Media Enablers

Daily Kos
Shame on the Media
by Dr Teeth Wed Jul 21, 2010

By now everyone knows the story of Shirley Sherrod. The new storyline is whether the Obama administration will restore her status. There is no question they should make this right, but I would prefer it happen behind the scenes.

Still, the question is not what the White House did. It isn't what the NAACP did. It isn't even what the right wing hacks did.

The question is whether the media did their due diligence, before reporting this story.
The tea partier behind this is human garbage, so let's just get that out of the way first. The internet is full of people of his ilk. You simply have to search youtube for a couple minutes, and you'll find a multitude of intellectually dishonest propaganda.

That being said, there is no defense in that fact. Journalism is not a function of populism. Before any news agency touched the story, they should have done the responsible thing. They were about to spur racial tensions, and any producer in television knew the demographic reactions, which would result.

Someone at CNN did actually dig the real story up. They followed the simple process of getting both sides of the story, and are deserving of some admiration. Of course they ran the story like everyone else, before seeking out all sides, so this admiration is tempered.

MSNBC or NBC failed to do this. CBS, ABC and newspapers failed to do this. Every morning show on every network, tapped directly into the race baiting for ratings. I refuse to give Fox News the credential of reviewing their vetting process, as they are simply a right wing blog on TV.

This isn't some complex ruse to debunk. Whenever someone sends me a link to a blog or youtube video, I assume it is bullshit. I've been on the internet as long as the world wide web has existed (and a little before that), and my skepticism is well earned. There isn't really citizen journalism, only citizen propaganda.

I do what ever reasonable person should do. I read something on the internet, then seek a credible source for it elsewhere. This level of skepticism should be the standard for everyone who isn't a political hack.

It certainly should be the standard for the media that unjustly got a good woman fired yesterday.

Will Goldman Sachs Prove Greed is God?

From http:commondreams.org

Saturday, April 24, 2010 by the Guardian/UK
Will Goldman Sachs Prove Greed is God?
The investment bank's cult of self-interest is on trial against the whole idea of civilization – the collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even if we can
by Matt Taibbi

So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.

Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in the 80s - and in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the western world like a venereal disease.

When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.

While, outside of America, Russian-born Rand is probably best known for being the unfunniest person western civilization has seen since maybe Goebbels or Jack the Ripper (63 out of 100 colobus monkeys recently forced to read Atlas Shrugged in a laboratory setting died of boredom-induced aneurysms), in America Rand is upheld as an intellectual giant of limitless wisdom. Here in the States, her ideas are roundly worshiped even by people who've never read her books or even heard of her. The rightwing "Tea Party" movement is just one example of an entire demographic that has been inspired to mass protest by Rand without even knowing it.

Last summer I wrote a brutally negative article about Goldman Sachs for Rolling Stone magazine (I called the bank a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity") that unexpectedly sparked a heated national debate. On one side of the debate were people like me, who believed that Goldman is little better than a criminal enterprise that earns its billions by bilking the market, the government, and even its own clients in a bewildering variety of complex financial scams.

On the other side of the debate were the people who argued Goldman wasn't guilty of anything except being "too smart" and really, really good at making money. This side of the argument was based almost entirely on the Randian belief system, under which the leaders of Goldman Sachs appear not as the cheap swindlers they look like to me, but idealized heroes, the saviors of society.

In the Randian ethos, called objectivism, the only real morality is self-interest, and society is divided into groups who are efficiently self-interested (ie, the rich) and the "parasites" and "moochers" who wish to take their earnings through taxes, which are an unjust use of force in Randian politics. Rand believed government had virtually no natural role in society. She conceded that police were necessary, but was such a fervent believer in laissez-faire capitalism she refused to accept any need for economic regulation - which is a fancy way of saying we only need law enforcement for unsophisticated criminals.

Rand's fingerprints are all over the recent Goldman story. The case in question involves a hedge fund financier, John Paulson, who went to Goldman with the idea of a synthetic derivative package pegged to risky American mortgages, for use in betting against the mortgage market. Paulson would short the package, called Abacus, and Goldman would then sell the deal to suckers who would be told it was a good bet for a long investment. The SEC's contention is that Goldman committed a crime - a "failure to disclose" - when they failed to tell the suckers about the role played by the vulture betting against them on the other side of the deal.

Now, the instruments in question in this deal - collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps - fall into the category of derivatives, which are virtually unregulated in the US thanks in large part to the effort of gremlinish former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who as a young man was close to Rand and remained a staunch Randian his whole life. In the late 90s, Greenspan lobbied hard for the passage of a law that came to be called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, a monster of a bill that among other things deregulated the sort of interest-rate swaps Goldman used in its now-infamous dealings with Greece.

Both the Paulson deal and the Greece deal were examples of Goldman making millions by bending over their own business partners. In the Paulson deal the suckers were European banks such as ABN-Amro and IKB, which were never told that the stuff Goldman was cheerfully selling to them was, in effect, designed to implode; in the Greece deal, Goldman hilariously used exotic swaps to help the country mask its financial problems, then turned right around and bet against the country by shorting Greece's debt.

Now here's the really weird thing. Confronted with the evidence of public outrage over these deals, the leaders of Goldman will often appear to be genuinely confused, scratching their heads and staring quizzically into the camera like they don't know what you're upset about. It's not an act. There have been a lot of greedy financiers and banks in history, but what makes Goldman stand out is its truly bizarre cultist/religious belief in the rightness of what it does.

The point was driven home in England last year, when Goldman's international adviser, sounding exactly like a character in Atlas Shrugged, told an audience at St Paul's Cathedral that "The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest". A few weeks later, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the Times that he was doing "God's work".

Even if he stands to make a buck at it, even your average used-car salesman won't sell some working father a car with wobbly brakes, then buy life insurance policies on that customer and his kids. But this is done almost as a matter of routine in the financial services industry, where the attitude after the inevitable pileup would be that that family was dumb for getting into the car in the first place. Caveat emptor, dude!

People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred toward "moochers" and "parasites" - the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.

This debate is going to be crystallized in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilization - which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits.

© 2010 Guardian/UK
As Rolling Stone’s chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. His latest collection is Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire

© Copyrighted 1997-2009 www.commondreams.org

From dailykos.com.
Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
by DemFromCT Sat Apr 10, 2010
Saturday punditry, and if you need a second opinion...

NY Times editorial:
President Obama might be tempted to replace Justice John Paul Stevens with someone bland enough to slip through the Republican chain of opposition in the Senate. If he is, we recommend he read a few of the opinions that Justice Stevens wrote in the last 34 years.

EJ Dionne:
Justice John Paul Stevens’s retirement is an enormous loss for the country, and particularly for progressives who have valued his brave and straightforward defense of civil liberties, equal rights and equal justice over many years.
But his departure should not lead to a bloody battle over his successor. Whomever President Obama names to the court will be no more liberal than Stevens -- and might possibly be slightly less so.

