The following is a segment of an interview with NPR's Terry Gross and Lester Brown. Brown recently wrote an article entitled, "The New Geopolitics of Food" appearing in Foreign Policy Magazine, and he founded both the World Watch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute.

Given the fact that Brown has been fighting the good fight since the early '70s, Gross asks him the following question:

GROSS: So you haven't given up. Not much has changed for the better, you say. But you haven't given up. Do you consider yourself a man who is constantly frustrated by what you see?

Mr. BROWN: You know, I probably should be. But sometimes you're asked if you're an optimist or a pessimist, and someone answered that question recently and said it's too late to be a pessimist. And I think that sums it up well. But one of the things I do is go back and look at the economic history of World War II, and realize that we totally restructured the U.S. industrial economy almost overnight.

The attack on Pearl Harbor came on December 7th, 1941. It was extraordinarily successful in military terms, sinking, you know, sinking a large part of the U.S. Pacific fleet that happened to be at anchor there.

But then a month later, January 6th, 1942, President Roosevelt gave his State of the Union address in which he laid out arms production goals. He said we're going to produce 45,000 tanks, 60,000 planes, thousands of ships. And people just couldn't relate to that because we were still in a Depression mode economy at the time.

But what Roosevelt and his colleagues knew was that the largest concentration of industrial power in the world at the time was in the U.S. automobile industry. So after his State of the Union address, he called in the leaders of the industry and said because you guys represent such a large share of our industrial capacity, we are going to rely heavily on you to help us reach these arms production goals.

And they said well Mr. President, we're going to do whatever we can. But it's going to be a stretch producing cars and all these arms too. He said you don't understand. We're going to ban the sale of automobiles in the United States. And that's exactly what we did. And we'd been producing three million a year even during the Depression.

We banned the sale of automobiles. So from early 1942 until the end of 1944, there were essentially no cars produced in the United States and we exceeded every one of those arms production goals. In the end, we didn't produce 60,000 planes, we produced 229,000 planes.

I mean, even today, it's difficult to visualize how we could do that. But the encouraging thing is that we did that and it didn't take decades to restructure the U.S. industrial economy, it didn't take years. We did it in a matter of months. And if we did that then, then certainly we can restructure the energy economy much more rapidly than most people think and thus, be able to stabilize climate before it spirals out of control.

Real change is possible, and yet so many behave as if it's a lost cause, that we're doomed. They don't say this aloud, nor do they probably admit to it privately. Rather it's more likely an indirect admission that occurs subconsciously, with a good dose of cynicism and more so a whopping helping of selfishness. It's much easier to silently cave to the belief that we as a country, much less we as a planet, simply do not want to sacrifice those comforts and routines comprising our day-to-day lives. Needless to say, I suspect a much larger percentage of these folks are conservative and/or Republicans (see the John Kenneth Galbraith quote at the masthead of my blog).

But it's refreshing to read Brown's words of hope. Not platitudes or empty sentiments, but a documented example of a prior time not long ago when we were faced with an emergency and rose to the occasion.

The one problem is a tragic event like Pearl Harbor was a clarion wake-up-call, one with sudden and forceful impact. It literally changed the course of events at the time and ultimately history. Climate change is much slower moving and in effect more of a silent killer, like carbon monoxide poisoning. Before you know it, it's too late.

Sadly we're not treating the effects of climate change as we would if they collectively equated to a singular attack on our soil, ala Pearl Harbor or 9/11, two events that we know catalyzed significant actions for change.

By the time we realize as a nation that we need to take drastic steps, it may be too late, irregardless if we stop everything and come together to solve the problem.

And once again Kevin Drum sums it up quite succinctly:

Republicans got the tax cuts they wanted. They got the financial deregulation they wanted. They got the wars they wanted. They got the unfunded spending increases they wanted. And the results were completely, unrelentingly disastrous. A decade of sluggish growth and near-zero wage increases. A massive housing bubble. Trillions of dollars in war spending and thousands of American lives lost. A financial collapse. A soaring long-term deficit. Sky-high unemployment. All on their watch and all due to policies they eagerly supported. And worse: ever since the predictable results of their recklessness came crashing down, they've rabidly and nearly unanimously opposed every single attempt to dig ourselves out of the hole they created for us.

But despite the fact that this is all recent history, it's treated like some kind of dreamscape. No one talks about it. Republicans pretend it never happened. Fox News insists that what we need is an even bigger dose of the medicine we got in the aughts, and this is, inexplicably, treated seriously by the rest of the press corps instead of being laughed at. As a result, guys like Marco Rubio have a free hand to insist that Obama — Obama! The guy who rescued the banking system, bailed out GM, and whose worst crime against the rich is a desire to increase their income tax rate 4.6 percentage points! — is a "left-wing strong man" engaged in brutal class warfare against the wealthy. And Rubio does it without blinking. Hell, he probably even believes it.

We are well and truly down the rabbit hole.

House and Senate Republicans have become so extreme in their ideology, so far beyond the comprehension of anyone who thinks rationally, that we've recently observed many surprising voices speaking out:

"In short, this is quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin. Every senator cosponsoring this POS should be ashamed of themselves." -- Former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett, commenting on the Republican's balance budget amendment.

"It's very dismaying to see that 30-year descent into the kind of nihilism, know-nothingism that is represented by the Republican Party today." -- Former Reagan official David Stockman

"Of the 400 richest people in America, they pay a 16-percent average income tax rate. Grover Norquist, in another couple of years, is going to be irrelevant. You can’t save America without some kind of revenue. You can’t fight two wars and not have something to support it. You can’t run a country that way.... I remind him that Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times.” -- Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson

“I think that the Republicans ought to identify a very significant amount of so-called tax expenditures which in fact are misclassified. They are expenditures. They are outlays, and many of them are subsidies. And subsidies are not the type of thing that you want for an efficient market system. There are a lot of them. My view is that I was in favor of the Bush tax cuts on the grounds that it was the dissipation of a surplus. As soon as it became obvious that the surplus disappeared, I no longer supported that." -- Alan Greenspan

Finally, and to me most shocking to the point where I still think he's joking:

"I am in favor of greatly raising the taxes on very wealthy people, millionaires and billionaires. I wouldn't raise the taxes on people making $250,000 a year. Look, it's a basic arithmetic thing; it's not an ideological thing. We are spending an enormous amount of money that we're not covering with tax revenue; we're borrowing it. At some point we're going to have so much debt that there's going to be a crisis and there will have to be austerity measures here just as they were in Greece. A simpler way would be tax people who have a great deal of money, tax them more, let them help pay down the debt." -- Ben Stein

This chart, from Tim Noah at Slate via Ezra Klein, speaks volumes:



Under Democratic presidents, nearly all income levels have done equally well. However under Republican presidents, the skew of top income earners doing better than the lower earners is striking. Under GOP presidents, the 95th percentile saw their incomes grow by almost 5 times the growth rate of the 20th percentile -- that's enormous.

Oh, and don't forget to notice that the growth rates for all income buckets are higher under Democrats than Republicans.

One has to wonder just how worse off we'd be if Republican McCain had been running the show for the last 2+ years.

"Mountaintop coal mining raises birth defect risks" -- how shocking.

Tea baggers and the Taliban have many things in common.

Soon in the not-so-distant future we will have lifeless oceans. Based not on fear-mongering but rather facts (unfortunately).

Man robs a bank so that he can obtain health care in prison. Why doesn't he just go to an emergency room each time he needs health care, as GW advised....?

Several good suggestions from Bill Clinton re job creation.

Take a good look at this chart. Notice the three big dips prior to the current one? See what they have in common...? Wars. I wonder if the Iraq & Afghanistan wars have added much to our deficit (click here).

The headline in Sunday's Boston Globe, "‘RomneyCare’ — a revolution that basically worked." I think it speaks volumes about today's GOP when they have a presidential candidate who by all accounts has one clear success to his credit as governor, and yet he is forced to run away from it as if it was a failure. Complete and utter Orwellian insanity.

The epitome of penny wise and pound foolish:

When congressional Republicans cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget 16 percent as part of a deal with President Obama in April to keep the government running, they hailed it as a blow to a federal bureaucracy that had overreached in its size and ambition.

