Racist Judge apologizes for people finding out he is a racist

TRIBUNE PHOTO/ RION SANDERS with text added

As reported in the Great Falls Tribune, Federal judge Richard Cebull recently forwarded a blatantly racist email and got caught.  What's his defense?  He said "It was not intended by me in any way to become public," and that  he's sorry if anyone was offended.  It seems to me that not intending for something to become public, and being a racist are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, his racism, and specifically keeping that racism a secret, would be very strong motivators to not have this go public.

Bottom line: U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull is a racist.

From The Answer Sheet

By Kathie Marshall

In May 2005, I wrote an op-ed for one of our Los Angeles newspapers, in which I vented my frustrations about the state of education in my community. Here’s some of what I said:

“I’ve been an educator in the Los Angeles area for more than 30 years in grades two through eight, including general education, second-language learner, gifted, special-education and intervention students. I’ve taught some of the wealthiest families to some of the poorest, in both private and public schools. For the past four years I have been a literacy coach at a middle school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, working with teachers and students to improve instruction and learning. And I have to tell you, many things that have taken place in education over the last decade have me mad!”

Read the rest at The Answer Sheet.

Why are Democrats so stupid?

Put another mark in the "no shit Sherlock" column as the Washington Post reveals the results of yet another poll that shows a majority of Americans would like to see taxes on the very richest Americans go up, while keeping benefits like Medicare in their current form.  (http://wapo.st/g4bGH5)

To progressive Americans, this comes as no surprise as we have been yelling as loud and as often as we could for the past 10 years.  Americans are sick and tired of seeing massive tax cuts benefiting the likes of Warren Buffet, Steve Forbes, and the Walton Family, while the middle class sees its wages frozen and its benefits being chipped away.

As much as it pains me to borrow from the GOP talking points, this really does highlight a massive failure of leadership from President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the previous Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  All three of them had the means to cut out the tax cuts for the richest 1% at any point in time between January 2009 and December 2010.  This could have been their big election issue going into last Fall.  They could have forced Republicans to vote NO on tax cuts for the middle class and held their feet to the fire...but instead they blinked as they always do.

The excuses that have come out of the Democratic party since the Fall elections have been that they had to act to save tax relief for the middle class.  But that's only because they failed to act on it sooner.  The first day back after the summer recess Democrats should have been hammering away at the GOP to pass tax relief for the middle class and the middle class only.  Leave out the estate tax breaks that will save the Walton family over $34 billion.  Forget about the keeping the marginal tax rates for the richest 1% lower than it's ever been since the creation of the income tax (it's not like any of them pay that rate anyway http://bit.ly/dL6mer).

But no, that's not what they did.  Instead, Obama, Reid and Pelosi tried to hang on by moving to the center.  And we saw how well that worked out for the Donkey.  One would think after the "shellacking" Obama and the Dems took in 2010 they would find some new vocabulary and really hammer home to people the importance of getting tax rates back to at least where they were under Clinton, if not pushing them back to where they were under the great Conservative himself, Ronald Reagan.  As Anthony Weiner said to Mike Huckabee "why should the guy working 70 hours a week on a construction job pay a bigger percentage in taxes than the do-nothing child of a millionaire who inherits a massive fortune?" (It's a really great clip: Anthony Weiner vs Mike Huckabee)

Not Far Enough...to the left

In the aftermath of Bloody Tuesday, in which over 60 Congressional seats, 19 State Legislatures, and at least 11 Governors have gone from blue to red, the pundits are saying over and over again that this is the result of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid cabal going too far to the left for the American people to stomach. While that feeds a great narrative if you are arguing that the GOP has a big mandate to roll back what little progress has been made over the past two years, it misses the reality of what happened this election. President Obama and the gang were not too far to the left, they weren't even on the left. They were barely in the middle.

As this NYTimes blog from last year points out, many progressives were very upset with the administration for its caving to Republicans and conservative Democrats in the healthcare legislation that violated many of the campaign promises then candidate Obama made in 2008.

Once again, the GOP have managed to move the markers for what constitutes the "left" and "center" of political discourse. By consistently lashing out at policies proposed by the administration and the Democrats in Congress as being far to the left when in fact they are right of center, the Republicans have waged an incredibly successful public relations campaign and if polled, many Americans would believe that the Affordable Care Act was far to the left but that's without a single payer system or even a public option. How can something so vehemently decried by real progressives as over compromised and a gift to the insurance industry also be some Maoist takeover of the American government?

