by Anthony Ioven
More bad news for the Massachusetts Insurance Industry Protection Plan (or universal health care plan, as it's usually referred to, often with a straight face).
Not only does the law mandate that uninsured residents buy health insurance — even if they can't afford it — it now turns out that over two hundred thousand residents who already have insurance are going to be required to buy more.
The lengths politicians will go to keep the insurance companies fat and happy...
by Anthony Ioven
Headline in the Guardian:
US Answer to Global Warming: Smoke and Giant Space Mirrors
You can't make this stuff up.
by Anthony Ioven
Kate/A/blog takes a look into the futures of the content, uncritical, self-absorbed young people in Generation Next:
By the time GenNext realizes fortune and fame dropped to the bottom of their "to do" list - they will be disgruntled disoriented cogsters, living in a hut full of toys on a global service kibbutz with pisspot poor funds from the privatized Social Security accounts they begged for; their gray heads clamoring "look at me, look at me" on MyOldSpace.
Whatever...
by The Guests of 604
How can we expect the military's brass to face down the terrorists when they don't have the brass to face up to the truth?
Last week, the military reported that four US soldiers were killed while fighting off an attack on a public official in Karbala. Turns out the soldiers were actually abducted in a daring, sophisticated commando-style operation and killed miles away.
There is no shame in the way these soldiers died. Why does the military think there is?
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Democracy Now has a chilling post today on our increasing dependence on mercenaries. Listen to Jeremy Scahill, author of the soon-to-be-published book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army:
And then, perhaps the most frightening employee of Blackwater is Cofer Black. This is the man who was head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center at the time of 9/11, the man who promised President Bush that he was going to bring bin Laden's head back in a box on dry ice and talked about having his men chop bin Laden’s head off with a machete, told the Russians that he was going to bring the heads of the Mujahideen back on sticks, said there were going to be flies crawling across their eyeballs. ... He is now a senior executive at Blackwater and perhaps their most powerful behind-the-scenes operative.
And a helluva guy...
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Here's an idea. Now that we're ok with torture, let's start re-arresting Americans whose convictions were overturned because they were tortured by police. Thirty years ago, no less.
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I'm sorry, but there's something not right with the official story on TWA 800. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I'll keep an open mind on it.
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It may become celebrated by criminals everywhere as the Alberto Gonzales Defense.
The administration is claiming that the ACLU, god bless their freedom-protecting souls, should drop their suit against the government for its years of warrantless wiretaps in defiance of the FISA law. Why? Because recently, Gonzales informed the citizenry that all that unconstitutional domestic spying is now a thing of the past. Promise. Scout's honor.
Too bad Nixon didn't have Gonzales on the payroll.
by Anthony Ioven
Don't know if anyone else noticed this at the SOTU last night. When Bush said we should reduce gasoline usage by 20% in the next 10 years, Cheney looked off to his left at someone in the audience, broke into a big grin, and winked.
I haven't laughed so hard since watching former Speaker Carl Albert nodding off behind President Ford.
by The Guests of 604
If a tree falls in the forest, but the media chooses not to report it, does it make a sound? Bernie Sanders tells Democracy Now about a number of serious issues that the media is underreporting, and the consequences for America.
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The president's second dumbest economic proposal (after privatizing Social Security) is making Mahablog "want to tear my hair and scream."
The plan is to tax employer-paid healthcare premiums while allowing deductions on amounts up to the national average. The alleged thinking behind this sham is that deductions will give the uninsured an incentive to buy insurance. But as Paul Krugman put it:
Wow. Those are the words of someone with no sense of what it's like to be uninsured.
Going without health insurance isn't like deciding to rent an apartment instead of buying a house. It's a terrifying experience, which most people endure only if they have no alternative. The uninsured don't need an "incentive" to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting insurance possible.
One quibble: Krugman should have stopped after "...someone with no sense."
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Cartledge posts some good info here and here about US contractors in Iraq. The MSM doesn't pay nearly enough attention to the military's second and third armies in that country.
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Serious threat or just wishful thinking?
Eighty-one-year-old Dan Tilli recently had a surprise visit from the Secret Service at his Pennsylvania home. They questioned and photographed him and searched his house.
The offense: Mr. Tilli's letter to the Editor of the Easton Express-Times about the hanging of Saddam Hussein, which ended "I still believe they hanged the wrong man."
