Patricia Williams explains that it matters how the American President speaks,
in Diary of a Mad Law Professor at thenation.com:

Nobel Peace Prize Sparks War

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/williams

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/opinion/30krugman.html?th&emc=th

"The Defining Moment"

"Does anybody really know what's in the bill?", asks Joe.

"Has 'anyone' TRIED to see what's in the bill?" we ask.

This reminds me of the Kerry campaign in 2004.
Even his own supporters complained he wasn't articulating his own
platform effectively enough. I get so sick of the complacency of people
who can't be bothered to lift a finger to research what the info IS,
when in this age of Google, it is ALL there. People get bothered
that the message hasn't been effectively shaped(read "spoon-fed").

[Most of these critics have access to computers and TV news shows.
Use 'em-- and not just the ones you agree with.]

Obama, answering complaints that no one know what's going on,
presents himself on five TV shows in one day plus Letterman the next;
What do we hear? "He's overexposed." Can Bill Maher be right?

While Obama/Biden are considering what to do in Afghanistan,
we think police work, including routing out the top guys("cutting the head off the snake"), mixed with political solutions is the best way to effectively end terrorist movements.

RAND Study on How Terrorism Ends

See below for correction in caps:

Did Obama squander the summer? Maybe. But did Maureen Dowd count Joe Wilson(R-SC)
among racists because she "didn't understand the 'serious' opposition"? No. Nice Try, guys.

It's not a contest which president got called the worst names(besides with G. W. Bush, people called him so many things--it was a cottage industry!-- that a lot of these lazy insults lost their meaning as they were often not preludes to real action):
No prez has ever been called a liar in front of a joint session of Congress.

[Bush was called a liar in 2007 in by Rep. Pete Stark but he apologized IN Congress on the House floor.]
.
Personally I think too big a deal has been made of it, but did he come off racist? Yes. Maureen was quite loathe to, as Morning Joe so unoriginally says, "play the race card",
but she is right-- and Wilson could end this whole firestorm simply by apologizing to Congress...yes, again.

Sung to the tune of "They Just Want You to Be There" from Carly Simon's latest album,
This Kind of Love":

They don't care if the country's scared,
They just want him to fail....

GOP forces Resignation of Green Enerrgy
Jobs Director


They don't mind when the country's not succeeding,
If it's trying to improve and not sure how it will bail,
They just want him to fail."


Seriously, though. I keep hearing on neo-con talk shows like David Gergory's Meet The Press, that Obama hasn't specified where he will find savings for the healthcare plan.
He has thought of many ways to save, one of which involves more prevention and less
pathologizing(simply fixing illness), a theme specified by Howard Dean; another which involves not incentivizing doctors to order unnecessary testing, and not preventing them from doing the necessary ones.
The sort of thing that doesn't get counted by the Congressional Budgeting Office(CBO).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-frank-lipman/true-health-care-reform-1_b_266734.html

Friend of Chris N. prescribes better healthcare

I think the above is is basically enlightening.

Hey, NY Times! The Wall Street Journal is kicking your ass and you publish this?
The WSJ feeds my intellect and emotions a bit,
but The NY Times feeds my soul. So don't lose your soul, NY Times.

The book review in question:

Reefer Madness

This is a classic example of a candidate or a newspaper pretending to be conservative.
Politicos, If you do that, then conservatives will inevitably end up preferring the REAL conservative, not YOU.

Ok, ok, I vented. Now seriously, folks-- and long overdue:

We sympathize deeply with this young woman who had to lock out her late-teen son because he became too violent to live with. But a NY Times writer slanting it that
this young man's behavioral problems were the fault of marijuana alone is making our heads explode, yes! Did anyone think to wonder if he might have had his own problems?
Also the idea that one woman had a bad experience so it should then become policy.

Like with all drugs, people's reactions to them vary widely. I will grant you that even
NORML[which I recommend you catch WAY up with for scientific studies on marijuana, at:

http://www.norml.org

NORML

]Even NORML discourages teen use of marijuana! HOWEVER, by not legalizing and regulating marijuana, the way we do with alcohol[a MUCH more dangerous, violence-inducing substance
(OMG, the relentless number of fatal car crashes alone(!)]
and cigarettes--
We are putting the marijuana right into the hands of these adolescents AND we can be
putting them in very dangerous situations when they go to score the drug, when they
COULD just be FORBIDDEN to buy it from the local drugstore until they are of age.
Recap: Marijuana COULD be more tightly controlled. Hello!