What caused this dramatic swing in the electorate was not so much people changing their voting patterns from 2008 but rather so many of the Democrats' key supporters being disgusted with the horse trading that went on in the last year and a half. African Americans voters and young voters who show solid support for the President did not come out to vote on Tuesday. While some of that can surely be chalked up to the unreliability of young voters to show up at the polls with some celebrity urging them on, it looks like a larger part of it was simply voter disappointment with how the Democrats had compromised their legislation and themselves in the short time that they held massive majorities in both houses of Congress. This disappointment resulted in much lower turnouts in those core constituencies.

This further boosted Republican outcomes because those who disagreed with the fundamentals of helping your fellow citizens and ensuring that everyone has access to health care regardless of what pre-existing conditions exist were clearly fired up to come out and vote for the GOP, but those who were upset with the Democrats and saw little differences between the two parties are the ones who stayed home. And while I personally believe that not voting is one of the most cowardly acts a citizen in a democracy can commit, I understand the frustration that made people feel that packing the bong, playing another round of Madden on the xbox, and proving pundits right that young voters are unreliably AKA should be ignored, was the best thing to do on Tuesday.

The Democrats lost on Tuesday because the early economic predictions of bad times to come were too cautious, the stimulus was too small, the health care reform too conservative, and the financial reform too toothless. The Democrats, in an effort to woo independents who are too stupid to stick with one political direction for more than 2 years, lost their base and were abandoned on election day by the people who sent them there in 2008.

The Real Difference: Tea Baggers vs Anti-war Rallies

NOTE: I started writing this a week or so ago and forgot to pick it back up so I figured I should just post it now and finish it later.

In an article today from Foxnews.com, the case is made that while there have been some nasty things shouted or written on posters by the Tea Party movement, it is no different than the nasty things that were said of President Bush during the anti-war protests leading up to and during the unnecessary Iraq war. While on the face of it that may seem true there are some striking differences that people should keep in mind when comparing the two.

MOTIVE

When millions of people took to the streets AROUND THE WORLD in 2003 to oppose a US invasion of Iraq they did so not over trumped up charges of falsified birth certificates or allegations that "dubya" wanted to kill our grannies, but rather on the basis that the claims of WMDs were likely false or at least incorrect, and that going to war would result in killing millions of people (and thousands of Americans). Those have all been shown to be correct at this point, and were it not for the clever misinformation campaign led by Vice President Cheney to link Iraq/Al Queda/9-11 in public statements to confuse the public, we might not have had to go into Iraq.

The Tea Baggers, on the other hand, have as their end goal to lower the taxes on the rich bring back the usage of the N-word into the casual American vernacular. I would say that in a thoughtful society, a little more deference must be given to those trying to stop the unnecessary deaths of millions, against those in the highest income earners wanting to save a few bucks.

BUSH LIED - IRAQIS DIED

Another one of the Tea Baggers' claims is that President Obama is illegitimate and lying to the American people about his citizenship and his religion. While we here at PutridPundits think that religion is silly and whatever flavor of that silliness should never be the basis for support or opposition to a particular candidate, we do recognize how to the casual observer these claims might sound similar to those leveled against Bush after the contentious 2000 election. So yes, FOXNEWS would be correct in saying that both the anti-war protesters from the Bush era and the Tea Baggers today are accusing the President of lying and being illegitimate, but the substance behind those lies is important to investigate before saying they're all equal.

President Obama has been accused, way back during the campaign, of being a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya. Despite how ridiculous such allegations were, and despite releasing documents no white candidate for President has ever been so incessantly hounded to produce, there are still these fools shouting about Obama's mother secretly giving birth in Kenya and then Hawaii issuing a false birth certificate. Meanwhile, the accusations of Bush's illegitimacy stemmed from the contested Florida election in which recounting suspect ballots was prevented by George Bush's Florida campaign co-chair.

Obama sneaks in and out of Afghanistan

This weekend President Barack Obama snuck out of Washington with a Blackberryless entourage of journalists and flew to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for a "surprise" visit. By calling it a "surprise" visit it almost seems as though that isn't the only kind of visit a President can make to Afghanistan or Iraq. When did President Bush ever announce ahead of time that he was heading to Iraq or Afghanistan? Will Obama ever have the luxury of declaring when and where he will visit? The fact that neither President has, in the 9 years of occupation, been able to announce a trip to that country is a black eye for the whole worthless mission of invading and occupying Afghanistan. If an American President is unable to safely visit either of our occupied countries without sneaking in and out, then clearly these endeavors have failed and we should acknowledge those failures and withdraw. Every day that American forces remain in Afghanistan and Iraq past January 20th 2009, is another day of failure that belongs to President Obama.

Health Insurance Reform: Learning to Settle

After 15 months of discussions, debates, procedural votes, false hope inspiring votes, disappointing special elections, televised summits, gut wrenching compromises, childish use of props, fear mongering television pundits, and Dennis Kucinich being force fed a bowl of shit that he had to eat on camera, we are now approaching the latest best hope for some sort of health insurance reform. Let me say clearly that the current bills suck. They are absolutely the wrong way to fix health care in America but it's all we've got right now so get on those phones and call your representatives to support the vote.

