Fire DeMarco NOW
On Thursday Housing Secretary Sean Donovan stated, “We believe, the president believes, that the decision that Ed DeMarco made is wrong.” That’s not enough. President Obama has the power and obligation to remove DeMarco. In failing to do so, it’s President Obama who must face our anger and frustration for his inaction.
write the President...tell him to FIRE DeMarco NOW

Going to dust this off and post some optimism...
http://www.andrewtobias.com/cgi-local/display_col.pl?120315&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AndrewTobias+%28Andrew+Tobias%29
Thanks Metacomet!

RIP Coug.

No time to run this failure of a thread.
Just time for our SI thread.
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/subject.aspx?subjectid=55094
Come by if you wish.

Well you're a fine humanoid.
So there.

Happy New Year to you too good friend! That was a fine card.

My best to those with a good heart.

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=2165954197481&source=jl999

You be rather ignorant you be.

how would this fit in?

Keith nailed it tonight...
Medical mobster protection money.

Make us pay so they can take our money and later say they can deny the claims. what a deal for them.

They just keep sucking the money up to the top.


Nothing about what is going on in this administration is sane. They're putting something in the koolaid they didn't use before. Everybody seems like an idiot.

That make believe tug of war good cop bad cop has run its course. Time to give us the option to fire the reps.

Obviously the vote is useless. We're just voting for who receives corporate bonuses for voting their way.

All the President's Climategate Deniers
Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, December 02, 2009

"The science is settled," we've been told for decades by zealous proponents of manmade global warming hysteria. Thanks to an earth-shaking hacking scandal across the pond, we now have mountains of documents from the world's leading global warming advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami. You won't be surprised by the Obama administration's response to Climategate.

With pursed lips and closed eyes and ears, the White House is clinging to the old eco-mantra: The science is settled.

Never mind all the devastating new information about data manipulation, intimidation and cult-like coverups to "hide the decline" in global temperatures over the last half-century, they say. The science is settled.
Never mind what The Atlantic's Clive Crook, after wading through the climate science e-mail files of the U.K.'s Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, called the overpowering "stink of intellectual corruption" -- combined with mafia-like suppression of dissent, suppression of evidence and methods, and "plain statistical incompetence" exposed by the document trove. The science is settled.

Never mind the expedient disappearance of mounds of raw weather station data that dissenting scientists were seeking through freedom of information requests from the Climatic Research Unit. The science is settled.

In March, President Obama made a grandiose show of putting "science" above "politics" when lifting the ban on government-funded human embryonic stem cell research. "Promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry," he said during the signing ceremony. "It's about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda -- and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

Yet, the pro-sound science president has surrounded himself with radical Climategate deniers who have spent their entire professional careers "settling" manmade global warming disaster science through fear mongering, intimidation and ridicule of opponents.

-- Science czar John Holdren, who will testify on Capitol Hill this week at a hearing on Climategate, infamously hyped weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich. He made a public bet against free-market economist Julian Simon, predicting dire shortages of five natural resources as a result of feared overconsumption. He lost on all counts. No matter.

Holdren's failure didn't stop him from writing forcefully about mass sterilization and forced abortion "solutions" to a fizzling, sizzling, overpopulated planet. And it didn't stop him from earning a living making more dire predictions.

In 1986, Ehrlich credited Holdren with forecasting that "carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020." He went on to Harvard and the White House. On the "Late Show with David Letterman" earlier this year, Holdren fretted that his son "might not see snow!"

Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball notes that Holdren turned up in the Climategate files belittling the work of astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division. Holdren put "Harvard" in sneer quotes when mocking a research paper Baliunas and Soon published in 2003 showing that "the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." First, deny. Next, deride.

-- Energy Secretary Steven Chu picked derision as his weapon earlier this year when peddling the Obama administration's greenhouse-gas emission policy. "The American public … just like your teenage kids, aren't acting in a way that they should act," The Wall Street Journal quoted Chu. He dismissed dissent by asserting that "there's very little debate" about the impact of "green energy" policy on the economy.

There's "very little debate," of course, because dissenters get crushed.

-- The Obama team's chief eco-dissent crusher is climate czar Carol Browner. She oversaw the destruction of Environmental Protection Agency computer files in brazen violation of a federal judge's order during the Clinton years requiring the agency to preserve its records.

Over the past year, the EPA has stifled the dissent of Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the agency who questioned the administration's reliance on outdated research on the health effects of greenhouse gases. Recently, they sought to yank a YouTube video created by EPA lawyers Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams that is critical of cap-and-trade. Browner reportedly threatened auto execs in July by telling them to "put nothing in writing … ever" about their negotiations with her.

And she is now leading the "science is settled" stonewalling in the wake of Climategate. "I'm sticking with the 2,500 scientists," she said. "These people have been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real." Book-cookers are good at making it seem so.

In any case, last year, more than 31,000 scientists -- including 9,021 Ph.D.s -- signed a petition sponsored by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine rejecting claims of human-caused global warming.

But hey, who's counting? The science is settled.
http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=106121fd-c78f-49ba-a0dc-cc1acf609952&t=c

Been watching 'The Same Time Next Year', and saw the spot when Kennedy and Nixon were in debates. I remember that time frame because I was in grade school, and that debate was so important they made sure we could watch it at school.

Some of the school rooms had a black and white tv and we were called into the rooms so we could witness history.

Wonderful when we were taught to listen and think.

The health care bill is now down to 35 % approval LOL >> It's losing steam everyday >> folks are seeing thru the smoke and morros.

jason

LMAO this is such drivel >> U blaim all Beck fans for being unhealthy ?? I must have been watching different tea parties >> They all were pretty active healthy folks >> U mean to tell me liberals are healthy sos not to put a drain on health care ?? They are usually the whiners and the "poor little oh me croud" >. I know because I'm in the health care field. Another thing >> those scooter chairs should NOT be funded by tax payers and don't know to many conservatives that would try and get one for free. Hows about paying for the damn thing UR self >> OH thats right liberals are pros at scamming the tax payer and even have orgs to help them do so ie ACORN. The unhealthy issue is UR mind IMO.

Liberal thinking is a mental dissorder in it's self so UR drival posts don't even have merrit ..

Obamas health care is all about infusions of stolen money into the government and inch us even closer to socalism. He could give a rats ars about drowning us in debt OR UR health.

Keep that head in the sand >> the ants have already eaten about half UR brain !!!

jason

Until we get big business out of the pockets of the people in Congress, the vote is just to determine who gets the big payoffs.

If I'm paying attention properly, neither side is innocent.

We need a no confidence vote, and we need to be able to fire these worthless Pr*cks when they vote the big business conscience.

We have nothing if we have no vote that gets us representation.

They have a wonderful healthcare plan mostly paid for by the taxpayer. Their wonderful retirement benefits they vote for themselves and fund it with taxpayer money. Lets not forget their raises voted for by themselves not the voter.

Getting into public office is the real deal.

F*ck the voter that helps put them there.

I have to make up new words to describe how fed up I am with this highway robbery.

Graph of the Day for November 25, 2009
Randall Hoven
"Figure 3 shows the maximum capital gains tax rate and capital gains realizations as a percentage of GDP. The major spikes in realizations correspond to changes in tax rate. The simple correlation between the two time-series is -0.64, which suggests that realizations increase when the tax rate decreases."


Source: Congressional Research Service report, The Economic Effects of Capital Gains Taxation.


Hoven's Index for November 25, 2009


The Congressional Budget Office's error in revenue estimates for 1990-94 from capital gains taxes (the period of high capital gains tax rates): $737 billion (estimate higher than actual).