Charles Blow:
On the issue of the court being completely composed of former federal judges, she said: "In the past, we’ve had a very diverse court, at times, and typically we’ve had people on the court who didn’t serve one day as a judge. Sorry. You know. I’m a judge. I like judges. But we don’t need them all on the court. And we need people of different backgrounds."
In fact, according to a 2005 article in The Christian Science Monitor, 41 of our Supreme Court justices have had no prior judicial experience. That’s more than a third.

TAPPED:
I don't think there's any mystery about how Republicans are going to handle President Obama's nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stephens. Here are some revealing quotes from a short Wall Street Journal post on the retirement announcement (all emphasis mine). Mitch McConnell: "Americans can expect Senate Republicans to make a sustained and vigorous case for judicial restraint and the fundamental importance of an even-handed reading of the law." Orrin Hatch: "[S]omeone who would be an activist judge, who would substitute their own views for what the law requires, is not qualified to serve on the federal bench." John Cornyn: "Our nation deserves a Supreme Court nominee who is committed to deciding cases impartially based on the law, not on personal politics, preferences, or what’s in the nominee’s ‘heart.’" Man, it's gonna be a great summer.

Monica Potts:
It’s not surprising that Stupak, who stood front-and-center in the health-care debate over its treatment of abortion, would want to leave after such a bruising battle. The end result of health-care reform is that access to abortion will be at least as restricted as it ever was, and likely more so. That was true without Stupak’s more restrictive amendment to the house bill, and would likely have been true even if he’d never raised a fuss over abortion.
The problem is, once you use anti-abortion rhetoric to criticize the health-care bill, the legislation's actual provisions on abortion -- that women would have to use their own money to buy abortion-riders because federal subsidies can't be used to pay for abortions, so plans in the exchanges can't offer them -- don’t matter. For voters who do not support abortion rights, the bill is forever associated with abortion, and Stupak played a roll in that. Since he ultimately voted for the bill, it was inevitable that he would be branded a sell-out.

Ezra Klein:
Compare Nelson and Stupak to people such as Mark Warner or Brad Ellsworth, both of whom are moderate Democrats who had serious concerns about the bill, but who spent their time quietly getting those concerns addressed rather than using them to get TV bookings in advance of a high-profile deal. Nelson and Stupak made themselves into targets for both the left and the right, and ended the process with lots of notoriety but even more new enemies. Warner and Ellsworth haven't suffered from the same backlash. The old model in which moderate Democrats justify their vote for a bill by talking trash about it until they get bought off doesn't work in an environment where the media and the political opposition is waiting to pounce on the buy-off.

Gail Collins:
At the Minnesota [Palin-Bachmann] rally, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a presidential hopeful, tried to glom onto some of the glitter, but all he could come up with was "Wall Street gets a bailout, the poor get a handout and everybody else gets their wallets out," which is mean without being exciting. The crowd yawned.
Pawlenty is supposed to be one of the new breed of level-headed conservatives, but by next year he may be wearing snowshoes for his speeches and accusing Obama of surrendering our freedom to Finland.

Hatred As A Political Strategy

This post was taken from by way of commondreams.org

Published on Saturday, March 27, 2010 by The Boston Globe
Hatred as a Political Strategy
by Derrick Z. Jackson

Newt Gringrich hit a nerve. No, wait. He hit nerves no one wants to talk about.
In an interview this week with the Washington Post, the former speaker of the House who led the charge to slash social programs during the Clinton presidency, said President Obama and the Democrats would regret pushing to pass the health care bill. Gingrich called the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times,'' so radical that Obama and the Democrats "will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years.''
The Post said the quote referred to civil rights bills enacted under Johnson. Gingrich said that was not what he meant. In a correction, the Post wrote, "Gingrich said he was referring not to the civil rights legislation but to Johnson overreaching on his management of the economy, the Vietnam War and the cultural divisions that emerged partly because of that war. Gingrich said Johnson erred on civil rights by supporting busing to integrate schools and by failing to take a firmer stance against racial violence in urban areas.''
By clarifying, Gingrich helps us get why health care became the most divisive social-program debate since Gingrich's successful attack on welfare in the 1990s, an attack that had racial overtones. Health care is breaking the backs of millions of families of all colors, but the Republicans chose to gin up the masses with unbridled fear, with House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio declaring the vote "Armageddon.''
It was Armageddon all right, a battle between selfishness and sharing. Some Americans who believe health care reform represents a heist of "their'' resources for the undeserving betrayed their underlying feelings as Democratic congressmen were either called the N word or spat upon, a Latino congressman was called a "wetback,'' and Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, who is gay, was called the F word.
No Republican had the courage to remind the rabid that America, at other great crossroads, did put government into their lives. The wealth of countless white middle class families today stems from World War II veteran housing bills that too often, we conveniently forget, discriminated against black veterans along with housing segregation. Surely, more than one tea partier has Medicare or uses a VA hospital. Yet most Republicans do anything they can to deflect responsibility for the frenzy.
None is more representative than Gingrich who, after saying there was of course no place for such behavior, told the Journal-Constitution, "I think the Democratic leadership has to take some real responsibility (for choosing) to use corrupt tactics that bought votes, that bullied people and as a result has enraged much of the American people.''
Some things just add up. The vast majority of tea partiers, at least from all the photos, are white and the nearly all-white Republican congressional delegation stood as a brick wall against reform. The rage around health care, going back to the disruptions of Democratic legislator town halls last summer, continues to raise the temperature not just on health care, but on the dangerous debate on who is a "true blue'' American.
One cannot forget how, in a last gasp before Obama's election, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said of Obama, "I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America as you and I do.'' One cannot forget the level of disrespect shown to Obama in the "You lie!'' outburst by South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson. Wilson has been rewarded for his outburst with the most campaign contributions of anyone in the House, $3.4 million in the 2010 election cycle.
In the final stages of the health care debate, Palin and other Republican leaders resorted to telling their masses to "reload'' or get ready for the "firing line'' in November. Republican Congressman Randy Neugebauer had to apologize for shouting "baby killer'' when anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan gave his support for the health care bill. The Republicans need to find someone with courage to disarm the rhetoric, before someone reloads for real.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyrighted 1997-2009 www.commondreams.org

Tampa Bay Still Low on Jobs...

... which is no surprise to those of us living in this town.
If you are an hourly worker here in Tampa, then you know how rough it is trying to find even a temp job, much less a permanent one.
So how bad is it here?
Florida's unemployment rate was 11.9 percent for January, tying a high which was set almost 35 years ago, while Tampa was even higher at 13.1 percent.

A group of state economists recently predicted unemployment in Florida would top out at 12.3 percent by this fall before a slow crawl back toward the single digits.
"Unfortunately, we caught the brunt of this recession," said University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith. "I think we're in the last phases of the labor market's worsening."