What's wrong with the bill?

Leave aside the twitter #hcr tag for the moment and recognize that this bill is not Health Care Reform, but rather Health Insurance Reform. This bill attempts to fix the massive problems in the health care system without fundamentally changing the system itself. What we need to overhaul the American health care system so that it is fair, efficient, and accessible to all. By mandating that people purchase insurance without the guarantee of a public option, the bill will ensure that tax payers money will be directed to the insurance companies which will, at some point, trickle down to the doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and hospitals that treat patients. By not creating a single payer system the bill will continue to guarantee that insurance companies get to keep a third of all monies spent on health care as company profits. And if the Stupak language or measures similar to it are included in the bill, it will force private insurance companies to drop, or make so complicated that most women will not purchase, coverage for abortions. The Stupak language, going even further than the Hyde Amendment would require women to not only sign up separately for abortion coverage, but would have to pay a separate premium for that service if the need should ever arise. This has nothing to do with their claims that they want to prevent federal money from paying for abortions, and everything to do with their goals to outlaw the procedure, something that should not be tangled into an already complex issue like health care reform. Simply put, this bill does not go far enough to effectively reform health care, so if we were at this point in March of 2009 I would advocate that we kill this bill and start over, but we are not in March of 2009.

If Medicare is so wonderful, why don't we expand it to everyone?

Thanks to Senator Coburn's (R-OK) obstructionist move back in December, the American public was denied the opportunity for even the debate on a single payer system. This was really too bad because one of the first things the Republicans did to oppose health care reform was to talk of the money that would be taken from Medicare, America's first single payer system. It was ironic and refreshing to see the very same people who year after year have attempted to kill the federal government's most popular program wax day and night on the cable news channels about how important Medicare is and why we must protect it. It would have been wonderful if, there on the Senate floor, members could have been asked to their faces if Medicare is so wonderful, why then are we denying it to the majority of the country because they aren't 65 yet? Why not expand Medicare to those 55 and up as a buy-in program? Or 45 and up? Or, better yet, expand it to everyone and stop wasting the 20% that the insurance companies are spending on CEO salaries, and unnecessary paperwork that wastes doctors' time.

But if it's wrong, why should Congress pass it?

As has been said over and over by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, we cannot afford to wait any longer to address the fundamental flaws in our privatized health care system. Too many people are suffering from the tactics and games that the insurance companies are playing with the lives of the American people. Too many people are forced to stay with terrible insurers because they know that with their pre-existing conditions, they will never get coverage elsewhere. Too many people are stuck working jobs they hate because the fear of not being able to find insurance in the individual market is daunting, and rightly so. Too many people are ignorant of the fact that America is spending far more per capita on its health care than any other developed country and not getting better outcomes. Too many people are falling for the Glen Becks and Sean Hannitys who spew lies castigating publicly provided health care while simultaneously pretending to defend medicare. We need Congress to pass this bill so that we can move on and deal with one of the many other issues that the country should be working on at the moment.

Presenting, the next Senator from the state of Massachusetts....

Way to go Massholes! To all those morons that complained that Obama had not delivered enough change yet, and that things were moving too slowly in Congress, you should be real happy now. With the GOP gaining their crucial 41st vote, all legislation will now suffer one of two fates: grind to a halt or get gutted to the the point where it is no longer worth passing.

One such piece of legislation is the current health care reform bill, aka, the health insurance bill. I call it that because in order to get even members of their own party on board, the Democratic leadership tore out the soul of health care reform and turned what could have been a great advance in American politics and society into little more than a handout to insurance companies. With Scott Brown joining the Senate, Democrats will either need to find something incriminating on Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, or rip out even more of the health insurance bill.

The biggest problem with the health care bill (Senate version) is that it has already been compromised to death. The American people are proving themselves to be dumber than a box of rocks by buying (and then stuffing into their mouths) the echo chamber feces that tells them that this bill was written by Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. The false outrage at things like Harry Reid's comments and the efforts to provide health care to America's poor is sickening and needs to stop.

But it won't. The party of "No" is finding power in the ability to deny and delay. Tactics that would not work if people would simply pay attention and turn off American Idol, Top Chef, or the 20th season of Flavor of Love. Chances are that come November, the Republicans will be hammering home the fact that the Democrats haven't done anything despite majorities in both houses of Congress and the oval office. And the public will continue to eat that shit up and holler back "yeah! they haven't done anything!"

