Wednesday Stuff

Once more, the dangerous derangement of Tom Coburn is on display for all to see in this report of how our veterans and their families and friends are being screwed over by Coburn's "hold" on legislation that provides funding to care for our heroes ("hold" this, you lunatic - and yes, we know what happened to John Edwards, but he was the first person I can recall who spoke out about homeless veterans, and he was met by the predictable outcry, most notably from Fix Noise's premier falafel-abusing talking head here)...

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...and I thought this was an appropriate song for the occasion, which of course includes Remembrance Day for our friends across the pond ("Dad" is military slang for Baghdad, just as a reminder).

Wednesday Mashup Part 2 (11/10/09)

(Part One is over here.)

The New York Times informs us here that the infamous Second Circuit Court of Appeals under Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs (pictured) has done it again…

Two courts, one in Italy and one in the United States, ruled recently on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the kidnapping of people and sending them to other countries for interrogation — and torture. The Italian court got it right. The American court got it miserably wrong.

In Italy, a judge ruled that a station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans broke the law in the 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric who ended up in Egypt, where he said he was tortured.

Two days earlier, a federal appeals court in Manhattan brushed off a lawsuit by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was seized in an American airport by federal agents acting on bad information from Canadian officials. He was held incommunicado and harshly interrogated before being sent to Syria, where he was tortured. He spent almost a year in a grave-size underground cell before the Syrians let him go.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided that none of that entitled Mr. Arar to a day in court.

…

Written by (Jacobs), the 59-page majority opinion held that no civil damages remedy exists for the horrors visited on Mr. Arar. To “decide how to implement extraordinary rendition,” he wrote, is “for the elected members of Congress — and not for us as judges.” Allowing suits against policy makers for rendition and torture would “affect diplomacy, foreign policy and the security of the nation,” Judge Jacobs said.

…

One of the dissenters, Judge Guido Calabresi, said that “when the history of this distinguished court is written, today’s majority decision will be viewed with dismay.”

The damage to Mr. Arar, America’s reputation and the rule of law is already quite plain. The Supreme Court should reverse this ruling.

Given, though, that we’re talking about the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR, I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope for that either (and this tells us how the Second Circuit upheld a ruling in 2006 dismissing a claim against Saudi Arabia, a Saudi charity, four princes and a Saudi banker of providing material support to al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks).

The prior post also tells us that the Jacobs court was guilty of “a bad reading of federal law” when they let gun manufacturers off the hook in response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s lawsuit, and they also let former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman “skate” as well, ruling that she could not be held liable for assuring residents near Ground Zero that the air was safe to breathe (overturning a verdict against Whitman issued by U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts, who stated that Whitman’s actions “shocked the conscience”).

Oh, and did I point out that Jacobs also ruled that Medicaid funds could be denied to disabled people?

As noted here, though, Jacobs actually did have good words to say on behalf of Judge Sonia Sotomayor prior to her Supreme Court confirmation.

Would that he showed a speck of the generosity or understanding towards those seeking a hearing before him that he shows to his peers.

Also, former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm recently opined as follows (here)…

A new CNN/Opinion Research Poll of 1,018 adult Americans finds those who are very or somewhat confident about the Democrat administration's plans waning, while those lacking confidence are increasing in numbers.

Nice one, Malcolm, you scumbag (the "ic" always matters).

Continuing...

…steady delays in manufacturing the (H1N1) vaccine and the federal government's distribution have continued. Deliveries of millions of doses have gone way beyond the original schedule. So late are deliveries that some medical experts say an epidemic will be well underway or over before all the doses become available in late December.

GOP Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, never a fan of big new government programs, has called this year's H1N1 swine flu preparations a "total failure." His belief seems to be spreading like a virus as well, with several polls showing a majority of Americans now have no intention of getting the doses, even if and when they become available.

Now, the new CNN Poll, taken Oct. 30-Nov. 1 with a margin of error of +/-3 points, finds those Americans who are very confident that the Obama White House can prevent a pandemic has fallen from a meager 15% around Labor Day to a worse 11% now. Those feeling "somewhat confident" has dropped from 44% to 40%.

Meanwhile, the percentage of those lacking any confidence has jumped from 40% to 49%.

I must tell you that I’ve just about had it with Ron Paul.

And I don’t care if he’s a doctor or not. In the final analysis, he’s a bought-and-paid-for Repug who has been screaming about “socialized medzin’” just as loudly as anyone else in his party for just as long (here).

And he claimed on that Alex Jones show (I'll let you find the link) that Obama is supposedly keeping his daughters from getting the H1N1 vaccine (uh, really?).

