Four things:

1) site upgrade will take place tonight and the site may be inaccessible for 2-3 hrs.

2) Tomorrow, I’ll be changing my registration to Independent. With the cave-in on FISA by the majority of Congressional Dems and by Obama, I no longer wish to be associated with a party I believe has succumbed to the impulse to behave like cowards instead of defending my Bill of Rights.

3) I remain a committed liberal and will vote for liberal candidates. I will leave my ballot blank where the choices range from lukewarm to full-stink bullshit.

4) If you don’t like my choice, spare us both any grief and go read someone you prefer. I will delete name-calling comments or flame them, depending on my own transient preferences. I don’t much like my choice either, but it seems to me to be the only alternative left. There is no political party in our country now that I believe represents the best interests of me, my family or my fellow citizens. (Being better than Bush and McCain is such a low bar to surpass that I refuse to buy into either-or voting for the lesser of two evils. In presidential races, that’s been my only choice for the past 20 years and I refuse to do it any more.

Symptoms have been spotted in Barack Obama. Of course, his strength, contrary to popular opinion, is not rooted in his oratory as much as it’s been in his capacity for organizing volunteers. Any competent political analyst understands the training and coordination of his supporters was the groundwork that enabled him to win numerous caucuses and upset a heavy favorite in the primaries.

So is his current strategy to continue to rely on that, on planning and internal polling? Or will he ever resume the other aspect that impressed voters: the capacity to demonstrate leadership on anything?

My impression is his internal polling indicates he’s likely to win in November simply because the economy sucks and will continue to suck. So why continue to display boldness or commit to anything that might be construed as ‘new’ or ‘different’ that his opponents could use post-election to say “he’s changed positions?” Better to shift before the election to the conservative status quo guy we’ve been seeing a lot of lately, isn’t it?

The problem with that is it mirrors the DLC strategy that worked - in a different time. It betrays the theme of some new vision for the country to aspire to beyond the one that sheep and wolves will sit around the campfire singing ‘Kumbaya’ in a new post-partisan era.

It offers all the appeal of leftover lukewarm mush. It demonstrates no leadership at all. It says “I’m not Bush” and nothing about what he actually is. Never mind that 75% of the country can hurdle that low bar of being more ethical and more responsible than Dubya.

He is demonstrating the defensive crouch that Democrats have utilized for the past twenty years. But in Obama’s case he’s trying to have it both ways now. He talks about offering change while trying to prove that he’s exactly like every other forgettable Democratic politician, ready to lead the polls, but not the country.

By adopting this new strategy, he’s doing far more than proving he’s not Bush or Cheney or McCain. He’s also proving he’s not FDR, not LBJ, not MLK, not RFK or JFK, nor even Reagan or Ike. He’s also repudiated Carter, which leaves only Clinton, Nixon and Truman and two of them left office with the lowest popularity ratings ever recorded.

Talk about low bars he’s willing to hurdle.

The bottom line? The reason the GOP meme - that Democrats are weak - works so well is because some Democrats actually ARE weak. Not all, of course, just the majority of the House and the Senate. And considering his performance in the past two weeks, it’s a perfectly fair question to ask: when did Barack ‘Wimp’ Obama get infected with Democratic loserism and who ate his balls?

As America ages, the GREED factor related to Health Care grows exponentially. Watered down services and inflated cost is squeezes every penny out of the US Taxpayer.

Health Care is no longer the realm of HEALTH and it no longer cares about anything but BIG BUSINESS bottom line. Pharmaceuticals and Hospital Corporations are the body politic pulling the strings of government agencies. The argument for medical industry under government control is oversight America can get that concept to work if they start. This is not the “Socialized Medicine” that corrupt Medical Businesses would like you to believe. Put a cap on the outrageous price fixing they have enjoyed for too long. Just ask yourself why patients have traveled to other countries to get affordable treatment. The Medical Industry has lost its way. The Corporate Owner of our US Government has victimized taxpayers. Their “Golden Goose”, the American Taxpayer, is dying. When it comes to basic health care, the US Taxpayer is out of luck. America’s Corrupt Medical Industry has marketed the fear of “Socialized Medicine” so well, that they have re-defined the whole concept into blasphemy. The current system is forcing patients into exile for life saving treatment. Medical tourism, whether it is Mexico, Canada or services on other continents, has become the only viable alternative for those having the luxury of buying a ticket. America can no longer brag about its superior medical system because it has lost its way. Corruption has saturated the medical system and made life too expensive to live it. Living a healthy life should not be a luxury, it is a necessity.

