The WAWG Blog

My most used quote is from Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean:

Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.

Based on recent lies promoted by this fearful “adult American population” as evidenced in emails, at town hall meetings, in endless reports from both left and right media, but, more importantly, by the lack of denial of these lies by most, if not all, Republican Senators, this 20 percent of adults controls 40 percent of our US Senate.

Will this 20 percent defeat health care reform, stop the greening of American and green jobs that can’t be exported, defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, foment hatred, racism and worse, and bring a stop to all the change that was voted for last November?

I don’t know, but it is up to us to do our part to work against these fearful conservatives without conscience.

Youth-Education Program? – The Arlington Independent School District, which passed on airing President Barack Obama’s live classroom address, has announced that some students will be bussed off campus to hear a message from former President George W. Bush on Sept. 21. The event launches the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee’s largest-ever youth education program.

Top 1 Percent of Americans Reaped Two-Thirds of Income Gains in Last Economic Expansion – Income concentration in 2007 was at the highest level since 1928, and we all know what happened in 1929. From 2002 to 2007, the inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households.

Republican Pick for Response to President Obama’s Health Care Speech is a “Birther” Who Supports “Death Panels” – Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany will be delivering the GOP response to President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress tonight. The Washington Post says that it’s a “somewhat surprising pick in that he is little-known nationally and not part of the Republican leadership in Congress.”

What is known about Boustany is that he is a heart surgeon. Somewhat ironically, Boustany is also the co-sponsor of the “Life Sustaining Treatment Preferences Act of 2009” which would mandate that Medicare reimburse the cost of end-of-life counseling — the so-called “death panels.”

But the most “surprising” aspect to the choice of Boustany is the fact that he is a Birther! (A person who says that the president is not an American.)

Back on July 27, guerilla videographer Mike Stark posted a video on this site in which he sought out the “Birthers on the Hill,” in which Boustany is included.

Before entering politics, Boustany unsuccessfully tried to purchase the title of British lord from a pair of con artists.

Bush Tax Cuts Twice As Costly as Dems’ Health Plan – The Democrats’ health care plan costs half as much as the two major tax cuts pushed by the George W. Bush administration, according to a report issued Tuesday. Enacted in 2001 and 2003, the Bush tax cuts are projected to cost about $2.1 trillion in lost revenue in the 10 years since they were first passed, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. The Bush tax cuts tally does not include the additional interest payments on the national debt made necessary by the deficit-financed cuts, the report noted.

That figure bumps up the total cost of the tax cuts to about $2.48 trillion. By comparison, the health care plan advocated by House Democrats is projected to cost about $1 trillion through its first decade (2010-2019), according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

“Many of the lawmakers who argue that the health care reform legislation is ‘too costly’ are the same lawmakers who supported the Bush tax cuts,” the report notes. “Their own voting record demonstrates that health care reform is not a matter of costs, but a matter of priorities.”

Family-Values Republican Likes Bad Girls – Orange County Republican Michael Duvall describes himself as a “family values” assemblyman. But, now he’s caught on audio tape making naughty conversation about how he likes to spank “such a bad girl,” who happens to be a lobbyist for utility companies. Duvall is vice chairman of the Utilities and Commerce Committee. Bad assemblyman!

Special Interests Received a Copy of Baucus’ Health Care Plan Before the White House Did – In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admitted that the Obama administration has not yet seen a copy of Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) newest draft of health care legislation. “[W]e’ve seen what we’ve read in the paper, but I do not believe that we’ve seen paper on the plan,” said Gibbs. However, he added that he believes special interests on K Street have already received a copy. Baucus has received hefty financial contributions from the health care industry.

Disgraced Ex-Congressman to Get His Own Radio Talkshow – Nearly three years after then-Congressman Mark Foley, R-FLA, saw his political career crumble following the revelation of his sexually explicit emails with underage congressional pages, he’s garnering the spotlight once again: as a radio talk show host.

Foley, who resigned after ABC News’ The Blotter broke the story before going to rehab in Arizona, is set to debut his radio show entitled “Inside the Mind of Mark Foley.” Don’t wear your good shoes.

AT&T Says It Can’t Afford to Upgrade Service, But Spends Plenty on Lobbying – AT&T acts like a company with money to burn. AT&T reportedly spent $8.2 million in the first half of this year lobbying Congress. The company is expected to spend more on lobbying this year than it did last year — money that could be spent improving network performance.

In fact, AT&T is the No. 1 political contributor in the nation, spending an incredible $43.5 million since 1989 to buy influence in government. AT&T complains that it doesn’t have the money to service its iPhone monopoly, while at the same time spending more than every other company on currying favor in Washington. That doesn’t make sense.

Most iPhone users oppose Apple’s exclusivity arrangement with AT&T, and have since the beginning.
Competitive carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile, didn’t like being shut out of the iPhone phenomenon.

The FCC isn’t thrilled, either. The agency is looking into Apple’s exclusive relationship with the carrier.
And Apple has got to be unhappy. AT&T failed to support multimedia messaging (MMS) and tethering (using a phone as a laptop modem) now that iPhone itself supports those features. Apple worked hard to perfect the iPhone experience, and AT&T is wrecking it.

This week, even AT&T itself started complaining about the burdens of serving as the only U.S. carrier for iPhone.

It’s unanimous. Everybody hates Apple’s exclusivity arrangement with AT&T. Even AT&T. So just end it.

Regards,

Jim

Republicans Who Criticize Public Health Care Get Their Surgeries at Government Hospitals – Republicans in Congress have raised the specter of a bloated, “socialized,” bureaucrat-run nightmare of a health care system as a means of undermining the White House’s effort at a systematic overhaul. And yet, as Democratic sources are now pointing out, when medical crisis hit close to home, many of these same officials turned to a government-run hospital for their own intensive care and difficult surgeries.

