Democrats Cave, Win GOP Support of Health Care Plan

Democrats have gutted their health care plan of its key components in a bid to placate Republicans and win bipartisan support. Some of the progressive ideas removed from the plan include: Euthanizing your grandmother, nationalizing hospitals, government-subsidized abortion on demand, unlimited free health care for illegal immigrants, and government control of your bank accounts.

With these concessions having been made, I trust that we can now move forward on health care reform with a broad, bipartisan consensus. Blue Dogs and Republicans, you can now rest easy knowing that the concerns of the town hall protesters have been met. While the progressive dream of a nation in which old people are slaughtered to pay for the abortions of ACORN-employed illegal immigrants will again have to be deferred, we are willing to settle for a bill without these measures in the name of bipartisanship.

[credit: Stroszek at The Daily Kos]

This Explains Everything

HT: HumboldtBlue

If We Fail to Cower in Terror, the Terrorists Win

Or so Victor Davis Hanson says:

In short, six years of quiet at home since 9/11 have fooled some into thinking that terrorists pose little danger here — or that we may be doing far too much rather than too little to stop such killers. No matter that this past week a jihadist plot to destroy U.S. facilities in Germany was thwarted.

Others make the mistake of endlessly refighting the past six years — who let al Qaeda grow?; who “lost” Osama bin Laden?; who fouled up postwar Iraq? — instead of concentrating on the storm ahead.

Hanson is shocked that people are actually questioning the methods of the Global War on Eastasia Oceania Terror; clearly, if they understood the direness of the situation, they would complacently accept any and all actions taken by the administration using terrorism as a pretext. Because, being insufficiently complacent about Bush means you're way too complacent about people who want to take a blowtorch to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Or something.

Before 2001, the excuse for American complacence and in-fighting was naivete. But what will be the reason for the next successful strike against us by the jihadists?

Administration incompetence? Just a thought.

I know we'll probably never get to a point at which we can talk rationally about the statistically tiny threat posed by loosely-organized fractious groups composed largely of self-aggrandizing incompetent wannabes. In the alternative, though, maybe we could get hysterical about things that are really killing Americans.

Maybe we could ascribe the 30,000 or so workplace deaths since 9/11 to "employer terrorism". Or the 180,000 handgun fatalities to "NRA terrorism". Maybe we could call the 24,000 pedestrians slaughtered since 9/11 victims of "vehicular terrorism".

Nahhh...we'd probably just end up declaring war on bicyclists.

How I Learned to Start Worrying...

With the Prezdint invoking images of nuclear holocaust and B-52s with nuclear warheads flying overhead, this might be the week to dig up Dr. Strangelove (full title: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) and watch it, especially if you've never seen it, and maybe even if you have.

The dark humor of this film was at least partly derived from the possibility that the plot's bizarre scenario could actually play out in reality. For anyone who hasn't seen it, a B-52 with a nuclear warhead is sent on its mission, when the zany (but plausible) sequence of events brings the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to the brink, and can't be called back. The context back then was that Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D., doncha love it?) was the policy of the time. Except for the fictitious "Doomsday Machine", everything referenced in the film, from the B-52s to the "red phone" and the drunken, bellicose Soviet Premier, was part of our Cold War reality.

I was not just a Cold War kid by virtue of age; we lived in Dayton, Ohio, when nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was a major operations and R&D center for the Strategic Air Command. It seemed like there were always military aircraft overhead, and the occasional sonic boom, far from being an annoyance, was an exciting reminder that we were only fifteen years into the supersonic age. Although the evidence suggests that some of those planes overhead had nuclear weapons aboard, if anything, it was supposed to make us feel safer; the normalization of insane concepts like MAD was a primary feature of Cold War living, just like the acceptance today that the risk of a terrorist attack far outweighs any other concern.

From the AP:

According to the officials, the weapons are designed with multiple safety features that ensure the warheads don't accidentally detonate. Arming the weapons requires a number of stringent protocols and authentication codes that must be followed for detonation.

From the cockpit of the rogue B-52, you see the frozen Arctic landscape screaming by at 500 mph, only 50 feet below (to avoid Soviet radar), as the crew goes through the checklist of decoding their orders, going through it again when they realize it's an order to drop The Big One on a Russian city.

Major T.J. "King" Kong, pilot/mission commander (played by Slim Pickens): "Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you got today's codes?"

From the AP:

"Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible," said [Ed] Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation.

From the film:

President Merkin Muffley: "General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you *assured* me there was *no* possibility of such a thing *ever* occurring!"

General "Buck" Turgidson: "Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

Meanwhile, back in the cockpit...

Slim Pickens as Major "King" Kong again: "Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies."

Of course, by the time the situation in Moscow and D.C. is defused, the equipment on which they would have received their callback order has been rendered inoperable by anti-aircraft missiles...

