Month: February 2011

It’s almost weird that so many on the left remain mystified about why corporate-owned cable news outlets simply refuse to cover any evidence of discontent on the left. We can hold the biggest rally in Washington of the decade (against the war, in favor of abortion rights, etc.) and it will be a footnote. Meanwhile, all evidence of discontent on the right is covered, and covered some more, and covered to death. But there’s a simple reason for this. Discontent on the right, no matter how racist, nativist, or religiously intolerant, no matter how baseless and fact-challenged, does not threaten the pocketbooks of rich people. It’s that simple. This also extends to foreign policy coverage. Right-wing death squads are not news. Any leftward drift in the politics of a resource-rich country is met with a flurry of demonization.

Deal with it people. This is why the blogosphere exists and deserves your support.

I am skeptical about the safety and necessity of many vaccines, especially in very young children, but I’d never oppose a vaccination because it removes the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted virus that can lead to cancer and, thereby, makes sexual activity less dangerous. But that’s the position a lot of conservatives take. They want to be able to scare their daughters out of engaging in sexual activity by telling them that could get human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes genital warts and cancer. The Virginia Senate just had to fight off an effort to kill their (not really) mandatory vaccination program for girls. But I think a lot of men would think twice if they realized that they run a real risk of getting killed by HPV, too.

What’s the leading cause of oral cancer? Smoking? Heavy drinking?

Actually, it’s oral sex.

Scientists say that 64 percent of cancers of the oral cavity, head, and neck in the U.S. are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which is commonly spread via oral sex, NPR reported. The more oral sex you have – and the more oral sex partners you have – the greater the risk of developing these potentially deadly cancers.

“An individual who has six or more lifetime partners – on whom they’ve performed oral sex – has an eightfold increase in risk compared to someone who has never performed oral sex, Ohio State University’s Dr. Maura Gillison, said at a recent scientific meeting, according to NPR.

What a great argument against having oral sex!! How can conservatives let such compelling data get destroyed by a successful vaccination program? Yes, unbelievably, this is still a fight in one legislature after another. We’re a nation of idiots. But maybe the news that men can get oral cancer from HPV will convince enough of them to stop trading a bad argument for the lives of their wives, daughters, and sisters.

The Irish General Election is over bar the counting in the three large 5 seater constituencies of Galway West, Laois/Offaly and Wicklow where recounts have been ordered because candidates are separated by a mere handful of votes. Depending on the number of further recounts requested, it could take another couple of days before these results are finalised. These constituencies are devilishly difficult to call (more anon) but my best guess of the final outcome is as follows:

So what are the main conclusions we can draw from the results table above?

The Fianna Fail vote has imploded from 42 to 17%, and its seat numbers have fallen even more dramatically from 77 to 20.  This greater fall in seat numbers was for three main reasons:

1. Fianna Fail has lost the slight seat bonus which larger parties typically get from the Irish Single Transferable Vote multi seat constituency system.
2. This has been an “anybody but Fianna Fail” election and even Sinn Fein (traditionally the most transfer toxic party) has gotten a higher proportion of lower preference votes which typically determine the final distribution of seats in a constituency.
3. Fianna Fail split its first preference vote between too many candidates who then did not transfer to the remaining FF candidate in sufficient numbers on elimination.  This is because many of those who did vote for an FF candidate did so on a purely personal or local loyalty basis, and then didn’t give their second and third preferences to other FF candidates on the ballot.  When their favoured candidate was eliminated, that vote was then lost to FF, and either became non-transferable or transferred to another party/candidate.

Fine Gael did well despite getting slightly less first preferences than indicated by the last opinion and exit polls. Many have interpreted that slight decline as a sign that some of its potential supporters were unsure about the prospect of a single party Fine Gael Government which was being very much hyped by the Independent group of newspapers.  It got an enormous seat bonus for precisely the opposite reasons to what exacerbated FF’s decline: It was by far the largest party, got the largest number of lower preference votes, and managed that vote very effectively by having precisely the right number of candidates in most constituencies and who transferred well to each other on elimination (or their surplus on election).  I will illustrate these points with respect to a specific constituency in a later diary.

