U.S. worst in preventable death rate

Of the 19 leading (whatever that means) industrialized nations, the France ranks the best, and U.S. ranks worst in the rate of preventable deaths, with a death rate equal to 1.69 x that in France. Published yesterday by, for example, ABC, Reuters, and UPI.

Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us

Making information disappear. 2007 version. 2006 version.

Truth hurts, so it seems.

Bush Administration Subjects of Criminal Probes

Wow, it's a New Era in Government. Bush Administration Officials Indicted, Convicted, Pled Guilty, Resigned due to Investigation, Pending Investigation of Allegations of Impropriety, Nomination Failed Due to Scandal, Under Investigation but Still In Office: listed.

Our Undemocratic Constitution

On the December 21 episode of his Journal, Bill Moyers interviewed Sanford Levinson, whose most recent book is Our Undemocratic Constitution. We find ourselves decrying the degree to which the United States is undemocratic. It turns out, it was never intended to be a democracy. Rather, our founders of the United States of America deliberately and extensively devised strategies to isolate its government from its people. Would we imagine that the word "democracy" would be found in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution? It's not. We talk about spreading democracy around the world, yet our own government is explicitly designed otherwise. For starters, the veto gives the president the power to override congress 95% of the time. The electoral college! And the Senate! Very interesting to grasp the implications of how this most undemocratic of institutions can block anything the House of Representatives does. There is a transcript as well as a video at Bill Moyers's site.

The Christmas Story

Today I stumbled onto a particularly coherent explanation of the the origin of the Christmas story. It's in the form of a 33 minute video. I have not seen Parts 2 & 3 of the same series, which appear to be polemics on "911 Truth", and on "History of the Federal Reserve", respectively. I think the Part 1 linked above can stand alone as a good piece of scholarship.

The piece feels a little too pat, simplistic, at wrapping up the origins of Chrisianity. My gut feel is that the brief survey of the historians like Josephus is more or less veridical; that the resonance of the attributes of Jesus with those of Horus and Mithra seems convincing; and that the broad basis in astrology, though surprisingly explanatory of many core Christian themes, might be overstated. But this stuff should be the starting point for any serious consideration of what Christianity is about.

Bush Administration Scandals.

On December 6, we mentioned that Hugh at Netrootsmass had compiled a list of 284 Bush Administration scandals. Now it's 15 days and 8 scandals later. You've got your give-aways to lobbyists; the Administration's assertion of the right to kidnap British citizens; its assertion of States Secrets privilege to keep the purpose of Jack Abramoff's White House visits secret; the destruction of video tapes documenting use of torture; the underfunding of Social Security disability payments; the attempt to put the JAGs under the control of political appointees; the hidden costs of the Iraq occupation; the failure of the Justice Department to participate in the matter of Jamie Leigh Jones who was drugged and gang raped by employees of Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Keith Olbermann on Bill Moyers Journal

On his Journal last night, Bill profiled and interviewed Keith Olbermann.