Sunday news: we're all gonna die edition

It's Sunday! That means there's a decent chance I've read the morning papers (as emailed to me). What do I find today? Death, mayhem, poverty, destruction, and no hope of anything ever getting better, ever. And these newspapers wonder why they're losing business.

Here's a recap:

• The economy = teh suckage.
• Texas will probably continue to be run by a crackpot, who was just endorsed by Sarah Palin. If my left arm was endorsed by Sarah Palin, I'd cut it off.
• The U.S. Senate is a shit show, but maybe Evan Bayh will run for president and save us all.
• If you're in DC and get on the Metro, it could kill you, and won't have any money to send your mother a decent house plant.
• People are stealing from non-profit bookstores that ostensibly raise money to promote literacy programs for poor urban youth.
• The U.S. Senate is still a shit show, but Rahm Emmanuel is keeping Barry O from becoming the next Jimmy Carter, so it's all good.
• The president orders up his robust policy offerings at some bland hoity toity DC restaurant, which explains a lot.

Well now, this was kinda fun. Maybe I'll do it again sometime. ;)

Max Baucus can kiss my pansy ass

This grand non-compromise plan isn't worth the paper it's written on. To paraphrase from The American President, what good is health care reform legislation that does virtually nothing to reform healthcare?

Also, I want more than just some good old fashioned market choice, especially if these ridiculous "you're not insured" taxes are going to be foisted onto people.

Now let me make myself clear: I support healthcare reform. Hell, I support turning the whole healthcare system on it's head, shaking it down, and rebuilding it in Sweden's image. This proposal, however, simply doesn't cut it.

Is there some drive up window wherein I can order 535 legislators with integrity and fortitude?

Amoral healthcare reform bordering on immorality

This article from today's Post pisses me off in about 14,000 different ways. And, as many of you know, I'm not a morning person. The issue here is mandated coverage, particularly for young adults (like me).

As has been known for some time, the plans progressing through the idiot Congress mandate that everyone has healthcare. Excellent. Good idea. It's both true and necessary.

However, since the public option has been scrapped in the name of political expediency and Rush the Addict Limbaugh, this comes down to an unfunded mandate to the taxpayer.

Anybody other than me notice that unemployment is up and incomes are down lately? No? Have you read a newspaper/blog or heard a radio or seen a TV? No? Then you have no business writing or voting on legislation. Now isn't the time for an unfunded mandate to anybody.

Since I try to avoid national domestic issues like the plague on our houses that they are, I don't have any data available that I can readily cite. What I do know is this: more of my friends are unemployed than there used to be. Many of those that are employed scrape buy. If my job didn't provide insurance, I, like many, simply wouldn't have it. A mandate from Congress will not change that reality. And yes, it's great that the Medicaid cap on income would go up to about $14,000 a year. But what about the multitudes that make more than that (even by a few dollars), but don't have access to employer supplemented insurance?

Say you live in DC and make $20,000 per year, and you don't have a car, so living outside the city isn't much of an option. Rent and utilities will likely eat up at least half, if not more, of that income. If you ate cheaply, you could maybe get by on $100 per month, if you have no dependents. Factor in another few hundred in bus fare, etc. Everyone needs to buy clothes periodically, but assume you rely on thrift stores. That all would come to roughly $15,000 of the 20. Now, where exactly will the $200/month for a baseline government mandated insurance plan come from? Yeah, you could do it, but you could save virtually nothing and your budget would have to be planned to the penny, and you couldn't survive any contingencies (say, a month being unemployed). Even a college graduate making roughly $32,000 per year, but say carrying $20,000 in debt, is going to find it phenomenally challenging to buy insurance, regardless of the cost. A tax break is a nice idea, but those usually come once a year, and after a purchase has been made. Where does the cash come from in the meantime?

My social security deduction already goes straight from my payroll to my grandparents, after a quick stopover at the Treasury. That's fine with me, as I like my grandparents. But to force young people to buy insurance to keep insurance companies' costs down as they pay for my parents' coverage isn't really ethical. If I had wanted to pitch in on the repair costs for my stepfather's recent broken ankle, I could've done that on my own.

Without a public option, any healthcare reform bill is immoral, particularly if it shoulders more of the costs onto people with the least means. How about we cut the disgustingly high salaries of healthcare execs, or something more socially equitable? The people that claim a public option would fund abortions or provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants (heaven forfend!) or haul my grandmother out and shoot her (I defy anyone to even try that -- you'll lose) need to shut the hell up. And I've yet to buy the argument that reform is somehow unconstitutional. But the plans as they're taking shape are immoral, and for a looney lefty like me, that's entirely unacceptable.

