“DON’T ASK ME, I DON’T GIVE A DAMN”

 

 

Immigrants called to American duty.

WALDO IN REVERY (from Common Lives, a novel)

“I cannot say for certain what began my transformation,” Waldo said.  “I only know that it occurred sometime in mid-June, probably on a Wednesday, or possibly, a Tuesday, but it was June.  In the process, I suddenly saw everything in a new perspective, as if awakening from a very deep sleep.  I saw reality with fresh eyes.  Rip Van Winkle is real, you see?  And, what did I discover? Just this:

“I was born in America, in the City of San Francisco just before mid-century.  As I grew in that storied city, I was imbued with both the Spirit of Liberty and the Phoenix – that magic bird which resurrects itself again and again from the ashes of its own destruction.  I grew up believing in Superman, Manifest Destiny, Truth, Justice and the American Way.  I was the refugee child of refugee parents, themselves the children of refugees.  We looked for a better way on alien shores as aliens among aliens.  We took our place in the legion of strangers pushing and jostling for the top – hoping to look back on poverty and want, and to feel smugly and arrogantly removed from the incessant rhythmic fear, which had started all that long march.

“I grew up in suburbs, being numbered among the handful raised in blessed innocence, free from teeming, toiling city masses.  We learned the horror of crabgrass; we observed neighbors piling bricks up to build barbecues.  We found pleasure in the smallest things in a mundane world, taking solace in rigid normalcy, created by following rigid rules.  We aspired to concrete patios, toured on weekends through farmlands in noisy, fuel-inefficient machines which ultimately doomed the very orchards we’d come to see; or took slow rolls through upper class neighborhoods to see where we thought we were going.

“Those high neighborhoods were always sheltered by sculpted trees, surrounded by acres of immaculate lawn – no sign of crabgrass anywhere!  They had Japanese, or Mexican gardeners, bright flowerbeds, eagle-crested double car garages, and gated drives a city-street wide.  Those drives were stainless, absolutely unblemished.  I can only assume that they were scrubbed  daily by Irish washerwomen .

“To make a long story short, I was sent to college – the first of all my tribe.  Set on the course of upward mobility, professionalism, immaculate lawns and sanitized driveways,  I married and committed to a career.  Never well paid, always overworked, I eventually examined my circumstances and decided that I was part of a large system that demanded more expenditure of my time and attention than I usually made back from it.  Further, it demanded that I dedicate whole sections of my future to it, regardless of my personal motives or aspirations!  I was compelled socially, economically and culturally to serve that damned system as a blind, following member – no better than mindless serving ants plugging themselves genetically in and out of nests, mindlessly serving a queen, whose sole purpose is to mindlessly push out eggs to ensure continuation of that self-same mindless estate.  Well, to put it mildly, I was pissed!

“Glancing about, I noticed that a good two-thirds of the world was starving.  While those people were dying, I was being paid to help perpetuate an all-consuming ethos that dooms the majority of humankind to war, famine, pestilence, murder and screaming neglect.  I’m the son of refugees!  How can I eat well and consider the world well ordered with those millions of others – the mirrors of my own ancestral impetus – still awash in the chaos, which my forebears had so intelligently fled?  I could not.

“I, therefore, divested myself of every vestige of my former reality: wife, family, friends, career.  I ran off to find myself, wondering all the while why the price of that journey should be so painfully high.  I lost myself in drugs, booze, sex and cheap thrills.  I walked ocean beaches, hiked mountain trails, re-observed city streets, and wrote and wrote and wrote, trying through the recording of all those sights, sounds and experiences to find some common thread among them, and in me, so that I would not forever remain an outsider.  In this fashion, find my way back in some improbably acquiescent present, imagined in a perfect future, to my imperfect, misunderstood, but now clearly missed past.

‘You know you can come back in,’ The ex-wife said. ‘We’ve all wished for freedom and creative individuality. Your friends will understand why you failed and admire you for trying.’

