The WAWG Blog

After asking others to support the above effort, I got this one response:

You mean the public option which is the government supplied option that will be offered if you still want to use your own health care? That public option will eventually destroy the regular private option so we will eventually only have the government option. The government should not be in this at all. This is government take over. …

I responded with the following:

Our Declaration of Independence refers to “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” – life being the key unalienable right here.

The government is the only entity that should be overseeing the healthcare of its citizens. It is the moral obligation of our government to protect and empower its citizens and protecting our health should never be subjugated to profit, which will trump our lives if it means more [profit].

Our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are of absolutely no concern to the corporations of healthcare. Profit is king.

Profit is great, however, it has no place when it comes to any moral issue involving our protection and empowerment. If it is, we lose – our “unalienable rights” are taken from us for the sake of profit. WRONG!!!

(Natural rights (or inalienable rights) are rights which are not contingent upon the laws, [profit,] customs, or beliefs or a particular society or polity)

What causes an individual to be successful? Are there a multitude of factors including the talents of the individual or is it entirely individual talent? Does society contribute to an individuals success?

George Lakoff wrote the following in The Political Mind:

One of the most profound differences between strict and nurturant modes of thought is the area of causation. In the strict father model, there is individual responsibility and direct action operating: the father gives a directive, the child is expected to carry it out, and if not, the father punishes. Causation is direct and individual.

In the nurturant parent model, causation is sometimes direct and individual, but just as often it is systemic. Nurturance involves developing attachment, empathizing with and forming connections to others. The more absolutes are Help, Don’t Harm, Do Unto Others. … You have to function as part of a social and interpersonal system less governed by specific rules and more “felt out” in terms of how you relate to others and sense their needs and requirements [empathize].

In Thinking Points, Mr. Lakoff states, “Pure conservative philosophy is the application of the strict father model – and only that model – to politics.” He also observes the “appearance of the authoritarian conservative, who applies the strict father model not just to all issues but to governing itself.” John Dean refers to these individuals as Conservatives Without Conscience (CWC).

In other words, CWCs are driven by “individual responsibility and direct action.” Mr. Lakoff restates this as their “Individual Responsibility Principle” in Thinking Points:

All of us are individually responsible for our own destiny. If you succeed, it’s because you deserve it; if you fail it’s your own fault. You’re on your own, and you should be. No coddling.

…

In surveying conservative and progressive arguments, we have noticed another important regularity. Conservatives seem to argue on the basis of direct, individual causation, while progressives tend to argue on the basis of systemic, complex causation.

The two worldviews described by Dr. Lakoff see causation differently. What evidence exists to give credence to either the strict father or the nurturant causation statements made by Professor Lakoff?

The answer is found in the many examples of success documented in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In part 1 of Outliers, Gladwell reviews the different individual and systemic causes of success for several groups and individuals.

Discussed below are summaries of successful individuals and the individual and systemic factors that contributed to their success.

The Matthew Effect shows how setting cutoff dates gives individuals born closest to that date an advantage over others born later.

Championship Canadian Hockey Teams – from age 10 to professional hockey player – were determined by the following external factors:

• They had to be born in Canada
• They had to be born shortly after some arbitrary cutoff date – the closer the better. In this case, January first.
• Their innate talent and early start got them on the “rep squad” which lead to more practice sessions and games to enhance their talents
• They had a physical advantage over others when the differences between 10 year olds over a 12 month period can be significant.

Analysis of successful Canadian hockey teams shows that their members were composed of players with birthdays in the following groups:

• Jan-Mar – 40%
• Apr-Jun – 30%
• Jul-Sep – 20%
• Oct-Dec – 10%

When the researchers looked at individual months, they found more successful team members were born in January than any other month. Second in number of successful players was February and then March.

In the United States, there is a cutoff date of July 31 for baseball. Well, guess what? More major league players are born in August than any other month. Similar statistics exist for European soccer teams.

There were similar results for math testing of fourth graders. The older fourth graders scored 4 to 12% higher.

Research has also showed that not all those born in January become successful team players. Innate talent is also required. But this innate talent is given a significant boost if you are born in January in Canada and you want to play hockey. “Achievement is talent plus preparation” and those with the most preparation become champions.

One researcher said, “It’s outlandish that our arbitrary choice of cutoff dates is causing these long-lasting effects and no one seems to care about them.”

So, successful sports players had innate talent, but that talent was boosted because of when and where the player was born. This luck of the draw then lead to more chances to practice and play more games and thus boost their success and natural talent, if they had any.

The 10,000 Hour Rule:

Mr. Gladwell then goes on to point out that preparation for successful individuals takes about 10,000 hours. People at the top had to “work much, much harder.” Talent is there but experience is a major factor.

This experience requirement was part of the success of The Beatles, Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, Bill Gates and many others. After reviewing details on innate talents, who they knew that provided a distinct advantage, what family they were born into and who the parents knew, and how they gained their relevant 10,000 hours of experience in a short time, Mr. Gladwell then looked at when they were born. Again a common factor about birth was part of the systemic causes for success. But again, birth is just one factor that contributed to success. “Lucky breaks” for these successful billionaires or The Beatles or star athletes “seem like the rule.”

Mr. Gladwell then listed the 75 richest people in human history based on current US dollars. Whatever the other factors, talents, or lucky breaks were for these 75 people, this list included 14 Americans that were all born within 9 years of each other. Twenty percent of this group comes from one century and one country – lucky breaks.

They were all born between 1831 and 1840. During this era railroads were starting; Wall Street was born; and industrial manufacturing started in a major way. All the economic rules were broken and remade. It really matters if you are born in a time of major transformations and get those lucky breaks.

This same kind of transformation, the personal computer age, was starting just in time for Bill Joy and BIll Gates. If you were born before 1952 and working in computers, your future was in main frames and time sharing, and you wore a black tie and white shirt. If you were born after 1958, you didn’t have time to get your 10,000 hours of computer programming experience.

Opportunity and the right experience are major systemic factors for successful people. Major opportunities occur during the right time for lucky individuals with sufficient experience plus innate talent. But it must all come together just so and at the right time for significant success to occur.

