A Tax Revolt

Few things make my blood boil like the notion that it is statist for a government to provide health care for its citizens but that it is okay for the government to create an environment in which citizens can purchase "affordable" health care.

No one should have no faith in the definition of what is affordable given from people who have already shown that affordability is the last thing on their minds when it comes to education (college tuition and interest rates, school vouchers, charter schools all come to mind), medicines for senior citizens (Medicare Part D), alternatives to Social Security (there is no lack of studies that show that the administrative costs of private retirement funds far exceed those of Social Security), just to cite a few examples.

What is affordable, when it comes to health care? The average American family is already expected to spend 17% of its annual income on health care, and costs have been rising steadily at triple the rate of inflation for the last 20 years. In Massachusetts, then Gov. Romney introduced a state health care plan that mandates that each resident purchase private insurance lest it should be subject to a penalty (Congress then went on to copy the Massachusetts plan in 2010--a plan, may I add, of extremely dubious constitutionality).

What has happened to the cost of health care in Massachusetts since the passage of "Romney care" in 2006? Up until two years ago, when Democratic governor Deval Patrick decided to tackle the issue of health care costs, they had been rising at a rate of 17%! Now the rate of increase has dropped to an average of 2%, but in the meantime the people of the state have been forced to swallow premium increases that can easily break a family's budget. If history is any indication, isn't that what we should expect from those who are claiming that affordable care ought to be the goal that Congress should help bring about?

Additionally, there is no absolute measure of affordability. What is affordable for one individual or family can be completely out of reach for another. The measure of health care shouldn't be its affordability, but its quality and the coverage it provides. Is a premium affordable if it covers only catastrophic events but it forces the insured to pay for everything else out-of-pocket, or if it comes with high deductibles and co-pays? Is it affordable for someone who is already struggling to make ends meet to pay for rent or a mortgage, his children's education, car insurance, gas, food, clothes, perhaps the care of a parent or both, to be forced to pay for something deemed to be affordable by someone else who has no idea of a person's financial situation?

Again, what is affordable for someone who has taken a 10% cut in salary to keep his job, or who has seen a negative rate of increase in his salary for ten years, while everything else around him has gotten more expensive, a common situation for many in the United States?

And why on earth is it okay for a government to spend as much on its military as the next 23 countries combined, without providing a minimum of health care services for its citizens, and then have the gall to force them to purchase a product it may not be able to afford? Cut defense spending to an acceptable level, then return the money that has been cut where it belongs, the pockets of middle-class Americans, then come back with a definition of what constitutes affordable health care, and we'll start a conversation. Until then, come April 15th, Americans should take its patriots as an example and conscientiously object to paying taxes.

Why He, A Principled-Conservative, Bible-Believing Protestant, and Counter-cult Expert, Will Vote for Mitt Romney

As the election season approaches, the Constructive Curmudgeon regales us with the reasons why he, a principled blah blah blah, will vote for Willard Mitt Romney in the November elections. The real reasons? The Curmudgeon enthusiastically welcomed Sarah Palin as the VP candidate of the last Republican presidential ticket, he supported Michele Bachmann this time around. In other words, in spite of all claims of logic in support of his choices, the guy votes Republican because he hates Democrats, which he is entitled to.

He'd never vote for a Democrat, like I would never vote for a Republican, and he rationalizes his distaste for Democrats and cloaks it in a smokescreen of alleged good reasons when, in fact, he offers really none (unless you consider lines like "the alternative to Romney is [...] the end of America as it was founded and as we know it" an example of a good reason, in which case you have bigger problems than agreeing with the Curmudgeon.

If the choice were between a Democrat and an orangutan in Republican garb, the Curmudgeon would come up with a list of "good" reasons why the orangutan would make a better president for America. Lucky for him, many Republicans reason just as well as orangutans do.

(P.S. If you want to read his official reasons, complete with factual inaccuracies and simply made up stuff like [Obama supports] "the federal takeover of health care, leading to rationing, inefficiency, and a loss of personal freedom. You will be paying for abortions. Some would rather go to jail than do this", "A growing and perhaps insurmountable debt, mortgaging our future, and making us like Greece", and the completely fantastic "Further evisceration of our military and cut backs in military benefits" you can read the whole sorry post here.)

You've Got To Wonder About Some Congressional Districts

How do idiots like Allen West (R-FL) get elected? When a district contains enough idiots like him to elect him, I guess, and when the good people who might prevent him from winning a seat don't vote.

Anyway, here's West's latest nugget of idiocy. In any case, better red than [being represented by] West.

Greed vs. Life

Hunter at Daily Kos gives a very typically pitiless and accurate take down of the conservatives' arguments against universal health care, in which he unmasks the freedom vs.socialism/government argument for a what it really is: an argument for greed over life.

You can read Hunter's whole impeccable argument, Steve King is still a rotten human being by clicking the link. But a few excerpts bear highlighting:

The freedom of the healthy, it is presumed, will be abridged if they are taxed even a penny to pay for the less healthy. The freedom of the decently well off will be compromised, it is argued straight-out, we consider it a national interest to care for people those "well off" individuals deem it unnecessary to care for. 

[...] The future potential of a need for health care among all living humans would seem to be a self-evident premise, and existing federal law provides that they will be cared for in emergency situations, whether they have preemptively "entered into" that commerce or not. The hospitals and other institutions responsible for that care are already actively engaged in—and mandated to— provide that commerce. There's no opt-out there. There is no citizen who does not benefit from that explicit federal guarantee of some very basic level of care, even if they, like Mr. King's Randian supermen, never actually need to partake of it. They are in that commerce. They benefit from it.

[...] The conservative argument is that there is no underlying right to health care, there is no obligation to provide citizens with that care, and that establishing a tax or fine or program to provide that care is in fact the true infringement of rights and freedoms, as some people might be put out by it. This argument is considered implausible in nearly all other aspects of government: There is no opt-out of defense spending, if you do not wish to pay for it. There is no little box to check if you do not want your tax dollars to go towards transportation spending, or infrastructure improvements, or courthouses, or police forces, or fire prevention efforts. These are decided legal issues. The notion that the rights of a certain small subset of the greedy and amoral are being wounded by requiring them to partake of a federal program to insure all others would seemingly be a rather asinine proposition. For millennial conservatism, however, it is not. 

[...] The "right" not to be taxed is being weighed against the "right" of poorer or less fortunate citizens to live, and the outcome of that question is honestly being presumed as debatable, even though there are precious few other contexts in which you could debate the question and not be considered, for lack of a better phrase, a goddamn monster. 

 Read the rest of it. It's well worth it.

Blood Boils Again, I'm Afraid

Every country has horror stories that affect the lives of its citizens. The United States, of course, is no exception, except in the minds of rabid Repuglycans (not Republicans, mind you, although the distinction is getting quite pointless) and Tea Partiers who take any criticism of the nation as the evil work of Commie infiltrates. On the contrary, recognizing one's shortcomings is the only way to eliminating them, which is why so much that is good in this country has been going so badly, so fast. Denial, Egypt, etc.

Tonight, I had the misfortune/good fortune of watching a special presentation of PBS's Frontline that featured two such horror stories.

The first one covered cases in which the forensic pathology and prosecutorial apparatuses of this nation combine in a frightening frenzy to create crimes when there is none. Prominently featured was the case of a quite likeable fellow, Ernie Lopez, who spent close to 10 years in prison for a crime he almost certainly did not commit: the rape and murder of a 6-month old infant he baby-sat. You can watch the original investigation, The Child Cases, on Frontline's web site.

The other story followed the intersection of for-profit online universities (with a lowercase U) with the lives of veterans who attend them in hope of rebuilding their lives after serving the nation. The waste of money is unthinkable, as is the damage done to the lives of men and women who have sacrificed their lives, and their families', in service to the nation. You can watch this episode too, Educating Sgt. Pantzke, on Frontline's web site.

If your blood is not boiling after you have viewed this stories, check your pulse. If it is, do something about it.

Some Republicans' Idea of Democracy Very Much Resembles Dictatorship

A chilling report broadcast by Rachel Maddow  tonight shows the Republican-led Michigan legislature put laws into immediate effect, a practice that requires a 2/3 majority and that should presumably be reserved for emergency situations, not by roll-call but by a simple show of hands (actually, by asking representatives in favor of the resolution to stand).

