News Flash! Nader admits to being "spoiler"

St. Ralph Nader, patron saint of the Ideologically Pure Left, is reported to be considering not running for US Senate from the State of Connecticut!

Nader's Senate prospects hit snag with Dodd's retirement

By MARIA RECIO
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- What's up with Ralph Nader?

The three-time presidential candidate and consumer crusader, mostly under the political radar while hustling a new book of fiction, also has been quietly thinking about doing something completely different: running for the U.S. Senate.
The intriguing prospect of running against embattled Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., in his home state this year has hit a snag, however. Dodd made the surprise announcement Wednesday that he'll be retiring, leaving the race open to a strong Democrat, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

That has Nader, 75, known for his "spoiler" role in the 2000 presidential election, re-thinking his chances.

"The attraction is a three-way race," Nader said in a telephone interview. His voice raspy from a cold, Nader - "I never get sick" - spoke from his home in Washington. "It's less likely to have a three-way race with such a strong candidate."

Blumenthal, who's held the attorney general position since he was first elected in 1990, has a reputation for pursuing consumer and environmental causes.

Dodd was a more inviting target for Nader, who's among the critics of the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee for his handling of the financial crisis and for benefiting from a favorable mortgage from scandal-ridden Countrywide Financial Corp.

Nader was looking at a contest as the third option between a weakened Dodd and a Republican opponent; among the candidates is Linda McMahon, former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.

And what, pray tell, would St Ralph running against Chris Dodd accomplish besides getting an asshole Republican elected?

And getting another asshole Republican elected to the US Senate would get the peasants to rise up how, St. Ralph?

Well, gee, St. Ralph, how'd you like the Bush years? And the Clinton years post-1994, those were great weren't they, St. Ralph?

In some ways I can understand the concept of making things worse before they get better. I've even said myself that these white, suburban fucks making $70,000 a year and less who vote Republican, because Republicans cut the social safety net out from under niggers, spics and all other lazy Democratic welfare dependents, deserve to get a taste of their own medicine when the economy goes tits up. But would that really make these guys more amiable to a more socialist agenda or merely drive them into even more virulent fascism? Well from what I've seen in the past thirty years or so the lower income white collar classes of Suburbia USA are growing increasing fascist, witness the teabagger movement.

My biggest complain with St. Ralph and his ilk of the IPL is that while their criticism of the system is correct they only offer mealymouthed solutions like, people got to get organized, fight the system, buy local, act global and so on, and nothing changes.

But what really sticks in my craw about the leading lights of the American IPL like St. Ralph is that most are members in good standing of the coordinator class with the financial wherewithal to withstand only the most severe of economic downturns. And like their opposites on the reactionary right, leaders of the IPL are for the most part products of the nation's leading institutions of higher learning. Quoting from "Can We Rescue the Republic Before the Dark Politics Take Over?" by Kirk Nielson, posted at Alternet.org, December 25, 2009,"...Harvard, Yale, Princeton and most elite schools "do only a mediocre job of teaching students to question and think." Elite universities are in the business of producing "hordes of competent systems managers" not critical thinkers. And there is the crux of the dilemma of what ails the United States.

Politics is firmly in the hands of one, and only one, socio-economic class, the coordinator, or system manager, class. My short hand for the difference between establishment Democrats and Republicans is simple: Democrats are lawyers, Republicans are insurance salesmen. That may seem overly simplistic but all one need do to verify it is scan the biographies of US Congressman and Senators.

The great genius of the coordinator class since the end of World War II was to create the illusion that the United States was a truly classless society, as opposed to the faux classless societies of the Soviet Union and Maoist China, where all its citizens had a chance to move up the economic ladder.It wasn't true fifty years ago and it is even less true now.

Hedges truly diagnoses our national problem

Posted originally at Alternet.org:

From the above article:Hedges...asserts in Chapter 3, "The Illusion of Wisdom," that Harvard, Yale, Princeton and most elite schools "do only a mediocre job of teaching students to question and think." Elite universities are in the business of producing "hordes of competent systems managers" not critical thinkers(emphasis added by me).

This, my friends, is as accurate, succinct definition of the coordinator class I have ever read. Economic class is at the base of America's political and economic problems yet we, the vast majority of the American people, fail to discuss it. So brainwashed are we as a people with the notion of "upward mobility" we do not see that for the vast majority the game is rigged against us.

Again from the article:Hedges not only blames the elite universities for our mortgage-fueled financial crisis but is sure their alumni on Wall Street and in Washington have no capacity to really fix the economic system..."They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of how to replace a failed system with a new one." (He includes George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Obama's "degree-laden" cabinet members in this group.)

Elsewhere on this Web site Naomi Klein excoriates President Obama for squandering ...once-in-a-generation opportunities... to clean up the global environment and repair our broken economy at the same time. From my perspective President Obama fails to see the opportunities Klein describes for the very reasons Hedges outlines above. The president is a product of two of the most prestigious Ivy League universities, Columbia for his degree in journalism, then Harvard Law, and as such is, in Hedges' words, he is first and foremost a competent systems manager, a coordinator.

And why, I think, our center-left and center-right coordinator class politicians and economists try to work within and not alter the fundamental elements of what for the greater majority of Americans is an increasingly flawed and inequitable socio-economic system, is because it works for them. My coordinator class, real estate developer, Democratic state senator is known as a "champion" of the poor in my state, because his district includes some of my hometown's poorest neighborhoods. Yet at the same time he profits from tax incentives, rebates and credits laws for developers, many of which he has hand a hand in fashioning.

