corporatism « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Rahm sez: "NAFTA = Good Times!"

timmuky — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:07:13 +0000

Easy credit ripoffs. Good times!

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been telling Democrats a win on the health issue will reverse the slide in public opinion, just as passage of another controversial proposal, the North American Free Trade Agreement, lifted President Bill Clinton in the polls.

-Wall Street Journal, “Democrats pin 2010 hopes on bill”

In an only slightly different context a wise person said, “It’s scary to think that people this obscenely stupid are running the country.”

The customer is NEVER right

jonxc — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:25:58 +0000

If you think that the customer is always right, those days are over in our brave new world!

We, the big vendors now use laws as weapons regularly, swinging it at you when you do not pay up or become unsatisfied with our products and/or services. You can never “not buy” from us because you NEED our products and/or services. We love to give you the illusion of choice but we really own everything. And we make sure each “choice”, each “mom and pop” firm has its unique imperfection. That way, you’ll keep running but will never be satisfied. Yet, you can’t live without food, Internet, transportation, energy, roads, military and courts. Haha! We own and control the very courts you peruse for justice! How screwed up is that for you? So try. Try to stop us. Hahahaha.

There’s just nothing you can do about it. Absolutely nothing. You can yell all you want about anarchy and freedom, how they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. You can do whatever you want in your own power. And what will we do? Sit and laugh at your puny attempts to destroy our world. You can never destroy our world! Because you serve as our customer, and the customer is NEVER right. MIGHT makes right. MIGHT gets things done. Hahahahaha.

So go ahead and eat your tasty “enhanced” chicken and drink that soothing “detensionizing” red wine. I can assure you we did not put anything special in them. Would we lie? Maybe, sometimes. You never can tell. But remember, you must eat. You must DRINK! And we ultimately provide all the food and drink you can ever consume.

You MUST eat or you’ll have to live with the wolves! That’s the price of civilization. But, hey, we give you the choice.

More on Jane, Grover and Rahm

timmuky — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 04:08:21 +0000

All I know is the Hamsher/Norquist joint venture caused many Obama loyalists to pee their pants, and got a lot of positive comments on Jane’s own site. Not exactly surprising.

Someone asked about it on the President’s plane and was met with a predictably smug reply, that the Chief of Staff’s job was “very safe”.

And also: over the Christmas weekend the White House announced that the caps on Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac losses would be lifted. There was talk that they would be raised from $400 billion to $800 billion, but no. They have been raised, to, uh, infinity.

Did Jane Hamsher really whack Rahm Emanuel upside the head, as Cenk Uygur claims? If so, was it with a Nerf bat, or a 2 by 4 with a nail sticking out of it? Is he PISSED? Just mildly annoyed? More important, Will this be enough to shame the White House into taking any real judicial/investigative action with regard to Freddie Mac, like letting Inspector General Ed Kelley get back on the job? You know, 6 trillion dollars is a lot of money.

more about "Jane Hamsher Hits Rahm Emanuel Over t…", posted with vodpod

Why I do not celebrate Christmas

nfamous23 — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:20:43 +0000

As an agnostic I don’t celebrate Christmas. Right off the bat there’s Christ in the word. That pretty much speaks for itself. Maybe if it was called Mythmas or Gitftmas I could swallow my agnostic pride long enough to engage in frivolous consumption that furthered the ends of corporatists and our military around the world as they continue to silently wreak havoc upon this middle class and innocent women and children in other countries. I’m not saying that I feel guilty because I have more than other people. I’m saying it’s wrong and we should act to change it but we don’t and we won’t because Americans are selfish to the bone and terrified of their government.

One of the most frustrating parts of Christmas for me is how nonbelievers like myself are forced to tacitly participate in Christmas even if it’s nothing more than getting a paid vacation day or being the recipient of a flurry of “Merry Christmas” greetings from believers who think it’s important to be polite at least one day out of the year. It’s sort of like the racists who hate getting MLK day off. Every time someone tells me “Merry Christmas” I just want to say “I don’t celebrate but Merry Christmas to you since you do.” Now that I think about it I shouldn’t even do that because sit lends credence to the ridiculous mythology. If people need hope in their lives they need to find another way besides lies to accomplish that. They need to find hope in each other instead of material possessions and money.

How can I respect any religion that doesn’t even respect itself enough to make its members adhere to any of its own proclaimed tenets? There are no membership requirements to be a Christian. Anyone can join and after joining you can do whatever you want and still call yourself a Christian. This is part of the sickness that has been wrought upon us by hypercapitalism, consumerism, infantilism, corporatism and hyperindividualism but most Americans refuse to help find a cure and end up espousing treatment of the symptoms. Giving in to it feels better than fighting so as usual we end up choose the path of least resistance just like every election cycle when most of us (not me) believe the same repackaged lies that were parroted during the previous election cycle. Obama is the most recent repackaging of such lies. Sarah Palin will be the next.

No one really believes that the Earth is 6000 years old. You have to be clinically insane to really believe that humans lived amongst the dinosaurs like in “Land of the Lost”, a show I used to love as a child (although I don’t care for Will Ferrell’s version or anything Will Ferrell does as an overpaid idiot). The truth of the matter is that faith overrides all for believers. Out the window goes science, logic, reason, our five senses, etc. Everything because the sacrifice for faith to avoid cognitive dissonance. They put it all on black this time and again got burned. Of course these very same believers rely heavily on science to get through each day. They haven’t rejected any science that benefits them, just the science that causes them emotional distress by questioning long held ridiculous beliefs about the origin of man, life and the universe. How convenient for them!!!

Why should nonbelievers get to have their cake and eat it too? They get to enjoy the science of electricity. They get to enjoy the warm of electric and gas heat in the winter. They get to enjoy contact lenses for poor vision. They get to enjoy food raised using modern scientific techniques. They get to drive cars and ride in elevators. If you are a real Christian then you should reject all science but believers are known for their cherry-picking aren’t they? Many Christians believe homosexuality is ok even though the Bible clearly illustrates God hates it, assuming briefly that the Bible is the word of God. Many Christians lie with impunity even though the Bible says that “All liars will have their part in the Lake of Fire”. Do Christians think God is kidding? Do they think God will excuse “white” lies or their support of a gay agenda? I have read the Bible several times and I have yet to find any escape clauses. There are no mitigating circumstances or plea deals from what I can tell. There’s also no time off for good behavior nor any probation or parole. It’s an open and shut case in almost every instance.

