'Liberal' media caught lying for Bush again...

The Washington Post, regularly criticized by Republicans for their "liberal" bias, has been busted for misrepresenting their own poll data. The Post article says support for withrawl from Iraq is drastically less than what their own polling numbers (also published that day) show.

Boy, that "liberal" media. With those kinds of enemies, who needs friends?

General admits Bush illegally attacked Iraq.

The Downing Street Memos have shown that Bush had already set the course for war long before he ever presented any evidence, and before Congress authorized any action. Well, if that wasn't enough of a smoking gun to the illegality of the war, here's something that is.

"...in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started."

Bombing in the summer of 2002? That's before the inspectors even had a chance to start poking around. That's before Bush presented his first official lie about WMDs. That's way before Congress gave him even vague authority to use military force.

How can this possibly NOT be illegal? Bush was attacking without any authorization whatsoever. The purpose is no secret. Bush intended to provoke Saddam into defending himself, which would then be spun as an aggressive act and cause for war.

Let's impeach this criminal tyrant and preserve our democracy.

Oil prices--the doorway to major corporate handouts.

Oil prices have jumped to over $60 a barrel. Wow.

"Prices are striking fresh records amid continued fears that refineries will struggle to turn enough crude oil into heating fuel to meet fourth-quarter demand amid the onset of the northern hemisphere winter."

Oil corporations have always been extremely profitable. They've also been among those who pay the least in federal taxes. And we see what they've NOT been doing with their profits...reinvesting it into the energy industry.

They've been cooling their heels counting their cash while letting the refineries deteriorate more and more. Why? Didn't they know demand would only grow in the future? Hell, of COURSE they did. It's a crisis they NEED. And now they'll soon get. Soon America will be so sick of high gas prices that they'll cave in to any demand by the oil industry that purports to give them relief. And the industry is setting us up now by blaming high prices on limited refinery capability.

So.... the oil corporations will demand (1) massive tax "incentives" and (2) erasure of any and all regulations, so that this self-inflicted "crisis" can be averted with the immediate build-up of refineries. Helluva scam, but it will work.

Let the feasting begin...

Bush cooked the intelligence. He (em)broiled Iraq in war. He whipped up a half-baked Iraqi replacement government as an appetizer. And now, the REAL feasting will begin.

American and British oil corporations will be meeting this week to carve up the 200 billion turkey Bush has served them.

Freedom isn't free, y'know.

Conservatives have long argued that economic freedom and political freedom are intricately linked. There is a world of truth to this. So it's hard to reconcile how America is bringing freedom to Iraq when Bush is so clearly setting Iraq up as a colony for US/UK oil corporations. It's a sleazy Clintonian lie to say the oil belongs to Iraqis when foreigners hold the contracts.

What pisses me off the most, though, is that--regarding American corporations--this gift Bush is giving them is a total freebie. The big energy corporations rarely pay much in federal taxes and not a single share holder is over there carrying a rifle, but they will rake in trillions of dollars from Iraqi oil profits without ever footing the $200+ billion cost of this war.

Working Americans are paying for this, and all they're getting in return are dead relatives and high gas prices.

Evil bastards.

Proof that high medical costs are truly, truly, truly about greed.

It looks like Americans are going to have to learn a lot more about how big corporations actually work. Because our ignorance is allowing some major schemes to be pulled on us.

Case in point: the GOP agenda to eliminate our right to sue doctors for malpractice. Their excuse, as falsely championed by Bush in the last campaign, is that “frivolous” lawsuits are driving up the cost of health care. This is utterly false. And here’s why.

1) Studies are showing that states who limit malpractice suits have not seen any meaningful (if any) drop in costs.

2) The REAL REASON health care corporations keep raising their prices is because, get this, they need to make up the cash they keep losing on Wall Street.

Yep, these companies take their profits and invest them in other companies. But thanks to the recession, they’ve lost money. And instead of facing their own stockholders by fessing up to their bad luck/decisions, they try to extract those lost profits from the millions of Americans who damn well can’t afford to pay it.

So in a nutshell, that $300 price on the bottle of pills your insurance won’t pay for is NOT because of the high costs of research and development, but because of business decisions COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the manufacture and sale of medical products.

(The article includes a rebuttal that says higher costs are because of litigation costs. There might be some truth to that, but the companies are largely to blame for that also. Their lawyer costs would reduce significantly if they did not reject every claim out of hand and force injured people to drag them into court--just to get them to do what they should have done in the first place.)

