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It blows my mind that we on this post decry the need to elect more Progressives but when one (Kucinich) stands up for what we claim to believe some of us are quick to turn our backs.
I guess I have a question for Chris Hedges, which may go unanswered. What do we do? Vote Green? If we are not going to work within 'the system', how do we affect change?
@Quark
The only good point Markos made is Kucinich might score some favor within his party. But comparing him to Blanche Lincoln is disingenuous. Kucinich opposes the Senate bill because it does not go far enough to help the poor and disadvantaged while Lincoln opposes a public option that will hurt the insurance industry.
The House needs 216 votes from the 253 Dems. Kucinich should not be vilified for standing with the poor. The Blue Dog Dems standing with the insurance companies should feel our wrath.
"This bill doesn't change the fact that the insurance companies are going to keep socking it from the consumers," says Kucinich, who argues that, "The insurance companies are the problem and they are getting a bailout."
"Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private health insurance, guaranteeing at least $50 billion in new business for the insurance companies?
Kucinich continued:
Is this the best we can do? Government negotiates rates which will drive up insurance costs, but the government won't negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies which will drive up pharmaceutical costs...
Is this the best we can do? Eliminating the state single payer option, while forcing most people to buy private insurance.
If this is the best we can do? Then our best isn't good enough and we have to ask some hard questions about our political system: such as Health Care or Insurance Care? Government of the people or a government of the corporations.
Taken from: Kucinich's Health Reform Dissents Merit Consideration
by John Nichols
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/09-13
I think Ron accidentally raised an interesting question, which might be: Does the pay level for Congress have any effect on the productivity of the Congressperson? I think it would be tough to determine what the actual rate of pay is for Congress, since a significant portion of the income derived from serving in congress is other than the pay issued by the treasury. The business contacts, book deals, inside information, and corporate board memberships generate the real income. Some of it only accessible after you leave congress, but nonetheless accumulating potential value during the term of office.
I would suspect that a good congressperson does much better financially than a bad one. the question is good for whom? citizens? Probably not so much. the money is in doing the bidding of the monied interests, right?
We need a better educated electorate, and campaign finance reform. Anything else we do is a band-aid on a gushing wound. Thom is doing his part on education. The rest of us need to spread the word and lead by example.
I occasionally like to read a book that challenges my preconceived notions (as opposed to your average FOX viewer, who picks and chooses only those opinions and facts that completely agree with his own). We've set up a lending library in the lunch room where I work, and a couple weeks ago, I spotted a copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" there - the novel that the Libertarians take as an allegory of Biblical proportions.
I'm about 1/3 of the way through it (i. e., about 400 pages!). Interestingly enough, Charles, this book also seems to put forth the meme that charity is evil. Rand, of course, is NOT attempting to speak from a religious point of view, but from an objective one. The whole idea behind it is that an entrepreneur does society the greatest service possible when he serves HIMSELF.
Few of the books characters are presented as REAL entrepreneurs, though. Most are shown as lazy riders of the coat-tails of the GOOD people. The story progresses through several trade-limiting agreements, reached first by industrial consortiums and then by the government, all (apparently predictably) leading to ever-greater disasters. Those who favor these policies are referred to by the story's apparent "heroes" as looters.
Rand's world is full of absolutes - everything is either black or white, thoroughly good or unspeakably evil. Characters leap from the heights of euphoric hopefulness to the depths of abject despair, often in the space of a paragraph. Without exception, every major character in this tale, it seems to me, would benefit greatly from a course of SSRI's.
I probably will finish this book - unlike the last "challenge" book I selected (Tom Freidmann's "The World is Flat", which I abandoned because every argument presented therein follows logically from one that I do not accept - that, from a purely business standpoint, where you manufacture your product does not matter). There are a enough good mysteries in the plot to be solved that my interest is piqued, even if I find the politics abhorrent.