Medical tourism to earn $1.87 Billion a year by 2012

New Delhi: India is set to earn Rs.80 billion ($1.87 billion) a year in foreign exchange from medical tourism by 2012, according to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).

With easy visa facilities to overseas patients coupled with best emerging medical infrastructure facilities, India’s medical tourism can become a lead foreign exchange earner and the earnings will grow from the existing Rs.35 billion annually to Rs.80 billion a year by 2012, Assocham president Venugopal N. Dhoot said.

The study on Prospects of Medical Tourism for Higher Forex Earning was done under the supervision of the health committee of Assocham, headed by Sir Ganga Ram Hospital chairman B.K. Rao.

“The primary reasons as to why medical tourism would flourish in India include much lower medical treatment costs for various ailments, such as bone narrow transparent, bye-pass surgery, knee surgery and liver transplant as compared to western countries,” Dhoot said in a statement Monday.

“The cost of medical treatment is very high in the western countries, forcing patients from Africa, the Gulf and various other Asian countries to explore medical treatment in India,” he said.

He noted that the medical infrastructure in the country has geared up to provide them non-subsidized medical treatment at far lower costs.

Other factors boosting medical tourism include India’s strength in traditional treatment in homeopathy, naturopathy, ayurvedic and unani systems which are becoming very popular because they do not have side effects, said Dhoot.

He called for more allocation for the health sector which would lead to proliferation of new health facilities and centres of medical excellence, which in turn will finally be able to service overseas patients.

Indian pharmaceutical industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the Indian economy and has made rapid strides over the years. From being import dependent in the 1950s, the industry has achieved self-sufficiency and gained global recognition as a producer of low cost, high quality bulk drugs and formulations. Now India is ready to face the challenges of proving its efficiency as the preferred destination for global clinical trials.

Why is it so much cheaper to travel to other countries for medical treatments? Because they ship those same treatments to the USA so we can grease palms from CEOs to Politicians. That has become a costly affair. Fewer drugs and medical devices are home grown. The best you can hope for is “assembled in America”. We have assembled ourselves OUT OF LUCK by outsourcing our very lives. America has become a CAN’T DO SOCIETY. Must we hire immigrants to baby sit our sorry selves … must we gripe about what we have become by demonizing other options.

Now we find out he and Cindy are tax deadbeats?

Wow, just wow.

This has got to go down as the worst Presidential campaign by a major party since Herbert Hoover’s reelection motorcades were pelted with eggs and rotten fruit. McCain must know how he feels, and the hecklers will only get worse the longer he waits to definitively say George Bush is the Worst President Ever and that he really doesn’t like the guy or anything he did. Unless he does, and that may be impossible if not improbable, they might as well hang a sign over his headquarters that reads, “Abandon hope, all ye that enter here.”

Inept and feckless are descriptors that barely scratch the surface of what a joke the GOP has put up as their sacrificial lamb.

By the time it becomes obvious to the Republican Convention Delegates that they can’t possibly win with this guy, who do you think will be the lucky winner that get’s to take his place, starring as the candidate who will lose in the worst landslide in the history of landslides?

By the way, this might win the prize for the biggest “No Duh!” headline of the year: A Win by McCain Could Push a Split Court to Right. The villagers must be on vacation at the Washington Post, and left their idiot in charge. Dumb, just dumb.

Video here

I’ve been set free
and I’ve been bound

To the memories
of yesterday’s clouds

I’ve been set free
and I’ve been bound

And now I’m set free
I’m set free
I’m set free
to find a new illusion

I’ve been blinded but
Now I can see
What in the world
has happened to me

The prince of stories
who walk right by me

And now I’m set free
I’m set free

I’m set free to
find a new illusion

I’ve been set free
and I’ve been bound

Let me tell you people
what I found

I saw my head laughing
rolling on the ground

And now I’m set free
I’m set free

I’m set free to find a new illusion

Video here.

Here she comes
You better watch your step

She’s going to
break your heart in two

It’s true.

It’s not hard to
realize.
Just look into her
false-colored eyes

She’ll build you up
To just put you down

What a clown.

‘Cause everybody knows
The things she does to please.

She’s just a little tease.

See the way she walks.
Hear the way she talks.

You’re written in her book
You’re number thirty-seven
have a look.

She’s going to smile
to make you frown

What a clown.

Little boy, she’s
from the street
Before you start
you’re already beat

She’s going to play
you for a fool.

Yes, it’s true.

Cause everybody knows.
The things she does
to please.

She’s just a little tease

Video here.

