Can't decide which one to read

The Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb or Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh? Click on the books for reviews. I'm leaning towards the Wambaugh because I just need a break from shit I have to think about. A little fiction break maybe? Anybody read either of these?

ACORN’s Family Tree

Behind the News, Campaign Desk — September 18, 2009 05:44 PM
Was the Baltimore video journalism? Does it matter?
By Alexandra Fenwick

In a piece in the October 2009 issue of The Atlantic, “The Story Behind the Story,” journalist Mark Bowden examines the source of the Sonia Sotomayor video clips that surfaced during her Supreme Court nomination—and what happens when ideologues step forward to provide the reporting that journalists don’t have the resources to do.(click title link)

Selective Deficit Disorder

Published on Friday, September 18, 2009 by TruthDig.com
by David Sirota

Watching the health care debate unfold these days is a little like watching scenes from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”—the ones showing a collage of strung-out, deranged or otherwise incapacitated patients rotting away in a squalid psychiatric ward....(click on title link)

Sirota makes me laugh.

Bill Moyers is going to expose the Tea Baggers and their leaders' hypocrisy tonight. Whadyaya know, the same people who killed "HillaryCare" are all juiced up with health sector bucks to kill "Obamacare" and the Tea Baggers are so stupid they don't even know they are being used by Glenn Beck and Dick Armey to do the bidding of those that make Armey and Beck wealthy. And hypocritical. Is there no end to teh stoopid?



Man Arrested For Asking Anthem Blue Cross/Shield About His Rate Increase
By Susie Madrak Friday Sep 18, 2009 4:00pm

It gets more unbelievable by the day, doesn't it?

Joe Szakos leads the Virginia Organizing Project, an almost fifteen year-old community organization that Health Care for America Now works with in Virginia to organize for health care reform. Szakos's organization employs dozens of people, and they get their health care through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

This year, Szakos was informed that Anthem was going to increase the premiums on Virginia Organizing Project's health plan by 14.1%. Around the same time, the Virginia Organizing Project received an email from Anthem:

We strongly support reform that builds a strong, sustainable private-sector health care system - and strongly oppose creating a government-run health plan. We are urging our elected officials in Washington to take bipartisan action that will accomplish that. We are educating policymakers in Washington and working with our trade associations to encourage Congress to build on the current system and not disrupt the quality, affordable coverage on which our members depend....

As our elected officials debate health care, they need to hear directly from you.

Szakos immediately had some questions for Anthem. Chief among them, why is Anthem using its resources to lobby against health care reform with a public health insurance option while at the same time increasing rates by 14.1%?

Szakos, along with three other Virginia Organizing Project board members, went down to Anthem's offices in Richmond, VA to ask. He left in handcuffs.

Szakos, a customer, couldn't get an answer from Anthem. There was no justification for raising rates on one hand, and spending money lobbying against health care reform on the other. And instead of trying to offer Szakos an explanation, they had him arrested.

As Szakos said in the video, this is about greed and force. There is no good explanation for these rate increases, and there is no justification for Anthem to spend money it collects in premiums from customers suffering under its "health care" plans on lobbying against reform that would help these very same people. The only thing motivating Anthem - and all insurance companies - is greed. And they get and keep their money by force.

While the Fox newz freeptards were obeying the order to sic ACORN

They were successfully distracted from the fact that the health sector lobbyists were screwing them:

Wendell Potter: Public Option Essential, Baucus Plan An "Absolute Gift" To Health Insurance Industry (VIDEO)


Hmm, looks like I'm not the only one who had that thought, Greenwald points out the M-I-C and the banksters lobbyists activity also.

Glenn Greenwald:
Thursday Sept. 17, 2009 11:18 EDT
The distracting benefits of ACORN hysteria

Health care reform

FACTBOX: Details of Baucus plan for healthcare reform


Yeah. Ever since I read distributorcap NY's post titled Constitutional Side Effects I knew we were screwed. You think corruption is endemic in only states that have large populations?

