Please

Health Care Reform

"A real health plan would start with public executions of the top thousand CEOs and owners of the major food companies and fast food franchises. It would continue with serious penalties for health workers not washing their hands or merely holding them under the tap without using soap." -Alexander Cockburn

I'd add some folks from Madison Ave.

"Problem number one here is that there’s no such thing [as an Obama health care reform plan]. As in just about everything else of consequence his administration has been involved in, [the president] seems quite content to simply defer to Congress and allow the sausage-making process on the Hill to generate precisely the policy abomination one might expect, with all the political liabilities we’ve come to know and love from such a dispiriting collection of 535 (minus two or three) moral midgets." -David Michael Green

Non-Fiction

A friend stopped by for a cup of coffee and a chat. She sat where she could see the titles of the books stacked on edge of my desk. She asked me how I could read such depressing stuff.

I don't think I was able to explain it very well. I'm not really depressed by what I read. What really depresses me is the way so many people spend so much time and energy avoiding anything that might make them think anything other than happy thoughts.

Change With No Bearing

Obama Backs Off a Reversal on Secrets

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

Judge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”

Once more, he said, “No, Your Honor.” The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.

My New Bumpersticker

http://www.cafepress.com/DontBlameNader

Hot Off the Presses

Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Three months after the fact, The New York Times finally reports that Georgia "may" have been the aggressor. I wonder if McCain or Biden have commented somewhere...

Election Day

I was able to ride my bike into the village to vote on a beautiful Indian summer day.

As much as I want to see the Republicans driven into a dark place where they can pupate into a higher life form, as much as I'd like to believe the Democrats will handle their new found power with grace and courage, I could not vote for Obama and, more particularly, Biden.

My easiest and most heart felt vote was for local activist, Howie Hawkins for Congress. If only there were more like Howie Hawkins...

American Know How

How is it that I can be even more embarrassed to be an American? All these images that make the U.S. looking like some third world incipient democracy that hasn't figured out how to conduct an election.

Decision Clarified

Apparently Joe Biden likes the way Dick Cheney has redefined the role of the vice president.

Undecided

How can it be that one week before the election I am undecided? I live in a state where I have the luxury of voting my conscience but still I can't decide...

I had intended to vote on the basis of my opposition to U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Pakistan and now Syria... but in past few days I've been thinking about what has happened to America in the last forty years. I've been thinking about the first time I put a war above everything else and may have missed something equally important. I've been thinking about a man I thought I loathed but whom I've now come to see as the most courageous man to have served as president in my lifetime.

I would like to honor the civil rights that give me an opportunity to cast my vote for the first presidential candidate of African decent but I just don't know if I can face the possibility of witnessing him escalating U.S. military action.

"Heat"

This week's edition of Frontline kept me up all night. I thought I'd read enough, seen enough to give me a pretty good picture of climate change but this program brings it all together and the impact is gut wrenching.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/

Unconnected Dots

A week after I first saw this sign it's still there, a perfect demonstration of the disconnect that many people still maintain with the reality of failed governmental policy. This sign is in Fayetteville and there's another one in the village of Manlius in front of another vacant building.

Newsweek

Illustration: Steve Brodner for Newsweek
"The Fall of America, Inc."

Takin' It To The Street

NICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP/Getty Images

Demonstrators protest the proposed 700 billion USD Wall Street bail-out in front of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City on September 25, 2008. In response to the global financial crisis, protesters, from a variety of activist groups, denounced the capitalist system, Wall Street and the administration of US President George W. Bush.

Paul Newman 1925-2008

I guess one good thing about modern technology is the way it allows us to perpetuate images and keep memories alive. But as the losses accumulate, I wonder if images will still give us pleasure. When the polar bears, the emperor penguins, the frogs, the forests are gone will it be too painful to be reminded of all that we've destroyed?