I've been fortunate enough to find a somewhat steady job through a day labor temp service, but that job is subject to end at any time without notice. Many down here in Tampa are not that lucky and are etching out an existence on only a few hours of work per week. Some good news may be forthcoming though.

The St. Petersburg Times reported last week that Florida had lined up 900 projects that could result in nearly 10,600 short-term jobs but was held up waiting for federal approval. Under the Back to Work program, stimulus funds would pay for up to 95 percent of salary and training costs for new hires if employers agree to keep those jobs until at least September.
Some of the most stunning statistics out Wednesday were on the local level, with the Tampa Bay area posting the highest rate among major metropolitan areas.

The last time state unemployment was at 11.9 percent was May 1975, the highest point since the state started tracking such data in 1970. Comparable figures for national jobless rates during the Depression era are not available but were believed to be about 25 percent.
Florida's unemployment rate remains substantially higher than the national average, which was 9.7 percent in February and appears to be near a peak.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/workinglife/article1078706.ece

Conservative Health Care Woes

Jonathan Chait on the coming conservative freak-out
by blue aardvark Sat Feb 20, 2010
From The New Republic:

The Coming Conservative Health Care Freakout
You can imagine how this feels to conservatives. They've already run off the field, sprayed themselves with champagne and taunted the losing team's fans. And now the other team is saying the game is still on and they have a good chance to win. There may be nothing wrong at all with the process, but it's certainly going to feel like some kind of crime to the right-wing. The Democrats may not win, but I'm pretty sure they're going to try. The conservative freakout is going to be something to behold.
And Paul Krugman adds this:
If this works out — I’d think the odds now are that it will, though it’s by no means a done deal — there will be endless debate about whether Anthem Blue Cross was wot did it. My sense is that a final push was always available, as long as the White House was willing to take a stand; Anthem may just have helped provide an occasion.
I think Krugman's correct. And Chait, too.
The Democrats are going to pass something. It's going to be less than it should have been, but better than nothing. And then what's going to happen?
The answer is the Republicans, especially the Tea Party types, are going to lose their collective minds. They will scream about the use of reconciliation. When they do, we must be ready to point out how often Bush used it. And that only a few 'amendments' were passed that way.
They will scream that the public doesn't want Obamacare. And that's where the hard work will be. Educating the public that the vast majority of the provisions in the bill are ones they like - tax breaks for small business, the exchange, and so on.
We need to force the screaming crybabies to explain why the public doesn't want those enormously popular items at the top of the chart. The time to start thinking about framing it that way is now. They are going to frame this as the Democrats using a trick to pass a bill the public doesn't want. The Democratic Party needs to get the truth out about this bill.
Lean on your Senators. Lean on your Representative. Tell them to support reconciliation to pass health care. Tell them to include the public option and the millionaires tax (the only two popular items not in the Senate Bill per Nate).
Let's get this done. Because if we play it correctly, the GOP is going to look like sore losers. And if there's one thing Americans dislike, it's whiny crybaby sore losers.

And just for grins, here's a quote from Newt Gingrich:

February 20, 2010
I'm not frightened by bipartisanship... We should be brave enough to stand up and say let's work together until we finish defeating the left and then we won't have to work with them as much.
Supplied via Political Wire
Update:
I think this is my first trip to the top of the Recommended List. I think it's because it's a slow Saturday evening, but I thank all those who clicked the little button.
From dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/20/839072/-Jonathan-Chait-on-the-coming-conservative-freak-out"

Obama's Speech: Your Reviews...

... which are comming to you by way of Dailykos.com. Sorry for the link to the story missing, I'm still not able to post the link in the way that I wish it to be shown.