Bwaaa haa ha ha ha hahahahaha ha ha ha

Finished reading The Big White Lie by Michael Levine

And the same information keeps popping up. This time from a link to a Robert Parry article I happened upon through Scoobie's The Real Sun Myung Moon blog. Ladies and gentlemen, the truth really is stranger than fiction and more horrifying. The CIA drug smuggling while running a campaign to persecute a clean DEA agent who uncovered it. Nazis. US govt trained death squads all over Latin America. Religious nutcases involved with all of the above while running a national newspaper and funding one of the most powerful political families in the US.

The real nutcases in the world have FAR too much power.

How long before we figure out that there are more of us than there are of them?

Nobody listened, they're still not listening

Why Obama Won't Be Able to Reform Wall Street
Huff TV
Posted March 31, 2009 | 10:49 PM (EST)
Black Swan Author Nassim Taleb Joins Arianna on CNBC's Squawk Box

Originally Aired: September 14, 2009
Analysis
One Year After Financial Crisis, Reform Questions Loom
On the one year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Jeffrey Brown talks to economists and experts about what has been learned and the future of financial reform.

Stiglitz Says Banking Problems Are Now Bigger Than Pre-Lehman

WTF?

Why a New York Court Unmasked the Blogger Who Wrote Harshly About a Model
By JULIE HILDEN
Tuesday, September 15, 2009

FINANCIAL CRISIS DAILY UPDATE: WHO WILL CELEBRATE ANNIVERSARY OF MELTDOWN?

NY TIME SAT: WALL STREET TRIUMPHANT, CRIME UNCHECKED

NYT VIA LBN: A YEAR AFTER A CATACLYSM, LITTLE CHANGE ON WALL ST.

Bitchin'

The banksters are fine and the arms industry is booming.

The middle class?

Uh, not so good.

I have a question. How come I have to get the news from someone who got sick of the BS in the news business and struck out on his own?

Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Ruins in Our Future

posted September 13, 2009 5:44 pm

All of us have been watching drought in action this summer. When it hits the TV news, though, it usually goes by the moniker of "fire." As we've seen, California, in the third year of a major drought, has been experiencing "a seemingly endless fire that has burned more than 250 square miles of Los Angeles County" (and that may turn out to be just the beginning of another fire season from hell).

Southern California has hardly been the only drought story, though. For those with an eye out, the southern parts of Texas, the hottest state in the union this year, have been in the grips of a monster drought. Seven hundred thousand acres of the state have already burned in 2009, with a high risk of more to come...

I was born here. I grew up here. I've noticed the gradual changes. I don't remember ever having fear of the Santa Ana winds and massive fires. That has happened in the last ten years.

Born to be Big

Early exposure to common chemicals may be programming kids to be fat.
By Sharon Begley | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 11, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Sep 21, 2009

...In 2006 scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health reported that the prevalence of obesity in infants under 6 months had risen 73 percent since 1980...

...hormone-mimicking pollutants,...

What Causes Hormonal Imbalance?

Wall Street's Mania for Short-Term Results Hurts Economy

By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, September 11, 2009

No shit Sherlock. Yeesh what a title.


Update 8:24 PM 9/11/2009
Ironically, I had to go shopping to get the kid ready for the dorms. I am tired.

I don't think any American likes this particular anniversary. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that 8 years ago today was the beginning of the end of my brainwashed existence. I read very little non-fiction now and I read constantly.

Reading Now

The Big White Lie by Michael Levine (c) 1993


So far it's depressing, but not surprising. After all, I have read The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy. Maybe the decriminalization of small amounts of drugs in a couple of Latin American countries will force the CIA to knock off its bullshit, eventually. How many more innocent people will die before then? Who knows? Some moron told me he thought the CIA was a good organization. Good for who? I couldn't have had more contempt. Nothing will really change here until decriminalization of small amounts of drugs and drug treatment takes precedence.