But now that the agency has detailed how it is making the $1.6 billion cut for fiscal 2011, the reality is somewhat different. Because the EPA passes the vast majority of its money through to the states, it has meant that these governments — not Washington — are taking the biggest hits. Already constrained financially at home, state officials have millions of dollars less to enforce the nation’s air- and water-quality laws, fund critical capital improvements and help communities comply with new, more stringent pollution controls imposed by the federal government.
<..>
The EPA was a central target for Republicans during the spring budget battle, as they tried to curtail its authority to curb greenhouse gases, mercury and other pollutants. Although lawmakers failed to secure those provisions, they limited the agency’s activities through budget cuts.

Can someone tell me how Tea Partiers and the like do not see how such moves by Republicans in office are detrimental to their well-being? Our deficit amounts to trillions of dollars and yet Republicans cravenly decide what needs to be done to save some money is cut a measly $1.6 billion from the EPA's already miniscule budget (about $10 billion total). It's obvious the move is a gift to corporate polluters, however Republicans dress it up as curtailing run-away government regulation and the idiotic Tea Party folks just lap it up, gladly accepting the insult to their intelligence. No protest or angry criticism from them, not a peep.

Why pound foolish? Many studies show the added health care costs stemming from soot, toxins & other pollutants released into our air and water amount to well over $50 billion per year, not to mention the thousands of premature resulting deaths. In effect, the EPA's meager budget is an absolute bargain both in costs and lives saved.

But again, Republican constituents are seemingly too stupid to realize this simple fact, choosing instead to allow their emotions to rule over rational thinking -- and no one is better at playing on fear and anger than the GOP. Until people wise up to what's truly behind Republican motives, this country will continue to suffer.

But I thought Tim Pawlenty was going to be this voice of courage, willing to make hard choices and candidly speak his mind? With his now infamous ObamneyCare-dodge, guess not. Just another spineless wimp.

I love this take from Michael Tomasky, on Pawlenty's laughable economic plan:

One hardly knows where to start with it. Probably with the assumption that we can reach 5 percent growth for 10 straight years—when from 1947 to 2010, the average has been 3.3 percent. This is a contemptible piece of nonsense, but at least it’s not really harmful. What would be harmful are Pawlenty’s tax proposals, which soak the poor and reduce the burden on the rich more nakedly than any Republican plan I have ever seen. He would eliminate—completely!—the capital gains tax and the estate tax. Of course he’d massively lower income-tax rates. Oh, and he’d get rid of loopholes. (Yeah, sure.) Of course the little schlubs would keep paying those payroll taxes, but I suppose he hopes they can be distracted with some Jesus talk.
<..>
[T]he bilious idiocy of Pawlenty’s numbers shows just how far removed from economic reality this country is getting to be. The Republicans have lost any connection to earth, and the Democrats are afraid (with a few noble exceptions) to tell the American public the truth. In such a context, erstwhile conservative Republican Ben Bernanke emerges as a courageous truth-teller for saying something as simply and obviously true as that enacting sharp spending cuts now will hurt the economy. Time was when Republicans listened to the Fed chairman. But these days I guess he’s a socialist, too.

And at least some Minnesota residents (and TIME readers) believe Pawlenty was anything but a terrific governor:

Your article on ex-governor Tim Pawlenty left me flabbergasted and angry ["Mr. Nice Guy," May 30]. As a Minnesota resident, I can assure you his appeal is not in "the middle" here. The poor, the old, veterans and schoolchildren all suffered under his stewardship, and the "fees" imposed to generate revenue (Pawlenty didn't call them taxes) didn't help. Pawlenty is an aw-shucks, smooth-talking panderer whose regular-guy image masks craven opportunism.

Kimberlee Remus, WOODBURY, MINN.

When Pawlenty took office, Minnesota was prosperous and comfortable. It is now broke and angry. It's not true that he "cut taxes and reined in spending." He just created a massive tax shift from income taxes to property taxes, while spending down every savings account and rainy-day fund the state had. Pawlenty couldn't get elected dogcatcher here. Please don't wish him on our country.

Peter Hill, MINNETONKA, MINN.

According to Republicans, our deficit is #1 priority and yet Pawlenty was pretty abysmal on this front while governor. Not surprising.

Confirmed: $6 billion in hard-earned taxpayer money stolen in Iraq, under GW's watch. Imagine the GOP outrage if occurred under Obama. But then as we know with Weiner's resignation (versus Vitter, Ensign, Craig, Sanford, etc.), it's OK as long as one is a Republican.

By putting Rick Scott into the governor's mansion in FLA, it just confirms the wackiness of FLA voters. See here, here and here. And to think these voters may be key (again) in deciding our next President in 2012 -- ugh.

Shouldn't Clarence Thomas just resign or step down? I know he won't but it's beyond embarrassing at this point -- and that's saying something given his past....

Republicans continue to trot out lies, not facts, re the environment. Another example: the EPA's proposed rules to clean the air will cost oodles of jobs. Fact: not true. In fact, the rules will actually create jobs while saving many billions in $$$ per year in health costs. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “We
may be of different opinions at different times but let it be said we both
remain on the side of the truth.” Too bad today his respectful sentiment no longer applies since one side is clearly not for truth.

OMG! A banker sentenced to prison! It's a start.

I recently read T.R. Reid's "The Healing of America" and I highly recommend it if you wish to learn more about how our health care system compares versus other developed nations. Reid obliterates much of the fiction and scare-tactics used by the "death panel" folks. Truly eye-opening revelations. It's astonishing when you realize what other nations have compared to our dysfunctional, nonsensical and wasteful way of doing things. France, Canada, England, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and Taiwan all have better health care systems than our own, cheaper with better outcomes, and all of these nations are very market-oriented. Yet a big reason why they succeed where we fail is they realized a successful healthcare system cannot be market-driven. In fact, Switzerland was fairly recently on our course with regards to a failing system, however they made the necessary reforms away from a for-profit system and lo/behold things have dramatically turned around for the better. When will we learn?

Erasing facts and replacing them with lies. Hello Orwell's 1984. These folks are beyond scary. We're talking cult, not fans. And they celebrate ignorance in the name of patriotism. The Founding Fathers deserve light years better than this.

It's OK, the planet will continue to absorb all that carbon like a sponge, no problem. And don't worry about all of the toxins associated with such emissions, cancer shmancer.... And I'm sure all of these deadly tornadoes (now in Massachusetts?!) have nothing to do with global warming affecting the climate....

Running out of scapegoats, the Vatican is now blaming Woodstock for the sexual abuse committed by priests.

Palin screws up again when it comes to basic U.S. history. Oh yeah, let's definitely get her in that White House to straighten things out and make us all proud.... Further proof that at least 20% of the voting public are complete, utter morons.

The goons are paying their minions to attack Elizabeth Warren. This alone should tell you just how effective she would be in her job as head of the CFPB. The financial lobby wants a go-along stooge.

Taxes are lower under Obama than Reagan ("And Reagan knew that taxes were an important part of the budget equation. After all, he 'raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,' including four times in just two years"). But that was then this is now, right? 35% is the new 50%, and in 10 years 20% will be the new 35%. Meanwhile the deficit climbs (thanks to GW tax cuts, Iraq war, economic decline). But all of this is just too confusing to Tea Baggers, or perhaps it has to do with having a dark-skinned guy in the White House....

From PolitiFact: "[T]he truth is that there are an awful lot of similarities between the plan he signed in Massachusetts in 2006, often called "RomneyCare," and the one that President Barack Obama signed in 2010."

"Senate Republicans Introduce Bill To Abolish The EPA" Yes, abolish, eliminate, rid the U.S. of environmental regulations. Insanity.

Fracking panel is stacked.

From Kevin Drum:

Put this one (chart below) up on your refrigerator along with the last one. Then, if a friend comes over after watching Glenn Beck and insists that we're doomed, just point to the chart. If you want to save America from a crushing future debt burden, you need to repeal the Bush tax cuts, get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and stop pursuing austerity policies that will slow down economic recovery.

Once we've done that, then it's time to talk about Medicare. But the other stuff comes first.

Gingrich surprised me. I thought he'd enter the race and proclaim to all his followers and fellow Republicans what they'd want to hear -- mainly GOP talking points with a bit of a variant spin to give it that Newt touch (i.e. to say something slightly different than the printed talking points to perpetuate the myth that he's original and a heavy-weight intellectual). Instead we see him go on Meet The Press and actually try to say something reasonable, or at least something far beyond conventional Repub-speak. And of all topics, Newt decides to be provocative, unique and/or profound by criticizing GOP golden-boy Paul Ryan.

