Jack Murtha who died today was an American patriot. He quit college to join the Marines and fight in Korea. We were fighting the Communists, and he didn’t want to shirk his duty. He did the same thing as an officer, earning two Purple Hearts when America became involved in Vietnam. He bravely and single-mindedly carried on a family tradition of military life going back to the Civil War and the Revolution. And, for 37 years, Jack represented his western Pennsylvania district in the U.S. Congress. He was a close friend and supporter of my old boss, Speaker Tip O’Neill. He was a leader in standing up for the economic interests of our home state of Pennsylvania, and he was always there for the good fight, and he was so much fun to have around, in good times and bad. Jack Murtha was what Tip O’Neill liked to call a street-corner guy, someone who never lost touch with the people who elected him. He loved this country and looked out for its interests. He fought bravely in war and fought just as valiantly against a war in Iraq he believed was not in our country’s interest. Jack was old-school. Let’s see if the new-school types can match him in patriotism and looking out for their people and keeping this country great. For generations, he presided over the Pennsylvania corner in the House of Representatives, you could see him up there, surrounded by the members who looked up to him for leadership, for the inside word on what was coming legislatively and to carry out the gung-ho bread-and-butter American values he was brought up with. My prayers and good wishes are with his wife, Joyce, and the Murtha family, and the thousands of Jack Murtha fans in Johnstown, Altoona, and those hard-working communities out there in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I loved Jack Murtha. God bless him. U.S. Congressman Jack Murtha.

Tweet This Post

But he’d always put Murtha signs out. To the point that he had to tell his local party leaders to go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks when they gave him crap for it.

I think that says what needs said about Congressman John Patrick “Jack” Murtha, Jr., who died today. I think that said uncle identified with him as a fellow Marine and as a fellow bona fide Johnstown-area dude. I think he also knew that Murtha represented his district regardless of what capital consonant came after his name.

You’ll hear from Murtha’s detractors today, about ABSCAM, about some airport, they’ll say he was corrupt and what the hell ever else. But I know that Murtha only came up on my radar after he became a genuine military voice that called tons of shenanigans on Gorge Dubya Boosh’s Dirty Big War. I don’t care what else the man did or didn’t otherwise. He did that. His voice among a few others affected a real horizon change on Iraq. For that and for his service, Murtha was a true American hero.

God bless you, Congressman Murtha.

Tweet This Post

This is a note card.

Note cards are handy tools for public speaking. You can write notes on them that you intend to use while you are speaking in public. Showing up with a few of these can even make people believe that you have thoroughly prepared for your presentation. A speaker with note cards can appear to be collected and can even rely on them as a bit of a crutch.

It can even, in some cases, help the speaker pronounce words correctly.

But all anyone who ever writes anything on her hand ever looks like she’s doing is cheating.

Listen. If a note card like the one above was good enough for President John F. Kennedy…don’t you think it might be okay for you, too?

Tweet This Post

Last evening, one of my former classmates was complaining about the amount of money the federal government has spent on Super Bowl advertising to promote the census. I was tempted to chime in but did not. If I did, I would have to ask the poster and his several assenters: Did you bother to find out exactly how much such advertising cost the federal government?

The fact is that advertising on the Super Bowl this year was a bargain. Rates fell this year from around $3 million per 30 seconds in 2009 to $2.5 to $2.8 million per 30 seconds in 2010. This is to advertise on programming that pulls a 40 rating and a 60 share, reaching 80 to 90 million Americans. That is a bargain.

And it’s a drop in the bucket when you consider the total amount appropriated to promote the census in advertising: $340 million. Which, when you consider the enormous resources that are allocated by the process of the census—which is, by the way, a constitutionally mandated process—is in itself chump change. The census literally determines how trillions of dollars are spent. I think spending $340 million to convince people to sit down with an ink pen and fill it out is worth the dime.

But it’s not worth the fight. It’s just not. These are folks whose minds have been so thoroughly pithed by the likes of Michele Bachmann Turner Overdrive that they view an innocuous and constitutional (see Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3; it’s in there, really) process like the census with partisan suspicion. These are the same people who were shitting themselves because the President wanted to speak to school children. So I am afraid there is no use in laying out facts before them. It is a shame.

