June 30, 2010

Yes. History Does Repeat Itself

The scariest thing about the little rumble in the stock market this week is that it happened for good reason. The market slid three percent in one day because it appears that the governments of the world are backing away from support for the economy. If the politicians of the world have forgotten the lessons of history, the market has not. If we do not continue to stimulate the economy with government spending, there will be a depression the likes of which have never been seen. Not that we ever did pay attention to history. If we had we would not be in this mess. We learned an excellent lesson back in the 1920s. Then we had a president who had little more than contempt for the federal government. "If the federal government should go out of existence, the common run of people would not detect the difference in the affairs of their daily life for a considerable length of time," said Calvin Coolidge. (Compare to Ronnie Raygun's "scariest words"... "We're from the government and we are here to help.") Silent Cal set the tone for governing in the 1920s by espousing a partnership between the government and industry. "This is a business country," he said, "and it wants a business government." The GOOP of the 1920s championed tax breaks for the rich and channeled $3.5 billion in tax rebates and waivers to millionaires and their corporations. It opposed labor unions and ensured that the working classes stayed poor while the working classes got richer. High tariffs demanded by business protected the world's most prosperous market from imports while the export market exploded … primarily because European buyers borrowed money to buy American goods from American banks. Business boomed. (And when Europe could not afford to pay its debt, American banks lost, but that wasn't until 1929.) The federal government, which had busted trusts and effectively regulated the economy for years, quit regulating. The Federal Trade Commission walked away from the antitrust laws and replaced them with industry-wide trade agreements. The concept of transparency in the stock market was widely derided. It all made for a robust ride up, a shimmering bubble at the top, and a quick disaster in 1929. Herbert Hoover has been president for six months when the stock market crashed and like all free market thinkers he was sure it would correct itself. He suggested that restaurants give leftovers to needy people and ran Coxie's Army out of the Nation's Capital at gunpoint. The economy was a shambles by 1933, when Roosevelt took over. FDR reregulated Wall Street and stimulated the economy. He did the later by pumping billions into the government projects. He put people to work and built infrastructure. By 1937 the people had forgotten all that. They believed to was time to get back to the balanced budget and stop deficit spending. The economy tanked. The depression was so deep that it took a war to get us out of it. In Washington D.C. it's 1937 again. They want to quit spending money, cut the deficit and let the economy correct itself. Something tells me that history is going to repeat itself again. Good Luck with That!

June 29, 2010

Shaking Hands With The Unemployed

Nobody has summed up the idiocy of the Senate's holdup of the unemployment extension better than Noted Lesbian Rachel Maddow. Nobody.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What she points out so adroitly here is that unemployment benefits aren't just good for the jobless. It's good for the economy as a whole. I don't know what the exact stats are exactly, but I've heard it quotated frequently, that for every buck that goes out in unemployment benefits in times like these, $1.35 is generated in the American economy. That's because these are dollars that are turned over so quickly and so efficiently that it's that beneficial to the economy as a whole. So these Republigoats, they're not just being scrooges here to the jobless, and they're not just denying the lazy and shiftless a free lunch, neither. No, friends, they're TRYING EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO STOP THE ECONOMIC RECOVERY IN ITS TRACKS. To make matters worse, they're also taking a big fat dump all over the memory of one Thurgood Marshall. WTF, guys? Thurgood Marshall? Really? REALLY? Why not just drag Bambi into the hearing room and field dress him alive? Huh? And hey, remember how President Obama was going to come over to your house and take all your guns away from you? Well, guess what? John Roberts (who, I have to remind you, looks exactly like Otto from "Airplane!") and his bunch have now made it so you can have a gun or a mace or whatever you want everywhere you go! Yay guns! It just strikes me as so friggin' odd that conservatives are so all about guns even though it was a kook with a gun who very nearly took out their vaunted superhero Ronald Warson Raygun. But, what the hell. Let's just everybody get ourselves all armed up. James Brady be damned. This country. Is losing. Its mind.

June 28, 2010

Robert Byrd

Sure, he was kind of a mixed bag. It's true that he joined the Klan at age 24, that he filibustered against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that he was at one time in his life an unabashed racist, that as late as 2001 he was on the record as using a certain word that begins with the letter "n," and that he also really liked to bring money home to West Virginia. But he also castigated his colleagues for the dearth of real debate regarding the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq. He was an unstoppable critic of the previous administration and an utterly outspoken advocate for health care reform. He was also, I think, evidence that even those Americans who succumb to this nation's most base, most vile cultural instinct, that those who opt to hate or otherwise distinguish an entire group of people based on pigmentation and other physical features and the history represented thereby, even those folks, Byrd was evidence that even they can be redeemed. Is the last of the old guard of liberals finally gone?

June 23, 2010

Gen. McChrystal Gets His Life Back

So President Obama told McChrystal to pack his duffel today. I don't think he had much choice in the matter. But one can't help but wonder if Obama actually affected a policy change regarding Afghanistan today as well as a change of personnel. He said he didn't. But we'll see. One thing's for sure: This may be the most powerful thing journalism has achieved in decades. As Sam Stein points out, a little ink managed to give McChrystal the old heave-ho when other scandals, including the cover-up of the death of Pat Tillman, couldn't. Other interesting shouts from Leftblogistan:

June 22, 2010

Read It First

You might wanna read the story first before you figure out what you think. The Runaway General Thing is, this isn't just a story about Obama's point man in Afghanistan talking shit about the CIC. It's an all-out indictment of military strategy in Afghanistan. And McChrystal comes out looking dumber than Westmoreland.