Well, lived my life
and never stopped
to worry ’bout a thing

Opened up and shouted out
and never tried to sing

Wondering if I’d done wrong
Will this depression
last for long?

Won’t you tell me

Where have all
the good times gone?

Where have all
the good times gone?

Well, once we had an
easy ride and always
felt the same

Time was on our side
and I had everything to gain

Let it be like yesterday
Please let me have happy days

Won’t you tell me
Where have all
the good times gone?

Where have all the
good times gone?

Ma and Pa look back at
all the things they used to do
Didn’t have no money
and they always told the truth

Daddy didn’t have no toys
And mummy didn’t need no boys

Won’t you tell me
Where have all the good times gone?
Where have all the good times gone?

Well, yesterday was such
an easy game for you to play

But let’s face it things
are so much easier today

Guess you need
some bringing down

And get your feet
back on the ground

Won’t you tell me
Where have all the good times gone?

Where have all the good times gone?

Where have all the good times gone?

Despite having a postponement for the Independence Day recess giving hope to freedom loving bloggers, when the Congress gets back in session the Senate will be proceeding on the FISA revisions that gives President Bush exactly what he wants, no doubt capitulating to his demand that we won’t be safe and can’t fight terrorists unless the Telecommunication Giants are given immunity for spying on Americans illegally.

This move was in no small part deemed a procedural requirement by the Democratic Leadership, Mr. Ried and now you Mr. Obama (yes you … ), due to the necessity of getting other business done without more GOP obstructionism:

• like Senator Dodd’s housing bill (which will be vetoed) and,
• the new GI bill (which will be vetoed) and,
• attaching Gulf Coast and Midwest flood recovery funds to the usual off-budget War Supplemental (which will be vetoed) and,
• attaching an extension of unemployment benefits to the War Supplemental (which will still be vetoed) and,
• fixing Medicare so doctors don’t get a pay cut (which might just become law)

We give up on FISA’s repudiation of the Fourth Amendment, and in exchange the Republicans will still call us weak on terror and the GOP Congress Critters can blame President 23% for no GI Bill, no relief for flood victims, no more unemployment benefits and maybe see doctors throughout the land re-bill their Medicare patients for lost fees and up their rates to everyone else to make up the difference — giving what’s left of the Republicans in Congress (the few, the proud, the very afraid) a legitimate means of distancing themselves from Still POTUS Bush.

Feh! The Potomac Village is a place where only lies have any currency whatsoever. The powerful and their entourage trading in what can be foisted on rubes who have no clue and zero interest in their world.

You know, for all my frothing at the infuriating way Washington has been so completely ass-backwards about so much for so long, with what’s coming down the pike economically it really doesn’t matter what those pompous pontificators do, and it’s sadly clear that Cheney’s oil gambit in Iraq, the one Rupert Murdoch ventured would bring $20/barrel crude has failed, miserably.

A treat for me recently was to meet Max of Max and The Marginalized, a great rock band with a killer political instinct.

Here is their mission, in Max’s own words:

Welcome to Max and the Marginalized’s page/blog, etc. We are a political band in Los Angeles. We write and record a new song every week (as of this writing we’ve been doing this for 32 weeks straight), always about something that week which we find worthy of our protestations.

The idea is simple, really. How can bands claiming to want to make a difference write a song about, say, ending the war and then hold on to it to make a perfectly polished recording of it for their album which will come out in a year, secretly and shamefully hoping the war lasts until then so their song, marketed properly, will still be relevant?

We don’t have any interest in that. We write songs about things that are happening now, record them, and release them with the hopes that they can be a small part of a big conversation that leads to real progress.

All of our songs appear on The Huffington Post with little blogs accompanying them explaining what they are about. Those can be found right here. We are also on MySpace like every other band in the universe, but are trying to move the operation to the non-Murdoch world at our Facebook Page.

Here are partial lyrics to Max’s latest song, Waiting For The Blackout To End, based on the fact that CBS News has spent exactly 51 broadcast minutes so far this year on Iraq:
(click here to listen to an mp3 of the song)

It takes just a couple of minutes
It’s just about that long
To boil a pot of water
Or to play a 4 chord song
So if you think that there’s been improvement
Or it’s a mess that spirals on
It takes more than a couple a minutes
To ascertain what’s going on
When there’s 150,000 bodies
And 300,000 boots
And a billion some odd dollars
Going to high-priced substitutes
It don’t matter if they find it boring
Or if it makes your product flat
If you only do a couple of minutes
You owe much more than that

Check Max and the Marginalized out, support them, listen to the great music. They’re a rare treasure in today’s awful world.

