Enough Turkey Talk - Time To Get Serious Again

I read this today at Salon.com. I was so impressed with it that I had to pass it along. Rather than paraphrase, I present it as written. No links. No graphics...just a damned good article.

Friday, Nov 27, 2009 18:01 PST
How dare you criticize wasteful defense spending!

So you think it's only terrorist-appeasing lefties who are down on Pentagon profligacy? Think again
By David Sirota
Salon

Pop quiz -- name the political leader who said the following:

"We must be willing to pull the plug before sinking more dollars into weapons that do not provide what our warriors need."

Now name the leader who said this:

"(W)e cannot track $2.3 trillion in (Pentagon spending) ... We maintain 20 to 25 percent more base infrastructure than we need to support our forces, at an annual waste to taxpayers of some $3 billion to $4 billion ... There are those who will oppose every effort to save taxpayers' money ... Well, fine, if there's to be a struggle, so be it."

I'm willing to bet many self-described "conservatives" guessed Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich. I would make that wager based on the enraged response to my recent column about government data showing that our waste-ridden, $600-billion-a-year defense budget will cost about seven times more than the healthcare legislation currently before Congress.

In e-mails, letters and Web site comments, right-wingers didn't vent anger at Pentagon profligacy, but at the criticism of Pentagon profligacy -- as if brazenly throwing away billions on outdated weapons systems and obsolete military programs is now a "conservative" value. Notably, the vitriol didn't include contrary numbers disproving the figures I referenced (none exists) -- the responses just used Fox News-ish slogans like "the cost of freedom" to deride all criticism of Pentagon spending as unpatriotic ultraliberalism.

Of course, if that's true, then Stephen Colbert's refrain that "reality has a well-known liberal bias" is now less a laugh line than a devastatingly accurate commentary on the deranged terms of America's political discourse. I say that because here are some objective, nonpartisan, non-ideological facts:

* The 2010 Pentagon budget means "every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on (defense) programs and agencies next year," reports the Cato Institute. "By way of comparison, the average Japanese spends less than $330; the average German about $520; China's per capita spending is less than $100."

* "(The Pentagon budget) dwarfs the combined defense budgets of U.S. allies and potential U.S. enemies alike," reports Hearst Newspapers.

* "President (Obama) is on track to spend more on defense, in real dollars, than any other president has in one term of office since World War II," reports National Journal's Government Executive magazine.

* In 2000, the Pentagon admitted it has lost -- yes, lost -- $2.3 trillion. In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a subsequent Department of Defense study said it was only $1 trillion. To put such numbers in perspective, contemplate what those sums could finance. $1 trillion, for instance, could pay the total cost of universal healthcare for the long haul. $2.3 trillion would cover universal healthcare plus the bank bailout plus the stimulus package.

Obviously -- obviously! -- these points are no cause for alarm and certainly no cause for defense spending reductions, right? All they must prove is that the archconservative Cato Institute, William Randolph Hearst's newspaper chain, National Journal employees and Pentagon officials are secretly America-hating liberals. And -- obviously! -- so are two of the most aggressive neoconservative hawks ever to hold government office, Sen. John McCain and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. After all, they’re the ones who issued those scathing statements about wasteful defense spending in the pop quiz above. That means they’re actually terrorist-appeasing lefties, right?

Really, how could anyone other than traitorous communists see the data and then consider backing the mildest Pentagon spending cuts? I mean, come on -- in a country whose paranoid conservative movement now makes a dead-serious ideology out of Stephen Colbert wisecracks, how dare any red-blooded American even think of pondering basic budgetary facts?

© 2009 Creators.com

A British Opinion

I stumble on this over at WTF is it now???. It's a article by columnist Johann Hari of the London Independent, entitled, Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason.

It is such a disturbing article, I wanted to make sure no one who visits this blog regularly, miss it. Of course we all know these things here in the U.S., but to see it articulated by a foreign columnist, is jarring.

The article is not just about Sarah Palin, but about the GOP in general.

An excerpt:

A few months ago, a recent board member for several private health corporations called Betsy McCaughey reportedly noticed a clause in the proposed healthcare legislation that would pay for old people to see a doctor and write a living will. They could stipulate when (if at all) they would like care to be withdrawn. It's totally voluntary. Many people want it: I know I wouldn't want to be kept alive for a few extra months if I was only going to be in agony and unable to speak. But McCaughey started the rumour that this was a form of euthanasia, where old people would be forced to agree to death. This was then stretched to include the disabled, like Palin's youngest child, who she claimed would have to "justify" his existence. It was flatly untrue – but the right had their talking-point, Palin declared the non-existent proposals "downright evil", and they were off.