The Infrastructure Expectation and D.C. Metro

One point I failed to make in my previous post regarding infrastructure. I argued in that post that key to solving the energy crisis is the larger issue of infrastructure. I wrote as an example of my own ability to never ever hardly drive because I live in the D.C. Metro region, an area that has historically invested in the public transportation infrastructure. What I failed to write was "what have ya done for me lately." Today is a year since I've been on a Metro train. Metro has been working for years to scare the living shit out of me and to convince me to ride buses instead. A year ago, those trains killed nine people and at last forced me to a more time-consuming but more reassuring commute. I mainly stopped riding because I was sick and tired of the trains stopping underground; I don't like the feeling that gives me, not after I was stuck underground for 20 minutes when Foggy Bottom caught fire a few years ago, and not after 9/11. It's not a rational reason. But it's mine. But then you see some stories. Like how this one train was taken out of service and blasted through like six stops before someone realized that there were two women aboard the train, held hostage by their own attempt to commute. Or, there's the recent story of a bunch of ten-car trains on the track when they're only supposed to use an eight-car train or fewer (this leaves the last two cars of the train stuck in the tunnel). Or, there's shit like this:

So it's not surprising to me that a report by The Washington Post says that, one year following the fatal wreck, Metro's record on safety has not improved, and that this is in part due to a failure to invest in the system and in a failure to regulate it as well. The part I forgot to mention is that the Washington Metro system is in a shambles, and there is precious little being done to improve and invest in this system that I've been riding since I'm 12 years old, even in the wake of nine dead people. That is the sad truth regarding what once was one of the nation's finest commuter rail systems. And it is why I'm likely to be a bus guy for the duration.

Heh.



June 21, 2010

It's Right In Front Of Your Face

Or, rather, north of it. Evidence, that is, that regulation isn't just some silly hogwash come up with by lilly-livered nanny-state homos with nothing better to do than to interfere with good old-fashioned, red-meat capitalism. Blame Canada.
"We should be proud of the performance of our financial system during the crisis," [Canadian] Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said. He recalled visiting China in 2007 and hearing suggestions "that the Canadian banks were perhaps boring and too risk-adverse. And when I was there two weeks ago some of my same counterparts were saying to me, 'You have a very solid, stable banking system in Canada,' and emphasizing that. There wasn't anything about being sufficiently risk-oriented." The banks are stable because, in part, they're more regulated. As the United States and Europe loosened financial regulations over the past 15 years, Canada refused to do so. The banks also aren't as leveraged as their U.S. or European peers. There was no mortgage meltdown or subprime crisis in Canada. Banks don't package mortgages and sell them to the private market, so they need to be sure their borrowers can pay back the loans.
Imagine that.

Something Good About Kansas

It's almost a ritual in every political campaign for the parties to seek the endorsement of the Chamber of Commerce. Even if you are a Democrat and do not have a snow-ball's chance of getting the nod from the big money business guys, you play the game and ask for their endorsement. So I have to say I am impressed with Tom Holland, the Democratic Party candidate for Kansas Governor. He told the Chamber to go piss up a rope. Of course, Holland got a big bump in the news cycle for dumping on the Chamber, proof, perhaps, that he is going to be more than a handful for the popular and well-funded Christofacist Sam Brownback, who is running for the GOOP. Holland used the moment to tie Brownback to big business interests that have no interest in the average Kansan. The Chamber made this easy. The Democratic candidate cited Chamber statements last year calling people using government services… who include "the elderly, the vulnerable, school children and struggling families" to "animals feeding at the government trough." He cited Chamber support for a bill that would have stopped enforcement of controls aimed at greenhouse gasses, a measure that was supported by the state utilities because it was seen as a better alternative to federal regulation. The primary reason for supporting the bill, Holland said, was politics, not the best interests of Kansas. It seems the disputed legislation was the brainchild of Tim Huelskamp, GOOP candidate for Congress, and the Chamber wanted to make him look good. Finally, The Chamber opposed a, $8.2 billion transportation plan that Holland said would create jobs and attract new business to the state. The Chamber is putting tax cutting GOOP ideology over the best interests of the state, Holland said. The best thing about Holland is he is he is running a bare knuckled campaign, probably the only way to fight a battle uphill. At the same time it is an object lesson in how Democrats should run. As Brady frequently points out, when Democrats run like GOOPers, they don't win. More Harry Truman, less Tru Deeds.

June 17, 2010

Death Penalty Redux

There is a guy in Utah who is due to be officially killed. He wants it to be done by firing squad, which apparently has caused some controversy. What follows is a post from Papa Bonk in 2006, which still has some relevance. I do not believe in the death penalty. But like a lot of things I don't believe in "the invasion and occupation of Iraq, SUVs, tax exempt churches, criminal penalties for drug use" we have them and we will continue to have them until Americans get as smart as I am. Not likely that will happen in my lifetime. So just a few thoughts on this foolishness about lethal injections that fail. The most humane method of executing someone, from the perspective of the victim, is probably the guillotine. I suspect it is no scarier to be led up to the blade and be laid out on it than being led to a scaffold or an electric chair or strapped to a gurney. You are aware the whole time that you are in your waning minutes, and the devices you see will kill you. At least with a guillotine, it's fast and probably not very painful. I suspect the same could be said of a quick shot to the head with a 12 gauge, or a 30 calibre bullet to the heart (which, as I recall, is what they do in Utah). The problem with these quick and easy methods is that from the perspective of the killer, they leave lasting impressions. I hope I can report with some satisfaction and sense of human progress that we no longer take joy from lifting heads out of the basket and displaying them to the crowds. Still, whacking off a head is a messy business. It would require that someone clean it up, wash down the killing room, remove the separate parts. Same for the shot to the head. Shot to the heart is less messy, but they say they use a full firing squad with only one person having a bullet so that the shooters don't know for sure that they caused the death…deniability, the theory is, spares the conscience. And what if one misses? (And why is it that firing squads are queasier than hangmen?) Hanging was for many years viewed as a humane way to do it if you tied the rope right. It is the oldest of the no muss no fuss methods. So clean, in fact, that lynching crowds in the American south often cut off body parts before the hanging, just for sport, and the Brits did the drawing and quartering thing. In modern times, however, we have sought out "humane" ways to kill that did not leave a mess. The electric chair, for example. No one seemed to be too bothered by the smell of singed hair and cooked brains. In general it left an intact package that could easily be carted off. Gas was used for a while in some states. California used it on Carrol Chessman, and the Feds used it on the Rosenbergs. The lethal injection seems to be the perfect killing tool for those who want to think they are being humane and also want to avoid the problem of mopping up. So why is it so hard? Apparently the guy that first recommended it suggested a complex drug cocktail that would do its work fast and painlessly…but only if administered just right, which of course, no one seems to be able to do. Incompetents are everywhere, even in the killng rooms of our nation's prisons. Let me make a suggestion. Use morphine. Lots of it. 1,000 milligrams. Maybe More. It's clean. It's painless, and if you screw it up the victim won't give a shit. He'll just ask for more.

