Senator Franken (Finally)

I have just seen notice that Democrat Al Franken's election to the U.S. Senate has been affirmed by the Minnesota Supreme Court. Norm Coleman, the incumbent Republican, has been fighting the result of the polls in November ever since then. But today he conceded the election. And the proper certification will be issued by the certification board or whatever it is today. Word is that he will not be able to take his seat till next week because of the July 4 break. It's about frigging time! Only eight months later the used up Republicans are admitting they lost another seat.

An this is an important one. It's going to give Obama a solid 60 votes when the two independents who vote with the Democrats are added.

Jesus Loves Guns

Is there no end to the insanity of gun nuts? It seems not. Did you not realize how much the Lord loves guns? Well let me help understand. In Louisville, Kentucky, Ken Pagano--the NY Times story doesn't call him "Reverend," which seems about right to me--pastor of the Bethel Church there, last week invited all his parishioners and any other idiot who wanted to do it to bring their gun to church on last Saturday night. Wear it or carry it. Doesn't matter. According to this nut, "God and guns were part of the foundation of this country," and "Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.” Right. Jesus was all about guns and self-defense, about the right to carry concealed weapons so you can kill somebody if you take a mind to it anytime, anywhere.

What are you going to do with people like this? Hey, I have an idea: let's let those poor, unfortunate pot smokers out of prison and replace them with truly dangerous people like this "Christian."

The rest of this story is not encouraging. I didn't know that 40 states have so-called "right to carry" laws, and 20 of them allow guns in churches. Well, why not? They are letting people carry them in restaurants, parks, bars, cars.

"Public attitudes also seem to be turning more sympathetic to gun owners. In April, the Pew Research Center found for the first time that almost as many people said it was more important to protect the rights of gun owners (45 percent) than to control gun ownership (49 percent). Just a year ago, Pew said, 58 percent said gun control was more important than the rights of gun owners (37 percent)."

Update I: About 180 people took Pagano up on his invitation on Saturday, the Times reports. All kinds of talk about self-defense and the gun-God partnership. "I believe everybody should carry a gun," said one attendee.

Good Lord, help us!

Vote of No Confidence

The Consumer Confidence Index for May, 2009: -53, a new low. That, brothers and sisters, is what the American people think about about how well this "recovery" is going. Less than 40 percent of them are satisfied with the state of their own personal finances. And we should probably discount this figure by removing the super rich, the Wall Street bankers and tycoons, and the other malefactors of great wealth who are delighted with the state of their personal finances, who not only are not being hurt by these dire economic times, but are actually prospering. You do realize that Wall Street is continuing pay huge salaries and bonuses, right? You do know that not a single CEO on Wall Street has lost his job as a result of his gross mismanagement, right? The American people at least know enough to be worried about their situation, but apparently don't know enough to know that they're still in the process of being royally screwed by the perpetually greedy and that the only way to reverse this situation is grab their congressmen and senators by the throat and shake them till they turn purple and then kick their asses until they promise on their children's lives that they will go back to Washington and vote for the interests of the little people of this country, the people who have been so abused and used by the current system. I mean, look where we are, brothers and sisters. Have you ever seen this country in such shape? Who have you talked to lately that's got a functioning brain who thinks things are getting better? Who's not worried about the future for his or her children or grandchildren? This ain't the America we know; it's the nightmare we get for deciding that oligarchy--and don't kid yourself, that is exactly what we have--is the best form of government to achieve prosperity and protect the rights of everybody.

Cupcakes and Ravenous Rats

Wasn't it just a few days ago I was bemoaning the so-called health care reform effort now in progress in the US Congress? Indeed, it was. The subject is likely to appear several more times in coming weeks as the issue heats up in Congress. And one thing that's certain: unless the apparent course of events takes some sort of drastic new turn, it's going to heat me up also. The general temper--er, no pun intended--of my remarks the other day had to do with the lamentable lack of backbone our president appears to be afflicted with. Whereas happy, smiling faces all around the political spectrum is a nice vision (i.e., partisanship), the reality is Obama is in a knife fight with people determined to kill him. Offering to shake hands and have a discussion in the midst of the fight is a sure way to get a shiv in the ribs. In fact, what Obama needs to do is have somebody hand him a cutlass so he can slash his way through his enemies. Unfortunately, Obama doesn't want a cutlass; he wants a plate of cupcakes to offer the people who are trying to kill him.

Paul Krugman says Obama doesn't have enough audacity for the moment. Like me, he fears that Obama will sign what he can get out of Congress, and that he won't insist on anything. But this guarantees that what he will sign will reform nothing. It will, in fact, probably be as bad as what we have now. As Krugman says: "The point is that if you’re making big policy changes, the final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach."



The president is but one obstacle to a successful health care reform effort. The other is more numerous and in all likelihood more powerful, especially since Obama is the way he is. The other enemy is the ever present, oiled to the gills army of lobbyists who have descended upon the Congress like a swarm of locusts . . . actually more like ravenous rats who are going to chew the guts out of any meaningful health care reform bill. Make no mistake about it: the Republicans and lobbyists for the for-profit hospitals, the drug giants, and the insurance industry don't want any reform at all. They are gloriously happy with the present system which is rewarding them quite handsomely, thank you, but which is cost the American people about twice as much as the next most expensive health care system in the world. And they don't really give a flying fuck for what's best for the country, or some nonsensical concept like the greatest good for the greatest number. But they realize something is going to pass, so their job is to pass legislation which is as meaningless as possible and which preserves the status quo as much as possible. This is what they've set out to do with all their millions, and quite frankly, I have little hope, as I've said before, that Congress is going to be able to resist these blandishments--regardless of what the American people want, regardless of what is desperately needed.

