Senate Sixty

The Supreme Court of Minnesota ruled in favor of Al Franken today in a case originating after Republican Norm Coleman refused to concede the tight election. After the ruling, Coleman bowed out and Governor Pawlenty said he would sign the election certificate. Senate Majority Leader harry Reid indicated that Franken will be seated after the 4th of July holiday. Thereafter, the Democrats will -- in theory -- have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Perhaps Reid and Obama will grow a pair as a result?

30 June 2009

Obama, Gay Rights, & Free Milk

Thus far into his presidency, Obama has not been a friend to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. In spite of this, these groups have continued to support him. At The Huffington Post, Michael Rowe forcefully makes the point that LGBT Americans and their supporters need to take the president to task for his actions, or lack of action. After all, why will the president buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?

29 June 2009

"Free Market" Health Insurance

Those opposing a so-called public option in health insurance reform usually do so by saying that it will destroy competition in the market place. However, as Zachary Roth of TPM notes in this article, there really isn't any competition to speak of right now in over 90% of the health insurance market. Opponents are actually against competition, whatevery song and dance they may be doing.

Know the facts. Spread the word. Support a public option.

29 June 2009

"What Can I do?"

Robert Reich writing at TPM, quoted here in full.

Someone recently approached me at the cheese counter of a local supermarket, asking "what can I do?" At first I thought the person was seeking advice about a choice of cheese. But I soon realized the question was larger than that. It was: what can I do about the way things are going in Washington?

People who voted for Barack Obama tend to fall into one of two camps: Trusters, who believe he's a good man with the right values and he's doing everything he can; and cynics, who have become disillusioned with his bailouts of Wall Street, flimsy proposals for taming the Street, willingness to give away 85 percent of cap-and-trade pollution permits, seeming reversals on eavesdropping and torture, and squishiness on a public option for health care.

In my view, both positions are wrong. A new president -- even one as talented and well-motivated as Obama -- can't get a thing done in Washington unless the public is actively behind him. As FDR said in the reelection campaign of 1936 when a lady insisted that if she were to vote for him he must commit to a long list of objectives, "Maam, I want to do those things, but you must make me."

We must make Obama do the right things. Email, write, and phone the White House. Do the same with your members of Congress. Round up others to do so. Also: Find friends and family members in red states who agree with you, and get them fired up to do the same. For example, if you happen to have a good friend or family member in Montana, you might ask him or her to write Max Baucus and tell him they want a public option included in any healthcare bill.

Do it! The White House can be reached via this web site. You can find your Member of Congress here.

26 June 2009

"Why the Critics of a Public Option for Health Care Are Wrong"

Robert Reich has done it again. Do not miss it at TPM!

25 June 2009

Change... Not!

Arianna Huffington has a great op-ed today at The Huffington Post about how lobbyists are winning the war in the fight for any significant change in Washington. Both Obama and Members of Congress who at least speak of change are getting rolled and rolled hard. As she puts it:

Remember all that change Americans voted for in November? Well, there's been a change in the plans for change.

The detour has come courtesy of a familiar nemesis: DC lobbyists who, this year alone, have watered-down, gutted, or out-and-out killed ambitious plans for reforming Wall Street, energy, and health care.

The media like to pretend that something's at stake when a big bill is being debated on the House or Senate floor, but the truth is that by then the game is typically already over. The real fight happens long before. And the lobbyists usually win.

They're used to administrations and newly elected Congresses that come in with big plans for the future. But, as Obama and Congressional reformers are finding out, the future doesn't have a well-funded lobby. The past, on the other hand, is extremely well represented.

Oh how I wish that she wasn't dead right.

25 June 2009

Song Lyric Humor

The Test Pattern blog over at MSNBC has had two days devoted to song lyrics, one for misheard lyrics and the other for lyrics that just don't make sense. For some reason, I found them pretty funny, especially the former. If you have time, searching through the comments can be fun, too. Enjoy.

25 June 2009

NYC Beekeepers

A friend sent me an article on beekeeping in and around New York City. Apparently, Giuliani made the practice illegal when he was mayor, but there is a big push to bring the hobby back and to legalize it as well. The man really is a putz.

23 June 2009

Obama as Nerd

John Hodgman of The Daily Show -- and Apple commercial fame -- roasted the president recently at the TV and Radio Corresponents Dinner. Funny stuff. The president also spoke at the dinner.