Regulating Big Oil. Right.

Last night Rachel asked Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) whether he believed that a well-established regulatory program that was dedicated to real regulation would have had actual functional regulations in place that could have prevented the BP Gusher from happening. Markey said sure enough, no doubt, the real problem was a lax regulatory environment at the Mineral Management Service that dates back to it's establishment and a better regulatory structure would have done the job. I have to call more than half bullshit on that. Prior to the recent Disaster in the Deep, it would have been next to impossible to impose the kind of regulations that would ensure a quick and effective plugging of the leak and clean-up. Washington D.C. is still the place where money talks and bullshit walks, and without a massive public disaster to build your regulations around, you will never get reality to prevail over bullshit. .. if at all. This is nothing new. In the 1950s, Lyndon Johnson, at the behest of the gas barons who owned him, destroyed the regulatory capacity of the Federal Power Commission by accusing the chief regulator of being a commie and having him run out of town. The gas companies got their way in Washington ever after, and made millions while the public paid ever higher gas prices. In the 1970s, a well-funded funeral home industry not only derailed an effort by the Federal Trade Commission to curtail sleazy sales practices in the death industry, it also striped the FTC of most of its regulatory clout. Back in the 1980s the lawyers and examiners at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board provided ample warning to their bosses that the duct tape and chewing gum that held the savings and loan system together would come undone. Savings and loan barons, well connected on both sides of Capitol Hill and in the White House, convinced the leadership that the staff was full of crap. Real regulation gave way to conventional wisdom and it cost the taxpayers than $!50 billion (that's just direct payments to the Resolution Trust Corporation) at a time when a billion was real money. In the 1990s, regulators were fully aware that the dot.com bubble was fueled by outrageous valuations placed on IPOs by underwriters and analysts who knew that most of the stocks being offered could not demonstrate an income stream, let alone a profit-making model. Wall Street's big money lobbyists pumped millions into the campaign chests of Congress to stave off any serious regulatory scrutiny until after the bubble burst. And still, it should be noted, no lessons learned from the dot.com bubble were ever applied to the far more disastrous housing bubble that followed. In the face of clear and convincing evidence of the health hazards of cigarettes, the tobacco lobby held off efforts to regulate cigarettes in the interests of public health for years. Ten years ago the regulators of FreddieMac and FannieMae provided fair warning to the Congress that capital was too thin and accounting too creative at the giant secondary market agencies. Fannie and Freddie, awash in cash, bought the most expensive lobbyists in town and a fist full of Congresspersons, on both sides of the isle, and nothing was done until the system collapsed. We might add that it is not yet clear that the financial institutions reform package still being tinkered with in a House-Senate conference committee will address the egregious regulatory short comings that directly contributed to the current financial crisis. Oil is the richest industry on earth. It can outspend any lobby in Washington if it wishes. It has suppressed environmental efforts to regulate auto emissions and auto mileage standards. It owns many of the most important people in Washington. I will concede that with current oil disaster on our southern coast, it may be possible… as it was after the Santa Barbara oil spill of 40 years ago… to obtain some serious and effective regulatory limits on off-shhore drilling. Absent this event, it would never have happend. At the same time. I think it is a good bet that the oil companies will be drilling again long before they demonstrate that they actually have 21st Century technology that can close off a well and clean up the mess.

BP Cares About Midgets!

I was so glad to know that British Petroleum, the international conglomerate that has poked a big, ostensibly irreparable hole into Mother Earth, now seems to care a whole lot about midgets.
We care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies or greedy companies that don't care, but that is not the case at BP. We care about the small people.
Said Carl-Henric Svanberg yesterday. I figure he just figures we "normal" sized people can stand in the oil just fine with problem. But the small people, man, he's worried that they're gonna drown.

June 16, 2010

Oil Company Elitists

I have to confess that I had no recollection of the Ixtoc Oil disaster that dumped millions of gallons of raw crude into the Gulf of Mexico in 1978. I first learned of it watching Rachel Maddow a few weeks ago. She used it to make the point that the technology used by the oil industry to cleanup oil spills has not changed in 40 years. More interesting is the fact that when the CEOs of the top five oil producing corporations in the world were asked about Ixtoc at a congressional hearing yesterday, not one of them had ever heard of it. Not only did they not know of it before the BP disaster, none of them knew of it even though it became a set piece in discussions of the current crises. There have been hundreds of oil spills in the world since 1969… they have a pretty good list on Wiki… the Exxon Valdez is not even in the top ten. The oil industry has been fucking up the environment at will all these years, and they have not spent a nickel on figuring out how to clean up the mess. That's probably because they don't give a damn, a fact donfirmed by the single most amazing statement from yesterday's hearing, which came from the CEO of Exxon. He explained, in the manner of a ppatient teacher revealing the facts of life to children, that as long as there is going to be oil drilling, there will be environmental damage. He did not say and the oil companies should worry about that, or that the oil companies certainly would clean that up. He just said there would be environmental damage and … too fucking bad!! I guess when you are the head of the richest corporation on the planet you get used to saying stuff like that to people. "We're crapping all over your vegetable garden, asshole, tough shit." "Your kids died so we could get more oil out of Iraq, too fuckin bad, asshole." "Who likes oysters anyway." "Let the fuckin fisherman get jobs waiting tables." Oil Company presidents make about a billion dollars a year and they don't have to take crap from anyone. Right?

