Update: Progress on Single-Payer Universal Healthcare

Here's the latest communication from Marilyn Clement of Healthcare-NOW:

Many good things are happening across the nation as the single payer movement continues to develop. People ask the question, “How could this have happened?" How is it that there is only one healthcare plan in the nation that has a huge constituency of support? And we know the answer. It is because of your work.

Here are some of the exciting developments in the single payer movement:

1. We now have 62 co-sponsors of H.R. 676 in just two months following its reintroduction in this new Congress -- as a result of your efforts.
2. The AFL-CIO has joined us as an endorser of single payer. How did this happen? It happened because of the movement of local unions from the bottom up who studied the bill, endorsed it, and urged the AFL-CIO to join us over the past eighteen months. One volunteer, Kay Tillow, has worked tirelessly to make this happen.
3. Act-Up has joined us – one of the most militant organizations in the U.S. – the group that challenged Congress and the healthcare agencies to do the research and help to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s and 90’s. Now they have made single payer, national healthcare their #1 issue.
4. The National Organization for Women has formally endorsed.
5. Newspapers all over the country are studying the issue, and many are endorsing. City councils are signing on. Two state democratic parties, New Hampshire and Washington State have endorsed single payer and will be pushing the national Democrats to move forward toward single payer in the coming election.
6. We met with the New York Times this week in a very good exchange on the issue.
7. And Congressman John Conyers is planning a briefing for Congress members and the public on April 24^th in Washington, D.C. You are invited. Be in touch with joel.segal@mail.house.gov for more details.

One of the friends of single payer in the U.S. Congress is Maurice Hinchey. In addition to being a strong endorser of H.R. 676, he has introduced legislation that has forced the FDA to create new rules to protect us from the drug profiteers.

When we achieve a national single payer system in the United States, we will have a system where the single payer (probably Medicare) will negotiate the cost of all drugs for all of us and have a strong mechanism for protecting our people.

We will have several elements of good business practices as a part of our national healthcare program including “negotiating prices,” “eliminating the unnecessary middle man (the insurance companies)” and “purchasing in bulk” both durable medical equipment and prescription drugs since there will be 300 million of us in one large purchasing pool. This will be another of the great savings that will provide us with a quality healthcare system for all without spending any additional money.

Businesses, employees and employers will all save money. No more co-pays or deductibles and no more denials and out-of-pocket expenses for necessary medical care.

Hinchey’s legislation and the FDA’s response are described in today’s [NYTimes], F.D.A. Rule Limits Role of Advisers Tied to Industry. The new rules would bar government advisers who receive money from a drug or device maker from voting on that company's products. As the story notes, this is not the ultimate solution to the problem of FDA complicity with the drug profiteers, but it is a start.

H.R. 676, Conyers’ United States National Health Insurance Act, is the only bill in Congress that pushes for a non-profit national healthcare system that will serve us all. It is the only bill among the many that have been introduced recently and among the state bills that are being considered that eliminates the role of the insurance companies, both in government-funded programs such as Medicare and SCHIP (the child healthcare program) and in the healthcare fund that will provide excellent healthcare to all of us.

As a result of the elimination of the insurance companies’ role in healthcare, we will be able to cover one-third more healthcare. In other words, we could cover one-third more children if we didn’t have insurance companies in the middle of the SCHIP program. We can cover one-third more people in the United States and provide 100% better benefits for all of us with H.R. 676.

Under single payer, H.R. 676, we will eliminate the waiting lines that keep about 50 million of our people suffering and dying, and we will be able to provide much better benefits, doctors who don’t have to spend their time satisfying hundreds of insurance companies, hospitals that don’t have to spend billions of dollars on exacting payment for hundreds of insurance, government and individual payers, mental health care, drug and alcohol treatment for all who need it; payment for prescription drugs; long-term care (how many of us have no long-term care insurance now?) and more.

"Everybody in; nobody out!”

Here are some of the things that you can do immediately to push forward real single payer legislation, H.R. 676 (see more ideas at our website, http://www.healthcare-now.org):

1. Visit the editorial board of your newspaper;
2. Send letters to the editors and to columnists and writers of newspapers nationwide including the New York Times editorial board;
3. Get on the list for newspaper articles on a daily basis (write joykal1@aol.com)
4. Hold and event or hearing this coming month (April) or soon in your neighborhood or state (See guidelines for organizing on our website. http://www.healthcare-now.org/action/how_to.htm). Invite your Congressmember. But don’t wait on Congress. It is the people’s movement rising up from the bottom that will get us a national single payer healthcare system. No Congress or Presidential candidate is going to provide us with the healthcare system we need without our massive efforts;
5. Call us for organizing suggestions. 1-800-453-1305 ; info@healthcare-now.org;
6. Make a contribution to Healthcare-NOW… now! Get a free book. We really need your support NOW. https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2264;
7. Order beautiful Martin Luther King, Jr National Healthcare Month posters and our “Improved Medicare for All” booklet in Spanish or English. Bulk copies from our printers. prioritypress@optonline.org;
8 Plan to visit your Member of Congress in his/her local office during the first two weeks of April. Thank your members if they have signed onto H.R. 676. Insist that they do so if they have not;
9. Call or Fax Congressman Pete Stark’s office to be sure that H.R. 676 is a part of the agenda for his healthcare hearings in May. Phone: (202) 225-5065; Fax: (202) 226-3805;
10. Get your City Council, State Legislature, Democratic or Republican State Committee, Union, Faith Community, Club, Community Organization or Local Business to endorse H.R. 676. See the growing list of endorsers at http://www.healthcare-now.org/endorse676.php:
11. Get a copy of John Conyers’ inspirational 6-minute dvd “Giant Steps” from Healthcare-NOW. See it on You Tube.
12. See our home page to read about or use the power point about the problems with all of the other proposals being offered: http://www.Healthcare-now.org.

Don’t Complain; Organize!

Remember “We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.”

http://www.healthcare-now.org
info@healthcare-now.org

See: Candidates Should Catch Up to American People on Universal Coverage (ThinkProgress.Org)

"I did it!"

The confession of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed -- or "KSM" as a terrorism expert on NPR kept calling him as though he were a celebrity like "Paris" or "Brangelina," which I guess to the terrorism crowd he probably is -- begins to take on the outline of a routine on Saturday Night Live. Before it's over, besides the many spectacular crimes he claims to have masterminded, expect him to take responsibility for fathering the baby of Anna Nicole Smith,* breaking up the Beatles, and kidnapping Judge Crater.

As for his "plans" -- to destroy Israeli and American embassies, military vessels, oil tankers, the stock exchange, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, Heathrow and Big Ben, NATO headquarters in Brussels, and 12 -- exactly 12 -- civilian airplanes "full of passengers," etc.; to assassinate Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II (and to think the current pope was worried about Bob Dylan), Paki Prez Pervez Musharraf, et al; and...well...I "plan" to win the lottery.

The confession will clear a lot of cases and spruce up Bush's resume, which is all to the good, but what I really want to know is, is there actually an oil company in Sumatra, as the Times quotes the confession, "owned by the Jewish former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger"? How'd Henry the K pull that off? Now, as my dad used to say, that's interesting.

*"Please Note: No subscriptions for the Video Diary are being accepted." Is there no coffin cam?

2008: Obama's Democracy Index Bill

This is from Dan Tokaji's Election Law blog:

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has instituted the "Voter Advocate and Democracy Index Act of 2007," designed to institute a system by which states' election systems could be measured. A release describing the bill may be found here and the text here courtesy of Rick Hasen.

