what's the great orange ape up to?

by law, the white house has to let us know what it's up to, and you can follow that here.

but it's easier to parse what it means if you divide it up into judicial appointments (many of which are unqualified to sit on the bench, according to the bar association, but are overwhelmingly white, male, and loyal to the gop) and executive actions (including one that allows the government to hire other unqualified but loyal people for any position it likes.

the morning after

i'm waiting to hear the sanders supporters' reactions - much like the obama supporters when they learned that their candidate could not change the world single-handedly. it must be like waking up after you've slept with someone at a party... sweet talk and too much to drink, followed by that long, angry and disappointed walk home.

it's not that the candidate is not admirable; they are always better than what we end up with. but expecting a different outcome when the other side writes the rules is folly, and naive. of course they win - they own the game.

the winning move is not to play. don't accept the lesser of any number of evils; evil is not something that should be judged by degree. do you say that the monster who eats just 1 child is better than the one that eats 10?

they are a made-up thing, like money and priests. if we all stop believing in them, they will go away.

congress kills insider trading ban

one of the few pieces of good legislation to come out of congress in a long while was a law meant to stop the congressional practice of profiting from insider information, known as the stock act. all the law did was require that any stock transactions by members of congress and their senior staff be posted in an online database so we could see nothing shady was going on.

although the law was passed almost exactly 1 year ago, it was never put into effect, and the white house is just as responsible for that as anyone else.

then, as soon as they thought we weren't looking any more, congress repealed it. both parties, both houses, in a grand total of 24 seconds, and signed by president obama almost as quickly.

transparent, my ass.

still think obama is a socialist?

then you haven't seen this: http://www.upworthy.com/the-massive-corporate-power-grab-youre-not-supposed-to-know-about?c=ufb1

(hint: it's a trade agreement that gives corporations rights that transcend international law; in effect making them above the law in every country that signs the agreement. and it was brokered in secret by the obama white house.)

who are the richest members of congress?

warren buffet has proposed increasing the tax rate for millionaires, which is currently at the lowest rate it's been since the 1950's. president obama put it on the table for congress to chew on, as he seems to do with everything. the thing is, almost 50% of congress falls in the millionaire bracket, so how motivated do you think they are to raise their own taxes?

 that's what we think, too.

anyway, here are the 12 richest members of congress, just in case you were wondering:

sen. frank lautenberg (d - nj) - $77 million
sen. diane feinstein (d-ca) - $77 million
sen. richard blumenthal (d-ct) - $94 million
sen. jay rockefeller (d-wv) - $99 million
sen. james risch (r-id) - $109 million
rep. michael mccaul (r-tx) - $138 million
rep. vernon buchanan (r-fl) - $148 million
sen. herb kohl (d-wi) - $160 million
rep. jared polis (d-co) - $161 million
sen. mark warner (d-va) - $174 million
sen. john kerry (d-ma) - $239 million
rep. darrell issa (r-ca) - $304 million

the real issue, though, isn't that so much of congress falls in the millionaire category - it's that their major donors do. and now that corporations are permitted to spend as much on campaign contributions as they like, and pacs & superpacs can keep where their money comes from and what they do with it a secret, fear & loathing is finally back in style.

too bad george carlin and hunter thompson are dead. they would have loved this.

there's a secret patriot act?

no, not really - but there is a secret body of interpretations of the law that the government is using to remove our remaining 4th amendment rights, according to intelligence committee member sen. ron wyden (d). that includes the obama administration.

according to wyden, the government believes that the patriot act gives it the right to collect and data mine business records, medical records, etc., but tells its constituency the complete opposite.

(and to all the low-wage grunts forced to read elsewhen because we're reporting this, you'll find our naked pictures in the ounce of flesh area. hey, even base-level spooks need a little love.)

rapist acquitted over jeans

'kayso, here's the scoop: a rapist was acquitted solely because the victim was wearing skinny jeans. nope, not kidding. and this wasn't something that happened back in the 70's or something, before we all evolved socially and recognized the self-evident fact that even a woman who walks around completely naked is not necessarily 'asking for it', and has total control over where things go from that point... if anywhere. this just happened. the argument: the pants were tight enough that the rapist could only have taken them off with the victim's help. your honors, we present the following clip for your review. the victim, played by elizabeth mcgovern, is wearing a 1930's ball gown - the equivalent of a wedding dress with an undercarriage constructed out of strait jackets. difficult to remove, yes? yet robert deniro seems undeterred. and she's riding around in the back of a limo with him, after a grand night out where alcohol was probably involved, and it's obvious there's some chemistry and a bit of history there. so watch the clips - we'll wait. done? good. now: is there any doubt in your mind over whether ms. mcgovern at any time gave consent? your honors, we rest our case.

