see you in a week

From Under The LobsterScope (December 20, 2009)

Comparing the House and Senate Bills prior to Compromise:

If all goes as the news is saying, Harry Reid has the 60 votes to get the Senate’s Health Care bill passed on Tuesday morning. Then it will have to go into a compromise commission with the House of Representatives.

I was looking for a clear source comparing the two bills and found it at the Washington Post. Go HERE to see the differences.

We won't bad mouth you while you are gone.

Anybody hungry?

day after win!

fresh coffee and a clean kitchen bliss!

the small stuff is underated.

try not to get renditioned...and gitmoed...

Now you have us all wondering!

Have a great time! We all love you!

toniD's Ya Think?

And Happy Day After.

25°F here in the midwest and
lots of snow falling.
Was planing to go out but looks like
I'll be clearing snow again.

A good day to stay in and maybe relax
with some good music on.

.
.
.
_ _ _
brr

Hope good--for you at least.

We listen to the same radio station.

Tells the story of tar-baby prehistoric jesus!

Don't let any-damn-body tell you any different. (Including the transit service website which had an update specifically for today.)

Guess where the walks weren't shovelled (other than in front of some assholes' houses that had two feet [I'm serious] of sidewalk to shovel and whose cars were all dug out [I'm beginning to see your point, tz] ;).) Well-where else? ...

1) For hundreds of feet in front of the old plantation house. (Yesss, I said the old plantation house...) 2) For at least a hundred feet in front of a vacant lot (ok...ok...but wfi...) ON MAIN STREET. MAIN STREET ONLY RUNS A COUPLE OF MILES. (Am I screaming more lately?)

Xmas, I guess, is the reason. And it's a weekend now. I'm weighing that, carefully, before I begin my correspondence with the appropriate agencies.

Good morning. :)

really.

We are not a nation of self-centered Senators, we are a nation of "the people". The majority of "the people" wanted more than the self-centered Senators were willing to give.

Being willing to accept less than is possible is never acceptable when the majority of the voters want it.

(Except the "for once" part. ;) )

http://lafiga.firedoglake.com/2009/12/25/mherhy-cthulmhas-santa-we-hardl...

re:woxy
For that type of music it's the best.
Can't get enough. There hasn't been a
terestral (through the air) station like it
here in chicago since about 1997.
It's a drag to have to be attached to a computer
to hear new and different music.

I discovered it in '98 when visiting my bro. in Cincinnati.

Videos

.
.
.
_ _ _
brr

wtf # 33

Only a phallocentrist would call an entity with that tongue phallocentric.

Submitted by gloryoski on Fri, 12/25/2009 - 9:46pm.
...is it a real no-no to use semi-gloss not just in the kitchen and bathroom but everywhere? It really is so much better when your a lazy klutz--especially when you are talking...

We are a small organization looking for help around the office. We mainly run Outlook and excel experience with these would be great.

responsibilities include
- Scheduling and keeping track of appointments
- |(Answer the phone|Answering phone calls|Receiving phone calls|)

http://charlottesville.craigslist.org/ofc/1524274073.html

---
Don't think I'm hard up enough yet to work in any office where someone uses "would be great" without a trace of irony...

Alice don't know how I missed your "tree w/ p" post. That has a lot to do with why I live where I do.

The palm in the foreground is the male tree the one to the right is his "date."

==
I listened to "war is over" over and over.

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Submitted by bibimimi on Fri, 12/25/2009 - 11:47pm.
Peace of The Season To You, Your Family, and All My Blog Brethren and Sisteren [isn't that a big-ass tank that holds water?]
--------
Sisteren was made famous by Rosemary Clooney and (Trudy Stevens singing for) Vera Ellen in White Christmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYZbgG4D2oA

The visual spoof by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye gave the tune that certain je ne sais quoi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YhTKiFEMAg&NR=1

(Note the quick cut to a tone arm being placed on a spinning record. I guess it's a ham-fisted clue for the slow-witted who could have used a similar clue earlier when Trudy Stevens' vocals were being lip-synched by Vera Ellen.)

hope ya all had a lovely day yesterday.
Went to a friends house & ate like a little
piggy.
Had a very nice dinner.

