Post 644 or Let's Think Up a New Name

OK, so I'm reading various blogs and things and I've now see our ruling monied classes called Neo-Feudalists, Robber Barons and Corporatists.

Humm which name really truly describes them, do you think?

Post 643 or Sociopaths Anyone

Here I am trying to figure the hoohah over Jane Hampsher's decision to hook up with Grover Norquist and attempt to get an independent investigator to try to investigate Rahm Emanuel for misdeeds when he was with Fannie and Freddie. It is almost as though many of the progressives who are criticizing her have backed into a hot poker and have come out in a nearly uncontrollable rage attacking her. Forgetting that the ACLU and others have connected up with this organization at points where there goals coincided. Also perhaps forgetting that Churchill connected up with Stalin at a point where their goals coincided. Perhaps one reason they come out fighting like this is that they have laid down and allowed the corporate elite to run over them without standing up for anything. They have caved at the request of Obama and his minions and have become Obama's minions themselves.

Hampsher has been slamming large and important members and groups of the progressive community for being in, what she calls the veal pen for some time. So I expect that she hasn't made a lot of friends, but the response is kind of interesting, to say the least. Or stupidly overwhelming might be another way of putting it. One of my favorite sites, "No More Mister Nice Blog" has delinked (sorry can't link directly to that post you'll have to scroll down some to see it) to her based on that and her argument that the senate health care[?] bill needs to be destroyed because nothing is better than that bill for the vast majority of Americans.

I'm not sure what I'm seeing here. I really hope that I don't understand what is going on. That is I think that Emanuel and Obama are incredibly corrupt and were more that willing to lie about just about anything to get Obama elected. Further, I think that we (those of us who consider ourselves liberals/progressives) were completely taken in by our own desire to see a progressive black man elected president, so we were willing to overlook his real background and project our own fantasies on to him. So if I'm right then Obama and Rahm are simply very intelligent sociopaths and the rest of us are beyond belief naive and probably not so bright.

If we go on with this thought game a little further we end up with a lot of people who have a great deal invested in Obama the Idea now that they see where Obama is leading them they are too invested to back up and say: "He lied and is continuing to lie and he is only going to serve his corporate masters and not the people who really elected him." So where are they and what are they going to do when they see this abortion of a health care/insurance give-a-way of a bill? They have to believe that really Obama wants more, but he can't do more right now, so he is playing some sort of brilliant chess game that we mere mortals can't understand. We must remain in awe and let him play it out his way and just hope that we get some crumbs from the rich man's table. They cannot allow themselves to see that they (we) were taken for suckers and we've got to stop giving him a pass and start fighting if we are going to get any more than those few crumbs.

Let's see what he's done with just health care (let's forget Wall Street and the other money men):

First, a (it turns out a not so secret) deal with the pharmaceutical industry to guarantee them no cheaper imports of drugs from Europe or Canada and to continue the highest prices in the world.

Second, a deal with the insurance industry to guarantee them 31,000,000 new customers at whatever rate they want to charge. Payment to be made by the middle class whether in the form of direct payments to the insurance companies or in subsidies paid through the government or with tax credits and to continue the highest prices in the world.

Second B, a subsidy that will not cover the increased cost for the middle class.

Third, special deals with hospitals and doctors to continue the highest prices in the world.

Fourth, if Hampsher is correct, he directed the largest progressive organizations to back off. That is not to try to organize demonstrations or other grass roots actions to support a truly progressive bill. No he wanted them to stand down to allow him to proceed in secret to construct these deals whose details were not available to the public until later, but would be what was best for us, you'll see. Then when in essence it was really too late to do much about it the facts emerge. Added to that fact was of course, the out pouring of right wing crazies who essentially controlled the news all summer.

Fifth, he refused to pressure anyone on the right to move to a more "moderate" position, because as president he couldn't.

Sixth, he was more than willing to pressure those on the left to support this bill because as president he could.

Seventh, one of the most important parts of the bill and a way to pay for other parts is a tax on health insurance provided by employers (but just on "Cadillac" health insurance where employees get more insurance than they need or really know what to do with), so that the health care will be paid for by the middle class and workers, instead of oh say the wealthy or the health care industry in one form or another.

