Where's the Outrage?

Republicans are always trying to get us up in arms over something. They don’t want us to sit down and calmly think about things. Instead they want to hit that nerve. They want us to have the knee-jerk reaction. They want us to be outraged, fearful and moved to action. Yesterday, it was death panels. Today, Czars.

From The Political Animal:

The right-wing drive to target the Obama administration’s use of “czars” seems to be catching on among Republican lawmakers. On Fox News yesterday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the president’s use of czars is “an affront to the Constitution.”

I did some research last night, trying to find examples of Lamar Alexander criticizing the Bush administration’s use of czars. After all, Bush/Cheney not only kept some of the czars left over from the Clinton and the H.W. Bush administrations, but also oversaw the creation of a “food safety czar,” a “cybersecurity czar,” a “regulatory czar,” an “AIDS czar,” a “manufacturing czar,” an “intelligence czar,” a “bird-flu czar,” and a “Katrina czar.” If Alexander is concerned about this “proliferation” of czars, surely he raised some concerns during the previous administration.

Except he didn’t. As far as I can tell, Alexander never said a word. Apparently, Republican czars are fine; Democratic czars are un-American. Just because. Good to know.

I think I have a solution to this meaningless dust-up: stop using the word “czar.” It’s a meaningless word, anyway. It’s not as if there’s a single person in the executive branch with the word “czar” in their formal title — it’s just a colloquial political euphemism.

Tags: Congress, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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I have only recently gotten into Carlos Mencia. He is fall on the floor laughing funny. This is his “rap” song “Dee, Dee, Dee.”  Funny and true! (I posted this a couple of years ago but it is funny enough to be re-posted. Re-sized video.)

Mencia - Dee, Dee, Dee [ 3:26 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Education, Fun, Music by ecthompson md
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Jazz legend Sonny Rollins has a new CD. For the most part, Sonny Rollins is too intellectual for me. I enjoy his music but I know that 90% of it goes over my head. This is a recording from 1962 if I’m not mistaken.

My buddy, who is much smarter than I, will have a little more about Sonny later.

Sonny Rollins- Rome [ 5:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Music by ecthompson md
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Could the ice be finally melting from the llloooonnnnggg winter of Bush? No major Bush administration official has been accountable for squat.

John Ashcroft (from Getty Images)

From CNN.com:

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is not immune from being sued by a man who says he was illegally detained under Justice Department policies implemented after the September 11 terror attacks, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

A spokesman for former Attorney General John Ashcroft says his team is reviewing the decision.

The man, a native-born U.S. citizen who was once a college football star, was held and interrogated by the FBI for 16 days in 2003 and his travel was limited for another year, court documents said.

A spokesman for Ashcroft, asked for his reaction, said, “We’re reviewing the decision and have no further comment.”

The court rejected Ashcroft’s argument that his involvement was as a prosecutor, which would give him full immunity from lawsuits, not as an investigator, which could leave him liable.

“We disagree,” the decision said. “Many tools and tactics available to prosecutors can serve either an investigatory or advocacy-related function.”  (more… )

Tags: Bush Administration, Legal by ecthompson md
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Now this is cool.

From CNN.com:

An archaeological dig in Jerusalem has turned up a 3,700-year-old wall that is the largest and oldest of its kind found in the region, experts say.

The wall is built of enormous boulders, confounding archaeologists as to how ancient peoples built it.

Standing 8 meters (26 feet) high, the wall of huge cut stones is a marvel to archaeologists.

“To build straight walls up 8 meters … I don’t know how to do it today without mechanical equipment,” said the excavation’s director, Ronny Reich. “I don’t think that any engineer today without electrical power [could] do it.”

Archaeologist Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority added, “You see all the big boulders — all the boulders are 4 to 5 tons.” (more…)

Tags: Science by ecthompson md
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There is no better spokesperson for the value of education than President Barack Obama, but Conservatives, already in a frenzy, want no part of it. “Brainwashing!” they shout. It’s sad to see so many Americans divorced from reality. Tony Perkins has not read any data on preventing teens from dropping out of school. Talking to high school kids is too late. Everyone with a high school education knows this. Oh, and I guess he just missed the president’s push to improve our schools.

From TP:

For the past few days, conservatives have been freaking out over President Obama’s upcoming speech to schoolchildren on the first day of school. Though Obama’s speech will be about “persisting and succeeding in school,” the right wing is claiming it is about “school indoctrination” just like “what Chairman Mao did.”

On Fox News this morning, NPR’s Juan Williams defended Obama’s effort as “innocuous,” saying that “on the face of it, it seems to be almost patriotic…you should hear the president speak about the value of education, staying in school, hard work.” But Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wasn’t convinced that the speech would be benign. To buttress his argument, Perkins asserted that “the president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration”:

PERKINS: It is unprecedented in the fact that there’s a worksheet attached with this, that there’s homework involved here. And Juan has to admit that the question of write a letter to yourself on how you can help the president does raise some questions as to whether or not he could have gotten into the policy issues. The president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration. He’s been busy with other controversial things. But you know, going to elementary kids to talk about drop out. What about high school kids? That is a little — it raises some questions.

