For instance, the American auto execs were chewed out for flushing their businesses (and lots and lots of jobs) down the national toilet.  The chewing-out did not stop the same execs from taking private planes to their meetings (hadn’t they heard of carpooling?) or from standing up the President of the United States.  One executive head rolled, but only one.  Not that bad.

The heads of Banks Too Big To Fail might have squirmed a little when they were introduced to a new orifice courtesy of a committee hearing, but nothing happened to them either. They continued to collect vast bonuses and so did their underlings. We could probably balance the budgets of several states using the money they doled out to themselves. OK, so Ken Lewis might get a little hand slapping for not talking about the problems with Merill Lynch’s balance sheet, but then again maybe not.   Lewis has already portrayed himself as a patriot doing his civic duty, as not having a choice because Hank Paulson said so.

Fast-forward to Tony Hayward’s testimony before yet another freakin’ committee looking for air time so its members can emote righteously and pretend that it means something.  Because it doesn’t.  There isn’t going to be any meaningful regulation on the oil industry any more than there were regulations sicked like rabid dogs on the bankers, who were then free to do everything they did before the recession, which will bring our economy land in even more do-do.  Nope,  most if not all of our politicians are basking in the well-lined pocket of  industry, like tanning addicts bake in the sun, no matter what that industry’s name.  BP has been and/ or will be penalized, but the industry itself will keep on chuggin’ like the little engine that could.  I mean,  a Federal district judge just lifted the President’s moratorium on drilling because the administration hadn’t proven that all of the new offshore rigs in question were bound to fail as BP’s Deepwater Horizon did because of a faulty assumption.  The thing is, I’m not sure it can be proven that any or all of the rigs are not bound to fail.  The point is that it’s more important to secure the oceans and shores from spills extending for months, and perhaps years if the relief wells don’t work, than it is to generate oil.  The environment depends on it; our people’s livelihoods depend on it.   What we can’t depend on are the courts,  the oil companies, and the politicians to make sure it never happens again.

So, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, what should happen to McChrystal after the disaster that is the snarktastic  Rolling Stone article?  The same thing that happens to everyone else–a little public humiliation, then back to work for the sucker.*

(No, not the Deity.  Wall Street.)

I’d like to address all the Democrats for a moment:

You knew this was coming.  And if you didn’t, you aren’t the brightest bulbs on the porch.  Wall Streeters are attempting blackmail.  They want your panties in a twist, they want to see you shivering in your penny loafers because A) they’ve paid you good money, which implies they own you; B) if they made you–and they think they did–they can break you;  C) they’ve convinced you that the market runs the entire economy.

Do not pay attention to the Little Men Behind The Curtain. Go ahead and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act, or bring to life something even better.   Yes, Republicans and Blue Dogs will call you  Frankenstein and your baby a monster, but you know better.   Really, you do.  You can’t allow Wall Street to hold you hostage to its evil plan; you can’t let Wall Street keep making the same mistakes that plunged our economy into ruin.  And you most certainly won’t win any more votes from Main Street by doing the Little Men any more favors.

Do yourselves a favor,  do us all a favor:  find the people who played with derivatives and default credit  swaps and what all else, take away their toys for good.  Then prosecute the bastards who broke the law, who defrauded plain ol’ Americans and pounded them into the ground with rubber mallets labeled “Death. by Debt.”  Remember The Guy In Orange?   Remember the folks who own and run World Savings?  Or who used to be Countrywide?  Yup,  them,  their buddies,  and the horses they rode in on.  Take wooden stakes, preferably some with nasty thorns, to the blood suckers.

But don’t let Wall Street scare you.  The Streeters may have more money, but we have more votes.

P.S.  Please do not assume that the economy is the only reason Scott Brown got elected.  There are way too many groups here under the bus for the voters’ wrath to be all about that.

There are limits to my patience.   I could not watch the Obama administration mishandling the progressive agenda by abandoning most promises made during the campaign without wanting to rant and hiss and scream.  That doesn’t make for good blogging, now does it.  (Not really a question. Hence, the lack of usually appropriate punctuation.)

Well, today I’m back for a quickie.  I’d like to say that Evan Bayh* is inane, a  carping dumbass fool, in imagining that Coakley lost in Massachusetts because the Democrats’ agenda is too progressive.

Progressive? Where?  Show me progressive, Evan, you idiot.

Lemme see, Dems kowtowed to Olympia Snowe and heeded the growls of Blue Dogs in crafting the health care bill, which is now a tremendous flop, a giveaway to Insurance and Big Pharma because of some deal Obama made with those industries behind closed doors,  and looks to get even  worse. Witness, allowing Catholic bishops to influence legislation with respect to abortion.   Now Barney Frank admits the bills deserves to be in the crapper, but still wants to work with Snowe & Friends.   Mmmmm, that tastes progressive! ( My ass, it is.)

