Quote of the Day: On Pat Tillman's Death

The one thing that’s definitely true is there’s certainly a cover-up. I mean, I wouldn’t speak on whether they had some CIA operative waiting in a bush to shoot his ass … I think it’s criminal for sure.

- Richard Tillman, brother of killed soldier Pat Tillman, about his brother’s death. Real Time with Bill Maher

I too have written my opinion of Pat Tillman's death and of the documentary movie that came out last month in cinemas across North America. It should be the duty and moral obligation of every American to understand who Pat Tillman was and under what circumstances he died.  None should ignore his death or that of many other soldiers, during the Bush years, who enlisted to serve their nation, but were used as political pawns in the geo-political machinations of the neo-conservatives and American military-industrial complex.

Quote of the Day: Now the Rich are Victims!

We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

- Bill Maher on "New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified "

On the whole, who should pay for the Bush tax cuts, two failed and utterly unpaid for Middle Eastern wars, Medicare Part-D, more tax cuts, increasing the already bloated military-industrial-surveillance state, and failing to invest in America's infrastructure for the past decade?  Well if you're making top-dollar and are part of the top 0.1 percentile, you apparently don't care as long as it's not you or any of your friends who you go with to golf games in the Hamptons or ski with in Vale.  The problem is that unless Americans as a whole are going to embrace cutting defense spending and hacking Medicare and Social Security to its bare bones, then someone is going to have to pay more.  If you're really pissed off that you had a ten-year tax vacation and now have to pay 3% more on your top earnings, then let's face it: you're just a greedy motherfucker.

The Lunacy of the Tea-Baggers!

Lindsey Beyerstein, a prominent left-wing blogger, excoriates the mind-numbing idiocy of newly minted GOP Senate candidate for Delaware in her posting "Anti-Masturbation Crusader Christine O'Donnell is Master of Her Domain in Delaware."

In it she outlines Ms. O'Donnell's predilection with sexuality and her bizarre notions that persons who have AIDS deserve no sympathy, because they've brought that ailment upon themselves by not adhering to strict Biblical tenants.

Good Laugh here:

Anti-masturbation crusader Christine O'Donnell beat establishment favorite Rep. Mike Castle last night in Deleware's GOP senate primary, with a helping hand from the Tea Party Express.

O'Donnell first rose to national prominence as the founder and president of the SALT, an anti-masturbation youth ministry. In 1996, she and her fellow salteens appeared on MTV's series "Sex in the Nineties" to explain why masturbation is a form of adultery that will render your future married sex life irrelevant. "[I]f he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?” O'Donnell asked earnestly.

The following year, while representing SALT on C-SPAN, O'Donnell argued that people with AIDS didn't deserve to be called "victims." A guy called in to say that he had a hard time feeling sorry for people with AIDS because their disease was their own fault. In his opinion, feeling sorry people with AIDS was like feeling sorry for "bank robbers who get shot in the head" while they're robbing banks. "He makes an excellent point," O'Donnell replied.

Lest you think SALT was just some youthful indiscretion, O'Donnell is still listed as the contact for the group in this internet directory, which was last updated in 2009.

I hope Democratic senate candidate candidate Chris Coons cracked open a bottle of Astroglide to celebrate O'Donnell's victory. With any luck, the wankers of the great State of Delaware will grease his path to Washington.

The Huffington Post also posts a segment Ms. O'Donnell did on Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" in the 1990's, where she is posed with a hypothetical situation if she would lie to Nazi soldiers seeking whether she was hiding any Jews.  Using the false consistency argument, she states that it would be wrong to lie and that she implicitly would side with the Nazi's seeking to exterminate Jews!  I suppose she never realized that by hiding the Jews in the first place she would be lying to the Nazi's to begin with, and secondly her admission to those roving death squads would certainly have lead to her and her family's death.

Welcome to Fascist America!  Please check your frontal cortex at the gates, if you intend to visit.

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Update: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow highlights O'Donnell's youthful "don't touch myself" campaign from the 1990's (h/t Crooks and Liars).  Ugh!