June 15, 2010

The Infrastructure Expectation

We went to dinner, and I forgot to reset the DVR to record the Prez this evening. So, what I'm writing here might be somewhat disjointed. Which is too bad because it really shouldn't be. I drive a four-door sedan. 'Murcan made. She's eleven years old. And she has 63,000 miles on her. This is a bit of a joke around my family, how little I drive. Now this is not to say that I don't use a hell of a lot of power in its other forms. I run a television in probably unhealthy amounts, a laptop compyooter, an iPhone, and an entire household, not to mention the electricity I use in my office. But. 63K in 11 years. That's pretty impressive, and I imagine it shrinks my carbon footprint somewhat. But I'm only allowed to do that for one reason: I live in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, which, in the past, has thought it vital to fund and build things like subway systems and a system of commuter buses. You can't do that in many other regions of the United States. In fact, it is entirely possible to live in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and—get this—not even own an automobile. This is especially true, I should add, with the establishment of the Zipcar. This is an amazing little service whereby you can reserve an automobile using the Internet, and then, that afternoon, you can hike over and get in your car and drive off. This service, along with the more traditional methods of public transportation, make it the 63,000 mile 11-year-old car possible. Without that infrastructure, that odo would have turned over long ago. But there is another aspect that must be present for such a success. There must be somewhat of a culture that expects to be able to use said infrastructure, a culture that believes in and trusts the infrastructure. There must be some of that population that grows up using the infrastructure, that learns the ins and outs of their hometowns just by getting around. You've got to have the infrastructure, but you've also got to have the infrastructure expectation. As we discuss possible solutions to whatever you think the "energy crisis" is, I think we tend to go around in circles and to speak in terms of fragments. We have special-interest TV commercials, and this one's touting ethanol, and that one seems to be touting solar and other alternatives. We talk about geothermal, conservation, nuclear, offshore drilling, coal, and so on. This method or that method versus that. I hate to keep bringing this up, but we recently had a bridge fall out of the sky. In America. And yet, this President had to compromise his way out of infrastructure stimulus dollars. People hurl around "tax-and-spend" as if the word "bastard" is to immediately follow. The notion that, as a nation, we require a basic infrastructure that government has a larger interest in creating and maintaining than do for-profit fuck-pigs, that notion is now, incredibly, ridiculed and even dismissed as "socialist." The whole enchilada regarding "energy alternatives" rests on infrastructure and the expectation of infrastructure. Without the trains and the buses, and without a general public that intends to rely on those transportation regularly, all you've got is a bunch of people in their own cars. And that leads, too, to its own discussion of infrastructure. Have I written the word "infrastructure" enough times? It may not be a sexy sexy topic, but bricks and mortar, that's the crux of the issue. This discussion should not just reflect what methods we will use to create power or where to put the damned spent nuclear waste or whatever. It should reflect the larger issue of the national infrastructure as well. That's what it's all aboat.

The Lawrence O'Donnell Show

A few years ago, this blogger had fairly accurately predicted within some proximity that Noted Lesbian Rachel Maddow would become a television star. Now it is with utter cheer that I can report that my prediction in that vein regarding one Lawrence O'Donnell were completely wrong. I have always predicted that O'Donnell seems to be more of a jack-of-many-trades kind of guy. But now, as has just been breaking on The Huffington Post, we know that O'Donnell will indeed host his own television program at 10 p.m. on MSNBC. O'Donnell is a POWERHOUSE of a broadcaster and a shrewd analyst. Watch him eviscerate Buchanan.

This is going to be TEH AWESOME.

Boycott Snapple

Employees of Mott's, who make the apple sauce and juice and such, are striking. Seems the company, which made over $500 million last year, wants the employees to take a pay cut so the company can make even more money. Motts also proposes to end the pension plan and cut payments to 401K plans. Mott's is part of the Dr. Pepper/Snapple Group, located in Texas. It is not as though the company is in trouble. The stock price has more than doubled in the last two years, and even the strike has not dinted its value. While it wants to cut worker pay, it boosted its quarterly dividend 67 percent. The company has made no bones about its intention to get rid of long-term employees and replace them with cheaper labor. They believe that unemployment, which is at an all-time high, works in their favor and have told the employees that they are a "commodity," that can be easily replaced. The strike has been going on for over a month and the company is so confident that it is not even mentioning it on it's web page. The workers are getting some substantial support. New York politicians, including Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, Rep. Dan Maffei, and Rochester Mayor Robert Duffey, who is also a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, have all stood picket duty at the Williiamson, NY plant. (How long has it been since we have seen politicians stand with workers on the picket line?) Two Canadian MPs Jack Layton, the Leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, and Malcolm Allen, Deputy Critic Food Security have stood up for the workers. Layton wrote Snapple Group President & CEO Larry Young to express his concern for product safety as the company uses replacement workers. Allen wrote Carole Swan, President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), to "express concerns about a potential food safety risk in a classic Canadian drink." Mott's Clamato juice is the key ingredient of the popular Canadian summer season cocktail named the Bloody Caesar. Allen pointed out that Mott's decision to use "untrained and inexperienced temporary workers" creates a safety risk and breach of health standards that "could have a negative impact on the quality and safety" of products shipped from the plant. He requested the CFIA to "take extra care" when inspecting Mott's products from the Williamson plant as the summer season is in "full swing." There is a boycott of all Dr. Pepper/Snapple products. Boycotting them is hard work… they sell more than 50 brands, including, for example, all the decent tonic water (Schwepps and Canada Dry), root beer (A&W, Hires and IBC), and Snapple, and Dr. Pepper, and a lot of other stuff. For the full list, go here http://www.drpeppersnapplegroup.com/brands/. Cross them off your shopping list! It's time we all stood up for the American worker!

June 14, 2010

I Don't Know, Dickhead? Who Are You?

I have to say I am surprised by this video of Rep. Bobby Etheridge going apeshit like this. In my former career as a newspaper journalist, I met Etheridge on several occasions. He is the favorite son of a little place near Raleigh called "Cleveland Township." He was always an extremely cordial fellow. Now I don't think our legislators should come to expect to entertain the requests of amateur ambush journalists while they're walking down the street in downtown Washington. But this behavior on the part of Rep. Etheridge renders him no longer worthy of his seat. I hope his constituents will review and consider this tape carefully.

But Lewis, What We Really Need is Instant Runoff Voting

Lewis Black on the American political system.
Our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking in the mirror at itself. ... Basically, the last eight years, I feel, the Republicans stood around farting and the Democrats went, 'Ooh, let me smell it.'


June 11, 2010

12,000 Minnesota Nurses Walk The Hell Out

They returned to work today, but did you know that yesterday marked the largest walkout by nurses in America like, ever? The one-day work stoppage netted 12,000 nurses walking off the job yesterday. That's a humongous labor action. HUGE. And you probably didn't hear about it. Because the corporate media these days thinks it's very important to report on "business" but doesn't seem to think that labor merits the same attention. This is why I will try to start blogging more in this space about the things I learn from catching the Workers Independent News each day. This daily three-minute dose of labor news will put you in the know about what's happening with folks who, like most of my fellow Americans, actually have to live off of a paycheck. Shameless plug: Workers Independent News runs every hour on the hour from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays on my Live365 radio station, Radio B.O.N.K.. Or you can catch it at the ">WIN Web site. But this is a fine news source that more Americans should follow, IMHO. And more power to those Minnesota nurses. Keep fighting!