The legislature which was seated in January 2011 passed 546 of 566 laws with immediate effect. You can watch how long it takes the speaker of the Michigan House to determine that a 2/3 majority exists for the immediate effect resolution in the video below. And then you may shudder.

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If Broccoli Were Like Health Insurance...

If broccoli were like health insurance, in cartoon form. What a country, eh?

Hunter Hits Another Bulls' Eye

That'd be Hunter over at Daily Kos, and his latest bull's eye is his post about this week's Supreme Court Kabuki Theater job.

You can read it here.

Broccoli, Vile Weed! (And Even Viler Justices)

There's a famed episode of Seinfeld where Jerry, in order to save a friend's job who works at Kenny Rogers' Roasters, accepts to switch apartments with Kramer, who had started a protest against the restaurant in an attempt to put it out of business so he could resume a regular sleeping schedule (the restaurant's red neon sign prevented Kramer from catching a good night's sleep).

Later in the show, though, Jerry discovers that in spite of the protest, Kramer (and Newman) has become addicted to the chicken, and figures out that Kramer would not have the guts to resume his ploy to put the restaurant out of business even if he had to go back to his apartment. Jerry finds out because he meets Newman at Kenny Rogers' and the clerk who hands Newman the order says "Oh, don't forget your broccoli." Jerry says "Broccoli? You wouldn't eat broccoli if it were deep-covered in chocolate sauce!" Newman's half-heartedly responds "I love broccoli!", so Jerry exhorts him to have some broccoli, then. Newman does and proceeds to spit it out after almost choking on it and exclaims "Vile weed!". That's how Jerry uncovers Kramer's ruse and forces Kramer to switch back apartments.

This week's health care arguments in front of the Supreme Court reminded me of that episode, because broccoli was a central plot twist in the Seinfeld episode and was also a central argument in Justice Scalia's opposition to the Affordable Healthcare Act. Scalia, whose antics are legendary and whose intelligence and rhetorical abilities are obviously greatly overrated, contended that allowing one government mandate (the individual mandate to purchase health care or pay a tax penalty) might lead to another (the government's hypothetical mandate to all Americans to purchase broccoli).

Paul Krugman was one of many commentators who pointed out that Scalia's argument is disingenuous because one American's failure to purchase broccoli does not have any effect on another American's ability to purchase the vegetable or on its affordability. Justice Scalia is a sure vote in the pocket of the Act's opponents, no doubt. His clumsy rhetoric and his inability (or unwillingness) to understand the difference that goes between the grocery market and the health care market.

But where Don Verrilli, Solicitor General of the United States, caught a lot of flack in the mainstream media for his fumbling defense of the ACA's individual mandate requirement, Justice Scalia caught almost none for his pedestrian offense against logic and his attack against the Act's pivotal requirement. This difference in treatment is another example, in case one was needed, of the ridiculous job that the MSM does in informing the American public about the content of the issues. No wonder so many Americans are confused and think that both sides are equally guilty for the country's failures.

Perhaps, as Newman says in the Kenny Rogers' Roasters episode, broccoli is a vile weed. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind, however, that Justice Scalia's presumed defense of individual liberty in the name of broccoli is very vile weed.

Now That The Health Care Arguments Have Been Heard, Let The Arguments Begin

For the insatiably masochistic, like me, here are a couple interesting posts about this week's SCOTUS hearings on health care.
The Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act, and the Slippery Slope (by Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago)
No Surprise: The Supreme Court Is Hostile To Health Care (by Adam Winkler, Professor of Law, UCLA)

Start From Scratch

I said it before and I will say it again: The best thing that the Supreme Court could do for all of us is shoot down the individual mandate that is that foundation of the Affordable Healthcare Act. In saying it I know that I will draw the ire of many, many of whom I sincerely respect.

As you know, I am no libertarian and no conservative, but I do believe that the Affordable Healthcare Act is a total screw up of the promise of health care for all, brought about by a weak President and Democratic majority. It was a half-assed, half-hearted attempt to make health care accessible to all Americans without pissing off the insurance industry and the medical-hospital complex too much. It was never, in spite of the name, an attempt to make health care more affordable. If it had been, cost meaningful controls would have been part of the law. They are not. The closest the law gets to some form of cost control is to mandate that insurance companies must spend 80 cents on the dollar on health care, which is no cost control at all, because it does nothing to prevent costs from rising at the rate they have been and beyond.

At this point, the best thing that can happen is for the Supreme Court to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional. Send the whole law back to the drawing board, and let the states deal with creating a universal health care system for its residents. That's how universal, single-payer health care started in Canada. That's probably what it will take over here.

If Obama and the Democrats had really wanted to make health care affordable and accessible to all Americans, all they had to do was to open enrollment in Medicare to all Americans who wanted to enroll. If you want to achieve the goal of bringing the USA up to the same level of humanization as all advanced countries, it should be a piece of cake to do it for the country that constantly, and unjustifiably, calls itself the number one in the world. If you wanted to have every American citizen and legal resident covered by a universal health care system, do it through taxation: slash the military budget, and redirect that money to provide your people with what most other civilized countries regard as a basic human right.

Anything short of that is a hoax. The President and too many Democrats viewed health care reform not as a goal in itself, but as a means of currying and keeping political favor. Let them deal with the consequences. And apologize to all who will suffer because of their short-sightedness.

Paul Volcker on Obama

Paul Volcker says that claims that Obama is a socialist have "no connection to reality". Of course they don't.

I understand why Repuglycans try to paint President Obama as a socialist. After all, they have also played the "show us the birth certificate" card for three years before finally giving in to being ridiculed for it.

What I don't understand is how anyone who is not a shill for the Repuglycan Party can seriously believe that the president is a socialist. I guess it comes down to most Republican voters holding a Manichaean worldview that divides the world into good ("those who see the world like we do") and evil (everybody else).

I feel sorry for them. And for the rest of us.

Fox Double Standard

Jon Stewart's classic takedown of the douches at Fox News Channel.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Republicans, Full of Gas

So, now that Bin Laden's with the fishes, unemployment is down, and the Dow is up, the talking point du jour is the price of gas. You know, Republicans are full of it, so they know what they are talking about. And since a vast number of Alabama and Mississippi Republicans now believe that Obama is a Muslim (45 and 52% respectively), they might as well keep lying.

The Great Teleprompter Crisis

I've heard it said, and seen it written, that Obama is a fraud because he uses teleprompters, without which--his critics say--he would be a bad public speaker. That, of course, is bullshit. The problem with Obama is not that he cannot the talk, with or without technical aids. But Republicans and their shills won't stop at anything to avoid speaking about the country's real problems and they will invent fake problems instead. So you will be likely to hear about the great teleprompter crisis in the next few weeks/months.

But don't let the contemptible stupidity make your blood pressure. Instead, have fun with it and read these two posts from Daily Kos: Teleprompters are stupid ... only when Obama uses them and All other ideas exhausted, Republicans continue attack on TelePrompters.

A Good, Necessary Defense of Rep. Kucinich

Salon's Glenn Greenwald published a much-needed defense of exiting Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who lost his seat to Marcy Kaptur after redistricting caused two Ohio districts to be merged.

Game Change: History Changed

I watched Game Change, the much touted HBO original based on the book by the insufferable Mark Halperin and his co-author, John Heilemann. It is entertaining, and Julianne Moore's portrayal of Sarah Palin as good as Meryl Streep's Margaret Thatcher. It is so good that it even redeems one of Ed Harris's worse performances, as John McCain (among other things, Harris fails to deliver his lines with any of the senator's gravelly voice and his physical mannerisms).

I should say that I did not read the book because, as I said above, I find that Mark Halperin insufferable. He is the embodiment of servile, "equidistant" journalism at its worst. Nonetheless, I can confidently say that I found Game Change unsettling in its attempt to portray John McCain more as the victim of a choice that he seconded, but which was made by his top campaign managers, than as the "game caller" he must have been in the process.

I'll say that I never subscribed to the wildly-held belief of the mainstream media that Sen. McCain is a "maverick" who represents a fresh and atypical departure from the world of party loyalism. In the events depicted in the film, either Sen. McCain really had little say in the choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, and Sarah Palin was so out-of-control that it was impossible for anybody to restrain her in her "mavericky", rogue ways, or--an alternative that I find much more likely--he did not try or was unwilling to control her. Whichever the case, he was highly responsible for approving the choice of an obviously incompetent woman as his VP. If the latter is true, then obviously his judgment was faulty beyond reason and we are very lucky that he was not elected president.

