Thursday Morning News: Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime

At this time next week, I will be lolling on a beach in Maui.  Ahhhhh.   I can hardly wait to get out of the stifling humidity of NJ, a humidity I haven’t been able to escape now that my AC is kaput and I am determined to ride out the rest of the summer without it.  (Well, that plus the fact that a replacement is supposed to cost me nearly $6000 for my modest townhouse.  Does that number seem high?)  The AC went out after the plane tickets were bought so Maui it is and I do not regret it.  If the pictures are accurate, here’s where I’ll be having breakfast next Thursday.

Yeah.

On to the news:

Corzine is still trailing Christie in the race for New Jersey’s governor.  It doesn’t look like Corzine has closed the gap much.  Christie leads by 12+%  The DailyKos poll has him leading by only 8%. which is the most optimistic poll.  With DailyKos polling only the Obama supporters who are men between the ages of 14-30, with jobs in the finance industry who have posters of Jon Favreau on the walls of their bedrooms in their mom’s house, that’s still not good news for Corzine.  Ya’know, you can’t blame this on racism, not that the Kossacks won’t try. Hmmm, maybe Corzine should have tried harder to be a good Democratic governor instead of a DINO placeholder.  Oh, well!  Too late to cram for it now.

Simon Johnson at baselinescenario is following the Fed’s claims that it can protect consumers better than a new Consumer Protection agency of the type that Elizabeth Warren favors.  Johnson’s not buying it.  It’s not part of the Fed’s scope or mandate and it doesn’t work in the Fed’s favor.   Part of an ongoing series of arguments that are not to me missed.

Alegre points to a piece by Peter Daou on the Overton Window at The Huffington Post.  I can’t disagree with anything in Daou’s piece but I think what is getting overlooked is the reason that Obama started in the center and worked his way right.  I think this was part of the design in electing Obama in the first place.  The establishment press loved him because they knew he would be weak and beholden to them for getting him into office in the first place.  It explains why Michelle has been deep-sixed on the political stage and relegated to a Republican First Lady style public role.  It’s to keep the press at bay.  So much for feminism in the White House.  Obama’s reluctance to start left and negotiate from there indicates a fear of the press, who would have savaged him on the health care issue.  So far, the media is supporting his plan, with the exception of the Limbaughs and other right wingers.  That worries me because the establishment media doesn’t like change.  Obama could have used his political capital and his majorities in both houses to come out of the inauguration like gangbusters and take everyone by surprise with a well constructed universal health care plan that would cut out the middle men.  That didn’t happen and I don’t think it was just fear of the media that prevented him from doing it.

But what is preventing Obama from doing it?  I keep reading “faith based” musings from Democrats and liberals who assume that Obama has some greater purpose that he isn’t telling us yet.  Like this one from Robin Wells:

Joking aside, I have this fervent belief that Obama has somewhere, deep down in his pockets, the keys to escape.

Or this one from Michael Moore:

I take all of the things that make me nervous about the decisions that Obama has made, and I look and them through that lens – that it’s some kind of master plan. It’s like his continued support of a government-run option for health care. If a true public option is enacted – and Obama knows this – it will eventually bring about a single-payer system, because the profit-making insurance companies won’t be able to compete with a government plan and make the profits they want to make. At some point most of them will probably have to bow out of the business.

It sort of reminds me of Saint Paul telling us that we see through a glass darkly but soon all will be made clear.  Surely, the judgment day is coming when Obama will return and smite his enemies and usher in an era of liberal paradise.  We cannot know the day or the hour.  But it’s coming.  We mere mortals shouldn’t question his ways of Obama.  Um, this is creepy.  I even see Paul Krugman almost slipping into this mindset.  But the signs do not point to an Armageddon followed by 1000 years of New Deal-Great Society 2.0.  Can we just put away the glazed out expressions and deal with reality here?  Obama is not a god and we don’t have to make burnt offerings and read the smoke to figure out what he wants.  There is no such thing as 11 dimensional chess.  He’s just not a very strong or progressive president and he’s not going to save the day.  Period.

And here’s a cold dose of reality from the New York Times for the believers.  In Obama Injects Himself Into Health Care Talks, the veil is pulled back to show that Obama already cut deals for undermining the public option back in the spring:

In pursuing his proposed overhaul of the health care system, President Obama has consistently presented himself as aloof from the legislative fray, merely offering broad principles. Prominent among them is the creation of a strong, government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers and press for lower costs.

Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Obama and his advisers have been quite active, sometimes negotiating deals with a degree of cold-eyed political realism potentially at odds with the president’s rhetoric.

