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It makes me wonder what I would do if I lived in Alabama, one of the few remaining states whose obscenity law makes it illegal to "produce, distribute or otherwise sell sexual devices that are marketed primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."
Sherri Williams, owner of upscale sexuality boutiques Pleasures I and Pleasures II and plaintiff in Williams v. Alabama, has been fighting the law since its inception in 1998. (The Supreme Court rejected her most recent appeal.)
However, even this law recognizes that sex toys are not inherently criminal. It exempts sexual devices used "for a bona fide medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial or law enforcement purpose." It just isn't clear on what qualifies as "bona fide" -- or who makes that decision.
"The reason they put that (exemption) in the law was so they didn't violate the rights of people who needed (these devices)," she says. "But the witnesses in our case are stating in their depositions that they physically need sexual aids," and it's not making any difference.
I hope you choose to recognize the growing body of research showing that the so-called "tort reform" your organization has advocated in the past will not result in lower insurance rates for doctors—but will victimize the patients your members have sworn an oath to protect.I can't tell you how true this is. My job has to do with medical fraud and malpractice, and you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to put a bad doctor out of business. You should see the files I read every week.
Instead, I would urge you to work with the attorneys of our organization and the broader consumer and patients' rights coalition for patient safety reform to reduce the incidence of malpractice and insurance reform to lower premiums for doctors.
As you are surely aware, in an official submission to the Texas Department of Insurance, GE Medical Protective, the nation's largest medical malpractice insurer, recently admitted that the caps on non-economic damages passed in Texas had a negligible impact on rates and announced a 19 percent increase in doctors' premiums.
Dennis Kelly, a spokesman for the American Insurance Association, told the Chicago Tribune on Jan. 3 of this year, "We have not promised price reductions with tort reform."
Caps on damages are clearly ineffective in achieving your single purpose of lower insurance rates. Moreover, limits on the most meritorious suits by the most severely injured patients don't reduce the number of medical errors or improve the availability of quality medical care.
***
Doctors and patients needn't be adversaries in this debate. Doctors, patients, and lawyers should agree that the insurance industry has too much control over the entire health care system, and find common ground on the need for insurance reform.
What the New York Times and countless studies have found is that it is the declining investment earnings of the insurance companies and the nature of competition in that industry that have driven cyclical changes in malpractice insurance rates.
Removing the insurance industry's anti-trust exemption and requiring justification for rate increases are two simple measures that can reduce doctors' malpractice premiums, without stripping away patients' rights.
***
State boards of medical examiners should be more aggressive in getting bad doctors out of the profession. According to the National Practitioner's Databank, less than 5% of doctors create 55% of all medical malpractice payments.
Syndicated columnist and CNN host Robert Novak misquoted Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean in order to suggest that Dean supports the Bush administration's message that Social Security is in crisis.
From the February 26 edition of CNN's The Capital Gang:
NOVAK: The Democratic line that this isn't a problem -- Howard Dean gave a speech at Cornell on Thursday of this week in which he said that 80 percent -- over the years, 80 percent of the Social Security benefits will be lost. There is a problem. So, Howard sometimes tells the truth. He doesn't get the exact line.
In fact, Dean did not say "80 percent of the Social Security benefits will be lost," as Novak claimed, but rather that "if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now," as The Cornell Daily Sun reported in its coverage of Dean's February 23 speech at the university. The article further noted that Dean "would not endorse" privatizing of Social Security, adding that "[h]e acknowledged that while there were indeed problems with the program, turning to Wall Street was not the answer."
As Media Matters for America has noted, the Social Security trustees projected in their 2004 report that the current system could pay out full benefits for 37 years, or until 2042; it could then pay 73 percent of currently scheduled benefits immediately thereafter and 68 percent of benefits in 2078. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's 2004 projections, the current system could pay out full benefits until 2052, 81 percent of currently scheduled benefits in 2053, and 71 percent in 2100.
Salad with Raspberry Walnut Viniagrette DressingI wonder if the snow-food fixation has a biological component. You know, your brain screaming, "Stock up now because you don't know when you'll get outside again."
Trader Joe's Cheddar & Broccoli Quiche
Hot Tea
WASHINGTON - Today Reps. Henry A. Waxman, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, and Rep. Sander M. Levin, along with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, and Reps. Obey, Miller, and DeLauro, released a new report that shows how the Social Security Administration has modified its communications strategy to undermine public confidence in Social Security.
The report, based on a review of over 4,000 pages of Social Security documents from 1995 to 2005, reveals that the agency has systematically altered agency publications, press releases, PowerPoint presentations, website content, and even its annual statements to foster the impression that Social Security is "unsustainable" and "must change." The agency's new pessimistic tone and emphasis echo President Bush's warnings about the future of Social Security.
"The job of the Social Security Administration is to run the Social Security program, not to provide political cover for President Bush," said Rep. Waxman. "The agency has sacrificed its independence and abandoned its tradition of nonpartisan administration of Social Security."
Most states would not be able to absorb the added burdens and be forced to choose between reducing Medicaid coverage or benefits — thereby further increasing the numbers of low-income Americans who are uninsured or underinsured — and raising taxes or cutting funding for other priorities such as education. In the face of the growing Medicaid financing squeeze that states are facing, federal savings in Medicaid should be reinvested in the program to help states avert actions that cause the number of uninsured Americans — now 45 million — to climb still higher.
In addition to the proposed Medicaid funding reductions contained in the Administration’s budget, the budget also includes a significant proposal that suggests the Administration may be seeking a major structural change in Medicaid that would further disadvantage beneficiaries and states. The Administration proposes to “modernize” Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to give states more “flexibility” both to restructure coverage for some groups of beneficiaries that Medicaid currently covers and to expand coverage to people not presently covered. The budget offers no specifics on this proposal, except to specify that this change must be carried out in a manner that results in no additional federal expenditures. That statement, coupled with the apparent similarity of the budget’s description of this proposal to the rhetoric that surrounded previous Administration proposals to cap federal contributions to Medicaid and convert part of the program to a block grant, suggest this proposal is likely to include a cap on at least part of federal Medicaid funding.
