Kevin Kadamus of Lyndon Center pleaded no contest to killing his own son (involuntary manslaughter actually), and received a 3 year deferred sentence … and his record is expunged if Kadamus stays out of trouble for 3 years. Kadamus apparently mistook his son for a turkey.

John Boppel of Ashland, Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to a charge of felony aggravated assault and received a sentence of 4 to 12 years with all but 18 weeks suspended along with a fine of $60,335 for restitution. Boppel had shot and wounded a gentleman who was sitting in the woods using a moose call. The victim lost one of his legs and is still in extremely serious condition.

Under federal law Mr. Boppel will never get to own or carry a firearm for any purpose (unless he receives clemency from an appropriate office). There will be some protection for us.

On the other hand, Mr. Kadamus can be back out in the woods in several years endangering more people.

Gotta stand by our Vermonters, don’t we?

yes, there it is, Afghanistan and Iraq and all the little nameless places where the United States empire is being supported by war and lesser violence.

For me he owns them all as of today.

Expanded war in Afghanistan (another nation that never attacked us); no end to the Iraq invasion; increased war spending for our Department of War; a larger military and more.

And, just like the cheney/bush administration before him, Obama has added central America to his list.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday defended an imminent agreement that will give the United States access to military bases in Colombia, amid regional concerns about US intentions.

(Sec. Clinton defends deal to send US troops into Colombia, RawStory)

So how’s that feet to the fire thing working out for you liberals?

Yeah, this could have been titled “More non-change, you can believe it!”

The first half of this title is the top headline in today’s Barre/Montpelier Times Argus.

My wife, an ardent Obama supporter who actively and successfully lobbied friends to vote for Obama, tossed the paper down in disgust. “Where’s the change I voted for?” she asked the kitchen and me.

In my opinion the answer is simple: we are witnessing Obama’s definition of political change.

If all you ever heard during the ’08 presidential campaign was the flowers in Obama’s speeches … sure … you’re surprised and disappointed in what you’re seeing now. But if you listened to the words Obama was using, like me you’re recognizing he is following the path he promised.

For Obama change was and is about Republicans and Democrats coming together to create common solutions to our nation’s and world’s biggest problems. On the campaign trail he wasn’t results oriented instead focusing on the process to achieve the results and that is where he still is today.

Nothing illustrates this better than the inexorable dissipation of any political will to insist up the inclusion of the progressive compromise on single payer health care systems: a public run insurance program.

Simply put Obama is going to push through anything he can label as “reform” without regard to what the sausage tastes like in the end. It is more important for Obama to garner Republican support than it is for him to jump ugly on intransigent right-wing Democrats. (This is despite the fact that the House’s bill 2600 made sure that prices were to be fixed at a level insurance companies could thrive with … a point I made in a previous post.)

I remember when the Bybee pro-torture memo surfaced. It is a litany of ways the cheney/bush administration could avoid any application of anti-torture laws to them or the good Nazis who did the bidding or cheney/bush.

(Obviously the Bybee memo has served its purpose well as Obama has strenuously fought any attempt at holding the torturers or their enablers responsible for anything … ‘nother story ‘nother day.)

The primary way the Bybee memo performed its function was simply by redefining torture to mean an act that could never be reached! Pain and suffering was defined as being “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such a organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” (The Bybee memo got this definition from medical law describing when medical care is required … but never mind.)

Various methods the Bybee proposed as not being torture includes: “four detainees were severely beaten and forced to stand spread eagle up against the wall” (page 29); and being ‘forced to stand spread eagle while an interrogator kicked them “continuously on the inside of the legs.”‘ (ibid … oh, and you might want to take this definition and enter “common peroneal strike bagram airbase” in google … describes what happens when the cheney/bush torture process is applied to the outside instead of the inside of the legs).

And let us not forget the ever copyable Israelis and ‘”the forceful shaking of the suspect’s upper torso, back and forth, repeatedly, in a manner which causes the neck and head to dangle and vacillate rapidly.”‘ No, not torture either.

The end result of the Bybee memo (beyond giving Obama a chance to make excuses for torturers) was a complete redefinition of the word torture that still survives today. And like the Bybee memo has effectively redefined torture, at least for now, Obama has effectively redefined change.

For Obama change has nothing to do with results, but has everything to do with process … even when that process is the same old process that has been failing our nation. Obama has no issue with the same policies and proposals as those that came out of the cheney/bush administration; he just wants it to be “bi-partisan” as opposed to Republican party rule.