Eighth, the insurance industry can't refuse you for preexisting conditions, but they can charge you out the ass for them. Therefore, more money for them again.

Ninth, no cost control.

So how do progressives stomach this? The argument is now that we get something now and we build on it in the future. You know like with Medicare or Medicaid or ADC or or or or or. Or what of course we have built on nothing in the last thirty years except deregulation and tax cuts.

So I guess I understand enough about what is going on with Obama and Rahm (they are sociopaths), but what is going on with the progressive blogesphere? I do suspect that they are just too invested to admit that they were wrong and are now wrong. And their God has failed and they do not know what to do. They will eventually get their heads out of their asses just like they eventually did with Iraq, but then what?

I Stole This Entire Post

"wrestling with the crushing burdens of the Bush terms" irony -- only the best blogs have it.

You mean like escalating the war in Afghanistan, preserving military spending levels, helping to keep gays as second class citizens, granting immunity to price controls and competition from Europe and Canada to big PHARMA, backing the Bush position on land mines and biological weapons, preventing disclosures to the ACLU under the FOIA, continuing the Bush tradition of renditions, preventing legal action against tortures aledged by Rumsfeld, not closing Quantanimo, bailing out the banks instead of protecting homeowners, failing to commit to anything substantial that might slow climate change, smothering the public option with neglect and poor leadership, keeping Dick Chenney and his pals from being investigated, giving bailouts to GM instead of creating green jobs, and quashing Rahm's investigation?

Seems he's accomplished quite a lot in just one year. I don't see how McCain could have done much more.

Columbus Fun

Isn't that an incredibly distinguished looking gentleman there on your right in the top and bottom photos?

Post 640

This is depressing, but mostly right and this is only about the broken promises concerning health care.

Krugman is arguing that this bill needs to be passed, but I think that his position is that it is better than what is there now. Much like his being in favor of the various bailouts of Banking and Wall Street (are they the same?). That is, it is better than nothing, in the sense we need something done so this is what we've been given so we might as well live with it. I do not think that he understands the political implications of these half assed actions. The rage that inflames the middle class and the poor and what the outcomes of that rage can be and probably should be. Hell the middle class and poor are already pretty pissed with the attitude that the parties we keep electing will not govern in the interests of the people, but rather only in the interests of the 1% who now more or less own us all.

There is a good essay at Firedoglake, about how it is just as probable that we will not improve a very bad bill, but that we will instead institutionalize the insurance industry into another bloated (alright more bloated) government subsidized bureaucracy. In fact, given that the democrats are going to lose and lose big in 2010 it is a for sure thing that it will end up that way.

Hey Merry Xmas. And I hope you enjoy the anthracite compound in all your stockings.

They Forget Nothing and They Learn Nothing

I had a great afternoon in Columbus with some old friends then I came back here to read more stuff about the "Health Care Reform Bullshit."

I am reminded about what happened with the Bankruptcy bill a few years back when the right wing crazies, along with some left wingers managed to prevent the passage of that bill for a couple of years until the democrats got control.

I simply can't figure out what the majority of the democrats in congress think that they are doing. How hard is it to see that they are going to get their asses handed to them on a platter if they pass a plan that requires us all to buy insurance from private companies at private company rates, with a less than adequate subsidy, and no way to limit the cost.

Rahm is truly the epitome of the old description of the French ruling class: "They forget nothing and they learn nothing." He helped destroy health care under Clinton and now he charges forward to do the same thing under Obama.

I still think that I am right that they never wanted any real reform, just some sort of cosmetic change to let people think that they were going to get something good. It has come as quite a shock to them to find out that the people are in on it and do not like it one little bit. Further, I suspect that the people will not let Obama and the democrats forget how they feel, and that the result will be a disaster for the party next time out. So sad. too bad.

I would be more distrought if I thought that it would make any difference who was elected. I realy do think that there was more than a dime's worth of difference between the parties when Wallace ran back in 64, 68. Now perhaps about $0.03, maybe.

So I'm distraught about what is going to happen, but I do not think that the person I vote for is going to try to make any difference.

So sad, too bad.

Well one can dream, can't one.

Post Number 638

So I've come to the point that the military was in in Vietnam. Now the posts have become simply numbers. How many times can one say WTF.

