Cartoon of the Day

*Ted Rall

Thanatos

Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Chronicle pens an interesting column, entitled How do we survive Bush's march to self-destruction?

The Greeks and Sigmund Freud had a name for what may ail President George W. Bush: Thanatos. The death wish.

Thanatos was the Greek personification of death, which Freud later expanded to describe man's "death instinct," or the unconscious wish to abandon life's struggles and return to a state of quiet repose.

That would be the grave, as Freud envisioned man's endpoint. But for Bush, perhaps the metaphor extends only as far as a nice, quiet ranch in Crawford, where, as Yeats once put it, "peace comes dropping slow."

How else to explain this administration's inexorable march toward political death?

The final throes of Bush's journey toward self-destruction may have found expression with the apparent sale of operational rights to six of our nation's largest ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Approved by the Bush administration against all reason, the $6.8 billion sale includes the ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Despite bipartisan condemnation, the Bush administration has defended the sale to Dubai Ports World as not only safe, but prudent. The UAE, which incidentally served as a financial and operational base for the Sept. 11 hijackers, is an important ally in the fight against terror, we're told.

Of course they are. And Colombia is an important ally in the war against drugs. And Mexico is an important ally in the fight against illegal immigration. Perhaps, given that much of our illegal drug supply and immigrant population come from Colombia and Mexico, respectively, we should reconsider our strategy.

Reminds me of Bill Maher's New Rule from a few month's ago after the Katrina fiasco, where he observed that Bush would welcome a recall. As he said then: "I kid, but seriously Mr. President, this job cant' be fun for you anymore. There's no more money to spend. You used up all of that. You can't start another war because you also used up the army, and now darn the luck the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare, helping poor people." (See George of the Bungle)

Just in case, as Parker concluded:

In the more likely event that Thanatos truly is at the helm of our ship of state at this titanic moment, we can't afford to let Bush's death instinct subsume the national imperative to survive.

Survival now depends on fitter minds.

Cartoon of the Day

*David Horsey, The Seattle Intelligencer 

Forget Something?

The Inquirer reports that an a "nationwide abstinence-only program that uses a silver ring to remind teens to remain sexually pure has lost federal funding with the settlement of a lawsuit alleging it used the money for Christian evangelization." See: Abstinence-only program loses aid.

What the article doesn't mention is that the "Silver Ring Thing" is a pet project of my "favorite" Senator, Rick Santorum. The Village Voice The Bush Beat, notes that Santorum assisted the Pittsburgh-based evangelist Christian group receive more than $1 Million in federal funds.

This is an election year for Santorum. I would think this information might be relevant for voters to consider.

Saturday Silliness

CanOFun has a video clip of The Conan O'Brien shows spoof of Bush on Larry King Live. Bush impersonator Craig Ferguson is perfect.

And while you're still giggling, you can check out The Daily Show, at Crooks and Liars, on military recruitment and Your Tax Dollars at War.

Enjoy! Keep smiling.

Cartoon of the Day

*Tom Toles, The Washington Post

It Ain't Over Till the Quail Speaks

I know that the Cheney shoot 'em up is so last week, but I couldn't quite let it go yet. This Daily Show clip, The Week In Review, is irresistible. Way best line:

JS: Wow. How powerful a man do you have to be, to be able to shoot someone in the face and have that guy say, "My Bad." That's awesome.


Finally, we've heard from everyone else on the shoot-out at OK Corral. Well, it ain't over until we hear a word from the Quail. See Current TV (Under Super News, select the Quail Speaks).

Career Change?

I recently wrote about the soon-to-be former Senator from PA, Rick Santorum, in Tricky Ricky, which referred to the article published in the American Prospect by reporter/blogger Will Bunch. His blog Attytood also has a number of follow up pieces on the brewing Santorum Scandal.

One item that I noticed in an article published by the Philadelphia Inquirer on this issue, Santorum defends his home mortgage, gave me pause. Bunch's article focused on the mortgage that Santorum received from a private bank in Philadelphia, questioning the ethics of the loan.

According to the Inquirer, the $500,000 loan was "a five-year interest-only balloon loan at 5 percent in 2002 from Philadelphia Trust Co.," and did not include points. The main focus of the article was the reasonableness of the mortgage itself, but at the end of the article, it noted:

Interest-only mortgages are "pushed aggressively nowadays by lenders and brokers," but they are generally for people who might earn more a few years down the road, according to Bankrate.com, a financial Web site. Homeowners make monthly interest payments on the mortgage for only a fixed term - usually five to seven years, after which the loan is refinanced or paid off.

Made me think back to Neil Weyrich's observation in Philadelphia Magazine. He opined that Santorum intentionally has not curbed his zany right wing antics, even though he is trailing in the polls against his expected opponent, Bob Casey. He thinks Santorum wants to lose so that he could go over to the dark side, become a lobbyist for some extremist conservative Christian type organization and cash in with a big boy salary.

