SCOTUS rules against school strip searches

NYT on a SCOTUS decision dated today.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school's strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal.

The court ruled 8-1 on Thursday that school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding in the rural eastern Arizona town of Safford.

I've been sort of following this case and wondering how it would come out.

Now, I've been strip searched. At my age, it's actually kinda fun. Heh. Lemme 'splain. The more squeamish amongst you might want to skip this part.

Our county jail, "Wayne's World", has a wonderful program of providing inmate working parties to various local outfits - the food bank, recycling center, the Elks Club, and other places. It's free labor for them and a chance for minimum security inmates to get outta the jailhouse for the day. Everybody wins.

The fun starts when the inmates get back to the jail at the end of the day. A deputy is there to make sure no one has brought in any contraband. Everybody strips down. The deputy then has everybody face away from him and bend over and spread 'em. He's looking for stuff like cigarettes and dope, but they've found cell phones and no doubt fire axes. There are inmates who can keester anything.

They searched me that way exactly once. Not only did they quickly realize I was just an old fart who wanted to do his few days without incident and go home, but that I was having way too much fun essentially mooning a cop. Hell yeah I was! You don't get a chance to wink at a cop that way very often! Or let a ripping great fart at him either (I apologized of course, but my shit-eatin' grin might have led them to believe I was less than sincere). I think the cops' union might have gotten involved, something about 'cruel and unusual' or psychological trauma, maybe workplace safety, who knows.

I just told that story for fun, but here's my point:

A strip search in jail is one thing. It's perfectly acceptable, and there's no point in getting uptight about it because you have no choice in the matter anyway. You might not like it, but the cops don't either. It's adults searching adults in a known state-controlled prescribed manner for safety and discipline reasons. If you're shy or think it's degrading, tough shit, that's the way it is. Obey the law or don't get caught and it will never happen to you.

A strip search of a teenage girl in Middle School based on mere accusations from other teenage girls that she might have ibuprofen in her pants is unconscionable on its face. Period. Schools need to keep harmful substances out and have rules about prescription drugs, intended to keep out things like oxycodone, opiates, barbiturates, all the fun medicine cabinet pharmaceuticals that kids like and shouldn't have.

For school officials to interpret the rules against prescription drugs so stringently as to include things that the student might actually need, and then to humiliate a youngster without much reason just because they can is despicable.

Well, now they can't, and kudos to the highest court in the land for recognizing the obvious.

One more thing: 8-1. Who's the '1'? Who d'ya think would go against so predictable a ruling? I guessed it correctly and damn near broke my arm patting myself on the back when I looked up Safford Unified School District v. April Redding, 08-479. Damn, I'm glad I didn't become a lawyer like my parents thought I should and have to read that shit all the time as part of my job. All I ever had to read was repair orders and service manuals, thank you Lord!

By deciding that it is better equipped to decide what behavior should be permitted in schools, the Court has undercut student safety and undermined the authority of school administrators and local officials. Even more troubling, it has done so in a case in which the underlying response by school administrators was reasonable and justified. I cannot join this regrettable decision. I, therefore, respectfully dissent from the Court’s determination that this search violated the Fourth Amendment.

I'll let you go see who it was, but I'll give you a hint: not only was this Justice the worst choice for that bench in history, the terms 'far right' and 'affirmative action hire' are involved.

Also, watch for the wingtards to flap their jaws about 'activist judges' over this. Might happen, might not, but anything that takes power over people away from the 'ruling elite' is obviously the work of commies on the court, or worse, Liberals like Roberts and Alito.

Fun fact ...

From reader, commenter, and blogger (and neighbor ... sorta) Nancy:

At last count, 54 sanctimonious republicans have had affairs since denouncing Clinton's "peccadillos." ...

Those who live in glass houses shouldn't get stoned. Off to work ...

Good Barry ...

Sometimes, Obama, for an incredibly intelligent man, baffles me with the stuff he doesn't get (gay issues, the demand for public healthcare, "preventive detention") but on the stuff he does get, the guy's fantastic:

...

