Archive for August, 2009
NM Rothschild pitches motorway privatisation plan
NM Rothschild pitches motorway privatisation plan
by Robert Watts and Dominic O’Connell
A radical plan to raise £100 billion by privatising the motorway network has been presented to the three main political parties by NM Rothschild, the influential investment bank.
Rothschild, an architect of several privatisations, made its pitch in the weeks running up to the summer recess on July 21, Whitehall sources said. Bankers told leading politicians that the sale of the roads overseen by the Highways Agency — all motorways and most big trunk roads — could help revive battered public finances.
Toll-road companies and infrastructure funds would compete to operate and maintain stretches of the network.
In one version of the scheme, the government would pay for upkeep through a system of “shadow” tolls. A more radical, and less politically palatable, option would be for companies to charge motorists directly through toll booths or electronic card readers. The RAC Foundation, a motorists’ group, advocated privatisation in a report last week.
The Rothschild plan has already won the support of Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader and Treasury spokesman.
“This is an attractive, positive idea which could release considerable resources to the public finances and may have real environmental merits,” Cable said. “The scale of it is vast — it makes rail privatisation look like small beer.”
via NM Rothschild pitches motorway privatisation plan.
The Drive for Single Payer
The Drive for Single Payer
Ralph Nader
After several weeks of protests at Senate hearings and health care events by single payer advocates (visit singlepayeraction.org), six physicians from Oregon, with 191 years of combined real-world medical experience, are crossing the country in a 27-foot Winnebago making stops in nearly 30 cities, to debate, educate and advance full medicare for all. Everybody in, nobody out.
Calling themselves “Mad as Hell Doctors,” these physicians are already drawing crowds and expect thousands to turn out at each city that they visit, culminating in a large arrival demonstration in front of the White House around October 1. (Visit www.madashelldoctors.com)
They have written President Obama asking for a meeting “to discuss the future of health care as well as the moral, social, and fiscal imperative of enacting a single-payer system for America at this moment in our history.”
The White House turned them down flat, not even leaving the door open for reconsideration. Mr. Obama has met countless times with the CEOs of large corporations, whose greed and callousness causes so much of this crisis. Though he believes in single payer “if we started from scratch,” he has yet to meet with any single payer delegation.
via The Drive for Single Payer – The Nader Page.
Liquidity to Keep the Financial System from Collapsing in a Heap
Liquidity to Keep the Financial System from Collapsing in a Heap
by Mike Whitney
Ben Bernanke never should have been reappointed as Fed chairman. Obama made a big mistake. The main thing to remember about Bernanke is that, in the two years since the financial crisis began, he’s made no effort to force the large banks and financial institutions to write-down their losses. Nor has he pushed for the regulations that are needed to restore confidence in the system. The credit system is still clogged because the banks are buried under $1.5 trillion in toxic assets and non performing loans which are defaulting at the fastest pace on record. At the same time, Bernanke has failed to push for reform of derivatives trading, off-balance sheet operations, securitization or capital requirements for financial institutions. The good news is that Bernanke has demonstrated great creativity in providing sufficient liquidity to keep the financial system from collapsing in a heap. The bad news is that the core problem is not liquidity at all, but solvency. A good portion of the banking system is underwater. That’s why Bernanke’s actions have been a complete flop.
The banks can’t fix themselves, because–to do so–would drive many of them out of business. If the FDIC doesn’t sort them out, they will continue to be a drain on public resources. Lending will continue to contract and GDP will shrink. That’s what is happening now, except Obama stimulus has triggered a slight uptick in growth that is being confused for recovery. But there is no recovery. Things are simply getting worse at a slower pace. That’s to be expected. Housing prices will not go to zero; they flatten out over time. That doesn’t mean things are getting better. They’re not; they’re getting worse. Personal consumption is in the tank, business investment has never been lower, the rate of bank failures is accelerating, and unemployment is headed higher. So where are the “green shoots”
The only real cure is political. The notion that the market will fix itself is pure fantasy. We are following the same path as Japan–perennial recession.
via Liquidity to Keep the Financial System from Collapsing in a Heap.
When Cocaine and Monsanto’s Roundup Collide, War on Drugs Becomes a Genetically-Modified War on Science
When Cocaine and Monsanto’s Roundup Collide, War on Drugs Becomes a Genetically-Modified War on Science
BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White
At the intersection of cocaine and Roundup in rural South America, Monsanto and the U.S. government are struggling to keep up appearances. That’s becoming more and more difficult as the unanticipated hazards of genetic modification become clearer.
Back in April, Argentinean embryologist Andrés Carrasco gave an interview with a Buenos Aires newspaper describing his recent findings suggesting the chemical glyphosate, a chemical herbicide widely used in agriculture as well as in U.S. anti-narcotic efforts, could cause defects in fetuses in much smaller doses than those to which peasants and farmers in his country were already being exposed. Loud calls for a ban on the substance were issued by Argentinean environmental lawyers, and the country’s Ministry of Defense banned the planting of glyphosate-resistant soya crops in its fields.
Then came the backlash. An article in an Argentinean paper recently reported that Carrasco was assaulted in a way he described as “violent” by four men associated with agricultural interests:
Farmers’ Almanac Predicts “Numbing Cold” This Winter
Farmers’ Almanac Predicts “Numbing Cold” This Winter
LEWISTON, Maine — Americans, you might want to check on their sweaters and shovels – the Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a cold winter for many of you.
The venerable almanac’s 2010 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says numbing cold will predominate in the country’s midsection, from the Rocky Mountains in the West to the Appalachians in the East.
Managing Editor Sandi Duncan says it’s going to be an “ice cold sandwich.”
“We feel the middle part of the country’s really going to be cold – very, very cold, very, very frigid, with a lot of snow,” she said. “On the East and West coasts, it’s going to be a little milder. Not to say it’s going to be a mild short winter, but it’ll be milder compared to the middle of the country.”
The almanac, which has been published since 1818, issues annual forecasts using a formula based on sunspots, planetary positions and the effects of the moon.
via Farmers’ Almanac Predicts “Numbing Cold” This Winter.
Riding the Asian Wave
Riding the Asian Wave - Craig Harrington @economyincisis.org
Instead of relying on the United States to lead it back to prosperity, the world has turned to Asia – particularly to China – as it tries to bounce back.
During the 19th century the world could count on the productivity of Europe to lead it out of economic trials. During the 20th century the United States became the world’s “go to” in times of need.
Now, a new century has been met with a new champion. Instead of relying on the United States to lead it back to prosperity, the world has turned to Asia – particularly to China – as it tries to bounce back.
A piece published by The New York Times on August 23 summarizes the new situation in the global economy. Asia, particularly China, has done so well in capturing productive resources in the past few decades that is now the production hub for world markets.
Furthermore, these countries have done so well to boost their domestic consumer economies that they are replacing the United States in that area as well.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Rep. Joe Barton: If GOP takes back the House, ‘we’ll repeal’ health care reform.
Rep. Joe Barton: If GOP takes back the House, ‘we’ll repeal’ health care reform. – Think Progress »
Politico reports that some polling experts are predicting House Democrats to lose many seats in the 2010 midterm elections. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver said the GOP has a one-quarter to one-third chance of taking back the House. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is giddy at the thought of regaining his chairmanship in the event the Republicans take over. This weekend on Fox News, Barton revealed that his agenda would be to repeal health care reform, if it passes before 2010:
BARTON: If they [Democrats] somehow manage to get the votes and get enough Democrats to walk the plank and commit political suicide, in the next Congress, I’ll be Chairman Joe Barton of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and we’ll repeal it.
If Obama attempts to “muscle through” health reform, Barton predicted he would end up leading the Democrats into the “political wilderness.” Watch it:
via Think Progress » Rep. Joe Barton: If GOP takes back the House, ‘we’ll repeal’ health care reform..
VA won’t pay benefits to Marine whose injuries came from vaccine
VA won’t pay benefits to Marine whose injuries came from vaccine – | McClatchy
— It wasn’t a bullet or roadside bomb that felled Lance Cpl. Josef Lopez three years ago after nine days in Iraq.
It was an injection into his arm before his unit left the states.
The then 20-year-old Marine from Springfield, Mo., suffered a rare adverse reaction to the smallpox vaccine. While the vaccine isn’t mandatory, the military strongly encourages troops to take it.
However, it left Lopez in a coma, unable for a time to breathe on his own and paralyzed for weeks. Now he can walk, but with a limp. He has to wear a urine bag constantly, has short-term memory loss and must swallow 15 pills daily to control leg spasms and other ailments.
And even though his medical problems wouldn’t have occurred if he hadn’t been deployed, Lopez doesn’t qualify for a special government benefit of as much as $100,000 for troops who suffer traumatic injuries.
via VA won’t pay benefits to Marine whose injuries came from vaccine | McClatchy.
Gun-toter’s pastor now prays Obama dies of brain cancer
Gun-toter’s pastor now prays Obama dies of brain cancer – Raw Story »
Pastor Steven Anderson of Arizona’s Faithful Word Baptist Church — spiritual adviser to the man who carried an assault rifle outside a recent Phoenix health care rally with the President — believes that God wants people to hate Barack Obama.
He’s even praying that Obama dies of brain cancer, “like Ted Kennedy.”
Anderson first made news for his controversial YouTube sermon declaring a hatred of the President and his wish for Obama’s death.
On Sunday he told MyFoxPhoenix: “I hope that God strikes Barack Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy. You know, and I hope it happens today.”
He continued: “I will not take the law into my hands. I will not take up any arms. It’s a spiritual battle. It’s a spiritual warfare.”
via Raw Story » Gun-toter’s pastor now prays Obama dies of brain cancer.
We Need a Special Prosecutor for Blackwater and Other CIA “Contractors”
We Need a Special Prosecutor for Blackwater and Other CIA “Contractors”
Blackwater’s web of connections includes a Who’s Who of former Bush-era CIA officials. And that’s just one company in a sea of “private contractors”
By Jeremy Scahill
Some parts of Blackwater’s clandestine work for the CIA have begun to leak out from behind the iron curtain of secrecy. The company’s role in the secret assassination program and its continued involvement in the CIA drone attacks that occur regularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan have become front page material in the Washington Post and New York Times. There is much more to this story than has been reported publicly and details will continue to emerge, particularly about Blackwater’s aviation division(s).
Now we learn (unsurprisingly) that Blackwater offered “foreign” operatives to work on the CIA assassination program. Blackwater told the CIA that it “could put people on the ground to provide the surveillance and support — all of the things you need to conduct an operation,” a former senior CIA official familiar with the secret program told The Associated Press. If that’s true, those foreign individuals would appear to have been privy to information that vice president Cheney and other US officials deemed not appropriate for Congressional ears, not to mention oversight.
In light of all of these developments, it is important to remember how Erik Prince essentially hired George W Bush’s top people from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations to create his own private CIA, Total Intelligence Solutions. He also offered Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, the former number 3 man at the CIA, a paid position on Blackwater’s board. Buzzy was the guy who got Blackwater its first known CIA contract back in 2002 in Afghanistan. Buzzy is also the one whining about the CIA’s “morale” problem, in light of the recent scandals, in the Washington Post. “Morale at the agency is down to minus 50,” he told the paper.
via RebelReports – We Need a Special Prosecutor for Blackwater and Other CIA “Contractors”.
Afghanistan strategy must change, US commander General McChrystal says
Afghanistan strategy must change, US commander McChrystal says
Top American commander announces completion of long-awaited review that may prefigure request for more troops - | guardian.co.uk
The west must change its strategy in order to prevail in Afghanistan, the top US commander in the country said today as he handed over to US and Nato commanders a sweeping review of operations that may lead to a demand for more troops.