Bush II gave tons of taxpayer money away and Obama let the same jerks  (and their friends) who ran this country into ruin by repealing necessary bank regulations continue to wreak havoc and ruin.  Just you wait. It’ll happen.  The Dems let the banks continue to make the same mistakes and pay vast bonuses in the wake of  the country’s economic disaster just to show voters on Main Street that we don’t matter.   Obama’s only response to the banks’ largesse, sheerly political in nature and kinda dumb for a smart guy, was taxing the banks to allegedly pay back the American people when anyone with half a brain knows the banks will pass the expense on to consumers.  (Thankssoverymuch,  Barack.  You’re a chump peach.)

Naturally, Cosmo poster boy  Scott Brown is such a narcissist he thinks his win is B I G G E R than a slap in the face to Obama and progressives, while progressive polls show that voters who backed Obama are still behind the reforms,  but don’t believe the Democratic party can stand and deliver. Ya think?  It’s Massachusetts, Brownie.  That’s where liberals go to die.

Obviously, Evan didn’t know.  Or he wouldn’t have been so stupid and let it go to print. Same with Barney, who used to be a liberal. Goddess knows what happened to him. (Head injury?) And our fave poster boy, Scotty Brown. I thought you had to be smart to go to law school. Maybe not.

So who’s the biggest idiot? Well, the day is young yet.

* Just Google “Evan Bayh is an idiot” and you’ll see what I mean.

Yes,  I said “dither. “  So shoot me.

I would really like to know why Lieberman still has a chairmanship, why no one is sitting on the Blue Dogs until they howl for mercy.  Because someone should.   You know, a leader.  If we have any leaders to speak of anymore.

I feel stabby-stabby that our elected officials are such wusses.

Obama wussed out on health care such that he can’t be seen or heard in leaks ever saying he’d ram it through Congress come hell or high water even though Americans voted him into office for just that.  He would rather be all “bipartisan”  (which is a joke when the hard right Repubs remain so rabid) and take presidential  credit for a vote that could be construed as remotely positive than do what’s best for the citizens of this country.

Pelosi has muchos cojones when it comes down to it, but I don’t think she’s got a majority as Reid does.  Nope.  Pelosi would have to scrounge 32 votes for a majority.  Reid not so much.

Reid totally wusses at almost every opportunity. It makes me sick.

I saw Howard Dean on CBS earlier this morning and he seemed resigned to the slight expansion. Sure, Rockefeller’s all happy because he’s wanted to include 55+ year olds in Medicare for a racoon’s lifetime, but that bit of reform excludes  so many people it’s tragic.

I wonder how other progressive Dems feel about their elected representatives’ behavior during the health care debacle.  I know I’m all stabby-stabby, but I wonder whether they are or not.  Maybe most of the people who voted Obama into office don’t even notice.  Maybe they think their part is done so the new-ish administration and the Democratic Senate should have a handle on things while they’re not watching.   Guess what, folks?  NOT.

(AmericaBlog took questions from readers today, which will be transported to Senator Sherrod Brown for review.  With any luck he’ll answer a few good ones.  I hope he doesn’t mind a little familiarity.  I used his first name because I hadn’t heard of him. Well, it’s actually more interesting than his surname. )

Greetings, Senator Sherrod.

I would like to know how a person who qualifies for and uses an indigent health care plan can afford to get well. For instance, let us say that a person with a chronic illness might be able to work with the right drug cocktail. Since,according to law, drug companies must provide patient assistance for those poor enough to qualify, imagine that this person has improved using an indigent health care program. He has become more functional so he would like to contribute to society.

Bravo.

Unfortunately, he faces a few hurdles. For one, being out of work for a long time, as often happens with the disabled or chronically ill, doesn’t look so nifty on a CV, and while it’s difficult for a healthy person to find work nowadays what with the unemployment rate being so high, a disabled person will have that strike of a lengthy unemployment against him.

Let’s give him a little luck here. Let’s say this person obtains a fairly good job: his wages begin at entry level, yet once his health insurance kicks in, he must pay the going rate for medications and insurance coverage. Unless he’s taking generic medications, and even then, the cost of his medication is prohibitive.

He then realizes he’s experiencing the ultimate health care Catch-22: if he keeps working for as little money as he makes, he won’t be able to pay the co-pays for doctor visits or buy his medication; without medication, he will become too sick to work; and his health will suffer because he won’t be able to see his physician. He might even develop a life-threatening condition in the meantime.