The directors made the decision to portray the Arizona senator as being fairly detached from, and uninvolved in, the whole process of appointing his VP. I must assume that they have stuck fairly faithfully to how the book's authors chose to represent the senator. The problem I have is that there seems to be an obvious attempt to redeem Sen. McCain's poor judgment by showing that his choice may have turned out to be a bad one in retrospect, but that it was a justifiable "hail mary" at the time.

The film also shows Sen. McCain as pushing back against his advisors' judgment that Rev. Wright, the black pastor of the church that the Obama's attended for two decades, and who officiated the Obama's wedding ceremony, should be made into a campaign issue, because he did not want to drag race into the race (if you forgive me the turn of words.) As I remember things, the evolution of McCain's campaign into a series of one vile, baseless attack after another on candidate Obama was not sudden. Sure, it began with Sarah Palin's appearance on the national stage but it went on unchecked for weeks, before Sen. McCain finally started to pull back on the personal attacks. The moment when McCain gently rebukes a woman in the audience at one of his rallies for calling Obama an "Arab" came so late that it could not undo the damage to McCain's campaign image as one of hateful speeches and personal animosity. By then, Gov. Palin's and Sen. McCain's rallies had turned into vitriol-fests in which members of the audience shouted things like "terrorist" and "kill him", directed at candidate Barack Obama.

There is a scene towards the end of the film in which McCain's clan is shown celebrating Palin's performance after the VP debate as one of the greatest in the history of American political debates. Most impartial observers would agree instead that Biden made a meal of Palin, even without ridiculing her. That is the perfect example of what happens "in the bubble", in environments in which group-think and hope prevail over reason that things will turn out fine in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Certainly, in spite of the film's too generous and empathetic account of the events of the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 was one of the lowest points in American political history, perhaps only matched by George H.W. Bush's choice of Dan Quayle as his VP. To paint any other picture of history is not a simple matter of opinion: it is a fictional re-write of history.

No Government Between A Patient And His Doctor

The Republican mantra of the last two three years has been: The government should between doctors and their patients. Unless the patient is a woman and the doctor wields an ultrasound wand before a scheduled abortion.

In the plentiful world of Republican hypocrites, the rationalization is that the sanctity of life trumps the relationship of a woman with her doctor. Unless the life is that of a man on death row for a crime he did not commit, and for whom exculpatory DNA evidence exists. Or unless a Republican governor decides that forgiveness is a Christian duty that trumps the sanctity of the life of a convicted killer's victims.

Really, anyone can be a Republican. It takes no principles, boundless greed, and the ability to renege tomorrow on what you firmly stated today. It also takes no brain, so a good number of Americans voters are well-equipped.

All You Needed To Know About Rush Limpballs

The fact that Rush Limbpballs said something ugly about Sandra Fluke is no surprise to anyone with half-a-brain (but, apparently, not to the people who worship the man who rants everyday with "half his brain tied behind his back.") I wrote everything that needed to be said about Rush Limpballs, and about his worshippers, here.

Left v. Right: The Worldviews

Hunter at the Daily Kos writes pithy, vivid posts that typically address the hypocrisy of the Right and the completely fantastic picture they paint of the world we live in, which has mighty little to do with the reality of the world we do live in. He writes sharp, scathing posts that connect the dots between seemingly unrelated but deeply interconnected actions and statements that arise on the Right day after day. But his latest post is different. It's not as scathing; it's profound and sad, and it captures better than many of his other excellent posts the nature of the debate that divides the Left from the Right.

Much has been written about how the liberals and conservatives are divided by a failure to communicate effectively using a common language. That is also the contention of Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia who recently appeared on Moyers and Company to discuss his soon-to-be released book titled The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Haidt's book tackles the problem of how different moral intuitions and compasses shape our world view and how the failure to empathize leads to a breakdown in communication between political factions. It all sounds very refined, scholarly, and even convincing.

I like Moyers, and I  usually like the points his guests make. I will probably buy Haidt's book and read it with curiosity, but I suspect that I will be disappointed by its premise, and by its conclusions as well. It seems to me that Hunter does a better job of capturing the essence of the divide that separates the Left from the Right: It's not one about failure to speak a common language, to understand the different but equally valid point of the opposition that causes politics to break down and fail its people. It's really about a battle about disappearing opportunities; about how the America of the present, with all its huffy and haughty pretenses at still being the land of opportunities and just rewards, is a nation that more and more picks winners and losers by birth right, by heritage, and by heirdom. It is a nation where the promise, let alone the achievement, of upward mobility has been on the decline for decades, and where birth places and conditions tend to determine the outcome in life more than anywhere else in the advanced world.

George Will, Thomas Sowell, and all the other conservative pundits that strike a pose of supremacy of knowledge and intellect, cannot explain--as Hunter points out--why there are such disparities in our society if the goal of the Left, with all its assumed power over the ignorant masses, is to create equal outcomes. Ineptitude? Or is it because the premise that the Left is constantly seeking to establish equal outcomes is an invention of those whose mission in life is to conserve and preserve the inequality that has played to their advantage? Hunter's post, in all its quiet desperation, can be summed up in this paragraph (Hunter's):

[...] three stories sit on my computer desktop, all of which were written in the span of a few January days. A story about the damn redistributionists; a story about how America measurably fails its poor; a concrete case around which to question ourselves on what, as a society, we believe equal opportunity to mean. [Emphasis added]

I added emphasis to the sentence "[A] concrete case around which to question ourselves on what, as a society, we believe equal opportunity to mean." because nations are not shaped by debates; they are shaped by how debates are translated (or not) into action. We have a concrete case to deal with. How we deal with it defines not only our idea of what future we want to build, but future itself.

Republican "Strategery"

Grover Norquist recently made the following statement (paraphrased broadly): If we can hold on to the House and turn the Senate, all we need in the White House is a man who can work a ballpoint pen. In other words: Conservatives need not fear a Romney presidency. As long as Obama is out of the picture, game over.

Norquist's argument seems reasonable at first blush, but is typically disingenuous in true Republican fashion. Why? Because it is even better for Republicans if Obama wins a second term, while Republicans reconquer the Senate. Let me explain.

If Romney wins the White House and Republicans gain full control of Congress (and they keep their majority in the Supreme Court even if a Conservative on the court should retire or die), there will be no alibi for them. The failures of politics for middle-class and poor Americans will have a single father, for all to see: Conservatism. If on the other hand Obama retains the presidency for another four years, Republicans will presumably still be able to pass favorable legislation with the consent of a weakened White House, and they will also be able to blame their legislative failures on Obama's unwillingness to compromise (read: cave in to their wet dreams).

Either way you look at it, we're already screwed. Conservatives have already won the economic war. They can still fight the "morality" war, but the economic war is done. Warren Buffet has famously said it: There is a class war in the USA, and his class is winning.

Americans have given up on the reality-based world, where facts matter more than spin; they have come to accept Conservative platitudes, for example that high taxes are killing jobs, as are excessive environmental regulations. It doesn't matter that both are demonstrably false claims. No wealthy American pays anywhere the nominal tax rate. Take Mitt Romney, the would-be next President of the United States of Corporate America: The effective tax rate he paid on his income in recent years has been more or less 15%, not the 35& percent which he should have paid before all deductions and loopholes had been exploited to reduce his tax liability.

It seems to me that it makes much more sense for the Republican National Committee to pour money into electing as many Representatives and Senators as they can: It's cheaper than buying the White House and the return on investment is higher anyway. Much of the president's power is symbolic anyway; the real power rests with a few senators in small swing states. Also, rigging a state election is easier and carries less scrutiny than rigging a presidential election.

Republicans may run despicably (take their war against contraception, the latest example of their willingness to turn every non-issue into a war) but they don't run ineffectively. They are well-funded, better organized, and are more determined than Democrats. They represent the economic interests of a tiny percentage of the population, perhaps 2%, and yet they manage to get half of the votes, give and take a few millions, every four years. They fool us into believing that they don't have their act together by fielding a league of idiots, crooks, and liars for President in 2012, but they are masters of sleight of hand: While you are watching the hand that holds the nomination sideshow, with the other hand, the right hand, they are robbing us blind. In other words, they make strategy look like "strategery". But the joke's on us.