For the President to offer a veto threat, which to my recollection is the first veto threat of his Presidency, over ending the military-industrial complex gravy train is pretty significant. If we don't take the first step and restore the ability to end weapons systems, then the military budget will just grow and grow. Most politicians already consider it magic and unrelated to any other spending, even while they scold about "runaway budget deficits" in the same breath. The jobs argument attempted here is bogus, "weaponized Keynesianism", as Barney Frank called it. Building bridges and roads and a smart energy grid were the kinds of job-creating engines that all the fiscal scolds considered too expensive during the stimulus fight, but suddenly when defense is on the menu, they're all "jobs, baby, jobs." Those Blue Dogs who scream about budgets can now tell everyone why we can afford a plane that the Air Force doesn't need and the manufacturer doesn't even want to make.

The President's taking a small risk here. I can already hear the resurrection of Zell Miller demagoguing in 2012 about "what are we gonna use, spitballs?" But this represents the setting of a marker, one of the first I can remember, that our military budget is not sustainable, and as a first step we have to be able to wind down Cold War-era weapons systems that are completely inapplicable to the present day. Not many people have allowed themselves to publicly make this argument. So it deserves some credit. [my em]

...

We don't need the F-22 "air superiority fighter". We already have air superiority. No one can field an air force against ours and expect it to survive. It's that simple; we own the air, period. The Air Force doesn't need, or want, the plane. We don't need an extra engine for the F-35 "joint strike fighter" - a program designed to keep development and maintenance costs lower. It's all about bringing pork back to home districts. Cutting costs is fine when it comes to health care and other parts of the social safety net, but heaven forbid you deny the Congress their toys. The wing wipers don't want the planes but Congress says they're necessary? I tend to think the AF knows what they want and need more than some blowhards on the Hill.

Digby is correct. We are still fighting the Cold War instead of adapting to the threats we're facing now. We certainly ain't winning in Afghanistan and Iraq is still an ungodly mess; what have we to show for our technical prowess and air superiority? We have enough to turn both places into smoking holes in the ground, yet we're holding on with our fingernails in Afghanistan and they're still blowing up innocents in Baghdad. We're hundreds of years ahead of these people technologically and we've wasted the better part of a decade trying to get the upper hand.

I'm glad the President sees the waste and hand it to him for standing up to the entrenched interests in Congress. In a time when we need every dime we can scrape together, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on a weapons system no one wants is criminal.

We don't have a governor ...

We have a fucking babysitter:

[New York Governor David] Paterson made the threat late Wednesday. He said he intends to be in court at 9 a.m. on Thursday—unless all 62 senators agreed to show up and participate in an emergency legislative session that Paterson has called for 3 p.m. that same day.

...

"This is a farce," said Paterson, visibly angry. "Senators, get to work tomorrow. You’re not going home. You’re not getting paid. And you’re not going to disrespect the people of New York any longer."

...

"What we’re simply doing here is compelling them to get to work," Paterson said of his plans to sue senators. "The people have had enough. I know I have."

...

The most useless governing body ever created by man (the New York State Legislature - the Assembly ain't much better than the Senate) has turned the Empire State into a laughingstock. When the governor has to threaten to dock their pay to get them to do their jobs it's like trying to coerce teenagers to do their homework. Were I the governor, we'd be talking "National Guard" and "firing squads".

My eyes!!!!

Gov. Mark Sanford's emails to Evita Peron his Argentinian mistress have surfaced. As Watertiger said:

...

I'm gouging my eyes out as I write this.

Why Lawrence Still Matters

T.E. Lawrence astride 'Boanerges'
It was either this or Peter O'Toole on a camel

Thom Hartmann

Back on Iyyar 2, 5769 (that's April 26th of this year to most Americans) the most left of Israel's major newspapers, Haaretz, published an article by Amer Oren titled, "Why Lawrence of Arabia is still relevant, from Gaza to Kabul." I resolved to watch the movie, and ordered it from a popular online seller. Last week I caught enough time (it runs over 3 hours) to watch it. Oren was right.

Its critical essence - what provoked Oren to write his piece for Haaretz and led Admiral Eric Olson, the chief of US Special Operations Command in the Middle East to initiate last year "Project Lawrence" - is the story of Lawrence, a British Army officer, who comes to know the culture of the local Arabs so intimately that he is able to lead them in a world-changing uprising and several major battles against the then-massive Turkish Ottoman Empire.

There are a number of subtexts to the movie, and given recent US and British adventures in the region, some that weren't even intended by David Lean and Sam Spiegel, its director and producer. First among these is how the British apparently hadn't learned a thing since the American Revolution about taking on a foreign army that's nationalistic, decentralized, and fights in an unconventional fashion. They also had (have?) never given up their insufferable assumption of absolute cultural superiority relative to virtually everybody but particularly with regard to people who live tribally.