“As I mentioned, on a Wednesday in mid-June, approximately three years into my odyssey, I suddenly saw everything in a new perspective.  The remnants of dream were washed from my mind, and I confronted stark reality.

“Until the moment when the mists cleared, I was as the others.  I walked, I talked, and I carried on the day’s business without hesitation.  I went home in the evenings, packed into cattle cars with my fellows.  I sank down onto my isolated bed at night, alone in my isolated cell, conserving energy for the effort of that forever approaching ‘Next Day.’  All remained the same when I awoke, but now I saw it clearly for what it was, and the questions came faster and with greater force.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  Where am I going?  What has come to pass?

“Each day, I observed crowds spilling out of vehicles and doorways into the early morning city air.  Each day, I watched them queue for bread, for work, for a drink, for love.  They eddied and swayed in great mass, afloat in the polluted ether of overcrowded, urban life, elbowing for position, shouting for attention, separate yet fixed within the same stream (as oil in water, a colloidal ambient suspension, a physical chemical reaction like any other).  What is this? I demanded to know.  What is happening?  Why is this all so?  Clearly these others among whom I accomplished my time were not all the same.  No two were alike as peas in a pod.  No one the mirror of another.  (Oh, yes, we behave in generally predictable fashion – the degree of response varies from individual to individual, but a tack in the shoe usually causes the wearer to react.  However, there are differences and they must be there for some reason, although we spend most of our time trying to deny or destroy them, for generally irrational cause).

“That common denominator I had been seeking seemed finally within reach.  I began to observe my fellows and fellowesses more closely.  Since we were all involved in the same great system into which we fed our energies – each of us without marked mental consideration – there must be something to it.  The alternative, which I’d most recently been pursuing, was a form of outlawry or exile.  Yet, outlaws and exiles depend in whole or in part on the system as well, if simply by preying upon it.  Even survivalists come down from the hills for a gallon of gas to make themselves ‘independent’ of the rest of us.  (Incidentally, if nothing cataclysmic happens, those survivalists are going to look pretty silly.  Still, the current state of the cosmos appears to be bearing them out).  In any event, the outlaws and the exiles are a minute fraction of the whole.  I hence turned my full attention upon the majority.

“You see, from channeling my interest on a narrower and narrower track, transmuting my initial preoccupation with the cosmic to contemplation of my own navel, I have at last looked up from that infinitesimal focus of anatomy to perceive my individual smallness in the scheme of things.  I see my relative impotence in the face of the world’s great consortiums of nations, corporations, religions and other power groupings.  Yet, I am not frustrated by my size.  I see the power of my personal vision.  Because it is so personal, it is overwhelmingly intense, and that is the precisely directed laser, I as the surgeon will use to help erode the deadly cancerous tumor, which presently corrupts the body, mind and spirit of humankind!”

“Not all at once, of course.

“Reality is the key,” Waldo continued, “not dream, not fantasy, not wanting, nor wishing.  Reality rules.  In order to live a proper, that is, a real life we must take what comes as it comes.  There is no formula, no magic spell, and no special prayer – which facts protect us from charlatans.  We are all lost at sea, and all coping – president, priest, or peasant.  That’s just the way it is.

“So, where do we go from here?  Wherever we want.  We are not bound to one reality, to one anything.  We make gods a dime a dozen.  We are the dreamers.  Ursula LeGuin is right (marvelous mind, great poet and story teller.  Don’t know her?  You probably should. In her classic Lathe of Heaven, sleep is not a respite, and dreams are tools ).”

 

VERY IMPORTANT – WORTH YOUR NOTICE:Now more than ever, Oregon teachers are digging into their own pockets for back to school supplies. When teachers can dig no deeper, students go without.

Join fellow citizens in America’s Back to School Challenge. Together, we can be a positive force not just for Oregon, but all of America’s public school children.

Vegetables for Victory!