• Take, for instance, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who warned that “a government takeover of health care” would “take away the care that people already have [and] are perfectly satisfied with.” In its place, the senator said, would be “a system in which care and treatment will be either delayed or denied.” That was July 2009. In February 2003, McConnell actually went to one of those government-run institutions (where treatment is, apparently, “either delayed or denied”) for a procedure of his own. The Kentucky Republican traveled to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to have an elective coronary artery bypass surgery after it had been revealed that he had arterial blockages.
• Senator John McCain, (R-Ariz.) for instance, recently applauded the town hall protesters who were, in his words, revolting “against a government-run health system.” That was August 2009. In May of 2000, McCain had surgery at the Bethesda Naval Hospital to remove a potentially lethal melanoma from his left temple.
• Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.), meanwhile, has warned of the rationing of care, expensive costs, and reduced quality that would come under a government-run health care plan. In April 2003, however, he traveled to Bethesda Naval Hospital to undergo hip replacement surgery in an attempt to alleviate degenerative arthritis in his left hip.
• Senator George Voinovich, (R-Ohio), has declared that a “bureaucratic Washington-run government plan is not the answer” to the nation’s health care needs. In June 2003, the Ohio Republican (who is retiring from the Senate in 2010) went to Bethesda Naval Hospital to have a pacemaker installed.
• The best example of this double standard, however, may be Rep. Roy Blunt, (R-Mo.) who compared government-run health care to an elephant, stomping on and killing off the mice of the private insurance industry. Blunt has had two procedures done at Bethesda Naval Hospital. The first came in July 2002, when he underwent surgery to remove his left kidney. The second came a year later, when he underwent prostate surgery after being diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer.

They seem to love their “socialized medicine.”

Has Glenn Beck Inhaled Too Much DDT? – Glenn Beck is advocating the reuse of the banned pesticide DDT. Perhaps Glenn Beck is looking for more sponsorship from the pesticide industry given the loss of his other sponsors. Once again Beck claimed to use “facts” in his support of DDT, but some more research into his “facts” reveals just how misinformed Beck is.

Beck overlooked the side effects of DDT. After all, we could kill mosquitoes and stop the spread of malaria by spraying gasoline everywhere but would that really make sense given the side effects? Beck uses a whooping two scientists to support his claim that DDT has no harmful side effects to humans. One of Beck’s sources is Bruce N. Ames who developed the Ames test used by tobacco companies in their attempt to prove cigarettes are healthy. Needless to say Ames methods are questionable when applied to humans. Thomas Jukes is Beck’s other source who Beck claims “proves” there is no evidence of DDT being harmful to humans. Jukes died in 1999 which makes Beck’s claim curious since a number of studies have in fact proven the harmful effects of DDT on humans since 1999. Did Jukes rise from the dead to refute these studies?

No Respect for Bernake at CNBC – Here’s a screen shot of how business channel CNBC covered remarks by Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve Ben Bernake. How BLAH! Stay classy, business guys!

Louisiana Governor Mixes Political Campaigning and Church-Going at Taxpayer’s Expense – Over a period of five months, Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took more than three dozen helicopter trips. Fourteen were to attend Protestant church services, according to state records. Jindal is Catholic.

At least two aides usually accompanied him along with his security detail and State Police pilots. The public pays their salaries as well as the fuel and upkeep for the helicopter. The helicopter that the governor uses the most costs $1,200 an hour to operate — about $45,000 for five months of church visits.

Political commentator and former Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown said Jindal is playing good politics by continuing to concentrate on churches in north Louisiana.

Reagan Preached Tax-Cut Gospel to America’s Students – The conservatives are having a freak-out over President Obama’s planned speech to students urging them to stay in school and work hard. But, in 1988, President Reagan’s talk with school children was broadcast live and rebroadcast by C-Span, and Instructional Television Network fed the program to schools nationwide on three different days. Much of Reagan’s speech that day covered the American “vision of self-government” and the need “to keep faith with the unfinished vision of the greatness and wonder of America” but in the middle of the speech, the president also covered low taxes (helping the rich).

Regards,

Jim

The Republican Party’s Fake Doctor Council – Can the Republican Party draft a doctor, entirely against his will and political inclination, into the Kill Obamacare movement? Well, it can try. Here is what happened to a physician and medical school professor, who prefers that I not use his name. I’ll call him Fred.

Fred received by fax a draft press release from Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who is an orthopedist, head of the Republican Study Committee, and chairman of something called the Physicians’ Council for Responsible Reform. According to its Web site, this group seeks “to defeat Members of Congress who support ‘ObamaCare’ in the upcoming 2010 elections.” The PCRR is a front for the National Republican Congressional Committee. The draft press release listed Fred’s name along with 32 others as members of the council, “comprised of physicians who are respected by their peers.” These worthies, it said, “will be receiving special briefings and providing input to Republican members of Congress,” including House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, “during their deliberations of the Obama administration’s efforts to reform health care.”

A handwritten note on the cover sheet explained:

Because of your invaluable experience, we are asking you to represent California as a consultant on the Physicians’ Council.

We’re running a press release to honor the achievements of you and other concerned physicians like you. Please call me with your approval at 1-877-416-7188.

Fred phoned the number and was connected to an employee at an InfoCision call center in Austintown, Ohio. The employee pretended to work for the Physicians’ Council. This person played Fred a prerecorded message from Rep. Price:

There’s a very real threat of Washington interfering even more with doctors’ efforts to provide the best possible care for their patients. And I’m afraid that declining reimbursements, frivolous lawsuits, and total governmental control of health care could be just the beginning of our worries. … Please stay on the line for my assistant, who will explain how I’d like for you to get involved. Your input is vital to our efforts.

But Rep. Price’s “assistant,” Fred says, assured him that his “input” would consist entirely of having his name listed on the press release. This agrees with the testimony of another M.D. on the Daily Kos, who said he was told “it would require absolutely no time commitment.”
The NRCC’s Physicians’ Council is dishonest in two ways.

1. Quite obviously there is no [real] Physicians’ Council for Responsible Reform. Serving on a real council requires some commitment of time. You can’t receive “special briefings” and provide “input to Republican members of Congress” if you’re just a name on a page. The real purpose is to identify doctors riled up enough about Obamacare that they’ll give money to the NRCC. (Good luck getting that face time with Minority Leader Boehner if you don’t write a check.) Since June, the NRCC has raised more than $1.2 million this way.

2. Fred believes that had he never phoned back and requested his name be removed, it would have remained there. When I asked a call center employee whether that was true, I was told it was not. But the draft press release did imply, falsely, that the other physicians listed had already agreed to be on the council. Yet when I phoned another name on the list—an oncologist in Missouri whom I’ll call Dr. Blank because, like Fred, he never asked to be included—I was told that Dr. Blank had not agreed to join.

