corporations

After all is said and done I think Biden was a one-sided selection. If you have had any news on then you’ve heard how he will shore up Obama’s lack of foreign experience and it could be said help Obama’s lack of experience in total. Biden is also supposed to be a good attack dog which will allow Obama to stand above that sort of thing. Overall, he will help Obama nationally with the independent voters.

However, I am guessing that the core Democrats involved in this race are not happy. To be honest, the Clinton supporters would not be happy with anyone other than Hillary. I think they might have been more understanding if Obama had picked some outsider. Instead they go with someone who is old school, which she is, too. Why go for someone with a good resume when you could have someone with a great resume? And already PUMA is arguing that Biden had a whopping 9,500 votes during the primary vs. Hillary’s 18 million. (I know it isn’t a fair comparison as Biden dropped out early but who ever said politics is fair?)

But it is the core Obama people who are also rumbling a little bit this morning. Obama’s entire campaign is based on change. But his first important decision to select his running mate and he completely turns his back on the idea of change. Instead of an outsider he went with Biden who is yet another old white guy who has been in DC since Watergate. Or as I heard one African American reporter tell it - she wasn’t even born when Biden was first elected.

I would also think that Obama’s advisors aren’t that pleased either. There are two primary jobs for a VP candidate. The obvious one is to step in as President in case the President is unable to perform his job. The other purpose of a VP is to bring in votes that the President elect may not have been able to capture himself. I am not sure how much Biden will help Obama in this. In the past VP candidates have come from large electoral states or from swing states or from geographical areas that normally go for his opponent.

As everyone now knows - Biden is from Delaware which has a whopping 3 electoral votes. Nor is Delaware a key transitional state. Some analysts are saying that Biden may not readily have a large group of people that will now be for Obama. But he might have large corporations and big bucks behind him. And every candidate always could use more money.

Later today Obama and Biden will officially announce this in Springfield Ill. (And didn’t Obama’s idea of texting his supporters first backfire. But more on that another time.) Anyway, back to the picture of the two of them standing together, most likely with raised hands held together as you always see it. And how will that look? How will America react to this picture of a youngish good looking black man holding hands with an old grey haired white man? In spite of what the picture might indicate, is America ready for an African American President?

Now that the Olympics are wrapping up tomorrow, let the real games begin!

Pony-tailed, Tie-Dyed Bongo Drummers Against McCain’s Offshore Oil Drilling

The apparent Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain stuck his head into the environmental lion’s mouth at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Santa Barbara, California touting his offshore oil drilling banner and drawing the ire of local anti-oil activists. An increasingly unpopular California Governor Schwarzenegger who opposes offshore oil drilling also attended.

The usually timid local Congresswoman Lois Capps (D) chastised McCain for calling for more offshore drilling virtually on the hallowed site of the 3 million gallon 1969 oil well blow out that coated local beaches, launched the modern environmental movement and made Santa Barbara an obligatory political stop to bash offshore drilling which McCain did himself during his 1980 campaign. Capps took pains to read Obama talking points criticizing McCain’s idea as continuing Bush-Cheney policies. Santa Barbara City Councilman, liberal Democrat up and comer and Obama supporter Das Williams blasted McCain in the Las Angeles Times saying, “What we are seeing is just a shameless amount of opportunism from Mr. McCain.”

Six out of ten Americans now support more offshore oil drilling to increase supply and eventually lower gasoline and diesel prices. But an overwhelming majority of California “left coasters” oppose it. In fact Capps’ 23^rd District was gerrymandered in 2000 to give her a safe entirely coastal district that runs from Monterey into Los Angeles Counties and in places is only six inches wide gaining the national title of the “ribbon of shame” as the most contorted district in America.

