Play it again, Pete

Moments that stir our senses never leave our memories. One such memory for me was a moment many years ago.

As the song from “Phantom of the Opera,” appropriately “The Music of the Night,” describes it, it was a moment when “silently the senses abandon their defenses.”

I was sitting at the bar in the Bateau Lounge on Bourbon Street. A man with a goatee sat in a chair atop the bar. From his clarinet came one of the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard, and it had nothing to do with Teacher’s on the rocks.

“Just a closer walk with thee ...”

I share with you the following poignant passage as I listen to Douglas Brinkley’s “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”

“Saventy-five-year-old Pete Fountain, the legendary clarinetist, tried to stay positive. He was safe, but his $1.5 million Bay St. Louis (Miss.) house was gutted, and his most treasured possessions, which documented his illustrious jazz career, were lost forever.

“Correspondence with Frank Sinatra, gold albums, signed pictures of himself with presidents, Louis Armstrong memorabilia. Losing the gold record of his signature song, ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee,’ was a truly personal blow. Fountain’s vintage gun collection was also gone. After Katrina, it all came under the heading of one word: debris.

“Fortunately, Fountain had evacuated with his family to Hammond, Louisiana, 75 miles west. ‘Katrina really got me,’ he told the Associated Press, ‘but I have two of my best clarinets, so I’m OK.’

“That’s what Fountain told the press after Katrina. He had that Mississippi Gulf Coast male mentality that no matter what your age you don’t complain. His post-Katrina sadness, though, was acute. For 46 years Fountain had participated in New Orleans’ Mardi Gras parades. His krewe was called ‘Half-Fast Marching Club’ and was a huge tourist draw, parading down St. Charles Avenue while Fountain played his clarinet, a modern-day Pied Piper.

“When February 2006 rolled around, however, Fountain stayed at his rented home in Hammond, Louisiana, refusing to participate in Mardi Gras. His heart wasn’t in it. ‘I think maybe it was just depression about all the stuff that happened,’ he said, ‘all the things we lost, all the disruption. And then you look around and see all the stuff messed up. It just sort of grinds you down.’ ”

***

Upstairs, somewhere in a box, I have Mardi Gras doubloons from the Half-Fast Marching Club. (If you haven’t caught on, it’s pronounced “half-assed.”) I have Fountain’s original album. These are little treasures I myself hoard.

Smile, Pete. When you take that closer walk, I – and the world – will have your music.

No winds, however menacing, can take away the music.

'Vast right-wing conspiracy'

Remember when Hillary uttered the words “vast right-wing conspiracy,” and the media and public opinion pooh-poohed her?

Now that Bill Clinton has called this vast right-wing conspiracy as “virulent” as ever, bear in mind that he didn’t bring it up, but was asked specifically about Hillary’s remark Sunday morning by “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory (LINK).

Is there a vast right-wing conspiracy? You betcha!

The Cliintons, Bill and Hillary, like President Obama now, have been the brutal brunt of it.

The Clintons were accused of murder. President Obama is being accused of wanting to murder old folks with “death panels.” The right-wing continues to strip itself of its self-proclaimed monopoly on moral values.

For this reason, the former president says there’s “no way” Republicans will retake Congress in 2010.

For an eye-popping look at the right-wing’s vulnerable underbelly, read David Brock’s “political and journalistic mea culpa,” Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservtive.” (There are multiple paperback copies for 75 cents on half.com.)

This is a no-holds-barred, nonfiction roman à clef which names names and exposes how they dished the dirt.

As one of a bright and talented army of young conservatives recruited to destroy the Clintons, Brock was the dirtiest of the dirty tricksters. As he personally struggled with his homosexuality, he experienced a road-to-Damascus revelation about the puppetmaster pulling his strings.

The word “conspiracy” turns me off, but it did exist when Hillary talked about it, and it exists now that Bill acknowledges it. Brock’s book is a good jumping-off place to fully understand both its impact and the money and power behind it.

Brock continues to expose and fight this conspiracy today on the Web site he founded, Media Matters for America, described thusly:

“A non-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation.”

As to whether the efforts of the right-wing are as effective today, Clinton told MTP’s audience, "The country is more diverse and more interested in positive action." The people saw Republican control of Congress under George W. Bush, he said, and “they know the results were bad.”

Inexplicably, there remains a fringe out there hellbent on bringing Obama and his positive agenda down, and we must hold complicit media and members of Congress accountable. They are, after all, doing the bidding of the puppetmasters with the power and the money.

Decade's totally bad flicks

Headed out to your favorite movie rental spot? This one’s for movie buffs and lovers of lists!

In my home film library I have a collection of movies labeled “Totally Bad Sci-Fi.” I also have 17 of the old black-and-white Godzilla films, which might be viewed in a different light when you realize Godzilla represents the atomic bomb. (Bought a movie ticket for the latest Godzilla, and it sucked.)

These are movies which the publication VideoHound Golden Movie Retriever would call “a waste of film and studio vehicles.”

Sometimes they’re just so bad they’re good.

Rotten Tomatoes has compiled a list of the 100 Worst Movies of the Decade (2000-2009).

To help you decide what you might want to avoid for your movie weekend – or check out depending on how warped and campy you are – DemWit has complied the list and put it in The Reading Room, so you won't have to wade through all those pesky screens. This is a LONG list, so feel free to scroll and scan - or zero in on one that was a waste of your ticket money!

Fire up the popcorn and get a taste of totally rotten HERE. To comment, please hit "backspace" and return to this post. Thanks!

KISS

My college photography instructor Ed Wheeler was fond of saying “KISS – keep it simple, stupid!” Henry David Thoreau’s repetitious admonition works as well as Wheeler’s.

Theirs would have been good advice to anyone hoping to ensure passage of legitimate healthcare reform.

DemWit has featured a number of posts aimed at dispelling the unending myths surrounding a seemingly unattainable dream of quality healthcare for every man, woman and child in America. It is incomprehensible to me that such lies can waylay the goals of a legitimate president and a citizenry majority.

After reading reams of information on the issue, it dawned on me (I’m slow) that the whole campaign is misnamed. Although polls show Americans are primarily concerned about costs imposed by the medical community, this is not healthcare reform, it’s health insurance reform. OK, whatever works, I told myself.

Back during the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary’s plan was highly criticized for imposing a penalty on persons failing to purchase health insurance. Now that Obama has endorsed the same penalty, where is the outrage? I understood all along the reason for such a penalty. I understand about cost shifts. The question is: does Congress understand there are middle-class families out here who cannot spare another dime from their already impossible household budgets?

Let’s keep it simple: you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.

I’m reading on my better informed friends’ blogs that the Senate bill produced in committee by Max Baucus (D-MT) is “the plan from hell.” Then Tuesday, the headline on my Progress Report read, “Obama defends Baucus bill” - which he apparently did on a round of Sunday morning talk shows.

Then, there are the cutesy catchphrases guaranteed to confuse even the most astute observer; phrases like “trigger” (one silly report referred to it as “Roy Rogers’ horse”) and “Cadillac healthcare plans.” All these dollops of doublespeak seem contrived to complicate and confuse and send you searching for a glossary of terms!

Frankly, I am limited visually in reading all the lengthy articles promoting or panning this proposed legislation. I have better things to do with my life than spend six, seven, eight hours a day online fighting battles for people who are too ignorant to give a damn about their own welfare.

From the blogosphere to talk shows, this issue has eclipsed every other. The G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. A friend writes that the “Fair Elections Now Act” – calling for public financing of congressional campaigns - has been introduced in the House (H.R.1826) and Senate (S.752) and needs our support. The top general is making dire predictions about Afghanistan. Live Earth emailed me that I have three more days to enter the “Love, the Climate” giveaway!

I recently asked a friend who emails me daily articles on healthcare reform, “Aren’t you tired of all this?”

I am.

To “keep it simple, stupid:” I recall the old adage, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

Advise me if I’m wrong, but I believe Obama made a mistake in throwing the issue over to Congress in hopes of a bipartisan solution. What we are ending up with, at this point, is a watered-down broth of a bill which seems to benefit the insurance industry by bringing millions of new policyholders to its rolls.

“Ranch Chimp” had a blog post not too long ago asserting these newly insured persons will get minimal coverage. Will the final legislation prevent insurers from stiffing policyholders? Who knows? I don’t have time to read these neverending, ever-changing versions. Do you?

Once more Thomas Jefferson’s words are going through my mind. Obama should have produced a bill and presented it to the American people thusly:

“To place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”

In other words, KISS.

And bipartisanship - along with Fox News, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and all their ilk - be damned!

In every argument I’ve read, in every discussion I’ve had with others on healthcare reform, the line is drawn, the gauntlet thrown down. Clearly, the case before us is Individual Greed vs. Altrusim. If a certain political party falls on one side of this line, it is misanthropy of its own making.

With one side perpetuating lies and the other claiming racism (with Obama himself denying it’s a factor), there is a cancer growing in this nation that can hardly be, well, healthy.

Let me know how all this turns out, will ya?

A changeful page

“To make this Earth, our hermitage,
A cheerful and a changeful page,
God’s bright and intricate device
Of days and seasons doth suffice.”

- The House Beautiful, Robert Louis Stevenson

***

Turning the leaves of my life, the most cheerful and changeful pages have come in autumn.

