I don't know how he does it, but Jon Swift eloquently explains why it's necessary to destroy a 12-year-old in order to ensure that Americans have the choice to sell the roof over their heads to pay for health insurance.

Note while reading his post the preponderance of quotes from wingnuts who refer to the Frosts as "fair game" because they dared to step forward and criticize the president's stand against expanding SCHIP. Hmmmm....."fair game".....now where have we heard that expression before?

Labels: health care, snark

And they aren't looking to give you a set of keys to their club, either:

The richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record, surpassing the highs reached in the 1990s bull market, and underlining the divergence of economic fortunes blamed for fueling anxiety among American workers.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks.

The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000.

The IRS data, based on a large sample of tax returns, are for "adjusted gross income," which is income after some deductions, such as for alimony and contributions to individual retirement accounts. While dated, many scholars prefer it to timelier data from other agencies because it provides details of the very richest -- for example, the top 0.1% and the top 1%, not just the top 10% -- and includes capital gains, an important, though volatile, source of income for the affluent.

The IRS data go back only to 1986, but academic research suggests the rich last had this high a share of total income in the 1920s.

So what does the president, who is among those whose fortunes have grown even larger over the past seven years (despite his stated need to "replenish the ol' coffers" after leaving office) attribute this concentration of wealth in the hands of ever-fewer people? A skills gap -- perpetuating the myth that the rich are just smarter and harder-working than the rest of us:

In an interview yesterday with The Wall Street Journal, President Bush said, "First of all, our society has had income inequality for a long time. Secondly, skills gaps yield income gaps. And what needs to be done about the inequality of income is to make sure people have got good education, starting with young kids. That's why No Child Left Behind is such an important component of making sure that America is competitive in the 21st century."

Certainly education is important, though it's highly debatable whether teaching with a goal of scoring to a certain level on a standardized test requires education. But when you look at the jobs being outsourced and taken by H-1Bs workers, they are not those on the low end of the educational requirement scale, they are those at the higher ranges -- not just IT jobs, but those for financial analysts, accountants, nurses, clinical data managers, and other relatively high-paying jobs are being outsourced to other countries or H-1Bs. Someone needs to ask this president exactly what kinds of jobs will be available for those with more education -- when month after month, the numbers reflect job creation primarily in the food service, hospitality, health care (presumably jobs like home health aide) and retail industries.

The fact is that most of us in our lives are not going to be entrepreneurs, we are going to work for other people. And as long as those other people are seeking to lower pay ranges to as close to slave level as they can, the share of American income held by working people is going to continue to shrink.

Labels: corporatism, employment, greed, income inequality

I mentioned in my recent SNARK ALERT! post the number of articles that have been published recently, all decrying the supposed "high tech skills" shortage. I've noticed that each author has his or her own unique spin on this catastrophe, making it impossible for us bloggers (since we are not being subsidized by Big Business to spend eight hours a day pounding out the party line on our keyboards) to keep up with the task of refuting all of the misinformation being spewed forth.

I give you the following examples:

• Poor Billy Boy has no choice but to open a new software development center in Vancouver, British Columbia in order to skirt the limits on H-1B visas issued in the United States.
• Equally poor Rob Preston from InformationWeek tried his best, but all he could do was come up with a confusing article that seemed to imply there is a talent shortage, but could not seem to muster up any convincing facts or statistics to support his claim. At least he had the guts to face his accusers!
• Moira Herbst's article at BusinessWeek came up with an interesting twist. Sure, there are plenty of IT professionals and engineers out there, but most of them have the wrong skills sets. Enrollment in computer science and engineering programs at colleges and universities is predictably bottoming out, forcing Bill Gates to go on a public relations tour to urge students to switch their majors back to technical degrees.

Just when I thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, Anne Broache from CNET comes up with this gem, "Allow More Green Cards for Foreign Techies, Congress Told".

"But what's sometimes forgotten in the debate is a key point of agreement among at least some representatives of the warring sides. A new joint letter (click for PDF) to Congress from the Semiconductor Industry Association and IEEE-USA, the U.S. branch of the world's largest professional society of electronics engineers, seeks to remind politicos of that common ground, which is this: we need more green cards."

No, Anne, WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT GREEN CARDS! And, no, Anne, WE DO NOT NEED TO ISSUE MORE GREEN CARDS! We do not mention Green Cards every time we write about this "high skills" debacle because we don't have time to write 300-page treatises debunking these claims each and every time you and your colleagues decide to write another article full of cheap shots aimed at American workers! And besides, have you Googled "Green Cards high tech skills shortage" lately? I came up with 805,000 results!

During the massive KoolAid-sipping debauchery amongst corporations in the 1990's, the decision was made to lower costs by downsizing thousands of experienced American professionals, and either replace them with lower cost H-1B or L-1 visa employees, or just to ship the jobs outright overseas and be done with them, once and for all. Surprise, surprise. We now ONLY HAVE A SHORTAGE of professionals who are perfectly matched for each and every esoteric little high tech position being created, and students, who are smarter than Bill Gates and his Strong American Schools cohorts realize, are REFUSING to major in technical career fields after having seen an entire generation of tech workers given the shaft and having no reason to believe it could never happen again.

U.S. corporations made their beds, now make them sleep in them! Just like the American households that must live with the consequences of their spending habits, U.S. companies should be forced to live with the available American talent pool that their policies have repeatedly diluted and destroyed over the past 15 years. Don't let these guys off the hook by letting them bring in workers from overseas.

I don't have time for any more of this nonsense. Tomorrow I'm going on a fall color tour. Don't anyone DARE try to publish another one of these phony talent shortage articles while my back is turned!

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: employment, H-1Bs, immigration, Information technology

This is how the Bush Administration supports the troops -- by allowing Blackwater's thugs to intimidate them:

The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company. Asked to address this and other allegations in this story, Blackwater spokesperson Anne Tyrrell said, "This type of gossip has led to many soap operas in the press."

Whatever else Blackwater is or isn't guilty of—a topic of intense interest in Washington—it has a well-earned reputation in Iraq for arrogance and high-handedness. Iraqis naturally have the most serious complaints; dozens have been killed by Blackwater operatives since the beginning of the war. But many American civilian and military officials in Iraq also have little sympathy for the private security company and its highly paid employees.

This is the modus operandi of George W. Bush: use people as props and then legislate to screw them over. Use soldiers as props for your war, then cut veterans' benefits, extend their tours of duty, and make those tours one day less than enough to qualify for educational benefits. Surround yourself with "snowflake babies" to sign legislation banning embryonic stem cell research, but if those babies' families can't get health insurance, veto legislation that would provide it for them.

Greed, venality, corruption, hypocrisy: That's what will be the Bush legacy.

Labels: Blackwater

Hey, Al Gore...you've just won the Nobel Peace Prize. What are you going to do now?

Well, he MIGHT go to Disney World (though I doubt it), but I'll tell you what he's NOT going to do...he's not going run for president.

If you were Al Gore, would YOU run for president? Would YOU subject yourself and your family to endless ruminations in the media and attacks from the right about your weight, your clothes, your son's legal problems, their exhumation of old (and largely imaginary) scandals? Would you want to endure another year of Maureen Dowd saying you're "practically lactating" and the press accusing you of lying -- and that's before you have to endure four to eight years of nonstop attacks from the media if you're not able to clean up Bush's mess quickly enough?

Does someone who's been battered by the press and the political process the way Al Gore has really need to get into that snake pit again?

Congratulations, Mr. President, on a well-deserved award. You've earned it...and then some.

Labels: Al Gore

Wow...Our Blessed Mother of Perpetual Internment Camps must have done some really deep ego surfing to find THIS little bloggie. So welcome, wingnuts! Behave yourselves, and nobody gets hurt. Or banned. Just don't hog all the canapés.

The quote for today comes from Krista at John Cole's place, and nicely distills the essence of people who think out-MyLifeSucks-ing the Frosts is defending your country's health policies:

They’re saying shit like, “Well, I had two kids and I went without food, shoes and toilet paper so that I could afford health insurance for my kids. I probably would have qualified for a government program, but knew that I had to be responsible for myself.”

