Oct 07 2007

With today’s Congress, Nixon would not have resigned

Carl Bernstein was part of a 35-year retrospective on Watergate today as part of the 2007 Society of Professional Journalists National Convention. The Capitol Hill newspaper, The Hill, reports Carl Bernstein thinks Watergate would have played very differently if it happened today.

Why?

Because, Congressional oversight is more lax now than during Watergate.

“The difference with today is that the system did its job. The press did its job. The court did its job. The Senate committee did its job,” Bernstein said Saturday. “There’s been great reporting on this president. But there’s been no oversight. We have a Democratic Congress now and there’s still no oversight.”

Bernstein also said that “35 years of ideological warfare” could also change how the public would react to such a scandal.

“We live in a very different atmosphere today,” Bernstein said. “With Watergate, eventually the people of this country looked around and decided Nixon was a criminal president. I’m not sure the same chain of events would have taken place today.”

If we had today’s Congress during the Nixon presidency, then I doubt Richard Nixon would have even resigned. Shoot. It is doubtful even Vice President Spiro Agnew would have been forced to resign. Image, if you will, this scene on February 2, 1973. Nixon is before a joint session of Congress for the State of the Union address, and then…

Welcome to 2007 with the same gang of Nixon minions running the U.S. government. Somewhere, Richard M. Nixon is smiling.

Oct 07 2007

Act Surprised: Private Insurers Abuse Bush Medicare Drug Plan

Once again, privatization of what should be government’s responsibility proves that privatization is really about avoiding any responsibility.

The New York Times reports:

Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration, a review of scores of federal audits has found.

Shocking, yes. Private insurers play parlor games with people’s lives, because their only concern is profit. This is about so much more than the mere outrage of these specific vultures preying on the vulnerable. This is, once again, the Conservative ideology revealed for what it is: greed, cruelty, and social blight.

The problems, described in 91 audit reports reviewed by The New York Times, include the improper termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from consumers, doctors and drugstores.

Nothing to add, there. Except maybe a question: is improperly denying coverage to people with H.I.V and AIDS a crime against humanity? Are war crimes, alone, deserving of that appelation?

Since March, 11 companies have been fined by Medicare. Among them are three of the largest Medicare insurers- UnitedHealth, Humana and WellPoint.

The audits document widespread violations of patients’ rights and consumer protection standards. Some violations could directly affect the health of patients – for example, by delaying access to urgently needed medications.

But rest assured- HHS Secretary Michael O. Leavitt says the plan is saving seniors money. Presumably those who haven’t died, because they were denied the drugs they needed.

Industry execs make the excuses you would expect, but the Times lists the companies and the reasons they were cited.

David A. Lipschutz, of the non-profit California Health Advocates, gets to the bottom line- the bottom line. Explaining that the system still encourages predatory practices:

“Every enrollee in a private Medicare plan is a potential source of substantial profits,” Mr. Lipschutz said.

Exactly. Because large for-profit insurers are only in it for the profits. This needs be emphasized, again and again, because it is the moral black hole at the center of Republicanism: the Republican Party is the champion of Big Business, not people. And to their masters the Republicans will sacrifice as many people as is necessary.

Oct 07 2007

Speeding like a space brain one more fucking time toniiight!

::

hey mates

sup!

KM

Oct 07 2007

“Much of the Amazon basin is burning”

I don’t know about you but where I am, the weather is positively balmy. So warm in fact that this year’s crop of McIntosh apples is two weeks ahead of schedule (and growers are worried it may turn to mush if the nights don’t start turning cold soon) and local grape growers (for making wine, an unheard of occupation in these parts, when I was growing up) are reporting a bumper harvest. People bask in the warm sunshine, but you can hear it in conversations: the “new” weather (it’s been trending this way, the last few years) is kind of unsettling, like some strange, still-faint background noise that disturbs at some subliminal level. You step outside your door in the morning and the thought crosses your mind: July in October, what the fuck? Oh the trees are turning, sure (lots of maples around here) but the colours seem… faded. Just like last year. And the year before that. Geez, the last time I really saw the mountains blazing was in the nineties. Early nineties even. Not enough cold nights, they say… Some mornings it’s positively eerie.
  But it isn’t happening only here. That’s the really creepy part. And when you bother to look, what’s going on elsewhere is downright hair-raising.