Last month, for example, hospital officials were poised to appear at the White House to announce a deal limiting their industry’s share of the costs of the overhaul proposal when a wave of jitters swept through the group. Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and a party to the deal, had abruptly pulled out of the event. Was he backing away from his end of the deal?

Not to worry, Jim Messina, deputy White House chief of staff, told the lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal, Mr. Messina said, capping the industry’s costs at a maximum of $155 billion over 10 years in trade for its political support.

Some Democrats and industry lobbyists now argue that, in negotiating deals through Mr. Baucus’s panel with powerful health care interests, the White House was tacitly signaling as early as last spring that it might end up accepting something more modest than the government insurer the president has said he prefers.

The Rapture ain’t coming.

I don’t like to dwell on the trivial and distracting but here are two takes on Hillary’s (quite understandable) retort to a student journalist in Africa who asked whether she deferred to the Big Dawg while doing her job.  Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian thinks Clinton is due some respect for the job she has taken on and gets no credit for.  Tina Brown, that middle aged mean girl at The Daily Beast writes the most loathesome piece of tripe I’ve read since Sally Quinn told Hillary to take some time off after the primaries and visit an ashram or something to get her moral bearings.  (Wasn’t Sally Quinn the woman who ended her husband’s first marriage with an affair?  Someone remind me.)  One can almost imagine MoDo, Quinn and Brown doing lunch and plotting their next nasty knifing of a powerful woman.  What exactly is their problem with powerful women anyway?  Is it that nastiness is the only power they possess?  Ok, I’ve given these people waaay too much time.  Moving on…

Yes, that’s Tina Fey playing teacher.

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Celebrating geezerdom

I saw what follows on the BBC, written by a young teenager and good sport named Scott Campbell. I laughed practically non-stop through the whole thing, coming at it from the geezer side myself. I have to share snippets with you.

BBC | Giving up my iPod for a Walkman

My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.

He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book. …

From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets. It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.

And you probably thought we didn’t wear those diaper pants because we weren’t cool, huh?

… It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser ….

I love it.

You can almost imagine the excitement about the Walkman coming out 30 years ago, as it was the newest piece of technology at the time.

Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.

Personally, I’m relieved I live in the digital age, with bigger choice, more functions and smaller devices. I’m relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born . . .

Bwahahaha.  Sort of reminds me of whoever it was before Niels Bohr and Einstein burst upon the scene, saying there was nothing new to be discovered in physics.  The boy’s in good company.

. . . as I can’t imagine having to use such basic equipment every day. …

Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?

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Racist Wanker

Gary Frago

You may recall the original report about this story.  From the Merced Sun-Star:

Violent and racist e-mail jokes alluding to the assassination of President Barack Obama, the killing of Latinos and violence against black people were forwarded by Atwater City Councilman Gary Frago during the last six months, according to more than 200 new e-mails obtained by the Sun-Star from the city of Atwater.

The councilman, who forwarded the newly obtained e-mails to city staff and a county supervisor, among others, has been under public pressure to resign since it was learned in July that he had sent other racist e-mails in late 2008 and early 2009.

One of the most troubling of the new Frago e-mails, forwarded in January, joked that Nokia had designed a new cell phone for “nervous white people” who want to make calls in a series of cities known for their large black populations, such as Oakland and New Orleans. The phone was a gun.

[…]

Another e-mail forwarded by Frago on Dec. 9, 2008, was in the form of a fictitious letter sent by Sen. John McCain to John Hinckley Jr., a man obsessed with actress Jodie Foster, who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. The letter said that Hinckley would be released soon and he should know that Obama was sleeping with Foster now.

[…]

A third e-mail joked about killing illegal immigrants and Obama delegates. The joke is about a man applying for a position with a police department. As a test, the chief tells the applicant: “Take this gun with 13 bullets and go out and shoot six illegal immigrants, six Obama delegates and a rabbit.” The man asks: “why the rabbit?”

“Fantastic attitude,” says the chief. “When can you start?”

[…]

Frago, who says he won’t resign from the council, is already in hot water after revelations surfaced in a Sun-Star story July 17 that he e-mailed a series of racist jokes about the president, first lady and blacks in general.

Frago has begun racial sensitivity classes and this week resigned his honorary position as mayor pro tem. “I have made a mistake, I should have known better,” he said at a special meeting on the e-mails in late July.

His “sensitivity classes” should require him to go to downtown Oakland and tell those jokes to the residents. This guy has no business holding elective office.

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Gun-packing Paultard Birther Idiot

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The price of freedom is having to put up with morons like this:

One of Tuesday’s big mysteries was the motivation behind anti-Obama protester William Kostric, the man who brought a loaded gun to the town hall meeting and carried a sign referencing Thomas Jefferson’s famous credo, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

On Tuesday afternoon MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked Kostric why he carried “a God-damned gun” to a meeting with the president, “given the violent history of this country with regard to presidents and assassinations,” and whether he supported the Birther movement. Kostric insisted his intentions were peaceful, and that he’s not affiliated with Birther groups.

