Michael Jackson's personal physician, Conrad Murry, has now been found by the coroner's inquest, to be guilty of Homicide, or"Death at the hands of Another" as they refer to it. I remember that term from the Reuben Salazar Inquest in September of 1970 here in the LA area. If you don't know the details, first Murry gives Jackson Valium at 1:30 in the morning, and then every hour or hour and a half after that, as sleep eludes Michael Jackson, he piles on other drugs such as Ativan and muscle relaxents, often giving repeat doses of the same drug. But Michael still could not fall asleep and finally Jackson asks for his "milk", which is what he refers to Prophinol as, which is that drug administered by hospital drop and must be constantly monitered all the time. The doctor administers Prophinol and then leaves the patient to take a bathroom break. When he returns the patient is now unconscious. Of course he doesn't call the relavant authorities. Instead he makes phone calls and gives Jackson another drug to try and counteract what he's had. The thing is that Murry lied about all of this. He failed to tell any of the medical authorities this vital information. This right there is a criminal act. The charge under California law will be at least Manslaughter, and lately we out here have redefined what "murder" is, so don't count that charge out. This will be another of these cases which dominate the headlines. And we know how with any case in the Entertainment industry, that defendants seem to live a charmed life, and convictions are hard to come by.
Ben Vernanke has been reappointed to head the Federal Reserve. Some say this was done now to take people's attention off the fact that the projected deficet over ten years will now be nine trillion over the expected seven trillion. Some may say "why quibble over a couple trillion"? It is believed that had Vernanke NOT been reappointed this would have caused the stock markets to fall percipitously. People are arguing over which "letter" best fits this recession. Will it be a "U" recession, a "V" recession - or worse yet, an "L" recession, where the recovery just doesn't come? I don't even know if there is any evidence that the head of the Fed even knows what he is doing at this point. At the "bottom" of the 1982 recession late in the year, the stock market was already making new highs in anticipation. We are nowhere near that now being nearly five hundred points from the top of the market on the D J I. If they continue to cut back things like Social Security checks, this will further depress the "demand" of this economy.
Thom Hartman suggests that if you really want to see action in this economy, to cut the retirement age to 55 and that way all those people would be taken out of the labor market and this would force the unemployment rate down and wages up. In terms of this Health Care situation, what President Obama needs to do is to get on TV and declare war on the Insurance Companies and H M O's. Point out that everyone opposing a publicly funded health plan is acting knowingly or unknowingly as a schill for the insurance companies. Do not let let a handfull of greedy insurance companies dictate what health care will consist of in this country. What we need to do is re-frame the whole debate and take charge of what terms we define our opposition with. The Republicans are pros at this. Instead we have Ronald Reagan speeches from 1962 making the rounds where he uses the phrase "The government wants to Impose "socialized medicine" on a US Population that is perfectly happy with the status quo. They say that having a member of your family mugged will instantly change anyone from a liberal to a conservative. May I suggest that an unforseen medical crisis in a family can just as quickly change a complacent conservative to an agitated, activist liberal. But why wait for disaster to happen before you change? It's pointed out that we in the US ALREADY spend MORE MONEY on health care than anywhere else in the world, but we get a whole lot less for it. But all conservatives see is this bullshit with this guy going to Canadian health care clinics and not getting treatment for tennis elbow, or whatever it is he claims to have.
As you know we are coming up on the four year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. But there is a case to be made that President Bush's entire response was designed for "social engineering" to rid the New Orleans metropolitin area of Black people. First of all Bush did not shorten his vacation to tend to the hurricane. But on August 27th. apparently before the hurricane even struck, Bush already declared certain counties a disaster area but it was areas in Northern and Western Louisiana but NOT ANY COUNTY most likely to be affected by the hurricane. It would seem that Bush's policy was marked, "For Whites Only". You have heard the investives uttered against the Black and the poor people in New Orleans by Bush's apologists of the far right. And with each passing day they move further and further to the right as new more extreme voices such as Glen Beck rise to prominence. I don't know of any other natural disaster where the victins were referred to as "shiftless" and "lazy". The idea is to clear all the problem Black people out of the city to "Turn New Orleans Red" and to create a new Republican base in the area with construction projects that are designed to cater to the rich.
The CIA tortures people. In previous times the CIA was known as an information gathering agency. We all know about the world of spies and counter spies from the movies. But Bush's CIA had a whole array of torture techniques they employed. They water boarded the same prisoner over a hundred times. They staged mock exicutions. They threatened prisoners with the deaths of their loved ones. In one case they turned on a power drill and aimed it at a guy's head. There is the usual heat and cold and sleep deprivation. Now it seems Eric Holder is going to appoint a special prosecutor to handle some of this stuff, but the juristiction he has will be narrowly prescribed, with little or no lattitude to "expand" any investigations. I am among the many people who feels there is all too much "continuity" between the Bush and Obama administrations. Finding real evidence of change is a lot harder than you would think.
And now for our "Piracy Moment". The following "admission" might as well have been taken from secret ecclesiastical documents in the Pope's vault. But it is taken from that other great "treaties" of our time, Mein Kamph. Here is goes: All this [self deception] was inspired by the principle--[technically] true in itself--that in the Big Lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily [subconsciously] corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the Primitive Simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the BIG lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell Small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths (Selah), and they would not believe that others could have the Impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will Still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be SOME OTHER EXPLANATION. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. (Selah)
Finally, in soap land they are pulling a major bullshitting job on us. They are leading us to believe that Bo and Hope's little daughter was gunned to death at the end of today's episode by that rogue cop confirming Hope's worse fears, hiding behind green tarp. Of course they can do "dishonest" editing when they want to, and come tomorrow's episode you're going to find that there's a whole lot of stuff they left out of the story deliberately to mislead you. All I can say to the NBC producers is, "Just be glad that Annie Wilkes is only a fictional character". They have had totally "un-believable" plot twists before such as the utterly looney circumstances of John and Marlena Black's exits from the show.
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