Everything Old Is New Again

I remember a history lesson from when I was in College. No linky, but the story went that back in the bad old days of the Gilded Age the New York legislature was about award someone the right of way to build a railroad through a part of New York state.

In those bad old days there were two major competitors. One went to the legislature with a bag of money. The other went with two bags. The guy with two bags got the award to build the railroad.

All I can say is thank god that isn't the sort of thing that happens now a days.

Obama, Gates, and the Cop

More Stuff to Be Crazy About

OK, so he is right. I've said it before, that we won't get any real change until things get so bad something will have to be done and then it will probably be too late: See Global Warming, Not Doing Anything Until The Sea Rises About 300 Feet From The Melting Icecaps.

Why is it that when a minority gains power they act like a caricature of the reactionary white guy? See: Thacther, Gandhi, Meir, Powell. But I'll admit it I was really hoping that the Black Guy would make a difference.

Let's face it I'm just:

Fuck Them All

For god's sake. We luvs us some mushie middle of the liberal road shit. Fuck 'em all. I got mine seems to be what most of the people in Washington say, even those who are identified as liberal. Why is it that a guy who ran as being just a little liberal needs to be pushed to be even just a little liberal? No one ever sees the need to push him back from a radical leftist position to something more "centrist." He always starts from the right, ALWAYS!

When the public option is destroyed, he will not use that defeat to push a more progressive agenda, he will curl up with the right wingers of both parties and hug and kiss them and tell us all what a great deal we've gotten. Then he will throw more money at the banksters because that will again be necessary. And there will be more and more people who have no health insurance, or perhaps they will be required by law to buy it, and they will get the same kind of coverage that minimum auto insurance provides.

Health Care

Oh my god. Is this guy real? Why yes he is. He is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be stupid and lazy. Pravda on the Potomac cannot self destruct too soon for me. Leaving only reactionary pieces of shit in it's place. Good better the enemy we all know than one that pretends to be our friend when it suits them!

The second point, is that I am positive that it will be better not to pass a health care "reform" that doesn't have a very strong public run by and completely owned by the government insurance package.

Stopping real health care reform by the blue dogs and republicans will not be Obama's Waterloo (depending of course on how he handles it), but to move our historic metaphors back a dozen or so centuries a Pyrrhic victory for the right wing corportists.

It should be obvious that we can run against those ass holes, using the fact that they kept us from getting decent health care. That is I am positive a better outcome than to try to get some piece of shit through that really helps no one except the incredibly wealthy insurance company owners. Because we are really not going to be able to "build" on a piece of shit legislation.

Nutz

Lost an O.V.I. yesterday. Nutz. I had testimony that the guy had only had one drink. That the HGN test is only 70% accurate. That diabetes and time of day and even nicotine affect it it. Unfortunately, he volunteered that he takes 42 pills a day and "probably all of the bottles say do not drink with this drug."

The guy is a diabetic, is on a list for heart lung transplant, smokes, etc.

Still probably no reason to appeal. The guy had about four different driving under suspensions. So the magistrate gave him 70 days each on each of his M1s all to be served concurrently. So even if we appealed and won he'd still have to serve 70 days.

Jesus H. Christ

Well Hell.

Marginal Tax Rates

Why can't people have a rational discussion about taxes? In the 1950s under Eisenhower (a republican who had a republican congress for two years) the marginal tax rate was 90 fucking per cent on the wealthiest.

Why the fuck is it that 35% fucking marginal tax rate on the wealthiest 1% of the of the income over $250,000.00 is such a big deal for the vast majority of us. Oh wait there is not a single talking head who makes under that is there?

Dogs

Loki with his blankey.

Loki trying to get Ming's attention.

More Medical Stuff

Why is it that we seem unable to get ourselves the same kind of medical care that every single other educated, democratic, industrial nation in the "Western World" (and many third world) nation has?

Instead we are left with:

The Professor Speaks

This is, to put it mildly, interesting. Something other than the cops view.

Professor Gates etc.

A couple more thoughts about the Gates thing and BHO's back peddling on his calling the actions of the cop (not the cop) stupid. (Although, the people who control public discourse, quickly changed the quote to calling the cop stupid, not his actions.)

First, and most importantly it allows the media to just skip away from the Health Care debate and go on to something so much simpler (racist vs. not-racist, abusive cop vs. cop abuse, dirty fucking hippys vs. decent lawn order types [all the rest of us], uppity blacks vs. just us down home decent white types).

I suspect, as people have already commented the white house press corp, was bored with Obama's press conference (except the part about Gates). Because, dare I say, it involved policy that helps the middle class and the poor and it did not involve shooting or beating up somebody (or a lot of somebodies). I now suspect that most of the press are simply not smart enough to understand even the simplest economic and political ideas, short of the shoot up beat up kind. (OK, they may be smart enough [although I'm not sure about that], but they are too lazy to really learn even econ. 101 or to take a couple of weeks and drive through Canada or the British Isles (both countries where English is the language) and talk to the average person who enjoys socialized medicine. Of course, it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, they also know on which side their bread butter blah blah. Or to put it more elegantly: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on his not understanding it."

Second, it allows the right wing to ratchet up their usually high decibel level to the screaming level again and by doing so to try to force (and let's face it they did force the prez.) to back down and to show their power.

Finally, it does amaze me that we are having the discussion on whether or not to enter the last half on the 20th century concerning health care, and we are doing that now well into the 21st century.

All in all, a kind of depressing end to the week.

Health Insurance Documentary

Gee What Important Things Are Happening

Let's see a cop admits hassling a small 60ish guy (who just happens to be black) and arrests him for clearly no reason, as the case is dropped within hours of being filed.

The President says the cop acted stupidly. Now the Prez. apologizes.