Lawrence got it - so much so that one of his superior officers wonders out loud if he's "gone native" - and it was through this understanding of the Arab culture that he was able to accomplish what he did. The consequences of those accomplishments are still playing out in the region, nearly a century later.

And Lawrence's understanding is what inspired Admiral Olson to tell the House Armed Services Committee this past June that he's now recruiting native Pashtu, Hausa, and Sinhala speakers (among others) for his "Project Lawrence." Olson doesn't intend to repeat the British mistakes, and one hopes that in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq he and his peers have learned something. Two weeks ago in New York I had occasion to talk with one of the Army generals responsible for southern Afghanistan. "We can't kill our way to victory," he said to me, adding that we must both respect their culture and help them build a modern and functional infrastructure. Another military person who watched the movie?

Other subtexts include the madness of the legal mass murder we call war and its effect on those we push into it; Lawrence's homosexuality (and later love of masochism); the importance of hospitality in tribal cultures; and how when cultures clash (particularly violently) those with the poorest technology are most often absorbed or at least dramatically changed by their brush with the more technological.

Shorter: Lawrence promised the Arabs independence in order to get them to help the British fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East in WWI. By all accounts, he meant to keep that promise. Then, war safely won, his superiors fucked him and took over the Middle East for England. Oil and Empire were foremost. It messed Lawrence's head up for the rest of his life.

If Bush had been intellectually capable of getting past My Pet Goat and read Lawrence's Seven Pillars Of Wisdom, perhaps he would have gotten a hint of cultural and historical understanding of the Middle East instead of an imperialistic oilman's view and then perhaps he would not have gotten us into this even worse mess than the Brits got themselves in back then. I know it's a stretch, because he still would have had to have the balls, which he doesn't, to tell Cheney and the neocons to go fuck themselves, which he didn't.

Instead, that ignorant fucking weakling got us in a jam over there that will be with us for generations.

Lawrence only still matters if we can learn from him. It looks like someone finally has, I hope. There's a lot of better places to learn than the movie, but I guess it's a start.

I read SPOW back in school, and that being pretty much the dawn of time, I should read it again. I still have a copy of it. I'm sure its lessons will be more valuable both in terms of what's going on today and the fact that maybe now I'm old enough to understand it.

A few personal words about Lawrence. He was probably the most poetic motorcyclist who ever was. He liked to ride far and fast and captured it beautifully in The Road, an account of a motorcycle ride that will raise goose bumps on anyone who has ever laid down on a gas tank and tried to pull the slide outta the top of the carburetor.

Even though my Royal Enfield ain't a patch on the ass of a Brough Superior (pronounced 'Bruff'), it does have a sort of classic Limey appearance and I named it after Lawrence's rides. He called his bikes 'Boanerges', a biblical reference meaning 'sons of thunder' (it also means 'Any declamatory and vociferous preacher or orator'. Heh.), and since my ride was built in India, I call it 'Boanerges-Jee'. I'd get that painted on it except pinstripers charge by the letter. Maybe reg'lar ol' sign painters aren't so carried away with themselves. I'll have to check on that.

Lawrence's life has fascinated me since my 7th Grade science teacher claimed to have loaned the motorcycle to Lawrence that he got killed on. I have since learned that the rarest Brough of them all is one that Lawrence didn't get killed on.

By the way, since I got the RE I've become interested in India. I actually enjoy talking to tech support guys now. And the guy who owns the sandwich shop downtown. History? Culture? India makes Europe and Persia look like they just got off the turnip truck. So much to learn, so little time...

Huh?

USA Today

Sanford was in Argentina, not hiking on the Appalachian Trail

He will hold a news conference at 2 p.m ET.

This better be good. Ju got some esplainin' to do, Loosey. Heh.

And oh yeah, getcher clothes and stuff off the lawn of the governor's mansion.

Tony Peyser

Maybe I'm wrong but I now do suspect
That in the near future -- without fail --
New slang for being on a bender will be,
"I'm hiking on the Appalachian trail."

I was actually sort of hoping Sanford was involved in "Naked Hiking Day". Laid in a case of bleach.

Update:

Sanford done 'splained it.

The good news: The 'party of family values' ain't gonna have no Sanford/Ensign ticket in '12.

The bad news: None, unless you're the one who already printed the bumperstickers.