The bill would create an Office of the Voter Advocate within the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Among the responsibilities of this new office, as described in Sen. Obama's release, would be to measure:

- The amount of time spent by voters waiting in line;

- The number of voters incorrectly directed to the wrong polling places;

- The rate of voter ballots discarded or not counted along with an explanation;

- Provisional voting rates and the percentage of provisional votes cast but not counted;

- The number and description of election day complaints; and

- The rate of voting system malfunctions and the time required on average to get the systems back online

The bill draws on an idea by Professor Heather Gerken of the the Yale Law School, which appeared in the Legal Times. After my colleague Ned Foley wrote a weekly comment in response, Professor Gerken offered these further thoughts here on the EL@M site a few weeks ago.

The idea of creating a mechanism by which to measure the health of each state's election system is an excellent one. Despite all the attention devoted to election administration these days -- or maybe because of it -- it is sometimes difficult to tell where there are really serious problems, as opposed to partisans angling for position. Creating a sense of performance standards is a worthy enterprise, one that in the long run could make our election system function much better.

That said, it will undoubtedly be a major challenge to get a bill of this nature passed. There will almost certainly be resistance on the part of Republicans, at least to the way the bill is presently framed. Senator Obama's bill focuses on issues of access and, if the debate over HAVA a few years ago is any indication, Republicans are likely to be more interested in issues of "integrity" like combatting voter fraud. I'd also expect resistance from some election administrators, who are likely nervous about the possibility that their states will look bad.

Designing a fair and workable Democracy Index will also be a major undertaking. Still, it's a worthy enterprise, and I very much hope that some version of this bill is eventually enacted into law.

Read more about election law issues at Dan Tokaji's blog.

Other sources on election law include:
Election Law Blog (Rick Hasen)
Election Updates (Michael Alvarez & Thad Hall)
ElectionLine.org
Votelaw Blog (Ed Still)

Required Reading: Newshounds - "We watch FOX so you don't have to"

Smart, thorough, succinct...and much more fun than actually watching Faux News yourself. Subscribe to the rss feed. <http://www.newshounds.us/>

NWO: The Cops Want to Digitally Read Your Lips

Not content that every square inch of urban space is under surveillance by video cameras, researchers at the University of East Anglia have embarked on a project to develop computer lip-reading systems in the name of crime-stopping. The three-year project will collect data for a lip-reading data base and use it to create machines that automatically convert videos of lip-motions into text, building on work already carried out at the UEA to develop state-of-the-art speech reading systems.

The university is teaming up with the Centre for Vision, Speech & Signal Processing at Surrey University, where accurate and reliable face and lip trackers have been built, and the Scientific Development Branch of the Home Office, never happier than when it is pushing something that it thinks will enhance police powers.

The team also hope to carry out computerized lip-reading of other languages. Arabic, say?

Besides police work, there could be other potential uses for the technology, such as, to take one example, using the technology in a mobile phone or on a dash board for speech recognition under difficult conditions. Other uses are not what is driving funding, however.

The question is, as it has been since long before 9-11, how much freedom and privacy are we willing to sacrifice in the name of order and security?

Action: OpenCongress.org

The Sunlight Foundation has a new project: "OpenCongress.org....[a] joint effort with the amazing team from the Participatory Politics Foundation -- a group based in Worcester, Mass. that builds open-source software and web tools for civic engagement. Think of this as a user-friendly Thomas, on steroids. We've brought together critically important information about what is happening in Congress -- legislation and issue focused -- and combined that with what bloggers and the mainstream media are most talking about. We've added a component of social wisdom tracking what's hot and what's most-viewed on the site itself, along with what others are writing about. There are lots of links to other Sunlight projects like Congresspedia and Sunlight grantees like OpenSecrets.org. We are aiming to to offer a comprehensive, understandable, user-friendly snapshot of every bill and Member of Congress." -- from the website. <http://www.opencongress.org/>

The Beach: Safety

Be Prepared: Everything you wanted to know about Rip Currents but were afraid to ask (U.S. Weather Service) was just posted on lol: library of links.

More free Wi-Fi Spots in LA County

City of Angles
The Smug Little Village by the Sea
Mall Town
90210
Pollutionville
For free wireless everywhere, Forbes.com's Access Spots: <http://forbes.anchorfree.com/>

Iran must die! (so I can be president)

Democratic leaders in Congress allowed themselves to be stampeded into war not, as they would have us believe, because they were misled by faulty intelligence -- if we, and by we I mean everybody out here in the hinterlands, average readers of the New York Times 3000 miles from the Beltway, if we knew the WMDs and the ties to Al Qaeda were bogus, certainly the senators knew.

Note that among the solons who voted no on the war authorization -- and here's an honor roll for you: Akaka (D-HI), Bingaman (D-NM), Boxer (D-CA), Byrd (D-WV), Chafee (R-RI), Conrad (D-ND), Dayton (D-MN), Durbin (D-IL), Feingold (D-WI), Graham (D-FL), Inouye (D-HI), Jeffords (I-VT), Kennedy (D-MA), Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Mikulski (D-MD), Murray (D-WA), Reed (D-RI), Sarbanes (D-MD), Stabenow (D-MI), Wellstone (D-MN), Wyden (D-OR) -- not one was burdened by the illusion that s/he was destined to be president.

The votes of Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, Biden, Dodd, et al, were not stupid or ignorant: they were cowardly, the defensive actions of ambitious politicians who were determined not to be on the wrong side of the question, Who lost Iraq?

Now the Bush administration is back with its next war, trumpeting as fact questionable evidence of NWMDs -- nuclear weapons of mass destruction -- in the hands of the mullahs -- in English, an ugly sounding word, but try substituting "priest" or "minister" -- in Tehran.

The build-up is happening on multiple fronts. The new head of CENTCOM, the military's Central Command responsible for U.S. security interests in 25 nations that stretch from the Horn of Africa through the Arabian Gulf into Central Asia, is not, as common sense might suggest, a counterinsurgency specialist, but the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. "Fox" Fallon, who, aside from being a dependable water-carrier for Bush, presumably knows a thing or two about co-ordinating air strikes and deploying naval blockades. In the Gulf, the carrier group Stennis is being sent to back up the Eisenhower. Minesweepers are being deployed in the Strait of Hormuz. American fighter-bombers have returned to Incirlik in Turkey. Upgraded Patriot missiles are being moved to Kuwait and Qatar.

Quite a lot of firepower to bring to a fight for hearts and minds.

Bush's anti-Iran rhetoric is ratcheting up as well. When he announced his surge, the commander-in-chief took time out to note that Iran "is providing material support for attacks on American troops....we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq," just as he took time out during the post-911 assault on Afghanistan to soften us up for his planned attack on Iraq. This latest threat to launch an illegal preemptive military operation was followed by shoot-to-kill orders to U.S. troops encountering Iranians aiding the insurgency. And, in text-book perfect provocation, Iranian officials and Iraqis returning from Iran are being seized in Iraq and interrogated by U.S. troops.

Presidentially inclined Democrats do not plan to be on the wrong side of the Who lost Iran? question, either.

In January, at the Herzliya Conference on Israeli national policy, John Edwards said that keeping Iran from possessing nuclear weapons "is the greatest challenge of our generation." Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation got Hitler; we get Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sounding like Bush-lite, Edwards said, "To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. Let me reiterate -- all options." In the run-up to the 2012 election, will Edwards be demonstrating his integrity by confessing he was wrong on Iran?

