The spawn of Shrub, Jenna Hager, has joined the Today Show. No, I'm not making this up. I didn't watch that corporate media product often because I have severe limits on the amounts of perkiness I can cope with in the morning.

Now, I can't watch it at all.

An unqualified person gets a high profile job because she is the daughter of a man who illegally occupied the White House for eight years due to two stolen elections. When I read about this on Monkey Muck, I almost gagged.

During, the Bush regime, one of the funniest jokes was:

WWJD: What Would Jenna Drink

I guess the Today Show was never meant to be taken even slightly seriously, but this is sinking to an incredible low.

 

There is a dangerous distortion of language in discussing the Iraq War in addition to referring to torture by names like "harsh interrogation techniques." One of the most common deceptions that has been foisted on us is the use of the word "contractors" to describe mercenaries. However, whatever word you use, they are getting killed in Iraq.

From Swift Economics 8/28/09 (bolding mine):

The next major segment overlooked by the statistics is American contractors. The United States military has privatized much of its non-military operations, things it used to do itself. For example, soldiers used to handle food services, now that is contracted out to companies like Halliburton. The United States has had well over 100,000 contractors in Iraq at any given time since the wildly premature declaration of “Mission Accomplished.” So far, 1395 contractors have been killed in Iraq.

The numbers of US mercenaries in Iraq, and the numbers of them killed in the war of occupation are seldom mentioned by the corporate media. It's difficult enough to get them talking about the war in general these days, much less about this.

The war isn't just costing us hundreds of billions of dollars we could be using improving our public infrastructure and providing jobs at home. It has a dangerous hidden costs. Private armies like the company formerly known as Blackwater pose a significant national security risk. These national security risks are completely censored from corporate media sources.

Meanwhile, the mercenaries and our troops are dying and the Iraqis are still being slaughtered.

 

NBC New York (8/26/09) has some bad news on SAT scores in the NYC public schools:

The city's average score on each 800-point section of the SAT has plunged 18 points in math, to 459, and 13 points in reading, to 435, after reaching a peak in 2005.

Scores on the writing component of the test, which began in 2006, fell six points, to 432.

SAT scores have been going down for four years in a row. The city is trying to spin this as more black and latino students taking the SATs, but it is silly to say that so many minority students are taking the test that the scores dropped by a cumulative 37 points. Besides, Bloomberg has been in office over seven years. He should have accomplished a lot more by now to address racial disparities in the quality of education in the district. We should also be skeptical when a politician or bureaucrat says anything that seems to play on racial prejudices.

National SAT scores changed very little (Dayton Business Journal 8/26/09)

Nationally, scores on the test dropped slightly compared to last year. The College Board data showed the average combined score was 1,509, down two points from last year. Ohio’s average combined score was 1606.

What's the real problem?

Bloomberg has turned the NYC public schools into educational test prep academies, focusing on New York state mandated exams. Teaching to tests always has been frowned upon in educational circles because it has very little applicability to anything outside of the tests. The plummeting SAT scores show that teaching to one test doesn't necessarily apply to another test. Such teaching is even less applicable to college or work.

Bloomberg is a terrible mayor.

 

Our embarrassment of an FBI Director opens his mouth and sticks his foot right in. AFP 8/22/09:

In a letter to Scottish Minster Kenny MacAskill dated August 21, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was "outraged" at the decision to release Megrahi, who is dying of cancer, on compassionate grounds.

"Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice," Mueller wrote. "Indeed, your action makes a mockery of the rule of law.

"Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to the crime, the terrorist will be freed by one man's exercise of 'compassion.'"

Mueller is a jackass. This is another country's legal system. They get to decide. We don't. It's a typical ugly American attitude that we have any business bullying other countries. Do you agree with the release? Do you disagree? Unless you are Scottish, you should STFU.

Mueller also is the worst kind of hypocrite. The Iraq War is an act of terrorism on a far greater scale than the Lockerbie bombing. The Iraq War is illegal under US and international law, yet Muller refuses to arrest anyone responsible for getting us in that war. Until Mueller starts arresting these American terrorists, he's in no position to criticize anyone else for not being strong enough on terrorism.

 

Mayor Bloomberg always has been out of touch with middle class and poor people here in NYC, but now he is showing that he has lost touch with reality.

From Crain's New York Business 8/21/09:

In its continued attempt to display Mayor Michael Bloomberg as out-of-touch with the average New Yorker, the Thompson campaign jumped on a comment made by the mayor during his weekly radio show that suggested pharmaceutical company chief executives are not highly paid.

After the mayor told WOR’s John Gambling, "You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money, their executives don't make a lot of money,” the comptroller’s camp fired back with a press release declaring “Mike Bloomberg needs a dose of reality.”