Actually, I already pointed out here that the issues with vaccine preparation in this country aren't Obama’s fault; as noted in the third item above (in an unusually lucid moment for Dana Milbank of the WaPo), the present shortage is “the result of years of failure to build adequate vaccine-manufacturing capacity in the United States. Too little work on new vaccine technologies means producers of flu shots still rely on the ancient method of making inoculations with chicken eggs.”

But beyond that, I want to add the following that I didn’t add last time (here)…

At a time of heightened national anxieties following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and other targets, US authorities raised the spectre of biological attack using the smallpox virus (though there was no evidence that such an attack was imminent, or even feasible). Bush announced a programme to vaccinate 10 million ‘frontline’ public service workers, including police and health staff, with the smallpox vaccine (which had not been used since smallpox had been declared extinct 30 years earlier). But few believed that smallpox was a real threat and, though the politicians succeeded in bullying the public health authorities into endorsing the programme, fewer than 40,000 of the eligible staff came forward to have the vaccine and within a year the whole campaign sputtered out.

According to journalist Arthur Allen in his authoritative study of vaccination and anti-vaccination campaigns in the US, in the smallpox scare ‘the Bush administration had seemingly distorted the truth and manipulated public fears to achieve its goals’ (4). As an advocate of the benefits of immunisation, Allen regretted the effect of the smallpox bioterrorism vaccine programme in undermining public trust for health authorities and in damaging the reputation of vaccination. He noted that this episode contributed to a shift in popular attitudes towards immunisation from the prevailing enthusiasm of the postwar years (resulting from the success of vaccination against polio, smallpox and other diseases) to the more ambivalent climate that now prevails (as a result of the vaccine/autism and other scares).

So if people are hesitant about getting their vaccinations (and there’s no reason for that, by the way; some school districts mandate up-to-date vaccinations), we can thank the husband of Malcolm’s benefactor for inflicting some unnecessary panic.

And finally, aside from Veterans Day, this day marks another remembrance for anyone living in the Philadelphia area in particular; fifteen years ago, Eddie Polec, all of 16 years old, was beaten to death on the steps of St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church.

It’s hard for me to find the words to properly communicate what this act did to this city in particular. I guess phrases like “shocks the conscience,” “riveting,” “setting off torrents of rage” all seem to fit. After the emotions subsided, though (and it took a long time for that to happen), I suppose all that was left was almost unfathomable sadness.

As this New York Times report tells us…

…the police say, as many as two dozen Abington (Pa) youths armed with baseball bats piled into cars, drove into the Fox Chase neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia and confronted a group of teen-agers who ran off.

The Abington youths then cornered (Polec) in front of the church where he had once been an altar boy. He fell or was knocked to the pavement. Then, while some of the attackers pulled him to his feet, others clubbed him to death with a bat, fracturing his skull seven times.

The Philadelphia police arrested three suspects on Tuesday, and said they expected to make at least two more arrests soon. Thomas Crook, 18, Bou Khathavong, 17, and Nicholas Pinero, 17, were charged with murder and are being held without bail.

The police said the attack appeared to have been provoked by an accusation by a young woman from Abington who said she had argued with some teen-agers at a McDonald's in Fox Chase and was then raped. The police said that the young woman had not been raped, but the young men from Abington nonetheless planned revenge for days before they drove to the same McDonald's the night of Nov. 11.

Mr. Polec, whom the police said was not involved in the earlier incident, was standing in the parking lot with some friends when the Abington teen-agers pulled up and chased them to the front of St. Cecilia's Roman Catholic Church. Several of Mr. Polec's friends were injured in the melee.

And as noted here in a post about police and emergency personnel acting with the haste and pre-emption that, tragically, were missing in the Polec case, “(The Polec story) pained a family, neighborhood, city and nation in 1994. It prompted an overhaul of the Philadelphia 911 system – including removing civilian dispatchers and replacing them with trained officers.”

Another memory of this terrible event was the aftermath and the trial of the three defendants, in which the Polec family (led by father John) showed a measure of calm and reserve that seemed to be incomprehensible at the time (I can particularly recall some questioning by the father of the criminals responsible for the death of his son, which I believe took place in court…despite much Googling, I’ve only been able to obtain some sketchy information on all of this, so I can’t confirm that).

I also have a bit of a personal remembrance I’d like to share on this. John Polec worked as a computer programmer at The Vanguard Group for years, a place where I toiled as well, and I ended up working on a development team with a member of the family, as skilled a programmer in her own right and as nice of a person as you could imagine. A co-worker at that time brought up the family connection, and after I said to him that he must be mistaken, he pointed out to me a tattoo on her ankle with Eddie’s name and the year of his birth and death. I never asked her about it because I didn’t know what I could possibly say that wouldn’t reopen a wound; my guess is that most people lose themselves in their jobs to forget about bad stuff in general. So I kept my mouth shut and discussed other stuff.