Such a cap would represent a profound change in the Medicaid program. It would end the entitlement to coverage for beneficiaries who are covered under the parts of the program that would be subject to the cap, with the result that eligible low-income uninsured people could be turned away or put on waiting lists. A cap also would end the guarantee that states would receive federal funding at a specified matching rate for the health care and long-term care costs they incur in covering eligible beneficiaries. A cap would result in the federal government reducing its share of Medicaid costs over time and would shift more of the burden to the states. In response, states would likely cut back on Medicaid coverage, benefits, and payments to providers.
The issue here isn't that Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church are easily the scummiest and most venal group in America. I'm curious more about what responsibility the Republican Party has in condemning this sick behavior. They certainly were forced to denounce David Duke many, many years ago. This group is easily as sick and destructive to the America as Duke's KKK, so why do we not hear anything from the Republicans about Westboro, which seemingly is doing its dirty work for them (of course, they haven't shrunk from dirty work much in recent years -- is that the real answer to my question?).
Bob Dole is from Kansas. Why doesn't he speak out? Sam Brownback (email form), why don't you speak out against hate so ugly and obvious? Pat Roberts (email form), as Senator you have an opportunity to stand up for true family values, why don't you do so? Is it really so risky to stand up against this filth that these Republicans fear doing it?
Are Republican values so shallow that these guys can't even speak out against such evil in their own state, or do they seriously think, through some sort of electoral calculus, that it would cost them votes to take on Fred Phelps? If the latter is the case, then the Republicans are further out in Right Field with the Right Wing Ding Christian Clerics than I thought.
ONCE they were a byword for mindless docility. But cows have a complex mental life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited by intellectual challenges, researchers have found.I knew it. I knew those fucking cows held grudges.
Cows are capable of strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety about the future. But if farmers provide the right conditions, they can also feel great happiness.
The findings have emerged from studies of farm animals that have found similar traits in pigs, goats and chickens. They suggest such animals may be so emotionally similar to humans that welfare laws need to be reconsidered.
WASHINGTON — The White House and its allies who back overhauling Social Security are launching a highly targeted campaign to convince blacks that President Bush's plan to create private investment accounts would have special benefits for them.
The most provocative element of the GOP message to blacks: Their shorter life expectancy means that Social Security is not a favorable deal for them, a point contested by Bush's critics. The president's plan for private accounts, say Republicans, would particularly benefit blacks by allowing them to build wealth more rapidly and pass a portion of their Social Security contributions to their heirs.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Rick Santorum, the conservative from Pennsylvania who ranks third in the Senate Republican leadership, said Sunday that he was willing to discuss increasing the Social Security tax rate as a way of helping to assure the program's solvency.Not only that:
Santorum said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that raising the Social Security payroll tax might be the price Republicans have to pay for Democratic support for diverting some of the tax revenue to private retirement accounts, as President Bush has proposed.
Santorum, who is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said the one issue that he would not negotiate with Democrats was his — and Bush's — insistence that there be no benefit cuts for today's retirees and workers 55 and older.Those horrid, horrid Democrats! Insisting that all the older people be cut loose and left to fend for themselves... But worry not, Little Ricky and Bubble Boy are bravely protecting the workers from something no Democrat will propose, anyway.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 28 - A suicide car bomber drove into a line of about 400 volunteers for the Iraqi National Guard and police force today in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing at least 122 people and wounding at least 170, an official at the Interior Ministry said.
It was the deadliest single attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
Sure, Dr. Farrell accepts that women, as a group, are paid less than men. But the way he sees it, using pay statistics to prove sex discrimination is akin to using the horizon to prove that the world is flat.Be sure to read the entire article before you come to any conclusions.
Women, he believes, methodically engineer their own paltry pay. They choose psychically fulfilling jobs, like librarian or art historian, that attract enough applicants for the law of supply and demand to kick in and depress pay. They avoid well-paid but presumably risky work - hence, the paucity of women flying planes. And they tend to put in fewer hours than men - no small point, he says, because people who work 44 hours a week make almost twice as much as those who work 34 and are more likely to be promoted.
Every president has sought to manipulate the media. But historians say that Bush, unhappy with what he calls "the filter," is courting controversy in his quest for innovative formats. Several conservative commentators have been paid to trumpet Bush policies in their work; one recipient, Armstrong Williams, is being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission. And two agencies have disseminated pro-Bush videos that look like TV newscasts, without disclosing the Bush sponsorship - a breach of federal law, according to the Government Accountability Office.Hmm. You mean they might even - oh, I don't know - lie about the dead and wounded from Iraq?
The White House has stated that these media decisions were made independently by the agencies. Nevertheless, former Republican strategist Jim Pinkerton, who later worked in the senior George Bush's administration, says: "It's quite clear this White House is exploring radical alternative ways to getting its message out - through the aggressive hiring of flacks like Williams, and the presence, or even planting, of friendly so-called journalists like Gannon.
"The Bush people are challenging all the old assumptions about how to work the press. They are ambitious - visionary, if you will - in ways that Washington has yet to fathom."
Larry Gross, who runs the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, says: "Richard Nixon hated the press, Bill Clinton hated the press - but they accepted the basic rules of the game. Bush has a strategy of discrediting, end-running, and even faking the news. Those prepackaged videos sent to local TV stations `looked' like news, much the way Gannon `looked' like a reporter. We're seeing something new: Potemkin-village journalism."
The nation's system of veterans' health care is already seeing the first of those men and women, saved by modern battlefield medicine but in need of long-term rehabilitation. While their numbers are not nearly as large as the injured from Vietnam or World War II, the severity of their wounds is often greater than from previous wars.And then we have the emotional wounds:
"What is important is the really more profound nature of their injuries," says Tony Principi, the Veterans Affairs secretary during President Bush (news - web sites)'s first term.