Um…koo-koo! So you’re PROUD of the fact that you had to choose between basic necessities and health insurance? People are actually deriving this bizarre, masochistic pleasure from one-upping each other on how much they’ve had to sacrifice and give up in order to pay their insurance premiums. “Well, I had a dream of owning my own business, but I gave up that dream and took a job that I hate so that I could get health coverage for my family!” Um….yeah….good for you? Yay, America?

Sick.

The Marines may be tough motherfuckers, but they're like the Yankees: they hate losing. They may die, but they want to do it for a reason. And they see a better shot at stabilizing and keeping the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan than in the cesspool of sectarian rivalries that is Iraq:

The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

As described by officials who had been briefed on the closed-door discussion, the idea represents the first tangible new thinking to emerge since the White House last month endorsed a plan to begin gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq, but also signals that American forces likely will be in Iraq for years to come.

At the moment, there are no major Marine units among the 26,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan. In Iraq there are about 25,000 marines among the 160,000 American troops there.

It is not clear exactly how many of the marines in Iraq would be moved over. But the plan would require a major reshuffling, and it would make marines the dominant American force in Afghanistan, in a war that has broader public support than the one in Iraq.

You have to love the way this article makes it seem as if the Marines are making a cynical political calculation here. The article paints the suggestion by the Marines' commandant as a pissing contest between branches of the military as to which branch is manlier. But if the Marines are about combat, and Afghanistan is still about defending territory, it makes sense to have the marines there instead of in the occupation/police role in which the American military is mired in Iraq.

Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, Marines

A number of dreadful "IT worker shortage" articles are coming out fast and furious these days. BusinessWeek came out with a rather routine one today, "The Great Tech Worker Divide". Maybe I'll post a comment in the next day or so if I get the time. The real beaut is the one from Rob Preston at InformationWeek, "Down to Business: Worried About IT Talent Shortage? Do Something About It." A lot of people took issue with his statement,

"Many tech workers, mostly working on anecdotes and creative interpretations of the employment numbers and other research, claim there's no talent shortage, looming or otherwise. But the stats and surveys tell otherwise."

My heroes, frequent InformationWeek contributor Tokharian, and Job Destruction Directory's Rob Sanchez, came through with their always informative comments. All of the other usual suspects, like J2EE Guy, were also in fine form. A particularly snarky exchange between Rob Sanchez ("Rob Sanz") and Rob Preston had me laughing out loud, particularly when Sanchez accused Preston of espousing socialism!

Finally, you can read Rob Sanchez' latest Job Destruction Newsletter at the Alipac website, where he reveals that a hearing scheduled by the House Judiciary Committe on H.R. 750, "Save America Comprehensive Immigration Act of 2007", is scheduled to commence at 10:00 am on Thursday, October 11. This proposed bill is apparently part of the latest attempt to raise the limits on H-1B visas being issued, although I couldn't figure that out from the doublespeak that I found on the summary at WashingtonWatch. ("Increases the worldwide level of diversity immigrants."?) If anyone has additional information about this bill as it pertains to H-1B levels, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: employment, H-1Bs

Who wrote this?

I have commented before on the problems with central planning in health care. I certainly am not convinced that a government-run system is the answer, but I do agree with Krugman that there are serious problems with our health insurance system, particularly in the market for individually-purchased (non-group) coverage.

After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.

We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage–a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.

Answer here. (Kate will love this one -- the person was denied a preferred rate on the grounds of being "underweight".)

Big ups to Ezra Klein for finding this little gem.

Found out

Labels: health care, wingnuttia

Again, for two more days and in retrospect....I don't like Columbus Day....and I'm sure I don't have to explain why here. Snarky William is saying that its not even Italian because Columbus was representing Spain...so in the world of the splitting of hairs and the distribution of small pox blankets; the raping and pillaging, some 13 year old is bound to come along and pop your bubble too. Give me back my mail! Fuckin' postal holiday...some of us are cheered to see the new coupon shopper or Bird Talk in the box! Anyway...in "honor" of this day I put up my favorite Son Volt anti-Columbus Day song on the lil' player over there at RIPCoco....and though these genocidal things tend to happen in the natural Darwinian course of things, I'm feeling very sorry about what we do in the name of our own feelings of superiority. I guess that you could add Iraq to that equation too.

I was added to the list of 100 Women Political Bloggers, over at Informed Voters,which is really nice. But whats better is to see how many, many Political women's blogs are out there Its not that there has been a dearth of women bloggers around, but it seems that in the past they have either hidden behind named blogs or been part of duo or group blogs. I think that Digby's coming out was a real revelation for alot of us (though I was always out there...not careful enough, according to my peeps.) In any case, after looking myself up, (and hoping that those hits weren't on my silly chicken blogging days,) I took the quiz at Informed Voters main page to find my candidate, and it was spot on...except that the first 3 didn't have a chance in hell for the nomination, and then the 4th was my boy, Johnny Edwards. The interesting thing is that down at the bottom of Dems was Hillary, of course being the most conservative and furthest from my ideals, and then right below her was Rudy, as the republican closest to my ideals...then the choices went down, down, down from there....I find it so much fun that the republicans are actually thinking that old Rudy has a chance. Its just too good and though I am pretty upset these days, I look forward to Rudy's fall. If he doesn't fall, then I'm gonna have to think hard about America and if it embodies my beliefs anymore.

Onward:
I got wind of this guy, Scott Horton's blog through Sam Seder's Sunday show and then again Sam talked about him during his fill-in stint for Mike Malloy a week ago Monday, and I went where I normally wouldn't consider going; to the Harpers magazine site, to find his blog "No Comment," It was like the old days when I used to discover so many things just by listening to Majority Report or Morning Sedition. Now, that sort of in depth, interesting reporting is limited to Sam's shows on Weekends, a little bit of Rachel Maddow, and the Vod-cast of Marc vs. Sam. I miss those days of driving around with a pen and pad and jotting things down to check out when I got home and all the new ideas I had just from the great discourse going on; It was almost like sanity. I bought more books and DVDs, and got more ideas, from that little outlet than anything else...oh well...
Anyway,I was looking for that unbelievable story that Horton covered involving the lawyers who have been
supporting Edwards (and, to some extent Hillary, though targeting her seems to be more about paranoia than anything else,) and what the government is doing to try to stem that support....which is pretty much to start a federal investigation of them, which the lawyers are not able to talk about without ruining their own reputations, and then squeezing them by making every tiny financial issue into a big deal so that their financial support would be tainted. This is the lowest form of the misuse of government power that a scared-to-death party incumbency could put into action: strong arming supporters of one candidate or another, and I'm sure its only the tip of the iceberg.

At least we can be pretty sure that even the slimiest of the slimy of trial lawyer supporters of Edwards can't touch the dirt on the hands of too many of our country's most outspoken and devoted neocons. If there is any comparison to be made, this administration wins the slime race hands down.

Lucky me; No Comment is a great blog, though just scanning through the posts is enough to make me cry at how insane things have gotten. These rundowns, no matter how sarcastic, hit me like a lead weight (made in China, no doubt,) in the enormity of what we're seeing happen in the political realm daily, weekly; even hourly. Its overwhelming and infuriating.
Before I could even get to the meat that I was looking for, I came across this from last Tuesday (my bold:)

"Thank God for Tom Davis (R-Va.) He fully understands the constitutional role of the Congress. Davis has sent a letter to Henry Waxman, chair of the House
Oversight Committee, with a very sharp demand. The Committee needs to set aside all other work and immediately take up a matter so gripping that it supersedes everything: Why, he asks, did the organization Moveon.org get a more than 50% price break when it recently ran an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the Administration’s plans to continue its “surge” in Iraq?
I understand Rep. Davis fully. Why should the Oversight Committee be looking into the roughly twenty billion dollars that have disappeared down mysterious rat holes in Iraq; why should it be looking into the festering open wound called FEMA; why should it be considering the operating rules governing security contractors who are running amok in Iraq and Afghanistan, endangering U.S. soldiers and destroying America’s reputation? The people aren’t concerned about this trivia. And heaven forbid that Congress should actually examine and discuss Iraq policy itself, or the increasingly obvious disaster in Afghanistan. No, what Americans want is for Congress to get to the bottom of the internal advertising practices of the New York Times. How did this group of lefties get such a good deal; how did they land a page at the stand-by rate?! (But, by the way, let’s ignore Fox News, which operates as a G.O.P. campaign soapbox 24/7, using ever less care to disguise its political pimping–of course, it’s a broadcaster and actually subject to Congressional oversight.) "

You would think that these politicians have nothing better to do than pander to the obscene propaganda being pushed out there; saying that the left is somehow unpatriotic. How is it possible to turn that around when we are dealing with what amounts to a big bucks propaganda and advertising campaign? Well, the follow-up was, of course to try to bring a resolution to the senate floor about Rush Limbaugh...not worth saying much more about, really...its just more craziness while our soldiers are dying.

