Being a Victim Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

In the maelstrom of claims and counter-claims arising out of Roman Polanski's recent arrest, a recurring theme amongst his supporters goes like this:

He was once a victim of the Holocaust. He escaped from the Krakow ghetto as a child, his father survived Mauthausen, and his mother died at Auschwitz. He lived off the kindness of strangers. He managed to get out of communist Poland. His wife, unborn child, and friends were brutally murdered by a cult, and the details were laid bare in a media circus. How many more ordeals must he endure? He's been traumatized by life, and now he has had to live in exile in Europe for 30 years. Hasn't he suffered enough? He's an old, old man! Even the victim doesn't want him to be extradited!

Even those I respect have taken his side. Jeralyn Merritt at Talk Left cites judicial misconduct as a reason for leaving him in peace, and Paul Campos reveals that people like Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, and Martin Scorsese have come to his aid. The Washington Post, normally a running apologia for conservative flapdoodle, thinks the tormenting of Polanski is simply outrageous. Anne Appelbaum asks us to look into our hearts and consider: Isn't it understandable that a man whose early years were characterized by horror and the constant need to escape would run like a rabbit under circumstances he himself created by forcing anal and vaginal penetration on a crying child who repeatedly told him “no” and was already intimidated by his power and influence from the get-go?  Silly me, she forgot to mention the penetration part, and the crying. And the plying with Quaaludes and champagne, and the set-up of being dropped off by her mother and left there, alone. But I digress.

For some, like Merritt, the case turns on possible corruption issues, which call the entire original plea bargain into question. For them, it's wrong to haul Polanski back because he was legally railroaded in the first place, but they have no problem trivializing the rape he committed to strengthen the argument. For others, Polanski's body of work and life in exile as a rich and pampered infant terrible seem sufficient to grant him pardon. But underlying all their arguments is one unwavering tenet: “The poor man was a victim in the past. Let's not victimize him further.”

Look, if there was malfeasance, it seriously harms the prosecution's case, and the state needs to get its house in order. But it doesn't make Polanski a fucking angel, and painting him as a pitiful victim taints the good names of those who have made him a cause celebre. In a country where 18 year olds are jailed and labeled sexual predators for having consensual sex with their 15 year old girlfriends, Polanski's treatment by the court pales into pure coddling, so I'm not going to weep in the garden over this. But the the thing I have the most trouble with is the pass that people seem willing to give him because he was subject to early horrors, as though experiencing pain makes one incapable of giving it. And it's not just the Polanski case.

People trying to dodge responsibility for their own atrocities have learned this game all too well. Israel, for example, reliably exonerates itself whenever attacked for its occupation and theft of Palestinian land by raising the spectre of the Holocaust, a ghost that never fails to spook. Anyone who dares criticize their current inhumanity is roundly excoriated for attacking a people once so persecuted, and in case the Holocaust doesn't end it, they'll remind you that they were decimated in ancient Spain, and driven from place to place across Europe over the centuries, as if each and every one of them were there for the experience. Who stops to wonder what any of that has to do with those who are alive today and their behavior towards others? Despite the fact that they move through the world exercising unprecedented power compared to their ancestors, many continue to summon the demon of past horrors as if it were a defense for committing them. Jews who point out this contradiction are abused unmercifully as self-hating or worse; Gentiles are simply dismissed as anti-Semites and war criminals. And because Polanski is Jewish, many who support him soil themselves with these arguments to excuse behavior for which there simply is no excuse.

But there are other examples. Reginald Denny suffered a horrendous attack at the hands of brutal rioters, leaving him with brain damage and physical limitations for the rest of his life, but the defense leaned heavily on poverty and racism. Despite video footage identifying the accused as the attackers, the most severe charges were thrown out, and most went free. Suggesting that such a horror can be mitigated by a defense of racism proclaims to the skies that that victims simply cannot be victimizers, and paints millions of non-violent African-Americans who have also shared the institutional terrors of racism as just as likely to go off at any opportunistic moment. In Iraq, Shiites who suffered for generations under the boot heel of a Sunni-dominated government have, since our invasion, graphically demonstrated how well they learned the lessons of atrocity. Should anyone raise objections, there will be plenty who can justify it with history. And of course, even today we victorious American citizens deny to our First Nations the same ancient claim to land that we legitimize when it is made by Israel.

To bring us full circle back to the Polanski case, let's imagine that he had actually been a poor, unimportant, unlovely man whose background trauma was a series of childhood rapes he'd suffered at the hands of his uncle. Those who have been molested may be at risk to become molesters themselves. But when was the last time you heard that raised as a successful defense in a child rape case? Ruthless American observers scream themselves hoarse for revenge in such cases, and no amount of sad story will soften their hearts. Yet Polanski draws demands for clemency dependent in part on the terrible circumstances of his childhood and early life.

We continue to see the world through the lens of our wishfulness, instead of as it truly is. Can any of us ever expect justice under these circumstances?

The Smaller the Man, the Bigger the Dick

So Trent Franks, a Republican drama queen from Arizona, is all worked up about Obama as a "threat to humanity":

"Obama's first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers' money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries....A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can't do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity."

Never mind the blather, nor the outre suggestion from a real live elected government official that Obama is a genocidal madman.  No, it's that one phrase that caught my eye:  can't see the image of God in these little fellow human beings.  Gee, that sounds almost...Eastern, in its embrace of the Godhead-in-life, doesn't it?
Well, here's a little peek at just how "pro-life" Franks really is:

• (Voted to) ban gun registration and; trigger lock law in Washington DC. (Mar 2007)
• (Voted to) allow firearms in National Parks. (Feb 2008)
• (Voted to) apply concealed carry permit to all other states where legal. (Feb 2009) 
• Voted NO on Veto override to extend SCHIP to cover 6M more kids. (Jan 2008)
• Voted NO on adding 2 to 4 million children to SCHIP eligibility. (Oct 2007) 
• Voted NO on investigating Bush impeachment for lying about Iraq. (Jun 2008)
• Voted NO on redeploying US troops out of Iraq starting in 90 days. (May 2007)
• Voted YES on declaring Iraq part of War on Terror with no exit date. (Jun 2006)
• Voted YES on approving removal of Saddam and valiant service of US troops. (Mar 2004) 

You see, people like Franks, who like to bawl all over your sleeve till it's sopping wet about the sanctity of life and the sacredness of the unborn, don't give a good goddam about the children they murder with their heartless warmongering, or the ones who die because they have no way to pay for medical care or because the whole damned country has a sick and mindless obsession with weapons of death.  Using taxpayers' money to kill children overseas is more than acceptable, so long as those children have already been born, you see.

