By Manifesto Joe
I think a lot of people were inclined to underestimate Al Franken when he at long last took his seat as Minnesota's junior U.S. senator. Although he demonstrated quite a bit of gravitas in his wonderful 2003 book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, some can't get past the fact that Al came to national prominence as a comedian on Saturday Night Live.
I'd say the people of Minnesota can be proud in that the new senator has already distinguished himself far more than his predecessor, the former mayor of St. Paul. Here's Al in action, figuratively slapping around a stooge from the Hudson Institute.
On the Same Issue, a Question From Michael Moore
The self-styled progressive documentary filmmaker and author is nonplussed about something that, on the surface, seems like a no-brainer. Why aren't Americans pissed off enough about obstructionism to health care reform to be out in the streets protesting, raising 10 kinds of hell?
An Answer From Gore Vidal
In a recent TV appearance, 84-year-old Gore Vidal had what could have been an answer to Moore's question. Asked for his opinion of President Barack Obama, Vidal replied that he likes him, but the problem is that he tries to address the American people as educated, thinking people, like himself.
That's a mistake, Vidal suggested. The U.S. has a very poor educational system, actually a joke in many other developed countries. People laugh at us. And for this reason, Americans are very easily misled and duped. The lack of critical thinking, even among those with formal education, shows up in an array of issues, not just health care reform.
I Have Yet Another Answer
I know a man from India, now a longtime U.S. resident and naturalized citizen, who once discussed cultural differences between Americans and Asian Indians. When one ventures to the countryside in India, one finds many illiterate people, many more than in America.
But these people argue and discuss politics all the time, and they're often far more savvy on the subject than most Americans are, even when they can't read or write.
I know plenty of Americans who say, when engaged in the subject past a certain point, that they just don't care about politics. It's times like these when that attitude becomes disastrous, because so many of the people who DO care, care for just one reason -- greed.
The less Americans care about politics, the more to the delight of the aforementioned powers that be. Millions who should be fighting for reform right now are instead being led around like cattle and sheep. As nasty as politics is, politicians are making decisions that profoundly affect our lives every day. The subject is ignored at one's own peril.
It's often not so much a matter of education as it is the quality of one's thought that makes the difference. There are plenty of insular specialists out there with BBA and B.S. degrees who are wretchedly ignorant when it comes to political issues.
They could use lessons in critical thinking -- from a former funnyman, Senator Franken.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Real Health Care Nazis? If The Jackboots Fit ...
By Manifesto Joe
What if a health insurance provider told you that before it would insure you, you would have to be sterilized?
That's what a Colorado woman told U.S. senators during a committee hearing last week. McClatchy Newspapers reported that Peggy Robertson read a letter from her insurance company. Here's an excerpt from the McClatchy report:
Robertson testified that because she had already given birth via cesarean, when she tried to get an individual policy in Colorado, her insurance company considered it a pre-existing condition and wouldn't insure her unless she could prove she had been sterilized.
The report said that the chairperson of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said that the woman's account "put me on the edge of my chair," and called the provider's position "offensive and morally repugnant."
"No one in the United States of America, in order to get health insurance, should ever be coerced into getting sterilized," she said.
Aside from the obvious gender bias exhibited in this incident, the Nazilike condition that this woman was confronted with reeks of totalitarian eugenics. This is something one would imagine happening in some futuristic dystopia, with common folks marching around in quasi-military uniforms and such. It was just being done in the private sector, and that's the only real difference.
Is Health Care a Right? Perhaps Not, But Neither Is Eating
Granted, the Earth is rife with sick people, and with hungry people -- millions and millions who have access to neither adequate medicine nor food. When you get down to fundamentals, I suppose there is arguably no intrinsic human right to either.
Consider, though, that the U.S. is, among developed nations, the lone holdout when it comes to providing universal health care. "We" (in the editorial sense) even do better when it comes to food. Although some, such as the homeless, are undoubtedly missed, food stamps are a savior for most of our indigent people.
So what happened with medicine? The simple and obvious answer: Money, and lots of it. There are several groups that are making a killing off the status quo, and those groups are prepared to do just about anything, even kill (the uninsured), to keep that money machine rolling.
There is no law I can think of, anywhere, that mandates that I personally provide medicine, or food, for anyone, anywhere, anytime. At a fundamental level, those things would have to come from the goodness of my heart.
Yet, I am forced to pony up tax money for wars I oppose, year after year. When it comes to paying for deadly force on an international scale, suddenly I am confronted with a collective responsibility. Call it "socialized militarism."
But when it comes to providing medicine and food for people, that ideology is turned on its head, and it's once more every fool for himself.
Chickens Who Still Support Colonel Sanders
Speaking of fools -- last week, before I read the aforementioned newspaper report, I saw an old, weather-beaten pickup truck with "Health care is not a right" painted in the rear windshield, apparently with white shoe polish.
No, and neither is eating -- until you've actually gone hungry. Circumstances like that can jolt even the most demagogued moron back into reality. Too bad such things can't happen more often. And yet, this rube's argument is with precisely the people who are trying to prevent that sort of thing from happening to him.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
What if a health insurance provider told you that before it would insure you, you would have to be sterilized?
That's what a Colorado woman told U.S. senators during a committee hearing last week. McClatchy Newspapers reported that Peggy Robertson read a letter from her insurance company. Here's an excerpt from the McClatchy report:
Robertson testified that because she had already given birth via cesarean, when she tried to get an individual policy in Colorado, her insurance company considered it a pre-existing condition and wouldn't insure her unless she could prove she had been sterilized.
The report said that the chairperson of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said that the woman's account "put me on the edge of my chair," and called the provider's position "offensive and morally repugnant."
"No one in the United States of America, in order to get health insurance, should ever be coerced into getting sterilized," she said.
Aside from the obvious gender bias exhibited in this incident, the Nazilike condition that this woman was confronted with reeks of totalitarian eugenics. This is something one would imagine happening in some futuristic dystopia, with common folks marching around in quasi-military uniforms and such. It was just being done in the private sector, and that's the only real difference.
Is Health Care a Right? Perhaps Not, But Neither Is Eating
Granted, the Earth is rife with sick people, and with hungry people -- millions and millions who have access to neither adequate medicine nor food. When you get down to fundamentals, I suppose there is arguably no intrinsic human right to either.
Consider, though, that the U.S. is, among developed nations, the lone holdout when it comes to providing universal health care. "We" (in the editorial sense) even do better when it comes to food. Although some, such as the homeless, are undoubtedly missed, food stamps are a savior for most of our indigent people.
So what happened with medicine? The simple and obvious answer: Money, and lots of it. There are several groups that are making a killing off the status quo, and those groups are prepared to do just about anything, even kill (the uninsured), to keep that money machine rolling.
There is no law I can think of, anywhere, that mandates that I personally provide medicine, or food, for anyone, anywhere, anytime. At a fundamental level, those things would have to come from the goodness of my heart.
Yet, I am forced to pony up tax money for wars I oppose, year after year. When it comes to paying for deadly force on an international scale, suddenly I am confronted with a collective responsibility. Call it "socialized militarism."
But when it comes to providing medicine and food for people, that ideology is turned on its head, and it's once more every fool for himself.
Chickens Who Still Support Colonel Sanders
Speaking of fools -- last week, before I read the aforementioned newspaper report, I saw an old, weather-beaten pickup truck with "Health care is not a right" painted in the rear windshield, apparently with white shoe polish.
No, and neither is eating -- until you've actually gone hungry. Circumstances like that can jolt even the most demagogued moron back into reality. Too bad such things can't happen more often. And yet, this rube's argument is with precisely the people who are trying to prevent that sort of thing from happening to him.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Governor Goodhair's 'Saturday Night Massacre' Of The Forensic Science Commission
By Manifesto Joe
If it were possible that your state had executed an innocent man, it would make sense to keep the same people on the main panel that's investigating the matter. Wouldn't it? But alas, this is Texas. And our governor is Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry.
By now, it isn't news that at the end of last month, Perry decided to clean house at the Texas Forensic Science Commission, just two days before the commission was to examine a report challenging the arson findings that resulted in the state's 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.
The news now is what has come out since then. But first, here's the background.
Perry's decision to remove Chairman Sam Bassett and commission members Alan Levy and Aliece Watts (who happens to be a forensic scientist) was announced Sept. 30. The three quickly questioned the governor's motives -- he was in office at the time Willingham was executed, and he's running for re-election next year. They also said that the commission's investigation could be slowed by the governor's actions.
The case stemmed from a 1991 fire at Willingham's Corsicana home. His three daughters died in the fire, and Willingham was charged with capital murder, as the fires were believed to be arson. Willingham said he was asleep in the house when the fire started, and denied that it was arson.
The Willingham case had become a kind of cause celebre for death penalty opponents and advocates for clearing wrongfully convicted inmates. Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, called Perry's actions "troubling" and compared them to "the Saturday night massacre," when in 1973 President Nixon fired a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal.
The nine-member commission had agreed last year to review the case after defense attorneys said Willingham was convicted on flawed scientific evidence. Craig Beyler, an expert on fire investigation, was hired and submitted a report in August saying that he could not fully support a finding of arson.
Perry and his spokespeople have repeatedly told news media that the timing was nothing out of the ordinary. The removed members' terms officially ended Sept. 1, and Perry has kept saying it would have been business as usual to replace them anyway.
Then, on Oct. 9, Perry removed a fourth member, Sridhar Natarajan, a Lubbock medical examiner. Two appointments were announced the same day.
Now we have the latest development.