"If" s.b. "if"
Kos Calls Out Kucinich
Markos Moulitsas (The Daily Kos) told Lawrence O'Donnell on Countdown that, If Dennis Kucinich stands in the way of passing health care legislation, as he seems to be promising to do, Kucinich should have a primary challenge, just as Blanche Lincoln and other naysaying Dems. do. Min. 4:20 of 6:49 - video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olb...
P.S.
I'm not sure that I agree with Kos' assessment of Nader's legacy.
I just want to mention that Ellen Ratner's "NAFTA-SHAFTA" seems to underscore the point that the term "NAFTA" has grown to be defined as "bad trade deal" in common usage.
Dan Rather's "watermelon" comment and rebuttal are on Huffington Post.
Frank Schaeffer's book is next on my reading list.
Glenn Beck personifies the last desperate vestige of the aquisitors Ravi Batra lays bare in "The New Golden Age". He is part of the cult that utilizes every means to grow and protect its wealth. Christians served the purpose of retaining power. Now that Christians are tasting the bile of the snake oil they have been sold and are returning to the fundamentals of Christ's teaching, the cult must demonize those espousing charity and compassion as belonging to an evil plot.
www.pahrumplife.org writes: Read the book, The Family, by Jeff Sharlet, to get specific reasons for the madness out there that wages war for fun and profit and for the sake of God. In one poignant passage in the book Mr. Sharlet recalls an article in the February 18, 1966 Washington Post describing the choice of words by one Billy Graham, quoting and then paraphrasing words of Jesus. The Paragraph begins:
“Over ‘lamb chops and hash-browned potatoes and fried apples and fried tomatoes,’ reported the Washington Post in 1966, Billy Graham followed LBJ to the podium of the National Prayer Breakfast to preach the fury of Christ down on America's enemies in Vietnam... "I am come to send fire on the earth!" he quoted Christ. "Think not that I am come to send peace but a sword!" ‘There are those,’ Graham continued, ‘who have tried to reduce Christ to a genial and innocuous appeaser; but Jesus said, You are wrong--I have come as a firesetter and a sword-wielder.’”
The first and second quotes above from Jesus are from scripture, Luke 12:49 and Matthew 10:34. respectively. They are juxtaposed and out of context and as such have lost much of their original poetry to make a new sort of poetry that would presumably fit the message that the above Jesus quoter is trying to convey. Upon reading the whole chapters Matthew 10 and Luke 12, I believe one can see that Christ is advising his disciples on how to spread His word and is laying out the difficulties that they will encounter in this task while also espousing the apostles’ value, and the precautions that they must take in the effort. I believe he is telling his pupils that His words of peace and love have the effect of a sword in that they will be difficult to accept by some people who, invested with interests in war or wronged, sick with rage and vengeance, will differ from even their own family members who see righteousness in those words of peace albeit that they may kindle a fury in those who will not accept it, ergo helping to create great unrest, violence and more murderous and cataclysmic war. And other quotes by Jesus support this analogy and exemplify Jesus’ mere war of words, especially the following: “Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth” (Revelation 2:16). Again His word can be interpreted as His sword.
“You are wrong--I have come as a firesetter and a sword-wielder” is a paraphrase of the verse from Matthew and the verse from Luke, convenient extra words put into the mouth of Christ by a spinning reverend applying an extra kicker in the sermon, as if a nod from Jesus to go ahead and escalate the violent war. Again we can see that Jesus’ words clearly were whitewashed, colored and spun around.
For more on this subject and related subjects please check out:
Free Speech TV - http://www.freespeech.org
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/120305466.h...
Thom Hartmann http://www.thomhartmann.com
Pahrumplife on Mike’s Blog - http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/americas-mayor-calls-morator...
www.pahrumplife.org
I watched the movie "Throne of Blood" (part of the March TCM film festival celebrating the work of the wonderful Akira Kurosawa) last night. The movie was Kurosawa's interpretation of Shakespeare's "MacBeth."