Economist Allen Sinai's predictions in 1997 of the marginal effects of a capital gains tax cut if enacted then (and it was):

* Increase in real GDP annually: $51 billion.
* New jobs by end of 2000: 500,000.
* Increase in real business spending annually: $18 billion.

Source: US House of Representatives Joint Economic Committee Study, 1997.


Actual results (total, not just marginal effects of tax cuts) from 1997 to 2000:

* Average annual increase in real GDP (4Q96 to 4Q00): $436 billion.
* New jobs (Dec. 96 to Dec. 00): 11.5 million.
* Average annual increase in real gross private investment (4Q96 to 4Q00): $142 billion.



Source: St. Louis Fed (links embedded above).


Graph of the Day Archive.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/11/graph_of_the_day_for_november_23.html

Left Wingers Jump to Conclusions: FAIL

Posted by Gregory of Yardale at November 24, 2009 2:09 PM

You may recall back in December, a census worker named Bill Starkman was found hanging from a treee in Kentucky. The left immediately jumped to the conclusion that right-wingers were to blame.

* The Idiots at the Democratic Underground Message Board (DUMB) quickly posted a ‘Handy Guide to how Republicans and Fox News are responsible for Census worker being hanged'.
* Rachel Maddow suggested Sparkman was killed simply because ‘he was a federal employee'.
* Liberal bloggers were quick to accuse ‘right wing zealots' trying to ‘take their country back.
* Time chalked it up to government distrust, a sentiment fanned by ‘talk media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings'.
* The Huffington Post immediately assumed this was a case of right-wing paranoia.
* True/Slant opined that the body of Sparkman should be shipped to Glenn Beck.
* Think Progress pointed the finger at Michelle Bachman and her ‘inflammatory and fear-mongering rhetoric against the Census'.
* New York Magazine linked the death to that of ‘some wide-eyed, hysterical woman' named Michelle Bachman. (The irony in this is that the reference to a wide-eyed, hysterical woman was made in an article mentioning Nancy Pelosi).
* AIDS-addled conspiracy theorist Andrew Sullivan immediately fingered “Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts.”

Today, the police have ruled the death a suicide.
And as for our own local progressive nitwits, Ghost of Wellstone was quick to insinuate that anti-Government right-wingers were responsible.

As far as the census worker, we don't know who killed him. Yet, "FED" being written on his chest, begs the question Posted by: Ghost of Wellstone at September 29, 2009 10:17 AM

Andy42302 got even more specific and implied that Michelle Bachman was to blame.

While Bachmann may not be directly responsible for the brutal slaughter of the Census worker, the obvious resentment expressed by the perpetrator(s)is directly proportional with Bachman's latest irrational diatribes about those scary, stalking, and intrusive Census workers. Posted by: andy42302 at September 30, 2009 5:44 PM

Neither of them doubted for a minute the man was murdered, and jumped right to the conclusion the right was to blame.

Not everyone is quite ready to give it up the conspiracy theories just yet.

Who wins with a suicide determination ?
Local Police. Homicide of an on the job census worker brings in the FBI. Not a welcome presence in rural Kentucky.
Insurance carriers. They don't pay out.


Comments

They're all just sooooo much smarter than everyone else. FAIL!
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/11/in_which_we_poi.html#more

Health Care Legislation Creates Over 100 New Bureaucracies

11.23.09 @ 4:24PM

MEMO FOR THE MOVEMENT:

Health Care Legislation Creates Colossal New Bureaucracies

RE: The 2,032 page Speaker Pelosi Healthcare bill that was approved by a narrow margin in the House of Representatives on November 7th and the 2,074 page Senator Reid Healthcare bill just introduced creates over 100 new bureaucracies that are sure to be inefficient with taxpayer money.

ACTION: We urge you to contact your Congressman and Senators, as well as to inform your local activists and friends that this bill is a regulatory nightmare destined to create lots of pork barrel projects, more government agencies and endless edicts from Washington, DC that waste taxpayer money.

ISSUE-IN-BRIEF: The health-care bill in its current form would create a regulatory mess estimated by one Senator to add100,000 new administrators in over 100 new bureaucracies. Many of these bureaucracies will get between doctors and patients. Others are simply a waste of money. Among the many new bureaucracies are:

· Health Benefits Advisory Committee

· Health Insurance Exchange

· Public Health Insurance Option

· Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research

· Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission

· Patient Ombudsman for Comparative Effectiveness Research

· Accountable Care Organization Pilot Program

· Community Based Medical Home Pilot Program

· Independent Patient Centered Medical Home Pilot Program

· Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman

· Grant Program for Health Insurance Cooperatives

· Telehealth Advisory Committee

· Prevention and Wellness Trust

· Personal Care Attendant Workforce Advisory Panel

· Community Prevention Stakeholders Board

To pay for all this new bureaucracy there will be dozens of new taxes totaling nearly $800 billion and extending to items such as wheelchairs and hospital gowns. Almost every major recent public opinion poll has shown more Americans oppose Obama/Pelosi/Reid Care than support it. Just this week, in The Wall Street Journal, the Dean of the Harvard Medical School gave the health care reform debate "a failing grade."

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE BUREAUCRATIC MESS THAT THESE BILLS WILL CREATE PLEASE VISIT THESE WEBSITES:

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2009m11d2-Pelosis-health-care-bill-creates-111-new-federal-Obamacare-bureaucracies

http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/15/truth-and-consequences-of-health-care-reform/

http://townhall.com/columnists/JosephCPhillips/2009/11/16/health_care_and_the_moral_imperative

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/11/11/the-absolutely-worst-bill-ever/

http://www.gop.gov/policy-news/09/11/05/nov-5-2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704795604574519671055918380.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703399204574505423751140690.html

http://www.newsok.com/sen.-tom-coburn-says-bill-creates-expanded-bureauc

http://www.newsok.com/sen.-tom-coburn-says-bill-creates-expanded-bureauc

racy/article/3417005?custom_click=pod_lead_politics

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/14/AR2009111402597_pf.html

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124202/No-Clear-Mandate-Americans-Healthcare-Reform.aspx

Tom Schatz, President, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government

Matt Kibbe, President, Freedom Works

Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform

Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America

Jim Martin, President, 60 Plus Association

Marion Edwyn Harrison, President, Free Congress Foundation

Herman Cain, President, THE New Voice, Inc.

T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., former Chief Domestic Advisor to President Reagan

Richard Viguerie, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com

Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council

Alfred Regnery, Publisher, American Spectator

James C. Miller III, former Reagan Budget Director

Tom Winter, Editor in Chief, Human Events

Karl Ottosen, Untied States Federation of Small Businesses

Very clever....
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911060002

its about time.......hope they have the balls to keep that in the final bill and its not just a bargaining tactic

Pelosi To Dems: Time To Take A Stand On Public Option

Nancy Pelosi is ready to rumble. The House Speaker told her Democratic caucus Tuesday night that she plans to bring a health care reform bill with a robust public option to the House floor for a vote, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) tells HuffPost. But first she needs to know that the party is with her.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has been tallying support for a public insurance option tied to Medicare reimbursement rates over the last several weeks. According to people in the room Tuesday night, Pelosi told her members that the caucus is close to the 218 votes needed to pass the bill. She went on to say that the few remaining undecideds - or undeclareds - needed to let Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) know by Wednesday where they stand.

The caucus will meet again Wednesday evening to retake the Democratic temperature. If the 218 votes are there, the party will plow forward and go to conference committee negotiations with a strong hand.

The challenge from Pelosi to her caucus puts the onus on her to find the votes. "Do I think it will get to 218? I have such confidence in our speaker Nancy Pelosi, that when she is determined, as a strong woman - I can't guarantee everything - but I do believe she's determined to go into the conference with the Senate with a strong public option," Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday.