I’m playing the devil’s advocate because I do support gays and I don’t believing in lying on principle because it’s wrong and by wrong I mean simply that liars are trying to avoid responsibility for their misdeeds, conceal something they are ashamed of or even avoid being incarcerated and/or executed if it’s serious enough. 9/11 was one such lie. Christianity is another. So is 99.9% of what you hear on CNN from Wolf Blitzer’s Zionist lips. They are all connected. They are the lies that bind. They bind us together in our treachery as Americans against the rest of the world and furthermore against each other. If that draws your ire then then there may be hope for you yet because at least you still have the capacity for good. Guilt is good trying to express itself but Americans usually just block it out with tv, sex, drugs, alcohol (also a drug), really bad music, consumerism, etc. Those distractions may provide temporary relief but it cannot provide a cure for what ails us as a nation. Lies.

The Health Care Bill: The Lowest Chop

lobobreed — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:45:02 +0000

“I’ll chop you so low, you’ll have to look up to look down!” This was one of the lowest “chops” of all, that art of crafting an insult which was quite an intellectual skill amongst the wolfcubs when Silverwolf was in the fifth grade, at the Collectivist brainwashing center. The above “chop” was Silverwolf’s favorite, and would endlessly puzzle his mind, as he tried to imagine looking up to indeed look down. It seemed a daunting task, intellectually, to grasp this notion, just as it was equally to grasp the idea of “what is on the edge of the universe” or “is there anything beyond the universe?”

Fast forward a few score years to December 24, 2009, a day that will live in Libertarian infamy, as Silverwolf finally discovered what the meaning of “I’ll chop you so low, you’ll have to look up to look down!” was.

It’s the Healthcare Bill, for it is this piece of legislation that has extinguished the last spark of Libertarian Freedom residing on the face of the earth. Singapore may have lower income tax rates, but that is one of the few positives to say about that sewer of Human Values, a “country” that has executed a young Australian man by hanging for possessing a few pounds of cannabis. But from the standpoint of Freedom, it was almost certainly in America that there was still some glimmer of Libertarian Freedom, some still-flaming embers, as the income tax rate was lowered a score of years back from the usuriously immoral rates perpetrated by the Democrats during the dark days from Truman up to Kennedy (including Eisenhower, who, like Churchill, became a milktoast Socialist after defeating the National Socialism of Hitler and his numerous German fans).

But these embers of a dying Capitalism and Human Freedom have been extinguished by this immoral Health Care Bill, which gives the corporate Socialists everything they want, and destroys the last vestige of that Bill of Rights which Jefferson and the Founding Fathers so passionately saw the necessity of. America has been castrated by the feminized Socialism of Roosevelt through Clinton-Bush, and this Bill is the last nail in the coffin, for now, no longer is a Man Free in America, but he must now pay a corporate tithe every month just to exist as a Man, thus overthrowing the Creator-given Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, which the Men who wrote the Constitution had the vast intelligence to appreciate. Mental pygmies like Pelosi and Senator Reid have not one iota of that hyper-intelligence which reeks through the writings of Jefferson, Madison, and Paine, or the slightest love of Human Freedom. They are working for that Corporate-Socialist agenda which completely subjugates the Individual to the Collective, just as was done by the Criminals, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and they have virtually succeeded. The “reconciliation” of the Senate and House versions will be used to imply that real debate and give and take have gone on, but the real damage, the destruction of the Individual’s Self-Ownership, one of the axiomatic foundations of Libertarian insight, has already been achieved by the Moral Castrates of the Democratic Majority in the Senate.

However, Goliath was sure that he would slay David, and the punters of the day were laying the odds that way, but things didn’t turn out as expected. Judging from the anger of callers to Liberal- and Moderate-Democratic talk-show hosts last week in San Francisco, a very Liberal town, Silverwolf would say that the Democrats, in their self-righteous blindness which they invariably display towards the morality of what they are doing, especially when it is deeply immoral (witness Sen. Feinstein’s staunch support for Legalized Murder — oh, I mean, Capital Punishment), — these Democrats have finally slit their own wrists, metaphorically speaking, for they have not awoken to the fact that they are going to drive millions of Americans who either did not vote, or voted for them, believing the propaganda machine of Herr Obama, into a state of utter destitution when they suddenly have to use their food money to send off hundreds of dollars a month to a corporation that makes billions of dollars a year. This was the Clinton plan; this was the plan that Obama said he staunchly opposed when he lied during his campaign against Her Highness in Iowa, as he let go another trial-balloon lie. By now a dozen have rolled off his back, as effortlessly as they rolled off a teflon Reagan-duck. Birds of a feather study evasion together.

And as for lukewarm Republicans amongst that 31 million who will now be forced under threat of robbery — I mean, tax penalty, to make their monthly contributions to the insurance mafias, well, you can be sure they will be transformed in strident Republicans. With all those millions now forced to pay monthly tribute to the insurance companies, it’s small wonder that insurance execs with tons of their own stocks made a mint the other day, when final passage was in sight. No wonder insurance industry fan Buffett was so gungho on Barack. Qui bono? Who does it benefit? was the question that Professor Rothbard taught us to always pose when looking for the reasons for anti-Libertarian legislation. On this one, the answer is not difficult to determine.

When the half-of-Americans who are too indifferent to vote and the Obama-fans-no-longer who must now pay through the nose, without their beloved “public option”, are joined by angry Republicans, there will be a Libertarian coalition formed that will rival anything seen since the Founding Fathers wrested the Colonies from Georgy-Porgy Puddinghead-Pie the Third, or J. Bracken Lee ran for President in the 50s as a Libertarian. Impinging on the Freedom of Individuals can have a tonic effect on those who take the comparative Freedom of America and the Western European Democracies as a social given which has existed since time immemorial, instead of a brief respite in the long history of Totalitarianism, which is one group of gangsters trying to ride herd over a vast number of Human Freedoms. The requirement to pay out hundreds a month just to exist will produce a bile so galling that it will be tastable in the American political mouth, and the only way to spit that taste out will be for the public to vote out the Democrats, and vote in Libertarians and Ron Paul economic-Republicans. And they will.

“Heat not a fire for thy adversary so hot that it do singe yourself” advised Shakespeare, but that is a lesson the Democrats never learned.

Arise America, retake your Freedom at the polls, and vote the Collectivist Scoundrels out forever!

And that will be the best chop of all.

Hoooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww! — Silverwolf

Progress vs Stagnation & Hopelessness

philip1723 — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:05:48 +0000

This essay by Al Giordano is an interesting look to how societies evolve and improve.
Maybe there is more hope for the future than I have previously thought.

Weapon of Monetary Destruction

UNETS Detroit — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:42:09 +0000

Source By way of review, the Fed has only one distinct power: the capacity to create money out of th

odd couple: jane and grover join forces against rahm

timmuky — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:01:39 +0000

Hugely unlikely bedfellas Jane Hamsher and Grover Norquist have teamed together to demand Rahm Emanuel’s resignation, over the White House Chief of Staff’s “activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it.”