So what I fear is passage of an unadulterated POS that Obama will claim is great for the country and sign with great fanfare surrounded by bunch of grinning politicians, every single one of whom knows that nothing has really been reformed at all.

The King of Pop is Dead

Michael Jackson died today. RIP. He was 50. After reaching a pinnacle beyond which few besides maybe the Beatles and Elvis reached, he led a sad and tortured life for the past 15 years or so. He was rehearsing strenuously for a massive comeback: an unprecedented 50 shows in a London arena. No official word on his death, but his abuse of prescription drugs was well known.

Most people will think of one of the huge hits off his "Thriller" album when they think of his music. But for me the two songs below are the ones I think of. Both of them still give me chills and sometimes, like now, make me cry.



I recognize almost everybody, but don't know two or three. How about you?



UPDATE I: Andrew Sullivan has a sensitive and insightful take on Michael Jackson. I agree with it.

Well, Well, Well . . .

Well, guess what? Another outspoken proponent of family values has been caught having an affair. He's a Republican, of course, the governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford. (Everybody knows that Democrats don't give a hoot about family values.) Need I tell you that while a congressman during the Clinton administration, Sanford was extremely critical of the president's behavior in the Lewinsky affair? Need I also tell you that he said Clinton should resign his office once it was discovered what he had been doing?

This whole thing has a really bizarre aspect to it. For Sanford simply disappeared for a week, and nobody, including his family and staff knew where he was. Well where he was was in Argentina, poking his girlfriend. In the meantime, he misses Father's Day with his four sons, and the lieutenant governor of the state has not even been put officially in charge. A spokesman said the governor had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail. His wife claimed she didn't know where he was. Are you kidding me?

Well, all of that turns out to be b.s. What actually happened was that Jenny Sanford had basically kicked the governor's butt out of the house two weeks ago "to maintain my dignity, self-respect and my basic sense of right and wrong."

Of course, there's been the usual apologies and expressions of regret. Sanford says he is resigning his post as head of the Republican governor's conference. How much do you want to bet he doesn't resign as governor of South Carolina?

Democrats Are the New Republicans

Bill Maher is a funny guy. He's also completely correct in everything he says here.

Canary in the Mine

My friend Montag over at the blog A Father Talks to His Daughter about God has an interesting post on health care reform entitled "The Canary in the Mine is Health Care." (He's a wonderfully metaphorical guy.) In which he makes the following statement: "The only thing that matters is the welfare of the human beings in a country; ideology and political philosophy are meaningless charades. The measure of a country is the well being of the people under its power."

While there's certainly nothing profound here--great thoughts don't necessarily have to have that attribute--it's something that bears some contemplation. It occurs to me that by the measure suggested here, very few countries are going to make the cut as caring much about the well being of their people. And I can say without fear of contradiction that no capitalist country will. The only countries that I can think of are the ones we disdainfully dismiss here in the US as those practitioners of "European Style Socialism." Countries such as Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden . . . you know, those crazy, corrupt countries with everybody on welfare. Nobody worrying about health care costs, higher education costs, disability insurance, or millions of nimwits running around armed with handguns and assault rifles. How unAmerican! What a stupid way to organize a society.

Bottom line: the American canary is long since dead.

Well, Duh . . .

Two scientists from Britain's University of Oxford, on a three-year study costing the equivalent of nearly $500,000, found that ducks may be even more comfortable standing under a sprinkler than paddling around in a pond. Lead researcher Marian Stamp Dawkins concluded that ducks basically just like water. [The Guardian, 5-20-09]

According to research announced in May by pediatrics professor Jennie Noll of the University of Cincinnati, the more often that teenage girls tart themselves up in online presentations, the greater the sexual interest they provoke. [Forbes-HealthDayNews, 5-26-09]

I need to get in on one of these research projects . . . I could do at least as well.

Kissing Butt Instead of Kicking It

The state of health care in America
The state of health care reform in Congress
Take your pick or take both. True in any case. ====>>>>

"Where did we get the idea that the only good health care bill is a bipartisan bill? Is bipartisanship more important than whether a proposal is practical and effective?" E. J. Dionne asks in the latest Truthdig. The questions get to a theme I've been humming since a few weeks after Obama took office. It's perfectly obvious that the Republican party is not the least bit interested in bipartisanship. If it were, the party would come to some agreement on fundamentals, the core goals, with the Democrats, and the bipartisanship would involve compromising on the details.

But on health care, as well as on every single other issue that's been addressed by the Congress, the Republicans simply stonewall, say no. They refuse to acknowledge that the Democrats have any core goals or espouse any fundamentals that they can agree with (other than worship of the military.) The great divide on health care is whether the government should be involved in the reform at all.

Despite evidence that by any stretch of the imagination has to be regarded as overwhelming, the GOP continues to insist that relying on the market is the best way fix a health care system that has been brought to its knees by the market principle of profit. And it continues to trumpet the absolute falsehood that what the Obama administration proposes is "socialized medicine."

Here's what I fear: whatever "reform" happens is going to be worse (if you can imagine such a thing) than what we have now, because Obama doesn't have the cajones to stand up not only to the Republicans, but also to the weak-kneed blue dogs in his own party. It's obvious to me that Obama would much rather kiss ass than kick it.