August 2009 archive

So you can bet this will be completely underreported in the United States, or not at all.

I find it almost humorously ironic that a man who stole an election in the United States then invaded a country where he set up a faux Democracy, and the puppet that he installed has now proceeded to steal his own election.

All the while we spend $133 million dollars a day — $5.5 million bucks an HOUR, 24/7 to have our military in said puppet’s country, loading taxpayer money into Big Corporate’s pockets.  

It’s almost a perfect perpetual-motion machine of corruption.

This from The Toronto Star:

Afghan vote called ‘mockery’

On the videotape, a couple of mooks are shown blithely filling out a slew of ballots for President Hamid Karzai. Tick-mark. Tick-mark. Tick-mark.

Says one to the other: “We should at least include a few for Dr. Abdullah, don’t you think?”

The man in question, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, can’t prevent a bemused chortle from escaping his lips as he watches the video clips, surreptitiously shot, that purport to show brazen vote-rigging by Karzai boosters of both minnow and barracuda variety – from anonymous foot soldiers to the head of the Independent Election Commission in Ghazni province.

It is, indeed, to laugh. It is, perchance, to cry. It might become a matter of vocal citizen demonstration, too, beyond the formal complaints – some 100 – that Team Abdullah has already registered with authorities over alleged fraud in Afghanistan’s national elections.

This presidential vote, the second-ever democratic poll in Afghanistan, but the first organized and mounted by Afghans themselves, is rapidly turning into a wreck.

Preliminary results for last Thursday’s election in Afghanistan have been released by election officials. While initial results put Afghan President Hamid Karzai with a slight 2 percent lead over Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, his nearest rival, results released on Wednesday showed Karzai pulling ahead with 44.8 percent of the vote compared to Abdullah’s 35.1 percent based on returns from 17 percent of the nation’s polling stations.

After the polls closed, the New York Times reported the Afghan election was called a success despite Taliban attacks. “American officials were quick to declare the poll a success – worth the expanding commitment of troops and money to an increasingly unpopular and corruption-plagued government.”

Before the election, Western officials feared the Taliban would completely disrupt the election with violence. The Guardian noted that US and NATO officials were quick to proclaim poll a success despite violence, low turnout, and fears of electoral fraud.  

Among all of his other accomplishments, Ted Kennedy can be remembered since Katrina and the federal flood happened as a legislator who proactively did what he could to help New Orleans’ and the rest of the Gulf Region’s people after the catastrophe.  

All right.  Anastasia P requested that I repost an earlier diary detailing my hopes and suspicions about “health care reform.”  I don’t do reposts; however, I am interested in an investigation of the central theme of that earlier diary, which was to look at health care in the context of a (these days) booming industry: “getting those who can’t pay to pay.”  In this stage of capitalism, it would seem, the big growth industry is in “squeezing blood from turnips,” in which it is imagined that the poor and indebted will pay their creditors whatever is owed them if only the laws requiring them to do so are tough enough, and if the collection agencies are firm and resolute enough in their intentions.

Health insurance reform enters into it.  More below.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

In 1979-1980, Ted Kennedy made his one and only bid for the U.S. Presidency.

I have often wondered why Ted Kennedy did not just hold his fire until 1984, when there would’ve been no Democratic Party Incumbant President standing in his path to first overcome. But despite this, Kennedy did poll very well during 1979. And before he even declared his candidacy seemed to be the “frontrunner” in the race initially by a healthy margin.  That is until he did an TV Interview in 1979 with Roger Mudd of CBS News.

In the interview, Kennedy neither made any “gaffes“, nor did he say say anything remotely as stupid as George W. Bush or Sarah Palin ever did.  But yet the U.S. News Media succeeded anyway in manufacturing a controvesry by declaring and pontificating about how “Kennedy could not answer the simple question of why he wanted to be President.” As the news stories from many sources then ran wild on this meme, and later jokes by various comedians followed, Kennedy’s once promising Campaign, to put a genuine Liberal of true Integrity back into the White House and remake this Country, just evaporated away in a matter of a couple of weeks.  By a few weeks later the polls had completely reversed and the renomination of Jimmy Carter was a foregone conclusion (and the Media was all too happy then to brand Ted Kennedy as “a loser“).

But a closer examination shows that Kennedy merely answered the question in a thoughtful, unhurried, intellectual manner — which had always been the style of the Kennedy brothers in many interview situations. Both John and Robert Kennedy would also often give slow, reflective,  pensive, thoughtful responses to questioners in a variety of casual interview situations.  

Caption This!  Let’s play, okay?  & keep in mind that Pony Party is an Open Thread.  Please DO NOT rec the party.

moar funny pictures

article, by Louis Poyect, via The Unrepentent Marxist:

From an editorial in today’s Washington Post:

TED KENNEDY once said that his own legislative record was one he’d love to run against. A number of people tried, of course, and lost. But then, they weren’t Ted Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy spent 46 years in the Senate hewing pretty steadily to his course while others trimmed or just plain bailed out.

He remained committed to a brand of New Deal and postwar liberalism that, even when it had lost some of its luster and had run up against a conservative tide in politics, still had much to offer the country.