Finally done

Health insurance reform legislation passed in the Senate today after more than a year of wrangling between progressive and corporate Democrats, and an all-out effort among Republicans to derail it. The Teabaggers and other right-wingers throughout the country reacted with their usual grace and sophistication: racist and homophobic slurs, vandalism, threats, envelopes of white powder in the mail and other charming instances of the spittle-flecked, purple-faced rage that spills over whenever a small, long-overdue step towards social justice is achieved.

The ignorance and incoherence of the Right was in full flower during the past year, what with cries of "keep government hands off my medicare," attacks on medical patients and children, and the comparison of Obama to Hitler in the apparent belief that attempting to solve the healthcare crisis is equivalent to exterminating millions of people.

The spectacle was similar to school integration in the 60's when the desire of dark-skinned children to have a better educations was a crime worthy of capital punishment by vigilante mobs.

It would have been nice to have a single-payer system or at least a public option for all this effort, but when you want something more than your opponent does, you are at a disadvantage in the negotiation process.

There is good to be had out of this, with the closing of the Medicare donut hole, the ending of discrimination against pre-existing conditions, ending limits on coverage, and of course, extending coverage to more people. I also hope that this ordeal has finally convinced Democrats that Republicans care about nothing but regaining power and will never negotiate in good faith.

That's it, I'm done

Obama should have everything fixed by now, and it's not. Therefore the only thing left to conclude is that the Republicans were right and we should all be free-marketeers. Sarah 2012!

Where's the next terror attack coming from?

My guess is not from Al-Queda.

Why we fight

Lee J and I became politically active because we feared that democracy was in danger here in America. We joined millions of other concerned progressives to turn the tide in the last two elections. Our efforts are bearing fruit. The Obama administration has begun disclosure of secret legal documents written by Bush administration lawyers. We knew it was going to be worse than we thought, and this is being verified. 

Progressives had already denounced Bush's trashing of habeas corpus and the 4th Amendment, but these memos show that his attorneys thought they could override the 1st Amendment and probably the entire Bill Of Rights as well. This is not hyperbole, this is confirmed the Bush administration's own writings.

A substantial percentage of Americans have no respect for democracy and are relentless in undermining it. Even the people we've elected can be infected by this. A dictatorship could happen here if we let them win. That's why we fight.

Now it's personal

My boss had to cut everybody's hours at work. We're all taking one unpaid day off per week in the hope of avoiding layoffs. While there is no shortage of work to do around the house and I'll have more time to do it, a 20% pay cut hurts. Especially with a California mortgage. This economy hasn't hit bottom yet, so my pay might still get cut again, maybe by 100%.

Lee J and I have done our part all these years. Our mortgage is one we could afford, with 20% down and a fixed rate. We don't have any other debt except for a modest amount on the credit card. I put my 15% into retirement savings every single pay period and Lee J went back to school and begun a new career. The Republicans took a surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars and squandered it into a trillion dollar hole. All they can say is "more tax cuts" while arrogant executives spend our bailout money on cruises and manicures. Overpaid and unregulated Masters Of The Universe showed they had no idea what they're doing and were rewarded anyway.

President Obama, members of Congress, here's my take on the stimulus. Right now, I'm not gonna spend a dime unless it's necessary. No going out, no purchasing of gadgets, toys, treats, goodies or anything. A tax cut won't mean a damn thing. If I can't be reasonably sure I'm still going to have a job, any tax savings will go into the bank, or to the aforesaid mortgage. I'm not helping the overall situation this way, but I've got my own ass to worry about. Democrats, we donated money, worked the phones and pounded the pavement for you. Do your part. Shut the Republicans up and do this right.

Smell the bipartisanship

He wined them. He dined them. They still spit in his face. Obama courted House Republicans for their votes on his stimulus plan and didn't get any. Not one. It still passed, thanks to the voters who elected enough Democrats. Now the bill goes to the Senate where it is automatically assumed to be filibustered unless the Democrats can peel two skittish Republicans off or Obama guts the bill completely. I hope he learns from this.

