On the Contrary

Here are a few of the tidbits of news that shed some light on where we have been and where we are going:

• “Many Republicans are already angry over the emphasis Mr. Obama placed on the public plan (health care) in last weeks letter.  Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said Friday that ‘the key to a bipartisan bill is not to have a government plan in the bill’ (New York Times).”  Said another way, the Republican idea of bipartisanship is their way or the highway.  We have already had enough of their failures haven’t we?  I wish they would just get the hell out of the way.  The real issue here is do you want something bipartisan or something that works.
• Here is another thought on health care:  The big question is how to pay for it and one of the suggestions is to tax health care benefits.  Another is to tax sugar in soft drinks. I find this whole discussion to be an indicator of how troubled our whole tax system is.  It also indicates how entrenched are the forces to prevent any change in our tax system when the suggestions are just to pile on more obscure taxes instead of reforming the whole system.  One way or another you already pay for health care so why not just get rid of all those hidden costs and include it as part of our income tax.
• Watching the banks maneuver is always entertaining, if not somewhat appalling.  Most of us understand that derivatives got us into the financial mess we are in because they were unregulated and basically invisible to the investor to understand their makeup and risk.  The Obama administration has proposed regulating them, but left a loophole for “customized” derivatives which would leave them, let’s just say, less than transparent.  Most agree that the best way to not allow speculation to get out of control again is to be able to evaluate the risk in each investment through the transparency of trading them on an open market.  So why are we opening ourselves up to “customized” derivatives?  So the banks can once again make fabulous amounts of money by hiding their risks and preventing open competition.  Isn’t it amazing that the boys who tout competition are the first ones who try to undermine it if it impacts their goose who is laying their golden eggs?
• President Obama has told Israel no more settlements.  This apparently broke an agreement by the Bush administration (verbal) that we would continue to say that, but normal growth is okay.  I think this is the pivotal “no duh” moment.  The Israelis have a problem here because much as we have our radicalized Republicans who want no government unless it prevents a woman’s choice or two consenting adults from marrying, they have their fruit loop religious radicals that think God made them special and they can take what they want (very similar to Republicans).  Until Israel decides on an equitable swap of land, there will never be peace there.  That means marginalizing their religious nuts.  So when the Republican Party can marginalize their nuts, maybe the Israelis can marginalize thiers and there may be hope for the future.  I am not holding my breath.
• It appears the administration is considering whether they can accept guilty pleas from some of the detainees for the 9/11 murders, skip the trial, and go directly to execution.  It solves so many problems like the law explicitly prohibits accepting the plea, and the fact that much of the evidence was gathered using torture which makes it problematic.  Note I am not saying abusive interrogation techniques.  Let’s just call it what it is.  Sometimes in our rush for retribution we forget what justice is about.  Yes a trial would be messy, but it would be honest.  And it would take what everyone knows is the PR approach to what a wonderful country we are off the package and expose our ugly underside.  But it would be what the world and we American citizens are really yearning for, honesty.  It would reemphasize that we are about, justice not efficacy, and it would help to expose what animals these people are.  Oh and on the execution thing, make it life without parole.  Execution just plays into their hands and makes them martyrs.   When will we ever learn that the hard road is the only road that will get us to where we want to go?
• Liz Cheney is still making a fool of herself along with most of the media.  She is still operating under the impression that saying it is so makes it so.  The media is also helping that impression by unquestioningly repeating whatever she or her dad say.  Ah, but the problem is video of what really happened and what they really said.  Liz is claiming that there was no attempt to link the 9/11 attack with Saddam Hussein.  Roll the video.  The only thing that worries me about all this is that the press seems to have learned nothing from their failures during the run up to war in Iraq.  But we still have The Daily Show, Colbert, and MSNBC.  The rest of them just sit there like idiots and accept this garbage or repeat it endlessly like it were true.  That’s entertainment folks!
• One last thought.  A friend of mine was trying to convince me that the whole economic mess was caused by Fannie and Freddie (government) and irresponsible home buyers.  That is like blaming your kids for their bad behavior without looking at how you set up an environment in which they could act out their worst impluses.  The banks were making a fortune repackaging debt and selling it to the rest of the world.  All the rest follows from this.  It is the root cause.  Why can’t we ever remember the simple rule, “follow the money.”

Are we getting anywhere yet?

