This video has been around for more than a week, and I guess it took off over the last couple of days, so by now, just about anyone not living in a cave has seen it. I just emerged from my cave today, and should any of you still be dwelling in such a habitation, this is for you. Bonus points for anyone who can remember the subject of the last funny internet video that used the same Hitler clip. I posted it, but I can’t remember what it was about.
One salutary by-product of all the hate and vitriol spilling out of the right is that Maureen Dowd appears to have woken up to the fact that there are more important things than Maureen Dowd. She actually wrote a reasonably good column today, in which she deals seriously with a serious subject-the racial animus behind the anti-Obama movement in this country. And I understand, from other sources, that this is her second reasonably good column in a row. It’s a shame that it’s taken a rebirth of what we thought was a bygone brand of American racism to bring Dowd to at least temporarily address real issues, but we have to take what we can get these days.
The Times has begun a major new series on water pollution, detailing the degradation of our water’s quality by the usual suspects, and the attendant health consequences. This looks to be a great piece of journalism, and is further proof that despite print journalism’s many failings, we need outlets like the Times to survive in some form. Who knows, this series may actually provoke some sort of salutary response.
There’s really nothing surprising here. State agencies, underfunded and understaffed, have greenlighted environmental crimes over the course of the last eight years. This trend was either initiated or encouraged, depending on how you look at it, by the Bush EPA, which preferred its water polluted, thank you. What is amazing about all this is how easy it became, the Times didn’t really have to look far, in many instances, for proof of what was going on:
Records analyzed by The Times indicate that the Clean Water Act has been violated more than 506,000 times since 2004, by more than 23,000 companies and other facilities, according to reports submitted by polluters themselves. Companies sometimes test what they are dumping only once a quarter, so the actual number of days when they broke the law is often far higher. And some companies illegally avoid reporting their emissions, say officials, so infractions go unrecorded.
In other words, the companies were fessin’ up, secure in the knowledge that they had a friend in Washington, and lots of friends in state Capitols, as the Times also demonstrates.
One interesting point made in the article is that today’s pollutant’s are relatively invisible. The water looks fine, only it’s poison, so it’s not as easy as it was in the 60s and 70s to take compelling pictures of dirty rivers and streams.
The health consequences of all this are serious, and of course, will be tremendously costly in the long run. It’s an object lesson in the interconnectedness of all things; if we would put money into enforcement of existing laws, and make some common sense changes in the law to go after non-point sources of pollution, we could avoid serious health costs (some obvious consequences are documented in the article) over the long term, since many of these poisons are slow acting. Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress had done the right thing 7 months ago, and put stimulus money into state governments instead of tax cuts. Had that money been made available, with some directly targeted to this kind of enforcement, we would have been investing in something that would have had beneficial results in both the short and long term.
In addition to enforcement, maybe we should be using some of that stimulus money to simply pay for installation of whatever equipment is needed to enable these polluters to stop. It rankles to shovel money at the bad guys, but there are times when you have to be practical, and in any event, it would be a trivial expense to what we’ve given to the Wall Streeters that have ruined our economy once, and who we are now enabling to ruin it again.
So kudos to the Times for bringing this issue to the fore, and double kudos for relegating the teabaggers to page 36 or thereabouts.
The Groton Democratic Town Committee formally opened its new Headquarters today. We had a reasonably good turnout, including two people who are exploring the idea of running for governor. You sort of get the impression that they are constantly tripping over each other, since they must be going to functions like this all the time.
Gary LeBeau and Dan Malloy showed up, and Susan Bysiewicz and Nancy Wyman sent their regrets. This was actually a great opportunity for anyone actually interested in talking to these guys, because they both hung around for a while (LeBeau stayed until the bitter end) and you could actually hold a conversation with them. I have to admit I didn’t take the greatest advantage of the opportunity. I basically vented about wussy Democrats from Obama on down, though I have to say I really don’t put Malloy in that category. (I don’t know about LeBeau). It always impressed me that he didn’t take no for an answer at the 2006 convention and practically stole (but legally) the endorsement from DeStefano. He seems like a bit of a street fighter, something we can use more of in our high minded, ineffectual party.