How do you propose to help people such as this man afford their health care? I’m sure you’re aware of insurance companies’ tactics. If they have to take a customer with a pre-existing condition or a serious illness that arises while the customer is covered, those companies will make sure he pays a much higher rate than anyone else.  If it comes to pass that this man cannot be denied health insurance because of his chronic illness, who will make sure his premiums are truly affordable? (I don’t buy into the competition scheme because I think insurance companies could pull an Enron or develop secret cartels like OPEC. ) Who will decide what is “affordable”–even with a public option? Will demographics, such as cost of living, be taken into account? Will a person’s debt be factored into the mix? Will a person living in San Francisco pay the same rate as someone in, say, Mississippi?

And *why not* single payer? I mean, we already have single payer: Medicare. It’s easier and it works.  Or we could have a combination: single payer with an option to go with private insurance like people do in the UK. (By the way, most Brits *like* their health care system.)

Frankly, I do not trust the insurance companies to initiate or complete true reform. I think we’re witnessing the same song and dance they’ve fed us like pablum us since Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman (http://cthealth.server101.com/why_doesn%27t.htm). We did the same thing with the auto industry–trusted the Big Three to change and allowed them to dictate terms–and look where they are now. We need to stop bending over backwards for these companies. They don’t deserve it.

I realize that our nation’s leaders are chary of single payer in part because so many people in the insurance industry would lose their jobs and that wouldn’t help the economy. But why not retrain them and/or give them jobs doing mostly the same thing in the public sector? Why is Congress so short on answers and ideas? Why not look at the countries with the best health care and try those on for size? We’re number 37 in health care, for goodness sake! Behind third world countries! We’re behind Colombia! Can you believe it?!

As I see it, our nation’s leaders would rather pay for wars, help the Wall Street gangsters (who then made out like bandits), and protect their own campaign dollars. What does that say about us as a nation that we put up with such morally reprehensible derangement? What does it say about the Legislative and Executive branches of our government that politics is almost always more important than our own people?

Thank you for reading, Senator. If you’ve gotten this far you’ve got quite an attention span.

Dear Madam Blogger

Brzezinski is 81 years old. He wasn’t given a position in the Obama administration because of his age. To say otherwise is an egregious error. Brzezinski also is a respected Democrat, yet Brzezinki’s opinion is only that, an opinion. He’s not speaking in an official capacity. There will be no US attack on Israel. End of story. Get over it.

It’s long been known in the International community that Israel would not obtain the privilege to fly over Iraq … because:

A) when the story first arose, the US still had some “custody” of Iraq and so would become embroiled in such a war begun by Israel, which would make three happening for the US at once. The US forces, depleted under Donald Rumsfeld cannot not tolerate another battlefront without collapsing;

B) allowing Israel to attack Iran could spark a war in the Middle East, making the region more unstable than it already is (a very bad idea);

C) any country that allowed Israel flyover privileges (e.g., Saudi Arabia) would earn the ire of Muslim states around the globe. Note well that the Saudis denied the report in July as did the Israelis. That’s how unpopular the notion actually is.

The US under George W. Bush provided the Israelis with defensive technology. That was a gesture of friendship. You may not like it or think it was enough because you want a war with Iran to be ineluctable, but it’s not in Israel’s best interests to have Arab and Muslim nations banded against them in a war. Nor is it in the world’s best interests, since we could have another global war on our hands. Wasn’t WW I and WW II enough? Must we again have more bloodshed on that scale? I would hope not.

I can remember listening to Old Testament readings in which the Israelis were described as stiff-necked and warlike. I’m sure it’s not always the case, but this constant hankering after war, when it might be possible to win peace, constitutes a prime example of those character traits. However, what I find most fascinating is the conservative* Israelis love-hate relationship with the US. Most Americans have absolutely no idea that their beloved friends despise them so much. But if the manner in which news is reported on this site is any indication, Arutz Sheva contributes to the ethos of drama and victimhood; this news organ evidently loves to whip up the mob against the enemies of Israel. Granted, many people around the world feel great anger towards Israel, but that state of affairs has to do with its behavior towards the Palestinians as well as its seemingly bellicose nature.

As for the the American Jewish community–it is split between old school types who would support whatever Israel wants, no matter what, and newer groups (i.e., J Street) who love Israel but are concerned that Israel’s current policies are not in that country’s best interests. I happen to concur with the latter view and would go further in saying that those policies could lead to Israel’s destruction, which I find appalling, but possible. I am also disappointed and troubled by Israel’s actions / wars against the Palestinians and Lebanon. I don’t think those policies are helpful; I also don’t think they have worked since there is no true peace. I don’t hold the Palestinians innocent by any means, but I don’t think Israel’s policies are doing its country any good.