Well, we know what happened then, with the right doing their go-berserk thing, and Newt back-pedaling and blaming the media ala Sarah Palin. But the very fact that Newt would dare to utter something that could get his folks in a tizzy tells me he's more serious about running this time around than in the past. Many of us believe that he gets into these races to play up his name which in large part is how he makes a very comfortable living. To do what he did and cause a stir amongst his peeps means he either wished to say something that was well-meant and justified, i.e. that the Ryan plan is not as serious or courageous as Republicans like to believe, OR Newt just made an off-the-cuff response that he would later regret (not the first time that happened).

In any case, it's hilarious to watch Newt scramble and squirm in an effort to quell the backlash and satisfy the kooks that comprise his party. Better still, we are likely to see him do this awkward dance many times before finally dropping out.

It appears Camping may have been saved, but I assume the rest of us (or 99.99999999% of the planet's inhabitants) who remain here on Earth are reprehensible sinners and are doomed.

Newt Gingrich running for president is very dangerous. Why? Because to the ill-informed, he comes across as serious, credible and to be trusted. Yes, we know nothing could be further from the truth. However, compared to Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly -- who most people realize are laughable and living cartoons -- Newt appears to be Abe Lincoln. There are so many nutballs and kooks in the conservative wing these days that someone like Newt is able to pull off sounding as if he's given things considerable reflection and thought, expounding in his professorial tone with great certitude and confidence. And folks on the right just lap it up, believing his crazy statements without question, despite the fact most are as riddled with distortion and non-facts as Beck's or O'Reilly's. It's all in the delivery, style over substance.

FCC head Meredith Baker resigns to take an SVP position at Comcast/NBC. Baker was appointed to the FCC by GW Bush and she was a strong supporter of the Comcast/NBC merger. But I'm sure no revolving door shenanigans are involved, after all Baker denies it....

Not sure where this John McCain has been for the last few years, but it's refreshing to see him return. Given how far to the right McCain has gravitated, for him to go on record and strongly slam the BS that has recently been peddled by GW's band of mad men about torture and finding bin Laden belies just how false all of it is.

I can't get enough of this chart, showing the factual blame for the deficit. By far the bulk of it is due to GW's tax cuts and wars, and then the Great Recession (which can't be tagged to Obama). But don't tell that to the Tea Party folks, who continue to think it's all the fault of the dark-skinned fella and that the road to surpluses is through budget cuts to NPR, the EPA and Planned Parenthood.

Jon Stewart: Why Is Bush Administration Taking All the Credit for Killing Osama bin Laden?

As I've written here before, re fracking, be very afraid.

Earth is running out of food, and it will increasingly provoke violence.

Trillions? Really House Speaker Boehner?? Where will those trillions come from?? To get to trillions means cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or defense spending -- not unemployment benefits, environmental regulations, or "waste" in government. Please be more specific (I dare you). Apparently selective defense spending is off the table.

Blackwater hired John Ashcroft as its ethics chief. Yes, really.

If possible, yes, Osama should've been captured and not killed. But I have no idea what truly went down in the heat of the moment during the encounter, so I will hold off on judging what should have happened. Better to have killed him then to have a Tora Bora occur. That said I continue to be confident that we'll stop any attacks. We have since 9/11 due in large part to increased intel, however I maintain that our intel apparatus was pretty darn good prior to 9/11. Recall we did have enough info pre-9/11 to prevent the attack but due to incompetence and.... So let's not make too much of the killing vs. capture thing. Besides, you don't think a captured Osama, for years held before trial, would serve as a martyr??

We’re not Broke. We’ve been Robbed!

I've said this all along, Obama is more of a moderate Republican than the far right would have you believe.

"Yes, paranoia, greed and racism are fun, but…"

Bill Maher says it all (as per usual), must-read stuff, transcript courtesy of Political Ruminations:

Now that it's become clear that the Republicans, the fiscally conservative, strong on defense party are neither fiscally conservative nor strong on defense ….they have to tell us what exactly it is they're good at. Because it’s not defense – 9/11 happened on your watch, and you retaliated by invading the wrong country.

And you lost a 10-year game of hide and seek with Osama bin Laden.

And you’re responsible for running up most of the debt, which more than anything makes us weak.

You’re supposed to be the party with the killer instinct, when it was a Democrat who put a bomb in Gaddafi’s bedroom and a bullet in bin Laden’s eye like Moe Green.

Raising the question, “How many Muslims does a black guy have to kill in one weekend before crackers climb down off his ass?”

Let’s look at some facts. Now for you FOX News viewers feel free to turn down the sound until the flashing “FACTS” light at the bottom of the screen disappears.

When Bill Clinton left office in 2001 the Congressional Budget Office predicted that by the end of the decade we would have paid off the entire debt and have a $2 trillion surplus. Instead we have a $10.5 trillion public debt, and the difference in those two numbers is mostly because Republicans put tax cuts for the rich, free drugs for the elderly and two wars on the layaway plan and then bailed on the check. So much for fiscal responsibility.

But hey, at least they still have the defense thing, right? The public still believes Republicans were tougher when it came to hunting down dark-skinned foreigners with funny sounding names. But Bush had seven years to get Osama. He didn’t. He got Wesley Snipes.

Only six months after 9/11, Bush said he didn’t spend that much time on bin Laden, that he was no longer concerned about him. Just as he wasn’t before 9/11, when he blew off that mysterious, inscrutable memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack INSIDE the U.S.” In under a year, Bush went from “who gives a shit?” to “wanted dead or alive” and back to “who gives a shit?”. Why focus on the terrorists who reduced Wall Street to rubble when you can help Wall Street reduce the whole country to rubble?

In 2008, the candidates were asked if they knew for sure that bin Laden was in Pakistan would you send our guys in without permission to get him. McCain said no, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation. Obama said yes, he’d just do it, and McCain called him “naïve”. Who’s being naïve, Cain?

And why can’t you just admit that Barack Obama is one efficient, steely nerved, multitasking, black ninja gangsta, President?

In one week he produced his birth certificate, comforted disaster victims, swung by Florida to say “hey” to Gabbie Giffords, did stand-up at the correspondents dinner, and then personally rappelled into bin Laden’s lair and put a Chinese star through his throat without waking up any of his 13 wives. That’s how it went down….I saw it on MSNBC.

Look, 30% of this country will always vote Republican. I’m just asking “why?” Yes, paranoia, greed and racism are fun, but…it’s… it’s like when you see someone driving a Mercury. You think, “did that person really wake up one day thinking ‘you know what car I want to drive?”
A Mercury Mariner “. No, no, you assume he knows someone who sells them or he was molested by a Kia dealer as a child.

And I know this all sounds like harsh truth, but Republicans are supposed to be the party of harsh truths. Like “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.

And speaking of lunch, Obama just ate yours.

"The top X% of wage earners pay X% of income taxes."

This is a favorite line of right-wingers (fill in your own figures, top 1% pay 58%, top 2% pay 72%, etc.). You get the point they try to make, go easy on the wealthy, they pay their fair share and then some.

Please. As usual, it's all hocus pocus word games. I'll show you.

Suppose a country had a population of 10 people. Person A, the tycoon, made $100 per year, and the other 9 people all made $10 each per year. Thus the total amount of income to be taxed = $190. Suppose 10% is the income tax rate applied to all. This means the total amount of taxes paid is $190 x 10% = $19.

Person A, the tycoon, paid $100 x 10% = $10 in taxes. $10 / $19 = 53%

So you see, Person A, 1/10 of the population, paid 53% of the total taxes paid -- wow, what a swell person, cheers, bravo.

Ahh, not so fast. Person A pays 53% of the total taxes paid because Person A makes 10 times more than each of the other 9 people. Duh. But that's not the point! The point is all 10 people pay the same tax rate, thus it's arguably very fair. Person A doesn't deserve applause or accolades as this person is doing the equivalent of all other citizens in this country.

And this is with a system of one tax rate for all. If it was a bit more progressive, where say Person A had to pay a 15% tax rate, then we're talking: $15 / $24 = 63%, or Person A now pays 63% of all taxes paid.

As you can see, right-wingers try to use deception by shifting the viewpoint quite a bit. It just takes a little bit of thinking to see what they're doing, but how many people take the time to do that thinking?

Meanwhile, the sad fact of the matter is the top 400 wealthiest households in the U.S. (worth $350+ million) pay a lower tax rate than the average citizen pays.

