It’s no secret I am not a fan of conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. That does not mean I don’t respect the guy for the millions he has earned milking the political juices from his loyal following. Hell, I don’t even own a radio so I obviously don’t listen much. The “listening” comes from snippets of video clips mostly his enemies play on MSNBC-TV. Usually they are unflattering and outrageous. As a result of being an open-minded guy, I downloaded the...

Screw health care. The national discussion is our racial divide. So let’s discuss the match which ignited the latest fire. Keep in mind not all the facts are in. I’m extremely curious to hear the 911 and police recordings of the Cambridge, Mass., incident. The scene is a quiet residential neighborhood in which renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. returned from a trip and found himself locked out of his house. Someone called police reporting a burglary in progress. The cops...

It pays not to always believe health care providers when they say “no” to paying for services. On Tuesday I lamented my case in which California’s MediCal system because of budget cutbacks no longer paid for my test strips used to monitor my blood glucose which for a diabetic is essential as breathing. Today I struck gold. After 45 minutes plowing through the automated phone tree of Health Net and being placed on hold while the call was transferred to three different departments,...

This just in. Wall Street banks which have paid back federal bailout funds are stockpiling billions of dollars to pay employee bonuses that at the present rate would exceed compensation levels before risky trading plunged the industry into a meltdown last year. It’s business as usual, President Barack Obama said mockingly at his Wednesday night press conference. “With respect to compensation, I’d like to think that people would feel a little remorse and feel embarrassed and would...

Conspiracy theories know no political boundaries. The assassinations of President Lincoln and Kennedy and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are replete with theories still being debated today. But, the current so-called “birther” flap over President Obama boggles rationality. And, therein rests the problem with all conspiracy theorists: They won’t accept factual documentation. In Obama’s case, the wingnuts from the right led by its more vociferous superstars in G. Gordon...

I am shocked to discover this morning I am a victim of the on-going budget cuts in California’s MediCal system. It seems so simple on the surface but in reality is a life-threatening disaster. I am a diabetic low-income senior. My health is dependent on testing my blood glucose levels to determine the dosages of insulin I require to maintain a normal life. This is achieved by pricking blood from a finger tip and applying it to a test strip attached to an electronic monitoring device. As I discovered...

Tens of thousands of California’s poor children, welfare recipients and elderly will lose some if not all healthcare benefits as a result of a budget deal to close a $26.3 billion deficit brokered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislative leaders. Prisoners will go free, property taxes collected by county governments will be snatched by the state and oil drilling will resume off the Santa Barbara coastline. The good news, Schwarzenegger glowed, is no new taxes. The entire legislature...

News flash: Anyone who says the health care bills now in Congress are doomed to failure. Or those who proclaim health reform is on the horizon. I say bunk. I have read portions of the versions of the House and Senate bills until the words became blurred as if viewing the world through cataracts. Frankly, I gave up in despair. I came to the only sane conclusion possible: Wait until the House and Senate bills are voted and sent to conference for reconciliation. Then and only then can they be dissected...

The withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from within Iraqi cities is not going too well. Whether it’s a language translation of the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement or grandstanding by the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is unclear. U.S. commanders are complaining their hands are tied defending themselves from attacks by Shiite militias or Sunni insurgents. Skeptics, both those who opposed the war and those who warned the phased pullout would backfire, are both right,...

As President Obama’s personal popularity sinks to the 50-yard line, his landmark climate change and healthcare bills in deep doo doo, the stimulus bill tied up in bureaucratic knots and his continual flummoxing over Bush Administration torture and secret CIA operations, one thing remains certain. The public has an insatiable thirst for the guy. It ranges from the fanatical extreme right fringe which went ballistic over his elder daughter wearing a T-shirt sporting a 1960s peace symbol that...

If we are to believe U.S. intelligence officials that a plan to train assassination teams to strike Al-Qaeda leaders overseas including allied countries — a plan rejected for the most part and never operational — then I say more power to them. Keep in mind these plans work terrific in movies and Tom Clancy novels but rarely in the real world. The wrinkle is Central Intelligence Agency officials never briefed Congressional leaders at the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, another...

This is without a doubt, swear on a stack of Bibles, the last article I will post on the announced soon-to-be resignation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — until she actually contributes something of value to national politics. This is not a political obituary for she shall return as certainly as Gen. MacArthur promised, a chap she fondly quoted recently. I take Sarah Palin for what she is. A former beauty queen, mother of five children, an ambitious politician in the tiny confines of Wasilla and...

Americans are an impatient lot. They demand instant gratification. That is why sodium-saturated frozen meals are microwaved in minutes and cholesterol-rich fast food restaurants so popular. When Americans apply this mentally imbalanced approach to solving our nation’s economic ills, they demonstrate a side of themselves that is at best naive and worst ignorant. So it comes as no surprise that President Barack Obama or his ghost writers offered The Washington Post an op-ed article the paper...

