This blog is written by a couple of liberal patriots who aren't quite as pissed off as they were a couple of years ago, but aren't taking anything for granted, either. We share a fierce dedication to the Constitution - the only words ever put to paper worth dying for, and we'll argue it's finer liberal points with anyone.
We exist to remind y'all that America was founded on four boxes:
The Soapbox
The Ballot Box
The Jury Box
The Ammo Box
They should be used in that order. This is our soapbox.
To contact BG or YD, send email to:
WorthyDescendants_at_gmail.com
Your humble bloghostess is proud to be the recipient of not one, but two much-coveted Golden Monkeyfist awards!True Golden Monkeyfist - 2007
***************
Best New SoapBlox - 2008
USDA Prime snark that we wish we had thought up Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, referred to the republican elected officials and candidates who trash the unemployed as lazy, spoiled, drug-addled bums and hobos as the "let them eat want ads" caucus. Well played, Sir.
Sordid and Sad Now that Levi and Bristol are back together and engaged again, the news breaks that the lass Levi was hooking up with - Bristol's (former) BFF - while he and Bristol were split is pregnant - and she thinks that Levi might be the baby-daddy. And, the tabloid press reports, she is extremely embarrassed that she isn't sure who sired the child without a DNA test. Which begs the question...has he ever even been in the same zip code as a female that possesses even a modicum of class or self-respect? Until evidence to the contrary is presented, we are going to go with "No."
GAO exposes State Department vulnerabilities to passport fraud "The Government Accountability Office recently submitted seven obviously fraudulent passport applications to the State Department to test whether any would be spotted by State Department employees. ... State ended up issuing five genuine passports, though at the last minute it managed to recover two in the mail when it realized it was being tested, according to testimony prepared for delivery this afternoon before the homeland security panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ... In one test, the application included both a counterfeit Florida birth certificate and West Virginia driver's license, both using the same fictitious name that was on the application. The application also included a Socal Security number that recently been issued by the Social Security Administration, even though the applicant was listed as a 62-year-old man. And it included a permanent address in West Virginia and a mailing address in Seattle -- another indication of fraud. And yet State issued the passport even though the agency says these were fraud indicators that should have been questioned prior to the issuance of the passport."
The SEC catches up to the Wyly brothers "Billionaire brothers Sam Wyly and Charles Wyly hid $550 million in trading profits by using an "elaborate sham system" of offshore entities, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Thursday. ... The civil suit, following a six-year probe, targets a pair of entrepreneurs in their mid-70s who amassed a fortune over more than four decades through ventures including Michaels arts and crafts stores. ... The SEC said the Wylys used sham trusts and subsidiaries in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands to avoid disclosure of their stakes and sales of stock in public companies where they were directors. In one instance, the brothers traded on insider information about an upcoming sale of a company to make a $31 million profit, the SEC alleged. ... "The cloak of secrecy has been lifted from the complex web of foreign structures used by the Wylys to evade the securities laws," said Lorin L. Reisner, deputy director of the SEC's enforcement division."
Ditto snakes If you catch Salmonella from the frozen mice you buy for your pet snake...no sympathy from us. We'll just tell you to get a dog or a cat like a normal person. And cut your hair and get a job while you're at it. Hippie.
Boxer will highlight Fiorina's extreme (and recent) anti-choice views The republican candidate and failed Hewlett-Packard executive usually sidesteps questions about a woman's right to choose, but during one interview she went for the full wingnut (someone I know didn't have an abortion that doctors recommended and everything was fine, so everyone else will be, too.) Now Planned Parenthood and Boxer are going to beat her senseless with it from now to November.
Gibbs blasted Linbaugh in today's briefing "Told by a reporter that "You had Rush Limbaugh today - today or yesterday - talking Obama Motors again," Gibbs, who doesn't often provide free advertising by taking on his critics by name from the podium, let fire. ... "Look, Rush Limbaugh and others wanted to walk away. Rush Limbaugh and others saw a million people that worked at these factories, that worked at these parts suppliers, that had - that supported communities, and thought we should all just walk away. The president didn't think that walking away from a million jobs in these communities made a lot of economic sense," Gibbs said. ... He was just getting up to speed. ... "We've got auto companies that for the first time since 2004 all showed an operating profit in the first quarter of this year. It's adding jobs. And the money that this administration invested - about $60 billion - we believe we're on the path to recouping all of that. That's a significant story. ... "I'll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year-and-a-half ago and wanted to walk away" from a milion workers, he continued, "explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision." ... Finally, he wrapped it up: "And then you should ask Mr. Limbaugh - I don't know what kind of car he drives, but I bet it's not an F-150."" (Ummm...Mr. Gibbs...One of us drives an F150. It's a Ford. They didn't need bailed out. GM and Chrysler were mismanaged, Ford wasn't.)
We swear, these fuckers are not going to happy until non-christians are literally hunted like game "Mike Grimm, a G.O.P challenger for Mike McMahon's Congressional seat, took in over $200,000 in his last filing. ... But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker. ... The file, labeled "Grimm Jewish Money Q2," for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home. ... "Where is Grimm's money coming from," said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign spokeman. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.""
We have a LATE UPDATE on that last item: McMahon is in full-on damage-control mode tonight, and the campaign aide who highlighted the "Jewish money" that is funding his opponent has already walked the plank.
This simply should not happen in our America. Period.
Missing the point, wasting the FBI's time and failing to address the real problem. "US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has called in the FBI to help with the inquiry into the leaking of more than 90,000 classified military records. The documents, published online on Sunday, give details of the Afghan war. Mr Gates said they were potentially dangerous for US troops and allies, and an "aggressive investigation" would determine how the leaks occurred. The Wikileaks website, which posted the documents, said they had been compiled by a variety of US units in 2004-09. The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world," Mr Gates told reporters on Thursday. He said intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics could "become known to our adversaries" "
We don't get it. We will never get it. "A woman in northern France has admitted killing her eight newborn babies but said her husband knew nothing about it, the prosecutor in the case has said. Dominique Cottrez has been placed under investigation over the deaths, which happened between 1989 and 2006. Her husband has been freed without charge. Mr Cottrez had initially faced investigation for allegedly concealing the bodies and not reporting crimes. Mrs Cottrez, 47, faces charges of the voluntary homicide of the babies. Being placed under investigation is the first stage of criminal proceedings that can lead to charges."