*****AUTHOR'S NOTE*****

The closing to this post contains language not suitable for all audiences. If you do not want to see any offensive language you may as well just stop reading here. Take a look at C-SPAN or Google News.

If you still want to read on, don't complain about the language used.

*****AUTHOR'S NOTE*****

So fuck you Joe Lieberman for dragging your feet before Christmas.

And fuck you Ben Nelson for trying to block insurance companies from covering abortions.

And fuck you Max Baucus for gutting the public option.

And fuck you Tom Coburn for forcing the reading of Senator Sanders' amendment and then leaving the room while it was being read.

And finally, fuck you Senate Democrats for being spineless, gutless, cowardly little wimps who can't even get a decent bill passed with 60 votes. Maybe you need to learn some lessons from your colleagues across the aisle who seem to be able to pass whatever piece of shit legislation Karl Rove and Dick Cheney could dream up.

What to do about: Banker's Bonuses

Mere minutes after the capitulater in chief held a special conference with the country's top bankers it became apparent that his tough talk on CBS's 60 Minutes was nothing more than talk. While he seemed to be quite upset about the large bonuses being paid out by banks that have just repaid their TARP money, he seems unwilling or unable to do anything about them.

President Obama's ability to think things through may be the biggest hindrance to really nailing the bankers and their obscene bonuses to the wall. After all, how can he seriously denounce a practice that his own economic advisors have helped to create and reinforce during their years in the private sector? No, Obama does not really want to do anything about the bonuses but rather would like to appear, to the American public at least, that he is angry and that he is going to make them do something good for the country to make up for it. Good luck America.

What he really needs to do is follow the UK's example and say "fine, you want to give out big bonuses? Well, we'll take big taxes." The UK is likely to raise over a half a billion pounds by slapping a 50% tax on all discretionary bonuses over £25,000. One of the biggest arguments the banks are making right now to support their bonuses is that if they don't pay them, they'll lose their top talent. Well, with a measure like this all banks will have to reconsider doling out those big bonuses or risk paying dearly in new taxes. If they still want to give their top executives those hundred million dollar bonuses they can, but then the taxpayers (we the people) get a taste.

Explaining fossils to creationists just isn't worth the effort

Chants of "Socialist!", "Communist!", and "health care rationer!" abound if you turn on the news and see a Tea Bagger rally taking place. Sadly, the irony of seeing simultaneous accusations of fascism and socialism on the same posters long since ceased to be amusing. As the debate on the Health Care reform bills meanders through the Senate, like a carton of molasses spilling across a frozen pond, the opponents of bringing America's health care system in line with the rest of the developing world continue to throw in new challenges and obstacles.

Senator Nelson has stated that he would like to put forward an amendment "based on a proposal by Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). The measure would prevent the public insurance plan from covering abortion. It would also prohibit any woman who got the tax credit from enrolling in a plan that covers the procedure." He has made clear that he will not vote for the bill if it does not include these restrictions. Fine! So be it. Let him go home to his 156,000 constituents in Nebraska that currently lack health insurance (www.familiesusa.org). Let him tell those families, and those 35,000 uninsured children that he doesn't want them to have health insurance because someone somewhere might try to get an abortion.

The unfortunate reality is that both the Stupak amendment and any potential other anti-choice amendments that are put forward will not ultimately matter for real meaningful reform. If a single payer plan were still on the table, and this asinine ban on abortion funding would mean that large numbers of Republicans would finally start voting for their constituents' interests instead of in the interest of their next campaign contributions, then I might even be ok with it, in the hopes that it would be repealed or declared unconstitutional down the line. But to give in on the issue of choice, when the reform that is taking place is no longer even Health Care reform, but Health Insurance reform makes my stomach churn.

For the past 30 years we have had to keep fighting the same fights that were thought to have been won already. The problem isn't even with the ridiculous views of the Sarah Palins and the Sam Brownbacks who probably think the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago. Don't get me wrong, that's a serious problem and the millions of Americans that actually believe that nonsense doesn't help our scientific standing in the world, but the real problem stems from the turncoat, traitorous, backstabbing, shortsighted Democrats like Ben Nelson. A line must be drawn! These people need to be cast out and purged. Donations to their campaigns from any DNC or President Obama supporters should come to an end, and they should be left to rot in the beds they've made.

If they have such serious qualms with the efforts to make Health Care something that all Americans experience and can afford, then they should vote no on the bill itself, but they should stop this nonsense of holding up the bill with non-filibustering filibusters. Allow it to come to a vote and VOTE NO if your conscience demands. Democratic senators, no matter their view on health care reform, should not be trying to stop the vote itself with procedural wrangling.