Discussion of socio-economic class in the United States is taboo unless it is coupled with race, i.e. blacks and Hispanics are poorer that whites. Yet there is real class resentment which the reactionary-right coordinator class recognizes and exploits to their own benefit, think of the tea party movement.

Sadly unless we can get the big money out of politics and end the myth of corporate personhood I can think of no solution to this dilemma other than the trumbles and guillotines. And this is a step that even the farthest left of the coordinator class will never take.

What if the Republicans had acted like an opposition party?

The health care "reform" bill slithering its way through the US Senate, Massachusetts-style Romney-care writ large, is what Congressional Republicans, had they been responsible and adult, should have offered to counter the allegedly more "liberal" bills from the Democrats. This would have forced Senate Democratic leadership, especially the round-heeled Harry Reid, to hold to a more "socialist" health care reform package that included a "public option" or Medicare expansion.

Unfortunately Republican leadership decided to bite the hands that fed it for so very long, Big Pharma and the health insurance lobbies, and do nothing. This left the door open for Republicans-in-donkey suits, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and long time GOP-deep plant mole Joe Lieberman to take up the cudgels of opposition which US House and Senate Republicans had dropped.

Through intransigence that came close to blackmail at times, Landrieu brought home $300 million in Medicaid bacon for Louisianans and Nelson got Nebraskans off the hook for Medicaid expansion forever.

Writes USNews & World Report columnist Doug Heye,"For Nebraska, the federal government (that means you) will pay the cost for all new enrollees in perpetuity. Think your governor likes that?" Well, Mr. Heye, my governor may not like it but what is he to do? Invade Omaha and hold Nebraska Furniture Mart hostage until the State of Nebraska forks over some dough for Iowa's Medicaid?

Even the darling of the left Vermont's Bernie Sanders got a little Medicaid sweetener.

Unwittingly the Republicans may have signed their own death warrant by taking the obstructionist road to health care deform. As witnessed by Wall Street's "US Investors Flock to Big Health Insurers", MarketWatch.com, after Democrats successfully closed debate on its health care deform bill. Why would the insurance/pharmaceutical industrial complex continue to back a bunch of losers who did nothing for them? So watch for contributions from Big Pharma and Big Insurance dry up for Republicans in 2010. For instance, why would Big Pharma want to contribute to Chuck Grassley, up for re-election, as heavily as in the past? He did nothing to increase their share profitability, nothing for their bottom line. It was all the Democrats.

So while establishment Republicans and teabaggers on the one hand, and progressives and the ideologically pure left on the other rant and rave about back room deals and pork put yourself in the shoes of a Nebraska or Louisiana voter. Why would you want to get rid of a Senator who has brought home the bacon. It is only pork if it goes to the other guy, if it comes to you it is needed federal funding.

And remember, kiddies, people power never trumps money, at least in my life time. Even that hero of the ideologically pure anti-war left Eugene McCarthy's 1968 quixotic presidential campaign was totally funded by four wealthy donors whose identities, and motives, remain secret to this day.

Et tu, Tom?

As you can tell from the post below I am not a fan of "cap-and-trade." Yet however weak it may be for cleaning up carbon pollution, and strong for lining the pockets of the Wall Streets assholes who fuck up this "free market economy" on a regular basis and get away with it, it may be better than doing nothing.

Well don't tell that to our good U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, liberal hypocrite when it comes to environmental issues. Here's what the late-Paul Wellstone's bestest buddy said of the "cap-and-trade" bill crawling out of the U.S. House:"The fact is the House bill, I think, does disproportionately hurt some of our Midwestern states, and we're going to have to get that rectified in the Senate[.]"

In other words my "liberal" Democratic U.S. Senator is standing in the schoolhouse door to protect one of the major air polluters in the country, MidAmerican Holdings, parent company of my utility company MidAmerican Energy,q.v. Des Moines Register, June 14, 2009.

In a news story by Thomas Beaumont in this morning's edition of The Des Moines Register:

Sens. Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley both have senior roles on committees related to energy policy, and they both say the House-passed bill unfairly penalizes Midwestern utilities and faces long odds in the Senate.

That hasn't stopped MidAmerican Energy Co. from conducting an ad campaign criticizing Iowa Democrats' support for the bill in the House. The utility says the bill would require it to raise rates in order to comply with provisions aimed at lowering carbon emissions.

U.S. Reps. Leonard Boswell, Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack say they backed the bill despite reservations because they were happy with changes that helped farmers and rural electric co-operatives. Boswell and Braley described MidAmerican's ads, in print and on the air, as misleading and intended to justify a rate increase.

Well, jesus christ, Blue Dog Boswell and Braley just may be on to something. And why would this "investor owned"--Omaha-based billionaire Warren Buffett being the most major investor--utility company and polluter of Iowa skies seek a rate increase? Back to Beaumont's news story:

The bill would require utilities to obtain government allowances for the amount of heat-trapping carbon they emit. The number of allowances granted would be reduced over time, to compel power companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Half of these carbon credits would be awarded based on a company's emissions, and the other half would be awarded based on its annual sales.

Some large companies such as Seattle City Light, which provide emissions-free electricity to millions of customers, would be allowed more credits than they need, according to the formula.

MidAmerican, which operates mainly coal-fired power plants, would need to buy credits on a regulated market. The utility, the state's largest electricity provider, had fewer than 550,000 residential customers in Iowa last year.

In other words, MidAmerican will be a big loser in the "cap-and-trade" shell game. Warren's good investment doesn't look so good now. I mean he's in the business of making money from making money and if MidAmerican has to actually use some of its capital to invest in clean(er) electricity generation the value of its stock may take a temporary nose dive. We can't have that, can we? That must be why the "obsessively, relentlessly at your service" MidAmerican has been asking its customers to kick in a buck or ten for renewable energy for the past five years or so.