Isn't it becoming painfully apparent how all of this frustration is playing out in all of us lately? Had enough yet?

This is exactly along the lines of something that I had a filed away a dusty working draft of here in the RIPCoco vault.... but I had written it off as something long expired, along with so many of my ideas that seem to be getting swept away by the speed at which stuff is unfolding. But then, of course, the psychology of anger and the nature of the id never get old; they just get turned to the next subject, object, or person.
It all just feels so rotten...Like Bush/Cheney haven't just damaged our government,environment, budget, and society, but that they have hurt our psyche. I feel real stress fatigue from the last 6 years, and I cant fathom how those years slipped by the way they did, without all of the trauma sapping the very life out of me....I survived, but I'm different... I've lost hope at times, and wished for this unraveling of the republican party; I've wanted the worst for these people in ways that Ive never felt before. I hate them and I pity them, because what is life without empathy and some degree of self reflection?...and that, they lack.

The unraveling of the facade of those holier than thou conservatives who have been wielding power in this country, and the anger floating around at the enormity of their fall, comes almost as a surprise to me; and I'm someone who expected it all along! This thing has been the equivalent of waiting for a death that is a given, but somehow as it happens, and in its last throes, there are truths and realities revealed that no one could be prepared for ....ever. The actuality is always a surprise in its finality. We surely have known that things would fall apart, but my take on it went from some sort of slo-mo despair at who will ever get the truth out, to something so big and all encompassing that I keep waiting for the dancing girls and locusts. The thing that I wonder sometimes is if all of this emotional upheaval isn't somehow a negative force...and if I am driven to hate so deeply, have they somehow been successful in turning me somehow into an image of them?...or if maybe the despair can be turned to something positive.

I am raising my anxiety riddled child in a world where people blow themselves up in the service of an idea more important (to them) than life itself. This idea is not to free slaves or feed children, but to fit humanity into a set of rules being translated into religious texts by societies run by people with an agenda. The extremism that has been actively inflamed by the form and action of our presence in the middle east is mind-boggling to me, and the specter of it increasing is terrifying.
And yet, the march to further this war, and begin the next, continues. The information and "evidence" forming the foundation of the movement towards more war seems to be largely a replay from before, and the recycled fear, even in the face of acknowledgment that this has all been a farce, is almost laughable.

Those of us who have been fighting the good fight since long before it was considered OK to whisper our dissent in public; and even those of us who knew, and who have been allowed moments of sangfroid musing, are caught in the anger/depression/disbelief cycle of not only just the realization of how bad things are, but also the weight of knowing too many details of what is happening and how it came about....and how long it will take to even begin to stop digging the hole, much less start getting out of it.But the most troubling and chilling thing that I'm realizing is that the hate is something that they strive to create. They want to make us hate and then try to turn us on eachother, and turn and point fingers saying that we are just insane angry conspiracy theorists. I can't see my way out of this, except maybe to just not react to anything, but I am acutely aware that is this a negative force; and I don't want to be angry all the time about how my son will never know the same American dream that the few generations before him knew, and that I remember, in the earth shattering changes of the 60's. After all, didnt those flower children still grow up to expect a home of their own, even if it was bohemian? Will doesn't even know a world where you can eat fish without measuring it out weekly and worrying about poisons, much less a hamburger that has to be cooked through because it certainly has a bit of poo in it.

It really makes you want to throttle the few people out there who stupidly say "oh yeah, I voted for Bush 2 times...because I thought we needed someone who could fight the war and protect us."
What do we do with the urge to smear those people, who now are saying that they they just didn't understand how bad he was, across the pavement?...what do we do with the "friends" who continue to send us neocon spam mail? Is it excusable to use your vote to make a decision that you have surely not researched and that has so negatively effected our country and the world? Do the same people who were so misled even have the reasoning power to be able to comprehend what has happened? Or are they like those people lately who are feeling like its all just too negative and that maybe its best to stop watching the news?

I am working on forgiveness and empathy, but its difficult if the person doesn't somehow repent in a real way. For instance, the very same people who may have realized that Bush has been a jerk and handled things in the wrong way, or however they excuse it, seem to be looking at Rudy. Anyone looking at Rudy seriously has definitely not done their homework. Right now, that is inexcusable.
And I know that these are not people that I can actively be "friends" with, even on a completely superficial level. The self centered yuppie mentality and the car much bigger than you actually need for your living conditions sends a message out to the world about how you want to be perceived. So if its Hummers or diamonds or any other overt signals to the rest of the pack, I just cant tolerate it much past the karate waiting room...and I hope that they also keep their Spam amongst themselves. isn't it a little presumptive to send out some neocon screed without checking the basic facts?...because a simple Google search would show that its bullshit...and there is little difference between that and other urban legends that can easily be checked on Snopes...and not so strangely, there is actually a political part to Snopes, but I would urge them or someone else to add some Spam debunking pages because this one deals with errant "facts," rather than really delving into the huge lies and smears perpetrated by the Rovian sleaze machine.

Im hearing alot of talk that its gonna be Hillary and Rudy and that no one else stands a chance so we should just get used to it? Huh? Was it really that easy for these guys to kill our spirit and hope? Are we still a nation of people who are just sure or lazy enough to not feel like our votes count? How did we get so passive? The Hardball pundits discuss the republican field and only compared them to Hillary. They act like this decision has been already made. And I have no doubt that it has been...but, something in me wants just a few brief shining moments to think about what it might be like to have a fair system, and to have a system that cares about people. I'd just like to muse a while before Chris Matthews informs me who my candidate is gonna be.

The American dream has dried up for a huge portion of our society, and at the same time, almost in defense of what they have, the soccer families on the cul de sac have gone into overdrive protecting not only what is theirs, but also their (God-given??) right to have it. Who told us that we deserved these kinds of riches and that there would be no larger price to pay in the world? Where did the idea spring from that us few lucky ones in the rent controlled then co-oped apartments, who were lucky enough to invest in Microsoft when it was just a baby, or who were born to the privilege of even just being American, didn't owe something back to the society that made those gains possible? Could any of us have even begun to pull our bootstraps up if we weren't standing on a publicly funded road, and on the shoulders of the soldiers who fought for us and who serve in our socialist military? The infrastructure that has made it possible for the fortunate to be where they are is largely socialist...no bootstraps involved really. Look at it sometime!

It is clear now that the outsourced privatized service sector is a failure...and if there is anyone left who doesn't realize that, just Google what Blackwater charges for a guard and compare that to what the army pays a sergeant to do the same job. The Blackwater entity is at least 10 times the cost across the board, and the service of those individuals cant be said to be better. Indeed, in many cases its worse. What a slap in the face to our military to have an officer making less than $100 per day serving next to a private guard making six times that, and not necessarily limited by the same laws and rules as our soldiers.

Surely its obvious how the quality of the socialist parts of our society have gone downhill incrementally as the republican party has tried to transfer and privatize them away. isn't it clear to anyone who cares to take a look? And now, in the absence of proper funding for schools and police and the army and all that, where are we to go beyond Blackwater and Halliburton?....and haven't they proven over and over that they are inept
at providing even bottled water to soldiers in the dessert?

I was just explaining to a 13 year old boy from the inner city about why history class matters. He is studying the time in Europe right before the supposed "discovery" of America and jumping around to the first settlers here, and he is having trouble with not only the dates and names, but also why it is important to him to know this stuff now and what it means for his future.
Sometimes great truths come out of the mouths of babes, and in this case, a young guy who should have everything ahead of him laid out in gold because he is smart and funny and good-looking, is looking into the gaping maw of human nature over time and, if shown the connection, sees all too well why it matters. Because you have to know what it is in order to see what they are trying to take away from you.

