Let my Resources go!

In a column published by the Miami Herald today, activist Gal Luft outlines the effects of our continued oil dependence. His prescription is to have Congress mandate flex fuel at a manufacturer cost of $100 per car. I am not sure whether I trust his math, or his insistence on new government mandates, because if the solution is that cheap, why not convert current autos to support flex fuel? Of course I'll await an answer. I'd put $1000 into my car to support US independence, and lower my gas cost.


Until that answer comes, I would say:

While our dependency on oil is cramping our economic style, we must also concede that we have brought this upon ourselves by bowing to those who claim to be protectors of "the environment."

These self appointed protectors along with their elected official followers have prevented us from lowering the cost of gas by restricting our supply of gas. This has happened in 3 crippling ways.

First there is an uncalculated supply of oil off of the costs of Florida, Texas and California. There is also the well publicized supply available in the Alaskan Wildlife Reserve. We have been blocked from getting it. The reasons offered are not acceptable when gas is over $3.00 a gallon.

Second, once the oil is harvested it must be refined, and unreasonable regulations have stood as a roadblock to building new refineries for a quarter of a century.

Third, alternative energy has been blocked by similar unreasonable legislation. When other industrialized nations can depend on nuclear power for more than 75% of their needs, we have surely hobbled ourselves by waiting to build new reactors.

These factors have added to the opportunity seen by by competing nations to weaken us in ways which go far beyond the price we pay at the pump. Move these obstacles, and we will still have years to suffer, but we will at least allow ourselves a certain and proven outlet.

What else is there to say.?

I want to blog more often

It has 3/4 of a year since I last wrote anything on this blog. I haven't carved out the time to publish my thoughts, and the rest of the world doesn't really seem to care. No, I'm not really surprised, but I do have fun looking back at the things I wrote so many months ago. That was part of the reason I started this thing. The other reason was to offer a wide array of my ideas so that I could direct others to the site when the question came up about what I think. (Yeah, Bee, how often does that happen..? )

I can't say that I disagree with much from last year. I mean now that the guy at the lead of the failed immigration policy is leading the Gopsters to the November election, it is comforting to be able to remind myself exactly what it was that I didn't like about that proposal last year. This means I really have to review my assessment of Sen. McCain. Lately I have been thinking that he would be the best of two evils when paired against Obama or Hillary. In my deepest understanding, that is probably still the case, but if he can make mistakes as dramatic as that immigration bill, do I really want to push him toward the presidency? Again the answer must be to defend against the most pain, and I think he will probably offer us the least pain.

What Michael Moore left on the cutting room floor

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0626sickojun26,0,7362264,print.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed

By Helen Evans, director of Nurses for Reform, a pan-European network of nurses dedicated to consumer-oriented reform of European health-care systems

June 26, 2007

Michael Moore's denunciation of America's health-care system is about to hit the silver screen. In the film's trailer, a desk attendant at a British hospital smiles while explaining that in Britain's National Health Service, "everything is free." But for free hospital care, Britons pay an awfully high price.

Just ask the nearly 1 million British patients on waiting lists for treatment. Or the 200,000 Britons currently waiting merely to get on NHS waiting lists. Mr. Moore must have missed those folks.

Curiously, though, many American policymakers seem to think that a government-managed, NHS-style system is the answer to all of America's health-care woes. Before heading down that road, however, America's leaders ought to actually investigate Britain's experience with state-sponsored medical care.

Upon launching its state health service in 1948, the British government promised that it would provide its citizens with all the "medical, dental and nursing care" needed, so that "everyone -- rich or poor -- [could] use it." To make good on its plans, the government nationalized more than 3,000 independent hospitals, clinics and care homes.

But today, after nearly six decades of attempting to make socialized medicine work, the NHS is in a perilous state.

Consider waiting lists. Across Britain, patients wait years for routine -- or even emergency -- treatments. And many die while waiting.

Indeed, the NHS cancels around 100,000 operations because of shortages each year. In a growing number of communities, it is increasingly difficult for people to simply get an appointment with an NHS general practitioner for a regular checkup.

Further, when it comes to keeping patients healthy, NHS hospitals are notoriously unfit. After admittance to state hospitals, more than 10 percent of patients contract infections and illnesses that they did not have prior to arrival. And according to the Malnutrition Advisory Group, up to 60 percent of NHS patients are undernourished during inpatient stays.

Consequently, many Britons have turned to outside practitioners for treatment, and the private health-care market has boomed. Today, more than 6.5 million people have private medical insurance, 6 million have cash plans, 8 million pay out-of-pocket for a range of complimentary therapies, and 250,000 self-fund each year for private surgery. Millions more opt for private dentistry, ophthalmics and long-term care.