And yet people like this have the gorge to accuse good and decent human beings of the very life-hating that they themselves engage in every day.  It would be laughable, if it wasn't so dangerous.  How much more of  this nonsense from people like Franks, or this yutz, (UPDATE: Newsmax pulled the column, but you can still see the cache page here)  must we endure before real tragedy unfolds?

And why do so many of them always seem to come out of Arizona, for Chrissake?

They Never Learn If They Don't Pay The Price

So Jon Kyl wants to have hisself a war!:

"At a certain point, talking (to the Iranians) is counterproductive rather than productive because time is not on our side," he said, adding later that "the carrot approach does not work with these people."

So true.  Which is why we should say "Screw the Republicans", and  ram through reconciliation legislation on health insurance reform as soon as possible.

As for Kyl, he can lead the charge to Persia.  We'll check in on you there next year, Jon.  Good luck with that.

I Like To Be in America

Bonnie, Shawn, and Bruce:



You got a name for this group?"

How about "Pocket Dogs Anonymous"?

Meanwhile, I was hankering after this. Most excellent snark:



Bernstein and Sondheim just kick ass. In highlighting the tension between two cultures, they meld them seamlessly, and create a delightful new art form...just like America always has on its best days.

The Priests of Amen-Reagan

Each week Charles Pierce demonstrates again that he is one of the most eloquent proponents of compassion, logic, and creative obscenity in the journalistic world.  Ending a particularly excellent rant on how the Republican party used racism to shoehorn itself into power, he's un-inclined to let the not-insane off easy, just because they woke up and began to smell the dead elephant in the room:

"Now that the national Republican party is solely the province of meathead politicians and radio maniacs, there are "sensible" conservatives who are alarmed by what they see. It should be agreed upon in our politics that these people drift into the wilderness for a while and muse upon where their movement has led them. But the first thing they all should do is apologize to the nation for choosing to take a course 45 years ago in opposition to the transcendant moral issue of America. They prospered through bigotry, and then through a deft ability to package it, and they made the ensuing four decades immeasurably crueler as a result.There's not enough sackcloth in the world for these clowns."

Mmeanwhile, Rick Perlstein, in an interview with Greg Marx at the Columbia Journalism Review, pisses in the Washington Post's punchbowl, while explaining how the current attack on ACORN, supported by nothing more than the Right's bald-faced lies, has been so effective:

"RP: The job of a newspaper is to tell the truth without fear or favor, whether that truth ends up advantaging conservatives, or liberals, or Zoroastrians or Masons.
GM: Do you find anything legitimate in the idea that trying to incorporate conservative perspectives could bring a paper closer to the truth than it might otherwise be?
RP: Sure, of course. But what does this ACORN story have to do with conservative perspectives?
Everything has to be understood in historical context. Unless you grasp the history of conservatives attempting to appeal to newspaper editors’ guilt about being liberal—which has been around since Spiro Agnew—then you can’t tell these kinds of stories, because all that is part of the story. And unless you look at the repeated pattern of smear-driven narratives in presidency after presidency—which turn out, in the end, not to implicate anyone—then you’re not telling the story...
GM: I think what’s being expressed is a sort of felt need to compensate for the perceived fact that journalists don’t see the world through the same prism as members of the conservative movement do.
RP: I would say that journalists’ job is not to see the world through the same prism as the conservative movement, or a different prism than the conservative movement. It is to tell the truth without fear of favor. And if the truth makes conservatives look bad, devil take the hindmost. And if it makes liberals look bad, devil take the hindmost. It’s just too easy—and if you read my work, it’s been too easy for four decades—for conservatives to exploit their ability to create a sense that the media are biased in favor of liberalism in order to manipulate the media, in order to get the stories they want told told in the way they want. It’s a strategy—you can see the memos in which people lay it out. And unless that strategy is reported on, and treated as part of the story, then you are not reporting on what’s actually happening in the real world."

All of which is music to the ears of those of us who fell down the rabbit hole back in 1980.  And all of which might make one damned bit of difference if anyone in this doofus Pantomime we mistake for a national dialogue was willing to humble him- or herself before the truth.  Voltaire advised, "When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation." Sadly, the high priests of journalism stopped giving that long ago.

Cost Containment Is Inherent in Single-Payer

At Counterpunch, David Lindorff makes a persuasive argument for the inherent cost savings of a Medicare-for-all plan:

"Medicaid, the program that pays for medical care for the poor, and is funded by federal and state taxes, would be eliminated, saving $400 billion a year. 

Veterans’ care, currently running at $100 billion a year, would be eliminated.

Perhaps two-thirds of the $300 billion a year spent by federal, state and local governments to reimburse hospitals for so-called “charity care” for treatment of people who have no insurance but don’t qualify for Medicaid, would be eliminated.

Individuals and employers would no longer have to pay for private insurance.

Several hundred billion dollars currently spent on paperwork by private insurers would be eliminated.

Car insurance would be cheaper as there would no longer have to be coverage for medical bills.

Federal, state and local governments would no longer have to pay to insure public employees.

In short, if every person were on Medicare, the overall savings would overwhelm the small increase in the Medicare payroll tax of 5.8%."

I would add that federal incentives to make going into primary care more attractive than specialties, and requiring service in under-served areas in exchange for those incentives, might go a long way to  keeping costs down, as well as injecting a much-needed correction into the expanding gentrification of our health care continuum.