I suppose the point of mentioning this at all is to say that Eddie Polec’s memory and that of his courageous family has not been forgotten. For anyone living in the Philadelphia area at the time of his death, I’m sure the attack remains as incomprehensible an act now as it was then, a tragic reminder of what happens when conscience-less young men with hormones raging imagine indestructibility, looking for any excuse to set themselves upon another human being like savage animals.

May God bless and keep the Polec family now and always.

A Salute To Our Veterans

I thought this was a really nice tribute from the Joe Sestak for U.S. Senate campaign.



Update: This, in a word, is inexcusable.

Tuesday Stuff

The straight-up racism and sexism of the New York Post is on full display here, people...

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..."Worst Persons" (the beat goes on for Rupert The Pirate, caught lying about Obama references to Hitler and Stalin on Fix Noise -aaarrrgghhh, me hearties!; Repug U.S. Congresswoman Sue Myrick gets the silver for writing a forward to a book about rounding up scary Muslims - Gaubatz? I thought that's what the wingnuts did every day...heh; but Bill Orally gets the nod for speaking out against "the public sector" to the point where he has to be corrected by the fossilized Homo sapien known as Brit Hume - maybe Brit should change his name to "Gaubatz" just to make things interesting)...

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...and why is it appropriate to follow Billo with a cartoon; Happy 40th Birthday to Sesame Street! (and God bless Lena Horne, still with us at 92)...



...and happy 62nd birthday to Greg Lake, here with ELP back in the time of bell-bottom jeans and leisure suits, though the highlight is the percussion tutorial by Carl Palmer...and yeah, I didn't get the "bell" thing either - I vaguely recall that this concert was broadcast on ABC, and I guess they're the ones who had a problem with the line in the song about "seven virgins and a mule"...funny.

More Asinine Armey Analysis From "The Old Gray Lady"

Michael Sokolove wrote the following profile of Dick Armey in the New York Times magazine on Sunday, in which we learned the following…

The (Washington) march on Sept. 12 was largely organized by FreedomWorks (the non-profit “Astroturf” group of which Armey is co-chairman) which secured the permits and opened the podium to a range of speakers — including those from the like-minded but separate Tea Party movement.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters had a good response to that and other excerpts here (and as noted here, I’m sure the statement from Sokolove that Armey’s group is somehow separate from the “teabaggers” is news to Joe Conason, among others - Wikipedia does tell us that the "Tea Party Patriots" are officially separate from Freedom Works, however).

Also…

Armey told me that he had doubts from the beginning about the Iraq war and now regards it as a mistake.

That’s interesting, because while in Congress, Armey voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force (noted here, though to be fair, a lot of other members of Congress on both sides of the aisle did also).

Also...

To Armey, the Constitution is not a “living document” — a phrase he mocks at rallies, to laughs and great applause — and is in fact so straightforward and speaks so directly to this era that it’s reasonable to wonder why we need the nine justices of the Supreme Court to interpret it.

I can’t think of a word to describe my disgust over the fact that Armey actually served in Congress at any point whatsoever if he actually felt such disregard for the constitutional separation of powers.

And if you don’t feel repulsed by Armey over that, I’m sure you will over this (here)…

In 1998, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a reporter asked him what he would do if he were in President Bill Clinton's position. He replied "If I were in the President's place I would not have gotten a chance to resign. I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying, 'How do I reload this damn thing?'"[5] Several of his former female economics students went public with stories of his sexually harassing them — harassment allegedly so severe that at least one student transferred to another school. He would later divorce his wife and marry one of his students.[6]

And finally, I give you this from Sokolove’s article…

If Armey’s views seem disconnected from how many Americans experience health care, one reason could be that Armey himself has very little recent personal exposure to the system. Like many American men, he avoids doctors and said he has not seen one in many years. “I’ve been very fortunate, very healthy,” he said, “so why change up what I’ve been doing?” He equates medical care with unpleasantness. “What happens to old folks, and I’m 69, is they get prodded and poked and picked on. They run a camera up your behind. If these things are medically necessary, I will adhere to them. But don’t make me go through them for your comfort. Medicine is supposed to be for my safety, not yours.”

If Armey chooses to put off colorectal screenings to prevent detection of cancer, that’s his right, even though he’s a damn fool when it comes to his health (to say nothing of his politics either, of course) since he’s in a higher-risk age group. However, this story tells us that colorectal cancer rates have ticked upward for groups beneath the age of 50, generally considered the cutoff for procedures to detect colorectal cancer.

