Memorable Dates in History - Volume #7

To the man to whom we are all in debt (most of us, quite literally)

Memorable Dates in History - Volume #7

And the Oscar goes to... The President's Speech

This has done more to rehabilitate Mike Tyson than The Hangover...

And the Oscar goes to... The President's Speech

You might be a Republican if...

1) You believe that Bush's redistribution of middle-class tax cuts to the top 1% of tax-payers was good for America, but Obama's plan to return it to the middle class is 'socialism.'

2) You believe stem cells are living human beings, but thousands of Iraqi children are 'expendable collateral damage.'

3) You believe tax cuts for billionaires is a great idea, yet you wonder why the economy has stalled, your job just got outsourced to India, and oil company executives receive $400,000,000.00 retirement packages as they cut pensions for their labour force.

4) You believe that the surge worked because the violence in Iraq is back to 2006 levels, which is only horrible, compared to what it was in 2007; intolerable. Besides, Brit Hume said so.

5) You think trial lawyers are harmful to America, but you support prosecuting some guy in Muncie Indiana who burned his 99¢ American flag that was made in China by forced child labor.

6) You're all for the 'rule of law' when it's applied to Bill Clinton for lying about his infidelity, but not for prosecuting Karl Rove and Scooter Libby for committing treason.

7) You think George W. Bush is actually a really smart guy, but his folksy mannerisms just makes him seem dumb.

8) You believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own, and that those who are born to poverty and never have opportunities for advancement, got what they deserved.

9) You believe Ronald Reagan was a great president who had complete control of all aspects of government, and that Iran-Contra Affair was an insignificant scandal that went on without his knowledge.

10) You believe Democrats tax and spend, but George W. Bush was a fiscal conservative.

11) You believe Oliver North, who was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, destroying evidence and accepting bribes is a patriot, but John Kerry, who saved a man's life while under enemy fire in Vietnam is a coward.

12) You believe George W. Bush has kept us safe from terror, and that the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks were Clinton's fault.

13) You actually believe Fox News is fair & balanced.

14) You still believe Saddam had truckloads of WMDs, and that he somehow managed to sneak them into Syria, right under our noses.

15) You believe Terri Schiavo was sentient all along, and that Bill Frist had the ability to diagnose her condition by watching a 5 second video of her sleeping.

16) You're in favor of stronger prison sentences for drug abusers, yet your favourite radio personality is Rush Limbaugh.

17) You complain about having to press 1 for English, yet you hire illegal Mexicans to mow your lawn because they're cheaper than hiring the kid next door.

18) Homosexuality is abhorrent to you, except when a Republican senator, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and a planted White House journalist all turn out to be gay, then you suddenly feel sorry for them.

19) The war in Iraq makes perfect sense to you, but any suggestion by Barack Obama that we target al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan is 'dangerous and reckless.'

20) You don't mind that president Bush tortured men who were never charged with a crime, yet you're horrified by the barbarism of al Qaeda when they capture one of our guys.

21) You believe the 1/10 of 1% of scientists who claim global warming is a hoax, and reject the 99.9% who say it's real, because Sean Hannity and his sponsors from the oil industry have convinced you that science is a liberal conspiracy.

22) You believe patriotism means you should support your government right or wrong ... unless a Democrat's in power, then it's your patriotic duty to call him a closet Muslim, a Marxist, challenge his birth certificate, expose his sex life and impeach him.

23) You're proud of your party's 'culture of life.' Yet you support the death penalty for minors, you believe 600,000 dead Iraqis is justified because one of them was Saddam Hussein, and you oppose confronting the genocide in Darfur (after all, they don't have oil).

24) You support prayer in school, as long as your kids aren't subjected to any prayers other than the ones you hear in your own church.

25) You think Darwin's theory of evolution is a loony fairy tale, and that mankind actually began with two naked teenagers, a magic apple and a talking snake.

26) You think $35 billion spent on health care for children is a waste of taxpayer's money, but $2.5 TRILLION spent on a catastrophic war that has isolated us from our allies, decimated our economy and made us less safe was money well spent.

27) You believe embargoing communist Cuba is sound foreign policy, but trading with China is just good business.

28) You believe Bill Clinton was an immoral cad, but Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde were faithful husbands -- and that Larry Craig just has a wide stance.

29) You fervently defend the Constitution, but when president Bush got caught monitoring 200 million phones without a warrant, politicizing our justice system, hyping evidence for going to war and commuting the sentence of a convicted perjurer who just happened to be on his staff, then it's okay, because he was 'protecting America.'

30) You were outraged when a gallon of gasoline went from $1.29 to $1.40 during the two terms of the Clinton presidency, but you didn't seem to mind when prices tripled under George W. Bush, the "oil man."

31) You were furious when Bill Clinton pardoned international commodities trader Marc Rich, who was convicted of tax evasion, but applauded when George W. Bush exonerated Scooter Libby for obstructing justice to protect Dick Cheney from a treason indictment.

32) With no evidence whatsoever, you complained of 'voter fraud,' and demanded that thousands of blacks be scrubbed from voting lists during the 2004 election in Ohio, yet when Rush Limbaugh asked his audience to illegally claim to be Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton during the Ohio Primary in February to "stir up trouble", a felony, you were okay with that.

33) You believe that Barack Obama should be held accountable for every sermon that Jeremiah Wright ever gave, but John McCain, who sought the endorsement of anti-Semitic, xenophobic, openly racist and homophobic pastors should be given a pass.

34) You believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, was actually born in Kenya, and his parents forged a fake birth certificate back in 1961 - just in case he should ever run for president of the United States, and that his father's nationality disqualifies his son from being president, all because you read that on the Internet.

35) You believe that the 8 consecutive years of prosperity and strong economic growth from 1993 - 2001 was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but today's recession is all Clinton's fault.