Glenn Beck and the Society for (In)sanity in Art – Wednesday night, Fox News ranter Glenn Beck went off on art that was made more than 70 years ago for Rockefeller Center, corporate headquarters of NBC and — not coincidentally — supposed arch-enemy of Rupert Murdoch’s television empire. To the surprise of no one, Beck donned his art critic’s tin-foil conspiracy hat to find hidden evidence of “progressives, fascists and communists” in the carved reliefs and paintings of a landmark Manhattan building complex that was made a national historic monument in 1987. (Let’s see; who was president that year? Oh, yeah: Commie-symp Ronald Reagan.)

Wait till Beck finds out about the Commie tree they put there every December at Rockefeller Center!

And now for some Friday fun: Town Hall Organizers Put Out National Casting Call for Angry Jerks – Encouraged by their ability to disrupt a week’s worth of town hall meetings on health care, Republican organizers have secured the services of a Hollywood casting director to conduct a nationwide talent search for angry jerks.

Carol Foyler, who has stocked numerous Hollywood films with angry mobs for crowd scenes, says that she is looking for people who are “willing to shout and scream and get red in the face with no provocation.”

Saying that her current assignment was a “challenging” one, Ms. Foyler said finding “angry, out-of-control jerks” is harder than it looks: “You really have to tip your hat to Fox for finding Glenn Beck.”

In Move to Appease Critics, Obama Promises to Extend Health Care Coverage to Morons – Facing opposition to his health care reform proposals, President Barack Obama has decided to reach out to a key demographic: morons.

Starting this week, Mr. Obama will host a series of town halls to roll out new features of his health care plan which will extend health care coverage to “all idiotic Americans,” in the words of one White House source.

“We clearly underestimated the role that doofuses and dimwits were going to play in this debate,” the source said. “We want to send them the message that this plan will give them coverage – but we need to come up with a one-syllable word for ‘coverage.'”

But critics of the President’s new plan worry that extending coverage to every American who is a few bricks shy of a load could triple the size of the nation’s deficit.

“The sheer number of lamebrains in the U.S. is much greater than the Administration estimates,” says Davis Logsdon, who studies the demography of idiots at the University of Minnesota. “Just look at Glenn Beck’s ratings.”

America Less Safe With Palin No Longer Keeping an Eye on Russia – Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin said today that America was less safe now that she was no longer keeping an eye on Russia, but added that she hoped other Alaskans would step up to fill the security void she has left.

“What with me being out and about trying to progress the agenda of so many Americans out there, it’s not possible for me to be seeing when Putin’s rearing his head like I used to be doing,” she said.

Regards,

Jim

Insurance Company Told Employees to Fight Health Reform According to Watchdog -Anthem/Wellpoint and United Healthcare may have violated the right of employees to be free of political pressure by employers. Both companies are urging their employees to lobby members of Congress with corporate assistance, including talking points and even the placing of phone calls for the employees, according to Consumer Watchdog.

An email from UnitedHealth told its employees that “you may be contacted during business hours by the United for Health Reform advocacy team.” United for Health Reform is UnitedHealth’s advocacy group. The letter also urges employees to contact United for Health Reform on their own, and to seek out town halls on health care reform.

Anthem/Wellpoint “sent what appears to be an undated general employee e-mail carrying the Anthem logo. The e-mail urges employees to ‘make your voice heard’ by visiting a ‘grassroots website,’ the Wellpoint Health Action Network, ‘to assist you with contacting your elected officials… about this important issue’,” Consumer Watchdog stated in a press release.

The letter also states that “tens of millions” of Americans would lose their private insurance coverage and be forced on to a public health plan. Consumer Watchdog says the message to Anthem/Wellpoint’s employees from that is that “employees would lose their jobs if proposed national reforms are passed.”

Read the Anthem/Wellpoint email.

Mayor to Give Glenn Beck Key to City – Mayor Bud Norris of Mount Vernon, Wa., says he will give the key to his city to conservative talk show host Glenn Beck on September 26. Norris says Beck will deliver a short talk that night and become the first person to receive a key to the city in the six years Norris has been mayor.

Protesters from the Skagit County Young Democrats walked outside city hall Tuesday with protest signs, one reading “Change the locks!” They called it “totally inappropriate” to give a man who labeled President Barack Obama a “racist” a key to the city. (He’s also talked about his fantasy of poisoning the Speaker of the House.)

Norris told KOMO News the key does not represent city approval of every comment that Beck may make, but recognizes a local boy who made it big.

Note to Norris: Charles Manson and Fred Phelps are also famous. You probably won’t see their hometown giving them the “key to the city” because, like Beck, they’re also insane and hateful.

Right-Wing Doesn’t Want Your Children to Be Inspired to Do Well in School – According to an announcement posted on ServiceWire.org, President Obama will address students “about the importance of persisting and succeeding in school” at 1 p.m. Eastern, Sept. 8, at the WhiteHouse.gov website. And what does the right-wing think about the president encouraging students to be responsible and work hard in school? They’re saying:

At a forum at Free Republic, “He’s recruiting his civilian army. His ‘Hitler’ youth brigade.”

At the AmericanElephant blog, the subject of the day was a national “Keep-Your-Child-at-Home-Day,” and said, “Totalitarian regimes around the world have sought to spread their propaganda and entrench their power by brainwashing the children.”

Yes, the right-wing believes that you should keep your children away from school that day because if they get inspired to actually pay attention, learn to read and write, and apply critical thinking skills, they’re actually a lot less likely to believe the crazy ranting of the right-wing. (Oh, by the way, it was OK when George W. Bush talked to the school kids.)

Regards,

Jim

Wheelchair-Bound Woman Shouted Down At New Jersey Health Care Town Hall This is a video you need to see. It can’t be properly described with a few words. Much like the unruly town hall meetings that have been going on across the country, the angry crowd held up bizarre and nonsensical posters of protest while hurling insults at health care supporters.

A new low for these meetings may have been set when the crowd shouted down a wheelchair-bound woman with two incurable auto-immune diseases who asked a question.

Healthcare Opponent Punches 65-Year-Old Supporter in Face – A 65-year-old man cheering healthcare reform in Miami was punched in the face and knocked to the ground by an opponent of a public health plan, according to a reporter at the scene. The rally took place outside a Great Miami Chamber of Commerce event where Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) was speaking.

Glenn Beck’s Soliloquy: I am a Clown Who Wants to Make Money – Last night, Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck delivered the following soliloquy, “I am a clown. I am a guy who just… I just want to have laughs and fun, I’m a capitalist, I want to make money, all that stuff.”

Comment to Beck:

You are not a clown. You are a dangerous jerk who is putting this country in danger when you stir the pot.