My favorite season arrives today at 5:18 p.m. ET when the autumnal equinox begins in the Northern Hemisphere.

How thankful I am, looking back into the earliest chapters of my life, to have lived in a time so simple a little girl could cherish poster paints, crayons, pencils, tablets and crisp new workbooks as she readied her new booksack for the first day of school. (That was when school actually started in the fall.)

Fall was Halloween and homemade costumes and gathering sacks of candy in a three-mile radius from home. For little kids with little money for candy, it was dumping our bounty on the living room floor and divvying up favorites with my brother Isaac. No one spoiled the moment by telling us sweets were bad for us.

A highlight of the fall social season came on the first really cold day, when neighbors and relatives arrived at my grandparents’ farm for the hog-killing.

I recall no character-altering trauma as I watched my Poppa Timmons shoot the animals in the head, then hang them in the trees to be gutted. Farmhands dipped them in drums of boiling water to loosen stiff hairs before scraping away the only thing on the hogs that would not be eaten.

All the grandkids pitched in, making souse, cooking cracklings and slinging chitlins as men hung hams and roasts and slabs of bacon in the smokehouse ceiling. Aside from the purchase of flour, sugar, coffee, spices and vanilla flovoring, most of what would sustain the family (and company) through winter was preserved that day.

The falls of my teen years brought high school and Ole Miss football and Malone’s taffy, candy apples and corn dogs at the Mississippi State Fair.

In 1985, when I moved to South Carolina, fall’s big event was the opening of the county fair, just a stone’s throw out my front door – all the sights and sounds and smells and the free nightly concerts and fireworks from my porch’s front-row seat.

How sad it was for me when a few years back Anderson University bought the fairgrounds, and those special September moments came no more.

Having grown up among pine trees, fall took on more meaning as I walked beneath the brilliant canopies of broadleaf trees on one of the country’s most beautiful campuses at Southern Illinois University- Carbondale.

Later, drives along the Blue Ridge Parkway from Asheville, N.C., to the top of Mount Mitchell brought palettes of fall colors in breathtaking vistas across mountainsides.

Despite all that piques the senses, anyone who has lived their life in the Southeast knows the main reason fall is my favorite season of the year – that first brisk snap in the air and saying so long to summer’s energy-sapping humidity.

It’s a time for sharpened pencils and carved pumpkins and turkeys, not Christmas decorations in stores. And, if there’s a fair near you, please send me a candy apple.

What the Beck's going on?

Glenn Beck, as DemWit readers know, has become the schlockmeister of the Radical Right. As one headline suggests, he’s lunatic fringe meets comedy. Horror writer Stephen King has called Beck “Satan’s mentally challenged younger brother.”

I have placed in my Reading Room an article which is seven pages long in Microsoft Word. Reading time for the article: 15 - 20 minutes. I tell you this so you can schedule an opportunity to read an expose of Beck Fever by a writer of immense talent:

“Mad Man: Is Gleen Beck Bad for America?” by David von Drehle, Time, 17 September 2009.

Here’s a sample of von Drehle’s way with words:

“Our hot summer of political combat is turning toward an autumn of showdowns over some of the biggest public-policy initiatives in decades. The creamy notions of postpartisan cooperation — poured abundantly over Obama's presidential campaign a year ago — have curdled into suspicion and feelings of helplessness. Trust is a toxic asset, sitting valueless on the national books. Good faith is trading at pennies on the dollar. The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style" — the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country — is aflame again, fanned from both right and left. Between the liberal fantasies about Brownshirts at town halls and the conservative concoctions of brainwashed children goose-stepping to school, you'd think the Palm in Washington had been replaced with a Munich beer hall.”

So, why is it important to take the few minutes to read this TIME article?

1) Beck’s techniques are fully exposed.
2) The Beck Effect on the masses is fully examined.
3) Von Drehle is one of the best writers I’ve run across online!

“No one,” von Drehle tells us, “has a better feeling for this mood, and no one exploits it as well, as Beck.”

Beck, like on-air populist predecessors, has put up grassroots roadblocks aimed at both stopping the American dream of progress which put Obama in the White House and, not insignificantly, lining his own pockets with profits.

Take the few minutes to read this one: it’s excellent! When you're finished, please hit "backspace" and leave your comments about the article on this post. Thanks! ENTER THE READING ROOM

Self-examination

Former President Jimmy Carter in an address to Emory University students Wednesday:

“When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds,

“I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African-American.

“It’s a racist attitude, and my hope is and my expectation is that in the future both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the president of the United States.”

Yes, these attacks are unprecedented because Obama’s presidency is unprecedented. As our former president reminds us, these attacks are from “a radical fringe element” in our society. Or, are they?

So many times over the last few days I have thought about the following quote from President Theodore Roosevelt:

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

So, are we on the left hypocritical in condemning the right, having so arduously criticized George W. Bush?.

Yes, we spoofed his slaughter of the King’s English. He did so himself.

But, we also criticized his policies, most notably an unnecessary war for which we are still paying the price in blood and treasure.

We fought against his efforts, in tandem with a Republican-heavy legislative branch, to overturn all that had been accomplished in this country for decades.

We exposed the many scandals at every level of his administration.

Throughout Bush’s tenure as president, I – and many bloggers I count as friends - struggled to …

Well, Thomas Jefferson in stating his aim when writing the Declaration of Independence said it best: “To place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”

That’s pretty lofty, but it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if folks turn a deaf ear to facts.

To be honest, we on the left also have our “radical fringe element,” and, yes, I recall seeing references in blog comments comparing Bush to Hitler.

Here’s the difference:

President Carter got it wrong. The truly egregious comments about President Obama are not limited to a radical fringe element. The most damning lies are coming from a former GOP candidate, Republican governors and Republican members of the U.S. Congress.

To construe every criticism of President Obama as “racist” would be a mistake and, in my opinion, unfair to him.

But, how does one explain personal attacks so devoid of facts they border on the absurd?

Are the racists out there only on the right’s fringe, or are they front and center in the Party which once claimed Abraham Lincoln?

I would like to believe the answer to the latter question is “no,” but, as Carter challenged, leaders of both parties must take the initiative to condemn racism against our president, however subtle or disguised it might be.

There are currently 178 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier this week, 179 House members failed to censure Joe Wilson (R-SC) for wrongly calling the president of the United States a liar.

Not much in the way of condemnation of a man who voted to keep the Confederate battle flag flying over South Carolina's statehouse.

The election of President Obama was a positive statement about race relations in this country. Failure to reinforce this will not bode well for the Republican Party or America.

Patrick Swayze, 1952-2009

I’ve had the time of my life, and I owe it all to you.

Patrick Swayze is eye candy in “Dirty Dancing.”

Patrick Swayze is sexy, gracing one of the sexiest scenes ever filmed - at a pottery wheel in “Ghost.”

Patrick Swayze is Pretty Woman in “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.”

Patrick Swayze is the bad guy trying to catch the big one in “Point Break.”

Patick Swayze is an altruistic physician finding joy among lepers in “City of Joy.”

Patrick Swayze is tough in my favorite of his movies, “Road House.” I suppose I like this one for the same reasons I like Kurt Russell as “Snake Plissken.”

Reuters’ report of his death summed up Patrick Swayze’s on-screen persona: “masculine grace.”

Patrick Swayze will remain forever in the present tense through his filmography.

If you see a penny floating in air, take it and hold it to your heart.

Middlemarch revisited

“He had also taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant dangerously disturbing to his faming conservatism, which consisted in holding that whatever is is bad, and any change is likely to be worse.”
- Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot

***

Middlemarch is a fictional 19th Century English town created by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans. There exists among the provincial, narrow-minded gossips of the town a few persons who see beyond the smallness of their environment.

A much-disliked businessman takes it upon himself to build a new hospital for both the treatment of and research into fevers. He engages a progressive young London doctor who gains the trust of some townspeople when his treatments prove more effective than those of his medical peers.

The young doctor, devoted to research, has dreams of medical breakthroughs which will benefit his profession and his fellow man.

Most of the townspeople abhor change, and the rumor mill is set in motion to destroy the new doctor’s credibility. The purpose of the new hospital, one persistent rumor claims, is to allow the doctor to kill people so that he might cut up their bodies.

Later, when railways are being built across the countryside, we find that “In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public opinion was against them, for the human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbial tendancy to admire the unknown, holding rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.”

2009: Absent the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of progress will always be impeded by such stagnant, fearing minds.

Take a quiet moment

What a week! Right-wing idiocy out the ying-yang!

Two solid and meaningful addresses by our president – from kindergarten to Congress – and in “quiet desperation” all the right-wing can do is criticize. I’m a tender-hearted person, and all I can feel is pity for they are being used.

All complaints, no solutions.

But, hey, it’s Friday, so let’s lighten up.

***

That was how I began the TGIF fluff piece I had written for today. Then, I remembered the date.

Perhaps that date – September 11, 2001 – was the last day we all pulled together as Americans.

Suddenly, like some long ago Movietone newsreel, images began to move through my mind.

That second plane hitting the second tower and our collective realization at that moment that something was unfolding – something many of us had not experienced in our lifetime.

More images. Captives sitting in chairs while masked heathens threatened to behead them. Carnage from car bombs.

