February 21, 2008 archive

I’ve written a bit about Bush’s despicable abuse of our military personnel, treating them as little more than props in his juvenile cowboy fantasy. Well, it just keeps coming. Joseph L. Galloway of McClatchy Newspapers has this bit of encouraging news:

Sen. James Webb, D-Virginia, a Vietnam veteran, has been doggedly pursuing passage of a new GI Bill aimed at helping these new wartime veterans get that education by giving them much the same educational benefits that were extended to their grandfathers after WWII.

Under his bill, which has attracted three dozen other sponsors, the government would resume paying full college tuition for these veterans for a period linked to their times in uniform, but for no more than 36 months or four academic years. Every eligible college veteran also would receive a check for $1,000 a month to help cover living expenses.

This would cost the government about $2 billion a year, which is about what we’re presently spending every 36 hours in Iraq.

President George W. Bush and the Pentagon oppose any such improvement of this miserly benefit for our young veterans. Why? The president says it would cost too much and be too hard to administer, and he’s threatened to veto Webb’s bill if it ever passes.

The Pentagon says that if you offer more realistic college benefits, too many troops might decide to leave at the end of their enlistments and take advantage of it. And that, they say, would only make it even harder to find and enlist enough recruits to man our wars.

It would cost too much. What we spend every day-and-a-half on Bush’s Iraq disaster is too much to spend to ensure that those of our military personnel who survive Bush’s disaster can come home to a promise of an education. Because if they can get an education, they won’t want to re-enlist! Could it be more clear that the Pentagon is deliberately taking advantage of lower-income Americans to provide cannon fodder for Bush’s war?

This is the Burning the Midnight Oil Midnight Thought for tonight … which will be found in Burning the Midnight Oil for Sensible Economics … but not until later tonight (Wednesday).

Posted here because … well, Docudharma blogs the future. Yeah, normally further ahead in the future than three or four hours, but if I didn’t already have this part in the draft diary queue, ready to go, I’d have no idea what I was going to say.

And, yes, the two most important parts of the Midnight Oil are, first, the commentary that follows and, second, the diary roll, so what I’m giving you here is a Bronze Medal … that is, the Midnight Oil clip and snippet from the lyrics. And then, of course, the Midnight Thought which finishes, as they say in Oz, “just outside the medals”.

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Midnight Thought

The time has come to talk about … Inflation.

Oh, c’mon, wake up! You, there in the back, I see you dropping off to sleep. Yeah, its late for some of your, get a cup of coffee or tea or something. This is serious. Start talking about economics and people just {mutter mutter mutter}

Is there any question that we are facing a threat of inflation? No, of course not.

The question is, which inflation are we facing?

However, nowhere does the insensitive misuse of American Indian images, icons, and stereotypical elements appear more brashly than in athletic contests at the public high school level in Oklahoma.

Savage Country: American Indian Sports Mascots Part One

Bill O’Reilly is broadcasting his “O’Reilly Fester” from Los Angeles all this week. We don’t particularly want him, but hey, it’s a free country – despite O’Reilly’s best efforts to promote authoritarian rule via his bullying brand of demagoguery.

The question I have is, “Why is he here?” Seeing as Billo is unlikely to return my calls, and I don’t have a producer like Stuttering Jesse Watters to ambush him at his hotel, I’m left with speculation.

This is a review of Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen’s The Politics of Money, a critique of the money system that contains lots of good material, especially insofar as the authors’ discussion of the money system can be used to debunk the Republican dross about the sacredness of capitalism, but also insofar as the authors suggest a number of alternatives to the money system we currently have.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

(This is the third diary in a 24-hour fundraiser for Gilda Reed, Democratic Candidate for Katrina-Burdened LA-01.)

GILDA REED WILL NOT ABANDON US

Livingston.  Vitter.  Jindal.   When it comes to Louisiana’s First District, none of them stuck it out.  There’s no stability to be had when an entire community of American citizens is used as a political stepping stone.  Gilda Reed will not abandon anyone, ever.  Imagine that.

As for the Republicans running for LA-01 today, we can see from the Times-Picayune, the new crop of candidates are just as interested in “seat-hopping” as the old:

As Bobby Jindal drops his title of U.S. representative in favor of Louisiana governor today, voters will begin posing a number of questions to the candidates who hope to succeed him in Congress. Among them:

— What qualifications do you have to be my voice in Washington?

— What is your position on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq?

— How can you bring home the bacon?

This is how republican politicians make nice to their torture loving base.  The New York Times reports:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

McCain voted against the bill, which would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual.

His vote was controversial because the manual prohibits waterboarding — a simulated drowning technique that McCain also opposes — yet McCain doesn’t want the CIA bound by the manual and its prohibitions.

Hmmm.  McCain voted against a measure– an inadequate measure imo because among the 19 permitted “techniques” are some that amount to torture– that would forbid any “innovations” not in the 19 listed techniques.  These “innovations” include waterboarding.  And how does McTorture explain the brilliant logic of that?

‘I knew I would be criticized for it,” McCain told reporters Wednesday in Ohio. ”I think I can show my record is clear. I said there should be additional techniques allowed to other agencies of government as long as they were not” torture.

”I was on the record as saying that they could use additional techniques as long as they were not cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment,” McCain said. ”So the vote was in keeping with my clear record of saying that they could have additional techniques, but those techniques could not violate international rules against torture.”

What, pray tell, are the magical, non-torture “additional techniques” beyond the 19 in the manual and waterboarding?  F*ck if I know.  Do you know?  Does anybody?  Are there such things?  You know what?  It doesn’t matter because this vote isn’t about the content of the bill.  No, it’s about rallying the Torquemadas around this candidate’s willingness to torture.

McTorture wants all of the little torture happy rethuglicans in the base to know that he’s the true successor to Flyboy McCodpiece and that he, too, will use “other techniques” (we cannot tell you what they are because that would give it away).  And just as W says that waterboarding isn’t torture, so too the undisclosed additional techniques aren’t torture, also. And how do we know that?  Because the US doesn’t torture.  Did he tell us that already?  

What slime.

The American College of Physicians recently published a position paper in support of medical marijuana.  

Marijuana has been smoked for its medicinal properties for centuries. Preclinical, clinical, and anecdotal reports suggest numerous potential medical uses for marijuana. Although the indications for some conditions have been well documented, less information is available about other potential medical uses.

Additional research is needed to further clarify the therapeutic value of cannabinoids and determine optimal routes of administration. Unfortunately, research expansion has been hindered by a complicated federal approval process, limited availability of research-grade marijuana, and the debate over legalization. ACP believes the science on medical marijuana should not be obscured or hindered by the debate surrounding the legalization of marijuana for general use. In this paper the College lays out a series of positions on research into, and the use of, marijuana as medicine.