"OBAMA EATS REPUBLICANS' LUNCH"! Reviews, bonus, poll, photos
by blackwaterdog
Sat Jan 30, 2010 (edited for content)
Hello,
After the last couple of days, i'm thinking maybe Monarchy is not such a bad idea.
First: best three random reactions out of hundreds, maybe thousands, that i've read all over the web yesterday:
"It was as though Obama reauthorized torture for 90 minutes—a masterful performance".
"This was like something straight from The West Wing. Glad i've been alone so i could shout to the TV: LET OBAMA BE OBAMA!"*
"I scared the bejeezus out of all three dogs cheering Obama on! That was absolutely the best political teevee I have ever seen, outside Election night last year and Inauguration Day!!
Third, all kinds of reviews:
Ambinder:
Obama's Question Time: An Amazing Moment
The moment President Obama began his address to Republicans in Baltimore today, I began to receive e-mails from Democrats: Here's an except from one of them: "I don't know whether to laugh or cry that it took a f$$@&$* year for Obama to step into the ring and start throwing some verbal blows... I'm definitely praying at mass on Sunday morning that this Obama doesn't take another 12 month vacation."
This e-mail comes from a very influential Democrat.
Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months. Debating a law professor is kind of foolish: the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama's weakness -- his penchant for nuance -- into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president. (By the way: can we stop with the Obama needs a teleprompter jokes?)
More than the State of the Union -- or on top of the State of the Union -- this may be a pivotal moment for the future of the presidential agenda on Capitol Hill. (Democrats are loving this. Chris Hayes, The Nation's Washington bureau chief, tweeted that he hadn't liked Obama more since the inauguration.)
... Republicans may have wished they had spoken to John McCain about what happened to him in the presidential debates before they decided to broadcast this session. The president looked genuinely engaged, willing to discuss things. Democrats believe that he tossed away the GOP talking points and lack of real plans into a bludgeon against them. "The whole question was structured by a talking point," he told Jeb Hensarling. Obama took the blame for not living up to some of his promises on transparency in health care negotiations. He displayed a familiarity with Republican proposals that seemed to astonish those who asked questions of him. And at the end, Republicans rushed up to him, pens and photo cameras in hands, wanting autographs and pictures.
Mused one mid-level White House official: "This really is the best thing we've done in a long, long time".
Ezra:
Remember the old joke, "I was at a fight and a hockey game broke out?" Well, earlier this afternoon, I was at a photo opportunity and a policy debate broke out.
Obama's Q&A session with the House Republicans was transfixing. What should have been a banal exchange of talking points was actually a riveting reminder of how rarely you hear actual debate -- which is separate from disagreement -- between political players.
This was a surprise. The session was clearly proposed so that Obama could appear to be taking real steps to reach out to Republicans. That implied warm feelings and a studied unwillingness to cause offense. But that was not the event we just saw. Instead, Obama stood at a podium for an hour and hammered his assailants. That makes it sound partisan and disrespectful. But it wasn't. It was partisan, but respectful.
There's a value in proving that you understand the other side's ideas deeply enough to disagree with them. And that was the message of Obama's session. Not that the Republicans were right. But that he'd looked hard enough at their ideas to realize they were wrong. I'm willing to work on tort reform, Obama said, but it's not a credible way to rein in health-care spending. The GOP budget might save a lot of money in theory, he admitted, but it does that by voucher-izing Medicare and holding its spending constant even as health cost increase -- which means seniors will go without a lot of necessary care. And it's hard to take that proposal seriously coming from the party that spent the past few months saying slight decreases in Medicare Advantage reimbursement represented an unforgivable threat to seniors.
Amazed that Obama knows offhand that Ryan wants Medicare vouchers. More amazed he can explain it offhand. This is a command performance.
Yesterday, I interviewed David Axelrod and was struck by his inability to explain how the White House would highlight the the difference between disagreement and obstruction. Today's session, if it becomes a regular event rather than a one-off, provided part of the answer. He'll debate them directly. But that may be tough to do. Republicans are already spreading the word that they made a mistake allowing cameras into the event. Apparently, transparency sounds better in press releases than it does in practice.
But if this is to be the last of these we see for a while, make sure to take the time and watch it, or read the transcript. It's some of the best political television I've seen in memory.
Benen:
I'm reasonably certain I've never seen anything like it. GOP House members were fairly respectful of the president, but pressed him on a variety of policy matters. The president didn't just respond effectively, he delivered a rather powerful, masterful performance.
It was like watching a town-hall forum where all of the questions were confrontational, but Obama nevertheless just ran circles around these guys. I can only assume caucus members, by the end of the Q&A, asked themselves, "Whose bright idea was it to invite the president and let him embarrass us on national television?" .
Note, however, that this wasn't just about political theater -- it was an important back-and-forth between the president and his most forceful political detractors. They were bringing up routine far-right talking points that, most of the time, simply get repeated in the media unanswered. But in Baltimore, the president didn't just respond to the nonsense, he effectively debunked it.
Republicans thought they were throwing their toughest pitches, and Obama -- with no notes, no teleprompter, and no foreknowledge -- just kept knocking 'em out of the park.
It's easy to forget sometimes just how knowledgeable and thoughtful Obama can be on matters of substance. I don't imagine the House Republican caucus will forget anytime soon -- if the president is going to use their invitation to score big victories, he probably won't be invited back next year.
Nevertheless, the White House should schedule more of these. A lot more of these.
Yglesias:
...It was sort of like Prime Minister’s Questions and it revealed, simply put, that Barack Obama is a lot smarter and better-informed than his antagonists. A lot. He very calmly and coolly dismantled them.
To me, personally, it’s not a surprise. I debated policy with Mike Pence once and the guy is a stone-cold idiot. That was a years ago and I’ve been surprised since then to learn that conservatives consider him an unusually sharp policy mind and I take leading rightwingers at their word about that. But it’s the kind of thing that I think most Americans aren’t aware of. Obama knows what he’s talking about. A lot of the members of Congress you see on TV all the time talking smack don’t. That’s not always clear to people since the TV anchors interviewing them usually also don’t know what they’re talking about. Judd Gregg’s whining freakout on MSNBC yesterday punctured the illusion of calm confidence and so did Obama’s back-and-forth.
Mike Madden:
Before President Obama started speaking to the House Republican conference's retreat in Baltimore Friday, the GOP presented him with a little book, one that wrapped up all of the policy ideas they've had since he took office that have languished. It had a catchy title: "Better Solutions." The pamphlet may not be an ideal blueprint for governing -- it only takes 30 pages to wrap up everything from economic stimulus to national security to financial reform -- but, as it turned out, it did make for a pretty good prop.
Which Obama demonstrated about an hour into what was easily the most entertaining program C-SPAN (or any cable news network, really) has aired in a long time "You say, for example, that we've offered a health care plan, and I look up -- this is just {in} the book that you've just provided me, 'Summary of GOP Health Care Reform Bill,'" Obama said, casually flipping through the book as Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., stood by. Price had demanded the president tell Republicans how they should answer constituents who don't like the way the White House says the GOP hasn't offered any ideas. So Obama played it deadpan. '"The GOP plan will lower health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing America's number one priority for health reform.' I mean, that's an idea that we all embrace. But specifically it's got to work."
Two days after his feisty State of the Union speech, Obama's trip to the retreat started off slowly, with a speech that could have worked almost anywhere with only a few edits ahead of time. And then the question-and-answer session got started, and the event turned into a spectacle, the kind of thing that hasn't been seen in American politics in years -- and probably won't again, once the people responsible for putting it together go back to look at the video. (Which is too bad, because NBC does have an opening for a 10 p.m. show, and this was a lot more watchable than Leno.) Rarely has his administration done such a good job of bluntly underscoring the differences between what Obama wants to do and what Republicans would prefer if they had power. The president was funny and disarming, but he defended his policies fiercely, and he tiptoed up to the line of calling Republicans liars to their faces...
The whole thing basically went like that: Republican asks obnoxious question rooted in Glenn Beck-ian talking points; Obama swats it away, makes the questioner look silly, and then smiles at the end. It got so bad, in fact, that Fox News cut away from the event before it was over. Democratic operatives around Washington watching it had pretty much the same reaction: "Where the hell has this guy been?" One source said GOP aides probably wished they'd spoken to John McCain "about what happened to him in the presidential debates" before they broadcast the event. "It's quite a show," a White House official said, apparently going for the same deadpan tone the president was...
... By the time Obama was done, and had stayed about 30 minutes past when he was scheduled to leave, Republican leadership was ready to get him out of the room. One GOP lawmaker asked for one more question, and as Obama started to say he was out of time, Pence jumped in, too: "He's gone way over." And with that, Obama took his booklet of GOP policy proposals and left the room -- in much better political shape, possibly, than he was when he walked in...
Booman:
Obama performed as well as any British prime minister during Question Time. The same cannot be said for the Republicans who, by and large, tried to use dishonest arguments and demonstrably inaccurate statistics only to have Obama tell them to get serious and stop trying to score cheap political points. I can honestly say that if as many Americans watched today's Q & A with the Republicans as watched the State of the Union, our political problems would be over. If we had Question Time, we'd have a much easier time winning over public opinion and sustaining support for progressive policies.
The Republicans certainly will not want to repeat this extremely painful beat-down.
Drun:
Obama is adressing the GOP retreat in Baltimore right now, and it's being televised live. It's remarkable that Republicans agreed to this. The guy at the mike always has an advantage in these kinds of forums, and in any case Obama is better than most at this kind of thing. For the most part, he's running rings around them. I don't know if this will have any long-term effect, but it's good for Obama and, regardless, a good show. Presidents should do this kind of thing more often.
Sullivan:
But here's the key thing: Obama is best at this. He is best at defusing conflict; he is superb at engaging civilly with his opponents. It's part of his legacy - I remember how many conservatives respected him at the Harvard Law Review. But he needs to do more of this, even though he may get nothing in return. Why? Because unless the tone changes, unless the pure obstructionism and left-right ding-dong cycle stops, we are on a fast track to catastrophe.
That was the core message of Obama in the election. It was one of my core reasons for backing him over Clinton - because he has the capacity to reach out this way. I remain depressed at the prospects for a breakthrough, but this was good politics and good policy. More, please. Do this every month. Maybe over the long haul, the poison of the past has to be worked through with Obama as therapist in chief.
The Guardian:
Obama eats Republicans' lunch
"When the Republicans invited President Obama to address their congressional House delegation in Baltimore today, they had no idea how badly it would turn out for them.
Presumably the Republicans thought they'd get a high-profile chance to grill the president on live television. But instead, Obama – following on from his state of the union address on Wednesday night – turned the tables by highlighting the Republicans who opposed his policies and refused to bend, yet were prepared to "turn up and cut ribbons" when their constituents reaped the rewards.
Obama also displayed a rare grasp of policy and legislation, wrong-footing his questioners to their face with some stern rebuttal and in some instances quoting their own positions back to them to highlight the contradictions. He mocked the GOP for presenting healthcare reforms as a "Bolshevik plot" – and got a laugh, even from the Republican audience – and suggested that their approach was counterproductive:
I think we can confidently predict this is the last time the Republicans invite the president to a similar format. Indeed, because the hall the Republicans are holding their event seemed to have just a single TV camera, Obama literally took the spotlight away. Republican questioners showed up as shadowy figures, and when caucus leader Mike Pence kicked off the Republican questions at first he couldn't be heard at all.
At the end, shaking hands with the president, Pence's face looked as if he'd sucked a lemon for an hour – and in a way he had.
A sign of how compelling the footage was: the US cable networks, always so trigger-happy and ready to move on if an event is looking boring, stuck with the live feed, although Fox did cut away first for analysis.
The net effect is that Obama looked serious, reasonable and intelligent. The Republicans got to sound like whiners, complaining about various pet peeves and chewing over their old laundry list of tax cuts and opposition".
John Cole:
For some reason, the GOP allowed the cameras to roll at their retreat during a question time session with President Obama, and he spent the next hour and a half depantsing them. Pretty funny stuff:
If Mike Pence really is regarded as one of the deep thinkers for the GOP, I’m beginning to understand why they refused to admit Terri Schiavo was brain-dead.
Time
President Obama just spoke before the House Republican caucus and then took questions from members - live. It was amazing television - watchable, interesting, feisty and even a little dramatic. I was reminded of the campaign when, in a single speech in Philadelphia, Obama neutralized the Jeremiah Wright issue that could have sunk his candidacy. The environment and subject matter are obviously completely different now, but Obama proved again that he performs best when he's up against the wall. Today, at the caucus meeting, he went right after Republicans on their turf and, in my opinion, owned them.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/30/831961/-OBAMA-EATS-REPUBLICANS-LUNCH!-Reviews,-bonus,-poll,-photos