Well, fuck Warren Buffett and the Dairy Queen he rode in on.

And the usually reliable Beaumont either sallowed MidAmerican's, "we're just a li'l, ol' ma and pa Iowa utility company" bullshit or he was too lazy to "Google" MidAmerican Energy Holdings. Hell, the figure Beaumont quotes "...the state's largest electricity provider, had fewer than 550,000 residential customers in Iowa last year[,]" seems suspiciously low.

Oddly enough, while the Des Moines-based company keeps mum about the real number of its Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois customers, it has no problem telling anyone with enough dough to buy a big block of its holding company stock that subsidiaries PacifiCorp has 1.7 million customers in Oregon, California, Washington, Utah and Idaho, or that CE Electric UK is ...responsible for delivering electricity to over 3.8 million properties across the North East of England, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire[.]

Yet according to "liberal" Democrat Tom Harkin, poor li'l MidAmerican Energy is just a struggling li'l ol' Iowa utility that can't meet its obligations under the terribly flawed and too-little-too-late Waxman-Markey Climate and Energy Bill.

R ECs grow Astroturf to fight "crap & trade"

First of all I think the carbon cap-and-trade legislation, now wending its way with all the alacrity of a tortoise though the Halls of Congress, is kind of goofy. I mean the government "auctions," these "pollution permits," emissions permits in polite society, to all the electricity generating and coal-burning plants in the land. These "pollution permits" tell all the carbon-smoke producing industries know just how much carbon dioxide, CO2, the federal government will let them pump into the atmosphere every year. By selling these "pollution permits" to smoke-stack industries, like electricity generating plants, the federal government will supposedly rake in a ton of dough.

Now here's where it get screwy. After all the "pollution permits" are handed out and all the carbon-smoke belching industries find out how much they are allowed to continue polluting Company X sees that it doesn't pollute the atmosphere nearly as much as Company Y. So Company X sells its excess "pollution permits" to Company Y, for a profit, that can now go on its merry way spewing black clouds of CO2 into the air we breath.

As far as I can figure the theory behind this shell game is that the guys running Company Y will get tired of being screwed by the guys at Company X so this gives the guys at Company Y an incentive to clean up their act and in turn sell their "pollution permits" to some other Smoky Joe of a company. Of course, this being American, land of the "free market economy," we gotta have middle-men, brokers if you will, to set up and sell these "pollution permits" in some sort of "free market" stock exchange thingie. And this is where the real money will be made. The general public gets slightly cleaner skies while the assholes who bought you the Dot Com-bubble, the Housing-bubble, and last summer's Oil-bubble get to wax even fatter on the coming "Crap-and-Trade" Bubble.

But this being the United States there are always a few dipshits too lazy or too cheap or just too stupid to know a good thing when they see it. Either that or they just want to be spoilsports and wreck the good times ahead for the Wall Street fucks with their "cap-and-trade" bullshit because they're making a shitpot of dough doing what they've been doing for the last seventy years, thank you.

In this case the spoilsports are some of the good folks of theNational Rural Electric Coopertive Association, NRECA". It seems that a group of these "privately owned, democratically governed" businesses in the Chesapeake Bay region, North Carolina and Iowa just don't want to play ball. So they've sent up an Astrotruf organization called Find A Balanced Solution.com.

Here's what these guys are pitching to the bib-overall set out here in Iowa

We can't afford not to act on the issue of climate change. We also can't afford soaring energy costs. The answer is a balanced solution.

We can have a clean environment AND a healthy economy.

We need a balanced climate change policy that reduces emissions without raising the cost of electricity. The current cap-and-trade proposal before Congress will tip the balance, sending energy costs soaring at a time when reliable, affordable energy is essential for our economic recovery. The effects will be felt in every sector of our economy, in every business and every home.

We need a balanced policy that focuses on new technology, innovation and American ingenuity. Iowa's member-owned cooperatives are already addressing this issue by investing in energy efficiency, clean technologies and renewable resources. We can't let Congress tip the balance with policies that will drive costs up and drag our economy down. Work with us to tell Congress we want a balanced solution.

Act now. Tell your congressmen you want a balanced solution to climate change.


Member systems of CIPCO, NIPCO and Corn Belt Power Cooperatives

What the fuck does this double-talk supposed to mean?

As near as I can figure what this is supposed to mean is that you, Mr. and Mrs. Corn-fed Rural Iowan will see higher electricity bills if this "cap-and-trade" bullshit goes through Congress and President Oreo signs this steaming pile of crap into law. Well, d'uh, Mr. and Mrs. Corn-fed Rural Iowan, you are going to get higher electricity bills in the near future with or without "crap-and-trade" anyway, so what the fuck? You're screwed no matter what.

And as far as the "balanced solution?" My take on the above gobbledygook is, first: "We didn't try nothing and it didn't work so we're just gonna keep on doin' what we been doin', 'cause it makes us money"; and secondly: "We'll get around to 'clean' energy generation just as soon as the price of coal goes up. Trust us." Like that's ever going to happen since coal, the real villain in this melodrama, is the continental United States' number-one fossil fuel. We have more of the shit than nearly anywhere else in the world. And that's why the assholes in Washington, D.C. are playing around with this "cap-and-trade" garbage in the first place.

So either way, "cap-and-trade" or doing nothing, we, the American people, are screwed.

Look, if we lived in a sane country the electric utility industry wouldn't be in private, for-profit hands. At the very least if we just had to have private, for-profit entities own the electric grid, it should be highly regulated like the old AT&T was when it had a virtual monopoly on telephone service. Before divestiture AT&T was a highly profitable company that provided excellent service, in spite of Lily Tomlin, and everybody, except the boys at Bell Labs, was happy with the arrangement.