Tweet This Post

In Kermit, TX, Anne Mitchell is charged with a third degree felony for blowing the whistle on a doctor she believed to be incompetent who was practicing at the local hospital where she is a nurse supervisor. Ms. Mitchell sent an anonymous letter to the State Medical Board suggesting a review of five cases where she believed the doctor, Rolando Arafiles, Jr., had engaged in “a pattern of improper prescribing and surgical procedures,” according to the New York Times. She has lost her job, cannot get another, and faces prison and fines.

As I have pointed out earlier, the medical profession does not adequately protect the general public from medical incompetence, and prefers to shield its members from outside criticism. This leaves malpractice as the only realistic tool for policing the medical profession. Now we have the full force of the state’s prosecutorial apparatus brought to bear on a woman who believed it was her duty to inform the medical board.

“We are just in disbelief that you could be arrested for doing something that you had been told your whole life you were obligated to do,” Ms. Mitchell said.

That might be true in a rational universe, but there is nothing about the medical profession’s obsession with self protection that is rational. I say we better hang onto that medical malpractice practice a while longer.

Tweet This Post

Just curious.

Tweet This Post

When you’ve got a government regulatory agency, it has to be a government cop on the corporate beat. And it’s got to act like a cop.

Joan Claybrook. Former chief, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (during the Carter administration)

Tweet This Post

Her maiden name is “Pierce.”

Why yes, that does make her a direct descendant of Franklin Pierce, one of the most ineffectual chief executives ever and the only incumbent President EVAR to be denied a re-nomination by his own party—why do you ask?

Tweet This Post

None the less, if he had to go (and I expect President Obama would rather avoid the drama that would accompany not going) it is good that he turned it into his event… a lecture on the need for civility in government discourse, strong words in defense of gay rights. Good for that. Now let me be uncivil.

The President said that we cannot discuss policy if we continue to question the motives of the opposition. In dealing with the GOOP, I am not sure that is true. In particular, the President concluded: “We may disagree about the best way to reform our health-care system, but surely we can agree that no one ought to go broke when they get sick in the richest nation on Earth. We can take different approaches to ending inequality, but surely we can agree on the need to lift our children out of ignorance; to lift our neighbors from poverty. ”

I am fairly certain the GOOP doesn’t give a damn if people go broke because they got sick and I am certain they don’t care about lifting children out of ignorance and neighbors out of poverty. These boys are not their brothers’ keepers. They are the people who saw the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to make money. I am sure their primary interest in Haiti today is development of new resort hotels. They are ruthless money grubbing worshippers at the altar of capitalism. To make their system work best they need lots of people living in ignorance and grinding poverty.

Ignorance is particularly useful to them because educated people can see through their lies. Morons, the unwashed masses I pretend to be writing to all the time, are stupid enough to believe that the Constitution only grants rights to American citizens, that it guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, and the endless string of lies about the current government that cement together what is becoming an effective assault on our future.

If you can keep stupid people living on the edge of poverty you can keep them frightened and malleable. It is no coincidence that the quality of life for the average American middle income earner declined significantly in the Busch years while the percentage of the wealth held by the top two percent got bigger and bigger. It is no coincidence that the GOOP is fighting hard to maintain that trend by standing in the way of healthcare reform and Obama’s new stimulus plans, such as the jobs bill.

The model for the GOOP is the British Empire which sustained itself on the sacrifices of an impoverished underclass that found it better to fight the Empire’s wars than starve to death on the streets of London. The GOOP vision for our future looks more like George Orwell’s 1984 than Augustine’s City on a Hill. We should always keep that in mind when we think their motives don’t count.

Tweet This Post

Canada has reached a tentative deal with the United States to end a dispute over “Buy American” provisions that had strained bilateral ties, the two trading partners announced on Friday.

Under the agreement, which is designed to settle months of wrangling over what Canada saw as U.S. protectionism, both nations will open up parts of their internal markets to the other’s companies.

Washington said it was happy with the deal because U.S. companies will finally gain access to long-closed and potentially lucrative public works contracts in Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories.

In return, Canadian companies will be able to compete for projects in the 37 U.S. states already covered by the World Trade Organization government procurement agreement.

By the way. How about them unemployment numbers. Eh?

Tweet This Post