"As with so many other issues, the American public is way ahead of even those of us in Congress," said Rep. Donna Edwards, a progressive Democrat from Maryland. "It's good fortune and a lot of hard work on the part of the Speaker and the Democratic caucus for us to finally come where the American people are."

A progressive public option also puts pressure on Senate negotiators hammering out the final health care bill in the upper chamber. A robust public option on the House side could give Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) the political wiggle room to include a more conservative public option in his package. It would then come down to a duel between the chambers.

Pelosi was "upbeat" as she delivered her news and made the call to the caucus, said one person in the room. A Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday showed support for the public option climbing nationally.

The robust public option's ability to save money bodes well for its future. Pelosi shared the outlines of a preliminary Congressional Budget Office estimate of the costs of the House bill, telling the caucus it came in at well under $900 billion over ten years.

President Obama has demanded that the package come in at under $900 billion. "Without the public option, which has been scored as a big cost saver, it will be hard for us to meet the $900 billion mark and provide the affordability to Americans that is absolutely essential," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/20/pelosi-to-dems-time-to-ta_n_327979.html

DEMS GO TRUST-BUSTING

WASHINGTON A House committee has voted to strip the health insurance industry of its exemption from federal antitrust laws as senators announced plans to take the same step.
The moves Wednesday signaled a growing determination by Democrats to punish the insurance industry for its criticism of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul agenda. The House Judiciary Committee voted 20 to 9 to repeal a 1940s law that exempted the health insurance industry from federal controls over certain antitrust violations including price-fixing.
Lawmakers said they wanted to include the legislation in a larger health care overhaul bill taking shape in the House. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans to repeal the antitrust exemption as part of its health care legislation.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/senate-dems-aim-to-strip_n_328362.html

The Real Hoax Is Health Care
by Laura Flanders


An attention grab that held millions of Americans transfixed. A story that seemed to be about life in the balance. It dominated the airwaves, the social networks, held Americans in its clutch. And then it turned out to have been nothing but a hoax. A play for attention that distracted the entire country.

Now that the Balloon Boy's story is blown, can we call out the health care hoax?

The anti-health care lobby is taking all our attention hostage. And a nation's hopes (and votes) for quality health care are floating away, leaving real lives in real danger.

If you're angry and feel played by the Heene family of Colorado, you'd better be furious at the private insurers.

If you want Richard Heene and his wife to be jailed and their kids taken into protective care - you better be fighting for all Americans to be taken out of the custody of abusive wealth-insurance companies.

We know now that the Heenes were smart about how to manipulate the media in part because they'd starred in two episodes of Wife Swap. Cigna, Aetna, United Health own the news. They and their guns-for-hire lobbyists underwrite just about every pseudo-news show. Call it "News Swap." (Theirs for the real stuff.)

And right now, with their House Republican pals they're planning to stop a health care bill by spending the next three weeks arguing over a phony-facts study that claims that the Democrats' measure will be a bad deal for small businesses, senior citizens, and women and children,"

At least the empty balloon that the Heene's floated was harmless. The anti-health care lobby is taking us all for a ride. Where is the sheriff when you need him? And where are the felony charges?

Published on Monday, October 19, 2009 by GRITtv

A Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction
by Chris Hedges

We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.

“If we all wait for the great, glorious revolution there won’t be anything left,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me when I interviewed him in a phone call to his home in California. “If all we do is reform work, this culture will grind away. This work is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to use whatever means are necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet. We need to target and take down the industrial infrastructure that is systematically dismembering the planet. Industrial civilization is functionally incompatible with life on the planet, and is murdering the planet. We need to do whatever is necessary to stop this.”

The oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants will not willingly accept their own extinction. They are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe. We will not significantly reduce carbon emissions by drying our laundry in the backyard and naively trusting the power elite. The corporations will continue to cannibalize the planet for the sake of money. They must be halted by organized and militant forms of resistance. The crisis of global heating is a social problem. It requires a social response.

The United States, after rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, went on to increase its carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels. The European Union countries during the same period reduced their emissions by 2 percent. But the recent climate negotiations in Bangkok, designed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen in December, have scuttled even the tepid response of Kyoto. Kyoto is dead. The EU, like the United States, will no longer abide by binding targets for emission reductions. Countries will unilaterally decide how much to cut. They will submit their plans to international monitoring. And while Kyoto put the burden of responsibility on the industrialized nations that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same. It is a huge step backward.

“All of the so-called solutions to global warming take industrial capitalism as a given,” said Jensen, who wrote “Endgame: The Problem of Civilization” and “The Culture of Make Believe.” “The natural world is supposed to conform to industrial capitalism. This is insane. It is out of touch with physical reality. What’s real is real. Any social system—it does not matter if we are talking about industrial capitalism or an indigenous Tolowa people—their way of life, is dependent upon a real, physical world. Without a real, physical world you don’t have anything. When you separate yourself from the real world you start to hallucinate. You believe the machines are more real than real life. How many machines are within 10 feet of you and how many wild animals are within a hundred yards? How many machines do you have a daily relationship with? We have forgotten what is real.”

The latest studies show polar ice caps are melting at a record rate and that within a decade the Arctic will be an open sea during summers. This does not give us much time. White ice and snow reflect 80 percent of sunlight back to space, while dark water reflects only 20 percent, absorbing a much larger heat load. Scientists warn that the loss of the ice will dramatically change winds and sea currents around the world. And the rapidly melting permafrost is unleashing methane chimneys from the ocean floor along the Russian coastline. Methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times more toxic than carbon dioxide, and some scientists have speculated that the release of huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere could asphyxiate the human species. The rising sea levels, which will swallow countries such as Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands and turn cities like New Orleans into a new Atlantis, will combine with severe droughts, horrific storms and flooding to eventually dislocate over a billion people. The effects will be suffering, disease and death on a scale unseen in human history.

We can save groves of trees, protect endangered species and clean up rivers, all of which is good, but to leave the corporations unchallenged would mean our efforts would be wasted. These personal adjustments and environmental crusades can too easily become a badge of moral purity, an excuse for inaction. They can absolve us from the harder task of confronting the power of corporations.

The damage to the environment by human households is minuscule next to the damage done by corporations. Municipalities and individuals use 10 percent of the nation’s water while the other 90 percent is consumed by agriculture and industry. Individual consumption of energy accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumption; the other 75 percent is consumed by corporations. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States. We can, and should, live more simply, but it will not be enough if we do not radically transform the economic structure of the industrial world.

“If your food comes from the grocery store and your water from a tap you will defend to the death the system that brings these to you because your life depends on it,” said Jensen, who is holding workshops around the country called Deep Green Resistance [click here and here] to build a militant resistance movement. “If your food comes from a land base and if your water comes from a river you will defend to the death these systems. In any abusive system, whether we are talking about an abusive man against his partner or the larger abusive system, you force your victims to become dependent upon you. We believe that industrial capitalism is more important than life.”

Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible for our personal impoverishment as well as the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels. Species are vanishing. Fish stocks are depleted. The great human migration from coastlines and deserts has begun. And as temperatures continue to rise, huge parts of the globe will become uninhabitable. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has demonstrated that any concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with maintenance of the biosphere on the “planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” He has determined that the world must stop burning coal by 2030—and the industrialized world well before that—if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number. Coal supplies half of our electricity in the United States.

“We need to separate ourselves from the corporate government that is killing the planet,” Jensen said. “We need to get really serious. We are talking about life on the planet. We need to shut down the oil infrastructure. I don’t care, and the trees don’t care, if we do this through lawsuits, mass boycotts or sabotage. I asked Dahr Jamail how long a bridge would last in Iraq that was not defended. He said probably six to 12 hours. We need to make the economic system, which is the engine for so much destruction, unmanageable. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has been able to reduce Nigerian oil output by 20 percent. We need to stop the oil economy.”