The McCain town hall event followed a $1,000 per person fund raiser Monday night attended by about 200 including the usual freeloaders. Oprah Winfrey hosted a record setting multi-million dollar fund raiser in Santa Barbara a few months ago, and Rudy Guiliani also dipped into local pockets before his campaign imploded. Once conservative the Central California coast has definitely gone liberal with Democrat majorities in Ventura, and Santa Barbra Counties, and while San Luis Obispo County clings to a Republican voter edge the June primary there elected a liberal majority to its Board of Supervisors. John Kerry carried Santa Barbara County in 2004 and McCain trails in California from 20-30%.

Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to child pornography and eliminate the material from their servers on a nationwide basis thanks to a settlement brokered by New York’s attorney general. The agreements follow an undercover investigation of child porn newsgroups. Last year New York reached agreement with the social networking sites MySpace and Facebook to toughen protections against online sexual predators. So-called 1^st Amendment activists have objected saying “free speech” must be protected at all cost. Verizon and Time Warner Cable are two of the five largest internet service providers in the world. Verizon has 8.2 million subscribers and Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner has 7.9 million. Sprint is one of the three largest wireless companies in the United States. Child safety advocated point out the right to free speech does not make the speech right.

It was suggested elsewhere on hypocrisy.com that partisan environmentalists are responsible for a suicidal oil avoidance policy. That sounds like the paid comments of the oil lobby. Maybe even a lobbyist for Bush or McCain who are dependent on big corporate money to sustain their failed policies on all fronts.

Big Oil is deeply rooted in the Republican Party and it is an unholy alliance just like the drug companies and other abusers of the public trust. As long as they hold sway, we will never find alternatives to the earth destroying use of petro based energy and manufacturing.

If the Bush Administration had not delegated all of it’s energy policy discussions early in their eight years to the secretive Cheney Corporation which held fact finding and policy guiding meetings with only one side of the equation present, the current price of gas at the pump would be a lot lower than it is today.

Bush, Cheney and he other neo cons have not only missed the boat in foreign policy, energy policy, health care, national security and education, they have set us back decades when the rest of the world is advancing.

Jerry Ford once said something like our national nightmare is over. I am not prepared to say that until Barack Obama is installed in office in January 2009.

In a letter to shareholders General Motors’ Chairman and CEO Porter Stansberry says he sees light at the end of the tunnel but it is a GM bankruptcy and that a company cannot suffer 40 years of bad decisions, bad ideas, and bad debts and expect to compete with the rest of the world’s automakers.

He says, “what’s killing us is a legacy of debts and obligations we cannot possibly repay.” Stansberry says, “nor do we have any pleasant way to repudiate our promises. The only answer is bankruptcy.” He likens it to promises made under Social Security saying, “we cannot make enough money selling cars to afford the service on our $33 billion debt load, ” and “or the $11 billion we owe in cash pensions. These debts are killing us.” He thinks, “we’ve finally entered the end stage – the death spiral.”

“Given our current burn rate, I estimate we will declare bankruptcy in a little more than three quarters, “he predicted.

Toyota pays workers $43 an hour to make cars in the U. S. but the United Auto Workers demand $67 an hour from GM, Ford and Chrysler. Plus, they make cars that consumers judge to be inferior. Turn out the lights the party is over in Detroit, and Dearborn.

Yes, today’s Ten Post Round-Up is as cold as the Colorado mountains:

1: thepoetryman has something to say about the FLDS Church…

KNOTTED FACE–A Poetic Justice

2: More “supporting the troops” by the Bush Administration…

Family’s Sole Surviving Son Denied GI Benefits–cbs13.com

3: A case where “what happens in Vegas…” won’t be staying in Vegas…

The Las Vegas Economic Downturn Has Started–ECONOMICROT

4: You thought your health care plan was expensive before, wait until you get sick with a serious illness…

Consumers may see higher co-pay costs–keyetv.com

5: Not able to find enough diplomats to volunteer for duty in Iraq, the State Dept. will now start drafting them to go…

State Department warns diplomats of compulsory Iraq duty–Minstrel Boy

6: Another school kid calls out the big dogs on their errors…

German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA’s asteroid figures: paper–PHYSORG.com

7: Japan has joined in the war against fat people….

Cut Back on the Sushi–Reason Magazine

8: McCain wants to suspend the gas tax for the summer…

McCain’s fix for hard times–The Rocky Mountain News

9: There’s a problem with your cereal and it’s ten years old…

Marler Clark Sees Pattern in Malt-O-Meal Salmonella Outbreaks–Signs of the Times

10: This is so typical of our politicians, these days, it comes as no surprise that they would start off with a bill to help homeowners and end up giving the bulk of the “help” to big business, instead…

Big Tax Breaks for Businesses in Housing Bill–truthout

277 días hasta el final de un error…

Peace.

(I love the smell of hypocrisy in my morning cuppa)

MEXICO CITY — The Swedish Absolut vodka company apologized Saturday for an ad campaign depicting the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico amid angry calls for a boycott by U.S. consumers.

The campaign, which promotes ideal scenarios under the slogan “In an Absolut World,” showed a 1830s-era map when Mexico included California, Texas and other southwestern states. Mexico still resents losing that territory in the 1848 Mexican-American War and the fight for Texas independence.

Radical groups still contend the southwestern U. S., including California and even Oregon, is territory that should be reconquered by Mexico. Pundits often cite the “invasion” of illegal Mexicans and others that have flooded across the southern U. S. border as an artifact of reconquest.

Researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health are calling into question some accepted science data about red light cameras and safety. In the view of lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at USF College of Public Health, “The rigorous studies clearly show red light cameras don’t work.”

“Instead they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes die to the states high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs.” This was reported in Science Daily(mar 12,2008)

The logic behind cameras at red lights is of course, to try to get people to obey the law for fear of getting a ticket in the mail. The reality, the research suggests, is less clear due to “research design flaws” like incomplete data and perhaps more importantly and more pertinent to this post the connection with funding from the insurance industry.

Now what would the insurance industry have to do with this research and why would they “slant” the evidence in a way that would in any way increase accidents? Well, while even the most jaded amongst us might not be able to believe that an industry that has been proven capable of denying rightful compensation to its insured( no, no liver for you) and has been accused of having systematic “McKinsey documents” for systematically denying compensation to victims in car crashes, it seems hard to believe they would want to cause more car crashes. Hard but not impossible.

But you don’t have to believe that “crazy” idea to believe that the insurance companies have some financial interest to gain from the cameras at red lights. Does your insurance go up if you get a citation?

And where the money interests drive the study of science and not the hunger for knowledge the outcome of that science must be questioned.

It is thought by some that these cameras may case more accidents when motorist stop when they should not in an attempt to NOT get a citation and in doing so cause an accident. In the interest of public safety more studies must be done on this before these camera become more widespread. The studies should be done by independent sources and the insurance company should not profit from any new citations from these cameras until this is resolved.

For the insurance company to make money from a creation of their own with dubious health benefits would be, dare I say it, hypocritical.

Those slobbering over the unsourced New York Times expose’ alleging SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN’s romantic affair with a woman telecommunications lobbyist and favoring her clients should recall: (1.) The New York Times cited Kitty Kelly 1991 book “Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography” alleging NANCY REAGAN had White House tryst with FRANK SINATRA and made the story big news despite no evidence, and (2.) the NYTs virtually ignored Juanita Broderick’s substantive allegations that Bill Clinton, while ARKANSAS ATTORNEY GENERAL, had raped her. Kelley was herself the subject of a highly critical book, Poison Pen (1991), by journalist George Carpozi, Jr. in September 1997. TIME magazine reported that most journalists believe Kelley “too frequently fails to bring perspective or analysis to the fruits of her reporting and at times lards her work with dollops of questionable inferences and innuendos.” This partisan New York Times “poison pen” attack is helping McCain solidify conservatives, even Rush Limbaugh. The New York Times is helping McCain and reminds me why I cancelled my NYT subscription. It may believe anything is worth staunching falling subscriptions, tumbling ad revenues, and a deflating reputation. It is still stinky, tawdry and inexcusable.