36) You laugh at how much better Barack Obama speaks with a TelePrompTer than without one, yet you never mention the fact that even with a TelePrompTer, every time George Bush opened his mouth, gibberish tumbled out. Bush couldn't construct a coherent gaff-free sentence even when Karl Rove was whispering in his ear via a wire.

37) You still believe Barack Obama is lying about being born in Hawaii, and has somehow succeeded in fooling every government and independent examination with his "obviously Photoshopped" documents. Instead, you rely on Internet blogs, WorldNetDaily and Jerome Corsi as your sources for "truth."

38) Your conservative media spent more air time discussing Michelle Obama touching the queen than on the economy, the environment, terrorism and health care combined.

39) You believe Barack Obama is "nation building" in Afghanistan, yet for eight straight years of Bush's bumbling incompetence there, you kept mum. Therefore, attacking Iraq makes sense, even though they never threatened us, but finishing off the job of finding Osama bin Laden; the terrorist who killed 3,000 Americans -- Bush's original task -- is a dumb idea because it's nation building. Got it!

40) You were furious that Barack Obama admitted in France that Americans had in the past been "arrogant, dismissive and derisive," yet you cheered them on for eight years while Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were arrogant, dismissive and derisive.

41) You believe that Obama's $3.6 trillion budget is an outrage, but never once complained that George Bush turned Bill Clinton's $300 billion surplus into a $1.3 trillion deficit. And it never once occurred to you that Bush deliberately omitted the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from those statistics, which means Bush's true deficit was over $3.1 trillion.

42) You supported Gov. Sarah Palin, partly because you believed that she kept a good Christian home. This, despite the fact that her seventeen year old unmarried daughter was knocked up, her son was accused of vandalizing 44 school buses (cutting the brake lines - HELLO!!?) and was given the choice of going to jail or join the military, and Palin herself was found guilty of abusing the power of her office. But Barack Obama can't possibly be a true Christian, because his father was a Muslim, and his middle name is Hussein. (Besides, he's black, and everybody knows that Jesus was a blond haired, blue eyed white man.)

43) You believe that the only solution to gun violence is to make sure everybody packs heat. That way, when some crazy person goes on a killing spree, right-thinking people will take out the killer, and tranquillity will prevail throughout the land.

44) You believe the mainstream news anchors are crazy and filled with hate, but Glenn Beck, Terry O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are rational, accurate and informative.

45) You defend Rush Limbaugh's right to wish for Obama to fail, and therefore, the failure of our republic, yet you call Democrats the "blame America first crowd."

46) You believe the economic crisis is the fault of liberals, but never mention that it was the Reagan administration that massively deregulated the banking industry in 1982, and it was Phil Gramm - McCain's choice for economic advisor - who completed the task for his pals in the banking industry in 1999.

47) You believe the failure of the US automobile industry is primarily the fault of the unions, and not because management of the three corporations insisted on producing vehicles that nobody wanted. And you're angry with the $28.00 per hour average wage of the work force, but you believe that the multimillion dollar salaries of the men who bankrupted the industry are perfectly reasonable.

48) You think this list is mean-spirited and biased, and even though you privately acknowledge to yourself that it's all true, you believe the Democrats are just as bad. Here's a bulletin: Nobody has ever been this bad.

***************************************

Thanks to Bruce Lindner for the write-up!

You might be a Republican if...

The G.W. Bush Presidency - 8 years in 8 minutes

Just woeful

The G.W. Bush Presidency - 8 years in 8 minutes

The 'Fiscal Conservative' myth debunked

You've perhaps often read (and certainly heard) that Republicans, the Teabaggers and some, ahem, 'independents', all claim to be "fiscal conservatives".

This claim, and their ethos, is predicated on tax cuts (which, ironically results in the gov't generating less tax revenue for spending on the programmes to which they're committed), a reduction in said gov't spending (see previous point), and generally sees them protesting, rather vocally, when any suggestion is made other than the above two chief 'demands'.

You can see why gov't spending could be an issue, certainly if it gets out of control - as without the tax revenues to ensure the provision of it commitments (social services, Medicare, wars etc.) it then runs up a deficit - and 'fiscal conservatives' are avowedly against deficits!

With me so far? OK.

Then, and with no small irony, Reuters have just gone and pissed on the chips of, and given the lie to, these so-called fiscal conservatives, with the following deficit graph. You'll note that Clinton, a Democrat president, actually cleared the deficit and then operated at a not insubstantial surplus, whilst every other recent Republican president grew enormous deficits - most notably Reagan and both Bushs.

And yet, even with this being the case, Republicans, Teabaggers and 'independents' still vote for what they, incorrectly, perceive to be the party of 'fiscal conservatism', the Republicans/GOP?! 

I guess you can lead a horse to water....

The 'Fiscal Conservative' myth debunked

The Best George W Bush Impression - EVER!

Just superb!

 

Thanks to Jean Blount for the clip!

The Best George W Bush Impression - EVER!

The Party of the Past: Republican Obstructionism

The latest fevered attempt to use the courts to block and/or then repeal the healthcare reform bill is simply the latest tired throw of the dice by the Republicans in their strategy of obstructionism.

Their current rote rhetoric is based around two points:

1. "Obama's going against the will of the American people."

Bullshit: an Obama election campaign pledge was to try and introduce something as close to universal healthcare as he could get passed in Congress - he's now done precisely that. Apart from the Americans having had a belly-full of the Republicans, after eight disastrous years of GW Gump Bush, healthcare reform was the chief reason Obama won the presidential election. So how can he be accused of "going against the will of the American people" when he was voted in on that very ticket?

I know this may come as a shock to some folks, but the Fox News Borg, The Teabaggers and self-interest-only Republicans do not represent 'the will of the American people'.

2. "It's unconstitutional to require citizens to spend money on goods and services."

Again: bullshit - so how do they explain no Republican complaints when their taxes go towards their public highways, their military, their public schools, their drinking water, their public libraries, their ... the list goes on. And yes not a peep out of them.

