Author: Brian

Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is retiring Opus the Penguin. “30 years of cartooning to end. I’m destroying the village to save it. Opus would inevitably become a ranting mouthpiece in the coming wicked days, and I respect the other parts of him too much to see that happen. The Michael Moore part of me would kill the part of him that was important to his fans.” Farewell old friend.

But please, let us all become a ranting mouthpiece in the coming wicked days. They are wicked due our silence and worse without us.

McCodgerheimer’s Messy Goals, typed while viewing the second presidential debate.

McCain: I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy, so I’ll freeze all spending, lower social benefits, build nuclear plants to make jobs and store radioactive waste using the French and Japanese method, invent clean coal and a pipeline array, stop the bailout from going to terrorists, borrow five grand of your taxes for door to door health insurance sales if you post your records on the Internet, keep a trillion for the military in all four corners to secure the world’s normal lives and shopping in tiny democracies, eliminate that fancy tanker or that other waste I voted against, talk with you first, my friends, but not before invasions or when I’m standing outside bin Laden’s cave, stop leaky earmarks into local projects but keep eminent domain for casino hotels and private water and surveillance and jails, buy back your pre-crash appraised equity to help Wall Street sell new credit wrap loans, set up a commission to talk about your retirement and education losses, and consult with you people the way Ronald Reagan made those good deals with Tip O’Neil.

Oh shit America!
No nation is based on this style of junk and none go forward in this cranky swamp.

At the end of the day, my friends, second holocaust or never, McCain knows dark times and he’s running for president.

The Choice?

Be cold. The financial crisis and the trembling United States economy have dealt a hard blow to conservative economic ideology.

Be warmed. Others have written good and grand and great things about Barack Obama.

What should be the trigger, or should there be a trigger, when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?

Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet… so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period. Can we talk about Afghanistan real quick, also, though?

[link]

Washington – October 7, 2008 WB [Without Bush] – Global leaders have unanimously agreed to try again on behalf of struggling Africa. After trillions in surplus have accrued to the United States plus Europe’s revitalized economy, the stability of Asia and the success of South America’s emergent economies, attention has turned to beleaguered African nations. “Millions of children die each year. It’s time the world paid attention to those other than rich.”

McCain’s legislative record shows otherwise.

Michael Neary, president of the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association, a non-profit trade association, said McCain frequently says he supports renewable energy development, but his deeds do not match his words. McCain has voted against measures that would spur alternative sources like solar and wind.

McCain’s underwhelming support of alternative energy is well known to Arizona’s solar industry leaders, several of whom were surprised to hear the GOP presidential candidate proclaim his strong support for solar during the first debate.

McCain’s renewable energy adverts stating policies that will “transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence” are “completely false and misleading”.

McCain “has a long record of consistently voting against renewable energy” and Sarah Palin exaggerates!

A close examination of Palin’s energy background, however, reveals that the GOP vice presidential candidate has only a relatively short history of studying and working on this issue. Palin served as chairwoman of a state energy board, a position reserved for a private citizen, for 11 months. A year before running for governor, Palin joined a group of other Republicans in TV ads advocating an all-Alaska gas pipeline route, though she eventually didn’t support this in office. As governor, Palin made a series of distinctly populist energy decisions that yielded short-term political gains, rather than policies designed for the long-term benefit of Alaska.

In more than a dozen interviews over the course of a month with Alaska insiders and close observers of state politics, most say Palin does not have a deep understanding of energy policy as she has claimed on the presidential campaign trail. In fact, she’s regularly described, even by those who support her policies, as having little expertise in the area.

There are a number of specific criticisms. Palin’s been accused of taking credit for the work of her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, in pushing through oil tax policy changes; promoting policies that may not actually further her pro-drilling mantra; hiring a personal friend and college drop-out to head a $40-billion oil revenue fund; calling the gas pipeline project a success, though it may never be built, and ignoring the root causes of the state’s consumer energy problems.

The lowest presidential approval rating in Gallup Poll history.

How could it be otherwise?

Yet as if a refuge from public rejection, Bush is pumping the military budget while stripping or ignoring all others.

How could it be different?

With few supporters and Dick Cheney making the decisions in an outsourced fiasco that will haunt us for decades, Bush relies on the military.

Foreign relations and the diplomatic corps are underfunded while the military force budget increases to a ratio of 18 to 1.