Misunderstandings About Class Warfare

Like Warren Buffet said, "There's a class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

The letter that Dave Zweifel wrote about in The Capital Times underscores the fact that the rich are winning, and they are winning because they are pitting working people against each other. Apparently, some of the working people fail to grasp simple realities, as "Brenda"'s letter illustrates. The article is a must read.

Insignificant Markers

So the Dow Jones reached 13,000 for the first time since 2008. Hooray, yes? Could there be a better example that the index that measures the (supposed) health of public companies in this country is completely meaningless in terms of how the American middle class fares?

This is an important point, because all the measures and indexes that you hear quoted on a given day in all of the mainstream media are meaningless? Productivity? Gone up. Unemployment? Down. Wall Street? Up. They are all numbers that are designed to make us feel good and mean absolutely nothing to most of us. How is your purchasing power now, compared to 10 years ago? How did your salary fare in the last ten years? How much of your income goes toward non-discretionary expenses every month? If you look at those numbers, they all probably look worse now than they did last year, five years ago, ten years ago. That's why you never really hear them mentioned in polite Washington conversation. On the upside? Access to contraception would be much, much more difficult if Republicans have there way. That'll fix your life, won't it?

You Don't Own Me

Mark Sumner wrote an interesting post at the Daily Kos, titled You Don't Own Me. The framing is a little weird, as it seems to start out as a North-South diatribe, but the contents are nonetheless worth a read. So, read it. Comments are welcome.

The Dishonesty and Hypocrisy of Republican "Stars"

I am often appalled by the idiocy and the hypocrisy of mediocre Republican figures. but when the idiocy and the hypocrisy come from one of the supposed "rising stars" of the Republican party, I find it even more appalling. Take the example of Gov Chris Christie.

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In vetoing a bill that legalized same-sex marriage in New Jersey, Gov. Christie made the following statement: "I am adhering to what I've said since this bill was first introduced – an issue of this magnitude and importance, which requires a constitutional amendment, should be left to the people of New Jersey to decide." If that statement does not bother you, think again: it should.

We live in a nation that established representative democracy as a form of government: We elect representatives to legislate and execute laws on our behalf. If we do not like what our representatives do, we can vote them out, and someone else in, at the next election. By this measure we judge everything our representatives do: Increasing or lowering taxes, enhancing or reducing social services, strengthening or . weakening law enforcement powers vs. the protection of individual rights, and so forth.

It really bothers me when some politicians think that some things are too sacred to be decided by legislators and sent the back to voters for further approval: The majority of the people already voted you in, so do you fucking job, which is to make a stand on principle from time to time, call an issue as you see it, and make decisions on our behalf, without making pitiful excuses.

Often, appeals to voters are made by reactionary politicians who want to maintain the status quo, and know that it is easier for 30-40 somewhat enlightened representatives (or 3, 4, or 5 judges) to repair a wrong, than it is for millions of voters that often include a majority of backward-thinking, religiously-motivated dullards who think that (their) God's view of morality be driving their vote, instead of rational, humane considerations. Do you think we should have patiently waited for the majority of Americans to eliminate racial segregation, antimiscegenation laws, or to decide whether Genesis or the theory of evolution by natural selection should be taught in science classes? If so, you need to live in a gated community of like-minded freaks. It's better for all of us if you do.

Referenda are the means that voters can use to right what they perceive to be a wrong perpetrated by a minority (their elected representatives or a handful of judges) after a decision has been made that is contrary to their general sensibilities. And courts have the final say because they are supposed to be composed of individuals of above average intelligence and education (and hopefully, some sense of impartial justice), who can recognize when a law goes against constitutional principles.

What bothers me even more is that referenda are often called into play with the excuse that the issues they are meant to decide are of foremost importance and consequence, but which in reality are fairly trivial, like gay marriage, the legalization of pot, the legalization of gambling, and so on, when compared to things that are hugely consequential in people lives. I would like to be called to vote on whether corporations are "people", in the sense that they should enjoy the same privileges that individuals do, without suffering any of the ill effects (like being sentenced to death when they wreck the world economy.) I would like to be called upon to decide whether we should have a national health care system, with a good deal of government intervention, versus a fragmented one in which the influence that power players exert (health care corporations, insurance companies, and Wall Street) greatly exceeds the ability of individuals to oppose them. I would also be liked to call to decide whether the water that I drink, or the food that I eat, or the drugs that I take, should be safe, whether the fuck the politicians want them to be or not. But that's not what happens as a matter of routine.

As a matter of routine, we let politicians represent us in the hope that they will weigh the public interest versus the private, and that they will legislate in good faith. And if, and only if, we disagree with the decisions they make, do we then have recourse to the courts or to undo what they did via referenda. For a number of reasons that make eminent sense,  that's the way things should work and that's the way, for the most part, they have worked. I am sure that Gov. Christie knows that; which is why he is both a hypocrite and dishonest when he says that "an issue of this magnitude and importance... should be left to the people of New Jersey to decide." But if there is no dishonesty or hypocrisy in his statement, that might be an even worse fault, because it would be a sign that the governor does not understand how representative democracy works. If so, he is not fit to be a leader in one, and the people of New Jersey would do well to replace him as soon as they get a chance. And the rest of us should so hope that he never ascends to higher power than that of Governor, if that's his idea of how politics should work.

Health Care Failures in the USA (UPDATED)

UPDATE: So, the bill for part of the surgery finally came in: $171,900. No, it wasn't a transplant, it wasn't open heart surgery. It was pretty routine surgery, the kind many women undergo every year. Yes, $171,900 seems a bit overpriced. As would have $71,900, as would have $50,000. In fact, I'd be really interested in finding out how much hospitals and surgeons in other countries charge for the same type of surgery. I'll do my best to find out.

I wonder: Does God only unleash hurricanes and other national calamities on "gay-infested cities" like New Orleans, or does he get pissed when doctors, hospitals and insurance companies combine to swindle the American public? Because, if He doesn't, His priorities are out of whack. Honestly, if I hear one more American sing the praises of the American health care system and rail against socialized health care I am personally going to beat the crap out of him.

------------------------------
So I finally have my own U.S. health care/health insurance horror story to tell.

I am among the lucky ones, I guess. Through my employer, I have a health care plan that covers most of my expenses. The only thing I have to worry about (until I find out otherwise) are my co-pays, which are fortunately manageable. Around 2 a.m. last Saturday, my wife (L.) started screaming for the pain in her lower abdomen. She was nauseous and could barely move. It was immediately clear that there was something seriously wrong with her, so I quickly got dressed and drove her to an E.R., which I will refer to as ER-1 from here on out.

We were at ER-1 from approximately 2:30 to 6 a.m. After ordering a complete blood count and a urinalysis, and after administering fluids, painkillers and anti-nausea meds to L., the doctor concluded that the best thing to do was to send her home and keep her on painkillers and anti-nausea for 12 hours, at which point if things hadn't improved we should return to the ER for a CT scan. (This visit was billed by ER-1 to our insurance company at $5,700 and change, and I had to write a check for $50 for the co-pay)

Come 6 p.m. things weren't better, they were the same. So, as instructed, we returned to ER-1, where L. was given CT contrast liquid in preparation for a CT scan, which she promptly threw up. Still in pain and as nauseous as she was in the morning, we asked for her to be admitted to the hospital. Armed with new negative blood and urine tests, as well as a CT scan), the doctor left us with a (botched) diagnosis of possible food poisoning, or viral gastroenteritis, or ielitis (an inflammation of the colon). The appendix was cleared as a culprit and we were advised to make an appointment with a GI for a colonoscopy on Monday. No antibiotics were administered, just the same painkillers and anti-nausea meds. We were sent home in spite of the fact that L. was evidently no better than when we first visited ER-1, some 15 hours earlier. (This second visit was billed at over $10,900 and I had to write another $50 check for a second co-pay).

Things did not get better on Sunday, and before we had a chance to make an appointment for a colonoscopy, L. woke up shivering and gnashing her teeth. She was running a fever of 103° F, and on the way back to ER-1 she threw up for the fifth time in 60 hours.