2010 BLOG REPORT:

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,300 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 60 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 117 posts. There were 131 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 62mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was August 14th with 71 views. The most popular post that day was YOUR ENEMIES ARE UP.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were allhatnocattle.net, zazzle.com, mail.yahoo.com, statistics.bestproceed.com, and stumbleupon.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for it’s not fascism when we do it, iww, thomas paine, international workers of the world, and republican fascists.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1 YOUR ENEMIES ARE UP August 2010

2 REPUBLICAN INSURANCE NAZIS August 2009
3 EASTER ISLAND BLUES February 2010
4 DENIAL NO LONGER AN OPTION September 2010

5 “THINK MANCHURIAN CANDIDATES” January 2010

Critical Mass Wakes Up

David DeGraw, Alternet, writes:  “It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us. Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99% of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep. . . and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the US middle class.”

At the center of this group is the Business Roundtable, an organization representing Fortune 500 CEOs that is also interlocked with several lead elite organizations. Most Americans have never heard of the Business Roundtable. However, it is the most influential and powerful Economic Elite organization. READ MORE: http://www.alternet.org/economy/145996/the_business_roundtable%3A_the_most_powerful_corporate_business_club_most_americans_have_never_heard_of

Corporatists declared war on the rest of us.  Time to fight back with full vigor and from every side, Let Freedom Ring!

Just say, “Yes!”  Baldhead of the Business Roundtable.

WHO EATS, WHO STARVES?

Please note – the History Channel, International History channel, Military Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, and other shows currently on television are all engineered to avoid American History from 1968 to the present.  Oh, yes, there are superficial exceptions: how the army rangers felt who parachuted into Grenada, for example, but no critique of why they were there policy-wise, or how it fed into the on-going Nixon-Republican orchestrated CIA destabilization program for “socialist,” or “democratic” countries that might resist U.S. commercial domination – read: “big multi-national corporations.” JFK’s death, RFK’s death, Dr. King’s and Malcolm’s deaths took the bright vision of America from us, and left the fear-mongering, greedy bastards who may have colluded to kill them in charge of our nation.  Conspiracy theorists are maligned, but there is truth in what they have to say.

I was in Washington D.C. when Nixon was inaugurated.  It was a glum, horrible, overcast day, cold and rainy, bleak, and that’s where he took the country – into a foggy frozen limbo.  Under Nixon, Allende was assassinated in Chile for advancing the democracy and social justice that drove up the cost of doing business for the usual profiteers.  We invaded Cambodia and Laos to cleanse the place of heathen anti-capitalist Vietnamese, whom we nearly bombed and napalmed into the Stone Age, in order to defend an exploitative ruling elite that served western economic and, therefore, our own geo-political economic interests.  Nixon bugged our loyal opposition party’s campaign headquarters, cheating and lying his way not only into election, but re-election.  He set the modern pattern for Oval Office cover-ups and executive stonewalling, and turned up the paranoid distrust and oppression of the American people by its corrupted leaders.

Reagan compounded it.  Reagan reinforced and made it somehow “acceptable,” made us “comfortable” with our subversion.  Whenever possible, Reagan legalized it.  Under Reagan, Cheney and Rumsfeldt began to plan for a “shadow government” to bypass Congress and the Supreme Court, corrupt the Justice Department, and seize power from the rightful, lawful government of the United States; that is, We, the People.  Their “shadow government” serves the interests of the rich, powerful, radical right, elitist leaders of the multi-national corporations, the possessors of the great fascist slave-based capitalist fortunes that have crushed people around the world for generations.  When will we put a full stop to their greedy madness?  It is clear that they know they have to stop us – cold.  They are ruthless, and we should defend ourselves to the death, for they will kill us directly, or indirectly, if we do not.  PUBLIC ENEMIES 1 and 2

Indirectly.  They have ruined our environment.

Directly: Stolen our money. Corrupted our government. Crippled our labor movement. Ruined our economy. Attacked the Middle Class. Forced us out of our homes.

The list of their offenses – crimes they have made legal by reason of seizing the law and twisting it to their tyranny and abuse – is long and despicable.

