Damned Liberal

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It's a shame that our Congress is for sale to the highest bidder (the banks) and refuses to pass meaningful consumer protection against the credit card pirates.

If you'd like to get really pissed off, watch this video from Frontline.

Upcoming on PBS Frontline, Tuesday Feb. 9, 9 pm Eastern:
Flying Cheap

It's understandable the Republicans are doing everything they can to oppose Obama:

• They got their asses kicked at the ballot box
• They have nothing to offer, so they have to tear down
• They, too, believe in Number One only

What is not understandable or excusable is their willingness to lie to, and deceive, the public about a very serious matter: Public safety.

A certain know-nothing from Alaska who, for some reason, gets widespread press coverage was quoted today as criticizing Obama over the handling of the Detroit underwear bomber.

Other Republicans have been making the same sort of noise.
In doing so, they are either ignorant or lying (IOW: politicians).

Some in the media (generally not Corporate Media) are calling the Republicants out about their lies:

Terrorism Derangement Sydrome (Dahlia Lithwick at Slate):

Policies and practices that were perfectly acceptable just after 9/11, or when deployed by the Bush administration, are now decried as dangerous and reckless. The same prominent Republicans who once celebrated open civilian trials for Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," now claim that open civilian trials endanger Americans (some Republicans have now even gone so far as to try to defund such trials). Republicans who once supported closing Guantanamo are now fighting to keep it open. And one GOP senator, who like all members of Congress must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, has voiced his concern that the Christmas bomber really needed to be "properly interrogated" instead of being allowed to ask for a lawyer.

Underwear Bomber Got Worst Treatment Law Allows (Ann Wolner, The Economist):

And for anyone who considers it weak-kneed to prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a common criminal rather than declare him an enemy combatant and haul him to a military tribunal, here are two more words: Bush, Cheney.

The previous administration always prosecuted suspected terrorists captured on U.S. soil in federal district court. Some 300 people have been tried there on terrorism-related charges, convicted and sentenced to spend a chunk of their lives in U.S. prisons.

Bombing Suspect Criticism Comes ‘After the Fact,’ Brennan Says (Alan Bjerga, The Economist):

John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said he told Republican congressional leaders on Christmas night about the interrogation of terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and called subsequent criticism “a bit of an outcry after the fact.”

Brennan said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader John Boehner were among senior members of Congress he briefed after Abdulmutallab was arrested on suspicion of trying to detonate explosives as Northwest Airlines Flight 253 approached Detroit carrying 279 passengers and 11 crew members.

“None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point,” Brennan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.

Only in America:

Kermit (not the frog), Texas:

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An experienced nurse was concerned about the obviously egregious actions of a hospital's doctor.

She and another nurse sent an unsigned letter to the Texas Medical Board.

They ended up being indicted by a Texas grand jury (says a lot about Texans, doesn't it?), and now one of the nurses is facing a felony criminal trial. They've both lost their jobs and probably will never find the same sort of job again. They find themselves stared at when they're out in public.

The County Attorney claims the complaint was made in “bad faith” to carry out a personal vendetta against the doctor. WTF?

The doctor:

• Performed a failed skin graft in an emergency room even though he didn't have surgical privileges.
• sutured a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger
• was sending e-mail messages to patients about an herbal supplement he sold on the side
• had been reprimanded on several occasions for improprieties in writing prescriptions and performing surgery
• had a restriction on his license stemming from his supervision of a weight-loss clinic

WTF????

The guy sounds like a quack!
"Personal vendetta"???

HERE's "personal vendetta":

When the medical board notified Dr. Arafiles of the anonymous complaint, he protested to his friend, the Winkler County sheriff, that he was being harassed. The sheriff, an admiring patient who credits the doctor with saving him after a heart attack, obtained a search warrant to seize the two nurses’ work computers and found the letter.

This serves to reinforce my opinion of Texas as one of the world's craziest places.

Stories:
N.Y. Times
ModernHealthCare.com

P.s. And Republicans keep screaming about malpractice lawsuits against doctors.
They should make all Republicans move to Texas.

I remember those days in high school, when every guy wanted to be a sports jock--a letterman. Because, as we all know, the sports lettermen got the girls. Sports was a means to an end...another sort of "winning". Alas, my attempts at basketball, track and (finally) swimming proved to me that I simply didn't have the stuff to become a letterman. That happens to most high school guys.

However, a victorious high school football or basketball team DID do wonders for school spirit, and bragging rights. Those thousands of kids in the stands participated in a vicarious thrill as "we" beat "them" and if we won, the after-game dance was even more vibrant.

I get a bit confused when it comes to college sports (especially football), where colleges pump zillions of dollars into their sports programs, where successful coaches make tens of millions per year, and where the kids doing it all get paid nothing...well, maybe a scholarship. Why does everybody but the players make money on the deal?

Then there's pro sports, where cities spend hundreds of millions in tax dollars to build new stadiums where the pro teams keep the money from tickets, sky boxes, concessions, etc. Some cities are now finding themselves financially strapped, btw, by these generous stadium deals.

And at the pinnacle, there are the pro sports players, some with salaries of $10 million, $15 million, $25 million or more per year. Throw in endorsements and commercials, and they can quickly become billionaires.

Then, if you ask yourself "What do they contribute to society to justify making that kind of money?", you may be hard-pressed to come up with a suitable or justifiable answer. When you think about some very important people who earn a pittance by comparison (teachers, emergency personnel, nurses, scientists, academics), you may might ask (if you're a liberal) "Why the disparity"?