As far as I'm concerned, "cap-and-trade" is a load of bullshit. The only real way to get these polluting sonsuvbitches in line is to threaten them with legal action if they don't mend their ways. All "cap-and-trade" will accomplish is making the pricks who ran this country into the economic ditch it now finds itself in the first place a little richer and assuage the the consciences of a few well placed and well-known limousine liberals, who will undoubtedly also pad their bank accounts at the same time.

From Bill's Private Stash

Hillary lookin' better than she has a right to be

Digging her own grave

CLINTON WON'T COMMIT TO RENEW CONSTITUTION...Illinois Senator Barack Obama has finally signed the American Freedom Pledge, joining his fellow Democratic presidential candidates in encouraging the restoration of basic Constitutional principles after the battering they have taken during the Bush-Cheney era.

All the Democrats, that is, except New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

The effort to get presidential contenders to sign on the American Freedom Pledge has been promoted by organizations ranging from the Center for Constitutional Rights to Human Rights Watch, MoveOn.org , Amnesty International USA, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and True Majority.

The pledge is anything but radical. It simply asks candidates to affirm a statement that reads: "We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people's phones and emails without a court order, and above all we do not give any President unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any President."

The often embarrassingly cautious Obama campaign had been slow to sign on to the pledge. Earlier this week the American Freedom Campaign, which is promoting the pledge, revealed that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Alaska Senator Mike Gravel had signed the pledge, while former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and Delaware Senator Joe Biden had responded with supportive statements. After a release from the freedom campaign noted that Obama and Clinton had not committed to the Constitution, Obama's aides moved quickly.
The Nation.com/blogs

In light of Super Tuesday...

A repost from Weekly Spoon, June 7, 2006.

My buddy in Oregon send my a link to the neonatal political party Unity08. Catchy, what?

Now there a couple of things I like about Unity08's agenda, but, of course, being "bipartisan" and "centrist" there should be something for everybody. I do, for example, partially agree with the following statement:

Unity08 divides issues facing the country into two categories: Crucial Issues – on which America’s future safety and welfare depend; and Important Issues – which, while vital to some, will not, in our judgment, determine the fate or future of the United States.

In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington’s lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.

By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.

In our opinion – since the disintegration of the Soviet Union – our political system seems to have focused more attention on the “important issues” than the “crucial issues.” One result: The political parties have been built to address the interests of their “base” but have failed to address the realities that impact most Americans.

Well, I'll give'm that. Gun control, abortion and gay marriage are "...not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda." In fact I wouldn't even consider these "Important Issues". They're just plain stupid. Anyone who votes for a political candidate based on what Unity08 calls "Important Issues" is stupid and deserves to get screwed.

As for Unity08's "Crucial Issues", yeah, they sound good but watch out. If you take a gander at the group's "Founders Council" you'll see that it's heavily larded with disaffacted Republican moderates, entrepreneurs, (probably rich) college kids, a sprinkling of lawyers and Carter administration chief-of-staff Hamilton Jordan (pronounced Jerr-dan). So don't expect any denunciations of a "free market economy," or anything that might fundamentallly upset the socio-economic status quo, i.e. Rockefeller Republicans and the "New" Democrats of the Democratic Leadership Council.

But what is most destrubing, to me at least, is this statement:

Goal One is the election of a Unity Ticket for President and Vice-President of the United States in 2008 – headed by a woman and/or man from each major party or by an independent who presents a Unity Team from both parties.

This is my worst nightmare. But, of course, Unity08 is honest in dissolving the illusion of a "two-party system." But what man, and what women fit Unity08's bill?

In the time that I posted the above how little has changed. The corportocracy and its lapdogs the Mainstream Media, in the space of 18 months, has maneuvered the electorate back to the snide. I mean what are the meaningful differences between the laughing witch and the man with the lopsided face? Both of them voted with Bush on the Iraq war resolution and both of them are against the Bush tax cuts for the idle rich. Yippee-fucking-skippee.

There is one difference between June 7, 2006 and now. Unity'08 has suppended operations. It seems a couple of the group's big-wigs are pushing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a "third-party" alternative. Total and unmitigated bullshit. Bloomberg's just the third pea in the pod.

Ann Coulter: Hillary is more Republican than John McCain

If one needs anymore reason not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Des Moines Register endorses Clinton, McCain

Well, no surprise here. Milktoast anyone?

LTE: November 6, 2007

The Des Moines Register editorial, Confirm Mukasey as U.S. attorney general, November 6, 2007, illustrates why the many voters are losing confidence in the Democratic Party, and why the United States is losing respect in the world.

Judge Michael Mukasey may be a fine jurist and personal acquaintance of New York Senator Charles Shumer, and have the credentials required to bring a smidgen of dignity back to the office of U.S. attorney general. Yet his unwillingness to denounce "waterboarding" as torture should out weigh all other considerations when the Senate votes to confirm or deny his appointment.

In 2004, in an effort to form a coherent Justice Department policy on torture, then acting assistant attorney general Daniel Levin subject himself to waterboarding. Following that experience Levin issued a memo declaring "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms." For his efforts Levin was shown the door by, then, in-coming attorney general Alberto Gonzales.

It is alleged President Franklin Roosevelt said of a Central American dictator, "He may be a son of a b____, but he's our son of a b____ ." If this is the kind of reasoning certain leading centrist Democrats, most prominently Shumer and California's Senator Diane Feinstein, have for confirming Mukasey, it is not good enough.