He was born into the class that has become what the underclass was in Europe and what spurred the difficult immigration to a very difficult new land for a chance at what became the American dream. So, after the basic overview (and at this point he started rolling his eyes because he realized that I was somehow gonna tie this into Bush and what is going on now,)we discussed the American Dream and the birth of the idea of having rights and the evolution of thought about what your rights are if you put work and resources into a place, and what you should be able to expect to get back.

At that point he started coming up with all sorts of unanswerable questions about what it is that republicans, and more specifically neocons, reasons are for wanting to tip the power upwards even if it means that those on the bottom won't ever have a chance at the rights and the dream that America was built on?
Here is a kid who has grown up with very little and in a situation where things change quickly and people disappear and go away, and he is trying to fathom
why he and his family shouldn't have a chance to at least be stable.
...and I don't have answers for any of it. Except to try to explain the selfish ideas that come from that line that if you have it you must have earned it
somehow, and maybe there is some sort of fear and then shame that happens when you have and others don't....but that its really important to keep trying because the people who are trying to keep others down aren't always successful and aren't always in power...you have to keep trying to slip through the net that they have strung above you or they have won.

Is selfishness an instinctual urge for survival?...could this all just be Darwinism at work? If humans are able to reason then do we have a responsibility to use
that reason for the greater good as opposed to for the selfish desire to get ahead, just because we can? And when does that reason attach itself to a feeling of empathy; because we sure have empathy, at least towards our own immediate family; Otherwise our young would die.

I find that for myself the anger at who was stupid enough to buy the line, be a selfish prick, feel the fear, not admit to any wrong doing, and be a real
21st century American from the land of the ME of id...isnt it all about me after all?, turns into some sort of pity at people who may live their entire lives as not much of a part of the human race, or who are so weighted down with their own stuff that they never get to experience the joy of giving. But maybe the "full" experience of the nuclear family and the rituals that we all create around that picture is enough for some people. The perfect denial of it is so rampant around here, which is very strange considering that we live just outside NYC and are surrounded by communities full of lives so desperately in need that its unfathomable to people who live just a few miles away and drive Hummers.

The explanations and acceptance of things as they are as anything but luck are hard to take, though....and I cant see what interest there can possibly be in
cocktail parties full of people dressed alike all talking about their houses and summer plans, skiing over the winter break, and the restaurants they've been
to. I'm not saying that its bad if some happiness can be squeezed from some part of that, and Im not saying that these people dont do alot of charity all around. But the people writing a check to the soup kitchen dont seem to fully acknowledge their "help" and the paradox of having that sort of help in general. And Im not saying that its bad, because I've fitfully accepted some help lately...but I think about it, and it weighs on me. I care about the people and wonder what their lives are like, and would never pay them as little as they are getting out on the market. They need the job...I know that....and its not huge....But I seem to lack the gene where I expect someone to do my laundry or clean my dishes. It somehow doesn't compute.

The thing is also, that often the same people who have the seemingly idylic life with this seamless acceptance of their great fortune to be in the class where they are,reveal something that cant be covered by the facade.
Underneath there is usually someone in pain, on medicine, a child who is suffering silently, and a search for some meaning. I also have found many things that are left unsaid for fear of what the neighbors might think. People are so terribly unhappy that I am always just thrilled to find anyone who is actually happy, or labels themselves as such, that I want to put them in a jar and study them.

But the truth here is that people like me, who never really felt like a part of things, often were told and shown in pretty apparent ways that they, in fact,
weren't a part of anything. And in however the psychology of that effects anyone, whether it is a dysfunctional family or the 60's in America when many of
our parents rebelled, only to end up not providing the false sense of belonging that some people seem to have had (and maybe its NOT false...what do I know?)
What concerns me is what we are teaching the children of this generation of the underclass. They are certainly trapped in a system that wont give them a
chance at anything resembling the American dream. They are learning helplessness that can look so inpenetrable that having a baby and getting housing in the neighborhood starts to look good after a while.
Hell, alot of the middle class is in THAT situation too! Make the best of what you can get your hands on, pay the minimum on your credit cards and hope to win the lottery.

To continue to cut funding and to make it more and more OK for the very rich to get richer without any sort of regulation, sends a signal to those with no way out of their station. And that signal creates a hugely disgruntled population that is tired of standing on line for 12 hours to vote in the richest country in the world.
What are we telling these children? Learn what the founders were fighting against so that you can watch your leaders now take it apart? What I'm hearing alot is the learned helplessness line of people who feel that they have no power, nothing that anyone does matters, and a laziness that is not real considering how much more people actually DO in their days than they ever did because everything takes so many more steps for the consumer...and often you have to do things twice. But there is also a lack of interest in anything that is not comfortable, as if our daring entrepreneurial spirit had somehow died in the past 6 years. I think it got outsourced.


At some point the only people who I can talk to in any real way anymore are those who understand and feel the pain of whats going on and what has gone on, as if it were happening right on this street; because I am sure as hell that it could happen here, and that it did, and that it IS actually here, in so many ways, and that if most of the country stays asleep we will see it in drastic relief, and it may not look like the villains that we have come to expect.

But then, here I am, out in my community, talking to any number of people who have made wrong choices in many areas of their lives. They still have a vote and when they honestly say that they were afraid of Kerry or whatever, do I tell them to fuck off because I have no time for their brand of stupidity? Do I tell them that we don't need their vote anymore and that its not worth anyone's time trying to educate morons?

I've lived through alot of disappointment around the people in my life. Disappointment in the larger aspects of humanity and the weak crowd's need for a controlling force lest they spin out of line, and also serious disappointment in many of my personal relationships, where Ive had to come to terms with the fact that people are just fucking limited, and that no one can be everything to you for all time. I expect a lot of people, and thats probably why I don't hang around many or consider many to be my true and trusted friends. But that doesn't mean that I don't also spend time talking to all sorts of acquaintances out there, and strangers in here, trying to share a little and to explain what its taken me years to figure out, and then longer to really believe on an emotional level.

I am angry as hell at how things have gone. But who is the real victim here?...and do we blame the victim or the situation that has created the victim?... or do we try to suss out the culprit? If the aim of the sort of sociological manipulation that the neocons have been slowly putting in place, over more years than we might want to look at, is to redirect the anger and blame downward towards the people rather than upwards towards the engineers of this experiment, then the myth of the welfare queen and the reality of the poor voting against their best interests has come to full fruition. We blame them for voting against their own best interests, but at the same time we wont take responsibility for our role in the society that has allowed this to happen.

In America, we have everything, and it could be said that there is no excuse for ignorance in a place that offers so much if you just work hard enough. But fear is a powerful thing, and when a long term plan of disempowerment, fear, and bold lies comes into play, its uncanny how people will act. It is also true that serious roadblocks exist for many people in this country and no matter how hard they work, ever, they wont get out from under...thats just a fact. The neocons have no plans for those people.

Honestly, for me the anger is more towards our mealy politicians who I know are really just being strategic in a powder keg atmosphere where one statement taken out of context can ruin not only a career but a plan that may have been in the works for years. This is where the delicate balance of powers has been so ruined and twisted in a way to be used against the very people that they were designed to protect.
And thats what we have to look at if our democracy is going to survive.
We need leaders who don't give a crap about what people think, their careers, and if protocol is followed exactly.Its not that I don't respect the structure and protocol of this thing, but I also am aware that desperate times call for desperate measures...and there have been less desperate times when an entire body has stood up and walked the hell out...or abstained from an insulting and time wasting vote.

In a world of tit for tat, we are seeing what the senate wants to spend their time on...the safe and non confrontational issues that wont rock the boat as it sails safely into harbor....And, to tell the truth, I can see both sides of the arguments...except that kids are dying, and the situation is getting worse and worse....probably due to the insane vote that allowed this "surge" to happen in the first place. And now we are supposed to be happy that we will have some 5000 troops home by Christmas and then in a YEAR we may be back to pre-surge levels....? Like I said, I understand fear, and I have empathy for the folks under the gun in this government...but they signed up for the job of representing the people, and I hope to god that we start to see a little of that soon....