Let's see. 5 year mortgage in 2002. That would come due sometime in 2007. These types of loans are usually done with the expectation of future big bucks. The election is November of 2006?

Raging Racists

Orcinus is a freelance journalist from Seattle who has written a series on the emerging rise of racism in our country. Recent posts on this issue can be found at Say No to Nazis and Backyard Nazis. He observes that there have been increasing signs of an emboldened white-supremacist far right, with a surge in the ranks by young people.

This is an occurance that I have noticed as well and discussed some time ago, at Bill's a Bigot.

Orcinus cites an article from a local paper, the News of Delaware County, entitled Defining a skinhead. The article notes:

A new bread of skinheads is emerging in Pennsylvania bringing a fresh approach to a familiar brand of prejudice.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report that skinhead groups in the United States are increasing and Pennsylvania is a major rallying point.

* * * *

There are 110 skinhead groups in the United States, including six in Pennsylvania, according to the ADL.

The largest Pennsylvania organization - the Keystone State Skinheads (KSS) - has about 70 members and several regional chapters, including in Philadelphia and Chester County, according to the ADL.

Many of the new skinheads are young, impressionable, undisciplined and violent, according to Morrison.

"To be a skinhead is to be violent," Morrison said. "They have a great tendency to engage in criminal activity."

The South had the KKK. Pennsylvania has the KSS. The letters may be different, but the hate is still the same. It's not exactly the kind of progress that one would have hoped for at the beginning of a new century.

Tags: Racism, White Supremacist, Keystone State Skinheads, KSS

Cartoon of the Day

*Bruce Beattie

Hidden in Plain Sight

"And the poverty problem -- listen, this nation is committed to dealing with poverty."

-- George W. Bush, Washington, DC, 19 May 2003

Not surprisingly, the facts are in stark contrast, as portrayed in this article in The Observer (UK), 37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty. As the tag-line states:

"Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening."

The article notes:

The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky.

The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around, barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs. Oblivious to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden porch frozen by a midwinter chill.

It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal government help.

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.

Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.

Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.

For a brief moment last year in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina brought America's poor into the spotlight. Poverty seemed on the government's agenda. That spotlight has now been turned off. 'I had hoped Katrina would have changed things more. It hasn't,' says Cynthia Duncan, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.

The Observer also provides some relevant statistics at the end of the article:

An America divided

· There are 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. That figure has increased by five million since President George W. Bush came to power.

· The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world.

· Almost a quarter of all black Americans live below the poverty line; 22 per cent of Hispanics fall below it. But for whites the figure is just 8.6 per cent.

· There are 46 million Americans without health insurance.

· There are 82,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone.

· In 2004 the poorest community in America was Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Unemployment is over 80 per cent, 69 per cent of people live in poverty and male life expectancy is 57 years. In the Western hemisphere only Haiti has a lower number.

· The richest town in America is Rancho Santa Fe in California. Average incomes are more than $100,000 a year; the average house price is $1.7m.

(Via Philadelphia Freedom Watch)

Pass It On

The Boston Globe carries the cautionary advice often given and not so much heeded, in 2 e-mailers get testy, and hundreds read every word. As the article warned:

"Once again, a friendly reminder: The next time you're tempted to send a nasty, exasperated, or snippy e-mail, pause, take a deep breath, and think again."

I give the same advice to clients all the time, but they don't listen either.

The article describes the tale of two Boston lawyers who got into an email battle over a job offer, that was later turned down via email. A back and forth email exchange followed, which concluded with a 3 word "bla bla bla" response by the associate. Long story short, the email exchange was forwarded to a colleague of one of the attorneys, who passed it on. It ended up spreading across the county (and beyond) and led to the article in the Globe. From there, it will no doubt be carried further by bloggers, such as me.

What a way to gain infamy. Not over winning a tough, but important case. No, over some nasty words in an email.

Double Time

I couldn't decide which video to post, so I decided to provide double the pleasure, double the fun.

Without further ado, you can check out:

Letterman Show: "Big Bowl" (Via Crooks & Liars), and

The Daily Show: "Know Comments" (Via onegoodmove).

Cartoons of the Day

PA Edition

*Signe Wilkinson, Philadelphia Daily News
*John Cole, The Scranton Times

Tricky Ricky

Attytood, also known as Will Bunch, a writer from the Philadelphia Daily News, wrote an American Prospect article that has just been posted, With A Little Help From His Friends. The article details some of machinations of Rick Santorum, that sanctimonious so and so. It's a fascinating picture of Santorum and his questionable ties to large donors and lobbyists. Bunch provides a summary of the article on his blog, How Santorum paid for his Va. house...and his Starbucks coffee.