While armored vehicles and jackets sometimes protect vital organs, the car bombs and booby-trap explosions so common in Iraq have left American soldiers with catastrophic amputations and serious brain trauma.
These injured and disabled men and women represent the most grievously wounded group of returning combat veterans since the Vietnam War, which officially ended in 1975. Of more than 5 million veterans treated at VA facilities last year, from counseling centers like this one to big hospitals, 48,733 were from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites).
Many of the most common wounds aren't seen until soldiers return home. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an often-debilitating mental condition that can produce a range of unwanted emotional responses to the trauma of combat. It can emerge weeks, months or years later. If left untreated, it can severely affect the lives not only of veterans, but their families as well.
Of the 244,054 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service, 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with PTSD. Comparisons to past wars are difficult because emotional problems were often ignored or written off as "combat fatigue" or "shell shock." PTSD wasn't even an official diagnosis, accepted by the medical profession, until after Vietnam.
***
• Jesus Bocanegra was an Army infantry scout for units that pursued Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in his hometown of Tikrit. After he returned home to McAllen, Texas, it took him six months to find a job.
He was diagnosed with PTSD and is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim. He goes to the local Vet Center but is unable to relate to the Vietnam-era counselors.
"I had real bad flashbacks. I couldn't control them," Bocanegra, 23, says. "I saw the murder of children, women. It was just horrible for anyone to experience."
Bocanegra recalls calling in Apache helicopter strikes on a house by the Tigris River where he had seen crates of enemy ammunition carried in. When the gunfire ended, there was silence.
But then children's cries and screams drifted from the destroyed home, he says. "I didn't know there were kids there," he says. "Those screams are the most horrible thing you can hear."
When you're a Republican, you can just ramble and make shit up, and they print it anyway. What a great country!
Mr. Arar's is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?
President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."
Someone should tell that to Maher Arar and his family.
Mr. Arar was the victim of an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That's a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture.
The Transportation Security Administration has disbanded its Office of Maritime and Land Security in what the agency says is an effort to comply with a presidential homeland security directive.Let's see. So they pushed maritime security into another program with a new boss who's apparently paying a lot more attention to air security.
According to a TSA spokesman, the Feb. 7 reorganization created an intermodal program with a new boss, Theresa Bertucci. She oversees security for postal operations and shipping as well as seven modes of transportation, including the agency's high-profile aviation work. Bertucci served as TSA's acting chief of staff in 2004. Spokesman Darrin Kayser said he was not familiar with her experience in transportation issues or other details of her professional background.
The move sidelined TSA Assistant Administrator Chet Lunner, one of the agency's founders. He had been in charge of maritime, railroad, highway, mass transit and pipeline security since June 2003. Lunner now serves as a special adviser to Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Fleming. He declined Government Executive's request for comment Friday.
Brian Tetrault was 44 when he was led into a dim county jail cell in upstate New York in 2001, charged with taking some skis and other items from his ex-wife's home. A former nuclear scientist who had struggled with Parkinson's disease, he began to die almost immediately, and state investigators would later discover why: The jail's medical director had cut off all but a few of the 32 pills he needed each day to quell his tremors.
Over the next 10 days, Mr. Tetrault slid into a stupor, soaked in his own sweat and urine. But he never saw the jail doctor again, and the nurses dismissed him as a faker. After his heart finally stopped, investigators said, correction officers at the Schenectady jail doctored records to make it appear he had been released before he died.
Two months later, Victoria Williams Smith, the mother of a teenage boy, was booked into another upstate jail, in Dutchess County, charged with smuggling drugs to her husband in prison. She, too, had only 10 days to live after she began complaining of chest pains. She phoned friends in desperation: The medical director would not prescribe anything more potent than Bengay or the arthritis medicine she had brought with her, investigators said. A nurse scorned her pleas to be hospitalized as a ploy to get drugs. When at last an ambulance was called, Ms. Smith was on the floor of her cell, shaking from a heart attack that would kill her within the hour. She was 35.
In these two harrowing deaths, state investigators concluded, the culprit was a for-profit corporation, Prison Health Services, that had moved aggressively into New York State in the last decade, winning jail contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with an enticing sales pitch: Take the messy and expensive job of providing medical care from overmatched government officials, and give it to an experienced nationwide outfit that could recruit doctors, battle lawsuits and keep costs down.
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MOUNT HOLLY, NEW JERSEY HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR MONDAY AND MONDAY NIGHT FOR EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA, AND NORTHERN AND CENTRAL NEW JERSEY.
SNOW WILL BEGIN FROM SOUTH TO NORTH IN THE LATE MORNING HOURS ON MONDAY AS AN INTENSIFYING AREA OF LOW PRESSURE APPROACHES THE REGION. THERE IS STILL SOME UNCERTAINTY AS TO THE EXACT TRACK OF THE LOW AS IT MOVES BY AND A DIFFERENCE OF POSITION BY AS LITTLE AS 30 TO 50 MILES CAN HAVE A BIG INFLUENCE ON WHAT TYPE OF PRECIPITATION FALLS AND WHERE.
AT THIS TIME, THE PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO REMAIN ALL SNOW OVER THE AREA, AND TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 8 TO 12 INCHES ARE EXPECTED. SOME HEAVY SNOW IS POSSIBLE DURING MONDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING.
TRAVEL CONDITIONS WILL QUICKLY DETERIORATE DURING THE DAY ON MONDAY AND BECOME TREACHEROUS DURING THE AFTERNOON, AND IT IS BEST TO AVOID ALL TRAVEL, UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. ROADS SURFACES WILL BECOME SLIPPERY AND VISIBILITIES WILL BE REDUCED IN AREAS OF HEAVY SNOW. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL, SLOW DOWN AND ALLOW PLENTY OF TIME TO REACH YOUR DESTINATION.
