Swim - Jack's Mannequin

 

In case you wondered why the wealthcare bill didn't make it legal for people to buy cheaper drugs from Canada and why it didn't include medical marijuana provisions...

From National Journal 3/17/10:

Under his tenure, PhRMA has spent well over $100 million on ad drives backing health care reform legislation, a strategy that grew out of a deal Tauzin struck with the White House and key Democrats in the Senate that's provoked some criticism from parts of the drug industry. Early this year, Tauzin announced he would be departing PhRMA after five years at its helm and a search is underway for a replacement. Tauzin earned $4.5 million in 2008, according to IRS documents.

PhRMA is the trade association that lobbies for the drug companies.

If you have seen an ad promoting the wealthcare bill, chances are better than 50/50 that they paid for it. We need public financing of campaigns as much as we need single payer.

 

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's opposition to my inalienable right as a crime victim to gun control is one of the most important reasons why I will never vote for her for any public office. New York deserves a Democratic Senator who supports the policies of New York's Democratic voters.



I encourage you to learn more about Jonathan Tasini's primary challenge against Ms. Gillibrand.

 

Last week, President Obama went to Iowa, which always has been friendly territory to him, to market his wealthcare plan. If you look at the text of the speech, it's amusing to see just how much bullshit he included with it. Let's look at some of the lies.

Lie:
"If people like their plan, they will keep their plan."

Facts:
The wealthcare bill will seriously damage the plans of at least two groups of people with coverage now. The plans won't be even close to the same.

1) People on "Medicare Advantage" (the HMO version of Medicare) will face dramatic reductions in services because of funding cuts. Even worse, the HMO version of Medicare is a trap. Once people are in that version, they can never go back to regular Medicare. The tradeoff of a lack of premiums and lower quality care already existing in "Medicare Advantage" mean that the population of seniors most likely to be hurt by these cuts are the elderly poor.

2) People With Mediocre Plans, which the corporate media call "Cadillac Care" (they must really, really hate Cadillacs) will face cutbacks in care, higher premiums, and higher copays when the excise taxes on those plans go into effect in 2018.

---

Lie:
"The days of the insurance industry running roughshod over the American people are over."

Facts:
1) The insurance companies and HMOs wrote this bill. They already have started discussing the loopholes they put into place which will keep them from having to cover sick children.

2) The regulations in this bill require sick people and their families to enforce them. If they are relatively lucky, they can go to court. The HMOs and insurance companies have all the best lawyers in the field. However, if the contract for the HMO or insurance company requires arbitration, then people are forced to go to an arbitration system that is completely rigged in favor of the corporations.

---

Lie:
"And so if you already have insurance, this reform will make it more secure and more affordable."

Fact:
Every time insurance companies have managed to get laws passed making any kind of coverage mandatory, they have shot premiums through the roof.

---

Lie: (worded differently in different parts of the speech)
"And costs will come down for families, businesses, and the federal government, reducing our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades."

"But we have built into the law all sorts of measures to assure that in years to come, health care inflation, which has been rising about three times as fast as people's wages, will start slowing."

Fact:
This cynically ignores the fact that instituting heavy fines for not buying defective insurance will cause premiums to go up dramatically.

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Deception:
"And I want seniors to know: despite what some have said, these reforms will not cut your guaranteed benefits."

Fact:
This bill will result in cutbacks for many in benefits not guaranteed by law. (This is a trick more than a direct lie, though the intent to deceive is the same.)

---

Two Lies in One Sentence:
"Once this reform is implemented, health insurance exchanges will be created, a competitive marketplace where uninsured people and small businesses will finally be able to purchase affordable, quality insurance."

Facts:
The new lie contradicts the fact that HMOs and health insurers don't provide quality insurance. They provide something which is universally known to be a defective product. Even with the subsidies, the insurance won't be affordable for the overwhelming majority of the uninsured. Insurance will become more expensive for people who already have it.

(I should note that, in this sentence, Obama reminds me of one of the hucksters who sell crap products on cable TV as "affordable, quality" products. They leave out that the junk they are selling is "not available in stores" because the stores don't want to deal with the returns.)