Nor is any pledge of judicial independence made by Mukasey good enough. If we have learned anything
from the history of this administration it is pledges are not worth the paper on which they are written; nor will a Democratically controlled Congress do its Constitutional duty and check the power of the presidency.

How to look like doing something by doing nothing

Jesus Christ, state Senator Smiling Jack Hatch is playing the liberal bleeding-heart race card again. Here's what Iowa's favorite grinning DLC-jackass says about health care in his latest e-mail:

Hispanics and African Americans are more vulnerable to poor health because they have more families without health insurance than white Americans.

The Commonwealth Fund reported earlier this summer that among adults ages 18 to 64, nearly half of Hispanics (49 percent) and more than one in four African Americans (28 percent) were uninsured compared to 21 percent of whites and 18 percent Asian Americans. Children are covered under Medicaid and Hawk-I and seniors are covered under Medicare.

As a result of limited health insurance, Hispanics and African Americans also have differential access to a regular doctor or sources of care, with Hispanics particularly at risk. As many as 43 percent of Hispanics and 21 percent of African Americans report they have no regular doctor or source of care, compared with 15 percent of whites and 16 percent of Asian Americans.

This year, the Iowa Legislature created the Health Care Reform Commission to address how we can develop a system that provides coverage to the 271,000 Iowans who don’t have health insurance. Last month, the Commission, which I co-chair with State Representative Ro Foege, made a historic recommendation at its meeting in Mason City. It approved a series of guiding principles as the basis for restructuring of Iowa’s health care system.

Most significant to eliminating the health care disparity between minority and white Iowans is the principle that “everyone should have a medical home(emphasis added).” A medical home is a health care setting that provides patients with timely, well-organized care and enhanced access to providers. It emphasizes preventive care, especially in managing and eliminating chronic diseases and ethnic disparities in medical care. Individuals should be able to select their own health care (again emphasis added).

Now what in the fuck is this supposed to mean??? Medical home? Sound like some psycho-babble bullshit, doesn't it. Follows the best definition I can find on the Web for the critter: A medical home is not a building, but rather a team approach to providing comprehensive primary health care services in a high-quality and cost-effective manner. And it seems to be the only definition. Still reads like bullshit to me. And notice the emphasis on individuals selecting their own health care, obviously a sop to both free market fundamentalists and the insurance industry.

The report from the Commonwealth Fund (founded in 1918 by Anna Harkness (wife of one of the original Standard Oil investors, Stephen Harkness, ES) indicates that the concept of a “Medical Home” shows promise for promoting equity in health care and addressing racial and ethnic disparities. According to the report, “When adults have a medical home, their access to care and rates of preventive screenings improve substantially… and when minorities have a medical home, racial and ethnic differences in terms of access to medical care DISAPPEAR.”

This is good news for political leaders, like State Representatives Wayne Ford and Ako Abdul-Samad who have been working with me to promote greater collaborations within the health care system. We believe equity will not come without restructuring our health care system here in Iowa and nationally. And that is where we are heading with our Iowa Health Care Reform Commission.

O.K., you may ask, what the Hell's wrong with that? Yeah, it's true what Smiling Jack writes about medical care and private health care insurance ownership rates for African Americans and Hispanics . I don't dispute that fact. And Wayne Ford's my state representative and Ako Abdul-Samad seems like an good guy, from the little I've personally had to deal with him. But why are they swallowing this crap? But let's read on:

In the months ahead, we will hold three public hearings chaired by former Governors Vilsack and Branstad. For those of you in the Des Moines area who may want to participate, there will be hearing at Simpson College in Indianola on Sept, 26 at 6 p.m. The Commission will also hold meetings in Iowa City, Sioux City, Dubuque and Des Moines in the coming months.

Tom Vilsuck and Terry Brainsdead!!! Holy shit! There's a pair of jokers to draw to. Branstad's on the board of Iowa Health System-- an ostensibly "nonprofit" chain of hospitals and clinics whose CEO pulls down $1.3 million a year!--and president of Des Moines University the second oldest osteopathic college in the country. Talk about the foxes watching the chickens!

As co-chair of this commission, eliminating the disparity between minority and white Iowans is one of my top priorities. Time will tell if our political and business leaders are truly committed to the health care of ALL Iowans (weasel words, ES), but I have faith in this Commission and in my colleagues that we will not debate health care reform without addressing this issue.

Smiling Jack's emphasis on minorities is a surefire method to ensure backlash. I mean this isn't going to set well with the white rednecks who are getting raped by high monthly premiums and co-pays in what passes for health insurance from their employers. I don't think Smiling Jack is this stupid. He so wants to look like he's doing something but...when those evil Republicans in the Iowa Senate shoot this initiative down...well it ain't gonna Smiling Jack's fault.

The delusions of intellecutal snobbery

If you've been a regular reader, and I doubt many of you have, you'll know that I have something of a love-hate relationship with CounterPunch.com columnist Alexander Cockburn. Well, it's a one-sided relationship as he doesn't even know I exist. Be that as it may, however, there are time I heartily agree with Mr. Cockburn and times that I don't. This is one of the "don't" times.

Perched on his journalistic version of Olympus, Cockburn spurns the suspicion shared by many in the left-learning blogoshpere that Karl Rove's departure from the White House has less to do with embarrassment, shame or contrition and more with the up-coming 2008 presidential campaign. Writes Cockburn:

The Left designated Rove as the arch engineer of America's supposed lunge in the Bush years into the arms of the Christian right. Indeed the left has so demonized Rove it can't even accept he's gone and advances devious explanations: he's not really resigning at all; he fears impending indictment; he's preparing to "work behind the scenes".