The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits. We have allowed the corporate state to sell the environmental crisis as a matter of personal choice when actually there is a need for profound social and economic reform. We are left powerless.

Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of Russian anarchists working to topple the czar, reminded his followers that they were not there to rescue the system.

“We think we are the doctors,” Herzen said. “We are the disease.”

Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Published on Monday, October 19, 2009 by TruthDig.com

Big Bank Profits Spark Rally in Cocaine, Hooker Sectors


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/big-bank-profits-spark-ra_b_322088.html

Conservatives and Off-Base Lefties: Can You Top This?

Well over half the people who walk the face of this earth come from among the three Abrahamic traditions or faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is no secret that there has been no love lost and little understanding between Islam, the fastest-growing of the three, and the other two.

Now, along came a newly installed civic leader, a President of the United States, generally recognized as the "leader of the free world." Since what is known as "the free world" is predominantly Christian, the new president can also claim to be the most significant leader on the world stage of that Abrahamic faith, Christianity. Among his earliest actions, the new United States President stunned the world by reaching out to Islam -- not from Washington, not by way of TV or the Internet -- no, he traveled to Egypt, put his body and his presidency on the line, and spoke to Islam as he would speak to us. "I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge a new beginning," he said, emphasizing that, "It is easier to start wars than to end them."

And then, speaking from the epicenter of the Muslim world, to all the world, and to the essence of our humanity, he spoke this truth: "It is easier to blame others than to look inward, to see what is different about someone, than to find the things we share."

And who, for the love of God in three faiths, topped that this year?


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-lear/conservatives-and-off-bas_b_316948.html

Relax, Obama Was A Brilliant Choice For Nobel Peace Prize



Joe Weisenthal|Oct. 9, 2009, 10:11 AM


The world is now engaged in universal mockery of the Nobel Prize committee's decision to award the Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. Even his supporters can't fathom what he did to deserve it, and many are suggesting that he turn the prize down and say "Thanks, but no thanks... it wouldn't be right until I've accomplished my goals."

He speaks at 10:30, so maybe he'll say he declines, but we really doubt it.

And besides, he deserved it. People in the US might be jaded, but it's hard to estimate how badly America's reputation had been damaged internationally after 8 years of George W. Bush, and though Obama hasn't really done anything different, just the perception is big. And then of course there was the historic nature of his Presidency in the most important country in the world, which really shouldn't be discounted as an accomplishment -- it's a lot more impressive than anything anyone's ever done in the Mideast, a region which has had its share of undeserved Peace Prizes.

But the real reason it's a brilliant choice is that when it comes to making world Peace, putting the cart before the horse is exactly the right way to go. Now Obama can sit down at the negotiating table with Ahmedinijad or Benjamin Netanyahu, and slap his Nobel Prize on the table and say: "now deal."

In other words, this Nobel Prize was an investment in future world peace -- a bet that by lending some support to the leader of the free world, that leader would be able to achieve something.

It may not work, but then again, considering the dubious history of the prize, why not take the bet?

(One thing to note: While people are saying this totally discredits the Nobel Prize, it really doesn't, or at least it can't do any worse than than the prizes awarded to Gore, Carter or Yasser Arafat. The other prizes all retain their exemplary status, and the Peace Prize remains kind of weird. That's just how it goes.)


http://www.businessinsider.com/relax-obamas-selection-was-a-brilliant-choice-2009-10

My Orlando hero....

Nobel Insiders: Beer Summit Sealed it for Obama
Andy Borowitz

OSLO, NORWAY (The Borowitz Report) - As the world responded with a mixture of surprise and amazement to the announcement of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel insiders revealed that the President's "beer summit" at the White House put him over the top.

"The committee was definitely split down the middle right up until the end," said Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician and member of the five-person Nobel committee. "Some of them were still quite upset about that nasty business with the Somali pirates."

But, according to Ms. Valle, "someone brought up the beer summit, and we all agreed that that was awesome."

Ms. Valle said she hoped that Mr. Obama's victory would be seen not only as a victory for him, but "as a tribute to the healing power of beer."

Ms. Valle acknowledged that the President's win was widely considered an upset, with most pundits having expected the prize to go to Mad Men or 30 Rock.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/nobel-insiders-beer-summi_b_315108.html

Heads or tails, Obama loses
By Jim Lobe

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ09Df01.html

Healthcare Briefing

from Campaign for Liberty President John Tate


http://www.chooseliberty.org/audio1.aspx

crimminal bastards have it figured that doomsday maybe doesnt happen in their lifetime.......so they will take the cash and let future generations suffer

this couple probably does

Does Anyone Actually Understand the Health Care Debate?:
Okay, let's see if we can get this straight:

There's the "public option," the worst-branded good idea since solar power, which is a federal government-run not-for-profit health insurance program that would be there as a way to force for-profit insurance companies to rein in costs and not be such dickheads because it would be part of an "exchange," a menu of various kinds of health insurances competing for your (or your company's) health insurance dollars, all private except for the federal government-run one, depending on how many accessories you want or can afford on your policy; however, as a way to water it down for insurance company lobbyists and their pet members of Congress, as well as for idiots who don't actually get how any of this works, the people who could get a public option would be those who can't get health insurance through their work, either because it's not offered or because they don't work, and small businesses, who routinely get dicked over by insurance companies because they are, as mentioned before, such dickheads. And people who can't afford jack shit would get reduced cost or free public option insurance, just like school lunches. But wait...

That's too socialist for conservative Democrats, who wouldn't know a socialist if Karl Marx bit them on the ass and yelled, "Lose your chains"(and let's not even talk about Republicans [yet] because they're not part of the equation), so instead of a really stupidly-named "public option," they might would maybe perhaps be willing to talk about possibly having health care cooperatives, which would be privately-run and based on premiums after getting seed money from the federal government, but they'd be non-profit, which would possibly maybe, in an ideal world, provide the competition that supposedly would eventually drive down costs if and when things get going in a few years if maybe the co-ops are allowed to negotiate lower fees for services, unless the drug companies and others get in the way. But wait...

That's all a bit too centralized for some conservative Democrats, who, really, need to have primary candidates run against them, so instead they are thinking about giving states the money to run their own versions of the aforementioned shittily-labeled public option or the previously discussed co-op or some Frankensteinian combination of those and other things cobbled together that would be "experiments" in creating competition for the dickhead insurance companies and, in an ideal world, could maybe possibly lower costs in the long run if the experiments are successful, but, hey, at least then Idaho or New Hampshire would only have itself to blame and not the Congress if it turns out they made things worse. But wait...

That's all a bit too cart-before-the-horse for some conservative Democrats and the one and only Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe, who might maybe be willing to vote for some kind of health care bill if perhaps it possibly maybe has something in it that covers her ass with fellow Republicans but still gives her the semi-compassionate street cred with her allegedly independent-thinking constituents who mostly just want the previously mentioned poorly-marketed public option. So they've come up with this idea of a "trigger," which means that if the insurance companies, who are, as mentioned before, dickheads, all of a sudden think there might one day perhaps be some kind of public option, they might consider being marginally less dickish about things like pre-existing conditions and cutting sick people off and jacking up premiums, which does more than anything else to harm the bottom line of all American businesses except the insurance companies, and thus, in concept, in an ideal world, the dickhead insurance companies, who have proven so trustworthy in the past, will rein in their costs, and if they don't, then, after a few years, oh, boy, they better watch out because, depending on how Congress words it, they could face a federal public option or co-op or 50 state-run versions of those previously mentioned and described potential possibilities if any trigger is actually pulled, because any Congress after this one can merely unload the gun.