People are really not sure where Obama was born, perhaps Kenya then jet flighted to Hawaii to appear in the local papers. So that's all over the news.

I guess nothing else interesting is going on in D.C.



The media at work.

Obama vs. FDR

So I've been thinking about Obama and wondering why he isn't more attuned to the needs of the poor and really middle class given his background and history.

Then I started to wonder just what is his back ground? Since, he graduated from high school, at least, he has always been on the fast track and in the, how does one say it, midst of the well off. One of the best undergraduate schools, one of the best law schools, one of the better law firms, some time off to help organize, but not too much.

Into politics and an unbroken string of successes there. So hey, buddy why can't you do the same thing, huh? I'm not saying he is as bad as a Goldberg or Bush, but he really doesn't know what the average person, or poor person faces. I suspect if he wasn't obviously partly African American, he would be another wealthy white person "born on third who thought he'd hit a triple."

So what was the difference with FDR, Truman, JFK and Johnson? Well FDR was born with that silver spoon, but he lost it all in one afternoon. He knew what loss was and he knew what it was to need help. Truman and Johnson were essentially saved by the New Deal. JFK, I do suspect that the PT Boat thing did something to him in terms of his ability to relate.

Or perhaps I'm just full of it and trying out to be a wealthy pundit?

More Weird

This is just weird. Not the fact that most of our senators are crazy enough to want to require all states to recognize the most lax concealed carry laws of any state. (I've given up on expecting any kind of real rational action by a majority of our legislators.) Nor the fact that the NRA keeps pushing more and more extreme gun laws (by the way are you watching and learning HRC and NARAL?).

But that apparently now we require a super majority of 60 in the senate to pass any legislation. When the fuck did this happen? It certainly wasn't the case when the republicans controlled the chamber.

Fuck it, lets filibuster night and day from now until the end of time, at least it will be entertaining.

The Physically Ill and the Mentally Ill

A couple of kind of interesting personal things today, or rather this week.

First, the little woman came down with some kind of flu on Sunday. In fact I can tell you almost to the exact minute. She started saying she was cold about 2:00 p.m. Sunday and at about 4:00 p.m. we suddenly realized she was sick.

She had incredible muscle aches for the next three days and yesterday at about 11:00 a.m. had a temperature of 102. So we gave up and went into the doctor's. We got there by about 3:00 p.m. by that time her temperature was back to normal and the flu was over. Verrrrrrrrrry interesting.

Then this morning we got up and she put the Saint's food out while he was outside doing his thing. He came in and she tried to feed him, but he refused to eat because he always watches when she fixes his food, and this time he didn't. So when I went into the kitchen he was just laying there looking at the bowl. I picked up the bowl and took stuff out and pretended to put it into the bowl and gave it back to him and he ate it. Weird.

Well Well Well

A little something from Kos about the lies the anti-health care contingent keeps spreading.

Doctors

So my brother and his daughter both are scheduled to have heart caths tomorrow morning. She is only twenty-six years old.

A Little Sunday Sleeping Music

I Fucking Told You So

We are not going to leave that "country" at all. We are going to stay there and keep a major presence in Iraq until Hell freezes over or until we can no longer afford to do it. We are going to replay, not Vietnam, but rather Indochina. And this time we are not going to be us, but we are rather going to be the French.

Unhealthy Sunday

Sonny after a trim to get the clumps he can't reach because he's too fat.

See.

Convalescing.

Stuff

So it appears as though the little woman has come down with the flu. Which has the dogs very worried since she is the only one who knows how to make the dog food and the yogurt that the dogs eat. Actually they seem to be looking at me and licking their chops.



I'm sure she'll be alright.

Sunday Morning

A little bump to get you moving in the morning.

Book Report

I've stared reading The Art of Fiction by John Gardner and wow is it good. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in writing.

Later In the Day

Forty three years ago today:

How About a Little Zevon to Wake Up To

Why do they do it?

Another far left radical

I have long wondered why the right becomes so enraged and hysterical about policies and people that are just kind of, well really "moderate" and not really progressive or liberal at all.

I think the reason is if they can paint the Clintons and Obama as far left liberals, then they can prevent any kind of change and then roll things back to those glorious days of yesteryear, when Robber Barons roamed freely over the American land scape.

So any minor change, one (like government health care) that brings the USofA into the middle 20th century and up with all modern democratic governments becomes a radical far left liberal (I don't understand it, but "far left liberal" seems to be the phrase du jour, if you define jour as decades) agenda to destroy our freedoms.

I would guess that what they are trying to do, the smarter ones at least, is to make any progressive move so painful that no politician will want to experience that sort of pain, so they will fore go it. The rest are just dumb fucks.

I watched it happen with Clinton, and at that time I wondered. He managed quite a few real conservative changes, yet he (and Hilliary) were both constantly attacked as being radical far left liberals (oh yes, and major drug dealers and murderers). WTF?

Of course they have successfully moved the discourse so far to the right that the kind of health care that was enacted by Bismark is too far to the left for us. So what happens instead of real health insurance is that we have now apparently come up with a mandatory insurance plan that includes penalties for those who don't buy private insurance. Some far left liberal plan.

I suppose that if the entire house of cards collapses again under Obama or doesn't recover then the "far left liberals" will get the blame and we will be back with another "Bush/Chaney moderate" of some sort. If it happens under the reactionary right then any change will be so moderate that we will end up with ...........................Obama and no real change after all.

More Disturbing Science Stuff Which I'm All For

According to P.Z. Myers we are not planning on creating a race of slave beast men. Why not?

Well at least we can be sure that our representatives are working hard for us to keep this horrible thingy from happening. Personally I'm in favor of it.

My Style of Deposition