So why whine like a cut snake specifically on healthcare - especially when it's for the greater good of the American public (and specifically 32+ million of them who are currently denied any healthcare cover)?

The only reason the Republicans bitch about healthcare reform can be boiled down to two things: selfishness and self-interest. This "constitutional" angle's just a smoke screen and will lose in the courts. LBJ had to go through this nonsense with Civil Liberties reform - and the opposition then came from the same crowd right-wing mentality.

Let them waste their time theorising: healthcare reform is now law. Time for the party of the past to deal with and get over it.

And last night I watched Michael Steele, RNC Chairman, being 'interviewed' on Faux News - he was embarrassingly inept and full of sour grapes at failing to 'kill the bill'. Tragic. Back-peddling like a JAMF when asked, by Greta Van Susteren, "so, this 'strategy' of just saying 'no' to everything and refusing to work with the Democrats on anything - how's that working for ya? Success or suicide?"

I doubt he'll be keeping his job for much longer - for the head of an organisation to screw the pooch so badly, in terms of having delivered no more than rancour and decisiveness, even the Republican village elders must see that their ship needs to change course if it is to re-engage with the mainstream American public.

And in a playground move of epoch-redefining proportions, if you go to the GOP's website, your session is hijacked by a captive portal and you're taken, instead, to a site they've knocked-up called "Sack Nancy Pelosi". Just pathetic. Though it's amazing what you can achieve in lieu of any actual or meaningful policies which might serve 'We The People'.

Here, try it for yourself: www.gop.com

And finally, as if the Republicans haven't spent enough time tossing their toys out of their prams, because they're not getting their own way, they're now punting the line that for the bill to pass the US Senate, and instead of a simple majority (i.e. 51 of the 100 available seats, which the Dem's have), instead they'll now need 60 seats! Talk about making the rules up as you go along to suit yourself.

The GOP are designing themselves into irrelevance at a rate of knots - but give them their due: they're also providing some of the best unintentional political comedy I've seen since GW Gump Bush was in power.

The Party of the Past: Republican Obstructionism

The Reagan Myth: finally demolished

Ronald Reagan was never that popular a president, records of opinion polls in a new book reveal.

In reality, issue by issue the majority of Americans were against Reagan policies throughout his presidency. He did receive a bounce after leaving office, but in 1990, in fact a year after leaving office, Americans rated Carter more favourably than Reagan.

Reagan did not reduce the size of government; indeed, the number of people on the federal payroll went up significantly under his leadership, which destroys another Republican/Teabagging group psychosis claim about them being the party of minimal federal government. A myth indeed.

When Reagan took office, middle-income Americans with children paid 8.2% of pay in income taxes + 9.5% in payroll taxes; when Reagan left it was 6.6% and 11.5%. Yes, unless you were rich, your federal tax burden went up, illustrating that Reagan pretty much catered only for his tax-cut-seeking electoral base and not the average American family.

Lifting many restrictions on S&Ls in 1982 was followed by a bailout 7 years later due to losses in high-risk commercial real estate ventures, and then the 2009 prime-mortgage fiasco. Proof that new Republican dogs cannot learn old tricks.

Manufacturing jobs declined under Reagan by an estimated 300,000 - 1.8 million, the US became the world's greatest debtor nation (a habit, policy and national trend continued under both Bushs), wealth inequality began its great upward leap, and the middle-class began its decades of real-income stagnation.

At the time that it happened, Americans did not credit Reagan with the fall of the Berlin Wall. A USA Today poll 4 days after the fall of the Berlin Wall (in 1989) gave 43% of the credit to Gorbachev, and 14% to Reagan; the figures were 70% and 2% among Germans.

In 1985, Reagan ruled out a military response to a Beirut hijacking for fear of civilian casualties; Lou Cannon reported then in the Washington Post that Reagan called retaliation in which innocent civilians are killed “itself a terrorist act": something which didn't stop him bombing Libya and, err... killing civilians.

The Reagan administration was completely against trying terrorists in military tribunals. Paul Bremer (yes, that Paul Bremer) said in 1987, “a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them.” Bizarre, then, that Bremer was GW Bush's man on the ground in Iraq in the 'War on Terrorism' (not that Iraq ever threatened the US in any manifest way, nor did his time there see Bremer wish to stick by his own words when ferrying suspects over to military tribunals at Gitmo, instead of insisting that they be tried in civil courts - you know, "to use democracy's most potent tool" to prove that the rule of law works...)

I still can't figure out whether that's breathtaking hypocrisy or epoch-redefining irony? Probably both.

Finally, nowadays, whereas any self-respecting Republican, or at least those now scrabbling to be cast in the Reaganite mould (and they are legion), routinely claim to be a deficit-busting 'fiscal conservative', a term rapidly becoming a devalued currency for its claimants, interesting then that, according to former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, former Vice President Cheney claimed during a cabinet meeting that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” Which prompts the question: then why do these self-same people bitch and whine non-stop about "the deficit", whilst seeking, feloniously, to paint the deficit as something which is Obama's fault, when he wasn't even in power during the previous eight Bush years which actually created it? Indeed, hypocrisy aside, as Will Bunch points out in the his Harper's interview:

'I would argue that there are parallels between Reagan and Obama, in the sense that both presidents came into power during economic crises and both cut taxes and increased spending in their first year, leading to higher deficits. The one difference—and it’s an important one—is that Reagan’s increased spending was for the relatively wasteful area of defense (although it did lead to some job creation) while Obama is making an attempt to target more useful areas, such as infrastructure and alternative energy. The bottom line on Reaganomics is pretty bleak. Yearly deficits soared, and the overall national debt nearly tripled, from $930 billion to about $2.7 trillion, according to the Washington Post.'

For those who'd like a comparison with another runaway-deficit-creating Republican president, here are the figures on GW Bush's presidency: Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy - and they do not make pleasant reading for Americans.