Noted Obama admirer lambasts him on civil liberties, secrecy

Glenn Greenwald, obviously a regular reader of the Brain, expands on Fixer's post:

Barack Obama has few, if any, more adoring fans in the world of establishment punditry than New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Back in February, Herbert constructed an entire column around the ultimate Obama fan cheer: he venerated Obama as a "chess master," a "championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike" who "is smart, deft, elegant and subtle." That's what makes Herbert's superb column today -- lambasting Obama for his "unwillingness to end many of the mind-numbing abuses linked to the so-called war on terror and to establish a legal and moral framework designed to prevent those abuses from ever occurring again" -- so significant.

Note that Herbert is not complaining that Obama has failed to move fast enough to fix these problems. Rather, he's exclusively criticizing Obama for Bush-replicating policies, positions and abuses which the administration has affirmatively embraced and aggressively defended. And as Herbert suggests in his last sentence -- in which he argues that Obama's actions are mutually exclusive with the pledge "to get our moral compass back" -- these issues were not ancillary to progressive objections to the Bush presidency but were central to them. As Herbert says: "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House." If a full-fledged Obama admirer like Herbert has the intellectual honesty to acknowledge this and be angry about it, that's a fairly compelling sign of just how extreme this has now become.

There's a lot between those quotes. Go read.

I'm torn. On the one hand, I trust Obama simply because he's everything Bush was not. I want to trust him. I have no doubts whatsoever that Obama is orders of magnitude better than Bush in terms of intellect and engagement. I feel better with him in office and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in a lot of areas.

On the other hand, some of the things he's doing piss me off too, particularly 'preventive detention'. I understand the concept, having been 'preventively detained' a few times so I wouldn't hurt myself or others, but I was always released when I sobered up and walked out of jail with a charge sheet and court date in my pocket. Open-ended years-long preventive detention is a crime Bush committed and I'm appalled that Obama is keeping that policy in place. If he can prove that someone is planning something against us and that detention prevented it, that's one thing, and he has a case in open court and that's OK. Locking someone down on spec is a different matter altogether, an unconstitutional abuse of power worthy of pussy cowards and war criminals like Cheney and Bush. I expected it from them, but not from Obama. How he uses it remains to be seen, but it's wrong. Period.

I hate Bush and Cheney, and the mere fact that they survived each night in office and were able to get up in the morning kept me pissed off anew every morning for years. It was no way for me to live but I survived it and hoped for a new day with Obama.

In large measure we're getting that new day with him, and I genuinely like him and respect him for the most part. I still have high hopes that the U.S. is on the road to recovery with him and I think we're basically on track, but in the areas that hold over Bush policies, he's fuckin' up big time and is a huge disappointment.

Always remember, one 'aw shit' wipes out 10,000 'attaboys'.

S.S. McCain ...

Gord found a great pic of a ship that deserved the name S.S. McCain yesterday so I thought I'd bring back an oldie I found on Gibraltar last year.

The S.S. McCain at anchor.

Obama fail ...

Bob Herbert:

Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the early months of the Obama administration has been its unwillingness to end many of the mind-numbing abuses linked to the so-called war on terror and to establish a legal and moral framework designed to prevent those abuses from ever occurring again.

...

We said this for years during the Bush administration. When the Patriot Act was passed and when Congress gave Bush his "war authorization", we knew those powers would be abused, by Bush and Cheney most certainly, but also by successive Presidents who would use them for their own devices. This has now come to pass.

Obama feels no compunction to abandon the power he has to imprison people unjustly or monitor the communications of law abiding U.S. citizens. We have started down a slippery slope with Bush and it doesn't look like Obama is about to hit the brakes anytime soon.

You realize, if we had a Republican-dominated Congress, those powers would have been legislated away by now. Unlike the Dems, who caved to whatever Bush wanted, the Rethugs would have been the first to cry foul. The Dems, per usual, will not make a fuss and Obama will continue to operate without oversight.

...

It was thought by many that a President Obama would put a stop to the madness, put an end to the Bush administration’s nightmarish approach to national security. But Mr. Obama has shown no inclination to bring even the worst offenders of the Bush years to account, and seems perfectly willing to move ahead in lockstep with the excessive secrecy and some of the most egregious activities of the Bush era.