Finally, I wish that those fighting for meaningful change, like the great Senators from Vermont, Leahy and Sanders, could organize their allies and lash back at the disinformation machine that has confused so many Americans this past year. If opponents are concerned about rationed care or medical services being denied due to Washington bureaucrats then they should be equally upset about the "rationing" of OBGYN services through the Stupak amendment. If people are concerned about the rationing of medical care then attack the Stupak amendment as a slippery slope towards bureaucrats, and not doctors, deciding what treatments can and cannot be provided to a patient.

President Obama is supposed to have the most cunning team ever assembled to deal with "the message." If only that were actually true.

Obama's 30000 mistakes

Do not be alarmed. You have not accidentally stumbled across some ridiculous top 30000 list written by the great minds of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. I am not going to spew out 30000 ways that Barack Obama is trying to kill your grandma and rob your paycheck. I'll leave that kind of hackish nonsense to the triumvirate of stupidity that dominate FoxNews. Instead, this is one last plea for President Obama to save his administration and his legacy from making the biggest mistake of his first term: calling for the deployment of 30000 additional American soldiers to Afghanistan.

As Jonathan Schell details in his fantastic article in the November 30th issue of The Nation, there were plenty of things that Johnson and his team knew going into the Vietnam deployments that, had the people known, should have changed the course of history in that unfortunate fiasco. It is all too likely that Obama's team of advisors are seeing a similarly pessimistic outcome from this Afghan troop deployment but for some reason, believe that it is the only way to defend against the salacious accusations that he is "soft on terror."

Democrats need to dig deep, find their balls (or lady balls where appropriate) and present a real alternative to the hawkish war mongering that has dominated this country for far too long. The most courageous step President Obama could take today, contrary to what Glenn "the weeper" Beck says, would be to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan and urge our NATO allies to do the same.

By removing foreign soldiers from Afghanistan, President Obama would deal a momentous blow to Al Qaeda and other "terrorist" recruiting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The vast majority of our "enemies" in those countries are either nationalists who are opposed to foreign occupation, mercenaries attacking the NATO forces for pay, or a mix of the two. If we removed the foreign occupier for the region then both the motivation, and the money (read Aram Roston's piece in the same issue of The Nation) would dry up.

Certainly, if someone proposes a full withdrawal some ill informed but well meaning person might scream "but what of the women?" Or someone else who recognizes that little progress has been made but still sees some women attending school and being set free from the captivity of the home might say "we can't just abandon those women who we have told to go to school." Sadly, that is exactly what we must do. Not just for our sake, or the sake of our soldiers, but for those women as well. By propping up a corrupt regime that passes laws that legalize rape and legitimize the oppression of Afghan women we are hurting the women more than most Westerners realize. Malalai Joya, who has spoken out against the current puppet government does not see any benefit for women in NATO's continued presence. As she says "Democracy never comes by occupation. You cannot give it with cluster bombs."

People who throw shit for a living, may as well live in a house made of shit

Karl Rove's brave expose on the Obama administration's use of the "Friday news dump" is laughable when you consider how the administration he lied and cheated for was no stranger to the practice of dropping bad news on a Friday afternoon or evening.

Nor, for that matter is the concept of the "Friday news dump" a new discovery in any way, shape or form. One of the first episodes I remember watching of The West Wing was about exactly that, the Friday afternoon release of bad news.

So why is Rove doing this? Is it because he is a true journalist looking to uncover some fiendish plot by the present administration? No! It's because he's a scum sucking dirtbag who is not only a hack for the conservative agenda but is himself crafting that agenda. What he does is not in the interest of informing the public, or even sharing his opinions. His objective is to drum up opposition to President Obama any way he can, by saying anything, and doing everything, whether he believes it or not.

This is the biggest problem with the way that hacks for all parties and interests have been working these days. Perhaps this was always the case, but it seems to me that a very large number of mouthpieces on all sides have been saying a lot of crap they clearly don't personally believe, but pretend that they do, in the hopes of influencing the dumb public that doesn't bother to pay any attention to the issues at hand. I would like to see more open and honest debate of the issues so that those too busy, tired, or uninformed can still make decent decisions.

Instead of opposing health care reform on the basis that it will hurt Medicare (a program that you probably have opposed at every turn until now), speak your mind and be honest that you are happy to see millions of Americans die of easily preventable causes if they cannot afford insurance premiums and copays to get the treatments they need, all so that the richest 1% can keep those extra billions from the tax man.

How about, instead of running in circles screaming "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" because we might have a deficit from some responsible social spending, you take a look at your own record and all the deficits you helped create by launching 2 wars and giving sweetheart deals to your buddies' companies. If deficits are so important to you, why do you keep voting for supplemental spending bills that drive it up higher?

And when you huff and puff all day about the sanctity of life and try to restrict and abolish access to abortions, but then cheer when a lunatic kills a doctor, or don't give the million plus lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan a second thought, you sound ridiculous.