We need serious oversight and regulation of this industry, and we need it now.

Will pot prove the conservative kettles black?

States' rights. Here's another chance for conservatives to prove they really believe the states should decide laws for themselves. And here's another time when they prove themselves two-faced. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the feds may arrest people who use medical marijuana even if their state has legalized it. There's virtually no chance the GOP is going to step up and say the states can decide for themselves if they want to allow medical marijuana prescribed as pain medication.

(My money says the biggest voice against legal medical marijuana is Big Pharma. Can't have customers, er, patients passing up Oxycontin for home-grown. Where's the money in that?)

So what's it gonna be, red-staters? States' rights or more "federal tyranny"? Here's your chance to speak up.

Bolivians sick of greedy corporations.

Bolivia is experiencing what can happen when key industries are left to greedy private corporations. Tens of thousands of Bolivians marched in the streets recently to demand their natural gas industry be nationalized. They were fed up with the greed of privatization and corporate exploitation.

Could South America be to free market capitalism what Poland was to the communist workers' paradise? The Soviets were infuriated that Poland became a hotbed of worker unrest and demands for reform. It was a black-eye for the USSR who preached that communism was the ideal economy for workers. Nowadays in South America, nations such as Bolivia, Argentina, and Venezuela have enacted socialist-style policies to rectify the problems caused by corporate profiteering at the expense of public need.

Hopefully some of that thinking will spill over into North America. The threat of nationalizing industries would scare the bejeezus out of our own corporations by letting them know we won't put up with their schemes and exploitations. And it just might get us some gas pump relief. We know they can charge less, because we know they're raking in record profits.

Koran abuse confirmed

Given that claims of Koran abuse were already old news, I was disgusted at how Newsweek quickly and publicly prostrated itself when a source flip-flopped his confirmation of a story. Well now we have another Pentagon confirmation of Koran abuse, this time in the form of a new internal report.

This time I'm ready. I got my remote and a bowl of popcorn, and now I'm just waiting for the riot footage to start rolling.

Egg on their faces: the GOP is stumbling towards a showdown over embryos.

Conservatives are wanting to have it both ways when it comes to ebryos.

On one hand, they are steadfastly against using embryos for stem cell research because it causes embryos to die. Not that conservatives really care about these surplus embryos, but they believe a victory here will help their anti-abortion agenda. If they can stop stem cell research based on killing embryos, they can also end abortion rights.

On the other hand, they wholeheartedly support in vitro fertilization even though it also causes embryos to die (those that don’t become babies, which is most of them). Conservative support of IVF is likely more about fighting bad press than anything else. It would be more convenient for their anti-abortion agenda to simply also be against IVF. But the Dem/libs would crucify them for being against creating “families.”

And the Republican party has taken on this agenda because it keeps the “religious” voters under their tent. Without them, the GOP is left with only their true constituents: the rich (who are too few to win a majority in any election). A good article on the building crisis can be found here.

What I find interesting is that for the GOP and conservatives to win, they must argue against the independence of the family and for Big Government control of family decisions. They must argue that the state has a “societal responsibility to protect life.”

That’s a pot hole the GOP would very much regret stepping into. It virtually cements the legitimacy of the government intervention on behalf of the citizenry. It legitimizes social programs, the New Deal and the Great Society, and changes Social Security from a subversive socialist scheme (as many hard-right pundits might say) to a legitimate state interest in promoting the general welfare of America.

If the Dems/libs are wise, and take a scorched Earth defensive approach, they can let the GOP/cons gain so much ground on this battle that by the time they realize the larger war is lost, they will have gone too far to turn back.

Judge offers church time instead of jail time.

I'm all for alternative sentences. Sometimes it's best to let the punishment fit the crime. But there are lines a judge can't cross, not and stay within the Constitution.

Here's one ACTIVIST JUDGE who offers criminals the choice of going to church instead of going to jail. If I ever get convicted, I hope I get such a sweetheart deal!

I'm heavily against this. But not just because it is a gross violation of the separation of church and state (why should church-goers get off so lightly?). Rather, because it completely lets guilty people get off scott-free without paying off any of their debt to society. This judge isn't just slapping their wrists, he's wearing thick velvet gloves while he does it.

He might as well just wag his finger and say "tsk, tsk."