This merely proves that Armey knows as little about enabling better health care outcomes as he does about economics (he referred to the stimulus as "fiscal child abuse"), as noted here.

The “Rump” Runs Wild In A Fort Hood “Frolic”

(And I also posted here.)

Did you know that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused shooter in the Fort Hood rampage in which 13 people were killed and at least 30 wounded, allegedly committed his horrific acts of violence in an example of “the chickens of the left coming home to roost”?

And I mean, that must be true, since David Horowitz wrote it, right? And by the way, a great big raspberry goes out to New York Times “Opinionator” Eric Etheridge for linking to Horowitz yesterday and giving him more credibility than Horowitz will ever deserve (here).

I guess this is what it takes for the right’s point man on filing nuisance college lawsuits claiming “bias” (here) to remain relevant, since the ruling cabal for which he plied his dark art is no longer in power.

And if you bother to take the time to read Horowitz’s online literary equivalent of flatulence (here), you will also see a post titled, “Obama’s Ft. Hood Reaction is Far Worse than the Left’s Smear of Bush’s ‘Pet Goat’ Moment.”

So this is what passes for informed dialogue by apologists for the party out of power, my fellow prisoners: some sick tit-for-tat game in which 12 pointless deaths supposedly trump nearly 3,000 other innocent lives.

And using more elegant language but still communicating the disgusting notion that anyone whatsoever sought to provide “a national rush to therapy” for Hasan, David Brooks, citing no evidence whatsoever, said here that “It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.”

Shockingly, though, I have to admit that Brooks could be right about this country not being “politically serious.” After all, we still bother to give assclowns like Brooks the time of day, don’t we?

I could go on with this, but you get the idea (here and here are two more equally ridiculous examples).

Now while it is true that Hasan did have a correspondence with the radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (noted here), the following is also true (from here)…

A preliminary review of the computer of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused shooter in Thursday's rampage at Fort Hood in which 13 people were killed, has revealed no evidence of any connection to terror groups or conspirators, according to law enforcement officials.

I know decency towards those with whom they disagree is way too much to ask of Horowitz, O’Reilly, Hannity and the rest of that crowd. Apparently, though, respectful silence to commemorate the dead prior to another round of bloviation is too much to ask also.

Monday Stuff

Just to remind us all, the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago today...



...and I thought this was an appropriate selection, recorded a few weeks before the wall actually fell (SRV left us way too damn soon).

The House Closes The Deal On Health Care Reform

Yes, the road will get rockier still in the Senate, but for now, congratulations! (here).

And by the way, I hope every one of the 64 "Democrats" who voted for the Bart Stupak pro-sepsis amendment (Stupak is pictured above) loses next year when running for re-election (here - I don't know the math on whether or not the Dems would still control the House or not, but I'm sick of trying to accommodate these characters...as far as I'm concerned, they're Republicans already). And the fact that the Stupak amendment was co-sponsored by Joe Pitts tells you all you need to know.

Also, a personal thanks to Patrick Murphy for voting nay on Stupak-Pitts. The howls of outrage will be constant on the Op-Ed page of the Courier Times, but you did the right thing.

And how ridiculous is it that, after pulling that stunt with the baby yesterday, Repug John Shadegg of Arizona voted "present" on Stupak-Pitts. Some "courage of your convictions" there, huh?

(Finally, posting is questionable for tomorrow).

Saturday Stuff

Your Republican Party on health care reform, ladies and gentlemen (here)...



...and by the way, get a load of this nonsense from John Shadegg...



...and I thought this was some good stuff from Rep. George Miller of California (classy intro by Rob Andrews - there's a clip out there of Miller taking appropriate shots at the Repugs, but the audio is lousy; the final House vote is in progress)...



...and yep, I think this song is an appropriate response to the "loyal opposition" (and Stupak also: I can understand somewhat if people don't want public funding of abortions, but abortions paid for by subscriber premiums has been on the table for awhile, but Stupak and his pals don't even want to compromise on that - by the way, this is unexpurgated).

Friday Stuff

Man, is Tancredo a WATB or what? Kudos to Markos Moulitsas for responding to his BS with some truth...



...and I think Jon Stewart should get an Emmy, or a cable ACE award, or something, for this sendup of Glenn Beck (speaking of WATBs - love the pic of Che Guevara on the blackboard for no apparent reason)...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

..."Worst Persons" (Alan West running for Florida's 22nd District seat in the U.S. Congress starts making up what are basically racist excuses for the Fort Hood shooter - actually, I'd heard that World Nut Daily "reported" that Maj. Hassan was an Obama advisor, but when that lie was exploded, Fix Noise claimed that the shooter was mad at Obama for not ending the Iraq war earlier, though I have no video at the moment...the media wing of the Repug Party strikes again; speaking of which, Gretchen Carlson, Brian Kilmeade and Pete Johnson of the Roger Ailes Network come up with more excuses on Hassan, including "political correctness" over not screening him as a scary Muslim or something - um, wonder if these androids know that Dubya is no longer president and that BS basically doesn't fly any more; but Tom Kennif of the JAG office takes it for deciding to call out a member of our military as to whether or not that person had served in Iraq and supposedly knew as much as he did - the problem for Kennif is that the person he called out was Specialist Shoshana Johnson...a "JAG-off" indeed)...