Labour almost doubled its vote and seats and also did well on the transfer of lower preference votes. Sinn Fein more than tripled its seats on a mere 3% increase in votes because it lost its transfer toxicity to Fianna Fail and also reached a critical mass of support in many constituencies.  The Greens, conversely, lost the critical mass required to retain a seat although a couple of their more prominent candidates almost managed to buck the national trend.

The results were broadly consistent with the opinion polls and the exit poll issued in the days and weeks coming up to the election.

Comparing the results with my prediction of last Tuesday yields the following comparison:

The predictions are quite accurate but underestimated the degree to which Fianna Fail would damage its seat return through an inability to attract lower preference votes and running too many candidates. Sinn Fein’s improved ability to attract lower preference votes meant that it dramatically improved its return of seats.

Independents also did remarkably well and their 19 seats include 5 for the hard left United Left Alliance which previously had no seats. The preponderance of left wing and ex-Fianna Fail members amongst the independents may have been a significant factor in persuading Enda Kenny, Leader of Fine Gael, to pursue the option of a Fine Gael Labour coalition as opposed to a minority Fine Gael Government with independent support.

As I wrote in my last diary, 75 seats was the absolute minimum that might make such an option feasible but it would hardly represent the stable option that many voters voted for.  The exit poll, in particular, showed the Fine Gael Labour option to be the most preferred option for the next Government.  Some Labour leaders have shown an awareness that leading the opposition would be in the party’s on best interest but claim to be determined to join a coalition government “in the National Interest”.

It is remarkable the degree to which Labour leaders are prepared to subjugate their party’s best interests to the national interest and I doubt the nation will reward them for it at the next election.  Of course any suggestion that labour leaders are motivated by the “Mercs and Perks” of office would be entirely scurrilous.

For those interested in following the remaining counts or looking at how the transfer patterns worked out in each constituency, this RTE site gives an excellent presentation of the detailed counts. My summary table of constituency results (including my prediction for the three remaining constituencies to be declared) is below.

Sinn Fein may pick up another seat in Wicklow (at the expense of independents or Labour) and Labour is still in with a chance of a seat in Laois Offaly, probably at the expense of Fianna Fail or Sinn Fein.

The Republicans wanted to cut $4 billion from the budget in any deal they made to keep the government open for two more weeks. The Democrats wanted a longer extension without cuts. The compromise is that $4 billion will be cut and the extension will be for only two weeks, but the cuts will come entirely from line items that the Obama administration has already identified and approved for elimination.

This pushes back the new potential government shutdown date to March 18th. The upside is that programs that the Democrats value were protected, but the downside is that the Dems now have that much less to give away in the next negotiation.

One significant part of the cuts comes from a $2.7 billion reduction in earmarks. The deal allows both sides to claim a victory of sorts, which is the basis for a decent compromise, but it doesn’t solve anything. In two weeks, we’ll probably be right back where we started, trying to pass another two week extension.

Death Panels by any other name must smell sweeter when the Republicans are in charge. Just ask Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels:

Mitch Daniels edged into the debate over rationing health care Friday, saying there will “never be enough money” for every American to have access to all modern life-saving technology. “We all want to live forever, we want everything done for us to live forever,” the Indiana governor told a small group of health reporters.

Of course there will never be enough money for health care when tax hikes for the rich and corporate tax loopholes that allow most corporations to avoid paying any income taxes are off the table. There will never be enough money for health care when private for profit health insurance companies, which operate much more inefficiently than universal health care coverage in other countries, are already rationing health care on the basis of what people can afford.

“In America, we strictly ration health care. We’ve done it for years,” says Dr. Arthur Kellermann, professor of emergency medicine and associate dean for health policy at Emory University School of Medicine. “But in contrast to other wealthy countries, we don’t ration medical care on the basis of need or anticipated benefit. In this country, we mainly ration on the ability to pay. And that is especially evident when you examine the plight of the uninsured in the United States.”

The same health care system costing us more money in health care costs than any other developed nation because it is so inefficient, even after health care reform. The same crappy health care system that would improve immensely and cost us billions of dollars less if the United States adopted a single payer system or other form of universal health care.

According to U.S. Congress’ General Accounting Office, administrative savings from a single payer reform would total about 10% of overall health spending. These administrative savings, about $100 billion annually, are enough to cover all of the uninsured, and virtually eliminate co-payments, deductibles and exclusions for those who now have inadequate plans – without any increase in total health spending.