Dangerous times require subtle language, Mr. Tilli. Next time just say, "I hope he gets everything he deserves."
by Anthony Ioven
Well here's a surprise — Massachusetts' universal mandatory "Health Care For All" program is running into cost overruns even before the program officially gets underway this July.
At $380 per person, the current estimate of the plan's average premium is over $100 above recent estimates, and is almost 100% over the $200 Mitt Romney estimated when he first proposed the plan.
The current estimates are based on bids by insurance companies.
When is government going to stop doing acrobatics to keep insurers happy while pretending to do something about this country's shameful, exclusionary health care system?
by Anthony Ioven
Maliki to Bush administration — You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.
That's what Maliki thinks about the administration's public lack of confidence in the Iraqi government. Borrowing spin that the Bush admin uses against its critics, Maliki accused the Bush leaguers of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Responding to Condoleezza Rice's comment that the Iraqi government was on "borrowed time," Maliki said:
I believe that such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American administration...
Maliki also thinks US troops could start leaving Iraq within 3 to 6 months.
Careful, Nuri. Thinking these thoughts could earn you a serious attitude adjustment session.
by Anthony Ioven
 During the 2000 Presidential campaign, George Bush immediately struck me as a little boy pretending to be a grownup. How could such a person manage to win (sort of) two presidential elections?
How could such an apparent dimwit accomplish the things he has — like getting Congress to authorize his war of aggression, convincing millions of Americans that torture is a legitimate tool to fight terrorism, and undermining the US Constitution? Sometimes I wonder if there is more to Bush than meets the eye.
Actually, though, there is less, if Jane Smiley's disturbing and well-written profile of our boy president is as accurate as it seems. She paints a picture of Bush as an empty vessel, and into that vessel the likes of James Baker, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and others pour "the deluded propaganda of the neocons, addressed first to him and through him to the rest of us."
Bush is "unusually ignorant for a president and unusually shallow" — two essential qualities for his fool's role as front-man in the hijacking of our country. But while the boy president struts from one photo op to another, firmly believing the voice he hears when he speaks is his voice, a terrible price is being paid for his childish fantasy:
He will tell himself that God is talking to him, or that he is possessed of an extra measure of courage [but] soldiers will pay the price in blood. We will pay the price in money. The Iraqis will pay the price in horror. The Iranians will pay the price, possibly, in the almost unimaginable terror of nuclear attack. Probably, the Israelis will pay the price, too.
The president seems unable to see reality as it is, but only the reality that the men behind the curtain have built for him. That's the definition of madness.
by Anthony Ioven
 Apparently some teachers in Federal Way, Washington got it in their heads that their job is to, you know, teach, and a few of them saw educational value in showing Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, to their students.
But one parent was having none of it. After his complaints to the school department, the film can no longer be shown except with permission from the principal and superintendent, and then only if the teacher agrees to present a "credible, legitimate opposing view."
Why the paranoia, you might ask? Because:
Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore.
Thus spake Frosty Hardison, whose email led to the restrictions. Hardison, who believes the earth is 14,000 years old, is a parent of seven. Something tells me he drives an SUV, too. But not to the drug store.
by Anthony Ioven
I thought the story was apocryphal — about the man who watched the twin towers fall on 9/11 and took some comfort in telling himself, Thank God we have a Republican in the White House.
But such a creature actually exists, in the body of one Rod Dreher, a conservative columnist for The Dallas Morning News and a contributor to the National Review.
But after listening to the president's surge escalation speech the other night, Dreher had something of an epiphany, and talked about it on NPR:
As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool's errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.
...
As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
...
I had a heretical thought for a conservative — that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word — that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot — that they have to question authority.
Welcome to the world, kid.
You can read a partial transcription of Dreher's broadcast on Glenn Greenwald's site, and a great post expanding on Dreher's duh-moment at Mahablog.
by Anthony Ioven
If you think that the Dems, fresh from their November election victory, are finally going to start kicking ass and taking names over Iraq and the botched War on Terror, you better think again.
According to today's Boston Globe:
House Democratic leaders yesterday outlined plans to try to force the Bush administration to close the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba...
Rep. Murtha claims that the closing are necessary "to restore our credibility worldwide."