Meanwhile, despite the state's continued claims that it can deliver quality health care to all, government ministers are increasingly willing to quietly outsource health care to the private sector. In other words, instead of directly providing health care through the NHS, the British government is shifting to simply paying the bills.

In 2000, Tony Blair's government authorized the treatment of state-funded patients in private hospitals for the first time. More recently, the government has made it clear that it would like all NHS hospitals to be recast as Independent Foundation Trusts able to attract private investment.

But even with these efforts, the British government has found it hard to cover its expensive obligations. So in addition to waiting lists, substandard care and increased outsourcing, the government has adopted outright rationing to control costs.

Through a concept called "Health Technology Assessments," the United Kingdom now empowers government-appointed experts to dictate which drugs, procedures and treatments are available for public consumption. Charged with controlling costs and watching the bottom line, these bureaucrats are expected to save money -- not lives.

Already, this system has barred the purchase of Herceptin, a lifesaving breast-cancer drug. Alzheimer's patients have had trouble obtaining Aricept, a drug that improves cognition in those afflicted with the degenerative disease.

The criteria for these denials of care are kept from the public. And patients who could be saved needlessly die.

Rationing, as history proves time and again, is always a recipe for horror.

The U.S. health-care system certainly has its shortfalls. But the solution to America's woes can't be found in the U.K. -- no matter how many movie tickets Mr. Moore sells.

----------

Helen Evans is director of Nurses for Reform, a pan-European network of nurses dedicated to consumer-oriented reform of European health-care systems.

George E. Curry Wants Amnesty---Too Bad

TO: George Curry
FROM: BeeJiggity
RE: Running a numbers game on Black America


No sir, given my unique history as the descendant of Africans who were kidnapped, enslaved, tortured and denied citizenship in the greatest nation on this earth I expect that anyone choosing to come here, at least follow the rules in place in order to become citizens. I don't expect trespassers to be given free reign to do jobs that my brothers and sisters did very well 15 years ago; do those jobs being paid under the table at an illegal rate of pay; expect the rights and privileges of actual citizens who either followed the rules at a financial and emotional cost, or fought for citizenship rights which are still in question.

Citizenship for them without returning to their country of origin paying fees, waiting for processing, and risking denial is unacceptable.

Work visas maybe.
Civil rights, maybe.
Come out from the shadows, maybe.

Staying here and being citizens, voting, serving on juries, holding elected office, coming and going without scrutiny? No.

The Meeting to Plan 9/11 via Loose Brains

Thank you Atlas!

Matt Taibbi wrote an amusing satirical blurb in Rolling Stone about what he imagined the 9/11 planning session looked like...

BUSH: So, what's the plan again?

CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.

RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.

CHENEY: No, Don, we won't.

RUMSFELD: We won't?

CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.

RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?

CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Don. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.

BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!

CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized additional symbol of international terrorism -- and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of farking nowhere in rural Pennsylvania.

RUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of farking nowhere.

CHENEY: And the Pentagon crash -- we'll have to do it in broad daylight and say it was a plane, even though it'll really be a cruise missile.

BUSH: Wait, why do we have to use a missile?

CHENEY: Because it's much easier to shoot a missile and say it was a plane. It's not easy to steer a real passenger plane into the Pentagon. Planes are hard to come by.

BUSH: But aren't we using two planes for the Twin Towers?

CHENEY: Mr. President, you're missing the point. With the Pentagon, we use a missile, and say it was a plane.

BUSH: Right, but I'm saying, why don't we just use a plane and say it was a plane? We'll be doing that with the Twin Towers, right?

CHENEY: Right, but in this case, we use a missile. (Throws hands up in frustration) Don, can you help me out here?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, in Washington, we use a missile because it's sneakier that way. Using an actual plane would be too obvious, even though we'll be doing just that in New York.

BUSH: Oh, OK.

RUMSFELD: The other good thing about saying that it was a passenger jet is that that way, we have to invent a few hundred fictional victims and account for a nonexistent missing crew and plane. It's always better when you leave more cover story to invent, more legwork to do and more possible holes to investigate. Doubt, legwork and possible exposure -- you can't pull off any good conspiracy without them.

BUSH: You guys are brilliant! Because if there's one thing about Americans -- they won't let a president go to war without a damn good reason. How could we ever get the media, the corporate world and our military to endorse an invasion of a secular Iraqi state unless we faked an attack against New York at the hands of a bunch of Saudi religious radicals? Why, they'd never buy it. Look at how hard it was to get us into Vietnam, Iraq the last time, Kosovo?

CHENEY: Like pulling teeth!

RUMSFELD: Well, I'm sold on the idea. Let's call the Joint Chiefs, the FAA, the New York and Washington, D.C., fire departments, Rudy Giuliani, all three networks, the families of a thousand fictional airline victims, MI5, the FBI, FEMA, the NYPD, Larry Eagleburger, Osama bin Laden, Noam Chomsky and the fifty thousand other people we'll need to pull this off. There isn't a moment to lose!

