Elliot Spitzer Again....Truth to Power; Listen to this Guy...

What if the most reasonable voice out there on the financial crisis was a discredited, fallen, former prosecutor and governor, who now, having been through the depths of what happens when you turn over too many rocks in this game, can actually speak about it without looking over his shoulder? We know his horrible secret already, and that's the beauty of having him as a voice now. Watch this entire thing because you need to know this. I would venture to say that if we had leaders who were as smart as this guy and who were exorcising their demons with high class call girls rather than say...um...torturing people, maybe we'd be in better shape. I'm sorry for all of us women who were promised fidelity forever and the perfect cotton candy skies (as Sammy Seder used to say about the World of Your Imagination,) but maybe these high power guys should be assigned a hooker of their own, just to keep it all in the lines...y'know? I'm just sayin'...I'm not dismissing his expertise because he did it with a fancy hooker...OK? At least she was fancy and seemingly didn't have diseases; I guess we all draw our own lines.

You didn't hear it from me, but this guy is coming back:




and for those of you who wanted to hear him speak on the horrible scandal, for which he was not charged with any criminal wrongdoing...far be it for me to deprive you of this part:



If we are supposed to focus on the shiny hookers and blow aspect of this guy,then maybe we need to step back from what the media want us to think about and think that he knows so much about this that might actually help us, and what is it that they don't want us to know?

Thanks to Rachel Maddow for booking him...and Fareed Zakaria for booking him for us.

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast!

FEMA Trailers to be Seized By a Rutterless Agency; Elizabeth and John Edwards Again

First, I want to reiterate what Jill said here about the repossession of FEMA trailers in Louisiana by the end of May, and before most of the projects to restore housing are fully in place. This is another example of the bold insanity of our government at work. Contact the FEMA Leadership here, and Vitter, to urge him to stop blocking Obama's nominee for the post of FEMA head, here. This is storm season and, as Jill says, no one is in charge of disasters and emergencies. This sort of thing just makes you wonder where the media is considering the story below and this.
There are people in office who are seriously kinky and caught in ignored scandal, and the media is obsessed with the most irrelevant moral implications of what amounts to straight sex in the primary season, in their quest for ratings. Meanwhile the long suffering people of Louisiana and areas effected by Katrina are still not back in reasonable housing...and now will be on the street if the rudderless FEMA has its way. Is anyone paying attention? Again, go here and tell them what you think!




Yesterday I found myself absorbed in the (DVRed) Elizabeth Edwards edition of Oprah that aired this past Thursday. Elizabeth Edwards has alot of important things to say to us as human beings and as a country in her new book Resilience, but the whole thing ultimately made me just a little uncomfortable. As much as I like the Edwards' regardless of the disingenuous air that surrounds them these days, and the seemingly insane choices that they both have made along the way, my radar was buzzing. This is, after all, still politics.



There is an amount of crazy fairytale here, that is almost childlike in its construction, and there is a part of me (the New York City, glass half empty, Woody Allen part, I'm sure,) that doesn't buy that anyone really believes in those sorts of happy endings. At the same time that Elizabeth Edwards is telling us that life is messy, she holds forth the illusion that she created years ago that somehow her family could beat the odds. The fact that they have so extremely NOT beaten the odds, makes it even further fetched that this particular betrayal came as a huge surprise to her. Somewhere in the fateful family decision to become political after the death of their son, they gave up the ability to falter privately, and Elizabeth's only gift request, that he remain faithful, almost assured their eventual demise. I find that request sort of strange unless she had some reason to think he wouldn't...or unless she was having a realistic moment in the fairy tale. His request in response would have to have been that if he did somehow fail her, that she try to forgive him. But it feels to me like those thoughts are the territory of mere mortals, and this was a fairy tale.

If we just accept that they are both far from victims in this game, and I don't think that cancer, infidelity, or the subsequent lies, changes the facts and the rules of the game, then we can move forward with whatever bits of the underlying story here that can help people struggling with these issues that stretch beyond marital infidelity and into the cold fact that the entire construct of the American Dream and the happy ending is an impossible lie. If we accept that human nature is fragile and fallible, and that we have been lied to about what to realistically expect, maybe we can move to a place where we realize that our personal dream fulfillment is more about what we create internally, and less about what we've been told just happened naturally. The prize at the end is what screws everything up because it becomes more and more idealized until we are easily convinced that it can be bought with a credit card and that its something accessible without hard work, failure and forgiveness along the way.