/

South America chokes as Amazon burns
By Daniel Howden and Jules Steven in La Paz
05 October 2007

Vast areas of Brazil and Paraguay and much of Bolivia are choking under thick layers of smoke as fires rage out of control in the Amazon rainforest, forcing the cancellation of flights.

Satellite images yesterday showed huge clouds of smoke and much of the Amazon basin burning as fires, originally set by ranchers to clear land, have raged into the forest itself.

Did you just choke on your morning coffee? Yeah, that’s what happened to me too. Quick, what’s the date on this? October 5th 2007? Damn. That was yesterday  . How come I haven’t heard of this? How come it wasn’t on the news? How come no Breaking News diaries on DKos about it? How come the goddamned Democratic candidates all campaigning for President don’t mention it ??????

Yeah, it’s nice and warm where I am. Some even like the change and are hoping for more. But for others, elsewhere on the planet, not so much:

Burning smoke has blocked out the sun and local communities have begun to complain of respiratory disorders.

Roberto Smeraldi, head of Friends of the Earth Brazil, said the situation was out of control: “We have a strong concentration of fires, corresponding to more than 10,000 points of fire across a large area of about two million sq km in the southern Brazilian Amazon and Bolivia.“

(…)

“(This year’s fires) are mainly, I would say more than 90 per cent, the result of expanding cattle ranching.” The first rains have arrived but they are weaker than usual in most areas and have been useless against the fires.

In the past three years Brazil’s National Development Bank and the World Bank have poured funds into the southern Amazon“, fuelling the expansion of the cattle industry. (..) “It is taxpayers’ money fuelling these fires,”” said Mr Smeraldi.

(…)

“These fires are the suicide note of mankind,”” said Hylton Murray Philipson, from the London-based charity Rainforest Concern. ” While politicians talk about defining moments, destruction will continue until we begin to attribute real value to the standing forest.

Think about that. Resist the incredulous, knee-jerk reaction. No. Take a deep breath and let it sink in. ‘Cause it’s not just the Amazon. It’s happening now. All over. Everywhere.

The planet is shifting gears on us. And we, collectively, aren’t paying attention. Those of us in the driver’s seat are asleep at the wheel, and the rest are all squabbling over their toys in the back seat. While the vessel we’re riding in is careening wildly. It is indestructible, by the way. It can hit a wall, drive over a cliff, sink under water, even burn, and emerge unscathed. A massive orb of rock and iron, that will continue on its stately path, rotating across the field of stars for all eternity (or what we humans concieve as such). We are the ones committing slow-motion suicide. And the worst of it is that those who aspire to lead us know what’s going down. Hell yes, they know all that, and a lot more besides. Oh, and some of them talk a good game. But I don’t trust them. Because they are DOING NOTHING other than talking. And all for short-term political gain. Because their polls and focus-groups and  millionnaire consultants all tell them that the people don’t really care that much.

Because these are not leaders. These are merely your bargain-basement, business-as-usual, snake-oil salesmen politicians, only out to secure the next election. For themselves. And I’m not pointing fingers here. It’s just as painfully deplorable up here in Canada, where our Neanderthal Right Wing government has just hamstrung our three pathetic, feeble, spineless “opposition” Parties (sound familar, dear neighours?) by threatening them with (gasp!) an election!

That’s why I am so desperate for you next door to get a true leader to run for President, i.e., for better or for worse, as even we recalcitrant Canucks know all too well, de-facto King of the World. That leader was at the U.N. last week, urging the politicians to wake the hell up. And This is what it looked like. And we need him as much as you do. Because up here too, it would instantly change the paradygm, by making climate change the top of mind issue in the next elections (which Harper won’t wait past the end of this year to hold, while his “opponents” are on the ropes, ’cause he wants him some Majority Government, so he can hog-tie the rest of us and sabotage international talks on climate and keep us in Afghanistan forever, and pour even more taxpayers’ money into the filthy Tar Sands of Alberta).