So shut your trap Karl, and quit calling people out for the same shit that you pulled during Bush's eight years in the oval office.

If you don't like abortions then don't get one

Now that the massive Health Reform bill is shaping up to be something everyone can hate, the anti-choicers are clearly overdue for a smackdown. Unfortunately due to that magical mix of cowardice and inaction that have become the Democrats' rallying call, it's looking like women's reproductive rights are about to get backhanded into last century.

While an LA Times OP-ED downplays the notion that the Stupak Amendment is a total victory for the anti-choice forces, it still points out that "it's undeniable that the amendment threatens the availability of insurance coverage for elective abortions for the working poor and lower middle class." By accepting this amendment into the final bill, Congress will be stripping those strata of society the ability to receive an abortion, while keeping it within reach of the wealthy.

People across the nation should be outraged by this, even if they are afflicted with a crippling mental defect that prohibits logic and reason from taking root (religious belief), by its very class oriented approach at limiting medical services. Supposing various other groups decided to take this approach to the health care reform bill, there are a whole range of other medical procedures and services that could be whittled out.

Those that eat healthy and exercise regularly might not see any good reason for plans receiving federal money to be providing care for heart surgeries, diabetes, or other ailments related to an unhealthy lifestyle. Similarly, the argument could be made that smokers should have to pay for any lung cancer treatments out of pocket as well. Perhaps lobbyists for women's issues should request that funding for prostate cancer come directly from the patients as well. Equally absurd as the "abortion rider" being proposed would be "drug rehab rider", or a "mental health supplemental" because they are all things that one doesn't plan for.

What's even more troubling to those of us who actually want real reform that produces an environment of universal access to health care (not insurance) is that these provisions are being placed in the bill under the auspices of winning over votes from across the aisle. But like previous attempts to reach out the opposition, this isn't going to succeed in getting more than a handful of Republican votes, some of whom would have voted for the reform without the amendment. It's time for the Democrats to start acting like, as former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones put it, "assholes" so that they can get shit done. It is a disheartening slap to the face that President Bush with 51 seats in the Senate was able to get so much regressive legislation passed but President Obama with 59-60 "fellow" Democrats can't get the most basic of progressive initiatives passed.

The fact remains that the only reason to put these restrictions into the bill isn't because Stupak and his friends are terrified that some of their income tax dollars are somehow going to end up paying for someone's abortion, but because they want to see abortions outlawed/banned/discontinued altogether. They are exercising their cunning right now in how they go about that, and they realize that by removing the funding for it there will likely be a drop in women's ability to have an abortion.

My answer to them remains the same. If you don't like pot, don't smoke it. If you don't like alcohol, don't drink it. If you don't want an abortion, then don't get one. By giving women the option to have a safe, affordable abortion, it is in no way forcing one on those that do not want them. Organizations like NARAL aren't planning to kidnap Mrs. Stupak and force her to have an abortion so it would be really nice if Mr. Stupak could get over himself and his beliefs that were conceived in an age when people thought that the universe revolved around the Earth and those that were able to swim were witches.

And the winner is...the only guy running

(I started writing this 2 weeks ago and got side-tracked)

So depending on who's shoveling shit into your ear, today was either a great day for Afghan democracy, or just another example of business as usual in the weary war-torn country. Today's acceptance speech by President-until-NATO-kicks-him-out Hamid Karzai marks another sad page in Afghanistan's painful, bitter history. It shows the retreat of what could have been a meaningful foreign policy decision by the NATO powers vis-a-vis the endemic corruption that permeates the Afghan political community. Instead, we all get to sit back and watch as the status quo remains the same and the corrupt flunkies that caused the initial snafu are allowed to keep their jobs.

Remember that this all began with the elections in August in which there was so much wide-spread voter fraud that some of the ballots for Hamid Karzai were still in their original ballot booklets. And don't forget the imaginary polling places that never opened their doors to the voting public but still managed to rack up thousands upon thousands of votes for President Karzai.

Despite many people's claims that Karzai is a puppet of the West, it's even worse than that. If he were our puppet and he did what we told him, there would be some arguments to justify the complete perversion of our imposed democratic system over there in the interests of calm, stability, and development. But he isn't even our puppet. He's the puppet of the drug growing rapists who run Aghanistan today and that's one of the few things that could be even worse than if he were a Western puppet.

In the past year we have seen the Afghan parliament come up with laws that allow for husbands to withhold food from wives who withhold sex. We have seen President Karzai pardon a group of powerful elites who somehow managed to find themselves convicted of rape (something that is extremely difficult to convict someone of in Afghanistan). We have seen an escalation in NATO and civilian deaths and yet the British and the American leaders are still talking about "how many" more troops to deploy in the region as opposed to "why are we in the region?"