“The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort,” General Stanley McChrystal said. His findings will be submitted to President Barack Obama, who faces a public increasingly restive over a war that has lasted eight years.
McChrystal does not ask for more US troops to be sent to Afghanistan, but his grave reflections on the failure of strategy may well herald a request in a separate briefing to Obama expected later this autumn.
via Afghanistan strategy must change, US commander General McChrystal says | World news | guardian.co.uk.
$3.1B set aside for jobless unclaimed
$3.1B set aside for jobless unclaimed - - USATODAY.com
More than $3.1 billion in stimulus money for state unemployment insurance programs is sitting in a federal trust fund because 23 states haven’t expanded their jobless benefits, Labor Department records show.
Nearly 350,000 out-of-work Americans could get benefits if all those states revamp their unemployment systems to qualify for federal money, according to estimates from the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a workers’ advocacy group. In all, the stimulus package offers $7 billion to states that make changes, which can include offering benefits to part-time workers.
Some Republicans such as Gov. Rick Perry of Texas have criticized the program, saying expanding benefits would force their states to raise taxes on employers once the stimulus money runs out.
via $3.1B set aside for jobless unclaimed – USATODAY.com.
Bill Moyers disses Dems as ‘spineless’
Bill Moyers disses Dems as 'spineless'
via Bill Moyers disses Dems as ‘spineless’ – Patrick Gavin – POLITICO.com.
End-of-Life Counseling Allowed a Focus on Living
Counseling That Helps the Dying Live – - washingtonpost.com
Many opponents of health-care reform have concentrated their fire on a provision in House legislation that would provide for government reimbursement to doctors who offer end-of-life counseling. How our society deals with those confronting death is understandably controversial. Unfortunately, the debate has degenerated into a cacophony of demagoguery and distortion, including invocations of Hitler and fear-mongering about “death panels.” As a result of these attacks, a number of senators who are key to determining what bill will emerge from Congress have abandoned support for end-of-life counseling.
Our family’s experience this year provided a vivid perspective on the value of that service and the misguidedness of the campaign against it. Brooke Shearer — wife, mother and grandmother — had been fighting cancer for more than a year. She had undergone major surgery, numerous scans and biopsies, and two debilitating courses of chemotherapy. Her doctors were among the best in their fields. Their expertise did not, however, extend to the fine points of, and latest advances in, pain management.
Brooke was determined to maintain the highest possible quality of her own life and that of her family for whatever time we had together. With that goal in mind, she sought advice and treatment from palliative-care specialists at Washington Home and Community Hospices. Their ingenuity and skill in adjusting her medications significantly alleviated her discomfort in her final months. Working closely with her primary physicians, the hospice staff helped Brooke anticipate the likely course of her disease in a way that allowed her to make decisions and exercise a degree of control over both her own condition and our family’s adjustment to it.
Ridge Backpedals, Says There Was No Pressure To Raise Terror Alerts
Ridge Backpedals, Says There Was No Pressure To Raise Terror Alerts
WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Monday people “are hyperventilating” about his assertion that politics played a role in talk of raising the terror alert before the 2004 elections.
“A consensus was reached. We didn’t go up. The process worked,” Ridge said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
The former Pennsylvania governor, however, did not take back the statement in his new book, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege,” that he worried at the time that politics was a consideration in discussions among high-level officials about whether to raise the color-coded terror alert to a higher level. He acknowledged there was a lively debate about it, but repeated that it was not done, and thus not an issue.
via Ridge Backpedals, Says There Was No Pressure To Raise Terror Alerts.
Chris Wallace, A Teenage Girl Interviewing The Jonas Brothers
Chris Wallace, A Teenage Girl Interviewing The Jonas Brothers
| By Andrew Sullivan
Here are the tough and penetrating questions asked by Chris Wallace of a man whose critics accuse of war crimes, and whose administration presided over the death of over a hundred prisoners in interrogation, who authorized torture techniques once trade-marked by the Khmer Rouge:
Why are you so concerned about the idea of one administration reviewing, investigating the actions of another one?
Chris_Wallace_while_doing_an_interview_on_Fox_News_Sunday Do you think this was a political move not a law enforcement move?
The attorney general says this is a preliminary review, not a criminal investigation. It is just about CIA officers who went beyond their legal authorization. Why don’t you think it’s going to stop there?
via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
“Loss-Share”: FDIC Offers Billions In Guarantees For Buyers Of Failed Banks
“Loss-Share”: FDIC Offers Billions In Guarantees For Buyers Of Failed Banks
As the Wall Street Journal reports this morning, in what are called a 
“loss-share” agreements, buyers of failed banks are getting billions of dollars in government guarantees to snatch up the bank’s bad assets. To entice buyers, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is offering to cover around 80 percent of the losses associated with buying a bank. The result, the WSJ points out, is a massive subsidy to the private equity industry, and a huge risk to the American taxpayer.
As bank failures have mounted this year, much has been made of the FDIC’s dwindling Deposit Insurance Fund. But, as the WSJ reports, the FDIC’s potential risk through loss-share agreements “is about six times the amount remaining in its fund that guarantees consumers’ deposits.”
Though the WSJ doesn’t go so far as to say the enormous guarantees are, in fact, sweetheart deals, it’s hard to imagine a better scenario for bank buyers. (Except maybe the FDIC offering to guarantee 100 percent of the total losses associated with buying a failed bank.)
via “Loss-Share”: FDIC Offers Billions In Guarantees For Buyers Of Failed Banks.
As Biggest Banks Repay Bailout Money, the U.S. Sees a Profit
As Big Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit – - NYTimes.com
Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation’s biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that many critics thought might never be seen again.
The profits, collected from eight of the biggest banks that have fully repaid their obligations to the government, come to about $4 billion, or the equivalent of about 15 percent annually, according to calculations compiled for The New York Times.
These early returns are by no means a full accounting of the huge financial rescue undertaken by the federal government last year to stabilize teetering banks and other companies.
via As Biggest Banks Repay Bailout Money, the U.S. Sees a Profit – NYTimes.com.
‘We hate the United States’: Secessionists rally in Texas
‘We hate the United States’: Secessionists rally in Texas -
For some folks in Texas, the prospect of a universal health care scheme isn’t just cause for protest and debate — it’s reason enough to secede from the United States altogether.
Some 200 people rallied at the State Capitol in Austin on Saturday, a small but vocal crowd that set itself in opposition to pro-health care reform protesters.
Larry Kilgore, a Christian activist that the Texas Observer says has advocated execution for homosexuals, “drew some murmurs of disapproval” when he told the crowd: “I hate that flag up there. … I hate the United States government. … They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need!”
“We hate the United States!” he declared later in his address.
via The Raw Story » ‘We hate the United States’: Secessionists rally in Texas.
Billionaires for WealthCare mocks healthcare protesters in California
Billionaires for WealthCare mocks healthcare protesters in California – Raw Story »
“If God loved the poor people, he wouldn’t let them get sick.”
“Healthcare rationing, that’s our job!”
“We love BlueDogs. A solid investment in healthcare profiteering.”
Carrying signs with irreverent messages praising the status quo of the American healthcare system, a farcical anti-healthcare reform group, Billionaires for Wealthcare, paraded outside a Democratic town hall meeting in Spring Valley, California Sunday.
Dressed in business suits and cocktail dresses, and occasionally sporting champagne, the motley crew of “billionaires” cheered on anti-healthcare protesters. They carried signs with messages including “Survival of the RICHEST!” “IT’S A CLASS WAR AND WE’RE WINNING” and “Keep WEALTHCARE alive / NO on HealthCare reform.”
via Raw Story » Billionaires for WealthCare mocks healthcare protesters in California.
Democrats poised to lose 20 to 50 seats in House: analysts
OPS: Well, let’s keep in mind that this is POLITICO’s ‘guess’. HOwever, the DEMS NEED to show that there is at least SOME difference between them and Republicans, or whats the point?
Democrats poised to lose 20 to 50 seats in House: analysts - The Raw Story »
Democrats are in hot water, according to political analysts quoted in Monday’s Politico.
According to two key observers, Charlie Cook and 538.com’s Nate Silver, Democrats are poised to lose “double-digit” seats in the House amid an increasingly bitter political climate.
Silver apparently stunned a liberal audience at the blogger convention Netroots Nation earlier this month, saying that the Republicans have a 25 to 33 percent chance of retaking the House. For both observers, such a happenstance seems unlikely, though first- and second-term Democrats appear particularly vulnerable
via The Raw Story » Democrats poised to lose 20 to 50 seats in House: analysts.
Top 10 Ted Kennedy Legislations
Top 10 Ted Kennedy Legislations
Edward M. Kennedy’s legacy. The major votes he participated in, bills Ted Kennedy passed and more. This is my tribute to the lion of the Senate. This memorial for Ted Kennedy can’t even begin to do his legislative legacy justice, but as talk begins to turn to who will replace Senator Kennedy, I hope this helps serve as a guide to what he and his seat came to stand for.
List Follows:
via Top 10 Ted Kennedy Legislations | Ranker – A World of Lists.
Pentagon terminates controversial contract with The Rendon Group.
Pentagon terminates controversial contract with The Rendon Group. – Think Progress »
Last week, Stars and Stripes revealed that the Pentagon had contracted The Rendon Group to screen journalists seeking to embed with U.S. forces. Rendon was rating whether reporters were giving the military “positive” coverage. Journalism groups immediately criticized the arrangement, calling it “alarming.” One week later, the Pentagon has announced that it is canceling the contract with Rendon:
“The decision to terminate the Rendon contract was mine and mine alone. As the senior U.S. communicator in Afghanistan, it was clear that the issue of Rendon’s support to US forces in Afghanistan had become a distraction from our main mission,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, in an e-mail sent Sunday to Stars and Stripes.
“I have been here since early June and at no time has anyone who worked for me ever conducted themselves in a manner as your newspaper alleged. I cannot and will not speculate on the past, although I have found no systemic issues with fairness or equity in the way U.S. forces have run their media embed program.”
via Think Progress » Pentagon terminates controversial contract with The Rendon Group..
Double Dip Recession Looming?
Double Dip Recession Looming? - Craig Harrington – economyincisis.org
Nouriel Roubini discussed the very real concern that this recession could be a “double dip.”
Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, in an August 23 article written for The Financial Times, discussed the very real concern that this recession could be a “double dip.”
Roubini foretold of the financial market collapse which we witnessed in the spring of 2008. He also was correct in many of his predictions about how jobs, finance, employment, and government spending would react during the recession.
Lately his worry has been the so-called “U-shaped” recession. Most economists favor the V-shaped model where rapid declines bottom and are met in turn with rapid growth. In a U-shaped model rapid declines bottom out and are met with very slow growth. Roubini characterizes this as “anemic” growth.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Why Our Economy is Collapsing
Why Our Economy is Collapsing - Craig Harrington – economyincisis.org 
While formerly living in the lap of luxury we allowed the greatest economy on earth to fall apart by living on imports and foreign financed debt.
The United States is in open competition with the same countries from which we buy our goods and finance our government. These countries supply our consumption while simultaneously competing fiercely against our companies in international markets. Nations like India, Japan, and China, along with trade blocs like the European Union, rail against the U.S. when we use “protectionism” because they do not want to have their unfettered access to our market tampered with.