The same lousy US health care system that could provide better care and outcomes if private companies were not involved in “managing our health care system” as they are today.

Insurers are gutting mental health benefits, denying needed care, cutting payment rates, and insisting on the cheapest – and often not the best – form of therapy.

HMOs have sought to profit from Medicare and Medicaid contracts by providing substandard care, and even perpetrating massive fraud. The largest Medicare HMO, IMC in Florida, induced thousands of the elderly to sign over their Medicare eligibility and then absconded with $200 million in federal funds. Nationwide, Medicare HMOs provide strikingly substandard homecare and rehabilitation to the disabled elderly. Tennessee Medicaid HMOs have failed to pay doctors and hospitals for care. […]

HMO payment incentives increasingly pressure primary care physicians to avoid specialty consultations and diagnostic tests. In this coercive climate, errors of judgment will inevitably occur, denying patients needed specialty care, while specialists are idle. In some areas of the nation (eg. New York City and California) market imperatives have led to growing unemployment of physicians, while huge numbers of patients don’t get adequate care. […]

Reasonable people have known for years that a single payer or other universal health care plan would be cheaper, fairer and more economically sustainable. The developed nations with a lower infant mortality rate than the United States all employ some form of a universal health care plan. People in those countries tend to live longer</a. than those of us in the United States.

However, for some reason, the benefits of universal health care are not apparent to Republicans like Mitch Daniels. This is the same Mitch Daniels who ended the collective bargaining rights of Indiana’s public employees by fiat in 2005 because he who believed we need to privatize most government functions (after all, that worked out so well for us in Iraq and Afghanistan where fraud and abuse by private companies hired by our government was rampant). Many of Daniel’s privatization schemes failed miserably, like this one.

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced Thursday that the state will cancel its $1.34 billion contract with IBM to automate the application process for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits. […]

Clients, their legislators and advocates had complained that the new modernization system, which took away in-person caseworkers, loses documents, misses telephone appointments and has lengthy hold times.

Daniels said he canceled the contract because IBM did not make satisfactory progress to improve services as required by a corrective action plan.

Gee, what a surprise.

However that hasn’t stopped Gov. Daniels from arguing for more privatization of government services. Or for suggesting we austerity measures that would cut Medicare and Social Security benefits and raise the age for eligibility for those benefits. No wonder he’s being considered as a potential GOP presidential contender in 2010. He clearly prefers to promote the welfare of corporate persons over the welfare of real, living, breathing, not rolling in dough persons.

Brooklyn Dodger legend Duke Snider died yesterday. In the 1950’s the Yankees had Mickey Mantle, the Giants had Willie Mays, and the Dodgers had the Duke. They all played centerfield in New York City and one or two of them were in every World Series from 1949-1957. People fiercely debated which centerfielder was the best, and while everyone now agrees that Mays had the best career, and that Mantle was one of the greatest players of all time, the Duke had an argument to make:

Playing for 18 seasons, Snider had 407 home runs and 2,116 hits. He batted at least .300 seven times, had a lifetime batting average of .295 and was generally among the league leaders in runs batted in and runs…

…A swift outfielder, a slick fielder and a No. 3 hitter with reliable power in the clutch, he hit 40 or more home runs in five consecutive seasons, something neither Mays nor Mantle ever achieved, and a feat matched by only two other National Leaguers: Ralph Kiner and Barry Bonds.

Of course, Barry Bonds was juiced out of his mind, so we should discount his achievement. A lot of Dodger fans are mourning their loss today. All baseball fans should tip their cap to one of the most outstanding ballplayers in the history of the game.

Speaking of which, I love everything about Derek Jeter. I love how he plays the game and I love how he conducts himself with the media, I admire how he excelled in the steroids era without taking steroids, and I love how he’s never embarrassed the Yankee organization or its fan base. But I gotta say that his house is too damn big for a single guy. Since it’s in the Tampa area, at least he doesn’t have to heat it, but I wonder what it costs to air condition. Seriously, WTF is he thinking?

In other news, there was some union solidarity at The Oscars last night.

At the Academy Awards tonight, best cinematography winner Wally Pfister made a point during his acceptance speech of thanking his union crew on “Inception.”

Backstage he went further, expressing shock at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal, which would limit union’s collective bargaining powers. Opponents of the plan have been protesting at the state capitol for 21 days.