The release included a list of the top 17 pharmaceutical CEO salaries, ranging from Miles White of Abbot, who earned $33.4 million in 2007, to Gerald Le Fur of Sanofi Aventis, who earned $3.3 million, according to the Web site Fiercepharma.

$3.3 million is an astronomical salary. It is physically impossible for any one person to earn that much money in one year. Yet, Bloomberg would have us believe that these parasites "don't make a lot of money."

Excessive executive pay at the drug companies, like enormous executive pay at the HMOs and health insurers, is an important area of inefficiency in our healthcare system that we need to address. We need leaders who will be reasonable and living on the same planet as the middle class and the poor.

We cannot expect that from Emperor Bloomberg. He will spend more of his personal fortune on this mayoral campaign than anyone can actually earn in a lifetime. When Con Edison performed execrably during a blackout a couple of years back, Emperor Bloomberg defended their scumbag CEO. Bloomberg will excuse any CEO for anything.

We need a new mayor desperately.

 

While I was channel surfing Wednesday night, I made the mistake of stopping at the Corporate News Network. The focus was on the people comparing Obama to Hitler.

The people mostly were followers of the rightist nutjob Lyndon LaRouche, the same guy who put a proposition on the California ballot that would have put people with AIDS in concentration camps if it had passed. CNN's corporate shill made a point of calling these people "far left." This not only is factually incorrect. It is patently offensive.

Make no mistake. The Corporate Nonsense Network had an agenda. With other rightists trying to silence opposing views at townhalls this summer, the corporate media are trying to create the impression that the nuts are evenly distributed. Never mind the fact that all the nuts at the forums on healthcare are from the right.

Then, they had pundits babbling about how there supposedly are legitimate objections to government run healthcare. Unless you work for an HMO/health insurer or own stock in those vicious corporations or you are a rich scumbag who doesn't want to pay for the social responsibility we all have to make sure everyone has healthcare, it is completely idiotic to oppose government provided healthcare. Single payer is cheaper than what we have now. More people get care, and the quality of care is dramatically higher. No one on the show said anything supporting government provided healthcare.

I've got to stop watching the Corporate Neocon Network. I'm almost completely out of patience with talking heads insulting my intelligence with infantile lies.

 

Hat Tip to A Swift Blow to the Head:



Yet, the rightists and HMOs are lying and saying Canadians don't like their healthcare system. Canadians even point out that they have their choice of doctors. Americans in HMOs get far less of a choice than Canadians do.

Physicians for a National Healthcare Plan have run the following press release:

New poll shows Canadians overwhelmingly support public health care

The HMO/Health insurer PR flaques really screwed up by bringing Canada into the discussion.

 

Journalist Robert Novak dies at 78 (Los Angeles Times 8/18/09)

I have to laugh at the "Journalist" part.

 

Single Payer Action has a blog posting on the Whole Foods Boycott in response to a WSJ Op Ed by Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey opposing single payer and any other kind of government run healthcare plan.

Whole Paycheck may market itself to liberals, but it is a nasty rightist corporation. Here are some examples from the Op Ed piece.

John Mackey is a right wing libertarian.

He’s a union buster.

He believes that corporations should not be criminally prosecuted for their crimes.

He has just launched a campaign to defeat a single payer national health insurance system.

And he’s the CEO of Whole Foods.

Isn't that just grand.

Alternet has more information on Whole Paycheck and its CEO.

Mr. Mackey, you just shat all over your best customers. Given the years of pseudonymous postings on Yahoo finance slamming a competitor you were quietly trying to acquire at the time, double talk and unethical behavior arguably seems to be becoming a habit for you.

I had forgotten about those postings.

Mother Jones provided an example of Whole Paycheck's union busting and intimidation tactics against its workers.

Shortly before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the manager of a Whole Foods grocery store in the San Francisco Bay Area gathered his employees in a conference room for a chat about labor organizing. “This is not a union-bashing thing whatsoever,” the manager began, adding, however, that he’d called the meeting because Whole Foods believed Obama would sign the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation intended to ease unionization that was opposed by the company’s lobbyists. According to a tape of the meeting obtained by Mother Jones, the manager went on to imply that joining a union would lead to reprisals: “It’s interesting to note that once you become represented by the union,” he said, “basically everything, every benefit you have, is kind of thrown out the window, and you renegotiate a contract.”

These kind of meetings are scripted by anti union consultants and pushed on local managers by CEOs of all sorts of corporations.

Michael Bluejay lists 14 practices of Whole Paycheck. I'll list the titles, you can read his blog posting for the details.