I kept wondering why now? why this way? why Oprah? It all comes off as so weepy and touchy-feelie....and yet, it sorta worked. Elizabeth, the kids, the house, (alot of those square feet are part of some huge basketball complex, by the way, but how can you explain that away once the bulldogs in the media have their jaws locked on the lawyer with a huge house meme,) John skulking in the background looking thin and wan, and then finally having a quick heartfelt sit down at the end, it all worked; the despair and growth and learning....and then....



It was somewhere towards the end that I began the see the well oiled machine gears turning behind all of this. I began this new lil' Edwards cycle feeling sort of annoyed with Elizabeth for bringing this forward again, and then beating myself down with the internal response that its up to her as a dying woman. After all, Ive been told time and again by the media that Edwards is not eligible for his second act, ever, because THIS is just too bad. You would think that we don't live in the political climate that we live in; you would think that we haven't witnessed every disgusting scandal possible, save bestiality, (but so long as there are a few fundamentalist, holier-than-thou, creeps still out there, stay tuned,) none of which excuses John Edwards for what he's done. Its just that anyone who knows politics knows that what hes done, as it effects society and even the message the Obama carried forth, has more to do with being a champion for the poor than cheating on his dying wife. And the timing; how could the investigation into campaign funds begin just as the book is released? That couldn't have possibly been by design, but it worked out great, huh? Lets chalk that up to luck, OK?



Elizabeth is a formidable woman, and a wonderful human being, (or so we hear from those who have met her; I like her image but I don't know her personally.) She is dying of cancer pretty publicly and she speaks about the messiness of life in a way that is accessible and common. But to assume that she isn't every inch the powerful political wife would be to underestimate her. To think that her need to come out with a book now as opposed to later, (....after all, and again, who are we to judge the wishes and the medical condition of a dying woman?) doesn't also have some cathartic underlying healing of the cheated on woman in all of us, would be tragically naive.

And somewhere towards the end of the sister's sit down, it became clear to me that Elizabeth is giving John and ultimately the country, the greatest gift that she could; she is allowing us to walk with her on her path of forgiveness and her quest for truth in her life. It matters little that the details are far from what any of us will ever experience in our lives. In the end, we are all the disappointed child that Bush abused, and the abused wife that John cheated on. There is some part of the misplaced emotion of the past 8 years, and probably from our own dysfunctional families, that seems to land on the Edwards' shoulders. So to address that is ultimately probably more helpful than not.



If we are over identified with Elizabeth, she is allowing us an end to the story that is believable, because she isn't Barbie, and Ken doesn't just get a pass because he's the most popular boy in school. If we ever were blinded or offended by Edward's good looks, this puts a few lines on his face and takes him down a few notches. So whether this happens in the service of Elizabeth's legacy or the future of the country and breaking down the walls between the Two Americas, isn't really important. I don't feel like we are in a position to split hairs when it comes to what has to be done to bring this country back in the general direction of Americans at least having a chance at some sort of life, and I'm not in the business of ignoring an intellectual voice at a time of crisis, for moral reasons. Americans who are willing to put their entire lives out there for scrutiny, and who have the background and knowledge to speak on the issues, should not be silenced because of a set of bad decisions. If anything, we could hope that they learn from their mistakes and emerge stronger and more focused on what is important.

I'm not saying that this is something that happens immediately, but I can see the groundwork in its infancy here. I don't see the damage to message or the impact of the paternity of the child that others are bringing up. last thing I knew, Edwards had left the race with the agreement with the other players that his message would be carried through. Last thing I saw was that Obama is actually, in the quicksand of the messes hes been left with, trying to address it. It seems to me that if paternity is an issue, we will be informed. Its not like the mother of the child has held back as far as her pursuit of Edwards ("you're so hot!" ??? Could that be the line that brought down a Presidential hopeful?)




Nothing excuses John Edwards lies, (and I am more concerned with the deeply flawed decision by the two of them, to stay in the race after it was clear that this was coming out,)...but are we going to allow our perceptions to be shaped by a media that decides what to focus on, and pundits who dictate the future feasibility of the voices in our midst? I want to point out how incredibly and terribly wrong most of these media folks have been over the past 8 years, and how frantically they have been scratching for a perch from which to expound on our new socialist government. I was offended last Sunday to hear the various panels decide that Edwards is finished forever, no chance ever, ever, ever....how can they project how bad things will get or what will happen in this country? What have they been right about lately that didn't fall in their laps? What is the formula that they use to measure the feelings of the American people?...I want to point out that it matters little when they are wrong; they just move on with more predictions and tell-me-something-I-don't-know. Its when they are right that they take off running a victory lap, and it serves....who?