Oh, yes, I too am one of the unlettered "Left" who think KKKarl left the White House to work unfettered, behind the scenes, for the defeat of whomever many be the Democratic Party's nominee for president. And what was my evidence, slim though it many be? Why nothing other than Wall Street Journal commentator Paul Gigot's August 13 "interview" with the devil himself.

Interestingly Cockburn, who formerly dropped off a column or two at the Wall Street Journal, makes no reference to the Gigot column. The voice of Rove the anti-Christ is silent.

Cockburn then turns his sights on one of my personal favorite reactionary wing nuts, the inimitable Richard Viguerie:

The conservative right similarly detests Rove as the man they claim pushed Bush towards socialism. Richard Viguerie, a prominent conservative, bid Rove adieu with these words: "Karl Rove's departure from the White House is good news for conservatives. As President Bush's chief political advisor, Karl Rove was a master in the care and feeding of conservative leaders, keeping them mostly silent as the Republican Party moved Left during the Bush presidency." As evidence of Bush's left agenda Viguerie cited Bush's signing of the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, his wildly expensive prescription drug benefits bill, soaring farm subsidies, steel tariffs, higher federal deficits, plus "Nation-building on a scale never attempted before". Viguerie's demonization is rather more persuasive than the left's.

I guess, the erudite Mr. Cockburn is taking Viguerie at face value. That is something I've learned, from my wormlike prospective, never to do when it comes to the words or writing of reactionary apparatchiks. And everything Viguerie writes one should take with a very large grain of salt. Obviously Cockburn discounts the notion that the reactionary right of Twenty-first Century United States will react to a small set-back, like the 2006 congressional elections, roll with it, lose the White House if need be; nurse an unfounded grudge four long years, obstruct a Democratic administration at every turn; charge out spitting piss and vinegar, crying "We told you so!" with a new cadre of right wing fanatics and retake the government. Jimmay Carter was an aberration, Bill Clinton an irritant. Why should it be any different now?

But the "I'm-smarter-than-you-are" Cockburn sees Rove's departure as nothing more than routine:

So why did Rove quit? Like many White House counselors in the third or seventh year of their White House sojourns, Rove is getting out before the last humiliating year of a lame-duck presidency, when governors of second tier states won't answer the White House's calls. He'll serve out the stipulated year selling his memoirs, rediscovering his family and learning their names. Then he'll become a lobbyist.

Oh? Cockburn's essay went to press, or Web page, before Peter Wallsten's analysis of Rove's departure and subsequent actions in the Sunday Los Angeles Times saw light of day. Reports Wallsten:

Day after day last week, outgoing White House political strategist Karl Rove delivered slashing attacks on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner. Her healthcare record was "spotty and poor," he declared. Her candidacy was "fatally flawed," he said. And no one with her negative poll numbers, he stated, "has ever won the presidency."

The decision to focus on the New York senator to the exclusion of other potentially formidable Democratic standard-bearers such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered a rare glimpse into a world where things are not always what they seem -- the world of modern-day electioneering, whose denizens often prefer going from A to B by way of Z.

Their thinking went like this,[Rove lieutenant Matthew ]Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most.

"I haven't known Karl to do many things accidentally or spontaneously," said Dowd, who has broken ties with Bush, Rove and others and has expressed disappointment in the president's leadership and political tactics.

I suggest you read the entire LA Times story. Wallsten even has an interesting quote from small government guru Grover Norquist, who avers that Hillary Clinton is the easiest person to beat.

But what does Cockburn care. He has his home somewhere in the Northern California woods, his vintage car collection and, perhaps, yet some contacts with Wall Street via old and useful friends at the soon-to-be Murdochized Journal.

Obsessively, relentlessly in your, or some one's, pocket

Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy says it’s interested in building a natural gas pipeline on the North Slope of Alaska.

David Sokol, MidAmerican chief executive, told Petroluem News that MidAmerican and unnamed partners plan to submit an application to the state this fall.

The deadline for applications is Nov. 30.

In 2004, MidAmerican proposed building a $6.3 billion, 745-mile natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to the border with Canada’s Yukon Territory. The company later withdrew that application[.]
Des moines Register

Awww...ain't that nice.

Here's some more of what the Register didn't tell us:

The only thing that could stand in the way of MidAmerican’s application, [Sokol] said, was if the FBI investigations and indictments of Alaska State and U.S. lawmakers would somehow “circle back to implicate any of the producers. If they do, our concern is the process might negatively impact a gas line project from a timing standpoint.”

Applications for a project to take North Slope gas to Lower 48 markets have to be filed under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act by Nov. 30. Strongly supported by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, AGIA passed at the end of the 2007 legislative session despite intense criticism from the North Slope’s three oil producers and gas owners, BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil. The three mega-majors, which own controlling interest in the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline, have indicated it’s imperative they also own controlling interest in a gas line in order to keep project costs down. They say AGIA, as written, won’t work.
Petroleum News.com

So just what is the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act so favored by Republican Governor Palin?

Supposedly it is designed to start "competative" bidding for the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope oil fields. But there is a sweetener and this is what undoubtedly drew MidAmerican.

Sec. 43.90.110. Natural gas pipeline project construction inducement. (a)
15 Subject to the limitations of this chapter, a license issued under this chapter entitles the
16 licensee or its designated affiliate to receive
17 (1) subject to appropriation, state matching contributions in the form of
18 reimbursements in a total amount not to exceed $500,000,000, paid to the licensee
19 during the seven-year period immediately following the date the license is awarded;
20 the payment period may be extended by the commissioners under an amendment or
21 modification of the project plan under AS 43.90.210; a payment under this paragraph
Governor's office Alaska, pdf

And here's another tidbit the Register didn't have room to report, once again from Petroleum News story cited above:

So, what about costs? Gas prices are high now, but what if they drop? Opponents of an independent gas line say the producers will be more concerned about keeping construction costs low because they’ll be shipping gas in the line, whereas a pipeline company such as MidAmerican isn’t going be as worried about cost overruns because it can simply charge a tariff based on whatever the pipeline costs them to build.