Is that about right? Are they just fucking with us?

The only real question remaining before any of this convoluted, alienating nonsense is passed is if Democrats will realize that the majority of the people in this country want a straightforward government-run health plan, a, yes, "public option." (What they really want is nationalized health care, but, shhh, Obama says we're not allowed to bring that up.) The electoral implications are simple: if a bill with any kind of watered-down, bullshit public option is passed, be it a trigger or state-run or co-ops, Republicans will attack it as socialism and government intervention in blah, blah, blah. It could be a slightly lower cost on aspirin, and conservatives will make it seem like Josef Stalin is shooting Grandma and tossing her in a mass grave. That's what August and everything after should have taught us.

So why not just pass the real thing?

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2009/10/does-anyone-actually-understand-health.html

Democrats with guts

Democratic congressman Alan Grayson beat the Republicans at their own game last week, when he ripped into them for dragging their feet on the American healthcare crisis. On the floor of the House of Representatives, he summarised the Republican healthcare plan as: "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." It has caught Republicans like a deer in the headlights, understandably so because Republicans are not used to Democrats with guts.

Far from surrendering to immediate Republican outrage and demands for apology, Grayson stood firmly by his stance, teasing his opponents that he'll apologise, but "to the dead and their families" for government's failure to improve the system. In fact, Grayson has since stepped up his rhetoric in a recent media blitz, calling Republicans "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals" and "a lie factory" whose only approach to policy is obstructionism. By failing to produce a counter-proposal in the following days, Republicans have effectively proven Grayson's point.

This kind of pugnacious spirit is common among Republicans but very rare among Democrats, which is largely why Democrats so often get trampled in legislative battles where they have the upper-hand politically, intellectually, morally, historically and in opinion polls. Grayson's star power has surged since his remarks. While the GOP has designated him public enemy number one, Grayson has lit up the Democratic base.

What's unique about Grayson is that he's passionate about championing liberal causes, and he forcefully calls out the lies of his Republican opponents and the vapidity of today's conservative movement. With the significant rightward shift of the Democratic party in the last few decades, progressives are hardly represented in American government any longer. Though there are a few notable exceptions, none have quite the determination Grayson showed this week.

In the last 30 years, Republicans have yanked America further to the right than was once conceivable. Democrats have been complicit in this. Many Democrats sat idly by – if not supported – Republicans starting unnecessary and destructive wars, violating the Constitution and international law, redistributing wealth upward from the working poor to the rich, letting tens of millions lose their health care, and actively ignoring the threat of global climate change.

Democrats have effectively allowed Republicans to elide the word "liberal" from an adjective into a smear. This continues today, despite the fact that conservatives have steered America to one of its darkest places yet. President Obama's self-consciously conciliatory approach plays right into this meme. The zeal with which Republicans continue to promote their agenda, despite its immense failures, provides a stark contrast to the tepid Democratic spirit.

This is why Grayson is not a typical Democrat, and why he's exactly what Democrats have needed for a long time. The party dominates the House of Representatives, has a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and boasts a popular president – yet continues to get pushed around the bullied by the GOP, which is less popular than ever and has no serious proposals for solving today's problems. What gives? A lack of fortitude.

Capping an era of great political cynicism and unprecedented domination of money in politics, progressives have lost their footing and have tumbled behind conservatives, facing an increasingly steeper mountain to climb as Democrats continue to capitulate to the perpetrators of these quandaries. In an age where campaign contributions from wealthy, narrow interest groups are so critical to political survival, the incentive for ordinary Democrats is to play the game, not change it.

With the Democratic party slowly morphing into a watered-down Republican party, progressives have grown increasingly cynical of politics. Many feel little incentive to vote or participate in the political process. A Grayson-like fervor for liberal causes can help recapture this waning enthusiasm, perhaps eventually motivating Democrats to be real progressives again.

The internet age provides as much potential for political self-harm as it does opportunity, but Grayson seems happy to take the heat. Democrats need representatives who genuinely believe in liberal values, who have the courage to fight for their beliefs, and who won't prioritise political expediency over doing their job the right way. "We need Democrats with guts," Grayson said of the whole matter. He's right.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/06/alan-grayson-healthcare-democrats

I knew I should have looked at the bottom first. lol!

Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons To Touch Paintings

NEW YORK—Hoping to boost attendance and broaden its base of supporters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art launched a new initiative this week that allows patrons, for the first time ever, to prod and scratch at the classic paintings in its revered collection.

"Though it contains more than two million pieces and represents a profound legacy of artistic achievement, most people remain completely indifferent to our museum," Met director Thomas P. Campbell said. "So we decided to try something a little different and give visitors a chance to experience our timeless works of art up close and personal."

Added Campbell, "Please, bring the whole family and smudge up our paintings as much as you want."

According to Campbell, attendance has increased tenfold since the new policy went into effect, with record turnouts causing 45-minute waits for those wishing to clumsily paw at the works of Vincent van Gogh.

"You can't grasp the brilliance of a great painting just by looking at it," said Phil Brehm, 32, who acknowledged that he hadn't set foot inside a museum since a mandatory field trip in high school. "To truly appreciate fine art, you need to be able to run your fingers over its surface and explore its range of textures."

"Or just rub your face all over it, like I do," Brehm added.

Gerard Schmidt, a retired banker who lives near the Met, said he had never much cared for museums until he was given the chance to manhandle one of Monet's Water Lilies.

"At first it just looked like a picture of a bunch of lily pads, but then I started scraping at it with my pocket knife and the whole painting just sort of spoke to me," Schmidt said. "For the first time, I finally understand what Monet was trying to get across in her work."

Art students also took advantage of the Met's relaxed rules, with many photocopying Cézanne canvasses or trying to gain insight into Rembrandt's techniques by tracing over Aristotle With A Bust Of Homer with soft pencils and charcoal.

Karen Cooper, a 41-year-old mother of four, said she enjoyed her first visit to the Met, but admitted it was exhausting to spend an entire afternoon touching paintings.

"This is good to know about, though" said Cooper, before applying another coating of moisturizing lotion to her hands and returning to palm more Vermeers. "Whenever I need some alone time, I can bring the kids here and send them off to go play with the Picassos for a while."

Museum officials confirmed that many new visitors have given donations to the museum to get special member benefits, such as being allowed to remove works of art from the walls and sit down with them while enjoying food or drinks in the café.



The new policy has been so popular that on Monday the Met began extending tactile privileges beyond its paintings. Patrons are now invited to climb inside ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, whether to take a souvenir photo or just carve a message into a 2,500-year-old sacred coffin. Museum-goers are also encouraged to try on the medieval suits of armor and participate in mock battles.

Commenting on the diversity of the museum's permanent collection, Met publicity director Sarita Bhakta said, "Where else can you recline in an original Mies chair, put your feet up on a Rodin, and play "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" on a 300-year-old Stradivarius?"

Some, however, remained unimpressed.

"I touched a crapload of Jasper Johns' paintings," said Mark Bennet, 67. "I just don't get why they're supposed to be so special. They feel like any regular old painting."

Still, the Met's success has inspired other institutions to follow suit. The Guggenheim Museum now allows customers to swing from its Calder mobiles, while the American Museum of Natural History has begun charging $2 to ride atop its famed brontosaurus skeleton.

And the cash-strapped Boston Symphony Orchestra has created a special "Jam Night" during which audience members can come up onstage to play along with the orchestra, improvise lyrics, or just twirl around waving colored scarves.