This is sure to raise the hackles of lefties who despise Norquist and of conservative-identified folks for whom Hamsher is the SheDevil incarnate. But after that settles down, what will it mean? Will a coalition of ideologically opposed outsiders be able to gain any traction at making life difficult for America’s Number One insider political figure? And will it change anything about the corporate ownership of the political process?

Honestly, I have no idea. My hope is that it will. And I’ve become comfortable with this for some time. As a longtime reader of antiwar.com, whose masthead bears the names of both Pat Buchanan and John Pilger, and represents an alliance of libertarian, paleocon, and old-school lefty antiwar sentiment. Sometimes it gets weird.

Eventually, the corruption of the Washington D.C. political/corporate united front will collapse in on itself, and the two-party system will have a hard time containing the fallout. This move by Hamsher and Norquist might still be too early, or it might be perfectly timed. It remains to be seen. But the contempt of the political class for what used to be called democracy has never been greater. Whatever her motivations may be, I’m glad to see Jane rolling the dice on this one.

Update: Didn’t take long for the firestorm of reaction, hurt feelings, and name-calling to break out (read the comments to this post), nor did it take long for Jane to issue what is sure to be the first of many apologia (I am not entirely sure what the plural for apologia is, sorry):

Rahm Emanuel is destroying not only the Democratic majority but the Democratic Party. There isn’t enough pork in the world to hold his “Blue Dogs” in office with the legacy of bailouts that he has engineered, and that’s why his “big tent” is now collapsing in his wake. Parker Griffin, and now (possibly) Chris Carney, may blame Nancy Pelosi for their defections to the GOP, but that’s pure demagogurery. The mess they are fleeing — the corrupt back-room deals, the endless bailouts — belong to Rahm.

The ground is shifting. You can feel it. And the Rahm dead-enders have become no different than the Bush dead-enders, completely unaware that the President whose malfeasance they are defending on the basis that one must not “consort with Republicans” is the one who ran on — consorting with Republicans. It is knee-jerk authoritarianism in the extreme. Rick Warren is okay because Obama says so. Principles? Who needs them.

If Obama/Rahm want to triangulate against progressives (and they do), they’re not the only ones who can make cause with people on the other side of the aisle. If that’s what it takes to shake up the corporate domination of our political system, we’ve done it before and we can do it again. Because working within the traditional political order to support “progressives” whose conviction lasts only as long as it doesn’t matter just doesn’t seem to be working.

She’s good. And she’s got my vote.

Business model of fear and propaganda

jonxc — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:15:26 +0000

We have tried many different business models in the past.

We tried offering excellent customer service but everybody else was doing that. No, we needed to differentiate ourselves from the crowd. We offered lower prices. Yet, that didn’t pan out very well because customers would exploit us. Oh they sure would. Back then, the customer was always right. So we went to the last resort.

We used fear to destroy the competition and control the customers.

Fear is a human emotion, just like happiness or guilt. If people used emotion to lure customers and edge out the competition, why not use the emotion of fear? So we destroyed the competition by hiring “agents” to assault our competitors. Most often, they needed not assault but just threaten. Anyone who decided to form a new startup would receive threats of punishment. They would have no incentive to open up shop. We could then offer our services in peace. If we liked a competitor, we would ask them to contribute to a fee for “private protection services”.

We would pressure anyone who did not pay up that their business would not survive long due to the dominance of gangs in the region. Nine times out of ten they would pay up without a fuss. The other tenth would receive “agents” appearing at random hours of the day. We’d then show how much they needed our protection services. Over time, they thought it became a competitor’s duty to just pay up and not question the system. We would make sure they paid tribute as a token of their appreciation if they had too many customers.

As “agents” mysteriously descended upon them at random hours of the day, we also ensured that supermarkets and private food marts closed down or fell under our management.

Once we controlled the competition, we could then control the customers. Anyone who wanted to eat had to pay us a subscription contract for one year. If they did not like it, we told them that they could leave our territory. Many had lived here for generations, so we used this to our advantage. We would play them for fools. Sometimes, we would ask waiters to purposefully spill wine on their clothing or inventory boys to shoot customers with pricing guns. The patrons had no choice but to laugh it up!

We soon started raking in record profits and continued a virulent ad campaign.

Oh, we became so great at it we decided to boast about our abilities with large mural-sized billboards and advertisements all across the region. Some became so hypnotic that people after a heavy meal in our partner restaurants, they would go to another for an extra bite. Each of our branches used a different name to give the illusion of competition. I credit my minion for this idea.

We then became able to offer faster services, better food and a more pleasant dining experience. We could also provide high quality stage entertainment. Day care services. Laundry services. Taxicab services. Bars. Pharmacies and hospitals, even. Society would soon start to shun the crazies who would speak the truth about our business model. After all, why ruin the bread and circuses f0r everyone?

We offered tons of jobs! Imagine what it would do for the economy if people just tried to topple us!

We also persuaded our subscribers that if they did not take certain vitamins, their limbs would fall off (or something to that effect). They would believe us and purchase our placebo capsules. After all, many of them had such busy lives with their jobs and hobbies, and had no time to test the veracity or read the equivocated documentation of these tablets. We would pay off all the doctors. Oh, they lived comfortably and with sufficient distractions not to think too much about this. Free photography lessons here, free organized cruises there. It was all worth it.

So, kids, fear and propaganda do work.

It’s worked for us (that’s how we’ve survived for about 50 years!) and it will definitely work for you in your home territory. Try it some day when you have saved enough money and gained enough clout. You should then gain the ability to take control of your surroundings.

It’s what you want and you know it.

Leith List - Progressive Opposition to the Health Care Bill

nelsonleith — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:45:07 +0000

Health Care Deform. With even left-leaning pundits and politicians coming out against the current he

A Pound of Flesh

stevefl — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:05:10 +0000

by Stephen Fleischman

Interest and Profit.

They fought about it in Shakespeare’s time.

Shakespeare wrote a play about it. A character emerged depicting the essence of it. Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice”—a portrait of capitalism, in the period of transition from the feudal system.

Can you take a pound of flesh and spill not a drop of blood? That was the restriction Portia, the self-proclaimed lawyer, tried to impose on Shylock in Shakespeare’s play. The pound of flesh was the interest Antonio would have to pay if he didn’t return the 3 thousand ducats he borrowed on time. Portia excoriated Shylock’s capitalist greed while defending his right to be a Jew, in a time of intense anti-Semitism.