Yes, let's continue to cut taxes for the rich -- woe to them....

Osama bin Laden is dead

What GW failed to do for seven years, Obama achieved (read story, he was heavily involved). Great day for America, but let's see what the hyper-partisan Republicans have to say.... (Most likely "what took so long?" or "that's fine but what about the deficit??"  You know, the deficit that GW and Republicans were creating for many years without a peep from anyone at the time....)

If you've ever wondered whether or not Republican politicians actually believed the birther crap, we can thank Donald Trump for settling it.

Until Trump recently became the most famous birther, many Republicans would either look to side-step the issue by not answering questions directly or they would encourage the continuation of the conspiracy theory by mentioning the possibility Obama may not be a U.S. citizen, thus leaving the door slightly ajar to satisfy and energize the kooks in the base. It worked for the GOP politically.

However, along comes The Don, who quickly makes it his #1 issue in his maybe/maybe-not 2012 run.  I assumed all those same Republican officials would do the usual when asked what they thought of Trump's allegations about Obama's place of birth, that they'd hee and haw but ultimately do some wink-wink and deftly support the notion (leaving door slightly open....).

But I was wrong. One after another, Republicans have been firmly and clearly coming out against all this birther nonsense, stating for the record that it's not a serious issue and seemingly never was. Michele Bachmann, Karl Rove, Eric Cantor, just to name a few, are suddenly above such silliness.

Why the change of mind? I surmise two reasons. The first is they never actually believed the birther stuff and felt with the 2012 race beginning to take shape that they would need to appear like credible people and distance themselves from something that has served their political purposes up till now.

The second reason is the GOP establishment quickly figured out that they needed to put a stop to Trump's growing popularity as a presidential contender. He may not have the billions of dollars he claims to have but he certainly has enough to make a go of it. But more so The Don appears to be a loose cannon who will say anything that pops into his head. Trump is loyal to only one thing: himself. He will and has gone off script and such behavior frightens the heck out of Republicans. In other words, The Don truly "goes rogue" and by all means Republicans do not want that!  Oh yes, say you're "going rogue," that you're not just another politician, that you're a maverick, etc., but just don't mean it!

The bottom line is thanks to Trump, we've come to learn that Republicans never believed in the birther movement. Nothing has changed with regards to the existing documentation, what is known, what Obama and his administration have said, etc., and yet suddenly we observe this rising tide of GOP converts. As I've said, Trump's antics and 2012 fast approaching combined to force Republicans to admit the truth they knew to be the case all along.

And once again, the too-many nutballs in the GOP base get played by their leaders.... That never gets old.

Do you know what "fracking" is? If not, I highly encourage you to watch the Oscar-nominated "Gasland" documentary, made by Josh Fox. It's scary to say the least.

On a related note, this news from PA:

Pennsylvania has come under fire lately as pollution from drilling in the Marcellus Shale threatens water resources across the state. But instead of ratcheting up oversight, Gov. Tom Corbett wants to hand authority over some of the state’s most critical environmental decisions to C. Alan Walker, a Pennsylvania energy executive with his own track record of running up against the state’s environmental regulations.
<..>
Private water wells have been contaminated with methane gas and other pollutants across the state, and in many cases the DEP has found that hasty or insufficient gas well construction was to blame. Several drilling site accidents have led to spills where wastewater, including from hydraulic fracturing, contaminated streams.

A 2009 ProPublica investigation revealed that Pennsylvania’s sewage treatment plants were accepting millions of gallons of drilling wastewater, but lacked the technology to remove or treat many of the chemicals and pollutants the water contained. In 2008 people along one stretch of the Monongahela River were advised to drink bottled water because the level of dissolved minerals and salts in the river was almost twice as high as the DEP considers safe.
<..>
In January, the Associated Press found that about 150 million gallons of Marcellus Shale wastewater—the majority of the wastewater for the period examined—had been dumped into rivers and streams after only partial treatment. A subsequent story from the New York Times revealed that much of that wastewater was dangerously radioactive, and that drinking water facilities have not been testing their intake for this radioactivity.

On Monday the EPA leaned on Pennsylvania’s DEP to tighten its oversight of drilling waste disposal. The next day, Gov. Corbett released his budget, reducing DEP funding and stating that job creation should trump lengthy permitting delays.

It's not shocking to learn that Republican Corbett accepted more than $800,000 in campaign contributions from the oil & gas industry.

Another bought-and-paid-for politician paying back his supporters at the expense of the people -- in this case possibly their health, not to mention land value.

Every so often Fox News gets it correct. It's an extremely rare occurrence but it does happen, almost by accident.

Shep Smith is caught telling it like it truly is in Wisconsin.

Shepard Smith said the battle over union rights in Wisconsin was all about busting unions and securing Republican political power, not about the state's budget deficit....Smith said the fight was "100 percent politics."
"There is no budget crisis in Wisconsin," he said, adding that the unions "[have] given concessions." The real point of the fight, Smith said, could be found in the list of the top ten donors to political campaigns. Seven out of the ten donated to Republicans; the other three were unions donating to Democrats.
"Bust the unions, and it's over," Smith said. He then brought up the Koch brothers, the billionaires who have bankrolled much of the anti-union pushback in Wisconsin. The fight, Smith said, "started" with the Kochs, who he said were trying to get a return on the money they donated to Walker's campaign.
"I'm not taking a side on this, I'm just telling you what's going on...to pretend this is about a fiscal crisis in the state of Wisconsin is malarkey," Smith said.

Watch the video.

• Michele Bachmann gets her facts and history wrong, again. I thought Tea Party folks were all about getting this stuff right?

• Dirty air triggers more heart attacks than cocaine.

• "I just want to say, if you're a Republican, please go screw yourself."
  

• For those who haven't figured it out yet, it's fairly obvious that with the start of this year the Republicans had put together and implemented a strategy where they would try to systematically go after those who tended to vote for Democrats. It's what they're doing to unions in Wisconsin, with attempts to do similar in other states (Indiana, Ohio). Break the unions and strip them of all power and you succeed in extinguishing a primary donor to Democrats. That's the real goal in Wisconsin, ignore the trumped-up nonsense about a fiscal emergency. Next on the list: make it harder for minorities and college students to vote, two groups that generally side with Democrats. My question is are Democrats in Washington DC too naive or stupid to realize this is going on? Do they care?? WAKE UP!

• Matt Taibbi on John Boehner: "He's a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done....Look back over almost every controversial episode in the recent history of the U.S. Congress and you will find Boehner's face appearing, Zelig-like, somewhere in the foreground....Boehner, in short, has for most of his career been a Bush Republican, i.e., a corporate schmoozer and a remorseless spender of taxpayer money for whom the notion of small government is just something to say when the cameras are on."
  

• Republicans Gut EPA Climate Rules

• Sums things up.

Niall Ferguson's Newsweek piece is just more proof that Obama is anything but a socialist, much less a radical progressive. I would say (as I have many times) that he's slightly left of center -- slightly. In other words, he's a fairly conventional politician.

The right has been doing to Obama what they did to Clinton for eight years: attempt to define him as more of an extreme ideologue than is truthful. They succeeded in convincing their base that Clinton was a far-left liberal -- a joke at the time and even more so looking back. And the same is true now with Obama, with their tireless effort to cast him as a pinko-socialist "community organizer." He's of course nothing of the sort -- if anything, he's been pissing off his own supporters for not being liberal enough!

But the right and Republicans control via fear-mongering and their base complies, allowing such tactics to prevail repeatedly. The base gets played over and over.... Idiots.

So Newt Gingrich is very likely going to jump in the race in 2012. This despite him being a member of the party of family values, a guy who is on his third wife, apparently cheating on his first two.

Best of luck to you Newt!

Regarding the mess in Wisconsin, it's fairly simple to understand at this point. It's all about politics and very little is about fiscal concerns. If the prank phone call was not revealing enough for you, all you have to know is Gov. Walker exempted those unions that supported him in his run for office.

If the state is in such financial trouble, requiring unions to sacrifice, going so far as to demand the abolishment of collective bargaining, than why is it some unions don't have to relinquish that right?

So Orrin Hatch is in danger of losing because he's not conservative enough...??!! Come again!! That's like saying the Devil is to be replaced in Hell for not being evil enough.

Just how far to the right is the GOP going to drift?? Reagan today would be the equivalent of Jerry Brown.