"Sometimes you have to go that extra mile to grab people's attention," said Campbell, the Met director. "Sometimes it takes more than curating exhibits that bring meaning and context to our complex cultural heritage, more than preserving works of art that capture the spirit of transcendence unique to humankind."

Continued Campbell: "Next year we're going to let people grab any masterpiece they like and just take a shit on it."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/struggling_museum_now_allowing?utm_source=a-section

Bill Maher Slams GOP Climate Change Skeptics: They're "So Stupid They Make Me Question Evolution" (VIDEO)


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/03/bill-maher-slams-gop-clim_n_308501.html

I'll take Dean over Rahm any day.

When they gave Howard Dean the boot after he helped so much in the election, we had the sick feeling that something big was coming which involved the 'last gasp' of the Democratic Party. As if it had been set up that this was the token win. The way they keep standing down to Republicans voicing ugly sentiments makes me fear the collapse of our once great system. Big business dollars own Washington. We've asked our reps how much does it take to get you to work for the voters? We get the nice form letter responses in return, "Thanks for your concern blah blah blah."

We can't afford a lobbyist.

Howard Dean vs. Rahm Emanuel
Cenk Uygur
Host of The Young Turks


It has always been thus. Now comes round two.

In the first round, Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean butted heads on what strategy was best in regaining House seats in 2006 (also to some degree in 2008). Emanuel was chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Howard Dean was chair of the Democratic National Committee. Dean's path was the famous 50 state strategy. Emanuel thought that was foolish and that the Democratic Party would be much better served spending more money in traditional political ads in more "realistic" districts.

As it turned out, Emanuel was wrong and Dean was right. The Democrats won everywhere, including districts previously thought unimaginable. Dean's efforts to reach out to all the states paid off huge dividends as the Democrats became competitive in districts no one had thought possible.

Now, we're in the second round. This time it's the health care debate. Rahm Emanuel has been pushing for a weaker version of reform from the beginning. In his defense, he believes he is focusing on what is doable (nearly the same thing he said during the previous House elections). Emanuel has argued for a trigger from the beginning of the debate and seems to think that a public option is not realistic in this political environment.

Howard Dean has instead argued for a stronger version of health care reform. He believes the country is persuadable (the same position he had in the House elections) and is largely on the side of bolder reform already. He believes the Democratic politicians need to have the courage of their convictions and they can make a real difference.

Once again, Howard Dean is right and Rahm Emanuel is wrong. The voters didn't vote for a little bit of change. They gave the Democrats the White House and overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. They voted for real change. The kind of change that Dean always pushes for (and often accomplishes) and the kind of change that Emanuel doesn't ever find "realistic."

Emanuel needs to change his definition of realistic. We didn't elect Obama to fiddle around the edges. We elected him to change the current reality of Washington. We didn't elect him to figure out the best way to appease the lobbyists; we elected him to figure out the best way to beat them. What Rahm Emanuel doesn't seem to get is that real change is realistic. You have all this political power. It's time to use it. If not now, when?

There were rumors when President Obama was picking his cabinet and administration that Emanuel kept Dean out of the West Wing because of their running feud. If there was truth to that, then it seems Obama picked the wrong guy - not just for pushing forward bold reform but also for actually getting it done.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/howard-dean-vs-rahm-emanu_b_303915.html

The Best Health ‘Reform’ Money Can Buy
by Dave Lindorff


When the White House or Democrats in Congress talk about health care reform, and about wanting to preserve the central role of the private insurance industry in health care, it pays to look at just what it is that they they're so anxious to preserve.

According to the Health and Human Service's department's National Health Expenditures report, private insurers will pay out $854 billion in medical claims for health insurance policyholders this year. That represents about one-third of the nation's estimated $2.5-trillion medical care bill for this year. But that's not the whole story. The premiums paid for those claims payments will total $1.2 trillion, which includes $179 billion in "administrative" costs (21% or over $1 out of every $5 dollars spent on health care) and another 150 billion in profits (a tidy 15% return). That is money that was paid out in premiums by individuals and by employers (who every year are shifting more of the cost of health coverage onto employees).

A big part of that $179 billion you and your employer pay for insurance company "administrative expenses" (none of which is for actual patient care) goes to fund private "death panels" whose job, as insurance company whistleblower Wendell Potter has testified in Congress, is to deny coverage to sick policyholders.

And that $179 billion wasted on administration (Medicare, a federally-run program, only devotes 4% of costs to administration by way of comparison), isn't all. Doctors, hospitals and pharmacies also spend a similar sum on administrative expenses, much of it devoted to fighting to get paid by those same insurance companies. How many of us have spent hours struggling over claims forms, and getting signatures from physicians in order to get reimbursed for care, or on the phone arguing with insurance company "customer service" people on the phone, either to get reimbursed, or to get a pre-treatment authorization? Doctors, hospital administrators and pharmacists do the same thing. That's why your doctor's office has such a large staff of people who aren't there to take your pulse or blood pressure-just to work with paper.

Insurance companies, in their discussions with investment analysts, actually refer to their payouts for patient care vs. their premium take as their "medical loss ratio," a figure which they vow to improve by clamping down on "losses" (meaning benefits paid).

I took a look at the latest 10-Q financial statement filed by Aetna, one of the nation's largest private health insurers. Through June 30, Aetna took in $14 billion in premiums, $10.7 billion of that amount from employers and employees, $2.9 billion more from Medicare recipients who bought a supplemental insurance plan to cover the gap in what Medicare covers, and another $400 million for handling Medicaid claims. Aetna reports that it paid out $11.9 billion in health care reimbursements, and $2.3 billion in administrative expenses (20%).

By the way, this same Aetna is headed by CEO Ronald A. Williams, who earned $24.3 million in 2008 according to Forbes magazine (about the norm for insurance CEOs), as well as another $296,639 as a board member of American Express. Williams also has unexercised options on Aetna stock worth $194.5 million, according to Forbes. He owns a palatial home in Farmington, CT assessed at $1.7 million. According to Opensecrets.org, Williams has spent close to $10 million on lobbying activity for his company and the insurance industry since 2005.

Somebody tell me why this is a system we not only want to keep, but that, under proposals working their way through House and Senate, would force another 40-50 million currently uninsured people, most of them low-income, to pay into, under threat of being assessed a $3800 tax penalty by the IRS if they don't buy some particularly crummy plan.

Common sense says that if this insurance intermediary were removed from the process, besides Williams and the other industry CEOs and other executives losing their fat paychecks and bloated homes, planes and portfolios, the whole American healthcare system would run a lot more smoothly and cheaply.

I remember back in 1990, when I was working on my book Marketplace Medicine (Bantam 1992) about the for-profit hospital industry, talking to the administrator of a Canadian hospital in Ontario. He told me he had formerly worked as a hospital administrator in the US. He reported that back then, when new less-invasive technologies, as well as reforms introduced to Medicare, had begun reducing the amount of time people were spending in hospital beds, his hospital had been able to shut an entire wing because of a declining patient census. "But one year later, we had to reopen it to accommodate all the staff needed to deal with paperwork from the insurance industry," he said. That problem has only gotten worse over the ensuing two decades. Meanwhile, this same administrator told me, "In Canada, I have only three people doing paperwork for the whole hospital: one for Canadians, and two to deal with paperwork for the occasional American tourist who gets sick or injured."

Let's be clear. The only reason Congress and the White House are pushing a plan that continues to give a central role to the private insurance industry is that the private insurance industry is flooding the capital with money. It's a great investment for them. If health insurers are collectively earning $150 billion in profits in a year, and it only costs them perhaps $50 million in legal bribes to keep their scam operating, they're earning a 3000% return on investment!