So yeah, I have been feeling like, what the fuck is going on in the government that really important issues slide by and then they spend time on what appears to be shit? How is it possible that any grown person would even for a second think of voting on some of this crap? But the balance and the votes and the climate...and the stupidity of the American people...the media...I could just imagine the endless bickering about the troops who originally called Petraeus a nickname, and who thinks he is an asskiss and who thinks he is not in a position to judge anything. The openings that leaves for sound bytes that make the democrats fighting non-issues would turn the entire left into petty nitpickers who hate the military (nyah, nyah...this guy said that about your stinkin' general...) And its seemingly that way with every issue that comes along.
In my opinion, Obama showed some real leadership on the Limbaugh issue by abstaining...and I believe that entire body should have abstained and gone right outside and talked to the media about who is wasting time...
RIPCoco

I really should have added John Cole to the blogroll a long time ago. I'm not sure John even qualifies as a conservative any longer, now that "conservatism" involves stuffing billions of dollars in taxpayer cash into the pockets of crony corporations, and when "privatization" involves replacing the accountable military with mercenaries who fire indiscriminately at civilians, and when "freedom" means agree with the president or we will destroy you.

The right's attempts to destroy the Frost family for their "crime" of pointing out that sometimes even families who play by the rules and aren't "welfare queens" cannot get health insurance on their own seem to be, for John, the last straw:

[The Frosts] are a white, lower-middle-class, committed family, who is doing EVERYTHING the GOP Kultur Kops would have you believe people should be doing. They aren’t gay. They aren’t divorced. They didn’t abort their children. They aren’t drug addicts or welfare queens. They are property owners, entrepeneurs, taxpayers, and hard-working Americans. I bet nine times out of ten in past elections, if you handed this resume to a pollster, they would think you were discussing the prototypical Republican voter. Hell, the only thing missing from this equation is membership to a church and an irrational fear of Muslims and you HAVE the prototypical Bush voter.

They are, however, not without fault. They are unable to afford insurance through normal means (and now that they have pre-existing conditions, probably couldn’t get traditional insurance anyway), and managed to get several of their family members injured in a traumatic accident. And, it appears, those are the big blind spots for compassionate conservatism. That, and the real big sin- allowing themselves to advocate for a policy that the Decider was going to veto.

[snip]

I simply can not believe this is what the Republican party has become. I just can’t. It just makes me sick to think all those years of supporting this party, and this is what it has become. Even if you don’t like the S-Chip expansion, it is hard to deny what Republicans are- a bunch of bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs, peering through people’s windows so they can make fun of their misfortune.

Jump on over to see some of the comments that some of these bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs posted at Michelle Malkin's blog. John's right. This is what the Republican Party has become. Where I differ from John is in the notion that this is somehow something new; something that's just come about in the aftermath of 9/11; that it's a reptilian brain response to a genuine threat that is oozing over every other aspect of American life. One could argue that it goes back to Barry Goldwater, but I'd say it has its birth from the loins of Ronald Reagan, who voiced his "hate the poor and the different" rhetoric with a kindly,, smiling face. It was honed by Lee Atwater, who perfected the art of destroying the opposition through half-truths, innuendo, outright lies, and playing on fear. In the infamous Willie Horton ad of 1988, we saw the kind of campaign tactics that would eventually become the equivocation of a Vietnam veteran who left three limbs there with Osama Bin Laden and the Swiftboat Veterans for Lies smearing a presidential candidate based on nothing but their own bitterness.

There IS a difference between Republicans and Democrats, at least in terms of how they think. Republicans are about greed, fear, xenophobia, white supremacy, and male power. The Republican Party creed really IS "I got mine and fuck you." Democrats think about what the world could be. They believe in the essential decency of humans in general and Americans in particular. That's why it's so sad to see Democrats in Washington cave in again and again to the Republican doctrine of fear and hatred -- out of their own cowardice. The Democratic heritage IS of a better way, of a way that has for the most part had Americans living a better life with less anxiety and less rage. Republican rule seems only to result in an angry, vengeful populace. One wonders, then, why anyone wants these vile people to rule anything -- and why Democrats have allowed them to do it.

UPDATE: Unrelated, but relevant. Brandon Friedman isn't a 12-year-old, but he is an Iraq war veteran. If you think that what Rush Limbaugh says doesn't matter, check out some of the hate mail that VoteVets has received.

This is Republican America, folks -- where it's not just acceptable, but mandatory, to harass and threaten a 12-year-old and where war veterans are branded as pussies by guys too chickenshit to enlist to fight the very wars they love.

Labels: bloggers, conservatism, liberalism

Every now and then, Maureen Dowd is able to turn away from her personal issues long enough to show that she does still have a brain. Today she takes on Hillary Clinton's Iran vote and distills why it's so foolish in a single sentence:

If you know the dingbat vice president is agitating for a conflict with Iran, if you know that Condi is chasing after Cheney with a butterfly net on Iran and Syria, if you know you can’t believe anything this administration says, why vote to give them more backing on their dysfunctional Middle East policy?

Precisely. And this is why people like me aren't buying the notion that even a hawkish, triangulating, suck-up-to-Rupert-Murdoch Democrat is better than any Republican. At least with Republicans I know they're crazy, warmongering, faux tough guys who want to destroy what little of this country is left after George W. Bush gets through with it. I don't need to vote for someone who'll tell me she's on my side and then sell my values out to the right for political expediency, or worse, because she actually adheres to their values herself.

Labels: Hillary Clinton

...from Roger Simon at Politico:

All he has to do is not fall asleep.

All he has to do is not throw up.

All he has to do is not drool.

If Fred Thompson does none of these, the pundits say he wins the debate tonight. Even though he knows nothing about the Terri Schaivo case, thinks the Soviet Union still exists, and insists that Saddam Hussein "clearly had weapons of mass destruction".

Republicans sure do like their tough-talking Big Manly Idiots, don't they?

Labels: Fred Thompson, idiocy, Republic Party

Dear Yankees fan,

I know how you feel today. I really do. The difference is that those of us who follow the team that plays out in Queens are more used to it then you are.

I know you're angry. I know you think that Alex Rodgriguez should be chased out of town by a screaming mob carrying pitchforks and torches. And he probably will be. I know you're going to be calling WFAN today screaming for Joe Torre's head, which will probably be on a spike long before you finish punching in the area code. I know you're going to feel, as Yankees fans always do, that the entire season means nothing if you don't win it all. Every year. Without fail.

Sometimes I wonder how you folks even enjoy the season, if the only thing that matters is those few games in October. You guys are so used to running away with the division every year that you start screaming bloody murder every time your team loses a game. How can you get any pleasure out of winning when losing destroys you every time?

Before you start calling Mike and the Mad Dog today screaming as if someone were eviscerating you with a blunt knife, consider this: Your team came back from being 14-1/2 games back at one point and made it to the postseason. This is almost unheard of. And do you want to know one of the reasons this happened? One Alex Rodriguez. Already you've forgotten that this guy hit .314 this year, with 54 (presumably) steroid-free home runs, with a .422 on-base percentage and a .645 slugging percentage. That's eight full points above his career batting average. Yes, A-Rod seems to have a problem producing in the postseason -- but only in New York. Ask yourself today if your "Hit a Home Run Every Time" mentality, and the pressure that puts on a star ballplayer, has something to do with that.

I'm no star ballplayer, but I can tell you from experience -- feeling you have to be perfect every time on your job, that the consequences will be dire every time you make a mistake, is not just a terrible way to live but a guarantee that you will fuck up -- just from the pressure. So before you run a player like A-Rod out of town, give it a few days and make sure it's what you want.

Another thing to consider: Your team has had as its manager for twelve years one of the classiest guys ever to be part of this game. Yes, it's been a long time since you won a championship, but getting to the postseason is hardly chopped liver. Think of all the fans for whom the season ended two weeks ago. Good ballclubs go to the postseason, but in a short series, anything can happen. Do you honestly believe that the St. Louis Cardinals were the best team in the majors last year? Hardly. They got hot when it counted, and this year it was Cleveland's turn to get hot. Just like it's been the Rockies' turn to get hot at just the right time.