the shadow factory

if you're curious about the nsa and their ongoing programs to listen in on your calls and read your emails & text messages, this is likely right up your alley.

untested medical devices: is your mom at risk?

despite the fact that congress ordered the fda to clean up this mess, the fda approved 228 medical devices without a single full-scale review between 2003 - 2007.

why? who was presi... oh. yeah. duh.

of course, they're probably low-risk items like bandages and tongue depre... what's that? they include metal hip joints, external defibrillators, and electrodes for pacemakers?

oh.

so the real issue seems to be which companies made these items, and who in the bush regime they paid to ignore congress's mandate. anyone got the skinny on either or both?

musings on democrat & republican presidents

in our lifetime, we've seen several presidents. want to know what we remember about each?

dubya (r): the war, of course. and the fact that he appointed 99 people to regulate industries that they used to be lobbyists for. wonder how the economy crashed? consider this a big clue.

clinton (d): brought back domestic spying, which we thought we shed back in the 70's. extremely intelligent but - like kennedy - he couldn't keep it zipped.

bush (r): read his lips - no new taxes. the wimpiest pitch in history, and a wife that looked more like his mother (and acted like it, too).

reagan (r): iran contra. no amrs for hostages (while we were looking, anyway). the most indictments of presidential appointees in history. greed is good. what you feel trickling down is the wealthiest 3% pissing on you.

carter (d): a good man, but a terrible president. killer bunny. a lusting heart.

ford (r): a tripping, flavorless cypher with a good golf game. lost any hope of (re?)election by pardoning tricky dick.

nixon (r): how can you tell when nixon is lying? his lips are moving. but tricky dick established relations with china. (the fact that they now own a sizable chunk of this country is not his fault, however - its ours.)

johnson (d): a yes man from the word go. the question is, what did he really say yes to?

kennedy (d): a great president for everyone but the rich, the military, and the mafia. and a player of the first rank.

mines = poisoned water

and - just weeks after dubya pushed through an exemption for mines that allows them to dump waste into rivers and streams, the water supply of a town in tn is found to be full of arsenic - a common component of mine runoff.

doh!

killer whales starving

puget sound, with its chinook salmon supply, used to boast a large, stable population of orcas. then the bush administration's concerted efforts to kill the chinook fishery (to support salmon farms, power plants, and rerouting of vital salmon spawning areas for water use and game fishing) paid off in an unexpected and highly noticeable way:

the puget sound orcas are starving to death.

early election chicanery

this promises to be one of the most entertaining elections since nixon stomped mcgovern. just listen to what's happened so far:

the republicans hired a contractor called ypm to trick voters into changing their political party, often without their knowledge or consent.

the state of michigan denies removing tens of thousands of eligible voters from its rolls.

meanwhile, the ny times said it found problems with voter registrations in co, in, oh, mi, nv, and nc.

at the same time, ahnold schvarzenwhatsit vetoed a bill to make california's convoluted voting process any easier for non-republicans to understand or participate in. (he said he was too busy to make the bill a priority.)

and the beat goes on.

iraq: balance sheet

as of this writing, the total number of american casualties in iraq, as confirmed by the dod, is 4,180. the number of iraqi casualties is astounding: 1,273,378. and the current amount that it's cost you, your children, and your grandchildren: more than us$563 billion. (you'll see the most current figures in our counter in the sidebar to your right.)

if, like us, you like to play with numbers, this works out to almost us$135 million per american death, but only us$442k per iraqi - a comparative bargain. also, thanks to improvements in production numbers, each american death now buys us roughly 3.5 million fillups at the pump (that's about 11,000 tankfuls per iraqi death), compared to the wasteful stats at the beginning of the war (only 2 million tankfuls per dead american and just 6,500 fillups per iraqi death).

while all of this has been going on, the oil companies have been consolidating their hold on the market, securing no-bid contracts for oilfield services, production, and distribution, and buying smaller players until just a few powerful names are left in the ring.