Other countries, like China and Japan, protect their companies by putting limits and restrictions on the amount of American-made goods flowing into the markets. The United States puts up no such regulations, and is thus flooded with foreign-made goods.
NAFTA, and other “free trade” agreements, favor the foreign producers. We are told by the WTO and the EU that we cannot and should not protect our own economy. Through “free trade” the U.S. must open itself to all foreign interests.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Big Oil Gets in on Right-Wing Astroturf Game
Big Oil Gets in on Right-Wing Astroturf Game
By Jim Hightower
Since Astroturf itself is made up of petroleum, there’s a certain poetic symmetry in having Big Oil produce the silliest astroturf campaign yet.
Protests are back! All across America, angry demonstrations are popping up like mushrooms on moldy Astroturf.
Similar to the plastic “grass,” political astroturf is the corporate version of grassroots — instead of ordinary citizens organizing and mobilizing themselves for political action, astroturf campaigns are well-orchestrated PR efforts that put real folks out front, but are instigated, organized and funded by corporate interests and right-wing front groups.
We’ve seen a surge in these plastic uprisings this year, all directed at policy changes being put forth by Barack Obama. First come the April 15 “teabag” rallies to oppose Obama’s economic recovery package. Billed as a spontaneous people’s rebellion against BGS (Big Government Socialism), the events turned out to have been spawned and coordinated by a corporate-financed anti-government outfit in Washington called Freedom Works, headed by former GOP majority leader Dick Armey.
via Big Oil Gets in on Right-Wing Astroturf Game | Environment | AlterNet.
Shotgun Adoption: The Religious Right’s Adoption Racket.
Shotgun Adoption – by Kathryn Joyce, The Nation
Preying on the Desperate: The Religious Right’s Adoption Racket. Many Christian adoption agencies are far more concerned with artificially producing “orphans” for Christian parents to adopt, than helping birth parents care for wanted children.
Carol Jordan, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, was living in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1999 when she became pregnant. She’d already decided against abortion, but she was struggling financially and her boyfriend was unsupportive. Looking through the Yellow Pages for help, she spotted an ad under “crisis pregnancies” for Bethany Christian Services. Within hours of calling, Jordan (who asked to be identified with a pseudonym) was invited to Bethany’s local office to discuss free housing and medical care.
Bethany, it turned out, did not simply specialize in counseling pregnant women. It is the nation’s largest adoption agency, with more than eighty-five offices in fifteen countries.
When Jordan arrived, a counselor began asking whether she’d considered adoption and talking about the poverty rates of single mothers. Over five counseling sessions, she convinced Jordan that adoption was a win-win situation: Jordan wouldn’t “have death on her hands,” her bills would be paid and the baby would go to a family of her choosing in an open adoption. She suggested Jordan move into one of Bethany’s “shepherding family” homes, away from the influence of family and friends.
via Shotgun Adoption.
5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America
5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America’s Future.
If we want to build a fascist-proof America for the long haul, we must stand up now for everything we believe and everything we are.
August, die she must. The town hall freak show is winding down, the media circus is packing the cameras and satellite dishes and hairspray back into the vans, and Congress is soon heading back to the relative safety of Washington.
Yet, after all the fuss and bother, they’re probably no more or less resolved to pass health care reform than they were back in June, when those first delirious fevers rose like clouds of infectious mosquito nymphs hatched from a thick, overheated carpet of soggy Astroturf.
Let’s hope they succeed at getting it done. But, win or lose, we’re crazy to think that the goon squads formed and trained to instigate this summer’s health care wars will pack it in just because the silly season is over.
via 5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
White Christian America versus Everybody Else
White Christian America versus Everybody Else - | OurFuture.org
In the current issue of The Nation (which also featured a cover story co-authored by our own Bob Borosage), Chris Bowers pointed out a structural truth that lies at the heart of both American political parties. In the Age of Reagan, it came to pass that the GOP consolidated itself as the party of people who are white and Christian. Everybody else—black, brown, women, gays, immigrants, urban dwellers, non-Christians, you name it— found themselves on the receiving end of conservative scapegoating so often that they eventually decamped and aggregated in the other party. At this point, it’s statistically true that If you are either not white or not Christian, then you are (with varying degrees of certainty, depending on what you identify as) far more likely to be a Democrat.
This has left us in an interesting situation where the vast bulk of the country’s swing voters are white Christians with progressive tendencies, who can be induced to vote either way depending on what values you can activate in them. This gives them political power far beyond their actual numbers, because winning a presidential election is largely reduced to being able to find and work the political, cultural, and religious sweet spots of this one group.
It’s also given the GOP a real advantage where group solidarity is concerned. Their shared grounding in white Christian conservationism gives the GOP its notoriously unshakable consensus on worldview and goals—a unity that has consistently proven to be its strongest political advantage. On the other hand, the polyglot Democrats have become a motley crew of Everybody Else Trying To Get Along, in spite of widely varying worldviews and often irreconcilable goals. Without that same kind of coherent vision of what we hope to achieve, the progressive side is damned fragile. And conservative strategists know this.
via White Christian America versus Everybody Else | OurFuture.org.
Four Years After Katrina, Thousands Are Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans
Four Years After Katrina, Thousands Are Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans – By Jordan Flaherty
With recovery still lagging in New Orleans, thousands are living in storm damaged and abandoned buildings.
Crawling through a hole in a fence and walking through an open doorway, Shamus Rohn and Mike Miller lead the way into an abandoned Midcity hospital. They are outreach workers for the New Orleans organization UNITY for the Homeless, and they do this all day long; searching empty houses and buildings for homeless people, so they can offer services and support. “We joke about having turned criminal trespass into a fulltime job,” says Rohn.
Up a darkened stairway and through the detritus of a building that looks like its been scavenged for anything of value to sell, Rohn and Miller enter a sun-drenched room. Inside is Michael Palmer, a 57-year-old white former construction worker and merchant seaman who has made a home here. Palmer — his friends call him Mickey — is in some ways lucky. He found a room with a door that locks. He salvaged some furniture from other parts of the hospital, so he has a bed, a couch, and a rug. Best of all, he has a fourth-floor room with a balcony. “Of all the homeless,” he says, “I probably have the best view.”
Journey to the Center of the Creation Museum
Journey to the Center of the Creation Museum 
Creationist theme parks are filled with paleontological wonders. How do Christian fundamentalists reconcile creatures millions of years old with their Young Earth ideas?
Recently, reports came out that Florida Adventure Land, a Christian dinosaur theme park in Pensacola, Florida, was shut down for tax fraud. Apparently the owner contended that he was working for God, not the federal government, and so was not required to pay taxes. But let’s back up: what on earth do dinosaurs have to do with Christianity?
Kent Hovind, the evangelist behind Dinosaur Adventure Land, is not alone in using paleontological wonders as a tool for religious outreach. Last October, I visited the Creation Museum in Bullittsburg, Kentucky, a 27-million-dollar pseudo-scientific complex built in 2006 by a group called Answers in Genesis to promote young-earth creationism. Dinosaurs were everywhere, animatronic jaws opening and closing, letting out pre-recorded elephant-like roars on a constant loop. They were hanging out with Adam and Eve in the lush recreation of the Garden of Eden, marching two by two onto Noah’s Ark.
I was confused. Wouldn’t an organization that wants us to believe the earth has only been around for 6,000 years want to distance itself from creatures which have been proven to be millions of years old?
via Journey to the Center of the Creation Museum | Science and Religion.
Why Is iTunes Selling White Supremacy?
When It Comes to Peddling Hate Music, iTunes Appears to Be Selective – Southern Poverty Law Center
iTunes has removed songs deemed homophobic, yet allows white supremacists to peddle their hate on their website.
Posted in Racist Music by Sonia Scherr on August 24, 2009
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“Let’s see out the Fuhrer’s dream/To break the back of the eternal jew/Rid the world of the evil we’ve seen/Make it safe for me and you.”
— From “Under the Hammer” by Brutal Attack
“When the battle is over and the victory is won/And the White man’s lands are owned by true white people/the traitors will all be gone.”
— From “White Warriors” by Skrewdriver
If you thought such unabashedly bigoted music was available only from underground sources, you’d be wrong. With a few clicks at Apple’s iTunes website, Internet users can buy albums and songs from white supremacist groups such as Bully Boys, Final War, Stormtroop 16 and H8Machine.
But what has one iTunes customer particularly incensed is that the website has apparently removed homophobic songs by reggae artists, but left the white supremacist music. Galen Andrews, who lives outside Des Moines, Iowa, told Hatewatch that he thinks all hate music should be pulled from iTunes. “It made me sick,” he said of the white supremacist music. “I think it’s irresponsible of iTunes to offer that kind of music. I don’t like the fact that they’re selling racism for profit.”
Obama’s Squandered Honeymoon: How Botched Bailouts Hamper Healthcare Reform
Obama’s Squandered Honeymoon: How Botched Bailouts Hamper Healthcare Reform – By Rob Johnson,
By refusing to stand up to the finance oligarchs, the Obama Admistration fed the cynics and dissipated the opportunity for real change.
We live in an era where the effectiveness of government has been denigrated for more than 30 years. The echo chamber of the right, particularly since the election of Ronald Reagan, has sought to intimidate anyone who let the romantic notion into their head that government can help. They even denigrate the New Deal, like it was a bad dream rather than a series of programs that helped many people, and may have saved capitalism from itself.
With the romance of government trampled, the void in social theory was filled by the romance of markets. The free market fundamentalists vehemently promoted the notion that markets were not just a means to achieve social goals. To their way of thinking, social goals themselves would have to be designed to curry favor with the “wisdom” of the market.
In the years from Reagan to Bush II, we experienced “Capitalism Unleashed,” as the late Andrew Glyn titled his fine treatment of this period of history. Distribution of income and wealth became more concentrated at the top; productivity growth and profit soared; wages were flat; and finally, outsourcing, foreign direct investment and the stress of bringing labor-intensive, low-wage countries like China into the world economy caused severe adjustment pain. Yet none of this stress really shook the romance out of free market fundamentalism. The pain was temporary, and better times would surely come, they said.
Goodyear, Steelworkers get tentative national agreement hours before contract expiration
Goodyear, Steelworkers get tentative national agreement hours before contract expiration – WZTV FOX 17/Nashville
CLEVELAND (AP) — Thousands of workers at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plants in seven states — including Tennessee — will vote in the coming days on a tentative national contract agreement.
The United Steelworkers of America and the company reached the deal Saturday night about three hours before a midnight deadline for the expiration of the old three-year contract, which had been extended twice.
The union says rank-and-file members will be briefed on the new contract and ratification votes will be scheduled at all plants.
ACLU Lobbyist Larry Frankel Found Dead in Washington
ACLU Lobbyist Larry Frankel Found Dead in Washington - | Young Philly Politics
Longtime Pennsylvania ACLU lobbyist and Executive Director Larry Frankel, who in the last year or so has become the lobbyist for the national ACLU, has apparently been found dead in Washington under mysterious circumstances. Larry was 54. This is a breaking news story in which most key facts are still generally unknown.
Frankel was an outstanding lobbyist for the Pennsylvania ACLU in Harrisburg, taking positions on scores to hundreds of bills each year. He was a coalition builder reminiscent of Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate or William Brennan on the U.S. Supreme Court, who agressively reached out to unlikely allies like the National Rifle Association to help persuade members of the legislature that the ACLU was addressing broad concerns.
His aggressive outreach removed the ACLU from the fringes or margins of state policy and moved it toward the center of direct involvement.
via ACLU Lobbyist Larry Frankel Found Dead in Washington | Young Philly Politics.