The Reagan Myth: finally demolished

Limbaugh threatens to flee the US if Healthcare is passed

As regulars here will know, the chaotic, manifestly unjust and selective refusal system, which attempts to pass for 'healthcare' in the US, is a topic to which I return to quite regularly - especially when those who are so vocal in seeking to deny equal rights to ALL US citizens, when it comes to gaining access to any meaningful healthcare-at-the-point-of-need, decide to make pronouncements on it and seek to bill it as 'the best healthcare system in the world'.

Such is the case, today, when those two dysfunctional stalwarts of putting the 'fun' back into fundamentalism, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, hit the news - after they opened their mouths, apparently only to change feet.

To the rapture of the lucid and sentient, El Rushbo has threatened to flee the US if President Obama's much needed healthcare reforms are passed into effect. By contrast, there's no doubt been much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst his supporters - perhaps because, at least for the period which he's away (apparently poste restante in Costa Rica), they'll be denied their daily fear fix from Limbaugh's bully pulpit. Any way, here's the part in Herr Limbaugh's daily histrionics where he gives hope to those who'd gladly pay his airfare:

Thing is, you can't help but think that Limbaugh's not really given his knee-jerk 'threat' much thought, as I was reminded earlier today, as most countries tend to have strict no-entry policies for well publicised and known drug abusers. It also begs the question as to by how much Costa Rica's national drugs bill might sore were Limbaugh to pitch up there? After all, it must take a hangar-load of drugs to keep him in his usual apoplectic state.

So, speaking of fleeing the US to seek medical treatment abroad, and with no small irony, it's also come to my attention that the darling of the moose conservation movement, Sarah Palin, has also been "zooming" over the border into Canada to receive treatment for herself and her family.

But frankly, should we really be surprised at this glaring double standard, certainly when we consider Palin's credentials? After all, here's a woman who spent 312 nights, during her first 19 months in office, charging the beleaguered Alaskan taxpayers a "per diem" totalling $16,951 for staying in her own home -- an allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses whilst travelling on state business...

And yet, even with this apparent habit of embezzlement whilst in public office, there are still those out there who'd vote for her to be president?

'Flexible accounting' notwithstanding, were she to be installed as president, it rather makes you wonder what kind of impression some Americans (at least those who'd willingly vote for her) would like the rest of the world to have of it, and certainly its head of state - especially after eight disastrous years of GW Gump? Who or where would she invade first?

You can just see the diplomatic "Out of Office" messages being readied all over the rest of the Western world at the very prospect of it.

Limbaugh threatens to flee the US if Healthcare is passed

When bumper-sticker sloganeering meets rampant paranoia

Thanks to New Left Media for their endeavours in putting this package together.

In February 2010, the group Tea Party Nation organized the first Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, a for-profit event. Some 600 people paid $550 to attend, and Sarah Palin was reportedly paid $115,000 to the be the keynote speaker. After criticism of the convention's cost, for-profit status, and payment to Palin, multiple national Tea Party organizations withdrew their participation.

But the event went on.

And so did the paranoid, conspiratorial assertions--that President Obama was born in another country, that he has covered up his college transcripts, that he is pushing a communist/socialist agenda, that he is protecting terrorists and endangering our country, etc.

The organizers of the convention made great efforts to limit access to the press, and even held "new-media training" sessions to help the Tea Partiers sound and look better on camera--the more people see inside this movement, the less they like it. But we got ourselves into the event, where the right-wing, fringe sentiments were on plain display.

That said, these Tea Partiers - at least those able to pay the cost of attendance - are more affluent than those at the 9.12 DC March, and more self-conscious of how they are portrayed in the media. There were fewer signs and homemade t-shirts here, but the attitudes, if more subtle in delivery, were the same.

 

When bumper-sticker sloganeering meets rampant paranoia

'Gitmo North': the cash-for-inmates scramble

And so, after years of "extraordinary rendition", false imprisonment, 3rd-party "interrogation" (i.e. mistreatment and torture) by people in countries with no recognisable history or appreciation of Habeas Corpus; and after president Gump Bush spent his entire period in office, and every trick in the book, denying Guantánamo Bay inmates any and all due process, incarcerating them without charge in an off-shore legal limbo, doesn't this news, about how towns with 'empty prisons' on the US mainland are now fighting to "win" the right to house those same Gitmo inmates strike you as ironic?

Before, under Bush, no expense was spared in keeping these inmates out of the clutches of any reasonable legal observation or purview - be that US or international.

Now, although it appears only out of a desire to attract the much needed revenues they will bring in a time of economic recession (sadly not any sense of wanting to do the right thing), the inmates will now end up being housed on US soil proper and, it is to be hoped, accorded all due legal process - no doubt a more straightforward proposition now that the morally bereft and politically dubious Bush-Cheney administration has been put out to grass. Full marks to Obama for wanting to close this outpost of cowboy law and mentality - a place which will forever symbolise the crassness, ineptitude, social autism and functionally illiterate 'two-wrongs-make-a-right' nature which so defined the Bush administration.

And of course, no story about Gitmo's guests would be complete without the comedy of its attendant irrational claims by Republicans, about how this move is a "threat to national security" - although, like most of their utterances since losing to Obama, they don't really amount to much other than their usual incessant partisan whingeing.

'Gitmo North': the cash-for-inmates scramble

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term"

You know, given that this this woman, Perino, was White House Press Secretary, under President Gump Bush, you'd perhaps have hoped that she'd at least remembered the one attack on the US which sent Gump Bush into his flat-spin and prompted the worst of his administration's excesses, right? Alas, she appears to have a bad case of selective amnesia, or the attention-span of an absent-minded gnat.

But hey, this is Hannity on Faux Noise - so the people watching will believe it anyway...

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term"

More Motivational Posters

Click on any picture to enlarge.

More Motivational Posters

Mussolini's brain 'for sale on eBay'

With this news Mussolini's brain 'for sale on eBay', I pondered just what other rare and unseen possessions, from the Great and the Good, might have been purloined over the years and punted out secretly into the market for a quick profit...?

