Democracy ain’t pretty

Once again I find myself reluctant to get my tightie-whities in a twist the way I’m told a good liberal is supposed to do: ThinkProgress reported today on the growing number of angry right-wing activists viciously harassing Democratic, as well as moderate Republican, members of Congress on health care reform. Jonathan Cohn wrote that these [...]

Your Breakfast Read, Served By The Confluence

Health-care Waterloo Nightmare Pseudo-Reform I know he’s a douche but this is really good. This is a very good question: Why should we preserve the he for-profit health insurance industry? Really, why? What’s so great about private health insurance? The bloody battle in Congress over a ‘public option’ ignores the insurers’ role in creating the [...]

Why NewsCorp Silenced O’Reilly’s Attacks on GE

At the end of my post on General Electric’s control over MSNBC and NBC yesterday, I asked why Newscorp and Rupert Murdoch ordered Bill O’Reilly to stop trying to get at Keith Olbermann by revealing information about NBC’s corporate owner, General Electric. I never watch O’Relly, so I hadn’t heard that he was doing real [...]

A message from Captain Spaulding

I have been “asked” to relay the following message: Dear Gentle Readers: My name is Captain Spaulding.  On behalf of the Fraternal Order of Jokers, Jesters and Clowns I want to express our outrage over the above poster.  We are an ancient brotherhood of professional entertainers who specialize in easing stress by mixing humor with [...]

I told you so: negawatts work

Not only have I told you so, repeatedly, but so did everybody else who’s capable of coming up with four when adding two plus two, going right back to Amory Lovins and the DFHs. US’ best source of carbon-free energy is efficiency. Not just the US of course. The laws of physics are the same [...]

Moanday Morning News

Education: Jobless grad sues for $70K tuition She has given new meaning to a class-action lawsuit. World: U.S. take on detained journalists hypocritical While demanding that North Korea release two Bay Area reporters sentenced to prison, the United States has detained a Reuters cameraman without charges in Iraq since September – one of numerous foreign [...]

The Kitty Genovese Case: A Fascinating Intersection of True Crime, Psychology, and Media Misinformation

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I want to thank Bob Somerby for inspiring me to do more research into this crime that I remember so vividly from my teenage years. Somerby included the following comment in a recent post about “Ceci Connollyism.” It was all completely different back then: In the Wikipedia account, note how the high-profile Genovese [...]

Barack Obama and General Electric: Why MSNBC and NBC Talking Heads Supported Obama So Vociferously

It is starting to look like General Electric is Barack Obama’s Halliburton. A “Negotiated Settlement” of the Olbermann-O’Reilly Media War Yesterday Dakinikat wrote a post on the “negotiated settlement” in which Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News were silenced by their respective corporate masters, General Electric and News Corp. Here’s a [...]

I’m tired and I don’t wanna do it

I know I’m supposed to be all excited that Nancy Pelousy promised that there will be a roll call vote on single-payer, but I can’t work up any enthusiasm: Seeking to dampen liberal anger about deals cut with centrists, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said House leaders have agreed to allow a [...]

Breakfast Read, Sunday Edition

Health-care Reform Imagine Doctors, Patients Talking Patients increasingly are taking a more active role, says Diane Rittenhouse, associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. “They’ve gotten a lot of information out in the world and are trying to make sense of it, and the doctor says, ‘Here’s a choice [...]