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...and between the elections and the result of the World Series, this has been one crappy week for your humble narrator, and here's something a bit mellow to end it (the paintings are from J.M.W. Turner, whose portrait appears at the every end).

Where The Rubber Meets The Road (11/6/09)

As reported in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress were recorded on major roll-call votes last week (and I also posted some videos here; not really able to do much more at the moment).

House

Interior Department budget. Voting 247-178, the House approved the conference report on a bill (HR 2996) to appropriate $32.2 billion for the Department of the Interior and other agencies in fiscal 2010. The figure is nearly 17 percent above 2009 outlays, with most of the increase allocated to restoring the Great Lakes, helping communities provide clean drinking water, suppressing wildfires, addressing climate change, and funding programs for American Indians.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Voting no: Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), and Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.).

Not voting: Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.).

This is the first vote that I can ever recall Patrick Murphy actually missing, and he had a great reason; as noted here (second item, and kudos to Rollins and Victorino for supporting the EFCA in the first one), his wife Jenni gave birth to their second child, Jack, last Monday, with big sister Maggie on hand also. Everyone is doing fine – congratulations all around!

Senate

Extended jobless benefits. Voting 87-13, the Senate advanced a bill (HR 3548) that would provide 20 more weeks of jobless checks for those whose current allotments have expired or soon will expire and who live in states with at least 8.5 percent unemployment. The bill provides 14 additional weeks of benefits for the long-term jobless in all other states. Jobless checks average $300 per week.

A yes vote was to begin debate on the bill.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Ted Kaufman (D., Del.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and Arlen Specter (D., Pa.).

Interior Department budget. Voting 72-28, the Senate sent President Obama the conference report on a bill (HR 2996, above) to appropriate $32.2 billion for the Department of the Interior and other agencies in fiscal 2010.

In addition to items noted above, the bill provides $1.5 billion for cleansing toxic-waste sites; $1.1 billion for the Bureau of Land Management; $761 million for the Smithsonian Institution; $475 million for restoring the Great Lakes; $385 million for addressing climate change; and $335 million for the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities.

A yes vote backed the conference report.

Voting yes: Carper, Casey, Kaufman, Lautenberg, Menendez, and Specter.

This week, the House took up bills on health care, credit cards, and protecting chemical factories, while the Senate debated extended jobless benefits and a renewal of the home-purchase tax credit.

Friday Mashup (11/06/09)

“Floats” for the Yankees parade today in honor of their World Series win, huh?

We didn’t need any damn “floats” here when the Phillies won last year. All we needed was to load up everybody into assorted vehicles and take them down the parade route to Citizens Bank Park for the celebration.

(No, I don’t begrudge the Yankees their “day in the sun” here. As much as it pains me to admit it, they were the better team, though part of me wonders what would have happened if Hideki Matsui had taken the wrong subway train to the stadium on Wednesday, though on second thought, all those guys probably have limos.)

I’m surprised there isn’t a commemorative A-Rod “float” with circular mirrors surrounding him so he can gaze upon his supposed gorgeousness at every moment (with Kate Hudson fawning appropriately, of course).

Let’s see this bunch get back to the Series next year (past the Sox, Angels of wherever they are, Texas, whoever in the Central division and maybe Tampa Bay). This definitely isn’t the Yankee team of Paul O’Neill, Bernie Williams, Chuck Knoblauch, Scott Brosius, etc.

Hopefully, though, the Phillies can make it back also, though their biggest NL foes have all improved as well.

The off-season should be interesting (and the palace for the Yankees sounds as ridiculous based on this as the F.U./Wachovia/Wells Fargo/Whatever It's Called This Week Center where you can pay top dollar to watch the orange-and-black get beat by the best the NHL has to offer, to say nothing of the Sixers getting flattened by the NBA's elite teams).

Also, over at the AEI blog yesterday, Danielle Pletka tried to make a joke out of the following here…

…as the president searches for different approaches to the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terror, there’s another option that hasn’t received the attention it deserves: Bear deployment. It’s green. It’s mean. It’s a killing machine.

