Bad American

Alternet

If you want to see just how cruel and heartless corporate America can be, check this out. Olbermann just had a field day with it, giving Wal-Mart a well-deserved Worst Person in the World award:

Debbie Shank used to stock shelves at night for Wal-Mart so she could spend time in the afternoons with her three sons. Now she lives in a nursing home, requires around-the-clock medical care and owes Wal-Mart almost $500,000.

The story of the Shank family is heartbreaking in the sense that it could happen to anyone. Driving home one night, Debbie’s car was hit by a tractor-trailier, leaving her brain-damaged and paralyzed. After collecting health insurance money for hospital bills (Debbie’s policy with Wal-Mart paid for over $400,000 worth of emergency care), the Shanks sued the trucking company responsible for the accident, hoping to provide for Debbie’s long term needs.

Now Wal-Mart has sued the Shanks, citing a line of fine print in Debbie’s insurance policy that entitles the company to any lawsuit settlement. Wal-Mart intends to collect $470,000 from the Shanks, despite the fact that this will undoubtedly bankrupt Debbie’s family.

Wal-Mart could take its legal victory and simply do the right thing and leave the Shank family and their money alone. Surely, even CEO Lee Scott himself would agree that the Shank family has suffered enough.

Actually no. From  InjuryBoard.com:

A Wal-Mark spokesman expressed the company’s sadness about Shank’s condition but said the company had to pursue repayment out of fairness to all participants in the health plan.

Oh yeah, fairness. Pardon me while I die laughing. The fairness of Wal-Mart to its employees with that remarkable health care plan. Oh yeah.

But hey, if you think THAT is bad, you haven’t seen the best examples of heartless America, corporate anus-sucking Texas assholes (isn’t Texas the breeding ground of most American fascist assholes?) as the comments from this absolute piece of mis-bred human garbage blog known as Lone Star Times.

To quickly recap, a tragic accident happened to a Wal Mart employee. She was covered by the Wal Mart health insurance plan and the plan paid out $470,000 for her care. Her family hired a lawyer and sued the company that caused the accident and received a $1 million award. Of which her lawyer took $583,000, 58.3%. The Wal Mart health plan then sued to recover the money it paid out, as specified in the plan’s charter.

Take a look at how CNN reports this story. First, they include the fact that her 18 year old son was killed in action in Iraq after her accident. No question, this adds depth and color to the story but is it relevant to the matter at hand? Or does it simply lend sympathy to the cause?

No because you can’t have sympathy when the poor little corporation needs to be protected from big bad disabled people who are screwing those God-fearing stockholders out of $417k.

Look, I’d go on but I just get too mad. I hate the fact that I even have to share the planet with people so small, so greedy, so hateful, so unfeeling, so devoid of any semblance of humane feeling that they have to write such shit. It reinforces my opinion we should have let Texas and the rest of the Confederacy leave the union so they could forever dwell in their miserable backwater. But no, we had to win the Civil War and have Reconstruction and civilize these people. But it ended in 1877 and they resisted civilization and now we have the problems we have in this country.

If Wal-Mart cared about smart PR they’d stop this kind of heartless raping of sick and helpless people for the sake of capitalistic excess. But they don’t. Boycott Wal-Mart if you’re not already doing so.

CommonDreams

Despite recent acknowledgements from the likes of Alan Greenspan, Gen. John Abizaid, and others that oil and permanent (or, if you prefer, “enduring”) military bases were among the main objectives, Frontline avoided any real discussion of such delicate factors. Someone not already aware of how our media has become a tool of the Bush administration might have been shocked at how Frontline could have missed one of President George W. Bush’s most telling “signing statements.” Underneath the recent Defense Authorization Act, he wrote that he did not feel bound by the law’s explicit prohibition against using the funding:

“(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or

“(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

So the Frontline show was largely pap.

Well what did you expect? The Military-Industrial complex largely gutted the life out of PBS which is now almost wholly dependent on the sponsorship of big oil and other industries to underwrite their major projects.

And the rest of the so-called ‘liberal media’ really isn’t and therefore you will not see anything substantive on the nets.

HuffPo

For a few seconds Chris Wallace must have been channeling his dad and thought he was working for CBS News in its heyday.

Well so much for that.

Last Friday, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace appeared on “Fox & Friends” and railed against the show for what he called “two hours of Obama-bashing.” Almost immediately, he knew his position was unpopular, calling into host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show to discuss how mad the other hosts — and Fox executives — were towards him.

In an interview with the New York Observer’s Felix Gillette, Wallace goes further, admitting,

“I didn’t have any second thoughts about the substance because I still believe what I said was right,” said Mr. Wallace. “But after the fact, you do think to yourself–on a professional level with colleagues I very much like and respect–should I have done that off camera?” “It’s a close call,” said Mr. Wallace. “I’m not sure I’d do it again.”