We've surely got more important issues to deal with than this, but in light of the government investigation and the book, here we are again. What can we take from this? Whatever applies; I don't turn my nose up at anything that could possibly help me process all that's gone on, and really, the Edwards thing is the very least of it.


c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

McCain is out of His MInd...Sarah Palin and the Future of this Country.

Unqualified, wingnut, crazy, scary....these are just some of the words that come to mind when looking at the life and time of Sarah Palin.

Ah, Sarah Palin, runner up to the Ms. Alaska crown, outspoken opponent of a woman's right to choose, enemy of the Polar Bear, and great leveler of the field in the area of youth, gender, experience and the naming of children, will be side by side with pinky mouse McCain on the republican stump starting immediately.

Is this a joke? Trailing her cadre of children, including the infant dangling oddly from the arms of an older daughter, this oddball is being paraded around the bubble where the Bushies live, while the rest of America is shaking their heads at the similarities to the Harriet Miers debacle. Isn't anyone advising the McCain campaign?...what an embarrassment!

Sarah Palin is advertising herself as a mother, but if the naming of children is any indication of one's ability to reason and govern, then the republicans are in trouble. How she chose her kid's names is anyone's guess (and it has been mentioned that on those occasions that she admits that she tried pot , which I should add is legal in Alaska, she may have thought up those names!)

So, we've got Track and Willow, Piper, and Trig(Paxson Van Palin,) but worst of all is poor Bristol, who is known as Brillo....Track will be called up to duty in Iraq soon, Trig may be the love child of Brillo...who can keep them straight? Trig, with Downs Syndrome is more likely the 44 year old wanna-be Commander-in-Chief's, child, though she remained pretty scary thin throughout the pregnancy; shes strongly anti-choice yet kept this a secret from even her closest co-workers for 7 months, knowing that the child would have Downs Syndrome. US Conservatives at About.com had this:

The Palin family released this statement the morning after Trig Paxson's birth:

“Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

Three days later, Gov. Palin was back at work.

She went back to work 3 days after having this child!? And who is going to be caring for these children when she is VP? McCain is pretty damned old, not to mention the cancer; he could very well die. Is this who we want for president? Haven't we been through the not very bright and very crazy wing-nut thing for 8 long years already? Palin has no experience; less than no experience in that she is in such a remote area...her level of experience is in no way comparable to Obama's supposed lack of experience; she really, really has no experience except in the way of governing a state with very, very few people. She has had the ability to wield a strong outspoken wingnuttian stance on just about every issue that the rest of the country is too busy trying to pay the rent and juggle some semblance of a life, to take seriously, and the fact that McCain and his team view any part of her bio as a viable political option is just plain scary.

Onward: She has a husband who is part commercial fisherman and part oil field worker, and a history herself as a "maverick" of sorts, who hunts and fishes and is a lifetime NRA member; her bubbly yet carefully crafted delivery of support for the war, guns, and the conservative line, make her an interesting choice for McCain in a field where the PUMAS might actually be crazy enough to vote for a woman, any woman....my god, is it not apparent that Alaska and the life there is not representative of most of the country and that just as McCain is removed from the lives of most Americans to the point that he can't even state what "middle class" means or how many houses he has,what car he drives, this nut is also so far from the main stream as to be...a joke....this is a joke, right?

Sarah Palin is a surprise, and she is surely an all or nothing roll of the dice for a desperate Republican party that is looking towards a convention shown in split screen with hurricane Gustav bearing down on NOLA, in a stark remembrance of the failures of this administration. Even now, the White House is trying to pull Bush from having to appear on that split screen. Clearly this is not what Bush needs for his legacy of failure...Forget the beauty of karma and how the timing of Gustav cries out to the Bushies paybacks-a-bitch boys! Is the gulf prepared for this thing?...its horrifying that all of this time later, the infrastructure questions have not been clearly addressed and flooding has become a huge problem across the country.

I fell pretty strongly that most Americans are disgusted enough on both sides to just vote the knee jerk opposite of what we've had. I cant see this Palin woman going up against Biden in any meaningful way and I look forward to McCain trying to hold his own in a direct debate with Obama. But in reality, most Americans lack the interest, attention span, and mostly time to go much past their morning paper in this. They will vote their pocketbooks and the gas pumps...the war...food prices...and disasters on television. I'm not so sure that polls mean much in this strangest of strange times, but they sure are embraced by the media as a foundation for creating a reality show that could somehow produce ratings. This particular episode is like the Big Brother house when the old guy makes a pact with the sorority sister.