They are the great criminals of our age. They are today’s super pirates, slave traffickers, dope kings, cutthroats, robbers, tricksters, hoodlums, and villains.  They will finally rank as the monsters that destroyed a Golden Age.  We are living at the end of Camelot.  A Dark Age is about to fall, if we allow it to happen, and they – the neocon corporationist republicans – made it happen.  REPUBLICAN INSURANCE NAZIS

If there is a god of justice, if we do want to save ourselves from the horrors of the neocon fascist creation, there must be a reckoning.  Very soon.

"He was the biggest asshole at Goldman Sachs!"

SIX GENERATIONS

Six generations are required to forget the people,

deeds and glories of the past,

The great spaces, places, faces, and

traces of the first generation, are

Inheritance of the second,

Legacy of the third,

Plaything of the fourth,

Burden of the fifth,

Disinterest of the sixth;

Six generations shall pass

When all shall be gone but

Not forgotten nor forgiven

As descendents reinvent and

then eat their

Ancestors’ ancient sins.

Immigrants called to American duty.

WALDO IN REVERY (from Common Lives, a novel)

“I cannot say for certain what began my transformation,” Waldo said.  “I only know that it occurred sometime in mid-June, probably on a Wednesday, or possibly, a Tuesday, but it was June.  In the process, I suddenly saw everything in a new perspective, as if awakening from a very deep sleep.  I saw reality with fresh eyes.  Rip Van Winkle is real, you see?  And, what did I discover? Just this:

“I was born in America, in the City of San Francisco just before mid-century.  As I grew in that storied city, I was imbued with both the Spirit of Liberty and the Phoenix – that magic bird which resurrects itself again and again from the ashes of its own destruction.  I grew up believing in Superman, Manifest Destiny, Truth, Justice and the American Way.  I was the refugee child of refugee parents, themselves the children of refugees.  We looked for a better way on alien shores as aliens among aliens.  We took our place in the legion of strangers pushing and jostling for the top – hoping to look back on poverty and want, and to feel smugly and arrogantly removed from the incessant rhythmic fear, which had started all that long march.

“I grew up in suburbs, being numbered among the handful raised in blessed innocence, free from teeming, toiling city masses.  We learned the horror of crabgrass; we observed neighbors piling bricks up to build barbecues.  We found pleasure in the smallest things in a mundane world, taking solace in rigid normalcy, created by following rigid rules.  We aspired to concrete patios, toured on weekends through farmlands in noisy, fuel-inefficient machines which ultimately doomed the very orchards we’d come to see; or took slow rolls through upper class neighborhoods to see where we thought we were going.

“Those high neighborhoods were always sheltered by sculpted trees, surrounded by acres of immaculate lawn – no sign of crabgrass anywhere!  They had Japanese, or Mexican gardeners, bright flowerbeds, eagle-crested double car garages, and gated drives a city-street wide.  Those drives were stainless, absolutely unblemished.  I can only assume that they were scrubbed  daily by Irish washerwomen .

“To make a long story short, I was sent to college – the first of all my tribe.  Set on the course of upward mobility, professionalism, immaculate lawns and sanitized driveways,  I married and committed to a career.  Never well paid, always overworked, I eventually examined my circumstances and decided that I was part of a large system that demanded more expenditure of my time and attention than I usually made back from it.  Further, it demanded that I dedicate whole sections of my future to it, regardless of my personal motives or aspirations!  I was compelled socially, economically and culturally to serve that damned system as a blind, following member – no better than mindless serving ants plugging themselves genetically in and out of nests, mindlessly serving a queen, whose sole purpose is to mindlessly push out eggs to ensure continuation of that self-same mindless estate.  Well, to put it mildly, I was pissed!

“Glancing about, I noticed that a good two-thirds of the world was starving.  While those people were dying, I was being paid to help perpetuate an all-consuming ethos that dooms the majority of humankind to war, famine, pestilence, murder and screaming neglect.  I’m the son of refugees!  How can I eat well and consider the world well ordered with those millions of others – the mirrors of my own ancestral impetus – still awash in the chaos, which my forebears had so intelligently fled?  I could not.

