BottleOfBlog

The Worst People In The World

I hate to just post things other, better bloggers have already posted.  I mean, what's the point?  You can just go to their websites and get the bloggery goodness right from the tap.  What do you need me for?

But, sometimes, you read things and they're so appalling and you may have nothing original to add, but you, as a human being, really feel an obligation to post it anyway.

This is one of those times.  So, I give you, one of the most dishonest, stupidest, horrendous bullshitters on God's green earth:  Sean Hannity.

It's not bad enough that decent, moral, intelligent Americans have to endure the endless parade of freaks and scumbags, and demented stupid liars who comprise the modern "right" wing in America.

But, to add insult to injury, we, the upright walking mammals, have to endure these cretins blaming us for the horrid, imbecilic things they say.

God have mercy on their eternal souls.  That's all I have to say.  Because I seriously doubt He--or She--is going to think this kind of bullshit is funny.

Rainy Day

NEW YORK -- Hurricane Katrina could cost the insurance industry up to $25 billion in claims, which would make it the costliest storm in the nation's history, according to updated reports Tuesday from risk assessment firms.

AIR Worldwide Corp., a risk modeling firm based in Boston, said its revised projection anticipates insured losses in a range of $17 billion to $25 billion. On Monday, the company said its initial assessments suggested property and casualty losses in a range of $12 billion to $26 billion…

President Bush has declared Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as disaster areas, making residents eligible for federal assistance if they don't have insurance or damages exceed their insurance coverage.

Yes, that’s $25 billion in insured claims.  It doesn’t even begin to cover uninsured or underinsured losses.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the cost of providing food, clothes, healthcare, water, and shelter for a half a million people for who knows how long—weeks, months?

It doesn’t have anything to do with the mind-boggling sums of money state and local and federal agencies are going to have to spend on a million different things.

Twenty five billion is nothing compared to what this is really going to cost.

And who cares?  Whatever it takes, spend it.  Who cares about the money now?

But, at a time like this, you know what would be nice to have?  At a time of catastrophe, you know what would be fantastic to have?

A budget surplus.

At a time like this, when money just doesn’t matter, wouldn’t it be great to have, say, $250 billion dollars sitting around in the United States Treasury that we could just throw at this?  A little something in the bank for a rainy day?

Like that $250 billion surplus Clinton passed on to Bush?  The $250 billion that Bush just inherited and squandered on tax cuts for a record setting number of new millionaires and billionaires?  That $250 billion surplus that Bush foolishly turned into $200 and $300 billion deficits?

Well, maybe the Chinese have more money to lend us.  We can all pay them back later.  Plus interest.

But this is what you get when you put a stupid man like Bush in the White House, a man who never in his privileged life ever had to worry about tomorrow:

You get, of course, a man who never worries about tomorrow.  And never plans for it.  You get a man who’s always unprepared when tomorrow becomes today.

What a disaster this clown is.  And, sure, sure, he didn't create this disaster.  But he's certainly created the circumstances where this awful event goes from horrible to unbelievably horrible.  Like September 11th, he's managed to take a national tragedy and make it worse.

If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed, "personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures", then being George W. Bush is an unbroken series of disasters--college, the Texas Air National Guard, drunken driving, substance abuse, dry wells, bankruptcies, run ins with the law, deficits, Iraq and on and on and on and on...

And frankly I wouldn't care, since he doesn't care.  But when this clown and the rubes, and suckers, and greedy bullshitters, who foisted this lifelong failure on us, force all American life to approximate Bush's life--one disaster after another--it's almost more than I can stand.

And it's more than you can stand.  Whether you know it now or not.

Because unlike the pampered Peter Pan prince, who breaks his toys, gets bored, shrugs the make-believe epaulets on his shoulders and wanders away to find something else he can fuck with, you and I have to clean up the mess.

Nero

Question:  Yesterday, while one of the worst disasters in our nation's history was unfolding, why was the Preznit goofing around happily and playing a guitar?