Nancy Reagan touching her husband’s coffin.

Post-apocalyptic images in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. A black worker describing how he had to rake bodies away from one of New Orleans’ pumps so it could remove water from the city’s flooded streets. CNN’s Anderson Cooper telling Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu to can the crap as she praised officials, because he had just seen rats eating the body of an old lady on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Horror drawn along the lines of race and poverty.

Disgusting photos from a place called Abu Ghraib.

Still, the images stream by. The chilling video of the poor sick mind behind the massacre at Virginia Tech.

Soon thereafter I could no longer distinguish images on TV, but nothing can block these from my mind's eye.

We didn’t lose our collective heart on 9/11, that was already taking place. We had moments that day and in the days that followed when we still felt its beat. But, somewhere along the way, during the last eight years, America has contracted a social disease, which, if left unchecked, will rot this nation from within.

So, take a quiet moment today to take measure.

***

MARY STEWART’S “COLLECT (1904)”

Keep us, oh God, from pettiness;
Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding
And leave off self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense
And meet each other face to face,
Without self-pity and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment
And always be generous.
Let us take time for all things;
Make us to grow calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses,
Straight-forward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize
It is the little things that create differences;
That in the big things of life we are at one.
And, may we strive to touch and to know
The great, common human heart of us all.
And, oh, Lord God,
Let us forget not to be kind.

What is a nation profited?

Paraphrasing Matthew 16:26 in The Holy Bible (KJV): “For what is a nation profited, if it shall gain money and oil, and lose its own soul, its own security?”

From time to time, DemWit moves beyond screaming headlines and partisan brouhaha to bring readers stories which might otherwise escape their attention.

One such story, in the 6 September 2009 edition of The New York Times, grabbed my attention.

But first, I offer a little historical background:

EXHIBIT 1:

During the Iran-Iraq War, the United States, deciding an Iranian victory was not in its national interest, began to provide Iraq’s Saddam Hussein with support. While claiming neutrality in the war, this U.S. aid included military arms.

Background on the above photo:

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan, concerned over Iran’s threat to the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf region, issued a national security directive, which, according to the National Archives (LINK), called for “heightened regional military cooperation to defend oil facilities and measures to improve U.S. military capabilities in the Persian Gulf.” The document further directed “the secretaries of state and defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take appropriate measures to respond to tensions in the area. It states, “Because of the real and psychological impact of a curtailment in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf on the international economic system, we must assure our readiness to deal promptly with actions aimed at disrupting that traffic.” The directive does not mention chemical weapons.

The National Archives report continues:

“Soon thereafter, Donald Rumsfeld (who had served in various positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations, including as President Ford's defense secretary, and at the time headed the multinational pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co.) was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish ‘direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein,’ while emphasizing ‘his close relationship’ with the president. Rumsfeld met with Saddam, and the two discussed regional issues of mutual interest, a shared enmity toward Iran and Syria, and the U.S.'s efforts to find alternative routes to transport Iraq's oil, Its facilities in the Persian Gulf had been shut down by Iran, and Iran's ally, Syria, had cut off a pipeline that transported Iraqi oil through its territory. Rumsfeld made no reference to chemical weapons, according to detailed notes on the meeting.”

EXHIBIT 2

We all know how the Iran-Contra scandal turned out.

EXHIBIT 3

In George Crile’s masterful book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, we learn the United States funneled more than $500 million in arms and aid (matching Saudi funds brought the figure to more than $1 billion) through Pakistan and into Afghanistan. This aid to the “Freedom Fighters” assured the Mujahideen’s defeat of the Soviet Union.

In one of history’s “unintended consequences,” these arms would later fall into the hands of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

THE ARTICLE

Having presented a little historical perspective, I now call your attention to The New York Times article’s headline and lede paragraphs:

Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows

WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.

The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.

And those, dear reader, are the “unclassified” sales, the ones we know about. These sales are not only for profit, but for “political influence.”

Read the article HERE. Don’t make me continue quoting Walt Kelly’s possum, “Pogo.”

Will we never learn?

***

IRADICATE IDIOCY! Please read the very brief post which follows and share it with parents on your mailing list.

A happy ending

Once upon a time there was a Democratic president, who, for the benefit of his country, pushed some rather radical new programs.

In one program, he directly appealed to America’s school children, asking them for their involvement and support.

Years later when I was in elementary school, children were still marching to his beat. Every American school child.

That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a polio victim, and his “radical” program was the March of Dimes,
the first organization to directly engage citizen volunteers to achieve social change.

Every school in this country passed out little cards with slots to be filled with dimes. Every kid worked untiringly to fill the slots.

We did it because we were afraid to play in water puddles. We saw other children encased in metal leg braces, cumbersome wheelchairs or iron lungs.

By the time I reached junior high school some of my schoolmates still wore the metal braces on their legs as children lined up for “cures” by Sabin and Salk.

So effective was this presidential program involving school kids, its focus eventually became the eradication of birth defects.

Imagine an American president asking school children to apply themselves for the betterment of their country.

Ignorance in Education Award

Ignorance won’t take a holiday, so DemWit can’t.

POTUS wants to encourage America’s school children to study hard and set goals, and across the country right-wing parents are teaching their children lessons in prejudice and fear.

The likes of Fox’s Glenn Beck are telling these poor ignorant souls to keep their children home from school Tuesday to protect them from our president’s words.

Today DemWit presents the Ignorance in Education Award to one so-called educator who sadly typifies others across America:

Escambia County, Florida, Superintendent of Education Malcolm Thomas.

Here’s Thomas in his own words as quoted in the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal (LINK):

"We do not let teachers just watch television. It's going to have to fit with what they're teaching the children. We're in a district where our students struggle. We have bell-to-bell instruction, and we don't want to waste a single minute."

So, Escambia County schools, like so many with lily-livered superintendents, have the option to tape the president's words, which teachers might get permission to show later – if they can justify fitting them into their curricula.

I am 67 years old, and I sit here recalling my days at Viola E. Lake Elementary School in Jackson, Miss., where, in February, we cut out construction paper hatchets symbolic of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and fashioned with our scissors Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat. In the morning, we would “waste a single minute” pledging allegiance to our country’s flag. We revered our president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. We were good kids, and discipline was the order of the classroom. We learned the "three Rs" and so much more.

So, DemWit salutes Supt. Thomas for exposing the ignorance pervasive in our nation today, even in our children’s schools.

UPDATE:
A voice of reason at the Pensacola News Journal:
"Students should hear Obama talk," a column by Reginald T. Dogan, 5 September 2009: LINK

Louisiana players

For your holiday entertainment, dear reader. Enjoy!

In a phone chat my sister Martha in Slidell, La., mentioned the increase in New Orleans crime. I told her I am listening to the guy who wrote the book (or books) on crime in New Orleans and in south Louisiana’s Cajun Country.

I’m on book seven of James Lee Burke’s series about New Iberia Parish, La., sheriff’s department detective, Dave Robicheaux – a fictional force fighting low lifes, street scum and mobsters in south Louisiana.

Martha and I made an easy transition from crime to Louisiana politicians. “What about David Vitter and all the prostitutes?” Martha asked.

“Welcome to Louisiana,” I said.

Not one hour after our conversation I ran across this jewel from Det. Robicheaux in Burke’s “A Stained White Radiance:”

“What always struck my eye first as I rolled over the apex of the bridge into Baton Rouge was the spire of the capitol building lifting itself out of the flat maze of trees and green parks in the old downtown area.

“All the state’s political actors since Reconstruction had passed through here - populists in suspenders and clip-on bowties, demagogues, alcoholic buffoons, virulent racists, a hillbilly singer who would be elected governor twice, another governor who broke out of a mental asylum in order to kill his wife, a recent governor who pardoned a convict in Angola who repaid the favor by murdering the governor’s brother, and the most famous and enigmatic player of them all, the Kingfish, who might have given FDR a run for his money had he not died, along with his supposed assassin, in a spray of 81 machine gun bullets in a hallway of the old capitol building.”

That recap of Lousiana political players was written in 1992.

Just a few years before, in 1985, the state’s governor, Edwin Edwards, was indicted on federal racketeering charges and a year later was acquitted of all charges. The next year Edwards lost his bid for re-election and Pope John Paul II visited the Crescent City, followed in '88 by Republicans in convention.

This gets better.

In 1989, former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke won election to the Louisiana legislature.

At about this time, the state approved a lottery and casino gambling.

And in 1991, Edwards won a fourth term as governor in a landslide victory over former Grand Wizard Duke.

Edward's campaign slogan? "Vote for the crook, at least he’s honest!”

In 1993, Louisiana's violent crime rate was the highest in the nation.

See “A Selective Chronolgoy of Louisiana History."

All this is to say, among Louisiana political players Senator Vitter is small potatoes and par for the course.

As I wrote this, I was reminded of a brief post I read back in July on the ThinkProgress blog (LINK), a post written by Ben Bergmann about Vitter.