You are not a capitalist. You get a paycheck. You are a wage earner, not that there is anything wrong with that. You are a mouthpiece for the economic elites. You are a useful idiot in their eyes.

Will you make a lot of money? Yes.

Will that lot of money make you ‘happy.’ Maybe, maybe not.

Will you have to sacrifice your soul or integrity to make that money? Yes.

Pfizer Inc. Unlawfully Promoted Prescription Drugs – Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker, will pay a record $2.3 billion civil and criminal penalty over unlawful prescription drug promotions. Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it is the fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade. Even as Pfizer was negotiating deals on past misconduct, they were continuing to violate the very same laws with other drugs.

To promote the drugs, authorities said Pfizer invited doctors to consultant meetings at resort locations, paying their expenses and providing perks. “They were entertained with golf, massages, and other activities,” said Mike Loucks, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts. The government will monitor the company’s conduct for the next five years to rein in the abuses.

Conservatives Have Pulled Another Hijacking – The term public has been hijacked and turned into a dirty word. Well it isn’t. Because the public, folks, isn’t them, it’s us. It’s “we the people,” it’s neighbors united to take care of one another, it’s citizens doing together that they can’t do alone.

The public square is our common ground. That’s why in England they call it “the commons,” the shared turf where in a democracy we stand together to overcome what keeps us apart and do together those public things (res-publica) that make us a republic.

Once we allow the word public to be vilified, however, then everything associated with it becomes pejorative. Like paying taxes. See, taxes is how we pool our money to do things in common that can’t be done alone. Like building roads or educating the young or fighting wars or taking care of the poor and the sick and those with handicaps. Taxes are the common allowance we give ourselves as a national family so we can pay for the things that make us a family and keep us a family.

The attack on the term public is really an attack on democracy, on citizenship, on our efforts to come together under the banner of “we the people” to protect our liberties and secure our property and ensure our safety. Because centuries ago we figured out you can’t do those things alone, one by one, even if you are strong. Behind the abstract term public stand your neighbors, your fellow citizens, your partners in common pursuits across the land.

Those who attack the public then are attacking you and me insofar as we want to think of ourselves as us. And in health care, us is critical, since the public health is at stake and only a public element can assure us a fair, efficient and cost-effective system.

It’s really quite simple: the public option in health care is the public good in health care; and health care constitutes the core meaning of the public good. So let’s out those who assail the term public: they are not protecting liberty, they are undermining the common goods and democratic institutions by which liberty is established and preserved.

Conservatives Are Killing Themselves – The tide is about to turn in the debate over health care reform. The lies and the screaming that captured the discussion in August have a lot of Republicans thinking they’ve got the Democrats right where they want ’em.

They are wrong. And they are wrong because their castle is built upon a pile of sand… a pile of crazy, crazy sand.

Sam Tanenhaus talked about it earlier today on Morning Joe. Discussing his new book, The Death of Conservatism, Tanenhaus warned that today’s Republican Party is more about radicalism than conservatism.

While the mobs, the conspiracy theorists and the lie-pushers look like they’re winning the debate for the Republicans, they are actually setting them up for a big fall. For the discussion will inevitably move past what the protesters think the dreaded ‘Obamacare’ will do, to ask A) why they feel this way and B) what’s their alternative? The crazy-crazies can only answer the first question. The Republican Party is utterly unprepared for anything else. Their alternatives are lousy because their party has spent no significant time honing and improving their failed ideas from when they were recently in power. Nor have they pushed the lunatics and extremists away from the debate; if anything, they’ve pushed them to the front.

In so many ways, you have the case of an opposition party that is not yet ready to be an opposition party. The smash-it-up approach may have worked for August, but it has done nothing to improve the Republicans’ capability to offer cohesive, plausible alternatives.

Companies Often Cheat Low Income Workers – Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week.

In surveying 4,387 workers in various low-wage industries, including apparel manufacturing, child care and discount retailing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay.

So, Mr. Free Enterprise, You Just Squandered Billions of Our Money . . . So Take Another Whack At It – Like golfers who treat themselves to a second drive after hooking the first one deep into the woods, these guys play on without apology or penalty. The maddening thing is that they’re getting away with it and nobody seems to care.

Consider the case of Jay Levine, once the co-chief-executive of RBS Greenwich Capital, the American investment banking arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Under Levine’s direction, RBS Greenwich went from the bottom of the “league tables” in terms of issuance of asset-backed securities to a perch near the top — right up there, one industry publication wrote at the time, with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers as one of the “best mortgage-backed houses” in the business.

At the height of the mortgage frenzy, Levine’s group generated more than $350 million in profit annually for RBS and Levine was reportedly RBS’s highest paid employee, earning more than $60 million during the three years before his departure at the end of 2007.

Now, two years later, RBS is a financial ward of the British government, which has had to put in more than $30 billion to keep it from collapsing. RBS’s biggest mistake was an ill-timed and overpriced purchase of a Dutch bank, but there were also tens of billions of dollars in U.S. credit losses, many of them attributable to RBS Greenwich.

Levine, meanwhile, left RBS at the end of 2007 to take the top job at Capmark Financial Group, a spinoff of GMAC that had become one of the country’s biggest commercial real estate lenders. Since then, of course, things have only gone from bad to worse in the world of commercial real estate finance, forcing Capmark to post more than $2 billion in operating losses before it stopped filing public reports this spring. Its biggest shareholder, the buyout firm KKR, has now written off its entire investment in the company. Levine volunteered to reduce his base salary from $5 million to $4 million.

But don’t shed too many tears for Jay. Even while remaining at Capmark, he’s reassembled some of the old team from RBS Greenwich at a new firm, CRT Capital Group, a small trading house in Stamford, Conn., that he bought in July with former RBS Greenwich co-chief-executive Ben Carpenter and Ron Kripalani, who once headed the capital markets group at none other than Countrywide Financial. In a statement announcing the purchase, the new managers suggested that with so much of Wall Street operating under government-imposed pay caps, it was a perfect time to lure away the industry’s “best producers.”

And he’s not the only one.

SEC Mishandled Multiple Madoff Probes – During the Bush Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission consistently mishandled its investigations of Bernard Madoff’s business, despite ample warnings of the multibillion-dollar fraud. The SEC enforcement staff, conducting investigations of Madoff’s business, “almost immediately caught (him) in lies and misrepresentations, but failed to follow up on inconsistencies” and rejected whistleblowers’ offers to provide additional evidence.