The day after Senator Santorum made his remarks comparing sodomy to bestiality, I made the following call to his office:
SSO: "Senator Santorum's office."
Freewayblogger: (with midwestern accent) "Hello there... took me awhile to get through. Guess you're pretty busy what with all this going on."
SSO: "Yes."
Freewayblogger: "Well I just wanted you to know that my wife and I are big supporters of the Senator, but we have just one question..."
SSO: "Yes?"
Freewayblogger: "Does oral sex between a husband and wife, when they're both consenting... does that constitute sodomy?"
SSO: "Umm.. no. It does not."
Freewayblogger: "HOT DAMN! (calling out to wife:) HONEY? GREAT NEWS!"
SSO: (stifles laugh)
Freewayblogger: "Thank You. Thank You Very Much. Just one more thing..."
SSO: "Yes?"
Freewayblogger: "How does the Senator feel about doggy-style?"
SSO: "Umm... I can't really speak for the Senator on that."
Me: "Oh Well... Thanks Again!" (Hangs up.)
If you've got questions for Senator Santorum concerning appropriate sexual behavior, you can reach his office at (202) 224-6324.
And Dean told the Hiebert fund-raiser that gay marriage was a Republican diversion from discussions of ballooning deficits and lost American jobs. That presents an opportunity to attract moderate Republicans, he said.Hey, Derrick? Ever read any Carl Jung?
"Moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant. They don't think tolerance is a virtue," Dean said, adding: "I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant."
And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: "This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."
When told of Dean's remarks, Derrick Sontag -- executive director of the Kansas Republican Party -- said he was "shocked."
"My immediate reaction to that whole dialogue is, it's full of hatred," Sontag said. "The Democratic Party has elected a leader that's full of hatred."
A growing chill is in the air over Hollywood Saturday night after ABC executives forced Robin Williams to drop a comic song from the Oscars show!
Williams, the presenter of the Academy Award for best animated feature, decided last week that his one minute on stage would be a prime time to lampoon a conservative critic James C. Dobson, whose group Focus on the Family last month criticized the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants for appearing in a video about tolerance that the group called "pro-homosexual."
TEL AVIV (AFP) - Israel accused Syria on Saturday of being implicated in the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in which four Israelis were killed, while an official of the Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad said in Beirut his movement had carried out the attack.
The claim and Israeli accusation followed the release of a video showing a man known as a member of Islamic Jihad saying he was carrying out a suicide attack in Israel in response to what he termed Israeli killings and destruction of homes.
There is widening unease within the Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during interrogations and detention of terrorism suspects, according to current and former government officials.
Until now, only one C.I.A. employee, a contract worker from North Carolina, has been charged with a crime in connection with the treatment of prisoners, stemming from a death in Afghanistan in 2003. But the officials confirmed that the agency had asked the Justice Department to review at least one other case, from Iraq, to determine if a C.I.A. officer and interpreter should face prosecution.
In addition, the current and former government officials said the agency's inspector general was now reviewing at least a half-dozen other cases, and perhaps many more, in what they described as an expanding circle of inquiries to determine whether C.I.A. employees had been involved in any misconduct.
Previously, intelligence officials have acknowledged only that "several" cases were under review by the agency's inspector general. But one government official said, "There's a lot more out there than has generally been recognized, and people at the agency are worried."
We once loved together
And we floodlit that time
Input, output
Electricity
But the lines overloaded
And the sparks started flying
And the loose wires
Were lashing out at me
She's not going to fix that up
Too easy
But she holds out her candle
And she shines it in
And she begs him to show her
How to fix it again
While the song that he sang her
To soothe her to sleep
Runs all through her circuits
Like a heartbeat
She's not going to fix it up
Too easy.
Kerry-Edwards 2004 has just made two filings in the Ohio recount case currently pending before Federal Judge Edmund Sargus in Columbus, Ohio.
Kerry-Edwards 2004 has been relatively quiet in this case for the past several weeks and its filings today indicate its continued interest and involvement in this litigation.
An absolute non-issue with the American print and TV media is the control by very powerful gays of the top policy levels of the White House. Growingly pointed comments inside the Beltway social clubs, homes and watering places about Karl Rove’s “good friend” ‘Jeff Gannon’ are being very thoroughly ignored by the mainline press.
There are two reasons for this crashing silence. One is the fact that a large number of powerful and wealthy Republicans are gay and do not want their wives and children to discover that they put on leather underwear and spend their spare time at the Eagle over on New York Avenue or getting rough trade action at the Crew Club. Fat Karl Rove was seen by one of my people entering a private homosexual orgy at a five-star Washington hotel over the Mid-Atlantic Leather (MAL) weekend last year. All the self-hating loyal Republican gays at the no-pants party, many of them Senatorial aides and military types, of course pretended they didn't recognize him, and who can blame them - imagine how repulsive Fat Karl must look without his clothes. The report that came back was that Fat Karl greatly enjoyed the supervision of a certain hairy 350-lb. Leather Dominator, who had won the Miss Virginia Daddy Bear title at the MAL festivities.
Karl used to hang out at JR’s, which is on 17th between P&S, before he became so well-known. This is a “respectable” gay bar for discreet people who do not wear mesh panties, high-heeled pumps and wear terrible wigs. How many people know about these activities? In Washington, a hell of a lot of the prominent. But very few of them dare to open their mouths because of their own small problems.
***
When I get back a report I loaned to someone, I will be happy to discuss the background and current activities of Ken Mehlman, the head of the Republican Party and, like Fat Karl the Eunuch, a warm friend of the President…and others. Many others. And there are letters, too, and confidential reports. And more people to discuss with you and your readers.