You’re going to love this:

“Earlier this week, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told the Columbus Dispatch that the GOP was ‘being taken over by southerners’ and that the party has ‘too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns.’ Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) responded today by slamming his colleague for being a ‘moderate, really wishy-washy’ Republican. Vitter decried the influence of ‘moderates’ in his party, saying that the GOP has not stuck to ‘core conservative values:’

“ ‘I’m on the side of conservatives getting back to core conservative values,’ said Mr. Vitter, Louisiana Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. ‘There are a lot of us from the South who hold those values, which I think the party is supposed to be about. We strayed from them in the past few years, and that’s why we performed so badly in the national elections.’ ”

***

I recommend Burke’s Robicheaux series. As I said of the movie “Fargo,” “Violence, raw sex, profanity, and suddenly you realize you’re being totally entertained.”

If there’s anything worse than violence, raw sex and profanity, it’s hypocrisy. Right, Sen. Vitter?

***

Have a great holiday, guys. I’ll see you Tuesday.

Let's just call it stupid

As is generally the case when sweeping legislative reform is debated, the states which need it most are the states where opposition is the loudest.

Healthcare reform measures are no exception.

Recently, I read two interesting Gallup Poll surveys which bear this out:

Among states with “basic access to well-being” – "basic needs optimal for a healthy life such as access to healthcare, safe places to exercise, affordable fruits and vegetables" – Mississippi and West Virginia have the least access. (LINK)

Mississippi, Texas and New Mexico have more citizens without health insurance than any other states in the country. (LINK)

Today's edition of the Los Angeles Times has an excellent analysis of this enigma. (LINK) Here are the headline and sub-head of the analysis:

"States most likely to win under healthcare overhaul are home to its biggest foes"

“Rural states have more uninsured and lower-income people who stand to benefit from legislation, but it's there where the effort faces the most vocal resistance. It's a factor that stymies legislators.”

A senator from one of these states, Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) can’t seem to grasp the needs of his people. That’s because they can’t seem to understand their own needs.

What else can we call this if not stupid.

Republicans are scared to death of a maneuver called, ironically enough, “reconciliation.”

According to CNN’s Political Ticker: ““Under reconciliation, which applies to bills affecting the federal budget and deficit, a measure requires a simple majority of 51 votes to pass in the Senate, rather than the super majority of 60 votes needed to overcome an opposition filibuster.”

In a CNN report this morning (LINK), Sen. Alexander warns of such a vote, “This will wreck our healthcare system and wreck the Democratic Party.” Tennessee's town hall meetings led Alexander to conclude Americans are “scared to death” of healthcare reform and its passage will lead to “a minor revolution in this country.” (Read "Be afraid, be very afraid.")

Is this responsible representation of an area which would benefit from reform? Well, yeah, if his people are too stupid (there’s that word again) to understand their own needs.

In what is one of the most hypocritical statements concerning this issue, Alexander said of Democrats:

"Either they don't know how to operate in a bipartisan way or they don't want to operate in a bipartisan way."

And, that claim, Sir, is, well, stupid.

Happy Birthday, big brother!

Photo: B.J., age 3, with sisters, cousins, aunt and my big brother Roy, 19, back left. I am wearing one of Roy’s sailor hats, 1945.

***

My big brother Roy turns 83 today. I talked with him last night, and he is just as excited about celebrating his 26th anniversary with wife Glenda on Thursday. What a couple of lovebirds!

Roy has been blind all the years of their marriage, and Glenda has been a Godsend in his life – and our family’s.

Some of my readers will remember a post on my archived blog about the WWII military service of Roy and my two brothers-in-law Paul and Harold:

“A little girl’s pride in military,” I See My Dreams, 15 October 2007.

I believe new readers of DemWit will enjoy reading the post.

Let me take a minute to tell you about a conversation with Roy that touched my heart.

There are five of us siblings: Leroy “Roy,” Mary (deceased), Martha, Betty “B.J.” and Isaac. Our brother Jesse Lloyd was born three years before me and died when he was one month old. Roy called a few years back to tell me he and Glenda had located Jesse Lloyd’s burial site and had bought a tombstone for, as he put it, “our baby brother’s grave.” To hear a man of Roy’s age referring to “our baby brother” made me cry bittersweet tears.

I love you, big brother! Have a wonderful birthday!

The demise of Facebook?

Texting, My Space, Facebook, Twitter. We are living in a one-liner world where people truly believe they are making contact with a social circle when all they are doing is losing touch with real communication skills.

I joined a friend’s “Facebook” page. At least I thought that’s what I was doing. Suddenly, my inbox was being filled with notices of messages left by friends of friends of friends.

I received one message from a woman who was a friend in college which read simply, “It’s great to make contact with you again!” That’s it. That’s all it said. How is that making “contact?”

In one instance, I found out that a person apparently was deceiving others in an atrocious way, yet I could not say a word. This is a secret I’ll have to carry to my grave. Downright spooky.

I couldn’t get off Facebook fast enough, but couldn’t figure out how to “unjoin.” I finally called a friend who logged on for me and disengaged me from the worrisome site.

Not surprisingly a New York Times headline caught my eye: “Facebook Exodus.” Writer Virginia Heffernan explores the many reasons folks are bailing out of the social networking experience of Facebook. There are many interesting direct quotes from former members.

From a sociological standpoint, this is pretty fascinating stuff.

In the end, writer Heffernan asks:

“Is Facebook doomed to someday become an online ghost town, run by zombie users who never update their pages and packs of marketers picking at the corpses of social circles they once hoped to exploit? Sad, if so. Though maybe fated, like the demise of a college clique.”

Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail” talks about a $2.95 “tall, decaf cappuccino” giving “people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are … an absolutely defining sense of self.”

I think this is probably true of these online communication shortcuts as well.

“Facebook Exodus” is brief enough and a fascinating read worth your time.

At the heart of evil

At the heart of evil lies an evil heart, and its name is Dick Cheney.

Of course, that’s my opinion, but it’s an opinion based on years of taking the measure of the man.

This is the man who brought the neocons’ dream into the White House and led it to fruition in Iraq.

During the eight years of the Bush administration, we learned of one breaking scandal after another with names like Valerie Plame Wilson, Abu Ghraib, Attorneygate, Halliburton/KBR and numerous others which led eventually, sometimes circuitously, to the vice president’s office.

This is a man who can go on Fox News this morning and brush off the atrocities of his administration by accusing any investigation into them of being simply “politically motivated.”

The CNN Wire (LINK) has just reported Fox News’ viewers got a dose of the smarmy veep who won’t go away defending once more “enhanced interrogation techniques” – a term weak-kneed news organizations prefer to calling torture “torture.”

CNN Wire:

“The attorney general’s decision to review waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques is politically motivated, former Vice President Dick Cheney said in remarks broadcast Sunday.

“Cheney told FOX News Sunday in an interview conducted Friday that he opposed Attorney General Eric Holder asking a former prosecutor to review CIA interrogations of high-profile terrorism suspects outlined in reports released last week.

“Cheney made clear he believes President Barack Obama directed Holder to launch the review, due to pressure from left-wing Democrats. He called it a bad move that would undermine the willingness of CIA operatives to carry out necessary operations to protect the country. ‘I think it’s a terrible decision,’ Cheney said, later adding: ‘It’s clearly a political move. There’s no other rationale for why they’re doing this.’ “

No other rationale for why they’re doing this?

Well, that’s one way to cover your ass.

I suspect the public at large has no idea what “techniques” have come to light in recent weeks as various reports have been released.

The proof of valuable information gleaned at the hands of torturers – something Cheney has insisted the reports would reveal – has not emerged.

But, let’s move beyond the “deserving victims” argument some would make concerning suspected terrorists – with emphasis on the word “suspected.”.

The atrocities revealed in recent reports say to the world:

“This is the United States of America. This is what we’ve become. This is who we are.”

Army field manuals and Geneva Convention be damned.

I am not at all happy with the new American image. Are you?

'Losing the News'

Dear DemWit reader:

What follows, in my opinion, is the most informed argument for the preservation of real news – facts, not opinion – made today. It very well might constitute the last stronghold of real news in this country. And, it is as impassioned a plea as John Milton made for a free press in “Aeropagitica.”

I can make it no clearer than this: this is a post which demands your attention and your time. Arguably, it will be the most important information you will find online today, or any day.

Two eseential elements of this post are an NPR interview, available to you on video or transcript, and the Chapter One excerpt from the featured book.

The post will be here at the top of DemWit. Come back to it, if you must, but you will not want to miss any part of it.

If factual news feeds democracy, there is today a very great threat that our democracy is in trouble.

Enlighten yourself on all aspects of that fact presented here.

Thank you for reading and thinking for yourself.

B. J. Trotter

THE POST:

“After reporting for small newspapers, a big metro paper, radio, TV, books, magazines, and the Internet, Alex S. Jones fears that the kind of news he believes in is in trouble.”

-Terry Gross, FRESH AIR, National Public Radio, 18 August 2009.

***

My recent post, “News at Noon,” focused on my concern over my own news dearth – and that of the United States.

I am very grateful to my friend Katherine for calling my attention to a new book:

Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy, Alex S. Jones, Oxford University Press, 2009.

From my research – all 37 pages of notes - it is apparent this book will be a bestseller. It is at once a book which will be snapped up by news professionals, will grace the college classroom and will enthrall consumers of news.

The top-rated reader review on amazon.com (LINK) had this to say:

“But, most of all, Losing the News is for people who love good books. Written by a master storyteller, the prose is gorgeous. Jones' style empowers the reader to enjoy the book from his or her unique experience.”