The best possible course of action for the Afghan people, and the NATO soldiers who are dying or being wounded trying to do what their leaders tell them is the right thing to do, is for NATO to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately. It does not appear that Karzai's government has any interest in curbing corruption or correcting the misogyny that exists in their laws and so it does not seem fitting for us to stay there. The presence of Western soldiers in Afghanistan creates a recruiting bonanza for terrorist groups and inevitably leads to more civilian casualties, which further undermines any stabilizing missions our soldiers are undertaking.

As the FoxNews Opiniontainment says over and over again, where's the Hope and Change you promised us Mr. President? Change course from the Bush/Cheney policies in Aghanistan and give the world hope in a new American foreign policy; one that isn't stained with blood.

Health Care

The Wall Street Journal ran an article today about the health insurance industry's lack of support for the present health care bill that passed through Max "the giant coward" Baucus' finance committee earlier this month. Surprise, surprise, the health insurance industry is fearing that their excessive profits in caring for Americans' healthcare needs might shrink. Smart Democrats (if any exist) need to respond to this with renewed calls for a Single Payer system or, at the very least, a fully developed public option. Stop allowing the health insurance industry to hold a gun to America's doctors, hospitals, and people.

Frankly, seeing the insurance industry's reaction to the Baucus plan makes me think that the Baucus plan might actually be better than I initially thought. After all, if they don't like, then it must be doing something right. We need the principled members of Congress now more than ever to step forward, and stand up for a Single Payer system. And if opportunists like Senator Burris want to hop along on for the ride, great! But it's time to put the cards down on the table and see which Democrats want to be the ones to go down in Senate history for standing with the insurance companies, against the American people and President Obama, for a procedural filibuster against a Single Payer plan.

Most Americans can't learn from past mistakes

A headline caught my eye this morning. It was from the Associated Free Press' reporting on a recent survey that found that "Most Americans see Afghan fight worth US bloodshed". This seemed a little surprising to me as you would think that since most Americans finally have the grey matter to realize that invading Iraq, killing more than a million Iraqis, spending trillions of dollars, and losing thousands of American and coalition lives was a mistake, they would also be able to see what a boondoggle the mission in Afghanistan is.

Upon further reading of the poll, it becomes more clear why the results are what they are. The question wasn't really "is the Afghan fight worth more US bloodshed" but was in fact asked how many "are willing to have American soldiers 'fight and possibly die' to eliminate the threat of terrorists operating from Afghanistan." To the passerby this might seem like the same thing, but I bet if the question were rephrased to something more likely, such as how many "are willing to have American soldiers 'fight and possibly die' to keep trying to eliminate the threat of terrorists operating from Afghanistan without any certainty of victory" we'd probably have some very different survey results.

Even as someone opposed to the Afghan mission long before it was such a cool thing to do, I might say sure, if you can promise me total victory in Afghanistan (flourishing democracy, no terrorism, no insurgency, no violence against women, no more poverty, 711s, Wa-was, and Tim Horton's on every street corner) then maybe it's worth some American lives. For all the above mentioned items I might even say it's worth 500,000 American and coalition lives. But that's not what's going to happen. Not even close.

Instead, we are going to see another 10-20,000 NATO soldiers killed over the next decade or so as President Obama foolishly takes ownership of one of W's hubris inspired military blunders and submits to the never ending requests for supplemental troops, equipment, and money that will be required to sustain (not win) the conflict in Afghanistan. Meanwhile the hawks back home will lament our deficits in explaining why we cannot have universal healthcare or decent educational funding and they'll continue to piss away our soldiers and our treasury.

We must end the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, no matter what a cunningly worded survey question shows because at the end of the day, there can be no victory for an occupying country except withdrawal. Vietnam is a great example of this problem. Granted, Ameircan soldiers could have stayed in Vietnam for another 20 years. They could have butchered another 3 million Southeast Asians, and lost another 60,000 American soldiers. They could have pissed away trillions more dollars in bombs and upkeep, and shot a few more protesters at college campuses, but in the end, it was by leaving Vietnam that allowed that country to develop itself into the capitalism loving, wheeling and dealing people that they were always meant to be.

Perhaps Afghanistan is different, and it will descend into chaos and bloodshed if NATO forces leave, but it is doing that anyway, so why should NATO, and specifically America, play any role in contributing to that downward spiral? It's time to bring the troops home...all of them.

Fuck you McChrystal!

Max Baucus = corrupt coward

Since I believe in giving credit where credit is due, here is a great blog I found about what a stupid corrupt coward Max Baucus is.

