Category: Issues of the Day

Best line of the day, so far

“I don’t know about you, but I’m really getting tired of having elected officials who appear to have either no knowledge of or respect for the Constitution of this country.”

Crooks and Liars commenting on Rep. Steve King saying “If you teach American history, you cannot teach it without teaching Christianity.”

It’s worse. They appear to have no knowledge of or respect for a Constitution they have sworn to “support and defend…against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to.” Shouldn’t they have to pass some sort of written exam before they can take the oath?

The human spirit

NewMexiKen received a Christmas letter from a good friend who volunteers at the Occupational Therapy Clinic at Walter Reed Army Medical Center teaching amputees how to cook. (Bless you, Jeanne.)

Jeanne writes:

It’s amazing how upbeat they are and determined not to be defeated or defined by their injuries. While we were eating the Thanksgiving meal, one of the amputees, who’s really into cooking said, “The good thing about eating dinner with a bunch of amputees is there’s plenty of leg room under the table.”

She continues:

They joke and fool around and have a really good time–the current bunch especially. The downside, of course, is the missing limbs and sixty percent of the amputees have traumatic brain injuries. IEDs have a lot to answer for.

Destroying the CIA tapes

There’s a lot of hand wringing on the blogs about who gave the CIA authority to destroy the videotapes of an “interrogation.”

One important point: By law, the only person who can authorize a federal government agency to destroy a “record” is the Archivist of the United States. (36 CFR Part 1228)

Now, this may have been done for the CIA under some general or ongoing authority, but that seems unlikely.

Furthermore, based on my experience, I find it difficult to believe the CIA destroyed anything.

Social Security is not a problem

But it could use a few adjustments. Andrew Tobias offers his, illustrating among other things how minimal the fix is.

My tweaks:  (1) I’d keep 62 as the age for early retirement.  But, where currently the full-benefits retirement age rises one month per year to 67 in 2027, I would let it keep rising to 68 in 2039.  (Hey: “Seventy is the new fifty-five.”)  (2) Where the 6.2% tax rate you and your employer each pay drops to zero on wages above a certain cap, I’d have it drop to 1% instead.  Annoying, but not a killer.  (And worth paying so that grandma – much as we love her – doesn’t have to move in.)  (3)  I’d keep raising benefits with inflation.  But for higher-income recipients, I’d calculate those benefits based on price inflation, not wage inflation, in years when prices rose slower than wages.  Bang: you’re done.  A bit of pain around the edges, with plenty of time to prepare for it, and the Social Security problem is solved.]

But, as they point out over at AlterNet, there’s no crisis and no hurry:

To say that Social Security’s surplus “has been spent,” is like saying that when you buy a U.S. government bond, your money “has been spent.” Whatever has been done with the money, you are still holding a bond, and you will get your interest and principal so long as there is a US government. If there is no US government when you retire, well then you will have other things to worry about than Social Security, including your private savings.
…

In fact, even if nothing were ever done to close the projected gap – and that is a wildly implausible scenario – Social Security would, after 2046 still have enough money to pay, indefinitely, a bigger benefit than it does today. That’s in real terms, adjusted for inflation. Of course, this benefit would be less than what seniors in the distant future would be entitled to, so we will eventually make some adjustments. But there’s no hurry.

Certain people in our society hate social security. For the past 20 years they’ve spun a tale about the looming crisis. It’s bullshit. And, unfortunately, even Barack Obama, has been drinking their Kool Aid.

Medicare and Medicaid, now those, on the other hand, are serious matters.

Terrorists

NewMexiKen first wrote and published this one year ago today. It seemed worth repeating.

Something fewer than 4,000 people have been killed by terrorists in the U.S.; most on September 11, 2006, but others in Oklahoma City, or by individual actions such as victims of the Unabomber. Each of those premature deaths is, of course, a tragedy.

However, something like 17,000 people are killed in alcohol-related traffic fatalities — each year.

17,000. Each year.

Friday night in downtown Denver, a drunk driver ran into a family as the parents — in a crosswalk with the green light — pushed a stroller carrying their two children across the intersection of 15th and Arapahoe streets. The mother, and two children ages 2 and 4 were killed. The father is recovering; as The Denver Post reported it: “Physically, he is doing well,” said Benny Samuels, spokeswoman for Denver Health. “Emotionally, he’s having a rough time.”