Now bear in mind that not all of these would have necessarily been missed if stolen, but here's how the list might look:

• Gandhi's knuckle-dusters
  
• The lifeboats from Noah's Ark
  
• The restraining order, not to come within a 5 mile radius, filed by George W Bush's shadow
• The view of Russia from Sarah Palin's back door
  
• Mother Teresa's porn stash
  
• Any factual or unbiased reportage from Fox News
• Gordon Brown's sense of direction
• Iraqi WMD
• Hitler's "lost" testicle
• Anna Nicole Smith's talent
• The plot to 'Lost'

What would you add to the list?

Mussolini's brain 'for sale on eBay'

The Etiquette of Tipping

A pal of mine in the US, Chuck, has just fired this across the ether to me; and I have to confess to a sense of pique after reading this news Couple arrested after refusing to pay tip at Pennsylvania pub.

The irony? America: the only country where gratuities can be gratuitously demanded.

[affects tone of unbridled indignation] The damned cheek of it!  A pox o'their house, Sir! In civilised countries, tipping is a social custom, not a requirement!

One of the things I love about travelling is the presented range of different experiences on offer in the far-flung. And if your levels of expectation are reasonably flexible and not pre-set, then you're more likely than not to survive (if not enjoy) most of these differences.

Having lived, worked and travelled extensively in the US, I can say that you become accustomed to their custom of the all-but-mandatory tip, when paying for most meals (regardless of how light the repast may be) - and mandatory in the sense that waiters and waitresses, there, allegedly get paid so poorly that the only way they can 'make-ends-meet' is to receive tips and gratuities from willing patrons - even if the service is utterly below par, and sometimes so flagrantly unacceptable that you wouldn't consider kennelling your dog there.

So whilst 'tips' are expected, good service can be an utter lottery. And whereas poorly prepared food may be sent back, in the reasonably safe knowledge of a corrective and freshly prepared dish replacing it, serving staff with bad manners, and an attitude towards customers of which the Gestapo might have been envious, is another matter entirely. Alas, these people have yet to understand that customers are not merely an embuggerance - and notwithstanding that the withholding of tips can result in a little more that just an awkward silence, as the above article points out. Nevertheless, poor service is one of my pet-hates, and I have, before now, on being kept waiting for nearly an hour after placing an order, informed the house "Hey! My money's good anywhere!" before walking out the door, followed in hotfoot apologetic persuit by the manager. However, I digress...

But what of elsewhere? With just under 20% of Americans owning a passport (and fewer still having travelled outside the US), what might they expect to see and experience in terms of the habits and tipping etiquette of other nations?

Well, by contrast, here in the UK, the tables are turned and the reverse is true: the working norm here is that we only tip if we feel that the food and service has been worthy of us being generous with our cash - if not, then we don't. Simple as that. There are no laurels for simply taking food from a kitchen where it's prepared and then placing it on a customer's table. After all, it's hardly a Herculean task, is it?

And there is one set of circumstances to which I will always take umbrage: the like-it-or-not "service charge".

As a working rule, any eatery, anywhere, which on the menu stipulates that a mandatory "service charge" is payable, regardless of how small the portion and underwhelming your Lobster Kebab might have been, gets no tip, as they've already shown temerity and fleeced me of it with this additional charge. The staff can then sort out who gets paid what with the owner. Harsh, but fair I feel.

Mind you, the tipping etiquette in Iceland and Norway border on zero-tolerance!

A couple of years ago my wife and I were eating with friends at one of the finest restaurants in Reykjavik, Iceland, The Pearl, where, on getting out my wallet to pay the bill, I was informed by our friends, in a mock-brusque manner, that tipping simply isn't done in Iceland - full stop! Same thing in Norway. Come to think of it, I have garnered one or two feigned-polite ah,-you're-a-foreigner-,aren't-you? looks from waiters in Oslo, when unthinkingly trying to pay a bill there.

Australia's more of a mix between the UK and its adopted habits of the US, as is South Africa - where the preference (of the waiting staff) is that, more often than not, you leave a tip; but you're not obliged to do so. In France, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands, you just toss some change on the table with your bill, and no one seems to care what percentage you've coughed-up as a gratuity.

But come on!? Getting pinched by the law for refusing to pay a tip after having received woeful service? Talk about a disproportionate response and a gross overreaction!

What next: being sent to Guantánamo Bay for jaywalking?

Actually, if Bush and Cheney were still in power...?

The Etiquette of Tipping

Scenes from the US healthcare debate

Hands across the Herring Pond - a reply to Hoosierboy

If you read my earlier piece, from November 03rd, on US Senator Orrin Hatch (Rep. Utah)'s nonsensical claims that any introduction of healthcare reforms  there would lead to the inevitable downfall of the two-party system of democracy in America, then you'll know that in the comments in response to it, one of the replies came from Hoosierboy; someone with whom I've exchanged on a number of blogs (including his own) in the past.

To recap, 'Hoose' was good enough to offer the following points below (those in courier font) - and I promised him a fuller reply in the form of its own piece: so here goes; everyone please feel free to comment, for or against!

Hoose, if it's OK with you, I'll quote each of your points in order before replying to them.

I challenge you to find one person who is denied health care in this country. If you are poor and cannot afford treatment it will be provided free in any public hospital.

A challenge, eh? Well OK, if you insist. 

In reality, millions of people are denied healthcare every year in the US, when their HMOs & Insurers refuse, for whatever reason, to authorise/sanction/pay for the medical treatment they need, as this Reuters article makes crystal clear California's Insurers Deny 21% of Claims - here's the rub: 

"From 2002 through June 30, 2009, the six largest insurers operating in California rejected 31.2 million claims for care - 21 percent of all claims."