Given this latest news, isn't Glenn Beck supposed to be passing out on air at this point??

Finally saw The Social Network. I'd give it a "B" on scale of A-F. It was good, but not great. Why do I get the feeling that because Fincher and Sorkin's names were attached, it had critics extra-excited before viewing, elevating their reception from B to A....

Frankly, a better film is Mike Leigh's "Another Year," but it's British and has no big names involved.

Remember this ("Republicans Gut EPA") the next time you hear someone complain about the EPA not doing its job. Tough to do one's job when you're constantly underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed -- just as corporations and Republicans (one and same) like it.

Mind you, these cuts don't do jack sh*t to solve the deficit, just a bug bite on an elephant's ass. More meaningful cuts would come from the nearly $1 TRILLION we spend on defense each year but we can't cut there, right? Spending on defense amounts to more/less $800 billion per year, versus the EPA's meager $10 billion budget. Yes, we spend 80 times more on defense than our environment -- and that doesn't include GW's unpaid-for wars.

Attention Tea Party folk, the deficit will be the least of our kids' problems if the planet is uninhabitable. Duh.

I recently finished Wendell Potter's book, Deadly Spin. A very good read, highly recommended. Many of the horrible things he confesses to about the industry are not shocking, but I must admit even I didn't realize the extent of the rot and evil riddled throughout the for-profit health care system. What people won't do to earn an extra buck! (OK, many bucks). Beyond shameful.

Potter makes many good points in the book, too many to list, but I felt his discussion about the medical-loss ratio (MLR) was worth posting here. He writes, "The best example of the industry's secrecy is the medical-loss ratio, which, as I mentioned previously, is the measurement of the share of premium revenue spent on actual health care." When an insurer lowers its MLR, that means its spending less on health care leaving more for "overhead" (i.e. salaries, profits, etc.). Wall Street wants to see the MLR head lower; for it to rise typically means the stock price will selloff.

The graphic below depicts what Potter discusses about the MLR. Since 1993, the MLR for insurance companies has declined from 95% to 81% in 2007, an enormous drop-off in what is actually devoted to health care services. Note that the MLR for Medicare has consistently remained at the 97%-98% level, meaning "overhead" is at a scant 3% compared to about 20% for private insurers.

Yet Republicans and others backed by the insurance lobby will try to murky the waters, demonize Medicare and deflect our attention from plain facts like this.

Continue to fall for the "socialized medicine" and "government takeover of health care" line of crap. Potter divulges in the book that these exact phrases tested very well in PR focus groups when it came to effectively frightening people. The industry is by no means dumb, spending many millions to maintain the status quo and keep the public stupid. For them, it's always been money well spent.

Drought and floods, get used to it. Why? Because of man-made global warming. Warmer air can carry more water vapor, meaning the clouds can accumulate and hold on to more water (rain) for a greater duration of time. This creates extended periods of drought until the clouds become extremely "full" with water vapor, finally releasing the water as deluging rain = massive floods. To put it in terms that Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly can understand, global warming has made the clouds bigger sponges.

And this story relates with the above. Drought and floods = worse agricultural conditions = less food = higher prices = more starvation = more unrest, outrage, protests and violence. It's not just about Twitter. Climate change has far-reaching impact and effects.

Curveball lied.

Let's see if this makes it on network news at all -- you know, the liberal MSM. Bets anyone?

Incredible. Not that this "informant" lied, fabricating BS and not long after we're in a war. Many at the time said he was lying, and much (real) intel didn't confirm, so not shocking.

No, what is incredible is no one cares anymore why or how we got into a war that is expected to cost us between $2 and $3 TRILLION (with a "T") dollars when all is said and done.

But not a peep out of the "newly awakened" Tea Bag crew. They never cite anything having to do with GW/Cheney or war when it comes to deficits. Nope, they can only focus blame on a non-white man in the White House, and all that supposed wasted $$ going to welfare abusers. Oh, and the tons of $$$ going to PBS and the arts.

From Fox Geezer Syndrome:

After the Tucson shootings, Fox chief Roger Ailes said he had told his crew to “tone it down.” I’m skeptical, but I hope he succeeds. One of the great advantages of a conservative disposition is a suspicion of emotions, and emotionalism. The dumbest decisions I’ve ever made, about politics and everything else, were executed while I was worked up about something, and trusted my emotional response. (my emphasis)

Come again?! If I had to sum up the modern conservative today, I would say he/she is all about emotion, period. Specifically anger, but throw in fear and paranoia. Unlike what this author asserts, I see no evidence whatsoever of level-headed, unemotional, objective reason. Just look at the Tea Party folks! And did we observe lots of cool, detached thinking last year during those infamous town hall meetings??

The fact this person could even type this with a straight face says it all. Complete and utter delusion.

Rush, Glenn, Sean -- these guys are hilarious. If the events in Egypt were occurring with their boy GW in office, we would be hearing emphatic words of support about the encouraging opportunity for democracy to finally take root (mind you, without requiring U.S. armed forces to invade and make it happen). But because it's Obama sitting in the White House and not their guy, we hear nothing of the sort. Rather the rightwing bloviators flame cautionary warnings of socialist uprisings, radical youth, and the ever-heinous "community organizing." Be very afraid!!

Saddam was evil enough for GW to misdirect 9/11 rage and our military into a war to free Iraqis, yet in this case, when Egyptians have been protesting for weeks in the name of democracy, the wingnut pundits do not side with the oppressed people desiring liberty. No, instead these partisan sociopaths will use any excuse, any policy issue, any world event to go against whatever Obama is for. No matter what it is, they must be against Obama, period.

That's change to believe in? That's a cohesive, sophisticated, fruitful vision for our country's future? Seems pretty simple-minded to me -- but then judging by the throngs of Tea Party followers, simpletons abound.

Reagan turned 100, another occasion to debunk and myth-bust and shatter the many fictional accounts of the man. And I didn't know he was a big fan of FDR, something I assume would greatly upset most conservatives.

Gail Collins writes about Michelle Bachmann, inevitably spending some time making comparisons to Sarah Palin. How can one not compare the two -- in their own ways, they're both bat-crazy. I love this description by Gail: "If Palin and Bachmann were your co-workers, Palin would be the one sneaking out early to go bowling, while Bachmann would stay late to reorganize the office seating chart to reflect her own personal opinion of who most deserves to be near the water cooler."

Speaking of Palin, an interesting article on narcissism. Doesn't this sound like Sarah? "A narcissist is someone who has an unrealistic sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy, and a 'conviction of being different and special and entitled that is so profound that they feel it’s only natural people will admire them'."

A graphic depicting the $3 trillion (with a "T") Iraq War. Funny how the Tea Baggers never mention GW/Cheney's war when they complain about our worsening deficit. Most telling. Oh, and one reason Obama's deficit figures look worse than GW's is not just because of the Great Recession, but also because Obama decided to finally put both this war and the Afghanistan war on the books. GW made things look better thanks to accounting tricks; Obama said enough.

Top-brass business executives have had their feelings hurt and dislike liberals so much they are more than willing to punish the country by stock-piling cash, avoiding much-needed hiring. Really? Apparently this is what David Gergen would have us believe.

This is long overdue, "As the rates of learning disabilities, autism and related conditions rise, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release a roster of the pollutants likely to contribute to these or other neurological disorders." Theodore Slotkin, a pharmacology professor at Duke University Medical Center: "What we've been doing the past 30 years is a failure. They [industry] can produce these chemicals faster than we can test them." And a truly shocking reality: "[U]nder current law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA permits companies to put many chemicals on the market without first proving they are safe. Then, if evidence mounts that a particular chemical, such as bisphenol A, or metal, such as lead, could harm people who are exposed to the substances in varying situations, the agency has to play catch-up." Incredible. The EPA acts only after the fact. And what about the many chemicals that could be doing harm but are much more subtle when inflicting their damage, thus staying under-the-radar and escaping the attention of regulators...?

A group of organic food giants surrender to Monsanto. Sadly, why does this seem like it was inevitable?

A conservation group may sink a very promising renewable energy project. Look, at some point choices have to be made -- in this case, the future of the planet versus question marks surrounding migrating birds. If we don't look to replace coal plants with cleaner burning alternatives, and fast, then the risk to turtles and cacti will be the least of our problems!