I know about these fag bars and cock emporiums because it is my job to make sure there are no scandals to disturb the Rabid Rove the Queen of the Republican’s goal of being the only political party in the U.S.. I personally have never been in a gay bar but people who work for me have and only because they are following certain interesting people. Eventually, all of this will end up in the print media and you can remember my discussions when that happens. Many of these unfortunates are eagerly in favor of a large army because it improves their choice of stud boyfriends.
***
The general feeling in Russian, French and German diplomatic, political and social circles is that Bush is a menace to world peace and ought to be removed from office before he starts a major war. There is already a major economic war raging with almost all of the world joined to shut down the dollar, spike the cannons of American dominant business interests and bring down, or neutralize, Bush and his cronies. This is all very well and good but all of this clandestine, and very effective, economic warfare will do terrible damage to the American people.
Bush frankly doesn’t give a damn as long as he gets his money in front. This has always been the way he has operated - borrowing money from family friends, gutting the business ventures they paid for and stuffing his obscene profits into his pockets ... and overseas bank accounts.
More on all of this massive swindling later and in detail.
George Bush is this week having an extravagantly orchestrated series of meetings with Europe's leaders, designed to show a united front for the creation of democracy around the world. Tony Blair talks of our "shared values". No one mentions the word that makes this show a mockery: torture.I wonder if this is a result of The Guy Rule, something that seems hardwired into the male DNA.
It is now undeniable that the US administration, at the highest levels, is responsible for the torture that has been routine not only, as seen round the world in iconic photographs, at Abu Ghraib, but at Guantánamo Bay and Bagram. Meanwhile, in prisons in Egypt, Jordan and Syria (and no doubt others we do not know about), Muslim men have been tortured by electric shocks to the genitals, by being kept in water, by being threatened with death - after being flown to those countries by the CIA for that very purpose.
How can it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has denounced these appalling practices and declared that, in view of all we now know of cells, cages, underground bunkers, solitary confinement, sodomy and threatened sodomy, beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, mock executions and kidnapping, President Bush and his officials are not welcome? Perhaps it's not surprising given the British army's own dismal record in southern Iraq. Why has no public figure had the honesty to admit that the democracy and freedom promised for the Middle East are fake and mask US plans to leave Washington dominant in the area? And why does no one say publicly that what is really happening in the "war on terror" is a war on Muslims that is creating a far more dangerous world for all?
At the root of Bush's pathology is a deep dissociation. Like the terrorists, he has split-off from his own darker half, projecting the shadow ‘out there,’ and then tries to destroy this dis-owned shadow. By projecting the shadow onto each other, Bush and the terrorists are each seeing their own shadow reflected in the other. They see each other as criminals, as the incarnation of evil. By projecting the shadow like this, they locate the evil ‘out there,’ which insures that they don't have to recognize the evil within themselves. It's interesting to note that the inner meaning of the word 'mirror' is ’shadow holder.’ Ironically, by fighting against their own shadow in this way, they become possessed by the very thing they are trying to destroy, thereby perpetuating a never-ending cycle of violence. To quote Jung, "The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided [not in touch with both the light AND dark parts of themselves] and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves."Carl Jung. Genius.
Jung simply refers to projecting the shadow as “the lie." It’s interesting to note that one of the inner meanings of the word Devil is ‘the liar.’ Projecting the shadow, to quote Jung, "deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil." Jung stresses the importance of consciously developing what he calls our "imagination for evil," which is to consciously recognize our potential for evil. This recognition means embracing and integrating our dark side into our wholeness, which is made up of both light and dark. If we have no imagination for evil, to quote Jung, "evil has us in its grip.......for only the fool can permanently disregard the conditions of his own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil."
By projecting the shadow, Bush is unwittingly being a conduit for the deepest, archetypal evil to possess him from behind, beneath his conscious awareness, and to act itself out through him. At the same time, ironically enough, he identifies with the light and imagines that he is divinely inspired. To quote Jung, a person in a position of power who has become dissociated like Bush “even runs the grave risk of believing he has a Messianic mission, and forces tyrannous doctrines upon his fellow-beings.” He then believes that any action he desires is justified in the name of God, as he can rationalize it as being God's will. Unable to self-reflect, he is convinced of the rightness of his viewpoint, which he considers non-negotiable. This is a very dangerous situation, as Bush has become unconsciously identified with and possessed by the hero, or savior archetype. This figure is religious in nature, as it derives from the transpersonal, archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Being inflated with the hero archetype, he (archetypically) wants to save the world from evil and to liberate the planet.
WASHINGTON Feb 25, 2005 — Ten members of the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel who voted that a group of powerful pain killers should continue to be sold had ties to the drug makers, a new analysis shows.
A study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest indicates that 10 of the 32 panel members had ties to either Pfizer Inc., or Merck & Co., ranging from consulting fees and speaking honoraria to receiving research support from the companies.
After three days of hearings on the drugs, known as Cox-2 inhibitors, the panel voted 31-1 to keep Pfizer's Celebrex on the market, 17-13 with 2 abstentions in favor of Pfizer's Bextra and 17-15 that Merck's Vioxx should be allowed back on sale.
Democrats plan an aggressive fight against legislation that would overhaul the nation's bankruptcy code, and they plan to offer many amendments on the Senate floor next week with the hopes of bogging down the bill. "It effectively makes our bankruptcy courts a collection agency for the credit card companies," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said of the bill, which would make it tougher for some people to discharge their debts through bankruptcy. The bill (S 256) would end nearly a decade of legislative efforts on a bankruptcy overhaul.
Democrats are expected to offer an amendment to raise the minimum wage by $2.10 over 26 months, and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., plans to offer a counterproposal that would raise it by $1.10 over two years. Republicans have been resistant to raising the minimum wage, but Santorum represents a heavily unionized state and faces a tough re-election race in 2006.
NEW YORK When the conservative Bradley Foundation awarded a $250,000 prize to George Will last week, it raised some eyebrows at a time when Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Michael McManus have been criticized for accepting government money.