Well, I guess.

Saturday night on I-25 north of Santa Fe, a drunk driver going south in the northbound lanes hit a family returning from a soccer tournament in Bernalillo, New Mexico. The impact nearly separated the family’s van in two. The father, mother, two daughters and a stepdaughter were killed. The daughters were 11 and 10 and the stepdaughter 17. Another stepdaughter, age 15, survived. As reported by The Albuquerque Journal: “Arissa was recovering Sunday at St. Vincent Regional Medical Center from a broken left arm, fractured hip, and bruises to her head and chest— and from the loss of her three siblings, mother and stepfather.”

Well, I guess.

The New Mexico driver also died in the crash. The Denver driver, who fled the scene, is under arrest. Both were intoxicated. The New Mexico killer had five previous DWI arrests and a blood-alcohol content of 0.32.

17,000. Each and every year. Why does this madness continue? What is wrong with us?

Which type of terrorist are you more frightened of?

It’s those damn facts getting in the way again

[Kentucky] Gov. Ernie Fletcher on Monday ordered an exhibit that includes the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta and the “Star Spangled Banner” be put on display in the Kentucky Capitol Rotunda, surrounding a mammoth statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Fletcher, who lost a bid for re-election the next day, signed an executive order proclaiming the documents have played important roles in developing the current legal system and should remain on display until another governor or legal ruling forces them down.

. . .

One plaque, about the national anthem, reads: “Both the new song and the flag became known as ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and became a rallying cry for the American patriots during the Revolutionary War.”

But Francis Scott Key didn’t write “The Star-Spangled Banner” until 1814 after a battle at Maryland’s Fort McHenry, and the American Revolution ended in 1781.

Lexington Herald-Leader

And don’t even get me started on the “nine-ten-or-eleven commandments.”

Sometimes a Fire is Just a Fire

What kind of sick people are we that Fox News has linked the Southland firestorm to Al Qaeda, Glenn Beck suggested that this disaster is some sort of divine retribution for those Malibu-ites who “hate America,” while the Huffington Post has seemed all kinds of eager for this to be The Next Katrina — almost rooting on the Santa Anna winds in the dark hope of adding another failed disaster response to the execrable Bush legacy.

Seriously. Take a breath. …

Tim Dickinson

The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself

They have to come up with super-human powers for Al Qaeda because they want to use Al Qaeda to justify a super-extreme agenda for the United States of America. If you really, really want to radically transform our government and radically transform who we are as a country; if you want East German style policing, and people informing on their neighbors, and you want to get rid of the Fourth Amendment, and you want endless wars conducted for profit; if you want to completely get rid of the safety net function and the regulatory function of the government; if you have an agenda that radical, you better have a really radical justification for it. And so they have to elevate this band of death cults, fundamentalist criminals into a threat that is greater than the Soviet Union ever was when they not only had a military but they had thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at our country. They have to make Al Qaeda even worse than that.

Rachel Maddow on “Countdown with Keith Olberman” reacting to Fox News’s suggestions that the fires in Southern California were linked to Al Qaeda.

Exactly!

“I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.”

Paul Krugman concluding Friday’s column.

What liberal said it?

The thing that gets under my skin most about George W. is his intention to install fear in people. This is America. We’re proud. We’re not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We’re changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other’s dresses. Fear’s the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That’s not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that’s slipping away.

Merle Haggard quoted by Joe Klein at Time.

Loathsome understates it

This is so loathesome I am literally sick to my stomach. These kids were hurt in a car accident. Their parents could not afford health insurance — and sure as hell couldn’t get it now with a severely handicapped daughter. And these shrieking wingnut jackasses are harassing their family for publicly supporting the program that allowed the kids to get health care. A program, by the way, which a large number of these Republicans support as well.

They went after Michael J. Fox. They went after a wounded Iraq war veteran. Now they are going after handicapped kids. There is obviously no limit to how low these people will go.

Digby

More from The New York Times.

And Think Progress.

And the Daily Howler.