EDIT: Had I read to the bottom of the Post's daily email before sending my blood pressure through the roof, I would have discovered that at least one senator's views comport well with my own. All we need are 99 more.

I thought she retired

Allow me to just go ahead and jump into the chorus of people laughing at Cindy Sheehan's announcement that she'll (maybe) challenge Nancy Pelosi for her seat in Congress in 2008.

Now let me take a moment to prove my bona fides here. I'm just about as anti-Iraq War as they get, and I'll gladly point out the various reasons why that effort was and is both illegal and unethical. I'm not yet a pacifist, but a Quaker education and a degree in peace have pushed me markedly in that direction. Nevertheless, I have a long-standing (though rarely mentioned) beef with Cindy Sheehan (not that I've ever met her).

Plenty of people have gone on about how she's unqualified for this and that, how she takes overly simplistic positions on incredibly complex subjects, etc. I'll leave those arguments to their merits (or lack thereof).

My thing is this. Cindy Sheehan is far too possessive of the "parent of an Iraq War service personnel killed in action" mantel. I hear her story about her son's service and her grief at his loss and it is truly heartbreaking, and certainly one I empathize with. However, through her things like setting up Camp Casey and naming every soldier and marine that's fallen and claiming that they died in vain, she's disrespecting the memories of those individuals. I won't tell her how she should remember her son or what she should feel about his loss. But she shouldn't go around telling the other parents/loved ones to be enraged. Some parents/spouses/children of deceased Iraq veterans believe that their family's victim in the war died honorably, in an honorable cause. No matter how much Cindy Sheehan, or anyone else, feels about the war and its consequences, absolutely no one has the right to challenge people in their grieving. Sheehan should have respected the wishes of those families who did not want their loved one's names displayed at Camp Casey (and elsewhere) and who did not want to be connected with the message she was conveying. She simply cannot rightly claim ownership over and complete understanding of every single U.S. military death in Iraq or Afghanistan, and her claim to speak for all war-dead parents is totally unfounded. It's painfully disrespectful and frankly rude.

Now my faith in any elected representative is virtually nil, and my trust of them is even less existent. This definitely means I don't really like any of them. Nonetheless, I truly wish Speaker Pelosi the best in a potential campaign against Cindy Sheehan. Besides, I thought Sheehan was supposed to have bowed out of public life by now.

Support UN peacekeeping

Excuse me for a moment while I blather on like an activist.

The time has come for Congress to debate the foreign affairs budget, which of course includes funding to the United Nations, including peace operations. The Better World Campaign and the United Nations Association of the United States of America have teamed up to create a website, the Price of Peace, where you can learn more about peacekeeping and sign a petition to your Congress member asking for continuing support of peace operations.

UN peacekeeping is vital in many countries emerging from conflict, as it provides security and stability and thus allows for the development of peaceful political discourse. Peacekeeping is not without its problems, though on the whole the operations have had significant successes. There are currently over 100,000 peacekeepers stationed worldwide, with many more coming if missions in Darfur and Lebanon reach their authorized strength, as well as talks now underway about a mission in Somalia. The United States doesn't have a particularly stellar record when it comes to meeting its obligation to the peacekeeping budget, even though such missions are vital to American interests abroad.

Take a minute to visit the website and sign the petition, which is now linked in the sidebar here. If you're skeptical or want to learn more about peace operations, I recommend reading an introductory article here, and visiting one of these sites:

Center on International Cooperation: Global Peace Operations
Henry L. Stimson Center: Future of Peace Operations Program
Challenges of Peace Operations Project
Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping

A weekend of bad Africa policy

Yesterday we got the lovely news that there may be a major food crisis for impoverished Zambians unless aid groups get a swift infusion of cash to buy food, which is, admittedly, available. However, the money for such a move is most readily available from the U.S. (or Europe), but U.S. law insists that food aid be purchased in America, not local producers. In spite of shockingly reasonable and appropriate Bush administration proposals to change the law, at least for dire circumstances like this one, Congress under both parties refuses to do so. Their rationale is that the bottom would fall out of corporate America's support for international aid, because they would no longer get rich off it, and we all know the general population doesn't care.

So there's that.