The foundation is a private entity, but it is reported to have ties to the Bush administration, and its president/CEO is a former Republican National Committee member.
The prize "sure has a strong stench of a payoff to yet another White House sycophant," said "Non Sequitur" cartoonist Wiley Miller, whose Universal Press Syndicate comic appears in 700-plus newspapers and includes political commentary. "Is this how they're going to get around direct payoffs, by pretending it's some sort of journalism award?"
***
Aly Colón, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, said he didn't know enough about the Bradley honor to judge whether it's a problem for a newspaper columnist to receive it.
Colón did add: "When a journalist is awarded a prize, there's going to be some tension with regard to how independent the journalist remains." He said there's less tension when the prize comes from a journalism organization, but "another dimension of seriousness" when the award comes from an organization with a political orientation -- and when the recompense is as large as $250,000. Also, Colón raised the possibility that such a lucrative award could influence columnists who would like to win it in the future.
The National Journal’s Peter Stone will tear open the DeLay fundraising scandal in a Saturday exclusive, RAW STORY has learned.
The prominent lawyer and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is being investigated by federal authorities for his lobbying efforts of an Indian tribe and his relations with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), paid for DeLay and DeLay’s staff’s stay in an expensive London hotel in mid-2000.
National Journal has obtained a copy of an expense voucher that Abramoff filed the law firm where he was then a leading lobbyist, Stone reports Saturday.
“Among the big-ticket expenses that Abramoff listed for reimbursement was a bill for the DeLays at the Four Seasons Hotel in London in the amount of $4,285.35,” Stone writes. “The voucher shows that the total reimbursement for expenses was $13,318.50. For some reason, it shows that both Abramoff and Buckham were owed that amount.
“The voucher shows that Abramoff was accompanied by DeLay and his wife; Hirschmann and her husband; and Ed Buckham, DeLay’s former chief of staff who had also become a lobbyist,” Stone continues.
***
House rules stipulate that members or members’ employees cannot accept payment from a registered lobbyist to cover travel costs.
Over at There Is No Crisis they have just released some research into USA Next, the front group for Social Security
privatization. Go take a look at Social Security - Is the
privatization scheme just a junk mail operation? The first
installment of the research is a 158.63 KB PDF file.
From the blog post introducing the research,
It appears that USA Next, the front group for Social
Security privatization, was really just a junk mail and spam operation in disguise to benefit Richard Viguerie in the 1990s. It appears that it was, before becoming a corporate shell for pharmaceutical industry money.
So go have a read. I did some digging and found a few things to add:
The report says that Texans for Lawsuit Reform is a funder of USA Next. Well, here's a name you'll recognize: Enron's Ken Lay helped start and fund Texans for Lawsuit Reform! See the following, which is footnote 47 from my report The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law:
47]
Ken Lay helping start first tort reform organization in Texas: Doroshow, Joanne.
"'Tort Reform,' Bush and the Enron Connection." Center for Justice and Democracy. January 26, 2002. Viewed September 27, 2003
http://www.centerjd.org/press/release/020126.htm
"Bush, Lay Shielded Errant TX Businesses From Lawsuits." Texans for Public Justice. February 12, 2002. Viewed September 27, 2003 http://www.tpj.org/Lobby_Watch/enrontlr.html
Otto Scott, listed in the report as a former USA Next Boardmember is an interesting name. From Who Is Otto Scott:
The more complex answer is that Otto Scott is one of a great many Americans who are well-known to a special audience, but unknown to the nation at large.Well,
Scott is a member of the secretive Council for National Policy. CNP is an organization that keeps turning up... You can look for info on CNP (and please follow one or two of
these links) here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
I also found this about W. H. Regnery, former Boardmember:
W.H. Regnery Sr., patriarch of the nation's premier conservative pubishing house, was one of the principal financiers of the America First movement which advocated an isolationist policy prior to WWII and part of a
group that founded the National Review in 1944.
I encourage all of you, especially bloggers, to help out by digging into this yourselves. Send your research (or links to your blog posts) to Bob Brigham bob.brigham@gmail.com
The upset’s complete and the mole in our camp has been outed. We provide a 21 bun salute to the new Prince of Comedy for the Dark Side, to NorquemadaBizness (dba: Happy Furry Puppy Doing Time). May Don Drysdale’s ghost haunt you and your raving minions for making a mockery of these serious proceedings, Norby. You even made Hineyrocket and Jim Guckert cry, they wanted this one so bad!
Norbizness… I guess the Pope does scat in the woods. And keeps kosher. And the bear’s Catholic. Things will never be normal again.
I'm just going to sit here in the corner and sulk and try to ruin the party for everybody else by giving off bad vibes (while secretly hoping that some smart, pretty, big-hearted woman notices my all alone in the bean bag chair and comes over to ask in a soft, sweet voice, "Lance, what's wrong? You seem so down." It's unbelievable how many dates I got with this ploy back in high school. At least two! You'd think that every girl would have had sense enough to avoid a drip like that.) I know that all the people I voted for (including Jeanne D'arc, Lindsay Beyerstein, Michael Berube, James Wolcott, and Brad DeLong) deserved to win, just as much as all the others, and I'll console myself with being right about that.It's so funny. Go read the whole damned thing.
Next year though I think more people should vote like me. Also next year I think Wampum should start a new category and give an award for Most Lovably Clueless Blogger. This might also be called the Blogger Who For Some Inexplicable Reason Decides to Act Like a Dad in a 1950s Sitcom Who Bumblingly Insults His Wife and Daughters With a Foolishly Chauvinist Observation and then Stands There Looking Befuddled as the Ladies Storm Out of the Room and Set Off to Prove Him Wrong!
Early favorite for this award is hands down Kevin Drum.
"She's hitting him in the head with a Bible!"
The LA Times story about Gannon says a lot about the state of the mainstream media (MSM).