20 June 2009

The Politics of Universal Healthcare

Robert Reich is back with another memo to the president at TPM. This time, he is advising Obama regarding health care reform and what he needs to do to insure that universal coverage is part of the plan. Again, he is spot on.

19 June 2009

A History of House Cats

A good friend and fellow cat devotee sent me a link to a recent Scientific American article on the history of the house cat. Apparently, new information has come to light that has changed scientists' thinking on when and where these animals first became domesticated. The article lists these key points.

• Unlike other domesticated creatures, the house cat contributes little to human survival. Researchers have therefore wondered how and why cats came to live among people.
• Experts traditionally thought that the Egyptians were the first to domesticate the cat, some 3,600 years ago.
• But recent genetic and archaeological discoveries indicate that cat domestication began in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture was getting under way.
• The findings suggest that cats started making themselves at home around people to take advantage of the mice and food scraps found in their settlements.

I am a cat person to my core, so this is really interesting to me. Enjoy!

16 June 2009

"The 3 Essentials of Financial Reform"

Former Clinton cabinet secretary Robert Reich has written an op-ed at TPM detailing the three essential components that any financial reform package must contain to in order to prevent another meltdown in the banking sector. He is correct on all counts and with the president releasing his plan on this front tomorrow, I hope that the White House is listening. My hopes, unfortunately, are not high.

16 June 2009

Obama Needs a Little W

HBO host Bill Maher suggested this week that President Obama needs a little more President George W. Bush in him. By this he means that the president needs a little more certitude in his actions and a little less worrying about his standing. Obama has great ideas, but has done relatively little to push them forward in Maher's estimation. I'm not sure that he is far from the truth. Although, in some areas that Maher mentions -- namely the reform of the banking industry -- I'm not even sure that I'd agree that Obama has good ideas. The five minute segment is worth a look.

14 June 2009

Obama Haters & His Safety

Frank Rich has written a terrific op-ed in the New York Times on the state of far right hate speech in the United States today. There can be little doubt that far right members of the media are feeding the hate-filled rhetoric to the masses. So, too, can there be little doubt that this frenzy is -- in part large or small -- responsible for the recent killings of a guard at the National Holocaust Museum and of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. Rich wonders, as have others, exactly what danger this puts the president in, when it is Obama who is at the center of this Pavlovian storm.

I will place a few passages from the column below, but I highly recommend reading the entire piece. And if you still feed at the right wing communications trough, I would consider its cost on society. There is nothing inherently wrong with being a Republican or in having conservative views, however much I may disagree with you on points of policy. However, enriching those who spew hate -- and listing to the radio, watching television, and purchasing books does exactly that -- makes one culpable in that hate.

WHEN a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network’s surging e-mail traffic, warns urgently on-camera of a rise in hate-filled, “amped up” Americans who are “taking the extra step and getting the gun out,” maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most.

The anchor was Shepard Smith, speaking after Wednesday’s mayhem at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Unlike the bloviators at his network and elsewhere on cable, Smith is famous for his highly caffeinated news-reading, not any political agenda. But very occasionally — notably during Hurricane Katrina — he hits the Howard Beale mad-as-hell wall. Joining those at Fox who routinely disregard the network’s “We report, you decide” mantra, he both reported and decided, loudly.

What he reported was this: his e-mail from viewers had “become more and more frightening” in recent months, dating back to the election season. From Wednesday alone, he “could read a hundred” messages spewing “hate that’s not based in fact,” much of it about Barack Obama and some of it sharing the museum gunman’s canard that the president was not a naturally born citizen. These are Americans “out there in a scary place,” Smith said.

Then he brought up another recent gunman: “If you’re one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who’s performing abortions?” An answer, he said, was provided by Dr. George Tiller’s killer. He went on: “If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the president of the United States ...” He left the rest of that chilling sentence unsaid.

...

The question, Shepard Smith said on Fox last week, is “if there is really a way to put a hold on” those who might run amok. We’re not about to repeal the First or Second Amendments. Hard-core haters resolutely dismiss any “mainstream media” debunking of their conspiracy theories. The only voices that might penetrate their alternative reality — I emphasize might — belong to conservative leaders with the guts and clout to step up as McCain did last fall. Where are they? The genteel public debate in right-leaning intellectual circles about the conservative movement’s future will be buried by history if these insistent alarms are met with silence.