One thing that helps me is finding a reason to support another team just for the postseason. I know you're not about to root for Cleveland, and you're sure as hell not going to root for the Red Sox. But you might consider doing what I'm doing, and hoping that the trophy goes this year to the aforementioned Colorado Rockies. The Rockies are also managed by a very classy guy in Clint Hurdle. Hurdle was not only a decent utility guy for the Mets in three seasons, but also is an active advocate for research into Prader-Willi syndrome, which afflicts his daughter. But he's just the manager. The team is another story. The team has voted a full postseason share to the widow of their minor league first base coach Mike Coolbaugh, who was died after a line drive hit him in the neck this past season. Coolbaugh's widow is 32 and pregnant, with two other small children. The share was the players' idea.

The first day is always the hardest, I know. It's hard because you know the opposing team's fans are gloating. It's hard because everything was SUPPOSED to point to winning it all. It's hard because once your team is out of it, it's really and truly autumn (despite the 90-degree temperatures yesterday) and nothing's coming but a lot of leaf-raking, followed by the entire world turning grey for about four months. But you will get through this. And in a week you'll feel better.

Labels: New York Yankees

When our own side is perfectly willing to turn this into a police state, what hope do we have?

Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.

Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.

As the debate over the eavesdropping powers of the National Security Agency begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats.

Although willing to oppose the White House on the Iraq war, they remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence.

A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.

In an acknowledgment of concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the interception of foreign-based communications by the security agency.

A competing proposal in the Senate, still being drafted, may be even closer in line with the administration plan, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications utilities that participated in the once-secret program to eavesdrop without court warrants.

No one is willing to predict with certainty how the question will play out. Some Congressional officials and others monitoring the debate said the final result might not be much different from the result in August, despite the Democrats’ insistence that they would not let stand the extension of the powers.

Stop being so fucking scared, dammit! You have the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution on your side! Or doesn't that matter anymore?

I for one am sick of this. Every time the Democrats in the Senate and House cave on an issue like this, they reaffirm the stereotype that they are simply not tough enough to deal with the realities of today's world. That stereotype is based on an erroneous impression of a supposed lack of toughness in dealing with terrorism, but when they refuse to fight on any issue EVEN THOUGH IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO -- just because they're "afraid of being called soft on terrorism."

By whom? Rush Limbaugh? Ann Coulter? Tim Russert? Senate Republicans? Do these people not have mouths? Are they so stupid that they cannot articulate why giving the government broad, sweeping power to eavesdrop on every aspect of our lives is completely inconsistent with what this country was founded to be?

There are a few possibilities here: One is that the Administration has already used its broad eavesdropping power to gather dirt on every Democrat in Congress -- and is prepared to use it if they don't fall in line. Another is that they're afraid the next bogus intelligence about a planned attack on the Capitol won't be bogus -- or will be allowed to play out -- in which case they owe it to us to tell us. The third and most horrific possibility is that the Democrats also want to give the president unlimited eavesdropping power. And if that's the case, then why should we reward a party that's marching towards fascism as quickly as the Republicans are?

Labels: Democrats, fascism, police state, spinelessness

Most women don't use a diaphragm anymore. Last time I checked the statistics, only 3% of women use one. It's really a shame, though, because if you don't want to pump hormones into your body, the diaphragm, used correctly, is an inexpensive, non-interruptive, highly effective method of contraception.

But what do you do with the old ones when it's time to replace them? It seems a shame -- and certainly not "green" -- to just toss it. If you look at it, there ought to be SOMETHING that Heloise could come up with for it -- temporary drain stopper, gravy strainer...something...

The Thompson family of Tennessee thinks they've found a good use for it: teething ring!



Here's the full video:



As someone who used to use one, I can tell you that you're right. That is one mighty HUGE diaphragm.

(via BradBlog)

Labels: contraception, Fred Thompson

Just when you think the Republicans can't stoop any lower, here comes the virtues of early minority death rates and the swiftboating of a twelve-year-old.

I kid you not.

Alan Breslauer at BradBlog reports on how the chief of the Voting Rights division of the U.S. Department of justice says that restrictive voter ID laws give minorities a greater voice:

The NLC kicked off their 2nd Annual convention over the weekend, including an expert panel titled, "It's Not Over - Defending the Right to Vote Against Disenfranchising Tactics". While many issues were covered over the course of 2 1/2 hour panel, the most hotly debated subject was the current rash of GOP-pushed Photo ID laws sweeping the nation, just in time for the 2008 Presidential Election.

Tanner --- and we'll repeat it again, he's the Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice --seems to believe that restrictive Photo ID laws are not only non-discriminatory but actually favor minorities (at least in Georgia). All of the other expert panelists, audience members and even one particular vocal cameraman (that would be me), were incredulous, and found Tanner's comments absurd and objectionable.

In the first of several video clips below (5:45) Tanner states that Voter ID laws "very much [are] a state by state issue" that come down to "who has the ID and who doesn't." Tanner goes on to contend that Photo ID issues really only impact the elderly. There is a racial link however, because "our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first," he told those of us in the room. And things that disproportionately impact the elderly have the opposite impact on minorities. In other words, Tanner concludes that Photo ID laws actually negatively impact non-minorities and seemingly give them a greater voice.

Video here.

Meanwhile, the family of a 12-year-old who gave the Democratic rebuttal to Captain Codpiece's weekly radio address is being harassed by freepers and wingnuts:

The Frost's are a family of six living in a working class neighborhood in Baltimore MD.

The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.

They bought their "lavish house" in 1991 for $55k at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe. Sixteen years later, the house still needs work.

Halsey Frost is a self-employed carpenter/woodworker.

Bonnie is a part time researcher/editor for a medical research firm.

Last year, the Frost's made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined depending on Halsey's ability to find work

The children and their education

Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.

Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred do to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.

Right wing bloggers have been harassing the Frosts calling numerous times to get information about their private lives.

More here and here.

What the hell kind of monsters ARE these people?

UPDATE: Here's more about the Frosts (via Digby):

Graeme and his 9-year-old sister, Gemma, were passengers in the family SUV in December 2004 when it hit a patch of black ice and slammed into a tree. Both were taken to a hospital with severe brain trauma. Graeme was in a coma for a week and still requires physical therapy.

Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work.

Having priced private insurance that would cost more than their mortgage - about $1,200 a month - they continue to rely on the government program. In Maryland, families that earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level - about $60,000 for a family of four - are eligible.

Now before anyone says the Frosts can't afford their mortgage, consider that their mortgage is payment is 32% of their gross monthly income -- well within long-established guidelines in the mortgage industry that pre-date the recent bubble; which usually regard 28-33% as what one can afford. Another $1200/month or more for health insurance, and you're looking at nothing left after taxes for utilities, food, and clothing. It simply should not be necessary for families to spend a third of their pre-tax income for health insurance.

Labels: SCHIP, wingnuttia

(Update to Lyre, Lyre, Pantz & Fier)

ComputerWorld has provided a link showing letters from both Cohen & Grigsby PC and the Department of Labor that were issued in response to letters sent by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), in which the congressmen demanded a response to the statements made by the lawyers in the infamous YouTube video. ("Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker".) The images of the scanned letters in the .pdf file are of poor quality, but should be legible with increased magnification.

I thought it would be fun to have a contest to see how many inaccuracies we could spot in the letters, starting with, from Cohen & Grigsby, "Moreover, the employees for whom we file H-1B visa petitions are typically highly skilled and highly educated employees of U.S. companies who get wages above - often well above - federally mandated 'prevailing wages'." (On second thought, that statement may be correct, since the prevailing wage might be close to $0.00. Hardly any native-born Americans are performing the work anymore.)

(Cross-posted to Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: immigration

Twenty years ago it was cigarette smoking blamed for American health problems. Today it's Teh Fatties. Yes, obesity is blamed for just about everything, from diabetes to certain cancers to pregnant women who gain too much weight passing The Curse of Obesity to their children.

Blaming everything on obesity has a few advantages to society at large. It allows thin people to feel virtuous. It feeds the multibillion dollar diet industry. It gives health insurers a way to discriminate without having to resort to expensive risk testing. And it allows employers to hire based on physical appearance, all under the guise of "wanting healthy employees."