But at least one of those statements doesn’t seem to be true. A right-wing activist named “William Kostric,” who’s left a lot of footprints around the Web, is listed as a “team member” of the Arizona chapter of We the People, the far-right group best known for joining a lawsuit challenging Obama’s right to be president based on his not being a U.S. citizen. Kostric told MSNBC he recently moved from Arizona to New Hampshire.

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Why is someone who is “peaceful” armed and dangerous?  This guy is so stupid he doesn’t realize he is discrediting every right-of-center protestor in the country.  The police said he wasn’t breaking any laws but thankfully he wasn’t allowed anywhere near the President.

From Allahpundit:

Considering the lengths to which the Secret Service normally goes to investigate threats against the president, I’m amazed he wasn’t hauled in for questioning at the scene as a potential threat. People are going to beat the Second Amendment drum in the comments, but (a) I doubt it would have sat well with our readers if lefties carrying Bushitler signs had shown up to Dubya’s events packing heat and (b) having a right doesn’t mean you’re obliged to exercise it, particularly in circumstances where it would be provocative to do so. I’ve knocked atheist groups for suing for the right to display a “Darwin tree” or whatever on public grounds next to a Christmas tree, not because they’re not entitled but because they’re being spiteful, incendiary douchebags by doing so. How is Captain Sidearm here any different?

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Here’s another spiteful incendiary douchbag:

Your Breakfast Read, Wednesday Edition

Heath Care Nightmare

One of the most maligned persons in the whole debate takes the stand. It was all started by Betsy McCaughey (who else as soon as it’s about reforming health-care?)
Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama’s ‘Deadly Doctor,’ Strikes Back

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the medical ethicist and oncologist who advises President Obama, does not own a television, and if you catch him in a typically energized moment, when his mind speeds even faster than his mouth, he is likely to blurt out something like, “I hate the Internet.” So it took him several days in late July to discover he had been singled out by opponents of health-care reform as a “deadly doctor,” who, according to an opinion column in the New York Post, wanted to limit medical care for “a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.”

“I couldn’t believe this was happening to me,” says Emanuel, who in addition to spending his career opposing euthanasia and working to increase the quality of care for dying patients, is the brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. “It is incredible how much one’s reputation can be besmirched and taken out of context.”

It would only get worse. Within days, the Post article, with selective and misleading quotes from Emanuel’s 200 or so published academic papers, went viral.

Another bogeyman
‘Evil and Orwellian’ – America’s right turns its fire on NHS

The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative campaigners rail against Britain’s “socialist” system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama’s proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare.

Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market organisations in scorning the NHS for its waiting lists and for “rationing” the availability of expensive treatments.

As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health policy.

Is life just an endless loop? Why do we keep seeing the same things over and over again?
Health Care Protest Deja Vu: Welcome to 1994

Across the country, the Reform Riders encountered demonstrators bearing signs like IT’S SOCIALISM STUPID and pro-life campaigners worried that their tax dollars would be funneled toward abortions. The protestors were “vocal, virulent, menacing, and well organized,” shouting about guns, gays, and socialized medicine. Is any of this sounding familiar? So why weren’t the Democrats ready this time?

What is it with us and national health-care for everybody?
Health care debate a long-running story

President Barack Obama’s campaign for a health care overhaul is an intense installment in a long-running story, dating to Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

How Democrats And Republicans Exploit Emotion

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Around The Nation

2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11’s Wake

Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.

A Vindication for Iglesias?

Newly revealed e-mails may show that Karl Rove and the Bush White House had a more active role in the 2006 U.S. attorney firings than previously disclosed.

A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?

In briefing President Barack Obama one day this spring, White House economist Jared Bernstein delved into such arcana as the yields on different forms of credit relative to the risk. Later, Paul Volcker pulled Mr. Bernstein aside. “Why would the president want to know that level of detail?” asked the former Federal Reserve chairman.

“That’s what he wants,” Mr. Bernstein replied.

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Economy Watch

Economy may be improving, but jobs slow to come

Because labor is the biggest expense for most companies, that kind of caution is typical at the end of recessions. After the last one, in 2001, unemployment kept rising and didn’t peak until June 2003 — 19 months into the economic recovery.
This time around, some economists say unemployment may not return to healthy levels until 2013. Companies have been slashing workers’ hours, squeezing more work out of the employees who are left and relying on cheaper temporary staffers to fill the gaps.