Regards,

Jim

CNBC Anchor Asks 44-Year-Old Congressman: If Medicare Is So Good, Why Aren’t You On It? – Earlier today, MSNBC’s Carlos Watson hosted Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo for a discussion on health care.

At one point, Bartiromo was critical of the government-managed health care system in the United Kingdom. “How do I know the quality [of health care in the United States] is not going to suffer” with a public option? she asked.

Rep. Weiner reminded her that there already is government-managed health care in the United States — namely, Medicare, the system created for Americans 65 years and older — and that patients with Medicare report very high satisfaction rates.

Bartiromo’s response to this argument was a true head-scratcher. In a mocking tone, she pressed the congressman: “How come you don’t use it [Medicare]? You don’t have it. How come you don’t have it?”
Rep. Weiner, who turns 45 this week, tried to walk Bartiromo through it. “Because I’m not 65.” But she was insistent. “Yeah… c’mon!” she exclaimed, laughing incredulously.

Money-Driven Medicine – The film MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE reveals how a profit-hungry medical-industrial complex has turned health care into a system that squanders millions of dollars on unnecessary tests, unproven and sometimes unwanted procedures and overpriced prescription drugs.

Rasmussen Games Polling on Health Care – Rasmussen Reports, which often skews its presentation of polling for conservative media pickup, has a funny new poll that’s clearly designed to suggest public opposition to Dems going it alone on health care.

…Take a look at the wording of the question:

Suppose that Democrats agreed on a health care reform bill that is opposed by all Republicans in Congress. Should the Democrats pass that bill or should they change the bill to win support from a reasonable number of Republicans?

The first problem is not quantifying what constitutes “a reasonable number” of Republican supporters. Clever, eh? And linking the words “reasonable” and “Republican” is not unbiased, either.

Back to School Advice – Hi, kids.

Well, I don’t need to tell you that the school year is starting up real soon (maybe it already has where you live), and you’re going to be getting all kinds of advice from grownups about studying hard and paying attention in class and thinkin’ about your future and helping others and “Carpe Diem!” and all that.

It’s crap. Crap, I tell you.

Yes, you need to listen to your elders. But…you must carefully choose the elders to which you listen. If you choose wisely, you can party you’re a@@ off and glide through life on a fluffy cloud of ignorant bliss. If you choose poorly, you’ll be doomed to a life of thoughtful analysis and good works and fact-checking and reality-based reason. Yick!

As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one man whose words you should heed. A man of power and prestige and wealth. A man who basks in the adoration of his base (the birthers and Big Oil), and gets under the skin of his foes, the poopy-headed brainthinkers.

I’m speaking, of course, of that broad-shouldered, steely-eyed United States Senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma. When your teacher asks you a question about important material covered in your textbooks—stuff that might enlighten, inform and improve you—you just look him or her in the eye and repeat the magic words of Senator Inhofe (that I believe will one day be enshrined on a monument in Washington):

I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways.

I’m tellin’ ya, use that line whenever you can…and the world is your oil rig, baby. You may even graduate early. I can virtually gahrenteeyit!

James Inhofe, kids. That’s your Yoda. Let me know how quickly your teacher gives you an A when you use that line in class. I look forward to hearing your stories of scholastic domination!

Regards,

Jim

The Republican Death Machine – Sen. Charles Grassley rammed the GOP’s most astonishing pro-death policy through the Senate in 2001. The estate-tax revision he championed reduces the estate tax to zero next year. But it includes an expiration clause at year’s end, when the tax will jump back up to its previous level of 55 percent. Grassley’s exploding offer has an entirely foreseen consequence: It’s going to encourage those whose parents and grandparents are worth anything more than a million bucks to get them dead by midnight on Dec. 31, 2010.

Chuck Grassley Fundraises Against Health-Care Reform – Sen. Charles Grassley is responsible for developing a workable compromise on health-care reform. But as this fundraising letter (pdf) shows, Grassley is running against health-care reform back in Iowa. Here’s how the missive begins:

I had to rush you this Air-Gram today to set the record straight on my firm and unwavering opposition to government-run health care. And ask your immediate support in helping me defeat “Obama-care.”

Nice bi-partisanship there, Chuck.

Texas Republican Pete Olson’s Health Care Propaganda Fail – Texas Republican Pete Olson probably figured he could get away with using a young child as a propaganda tool at a recent town hall meeting — but he was in for a big surprise.

Republican Congressman Olson (R-TX) tells the townhall about a mother who was turned away by the free market doctors for her unborn child’s heart defect. She was denied by the free market doctors but persisted and was able to find a specialized doctor and got a very delicate operation and a heart transplant 17 days after he was born. Olson then claims that the public option would have denied him the needed health care and he would have died! After being challenged he abruptly ended the discussion. Watch as he is challenged, and clueless as to what to say.

As Olson spews out his talking points, people in the crowd repeatedly point out to him that it wasn’t the government who turned this poor child away, it was the insurance companies. Olson was absolutely gobsmacked when people started calling him out on his obvious gaffe as he stood there looking like a deer caught in the headlights. It’s so encouraging to see some town hall video from health care reform supporters giving these GOP shills a taste of their own medicine!

Conservative Commentator Says Katrina cleansed New Orleans. It Just Washed Out a Lot of Debris, Including Human Debris – Yesterday, hate-radio talk show host Neal Boortz mocked President Obama’s pledge to rebuild New Orleans, calling the victims of Hurricane Katrina human trash. Boortz, who regularly mocks Latinos, women and the poor — even calling Rep. Cynthia McKinney a “ghetto slut” — made an expansive case that the combined natural and human disaster of Hurricane Katrina actually helped the city of New Orleans on his June 24, 2009 radio show. Although Katrina’s devastation cost this nation $80 billion, killed thousands, and displaced a million people, Boortz believes “Katrina cleansed New Orleans“:

“Katrina cleansed New Orleans. It just washed out a lot of debris, including human debris.”

Boortz has also called the overwhelmingly black and poor victims of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans “human parasites” and “deadbeats,” even suggesting that a victim of Hurricane Katrina consider prostitution instead of “sucking off taxpayers.”

Boortz is nationally syndicated from Atlanta’s WSB, part of the Cox Enterprises empire, whose billionaire heiress Anne Cox Chambers is the richest person in Georgia and a million-dollar tax evader.
Compassionate conservatives, indeed! And by the way, no health care for you!