Supreme Court decisions affect YOU

So first of all, I don't get why the Obama speech to a joint session of Congress will get more air-time, but oh well, I don't get why local newz will cover some dead gang-banger and not a Supreme Court decision that will affect 300 million people, not just Hillary Clinton.

This fucking lizard brain thinks that corporations should have more "free speech" rights. You think they control the political message now? HA. This will be Sotomayor's first case as a Supreme Court Justice. Wanna bet that she passes the rich fuck's first test? You think Puerto Ricans have rights? Pffft.

Yes I do understand why the Obama speech needs to be covered and since he's a great orator, I love to watch him. I dunno why the media whores keep saying how much they need "bi-partisanship?" They don't. What they need is to separate the corporate money from the congresswhores.

I hope that some of the right-wing fucktards get a clue, but they probably won't listen to him if they do watch him, so ginned up on hate spew from Hannity, Beck, and the other corporate funded msm whores. So stupid they refuse to see that the highly paid corporate media whores get them to vote against their own best interests.

Big Business's Hidden Hand in the Smear Job on Van Jones
By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet. Posted September 8, 2009.
"...The strategy is simple: Prey upon the worst fears of the right-wing folks who live next door in order to get them to organize against their own interests..."

See?

Update 4:21 PM 9/19/2009
Gordon at Alternate Brain draws attention to a comment that the WSJ
picked up on regarding the original court decision on corporate personhood. I'm still a bit skeptical, being that judges put so much stock in precedent but I'd like to hope for a new precedent on an old case, or no new powers given to corporations in the current case.

The Next Financial Crisis

Economy
The New Republic
It's coming--and we just made it worse.
* Peter Boone and Simon Johnson
* September 5, 2009 | 12:00 am

Bloomberg still thinks Rethugs are important

* Congress

Current Party Numbers: 111th Congress, 1st Session
House Senate
Democrats 256 58
Independents 0 2
Republicans 178 40
Vacancies 1 0

Think "fracking" ain't fucking your water supply?

Well water, that is.



Ahhh, Halliburton's lawyers are busy. They just can't seem to stay out of trouble, can they? Good thing they moved to Dubai .

Bet they hate this website:
Halliburton Watch

They probably weren't wild about this post of mine, either, since I have had an interest in gas and oil exploration because it wreaks environmental havoc:

halliburton.com landed here, wtf?

Reading now

The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

translated "El poder del perro"


It's about narcotraficantes, the "War on Drugs," mercenaries, dirty cops on both sides of the border, dirty politicians that go all the way up to presidents on both sides of the border, murder, revenge, Iran/Contra, the S American right-wing bullshit wars on the people funded by the US and trained at SOA It mentions NAFTA , you know, all the lovely things our foreign policy has inflicted upon Latin America.

It's in the fiction section, I dunno why, so far the "good guys" are not only non-existent, they're losing. Which brings me to a newspaper article I spotted this morning:

Mother of Colombian girl allegedly raped by U.S. officer seeks justice
By Gonzalo Guillen and Gerardo Reyes | El Nuevo Herald
Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 McClatchy

Olga Lucia Castillo could never bring to justice the men who raped her in Bogota when she was pregnant with her daughter. Twelve years later, she is putting up the fight of her life to have a U.S. Army officer and a Mexican-born contractor indicted because, according to her, they raped her daughter at the military base in Melgar...

...both suspects were taken out of the country under diplomatic immunity,...

(more on the story here) | U.S. soldier's immunity clouds 2007 Colombian rape case

Enough about the "War on Drugs" how's that war in Afghanistan going?

'Why should the liberals always cave?' Dem asks

Rep. Keith Ellison


Ellison said private insurers wielded substantial market power "in nearly every major metropolitan area" that gives companies the ability to set premiums at high rates.