So MidAmerican, the utility company obsessively, relentlessly at your service, if this deal goes through recoups part of its contruction costs by a handout from the Alaska state government, then can turn around a jack up our natural gas bill some time in the future.

Oh, our anti-war Democrats

Boston Globe columnist Darrick Jackson shows that some of our most ardent "anti-Iraq war" and "liberal" Democrats are cozy with the Defense Department.

the Globe recently reported that [Massachusetts U.S. Senator Ted] Kennedy slid $100 million into the 2008 defense authorization bill for a General Electric fighter engine that the Air Force said it did not need.

It gets worse in a defense budget that is zooming to $648.8 billion. The nonpartisan budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense last month analyzed 309 Senate defense earmarks. Four of the top five "earmarkers" were not Republican hawks but centrist and liberal Democrats.

[Michigan's Carl] Levin led the way with 44 earmarks. [Senator Hillary] Clinton was second with 26. [Rhode Island's U.S. Senator Jack] Reed was fourth with 23, one behind Republican John Warner of Virginia. In fifth place was Charles Schumer of New York with 21. When asked if she saw any change in defense earmark behavior since the Democrats took back the House and the Senate, senior analyst Laura Peterson of the Taxpayers for Common Sense said over the telephone, "No."

More proof the swamp is still full is the fact that only four of the top 10 senators in defense campaign contributions in the 2006 election cycle were Republicans. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats Kennedy, Clinton, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Dianne Feinstein of California, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut collected 60 percent of the $1.4 million the industry lavished among the top 10.

Odd, isn't it, that our nominally most "liberal" senators also come from states with the highest concentration of military-security-industry contractors?

LTE: July 16, 2007

It is interesting that the Republican Party and its presidential candidates are just now discovering illegal immigration as a campaign issue, as reported by Jane Norman in her piece,Immigration key for GOP candidates, July 16, 2007. Modern illegal border crossing began in 1904 when 75 men and horses were authorized by the U.S. Immigration Service to patrol the United States-Mexico border to stem the tide of illegal Chinese immigration.

Fast-forward to 2007 and suddenly illegal immigration is the fashionable topic of the season. Even Democrats are incensed at the hoard of undocumented laborers taking jobs-- dish washer, busboy, packing plant worker, landscape gardener, construction laborer and so on---from American workers. Television host Lou Dobbs revives his flagging show by railing against illegal immigration. Republican Congressional back-benchers Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a free market fundamentalist who has never worked a day in the private sector, and Iowa's own Steve King, an earth moving contractor, rise to national prominence on the wet backs of illegal immigrants.

If the U.S.-Mexican border is a sieve, for the last 103 years and counting, why are no media pundits questioning illegal immigration's sudden rise as a political issue?

Let us face the fact that once again the Republican Party, with the complicacy of Democrats, has fashioned illegal immigration as this political season's abortion and "gay" marriage; an issue designed to radiate much heat, little light and about which little will ever be done. Look at the GOP's track record. With majorities in both houses of the federal Congress from 1994 until 2006, the Republican Party did nothing to outlaw abortion or "gay" marriage, nor did they legislate an end to affirmative action or school busing for racial parity in public schools, colleges and employment. Moreover, the GOP conveniently forgot its 1994 pledge to make term limits for political officeholders the law of the land. Perhaps it is time we Americans hold the GOP to its promise to build a Great Wall of China-like barrier from San Diego, CA to Brownsville, TX.

The Democrats, however, are little better for they know, the only way to truly stem the tide of illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America is by improving the economy of that region, though a Marshall Plan-type program, and repudiating the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA.)

The ugly truth of illegal immigration is, free market fundamentalists in both parties are content to keep things just as they are.

More dots

Look, I don't know if this means anything, but I had the Saturday
Morning Today Show on and the gentleman pictured on the right,
one Ron Noble, Secretary General of the international police agency Interpol, said something to the effect that Michael Chertoff's "gut" is a fairly accurate meter of "terrorist" activity. He also disclosed that al Qaeda plans on killing "four million of us." Where he came by this information Noble would not say.

I think I heard him tell Lester Holt something to the effect that if the United States withdraws from Iraq now the terrorist will follow us home. It was a strikingly similar comment to the oft repeated administration bromide "We're fighting terrorist in Iraq so we don't have to fight'em here." He continued with some alarmist shit about securing our borders and passport date. In fact, just a couple of days ago Noble told government propaganda network Voice Of America (VOA),

Interpol Secretary-General Ron Noble told VOA the organization set up a database of lost or stolen passports in 2002 as an anti-terrorist measure. But, he says, even though it was fully automated in 2005, only a handful of the organization's 186 member governments are hooked up to the database and taking advantage of it.

"In my view, every country in the world should make it their highest priority to scan passports of visitors against Interpol's global database. But my point is, right now, as I speak to you, only 17 countries in the entire world are doing this.

"And in my view, in the 21st century, in the century in which we find ourselves following the September 11th attacks, the world needs to change the way in which it fights terrorism globally by sharing information instantly and immediately with countries around the world. That's not happening, and it needs to happen."