Commercial Real Estate Lurks as Next Potential Mortgage Crisis
Commercial Real Estate Lurks as Next Potential Mortgage Crisis – - WSJ.com
Federal Reserve and Treasury officials are scrambling to prevent the commercial-real-estate sector from delivering a roundhouse punch to the U.S. economy just as it struggles to get up off the mat.
Their efforts could be undermined by a surge in foreclosures of commercial property carrying mortgages that were packaged and sold by Wall Street as bonds. Similar mortgage-backed securities created out of home loans played a big role in undoing that sector and triggering the global economic recession. Now the $700 billion of commercial-mortgage-backed securities outstanding are being tested for the first time by a massive downturn, and the outcome so far hasn’t been pretty.
The CMBS sector is suffering two kinds of pain, which, according to credit rater Realpoint LLC, sent its delinquency rate to 3.14% in July, more than six times the level a year earlier. One is simply the result of bad underwriting. In the era of looser credit, Wall Street’s CMBS machine lent owners money on the assumption that occupancy and rents of their office buildings, hotels, stores or other commercial property would keep rising. In fact, the opposite has happened. The result is that a growing number of properties aren’t generating enough cash to make principal and interest payments.
via Commercial Real Estate Lurks as Next Potential Mortgage Crisis – WSJ.com.
Missing Richard Nixon
Missing Richard Nixon - - NYTimes.com
Paul Krugman
Many of the retrospectives on Ted Kennedy’s life mention his regret that he didn’t accept Richard Nixon’s offer of a bipartisan health care deal. The moral some commentators take from that regret is that today’s health care reformers should do what Mr. Kennedy balked at doing back then, and reach out to the other side.
But it’s a bad analogy, because today’s political scene is nothing like that of the early 1970s. In fact, surveying current politics, I find myself missing Richard Nixon.
No, I haven’t lost my mind. Nixon was surely the worst person other than Dick Cheney ever to control the executive branch.
But the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Missing Richard Nixon – NYTimes.com.
FBI traces members of abortion murder suspect’s study group
FBI traces members of abortion murder suspect’s study group - – Kansas City Star
They met in one another’s homes on Saturdays, their Sabbath, for potluck dinners and scripture study sessions.
Among the topics: The Old Testament, their Hebrew roots and the “secret societies” attempting to control government and culture.
Among the members: Scott Roeder, the Kansas City man accused of killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.
As the investigation continues into whether Roeder acted alone in Tiller’s May 31 death, members of the study group have found themselves in the spotlight, showing up on the witness list for the prosecution and being interviewed by the FBI.
via FBI traces members of abortion murder suspect’s study group – Kansas City Star.
Beware Authoritative “Inside Washington” Sources Who Say The Public Option is Dead
Beware Authoritative “Inside Washington” Sources Who Say The Public Option is Dead – Robert Reich
Washington, D.C. is an echo chamber in which anyone who sounds authoritative repeats the conventional authoritative wisdom about the “consensus” of inside opinion, which they’ve heard from someone else who sounds equally authoritative, who of course has heard it from another authoritative source. Follow the trail to its start and you often find an obscure congressional or White House staffer who has seen some half-assed poll number or briefing memo, but seeking to feel important hypes it a media personality or lobbyist who, desperate to sound authoritative, pronounces it as truth. In any other place on the planet it would be called rumor, gossip, or drivel. In our nation’s capital it’s called “inside information.” The process would be harmless except that it creates self-fulfilling prophesies. Since most of our elected representatives would rather not stick their necks out lest they lose their heads, they tend to rush toward whatever consensus seems to be emerging — which, of course, is based on authoritative reports about the emerging consensus.
In the last few days authoritative sources have repeatedly told me that the public option is dead, that the President won’t be able to get a comprehensive health care bill, and that the White House and congressional leadership already know the best they’ll be able to do now is move incrementally — starting with insurance reforms such as barring insurers from using someone’s preexisting health conditions to deny coverage — with the hope of more reforms in the years ahead. The rightwing media fearmongers and demagogues have won.
57% Would Like to Replace Entire Congress
57% Would Like to Replace Entire Congress – - Rasmussen Reports™
If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.
Overall, these numbers are little changed since last October. When Congress was passing the unpopular $700-billion bailout plan in the heat of a presidential campaign and a seeming financial industry meltdown, 59% wanted to throw them all out. At that time, just 17% wanted to keep them.
There has been a bit of a partisan shift since last fall. With Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, it’s not surprising to find that the number of Democrats who would vote to keep the entire Congress has grown from 25% last fall to 43% today. In fact, a modest plurality of Democrats would now vote to keep the legislators. Last fall, a plurality of Democrats were ready to throw them all out.
via 57% Would Like to Replace Entire Congress – Rasmussen Reports™.
FactCheck.org Derides Vapid Health Care Email
FactCheck.org Derides Vapid Health Care Email – Pensito Review »
Even FactCheck.org has had it with the level of inanity coming from opponents to health care reform. The normally dispassionate site is addressing a ridiculous email (which so far, I haven’t gotten, praise Allah!) written by a rightwing blogger who posts the famous “Joker” picture of Obama on his home page.
It’s clear from the tone of FactCheck’s response that even they consider these lies over the top.
Our inbox has been overrun with messages asking us to weigh in on a mammoth list of claims about the House health care bill. The chain e-mail purports to give “a few highlights” from the first half of the bill, but the list of 48 assertions is filled with falsehoods, exaggerations and misinterpretations. We examined each of the e-mail’s claims, finding 26 of them to be false and 18 to be misleading, only partly true or half true. Only four are accurate…
This chain e-mail claims to give a run-down of what’s in the House health care bill, H.R. 3200. Instead, it shows evidence of a reading comprehension problem on the part of the author.
Ouch, FactCheck! But right on. We also like what they had to say about the ridiculous nod-nod-wink-wink campaign against ACORN. ACORN is an advocacy group for the poor that mainly deals with such issues as predatory lending but was portrayed as something else entirely during the last election. The misrepresentation evidently continues in the notorious email.
via Pensito Review » FactCheck.org Derides Vapid Health Care Email.
Some question value of Medicare Advantage
Some question value of Medicare Advantage
Privatized Medicare Advantage plans are rationing health care for seniors
MIAMI — Cecile Sangiamo liked her health insurance — until she needed to use it.
The 72-year-old Clearwater, Fla., resident had been on the federally subsidized, privately run Medicare Advantage policy through WellCare Inc. for about three years when she started having pain that made it hard to walk.
Her doctor’s referral to an orthopedic specialist was denied by the insurer. Her out-of-pocket costs were higher than she was initially told. And when Ms. Sangiamo needed surgery, she said, WellCare offered some unexpected medical advice.
“Take pills and use a walker,” Ms. Sangiamo remembered being told by the insurer, which declined to comment on the case. “I wanted to say, ‘I’ll take the walker and bang you in the head with it.’”
Seniors have flocked by the millions to Medicare Advantage, privately run plans offered as an alternative to traditional, government-run Medicare. Programs that promise lower premiums or other perks have combined with heavy marketing from insurance companies to make the programs double in size in the last six years to nearly 11 million members and growing.
But critics say that Ms. Sangiamo’s case is all too common and that the plans put profits above care and denials of service are routine.
via Some question value of Medicare Advantage.
Insurers Poised To Gain From From Health Care Reform
OPS: Public Option is a Judas Goat. Universal Single Payer (HR676) is the only solution to this problem.
Insurers Poised To Gain From From Health Care Reform – – Courant.com
President Mark Bertolini traveled around the country this year lobbying governors and insurance regulators in all 50 states for the industry’s vision of health care reform.
It was part of a full-court press by an industry that is under fire from President Barack Obama, key members of Congress and consumer groups. Insurers take the heat for soaring premiums, shrinking coverage and, the critics say, a lack of competition that hurts consumers and leads to unwarranted profits.
Ranking insurance executives, like Bertolini, say they are willing to make concessions and are working to cut costs in order to control premium increases. They say they have ideas — some already in the works — for saving billions by avoiding unnecessary care, coordinating care and pushing hard for disease prevention.
They also have their demands, including the rejection of a proposed government-sponsored plan similar to Medicare that would cover those who aren’t elderly.
via Insurers Poised To Gain From From Health Care Reform — Courant.com.
DOJ May Skirt Court Order on Interrogation Documents
DOJ May Skirt Court Order on Interrogation Documents - The Washington Independent » 
In Response to ACLU Lawsuit, Federal Judge Ordered Files Released by Aug. 31
The Obama administration may circumvent the spirit of a judge’s order to disclose hundreds of documents relating to the CIA’s Bush-era interrogation program, delivering instead generic descriptions of the documents and legal arguments for continued nondisclosure.
While the CIA inspector general’s 2004 report on torture was released Monday, a tranche of hundreds of supporting documents sought by an ongoing American Civil Liberties Union court case remain unseen. Those include 129 documents that provide some of the source material for the inspector general’s report; 138 other documents from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel about the interrogation program; and a Sept. 17, 2001 presidential order from George W. Bush authorizing the CIA to set up unacknowledged detention facilities around the world. The Justice Department released additional supporting documents earlier this week in addition to the inspector general’s report.
On July 20, Judge Allen Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the government needed to complete a review of the documents for declassification in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Monday, Aug. 31. “As to the remaining 318 remanded CIA documents, the Government shall complete its processing of those documents by August 31, 2009, such that, on or before that date, the Government shall produce to the plaintiffs any portions of those 318 documents that are appropriate for release under [the Freedom of Information Act],”Hellerstein wrote in an order filed the following day.
via The Washington Independent » DOJ May Skirt Court Order on Interrogation Documents.
Hatch, Dodd: Vicki Kennedy Would Be “Great” Replacement For Husband (VIDEO)
Hatch, Dodd: Vicki Kennedy Would Be “Great” Replacement For Husband (VIDEO)
Two of Ted Kennedy’s closest friends in the Senate said on Sunday that they thought his widow, Vicki, would make a great temporary replacement for him should the Massachusetts legislature allow for a gubernatorial appointment.
Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that Vicki “ought to be considered” for her late husband’s post.
“She is a very brilliant lawyer,” said Hatch. “She’s a very solid individual. She certainly made a difference in Ted’s life, let me tell you. And I have noting but respect for her.”
via Hatch, Dodd: Vicki Kennedy Would Be “Great” Replacement For Husband (VIDEO).
Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time
Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time - By Claire Bates - Mail Online
It may look like a piece of honeycomb, but this lattice-shaped image is the first ever close-up view of a single molecule.
Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule.
‘This is the first time that all the atoms in a molecule have been imaged,’ lead researcher Leo Gross said.
The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.
In the image above the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.
To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.
The brain may not be fooled by sugar substitutes
The brain may not be fooled by sugar substitutes - — latimes.com
Studies indicate that, on some level, we know real from fake. So what does that mean with regard to weight loss?
As the palette of artificial sweeteners has grown and manufacturers have honed the skill with which they blend them to mimic sugar taste, debate has swirled around whether these sensory stand-ins really help people consume fewer calories and avoid weight gain.
New research adds another dimension to the uncertainty: It suggests that even when artificial sweeteners fool the taste buds, they still don’t fool the ultimate arbiter of our appetites — our subconscious brains.
The latest evidence for this comes from a brain scanning study performed in the Netherlands. Paul Smeets, a neuroscientist at University Medical Center Utrecht, used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain responses in people sipping two versions of orangeade, one containing sugar and one containing a mix of four artificial sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame K, cyclamate and saccharin.
via The brain may not be fooled by sugar substitutes — latimes.com.
