There’s a steady drum beat of how we can’t abandon Afghanistan like we did in the late 1980’s. The end result will be, we’re relentlessly informed, a disaster reminiscent of what led to the rise of the Taliban and empowerment of al Qaeda.

I want to set aside historical reality for a bit and engage in a thought experiment.

Let’s pretend we didn’t abandon Afghanistan and our allies there in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Let’s pretend we kept our moral, financial, military and other support of the then still birthing right wing, international, violent movement we’ve all come to know and love as “jihadis”.

Let’s pretend Osama bin Laden continued to receive the unconditional backing of the US government.

Then let us stop pretending and realize that the only thing we could have done was disassociate with Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. We need to understand the bloody civil war fought among various Afghan warlords (including the Taliban) was the only way power structures were going settle on a future even if led by the brutal Taliban as opposed to the equally brutal war lords of the north, south, east and west.

And then allow that light bulb of understanding to brighten.

We need to “abandon” Afghanistan once again because until the Afghan people themselves settle their internal conflicts there will be no solution. We need to get the hell out of the way because our track record there proves we haven’t a clue as to who in the eyes of the Afghan people is good and who is bad.

We need to get out of Afghanistan because to do otherwise would be to accept that Osama bin Laden should today be our good buddy terrorist.

(that and war really doesn’t solve anything anyway … but that’s a different rant)

bullshit.

Vermont’s own Ethan Allen Institute (named after a land speculator who made his money by reselling lands stolen by big government programs) is out and about pontificating about “school choice” and how much money it will save us.

In Conservative Ethan Allen Institute, in report, says school choice could save state millions (Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 12/01/09) institute director Chris Robbins is reported as claiming “About $80 million could be saved by allowing school choice in Vermont, and as much as $300 million by increasing the number of students per teacher in the state”. (The quote is not of Robbins, but the article).

Let’s be real … this is just so much re-hashed bullshit intended to push a bullshit concept.

First off they’re talking about school BUILDING choice, not school choice. There is no discussion of doing away with layers of government mandates and the mandatory high costs that goes with these mandates (ever check out the price of standardized tests or books?).

The choice being offered by the institute named after a stolen lands speculator isn’t really choice for the students, but is instead a choice of who can grab the most cash.

Let me go through some of the claims as laid out in the article:

John McClaughry claims NOBODY will be turned down. There will be a school for everybody.

Well John, I have witnessed first hand how a private school will and did turn down a student with above normal physical needs. If it weren’t for the Williamstown public school system that young boy probably would never have known a classroom of his peers (the child died shortly after his 6th birthday). Perhaps we could have found something in St. Johnsbury as William Cruess, one time assistant headmaster and business manager at St. Johnsbury Academy suggested.

No problem … a 90 mile round trip ever day. That’s another great idea … MORE BUS TIME FOR THE RUG RATS!

Oh, and I forgot to mention … St J’s tuition is not “cheaper”:

Tuition for the 2009-2010 school year is $39,990 for boarding students and $13,470 for day students.  Fees for ESL Instruction are $4,210 for the school year and $5,600 for Summer ESL.  The Guided Studies program fee is $8,280 for the school year.

Nope … no savings there.

The aforementioned Robbins claims that charter or private schools can be run better and cheaper, and this may be true. The record for charter and other schools that don’t turn away the hard to teach is ambiguous at best, however. One cannot find a proper study that shows any advantage to such charter/private schools over the current publicly financed ones.

As to being run cheaper? That may be true, but that doesn’t equate to less expensive to the customer. Imaging your local school district having to increase your property tax to pay for return on investment not to mention additional company oversight in the form of executive salaries and bonuses.

Or imagine some school keeping the line on costs by taking that return on investment and additional salaries and bonuses out of existing programs! Teachers salaries? No problem … bust the union and drive ’em down … that will surely keep the well trained and experienced in Vermont.

Or maybe the free market for professional jobs doesn’t exist for teachers … just for school buildings.

Of course we could do away with foreign language or arts or other unnecessary riff raff to maintain return on investment that’ll keep the investments flowing in.

Oh, and don’t forget that local community investment in their local educational system. It sure will be a lot less expensive to pay off that school building while simultaneously tuitioning the town’s kids to another school.

