Hot Coffee

Watched a documentary last night called "Hot Coffee." Remember the famous McDonald's lawsuit? Yeah, it's about that (and more). You think you know what happened. But watch the documentary--because, well, you don't.

So it's about tort reform -- more accurately, tort deform -- how corporate advertising tilts the political climate to the far Right, against the people's own best interests. In this case, the myth of overzealous lawsuits and exhorbitant jury damages awards is used successfully to remove yet another constitutional protection: the right to a jury's determination of proper compensatory damages when doctors, corporations, and others screw or injure us. In this case, the truth of the McDonald's suit was buried in a blizzard of misinformation, and used to persuade us to undo our own constitutional rights. Seems we'll believe any crap we're told if it makes someone appear to be "getting over" at our expense. Like we believe the McDonald's suit was frivolous--until we learn the truth of it.

That's not all. It's also about court packing, the second way Karl Rove and George W. Bush moved America closer to fascism, intentionally, deliberately, and dishonestly. With the help of that parliament of whores called the US Chamber of Commerce (the largest corporate lobbyist in the USA), corporate America wages war on honest federal judges to replace them with bought boys and girls who'll rule against the people in cases of criminal or even tort suits. This they do by side-stepping limits on direct campaign contributions to judges' re-election campaigns and using both donations aggregated by the "independent" Chamber, and (when that fails) specious criminal investigations of any judges who survive their election shenanigans. See Oliver Diaz for a case in point.

There's more. See "Hot Coffee" on HBO "on demand." It's worth your freedom.

This is Really Eerie: Palin is Just W in Drag!

Hey, wait a minute! I think we've seen this show before! Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in drag. Totally. Selfish, arrogant, likely sociopathic, abusive, nepotistic, cronyist, liar, evangelical, ignorant, greedy and a bully. No wonder the GOP loves her. But man, are they slow learners or what!

That's my take. I report, you decide. This from yet another heads-up article in today's NY Times:

In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

For God's sake, haven't we been there and done that?

Remember?

A gentle reminder.

Pretty Much

About the Bush Administration on the break-ins into private passport files at the Department of State, Katrina, and the Iraq Occupation: "They just don't do well at anticipating or management." (Hillary Mann Leverett, Frm Foreign Service Officer and former Bush Administration employee, on "Countdown with Keith Olberman," MSNBC, March 21, 2008)

P.S.: The State of George W.

And where was discussion of the economy? And acknowledgement that the people of this country are sick of this war, much less thirsting for endless war? And fidelity to the Founders? Oh please. That was erased by illegal surveillance, the unitary presidency, the diminution of Congress, the politicization of the Justice Department (and the IRS and the FCC), and the breach of separation of church and state, and the assault on our right of privacy . . . .

No. This was a colllection of historical revisions and a cynical shopping list of tasks that he could have achieved had he sincerely wished to achieve them and not their opposites.

One last comment. This was about George. It was not about the state of the union. This was designed to reframe the last seven years by trotting out platitudes of humanitarianism and constitutional reverence and fiscal responsibility.

And I'll bet 20% of the country loved it. There's good news there.

A Small Man's Rhetoric of Cynicism

I doubt there's often been a more cynical State of the Union message, if there's ever been one.

I say so because this President has had seven years in which to achieve a viable alternative fuels program, curbs on earmarks, significant support for public education, the renovation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a vigorous pursuit of Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, fair free trade, qualified judicial appointees, clean air and carbon-reduction coal-based technologies, a viable housing market, a vigorous and healthy economy.

Rather than actually do so, this President has instead achieved the opposite in all respects.

What we have learned from bitter experience over the past seven years is that we can expect the diametric opposite of what he says, of the titles of bills he submits, of his press conference promises.

"No Child Left Behind" achieves the opposite. A fair and just approach to foreign policy instead is a preference for war in order to plunder foreign resources and direct resulting revenues to corrupt cronies intent on one-party rule by plutocrats. Confronting "terror" means constructing a nursery and training academy for terrorists. Doing everything possible to prevent another attack on the homeland means doing as little as possible but that with much fanfare. It means ignoring our ports, our airlines, our trains, our subways, our chemical plants, our nuclear plants, our fuel depots, and the arteries of their transport. It means, instead, instituting an illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus more sinister than anything envisioned in 1984. Opposing "genocide in Sudan" is a throw-away line in a presidential address. Fights against global poverty are in fact restrictions on women's access to healthcare. "Programs to purchase crops from developing countries" are actually programs to direct US funds to Monsanto. The AIDS funds he's pledged so far have not been spent, yet tonight he asked for $30M more. It's a cruel, cruel lie.

Reforming veterans care comes a bit late, doesn't it, and so does enriching veterans' benefits. What has he done these 7.5 years except to undermine just these programs? To call on Congress to institute them now is beyond cynical. It is shameless. This President has no ethical moorings. Like a small boat without an anchor, he floats where he will, unaware of where he's been and careless of where he's going. That qualifies as a kind of madness.

Yet this President isn't delusional. He is a congenital liar. He isn't concerned with America. He is concerned with the wallets of a few families. He isn't concerned with your access to health care; why should he be? His is secured and he will call your efforts to achieve universal healthcare "socialized medicine."

As all this is a matter of record, tonight's exercise in mediocre oratory amounts to a cynical cooptation of key Democratic objectives in the midst of the biggest political dogfight in memorable history. It was designed to plump up the rhetorical toolkits of the Republicans seeking the presidency, and to put the Democrats between the rock of his rhetoric and the hard place of his promise to veto--at last--any bill that includes spending he finds useless.

That would be spending for anything that is unrelated to warmaking or corporate welfare.

Remarkable. Shameful. A fitting summary of this small man's miserable reign of piracy and treason.