"How are we going to get them down? By introducing three things: competition, choice and a competitive price. I don't know how any conservative can be against those three things," he said.

Thank you Mr. Ellison!!

Update, and Dr. Dean
(sorry I missed this)

Finished reading Cruel and Unusual by Mark Crispin Miller

(c) 2004
Hucky-ducky, here's the deal; these are some sick motherfuckers that were at the helm of this country. Sick, twisted, abused and abusive critters who believed that their shit didn't stink and they could do no wrong. That's probably why you are still seeing the evil bastards on the Sunday talking heads shows. I say 'you' because I never watched watched those bullshit shows, and I don't watch these DC bubbleheads anymore, either. It was hard to go back over the destructive policy decisions again, but I learned a few things, so I'm glad I did. As painful as it was to read, it was worth it. I recommend it.

Pages 276-277
"The only legal way to halt the nation's slide into theocracy, it seems, would be to open serious investigations by the Congress and the press, begin a robust national debate, and finally vote the zealots out of power. And yet that electoral possibility as also been subverted-- to what precise extent we don't yet know-- by the Christian Reconstructionists and their allies in the GOP, for the computerized machines now widely used for voting purposes in the United States are actually the handiwork of Reconstructionist ideologues. It was Howard Ahmanson and his brother Robert who bankrolled American Information Systems (AIS) which was founded by another pair of brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. Under the corporate rubric of AIS, Bob Urosevich is president of Diebold, while Todd Urosevich is vice president of aftermarket sales at IS&E. Diebold and ESS are the nation's largest manufacturers of electronic voting machines, now mandated to be used in every state, thanks to the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Neither company's machines leave any sort of paper trail; neither company has allowed the public to review its programming code; and machines produced by both firms are notoriously easy to manipulate--from outside the system, so that anyone who has the skills and inclination can just revised whatever "final tally" he may find unacceptable. That a democracy would use such shoddy goods as its electoral infrastructure is disquieting enough. That both those companies were funded by a far-right partisan and active Christian Reconstructionist --whose am is an all-Christian franchise in America --is surely grounds for rational concern and timely action. Heir to an enormous fortune from the savings and loan business, Ahmanson is probably not into touch-screen voting for the money. "My purpose," he told the Orange County Register in 1985, 'is total integration of Biblical law into our lives."

Two Voting Companies & Two Brothers Will Count 80% of U.S. Election -
Using BOTH Scanners & Touchscreens
by Lynn Landes 4/27/04


Diebold Finally Dumps E-Voting Division... But Sells It To Equally Problematic ES&S
by Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Thu, Sep 3rd 2009

Max Blumenthal
Senior Writer for The Daily Beast
Posted: November 4, 2008 02:14 AM
Who Is The Mystery Man Behind Prop 8?

Howard Ahmanson becomes a Democrat. Seriously
March 23rd, 2009, 8:49 am · 7 Comments · posted by Steven Greenhut

And one more thing, Van Jones was right, they are assholes.

Taibbi nails it again, this time on health care reform

Published on Saturday, September 5, 2009 by Rolling Stone

How Washington is Screwing Up Health Care Reform – and Why It May Take a Revolt to Fix It

by Matt Taibbi

(Yep, once again he breaks it down into digestible chunks)

...Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world...

...Almost every single one of the main players - from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Blue Dog turncoat Max Baucus - found some unforeseeable, unique-to-them way to fuck this thing up...

...The only committee that didn't finish a bill is the one that's likely to matter most: the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by the infamous obfuscating dick Max Baucus, a right-leaning Democrat from Montana who has received $2,880,631 in campaign contributions from the health care industry...

...In the real world, nothing except a single-payer system makes any sense. There are currently more than 1,300 private insurers in this country, forcing doctors to fill out different forms and follow different reimbursement procedures for each and every one. This drowns medical facilities in idiotic paperwork and jacks up prices: Nearly a third of all health care costs in America are associated with wasteful administration. Fully $350 billion a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. went to a single-payer system - more than enough to pay for the whole goddamned thing, if anyone had the balls to stand up and say so...