So please, please, you progressives here on this blog, please help your fellow Americans to wake up to what’s happening world-wide. Before it is too late. Create the conditions for change to happen. DEMAND THAT YOUR CANDIDATE RUN ON CLIMATE . Uh, okay… Good luck with that. Seriously. Get the most qualified, knowledgeable, experienced, inspiring, hell, the most goddamned obvious person out there to run for President. The rest of us, beyond your borders, we looks toward you, we catches your eye. Please, all of you. It’s now or never.

Peace on Earth to all peoples.

(crossposted at Dailykos)

Oct 07 2007

A Symbol for the Saffron Revolution

A symbol for the Saffron Revolution

heart burma 2500 wc t

This red and yellow glyph, composed of a dot and a heart, is so simple to draw that even toddlers can make it.

Red symbolizes life and love, and is the color of Buddhist monk’s robes.
Yellow represents the Sun and the shaved head of a monk.

What do you create when you put them together? You can see a heart on its side, a letter B for Burma, and the posture of a monk in seated meditation. When you draw many of these symbols together, you create a group in meditation.

Click on the images to get your own fair-use copies and other progressive grahics.
Please draw it and send it everywhere!

This graphic is available on gear at
http://cafepress.com…
Profits go to http://www.dvb.no/ – $25 sent already!

Update –  You will love the Burma photos here:
http://www.pbase.com…

Oct 07 2007

The Big Picture Vol. 2

There has always been a struggle….most likely there always will be.

It is human nature to struggle, in some that is expressed as full out rebellion. In others it is reduced to complaining under their breath. Or worse….being afraid to even do that.

On the other side of the struggle, there is the range of full time crackdown on the rebels….actively supporting supporting the crushing of rebellion by The People, to indifference and willful ignorance. Ignorance has two forms those who cannot get information….and those who ignore inconvenient or uncomfortable information. Cracking down on ‘rebels….even those who merely mutter is a full time struggle for the status qou-sters

The two biggest chunks of information that are being ignored right now, imo, are Climate Crisis which is literally off the charts in its acceleration….and the fact that not just America, but pretty much the entire planet, is now a Corporatocrasy.

It has been for some time of course, at a lower profile. But as with absolutely everything else any thinking person would condemn as evil or at least Wrong! …under Bushco it has not only flourished and thrived, but has also revealed itself much more nakedly. They are no longer trying to hide it, very much….the fact that they are out to buy up the worlds resources and control all distribution of said resources. Though I don’t get into it much here….the distribution part is critically important as well.

Chevron and Burma is just the latest example of corporations gone wild. Whether it is their intent to be evil or if they are just fulfilling the mission of corporations with brutal efficiency, regardless of consequence to People and to the planet, what they are actually doing to the planet is incredibly and fatally harmful. And certainly with the oil companies and insurance companies, it is VERY easy to ascribe evil intent. I sure do. It is hard not to do the same with many others as well, Coca-Cola buying up water rights worldwide and the chemical companies and Big Pharma etc. The MIC is of course a No-brainer, you can’t get much eviler than selling death.

But the real point is, is that these corporations….in a purely corporate self preservationist internal logic, are now openly buying governments. They then use these governments to obtain and control that countries resources. It seems that there is no limit on their behavior, their ‘business practices’ ….as long as the stockholders are making money.

If you control the worlds resources and the worlds governments you control the world. Though perhaps not a conscious conspiracy, it has become a defacto one. Especially when you factor in the interdependency of needing resources another corporation controls to make your corporations product. Not to mention….mergers.

I won’t try to hazard a guess as to what degree of control the corporations hold these governments or what percentage of the worlds resources they now own. It is not any where near 100%, of course. There is not much point to it since the numbers will just increase. After all, no one is stopping them. Or has any plans to. Hell, no one in power will even talk about it. Because of course….they are all to some degree or another, beholden to those very same corporations. Especially, the Media. And of course their is the money that fuels Americas political process and lobbying industry.