Also, I'm concerned that I may have spelled Hippy (Hippie?) wrong. Gosh, I mean I was one, but then I never had to spell it, you know (hippy[ie?] not lawyer or for that matter dirty). So anyway that was depressing me and once again shows that I really can't spell worth a damn. Never could.

On top of that I've been posting to Facebook and linking there where I know that at least some people read the stuff. Here it is more like shouting in the wilderness. If a radical yells in the forest and there is not audience to hear him, does he make a sound?

One of the things that has been bothering me is that all of a sudden I'm seeing "progressives" claiming that they knew when they voted for Obama that he really wasn't a liberal, but was rather a "moderate." Therefore they have no reason to be surprised by what he is doing right now.

A couple of thoughts about that. After I call Bull Shit. First, if moderate has any meaning at all other then servant of the wealthy and powerful then he is no moderate. Of course, reading the MSM perhaps that really is what the word now means, so maybe he is what is now known as a moderate. Second, no one that I know of thought that he was the next FDR or LBJ but perhaps a JFK would not have been a bad thing. Hell another Eisenhower would have been OK. He is none of those. He is a Hoover, without Hoover's lovable personal qualities. Or a Bush II with a college vocabulary.

It appears as though we will now have a Health Care Reform Bill with no public option, no Medicare buy in, but with a requirement that each and everyone of us pay money to a private, nearly unregulated, for profit industry. Oh yeah, the government (us) will subsidize those of us who can't really afford it. But the subsidy will be so little and the kick in will be so high that it will still screw most of us.

November 11, 1918 etc.

So today is Veteran's Day. Big whoop. People congratulate me for serving in a (neo)colonial war half a world away, and tell me that I was there defending freedom (some add peace, but that is a little much to even comment on).

Sorry, I call bullshit. Eisenhower said that he kept the South Vietnamese from voting in 1958 to make sure that they didn't vote for Ho Chi Ming, which he knew they would. Some freedom. So I was no more defending freedom and democracy there and then, then the people in the service are now.

The guys who are busy being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and now it looks like there will be even more are fighting for what? Not freedom in Iraq certainly. In Afghanistan, gee we got a recent election that is so corrupt that the opposition "party" pulled out of the run off. On top of that one half of the population are being denied any rights at all (would you care to guess which half that is?) Given what just happened with the Sputak amendment, I would think that the democratic party probably has not problem with that at all.

I thought I was busy defending the world from the communist menace. Of course, keeping these mostly brown people from electing their own government was simply schooling them in real democracy. I really believed that at the time.

Seeing the affect we had on the people there the way we corrupted an already corrupt government (in Thailand) the affect on me was kind of like a cold shower. Why was I there, what was I doing? I grew up at 22, apparently our rulers have yet to get to that level of development.

At any rate I was supporting an entirely corrupt government that was not in any real way representing it's people. I guess that could refer to either the South Vietnamese or the good old USofA.

You can't do that on a continuous basis over seas (ever since about 1948) and expect that what you will end up with here at home is going to be anything, but a corrupt government which in no real way represents it's people.

The founding fathers understood that we could not have a large standing army and a republic. It's interesting that we knew so much more than we apparently do 200 years later. Now look at us. At any rate you cannot continue to support dictatorships everywhere else (no matter what Orwellian phraseology you might use to justify it) and not expect that kind of thing to start to be reflected in the government here.

So celebrate each one of us who helped support a corrupt and vile government (take your pick) whose only purpose is now to take money from the middle class and lower classes and give it to the wealthiest here in this country, it was always their purpose to do that in other countries.

P.S. Oh yeah, I've wondered since I could wonder why we insist on "celebrating" Veteran's Day on November 11. After all, the only thing that happened on November 11 (well except for the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs and Nat Turner) was the armistice in WWI, which merely paused the Great War. Our peace with Germany came much later after all the other parties had signed the Versailles Treaty and the Versailles Treaty simply set the stage for another war. We've actually ended at least one war since then, and stopped all our colonial wars without any formal ends. I suspect that there are no living WWI veterans left in the USofA. (As an aside I did meet a WWI veteran once. He had been stationed in south Texas during the entire war and spent the entire time chasing Mexicans and Indians, never seeing one, he said.)