Former Chairman Says He Was Pressured
Bassett now says that Perry's office called him into meetings twice, during February and March, and that he was told by Perry's top lawyers that the Willingham case was not the kind of work the Legislature had intended the commission to do, that the case should be given a low priority in lieu of higher concerns, and so forth.
Here's a link to the full story, from the Chicago Tribune with contributions from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
If it weren't already obvious, Governor Goodhair doesn't want any more people to know that he may have Cameron Willingham's blood on his hands. That could be very damaging in a re-election campaign, especially since Perry was approached in February 2004, just days before the execution, about possibly flawed scientific evidence in the case. The execution went on as scheduled.
Perry has presided over the Texas Death Row killing machine for nearly nine years. Over 200 inmates have been executed since he took office. I know of one instance in which he commuted a death sentence, and in 2004 he defied the pardons and parole board's recommendation of clemency in one case.
Is Perry really more concerned about his own political career than about the possibility that he allowed an innocent man, and perhaps more than one over the years, to die by lethal injection? You be the judge. It looks pretty clear to me.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
If it were possible that your state had executed an innocent man, it would make sense to keep the same people on the main panel that's investigating the matter. Wouldn't it? But alas, this is Texas. And our governor is Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry.
By now, it isn't news that at the end of last month, Perry decided to clean house at the Texas Forensic Science Commission, just two days before the commission was to examine a report challenging the arson findings that resulted in the state's 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.
The news now is what has come out since then. But first, here's the background.
Perry's decision to remove Chairman Sam Bassett and commission members Alan Levy and Aliece Watts (who happens to be a forensic scientist) was announced Sept. 30. The three quickly questioned the governor's motives -- he was in office at the time Willingham was executed, and he's running for re-election next year. They also said that the commission's investigation could be slowed by the governor's actions.
The case stemmed from a 1991 fire at Willingham's Corsicana home. His three daughters died in the fire, and Willingham was charged with capital murder, as the fires were believed to be arson. Willingham said he was asleep in the house when the fire started, and denied that it was arson.
The Willingham case had become a kind of cause celebre for death penalty opponents and advocates for clearing wrongfully convicted inmates. Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, called Perry's actions "troubling" and compared them to "the Saturday night massacre," when in 1973 President Nixon fired a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal.
The nine-member commission had agreed last year to review the case after defense attorneys said Willingham was convicted on flawed scientific evidence. Craig Beyler, an expert on fire investigation, was hired and submitted a report in August saying that he could not fully support a finding of arson.
Perry and his spokespeople have repeatedly told news media that the timing was nothing out of the ordinary. The removed members' terms officially ended Sept. 1, and Perry has kept saying it would have been business as usual to replace them anyway.
Then, on Oct. 9, Perry removed a fourth member, Sridhar Natarajan, a Lubbock medical examiner. Two appointments were announced the same day.
Now we have the latest development.
Former Chairman Says He Was Pressured
Bassett now says that Perry's office called him into meetings twice, during February and March, and that he was told by Perry's top lawyers that the Willingham case was not the kind of work the Legislature had intended the commission to do, that the case should be given a low priority in lieu of higher concerns, and so forth.
Here's a link to the full story, from the Chicago Tribune with contributions from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
If it weren't already obvious, Governor Goodhair doesn't want any more people to know that he may have Cameron Willingham's blood on his hands. That could be very damaging in a re-election campaign, especially since Perry was approached in February 2004, just days before the execution, about possibly flawed scientific evidence in the case. The execution went on as scheduled.
Perry has presided over the Texas Death Row killing machine for nearly nine years. Over 200 inmates have been executed since he took office. I know of one instance in which he commuted a death sentence, and in 2004 he defied the pardons and parole board's recommendation of clemency in one case.
Is Perry really more concerned about his own political career than about the possibility that he allowed an innocent man, and perhaps more than one over the years, to die by lethal injection? You be the judge. It looks pretty clear to me.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Do You Miss Chimpy Yet?
By Manifesto Joe
THE GHOST OF IL DOOFUS STILL WORKS HERE.
I have a right-wing relative who provided me with this priceless photo of Il Doofus. It has been circulating on e-mail among right-wingers. It's odd -- I couldn't have gotten a better favor from a left-wing blog bud.
The main problem I have with Barack Obama is that he's been entirely too nice. So far, he's erred mainly on the side of good manners. As so many Democrats have unfortunately done over the years, and decades, he brought a pair of boxing gloves to a knife fight.
But, even with Obama's early foibles -- do I miss The Monkey Man? Do I miss being crudely lied to, fleeced in taxes for a war that would have been ludicrous had it not been so deadly for so many? Do I miss the wholesale looting of the country for the benefit of the superrich? Do I miss cringing when I hear a man who is supposed to be our president, and he can barely speak English?
The answer, quite unequivocally, is NO, NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
THE GHOST OF IL DOOFUS STILL WORKS HERE.I have a right-wing relative who provided me with this priceless photo of Il Doofus. It has been circulating on e-mail among right-wingers. It's odd -- I couldn't have gotten a better favor from a left-wing blog bud.
The main problem I have with Barack Obama is that he's been entirely too nice. So far, he's erred mainly on the side of good manners. As so many Democrats have unfortunately done over the years, and decades, he brought a pair of boxing gloves to a knife fight.
But, even with Obama's early foibles -- do I miss The Monkey Man? Do I miss being crudely lied to, fleeced in taxes for a war that would have been ludicrous had it not been so deadly for so many? Do I miss the wholesale looting of the country for the benefit of the superrich? Do I miss cringing when I hear a man who is supposed to be our president, and he can barely speak English?
The answer, quite unequivocally, is NO, NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO!
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
At Last, A Democrat With Juevos To Fight GOP Hypocrites: Alan Grayson
By Manifesto Joe
He apologized -- to the uninsured dead. Freshman U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., showed REAL Democrats the REAL way. Don't pull punches with these hypocrites, and call them out on their double standards. After all the right-wing Republican rhetoric about death panels, government takeovers, the "free" market, so-called "choice," and such, we finally saw a Democrat stand up on his hind legs and give as good as "WE" have been getting.
Alan Grayson for President, 2016
I like Barack Obama enough to put up with him for two terms, and I understand that he can't afford to be the sort of attack dog that Grayson was Wednesday.
But what the Democratic Party has desperately needed for decades has been a dude who was willing to get this mean in the clinches. President Obama is arguably the most talented politician the Dems have fielded in a long time, even better than Bill Clinton. But what Democrats lack right now is someone like this who will give the other side HELL of this kind, and never, ever back down.
Compromise is beginning to seem futile, especially after the spectacle of "Heartland" Democrats spreading their posteriors for Big Insurance during that Tuesday Senate Finance Committee vote. These are not even good DINOs, and the party needs to field primary opponents, real Democrats, to run against every one of them.
I think Mr. Grayson is showing the way. This isn't a game that can be won with compromise or bipartisanship. The Baucus bill seems more and more like just another giveaway to Big Insurance. If I were a Democrat in Congress, I'd vote against it and reluctantly condemn America to a couple of more years with the status quo until we can get something that makes sense.
Here's a link to Alan Grayson's solid left hook to the Republican solar plexus, courtesy of the CBS News Web site.
Right-Wing Yellow Bellies' Hypocrisy
Now, let's look at the Republican crybabies' hypocrisy. After all the swill we've been hearing this year about "death panels," health insurance for illegal aliens, and funding of abortion, THEY now have the unmitigated gall to compare Alan Grayson's brave candor with the subhuman mendacity of Joe "You Lie" Wilson? Here's Keith Olbermann on the subject of Mr. Wilson, from last month:
I think the American people heard enough contemptible lies, for eight long years, that some candor is now sorely needed. After eight years of Il Doofus, Mr. Grayson is magnificently refreshing.
Now, maybe Obama can carefully, studiously find his way closer to this path.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
He apologized -- to the uninsured dead. Freshman U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., showed REAL Democrats the REAL way. Don't pull punches with these hypocrites, and call them out on their double standards. After all the right-wing Republican rhetoric about death panels, government takeovers, the "free" market, so-called "choice," and such, we finally saw a Democrat stand up on his hind legs and give as good as "WE" have been getting.
Alan Grayson for President, 2016
I like Barack Obama enough to put up with him for two terms, and I understand that he can't afford to be the sort of attack dog that Grayson was Wednesday.
But what the Democratic Party has desperately needed for decades has been a dude who was willing to get this mean in the clinches. President Obama is arguably the most talented politician the Dems have fielded in a long time, even better than Bill Clinton. But what Democrats lack right now is someone like this who will give the other side HELL of this kind, and never, ever back down.
Compromise is beginning to seem futile, especially after the spectacle of "Heartland" Democrats spreading their posteriors for Big Insurance during that Tuesday Senate Finance Committee vote. These are not even good DINOs, and the party needs to field primary opponents, real Democrats, to run against every one of them.
I think Mr. Grayson is showing the way. This isn't a game that can be won with compromise or bipartisanship. The Baucus bill seems more and more like just another giveaway to Big Insurance. If I were a Democrat in Congress, I'd vote against it and reluctantly condemn America to a couple of more years with the status quo until we can get something that makes sense.
Here's a link to Alan Grayson's solid left hook to the Republican solar plexus, courtesy of the CBS News Web site.
