August 27, 2009 archive

Widespread fraud and low turnout mar Afghan election

Preliminary results for last Thursday’s election in Afghanistan have been released by election officials. While initial results put Afghan President Hamid Karzai with a slight 2 percent lead over Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, his nearest rival, results released on Wednesday showed Karzai pulling ahead with 44.8 percent of the vote compared to Abdullah’s 35.1 percent based on returns from 17 percent of the nation’s polling stations.

After the polls closed, the New York Times reported the Afghan election was called a success despite Taliban attacks. “American officials were quick to declare the poll a success – worth the expanding commitment of troops and money to an increasingly unpopular and corruption-plagued government.”

Before the election, Western officials feared the Taliban would completely disrupt the election with violence. The Guardian noted that US and NATO officials were quick to proclaim poll a success despite violence, low turnout, and fears of electoral fraud.  

Overnight Caption Contest

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Ted Kennedy and NOLA

Among all of his other accomplishments, Ted Kennedy can be remembered since Katrina and the federal flood happened as a legislator who proactively did what he could to help New Orleans’ and the rest of the Gulf Region’s people after the catastrophe.  

Getting those who can’t pay to pay, and the health insurance industry

All right.  Anastasia P requested that I repost an earlier diary detailing my hopes and suspicions about “health care reform.”  I don’t do reposts; however, I am interested in an investigation of the central theme of that earlier diary, which was to look at health care in the context of a (these days) booming industry: “getting those who can’t pay to pay.”  In this stage of capitalism, it would seem, the big growth industry is in “squeezing blood from turnips,” in which it is imagined that the poor and indebted will pay their creditors whatever is owed them if only the laws requiring them to do so are tough enough, and if the collection agencies are firm and resolute enough in their intentions.

Health insurance reform enters into it.  More below.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Interesting Times

So we split the atom.  Now we can heat thousands of homes or incinerate thousands of homes.  Some people get luck and win the lottery but me, no I get the sociopath’s trifecta.

How the U.S. Media screwed Ted Kennedy, and the Country.

In 1979-1980, Ted Kennedy made his one and only bid for the U.S. Presidency.

I have often wondered why Ted Kennedy did not just hold his fire until 1984, when there would’ve been no Democratic Party Incumbant President standing in his path to first overcome. But despite this, Kennedy did poll very well during 1979. And before he even declared his candidacy seemed to be the “frontrunner” in the race initially by a healthy margin.  That is until he did an TV Interview in 1979 with Roger Mudd of CBS News.

In the interview, Kennedy neither made any “gaffes“, nor did he say say anything remotely as stupid as George W. Bush or Sarah Palin ever did.  But yet the U.S. News Media succeeded anyway in manufacturing a controvesry by declaring and pontificating about how “Kennedy could not answer the simple question of why he wanted to be President.” As the news stories from many sources then ran wild on this meme, and later jokes by various comedians followed, Kennedy’s once promising Campaign, to put a genuine Liberal of true Integrity back into the White House and remake this Country, just evaporated away in a matter of a couple of weeks.  By a few weeks later the polls had completely reversed and the renomination of Jimmy Carter was a foregone conclusion (and the Media was all too happy then to brand Ted Kennedy as “a loser“).

But a closer examination shows that Kennedy merely answered the question in a thoughtful, unhurried, intellectual manner — which had always been the style of the Kennedy brothers in many interview situations. Both John and Robert Kennedy would also often give slow, reflective,  pensive, thoughtful responses to questioners in a variety of casual interview situations.  

The pundits need to “chill out”

This turd of reasoning has been floating around awhile; if you investigate the Agency it will have a chilling effect which will hamper officers decision making and situations.

The answer, regrettably, is yes. Agents who relied on previous decisions not to prosecute are back in potential peril. And their angst and uncertainty will be shared by others in the intelligence community, particularly if the investigation is officially broadened.

The agents’ concern over their potential liability for past acts is understandable, given the relative legal uncertainty in which they operated. Most people believe that they know intuitively what torture is, but precisely what techniques meet the legal definition of torture is anything but clear.

WRONG….

A Simple Question About Health Reform

Do you know of this famous quote?

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.