I think you'll agree that this Reuters piece makes for some pretty grim reading - and yet that's just California - so if we, as we must, extrapolate that across the entire US, then you can see just how many Americans are "denied health care..."

And further to your assertion that "If you are poor and cannot afford treatment it will be provided free in any public hospital. " - I think it's fare to say that for the US to be basing its national healthcare policy upon mere charity is just a tad too Dickensian for the 21st century. What d'ya reckon?

Lastly on your point about how "poor people" are treated under the current system, another thing I found pretty unsettling is this recent Harvard Study, reported on the AP wires within the last 24 hours, which illustrates that uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance. 

With respect, Hoose, the "no one gets refused healthcare" line is just a popular myth in the US; and one, if we're being honest, usually punted by those on the more conservative Right (i.e. Republican) side of the political spectrum, and a myth which insists that everyone in the US, regardless of salary, can have free healthcare, simply by turning up at any hospital and asking for it. But what those punting this line choose to ignore (or omit) is the simple truth that not being able to afford healthcare insurance, or, worse, being declined its cover on the grounds of some "previous condition", is precisely the same as being "denied healthcare".

Whilst opinions on the exact number of uninsured in the US may differ - and by that I mean uninsured through either being unable to afford it, or being refused cover, for whatever reason -   we're still talking in the region of between 40 and 45 million people in the US either without or denied medical insurance cover. And that figure is nothing short of a national disgrace for the US: doubly so when we consider that any discrepancy in these figures is down to nothing more substantial than political partisanship, ideology and a desire to suit their respective prejudices.

So, where US medical healthcare (prior to any reform) is concerned, the message is clear: you cannot have what you can't afford - and if you can't afford (or are refused) it, then tough! And that's not a national healthcare system: instead, it's merely a pay-to-lay lottery.

And there is one other aspect which you've not addressed in your reply; but I think it's worth raising, for completeness, if nothing else; and it involves that other rote-learned deflection, err... sorry, 'caveat': that there is a federal mandate in the US which states that "no one can be refused treatment in a hospital..."

Sounds perfect, doesn't it? Even all-inclusive. But it fails in one chief criterion: its accuracy - in that it gives both an incomplete and (usually deliberately) misleading picture. 

Yes, no one can be refused medical treatment in the US, but, conversely, they will also receive a bill for any treatment they do receive, whether they can afford to pay it or not; and then have the privilege of being continually harangued and harassed by HMOs and Insurers when they can't pay it - just adding to their overall stress - and as if adding insult to injury (no pun intended) weren't bad enough, that's when hospitals aren't checking patients' personal credit ratings, to boot. When insurers and HMOs are placed in charge of saying ye or nay to whether a patient may receive medical treatment or not, instead of doctors, then it's not a system of national healthcare: it's a country held hostage to finance companies and one which puts profits before people.

And of course it's perhaps worth noting that, as this Harvard study shows, the paying of medical bills is behind over 60 percent of all U.S. personal bankruptcies. So you don't need me to tell you that the US has the most expensive healthcare - i.e. expensive to the end-user, the patient who needs it - in the Western industrialised world; and yet you still can't ensure that everyone - no questions asked - can receive the benefit of its coverage and treatment at point-of-need.

This isn't medicine as recognised or practised anywhere else in the civilised and developed  world; as in the US, the provision of healthcare is held as being, first and foremost, a business, and not a social service or societal necessity, as it is in UK/Europe and the Antipodes.

Is health care too expensive? Yes. Does it need reform? Yes. Can we get there without Universal Government provided health care? Yes.

Is US healthcare too expensive? Yes, we're in broad agreement on that point, so no argument.

Is it also, prior to any reform, and as currently run by the HMO's and Insurance companies, outrageously inefficient and wasteful (a charge usually levelled at "Big Gov't" run bodies by US conservatives), which in turn only drives up its user costs further for everyone - to the tune of $800bn a year, as Maggie Fox, the Science and Health Editor for Reuters reported only last week. So another rote objection of the Right holed beneath the waterline.

Which just leaves us with one point which you've perhaps missed in your assertion above: "Can we get there without Universal Government provided health care? Yes" -  I think we can agree that there's a huge divergence in imperative between 'can we do so?' and 'will we do so (i.e. left to our own devices, and our reliance on, and in most cases subservience to, the stockholders of the HMOs, Big Medicine Lobbyists and the vagaries of a free-market which strains with every fibre of its being to prevent universal healthcare coverage being delivered in the US)?'

Fair?

Now, if anyone's reading this and still finding themselves in the "we can do this off our own bat with no prompting or obligation" school of quandary, let's have a quick look at where we have a  working 'would we-could we-should we?' parallel in US History.

On what grounds were Ford forced into an urgent redesign of its Pinto range of cars, which had the nasty habit of simply exploding into flames when hit by another car, due to poor design and manufacture, killing thousands of Americans in the process?

Does anyone still honestly believe that Ford made the necessary changes and redesigns off their own bat, based on nothing more than some good will initiative, or out of some desire to adhere to a moral code of "doing the right thing"? Or was it being obliged to do so, due to the repeated court battles and the gazillions of dollars in fines it had to keep paying out, to the families of its victims, in damages and lost legal cases?

The record clearly shows that it was not merely Ford's beneficence and altruism which played a part in their decision to make corrective design changes to their vehicles to prevent further people being burnt alive in their cars. Their motive was having to explain to their stockholders why their profits were being made to look sick.

So ask yourself: will the current HMO-run healthcare model self-rectify or get its house in order, if left purely to its own devices? No. It won't. Because the profit incentive is too strong to want to make any changes to the how things are today - hence the much needed, and soon to be introduced, reforms.

To your point, whether we like it or not the Founders envisioned and designed a Nation with a limited Federal Government. That is not the case in the rest of the world, and frankly if Europe jumped off a clifff we are under no obligation to follow. Didn't your Mom teach you that?

Actually, no, she didn't: but then again, neither did she need to.