I've concluded the answer is really quite simple.
It's the "Number One" rule that governs all human life.
Number One is most important.
People take care of themselves first.

It's demonstrated by the Party of NO: They don't give a shit about the welfare of the country. What they do care about is creating failure for liberals, and about getting re-elected by their ignorant, brainwashed, prejudiced, unthinking, highly-opinionated, racist old white male base. They're taking care of Number One (getting themselves re-elected).

It's demonstrated at those holiday sales when an uncontrolled crowd rushes into a store and tramples and kills somebody who falls down in the herd.

It's demonstrated on the highways by those SUV drivers who are so aggressive, and by road rage that usually develops over something so minor and trivial yet results in a fight or a death: He cut in front of me, so I killed him.

And so it is with the big money in sports.
We love to be entertained and we love to see "our" team win...it's that vicarious stuff again.

Being entertained is one of our highest priorities, as demonstrated by the amount of money earned by the best entertainers (sports, movie stars, talk show hosts).

That, I have discovered, is really the meaning of life, the meaning of the universe.

Most important to us is our entertainment, our ability to escape "the real world" for a few hours, or to vicariously enjoy "victory", "winning", "the triumph of victory".

The meaning of life and of the universe is NOT "42".
It is Number One.

Right wingers seem to love to criticize Obama for often using a teleprompter.
In fact, some have come to call it "TOTUS" (Teleprompter Of The US).
It's really quite silly, since a teleprompter is simply another way of reading one's notes, and what person who's prepared for a speech doesn't take notes?

And which would you rather see:
Someone who speaks eloquently (like Obama)
or more of this sort of verbal idocy:

Have they forgotten how their idiot hero managed to mangle virtually every public address he made?

Palin, however, as scheming and cunning as she is, has come up with a middle-ground alternative:

The HandPrompter!

Read and see more at The Huffington Post

They're not looking great:
Dept. of Labor unemployment rates by state

The worst:
Michigan: 14.6%
Nevada: 13%
Rhode Island: 12.9%
South Carolina: 12.6%
California: 12.4%
North Carolina: 11.2%
Illinois: 11.1%
Alabama: 11% (Explains Senator Shelby's extortion attempt)
Oregon: 11%
Tennesse: 10.9%

The best:
Hawaii: 6.9%
Montana: 6.7%
Iowa: 6.6%
Kansas: 6.6%
Oklahoma: 6.6%
North Dakota: 4.4%

Observation:
Southern states (predominately red states) are pretty hard-hit, with most southern states having double-digit unemployment numbers. Will red state politicians continue to say no to jobs bill spending? Or will they, like Alabama's senator Shelby, simply try to bring home more pork?

As noted in the post below, Tom "I Can't Hate Too Much" Tancredo did a wonderful job of setting the tone for the Teabagger's Nashville Hatefest.

Judging by their published schedule, it's going to be one hate-filled bash, including:

• Steven Milloy (science sucks)
• Judge Roy Moore (Actually, former judge because he was booted from the Alabama Supreme Court for trying to officially turn Alabama into a theocracy).
• Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. As you can see, Judicial Watch is simply a litigation arm of the Republican Party
• Angela McGowan, Faux News "contributor", a Teabagger regular (video) and one of the few blacks amongst the elderly white crowd.
• Joseph Farah of World Net Daily, the right wingers' favorite news/propaganda source. Olbermann named Farah The World's Worst on Jan. 5, 2009, for finding Obama's forged birth certificate "authentic"
• Sarah "Can't Hate Too Much" Palin, of course, will top off the show.

Michelle Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn for some strange reason backed out.

So there you have it: Crazies firing up the crazies.

Some teabaggers take pains to say they are "nonpartisan", but look at their speakers' list. It's obviously intended to further stoke the huge red-hot cauldron of hate that exists in the belly of every teabagger.

Pandering to the hate and profiting from it: Priceless.
(Just ask Limbaugh, Coutergeist, Malkin, Faux News, et al)

Teabaggers are fewer in number than many believe.
They appear larger, as a group, because of (a) all the media coverage they get and (b) the fact they are so loud and shrill ("squeaking wheel" and all that).

There were some teabaggers standing along a major highway not long ago holding signs of protest. Large signs. Bright colors. Big letters. They were very active: Frantically waving and yelling at passing cars. There were three of them. Three. The greater metropolitan area consists of over a million people. Three teabaggers.

Today's New York Times carries one of its almost-daily stories about the teabaggers at their "convention" in Tennessee. It reports:

So who was it that spoke to the "non-crazy" attendees yesterday?
Tom Tancredo, who unleashed his customary tanker-truck load of venom and hatred. Tancredo's remarks included this: "President Barack Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote.”

(Teabaggers, I've got news for you: If you're not admitting crazies, you missed one.)

Of course, the keynote speaker is the queen of crazies, Sarah Palin.

So we know they can't recognize "crazy" when they see it.

But here's the truly amazing part:
600 "estimated" attendees.

SIX HUNDRED PEOPLE!

Look at the media coverage:
A Google news search for "Tea Party convention Nashville" returned 1,827 results, including The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Faux News (of course), The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Newsweek, and, of course, hundreds of other media outlets.

It's crazy.

Newsmakers:

Tebagger convention:
No flag, no pledge of allegiance, just Tancredo spewing xenophobic bile and venom.

tsk, tsk, tsk