And now our Joe the Plumber minute

His last line is the best:

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Anti-gay bigots caught lying again

I mentioned this a number of times, and the media that covers the religious right should especially take note. The religious right lies. A lot. You can't trust any "fact" they give you, as more often than not, it will be a fact ripped out of context to the point where if you read the context, the "fact" usually proves the exact opposite of what they're claiming. I found this when I was helping Senator Kennedy's office on gay issues back in 1993 and 94. I went through every document I could get my hands on that a particularly well known RR group had produced about gays. I then got the original sources for all of their footnotes. Of some 60 or so footnotes per document, I recall, very few were what any English teacher would consider "real" footnotes. It was rather astounding. Citing court cases to prove their point, and not telling you that they were citing the dissent - in other words, the court ruled for us, not them. Quite literally, there were documents in which not a single footnote was real. Anyway, read this blog post, it's another prime example of how they operate. Liars to the core of their cold un-Christian hearts. Read the rest of this post...

Economic bottom yet to come

June bottom? Not quite, according to Roubini. CNBC:

"People talk about a bottom of the recession in June, but I see it more like six to nine months from now," Roubini said. "The green shoots everyone talks about are more like yellow weeds to me."

"I think there will be a bounce in the second half of the year from the massive stimulus package," Rogoff said. "But I think the longer run trend is very slow, so we're vulnerable to dipping down again sometime in the next couple of years, like Japan."

Roubini said that the financial crisis was more than a crisis of confidence. "It was a crisis of excessive leverage of housing and the corporate sector," said Roubini. "We're not reducing the leverage, we're pushing the losses from the private sector on the government and increasing public debt. That's going to be a drag for growth."

"Housing's going to take five years to recover, and we have a long way to go," Rogoff said.

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Happy "Whitey Tape" Day

It's a new holiday. To celebrate the wingnuts who make life worth living. Read the rest of this post...

Some decent economic news out yesterday

Whether this is sustainable (or real) or not is another question but for now, I'll take it. Longer term stability looks like a major area of concern. Reuters:

U.S. economic data offered more evidence on Friday that the recession's worst phase may be over, with April consumer prices unchanged and industrial output declining at a slower pace than in March.

Signs that the 17-month-old recession may be nearing an end helped push consumer confidence in May to its highest since the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers last September.

Further dissipating the gloom, the contraction in New York state factory activity eased this month.

Clearly the federal intervention is juicing the economy and has pumped up the 2009 run on Wall Street but that too may be running out of steam. It's possible to delay paying the price of the Wall failure - especially when Treasury gives them a free ride at the expense of everyone else - but as Roubini and others are saying, it does not help the long term prospects or real growth. Choppy waters ahead. Read the rest of this post...

Obama's weekly address: It's a "new foundation"

Apparently, for Obama, his agenda (and legacy) is the "New Foundation." Energy and health care are "two pillars" of this new foundation:



Just one thing, four days after meeting with Obama, those health care industry execs he mentions are already backing away from their commitment. They can't be trusted. Read the rest of this post...

Who do you side with? The parents or the state?

AP:

A Minnesota couple who refused chemotherapy for their 13-year-old son was ordered Friday to have the boy re-evaluated to see if he would still benefit from the cancer treatment — or if it may already be too late....

Dr. Bruce Bostrom, a pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, diagnosed Daniel with Hodgkin's lymphoma in January and recommended six rounds of chemotherapy.

He underwent one round in February, but stopped after that single treatment. He and his parents opted instead for "alternative medicines," citing religious beliefs.

Doctors have said Daniel's cancer had a 90 percent chance of being cured with chemotherapy and radiation. Without those treatments, doctors said his chances of survival are 5 percent. Child protection workers accused Daniel's parents of medical neglect, and went to court seeking custody.

Ever since I was a kid, I've sided against the parents on these things. I still do. I think. But I have to acknowledge that at some point the parents have to have the right to decide what is the correct treatment for their child. And cancer treatments can be awfully vicious. They can also sometimes be more than what was needed, or so I hear. Still, when I read about these parents not treating their kids, for religious reasons, it still ticks me off. But is that enough justification for the state to intervene? Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The poem of the week is "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins. Our poet/blogger tells us "This is good advice to anyone just starting to read poetry." So, I'll take the advice and not try to torture a confession out of poems to find out what they really mean.