it's worthwhile and instructive to look at the change in oil company stock as the death tolls - and our debt load (which you owe to china, by the way) - have stacked up.

so what's our takeaway? does exxon demand blood sacrifices in exchange for higher share prices? will cheney (whom we affectionately call tricky dickless, for obvious reasons) get his old job back at halliburton when biden boots him out of his vp digs? did we avoid attacking saudi arabia - where almost all of the 911 hjijackers were actually from - because the saudi royal family is friends & business partners with dubya's family?

how the hell should we know? go find out for yourself!

undecided?

historically, what a candidate says when running for office isn't worth the wind their statements generate. since almost 20% of you are undecided which candidate to choose for president, elsewhen is going to help you out. there are 2 good ways to tell what a candidate is actually going to do:

see how they've voted in the past.

find out where they're geting their money.

since we think all politicians are horse thieves and, frankly, since elsewhen ignores the authority of any u.s. president over us, we're singularly qualified to be objective about this (plus campaign coffers and the congressional voting record don't lie). here we go:

barack obama's congressional voting record

john mccain's congressional voting record

and whose pockets they currently live in:

barack obama's campaign finances

john mccain's campaign finances

now get out there and pretend that it matters.

u.s. economy = fire sale

guess what? we paid for it. actually, china mostly paid for it, & you, your children, & your grandchildren get to pay them back. but don't worry: it's only us$500 billion.* so far.

this illustrates the problem with letting neo-cons get their grubby paws on the economy. the game revolves around guessing who will get winged, who will be shot dead, & how much damage the damned dirty apes will do before someone takes them out of the picture.

the problem is, even though we're paying for them, we won't ever own any part of the companies that washington is bailing out. essentially, we're giving them this money as a gift, to counter all of the bad debt that they knowingly took on. essentially, we're rewarding their mistakes, so that none of them learn a thing.

all hail the free market!

(* even without interest, that's an additional us$2,000 in debt for every man, woman, & child in america. added to this year's already-a-record national debt, and we're up to almost us$1 trillion. yep, that's trillion with a 't'.)

no get out of jail cards for gitmo inmates

you know, government hacks and military quacks are often accused of having no imagination, but not by elsewhen - oh no. under tricky dickless and crew, our government has come up with more creative ways to gut the constitution than any administration since the japanese interment. here's our latest example, straight from gitmo, and straight out of the pentagon's mouth:

get sent to prison immediately upon capture

never get to see any of the evidence against you

never get to see friends or family ever again

never get to face your accusers or witnesses to any of your supposed crimes

never get a trial

if you do get a trial, there will be no jury, and current judicial protections will not apply to you

and here's the capper: even if you are acquitted, you will remain in prison for the rest of your life.

does this sound like the way the good guys act to you?

so long, and thanks for nothing

with the bush white house coming to an end and the prospect of another republican sitting in the oval office increasingly remote, the administration is pitching environmentally unfriendly proposals at fire sale speed. here's one of our favorites: giving shipping companies carte blanche to run over whales.

springing abramoff

the justice department has recommended a jail term reduction for jack abramoff - let's just call him jack rip'emoff, shall we? - the crooked lobbyist. in case you've forgotten, rip'emoff was buddy-buddy with the bush white house and certain members of congress, and used money from his clients (such as indian tribes) to buy votes with members of congress and others.

do you smell the white house (which we're tempted to call the shite house, after the last 7 years) doing a favor for a pal, a la scooter libby?

here's our suggestion: burn him at the stake, instead. nothing sends a message like a good bbq. make sure to invite anne coulter; word is she's desparate for some new meat.

are rx companies the new satan?

we could go on for days about this one, but let's just score the highlights, shall we?

let's start with this: it appears that genentech has 2 drugs that are equally effective in treating a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. one has a projected cost to patients of us$60, the other us$2,000. guess which one they're not going to make?

there are also new drug labeling regulations coming out this month that will provide legal protection to drug companies that withhold information on risks involved in using their products. (this move is part of an overall campaign by the bush administration since dubya took office to shield companies from lawsuits.)

another possibly-on-purpose failure of the current adminsitration: insufficient oversight of medicare drug programs. and all of this in a time when shrinks have moved to prescribing drugs rather than using talk therapy. soma, anyone?