Light Bulb Screwing Fail

How many white men does it take to screw up a state budget?  If you're in Pennsylvania, exactly as many as you were stupid enough to elect to the House and Senate.  I suppose this could have been predicted in the wake of the anticlimax that was the budget resolution (BTW, just check out that paradigm of diversity in the accompanying photo):

"Work continued Tuesday on drafting the many pieces of legislation needed for passage of the 2009-10 state budget.

Meanwhile, opposition to aspects of the $27.9 billion budget deal struck Friday is popping up, as it often does after an agreement on a budget framework and before the legislation is written."

Meanwhile, thousands of people and families whose only crime has been to have worked for or needing the services of a non-profit reliant on state funding have gone without lifelines for months, while these geezers think about making a final vote in a couple weeks.

October 2 is when it's going down, I'll wager, and it isn't going to be pretty.  Next year we'll be back at square one, and the Republicans who made this mess in the first place will be crowing about Democratic failure.  The good voters of PA will buy it, of course, and put in some political hack like Tom Corbett who will proceed to raise taxes like Rendell wanted to do anyway, only a year too late, and we'll all suffer the more for it.

It's time to eliminate this legislature and replace it with something that works.

Swine With Flu

One can only hope:

"Capitol alert for H1N1 outbreak; senators and staff to get masks

Senate officials are holding internal planning exercises this week to prepare for a swine flu outbreak that could hobble congressional offices."

Apparently they're under the illusion that we would know the difference if they stopped showing up for work:

"Some have expressed concern for members who have a full workload this fall, saying that if they are infected it may interfere with their ability to attend committee hearings or even vote because doing so could spread the infection."

Land o' Goshen!  Imagine committee meetings without Darrell Issa's trademark snark.  How would anything get done?

Plan B For Inner Space

Plan B, the contraceptive that can be taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, is now available in the greater Philadelphia area.  And no, contrary to the anti-contraception crowd, it is NOT an "abortion pill".  To find pharmacies that carry it, you can go here, but call first to make sure it's in stock.  No prescription needed.

The Ineffable Wisdom of the Anti-Czarist Proletariat

This anti-czar nonsense is being fed by a Congress of no-nothings intent on using every lame-brained hue and cry coming down the pike, no matter how transparently moronic, as a means of waylaying any useful work Obama might otherwise get done. Like passing a decent environmental spending bill, which has lately been hijacked by the Klown Kar Kommune as People's Exhibit #1 for drawing the line on this "affront to the Constitution", as scholar Lamar Alexander put it.  Mark Abramson, over at Government Executive.com, gives a sensible explanation of what the targets really are:

"The czar phenomenon is reflected in the rising number of White House special assistants for "x, y and z," as well as special envoys, special representatives and special advisers at the State Department. While there has long been a statutory czar at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, for example, recent appointments have followed suit. To name a few, Steve Rattner was named lead adviser on auto industry issues -- better known as the car czar. Nancy-Ann DeParle was appointed counselor to the president and director of the White House Office of Health Reform -- aka health czar. And on Friday, the president announced a new White House cyber czar would be named to work on the threat to national security from hackers or terrorists.

While the term "czar" is getting ubiquitous, these positions are a far cry from the czarist Russia image. Today's government czars lack such dictatorial authority. It is more correct to call them collaborators, since their role is to bring together people from different agencies, sectors and nations. These jobs are nonhierarchical and have no direct control over anyone. Modern-day czars must instead use persuasive, partnership skills."

Well, that's sure to scare the hell out of the righteous, I guess.  Or the brain-dead.  Because as the loyal opposition has proven by its actions of the last 8 months, we can't be having any of that there damned ol' consensus, now.   Abramson goes on:

"Government czars are designated problem-solvers who are consciously placed outside the traditional bureaucracy, giving them several advantages in getting their job done.

For starters, they aren't bogged down with managing a large organization...

Designated problem-solvers can focus exclusively on one set of issues until they are resolved. George Mitchell, appointed special envoy for Middle East peace, and Richard Holbrooke, as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, are prime examples...

Government czars have the ability to reach across boundaries to work with the public and nonprofit sectors, state and local governments, and even other nations."

Of course, presidents going back to Nixon appointed titular "czars", and Dubya had over 30, a fact that the Right  never even raised an eyebrow at while he was illegally listening to their cocktail chatter and ripping habeas corpus out of their laws.  But this means nothing to those blinded by the Right.  Leave it to the Luddites and cranks to see it as yet another conspiracy to wrest our guns and butter away from us.  You can bet MacCain won't be having it; he's lining up with Alexander on this, and while he's at it, he's putting the kibosh on comunnistic enterprises like improving water quality for people in Illinois and cutting wastewater and drinking water infrastructure funding for rural and Alaskan native villages.  Good deal, Mac.  And while you're at it, why not add an amendment to make those damned kids get off your lawn.

Update:  I almost forgot this gem in Abramson's comments:

"It seems like a bad idea to have individuals that are not overseen by our elected officials."

and this:

"It's concerning that the "czars" only report to the President and are not accountable to anyone else!"

 And of course, this, which I swear to you that I did not make up:

"The use off Czar which takes us back to a mid-evil time doesn't sound like progress. Czars were also the name used to address the Sultons of time past. I think its a ploy to get the minds of the people off a true democracy and embrace the easter ideas as well as their religion. Look at the Czars and who they were and what they did. And you'll be glad they aren't honored any more. They were Horrable dictators. I think Obama I a Video gamer and doesn't understand what he's headed for or who's leading him. He's been deceived and hasn't made an intellegent puposefull decession since he took office. His affiliation with the Ratcal Wright who thinks he's a minister has damaged his ability to think. He about as smart as Kerry and Edwards if you know what I mean. How do people like that even get on the Bar let alone become learders."

Setting aside the troubling easter ideas that Obama has foisted off on us in this untimely season (but thank God not during mid-evil times), we know we certainly wouldn't care to have anyone in government who was not overseen by our elected officials---officials like, say, the President who appointed them in the first place.  Then, on the other hand, we wouldn't want people in government who are only accountable to the President---people like the Secretaries of the Cabinet.