But what about innate talent? Does it have limits?

The Effect of High IQ on Success:
Mr. Gladwell reviewed the value of IQ scores, a measure of innate talent, and it’s effect on success. The research shows that those with an IQ of 120 are just as likely to be successful as anyone with an IQ higher than 120.

Just after World War I, Lewis Terman, a Stanford professor, identified 1,528 individuals with an IQ of at least 140. They became known as the “Termites.” Their ages ranged from 3 to 28. A Stanford article on the termites concludes with the following:

As for what IQ scores can predict about a person’s future, Hastorf offers a middle-of-the road position: the tests are pretty good at identifying “school-bright” children, those likely to perform well in ordinary school settings, but “on the issue of what makes you school-bright, it’s obviously a combination of variables — your genetic constitution, your biological health, the motivation that your parents put into you, chance.”

Professor Terman tracked his Termites for years. When most had become adults, he reviewed the success of 730 males. He split them into three groups. The highly successful A group – top 20 percent. Ninety-eight percent of them had advanced degrees. The B group – the middle 60 percent – succeeded satisfactorily. The C group – the bottom 20 percent – were not very successful even though their IQs were 140 or more. Only a quarter of them graduated from high school and only eight earned graduate degrees. Further analysis showed the A’s were from middle and upper class families. The C’s were from the “other side of the tracks.” They all had innate talent, but the Cs lacked the other systemic factors that would foster success.

Mr. Gladwell discussed one such systemic factor that contributed to success for those with high IQs: the “motivation that your parents put into you.” “Concerted cultivation” is more relevant to success than an IQ above 120. If you can’t work with others, it doesn’t matter if your IQ is 195 – you’re not likely to be successful. Christopher Langan, discussed extensively in Outliers, is an example of someone with a high IQ but who had little success in life.

It is unfortunate, but concerted cultivation is typically missing from poor broken families, but it has nothing to do with genetics. It is cultural. The wealthy feel “entitled” to what they have. The poor learn “constraint.” The high IQ poor are less likely to be successful because they lack a “community around them that [could have] prepared them properly for the world.”

Mr. Gladwell provides ample evidence that there are systemic factors that contribute to the success of a talented individual. But there are still more …

In addition to the Matthew Effect, the requirement for 10,000 hours of experience, the luck of when and where you were born, social connections, and having sufficient but not necessarily excessive talent – there are still the systemic factors provided by society through its government.

Here is an insightful quote from Warren Buffet (net worth around $46,000,000,000) on societal causation:

I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I’ve earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil… I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well – disproportionately well. Mike Tyson, too. If you can knock a guy out in 10 seconds and earn $10 million for it, this world will pay a lot for that. If you can bat .360, this world will pay a lot for that. If you’re a marvelous teacher, this world won’t pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it. Now, am I going to try to come up with some comparable worth system that somehow (re)distributes that. No, I don’t think you can do that. But I do think that when you’re treated enormously well by this market system, where in effect the market system showers the ability to buy goods and services on you because of some peculiar talent – maybe your adenoids are a certain way, so you can sing and everybody will pay you enormous sums to be on television or whatever – I think society has a big claim on that.

Here is how George Lakoff describes how our society, through its government, helps cause citizen success.

America’s government has at least two fundamental functions, protection and empowerment. Protection includes the police, firefighters, emergency services, public health, the military, and so on. Empowerment includes the infrastructure needed for business and everyday life: roads, communications systems, water supplies, public education, the banking system for loans and economic stability, the SEC for the stock market, the courts for enforcing contracts, air traffic control, support for basic science, our national parks and public buildings, and more. We are usually aware of protection. But the empowerment infrastructure, provided by taxes, is usually taken for granted, hidden, or ignored. Yet it is absolutely crucial, a fundamental truth about America and why America provides opportunity [for success].

Taxes are part of our common wealth, what we all share. Protection and empowerment serve the common good. Because of our common wealth, we are all protected and America’s empowering infrastructure is available to all. That is a fundamental America value: the common wealth should serve the common good. It benefits everyone.

Citizens are financially responsible to maintain this common wealth [by paying taxes in proportion to their gains from society]. If we shirked this responsibility, we could not maintain our roads, fund our schools, protect ourselves from military threats, enforce our laws, and so on. Equally important, we could not create prosperity [success] for ourselves, because we would have no protection of our intellectual property, no oversight of our markets, no means to enforce our contracts, no way to educate most of our children.

Gladwell details many of the specific factors that helped cause the wealth of Bill Gates and Bill Joy. Professor Lakoff explains some of the societal factors that contributed to the success of these talented and lucky citizens:

He [Bill Gates] started Microsoft as a college dropout and has become the world’s richest person. Though he has undoubtedly benefited from his unusual intelligence and business acumen, he could not have created or sustained his personal wealth without the common wealth. The legal system protected Microsoft’s intellectual property and contracts. The tax-supported financial infrastructure enabled him to access capital markets and trade his stock in a market in which investors have confidence. He built his company with many employees educated in public schools and universities. Tax-funded research helped develop computer science and the internet. Trade laws negotiated and enforced by the government protect his ability to sell his products abroad. These are but a few of the ways in which Mr. Gates’ accumulation of wealth was empowered by the common wealth and by taxation.

The research of Lakoff and Gladwell supports the progressive worldview on the causes of success – it’s much more than individual talent. Gladwell emphasizes the technical more determinant causes of success while Lakoff highlights that “the empowerment infrastructure [of our society through its government], provided by taxes, is usually taken for granted, hidden, or ignored.”

Paying taxes supports America’s infrastructure and improves the chances of success for all its citizens. This contradicts the claim of CWCs that cutting taxes, like Nixon, Reagan and Bush did, will solve our problems. Cutting taxes, especially for the rich, only increases the chances of success for the rich – like bonuses and/or continued employment for the CEOs of banks too big to fail – while it reduces the chances of success for the rest of America’s citizenry – now losing their jobs and homes.

The video below illustrates one of the elements that distinguishes right-wing authoritarians (RWA) from others – the understanding of “systemic causation.” Their belief and basic framing for their conservative worldview is “rugged individualism.” This RWA framing does not allow them to believe the “network visualisation” this video discusses.

