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A potpourri of screeds attempting to patch the misinformation that plagues today's public discourse
Daily Life Policy & Politics ---Veritas Random Rants Outside the Box 2008 Campaign
INSIDE Our Take On ==<>== From: We Verb You To Quit Saying 245/7 First Rant of 2009: Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say Final Rant of 2008: Denial Ain't Just a Bleeping the Bard for Blago Taking Hubris to the Max in Illinois Specterlation About DOJ Just a Placeholder, Not a Changer Automakers: Mind What You Wish For Welcome President- Elect Barack Obama This Time a Thinker, Not a Stinker Ted Stevens and His Ironic Conundrum Why They Keep Campaigning Metaphorical Musings Beauty Queens for VEEP Who Let the Dogs Out? It's Regulation, Stupid! McCain/Palin/ Rove/Lies Letting Our Guard Down Irony Doesn't Get Much Better Than This Don't Be Too Obvious, John Bye, Bye Baseball, Annyong-Hi Kashipshio Ladies Golf Biden: Obama to Alter Earth Orbit A Vice President To Push Back What's Putin Up To? Cold War II? Pettiness and Presidential Campaigns More Random Musings From Veritas Iraq: Time for a Vision of the Horizon Random Thoughts of the Curmudgeon Kennedy's Unnecessary Trip Shed No Tears For Senator No Time for Trickle Up Economics Anti-Obama Clinton Voters: Are You Crazy? Some Random Mus- ings by Veritas Obama Should Re- ject McCain's Town- Hall Offer Blow Up Your TV Introducing Bobby Jindal Questions for the Confident Decider Big Newspapers Be- ginning to See the Light Just When is Water Wasted? Almost Never Myths Are Not Be- nign, They Maim the Message Cheney's New Bo- gey-Man on the Block The Irony of Olym- pic Protest U.S. House Takes One Small Tobacco Step for Mankind Kudos to Obama Watch Out for Mc- Cain--He Seems to be Getting It From the Sarcasm Corner When Shut Up Is Better Than Speak Up Blame Democrats for the Economy? Hah! Hubris and High Office From... Daily Life Guns Again--The Time Has Come The latest multi- ple-death shootings mean it's about time to enact some gun restrictions. Supreme Court to Decide D.C. Hand-gun Ban Touting Latest Stem Cell Research Threatens New Life for Bush Edict Blunder Paper or Plastic? From.... Policy & Politics Iowa, Jesus & Joe It's about time the two major parties end the silliness of allowing states such as Iowa and New Hampshire to deter- mine whom we can vote for. From... - ---Veritas Is Anyone Reading This? Remember Afghanistan? Still There, Still A Mess Standing Tough On Lies If the president tells you the sun rises in the East, would you believe him? New Blunder Ahead? Iran is rapidly be- coming another opening for military blunders by the United States under Bush. ___________ Our Mission Today's public discourse about events in daily life, politics, religion and most other subjects of the day is filled with false assertions that get passed around at Internet speed. |
Brown Shirts Steer Ship of Fools Again, major health-care reform is dead in Washington, D.C. This time, it died when the U.S. Senate adjourned for its August recess. Congress may yet pass and President Obama sign leg- islation labeled health-care reform, but it will leave big business in charge of our nation’s care with a system much like the sys- tem we already have. It can be pronounced dead at this point because of the same factor the Obama administration was aware of when it insisted on passage of a reform package before the August recess. And this August has resurrected the Nazi "brown shirts," just not the ones Rush Limbaugh points to. Health Reform Defines Parties Health-care reform legislation moving through Congress, still in the formulation stage, already is drawing out the classical political positions, making even more striking the increasingly sharp division between the two major parties. The friends of the Republican Party appear to see this and are moving quickly to take advantage of it early on in what is about to be a major battle. The friends of the Democratic Party do not and are about to get swamped, dooming meaningful health-care reform for at least another two years. In Defense Of ‘Wise Latina Women’ Nobody else seems willing to step up and defend Sonia Sotomayor for that now famous “wise Latina” statement and explain it, so we will. To wit: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experi- ences would, more often than not, reach a better conclu-sion.” Not only was she absolutely correct, the nub of what she was saying in that quote should be a major point of consideration anyone for the U.S. Supreme Court. Substitute for “Latina woman” any other descrip- tion of someone who has faced the exigencies of life that were never faced by most of the justices who have ever sat on that body and you would be absolutely correct. Cheney’s “Terrorist Gap”Former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech before the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute brought to mind the themes of the 1964 movie, "Dr. Strangelove, Or How I learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb." Then, and for the three decades following, the Soviet Union and communists in general were the central themes of fear-mongering in the United States. The movie moved the fear from a real “missile gap” to an imaginary “doomsday gap” to a fantastical “mineshaft gap,” all centered around the fear of the former Soviet Union and the “communist threat.” Change “communist” to “terrorist” and you have the fantastical “terrorist gap.” Quaking yet? Pelosi the Patsy Should Resign Nancy Pelosi should resign as speaker of
the House. No, not because she knew about torture of terrorist detainees from
the beginning. That’s the stupid part of this current dust-up. Her biggest sin
goes far beyond the consequences of knowing about that shameful episode. The