Bits and pieces is just some random thoughts about some of the events we are seeing swirl around us and that might give us some perspective and insight into our world and our perception of it.  To Wit:

• Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme should have been no surprise to anyone.  Recently on PBS Masterpiece Theater they ran a wonderful production of Dickens’, Little Dorrit, which he wrote in 1855.  One of the pivotal characters was Mr. Merdle, who everyone paid homage to as the great and wise investor who made money out of thin air.  Of course his and all his investor’s houses came tumbling down when they discovered he was running a Ponzi scheme, paying off old investors with new investors investments.  So with the history of this type of unscrupulous behavior so well chronicled in our literature, why were we surprised when what seemed too good to be true, turned out to be too good to be true?  Maybe because most people don’t read anymore.
• The other night on the season finale of House, in one scene a doctor is in the operating room performing a critical and delicate surgery and the other doctor starts talking to him about his personal life and his problems.  This kind of behavior is reflected in many of our TV dramas, NCIS comes immediately to mind.  In the real world, it is becoming apparent that the commuter airline that crashed near Buffalo last winter was caused by pilot error and part of the problem may have been pilot distraction as the pilots were chit chatting during a critical phase of the flight.  Now some might say this is why women should not be in the cockpit as though men don’t do this.  But I would say this is a much more prevalent problem and it is simply a lack of professionalism and self-discipline.  I thought  television mistakenly portrayed this kind of chit-chat as some kind of steely eyed professionalism that allows you to multitask during critical times.  But as real life is showing us, real expertise as a professional is to be totally focused on your task during critical phases of it.
• Charley Crist, Republican Governor of Florida has announced that he will run for the Florida Senate Seat.  In announcing his bid he said, “The challenges we face are national issues.  We have to understand that, and I want to serve where I can serve the people of my state the very best.” Gee, is that a Republican recognizing that the role the federal government plays is extremely important and instead of “states rights”, most problems will have to be solved on a national level?  Could this be a shift in the Republican dogma of small government?  I doubt it, just a shift to suit a personal agenda, a.k.a. Arlene Specter.
• Liz Cheney was on the airways trying to defend her father again.  I actually felt sorry for her.  She loves her Dad and is blinded by that love.  Not so much different than anybody else’s daughter.  But in this case she came up against Eugene Washington of the Washington Post, who is unafraid to challenge circular and sordid logic.  Liz was saying that we did not do torture because we had legal memo’s that said it wasn’t torture.  Eugene pointed out that if you follow this logic then any country can get lawyers to justify anything and there is no law.  Poor Liz thinks these memos justified her Dad’s behavior when the reality is he went lawyer and memo shopping to get them to justify what he wanted to do anyway.  The fact that these memo’s are now being totally discredited as legal justifications just doesn’t penetrate her wanting to defend her Dad.  Somebody take these people off the air and put them out of our misery.
• Miss California has given an impassioned speech about her right to have her own views and not be attacked for them.  But that wasn’t why she was at risk of losing her crown.  She did pose semi-nude (I am taking this on faith because I am not allowed to Google her pictures on penalty of death) and starting work with political action groups against gays, which clearly was a violation of her contract.  In addition, she seems to think her right to speak her mind should not be criticized by others who want to exercise their right to speak their minds. She seems a bit schizophrenic to me and a great recruit for the Republican Party.   Then of course we have Donald Trump forgiving all sins.  No surprise here, but if she were unattractive or only mildly attractive, do you suppose he would have cut her the same slack?  If you are a woman watching this travesty, doesn’t it tell you everything you want to know about sexism?

Just another day where stop making sense is now a life style.

Just a short note as I work on Vine/Wine Friday:  The Press is finally being the press and it is a welcome surprise.  The Republicans have been out on one of their talking point drives trying to tamp down the outrage about their sactioned torture.  In the past the press has gladly lent their stage for these conservative talking points, but on the torture issue they are confronting these Republicans with a few facts that don’t quite jive with their story.  A case in point was yesterday’s Nora O’Donnell (MSNBC) interview with Liz Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Cheney.  Liz Cheney was spewing all the misinformation about torture and with the memos and other information we now know about what actually happened, Nora was able to point out most of the out right lies in the talking points or the failures in logic.  Later Lawrence O’Donnell was interviewed and he trashed the rest of the logic including the claims of preventing terrorist attacks.  On that one, the attack was prevented 6 months before we captured the terrorist they purported to have tortured to prevent the attack.  You can see all the interviews on the Daily Kos.

There was another interesting tidbit on the Olbermann show (Countdown MSNBC) when Keith was interviewing Chris Hayes the Washington Editor from the Nation Magazine about whether Nancy Pelosi had, as John Boehner claimed, known about what was going on (which she denied).  Chris said, “I am inclined to believe Speaker Pelosi over John Boehner, but I don’ really care from a partisan standpoint, who sign off on all this.  Let it all be brought to light.  If it were the case that there were Democratic law makers who knew what was happening and gave it the thumps up whether tacit or explicit, we should know about that…” This is the primary difference between Democrats and Republicans.  They are protecting their own at all costs, most Democrats are standing up for a principal that torture is immoral.

So here is a hearty thank you to Nora O’Donnell and we hope the beginning of a new chapter in Press coverage where instead of just letting the pundit spout his talking points, the interviewer is well enough prepared to raise critical questions about them instead of just moving on to the next question, letting the false claims go unchallenged, and lending credibility to them.  I would love to see the same type of interview about the economy or energy.  It truly would be a new day