Nowadays there would be some interesting parallels between the characters in our own American tragicomedy of the last few years and the film's characters -- several of whom were played by Peter Sellers, including Dr. Strangelove (who will remind many of Donald Rumsfeld) and the president (who, because he is the voice of reason in the film, should not remind anyone of someone, if you know what I mean).

And to piggyback on Tom's post from earlier today, the plot pits the NARL's against the RL's in a way that should send chills of recognition up any thinking American's spine.

Rent Dr. Strangelove and see it before you wake up one of these mornings to find we're living it. The propaganda runup to war with Iran starts this week.

Ari Fleischer Flogging "Stay the Course"

I saw former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer on Hardball yesterday, fronting for the new $15,000,000 pro-war ad campaign sponsored by the White House, er, I mean some group called Freedom's Watch. The group is targeting Republicans (and a few Democrats) who are wavering in their support for Bush's never-ending war in Iraq, and it doesn't hesitate to twist the truth to whip them back in line.

Guest host Mike Barnicle started the interview by showing one of the ads, which features an amputee veteran who says he re-enlisted after 9/11 because "they attacked us, and they will again; they won't stop in Iraq", with the obligatory shot of the burning twin towers in the background -- just in case anyone missed the verbal attempt to blame Iraq for 9/11. He tells us we're making good progress on the ground and that this is no time for politics. Yeah, right. Because there's nothing political whatsoever about these ads.

Barnicle challenged Fleischer, asking him how many of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq (the answer is none, in case you didn't already know). Fleischer came back with some crap about how this isn't about the 2002 debate anymore but about dealing with terrorists in Iraq now. See, pointing out the ads' false connection between Iraq and 9/11 means Barnicle is stuck in the stale 2001-2002 debate over Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. I guess Ari's hoping we've forgotten how he assured us back in 2003 that the administration had "evidence and information" of Saddam's WMDs.

“There is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly.”

When Barnicle asked him about the decimation of our military and whether an ongoing war would necessitate a draft, Fleischer tried to equate the mess in Iraq with World War II. Barnicle countered by pointing out that Franklin Roosevelt had asked the country to sacrifice during WWII, while Bush had only asked us to shop. Ari said we all sacrifice each time a soldier dies, which is true in a metaphysical sense, but it certainly doesn't address the cut-taxes-for-the-wealthy, borrow-and-spend policies that are turning our country into a wholly-owned subsidiary of China.

Asked for a definition of "winning", Fleischer said we will have won when the military tells us it's time to come home. Does it have to be unanimous? Because the neocons will always be able to find one "commander on the ground" who will toe the party line.

Freedom's Watch certainly picked a great spinner, er, spokesman in Ari Fleischer. He's just the person I would trust to tell the truth about the situation in Iraq. (That's sarcasm, btw.)

****

Here's an interesting side note: The Freedom's Watch ads include a toll-free number and encourage constituents to contact their representatives in Congress. When blogger Taylor Marsh called, she discovered that there's a screening process in place and only those who support the Iraq war are actually connected. What a surprise.

Man Up, Grow A Pair And Stop Sniveling

The first two articles on this morning's reading list reinforced just how little of the American spirit is left in its citizens. From the war that must not be mentioned, to trying to justify basing a world view based on fear, is to continue down a well trodden path. One that the world has traveled before but the lessons have been forgotten.

The WaPo has an article about the conservative Democrat, Dan Boren (D-OK) and the patriotic silence that his district suffers from. Even though fifteen of his constituents lives have been lost in the debacle that is Iraq, nobody wants to speak out because they don't want to be unpatriotic. The Republicans noise machine certainly did its job well. When people who have suffered the most, understand the least and are willing to continue suffering emotionally and spiritually, that isn't patriotism. It's brainwashing. While a person doesn't have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater, one does have the right to point out that the nation has lost its way, the compass is broken, the flashlight's batteries are dying and the guide has other goals besides the survival of the troops.

Then from the Guardian comes a story where the author (Andrew Anthony) offers up the specious assumption that many on the liberal left side of the political equation, got to be that way because we felt that America was always the culprit on the world stage. Excuse me? I'm a liberal because I care about people, not things and I certainly don't wallow in angst and self-pity trying to reassess my perspective because I'm scared. Which is what he is doing. One moment in time, albeit the most tragic and revenge inducing, should not be responsible for turning a grown man into a whiny, hormonal (he uses mid-life crisis as an excuse), defensive, mewling ball of quivering baby bleats.

He assumes quite a bit in his hit piece, not the least of which is how fast someone can put together a reasoned argument under pressure. He must have spent a long time on this article because he uses lots of big words to make his arguments sound logical but all they do is reveal a man who waited until his forties to see the world as it really is, not just as a foil for him to have a good time. Once he saw that reality includes the terror that millions have lived with on a daily basis, he wants us to believe that he has grown up and that the other side has the right view and that everything he believed before that point was wrong and we should listen to him because now he has wisdom on his side. What a crock.