SteveAudio.blogspot.com

Hi.

We’re going to have some down time tomorrow night, midnight to 1:00 am Sunday, for various geeky and technical reasons. I thought I’d let you know so no one gets unduly worried.

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD-8) — chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and my congressman — became the 208th co-sponsor of House Concurrent Resolution 362 on Tuesday. That resolution expresses

the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony, and for other purposes.

While that resolution is only a “sense of Congress” bill, asking — make that “demanding” — this president do things like this…

(3) initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program; …

(emphasis added) …seems to me like waving a red cape in front of a bull in a china shop.

Read the rest of this entry »

Greenwald has to dismantle Keith O’s argument along the path of ending the delusion that Obama is a magic man with a secret plan.

This is why the voting age should be raised to 25 and a sobriety test administered before one votes. Benevolent monarchies are just so yesterday.

Fortunately, Dodd and Feingold have kept the Constitution in the game for 11 more days. Anyone got a good YouTube ad idea that can shift the votes of 32 Democratic Senators in less than two weeks?

Image courtesy SiFu Tweety Fish and some other folks
who weren’t exactly thrilled with Hillary or Barack from the get go.

Didn’t ya kinda hope he wouldn’t break your heart until next year?

There was something inevitable about Barack Obama pissing off the netroots way before he he let anyone else down. We pay attention, so we’re the first to know when his liberal credentials fail our tests.

The primaries are over. We have now entered the battle for the low-information voter. The people who don’t or won’t even start paying attention until the conventions or later, seeking out the center, the easily swayed. Now to me, this is a tried-and-true strategy that is antiquated and misguided. More people than ever are engaged, paying attention and energized by eventuality that George Bush will no longer be entitled to the honorific, “Still” President.

Centrism and triangulation are strategies, but not ideologies. They do not provide a core set of beliefs, a structure upon which to develop a decision tree. A Centrist stands for . . . nothing. And save for the Villagers on the Potomac, they do not exist in real life.

First he lagged behind all the other candidates on proposing truly universal health care, waited to see what everyone else did on funding the war then followed Hillary’s lead after pressure from Edwards and Dodd and shouts from us rabble, took a stupid stand on dirty liquid coal, equivocated on public campaign funding, and I said nothing.

He told the ladies still stinging from Clinton’s narrow loss to get over it, and I said nothing.

I took the advice of friends and allies not to bash a fellow Democrat, and when it looked like he had it won about five months before Hillary would admit it, I criticized her for not going along with the program. I never thought he was our best candidate, but to me he was better than Senator Clinton and all her baggage. But he wasn’t the liberal champion I want and believe we all need.

He’s a parade chaser, judging (very well, I might add) which way the public is leaning and running out in front, but always leaving a safety line so he can walk it back. Smart politics, but hardly inspired leadership. In fact, it’s not leadership at all.

Yes, yes. He was against the war and wants us to believe that if he had been in the Senate, on the most highly charged vote in decades with historical significance we can still only guess at five years later, Barack Obama says, “Yes, you can believe” that he would have stood with the brave, principled minority and actually voted NO on the Iraq War.

Balderdash.  Not after we saw him leave Chris Dodd out to dry in his fight against immunity for the telecommunication giants. 

Folks, he ain’t all that special, JUST WAY BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE! If he was more than the projected hopes and fantasies of whatever we want him to be, he wouldn’t be so many things to so many people.  (John McCain so, so very much worse.  He’s nothing, so very little to so many.) 

I saw a lot that made me wince, but it never seems as blatantly (I hesitate to use the word) calculated — but close — as Hillary Clinton.  Knowing how important it is to rid this world of Republican Party rule, I said nothing.

Now the guy, my guy, the authentic liberal guy who pushed and pushed and pushed him to do the right things, say the right words and vote the right way (rather, the “left” way actually) wants me to send him money.

I got a fundraising letter from John Edwards on behalf of Barack Obama today — and I’m sending nothing.

I’m not a believer in the Unitary Executive Theory, but am 100% certain that intemperateness is the natural outcome of the Scanty Dick Hypothesis.

It’s unfortunately a corollary to the Undescended Parliamentary Testicles Reality.

This video is dedicated to Addington.

Just a ton of people have a whole heck of a lot to say about the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the D.C. handgun ban.

Frankly, I don’t have a dog in this hunt, or drive-by shooting.

Anybody else give a flying fig? Enough I mean, you know, to change your vote or something?

No, it’s not up for McCain’s ‘grabs’ because he’s proven he can’t be trusted.