Back at ER-1, the admitting nurse told us to go and sit in the waiting room, which--contrary to the two Saturday visits--was quite crowded. I was quite shocked that they would tell us to wait, since they must have seen from their computerized records that L. had already been there twice on Saturday already even if they did not hear us say it when they taking information from L. 30-40 minutes after our arrival, we were still waiting to be called, so I decided I'd had enough of waiting, particularly since L.'s pain and nausea seemed to have abated, so I told the admitting nurse that we wished to sign a release and walk away, which we did to the nurse's seeming relief.

Since the situation was far from resolved, I immediately took L. to see her primary care doctor. While I parked the car they had already given her a urine test and measured her temperature and blood pressure. With that data in hand, they told me that in fact we needed to return to an E.R. and seemed to be wondering why we decided to leave ER-1. (I stand by my decision to leave because, while the emergency seemed obvious to me--a layman--it seemed equally obvious that the E.R. staff did not share my view.) We were advised to go to a different E.R. in the suburbs, which  I will call ER-2, which we did.

At ER-2, doctors were visibly concerned with her low blood pressure and oxygen levels and treated her with a sense of urgency I had not yet seen. After a 9-hour visit in ER-2, which included another CT scan, ultrasound, blood and urine analysis, the administering of fluids, antibiotics, painkillers and anti-nausea meds, L. was admitted to the hospital at around midnight. Just over 24 hours later, she was scheduled for emergency surgery since she had failed to respond to treatment with antibiotics and she had been diagnosed with acute infection of several organs, as well as sepsis.

I am glad to report that the surgery went well and that, barring any unforeseen complications, L. is on the mend, pending a 6-8 week convalescence and absence from work. But the experience has left her scarred, figuratively and literally, and has left me drained. Since sepsis and low vitals were involved, it was a closer call than I probably realize. We were lucky that I did the "wrong" thing, by refusing to let my wife wait for treatment in a busy ER. We were also lucky that at ER/Hospital 2 L. received very good treatment, the kind most Americans imagine when they speak of the U.S. health care system, which they dogmatically believe to be the #1 in the world. And we are also lucky that our financial exposure should be limited to a series of manageable co-pays, thanks to my employment. (I have yet to see all the bills, but my insurance plan should cover all the costs after the co-pays; we'll see.)

However, no matter how good the care L. received at ER/Hospital 2, the fact remains that the staff at ER-1 did not seem to perceive the gravity of the situation, that we live with a system that discourages hospitalization as a diagnostic step, and that their inaction could have cost L. her health, even her life. That our insurance company was billed approximately $18,000 for two visits which amounted to barely 7 hours of work only adds insult to the injury that L. sustained, and further shows that even outrageous amounts of money (unless you think that $18,000 is a fair price for 7 hours in an ER and a handful of routine exams) cannot buy us good health care.

I shudder to think what would have happened to a couple who makes barely enough to fall outside the net of Medicaid, but not enough to buy insurance that covers all medical costs.

I wrote this very personal post because a reader of this blog who describes himself as a centrist blamed my disappointment with President Obama on the fact that he (the president) is not the flaming liberal I would like him to be (John, that's you). I blame President Obama not for being too much of a centrist, but for failing to fix (or even show that he was committed to fix) a system that fails the people it is supposed to serve. When President Obama ran away from true health care reform and into the arms of the insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals he had claimed he'd reform, that's when he lost me. It was a betrayal of trust that explains why I, and many people like me, are disgusted with politics as usual. It should not take a flaming liberal to take on and fix powerful interests that disrupt people's lives; only a person with a basic sense of justice fairness.

State Of The Union Analysis

No SOTU analysis this year. If you want, you can google it up and you will come up with hundreds of analyses by hundreds of pundits who will spew inanities on President Obama's vision for the future of America. I am not playing that game. Fool me once, shame on you...

The reality is this: The address was a campaign speech, designed to mobilize the base of the Democratic Party, and to lure independents to the polls come November. Mission accomplished? Time will tell.

Don't get me wrong, the President knows how to give a good speech, and last night's address was no exception. The problem has never been the President's ability to deliver a rousing speech; it's been his inability, or unwillingness, to follow through. We have had plenty of examples in the President's first three years in office. Do we need yet another State of The Union address to prove that there is a chasm between the President's talking the talk and his walking the walk?

Actions speak louder than words, as they saying goes, and this is an example of President's Obama's actions, as illustrated on (Bill) Moyers and Company last Friday night.

I have no faith in President Obama to do the right thing, not 3 years into his presidency. Like any politician, he will say anything he thinks he needs to say to get elected and do anything he thinks will keep him in power after he is elected. Still, the alternative being President Romney or President Gingrich, with the possible impact their election might have on the composition of the Supreme Court, we are stuck with the lesser of two evils.

Life sucks, at least in political terms.

And a Happy New Year!

Wherein Wendell Potter Takes Politifact to Task

Wendell Potter, former insurance company executive turned whistleblower, has written a post in which he takes Politifact to task for choosing a "Lie of the Year" that is actually true.

Merry Christmas!

Sad, True, and Maddening

Hunter produced another quasi-perfect post at the Daily Kos. (The "quasi-" refers to a couple of typos.)

The post, titled The failure of Austerity, is a must-read for everyone, but in particular for those who subscribe to economic theories that far-right conservatives promote (far-right conservatives being 95% of conservatives around) and dim-witted supporters espouse and repeat mindlessly, regardless of any contrary evidence.

It is sad that about half of the U.S. population, give and take a few percentage points, has been manipulated into believing that the government can do no good when it comes to changing the course of the economy, and it is maddening that too many in government act as if that were a true statement.

In an excellent book titled Perfectly Legal, tax policy expert David Cay Johnston writes, and I paraphrase only slightly, that the organic pursuit of self-interest is what makes democracy work, and that for too long a vast number of Americans have subscribed to and supported economic policies that go in the opposite direction of their self-interest, which is a failure of democracy of the highest level.

That the ideologues and hacks should continue to promote economic theories that have as much connection to reality as alchemy does is understandable; after that's how they make a living and prosper. But the fact that a sufficient number of people believe their fantastic claims is sad and maddening, because they make life much worse than it needs to be for those who know that the idiots are buying from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of snake oil. And that is what Hunter articulates so well in his post.

The only thing that I have yet to resolve in my mind if most of the blame lies with the ideologues and the hacks, or if it should fall squarely on the shoulders of their dim-witted supporters. And the more I think about it, the more I believe the latter is the case.

Too Little, Too Late, If You Ask Me

Tom Foreman reports on cnn.com:

Among the chief complaints of many voters: Obama has been too quick to compromise, too weak in taking on opponents and too much like just another politician intent on triangulating re-election, rather than being the transformative, bold leader they thought they were electing. 
[...] The White House is now clearly launching an offensive aimed at shifting voter disappointment from their man to the opposition.

If you ask me, too little, too late. If he gets re-elected it will be because the G.O.P. candidates are weak and ridiculous beyond belief. And yes, Obama would be a slightly better president than any Republican who might get elected. For the millions of Americans who are hurting and were looking for a "transformative, bold leader", it will be small comfort. 

A president who could not achieve anything he could have achieved, had he wanted to, in the two years when he could count on a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a clear majority in the House will achieve nothing noteworthy after both houses of Congress will have switched to the opposition, something very likely to happen in 2012. 

Sigh.

If It's Good For Bill Kristol, Well, It's Not Very Good

Hunter did it again at the Daily Kos.

In 6 brilliant, cutting paragraphs (plus two perfectly appropriate quotes) he destroys the mythical wisdom of serious Republicans such as that of the unfortunately very real Bill Kristol.

My favorite passage is this:

In any event, the sort of people that intellectual giant William Kristol praises as fellow intellectual giants should, at the least, give a person pause. The fellow who is currently pining for Paul Ryan to come save conservatism from the wreck of the current campaign season was previously pining for Sarah Palin to fill the same role. 

The rest of Hunter's post is here.

Stop The Presses

Here's an interesting statement for my (10) Republican/Libertarian friends to ponder:

I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

The statement was made in Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators, a Bloomberg op-ed by entrepreneur Nick Hanauer, who "founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in 2007 for $6.4 billion [and] was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)."

Go read, and ponder.

The Virus of Republican Ignorance

Eric Alterman has a pointed post on Alternet about the virus of GOP ignorance and the role that the mainstream media plays in spreading it.