David M. Boje, Professor of Management at New Mexico State University, says of the play, “this is a critique applicable to today’s global corporate model of financial capitalism …

“…Shakespeare brilliantly portrays a conflict between courtly (feudal) usurer’s capitalism and bourgeois merchant’s capitalism, the triumph of the new forms of adventuring over the old in the 16th century.”

In those times, usury (excessive interest) or even a normally accepted amount was considered a very bad sin in certain Islamic and Christian nations. Today, it’s the normal way of doing business and is one of the pillars of the capitalist system. Money making money.

However, money is only a medium of exchange. It has no intrinsic value. It replaces a barter system. All classical economists, including Adam Smith and David Ricardo, recognize some form of the labor theory of value where the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor-power that goes into producing it.

Karl Marx brought a new paradigm to the understanding of capitalism with the hypothesis that “profit is derived from the surplus-value that is extracted when workers put in more labor than is necessary to pay the cost of hiring their labor-power’.

This led him directly to the concept of the class struggle, the relations of production between capital and labor. Capitalism can only exist through the exploitation of the working class.

We’re in another period of transition, today—the next stage in our evolving economic system. Will it be socialism or something else?

Can we imagine a society where interest and profit do not exist?

Perhaps it was the road not taken when societies emerged from feudalism, with the lord dominant over the serf. Or even earlier, before the formation of class systems when human societies consisted of hunters and gathers, where members of the tribe were equal in some form of primitive communism.

Well, let’s see. The first thing we’ll have to learn, to achieve such a state on a higher level, is to bring out the best in people, not the worst—and to do that we must recognize that human nature is complex and is made up of both.

Compassion and a desire to serve one’s fellow man is as strong a drive in people as is greed. For a society, the stratagem must be to make the common good the standard behavioral form. The competition is in doing the best for mankind—rather than, “as long as I get mine, the devil take the hindmost”.

In the context of our country, in the failing state of capitalism, how do we save ourselves? Instead of making some pacts with the future, we are clinging to the failures of the past.

Our current attempts at health care reform are a good example.

In a show at providing universal health care for the nation, the people’s representatives dare not let these toxic words—socialized medicine or public option—cross their lips. Apparently, governments are no longer here to help our citizens. Powerful corporate entities, known as the health insurance industry, a part of the oligarchy that runs this country, won’t allow it. They literally own a good many of our Congressmen and Senators, enough of them to stop any kind of meaningful health care reform. Citizens are brainwashed into thinking that what helps the insurance industry helps them.

You can fool some of the people some of the time.

The rest of us are fighting back. The fight won’t be complete until the money changers are driven from the temple. If you can live with the mixed metaphor, we, the people, must take back our Congress, elect legislators that will represent us, not the special interests. Then, we might feel that we have a government that works.

If not, history will do it for us.

Instead of “The Merchant of Venice”, we will have to look to Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” or “Richard IIII” for a more violent solution.

One way or another, in Marx’s own words, “Capitalism will dig its own grave.”

A Healthy Economy

bobkoehler — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:00:45 +0000

By Robert C. Koehler “This amendment starts from the premise that health care is a human right, and

Former CDC head now leads Merck vaccine division

coto2admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:30:31 +0000

Dr. Julie Gerberding (Dennis Cook/AP) By Mike Adams You’ve heard it before, how the pharmaceut

'United States' Means 'Federal Corporation'

infolution — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:21:04 +0000

U.S. is a ‘Federal Corporation’ British Crown Colony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRXS1jlAr5g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Itvml2mgQ

Dear Government, Please Stand Up To Big Insurance!

corporations8mybaby — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:49:55 +0000

The Senate has produced 60 votes to allow cloture.
The Senate can now vote up or down.
We are halfway to reform.
What will it really look like?
How much of the HOUSE BILL will survive?
Will President Obama be a Ninja and use reconciliation after the bill fully passes to reinsert the public option?

It’s up to us.

This is the moment our business letters will have the most effect.

Write one to each Senator
Write one to your Representative
Write one to Nancy Pelosi
Write one to Harry Reid
Write one to The President

What to write?

A typical business letter. That’s the only form they pay attention to.

This is what that looks like:

http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/letters/l/bl_block_p.htm

Here is what one might say:

My Name
My Address
My Phone
Today’s date
re: (to what this letter refers)

President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

On Health Care Reform:

It has been made clear to me over the past couple of years, especially after seeing the Michael Moore film “Sicko,” that our nation faces a moral dilemma. Why should our precious constitutional democracy allow it’s people to barter human life for money with financial middlemen? How is this even a business in the land of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln?

Our freedom is amazing. Your story is a part of the greatness of America. Coming from humble beginnings to lead the most powerful nation in the world is unthinkable anywhere else in the world, and at any other time but in the last 50 years. This is the moral argument I make in favor of my trouble nation to my international friends.

Around the world, they agree with me. It’s amazing. But then they remind me that there is a permanent power structure in every nation too. Every nation, no matter how hard they try, has it’s “royalty” whether by title or by financial influence. The health of a nation is in how effectively the rule of law can contain the nation’s permanent power structure. Regulation trumps corporatism.

You can probably tell by my language that I am coming from a progressive perspective. I have learned of late to be cognizant and respectful of political reality while holding in my mind and heart the ideals I hold dear. It is true with health insurance reform as well.

I know that citizens of the United States typically pay TWICE what the citizens of other western democracies pay for a share in the health insurance system of their nation. The real moral outrage is that citizens of the United States get far less for all that money, and as of late, don’t even get to keep their insurance if they get sick. And for what? So that a business that takes a percentage off the top of our health care money can exist. People get sick and die for the enrichment of the richest and most powerful citizens of our nation.

We know that Medicare can return 95-97 cents on every dollar spent. Why should a business that returns 80, 70, even 60 cents on the dollar even exist? Probably only because they are rich and powerful; probably because the legislature is influenced by the money of these businesses. I have read that this “industry” papered Capitol Hill with $600 million to get their way. If I remember my U.S. History correctly, that’s called corruption.

The good news for me is that you, my representative, have the power and authority to do the ethical thing regardless of that money. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the American People that it was our job to “make you do it”.

This letter is written and sent to that end.

Please do the moral and ethical thing here.

Please guide our nation to a health care financing system that is effectively competitive with Germany, France, the UK, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain… well you see what I mean. As far as I can tell, a universal single payer system paid for by fair taxation directly to the federal program is the most efficient way to do this.

I ask you to follow the advice of industry whistle blower Wendell Potter and stand up to this immoral industry of private health insurance. Please end their monopoly.