Methinks these folks aren't worried about the form of government they already have.  They just want a whole NEW form, one that more closely resembles the authoritarian Daddy-figure in their nightmares, one that will sit them down, shut them up, waste their liberal siblings in a satisfactory manner when they step out of line, and lay down  a suppressing line of fire on any scary-looking strangers that dare wander by.  Yeesh.  We're definitely ready for The Road.

The Clown Car Is Never Full Enough

In The Wall Street Journal, of all places, Thomas Frank reflects on how the Ridiculous Right has turned the concepts of freedom and tyranny on their heads.  It's a crazy-making world to live in, especially for those who engage in independent thought and logical deduction, but at least we have Frank, among a few others, to remind us we aren't mad.  He sums it all up nicely:

"Today, of course, we know that the right's tyranny-fears were nonsense. Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN.

Even such pits of statism as Britain and Canada remain free societies, generally speaking, despite having gone skipping blithely down the universal-health-care road to serfdom decades ago.

For the sort of people who gathered on the Mall last weekend, however, I doubt that such observations would matter in the least. Their conception of freedom soars on by a force all its own, carried aloft on the wings of pure abstract reasoning: Government intervention equals tyranny. Liberalism is forever a form of despotism-in-waiting.
The reality of misgovernment, meanwhile, is not something you can grasp simply by donning a tricorn hat and musing on the majesty of Lady Liberty. It requires, among other things, close attention to the following irony: That many of the most destructive and even corrupt policies of the past few decades were engineered by exactly the sort of people who claim to be motivated by freedom and liberty. Our friends on the Mall no doubt imagine themselves as guiltless accusers, but if they really want to understand how our country got to this sorry state, they need to take a long hard look in the mirror."

 I think I'll pull out my old Ouija board and see what Orwell is thinking.

The Media Must Be Trembling in Their Stamford Loafers

Over at the NY Times, Tobin Harshaw is having a field day examining the ACORN fallout and the angst some in the media may be feeling about being "scooped" by a couple of kids playing dress-up and parlaying their particularly unconvincing drag into a so-what Allan Funt piece with the co-operation of a few dimbulbs.  For some reason I hesitate to anticipate that this will be the end of mainstream media as we know it. If this is the worst the fringe right can come up with to prove the rot at the core of liberal philosphy, I think we can all sleep tight tonight.  But it certainly gave our Congress something new to posture about, and hey, only a million or so poor people will be hurt, so it's not like it did any harm, eh?  This was my comment on the Opinionator website:

"So have you asked yourself, during this gleeful tirade, “Why ACORN, if the goal is uncovering wrongdoing amongst private groups getting public funds?”

Because this is truly small fry, toss-it-back-in-the-water stuff. The amount of funding, compared to where much taxpayer money goes, is paltry. Huge corporations engaging in criminal conspiracies, in-your-face ripoffs and outright murder and rape (Goldman-Sachs, AIG, Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater for starters) not only have not been held to account, but continue to siphon billions off the public tit with impunity. So why all the pearl-clutching about a few boneheads making bad decisions out of an organization of thousands?

Oh, silly me…the faces of ACORN are poor and black and the goal of the group is to help the weak. That makes them easy to grind into the dust. Those others? Well, they have powerful white men running them, don’t they? And they pull the strings in Congress, just as they always have.

The fact that the mainstream media failed to “uncover” what was hardly worth a couple paragraphs at the back of Section B is not an embarrassment to them. Rather, it’s an embarrassment to the whole country that we can get so worked up about this, while we once again beat up the poor and venerate the growing plutocracy that is our government."

  Feh.

What IS Affordability?

So now attention is being been paid to the Senate Finance Committee memo linked to in The New Republic by Jon Cohn. In 4 mildly-worded pages, it lays out a fantasist's idea of health insurance affordability that only cossetted, in-the-tank boneheads like Max Baucus and his ilk (which is to say, your average well-insured legislator) could find “affordable”. The maximum premium cap laid out in this plan is 13.9% of income. Bear this in mind for later.

But the best thing about it is that it begins to quantify what has heretofore been merely a slogan. What does affordability mean?

There has been no secret about the model on which these changes would be crafted; it's the Massachusetts Mess, and a simple exercise worked out on its convenient Commonwealth Connector website offers anyone who wants it, the opportunity to be a Bay Stater for a moment. A moment, I'd add, that once past, you will wake from in sweaty terror, clinging in sheer relief to the knowledge that you are free from that nightmare, for the nonce at least. Let's take a look at what the plan offers to an older couple not yet ready for Medicare, making a decent but not excessive living of about $86,000 per year.

First, we know the couple will not be eligible for Commonwealth Care, which is basically a public option, because it is only open to couples making less than $43,716 per year. We also know, from using the handy “affordability tool”, that our couple makes $1000 per year too much for subsidies, and so is considered fair game for any insurance plan offered. (Better hope your income doesn't vary from year to year, or the headaches won't be the kind your prescription drug plan can fix.) So let's go straight to the private insurers.

The plan offers 3 levels: bronze, silver, and gold, just like Olympic medals. See that? Don't you already feel like a winner? First, be aware that out of pocket spending in all plans is limited, to a mere $10,000 per year. Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one, eh?

Let's examine the highest and lowest cost plans offered. First, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care:

$960.12 per month, or $11,521.44 per year. 13% of total income.

What do we get for this princely sum? Well, first, the deductible: $3500. Then:

Doctor visits: $25 copay for up to 3 medical care office visits per individual (or 6 per family); the next visits are subject to the deductible; then 20% co-insurance thereafter.

ER visits: $250 (watch those kitchen accidents!)

Hospital stays: Deductible first, then 20% co-insurance

Prescription drugs: Separate deductible of $500, then $15 for generics, 50% co-pay all others

In a bad year, if our couple should have to use up their deductible, the total cost including premiums would be $21,521.44, or 25% of total income. And that doesn't even include the co-pays, drugs, or other spending, which will raise that percentage much higher.

For the highest cost, leave it to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts:

$2,293.73 per month, or $27,524.76 per year. 32% of total income.