I grew up loving Israel and now I don’t recognize it. Would the great Golda Meir have approved of using such things as pre-emptive strikes? I think not. She lived with danger herself, but recognized that pre-emptive strikes would lose Israel its friends and allies as well as its international aid. She may have said, “There are no Palestinians,” but If Israel were insecure she would have parleyed with the Palestinians and come to an agreement to keep her country safe.

There is just so much hatred any one nation can survive. At this point, I see Israel becoming less secure because of its own actions. Should there be an internationally unbacked, pre-emptive strike against Iran, which state will no doubt fight back, I see Israel losing even more status** and security, if not provoking an all-out war. A pity. I had such hopes for you.

* Used in American political terms.

** Look at what happened to George W. Bush.

BTW, I’m not removing the non-post about Sarah Palin’s resignation despite the loss retirement of the video. Think of it as a hat-tip to history.

I am not a Democrat.

I was a Democrat for a little over 30 years–until Diane Feinstein started acting and voting like a Republican. I told her I would never vote for her again and I won’t.  My point? Barack the president seems to have forgotten the promises he made as Barack the candidate. I have never seen such timid leadership in my life. No, wait:  the Democrats have behaved in such a manner all the way through the Bush administration. They kowtowed to the Republicans (who played serious hardball) while there was a big, wistful to-do in the MSM over “bipartisanship” that never happened because the Republicans were nasty and excluded the Democrats from almost every opportunity to make a difference. Perhaps the Democrats and Barack the president believe they should take the alleged high road and refuse to behave as the Republicans did.

With all solemnity, I adjure you… Now is not the time to abandon progressive ideals because a minority of crazy, hard right, radical Republicans–who don’t have much of a party left, mind you–are playing up the rhetoric and the lies and inflaming the wingnut populace against the president’s erstwhile agenda, inciting the crazies to riot and possibly to assassination.

Elegance and grace will not give us single payer and/or a public option or even decent health care. Besides, it would appear Barack the president and the rest of the Democrats have given up on both. If events unfold as I see they might, the insurance companies will realize even more profits if health insurance is mandated. How middle class and lower class Americans will pay, I don’t know. Tax deductions will not help. They are actually rather worthless. Americans need real help, upfront.

I cannot tell you how sickened I am with the current state of affairs. Single payer (with an option to retain private health insurance as is possible in the UK) is the right thing to do. Allowing Blue Dogs to mark this territory and bark orders to the rest of us is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and slightly insane into the bargain. While Teddy Kennedy was alive, you had a majority and you could have passed a good bill that contained both. Now all you have is mush.

What we Americans needed was an FDR on the economy and an LBJ on civil rights and health care. This administration hasn’t come close to giving us either one. What I see is a money-grubbing party that’s still beholden to big business, a party without backbone.  It’s appalling, truly.

And it’s not just health care. Barack the candidate was worrisome when he voted on FISA. But Barack the president has abandoned all principle on warrantless wiretapping as well as in legal cases concerning Guantanamo detainees, doing precisely what the Bush administration did before him, or worse. Barack the president did not seek to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He has left it to Congress, whose members will do nothing, ever. Barack the president has set up another Guantanamo in Bagram, and created an environment where anything will go by alleging that because Bagram is not on American soil (WTF?! It’s a US air base! Does that mean McCain isn’t really a US citizen? Hmph.), people detained there will have no right to habeas corpus let alone any Constitutional right to due process within the US legal system.  Barack the president still allows extraordinary rendition.  Barack the president has allowed the same people who destroyed the economy (think Wall Street investment bankers, Goldman Sachs, the New York Reserve, and the Fed) to retain control over the economy. Nothing has changed in that respect. Barack the president doesn’t want to do anything about the Bush administration higher-ups who approved torture and created an ethos where it could thrive and become even more twisted than Gen. Miller and John Yoo originally planned. Barack the candidate wanted to remove us from theaters of war while Barack the president is digging in in Afghanistan.

Barbara Boxer might give me hope, but it’s not yet clear she won’t do what she’s told by the White House, by the so-called Democratic leadership, or by the insurance and drug companies. But Barack the president and the rest of his administration? No, I have no hope at all.

I’m writing in the hortatory subjunctive now:  Look to your principles once more, recall the promises you made and work to fulfill them. Think of the people who voted for you, Barack & Company. Think about why they voted for you. It wasn’t simply your “soaring rhetoric,” you made promises that voters wanted kept. I urge you to reconsider your path, which thus far is filled with so many broken promises (after only nine months!). Remember that we who voted you and other Democrats into office can just as easily vote you out of office. Or, as in my case, simply not vote at all. There is no one worth voting for anymore.

Ignore me at your political peril. You will fail otherwise. A pity, but it’s true.

Sincerely yours–