Sunday Animals

Sonny and Ming taking a much needed rest.

Loki with his new stuffed toy.

Loki sleeping with his new stuffed toy. He doesn't want to be separated from it and doesn't trust us not to steal it from him.

Bad Treaties

I honestly do not think that there is any reactionary piece of crap that this administration will not sign off on. A secret treaty that will apparently (dare I say with any luck) decimate the internet. I understand that those who are in power, of course want to limit the real input of those of us out of power. The same type of thing happened with the introduction of the printing press. I would guess that it is important to keep these kind of things out of the hands of the radicals.

JWMcD? Just what would McCain have done? Let's us do it too.

Stupid Piece of Shit

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it, Upton Sinclair

An interesting timeline, one that is I suspect correct and one that is right in it's implications. Rahm would not want to learn anything that would interfere with his preconceived notions. The idea that we've got to suck up the the corporatists and the big money people in order to win certainly isn't new. The fact that you can't screw up enough to lose your job. Is probably not new either. If you insist that the things to do are very conservative things to do.

Now by job I mean the money that comes in from their corporate backers. That would include all writers for the MSM. It would also include all most all elected and appointed officials. One can of course lose one's elected position, or the people who appointed one can also get voted out, but then one will get to go back to the right wing welfare trough, or a nice lobbying position which would probably provide even more money than one got working for the government.

Elections

It is too bad the democrat won in NY-23, since a win by the republican would have meant that the crazy right wing would have been emboldened in republican primaries.

I'm kind of happy that the democrat lost in Virginia, because it shows what happens when we run a republican clone and the base stays home.

It is a tragedy that the marriage equity lost in Maine. How sad indeed. Why is it that we can't let everybody have those rights? Plus it would mean more business for divorce lawyers.

And then there is Ohio, the three constitutional amendments all passed with money from industry pouring in. So the second one was the worst. Now we have another bureaucracy of appointed people who will be able to set the conditions for more factory farms. The small farmers (those who are left) were convinced to vote against their interests as they (and other middle class and poor people) have so frequently in the past. Now the animals will have their lives made even more brutish and miserable. And the ground water run off from these places with their poisons, and antibiotics will contaminate the water we all drink, and especially those few family farmers left.

Health Care Crap

Among other's.

Now this is something that I should not have just learned. I guess that it would just be too much to expect that American doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies make a reasonable amount of money.

Democracy Wins

Wow, just wow. We congratulate Karzai on steeling the election so efficiently that no one will run against him in the run offs. Too much danger. Why is it that I am not supposed to think of Vietnam when I think of this place? Is it because there are no jungles there, cause there are certainly enough incredibly corrupt loser politicians that we are backing to make the whole thing seem like a case of deja vu all over again.

How stupid are we not only do we congratulate the guy, but also the British government and the U.N. How is it not like Vietnam? No jungle, so it's much cleaner and oh yeah, we are only losing about a fifth as many soldiers per week as we did during Vietnam. So I guess that means that we can continue on for thirty years or until we or the Chinese run out of money. Or we run out of unmanned drones.

H1N1 or Swine All About It

Now this is interesting, thanks Sue. I wonder what the deal is with the Indonesians? Well assholes abound.

Dr. Horrible

Hey I just found this today, I don't know where I've been, but it is good.

Health Care Crap

This kind of thing is just insider bullshit. From the beginning of the election campaign and I'm talking the primaries, on the Democratic side one of the major focuses of the of domestic issues has been the reformation of the health care and health care insurance system in this country. What that means is that private insurers have to be reigned in in some way to enable the average citizen (at the very minimum) afford real health care. Of course the best option would have been (and still is) single payer or an expansion of Medicare to the whole population.

That option was taken off the table by Obama right at the beginning so that he threw away a major bargaining chip for those who really wanted true reform. So now the god damn discussion is which of the least piss poor plans out there are going to be available to us. And by us I mean the average citizen, since the people who are making the rules and the laws get the best gold plated system there is in the world. For those people our health care and insurance industries are indeed the best in the world.