June 10, 2010

They Quack Up

Here's a little bit of good news. The Coast Guard says BP is now catching up to 630,000 gallons of oil a day. The bad news is that they're catching it with ducks.
—Jimmy Fallon


June 9, 2010

Where Are Those Damn Tankers/

The one oil spill story that has caught my attention and frustrated me more than any is the tale of the retired CEO of Shell Oil who says we should have couple dozen oil tankers out in the gulf sucking up oil. Nothing sounds more simple, and I cannot figure out why Obama hasn't just ordered it done. Now some news. Esquire reported last week that former Shell Chief John Hoffmeister met with the Coast Guard recently to move this thing along. It also reports that there are 47 supertankers located in the Gulf doing nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Apparently the tankers are being used to store Iranian crude oil, which no one wants because it is not as good as the stuff that is gushing into the gulf. Esquire reports that it would cost BP about $100 million per tanker for six months to lease these big boats for the clean-up effort. Are they gonna do that? No sign yet. Added complications? Maybe. The tankers are fully loaded, and it is obvious that if they are to be used for another purpose, they will have to be emptied. Where to put the oil? The USA keeps a strategic petroleum reserve of 727 million barrels, located conveniently along the gulf coast. Unfortunately, 727 million barrels is all it can handle, according to the Department of Energy, so we can't off load any more. Anyway it is apparent that we could use tankers to suck up the crude if we could just find a place to put the stuff. Notice that gas is cheap these days and the predictions are that summer will not make it much more expensive. That means there is probably plenty of oil being pumped and refineries are at capacity. That may also mean there is no place to put the stuff. There is an irony.

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America's Future. Now, Damnit!

I would be remiss if I did not mention that this week brought the America's Future Now! conference to Washington, D.C., June 7 - 9 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. Every year I swear I'm going to go print up a bunch of business cards with this URL on it and take them to this conference and attend, and every year, I don't. But, we can take a look at some of the news that's come out of this meeting of progressive minds. Dana Milbank reports somewhat breathlessly that, apparently, progressives are angry enough with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to heckle her. Albeit, the heckling sounds like it was pretty damned weird:
Just three minutes into her speech—right after she gave the triumphant news that "Change is here!"—two men stood up and spread out a large pink banner in front of the podium demanding "Stop Funding Israel Terror." At that moment, a wheelchair-bound woman named Carrie James began to scream from her table about 30 feet away: "I am not going to a nursing home!" At that cue, about 15 people in the crowd—who, like James, wore orange T-shirts demanding "Community Choice Act Now"—unfurled bedsheet banners and struck up a chant: "Our homes, not nursing homes!"
Look, I've had a chip on my shoulder regarding Madam Speaker since impeachment was yanked off the table in aught-six. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. Milbank paints this as a demonstration of the "unraveling" of the progressive movement somehow. But that's a rather myopic view. The truth is that, from the "left" in America, a major dynamic we're faced with in the Obama era is that of party politics versus movement politics, with Pelosi representing the former and staunch progressives understanding more and more that the latter is the only refuge they've left. The sobering truth is that the Democratic Party can only take a progressive agenda so far on its own, and that the party as a whole becomes less and less concerned with We the People each year. Look for that trend to worsen dramatically in the next decade as we enter the post-Citizens United decision era. But it's not just Pelosi drawing the ire of progressives. These folks are plenty mad at President Obama, too. Which I think is understandable to some extent, though I have to continue to query them as to what in the living hell they expected. News flash, kids. "Change" and "hope" were terrific marketing bytes for Obama, and they weren't lies considering the dread and horror foisted upon the American people by the Bush administration. But this guy is not a liberal; he is not a progressive, and he did not run as either one of those things. He did not run on ending our never-ending war. He did not run on all-out universal health care. He did run promising to do something about DADT, but he flat out came out and told Rick Warren that he's not in support of marriage rights for everybody. We were unable to nominate Dennis Kucinich, the most progressive of the bunch, and we did not nominate John Edwards, who talked a lot more like a progressive than most of them, and thank goodness for that. We elected a moderate. And he is governing moderately. So why are you surprised and would you be happier with a President McCain? Again, for those of us interested in moving the envelope forward in a dramatic fashion, party politics can only go so far for us. That is the unfortunate reality of American politics. Party politics is ruled by money and is not established in such a way that third-party options can make even a dent. Movement politics may offer a more effective tool for change, but then, it brings out the nut-bars who for some reason think it's a good idea to heckle the Speaker of the House. I mean, what do you reckon the chances are that she'll ever come back to your stupid conference again? Anyway. Look, kids. That's politics. Politics is sometimes you, a person, playing tug-of-war with a building. The point though is to keep tugging anyway. Ya know?

Arkansas Runoff

Couple notes on the Atkansas runoff. First, a look at the primary vote should tell anyone that the swing vote was going to be the many people who voted for the very conservative third candidate, and they were likely to vote for Liincoln if they voted, which rhey apparently did. So this shouldn't be a surprise, regardless what the pungents say. Second, a lot is being made of the Garland County vote suppression scam. I still think its voter suppression, and I still think that stinks, but Lincoln only trailed in the Garland county primary by 600 votes, and the conservative candidate got 1,800. Lincoln won the runoff with a 10,000 vote margin. Garland County couldn't have given Halter an edge big enough to win in any case. Third, Bill Clinton will have a hard time getting off my shit list for having supported Blanche.

