It's not just the big things

Let's say you don't care about the war, or torture, or spying on Americans, or shoveling billions of dollars into the pockets of billionaires.

Let's say you started out as a consumer activist, before there were consumer activists, and you became famous by fighting the big car companies and other corporate malefactors. And you not only became famous, you actually were successful, and cars and other consumer products are now much safer than they were before you arrived on the scene.


How do you think you'd feel to learn that the Consumer Products Safety Commission, headed by a former high--powered lawyer for Eastman Kodak and an official of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is sternly opposing legislation that would double its budget, expand its enforcement capabilities, and increase its staff?

Thanks, Ralph.

Five Years Ago Today

Yes, it was May 1, 2003, that Bush did his little dance in his pilot outfit. I'm sure glad we won five years ago, so we can concentrate our national energies on other important challenges.

Thanks, Ralph.

Well, it's official

The policy of the intelligence agencies of the United States is to torture those people unlucky enough to fall into their hands.

Thanks, Ralph.

"To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.”

This is truly disgusting. We send our forces over to Iraq to die for literally nothing. Some of them are horribly injured, and we give them terrible medical care and stick them in a squalid hole.

Some of them survive but have a hard time living with the horrors they've experienced. They're just as badly injured as those with physical injuries, so they've earned our gratitude and our support, haven't they?

What do they get instead? Slandered, labeled as constitutionally unfit to serve, and kicked out without the care and support they need.

Here's part of the story from The Nation. Go there and read the rest.

On April 9, Spc. Jon Town was featured on the cover of The Nation, in an article that told how he was wounded in Iraq, won a Purple Heart and was then denied all disability and medical benefits. Town's doctor had concluded that his headaches and hearing loss were not caused by the 107-millimeter rocket that knocked him unconscious but by a psychological condition, "personality disorder," a pre-existing illness for which one cannot collect disability pay or receive medical care.

Further investigation by The Nation has uncovered more than a dozen cases like Town's from bases across the country. All of the soldiers interviewed passed the rigorous health screening given recruits before being accepted into the Army. All were deemed physically and psychologically fit in a second screening as well, before being deployed to Iraq, and served honorably there in combat. None of the soldiers interviewed during this eleven-month investigation had a documented history of psychological problems.

Yet after they returned from Iraq wounded and sought treatment, each was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then denied benefits. As in Town's case, Army doctors determined that the soldiers' ailments were pre-existing without interviewing friends, family or fellow soldiers who knew them before they were wounded in combat.

Oh yes, and one more thing: Thanks, Ralph.

One more time

There were those who argued that there was no difference between the two major presidential candidates in 2000, and many of them will continue to argue, after the disappointments of the Obama administration, that there is no meaningful difference between the Obama who runs for reelection in 2012 and whatever troglodyte the Republican Party selects as its candidate.

One of the popular memes these last few years is that elections have consequences, and in a presidential election, one of those consequences is that the president gets to nominate justices to the Supreme Court.

The guy selected in 2000 got to appoint John Roberts, the current Chief Justice, and Samuel Alito, one of Roberts' accomplices. The guy elected in 2008 got to appoint Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Obama's two appointees and Bush's two appointees were on opposite sides of a case this week in which the Bush majority decided that a man who was convicted, sentenced to death, and served fourteen years on death row because of a fraudulent conspiracy to conceal exculpatory evidence carried out by prosecutor Harry Connick, Sr., and attorneys working under him, was not entitled to compensation.

Do you think things might have come out a little differently in this case if Bush hadn't been in the White House to appoint Alito and Roberts?

I sure do.

Thanks, Ralph.