‘A Recovery Only a Statistician Can Love’

The pile of economic data indicating that the worst of the recession is over just keeps growing. In the past few weeks, the government has reported that businesses last month shed the smallest number of jobs in nearly a year. The savings rate, after rising rapidly, held steady at levels not seen in at least five years. And from April to June, productivity surged to a six-year high.

But the same data also explain why any recovery isn’t going to feel like one anytime soon for millions of Americans. Its existence will be confirmed by statistics, but, over at least the next year, the benefits are unlikely to materialize in the form of higher wages or tax receipts or more jobs

The Final Days of Merrill Lynch

Last September, as Wall Street turned to rubble and panic threatened to come unleashed, Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, agreed to swallow one of the country’s most toxic investment houses. The deal was not altogether voluntary; as details have slowly emerged, the coercive role of the Fed and Treasury has loomed larger. What exactly happened in the weeks leading up to the merger? Did the deal save us all from economic apocalypse? And what does the government’s unprecedented role in it portend for the future of our economy?

Debate in Germany: Research or Manufacturing?

As more investment goes to research, Germans are confronting the idea that manufacturing may not be their economy’s indispensable foundation.

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Op-ed Columns

Eunice Kennedy Shriver: A Gladiator For The Voiceless

Eunice Shriver devoted her life to full-effort people. On the Bermuda grass at Timberlawn, where she hosted a camp for children with mental disabilities, and later at the Special Olympics, she could be found gamboling among the participants — encouraging, prodding, congratulating. She truly believed, and she instilled in those events, the idea that it’s not what you achieve in life, it’s what you overcome. A morally driven and politically astute woman, she sprung open doors globally for the mentally disabled and opened minds that had too long been closed to accepting people with Down syndrome and other disabilities.

Who was that gun-toting anti-Obama protester?

One of Tuesday’s big mysteries was the motivation behind anti-Obama protester William Kostric, the man who brought a loaded gun to the town hall meeting and carried a sign referencing Thomas Jefferson’s famous credo, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

Change We Can’t Believe In?

Candidate Barack Obama offered a lofty vision of how his White House would operate. When the details of health reform were being hammered out, he vowed, “We’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

Soaring deficit may defy forecasts

Stagnant unemployment, shrinking tax revenue and a struggling economy threaten to quadruple the size of last year’s federal budget deficit, raising more questions about the timing of costly proposals to overhaul health care.

As the White House and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepare to release new deficit estimates this month, several economists say the news is likely to be as bad as or worse than forecasts.

Fun, Berlusconi and Putin’s Bed

Part of the reason for Berlusconi’s longevity despite his many stumbles is cultural. As in other Latin or Mediterranean countries with a strong Catholic tradition, Italian society long ago learned to accept serenely a life of duplicity: on the one hand, a strong attachment to church and family values, and on the other a second life – often lived in plain sight – composed of mistresses and other “dubious” connections.

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Around The World

The race for TV ratings sometimes brings the worst out of hosts but this is taking it to another level.
Murder for ratings? Brazil cops suspect TV host

In one murder after another, the “Canal Livre” crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim.

Too uncanny, say police, who are investigating the show’s host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil’s Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking.

“The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police,” state police intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos charged in an interview with The Associated Press.

I wonder if the results here would look any different.
Sex and China’s credibility gap

The majority of Chinese people believe that prostitutes are more trustworthy than Communist Party and government officials.”

If this were a viewpoint made by a report or commentary in overseas media, it would definitely have been furiously refuted by Beijing as “venomous slander” of the Chinese government with some “ulterior motives”.

But this is not a sensational bluff by some tabloid newspaper. It is the result of a recent survey on the respective credibility of various social groups by the Research Center of the Xiaokang monthly, a sister publication of the bi-monthly Qi Shi (Seeking Truth) – the mouthpiece of the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As such it must be taken seriously.

Afghan woman defies threats to run for re-election

Conditions for women in Afghanistan have improved since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban in 2001, but that’s true mostly in urban centers. The fundamentalist Islamic militia banned women from working or going to school and flogged them for appearing in public unaccompanied by male family members.

Yet even the country’s educated elite prohibits female contact with men outside of immediate families. A woman must have her father’s or husband’s permission to go out, and must wear a burqa when she does. Doing otherwise risks punishment for “un-Islamic” behavior.

Taiwan mudslide survivors found

About 700 people missing in southern Taiwan after Typhoon Morakot have been found alive, army officials say.

Hillary Clinton demands arrests over Congo sexual violence

Hillary Clinton today called for the arrest and punishment of those responsible for the widespread sexual violence that has blighted eastern Congo for more than a decade.