“I think that what is going on in Wisconsin is kind of madness right now,” Pfister says. “I have been a union member for 30 years and what the union has given to me is security for my family. They have given me health care in a country that doesn’t provide health care and I think unions are a very important part of the middle class in America all we are trying to do is get a decent wage and have medical care.

I haven’t seen any of the movies that were nominated, so I have no opinion about the winners. I thought Natalie Portman looked beautiful as she graciously accepted her award. Maybe I’ll go see her film.

There was an interesting debate at the J Street conference, as David Saperstein opened the proceedings by “chastising the group for opposing the recent US veto of a UN resolution condemning Israel settlements.” The key graf:

He noted that so many Jews, on the Left as well as the Right, so distrust the UN on Israel that supporting a resolution is seen as supporting the UN’s stance on the Jewish state.

“You know that the vast majority of the members of Congress that you support and support you while criticizing Israel’s settlement policy cannot support UN condemnation, and you will put them all in a very difficult position, driving some to feel they have to choose between remaining with J Street,” Saperstein said.

Good advice? Maybe. But here’s the response:

J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami, who followed Saperstein on stage, thanked Saperstein for his “inspiring words,” as well “for the challenge” he laid down for the organization.

Ben-Ami told The Jerusalem Post after Saturday night’s event that the organization faces the disadvantage of alienating supporters on controversial decisions, but that “the upside is that J Street stands up for what it believes and maintains the connection to the people who are part of J Street.”

What news are you looking at today?

Good old hydrofracking. You know about it right? It’s the method to produce natural gas by fracturing rock formations with millions of gallons of water and toxic chemicals. It’s been contaminating groundwater in the Western US for many years and now it is being pursued with a vengeance in the East, particularity with respect to the Marcellus Shale formation that extends across Pennsylvania and New York.

Everyone in the know has warned us for years that hydrofracking was highly dangerous to sources of groundwater used for human consumption. But only now are we being told how much worse is that contamination of our water supplies. So bad it will make you ill after you read this investigative report from the NY Times:

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

In short, if your source of drinking water is a water plant that receives treated waste water from hydrofracking operations, your health and the health of your children and your neighbors and everyone else you know is at serious risk, a risk far greater than previously acknowledged by the oil and gas industry and federal regulators.

The Industry has known of these problems for many years, as has the EPA, as the documents shown to the NY Times reporters demonstrate. Yet neither the Industry nor the EPA has acted on those reports. Instead, both have turned a blind eye to the fact that waste water from hydrofracking is hazardous to your health. Indeed, since 2006, beginning with the Bush administration, the EPA told hydrofracking operators in Pennsaylvania that they did not need to test the the waste water that was released for radioactivity.

Astonishing, but true. Your government, politicians and the Oil and Gas Industry collaborated in a conspiracy of silence regarding the safety of using hydrofracking techniques to produce natural gas. As one alarmed expert stated:

“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.”

The risks are particularly severe in Pennsylvania, which has seen a sharp increase in drilling, with roughly 71,000 active gas wells, up from about 36,000 in 2000. The level of radioactivity in the wastewater has sometimes been hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water.

And as the Times report notes, waste water treatment plants that receive this tainted water are not capable of removing such high levels of toxic radioactive elements. Waste treatment plant operators openly admit that they cannot remove enough of these radioactive elements to meet the federal standards before the treated water is dumped into reservoirs, rivers and streams which provide the primary sources of drinking water for millions of people across the country. Water that men, women, children and even infants are drinking as we speak. In Pennsylvania alone:

¶More than 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater was produced by Pennsylvania wells over the past three years, far more than has been previously disclosed. Most of this water — enough to cover Manhattan in three inches — was sent to treatment plants not equipped to remove many of the toxic materials in drilling waste.

¶At least 12 sewage treatment plants in three states accepted gas industry wastewater and discharged waste that was only partly treated into rivers, lakes and streams.

¶Of more than 179 wells producing wastewater with high levels of radiation, at least 116 reported levels of radium or other radioactive materials 100 times as high as the levels set by federal drinking-water standards. At least 15 wells produced wastewater carrying more than 1,000 times the amount of radioactive elements considered acceptable.