Witness the miracle of hundreds of thousands at Woodstock, who were crowded together on a farm in Bethel but remained peaceful and happy throughout the whole event.
The normally redneck cops of upstate NY learned on the spot not to arrest them because
they saw that it was CROWD CONTROL. If the kids had all been knocking back beers it would've been mayhem.

OK. Back to Lost Child. Again we sympathize deeply with Julie Myerson's tragic tale of a teen pot-smoking gone awry(by the way, don't let your teens take the psychotropic Risperdal either, as it causes suicide in about 17% of them, a significant number). But I think Prozac might be OK. No, pot isn't really for teens. Although I knew many who smoked and seemed to become a lot more successful than me, who did not/does not.

Obama, being very cool, asked the blogosphere what their most burning topic was in
politics today and I believe about 70% said legalization of marijuana.

My hero Howard Dean wasn't too thrilled about this as he thinks the issue of healthcare comes first. The regulation of marijuana IS an element in healthcare(think of the hundreds of thousands with debilitating illnesses that could find relief but are suffering without it). As soon as this healthcare thing is settled, if ever, we MUST face up to and stop the abuses of the Drug War.

The Drug War is functioning right now as an excuse to put black men in jail, breaking up families very painfully and then you see The Wall Street Journal say something like, "Gee! Why do black men leave their families so much? Someone really ought to do something about that!" Granted that phenomenon is(I'm not sure what percentage more or less) about joblessness, exacerbated in the Great Recession.

The Drug War DOES work for those whose income derives from running prisons, which are mushrooming in size and number. It isn't helping anyone else, certainly not the country or the economy at large. Tons of US tax dollars wasted.
Marijuana and Hemp, if legalized could jolt the real economy quite a bit. Especially now,
when the world needs a financial jolt.

I don't blame Obama for not committing political suicide. It could be that the
the Supreme Court might decide and he might just get out of the way, or it might happen state by state. But legalization IS a burning issue and the people have spoken up to Obama that they know it.

Now Columbia's medical website, Go Ask Alice, says marijuana impairs motivation and sex-drive. But is that enough to make an essentially peaceful drug, which no one has ever died from(!!!) illegal? If you want to be peaceful and mindful, should that be illegal?

Go on, Be Yourself, New York Times, like your mother said.

18,000 people die a year from deaths that were medically unnecessary, says a 2004 study,
in Kristof's, "Till Medical Bills Do Us Part". He describes a woman who had to divorce the man
she loved because his growing dementia would've eaten up her and her daughter's savings.

Till Medical Bills Do Us Part

Debate starts at about 8:07 into the show and runs to the end of the show.

All you get after that is "Your moment of Zen". If you like, uou can see the continuation on thedailyshow.com

A Rare End-of-Life Debate That Doesn't Completely Degenerate

Basically the Laffer Curve shows how above a certain tax rate, the money flowing into
the federal government drops off, as no one actually PAID the 90% before Kennedy lowered it
(the rich have CPA's for getting around the law, in spirit, if not by the letter).
So yes, when the income tax rate was 90%, it WAS too high(!) and when Kennedy
cut it to 70%, that was better(if still too high). However raising it from 25% or whatever it is now to 30-33 or even 34% on the highest earners-- not going to make much difference!
So don't be fooled!

I can't believe my eyes at this WSJ Op-Ed headline, "Obama 'Can't Be Trusted' to Handle Numbers'". Can't be trusted? Who just testified before Congress about inappropriate firings of judges? Hello.

Here is the man who is responsible for worse than getting nothing done in W's last eight years, and my only interest in his opinions is re: polls, campaigning and the framing of language. He's not a terrible psychologist, if not with the best intentions. But W over-spent our budget on tax-cuts and war crimes and Obama's "not good with 'numbers'?"
Most Republicans who tried to predict this summer last February have revoked those
predictions from print by now. Obama is not a failure for missing something they also missed. No one knew and still-- no one knows.

Under Murdoch, international news in the WSJ has increased by a lot. I read the European and Asiandigests at 6:00 AM and 2 PM and I keep thinking, "With his more progressive wife, maybe he'll turn this into a real paper." But then I see that the WSJ Editorial page editors, by publishing Karl Rove, are still living in a negative-shadow la-la land.

Is this section even worse than it used to be? I can't tell. What do YOU people think of the WSJ editorials: Same or Worse?

Murdoch did promise to remain a bit hands off of the editors and this may be a form of letting them have free speech(My grandfather was a conservative who allowed the local liberal firebrand editor to publish whatever he wanted). The only problem for us as Democrats is that editorials from the WSJ are highly influential among the the rich and powerful.