The US secretary of state, who is in Goma to draw world attention to what she has described as “one of mankind’s greatest atrocities”, toured the Magunga camp

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From The World of Astronomy

Traces of planet collision found

The collision involved one object that was at least as big as our Moon and another that was at least as big as Mercury.

The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporising huge amounts of rock and flinging plumes of hot lava into space.

Strong meteor shower expected tonight

The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to put on a good show this week for those willing to get up in the wee hours of the morning and wait patiently for the shooting stars.

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Death Panels? They Already Exist

I just don't trust this guy.

At a town hall meeting today in New Hampshire, President Obama “debunked” what he termed “wild misrepresentations,” including the notion that the final health care bill will not contain provisions for “death panels that will pull the plug on grandma.” That’s great news. Does that mean that the bill will force insurance companies to change policies they have in effect right now? Because insurance companies frequently refuse to pay for procedures they arbitrarily deem unnecessary, and when they do that, people sometimes die. nyceve at Daily Cheeto calls it Murder by Spreadsheet.

A story in Salon by Mike Madden, “The ‘death panels’ are already here,” highlights the same case that nyceve blogged about at the above link, and he offers several more examples of Murder by Spreadsheet. From Madden’s piece:

The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they’re ready to operate, but the bureaucracy — or as Palin would put it, the “death panel” — steps in and says it won’t pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl’s family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent — but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama’s healthcare reform plans are. Except that’s not the future of healthcare — it’s the present. Long before anyone started talking about government “death panels” or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company’s analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn’t have saved her life.

I’m sure that politicians like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are well aware that the current system does exactly what they claim to fear. Perhaps they assume they will be immune because they are *very important people* who are in the public eye.

This is what a feminist looks like

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From the New York Times:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured an African refugee camp Tuesday crowded with victims of violence and malnutrition, pledging $17 million in American aid to help stem the tide of rampant sexual abuse that has staggered war-ravaged eastern Congo.

Clinton’s voice cracked with emotion as she described an epidemic of rapes that has convulsed the Congo over 10 years of internecine conflict. ”We say to the world that those who attack civilian populations using systematic rape are guilty of crimes against humanity,” she said.

Clinton toured Magunga Camp, a dust-choked warren of tents and tin-lined huts in eastern Congo that is home to 18,000 men, women and children. Most were uprooted from their villages by the on-again, off-again conflict between Democratic Republic of Congo troops and rebel forces that killed more than 5 million people since 1998.

”We believe there should be no impunity for the sexual and gender-based violence committed by so many — that there must be arrests and prosecutions and punishment,” she said during a press conference with Congolese Foreign Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba in the eastern city of Goma.

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The Guardian adds:

Clinton urged university students in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, to mount a campaign against such abuses.

“The entire society needs to be speaking out against this,” she said. “It should be a mark of shame anywhere, in any country.

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The media, of course, would rather talk about really important stuff, like what a mad b**ch she is.

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Hillary in Africa

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Oh noes!

Expect huge ratings for the Teen Choice Awards tonight:

In what could be perceived as an attempt to be edgy or an homage to ice cream distributors (they probably don’t get enough credit), Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus pole danced on top of an ice cream cart at the Teen Choice Awards Sunday afternoon (the show airs on Fox tonight at 8 p.m.). Personally, I never dropped it like’s it hot when the ice cream truck came ’round the neighborhood; I usually just went straight for a Good Humor Chocolate Eclair bar. Call me old-fashioned. But the stripper-esque choreography, coupled with Cyrus’ questionable red-carpet attire, came off completely inappropriate and ill-advised.

We see this same kind of fauxrage whenever a female teen star grows up in the spotlight.  Miley Cyrus became famous portraying Hannah Montana for Disney. Now she is transforming into a underage sex symbol. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are two other former Disney vestal virgins who shed that image quickly after they left the mouse house.

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But don’t kid yourself, their sexualization started years earlier.

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Once upon a time these young women were expected to project a public image of innocence and virginity well into adulthood, even if in reality they were far from innocent.  But that image is just one of the two sexual images allowed for females in our sexist culture.

How come nobody worries about the sexualization of boys?  Because boys are expected to become sexual as a sign of reaching manhood.  After they have sown their wild oats with a few bad girls they are supposed to settle on a good girl to marry.

I guess I’m jaded but I can’t work up any outrage here.   YMMV.  It’s not that I approve, but  Miley Cyrus isn’t my daughter and her image and behavior are none of my business. I already know too much about her personal life as it is.  First it was her Vanity Fair pictures and last month it was her appearance in Elle wearing a push-up leather top and “hooker boots.”

This whole thing is so predictable – millions will tune in to watch the show, and many of them will stare avidly at this young woman while tut-tutting the sexual imagery. I’ll be watching the Giants and the Dodgers.