Additionally, I ask you to show the American people the facts on cost and benefit. I ask you to save our lives, save the nation money & directly provide us with health care because it is a right as promised in the preamble to the United States Constitution.

I ask you to save more than 40 thousand American lives this year and every year going forward – while at the same time showing the “royalty” of our nation that the rule of law is the real king.

I am an American citizen by birth, but I am an American in my heart because I passionately subscribe to the spirit and letter of that miracle that is our beautiful constitution. I think the corporate domination of our society is in contraction to our founders’ promise.

I ask you to correct this imbalance by passing health care reform that leads to universal single payer. Let us never finance the middlemen with an individual mandate without a strong public option. Those middlemen are too powerful already. I ask you to do the right thing, stand up to the money on behalf of the spirit of our constitutional guarantee of the general welfare.

With great respect for your difficult work,

[ My Name ]

MW: All I Want For Christmas Is Adequate Representation

chatblu — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:00:57 +0000

The United Corporations of America

UPDATE from MB: Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has seen the light and now wants to “Kill the Bill.”

Click here to sign her petition.

You know, the whole “by the people, of the people, for the people” thing? Unsurprisingly, this appears to have devolved into “by the lobbyists, of the bought and paid for, for the corporations” style of governance. The Founding Fathers are rooooooooooolling in their graves. This certainly isn’t democracy as I understand it, and it’s a bastardization of any form of republic. There are too many masters involved to call this a dictatorship, and while Obama was crowned rather than elected, we still don’t quite meet the criteria for a monarchy. I guess that it’s a “corpocracy”, where corporations are king, and we are the not-so-loyal serfs that support the masters.

The Chicago Sun-Times ran an interesting article today about how health care lobbyists influenced the “reform” bill. As I did not recently fall off the turnip truck, I was aware that some staffers – indeed, some former Senators – became lobbyists, but I was taken aback at the numbers of same. For example, Harry Reid has 13 former staffers who now lobby for clients including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Dick Durbin counts 8 of his former staff as lobbying for Verizon Communications, Pfizer, Chevron, AT&T, Comcast, General Motors, Amgen Inc., National Association of Broadcasters, and General Dynamics. Nancy Pelosi has 5 former staff members now lobbying for Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, Chevron, Boeing, Amgen, General Dynamics, Monsanto, GlaxoSmithKline, Medtronic, and the Recording Industry of America. Steny Hoyer leads the pack with 14 of his former employees now working for the US Chamber of Commerce, Pharmaceutical Research and manufacturers of America, and Verizon. Dear old James “he’s talking in code” Clyburn has but 3 ex-staffers now in the lobbying business. Their firms are pretty busy, however, representing the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, BP America, National Association of Broadcasters, General Dynamics, Wal-Mart, Textron and the oxymoronic American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Republicans have similar stories.

The truly fascinating part of this article broke the number of former staffer cum lobbyist down by committees:

The Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions: A whopping 45 former staffers of the members of this committee are now lobbying. Their clients include the Chamber of Commerce, Exxon Mobil, AARP, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers, GE, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Verizon, AT&T, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. The Senate Finance Committee has a mere 36, now representing the Chamber of Commerce, the Pharmaceutical R&M, GE, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The House is no better. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has 45 staffers/lobbyists, the Ways and Means Committee 23, and House Education and Labor’s 18.

The president of Common Cause, Bob Edgar, blames “a toxic combination of insiders and money” for the death of the public option. During the past difficult days of negotiations, the insider lobbying influence has been palpable. We now have a waiting period for Senators and Representatives to become lobbyists, and now would be a good time to impose a long waiting period for staffers. Failing that, perhaps we should all become corporations.

This is an open thread.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

thomaspainescorner — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:50:03 +0000

COP-15. Copenhagen

December 18, 2009 by Stop the Blob

Simulposted with Climate Connections (The official blog of Global Justice Ecology Project created to amplify the voices of Climate Justice. http://globaljusticeecology.org/)

We are in the Belly of the Beast surrounded by lemmings in power suits. The masses have drunk the kool aid. The good majority of humans are deliberating over the most inconsequential details of commas and word placement in the “climate” agreement. These documents are written by the same people (mostly men) who have coerced us into believing that everything is under control and we can maintain the way we are living… These agreements are going to decide where we choose to listen to Mother Earth or destroy her.

The Convention of Parties- 15 determines the future of the planet—however these negotiations only fan the fire of the global economic system. These talks systematically and intentionally exclude billions of people who are not represented by governments or heads of state. The impacts of neoliberalism, financial institutions, corporate CEOS reverberates and permeates on each of our lives, pillage our Mother Earth and the future of humanity.

The plethora of crises we face is undermined by the unfettered growth and workings of the free market. We have been taught that the market is the only fair and democratic allocation of goods and services; some are palpable enough to believe that the government is doing all of us a service with policies that solely benefit a select few. Who are the select few? They are organized, they are greedy and they have an agenda.

Our climate is not negotiating. It is not interested in what we are going to do in 2050, even with good intentions and “low carbon development technologies”. The climate is not bargaining and it cannot be paid off or subsidized. Climate change is happening and it is going to get worse. We cannot even fathom the magnitude of climatic disasters.

They are bargaining with our children’s and their children’s lives. They have tried to convince us that that we aren’t going to have ecosystems collapsing within the next 20 years. This is depressing. I know.

Wait, we don’t have to let this happen. They will never stop thinking of everything in terms of capital and monetary value, even if they know these things kill people and make people sick.

We cannot let this continue. IT HAS TO END.

We need to remind our governments and delegates that they cannot bargain with a finite planet that cannot be traded, no matter how nice the package. We need to say these messages to the corporate-backed governments and delegations; say them loudly and so that can understand clearly that we mean business here – and not their kind of business. The tables are turning, WE ARE ORGANIZED.

I implore you to join us. In any way you’d like. We are all in this together.

Sigue luchando, sigue tamando.

Thomas Paine’s Corner wants to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to receive them, type “TPC subscription” in the subject line and send your email to willpowerful@hotmail.com

For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/

If you have a Facebook account, don’t forget to look up Thomas Paine’s Corner’s Facebook page via the “search” feature and become a fan.

And if you have a MySpace account, don’t forget to friend Thomas Paine’s Corner at www.myspace.com/anarchovegan

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 and go vegan. Do it for your health, for nonhuman animals and for the Earth!

To support or undertake animal rights and liberation activism in the Kansas City area, visit Bite Club of KC at http://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/.