June 8, 2010

Oy Vey Iz Mir

A last thought from me regarding Helen Thomas. I listened to Randi Rhodes yesterday defend the hell out of Thomas, saying that 27 seconds of video or audio on the YouTube shouldn't instantly mitigate a 67-year career. I disagree, frankly. Here is, specifically, the exchange that got Thomas "retired."
Thomas, White House correspondent for Hearst Newspapers, showed up at the White House's May 27 Jewish Heritage Celebration, where she gave an interview to Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com. Late last week Nesenoff posted a clip from the video on YouTube. Here's the transcript: Nesenoff: Any comments on Israel? We're asking everybody today-- Thomas: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Nesenoff: Ooh. Any better comments? Thomas (cackling): Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their land, not German and not Polish. Nesenoff: So where should they go? What should they do? Thomas: They should go home. Nesenoff: Where is home? Thomas: Poland. Germany. Nesenoff: So you're saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany? Thomas: And America, and everywhere else.
According to The Washington Post, Nesenoff was accompanied at the time by his two sons, both sporting the kippah. As noted, she was at the White House for an event that likely shadows Shavuot, a little-known holiday remembering the Old Testament events at Mount Sinai. And in that context, Helen Thomas is approached by an Ashkenazim looking fella with two boys in tow bearing yarmulkes, and she says wha? THAT THE JEWS SHOULD "GO BACK TO POLAND AND GERMANY?" Specifically, she chose those countries specifically? What Thomas revealed in those 27 seconds was that, despite all of her hard work and years and years of holding the noses of presidents to the grindstone, I'm sorry, but Helen Thomas has revealed that she is simply too ignorant to any longer deserve her seat in the press room. I do not think she was being hateful or anti-Semitic. I think that what Helen Thomas revealed about herself with her comments is that she is a buffoon who has gotten much farther on a tank of gas then she should have been able to. Buh-bye Helen. Why don't you do a little reading with your time off, dear? You should start with André Schwarz-Bart's "The Last of the Just" and go from there. Moron.

June 7, 2010

Is it just me...

...or did Big Eddie just refer to Prudence Palin as "Caribar Boobie?"

Washington Media Frenzy Consumes One Of Its Own

If you want to look at a media circus in action, check out the Helen Thomas foot in her mouth story. I didn't watch news all weekend so missed a lot of it. Had to go to YouTube to find exactly what she said, since not one of the written references I found this morning had an exact quote. Here is what she said: "They (the Jews) Should Get the Hell Out of Palestine." You would think that, this story being about a bunch of journalists, it wouldn't be that hard to find the right quote, but it was. It's harder to find an exact context. I saw a couple references to a radio show with a Rabbi, but the You tube thingy looks like a random person on the street interview… except of course, its Helen who was on the street, and she is not random. One Helen apologist insisted she was talking only about how Israel should abandon it's policy of making new settlements in Palestine. The same story insisted that the follow-up question… "Where would they go?" "Back where they came from, to Germany and Poland and Brooklyn," meant that she was pointing out that the settlements are being filled by newcomers to Israel who came directly from Brooklyn and Poland and Germany, and we would be better off if they went back to a place where they recently had homes than if they stayed in Palestine, where their presence poses a challenge and a menace. (I have to give some credence to this version, since she said Palestine, not Israel.) Helen's media fellows are feeding on this like cats on mice. Right wingers and Israeli apologists claim she wants to turn back the clock and force all Jews to go back to Germany and Poland and somehow relive the Holocaust. They claim it is proof that she is an anti-semite because she obviously does not know anything about the horrors of the Holocaust and such. Better, and I really like this one, the right wing also claims the Washington media establishment is circling the wagons to protect Helen, PROOF that the left wing supports fascism. In the meantime, the straight media, often referred to as the left wing media by the paranoid monkeys of the right, has been very busy proving the right wing media is completely wrong. Poor old Helen has been thrown under the bus by everyone who has been, had been or ever wanted to be a big cheese inside the media circus. That's about everyone she ever worked with who is still alive. This is, after all, the kind of gaff that causes all of Washington, particularly the press corps, to run as far as possible from the splatter. Her agent was the first to go. (I suspect it was more because her dollar value dropped than principled opposition.) Then her "co author," Craig Crawford, who was too happy to hitch his wagon to her highly respected star when his own career seemed to be running out of gas, no longer knows her. The White House Press Association is talking about censoring her, and every pundit in the industry is working overtime to get in front of the story. Where's the old lady? Where's the bus? I don't think Helen Thomas said anything a lot of people have not thought, some of which I have written here, and which some other people are saying. I don't think she really wants the USA to abandon it's support for Israel or means that all Israelis should go back to Europe. I certainly so not believe she is unmindful of the history of Jews in Europe. LIke many of she is frustrated that Israel has taken a number of actions that appear to ignore international sentiment and which have made it appear that they are as much the problem as is Hamas. More importantly, Helen Thomas is the only reporter who has lately asked any useful or penetrating questions about our little war in Afghanistan, proving she has not lost her chops as a reporter. She has been a stalwart of the journalism community for decades and it is a sad thing to see her treated with so little respect. If you are leading pack of Washington journalists, you have to expect that they will turn on you eventually. (I was going use a simile here, comparing journalists to whores, but I refrained out of respect for whores.)

Afghanistan't

History's made today! Yay! Longest. War. Evar. Eight Years and Eight Months! Take that, Vietnam! Wouldn't it be great if President Obama could simply admit what I think is true, that he made a commitment to Afghanistan for cynical political reasons, because for some reason, you can't get elected to the White House as a Democrat these days unless you sign on to the bipartisannally stupid idea that never-ending war is awesome. It's so weird. Presidents are not allowed to campaign on the promise of peace anymore. You know what presidents campaigned on the promise of peace? Liberal commie homo ones like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Mailbox Noxin, that's who. Nowadays, though, if you're running for President, it's all "I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth...eat dead burnt bodies..." and whatnot. The war in Afghanistan is intractable, folks. There's no winning to be had. We're never going to find UBL. And regardless, it's just a continuation of the classically awful foreign policy stance that we're gonna "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here." On that note, it's time to note the untimely retirement of Helen Thomas. That's right, yet another person's entire career has been run off the road by the YouTube, apparently. Thomas flapped her gums about Israel and said something very very stupid, and now out she goes. One could argue that she's past her prime, but considering that she was recently the only reporter with the balls to confront President Obama about our presence in Afghanistan during a recent press conference, I'd say we're losing a hell of a great resource, perhaps the last reporter with the actual nuts to put it to the POTUS. Let's raise a glass and remember what I think was her finest moment:
[George W. Bush] is the worst President ever. He is the worst President in all of American history.
And that's the way it is.