The new president’s excessively cautious approach to the national security and civil liberties outrages of the Bush administration are unacceptable, and the organizations and individuals committed to fairness, justice and the rule of law — the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many others — should intensify their efforts to get the new administration to do the right thing.

...

And you wonder why he has no plans to investigate Bush administration crimes? He wouldn't be able to take advantage of those 'policies' if their true scope came to light.

Let this be a lesson to all those who ever thought politicians were honorable. Some might be better than others but in the end they're all still politicians. There will be no 'Great Savior' to come along and make everything right and just. If we want real change, it's on us and until we're willing to do what the Iranian people are doing, we'll just get more of the same. Until life becomes hard enough for the majority of Americans (until they have nothing to lose), progressives will suffer many more disappointments and the "American Way" will continue to remain just so much bullshit.

Link thanks to Turkana.

Dudez ...

If I got up and split for 4 days, without telling the Mrs. where I was going or what I was doing, I might as well not bother coming back.

Where's them fuckin' pirates when ya need 'em?

Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press Writer:

SEOUL, South Korea – A North Korean-flagged ship under close watch in Asian waters is believed to be heading toward Myanmar carrying small arms cargo banned under a new U.N. resolution, a South Korean intelligence official said Monday.

A senior U.S. military official told The Associated Press on Friday that a Navy ship, the USS John S. McCain, is relatively close to the North Korean vessel but had no orders to intercept it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Any chance for an armed skirmish between the two ships is low, analysts say, though the North Korean crew is possibly armed with rifles.

"It's still a cargo ship. A cargo ship can't confront a warship," said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

Sure it can! For a minute...

Did they pay that guy for that 'analysis'? Yeesh.

What's all the fuss? The NK ship is just on its regular weapons run from one outlaw dictatorship to another. Oh, that's right, The U.N. finally said it's a no-no. Big whoop. Big toothless whoop.

I think McCain, and no it's not named after him, rather his father and grandfather who actually did good in the Navy, is in the perfect position to observe and report on Kang Nam's unfortunate demise upon encountering a reef.

Go take a look at the NK tub that's causing all the running in circles and screaming and shouting. I've been out on bigger sportfishing boats. McCain could just get up close and make a sharp turn and swamp her.

Update:

Here's the vessel that oughta be named for J.S. McCain III.

Theocrafascism

Of course He does, and I He uses thugs and troops with tear gas and bullets to inform you of My His displeasure should you have the temerity to question Me Him.

When you think of what's going on in Iran, think a little about how close we came to this shit under Bush and his christowhackjobs.

Thanks to YubaNet.

Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex

Robert Parry, links at site.

Indeed, if a public option were to be piggybacked onto the existing Medicare bureaucracy, the chances for savings could be impressive for average Americans and the overall American economy.

Insurance middlemen could be eliminated; investigators who ferret out “preexisting conditions” wouldn’t be needed; doctors could save on administrative costs; the burden on U.S. industry providing health benefits could be reduced; and more money could be freed to cover the nearly 50 million uninsured or for actual doctoring.

According to a New York Times/CBS poll, that point is obvious to 72 percent of the American people who favor “offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.”

It’s also reflected in a study cited by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and other insurance industry defenders saying that 119 million Americans would bolt from their private insurers to the public option if they were given the chance.

To put that figure in perspective, it is about two-thirds of Americans who have private insurance through their employers or as individuals. In other words, the industry's defenders say two of every three customers want out.

Though some analysts doubt the defection rate would reach 119 million, Grassley’s argument is that Americans would so prefer a government-run plan that it would destroy the private insurance industry – and that therefore the public option simply can’t be permitted.

Grassley’s fear of 119 million Americans voting with their pocketbooks against private health insurance represents a remarkable admission of failure by the industry and its backers. It says, in effect, that the industry’s treatment of its customers has been so highhanded over the decades that the industry can only survive if Americans are left with the unappetizing choice of private coverage or no coverage.

Even in the sorry history of special-interest-dominated Washington, it is rare for politicians to so blatantly adopt defense of a private industry over the will of the people.

The "will of the people" comes in a distant second to "special interest money".

Does anyone believe ...

This is a magnanimous gesture?

Under the deal, brokered by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, drug companies agreed to pay half the cost of prescription drugs that fall under the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. Now, Medicare beneficiaries are responsible for paying the full cost of their prescription drugs once they exceed $2,700 per year, up to $6,154 per year.

President Obama welcomed the agreement in a statement Monday.

...