Sounds good, until you give it two seconds' thought and realize that we'd just be moving the prisoners someplace else, no doubt under the same conditions of abuse and denial of basic rights — rights like actually bothering to charge them with some sort of, you know, crime.
This is how the Dems plan to spend the next two years — cynically making political hay for 2008 while Americans and Iraqis continue to die in a war that never should have happened. And by the way, a war that happened with the Dems' spineless complicity in 2002.
by Anthony Ioven
Yesterday, Keith Olbermann really ripped Bush a new one:
Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.
And that brings to mind a song:
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep, neck deep,
Soon even a tall man will be over his head.
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool says to push on.
by Anthony Ioven
 I'm confused. In the first sentence of his surge escalation speech tonight, President Bush warned that the "struggle" in Iraq has a direct bearing on "our safety here at home."
A little later, he spun off a nightmare scenario of "the consequences of failure" in Iraq — "Islamic extremists" toppling friendly governments in the Middle East. "Chaos." Iran building nukes. Terrorists planning and launching more attacks on American soil (with the requisite 9/11 reference inserted here). The dire predictions ended with this blunt warning:
For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.
America, this is serious. If we lose in Iraq, bad things are going to happen, right here at home. Clearly, losing — what the Democrats call a phased withdrawal — is not an option.
But here's the confusing part:
America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people.
What? America's commitment to the "safety of our people" is not open-ended? No, of course that's not what he meant. He's talking about America's commitment to Iraq. Bush gave the Iraqis fair warning that if the they don't stand up, and pretty damned soon, we're going to stand down anyway.
But wait a minute — didn't he just say that the safety of America depends on victory in Iraq? If that's true, we can't walk away from Iraq. Not now, not a year from now or 10 years from now.
So this 20,000-troop "surge" will be just the first installment of a phased escalation, until finally, after a decade or more passes and 58,000 American lives are lost, we do what we should have done in 2007 (and what we did do in 1975).
This contradiction exposes the fundamental illogic and dishonesty of Bush's so-called Iraq strategy. All it's likely to do is make 2007 the bloodiest and most horrifying year yet.
We'll win the battles, but we'll lose the war.
by Anthony Ioven
I'm shocked:
Scientific research on soft drinks, juices, and milk was four to eight times more likely to yield health results favorable to companies if it was sponsored by the food industry than research with no corporate ties...
by Anthony Ioven
America is, to put it kindly, of two minds about democracy. We take pride in promoting and defending democracy throughout the world, except in countries that have the nerve to put its own interests ahead of ours. Those democracies have got to go.
And just by coincidence, these "bad" democracies so richly deserving of regime change also have the bad habit of putting their own interests ahead of the interests of behemoth, multi-national corporations that operate there. An article in yesterday's Contra Costa Times entitled When democracy gets in the way, the U.S. squashes it cites two mid-20th-century examples with tragic consequences stretching over decades — Guatemala (fruit interests) and Iran (oil interests).
America's democracy hypocrisy is no secret. But this line in the article really struck me:
Americans might consider the possibility that some elements of our nation might not tolerate democracy at home if it threatens their interests.
In fact, hasn't this already begun?
by Anthony Ioven
According to news reports, the president's speech this week on the Iraq troop surge escalation will include plans to put Iraqis to work rebuilding the country:
The Bush proposal also will include a $1 billion jobs program for Iraqi civilians...
Plans include direct funding for such projects as water and sanitation system repairs, street cleaning, and painting schools, as well as money for job training.
WTF?
Atrios:
I thought that's what we'd spent the last close to four years doing...
[T]hrowing huge amounts of money at Iraqis to rebuild the country is the obvious thing to do. It was such the obvious thing to do that some of us were a bit confused when we realized they weren't doing it. Had there been a massive public works program which hired Real Live Iraqis instead of whoever the hell Halliburton was importing to do the work, and instead of painting the goddamn schools they'd managed to turn the lights on for more than a couple of hours per day there's some chance things could've worked out a bit better.
by The Guests of 604
The Kurds must be delighted by the swift execution of Saddam Hussein, the mass-murderer of the Kurds. Or so you might think. From Kurdish Media:
Saddam's hastened execution is perhaps the greatest travesty to occur for the Kurds in their written history.
Read the article. The sense of indignation and injustice is palpable.