Calling Ray Bradbury "Researchers have identified rocks that they say could contain the fossilised remains of life on early Mars. The team made their discovery in the ancient rocks of Nili Fossae. Their work has revealed that this trench on the dark side of Mars is a "dead ringer" for a region in Australia where some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth has been buried and preserved in mineral form. They report the findings in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The team, led by a scientist from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (Seti) in California, believes that the same "hydrothermal" processes that preserved these markers of life on Earth could have taken place on Mars at Nili Fossae. The rocks there are up to four billion years old, which means they have been around for three-quarters of the history of Mars."
How civil war continues to kill after the shooting stops. "Up to 140 people are feared dead after a boat carrying passengers and goods capsized on a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say. The accident happened on the Kasai river - a tributary of the Congo River - in the western province of Bandundu. Information Minister Lambert Mende told the BBC the boat had been overloaded and 80 people had been confirmed dead. After decades of conflict, DR Congo has few roads or rail links and many people travel on often overloaded vessels."
Stop the Insanity - Vote Yes on Proposition 19! "Police in California say they have seized $1.7bn worth of marijuana plants in the Sierra Nevada mountains. They have also arrested 97 people over the past three weeks, most of them Mexican nationals believed to have ties with Mexican drug cartels. White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said police had found industrial-sized plantations of marijuana. Experts say Mexican cartels are increasingly growing marijuana in the US, rather than smuggling it there. 450 officers from local, state and federal agencies took part in the raids in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California. They found more than a hundred locations where marijuana was being grown illegally. "
We'd be less afraid of people we're paying off, too. That's how protection rackets work. Duh. "Pakistanis are less afraid the country will be taken over by extremists and feel less threatened by the Taliban than last year, research suggests. The Pew Global Attitudes Project poll suggests that in 2009, 69% were very or somewhat worried about extremist groups taking control of Pakistan. In 2010, just 51% of Pakistanis expressed such concerns, Pew found. Meanwhile, nearly six in 10 Pakistanis polled described the US as an enemy and only one in 10 called it a partner. By contrast, more than eight in 10 Pakistanis view China favourably and as a partner."
This is really cool! And as soon as BG's kid gets back from vacation with the laptop with the really good webcam, we'll show you what we mean!
But it snowed last winter! And Al Gore is fat! And he flies on jet-planes! Also! Moscow - not the one in Idaho, the one in Russia, the one Sarah Palin can see from her house - has just experienced it's hottest day ever, with the mercury topping 102 degrees farenheit. At least 20% of the nation's wheat crop has been lost to the drought and hundreds have perished in the heatwave, mostly from drowning after they went swimming in their ambient state of being vodka-sotted.
Thanks BP A toxicologist explains just how truly fucked the Gulf is. (h/t the Punk Patriot)
We love Claire McCaskill when she gets her prosecutor on and gets an indictment and a conviction in the same afternoon. Today she utterly humiliated the "caretakers" at Arlington who misplaced thousands of Veterans' remains. We almost felt sorry for them, until we reminded ourselves what they did. Then we were back to "You go, Girl! Make that fucker cry!"
The Pentagon can point fingers and place blame all it wants...but until it faces the fact that there are a lot of shitbags in leadership positions and start cashiering some of these fuckers who have careers now who wouldn't have gotten five minutes of a recruiters time ten years ago...well, you are going to have problems with stressed troops and suicides. Can we have a DoD research grant now?
A victory for Native American women (Link goes to NPR, text is from the pool report) Here are the comments from the President on the passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act: "Today's passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act is an important step to help the federal government better address the unique public safety challenges that confront tribal communities. The fact is, American Indians and Alaska Natives are victimized by violent crime at far higher rates than Americans as a whole. Native communities have seen increased gang and drug activity, with some tribes experiencing violent crime rates at more than ten times the national average. And one in three Native women will be the victim of rape in her lifetime. ... The federal government's relationship with tribal governments, its obligations under treaty and law, and our values as a nation require that we do more to improve public safety in tribal communities. And this Act will help us achieve that. It will strengthen the relationship between the federal government and tribal governments. It will improve our ability to work with tribal communities in the investigation and prosecution of crime, and it authorizes resources for tribes to fight crime more effectively. While many members helped pass this bill, I especially want to applaud Senators Dorgan, Barrasso and Kyl, and Representatives Herseth Sandlin, Kildee, Cole, Conyers, Scott, Rahall, Simpson and Pastor for their leadership on this issue. I look forward to signing the Act into law."
China faces a looming internal threat: Pissed-off veterans. "China has embarked on an ambitious program to streamline its military, cutting manpower and improving technology. But some demobilized soldiers have fallen through the cracks and have taken to the streets to protest lack of jobs, health care and other benefits. It is a seldom-seen aspect of China's military modernization that has the Chinese government worried. ... Some of the demobilized soldiers can be found milling around a military complaints office in central Beijing. Some are dressed in fatigues and bedecked with medals. They are mostly veterans of China's civil war, the Korean War and China's 1979 border war against Vietnam. Another group includes members of Unit 8023, a secretive corps in charge of China's nuclear weapons tests, some of whom suffer as a result of exposure to radiation."
And finally...
Blast from the past In 1982 James Fallows wrote a column about his new computer. Read it. It reads so...quaint...now, that it makes us want to don a Member's Only jacket, put a lot of product in our hair and go to a "Men at Work" show.
In fact, I could have sworn that I drank to her demise at some point. Now I find out that she is not only still alive but still spewing her particular brand of hateful crazy and endorsing wingnut candidates.
Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly took aim at "unmarried women" at a recent fundraiser and in an interview with TPM, saying that they overwhelmingly support President Obama and are all on welfare. Democrats aim to exploit the comments to pressure the more than 60 Republican candidates who have earned Schlafly's endorsement.
"Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you've got to have big brother government to be your provider," said Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum and infamous for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.
A liberal organization recorded the Schlafly comments at a Troy, Michigan fundraiser Saturday for a Republican congressional candidate, the Detroit Free Press reported. In an interview with TPM this afternoon Schlafly stood by her comments and said Obama is trying to boost welfare rolls to help with his reelection and to help Democrats.