“I, therefore, divested myself of every vestige of my former reality: wife, family, friends, career.  I ran off to find myself, wondering all the while why the price of that journey should be so painfully high.  I lost myself in drugs, booze, sex and cheap thrills.  I walked ocean beaches, hiked mountain trails, re-observed city streets, and wrote and wrote and wrote, trying through the recording of all those sights, sounds and experiences to find some common thread among them, and in me, so that I would not forever remain an outsider.  In this fashion, find my way back in some improbably acquiescent present, imagined in a perfect future, to my imperfect, misunderstood, but now clearly missed past.

‘You know you can come back in,’ The ex-wife said. ‘We’ve all wished for freedom and creative individuality. Your friends will understand why you failed and admire you for trying.’

“As I mentioned, on a Wednesday in mid-June, approximately three years into my odyssey, I suddenly saw everything in a new perspective.  The remnants of dream were washed from my mind, and I confronted stark reality.

“Until the moment when the mists cleared, I was as the others.  I walked, I talked, and I carried on the day’s business without hesitation.  I went home in the evenings, packed into cattle cars with my fellows.  I sank down onto my isolated bed at night, alone in my isolated cell, conserving energy for the effort of that forever approaching ‘Next Day.’  All remained the same when I awoke, but now I saw it clearly for what it was, and the questions came faster and with greater force.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  Where am I going?  What has come to pass?

“Each day, I observed crowds spilling out of vehicles and doorways into the early morning city air.  Each day, I watched them queue for bread, for work, for a drink, for love.  They eddied and swayed in great mass, afloat in the polluted ether of overcrowded, urban life, elbowing for position, shouting for attention, separate yet fixed within the same stream (as oil in water, a colloidal ambient suspension, a physical chemical reaction like any other).  What is this? I demanded to know.  What is happening?  Why is this all so?  Clearly these others among whom I accomplished my time were not all the same.  No two were alike as peas in a pod.  No one the mirror of another.  (Oh, yes, we behave in generally predictable fashion – the degree of response varies from individual to individual, but a tack in the shoe usually causes the wearer to react.  However, there are differences and they must be there for some reason, although we spend most of our time trying to deny or destroy them, for generally irrational cause).

“That common denominator I had been seeking seemed finally within reach.  I began to observe my fellows and fellowesses more closely.  Since we were all involved in the same great system into which we fed our energies – each of us without marked mental consideration – there must be something to it.  The alternative, which I’d most recently been pursuing, was a form of outlawry or exile.  Yet, outlaws and exiles depend in whole or in part on the system as well, if simply by preying upon it.  Even survivalists come down from the hills for a gallon of gas to make themselves ‘independent’ of the rest of us.  (Incidentally, if nothing cataclysmic happens, those survivalists are going to look pretty silly.  Still, the current state of the cosmos appears to be bearing them out).  In any event, the outlaws and the exiles are a minute fraction of the whole.  I hence turned my full attention upon the majority.

“You see, from channeling my interest on a narrower and narrower track, transmuting my initial preoccupation with the cosmic to contemplation of my own navel, I have at last looked up from that infinitesimal focus of anatomy to perceive my individual smallness in the scheme of things.  I see my relative impotence in the face of the world’s great consortiums of nations, corporations, religions and other power groupings.  Yet, I am not frustrated by my size.  I see the power of my personal vision.  Because it is so personal, it is overwhelmingly intense, and that is the precisely directed laser, I as the surgeon will use to help erode the deadly cancerous tumor, which presently corrupts the body, mind and spirit of humankind!”

“Not all at once, of course.

“Reality is the key,” Waldo continued, “not dream, not fantasy, not wanting, nor wishing.  Reality rules.  In order to live a proper, that is, a real life we must take what comes as it comes.  There is no formula, no magic spell, and no special prayer – which facts protect us from charlatans.  We are all lost at sea, and all coping – president, priest, or peasant.  That’s just the way it is.

“So, where do we go from here?  Wherever we want.  We are not bound to one reality, to one anything.  We make gods a dime a dozen.  We are the dreamers.  Ursula LeGuin is right (marvelous mind, great poet and story teller.  Don’t know her?  You probably should).”