Although I don't take this seriously, there has been studies done that indicate a correlation between increased access to pornography through the internet, and a decrease in sex crimes. If this is the case, Ms. O'Donnell's earlier campaign would if given national scope, in fact increase violent crime and decrease public safety.

Deepwater Horizon: Spill, baby, Spill...

"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty." - Bill Maher

On April 20th 2010 the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling platform located approximately 80 kilometres off the Louisiana coast, was critically damaged by an explosion.   Eleven workers were lost at sea and are presumed dead.  Initial estimates provided by operators of the platform stated that the rig may have had as much as 700,000 gallons of diesel on board and 1,000 barrels a day of petroleum were leaking out of the broken wellhead.

Two days after the initial explosion the entire platform sunk.   New assessments indicate that the amount of petroleum leaking out of the ruptured wellhead is approximately 5,000 barrels a day; five times the original estimate.  At least six million litres of petroleum have spilled so far, according to U.S. Coast Guard, making this incident the worst U.S. oil spill since the infamous Exxon Valdez.  In addition, millions of animals, including 1.8 million migratory waterfowl, are at risk.  The potential environmental/economic damage extends across the entire aquatic zone adjacent to the Louisiana coast, which is abundant in shrimp, oysters and other marine life.  The state's aquaculture industry, the largest in the lower 48 states, is worth $1.8-billion annually.

News reports are emerging that BP (the facility’s operator) de-emphasized the risk of a catastrophe in risk analysis’ it submitted to the U.S. government as recently as last year.  BP claimed that it was
"unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur" and in the event of such an unlikely situation, "due to the distance to shore and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected."  As of today, the oil mass has already reached the Louisiana shoreline and substantial levels of heavy oil contained within a 1,500 square kilometer oil slick is anticipated to wash ashore in Mississippi on Saturday, before reaching Alabama on Sunday, and Florida on Monday.

According to the federal Minerals Management Service, since 2001 there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries, and 858 fires and explosions in the American controlled Gulf of Mexico.   Occupational health and safety management under the previous Bush administration was neutered.  Republican hacks, corporate yes-men, and people who had spent their entire careers fighting OSHA were placed in positions of authority.  Policies were then created to allow industries to set their own standards of compliance.   A culture of indifference to human life and the environment, which was the trademark of the "toxic Texan", became the national standard.

With the actual consequences of Mr. Bush’s deregulatory framework and anti-environment policies becoming clearer, the dunces of the Republican Party, who made "Drill baby drill" their call to arms during the 2008 federal election, have suddenly gone silent on this issue.  The Wasilla whack-job (Ms. Palin) has yet to provide an intelligent response to the catastrophic risk she demanded Americans accept so that they could drive their Hummers and fat-asses to their anti-tax and anti-government Tea Party rallies.

Mr. Obama on the other hand, who during his election campaign vigorously defended the position that no offshore drilling should be permitted on America’s coastlines, reversed himself several weeks earlier and allowed Atlantic drilling to proceed in an attempt to garner the support of Republicans for the passage of a global warming bill.  The hypocrisy and sheer spinelessness of this president to abandon the principles for which he was elected to execute is staggering.  Unlike the daft feces-throwing monkeys of the Republican Party, Mr. Obama promised America he would deliver real change and not simply continue on with the policies of the most hated administration in the history of the nation.

The damage is now done.  Millions of litres of toxic sludge will continue to contaminate the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the shorelines of the Southern states.  Wildlife will die, ecosystems will be destroyed, and the lives and welfare of those people and communities that depend on these commons will be decimated.

Ralph Nader: The Democrats have 'Punked' You!

Since the election of Barack Obama, liberal supporters have become extremely frustrated with him and the Democratic Party. Many have said that the Democrats and Mr. Obama's deference to the corporations and former Bush administration policies that led America to this economic precipice cannot continue. Bill Maher made it clear to America on his HBO show, "This is not what I voted for." Arianna Huffington who was one of Obama's greatest Internet promoters said, "He is demonstrating a preference for compromise and reconciliation even before the fight has been fought." Paul Krugman, makes the point that, "progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of [the] line." While Frank Rich of the NY Times, does not pull his punches and states clearly that he believes that Mr. Obama has "punked" him and liberal America with his bait n' switch policies.

