Report from the Trenches

There's a lot of post-election analysis going around. Mostly, it's self-serving damage control on the part of pundits who didn't have a clue this was coming and Washington politicians who, as recently as May, were opposing Howard Dean's “50 State Strategy”. One of those was Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

We in the trenches just received a message from Nancy Pelosi, on behalf of that same DCCC. It was a thank you note that listed six noncontroversial, meaningless goals for the 2006 Congress, cooked up for the consumption of the gullible faithful. Being faithful but less gullible, I am sending my own agenda back to Washington. It only has one item: “We're still not happy. We did not return you to power so you can have photo-ops in the White House with the most dangerous lame-duck president in American history. We elected you to fight him. If you are not doing that, you are wasting our time.”

Why should we pay for all of the research on medication?

The cost of bringing new medication to the market is high and getting higher because of the complexity of the research. Foreign countries and those groups who can bargain for lower bulk prices are not paying their fair share. The rest of us in the United States must carry the entire burden. That is why patients buy drugs from Canada and other countries which do bargain.

Social Security Part D is a sham. It does not allow for the group to bargain for lower prices. So, the government requires the seniors to pay an unfair share for research. This makes the drug companies Billions of dollars at the expense of the elderly. The drug companies wrote the law. It is expensive to administer and too complex for anyone to understand. Part D does not save seniors enough. After a certain amount of benefits, typically $2400, no benefits are given, so the patient pays for all his or her medication until they have paid $3600 out of pocket. This is known as the donut hole. Social Security part D must be totally revised!

The peace majority

Tony Blair told it like it was the other day - well, almost. What he did was demonstrate that the echo of truth often drowns out even its most shameless evasions.

"There's a deliberate strategy," he told David Frost, ". . . to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

Of course, he was talking about Iraq, where "al-Qaida with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other," were strangling democracy in its cradle, turning a nice invasion ugly. He wasn't talking about Great Britain or the United States, where a cabal of liars and fanatics fobbed off a high-tech war on a public that assented only because they believed it would be easy and cheap. But he could have been.

The Bush administration, despite its repudiation in the midterm elections, is now preparing to ask Congress for another $127 billion or so to feed that failed war. And they'll probably get it, even as the opposition tepidly debates timetables for withdrawal and agonizes over the fate of our "mission."

Thanks -- no, seriously

AUSTIN, Texas -- It's time to give thanks, and I want to start off with a great, big thank you for the top American movement conservatives and all the fun we've had since Election Day. I know I promised not to gloat after this election was over, but I'm not talking unseemly gloating -- I'm talking about moments so brilliantly hilarious the only option is to put your head down on the desk and howl.

            First in line is the wit of The National Review's Kate O'Beirne, who clearly teamed up with Borat to explain the great conservative win. Her explanation is that this is a win for conservatism because a great many of the D's elected are so conservative themselves. She says half of them are conservatives.

            She is indeed right. If only twice as many Democrats had been elected, it would have proved that there are twice as many conservatives in the country, and this is clear to any thinking person. We might challenge Ms. O'Beirne to explain how the next Republican win is a victory for liberalism.

Lesson

http://mattbors.com

Malachi burns himself alive for peace: More links

Malachi Ritschler burned himself alive earlier this month to  protest the war in Iraq, here are some links and more articles that are deciphering this act of a martyr for peace.

Either way you look at it we have to get this story out there, the mainstream press wants this to just look like the act of a mentally ill person and not a political act.  

Even though it is sad and a loss for the anti-war and artist community that he chose to give up his life for the cause of peace, it  appeared that he thought this out and knew what his actions meant in much the same way that Buddist monks did this during the Viet Nam war. His mission statement can be read at:

http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/23624.php

Another World Is Possible

Will they or won't they: last chance for Democrats

WHY did all manly gifts in Webster fail?
He wrote on Nature's grandest brow, For Sale.
--Emerson

A Tale of Two Conyers

PART I

Congressman John Conyers, "The Constitution in Crisis", December 2005:
"In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.  

HAIR is still of force of nature

Produced by the Ohio State Department of Theater at the Southern Theater
Guest Director: Steven C. Anderson

After all these years, HAIR is still a force of nature...and a theatrical delight.

The iconic sixties musical is at the Southern Theater for the weekend and it should not be missed. A bright, lively group of very talented OSU students has rendered the show in exactly the spirit it was meant---young, irreverent, fun...and poignant.

It's easy to forget amongst the monumental songs like "Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sun Shine" that this play is about a good young guy confronting the draft for the Vietnam War---and losing. The play is given its spiritual depth by the memory of the lethal, useless stupidity that was the slaughter in Southeast Asia.

Indeed, HAIR is more than just fun and games. It reminds us that a brilliant generation, endowed with a unique genius, was swallowed by a ghastly error for which we still pay---and which is now being repeated in Iraq.

Now what?

It all came out the way it was supposed to. America showed the world it could have an election shorn of front-page accusations of ballot fixing. Horrible senators like George Allen and Conrad Burns lost narrow races. The Republicans got a pasting. A man who called Alan Greenspan "a political hack" and George Bush "a liar" will be Senate majority leader. A woman elected to Congress with the help of thousands of San Franciscan homosexuals, some of them married by Mayor Gavin Newsom, will be Speaker. Who wouldn't want Harry Reid instead of Bill Frist, or Nancy Pelosi instead of fatty Hastert? It's a nice change.

            It's also the role of elections in properly run Western democracies to remind people that things won't really change at all. You can set your watch by the speed with which the new crowd lowers expectations and announces What is Not To Be Done. Nowhere is there an item on the Democrats' "must do" list saying, "Reverse plunge toward fascism. Rescind Patriot Act. Dump the Military Commissions Act. Restore habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights." Pelosi says impeachment is off the table.

The vote protectors

"After the first challenge, this one big guy stood over me and pointed his finger," Anne Schultz e-mailed me. "Shaking a bit with anger, he said that he could throw me out in a minute for disrupting the election. The woman was on her way out of the polling place, and I asked her to stay until this was resolved, which she was glad to do. I reminded him that I wasn't disrupting the election, I was simply doing what was within my rights, but after that the cozy relationship I thought I'd established with the judges, with the help of bringing donuts, went rather to hell."

This is democracy raw, warts exposed. It's not the kind you see on TV - all sanitized numbers and gleeful winners - but the real deal, one vote at a time, a power struggle in every precinct, as fair as it has to be (and no fairer).

Pages

Subscribe to ColumbusFreePress.com RSS