Month: September 2009

In a training session for my home sustainability work one of my classmates brought up how people used to be resistant to putting solar panels on their roofs because they thought it spoiled the look of their houses.

But now, having something solar on the roof is a status symbol.  He called it “roof-bling”.
We recently “blinged” our roof, and just yesterday we got our new front-load energy- and water-efficient clothes washer. Our other big and very “public-statement” economizer is our Prius (bought used a year ago).

So, if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Show us your “bling”.

ADDING: Since I am a certified Home Sustainability Assessor, if you have any questions about making your home more energy and/or water efficient (or about how to decrease your “carbon footprint”), feel free to ask me. I got loads of tips, and all that technical stuff as well.

It’s a shocking thing that a good public option from a budgetary point of view will mean a more progressive bill that trims more profits from the private insurance corporations. But the so-called ‘moderate’ ‘centrist’ ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats who pretend to be budget hawks are against the good public option. It’s obvious that they are concern-trolling the cost of the health care reforms. Their solution is worse for the deficit. No one honest argues otherwise. Therefore, the ‘moderates’ are caught with a conundrum. To protect the private insurance corporations they have to oppose the ‘robust’ public options being proposed by progressives. They have to oppose the real budget saving legislation in favor of crap that won’t save shit. That they lie about this is just an indication of how addicted they are to corporate campaign contributions.

A pie fight between Gleen Greenwald and Joe Klein? That’s probably not a good idea on Klein’s part.

This editorial, which appeared in the Financial Times of London (via Jews sans frontieres) August 26, 2009, well describes the Israeli government’s current trajectory toward peace when it invoked the term, “cynical evasion.” Nothing could be more evident even though a historical precedence for this evasion was already set up by the Oslo Accords and the later Camp David/Taba farce conducted no less by the Clinton/Ross team then operating out of the White House (Clinton, it may be recalled, contrary to the settlement freeze then dictated by the Oslo Accords, permitted the colonization to continue resulting in a doubling of the rate and number of settlers in the West Bank).

A halt to the evasion is now being attempted by Obama, whose adversary, Netanyahu, seems to be winning the day, at least on the critical issue of the settlement freeze.

It is also hard to believe that someone like the anti-Zionist Mark Elf, who runs the British site, Jews sans frontieres, could admit, “I hadn’t realised the extent to which Oslo had worked to the benefit of zionism and to the detriment of the Palestinians.” Israeli propaganda is just that good. To say the least, all of Israel’s peace efforts have been to the detriment of the Palestinians, and Netanyahu’s current cynical evasions are no different.

Says the Financial Times editor,

Mr Obama has chosen as his battleground the Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land, all of them illegal under international law. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” the president said. Washington has called for a total freeze, including on the so-called “natural growth” that has enabled the settlements to expand exponentially. Mr Netanyahu, in London and due to see George Mitchell, the president’s special representative, wants to talk economics. This is cynical evasion.

Obama has since folded on the settlement freeze, permitting natural growth in terms of 1,200 housing units to continue for the next 9 months and allowing Israel a free hand in building in East Jerusalem with as many settlements it wishes.

In 1992-96, at the height of the peace process, Israel alone reaped a peace dividend, without having to conclude a peace. Diplomatic recognition of Israel doubled, from 85 to 161 countries, leading to doubled exports and a sixfold increase in foreign investment. During the same period, per capita income in the occupied territories fell by 37 per cent while the number of settlers increased by 50 per cent. Economic development deals in facts; Mr Netanyahu deals in cosmetics.

In his last administration, Mr Netanyahu turned the drive for peace into pure process: piling up unresolved disputes to be parked in “final status” negotiations he never intended to begin. Under US pressure he has changed tactics – but the aim is exactly the same.

It is important to remember that Mr Netanyahu has always argued that the Palestinians cannot expect a nation, only some sort of supra-municipal government. His utterance of the word “state” in the June 14 policy speech he made in reply to Mr Obama does not change this in any substantive way. Beyond the Jewish religious claim to the Israel of the Bible, Eretz Israel, Netanyahu believes Israeli security requires a buffer of occupied land – including most of the West Bank – to insulate it from its Arab neighbours. The whole Arab-Israeli equation is, for him, a zero sum game. That rules out land-for-peace: the United Nations Security Council-mandated approach ever since the 1967 Six Day War.

The US president could have been addressing Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who refuses to rein in colonisation of Palestinian land or push a two-state solution to the conflict. Yet, however much Mr Obama tries to change the conversation, in and on the Middle East, Mr Netanyahu keeps trying to change the subject.

As we recall, in the “Clean Break” document developed for Netanyahu in 1996 by proLikud Neocons, the land for peace formula of Oslo was defunct. “Peace for peace” was Netanyahu’s cry. Little did he know then how Oslo would play out to Likud’s advantage.

It should be evident to most by now that following the deceptions of Oslo and Camp David/Taba where we came to know about the “generous offer,” Netanyahu is only beginning the third act of this historical drama, well described in the Financial Times as a “cynical evasion.” It is more of the same.