So, with Brillo and Trig, Twig, Twat, and Pipe....Tracks and Willy and the little green sprout....as the shiny-shiny that Mom, (with her obligatory still-working-apparently vagina,) is holding up to distract us from the magnificent speech of Obama, we have to know that it wont last long when its clear that the meat is not there. Mom is viewed as an intellectual lightweight, as is McCain, and up against the democratic ticket they will fail. Remember, most of America views Alaska as a scene from the Cicely Alaska of Northern Exposure. What happens when the scruffy John Corbett character ends up being the scary hairless mouse McCain?

Not to even mention that scandal has rocked her office lately in the form of an aide trying to kick her sister's ex out of his job. That bit of pulpy gossip has legs only in that its personal dirt of the kind that sells rags on the checkout line. Further, her popularity among the sparse voters up there could have something to do with $1200 oil rebates to cover the price of fuel....is she popular? Maybe, if you could even begin to tease all of this out.

So, if this is for us a Dan Quayle moment, minus the sharp intellect of the Q, then I hope to be heading north for the duration...If its just another installation of that wacky DC show, Wingnuttia, then I hope that Ms Palin and all the little Palinettes enjoy their 15 minutes of fame.
Some of us are serious about trying to fix this country; John McCain is certainly not. This nomination proves it beyond a doubt.

c/p RIPCoco

Soylent Green is Downer Cattle!

I've been trying to wrap my mind around the nightmare video clips of downer cattle at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Company of Chino, California, the release of which resulted in the largest beef recall in US history, this past weekend. This recall involves meat that was processed dating back to February 2006, most of which was used by schools and government programs...Oh yeah, and fast food joints too. The videos of the terrible treatment of these animals are shocking, but not all that different than the horror of factory farming done right...its all too much anyway. This is the stuff that makes high schoolers become vegetarians, for a while at least; the stuff that comes from Americans being so removed from their food sources as to think that there is some easy way to kill....But this isn't a story about those poor cows getting kicked by underpaid, under managed, and frustrated workers. Its a story about the basic inequities in our society and who is getting rich off of Americans and illegal workers without a voice. This is a story about the helplessness that is permeating our society, and how we have managed to allow the ill-informed past decisions of the electorate to turn on the crazy Reaganesque "less government" message, which was supposed to enable the individual and to put more money in each pocket, but actually crippled a system that was designed to give everyone a fair chance. Who were enabled were an elite few... and the elected government has been happy to keep America on red alert, scared, while handing power over to a dwindling number of large corporations who have managed their business as if this is a monarchy, and they are the god chosen heirs in control of all resources.

For anyone who ever wondered why the neocon power base would want to maintain a permanent underclass, here it is; This wasn't the beef that the upper and middle classes were buying at the supermarket, or that would ever be offered to anyone with a choice. This wasn't meat that a discerning adult was preparing for children or at a soup kitchen. This was the cheap-o garbage meat that is mass produced for foods that are heavily salted, frozen, and recooked numerous times for those who have no choice but to eat what is put in front of them. This is our Soylent Green. Weather or not it can be proved that anyone died from this particular batch is beside the point. These are the chips of protein that are parceled out to the helpless in order to keep them in line. Do I have to point out that many school children get their main meal at school lunch, or that "government programs" are likely prisons or social service providers? School children are often lucky to see a vegetable or a cup of high fructose fruit cocktail, and when offered a piece of steak or a fresh hamburger, they don't like it because they are conditioned to like the flat, brown, previously frozen, "beef" of the fast food and school lunch world.



Its not just the flat little frozen patties that are sent to schools that are suspect. CT has seen many recalls, and recently, after a barbecue at the local firehouse (during which I didn't eat, luckily,) every fireman got deathly ill for 24 hours with the worst of stomach complaints. The culprit was frozen beef patties from Costco. Besides that we are already short staffed here in our volunteer fire department, I cant imagine what would have happened if there had been a big emergency during that time.

We can't say that the beef in question in this recall definitely didn't kill anyone. Its just that it wasn't caught. Stomach virus' run through schools, and most of that stuff is cooked to death...but still...Once the meat is traced, I'm sure that illness will surround the areas where it was consumed. But, if any responsibility can be proved, its likely that the company will have already gone belly up. This is not the kind of a scandal that a food company lives through; its just too big.