Not to be out-cojonesed, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, self-described as "America's Pro-Israel Lobby," Hillary Clinton, trumping Edwards, said, "In dealing with this threat, no option can be taken off the table. We need to use every tool at our disposal including the threat and use of military force." Threat and use. (Apparently not buying the romantic notion that we can have him back as Hillary's vice-president, Bill Clinton warned against a military strike on Iran, saying in a speech at Kansas State University that it was unclear whether "we could take out whatever incipient nuclear efforts they have," and that even if we could, it is "not clear it would be the most effective strategy." Note to Bill: call Hillary).

Barack Obama, before he became Eirana to Hillary's Ares -- don't you just love these sexual reversals?, when he was still merely a U.S. Senate candidate (not so long ago, don't forget), the freshman senator suggested that the United States might one day have to launch surgical missile strikes into Iran and Pakistan to keep extremists from getting control of nuclear bombs. One man's surgical strike is another man's unprovoked act of aggression, of course. And you have to wonder about a Democrat who feels it necessary to stay to the right of the hapless Alan Keyes.

Then there is former US vice president and once and future presidential wannabe Al Gore, the Candidate McDreamy of Democrats of a particularly soft-minded sort, who has lashed out at Iran’s government, denouncing it as a threat to “the future of the world." The Future of the World? Wow. That sounds a whole lot worse than the greatest challenge of our generation. In an address in Saudi Arabia to the Jeddah Economic Forum, "the think tank of the Middle East," Gore said “corrupt leadership,” combined with President Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israeli outbursts, should raise alarums all over the world.

So much for the likely Democratic nominees.

For the record, as recently as February 24 in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Bill Richardson called "for the United States to engage directly with the Iranians and to lead a global diplomatic offensive to prevent them from building nuclear weapons. We need tough, direct negotiations, not just with Iran but also with our allies, especially Russia, to get them to support us in presenting Iran with credible carrots and sticks."

But what does he know? He's not a "serious candidate." He's just running for vice-president. Or secretary of state.

Outsiders: Wild Man Fischer

Barnes & Barnes gave the world Fish Heads, the most requested song in the history of the Doctor Demento show, and produced two albums by Wild Man Fischer, “the father of outsider music” to people who don't know who Harry Partch is. Larry Fischer, arguably the most bizarre recording artist ever to sign with a major label, has two albums -- Pronounced Normal and Nothing Scary -- being reissued on Collectors’ Choice Music, along with Barnes & Barnes’ classic Voobaha album.

Barnes & Barnes was Art and Artie Barnes, noms du disques for childhood friends Bill Mumy (yes, Will Robinson on Lost in Space) and Robert Haimer. They weren't trying to make it big; they just wanted to get played by Doctor Demento. Drawing on 50s and 60s comic books, including EC (which specialized in horror, crime and sci-fi), pre-superhero Marvel, and R. Crumb, they created such demented masterpieces as The Vomit Song, Boogie Woogie Amputee and Fish Heads, the latter spawning a popular music video on MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central that Rolling Stone named #57 on its all time best video list. For a while, they were signed to mega-manager Bill Siddons, who handled the Doors.

Voobaha was issued in 1976, then digitally remastered and reissued as a CD on Rhino. Haimer went back to the original tapes to prepare for the Collectors’ Choice reissue, and added some previously unreleased tracks, I Gotta Get a Fake I.D., plus alternate takes of Political Statement, Boogie Woogie Amputee and Fish Heads, so make sure you're getting the new release if you buy.

L.A. singer/songwriter Fischer's first album, recorded in the late ‘60s by Frank Zappa for Bizarre Records, spawned the underground hit Merry Go Round and the brief monologue I Used To Be Shy. Fischer was in and out of mental institutions and seldom kept an address for longer than a couple of months. His second album, Wildmania (already reissued by Collectors’ Choice) was one of the very first Rhino lps. But that didn’t mean that Rhino founders Richard Foos and Harold Bronson could readily locate him. Barnes & Barnes, however, were up for the Alan Lomax-like challenge and somehow found the mostly homeless Fischer. They were delighted to discover that he was a fan of Fish Heads. The session for Pronounced Normal followed, its title inspired by the song The Wild Man Fischer Story from his first album.

One track, The Bouillabaisse, was intended to be a psychedelic dream, his outsider Sgt. Pepper interlude -- all good, until Fischer became convinced, according to Mumy’s liner notes, that the song contained subliminal messages and that Barnes & Barnes, Demento, Zappa and “Weird Al” Yankovic, among others, were conspiring to sever his penis, chop him into little pieces and throw him to the sharks. Although he disappeared soon after, he began to phone the Barneses again around the time of the album’s 1981 release -- sometimes many times a day. The producers seized the moment to take on one more album, the 32-track Nothing Scary, released in 1984 and containing such gems as Derailroaded, Larry & the New Wave and Music Business Shark.

Resources:
The Legend Of Wild Man Fischer by Eichhorn and Williams
Yeah: The Essential Barnes & Barnes
Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (The Shaggs, Daniel Johnston, Joe Meek, Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, Tiny Tim, etc.)
Songs in the Key of Z, Vol. 2: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (Shooby Taylor, B. J. Snowden, Eddie Murray Tangela Tricoli, etc.)

Listening to...

...Naturally by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings on the sound system at Vic's Prospect coffee house in Longmont, Colorado. Hard to believe this band has been doing its raw, 70s-style funk-threaded thing only since 2002. When the first cut came on, I thought it was Jerry Williams with somebody like Bettye LaVette. This must-have recording isn't even her best: that accolade is reserved for Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, their propulsive 2002 debut that includes their cover of This Land Is Your Land used in the I Love New York ad. Both albums belong in the collections of everyone who digs classic soul.

Quote Unquote: Sen. Leahy puts it mildly

"As one who, for years, has fought for veterans' benefits, for fair treatment for the National Guard, for armor for our troops who were sent into battle unprepared, and for replacing the depleted stocks of essential equipment that our troops need and depend on, the absurd accusation that it is unpatriotic to disagree with a policy that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and created a terrorist haven in a country that before posed no threat to the United States, has worn thin." -- Sen. Patrick Leahy. Sen. Leahy's Remarks

New Media: FON challenging starbucks' wi-fi

"Listen up, Frappucino-lovers -- cheap Wi-Fi could be headed to a Starbucks near you.

"...Madrid, Spain-based FON [has] launched a campaign called 'FonBucks,'...to hand out free wireless Internet routers (for which the company normally charges about $40) to people who live near Starbucks coffee shops...

"FON is one of the most interesting new entrants in the wireless industry, largely due to its unique model. Here's how the service works: For a small fee, ($2 per day), anyone can use a FON network when near a hotspot, but FON members... must purchase a wireless router and then choose to either give away the extra bandwidth for free, or charge for it...

"Of course, the success of the service relies on widespread growth...exactly what FON is hoping the FonBucks campaign — and more importantly, soon-to-launch strategic partnerships — will help achieve...

"If it sounds warm and fuzzy, it is and it isn't. Like Vonage and Skype, FON is a disruptive company in an industry that, like most others, doesn't like to be disrupted....[T]hey did run through 10,000 free Wi-Fi routers very quickly in a similar campaign they ran recently. After all, who doesn't like free Internet access? Or frothy Frappuccinos, for that matter."

The rest of the story: Third Screen.

[FON is available on Main Street, Santa Monica at Library Alehouse.]