It’s typical of this dereliction of responsibility that when the Department of Homeland Security released a plausible (and, tragically, prescient) report about far-right domestic terrorism two months ago, the conservative response was to trash it as “the height of insult,” in the words of the G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele. But as Smith also said last week, Homeland Security was “warning us for a reason.”

No matter. Last week it was business as usual, as Republican leaders nattered ad infinitum over the juvenile rivalry of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at the party’s big Washington fund-raiser. Few if any mentioned, let alone questioned, the ominous script delivered by the actor Jon Voight with the G.O.P. imprimatur at that same event. Voight’s devout wish was to “bring an end to this false prophet Obama.”

This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned.

14 June 2009

"The Degradation of the American Dialogue"

Following in the wake of the shooting at the American Holocaust Museum and the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas, Michael Rowe has written an insightful piece at The Huffington Post titled Death at the Holocaust Museum and the Degradation of the American Dialogue. It is not to be missed.

In it, he addresses how today's media climate sets the stage for the greater, national discourse on many matters that often devolves into a xenophobic, hateful frenzy. Talking heads use this speech to make money and when they are called on it, they wrap themselves in the First Amendment. However, that speech is protected does not make it wise... does not make it right. Moreover, it can kill. And perhaps much worse, it can unhinge segments of society and perhaps unravel that society altogether.

11 June 2009

12 June 2009 Addition: In his New York Times op-ed yesterday, economist Paul Krugman spoke on the same topic and to the same fears.

Addition: Frank Schaeffer, former right wing nut job, wrote a great piece on this topic back on the 1st of June at The Huffington Post. What is interesting about his take is that he admits to being an insider in the movement that furthered, and in some cases created, the hate that ultimately has led to violence.

The National Debt Debate

Former cabinet secretary Robert Reich has a most interesting op-ed today at TPM regarding the national debt, not only in and of itself, but also how it can be used as a tool to frame the debate on other political issues of our day.

11 June 2009

Israel & the West Bank

Josh Marshall of TPM has written a great article as to why Israel must leave the West Bank to secure peace. Indeed, it is in its own best interest to do so and far from being a retreat, it is a bold move for its own security. It looks like in Obama, the world may have an American leader who understands this and is willing to press Israel on the issue.

10 June 2009

NY Gay Marriage Legislation

New York is attempting to pass legislation to support gay marriage in the state. However, due to a last-minute political shake-up on the Democratic side of the Senate, it currently faces an up-hill battle. The Human Rights Campaign has asked its members to contact friends in New York in an effort to get them to write their state senators in support of the bill. The HRC sent the following language:

Hi,

I just read about the bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry in New York, and I thought I'd write you. This issue is really important to me, and I'm hoping you'll take a minute to ask your NY state senator to support the bill.

The state Senate is going to vote on it soon, and Governor Paterson has vowed to sign it. But a handful of senators are still sitting on the fence, and yours might be one of them. Even if your state senator supports marriage equality, it is important that they hear from constituents that they are doing the right thing – opponents of marriage equality are trying to convince them otherwise.

Will you tell your state senator to vote YES on marriage equality? Here's a link to an action page with a pre-written message – simply enter your name and address and click "send message," and an email goes to your state senator automatically:

http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/nysenatemarriage?source=200906_adv_ny_taf

If you want to make even more of a difference, you can call your state senator at 518-455-2800.

And be sure to send this to everyone else you know in New York.

Thank you so much for your support!

If you live in NY, please use the link to contact your NY state senator. If you have friends in NY, please forward the message to them that they might do so. Thank you.

9 June 2009

The Mountain Goes to Mohammad

Daniel Levy wrote a very interesting piece detailing ten things of note in President Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Egypt. The speech was greeted enthusuastically and hopefully, it will be a turning point in our mutual dealings with the Muslim world. The proof will be in the pudding.

For a "Cliff's Notes" version of the speech, see TPM.

4 June 2009

5 June 2009 Addition: Full text of speech.

Rendezvous in Paris

A friend sent me the link to this YouTube video with the following text:

Filming in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris early in the morning . The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine , through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. The driver completed the course in 8 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running 19 real red lights, nearly hitting a myriad of pedestrians, pigeons, and driving the wrong way up two bonefide one-way streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground.

Now, this is crazy. The driver could have killed someone else countless times, not to mention himself. And I hate to think what could have happened to the car! That said, it is an amazing video.

1 June 2009