Answer:  Because he never learned to fiddle.

Distaster Monkey Ignores One More Disaster

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 30 - A day after New Orleans thought it had narrowly escaped the worst of Hurricane Katrina's wrath, water broke through two levees on Tuesday and virtually submerged and isolated the city, causing incalculable destruction and rendering it uninhabitable for weeks to come.

With bridges washed out, highways converted into canals, and power and communications lines left inoperable, government officials ordered everyone still remaining out of the city and began planning for the evacuation of the Superdome, where about 10,000 refugees huddled in increasingly grim conditions, running out of water and food, and with rising water threatening the generators.

So dire was the situation that the Pentagon late in the day ordered six Navy ships and eight Navy maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations. It also planned to fly in Swift boat rescue teams from California...

Swift boat rescue teams?  I wonder if Rove will find some way to accuse them of cowardice and blame the whole disaster on them!

"It looks like Hiroshima is what it looks like," Gov. Haley Barbour said, describing parts of Harrison County, Miss.

And where was the Preznit as the second American Hiroshima took place?  We know where he was during the first one--reading My Pet Goat and then hiding in a NORAD shelter in Nebraska.  Where was he, today, while this disaster was unfolding?

President Bush urged seniors to enroll in a new Medicare prescription drug benefit that becomes available in January. "This is a good deal," he told a group of mostly retirees Monday at the Pueblo El Mirage RV and Golf Resort in the West Valley.

The president looked tan and rested as he played the part of pitchman for the enthusiastic crowd.

He joked frequently and appeared far more relaxed than he was in October...

Looking tan and rested.  On a golf course.  Far more relaxed than he was when he faced a true American enemy--John Kerry.

Though, don't for a second think he doesn't give a shit about America or Americans!  After all:

As the sweep of the devastation became clear on Tuesday, President Bush cut short his monthlong summer vacation and returned to Washington...

It's not every President, in the middle of two wars, a national catastrophe, runaway oil prices, record setting deficits, and impending inflation who would actually cut two days off his five week vacation.  Not all of them would do it.

Just the ones who finally realize how awful their completely apathetic, selfish, sociapathic behavior looks. 

Not to mention how the polls react to it.

 

More Lucky Duckies

WASHINGTON -- Even with a robust economy that was adding jobs last year, the number of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million _ up 1.1 million from 2003 _ according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.

It marks the fourth straight increase in the government's annual poverty measure...

While disappointed, the Bush administration _ which has not seen a decline in poverty numbers since the president took office _ said it was not surprised by the new statistics...

Overall, the nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year. Of the 37 million living below the poverty level, close to a third were children.

The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, during the Clinton administration, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold. Since then, the number of people in poverty has increased steadily from 32.9 million in 2001, when the economy slipped into recession, to 35.9 million in 2003.

There's your Bush boom for you.  Nearly five million more Americans slid into poverty.  One third of them are children, who come from those embryos, Republicans spend so much money and time on saving.

Embryos are worth killing for!  But impoverished children aren't even worth voting for.

They got what they deserved.  Those lazy little bastards.

Well, things are tough all over.  Aren't they?  Isn't that why Bush has fought so hard to lower marginal rates and get rid of the inheritance tax, which only affects the wealthiest one percent of the country?

The wealthy have been suffering just as much as the poor under Bush, haven't they?  And Bush's economic policies have "helped" everyone equally, haven't they?

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – There are more millionaire households in 2004 than ever, and they have increased in number at a record rate year-over-year...

TNS found that there are now a record 8.2 million U.S. households with a net worth of more than $1 million, excluding primary residences. That's a 33 percent increase over the 6.2 million households that met that criteria in 2003.

Oh.  A record number of new millionaires.  Four years of increases in our national poverty.

The Bush Boom.

Worst President Evah!

Rising gas prices and ongoing bloodshed in Iraq continue to take their toll on President Bush, whose standing with the public has sunk to an all-time low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found Bush's job approval rating at 45 percent, down seven points since January and the lowest ever recorded for the president in Post-ABC surveys. Fifty-three percent disapproved of the job Bush is doing.