Right-Wing Yellow Bellies' Hypocrisy
Now, let's look at the Republican crybabies' hypocrisy. After all the swill we've been hearing this year about "death panels," health insurance for illegal aliens, and funding of abortion, THEY now have the unmitigated gall to compare Alan Grayson's brave candor with the subhuman mendacity of Joe "You Lie" Wilson? Here's Keith Olbermann on the subject of Mr. Wilson, from last month:
I think the American people heard enough contemptible lies, for eight long years, that some candor is now sorely needed. After eight years of Il Doofus, Mr. Grayson is magnificently refreshing.
Now, maybe Obama can carefully, studiously find his way closer to this path.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Untold Story: Regressive Taxation, State And Local
By Manifesto Joe
Debates about taxes tend to be dominated by federal income tax policy. That in itself has become a scandal because of myriad corporate and personal tax dodges. But it ignores what lies at the base of taxation in America. At the state and local levels, taxes hit the poor and the working class hardest, in terms of percentage of income.
My home state of Texas has a special history of this. Sales taxes, user fees and other levies are mostly directed at people with lower incomes. Courtesy of state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, here are some recent statistics:
State and Local Taxes as a Percentage of Household Income in Texas
Over $109,182: 4.7 percent
$69,614 to $109,182: 6.0 percent
$45,271 to $69,614: 6.4 percent
$24,899 to $45,271: 7.6 percent
Under $24,899: 12.8 percent
Source: The Center for Public Policy Priorities, May 2008
If you were to examine all the states, it might even get worse in some of them. In Texas, most groceries are exempt from sales taxes. I lived in Oklahoma for a while, and there, NOTHING is exempt from the sales tax.
The next time you encounter some anus-head doing the Rush Lardbaugh talking points about how the rich are so oppressed with their income tax burden, hit them with some of this. You won't change their "minds," but you might get the pleasure of seeing them stammer and look confused for just a moment.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Debates about taxes tend to be dominated by federal income tax policy. That in itself has become a scandal because of myriad corporate and personal tax dodges. But it ignores what lies at the base of taxation in America. At the state and local levels, taxes hit the poor and the working class hardest, in terms of percentage of income.
My home state of Texas has a special history of this. Sales taxes, user fees and other levies are mostly directed at people with lower incomes. Courtesy of state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, here are some recent statistics:
State and Local Taxes as a Percentage of Household Income in Texas
Over $109,182: 4.7 percent
$69,614 to $109,182: 6.0 percent
$45,271 to $69,614: 6.4 percent
$24,899 to $45,271: 7.6 percent
Under $24,899: 12.8 percent
Source: The Center for Public Policy Priorities, May 2008
If you were to examine all the states, it might even get worse in some of them. In Texas, most groceries are exempt from sales taxes. I lived in Oklahoma for a while, and there, NOTHING is exempt from the sales tax.
The next time you encounter some anus-head doing the Rush Lardbaugh talking points about how the rich are so oppressed with their income tax burden, hit them with some of this. You won't change their "minds," but you might get the pleasure of seeing them stammer and look confused for just a moment.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Rick 'Governor Goodhair' Perry: Recession? 'We're In One?'
By Manifesto Joe
In case there is any lingering doubt that Texas Gov. Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry is an authentic fool, here's what he said during a Thursday appearance in Houston:
"Why is Texas kind of recession-proof, if you will? As a matter of fact ... someone had put a report out that the first state that's coming out of the recession is going to be the state of Texas ... I said, 'We're in one?'"
His remarks at a luncheon for business representatives came as the Labor Department reported that unemployment in Texas has hit a 22-year high. You have to go back to the oil/real estate bust of the 1980s to find the last time the state had 8 percent joblessness.
A report from WFAA.com on the remarks concluded:
Forty-two states lost jobs last month, up from 29 in July, with the biggest net payroll cuts coming in Texas, Michigan, Georgia and Ohio, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Texas lost 62,200 jobs as its unemployment rate rose to 8 percent in August for the first time in 22 years. The state's leisure, construction and manufacturing industries were hardest hit, losing 35,500 jobs.
Here's a link to a report that also features YouTube video of Perry's remarks.
It's almost needless to say that U.S. Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry's opponent in next year's Republican primary, was all over this pretty quickly. Not that Kay would represent much of an improvement over Governor Goodhair for ordinary Texans, but she at least appears sensitive enough to refrain from gaffes like this one during a time when people are losing livelihoods, life savings, and homes.
Our 2010 gubernatorial campaign is already off and running, and having a dolt like Perry as the GOP incumbent stands to make this one really interesting. Stay tuned.
In case there is any lingering doubt that Texas Gov. Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry is an authentic fool, here's what he said during a Thursday appearance in Houston:
"Why is Texas kind of recession-proof, if you will? As a matter of fact ... someone had put a report out that the first state that's coming out of the recession is going to be the state of Texas ... I said, 'We're in one?'"
His remarks at a luncheon for business representatives came as the Labor Department reported that unemployment in Texas has hit a 22-year high. You have to go back to the oil/real estate bust of the 1980s to find the last time the state had 8 percent joblessness.
A report from WFAA.com on the remarks concluded:
Forty-two states lost jobs last month, up from 29 in July, with the biggest net payroll cuts coming in Texas, Michigan, Georgia and Ohio, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Texas lost 62,200 jobs as its unemployment rate rose to 8 percent in August for the first time in 22 years. The state's leisure, construction and manufacturing industries were hardest hit, losing 35,500 jobs.
Here's a link to a report that also features YouTube video of Perry's remarks.
It's almost needless to say that U.S. Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry's opponent in next year's Republican primary, was all over this pretty quickly. Not that Kay would represent much of an improvement over Governor Goodhair for ordinary Texans, but she at least appears sensitive enough to refrain from gaffes like this one during a time when people are losing livelihoods, life savings, and homes.
Our 2010 gubernatorial campaign is already off and running, and having a dolt like Perry as the GOP incumbent stands to make this one really interesting. Stay tuned.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Tea Party Bozos: Brown Shirts, Or White Sheets? Neo-Nazis, Or The Klan?
By Manifesto Joe
You didn't see this kind of blatant disrespect for the office of the presidency, even back in 1993-94, when the Clintons were trying to put across a version of national health care. President Bill Clinton, an indiscreet man, always caught hell from a lot of directions; but no congressman ever called out during one of his speeches to a joint session, "You lie!"
President Barack Obama is, from all evidence, a good family man, so they can't get him there. Other than cigarettes and an occasional chili dog, he has no major vices. So, why all the vitriol?
I'd really hoped our society had matured beyond this. But I think the general disrespect comes from one very ugly thing: To millions of white Americans, this is President N----r. That's the big difference between Bill Clinton in 1993 and Barack Obama in 2009.
During the past weekend, "Tea Party" bozos gathered in large numbers in Washington, D.C., and in cities around the country. They reportedly carried signs showing Obama depicted as the villainous Joker in the Batman series, with a Hitler mustache, and with a Pinocchio nose. "You lie!" appears to have become a mantra with these people.
Imagine that, during some speech back during the 2002-03 run-up to the Iraq war, that Rep. Dennis Kucinich had called out, "You lie!" to Bush's horseshit about weapons of mass destruction, now clearly one falsehood among a vast number from the Il Doofus administration. Or, that some Democratic congressman had been playing with his Blackberry during such an event. (Rep. Eric Kantor, R-Va., was caught on video doing exactly that during Obama's speech.) I can imagine the bulging neck veins on Fox "News" the next day, and the calls for resignation.
In case anybody thought that these Tea Party protests were some kind of spontaneous grassroots uprising, this article from veteranstoday.com by Gordon Duff gives a list of the corporate sponsors of this organized trashing of the president. It's quite a list, and would make up a good boycott.
This is from Mr. Duff's commentary:
Did you notice the pile of insurance companies, the defense contractors, the US Chamber of Commerce and the NRA? Check the list carefully. Look into who these folks are. This is the group funding, what they hope will be, a civil war in America.
These are the folks sending out gun toting protestors talking about "watering the tree of liberty."
These are also the richest people in America and the most powerful and include some of the biggest polluters, the biggest protectors of illegal immigration and thousands and thousands of lawyers working for big business against everyday Americans.
This is the single biggest group of "Washington insiders" ever assembled, if not insurance industry or defense, all are directly aligned to the Republican Party and help formulate failed Bush policies.
Let's face the truth. There is only one reason all those uneducated white people are out yelling and screaming, guns left in their luggage on busses paid for by taxpayer money sucked in by the biggest pack of corporate thieves that ever bribed a congressman.
Its all about the "N" word. We are having a convention of Americans in love with the "N" word, people who use it every day, folks afraid of black people they don't know, people easy to scare.
Joe Wilson for Grand Wazoo: If the sheets fit ...
In case there was any remaining doubt about U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (KKK-S.C.) and his background, here's a tidbit from The Daily Beast. Before Wednesday night, Joe seemed to be someone who could pass as just your typical Southern Republican congressfool. But he may not be so typical.The "You lie!" outburst was unprecedented, and there's no way it would have happened to a white president, however liberal.
This is the very first time on this blog that I have "played the race card." Sometimes one has to play the cards that are dealt, and I sure as hell didn't deal them.
I'm not going to go far into the accuracy of what Obama said, because it's virtually irrelevant. The crux of it appears to be that although the House version of the health care bill expressly forbids noncitizens from getting services under this measure, there's no explicit provision for enforcement by requiring proof of citizenship. That, of course, is something that could be added during the process. But no disagreement like this can possibly justify such blatant disrespect for the office of the presidency.
Throw shoes at Joe?