BTW – You don’t really think Miley came up with this transformation all by herself do you?

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Don’t forget that when Britney and Christina went “bad” they also got very rich.

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Entitlements and Smoke Filled Rooms

I recently received an email from someone I worked on a campaign with a couple of years ago.  I’ll call her Daisy.  Daisy is one of the most talented campaign volunteers you wlll ever want to meet.  I hope someone pays her big someday.

Anyway, Daisy and I had an email exchange that eventually boiled down to “I didn’t support Hillary because she had a sense of entitlement.”  (not her words exactly but that’s what stuck with me)

Now, I’ve always wondered why this meme more than all of the others managed to stick so well with so many Democratic activists who ended up supporting someone else.  It could be that the Democratic party used to pride itself on the idea of merit and equality of opportunity and perhaps Hillary’s personal connections gave her an unfair advantage.  But we saw how Hillary started off strong at the beginning of the primaries and then just got stronger right up until the end when she was still winning primaries on the last day even after the rest of the party had cut a deal with Obama in the smoke filled rooms. She earned her support the old fashioned way and not as Chris Matthews once opined, that everyone felt sorry for her.

And then it hit me.  Weren’t the voters the ones who should have had a sense of entitlement?  That point continually gets lost in the argument that Hillary had a sense of entitlement.  The entitlement goes to the people who vote.  It is their prerogative to give their votes to whomever they choose and not have their choices overturned by party operatives cutting a deal because they don’t like the way the election is going.

I was stunned by the hyperaggressive attitudes of the Obot coalition last year who thought it was just political hardball to steamroll over the voters on their quest to install Obama.  They seemed to think it was OK to characterize Hillary voters as racists and stupid, old ugly hags because that made it easier to justify depriving them of their entitlement to their own votes.  Right, guys?  Admit it.  That’s how you felt.  If we were going to be dumb old hicks who were bitter guntoting politically incorrect racists, then we didn’t deserve our votes.

I know a lot of you keep wondering why I come back to the primaries.  Why doesn’t she just let it go, you wonder.  Dwelling on it doesn’t change anything.  Well, I keep bringing it up because last year, our democracy was subverted in such an egregious way by the Democratic party that it could have been concocted by someone with direct access to Karl Rove’s wet dreams.  Who would have thought that te Democratic party could be taken over by a bunch of authoritarian nutcases who would usurp the entitlement of the voters and make back room deals to cut out their voices?  And they did it because *they* knew better than *us*.  They were going to be our social conscience and our Big Daddies who would take care of things on our behalf.

This is what happened to the party. It put itself, and our votes, in the hands of the back room power brokers and completely ignored the voices of the voters.  And we said that if Obama and his friends weren’t going to listen to the voters before the election, he had no obligation to listen to them afterwards.

Now, take a look at Dan Froomkin’s first post for The Huffington Post.  It’s about health care and the deals that the Obama administration is cutting behind closed doors, without the input of the voters.  In fact, going out of his way to cut out a significant number of voices that want Medicare for All.  Froomkin writes:

Despite an abundance of public remarks, Obama’s actual strategy to achieve health-care reform still remains largely cloaked in secrecy. While the media’s focus has been on the unseemly public wrangling in Congress, the White House has been doing two things: 1) Trying to influence legislators behind closed doors and 2) Making deals with industry leaders behind closed doors.

And disturbingly, the crucial endgame will apparently be played behind closed doors, as well. In a conference call with bloggers last month, Obama anticipated that the bills that eventually emerge from the House and Senate will, even then, still leave the most controversial issues basically undecided.

To recap: primaries were pretty much evenly split.  But party operatives got together behind closed doors and gave the whole show to Obama, cutting out a little more than half of the Democratic voters.

The financial crisis is killing the middle class and generating a lot of outrage towards bankers and Wall Street over their outrageous bonuses and cavalier attitudes towards our financial security.  But the Obama administration got together with those same bankers behind closed doors to cut deals.

Health care reform shows that there is strong support for a public option or Medicare for All or single payer.  But the party operatives got together behind closed doors to cut deals with the insurance industry.

See the pattern?

If you voted for Obama and thought it was OK for the party to stomp all over the Clinton voters because you were giddy with powerlust, *this* is what you voted for.

THAT’S why I keep bringing it up.

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Your Breakfast Read, Served By The Confluence

Politics

Can politicians and talking heads involved in hotly debated issues avoid pernicious hyperbole, if only to spare the rest of us fake over-the-top outrage pomposity pontification like this? Ergh!