At least 32 states permit the use of hydrofracking to extract natural gas. The toxicity of groundwater found in those states is alarming.

Fracking, as the practice is commonly called, is a means of extracting natural gas by pressure-drilling a mix of water, sand and chemicals more than a mile vertically and horizontally into the earth. The sand and chemicals break up the dense rock to release methane, the compound comprising natural gas, which is pumped back up along with the fracking liquid, now infused not only with the chemical additives but heavy metals and radioactive material as well. The problem is that these materials are leaching into our water supplies, sickening people, vegetation and animals.

And Big Oil is pressuring more and more states to allow the process to be employed, including my state of New York. Greed apparently knows no moral limits. The industry and government officials know the dangers posed to our nation’s water supplies, yet in their eagerness to turn a buck (or allow the oil and gas companies to buy key political figures with campaign contributions) they are putting the lives of millions of people at risk.

In Pennsylvania, these treatment plants discharged waste into some of the state’s major river basins. Greater amounts of the wastewater went to the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to more than 800,000 people in the western part of the state, including Pittsburgh, and to the Susquehanna River, which feeds into Chesapeake Bay and provides drinking water to more than six million people, including some in Harrisburg and Baltimore.

Lower amounts have been discharged into the Delaware River, which provides drinking water for more than 15 million people in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania. […]

“Hydrofracking impacts associated with health problems as well as widespread air and water contamination have been reported in at least a dozen states,” said Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, a business in Ithaca, N.Y., that compiles data on gas drilling. […]

There were more than 493,000 active natural-gas wells in the United States in 2009, almost double the number in 1990. Around 90 percent have used hydrofracking to get more gas flowing, according to the drilling industry.

Gas has seeped into underground drinking-water supplies in at least five states, including Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia, and residents blamed natural-gas drilling.

Aside from the obvious risk of radiation poisoning, water contaminated with radioactive elements is highly carcinogenic. And there is no tax or cost imposed on Big Oil to prevent or re-mediate the problems caused by hydrofracking or pay for the future medical costs of people who are now unwittingly drinking this toxic brew because the hands of the EPA and local state environmental agencies have been tied by bought and paid for politicians who support hydrofracking. And groundwater contamination is not the only concern. Respiratory illness such as asthma related to air polution from hydrofracking is also a great problem for people who live near these wells:

In Texas, which now has about 93,000 natural-gas wells, up from around 58,000 a dozen years ago, a hospital system in six counties with some of the heaviest drilling said in 2010 that it found a 25 percent asthma rate for young children, more than three times the state rate of about 7 percent.

The desire to make profits is amoral at best. However, deliberately covering up the dangers to the health and lives of million of Americans in order to generate profits is immoral, and would, in any just society, be prosecuted as a crime.

That crime would be attempted premeditated murder. These industry executives know that statistically a certain percentage of people who drink this contaminated water will contract diseases, including cancer, that will kill them. Yet they intentionally persist in pushing the use of fracking. Yet no one will prosecute them when people start to die from cancers and other illnesses related to the toxic waste products of hydrofracking.

Instead, they will likely be given government subsidies and tax breaks to do ever more damage and create ever more harm to the people of the United States.

Someone needs to volunteer to edit Kathryn Lopez’s writing before she publishes it on the interwebs. She asks why the Republicans are waging a war on contraception and then says that they aren’t really doing that. Then she says she wants to turn back the clock to before women had the pill, but then she says that we obviously can’t turn back the clock. Here’s the meat of what she’s trying to say to us:

The spending fight over Planned Parenthood in Congress is about a number of things. It’s primarily about good stewardship, as so much of the spending debate is. But beyond legislation, beyond anything Congress can or should do, it is a call to arms for a new sexual revolution. It’s about wanting more for ourselves and for those whom we love. It’s about ending the surrender to a contraceptive mentality that treats human sexuality as just another commercial transaction.

Who knows where to even begin with this addled thinking? The defunding of Planned Parenthood is “primarily” about good stewardship? Or is it “primarily” a calls to arms? It is about contraception or abortion, or both? She wants the government to end a “contraceptive mentality” through the social engineering of not funding contraceptives? How will people get the message?

Has it ever occurred to Ms. Lopez that families can’t get by on a single income anymore? Is she completely oblivious to the fact that working women need to have control over when they have children? Is sex between husband and wife a “contractual transaction”? How about between consenting adults? Who is getting paid?