Tags: Education, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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From AP: The Arctic is warmer than it’s been in 2,000 years, according to a new study, even though it should be cooling because of changes in the Earth’s orbit that cause the region to get less direct sunlight.

Indeed, the Arctic had been cooling for nearly two millennia before reversing course in the last century and starting to warm as human activities added greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

“If it hadn’t been for the increase in human-produced greenhouse gases, summer temperatures in the Arctic should have cooled gradually over the last century,” said Bette Otto-Bliesner, a National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist and co-author of the study on Arctic temperatures that was being published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science. (more…)

Tags: Environment by ecthompson md
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I’m hoping to find the whole video. I thought that the White House needed to unleash Joe Biden. He needed to be allowed to speak his mind. Here is VP Biden talking about Healthcare at the Brookings Institute.

Tags: Healthcare, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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I think there is really no doubt that a public option will help working families – middle America. The AFL-CIO is going to fight for the public option and this is a GREAT thing.

From TP:

Yesterday, the AFL-CIO drew “a line in the sand” when it outlined three elements any health care bill it supports must have: a public health insurance option, an employer mandate, and no taxation of health benefits. AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka told the press that this means the 11 million member-strong labor organization “won’t support the bill if it doesn’t have the public option in it.” Today, Trumka appeared on MSNBC and explained to Norah O’Donnell that the inclusion of these three elements marks the difference between “coming up with a bill that you have reform and actually having health insurance reform.”

Watch it:

Tags: Healthcare by ecthompson md
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Hello. Conservatives. (I’m waving at my computer monitor.) Tap, tap… (I’m knocking on the computer screen.) We’ve heard so many conservatives stand up and say that they support healthcare reform. Yet they don’t seem to agree with anything the Democrats are saying. So, I think that the problem may be the conservative leadership. Maybe your ordinary, next-door neighbor conservatives have better ideas then those who lead them. So I would like to post them here.

Tell me about your idea for healthcare reform. I only have a few rules — whatever system you come up with must be portable. Americans must be able to take their healthcare from Florida to Maine and from California to Texas. Secondly, whatever system you come up with must be at least as cost-effective as the system we have now. Thirdly, your system should have some mechanism to improve the outcomes. Finally, you start with a clean slate. You are the healthcare wizard. Make it happen.

I will post the best ideas on this blog.  I’ll looking forward to some thoughtful greatness!

Tags: Healthcare by ecthompson md
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Is this your Legislature at work? Is this my Legislature at work?

In case you didn’t catch it at first, check out the computer screens. Are they really playing solitaire? (Does anybody still play that on the computer anymore?) Is this better or worse than playing Grand Theft Auto 4???

Tags: General by ecthompson md
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Four years later, New Orleans is still a shadow of its former self. The Ninth Ward and other areas remain sparsely populated if at all. Many residents continue to live somewhere else as they were bused out of the area. I applaud Rachel Maddow for talking about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans.

Former Secretary Tom Ridge does take some responsibility for the horrific government response and for this he is to be commended. On the other hand, he does fall back onto some of the clichés that we’ve heard over the last four years. No one could’ve anticipated… state and local officials bear some responsibility and blame… while it is clear that Louisiana is a dysfunctional state and New Orleans functions only slightly better, the leadership had to come from the federal government. They had to coordinate the response.

It is a lie to say that no one could have anticipated the breach of the levees. Two years earlier, more than 250 emergency preparedness officials for more than 50 federal, state and local agencies worked on a tabletop exercise called Hurricane Pam. Pam was specifically developed to flood New Orleans. It was a slow moving category three hurricane. The lack of leadership from a federal level can be clearly seen in this tabletop exercise. Two years after the conclusion of the exercise, the final report was incomplete because the federal government had not filled in key sections.

I do not want to belabor the point, but Hurricane Katrina should be remembered. We need to look back and learn from our mistakes. The lesson is not that we cannot trust the federal government. Instead, the lesson is that we have to put competent people in the federal government. We need to look forward and be prepared for the next disaster. We also need to look backward and help those on the Gulf Coast truly recover and heal a wound that is over four years old. What is the Obama administration doing about this? (I know that the president has a lot on his plate but this, like so many other things that are on his agenda, is critical.)

Tags: Environment, FEMA, Obama administration, Rachel Maddow Show by ecthompson md
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The Fox “News” Channel continues to win in the ratings. For the month of August, their strategy of “all fear, all the time” garners a huge amount of viewers. It doesn’t seem to matter that Bill O’Reilly literally sucks IQ points out of the head anybody who is smarter than an empty soap dish. The fact that Glenn Beck’s viewership was up 108% over August of last year is depressing.

I’m not sure what this says about America. Bill O’Reilly’s show averaged 2.2 million viewers, less than 1% of the total population. So I guess the viewers are loyal. Where are the liberal viewers? Where are the millions that voted for Barack Obama? Could it be that all the liberals have jobs? Could it be that the liberals are getting their information through a variety of sources (newspapers, radio, the Internet and television)?

All I know is that it is damn depressing to see the Fox “News” Channel continue to trounce its competitors.

Tags: Media by ecthompson md
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