In this fifth annual edition of the “Unified Security Budget,” as with the previous four editions, a non-partisan task force of military, homeland security, and foreign policy experts laid out the facts of the imbalance between military and non-military spending. The ratio of funding for military forces vs. non-military international engagement in the Bush administration’s proposed budget for the 2009 fiscal year has widened to 18:1 from 16:1 in the 2008 fiscal year. [.pdf here]

Nuts!

From a Boston Globe op ed:

IT IS HARD to believe how far this republic has fallen since President George W. Bush took office.

Eight years ago, the United States had a budget surplus, peace and prosperity reigned, and America was universally respected.

True, Bill Clinton had besmirched the office of the presidency by his self-indulgence. In his memoir, he would put down his dalliance with a White House intern to the worst of all possible motives. He did it because he could.

But that pales in comparison to what Bush has done to the country.

John McCain says, “I did everything I could to get him elected and re-elected.“

AP – John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas – a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

Oliver North was in charge of running arms shipments to the rebels called Contras financed in part by arms sales to Iran!

McCain’s ties are facing renewed scrutiny.

Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group. McCain now says he quit the group. General Singlaud says he didn’t.

McCain has several ties to ‘external’ organizations operating outside of the US Government. And few in the media have accounted for McCain’s ongoing links to criminal thug G. Gordon Liddy.

It stuns me that jingoist Republicans threaten our nation and remain contenders.

When will these utopian fools stop? By its very definition, a society works together, devising services and rules under sensible government. We are not an agriculture merely open to the winds of commerce. That’s nonsense.

Free market policies under Republicans have become mystical, and dangerous.

McCain’s free-market health care would loose a sales force into every neighborhood no nation could manage or control. Commissions will be added to administrative costs while profits remain siphoned from every family.

Ameriblog notices that top business leaders say the Republican plank will “impose particular burdens on small businesses and old-line manufacturers that are already struggling.”

“To some in the business community, this is very discomforting,” said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the Chamber of Commerce.

“The private marketplace, in my opinion, is ill prepared today with an infrastructure for an individual-based health insurance system.”

Nuts!
Using the one year budget freeze and cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s senior policy adviser, said cuts from Medicare and Medicaid programs serving seniors, poor families and the disabled have always been planned to fund the McCain health care tax credits.

Nutso!
Sarah Palin misrepresenting as usual. Palin Asserts McCain’s Health Care Plan Is Free.

“Maybe it’s radical because we don’t want the government to control it all we want the private sector we want through competition for American families to be able to afford health care. Doesn’t cost the government anything and certainly doesn’t increase anyone’s taxes.”

Competition for American families? When will this robbery end?

Why do we need regulations?

The “health insurance death spiral“, which is a drawback to McCain’s health care plans. How it works is this: As time goes on, people in a given plan get sick, and the cost to insure them rises. The insurance company sets up a new plan, offering cheaper rates, and healthy members of the old plan decide to switch to the new plan.

Those who have developed conditions, however, cannot get accepted by the new plan, so all that’s left in the old plan are people who are costly to insure, and the rates rise for that plan. As rates rise, more and more people find the costs of that plan too high for their conditions, and they drop out, reducing the plan to sicker and sicker individuals over time. Eventually, the company drops that plan altogether.

Normally, this is something practiced by the commercial health insurance plans. You’ve surely heard the ads on television that say “you cannot be singled out for a rate increase” or “rates are guaranteed”.

The death spiral is one trick they use to avoid insuring you if you become an unprofitable customer.

You bet we want our government to control health care.

Lira Tskhovrebova,
Christian Science Monitor,
“I survived the Georgian war. Here’s what I saw.”

“My friend’s elderly father tried to douse the flames set by Georgian fire on the home he had built with his hands. His leg was severed by shrapnel from Georgian weapons. He bled to death while his disabled wife crawled from their burning home.”

“I know this because I was in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, on Aug. 7 when Georgian troops marched into the city and killed my friends and neighbors. I huddled with my family in terror for three nights while Saakashvili’s tanks and rockets destroyed hundreds of our homes, desecrated cemeteries, gutted schools and hospitals.”

“When I heard the reaction of the international media they told us only about the triangle of great powers, Georgia, Russia and the United States. There was nothing about Ossetia. Nobody said anything about dead Ossetians. It made my heart sick.”

“I know that Americans are a generous and fair people. But Americans haven’t been told the truth about what happened to us.”

“Yes, I would very much like to see an international commission investigate the truth of what happened.”

