Harry Reid is sending a health care reform bill to the senate said to include "robust" public option. As this blog has maintained, no "Public Option" bill is sufficiently robust to wipe Reid's bottom. The logic underlying that is two-fold, one,  there's not enough money to fund the PO due to the subsidies now provided to the insurance industry under the "Advantage" aegis, and two, there will be enough fine print to ensure that the PO will suffer early programmed cell death. It's a scam, menwomen, intended to keep single payer off the table. Off the table, hell, in the outhouse.

Meanwhile that gifted seer and writer Gary Younge has a column in The Nation for October 26 titled Obama and the Decline of White America that will scare the PO out of you. Paraphrased, his  explanation is  that this Fall's outbreak of ugliness is the "unleashing of a panic" over loss of White supremacy. Younge has consistently displayed the ability to see behind the obvious and, boy, does he ever do it this time.

This is a partial review of Ellen Brown's book of that title.I read the first half carefully then became overwhelmed by a bunch of case histories and decided the tone was turning polemical. So I skimmed the rest. At about 85 %, turning to recipes for reform, she does a good job on alternate currencies except at the end says they are not the answer, that the national mess has to be fixed. The final recipe was lengthy, and by now I had not the appetite to read it. The book does have a consistent theme, bank money is harmful. There is a paradox on the side: She ignores William Greider, the dean of US financial critics, but refers to the work of Bernard Lietaer, whom I regard as the dean summa cum laude of finance. Nobody has better creds. Plus, Lietaer actually plugs her book! In sum, I do think there is much solid information and fine critical thinking here. There is also a loose cannon of opinion rolling along. With a good edit this could be a very good book. Oh, by the way she gives no credit to Naomi Klein's...

Listening to Richard Goldstone last night was an hour to remember. Partly the fascination was with that face, the lips barely moving, and with expression showing only at fleeting moments, like the sky attempting a sunburst. In whole, the fascination was with the precision of report and judgement. He never hesitated, hemmed nor hawed, although at moments of extreme effort to make a point he stuttered. I'm having trouble here to reach the heart of his take on things, so have to get specific. Here's Hiroshima. Moyers asked if it was a war crime. Goldstone was oblique. He said that under current perception of international law it was! My god what an answer. A somewhat similar pass was given the US when he was evaluating the IDF's degree of effort to protect non-combatants. Of course we all now know that point number one of the report was that the IDF deliberately targeted non-combatants. But here's his side comment: he said that the US military took exceptional care to avoid collateral harm to civilians! So here you...

Last eve at the Vashon Theater, Peter Ray showed Robert Greenwald's documentary on Afghanistan which makes one sick to be an American. This morning I emptied my email box which wiped out my desire to create anything. Normally that is what gets me over my hangups -- the hotsies to do something. Best I can do is record the feeble twitching of overstressed neurons.

What's to be done in a country where a mother whose son was killed in Iraq gets attacked by the police, sound cannon, tear gas, the works? There is no hope for this country. There is hope that small cells of outrage will form within which one can cling to a raft. Alone, facing shocks like done to Sheehan, one feels impotent, wants off the daily duty to honor the gift of life. Problem is, here on Vashon there is little concerted recognition that Vashon is the only peopling we can control. Am I making this clear? There is no possibility of getting Congress to stop warring and start saving the US from hell. Mexico either. There is only one front on...