See if you can spot the RWAs in the diagram that is developed during this video.

“God Bless Charities”: A Fake Street Corner Charity Scamming City Residents – Calvin Tarver recruits workers, gives them T-shirts and loads them up in vans to collect cash all over Houston (including Clear Lake). God Bless Charities reports no taxes and does not have IRS 501(c) 3 status. In nine months, “God Bless” switched causes four times from AIDS and HIV to supporting youth, then collecting for a Hurricane Ike relief fund to now raising money for the homeless and hungry.

God Bless Charities does not house the public with HIV, nor is associated with any known AIDS agency or faith based AIDS org. in Harris County, TX., according to public statements from: the HIV funding source of the Ryan White Council, the AIDS Foundation Houston & AIDS Housing Coalition Houston.
In a financial report Tarver filed with the city, he claims from January to September 2008, God Bless Charities collected $45,000 (We don’t know how much they actually took in.). More than $19,000 went to pay stipends for the people who collected the cash. After rent, utilities and transportation costs, the group had less than $5,000 left for any cause.

Local 2 Investigates Charity Panhandlers

“Fire Letterman” Rally Organizer Greatly Exaggerates Number of Protesters – Reports indicate less than twenty showed up at the “Fire David Letterman” rally, along with at least thirty-five members of the press, although the organizer – perhaps delusionally – claimed on Fox News Wednesday morning that two hundred turned out (and, naturally, the Fox and Friends hosts left that figure unchallenged).

Now, just for entertainment, watch the ‘Top ten things overheard at fire Dave rally’ video from Letterman’s show at the link [above].

More Republican Hypocrisy on Family Values – Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign voted in the House to impeach President Bill Clinton over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinski and repeatedly called for the former president’s resignation. But now, Ensign has confessed to an extramarital affair. The affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008 with a campaign staffer who was married to an employee in Ensign’s Senate office. How does that square with Ensign’s statement made in 2004 regarding the sanctity of marriage:

“Marriage recognizes the ideal of a father and mother living together to raise their children,” Ensign said. “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation. Marriage, as a social institution, predates every other institution on which ordered society in America has relied.”

Glenn Beck Can’t Remember What He Was Rooting For – Glenn Beck wants everyone to rest assured he’s not a complete nutcase. He says that he’s not a fan of state secession, after all!

BECK: Did you catch the New York Times this weekend? [Giggles weirdly.] They published the third — count it, three — the third op-ed in the New York Times blaming Bill O’Reilly and me, or Fox News in general, of spreading hate and inspiring people like the killer of Dr. Killer, uh, Tiller, in Kansas. Also, we were the inspiration apparently for the guy at the Holocaust Museum last week.

You know, there are groups out there that preach hate and violence and racial violence. There are groups out there so fed up they want to secede from the union. But we ain’t one of them!

Hmmmm. An interesting denial. There’s only one problem with it: Beck was downright enthusiastic about Texas secession two months ago when he interviewed Chuck Norris:

GLENN: Somebody asked me this morning, they said, you really believe that there’s going to be trouble in the future. And I said, if this country starts to spiral out of control and, you know, and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country, which it would have under I think the Republicans as well in this situation; they were taking us to the same place, just slower.

NORRIS: It was slower, yeah.

GLENN: Americans will, they just, they won’t stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up. And they said, where’s that going to come from? And I said Texas, it’s going to come from Texas. Do you agree with that, Chuck, or not?

NORRIS: Oh, yeah. You know, Texas is a republic, you know. We could actually —

GLENN: It was a country before it was a state.

NORRIS: Yeah, we could break off from the union if we wanted to.

GLENN: You do, you call me.

NORRIS: Oh, yeah.

Forde’s Minuteman Spinoff Outfit Was About ‘Starting a Revolution Against the Government’ – Remember how all those right-wing pundits proclaimed the Minutemen as being just like a neighborhood watch? Michelle Malkin called it “the mother of all neighborhood watches.” Lou Dobbs labeled it “this country’s biggest neighborhood watch program”. Bill O’Reilly declared: “Talking Points applauds the Minutemen. They are in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups.”
Boy, that sure is some neighborhood watch:

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

“She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government,” he said.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department arrested Forde, Bush and Arivaca resident Albert Robert Gaxiola on Friday and accused them of killing Raul Flores, 29, and his daughter Brisenia, 9, during a home invasion. Forde was the executive director of Minutemen American Defense, and she had named Bush the “operations director” for the group’s border-watch activities along the Arizona-Mexico border.

The Big-Lie Media Campaign About Health Care – The scare ads and op-ed pieces featuring Canadians telling us American how terrible their government health-care systems have arrived – predictably. There’s another, factual view – by Americans who’ve lived in Canada and used their system. It’s not broken – and what’s more, Canadians like and fiercely defend it as shown in the statements below:

“Our son was born at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. My wife got excellent care. The total bill for three days in a semi-private room? $21.”

“I’m 82, and in excellent health,” he told me this week. “It costs me all of $57 a month for health care, and it’s excellent. I’m so tired of all the lies and bullshit I hear about the system up here in the U.S. media.”

“I now have 20/20 vision thanks to Canadian eye doctors. And I haven’t had to wait for my surgeries, either.”

During a show about health care, scores of Canadians called the Canadian Broadcasting Company from across that vast country, from Newfoundland to British Columbia. Not one said he or she would change the system. Every single one defended it vigorously.

Further proof: Not long ago, the CBC asked Canadians to nominate and then vote for The Greatest Canadian in history. Thousands responded. The winner? Tommy Douglas. Who? Tommy Douglas was a Canadian politician – and the father of Canadian universal health care.

Time Warner Cable is Still Trying to Restrict Internet Use and Overcharge People Who Use the Web Every Day – Time Warner Cable’s Internet overcharging scam came crashing down in April after tens of thousands of you protested the absurdly high fees. Time Warner Cable backed off. But the company didn’t give up. Instead, the cable giant quietly launched a customer “re-education” plan, hiring PR experts and launching phony front groups to mislead people into supporting excessive charges. Time Warner Cable also hides the fine print in their “terms of service” allowing the company to disconnect users on a whim.