Perry Farrell's Satellite Party

Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros frontman Perry Farrell has a new project, Satellite Party, his first since founding Lollapalooza. The new band will introduce a concept album in mid-May called Ultra Payloaded. Farrell says he believes people can change the world one step at a time, and Satellite Party is meant to be part of a musical movement to do just that. The music of Satellite Party, it is asserted, tells a story through a collaborative brain trust of artists, musicians and environmentalists called The Solutionists, who seek to redesign the world and come up with solutions for environmental problems.

I haven't seen the band live yet, but the cuts available for download show both Farrell and former Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt in good form; however, I'm pulling most of this post from a press release, so take it for what it's worth. It's offered primarily in the spirit of, if you're not part of The Solutionists, you're part of The Problemists.

Blending sounds as varied as rock, electro, urban beats and symphonic classical music, Farrell and Bettencourt are backed by a trio that includes Kevin Figueiredo on drums, Etty Lau Farrell on background vocals and Carl Restivo on bass. The album, produced by Farrell, co-produced by Bettencourt and executive produced by Steve Lillywhite, has guests that include the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea and John Frusciante, UK production duo/beat-makers Hybrid, New Order/Joy Division bassist Peter Hook, down tempo pioneers Thievery Corporation, Porno for Pyros' guitarist Peter DiStefano, Black Eyed Pea's Fergie, film composer Harry Gregson-Williams (Chronicles of Narnia, Kingdom of Heaven), and a 30-piece orchestra.

The album includes an unreleased Jim Morrison vocal track, Woman In The Window, the first unheard performance by the priapic lead singer of the Doors in almost 30 years. "Just try and stop us," sings Morrison against a backdrop of Farrell's music,"we're going to love." Farrell calls the lyric the mantra of The Solutionists. Other tracks are "Wish Upon A Dog Star" -- the album's first single, "Kinky," and "Celebrate," a Sly Stone-like groove marrying calypso and disco. "Awesome," written about seeing the world from the heavens, sounds like a marriage between David Bowie and Nick Drake.

Three years in the making, Ultra Payloaded is a wake-up call fired, it says here, by the same passion and idealism with which Farrell has worked to better the environment, as when he used his proceeds from Lollapalooza to work with the Costa Rican government to help preserve the rainforest, and human rights, as when he raised money for the relief fund and the rescuing of slaves in Sudan. Farrell and Satellite Party are working closely on climate change with Stop Global Warming (http://www.stopglobalwarming.com) and Global Cool (http://www.global-cool.com).

Satellite Party allegedly made its first live appearance in Aspen on (allegedly, because Perry & Nuno played together as Satellite Party at Lollapalooza last year and did a secret show at Spaceland the night before Aspen) as part of the 2007 ESPN Winter X-Games. The band is on MySpace, of course, and you can download Wish Upon a Dogstar and some of the other tunes here and here. Additional tour and live dates will be announced on http://www.satelliteparty.com.

Access: Villaraigosa announces plan for citywide Wi-Fi by 2009

"Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa outlined plans Tuesday to blanket Los Angeles with wireless Internet access in 2009, in what would be one of the nation's largest urban Wi-Fi networks.

"The L.A. Wi-Fi initiative would give Los Angeles residents, schools, businesses and visitors uninterrupted high-speed Internet connections — for work, research, Web browsing or even phone calls.

"More than 300 municipalities nationwide already have launched plans for similar networks based on the Wi-Fi technology that has become popular at coffee shops, bookstores, public parks and countless other so-called hot spots...

"The city's existing commercial broadband providers — AT&T Inc., Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications Inc. — aren't planning to oppose the city's efforts. Verizon, which once joined cable giant Comcast Corp. to try to curtail Philadelphia's wireless project, no longer stands in the way of municipalities."

The rest of the story: L.A.Times

Connectivity headed for the nation's 4th largest town, too:
City Wi-Fi coming, but will it be worth what you'll pay? (Houston Chronicle)

Kim Jong Il is 65 today (no plans to retire)

Long ago, in a former life, I was cultural editor of The Guardian, the Left's fishwrap of record. As the gatekeeper of political correctness, the paper was the recipient of bales of propaganda generated by leftist governments around the globe. Cuban marketing was colorful, inventive, idealistic; Vietnamese humorless, plodding and dull; but the most entertaining by far was North Korea's: paranoid, batty, an open invitation to parody. I think the first inkling had by the dour Trotskyites who ran the tabloid that they might have erred in hiring on a bunch of New Lefties -- radical anarchist hippies, as they soon thought of us -- probably came when it dawned on them that we venerated with insufficient fervor the great Korean revolutionary leader, Kim Il-sung.

The Guardian's guardians eventually fired the lot of us for other crimes against History, but looking back I think the trouble started at the moment a shrine to Kim the Elder, inevitably called Kim's Korner, sprang up in the newsroom. Each day new iconographic images of the capo di commies arrived (the Chinese pr mavens were pretty good at turning Mao and the gang into cartoon characters, too, but there was something truly inspired about Big Kim's comix) accompanied by transcripts of perorations by the Great One that must have required days to deliver and certainly consumed vast swaths of forest to reprint.

In a world where a public figure can overstay his welcome in a weekend, how reassuring that we can still, forty years later, celebrate the birth of Kim Sr.'s roly-poly and unaccountably vain offspring and successor, Kim Jong-il, who may or may not be 65 today (in a tip of the hat to Sino-style mythmaking, Junior likes to say he was born in 1942 in Papa's fabled guerrilla camp atop sacred Mount Paektu, the North's highest peak, an event that was marked by the appearance of a double rainbow and the birth of an especially bright star, as if one omen by itself would not be up to such a big job). There'll be extra portions of gruel in the bowls of Kim's countrymen tonight as they wish him a long and happy life, a little hungry, it's true, but thankful nonetheless to be safe under the Protector's nuclear umbrella from the inclemency of Japanese and American aggression.

So Happy Birthday to Kim Jong-il -- "Lode Star of the Twenty-First Century," "Eternal Bosom of Hot Love" and "Guardian Deity of the Planet," a rampart of stability in an otherwise insecure and volatile world.

NWO: 1-31-07 Never Forget

Since most domestic anti-terrorism efforts don't extend beyond inconveniencing law-abiding citizens, the endless identification checks and the forced confiscations of shampoo bottles and tubes of toothpaste rarely exceed the vexacious; only occasionally do they rise to the spectacularly ridiculous level achieved in Boston during the recent attack of the mooninites. To commemorate the events of 1-31-07, The Mep Report made a video of the chaos precipitated by the response of Boston authorities to the marketing campaign for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon. It might have been more reassuring if Beantown's public safety officials had accepted responsibility for overreacting and offered to make an attempt to learn from an experience that nearly brought a major metropolitan area to a standstill. Instead, we are left with the impression that all it will take to bollix Home Security, at least in Boston, is to give it the digital finger. Wikipedia already has an entry: 2007 Boston Mooninite Scare.

2008: Bill Richardson's foreign policy experience

I continue to believe, as I did in 2004, that the ticket of John Edwards for president and Bill Richardson for vice-president is the most formidable of the possible combinations the Democrats might field. A red herring in every presidential contest is the lack of foreign policy experience attributed to the potential nominees, especially the Democrats. Gov. Richardson, who entered the race last week, is one aspirant who will be immune from this canard. If he doesn't end up being Edwards' vice-president, at least he should be secretary of state. Among his diplomatic efforts so far:

December 1984: As chairman of the congressional Hispanic caucus, Richardson headed a delegation to nine countries in Latin America.

Late 1988: Richardson traveled to Angola to meet with rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, who was fighting against the Marxist-led government.

August 1993: Richardson traveled to Myanmar where he was the first non-family member permitted to visit pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi while she was under house arrest.