Area
1,506 square miles
(about the size of Rhode Island)

Population
70,000
Ossetians: 66%
Georgians: 29%
Russians: 2%
Armenians: 1%

Economy
Total – $15 million
Per Capita – $250

The Afterlife: Letter to Stephen Dobyns
Hayden Carruth
American Poetry Review, May/Jun 1999

You live in a sinking nation, Stephen, in a stinking
Time. America is falling apart. We look down in
Astonishment, but mostly in dismay. The other day
When I met Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison
On the plaza they turned their backs on me. I
Understood them. I’m a recent arrival, tainted
With degeneracy, no matter what my personal
State of innocence or guilt. Alas, they say
They can tell it in my speech. They say the spectacle
Of presidents and professors impeached on charges
Of trivial misconduct for patently greedy
And partisan ends is more than they can stand.
Who would have thought America could become
A nation where the putsch, the coup, the revolution
Advertisement
Of the swine could prevail against the common
Will. Stephen, we conclude the common will
Isn’t strong enough, not any more, the corruption
Has reached so deep and spread so far. You
Must learn again to live in the common shame,
As in the days of slavery and the massacres of the
Natives. You must learn to live again in
Dreadful isolation, a castaway. Oh Stephen,
For the first time I’m actually glad I’ve escaped,
Even to the nullity of the afterlife, even in spite
Of all the beauty and comradeship I’ve lost.

Hayden Carruth, In Memory

What single action would do the most to improve environmental responsibility from the federal government.

“Campaign finance reform,” he said.

CLEARWATER — Constantly under the watchful eyes of security, the media wasn’t permitted to wander around inside Coachman Park to talk to Sarah Palin supporters.

When reporters tried to leave the designated press area and head toward the bleachers where the crowd was seated, an escort would dart out of nowhere and confront him or her and say, “Can I help you?” and turn the person around.

When one reporter asked an escort, who would not give her name, why the press wasn’t allowed to mingle, she said that in the past negative things had been written. The campaign wanted to avoid that possibility Monday. – Times staff writer Eileen Schulte

Here’s Steve Schmidt, “the driving force behind John McCain” – the Los Angeles Times.

Schmidt is McCain’s day-to-day operations boss.

“The Republican presidential candidate’s chief strategist has shaken up his campaign with an approach that has left many heads spinning,” write Dan Morain and Bob Drogin.

Steve Schmidt ran Bush’s 2004 ‘war room’.

Schmidt selected Sarah Palin.

Steve Schmidt was a counselor and spokesman for Vice President Dick Cheney and an accolyte of Karl Rove. “Steve, I meant what I said Thursday. Victory would have been impossible without you. Best, Karl.” Karl Rove’s nickname for Schmidt is ‘Bullet’.

He defended Palin against what he called sexist attacks, and traveled to Alaska to brief her before her first TV interviews. For three days, he was ensconced at McCain’s spread in Sedona, Ariz., helping Palin prepare for her performance on the biggest night of her career: the debate against Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Schmidt managed Roberts as chief justice and Alito as associate justice.

A map of the United States on the wall over Schmidt’s shoulder served as a low-tech tracking system. A photo of McCain was pinned to Ohio, showing the candidate was in the state that could decide the election. Schmidt saw McCain’s appearance at a German restaurant as far more valuable than the international acclaim showered on Obama’s turn on a German stage.

Schmidt was campaign manager for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With these credentials, we should have learned about this fellow earlier.

Our media is hobbled, but sometimes we see the players.

Nov 23rd 1929 – The Economist

The slump on the New York Stock Exchange, which has resulted in this great change in the monetary outlook, is one of the spectacular episodes of financial history. A prolonged upward movement, the extent of which is illustrated by some graphs which we print in a later column, has been built up over a series of years on the amazing and unexampled prosperity of America. But some two years ago the speculative movement seemed to lose all touch with reality; and in spite of occasionally vigorous but more often half-hearted, measures by the banking authorities of the United States, speculative fever spread throughout the nation and carried prices, mainly with the aid of borrowed money, to fantastic heights.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

The fall of Bank rate on Thursday by another half per cent is an outward and visible sign that the dramatic and precipitous slump of the last three weeks in Wall Street has definitely relieved the pressure on the world’s money markets which the New York situation has been exerting so continuously for the last two years.

Very few could have dared to hope…

The human cost…’My grandfather jumped off a roof in the 1929 crash’

A Black Church?

Sharing her pulpit with a witch-hunter, does Sarah realize that Pentecostalism is a flow of African Christianity to Europe and North America?

Have Pentecostalism, Will Travel,
How Sarah Palin’s religion continues to evolve around the world, by David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

Pentecostalism becomes what local people make of it, whether bureaucrats or charisma, goods or spirit, and is shaped in any way the local authorities want.