Few people other than the most avid fat acceptance folks are saying that it's possible for a five foot tall woman to weigh 500 pounds and be healthy. But when we live in a society in which we inhale and consume toxins and artificial foods belched out by multinational corporations, blaming Teh Fat People seems just a bit of an oversimplification -- and a diversion.

Katharine Mieszkowski at Salon interviews epidemiologist Devra Davis, author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer:

Testicular cancer in men under age 40 has risen 50 percent in a decade. What are the theories about why there might be such a radical increase?

In the United States and Japan, there has been a significant decline in the birth of baby boys. What does this have to do with testicular cancer? Well, there's a theory of testicular dysgenesis, which means that there is something on the Y chromosome that is transmitted to boys that is affecting their overall health, and it may affect whether or not a boy sperm works to fertilize an egg.

Something is affecting fathers' ability to make baby boys, which may also be affecting the ability of the boys that are conceived to become fathers. It may be affecting sperm count, which is declining. It may also be affecting development of testicular cancer, which peaks in young men in their 20s. And these things are likely to be related to early life exposures to hormone-mimicking chemicals.

[snip]

In 1977, Richard Merrill, who later became dean of the University of Virginia Law School, was the chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration, and he formally asked the U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury to decide whether or not to indict the producer of aspartame, G.D. Searle, for misrepresenting "findings, concealing material facts and making false statements" in aspartame safety tests.

This is not some left-wing group. This is the actual chief counsel of the FDA asking the U.S. attorney's office to convene a grand jury. It never happened, because by the time the grand jury was ready to be convened we had a new president. That president was Reagan, and within a month of Reagan taking office, he had a proposal from a guy you might have heard of named Donald Rumsfeld [who was then chief operating officer of Searle].

And Jan. 22, 1981, one day after Reagan's inauguration -- one day -- Searle reapplied for FDA approval. Prior to that, ever single request for approval was turned down by all the scientists ever looking at the data. That's a fact. There's no dispute about that fact. And then, it gets approved May 19, 1981.

Remember what happened with the Reagan revolution? It was: "We need to get the government off our backs." One of the backs it got off of was suppressing the aspartame industry. Later, many of the people who worked at the FDA to evaluate aspartame ended up going to work for the company producing it.

[snip]

We have gone backward since the '70s. In the '70s, in the decision on lead in gasoline, the court said we could use experimental evidence that something was a threat to human health in order to prevent harm. The court repeatedly ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could use theories, models and estimates to prevent harm.

Now, we have to prove that harm has already happened before taking action to prevent additional harm. In the area of cancer this is a travesty, since most cancer in adults takes five, 10, 20 or 30 years [to develop]. It means that we have no opportunity to prevent cancer, because we must prove through human evidence that it's already happened. I think that is fundamentally wrong public policy. Ninety percent of all claims now for toxic torts are denied.

What the court decisions have done is to make the burden of proof close to impossible when it comes to human harm and environmental contamination.

[snip]

What does the history of work-related exposures to carcinogens being covered up mean for workplace safety today?

The United States today has the smallest percentage of men and women working in blue-collar jobs in modern history. Just as an example, computers today are made in the United States by robots, which is called "lights-out manufacturing." Where people are exposed to computer manufacturing is in Asia. So, we've exported our dirty jobs. In the United States today it's not so much of a problem.

But polar bears in the Arctic are showing up as hermaphrodites with toxic waste in their bodies that would qualify them for burial in a hazardous waste site. How do you think that they're getting exposed to these pollutants? They don't work at factories. But they are at the top of the polar food chain, and pollutants go up through the food chain stored in fat from the little fish to the big fish to the walrus to the polar bear. Ultimately, they're making it very clear that pollutants don't need passports, and that you can't ban toxic materials in one nation. It has to be a global policy.

[snip]

A recent report from the American Cancer Society found that breast cancer death rates are falling. To what do you attribute that?

Some people think it's because of hormone replacement therapy, which, if it's true, is extraordinary. The question is: Is it a true decrease? One possibility is that we stopped doing as many mammograms. There have been budget cuts, as you may have heard. With fewer mammograms, then you'd be finding less breast cancer. A third possibility is that there is a real decrease because fat-seeking pesticides, like DDT, are at the lowest point in American history.

Yet, Gen Xers are at greater risk of developing breast cancer than their grandmothers?

When Gen Xers reach their 40s, the risks are higher than the risk was for their grandmothers when they were in their 40s.

I've developed a theory of Xeno estrogen, named for the Greek word for "foreign." Basically, all of the risk factors that have been identified for breast cancer, except radiation, are related to the total lifetime exposure to hormones. So, the earlier in life you get your period and the later in life you go through menopause, the more hormones you're exposed to in your lifetime, and the greater your risk of breast cancer. The more alcohol you drink in your lifetime -- alcohol is highly estrogenic -- the greater your risk of breast cancer. The less exercise you get -- exercise lowers the amount of circulating estrogen -- the more estrogen in your life. The more fat in your body, the more estrogen, because fat is estrogenic.

Endocrine disrupters in the environment certainly have been shown to affect the chances. Certain plastic, phthalates, some pesticides, arsenic, mercury, diesel exhaust, all of these things have been shown to increase the risk. Some things that are widely used in cosmetics, like parabens, are estrogenic. So, the sum total of natural and synthetic estrogen in your lifetime affects your risk of breast cancer.

Why are more young girls going into puberty at an earlier age? Why are more young girls developing breasts? There are several reasons to think that hormones in personal care products may be playing a role, particularly for breast cancer in young black women.

A number of years ago there was a study of the high incidence of breast cancer on Long Island, to determine if environmental factors such as old pesticide residues were a factor. Among the other causes speculated (because God forbid we should blame anything produced by a corporation) was the high percentage of Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jewish women on Long Island and their consumption of fatty meats like pastrami. Yes, folks, it's not Monsanto or Dow Chemical that caused your cancer, it's the local kosher delicatessen.

And now we have the revelation of children's toys being contaminated with lead at the same time as 1 in 150 children being diagnosed as autistic, as much as 10% of this country's children being diagnosed as ADHD, and increased incidence of sensory integration disorders, and other learning disorders.

Given the government's long track record of protecting corporations against investigation of the safety of products, we need to look carefully at who funds the studies that always seem to point repsonsibility away from the toxic stews being produced by multinational corporations and towards individual fault.

Labels: cancer, environment, health

Why Driftglass is quite simply the best:

Dear Keith,

Beneath the farts and flourishes of failed amendments, procedural votes and resolutions passed, one fact remains:

About a quarter of the people in this country are just awful fucking human beings.

The walk upright like us. Eat and shit like us. Reproduce like us. But they are not like us.

We are, right now, enduring the final act of arguably the failingest, most incompetent and mentally underclocking President we have ever had. A President who has proven himself every day to be simultaneously a traitor, a sadist and a fop.

We are groaning under a debt his Administration created, an unnecessary and catastrophic war his Administration manufactured, and a failed foreign policy his Administration authored.

And for his sins and crimes he continues to enjoy the blind, rabid canine loyalty of the 27%, whose proxies in Congress -- the same wingnut hirelings who screamed themselves hoarse chanting “Up or down vote!” every time a single GOP nomination got snagged -- continue to happily obstruct even the mildest effort to curb their Dear Leader’s Forever War or in any way mitigate his “Bomb them ‘til they’re Christian” vision of world peace.

He was preceded by as moderate and center-seeking president as we have seen in my lifetime.

One who made it a point to appoint Republicans to his cabinet, give the Right a voice, and triangulate away to them a lot of what they asked for.

For his troubles he endured the blind, rabid reptilian rage of the 27% for seven years.

And then they impeached him.

These are the pod people that keep O’Reilly propped up, keep Limbaugh on the air, and keep Fox News profitable. The kept Jerry Falwell from being run out of Christendom on a rail, and keep James Dobson from sinking back into the tent-show fever swamp from whence he came.

They are the reason the Minority Party knows it will pay absolutely no price for thwarting the will of the majority of the America people.

They are the reason the War Party has, finally, resorted to simply lying outright about Iraq; because they know which side of the Mason/Dixon line their bread is buttered on.

More here.