So while you stand there with mouth agape wondering “What the fuck?”, well, don’t be surprised … it’s just Obama’s version of change … which really is no change … but that’s why it looks and feels like change really isn’t happening.

PS. Did you look up that “common peroneal strike bagram airbase” in google? If you did you’ll note that even life threatening pain in the end wasn’t considered torture by our nation’s military courts.

[A three-judge panel from the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia] has upheld the conviction of David Passaro, the first US civilian found guilty of abusing a detainee in Afghanistan, according to a copy of the ruling obtained by AFP Tuesday.

(Court upholds CIA contractor’s detainee abuse conviction, Agence France-Presse, 08/11/09 as reprinted on RawStory)

But don’t worry folks. The same panel looked out for the rights of the defendant by ordering a review of the 8 year, 4 month prison sentence … because it was longer than the federal guidelines suggest!

Okay, Obama isn’t looking out for this particular good little Nazi, this pile of irradiated waste (ie of no value whatsoever to anything), but let’s remember some of what has occurred that Obama doesn’t want to bring to public account.

At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

(In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates’ Deaths, NY Times, 05/20/05)

Yeah, we need something done about health insurance in this country, and we need it to be done urgently. Yeah, we need something done about the economic situation, and we need it to be done urgently. Yeah, we need something done about the deterioration of our only source of food, water, air and shelter (aka the physical environment), and we need it to be done urgently.

But with this cancer of torturers and their apologists running loose in our nation, we need to fix our country’s soul, and  that we need most urgently of all.

One of the few campaign promises I’ve found Obama to flagrantly violate is his promise of open government … a place where we can hold our elected officials and those who act in their names accountable. Instead Obama continues to obstruct court cases involving detainees from the cheney/bush war on terriers tourists terrists whatever is out there (there’s also White House visitor logs, torture photos and more, but some other time maybe).

Obama’s man in the DoJ, Eric Holder, has said he will pursue the bad Nazis who went beyond the blatantly illegal instructions to torture that emanated from the cheny/bush administration .. BUT .. he will not pursue the good Nazis who did a better job of just following (blatantly illegal) orders. There is absolutely no intention to hold those who issued the top level orders accountable for their crimes.

Obama and Holder have actively made themselves complicit in torture, and by international treaty (which by constitutional definition are the law of the land) that too is illegal.

I guess it’s a good thing liberals understand “feet to the fire” as nothing more than an idiom. I guess it’s a bad thing liberals continue to believe this idiom means “no matter what you do I’ll vote for you next time”.

Torturers and those who instructed them need to be held accountable for their crimes. Period.

Here’s the link … Rutland police kill dog; family angered by action, Times Argus, 08/11/09

Short version: police dog and citizen dog get in fight. To break up fight police officer shoots and kills civilian dog … not his own.

I am sick and tired of this self-serving attitude that says the police and their animals have more rights to life and liberty than we or our animals.

Face it folks, committee work isn’t always pretty. The products of committees reflect input of enough folks to move a proposal forward, and one can’t really know the end result until the finished product is voted out.

So what we’re reading today is not necessarily what we will be reading in the end.

That said ….

Here’s a link to H3200, the only health ‘reform’ proposal in the public domain.

And there is good and bad in it.

One of my complaints regarding forced insurance coverage, even … nay … especially where government subsidies will come into play, is simple: more of our collectively owned tax dollars will be siphoned off to big corporate investor America and the uber-wealthy making a financial killing off these investments (which we have to bail out from time to time … witness the latest multi-trillion dollar deal that saved the investor class, including today’s insurance companies).

Have no fear, deep concern this will happen again.

17 SEC. 116. ENSURING VALUE AND LOWER PREMIUMS.

18 (a) IN GENERAL.-A qualified health benefits plan

19 shall meet a medical loss ratio as defined by the Commis-

20 sioner. For any plan year in which the qualified health

21 benefits plan does not meet such medical loss ratio, QHBP

22 offering entity shall provide in a manner specified by the

23 Commissioner for rebates to enrollees of payment suffi-

24 cient to meet such loss ratio.

(H3200, page 24)

This sounds really great. If a given insurance company is making too much profit, they have to return such excess to the subscribers in the form of rebates.

But who gets to define what is excessive?