Ah, but here's the diff—NO deductibles. None. Nada. Nil. The co-pays are rare and much more reasonable, and involve no nasty surprise balloon payments:

Doctor visits: $15 co-pay (no limits on visits)

ER visits: $100

Hospital stays: $100

Prescription drugs: $10/$25/$45

In a bad year our couple will not pay much more than their premium payments, or $27,524.76 per year. 32% of total income. In other words, the same amount that they paid out in premiums, not counting a few small co-pays that, unlike the "cheap" plan, will not add up to anything worth sweating.

The difference between costs of the plans in a worst case scenario year is about $6000. But the problem is that with those hospital and drug co-pays in the “cheap” plan, a serious illness or accident could easily end up bankrupting or impoverishing a family, while that $6000 will be mostly all the family with the expensive plan will have to eat. Another safety valve, that of preventive care, also gets cocked by the “cheap” plan. The family that takes it out gets raked over the coals by premiums, and finds the co-pays and hoops so onerous and difficult that it may forgo treatments altogether. So those who go for the lowest cost end up feeding the corporate beast with little security to show for it, and are 13% poorer for the privilege.

But don't take my word for it. Public Citizen looked at the real-life situations of Mass citizens this past February, who had very little good to say about it. People are still falling through coverage gaps, still finding themselves unable to access care, worse off with less money to spend as the insurance companies rake in profits from their captive market. This is not the model for national health care. This was an experiment, and experiments are done to learn from mistakes.

Let's learn from this one.

...And Fat, Bloated Merchant Banks

Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. Read along here. Sing along here.

Part 1:



and 2:

Whocouldanode? (apologies to Calculated Risk)

Reasons not to buy into the bailout here (anything by Roubini, who was one of the few voices in the wilderness all along, is recommended) and here (Yves Smith has plenty of good stuff and links to others).

While everyone on Capitol Hill has been pissing themselves over Paulsen's and Bernanke's "revelation" this week, my husband and I have been recalling many a kitchen conversation over the last 4 years during which we berated Greenspan for stoking the housing bubble and for egging on the consumer to implode with debt ("take out ARMs!"), while the "free-market" priests and witch doctors gleefully built their pyramid schemes under the fond gaze of the least regulating government since Grover Cleveland. Not being one to hesitate to use a bullhorn on the deck of the Titanic to proclaim "I told you so", I thought I'd re-print a couple posts from the summer of 2005. All the country seemed on fire with excitement then. The journalists were praising the skyrocketing housing market to the skies. Toxic debts were piling up and being hidden in snazzy new vehicles, and the variety of immoral and should-have-been-illegal mortgage packages were mutating and breeding like viruses. People couldn't spend enough, what with all the credit card offers spilling over the transom each day. Home equity loans were spinning like well-oiled machines. Meantime, I'm looking at my paycheck, which had been stagnant for over 3 years by then, and looking at my daughter, and husband, and friends, who had been in and out of UC (some are still on it or getting by with under-the-table work), and I'm wondering just where sellers are getting all these people to buy houses I can't afford. The median income was around $50,000 yr., yet the median house price was over $250,000. The numbers just didn't make sense. When housing prices are no longer tied to people's income, the only way anyone can get into a house is by using the ledgerdemain so helpfully created for us by Greenspan's and Paulsen's friends. We saw that the rocket ride was unsustainable, and we also saw that once housing prices started to decline, people who paid outrageous prices would be stuck upside-down in houses not worth the money they paid, let alone housing that could earn them a profit at sale. As I said, we saw all this years ago, and waited for the plane to fly into the building.

Well, now it has. And Mssrs. Paulsen and Bernanke and all the other oracles of the market either never saw it coming, in which case we'd be insane to trust them with $700 billion, or they were lying to us about it all along, in which case we'd be insane to trust them with $700 billion.


Housing, Housing, Everywhere, And Not A Buck To Spend
July 25, 2005

What does a seller do when customers can no longer afford to buy a product, but the product still sits on the shelf, needing to be moved? Say, the odd house?
Would cutting the price sound too unlikely?

A lot of hard-nosed economists and real estate experts have pooh-poohed the idea of a housing bubble, and The Oracle of Nuthin' Much hasn't been able to characterize the current madness as more than "froth". The likelihood of the floor collapsing from under the housing market has been hard for many to imagine, mostly based on the idea that a bubble will burst only if there are no more buyers to be found, although there are folks cautioning that economic problems could loom with or without a drop in prices. And then the news came down: the housing market has porked up in front of our eyes like a fat man drowning his sorrows in Cheetos and Haagen Daaz:

"The nation's roaring housing market set its second record in three months as sales of existing homes climbed at an annual rate of 4.4 percent in June, to 7.33 million, according to a report released today.
Low mortgage rates and strong demand drove the frenetic sales activity, which far exceeded analysts' expectations. Median prices rose at their highest pace in almost 25 years, up 14.7 percent from June 2004, to a record $219,000. Average sales prices climbed 9.4 percent, to $268,000."

Gleefully, we read that the median price of a home nationally has gone up over 40% in 3 years, and despite this, people are falling all over themselves to take out mortgage applications at an historic rate, at historically low interest. The fact that they increasingly take chances on "creative" financing that more closely resembles a carny con game isn't given much white space. And the connect between long-term interest rates, that ultimately determine mortgage rates, and the decision by China to let the value of the yuan rise, is glanced at but not really examined. Besides opening the door to higher mortgage rates at a time when the cost of housing has gone astronomical, it could also lead to higher cost of living across the board, including energy, cars, and all those cheap-ass goods lining the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target that we've gotten so addicted to. Don't even think about that trip to Europe. The exchange was bad enough before, but already the Euro and pound have risen in response to China's news. And what with the minimum credit card payments going up, there will be less and less discretionary income, made worse by the fact that people already fail to save anything worth mentioning. But you'd never know, from the tone of this article and scores like it making the rounds, that the average American wasn't making a couple hundred thousand a year and casting around in heart-breaking desperation for someplace to spend all that lucre.

That is, unless you paid attention. The bottom line is that, even in these delusional times, you have to be able to come up with the money, or a reasonable facsimile, before you can buy a house.