We would all be far better off if Congress just passed Rep. John Conyers' bill, HR 676, to expand Medicare to cover everyone. As I have explained in an earlier article, expanding Medicare would result in no net increase in taxes, and because it would eliminate insurance premiums, workers' comp and public employee health expenses while also lowering car insurance rates, not to mention lowering the prices charged by doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, also a substantial savings for all Americans.

Some people worry that if we were all on Medicare, medical research would suffer. But this is a spurious fear. Much of the most important research in medical care and treatment is funded by the federal government through the National Institutes of Health. In fact, arguably, the profit motive leads industry to focus research on highly profitable, but much less urgent things, so we get research on cosmetic uses for Botox, but little or no research on finding a cure for Malaria or drug-resistant TB. Furthermore, with all the savings freed up by switching to a single-payer system there'd be more money to provide to the NIH for research.

There may be a valid argument for competitive markets, say for cars or food production and distribution. But it should be abundantly clear by this point that when it comes to health care, the market doesn't work. In fact, it is perverse. The end user-your and me-will never have the information needed to make a wise decision regarding either cost or quality. Furthermore, unless we were all buying our own insurance and selecting our own doctors unimpeded by "preferred provider" or HMO lists, we are being forced to chose, if we get any choice at all, from a limited selection made available by our employers, who are motivated only by bottom-line concerns. In fact, in countries like Canada or France, which have Medicare-like single-payer systems, people have vastly more choice as to physician and hospital than any American patient.

Some people also worry that a government-run single-payer insurance system, by pushing down the reimbursements to doctors and hospitals through its monopoly position as sole paymaster, would lead to a defunding of hospitals and would drive away the "best" students from choosing the medical profession. But really, if you look at what hospitals in the current "competitive" market spend much of their money on, it turns out to be cosmetic things like fancy building exteriors, pretty rooms, etc.-things that help lure patients, but that do nothing to improve patient care. As for future doctors, does anyone really think that having people go into medicine because of the prospect of earning millions of dollars and driving fancy sports cars results in better doctors than having people choose a medical career because of a passion to serve humanity, or a passion for research into curing disease? What changes is not the quality of the medical students, but their motivation.

Some progressives also point out that Medicare, as popular as it is among older citizens who depend on it, and among doctors who treat them and are paid by it, is hardly ideal, covering only 60-80% of most people's medical bills. But that overlooks a key point: if everyone in America were on Medicare, there would be a huge common interest in improving the coverage.

All the sturm and drang in Washington and in the media over the course of health care "reform" in Washington is really much ado about nothing. We are not getting real reform.

In a replay of last year's to-do over the mess in the banking industry, we are watching our dysfunctional and corrupt government simply, to quote President Obama, "kick the can" down the road, leaving the next Congress and the next President to deal with the same disaster. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans will continue to die needlessly every year because the care they need will be denied to them by insurance companies that are focused on making as much money as possible, and by a government that has sold its soul to the health industry lobbyists.

Published on Saturday, September 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

How to Trap a President in a Losing War
Petraeus, McChrystal, and the Surgettes
By Tom Engelhardt

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175118/a_military_that_wants_its_way

Nosh!t.
The vacuum cleaner still pulls the bucks up top. 4.6 billion dollars a year off the payers' backs is bad news Karma. He better live it up, because there is a bill to come due. All of them. Our congress is guilty too. Their great lifestyle is mostly off the taxpayers' backs, and the lobbyists who pay them to work for them.

We're being so screwed.

Public Option Headed For Vote Tomorrow


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/24/public-option-headed-for_n_299232.html

OUCH!

where your dollars end up

http://www.aflcio.org/issues/healthcare/upload/hc_ceosalaries.pdf

New Rule: You Can't Complain About Health Care Reform If You're Not Willing to Reform Your Own Health

New Rule: You can't complain about health care reform if you're not willing to reform your own health. Unlike most liberals, I'm glad all those teabaggers marched on Washington last week. Because judging from the photos, it's the first exercise they've gotten in years. Not counting, of course, all the Rascal scooters there, most of which aren't even for the disabled. They're just Americans who turned 60 and said, "Screw it, I'm done walking." These people are furious at the high cost of health care, so they blame illegals, who don't even get health care. News flash, Glenn Beck fans: the reason health care is so expensive is because you're all so unhealthy.

Yes, it was fun this week to watch the teabaggers complain how the media underestimated the size of their march, "How can you say there were only 60,000 of us? We filled the entire mall!" Yes, because you're fat. One whale fills the tank at Sea World, that doesn't make it a crowd.

President Obama has identified all the problems with the health care system, but there's one tiny issue he refuses to tackle, and that's our actual health.
And since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol -- and alcohol actually serves a useful function in society in that it enables unattractive people to get laid, which is more than you can say for Skittles.
I'm not saying tax all soda, but certainly any single serving of soda larger than a baby is not unreasonable. If you don't know whether you burp it or it burps you, that's too big. We need to make taking care of ourselves an issue of patriotism. If you were someone who condemned Bush for not asking Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror, the same must be said for Obama and health care.

President Arugula is not gonna tell Americans they're fat and lazy. No sin tax on food on Obama's watch. And at a time when it's important to set new standards for personal responsibility, he appointed a surgeon general, who is, I'm sorry, kind of fat. Certainly too heavy to be a surgeon general, it's a role model thing. It would be like appointing a Secretary of the Treasury who didn't pay his taxes. He did?

And get this: Surgeon General Benjamin had previously been a nutritional advisor to Burger King. The only advice a "health expert" should give Burger King is to stop selling food. The "nutritional advisor" job was described as, "promoting balanced diets and active lifestyle choices" -- and who better to do that than the folks who hand you meat and corn syrup through a car window? When you have a surgeon general who comes from Burger King, it's a message to lobbyists, and that message is, "Have it your way."


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-you-cant-complai_b_291852.html

The President’s Best Hope in the G.O.P.


President Obama intends to keep wooing the public to support for his health care goals in a scheduled Monday night appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” Polls suggest he has had mixed results so far.

Most critical, however, is his private effort to persuade one person: Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine.

And that effort appears to be going very well.

Ms. Snowe has not endorsed either Democratic health care bill in the Senate. No Republican has.

But in an interview, she offered a surprisingly robust endorsement of Mr. Obama’s skepticism about expanding government too much, his willingness to accommodate different views and his assertion that Washington must act now after decades of failure.

Those views directly contradict the assertions of Republican leaders, who accuse Mr. Obama of pursuing a radical expansion of government, spurning dialogue and unduly rushing to enact his agenda. Ms. Snowe’s analysis of the discrepancy: she has maintained traditional Republican principles over 30 years in Washington, while her party has moved past them to the right.

“I haven’t changed as a Republican,” she said. “I think more that my party has changed.”

The significance of the Obama-Snowe relationship lies not in the prospect that the president will replicate it with many, or even any, other Republicans. To achieve his objectives, Ms. Snowe may be the only Republican he needs.

‘Budget Neutral’

In talking across the ideological divide, Mr. Obama’s greatest challenge is persuading Republicans that his quest to extend insurance to an additional 30 million Americans will not add “a dime to the deficit,” as he recently promised Congress.

“Two-thirds of the costs for covering new people will be paid for by taking waste out of the system,” Mr. Obama said in an interview at the White House. The bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, would finance most of the rest with a tax on high-cost insurance plans — which economists say may also “bend the cost curve” down by discouraging heavy health care spending.

Republican leaders scoff. But Ms. Snowe believes the Baucus bill meets Mr. Obama’s goal.

“It is budget neutral,” Ms. Snowe said, citing a Congressional Budget Office analysis that the proposal would save $49 billion over 10 years. “It does reduce the deficit.”