Those Messed Up Democrats!!

Why is it that Democrats always tend to turn stupid once they get into political office? President Obama is no exception to this rule, as he seems to have forgotten what he was placed into office for.

www.commondreams.org
Published on Thursday, January 21, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Massachusetts and the Populist Imperative
by Robert Weissman

It takes a special skill for a Democrat to lose a federal election in Massachusetts.
But whatever the failings of the candidacy and campaign of Martha Coakley, the Democratic senate candidate in Massachusetts, the Democrats' loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat held for almost half a century by Edward Kennedy, following the party's November loss of the New Jersey gubernatorial race, suggests the need to focus more on the broader context, and less on individual shortcomings.
The Democratic Party has squandered the enormous opportunity bequeathed to it by the election of 2008.
The party gained overwhelming control of both the legislature and executive in 2008. Yet party leaders somehow failed to recognize the political moment.
We live in populist times.
Wall Street has crashed the economy. According to the official figures -- which under-report unemployment -- one in six people in the country are out of work or unable to find full-time work.
People know who's to blame for the country's deep recession, and they want them held accountable.
And they want to see aggressive policies to put people back to work.
But we've seen neither populist politics nor policies from the Democrats.
Although President Obama on occasion has had harsh words for Wall Street, in general the administration has sought to blunt the public's anger against the banksters.
It supported and has continued the Bush administration's bailout plan, a kind of unconditional love for Wall Street. Sure, you could make the case the banks had to be saved in order to rescue the economy; but there is no defense for bailing out the richest of the rich with no strings attached.
The administration has put forward a financial regulatory plan with some very useful components. But it has refused to embrace the bold populist policies we need -- breaking up the banks, taxing financial speculation -- to rein in Wall Street. It has also failed to defend the good positions it has advocated with sufficient vigor and high-level involvement.
The gentle treatment of Wall Street from the outset of the administration has framed subsequent political developments.
To its credit, the administration pushed through a desperately needed economic stimulus plan. But in significant part because the size of the stimulus plan was similar to the amount spent on the Wall Street bailout, and because the administration had embraced both, the stimulus and bailout -- though totally distinct -- became entangled in people's minds.
Next came health care. The Democratic Congressional leadership developed a complicated and obtuse health care plan. There was the occasional bluster about how the insurance industry was seeking to undermine the plan, but in fact the insurance and pharmaceutical industries embraced the idea, and will profit enormously from it. Rather than identifying and campaigning against the corporate obstacles to providing affordable access to care for all, the White House cut deals with them.
Meanwhile, while the stimulus and Federal Reserve interventions prevented the recession from turning to depression, the unemployment and foreclosure situations grew dire. No post-stimulus jobs initiatives appeared until the end of 2009. And the Congress and White House failed to do anything consequential to keep people in their homes.
Along the way, populism did find a partial outlet: in the confused and contradictory tea party movement.
Going forward, who grabs the populist reins will significantly determine the 2010 election results.
The populist issue of the day is Wall Street's exorbitant bonus payments. Wall Street remains in business only because it has benefited, and continues to benefit, from trillions of dollars in public supports. The billions that Wall Street is now preparing to pay itself in bonuses come, in a very real sense, out of the pockets of We, The People.
Neither we nor our elected officials need to stand by and watch this happen. We can take our money back by imposing a windfall bonus tax, as Representative Dennis Kucinich has proposed.
You can click here to sign a Public Citizen petition supporting a tax on Wall Street's bonuses.
One clear lesson from the last year is that the people cannot count on political leaders to read the tea leaves and go populist -- even if it is in elected officials' narrow self interest. They have to demand it.

Robert Weissman is the president of Public Citizen.