With all the attention paid to the swiftboating of John Kerry, George Bush’s capacity to draw in Latino voters clearly cost Kerry New Mexico and Nevada and possibly Colorado, where he lost by 4.67%. Winning those three would have won him the presidency.

As I’ve tracked different demographics, a noticeable pro-Democratic shift began occurring with women voters in 2004 and by 2006, that became the driving force that propelled the shift to Democratic control of Congress. Election analysts noted in both elections that the missing sub-demographic was single women, who are traditionally more liberal than their married counterparts, but often don’t vote in large enough numbers. That is another important change this year as both Clinton and Obama did a stellar job motivating their participation. Those two groups are definitely going to make a big impact on the 2008 vote.

And it’s clear that Hillary Clinton is delivering on her party unity pledge, recognizing the national shift, and working to see it delivered to Obama.

In 2000, Bush took 5% more of the Latino vote than Dole did in 1996, but compared to Dole, Bush took 16% more in 2004, dropping Kerry’s Latino support to 56%. Obama has raised that back above 60% and more importantly, McCain’s flipflop of refusing to back his own immigration bill has driven his support down to woeful territory.

As much as I dislike Bush and his election guru Rove, both were aware that the fastest growing demographic in the country is Latino voters. And if the GOP fails to appeal to that group, it could find itself in the wilderness for a very long time. Based on its recent history, the GOP candidates can only handle this in two ways. Either appeal to those voters or keep them registering and voting in low percentages. Disenfranchisement has been the preferred GOP way and helps explain why the GOP base wants to impede the path to citizenship for legal and undocumented immigrants as long as it can.

The permalinks are bloggered at this site, but go read the June 26 post about registration efforts in PA and NJ then scroll down four more posts to the June 23rd entry about the polling of Latinos in the Obama/McCain contest. The organizing is going exceedingly well for Obama and the GOTV effort seen in the primaries will provide plenty mojo if it’s sustained in November.

And, as Al Giordano notes, crucial conference appearances will be occurring Saturday and again on July 13th. So amid the summer doldrums common in election years, these two events could precipitate key polling movement in several states. I’d advise you to track the polling in NM, NV, CO, WA, AZ and TX in the next three weeks, an possibly FL, NJ and NC, too. What Obama and McCain say at these conferences can make a huge impact and it’s critical that the corporate media’s reportage of their speeches and the crowd’s response be held to a high standard of truthiness sothat important demographic can accurately weigh in when the pollsters come calling.

I expect Obama will follow with an international jaunt that is likely to include Iraq, Afghanistan and a few countries chosen for maximum impact. If his travel itinerary takes Obama to Mexico or Central America, I’d expect him to address the rising socialist movements south of our border in pursuit of the Florida Cuban-American vote. How to achieve that without sounding like an outdated cold Warrior is quite the challenge.

And what can McCain counter with?

If he stays true to form, he’ll continue his pattern of reversals as he panders desperately to the hate-based Republican core. Both candidates face an important challenge here, but I’m predicting we’ll soon see the Straight Talk Express become the Hate Talk Excess as McCain seems bent on doing anything he can to secure a landslide for Obama.

I got a chance to catch the late night rerun of the House Subcommittee hearing with John Yoo and David Addington

Blue Texan dubbed Addington a “Major Dick.” Some correction is in order since we all know Addington works for a dick. Ergo, the proper honorific would of course be, “Lieutenant Dick.”

From now on, the Vice President, at least this one, will be forever know as a barnacle.

I came away from the hearing with one glimmer of hope for our society. Kieth Ellison (D-MN-05 is an impressive young man. Especially in light of the crap he had to put up with from these two professional dissemblers.

I hadn’t had the chance to see the freshman congressman in action yet, and in a hall full of old men used to debating the finer points of archaic legal precedents, he stood out as a bright firebrand. Sharp as a tack.

Ellison’s place in history was secure at the first Muslim to be seated in the House of Representatives, and the coup he pulled off by being sworn in on Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Koran made him the stuff of legend. But to watch him try and cut to the chase against Teh Stupid was a pleasure.

We who don’t live in Minnesota or obsessively watch CSPAN (who you lookin’ at?) only know him from the slurs by Reich-Wing Blogistan that he and his IslamoNazi army are in cahoots with B. Hussein O-Bambi to blow up the Rose Bowl or something. Happily I can now report that we should be disabused of this paranoia.

Not only the people of Minnesota’s 5th District, but all Americans should be proud to have someone with more than half a brain there in the halls of Congress, and Keith Ellison definitely fits that bill and then some. Folks, he sure seems to me like one of the good guys.