Vegetables for Victory!

VERY IMPORTANT – WORTH YOUR NOTICE:

Now more than ever, Oregon teachers are digging into their own pockets for back to school supplies. When teachers can dig no deeper, students go without.

Join fellow citizens in America’s Back to School Challenge. Together, we can be a positive force not just for Oregon, but all of America’s public school children.

Just say, "Yes!"

HAPPY LABOR DAY!

The United States used to build things.

You must help to preserve it.

"Play it again, Sam!"

Republican Plutocrats Create Bank Failures.

True Progressives

Unite at the Ballot box.

Impeach the Supreme Court Five.

“We have it in our power to make the world over again!” – Thomas Paine, American author-patriot-founder.

Lest we forget:

INDEPENDENCE DAY

GULF DISASTER Breaking News

BECK’S CROCODILE TEARS

HALF-ASSED IS HALF-HEARTED

 

Variation on the Meaning of Life

Gibbs Gurns

You Wretched, Irrelevant, Drug-Addled Ingrates,You

A remarkable tantrum from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, in which he blasts “the Professional Left” for criticizing Obama policies – a.k.a. being a bunch of stoned, unrealistic, un-American losers who want to reform health care, eliminate the Pentagon and elect President Kucinich, not to mention save jobs, curb Wall Street, end two pointless wars, honor habeas corpus and do other “crazy” things. Glenn Greenwald, fuming, responds.

“Perhaps one day the White House can work itself up to express this sort of sputtering rage against the Right, or the Wall Street thieves who destroyed the American economy, or the permanent factions that control Washington.” – Greenwald.

Keith Kicks

KEITH OLBERMANN’S SPECIAL COMMENT: The ‘Professional Right’ Goes Unchallenged by ‘Amateur Left’ in the White House Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. In a Special Comment, Countdown’s Keith Olbermann explains to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that while his frustration is understandable, it is more appropriately directed at the “professional right” and at the Obama administration itself for throwing out so many principles in an effort to compromise with an unwilling partner. VIDEO: http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/08/11-0

GEOGRAPHY OF A RECESSION:

See unemployment bloom across the country in this animated, county by county map. Scary. Updated Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 9:15 pm. Click here for YouTube version.

END OF THE INTERNET? Google-Verizon Pact: It Gets Worse by Craig Aaron Tuesday, August 10, 2010 CommonDreams.org

So Google and Verizon went public Monday with their “policy framework” — better known as the pact to end the Internet as we know it.

News of this deal broke this week, sparking a public outcry that’s seen hundreds of thousands of Internet users calling on Google to live up to its “Don’t Be Evil” pledge.

This deal is even worse than advertised.

The proposal is one massive loophole setting the stage for corporate takeover of the Internet.

Real Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers can’t discriminate between different kinds of online content and applications. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies. It’s what makes sure the next Google, out there in a garage somewhere, has just as good a chance as any giant corporate behemoth to find its audience and thrive online.

What Google and Verizon propose is fake Net Neutrality. Read their framework here or go here to see Google twist itself in knots on this “thorny issue,” but here are the basics:

1.  Permits no Net Neutrality on wireless networks — anything goes, from blocking websites and applications to pay-for-priority treatment.

2.  Creates such a weak “non-discrimination” standard for wired networks that blocking of sites would be allowed.

3.  Allows ISPs like Verizon — instead of Internet users like you – to decide which applications deserve the best quality of service. The Internet has never worked that way, and the corporations threaten to close the door on tomorrow’s innovative applications.

4.  Allows ISPs to split the Internet into “two pipes” — one for “managed services,” a pay-for-play platform for content and applications (the proverbial toll road on the information superhighway).  The select are in the fast lane, the rest are on a dirt road.

5. Turns the Federal Communications Commission into a toothless watchdog, left fruitlessly chasing consumer complaints but unable to make rules of its own. Leaves up to unaccountable (and almost surely industry-controlled) third parties to decide what the rules should be.