Here’s Dan talking with RTM candidate William Rae and his wife Emma Palzere-Rae.
As I said, Gary LeBeau stayed pretty much until we closed up shop. Here he’s talking politics with Board of Ed candidate Dave Ferreira.
We got a great place for headquarters this year. Sort of a shame, because we could have used this kind of high quality space last year.
UPDATE: Corrected in line with the comment. I’m not sure where the “Shirley” came from.
This is happening with depressing regularity:
FOX’s Glenn Beck, whose criticism got a top Obama aide fired this week, has also been agitating about ACORN and its involvement with the 2010 census. The Obama administration has just announced that it is severing its ties with ACORN, and they admitted that they made the move because of the conservative criticism.
What was it Obama said on Wednesday:
If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.
Apparently that sentiment only applies to misrepresentations about the health care plan. On every other issue under the sun (and ultimately, on real health care), they will apparently keep trying to satisfy the lunatics. Would that Obama would watch the video here (sorry, I can’t embed it).
This is the guy who promised to be a leader? He can’t stand up to Glenn Beck, and we’re to believe that he will deal with the health care crisis, the financial industry, and the war in Afghanistan? If Beck can push him around imagine what the “titans” of Wall Street and the generals will do with him. If he wants to know why his approval rating is going down, he need look no further than people like me. Were I polled now, I’d take one for the team and give him the thumbs up, but where there once was real hope there is now dread. The Obama administration has a bad case of battered spouse syndrome. Where will we be if they cave like this for the next four years?
Tracy Chapman.
You can’t beat the video and audio quality on this one.
Fast Car
Max Baucus and Kent Conrad are nominal Democrats, extremely nominal. Baucus, especially, has been trying the patience of every knowledgeable Democrat in the country as he pursues his Holy Grail-a reasonable Republican. That animal is extinct. Baucus has made himself look like a fool for the past several weeks as he let himself get played over and over by Republicans who were announcing to the world, as soon as they were out of his presence, that they wouldn’t vote for Health Care Reform-not now, not never.
But Baucus, with Conrad in tow, jumped the shark today. It’s bad enough that he’s torpedoed health care, but it’s absolutely mind boggling that he would pull (the bad) Joe Wilson’s chestnuts out of the fire by adding unnecessary language to their so called bill to make it even more illegal than before for illegal aliens to participate in the new health exchange.It’s a trifecta. They have legitimized Wilson’s behavior, made themselves look even more idiotic, and added a provision which, if it becomes law, will massively inconvenience millions of Americans while doing next to nothing to address the problem it allegedly seeks to address.
Here we had the Republicans on the defensive, and these guys basically say: “Well gosh, maybe Wilson had a point. Maybe the president was lying”.
And now Baucus wants to be in charge of climate change legislation. We can all look forward to buying beachfront property on the shores of the Artic Sea.
I had my doubts about the authenticity of this story, but I considered it too funny not to pass along:
A devout Catholic who popped into church to thank God for a his rescue from a lift was crushed to death by a 860lb stone altar.
Police spokesman Roman Hahslinger explained that Gunther Link, 45, was “a very religious man and had been scared when he was trapped in the lift and had prayed for release”.
He continued: “A short while later he was pulled out of the elevator and he went straight to the church to thank God.”
It appears on a website called the Register. The reason for my doubts? The article is sourced to the Telegraph, but there is no link. My initial attempts to verify were fruitless, but I pressed on, and indeed, the Telegraph did run the story. So, it’s as true as it needs to be for my purposes.
This reminds me of stories I’ve read in which survivors of terrible events, such as a plane crash, credit God for their deliverance, never pausing to consider that, by their logic, God must have deliberately destroyed the folks who weren’t so lucky.
Anyway, while I feel sorry for Mr. Link, I can’t help get a bit of a chuckle out of this. Of course, maybe he’ll have the last laugh. After all he did die in church, and maybe the Lord Jesus was just bringing him to heaven while his account stood well with the Lord.