Happy Thanksgiving, Unless You're a Far-Right Islamophobe

Happy Thanksgiving to all men and women of good disposition.

And to all far-Right Islamophobes, may you choke on halal turkey. :-) Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney: That includes especially you.

News Flash from the Republican Debate on National Security

What national security issue do you worry about that nobody is asking about, either here or in any of the debates so far?

Rick Santorum: The spread of Socialism.
Ron Paul: Overreacting to non-existent threats and starting new wars.
Hermann Cain: Cyber-attacks
Mitt Romney: Latin America (and Socialism)
Rick Perry: Communist China
Newt Gingrich: Electromagnetic pulse attacks, WMDs in American cities, cyber-attacks.
Michele Bachmann: Who the fuck knows? Al Shabaab?
John Huntsmann: Joblessness and lack of opportunity, debt, lack of faith in our institutions

News flash for Republican presidential aspirants: Neglect the growing fury of jobless Americans at your peril. You are going to have to deal with them on a national security level long before a terrorist with a briefcase nuke plants it up your ass. It seems Huntsman and Perry are the only ones who are even remotely attuned to the gravity of the situation.

News Flash for Republican Candidates

Michele Bachmann: It's the UniTED States, not the UniNED States. Hermann Cain: It's killed not keeled. Rick Perry: It's nuke-lear not new-cool-ar. I'm sure I missed a few, but if I have to live through another ten debates, I'm not saying you need to master your language, just pronounce it properly. Thank you. Oh, yes! It's pundit, not pundint, pundant, or pendant. Again, thank you.

Paul Krugman's Perfect Take Down of Newt Gingrich

Krugman, on ABC's This Week With Christiane Amanpour: "Newt [...] is the stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like." Classic.

No Persons In Their Right Mind

While my "love" for Democrats (with a few notable exceptions) is close to hitting the nadir, no middle-class Americans in their right mind can vote for a Republican. Period. I repeat. No middle-class Americans can vote for a Republican. I say this after watching all but one of the presidential Republican debates.

But I don't just mean the Republicans running for president, the sanest and most principled of whom is Ron Paul (and that's all anyone needs to know). I mean any Republican, for any office. Including Blue Dog Democrats. Period.

Why? Because Republicans stand in antithesis to everything that is in the interest of the 99% of Americans (even if, apparently, about 50% of voting Americans don't know it). Read the previous post, David Michael Green Is At His Very Angriest Best

David Michael Green Is At His Very Angriest Best

Read We Are Not Your Human Resources, David Michael Green's latest rant on The Regressive Antidote blog.

Here's a taste of it:

Our solutions no longer reside, if they ever did, in the ballot box. The Republicans are a sheer criminal enterprise, whose entire function is to redistribute wealth from the rest of us to already wealthy elites. But the Democrats are actually worse, because they do exactly the same thing, while trading on the party’s past reputation for representing the public interest. For my money (which, along with yours, is precisely what is at stake), Obama and Clinton and their ilk in Congress have betrayed me and the country more than, say, any of the Dicks – Cheney, Armey or Nixon. You expect the asshole kid on the playground to live up to his reputation. It hurts a lot more when your best friend is the one sticking in the knife.

On The NBA Lockout

Though I have nothing intelligent to say about the NBA lockout, I can still recognize an intelligent article about it by someone else. Enter Bill Simmons's Business Vs. Personal.

Writes Simmons: "We were coming off of one of the top-five NBA seasons ever, now it's November, the league isn't playing … and nobody really cared. Imagine the outrage if pro football disappeared for an entire month. Where's the clamoring for regular season pro basketball?"

Though I like basketball, I'm really in the "and nobody really cared" camp. After reading Simmons's take on the whole debacle, I'll admit my interest has been aroused..

I Don't Know How To Do It

I don't know how to do it, and I don't think anyone knows how to either, but until money is out of politics for good we are going to get the Congress that money wants us to get (it's a must read).

Another Open Letter to President Obama

Dear President Obama:

If the Super Committee on Deficit Reduction fails to do the work that it was assigned to do, will you finally become convinced that Congress has reached a complete stalemate, because the two parties (one in particular) are unable or unwilling to cede any ground to their opponents? And, more importantly, will you then make a stand on behalf of the American people and veto any bill which does not include an increase in revenues financed by tax increases on the wealthy individuals and entities, those who make it their daily business to look for new ways to lower their own taxes, and evade their responsibilities as good citizens of this nation? Or will you continue to be an accomplice, willing or unwilling it does not matter, of a system which is designed to stick it to hard-working middle-class and poor Americans?

I am still looking forward to the day when your uplifting speeches actually translate into comparable policies, a la FDR.

You can still become what you promised you would be for the hundreds of millions of suffering Americans, in spite of all the pressures that you are subjected to to maintain an indefensible status quo.

Respectfully,

Watch This (UPDATED)

UPDATE: So I was wrong. For now.
----------------------------------------------------
Sam Stein of the Huffington Post reports that there may be a deal in the making to exclude the Pentagon from the automatic sequestration that would be triggered if the so-called Super Committee (on deficit reduction) fails to reach an agreement by the coming Wednesday. If a deal is reached to exclude the Pentagon, you can bet your first-born's life that it will be yet another cave-in by Democrats. In other words, Democrats will get nothing in return, but they will accept to save the Pentagon from cuts because they are afraid to lose a huge constituency, the military, in the 2012 elections.

Democrats will publicly reason that there can be no partisan disagreement that the Pentagon's budget should not be sacrificed, without granting the same grace to the lives of the many hard-working, retired, or unemployed Americans who will suffer because of the cuts that will be made to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

And, in the ultimate mockery of the intelligence of thinking Americans, they will also reason, publicly or secretly, that by caving in they are protecting the interests of America because taking a principle stand might make them the minority party in both branches of Congress and contribute to losing the White House to a Republican. All of this while never asking the question: What good can come of a party that never takes a principled stand for its core constituencies in the name of self-preservation? Who needs it? I am increasingly convinced that the Democratic party is inching closer and closer to the apex of total uselessness.

Watch what happens on Wednesday, if you don't believe me.

Hope, After All

As an uplifting companion to my previous post, titled Sad and Outrageous, I offer this clip from last week's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.


Please spread the words of this wise, clear-minded 84 year-old.

Outrageous and Sad.

I was going to post this as a comment on Douglas Groothuis's Facebook page, but I decided against it. Not because I am afraid of the consequences, but because I did not want to start a long, pointless tirade against me by a few of Douglas's hundreds of friends. While I have no ambition and no delusion to pose as a teacher or a professor, I do hope that Douglas finds this post here and that he learns something good from it.

On his Facebook page, Groothuis-- who is a professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary--recommended Mark Levin article with the following title: Mark Levin on Occupy: ‘What are these pieces of crap contributing to society?’ Levin is known for his hateful commentaries against all things liberal and I am not linking to his post because I do not want to foster undeserved publicity for him and his hateful thoughts. 

Occupy, of course, is short for Occupy Wall Street, the protest movement which for the last two months has brought the issue of how big financial institutions have brought economies all around the world to their knees, without any of them paying the price for their actions. One of his Facebook friends posted the following response: "My son, a gainfully employed New Yorker, marched on Thursday. We are all made in the image of God and we've all have fallen short. People are not pieces of crap." Another wrote ‎"Pieces of crap, huh That's not what my theological anthropology says." And I wrote: "Merry Christmas to Doug and Mark Levin, too." That's it. On the other hand, Groothuis's recommendation earned 3 "Likes", but I am sure that number will rise before long.

The fact that Groothuis has chosen to recommend the link without so much as a disclaimer about the title can only be taken to mean that he endorses not only Levin's message but the way it was phrased as well. And that would be no surprise, since Groothuis is not new to these attacks on OWS protesters. A few weeks ago he made a comment to the effect that Tea Partiers are better dressed and smell better than OWS protesters.

Since the birth of OWS, Groothuis has not missed a chance to take the worst possible examples offered by protesters and build negative generalization upon generalization of the movement's participants and their, admittedly, varied goals. At the same time, Groothuis likes to post about Christian apologetics and often quotes passages from the Bible on his page. What a curious mix of Christianity and contempt for fellow human beings.