consequences of the big sin are being played out down Pennsylvania Ave. as she
allows herself to be distracted and victimized by GOPcha. While she twists in
the wind, Obama is about to continue a mistake she could have avoided by allowing
impeachment. In his first three months in office, President Obama has revealed a major weakness that he needs to correct for the sake of future generations. He needs to drop the idea of “looking forward” at the expense of “looking back.” His most glaring lapse to date has been his indecisive flip-flop on what to do with those who authorized or carried out torture techniques against terrorism suspects in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Only by “looking back” and providing the same justice to the U.S. tortur- ers at all levels that we meted out after World War II against Germans and Japanese. Unless we do so, the United States will be seen as holding itself above the law applied to the rest of the world. Obama's First 91 Days Every quadrennial at the end of April, America gives in to one of its major obsessive compulsive disorders, this one hav- ing to do with round numbers. You’ll see it on every TV station in the country—the first 100 days of the Obama administration. We don’t like that silly fixation, so here is our assessment of the first 91 days, or whatever. Mixed in is a “we told you so” or two. There have been several disappointments, but none that cannot be rectified later in the term. Given the enormous mess left for him to clean up when he took over the reins Jan. 20, the disappointments seem almost too modest to bother with. We have to give Obama an A for his first 90-some days in office. Making Petty Points With almost-daily reports of harm to the economy, dithering and delay are the mantra of Republicans in Congress debating the economic stimulus. Some made speeches reminiscent of David Stockman and Ronald Reagan and trickle-down econ- omics: Give the rich a tax break and in their generosity, they will spread the wealth to the lowest. That has not worked. It will not work, but Democrats in Congress have had to accept some portions of that argument just to get enough support to enact the stimulus legislation. GOP leader John Boehner said Presi- dent Obama's plan for the economy, with its enormous deficits to come, has to be paid for by the current generation's children and grandchildren. Where was Boehner when Bush frittered away a huge surplus left to him rushed and lied the nation into a trillion-dollar war in Iraq? ---Veritas What Bush Left Behind Israel v Palestine: 60 Years of a Bad Decision
One of the dumbest decisions a collection of nations ever made occurred
in the years immediately after World War II. The consequences of that
decision, based as much on emotion as anything else, is playing out
today as it has for 60 years.
The conflict between the muslim Arabs of the Middle East and Jew- ish
Israel has no end as long as those who might have an im- pact on a
resolution continue to try to make a dumb decision work. If ever there
was an up-to-date illustration of trying to make a silk purse out of a
sow’s ear, it is the Bush administra- tion incursion into Iraq. The
Barack Obama administration needs some new thinking on the issue and
the rest of the in- volved world needs to take heed. We do not know what
the so- lution is, we only know there needs to be a new way of thinking
about the situation. Read more... Bailout by Trickle-Up Gift Card The effort to correct the financial crisis in the United States has been largely ineffective, and for good reason. The people in charge at the top of the economic arm of the Bush administra- tion, but aided and abetted by similarly minded people in Con- gress, continue to focus on the top of the pyramid instead of the bottom. Gift card for a car, to pay of credit card debt, to pay off student loans, recover mortgage stability or to cover the cost of alternative energy sources or a variety of other “green issues,” and subject the gift cards to taxes, but couple that onerous re- quirement with a supplementary card in the form of a certificate of deposit, treasury bill or federal bond that would not be re- deemable for at least another year, to cover those who do not plan well for the extra tax burden of having thousands added to their tax bill the filing period after they receive the gift card. Jobs and Infrastructure President-Elect Barack Obama has given the first solid indi- cation he will attempt to take this country down the path we be- lieve to be the key to remaking America. He is beginning with a “killing two birds with one stone” solution to two of the country’s major domestic problems: jobs and infrastructure. Even before the first oil crisis in the 1970s led to an economic crisis almost as big as the current one, experts warned about our collapsing infrastructure, e.g., roads, pipes, wires, dams, bridges, tunnels, much of which needed to replaced decades ago. The infrastruc- ture is a looming crisis almost as big as the financial one. The Favor Detroit Did Not Want GOP = SOP: The Same Old Party The Dangerous Path of Executive Orders And Much, Much More 2008 Raining On the ParadeIs Our Auto Industry Relevant? GOP's November Surprise Chance to Remake America Have We Reached China Yet? Drill, Baby, Drill; Then Export It ---Veritas
Iraq Fiasco Cost Nears 5,000 U.S.Dead --Veritas When Words Are Not 'Just Words' --Veritas Afghanistan Still There, Still A Mess --Veritas 2007 Standing Tough On Lies ---Veritas I Understand Day Va Ju (On friendly
dictators) | Scene Setting Are these these? Trickle-Up? Or Trickle-Down? As of Feb. 10, 2009 ![]() |
One dark night as I climbed the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
Oh how I wish he'd go away.
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