BUSH: Don't forget to call all of those Wall Street hotshots who donated $100 million to our last campaign. They'll be thrilled to know that we'll be targeting them for execution as part of our thousand-tentacled modern-day bonehead Reichstag scheme! After all, if we're going to make martyrs -- why not make them out of our campaign paymasters? shiat, didn't the Merrill Lynch guys say they needed a refurbishing in their New York offices?

RUMSFELD: Oh, they'll get a refurbishing, all right. Just in time for the "Big Wedding"!

ALL THREE: (cackling) Mwah-hah-hah!

Cornell West Really Sucks.

At a leftist conference he is asked what it means to be a leftist in the 21st century. (Full answer.) He comes up with a disconnected ranting stream of consciousness that takes us back to the white slaves of 1690.

Take this selection of drivel and laugh. Then tell me what he just said, and how it is that we consider him one of our foremost leaders of thought?

I’m saying, in part, that at least for me to be a leftist these days, in the way in which -- and I take very seriously Antonio Gramsci’s concern about the historical specificity of the emergeous sustenance and development and subsequent define of the American Empire.

And when you actually look closely at that empire, it seems to me what we have to come to terms with is the fundamental role of corporate greed, religious ideologies, white supremacy, the fundamental rule of the popular culture, youth, and acknowledge that anytime you're talking about white supremacy, you’re always already in some ways talking about the treatment of black women.

And if you're concerned about the treatment of black women, you ought to be concerned about the treatment of women across the board.

So the vicious ideologies, the patriarchy, come in. And the same thing would be true for the James Baldwins and the Audre Lordes, the gay brothers and the lesbian sisters. Now, where does that leave us? Well, for me -- and you all know about the Covenant movement of Tavis Smiley, the book that was launched last year, went number one in the New York Times. We sold 400,000 copies within nine months, not reviewed by the New York Times, not touched by the Today Show. Even Oprah wouldn’t breathe on it. And she can breathe on books and sell half a million these days, you know that?

We just ask Sidney Poitier and Brother Elie Wiesel for that. But this book went underground.

Why? Because Tavis Smiley knows that in an American culture that is so thoroughly commodified, driven by corporate greed, thoroughly commercialized, driven by corporate greed, thoroughly marketized, driven by corporate greed, you have to be able to communicate in such a way that you might be able then to shake people from their sleepwalking, which he's done every year now on C-SPAN, and uses his position in order to raise issues of right to healthcare, community-based policing so you can deal with some of this police brutality, especially in black and brown communities of proletarian and lumpenproletarian character, and so forth.

*HUH?*
Are you telling me, now that based on public speaking abilities that President Bush is dumb? Cornell is certainly dumber.

To be Popular or Smart...?

To me the question is simple. It is one all teenagers have to ask, and anyone with any wisdom has already made the right decision.

According to worldwide popular opinion (which means NOTHING) the US has decide on the latter.

A BBC Survey of 28,000 people has found that the US is a little bit more popular than Iran, a bit less popular than North Korea, and a good bit less liked than Israel.

The article correctly analyzes that nations with significant military power are found to be unpopular by this sample of people. What neither the analysis, nor the people seem to understand is that there is a grand difference between the power held by Israel and the US, as compared to the power held by North Korea or Iran. Anyone who needs an explanation either doesn't keep up with world affairs, or is playing equivelancy games by pretending the military power of the US is held at the expense of the starvation of our citizens.

Not true.

Here's the article:

LONDON (AP) - Israel, Iran and the United States are the countries with the most negative image in a globe-spanning survey of attitudes toward 12 major countries. Canada and Japan came out best in the poll, released Tuesday.

The survey for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service asked more than 28,000 people to rate 12 countries - Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela - as having a positive or negative influence on the world.

Israel was viewed negatively by 56 per cent of respondents and positively by 17 per cent; for Iran, the figures were 54 per cent and 18 per cent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 per cent citing it as a bad influence and 30 per cent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 per cent and positively by 19 per cent.

Canada had the most positive rating in the survey of 28,389 people in 27 countries, with 54 per cent viewing it positively and 14 per cent negatively. It was followed by Japan and France.

Respondents were also asked their views of the 25-member European Union; 53 per cent saw it as positive and 19 per cent as negative.

Britain, China and India were viewed more positively than negatively, while Russia had more negative than positive responses. Opinion on Venezuela was evenly split.

"It appears that people around the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is marked by the pursuit of military power," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the research along with pollster GlobeScan.

"Countries that relate to the world primarily through soft power, like France and Japan and the EU in general, tend to be viewed positively," he added.

Pollsters questioned about 1,000 people each in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States between Nov. 3 and Jan. 16. The margin of error in each country ranged between plus or minus 3.1 percentage points and plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.