July 1994: In a meeting with Gen. Raoul Cedras, Richardson urged the then military ruler of Haiti to step aside and allow Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide to return to power. Although Cedras refused to abdicate immediately, he fled the country three months later under pressure from Pres. Clinton.

December 1994: Richardson spent five days in North Korea negotiating the release of two U.S. Army helicopter pilots who had been shot down. The governor left with the remains of one who had died in the crash. Eight days after his departure, the surviving pilot was released in the wake of a separate visit by a Clinton administration official.

July 1995: Richardson flew to Iraq and successfully negotiated with Saddam Hussein for the release of two U.S. oil workers who wandered over the Iraq-Kuwait border.

January 1996: Richardson visited Cuba to press Fidel Castro for the release of political prisoners and for human rights reform. After a return visit a month later, Castro released three of 10 prisoners Richardson had requested.

March 1996: In a secret meeting in Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic gave Richardson a Balkan peace plan to take back to Washington. The Clinton administration found it unacceptable.

July 1996: In Bangladesh, Richardson negotiated the release of an American woman, Eliadah "Lia'' McCord, who had received a life sentence for muling heroin.

November 1996: On a fourth trip to North Korea, his first as special U.S. envoy, Richardson successfully negotiated the release of a troubled 26-year-old American named Evan Hunziker who had entered the country by swimming across the Yalu River.

December 1996: Richardson successfully negotiated the release of three Red Cross workers held captive by rebels in Sudan.

April 1997: Richardson, on his first mission as U.N. ambassador, traveled to Zaire to try to negotiate a peaceful transfer of power from Mobutu Sese Seko to Laurent Kabila. The two foes couldn't agree on a meeting place.

April 1998: The first cabinet-rank American in 24 years to visit Afghanistan, Richardson tried to persuade the Taliban to make peace with the Northern Alliance, improve the status of women and expel Osama bin Laden.

September 2006: Richardson was successful in negotiations with Pres. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan for the release of a New Mexico journalist and two others who had entered the country from Chad without papers to report on atrocities in Darfur.

January 2007: Richardson made a third trip to Sudan, this time to negotiate with al-Bashir and rebel leaders for an end to the fighting in Darfur. The Sudanese president refused Richardson's request to allow U.N. peacekeepers in to the country. He did agree to a cease-fire, but he broke it a few days later.

From Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life by Bill Richardson.

Sen. Tester's schedule is an open book

The freshman senator from Montana, John Tester, is living up to an "impractical proposal" he made during the late campaign. As he promised voters he would do, Tester posts his complete daily schedule into an archive on his website. Constituents can see everyone with whom he meets and how he spends his time, down to dinners with his family and workout sessions in the Senate gym. Even included are such casual contacts as a hallway "hello" with a group of beer-industry lobbyists. On the House side, another Democrat, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, also posts her schedule daily, but unlike Sen. Tester she doesn't archive it.

2008: Biden exceeds expectations

Those applauding Sen. Joseph Biden's decision to enter the race for president because of a Biden campaign's proven comedic potential (see Impractical Proposals, 2008: Maybe we should adopt the WSJ's trick of picking stocks by throwing darts) have reason to feel pleased.

It would not have been unreasonable to expect the senator to make it through at least the first day of his campaign without controversy, but, as the front page headline in the New York Times summed it up, "Biden Unwraps ’08 Bid With an Oops!" (The L.A. Times headline was the more neutral, "Biden announces bid for presidency," but the subhead read, "Delaware senator is forced to explain comment that called fellow senator Obama 'clean.'")

As the NYT's Dam Nagourney had it, Joe spent the first day of his campaign "struggling to explain his description of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat running for president, as 'the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.'"

While this has made the Delaware Democrat the early front runner in the writers' room of every comedy show, he may have raised expectations too high by opening so strong, and will likely have trouble sustaining the momentum through the long, long months to the national convention. By end of his first day as a candidate, some Democratic party leaders were openly wondering if Biden would be remembered for running the shortest presidential campaign in history.

But you could see the ploy instead as evidence of Biden's heretofore undetected political acumen. What other aspirant, even among those with sounder prospects for success, garnered nearly as much attention on his first day? As an added benefit to the candidate, no one this time is likely to claim he cribbed his remarks.

Don't listen to the naysayers, Joe. Don't quit anytime soon. The Democratic party needs you. Stewart and Letterman and Leno need you. We need you.

But, for pete's sake, pace yourself.

Law & Politics: Who Should Pick the Chief Justice?

It's easy to condemn political polarization in the capital, quite another matter to do something about it. One suggestion that might help comes from Todd Pettys of the University of Iowa law school: have the Supremes choose their own leader, thus eliminating the job as a bone of contention. There is no reason the chief justice should be a crony of the chief executive or be chosen on the basis of his/her ideological predilections. Here's a summary of Pettys' essay:

"This Article contends that the United States Supreme Court's nine members should be permitted to decide for themselves who among them will serve as Chief Justice. The Article does not challenge the Constitution's procedure for filling vacancies on the Court; rather, it argues that, once the President and the Senate have staffed the Court with a full complement of Justices, those Justices should be allowed to choose their own leader. After pointing out the Constitution's silence on the matter, the Article argues that our practice of allowing the President to specify which Justice will be Chief is a vestige of a time when people believed the Chief Justice would be one of the President's most trusted aides. The Article identifies numerous reasons why the President- and Senate-centered selection practice should be changed."

Choosing a Chief Justice: Presidential Prerogative Or a Job for the Court? by Todd E. Pettys (Journal of Law & Politics, Vol. 22, p. 231, 2006) can be downloaded from the Social Science Research Network eLibrary (SSRN - you'll need to sign-up for a free membership).

Good Eatin': The Village Idiot (Melrose)

If you're stuck east of Sepulveda but craving Ye Olde King's Head grub, salvation has arrived in the form of The Village Idiot, a British pub with dark hardwood floors, wood-beamed ceiling, exposed brick, lots of windows, and an open kitchen. It may look like the California Pizza Kitchen, but the savory pies (omg: steak and potato with pearl onion), fish and chips, and fresh ginger-spiced cake with pear compote and crème fraîche are strictly from the mother country. 7383 Melrose at Martel; 323-655-3331 (here's a review on Eater LA).

Report From Huffpo's Melinda Henneberger: Clinton Team's Testy Response To Edwards' Speech Against Sending More Troops...

"John Edwards had a hard time getting through yesterday's anti-surge speech at Harlem's Riverside Church, repeatedly interrupted by cheering from the pews. Standing where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached against American involvement in Vietnam 40 years ago, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina declared that, 'As he put it then, there comes a time - not just for Dr. King, but for all of us - when silence is betrayal.'"

Wouldn't it be nifty if the Clintonites were testy with the president instead?

The rest of the story: The Huffington Post

Joe Biden shows his mettle

A week ago on Sunday, presidential wannabe Sen. Joseph Biden, the leader of the Senate Democrats on matters pertaining to foreign policy, was asked on Meet the Press what he intended to do when President Bush ordered additional American troops to go to Iraq. "There's not much I can do about it," Biden whimpered. "Not much anybody can do about it. He's commander in chief....It'll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but as a practical matter, there's no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop.' "

World Opinion: What the Foreign Press Thinks about U.S.

