Backward

Political Cartoon is by Monte Wolverton at caglecartoons.com.

Lieberman Turns On Democrats - Again

Liberals tried to tell Harry Reid and Barack Obama months ago that Joe Lieberman shouldn't be allowed into the Democratic Caucus or be allowed be allowed to assume any Democratic committee positions. After all, he had run against the Democratic candidate in Connecticut (and defeated him) and had supported George Bush's illegal wars. Then he not only supported Republican John McCain for president, and spoke for him at the Republican Convention and on the campaign trail.

But Reid and Obama wouldn't listen, and convinced Senate Democrats to once again allow Lieberman into the Democratic Caucus. They said they would need his vote to overcome Republican filibusters (as if he would ever turn on his Republican buddies).

Now, Lieberman's vote is needed to turn back a Republican filibuster against health care reform. So what is Lieberman going to do? Naturally, he's going to support his real party -- the Republicans. Lieberman announced yesterday that he will back the Republican effort to filibuster and kill the Senate Democrats' health care reform bill.

Lieberman especially opposes the public option for insurance that would help poor and working-class Americans get health care insurance coverage. He said he would vote against the public option "even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."

He was allowed back in the Democratic Caucus because his vote was needed, but once again, when the chips are down he is voting with the Republicans. Allowing him back into the caucus is analogous to letting a rattlesnake into your bed -- you're going to keep getting bit until you get that snake out of your bed.

It's long past time to kick Lieberman out. He will never vote with Democrats on any important issue, and those who think he will are fools.

Break The Glass !

Political Cartoon is by R.J. Matson in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Scientology Guilty Of Fraud

Here in the United States, the courts give religions of all ilks a wide berth lest they be accused of denying religious freedom. Religious nuts can pretty much suck their adherents dry of their money, and their is nothing the law will do about it (just look at the TV "preachers" who are little more than shameless money machines preying on the dim-witted).

But things are different in France, especially if a religion is classified as a sect or a cult. That is how scientology is classified there. A French court has convicted two branches of the religion and several individuals of fraud.

The churches Celebrity Centre was fined 400,000 Euros and their library (bookstore) was fined 200,000 Euros. The head of scientology in France, Alain Rosenberg, was fined 30,000 Euros and given a two year suspended sentence, and three other church officials were also fined.

The case started in the 1990s when two women accused the church of manipulating them into parting with thousands of dollars for the church. The investigating judge said the church was little more than "a purely commercial operation designed to make as much money as it can at the expense of often vulnerable victims."

The prosecutor wanted the church to be banned in France, but a law in effect at the time the church was charged would not permit that. That law has since been changed, and if the church is convicted in the future it could well be banned.

I don't doubt the judge's description of scientology, and I think the same description could be applied to many religious entities here in the United States. I wish we could investigate and prosecute those entities whose primary function is to enrich the founders and leaders (on a tax-free basis).

But I don't see that happening any time soon.

Too Big To Fail ?

Political Cartoon is by David Horsey in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

First Republican ?

From the excellent blog What Would Jack Do?

Reid Abandons Texas/Southern Poor

Nearly one out of every four Texans does not have any kind of health insurance, and throughout the South the numbers are nearly as bad. It's not surprising, because in this part of the country if your employer doesn't provide health insurance then you probably can't afford to buy it. That's because there are few unions and working-class salaries lag far behind most other parts of the country.

This is a part of America that badly needs the public option for health insurance. It's also a part of the country where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and other senate Democrats are in the process of turning their backs on the working-class and the poor.

On Monday, Reid announced that senate health care reform legislation will include a plan for public option health insurance. Normally that would be cause for celebration, but Reid and fellow spineless Democrats are including a provision that will allow states to opt out of the public option.

Texas, along with most other Southern states, are controlled by Republicans. Making matters worse, the few elected Democrats they do have are mostly blue dogs. Both of these groups are far more interested in protecting their buddies in the private insurance companies, than in helping to provide insurance for poor and working-class citizens. It is almost a certainty that they will opt out of the public option and leave millions of their citizens without health insurance coverage.