(Yeesh sometimes I wonder how many times the Democrats will play Charlie Brown to the Lucy-with-the-football Republicans/Lobbyists/Moneyed Interests? And I did not know the following when I listened to Darrell Issa go on and on bitching about Obama's czars. )

...Many of the health care advisers in Obama's inner circle, meanwhile, are industry hacks - people like Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president's health care czar, who has served on the boards of for-profit companies like Medco Health Solutions and Triad Hospitals. DeParle is so unthreatening to the status quo that Karen Ignagni, the insurance industry's leading lobbyist-gorgon, praised her "extensive experience" and "strong track record."...

...employers who currently offer sub-par coverage will have their shitty plans protected by a grandfather clause. Which means ...

"If you have coverage you like, you can keep it," says Sen. Sanders. "But if you have coverage you don't like, you gotta keep it."

This grandfather clause has potentially wide-ranging consequences. One of the biggest health care problems we have in this country is the technique used by large employers - Walmart is the most notorious example - of offering dogshit, bare-bones health insurance that forces employees to take on steep co-pays and other massive charges. Low-wage workers currently offered these plans often reject them and join Medicaid, effectively shifting the health care burden for Walmart employees on to the taxpayer. If the HELP committee's grandfather clause survives to the final bill, those workers who did the sensible thing in rejecting Walmart's crap employer plan and taking the comparatively awesome insurance offered via Medicaid will now be rebuffed by the state and forced to take the dogshit Walmart offering...

...If the public option is the sine qua non for progressives, then the "individual mandate" is the counterpart must-have requirement for the insurance industry....

And Buzzflash nails it again.

Health Care "Reform" that Will Enrich For-Profit Insurance Companies and Big Pharma is What the WH is Fighting For Now

Bill Moyers Journal

is a must see if Democracy means anything to you.

Hey, where you going?

You're not done yet.

This IS good

Assclowns of the Week #76: Reading the Tea Leaves/Labor Day edition

This is not good

By Brad Friedman on 9/3/2009 7:10PM
DIEBOLD FINDS ELECTION DIVISION BUYER; ES&S TO CONTROL MOST U.S. ELECTIONS
Bargain-basement sale price; Anti-trust complaints to be filed; Dreadful history of failure by both companies
Merger causes concern among Election Integrity experts...

Darrell Issa's town hall meeting on health care

It was obvious before I even found a parking space that someone had gotten the word out and I soon found out who that was-- Rick Roberts, local AM hate radio wing-nut.

Or it might have been stump-speech-on-a-stick himself. I dunno.

Waiting in line the way in I heard the lady behind me say to her friend "So how did you hear about this?" Her friend answered "I got a call, personally inviting me." Hmmm, I went with my sister, who happens to be one of his constituents and she didn't get a call. Maybe it's because there is a D on her registration rather than an R?

All I know is that I never want to be in the midst of that many sheeple who will spread their cheeks out of sheer stupidity again. They politely applauded while he didn't answer question after question. God what a weasel he is. He made sure to give about a half dozen shout outs on tort reform, that's always good for Republican sheeple applause. He babbled on for a bit about cash payers being billed more than insurance ever pays. No shit Sherlock. Who created that mess, insurance agencies?

I laughed out loud when he went on about how drug companies spend billions testing and then getting the OK from the FDA to get a drug out on the market. No mention of settlements like this.

He's also really good at droning on until you totally forgot what the question was, you're just happy he quit babbling. It didn't really matter, it seemed most of the people who spoke or asked questions (some obviously rhetorical, it was a wing-nut love fest with no guns, that's illegal here) like everyone had made up their minds before they got there that HR 3200 is positively evil, but nobody knew why. Seriously, nobody could point to anything specific in the bill, they just hated it. Why? They are sheeple. They think what they're told to think and they do what they are told to do.