Look, I'm not one of these anti-One World Government nuts, I actually think a stronger United Nations would be a good thing, but...well, let's just read a little of Mr. Noble's official Interpol bio:

Mr Noble previously served as the United States Department of Treasury’s first Undersecretary for Enforcement (1993-1996), where he was in charge of some of the US’s then-largest law enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service, Customs Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and Office of Foreign Assets Control. Prior to that, he served as an Assistant US Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the US Department of Justice (1984-1989).

Noble worked for both in the Clinton and George H.W. "Poppy" Bush administrations, hence the "Bipartisan Bullshit" label, so this signifies nothing other than the fact the guy's a career bureaucrat.

However the internesting thing is, Michael Chertoff, professional Skeletor look-alike and Director of Homeland Security, says on July 10, he has a "gut feeling" that al Qaeda terrorists may attack the United States this summer. Then President Bush and Chertoff downplay and backpeddle Chertoff's "gut feeling" a couple of days later. Yet on the same day, July 12, a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) report is released titled "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West."

So, O.K., boys, which is it? Are we under a real threat of a major terrorist attack or are Washington/corporationist bureaucrats just trying to scare the pee-jeezus out of us?

Joe Biden: War profiteer

Just about the time I was ready to give Joe Biden a little slack the jackass votes to give Bush all the frickin' money he wants to continue the Iraq occupation. Then the Delaware-slick has the balls to say he's committed to supporting the troops while at the same time pressuring the pResident to end the occupation. What fucking utter nonsense.

Combover Joe is pushing the introduction of "Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles" to keep our soldiers and Marines safer, so they can do their job more efficiently. Might I remind you that the solider's "job" is to kill some people, capture and incarcerate the ones not killed and oppress the rest. The Iraqi occupation is warfare more in line with Ceasar's conquest and occupation of Gaul than the liberation of France in World War II.

But, of course, seeking to keep his Democratic anti-war bono fides in tact, following handing Bush a blank check on Iraq last week, Combover Joe introducted legislation to repeal the 2002 Iraq war authorization. Somehow that seems to me to be tantamount to letting the horse out of the barn after it has burned down.

Why Dems capitulated to Bush on Iraq

Danny Schechter nails the real reason Congressional Democrats wimped out in Thurday's Iraq war budget vote.

...[I]t is sometimes hard to remember that war is business, not just politics. The Military Industrial Complex does business in every state and in every congressional district and the politically distributed pork or war booty employs constituents in every district (emphasis added.) Members of Congress are very aware of that.

The MoveOn’s and anti-war groups are not the only lobbyists in this game. Behind the scenes, employees of war industries and their lobbyists are pressuring the Congress too. Their pressure comes in the form of threats to cut off political contributions unless those they patronize act “responsibly.” They don’t have to make too many threats to the natural born compromisers on the hill for whom selling out is part of buying in. They know who butters their buns.

And then, forever lurking in the background and in foreground, there is the unbrave world of media that gives endless newsprint and airtime to debates about whether the war has been managed well enough. In a media filled with crime shows, this crime goes uncovered as such. Instead, CBS fires a General whose politics they fear may blowback in their face. The reporting is still mostly one-sided and the anti-war movement is barely heard from or seen. No wonder the public is sending mixed messages. They are still being lied to by our weapons of mass deception. There are more new faces in Congress than on the networks.
MediaChannel.org

There. Schechter has written the undeniable truth which the MSM forget and most progressive and liberal commentators seem to ignore. For example, Working Assets blogger David Sirota is highly incensed by Congressioanl Democrats' vote, and righty so. Yet in his blog entries no mention of "The Military Industrial Complex" and its hold over Congress.

Likewise at the anti-war After Downing Street.org, retired US Army Reserves Colonel, Ann Wright, writes:

Thursday, May 24 the US Congress voted to continue the war on Iraq. They called it “supporting the troops.” I call it stealing Iraq’s oil-the second largest oil reserves in the world. The “benchmark” or goal the Bush administration has been working on furiously since the US invaded Iraq is the privatization of Iraqi oil. Now they have the US Congress blackmailing the Iraqi Parliament and Iraqi people: no privatization of Iraqi oil, no reconstruction funds.

And, yes, the rape of Iraq's oil resources is of overridding consideration for Bush and many in the U.S. Congress, but as Schechter points out the tentacles of The Military Industrial Complex stretch into every nook and cranny of the country.

So keeping in mind the power of The Military Industrial Complex, it was an extreme act of political courage for Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd to cast a no vote for the Iraq funding bill. "Although the State of Connecticut is the third smallest state in the union, it is the home of many major defense contractors, including Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, Sikorsky Aircraft, and Electric Boat." (US Department of Justice.gov)

LTE: April 22, 2007

The cynicism exhibited by the anti-immigrant crowd, headed by U.S. Representatives Tom Tancredo, CO, and Iowa’s own Steve King, can only be topped by the Register editorial board's hypocrisy in its April 22, 2007 editorial “Iowa should lead way on immigration.”



It is a long held business school mantra; labor is the only cost variable which management can totally control. Low wages equal high profits and stock prices. Toward that end, for the past twenty-five years, business has engaged in a winning strategy of union busting, global outsourcing and encouraging illegal immigration.



Illegal immigrants flood into this nation from the world over, but the greatest numbers come from Central America and southern Mexico. It should be remembered that the adventurism of the Reagan/Bush I administrations in Central America is in large part responsible for the economic conditions in that part of the continent. Moreover, President Bill Clinton reneged on so-called “side agreements,” permitting organizing by American labor unions in Mexico, after signing the North America Free Trade Agreement.



The Register’s contention of a looming labor shortage, due to falling birth rates and the aging Baby Boomer generation, is as pernicious as the anti-Latino slanders throw round by the anti-immigrant crowd, and ignores the simple and contrary logic: The smaller the labor pool, the higher the wage for the laborer.