    — William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”, Act 3 scene 2
      Greatest English dramatist & poet (1564 – 1616)

With the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, would it not behoove us to lay the question of a viable healthcare to bill to rest and let him take the victory of successful passage along with him as he is laid to rest? Isn’t NOW the time for all the wafflers, the Blue Dogs, the DINOs and the weasels to stop screwing around and pay one lasting, final tribute of honor to the man by ending this faux “bipartisan” compromise, putting the meat back into the bill and sending it sailing past the recalcitrant, criminally negligent GOP?

That’s the big question. What say you?

Pony Party

Caption This!  Let’s play, okay?  & keep in mind that Pony Party is an Open Thread.  Please DO NOT rec the party.

funny pictures
moar funny pictures

Ted Kennedy as New Dealer?

article, by Louis Poyect, via The Unrepentent Marxist:

From an editorial in today’s Washington Post:

TED KENNEDY once said that his own legislative record was one he’d love to run against. A number of people tried, of course, and lost. But then, they weren’t Ted Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy spent 46 years in the Senate hewing pretty steadily to his course while others trimmed or just plain bailed out.

He remained committed to a brand of New Deal and postwar liberalism that, even when it had lost some of its luster and had run up against a conservative tide in politics, still had much to offer the country.

Meta: What do you hope for?

     I write today to honor the loss of those who came before us, and not only the greatest among us but also the names we will never know, those who were dear to only a few, but just as important to what our nation is today, and what it should be in the future.

    So I ask you, my fellow Dharma Bums, what is it you hope for?

    And by that I not only mean what you seek to accomplish through blogging or in politics, but also what you hope to achieve in your personal lives, what you hope the world becomes through your work here on earth, and what you hope to leave after you are gone.

   I have always been a political creature. Myu mother’s brother was a self proclaimed socialist, and under his guidance I began to read voraciously the works of the greats, Orwell, Thoreau, Knut Hamsen, J.R.R. Tolkien, Chaucer, Dumas, more names than I can recall. Reading has never been a hobby for me, it has been part of my life’s work. It has shaped the man I am today, and while reading the work of the many talented writers here I have found much to be joyful for, and much food for thought.

   I always wanted to be a writer, or a teacher, or a journalist. That is my hope.

   Now I find myself settling at times, and simply hoping to find decent work that can earn a decent wage.

   But I do not lose hope. I am a fool, in that regard.

   In my writing/blogging, what have you, I hope share ideas, to learn, and to teach. I hope to meet like minded people and people who disagree with my views, in order to learn more, for, if we never hear that which we diod not think ourselves, how are we to learn?

   With that in mind I have read many things I disagree with, vehemently at times, passively at others. I have read Ayn Rand, Mein Kampf, Machiavelli and Newt Gingrich.

   Often I have read work that I thought I would disagree with at the end, only to find myself em[powered by what I thought I would not agree with, such as the works of Karl Marx, Adam Smith, barry Goldwater and others who I thought I would certainly oppose, only to find that I agreed more than I would have believed I would.

   Politically, my issue is Accountability. Accountability for the class war, the super rich and the Corporations they serve.

   Accountability for the power elite, the Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s, the Sanford’s and Ensign’s, the Baucus’s and Ross’s and the others of their ilk.

   I champion the powerless and disenfranchised, the fight for equality and civil rights, not because they effect me so personally, often they do not, but because I see how many people they do effect, and the injustice that is borne when it should not be so.

   I have been accused of siding with the unpopular decision for the sole sake of doing so. I admit freely to it. It is the unpopular speech that needs the most protection, the minority that must be fully protected if we are to pretend to be a nation of equality under the law, and not equality under who has the most dollars.

   I hope.

   I hope to create a better world. I see a nation of so many opportunities, and yet so much injustice. I see a people of such brilliance and grace, and yet we are mired in povery and division, and in hate, when we should be in love, united, and not divided.

   I hope to help create such a world, a world of peace and love, a world of equality, both legally and economically, where none go sick or hungry, where all my have a home and a hope and a dream they can work towards achieving.

   I am a champion of many issues because there are many issues that need someone to fight for.

   This nation and it’s people are worth fighting for, worth dying for.

   Many people can be divided into two groups, those that see others as less than they, and those who hope to see equality in all of us.

   That is the fight we see today. Hate vs Love. Empathy vs Disdain. Hope vs. Fear.

   I have much that I fight for, because there is much worth fighting for.

   So, I sk you, my dearest comrades, my fellow Dharma Bums, what do you hope for, what do you fight for, and what do you think is worth dying for.

   I am eager to learn as much as I can, and to share whatever you will have of me.

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