Throwing our energy at impossible dreams...

thomaspainescorner — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:07:46 +0000

By P.F. Henshaw

12/20/09

Signs of cognition, maybe? In the haystack of contentious arguments at Copenhagen it seems only the occasional unofficial commentary pointed to the real solvable source of our monumental collision with the limits of the earth. Somehow in the process of growing ever bigger, mankind got “big”, and continuing to grow still bigger is optional. Yes, it sort of “happened naturally”, and is also natural for us to be a bit confused about the whole turn of events it precipitates, but it is still also definitely our own choice to be doing it too, and we’re simply hiding from the problem it creates on the whole.

It may be easy to question the morality of how the Chinese chose to limit their population growth by limiting personal freedoms, but did face the challenge. You really can’t argue with the fact that virtually everyone else is just ignoring that same profound moral dilemma, that affluence naturally multiplies people. Instead we have a world desperately trying to mitigate climate change with an unqualified commitment to of sustaining the accelerating growth affluence forever.

Our technique for doing that is also our choice, trying to decrease our impacts on the earth by multiplying wealth more efficiently. What that actually does is feed our appetites at multiplying rates for profit as our first and last priority. It somewhat reduces the growth rate of our multiplying impacts, instead of reducing them, to then shortly make living on earth entirely unprofitable. Though it’s completely voluntary and purposeful, I’m sure everyone swept up in steering the planet in that direction intends something rather different than the consequence of making all our problems ever more insolvable.

People even mostly know and understand that at natural growth limits, as strains multiply, the cheapest way to reduce your strains and waste of energy is ALWAYS to just skip the option of adding to your investments in expansion. If the house needs a roof and another floor might make it unstable, build the roof! That trick is even seen in nature’s greatest success stories. Every organism that survives its own explosive growth from a single cell uses that as its way of bringing its own growth to a smooth and sustainable climax, for example!

Anything that reaches its climax at a peak of vitality does so by ending its self-investment in growth at the time its design is complete and worth sustaining. Our economic rule has been closer to “every good thing must be discarded”. The alternative is to just turn off the growth pumps when they start to cause trouble, and sort things out to find what’s worth keeping. That’s the whole formula for sustainability for so very many big and small things people do for themselves, and that we rely on in things that take care of themselves in nature too.

Still, where is the cognitive path? Humanity clearly believes in and is devoting its most concentrated efforts on making its growth machine more efficient, to grow its way out of the earth’s ever more severe physical constraints…

Growing your way out of environmental constraints is a plan that does work splendidly sometimes, as for a little chick inside it’s egg, yes, or an infant in the womb. Then bursting from severe environmental constraints reveals fields of grain and new worlds of choices waiting, for which the new organism only has a limited appetite. The plan to just crash your limits often enough also works OK in pursuing “the impossible dream” in the worlds of ideas, within the ‘noosphere’, where the only real limit is imagination and failures of imagination are of little real physical consequence.

The physical world is different though. We now have a whole planet of leaders who believe we only need to physically grow our economies ever faster to burst out of the limits of an entire planet! They truly act as if wishing we had the limitless resources and freedoms of the past would surely cause them to reappear. That’s the worst kind of fundamentalist delusion, a most extreme sort of misguided sophistry.

Is it a mass hysteria? Is it a case of worldwide Alzheimer’s disease, leading us to withdraw into our emotional detachment from the natural world and bumble around waving amazingly clever self-deceptions.., like growth to reduce impacts? I wonder, instead of creating ever more dramatic diversions in response to our ever more desperate situations, could we ‘wake up’ as from a dream? It would be a great deal less expensive, in fact. Could we just shift the use of our creative powers to discovering this new reality we find, that we’ve clearly seen approaching for decades of decades?

There’s also a need to help people understand why efficiency , productivity, hard work and big families used to be so good for everything. They once both relieved burdens and provided freedoms for people directly benefiting from them, but also created wealth and opportunity for everyone else too. That was the magic of economic growth. The problem now is that the very same things have the reverse effect, and multiply complications and constraints for everyone.

I think that’s what has everyone fooled, that as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold of becoming “big”, say between 50 and 75 years ago. After that, quite unnoticed, our normal way of relieving burdens on ourselves, hard work, productivity and efficiency, started ever more dominantly multiplying burdens on each other and the earth… More growth now pushes everyone all ever harder against nature’s limits instead of giving everyone more freedoms.

Continuing as we always did, now that the responses of the planet have so dramatically changed meanings, seems to be how we ended up trying to reduce our burdens on the earth by multiplying them! In a world as changed as ours is, living in the past or dreaming of returning to the past, as all the world’s leaders promote, is really a kind of dementia and disorientation. Nature changed her orientation and we just didn’t notice…! Just pausing to learn about this unfamiliar place and our unexpected arrival, might be a more productive diversion than arguing about how to get our vehicle going ever faster again. We’re marooned, as it were, on a part of the planet we never saw before, and it’s a bit of luck really too. We’re apparently both nearly out of gas and saved from heading over a cliff only by few flat tires and grinding gears in the transmission.

For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/

If you have a Facebook account, don’t forget to look up Thomas Paine’s Corner’s Facebook page via the “search” feature and become a fan.

And if you have a MySpace account, don’t forget to friend Thomas Paine’s Corner at www.myspace.com/anarchovegan

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 and go vegan. Do it for your health, for nonhuman animals and for the Earth!

To support or undertake animal rights and liberation activism in the Kansas City area, visit Bite Club of KC at http://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/.

URLed, not written

Mark Gisleson — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:38:04 +0000

Sorted to make it easier to skip over unwanted content.*

Econ:

Taibbi on Bill Moyers Journal

Shorter Yglesias: China getting the oil contracts doesn’t disprove Iraq was a war for oil

Hoarders? or just good consumers?

Sam Pizzigati’s Top Ten Greediest

One lesson we could learn from the Brits

Healthcare:

Evan fucking Bayh

Digby on the Nelson compromise

Eating compromise

Law and disorder:

DC snowball fight and the right to brandish arms

Rights? You’re joking, right?

No remorse

Cont.:

Yolanda Madden freed, granted retrial

Arguing with Al Giordano in the comments (again)

Stupak aide driving the evil?

Snowe goes Red Queen

DarkSyde on Peter Watts

CNN removes video of McCain Frankening Mark Dayton

Huckabee gets freebie from NYTimes

MN:

Zygi the welfare queen

World:

Political freedoms, Russki style

It’s a corporate thing, bloggers just don’t get it

And the truth will get you sued

DRM fan tries removing protection from his latest book and sales go up

Hollywood makes the perfect piracy busting movie, then cripples it with DRM

Patenting the papacy

Downloading a 7-hour train ride [it's a Norwegian thing]

Sunday reads:

Babylonians v monotheists not unlike wingnuts v progs (actually Devilstower says “conservatives,” but again, while some cons are wingnuts, not all wingnuts are cons — not by a longshot)

13th Century values

* Yes, maybe it would be better for all concerned if some content was aborted before publication. The truth is, I’ve killed unborn posts before and probably will again. They’re not as cute as you might think, at least not mine. Ugly little brats, each and every one of them and the world is a better place for their having been demised.