That being said, Max Baucus is not only a corrupt coward, but a stupid corrupt coward because his actions today, or should I say inaction, that killed the public option in the health reform bill as it lurched its way through the Senate finance committee, will be the rallying call for Republicans in 2010 and 2012.

I think it was best enunciated during the Kerry v Bush battle of 2004. Why vote for Bush-lite when you can get the genuine article? By trying to appeal to conservative voters, democrats are throwing away their opportunity to show how they differ from their Republican rivals. If your campaign is based upon "hey look how conservative I can be while still calling myself a Democrat" your constituents are bound to say "well shit, why don't I just throw my hat in with the really conservative guy."

Bottom line, this will hurt you Max. And it will hurt President Obama. And it will hurt the 45 million who do not have health insurance. And it will hurt the 260 million who have our messy, complicated, and fragile health insurance. Hopefully enough other Democrats will realize this mistake and fight for a Single Payer, or at the very least, the Public Option.

Afghanistan: How many is enough?

The New York Times is reporting that Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has said "success in Afghanistan would probably require more troops and certainly much more time". I would like him to be honest with Congress, the administration and the public and say exactly how many more troops, and how much more time he thinks it will take for "success".

Frankly, I am of the belief that matter how many more sons and daughters America and NATO decide to sacrifice in Afghanistan, there can never be "success" as I would define it, and I doubt that most people would consider what Mike Mullen is calling "success", truly successful. This brings us to the issue of what is success in Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan? What does it look like? Does anyone really believe that if we send another 100,000 or another 500,000 or even another 1,000,000 NATO soldiers to Afghanistan that it will transform the country into a Western style democracy where the biggest problems are which intern the President may have "not had sexual relations with"?

And if we are to have any trust in these generals, admirals and other military commanders, then they should say exactly how many more troops they need and for how long. Instead, we see them making their requests in a political framework, asking for 10-20,000 troops at a time. This is dishonest and erodes the public trust as well as prolongs these conflicts. It seems astonishing to me that all these military officials, who probably served during the Viet Nam war would still be unable to grasp the concept that America is not good at occupying other countries.

From the day American troops entered Afghanistan and Iraq it seemed to me that we were just beginning a countdown (or a countup of bodies) until the troops would have to be pulled out and the world would agree that the missions were giant failures and gross expenditures of lives and treasure.

If anyone believes that another 30,000 or even 300,000 troops in Afghanistan will truly achieve "success" then have I got some real nice shorefront property to sell you on Baffin Island.

What pork really looks like

The next time you hear some blowhard say how there isn't enough money in the budget for health care, education or other programs that benefit society as a whole, just mention the F-22. Despite the administration's requests to cut the massive spending (we're talking many billions of dollars) Congress continues to try and slip in more purchases of the F-22 fighters to appease their corporate campaign donors. Enough is enough. Call your Congressmen and Senator's offices and demand that they not fund the F-22 and instead fund something that truly matters to the American public.

If only conservatives really cared about conservation

Liz Peek demonstrates in her diatribe "Can the Climate Control Zealots In Congress Be Stopped?" Republicans and Conservatives in America are still acting as if we have a choice in the climate-change arena. As if we can just close our eyes, block our ears and put clothespins on our noses and everything will be ok.

What they all miss whenever they talk about how much all of these programs aimed at curtailing our use of fossil fuels, breaking our dependence on foreign oil, and creating jobs and whole industries for America is the hidden figure: what it will cost us if we do nothing.

You cannot fix this massive problem of climate change, energy overuse and America's crumbling industrial sector without a healthy infusion of spending and planning. We need for America to get back on her feet with innovative new industrial sectors that will create jobs, here in America. We also need to curtail the wasteful use of fuel in this country, that has stemmed from the relatively low prices Americans pay at the pump (compared to other industrialized nations).

To do this, we need to make sure there are provisions so that the most vulnerable among us will still be able to get to work and afford the necessities in spite of much needed raises in fuel prices. They can call these tax credits, to appease the Republicans, or they can call these fuel stipends or they can call them fairy godmother gas checks, so long as people at or below a certain level (probably 3-4 times the poverty level would suffice) can receive government money to cover the increase in prices at the pump and for groceries by taking part of the tax revenue generated through carbon caps.

Liz Peek and her friends at FoxNews have tried for years to feed Americans the same lie over and over again that climate change isn't real, or that it's not as bad as people say, or that it's inevitable. Hopefully Americans are waking up to the fact that it is real, it is here now, and unless we do something about it, we will pay a far bigger price that what President Obama has so far proposed.

If there is anything to criticize in this Energy Bill it is that it does not go far enough and that industry has already meddled too much in its formulation and drafting, to the point where it will not be as effective as a truly transformational energy bill should be, but I don't think Liz has any problem with that.