THE BOOK

Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy enlightens the reader on what constitutes “accountability news,” which is essential to a democracy, and how everything else perceived as “news” evolves from that central core of news.

THE AUTHOR

Let me hurriedly point out that the author is NOT radio host and right-wing conspiracy nutcase Alex Jones.

Alex S. Jones is a Pultizer Prize-winning reporter and of the fourth generation of a Tennessee publishing family – its newspaper begun in 1916 and pioneered by his great-grandmother and his grandmother. This from National Public Radio (NPR):

“Alex S. Jones has been the host of NPR's On The Media, and host and executive editor of PBS's Media Matters. He is the director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.”

THE NPR INTERVIEW:

This is one of the two essential elements of this post - as plain and as riveting a discussion as you will ever hear about what constitutes “news” in the United States today.

“Now, you said that you were brought up to believe in fairness, objectivity and accuracy. How do you see that approach to journalism changing as Web sites, blogs and cable news channels take on a bigger role, and opinion journalism becomes much more popular?”

- Terry Gross, host of FRESH AIR, NPR, questions Jones.

Mr. Gross’ interview with Alex S. Jones on “Losing the News and Why It Matters:”

Watch the video HERE.
Read the transcript HERE.

FROM CHAPTER ONE, “THE IRON CORE:”

The opening words of Jones’ book are the second essential part of this post, for herein lies – and I’m not exaggerating – both the threat to our democracy and the opportunity for informed citizens to preserve it.

Excerpt (LINK):

"Unfortunately, that meant we had to offer buyouts to some very talented people."

— Brian Kelley, editor of U.S. News & World Report, quoted by Washington.com after the magazine eliminated its investigative unit for economic reasons.

Imagine a sphere of pitted iron, grey and imperfect like a large cannonball. Think of this dense, heavy ball as the total mass of each day's serious reported news, the iron core of information that is at the center of a functioning democracy. This iron core is big and unwieldy, reflecting each day's combined output of all the professional journalism done by news organizations — newspapers, radio and television news, news services such as the Associated Press and Reuters, and a few magazines. Some of its content is now created by new media, nonprofits, and even, occasionally, the supermarket tabloids, but the overwhelming majority still comes from the traditional news media.

This iron core does not include Paris Hilton's latest escapade or an account of the Yankees game or the U.S. Open. It has no comics or crossword puzzle. No ads. It has no stories of puppies or weekend getaways or recipes for cooking great chili. Nor does it include advice on buying real estate, investing in an IRA, movie reviews, or diet advice. There is nothing wrong with any of these things. Indeed, pleasant and diverting stories are far more appealing to most people than the contents of the core, which some find grim, boring, or riddled with bias.

It has no editorials and does not include the opinions of columnists or op-ed writers or political bloggers. These things are derived from the core. They are made possible because there is a core. Their point of departure is almost always information gleaned from the reporting that gives the core its weight, and they serve to spread awareness of the information that is in the core, to analyze it and interpret it and challenge it. Opinion writers pick and choose among what the core provides to find facts that will further an argument or advance a policy agenda. But they are outside the core, because they almost always offer commentary and personal observation, not original reporting.

Inside the core is news from abroad, from coverage of the war in Iraq to articles describing the effort to save national parks in Mozambique. There is news of politics, from the White House to the mayor's office. There is an account of a public hearing on a proposal to build new ball fields and an explanation of a regional zoning concept that might affect property values. There is policy news about Medicare reform and science news about global warming. There is news of business, both innovation and scandal, and even sporting news of such things as the abuse of steroids. An account of the battle within the local school board about dress codes is there, along with the debate in the state legislature over whether intelligent design should be taught as science. The iron sphere is given extra weight by investigative reports ranging from revelations that prisoners at the county jail are being used to paint the sheriff's house to the disclosure that the government is tapping phones without warrants as part of the war on terror.

What goes into this cannonball is the daily aggregation of what is sometimes called "accountability news," because it is the form of news whose purpose is to hold government and those with power accountable. This is fact-based news, sometimes called "news of verification" as opposed to the "news of assertion" that is mostly on display these days in prime time on cable news channels and in blogs.

Traditional journalists have long believed that this form of fact-based accountability news is the essential food supply of democracy and that without enough of this healthy nourishment, democracy will weaken, sicken, or even fail.

For more than a century, this core of reported news has been the starting place for a raucous national conversation about who we are as a people and a country. Just as the Earth is surrounded by a blanket of atmosphere, so too is this core enveloped by a thick layer of talk and opinion. The conversation — which seems more like an endless family squabble — takes place on editorial pages and in letters to the editor, in opinion columns and on Sunday morning talk shows, on The O'Reilly Factor and the radio programs of Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus, in blogs on the Internet and press releases, over dining-room tables, beside water coolers and in barrooms, in political cartoons and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

And in-jokes. In his first ten years as host of The Tonight Show, Jay Leno told over 18,000 political jokes, almost 4,000 of them about Bill Clinton. But for each of Leno's political jokes, the starting point was something from the core. The core also feeds the entertainment industry, which has its own powerful voice in the national conversation. The quasi-news programs on television, such as Today and 20/20, look to the core for ideas and inspiration. Some pure entertainment programs, such as The West Wing, come directly from the core, and even the silliest of sitcoms and nastiest of hip-hop lyrics are often linked to it in some murky way. No matter where the conversation about public affairs takes place, it is almost always an outgrowth of that daily iron cannonball.

The biggest worry of those concerned about news is that this iron core is in jeopardy, largely because of the troubles plaguing the newspaper business. It is the nation's newspapers that provide the vast majority of iron core news. My own estimate is that 85 percent of professionally reported accountability news comes from newspapers, but I have heard guesses from credible sources that go as high as 95 percent. While people may think they get their news from television or the Web, when it comes to this kind of news, it is almost always newspapers that have done the actual reporting. Everything else is usually just a delivery system, and while resources for television news have plunged and news on commercial radio has all but disappeared, the real impact on iron core news has been from the economic ravaging of newspapers.

Until now, the iron core of news has been somewhat sheltered by an economic model that was able to provide extra resources beyond what readers — and advertisers — would financially support. This kind of news is expensive to produce, especially investigative reporting. And there are indications that a lot of people aren't really interested. In the media economy of the future, cold metrics will largely determine what is spent on news. The size and quality of the iron core will be a direct reflection of what the audience for it will economically support. Demand will rule, and that may well mean that, as a nation, we will be losing a lot of news. There will be a bounty of talk — the news of assertion — but serious news, reported by professional journalists, is running scared. –End of excerpt-

APATHY AND TEARS

"For over a century," Jones writes, "Americans have had as a birthright a remarkably good — though far from perfect — core of reported news that is as essential to our freedom as the Constitution itself. But the times we live in trigger an unsettling cascade of questions about journalism and news."

I saw a comment on a blog which read:

“THUMP …THUMP ... THUMP. That’s the sound of my head hitting the keyboard.”

Very apropos to my feelings about the absolute apathy which exists in this country over an issue of such extreme importance to the very existence of our democracy.

Just makes you want to cry.

'... and the poor get poorer'

“Yore government is spending $1 million just to blow yore homes off the face of the earth, so show yore ap-pre-she-a-shun.”

- Sen. Jack S. Phogbound, “L’il Abner.”

"Seniors may perceive that they are being hurt because there is no COLA, but they are, in fact, not getting hurt. Cngress has to be able to tell people they are not getting everything they want."

- Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

***

'Bout time the Associate Press got around to the story below. I read it on the Social Security and AARP sites months ago.

I even wrote a post about it on 4 May 2009, “Uppleasant surprise.”

The headline below is misleading: Social Security checks won't go up, but they won't SHRINK from no "cost of living adjustment" (COLA). They will stay the same.

For clarification, you will find mention in the AP article this term: “hold-harmless provision.” That simply means Medicare Part B premiums – which cover doctors, outpatient services and medical supplies - cannot go up if Social Security checks do not increase. The provision applies ONLY to persons who have their premiums deducted from their SS checks.

This then will hurt the poor.

According to AARP (LINK):

“About 7.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who don’t have their Part B premiums deducted from their Social Security checks are those whose premiums are paid for by their state Medicaid program. These low-income people are not affected—they still won’t pay the premiums themselves.

“BUT, the states would have to pick up the tab for the higher premiums. This could affect the NUMBER of people covered by Medicaid if state governments, already strapped by falling revenue, cut back on services, consumer advocates say.”

This will throw many more Americans onto the rolls of uninsured.

On a personal level, that means I might lose my Part B protection paid by the state of South Carolina. Concerned? Sure I am. I only qualified for this program two years ago and could not have had cataract surgery without it. I care about so many others who might be affected.

And, many sources are suggesting this is a prelude to cutting out the COLA permanently.

As my mother always said, "The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer."

THE AP ARTICLE:

Because this issue is important and is going to heat up in another month or so – when Social Security trustees officially announce there will be no COLA - I am posting the AP article (LINK), in accordance with my sidebars’s “Fair Use Notice.” I hope you will share the information in this post with older Americans and those who are disabled.

Social Security Payments to Shrink in 2010

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, The Associated Press
August 23, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise.

The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won't be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn't happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.

By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premiums, which often are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to go up slightly.

"I will promise you, they count on that COLA," said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who now heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. "To some people, it might not be a big deal. But to seniors, especially with their health care costs, it is a big deal."