And to further muddy the waters….we are all beholden in various ways as well, whether we own stock, or we work for a corporation or are dependent on a corporation buying the product of our work or merely through consuming corporate products. We are all in the web. Which of course is part of ‘the plan.’ The corporations depend on the consumers. The consumers depend on the corporations. It would be the perfect relationship if it wasn’t for the consumption and waste and destruction it engenders.

And as long as most people are getting what they want….dividends, a paycheck or just Twinkies, it is perfectly ok. Until they start to shed their ignorance and see what the cost of their consumption is. And no, I am not purity trolling. I do not condemn people ….neither do I support people…profiting from corporations. It is the system we live under and condemning people for living under a system is silly. Especially since most people became invested in the system before it truly revealed its raw and destructive face. Or at least when they were young and had no knowledge of the true cost of the system we now live under.

George Bush and his policies didn’t come out of nowhere. They were shaped by two forces, the Religious Wrong and the Corporations….what used to be called Big Business. They got him elected so he would remove any restraints…moral or regulatory from them so that they then could…..go hog fucking wild on fucking everything up. Who was one of Bush’s biggest supporters? Ken Lay from Enron. All of this is old news of course.

But it can longer be denied….just as with Climate Crisis. The Corporatocracy has truly become an enemy of The People. ALL of the planets people. They are the ones who have shaped and are exploiting this world we live in. This world we all bemoan everyday. This is the root of the nearly all the problems we face. From War to Warming to SCHIP etc. But this is also the foundation on which our present society is built. And this is the society that the corporations are working so hard to spread to every corner of the globe, even as that society kills itself more rapidly the more it spreads and the bigger it gets. It is a race to see if we can use up the worlds resources before climate change caused by the consumption and waste products of those resources changes/destroys the world we know now.

Not to mention that the imposition of this society onto Islamic life and culture is, shall we say, proving problematic. Especially since the corporations want to steal their oil.

Many folks have known this for years, many are still coming to terms with it. But as we move forward we must stop pretending the situation does not exist.

The corporations now control our political process and thus to an extent our government, they also control our media. They have shaped our society into a suicidal cycle of consumption. Yet they are the basis of all of our financial structures. And much of our social structure….if you consider watching tv a social structure, but aside from tv, think how much corporations affect your everyday life. They are ingrained.

Mitigating Climate Crisis and taking control back from the corporations will both force massive changes on life as we know it. Just getting off oil will change our lives…dramatically. We either have to face up to the fact that we are committing slow suicide or that we MUST make dramatic changes. And at the rate climate change is proceeding….alarming even the alarmists…we have to make these changes sooner rather than later.

We must react to climate crisis, that means reacting to the corporations who, with our help, are fostering it.

Also, ending the cycle of eternal war for the oil corporations and the profits of the Military Industrial Complex seems like a good idea.

There has always been a struggle….this is the shape of ours. The People vs the Corporatocracy.

Now what do we do about it?

Oct 07 2007

French People Are Terrified of Diebold Machines

I was just in Paris and talked to quite a few bartenders and so forth.  Suffice to say the American dollar is barely worth the paper it’s printed on, so we may have spent most of our time in the more dodgy areas of town.

That said, I believe we interviewed quite a cross-section, in our pidgeonish Franglais.  I was repeatedly told variants of the following:

1. Bush and Sarko (Sarkozy) are the same.  (usually followed by an obscene gesture)

2. Sarko won because a weak candidate ran against him.  (followed by a warning not to do the same in US)

3. Diebold voting machines are stealthily and gradually being installed in France.  (followed usually by the comment, “We don’t want to happen in France what happened in US” = stolen election(s).

4. Unions are getting weaker and demonstrations and strikes are ignored in US and France and anywhere else they’re tried, because of globalization. 

There were Chinese products everywhere, and a few suspected sweatshops, lots of immigrants “sans papiers” (& a demonstration planned to try to get preschool services for their children).  Alot of things seemed familiar (though we are still having “reverse culture shock” upon returning to America).

