The charts are telling, but even more so are the descriptive comments. Here is the link.

...is like getting a gynecological exam: it's all speculative.

This ACLU article appears to say the system is not yet fully up and running, but that it will when completed, allow the government to monitor normal daily activities of anyone in the country. Already the banks use software to analyze your every transaction for unusual activity, which is how Eliot Spitzer's use of a call girl service was found out. You may say you have nothing to hide, but that's not my point.

The point is, this system will enable the president and his ruling cadre to monitor you for purposes of learning about your personal political views and activities, and to bring retribution if those do not meet his or her approval.

That is against the constitution, and Congress has forbidden the building of this kind of system. NSA is putting it together anyway...

Here's an item from PBS about the same topic.

Bobby Jindal and then-governor Foster acted to prevent Louisiana from getting a share of the settlement from the tobacco companies, which was to have reimbursed money already spent by the state for treating people suffering from smoking-related illnesses. This is not the way a state officer of healthcare policy should act.

Eliot Spitzer, New York attorney general, writes the details. Don't expect to see a rebuttal...

Either one would be OK with me, however Hillary's mandated universal health coverage clinches my support. A doctor with whom I work told me this, and now Paul Krugman says it too in the New York Times. His article explains why making the coverage mandatory is so important.

I'll add, when I was a child health insurance was a relatively new thing, and there was none of the "cherry picking" that has over the decades made so many ineligible for insurance or unable to afford it. All the insurers took on all comers, so their customers' risks were distributed over a broader population. The healthy paid more relative to their claims for care than did the less healthy, but since all the companies were doing the same thing, the system worked.

Then someone had the bright idea to weed out the unhealthy and reduce premiums, thus gaining a competitive sales advantage. Eventually all the other companies were forced to follow suit, a trend that has since evolved into the "managed care" nightmare we have today.

No lesser force than the legislative power of government would be able to restore the universality of coverage. No company will volunteer to be the first. It would be grossly unfair to do anything else but make them all do it together.

I suppose all this sounds bizarre and "communistic" to those on the right. The difference in mindset between them and those who think like me is, ours is a desire to benefit the greater number of people. Corporations should exist to serve the greater good, not the narrow and disproportionate interests of a relative few. If corporate executives understood this and would govern accordingly, there would be greater loyalty of employees to their companies, and greater productivity over the long term. Sure, the CEOs wouldn't be making over 400 times as much as their frontline workers, but they would be better human beings for it, and happier. You can't take it with you...

I'm not the only one, but the Wall Streeters and Repubs wouldn't listen to any of us. Read it here: "most Americans have been living in their own personal recession for years."

My family has lost several members in the past couple of years, and each one was a surprise...but only in the sense that we thought they'd have a little longer yet.
But none of them was a total surprise because each one had been ill for some time before they died.

This economy is like that. It's been ailing for a long time. So why would the New York Times announce that the loss of 17,000 jobs from the American economy was "unexpected"?  Must be in the same sense that my relatives' losses were a bit of a shock, even though we knew it was coming.

Trying to stop this recession with more economic stimulus is like giving a dying speed freak some more crystal to stop him from giving up the ghost. Hmmm...

"This is what a police state looks like." 

Footage from Police cameras, apparently obtained through the freedom of information act, shows that they attacked a 2002 crowd of antiwar protesters for the simple reason that they were in opposition to current governmental policies. By now you've probably heard about the white house manual for keeping protesters from having any access to the president's entourage, and the many systematic changes or abrogations of existing law to permit the Bushies to surveil anyone, anytime for any reason they see fit.

A conservative is someone who is comfortable maintaining both their own values and the suffering of others.

This was foreseeable from a long way off, and a lot of people tried to warn the Republican administration, to no avail. The "greed is good" philosophy will brook no opposition when it comes to pandering to the fatcats with deregulation, such as the numerous legislative moves to create an unrestrained housing market. Adjustable rate mortgages, and practices such as lending the down payment to poorly-qualified buyers have led to the inevitable crash of inflated home values and to mortgage defaults, broken dreams.

 Meanwhile, the huge surplus that America enjoyed pre-Bush has been squandered aggressively. It resides in the pockets of those rich enough to use their wealth to influence legislation, or in the hands of persons abroad who have cronied with Halliburton. The pockets of the poor and the middle class are a lot lighter now, and will likely get lighter still.

Apparently, moral bankruptcy can lead eventually to financial bankruptcy, if not for those who own the government, then for others. How much Liberty and Justice can you find in that?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/candidate-match-game.htm

Click that link above, answer questions, it ranks presidential candidates most like yourself on issues.
Me: most like Dennis Kucinich.