Ohio 2004 All Over Again

If you need proof that Blanche Lincoln is a Gooper check out the latest voter suppression scheme at work in Arkansas. Lincoln, the party insider and corporate representative to Big Pharma, has gotten the Garland County elections commissioner to help out by reducing the number of voting places in that key district. Garland is, naturally, the one of the districts where Lincoln's opponent Bill Halter has substantial support. For the primary, they had 42 voting places. For the run-off tomorrow, they have two. Charles Tapp, who heads the election commission in Garland County, told the voters they could vote early, starting Saturday. Then they showed up and learned that was a lie. No early voting. Apparently that is not even legal in Arkansas. Tapp is appointed by the Democratic machine i.e. Blanche Lincoln. Garland is one of the top five counties by voting population, with more than 12,000 Democratic Party voters in the primary. Halter won it with 44 percent of the vote. Lincoln had 40 percent and D.C. Morrison, an arch-conservative, had 15 percent. Lincoln got the most primary votes with 145,000; Harter had 138.000. Morrison got 42,000, enough to tip the runoff balance either way. The leaders split most of the large counties closely, but Lincoln carried Pulaski County (Little Rock), by a significant margin, 52 to Halter's 40 percent. Thus, Lincoln has an edge, but it will be a tight election. (Morrison voters are a wild card. Will they vote? If their vote was a protest, will they use it against Lincoln? If they are real conservatives, will they vote against the Progressive?) Thus, keeping a few hundred Halter voters from the polls can only benefit one candidate. That's the way the GOOP does business. That is how The Moron George Dubya Busch got into office in 2000 and 2004. We would be much better off if Blanche Lincoln came clean and joined the GOOP.

June 4, 2010

Blame the Jews II

Thanks to Crisanthemama for pointing out that the Israeli blockade of Gaza extends to more than weapons. (Read here. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-pasta-paper-and-hearing-aids-that-could-threaten-israeli-security-1635143.html) It does not surprise me that the Israelis are being pigheaded, but I am surprised that they are being small minded and silly. Banning lentils and macaroni for what reason? Still, I don't see anyone who opposes the blockade proposing a solution to the problem of importing weapons, about which Israel has a legitimate interest. As I suggested, it looks like a matter for the UN to handle.

June 3, 2010

Go To Booming School @ Da Daily Kos

If you're watching The Rachel Maddow Show this evening, you're hearing a lot about booming and how ineffectively it's being deployed in the Gulf. If you want to learn all about it, you should go read this immediately. By the by, do you know what moniker British Petroleum once went by? Do you? Huh? The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Formed first as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company following a deal struck with the then Shah in 1901. Then 50 years later Mossadeq took power in Iran and nationalized the oil, pushing the AIOC out. Then in 1953, the CIA forced Mossadeq out. And guess who got to do business in Iran again? Until, oh, about 1979? Yep. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. (Which became the British Petroleum Company in 1954.) Hmmm.

Stop Confusing Us With Facts!

The safest cities in these Untied States of America, that is, the cities with the lowest violent crime rates, are: San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, and El Paso. All of these are cities that border Mexico. One of them is the capital of the state that recently passed a law you might have heard about. The Arizona law is nonsense. As we've covered here at KIAV before, this oft-repeated notion that "the federal government isn't doing anything about illegal immigration" is utter horsey-poo. And may I amend the conclusion of my April 30 post to include "oil gushers of apocalyptic proportions?"

Oh, What You Said!