We were staying in the area of Paris that was formerly known for incidents such as the “storming of the Bastille,” which was inspiring, but I have no doubt that something of the like needs to be done periodically, whenever the rich get too uppity.

Oct 07 2007

Should Domenici Retire Now?

Senator Pete Domenici was diagnosed with Pick’s Disease, a progressive and aggressive form of dementia.  It is unknown when he received the disease, or at what stage the disease is in.

However, it is always fatal, and it always affects insight, judgment and behavior.

Given the known disease progression and prognosis (fatal, usually within five years), should Domenici retire now instead of planning to serve out the remainder of his term until 2009?

Here’s what the NY Times described:

Mr. Domenici, who is 75 and in his sixth term, revealed on Thursday that he had frontotemporal lobar degeneration, a term that describes a family of diseases that damage parts of the brain that control language, behavior, planning, organizing, decision-making and movement. Patients can have either speech problems or behavioral ones, or both, and the symptoms can vary from subtle to flagrant. There is no treatment or cure. All they can do at this point is to rely on support from sources similar to Home Care Heroes to ensure that Mr. Domenici is comfortable. The cause is not known, though in about 40 percent of cases, there is a family history of it.

The disorder is also called frontotemporal dementia, and sometimes Pick’s disease, for the doctor who first identified a form of it in 1892. Frontotemporal disease causes a different pattern of brain damage than Alzheimer’s disease, and does not start with the kind of memory loss that usually signals the onset of Alzheimer’s. It is also less common than Alzheimer’s, affecting 100,000 to 200,000 Americans, compared with the 4.5 million people afflicted with Alzheimer’s.

eMedicine lists some of the symptoms during the first two years of the disease.  Several of the psychiatric symptoms are especially alarming in view of the role of senators.  They include:

  * Clinical course during the first 2 years is as follows:

  o Psychiatric abnormalities that seem to respect the pattern of the classic frontal lobe syndromes are present (Gregory, 1996).

  + Patients with orbitofrontal dysfunction become aggressive and socially inappropriate. They may steal or demonstrate obsessive or repetitive stereotyped behaviors.

  + Patients with dorsomedial or dorsolateral frontal dysfunction may demonstrate a lack of concern, apathy, or decreased spontaneity.

  + Patients may be depressed early in the disease.

  + These mood changes can predate amnesia.

  o Speech and language abnormalities often begin early and progress rapidly.

Most patients diagnosed with Pick’s Disease do not work.

Some questions for consideration include:

Since the onset of symptoms is insidious, what is the benchmark for diagnosing and assuring mental competence in judgment, insight and decision-making?

As senators are explicitly charged with representing constituents, may they legitimately be recalled or forced from office when this diagnosis is made, instead of when symptom progression is evident or by some other means of evaluation?

What role does the Senate ethics committee have in determining Domenici’s continued “fitness to serve”?

Are Domenici’s votes since his diagnosis, but before his public acknowledgment, valid?

What means should be put in place to remove elected officials from office who are diagnosed with health problems that affect mental competence relative to insight, judgment and mental capacity to make decisions in the best interests of their mandated constituencies?

Oct 07 2007

Brian Eno’s Soundscape in Shrillville: The Vertical Colors of Shrill!

The British are coming!  The British are coming!  Wow.  I thought artists were supposed to talk about airy nothings, like Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, “making a brick, not building a wall,” and the vertical colors of sound, you know, talking about things not related to concrete objects, but expressing something that can only be appreciated intellectually, based on general principles or theories rather than on specific instances, not aiming to depict an object but composed with the focus on internal structure and form, describing music that is intended to have no programmatic content, decorated with irregular areas of color that do not represent anything concrete, emotionally detached or distanced from something.  You know, drifting clarifiers floating ideas in the air of abandoned churches, and shit.  Boy, was I mistaken.  Brain Eno has gone unmistakably thoughtless, vulgar, and insensitive as to lack all refinement or delicacy, extremely so, and flagrantly.

If we have lost Brian Eno to the anti-war movement, then who can we look to salve our flaming souls?  Follow below the fold into the absurd reality of an artist banging his head on the political abutment that is Iraq!