Theories continue to swirl about why Olbermann called it quits at MSNBC. I just thought there was some bittersweet irony to this:

With Maddow enjoying both immense popularity inside MSNBC and very strong ratings for her Rachel Maddow Show, Olbermann’s invincibility as the heart and soul of MSNBC’s brand became softer.
<..>
[W]ith the Comcast-related departure of Jeff Zucker, and the rise of Maddow and O’Donnell, the landscape shifted, making an Olbermann exit suddenly seem well-timed.

From Day 1 for Maddow, Olbermann seemed to be an instrumental mentor to her, almost father-figure-ish, with appearances being that Keith was a big reason for Rachel getting her own show on MSNBC. She did so well that the network apparently took comfort in her success, enough for it to become a factor in releasing mentor Keith.

Whatever the reason(s) for Olbermann's exit, one thing is for certain: he will be sorely missed. He not only introduced the viability of liberal or left-leaning broadcasting (in stark contrast to Air America Radio's failure), thus helping to make it possible for Maddow, Shultz and O'Donnell, but Keith delivered with fire, with real heartfelt passion, and came closest to matching toe-to-toe the acidic tone of the right. For those of us who were sick and tired of the wet noodle, weak kneed, overly polite delivery from most figures on the left, he was a welcome and refreshing smack of fresh air.

But for some reason I get the feeling we haven't heard the last from him.... Let's hope not anyway.

It's estimated that 200 underground coal fires burn in 20 states, and thousands more burn around the globe. Just in the U.S. alone, an EPA assessment in 2002 put the amount of toxic mercury emitted in the air from these fires at 48 tons per year.

Just another very important story that goes under-reported, tucked in the back of the newspaper, or not reported on at all. And mind you, supposed "clean coal" won't put an end to these fires....

But again I ask, I thought he said he was innocent....?

On Monday, Keith Olbermann had Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on his show and among other things they discussed the Republicans stated goal to repeal health care reform. Here's a bit of their exchange:

WEINER: [I]f they want to vote their very first vote to take away prescription drug money from senior citizens, to take away coverage for young Americans 21 through 26, to take away coverage for people who have pre-existing conditions—this is the first thing they want to do. If they want that fight, bring it on, chicky. I think that that‘s exactly the kind of debate that we want to have.
<..>
OLBERMANN: The things that were just signed into law yesterday that the president made a note of seem to be really popular.

WEINER: Exactly.

Weiner believes because many things within the health care reform law do indeed poll very well with the public, it would seemingly be political suicide for the Republicans to try for a repeal. However, I believe Weiner (and Olbermann?) need to wake up on this matter.

Yes, on the surface one can assume Republicans would pay dearly for such an overreach to get rid of something so popular. However, what Weiner (and Olbermann?) fail to consider is that the Republicans and many special interest groups have done yeoman's work at thoroughly confusing the public about health care reform, in many instances convincing them that it will actually cost too much, deliver very little, will hamper job growth and is even likely unconstitutional -- all not true. But the fact remains that despite when asked the public does favor individual items of reform within the law, when asked about health care reform in general, support becomes less uniform and more tepid, thanks in large part to the opposing side's propaganda machine and massive effort to circulate misinformation.

The point being the Republicans and their allies have succeeded in doing what they've done for climate change: hoist enough non-facts and distortions into the discourse in an effort to create mass confusion about what should be fairly clear. By doing so allows them to take advantage of needless uncertainty and unwarranted fear -- in this case, affording the political cover to torpedo a law that in reality would be a huge benefit to the country.

Again, Weiner assumes that if a debate were to occur on this matter that the public would fully understand and appreciate what is at stake, what they stand to lose, and it would hurt the Republicans. Not necessarily true for the reasons I just discussed. The Republicans did what they do (distort and fabricate to achieve their goal(s)) and the Dems did what they do (lack the ability to effectively communicate to the public what they've done on their behalf). Advantage GOP.

Another huge fact the Republicans are well aware of: they must at all costs stop this law from being enacted because once implemented and the public began to actually experience the many benefits it stands to provide, and realize all of what they feared and were confused about were just lies and scare tactics, then the Republicans would never be able to repeal it. To try and do so then would clearly be political suicide, much as is the case today with Medicare and Social Security. Those of the public who criticize big government and excessive spending are most often enthusiastic supporters of both programs.

Republicans know they need to steer this train off the rails before it makes it to its destination. Weiner (and Keith) should've realized all of this and stated such. I think it's why in part the Dems always seem to remain a step or two behind the craftier Republicans.

Another snow storm, another round of sarcastic wise cracks from the right, poking fun at those who would dare suggest that the planet is heating up. Why, we have a foot of snow on the ground in many parts of the country, how could it possibly be that Earth is warming? Those silly scientists, all they need to do is look around and read the newspapers.

Does it get any dumber? Many countries experience flash floods -- but then still continue to have droughts. Short-term events versus long-term trends. It's all just embarassing at this point and shame on anyone who falls for this load of crap. As I've written several times before on this blog, and just last month, global warming and climate change are very complex, or at least more complex than the dim-bulb crowd will lead you to believe.

As Dr. Peter Gleick states:

Record snowfall is not an indicator of a lack of global warming, as has been pointed out in the scientific literature and many, many rounds of Congressional testimony. It merely means that there was a storm and temperatures were close to or below freezing. Indeed global warming can contribute to greater snowfalls by providing extra moisture. Many scientists testifying before the Senate and House of Representatives have explained the difference between a steadily warming planet and occasional extreme cold events in particular spots. But we can expect to see more examples of this kind of B.S. when it gets cold and snowy somewhere, sometime, this winter.

And from conservative David Frum's web site, a quote from Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC):

People who make a lot of money on talk radio and talk TV say a lot of things. They slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and they’re experts on climate change. They substitute their judgment for people who have Ph.D.s and work tirelessly [on climate change].

Maybe in 2011 we'll see more Republicans convert to the side of reason and science, before it's too late.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fear is what helps destroy freedom and democracy.

For those not already subscribers, Best of the Left is a terrific podcast. Strongly recommended.

As if there was any doubt:

We found that those who watch Fox nearly every day, compared to those who never or only watch it a little, are more likely to believe some pieces of misinformation...it has been statistically proven that you will be more misinformed if you watch Fox (News) than other networks.

My favorite discovery:

The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it.

Yes, even if you voted Dem you were just as likely to be adversely affected by the power of Fox News. It's like an evil, near-invincible force, just waiting to suck in its next helpless victim. Ever see the movie Videodrome?

And the "Lie of the Year" goes to.... Yes, you guessed it, the GOP fabrication that health care reform was "a government takeover of health care."

Another item I've been meaning to write about for some time now: the Michael Moore / Wendell Potter exchange on Keith Olbermann's show. It's worth watching both Part 1 and Part 2.

It's disturbing to hear Mr. Potter admit to what was common practice by these insurance companies, as if there exists an understood, step-wise protocol on how to discredit someone or something. You try X and if that doesn't work you move to Y, and if that doesn't work you.... Really scary.

A particularly unsettling admission by Wendell is when he says, "But I think it meant that we would do what we had to do to create ads and op-eds that we would get conservative pundits to place in newspapers with the whole objective of, as they call it, reframing the debate, to try to move the attention from them to you as a filmmaker." [My emphasis]

Is Wendell inferring that these companies can "create" propaganda per se, or a fabricated line of attack, and then simply find one of many conservative "pundits" to write it up and get it published in a major newspaper? Really? As if insurance companies have a Rolodex filled with right-wing writers for hire, who are just waiting for that call telling them what to write, with the chosen writer likely sending the finished copy back to the company for final edits. In fact, Potter seems to imply that the insurance companies would actually write the op-ed and then get a conservative writer to attach his/her name and get it published.

I don't doubt it happens, but nonetheless it was revolting to hear.

I am half way through Juliet Schor's Plenitude and it's terrific. Very interesting, crammed with eye-opening facts and lesser-known realities, and yet not written in a preachy, finger-wagging tone. A very important book for our times.

I thought Tea-Party fave Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) was to be an agent of change in Washington DC, to work hard at putting an end to the business-as-usual shenanigans, where special interest money corrupts governing and unduly influences choices?

Yawn, yeah right.

But unlike Brown, I'm sure the rest of the Tea-Bag crew that won this past November will follow-through on their campaign rhetoric and they'll fight the power, refuse to accept special interest money, really "go rogue" and defy what has been the norm in DC....

Yawn, yeah right.

"Judge Who Nixed Health Care Owns Stake in GOP Firm"

Does this shock or surprise anyone?