Will he finally make the case more convincingly and show some passion?
Obama to Push Health-Care Plan in New Hampshire After Town Hall Protests

President Barack Obama will defend his efforts to overhaul the U.S. health-care system at a town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, today after a series of protests met his fellow Democrats in recent days.

When the economy is doing poorly, give people a permanent tax cut. When the economy is doing booming, give people a permanent tax cut. Someone is uninsured, give him a tax cut. Someone needs a safety net for his retirement, give him a tax cut. Privatize everything and sabotage the government. What is there to rebrand?
GOP rebranding effort flames out

Television crews and reporters wedged themselves among the crowd of party faithful to cover the National Council for a New America’s first event at a packed pizza parlor in an Arlington, Va., strip mall. The resulting coverage dominated cable news chatter for the next week. Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney were also on board.

But the council has since flamed out – at least publicly.

Palin loses her final fight with Alaska lawmakers over stimulus

Reversing a governor’s appropriation veto requires a vote of 75 percent of the Legislature, a hurdle rarely met. The override passed 45 to 14 and if a single other legislator had voted against it or been absent from the special session, it would have failed.

Supporters argued Palin badly overstated the “strings” attached to taking the money, and that frigid Alaska could use the assistance.

The next issue that will not be reformed
Obama Says Immigration Changes Must Wait Till 2010

President Obama said Monday that efforts to change the immigration system would be a major focus for his administration only next year, after other major priorities were accomplished, including passage of a new health care system.

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War On Terror 2.0

Taliban Now Winning

The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency’s spiritual home.

Opium barons at top of kill or capture list as US targets the Taleban

The Pentagon has put 50 of Afghanistan’s powerful opium barons on a “kill or capture” list, signalling a radical shift in tactics against the Taleban.

The announcement came as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, admitted that the insurgency, nurtured by tens of millions of dollars from the country’s vast poppy fields, now held the upper hand.

McChrystal wants huge boost in U.S. civilians in Afghanistan

In addition to requesting some 45,000 additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the country’s top American military commander will ask the Obama administration to double the number of U.S. government civilian workers who are in the country.

Obama faces tough choices on Afghanistan

Having already “surged” an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan bringing US forces up to a peak of 68,000, Mr Obama could be forgiven for responding with expletives. At a time when the US president is under acute pressure to rein in a huge US fiscal deficit and when the Pentagon is severely overstretched, another hefty troop request would be hard to satisfy.

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Around The Nation

63 already? It looks like 1992 was yesterday with a young Bill.
Bill Clinton Celebrates His 63rd in Las Vegas

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, is in The Congo, as part of her trip to Africa, and thus will miss the celebration. No worries. Mr. Clinton might be celebrating on the strip on Monday, but his actual birthday is not until Aug. 19.

Yikes!
Michael Douglas’ son could get life in prison

The son of actor Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas could face life in prison for selling large amounts of an illegal drug over a three-year period before his arrest late last month, court records show.

The violent anti-choice movement found its hero
Violent abortion foes flock to visit jailed Tiller murder suspect

The list of those visiting and communicating with the man accused of killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller reads like a who’s who of anti-abortion militants.

Two convicted clinic bombers. The man behind the Army of God Web site. Several activists who once signed a declaration that defended the killing of abortion doctors.

I just took a look in my crystal ball: Sanford is finished.
Governor broke law in flights

Gov. Mark Sanford violated state travel law by flying overseas in more expensive business-class seating, violations that could help build a case of impeachment against him, state Sen. David Thomas of Fountain Inn alleged Monday.

Breakfast Can Wait. The Day’s First Stop Is Online.

Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.

That was so last century. Today, Mr. Gude wakes at around 6 a.m. to check his work e-mail and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The two boys, Cole and Erik, start each morning with text messages, video games and Facebook.

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Economy Watch

Shut Out at Home, American Seek Opportunity in China

Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home.

What are we paying these people for?
Where did that bank bailout go? Watchdogs aren’t sure

Despite a new oversight panel, a new special inspector general, the existing Government Accountability Office and eight other inspectors general, those charged with minding the store say they don’t have all the weapons they need. Ten months into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, some members of Congress say that some oversight of bailout dollars has been so lacking that it’s essentially worthless.

AIG’s Liddy Heads Toward Retirement With ‘$1, a Few Bruises’

American International Group Inc.’s former Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy, who returned the bailed-out insurer to profitability, didn’t know what he was getting into when he joined the firm, he wrote to employees.

“Truth be told, I had no idea what I was in for when I accepted this assignment, but I am glad that I came,” Liddy said in a letter dated Aug. 7. “It hasn’t been easy, and goodness knows, it hasn’t been pretty.”