No, not at me. I'm talking about Joe Wilson. I challenge someone out there to throw a pair of shoes at Joe "You lie!" Wilson. There's no direct parallel, but it would be interesting to compare the U.S. reaction to such a thing with the one regarding Bush in Iraq.
The Obama school speech
In Arlington, Texas, school Superintendent Jerry McCullough apologized Friday for administrators' decision not to show Obama's speech to local schoolchildren live on Tuesday morning. There were many other districts that did the same, but Arlington's decision became national news when it was reported that 500 fifth-graders would be bused to a Sept. 21 event with former President George W. ("Il Doofus") Bush speaking at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
If the hypocrisy weren't clear already, it ought to be by now. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who have no problems with being hypocrites.
Or racists.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Big Problem With The MSM: TV Journalists Are Often Political And Economic Illiterates
By Manifesto Joe
It caused me great pain and consternation to see a CNN anchor trying to interview a Tea Party leader during the big 9-12 march on Washington on Saturday afternoon. The anchor stammered something about the U.S. being a "democracy" and that capitalism is our system of government, or something to that effect.
It was appalling that the Tea Party fool had at least been paying some attention in high school civics and was half-right about one thing, in contrast to the anchor. He said that the U.S. is a "not a democracy," but rather "a republic." He was somewhat right on that point.
The U.S. is generally described as a democratic republic, with the former word the modifier in that there is a great deal of democracy, direct and indirect, codified at different levels. As a republic, it is offset by federal checks and balances, and by the fact that we are largely governed by representatives rather than through direct referendums and such.
But then the Tea Party fool veered off in the usual phallus-headed direction, saying something to the effect that the Constitution does not allow things that should be personal responsibility, such as the provision of health care. The CNN anchor kept stammering and was totally ineffectual at shooting down this pig dung, which is precisely what media professionals are supposed to be trained to do.
The U.S. Constitution does not address issues such as health care, one way or the other. It is silent on the subject, neither prohibiting nor institutionalizing a federal role.
If there were anything there that the federal courts could construe as a prohibition of any kind, then Medicare and Medicaid would both have been declared unconstitutional long ago. Even when the Supreme Court has had conservative majorities, as it has mostly had in recent times, there's no way they were ever going to go there, because it simply isn't there.
Medicare and Medicaid are both single-payer systems for specific groups, and could therefore be described as "socialized medicine" for the benefit of qualifying people. There is nothing in the Constitution that forbids certain sectors of the U.S. economy from being "socialized."
This brings me to some of the salient points that this CNN anchor, and the Tea Party cretin with whom he was botching an interview, fail to grasp in the least.
Democracy, and Republics, are POLITICAL systems. Capitalism and socialism are ECONOMIC systems.
There is no intrinsic relationship among any of the above. There are democratic republics that one would characterize, in economic terms, as semi-socialist -- to wit, the Scandinavian countries, and to a lesser extent the rest of western and central Europe. There have been many dictatorships that have not only tolerated capitalist enterprise, but have encouraged it.
Moreover, redistribution of income does not constitute socialism. ANY sort of taxation and appropriation redistributes income. It is strictly a question of to whom. The basic definition of socialism is ownership of the MEANS OF PRODUCTION by either government or cooperatives.
Contrary to wrongheaded right-wing attempts to link socialism with all authoritarian governments, Nazi Germany operated with the loyal support of Germany's industrialists, such as IG Farben. In fascist Italy, Mussolini, a one-time socialist, outlawed strikes, hammered down wages and put a lot of socialists in jail. Capitalist enterprises had no problems operating, with gracious deference, in Franco's fascist Spain.
To summarize, there are:
1. Semi-capitalist dictatorships
2. Semi-socialist/mixed system democratic republics
3. Socialist dictatorships (the old USSR, etc.)
4. Countries like China (commies-in-name who make American capitalists look like warm fuzzy liberals)
5. Mostly capitalist republics like the U.S., with lightly mixed economic systems and which feign democratic institutions, but are mostly ruled by big-ass money (plutocracies).
In short, political and economic systems, while related, are to some extent two very different animals. They can, and have been, mixed and matched in all sorts of ways, according to the mores of their populations and ruling elites.
Now here is a point that will modify most of what I've written above:
There has never really been, and probably never will be, an economic system in the world that is either purely capitalist or purely socialist.
Read your history, and check out the current world situations. They are pretty much all mixed systems, merely differing in the mix. The U.S. is the perhaps the world's prime example of a system weighted very much toward capitalism. But even here, much has changed in about a century, and it was arguably of necessity. Can you imagine what daily life would be like for a very large minority of the population if we had no Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid? No GI Bill? No workers' comp? No OSHA? Or even lacking some of the less-popular programs, such as food stamps and AFDC?
I can tell you one huge truth -- the fact that we eventually got those things is the main reason that communist movements never took hold in this country the way they did in other parts of the world. To wit: During the 1930s Depression/Dust Bowl era, Oklahoma had a surprisingly large and active Communist Party membership, inspired no doubt by a lot of hungry bellies. About 75 years later, that state is one of the most Republican in the country.
Want a vivid picture of what America looked like, circa 1905, from the viewpoint of an underclass worker? Read The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. It's on a lot of American literature reading lists.
You want to really fight communism? Support a measured, reasonable welfare state.
To wrap up, it was very dismaying to see a "professional" TV journalist getting his ass pathetically kicked by a Tea Party half-wit. It doesn't take a degree in either economics or political science to grasp most of these concepts. The 100-200 level of courses, plus some common sense and a willingness to read a few of the pertinent books, is what I would expect of any person professing to become a real journalist.
Unfortunately, what we largely have on the current scene are a lot of pretty-faced DJs with amnesia.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It caused me great pain and consternation to see a CNN anchor trying to interview a Tea Party leader during the big 9-12 march on Washington on Saturday afternoon. The anchor stammered something about the U.S. being a "democracy" and that capitalism is our system of government, or something to that effect.
It was appalling that the Tea Party fool had at least been paying some attention in high school civics and was half-right about one thing, in contrast to the anchor. He said that the U.S. is a "not a democracy," but rather "a republic." He was somewhat right on that point.
The U.S. is generally described as a democratic republic, with the former word the modifier in that there is a great deal of democracy, direct and indirect, codified at different levels. As a republic, it is offset by federal checks and balances, and by the fact that we are largely governed by representatives rather than through direct referendums and such.
But then the Tea Party fool veered off in the usual phallus-headed direction, saying something to the effect that the Constitution does not allow things that should be personal responsibility, such as the provision of health care. The CNN anchor kept stammering and was totally ineffectual at shooting down this pig dung, which is precisely what media professionals are supposed to be trained to do.
The U.S. Constitution does not address issues such as health care, one way or the other. It is silent on the subject, neither prohibiting nor institutionalizing a federal role.
If there were anything there that the federal courts could construe as a prohibition of any kind, then Medicare and Medicaid would both have been declared unconstitutional long ago. Even when the Supreme Court has had conservative majorities, as it has mostly had in recent times, there's no way they were ever going to go there, because it simply isn't there.
Medicare and Medicaid are both single-payer systems for specific groups, and could therefore be described as "socialized medicine" for the benefit of qualifying people. There is nothing in the Constitution that forbids certain sectors of the U.S. economy from being "socialized."
This brings me to some of the salient points that this CNN anchor, and the Tea Party cretin with whom he was botching an interview, fail to grasp in the least.
Democracy, and Republics, are POLITICAL systems. Capitalism and socialism are ECONOMIC systems.
There is no intrinsic relationship among any of the above. There are democratic republics that one would characterize, in economic terms, as semi-socialist -- to wit, the Scandinavian countries, and to a lesser extent the rest of western and central Europe. There have been many dictatorships that have not only tolerated capitalist enterprise, but have encouraged it.
Moreover, redistribution of income does not constitute socialism. ANY sort of taxation and appropriation redistributes income. It is strictly a question of to whom. The basic definition of socialism is ownership of the MEANS OF PRODUCTION by either government or cooperatives.
Contrary to wrongheaded right-wing attempts to link socialism with all authoritarian governments, Nazi Germany operated with the loyal support of Germany's industrialists, such as IG Farben. In fascist Italy, Mussolini, a one-time socialist, outlawed strikes, hammered down wages and put a lot of socialists in jail. Capitalist enterprises had no problems operating, with gracious deference, in Franco's fascist Spain.
To summarize, there are:
1. Semi-capitalist dictatorships
2. Semi-socialist/mixed system democratic republics
3. Socialist dictatorships (the old USSR, etc.)
4. Countries like China (commies-in-name who make American capitalists look like warm fuzzy liberals)
5. Mostly capitalist republics like the U.S., with lightly mixed economic systems and which feign democratic institutions, but are mostly ruled by big-ass money (plutocracies).
In short, political and economic systems, while related, are to some extent two very different animals. They can, and have been, mixed and matched in all sorts of ways, according to the mores of their populations and ruling elites.
Now here is a point that will modify most of what I've written above:
There has never really been, and probably never will be, an economic system in the world that is either purely capitalist or purely socialist.
Read your history, and check out the current world situations. They are pretty much all mixed systems, merely differing in the mix. The U.S. is the perhaps the world's prime example of a system weighted very much toward capitalism. But even here, much has changed in about a century, and it was arguably of necessity. Can you imagine what daily life would be like for a very large minority of the population if we had no Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid? No GI Bill? No workers' comp? No OSHA? Or even lacking some of the less-popular programs, such as food stamps and AFDC?