Unfortunately Groothuis has some influence in Evangelical circles, often talks at Churches and public fora around Denver, and has a loyal following on Facebook, so his frequent posts decrying all opponents of conservative politics, and particularly President Obama, as socialists, un-American, unintelligent, hypocritical, deceitful, etc, carry some weight.

What never ceases to amaze me is that very few people call him out on the dissonance that exists between his avowed love of Christ and Christianity and his pedestrian rhetoric about anyone who has a different point of view. In doing what he does, and in how he does it, Groothuis trespasses the line that separates Christian advocacy and political indoctrination. You can be a credible advocate for Christianity or you can be a mouthpiece of the worst elements on the Right, but you cannot be both.

It is a shame that only few of his followers on Facebook attempt to show Groothuis what a sad, outrageous, and indefensible example of Christianity he offers, and that many of them choose to laud him and encourage him instead of calling him to use better judgement. Well, I am glad to be one who is willing to call him on the madness of his words, with the hope he will see the error of his ways.

Why The Founding Fathers Were Wiser Than You Know

"Ridiculous veneration for the Constitution of the United States." Those are the words of Sanford Levinson, constitutional scholar, who has written a wonderful book that I highly recommend, both to those who understand its greatness and its limits and--particularly--to those who regard it as a sacred document, on par with Scriptures.

The book is Constitutional Faith, and you should buy it and read it as soon as you can.

And by the way, I wrote a post almost 4 years ago wherein I made many of the points that Levinson makes about the Constitution.

The Strange History of "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

I just finished viewing The Strange History of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" on HBO, a documentary about the long process that led to the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell", the U.S. Military policy that relegated our gay and lesbian brother and sisters who serve in the military to the role of second-class soldiers. Sen. McCain and his efforts AGAINST the repeal were prominently featured.

I can only say two things about the Senator: How sad it is that a man who sacrificed as much as he did for this country would fail to see how his efforts against the repeal were an utter betrayal of American values. And, how lucky we are that he did not become president of this nation.

The God Delusion

I found this on Facebook:

Why I reject Atheism?
By xxxxxxxxxx · Wednesday, September 29, 2010 [name withheld to protect the author's privacy]
I prefer truth over falsehood.
I prefer reason over emotionalism.
I prefer substance over vacuity.
I prefer logic over absurdity.
I prefer sound argumentation over provocative assertions.
I prefer life over death.

Oh, dear!

In this person's diseased mind (because I am of the opinion that religious belief is truly a mental disorder), religion stands for truth, reason, substance, logic, sound argumentation, and life. Atheism, which is the rejection of the irrational, fantastic being(s), whose existence cannot be proven and whose influence on human affairs and nature is also impossible to prove, is false, emotional, vacuous, absurd, litigious thinking and, cherry on top, dead(ly).

This is the kind of "logic", "substance", "reason", "truth", "argumentation", and (sanctity of) "life" that we need to overcome if our species is to advance beyond our superstitious stage. Disheartening. But hey, the number of atheists is rising, so there is some hope at least.

Duh!

Here's a report from the reputable Guttmacher Institute, showing that public funding contraception reduces unwanted pregnancies.

Of course, the United States is full of morons who think that abstinence education is the only solution to unwanted pregnancies, that we should not subsidize the lifestyle of poor "sluts" who "choose" to have sex, get pregnant and would seek an abortion, if state law allowed it. I also understand that Congress is full of callous, truly evil politicians who view abortion as the immortal wedge issue that can be applied to a stupid electorate every election to obtain the desired results; so these politicians cut public funding for reproductive care, in hopes that the "moral" divide between good Evangelicals and bad everyone else will play their advantage.

What I don't understand is how people of average intellect cannot see through the ploy of those who speak against abortion, and say they would like it to be banned, and also fight against access to contraceptive care. They are obviously not paladins of morality. They are just manipulative liars who care not one iota about women and their children and would say just about anything that people are dumb enough to believe to hold on to and expand their own power.

Hunter Is Quickly Becoming My Favorite @ The Daily Kos

Always on target, always acerbic, with a keen eye for the absurdity of the all situation, Hunter is quickly becoming my favorite blogger at the Daily Kos (with the excellent Joan McCarter).

Today, Hunter took it upon himself to dismantle a) the intellectual (?) confusion at Fox News over Halloween, and b) for the twofer, the apocalyptic stupidity and shamelessness of Republicans in Congress, in a story you have to read to believe: House to vote on reaffirming 'In God We Trust' motto: All other problems apparently solved

Personhood Insanity

The "personhood" amendements referenda that, for a few years now, have been popping up in different states are a despicable example of the way in which insane religious beliefs are morphed into a political tactic to help a party (the Republican Party, of course) and are a step toward a theocratic state, the disclaimers of such referenda's proponents notwithstanding.

Theocracy is not simply the imposition of religious rule over secular rule. That, of course, would be bad enough in a modern, civilized society. The real danger of theocracy is that it seeks to establish the rule of indefensible myths and unfounded belief over reason and science. And because modern theocrats have become more despicable and astute in their tactics, they have understood that it is important to camouflage their evil intents as science. Hence the unscientific drivel that is intelligent design is presented as a viable alternative to the scientific theory of evolution. Hence those who oppose the curbing of human activities that are taken as a very likely factor in the increase of global warming (a likelihood expressed in scientific terms to a 90% degree of certainty) do so with the pretext of conducting better science.

The theocrats' tactics are typified in these "personhood" amendments, which when you think about it have little meaning when the Party that supports them also support the ridiculous concept of "corporate personhood". Take for example the despicable referendum on the ballot in Mississippi. While the text of the amendment itself does not specifically mention science, the website set up by the amendment's supporters poses as scientifically sound. Falsehoods and misleading facts are presented in such a way that would have the ignorant believe that science backs the fantastic notion that a fertilized egg should be accorded the same rights that humans gain after birth. Keep in mind that the fertility specialists community view this as a laughable notion, since most fertilized eggs do not implant into the uterus or develop further.

Note that abortion would not be the only casualty of the passage of Amendment 26 in Mississippi; Many forms of contraception would be banned as well (for example the "day after" pill, under the unscientific pretense that every fertilized egg represents the first step toward human life. That would be true, if only it weren't scientifically false.

I invite to go over at the Daily Kos and read Kaili Joy Gray's excellent post, The Personhood Amendment: Rights for eggs but not for women for an expanded discussion of why this theocratic fantasy only shows that a majority can be of the Right and often be wrong, particularly if they are ignorant and/or dupes, the way most religiously-motivated voters are about scientific matters.

A New Category

I have decided to create a new category to underscore Republican mischief in knowingly using either made up stats, or factually inaccurate data, to goad their stupid electorate into following them to the brink of disaster and beyond. The new category/label is going to be named "M.O.E.", which does not stand for "margin of error", as the statistically savvy among you might have logically guessed, but for "margin of evil", which is the threshold of inaccuracy that no disreputable Republican fears to trespass in his/her pursuit of unfettered personal or corporate power.

So welcome, "M.O.E. (margin of evil)", our newest labeling category.

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Aren't Against All Capitalism

There is an excellent piece on the Huffington Post that everybody who is mindlessly pooh-poohing the Occupy Wall Street movement and repeating the hateful, mindless drivel that the right's bullshit-emitting volcanoes, Rush Bimbo and Faux News, are making up of whole new cloth, day in, day out. (Yes, I do have in mind more than a couple of friends/acquaintances who fall in the category of mindless pooh-poohers. Not to say that none of them has a mind. Unfortunately some do, which makes them pretty evil in my book).

Anyway, you should read the whole post, Not Here To Destroy Capitalism, But To Remind Us Who Saved It. And here's an excerpt, to get your appetite for intelligence up:

Kristof's right to suggest that the Occupiers aren't "half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system." This isn't the "Project Mayhem" of Chuck Palahniuk novels -- we're talking about a movement that's spurring people to move their money from "too big to fail" banks into credit unions. That's not exactly "smash the system." That's more like a group of people seeking out a means to maximize their power within the system, or using consumer choice to preserve, enhance and improve the best parts of the system. As Matt Taibbi notes in a fitting companion piece to Kristof's, "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street." [Emphasis added]

If You Read Nothing Else For The Rest Of The Year, Read This

Go to The Daily Kos, and read A Voice From the 1%. It speaks about the perspective of the Occupy Wall Street movement as seen from a person who "made it" in life.