The math behind the likely jobless recovery

In modern economy, industries vanish and it takes time to replace them

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Op-ed Columns

These Baseline Scenario guys are very smart
Like Your Health Insurance? Maybe You Shouldn’t. (By Simon Johnson and James Kwak)

If we fail to reform our health care system this year, a major reason will be that a majority of Americans are satisfied with their health coverage and believe that reform could hurt them. According to a recent (unscientific) Consumer Reports survey, 64 percent of readers are satisfied with their plans — down from 67 percent in 2007, but still a clear majority. A recent New York Times poll found that 59 percent of Americans do not think that health-care reform will benefit them personally; 69 percent are concerned that reform could harm the quality of their own care and 68 percent are concerned that it could limit their access to treatment.

This is deeply misleading, for two reasons. First, what does it mean to say that you are satisfied with your health insurance? Consider homeowner’s insurance. Until you need it — your house burns down — you have no way of judging its quality. The same goes for health coverage; until you have a serious illness, the kind where your plan’s limits and exclusions may kick in, how do you know if your health coverage is any good?

As more U.S. troops arrive, is Afghan war worth it? (By Lee Hamilton)

Tens of thousands more American troops are en route, adding to the approximately 90,000 troops, both U.S. and allied, already on the ground. The U.S. military leadership likely will request more troops in the months ahead. President Barack Obama will have to make a crucial decision on the future of a conflict that has become his war.

I think Prof Blinder was one of the first to push the “C4C” idea.
Stay the Stimulus Course (By Prof Alan Blinder)

Apparently not bothered by facts, some congressional Republicans are already claiming that President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package has failed and are even advocating that some of the remaining scheduled steps in the legislation be canceled.

In medicine, that would be malpractice. In politics, it’s demagoguery. In reality, we need to stay the course.

Health Reform’s Hearing Problem (By Danielle Allen)

Both Sides Are Deaf to the Real Debate About Consequences

Aren’t we actually moving in the opposite direction?
A Century-Old Principle: Keep Corporate Money Out of Elections

The founders were wary of corporate influence on politics — and their rhetoric sometimes got pretty heated. In an 1816 letter, Thomas Jefferson declared his hope to “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

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Around The World

Myanmar court convicts Nobel laureate Suu Kyi

Who knew the wrong translation could be unfunny?
Lost in Translation: Clinton Says She, Not Bill, is the Secretary of State

Apparently the translator made a mistake and the student had wanted to know what President Obama thought of the deal. A State Department official tells ABC News the student went up to Clinton after the event and told her he was misquoted.

Mission accomplished.
Despite bombings, Iraq confident it can maintain security

A series of bombings in Baghdad and Mosul on Monday killed at least 49 people and wounded more than 230 in the latest attack since the June 30 pullout of US combat troops from Iraqi cities.

The explosions were the latest in a series of attacks on Shiite targets that officials fear could spark retaliation, setting off a cycle of sectarian violence that could unravel security gains made under US control.

What is it with these guys who never seem to die?
Militant commander resurfaces to rebut official claims of his death

A senior Taliban commander who the Pakistani government believed was dead suddenly resurfaced today, sowing further confusion about the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban, days after Baitullah Mehsud’s apparent assassination.

New Momentum — but No Clear Goal — for Iran’s Street Protests

In recent days, despite the regime’s heavy-handed efforts to stifle the resistance, public demonstrations have become more decentralized and frequent as protesters become increasingly bold and defiant. This shift in mood — from despondency in late June after the Basij fired on protesters following the June 12 presidential election, to a renewed sense of optimism — signals that the vocal opposition movement will not be going away anytime soon.

Women continue to pay a very high price in crisis.
Congo’s Rape Epidemic Worsens During U.S.-Backed Military Operation

For the women of eastern Congo, a U.S.-backed Congolese military operation meant to save them from abusive rebels has turned into a nightmare of its own.

An already staggering epidemic of rape has become markedly worse since the January deployment of tens of thousands of poorly trained, poorly paid Congolese soldiers, with people in front-line villages such as this one saying the soldiers are not so much hunting rebels as hunting women.

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From The History Files

Donald Versus Hitler: Walt Disney and the Art of WWII Propaganda

During World War II, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse weren’t just about entertainment. Film studios used animated characters to spread propaganda and educate Americans about their enemies. And the animators themselves were employed to make insignia for military units and equipment.

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From The World Of Science

I think I have a perfectly symmetrical face. How come I’m losing my marbles? Is it the health-care debate or is something else happening?
Losing your mind? The answer is in the mirror

Although the connection between a symmetrical face and cognitive ability may seem surprising, scientists believe that it could be explained by the idea that a good set of genes for facial symmetry may be linked with an equally good set of genes for brain preservation.

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