I can tell you one huge truth -- the fact that we eventually got those things is the main reason that communist movements never took hold in this country the way they did in other parts of the world. To wit: During the 1930s Depression/Dust Bowl era, Oklahoma had a surprisingly large and active Communist Party membership, inspired no doubt by a lot of hungry bellies. About 75 years later, that state is one of the most Republican in the country.
Want a vivid picture of what America looked like, circa 1905, from the viewpoint of an underclass worker? Read The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. It's on a lot of American literature reading lists.
You want to really fight communism? Support a measured, reasonable welfare state.
To wrap up, it was very dismaying to see a "professional" TV journalist getting his ass pathetically kicked by a Tea Party half-wit. It doesn't take a degree in either economics or political science to grasp most of these concepts. The 100-200 level of courses, plus some common sense and a willingness to read a few of the pertinent books, is what I would expect of any person professing to become a real journalist.
Unfortunately, what we largely have on the current scene are a lot of pretty-faced DJs with amnesia.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Furor Over Obama Speech To Schoolchildren Is Epitome Of Right-Wing Lunacy
By Manifesto Joe
Reagan did it, in 1988. So did Bush I, in 1991. So, why is it controversial for President Barack Obama to address schoolchildren tomorrow about working hard to become good scholars?
Today the White House released a Web page with Obama's address. Here's the link.
Now, here's a video of President Ronald Reagan's address of Nov. 14, 1988. If this wasn't at least a generically political speech ... well, compare it with Obama's personal, rather than ideological, tone.
My first impression about the White House releasing Obama's speech a day early is that perhaps the intention was to embarrass the right-wing goons who have stirred so much feces about this. But you can't embarrass insane people.
And when insane people -- at least, the right-wing brand -- become vocal enough, authority figures listen. School districts around the country have been opting out of carrying Obama's speech in their classrooms.
Among these are a number in my home state of Texas. A bunch are in Tarrant County (Fort Worth, Arlington and suburbs), which, unlike neighboring Dallas County, was carried by McCain-Palin in 2008. Here's some of what the chairman of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, Steve Maxwell, had to say in a recent e-mail:
As you may have heard, President Obama is planning to deliver an address to the young people of our nation, on Tuesday, September 7. The message he will deliver is one of hope, of encouragement and of importance. President Obama is a shining example of what can be accomplished in this country by anyone willing to dedicate themselves getting an education, and has the willingness to pursue his or her dreams. This is the message he wants to deliver to the school children On Tuesday, the President will encourage students to care about their education, to apply themselves, to stay in school and to graduate. I believe this is a message our kids cannot hear enough.
There can be no more effective promoter of such a message than the President of the United States.
Unfortunately, some local radio hosts and Conservative activists have interpreted this as an attempt to indoctrinate students. Predictably, schools have received numerous complaints. As a result Arlington ISD, Aledo ISD, Mansfield ISD, Eagle -Mountain Saginaw ISD and Grapevine Colleyville ISD are all declining to show the speech live.
And then, there are those parents who have declared that they are simply going to keep their children home tomorrow so that they don't hear the simple story of an African-American who, against great odds, became a law professor, a U.S. senator and finally the leader of the "free world."
It's been said that it's often better to laugh at, rather than weep over, a sad and grotesque situation. So I'll leave you with a bit of morbid humor gleaned from YouTube:
Here's one of the comments this comedy video got:
Tell me something then, WHY does Obama need to address the CHILDREN?!? WHY??? Their own parents and teachers can't tell them to try hard and be good little communist fascists? Hitler did the same fucking thing. Ever heard of the HJ? The Hitler Jugend or Hitler Youth.
That's coming next. Obama has already laid out his plans for MANDATORY civil service or community service. Either you are too stupid to see it or you approve of BIG BROTHER OBAMA telling our CHILDREN what to do and think.
Sigh ...
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
2009: A Right-Wing Odyssey Of Spaced-Out Idiocy
By Manifesto Joe
The right wing seems to have gone completely into orbit this year, outdoing itself at every turn. The galaxy of Goonville stars is lit up with names old and new.
Pat Buchanan: This mainstay of the kook right is often good for laughs, albeit pretty dark-hued ones. I have to confess that in 1996, with Clinton up for re-election and nothing interesting going on in the Texas Democratic Party, I actually held my nose and cast a disingenuous protest vote for Patsy in hopes that a good showing from him would help shake things up in The Party of Satan. ("I'm going to vote NAZI this time!" I exclaimed gleefully to one of my very few Republican friends. That comment didn't make us any friendlier.)
I was doing the same thing, in reverse, that a lot of nasty little Republicans have been doing here in Texas for many decades. If there's no pressing reason for them to vote in their own primary, they cross over and pollute the waters in ours. The idea is to vote for the candidates you figure are the most likely losers in the pack, or who would cause the most organizational trouble.
By the way, I gave up on that kind of subversive cross-voting, in large part because of all the Republican junk mail I would get in the ensuing months. (You know, polls from the local Congressfool that feature questions like: "Do you think that baby-murdering Supreme Court justices should be impeached? Yes/No)
I had to hold my nose to vote for Patsy, but I admit that I was actually (and pleasantly) shocked when I read parts of his book The Great Betrayal. Although the motives behind his economic nationalism were suspect back then, I was astounded by the opening chapter. It read like it could have been written by Jesse Jackson.
Unfortunately, Patsy didn't really, truly change his stripes. He's still a 1940 edition America Firster. He's not a neocon, because he's not even that evolved. He's a neolith.
The newest hardback offering from Patsy is a Nazi apologist treatise that was explained in shorter form in a recent column. Here's an Air America review of all this. I always smelled 1930s anti-Semitism behind Patsy's "thinking," sort of like the notion that the problem with World War II was that "we fought the wrong people." I actually heard a ranking editor at a newspaper I once worked for say exactly that. He noticed that I was looking at him funny, and he explained that "Hitler was the more pressing problem, but" look at all the horrors and atrocities of Stalinist Russia and other communist regimes.
This is not to minimize the enormities committed by the likes of Stalin, Pol Pot, and from all evidence, Mao Tse-tung as well. But to slough off the clearly murderous and insane Adolf Hitler as merely "the more pressing problem" is itself insanity. And, tragically, there are millions of Americans who would agree with that assessment.
Michele Bachmann: It will be a curiosity for the ages as to how a person this imbecilic ever got elected to Congress, and especially in a state like Minnesota that has produced the likes of Hubert Humphrey, the Farmer-Labor Party, Paul Wellstone and Al Franken. One thing I have noticed about Minnesotans is that there aren't many moderates from there, at least none that I've met. I love and admire the progressives from there (even you, Jack Jodell!); but, in contrast, one of the most demented and intractable religious-right fanatics I've ever known was from the Minneapolis area. And this is a state that actually elected Jesse Ventura governor. It's a place given to some extremes.
Onward to Michelle: She has repeatedly argued that while diversity sounds like a good thing, not all cultures are created equal. Some are apparently anointed by God His Own Self, and others just aren't. Here's one of her statements. And then, here's a link to the World of Health Care According to Michele, again courtesy of Air America.
The odyssey continues. The idiocy, too. Stay tuned.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
The right wing seems to have gone completely into orbit this year, outdoing itself at every turn. The galaxy of Goonville stars is lit up with names old and new.
Pat Buchanan: This mainstay of the kook right is often good for laughs, albeit pretty dark-hued ones. I have to confess that in 1996, with Clinton up for re-election and nothing interesting going on in the Texas Democratic Party, I actually held my nose and cast a disingenuous protest vote for Patsy in hopes that a good showing from him would help shake things up in The Party of Satan. ("I'm going to vote NAZI this time!" I exclaimed gleefully to one of my very few Republican friends. That comment didn't make us any friendlier.)
I was doing the same thing, in reverse, that a lot of nasty little Republicans have been doing here in Texas for many decades. If there's no pressing reason for them to vote in their own primary, they cross over and pollute the waters in ours. The idea is to vote for the candidates you figure are the most likely losers in the pack, or who would cause the most organizational trouble.
By the way, I gave up on that kind of subversive cross-voting, in large part because of all the Republican junk mail I would get in the ensuing months. (You know, polls from the local Congressfool that feature questions like: "Do you think that baby-murdering Supreme Court justices should be impeached? Yes/No)
I had to hold my nose to vote for Patsy, but I admit that I was actually (and pleasantly) shocked when I read parts of his book The Great Betrayal. Although the motives behind his economic nationalism were suspect back then, I was astounded by the opening chapter. It read like it could have been written by Jesse Jackson.
Unfortunately, Patsy didn't really, truly change his stripes. He's still a 1940 edition America Firster. He's not a neocon, because he's not even that evolved. He's a neolith.
The newest hardback offering from Patsy is a Nazi apologist treatise that was explained in shorter form in a recent column. Here's an Air America review of all this. I always smelled 1930s anti-Semitism behind Patsy's "thinking," sort of like the notion that the problem with World War II was that "we fought the wrong people." I actually heard a ranking editor at a newspaper I once worked for say exactly that. He noticed that I was looking at him funny, and he explained that "Hitler was the more pressing problem, but" look at all the horrors and atrocities of Stalinist Russia and other communist regimes.
This is not to minimize the enormities committed by the likes of Stalin, Pol Pot, and from all evidence, Mao Tse-tung as well. But to slough off the clearly murderous and insane Adolf Hitler as merely "the more pressing problem" is itself insanity. And, tragically, there are millions of Americans who would agree with that assessment.
