A Site to See

They're Back!

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports on the return of the right wing militias. With a black president in the White House and increasing numbers of non-white immigrants entering the country, the groups that fostered Timothy McVeigh, the man who murdered 168 innocent men women and children in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, have returned to the forefront, fueled by the popularity of the Tea Party movement and populist blowhards like Glenn Beck. Recently, leaders of the Republican Party vied with one another at CPAC in Washington to see who could pander the loudest to the far right in the American political spectrum, with some seemingly encouraging more right-wing terrorist action like that of the recent incident in Texas when a Vietnam War hero was murdered by an anti IRS activist. (See Frank Rich in today's New York Times.)

Surprise! Surprise! E-mail Torture Messages Disappeared!

Shockingly, many of the e-mails sent by torture specialists within the Bush administration have vanished. (See today's New York Times.) John Yoo and Co., the young hawks who sought to emulate the Fox TV show, 24, have been practicing their "dumbfounded" look in response, claiming the messages didn't add anything to what is already known, sort of like the missing minutes from the Watergate tapes. Nixon would be proud.


Hey! Stephen Cobert, It Ain't the Bears You Need To Be Afraid Of:

Deadly bacteria are becoming more resistant to antibiotics. "[C]lassified as Gram-negative because of their reaction to the so-called Gram stain test" these bugs are beginning to proliferate, as reported in today's New York Times. The "supergerms are … spreading worldwide." Unfortunately, the drug industry is conducting very little development in antibodies. Money, as always, is the issue.

Where do people come by these bacteria? Hospitals. Your biggest risk for infection in the developed world exists in the very place where you go for treatment.

Caution! Job Loss and the Fear of It Could Cost You Your Life!

Surprise, surprise, new studies indicate that the loss of your job or the fear of it might well bring on your early demise. Does this shock anyone?

Michael Luo reports on the findings in today's New York Times. Naturally, this is about as unAmerican an activity as you can get. Job loss is your hard luck. No one owes you a job. America is about the possibility that you can win the lottery, get rich while your neighbors can just suck it. We are a nation of individuals, where each individual has the right to the pursuit of his own happiness. Ask Mitt Romney. He got rich by closing down other people's work places. That's the entrepreneurial spirit that has made America great. (Whatever "great" means. A great opportunity to exploit everyone else, I suppose?)

We are a nation built on "self-interest." Unfortunately, everyone's self-interest interferes with everyone else's self-interest. You can go west, young man, but please note that you'll be standing in your neighbor's back yard.

YES!!!

Robert Reich wants the health care trusts busted up, and I am in agreement. Bust 'em apart now!

California's Anthem Blue Cross has been in the news lately, with its giant increases in premiums for those who are individual policy holders. Folks who are members of group policies aren't seeing much in the way of increased prices.

The insurance companies claim that too many healthy people are no longer buying policies during the economic downturn and that the companies need the higher revenue. The truth is that they are afraid an Obama-plan might limit their profitability. Reich points out that while the rest of the country is suffering economically, health insurance companies are raking in profits hand over fist. They get away with it because they are protected monopolies.

Hey! Even the post office has competition. Bust up these vampires now!

Justice Department White-Washes Torture Memos:

Yesterday, the Justice Department announced that the lawyers who prepared the now infamous memos justifying the use of torture during the Bush administration were innocent of any wrong doing, that they had simply used bad judgment (thus providing every suspect apprehended, from this point on, with an immediate defense, no matter the crime).

The report concludes, in the words of Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane of The New York Times, that Jay S. Bybee and John C. Yoo "had demonstrated 'professional misconduct.'" And that they "had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice to the White House in possible violation of international and federal laws of torture."

Beyond that there seems to be no indication that the Justice Department intends to prosecute the lawyers. One lawyer with the department adds that the two were functioning under a particularly difficult climate at the time the memos were written, which did not allow for any reflection. However, John Yoo, who has made a career out of having written the memos, denies that there was any pressure. Yoo, it seems, was chomping at the bit to do his part to help the Bush administration create a police state of the U.S. at the first opportunity.

Bybee is currently a federal judge. Evidently that was his reward for generating paperwork to help justify Dick Cheney's attempt to destroy American democracy.

While we're on the topic of Cheney, "Darth Vader" appeared at CPAC in Washington this week where he was welcomed to chants of "Run, Dick, run!" indicating the desperation of conservatives to find a candidate for 2012.

Fat Cats Fatter Than Ever:

Last night George F. Will, the lone intellectual on the right and a Washington Post writer, was caught once again in the lie that the federal government wants to tax you even after you're dead.

Will was a speaker at the CPAC harangue in Washington where C-Span captured him—does a man begin to look like the animal he most closely resembles?—whining that a man who works really hard and accumulates large rewards here in this world will be taxed upon his death even as he resides in the next.

Sorry, George, but it ain't the dead who are taxed, it's the folks who inherit those large sums of money who are, money for which they've done nothing other than to have been selected as beneficiaries by the deceased. And the sums have to be over a million dollars per individual before such a tax even takes place.

George Will and his ilk, like that other George we've so recently shed ourselves of, care little for accuracy. They've been waging a class war since the founding of the country.

And in case you are still feeling sorry for the wealthy, who undoubtedly must be suffering like the rest of us during the Great Recession, think again. Joe Conason at Salon.com reports on the findings of David Cay Johnston, who has been examining just how hard the recession has hit the 400 Americans with the highest income. You guessed it, they're still making money hand over fist, and paying lower and lower tax rates all the time.

There are vampires among us, and they're not mooning over teenage girls. (Okay, so I'm mixing my metaphors, but cats and vampires are both known to have sharp, pointy fangs.)

Three Dead in Alabama:

Forty years ago National Guardsmen ran riot in Ohio, killing three young people at Kent State University, as a nation gone mad unleashed its military against private citizens; yesterday, a faculty member of the University of Alabama, who had failed to receive tenure, murdered three of her colleagues at a biology department meeting.

There are no parallels between those events other than a nation that seeks resolution through the use of violence. Undoubtedly, some fool will use this latest episode as justification for arming both students and faculty at universities around the country.

While we're on the subject of tenure, let's stop and consider that factor for a moment: only about half of the instructors at major universities who are eligible to apply for tenure ever receive it. This is dramatically different from the public school systems where tenure exists. In most public school systems, a faculty member is tenured after six months as long as he or she doesn't do something dramatically evil, like bring a gun to school.

At universities, a faculty member has to spend six or seven years working towards tenure and then go through an approval process that takes most of a year and has many layers. Substantial numbers of achievement recognized by one's peers are required. And half of the applicants will be rejected. Think of that. You spend 20 or more years on your education, go heavily into debt, work for peanuts for half a dozen years, and then when you are somewhere between 25 and 35 years of age, there is a fifty-fifty chance that you'll find yourself unemployed and still deeply in debt.

By the way, about half of failed applicants end up filing law suits against their universities, which they almost never win.

The ivory tower gleams in the sunlight, as long as you view it from a significant distance.

(See The New York Times' story.)

Where is the Republican Party Headed?

Russell Shorto thinks the answer can be found by watching the results of the coming March 3 primary for the Texas school board District 9 election. Texas is owned by the Republican Party, and America's public school system is owned by the state school board of Texas.

Texas has a huge budget with which they buy school books, and the text book publishers willingly kowtow to their wishes. Fundamentalist Christians have been working hard to control the board in order to instill their propaganda into the curriculum.