This is a very disappointing turn of events. How can they claim to have passed health care reform, when they are leaving millions without health insurance coverage? I don't really blame Republicans. We have known from the beginning that they opposed any kind of health care reform. They were long ago bought and paid for by Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

But the Democrats are starting to disgust me. They were put in power because a majority of the American people wanted change -- especially health care reform. But they seem to be too spineless to pass any real change.

I feel like the Democrats have abandoned me and millions of other Texans and Southerners, and I really don't know how much longer I can support them. I can't vote Republican, but I can certainly vote third-party or stay home on election day.

Professional Courtesy

Political Cartoon is by John Cole in The Scranton Times.

Newspaper Circulation Falling Rapidly

There has been an ongoing discussion over the last couple of years over whether newspapers can survive in the age of television and the internet. More and more people are said to be getting their news from television and the huge number of internet sources. New figures show that the circulation numbers of newspapers are still falling.

This is very bad news for the papers. The lower the circulation is, the less they can charge for advertisements and the less ads they can sell. These ads are the life-blood of a newspaper. The charge to the consumer barely covers the distribution cost for most newspapers. The other costs (such as salaries) and profit are covered by advertising sales.

New figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation shows that the average drop in newspaper circulation (in April-September from the same span last year) was 10.6%. Making matters even worse, it looks like the circulation drop is increasing with each six-month reporting period. The drop for October 2008-March 2009 was 7.1%, and the drop for April-September 2008 was 4.6%.

It is increasingly looking like newspapers are the news media of the past, and will not survive long in the 21st century. There are still those consumers who like getting a print version of the newspaper, but there probably are not enough of them to keep newspapers viable in this era of multiple news sources.

The question now is can these newspapers make themselves viable enough on the internet to survive as a news organization. Some papers are considering charging consumers for their online version, but I don't think that's going to work. All that will do is depress their online viewership, which will in turn depress their ad revenue. There are just too many news sources on the internet that are free (not to mention free television).

If these newspapers are going to survive as news-gathering organizations and stay viable, they will have to do it with advertising revenue (and that's not easy on-line). The question now is not whether the print version of newspapers will die. That is pretty certain at this point. The real question is whether these organizations can remain viable and profitable in their move to the internet. The answer to that question is still unknown.

For your edification, here is how the top 25 newspapers are doing with their weekday circulation figures:

Wall Street Journal -- 2,024,269 -- up 0.6%

USA Today -- 1,900,116 -- down 17.2%

New York Times -- 927,851 -- down 7.3%

Los Angeles Times -- 657,467 -- down 11.1%

Washington Post -- 582,844 -- down 6.4%

New York Daily News -- 544,167 -- down 14.0%

New York Post -- 508,042 -- down 18.8%

Chicago Tribune -- 465,892 -- down 9.7%

Houston Chronicle -- 384,419 -- down 14.2%

Philadelphia Inquirer -- 361,480 -- no % available

Newsday (Long Island) -- 357,124 -- down 5.4%

Denver Post -- 340,949 -- down 9.2%

Arizona Republic -- 316,874 -- down 12.3%

Minneapolis Star-Tribune -- 304,543 -- down 5.5%

Chicago Sun-Times -- 275,641 -- down 12.0%

Cleveland Plain Dealer -- 271,180 -- down 11.2%

Detroit Free Press -- 269,729 -- down 9.6%

Boston Globe -- 264,105 -- down 18.5%

Dallas Morning News -- 263,810 -- down 22.2%

Seattle Times -- 263,588 -- no % available

San Francisco Chronicle -- 251,782 -- down 25.8%

Portland Oregonian -- 249,163 -- down 12.1%

Newark Star-Ledger -- 246,006 -- down 22.2%

San Diego Union Tribune -- 242,705 -- down 10.1%

St. Petersburg Times -- 240,147 -- down 10.7%

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Seattle Times figures were not comparable to the prior year because they both merged with another paper and took over their subscriptions, but both showed declining Sunday figures. For Sunday figures for all papers please click here.

The Party Of No

Political Cartoon is by John Darkow in The Columbia Daily Tribune.