"Yes I said that. It's true, too. All welfare goes to unmarried moms," Schlafly told TPM. "They are trying to line up their constituency for Obama and Democrats against Republican candidates."
Wow. Just...wow.
I liked her better when I thought she was dead.
There are seventy-five candidates that her Eagle Forum has endorsed and/or supported financially. Here's hoping their Democratic opponents locate their spines and beat the hell out of those candidates for being the radicals they have to be to have garnered Schlafly's endorsement.
Senate republicans have done it again. This time they succeeded in blocking a bill that would have increased small business lending by community banks. It hurts small businesses and it keeps them from creating jobs, but that matters not one whit to the republicans in the Senate. They have to make Obama fail, and if they harm their constituents in the process, well fuck those people anyway, they probably voted for the darkie son-of-a-bitch so they have a world of hurt coming for their intransigence in rejecting republican rule in favor of Democratic governance, the bastards.
The bill would create a $30 billion government fund to help community banks increase lending to small businesses, combining it with about $12 billion in tax breaks aimed at small businesses. Democrats say banks should be able to use the lending fund to leverage up to $300 billion in loans to small businesses, helping to loosen tight credit markets.
The fund would be available only to banks with less than $10 billion in assets. Some Republicans, however, likened it to the unpopular bailout of the financial industry.
[ ... ]
Congress has extended unemployment benefits for people who have been out of work for long stretches and passed a measure that gives tax breaks to businesses that hire unemployed workers. But many other initiatives stalled, in part because of concerns they would add to the growing national debt.
Obama lobbied for the small business lending bill during a trip Wednesday to Edison, N.J. But Senate Democrats fell short of the necessary 60 votes Thursday to end a Republican filibuster.
The vote was 58 to 42, with all 41 Republicans voting to continue the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also voted to continue the filibuster, but only as a procedural step that allows him to call up the bill again.
I can't believe that the republicans will continue to get away with this stuff and pay no political price for their venality. I mean, I realize that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but damn...we don't all need guardians for our major decisions...do we?
The single best moment in political TV may have been when Jon Stewart recently did a perfect imitation of Keith Olbermann by way of putting Olbermann in his place (as a friend and fan) for some over-the-top "Special Comment" that Keith had done, I think it was on Senator Scott Brown.
Anyway, the second best moment was when Olbermann ran Stewart's put-down on his own Countdown show, in its entirety, and then when it was over said that Stewart was right. That's when I really knew the difference which separates Keith and Rachel and the whole MSNBC crowd from their opposite numbers over at FOX.
A few days ago Olbermann did a Special Comment on Fox's race-baiting. Watching Glenn Beck on his radio show with his on-air side kick was like watching a couple of dumb high school jocks who'd been put down by the smartest wit in the class try to punch back with clownish ridicule and buffoonery. It was pathetic. And also kind of sad.
Just like the email I just got from the conservative Town Hall Forum a few minutes ago pitching me on a year's subscription to their magazine by featuring their cover story takedown on Olbermann, which they call the "Unhinged Newsman."
Reading their pitch, however, I was struck by how insecure the right wing really is - how unloved and unappreciated they feel -- and how this might explain both their anger and their anti-social politics. They're so unloved they're going to make sure they unlove us first, just like the nerd with all the zits in class who'd been turned down for the prom. And if any of you readers out there have ever spent any time at all around Republican Party politics (as I have) you know exactly what I mean. These tough-talking nerds are everywhere. Karl Rove is one.
Here, for example, is what these over-sensitive war hawks over at the Town Hall Forum have to say about Keith Olbermann:
He has spewed anti-Republican, anti-conservative rhetoric for years.
He's biased, arrogant, ignorant, foul-mouthed, boorish and nasty.
Is he alone in his craziness?
Is his behavior unique to him?
Or does he represent a larger movement on the Left?
Can MSNBC afford to keep broadcasting his lunacy?
He hates, well, everybody in public life who leans to the right and/or has the letter "R" after his name.
He hates average Americans who are obviously too stupid to understand both his brilliance and that of The One.
And, in case you hadn't heard, he really, really hates Fox News.
Why all this focus on the fact that Keith Olbermann doesn't like conservatives? But the Town Hall pitch goes on in this hurt-feeling tone for awhile until it mentions Olbermann's appearance as a guest on Bill Moyers' "Journal" on PBS.
Moyers read from a viewer who wondered how Olbermann could "differentiate his ad hominem attacks from those we see on the other side?"
Olbermann joked, "Well, they're better written." Then he suggested the nastiness "bothers me, too. It's the one criticism that I think is absolutely fair." But Olbermann claimed that "emergency rules apply" under Bush and that it is "so obvious" that historians will document that the Bush era "looked at the way we look now at the presidents and the leaders of this country who rolled back Reconstruction. I think it's that obvious. And I think only under those circumstances would I go this far out on a limb and be this vociferous about it." The Bush administration was "so obviously" like the men who installed segregation in the Solid South.
As Town Hall sums up:
"This underlined why liberals are so reluctant to quibble with Olbermann. In their heart, they think he is right, and his truth hurts. They think his passion was crucial in motivating protest and political organizing to elect Democratic majorities in Congress and then President Obama. Their opinion of conservatives is really that low.
But they, like Olbermann, want to pretend that they believe in fairness -- just not when history is on the line. Isn't it interesting that most liberals who publicly complain about the reckless "food fight" talk shows and the "meanness" of political discourse often skip over the meanness and recklessness of Keith Olbermann?"
So, there it is again. The right wing justifies it's nastiness because liberals like Olbermann are nasty to them because they are nasty to everyone else because they feel unloved and then justify their nastiness because liberals like Olbermann...and round and round and round it goes.
After roughly 25 years on line, not many things on the internet can actually get me to LOL or LMAO but once in a while a real gem... usually involving some well deserved karma... comes along and you just can't help yourself. This is one of those.
As Mr. Niewert so perfectly nailed it on his intro:
That loud PLOP you just heard was Andrew Breitbart crapping a brick at this news:
From the article:
Ousted Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday she will sue a conservative blogger who posted a video edited in a way that made her appear racist.
Sherrod was forced to resign last week as director of rural development in Georgia after Andrew Breitbart posted the edited video online. In the full video, Sherrod, who is black, spoke to a local NAACP group about racial reconciliation and overcoming her initial reluctance to help a white farmer.
Speaking Thursday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Sherrod said she would definitely sue over the video that took her remarks out of context. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has since offered Sherrod a new job in the department. She has not decided whether to accept.
Exactly dead on ma'am. Kick his worthless ass, once and for all. Take the sonofabitch for everything he's got and everything he's ever likely to have, including the domain for that litany of lies, half truths and innuendo he calls a blog. I used to scrape shit off my boots every evening after work that was worth considerably more than Andrew Fricking Breitbart and anything he has to say.
Sherrod said she had not received an apology from Breitbart and no longer wanted one. "He had to know that he was targeting me," she said.
Breitbart did not immediately respond to a call or e-mails seeking comment. He has said he posted the portion of the speech where she expresses reservations about helping the white farmer to prove that racism exists in the NAACP, which had just demanded that the tea party movement renounce any bigoted elements.
Bullshit! The so called news media in this country has been given the right by an out of control federal court system to say anything it damned well wants to. It can lie, slander, libel and/or defame anyone or any group it decides it wants to target and the government is just going to ignore it.
Well, in most cases they're going to ignore it. In this one however... which they SHOULD have ignored... they went into a dithering tizzy and came down on the side of the slanderers and libelers and wound uo making themselves look like the Apple Dumpling gang in Brooks Brothers suits. In other words, this administration is rapidly coming to deserve it's nickname... The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.
The farmer came forward after Sherrod resigned, saying she ended up helping save his farm.
Vilsack and President Barack Obama later called Sherrod to apologize for her hasty ouster. Obama said Thursday that Sherrod "deserves better than what happened last week."
Addressing the National Urban League, he said the full story Sherrod was trying to tell "is exactly the kind of story we need to hear in America."
Obama has acknowledged that people in his administration overreacted without having full information, and says part of the blame lies with a media culture that seeks conflict but not all the facts.
And you've known this... how long, sir?
At the journalists convention, Sherrod was asked what could be done to ensure accurate coverage as conservatives like Breitbart attack the NAACP and other liberal groups.
Sherrod, 62, responded that members of her generation who were in the civil rights movement "tried too much to shield that hurt and pain from younger people. We have to do a better job of helping those individuals who get these positions, in the media, in educational institutions, in the presidency, we have to make sure they understand the history so they can do a better job."
She said Obama is one of those who need a history lesson.
No kidding. When it comes to dealing with people like Breitbart... who does this on a regular basis and in fact has apparently never done much else... at least some of the people who speak for him appear unable to remember what happened last year or six months ago.
More at the link. Once and for all... the man is a congenital liar who will never be compelled to tell the truth when a lie serves his agenda more... which is all the time. You do NOT go off half cocked over anything this cretin says because in the end... as in both the ACORN and Sherrod cases... you wind up with hen fruit dribbling down your chin. Which is probably a large part of the ultimate goal in the first place and definitely the fallback.
This is one classy lady and I hope Andrew Breitbart winds up with her footprint permanently embossed in his worthless ass. Anyone who gives this turd the slightest degree of credibility in anything is an idiot. You understand what I'm saying, Bill O'Reilly?
If you are inclined to look for a deeper reason than rank and cynical opportunism to explain the "Party of No's" across-the-board obstruction of the Obama's agenda, it might be found in what professor A.O. Hirschman calls the "perversity thesis" that is integral to the reactionary Republican Party's worldview, namely: "Any human attempt to improve society only makes matters worse."
We see this perverse idea most clearly at work in the right wing's recent opposition to the extension of unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who've been without a job for 99 weeks or more.
Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky single-handedly tossed millions of unemployed out on the street when he refused to allow a vote on extended jobless benefits to take place, then whined that his selfless act of fiscal rectitude wasn't fully appreciated as it caused him to miss an important U of Kentucky basketball game he'd been looking forward to seeing.
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said the jobless should be cut off because "continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work."
Tea Party favorite Sharon Angel famously said that citizens are being "spoiled" by giving them jobless benefits.
"You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job but it doesn't pay as much," said Angle. "We've put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry."
And who can forget South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer. He thinks he can become the Palmetto State's next governor by likening the unemployed to stray cats.
Said Bauer: "My grandmother told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And what you've got to do is, you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
This concern for the moral fiber of the destitute and the down-on-their-luck is also evident in the right wing's newest obsession: the fact that something like 47% of Americans pay no income tax at all. As a result, low income Americans are unfairly "getting something for nothing," according to people like Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
This theme of the poor getting a free ride has been picking up steam in numerous other right wing media outlets. It all sounds a little strange to hear reliably anti-tax zealots complaining about people not paying taxes until you realize the point is to provoke white middle class anger at minority freeloaders in order to generate public support for cutting taxes even more for all those over-stretched rich people who so obviously need our sympathy.
The Republican reaction to unemployment benefits proves yet again that there are few truly original ideas in history, for as Dr. Hirschman reminds us, the reactionary idea that helping poor people actually hurts them instead has a long, if notorious, pedigree.
The right wing idea that "stuff happens" and we should do nothing to change it may have reached is apogee, says Hirschman, in the 1834 amendments to England's Poor Laws. These changes created a system of workhouses that for a mercifully brief period of time were England's exclusive instrument of public assistance -- and were significant if, for no other reason, than that they produced some of the best-loved literature of the English-Speaking world, specifically Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist.
At the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1795, Great Britain passed the public assistance Speenhamland Act in order to provide a floor under English worker wages as a guarantee to domestic tranquility at a time when Great Britain had other worries on its plate, namely a French madman trying to conquer all of Europe.
But once Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the costs of this social safety net, both financial and (it was alleged) moral, produced a reactionary backlash reflecting the general conservative and counter-revolutionary political climate enveloping Europe at this time.
Critics of public assistance, said Hirschman, "scoffed at the notion that the poor laws were merely a safety net for those who had fallen behind through no fault of their own. Given the human proclivity to idleness, the availability of the assistance, so it was argued, acts as a positive encouragement to sloth and depravity and thus produces poverty instead of reliving it."
As one supporter of this get-tough approach said at the time: "The Poor Laws were intended to prevent mendicants. They have made mendicancy a legal profession. They were established in the spirit of a noble and sublime provision, which contained all the theory of Virtue. They have produced all the consequence of Vice. The poor laws formed to relive the distressed, have been the arch-creator of distress."
As these reactionary attitudes took hold, Hirschman said the workhouse became the instrument by which compassion's perverse side effects would be siphoned from British society.
"To this end, the new arrangements were meant to deter the poor from resorting to public assistance and to stigmatize those who did by imprisoning them in workhouses, compelling them to wear special garb, separating them from their families, cutting them off from communication with the poor outside and, when they died, permitting their bodies to be disposed of for dissection," said Hirschman.
The harsh inhumanity of this new regime, which was exposed by heroes like Dickens, whose 1837 Oliver Twist was published around the same time, soon aroused the moral sympathies of the British people who, in short order, turned away from the workhouse regime and the worldview it represented in horror and disgust.
"I consider that this Act has disgraced the country more than any other upon record," said future Conservative Party Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli of the amended Poor Laws in 1837. "Both a moral crime and a political blunder, it announces to the world that in England poverty is a crime."
Public demonstrations and riots also took place to protest the workhouses, and because of prominent criticisms from public figures like Disraeli and Dickens, the acts were never fully enforced before their eventual repeal.
"It became uncomfortably clear that there were many evils - loss of community, forgoing of common decency, and internal strife - that could be worse than the alleged promotion of idleness, whose elimination had been so single-mindedly pursued," writes Hirschman.
As E.P. Thompson also wrote later: "The Act of 1834 was perhaps the most sustained attempt to impose an ideological dogma, in defiance of the evidence of human needs, in English history."
Yet, if history has one lesson to teach it's that bad ideas never fully die forever and their evil must be re-learned with each succeeding generation.
As Republican opposition to support for the unemployed shows us yet again today, each new age seems consigned to its own heartless tormenters who are confirmed in their belief that the poor must suffer for their own good -- just as each age awaits its own Charles Dickens to help it regain its moral clarity.
It's no secret that I despise George Bush. I have a problem with presidents who tell lies and start wars for no good reason and get a bunch of young men and women killed.
I also have a whole shitload of problems with warrantless wiretapping, Constitutional abrogation and violations of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy...and I have those problems no matter who is president. In fact, I expect shit like this from republicans. Democrats? I'll fucking go to war with them over crap like this because I simply expect better of them. That's why I'm one of them.
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.
But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.
Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL."
Many Internet service providers have resisted the government's demands to turn over electronic records, arguing that surveillance law as written does not allow them to do so, industry lawyers say. One senior administration government official, who would discuss the proposed change only on condition of anonymity, countered that "most" Internet or e-mail providers do turn over such data.
Okay, here's the deal...I know things that you not only don't know, but you never will. The prime specimens with earpieces interviewed my prom date's mother, fergawdsake when my background was checked. A couple of decades later, I sorta paid attention when the same guys debriefed me as I left my job. Especially to the part where they said "and if you tell anyone anything, you'll go to jail for a very long time."
It's an interesting dynamic when both of the halves of a couple is keeping national security secrets from one another because both have knowledge that the other one has no need to know. I have no need to know anything about the nuclear arsenal, and he has no need to know about what we are doing to thwart bioterrorism. On the other hand, I don't know any couple that has more inate trust between the partners than the two of us. It is a peaceful comfort that I can't describe, I can only experience.
Anyway, the fact remains that our national security hinges on keeping secrets that the wider public has no need to know, and ordinary Americans - people like my husband and I who come from a podunk backwater - keep them. Intel is compartmentalized so even those of us who know part don't know all, and the people who keep secrets understand the need for them.
That said...this sort of shit is not what we signed up for.
I didn't agree to keep your damned secrets so you can spy on my neighbors and friends. I agreed to keep your damned secrets to keep this country safe. How the hell does reading my cousin's emails make this country any safer? Her baked beans are the tastiest things this side of Boston, but I bet she would just give the NSA the recipe if they asked, there is really no need to black out the Fourth Amendment to get it.
I spent a lot of time, energy, pixels and outrage on FISA and the trashing thereof during the last administration. I didn't change my civil libertarian stripes just because it's my team carrying the ball now. In fact, it's a supreme insult. We voluntarily gave up any pretense of personal privacy to protect it for you and the rest of the country who didn't strike those bargains. It's rather heartbreaking to discover your sacrifice has been for naught.
During my career in hospital labs, I was frequently a member of the infection control team when the facilities were forward-thinking and had the good sense to include the lab, which is always called on to identify the bugs anyway when inevitable infections do crop up from time to time.
A few years ago on a Saturday afternoon I got a call from the infection control nurse in another facility in the system. She was sending over a sample by courier for a confirmation by the lab at the flagship facility (the one where I worked) that they had MRSA in their NICU.
That call sent my heart to my throat and chills down my spine. Sick newborns and preemies have a tough enough start in life - the last thing they need to battle on top of it is MRSA.
The panic phase lasted about fifteen seconds, then I got pissed, and focused. By late afternoon, the infection control team had been assembled and I gave them the bad news...we not only had a contaminated NICU in the system, we had three sick babies. "We have to stop this in it's tracks. Failure is not an option."
I had that same panicked feeling when I read that funding for AIDS treatment programs in the developing world is in jeopardy because of...wait for it...budget worries.
Now, full disclosure...A decade ago, I was one of the voices concerned with launching the effort to deliver antiretrovirals in the third world. I was worried that the drugs would not be used properly and resistant strains would emerge and make the AIDS problems in sub-Saharan Africa even worse. "How can they take the medications properly when they don't have wristwatches?" I asked anyone who would listen.
I am not proud of the fact that I was firmly on the wrong side of that one, and five million patients proved it.
There's barely enough money to pay for people whose treatment is underway and who will need it for a lifetime. There isn't enough to start treatment for about 5 million more who urgently need it.
Those new concerns about costs dominated the 18th International AIDS Conference, which drew 19,300 participants from 193 countries to Vienna last week.
"If I were to characterize the mood here, I would say it was a combination of rage and panic," said Joanne Carter, director of the anti-poverty group Results and a board member of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The rage is directed at the Obama administration, which many activists say is reneging on a commitment to continue big annual increases in global AIDS spending. The panic arises from the knowledge that in some African countries, patients who want antiretroviral treatment are being turned away and will soon start dying.
"The paradox is that the United States government and other funding partners have decided to either flat-line or reduce their spending just when funding should be ramped up so we could actually win the battle," said Paul Zeitz, director of the Global AIDS Alliance.
U.S. overseas AIDS funding is part of the Global Health Initiative (GHI), the Obama administration's $63 billion, six-year program. The portion devoted to HIV and tuberculosis, an infection to which AIDS patients are particularly prone, is $44 billion. The rest goes to malaria, maternal and child-health programs, and the hard-to-define goal of "health systems strengthening." Although larger than Bush's revolutionary President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Obama's GHI is spread across more agencies. It is less a bullet aimed at the heart of AIDS than a net cast to capture a flock of health problems.
As much as I despise George Bush, I have to give him his props here. He did a good job of countering the spread of HIV/AIDS. In that regard, he was right and Little Miss Know-it-all over here was wrong.
And if the Obama administration doesn't get their shit together and fund the efforts to combat the spread of the disease and bring treatment to the people who need it, they will be as wrong now as I was then. Moreso, even. Because they actually have the power to do something about it.
They have no problem continuing the Bush legacy of warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention, so how about continuing the one thing the stupid son-of-a-bitch got right?
We refuse to even speculate on why something this uniquely evil appears to be a trend. "French police have arrested a couple after finding the bodies of eight newborn babies in a village, officials said. Police were continuing to search with sniffer dogs in Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille in northern France, the officials said. The two in custody are said to be the parents of the children. They are being held on suspicion of concealment of a corpse and the non-reporting of a crime. Forensic teams Residents quoted by AFP said the new owners of a house in the village had called in the police after finding the remains of infants in the garden of their home. Inquiries led to another house in the village where the bodies of more babies were found, the residents added. However, other reports said the remains were found in the house and garden of the same home. The bodies are reported to have been wrapped in plastic bags. Prosecutors are due to hold a news conference about the discovery on Thursday. The BBC's Christian Fraser, in Paris, says France has had a string of cases in recent years in which parents have killed their newborn babies. In March, a mother confessed to killing six of her newborn children and hiding them in the cellar of her house in north-west France."
Public or not, we don't tell Facebook anything our worst enemies don't already know. "Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been harvested and published on the net by a security consultant. Ron Bowles used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user's privacy settings. The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. Mr Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information."
Pakistan's government is our de facto enemy, but its people have our condolences. "An Airbus A321 crashed as it was about to land in the capital Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board. The domestic flight from the southern city of Karachi was operated by the private Pakistani airline Airblue, which has a good safety record. There is no word on the cause of the crash. It happened in heavy monsoon rain and poor visibility. The plane - with 146 passengers and six crew on board - was flying at an extremely low level before crashing into the Margalla hills north of the capital, eyewitnesses said. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani declared Thursday a day of national mourning and ordered flags to fly at half-mast across the country. Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said 115 bodies had been recovered, but bad weather and difficult terrain had hampered recovery efforts."
Out of sight, out of mind - this is very very bad, and was of course the real purpose of the Corexit. "Oil from BP's damaged Gulf of Mexico well is clearing from the sea surface faster than expected, scientists say, 100 days after the disaster began. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said much oil had been "biodegraded by naturally occurring bacteria". But concerns remain about the spill's unseen effects."
Hate to break this to ya, Davey, but Pakistan IS a group that promotes the export of terror. "British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned Pakistan not to have any relationship with groups that "promote the export of terror". He said that he would be raising the issue with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh when they held talks in Delhi on Thursday. Mr Cameron's spokeswoman insisted he was talking about Pakistan as a country, not its government. She said that the main message was for Pakistan to shut "terror groups" down. More stable "We should be very, very clear with Pakistan that we want to see a strong, stable and democratic Pakistan," Mr Cameron told reporters after a speech in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. "We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world." "
Right-wing violence not just American. An 80-year-old woman has died after an explosion at an Orthodox Christian church in southern Ukraine which injured at least eight other people, officials say. The blast in the city of Zaporizhzhya is believed to have been caused by a homemade explosive device. It is not clear who is behind the explosion. It came towards the end of a visit to Ukraine by the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I which has attracted protests by right-wing nationalists. Wednesday saw Orthodox church celebrations in the region of the anniversary of the adoption of Christianity in 988 AD .... Local media said the woman who died was a nun from the Holy Protection of the Virgin church - which belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate."
Arc of justice getting longer all the time. "A suspected former Nazi death camp guard has been charged with taking part in the killing of 430,000 Jews, German prosecutors have said. Samuel Kunz, 88, who has been living near Bonn in western Germany, is also charged with murder over the deaths of another 10 Jews in separate incidents. He is alleged to have been a guard at the Belzec camp in Poland in 1942-43. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Nazi-hunting organisation, puts Mr Kunz as its third-most-wanted Nazi suspect. The retired civil servant's flat was raided by police in January. At the time, prosecutors said Mr Kunz denied being personally involved in any killings. Prosecutors say he was informed of his indictment last week. The BBC's Tristana Moore in Berlin says Mr Kunz has been questioned several times by German investigators but it was only recently that prosecutors stumbled across his name during the trial of another Nazi war crimes suspect, John Demjanjuk. It is alleged that the two men trained at the same SS camp, at Trawniki in Poland."
The immediate proximity of the words "experimental" and "nuclear" makes us very nervous. "The European Union and six member states have reached a deal on the financing and timetable for an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. An explosion in costs had cast a cloud over the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter). The project, which is to be based in Cadarache in southern France, aims to harness the same physical process that fuels the Sun. Additional construction funds will have to come from within the EU's budget. The extra 1.4bn euros will cover a shortfall in building costs in 2012-13."
We're gonna need more popcorn Missouri's disparate collection of Tea Partiers (38 groups boasting about 8600 members) are all singing from the same hymnal in one regard: They are pissed at Teabagger Queen Michele Bachmann for endorsing Roy Blunt in the crowded republican primary field. "The Tea Party is not the Republicans to claim. This is the citizen's movement and we will not stand for any politicians to try to use us for their own political gain," wrote a spokesperson for one of the groups that goes by the name "MID MO 9/12 Patriots." We can't believe the stupidity of elected republicans foolish enough to think they can ride this tiger and not end up inside it. Like we said...we're gonna need more popcorn.
This is not helpful "A new poll indicates Americans have complicated views towards immigrants. ... According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national survey, the vast majority believe that most immigrants are basically good, honest people who are hard-working. However, nearly seven in ten say that immigrants are a burden on the taxpayer, 62 percent think they add to the crime problem, and 59 percent believe they take jobs away from Americans. ... The poll, released Wednesday, asks about all people who have immigrated from other countries in the past ten years, and not just about illegal immigrants in the U.S. ... According to the survey, 45 percent of whites say they have achieved the American Dream, compared to 38 percent of Hispanics and only 23 percent of blacks. Roughly one in five of each racial group says they will never achieve the American Dream."
Brown up by 6 in California We keep hearing that Jerry Brown isn't campaigning. Apparently he doesn't need to too much. Whitman is damaged goods and he is a known quantity. He'll do a good job this time just like he did the last time. What's not to get?
Can the state outsource these little fuckers' punishment to us? "Two Missouri brothers who pounded U.S. college students with unwanted commercial e-mails pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to conspiracy to distribute spam. ... Amir Ahmad Shah, 29, and Osmaan Ahmad Shah, 26, both of Manchester, Mo., each acknowledged using the University of Missouri computer network to send the spam. ... When prosecutors initially charged the brothers in April 2009, they alleged that the conspiracy had sent millions of unwanted messages to students at U.S. colleges and universities. The guilty plea Wednesday was more narrowly drawn, focusing on a single campaign offering digital cameras from December 2004 to February 2005. ... The brothers also admitted using computer software to harvest more than 8 million e-mail addresses for students at the University of Missouri and hundreds of other U.S. colleges and universities."
No one could have possibly seen this coming "Several major coal companies hope to use newly loosened campaign-finance laws to pool their money and defeat Democratic congressional candidates they consider "anti-coal," including U.S. Senate nominee Jack Conway and U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler in Kentucky. ... The companies hope to create a politically active nonprofit under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, so they won't have to publicly disclose their activities - such as advertising - until they file a tax return next year, long after the Nov. 2 election. ... "With the recent Supreme Court ruling, we are in a position to be able to take corporate positions that were not previously available in allowing our voices to be heard," wrote Roger Nicholson, senior vice president and general counsel at International Coal Group of Scott Depot, W.Va., in an undated letter he sent to other coal companies."
Breitbart and Vitter revive the "death panels" idiocy "In one fell swoop today, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) revived the specter of health care death panels, and called into question the FDA's ability to judge the effectiveness of breast cancer medication. ... According to the Associated Press, Vitter slammed the FDA, which voted 12-1 to drop its endorsement of the breast cancer drug Avastin after research showed that its additional positive effects were minimal, but it was associated with increased liver toxicity. Vitter called the decision "sickening" -- but not because the FDA's accelerated approval of the drug in 2007 went against the medical advise of its advisory committee or because women with metastatic breast cancer using the drug were more likely to die. Instead, he compared the FDA's reversal to withholding care for patients whose lives are "not deemed valuable enough." ... This puts Vitter into the same camp as noted pharmaceutical expert Andrew Breitbart, whose website Big Government today lambasted the FDA for "rationing.""
Extending Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans won't create jobs "Blinder's economic advice supports the tax policy of President Obama and the Democrats, who would like to maintain tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans, while letting the cuts for those with incomes above $250,000 expire. Letting the tax cuts lapse is projected to trim approximately $675 billion from the deficit over 10 years, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. ... The GOP, by contrast, is aiming to extend the Bush tax cuts across the board, and has tried to block the billions in deficit spending to extend benefits to the long-term unemployed. ... Blinder said that extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would only exacerbate an ever-increasing income gap. ... "One of the objections a lot of us raised back in 2001 when the Bush cuts were originally enacted was that they were...adding further post-tax income inequality to an economy that was already producing a lot of pre-tax inequality," he said. "I still feel that way. On the other hand, unemployment benefits and food stamps tend to go to people with much much lower incomes [who] need it a lot more, and you get substantially more GDP boost and job creation than if the same amount of money were spent extending tax cuts at the top.""
Ask not for whom the crazy tolls, it tolls for thee, Tom Tancredo "Former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo's rogue bid for governor, already imperiling the GOP's shot at the state's top office, could also dim Republican prospects for knocking off first-term Democratic Rep. Betsy Markey in the 4th Congressional District. ... That's because Tancredo's running on the ticket of the conservative American Constitution Party - a minor third-party ballot line that happens to include a candidate, Doug Aden, running in Markey's district. A statewide campaign that draws attention to Aden's party might give him the kind of lift that would make him a spoiler for Republican state Rep. Cory Gardner's campaign. ... If Tancredo can raise enough money to advertise on television, his message is virtually certain to reach Markey's Fort Collins-area district, which includes part of the Denver media market. And Republicans worry that Tancredo's bombastic political style could also shape the campaign debate in a manner that alienates moderate swing voters across party lines. ... "Not only is it making a mess of the governor's race, he also, through his extreme comments like 'let's bomb Mecca,' has the possibility to cause consternation for Republican candidates in other races ... It could cause the Republican candidates to be drawn into those discussions," Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams said. "The 4th Congressional District is one that it could really affect.""
John Thune and the amazing, staggering, blisteringly stupid #Mathfail "Sen. John Thune (R-SD) -- the fifth highest ranking Republican in the Senate -- has a new plan for lowering deficits, and as you might expect from GOP leadership, it involves zero tax hikes. It does however, involve math and, if his appearance on Fox News last night is any indication, Thune finds math rather difficult. There's really no other way to explain his utter failure to remember the law of diminishing returns when he talked about the benefits of his deficit reduction plan. ... Appearing on Fox News, Thune and host Greta Van Susteren discussed the bill's call for the creation of a Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked with reducing the deficit 10 percent year over year. ... "It would be required to find 10% in savings -- 10% of the deficit in savings every budget cycle," Thune said. ... "So in 10 years we wouldn't have a deficit?" van Sustern asked. ... "Theoretically, yes," Thune replied. "10% Is a floor. Obviously -- you can go beyond that." ... This is what's known in think tank (and Twitter) circles as a #mathfail."
We are so sick of anti-Muslim bigotry we could scream "Rick Lazio, the Republican frontrunner in the primary for New York governor, has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged Democratic nominee and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to a debate...a debate that focuses solely on the controversial plans to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero. ... In a statement released yesterday, Lazio wrote that "the time to debate the Cordoba Mosque proposed to be built on the sacred land at Ground Zero is now."" Would it be assault if we started abducting these morons and tattooing the First Amendment on their foreheads before releasing them otherwise unharmed back into society?
Anne Rice ended a relationship today, and she did it on Facebook "On her official website she posted the following announcement via her facebook feed this afternoon:"I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of ...Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.""
Here is a sad commentary on our media circa 2010...Mark Halperin is today's voice of reason "The three pillars of new media - cable-TV news, the Internet and talk radio (the last an older medium that has been reborn and rebooted in the postmodern period) - were all rising at the time of the Simpson murders, with not only bigger audiences but an ever increasing capacity to set the national media agenda. ... What all three of these media crave is content that is driven by contretemps, gripping video, factual disputes, logistics and compelling dramatic personae. What the Simpson case taught news and entertainment organizations - from the lone pajama-clad blogger to the suited stable of broadcast-network-news presidents - is that such complex, unfolding story lines provide the kind of long-term fodder that fills a news hole of any size, often cheaply. No organization wants to be a minor player in a major story, thus establishing a crude dynamic in which maximum resources are thrown at even the tawdriest detail. ... The Simpson investigation and trial were not explicitly political, but they brought serious questions to the public square and became a cause célèbre for every media outlet. In the Sherrod storm, politics is, of course, directly involved, bringing a patina of legitimacy to the incessant news coverage. ... And that explains why the firing of Sherrod last week paralyzed the Obama Administration and completely overwhelmed coverage of more important matters, such as the President's signing of the financial-regulation law, Washington's debates over how to deal with unemployment, major developments regarding Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq and about a dozen other truly significant stories."
Yo, Sarah Palin...You know how you snow-billies are always saying that you don't give a damn how they do it 'outside?' Apparently there are a lot of folks in the other 49 who feel doubly so about you, and find an endorsement from you a reason the take a second look at candidates they had been inclined to vote for - because your endorsement makes people nervous.
And finally...
We'd set up atheist schools here if we weren't sure they'd be bombed by Jeebus-worshipping christianists. "Atheists could set up their own schools in England under the government's education reforms, Education Secretary Michael Gove has said. Mr Gove said he would be "interested" in proposals from individuals such as atheist Professor Richard Dawkins. Last month Prof Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, said he liked the idea of starting a "free-thinking free school". Under Mr Gove's "free schools" plan, parents, teachers and others will be able to set up their own schools. But Mr Gove said he would not choose such a school for his children. Answering questions from MPs on the Commons education select committee on Wednesday, Mr Gove said: "One of the most striking things that I read recently was a thought from Richard Dawkins that he might want to take advantage of our education legislation to open a new school, which was set up on an explicitly atheist basis."
Ordinarily, a story like this one would have me pushing a CVA and ranting and rearing and chewing on my keyboard but this lady's story deserves something better than that. I probably won't do it justice but I think it's something that people need to know about.
If anyone needs another example of the depths Wall Street... again in the form of the giant insurance conglomerates... is willing to sink in order to profit from the misery and even the deaths of American citizens... I've got your example right here.
The package arrived at Cindy Lohman's home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. It was a thick, 9-inch-by- 12-inch envelope from Prudential Financial Inc., which handles life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Inside was a letter from Prudential about Ryan's $400,000 policy. And there was something else, which looked like a checkbook. The letter told Lohman that the full amount of her payout would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use the benefit.
"You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like," the letter said. In tiny print, in a disclaimer that Lohman says she didn't notice, Prudential disclosed that what it called its Alliance Account was not guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.
Which is your first and in this case, the only clue you're going to get that this money is not in a bank and that little book is not full of bank checks but really, who knows that? And at a time like this, who's going to question a huge, well known Wall Street stalwart like The Prudential? Well, besides me, anyway and I question them BECAUSE they're a huge Wall Street stalwart.
Lohman, 52, left the money untouched for six months after her son's August 2008 death.
"It's like you're paying me off because my child was killed," she says. "It was a consolation prize that I didn't want."
As time went on, she says, she tried to use one of the "checks" to buy a bed, and the salesman rejected it. That happened again this year, she says, when she went to a Target store to purchase a camera on Armed Forces Day, May 15.
Again, these weren't bank checks... I'm actually wondering if ANY retailer would accept them. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.
So what does Prudential gain by misleading this lady into thinking she has a bank account with $400k sitting safe and sound and readily accessible for her use? What else? PROFIT baby, PROFIT!
Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son's life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money -- like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers -- wasn't actually sitting in a bank.
It was being held in Prudential's general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer. Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.
"I'm shocked," says Lohman, breaking into tears as she learns how the Alliance Account works. "It's a betrayal. It saddens me as an American that a company would stoop so low as to make a profit on the death of a soldier. Is there anything lower than that?"
Well... that's a hard question ma'am. A few years ago, I would have said no without blinking an eye. These days, I'm of the mind that there are unplumbed depths of financial depravity that you and I couldn't conceive of in a million years of trying.
But I'm also sure that Wall Street is finding new ways to plumb those depths 24/7 and while this is low down enough to be clear off of most people's personal scale of ethics, there will be something just as bad or worse next week or next month. This is what Wall Street does.
Millions of bereaved Americans have unwittingly been placed in the same position by their insurance companies. The practice of issuing what they call "checkbooks" to survivors, instead of paying them lump sums, extends well beyond the military.
SNIP
In the past decade, these so-called retained-asset accounts have become standard operating procedure in an industry that touches virtually every American: There are more than 300 million active life insurance policies in the U.S., and the industry holds $4.6 trillion in assets, according to the American Council of Life Insurers.
More at the link. This situation affects virtually everyone who holds or is the beneficiary of a life insurance policy, meaning that the insurance companies have made and are making billions of dollars from the deaths of American citizens.
So yes Mrs Lohman, I agree that this is, for many people, a disgusting new low, even for Wall Street... but again, I'm neither surprised by it nor given any reason to think that they won't find a way to exceed even this level of depravity tomorrow.
I go back a few years with Dan, and he has always come through for me like a champ. I honestly can't say enough good things about him or his business. --BG
Show Me Blue Girl's Favorite Missouri Blogs
***************
Best New SoapBlox - 2008