Republicans don't care about anything but returning to power. They want Obama to fail. Their leader said as much. Karl Rove is still thumbing his nose at Congress. Republicans cannot be reasoned with. Obama will have to go around them or through them if he wants to get anything done.

The future is go

We have entered the Obama era. I started drinking since 8:30 this morning and now Lee J and I will hit a MoveOn party at a bar. I haven't celebrated like this for I don't know how many years. Things will suck for a while, thanks to the outgoing people, but the healing begins today.

Yes We Did

Last night, at some friends' house, we watched our first black President-elect give a call to a new nation. The long horror of the Bush administration will end soon. The country has repudiated conservative ideology. We are not a conservative country and never were. The slumbering electorate, long content to be led by simpleminded dogma, has awakened to the need for thought again.

The glass isn't full. The passage of Prop. 8 is a big turd floating in the punchbowl. The gains in Congress were less than I had hoped. Scumbags like Michelle Bachmann and Mitch McConnell retained their seats. But, for the second election in a row, we won. The left is energized, organized and on offense again. This is our moment. This is our time.

Funny or die

Ron Howard reunites with some old friends for Obama. When you've lost Andy Griffith, you've lost the country.

A look inside the right-wing mind

They want to smear Obama with his tenuous association with Bill Ayers yet Palin doesn't consider abortion clinic bombers terrorists. Palin and her supporters think killing people is just fine when it's done on their behalf.

McCain: Pallin' with terrorists

The Huffington Post has a live one: William Timmons, the lobbyist heading up John McCain's transition team, lobbied for Saddam Hussein. It's a long post, but read the whole thing anyway. Two guys working for Timmons were convicted of acting as unregistered agents for Saddam, and Timmons bragged that his ideas led to the disastrous oil-for-food program. MCain want's to bring up Obama's associations in the debate tomorrow. We can only hope.

The mask is off

Republican voters are showing their true colors:

More examples of compassionate conservatism here, here, here, here, and here.

Here's mud in your eye

The McCain campaign has decided that, since it can't win on the issues, it wants to drag Obama into the mud. This weekend, Sarah Palin pulled out the race card and tried to pin Obama to retired Weatherman Bill Ayers. They also plan to exhume the corpse of the Jeremiah Wright "scandal," even though they said they wouldn't. Fine. Let's play that game, shall we?

Since we're on the subject of past associations with supposed terrorists, what might we find? For starters, McCain doesn't think bombing abortion clinics is terrorism. He also hangs out with several convicted criminals, such as G. Gordon Liddy, Carl Lindner and Ollie North who've all supported terrorists. When Clinton was trying to warn everybody about Osama bin Laden, McCain didn't think bin Laden was such a bad guy. And, of course Todd Palin's membership in a party that seeks Alaska's violent secession from the US should also be in our tally.

When it comes to rubbing shoulders with religious crazies, Obama can't touch McCain or Palin. McCain's associations with bigoted and unstable preachers such as John Hagee and Rod Parsley is well-known as is Palin's pal, witch-hater Thomas Muthee.

Oh, and McCain's oft-told war hero story might be not what it's made out to be.

Since the economy is on everyone's mind, the Obama Campaign made a little documentary on McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal:


McCain was supposed to be contrite about that and called it one of his worst mistakes. Seems that he's apparently only sorry he got caught. McCain is right; his only way to victory is to distract voters from the collapse of the free-market economy that he championed. The only problem is, if he's going to resort to cheap smears, Obama is rubber and McCain is glue.

Yet another reason to vote for Obama

With John McCain growing more infantile by the minute, there is no shortage of reasons to vote against him. This makes us forget that there are just as many reasons to vote for Obama. Here's another one; 61 Nobel science laureates endorse him because he understands the importance of research.

They're doing it again

Disaster is imminent.