Somehow, Ms. Neuman has managed to make the Gannon story about them...and it is, but not the way she thinks.
She said, the MSM is being forced to ask: What is a journalist? Here's a better question for the MSM: what is journalism?
Neuman's piece is a classic example of present day journalism. It's an example of how far the MSM has gone to avoid covering the real issues in Gannongate. When describing the research done on Gannon by bloggers, she uses terms "left wing bloggers" "gay activists" and "bloglust." Her words imply a lack of credibility.
When she writes of Jeff, there are no similar "descriptors" applied to him, GOPUSA or Talon News.Reporters are trying so hard to be fair, and not piss off the right wing, that they are becoming part of the Right Wing Noise Machine.
It's actually frightening. Maybe Ms. Neuman talked to some of bloggers from the "left wing." She didn't talk to John Aravosis, who is apparently consigned to the role of "gay activist" as if Americablog is nothing more.
This is the first major story the LA Times wrote about Gannon and they couldn't interview any of the players who broke the story? I've said it before, this story played out right under the noses of the media. Jeff/Jim was among them. He essentially mocked them....and continues to do so.
Maybe that's why they can't cover the story. It involves self-examination and self-criticism. And, it might involve pissing off the White House. Then, they might not get their Presidential nicknames. That would really suck.
The story seems to be about more whores than we realized.
Official documents in Canada suggest that Mr. Arar was never the target of a terror investigation there. One former Canadian official, commenting on the Arar case, was quoted in a local newspaper as saying "accidents will happen" in the war on terror.
Whatever may have happened in Canada, nothing can excuse the behavior of the United States in this episode. Mr. Arar was deliberately dispatched by U.S. officials to Syria, a country that - as they knew - practices torture. And if Canadian officials hadn't intervened, he most likely would not have been heard from again.
Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this policy may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not make it any less repugnant.
Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.
"It was so scary," he said. "After a while I became like an animal."
A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."
This is a government that feels it is answerable to no one.
Iraqi insurgents have hit American troops with more remotely detonated bombs in the past year, but the attacks are killing and wounding fewer troops, the Pentagon (news - web sites) said Thursday.And on the same page, this story:
Since April 2004, bomb attacks have risen from an average of 25 a day to 30 a day, but the percentage of those attacks that injured or killed U.S. troops fell from 90% to about 25%, according to Lt. Col. Christopher Rodney, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.
Rodney attributed the declining injury and death rates to a number of factors, from better protective armor and better intelligence to a dramatic improvement in U.S. troops' ability to electronically jam the devices that detonate the bombs.
BAGHDAD (AP) — A roadside bomb blast killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded eight others north of Iraq's capital Friday, the military said.
Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said a U.S. patrol was hit by an improvised explosive device, or IED. That is the term the military uses for roadside bombs.
Witnesses said the attack took place around midday in Tarmiyah, 20 miles north of Baghdad.
The Marine Corps suffered a 29 percent spike in suicides last year, reaching the highest number in at least a decade, with the demanding pace of military operations likely contributing to the deaths, the top-ranking U.S. Marine said yesterday.
Thirty-one Marines committed suicide in 2004, all of them enlisted men, not commissioned officers. The majority were younger than 25 and took their lives with gunshot wounds, according to Marine statistics. Another 83 Marines attempted suicide. There were 24 suicides in 2003, and there have not been more than 29 in any year in the last 10.
***
Marine commanders say the rise in suicides continues a worrisome three-year trend that is likely linked to stress from the sharply increased pace of war-zone rotations. At the same time, they said the increase in suicides is not directly related to service in Iraq or Afghanistan; since 2001 24 percent of the suicides have been committed by Marines who have been deployed there, the statistics show.
***
Hagee warned that while some Marines have displayed obvious warning signs of suicidal tendencies -- such as a preoccupation with dying, risky behavior, withdrawal or giving away their possessions -- many do not. In his memo, he warned that some Marines feel stigmatized for seeking help.
In other words, when people (including the president of the United States and his subordinates in the administration) shun Al Jazeera, pressure the Qatari government to break off their involvement with it, and try to promote Al Arabiya what they're doing is seeking to promote a situation in which the government of Saudi Arabia has a total monopoly on Arabic-language electronic media. This is, roughly speaking, the reverse of what these people claim to be trying to accomplish -- the promotion of dissent and political reform in the Arab world. Mostly, I think this is genuine confusion -- we're talking about dupes rather than liars -- though obviously someone, somewhere understands that a scam's being run or else it wouldn't work. Frighteningly, the Saudis seem very close to achieving their goal.
TOPEKA, Kan., Feb. 24 - Attorney General Phill Kline, a Republican who has made fighting abortion a staple of his two years in the post, is demanding the complete medical files of scores of women and girls who had late-term abortions, saying on Thursday that he needs the information to prosecute criminal cases.You know, I actually feel bad for people whose own emotional pain compells them to inflict it on others.
Mr. Kline emphasized statutory rape at a news conference here but also spoke obliquely of other crimes that court documents suggest could include doctors' providing illegal late-term abortions and health professionals' failing to heed a state law that requires the reporting of suspected child sexual abuse.
***
The brief, which provided the first glimpse into a yearlong battle whose records have been sealed, said the laws cited as the basis for the subpoenas are one that restricts abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy and another that requires health professionals to report suspected child abuse.
When Mr. Kline was in the legislature, he helped write the 22-week limit.
Although Mr. Kline emphasized statutory rape in his news conference, many here on both sides of the abortion debate said they suspected that his real target was doctors who provide late-term abortions.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 - The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday that his party's proposal to change the Senate's rules if Democrats continued to block President Bush's judicial nominees would wreak havoc in the Senate.
Moreover, the chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, suggested that his party might not even have the votes to enact the rules change.