5 Habits Of Healthy People You Can Have Too
5 Habits Of Healthy People You Can Have Too
We all want the secrets to health and vitality. We can buy bottles, creams, and whatever else is advertised to us, but ultimately anything sustainable comes from self-awareness and choices.
I recently read the New York Times piece, The Economics of Doing What You Love, by Justin Wolfers. Wolfers outlines analysis of his habit of running and what it has cost him financially. Time spent running vs. potential extra hours at his teaching job, money spent on shoes vs. money saved, and so on. “By my calculations, my 16-week training program comes at an opportunity cost of several thousand dollars. A quicker runner would have a smaller opportunity cost. It’s only because I’m both slow and an economist that I fret that the world’s cheapest sport is actually incredibly expensive.”
via Tara Stiles: 5 Habits Of Healthy People You Can Have Too.
Lockerbie bomber ‘set free for oil’
OPS: Debunking the debunking
Lockerbie bomber ‘set free for oil’ - – Times Online
The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.
Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.
The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.
The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.
via Lockerbie bomber ‘set free for oil’ – Times Online.
Japan Election Results: Opposition Democrats Win Huge Victory
OPS: Like the United States in 2008 Japan just took a huge LEFT turn. Let’s hope they can do more with it than we have been able to.
Japan Election Results: Opposition Democrats Win Huge Victory
Ruling Conservatives Crushed In Historic Japan Election. Election Ends 54 Years Of Nearly Unbroken Rule
TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso conceded defeat in elections Sunday as media exit polls indicated the opposition had won by a landslide, sending the conservatives out of power after 54 years of nearly unbroken rule amid widespread economic anxiety and desire for change.
“These results are very severe,” Aso said in a news conference at party headquarters, conceding his party was headed for a big loss. “There has been a deep dissatisfaction with our party.”
Aso said he would have to accept responsibility for the results, suggesting that he would resign as party president. Other LDP leaders also said they would step down, though official results were not to be released until early Monday morning.
via Japan Election Results: Opposition Democrats Win Huge Victory.
Majority Rule on Health Care Reform
NYT To Dems: Stop Retreating On Health Care
NYTimes Editorial 
Majority Rule on Health Care Reform
The talk in Washington is that Senate Democrats are preparing to push through health care reforms using parliamentary procedures that will allow a simple majority to prevail in their chamber, as it does in the House, instead of the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster that Senate Republicans are sure to mount.
With the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, the Democrats do not have the votes just among their 57 members (and the two independents) to break a filibuster, and not all of these can be counted on to vote in lock step. If the Democrats want to enact health care reform this year, they appear to have little choice but to adopt a high-risk, go-it-alone, majority-rules strategy.
We say this with considerable regret because a bipartisan compromise would be the surest way to achieve comprehensive reforms with broad public support. But the ideological split between the parties is too wide — and the animosities too deep — for that to be possible.
via Editorial – Majority Rule on Health Care Reform – NYTimes.com.
Health Care Premiums Run Amok
Health Care Premiums Run Amok - Center For American Progress
The Cost of Doing Nothing About the Health Care Crisis
Download this memo (pdf)
View table showing a comprehensive 10-year review of health care premiums
Health care costs are expected to grow 71 percent over the next decade, which will in turn drive premium increases for health insurance. Unless we take serious steps now to reform our health care system—in particular to reduce the rate of growth in health care costs—health insurance coverage will slip out of reach for even more individuals than the 52 million Americans who today are uninsured.
This analysis shows that without health reform, average family premiums will grow to more than $22,000 by 2019, up from $13,100 today. In some states with higher-than-average premiums, family premiums will exceed $25,000 in 10 years. Of course, a family’s total health care costs will be even higher once co-payments and other out-of-pocket expenses are calculated into the total.
These projections, as alarming as they are, need not come true. We know how to “bend the curve” of growing health care costs, reducing the future costs that will be borne by American families, businesses, and government budgets. In fact, we can save more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years by promoting cost-saving innovations and reducing waste and inefficiencies. We can significantly reduce health care spending over the long term through a combination of increased research into which treatments work and which do not, improved payment systems that reward efficient and effective care, and the infrastructure we need to enable these elements to work together.
via Health Care Premiums Run Amok.
Justices to Revisit ‘Hillary’ Film, and Corporate Cash in Politics
Supreme Court to Revisit ‘Hillary’ Documentary - - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will cut short its summer break in early September to hear a new argument in a momentous case that could transform the way political campaigns are conducted.
The case, which arises from a minor political documentary called “Hillary: The Movie,” seemed an oddity when it was first argued in March. Just six months later, it has turned into a juggernaut with the potential to shatter a century-long understanding about the government’s ability to bar corporations from spending money to support political candidates.
The case has also deepened a profound split among liberals, dividing those who view government regulation of political speech as an affront to the First Amendment from those who believe that unlimited corporate campaign spending is a threat to democracy.
via Justices to Revisit ‘Hillary’ Film, and Corporate Cash in Politics – NYTimes.com.
The Single-payer Movement with Dennis Kucinich
‘Article 1, Section 8… Promote the General Welfare’
Saturday, August 22, 2009, Cleveland Ohio. The Single-payer Healthcare Movement: Washington and Across the Nation
via YouTube – The Single-payer Movement with Dennis Kucinich.
Powerful group pushing for legislative approval of oil drilling off Florida
Powerful group pushing for legislative approval of oil drilling off Florida - Bradenton.com
TALLAHASSEE — A secretive group of powerful legislators, business groups and Texas oil companies has been laying the groundwork since December to win legislative approval to open Florida waters to oil exploration and end the 20-year drilling moratorium.
Florida Energy Associates, which identifies itself only by saying it is financed by a group of independent oil producers, has hired lobbyists, public relations experts, a financial consultant and a pollster to help advocate for the sale of drilling leases in state waters between the shore and 10 miles off Florida’s Gulf Coast.
And the group has influential friends: Associated Industries of Florida, the Association of Builders and Contractors, and several petroleum companies.
Between the start of April and the end of July, the group spent as much as $234,000 on legal work and lobbying to push a bill through the Legislature last session. The measure passed the House, 70-43, but died in the Senate.
Supporters say defeat won’t happen again.
“I predict we’ll pass the bill and the governor will sign it,” boasted Barney Bishop, president of Associated Industries of Florida.
Veterans Demand Apology from GOP and FOX for Lies About VA
Veterans Demand Apology from GOP and FOX for Lies About VA
Veterans for Common Sense
August 27, 2009 – The claim that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a manual encouraging veterans to “commit suicide,” made by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, is an asinine assertion with no basis in fact.
Steele made the charge two days ago (August 25th) on FOX News. Steele’s egregious comments are an outrageous slander against VA designed to create an atmosphere of mistrust and fear among the millions of our veterans who rely on the VA for medical care. Veterans demand an apology from Steele and FOX News.
“Let me be absolutely clear, Steele lied. There is no VA manual encouraging veterans to commit suicide,” said Paul Sullivan, the executive director of VCS, a non-profit based in Washington, DC providing advocacy for veterans, especially veterans with mental health conditions.
Here is the full text of Steele’s comments:
via Veterans Demand Apology from GOP and FOX for Lies About VA – Veterans For Common Sense.
Physicists successfully predict stock exchange plunge – physics-math – 28 August 2009 – New Scientist
Physicists successfully predict stock exchange plunge
WITH 20/20 hindsight, financial crashes seem inevitable, yet we never see them coming. Now a team of physicists and financiers have bucked the trend by successfully predicting a steep fall in the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Their model, which employs concepts from the physics of complex atomic systems, was developed by Didier Sornette of the Financial Crisis Observatory in Zurich, Switzerland, and Wei-Xing Zhou of the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai. The idea is that if a plot of the logarithm of the market’s value over time deviates upwards from a straight line, it’s a clear warning that people are investing simply because the market is rising rather than paying heed to the intrinsic worth of companies. By projecting the trend, the team can predict when growth will become unsustainable and the market will crash.
Sornette, Zhou and colleagues applied their model to the Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks the combined worth of all companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the world’s second largest. Early this year, the index gained 50 per cent in just four months. In July, the team predicted that the index would start to fall sharply by 10 August (www.arxiv.org/abs/0907.1827). The index duly began to slide on 4 August, falling almost 20 per cent in the subsequent two weeks.
Holder Appoints Torture Prosecutor, Rejects Nuremberg Principle
Note: The New American is a John Birch Society publication.
Holder Appoints Torture Prosecutor, Rejects Nuremberg Principle - by Thomas R. Eddlem
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appointed Assistant United States Attorney John Durham to investigate torture by U.S. officials since President Bush commenced the “war on terror,” but in the same act also gave political cover from that prosecutor to anyone who actually committed torture.
Holder announced the August 24 appointment with the proviso that anyone who engaged in torture at the urging of senior Bush administration officials would be exempted from prosecution. Holder said torturers “need to be protected from legal jeopardy when they act in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance. That is why I have made it clear in the past that the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees. I want to reiterate that point today, and to underscore the fact that this preliminary review will not focus on those individuals.”
“I was only following orders” is now apparently a complete defense under the Holder Justice Department. But this was precisely the defense rejected at the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War from German soldiers who had committed war crimes. The accused claimed they should be held innocent from punishment for killing Jews and others because they were only following the Führer’s legal orders. Although there were numerous problems with the Nuremberg trials, the one truly worthwhile precedent to come out of the tribunals was the principle that men are always responsible for their own actions.
via Holder Appoints Torture Prosecutor, Rejects Nuremberg Principle.
Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal Ash
Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal Ash – - NYTimes.com
UNIONTOWN, Ala. — Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.
To county leaders, the train’s loads, which will total three million cubic yards of coal ash from a massive spill at a power plant in east Tennessee last December, are a tremendous financial windfall. A per-ton “host fee” that the landfill operators pay the county will add more than $3 million to the county’s budget of about $4.5 million.
The ash has created more than 30 jobs for local residents in a county where the unemployment rate is 17 percent and a third of all households are below the poverty line. A sign on the door of the landfill’s scale house says job applications are no longer being accepted — 1,000 were more than enough.
via Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal Ash – NYTimes.com.
We don’t want to rule the world
We don’t want to rule the world - | Mark Weisbrot | | guardian.co.uk
The US public largely opposes America’s foreign wars and economic meddling. They need a voice in US foreign policy
Americans are famous for not paying much attention to the rest of the world, and it is often said that foreign wars are the way that we learn geography. But most often it is not the people who have little direct experience outside their own country that are the problem, but rather the experts.
The latest polling data is making this clear once again, as a majority of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan, but the Obama administration is escalating the war, and his military commanders may ask for even more troops than the increase to 68,000 that the adminstration is planning by the end of this year.
This gap between the average American and the foreign policy elite has been around since the Vietnam war and long before. The gap is also large between Democratic voters, three-quarters of whom oppose the war in Afghanistan, and the politicians and thinktanks that represent them in the political arena. A few decades ago there was a real voting base of cold war liberals – people who were progressive on social and economic issues but rightwing on foreign policy. That base has largely disappeared. Yet amazingly, the foreign policy establishment – including most of the media – has managed to maintain this political tendency as a very influential force.
via We don’t want to rule the world | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Until Medical Bills Do Us Part
Until Medical Bills Do Us Part - – NYTimes.com
… it’s a good bet that our existing dysfunctional health system knocks off far more people than an army of “death panels” could — even if they existed, worked 24/7 and got around in a fleet of black helicopters.