In Chinese medicine terms he lost a lot of Kidney qi due to fear on September 11 and no longer has enough water to rise up and cool the Heart which can lead to cloudy or irrational thinking. In regards to Hugo, OK, the grief (Lung) has smothered their voice, leaving them unable to speak up and fearful of authority. If we had had a different leader on 9/11, one who was capable of seeing the larger picture, this country could have continued forward into the future instead of retreating into the darkness of the past.

Terror is the world's problem, not just white people being killed by brown skinned people. Germany had the Baader-Meinhof, the US had Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph, Japan had the Aum Shinrikyo and now we all have a problem. One that needs to be addressed on an individual and global scale. Why can't governments all over the world coordinate their efforts and decide on a moment in time and use that moment to arrest suspected terrorists all over the world? Let the court system sort it out instead and at the very least the terrorist networks will have been disrupted and it might be possible for the Bauers, Bonds, Bournes and Plames of this world to infiltrate suspected groups. Law abiding citizens rights are being eliminated in a futile attempt to control terrorism, so it would have to a one-time only deal, leaders shouldn't have that much power on a daily basis, that leads to the bad examples (Stalin, Hitler, Pinochet) we've seen previously.

Instead what we have is the death and destruction of our military, forced to keep fighting the wrong target and ensuring that there will be an endless supply of people willing to die for what they believe in. And take others with them. At this point there are very few innocents left, because our silence has allowed the atrocities to continue.

Crossposted at Big Brass Blog and Debsweb.

Internet makes nice girls have sex

I picked up a newspaper to read over lunch, and I come across this on the front page:

Mom's sleuthing snares sex suspect

Investigators credit a cyber-savvy Ramsey mom with helping nab a 42-year-old Pennsylvania man who they said had sex with her 15-year-old daughter after they met on a social networking site.

The entire article is like a confluence of social anxieties, being equal parts sexism, slut-shaming, and fear of technology.

"It's a complete shock," said the woman..., "She hasn't dated much. She doesn't wear makeup. She's not one of these 'hot' kids, strutting all over the place.

"It shows how scary the Internet can be."

That's right. There are sluts who where makeup, and nice girls who don't date (much), but Teh Scary Internets can make nice girls have consensual sex.

As you read the article, outlining how the 15 year-old girl met the 42 year-old man for sex at a hotel twice, you come to understand that this girl was definitely making a choice. Now, the man is clearly a sick motherfucker, but the girl? Chose to have sex. Despite the fact that she doesn't wear makeup.

Her mother is clearly confused. Only painted strumpets have sex. Therefore, some other explanation for her daughter's abberation must be sought, and fortunately, it's right there on the desk: The computer. The computer made her do it! If it weren't for "social networking sites" her daughter would still be a virgin—because that's exactly the truth about unpainted girls in the pre-Internet days. They were all virgins. And still are.

Inside [the suspect's] truck [the police] found a laptop with broadband access and a global positioning device that Maloney used to guide him on the more than 100-mile trip from his Pennsylvania home, said Joseph Macellaro, acting chief of detectives for the Prosecutor's Office.

"This was a pretty determined individual," Macellaro said. "Obviously, this person is somebody who would be considered dangerous."

OHNOEZ! Only determined perverts have laptops! And GPS units!

Sgt. Andrew Donofrio, who heads the prosecutor's Computer Crimes Unit, said credit is due to such mothers – however nosy – who relentlessly investigate potential indecencies on their children's computers.

"She took a proactive step," Donofrio said.

The mother said it simply seemed the right thing to do.

"I guess all the warnings that you read about as a parent are true -- that you do have to monitor them non-stop," she said.

I'm tempted to just leave this part without comment. Because obviously, non-stop monitoring helped so much here. I mean, yes, it stopped this pervert. And one less free-roaming pervert, yay. But in what way is that parenting? The girl isn't even in the equation, is she? Non-stop spying monitoring isn't helping this girl make good choices, or even working towards understanding what choices she actually made.

The mother also took the computer away. So now I suppose the girl will have to wear makeup.

('hot' strutting cross-post)

More fear-mongering

Today Skeletor Michael Chertoff announced he has a "gut feeling" that we're going to be hit by terrorists this summer. There's no specific evidence, he just feels it.

It is obvious to me that this is just another "nexus" moment; a shiny scary object to distract us from the news of the day. Which today includes "testimony" by a former White House aide who will refuse to answer actual questions, at the President's orders, as well as the news of yesterday's testimony by former Surgeon General Richard Carmona about how the Surgeon General's office has been politicized and functionally destroyed.

These items, as well as the increasing bad news from Iraq and the dissent within Bush's own party about it, are the real "gut" indicators towards terror. Except that this is such old news, such a repeated cry of Wolf, that hardly anyone is even bothering to point it out.

(I have a gut feeling this is a cross-post.)