Now, other phone and cable companies like Comcast and AT&T are weighing similar schemes to hike prices, shut down the free-flowing Web and keep users in check.

But there’s a new bill in Congress and a plan to stop greedy phone and cable companies from padding their pockets by curbing our Internet use. New York Rep. Eric Massa promised to introduce a bill to stop this excessive price-gouging. Today, Massa delivered:

Tell Congress: Support the Broadband Internet Fairness Act

Regards,

Jim

Conservative Radio Commentator Attempts to Rig Election – Conservative radio commentator Dale Jackson of WVNN in Huntsville read a phony release on air that said the polls would be open for two days. The release also stated that because of heavy voter turnout, the candidates had agreed to flip a coin to see who’s voters would vote on each day. The release said Republican supporters would vote Tuesday, the Democrats were to vote Wednesday (when polls were actually closed). Jackson also posted a copy to his Web site Tuesday morning, where the release made prominent use of the Alabama state seal to make it look official.

Senators Who Opposed Tobacco Regulation Bill Received Top Dollar From Industry – Among the 17 senators who voted against allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco are some of the top recipients of campaign contributions from the tobacco industry, which has donated millions of dollars to lawmakers in the past several campaign cycles:

• Over the course of his nearly quarter-century Senate career, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has received $419,025 from the tobacco industry, more than any other member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that analyzes the influence of money on politics and policy.
• North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who led the opposition to the bill, is the second highest recipient and netted $359,100 from tobacco-related political action committees and individual contributions.
• Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, is the third highest recipient with $228,700.
• Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning, who’s up for re-election next year and is considered the most vulnerable Senate Republican, received $194,166.

Coal Ash Spills Too Dangerous To Reveal To Public, Says Dept. of Homeland Security – Just how bad has the coal ash situation gotten in the United States? So bad that the Department of Homeland Security has told Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that her committee can’t publicly disclose the location of coal ash dumps across the country. The pollution is so toxic, so dangerous, that an enemy of the United States — or a storm or some other disrupting event — could easily cause them to spill out and lay waste to any area nearby.

There are 44 sites deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency to be high hazard, but Boxer said she isn’t allowed to talk about them other than to senators in the states affected. “There is a huge muzzle on me and my staff,” she said. “Homeland Security and the Army Corps [of Engineers] have decided in the interests of national security they can’t make these sites known,” she said. There are several hundred coal ash piles across the nation, she said, all of them unregulated.

Pastor Prays for Death of Our President – The following is from an interview with Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif.:

Colmes: …you then said, I asked for whom else are you praying in that fashion and you said President Obama. Are you praying for his death?

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?

Drake: Yes. Are you concerned that by saying that you might find yourself on some secret service call or FBI most wanted list. Do you think it’s appropriate to say something like that or even pray for something like that

Drake: I think it’s appropriate to pray for the will of God. I’m not saying anything, what I’m doing is repeating what God is saying, if that puts me on somebodies list then I’ll just have to be on their list.

Colmes: You would like for the president of the United States to die?

Drake: If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around I am asking God to enforce in imprecatory prayers throughout the scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.

Regards,

Jim

Over-Paid Insurance CEOs Oppose Public Healthcare Option – The public healthcare option has the potential to make private plans compete and be more affordable by trimming their costs. But the private insurance companies have their obscene CEO paychecks to support:

These people are, of course, compensated based upon the potential profits they’re able to generate for their shareholders. And those profits are generated both by charging ever-increasing premiums and by refusing to pay out to those who are in need.

[Our government, as our parents, are here to protect and empower us. Protection comes in many forms including a military for national protection, police for local protection, basic education for protection against ingorance, and EMTs, the FDA, the EPA, and a national plan for health care/protection. Profit will always trump protection.]

Heath Insurance Companies Invest in Tobacco to Make you Sick – Health insurers around the world collectively hold $4.5 billion worth of tobacco industry stock, according to a new study. The Consumerist has great highlights on the story, including this killer quote from the study’s co-author, David Himmelstein, “[It’s] the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back.”

Clarcon Skin Products Contain High Levels of Disease-Causing Bacteria: FDA – A recent FDA inspection found that Clarcon skin products contained high levels of disease-causing bacteria. How ironic.

I’m glad that some of our taxes go to protect us from real threats like this rather than imaginary WMDs.

Texas Puts Energy Company Profits and Politics Ahead of Health of Citizens and Planet – Texas state comptroller Susan Combs joined Gov. Rick Perry, also a Republican, at a meeting with industry leaders in the state capitol to discuss the threat of federal climate-change policy and underscore the energy-producing state’s skittishness towards the environmental concerns that are at the core of the Obama administration’s policy-making. “I happen to think that what they are discussing could wreck our traditional energy industry and put a very serious dent in our economy,” said Mr. Perry.

Political observers have pointed out that Mr. Perry has a political agenda for attacking Washington D.C. He will likely face a stiff challenge from within his party next year in the Republican gubernatorial primary from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. His critique of Washington regulations has traditionally played well with Republican primary voters, and might be Mr. Perry’s strongest strategy for fending off the challenge from Ms. Hutchison, a three-term U.S. Senator, to win an unprecedented third term.

In contrast, China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday. Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China’s national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.

Texas Senator John Cornyn Has Highest Travel Bill in Senate – Texas Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, racked up the highest travel bill in the Senate by spending more than $140,000 in taxpayer money on travel in the first half of the fiscal year. Cornyn spent more than $38,000 on a St. Michaels, Md., retreat for 59 staffers and took expensive, multicity charter flights throughout his home state of Texas.

Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, ran up the second-highest bill by routinely flying private charters to cities in New York served by commercial airlines.

Regards,

Jim

Fox News Jumps to Conclusion on Shooting – At least three people were shot today at Washington’s Holocaust Museum. Fox News spent considerable time Wednesday afternoon speculating whether the shooter was of Muslim descent, but stopped soon after MSNBC reported the shooter was a white supremacist.