Tho I've seen the movie many times, I suddenly had the image of corporate CEOs driving the desire for power and and property through force and bloodshed. Kurosawa said, in so many words, such forces are eternal, lead to self-destruction and need to be overcome.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050613/
More on the cannabis as sacrament case in Colorado:
According to an article in the Denver Post today, the judge in the trial, in Georgetown, Colorado, rejected the defendant's religious defense, saying that the issue was whether or not his personal beliefs amounted to a religion, as defined in case law.
"It does not appear to this court that the defendant is practicing a religion so much as his own beliefs," she said.
For more on the case, see the following web page: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14643 ... z0hnRufTqR
On the way into work this morning, I found myself behind a tanker truck bearing the company name “Big Green Oil”. Let’s step right on past the hypocrisy inherent in that name (another rant for another day, as TH would say), and talk about the pure unadulterated laziness in the selection of that name. “Huh – everybody’s talking about this “Green Energy” stuff. We’re an Oil company. Oil is Energy.” And that, apparently is as far as the “thinking” applied to the decision went.
This same kind of laziness is apparent in some of the advertising for some pretty big players in the corporate world, too. Consider the case of Toyota, whose flagship products are currently plagued by problems with (1) uncontrolled acceleration, and (2) unreliable braking – yet ALL of their current advertiaments STILL contain the slogan “Moving Forward”. Irony, anyone?
On the Sunday AM talking-point-fests this past weekend, I noted a new ad for the investment product known as Spiders (SPDRs – Standard & Poor’s Depositary Receipts). They actually use the first linr childhood ditty “The Eensy-Weensy Spider” in the ad. Does anyone recall the SECOND line of that song? Yup … that’s what we want – to see our investments “washed out” in the next rainstorm.
The classic example of the above, of course, was Microsoft’s campaign for the Windows95 launch. Win95, you may recall, introduced the now-ubiquitous “Start” button, and MS threw their budget to the wind, obtaining the rights to use the Rolling Stones tune “Start Me Up”. That song, of course, has the recurring lyric “You make a grown man cry”. Surprisingly accurate, when you think about it – how many of us were driven close to tears by our early Win95 experiences?
Here’s what I wonder about … Has this become accepted practice because THEY don’t take the trouble to think just a little bit ahead, or because they know that they can count on US not to?
@Brachland - HEY!!! ... watch it, buddy - I'M an Engineer! Engineering is universally recognized as the most difficult 4-year college program one can take. Way harder for undergrads than Medicine or Law.
Engineers, regardless of their specific discipline, are trained in the following -
1) identification and analysis of problems
2) identification of available resources that may be applicable to said problem
3) reaching a solution to the problem using the available resources.
These skills, of course, are relatively useless to the world of politics, where the paradigm seems to be as follows:
1) identify and analyze the problem
2) obfuscate all aspects of the problem so as to divide and exploit the voting public and remain in office for as long as possible without actually doing ANYTHING.
Thom would be better actually creating a valid argument.
Why not present the information mst??? I am talking short term effects. Thom wants short term productivity gains to automatically go to "labor" no matter the level of unemployment but when productivity goes down as new hires are added to the payrolls then I am sure that Thom will not consider that "fair".
Thom just has no idea how labor markets work and likes to cherry pick data to confirm his own biases.
LOL, Not my hero. I have no heroes and find no reason to go looking for them in my life also. Maybe Thom is your hero and you need to defend him? No?
Seems we don't have a blog page for 3/10, so I'm putting this here -
On the way into work this morning, I found myself behind a tanker truck bearing the company name "Big Green Oil". Let's step right on past the hypocrisy inherent in that name (another rant for another day, as TH would say), and talk about the pure unadulterated laziness in the selection of that name. "Huh - everybody's talking about this "Green Energy" stuff. We're an Oil company. Oil is Energy." And that, apparently is as far as the "thinking" applied to the decision went.
This same kind of laziness is apparent in some of the advertising for some pretty big players in the corporate world, too. Consider the case of Toyota, whose flagship products are currently plagued by problems with (1) uncontrolled acceleration, and (2) unreliable braking - yet ALL of their current advertiaments STILL contain the slogan "Moving Forward". Irony, anyone?