And she gets paid to write this stuff.

What is with this strange longing for a time when women’s destinies were determined by factors that were barely in their control, if at all?

Come, come, Ms. Lopez, elucidate your thoughts.

Scott Walker got punked big time by Buffalo journalist Ian Murphy recently. I’m sure that you have heard about it. Murphy claimed to be one of the right-wing financier Koch brothers (Pronounced “coke”…y’can’t make this stuff up.) and recorded the call.

But…the media has almost universally labelled this labelled this a “prank” call. Dig deeper into it and hear the real deal.

I got yer “prank.”

Right here!!!

Read on for more.
I wonder how the hypnomedia will try to spin the first contemporary U.S. domestic protest shootings. A “prank?” I wouldn’t put it past them. They blew it when Kent State happened, but they were so much less competent at the time. Now? The media is a massive wall of disinfo. Massive and almost seamless. Of the several hundred TV stations that I receive via Direct TV only one (Link TV) gives even a hint of what’s really up here, and it is very small and basically unwatched channel.

So far? Very peaceful.

As Madison Police spokesman Joe DeSpain stated:

This is one of the largest sustained protests we have seen in Madison since the Vietnam War. And to my knowledge there were absolutely no problems.

‘Muricans are so nice. So peaceful! So well-fed!!!

We’ll find out…bet on it. Violence will happen eventually as the protests grow here. If the protesters don’t get unruly enough? Why…that can always be arranged. Governor Scott Walker’s own words show the direction that such action can take.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz sent Gov. Scott Walker a letter Friday, demanding an explanation to comments Walker made during a prank call that the governor thought was with billionaire donor David Koch.
Ian Murphy, a reporter in Buffalo, called Walker pretending to be Koch and recorded the call. In the call, Murphy offers to help by “planting some troublemakers” among the protesters.

Walker responded: “We thought about that,” and added, “My only fear would be if there was a ruckus caused, is that that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor’s got to settle to avoid all these problems.”

Cieslewicz says he was “dumbfounded” when he heard the recording (here andhere). “I have a hard time getting my head around it,” he said. “I’ve got some responsibility to keep people safe in our community. And I’ve been really impressed with how police officers have conducted themselves and how the protestors have conducted themselves.”

On the same day the call was released, Cieslewicz referred to the governor’s comments as “very upsetting.” On Thursday morning, the mayor published a blog post offering a more detailed response, asking, “”Really, Governor, you thought about that? The Governor of Wisconsin actually thought about planting people in the crowds who might turn these peaceful protests into something ugly?”

Now, in a new letter (PDF) released Friday, Cieslewicz asks Walker to explain who made the suggestion, what was his immediate response, if he took any steps in that direction, and why he didn’t reject the suggestion on moral grounds, rather than political ones.

Cieslewicz says Walker doesn’t need to respond to him directly but that “has to respond to the people of Wisconsin. It’s not my place to be a moral inquisitor. But he owes a much bigger explanation to the people.”

He adds that Walker’s response in subsequent press conferences about the call disturb him just as much as the call itself. “He’s really defended this in his press conferences. He actually defended it.”

The mayor said he didn’t know how far he’d push his grievance over the phone call. He said he’d give the governor a few days to respond. “If there is no response, perhaps there’s some government accountability board action that might be taken, I don’t know.”

The fact that this recorded…and widely distributed…conversation has not resulted in front page news from the hypnomedia along with calls for Walker’s resignation or impeachment is evidence enough that the U.S. has already descended so far into the morass of an Abu Ghraib-like “security” system that it will never return.

Without a doubt some gangster security company already has its plans drawn up and stored in a nice office somewhere close to Langley, VA.

Bet on it.

I give it less than a year. Maybe sooner if the Middle Eastern revolts result in a true gas crisis.

Watch.

AG

Well, we now know what would be happening if John McCain (or, most likely, Al Gore) had been elected:

Two senators urged the Obama administration to give “tangible” support to the opposition in Libya in terms of recognizing the opposition as the legitimate government, arming the opposition and establishing a no-fly zone over the North African country.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning from Egypt, as they’ve been on a regional tour over the Presidents Day weeklong recess.

It’s always our job. It’s always our responsibility. Maybe Obama will be different.