At any rate to go back. It is clear (to me and it should be clear to everybody everywhere) that Obama has no interest at all in any real reformation of the health care industry (I think that might be an oxymoron: health care/industry). From the git go he has wanted to pump money into the insurance and pharmaceutical industries (just like the bankers) without any reforms at all. He plans on taking that money from the average American (and the Chinese for as long as he can) and giving it to the wealthiest 1% who produce nothing.

It is interesting that he acted differently with the auto industry. There he canned CEOs and cut wages, etc. He appears to be willing to throw money at only the industries that produce nothing.

So to get back he still wants to screw us and the only reason he hasn't been completely able to do that is that we the people are raising a huge stink and he needs a little cover. The other thing is that there are a few people in congress who won't go along and a few who are scared to go along. Of course, once again the insurance industry is doing their bit by pouring tons of money into this congress. My bet is that anyone who loses their seat because of voting for the industry and against their constituents will find that they and their immediate family have good insurance and jobs for the rest of their lives.

So apparently there is a little bit of democracy still left in the old girl.

Late (OK Very Late) Sunday

Watching the World Go By.

Cat In a Box.

Hows about it big guy?

How About a Little Terror

The best defense of the French revolution and its supposed excesses is surely that of Mark Twain in "A Connecticut Yankee":

"There were two 'Reigns of Terror' if we would remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us have been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."

Our Slightly Liberal[?!] President

So OK it is possible or maybe even probable that we won't have a sort of decent public option (we already don't have the possibility of single payer, the best option) almost solely based on the fact that the president doesn't want one.

It looks like there is a good chance that there will continue to be a rape exception for all the corporations that are getting fat off our never ending colonial wars, in large part because the president doesn't want to remove it.

OH, by the way we did not get any real oversight of the various financial institutions we bailed out because the president didn't want it, in fact he insisted that it not be there.

On the plus side people who are dying and would like to smoke dope are allowed to if they have a doctors prescription in the few states that is permitted. Oh yeah, polar bears, some little protection. Big Whoop.

It is like there are three elevators; two that g0 down to a hell of our own making and only one that goes up. The two that go down are labeled republican, which is the express, and democratic, which is the slower more local run, but they are both heading in the same inexorable direction. To the same place. The third one which goes up? That is one the DFHs are trying to operate, but we just can't figure out how.

There is no progressive movement or legislation that conservative democrats, the president and republicans will not gut.

Stars and Stripes

I have been looking at some stuff recently about our history of warfare. Think about Stars and Stripes the service[wo]man's newspaper has been around, off and on, since the Civil War. It was founded in 1861 and went out of business after that war.

It was reestablished for WWI and went out of that business after the war.

It was reestablished for WWII and is still in business. That is it is a paper run by soldiers who are in a shooting war and it has been up since World War II. Why do you think that is? We have I think been constantly at war since at least late in 1941. The latest kerfuffles in Iraq and Afghanistan are just that the latest kerfuffles. Given the guy in the white house we will be there for at least 7 more years. Eleven if he is a one termer and the guy who replaces him is a republican.

Oh yeah, it is a pitty that we don't have enough money for health care, any health care must be revenue neutral. I do so wish that any war would also have to be revenue neutral.

Late Animals

Mom and her baby.

Loki and Ming

A coupla chicks lookin' for trouble.

Trying to Push the Obama Rock

So let's see, Daily Kos provides a little back ground on our great leader's actions, working closely with the industry to be regulated and with the senator to do the regulating we get the destruction of any possibility of reform once again.

It appears as though today the guy has finally figured out that he has got to be confrontational and to provide something to his supporters if he expects to be anything more then the first african american president. My wife insists that is all he thought he would have to be. Me, I personally have a much worse impression of the guy. I think that he's in the pocket (and has been all his public life) of the oligarchs that really run this country. I suspect that he might be finally coming around to the realization that if he doesn't give us little people something he or at least his party is toast. I also suspect that he and his backers may be starting to become aware that if they screw the people who really worked and voted for him, the real crazies will come to power. Not because there are more of them, but because the rest of us will simply sit on our hands and watch it happen. That may scare the oligarchs more than any faux liberal movement. So the minimum that can be done might be health care reform at this point. The massive battle that has been necessary to get anything may just wear everybody out. Not enough energy left to accomplish anything after that? Hmm?

