Cats? Cats...

My dear fiend Boegle has requested cats and politics. I will have to approach this obliquely, something about leopards and their (in)ability to change spots...

While the current nominee for the US Supremes has to listen to a lot of pseudo-Hispanic jokes without getting all huffy on them ("you got a lot of esplainin' to do" is the worst by far - Tom Coburn R-OK), it seems as though there is a current of either racism or outright stupidity running through the GOP side of the aisle in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. One Repugnican upbraids her for not voting the same way as another Puerto Rican justice sitting on the same court, while others want to be certain she's as neutral as possible.

So this leaves me confused - either she should be a biased judge and vote with her P.R. posse, or she shouldn't. And while she's sold as a very passionate person when it comes to the law (comments made by defense lawyers that have come up before her appeals court describe her as a kind of Judge Crankypants), if she actually shows any sort of irritation to the members of the Committee, she would be lambasted for being too emotional, too erratic, too... I dunno... female...

So here we rest again, saying that affirmative action is bad, and that the only reason Obama picked her is because she's a Latina. Of course, when the black judge retired during George HW Bush's presidency, no one said affirmative action about Clarence Thomas. Well, except Clarence himself, who basically felt that it tarred him with an awful brush. So, while he's grateful to have received the benefits of affirmative action, it's bad. As Al Franken said in his Rush Limbaugh book, kind of an "I've got mine" attitude.

And so we come back to the spots of the Repugs. When we nominate a perhaps not-perfectly qualified person to the Supremes, it's affirmative action. When the Republicans do it, it's the "right thing to do." Hmmm... the constantly shifting patterns in their fur makes them hard to spot, yet when they bite you, it doesn't matter - it just hurts.

I know. If I'm going to write about politics, facts or truth or whatever you want to call it basically has to go out the window. When you ask a question like, "how far is New York City from Los Angeles?" and all you ever get are answers like, "well that's a complicated question..."

Cats are better than politicians, because they're honest about their appetites. If they want to eat, they eat. Politicians think they have to sound like the food asked for it.

The Magic Number

Sixty senators. 60. We have no excuses. The Democratic Party is either going to do good works for this country, or it's going to get itself voted out of office for being too Republican.

Al Franken, Saturday Night Live alumnus and best-selling author, decided to go after the late Paul Wellstone's seat, occupied by a man with too many excessively white teeth, Norm Coleman (R). After a vote that was way too close to count, Norm battled his way all the way up to the Minnesota Supreme Court, who (yesterday) unanimously gave Franken the win in last November's senate race. And a long, hard slog it's been.

So now we have a majority that can do things in both the House and the Senate, and we have the White House as well, with a President who is possibly the most progressive person in the White House since FDR.

Shame about the lack of spine, though.

Federal Reserve Notes

In other good news, it appears that the most Libertarian Senator, Ron Paul, and the only sitting Socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, are both approaching the Federal Reserve with the right idea: "Let's Have An Audit!" Many people are advocating a return to the gold standard, which I am guardedly in favor of. It's all about perceived value, after all, and just because something is rare doesn't mean it's desirable. Uranium is quite rare, but I sure as hell don't want uranium coins in my pocket.

But the Fed is a law unto itself, and feels no compunction to tell the United States government (or the people of the United States) where they spent the money we told them to flood the market with. Or rather, Bush, Obama, and the Congress told them to flood the market with. Still not sure that was such a good idea. But hundreds of billions of dollars later, I'm still paying for a pretty inflated mortgage.

740 + 20% down

And (speaking of credit ratings, et al): why is it that when I pay off a credit card, or my car loans, my credit history is dinged? Or if an account is closed by a credit card company because I've decided to stay away from being further in debt, my credit rating is lowered? Can anyone reasonable tell me this? I know that one must experience small debts before one amasses larger debts (Macy's card, then car loan, then mortgage); but if a person pays their mortgage on time, and pays off credit cards, apparently that means you're some kind of deadbeat.

Requests

I have run into a wall. Some of my loyal readers may have noticed that posts have gotten far and few between these days, and part of that is my ADD when it comes to choosing a topic.

So, I leave it you, dear readers: give me a topic, any topic, multiple topics, to write about, and I will look through the list. If it's a short list I'll write about all of 'em; if it's long, I might put the list up for a vote.

Thanx!

Political Obedience

And the grand corporations say "sit... Sit! SIT!"

"Good little politico. Have a campaign contribution."

When will we see the influence of money leave politics? Will there have to be a revolution? Will the Supremes finally remember that money does not, in fact, equal speech?

In its most base form, witness the health care debate. On the side of the existing system, there are those who cry out "socialized medicine!", "rationed care!", and (my personal favorite) "the government can't do anything right!" Said, primarily and loudest, by people who work for the government.

When your insurance company says it won't cover certain things, like, say, chemotherapy, because you were diagnosed with cancer right after you got insurance, and they want to claim "pre-existing condition," that sounds like someone's rationing something. Money, maybe. Of course you can get the coverage you need, so long as you go to court. Everyone has time to do that these days, right?

And the idea that the government is just SO incompetent: why do we trust them to do anything right, like, say, protect our borders, or field an army? If they can't buy a light bulb without a hundred forms being filled out, how can they possibly have enough time to move an aircraft carrier from point A to point B?

To all the conservative nay-sayers (who don't read this blog - why do I even bother?): single-payer health care is cheaper than for-profit health care. It means that the government simply acts as the insurance company, paying doctors and hospitals when they are billed for services. You will pay higher taxes in order to get this, but employers no longer need to contribute their own money (unless they so choose, I guess) in order to offer you health care. In other words, you can work anywhere, and have health care. You can be unemployed and have health care. You can be retired and have health care. And you can buy supplementary health care insurance (if you want) so you can get fancier health care. Common amongst Great Britain's wealthier citizens.