WatchingAmerica makes available in English articles written about the U.S. by foreigners for foreign audiences. The site offers its own translations and is updated frequently. "If coverage of an issue, on a particular day, surprises or irritates," the editors write, "remember that we are reporting what is out there, and trying to show the fullest range of views. We don't endorse the content presented, or imply anything about the motivation behind or accuracy of the original sources. Watching America does not seek to influence opinion by selective presentation, but sometimes global opinion can be quite polarized. It may, therefore, fall outside the spectrum of debate in the United States or appear one-sided." The site is supported by ads and donations. <http://watchingamerica.com/>

2008: Maybe we should adopt the WSJ's trick of picking stocks by throwing darts

So it looks like we are going to have to choose, at a minimum, from among John Edwards, Hilary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Hussein Obama (as he will be known to Faux News and the GOP), Al Sharpton (if he can find some Republicans fatcats to pay his bills again), Tom "Look, I'm termed out, okay?" Vilsack, Bill Richardson (well, maybe), and, as of this week, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden (gratifying that Evan Bayh and Mark Warner hold themselves in the same esteem that I do and pulled out of the race; too bad Russ Feingold did likewise).

The entertainment value of a Biden candidacy is not to be undervalued. To take one example -- and there will be many more in the months to come, during former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter's Senate testimony in the run-up to Iraq, small "d" democrat Biden opined, "The decision of whether or not the country should go to war is slightly above your pay grade" (to his credit, Sen. John McCain later replied that he "wished that the administration had consulted with somebody of Ritter's pay grade during the Vietnam war") (source: <Wikipedia>).

Keep 'em coming, Joe.

2008 (cont.): Dennis Kucinich

Oh, yeah. Kucinich. I forgot all about him.

2008: John Edwards readying bid

In 2004, I favored John Edwards for the Democratic presidential nomination for two reasons: I thought he had the best set of political skills to wield against Bush; and he was the first candidate for national office since Lyndon Johnson to make economic class the defining issue of his campaign.

Although he hasn't made an official announcement, it's no secret Edwards is running again.

He's got a lot of company. At least two Democrats -- Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and U.S. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana -- have announced plans to form exploratory committees (an exploratory committee is a formulation that permits you a graceful way out when your candidacy fails to spark the least interest). It's likely that Vilsack's real goal is the job of vice president, especially since he is barely a blip on the screen even in his native Iowa. And you would think Bayh is too shallow for the job until you remembered who currently sits in the president's Aeron chair.

The pundits have anointed Hillary Clinton as the front runner, in a replay of the scenario that succeeded in making Kerry the nominee in 2004. It looks to me as though Clinton peaked a year ago, and has lost ground since because of her too successful effort to blur her position on every issue from Iraq through abortion to flag burning. Her obsessive triangulation is giving cynicism a bad name.

The media have been trying to light a fire under Barak Obama, admittedly the romantic lead in the fantasies of many Democrats of a sentimental bent -- that is, at least during the few minutes a day when the aren't dreaming of the Revenge of Al Gore, but no one has come up with a believable scenario in which Obama wins. My guess is that his Wesley-Clark-moment won't last until the Iowa caucus, let alone to November 2008.

The former vice president will clearly be the favorite among many Dems if he decides to run, but it would be a shame to trade the New Gore, outspoken and fun, for the old Gore, the overly cautious, wooden, rhymes-with-Gore who blew the race in 2000.

It's hard to believe that Joe Lieberman and Howard Dean have given up on their ambitions (but it may occur to Dean that if he stays put at the DNC, he could be a kingmaker in his role as the national voice of the state parties), and it is unlikely we have seen the last of Rev. Al Sharpton, but it is to be hoped that each of them has a kid around to ask pointed questions about their lack of clothes.

For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that Joe Biden is also considering applying for the job; actually, let's hope he does run because, other than Dean and Kerry, who may be sidelined, the Delaware senator is the only candidate who can be relied on to contribute his fair share of gaffs and embarrassments. Also look for boomlets for people like John Tester, Bill Richardson, Bob Casey, Chris Dodd, Eliot Spitzer, and Brian Schweitzer as members of the press attempt to cycle through two years of non-news without repeating themselves.

Even John "Whack-A-Mole" Kerry, apparently as completely untethered from reality as the man he tried to replace, is thinking of another try, despite coming in dead last in a poll two weeks ago that pitted America's 20 best-known politicians against each other in a likability contest (a poll conducted, by the way, before the flap over his momentary lapse into candor over the prospects in the workplace of the poor and the under-educated).

For what it's worth -- after all, Kerry probably couldn't have won a likability contest in his crib with only members of his family voting, but he still somehow wound up the Democratic nominee....anyway, for what it's worth, the top Dem was Senator Obama, followed by Lieberman, Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Gore. Kerry was even outpaced by the Bay State's lame duck governor, Mitt Romney, who is being short listed for the Republican nomination. Romney was 13th on the likability ballot, not much ahead of number 15, George Bush, the person thought to be the least liked politician until Kerry beat all comers. To keep this all in perspective, one measure of how successful such polling may be in predicting future political outcomes can be taken from the fact that Obama came in second behind former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a man who has about as much chance of being president as Peewee Herman.

For his part, Edwards has been waiting for his moment. On Sunday last, he told CBS News, in the coy language of his cohort, that it was "safe to say I might very well" run for president, but recent moves by Vilsack, Bayh, Obama and Clinton will probably force him to jump in sooner than later.

After the Democrats lost in 2004, the Edwards family moved back to North Carolina. Elizabeth Edwards, his wife, had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the final days of the campaign, but after chemotherapy she is now free of the disease.

Last year, Edwards founded the Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Law School. The organization focuses on one of his primary passions -- class disparity in America.

During the last year he has also logged thousands of miles traveling around the country, including visits to such early primary states as New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada, racking up points in heaven by pushing for an increase in the minimum wage and collecting terrestrial IOUs by stumping for Democratic candidates.

Edwards has blunted criticism about his lack of foreign-policy experience by working with former representative and vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp as co-chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Russian-American Relations.

Clearly, although you wouldn't know it from the incessant handicapping on CNN and Faux, it is way, way, way too early to draw any conclusions about 2008, but John Edwards is positioned well to be one of the finalists in the next race for president. I still believe, as I did in 2004, that a John Edwards-Bill Richardson ticket would be almost impossible for the Republicans to beat. Let's hope somebody keeps Lindsay Graham out of the White House.

--
John Nichols on Candidate Edwards: Version 2.008 in The Nation (2006-12-28).

Public Spaces: Cell Phones

It has become common in East Coast restaurants, especially in New York City, to delineate "No Cell Phone" sections when not prohibiting them altogether. In L.A., where civility at Starbucks and other venues is being obliterated in a cacophony of cell phone abuse, it is worth noting that at least one coffee house, Santa Monica's funky Velocity Cafe at 2127 Lincoln Boulevard, is taking a stand. Tent cards on the tables politely request that you "PLEASE TAKE PHONE CALLS OUTSIDE," a custom that used to be routine at Starbucks. If you're coming off the westbound 10, go left onto Lincoln; Velocity is on the east side of the street a couple of blocks south of Pico.

Howard Zinn talks about the uses of history

Democracy Now broadcast a thoughtful lecture by the historian Howard Zinn on "The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism." Prof. Zinn wrote the classic "A People's History of the United States," required reading for any person who wishes to understand America.

Among other things, Zinn argues that, "If the American people really knew history, if they learned history, if the educational institutions did their job, if the press did its job in giving people historical perspective," then they would understand when they are being lied to by their government and, presumably, do something about it.

This pretty much lets us off the hook. The American failure is institutional. Blame the schools. Blame the press. It's not our fault.