Then today we get the joyous news that the U.S. allowed the Ethiopians to buy military equipment from North Korea, after sanctions against such purchases had been put in place at U.S. insistence. Granted, few countries still produce parts that are compatible with old Soviet tanks, and those that do are probably also vile human rights violators, but, still. This revelation makes the whole War on Terror thing seem even more like the Cold War. In this case, alleged terrorists in Somalia were our enemy, and the Ethiopians didn't like them either, so Ethiopia is our friend and we should give them the leverage to do whatever they need to fight terror. Even if that means violating the very sanctions we wrote. Meanwhile, State Department lackies are gingerly suggesting that Ethiopia find a new supplier, which they've been doing for over a year.

And what caps it all off? Assistant Secretary of State (and official useless mouthpiece) Jendayi Frazer went to Somalia to express support for the recently beleaguered Somali government. She made no mention of the revelation that Somali, Ethiopian, and perhaps also African Union forces committed war crimes during last week's campaign against Islamic Courts loyalists (or, perhaps more precisely, anti-government fighters resisting perceived clan favoritism). I'm pretty sure open messages of support for weak governments by the United States will only make said governments weaker, given the super popularity of the U.S. at present.

State of the Hangover 2007

Madam Speaker, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens,

I begin this address they way it should always begin, with these words:

The state of our hangover is strong!

That said, there is a need to offer some critique as to the state of our Union. After watching the president last night, I must say that I remain unconvinced about basically everything he proposed. The health insurance scheme just came across as confusing and even bizarre, with even the vice president looking uncertain. The talk of balancing the budget should not be taken at only face value. The real source of U.S. growing debt is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which thus far have been financed in non-budget supplemental bills. Thus while there is a deficit in the regular budget, the far greater problem is these security funds which aren't even included in the budget. Yes, we should control earmarks. But we also need to realize that tax cuts to the wealthy probably wasn't the best idea.

Take a moment to worry over immigration. Them Mexicans are coming over faster than the Minute Men can shoot 'em. That's why we're gonna build a big fence to keep them out. The illegals, obviously. And of course terrorists. Terrorists are everywhere. The other domestic issues mentioned I have largely forgotten, as I was drinking pretty fast.

With regard to national security, I cannot reiterate enough the heart of the president's message: Be afraid, be very afraid. Them terr'ists is comin' to get you, your little cute babies with the plump cheeks, and your puppies. In fact, they're going to destroy all the puppies. Kitties too. Be afraid. They're after us. They'll attack us as we sleep, as we refill our SUVs with the shit-tons of fuel that fund their operations, and as we gorge ourselves on massive volumes of corn-product-based fast food items. Be afraid, dammit. That FDR guy, and his little snippit about "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" was obviously, gravely, tragically mistaken.

As for our current military ventures abroad, the president wants you to trust that by continuing to do the exact same thing we've been doing, we will see success. Someday. Hopefully soon. Those sovereign Iraqis need to do what we tell them to. Also, at least there has been some realization that the country is too stretched to blow up Iran or DPRK right now, but that will certainly not stop us from lobbing a few bombs into Somalia every now and again.

In last bits of substance, lets talk about malaria and saving African babies. Look at that tall dude from the big country of Africa who does something decent back in his village. Remember that of course there are no cities in that big country. Just quaint villages. And mosquitos. Basically I'm saying this to get Bill Gates and those Darfur bitches off my back.

And hey, look at all those other brave people who do good things.

And freedom, liberty, and et cetera.

God bless... _____?

The less than loyal opposition responds

Friends, the president is a shit head. He's done a whole lot of wrong. In fact, Senator Webb's not even gonna bother to rebut him. Just send out a friendly reminder that the Senator's son is in Iraq while Jenna and Barbara are terrorizing Latin America. Also, remember George, if you don't lead, we will (and you won't like it).

Are you ready to rumble?

This will just be a brief one. As you probably already know, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) will be delivering the Democratic response to the State of the Union next week. Between watching Speaker Pelosi roll her eyes repeatedly, a whole series of non-ovations, and then a reaction by the guy who basically told Shrub to fuck himself, this oughta take the annual SOTU drinking games to a whole new level of "where the hell is my apartment."

Personally, I think it's good for the country. Yay for democracy in action! And double-yay for that little Constitutional provision that forces the President to do stand-up for Congress once a year!

New Congress, new problems

As proof of Pat Robertson's impending rain of hellfire upon the United States of Gay Communist Democrats, I just saw a completely white squirrel running around on the sidewalk across the street. No, this wasn't a cat. It totally moved like a squirrel. Unless it was a squir-cat, which would be incredibly worse.