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”
Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”
When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”

We're in trouble. But something about that meeting seems familiar... why do the words weapons of mass destruction and civil liberties keep popping into my head? As usual, Glenn Greenwald explains why:

What's most vital to underscore is that the beneficiaries of this week's extraordinary Government schemes aren't just the coincidental recipients of largesse due to some random stroke of good luck. The people on whose behalf these schemes are being implemented -- the true beneficiaries -- are the very same people who have been running and owning our Government -- both parties -- for decades, which is why they have been able to do what they've been doing without interference. They were able to gamble without limit because they control the Government, and now they're having others bear the brunt of their collapse for the same reason -- because the Government is largely run for their benefit.

We're being played again. Yes, this is a serious problem, but anything these people say is probably a lie. So how we deal with it is something we should be careful with. One way of being careful is making the choice between John McCain, who said this;

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

and Barack Obama, who said this:

First, there must be no blank check when American taxpayers are on the hook for this much money.
Second, taxpayers shouldn't be spending a dime to reward CEOs on Wall Street.
Third, taxpayers should be protected and should be able to recoup this investment.
Fourth, this plan has to help homeowners stay in their homes.
Fifth, this is a global crisis, and the United States must insist that other nations join us in helping secure the financial markets.
Sixth, we need to start putting in place the rules of the road I've been calling for for years to prevent this from ever happening again.
And finally, this plan can't just be a plan for Wall Street, it has to be a plan for Main Street.

Time for new management.

Register to vote

If you haven't already done this, you can do so here.

Something is happening

I had planned to spend Labor Day weekend finishing off the summer with barbecues and yard work but with taking down my reef aquarium and some short-notice volunteering it became pretty busy. I received an email from MoveOn asking if I could join the Obama campaign at our local Safeway and register voters. Since it's just around the corner from me, I signed up for a couple of hours. In a short time, I was running out of forms, needed a couple more clipboards and had people signing up three abreast. Young people, people who'd moved and people switching to Democrat wanted to be a part of history. I even registered a few Safeway employees who wanted their chance to vote for Obama.

On Sunday we attended the opening of the local Democratic party headquarters in downtown Santa Rosa. They had optimistically expected 100-150 people on a holiday weekend that usually means few people would stop by. Not this year. Well over 300 people showed up, overwhelming the office space and spilling out over the sidewalk. Buttons, bumperstickers and signs vanished as people waited in line to volunteer. Our local representative, Lynn Woolsey spoke and even though I was only 20 feet from her, I could barely see the top of her head through the crowd.

We're in an indigo-blue district, so I'd expect Democrats to be popular. But people can be complacent out here, with progressives winning regularly and with comfortable margins. There's a buzz this year, however, even more so than '06. Obama is deadlocked in the polls with McCain so far, but when I look at the trees instead of the forest, I see energy like never before. Something is happening in America.

DNC Day 4: "It's time for them to own their failure."

There's a new sheriff in town. Even Pat Buchanan knows it. This was what I was hoping for. If Rove thinks he can undercut this guy, he's dreaming.

DNC Day 1

For what it's worth, we were glad to see the old lion, Ted Kennedy give one more call to arms. Jim Leach made some great points about the current Republican party if you can stand his droning style. Michelle Obama's speech made me wonder if we nominated the wrong Obama.

Did McCain cheat?

I did not watch McCain and Obama on Rick Warren's special. We had a MoveOn council meeting and I wasn't expecting much anyway. Warren in just another televangelist huckster, he just soft-pedals the xenophobia that the rest of them wear like a badge. From what I heard, the crowd was ideologically inclined towards McCain, but Obama came across to them as somebody who believes in his principles. With luck, Obama might have deflated the myth that he's a closet muslim.

Two stories are worth noting though. One, that since Obama went on first, McCain was kept in a "cone of silence" so he wouldn't have an advantage, has turned out to be false. He was en route and surrounded by blackberry-toting assistants. He was not proven to have heard Obama's replies, but he easily could have, contradicting the claim.

The other is that McCain's "cross in the dirt" answer to Warren's faith question appears to be plagiarized from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. McCain has built a mythology around himself that would never stand up to the scrutiny he would get if he was a Democrat.

Oh, and I almost forgot, McCain thinks people who earn $4.99 million per year are middle class.