Critics fret that health care reform would undermine American family values, not least by convening somber death panels to wheel away Grandma as if she were Old Yeller.
But peel away the emotions and fearmongering, and in fact it is the existing system that unnecessarily takes lives and breaks apart families.
My friend M. — you’ll understand in a moment why she’s terrified of my using her name — had to make a searing decision a year ago. She was married to a sweet, gentle man whom she loved, but who had become increasingly absent-minded. Finally, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
The disease is degenerative, and he will become steadily less able to care for himself. At some point, as his medical needs multiply, he will probably need to be institutionalized.
The hospital arranged a conference call with a social worker, who outlined how the dementia and its financial toll on the family would progress, and then added, out of the blue: “Maybe you should divorce.”
via Op-Ed Columnist – Until Medical Bills Do Us Part – NYTimes.com.
Chances of health compromise take another blow
Obama Needs to Cut Bait and Stop Playing Footsy with the People Who Lost the Election by a 
Landslide. Why do the Republicans Obstruct Legislation When They are in the Majority and in the Minority? It’s Time to Start Acting Like You Won the Election, President Obama, and Kick Some Butt for the Good of the American People. – BF
Chances of health compromise take another blow
A leading GOP negotiator on health care struck a further blow to fading chances of a bipartisan compromise by saying Democratic proposals would restrict medical choices and make the country’s “finances sicker without saving you money.”
The criticism from Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., echoed that of many opponents of the Democratic plans under consideration in Congress. But Enzi’s judgment was especially noteworthy because he is one of only three Republicans who have been willing to consider a bipartisan bill in the Senate.
In the Republicans’ weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, Enzi said any health care legislation must lower medical costs for Americans without increasing deficits and the national debt.
“The bills introduced by congressional Democrats fail to meet these standards,” he said.
via Chances of health compromise take another blow – Yahoo! News.
Soaring deficits cast a shadow over the dollar
Soaring deficits cast a shadow over the dollar – - Times Online
$2,000,000,000,000. That’s the amount by which the Obama administration raised its 10-year estimate of the nation’s budget deficit from the $7 trillion it guessed only a few months ago, a 30% error. It seems that expenses are higher than estimated — up 24% this year, the largest increase since the height of the Korean war — and revenues are lower.
There’s worse. The new estimate assumes that Medicare and Medicaid (government healthcare) spending will be cut by $622 billion, even though Congress has made it known that it is reluctant to make any such cut. Then there is the $600 billion in revenue included for the sale of emission permits, despite the fact that The House of Representatives has given away so many permits gratis that the programme will produce at most $450 billion. Those two items alone come to almost another $1 trillion in red ink. Throw in another $1 trillion for Obamacare, recognise the irrational exuberance of Obama’s economic and revenue projections, and it is no surprise that senior economist Bill Gale, at the liberal Brookings Institution, says that the deficit will exceed $10 trillion over the next decade, a figure he finds “deeply alarming”. So do voters, who now rate the deficit as the nation’s No 1 problem.
This year, the deficit will come to 11.2% of GDP, and by 2019 the debt will be equal to 76% of the value of the nation’s output of goods and services, almost double the 41% when Obama took control of the nation’s finances. Not a problem, White House economists tell me. Not sustainable, says Warren Buffett, among others.
via Soaring deficits cast a shadow over the dollar – Times Online.
Murdoch’s Son: BBC Expansion Is “Chilling,” A Threat To Independent Journalism
Murdoch’s Son: BBC Expansion Is “Chilling,” A Threat To Independent Journalism
The son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch has called the British Broadcasting Corp. a threat to independent journalism.
James Murdoch, the 36-year-old executive in charge of News Corp.’s businesses in Europe and Asia, spoke late Friday at the Edinburgh International Television Festival — 20 years after his father delivered a keynote speech at the same event.
“In this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy,” Murdoch said.
via Murdoch’s Son: BBC Expansion Is “Chilling,” A Threat To Independent Journalism.
The Top 5 Lies About Obama’s Health Care Reform
The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate – | Newsweek.com
To the credit of opponents of health-care reform, the lies and exaggerations they’re spreading are not made up out of whole cloth—which makes the misinformation that much more credible. Instead, because opponents demand that everyone within earshot (or e-mail range) look, say, “at page 425 of the House bill!,” the lies take on a patina of credibility. Take the claim in one chain e-mail that the government will have electronic access to everyone’s bank account, implying that the Feds will rob you blind. The 1,017-page bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee does call for electronic fund transfers—but from insurers to doctors and other providers. There is zero provision to include patients in any such system. Five other myths that won’t die:
You’ll have no choice in what health benefits you receive.
The myth that a “health choices commissioner” will decide what benefits you get seems to have originated in a july 19 post at blog.flecksoflife.com, whose homepage features an image of Obama looking like heath ledger’s joker. In fact, the house bill sets up a health-care exchange—essentially a list of private insurers and one government plan—where people who do not have health insurance through their employer or some other source (including small businesses) can shop for a plan, much as seniors shop for a drug plan under medicare part d. The government will indeed require that participating plans not refuse people with preexisting conditions and offer at least minimum coverage, just as it does now with employer-provided insurance plans and part d. The requirements will be floors, not ceilings, however, in that the feds will have no say in how generous private insurance can be.
No chemo for older medicare patients.
The threat that medicare will give cancer patients over 70 only end-of-life counseling and not chemotherapy—as a nurse at a hospital told a roomful of chemo patients, including the uncle of a NEWSWEEK reporter—has zero basis in fact. It’s just a vicious form of the rationing scare. The house bill does not use the word “ration.” Nor does it call for cost-effectiveness research, much less implementation—the idea that “it isn’t cost-effective to give a 90-year-old a hip replacement.”
via The Top 5 Lies About Obama’s Health Care Reform | Newsweek Health | Newsweek.com.
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet - CNET News
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.
via Bill would give president emergency control of Internet | Politics and Law – CNET News.
U.S. is 15 years behind South Korea in Internet speed
U.S. is 15 years behind South Korea in Internet speed - – The Business Review (Albany):
A report on Internet speed in the United States says the country isn’t likely to catch world leader South Korea for 15 years.
Or for much longer — at current growth rates, the United States will only reach South Korea’s speed today in 15 years.
The report, by the Communications Workers of America, details Internet download and upload speeds all over the United States and some of its affiliated territories. In the last year, the average upload speed in the United States “barely changed,” the report said, and download speed only grew a little, from 4.2 megabits per second in 2008 to 5.1 megabits per second in 2009.
In South Korea, average download speed is four times faster — 20.4 megabits per second. The United States also lags Japan (15.8 mbps), Sweden (12.8 mbps), the Netherlands (11 mbps) and 24 other countries.
via U.S. is 15 years behind South Korea in Internet speed – The Business Review (Albany):.
McCain perpetuates ‘death panel’ for veterans myth
McCain perpetuates ‘death panel’ for veterans myth - The Raw Story »
Speaking with Fox editorialist Sean Hannity on Thursday, U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a beneficiary of government-funded health care, supported the myth that President Barack Obama’s health insurance reforms would establish some kind of nebulous, undefined “death panel.”
Hannity was specifically talking about the literature, “Your Life, Your Choice,” which he insinuated somehow encourages sick and dying veterans to not be a burden on society.
The claim is an echo of the latest attack on the proposed insurance reforms.
First came Palin’s allegation that a so-called “death panel” would have killed her down syndrome baby.
More recently, RNC Chairman Michael Steele alleged that a VA pamphlet dredged up by the Obama administration is encouraging vets to “commit suicide.”
Hannity’s cleverly-worded question merely piggy-backed on this fallacy, albeit through the use of softer terminology.
via The Raw Story » McCain perpetuates ‘death panel’ for veterans myth.
Why the GOP Is Gunning for Grandma
Death, Republican Style | Newsweek
It’s the GOP that’s out to get Granny.
The republicans charge that Democratic health care reform would, in Sen. Charles Grassley’s words, “pull the plug on Grandma.” According to Sen. Jon Kyl, the bills before Congress would ration medical treatment by age. Rep. John Boehner says they promote euthanasia. Sarah Palin has raised the specter of “death panels.” Such fears are understandable. It’s not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make an early exit. After all, that’s been the Republican policy for years.
It was Grassley himself who devised the “Throw Mama From the Train” provision of the GOP’s 2001 tax cut. The estate-tax revision he championed will reduce the estate tax to zero next year. But when it expires at year’s end, the tax will jump back up to its previous level of 55 percent. Grassley’s exploding tax break has an entirely foreseeable, if unintended, consequence: it incentivizes ailing, elderly rich people to end their lives—paging Dr. Kevorkian—before midnight on Dec. 31, 2010. It also gives their children an incentive to sign DNR orders and switch off respirators in time for the deadline. This would be a great plot for a P. D. James novel if it weren’t an actual piece of legislation.
via Why the GOP Is Gunning for Grandma | Newsweek Newsweek Voices – Jacob Weisberg | Newsweek.com.
Fed Judge: SEC Opening Pandora’s Box
Fed Judge: SEC Opening Pandora’s Box - Dustin Ensinger economyincisis.org
A Federal judge called a proposed settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America “puzzling” and refused to accept the terms of the agreement.
A Federal judge on Thursday called a proposed settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America “puzzling” and refused to accept the terms of the agreement, demanding more information on the investigation conducted by the federal regulator.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff puts the SEC in an uncomfortable situation – the SEC defended the settlement it reached while arguing that no additional penalties are necessary.
The SEC had reached an agreement with Bank of America to pay a $33 million settlement based on allegations that the bank failed to disclose to shareholders billions of dollars in bonuses to Merrill Lynch employees, which Bank of America acquired.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Reform we can afford
Reform we can afford - Economic Policy Institute
Josh Bivens
On August 25, another economic shoe will drop, when the government announces new federal budget projections for large deficits over the next decade. Most economists shy away from predictions, but here’s one you can take to the bank: Whatever the number is, it will be interpreted as a reason to abandon or delay health care reform by pundits and politicians, and not just from the right. This argument’s broad ideological appeal, however, signifies less about its intrinsic worth (which is near zero) and more about the sorry state of economic reasoning that characterizes policy debates inside the Beltway. Let’s run through the reasons why concern over the deficit should not impede the progress towards health reform.
First, and most simply, the one fleshed-out version of health reform that has made significant progress through Congress – the House reform bill – fully pays for its expansion of health coverage. That is, the proposed reforms that provide insurance for over two-thirds of the currently uninsured would not add to the deficit. There’s a small caveat to this: included in the House bill is an admirable attempt to end a perennial budgetary gimmick that projects steep cuts in reimbursement rates paid to doctors under the Medicare program and then rescinds these cuts at the last moment. Ending this gimmick brings a cost that was in the past constantly disguised. This cost is roughly $239 billion over the next 10-years.
Even if we decide that this $239 billion must be identified as the net “cost” of the House bill, it’s worth noting that this amount is roughly 15% of the cost of the tax cuts passed during the Bush administration, or roughly 25% of the cost of spending on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to date, or roughly two-thirds of the cost of the first 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003. None of these policy initiatives came with even a penny of dedicated revenue sources or offsetting savings specified elsewhere in the budget. Despite these more expensive precedents, somehow it’s being argued that health reform should be derailed because a bill that fully pays for new health coverage made the mistake of introducing some honesty to the budget process? This sounds like health reform is being held to much higher budget standards than, well, anything else in recent memory.
via Reform we can afford.