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I'm not going to pretend that I'm surprised by a politician lying. But, what really is surprising is that so many liberal blogs aren't calling President Obama on it. This is the same wealthcare proposal Bush and the Republicans would have pushed through if they were in power, and the sales pitches would be only modestly different.

Politics isn't team sports. Policies have very real impacts on peoples' lives, and that has to be taken a lot more seriously than many blogs on the left are doing so far. We need to stop cheering on the donkeys vs. the elephants and pay attention to what's actually going on.

 

This is a submission to the annual Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm.

There are a lot of things about the Vatican that don't get the attention they deserve. One of them is the fact that it is a pure theocracy. It has a dictator, the Pope, who is selected by a group of Cardinals appointed by previous Popes. That dictator has absolute power over the Vatican's foreign and domestic policy.

Because the Roman Catholic Church claims that their dictators are infallible, any Roman Catholic who questions the dictates and behavior of that pontiff is automatically suspect and sinful in the eyes of her or his church.

Under these circumstances, it isn't that difficult to see how difficult it is to root out any kind of corruption from such a structure. The area of Vatican corruption that is finally getting some of the media attention it deserves is the Vatican's coverups of the rampant child molestation in the Roman Catholic clergy.

Revelations of Vatican coverups are popping up all over the world. One of the most recent ones was the discovery that a now dead Bishop in Tuscon tried to get child raping priests fired only to have the Vatican block him. This is terrible, but it is equally commonplace.

Theocratic corruption is hardly limited to the Vatican. The Taliban sold heroin and banned all music they couldn't make money off of. We know about the litany of corruption among televangelists who would like to set up America as their own private theocracy.

People are correctly concerned about the dangers to human freedoms posed by theocracy. What gets lost is that in theocratic governments, dissent is suppressed and people are brainwashed into thinking they are evil when they question anything. This sets up a system where any kind of corruption that humans are capable of inventing can take hold. It also creates an environment where it is incredibly difficult to stop those corrupt practices, whether they be financial or physically brutal. This problem is by no means limited to the Vatican.

 

Terrible spin efforts have happened before, but I never thought a Vatican propagandists would sink this low. From the NY Times 4/2/10:

Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

Putting these words in a letter from a phony "Jewish friend" only makes it more heinous.

Of course, there hasn't been any violence in response to the heinous acts of violence committed by Roman Catholic priests against children of that faith. However, that lie is nowhere as unconscionable as the comparison. Even the most imaginative critics of the RCC couldn't make this shit up.

I really don't know how those fuckers sleep at night.

 

The more I learn about the wealthcare bill that the Obama administration pushed through Congress on behalf of the HMOs and health insurers, the worse it gets. From the Washington Post 3/27/10 (Hat Tip: No Blood for Hubris):

The bill restores $250 million over five years for states to sponsor programs aimed at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases by focusing exclusively on encouraging children and adolescents to avoid sex. The funding provides at least a partial reprieve for the approach, which faced losing all federal support under President Obama's first two budgets.

"We're very happy to see that funding will continue so the important sexual health message of risk avoidance will reach American teens," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, a Washington-based lobbying group. "What better place to see such an important health issue addressed than in the health legislation?"

Now we know the other reason why Bart Stupak voted for the wealthcare bill. The better known reasons were the woman hating restrictions on abortion in the Senate version of the bill and President Obama's misogynist Executive Order on abortion.

This is disturbing for so many reasons. These "abstinence only" scams promote teen pregnancy, and the kind of unsafe sex that causes pregnancy also spreads HIV. This action by Obama is typical of an administration that treats AIDS as one of its lowest priorities.

Also, these fraudulent "sex educations" programs represent deliberate religious indoctrination in the public schools. This violates the Establishment Clause, and it discriminates against atheists. Obama and the "Democrats" in Congress have had a really lousy record on state/church separation issues thus far, and it doesn't look like it will be getting better any time soon. I wonder if the same groups that will get funding for "abstinence only" scams also will get money under Obama's expanded hate based initiatives.

Is it too much to want actual Democrats in Congress and the White House?