Good to see the Washington Post bend over backwards to explain it.  Though, it's a bunch of hooey.  Bush's approval ratings were lousy, since the day he lost to Gore, and his disapproval ratings were growing month by month, and they were on their way to a grim slide into a single, hopefully forgettable term.

Before September 11th, the only spikes he had were from mailing out Bill Clinton's surpluss in little $300 checks.

Other than that?  He lost the general election.  And no one much cared for anything he was saying or doing.

Were it not for September 11th, he would have hit the low forties by the end of 2001.

It's not the gasoline.  It's not Iraq.  It's the President who never should have been President.

Americans have never supported his policies.  They supported the Presidency.  In the wake of a national catastophe.

And Bush let them down.  And they're finally remembering why they didn't like the guy in the first place.

Missing: 2 ft., 8 lb., Monkey Wearing Blue Pants

SPRINGDALE, Ohio - The bulletin issued by police in the southwest Ohio town of Springdale describes the subject as two feet tall, weighing eight pounds, clad only in blue pants and prone to sleeping in trees.

Relax!  Apparently, he's coming back to Washington.

Finally.

The Filter

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- More journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Sunday.

I guess that would explain the lack of good news out of Iraq.

Radio, Radio

The ol' Straight Shooter, he's got a face you can trust, on radio:

"Iraqis are working together to build a free nation that contributes to peace and stability in the region, and we will help them succeed," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

He gave no sign of dismay at serious snags in Iraq's democratic process...

In his radio address, Bush expressed only confidence that the problems would be overcome, saying a new democratic constitution "will be a landmark event" in the Mideast...

I'm sure.  We can only hope it's as much as a landmark event as Afghanistan.  The first mission Bush accomplished.  You remember Afghanistan, don't you?  Even if Bush forgot it long ago.  Democracy is going swimmingly in Afghanistan:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Suspected Taliban rebels on Sunday killed a candidate running in next month’s legislative elections, while an attack on a U.S. military convoy wounded three American troops, authorities said...

The assaults come amid a major upsurge in attacks by Taliban-led rebels that have left more than 1,100 people dead in the past six months...

Ullah’s killing brings to four the number of candidates killed in the lead-up to the polls. Four election workers have also been murdered and several election offices have been rocketed.

But democracy is hard.  It's hard.  It's hard work--though nothing to interrupt a five week vacation over!  Things are tough all over, but Bush realizes it's important for him to go on with his life, after all.

And anyway, it sounds like the real hard work in Iraq is already over with!

"Like our own nation's founders over two centuries ago, the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government," [Bush] said. "What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion -- not at the barrel of a gun."

It's just debate and discussion!  Like our Constitutional Convention.  Just like Hamilton and Jefferson:

BAGHDAD, Aug. 26 -- Political violence surged Thursday along many of Iraq's ethnic and sectarian fault lines, while Shiite and Sunni Arab political leaders haggled past a third deadline without reaching accord on a draft constitution.

As the two-day death toll around Iraq reached 100, fighting between two powerful Shiite militias in the southern city of Najaf subsided, with 19 reported dead overall. The clashes Wednesday night and Thursday between the Mahdi Army, loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, and fighters allegedly linked to the government-allied Badr Organization were the deadliest between Iraqi militia forces since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

In Baghdad, 13 Iraqi police officers, 27 Iraqi civilians and an unidentified American security force member were killed when dozens of fighters believed to be former members of Saddam Hussein's security apparatus laid siege to a neighborhood late Wednesday, openly walking the district's streets in black masks and carrying AK-47s and grenade launchers, according to the U.S. military, Iraqi officials and witnesses. East of the capital, the bodies of 36 other men, their identities unknown, were found heaped Thursday near a road leading toward Iran, security officials told news agencies.

Well, maybe like Hamilton and Burr.