Mr. Specter's outspokenness was especially notable coming when Republican leaders were hoping to present a unified front to bolster the credibility of the threat they are brandishing against the Democrats. It is not the first time that Mr. Specter has been at odds with his party. After the November election, party conservatives tried to prevent him from becoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee after he remarked that strongly anti-abortion judicial nominees might be rejected in the Senate.
***
He told reporters that he hoped to persuade his fellow Republicans not to seek a rule change that would allow them to override any filibusters the Democrats might mount to block judicial nominees. He also hoped to persuade Democrats to support some of Mr. Bush's nominees to break a logjam of nearly four years.
The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security privatization. There's no hard evidence that the people involved - some of them also responsible for the "Swift Boat" election smear - are taking orders from the White House. So you're free to believe that this is an independent venture. You're also free to believe in the tooth fairy.
Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors' organization of being against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they'll be back, and it's important to understand what they're up to.
***
And this week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front.
It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the rule, not the exception.
For example, for much of December viewers of Fox News were treated to a series of ominous warnings about "Christmas under siege" - the plot by secular humanists to take Christ out of America's favorite holiday. The evidence for such a plot consisted largely of occasions when someone in an official capacity said, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas."
So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.
Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of smears to come.
First, we learn they wouldn't quit. Now, the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire reports that many Bush aides are resisting transfers to other positions in the government. "Though Chief of Staff Card tried to move some subordinates out to agencies, lure of proximity to the White House inner circle produced lackluster response."Plus, there's always the chance of seeing Gannon naked in the steam room.
Patents are the key to huge drug-company profits. The industry will fight vociferously to protect them. In West Virginia, where the issue came up last summer, industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional. With virtually unlimited resources, the drug companies could drag states through courts for years. Still, the specter of states compelling companies to license their patents to other firms terrifies the industry. And even the fight to do this would open the industry to further scrutiny on pricing policy. All of which, some officials hope, could make drug companies more willing to negotiate discounts.Oh, yeah. If we can use eminent domain for the Texas Rangers stadium, why not this?
That’s what District of Columbia Councilman David Catania hopes will happen. Catania, a Republican who recently registered as independent after breaking with President Bush over the same-sex-marriage issue, introduced a compulsory license bill February 1. It authorizes Washington, D.C.’s mayor to declare a health emergency and, under eminent domain authority, issue a compulsory license to a generic firm to produce select patented drugs.
Under eminent domain requirements, the patented drug company would be given “just compensation” for the patent. The councilman argues that if drug companies were smart, they would “start talking about price reductions now rather than leave themselves open to a long, drawn-out due process review and hearings to determine just compensation.” Such review and hearings, he warns, would expose “just how pervasive the price gouging and profiteering has been.”
The Pentagon is implementing new restrictions on detainee interrogations, officials said. For example, said Thomas Gandy, a senior Army intelligence official, military dogs will never be used in interrogations.On the other hand, the menstrual-blood thing is still okay. So it's not like the military guys and gals won't have any fun...
Gandy said requirements of the Geneva Convention "are well integrated into the techniques" permitted. He did not describe other limits.
The USA Next group intends to combine the two ruthless success stories of the Bush re-election: the Swiftian tactic of amplifying its vicious and dishonest attacks through the media, and the Rovian tactic of hanging gay marriage like an anvil around the neck of a foe.And this, my friends, is why Carl Jung was a fucking genius. How utterly predictable that a party rife with self-loathing, closeted homosexuals would put all its political muscle into scaring the public about... well, people just like them.
It began with an almost comically hyperbolic Internet ad that briefly ran on The American Spectator's Web site, painting AARP as pro-gay sex - even though it's tough to think of AARP and steamy lust in the same hot breath - and anti-soldier. It showed a soldier with a red X across him, and two gay men kissing at their nuptuals, with the headline "The REAL AARP Agenda."
(Mr. Jarvis, who used to be executive vice president of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, also urged his Web site readers to "support Mel Gibson's 'The Passion.' " The group's national chairman is Art Linkletter; it seems that aging right-wing trash-talkers say the darndest things.)
AARP has not taken a position on same-sex marriage. But Mr. Jarvis told Judy Woodruff on CNN's "Inside Politics" yesterday that it had opposed a proposal in November to ban same-sex marriage in Ohio.
This was, of course, specious. The Ohio chapter of AARP objected to the proposal because it said the wording could affect legal recognition of any union, even of older heterosexuals living together.
The dollar is falling! The dollar is falling! But the Bush team has basically told the world that unless the markets make the falling dollar into a full-blown New York Stock Exchange crisis and trade war, it is not going to raise taxes, cut spending or reduce oil consumption in ways that could really shrink our budget and trade deficits and reverse the dollar's slide.
This administration is content to let the dollar fall and bet that the global markets will glide the greenback lower in an "orderly" manner.
Right. Ever talk to someone who trades currencies? "Orderly" is not always in the playbook. I make no predictions, but this could start to get very "disorderly." As a former Clinton Commerce Department official, David Rothkopf, notes, despite all the talk about Social Security, many Americans are not really depending on it alone for their retirement. What many Americans are counting on is having their homes retain and increase their value. And what's been fueling the home-building boom and bubble has been low interest rates for a long time. If you see a continuing slide of the dollar - some analysts believe it needs to fall another 20 percent before it stabilizes - you could see a substantial, and painful, rise in interest rates.
"Given the number of people who have refinanced their homes with floating-rate mortgages, the falling dollar is a kind of sword of Damocles, getting closer and closer to their heads," Mr. Rothkopf said. "And with any kind of sudden market disruption - caused by anything from a terror attack to signs that a big country has gotten queasy about buying dollars - the bubble could burst in a very unpleasant way."
Why is that sword getting closer? Because global markets are realizing that we have two major vulnerabilities that this administration doesn't want to address: We are importing too much oil, so the dollar's strength is being sapped as oil prices continue to rise. And we are importing too much capital, because we are saving too little and spending too much, as both a society and a government.
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