“If J. P. Morgan wanted a boat made out of papier-mâché, they would have made him a boat out of papier-mâché.”

Newsweek:
To date, experts have amassed enough evidence to demonstrate that the ship broke into three pieces, not two—before sinking, not after—and she went down faster and at a much lower angle than James Cameron would have ever guessed—all thanks to skimpy rivets and a flimsy hull.

… the problem was not just one of incompetence and poor construction.

…U.S. and British governments were throwing money at an industry that was virtually unregulated.

…the ship’s builders suspected that the ship’s hull was too flimsy, but overrode engineer.

Making the hull plating a quarter of an inch thinner and the rivets an eighth of an inch thinner than the original designs called for would reduce the ship’s weight by 2,500 tons, enabling her to cross the English Channel faster than the competition.

An investigation held after the ship sank was not made public; the heads of Harland and Wolff allowed two formal government inquiries to lay blame for the wreck on the shoulders of the ship’s captain. The lawsuits of so many victims would have bankrupted the Titanic’s owners—J. P. Morgan among them.

The Economy Crap Explained

How Wall Street went from helping people trade stocks into a bunch of cowboy hedge fund traders who didn’t even realize what they were trading, but knew they were making tons of money — so they kept borrowing to do more of it.

You are bought!

To cater to voters, “Republican presidents have been remarkably successful in timing income growth…”

Unequal Democracy debunks many myths about politics in contemporary America, using the widening gap between the rich and the poor to shed disturbing light on the workings of American democracy.

Larry Bartels – director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University – shows that increasing inequality is not simply the result of economic forces, but the product of broad-reaching policy choices in a political system dominated by partisan ideologies and the interests of the wealthy.

…elected officials respond to the views of affluent constituents but ignore the views of poor people.

…Republican presidents in particular have consistently produced much less income growth for middle-class and working-poor families than for affluent families, greatly increasing inequality.

He provides revealing case studies of key policy shifts contributing to inequality, including the massive Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the erosion of the minimum wage.

He challenges conventional explanations for why many voters seem to vote against their own economic interests, contending that working-class voters have not been lured into the Republican camp by “values issues” like abortion and gay marriage, as commonly believed, but that Republican presidents have been remarkably successful in timing income growth.

Unequal Democracy is social science at its very best. It provides a deep and searching analysis of the political causes and consequences of America’s growing income gap, and a sobering assessment of the capacity of the American political system to live up to its democratic ideals.

Bill Clinton says read these three bailout-related books:

Michael Heller’s Gridlock Economy (about hoarding resources), David M. Smick’s The World Is Curved (why things could get much worse), and Larry M. Bartel’s Unequal Democracy (on how partisanship has hurt the poor). Especially at this time every thoughtful American needs to learn as much as possible about the relationship of politics to economics.

John McCain’s campaign has been tapped to transfer its political technology to cattle ranchers.

William M. Welch, USA TODAY

Dean Anderson, an animal science researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is working on a system that will allow remote control of herds by singing commands and whispering – singing jingles, sharp commands, or mimicking bees or snakes – via radio and satellite tracking and computer data analysis.

Anderson and others involved in researching the concept of “virtual fencing” say it is getting close.

World stock markets have plunged after government bank bail-outs in the US and Europe failed to stem fears of slower global economic growth.

London’s key UK share index lost 7.85% – its biggest percentage fall since 1987.

Paris Cac-40 suffered its largest fall on record.

The Dow Jones fell below 10,000 points for the first time since 2004.

The BBC Business Editor says it’s the “the messy response of the authorities that’s to blame.”

Founder of Quadrangle investment firm, Steven Rattner points to the NYT series The Reckoning as “amongst the best stuff I’ve read on the meltdown situation. They shed important light on how we got into this mess without a lot of the hyperbole, hyperventilating and simply wrong headed notions that have diminished much of the coverage of this.

The Money Meltdown is a comprehensive site with ‘everything you need to know about the global money crisis‘ – simple articles as well as extensive analysis of previous banking crises.

International Monetary Fund economists give a dry but surprisingly readable comparison of the current banking crisis to 42 previous crises, including an overview of past government interventions and their effects.

Pope Benedict XVI says. “The global financial crisis is proof that the pursuit of money and success is pointless.”

Perhaps the frivolous pursuit of wealth – ‘they bought things they didn’t need with money they didn’t have to impress people they didn’t like’ – but our prosperity is important, our path to a peaceful world, a sustained earth.