Right-Wing Radio Hosts Try to Destroy GM Workers and Families – A pair of right-wing radio hosts says there’s only one choice for conservatives angry about government involvement in the auto industry: Boycott GM. “Nobody wants to support an Obama company,” Rush Limbaugh told his audience Friday, citing a poll showing that 17 percent of Americans backed a boycott of GM. “Every dollar spent with GM is a dollar spent against free enterprise,” conservative talker Hugh Hewitt wrote online last week.

Why are Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh trying to destroy the American automotive industry? What about the families that need these jobs to survive? Will Hewitt and Limbaugh support all the families that this child-like boycott could affect?

Liz Cheney Defends Her Father’s Disavowment of Iraq-9/11 Link, Then Says It’s True – In an interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, Liz Cheney insisted that her father had always disavowed the notion that there was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda and September 11th (even though there’s plenty of video tape of him saying it existed). Then she said that the link actually existed! (even though there’s plenty of facts showing that it did not exist.)

What Sidearm Would Jesus Carry? – A Kentucky pastor is inviting his flock to bring guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of July and the Second Amendment. “We’re just going to celebrate the upcoming theme of the birth of our nation,” said pastor Ken Pagano. “And we’re not ashamed to say that there was a strong belief in God and firearms — without that this country wouldn’t be here.”

John Phillips, an Arkansas pastor who was shot twice while leading a service at his former church in 1986, said a house of worship is no place for firearms. “A church is designated as a safe haven, it’s a place of worship,” said Phillips, who was shot by a church member’s relative for an unknown reason and still has a bullet lodged in his spine. “It is unconscionable to me to think that a church would be a place that you would even want to bring a weapon.”

Jeff Sessions: Empathy-Free – During testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Shirley Tan, a Fillipino woman who has been with her American partner for 23 years, told about how they are raising twelve-year-old twin boys. She originally left the Phillipines after suffering a violent attack from a man who murdered her mother and sister (one of the reasons why Tan does not want to return to her native country, aside from the fact that her partner and children live in the U.S., is that the man who brutalized her has since been released from prison.). one of Tan’s children started crying within seconds of the start of her testimony. At the sight of this, Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy stopped the hearing and asked Tan if her son might want to sit in another room, where presumably a Senate staffer would console him for the duration of what was clearly an emotionally fraught experience. But, at the sight of the weeping boy, according to a Senate staffer who was at the hearing, Jeff Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, “Enough with the histrionics (exaggerated emotional behavior).”

Fear mongering Against Labor Unions – The cast of Morning Joe was fear mongering about the Employee Free Choice Act by saying they can’t manage to name a single successful unionized company, even though they work for one. GE is one of the world’s largest companies; in 2006, its revenues were greater than the gross domestic products of 80 percent of UN nations.

Medical Bills Underlie 60 Percent of U.S. Bankruptcies According to Study – Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers said in a report. More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection,” said Harvard’s Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States.

The United States is embarking on an overhaul of its healthcare system, now a patchwork of public programs such as Medicare for the elderly and disabled and employer-sponsored health insurance that leaves 15 percent of the population with no coverage.

“Expanding private insurance and calling it health reform will fail to prevent financial catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of Americans every year,” Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen said in a statement.

The researchers and some consumer advocates said the study showed the proposals under the most serious consideration are unlikely to help many Americans. They are pressing for a so-called single payer plan, in which one agency, usually the government, coordinates health coverage.

Still Digging Up Exxon Valdez Oil, 20 Years Later – Twenty years since the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in southeastern Alaska on March 24, 1989, spreading an 11-million-gallon crude-oil inkblot into Prince William Sound, there is still oil just beneath the surface, close enough for animals to be affected by it.

Firms Hoarding Oil in Anticipation of Price Increases – The giant US bank JPMorgan Chase has reportedly hired a newly-built supertanker to store heating oil off the Mediterranean island of Malta. Other companies, including BP and a unit of Citigroup, have also hired ships to store either crude oil or oil products.

According to Bloomberg.com, “Traders were already using smaller tankers to store record volumes of jet fuel and heating oil in Europe as on-shore tanks filled up.” “I’ve never before seen storage demand on this scale,” a shipbroker told Bloomberg.

This latest move comes amid suggestions that recent increases in oil prices may be the result of speculators looking for a new financial bubble, prompting fears that increases in energy costs could stall any hope of an economic recovery.

According to MSNBC, “Even though most analysts say crude is still overpriced, the market has created its own momentum with an enormous amount of money fleeing equity and currency markets. … With so much money flowing into the market, prices are likely to hold close to where they are, until market fundamentals can take hold.”

How Are George and Barbara Bush Doing?

Regards,
Jim

Republican Lawmaker With Ties to Tom DeLay Aim to Weaken Travis County DA’s Office – State Rep. Wayne Christian has proposed legislation aimed at weakening the Travis County district attorney’s office, which became the pariah of Republicans everywhere after it indicted GOP stalwart Tom DeLay on charges of money laundering and violating election law.

Christian has ties to DeLay and his co-defendant and one-time associate John Colyandro. In addition, former District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who hastened the end of DeLay’s political career and indicted Colyandro, also named Christian in an indictment of the Texas Association of Business for violating campaign finance laws.

Christian’s signature piece of legislation, HB 566, would require that state elected officials and officers only be charged for official misconduct in their county of residence. The intent of that is clear: The Travis County DA’s office would no longer be able prosecute the vast majority of lawmakers on public corruption charges. That would now be the task of local prosecutors, who often don’t have the resources, if not the moxie, to indict their local representative.

Jim Wells County, Texas Ran on Seized Valuables and Cash – Cash and valuables seized from drivers in Jim Wells County, Texas, helped fund police, provided bonuses to secretaries.

Tom Tancredo Claims Sotomayor in “Latino KKK” – Tom Tancredo, the former Colorado congressman and radical anti-immigration activist, stepped up his attacks on judge Sonia Sotomayor Thursday. Appearing on CNN, Tancredo suggested that Sotomayor’s affiliation with the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, was equivalent to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He also said, “the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.”