 

Sadly, it's not an April Fools Day joke. There's a lot of rightist venture capital behind Facebook too. (Hat Tip: The Peace Tree)



It's all pretty sobering.

This article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation shows how to hide your Friends list from the entire world.

However, Facebook may be revising its Privacy Policy to let websites that you go to have your Friends list and other personal information. They seem determined to force users to repeatedly opt out to protect their data, which suggests they really want to wear people down until they give up on any privacy at all.


I would still recommend using a pseudonym if you go on Facebook at all.

 

He hates us because we have sex with adults.

 

Image: Contando Estrelas

The Burmese opposition has decided not to go along with being window dressing for the dictatorship's bogus upcoming election. (The Irrawaddy 3/29/10 - Hat Tip: Ten Percent)

Burma's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), on Monday decided against registering for the general election this year, a party spokesman told The Irrawaddy.

“Without any objections, all the party leaders reached a consensus not to register the party and join the election because the junta's election laws are unjust,” said senior party official Khin Maung Swe who attended the meeting at the party's Rangoon headquarters. “We also agreed to call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners.”

Party officials said that the lawyer of detained leader Suu Kyi read out a message from Suu Kyi to the party leaders at the meeting and said that “Daw Suu could not accept the party registering under the unjust laws, but she said that neither she nor anyone else owns the party. Therefore, the party members have to make the decision by themselves democratically.”

The Obama administration has said that it is disappointed, blaming the generals, but will continue to "engage" with the military dictatorship. This policy, which even sounds a lot like Reagan's policy of "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime in South Africa, emboldened the Burmese dictatorship to rig the elections with an election law which, among other things, would ban Suu Kyi from the party she leads in return for a chance to participate in "elections" whose outcome would be predetermined anyway.

 

So much of the media coverage is focused on how the rampant child molestation in the Roman Catholic clergy is affecting Ratzi and the Vatican. What about its effects on the rape victims? When anyone defends those clerical monsters, they should be forced to read and listen to the words of people who have been raped.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests has a statement that should be required reading for anyone who defends Ratzinger or his evil church at this point.

SNAP Press Statement

For immediate release: Saturday, March 27, 2010

A Wisconsin victim's impact statement

Statement by Kevin Dresdow

I was a typical twelve year old boy before I met Jim Blume. I had a lot of friends. I was athletic, a good student, and attended mass every Sunday. My family was very supportive and always there for me; we were an ordinary happy family. Everybody who knew Jim wanted to be his friend because of his generosity and kind nature. The racquetball games, ski trips, playing board games were all just a ploy to get me alone whenever he had the chance. I was twelve, shy and trapped inside Jim’s parent’s house in Mishawauka Indiana the first time he molested me while I was trying to sleep. I was confused, wondering what had just happened. The molesting continued for the next two years, dozens of times in five different states from right here in Wisconsin to California.

It is hard to describe in words how this has impacted my life for the last thirty-two years. I have very low self –esteem. I have lost my faith in the Catholic Church and I trust no one. I have been addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex and tobacco. I worry everyday for my three children and wonder if this might happen to them. I lied to and kept this secret from my former wife who I was with for twenty-four years. I have troubles with all of my relationships, which resulted in my divorce five years ago. I have occasional nightmares and have trouble focusing on daily tasks, which has prevented me from holding a job for a long term basis. I kept this inside of me for all of these years because I was confused, ashamed, and worried what my family and friends would think. To this day I am seeing a counselor in the hopes that someday I will be healed. There were other victims after me, and now I feel guilty for not coming forward before they became prey to this pedophile. Now my parents who are in their seventies share their own guilt for allowing me to spend so much time with Jim Blume and encouraging me to take a trip with him across the country. They even had him over for dinner on occasion; he had everyone believing he was a good man.

I need to move on with my life. I am so sorry I wasn’t able to come forward sooner and offer my deepest apologies to those who were victimized after me. For me to think that this man might still have the ability to molest another child is unbearable. The fact that he originally denied my allegations only made this process worse. Now I need to see him punished so he doesn’t have the opportunity to ruin another person’s life.