. . . .And your point is??

Tuesday September 29, 2009

. . . . .Good morning, and here in the Upper Midwest, it's become fall in 24 hours. For us, that means slate gray skies, a cold, wet wind and needing the flannel sheets again. (I can't wait to get back to work in the Gulf of Mexico)

. . . . .The playlist is a complete change-up. New releases from artists, a lot of whom, you all don't listen to, but should. New stuff from John Fogerty w/Bruce; Kris Kristofferson with a tribute to his friend Johnny Cash, Robert Earl Keen, Cross Canadian Ragweed, The Band of Heathens & Big Kenny. Enjoy, and remember you heard them here first. (And no, you can't have them). If you're reading this on the Facebook notes page, you can go to the external site, The Desolation Angel, and get the podcast with the playlist, the music and embedded videos there.

. . . .I really had to toss around which of the first two I wanted to cover this morning. But, with the Senate Finance Committee vote coming up today on the first marked-up version of the piece of feral pig shit that Max Baucus and the Gang of 6 put together for a Health Care Reform bill, this first one is more important.

. . . .I'm slowly becoming a Dylan Ratigan fan. I listen to him, and read him and realize that he's probably a lot like me, a reformed conservative. Trust me, there's nothing more dangerous to the extreme Right and "values" crowd than us. They destroyed the Republican Party and sucked the last brain cells out of the conservative movement. We know their narrative, their shenanigans and most importantly, and now speaking for myself, not only does it make a little bit of vomit come up in my mouth, I very sincerely see them as a threat to the long-term welfare of this Republic. From his op-ed piece this morning, Dylan Ratigan:

Why is health insurance the only business that has an exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act other than Major League Baseball? If the delivery of taxpayer trillions by our politicians to the banks to support their fraudulently paid bonuses hasn't shown you what our current government's values are, check this link out.

Through the governmental negligence that we as voters allowed, a health care system was created in which a single health care company controls at least 30 percent of the insurance market in 95% of the country, including states like the following:

Maine, where Wellpoint controls 71% of the market.

North Dakota, where Blue Cross controls 90% of the market.

Arkansas, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75% of the market.

Alabama, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83% of the market.

This monopoly, combined with the misaligned incentives that trap people in employer-based health care, is causing the skyrocketing health care costs that are hurtling our nation towards bankruptcy.

I don't know what's worse: that most Republicans seem to be against ending this unfair legal protection for an entrenched industry that is ruining our country with their non-competitive practices, or that most Democrats seem to be threatening this arrangement only as a bargaining chip to push for a meaningless public option that wouldn't be accessible to almost 85% of the population?

Instead of improving our country, through creating and enforcing free and fair markets, our politicians are currently engaging in backroom deals, most of which protect the very companies who profit the most from these disastrous outdated systems -- industries like health insurance and big Pharma.

While we clearly have the ability as a group of 305 million to update the system that is American Health Care and move our country into the 21st century in the process, it's becoming clear that we may not have the leaders to do it.

Instead of seeking answers to the problem of paying for and providing medicine, we are doing the exact opposite. Taxpayers' money is being played with by politicians who are desperately trying to protect the competition-stifling, false security of the monopolistic employer-based health care system and its outdated, over-charging, under-delivering ways. Given the least consideration are those affected the most -- the patients and the doctors who care for them.

This country's founders built an ingenious system of checks and balances for a reason: to ensure that no special interest or group could use government power to commandeer the creative and economic wealth of our nation to their own ends. How much longer must we live in a country where the citizens are subservient to the banks, health insurance companies and any other special interest able to control our government at the expense of our the most basic principles of fairness, our future as a nation and, as a result, our freedom?

. . . .Trust me, should the Democrats pass a bill that has mandated coverage with no public option to provide competition to the health insurance cartels, the Dems will be as done as the Republicans are. It's time for two new parties in this country anyhow, if not at least 4 major parties to accurately represent the philosophical splits in this county's electorate.

. . . .The other one that I felt was important may be a self-justifying, but who cares? It's my blog.
Chez Pazienza, who blogs as Deus exMalcontent, points this one out from Matt Taibbi, who along with Tim Dickinson, is doing some of the most fearless investigative journalism out there.

From Matt Taibbi, probably the single greatest quote about being a journalist I've ever read:

"Let me just say that I’m always suspicious when I see articles about the motivations of journalists. I think they often reflect a misunderstanding of what journalism is all about. Journalists are supposed to be assholes. The system does not work, in fact, if society’s journalists are all nice, kind, friendly, rational people.

You want a good percentage of them to be inconsolably crazy. You want them to be jealous of everything and everyone and to have heaps of personal hangups and flaws. That way they will always be motivated to punch holes in things.

Obviously it would be bad if all journalists were like this, and there is certainly a place for the more gentlemanly school, i.e. those writers and TV reporters who maintain good relationships with politicians and institutions, and work with them to deliver important information to the public.