More on the I Hate Obama Sermon – I reported on this last week, but there’s more detail. The guy who carried an AR-15 rifle to President Obama’s event attended this church sermon the day before. Here are some excerpts:

Here is my sermon, why I hate Barack Obama. That’s my sermon tonight, because Barack Obama is coming to town tomorrow morning.

And I’m going to tell you something. I hate Barack Obama. You say, well, you just mean you don’t like what he stands for. No, I hate the person. Oh, you mean you just don’t like his policies. No, I hate him.

What goes around comes around. You love violence. You hate that which is right. You love to harm others. You love to hurt or kill the unborn or the innocent or the righteous. He is saying, God is going to bring that upon your own head, because whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Now, turn back to Psalm 58 and let me ask you this question. Why should Barack Obama melt like a snail? Why should Barack Obama die like the untimely birth of a woman? Why should his children be fatherless and his wife a widow, as we read in this passage?

What does this pastor “soweth”? He talks against hate while spewing hate? A defining characteristic of right-wing authoritarians is lack of self awareness.

Billionaires for Wealthcare Say, “If God Loved the Poor People, He Wouldn’t Let Them Get Sick.” – Carrying signs with irreverent messages praising the status quo of the American healthcare system, a farcical anti-healthcare reform group, Billionaires for Wealthcare, paraded outside a Democratic town hall meeting in Spring Valley, California Sunday.

Dressed in business suits and cocktail dresses, and occasionally sporting champagne, the motley crew of “billionaires” cheered on anti-healthcare protesters. They carried signs with messages including:

· “If God loved the poor people, he wouldn’t let them get sick.”
· “Survival of the RICHEST!” “IT’S A CLASS WAR AND WE’RE WINNING”
· “Keep WEALTHCARE alive / NO on HealthCare reform.”
· “Healthcare rationing, that’s our job!”
· “We love BlueDogs. A solid investment in healthcare profiteering.”

In a YouTube video the group posted, one top-hatted “billionaire” is quoted as endorsing the privatization of other public services, as well. “Along with privatized police, [we should have a] privatized fire department,” the gentleman quips. “I mean, because if my cat’s stuck in a tree, I don’t want the fire department taking ten extra minutes because of a silly fire going on somewhere else in my neighborhood. Because if I have the money, I get the first priority.”

Regards,

Jim

Man Holding “Death to Obama” Sign Outside Town Hall Meeting on Health Care – A man was holding a sign reading “Death to Obama” Wednesday outside a town hall meeting on health care reform in Hagerstown, Md. Washington County Sheriff’s Capt. Peter Lazich said the sign also read, “Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids.” There were also signs comparing President Obama to a Nazi and showing him with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache.

Is it heath care, or is it something else with these people?

Race-Based Protests Directed At Obama Go Beyond Health Care Town Halls – Race-based attacks and criticism of President Obama have been on the rise during the dog days of August. And they’re not just happening at health care town hall protests.

A group of protesters camped outside Rep. Susan Davis’s (D-Calif.). “Neighborhood Day” event this past week were brandishing signs calling the president a Black Supremacist and suggesting he’s a Nazi disciple.

“Black National Socialism Is Not Utopia,” reads one poster.

Another has a picture of Obama’s former preacher, Jeremiah Wright, juxtaposed with a picture of Adolph Hitler and one of picture of Obama and Wright together. It read, “Obama’s Church: Black Supremacist.”

Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Says He’d Buy a License to Hunt Obama – Earlier this week, Idaho Republican gubernatorial hopeful, Rex Rammell, said he’d buy a license to hunt Obama. At a Republican rally Tuesday in Twin Falls where talk turned to the state’s planned wolf hunt, for which hunters must purchase an $11.50 wolf tag, an audience member shouted a question about “Obama tags.” Rammell responded, “The Obama tags? We’d buy some of those.”

Confused in Conroe – An attendee at the town hall meeting in Conroe, TX, said, “I don’t want it (health care system) to change.” Then she said she just dropped her insurance two months ago because of a lack of income, which she blames on the current government.

Let’s see, she blames her job loss on the current government although the recession set in under the Bush Administration and she doesn’t want the health care system, which she now can’t afford, to change. Brilliant! NOT!

Health Insurance Exec Admits Her Industry Rations Care: “We Believe In Controlling Utilization” – Cheryl Tidwell, Humana’s director of commercial sales training said, “We believe there’s a better way to control costs by controlling utilization and getting people involved in their health care.”

Now, I know we’re supposed to think that private for-profit health care companies don’t ration care, while government-run programs like Medicare do – but as the insurance industry admits right here for all to see, that’s just not the case. The obvious truth is that the health insurance industry works hard to “control utilization” – that is, it works hard to make sure that when you need a costly medical service, you are “controlled” (read: prevented) from getting it.

Americans Need Help, Republican Senator Coburn Needs a Heart – At a town hall meeting in Oklahoma hosted by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), a constituent begins her question with a desperate plea, “Senator Coburn, we need help!” Her voice is then overwhelmed by the kind of choking tears that reveal a person reduced whose frustration and suffering has brought them to the last possible chance to save the life of the person they love more than anyone else in the world. She then explains her situation:

My husband has traumatic brain injury. His health insurance will not cover him to eat and drink. What I need to know is, are you going to help him so he can eat and drink?

As the questioner’s courageous voice fades into heaving sobs, Senator Coburn calmly responds,”Yeah, we’ll help. The first thing we’ll do is see what we can do individually to help you through our office.” Initially, Coburn seems headed towards a reassuring resolution, but then he concludes with the following:

But the other thing that’s missing in this debate is us as neighbors helping people who need our help. We tend to–the idea that government is the solution to all our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.

Coburn answers an American’s desperate plea for help to care for her husband, in other words, by repeating the anti-government mantra of the Republican Party. The political calculus in Coburn’s words hang in the room like an icy cloud. There are millions of Americans with problems like this, and neighbors and Coburn’s office staff can’t help them much. If Coburn cared, he wouldn’t be trying to defeat health care reform legislation.

John McCain Promises and Plans Don’t Match – After John McCain opened his town hall up to questioning, one man angrily pointed at him and asked the senator why he deserves a better health care plan than him.

“I’m trying to get it for you,” McCain told him. “We’ll do it for you. We’ll make it affordable and available to you.”