The proposals put forth by the institute named after a speculator of stolen lands are nothing more than smoke screen for the forced funneling of your tax dollars into private corporations.

A child should not have to commute hours every day for their education. There are models that can be used to keep the educational system local and open to all.

School building choice and corporate ownership shouldn’t be on the table.

You remember that war, don’t you?

That was where the US (under a Democratic president named Johnson) decided we could jump ugly in somebody else’s civil war.

Vietnam had been stewing in conflict under the occupation of foreign (French in this case) troops for many years. When the French tired of the situation, the United States stepped in first at a low level measured in the thousands of advisers.

That simmering participation took huge leaps when war president Johnson upped the ante to hundreds of thousands of troops and lots of planes and artillery and war ships and stuff. And never forget the reality we directly participated in the slaughter of what many sources peg at millions of dead non-combatants. (I’m not even to start on the still ongoing environmental issues such as agent Orange … yet one more huge corporate interest well fed by the Democratic led war machine.)

In the end the war industry gorged themselves on our tax dollars, well meaning young people died and were maimed because they believed those they were taught to believe and the end only came when the Vietnamese people decided their own fates.

And now Obama has Afghanistan and his very own civil war to be in the middle of, and he’s in for a penny, in for a pound. This dog has Obama by the tail and isn’t gonna let go.

But this is what Obama wanted and wants. He spoke of this “good war” in Afghanistan often and prominently during his quest for the presidency, and he’s continued that line of talk since being elected.

I suspect most progressives just weren’t really paying attention.

Good morning Vietnam Afghanistan.

Use to be a “tree hugger” could only mean one thing: a person supportive of protecting our only source of food, water, air and shelter (aka the physical environment).

But now?

The Conservative Party candidate in a closely-watched upstate New York congressional election has accused the activist group ACORN of trying to steal the election for his Democratic Party opponent — a claim that even Republican election officials are denying.

(

NY conservative blames ACORN ‘tampering’ for loss to Democrat, Raw Story, 11/19/09)

Guess we can add an ACORN supporter to that “tree hugger” label … oh, and count me in!

But there’s more to this story.

The above quoted post points to this news story, VIRUS in the VOTING MACHINES: Tainted Results in NY-23 from The Gouverneur Times that discusses (as the title says) a problem with the computerized voting machines.

These types of problems have been hi-lighted by (primarily progressive minded) folks for over a decade now, and I agree these issues present concerns of an extremely high magnitude.

It’s time to go back to hand counting ballots.

When a mistake is made in a hand counting it is a localized event. One or two vote counters, either through honest oversight or malfeance, return counts that don’t reflect the actual ballots.

The important point here is that any systemic attempt at stealing an election requires a conspiracy of such size that it would never stand a chance of being kept secret.

Computerized voting is quite different. Through simple computer code manipulation many or all voting machines can, either through honest mistake or malfeance, return bad counts WITHOUT the need for more than a few people being involved! Much more difficult to trace and highly unlikely to see a conspiracy collapse.

Call me a tree hugger … I like our only source of food, water, air and shelter (aka the physical environment) and ACORN (weasel Welch not-withstanding … good to swap spit with Hoffman, ain’t it?). I also like open, honest and fair elections.

Investigate the machines. We know there was a problem there!

( – promoted by odum)

We’ve been hearing the following refrain for some time now. If we move ahead to a single payer health care system or entertain the notion of a government run health insurance choice, we have to make sure the playing field is level so the private insurance companies can compete. In other words … we have to give up any concept of price controls and reduced premiums so the fat cats running the non-governmental insurance ripoffs can maintain their over the top lavish lifestyles.

But [director of government and public relations for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Vermont] Tofferi did say that the company is not opposed to the state offering its own health insurance program for open enrollment so long as it competes on the same level playing ground as their products.

“If there was a true competitive environment, that’s fine,” Tofferi said. “But our concern would be that the program would have competitive advantages that we don’t, such as paying lower rates to providers.”

(Rep. Paul Poirier is single-minded on single-payer, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 11/18/09)

It’s time folks act on the firm acknowledgment (even acknowledged by the insurance companies themselves) that a government run health insurance system is less expensive and more desirable than today’s bloated and confusing patchwork of health insurance plans.