If they're willing to throw away $80bln, they can afford a hundred times that. I'd tell 'em to stuff their money because, like Big Pharma has made huge campaign donations to our senators, this is lobbying money being thrown at us to shut up with regard to the "public option".

...

Analysts say that the drug companies' decision was strategic -- they accepted the payment cuts now in order to gain a seat at the bargaining table and stave off potentially more drastic cuts later.

...

No shit. I got a better idea. How about treating these assholes like the assholes who make cigarettes?

Double standards ...

Outrage:

Iran - pic from here.

Acceptable collateral damage:

Iraq - pic from here.

So why do the neocons believe we have the moral high ground and the right to say or do anything to the Iranians?

Shaddap!

Seems like Son of Shah has come out of the woodwork. Think he sees an opportunity?

...

Like he doesn't have a dog in the fight. Spawn of Shah should forget about any dreams of becoming the next leader of Iran, for the odds are that there are damn few people in Iran interested in being ruled by the offspring of a CIA stooge.

...

Back to your hole, boy.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Americans Saving More
Spending less on clothing, transportation.

Obama Compares Health Care to “Ticking Time Bomb”
Justifies torture of certain key Republicans.

Anything justifies that!

Federal Judge Rejects DOJ Argument in Cheney Case that Future Veeps Would Withhold Info from FBI for Fear of Becoming ‘Fodder for Daily Show’
Strict constructionist says Founding Fathers didn’t watch late night TV.

That's 'strict constructionist' philosophy, all right.

New Research Suggests Orangutans May Be Our Closest Relatives
Promises much livelier Thanksgiving dinners.

You'd have to ask Mrs. G's relatives about that. I've been to forty of their Thanksgiving dinners...

One in Four Mammal Species Faces Extinction
One in forty-six hundred mammal species is responsible.

Japan Unveils Latest Bullet Train
Shown: oops, you missed it.

Single Payer Is Like A Beer Run

It is said that folks should write about what they know. I know about this due to my wonderfully checkered past. Knowing that no metaphor is exact, take from it what you will.

It's Saturday night in the East Rademacher Mountains section of the Mojave Desert. There's an encampment of maybe 150 dirt bike riders and their ladies and kids and dogs. They've been there since morning, some since Friday night. The day has been spent with various groups of friends riding their bikes all over the place. Many hundreds of miles have been covered, mostly to Charlie's Place on the Trona Road, the only bar and burger joint for fifty miles that can be accessed without any of that damned pavement, and back. Many tanks of gas have been burned and all the knobbies have a little less rubber on them. There have been a few spills, maybe one or two that needed a little group attention to get a pickup to haul a broken bike or rider. Bragging rights have been won and lost. Everybody is filthy and tired.

And happy. Life is good.

Business has been attended to. There's a pig and beef and a turkey in the ground over a slow fire for Sunday. Campfires are lit and folks are wending their way from one to another to visit. There's lots of talkin' loud and tellin' lies and laughter. It's party time.

And, due to mass consumption all day, beer, soda, and ice are running low. There's only so much you can put in a pickup. Those pesky motorbikes, the excuse for all this after all, take up a lot of room. There's still plenty of water, but that's for dogs and radiators and washing hands and faces and does not a party make.

What to do, what to do.

It's pretty obvious: go get more beer. The nearest store is in Ridgecrest, forty miles away by paved road, ten by dirt road. They don't deliver.

There's two choices. The first is that everybody goes and gets their own. That would be fifty pickups full of drunk and dirty desert riders in a convoy, fifty sets of headlights coming out of the desert into town in a big cloud of dust. It's just possible that some townie might see this, think it's some sort of invasion, and wake up Barney Fife of the Ridgecrest PD who would go out and have a field day raising some serious revenue for the town. If he didn't get stuffed into the nearest garbage can, that is, which could lead to the involvement of the county sheriffs and Highway Patrol and lead to serious overcrowding of the local jail and tow yards. Not to mention the folks at the camp who not only won't get any beer, but then have to figure out how to get themselves and all their gear back home in time to go to work on Monday.

Even if our happy campers go into town on their own individual schedules, some of them are bound to get picked off by the law, or run off the road and get stuck, or something.

No, this option simply won't do.

The other option is a little harder to coordinate, but it's better for all concerned.