Listening to Buffy Sainte Marie's newest album Running for the Drum. We're going to Quakers on Sunday and then for an hour with a drumming circle, with my new native american drum. I have become so DFH like, I find myself a little much at times. I wasn't this way in the 60s. Of course in the 60s (and 70s and 80s come to think of it) I was more interested in getting high than in expanding my consciousness, or whatever (and 90s).

We've also just gotten back from another funeral. I am intimately aware of all the funeral parlors in the greater Zanesville metropolitan area. Given the number of people who are friends of or related to friends of my wife who have shuffled off this coil of tears within the last six months, I'd suggest that if you are a friend or a relative of a friend of my wife to keep your doctor close at hand.

I've also been listening to Homer in the car. I figured that since they were originally meant to be listened to that I would listen rather than try to read the Iliad and the Odyssey. I've already went through the Iliad as translated by W.H.D. Rouse into prose. Although, we've got the Rouse version of the Odyssey, I found a verse translation by Fitzgerald. That is after, of course, listening to the new translation of Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell .

Unfortunately it does look like I will have to go back to work on Monday. Drat.

No Pictures

So no photographs of American war dead. It would I guess be just too icky for us all.

No photos of our torture victims. It might upset the various people of our various colonies if they saw what we actually did to those we disappeared into our Gulag well one never can tell what could set those lesser breeds without the law off. Not to mention that our own citizens might (I say might) react to the realization that torture wasn't something that was done by a few bad apples, but was ordered by the highest levels of our government. It doesn't seem to matter that Chaney pater and fili are all over the teevee bragging about it, and arguing that it is necessary. If you can't see it, it didn't apparently happen.

I wonder how long it will be before we look to a complete blackout on photographs of dead and terribly wounded civilians?

Ain't war grand, ain't we just the best people in the whole world.

Gay Rights

I'll go with this image, but I'm not positive that is from this year. It is interesting that after the rather pathetic turn out for the tea baggers a month or so ago there were photos all over the net purporting to be of that march. Now it is very hard to find photos.

So it looks like four or five times as many people turned out for the Gay Rights march as did for the Tea Bagger thingy.

BFFs

SNAFUed For Eternity

I find this to be incredibility funny in a sick sort of way, as I say in the title SNAFUed for all eternity.

More of the Same

I am having a hard time writing about politics recently. The reason is that I keep seeing the same things happening and I keep thinking the same things about them. The people in charge of the democratic party: Venial or incompetent or both, take your choice. So no money to the DNCC or any other democratic committee I gave to marriage equality in Maine, and I anticipate giving to Mary Jo Kilroy in Columbus, who I think is pretty progressive and who I've known off and on for a couple of decades.

At any rate as Firedoglake points out the veal pen operated by the White House continues to gut and kill. So called liberal groups being placed into a (not so?) metaphorical pen to be slaughtered, or at least to have any real progressive proclivities removed (then slaughtered). The discussion at No More Mister Nice Blog was interesting (got to scroll down for "Emotionally It Works for Him), but it devolved into, I think, the question: "Obama venial or incompetent?"

I lean towards the venial part of the question, and I am pretty sure that the question is really just that. I would lean towards incompetent, except for the Veal Pen. The active attack by the White House and it's minions on those who are even a little progressive. Good lord, when republicans (who are not in congress) are openly for a robust public option, where does that put the president who is clearly not in favor of a public option and would have ensured that it wasn't even still on the table, if he had his way, and if the DFHs didn't continue to push for it in spite of everything.

No Comment

The Classics

You know you just can't go wrong with the classics.

Sunday Animals

Sunny finding yet another very comfortable place.

Ming with a new toy and some of her hair back.

Loki and Tansy watching the world together.

The Last Polanski

When one goes back to the original rape charges against Polanski. What one comes up against is that it really is a she said he said situation.

One could see the mother of the victim, essentially setting things up, expecting that something sexual would happen that would advance someone's (her's or her daughter's) career, and then just leaving her 13 year old in this house, and also see the 13 year old as thinking that she was much more mature than she was and thinking that she could control things, but having them get out of her control. The problem with these kinds of discussions is that they move along and all of a sudden it appears that one (I) am giving Polanski a pass for violently raping a 13 year old. No.