However, “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” is not La Raza’s motto. Instead, the group’s motto is “Strengthening America by promoting the advancement of Latino families.” The phrase that Tancredo incorrectly links to Sotomayor is, in fact, found only in the founding documents a wholly different group to which Sotomayor has no known affiliation.

Limbaugh Says Nominating Sotomayor Like Nominating KKK’s David Duke – Rush Limbaugh, following a trend of conservatives depicting Sonia Sotomayor as a dangerous racist, suggested that President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination had set back civil rights progress and compared Sotomayor to David Duke:

And how can a party get behind such a candidate? That’s what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke or pick somebody even less offensive.

G. Gordon Liddy On Sotomayor: ‘Let’s Hope That The Key Conferences Aren’t When She’s Menstruating’ – Yesterday on his radio show, conservative host G. Gordon Liddy continued the right wing’s all-out assault on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. First, just like Tom Tancredo, Liddy slammed Sotomayor’s affiliation with the civil rights group La Raza — and referred to the Spanish language as “illegal alien“:

I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.

Finished with the race-based attack, Liddy moved on to denigrate Sotomayor’s gender:

Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Regards,

Jim

Right-Wing Military Writer: We May Have to Kill War Journalists – Ralph Peters’ work regularly lands on the pages of The New York Post and has cropped up in USA Today. He’s even a special contributor to Fox News. In his latest column titled “The killers without guns” for the Journal of International Security Affairs, Mr. Peters suggests that the media is responsible for “saving” Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, but that media had “failed to defeat” the U.S. government’s charge toward Iraq.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

Because, of course, in Peters’ mind America can do no wrong:

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters.

Torture Cost Hundreds ‘If Not Thousands’ of American Lives According to Former Military Interrogator – A 14-year military interrogator has undercut one of the key arguments posited by Vice President Dick Cheney in favor of the Bush Administration’s torture techniques and alleged that the use of torture has cost “hundreds if not thousands” of American lives. The interrogator, who uses the name “Matthew Alexander,” says he oversaw more than 1,000 interrogations, conducting more than 300 in Iraq personally.

“Torture does not save lives,” Alexander said in his interview. “And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool…These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse….literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives.”

Moreover, Alexander avers that many — as many as 90 percent — of those captured in Iraq said they joined the fight against the United States because of the torture conducted at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

“At the prison where I conducted interrogations,” Alexander said, “we heard day in and day out, foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason that they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.”

“The point that is most absent is that our greatest success in this conflict was achieved without torture or abuse,” Alexander wrote in a blog post Sunday. “My interrogation team found Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaida in Iraq and murderer of tens of thousands. We did this using relationship-building approaches and non-coercive law enforcement techniques. These worked to great effect on the most hardened members of Al Qaida — spiritual leaders who had been behind the waves of suicide bombers and, hence, the sectarian violence that swept across Iraq. We convinced them to cooperate by applying our intellect. In essence, we worked smarter, not harsher.”

Regards,

Jim

Evangelist TV Preacher Rakes in the Money – As Easter approached, the ad ran repeatedly on the Inspiration Network: David Cerullo, clutching a Bible, told viewers they, too, could receive prosperity, physical healing and other blessings God gave the ancient Israelites.

All they had to do, the televangelist said, was send him $200 or more.

“Go to your phone,” he said. “Sow your Passover offering and watch God do what he said he would … Call now.”

Pitches like this have transformed the Charlotte-area cable network into one of the world’s fastest-growing Christian broadcasters, beaming into more than 100 countries on five continents. They’ve also helped turn Cerullo, Inspiration’s CEO and on-air host, into a wealthy man.

He brings home more than $1.5 million a year, making him the best-paid leader of any religious charity tracked by watchdog groups. His salary dwarfs those of executives leading far larger religious nonprofits.
David and Barbara Cerullo live in a 12,000 square-foot lakefront home in south Charlotte – complete with an elevator and an 1,100-square-foot garage. Their grown children also receive handsome salaries.

Republican Blog Says Jesus would be OK With Waterboarding – The following appeared in the Republican blog, Red State:

It’s likely even Jesus would have OK’d water boarding if it would have saved his Mom. He would’ve done the same to save his Dad, or any one of His disciples. For that matter, He even died to save all humans.

U.S. Holds Journalist Without Charges in Iraq – The Obama administration harshly criticized Iran for its imprisonment of Roxana Saberi, the U.S.-Iranian journalist who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison before being freed two weeks ago. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Iran’s treatment of Saberi as “non-transparent, unpredictable and arbitrary.” Washington also has called upon North Korea to expedite the trial of two U.S. journalists being held on spying charges.

Yet the U.S. has routinely used the arbitrary powers it assumed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks to hold journalists without charge in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. Ibrahim Jassam, a cameraman and photographer for the Reuters news agency was arrested by U.S. Forces in Iraq in September. Jassam, 31, has been in U.S. custody ever since. His case is the latest of a dozen detentions the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has documented since 2001. No formal accusations have been made against Jassam, and an Iraqi court ordered in November that he be released for lack of evidence.

Land of the Safe and Home of the Cruel – Obama’s May 21 speech at the National Archives combined a general repudiation of the Bush-Cheney policies with a surprising concession to methods that the former vice president, Dick Cheney, tried to graft onto the Constitution. This approach the Constitution repels as surely as a healthy body rejects poison; for in the Cheney interpretation, the common-law right of prisoners to be charged with a crime and to have due process in challenging the accusation was abridged in cases specified by the executive. Cheney singled out for detention as “enemy combatants” persons suspected of being hard-core terrorists without there being sufficient identification to charge or sufficient evidence to convict them.

We may think ourselves a safe country, but we can hardly be the United States of 1776, of 1865, and of 1945 so long as we retain a power imported by Dick Cheney and his lawyers from the 17th century into the 21st — the power of government to imprison and keep in jail a person against whom nothing has been proved and nothing charged. It is a bondage as complete as slavery; and like slavery, it can last for life.