But, here’s an analysis of McCain’s plan:

John McCain’s health care proposal is similar to President Bush’s failed plan. Like Bush’s, McCain’s plan undermines existing employer-based health care and pushes workers into the private market to fight big insurance companies on their own. It will reduce benefits, increase costs and leave many with no health care at all.

What You Can Expect From Unregulated Private Enterprise (Investment Firms, Insurance Companies, etc.) – The former finance chief for jailed Texas financier R. Allen Stanford said his boss created a business empire where blood oaths were taken to secure loyalty, bribes were paid from a secret Swiss bank account and investor profits were more fiction than financial genius.

Investors were promised their investments were safe and were scrutinized by Antigua’s bank regulator and an independent auditor. But Davis said in the court documents that the bank’s balance sheets were made up and the work of “reverse engineering.”

“Sometime in 2003, Stanford performed a ‘blood oath’ brotherhood ceremony with King and another employee of the FSRC … This brotherhood oath was undertaken in order to extract an agreement from both King and the other FSRC employee that they, in exchange for regular cash bribe payments, would ensure that the Antiguan bank regulators would not ‘kill the business’ of” the bank,” according to the plea agreement.

Republican Dirty Tricks Are Not New – Tape recordings from the Nixon White House betray a preoccupation with the Kennedy mystique and how that advantage might be used against the Republican president by the last surviving brother, Ted Kennedy, who died Tuesday at age 77. Nixon wanted a sharp and private eye kept on Ted Kennedy’s movements after the Chappaquiddick scandal, hoping to expose another misstep with a woman other than his wife, Joan.

Nixon’s men had investigators tail Ted Kennedy on a Hawaii vacation and when he was at his Martha’s Vineyard haunts.

Mortified, they told Nixon that Joan Kennedy wanted to wear “hot pants” to a White House function until her husband talked her out of it. But Ted’s behavior? In the aftermath of his scandal, he was careful not to step out of line, the tapes suggest.

“Does he do anything?” Nixon asked in a September 1971 meeting. “No, no, he’s very clean,” Ehrlichman replied. “He was in Hawaii on his own. He was staying in some guy’s villa. He was just as nice as could be the whole time.”

Nixon shot back: “The thing to do is watch him.”

Nixon pressed for more wiretaps and a combing of tax records, not only on Kennedy but other leading Democrats. “I could only hope that we are, frankly, doing a little persecuting,” he said.

Because Kennedy was not a presidential candidate in 1972, he did not qualify for full-time Secret Service protection. But Nixon offered it to Ted Kennedy.

But Nixon’s motives for the offer were not pure. He worried that if a third Kennedy were shot, and while not having Secret Service protection, he’d be blamed.

Plus, he wanted dirt. And the best way to get it was to have a Secret Service agent rat on the senator. There is no evidence an agent turned into such an informer.

“You understand what the problem is,” Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman on Sept. 7, 1972. “If the (SOB) gets shot they’ll say we didn’t furnish it (protection). So you just buy his insurance.

“After the election, he doesn’t get a … thing. If he gets shot, it’s too damn bad. Do it under the basis, though, that we pick the Secret Service men.
“Understand what I’m talking about?”

Pete Olson Filters Town Hall Questions But Still Gets Punked – At Congressman Pete Olson’s Town Hall meeting in Sugar Land, audience questions to Olson were entered on 5 x 7 cards that Olson’s aides collected and then filtered. They literally handed them to him one at a time. So Olson’s questions were largely tailored to Olson much like his ridiculous “polls.”

For example, here is one “poll” question right off of one of his recent glossy mailers: “Do you support or oppose limiting access to health care by placing a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor?” (He might as well asked if you’ve stopped beating your wife.)

Things started out pretty calm, as a result. The heat was turned up a little after Olson read the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. Someone asked him to read the Preamble to the Constitution, and Olson complied. Olson began with the words “We the people…” until he got to that part that says “promote the general welfare.” At that point several people in the room broke out into vigorous and loud applause.

Olson paused and looked genuinely surprised, realized at that point that he had been punked.

Health Care Poll Shows Republicans Say the Darnest Things – Democrats and Independents want health care for all, Republicans don’t care about other people’s problems.

George W. Bush Questions Brevity of Obama’s Vacation 😉 – Former president George W. Bush criticized President Barack Obama today for taking such a brief August vacation, arguing that the brevity of his summer break “sends the wrong message to terrorists.”

“The one way to let the evildoers know that they don’t have you all stressed out is by taking all of August off,” Mr. Bush told reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. “I always made sure I did that.” The former president called Mr. Obama’s golf game in Martha’s Vineyard today “a positive step,” but added, “It may be a case of too little, too late.”

Regards,

Jim

Failed Texas Bank Lied About Housing Losses According to Former Executive – Craig Wolfe, who served previously as vice president for loss mitigation at Houston-based Franklin Bank, claimed in a whistleblower letter prior to the failure that others at the institution improperly shifted losses that should have been booked in 2007 into 2008. Wolfe said in the letter that he refused on three different occasions to sign the bank’s Sarbanes-Oxley attestation certifying its balance sheet and financial statements. He was swiftly demoted, and the company moved forward with the statements as presented to him.

After Franklin Bank shut its doors, a loss review conducted by the FDIC identified major accounting errors and raised “significant questions about the competency of the management.”

In addition to facing continued regulatory scrutiny, the bank’s parent company was hit with several securities class-action suits alleging that it misled investors.

See, free-market and private enterprise takes care of itself. NOT!

Right-Wingers Opposed to Turning a Day of Fear into a Day of Service – Right-wing commentators are claiming that the White House is planning to “erase the meaning” of the 9/11 attacks and turn the anniversary into “a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry” — despite the fact that the idea to link the 9/11 anniversary to volunteerism was originally promoted by President George W. Bush. (“President Bush today [9-8-2008] renewed the call he made in the wake of the 9/11 attacks for every American to give 4,000 hours or two years of their lives in service to others.”) The bill, passed this spring, had bipartisan support.

An article by Matthew Vadum, published Monday in the American Spectator, states that the president’s plan for a National Day of Service, to be celebrated on September 11, would eliminate 9/11 as a political tool for Republicans. “The plan is to turn a ‘day of fear’ that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left,” writes Vadum. “In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.”