If there’s a silver lining, it isn’t up to Google and Verizon to write the rules. That’s why we have Congress and the FCC. Certainly by now we should have learned – from AIG, Massey Energy, BP – what happens when big companies regulate themselves and don’t do the right thing. We need the FCC — with the backing of Congress and President Obama — to step up to the hard work of governing. That means restoring the FCC’s authority to protect Internet users and safeguarding real Net Neutrality once and for all.

Such a move will not be popular on Wall Street, but it’s the kind of leadership the American people need right now.

TELL THE FCC WHY WE NEED Net Neutrality, please do it now.

Craig Aaron is the managing director of Free Press, the national, nonpartisan, nonprofit media reform group, where he leads all program, public advocacy and communications work, including the SavetheInternet.com and SaveTheNews.org campaigns.  READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/10-2

GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!

It’s Waterloo All Right: Ours From the Right: David Frum March 22, 2010 by FrumForum

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.  READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/22-2 

“WISDOM” FROM THE OTHER SIDE

The Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed by Chris Hedges March 22, 2010 by TruthDig.com

The claims made by the proponents of the bill are the usual deceptive corporate advertising. The bill will not expand coverage to 30 million uninsured, especially since government subsidies will not take effect until 2014. Families who cannot pay the high premiums, deductibles and co-payments, estimated to be between 15 and 18 percent of most family incomes, will have to default, increasing the number of uninsured. Insurance companies can unilaterally raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize local markets to shut out competitors. The $1.055 trillion spent over the next decade will add new layers of bureaucratic red tape to what is an unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable system.

The mendacity of the Democratic leadership in the face of this reality is staggering. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, said recently: “This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?” What is the point in supporting Democrats? How much more craven can they get? READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/22-1

NO CHANCE IN HELL

The Great Thing About the Health Care Law That Has Passed? It Will Save Republican Lives, Too An Open Letter to Republicans March 22, 2010 by CommonDreams.org by Michael Moore

To My Fellow Citizens, the Republicans:

Thanks to last night’s vote, that child of yours who has had asthma since birth will now be covered after suffering for her first nine years as an American child with a pre-existing condition.

Thanks to last night’s vote, that 23-year-old of yours who will be hit one day by a drunk driver and spend six months recovering in the hospital will now not go bankrupt because you will be able to keep him on your insurance policy.

Thanks to last night’s vote, after your cancer returns for the third time — racking up another $200,000 in costs to keep you alive — your insurance company will have to commit a criminal act if they even think of dropping you from their rolls.

Yes, my Republican friends, even though you have opposed this health care bill, we’ve made sure it is going to cover you, too, in your time of need.  So, when you find yourself suddenly broadsided by a life-threatening illness someday, perhaps you’ll thank those pinko-socialist, Canadian-loving Democrats and independents for what they did Sunday evening. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/22-0

CH-CH-CHANGES…

Signed, Sealed, but Not Delivered: Six Big Flaws Need Fixing to Make New Law Meaningful Health Care Reform by Jon Walker Monday, March 22, 2010 by FireDogLake.com

This health care reform bill passed late last night and soon to be signed into law is a seriously flawed piece of legislation, for it fails to achieve the goals of real health care reform. Now that it is essentially the law of the land, the country needs to work diligently at the federal and state levels to correct many of the most egregious problems with the legislation before the reform package fully goes into effect in 2014. The six main areas that need to be fixed are: cost control, enforcement, individual mandate, abortion, competition, and immigration.

1) Lack of Real Cost Control

This bill does not create real cost control and will not bring down premiums for most Americans.

2) Dangerously Weak Enforcement

There are some good new regulations, but regulations are only as good as the strength of the agency tasked to enforce them. This bill is dangerously lacking in this area.

3) Individual Mandate

The individual mandate, which uses the IRS to force people to buy a product from a poorly regulated, private industry, is an affront to the American people. People must be offered the choice of a public alternative, or the individual mandate must be repealed.

4) Abortion

This bill is a massive rollback of a woman’s right to choose. It would take away the abortion coverage of millions of Americans.