I'm late re this but still wanted to comment on Obama's press conference following his tax deal. Not long after I wrote, "And is he once again going to command Gibbs et al to lash out against us, the left, as if we were spoiled children who know not what we speak of or believe in?" did it come true, only it wasn't Gibbs doing the lashing but rather Obama himself.

Btw, is it me or is Obama's tone more indignant and hostile when he's criticizing the left than when he's doing the same versus Republicans and the right? Sort of akin to the parents who are meaner to their own kids than to strangers.

In the press conference, Obama attempted to equate the public option and healthcare reform with extending all tax cuts, including those for the wealthy, giving the enemy-of-the-perfect argument a try. Sorry, I don't find the two comparable, making it all seem a bit strained to say the least.

For one, I don't seem to recall Obama being so clearly and strongly in favor of the public option as he was against tax cuts for the wealthy. Secondly, Obama and the Democrats had much more power during the HC reform, to enforce their will, as opposed to coming off a brutal election leaving a lame duck Congress. Thirdly, the Tea Party furor and influence was in its infancy during HC reform, as opposed to now. Finally, most liberals did in fact support the eventual HC reform, even despite it not having a public option, so I think Obama is guilty of amplifying the few to make his point.

So I would argue his tax cut cave is quite different, and given this latest scolding, makes him appear that much weaker.

Let me also say that I fully understand his argument about being held hostage, that if he didn't do this the GOP would've voted against extending unemployment benefits, so Obama was acting as the bigger person and "caving" for the sake of the unemployed. I get that, BUT could we at least hear him be just as stinging and harsh in his comments about this craven maneuver by the Republicans as he was when commenting on the liberals and healthcare reform -- is that too much to ask? As opposed to him graciously and overly-respectfully describing it as the most important issue Republicans feel they must fight for -- no bite, no sting, no condemnation, no harsh tone.

And what makes him think Republicans won't repeatedly use this "hostage taking" tactic over and over again? Why wouldn't they? It worked for them beautifully this time, with hardly a fight and no mean words or mud-slinging. No wonder McConnell and others were praising Obama for acting so presidential. That in itself spoke volumes about how Obama made a mistake.

Obama caving on the tax cuts is just another unfortunate sign of how weak this president has become. Yes, I know he's attempted to offer up a seemingly rational excuse as to why he "had" to go along with this deal. Yada, yada, yada.

Are we not beyond sick and tired of the carefully-worded excuses for each time Obama gives in to the strident, unyielding Republicans? And is he once again going to command Gibbs et al to lash out against us, the left, as if we were spoiled children who know not what we speak of or believe in?

It's really just sad to see someone who was to be a strong advocate of change devolve so quickly into a willing vessel for the status quo. I always knew Obama was not the far-left, ultra-liberal "socialist" the right-wing machine made him out to be, realizing it was in their interest to portray him as a "pinko commie" just as they did with Bill Clinton. Nothing shocking there. However, I still maintained hope that he wouldn't lurch too far to the center and that there was the chance he would actually be a commanding force who exhibited continuous and consistent strength and fortitude. I'm sorry, many of us expected X and instead got Y, and it's not a matter of our expectations being out of whack or too unrealistic, but rather it's more a matter of feeling as if one was sold a bill of goods.

Look, I'm not one who doesn't appreciate the many good things that Obama has done during his two years in office. I've defended him to the point of growing weary (I know I'm not alone on this front), to the point where I feel I've defended him better than he has defended himself! I know he's light years better than most of the alternatives out there.... Blah, blah, blah. But Obama was not elected into office because he was less bad than McCain/Palin -- right?! His victory was one of excitement and promise, not begrudging resignation to what might have been otherwise.

With this recent cave, pact, covenant -- whatever you want to call it -- it just reminds me of the scene in The Godfather, when Brando slaps Johnny Fontane exclaiming, "You can act like a man!" As if Obama has become this pathetic, weak figure, groveling for understanding and support. STOP IT ALREADY, GROW A SPINE AND ACT LIKE A MAN!

Dr. Laura, another crazy right-wing hypocrite.

It wasn't long ago that she refused to belong to a network of stations that would include someone as repulsive and vile as Howard Stern (this was back when Howard was with Viacom).

But apparently with her recent agreement to join satellite radio Sirius XM, the network that Howard Stern belongs to and has built into a formidable operation, it seems now she's OK with being in the same family as Howard.

The hypocrisy just never ends. And as usual, the family-values BS is just crap tossed at the hapless audience, who gladly swallow it up, but meanwhile the Dr. Lauras tossing it could care less when it comes down to it.... Howard, Shmoward, just pay me....

There he goes again, being all far-left, socialist and ultra-liberal.... What a joke, and has always been one.

Julian Assange is now not going to be able to follow anyone, at least not for some time anyway. But I was intrigued with what Richard Cohen wrote:

Say what you want about WikiLeaks - and I don't much like what it has done - it nevertheless would be useful for its founder, Julian Assange, to follow George W. Bush as he lopes around the country, promoting his new book, "Decision Points." When, for instance, Bush attempts to justify the Iraq war by saying the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, Assange could reach into his bag of leaked U.S. government cables and cite Saudi King Abdullah's private observation that the war had given Iraq to Iran as a "gift on a golden platter."

Iraq now has a Shiite-dominated government and many senior officials who are ominously friendly with Iran. It was always American policy to use Saddam's Iraq to counterbalance Iran since it was really Iran that posed a danger to the region. That danger is now amply documented in the new WikiLeaks documents - including the revelation that North Korea has sold Iran missiles capable of reaching, say, Tel Aviv or, a minute or so later, Cairo.

Morning Coffee Spit

I'm going to try and put up here each morning an item that when read or viewed will cause you to spit up your coffee. It will be that ridiculous or idiotic.

OK, here we go for this morning, a video clip. A classic example of offering all opinions and seemingly passing them off as facts.

You have Frick & Frack (Beck and O'Reilly), trying to link Soros with WikiLeaks, with no hard proof offered, no facts, just Beck saying "I think..." and "We've talked about..." Best of all, you have O'Reilly literally say to Beck, "... I'm not going to ask you to prove it..."

No, we wouldn't want that, right?? HILARIOUS.

Senate passes overhaul of food safety regulations:

The biggest U.S. food-safety overhaul in more than 70 years won Senate passage as lawmakers sought to curb food-borne illnesses that cost the nation an estimated $152 billion a year.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration would gain more power to police food companies under the bill that passed today in a 73-25 vote. The measure, backed by the food industry, public- health groups and consumer advocates, adds inspections and lets the FDA force recalls, rather than relying on companies to voluntarily remove contaminated foods from store shelves.

Emphasis mine. I'm still trying to find out the names of the 25 senators who voted against this bill but I know one of them is Sen. Coburn (R-OK), so it's fairly safe to assume the other 24 are likely Republicans.

Let me understand, the food industry (i.e. big business) backed this bill, AND food illness costs this country over $150 billion per year, and yet still many Republicans felt the need to vote against this bill....? Really? And Tea-baggers wish to "take back this country" and hand it back to these partisan idiots?

UPDATE: Yup, all 25 were Republicans -- including John McCain. Maverick my arse.

It didn't take long for preppie-rock gods Vampire Weekend to sell out to commercial interests. But then again, that's assuming they had any artistic integrity to begin with. I tend to doubt it.

Tom DeLay found guilty? But I thought he said repeatedly that he was innocent...? I guess he meant of things other than this....

Go ahead, click here and try to balance the budget without touching Medicare, Social Security or military spending, and without raising any taxes -- GOOD LUCK!

Is Glenn Beck sending coded messages? Sounds completely plausible to me.

Another study, another unsurprising verdict:

A third of Americans say they have gone without medical care or skipped filling a prescription because of cost, compared to 5 percent in the Netherlands, according to study released on Thursday.

The study is the latest in a series by the non-profit Commonwealth Fund showing that while Americans pay far more per capita for healthcare, they are unhappier with the results and less healthy than people in other rich countries.

The study published in the journal Health Affairs also showed that 20 percent of U.S. adults had major problems paying medical bills, compared with 2 percent in Britain and 9 percent in France, the next costliest country.

"U.S. adults were the most likely to incur high medical expenses, even when insured, and to spend time on insurance paperwork and disputes or to have payments denied," the report reads.

Yes, we better make repealing watered-down healthcare reform priority #1!