Paying for Health Reform
Paying for Health Reform – Craig Harrington – economyincisis.org
Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute gives a complete overview of the bills and the real costs associated with them.
There is an astutely organized and intricately well-funded organization in the United States which has currently set itself against any and all ideas of health care reform. Much of the health care industry is in favor of reforming the decrepit system in which they operate. Many health care professionals are in favor of reforming the system which they see to be inadequate and unfair.
Unfortunately, the health insurance companies are against any and all changes being proposed by the House, Senate, and White House. They control the purse strings, and after decades of raising premiums, cutting benefits, and entrenching their costs on the shoulders of their customers they have plenty of money to pay for it all.
Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, in an article entitled “ Reform we can afford,” gives a complete overview of the bills and the real costs associated with them.
The insurance companies and their affiliated groups, as well as the congressmen they fund handsomely, are talking about the excessive costs of a health reform. In particular they have focused their attention on an alleged $239 billion price tag. This was even the focus of a major misinformation ad-campaign that was run during news broadcasts by the Chamber of Commerce.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Sen. Bob Bennett: ‘The No. 1 assignment in 2009 is to kill Obamacare.’
OPS: yet the Dumbo-crats still want to capitulate
Sen. Bob Bennett: ‘The No. 1 assignment in 2009 is to kill Obamacare.’ - Think Progress »
In Salt Lake City today, Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) held a fundraiser with former Bush adviser Karl Rove, where Rove declared that “Republicans will be defined this year by their effort to block Democrats’ efforts for health care reform.” “This year is going to be defined by Republicans and conservatives by what we oppose,” said Rove. After Rove praised Bennett’s health care plan, Bennett said that he agreed with Rove’s goal of killing health care reform:
Rove said that he supports Bennett’s work on the Healthy Americans Act – the health care bill Bennett is co-sponsoring with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon – although he said it’s “not exactly the bill that you or I would like each and every section.”
Bennett said his bill is not a negotiating tool on health care, but it will be there as an alternative after Democratic reforms are blocked. “The No. 1 assignment in 2009 is to kill Obamacare,” Bennett said.
Another Republican member of Congress, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), also expressed a desire to “kill” health reform today. Asked on ABCnews.com’s Top Line today if “Sen. Kennedy’s passing” would “change anything about the political equation” for health reform, Barrasso replied that “What I’m hearing all across the country is ‘kill the bill.’” Watch it:
via Think Progress » Sen. Bob Bennett: ‘The No. 1 assignment in 2009 is to kill Obamacare.’.
Huckabee: Kennedy Was Fighting Cancer To Deny Cancer Patients Ability To Fight The Disease
OPS: Allowing these people to declare that ” Up is Down”, and get away with it, is dangerous.
Huckabee: Kennedy Was Fighting Cancer To Deny Cancer Patients Ability To Fight The Disease - Think Progress »
Today, in an attempt to criticize Democrats for using Ted Kennedy’s legacy to pass health care reform, Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AK) argued during a radio segment on ABC Radio Networks that Kennedy would have died sooner under health care reform:
It was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don’t have as long to live might want to just consider taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them. Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for.”
Listen:
Texas ‘tenthers’ plan pro-secession rally tomorrow.
Texas ‘tenthers’ plan pro-secession rally tomorrow. - Think Progress »
An organization calling itself the “Texas Nationalist Movement” plans to march on the Texas capitol tomorrow to demand “Sovereignty or Secession”:
Texans will converge on Austin to deliver a petition to Restore America by Demanding our Sovereignty or we will be forced to call a vote for Secession.
This is straight out of the Declaration of Independence and our right to “alter or abolish” our government if it has, “after a long train of abuses” refused to protect the rights of the people.
At present, the Texas Nationalist Movement has a petition with 1 Million signatures directly calling for a vote of secession.
We are calling for an orderly process that will allow our federal government to fall back in line with the Constitution. We are reclaiming our states rights and our individual rights. [...]
We must stand up and be counted or we will find ourselves in another government. Either we restore America, we will live in a Marxist dictatorship, or we will secede and start over again.
via Think Progress » Texas ‘tenthers’ plan pro-secession rally tomorrow..
Sen. Reid indicates support for a public option that is privately-run.
OPS: Reid is either senile or thinks the rest of us are
Sen. Reid indicates support for a public option that is privately-run. Think Progress »
“We have a problem in America and it’s called the private insurance industry,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said in a private meeting with health care providers this week. While Reid recognizes the problem, he isn’t fully supportive of the solution President Obama, the Senate HELP Committee, and the House are pushing — which is, a public health insurance option that competes with private insurers and keeps them honest. The Nevada Senator said he “doesn’t think the public option ought to be a government run program like Medicare,” but instead favors a “private entity that has direction from the federal government“:
“I’ve told people, whoever will listen, that I am in favor of the public option,” Reid said, adding he thinks it’s essential in order to provide competition for private insurance companies that are exempt from anti-trust laws. “We’re working now to try to come up with a program that would allow that to take place.”
Reid went on to say that most people “misunderstand” a public option as “some government run program.”
via Think Progress » Sen. Reid indicates support for a public option that is privately-run..
Leon Panetta Should Resign…
Leon Panetta Should Resign…
…If reports of his attempting to block a lawful DoJ investigation of CIA-related crimes are true…
The BRAD BLOG
I have come to see very little difference between CIA chief Leon Panetta’s reported attempts to intercede in a Dept. of Justice investigation into Bush/Cheney Era war crimes and illegal torture by members of the CIA, and the reported attempts of folks like former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and former Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) to similarly inject themselves into a DoJ investigation (in their case, to force one over phony “voter fraud” allegations and other politically-based investigations of Democrats) leading up to the U.S. Attorney Purge under George W. Bush.
Why should the Director of Intelligence have any say within the DoJ and/or White House administration, over what and who is investigated when crimes have allegedly been carried out?
via The BRAD BLOG : Leon Panetta Should Resign….
‘Plasmobot’: Scientists To Design First Robot Using Mould
‘Plasmobot’: Scientists To Design First Robot Using Mould
Scientists at the University of the West of England are to design the first ever biological robot using mould.
Researchers have received a Leverhulme Trust grant worth £228,000 to develop the amorphous non-silicon biological robot, plasmobot, using plasmodium, the vegetative stage of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum, a commonly occurring mould which lives in forests, gardens and most damp places in the UK. The Leverhulme Trust funded research project aims to design the first every fully biological (no silicon components) amorphous massively-parallel robot.
This project is at the forefront of research into unconventional computing. Professor Andy Adamatzky, who is leading the project, says their previous research has already proved the ability of the mould to have computational abilities.
via ‘Plasmobot’: Scientists To Design First Robot Using Mould.
Blackwater in Court Today in War Crimes Hearing
Blackwater in Court Today in War Crimes Hearing – | CommonDreams.org
by Jeremy Scahill
Lawyers for Blackwater and its owner Erik Prince are in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia today where they are arguing that the five lawsuits against them should be thrown out. The judge in the case, TS Ellis III, is a Reagan appointee with an interesting recent history. He presided over the plea agreement of John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban;” he sentenced Lawrence Franklin to 12 years in the AIPAC/Israel espionage scandal and he also tossed out a case brought by German citizen Khalid El-Masri against private companies allegedly involved with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Judge Ellis said that to allow the case to proceed would “present a grave risk of injury to national security.” Blackwater has made a similar argument in this case, essentially that it was involved with sensitive operations on behalf of the government and cannot be sued (This is covered in great detail in my book).
Ellis has refused to grant Blackwater’s request for a gag order in the case, which Blackwater wanted. In my recent piece for The Nation, “Blackwater: CIA Assassins?” the second half of the story got buried because of breaking news. It dealt with Blackwater’s attempt to make the US government the defendant in these civil cases instead of Prince and Blackwater. For background, I am posting that section here:
Blackwater Strikes Back
via Blackwater in Court Today in War Crimes Hearing | CommonDreams.org.
Escalation: US wants 20,000 more troops to fight Taliban
US wants 20,000 more troops to fight Taliban – - The Independent
British and American soldiers to shoulder brunt of surge’s next phase
The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan will ask for 20,000 more international troops as part of his new strategic plan for the alliance’s war against a resurgent Taliban, The Independent has learned.
The demand from General Stanley McChrystal will almost certainly lead to more British soldiers being sent to the increasingly treacherous battlegrounds of Helmand, the Taliban heartland, despite growing opposition to the war.
General McChrystal, tasked with turning the tide in the battle against the insurgency on the ground, has given a presentation of his draft report to senior Afghan government figures in which he also proposes raising the size of the Afghan army and police force.
via US wants 20,000 more troops to fight Taliban – Asia, World – The Independent.
Public Option versus Single Payer (HR676)
Here’s a detailed comparison of Public Option versus Single Payer (HR676),
from doctors, not insurance executives:
Public option vs HR676
Wake Up, America: Forced vaccinations, quarantine camps, health care interrogations and mandatory “decontaminations”
Wake Up, America: Forced vaccinations, quarantine camps, health care interrogations and mandatory “decontaminations” by Mike Adams
(NaturalNews) The United States of America is devolving into medical fascism and Massachusetts is leading the way with the passage of a new bill, the “Pandemic Response Bill” 2028, reportedly just passed by the MA state Senate and now awaiting approval in the House. This bill suspends virtually all Constitutional rights of Massachusetts citizens and forces anyone “suspected” of being infected to submit to interrogations, “decontaminations” and vaccines.
It’s also sets fines up to $1,000 per day for anyone who refuses to submit to quarantines, vaccinations, decontamination efforts or to follow any other verbal order by virtually any state-licensed law enforcement or medical personnel. You can read the text yourself here: http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/sen…
Here’s some of the language contained in the bill:
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Scalia?
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Scalia? - Talk To Action | – By Frank Cocozzelli
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently claimed that the Constitution does not prohibit the execution of an innocent man provided that he has had a fair trial. While this is astonishing enough coming from a man who holds himself out as a Catholic — even more astonishing is how Justice Scalia substitutes his personal religious beliefs for the law and the Constitution.
This extraordinary tale of what we might call substitutionalism, begins with the case of Troy Davis who was sentenced to death by the State of Georgia in 1991 for the murder of a police officer. Davis has always maintained his innocence and sought a new new trial. “Seven key witnesses have since recanted,” according to an editorial in The New York Times, “and several people have charged that the main prosecution witness was the shooter. Rather than arguing that there were procedural flaws in his trial, Mr. Davis is making the more basic claim that he is innocent and that new evidence proves it.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens declared “the substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification.” The majority of his colleagues agreed and ordered a federal judge in Georgia to review the new evidence and rule whether it “clearly establishes” Davis’ innocence.
But Scalia and fellow traditionalist Catholic, Clarence Thomas, didn’t see it that way. “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial,” Scalia opined, ” but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”
The paradox that is Scalia (and Thomas) is revealed by understanding how Scalia’ applies his view of Catholicism to the law.
via Talk To Action | How Do You Solve a Problem Like Scalia?.
Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make birthers look sane
Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make birthers look sane 
WASHINGTON — Is the federal government building secret camps to lock up people who criticize President Barack Obama?
Will it truck off young people to camps to brainwash them into liking Obama’s agenda? Are government officials planning to replicate the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, using the guillotine to silence their domestic enemies? – | McClatchy
No. The charges, of course, are not true.
However, the accusations are out there, a series of fantastic claims fed by paranoia about the government. They’re spread and sometimes cross-pollinated via the Internet. They feed a fringe subset of the anger at the government percolating through the country, one that ignites passion, but also helps Obama’s allies to discount broader anger at the president’s agenda.