I was particularly moved by this passage, which is obvious to those with an ounce of perception and intellectual ability, but not to the typically brainwashed right-wing American:

I was not amazed but disgusted when John Boehner and his crew tried to justify the extremity of their position by rebranding the wealthy as "job creators." While true in a very basic sense, it obscures the fact that jobs are a cost that is voluntarily incurred only as a result of demand. Hiring has no correlation at all to profits or to income - none. Let me keep more of my money without increasing customer demand and I will do just that - keep it. Perhaps I will spend a little more of it, though probably not, but even if I do it won't help the economy very much. Here is another secret of the well-to-do: we don't really buy much more stuff than everyone else. It may be more expensive stuff, sure, but I don't buy cars, or appliances, or furniture, or anything else more frequently than the average consumer. The things I do spend more money on are services such as travel, entertainment, restaurants and landscaping, none of which generate well-paying middle class jobs. There, in a nutshell, is the sad explanation of what has happened to the American economy over the last 25 years of "trickle down" economics.

With this cherry on top, which answers the most irritating criticism that conservatives like to triumphantly level at the OWS movement, i.e. that no one really knows what the protesters stand for (as if it should stump anyone with a brain):

As George Orwell wrote in "Homage to Catalonia" about fighting fascists, I don't always need to know what I am fighting for when it is clear what I am fighting against.

This Is Why I Find The New Republican Breed Unbearable

Paul Ryan is slowly but surely becoming the face of the Republican party of future years, the supposedly "serious-thinker" in-chief. And still he says stupid, misleading, and irritating things like this:
"[It] appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback." Of course, he is saying it without a hint of irony. But to Congressman Ryan's credit, it is always hard to see a problem clearly when you're part of it yourself.

For decades, the Republican Party has fostered division in this country with its policies and with its rhetoric. It finds no shortage of socially useful programs to slash or defund, while it opposes any tax increases for those who have more than they could possibly ever need, or spend.

For 2 years Republicans talked about the dangers of death panels coming to American health care if we let "Obamacare" become the law of the land, when in fact death panels are a staple of the American health care system. (Tell Rep. Ryan to read Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, Wendell Potter's account of how the America health insurance sector plays Americans for fools is not. Wendell Potter was a VP at Cigna, he should know. Or suggest that he watches Michael Moore's "Sicko", a portrayal so accurate of the American health care system that even Fox News didn't find anything bad to say about it.)

For years Republicans have said that they would not support any tax hikes. But now their true message is finally surfacing: They don't want to raise taxes on the "job creators" (their wealthy übermasters), but it's okay to raise them on those who cannot afford a tax increase (the poorest in particular). That would be the effect of any flat tax plan, a Republican wet dream, that did not include significant exemptions for those in the lowest income tiers.

Actually, Think Progress has it right, in a post titled Talking About Income Inequality Isn’t Dividing America, Actual Income Inequality Is.

What The Fuck?!?

"Uh, yeah. Huzzah. It's great that 300 congressmen had the guts to stand up for mom, apple pie and baseball."

This is from a post by Barbara Morrill of the Daily Kos, announcing great bipartisan agreement on celebrating the baseball Hall of Fame. Finally, bipartisanship at work on something that really matters to Americans, particularly unemployed, underemployed, and sick Americans. And by the way, minority party: a good way to handle such a meaningless, offensive vote would have been not to to vote for it. Stay away from the floor of the House, until the discussion moves on to things that are relevant to the country's well being.

It reminded me of Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement, in which the Rolling Stone magazine's reporter says that the only business which is transacted on the floor of Congress these days is the naming of post offices and schools. We have to get rid of the bums, all of them. Start from scratch, ban political advertising, bring on free, public debates and public campaign financing. We won't get anywhere fast until we do.

I Support A Flat Tax

I do. For corporations. So no corporation can get out of paying taxes. You pay 20%, no loopholes.

And, to foster employment in the United States, there should be a penalty v bonus scale system, to reward companies that keep employment in the United States, and to punish companies that outsource plants and work.

Realize that even though corporate taxes in the United States are among the highest on the planet, as Republicans like to say on Fox News and to any organization that offers them a mic to spew spin at, that is true just in terms of statutory rates, not for effective rates. Many companies pay no tax. So you support a flat tax? Start by supporting a flat tax system for those who systematically use the law to pay no tax at all, and who use profits to destroy small businesses and export jobs abroad: large American corporations.

Yes, please.

Do get rid of the Electoral College system. It is an abomination that grants some states unbalanced power in the election of the President.

Fucking Liars and Their Fucking Talking Points

Thanks to the incomparable Joan McCarter of Daily Kos for drawing my attention to this chart, which exposes naked the Republican lie about the fact that too many Americans don't pay their fair share and pay no taxes.

The Greatest Scam Perpetrated by The Financial Sector on Unwitting Americans

Now that the title of the post got your interest, you do want to know what the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the unwitting American public is, right? 401Ks. There, I said it. And I have been saying that for a long time, to my friends and to my wife. And now, after a long time, they are starting to understand what I meant and still mean. And last night Rachel Maddow put things in perspective for you, with the help of Simon Johnson.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Republican Debate, Bonus Round

Here's a quick summary of the Republican Presidential Debate in Las Vegas, since there is a good chance you were among the 99%-ers (not that you were occupying anything, you were just not occupying your couch to watch it.) It's in the form of the answer each candidate might have given to the hypothetical question "What did you do last summer?".

Santorum: I spent last summer with my religious, entirely heterosexual family, trying to get google to change the search results hierarchy for Santorum.

Cain: Last summer I played Sim City a lot, and ate a lot of pizza, and then I fell asleep. And then the Archangel Koch came to me and told me "go and spread the 9-9-9 gospel." And I did not know what that crazy motherfucker was talking about, was it the price of pizza or some secret code for Sim City? What the fuck, motherfucker?!? Well anyway, I still don't know how, but I came up with my 9-9-9 tax plan.

Gingrich: When I was in Congress, in the summer of 1994, I ... oh, last summer? When I was in Congress in 1995...

Ron Paul: I didn't do anything last summer because the Federal Reserve is fucking us and our money and we need to get rid of the government, all of it! (Eyebrow falls off, head explodes.)

Rick Perry: When I left the house in the summer, I was packing heat. And a nukular weapon, in my pants. And I was wearing cowboy boots. And I hate Mormons.

Michele Bachmann: Last summer I was a business woman and a tax auditor for the I.R.S., I cooked for my 27 foster children and 5 natural children, did everything my husband told me to, and I have a message for all the white moms who are getting evicted from their nest: Hang in there! It's a shame you live in fear of losing your home while Barack Obama, that horrible black man, lives in a house. But help is on the way, and I am president Barack Obama will not have a house any more... either.

Mitt Romney: Look around, fellas. Who cares what I did last summer? Have you seen the other candidates? I am white, handsome, and love business. Who cares if I am a Mormon?

The End.

Cain's Jobs Plan

"Some people will pay more, but most people would pay less is my argument... Who will pay more? The people who spend more money on new goods. The sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods, not used goods. That's a big difference that doesn't come out." (Republican presidential aspirant Herman Cain, on last Sunday's Meet the Press.)
Yes, because what better way to create employment and jump start the economy out of a recession than to encourage people to stop buying new shit and trade in used shit instead? You know what else doesn't come out? A lot of people will pay zero tax, because they will rob the grocery store instead of paying for the stuff they used to buy. And as an added bonus, if you are caught stealing and go to jail, not only will you pay no income tax; the government has to feed you, too.
It amazes me that these Republican buffoons are even taken seriously.

They Might As Well Call It "The 999% Plan"

The Tax Policy Center's review of the 9-9-9 plan is in.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan would raise taxes on 84 percent of U.S. households, according to an independent analysis released Tuesday, contradicting claims by the Republican presidential candidate that most Americans would see a tax cut.

The Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, says low- and middle-income families would be hit hardest, with households making between $10,000 and $20,000 seeing their taxes increase by nearly 950 percent.

Since the difference between 950 and 999% is actually petty, in the general scope of things, I hope someone renames Cain's evil/idiotic idea the 999% plan, to signify the increase in income tax that the poorest would be subjected to. But this is America, so there are plenty of people who should be protesting this evil tax reform plan who are actually rooting for it.