It's been amazingly successful. Now, every conversation about healthcare has to begin with a Democrat explaining at great length that, no, they are not in favour of killing the elderly – while Republicans get away with defending a status quo that kills 18,000 people a year. The hypocrisy was startling: when Sarah Palin was Governor of Alaska, she encouraged citizens there to take out living wills. Almost all the Republicans leading the charge against "death panels" have voted for living wills in the past. But the lie has done its work: a confetti of distractions has been thrown up, and support is leaking away from the plan that would save lives.

New Health Proposal

NOTICE-THIS IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TONGUE-IN-CHEEK BLOG.

FLASH! This just in, the Republican side of the aisle has proposed a compromise health care plan, in the interest of the American People.

It is not government run, nor is it a co-op plan. The details are sketchy at this point. Informed sources maintain that it is available to each man, woman and child, and well within everyone's budget. The source further stated that it is a plan to die for.

Shown below is the spokes person who presented this new idea, earlier today.

Thus far, there has been no comment from the White House.

Huh?

NOTICE-THIS IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TONGUE-IN-CHEEK (the ones in your cabeza) BLOG.

I am thinking that
God (if there is one) and the Prez are operating in mysterious ways. I am confussed. And I am convinced that they are purposely trying to confuss me. Check this out from Crooks and Liars. Oh, and HANG IN THERE AND LISTEN TO HOWARD DEAN, at about 1 min 30 or so.


Don't Panic. Howard Dean Says Bill Will Pass - With The Public Option
By Susie Madrak Monday Aug 17, 2009 5:00pm



Howard Dean on Morning Joe this morning:

"The president knows very well that you aren't really going to have health care reform without a public option. But he also knows he has to get this out of the Senate," Dean said on "Morning Joe." "He's got a very important member of the Finance Committee, Kent Conrad, who doesn't want to vote for this bill if it's got a public option in it. And he knows he's not going to get any Republican votes, of any kind. So at the end of this day, this bill is going to be written by Democrats. It's got to get out of the Senate. And you only need a few Democrats to take out the public option."

He added that with Republicans unlikely to support any version of health care legislation, he had no doubt that the final reform bill would be passed with the help of reconciliation, which means Democrats need only to muster 50 votes in the Senate rather than the usual 60.

Dean told RCP earlier this year that a health care reform bill without a strong public option was pointless. "If it doesn't, all we have is the same old stuff, and I don't think it's worth spending $634 billion on what we've already got," he said.

OK, OK, OK, if that is true, and I sure as hell hope so...isn't that giving the strategy away, by stating it publicly?

A LIttle Ditty for Some Shitty...People

Today the walking man, posted an eloquent and stirring piece regards the proposed health care plan before congress, in favor of the single payer version.

His post will stir your emotions if you are a proponent. If you are agin it...suck an egg....and get sick...and go to the hospital...and pay exorbitant amounts of money to get the egg stink poison out of your system...and drop dead to boot...with no coffin money...or food for your children...because you had a pre-condition which pre-cluded any post-payment despite the fact that you pay 37,000 dollars a year for minimum health coverage...if...if...if, you go to their doctor...and, your widow will have to become a ho...working out of your 12 year old sedan...because the bank foreclosed on your house, due to the fact that your widow had to use the mortgage money to buy food...do fucking dah. Welcome to the third world America.

Sorry...back to my rational post.

The issue is running into stiff opposition, not just from the Republican side, but from a few Democrats as well. And in this past week it has taken a violent turn, at some of the "town hall" meetings across the country. The new tactics, remind me of the Nixon years...and the Nixon "dirty tricks" goons who went out to Democratic rallies and purposely disrupted them. And the tactics also put me in mind of the Brown Shirts of the German National Socialist Party of the early thirties.

Unfortunately, I am an artist, not a writer, and there are far more competent voices out there saying it for me...the way I'd like to say it. However, just so that I feel I have contributed in some way, I have a video of Millie Jackson singing a song dedicated to the Republican Party, wayward Democrats, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity...and my favorite traitor to free people everywhere...Rush Limpcojones. Here's to you boys and girls who drink the kool aid of insurance execs everywhere:

ADDENDUM - A great suggestion in the comments here...by The Walking Man. CONTACT YOUR SENATOR...http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm