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Big Money and Ploitics

Big Money will tend to disintermediate candidates from the citizens of their locales.

May One – Rerun/Recycled/New President/FooledAgain

A reminder that May 1 is the International Worker’s Day and early American labor rights protesters initiated it. It’s an American tradition – not a Communist tradition. And it’s a pagan tradition from the dawn of time.

I hope you all had a great May Day. As I post this it’s still May 1 from the CDT zone westward. For those who saw the original post, you can just skip it or get refreshed. For those who haven’t seen it, it has some interesting background on the history of the day.

Herewith, a recycled essay:

May 1.

A lot of Americans have apparently been brainwashed during their formative years. Especially the crowd over at the site that shall not be named. The vast majority associate the first day of the month of May as a Soviet Communist celebration day. Then again a sizable number of Uhmericans think Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. Oh, and the wiretapping started after 9/11 and not like late February or early March of 2001.

May first was a holiday before there was a May. It’s a cross-quarter day. That means it falls about halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Back before keyboards, laser mice and high-speed internet connections people used to notice these things. The only thing that emitted light, besides fire, was in the sky. You can check out the sky anytime. Just click here. Cool, huh? And you didn’t have to let go of your mouse to do it.

So back in the days of stone knives and bearskins, and I’m not talking about the Star Trek episode where Spock and McCoy have to build a time-machine thingie with 1930s tech, or even the dark ages of eight bit processors, RAM limits of 65536 bytes and machine code, I’m talking real stone and real bear. Hell, sabre-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth times. Back when chipped flint was high-tech. In the time of neo-pagans (not to be confused with the neopaganists of today).

Together with the solstices and equinoxes (Yule, Ostara, Midsummer, and Mabon), these form the eight solar holidays in the neopagan wheel of the year. They are often celebrated on the evening before the listed date, since traditionally the new day was considered to begin at sunset rather than at midnight.

Festival name Date Sun’s Position

Samhain 1 Nov (alt. 5-10 Nov)

Imbolc 2 Feb (alt. 2-7 Feb)

Beltane 1 May (alt. 4-10 May)

Lughnasadh 1 Aug (alt. 3-10 Aug)

There are Christian and secular holidays that correspond roughly with each of these four, and some argue that historically they originated as adaptations of the pagan holidays, although the matter is not agreed upon. The corresponding holidays are:

   * St.Brigids Day (1 Feb), Groundhog Day (2 Feb), and Candlemas (2 or 15 Feb)

   * Walpurgis Night (30 Apr) and May Day (1 May)

   * Lammas (1 Aug)

   * Halloween (31 Oct), All Saints (1 Nov), and All Souls’ Day (2 Nov)

Groundhog Day is celebrated in North America. It is said that if a groundhog comes out of his hole on 2 February and sees his shadow (that is, if the weather is good), there will be six more weeks of winter. February 2nd marks the end of the short days of winter. Because average temperatures lag behind day length by several weeks, it is (hopefully) the beginning of the end of winter cold.

It’s been Groundhog Day in Iraq for five seven years now. But who’s counting?

UPDATE: we’ve been lobbing explosives into Afghanistan since Clinton’s time. The definition of insanity is repeating the same act and expecting a different result. Our MIC PWOT is insane – but it keeps their funding flowing while we lose our jobs and homes.

It’s 2010 now and nothing has really changed that much, has it? I hope you enjoyed this May Day. It’s a day for Working Class Heroes.

There’s more:

Joe Wilson (R – SC) needs to resign

Rep. Joe Wilson violated the code of ethics of the Congress. He humiliated both himself, the Republican party (which is pretty hard to top these days) and the State of South Carolina – which seems to be a collective state of embarrassment to the GOP.

This comes via a TPM link:

Parliamentary Outreach Program

   RULES OF DECORUM & DEBATE IN THE HOUSE

   MEMBERS MUST:

       * Address themselves solely and directly to the Chair. They may not address other Members, individuals in the gallery, or persons who might be observing through the media.

       * Refer to Members by state, not by name.

       * Avoid characterizing another Member’s personal intent or motives and discussing personalities.

       * Refrain from speaking disrespectfully of the Speaker, other Members, the President or Vice President.

       * Refrain from referring to the official conduct of other Members where such conduct is not under consideration by way of a report of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct or as a question of the privilege of the House.

       * Refrain from referring to the specific votes of particular Senators.

       * Refrain from using profane or vulgar language.

       * Avoid walking in the well when a Member is speaking.

       * Ensure that all handouts distributed on the floor or adjacent rooms comport with the rules of propriety for spoken words, and that all handouts bear the name of the authorizing Member.

       * Refrain from eating, smoking, or using electronic equipment, including cellular phones or lap top computers, on the floor.

       * Wear appropriate business attire.

   NOTE — Debate which violates the rules of decorum may result in a Member’s words being taken down.

   FLOOR ACCESS RULES:

       * Former Members are prohibited from being on the floor (including the Speaker’s Lobby and cloakrooms) if any matter in which they have a personal or pecuniary interest or are employed or retained as a lobbyist is pending before the House. Matters are considered pending once full or subcommittee hearings have been held, or once a bill or resolution has been called up by a full or subcommittee.

       * Committee staff are permitted on the floor only during the consideration of measures reported from their committees. A maximum of five committee staff (for the majority and minority) is permitted.

       * Personal staff are not permitted on the floor of the House except when their Member has an amendment actually pending under the five-minute rule. A Member offering an amendment under the five-minute rule may be accompanied by one personal staff Member.

       * Staff are not permitted to pass out literature or otherwise attempt to influence Members or their votes.

The (Josh) Marshall Plan; today is D-Day

Bill Moyers ended last Friday’s hour with an impassioned plea to Barry Obama. Health care is not an option. It is a requirement. Bill suggested going witha an idea that Josh over at TPM put forward: Offer Medicare to evryone under 65. You’d have to pay for it. It wouldn’t be impossible to figure out a subsidy schedule for those who couldn’t afford to pay. Every American understands Medicare. The problem is most Americans are too dumb to understand that Medicare is government health care. And it works.

It’s almost too simple, too obvious and too effective to implement.

1-202-456-1111. That’d be the WH switchboard. Call it.

Call your rep at their district offices and their DC offices. You can google them. Same goes for your senators – or senator in my case; Teddy’s passed through the veil.

Fax them. The paper industry will love you for that one.

E-mail them and be sure to ask for a response.

If you have extra time then bombard the hold-outs not in your state or district. Google a business in their district and use that address and “Ima Madzhell”. We need a firestorm to cdounteract the August mind share the wingnuts got with their town halls and death panels.

Today is the first work day after the last big summer weekend. The elected people and the K St things will all be back in DC.

The real battle begins today. This is the only chance you will ever get in your lifetime for universal health care. It’s now or never and it begins today.

UHC vs UHC, my story

I’ve finally getting some late season head-way on my organic garden. I was pretty much out of it from the end of April to the beginning of July with pneumonia. Add in underlying lifelong asthma and it really slows you down. Today’s the 25th and I’ve had a full eighteen days in a row of health. It feels good.

The increased garden work has allowed me time to follow up on some blatant fraud being committed on me, Jordan Hospital (Plymouth, MA) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston). United Health Care is committing clear and open fraud in refusing to honor their contract with the hospitals and me and my wife’s employer (our health care insurance source).

A big H/T to D Wreck for the post a few days ago on UHC, the Heritage Foundation, the Lewin Group Study and Ingenix. I had no idea how incestuous the corruption circle can be. I’ve been on the phone to my congressman’s office four times this week wrt the Universal health Care bill. The following is a letter to William Delahunt (D-MA) with some short stories of my plight (only a very small part of it wrt UHC) and some observations from past managerial experience a IBM/Lotus and a look at the opportuinty cost to our national productivity and GDP that is lost to time spet dealing with these intentional fraud artists who claim to be honest corporations offering reasonable health care coverage at competitive prices.

The lies and corruption are beyond comprehension. The letter follows after the jump. Feel free to cut and paste from it, forward it or cross-post it. It is Now or NEVER. I hope you are all doing what you can this week before the bozos go home for vacation. Also, track down any pubic appearances they make in August and be sure to show up and let them know just how you feel. Call their local offices and ask for some face time. Remember, they work for you. They are the paid help. You are the boss. Don’t let them intimidate you.

Change harder! Yell louder! Get right up in their faces! Make it happen! Do not wait for someone else to do this for you! Get off your butts!

URGENT: Single Payer Day – UHC and Single Payer – Today is the day, folks

Woke up to an e-mail from change.org. A petition request to protest UHC. United Health Care for those who have not had the misfortune to cross paths with them. They asked for a personal comment and here is mine:


It’s no coincidence that your e-mail arrived in my inbox this morning. It is raining today and I’ a small-plot organic farmer so I have some inside time today. This Tue morn is dedicated to doing battle with UHC and the idiots who make its policies.

Those policies are designed to cheat the members who pay big money for their premiums. We get our UHC through my wife’s employment at Home Depot. I am disabled and we get by on her $22k a year but mostly we need that job just for the health insurance.

UHC are masters at mis-billing, avoidance of contract fulfillment and general outright fraud. I have friends who are doctors and their side of the story is even worse than mine as a poor patient.

I will lose an otherwise productive inside day spending it on the phone, delving the depths of incomprehensible automated telephone voice mail menus, only to find myself at the wrong department.

If by some stroke of luck I find a human being, I may be transferred to the right department – and disconnected while waiting five minutes on hold. Then I will start all over again until I get through.

Some of today’s issues are interesting. My wife took family leave to tend to her dying mother last year. We paid all of our co-pays on time. But somehow I disappeared from the rolls for about two weeks during the transition back to full-time post-maternal-death. Instead of being charged $50 – $15- co-pays, I am being charged in the hundreds for procedures that should have been covered.

Your prayers for my patience are appreciated. The problem is not the underpaid, overworked employee on the other end of the phone who bears the brunt of the collective anger. Pray for them. They are ou. The problem is in the executive and upper managerial suites, the board, and the Street. All compensation flows to the top these days. All these greed-heads want is to make their quarterly numbers thereby triggering their bonuses. All else means nothing.

These people have no humanity. They are lying, extorting and bribing their asses off today to kill single payer health care. Please join in, call your congressman and help get this done right. It is NOW or NEVER on health care reform. Our time has come. Shame on us if we let it slip by.

God bless you all.

Nano essay on Cat/Yusuf

Let me start by saying I love Cat Steven’s music. He was/is one of the spiritual lights of my life. He once sat right in front of me at Harvard Performing Arts center to watch our local lady, Bonnie, do the opening set before his show. I was in awe.

One of the primary spiritual threads that informs my being is Sufi Islam. I highly recommend looking into it if you haven’t read any yet. Idries Shah is an excellent source of many books. Caravan of Dreams is my favorite. Sufi Islam is a love supreme by another culture.

Here’s Wiki on Yusuf:

Yusuf Islam (born Steven Demetre Georgiou, 21 July 1948),[1] best known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British musician of Greek Cypriot and Swedish ancestry. He is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist and prominent convert to Islam.

As Cat Stevens, he has sold over 60 million albums around the world since the late 1960s. His albums Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat were both certified as Triple Platinum by the RIAA in the United States; his album Catch Bull at Four sold half a million copies in the first two weeks of release alone, and was Billboard’s number-one LP for three consecutive weeks. He has also earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in consecutive years, for “The First Cut Is the Deepest”, which has been a hit single for four different artists.

Stevens converted to Islam at the height of his fame in December, 1977,[2] and adopted his Muslim name, Yusuf Islam, the following year. In 1979 he auctioned all his guitars away for charity[3] and left his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He has been given several awards for his work in promoting peace in the world, including 2003’s World Award, the 2004 Man for Peace Award and the 2007 Mediterranean Prize for Peace. In 2006, he returned to pop music, with his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, entitled An Other Cup. He now goes by the single name Yusuf

Awesome human being.

My problem with Yusuf:


Salman Rushdie controversy

Main article: Cat Stevens’ comments about Salman Rushdie

The singer attracted controversy in 1989, during an address to students at London’s Kingston University, where he was asked about the fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie. Newspapers quickly interpreted his response as support for the fatwa, but he released a statement the following day which said that he had not been supporting vigilantism, and was merely explaining the legal Islamic punishment for blasphemy. In a BBC interview, he displayed a newspaper clipping from that time period, which quotes from his statement. Subsequent comments made by him in 1989 on a British television program were also seen as being in support of the fatwa, but in an extensive statement in the FAQ section of his web site, [46] he states that he was joking and that the show was improperly edited. In the years since these comments, he has strongly denied ever calling for the death of Rushdie or supporting the fatwa. [3][40]

Apparently, I only caught the first two to three days of the news cycle on that one. My impression was that he agreed with the “legal Islamic punishment for blasphemy” – death. I tuned him out immediately on hearing that news update. It saddened me greatly that someone whose work I had admired so much had embraced hard-lined dogma.

I’m glad to discover that I’ve been wrongly seeing the man in that light.

May One – Rerun/Recycled/New President/FooledAgain

Reminder more or less that May 1 is the International Worker’s Day and early American labor rights protesters initiated it. It’s an American tradition – not a Communist tradition. And it’s a pagan tradition from the dawn of time.

I hope you all had a great May Day. As I post this it’s still May 1 from the CDT zone westward. For those who saw the original post, you can just skip it or get refreshed. For those who haven’t seen it, it has some interesting background on the history of the day.

Herewith, a recycled essay:

May 1.

A lot of Americans have apparently been brainwashed during their formative years. Especially the crowd over at the site that shall not be named. The vast majority associate the first day of the month of May as a Soviet Communist celebration day. Then again a sizable number of Uhmericans think Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. Oh, and the wiretapping started after 9/11 and not like late February or early March of 2001.

May first was a holiday before there was a May. It’s a cross-quarter day. That means it falls about halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Back before keyboards, laser mice and high-speed internet connections people used to notice these things. The only thing that emitted light, besides fire, was in the sky. You can check out the sky anytime. Just click here. Cool, huh? And you didn’t have to let go of your mouse to do it.

So back in the days of stone knives and bearskins, and I’m not talking about the Star Trek episode where Spock and McCoy have to build a time-machine thingie with 1930s tech, or even the dark ages of eight bit processors, RAM limits of 65536 bytes and machine code, I’m talking real stone and real bear. Hell, sabre-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth times. Back when chipped flint was high-tech. In the time of neo-pagans (not to be confused with the neopaganists of today).

Together with the solstices and equinoxes (Yule, Ostara, Midsummer, and Mabon), these form the eight solar holidays in the neopagan wheel of the year. They are often celebrated on the evening before the listed date, since traditionally the new day was considered to begin at sunset rather than at midnight.

Festival name Date Sun’s Position

Samhain 1 Nov (alt. 5-10 Nov) ? 15° ?

Imbolc 2 Feb (alt. 2-7 Feb) ? 15° ?

Beltane 1 May (alt. 4-10 May) ? 15° ?

Lughnasadh 1 Aug (alt. 3-10 Aug) ? 15° ?

There are Christian and secular holidays that correspond roughly with each of these four, and some argue that historically they originated as adaptations of the pagan holidays, although the matter is not agreed upon. The corresponding holidays are:

   * St.Brigids Day (1 Feb), Groundhog Day (2 Feb), and Candlemas (2 or 15 Feb)

   * Walpurgis Night (30 Apr) and May Day (1 May)

   * Lammas (1 Aug)

   * Halloween (31 Oct), All Saints (1 Nov), and All Souls’ Day (2 Nov)

Groundhog Day is celebrated in North America. It is said that if a groundhog comes out of his hole on 2 February and sees his shadow (that is, if the weather is good), there will be six more weeks of winter. February 2nd marks the end of the short days of winter. Because average temperatures lag behind day length by several weeks, it is (hopefully) the beginning of the end of winter cold.

It’s been Groundhog Day in Iraq for five seven years now. But who’s counting?

UPDATE: we’ve been lobbing explosives into Afghanistan since Clinton’s time. The definition of insanity is repeating the same act and expecting a different result. Our MIC PWOT is insane – but it keeps their funding flowing while we lose our jobs and homes.

It’s 2010 now and nothing has really changed that much, has it? I hope you enjoyed this May Day. It’s a day for Working Class Heroes.

There’s more:

Nano-Essay: CNN invents Hello! journalism

NEWS ALERT!!!

CNN reports that (OMG) Poor Latinos are victims of abuse nationwide.

When did this happen, how did this happen? Apparently it’s been going on right under our noses all the time. Why didn’t we notice it? OMG!

On another note: people are actually getting paid real money for reporting this stuff as breaking news.

I’ll admit to having been a very active participant in the 60s and early 70s and I didn’t tail off until Jerry died. But what passes for reality these days is getting way strange. It’s all of a sudden news on Earth Day 2009 that poor Latinos are getting abused? Did I miss something some where? Poor people of all sizes. shapes, colors, races, ethnicities, denominations and flavors have been getting abused since time began! I mean like, WTF!!!

There was a Jewish kid who showed up about 2000 years ago to point out the obvious. That didn’t turn out too well for him personally. But now we have CNN here to tell everyone on the planet that poor Latinos are getting abused. Thank God someone’s finally noticed.

I think reality just jumped the snark.

My idea of a vent hole at the moment is Kiluaea up Dick Cheney’s ass.

William Randolph Hearst invented Yellow Journalism when he ginned up the Spanish-American War just to sell newspapers. They forgot to teach you that in high school. Dick used Fox, CNN and all the networks to gin up the Iraq War for his oil buddies. And now CNN invents Hello! Journalism by turning the obvious into breaking news.

Great planet. I love the waves and the fish. Got some tuna steaks and steamed spinach to ingest.

I hope you all had a great Earth Day. It was a hell of a planet.

Shanti.

Breaking News – Truth is Stranger than Fiction

This is just a quick one. I saw on the news that Dick Cheney strained his back while humping a moving box. Right! Apparently he strained it so bad that he’ll actually be in a wheelchair for (later today!) the inauguration. I hope he wears black leather gloves just like Peter Sellers did in Dr. Strangelove. This reality thing is getting too weird.

Come to think of it, I hope the Secret Service folks have that wheelchair sniffed for C4. Enjoy the video.

In nine hours Joe Biden will be sworn in. And fifteen minutes later it’ll be President Obama.

Thank you, God.

International Criminal Court – second of an unending series

Since Bob Fertik’s question got totally ignored then we can try another approach with the same potential result. Ask Obama to join the ICC. Let the world do what our fearful leaders won’t.

I just found this after hunting around change.gov a little bit. Added my $0.02 comment there.


United States joining the International Criminal Court

With all due respect President Obama,

If you are unwilling to prosecute the Bush Administration for war crimes in order to hold accountability and restore our moral standing in the world, then will you please have the United States join the International Criminal Court ?  This will ensure that you are sincere in being held accountable, ensure future administrations will not be able to repeat war crimes without being held accountable, and will restore our moral standing in the world.

1 Comment  »  Posted by Barbara D. on 1/16/2009 7:14 PM

Comments

Add Your Comment

RUKind

1/16/2009 7:18 PM

I fully and enthusiastically support this proposition. Please join the ICC. If you don’t have the simple decency to pursue the war crimes of the previous administration then let the American people have the freedom to ask the International Court for intervention.

Maybe Buhdy and Bob can get something going again along this path. We can’t stop. We can’t allow our voices to be silenced and ignored. Keep posting. Keep pushing. They may ignore ripples and small waves. They cannot ignore a tsunami. We need to be the tsunami.

Satya.

ICC Now

All roads lead to the Rome Statute.

From Wiki:

Following years of negotiations aimed at establishing a permanent international tribunal to punish individuals who commit genocide and other serious international crimes, the United Nations General Assembly convened a five-week diplomatic conference in Rome in June 1998 “to finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment of an international criminal court”.[7][8] On July 17, 1998, the Rome Statute was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining.[5] The seven countries that voted against the treaty were Iraq, Israel, Libya, the People’s Republic of China, Qatar, the United States, and Yemen.[5]

Article 126 of the statute provided that it would enter into force shortly after the number of states that had ratified it reached sixty.[3] This happened on April 11, 2002, when ten countries ratified the statute at the same time at a special ceremony held at the United Nations headquarters in New York.[9] The treaty entered into force on July 1, 2002;[9] the ICC can only prosecute crimes committed on or after that date.[10]

McClatchy has a great article that is pretty much a must-read summary of the consensus of where we are now on the subject of “War Crimes“.

Emboldened by a Democratic win of the White House, civil libertarians and human rights groups want the incoming Obama administration to investigate whether the Bush administration committed war crimes. They don’t just want low-level CIA interrogators, either. They want President George W. Bush on down.

There’s a little problem here, though.

Without wider support, the campaign to haul top administration officials before an American court is likely to stall.

In the end, Bush administration critics might have more success by digging out the truth about what happened and who was responsible, rather than assigning criminal liability, and letting the court of public opinion issue the verdicts, many say.

I strongly recommend reading the entire McClatchy article. I posted recently on the subject of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I don’t like the Reconciliation part any more than anyone else does. Pat Leahy (D – VT) predicts that there will be no criminal punishments. He’s almost certainly right. Dick Cheney has just admitted his guilt to the entire world and nothing – absolutely nothing – is being done about it. And nothing will be done about it.

There is, however, one possibility: the United States of America joins the International Criminal Court.

Are we up to it? Are we willing to join the ICC and allow any potential war criminals in our population to be tried openly and fairly on the world stage? Bust ourselves and turn ourselves in and plead for mercy? I doubt it. But it would be nice.

Our biggest obstacle to making this happen is mentioned in the McClatchy article:

Also left unanswered is whether any top congressional Democrats consented directly or indirectly to the most controversial interrogation practices after the administration disclosed them in closed-door briefings.

I think one of them said something like “impeachment is off the table” after the 2006 elections. More and better. Right. Check the dates. Scrutinize the time-lines.

Our leaders don’t lead. They follow. Sometimes they need to get shoved out front. We may have a different one now. We’ll see. Joining the ICC would be an emphatic statement that the truth will be known.

Satya.

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