From KarenMrsLloydRichards, more from her ongoing series of Haikus for the Obama administration. First, a "tribute" to Arlen Specter:

Party loyalty?
Self-interest guides him most.
He's: (Specter-PA).

Nails him. And, a perfect slam of Liz Cheney:

Daddy's Little Girl
Wuvs when the bad, bad mans are
Slammed against the wail . . .

I'm off for a longish run. Trying to get back in shape to do the Marine Corps Marathon in October. Petey will not be joining me. He's not a running dog. He has to stop too often to check for secret messages and monitor for squirrel activity. Read the rest of this post...

Ladysmith Black Mombazo - Shosholoza

One of my favorite songs and the best that I could locate on YouTube though my favorite recording is done by the Drakensberg Boys Choir. There is a good version here but the recording that we have is hands down the best. That choir is always a pleasure to listen to so wade through their other stuff and have a listen. Read the rest of this post...

Go veg, save the planet

Lots of stories over here about a town in Belgium that is planning to go vegetarian one day a week in an effort to combat climate change. I grew up in a household where eating vegetarian was considered a bit suspicious and here in France, there may even be laws against vegetarianism. I went 100% veg for a few years back in college so don't think much about eating or not eating whatever so adding a day per week of no meat seems easy enough. What is interesting in this story is the historical examples of vegetarianism to address specific food supply issues.

"Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there," he said. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity." This week the Belgian city of Ghent met his demands by declaring Thursday a meat-free day. Restaurants, canteens and schools will now opt to make vegetarianism the default for one day a week, and promote meat-free meals on other days as well.

This is not the first institutional backing for such a move. In Britain, the NHS now aims to reduce its impact on the environment partly by "increasing the use of sustainably sourced fish and reducing our reliance on eggs, meat and dairy". Last year, Camden council in London announced that it would be issuing a report calling for schools, care homes and canteens on council premises to cut meat from menus and encourage staff to become vegetarian. (In the end the initiative was shot down by Conservative councillors who insisted that people should not be deprived of choice.) While in Germany the federal environment agency in January called on Germans to follow a more Mediterranean diet by reserving meat only for special occasions.

These initiatives may sound novel, but in fact they reinstate what was for centuries an obligatory practice across Europe. The fasting laws of the Catholic church stipulated that on Fridays, fast days, and Lent, no one could eat meat or wine; on some days, dairy products and fish were also banned. Even after the Reformation Elizabeth I upheld the Lenten fast, insisting that while there was no religious basis for fasting, there were sound utilitarian motives: to ­protect the country's livestock from over-exploitation and to promote the fishing industry (which had the ancillary benefit of increasing the number of ships available for the navy).

Is going veg a day or two per week a big deal or something easy? Read the rest of this post...

Inquiry into G-20 death in London opens

This should be one of many inquiries that lead to radical change in the Metropolitan Police. In addition to the death of Ian Tomlinson there were numerous troubling videos of aggressive police behavior during the G-20 protests. The Guardian:

"Not only the Tomlinson family, but also many members of the public and MPs, have raised with us concerns about whether the police either misinformed the public about the circumstances of Mr Tomlinson's death or failed to correct misinformation about how he died," said IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass.

"I have therefore decided that not only will we investigate the family's specific complaint about the content and timing of the [Met's] media communications on the night of 1 April, but that we should also seek to determine, as far as practicable, the state of knowledge that both the Metropolitan and City of London police had about any police contact with Ian Tomlinson between 1 April and 7 April 2009."

Sources with detailed knowledge of the investigation said the IPCC is also questioning whether City of London police may have deliberately withheld crucial information from the watchdog.

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Limbaugh fires back at McCain's mom

He really can't help himself. But do note what Limbaugh says in his reply to McCain's mother.

"She is absolutely right" in her assessment that that she belongs to a different Republican Party than he does, Limbaugh said during his radio show: "The Republican Party she belongs to gets shellacked election after election after election."

Actually, the Republicans only lost the last two elections. Before that, they controlled the entire US government, all three branches. And just until 4 months ago, they controlled the presidency. This is the Republican victim mentality in its full glory. The religious right started it several years ago with their "America isn't safe for white Christian men" mantra, and now it's permeated all conservatism. The irony is that conservatives use to accuse liberals of always playing the victim. My how things have changed. Read the rest of this post...