© Copyrighted 1997-2009
www.commondreams.org

Temporary Employment:When Great Jobs Come To An End

One of the things that I've done for most of my life is to seek work through temporary employment agencies. I do this because this type of work gives me the benefit of choosing the type of work that I will be doing, along with the added benefit of learning new skills.
Since Christmas week I've been working for a company called Axiom Worldwide, which is based here in Tampa, Florida. The company builds state of the art machines which help to repair injuries to the spine without having to undergo surgery.
If you think that the medical field is not recession-proof, think again as this company has been scaling back in size and employees in order to stay in business.
That's where I came in, along with one other co-worker from my office. Our job was to help this company move their equipment from a 15,000 square feet warehouse into a smaller,5,000 square feet area. This was no easy task, to say the least.
Much of this equipment had to be broken down, crated and/or pelleted, and then moved.
Anyway, this was to have been a 3 day assignment but it turned into a 4 week one instead, Thank God!
I would like to thank ALL of the employees along with the owner of the company for being so cool with us. This job was better than working for family and it has been one of the best experiences that I have ever had working with total strangers. I have never witnessed such a friendly atmosphere on a continual basis at any past employment.
Axiom Worldwide has had its share of problems, and will have some for a little while longer, but I do think that the outfit will be just fine.
I will tell you about the other problems in a later post,but, right now this is just about showing my appreciation to a great group of people.
Thank You so much for this experience Axiom!!

George Bush Senior's Deal With The Devil

This article comes by way of Dailykos (dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/16/825780/-A-deal-with-the-devil:-George-Bush-the-Elder">.

A deal with the devil: George Bush the Elder
by Al Fondy Sat Jan 16, 2010
The concept of a deal with the devil arises in literature from the story of Dr Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. This story in itself is intended as a commentary on modern life, "modern" being the Commerical Revolution of the 17th Century. The reason for the appeal is that to some extent, every successful person can look to certain unsavory decisions that allowed his own rise to power and fame--it is part of the human condition. But because of his highly public position, George H.W. Bush is especially noteworthy for his bad decisions that gave all the fame and power that this world can provide, yet ruined the "House of Bush" forever.
Earnest Hemingway said, "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places." It is so true of George Bush the Elder. We first saw Bush as a young Congressman running for the US Senate in Texas. He lost to Lloyd Benson. He undoubtedly learned of some skullduggery in his next three jobs as Ambassador to China, Republican National Committee Chair, and CIA Director, but to all outward appearances, he tried to maintain his honesty. As a young thinker he was a strong supporter of ZPG, the rational movement to try to solve the world's population problems--and attendant troubles--through birth control.
The Faust theme was first noticed in 1980. Having previously referred to Ronald Reagan's tax plan as "Voodoo" economics, he gave up his intellectual honesty and started supporting the Voodoo. He renounced Zero Population Growth, and later appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court on the hope of getting additional votes from anti-abortion supporters. His treasonous activity in undercutting the Carter administration with the Iranian Mullahs during the election did much to cause the electorate to support the Republicans. After the election, the payoff was lots of arms and munitions to Iran.
Knowing of his own guilt, in 1988 he decided the only way to win was to hire Roger Ailes to do the dirtiest campaign yet seen in American politics. All of this apparent "dealing with the devil," however, seemed to pay off with earthly success.
In his later years, he deliberately kept his mouth shut about the known inadequacies of his son, and through fund raising prowess, foisted him onto the Republican Party and then onto the country. Thus, the Faustian bargain first made in the 1980s involved continual decisions leading to further decline and fall, not only of the house of Bush, but also the country.

Wall Streets Bundled Life Insurance Policies...

... are another attempt by those gouls on Wall Street to pass off a different product to you which will more than likely screw you in the end. Remember those mortgage backed securities?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/28/798049/-STOP-THEM:-Wall-Street-to-Bundle-Life-Insurance-Policies

STOP THEM: Wall Street to Bundle Life Insurance Policies
by War on Error Wed Oct 28, 2009
Wall Street banks, beaten down by the financial crisis, and propped up by
government bailout money are looking to get their securitization machines humming again. USING LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES.
Personally, I find this repulsive, ghoulish, and possibly dangerous. Please hit the orange REC button on the right side so others can see this. And while we have time to stop this.
The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.
Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Call Congress and the SEC to end this brain child NOW, before it launches. Life and death should never be something Wall Street gets to gamble on.

And if Wall Street dices up and securitizes life insurance policies, like they did with mortgages, who will be responsible to pay a Life Insurance claim? Could we see life insurance bankruptcies erupt at the very time the boomers claims become due?
How many ways could seniors be manipulated to die sooner? How many would have to die to insure a large return? Appalling as these questions are, I believe they must be asked.
Indeed, what is good for Wall Street could be bad for the insurance industry, and perhaps for customers, too. That is because policyholders often let their life insurance lapse before they die, for a variety of reasons — their children grow up and no longer need the financial protection, or the premiums become too expensive. When that happens, the insurer does not have to make a payout.
But if a policy is purchased and packaged into a security, investors will keep paying the premiums that might have been abandoned; as a result, more policies will stay in force, ensuring more payouts over time and less money for the insurance companies.
ibid, nytimes
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
There is a growing demand for a long-term hedge against improving annuity mortality. We have shown how innovation in swaps and bond contracts can provide new securities which can provide the hedge insurers need.
http://www.allbusiness.com/...

Swaps
The same cash flows, [B.sub.t] to the insurer and [D.sub.t] to the bondholders, can be arranged with swap agreements and no principal payment at time T.
ibid, allbusiness.com
Yes, there will be Hedge Funds that will make new fortunes Betting on our Lives!
HOW GOOD IS THE HEDGE?
We point out that, given the distribution of survivors, there is very little variance in the cash flows.
ibid, allbusiness
I have a hard time seeing the words Hedge and Swap used when the product is a life insurance policy.
Our life span and death date will be packaged in swaps and insurers offering bonds to investors.
It is deja vu Mortgage Default Swaps, only lives, not homes will be the foundation for the Wall Street traders. But, you can't reposses a life!
MetLife could be the next IndyBank if I understand this Wall Street scheme to bet on our very lives.
For a list of failed banks you can go here. They failed because of the Wall Street Housing Bubble:
http://www.fdic.gov/...

79 Metro Areas Are Recession Free...

... according to an MSNBC and Moody's Economy Adversity Index. The index measures the economic health of some 381 metro areas, covering all of the states.
Using this link (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33312701/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy) you can just click on the state in which you are interested, and you'll get some figures like the employment rate, single family housing starts, housing prices, ect. The map notes that 11 states are going through a time of recovery, though industrial production and other areas are still below normal.
I'm living down here in Tampa Bay, Florida, and we are not going to see any kind of better employment, or industrial production any time soon. Therefore, I'm not even going to comment on this state.
Speaking of the econony.
You may well know by now that those of you who receive Social Security checks will not be getting a " cost of living " increase in 2010. This will be the first time that this has happened since 1975! As if it isn't hard enough to live off of one of these checks as it is for most people, now you have to spend even more time in trying to decide if you should buy food or get your scripts filled! this is rediculous, folks. That is some 50 million people who will not be getting a raise. Some will suffer more than they should be. Are food and medicine prices going to stop going up in 2010? I doubt it.
SOURCE:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33324352/ns/business-personal_finance

19 Deaths From Swine Flu In Younger Children...

... and that was in the past week alone! H1N1 has killed a total of 76 children in the United States thus far, proving that this flu is more dangerous to the younger crowd.