However, what she did teach me is that 300+ year old, Georgian-era concepts need not be religiously and blindly adhered to, or never refreshed or updated to suit the times in which we live, in order to meet the needs of the modern era. This insistence, by some in the US, of sticking to old ways and outdated thinking is what's got America into the healthcare mess it's in today - or, put another way, allow me to quote John Maynard Keynes:

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Time moves on and thinking becomes more enlightened, and medical needs and practices are meant to keep-step and improve with them - and, as to your point about the US Founding Fathers, just as you now allow women and black people the vote in America (provision for neither of which appeared in either the US Constitution or The Bill of Rights; both were achieved - wait for it - by amendments!), the time has surely come to recognise that the medical and healthcare needs of all US citizens are just as important as clean drinking water and the right to laugh at Vanilla Ice.

And when all is said and done, the Founding Fathers made no provision for any number of things: the Space Shuttle, automobiles & Interstates, the portable TV, Presidents sleeping (and having children) with their plantation slaves...

Things change. Lord knows if we in the UK demanded to adhere to some of our oldest tenets and sacred cows, we'd still be allowed to kill a Welshman on sight!

Strictly speaking, Congress has no authority to force anyone to buy health insurance. If you can find otherwise in the Constitution, I will be glad to listen and learn. In fact the 9th and 10th Amendments give that authority to the States. If Massachusetts wants universal healthcare they can have it (they do). If Utah does not, so be it. The powers of Congress are few and disntly spelled out in Atricle 1, Section 8.

'Forcing' people to buy health insurance was one of Senator Hatch's lamentable ramblings, not one I suggested; but I think, for which suggested healthcare reforms make provision, if no one can be refused health insurance due to some previous condition, or be priced-out from affording it, then no one will be placed in a position where they are 'forced' into being unable to access health insurance, which can only be a good thing.

BTW, I should also point out that NO WHERE in the Constitution can you find the phrase "Seperation of Church and State".

Believe me Hoose, on this point, you are preaching to the converted (pun intended): I've been having this same debate with American friends for years: the actual wording used is so vague you can you can drive a coach and six through the gaps in it.

Anywyay, I look forward to reading your (and anyone else's) reply mate.

Take it easy and hopefully speak soon!

Bren.

Scenes from the US healthcare debate

OED bring out defintive English Language Thesaurus

Was happy to see and hear that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has now produced the definitive Historical Thesaurus of the English Language - and a sumptuous production it looks too.

Forty-four years in the making - well done the OED!

Apparently, when asked his opinion of the new Thesaurus, former president, GW Gump Bush, asked whether it was larger or smaller than a the T-Rex?

OED bring out defintive English Language Thesaurus

What will they build in memory of GW Bush?

Just read the news about the Kosovans erecting (insert cheap knob-gag here) a 3.5 metre-high statue of Bill Clinton in thanks for his help, whilst US president, in launching NATO air-strikes to rid the place of Serbian troops in 1999.

I couldn't help but muse on the irony of a predominantly Moslem country raising a glass (of I'm guessing orange juice) to an American president, given how relations have largely gone down the toilet since Clinton left office.

And then I began to wonder what might be built in honour of George W Gump Bush? Something befitting the man's stature. A public urinal? A sewage works? A fast-food outlet? I mean I know he'll get the 'comes-with-the-badge' presidential library - another irony, as the mans a functional illiterate - but what could or should be built to honour (if that's the right word) the man?

Beer tokens, a Big Mac and large fries awarded for the best reply!

What will they build in memory of GW Bush?

Can Fox News really be considered a 'News' entity?

Bizarre that this topic should arise today in the news, as we were discussing this very thing on my website, over a week ago, when an Australian friend, Roger, made the following comment:

"[Can Fox News really be considered a 'News' entity?] ... from what I've heard and read (having never actually seen the station on TV), it's a PR company for the Neo-Cons."

Which is pretty much the way I feel about Faux News, also. So, as Loyd Grossman might say - let's look at the clues...

As a 'news' entity, it's certainly a Murdoch-owned opinionated vassal; catering largely for what I refer to as 'The No Passport Fox News Christians': the kind of analysis-starved mindset which eagerly accepts voodoo claims and deliberate dissembling, such as "Obama death panels", in the US Healthcare Reform debate, and "Obama's a Muslim and has no US birth certificate". And this is the same audience who, as default, use the term 'liberal' in the pejorative sense.

It also makes much of the "we can say what we want, regardless of how petulant, puerile or pernicious it might be, and it's protected by the Constitution" mentality, so redolent in the US (in other words, the liberty to be both stupid and offensive, whilst trying to paint your actions as some  duty, or noble and cherished rite of passage - it's not called 'Faux' News for nothing!).

Fox would have you believe that it does indeed offer 'news & analysis' - which is an utter and deliberate misnomer; and one to which it obstinately and repeatedly clings in the belief that mere opinionated rants are in some way synonymous with, or a worthy substitute for, proper and impartial analysis.

In short, all Fox does is cater for its 'target market' (the eponymous 'No Passport Fox News Christians') and sees no reason to trouble itself with what (outside the US) is the dictionary definition of 'news' - that means it's just an opinion: and an avowedly, no pretence, right-wing one at that. This is why it is not considered 'news' anywhere else outside its Limbaugh-loving target market.

And what marks it out as a transparent shill for the US Right is its chosen format and approach; as this is one, in Europe at least, which we associate with, and attribute to, the tabloids and habitués of rags like The National Enquirer - hence the reason why most Europeans treat it with a mixture of concomitant contempt and parody.

Can Fox News really be considered a 'News' entity?