People in sweaty markets have been playing one end against the other, utilizing creative methods of buying property that, in a saner time and place, they wouldn't have touched with hazmat equiment. But the scent of blood is in the air, and the old tricks aren't enough anymore. Lack of affordable housing has finally started to affect the middle class, and when they can no longer afford to buy housing, all the hot condos and yupscale gated communities in the world aren't going to help the vultures running this show. Let's take a look at what we're seeing now, and what it bodes for the future.

From a December 9, 2004 story in WaPo on the sitch in the D.C. area, one of the worst for overpriced housing:

"The region's home prices are rising faster than its wages, worsening the affordable housing crunch, especially for low- and moderate-income workers such as parking attendants and firefighters, according to a report released yesterday by the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Urban Institute...The region's wages rose 9% on average from 2000 to 2002...but median home prices went up 37% during that time."

We've seen the impact of this before, where the very police paid to protect a community are unable to live there---the "coolie effect", where the hoi-polloi, with their embarassing social awkwardness and inability to afford tasteful furnishings, are blessedly banished unseen to another quarter when the need for them is over. But by their commutes ye shall know them:

"(the new economy) is not housing workers close to their jobs. That leads to lengthy commutes and less time at home for employees, the report said, as well as worsening congestion and pollution that could make the area less attractive to prospective employers..."

So in one of those reverses of fortune so beloved by ironists, a long commute, much like driving large cars in the 70's during the oil crisis, may soon become the hallmark of the less-affluent, rether than its opposite. Add to this the fact that people who do opt for the big plunge into debt are spending so much of their income on their mortgages (often more than 50%) that they can't even afford the simplest pleasures, and more and more of their assets turn out to be merely paper illusions in a creditor's shell game.

"The report recommended that localities promote dense development, which is less controversial than it once was, and require that affordable units be built in the most popular housing markets..."

That will make life more attractive and livable: cramming more and more of the working class into more and more crowded living conditions, while the upper crust gets to slink off to their landscape-challenged developments and bloated McMansions. They think we have problems with agression, crime, and quality of life issues now? And if that isn't enough to divide us, there's this:

"(the report said)recommendations will be difficult to implement because they require people to "reach across lines of race, class and political jurisdiction."

Right. In our "classless" society, about the only institution less integrated than the local church is the local neighborhood. Yet these are the recommendations of Fannie Mae, that government bastion of probity and trustworthiness.

Over a week ago, Jill Barton reported on the dismal fortunes ahead for working people in another overheated market, Florida:

"The red-hot housing market in booming cities across the country has made the dream of owning a home out of reach, not only for low-income families but also for white-collar professionals...
Real estate experts warn that housing prices in many markets are too quickly outpacing the incomes of most workers...
In California, the situation has long been the worst: Only 17 percent of households could afford a home with a median price tag in April,...By May, the median home price in California climbed to $522,590 -- more than double the price in most other states. To buy the typical home with monthly payments of $3,067, a California family would need to earn about $122,700 to qualify for a conventional loan.
The average family in Florida earns nearly $44,000, which fell 26 percent short of the amount needed to finance a median-priced home last year....
(Nationally) ...the typical household earns about $56,323, enough to buy a home costing $250,900 and 133 percent of what's needed to afford the median-priced home of $188,800..."

So to be able to afford these insane costs, people are ready to impoverish themselves or take chances that their lives will hold no nasty surprises like accidents, illness, or other unforseen impacts on their incomes:

"Buyers are choosing (interest-only loans,) adjustable-rate mortgages that keep payments low for a few months to a few years, or 40-year mortgages that allow them to stretch payments over an additional 10 years."

And in the St. Petersberg Times, they report:

"The double whammy of soaring home prices and low-cost housing being replaced by high-end condominiums is slamming the door on the dream of homeownership for many Tampa Bay area residents. It isn't just low-income residents who are being priced out of the market; increasingly, middle-income families are struggling to find an affordable place to live.
...average home prices in Florida have risen 70 percent since 1999, reaching a median sales price last year of $218,600, while the median wage was only $25,670...Developers are snatching up mobile home parks and aging apartment complexes - places that provided affordable shelter for those of limited means - and replacing them with expensive townhomes and condominiums. Displaced residents are struggling to find any other place to live.
...as modest neighborhoods are replaced and property values rise, housing within the reach of working people like teachers, police officers and employees in the tourist industry will disappear..."

And here is the coup de gras:

"Unless the problem is resolved, bankruptcies and homelessness are real possibilities for far too many Floridians."

And not just in Florida.


As Flies To Wanton Boys, Are We To The Gods (Pop Music Lyrics Edition)
June 10, 2005
.
"Lord, if you won't take care of us,
Won't you please please let us be?"
--Randy Newman, God's Song

The Oracle of Nuthin' Much speaks:

"Over the past year, the pace of economic activity in the United States has alternately paused and quickened. The most recent data support the view that the soft readings on the economy observed in the early spring were not presaging a more-serious slowdown in the pace of activity. Consumer spending firmed again, and indicators of business investment became somewhat more upbeat. Nonetheless, policymakers confront many of the same imbalances and uncertainties that were apparent a year ago."

Translation:
That's life, that's what all the people say.
You're riding high in April,
Shot down in May
But I know I'm gonna change that tune,
When I'm back on top, back on top in June.

--Frank Sinatra, That's Life

Or, for those of us less poetically inclined, who knows what tomorrow may bring? Not the Geezer-in-Residence, though you'd never know it by the genuflections the press makes in his direction every time he shows his face in a quasi-official capacity and babbles some incomprehensibly contradictory bushwa. He goes on to assure us, as he has more recently, that while a housing bubble is unlooked for, a bit of froth on the old cappucino can probably be expected. Or maybe not. In fact, who really knows? Not him--his job is to sit back and inhale the incense from the offerings we light to him every time the market gets a little jittery. So, what other pearls of cluelessness does the Oracle grace us with?