Michele Bachmann: It will be a curiosity for the ages as to how a person this imbecilic ever got elected to Congress, and especially in a state like Minnesota that has produced the likes of Hubert Humphrey, the Farmer-Labor Party, Paul Wellstone and Al Franken. One thing I have noticed about Minnesotans is that there aren't many moderates from there, at least none that I've met. I love and admire the progressives from there (even you, Jack Jodell!); but, in contrast, one of the most demented and intractable religious-right fanatics I've ever known was from the Minneapolis area. And this is a state that actually elected Jesse Ventura governor. It's a place given to some extremes.
Onward to Michelle: She has repeatedly argued that while diversity sounds like a good thing, not all cultures are created equal. Some are apparently anointed by God His Own Self, and others just aren't. Here's one of her statements. And then, here's a link to the World of Health Care According to Michele, again courtesy of Air America.
The odyssey continues. The idiocy, too. Stay tuned.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Listen American: This Country Has Produced Great Unheralded Composers: Roy Harris
Roy Harris conducts the ABC (American Broadcasting Company) Symphony Orchestra in his own composition Phantasy c.1945. Watch this one -- the still visuals are wonderful. One is the famous painting Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper (1942). -- MJ:
Roy Harris 1898-1979. Posted by Gordonskene on YouTube, March 14, 2009.
Roy Harris 1898-1979. Posted by Gordonskene on YouTube, March 14, 2009.
Glenn Beck Suffering Psychotic Episodes On The Air
Our master of ceremonies here is Keith Olbermann. Take it away, Keith:
Monday, August 31, 2009
Obama's Eulogy For Kennedy
MJ has been busy lately, but can't let much more time pass without posting a tribute to a flawed yet genuine hero, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Here is President Barack Obama's eulogy to, arguably, the most effective lawmaker of our era.
Click here.
RIP, Ted. -- MJ
Click here.
RIP, Ted. -- MJ
Monday, August 24, 2009
From Joe's Vault: 'Great' American Health Care System Isn't Cutting It On Life Span
By Manifesto Joe
Since health stats seem to be a hot topic now, it looks like a good time to dredge up a post from a couple of years ago. This was published on this blog Aug. 12, 2007.
This just in -- the U.S. is now ranked 42nd among the world's nations in life span. How can this be happening in a country that spends so much on medicine, the most worldwide per capita? It's a paradox: When it comes to insurance, less isn't more; but when it comes to medication, less can indeed be more. And, we need news media that will actually report on the problem rather than essentially shill for the medical/drug establishment.
To get the stats out of the way, this is from the Associated Press report:
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands. ...
A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Andorra, a tiny country ... between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years ... It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore. ...
Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.
OK, so far, so good. At least someone is observing that the number of uninsured Americans may have a lot to do with this. But wait, there's more. This Mainstream Media report lapses into whitewash and absurdity.
But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."
Among the other factors:
• Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."
• Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.
Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.
• A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.
Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.
"It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."
Most of the above displays an astonishing lack of critical thinking by this MSM reporter, or perhaps by editors who got hold of the piece later. The story attempts to drive some wedge between the absence of universal coverage in the U.S. and (1) racial disparities, and (2) infant mortality. A national health insurance system would do a vast amount to address these two problems. Our current system is the precise reason why many minorities do not or cannot get adequate care, when they are either old or newborn. It's the lack of insurance, stupid.
The passage points out that Cuba and most European countries have lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. Guess what those countries have that we don't.
Obesity is certainly a problem in America, and one for which individuals can largely be blamed. Or can they? As decades of my life have passed, I have witnessed a socially irresponsible advertising culture that graduated from making people into two-pack-a-day cigarette addicts into junk-food junkies who wash it all down with sugary soft drinks. If one ate a steady diet of what one sees every day on TV ads, billboards, and in the urban sprawl of any given U.S. city, it's the superhighway to diabetes and heart disease.
A thing I find quite revealing and disturbing is that although the Japanese smoke twice as much as Americans -- they light up the way we did in the '60s, back when my childhood senses were ablaze with TV cigarette commercials -- they don't have nearly as much heart disease as we do, and they're living longer than us. A simple observation is that they don't have quite the same advertising culture as we do, and so they're more likely to eat fish, tofu and veggies than a bacon cheeseburger. A decent diet can actually compensate some for other kinds of vices.
Something else to consider is that, for the poor in America, a good diet is actually hard to afford. It's cheap for our poor and working class to consume a lot of starch and sugar. Even the simplest staple items like rice and pasta -- not good for diabetics -- are much cheaper than the more healthful choices. We've had a reversal of roles between rich and poor in modern America: In the bad old days, the poor were skinny because they went hungry, and the rich were plump because they had all they could eat. Now the poor eat, but it's the wrong foods, sold cheap. The rich can afford the sauteed vegetables and the catch of the day.
But, I'm recalling that Emory University professor's remarks about Americans being so soft, not having a tough lifestyle imposed on them by adversity. This seems like an absurd contradiction as well. During hard times, people have trouble eating -- at all. Good food, or bad. And life spans were much shorter then. Something tells me the professor hasn't missed many meals.
Now for an unintended consequence of living in an "affluent" society -- affluent for some, anyway. The U.S. is the most overmedicated nation ever. Our "health care system" is largely driven by the pharmaceutical companies' greed, and they are hooking people on meds every day with the same foresight and scruples as the corner dope dealer.
Statin drugs are being pushed as though half the adult population should be on them. They may do a lot for people with severe cholesterol problems, but they can have very serious side effects. I have known a number of people who have given them up, despite warnings, because they complained that they always felt like they had the flu. My mother passed out and had to be hospitalized after three days on Zocor. I took Lipitor for three days, and I think my supervisor at work suspected that I was drunk.
I have been hospitalized twice in recent years after having adverse reactions to medications. Doctors who aren't into this dope craze describe patients coming to them looking pale and wan. And wait, there's more, from a site called Health and DNA:
ADRs are the fourth to sixth greatest killer in US with more than 100,000 deaths per year; and 2.2 million serious adverse reactions per year according to a 1998 Journal of the American Medical Association report. (JAMA 279:1200 1998) This study is a meta analysis of 39 research reports published from 1966 to 1996.
21.3% of the 548 most recently FDA approved medications were subsequently withdrawn from the market or given a black box warning. JAMA 287:2215 2002
The GAO reports that 51% of new drugs have serious, undetected adverse effects at the time of approval.
Of the best selling prescription drugs, 148 can cause depression, 133 hallucinations or psychoses, 105 constipation, 76 dementia, 27 insomnia and 36 parkinsonism. "Worst Pills Best Pills: A Consumers Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death or Illness," third edition, 1999.
I know from the experience of being overmedicated that it's hard some days just to get out of bed under those conditions, let alone get one's regular exercise for general health and weight control.
I have yet to see Michael Moore's Sicko, but I anticipate seeing it this week. It shouldn't be hard for him to win me over. This "health care system," coupled with a predatory advertising culture, looks likely to make either my generation or the next one the first to have a lower life expectancy than our parents had. As my fellow baby boomers age and become more dependent on this broken system to get decent and well-considered care, this is clearly one of the crucial battles that Americans must win.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Since health stats seem to be a hot topic now, it looks like a good time to dredge up a post from a couple of years ago. This was published on this blog Aug. 12, 2007.
This just in -- the U.S. is now ranked 42nd among the world's nations in life span. How can this be happening in a country that spends so much on medicine, the most worldwide per capita? It's a paradox: When it comes to insurance, less isn't more; but when it comes to medication, less can indeed be more. And, we need news media that will actually report on the problem rather than essentially shill for the medical/drug establishment.
To get the stats out of the way, this is from the Associated Press report:
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands. ...
A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Andorra, a tiny country ... between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years ... It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore. ...
Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.
OK, so far, so good. At least someone is observing that the number of uninsured Americans may have a lot to do with this. But wait, there's more. This Mainstream Media report lapses into whitewash and absurdity.
But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."
Among the other factors:
• Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."
• Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.
Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.
• A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.
Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.
"It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."
Most of the above displays an astonishing lack of critical thinking by this MSM reporter, or perhaps by editors who got hold of the piece later. The story attempts to drive some wedge between the absence of universal coverage in the U.S. and (1) racial disparities, and (2) infant mortality. A national health insurance system would do a vast amount to address these two problems. Our current system is the precise reason why many minorities do not or cannot get adequate care, when they are either old or newborn. It's the lack of insurance, stupid.
The passage points out that Cuba and most European countries have lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. Guess what those countries have that we don't.
Obesity is certainly a problem in America, and one for which individuals can largely be blamed. Or can they? As decades of my life have passed, I have witnessed a socially irresponsible advertising culture that graduated from making people into two-pack-a-day cigarette addicts into junk-food junkies who wash it all down with sugary soft drinks. If one ate a steady diet of what one sees every day on TV ads, billboards, and in the urban sprawl of any given U.S. city, it's the superhighway to diabetes and heart disease.
A thing I find quite revealing and disturbing is that although the Japanese smoke twice as much as Americans -- they light up the way we did in the '60s, back when my childhood senses were ablaze with TV cigarette commercials -- they don't have nearly as much heart disease as we do, and they're living longer than us. A simple observation is that they don't have quite the same advertising culture as we do, and so they're more likely to eat fish, tofu and veggies than a bacon cheeseburger. A decent diet can actually compensate some for other kinds of vices.
Something else to consider is that, for the poor in America, a good diet is actually hard to afford. It's cheap for our poor and working class to consume a lot of starch and sugar. Even the simplest staple items like rice and pasta -- not good for diabetics -- are much cheaper than the more healthful choices. We've had a reversal of roles between rich and poor in modern America: In the bad old days, the poor were skinny because they went hungry, and the rich were plump because they had all they could eat. Now the poor eat, but it's the wrong foods, sold cheap. The rich can afford the sauteed vegetables and the catch of the day.