House committees are expected to introduce their versions of healthcare reform measures Monday. A public option of government-pooled coverage competing with private carriers is included in the consoldated bill that would extend insurance to the estimated 45 million uninsured and underinsured. That in itself will add to the spiraling increase of health costs now reaching $2 trillion annually. Avoiding serious discussion, as far as I can tell, is an industry peer review aimed at lowering costs of unnecessary...

Sorry, PETA, I find this traffic-stopping story from Reuters a riot. UPDATE – A drunken Englishman passes out (pardon the pun) thousands of cash Euros at an airport in Spain that would have caused a riot if he didn’t smell so bad. It reminds us that the world is an intoxicating experience, seen through the glass, darkly. You think I’m kidding? Booze is making a comeback to lure men to go shopping. Newsweek’s Tony Dokoupil reports. Badgers, Englishmen and now the market place...

It seems the Russian office girls, taking a cigarette break, admire Michelle Obama not for her taste in fashion but her interest in gardening. It illustrates the cultural divide between Washington and Paris — where the media goggles over how well she fits into her sheik wardrobe — and Moscow — where wives don’t outshine their husbands. And, on this trip to Moscow where her husband is trying to mend fences with the Russian president and prime minister, she isn’t. On this...

If I were South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, I would stroll down to the store, select a Hallmark card and mail it to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, saying “Thank you, thank you, thank you for getting me off Page One and the cable news networks.” Or, as Maureen Dowd in her Sunday column in The New York Times wrote: “As Alaskans settled in to enjoy holiday salmon bakes and the post-solstice thaw, their governor had a solipsistic meltdown so strange it made Sparky Sanford look like a model...

My first reaction was shock… until reality stepped in. Sarah Palin says she will resign her post as governor of Alaska at the end of July. Nothing this woman does surprises me anymore. It took about a nanosecond for the pundits and second guessers to opine on her future from the cable channels to websites and Twitter. I haven’t a clue what she plans to do, if anything. She’s that flighty. I doubt she will disappear from the frozen tundra. It’s not in her DNA. She worked hard...

On the surface, it is extremely suspicious the New York Times news pages are working in concert with the Obama Administration’s initial steps towards immigration reform: A kinder, gentler approach in stark contrast to those employee raids conducted by the junior George Bush. I’ll use the link to the story and you can decide for yourself. What I do know is that Obama’s approach to sanction and fine employers and deport undocumented workers is the most reasonable one the government...

A rogue oil commodities broker was caught manipulating a spike in world oil prices forcing his company to eat $10 million in losses. The disclosure occurred Tuesday when the price of crude oil reached a year’s high $73.50 a barrel at a time when the U.S. posts its highest demand on gasoline for the summer vacation season. By Thursday oil prices fell to $66.50 a barrel, down almost 10 per cent from Tuesday’s peak. The unauthorized trading took place on the Brent oil market in Europe, one of...

We all get sucker punched by clever advertisements.This one is from Air New Zealand which headlines its latest ad of nude pilots and stewards in body paint in order to get passengers’ attention on safety precautions. Bummer. I demand a refund.

Have you even wondered as I have about the people who make Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Persons” list who are not politicians or household names? I confess it is oftentimes my favorite segment on his nightly show on MSNBC. Tuesday night Olbermann singled out a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy who he said maced and roughly threw to the ground and then handcuffed the hostess of an event at her home where a neighbor complained about loud noises. He made it sound the deputy over-reacted...

United States taxpayers are not happy campers when the subject of bank bailouts are discussed and I’m certain that perception will be bolstered by a story in today’s Washington Post that indicates Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) played a role in a bailout for a bank in which most of his life’s savings are invested. The upshot of the story indicates Inouye and his staff did nothing illegal but certainly pushed the envelope of favoritism on behalf of the senator’s vested interest....

Barring a miracle — I’d say a billion-to-one shot — the California legislature will not pass a budget by its constitutional deadline at midnight tomorrow forcing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pay bills by issuing IOU notes as he has vowed. The state’s Democratic-dominated Assembly late Sunday passed a series of tax fees in an effort to balance the budget’s $24 billion shortfall knowing full well the governor will veto the bill as he did a similar measure last year. And,...

I’m not buying the Republican bromide that passage of a revolutionary energy bill is nothing but a tax increase. Of course it will cost money for the transformation just as my first Apple computer cost $3,300 in the early 1980s and about a third of that in today’s market The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the average American household would pay an additional $175 a year in energy costs by 2020 as a result of the reform bill, while the poorest households would receive rebates...