On the Sunday AM talking-point-fests this past weekend, I noted a new ad for the investment product known as Spiders (SPDRs - Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts). They actually use the first linr childhood ditty "The Eensy-Weensy Spider" in the ad. Does anyone recall the SECOND line of that song? Yup ... that's what we want - to see our investments "washed out" in the next rainstorm.
The classic example of the above, of course, was Microsoft's campaign for the Windows95 launch. Win95, you may recall, introduced the now-ubiquitous "Start" button, and MS threw their budget to the wind, obtaining the rights to use the Rolling Stones tune "Start Me Up". That song, of course, has the recurring lyric "You make a grown man cry". Surprisingly accurate, when you think about it - how many of us were driven close to tears by our early Win95 experiences?
Here's what I wonder about ... Has this become accepted practice because THEY don't take the trouble to think just a little bit ahead, or because they know that they can count on US not to?
It is stupid to create a system that does noting to address issues of moral hazards or in Thom's mind a "free lunch" with no costs to society. It simply is not logical.
What costs is it to society to pay someone's medical expenses when he/she was obese and smoke and drank all their lives? Is that fair??? Go ahead Thom, answer some of these questions...
@Ron Rutherford, re: "I know you think that productivity should dictate wage increases when the productivity goes up but are you then willing to concede that wages should in fact go down when productivity goes down???"
Can you show me one genuine example, Ron, of a time when productivity dropped and wages increased? I sincerely doubt it - certainly not over the past 100 years or so. We've ALL seen the graphs, man - wages & productivity track very nicely - reasonably parallel, and constantly increasing at about the same rate, until your hero, Mr Reagan, got elected. Then wages go flat, but productivity continued on its merry way upwards.
You'd be MUCH better off presenting arguments like this on a website run by Fox, Ron - those folks won't try to screw up your story with facts. Over here , we DO read "the whole thing" before replying.
Finally, a Lottery where Everybody Wins!
I think everyone would agree, both Democrats and Republicans, that the current system of ‘he or she who has the most money gets to buy the congress’ is untenable and furthermore is taking us to a far worse place than we have ever been before. Tragically, ‘he or she’ is not usually a person at all, but instead a corporation whose primary objective is profit - and the consequences to humanity be damned: continuous, destructive, immoral behavior taking place every day which we are seemingly helpless to stop.
The obvious question -is there a way out? Here is an idea that I haven't heard before. And who knows, maybe it could happen someday, somewhere.
First, someone with a lot of resources starts a movement, or one of the existing political organizations takes on this Karmic Cause…
After some careful and extensive preparation, an edict is issued to the US Congress stating that they have 3 months to eliminate all 'excessive' corporate and private money from electoral politics. The maximum any person or entity can donate is $100, period. Elections will be paid for by taxpayers and the media. The media will contrubute by making equal time available to candidates at no cost to the government. Call it rent for using the commons, be it satellite, cable or the air.
Now the fun part: If the congress fails to enact the new election laws, we will decide the next election by lottery. Americans love to gamble so lets put it all on the table!
Imagine: a national lottery is held, drawing names of 'candidates' - one, and only one, for every seat in the federal government. Of course there would be some minimum requirements, but considering the caliber of our current elected officials, we wouldn't have to make the qualifications too terribly onerous.
First, applicants would have to have at least a Masters degree in a field that is applicable to governing, have worked in the real world for a minimum of 5 years, never have been convicted of a felony, be the required age and be able pass a civics test…you older folks will remember the 8th grade?
That’s it. You can enter if you are a Democrat, a Republican, Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Communist, Fascist or Corporatist. For you Fascists and Corporatists (is there a difference?) this may be the only chance you have to keep your seat. Better enter now before someone who cares more about the country than they do about their next job takes it away. I am sorry to lump you all in to the same dung heap (I know it’s not fair) but extreme problems call for extreme measures.