True dat, from The Economist:

As to hubris, the Republican freshmen bound for Congress next January are in danger of reading into the election a message of their own creation. Many see the mid-terms as a popular rejection of the president’s “extreme” policies. This is doubtful. Voters were more likely registering a protest at the economy than repudiating an ideology. Besides, to the disgust of his own progressive base, Mr Obama enacted no extreme policies. Obamacare is a good deal less radical than the plan Richard Nixon proposed in 1974 or Bill Clinton 20 years later. In fact it closely resembles the bill the Republicans put up as an alternative to Mr Clinton’s, and its central idea—the individual mandate—was introduced in Massachusetts by none other than Mitt Romney, who hopes to become the Republicans’ presidential nominee in 2012.

Summarizes the state of things quite nicely.

The always-insightful Frank Rich:

The G.O.P.’s arguments for extending the Bush tax cuts to this crowd, usually wrapped in laughably hypocritical whining about “class warfare,” are easily batted down. The most constant refrain is that small-business owners who file in this bracket would be hit so hard they could no longer hire new employees. But the Tax Policy Center found in 2008, when checking out similar campaign claims by “Joe the Plumber,” that only 2 percent of all Americans reporting small-business income, regardless of tax bracket, would see tax increases if Obama fulfilled his pledge to let the Bush tax cuts lapse for the top earners. The economist Dean Baker calculated that the yearly tax increase at the lower end of that bracket, for those with earnings between $200,000 and $500,000, would amount to $700 — which “isn’t enough to hire anyone.”

Those in the higher reaches aren’t investing in creating new jobs even now, when the full Bush tax cuts remain in effect, so why would extending them change that equation? American companies seem intent on sitting on trillions in cash until the economy reboots. Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ranks the extension of any Bush tax cuts, let alone those to the wealthiest Americans, as the least effective of 11 possible policy options for increasing employment.

Love that small business nonsense the GOP has stooped to offering as reason to extend tax cuts. Completely ludicrous.

But then while on the subject of what's ludicrous and nonsensical, Kevin Drum points out a sad fact, one that has been the case for decades:

This comes from the LA Times, but I think it could be the lead story in pretty much any newspaper in the country:

Californians object to increasing taxes in order to pare the state's massive budget deficit, and instead favor closing the breach through spending cuts. But they oppose cuts — and even prefer more spending — on programs that make up 85% of the state's general fund obligations, a new Los Angeles Times/USC Poll has found.

That paradox rests on Californians' firm belief that the state's deficit — estimated last week at nearly $25 billion over the next 18 months — can be squared through trimming waste and inefficiencies rather than cutting the programs they hold dear. Despite tens of billions that have been cut from the state budget in recent years, just a quarter of California voters believed that state services would have to be curtailed to close the deficit.

Well, there you have it. This is America in a nutshell.

Americans have always been all for cuts in "wasteful" spending -- just as long as those cuts do not affect any spending that benefits them. Nothing will ever get resolved with that kind of ass-backwards, delusional thinking, but you can count on politicians refusing to explain and force voters to recognize their flawed logic, fearing an angry backlash. Thus, we remain in this increasingly worsening state, seemingly paralyzed and sinking.

I could probably add another 20-30 items to the list, but not bad for starters.

I think we've known or suspected this for quite some time: "Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate"

RUN SARAH RUN!

Most global warming skeptics are ignorant about many things when it comes to that which they deny, this study not withstanding.

Whereas these folks seem to judge the veracity of global warming research based on daily weather patterns in their immediate location (!), the fact remains this subject involves highly complex and sensitive matters that go way beyond whether or not it happens to be inordinately cold in city/state/region "X" of the country. Ocean currents play a huge part in this complicated equation and as the study points out, it doesn't take much to skew the balance of seawater salinity (due to global warming) to significantly alter the direction of currents.

And we already know the ocean salt balance is changing. Weather patterns are already likely changing as a result.

But not to worry, it's all just cyclical, or due to sun spots, or something.... Let's get back to focusing on truly important things, like tax cuts for the wealthy.

I wonder why the Tea Baggers never have a misspelled sign angrily protesting this (the fact that many bankers haven't been prosecuted). Instead, they choose to focus solely on getting rid of the African-American in the White House. Quite telling.

It's been quite a long time since my last post (!) -- did you miss me? Bet you thought I died, or better yet with the election of Obama that I was content to stop blogging now that our national nightmare (GW/Cheney) was over. Wrong on both counts.

Admittedly, with the Bush reign of incompetence no more, I did find fewer things to raise the blood pressure. However, by no means has the new guy in the White House been a bang-up success, and many of his supporters -- including myself -- will tell you about our great frustration with how he has let us down, repeatedly. His excessive willingness to proffer compromise with Republicans who only wish to see him out of office, his seemingly inability to grow a spine and fight for what he believes in ala FDR, his fear that he will be perceived as a -- brace yourself -- "liberal" despite the fact that right-wingers portray him to be much farther to left than he actually is, ultimately alienating the many who put him in office just two short years ago.... The list goes on and on.

Anyway, I'm back and I hope to return to my schedule of posting entries daily. As always, I'd love to receive emails from readers.

As always, Rachel is dead-on correct:

That guy right there, last guy there was Phil Gingrey. He was the one at the end, right after John Boehner — Phil Gingrey expressing his grave concern about how much this [health-care bill] costs.

To be clear, the CBO is projecting that this bill will cut the deficit by $138 billion over 10 years. You can see it right there. $138 billion, not added to the deficit, but subtracted from the deficit.

This is the same Phil Gingrey and the same John Boehner who voted for the Medicare Part D drug benefit in 2003. When the CBO scored that bill, at that time, the CBO said that bill would raise the deficit by $394 billion, and yet, Phil Gingrey and John Boehner now so piously concerned about how much things cost, happily voted for Medicare Part D anyway.

When Republicans passed the Bush tax cuts that same year, the CBO score of that one at that time said that legislation would raise the deficit by $349 billion. And Republicans, including Phil Gingrey, had no problem voting yes. When Republicans passed the first Bush tax cuts in 2001, the CBO score of that one at that time said it would raise the deficit by $1.3 trillion — trillion with a “T.” And Republicans, including John Boehner, went along for that ride, too.

So, let‘s just make sure we‘re here on the same page, OK? Phil Gingrey and John Boehner say yes to adding $400 billion to the deficit for Bush‘s Medicare thing, yes to adding $350 billion to the deficit for Bush‘s first tax cuts for rich people, yes to adding $1.3 trillion to the deficit for Bush‘s other tax cuts. Those three votes projected to add $2 trillion to the deficit. Votes yes on all of those.

Lack of consistency? Hypocritical? Nah, it's just liberal spin and mumbo-jumbo from that leftist, pinko Rachel.

Never mind that she cites non-partisan CBO numbers through out. To reiterate, Republicans didn't seem to have a problem with adding $2 trillion to the deficit when voting in favor of Bush-era legislation. However, they are more than willing to get hysterical and cry foul about costs now that they're in the minority -- even though the health-care bill is projected to cut the deficit by $1.3 trillion. So we're talking a total swing of $3.3 trillion, not chump change by any means.

Let's see if the mainstream media can convey to the public this fairly straight-forward contrast in absurdity.

The CBO says the health-care bill will reduce the deficit by $130 billion in the first 10 years, and cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion (with a "T") in the second decade.

In other words, Obama's health-care reform effort will eventually pay for Bush/Cheney's (illegal) war.

Michael Tomasky writes:

And remember, as I've said several times now: take the poll numbers on reform with a grain of salt. Republican opposition is like 95-5, which skews overall polls. The important thing is how it plays among independents. They're opposed now, but hardly by overwhelming margins. By changeable margins, if they can be persuaded to see the benefits.

It's my understanding that health care reform in the state of Massachusetts was at first not all that popular, but has since become very popular.

This is the GOP's and insurance companies biggest fear that they're not telling us: that this reform will eventually work, that it will eventually effect beneficial change for many, and that it will eventually become very popular. And when that happens, the Republicans will starkly, nakedly be seen on the wrong side of the issue, and if the Dems properly manage it (always a big "if"), it will spell doomsday for the GOP come November.

It's this very probable scenario that drives the GOP and insurance companies to try as hard as they can to block reform. Their livelihoods and positions of power depend on its failure -- and they're certainly not going to make the real reason for their stiff opposition widely known or plainly evident.