What is our responsibility -- yours and mine -- for the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan? Whether or not the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Time mag, et al, fell down on the job, there were plenty of sources, even at the earliest stage of the "War on Terror," from which to learn the truth. The blinkered "I didn't know" defense quite rightly didn't work for the Germans, and it doesn't justify the complacency or explain away the ignorance of Americans.

You can't really blame the schools, whose reading lists have helped to make "A People's History of the United States" a publishing phenomenon. And if Hermann Goering, the proto-Republican operative, was right, all the blame can't be laid at the feet of the press, either; it has to be shared by the better than eighty percent of Americans who raised a mighty cheer when it was proposed to payback the incineration of innocent Americans at the World Trade Center by blowing to smithereens superior numbers of innocent Afghanis.

If the "I didn't know" excuse won't fly on Afghanistan, think how many fewer grounds there are for clinging to it on Iraq. We knew -- you knew -- where we were headed in the aftermath of 911. The people's representatives who cravenly voted for war -- and who will now advance the cause of peace by legislating huge increases in military spending -- knew. And many in the criminal enterprise that is our current government also knew, even as they cynically retailed the WMDs.

The first worthies interviewed on 60 Minutes the Sunday after the recent election were not Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or Charles Schumer or Rahm Emanuel or Howard Dean. Not Sherrod Brown or John Tester or Amy Klobuchar or Jim Webb or Bob Casey or Ben Cardin or Sheldon Whitehouse.

No, the first politicians to come before NBC's mics were John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, the two strongest proponents of peace through war. If that doesn't give you some idea that the fix is in, your obtuseness is willful; you don't want to know.

But a year from now, when the troops are still dying and Iraq is mired deeper in civil war, or two years from now when Hilary Clinton or some other Democrat holds out bloody hands in a plea for your vote, you will not be able claim you didn't know.

It was already clear, before the dust kicked up by 2006 election had time to settle, that the corporate elite is not prepared to give up the empire.

You know what is coming.

More war.

More bloodshed.

In our name.

If we do nothing, let's at least be honest, and admit that we knew.

-------------

Howard Zinn
Democracy Now
A People's History of the United States

Can of Worms: Outdoor Smoking Ban

As you already know, Santa Monica has passed an outside smoking ban. Turns out, it may not be the first, plus Belmont's is even more extreme:

"Belmont is set to make history by becoming the first city in the nation to ban smoking on its streets and almost everywhere else. The Belmont City Council voted unanimously last night to pursue a strict law that will prohibit smoking anywhere in the city except for single-family detached residences. Smoking on the street, in a park and even in one’s car will become illegal and police would have the option of handing out tickets if they catch someone." (Dana Yates, "Belmont to be first U.S. city to ban all smoking", San Mateo County Daily Journal, Nov. 15).

The Plan: McGovern to meet with Congress on war

This week, 60 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a 62-member group led by Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, will listen to former Democratic senator and presidential nominee George McGovern outline his strategy for extracting U.S. troops from Iraq by June (see Iraq, McGovern and Me: Now It's Your Move by Gary Gordon, ImpracticalProposals 2006-11-06).

If Democrats don't take steps to end the war in Iraq soon, they won't be in power very long, McGovern told reporters before a speech at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, according to the Associated Press.

"I think the Democratic leadership is wise enough to know that if they're going to follow the message that election sent, they're going to have to take steps to bring the war to a conclusion," he said.

McGovern's plan — outlined in a new book, "Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now" by McGovern and scholar William Polk — calls for the United States to remove hired mercenaries from the region, push for the removal of British troops and establish a temporary transitional force, similar to police, made up of Muslims from the region.

"Never let the new class of Democrats forget that they're there in considerable part because of the war the American public has now turned against," McGovern said. "That's going to have to be something that they have to explore with Republicans and with the White House." An excerpt from McGovern's book is here.

Joe Lieberman for Secretary of Defense

It's not over 'til it's over.

Maybe majority leader Harry Reid shouldn't measure the curtains in his new office just yet.

Whether he knows it or not, if he decides not to go ahead with the plan to name former CIA director Robert Gates to the job of defense secretary, the president has one more rabbit in his hat. In one move, Bush can take back the Senate and put the Democrats in a box on the war. How? Appoint Joe Lieberman.

Would Lieberman do it? Sure he would. In a house full of egos, Lieberman's is the one that sucks the air out of the room. "Senator," Bush says, "you're the only man in the world who can bring everyone together on Iraq. Peace with Honor, Joe. Only you can do it."

With Joe at the DOD, a nominal Democrat is now responsible for the war. And the appointment can be cited as proof that Bush was serious when, with as straight a face as he can manage, he announced at his press conference yesterday that a new era of bipartisanship has arrived.

Best of all from the White House point of view, Connecticut's Republican governor M. Jodi Rell gets to appoint his replacement until a special election can be held, up to two years from now.

Welcome to Republican control of the Senate.

Resource: FedSpending.org

This "free, searchable database of federal government spending" from OMB Watch, "a nonprofit research and advocacy organization dedicated to promoting government accountability," is drawn "largely from two sources: the Federal Procurement Data System, which contains information about federal contracts; and the Federal Assistance Award Data System, which contains information about federal financial assistance such as grants, loans, insurance, and direct subsidies like Social Security." Includes a handy glossary. <http://www.fedspending.org/>

Iraq, McGovern, and Me: Now It’s Your Move

By Gary Gordon

Last Sunday I watched the most moral, sensible, reasonable hour and forty-five minutes of TV I’ve seen in, well, maybe decades.

So what?

The thing is, it was former Senator George McGovern and a guy named William Polk talking about their plan to get the U.S. out of Iraq while at the same time doing the right thing for the Iraqi people.

I’m not sure that I’ve heard anything as sensible since I heard McGovern in front of the California delegation in Chicago in 1968 declare that he supported withdrawal from Vietnam — a position Hubert Humphrey and the majority of establishment Democrats could not bring themselves to embrace.

The TV show was on BookTV, on a fairly civilized network called C-SPAN2. It’s 48 hours of programming about non-fiction books every weekend. Imagine, as John Lennon might sing, 48 hours of programming every weekend featuring authors; authors interviewed, speaking at bookstores, universities, book festivals, on panels conversing with and debating other authors — all very civil, no wrestlers, shouting heads, sans O’Reilly. And, get this, no commercial interruptions. So, last Sunday, McGovern & Polk, moderated by the distinguished John Brademas, for 105 minutes.

As a disclaimer, before I proceed with an endorsement of McGovern’s & Polk’s plan and urge you to support it and use it as litmus test by which to measure Democrats and others who vie for your vote and support in 2008, I should mention two things: I gave my political heart to McGovern in 1971 as I worked for him in Georgia and Illinois, and I have been an opponent of Bush, his military misadventures, and his wholesale destruction of the American revolution and the American way of life since 1999. It boggles my mind (as it may yours) that so many people are only beginning to grasp that elections are referendums as well as contests for power and that so many people are finally coming around to the notion that 2006 ought to be a referendum on the wars as if 2002 and 2004 were too early to really frame the discussion. In the words of my people, “Oy!”

Be that as it may, 2006 is certainly shaping up as that referendum, even though my friend John, whom I agree with, declares flatly that the war is a side-show.

Side-show?

Yes.