No mention of a public insurance option.

At all.

I guess Ricky must have been filling the sheeple's heads with noise about a public option being what? Unpatriotic because it might give a few greedy insurers a run for their money? Might crimp the profits of insurers?

I almost felt sorry for one woman who almost pleaded with him to tell her she wasn't a hypocrite for not wanting Obamacare because she already had Tricare and Medicare.

Almost.

I'd make a lousy politician because when she pleaded "Am I a hypocrite?" I said loudly "Yup!" Jesus fuckin Christ lady, you know you're not gonna get the truth at a place where a bunch of sad and sorry rethugs have gathered to have thewe poow widdle bwuised egos salved. Issa weaseled out of the question.

Damn, what kills me is nobody ever mentioned the three trillion dollar war when they talked about a balanced budget. At one point he mentioned $500 a month for health insurance. I wonder if that's his cockamamie bill that offers the health insurance options of Federal employees to everyone, but the government doesn't pay for any of it? I pretty much drove my sister crazy by mumbling not quite loud enough for her to hear me the whole time. I need a shower, I don't like being around people who wear Buck Ofama shirts and mobilize minors to wave signs about a bill that isn't even finished being written.

Fuck it, let's thump these assholes at the next election ALSO.

NC Times says 3,000 people were there, but wait, it says 1500 in the gym and that would make it 1500 outside. I don't know where the fuck they are talking about, but there were NOT 1500 people outside where I was, there were 300 people outside, max.

And here's the fishwrap coverage. One sided as usual.

Update: Wow, I'm glad the drama was in LA and not here. I'm short tempered at times and if "Buck Ofama" lady had punched me in the face, knocked me to the ground, continued to holler at me while pointing her finger in my face, I might have bitten her finger off too.

Update 2 1:00 PM 9/13/2009. I found this article. SONIC WEAPONS USED IN IRAQ POSITIONED AT CONGRESSIONAL TOWNHALL MEETINGS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY
Hmmm. Sure looks like the loudspeaker I saw above the gym at the Issa event.

Court sides with Paris Hilton in Hallmark fight

Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009
AP

I wonder if she would have been fine with it if she had gotten paid for it?

I mean, is she really known for having good taste? In any of her well known commercial enterprises?

Really?

Have any of her nauseating public projects done anything other than attempt to separate the "classes" more in the US? A supposedly classless society?

Don't kid yourself ladies and gentlemen,

the Poles have every right to be pissed off at the West AND the East for what happened to their country and peoples during and After WWII.

Stalin, FDR, Churchill, they all fucked Poland.

If you haven't seen the PBS special "WWII behind closed doors," I highly recommend it.

Polish, Russian press welcome Putin gesture

I guess the PR flacks are recommending a newer, softer, cuddlier approach to governance.

On health care

Moyers on Maher's show

Reading Now

Cruel and Unusual by Mark Crispin Miller.

It's hard to go back over all the stuff that Bush/Cheney pulled. I don't think I've ever hated people that I never met like I hate that traitorous duo. Click on the book for a BuzzFlash interview with the author.

More coal

India's generation of children crippled by uranium waste
defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations
* Gethin Chamberlain, Bathinda
* The Observer, Sunday 30 August 2009
Observer investigation uncovers link between dramatic rise in birth defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations.

...But an Observer investigation has now uncovered disturbing evidence to suggest a link between the contamination and the region's coal-fired power stations. It is already known that the fine fly ash produced when coal is burned contains concentrated levels of uranium and a new report published by Russia's leading nuclear research institution warns of an increased radiation hazard to people living near coal-fired thermal power stations....

Let's see how Big Coal tries to spin this one. Max Baucus is a big coal guy. And here is a map of his health care lobbyist complex.

Crap-OLA it's hot again today (98°F)