I think you would have trouble finding fifty designated drivers at a shindig like this, but it's almost certain you could find one. I won't go into the statistical probability of finding a sober person who also has a valid driver's license and won't swing with the money at an affair like this, but one such is not out of the question. A low BAC driver is an acceptable substitute. One DUI is better than fifty, in any case.

Driver found, we need an empty pickup with two working headlights, some gas in the tank, four tires with air in them, and a battery that will start the truck for the return trip. A windshield and a valid registration sticker would be nice, but not essential. Done. I've actually seen that combo be pretty hard to round up in the desert in the middle of the night, but mostly I just threw that in as a study of the kind of stuff logistics people have to think about. Heh.

Here's the coordination part: if folks wanta drink, they gotta pay.

A collection is taken up. The driver, with a coupla helpers and a pocketful of cash, wobbles off into the night. The beer run is on.

Some folks won't have much money and some folks will have plenty. Everybody wants something different from the store, but that's just too damn bad. There will be beer and soda and ice, brand names be damned, whatever the store has. And one box of diapers or Depends (I never quite understood the 'Depends' part when I was younger. I do now!) The driver will get what he can get, which will be plenty even if not too much, and everybody will get something to slake their thirst and keep the party going. Some folks will get more than they paid for and some will get less than they paid for. Some folks will contribute money and not need or expect anything, and some won't kick in anything unless they are made to, but will expect a full share or more, and they will be the ones who bitch the loudest if they don't get exactly what they want. There are also people who brought more beer than they could possibly consume and won't share with others and will still want some of the proceeds of the beer run. Such is the nature of life and people.

The point of the beer run is to do the most good for the most people. There are always going to be folks on all the fringes and we have to take care of them, but the point of the exercise is directed squarely at the middle: you pay, you get.

Thank you for wading through this and here's my point about single payer:

Everybody kicks in. Everybody gets health care. The less fuss about who gets the money and who pays it out, the better.

One other thing - I hesitate to use the phrase "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", but nobody in their right mind would call a motorcyclists' beer run socialism! Might be fun ta watch if they did!

Health Care Showdown

Paul Krugman

[...]...voters are ready for major change.

The question now is whether we will nonetheless fail to get that change, because a handful of Democratic senators are still determined to party like it’s 1993.

And yes, I mean Democratic senators. The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the health care debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogans — Government-run health care! Socialism! Europe! — hoping that someone still cares.

Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public.

Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a “deal-breaker.” Why? Because he didn’t think private insurers could compete: “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day.” Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

If politicians were honest, which of course most of them cannot be or their house of cards would collapse in favor of having more truly public-spirited people in office, the answer would be, "Of course not! It's all about obscene profit. It's the American way.". They don't dare, so they talk about 'unfair competition' as opposed to no competition which is the way it is now, ever has been, and must stay as far as they are concerned. If there is, and there must be, a 'public option' that offers quality health care at an affordable price, Americans will jump on it like a duck on a Junebug and poof! goes the health 'insurance' monopoly out of business and good riddance to them.

Big Insh knows that the public option is the precursor of civilized single payer health care and thus their death knell and it scares the livin' shit out of 'em.

They want those 46,000,000 mandatory new customers too. We as taxpayers will be paying for those who can't afford it as well as for ourselves. Big Insh doesn't care as long as they get the money.

And Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota offers a perfectly circular argument: we can’t have the public option, because if we do, health care reform won’t get the votes of senators like him. “In a 60-vote environment,” he says (implicitly rejecting the idea, embraced by President Obama, of bypassing the filibuster if necessary), “you’ve got to attract some Republicans as well as holding virtually all the Democrats together, and that, I don’t believe, is possible with a pure public option.”

Honestly, I don’t know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn’t? If I had to guess, I’d say that what’s really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.

But this fantasy can’t be allowed to stand in the way of giving America the health care reform it needs. This time, the alleged center must not hold.

"Alleged" center is right. In the Senate, there is no Far Left, there's a few Liberals and Progressives, and a huge and unified bought-and-paid-for Far Right aided and abetted by (scare quotes) "Centrist" conservative and bought-and-paid-for Democrats.

The Repugs have defined anybody even slightly to the left of their party line, but still to the right of center, where most of the "Liberals" are, as commie/socialist/European bomb-throwing lefties, and it scares the shit out of 'em.

There is no Center and not likely to be one anytime soon. That would imply bipartisanship and that is not about to happen. Obama and Reid better wise up to that and get the 'public option' in and get it passed any way they can.