Driving While Hispanic Is NOT A Crime

A week or so ago, Ernestina Mondragon was driving in Dallas and made an illegal u-turn. She was ticketed for that and found guilty by a judge. There is no problem with that. She broke a traffic law and will have to pay a fine.

The problem is with another ticket she was given by the Dallas police officer. She was also ticketed for driving a car without being able to speak English. I am amazed that this ticket was given. Even most ordinary citizens in Texas know that there is no law requiring an ability to speak English to be able to drive. How could a policeman, who is supposed to know the law, make such an egregious mistake?

The judge did dismiss the ridiculous ticket, and Dallas Police Chief Kunkle apologized for the patrolman's mistake. The bad thing is that Chief Kunkle also admitted that the Dallas Police Department has issued 38 of these tickets in the last three years!

Let me make that clear. The Dallas Police Department has for the last three years issued more than one ticket a month for a driver not being an English-speaker! What is going on? What is the cause of so many of these illegal tickets being issued?

Either the Dallas Police Department is failing to properly train their officers on the law, or there are some immigrant-hating racist officers in the department trying to enforce their own personal brand of justice. I hope it is the former, because that can and should be fixed with better training. The latter is far more troublesome.

NOTE -- There is a law requiring drivers of public transportation (buses and taxis) to be able to speak English. But this law does not extend to (and was never meant to extend to) ordinary drivers in their own cars.

The Only Expansion Happening

Political Cartoon is by Ted Rall at gocomics.com.

Spineless

From the web site of bartcop.com.

55 Health Care Hypocrites

As we all know, the Republicans have had virtually nothing to offer in the way of health care reform. It seems like the only thing they are interested in is protecting the obscene profits of the huge private insurance companies.

One thing the Republicans have especially opposed is the creation of a public option for health insurance -- something along the lines of Medicare for Americans of all ages (even Sen. Snowe opposes this). Now it looks like this Republican opposition to public insurance has turned at least 55 congressional Republicans into hypocrites.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-New York) decided to do a little investigative work to see what kind of insurance members of Congress had. He discovered that 151 members of Congress were covered by Medicare (exactly the same kind of public insurance being denied to ordinary Americans).

Of that 151, 55 of them were Republicans who have voted against and campaigned against the public option for health insurance. That's just mean and selfish that they would oppose giving ordinary Americans the same kind of public insurance they themselves enjoy -- and it makes them hypocrites. Here are the names of those 55 hypocrites:

Rep. Ralph M. Hall ----- Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett
Rep. Sam Johnson ----- Rep. C.W. Bill Young
Rep. Howard Coble ----- Sen. Jim Bunning
Sen. Richard G. Lugar ----- Rep. Don Young
Sen. Charles E. Grassley ----- Sen. Robert F. Bennett
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers ----- Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
Sen. Richard C. Shelby ----- Rep. Jerry Lewis
Sen. James M. Inhofe ----- Rep. Ron Paul
Rep. Henry E. Brown ----- Sen. Pat Roberts
Sen. George V. Voinovich ----- Sen. John McCain
Rep. Judy Biggert ----- Sen. Thad Cochran
Rep. Harold Rogers ----- Rep. Dan Burton
Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon ----- Rep. Frank R. Wolf
Sen. Christopher S. Bond ----- Rep. Michael N. Castle
Rep. Joe Pitts ----- Rep. Tom Petri
Sen. Lamar Alexander ----- Rep. Doc Hastings
Rep. Cliff Stearns ----- Rep. Sue Myrick
Rep. John Carter ----- Sen. Mitch McConnell
Sen. Jon Kyl ----- Rep. Phil Gingrey
Rep. Nathan Deal ----- Rep. John Linder
Rep. Kay Granger ----- Rep. John L. Mica
Rep. Walter B. Jones ----- Sen. Jim Risch
Rep. Ed Whitfield ----- Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner
Rep. Virginia Foxx ----- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite ----- Sen. Saxby Chambliss
Sen. Michael B. Enzi ----- Rep. Elton Gallegly
Rep. Donald Manzullo ----- Rep. Peter T. King
Rep. Ander Crenshaw