But back to the news. Nancy Pelosi has been sworn in and since she's ruled out impeachment, is plotting the "plane crash" of Bush and Cheney so she'll usurp Hillary as first woman president. Observe this picture from the NYT first day of Congress gallery:The caption for this should totally be Charlton Heston's old line "from my cold, dead hands!"

Meanwhile in the Senate, new majority leader Harry Reid was completely ignored. Probably because Senator Clinton's husband showed up, and promptly threatened Dick Cheney with a nice, clean, "surgical" tactical bombing campaign, right in the pacemaker. Again from the NYT gallery: "Listen bitch, if you don't straighten up, my wife is gonna nail your ass to the wall. You and your little Bush dog too."

So there you have it folks. Our bi-annual Come to Jesus Meeting on how to be civil with each other. The White House is so ready for the bipartisanship, that they're already casting aside dead weight, intelligent, foreign and domestic.

The politics of disgust

Unfortunately, it's almost time for an election. This means all forms of media (the term airwaves is no longer sufficient) are riddled with the most ridiculous and insane methods of scum-sucking mudslinging that the English language (and sometimes Spanish) can sustain. There are some particularly flashy examples, but I'll let you find those on your own. More up my alley is the creative analysis of all this garbage found mostly on the internet.

One embarrassment is that the British (via BBC Magazine), known for their own mad dirt digging skills, have dubbed our current election season particularly spooky.

I suppose there was a time when candidates asked people to vote for them because they shared a political philosophy. I suppose that time predates modern democracy.

Now, it's vote for me because I'm not a paedophile, or a drunk, or a mistress-choking adulterer, or a moron - all of which members of Congress have been accused of, with varying degrees of veracity, in the last month.

As Mark Twain once said, there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.

I certainly agree with the author, and I especially dig Mark Twain's lovely addition. It seems about accurate, and in spite of my belief that the "mistress-choking adulterers" will probably lose, I'm not terribly confident that anyone more decent will when.

But then the president and his former challenger get involved, and it gets worse. From NYT:

When the president of the United States gleefully bathes in the muck to divide Americans into those who love their country and those who don’t, it is destructive to the fabric of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

I feel like that about sums it up. All fear, all lies, all the time. I really wish "freedom from fear" had been written into the Constitution. Maybe that would make campaigning a little nicer.

Is civility too much to ask for? Or do I have to spend my life learning about who fucked whose corrupt, gay, illegitimate pet monkey?

I love a good CRS report

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has issued an updated copy of its report, Intelligence Issues for Congress.

Let's all pause now to think about the insane humour found in that statement.

Intelligence? Congress? Yes, there are issues in Congress all right. Intelligence is not one of them. My number 1 intelligence issue for Congress is quite simple.

The entire Congress lacks intelligence.

That's all I've got. And no, I'm not bitter.

An open letter to the United States Congress

Honorable Members of Congress,

I must respectfully express my intense disappointment in your collective actions lately. Today's vote in the Senate over whether or not to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning is simply another exercise in legislative frivolity. Recent votes on whether or not to amend the Constitution to ban "gay marriage" are of a similar vein.

This nation faces real problems. Economists point out that another recession is looming. The Federal budget is absolutely out of control, running record deficits. Also, there is the not so small matter of running two wars simultaneously. Finally, the current Administration has engaged in at least two domestic surveilance programs on questionable legal grounds and without appropriate levels of oversight. To waste valuable time and money debating ridiculous attempts to amend the Constitution to meet with every shift of the political tide is insulting not only to the American people, but to the Constitution itself.

These pathetic grandstanding exercises must cease. There is a reason that the American public has so little faith in either party to effectively lead the nation. Please stop this foolishness and return to real work.

Sincerely yours,

Jason A. Terry
Disenfranchised resident of the District of Columbia

A more secure America

Yesterday the US Capitol and surrounding buildings were locked down due to suspected gunshots in the parking garage of the Rayburn House Office Building. It was later revealed that Rep. Jim Saxton (R - New Jersey) had called in the noise, saying it sounded like a 9mm handgun had gone off. The representative was so specifice in his claim because he grew up with guns (easy enough to understand) and served for 18 years on the House Armed Services Committee (what?).

Um.... If anyone knows when the last time somebody actually fired a gun in a hearing before the Armed Services Committee, please let me know. Honestly, I don't think that committee service makes one qualified to indentify weaponry, at least not by their sounds.

Turns out that it was really a pneumatic hammer that made the noise and that the massive shut down only caused a bunch of House staffers to get hungry.

That's really all I have to say.