Kirk Murphy

This morning (12:02 AM) the BBC sez our brave forces have captured teh Taliman second in command who…favors a negotiated end to the …uh, our war.

Oh – and he was picked up in Pakistan – not Afghanistan. No worries: still plenty of compounds full of Afghan kids for our drones to blow up on the road to winning hearts and minds.

Glad we’ve defeated the Taliban again, aren’t you? And Xe, and…?

Oh – now that we read this has been under wraps for a week, we can trust all the other Pentagon/NYT stories – right?

Last night Sen Diane Feinstein (D-Billionaires) announced her last minute secret deal to revoke Federal environmental law and a century of Western water law so that we taxpayers can subsidize a few hundred deadbeat welfare millionaires and one billionaire in California’s Central Valley.

In keeping with her visceral contempt for representative democracy and the citizens she purports to represent, Lord DiFi plans to push through her multi-billion dollar giveaway as a rider on the fast track Senate jobs bill.

Is DiFi’s multibillion scheme to give away thirty billion people’s water to a few hundred deadbeat welfare millionaire and one billionaire OK with Senate Majority Leader and President Obama?

Call them, and find out. But better call soon: the jobs bill – like DiFi’s obscenely wealthy pals – is on a fast track.

Or you can simply roll over, do nothing, and repeat the mantra: “Forget it Jake. It’s the Delta.”

Whatever else Barack Obama may believe, he clearly believes in Death. In Copenhagen, he’ll have the opportunity to kill billions! How can he pass it up? After all, this is a man who loves Death. He’s been piddling around killing off thousands in increments – now that he has the big chance, will he the Audacity to say “Yes, I can”?

By Wednesday night, the WTO meeting was underway; dozens of blocks and thousands of residents and downtown workers had been poisoned with tear gas war gases; the Constitution was for all practical purposes irrelevant. Media said the WTO protests failed.

In the convergence space-turned-infirmary we had a whole lot more people showing brain problems from tear gas war gases. And people coughing up blood. And women with floods of menstrual bleeding…as well as women with profuse menses out of cycle.

And outside a whole lot more sirens and helicopters.

Thursday morning the DAN collective was holding a press conference. They needed medical collective folks there.

After that we’d be marching downtown in defiance of martial law. Barbara Tuchman, eat your heart out: I’ll get to see the Children’s Crusade!

I’m sitting down to write this 10 years to the day after I stood in the dark outside Seattle’s world famous Pike Place Market, watching dozens of uniformed officers gone mad firing round after round of chemical weapons into the Market and the steet outside.

Standing – or more precisely, ducking and weaving – outside the Market, I was could hear my fellow medic Eric’s radio calls from inside the Market. Eric had set up a treatment station inside the Market as the uniformned riot drew near. He was doing what I and dozens of other medics were doing throughout the previous day (and night) on November 30, and what we continued to do Decemember 1. We treated victims of the largest chemical weapons attack upon our own nation in American history.

Ten years ago tonight I stood on Seattle’s streets outside the convention center where the WTO was scheduled to meet, but didn’t: civil society had won the day. That success deserves celebration. And now that corporatist-owned Dems are again choosing to sacrifice our lives for their masters’ profits, the sucess may well deserve emulation.

After five decades of destroying any national government, head of state, or aspiring leader who posed the remotest prospect of standing between the Seven Sisters and those pesky brown people living over the Sisters’ oil, now Langley and the Pentagon see the rewards for their triumphs. As do we.

This morning the NYT reports President Obama’s ready to throw the public option under the insurance companies limousines.

According to The Associated Press, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is suggesting the White House is ready to accept nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run public option in a health overhaul plan.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ms. Sebelius says Mr. Obama still believes there should be choice and competition” in the health insurance market — but that a public option is “not the essential element.”

We activists have years to defeat corporatism: single payer is one front in that very long war. Many of the indigent patients I’ve seen these last years – like many of the other 40 million uninsured Americans – will perish during that long war. With a robust public option this year, most of these patients will survive.

Arnold ran for ofice promising to destroy 4 billion in annual revenue from recent increases in the state’s vehicle license fee. He won and slashed back the fee. Since the 2003 recall, annual lost revenue may have grown to exceed 6 billion.

Net cost in lost revenue: 20 billion to nearly 30 billion.

Size of California’s deficit? 21 billion…up to 40 billion for this and “next” year.

Now that Arnold’s created the crisis, he’s vetoed an oil depletion tax. But he wants to open California to offshore drilling – for $100 million. As a loan. The state would have to pay the $100 million back to Big Oil. They’d get the billions: California gets the spills.

Shock Doctrine‘s up!