One day we’ll grab our government and our enterprise until it behaves.

Washington Post:

In early 1980, John McCain was a man in transition — and in a hurry.

Nine months earlier, at a cocktail reception in Hawaii, he met a glamorous young heiress named Cindy Lou Hensley and, by all accounts, fell instantly in love. McCain spent months flying from Washington to Arizona pursuing this new relationship. Soon, the 43-year-old naval attache and his 25-year-old sweetheart were engaged.

There was only one complication: McCain was still married.

The AP’s Washington bureau scorned McCain as being un-American by inserting racism into this election. Mainstream media is seldom so straightforward even if this editorial is politely obscure.

Although well-known for being polite, Ann Lander’s daughter Margo Howard, who has written advice columns for years, is more direct. She says Sarah Palin is a ‘loud mouth’.

I really thought I was done talking about Sarah Palin, but life is what happens when you’re making other plans. I wish there were a word that was a cross between “appalled” and “nauseated,” because that’s what the lady’s latest outburst has me feeling. Saturday evening Drudge picked up a Breitbart story where the headline was: “Palin says Obama ‘palling around’ with terrorists.” As if this weren’t bad enough, she went on to tell whatever group she was addressing: “This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America.” Well, I’ll tell you what I see: a loud-mouth, loose-lipped nobody who is drunk on media attention and a quart low in the judgment department. I think both she and her aged “maverick” buddy owe Mr. Obama an apology for this one.

To live on the same street and to have served on a board with Billy Ayers, part of the Weather Underground when Obama was in grade school and now a professor, is not my idea of “palling around with.” I think this hockey mom/moose skinner fits perfectly into the class war she is helping perpetuate, even though she has none.

It would have far more factual validity for Obama, or a surrogate, to publicize the fact that Track, the kid who joined the Army, did so because a judge told him it was that or jail due to his dealing drugs. I have a strong hunch, however, the Obama people would never get into that. Up until now the lady has annoyed me because of her ignorance and arrogance, but now I am furious, especially when her headline-making remark from yesterday was that Obama was not “fit” to be commander-in chief. I think the McCain people better lock the lady up again and tell her to zip it, because she is not fit to even ad-lib.

Sarah Palin’s son?? “…to publicize the fact that Track, the kid who joined the Army, did so because a judge told him it was that or jail due to his dealing drugs.” Dealing??

“I support my son’s independence, and I am proud of his decision because he made it for the right reasons — to serve his country,” Palin said in the Anchorage Daily.

The Rolling Stone says in Mad Dog Palin, the scariest thing about John McCain’s running mate isn’t how unqualified she is – it’s what her candidacy says about America.

“Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin’ Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States.”

A President watching out for us!

Dear Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson,
We cannot sit on the sidelines while increasing numbers of American families face the risk of losing their homes.

And while neither the government nor the private sector acting alone is capable of quickly balancing the important interests in widespread access to credit and responsible lending, both must act and act quickly…

[A] consortium of industry-related service providers and public interest advocates may be able to bring quick and efficient relief to millions of at-risk homeowners and neighborhoods, even before Congress has had an opportunity to act. There is an opportunity here to bring different interests together in the best interests of American homeowners and the American economy.

Please don’t let this opportunity pass us by.

March 2007.

Andrew Sullivan asks, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a president who actually anticipated problems rather than grappled with them after the fact?” More here… including the full letter to the Treasury Department.

Breast cancer vaccine ‘within reach’
New study confirms disease is associated with childbirth.

Professor Valerie Beral of Oxford University, who leads the Million Women’s Study into the causes of the disease, told the Guardian the study had put beyond doubt what had long been guessed – that many breast cancers are caused by the absence of hormonal changes connected with childbirth.

Beral challenged the scientific community to turn its efforts to preventing breast cancer. While money and effort is poured into better drug treatments, hardly anyone is working on prevention.

Speaking to the Guardian, she said that while death rates have been slashed by new drugs and earlier diagnosis, the number of women getting breast cancer and having to go through traumatic surgery and chemotherapy was rising.

Genes played a part in only a very small number of cancers. The processes of giving birth and breastfeeding protected a woman from breast cancer more than anything else.

The more children a woman had and the longer she breastfed, the lower her risk was of later contracting breast cancer. Women in developed countries where small families are the norm have six times the breast cancer risk of those in rural parts of Asia with large families.

We must all be bananas!

Observer, Monday morning in London:
Sources indicated banks might choose not to participate in the bail-out as there is a growing view on Wall Street that the market may be bottoming out.