No one could possibly call that "at a barrel of a gun"!  Not unless you considered grenade launchers and AK-47s guns.

And let's not forget the eighty or so Americans who have been killed in Iraq this month alone.  It was probably debate and discussion that got them.  Not guns.

But I'm sure none of this is cause for dismay.  I'm sure the Preznit is right to feel only confidence and optimism about winning in Iraq.  After all, as conservative columnist David Brooks writes today:

Andrew Krepinevich is a careful, scholarly man. A graduate of West Point and a retired lieutenant colonel, his book, "The Army and Vietnam," is a classic on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare.

Over the past year or so he's been asking his friends and former colleagues in the military a few simple questions: Which of the several known strategies for fighting insurgents are you guys employing in Iraq? What metrics are you using to measure your progress?

The answers have been disturbing. There is no clear strategy. There are no clear metrics.

But Bush, on the endless summer vacation, takes time off to phone in some sunshine to the American people--we're winning in Iraq!  We're making progress!  Democracy is on the march!

By God, his stirring radio addresses from his vacation hideaway do bring Churchill to mind, in a sick, sorry sort of way:

Never have so few cared so little, nor lied so much, at the cost of so very many.

This one goes out to you, Georgie, our own national radio sweetheart...

Every Day Americans Battle Their "Free" Press, Which Hates Them

It is thoroughly amazing that nearly all the people who dominate our public discourse regarding the law, science,  or politics, or economics have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.  Reading the "pundits" in our "liberal" media, about nearly any given issue, is like reading a Road And Track Magazine edited by a bunch of Amish guys:

In extremely complex and emotional cases, certain juries can sometimes do the rest of us a disservice.  The latest example: a $253-million verdict out of Texas against pharmaceutical giant Merck.  It was the first case to go to trial over the drug Vioxx.  It sets a dangerous precedent.  Not because Merck has clean hands and not because the plaintiff isn’t sympathetic, but it seems the evidence just doesn’t warrant this kind of payout and the jurors’ own comments prove the point...

It seems clear Merck should have to pay.  They ignored potential risks, should have studied the drug more thoroughly and should not be permitted to simply rely on the small print on a label.  Maybe a fine is appropriate.  And anyone who can demonstrate the drug caused harm should be compensated.  But if this jury couldn’t say that the drug was a cause in Mr. Ernst’s death and the FDA can’t even definitively say it should be taken off the market, then how does that translate into a $253-million verdict for one family?

And this guy is apparently a "legal" expert for MSNBC.

He's all over the place.  What exactly is he saying?  He's saying Merck was clearly negligent and put a product on the market that was unsafe for it's intended use.  He's saying the Plaintiff proved this.  But he's saying the Plaintiff didn't prove that Merck's negligence caused the death of the Plaintiff.

And so far, he's fine.  Though I can't for the life of me figure out what that garbage about a fine is all about.  Juries don't hand down fines.  Regulatory agencies hand down fines.  Maybe he's just being lazy and not taking the time to argue that this issue should have been decided by a regulatory agency rather than a jury.

Though, that's pretty stupid, because the fact that Merck sidestepped a regulatory agency, the FDA, to put an unsafe product on the market is the reason that this case was before a jury.  The fine idea is goofy.  The FDA failed to prevent Vioxx from reaching the market.  And the FDA hasn't done a damn thing since people started dropping dead from it.

If it weren't for private litigants bringing suits, none of Merck's negligent behavior would have ever come to light.

Is this joker really saying that its the duty of private litigants to spend their own time and money to prove regulatory violations so that the regulatory agencies which have either ignored or completely failed to notice those violations can impose fines?  It's up to private citizens to investigate federal regulatory violations?

And then not receive any money for it?  Not even a reward to cover their legal costs.  Gee, that's a system that would work well.

Goofy.

But the goofiest thing he says is: "how does that translate into a $253-million verdict for one family?"  Again, the causation point is valid.  If you can't prove causation, you don't get any money.  But this last line is the hallmark of the at least twenty five year corporately sponsored, Republican assault on product liability cases.