Isn’t that the mantra of the Republicans and their supporters? We don’t need your stinking socialized medicine! We don’t want guvmint controlling our lives with its regulations and pointy headed bureaucrats! We want our freedoms! Except of course, when they do want something from the Feds, and they want it now, because the free market (in this case the mining industry) screwed them over big time. From the red, red state of Kansas:

Residents of Treece will be tested for lead poisoning next week, in response to concerns expressed to high-level federal officials who recently visited the contaminated southeast Kansas community. […]

A once-prosperous mining town, Treece has dwindled to about 100 people since the ore petered out in the early 1970s.

A century of mineral extraction left the community surrounded by hundreds of acres covered with mammoth piles of lead- and zinc-contaminated waste known as chat.

Miners tunneled beneath the city and the landscape is dotted with abandoned shafts, sinkholes and cave-ins that have filled with contaminated water.

Unable to sell their homes, residents have been calling for the federal government to buy them out so they can move away from the environmental hazards.

Yeah, buy out their homes. They’ll still probably vote for loons like deeply conservative Senator Pat Roberts who threatened to shut down the Senate this month, and who has been pushing the lies that the Democrat’s health care would lead to rationing, prevent you from seeing the doctor you want, and restrict the benefits you already get (presumably a reference to that socialized program the federal government runs called Medicare). A man who voted no on every bill to deal with global warming even though a new study strongly suggests his state will be among one of the hardest hit by climate change. A man who voted to exclude coal, oil and gas smokestacks from regulations on mercury emissions. A man rated 0% on environmental issues by the League of Conservation Voters. A member of the Republican majority in Congress which supported the Bush administration’s deep budget cuts in funding for the EPA.

Yet, guess who was the first in line to demand help from the Federal government in the form of the EPA for the town of Treece, and who will take all the credit for this lead testing program? Yep, that’s who, all right:

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, had been pressing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to visit Treece. She sent three top aides to assess the situation Aug. 20. […]

Roberts aide Sarah Little said the senator is pleased with the quick response to the residents’ request for environmental testing.

So remember Big Guvmint is the cause of all our problems. Except when it can help a Republican Senator look good to his constituents, especially if he can finagle a bailout from the Feds for residents of Treece, Kansas from the Obama administration.

“Socialism stifles creativity! Profit and the free market are why we are number one in drug research.”

You’ve heard it OR some variation of it from faux patriots waving faded flags, right?

Turns out it never was true and never will be unless we get our sciences back on track…

It is widely believed that the United States has eclipsed Europe in pharmaceutical research productivity. Some leading analysts claim that although fewer drugs have been discovered worldwide over the past decade, most are therapeutically important. Yet a comprehensive data set of all new chemical entities approved between 1982 and 2003 shows that the United States never overtook Europe in research productivity, and that Europe in fact is pulling ahead of U.S. productivity. Other large studies show that most new drugs add few if any clinical benefits over previously discovered drugs. I discuss ways in which Congress, employers, and insurers can increase the value of drugs and revitalize the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.

Fact is we never caught up to those socialists in Europe and – probably because they base decisions on science a little more than the average American – they are pulling out further ahead now… I am truly shocked to find out that what the right wing teabaggers/birthers/deathers have been screeching about is the exact opposite of reality. Not really surprised, either, are you?

And yes… I know it is not really all because of science… It is just one of many disasters in America, right now, that have collided to kill good research.

Chris Bowers thinks we have the votes to pass a public option if we are willing to do it as part of a budget reconciliation process. If you read Politico, you might not feel so certain. According to their reporters, Alex Isenstadt and Martin Kady, the House Leadership is back on its heels and are going to pursue a rather a dispiriting strategy for anyone who is currently uninsured.

The comeback for Democrats — if there is one — will begin in an all-important closed-door caucus meeting next week in the basement of the Capitol, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her top lieutenants will try to undo the damage of the August recess and convince their wobbly members that a vote for health care reform will not cost them their jobs in 2010.

Leaders say their strategy is to convince members that nothing is set in stone and that they are more than open to negotiations. And they’re engaging in a softer sell, prioritizing health insurance reforms while pitching the public option as something that’s way, way down the road.

More specifically:

[Majority Whip Jim] Clyburn, for his part, is advocating a “two step” approach in which the most widely supported health insurance reforms, like coverage for pre-existing conditions, go into effect immediately, while the public option is framed as a distant step — something that would go into effect in 2013, only after benchmarks and pilot programs are studied.

Clyburn has proposed setting up modest pilot programs for the public option in certain regions or states — an experimental way of seeing whether these health exchanges can actually work at the local level before they go nationwide.

That is some pretty weak-ass shit to be using as your upfront approach. It might make a good final compromise if that’s the best we can do, but the House ought to be able to bring a good bill to the Conference and make their concessions there, rather than at the beginning.

If Bowers is right, a bill could be rammed home that has a robust public option. It might not kick in until 2013, but it can get passed. I hope the House isn’t crafting a bill with the thought that there are Republicans in the Senate who will vote for cloture. I think that getting any GOP support for anything is highly unlikely.