And clicking on the “bear deployment” link takes you to a BBC News story, which tells us the following…

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Hmmm, Kashmir, I think to myself; no, not that overplayed Led Zeppelin song on the “classic rock” station, but that endlessly-fought-over territory between India and Pakistan.

The area that was “ripe for resolution” according to Former President Stupid Head in 2008 here, even though he was told here in 2002 that he “can’t let it spin out of control.”

And as noted here, the most recent development is that India has objected to what it considers Chinese interference in PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), though the Indian home minister has said, “We will have a dialogue with every section of the people of Jammu & Kashmir. We mean dialogue process will start and it will be carried to its logical conclusion."

Maybe we can’t exert much influence on this conflict, but it would be nice if the AEI’s resident pundit (one of many) would at least acknowledge that that area of the world is a legitimate trouble spot and not some background upon which she can manufacture a veiled dig at the current occupant of An Oval Office (and you can read about more Pletka foreign policy misadventures from here).

Also, I really don’t have anything to add to this, but I just wanted to point out the following “Thumbs Down” selection in today’s Bucks County Courier Times…

To Bucks County Commissioner Charley Martin for his stubborn and thoughtless resistance to televising county commissioner meetings. And to Commissioner James Cawley for his cowering decision to defer to Martin on the issue.

The cost of televising meetings has long been a convenient scapegoat; that and because the county, unlike municipalities, does not have a franchise agreement with the cable TV companies. Still, the commissioners could record the meetings and stream them on the county Web site, which would let interested citizens view them at their convenience.

An opportunity to replay this week's commissioners meeting one way or the other - and at no expense to county taxpayers - was presented by minority Commissioner Diane Marseglia when she volunteered to pay for recording the meeting with video equipment at the Middletown Township building, the site of this week's remote meeting.

Martin initially dismissed the offer, saying, "I don't see any advantage to it."

Maybe not to you, Charley, or the other commissioners. The advantage would be to citizens, most of whom can't attend the commissioners' late-morning meetings because they have jobs.

Cawley said he had no problem with the meeting going online or on TV but wouldn't back up his convictions. Instead, he meekly yielded to Martin.

The senior commissioner later reversed himself, according to Marseglia, and gave the go-ahead for the meeting to play on Middletown's public access channel. Good thing for Middletown citizens - but what about the rest of us?

And somewhere, Jay Russell smiles (note: he was the “third party” candidate who con-vee-niently ran in the last Bucks County Commissioners’ election and took just enough votes away from Dem candidate Steve Santarsiero to ensure that Martin won instead).

And finally, I should note that I’m really sorry for Dem U.S. House Rep (NJ-3) John Adler that Jon Corzine lost his bid for re-election as New Jersey governor last Tuesday, but that’s no reason for him to believe that “the sky is falling,” as it were (on the subject of Corzine’s loss, by the way, I thought this was an excellent analysis that appeared in the New York Times).

As I’ve said at least once and many people smarter than I have pointed out numerous times already, the lesson, now as always, is to find a way to get your “base” into the game. And the Jersey Repugs, with the not-insignificant help of independent voters, did that for Christie (at times, I think “independent” voters are people who go into the voting booth, recall something they’ve heard no earlier than the day before or within the last five minutes and vote for that reason only; to be fair, though, that works for both parties).

But if Adler thinks that this qualifies as getting the Dem base in the game, then I think he can expect to serve no more than one term in Congress (I have just about nothing for the weekly congressional writeup today, so I might as well point this out now).

Because, as noted from the "Hill" post, Adler said the following…

"Congress should not pass a bill that costs more than $1 trillion dollars or increases the financial burden on middle class families and small businesses," Adler said in a statement. "Health care costs are rising faster than wages and inflation, and this bill does not change this trend."

In response, this post from Media Matters tells us the following…

The CBO has said that the $1 trillion figure (cited here by Adler)doesn’t include $167 billion in new penalty taxes imposed on businesses and individuals, reducing the cost to $894 billion, and beyond that, the CBO explained that that $894 billion figure represents the "net cost of coverage provisions." CBO found that those provisions "would be more than offset by the combination of other spending changes, which CBO estimates would save $426 billion, and receipts resulting from the income tax surcharge on high-income individuals and other provisions, which JCT [the Joint Committee on Taxation] and CBO estimate would increase federal revenues by $572 billion over that period."

Ultimately, the bill would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $104 billion over the 2010--2019 period.

Congressman, if you’re going to do nothing but parrot right-wing talking points and run away from what should be the courage of your convictions, please switch parties now. You’re giving the Republicans everything they want as it is. Why not make it official and be done with it?