We move away from causation--we forget causation altogether--and we appeal to your basest instinct:  envy.  You don't have $253 million.  Why does this one family get $253 million?  Does this one family deserve $253 million?  Doesn't that make you mad?

Which is just stupid.  And it's dishonest.  And, from a "liberal" new organization owned by giant multi-national corporations like GE and Microsoft, it's like taking out a billboard saying, "What You Are About To Read Is Corporately Approved Propaganda.  Please Proceed."

Do you know why that family got $253 million?  Was it to compensate them for their loss? 

No!

The jury awarded more than $250 million in total damages -- $24 million to Carol Ernst for mental anguish and loss of companionship, and $229 million in punitive damages. Ernst's Houston-based lawyer, Mark Lanier, said the punitive-damages figure was based on "the money Merck made and saved by putting off their product label changes."

The jury awarded $24 million to compensate this one family for their loss--and that is something you can debate whether they deserved or not.  Then, the jury handed down a $229 million dollar award in punitive damages.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that the jury, just like MSNBC's legal "expert", determined that Merck clearly should have to pay.  It means that the jury, just like MSNBC's legal "expert", determined that Merck "ignored potential risks, should have studied the drug more thoroughly and should not be permitted to simply rely on the small print on a label."

The jury, just like MSNBC's legal "expert", determined that Merck negligently put an unsafe product on the market.  And should pay for it.

Did the jury think that one family deserved $253 million dollars?  No!

The jury awarded $229 million in punitive damages.  Which are, by definition, to punish Merck.  Punitive damages are the civil litigation equivalent of a regulatory fine, which this clown already says Merck deserves.

Okay.  But why was it so much?  Why does Merck have to pay so darn much money to one family?

Well, it "was based on 'the money Merck made and saved by putting off their product label changes.'"

In other words, the jury basically took away the money Merck made by avoiding making their product safer.

And that sends a message to corporations:  "You aren't going to save money by putting people's lives at risk."  It tells corporations that spending a relatively small amount of money to save people's lives is no more expensive that killing a consumer and then standing before a jury.  With the legal costs.  And the bad publicity.

It tells corporations that it's cheaper to spend the money and put incredibly safe products on the market than it is to kill a few consumers now and then and face their families in court.

Is that the job of courts?  Absolutely!  That's the whole point of punitive damages.  To perform a regulatory function that regulatory agencies either can't or will not do.  And if punitive damages aren't obscenely large, with regard to giant corporations, like McDonald's or like Merck, then they won't work.

If punitive damages aren't huge, then, sorry, bidnesses will just continue to write off your death or the death of your loved ones as the cost of doing bidness.

Let's not forget:

The FDA approved Vioxx for sale in May 1999. By 2004, 20 million Americans had taken the painkiller and its annual sales exceeded $2.5 billion.

Merck had gross sales of $2.5 billion dollars on Vioxx alone.  I have no idea what the profit margin is for Vioxx.  But if it's even a lousy, thin 20%, which is less than retail, then Merck was making $500 million net profit off this drug a year.

How are you going to convince a company that's making $500 million a year in profit on a single product to take reasonable steps so that their product doesn't every now and then kill one its customers?

You're going to fine them?  You're what, going to pass down some $10,000 regulatory fine?  And that will discourage these corporations from unsafe bidness practices that are netting them $500 million a year???

Please.

Five hundred million dollars a year?  These corporations would pay $10,000 a month, plus the occassional successful wrongful death suit, to kill you and yours and not think twice about it.  They'd write it off as the cost of doing bidness.

You don't believe me?  We have nearly two hundred years of history of corporations killing Americans for profit or rendering the land on which Americans live absolutely poisonous.

It's punitive damages, it's "excessive" jury awards to one family that stop Love Canals, and thalidomide, and small exploding automobiles, and cribs that strangle babies.

Punitive damages are supposed to be excessive, expensive, shocking.  And it is not for one family.  It's for all our families.