Medicare (which has its problems, no denying that) has an overhead cost that is only 15% of private health insurance overhead. For every dollar you spend on your doctor visit, 12-20% of that is spent on paperwork, legal fees and profits for the insurance company. For every dollar spent by Medicare, that number is somewhere below 3%. Because all you're doing is saying how much does it cost, and what was the illness being treated.

The one thing you don't have to ask is whether the CEO needs a bigger yacht.

A Glimpse of the Perverse*

In which we discover that Newt Gingrich has no scruples, the Left has no spine, and Rush still has no testicles.

Obama got make his first big appointment, that of judge Sonia Sotomayor, to the United States' Supreme Court, as a replacement for the retiring David Souter. who wrote a famous decision saying that the government had every right to take the property away from those folks who weren't using it to its full potential. Prompting an immediate lawsuit by someone saying that the land under Souter's antique ranch house in New England could be more suitably used for the construction of a shopping mall.

Don't worry, he still lives there.

However, the story isn't about him - it's about her. Or, more importantly, it's about the right-wing punditocracy that's currently foaming at the mouth and flailing around madly trying to come up with ways to block the nomination, or at least to turn the nominating process into irrelevant crap by making the nominee answer all those "when did you stop beating your wife" kind of questions that the Repugs are so adept at creating.

She said once (severely paraphrasing) that being a Latina would give her a different perspective than that of a white male, and that having her background might make her a bit more empathetic to a poor minority person's plight than an old white man might be. Not unlike the quote from Samuel Alito about how his Italian-American background might influence his decision-making.

"Racism!" shouts Newt and Rush. Of course, not to be outdone, G. Gordon Liddy suggested that there might be certain times of the month where she shouldn't be asked to make decisions because of PMS.

Wow.

I mean.

Just.

Wow.

I have to wonder how Sandra Day O'Connor (a Reagan appointee) might have reacted to Mr. Liddy's statement.

Anyway, the Left, with it's infinite ability to find things to apologise about, has already been out there, full-throated, quite sorry that their prospective nominee actually had the nerve to go out and to say something that's true (darn her!). Both Robert Gibbs and his master, President Obama, have sort of said something to the effect that if she had to do it all over again, she probably wouldn't have said something like that.

When will the left-wing in power develop spinal bones? Get the mealy out of their mouths? Remove the skirting from around the issues?

And for Rush to call someone else a racist...

"You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed. " - Rush Limbaugh

That's not racism, that's just tellin' it like it is - right, Rush?

















*With apologies to E. A. Poe

Reserving the Right to Arm Bears

So the House and Senate have moved a bill through that makes credit card companies a little less like Captain Jack Sparrow, and a little more like the British East India Trading Company, i.e., they have to put in writing how they're going to rip you off and when, and they can't rip you off quite as much. Can't be so punitive with higher interest rates on late payers (never made sense to me - yes, they're more of a risk, but now they've become even MORE of a risk; how does that help?), have to use plain english in the small print they put into those endless contracts, etc. Vast improvement, while not quite weaning America off her great need to be in debt up to her follicles.

And then there's the gun amendment. Wait, what?

That's right, the gun amendment. One of the beauties of parliamentary procedure is the ability to add amendments to bills that have nothing whatsoever to do with the legislation at hand. Want to make a bill go down in flames? Add something to it that no one wants.

Like a "George W Bush National Monument in Baghdad" amendment. (just made that up - don't worry)

So, good old Sen. Tom Coburn (R - OK) decided that giving consumers better protection from obscure and/or just plain mean credit card policies wasn't enough; he felt it was necessary to protect the rights of the individual to carry loaded weapons into National Parks, including shotguns, rifles, or assault weapons. Going on a climb in Yosemite? Make sure you've got your Barrett 82A1, because you never know when you're going to need a .50 Cal. sniper rifle that can hit a target at two miles out - can you imagine all the stuff you could hit from the top of El Capitan?

Please, write your Senators and Congresscritters and make them strip this amendment off.

Or, as one of my cow-orkers has suggested, if this DOES come to pass, and CITI is having one of their annual meetings in Yellowstone - bring an Armalite AR-15, and express your opinion.*

*The Odd Bald Liberal does NOT advocate the use of violence to solve problems. But it would be fun to scare the snot out of 'em.

Whither Responsibility?

Nancy Pelosi may or may not have been properly briefed by the CIA on the question or the possibility or the actuality of torture being used/not being used on detainees at Guantanamo/Bagram/Abu Ghraib.

And the Right says, "well, she okayed torture, therefore she is responsible for the torture."

I leave it to you to fill in the blank: ______ed logic.

Ya see, it's the guys in charge, like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol who decided whether or not we should be using torture. Then they tell the CIA to do so. The CIA is then told they have to brief Congress about it, but not that they have to be completely truthful (yes, that's called speculation). So, the CIA swears a few Senators and Congresscritters to absolute silence, tells them either faulty or slightly incomplete information, and one of the Congresscritters writes a letter of protest (since he can't actually, you know, talk about any of it to anyone) to the folks higher on the food chain (Cheney), and SURPRISE! nothing changes.

Here we are, years later, declassifying memos, and hiding photos (Mr. Obama, I believe you misplaced your government transparency special power), and people start talking about who knew what when, rather than who ordered what, and then told everyone lies about it. Or not.

Torture is torture, and no matter who knew about it while it was happening, the more important question is who ordered it, and when will they be punished?

I'm not absolving Nancy of any responsibility. If she knew about this and did/said nothing, then she needs to be replaced by someone who will stand up to whomever is president, should that person do something so inherently illegal and (more importantly) immoral. Her fumbling press conference was embarrassing enough without her having criminal knowledge. Hint: it's called "preparation," Nancy.