One though is that everything went much farther than either the girl or her mother intended. If, however, at any point the girl was crying and begging him to stop as she said then he is a rapist.

As far as her unchanging testimony is concerned as proof of what happened, I have had clients who have told me obvious lies and then will not get off the story no matter what evidence I can show them to show that they are lying. On the other hand the fact that a witness makes a statement immediately after the incident and continues to hold to the same version of events, is an indication and can be used as an indication that the statement and testimony at a later date is accurate.

Polanski's admissions are really something that more or less innocent people do all the time. The prosecutor way over charges and then dismissed a lot of the charges if you will plead your guy and will give him a conviction and save him a trial. There is even a term for it: Alfred Pleas. Make the case go away with as little pain as possible to everybody. From everything he said he thought of it as consensual. The attitude toward adolescent sexuality was different at that time. also the attitude toward drugs and giving them to quite young people was also different. That's the point of the Pretty Baby link on the last post.

My Friend Roman

I've been thinking about my feelings about Polanski and I think I have realized why I feel as I do.

First, I am almost always happy when a criminal escapes the clutches of the law.

Second, I think that this guy has lived 31 years without, as far as we know, reoffending.

Third, during those 31 years he has lived a productive and creative life.

Then I have some thoughts on why some people seem to hot to punish him, people who wouldn't be so hot for punishment in other cases. Most progressives thought that the various members of the Weather Underground who were arrested decades after their crimes should not have gotten the kinds of jail time most of them got. Yet these same progressives seem to be more then willing to hang out to dry any other progressive who is busted for a sexual transgression (see Spitzer, Gov.).

Also I really do not see the conservatives or the MSM running around calling for the arrest and trial of the people like Bush and Chaney and their minions who authorized and micro-directed the operation of our own rape/torture rooms. Although, that is more of a shout out about hypocrisy, rather than about Polanski. But it is a simple point that a man who apparently committed one rape is hunted with relish, while a several men who committed multiple rapes are simply given a pass. Real progressives, for the most part get a pass on this one.

At any rate that's where I am now, but I may have more thoughts later about the crime itself. It is difficult to write about it with any kind of a balance, without coming off as sounding like a rape apologist.

Imagine

Imagine Obama as Frau Helm in drag of course:

Stuff

Wow my favorite word even, and this is really good and even I understand it.

Hari Kari Anyone?

I've been thinking since the last post. Perhaps Obama and Rahm believe that the democratic party has simply become too corrupt and been humiliated one too many times by the republicans and even by themselves, so they have decided that the democrats must commit sepaku.

Hey it makes as much sense as anything else.

Stuff

I haven't been writing a lot because it does seem so pointless. As a nation where we should right now have a new health care system in place with at a minimum a robust public option, or at least be in the middle of a vicious filibuster in the senate with the last right wing hold outs fighting to keep any change from occurring and becoming more marginalized by the day.

Day after day information comes out from the MSM that shows that we are indeed a third world nation as far as care is concerned, 45,000 die each year because of no insurance. Then a major democratic [?] senator either lies or is willfully ignorant concerning the amount of government regulation of health care in France, Germany, and Japan.

A while back I said that what was happening in Washington was like watching a slow motion train wreck. I take that back, it isn't that interesting. It is more like watching bread not rise.

In the mean time the guys (Obama and his Rasputin Rham continue on their merry way to destroying the democratic party. Do you think that they are both deep moles placed there by anarchists, or do they simply keep their heads in the sand ignoring the warning signs.

Mamas and the Papas

And now for something more or less tasteless. I seem to want to be tabloidizationed to death some days.

More Torture

My god do we just have the same arguments over and over. It is like somethings never have happened. More and more studies show that torture is not an accurate way to get good information, never mind the moral aspects of it. They show that it didn't work between 2002 and s008 and still those people who are important and should be listened to crap their pants and want to torture the most recent brown guy who gets busted because he bought too much peroxide and acetone and he is another Osoma? Geeze. Perhaps he just wanted to advance to hair stylus from car driver.

ACORN

Wow, if this is really accurate, then the whole thing about ACORN is even less than I thought it was. The guy plays along and turns it into the police. And then gets fired.

Bullshit gets you a long way if you are a reactionary pig.

Sunday

After

Before

No comment.

Cat in a box.