At a stockholder meeting, someone asked Paul Gigot why the WSJ was such a reflection of
Dick Cheney's policies. He happily replied, "Well, I like to think WE influence Dick Cheney!"
You know what? There is a grain of truth to that, so I don't think it's as easy as saving your own soul simply by not reading the WSJ, although every day I wonder if I could improve mine by not.

I do think international news has gotten better, and re: business, I can't really comment; although I saw a headline yesterday, "Economists Say We Don't Need
Another Bailout." I thought, "Certainly WSJ-friendly economists don't so."
Could the paper at least keep straight which part is hard news and which is fulmination?

A brilliant conservative commented, "If the over-spending Bush did was wrong, why is
Obama's spending suddenly right?" If the WSJ editorial page didn't brainwash every day,
I wouldn't need to answer this, but:

1) There's spending and there's spending. Bush never raised the money for the Iraq War,
and spent it off the books. Look what he spent it ON. The tax cuts(corporate, CGT, and
income) he put in place didn't anywhere near make up for the money he spent; they never do. If we weren't brainwashed we'd all know this. The fraction of the deficit caused by Bush is the lion's share of today's deficit. You can't press the reset button on Bush. It happened!

3) Where are the indications that inflation is about to happen? Scare-tactics is where.
4) Next: Why you're being fooled when WSJ brings up the Laffer Curve.

Date: Monday, June 29, 2009 11:58 AM Size: 19 KB


June 29, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Betraying the Planet
By PAUL KRUGMAN

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason - treason against the planet.

To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe - a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable - can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there's growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing - that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves - the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation - may become annual or biannual events.

In other words, we're facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?
Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking - if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided - they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn't see people who've thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don't like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it - and they'll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday's debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the scientific community." I'd call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists - a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun's declaration was met with applause.

Given this contempt for hard science, I'm almost reluctant to mention the deniers' dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill's economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.
Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn't it politics as usual?

Yes, it is - and that's why it's unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an "existential threat" to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole - but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it's in their political interest to pretend that there's nothing to worry about. If that's not betrayal, I don't know what is.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

LINK


Basically this is a fascinating and complex NY Times
article which deals pretty even-handedly with
conservative critiques of Obama's handling of
the budget while he tryies to rescue the economy.
It has a surprise ending.

More Health Care Scare

June 11, 2009

Could a public insurance plan spell the end of private insurance companies?

Summary

A new ad from Conservatives for Patients' Rights says that a public health insurance plan now being proposed in Congress "could crush all your other choices, driving them out of existence, resulting in 119 million off their current insurance coverage."

That's misleading. The 119 million figure comes from an analysis of a plan that would mirror Medicare and be open to every individual and business that wanted it. But that's not the type of public plan President Obama has proposed. Nor is such a plan gaining acceptance on Capitol Hill.

The author of the study says that while some have backed the Medicare-like proposal, using the 119 million number "overstates the impact of what now is being considered."

The ad also falsely cites the New York Times as the source of a statement that what's being proposed would leave no consumer choices and "government in control of your health care." The Times didn't say that at all. The newspaper was just quoting claims made by insurance companies and members of Congress.

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site: LINK

FactCheck.org

Cap-and-Trade Cost Inflation

May 28, 2009

Republicans puff up the impact of a cap-and-trade program on the average family's energy costs.

Summary:

Leading Republicans are claiming that President Obama's proposal to curb greenhouse gas emissions would cost households as much as $3,100 per year. The Republican National Committee calls it a "massive national energy tax." But the $3,100 figure is a misrepresentation of both Obama's proposal and the study from which the number is derived.

Republicans say they base their figure on a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But one of the authors says that the GOP's use of the study is "simplistic and misleading" and that it ignores key provisions designed to cushion the impact on consumers. The author puts the true added cost of a cap-and-trade system at closer to $800 a year.

Obama himself once said energy costs would "skyrocket" under his plan, but the GOP's partisan claim of a $3,100 per household cost increase is far higher than figures produced by other studies. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the average cost per household to be between $98 and $140 per year, based on the Democratic cap-and-trade bill working its way through the House. Even the conservative, pro-Republican Heritage Foundation figures the average family would see its energy bill increase by $1,500 a year, less than half what the GOP claims. A Congressional Budget Office expert recently estimated the cost per household at an average of $1,600 a year, but that figure doesn't account for energy rebates Obama has proposed giving to consumers. If the government did use revenue from cap and trade "to pay an equal lump-sum rebate to every household," the CBO expert said, "lower-income households could be better off."


Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site:

LINK

Hello. Thank you, Paul.

The Big Inflation Scare