Thursday Stuff

And we're supposed to take these people seriously as an opposing political party (unfortunately, I think Keith's reference to apartheid fits - another moment when I don't feel happy about the fact that I'm Caucasian)...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Update 1 11/6/09: Makes sense that Ratzenberger is as obnoxious as his character on "Cheers" here (and for the reality-based perspective, click here).

Update 2 11/6/09: It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic - despite their idiocy, I hope everyone recovered (here).

...and from the ridiculous to the sublime we go - I'm changing things up here as I do every so often; 20 years ago today, the man who may have been the greatest concert pianist who ever lived passed away, and I'm referring to none other than Vladimir Horowitz...here is another majestic performance.

Thursday Mashup (11/5/09)

Well, I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised by this New York Times story, which tells us the following…

…Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining (Mickey Mouse) for the future.

The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a forbidding wasteland.

…

…Disney has quietly embarked on an even larger project to rethink the character’s personality, from the way Mickey walks and talks to the way he appears on the Disney Channel and how children interact with him on the Web — even what his house looks like at Disney World.

“Holy cow, the opportunity to mess with one of the most recognizable icons on Planet Earth,” said Warren Spector, the creative director of Junction Point, a Disney-owned game developer that spearheaded Epic Mickey.

And given Disney’s recent agreement with Marvel, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the Jonas Brothers appear in concert in “Spider-Man 4” (I heard a month or so ago that a script was in development), Storm of “X-Men” shows up in a “very special” episode of “Hannah Montana” to help the teenage heartthrob with “coming of age” issues, and some threatening but ethnically neutral (re., primarily Caucasian) street punks invade “The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody” before the perpetually annoying, talentless but handsome pre-adolescents are saved in a guest appearance by “Iron Man” (hey, it’s all about multi-platform marketing, baby!).

If anything, I expected the Marvel world to get the edges of its characters kind of evened out a bit so they could be more palatable to the white-bread Disney archetype, but if the price for leaving them alone means turning Mickey and company into characters out of “Mad Max,” I’ll take that trade.

And by the way, am I the only one who is scratching his or her head over the fact that the Times thought that this was a legitimate front-page story for their print edition?

Also, Repug U.S. House Rep Rob Bishop of Utah tells us the following from The Hill here (the pic will make sense at the end)…

The Obama Administration continues to play politics with our energy future. Evidence of this fact is the recent cancellation of 77 oil and gas leases in Utah, delayed access to the Outer Continental Shelf, blocked mineral leases, new restrictive oil shale mandates and the consideration of costly taxes on U.S. energy producers and consumers.

…

Instead of focusing on special-interest solutions emanating from Washington, we should look to the hard-working American people for solutions to our nation’s energy and jobs crises. It is the American people, not government bureaucrats, who will develop new and innovative energy technologies. From the Silicon Valley to Manhattan, emerging technologies are revitalizing energy production. However, these new technologies are worthless without the ability to access our abundant domestic resources.

As we stand at the crossroads of what seems to be a future of bleak jobs, leaders in Washington are looking to implement costly and destructive policies that hinder, not help in economic and job recovery. The same lands that once brought good fortune and prosperity to early pioneer families can provide that same relief once again in the form of new jobs and greater energy independence. However, this will only be possible if federal bureaucrats and special-interest groups get out of the way and allow American ingenuity to flourish.

“A future of bleak jobs,” huh? Sounds to me like that sentence needed a copy edit (just a guess).

And as far as Bishop’s supposed concern for those “bleak jobs,” this Salt Lake City Tribune story tells us the following…

All four of Utah's Republicans in Congress voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act earlier this year, and all of them then used congressional stationary in an attempt to nab stimulus cash for the state. Utah's lone Democrat in Congress, Rep. Jim Matheson, who voted for the stimulus, also sought funds in letters to federal departments.

Also, the Sun News tells us the following (here)…

(Salazar) withdrew the leases of (the) 77 oil and gas parcels, or 130,000 acres (in Utah's wild red-rock country near Arches and Canyonlands national parks). The leases were also near Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon, an area with prehistoric rock art. Salazar said that the auction Dec. 19 took place without a proper environmental review and consultation with the National Park Service.

Salazar said the department would reconsider the leases and decide whether they were appropriate. It's possible that "a very large portion" of the land could be put up for lease, he said.

The cancellation of the leases was one of the first actions that the Obama administration has taken to protect environmentally sensitive public lands. Salazar called it "an important first step to making sure we have the right balance between development of our resources and protection of our environment."

Actor Robert Redford said in a statement that Salazar's announcement was "a sign that after eight long years of rapacious greed and backdoor dealings, our government is returning a sense of balance to the way it manages our lands" and added: "American citizens once again have a say in the fate of their public lands, which in this case happen to be some of the last pristine places on Earth."