For all of you engineers, and the like, I am not prepared to entrust my government to someone trained only in physics. I mean look at the Medical Doctors in congress. They seem kind of extreme when it comes to politics, don’t you think? What makes them think they’re qualified anyway? Set a broken leg, fix a country...all in a day’s work… ha, ha - it only hurts when I vote.
Of course, having a level of expertise in the machinations of real world endeavor is a must. Therefore, a certain percentage of applicants for the lottery should be doctors, engineers and other professionals - but not too many -just enough to provide real world opinions and possible solutions. My vote would be for about 20%.
That’s really about it. Everyone pledges to vote for the lottery winners ( again, only one lottery winner per seat) in the next election and we have a brand new government beholding to nobody but their families and friends. The newly elected senators and house members sole pledge, in addition to the oath of office, is to outlaw campaign donations of more than $100 from any person or artificial entity.
Should electing completely unknown but well educated individuals to run the government scare us? I don't think so. Most Americans are good people at heart. Granted, many are distracted by the incessant rat race and scared selfish by the constant uncertainty of what the future might bring. Besides, how could they be any worse than the imperious infection we call the Senate? I know... they're not all bad. But considering the scope of the problem, I think we would be justified in cleaning it out completely this one time. Hell, we could end up with 3 or 4 Bernie Sanders'. Wouldn't that be a nice change?
Probability says we will get a fair representation of the greater electorate, but even if we don’t, can it be any worse? Just consider this. Would any thinking, disinterested person have voted to cut summer jobs for teenagers or help for poor families during a depression? They just did! While at the same time refusing to tax the Wall Street Plunder, being euphemistically referred to as bonuses by our illustrious main stream corporate media.
Screw em all. Let the games begin!
Is it stupid for the US not to not have a universal health care system that creates both the sense of security and the actual enhancement of the right to life?
Hmmm let's see... here are just a few benefits: a profitable national postal system (carrying over 40% of world's mail volume!), greatly reduced auto insurance costs (most of it is medical liability), more competitive industry globally (watch China beat the US in joining the modern world), more focused and profitable industry locally (no insurance overhead, cost, management time and worries)
And trillions of dollars saved or actually spent on health care instead of "overhead" (dunning, denying and dining out).
And you'll like this Ron: it cures the right-wing hypocrisy about how we have the greatest medical care in the world when millions of people go years without any care at all.
Thom, you really let Katherine Mangu-Ward off easy. I can't believe she actually said it's OK to ship US jobs to China becuase they really need them. What!! She's just making up absurdity, that is most certainly NOT any part of corporate motivation, as an apology for corporations seeking cheap labor and lax regulation at the expense of US workers.
I'm all for US aid to poor countries and fighting to end the plight of sweat-shop workers where ever they are, but exporting US jobs and bankrupting our nation is probably not the best way to do it. Plus it's just beyond absurd to asign this as a motivation for why US tarrifs have been eliminated. You should have nailed her on this complete nonsense. Anyway, thanks a bunch and love the show.
rewinn March 9th, 2010, 10:34 am
@Zero G: hey have a SOH!
I know lotsa stoners. Some are smart and some are stupid.
The key point is that when you’re high, you are not smarter but you are mellower, as opposed to when you’re drunk: you’re not smarter then either but a lot of drunks act out.
I agree (surely preaching to the choir of liberals)..
I stopped when I was a teenager because it was making me fat.. But I observed many friends, now grown up.. And pot had no bearing on their lives (today all the legal penalties will for sure ruin ones life). As you said, the smart ones are still smarter, LOL.. I watched the ones with addiction issues jump from one addiction to another.. One friend was addicted to alcohol, then quit and then got addicted to pot, then quit pot and got addicted to religion (finally after Bush he woke up; but his church friends hate him now).. The "addict" friend was previouslty a CEO of a company (we are in our 50's now.. I dont understand why he still works, because he doesnt need to.. maybe he is addicted to working now, LOL)..
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