1 (b) BUILDING ON INTERIM RULES.-In imple-

2 menting subsection (a), the Commissioner shall build on

3 the definition and methodology developed by the Secretary

4 of Health and Human Services under the amendments

5 made by section 161 for determining how to calculate the

6 medical loss ratio. Such methodology shall be set at the

7 highest level medical loss ratio possible that is designed

8 to ensure adequate participation by QHBP offering enti-

9 ties, competition in the health insurance market in and

10 out of the Health Insurance Exchange, and value for con-

11 sumers so that their premiums are used for services.

(H3200, page 25)

As it turns out the government will be setting the excessive profit threshold. When was the last time you and I had a seat at the table for this kind of decision making?

The sausage currently being mashed together doesn’t include Palin’s death panels, lost coverage or killing off old people as the radical right wing Republican Party would have us believe. But it does have things of concern.

The insurance companies are getting their bread buttered on both sides: on one side are those who want to kill any attempt at reasonable changes in how we pay for medical care; and on the other side, just in case the first side lands face down, is an almost guarantee they (the insurance companies) will not suffer their huge profits and multi-million/billion dollar pay packages.

Anybody who believes this proposal provides a path to a single payer system isn’t paying attention.

Although originally described as a spontaneous uprising, it soon became clear that the recount riot was organized by then-Congressman John Sweeney (R-NY), who had issued the order to “shut it down.”

(A grateful President George W. Bush would later nickname Sweeney “Congressman Kickass,” for reasons that are all his own.)

And wouldn’t you know it — the “Brooks Brothers rioters” are back.

(‘Brooks Brothers riot alumni’ spotted at anti-health rally, Raw Story, 090807)

Can we say astro-turf outrage gaining real advantage? NOT AGAIN DAMINIT!

Something else … could well be more important:

FBI whistle blower Sibel Edmonds has for the first time been able to give testimony without the feds jumping to shut her up with claims of state secrets.

She has always claimed she has information regarding illegal activities on the part of high elected officials. I interviewed Sibel years ago when she first tried to go public, but the cheney/bush administration made sure she could never talk about what she knew.

Times could be changing.

“From my opinion, if I’m some of the current members of Congress, I’d be very very worried about the information that’s going to come out of this. There are current members of Congress that she has implicated in bribery, espionage. It’s not good. It’s crazy, it’s absolutely crazy. For people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don’t take action against it, in my opinion, it’s negligence.

[Which current members have been implicated?]

[Dan] Burton (R-IN), described as basically accepting bribes and involved in espionage for the Turkish government…she could not discuss the extremely illegal activities that Mr. Burton committed against U.S. interests, as she put it.

(BradBlog post)

And yes, I stole most of my headline from this thread started by Odum. Give it a quick re-read for re-minder.

But why bring it up again? Why attract attention to the claims that bloggers are not quite stealing stories or otherwise not engaging in valid sharing of life’s information?

Read on, my friend, and be prepared for an eye opening experience.

Below are excerpts from almost twin stories printed in the twin newspapers Times Argus and Rutland Herald. Both stories are titled Despite recession, Vermont tourism up (Rutland Herald’s version here, and Times Argus’ version here), and both are reprints of an Associated Press article.

The even shorter version of a short story: Tourism to Vermont up but less per person being spent.

The fun part is here … from the Times Argus version:

But even though more people are coming, it looks like they’re spending less. WCAX reports tax receipts are off, just not as bad as some expected. For example, in New England tourism numbers dropped 17 percent. In Vermont it’s closer to 3 percent.

So the Argus is cutting and pasting an AP story that relies on WCAX for the numbers … no problem … once CAX reports it, the info becomes public domain and the AP is paid to be copied from.

Here’s the Rutland Herald version (same paragraph … sorta’, oh, and this version gives each sentence its own paragraph):

But even though more people are coming, it looks like they’re spending less.

Tax receipts are off, just not as bad as some expected.

For example, in New England tourism numbers dropped 17 percent. In Vermont it’s closer to 3 percent.

Notice something missing? Like the attribution to WCAX for the numbers?

And we, the bloggers, are bad people because we often take what others write and then interpret or expand or condense it … with proper attribution?

Damn us anyway for being better than the “news” people.

(thanks to Raw Story for the pointer)

“Bill Kristol just said … that the government can run a first-class health care system and a government-run health care system is better than the private health care system.”

“You trapped me somehow,” a visibly uncomfortable Kristol responded.

Follow this link for more . . .