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I'm not sure the Iraqis have the hang (pun intended) of this democracy thing yet:
Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki has said his government could review relations with any country which criticized the execution of ex-leader Saddam Hussein.
Tolerance of opposing ideas is the cornerstone of freedom, Nouri. Or was that just the puppetmaster talking?
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Speaking of the puppetmaster...
If Iraq isn't officially in an all-out civil war just yet, it soon will be:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday that Iraq's armed forces are set for an assault on Baghdad to take out militias and rogue security forces...
The announcement came two days after al-Maliki and President Bush spoke by video conference for two hours.
Sit, Nouri. Lie down. Roll over. Good boy...
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This strikes me as a bad idea:
Democrats mull trying to cap Iraq troop levels
The administration would like nothing more than to blame the ultimate defeat in Iraq on the Democrats. And providing the admin with the excuse that the Dems lost the war by tying their hands is the admin's get-out-of-jail-free card.
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Lift, separate – and protect:
Real-life wonder bra stops bullet
by Anthony Ioven
Molly Ivins is asking some great questions:
What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?
That once envied and admirable American spirit has got to be around here somewhere. Maybe Bush can do a skit about it at this year's Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner.
by Anthony Ioven
Does anyone else find this troubling?
Deval Patrick, who will be sworn in Thursday as Governor of Massachusetts, yesterday spoke out against putting the question of gay marriage on the 2008 ballot:
Patrick described the issue as a "question of conscience" and said same-sex marriage is a civil right that should not be subject to a referendum. He said the question of civil rights outweighs the provisions providing for citizens petitions to amend the constitution.
There's more than a suggestion of elitism here — that the legislature knows best and the voters are just the great unwashed.
Referendum questions give us the opportunity to practice democracy in its purest form. But are there some questions that ordinary citizens just can't be trusted with?
by Anthony Ioven
Paul Krugman on universal health care:
Some say that we can't afford universal health care, even though every year lack of insurance plunges millions of Americans into severe financial distress and sends thousands to an early grave. But every other advanced country somehow manages to provide all its citizens with essential care. The only reason universal coverage seems hard to achieve here is the spectacular inefficiency of the U.S. health care system.
Americans spend more on health care per person than anyone else - almost twice as much as the French, whose medical care is among the best in the world. Yet we have the highest infant mortality and close to the lowest life expectancy of any wealthy nation. How do we do it?
Better question — how do the politicians and insurance companies manage to keep a straight face when dealing with such gullible marks like us?
Americans never let the facts get in the way of a comforting delusion. I mean, c'mon, we're the greatest civilization ever to bless the damn earth, aren't we? Our health care system must be better than all the rest, just because it's ours. And if 47 million Americans can't afford health care, well there must be something wrong with them.
by Anthony Ioven
Many disturbing scenarios have been offered about the reasons the Bush administration so badly wanted Saddam Hussein dead — for example, here, here, here, here, and even here — but this statement cited by William Rivers Pitt is most disturbing of all:
Immediately after the battle [around Halabja in 1988, between Iraq and Iran] the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."
Indignant emphasis mine. The statement comes from an NYT op-ed piece published in January 2003, well before the invasion of Iraq.
The Bush administration and the American media have hammered into the American psyche that Saddam Hussein deliberately gassed to death anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000 innocent Kurds in Halabja. That this widely accepted "fact" might not actually be true is given very little attention in America, virtually spoken of only in whispers. Why? Pitt offers this:
[T]hose who run this nation well know that an America focused on a shared and frightening enemy is an America easily distracted and manipulated.
What else explains how Americans can so blithely accept the deaths of possibly one million Iraqis over the last 15 years, half of them children, as a consequence of our actions?
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UpdateAmerica.com
604.UpdateAmerica.com
January's Posts
Faking It in Massachusetts
Smoke and Mirrors
Generation Next
Sure, George, Sure
Keeping the Customers Satisfied
Support Our (Iraqi) Troops
The Madness of Little George
A Trojan Horse in Our Schools?
A Conservative Grows Up
Still Spineless After All These Years
'Waist Deep in the Big Muddy'
Up Next: Tet
'I Paid for that Microphone!'
Spreadin' Liberty Too Thin
Better Late Than Never
Nope, Not Under Here
Let the People Vote
To Your Health
Truths Told in Whispers
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