But, I'm recalling that Emory University professor's remarks about Americans being so soft, not having a tough lifestyle imposed on them by adversity. This seems like an absurd contradiction as well. During hard times, people have trouble eating -- at all. Good food, or bad. And life spans were much shorter then. Something tells me the professor hasn't missed many meals.
Now for an unintended consequence of living in an "affluent" society -- affluent for some, anyway. The U.S. is the most overmedicated nation ever. Our "health care system" is largely driven by the pharmaceutical companies' greed, and they are hooking people on meds every day with the same foresight and scruples as the corner dope dealer.
Statin drugs are being pushed as though half the adult population should be on them. They may do a lot for people with severe cholesterol problems, but they can have very serious side effects. I have known a number of people who have given them up, despite warnings, because they complained that they always felt like they had the flu. My mother passed out and had to be hospitalized after three days on Zocor. I took Lipitor for three days, and I think my supervisor at work suspected that I was drunk.
I have been hospitalized twice in recent years after having adverse reactions to medications. Doctors who aren't into this dope craze describe patients coming to them looking pale and wan. And wait, there's more, from a site called Health and DNA:
ADRs are the fourth to sixth greatest killer in US with more than 100,000 deaths per year; and 2.2 million serious adverse reactions per year according to a 1998 Journal of the American Medical Association report. (JAMA 279:1200 1998) This study is a meta analysis of 39 research reports published from 1966 to 1996.
21.3% of the 548 most recently FDA approved medications were subsequently withdrawn from the market or given a black box warning. JAMA 287:2215 2002
The GAO reports that 51% of new drugs have serious, undetected adverse effects at the time of approval.
Of the best selling prescription drugs, 148 can cause depression, 133 hallucinations or psychoses, 105 constipation, 76 dementia, 27 insomnia and 36 parkinsonism. "Worst Pills Best Pills: A Consumers Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death or Illness," third edition, 1999.
I know from the experience of being overmedicated that it's hard some days just to get out of bed under those conditions, let alone get one's regular exercise for general health and weight control.
I have yet to see Michael Moore's Sicko, but I anticipate seeing it this week. It shouldn't be hard for him to win me over. This "health care system," coupled with a predatory advertising culture, looks likely to make either my generation or the next one the first to have a lower life expectancy than our parents had. As my fellow baby boomers age and become more dependent on this broken system to get decent and well-considered care, this is clearly one of the crucial battles that Americans must win.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Health Care And Infant Mortality: When It Comes To A Population's Health, Statistics Don't Lie
By Manifesto Joe
A commenter on my previous post brought up something often raised in defense of America's indefensible health care status quo. That is the alleged wait time for specialists in Canada. The commenter mentioned, in particular, OB-GYN wait times alleged to be 10 to 12 months.
I rather doubt that as something typical, although I have heard from less biased sources that wait times for Canadian specialists can be up to six months. But regarding OB-GYN wait times, statistics about infant mortality should be revealing. Here are some, courtesy of the United Nations World Populations Prospect report revision of 2006:
Countries with "socialized" medicine:
Japan: 3.2 per 1,000 live births
Sweden: 3.2 per 1,000 live births
Norway: 3.3 """
France: 4.2
Germany: 4.3
Denmark: 4.4
Australia: 4.4
U.K.: 4.8
Canada: 4.8
Cuba: (Those godless commies!) 5.1
And then we have:
United States: 6.3
The U.S. ranks below Brunei (5.5), Cyprus (5.9), and New Caledonia (6.1).
I guess now we know why so many long-suffering Canadians, and so many other people in countries with "socialized" medicine, are clamoring to trade in their government-run systems for the private U.S. monopoly/oligopoly model. Ours is clearly so superior.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
A commenter on my previous post brought up something often raised in defense of America's indefensible health care status quo. That is the alleged wait time for specialists in Canada. The commenter mentioned, in particular, OB-GYN wait times alleged to be 10 to 12 months.
I rather doubt that as something typical, although I have heard from less biased sources that wait times for Canadian specialists can be up to six months. But regarding OB-GYN wait times, statistics about infant mortality should be revealing. Here are some, courtesy of the United Nations World Populations Prospect report revision of 2006:
Countries with "socialized" medicine:
Japan: 3.2 per 1,000 live births
Sweden: 3.2 per 1,000 live births
Norway: 3.3 """
France: 4.2
Germany: 4.3
Denmark: 4.4
Australia: 4.4
U.K.: 4.8
Canada: 4.8
Cuba: (Those godless commies!) 5.1
And then we have:
United States: 6.3
The U.S. ranks below Brunei (5.5), Cyprus (5.9), and New Caledonia (6.1).
I guess now we know why so many long-suffering Canadians, and so many other people in countries with "socialized" medicine, are clamoring to trade in their government-run systems for the private U.S. monopoly/oligopoly model. Ours is clearly so superior.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Health Care: When Americans Voted For Obama And Democrats, What Were They Voting For?
By Manifesto Joe
A recent (Aug. 3-6) nationwide telephone poll by the Marist Institute of Public Opinion found that 45 percent of Americans disapprove of President Obama's handling of health care reform, while 43 percent approved. Here's a link.
Obama won the popular vote last year with 53 percent. This begs the question: What did the "swing" voters, the independents, think they were voting for when they cast ballots for Obama and other Democrats?
And, as for those who are wavering on the issue, did they not expect yet another disinformation barrage, perhaps even worse that the "Harry and Louise" campaign of 1993-94? There are many interest groups -- insurers, pharmaceutical companies, stockholders, doctors and other health care "professionals" -- who have a big stake in the status quo and fear they will lose money if a public option comes to pass. Wasn't a propaganda flood, financed by the vested interests, expected?
My disapproval of Obama's handling of this would be purely idealistic: I favor a single-payer model similar to the ones in Canada and Germany. Even the English, whose National Health Service is often vilified here, are getting highly pissed and coming to the defense of the NHS. Here's another link. No less than renowned scientist Stephen Hawking has asserted that, contrary to U.S. right-wing demagoguery, the NHS saved his life from the longtime ravages of ALS. (Yet another link.)
The idealist in me says, if "socialism" is what they have in Norway and Sweden, where do I sign up? They live longer than Americans do; their babies don't die nearly as often; and their middle class doesn't have to live in fear of bankruptcy if someone comes down with a catastrophic illness.
You don't even have to look at Scandinavian countries with hyperactive welfare states. Australia, perhaps the closest nation to the U.S. ideologically, has something resembling "socialized" medicine.
Among other developed countries in the world, you don't see any of them battling to trade in their government-run programs for the U.S. "Land of the Fee" model, do you?
Their way looks much more like the right path to me.
But -- living in America, and especially in Texas, made me stop being an idealist long ago. It's clear by now that Obama and his "allies" are going to have a hard time just putting over a public option, so single-payer will have to wait, probably until after I'm dead.
Back to the American public -- that 45 percent who disapprove. I'd wager that few of them ever had to actually USE their underperforming health insurance to battle a chronic illness. I have allergies so severe that I depend on multiple medications just to live, and the co-payments and deductibles eat up much of my income. This was not something I did to myself; I was born with allergies.
Let's talk about "death panels." I have the impression that among that 45 percent, their answer for me would be, "Just die and get out of the way." Such people protest loudly at being called Nazilike, but it sounds a lot like eugenics to me.
That 45 percent probably never had to battle cancer, as my wife did in 1992, on one of those swell 80-20 private insurance plans, with a deductible. That experience hurled us into debt that we've never gotten out of to this day. Bankruptcy was actually on the table for us a couple of years ago -- fortunately, we found an alternative.
But we are like many other middle-class Americans in that, even with both of us insured, another major illness could very well plunge us into so much debt that bankruptcy would be certain. And, the insurance companies would have the complete prerogative to drop either or both of us.
That 45 percent: I shudder to think that there are so many profoundly misguided Americans. One can go back to relatively recent history and witness the fickleness of the electorate. In 1992, Clinton pulled off a plurality win, and the Democrats took both houses of Congress solidly. Two years later, the Republicans and their "Contract With America" turned the tables utterly, though not for long.
Back a bit further, in 1974 the Republican Party seemed repudiated and in tatters after Watergate. It only took six years for the Reagan right wing to turn that completely around.
I hope that Obama can stand his ground, and that the electorate doesn't prove to be that fickle in 2010. If my insurance company decides to kick me to the curb, I'd like that public option, or at least something that keeps me from going broke.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Postscript: CNN reports that at 1:03 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, at a presidential event in Phoenix, a reporter saw a man in the anti-Obama camp carrying an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. (Arizona has an open-carry law.) Are those mean-spirited lib'ruls gonna call him a Nazi?
A recent (Aug. 3-6) nationwide telephone poll by the Marist Institute of Public Opinion found that 45 percent of Americans disapprove of President Obama's handling of health care reform, while 43 percent approved. Here's a link.
Obama won the popular vote last year with 53 percent. This begs the question: What did the "swing" voters, the independents, think they were voting for when they cast ballots for Obama and other Democrats?
And, as for those who are wavering on the issue, did they not expect yet another disinformation barrage, perhaps even worse that the "Harry and Louise" campaign of 1993-94? There are many interest groups -- insurers, pharmaceutical companies, stockholders, doctors and other health care "professionals" -- who have a big stake in the status quo and fear they will lose money if a public option comes to pass. Wasn't a propaganda flood, financed by the vested interests, expected?