The regular flu kills between 46 and 88 children a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That suggests deaths from the new H1N1 virus could dramatically outpace children's deaths from seasonal flu, if swine flu continues to spread as it has.

CDC officials say 10 more states, a total of 37, now have widespread swine flu. A week ago, reports suggested that cases might be leveling off and even falling in some areas of the country, but that did not turn out to be an enduring national trend.

The new virus, first identified in April, is a global epidemic. The CDC doesn't have an exact count of all swine flu deaths and hospitalizations, but existing reports suggest more than 600 have died and more than 9,000 have been hospitalized. Health officials believe millions of Americans have caught the virus.

Vaccinations against swine flu began this week and so far, states have ordered 3.7 million doses. Demand is exceeding supply, and people seeking the vaccination should ask their state or local health department where to go, said Schuchat, who heads the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Health officials also said more data is trickling in from several clinical trials of the new vaccine, and so far no serious side effects have been reported.
Preliminary results from one study indicate that both a seasonal flu shot and a swine flu shot are effective when given during the same doctor's office visit. However, the government is not recommending that people get the nasal spray versions of the seasonal and swine flu vaccines at the same time.
The nasal sprays contain weakened, live virus, and the government doesn't have data on how a person's immune system would react to exposure to both at once, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091010/ap_on_he_me/us_med_swine_flu_8

Go and get your children the shot for this flu folks, because this is going to get even nastier, I think. Some places are out of vaccine already so you may have to wait. Be the first in line!

Flu Vaccines Running Behind...

... as if this should be a surprise? What with the Swine Flu grabbing all of the headlines, it should be expected that those all-important doses of vaccine would be in short supply.
Sanofi Pasteur (pharm company) says that it has shipped more than half of its 50.5 million doses of its seasonal flu vaccine,but that it could be as late as November before the remainder are sent out.

Cary attributed part of the backlog at Sanofi Pasteur to its simultaneous production of 75.5 million doses of the swine — or H1N1 — vaccine for the United States. Also contributing to the delay is the fact that this year's seasonal flu vaccine includes a strain that develops more slowly in laboratories, she said.
But "everybody who ordered vaccine from us will be getting it," Cary
said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091001/ap_on_he_me/us_flu_vaccine_delay

The Healthcare Debate...

... rages on in places all over America.

http://demfromct.dailykos.com/
Health Care Tuesday
by DemFromCT Tue Sep 29, 2009
WSJ:
The health-system overhaul proposed by Sen. Max Baucus would create millions of new insurance customers without subjecting health insurers to government-run competition -- two key victories for the much-maligned industry.
It's all about the mandate. Hence, the need for the public option.
National Journal:
Congressional Republicans have worked themselves into a high dudgeon over a Health and Human Services department probe into one insurance company's controversial lobbying activities.
Not content to blast the investigation in angry letters and floor statements, GOP lawmakers have now threatened to block all HHS nominees from confirmation until the agency reverses course.
At issue is whether insurance company Humana, Inc., violated federal rules when it warned some of its Medicare Advantage clients in a mailing that pending health care legislation could slash their benefits.
I trust Humana to be telling the unvarnished truth. Don't you?
Lost in all this righteous indignation are some basic facts about Humana's role and obligations as a government contractor. Humana's communications did not take the form of a generic advertising campaign or mass mailing -- something the insurer was and remains free to do. Rather, Humana mailed a letter to Medicare Advantage members whose names and addresses were provided by the federal government.
Oopsies.
Bloomberg:
The army of industry lobbyists in the health-care battle is fighting on familiar terrain: More than half of them used to work for the government they’re trying to influence.
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Disturbing story:
Friends say the Miami University graduate who died this week after reportedly suffering from swine flu delayed getting medical treatment because she did not have health insurance.
Most cases of H1N1 are uncomplicated and self-limiting. You'll see similar stories both about the occasional severe case of H1N1 and the insurance issue. Keep both in perspective, but mixing them is volatile.
CIDRAP News:
Almost one third of a group of patients who died in the past 4 months from H1N1 influenza had bacterial infections that complicated their illnesses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in a conference call with healthcare providers. But the agency cautioned against applying that ratio to all cases of H1N1, saying the death records it reviewed were submitted by hospitals and medical examiners and did not represent a statistically valid sample.
Nevertheless, the 22 cases (among 77 deaths confirmed to be from H1N1) emphasize that bacterial co-infections are playing a role in the ongoing pandemic, something that was not clear at first, the CDC's Dr. Matthew Moore said on the call.
Clinician calls with CDC are frequent because H1N1 interim guidance and information is always changing.
I'll be on Second Life's Virtually Speaking with Jimbo Hoyer (Jay Ackroyd) this Thursday at 8 pm ET, also simulcast on Blog Talk Radio. We'll talk about pandemic flu with guest Josh Knauer of Rhiza Labs.
Weight loss and sleep apnea
Obese people with sleep apnea who lose 10% of their weight have a good chance of improving their condition, a study shows.
"This is good news because it shows that a little bit of weight loss can go a long way when it comes to improving sleep apnea," says the study's lead author, Gary Foster, director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Median Incomes Fall...

... which is no big surprise, is it?
According to the Associated Press ( no link ) the median income in 2008 for us workers was some $50,303 which is down from $52,163 in 2007. 2008 level is the lowest level since 1997. Middle income and poor Americans suffered the most, but, all groups did see declines in their cash.
The wealthiest 10% of Americans ($138,000 or more per year) earned some 114 times the average $12,000 made ny the working poor living near or below the poverty average. Poverty jumped up some 132%, an eleven year high.