Tiger Woods, seized Tahoes and failed media

Mark Gisleson — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:13:46 +0000

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Tiger Woods lately, mostly because I just don’t care. Frank Rich explains why I should.

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy)….

People wanted to believe what they wanted to believe. Tiger’s off-the-links elusiveness was no more questioned than Enron’s impenetrable balance sheets, with their “special-purpose entities” named after “Star Wars” characters. Fortune magazine named Enron as America’s “most innovative company” six years in a row.

There is so very much to answer for, and no, no one will ever have to answer for any of the decade’s greatest crimes. Obama’s DOJ, like Bill Clinton’s, has absolved them all.

The middle class will never get back all the money the rich stole from their pension funds and IRAs. Never.

Your life was financially blighted by bastards who will never be held accountable.

Enjoy your Tiger Woods coverage. Like Frank Rich points out, it’s as close as you’ll ever come to seeing justice done in this country.

Meanwhile, in the same edition of the New York Times no less, the corporate media/Bush DOJ disgraced Eliot Spitzer has some information on A.I.G. that’s worth reading.

Eliot Spitzer, however, is no longer in charge of anything. The suits made sure of that. Wingnuts get their Sheriff Joe Arpaios who trample on the Constitution and piss on our rights daily, but if a prog/lib gets anywhere near an indictment for a corporate suit . . . well, they’re just not going to let that happen, now are they?

This isn’t our country anymore. We’re all just renters and your credit ratings, jobs and retirements are privileges, not rights.

Or would you like them to prove that to you again?

Where are all the articles about the suits who’ve figured out how evil suits are?

If you don’t know about what happened to Reader’s Digest, you’re missing an important piece to the puzzle.

The puzzle that shows where all the money went.

People who sell fat-laden junk food, flavored sugar water and unhealthly lifestyles have a lot of nerve questioning Santa’s body type.

Then again, these are the same people who beat the drums of war, then refuse to hire veterans.

Productivity rises again, over the bodies of the soon-to-be-dead or burned out workplace survivors.

No need to hire when the suckers workers left can be made to pick twice as much cotton.

Chase Bank: not the most evil bank in the world, and that’s the problem.

What constitutes business as usual for the banksters is known as grand larceny in other circles. $38.5 billion in 2009 bank revenues will come from the gouging of the poorest ten percent of bankster customers.

I thought this was going to change. I also thought we’d get campaign finance reform, increased employment, troops coming home, human rights abroad, and healthcare reform here at home from this president.

Not because I believed Obama, but because I didn’t think a Democratic Congress would have the balls to fuck us over like this one has.

I don’t care which party wins Congress in 2010, I just want to see the bodies of incumbents left splattered across the countryside like so many baby ducks who tried to cross the freeway during rush hour.

In Minnesota, I’d like to see every incumbent up in 2010 go down except Keith Ellison and maybe Tim Walz. [Franken's not up, but so far I've been as happy with his leadership as I am unhappy with Klobuchar's.] And no, I can’t name any specific sins from Betty McCollum, but in times like these the leadership should pay with their heads.

If it takes an unholy alliance of Ron Paulistas, Greens and independents, so be it. No Congress could be worse than this one. Leadership that lets Ben Nelson and Joe fucking Lieberman be the deciderers are the worst leaders ever. Ralph Nader is starting to sound good again.

And have you noticed that the Dems haven’t done anything about electronic voting fraud yet?

Is it too late for America?

Will the right ever make an effort to work with other Americans to make this a better country?

How long does it take to learn Chinese?

Not only is this Congress refusing to do what it was elected to do, it’s still doing all the things no one in their right mind would ever ask for, like talking about privatizing the Post Office (because every letter should be overnighted and stamps should all cost $10).

I’m not saying Peter Galbraith deserves the credit, but isn’t it funny how good things happen when the truth gets out?

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled this week that jointly held property can be seized if one of the owners does something bad.

Does this mean that the State of Minnesota can seize all property held in this state by AIG, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, etc.?

Of course not. Tim Pawlenty’s appointees on the high court wouldn’t have ruled that way if they didn’t mean for the law to apply to drunks and druggies only.

I had to download the actual decision to find out who voted how on this one, btw. No one protects establishment insiders like local media does.

Mitch ranted about this, forcing me to leave this comment:

Does it bother any of you that ALL FOUR VOTES TO SEIZE THE TAHOE CAME FROM PAWLENTY APPOINTEES?

The other three votes came from Perpich appointees (2) and the Ventura appointee.

Please explain to me how you folks remain so heavily invested in politicians who tell you what you want to hear, then stick it to you like you were a pack of dirty stinking liberals.

And why is it that NONE of the Minnesota media reported the vote breakdown?

Anyone? Should the liberal media have trumpeted the Pawlenty angle? If in fact they were liberal.

Reread this comment thread and then explain to me why all of you shouldn’t be locked up for pretending to be conservatives. The Right ≠ conservative, not in the post-Reagan/pro-Dixie era.

What Norwegianity would read like if I was one big suck up to the rich and powerful.

Not my usual kind of story, but if you were as pleasantly tripped out by that dancing wedding video last July as I was, you might be interested in learning more about how the happy couple skipped all the $$ offers afterwards.

Work will not make you free, and becoming Nazis won’t save you from the future Nazis.

I’m not very good at promoting other people’s causes, but for those of you who think Gaza is an ongoing war crime, this may be of interest:

Subject: Monday and Tuesday evening, two last chances to meet Minnesota’s Gaza Freedom Marchers before they leave

Monday and Tuesday evening there are two last chances to meet with the Minnesotans who will travel to Egypt and Palestine for the Gaza Freedom March. We still have a lot of work to do to build political and popular support for the march and its goals before the 27th/28th, and maybe meeting and hearing the stories of these seven will help you help them.

A recent interview with Medea Benjamin on Mondoweiss shows good reason for us to be concerned for the safety of these seven unless we can bring a bit more pressure to bear on some parts of the State Department and Obama Administration and through them, the Gov’t of Israel : http://www.facebook.com/l/48387;mondoweiss.net/2009/12/gaza-freedom-marchs-message-to-israelis-dont-shoot-us.html

Israel has refused to meet with the organizers of the march. More than 700 US citizens, and nearly as many people coming from 41 other countries will soon arrive in Cairo for the march. This is your last best chance to have a connection with some of them.