“I know a lot of liberal critics like to snicker at the slogan ‘fair and balanced,’ but, in fact, we take it very seriously,” he added. “My feeling is that a lot of time ‘fair and balanced’ means giving the conservative point of view because that doesn’t get reflected in the mainstream media. In this particular case, I thought ‘fair and balanced’ meant giving more of an explanation of Obama’s point of view.”

Wallace also admitted that an unnamed Fox News executive sent him an email after the “Fox & Friends” appearance to say, “isn’t this the kind of thing we should be talking about off camera, not on camera?”

I bet a lot more was said and communicated  to Wallace by Fox honchos than what he’s admitting to. One might ask: so wouldn’t some other network pick him up if Fox had fired him over this?

The answer is perhaps, perhaps not. There is no such thing as a ‘liberal media’ anyway unless people believe that NBC News, for instance, is as liberal as their parent company, the giant defense contractor General Electric, wants them to be.

But the main problem is that Wallace spoke against the product on the air. Remember what Howard Beale said about TV news in the movie Network - at core, they’re selling soap. You don’t critique the product being peddled on the air even if you’re right! That’s a lesson I learned while I was on radio. Truth doesn’t matter at all - truth is what the general manager decides is truth. The days of some kind of ’sacred trust’ that on the air people had to their audience is long gone if it ever existed at all. And that goes for print as well, unfortunately.

Perhaps only a real titan like Walter Cronkite or Ed Murrow could speak speak out and tell the truth on TV - Cronkite about Vietnam and Murrow about Senator Joe McCarthy. Now the careerists (Wallace included) that populate the greasy pole of TV news know exactly what they are - whores.

And what is particularly odious about this incident is that Wallace knew he had to do more than just a simple make good for his bosses - he actually had to defend the ‘fair and balanced’ slogan which anyone with a room temperature IQ knows is total bullshit.

I wonder if had to excuse himself and throw up afterwards.

John Dolan in Alternet

I’ve only been saying this on this blog for how long?

I’d like to suggest a very simple strategy for American liberals: Get mean. Stop policing the language and start using it to hurt our enemies. American liberals are so busy purging their speech of any words that might offend anyone that they have no notion of using language to cause some salutary pain.

Why, for example, not popularize slogans that mock the Bush loyalists as “suckers”? Something like, “There are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires and suckers.” Put that on a few bumper stickers and I guarantee a lot of “South Park Republicans” will quit the GOP. They just smirk when you tsk-tsk at them for being disrespectful. They want to be disrespectful; every normal young male wants to be.

And this, of course, brings up a big issue: At some point liberal writers are going to have to decide if it’s OK to be young and male at all. For better or for worse, millions of American men hold on to playground ethics long after they leave elementary school. For most of them, the 2004 election came down to a classic playground scene: Would John Kerry defend himself when attacked by bullies? Liberals, still stunned by the way a legitimate combat vet like Kerry was beaten by a combat-dodging spoiled brat like Bush, never understood that for millions of voters, the question wasn’t how well Kerry fought in Vietnam but whether he would fight in 2004.

A LOT of Alternet readers got stuck right there. One poster said they read the part about playground ethics and then refused to read the rest of the article. Although I have commented quite a bit on this thread (as kegbot1) I refrained from answering that poster but the problem is: Dolan is right.

Many, many, many American men do NOT evolve from the basic playground bullying stage and it doesn’t prevent them from becoming very prominent players in out society. And they vote AND they also influence the coverage of issues in the media.

So implying they are suckers and not backing down may indeed have a better long term effect than trying to play nice and reason with them.

And if nothing else, making your opinions heard on local politically neutral boards gets your message out rebutting the repugs as I did with the insufferable Joe Amschlinger here.

Silence is no longer an option when everything good and decent about our society and planet is under dire threat.

Now a lot of women readers also stopped and complained about that playground mentality analogy as well. I understand their objections but the vast majority of the shot callers on the right are male both in the media and in the political structure. There are only a few Ann Coulters (thank Goddess) and Laura Ingrahams. We have to deal with the world as it is, not always as we would wish it to be. Yes, testosterone gets us into these messes but it is exactly the testosterone that needs to be confronted.

I’m often reminded of the Woody Allen line in the one movie (I can’t remember it now) where his friends (like many of the posters on Alternet) kept telling Woody that Nazis need to be met with biting sarcasm and ridicule. Woody kept saying: no, no with Nazis you have to give them a punch in the face.

And that is it exactly - at least a rhetorical punch in the face.

Today’s Contemporary Americana! 