Is Osama bin Laden Right?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/19
Published on Saturday, September 19, 2009 by The Independent/UK
Everyone Seems to Be Agreeing with Bin Laden These Days
Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we’re losing Afghanistan
by Robert Fisk
Obama and Osama are at last participating in the same narrative. For the US president's critics - indeed, for many critics of the West's military occupation of Afghanistan - are beginning to speak in the same language as Obama's (and their) greatest enemy.
There is a growing suspicion in America that Obama has been socked into the heart of the Afghan darkness by ex-Bushie Robert Gates - once more the Secretary of Defence - and by journalist-adored General David Petraeus whose military "surges" appear to be as successful as the Battle of the Bulge in stemming the insurgent tide in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.
No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby." There was no more talk of Obama as a "house Negro" although it was his "weakness", bin Laden contended, that prevented him from closing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any event, Muslim fighters wold wear down the US-led coalition in Afghanistan "like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it collapsed". Funny, that. It's exactly what bin Laden told me personally in Afghanistan - four years before 9/11 and the start of America's 2001 adventure south of the Amu Darya river.
Almost on cue this week came those in North America who agree with Obama - albeit they would never associate themselves with the Evil One, let alone dare question Israel's cheerleading for the Iraqi war. "I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan," announces Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the senate intelligence committee. "I believe it will remain a tribal entity." And Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, does not believe "there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan".
Colin Kenny, chair of Canada's senate committee on national security and defence, said this week that "what we hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan has proved to be impossible. We are hurtling towards a Vietnam ending".
Close your eyes and pretend those last words came from the al-Qa'ida cave. Not difficult to believe, is it? Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message. Afghanistan remains for him the "war of necessity". Send yet more troops, his generals plead. And we are supposed to follow the logic of this nonsense. The Taliban lost in 2001. Then they started winning again. Then we had to preserve Afghan democracy. Then our soldiers had to protect - and die - for a second round of democratic elections. Then they protected - and died - for fraudulent elections. Afghanistan is not Vietnam, Obama assures us. And then the good old German army calls up an air strike - and zaps yet more Afghan civilians.
It is instructive to turn at this moment to the Canadian army, which has in Afghanistan fewer troops than the Brits but who have suffered just as ferociously; their 130th soldier was killed near Kandahar this week. Every three months, the Canadian authorities publish a scorecard on their military "progress" in Afghanistan - a document that is infinitely more honest and detailed than anything put out by the Pentagon or the Ministry of Defence - which proves beyond peradventure (as Enoch Powell would have said) that this is Mission Impossible or, as Toronto's National Post put it in an admirable headline three days' ago, "Operation Sleepwalk". The latest report, revealed this week, proves that Kandahar province is becoming more violent, less stable and less secure - and attacks across the country more frequent - than at any time since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. There was an "exceptionally high" frequency of attacks this spring compared with 2008.
There was a 108 per cent increase in roadside bombs. Afghans are reporting that they are less satisfied with education and employment levels, primarily because of poor or non-existent security. Canada is now concentrating only on the security of Kandahar city, abandoning any real attempt to control the province.
Canada's army will be leaving Afghanistan in 2011, but so far only five of the 50 schools in its school-building project have been completed. Just 28 more are "under construction". But of Kandahar province's existing 364 schools, 180 have been forced to close. Of progress in "democratic governance" in Kandahar, the Canadian report states that the capacity of the Afghan government is "chronically weak and undermined by widespread corruption". Of "reconciliation" - whatever that means these days - "the onset of the summer fighting season and the concentration of politicians and activists for the August elections discouraged expectations of noteworthy initiatives...".
Even the primary aim of polio eradication - Ottawa's most favoured civilian project in Afghanistan - has defeated the Canadian International Development Agency, although this admission is cloaked in truly Blair-like (or Brown-like) mendacity. As the Toronto Star revealed in a serious bit of investigative journalism this week, the aim to "eradicate" polio with the help of UN and World Health Organisation money has been quietly changed to the "prevention of transmission" of polio. Instead of measuring the number of children "immunised" against polio, the target was altered to refer only to the number of children "vaccinated". But of course, children have to be vaccinated several times before they are actually immune.
And what do America's Republican hawks - the subject of bin Laden's latest sermon - now say about the Afghan catastrophe? "More troops will not guarantee success in Afghanistan," failed Republican contender and ex-Vietnam vet John McCain told us this week. "But a failure to send them will be a guarantee of failure." How Osama must have chuckled as this preposterous announcement echoed around al-Qa'ida's dark cave.
2009 Independent News and Media.
Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Terrorist And Bomb Scares...

... are in the news today especially since those ever persistent authorities in New York City went on a few raids of some apartments in which the cops were looking for evidence of explosives used for homemade bombs. Of course, the cops found nothing of the sort but that hasn't stopped
Counterterrorism officials from issuing warnings to police departments all over America to be on the lookout for such items. Of course, those in New York were also looking for links to al-Qaida operatives. I take it that none of those were found either.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/sep/15/151115/preventive-terror-raid-targets-nyc-apartments/news-breaking/
The joint FBI and Homeland Security intelligence warning, issued Monday, lists indicators that could tip off police to homemade hydrogen peroxide-based explosives, such as people with burn marks on their hands, face or arms; foul odors coming from a room or building; and large industrial fans or multiple window fans. The warning, obtained by The Associated Press, also said that these homemade explosive materials can be hidden in backpacks, suitcases or plastic containers.

Economic News...

...that is of no real consequence to most people.
Today is the one year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers' (LEHMQ) bankruptcy filing, and it is also the 1st year anniversary of the government's bailout of AIG (AIG). Nothing much to celebrate on either account, is there?
On more pressing news (?), retail sales went up some 2.7% in August with most of the credit for the jump coming from the government's Cash For Clunkers program. Most economist were predicting only a 2% gain in sales.
Not including cars and car parts, sales were up 1.1%.
So what will be the next program to keep sales rising in the United States? Rest assured that Uncle Sam will come up with something. In the mean time, how about another price increase with the minimum wage? You know, in the area of at least maybe $10 an hour so that the really low income resident would actually have a small shot at surviving? Would that be asking for to much? Why, of course it would.

Swine Flu Update

Okay, so i'm a little late with this update. Better late than never, in this case.
As of August 27,2009, there have been 8,843 people who have been hospitalized with the H1Ni influenza. There have been 556 deaths brought on by this flu.

Since I am down in the state of Florida, I will give you the latest on the flu here in the Tampa Bay area.

I would note that the schools in Hillborough County just started classes last week and that health officials expect the swine flu outbreak to go into hyper-gear as many students will be catching this flu.

In Hillsborough County/Tampa, six people have died from the H1N1 flu at this point in time. There has also been one death each in Pinellas and Polk Counties as of the 26th of August.

At Tampa Catholic High School, it is reported that 20 percent of the 700 student body are absent from classes due to the swine flu. Many parents have been told to keep their children home if they have any sort of illness at all, and it appears to be working.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/aug/26/262124/tampa-catholic-reports-20-absent-swine-flu-spreads/news-metro/

The increase in cases was not unexpected. Young people are especially susceptible to swine flu and on school campuses, the highly contagious virus can spread quickly. Hillsborough County Health Department Director Doug Holt predicted it would take two weeks for influenza to invade a campus once classes started; that's how long Tampa Catholic students have been back at school.Holt said he eventually expects absences of at least 30 percent in public schools, where classes began this week.

With all of this nice,hot and humid weather, this flu will spread quicker than health officials think that it will, I predict. These kids will still be getting together away from school to socialize and play, spreading this flu at an even faster rate. Wait till mid-September which is when I predict that all hell will break loose here in the Tampa area.