Cost of living adjustments are pegged to inflation, which has been negative this year, largely because energy prices are below 2008 levels.

Advocates say older people still face higher prices because they spend a disproportionate amount of their income on health care, where costs rise faster than inflation. Many also have suffered from declining home values and shrinking stock portfolios just as they are relying on those assets for income.

"For many elderly, they don't feel that inflation is low because their expenses are still going up," said David Certner, legislative policy director for AARP. "Anyone who has savings and investments has seen some serious losses."

About 50 million retired and disabled Americans receive Social Security benefits. The average monthly benefit for retirees is $1,153 this year. All beneficiaries received a 5.8 percent increase in January, the largest since 1982.

More than 32 million people are in the Medicare prescription drug program. Average monthly premiums are set to go from $28 this year to $30 next year, though they vary by plan. About 6 million people in the program have premiums deducted from their monthly Social Security payments, according to the Social Security Administration.

Millions of people with Medicare Part B coverage for doctors' visits also have their premiums deducted from Social Security payments. Part B premiums are expected to rise as well. But under the law, the increase cannot be larger than the increase in Social Security benefits for most recipients.

There is no such hold-harmless provision for drug premiums.
Kennelly's group wants Congress to increase Social Security benefits next year, even though the formula doesn't call for it. She would like to see either a 1 percent increase in monthly payments or a one-time payment of $150.
The cost of a one-time payment, a little less than $8 billion, could be covered by increasing the amount of income subjected to Social Security taxes, Kennelly said. Workers only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,800 of income, a limit that rises each year with the average national wage.

But the limit only increases if monthly benefits increase.
Critics argue that Social Security recipients shouldn't get an increase when inflation is negative. They note that recipients got a big increase in January - after energy prices had started to fall. (BJ NOTE: See my question at the end of post.)

They also note that Social Security recipients received one-time $250 payments in the spring as part of the government's economic stimulus package.

"Seniors may perceive that they are being hurt because there is no COLA, but they are in fact not getting hurt," said Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "Congress has to be able to tell people they are not getting everything they want."

Social Security is also facing long-term financial problems. The retirement program is projected to start paying out more money than it receives in 2016. Without changes, the retirement fund will be depleted in 2037, according to the Social Security trustees' annual report this year.

President Barack Obama has said he would like to tackle Social Security next year, after Congress finishes work on health care, climate change and new financial regulations.

Lawmakers are preoccupied by health care, making it difficult to address other tough issues. Advocates for older people hope their efforts will get a boost in October, when the Social Security Administration officially announces that there will not be an increase in benefits next year.

"I think a lot of seniors do not know what's coming down the pike, and I believe that when they hear that, they're going to be upset," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is working on a proposal for one-time payments for Social Security recipients.

"It is my view that seniors are going to need help this year, and it would not be acceptable for Congress to simply turn its back," he said.

***

OK, you economists, help me out here. Economics is not my long suit. It’s the only class in college I fell asleep in.

The COLA raise is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and is traditionally announced early in the fourth quarter of the year.

I have read that COLA is based on the “core rate” of the CPI, which excludes “volatile items” – the price of food and energy – and I am attempting to determine if this is true.

Here’s my question: how can the COLA be determined in May of 2009 for the year 2010, and projected for the next two years on a Consumer Price Index that is only calculated from month to month? For example, how could Social Security trustees know in May whether gasoline prices would soar as they did last September? How can they know the CPI a full year ahead of time?

What is this, crystal ball economics?

The Gary Burgess verdict

A brilliant defense has led to a “not guilty” verdict for Gary Burgess, the former Anderson, S.C., superintendent of District 4 schools arrested in a local park in April and charged with “soliciting for immoral purposes.”

At the time I initially wrote about the arrest of Greenville, S.C., businessman John Gilbert Ludwig in the Maserati crash which killed a man, I reported Burgess’ arrest. See my post of 4 May 2009: LINK

In the newspaper account linked below, arresting officers’ testimony was very explicit about sexual innuendos, but Burgess claimed he was at the park to work on his book and “eat a Happy Meal.”

According to local reports, Burgess’ attorney Fletcher Smith ignored the homosexual aspects of the testimony and argued that a city cannot have a law which targets one group of its citizens. He further argued that city law is too vague in defining “immoral purposes.” Smith said the verdict shows Anderson “is ready to operate in the 21st Century.”

The jury delivered its verdict after 20 minutes of deliberation.

***

DON'T MISS: “Former school superintendent found not guilty of morals charge,” Liz Carey, Anderson Independent-Mail, 21 August 2009: LINK

***

ATTENTION NEW VISITORS: Welcome to DemWit. I hope you will take 30 minutes this weekend to read the very important post from yesterday HERE. It might just blow your mind! At the very least, you will be enlightened. Thanks, BJ

THE TERROR ALERT PATTERN

Everyone’s all psyched over the revelation from Tom Ridge, Bush’s first homeland security chief, that he was asked to raise the terror alert level in 2004 to help Bush win re-election.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or, for that matter, slap some folks into reality!

Seven years ago, I was telling everyone, “There is a PATTERN to these terror alerts.”

More than two years ago on my archived blog, “I See My Dreams,” I gave my readers an opportunity to examine fully what I considered PROOF of this pattern.

I honestly don’t think anyone paid attention. They saw the length of the post and took off.

I’m sorry, I don’t undertand; don’t people read any more? I heard Tom Brokaw say if something is more than two paragraphs long on the Internet, no one will read it.

Well, stay stupid or get smart!

Maybe, now you’d like to take the advice of the 2007 post’s title, “Read or ignore, it’s your country!” - and spend a half hour getting to know what the hell is going on in it.

Maybe the next time the proverbial sh*t hits the fan, you’ll see it coming!

Here is the post AGAIN in its entirety.

6/07/2007

Read or ignore, it's your country!

(READ TIME: 30 MINUTES)

“If this week‘s alleged JFK terror plot teaches us anything, it is that fear, like fire, can spread only when it is given plenty of air.” – Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

***

Some five years ago, I posted a message on a grassroots forum that went something like this: “Has anyone noticed a PATTERN of bad news for the Bush administration followed by terror alerts and arrests?”

Not long after that I began to see mention of such a pattern on various trusted Web sites.

So, are these terror alerts and arrests real or red herrings? Are they believable or bogus?

If, as the pattern suggests, they are products of some creative propaganda genius, they would make even Joseph Goebbels proud.

Or, are they just products of paranoia generated by distrust of a president and an administration who lied to take us to war in Iraq? For lie they did, time and again.

Keith Olbermann, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” MSNBC, has been tracking this PATTERN, and on Monday night he updated his list titled “THE NEXUS OF POLITICS AND TERROR.”

Olbermann’s list is comprised of 13 separate incidents linking such terror news to other events. I believe there might be more.

But, I cannot, in any way, improve upon Mr. Olbermann’s work, and so I post it here for your enlightenment.

This post is long, and I plan to leave it here at the top of my blog for a couple of weeks. It’s that important. You can copy and paste it to a Microsoft Word document on your computer to read at your leisure and to keep for future reference.

You can read it or ignore it. It’s your country, your liberties and your children's future!

THE NEXUS OF POLITICS AND TERROR

INTRODUCTION

KEITH OLBERMANN: The abstract hypothetical terror plot at JFK. It sounds ominous, until you ask the experts. Blow up part of a jet fuel pipeline, and you still stand zero chance of blowing up the airport.

VIDEO: UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable.

OLBERMANN: Yes, well, so would me blowing up the moon with Mentos and a liter of Coca-Cola.

We will truth-squad the plot and update “The Nexus of Politics and Terror” - the now 13 times officials of this country have revealed so-called terror plots at times that were just coincidentally to their political benefit, no matter how preposterous the actual schemes might have been, including a plot against Fort Dix, where pizza deliverymen were supposed to kill at will at an Army base full of soldiers with guns, all summed up neatly by a Republican state party chairman, who has just said, quote, “All we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on 9/11, and the naysayers will come around very quickly for President Bush.”

(…)

TERROIST PLOT TO BLOW UP JFK AIRPORT

Law enforcement calls it, quote, “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.” But, even if the suspects had the support, the money and the wherewithal they needed, is it even possible to ignite JFK Airport by igniting the jet fuel pipeline that leads to it?

And, the president has renewed his attempts to link our security here with the war in Iraq. Are the arrests in this case, and the equally impractical Fort Dix plan, politically timed, or just politically coincidental? We will revisit the nexus of politics and terror.

(…)

OLBERMANN: If this week‘s alleged JFK terror plot teaches us anything, it is that fear, like fire, can spread only when it is given plenty of air.

In our fourth story tonight, the fear got plenty of that, even as it turned out that attacking JFK would not have ignited the fuel pipeline system, nor vice-versa, if only due to the lack of air.

In addition to the laws of physics, the pipeline that stretches 40 miles from New Jersey to JFK has the occasional disconnect valve or two. The alleged terrorists apparently hoped to take out JFK, the pipeline and thousands of people who live above the pipeline. It is not their job to know better.

But, when a U.S. attorney said that the results of a successful attack would have been unthinkable, in fact, she and other U.S. officials should have known that thinkable was about all those results were. They were not that doable. Federal officials confirm the alleged terrorists had no experience, no backing, no money, no explosives and no inside information, unless you count Google Earth.