But his remarks were thrown in the face of a people that don’t even know or understand their own country’s history. So it is easy to incite ignorant people who know nothing about most of what Rev. Wright preaches about. I have written on this ignorance before so I will not get into it again here.

But for those who get angry at what Wright is saying either read some Howard Zinn or check the comments of white pastors who basically said the same thing: God damn America - but for different reasons - because we tolerate gays and so-called un-Biblical behaviors. Of course, it was OK when they said it but not when Rev. Wright cites hard historical facts in his defense.

And now Wright has to fear the violence of the ignorant Bill O’Reilly-Lou Dobbs segment of the population and is having to cancel speeches for ’security’ reasons.  First Amendment for me but not thee, eh?

Sean Gonsalves writes an excellent rebuttal to Wright’s critics in Alternet today.

Associated Press

I can certainly understand why.

Gravel, a former Democratic senator from Alaska, said in an e-mail that the Democratic Party “no longer represents my vision for our great country.”

“It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism — all of which I find anathema to my views,” he said in the e-mail in which he also asked supporters for campaign donations.

That pretty much says it all. And as more people forsake the Democratic Party and the whole American two-party political duopoly you’ll begin to see the rise of a counter-movement. As long as the Dems like Pelosi and Reid continue to wave the flag and approve Pentagon spending there really is no choice for intelligent people who understand that we can’t rule the world at the business end of bombs and guns.

Barack Obama may be the last Democrat I ever vote for. If he doesn’t get the nomination, it’s pretty well all over. If he gets it and doesn’t win, it’s over. If he wins and doesn’t make fundamental changes in the military-industrial complex, it’s also all over.

I realize it’s a lot to put on his shoulders but you can’t come off like the black JFK and then not back it up. I hope Obama realizes how many hopes and dreams are riding on his campaign. If he disappoints, you can expect a very large segment of the American people to turn off from politics forever unless a third party movement can make serious inroads into the system.

Pain Dealer

One in three Americans say their families skipped medical care because of cost, according to a survey released Tuesday by the AFL-CIO.

A quarter of the respondents said they had serious problems paying for the care they needed and 79 percent said health care is a top voting issue.

snip

“Our country is in an economic nose dive,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a conference call. “Health-care costs are a significant part of the economic crisis.”

Sweeney said the results showed that the “lucky ones” - those who have jobs and insurance - also are struggling because of medical costs.

The influential labor organization conducted the survey so presidential and congressional candidates can “hear the needs and concerns of American working families,” Sweeney said.

The AFL-CIO planned a national effort to help its members and others know which candidates “are serious and which are paying lip service” to reforming the nation’s health-care system, he said. The group has planned a day of walks for health care on May 17, Sweeney said.

snip

Families USA, a national health advocacy organization, is releasing a state-by-state analysis of how many people die prematurely because of lack of health insurance. In Ohio, the group estimated two residents die each day, about 750 a year, because they postponed or were unable to get medical care.

The AFL-CIO survey broke out results for some states, including Ohio. While 29 percent nationally said they did not fill a prescription or skipped doses because of cost, 35 percent of Ohioans surveyed answered that question similarly.

Five percent of all survey takers said they had considered or filed for personal bankruptcy because of medical debt; the figure was 9 percent of Ohioans.

I applaud the AFL-CIO for performing a community service with this study but I think its folly to expect any of the three candidates to do anything about the health care crisis.

John McCain, of course, objects on ethical grounds. Since we live in the land of great capitalist opportunity, anyone who can’t afford health care is obviously a loser - someone with moral failings - who doesn’t deserve to live anyway. Capitalism should allow the herd to be trimmed so the ‘winners’ can get their rightful share of what they’ve earned.

Hillary Clinton takes more money from Big Pharma and the rest of the health care industry so when she’s bought, she’ll stay bought. Expect nothing from her that won’t continue to transfer money from the people to the health care industry. To make sure HealthCo gets its due on Wall Street, she’ll force people to buy health insurance thereby chaining people to a system that enriches the few at the expense of the many and delivers more of the same.

Barack Obama is too cowardly to do the right thing: advocate a Canadian-style single payer system. He takes too much money from Wall Street as well and knows he would be destroyed for advocating such ’socialism.’

And besides, in the end analysis, as long as Americans don’t mind shoveling 50 percent of all their tax dollars into the gaping maw of the Pentagon war machine to bring ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ to unwilling Arabs, then there’s no way we’re going to be able to afford to take care of our own people anyway. We’re broke, but still shooting.

Grover Nordquist wins. Corporate America wins. The rest of us lose.

Well, well, well, could it be Cleveland’s resident journalistic punk is trying to cover himself this morning? From his column today:

An even better argument might be that the state law that would turn crossover voters who “lie” into fifth-degree felons, subjecting them to up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine, is almost completely unenforceable.