My disapproval of Obama's handling of this would be purely idealistic: I favor a single-payer model similar to the ones in Canada and Germany. Even the English, whose National Health Service is often vilified here, are getting highly pissed and coming to the defense of the NHS. Here's another link. No less than renowned scientist Stephen Hawking has asserted that, contrary to U.S. right-wing demagoguery, the NHS saved his life from the longtime ravages of ALS. (Yet another link.)
The idealist in me says, if "socialism" is what they have in Norway and Sweden, where do I sign up? They live longer than Americans do; their babies don't die nearly as often; and their middle class doesn't have to live in fear of bankruptcy if someone comes down with a catastrophic illness.
You don't even have to look at Scandinavian countries with hyperactive welfare states. Australia, perhaps the closest nation to the U.S. ideologically, has something resembling "socialized" medicine.
Among other developed countries in the world, you don't see any of them battling to trade in their government-run programs for the U.S. "Land of the Fee" model, do you?
Their way looks much more like the right path to me.
But -- living in America, and especially in Texas, made me stop being an idealist long ago. It's clear by now that Obama and his "allies" are going to have a hard time just putting over a public option, so single-payer will have to wait, probably until after I'm dead.
Back to the American public -- that 45 percent who disapprove. I'd wager that few of them ever had to actually USE their underperforming health insurance to battle a chronic illness. I have allergies so severe that I depend on multiple medications just to live, and the co-payments and deductibles eat up much of my income. This was not something I did to myself; I was born with allergies.
Let's talk about "death panels." I have the impression that among that 45 percent, their answer for me would be, "Just die and get out of the way." Such people protest loudly at being called Nazilike, but it sounds a lot like eugenics to me.
That 45 percent probably never had to battle cancer, as my wife did in 1992, on one of those swell 80-20 private insurance plans, with a deductible. That experience hurled us into debt that we've never gotten out of to this day. Bankruptcy was actually on the table for us a couple of years ago -- fortunately, we found an alternative.
But we are like many other middle-class Americans in that, even with both of us insured, another major illness could very well plunge us into so much debt that bankruptcy would be certain. And, the insurance companies would have the complete prerogative to drop either or both of us.
That 45 percent: I shudder to think that there are so many profoundly misguided Americans. One can go back to relatively recent history and witness the fickleness of the electorate. In 1992, Clinton pulled off a plurality win, and the Democrats took both houses of Congress solidly. Two years later, the Republicans and their "Contract With America" turned the tables utterly, though not for long.
Back a bit further, in 1974 the Republican Party seemed repudiated and in tatters after Watergate. It only took six years for the Reagan right wing to turn that completely around.
I hope that Obama can stand his ground, and that the electorate doesn't prove to be that fickle in 2010. If my insurance company decides to kick me to the curb, I'd like that public option, or at least something that keeps me from going broke.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Postscript: CNN reports that at 1:03 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, at a presidential event in Phoenix, a reporter saw a man in the anti-Obama camp carrying an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. (Arizona has an open-carry law.) Are those mean-spirited lib'ruls gonna call him a Nazi?
Thursday, August 13, 2009
A Classical Change Of Pace: The Most Magnificent Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
Mr. Hanson was one of the most underrated classical/symphonic composers of his time, mainly because he did not follow the trends of his era, between the world wars. The American concert hall was filled with much Stravinsky and Copland during that time. I have absolutely no problem with either of them. But Mr. Hanson, a Scandanavian-American from the Midwest, was a bit neglected because of his unabashed romanticism.
Some film buffs might recognize this as the piece that was played at the end of the 1979 Ridley Scott film Alien. By the way, this symphony, No. 2, "Romantic," debuted in Boston in 1930.
This one has moved me to tears. -- MJ
1993 ISSMA State Champion Carmel High School Symphony Orchestra performing Hanson's Symphony No. 2, 3rd Movement. Conducted by Thomas Dick at Valparaiso, IN.
Some film buffs might recognize this as the piece that was played at the end of the 1979 Ridley Scott film Alien. By the way, this symphony, No. 2, "Romantic," debuted in Boston in 1930.
This one has moved me to tears. -- MJ
1993 ISSMA State Champion Carmel High School Symphony Orchestra performing Hanson's Symphony No. 2, 3rd Movement. Conducted by Thomas Dick at Valparaiso, IN.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Palin Steps Up To Lead Nazilike Campaign Against Health Care Reform
By Manifesto Joe
It's a departure from historical norms, but nobody ever demonstrated that a fascist movement couldn't be led by a pretty middle-aged woman. (She's not my type, but Sarah Palin has what could be described as generic good looks.) And it's happening -- I don't think she can ever legitimately vie for high elective office again, but sundry Brown Shirt types, jackbooted thugs and brainwashed hillbillies may be lining up behind Sarah Palin.
Maybe this is why Palin resigned her Alaska governorship. It's kind of hard to lead a Nazilike movement when you've got a full-time job in Juneau.
True, she's not as articulate (or bellicose) as Limbaugh. Hell, she's not even Father Coughlin. But Klondike Hottie seems to speak for a lot of manure-headed people out there, and now I think I dig where she aims to go.
Dean Baker of Truthout is on the money when he blames what's left of our "news media" for a lot of this. Palin was given a huge pass when she publicly conjured up fictions about a "death panel" and rationing of health care while denouncing Obama administration policy plans. Traditionally, media are supposed to function as a "truth squad" and shoot down pig dung like this. Here's a link to Baker's article.
Palin apparently has enough gutter political savvy to see a movement in the making. Nazilike hooligans have been showing up at "town hall" meetings to intimidate anyone who favors health care reform, up to and including the Congress creatures themselves.
There have been some scenes that recall the fascist thuggery of Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s. On Friday, Justin Rubin of MoveOn recorded a few nuggets that show a sampling of what's been happening to members of Congress, and continues, from coast to coast:
-- Last night in Tampa, Florida, a town hall meeting erupted into violence, with the police being called to break up fist fights and shoving matches.
-- A Texas Democrat was shouted down by right-wing hecklers, many of whom admitted they didn't even live in his district.
-- One North Carolina representative announced he wouldn't be holding any town-hall meetings after his office began receiving death threats.
-- And in Maryland, protesters hung a Democratic congressman in effigy to oppose health-care reform.
The Associated Press filed a more detailed account of the right-wing marauding in a Saturday story. Here's a link to that one.
Back to Sarah Palin, I realize that Klondike Hottie has plenty of competition for leadership of the GOP's gaping primate squad. Limbaugh has been whipping them up for 20 years, and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are most decidedly in the running.
But Klondike Hottie has them beaten in one crucial area -- sex appeal. To me, her appeal is very limited -- she reminds me too much those Young Republican college women who always seemed to belong to a sorority that was called "Betas" for short.
But, Bubba apparently digs it. And he may be willing to misdirect some of his testosterone toward neo-fascist asskicking, if she gives the word. Stay tuned.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
It's a departure from historical norms, but nobody ever demonstrated that a fascist movement couldn't be led by a pretty middle-aged woman. (She's not my type, but Sarah Palin has what could be described as generic good looks.) And it's happening -- I don't think she can ever legitimately vie for high elective office again, but sundry Brown Shirt types, jackbooted thugs and brainwashed hillbillies may be lining up behind Sarah Palin.
Maybe this is why Palin resigned her Alaska governorship. It's kind of hard to lead a Nazilike movement when you've got a full-time job in Juneau.
True, she's not as articulate (or bellicose) as Limbaugh. Hell, she's not even Father Coughlin. But Klondike Hottie seems to speak for a lot of manure-headed people out there, and now I think I dig where she aims to go.
Dean Baker of Truthout is on the money when he blames what's left of our "news media" for a lot of this. Palin was given a huge pass when she publicly conjured up fictions about a "death panel" and rationing of health care while denouncing Obama administration policy plans. Traditionally, media are supposed to function as a "truth squad" and shoot down pig dung like this. Here's a link to Baker's article.
Palin apparently has enough gutter political savvy to see a movement in the making. Nazilike hooligans have been showing up at "town hall" meetings to intimidate anyone who favors health care reform, up to and including the Congress creatures themselves.
There have been some scenes that recall the fascist thuggery of Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s. On Friday, Justin Rubin of MoveOn recorded a few nuggets that show a sampling of what's been happening to members of Congress, and continues, from coast to coast:
-- Last night in Tampa, Florida, a town hall meeting erupted into violence, with the police being called to break up fist fights and shoving matches.
-- A Texas Democrat was shouted down by right-wing hecklers, many of whom admitted they didn't even live in his district.
-- One North Carolina representative announced he wouldn't be holding any town-hall meetings after his office began receiving death threats.
-- And in Maryland, protesters hung a Democratic congressman in effigy to oppose health-care reform.
The Associated Press filed a more detailed account of the right-wing marauding in a Saturday story. Here's a link to that one.
Back to Sarah Palin, I realize that Klondike Hottie has plenty of competition for leadership of the GOP's gaping primate squad. Limbaugh has been whipping them up for 20 years, and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are most decidedly in the running.
But Klondike Hottie has them beaten in one crucial area -- sex appeal. To me, her appeal is very limited -- she reminds me too much those Young Republican college women who always seemed to belong to a sorority that was called "Betas" for short.
But, Bubba apparently digs it. And he may be willing to misdirect some of his testosterone toward neo-fascist asskicking, if she gives the word. Stay tuned.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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