The President of the United States, speaking yesterday at Carnegie-Mellon, the school what matriculated my very own Grannie G.
In a global economy, we can't pursue this agenda in a vacuum. At the height of the financial crisis, the coordinated action we took with the nations of the G20 prevented a global depression and helped restore worldwide growth. And as we've recently witnessed in Europe, economic difficulties in one part of the world can affect everybody else. And that's why we have to keep on working with the nations of the G20 to pursue more balanced growth. That's why we need to coordinate financial reform with other nations so that we avoid a global race to the bottom. It's why we need to open new markets and meet the goal of my National Export Initiative: to double our exports over the next five years. And it's why we need to ensure that our competitors play fair and our agreements are enforced. This, too, is part of building a new foundation. Now, some of you may have noticed that we have been building this foundation without much help from our friends in the other party. From our efforts to rescue the economy, to health insurance reform, to financial reform, most have sat on the sidelines and shouted from the bleachers. They said no to tax cuts for small businesses; no to tax credits for college tuition; no to investments in clean energy. They said no to protecting patients from insurance companies and consumers from big banks. And some of this, of course, is just politics. Before I was even inaugurated, the congressional leaders of the other party got together and made a calculation that if I failed, they'd win. So when I went to meet with them about the need for a Recovery Act, in the midst of crisis, they announced they were against it before I even arrived at the meeting. Before we even had a health care bill, a Republican senator actually said, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." So those weren't very hopeful signs. But to be fair, a good deal of the other party's opposition to our agenda has also been rooted in their sincere and fundamental belief about the role of government. It's a belief that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet our collective challenges. It's an agenda that basically offers two answers to every problem we face: more tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer rules for corporations. The last administration called this recycled idea "the Ownership Society." But what it essentially means is that everyone is on their own. No matter how hard you work, if your paycheck isn't enough to pay for college or health care or childcare, well, you're on your own. If misfortune causes you to lose your job or your home, you're on your own. And if you're a Wall Street bank or an insurance company or an oil company, you pretty much get to play by your own rules, regardless of the consequences for everybody else. Now, I've never believed that government has all the answers. Government cannot and should not replace businesses as the true engine of growth and job creation. Government can't instill good values and a sense of responsibility in our children. That's a parent's job. Too much government can deprive us of choice and burden us with debt. Poorly designed regulations can choke off competition and the capital that businesses need to thrive. I understand these arguments. And it's reflected in my policies. After all, one-third of the Recovery Act we designed was made up of tax cuts for families and small businesses. And when you think back to the health care debate, despite calls for a single-payer, government-run health care plan, we passed reform that maintains our system of private health insurance. But I also understand that throughout our nation's history, we have balanced the threat of overreaching government against the dangers of an unfettered market. We've provided a basic safety net, because any one of us might experience hardship at some time in our lives and may need some help getting back on our feet. And we've recognized that there have been times when only government has been able to do what individuals couldn't do and corporations wouldn't do. That's how we have railroads and highways, public schools and police forces. That's how we've made possible scientific research that has led to medical breakthroughs like the vaccine for Hepatitis B, and technological wonders like GPS. That's how we have Social Security and a minimum wage, and laws to protect the food we eat and the water we drink and the air that we breathe. That's how we have rules to ensure that mines are safe and, yes, that oil companies pay for the spills that they cause. Now, there have always been those who've said no to such protections; no to such investments. There were accusations that Social Security would lead to socialism, and that Medicare was a government takeover. There were bankers who claimed the creation of federal deposit insurance would destroy the industry. And there were automakers who argued that installing seatbelts was unnecessary and unaffordable. There were skeptics who thought that cleaning our water and our air would bankrupt our entire economy. And all of these claims proved false. All of these reforms led to greater security and greater prosperity for our people and our economy. So what was true then is true today. As November approaches, leaders in the other party will campaign furiously on the same economic arguments they've been making for decades. Fortunately, we don't have to look back too many years to see how their agenda turns out. For much of the last 10 years we've tried it their way. They gave us tax cuts that weren't paid for to millionaires who didn't need them. They gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight. They shortchanged investments in clean energy and education, in research and technology. And despite all their current moralizing about the need to curb spending, this is the same crowd who took the record $237 billion surplus that President Clinton left them and turned it into a record $1.3 trillion deficit. So we know where those ideas lead us. And now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future. We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward. And I don't know about you, but I want to move forward. I think America wants to move forward.
What's been missing in the debate over the issue of the day has been swats at the larger issue. He's getting warmer. But it's more like 30 years. And it's far more pervasive and sinister than he's able to acknowledge. The fact of the matter is that government isn't yet drowning in that bathtub, a visual that only a conservative like Grover Norquist would be twisted enough to even put into thought let alone words, but it's certainly treading water. To the point that when Obama made a point of saying that the federal government was actually in charge of BP's attempts to quell the oil geyser, I didn't believe him and still don't. The reason there is an oil geyser to begin with is that the government isn't in charge of anything. I can hope that the President will continue to espouse the long view of things and that he will go even longer. But I suspect that his remarks of yesterday were as broad as he can go. FDR. There's a guy who knew how to take the long view:
For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.
I was thinking last night as I took my evening constitutional: There is a part of the FDR Memorial here in Washington that memorializes soup kitchens. Seriously. It looks like this: It memorializes soup kitchens and/or bread lines. As if to say, that was something that happened, you know, "back then." And it won't ever happen again. I dunno about that. Not when you've got people who are apparently willing and able to sit in the hot sun and hold up signs that depict the President of these Untied States as Hitler who are begging for the country to become an all-out plutocracy, unable to understand somehow that doing so simply renders them as supplicants and serfs.

June 2, 2010

OK. Blame It On the Jews

Let me get this straight. Israel blockades the Gaza Strip to keep weapons from being imported. Without the blockade, Gaza would be awash in rockets and missles and all manner of things that could be used to bomb Israeli citizens by remote control. At the same time, Israel allows humanitarian aid to the Gaza provided the aid is channeled through Israel. That appears to be the case, and it seems to be reasonable. You don't let the Palestinians starve, but you don't let their allies in Iran ship them weapons. So a group of international humanitarians organized in Europe and using Turkish ships decided to run the blockade. For what reason? Humanitarian aid is supposed to be getting through normal channels. If they want to make the point that Israel is unreasonable about what kind of stuff they allow in, maybe they could present the stuff to the Israelis and let them reject it and then hold a press conference. Now nine of these humanitarians get killed because they decided to pick a fight with the commandos who boarded the ship in the reasonable assumption that if they are running the blockade they might be carrying weapons. I have a hard rime being sympathetic with the "humanitarians" in these circumstances. Looks to me like they were looking for trouble and they got it… which they probably had planned anyway. I am not normally sympathetic to Israel. I think they have played a lot of the wrong cards over the years and have a lot to answer for…maybe not as much as the Palestinian community, which has pissed off numerous opportunities to broker a lasting peace in their dusty corner of the universe. I do not believe anyone can hold Israel wrong in this case. Looks to me like the UN ought to be running these blockades and handling the humanitarian mission in Gaza. Everyone else should shut up and sit down.

June 1, 2010

Al Gore Concedes Erection*

No way! *This title was stolen shamelessly from Fark. Likely, this Fark hed is the crowning achievement of this poster's entire life.

The Gideon Massacre and Israel

There were a couple of morons this past weekend comparing Israel's raid on a relief boat to Gaza as "Israel's Kent State." As a former adoptive Kent townie, a graduate of Kent State University, a former member of the May 4 Task Force and a chronic student of that event, I can say somewhat authoritatively to those people, one of whom wrote for the Huffington Post, that they should fuck off, or at the very least, that they should be more precise with their historical comparisons. What happened at Kent was unique and should not be compared to Israel's botched raid this past weekend. Agree with it or not, Israel reacted in response to events regarding a decades-old to centuries-old violent political conflict. What happened in Kent, Ohio in 1970 had no such historical context. There were protests against the escalation of the Vietnam War, then an ignorant and short-sighted governor sent in the Guard with the permission of an ignorant and short-sighted mayor, then the protests stopped being about the war but about the occupation of the campus, and then a bunch of kids shot up a bunch of kids. There was no intifada in the heartland, you stupid assholes. I am by no means justifying Israel's bizarre stance on relief ships to Gaza, which it appears this morning will be an ongoing policy. But if you must compare this to a historic event, you're better off picking a fictional one—the massacre aboard the heavy hauler transport ship, the Gideon on Battlestar Galactica. At least that event took place in the context of a longstanding foolish violent political conflict.

Look. We're in the Dictionary.

What does KIAV stand for?

Happy First Day Of Hurricane Season!

You're fucked, New Orleans! That is all.

For the Governor ot Virginia

This article from today's Salon pretty much nails the coffin on any argument that the Civil War was something other than a war about slavery. It also provides some views, close to my own, about what would have been the consequences of a successful succession by the Southern states. For the benefit of that moron who is Governor of Virginia.