Labels: bloggers

One would think that the Paterson, NJ police would have better things to do than harass a couple of guys giving away free books in front of an abandoned storefront:

With an embarrassingly high rate of illiteracy in Paterson and no major bookstore for the city's poverty-burdened residents, two local activists took matters into their own hands.

Why not give away books for free?

To anyone.

So began the great Paterson book giveaway, the brainchild of a retired biology teacher and a tattoo artist -- definitely an unlikely pair.

Two mornings each week for the last year, former teacher John Sargis and tattooist Tom Silva have set up a table on a Paterson sidewalk and handed out Saul Bellow novels or travel books or Arthur Miller plays or memoirs by South African political activists -- to name just a few of their selection of free books.

In just the last month, the sidewalk table and book-brimming milk crates that Sargis and Silva bring to downtown Paterson has been visited three times by police.

What gives?

Police say they are only responding to citizen complaints -- and have not shut down the book giveaway or written any tickets or put anyone in handcuffs.

"There's probably a citizen complaint," Lt. Anthony Traina, Paterson's police spokesman.

But who is complaining? And why?

So far, police won't say.

Sargis and Silva say police have asked whether they have a sales license, then discover Sargis and Silva don't need one because they are merely passing out free books.

"We said this is not a sale," Sargis said.

"We know what our rights are," Silva added.

On other visits, the activists say police complain that they are blocking the sidewalk and ask if they have a permit to congregate. On a recent weekday, the activists' table took up barely 2 feet of the 8-foot-wide sidewalk. During the two-hour giveaway, pedestrians had plenty of room to pass by.

But Sargis and Silva say they don't want to pick a fight even though they both say they have a constitutional right to pass out free reading material. But on one occasion, when police suggested that they should leave, Sargis and Silva packed up their books and went home.

"No one likes to get arrested," Silva said.

And so what began as a community service has become a community question mark for Sargis and Silva. Can they continue to give away books?

[snip]

Sargis and Silva are decidedly liberal in their politics. When they set up their table of books, they also post political signs on nearby walls.

On a recent weekday, on a wall outside the abandoned El Nuevo Teresita Restaurant on the corner of Ellison and Church streets, the sign for "Free Books" was book-ended by two other signs.

"Impeach Bush," said one.

"Out of Iraq," said another.

Piled on the table with computer books and a biography of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and a memoir by retired U.S. Navy admiral and former Joint Chiefs Chair- man William Crowe were leaf-lets advising young men and women not to enlist in the military.

Sargis and Silva hope their political messages might provoke passers-by to talk to them.

"Knowledge is free," Sargis explains. "There shouldn't be any price on knowledge. In a democratic society, people need knowledge to make adequate decisions."

Exactly. If, as I suspect, the harassment is less about taking up space on the sidewalk and more about trying to suppress the messages that Sargis and Silva have posted on the doors of the abandoned storefront in front of which they ply their wares.

Story and video of the project is here.

Labels: police state, political activism

It's really too bad that Joe Biden is such a blowhard and that he's completely in the pockets of the credit card industry. Because on foreign policy, he's the smartest and most knowledgeable of the Democratic candidates.

Biden has been advocating a divided Iraq, held together by a loose form of central government. Iraq's government now agrees:

For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal.

Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.

"I don't think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. "To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power."

Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite cleric and parliament member, said any future reconciliation would emerge naturally from an efficient, fair government, not through short-term political engineering among Sunnis and Shiites.

"Reconciliation should be a result and not a goal by itself," he said. "You should create the atmosphere for correct relationships, and not wave slogans that 'I want to reconcile with you.' "

The acrimony among politicians has strained the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki close to the breaking point. Nearly half of the cabinet ministers have left their posts. The Shiite alliance in parliament, which once controlled 130 of the 275 seats, is disintegrating with the defection of two important parties.

Legislation to manage the oil sector, the country's most valuable natural resource, and to bring former Baath Party members back into the government have not made it through the divided parliament. The U.S. military's latest hope for grass-roots reconciliation, the recruitment of Sunni tribesmen into the Iraqi police force, was denounced last week in stark terms by Iraq's leading coalition of Shiite lawmakers.

"There has been no significant progress for months," said Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents and the most influential Sunni politician in the country. "There is a shortage of goodwill from those parties who are now in the driver's seat of the country."

Iraqi leaders say there are few signs that Maliki's government is any more willing to share power now than 15 months ago, when he unveiled a 28-point national reconciliation plan. A key proposal then was an amnesty for insurgents -- an "olive branch," Maliki said at the time -- to bring members of the resistance into the political fold.

So not only has the much-beloved "surge" (conservatives do love their ejaculation metaphors, don't they?) been an absolute failure, but there is absolutely nothing that even Jesus H. Petraeus can do to successfully bring about George W. Bush's delusion of Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq. There is nothing else to do in Iraq but help, through diplomatic means, to bring about the orderly division of Iraq and bring American troops home. There is no reason to stay in the stadium all night after the team loses. It won't change the outcome one bit.

Labels: Iraq

I hope you all got to see John Edwards on Press the Meat this morning. Tim Russert's absolute, sit-bolt-upright-at-night-screaming terror of a John Edwards nomination was palpable. He was bug-eyed, sweating with fear and practically yelling his questions -- and John Edwards was utterly unflappable.

If you didn't see it, the video is up at the show's site, here. Watch Timmeh have apoplexy as he fails utterly to trip Edwards up.

Labels: hack journalism, John Edwards, Tim Russert

Here in the new south of Fairfield County, we're sweltering in a heat wave, and in the half hour before the Sam Seder Show, complete with the Sammy Cam (!!) I'm looking at whats coming up this week and...yeah, its Columbus day tomorrow which is another opportunity for me to sleep late (8 AM, big-whoop) and then I can rail about how much I hate Columbus Day and all it stands for; and I don't mean Italian-American pride either. I think they should just rename the whole shebang Italian-American Day, and call it a...uh...day!
Take back your pox blankets boys...put your scurvy teeth back in your smelly head, and vamoose. I'm sure that Columbus was a brave guy, and I know that its human nature to explore, migrate, to and take over other lands...we are warlike creatures and the only way to survive is to appropriate the resources that are out there. But, do we have to celebrate it? Give the Italians a day of their own, and give it a rest...

In great news for the liberal voice, (besides that Sam is about to be on, streaming here, or...good luck finding a terrestrial signal,) Marc Maron will be guest hosting the Rachel Maddow Show on Monday and Tuesday, October 8th and 9th; then he will be appearing at Comix Friday and Saturday, October 12th and 13th; then, on Sunday the 14th, at Union Hall in Brooklyn (for a short set,) and THEN Monday at Mo' Pickin's House of Satisfaction on the lower east side of Manhattan/Ave A. For those of you who were hopeful that this might mean something in the way of the Greens/AAR suits being smart enough to offer him a show, no such luck right now....Though I'm sure that your cards and letters and email couldn't hurt.

This guy is one of the hardest working men in showbiz, and if HBO-Showtime-FX or the like, don't give him his own talk show soon, there is no justice in the world... which there actually isn't, so there you have it....a perfectly Maron equation...
For those of us on the east coast who were sorta getting used to having that guy living amongst us, lo those couple-a years, we unfortunately are not gonna get him here in person for a whole extra week before his Comix gig. He is apparently taping the Maddow show from sunny LA-LA...and the quickly evolving Marc-Sammy VodCast that is offered live HERE every Tuesday at 11 AM, EST, can be done, on Marc's end, from anywhere...but is also being taped from LA. Just refresh the page a few times if you don't see both screens. Its a great show and its going to be really fun to watch it develop.

In the embarrassment of riches department of this coming week, Sam Seder is filling in for Mike Malloy at Nova M, Monday to Friday from 9PM to midnight, EST. Its almost like the good old days....but unfortunately AAR can't see the forest OR the trees...

As if THAT wasn't enough, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is opening on Friday!

Bird News: My lil' parrotlets laid 2 eggs...and they are tiny. Think of smaller than a mini marshmallow....and my second frizzle baby is still holding on in the incubator but I'm a little worried about that one. Its also really little!...Why do birds make me happy? I don't know...but I'm holding on to whatever happiness I can get my hands on these days...


and yes...theres more...theres always more...

Cross posted at RIPCoco with pictures!

Labels: Marc Maron, Sam Seder, The Tudors