Cheney’s Speech Was Full of Lies and Distortions According to Former U.S. Senior Interrogator in Iraq – The former U.S. senior interrogator in Iraq dissects former Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech on National Security, point-by-point. In essence, harsh methods don’t work and are not needed. Valuable information was obtained from detainees by working smarter, not harsher.

Dick Cheney Urges Obama to Name Bitter Psycho to Bench (Humor) – Former Vice President Dick Cheney weighed in today on President Obama’s impending choice to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the President to name a bitter psycho to the bench.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Cheney said that the President’s choice to replace Justice Souter “should send a strong message to bitter psychos across the country that they will have a voice” on the nation’s highest court.

Mr. Cheney’s comments were widely interpreted as a sign that he himself was angling for a position on the Supreme Court, a charge he flatly designed.

“I have no designs on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Cheney said. “There are many other embittered psychotics out there who could do an excellent job.”

Mr. Cheney said that his own time was better spent “driving down the Republican Party’s approval rating to zero.”

Lack of Health Care Drove Terror Plotter to Get Money to Cover Brother’s Transplant – The lack of health care drove David Williams to plot an act of terror. “My insurance wasn’t good enough,” said Lord McWilliams, 20, who has a deadly liver disease. His brother, David Williams, wanted money “to speed up the process,” McWilliams said. “Medicaid only goes so far.” McWilliams said the FBI informant who lured his brother and three other hapless petty criminals into a plot to blow up synagogues and shoot down a plane promised enough money to take care of his transplant.

“[My brother] told me, ‘Don’t worry, when you go to the doctor, tell them you got money,'” McWilliams said. McWilliams, who has already had his spleen removed, said his brother told him he would have $20,000 for the operation. Their mother, Elizabeth McWilliams, said her older son had told her he would be able to give her a wad of cash Thursday, which was the day after the terrorist plot was to have been carried out.

Fox Sports Starts Their List of Star Female Athletes With a Horse – Fox Sports has compiled a list of women that can hold their own against men in the sports world — because everyone knows the real measure of a female athlete is how she competes against dudes. Fox starts their “Girl Power” list with Rachel Alexandra. Perhaps you’ve heard of her: She’s a horse.

Last weekend Rachel Alexandra became the first filly in 85 years to win Preakness Stakes. And if horses can do it, so can humans!

Which female athletes had the good fortune of an equine comparison? Well, there’s Katie Hnida, first woman to score in a NCAA football game, but she was entangled in a rape-allegation scandal, Fox notes. There’s Michelle Wie, but of course she faced “substantial criticism” when she only qualified for one of 14 PGA events. Legendary athletic phenomenon Babe Didrikson Zaharias is also mentioned, plus that one time she didn’t qualify for that one event.

See [in Fox Sports land], it’s important to remember that while these women were able to compete against men, they weren’t necessarily very good at it.

Conservative Commentator Says Oprah is Secretly Running the Obama White House – Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart told Glenn Beck on Friday that he thinks that Oprah Winfrey is the real power behind the Obama throne:

Breitbart: Well, this doesn’t surprise me. Does it surprise you? This is the Oprah Winfrey presidency. She was his biggest supporter, and I think that she’s been behind the scenes orchestrating this presidency as a media presidency, photo ops, giving billions of dollars of gifts away to people and to companies like General Electric, and until the mainstream media starts realizing —

Beck: Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that Barack Obama walks into a room and goes, “GE CEOs, look under your seat!”

Breitbart: I think that’s exactly what it is.

Beck: You’ve got a bailout. Is that what you’re suggesting?

Breitbart: That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. It is the Oprah Winfrey presidency.

Newt Gingrich Proves That Fearful People Do Stupid Things – It’s hilarious that Newt Gingrich perfectly encapsulates the overriding motivation for everything about the GOP: they are frightened little bunnies, petrified by the bogeyman coming to get them. And according to the Newt-ster, because that bogeyman is so vewwy scawwy, anything and everything you do in the name of making the bad man go away is fine, damn treaties, laws, and morals, much less effectiveness.

The thing that I think motivates Cheney, and I watched this firsthand after 9/11, is the shock of 9/11, the reality that his children and his grandchildren could die, that he has an obligation to America to take extra steps to keep us alive. And I think this was burned into him that day and the following day, and the realization we had been caught totally off-guard. Despite all the warnings of the ’90s, we have been caught totally off-guard. And so they did everything for seven and a half years to–and they have a very simple principle: If you’re in doubt, do what it takes to help America survive every time. … Let me just say, I think people should be afraid. I think the lesson of 1993, the first time they bombed the World Trade Center, was fear is probably appropriate. I think the lesson of Khobar Towers, where American servicemen were killed in Saudi Arabia, was fear is probably appropriate. I think the lesson of the two embassy bombings in east Africa was fear is probably appropriate. I think the lesson of the Cole being bombed in Yemen was fear is probably appropriate.

(The terrorists are in the fear business. Newt Gingrich, why are you helping the terrorists to succeed? You are proof that fearful people do stupid things. – JLV)

Coalition and Afghan Forces Caused 828 Afghan Civilian Deaths, Largely From Errant Air Strikes and Raids – Incidents where Afghan civilians are accidently killed by coalition forces are not uncommon in Afghanistan today and parallel the situation in Iraq where similar shootings were instrumental in turning popular sentiment against the coalition forces led by the United States. In Afghanistan, as it was in Iraq, when civilians die, international forces say that a suspicious vehicle approached a checkpoint or convoy and failed to heed calls as well as possibly warning shots to stop. After those standard procedures are done, an “escalation of force” takes place.

British Network of Cameras and Computers Automatically Tracks Cars Including Protestors – A national network of cameras and computers automatically logging car number plates will be in place within months. Thousands of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras are already operating on Britain’s roads. John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.

It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a “marker” on his car. That meant he was added to a “hotlist”. This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.

“I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?”

Regards,

Jim

Cheney’s Speech Contained Misstatements – In a recent speech, Dick Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that’s considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were “legal” and produced information that “prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.” Cheney quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a “deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country.”