"Excluding a large but apparently transitory surge in bonuses and the proceeds of stock option exercises late last year, overall hourly labor compensation has exhibited few signs of acceleration. Thus, the rise in underlying unit labor costs has been mainly the result of the slower growth of output per hour. At the same time, evidence of increased pricing power can be gleaned from the profit margins of nonfinancial businesses, which have continued to press higher even outside the energy sector. Whether that rise in unit costs will feed into the core price level or will be absorbed by a fall in profit margins remains an open question."

You'd never know that these were human beings whose lives he so blithely stuffs into such bloodless econ-numbnuts babble. In other words, excluding some fat cats' golden parachutes, wages didn't go up, and where the cost of employing the peons rose, it wasn't because they were paid more, but because the lazy slobs slacked off. After squeezing the working man and woman out of a raise, and hiking retail and wholesale costs to consumers, it's still a crapshoot as to whether it will all even out or whether business will come out on top. And he gets paid for this. But let's turn our attention to that perennial favorite, the housing market:

"It appears that a substantial part of the acceleration in turnover reflects the purchase of second homes--either for investment or vacation purposes. Transactions in second homes, of course, are not restrained by the same forces that restrict the purchases or sales of primary residences--an individual can sell without having to move. This suggests that speculative activity may have had a greater role in generating the recent price increases than it has customarily had in the past.
The apparent froth in housing markets may have spilled over into mortgage markets. The dramatic increase in the prevalence of interest-only loans, as well as the introduction of other relatively exotic forms of adjustable-rate mortgages, are developments of particular concern. To be sure, these financing vehicles have their appropriate uses. But to the extent that some households may be employing these instruments to purchase a home that would otherwise be unaffordable, their use is beginning to add to the pressures in the marketplace."

People are speculating on houses, and artificially raising purchase prices. They can't afford them. Who knows what may happen if they have to sell and can't get back what they invested? Long-term interest rates have stayed low though he keeps raising short-terms. Lawdy, me, whatever could be the matter? He later slips the possiblility of large-scale bankruptcies in there and then glides right past it as if someone broke wind at the luncheon and the only polite thing to do is to pretend you didn't hear it. He ends with this cryptic statement:

"...despite some of the risks that I have highlighted, the U.S. economy seems to be on a reasonably firm footing, and underlying inflation remains contained...Nonetheless, the Committee will respond to changes in economic prospects as needed to fulfill its obligation to maintain price stability."

Yes, I'm so fucking reassured...watching the price of ticky-tacky cheeseboxes spiral sky-high while dime-a-dozen 3rd tier lawyers and marketing managers cream themselves over their latest acquisitions of preening McMansions and Jurassic SUVs. Meanwhile, this dementia victim is still selling the mythology of the Bush economy.

Please, God, send a miracle. Or lacking that, at least someone who isn't nearly brain-dead.

The Evils of Regulation, Vindicated

Thank you, Ronald Reagan, for your refusal to live in the real world. Thank you, Alan Greespan, for sleeping through your job. Thank you, free-market Bacchae, for your blind eviscerations of the delicate regulatory structures on which our economic system depended. And thank you, George Bush, for once again breaking the toy Daddy gave you. Faith in the ideology of greed has been vindicated. The result of your undimmed decades of predation shines forth radiantly in the new sepulchre of our future, fashioned so hastily and so late by people who never gave two good goddamns about the people being ground down by those predations all these long, wasted years gone by. Hope your golden years are better than this:

Just for Laughs, Redux

I'm beyond articulation after reading this over at Greenwald's site:

"Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

... There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place,(President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild Bruce) Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.

Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested."

Thank God we have government pre-cogs to keep us safe from crimethink. Okay, so we don't have a First Amendment anymore...but at least they let us keep our guns. We can't let them take those away, because nothing can protect our rights as citizens like a couple semi-assault rifles up against a Pentagon bunker buster.

What Do Liberals Stand For?

Thinking about things since the Democratic Convention broke up, made me re-visit my old post on the 5 Basic Principles of Liberalism.

Just for Laughs

If you haven't yet been to the wake for murder victims Peaceable Assembly and the Right to Petition for Redress of Grievances, you'd better hurry. Services will be held soon with the burial immediately following:

"They had been persuaded...(to) conclude their protest in what the event organizers called the Free Speech Zone. This was a cage between the security zone and the public zone in which protesters were invited to demonstrate their concerns to the gathered delegates of the Democratic Party.

... I ended up standing next to a lanky, graying reporter whose security badge indicated he was from USA Today. I asked him if anyone had ever used the Free Speech Zone. He didn’t think so. But he had heard that the final location of the Zone was the result of considerable wrangling. The original location was almost completely inaccessible, and local activists had managed to ensure that the new location would be at least somewhat more visible.

This may have been the case, but the new location did not seem to be much of an improvement. I asked several volunteers if they knew where it was located, and none of them did. I finally found it myself by following some riot police to the edge of the security zone.

The Free Speech Zone, it turned out, looked liked the caged-in playground of a 1970’s-era housing project. It was made of the same kind of mesh barriers as the rest of the perimeter, only the barriers were much taller—maybe ten feet—and they had been doubled into parallel walls about four feet apart, like the twin battlements atop a medieval castle. To the right of this cage, which was about the size of three tennis courts, was a large gate, currently sealed. On one side were two dozen riot police, quite relaxed. On the other, just barely in view, the marchers. No one was in the cage. I asked one of the officers what was going on, and he said they refused to enter.

... A volunteer driving a trash cart paused to consider the situation. His youth and shaggy demeanor suggested that he might be on the side of anarchy and/or peace, but in fact he was disdainful. He looked at the meandering crowd and said, “All of them should go out and try making some money and then do something.” Then he drove off.

The protesters, for their part, seemed completely defeated. Someone had set up a microphone at a podium inside the cage and the protesters were invited inside to make speeches. I tried to listen, but I was kept so far back by the police that I couldn’t make out any of the words. The tone of the speeches became rambling, though, and at one point someone launched into a poor take on “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”

Things were falling apart."

Yes, as they have been ever since the Southern Strategy turned the nation into a loosely-affiliated motley of tribes smug and secure in their new, improved, "color-blind" segregationism.