But the iconoclastic school of journalist should be a difficult person. You know how when you go on the subway, there’s always one asshole on the train who just has to whip a pen out and draw a mustache on the face of the cute blond stewardess in the Jet Blue ad? That’s the kind of person we’re talking about. A pain in the ass on the subway, and in most places (and personal relationships, for that matter), but very useful in this particular profession."

A-fucking-men.

. . . .Now, Taibbi, in his entire piece, goes on to point out the thin, disappearing line between investigative journalism and bloggers, and how they are some of the most important people in politics right now and are more journalistically honest than the cable news channels. Taibbi, from his blog over at True/Slant:

I don’t know. It seems to me that maybe it’s time we all stopped drawing a big distinction between bloggers and mainstream journalists, because, let’s be honest, that distinction doesn’t really count for shit anymore.

The key distinction used to be that mainstream reporters vetted and fact-checked their material before they put it out in public. But the only media outlets that dependably do that anymore, at least in my experience, are feature magazines like Hagan’s.

Daily newspapers are crap for fact-checking now, even the New York Times (hello, Jayson Blair). TV stations, especially the cable news channels, are often even worse than bloggers, because there we’re often dealing with some chattering numbskull like Maria Bartiromo who is literally ad-libbing her “reporting” live and on-air. Bloggers at least have a neurological weigh station or two between their brains and their hands.

. . . .Straight back to health care then, and Michael Moore this morning (gotta love those Michigan boys. Love him or hate him, he isn't afraid to say "it", whatever "it" is. I think it's a Michigan thing, between weather and the economy (and our state road system), we've seen the worst that things can be, and just aren't afraid anymore.) Moore on what's wrong with every health care reform bill on the House and Senate floors right now:

Now we know why they've stopped calling this health care reform, and started calling it insurance reform. The current bills advancing in Congress look more like rearranging the deck chairs on the insurance Titanic than actually ending our long health care nightmare.

Some laudable elements are in various versions of the bills, especially expanding Medicaid, cutting the private insurance-padding waste of Medicare Advantage, and limiting the ability of the insurance giants to ban and dump people who have been or who ever will be sick.

But, overall, the leading bills and the President's proposal are, like the dog that didn't bark, more notable for what is missing.

Here are 13 problems with the current health care bills (partial list):

1. No cost controls on insurance companies. The coming sharp increases in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, etc. will quickly outpace any projected protections from caps on out-of-pocket costs.

2. Insurance companies will continue to be able to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.

3. No restrictions on insurance denials of care that insurers don't want to pay for. In case you missed it, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee uncovered data on the California Department of Managed Care website recently that found six of the biggest California insurers rejected, on annual average, more than one-fifth of all claims every year since 2002.

4. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas, where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.

5. A massive government bailout for the insurance industry through the combination of the individual mandate requiring everyone not covered to buy insurance, public subsidies which go for buying insurance, no regulation on what insurers can charge, and no restrictions on their ability to decide what claims to pay.. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . We may be slow learners, but the rest of the industrial world has figured it out: Universal, single-payer or national health care systems. That's the reason why all those other countries cover everyone, have better patient outcomes, cause no one to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes because of medical bills, and spend less than half per capita on health care than we do.

. . . .Catch the entire piece here.

. . . .I'm trying to figure this one out. Now, there was a school bus fight. A fight not unlike a hundred others that occur in this country every day, and happened, gasp, back in the 70's when I was in school. Because the assailants were black, the victim white, this was a "racially motivated crime", and yes, the Skinheads/American Nazi Party/Klan/White Power bunch (wait, how the can the American Nazi Party be in that group? I thought they were all black Democrats now?) holds a rally in Illinois, each step of this given vast overblown, overplayed coverage by Fox News. But, when an honor student is beaten to death, in broad daylight, with 2 x 4's there is no Fox News coverage at all? Perhaps because it was a black on black crime, and thus, not worthy of the same coverage?

. . . .You know what? That was too damn glib and snide, and I left it there on purpose, I am fully capable of screwing up large. What occurred to that young man was a complete and utter tragedy and an unforgivable crime. I cannot even imagine the savage mindset that the 4 perpetrators of this had, and how they could do it. It's incomprehensible, and I just don't get it. My sympathies and thoughts are with that family.

. . . .My friend Matthew is right. Forget everything else. Forget climate change, forget the financial meltdown and banking crisis, forget health care reform. Forget all of it. This, what occurred here, this is what's symptomatic of what's wrong in this country right now, and everything else will be for naught, and will have been for nothing, if we don't figure out how to start valuing one another's lives again.

. . . And this is what the news needs to be covering, the hanging of Mr. Sparkman in Kentucky, this young man's death, this is the real toll that families are paying every day in this country because we've all managed somehow to be completely OK with a total breakdown in civility and somehow or another, we all seem to think it's OK that we slide closer everyday to being some third world country that no longer knows how to have political discourse and disagreement and to respect one another's right to have a differing opinion and a life.

. . . .And here's my problem and what that's leading to next. The team of Fox and Friends (Doocey and the little brown haired one on the other side of the couch who makes a little bit of vomit come up in your mouth, Kilmeade, that's his name) have obviously decided along with that little troll, Michelle Malkin, that endangering kids and inciting their base of viewers to commit acts of violence is right up their alley. I'm not going to belabor their story of the kids and the song. If you've read me the past few days, this is not unusual for a President. What I have a problem with is Michelle doing some truly sub-human slithering to make sure that each kid's name and face was broadcast and the name and address of their school give out, so that the school's principal could now start receiving phoned-in death threats. I have a real, big problem with that.
And, just so everyone on the Right knows, get your phones ready and call Michelle NOW! It's happened again! Cesca:

I wrote about this the other day, but here it is. A group of kids singing directly to President Nixon. At the White House.

We love you president
Oh yes we do
We love you president
And we'll be true

When you're not with us
We're blue
Our president, we love you

Earlier this year when the wingnuts were crapping their cages over the president's (very common) use of a teleprompter, I joked that they would eventually be attacking him for living in that extravagant mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue. You know, the one with the oval-shaped rooms -- oval, which is the shape of an "O" as in the word "OLIGARHY." Get it? Get it?!

That hasn't happened yet, but we're getting closer.

. . . . . . .What's happened over on the Right is that there is no longer any constructive conversation around policy. They proudly are anti-knowledge, anti-constructive and have become an absolute hate machine of destruction. Like a defiant, spoiled teenager, they would much rather destroy what's around them than accept that in a dynamic universe, change occurs. Rove's creation of the Religious Right as a base, Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy, has now become a Mary Shelley creation, a Frankenstein's Monster that will destroy all in it's path over it's anger at being born and awakened. Andrew Sullivan:

Politico surveys the GOP base and finds Palin-mania still strong. I think she perfectly represents a form of protest cultural politics that has no interest in actually governing. And what's fascinating about the various quotes from local GOP machers is that none of them refers in any way to policy. She is not supported because of what she allegedly believes, or what she says she'll do. She is supported because she shares an identity, real or imagined, with white, angry alienated conservatives. She is identity politics personified. And so the loony right's transformation into a mirror image of the loony left of the 1980s accelerates.

. . . .How far does Republican hypocrisy extend? This far, the last 3 Republican Presidents are the ones who raised taxes, tripled deficits, and put budgets in place that 7 generations could not conceivably pay for, yet their base still clings to their "conservative" mantra, without the barest of Webster's Dictionary definitions of understanding of the word "conserve": Conor Friedersdorf in the Daily Beast today on that hypocrisy:

Due to a general's plea for reinforcements, President Barack Obama is under increasing pressure to send tens of thousands more troops to aid American counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan—a potential turning point in that conflict that some are likening to the surge in Iraq.

Escalating a single war can be costly. And were foreign-policy hawks given their way, President Obama would also extend the American campaign in Iraq, construct a missile-defense shield that safeguards Poland and the Czech Republic, persist in aggressive military efforts to eradicate illegal narcotics abroad, purchase a new generation of costly fighter jets, expand the NATO security guarantee to more countries, continue multibillion dollar contracts to mercenary defense contractors, maintain the nuclear arsenal at present levels, and launch air strikes to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon.

These are all demands that movement conservatives have made since President Obama took office less than a year ago—and whatever one thinks about them individually, it is evident that they are collectively unaffordable, and at odds with the strongest anti-Obama critique being offered by the right wing. It is folly, conservatives rightly note, for an insolvent, debt-ridden nation to pursue costly new government initiatives, especially when the American people already feel overtaxed. The national debt will reach $7.6 trillion this year. That's roughly $25,000 for every man, woman and child in the country!

Now that the spendthrift GOP Congress most recently responsible for that tab is out of power, along with the Republican president who enabled it, even the right's most partisan opportunists can join the correct right-of-center consensus that this level of spending is unsustainable. Hence the sensible conservative calls for painful program cuts, intense scrutiny of government waste, and a careful cost-benefit review of almost all federal spending.

Alas, there is an exception: The right hasn't any interest in applying those measures to military spending. Conservatives are right to rank national defense as government's preeminent responsibility. That we maintain the most powerful military in the world, by a sizable margin, is an appropriate use of whatever wealth we produce; only an ahistorical fool would undervalue the peace dividend American hegemony has afforded.

But that isn't any reason to abandon conservative insights about government spending on every matter funneled through the Pentagon.

. . . .Entire piece here.

. . . .How insane are the Repubs right now? This crazy - Republican Representative Trent Franks of Arizona at the wingnut conference over the weekend on "How To Take America Back" -

"Obama. .is an enemy of humanity"

. . . .And that's how bad it really is.

. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.


. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.


. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .