So last century …

Oops, Nader wants to do it again

Today on Meet the Press, looking gaunt and showing every one of his 73 years, Ralph Nader told Tim Russert that he was going to run for president yet again.  His reason, the two “business parties” (translation:  Republicans and Democrats) should not “own” the voters and he would offer a “choice.”

Eight years after he proclaimed that there was “no difference” between Gore and Bush, he still will not admit that he has been proved wrong about that.  Eight years later after he helped tip the election to GWB, the country faces economic collapse, there is neverending war in Iraq and Afghanistan and ordinary Americans face job insecurity, rising prices on gas and groceries, and a shredded safety net.  But Nader won’t admit that things would have been different under a Gore administration.

Empowerment …

By now the  pair YouTube videos in support of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton respectively have  been viewed by  3.8 million (Yes we can) and hundreds of thousands at least (Hillary4U&Me).  As the saying goes, they have “gone viral.”

The Will.i.am “Yes we can” effort came first.  View it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fZHou18Cdk

And now we have “Hillary4U&Me” by a Clinton supporter.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FvyGydc8no

There has been some derisive commentary about the amateurish quality of the Hillary video, especially in comparison with the professional slickness that is the hallmark of the  “yes we can ” piece.

However I think it might be  more telling to look beyond a comparison of the production values and  use them as a prism to learn something about the fundamental dynamics of the two campaigns.

No boundaries for e-mail, internet snooping

Forget the Fourth Amendment. It’s going the way of the dodo bird. It’s way too quaint and old-fashioned for National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

As diarist MLDB puts it bluntly over at DailyKos:

Forget the Constitution.  To this crew “national security” and the constitution don’t mix.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/14/113656/353/720/436584

Every e-mail, file transfer and internet would be subject of government surveillance if McConnell has his way.

McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park,” according to an interview published in the New Yorker’s print edition today.

Stopping by on a snowy evening, vandals trash Robert Frost’s home

I was saddened to see that the historic Robert Frost home in Vermont was the scene of an underage drinking party and that dozens of items were destroyed, some of which may have been used by the poet himself and his family when they summered there. The extent of the damage is appalling:

The intruders broke a window to get into the two-story wood frame building _ a furnished residence open in the summer _ before destroying tables and chairs, pictures, windows, light fixtures, and dishes. Wicker furniture and dressers were smashed and thrown into a fireplace and burned, apparently to provide heat in the unheated building. http://wtop.com/?nid=114&sid=1318503#

A couple of summer’s ago my husband and I visited this place, Robert Frost’s summer home. It is located on a two lane road, down a long driveway, nestled in trees. One cannot see the house from the road in the summer through the sheltering leaves. However, in the depth of winter those trees provided no protection from intruders  searching for a party place.

Countdown to Iowa (or why the polls are wrong)

Most of what has been written about the upcoming Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses is probably wrong. Polls have been done that purport to “prove” what caucus-goers will do. But a look back at 2004 is instructive since the conventional wisdom predictions then were totally off-base.

I came across a Newsweek analysis of the Democratic field that came out a week before the 2004 Iowa caucuses. Boy, did they get it wrong! Let’s take a trip down Memory Lane and see what they said then — and what actually happened.

Why LNG on the Oregon Coast?

I have been puzzling about the urgent drive by the Bush administration to build Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminals on the Oregon coast — in environmentally sensitive estuaries in Clatsop and Coos counties. (http://www.tdn.com/articles/2007/11/24/area_news/doc4747d5488da45921963651.txt)

It would seem that Oregon itself does not need the increased supply of LNG so it big rush is certainly not to meet local demand. The explanation that California market needs the increased supply makes a certain amount of sense but that state has blocked the siting of LNG terminals on their coast so the need must not be all that urgent.

So why the push for LNG terminals in Oregon, despite local opposition from fishermen and environmentalists and negative reports from Oregon state agencies charged with assessing the pluses and minuses of the proposed project? Why would FERC the federal agency in charge with siting of energy facilities like the LNG terminals be so anxious to ride roughshod over the state to approve these facilities?

The answer might well lie elsewhere, outside Oregon.

A Christmas Carol, Redux

Once again this holiday season Charles Dickens’ story about Tiny Tim will entertain audiences and leave them feeling good about the conversion of Scrooge into a philanthropist. But most watching the film or play today will not pay attention to the dark backdrop of Victorian England in which the story is set. And fewer still will reflect on the harsh reality that many in the power elite in this country would like to return to the untrammeled capitalism and exploitation of the poor that hid behind the facade of prosperity in Dickens’ England.

Let’s recap the story: Bob Cratchit is toiling on Christmas Eve for rich, selfish capitalist Ebenezer Scrooge who refuses to give his employee Christmas day off work. After a series of supernatural visitations Scrooge is converted to a benevolent philanthropist who pays for the medical care that is desperately needed by Tiny Tim, one of Cratchit’s children. The happy ending makes audiences go away feeling good.

But the happy ending in Dickens’ fable does not change the social and economic structure of the world that Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge inhabit. This world of mid-nineteenth century England is a harshly classist society, where one’s position at birth determines economic success and social status.

$1 million a minute!

I’m talking about the national debt here …

Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute. http://tinyurl.com/3×5v59

And just what are we getting for this out of control spending?

It’s not going to fund Homeland Security for one thing. We’re seeing a key component of the Homeland Security budget being sliced by more than 50 per cent in 2009. Said one usual supporter of the Bush administration:

After learning of Bush administration plans to slash counterterrorism funding for police, firefighters and rescue departments across the country by more than half next year, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said the president should not expect his support on major votes in the future. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jQ0Ao4X0-a32dSRsZ9upSawSrPdgD8TA88BO1

A big payday for Ashcroft — from a former employee

Former AG John Ashcroft and his 2-year-old consulting firm are due to make as much as $52 million to monitor a settlement of $311 million with manufacturers makers of hip and knee replacements.

No, Ashcroft did not actually negotiate the settlement with the five implant manufacturers — Zimmer Holdings of Indiana, Stryker Corp., Biomet Inc., Smith and Nephew PLC and Depuy, Inc, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary — that would be U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie of NJ who worked out the deal. Not coincidentally, Ashcroft was Christie’s former boss at the Dept. of Justice.

A form of murder?

I want to thank blogger Gayla McCord for drawing my attention to an article in the LA Times about the health care proposals of the leading GOP presidential candidates. To tell the truth I wasn’t aware any Republican even had a plan since the subject never seems to come up in the GOP debates and it is not prominently posted on their campaign websites. But it seems that I was wrong — they really do have some kind of a health care proposal. But the problem is simple — the plans are lousy market-based proposals and would not cover the life-saving cancer treatment that these guys received that enabled them be survive to run for President right now.

The LA Times looked at research on the proposed healthcare plans of Fred Thompson, a lymphoma survivor, Rudy Giuliani, who battled prostate cancer, and John McCain, who beat melanoma. None of these guys would be guaranteed coverage by their own plans. http://www.gaylamccord.com/

So the health care that these guys are propose for the rest of us is NOT of the same quality that they themselves received. These guys receive premium government-run coverage with taxpayers picking up the tab. But its OK by these GOP candidates for ordinary Americans to be at the mercy of the big private insurance companies — the kind that reward employees for canceling coverage on seriously ill patients. In other words they can’t get canceled but ordinary Americans with the same life-threatening conditions (lymphoma, prostate cancer, melanoma) can lose their coverage while they are undergoing treatment and battling for survival. [For more information about the cancellation policies of big insurance companies, read my earlier post "Another Chapter for Michael Moore's Sicko"]