The few crossover voters who were foolish enough to add snide remarks - “for one day only,” and the like - in the margins of the affidavits they signed attesting to their support for the principles of their new party might have some explaining to do. The rest of us, who signed without further comment, certainly wouldn’t.

Oh my. Note the entirely reasonable tone of this column. But Kevin dear, do you need to be reminded what you wrote (with childlike glee) on March 5? -

Fellow Democrats, join with me in moving our party toward a new birth of liberty and personal responsibility in keeping with the philosophy of Jefferson, and a recommitment to total victory over our enemies, just as Roosevelt and Truman preached.

I know some of these ideas may sound radical today, but I hope you’ll work with me for change.

If not, just think of me as diversity training.

No Kevin, you didn’t write any snide comments on the ballot sheet, you took your entire March 5 column as a calculated sneer to all your Democratic readers that now you were ‘one of them.’ We’re not stupid Kevin, you damn yourself with your own words and now you want to sanctimoniously present yourself and the other ballot thugs who crossover to vote for the non-black man as reasonably people who couldn’t possibly have been perverting the ballot system and, even if they did, nyahh! nyahh! you can’t catch us.

Again and again The Plain Dealer debases itself by allowing this man to write for them. But then again, the Pain Dealer is not a organ of community, but corporate journalism. That is why when my subscription runs on next Monday, I will no longer have it delivered.

For someone who, as a 10-year-old, rushed out into the Chardon cold to pick the just-delivered Cleveland Press off the snowy driveway, it’s a sad day indeed.

While there is room in any newspaper for a full range of opinions, reputable newspapers should not entertain people who gleefully trash our democratic institutions and daily exhibit a cavalier disregard not only for facts and reasoned discourse but also a thinly veiled contempt for their own readers, especially those with whom they politically disagree.

Kevin O’Brien doesn’t write a serious conservative column. Rather, he writes the taunts of a schoolyard bully and demeans himself, the craft, the readers and the community. His writing would be fine for a blog (like Bizzy Blog for instance) but for the pages of a daily newspaper in a community like Cleveland, it is an insult to the readers.

Susan Goldberg, your readers deserve far better than what they are getting.

Michael Moore

Friends,

It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn’t it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, may not exactly be blessing America these days. Is anyone surprised?

4,000 dead. Unofficial estimates are that there may be up to 100,000 wounded, injured, or mentally ruined by this war. And there could be up to a million Iraqi dead. We will pay the consequences of this for a long, long time. God will keep blessing America.

And where is Darth Vader in all this? A reporter from ABC News this week told Dick Cheney, in regards to Iraq, “two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.” Cheney cut her off with a one word answer: “So?”

“So?” As in, “So what?” As in, “F*** you. I could care less.”

I would like every American to see Cheney flip the virtual bird at the them, the American people. Click here and pass it around. Then ask yourself why we haven’t risen up and thrown him and his puppet out of the White House.

Hey Michael Moore, thanks for the letter. I’ll answer your question here.

The reason the American people do nothing is that they have been trained to do nothing. The most patriotic thing any American has been asked to do in the last 50 years (other than put a flag in the window) is to go shopping. Most Americans have no concept whatsoever of self-sacrifice for a cause or any knowledge of organizing such a movement. Most people are too busy trying to save themselves and their families in this failing economy to worry about such things.

The second reason is that the government and their business allies have intimidated them into inaction and silence. Having lost two jobs for speaking out against this criminal behavior, I can attest to that. If you’re in a cozy financial position where you have nothing at risk for speaking out, it’s one thing. But most Americans have to put food on the table and most employers, having money, are conservatives and don’t want your ‘un-patriotic’ political opinions to infect their workplaces. You learn to keep your damn mouth shut because your neighbor might enlighten your boss about your political opinions and, well, there’s this little thing called ‘employment at will’ so you know the drill.

The third reason is that the people know that they are being watched and recorded. The government, through the Patriot Act and other well-publicized news stories about going through library records and infiltrating peace group meetings and such, has made it clear that all dissent will be recorded and used against you at some future date. The no-fly list? No it doesn’t protect us against ‘terrorism.’ It wasn’t meant to. It was a method of social intimidation. People know that the President can send them to Guantanamo where they can be held without charges. Sure, the odds it will happen to you are slim - now. But what if there is some kind of future emergency? We rounded up the ‘potentially disloyal’ Japanese under the benevolent FDR - Americans sure as hell know it can happen again.

So why put a bullseye on your back? Hopefully St. Barack will put everything right again.

No, Americans are not going to do anything until a critical mass of them have little left to lose personally. And we’re still a long way off from that and even then they won’t know what exactly to do anyway. And how many of them would be willing to turn their deer rifles against the Blackwater ninjas?

1776 was a long, long time ago.