In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information “was valuable in some instances” but that “there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

Here’s a rundown of the other “omissions, misstatements and exaggerations” Cheney apparently made:

• Cheney said Obama’s move to release Bush memos on torture was “flatly contrary” to national security. – Fact: National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair “strongly supported” Obama’s decision to release the memos and said “we do not need these techniques to keep America safe.”
• Cheney claimed that the Bush team “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.” – Fact: Osama Bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large. Moreover, the US diverted critical military resources from Afghanistan to Iraq, where al Qaeda was not in force until the US invaded.
• Cheney asserted there was no connection between Bush administration torture and detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. – Fact: The Senate Armed Services Committee found in December that Abu Ghraib abuses were linked to approval of Bush administration techniques.
• Cheney said “only detainees of the highest intelligence value” were subjected to torture. – Fact: Cheney ignored Abu Zubaydah.
• Cheney said “the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence.” – Fact: The Bush administration used bogus intelligence as a pretense for invading Iraq — including a forgery that purportedly linked Saddam Hussein to an attempt to purchase uranium from Niger.
• Cheney ignored the recently “suicided” al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri, who provided bogus intelligence about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda.
• Cheney said Obama selectively released documents on Bush detainee policies. – Fact: A decision to withhold documents Cheney requested for declassification was made by the CIA under a standing order from President George W. Bush.
• Cheney claimed that only “ruthless enemies of this country” were detained by US agents and sent to secret prisons and Guantanamo. – Fact: “A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.”

Fear of Prosecution Caused Cheney to Speak Out, Daughter Says – Elizabeth Cheney told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that her father decided to speak out after he learned there was a possibility of legal action.

Republican National Committee Uses Controversial ‘Daisy’ Ad to Target Obama – The Republican National Committee Friday unearthed one of the most controversial political ads in American history to take aim at President Obama’s decision to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay.

Called “Daisy,” The RNC’s new 30-second Web ad uses footage of the now-infamous 1964 Lyndon Johnson commercial by the same name that showed a young girl picking off the pedals of a flower as a nuclear explosion is heard in the background.

That ad, which only ran once but was widely criticized as being extreme, ends with the image of a mushroom crowd and Johnson declaring, “We must either love each other, or we must die.”

The New RNC ad splices the image of the girl with Obama’s earlier declaration suggesting that closing Guantanamo Bay is “easy.” This time the girl asks “To close it? To close it not?” as she picks off flower pedals.

Conservative Radio Host Gets Waterboarded, and Lasts Six Seconds Before Saying its Torture – Chicago radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller decided he’d get himself waterboarded to prove the technique wasn’t torture. It didn’t turn out that way. “Mancow,” in fact, lasted just six or seven seconds before crying foul.

“I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face…I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’… It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow told listeners. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

George W. Bush Did NOT Keep Us Safe – Here’s a few examples of how George W. Bush did NOT keep us safe:

• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, thousands of soldiers died in Iraq–a war we now know without question to have been waged as part of an ideological program, not out of necessity. Those thousands of soldiers each had parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, children, and hometowns dragged through the cruel stop-gap policies imposed on service men and women by George W. Bush.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were injured, only to return to the squalid conditions and cruel indifference of a veterans’ care medical system that fell through the cracks of America’s for-profit healthcare racket. The tragedy of our injured soldiers came to light during George W. Bush’s Presidency.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, the number of Americans living in abject fear for lack of health insurance reached the tens of millions. More Americans were subject to death and disease. As a result of this crisis of fear, a private medical relief agency initially set up to fly doctors to remote jungles in South America began flying relief into poor American communities.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history occurred.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, the tragic death of thousands occurred in New Orleans.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, the citizens of nearly all American foreign allies began to view the United States as a hostile threat to world peace, safety, and security as a result of (1) the preemptive invasion policies of Dick Cheney and (2) the torture-of-prisoners policies of Dick Cheney, turning some of those people toward terrorism.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, job security for working communities dropped, underemployment reached historic highs, and earned wages for worker output stagnated. People could not provide care for their families.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, corporations and fat-cats defrauded private citizens, retirement funds, and not-for-profit organizations out of billions of dollars.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, the United States impeded global cooperation to lower carbon emissions levels, thereby increasing the destructive potential of [climate change].
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, pet food produced in China was discovered as the cause of deaths for American dogs and cats contaminated by toxic melamine, resulting in a nationwide panic.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, ecoli contamination killed multiple people who had ate spinach, tomatoes, and peppers.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, elderly Americans panicked over shortages of flu vaccines.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency the largest gun massacre on a university campus occurred at Virginia Tech, resulting in the violent deaths of 5 faculty members and 27 students.
• During George W. Bush’s Presidency, the CIA at the bequest of Dick Cheney tortured prisoners using techniques in direct violation of U.S. and international law, dramatically increasing the likelihood that captured U.S. prisoners in the future will also be subject to torture.

And that is just to name a few, but you get the point. So, remind me again: How did George W. Bush’s policies keep us safe? Call me crazy, but I just do not see it.

Texas to Use Stimulus Funds to Repair the Governor’s Mansion After Governor Criticizes Stimulus Funds – While Gov. Rick Perry is criticizing Washington bailouts, state lawmakers are planning to use $11 million in federal stimulus money to help rebuild the badly burned Texas Governor’s Mansion. Approximately $10 million in state tax money will also be spent on a renovation, which is expected to cost about $20 million, officials said Thursday. Perry has railed against federal bailouts and what he called the free-spending, power-hungry ways of Washington. In January, he said Texas was endangered by Uncle Sam’s “audacity.”

Conservative University Bans Democratic Club – Liberty University — the largest evangelical university in the world — has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club. In their explanation, the university said they were “unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by” the school.

Liberty’s vice president of student affairs Mark Hine penned an email to the group’s chief, saying the club must immediately desist from using the university’s name, holding meetings on campus or advertising events — and that violations could, if frequent, result in expulsion.

“We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech,” Hine quipped when asked about the email on Thursday by the Lynchburg News and Advance. “We looked at each club and organization to determine where it stood and unfortunately this one kind of got in the sights of policy, if you will.”

Update: After being criticized for the ban, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. has now said the Democratic club can exist but cannot use the University’s name.

Regards,

Jim