Bunch's article gives even more credence to the interesting theory raised by Noel Weyrich, who writes the Contrarian column for Philadelphia Magazine (which is unfortunately not posted on-line). Weyrich suggests that Santorum's strategy is to lose his Senatorial race, and to become a "martyr" to the right wing cause, which will ensure that he lands a big money job on K Street. Rather that give up his seat to a hand picked successor, he'd rather be badly beaten by Casey to be sure that he can claim to have lost to those Liberal devils.

Cartoon of the Day

*Charles Fincher, Scribble-in-Law 

Teach Your Children Well

Fridge Art

(Click on picture to enlarge view)

Presidential Moments

From CNN, in honor of President's Day, And the top 10 worst presidential blunders are...

And while we're at it, don't forget: Worst. President. Ever.

(Above via A portal into the mind of a writer)

What Did He Mean by That?

Mark Kleiman of the Reality-Based Community provides some updated definitions for the Age of Truthiness.

If you're looking for just the right word for a Truthiness occasion, you can find it here: Entries from the Republican-English Dictionary.

Swann Song

Former Pittsburgh Steeler and NFL Hall of Famer, Lynn Swann, is running for Governor. Just last week, he was "crowned" as the Republican nominee for Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the expected event, Swann is endorsed by GOP leaders. His celebrity coronation by the Republican party was a breeze, but the wind seems to be picking up. With any luck, it'll be a storm brewing.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has now reported that Swann sat out on most election days, noting that "[d]espite once saying that the right to vote should never be taken for granted, Swann missed 20 of the state's 36 elections in the last 18 years - including 13 of his party's primaries, records show." As if that weren't bad enough, George Stephanopolous interviewed Swann on "This Week" on ABC News. Swann was so unprepared that it was truly embarrassing to watch him "fumble" (I had to get one football analogy in) his answers to various issues raised during the interview. George Stephanopoulos actually had to correct Swann on the issue of abortion:

Stephanopoulos: So if you were governor and the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, would you try to pass a law banning abortions in the state of Pennsylvania?

Swann: Well, if the Supreme Court overturned it, then they've basically overturned it. They've basically said that, you know, you can't have an abortion.

Stephanopoulos: No, no. They would send it to the states and it would be up to each state to decide.

Swann: Well, if they sent it to the states to decide, then I would sign legislation from the legislature making abortions illegal.

Stephanopoulos: No exceptions?

Swann: No, there would be exceptions.

Stephanopoulos: For?

Swann: In terms of the health of the mother, rape, incest.

Stephanopoulos: Many people who describe themselves as pro-life are opponents of stem cell research. Are you?

Swann: I am not an expert on stem cell research at this particular time. I'd rely on the science and medical community to give me some input in terms of where we should go.

Stephanopoulos: Well, what you say there should be generally?

Swann: I've talked to doctors who say you can do great stem cell research without getting involved, heavily, in embryonic stem cell research. And there are people on the other side, who believe that the only viable stem cell research is embryonic stem cell research.

Stephanopoulos: What do you believe?

Swann: Well, I don't, it's no a matter of what I believe. It's a matter of getting the information and making an informed decision. You know, in our scientific community, why are they opposing each other? I mean if both are valid.

Stephanopoulos: If doctors believed it could be valuable, would you be for it?

Swann: Well, I'd have to give it more consideration.

Stephanopoulos: But right now you're against it?

Swann: I want to give it more consideration.

Stephanopoulos: But where do stand right now?

Swann: I'm not standing anywhere. What I want to do is get the information from the scientific community.

Ouch.

My husband & I have had a running battle on the impact of Swann in the gubernatorial race. It is certainly true that outside of Pittsburgh and Philly,Pennsylvania is very conservative (with the state being home to one of the highest proportion of KKK-type groups in the country). My husband believes that conservative whites will not vote for a black man, even a Republican one, even if he's a former football star. He also thinks that the Philly vs. Pittsburgh rivalry will mitigate against the black vote in Philly going for Swann. He points to the fact that most Philadelphians rooted for the Seahawks in the Super Bowl over the Steelers, because they can't stand Pittsburgh.

I've taken the contrarian position, arguing that celebrity status trumps race and Republicans tend to vote party-line (that's why I call them the Stepford Party), so they'll vote for him anyway. He could also garner a fair share of the black vote, who would support a sports hero (even if he's from Pittsburgh), so that could put him over the edge. However, after watching his performance on Stephanopoulos' Show, I'm less sure of my opinion. It was a debacle. He certainly has a long way to go and based upon that interview, I'm not sure he can get there in time. Although I have to admit that I'd have said that about George Bush and look where he is now.

I had to post this as my way of getting in the last word on the subject. We've even talked about putting a wager on the race. However, this is one bet I really want to lose.

This blog, Omphaloskepsis, agrees with my husband's view. See also: Lynn Swann Struggles with his Talking Points at Young Philly Politics.