More starkly, Ms. Snowe dismisses the Republican characterization of Mr. Obama as a big-government liberal moving heedlessly to expand Washington’s role. “I almost sense the opposite,” Ms. Snowe said. “He’s been very realistic in his views on health care.

“I’ve gotten an impression that he would, you know, probably do less than more,” she added. His place on the ideological spectrum, she said, is “more moderate than liberal on this question.”

She uses her running conversation with the president over a government-run health insurance “public option” to illustrate the point. Her portrait of a politically supple new president diverges drastically from the dogmatic leftist described by other Republicans.

“I sensed at the outset that he might be far more flexible on that question many months ago when I had an initial discussion with him,” said Ms. Snowe, who backs a public option as a backup that would be “triggered” only if the private insurance market fails.

An Early Courtship

Mr. Obama and his team began cultivating Ms. Snowe even before he took office in January. “He’s always eliciting my views,” she said, “wondering, you know, what my concerns are.”

It paid off on economic stimulus legislation when she provided one of three Republican votes clearing the way for the $787 billion package. Independence like that helps her popularity in Obama-friendly Maine, just as bucking Mr. Obama helps conservative Democrats like Senator Ben Nelson back in Nebraska.

Ms. Snowe will get a chance in the Finance Committee this week to tailor the bill further to her specifications, which include higher premium subsidies benefiting low- and moderate-income constituents, as well as the triggered public option.

That will not make it easy for her to do what Democrats wish: to defy her party, join 59 Democrats and provide the 60th vote necessary to surmount a potential Republican filibuster.

Not only is Ms. Snowe a lifelong Republican, but her husband, John McKernan, is a former Republican governor of Maine. In the interview, she made no commitment on the health care overhaul. Yet she offered a rationale for joining Democrats this year, observing that “the time has come” to act.

“I’d like to have more Republicans on board,” she said. Does she have to have them?

“Well, no — I’m going to support the right policy,” she concluded. “People really want to get something done.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/us/politics/21caucus.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1253554234-U1oGb8oQVbM0ARjUa9HNPA

Ahmadinejad: Holocaust Denial A Source Of Pride


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/ahmadinejad-holocaust-den_n_293083.html

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday he was proud his denial of the Holocaust had enraged the West, as the controversial leader geared up for a United Nations trip to stress what he said would be a message of "peace and friendship."
Ahmadinejad's latest comment about the killing of millions of Jews during World War II comes as Iran is locked in a bitter dispute with the U.S. and other Western nations over its nuclear program. Even as that fight continues, his remarks were sure to earn the Iranian president an even more frigid reception when he heads to New York on Tuesday to attend the U.N. General Assembly.
"The anger of the world's professional killers is (a source of) pride for us," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
He was responding to a question about criticism from the European Union following a speech on Friday in which he questioned whether the Holocaust was a "real event." The "killers" reference appeared to be directed primarily at Israel and the U.S.
"It's a sad day for the Iranian people," French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Christine Fages said in an online briefing Monday in reference to Ahmadinejad's latest Holocaust statements. She said "they unfortunately add to the long list of hateful statements" by Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly raised questions about the Holocaust. He has said it has been used as a pretext for Israel's formation, and that Israel and Jewish groups are actively muzzling any attempt to link shame over the Nazi atrocities with the what many in the Muslim Middle East believe is the West's bias for the Jewish state at their expense.
The comments have done little to bolster sympathy for Iran's conservative government, which the U.S. and others believe is looking to enrich uranium with an eye to nuclear weapons production. Iranian officials deny the charge, saying the program is for purely peaceful purposes.
The Iranian president is slated to address the U.N. on Wednesday, said IRNA.
"The most important message of this year's visit by president to New York is peace and friendship for all nations, fighting suppression and interaction with all nations in the framework of justice and mutual respect," Mohammad Jafar Mohammadzadeh, a spokesman for Ahmadinejad's office told IRNA.
Ahmadinejad's last trips to the U.N. have been marked by sharp protests. In 2007, before a planned speech at New York's Columbia University, he sat through a scathing criticism by the elite university's president.
Mohammadzadeh said Ahmadinejad was planning to meet extensively with the media while in the U.S., and that the "Zionist lobby," despite its efforts, will be unable to "stop the publication of the justice-seeking message of Iranians by their president."
Ahmadinejad is sure to face a drubbing over the nuclear issue and questions about whether Iran will negotiate or face the threat of even deeper sanctions.
The U.S. administration has invited Iran to start a dialogue on its nuclear program and gave a vague September deadline for Tehran to take up the offer. The U.S. and five other world powers accepted an offer from Iran earlier this month to hold "comprehensive, all-encompassing and constructive" talks on a range of security issues, including global nuclear disarmament.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana will meet Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili on Oct. 1 for talks on the nuclear issue.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/ahmadinejad-holocaust-den_n_293083.html

Blue Is the New Black
Maureen Dowd

Women are getting unhappier, I told my friend Carl.

“How can you tell?” he deadpanned. “It’s always been whine-whine-whine.”

Why are we sadder? I persisted.

“Because you care,” he replied with a mock sneer. “You have feelings.”

Oh, that.

In the early ’70s, breaking out of the domestic cocoon, leaving their mothers’ circumscribed lives behind, young women felt exhilarated and bold.

But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?

According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.

Before the ’70s, there was a gender gap in America in which women felt greater well-being. Now there’s a gender gap in which men feel better about their lives.

As Arianna Huffington points out in a blog post headlined “The Sad, Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling”: “It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in. Women around the world are in a funk.”

(The one exception is black women in America, who are a bit happier than they were in 1972, but still not as happy as black men.)

Marcus Buckingham, a former Gallup researcher who has a new book out called “Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently,” says that men and women passed each other midpoint on the graph of life.

“Though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy,” Buckingham writes in his new blog on The Huffington Post, pointing out that this darker view covers feelings about marriage, money and material goods. “Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older.”

Buckingham and other experts dispute the idea that the variance in happiness is caused by women carrying a bigger burden of work at home, the “second shift.” They say that while women still do more cooking, cleaning and child-caring, the trend lines are moving toward more parity, which should make them less stressed.

When women stepped into male- dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.

“Choice is inherently stressful,” Buckingham said in an interview. “And women are being driven to distraction.”

One area of extreme distraction is kids. “Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children,” said Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at Wharton who co-wrote a paper called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.” “It’s true whether you’re wealthy or poor, if you have kids late or kids early. Yet I know very few people who would tell me they wish they hadn’t had kids or who would tell me they feel their kids were the destroyer of their happiness.”

The more important things that are crowded into their lives, the less attention women are able to give to each thing.

Add this to the fact that women are hormonally more complicated and biologically more vulnerable. Women are much harder on themselves than men.

They tend to attach to other people more strongly, beat themselves up more when they lose attachments, take things more personally at work and pop far more antidepressants.

“Women have lives that become increasingly empty,” Buckingham said. “They’re doing more and feeling less.”

Another daunting thing: America is more youth and looks obsessed than ever, with an array of expensive cosmetic procedures that allow women to be their own Frankenstein Barbies.

Men can age in an attractive way while women are expected to replicate — and Restylane — their 20s into their 60s.

Buckingham says that greater prosperity has made men happier. And they are also relieved of bearing sole responsibility for their family finances, and no longer have the pressure of having women totally dependent on them.

Men also tend to fare better romantically as time wears on. There are more widows than widowers, and men have an easier time getting younger mates.

Stevenson looks on the bright side of the dark trend, suggesting that happiness is beside the point. We’re happy to have our newfound abundance of choices, she said, even if those choices end up making us unhappier.

A paradox, indeed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion