September - out of the gate at a slow trot

Thursday September 3, 2009 Afternoon edition

. . . .In the American Justice system, there is a vast difference between "innocent" and "not guilty".
- My friend Ralph

. . . .For those of you who are convinced that I only mine the archives of rock and roll, you're obviously not everyday listeners. Of course, when I'm working remote locations, the playlist doesn't change that much, but it's an absolute pain in the ass to upload and download about 30 megs worth of music on a daily basis when you're doing it by microwave and satellite. I'll change the order up in the playlist today, for those of you who haven't been listening all the way through, and you can catch some more of what's in there.

. . . .And for fuck's sake, it's Irish! It's not Celtic, it's not Scots, it's not Brit. Irish.

. . . .We could rule the world you know, it's just that. . .well. . . it's just that. . . shit, look at yourselves. We're Irish, why would we want to.

. . . .But back to music, oh ye of little faith or narrow minded listening tastes. By now, you should know that I listen to absolutely everything except the BeeGees, Disco or Alvin and The Chipmunks. Which means that I live in that perilous divide that programmers can't stand. An ideal playlist to me would include for example: Sevendust, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Van Morrison, Lostprophets, Metallica, John Mellencamp, Kid Rock, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis and Bruce and Willie Nelson duetting. If you only know Big Kenny from Big & Rich by their radio staple Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy then you're missing some pretty amazing music. Big & Rich are on hiatus, and Big Kenny is recovering from an operation and has laid tracks down for a new album. His new single Long Time Comin' is available at his website here, and is a gem, very different than where he took his writing for the last couple of years. You can, if you want, dismiss it as formulaic, but the passion and intensity in his voice as he covers the subject matter come through pretty clearly, and actually it's a damn good song. If you don't know of Big Kenny's very quiet, humble work in Darfur to ease the suffering there, if you don't know of his friendship with Kid Rock, the angel of Detroit, or if you don't know how he got his hat, who it came from, or the story of The 8th of November, I suggest you do so. In the meantime, click any of the underlined links in the paragraph above and enjoy his latest.

. . . .And while I'm strolling down this path, Cross Canadian Ragweed's latest effort, Happiness and All The Other Things came out on Monday. It kicks ass.

. . . .Yes, I will willingly admit to being precipitously excited that The Sons of Anarchy comes back next Tuesday on FX. I watch two hours of "entertainment" TV per week. In the summer, it's Rescue Me, (leaving Tommy Gavin laying on the floor, shot twice and bleeding out) and True Blood. In the fall, it's Sons. Network television is dead and needs to give it up. My question is simple, when is the "published" work of John Teller going to be available at Borders? Seriously, two points here just in case they flew by your head (1) The show is based in a Shakesperean mentality, Hamlet, for those of you too lame to have actually studied English Lit in high school, just in case you didn't get the imagery of the last scene of last season of Jax sitting in a graveyard staring at the tombstone of his dead father, with his mother and step-father in the background, or Opie as Horatio, or Tig and Seamus (the Irishman) as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. (2) I cannot believe the total narcissism and self-absorption of my own generation. If you're not a one-percenter, or an outlaw, no you don't get it, you haven't lived it, you don't know what it is, you're just an outsider looking in at what's a pretty accurate picture, but it's still one you don't know.

. . . .Plus, they deal their weapons with the IRA as wholesalers, how could I not love them?

. . . . .Today's lead-off, from Jonathan Ligon, via my friend LuLu, signs that will make you laugh. . .or cry. . . or both.

. . . .Yet more proud, patriotic members of the Conservative movement demonstrating their great patriotism, their ability to stay on topic and focused at town halls about health care reform, and filling their signs with witty sobriquets and demonstrating their facile, nimble command of the English language, learned with rapt attention at the best of schools.
There's about 30 more pictures here, if you'd like to put yourself through that torture.

. . . .And on the CNN Headline crawl this morning, the news that Tea Partiers want to draft Sarah Palin as the face and voice of their movement. WTF? Personally I think it's a wonderful fit. An attention starved media whore, an idiot savant, a moron with no knowledge whatsoever of how the world, her nation, or anything political or economic works, a woman whose entire persona is built on ignorance and a rejection of any type of knowledge or intellectualism, who sunk an entire Presidential ticket, all on her own joining up as the voice and face of an entirely disconnected from reality, unemployed, nothing better to do than blame some other person, one person, specifically for their complete inability to read a mortgage agreement and who really felt that the country owed them something for nothing, ("I deserve to pay nothing down and get a house beyond my income goddamit!") disaffected people who are completely disconnected from the political process and know only of legislation and the Constitution what Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh tell them. Man, talk about Cinderalla finding a slipper that fits!

. . . . . .As for the coverage of this type of insanity, we talked earlier this week about the total bull-goose loony that Glenn Beck is turning his hour into, ratcheting the crazy up to about 15 on a 10 scale. Well. . . .check this one out. Glenn is wandering the halls of NBC in New York finding subliminal communist messages in their artwork. Glenn needs meds, badly.

. . . .And while we're on media insanity, and NBC, could someone please explain to me just how and why Pat Buchanan is even allowed to rattle on while on MSNBC defending Hitler? Where he claimed that Hitler really didn't want war? And this is the second time he's done it! The first time, he claimed that the Holocaust was Churchill's fault, not Hitler's!

. . . .And he's from the side that claims that Obama is Hitler! So help me out here, is that a good thing now, or a bad thing?

. . . . . So, we tackled before the 6 to 1 health care lobbyist to Representative/Senator ratio that exists right now, and $1.6 billion in lobbying money that they've poured in, but the question is, where do those lobbyists come from? Well. . . according to LittleSis, they come mostly from the offices of the so-called "Gang of 6", the vaguely Maoist sounding Senators from the Finance Committee that will ultimately be the group who writes the final version of the Health Care Reform bill, after the previous 6 feints, 5 from the House and 1 from the Senate. In fact at the blog, you can find a pretty comprehensive list of them.

. . . .From Barbara V., down in N. Carolina, a regular contributor:

From Rosalie H.

Mark H, is my stepson that lives in Missoula, Mt. He has a Master Degree in Hospital Administration from

Tulane as does his wife Linda. Mark served about 5 + years in the Navy in Va. as well as Washington, D.C.

Mark owns his own company InterWest Health in Missoula, HMO's.

Rosalie,

I don’t know what to think about Obama’s health care plan. It is definitely a moving target, depending on what direction the political winds are blowing. Unlike some people, I am not opposed to the ideas of socialized medicine or a single payer system. We shouldn’t replicate the problems that other countries have had, but I think it is a travesty that people in our country are having to go without services or go into bankruptcy because they can’t afford the services they need. I don’t believe health care is a commodity. I believe it is a fundamental right of all people, regardless of income-- at least within certain bounds.

The cost of supporting the infrastructure needed to pay bills under our current system is huge… and wasteful. The whole financing mechanism in my mind needs to be scrapped and replaced with a uniform system that is easier to understand and less costly to administer.

What I am saying is heresy in my profession. I’m basically saying that to fix our current system, we have to dismantle the entire insurance industry in which I work. I could do like many of my peers and argue for the status quo. That would be better for me personally and financially, but in my mind, it is not the right answer. Making a few minor changes here and there to the existing system won’t solve the problem. The only thing that will is an overhaul of the entire financing system.

I believe that Obama shares much of the same vision and is trying to bring about positive change. The problem is politics. Our political system is so cumbersome that even the best of ideas get watered down to the point where they are no longer of any benefit or value. That is my fear about health care reform—not that it is going to destroy quality medicine in our country, but that by the time it is implemented, it will be so watered down it won’t have any impact.

I will be interesting to see what happens. Whatever does happen, it is sure to take years to implement. I suspect I will be long gone before any of it comes to pass.

I’m curious what you think?

Mark

. . . . .I like his point, whatever happens, it will take years. I go back to my cynical prediction from earlier this summer, that the entire thing is, was and has been already decided and that it was all a head feint. The real plan was, and will be what Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican presents. Both parties have pandered to their bases, and made all the noises that they were expected to, the President will come out Wednesday and be Presidential, Snowe will present the plan so that there is bi-partisanship, there will be no public option or single-payer, keeping the Right happy, a moderately priced, affordable coverage, done as a co-op and administered by United Healthcare will be presented and passed, and the insurers will get richer, big Pharma will get it's payoff from it's deal with the White House and there will be no limits on drug pricing, and the 535 money-hungry sluts in the Capitol building will survive to take another round of lobbying money and campaign contributions.

. . . . .I need to make a point here about John McCain, who is practically all by himself as an elected Republican official who is carrying himself with honor, dignity and respect. The guy I almost voted for until he put that Jerry Springer show cast-off Sarah Palin on his ticket. He's taking on Cheney, he's defending the office of the President, defended him as acting in a Constitutional manner during his town hall. Hell, he's going to get himself kicked out of the Republican party if he keeps it up. Right now, the pundits are making a big deal of his going it alone with his actions and his conscience. I still respect his service, his imprisonment, his holding up under torture, and his conduct in elected office. I think he's quite used to going it alone, and doesn't mind doing it. He's one of those people who knows that if he follows his own moral compass, especially in these days of a Rush Limbaugh-led Republican party, if he sticks to what that party was founded on, he'll spend a lot of time going it alone. He doesn't mind.


. . . .Krugman today in the New York Times:

Last year, everything came apart.

Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that economies may stray now and then but that any major deviations from the path of prosperity could and would be corrected by the all-powerful Fed. Neither side was prepared to cope with an economy that went off the rails despite the Fed’s best efforts.

And in the wake of the crisis, the fault lines in the economics profession have yawned wider than ever. Lucas says the Obama administration’s stimulus plans are “schlock economics,” and his Chicago colleague John Cochrane says they’re based on discredited “fairy tales.” In response, Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley, writes of the “intellectual collapse” of the Chicago School, and I myself have written that comments from Chicago economists are the product of a Dark Age of macroeconomics in which hard-won knowledge has been forgotten.

What happened to the economics profession? And where does it go from here?

As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.

. . . . Entire article here.

. . . .I still believe that the President's agenda is ambitious, and as opposed to a lot of cynics, it was forced on him. The economy, yes, first and foremost. Health Care Reform, because it was the campaign promise that got him to the White House. Iraq, forced on him. Afghanistan is where it will all fall apart. Bush43 let the Taliban and bin Laden roam free in Afghanistan, and grow stronger, unpunished for 9/11. Afghanistan is what bankrupted the Soviet Union, not Reagan, and Afghanistan and it's tribesman defeated the most powerful, feared military force in the world, the Soviet Army. Afghanistan will not be Obama's Vietnam. It will be his Afghanistan.

. . . . . My cynicism is reinforced daily. Now we know the price of a human life. 259 people died on Pan-Am Flight 103. With the revelation that Great Britain was pressured by Libya, and caved over oil supplies from Libya and had Scotland release Abdel Baset al-Magrahi, the Lockerbie bomber back to Libya. Oil closed at $67 a barrel today on the spot New York market. Great Britain consumes 1.82 million barrels per day of oil. A human life is worth, doing the math, $470,810 dollars.

. . . .I hope that the Senators, Representatives, health insurers and the White House have all done that math. A human life has a price. It's a barrel of oil.

. . . . .So, outta here for today

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive and we don't get to dictate the terms and circumstances of how our ticket gets punched. So it's not about tomorrow, or yesterday. It's about right here, right now. This ain't no dress rehearsal, the curtain's gone up, and it's real and right now. Change yourself, change your world and it changes the world around you. This is me, changing my world, what the blue hell have you done for yourself lately?

The Desolation Angel
Somewhere halfway to Heaven and just a mile out out of Hell