( – promoted by odum)

(You might want to read this first … or not.)

Seems so …

Salmon said he does not have an alcohol problem.

“I have too much discipline from my military background for this to be a pervasive situation,” he said.

(‘I made a mistake’: Salmon apologizes after DUI arrest, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 11/15/09)

This really pricks my ears up. First because it’s obvious Mr. Salmon wasn’t able to exercise that discipline enough to count drinks and watch time … or even used his freakin’ blinker; and secondly because any non-practicing drunk (and this includes me) will tell you alcoholism couldn’t give a rat’s ass about “discipline”.

Okay … ’nuff said about that …

“We picked up a state office without the benefit of an election and we’re proud of that, too,” Douglas said.

(ibid)

Hey now, Big Jim, isn’t it great when you can be rewarded for doing nothing? Remind you of your gubernatorial term or what?

A bittersweet story can have a happy story line followed by a horrendous ending or a horrendous story line followed by a happy ending … this seems a case of the latter:

“In all honesty, I’m not happy about what happened to me,” Ms. Kelo said. But, she added, “With 43 states changing their laws, in that sense I feel we did some good for people across the country.”

(Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case, NY Times, 11/12/09)

(Pfizer certainly doesn’t deserve the ‘good people’ comment … Court Documents Reveal Pfizer was Massaging Data to Increase Neurotonin Sales, The Pop Tort blog, 11/12/09.)

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a case challenging Congress’s unconstitutional defunding of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

. . .

For example, in an affidavit filed in today’s lawsuit, an ACORN affiliate wholly separate from the national organization charges it has been unfairly affected. The organization, ACORN Institute (AI), had grants pending to provide computer training, asthma education, tax preparation, and GED classes, among other programs. The affidavit avers that no grant the organization has received and administrated “has ever even allegedly involved any misconduct, misappropriation, fraud or other illegal conduct. AI has never been indicted nor convicted of any crime, nor … has any AI employee ever been indicted or convicted of a crime in conjunction with any work they have done for AI. AI has never been denied any grant from any federal agency due to fraud or other alleged misconduct.”

(CCR Charges Congress Violated Constitution in Vote to De-Fund ACORN, Affiliates, Allies, Center for Constitutional Rights press release, 11/12/09) with thanks to RawStory for the pointer)

Soooooo Peter the Guy Who Trips Over His Own Feet to Get dumbya bush’s Autograph, how you feelin’ today? How’s that unconstitutional vote of yours that tried to cut off funding for ACORN working out for you? Got any more innocent people you’d like to beat up just because Faux news and your allies in the radical right wing Republican party get their undies up in a bunch over positive advances in democracy? Ever hear of actual .. you know .. INVESTIGATION .. before you take an action like attacking a middle and lower income advocacy group because of heresay and manufactured evidence?

Oh … and you’re soooooooooooooooooooooo different from the Republicans.

Last March I put keyboard to blog and “authored” this bit titled Food for thought ….

Well, here’s a bit more for you to chew on:

Exposure to high levels of a controversial chemical found in thousands of everyday plastic products appears to cause erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems in men, according to a new study published Wednesday.

The study, funded by the federal government and published in the journal Human Reproduction, is the first to examine the impact of bisphenol A, or BPA, on the reproductive systems of human males. Previous studies have involved mice or rats.

(High BPA levels linked to male sexual problems, Washington Post, 11/11/09)

But don’t worry about those gender bending and other life giving hormone disrupting chemicals that we’re mistaking for food substances. After all the new health insurance deformation is going to make sure the already super well heeled pharmaceutical industry is going to make even more cash … in part by selling us the means to combat the problems caused by our “food” industries poisoning us.

Got diabetes? No problem … there’s a pill we can sell you for that (no guarantees mind you, however).

Got a case of BPA toxicity? No problem … there’s an erection creating pill we can sell you for that (no guarantees mind you, however).

Got money? Ha … that’s a problem that can be easily solved.

Want universal, publicly funded health insurance? Not a chance … we might be frugal and decide it’s more efficacious to stop the poisoning instead of favoring the fat pocket books of the already rich.