Now some people will say that this is only social evolution, that this is the age of the internet, and that marching thing is SO 1960s. But even a half million e-mails will never have the power of a half million warm bodies showing up to demand accountability from the Geezer-in-Chief. If you don't think Martin Luther King's people didn't have Nixon shaking in his shoes, you weren't there.



Until we can get pissed enough to get off our asses, we will continue to be herded into cattle pens miles from any potentially embarrassing encounter with the assholes who run our lives into the ground. Samuel Johnson wrote: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Does this mean we must continue to watch things spiral down into disaster until our situation becomes sufficiently dire to concentrate our minds? We are a nation of grasshoppers, not ants--and we seldom do anything until its already too late. So laugh at the protesters, if you think they're hopeless, naieve, simple. Go ahead, why not? The creatures who circumscribe your lives are laughing at you, too, and their laughter puts poison in your water and takes the future away from your children. It's a fine joke.

Let's Define the Meaning of Life, Shall We?

The Old Gray Mare's Seelye today begins a fairly meaningless piece on Ye Olde Mavericke with this charming dissonance in the GOP platform:

"ST. PAUL — The Republican Party platform this year will reassert the party’s opposition to abortion. And again it will not allow for exceptions in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, even though Senator John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee, has long called for such exceptions."

I will say that, to her credit, she avoids using the loathesome Orwellism "pro-life", and leaves it to one of the Ministry of Truthiness harpies to trot it out:

"Connie Mackey, a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, said: “It is out of the platform. We were told early on that the platform is going to be pro-life and that any differences the senator has with it are his own.”"

Tell me, Connie, how does killing the mother AND the fetus just to keep the woman from having an abortion add up to being on the side of life? Or is it that "life", as utilized by social reactionaries, references some sort of carbon-based creature the rest of us can't see?

And speaking of the Ministry of Truth, I wonder how things are going over there.

Tibet Screams

Once again, Tibet bleeds, and what do we hear from that saviour of the oppressed, the champion of freedom-loving peoples everywhere, the hero of faith-based faith? You can scour the news reports (few as they are) and see nary a mention of the old geezer.

FRATTO: We believe Beijing needs to respect Tibetan culture; they need to respect multi-ethnicity in their society. We regret the tensions between ethnic groups and Beijing. The President has said consistently that Beijing needs to have a dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

Q Ethnic groups in Beijing?

MR. FRATTO: And Beijing, so between --

Q Ethnic groups and Beijing.

MR. FRATTO: Right.

Q Has there been any contact between the U.S. government and China about this?

MR. FRATTO: I'm not aware -- not that I've heard since we took off.

Yes, that's got them shaking in their boots. "Got any comments on Tibet?" "Yeah, it's a real shame." "Hey, look, a campaign slur!" And like the Olympics committee of 1939, the one in charge of the upcoming Beijing games is throwing up its hands and claiming there's nothing it can do. From the serene safety of a tropical paradise, we get this stellar soundbite of empathy:

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, rejected calls for a boycott of the Games to protest the crackdown.
“We believe that the boycott doesn’t solve anything,” he said Saturday on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, The Associated Press reported. “On the contrary. It is penalizing innocent athletes and it is stopping the organization from something that definitely is worthwhile organizing.”

That's the same thing they said when Hitler hosted. And they even suggested back then, as they are doing now, that carrying on with the games might make some tiny change for the better. Well, you remember how well that worked out.

Crimson and Codpiece

The sick-of-it-all video. Wave your hands in the air like you don't care. Then have a stiff drink and lay off the news for at least 2 weeks. I dare you.

For the New Year

One of my favorites..no real video, just music. Thanks to the goodly soul who posted this:

Don't Look for the Cage, It's Everywhere

Suicidal women.

Naked deaf people.

Sleeping men.

A man walking away from a cop during a traffic stop.

Is there anyone so innocuous that they aren't potential targets for our taser-happy thin blue line? Innocuous or not, any encounter we have with the police these days seems to have the potential of scaring the bejeesus out of our heavily-armed home guard, and if they get jumpy, the tasers might come out. And if the tasers come out, you might join the 275 people who have died from tasers in the U.S. since their use began in 2001 (ah, that halcyon year!) Well, who would have thought they'd have gone and died on us? It was just a little 50,000 volt tap! Here's what Amnesty International's briefing on tasers, submitted recently to the Justice Department, has to say about those who die:

"AI’s records show that most of those who died were shocked more than once and 92 were subjected to between 3 and 21 shocks. One man was shocked repeatedly while in handcuffs in cycles lasting 19, 12 and 10 seconds; another man died after being shocked for 57 continuous seconds. AI said that the ability to prolong the electrical cycle beyond five seconds, for as long as the officer keeps his or her finger depressed on the trigger, may dangerously increase stress levels, and that “the psychological and physiological effects of prolonged or repeated shocks requires urgent review by relevant independent experts”.

AI further stated: “The degree of tolerable risk involving Tasers, as with all weapons and restraint devices, must be weighed against the threat posed. It is self-evident that Tasers are less injurious than firearms where officers are confronted with a serious threat that could escalate to deadly force. However, the vast majority of people who have died after being struck by Tasers have been unarmed men who did not pose a threat of death or serious injury when they were electro-shocked. In many cases, they did not appear to have posed any significant threat at all”.

Of 291 reported deaths, AI has so far identified only 25 individuals who were reportedly armed with any sort of weapon when they were electro-shocked; such weapons did not include firearms."

They also point to a troubling trend that indicates the increased use of Tasers in unnecessary situations may be the result of simply having the option of what is perceived as a quick, easy, non-lethal method to handle any situation, no matter how slight:

"AI expressed concern that many US police departments are using Tasers as a routine force option to subdue non-compliant or disturbed individuals who are not a serious risk. Such cases included children as young as nine. Such usage appears to contravene international standards which require that police should use force only when “strictly necessary”, in proportion to the threat posed."

Here are your tax dollars at work. First up, a little sadismo:


And next, some straight-out ego-tripping:


Before you go out next time for a drive, or even just go to bed, you may want to sew up a nice shirt and pants out of Thor Shield. It's likely to become the new American uniform.

War is Over if You Want It