Plus, of course, whatever the accused ringleader, seen here in surveillance tape just prior to his capture, remembers from his job as a cargo handler 12 years ago.

NO BLACK BELTS ALL AROUND

Let‘s turn to a professional in this field, Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group aviation consulting firm.

Mike, thanks again for your time tonight.

MICHAEL BOYD, AVIATION SECURITY CONSULTANT: Good evening.

OLBERMANN: Before we get to the dangers not being talked about today, explain why the prospect of terrorists putting a match to a fuel pipeline at JFK does not necessarily produce the apocalyptic scenario that the U.S. officials describe, both in terms of the pipeline and jet fuel, in specifics.

BOYD: Well, jet fuel is not as volatile as gasoline. (BJ note: this reduction of volatility was mandated by the FAA and the NTSB following airline crashes and 9/11.) Unless you have a lot of air and it‘s atomized, it‘s not going to burn real good. As a matter of fact, it takes a minute or two to get it burning if you put a blowtorch to a pool of it. You know, that‘s why the FAA said you got to be off an airplane in 90 seconds after an accident, because they figure that‘s how long it takes the fuel to get burning.

So, this argument that if you light it somewhere on the length of the pipeline, it‘s going to blow up all of Rego Park, that‘s just nuts.

OLBERMANN: So, what are the real dangers to the U.S. aviation systems, when we‘re talking about fuel supply, fuel pipelines, terrorist attacks on fuel pipelines?

BOYD: Well, you know, what these people we saw at that press conference yesterday don‘t know, and don‘t pay any attention to, but a pipeline is vulnerable. But, it‘s vulnerable to hurting our economy. If you could knock out the fuel supply of five or six airports, you shut down the air transportation system in a couple of days. And, what would that do to our economy?

They didn‘t even focus on that. They focused as if, somehow or other, this would be one giant incendiary event. And, what that says is, very clearly, these are not real security people. I mean, the terrorists they caught, supposedly, were not black belts in terrorism. And, these guys aren‘t black belts in counterterrorism, either.

OLBERMANN: So, all right, let‘s say, if this had somehow come to pass, if what they designed to do actually came to pass, what would the result have been? Would there have been an interruption to the flow of fuel to JFK? Or, would there have been something — what kind of cataclysm would we have had?

BOYD: Well, it depends on where they hit. If they hit the whole fuel farm or one of the major fuel farms that feed JFK, yes, you could have had a major shutdown at John F. Kennedy International. That‘s bad. But, you know, give New Yorkers a real flash here: New York is not the only place in the world. It would have hurt the economy, but it — and it certainly could have shut the airport down. If that happened to a lot of places, it could shut our economy down.

The unfortunate part is: these people at Homeland Security don‘t realize that, and that‘s why we‘re vulnerable, even to these second-rate kind of people like they caught yesterday.

OLBERMANN: So, if the danger is to fuel delivery and economy rather than conflagration, but people are talking about conflagration and terror and mass death, what does it tell you that the prosecutors knew about this since last year, and still characterized the results the way they did?

BOYD: Well, they‘ve done this. They said they started on this over -

about a year and a half ago. And, as of yesterday, that attorney still didn‘t know that what these guys were planning to do would not do what they thought it would do. That says to me is, this was more of a photo op than really anything that really focuses on protecting our airports.

OLBERMANN: You‘ve been on this since we talked to you first about this in 2003, that we seem to be devoting the right amount of attention to aviation safety, but we have always — we‘re always picking the wrong topics to be concerned about?

BOYD: Well, the problem is, our security — Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration - is not run by security professionals. It‘s run by political appointees. And, political appointees look to cover themselves and to look good rather than to do the job. And, that‘s why we‘re no safer than we were on 9/11, because we have the same problems we‘ve always had.

OLBERMANN: The aviation expert Michael Boyd, cutting through as always. Great thanks for joining us again, sir.

BOYD: Thank you, sir.

OLBERMANN: Details of another plot, more pipe dream than pipeline, emerging just as the White House redoubles efforts to equate the war in Iraq with our security at home.

“DUBIOUS COINCIDENCES”

We will update our look at the history of these kinds of dubious coincidences in a revised edition of the nexus of politics and terror.

(…)

The nexus of politics and terror. Why was the JFK airport plot revealed by a U.S. attorney in the middle of a U.S. attorney scandal and by the father of a Fox News reporter? (BJ note: According to an MSNBC reporter at the press conference, the conference was not broadcast live, because it was help on one of the top floors of the building and was not accessible to camera equipment.) And, why, on this Saturday, the coincidences have begun again. We will review that.

(…)

THE NEXUS OF POLITICS AND TERROR

OLBERMANN: Since last August, there had been a period of calm. The screaming hair-on-fire pronouncements about terror plots that may have had real plotters, but no real conceivable chance of actually happening had ceased. That that period spanned the time between the 2006 midterm elections and the week we reached exactly 18 months until the 2008 presidential election - just a coincidence?

“ALWAYS FEAR FEAR ITSELF”

Our third story on the COUNTDOWN, from the mind-bending idea that four guys dressed as pizza delivery men were going to outgun all the soldiers at Fort Dix to the not-too-thought-out plan to blow up JFK airport by lighting a match 40 miles away, here we go again. Time for an update of our segment, “The Nexus of Politics and Terror.” The instance is now 13 in number when those two worlds have overlapped, and we are reminded by our government, with or without justification, that we should always fear fear itself.

TWO PREFACES

We offer two prefaces tonight: one, the words of Dennis Milligan, the new state chairman of the Republican Party in Arkansas, who says about Iraq, to the newspaper The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, quote, “At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing. And, I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on September 11th, 2001, and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country.”

“All we need is some attacks on American soil,” said the Republican Party chairman in Arkansas - Arkansas. in the United States. That Arkansas!

The other preamble, we remind you again that coincidences can happen, that the logical fallacy insists that just because event A occurs and then event B occurs, that does not automatically mean that event A caused event B. But, neither does it say the opposite.

THE 13 LINKS

The Nexus of Politics and Terror updated through today (4 June 2007). Please judge for yourself.

NUMBER ONE

OLBERMANN: May 18, 2002; the first details of the president‘s daily briefing of August 6, 2001, are revealed, including its title, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.” The same day, another memo is discovered revealing the FBI knew of men with links to al Qaeda training at an Arizona flight school. The memo was never acted upon.

Questions about 9/11 intelligence failures are swirling. May 20, 2002:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The terror warnings from the highest level of the federal government tonight are …

OLBERMANN: Two days later, FBI Director Mueller declares that another terrorist attack is “inevitable.”

The next day, the Department of Homeland Security issues warnings of attacks against railroads nationwide, and against New York City landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.

NUMBER TWO

Thursday, June 6, 2002:

COLEEN ROWLEY: I never really anticipated this kind of impact.

OLBERMANN: Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who tried to alert her superiors to the specialized flight training taken by Zacarias Moussaoui, whose information suggests the government missed the chance to break up the 9/11 plot, testifies before Congress. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Graham says Rowley‘s testimony has inspired similar pre-9/11 whistleblowers.

Monday June 10, 2002, four days later:

JOHN ASHCROFT, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot.

OLBERMANN: Speaking from Russia, Attorney General John Ashcroft reveals that an American name Jose Padilla is under arrest, accused of plotting a radiation bomb attack in this country. In fact, Padilla had by this time already been detained for more than one month.

NUMBER THREE

February 5, 2003; Secretary of State Powell tells the United Nations Security Council of Iraq‘s concealment of weapons, including his 18 mobile biological weapons laboratories, justifying a U.N. or U.S. first strike. Many in the U.N. are doubtful. Months later, much of the information proves untrue.

February 7, 2003, two days later: as anti-war demonstrations continue to take place around the globe:

TOM RIDGE, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR: Take some time to prepare for an emergency.

OLBERMANN: Homeland Security Secretary Ridge cites credible threats by al Qaeda and raises the terror alert level to orange. Three days after that, Fire Administrator David Paulison, who would become the acting head of FEMA after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, advises Americans to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to protect themselves against radiological or biological attack.

NUMBER FOUR

July 23, 2003; the White House admits that the CIA, months before the president‘s State of the Union address, expressed strong doubts about the claim that Iraq had attempt to buy uranium from Niger. On the 24, the Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is issued. It criticizes government at all levels. It reveals an FBI informant had been living with two of the future hijackers.

It concludes that Iraq had no link to al Qaeda. Twenty eight pages of the report are redacted. On the 26th, American troops are accused of beating Iraqi prisoners.

July 29, 2003, three days later, amid all of the negative headlines:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Word of a possible new al Qaeda attack.

OLBERMANN: Homeland Security issues warnings of further terrorist attempts to use airplanes for suicide attacks.

NUMBER FIVE

December 17, 2003; 9/11 Commission co-chair Thomas Kean says the attacks were preventable. The next day, a federal appeals court says the government cannot detain suspected radiation bomber Jose Padilla indefinitely without charges, and the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, Dr. David Kay, who has previously announced he has found no weapons of mass destruction there, announces he will resign his post.

December 21, 2003, four days later, the Sunday before Christmas:

RIDGE: Today the United States government raised the national threat level.