(1) Aggressive monopolization.
(2) Failure to support farmworkers.
(3) Fierceless devotion to profit.
(4) Refusal to carry only turtle-safe shrimp.
(5) CEO posing as someone else on the Internet.
(6) Poor working conditions.
(7) Anti-Union.
(8) Low Wages.
(9) Refusal to come clean on the use of GMO's and toxic chemicals in its products.
(10) Selling dangerous food.
(11) Misleading shoppers about its support of small farmers.
(12) Gagging shareholders.
(13) Obfuscating executive compensation.
(14) Forcing smaller competitors to hand over private financial data.

This boycott has been quite educational indeed.

I think the things that have gotten such a strong reaction are first the fact that Whole Foods is luxury consumption. No one really needs to shop there, so it's easier to give up. More importantly, customers justifiably feel that they have been deceived. Whole Foods presents itself as this warm and fuzzy, progressive company when it's CEO is a hateful rightist.

Anyway, Americans have an inalienable right to government provided healthcare. We have every reason to fight back against greedy CEOs who are trying to steal from us what is rightfully ours.

Image: gezellig-girl.com

 

Here's a couple of brief items on Emperor Bloomberg.

Today, I got yet another mailing from Bloomberg's effort to buy the mayor's office again campaign.

For someone who pretends to be an environmentally conscious person, Bloomberg sure does kill a lot of trees just to bullshit about his horrible record as mayor. Very little is being done about AIDS; it's exceedingly difficult to get Bloomberg's NYPD to even file a report when you are a crime victim; gay men are targets of a Bloomberg entrapment campaign; cops get to break the law with impunity; homelessness is getting worse; Wall St. crooks aren't even being prosecuted; services are being cut instead of rich people paying their fair share in taxes; and that's just for starters.

Most of Bloomberg's "environmental initiatives" are just on (lots of) paper in reports recommending action for mayors in office at least ten years from now. Even his congestion tax had nothing to do with the environment. He would have just given the money to his rich cronies, like he has done with so much government money already.

Anybody But Bloomberg!

...

If you want to read someone telling the truth about our execrable Mayor, try this blog:

No Th3rd T3rm for Micha3l Bloomb3rg!

The author(s) are pissed off at our pathetic excuse for a Mayor for a variety of reasons, including Bloomberg's broken promise to accept the results of not one, but two voter referendums for limiting terms of councilmembers and mayors to two.

Hat tip Fishbowl America!



Let's start with the military ban. Bill Clinton claims that the problem with his deceptively labeled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was with its implementation despite the fact that he deliberately designed it to increase the number of discharges and witchhunts. Queer veterans groups at the time were warning people that this version was even worse than the version Reagan put in place as an Executive Order.

Clinton also lied about congressional support to sustain a veto of a military ban. In 1993, 35 Senators voted to lift the ban completely with no support from the Clinton White House. It only takes 34 Senators to sustain a veto.

Here are a couple of facts about the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that you may not know.

1) Military commanders are allowed to launch investigations of sexual orientation without anyone coming out based on any or no evidence. These witchhunts even have involved placing undercover military police in gay bars.

2) If a soldier tells her mother she is a lesbian, she is violating "DADT" and is subject to discharge.

3) If a marine tells his boyfriend he is gay, he is violating "DADT" and is subject to discharge.

(That's why it pisses me off when people call it "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" itself is one of Bill Clinton's homophobic lies.)

Bill Clinton also lied about DOMA. He said he didn't want to sign it, yet he ran campaign ads in 1996 on fundamentalist Christian radio bragging about signing it. Oops!

Lane Hudson deserves a lot of credit for challenging this vicious and evil bigot. I find it disturbing how little support he got from the audience. It shows how serious a problem heterosexism is at Netroots Nation. That a vicious and evil bigot like Clinton was invited to speak at a supposedly liberal grassroots conference is truly disturbing. It isn't that surprising, given the fact that Netroots Nation was started by the center right, sexist, and homophobic Daily Kos.

Clinton's bigotry was hardly limited to his heterosexual supremacy. He pushed fraudulent "welfare reform" legislation designed to scapegoat and punish women of color because we live in a society without full employment. Clinton also supported high interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve deliberately designed to keep unemployment higher than it otherwise would be in order to promote downward pressure on middle class wages. Bill Clinton's crusade to undermine affirmative action is yet another example of his racism.

Let's not forget that Clinton maintained sanctions on Iraq long after the first US/Iraq War was over. These sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Bill Clinton isn't just a racist. He's a genocidal racist. In fact, under international law, Clinton should be serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.

If you look at policy rather than rhetoric, it is obvious how little difference there is between Bill Clinton and the most bigoted of Republicans. If you think there is a meaningful difference, you have fallen for the hype.