Taliban: 'Cut us a deal and we'll ditch al-Qaeda'

After reading this article, Taliban: 'Cut us a deal and we'll ditch al-Qaeda', I began to wonder whether this might have something to do with some new, as yet unannounced US thinking regarding an exit-strategy from Afghanistan. And then I thought, hang on a minute! There are wider implications to pulling out of Afghanistan, not least the lack of any meaningful achievement - and they don't need me to tell them that it can't be done any time soon - and certainly not in the same slapdash manner as it was invaded initially.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, what with the war now entering its ninth year, what we now see is a "should I stay or should I go now?" situation: alas this is one of the dangers of blindly rushing to war, only one month after 9/11, without considering any meaningful or realistically achievable goals, or exist strategies, or in fact even the circumstances under which you may exit: all of which Bush jnr. is guilty and which, like so much of the man's spastic activity whilst in office, Obama now has the baleful duty and inherited responsibility of clearing up.

Goethe said: "Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong..."

It is, then, inescapable, that there was, certainly on the part of the Bush administration, an all encompassing desire in the US simply for revenge on the perpetrators of 9/11, with precious little, if any, thought going into anything  like either a measured or appropriate response to the attack. And so, like an inebriate hell-bent on finding a fight, Bush duly obliged.

So what to do now? Where are we at in terms of results? The US has still not caught or killed OBL, or Mullah Omar (al-Q's spiritual leader), nor any of the top ten lieutenants of that organisation. Even the US must be asking itself if this has been time and money well spent? Although certainly Bush never seemed to worry as he drove up military budgets and spending - placing an intolerably massive debt burden on each US tax payer in the process.

Even if the US does decide to cut its loses and a deal with Terry Taliban, all it will be doing is getting them off NATO's back [but only in the Afghan theatre], and back onto the backs of the Afghan people; OBL and the al-Q boys will just up-sticks and move further into their sanctuary of the largely ungoverned Waziristan border region, and their stated main prize - Pakistan. It will drop Afghanistan like an uncalled raffle ticket.

So exiting is one thing: but paying to exist (over and above the NATO lives already expended there) is another thing completely; as it sends a whole host of mixed, and damaging, messages.

The Taliban will see any payment deal as clear vindication that their 'Jihad' had worked and that waging it was right ("it must have been, otherwise why would the infidel pay us to leave them alone before running home with their tails between their legs...?")

And, once NATO has gone, at least in its combat role, it will then leave the Taliban to dispense their own brand of Stone Age nihilism upon a people who (like most Moslems) are a fatalistic bunch ('Inshallah') and who, no matter what the strictures placed upon them, or the extremes the Taliban go to as their overlords, will simply grit their teeth and bear it.

Why? Because at least the Taliban in Afghanistan are largely Afghan, and not foreigners - and that's important, as Afghans have never taken kindly to foreign invaders, regardless of the flag under which they've entered the country (The British Empire, The USSR, NATO...)

And, whereas the US (via the CIA) funded the former Afghan Northern Alliance resistance, first to the Soviets, and then the Taliban (lead in both cases by its then leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who, significantly, was assassinated just two days before 9/11, by al-Qaeda assassins posing as Saudi journalists), Afghanistan no longer has an effective or organised resistance movement to the Taliban - and certainly not one with a Charlie Wilson's War, money-&-weapons CIA sugar-daddy.

If ever there was a textbook illustration of "act in haste: repent at leisure", then Bush's sojourn into Afghanistan is it. Hundreds of NATO troops have now been killed there, as have a larger number of Afghanis - and for what? If no military objectives were ever agreed, or articulated prior to invading Afghanistan, then you can't really expect commanders on the ground to make them up as they go, which is now where we're at. 'Surges' and Mission Creep are great debating points, but they are no substitute for original, solid, pre-invasion military strategy when thinking of sending men into harm's way to do a politician's bidding - and the names on the list of Bush cabinet members who failed in this respect are legion.

NATO will leave Afghanistan at some stage, it has to (and the Taliban know this, and yet they have the luxury of time of their hands to let it happen), and just as nature reclaims an untended garden, so the Taliban will reclaim Afghanistan. And where it can't control, it will cut deals with whichever despotic warlords are in regional power (e.g. General Dostum and his successors).

Unchecked by NATO, the poppy crop yield will increase - and its sale will then fund weapons and other nasty Taliban habits - meanwhile, the knock-on-effect is that heroin will become more readily available on the streets of the West (with the attendant coterie of vice and misery which comes with it - people trafficking, forced prostitution, child labour, Mafia activity etc.) - and that's before Afghanistan (no longer policed by NATO) becomes an open training camp for any two-bit Islamic extremist group wishing to extend their 'Global Jihad'. This in turn leaves open the possibility of more terrorist attacks à la Madrid, London, & New York.

So whilst hindsight's a wonderful thing, unfortunately for the wider world, this is what you get when a US president who is so cataclysmically stupid that even his shadow demanded a divorce is voted into power; not helped by his complete lack of any decent or sage counsel after 9/11 happened; certainly in terms of the US making a mete response to the attack; and a situation which has now left us with two messes with which to deal - Iraq & Afghanistan.

So the US will send the 45,000 extra troops asked for by General McCrystal; but then again, when have you ever known a general who said they couldn't win a war without more troops? That's the kind of sameness we can all understand and get behind, right?

The main problem here is that there is no clear reason - other than US revenge for 9/11 - for NATO to be in Afghanistan; we've entered a whole new world of 'Mission Creep', and we're trying to develop strategy on-the-hoof - an approach which has never won a war (cf. Viet Nam). In invading Afghanistan,  a country in which no invading nation has ever won a sustained campaign, all we've done is stirreed-up a hornets' nest and given its people a reason to unite against a common foe: NATO and The West.

And we will leave, and the Taliban will stay - only this time, we won't be there to offer any alternatives or balance to the extremists punting their distorted  version Islam. Nor will we be able to prevent any training camps which will in all probability flourish in our absence.

Where both he and the patient needed precision, Bush tried to operate on the cancer with all the accuracy of a blind man with a blunderbuss: and the rest of us will, sadly, reap the results of that particular failed experiment for some time to come.

Taliban: 'Cut us a deal and we'll ditch al-Qaeda'