See, in the right-wing view, doing good deeds is evil. But war and lying is good. And, if George W. Bush said it, it’s good; but if Barack Obama says the same thing, it’s bad.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley Likes Beliefs More Than Facts – At a recent town hall, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said, “I think most of us believe we have the best health care system in the world, …” Well, it may be true that the people at that town hall may believe that we have the best health care system in the world, but the fact is that U. S. health care is ranked 37th in the world. Or maybe Grassley was referring to the health care of U.S. Senators provided by our government.

The Senator has in the past endorsed the “death panel” myth and told his constituents, “you have every right to fear” it.

How United Health Care is Gaming Heath Care Against Doctors and Patients – United Health Group, the insurance giant is literally instructing its employees to go to town halls and spit talking points. They have rigged the system to lower how much insurance pays of your bills. They bought the agencies that are supposed to independently determine “usual and customary “ costs. The AMA sued them, claiming United Health Group was now low-balling the usual and customary rates used by the insurance industry, so insurance companies, including United Health Group, could cheat patients and providers on their reimbursements, while telling patients the company providing their rate estimates was, quote, “independent.”

While United Health Group was telling other insurance companies they would get a 16 to one return on investment if they bought those rate estimates from United Health Group. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said United Health Group low balled consumers by as much as 30 percent. A Senate committee concluded that millions of Americans, including more than one million military families, paid billions more for out-of-network health care than they should have.

Republicans like to quote the Lewin Group‘s claim that more than 100 million Americans would ditch employer health plans for a public option. House Whip Eric Cantor, Orrin Hatch of Senate Finance, they have called Lewin non-partisan. But the Lewin Group, too, is owned by United Health Group, which has given thousands to Hatch and Cantor in just the past two years.

Last year, hospital executives raided big insurance companies in a national survey. United Health Group was worst. Favorable, just eight percent; unfavorable, 91 percent.

United Health Group has reportedly hit small businesses and consumers with regular double-digit rate hikes recently, far out-stripping inflation. In 2007, United Health Group denied, but agreed to settle, claims of handling patient claims improperly in at least 37 states.

They have colluded with elected officials to fatten their profits at your expense. With all of this terrible behavior, the United Health Group CEO has made $750 million so far, and will make even more if the public option does not pass.

Republicans Need Healthcare the Most; They’re Sick – Republicans politicians already have government health care plans, which is a good thing because clearly they‘re sick:

Patient number one: Senator Chuck Grassley. Diagnosis: possible dementia—telling a town hall in Iowa he opposes the public option because he wants the public to have options. Doing nothing to rebuke a man also who threatened Grassley‘s fellow lawmakers, saying, quote, “I‘d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”

Patient two: GOP Chair Michael Steele. Diagnosis: whiplash. Three years ago saying cuts to Medicare had to be on the table. Yesterday, releasing a senior‘s health care bill of rights promising to protect Medicare, today calling Medicare, quote, “a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care.”

And then there‘s patient three: Senator/Doctor Tom Coburn. Diagnosis: pronounced cardiac deficiency—or in layman‘s terms, he‘s utterly heartless. A constituent told him her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury. He‘s on a feeding tube. They have insurance. It will not cover trained help nor a nursing home. Coburn responded that her neighbors should help out but not, of course, via their government and that his office will help, even though his office is the government.

Why the Gullible Can’t Help Themselves – The psychological theory of cognitive dissonance holds that when people are presented with information that contradicts preexisting beliefs, they try to relieve the cognitive tension one way or another. They process and respond to information defensively, for instance: their belief challenged by fact, they ignore the latter. They also accept and seek out confirming information but ignore, discredit the source of, or argue against contrary information, studies have shown. An example is the large number of Americans that still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. In a study, when people who believed this Sadam-9/11 link were shown newspaper articles reporting that the 9/11 Commission had not found any evidence linking Saddam and 9/11, and quoting President Bush himself denying it, 96% of them still would not change their minds.

Which brings us back to health-care reform—in particular, the apoplexy at town-hall meetings and the effectiveness of the lies being spread about health-care reform proposals. First of all, let’s remember that 59,934,814 voters cast their ballot for John McCain, so we can assume that tens of millions of Americans believe the wrong guy is in the White House. To justify that belief, they need to find evidence that he’s leading the country astray. What better evidence of that than to seize on the misinformation about Obama’s health-care reform ideas.

Calculation May Explain Why So Many People Believe Stupid, Fact-Less Rumors – There is an old saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” If that’s true, assuming an average lifespan of 66 years (world average), 365 days per year, 24 hours in a day, and 60 minutes per hour, that comes to 34,689,600 suckers, which just happens to equal the number of right-wing wackos in existence today. (Just kidding, but you can’t prove it’s not true.)

The “I’d rather believe something crazy” crowd is not new. What makes a difference is knowing how to use them. Even though many people believe that the phrase, “there’s a sucker born every minute” was said by P. T. Barnum, there is no proof he ever said that. It was actually uttered by David Hannum, spoken in reference to Barnum’s part in the Cardiff Giant hoax. Hannum, who was exhibiting the “original” giant and had unsuccessfully sued Barnum for exhibiting a copy and claiming it was the original, was referring to the crowds continuing to pay to see Barnum’s exhibit even after both it and the original had been proven to be fakes.

In turn, Barnum’s fellow circus owner and arch-rival Adam Forepaugh attributed the quote to Barnum in a newspaper review in an attempt to discredit him. However, Barnum never denied making the quote. It is said that he thanked Forepaugh for the free publicity he had given him. (The quote is also attributed to other people.)

Perhaps the Health-Care Reform Opponents Should Take This Course – Occidental College – Course No. 180. STUPIDITY.

Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, … that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beevis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.

Deaths of 43 Bald Eagles is Unanticipated Side Effect of Rat Eradication in Alaska – Alaska’s Rat Island appears to be pest-free for the first time since rats overran it after a Japanese sailing ship wrecked there in the late 1700s. Scientists stopped by in early August to check on the progress of the $3 million eradication. The project has had some ecological side effects, however. Scientists found more than 250 dead birds on Rat Island last spring when they returned for the first time since the island was baited. Those carcasses tested positive for brodifacoum, the poison used on the rats. Scientists had anticipated that some gulls would die, but the deaths of 43 bald eagles surprised and disappointed them.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will look at water and soil samples to understand the movement of the rat poison in order to determine how it killed so many birds, and what scientists need to do to avoid such deaths next time, if they treat other islands in the chain.

There are several theories, but scientists suspect that gulls ate some of the poison pellets. Eagles may have eaten the dead gulls.

Regards,

Jim