Message me (or e-mail me) for details of a meeting opportunity at one of our send events! If you can’t make it, arrange for a powerful friend, a trusted staff member, or well-respected media figure to attend in your place.

The seven Minnesotans are:

Sylvia Schwarz, St. Paul
Ed Mucha, St. Paul
Oauhib and Gail Chalbi, Coon Rapids
Duane Suess, Plymouth
Dave Tilsen, Minneapolis
Phil Benson, Watertown/Carver County

P.S. I’d also love help distributing 15,000 union printed handbillls before the Dec 30th local solidarity march in the Minneapolis skyways, and your help in extending the facebook invitation to more people.

The Gaza Freedom March has been endorsed by SD61 DFL.

Yes, I made a pot of coffee this morning. I’m not surprised you could tell. Scientists will no doubt tell you that caffeine is caffeine whether you get it from green tea or from coffee.

Scientists lie.

Forced to buy insurance?

Mark Gisleson — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:22:04 +0000

Surveying my twitter account it appears that the Dems have 60 votes for whatever the fuck the healthcare bill is now, and apparently that doesn’t include the botox tax (although no one’s sure who took it out), you’re still forced to buy private insurance, and abortion is still an issue.

Here’s what the NYTimes is saying:

The blinding snow outside the Capitol added to what had already been a chaotic few weeks for the Senate, which has met every day since Nov. 30 and prepared to work through its third consecutive weekend. The sergeant-at-arms had four-wheel drive vehicles at the ready to bring lawmakers in for votes. And while senators wore the jackets and ties required on the Senate floor, dress shoes gave way to boots.

Mr. Nelson committed his vote after winning tighter restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions, as well as increased federal health care aid for his state.

With Senate leaders increasingly confident that they would pass the bill, Mr. Nelson pointedly warned that he would oppose the final version if negotiations with the House, which approved its bill last month, result in changes that he does not like.

Fuck Nebraska. Let’s reroute I-80 through Kansas and then watch half of Nebraska’s businesses (gas stations) go belly up.

More updates:

Maha on what’s in the bill

Scarecrow with more

Stupak still working with Catholic bishops to kill the bill

Even the NRA inserted language into this bill

David Waldman

Mick on corruption and vote-buying

And yes, Republicans are forcing the clerk to read the entire 383-page bill

I love 80% of what Al Giordano writes. Too bad he’s such an asshole the other 20% of the time. The talking points ripping liberals for opposing this watered down bill are getting pretty tired. I don’t know a single politically active person who’s living without health insurance who wants this shitty bill that forces you to buy from a private carrier.

No public option, no health care reform.

If my ass is going to be fucked, I’d rather it be fucked by a hospital collection agency than by BlueCross BlueShield.

As we listen to the yammering yak asses in the Senate whine about paying for abortions and union members with “Cadillac” insurance plans, it doesn’t hurt to remember that:

181 dead farmers collected over $1.1 billion from the Bush administration in ag subsidies

You know, I do not think I have ever heard a Republican criticize farm subsidies.

Ever.

Just welfare moms trying to feed their kids.

The first of three installments of my Best of ‘09 music sets is up at the other blog.

Corporatism vs Populism: Golinger on Venezuela and Obama

coto2admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:52:46 +0000

Interview of Eva Golinger on the US military buildup in Latin America, universal healthcare in Venez

"It’s scary to think that people this obscenely stupid are running the country"

timmuky — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:07:49 +0000

a flag you can actually buy at adbusters.com

Glenn Greenwald has a pretty much spot-on look at the deepest underlying issue in the health care debacle, the blurring of the lines between the corporate and public sectors. With the exception of party loyalists (both Republican and Democrat), it’s pissing off just about everyone in a major way, both those who identify as conservatives and as progressives. Each group has a different name for the problem:

Whether you call it “a government takeover of the private sector” or a “private sector takeover of government,” it’s the same thing: a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else’s expense. Growing anger over that is rooted far more in an insider/outsider dichotomy over who controls Washington than it is in the standard conservative/liberal ideological splits from the 1990s. It’s true that the people who are angry enough to attend tea parties are being exploited and misled by GOP operatives and right-wing polemicists, but many of their grievances about how Washington is ignoring their interests are valid, and the Democratic Party has no answers for them because it’s dependent upon and supportive of that corporatist model. That’s why they turn to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh; what could a Democratic Party dependent upon corporate funding and subservient to its interests possibly have to say to populist anger?

He’s not the only one to notice. See here and here and here. And just ‘cos it made me spit up my coffee a little bit, this little priceless observation from Jane Hamsher:

Rahm Emanuel has managed to convince enough of the people that any inadequacies in this bill will be forgotten if the Dems can claim a “w” and pass any piece of shit health care bill. And that if Congress just spends 2010 naming post offices, any objections that Americans might have to paying 8% of their incomes to private corporations who will use the IRS as their collection agencies will just disappear.

It’s scary to think that people this obscenely stupid are running the country. All the while, the painfully obvious left/right transpartisan consensus that is coalescing against DC insiders of both parties appears to be taking everyone by surprise.

DC snow day won't keep lobbyists away

Mark Gisleson — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:05:37 +0000

Al Franken’s letting everyone know that cutting off Joe fucking Lieberman was just business as usual, and nothing personal. Franken’s Communications Director, Casey Aden-Wansbury, used to work for Lieberman, btw.

Robert Parry doesn’t think Lieberman’s acting as a bag man for the insurance industry (this time). He thinks Lieberman is holding the healthcare reform bill hostage until Obama caves on Israel.

Joe’s not in DC at the moment, btw, having gone home to Connecticut for Hanukkah (and to avoid the snowstorm that hit DC). Getting healthcare reform passed by Christmas isn’t in Joe’s job description.

Al Giordano is one of the half a loaf people, Greg Sargent less so. Terrance Heath counts the votes. Atrios is just trying to figure out what the bill says, and the WaPost (as usual) buries polling data that disagrees with their insurance industry approved talking points.

See also James Ridgeway on Obamacare and the facade of regulation, ecfish on the medical/industrial complex, and Jed Lewison on the price Blanche Lincoln may pay for her opposition to a public option.

And Byron Dorgan would like to know who killed his drug reimportation amendment.

Republicans/corporations/agencies behaving badly:

I wasn’t following the Broadcom prosecution, but apparently the Bush-appointed prosecutors utterly bungled the case

Jim Inhofe and honorary GOoPer Lanny Davis get spanked

Senate Republicans take the bottomfeeder route (again)

Joe Barton embraces China

Orly Taitz update

Nathan Deal’s latest deal scrutinized

Steve King

Birchers are back!

Rove sighting