I know of no one who FAVORS abortion in this country, but the right to an abortion is memorialized in law, and this right is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. Conservative, evangelical “TheoNazis” would never be able to strip this right, overturning Roe v. Wade, through a national referendum, so they have now tried to deploy a back-door subterfuge in the Healthcare Reform Bill to make it difficult, if not impossible, for private insurers to continue to provide coverage for abortion procedures. This would be an insidious, and dangerous, precedent. Next goal of the TheoNazis: no healthcare coverage for people who contract HIV/AIDS from extramarital or gay sex (even though this will doom many in the current GOP leadership); no healthcare coverage for people who are found to have looked at porn on the Web; no healthcare coverage for people with strange, foreign or Hispanic names; none for drinkers, gamblers, readers of the Koran, or anyone who becomes sick or disabled having engaged in activities the scolds on the right deem “immoral”.
Abortion rights are settled law. Change the law, or get the hell out of the way of desperately needed healthcare reform.

Herewith the first of what I hope will be regular postings on the uber-patriot/clownish talking-head/darling of the right-wing ignorati Glenn Beck. Starting with his new moniker: The Grim Weeper. Stay tuned for more on this (passing) phenomenon.

Sarah Palin picked November 17 – my birthday – for the release of “her” book on whatever it is that Sarah is about. I’ve written a song about what Sarah is “about”. Have a listen, pass it along to a million of your closest friends, and let me know what you think!

I lived and worked in Hong Kong for 4 years, and the city is undoubtedly the world’s monument to free enterprise, laissez-faire capitalism, and pure chutzpah – all elements of the classic conservative ideology. Thus, a perfect environment for Sarah Palin to burnish her “credentials” as the standard-bearer of “Main Street” American conservatism. Hong Kong’s culture is also intensely cosmopolitan/polyglot/global – the antithesis of Palin’s willful ignorance on global affairs, etc., etc. There are no quitters in Hong Kong, and while I am quite sure the locals will have been entertained by her celebrity status, none will admire this shallow pretender who has not earned a position on the world stage. Just another dancing panda.

Palin is an embarrassment, but on balance probably better that she stay in the limelight as an example to the world of the best that the Republican Party has to offer.

I wrote this song a few weeks after Lehman Brothers tanked last September. On this anniversary, we need to keep on singing this tune, as the greedheads are at it again, with no shame to moderate their predatory behavior.

The Census Bureau’s new report on the near total destruction of the American middle class during the Bush administration should be shoved down the throats of all the deranged, shrieking Tea Party / Teabaggers and Fox News talking heads who refuse to acknowledge the wreckage left by their miserably failed conservative ideology.

This is the shameful “Legacy of 43″.

So, President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren has clearly violated everything that conservative Americans hold dear. He spoke about responsibility, integrity, persistence, literacy, fairness, not being afraid of failure, etc. etc., – all alien concepts to the pols and media screechers on the right who warned their acolytes of the President’s evil scheme to pollute their children’s minds with socialist propaganda.

Just when I thought the Republican Party could not possibly do any more damage to the country, and to itself, up pops the brainless conservative claim that President Obama’s planned pep talk to school children next week represents an insidious plot to poison the minds of our nation’s youth with “socialism”. The mind reels at the utter stupidity of this gambit. Is there no one in the GOP who has the courage to stand up and say “enough of this idiocy”? But, alas, there is not. The GOP, in truth, does not want an educated electorate. Their ideal is a willfully ignorant, malleable populace who will follow without question a failed ideology that undermines their very interests. Such a populace is easily manipulated by fear, which is the only thing the GOP has to offer. How very sad.

Sen. DeMint, hoping healthcare reform will be Obama’s “Waterloo”, is a classic example of a pol who is so ideologically constipated that he can’t see the reality of the disastrous effects of the current healthcare system in his own state of South Carolina (over 16% of the state’s population are without health insurance). And he is only too willing to contribute to the willful ignorance of his electorate by repeatedly affirming the insidious lies about proposed healthcare reforms (“death panels”, coverage of illegal immigrants, etc). Like the others in the sorry gang of current GOP “leaders”, DeMint will undoubtedly secure, through his mendacity, the support of the base ignorati in his state. That he describes himself as “too smart to be President” is beyond absurd.

For decades, the healthcare industry has perpetrated the myth that Americans enjoy the best possible healthcare system on the planet. Any number of independent surveys find this to be a completely bogus claim: we rank 37th, according to a World Health Organization study, and are nowhere near the top in, e.g., infant mortality rates, life expectancy, etc., etc.. What we do have, without question, is the most expensive DISEASE MANAGEMENT system on the planet, with outcomes that are no better than the next best systems in other developed countries such as France, Australia, Germany, UK, Sweden, etc.

No surprise, then, that the healthcare establishment – the for-profit providers, insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers et al, are pulling out all the stops to derail desperately-needed reform of an industry that is quite literally vacuuming up the income and savings of tens of millions of Americans, and duping us all into thinking that the reform proposed by President Obama will destroy our way of life. This is one of those grand, insidious lies (like the one about WMD in Iraq) that, if not debunked aggressively by thinking people, will doom us to decades of economic and social decline as our collective wealth is transfered to insurers, big pharma, hospitals and clinics that know no limits to their predatory inclinations. The tactics that these companies are now using to protect their franchises are truly shameful.