The problems in this country are so great as to require the economic equivalent of the Marshall Plan, the philosophical and legislative muscle of the New Deal, and the vision of many of the founding fathers, Paine, and the unsung revolutionaries combined with Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, the trust-busting inclinations of Teddy R., the visions of Debs, FDR and JFK (jawboning the steel industry, ignoring his generals and top intelligence and military advisers in the Cuban Missile Crisis) and LBJ’s Great Society, plus a dash of early Nader (the Highway 61 Revisited years), MLK and the other great souls who found that by mixing the small c christian values with the Enlightenment with American values, attitudes and resources you could work to create a society that would define greatness not by size or world domination but by a legal and judicial system and political system that was inclusive, democratic, oriented to justice, the dignity of the individual and the clear concept of society, especially anti-European, with its royalty and vulgar, brutal class systems, and especially anti-theocratic.

Note: I have few illusions about American ideals and the American revolution, realize almost everyone and everything mentioned in the paragraph above has it flaws, hypocrisies, buts and “did you knows?” — for further insight, read Gary Nash’s “The Unknown American Revolution” — but I still think justice, democracy, inclusiveness, and individual dignity are pretty good ideas.

Now, short of some as-yet uninvented Star Trek technology, how do we get there from here? How do we heal? How do we roll back the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years and get back (and forward) to a vision that can incorporate the best of Debs, FDR, LBJ and McGovern? How do we get on a path that picks up where Frank Church et al left off, reining in the CIA and the multinational corporations? How do we end what Marvin Harris called the Permanent War Economy and implement what was politely known a couple of decades ago as Conversion. And how do we do this in time so that the religious fanatics and warmongers in our own leadership and those around the world, and the impacts of Global Warming don’t succeed in irrevocably dooming civilization?

We start with the side-show.

The side-show must be ended so full attention to re-building America can begin.

And how do we end the side-show?

McGovern and Polk have a simple, eloquent, cost-effective, moral and diplomatically ideal plan, published in their book Out of Iraq and summarized in a recent issue of Harper’s <read an excerpt>.

The highpoints of the plan are these:

* Withdraw American military forces and private mercenaries within 6 months, beginning in December
* Terminate all post-war oil contracts and return the Iraqi oil industry to Iraqis
* Adopt and implement an economic plan that would:

1. Rebuild Iraqi infrastructure,
2. Build hospitals and schools,
3. Close U.S. prisons in Iraq and release P.O.W.s,
4. Eliminate U.S. bases,
5. Provide financial assistance to create a national reconstruction corps,
6. Provide for an independent audit of all funds spent on the war,
7. Fund reparations to Iraqi civilians,
8. Fully fund veterans’ services in the U.S.,
9. Rebuild Babylon, and
10. Finance the creation of a national Iraqi police force (instead of an Army).

Additionally, they insist the United States must offer condolences to Iraq. This significant gesture is non- negotiable.

The cost of this plan? Around $12 billion… or, at the current $250 million-a-day cost of the war, about seven weeks cost.

A further note: both Polk and McGovern readily acknowledge that this will be difficult and bloody. It is a plan for what America should do. It is not a plan for what Iraqis should do. There will be violence. People will kill each other. Their plan does not make every Iraqi nice. It does not require everyone behave. It does explicitly state that the major cause of the insurgency, the presence of the American military, will be removed and that over time this will lead to a decrease in violence. As both McGovern and Polk (who has studied the history of insurgency and guerilla warfare) said, bloodbaths predicted rarely occur; historically the withdrawal of the occupiers is the beginning of a return to order.

Now, as to criticisms that will be made, left, right and center, of this plan. Well, the right-wing criticisms are as predictable as they are self-righteous, ignorant, wrong-headed, pathetic, evil and dangerous. ‘Nuff said. As for centrists (Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman etc.), they will argue timetable, they will argue details—they will study and argue and bluster and recount their own self-serving histories -- such are the actions of American Tories. As for the left, they might argue that this plan doesn’t address the larger issues (as they see it) of the American war machine, troops in over 140 countries, Israel & Hamas, capitalism, and a host of other worthwhile issues that this plan is not designed to address.

So, what is our plan? You and me? The ones who are against the war, want us out of Iraq, but also believe there is a moral obligation to unbreak some of what was broken.

My humble proposal is this: we, you and me, should endorse this plan. Unequivocally. Without hesitation. Entirely. Not piecemeal. Not qualified. Not “I kind of like it but…” To use the flip of Bush’s line in the sand, with the Ken Kesey spin, “you’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus.”

Further.

We should start insisting that every single Democrat in congress, all the representatives and all the senators, propose this plan as legislation and pass it.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that the Democrats take the House and Senate. Let’s imagine they endorse and pass into law the McGovern-Polk plan. Let’s suppose Bush doesn’t sign it, or flails about, or tortures syntax, or flails about some more. I like the scenario.

Of course the reality is that this plan won’t satisfy some readers. Some Democrats, even if they take the House and/or Senate, won’t support this.

Then what do we do? Well, then it becomes the litmus test. That is, if you really care about the war, either as the number one issue, or as the side-show that must be dealt with before we can move forward.

See, it’s not enough to be against Bush. It’s not enough to declare a war immoral. It’s not enough to support Democrats (and as we will learn, boys and girls, someday the notion that they are the solution will have to go the way of Santa Claus—but that’s another column) — it’s not enough. You have to have a plan.

Now there is one.

The McGovern-Polk Plan.

Moral, reasonable, sensible.

And timely.

And you have to get the plan implemented.

Your move.

Visit Gary Gordon: <http://www.garygordonproductions.com/>
Get Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now by George McGovern, William R. Polk
Read an excerpt of the book.

When you vote...: Iraq

When you vote, please keep in mind the 103 American soldiers who died in Iraq in October, the bloodiest month in a year and a half, and the third worst casualty count of the war, three and a half years after Bush declared, "Mission accomplished."

2006: Santa Monica city council candidates and ballot measures

The Santa Monica City Council needs fresh blood -- badly. Bullet voting for Terry O'Day introduces the possibility that, if the tallies of the three incumbents seeking reelection are not increased by the voters who select him, he will overcome the advantage of incumbency and come in ahead of one of them. “I will use my experience as a Planning Commissioner, environmental leader and independent small business owner to find workable and sustainable solutions to traffic congestion, crime and homelessness,” O’Day wrote in his candidate statement. A seasoned progressive, O’Day considered running on the SMRR slate, but decided he'd have a better chance of working with the city's warring factions if he stayed independent.

If you want to fully exercise your franchise, two other independent challengers meriting support are Jonathan Mann, a Green Party member and perennial candidate for council, and Linda Armstrong, who ran last time on a “women and children first” platform and wants to require businesses citywide making more than $5 million to pay a living wage.

Measure W - No
Measure is the right name for this. It's a measure of the depth of cynicism among Santa Monica's political class. Placed on the ballot by current Santa Monica city council members, it's an effort to undermine a stronger anti-corruption law passed by the voters six years ago that the politicos have been unable to undo in the courts.

Measure Y - Yes
Measure Y will make personal marijuana use by adults the lowest law enforcement priority for the Santa Monica Police Department, so the cops can focus their time and resources on fighting violent crime, instead of wasting effort arresting and locking up nonviolent pot smokers. Under Measure Y, public use, sale and use by minors remain illegal, as does driving under the influence of pot. If the initiative passes, Santa Monica will join cities such as Oakland and Seattle in taking an important step toward ending the costly, dangerous and useless national "War On Drugs."

2006: Protect Your Vote

YES!, a "national, non-profit, ad-free magazine that supports people's active engagement in building a just and sustainable world," has published "12 ways you can protect your own vote ­and the fairness of the system."

Also, True Majority has prepared an "Election Preparedness Kit," a 3-step plan aimed specifically at election fraud.