5) Lack of Health Insurance Competition

The bill will do almost nothing to address the problem of lack of competition in the health insurance market. Repealing the anti-trust exemption and adding a public option would be two big steps toward solving the problem.

6) Immigration

Under this almost-law, undocumented immigrants would not be allowed to buy insurance on the new exchanges, even if they are willing to pay the full cost of the insurance with their own money.

If the majority party wants to honestly deliver on these promises—not to mention if they want to remain in the majority—then a concerted and immediate effort is required to prove that this week’s legislation is truly the first step toward reform, and not the last.

© 2010 FireDogLake.com

Jon Walker is political writer and blogger for FireDogLake. He is an expert on health care policy and the politics of health care reform.

HEALTHCARE FIXES

“This Is What Change Looks Like”: Congress Passes Health-Care Reform

Once Rep. Bart Stupak announced he would vote for the Senate version of the health-care reform bill that came before the House, Democrats had their votes.

After the Senate version of the health-care reform bill passed, the House voted, 217-209, a package of “fixes” to the Senate bill, which strip out several special deals made with specific senators in order to win their votes — for example, a Medicaid windfall for the state of Nebraska — and add changes to various thresholds for subsidies and taxes. That package will require a vote in the Senate in order to pass into law, but, as a budget reconciliation measure, that vote will require only a simple majority. Still, Republicans are promising mischief in the upper chamber once that body takes up the reconciliation bill, so the fate of those fixes remains a bit dicey.  READ MORE: http://www.alternet.org/news/146117/%22this_is_what_change_looks_like%22%3A_congress_passes_health-care_reform

MY TWO-BITS

Suggestions for Progressives in Congress – both houses:

• Adopt the Health Care Act fixes promptly.
• Adopt a new rule that Republicans and other demagogues can use the same argument only three times in debate to limit time-wasting repetition and ideological obstruction.  Repetition is the tool of demagogues.  (Our Latin teacher in high school was a demagogue).  We assume (makes an ass of u and me) that elected representatives are able to remember an argument as part of the record, once given.  Three times is the charm, according to human learning capacity.  Our speech teacher said, “Tell ‘em where you’re going, go there, and then tell ‘em where you’ve been.”  Should be good enough for any argument to be fully expressed understood and assimilated.  Of course, the Republicans et al are stalling and inventing roadblocks, so they love repetition; added to it, their toolbox is very small so they have to say the same thing over and over anyway.  We’ve had enough of that.  Offenders should get a Timeout.
• Put some hustle in the bustle – too much time is wasted on lies and the fallout from lies. Create a fine system for liars; charge the republicans for each offense – stiff fines, ones that will bring tears to their eyes so they will remember it; Pavlovian behavior modification works; check out the rats that ran to the bell and got some yummy cheese  – all receipts to go to Public Campaign Financing only.
• Deliver the knockout punch.  The agitated resistance of the Teabag Party and for-hire goons is simple gangster-style intimidation by the hostile rich and their Fox, Republican and other demagogic tools.  The crooks know their selfish cause is on the ropes.  They are willing to fight to the grim death to preserve their ignorance, superstition, greed and terror, but they will be finished if the Progressives hold strong and stay on the offensive.  Old Chinese military proverb: “The time to be on your highest guard is immediately after the battle.”  Brace for counterattack.
• Support Progressive candidates in every election.  What the People really want – in the significant majority – is to flush the bought-and-paid-for rascals out of our system.  Democracy is not an –ism.  Trying to run the country according to a script won’t work for people who don’t want to be in your lousy little play; people who prefer to deal with reality on a practical common sense basis.
• Think outside the box.  We cannot long endure as a nation of over-consumers and garbage-makers.  We must find new ways of doing business, which are less invasive and destructive.  Arab philosopher al-Kindi, c.801-66 wrote:  “We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it come to us.  Even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples.  For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than the truth itself.” 

LAST WORDS:

Flattery can get you practically anywhere.  It’s staying there that gets tricky.