OLBERMANN: Homeland Security again raises the threat level to orange, claiming credible intelligence of further plots to crash airliners into U.S. cities. Subsequently, six international flights into this country are canceled after some passenger names purportedly produced matches on government no-fly lists. The French later identified those matched names. One belongs to an insurance salesman from Wales, another to an elderly Chinese woman, a third to a five-year-old boy.

NUMBER SIX

March 30, 2004; the new chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, tells Congress we still have not found any WMD in that country. And, after weeks of having refused to appear before the 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice relents and agrees to testify.

On the 31st, four Blackwater USA contractors working in Iraq are murdered - their mutilated bodies dragged through the streets and left on public display in Fallujah. The role of civilian contractors in Iraq is now widely questioned.

April 2, 2004:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: The FBI has issued a new warning tonight.

OLBERMANN: Homeland Security issues a bulletin warning that terrorists may try to blow up buses and trains using fertilizer and fuel bombs like the one detonated in Oklahoma City, bombs stuffed into satchels or duffel bags.

NUMBER SEVEN

May 16, 2004; Secretary of State Powell appears on “Meet the Press.” Moderator Tim Russert closes by asking him about the enormous personal credibility Powell had placed before the U.N. in laying out a case against Saddam Hussein. An aide to Powell interrupts the question, saying the interview is over.

TIM RUSSERT, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: I think that was one of your staff, Mr. secretary. I don‘t think that‘s appropriate.

COLIN POWELL, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Emily, get out of the way.

OLBERMANN: Powell finishes his answer, admitting that much of the information he had been given about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was …

POWELL: Inaccurate and wrong, and, in some cases, deliberately misleading.

OLBERMANN: On the 21st, new photos showing mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison are released.

On the 24th, Associated Press video from Iraq confirms U.S. forces mistakenly bombed a wedding party, killing more than 40.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004, two days later:

ASHCROFT: Good afternoon.

OLBERMANN: Attorney General Ashcroft and FBI Director Mueller warned that intelligence from multiple sources ,,,

ASHCROFT: Indicates al Qaeda‘s specific intention to hit the United States hard.

OLBERMANN: And, that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete. The color-coded warning system is not raised. The Homeland Security secretary, Tom Ridge, does not attend the announcement.

NUMBER EIGHT

July 6, 2004; Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry selects Senator John Edwards as his vice-presidential running mate, producing a small bump in the election opinion polls and producing a huge swing in media attention towards the Democratic campaign.

July 8, 2004, two days later:

RIDGE: Credible reporting now indicates al Qaeda is moving forward with its plan to carry out a large scale attack in the United States.

OLBERMANN: Homeland Security Secretary Ridge warns of information about al Qaeda attacks during the summer or autumn.

Four days after that, the head of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Deforest B. Soaries, Jr., confirms he has written to Ridge about the prospect of postponing the upcoming presidential election in the case, the event, it is interrupted by terrorist attacks.

NUMBER NINE

July 29, 2004; at their party convention in Boston, the Democrats formally nominate John Kerry as their candidate for president. As in the wake of any convention, the Democrats now dominate the media attention over the subsequent weekend.

August 1, 2004, Monday morning, three days later:

RIDGE: It is as reliable a source — a group of sources - as we‘ve ever seen before.

OLBERMANN: The Department of Homeland Security raises the alert status for financial centers in New York, New Jersey and Washington to orange. The evidence supporting the warning - reconnaissance data left in a home in Iraq - later prove to be roughly four years old and largely out of date.

NUMBER TEN

October 6, 2005, 10 a.m. ET: the president addresses the National Endowment for Democracy, once again, emphasizing the importance of the war on terror and insisting his government has broken up at least 10 terrorist plots since 9/11.

At 3:00 p.m. ET, five hour after the president‘s speech has begun, the Associate Press reports that Karl Rove will testify again to the CIA leak Grand Jury and that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has told Rove he cannot guarantee that he will not be indicted.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC ANCHOR: We‘re awaiting a news conference at the bottom of the hour.

OLBERMANN: At 5:17 p.m. ET, seven hours after the president‘s speech has begun, a New York official disclosed a bomb threat to the city‘s subway system, based on information supplied by the federal government. The Homeland Security spokesman says the intelligence upon which the disclosure is based is of doubtful credibility.

And, later it proved that New York City had known of the threat for at least three days and had increased police presence in the subways long before making the announcement at that particular time. Local New York television station WNBC reports it had the story of the threats days in advance of the announcement, but was asked by high-ranking federal officials in New York and Washington to hold off on its story.

Less than four days after having revealed the threat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York says, “Since the period of the threat now seems to be passing, I think over the immediate future, we‘ll slowly be winding down the enhanced security.”

While news organizations, ranging from the New York Post to NBC News, quote sources who say there was reason to believe the informant who triggered the warning simply made it up.

A senior U.S. counterterrorism official tells the New York Times, quote, “There was no there there.”

NUMBER ELEVEN

A sequence of events in August 2006, best understood now in chronological order:

As the month begins, the controversy over domestic surveillance without legal warrants in this country crests.

Then, on August 9, the day after the Connecticut Democratic Senatorial Primary, Vice President Cheney says the victory of challenger Ned Lamont over incumbent Joe Lieberman is a positive for the, quote, “al Qaeda types,” who he says, quote, “are clearly betting on the proposition that ultimately they break the will of the American people, in terms of our ability to stay in the fight.”

The next day, British authorities arrest 24 suspects in an alleged imminent plot to blow up U.S.-bound aircraft using liquid explosives smuggled on board in sports drink bottles. Domestic air travel is thrown into chaos as carry-on liquids are suddenly banned.

On August 14, British intelligence reveals it did not think the plot was imminent. Only the U.S. did. And, our authorities pressed to make the arrests. Eleven of the 24 suspect are later released. And, in the months to come, the carry-on liquids ban is repeatedly relaxed.

NUMBER TWELVE

May 7, 2007, Greensburg, Kansas, leveled by a tornado, and the state’s governor notes, more in sorrow than in anger, that the redeployment of so much of the Kansas National Guard and its equipment to Iraq might now cripple the soldiers’ ability to respond if another disaster hits Kansas.

GOV. KATHLEEN SEBELIUS (D), KANSAS: What we‘re really missing is equipment. And, that is putting a strain on recoveries like this one.

OLBERMANN: The next day, the authorities announce arrests in a far-fetched plan to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey. The so-called terrorists planned to gain access to the base by posing as pizza delivery men. It is not a suicide mission. They state clearly they intend to kill personnel and then retreat to safety, even though they were going to attack a closed compound, full of trained soldiers with weapons.

And, though the plan is branded sophisticated, its perpetrators are not sophisticated enough to have not handed over the videotape of themselves training with weapons to a Circuit City store in order to be transferred to DVD.

The Fort Dix plot not only erases from most news coverage the issue of disaster readiness in Kansas, but it also obscures the next day’s story that, in anticipation of his testimony to a House panel, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has submitted opening remarks that match, virtually word for word the remarks he had given the previous month to a Senate committee.

ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Recognizing my limited involvement in the process, a mistake I freely acknowledge — a mistake that I freely acknowledge, I have soberly questioned my prior decisions.

NUMBER THIRTEEN

OLBERMANN: And, June, 2007, the JFK plot to blow up the jet fuel pipeline feeding John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, thus causing the entire airport to be consumed in an horrific conflagration. One of the men arrested has, as past employee, access to the sprawling complex, but little knowledge of the reality of the pipeline system.

The manager of that system tells the “New York Times” that the pipeline is not some kind of fuse. Shut off valves throughout would have easily contain any damage, just as a leak in a tunnel in any city would not flood everything in that city below ground.

The so-called plot happens to be revealed the day before the second Democratic presidential debate.

And, as the scandal continues to unfold over the firings of U.S. attorneys, and their replacements by political hacks, the so-called plot is announced by the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney for Brooklyn, New York, and by the police chief of New York City, the father of a correspondent for Fox News Channel.

(BJ note: And, the continuing Iraq debacle and troop deaths. And, the president’s plummeting approval rating. And, the final word from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the CIA that Valerie Plame was, indeed, a “covert operative.” And, on Tuesday, one day after this report, the sentencing of former Cheney Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby to 30 months in prison, and Bush’s “I call him Vladimir” saber rattling over Russia at the G-8 Summit.)

CONCLUSION:

OLBERMANN: In all fairness, we could probably construct a similar timeline of terror events and their relationship to the haircuts of popular politicians. But, if merely a reasonable case can be made that any of these juxtapositions of events are more than just coincidences, if that case can be made on this, the very day that a military judge at Guantanamo Bay dismissed all terror charges that have kept Salim Hamdan jailed there for five years, it underscores the need for questions to be asked and asked continually in this country, questions about what is prudence and what is just fearmongering.

…

“COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN,” MSNBC, Monday, 4 June 2007, transcript: LINK

FOR FURTHER STUDY:

Almost six years after 9/11, are we any safer? “THE NEW AGE OF TERROR” by Evan Thomas, Newsweek, August 21-26, 2006, issue: LINK

“PLOT TO BLOW UP JFK AIRPORT!” That’s what America heard. What are the facts? “Experts cast doubt on credibility of JFK terror plot,” Agence France-Presse, 5 June 2007: LINK

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