There is no excuse for any human being to mistreat a helpless animal, much less another human being, but the victims at the source are virtually cattle themselves. Its been shown over and over that the meat packing industry is a catch-all for illegal immigrants in this country, and that the corporate structure of that industry is so strong that it is seldom that our dwindling FDA is even able to check out what goes on. Again, I can see, in my mind's eye, a failing Ronald Reagan speaking about corporate responsibility and the need for government to step back and let large corporations police themselves. He was saying how there was no need for the country to have regulations in place because large corporations surely would do the right thing, Uh-huh. As Hillary Clinton says, large corporations and their lobbyists are people too, deserving of full protection and care...right? But what kind of people are they? Are they rich people who are above the law until something really bad happens, or are they the poor folks of color who are stopped fir driving in the wrong neighborhood? Thats how the law works, right?

If the video of the abuse of these cattle had not been released, this would still be going on, as it is probably still happening all over the place. Downer cattle are regularly picked up from the floor of the slaughter house and dragged along, because they represent profit, and regardless of whatever sickness they might have, or the e. coli that they've fallen in, the corporation's first responsibility is the it's stockholders, and those stockholders are looking at the bottom line, not the ramifications of the details...until they get caught, that is. A corporation like this has to weigh the legalities of producing poisoned foods, with the legalities of their responsibility to the stockholders. The two often are in conflict, as with health insurance, and that is why they need to be regulated. The fine line that is walked every day in trying to turn a profit in the face of globalism and China feeding plastic to it's animals to cut costs and offer it cheaper...well, maybe its less that American corporations need regulation and more that they need protection from globalism!



This episode is not likely to send a chill through the industry, because fines are relatively small, and the span of time in this case is such that liability for illness or death will be hard to prove. But again, we are faced with what happens when we allow the corporate world to regulate itself. Its not just that we are facing a problem in feeding our own citizens because the bottom line is ruling the quality of food that is available to the underprivileged in the richest country in the world, but we have removed social responsibility from the producers and replaced it with complete and total loyalty to the stockholders and business. How can that be? Whole portions of society are less able to function and learn because of the poison that a corporation like this feeds them; and then scientists note that the poor have more incidence of disease, are more obese, are more anxious...which they cant treat preventively because existing health insurance is unlikely to provide for care before the fact, and even if it does, there are no markets with fresh food near to the areas where they live, so the suggestion to get more exercise and eat better falls into a category of impossibility. Just like physical therapy 3 times per week and trying to relax more, those are options available to the rich. Even the middle class has trouble carving out time to even take a walk, much less make a salad.

I am disgusted as hell by the mistreatment of animals, and I cant imagine introducing something with the potential to kill children into the food chain. This case is evidently a purposeful case of the bottom line overwhelming common sense, and its criminal. I can guess that the CEO of this company is not hurting, and I wonder how many corners are cut to show enough profit in order to pay what have become overwhelming salaries to top management in these corporations. I know that the pressure is not due to worker's salaries or compensation packages. All of that is a thing of the past, along with job security, home owenrship, and comfortable retirement.

In the end of Fast Food Nation, a movie that is as timely now as it was, in 2006, when it originally came out and was nominated for 2 Academy Awards, the camera follows along the conveyor of the slaughterhouse where some struggling illegal immigrants work. It is very hard to watch, but it is also a truth that we would be foolish to put totally out of our minds, while trusting the government to protect us somehow. The Bush administration has done us the favor of laying some stark realities out for all to see. The government doesn't care about you or me. They certainly don't want an educated, safe, and well fed population to carry us into the next century. They are only interested in the top echelon of power and how to make the rich richer, while appearing to care about the little people.

We have to regulate the food industry in this county, and we have to get some sort of control over the quality of what is coming down the pike to a supermarket near you. This is less a story about pathetic sick cows being mistreated, than it is a story about how, in the service of the bottom line, a corporation can shape the lives of entire segments of society...including children, who should have all the possibilities in the world open to them!!...and how, once again, one company will take the fall, and the underlying problem with continue unchecked because we have no FDA.

And of course, there are too many videos on YouTube showing the "best" and the worst of how our food is processed...but I just couldnt bring myself to post any here. Its just too sad. But follow the link and prepare to cry; its not pretty, folks...but no one ever said that life was going to be.