First of all, let me distance myself from any of these remarks from a so-called artist, as I may one day find myself in retirement wanting to take up watercolors, or something, and won’t want to be bothered by crass thinking.

This Ban Will Not Stop Us
Parliament might want to forget about Iraq, but we will march on Monday to remind them
by Brian Eno

Our leaders would undoubtedly be happy if we “moved on” from Iraq. They don’t want to talk about it any more: it was a dreadful blunder, and reflects little credit on any of them. Presumably this is why the question has hardly been debated in parliament. Although the majority of the public were always against the war, this was not reflected by their elected representatives. The government behaved in a way that was transparently undemocratic but the Conservatives won’t call them on it, for without their almost unanimous support the whole project couldn’t have happened.

But to conveniently forget Iraq now is to forfeit the only possible benefit the war might have: the chance to rethink the dysfunctional political system that got us into this hole. If we don’t, we risk digging a series of ever-deeper holes. The Iraq adventure was justified as the planting of a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Not only did it utterly fail at that, it also undermined our democracy. Appealing to our paranoia more than our vision, George Bush and Tony Blair obtained restrictions on freedoms that had taken centuries to evolve. They said these were necessary to ensure our security – a device used by authoritarian leaders since time immemorial.

Now, I will not let Mr. Eno’s crassness infect my own judgment about his little piece of performance art, so I will remain utterly detached and academic in my critique.  Let’s start with the title, This Ban Will Not Stop Us.  The ban refers to the archaic Metropolitan Police Act invoked by Parliament to outlaw public demonstration by the Stop the War Coalition.  So, at the very beginning of this piece, without the slightest sign of hesitation or embarrassment, Mr. Eno lumbers out his testicles and ponderously hefts them for all to see.  See these?  The government will not stop us, it will not silence us.  If that unadulterated, testosterone addled defiance does not immediately turn you off to anything further he has to say, nothing will.  He then crows that

Then the artless man gets a little tricksy on us by taking a lofty abstraction and clunking it on the table like a bowl of cold porridge:

Civil liberties never seem important until you need them.

Sure it sounds like a simple declarative sentence at first, but it’s the added clause that’s tricky: until you need them.  I get it.  You take meals for granted, until you need them.  You take oxygen molecules for granted, until you need them.  You take pints of blood for granted, until you need them.  Do you see?  He’s taking something airy and incomprehensible and tries to reify it as something concrete, as if it existed for reals.  You take freedom for granted, until you need it.  It is a clever inversion of the artist, who normally takes something concrete and turns it into an abstraction.

Here’s what I think he is really saying: Listen to me, you cocksucking, motherfucking, hapless fucks!  You are not going to sweep this piece of shit under the rug and hope everyone forgets about.  I’m shoving this pile of fetid shit into your goddamned faces, and you can take your attempt to silence me and shove it up your asses.

I then imagine him squeezing his big balls until his knuckles are white, as if to demonstrate his will against the pain of death itself.

He then goes meta on the topic of abstraction in reference to Nazi Germany:

For most Germans it was all rather abstract, and they were expecting things to return to normal when Hitler faded back into obscurity. Only he didn’t, and civil liberties were so compromised there was no way to stop him.

And finally he portends the consequences of failing to squeeze one’s balls in shrill public protest:

If we don’t stand up about Iraq then we tacitly sanction the next steps in this deadly experiment of democratic evangelism. Those will likely include an attack on Iran, a permanent force of occupation in Iraq (probably always the intention), the complete militarisation of the Middle East, and a revived nuclear future.

He reiterates that “the government wants to show itself as clean and new, and doesn’t want attention drawn to the elephant and the mess it has made on the carpet…” and that he intends to “exercise our right to remind our representatives that even if Iraq has slipped off their agenda, it’s still on ours.”

I know what you’re asking: Compound F, what on god’s green earth does British politics have to do with the price of beans in China?  I don’t know.  I have always been interested in Eno until he got all crass and materialistic on my ass.

Oct 07 2007

Kucinich: Seven Straight Nights for Equal Rights w/poll