The global economy lies broken and the once imperious financial intuitions that once towered over Battery Park in New York and in London’s Financial District have been reduced to eunuch’s beggaring for public welfare. Corporate criminality has never been more apparent, with the investments of workers and pensioners stolen to feed the addiction of casino-capitalism. And despite the obvious fact that there has hardly been a more auspicious time for transforming the relationship between corporations and the government in the public interest, the Democratic Party and their leader seem paralyzed to confront these Brooks Brothers wearing pirates.

Ralph Nader succinctly describes the current situation in America:

In short, the global corporations want Washington, D.C.; to continue being their massive deregulator and cash cow perpetuating the abandoning of American workers, the pillaging of the American taxpayer and the defrauding of the American consumer.

Forget about corporate law and order to restrain the corporate crime wave. The harmony, bipartisan President Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, have outsmarted themselves. What worked to defeat Hillary Clinton last year has succeeded in splitting the Congressional Democrats into progressives, corporate liberals and Blue Dog Conservatives. Republicans can scarcely believe their luck and are busy exploiting these schisms.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, the number two House Democrat, undermines his Speaker, Nancy Pelosi’s “public option” plan for health insurance. Senator Max Baucus—a closet Republican masquerading as the Democratic Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is working hand-in-glove with right-wing Republicans and the White House to craft a weak “bi-partisan” bill that keeps getting weaker as the corporatist Republicans sniff increasing weakness in the White House.

President Obama, instead of merely fighting Republicans and entrenched corporate interests, has by alienating his base, now forced to manage a two prong internecine conflict within his own ranks. His heralded election machine that dispatched the poorly managed Clinton campaign in the primaries and John McCain in the November finals appears fractured, confused, and slipping erratically into paralysis. Unless he jettisons these useless and spineless corporate Democrats and follows through with his campaign promises for transparent and effective governance, the demise of the American experiment in democratic governance will be finalized.

Tweedledee versus Tweedledum: Democrats vs. Republicans

Does anyone remember why Bill "aka Bubba" Clinton got elected in 1992 the first place?

It could have been the twelve disastrous years under Reagan-Bush that left the country with the largest debt since the Second World War, three recessions, the stock market crash of 1987, $160 Billion spent rescuing the Saving & Loan industry, the post cold-war peace dividend spent invading Panama and Iraq (the first time), or the looming threat of seeing more American jobs being shipped overseas through NAFTA during a harsh economic turn-down. My opinion is that the primary reason, if you exclude that Ross Perot received 18.9% of the vote, was affordable health care for all American citizens.

Americans did not want another free-market dogmatist, they wanted a fresh face to run the affairs of state and provide them with minimal health care coverage, that other great superpowers like Denmark and Australia were able to provide to their own. During his candidacy Clinton heavily promoted and invested in the theme of health care reform. However, after loosing the lower house in '94 to Newt (who names their child after an amphibian?) Gingrich, Clinton switched teams and told everyone, "Don't ask and Don't tell!"

Sixteen years later the Obama administration and USA are in the same conundrum that 'Bubba' was facing in 1993, but worst. Bill Maher states what has been obvious for years, that the Democrats and Republicans who hold power are merely two heads of the same mutant jackass, that has long been ridden by the rapacious lobbyists of K-Street. When the actions of Nicholas Sarkozy, the conservative president of France, is demonstrably more liberal than the policies of Barack Obama, what really then is the most appropriate label for the current American president?

Maher with his classic sarcasm tells:

Every time Obama takes on a major 'progressive' cause there is a major party standing in his way; the Democrats...

When you go to the polls your choice is for the guy who voted for the first bailout or the guy who voted for the next ten...

Shouldn't there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military budget, a party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, legalizing pot, and steep direct taxing of polluters?

...What we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats, because bottom line: Democrats are the new Republicans.