And as noted here from a couple of weeks ago…

Salazar is asking for an investigation of an 11th-hour Bush administration change to oil shale leases in Utah and Colorado that he says may be illegal.

At the same time, Salazar says he's opening a second, more rigidly controlled round of leases for companies trying to find a commercially feasible way to produce synthetic fuel from oil shale in the Rocky Mountain region.

Salazar on Tuesday sent a letter to Interior's inspector general asking for a probe into changes President George W. Bush's Interior Department made to six existing leases -- including one in Utah -- that Salazar says greatly benefited the leaseholders at the expense of taxpayers.

Also, this Source Watch article on Bishop tells us that he favors the “wise use” of natural resources, which sounds benign enough, until you find out that the so-called “wise use” movement is…

“…often funded by timber, mining, and chemical companies. In return, they claim, loudly, that the well-documented hole in the ozone layer doesn't exist, that carcinogenic chemicals in the air and water don't harm anyone, and that trees won't grow properly unless forests are clear-cut, with government subsidies. Wise Use proponents were buffeted by Bush's defeat and by media exposure of the movement's founders' connections to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church network (tainted by charges of cultism and theocratic neo-fascism), but the movement has quickly rebounded. In every state of the US, relentless Wise Use disinformation campaigns about the purpose and meaning of environmental laws are building a grassroots constituency. To Wise Users, environmentalists are pagans, eco-nazis, and communists who must be fought with shouts and threats."

Oh, and Congressman Bishop is a pal of the teabaggers also, as noted here (and pictured above…wonder how many of Bishop’s teabaggin’ fans took time off from their “bleak jobs” to attend this little Bund rally today? And such lovely signs too…).

Finally, Tony Blankley of the Moonie Times imagined a big media conspiracy here (and naturally, the source is all of that “Chicago-style politics” of the Obama Administration)…

Not so long ago, there was a furious fight between different tribes in the White House, the CIA and the State and Defense departments over the correct war-fighting strategy. The coin of the realm back then was intelligence: Intelligence that pointed in the right policy direction was cherry-picked and shown to the public; covert players connected to undesirable conclusions were outed or disparaged. This fight for the hearts and minds of Washington opinion shapers was fought out on the battlefields of the Washington Post and the New York Times -- and from them to the networks and news outlets across the country and around the world.

These descriptions may remind you of Valerie Plame -- a CIA operations officer with relatively minor responsibilities who was outed by someone in the George W. Bush administration.

…

Well, last week the Times again published on the front page the name of a purported CIA-paid undercover asset. This time it was none other than Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful brother of the Afghan president. This time the Times cited, on background, Obama administration "political officials," "senior administration officials" and others as their sources to the effect that Mr. Karzai has been secretly on the CIA payroll for eight years and has been helping the United States with intelligence, logistic and base support for our Special Forces, recruiting and running an Afghan paramilitary force on the instruction of the CIA -- as well as being a major narcotics trafficker.

This Wikipedia article tells us the following about Plame…

Due to the nature of her clandestine work for the CIA, many details about Plame's professional career are still classified, but it is documented that she worked for the CIA in a clandestine capacity relating to counter-proliferation.[9][12][13][14]

Plame served the CIA as a non-official cover (or NOC), operating undercover in (at least) two positions in Athens and Brussels.[15] While using her own name, "Valerie Plame", her assignments required posing in various professional roles in order to gather intelligence more effectively.[16][17][18] Two of her covers include serving as a junior consular officer in the early 1990s in Athens and then later an energy analyst for the private company (founded in 1994) "Brewster Jennings & Associates," which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company for certain investigations.[19]

…

She married Wilson in 1998 and gave birth to their twins in 2000,[21] and resumed travel overseas in 2001, 2002, and 2003 as part of her cover job. She met with workers in the nuclear industry, cultivated sources, and managed spies.[22] Part of her work involved ensuring that Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons.[23]

Part of her work during this time was concerned with determining the use of aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq.[24] CIA analysts prior to the Iraq invasion were quoted by the White House as believing that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear weapons and that these aluminum tubes could be used in a centrifuge for nuclear enrichment.[25][26] However, David Corn and Michael Isikoff argued that the undercover work being done by Mrs. Wilson and her CIA colleagues in the Directorate of Central Intelligence Nonproliferation Center strongly contradicted such a claim.[24]

So basically, what Plame did was to track loose nukes, and to employ at least two different aliases in doing so (which Blankley considers as “relatively minor responsibilities”).

And he somehow sees an equivalency between Plame, a true patriot who no doubt risked her life untold times in the course of doing her job, and Ahmed Wali Karzai, who Blankley plainly admits is a “major narcotics trafficker,” as noted here.

Truly, words fail me.