I tried it again, giving the unkindest answers I could find in the multiple choices. It came up with Mitt Romney. I'm surprised, I expected Rudy Giuliani.

By the way, what is it that "conservatives" want to conserve? The planetary ecology? Pahh! The constitution? Laws of the land? America's status as an example to the nations? I used to think so, not anymore... I guess it's just "order", which means obedience to authority. Anyway, I've wanted to understand more about them because I'm sure that their ideology has some useful features. Their focus is different, and I think I value many things they do, but with different degrees of emphasis.

Here's an article by a researcher who delved into just this line of inquiry, and it gives scientific support to my hunch.

Do you believe him when he says that? Neither do I. He's telling the truth in the same way that Bill Clinton spoke the truth when he said, "I did not have sex with that woman."

You can redefine the facts until you convince yourself to lie with a straight face, but it's still lying.

The world is watching, and its people are not fooled. This has been an administration that will live in infamy...

From an Angry Soldier

---

Date: 2007-04-10, 1:00PM PDT


I'm having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I'm going to write this while I'm pissed off enough to do it right.

I am SICK of all this bullshit people are writing about the Iraq war. I am abso-fucking-lutely sick to death of it. What the fuck do most of you know about it? You watch it on TV and read the commentaries in the newspaper or Newsweek or whatever god damn yuppie news rag you subscribe to and think you're all such fucking experts that you can scream at each other like five year old about whether you're right or not. Let me tell you something: unless you've been there, you don't know a god damn thing about it. It you haven't been shot at in that fucking hell hole, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are "Supporting our Troops" and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I'll tell you why. I'm a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he's coming home in a box.

You fuckers and that god-damn lying sack of shit they call a president are the reason my husband will never see his baby and my kid will never meet his dad.

And you know what the most fucked up thing about this Iraq shit is? They don't want us there. They're not happy we came and they want us out NOW. We fucked up their lives even worse than they already were and they're pissed off. We didn't help them and we're not helping them now. That's what our soldiers are dying for.

Oh while I'm good and worked up, the government doesn't even have the decency to help out the soldiers whos lives they ruined. If you really believe the military and the government had no idea the veterans' hospitals were so fucked up, you are a god-damn retard. They don't care about us. We're disposable. We're numbers on a page and they'd rather forget we exist so they don't have to be reminded about the families and lives they ruined while they're sipping their cocktails at another fund raiser dinner. If they were really concerned about supporting the troops, they'd bring them home so their families wouldn't have to cry at a graveside and explain to their children why mommy or daddy isn't coming home. Because you can't explain it. We're not fighting for our country, we're not fighting for the good of Iraq's people, we're fighting for Bush's personal agenda. Patriotism my ass. You know what? My dad served in Vietnam and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

So I'm pissed. I'm beyond pissed. And I'm going to go to my husband funeral and recieve that flag and hang it up on the wall for my baby to see when he's older. But I'm not going to tell him that his father died for the stupidty of the American government. I'm going to tell him that his father was a hero and the best man I ever met and that he loved his country enough to die for it, because that's all true and nothing will be solved by telling my son that his father was sent to die by people who didn't care about him at all.

Fuck you, war supporters, George W. Bush, and all the god damn mother fuckers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.

(This was posted on Craig's List in the San Francisco area)

Read it here.

"For all the Rove-built facade of his being a 'strong' chief executive, George W. Bush has been, by comparison to even hapless Jimmy Carter, the weakest, most out of touch president in modern times," Gold writes. "Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."


Elsewhere in the news: "Bush refuses to set timetable for withdrawing head from Whitehouse banister".

Explicitly and repeatedly...

Executive Branch Secedes from the Union

by Devilstower

Sat Mar 24, 2007 at 08:11:28 AM PDT

When Tony Snow made the rounds of talk shows this week, some might have been surprised at his message.

Snow to CNN: "There's another principle, which is Congress doesn't have the legislative -- I mean oversight authority over the White House."

Snow to NBC: "Congress doesn't have any legitimate oversight and responsibilities to the White House."

Snow to NBC: "First, the White House is under no compulsion to do anything. The legislative branch doesn't have oversight."

Snow to ABC: "The executive branch is under no compulsion to testify to Congress, because Congress in fact doesn't have oversight ability."

Just in case you missed it the first time, Snow repeated himself to make sure the public gets the message: the White House has declared itself, a law unto itself, beholden to no other authority. This goes quite a bit beyond the already massive expansions of "executive privilege" previously claimed by this administration.

(Read the rest of the article)

...why he calls George W. Bush a traitor to his country. (needs Quicktime to play)