In one, retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson says the government has prepared 1,000 camps for its own citizens. He also says the government has stored 30,000 guillotines to murder its critics, and has stashed 500,000 caskets in Georgia and Montana for the remains.
Why guillotines? “Because,” he wrote in a report obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, “beheading is the most efficient means of harvesting body parts.”
via Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make birthers look sane | McClatchy.
We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident : A Netroots Declaration
The Founding Fathers gave us democracy.
We have the moral responsibility to restore what was given to us, to take back what has been taken away by corrupt politicians of both major parties. If the Democratic Party won’t restore American democracy, it will be up to Progressives to restore it. If Democrats cave again and pass a travesty of a health care reform bill without a strong public option, there will no longer be any doubt that the two-party system has been corrupted beyond salvage. If that happens, I believe progressives will have no choice but to dissolve all ties with the Democratic Party, establish the Progressive Party, and ask progressive Democrats in Congress and across this country to join us.
Bill Moyers Journal: MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE
Video and Transcript at link. If you have COMCAST it is also on free ON-DEMAND for the rest of the week.
MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE – PBS
The film MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE reveals how a profit-hungry medical-industrial complex has turned health care into a system that squanders millions of dollars on unnecessary tests, unproven and sometimes unwanted procedures and overpriced prescription drugs. Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney has teamed up with producers Peter Bull, Chris Matonti, and director Andy Fredericks to produce a film based on Maggie Mahar’s powerful book MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE.
After covering the health care industry for years as a financial journalist, Mahar wanted to write a book examining the system from the perspective of doctors and patients. The response from the doctors she contacted was overwhelming — five out of six called her back. The film brings their stories to the screen, portraying an industry where corporate profits often get in the way of care.
As the JOURNAL continues it’s coverage of health care and the debate over reform, we invite you to submit your questions to Maggie Mahar on the blog. We’ll get you her answers after the premiere of Academy Award winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s documentary, MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE, which will be broadcast next Friday, August 28 on the JOURNAL.
via Bill Moyers Journal . MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE | PBS.
Kennedy Memorial Service Lays out the Contrast Between Dems and GOP: Service to the Nation or Service to the Self
Kennedy Memorial Service Lays out the Contrast Between Dems and GOP: Service to the Nation or Service to the Self
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG By Mark Karlin
It was an Irish wake of the most pitch-perfect sort held for Ted Kennedy in Boston on Friday night: plenty of laughter and song, a celebration, a sense of thanks and gratitude for a full, rich life.
But Edward Kennedy also endured an extarordinary string of personal tragedies that would have turned a lesser man into a barely functioning person. Yes, he had his years of excess and reckless indulgence, but he never stopped working for the common good; it was what centered a life — of what one commentator has noted — Shakespearean proportions of loss.
Ted Kennedy remained the tenacious battler for what would benefit the people of the American nation. The Senate was his career, his job, his passion, his defining sense of purpose — and his commitment to improving the lot of all Americans — not just a select few — was his mission.
Everyone has their own personal recollections of Ted Kennedy, even those of us who knew him from afar.
Universal Health Care Message to Americans From Canadian Doctors & Health Care Experts
Canadian Doctors for Medicare hosted a celebration of Medicare in Canada. The speakers included Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan Premiere and Commissioner on Health Care in Canada. They tell Americans that Canadian universal health care works and encourage Americans to implement a single payer universal health care systems.
YouTube – Universal Health Care Message to Americans From Canadian Doctors & Health Care Experts.
Scientists: Tick saliva may hold cure for numerous cancers
Scientists: Tick saliva may hold cure for numerous cancers- Raw Story »
It may be one of nature’s repulsive little blood-sucking parasites, but the humble tick could yield a future cure for cancers of the skin, liver and pancreas, Brazilian researchers have discovered.
They have identified a protein in the saliva of a common South American tick, Amblyomma cajennense, that apparently reduces and can even eradicate cancerous cells while leaving healthy cells alone.
“This is a radical innovation,” said Ana Marisa Chudzinski-Tavassi, the molecular biologist at the Instituto Butantan in Sao Paulo who is leading the research.
“The component of the saliva of this tick… could be the cure for cancer,” she told AFP.
She said she stumbled on the properties of the protein, called Factor X active, while testing the anti-coagulant properties of the tick’s saliva — the way it stops blood thickening and clotting so the tick can keep gorging itself on its host.
The protein shares some characteristics with a common anti-coagulant called TFPI (Tissue Factor Pathway Inhibitor), specifically a Kunitz-type inhibitor which also has been shown to interfere with cell growth.
via Raw Story » Scientists: Tick saliva may hold cure for numerous cancers.
H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, District by District Impact
H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, District by District Impact
Publications
The Committee has prepared, for each member, a district-level analysis of the impact of the legislation. This analysis includes information on the impact of the legislation on small businesses, seniors in Medicare, health care providers, and the uninsured. It also includes an estimate of the impacts of the surtax that is used to pay for the legislation.
A list of PDF files follows for all Districts in the US:
via H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, District by District Impact.
Huckabee: Kennedy Would Have Been Urged To Die Earlier Under ObamaCare
OPS: Here’s one definition of perversion.
Huckabee: Kennedy Would Have Been Urged To Die Earlier Under ObamaCare
Conservative media figures are blasting Democrats for trying to draw political gain from the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. But on Thursday, it was one of their own — former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — who went there.
The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show, “The Huckabee Report,” on Thursday that, under President Obama’s health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” during his last year of life.
“[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don’t have as long to live might want to just consider taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them,” said Huckabee. “Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for.”
via Huckabee: Kennedy Would Have Been Urged To Die Earlier Under ObamaCare.
Frank: Bill Mandating “Complete Audit” Of The Fed Will Pass House In Fall
Frank: Bill Mandating “Complete Audit” Of The Fed Will Pass House In Fall
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told a Massachusetts audience at a recent town hall that the House will pass legislation this fall mandating a “complete audit” of the Federal Reserve.
The bill to audit the Fed, H.R. 1207, was introduced by libertarian Fed critic Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and is backed by well over a majority of the House. Frank’s comment suggests it won’t just be left to languish in committee.
“I want to restrict the power of the Fed in a number of ways,” said Frank in response to a question about the bill.
“They have had since 1932… the right to intervene in the economy almost whenever they” wanted to, Frank said, noting that the Fed relied on its extraordinary lending power to forward billions to financial institutions last fall. He intends to curtail that lending power, he said.
via Frank: Bill Mandating “Complete Audit” Of The Fed Will Pass House In Fall.
Questions Abound about AIG’s Rise
Questions Abound about AIG’s Rise – Dustin Ensinger economyincisis.org
On Thursday shares of the company rose to $50 at one point before closing slightly lower at $47.84 – an improvement of 27 percent from the previous day’s close.
Beleaguered insurance giant American International Group is back in the spotlight as its stock price rose precipitously and the company’s new CEO is on vacation just days after taking his new job.
On Thursday shares of the company rose to $50 at one point before closing slightly lower at $47.84 – an improvement of 27 percent from the previous day’s close. In fact, the company’s stock price has rose almost steadily since July.
This comes as a surprise to most given the perilous situation of the company. AIG is currently 80 percent owned by the federal government after the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department injected $180 billion into the insurance giant to prevent its failure.
“Who would want to buy a stock that’s still 80 percent owned by the government?” William T. Fitzpatrick asked, according to The New York Times.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
China Rising
China Rising - Craig Harrington economyincisis.org
The United States has been usurped as the world leader in solar and wind power by China.
As the United States shed jobs in basic manufacturing and watched its industrial base go to places like Canada and Mexico no one worried because we were becoming a “new economy.” We were creating a massive service sector and moving the bulk of our revenue generation into finance.
Then the service sector jobs also moved overseas, even more manufacturing fled to cheaper alternatives elsewhere and the financial system collapsed upon itself. In the midst of this crisis many politicians and business leaders called on the United States to spearhead growth and development in next-generation energy technologies.
The United States would become the world’s leader in solar and wind power, and in alternative energy research and development. Unfortunately, the United States has been usurped once again from overseas. After the political system in this country failed to get moving and gain initiative, the Chinese government began boosting its R&D in energy fields.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Decision to end ‘Reading Rainbow’ traced to a ‘shift’ in priorities during the Bush administration.
Decision to end ‘Reading Rainbow’ traced to a ‘shift’ in priorities during the Bush administration. - Think Progress »
“Reading Rainbow,” of the most beloved and long-running children’s education shows, is airings its last episode today. The show, hosted by actor LeVar Burton, started in 1983. John Grant, who is in charge of programming at Reading Rainbow’s home station, explains that part of the reason the show is ending is because no one — including PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) — wants to continue funding it. The other reason can be traced back to a “shift” in priorities during the Bush administration:
Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling.
Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that’s not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.
“Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read,” Grant says. “You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read.”
WellPoint Calls Attention To Its Own Immoral Practices In Effort To Smear Health Reform
WellPoint Calls Attention To Its Own Immoral Practices In Effort To Smear Health Reform - Think Progress »
For-profit health insurance giant WellPoint fired off an email blast to its customers (using its Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield subsidiary) yesterday attacking the public option and Democratic plans for reforming health care, according to Politico’s Ben Smith. The email directs customers to its “grassroots Web site” for instructions on contacting legislators, a website ThinkProgress revealed to be run by the secretive corporate lobbying firm Democracy Data and Communications (DDC). DDC, which is operated by a former veteran of the astroturf organization now known as FreedomWorks, has helped various corporate and Republican interests shape legislation by helping to generate seemingly organic phone calls and letters to Congress.
In the letter to its customers, WellPoint makes a variety of false charges against health reform. Ironically, the attacks WellPoint makes against the public option are more appropriate criticisms of the way the private insurer does business:
1. THE LETTER STATES: Health reform will “increase the premiums of those with private coverage.”
– WELLPOINT POLICIES: In a recent giddy report about WellPoint’s expected profitability to investors, Barrons reported that WellPoint will be “hiking” premiums to at least “6% to 8% annually.” In 2006, WellPoint’s profits increased 34% as premiums and fees surged.
2. THE LETTER STATES: Health reform will cause “millions of Americans to lose their private coverage” and end up in the public option.
Anti-reform town hall attendees are unable to locate Iraq on a map.
Anti-reform town hall attendees are unable to locate Iraq on a map. - Think Progress »
Many town hall protesters enjoy boasting to federal lawmakers about how knowledgeable they are about public policy. For example, at a town hall meeting with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) yesterday, an attendee stood up and declared, “I have taken the time to look at certain provisions of a bill on the Internet and I can quote…the sections and the page.” But the Omaha City Weekly went to a recent town hall hosted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and found that the health care protesters actually aren’t all that informed about public policy. They asked 40 pro-reform and 40 anti-reform attendees to locate Iraq on a map. The results:
A full 75%, 30 of 40 pro-reform attendees, could identify Iraq in its rather eye-catching, dead center position on the map. Only 52.5 %, 21 of 40 anti-reformers could do so. [...]
More telling was the startling reactions I got while conducting the test. Pro-reform people, even those geographically challenged few who laughed out loud at the futility of the task before them, portrayed a uniformly agreeable front. Most gave a knowing, touch_-like nod and smile. I received no negative comments, none at all, from that group.
The same could not be said of the other camp. Far from it.
via Think Progress » Anti-reform town hall attendees are unable to locate Iraq on a map..
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