Submitted by Sunshine Jim on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 9:54am.
...the small stuff is underated.
-----------
Sunshine Jim: "Don't sweat the small stuff."

and "small shit?"

Maybe it's just a failure to differentiate...
Submitted by gloryoski on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 12:01pm.
------
It's the price you pay for stuff.

Authorities Hunt for Clues Behind Foiled Terror Attack on Plane
FOXNews - ‎1 hour ago‎

That's an unexpected development.

Job Title: Trauma Sales Associate

(Not making it up.)

What the Fuck???? Come on - really?
GEEZ -

equipment to treat people with/in(?) trauma (physical) is what I gathered from the partial description. (But it wasn't easy to gather. It gave me a little bit of trauma.)

they are running a story on Mexico and they are now touching on ICE prisons. It's a rerun I think, so it is probably archived already. In any case...

http://www.wnur.org/

Odd because the show is supposed to be over but it's not.

Yeah - I heard that - I think it was just
about a month ago. Disturbing I think.

It would give me a tad bit of trauma 2.

lookee here

a northern european tradition - jumping naked into the frozen lake

in rome people jump from the bridge into the tiber river on new year's day, but these here are from germany and it's a christmas tradition

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/esteri/bagno-ghiacciato/1.html

scanning quickly through the blog saw ICE and was thinking you guys talking about ice :)

Seems there are a lot of such "Polar Bear Clubs"--That's what one of them is called I remember from years ago.

First one I've seen where women did it.

Vatican mulls options over woman who lunged at pope
Reuters - Philip Pullella, Louise Ireland - ‎3 hours ago‎
--------
(Impose a penance of three Hail Mary's and one Our Father, or three Our Father's and one Hail Mary?)

Submitted by gloryoski on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 1:51pm.
...First one I've seen where women did it.
--------
Further proof that idiocy is not gender specific.

However, women who take the icy plunge a second time are not necessarily as dumb as men who do the same. Most guys know that external genitalia is supposed to be on the outside.

Submitted by Crank Bait on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 2:02pm.

Vatican mulls options over woman who lunged at pope
Reuters - Philip Pullella, Louise Ireland - ‎3 hours ago‎

_______________

Mitre saw it comin'.

Submitted by Crank Bait on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 2:18pm.

... Most guys know that external genitalia is supposed to be on the outside.

___________________

True, but it gives them half-froze guys who fantasize about birthing their chance to lay a clutch of eggs.

http://www.gameshowthemesongs.net/sounds/The%20Better%20Sex/BETTERSEX.mp...

sisteren?

Do you need $$

If Obama would just vacation in Texas this shit wouldn't happen.

Isn't that enough trouble for one lifetime?

---
Just fer scuzz MsA has a Pink song so I want one too.

happy vacation sam

Have a fantabulous vacation!

Good Afternoon Sederville! It's a sunny 38F.

....However, Chesnutt had recently struggled with a lawsuit filed by a Georgia hospital after he racked up surgery bills totaling some $70,000, the Athens newspaper reported. He said he couldn't afford more than hospitalization insurance and couldn't keep up with the payments.

The problems baffled his Canadian bandmates, Chesnutt said.

"There's nowhere else in the world that I'd be facing the situation I'm in right now. They cannot understand what kind of society would inflict that on their population," he said. "It's terrifying."

Source

Welcome Back to Pottersville

Population 300,000,000

http://welcomebacktopottersville.blogspot.com/2009/12/assclowns-of-week-...

think of the mountain bike I got Wendy 4 Christmas??
It's kinda hard to c - it's a Trek.

I can't wait 2 read the rest of the "50
Assclowns of 2009"Seems like great reading
just from what I've already read.

Hope yours & Bgurls holiday was a good one.

29% of Americans say religion ‘out of date’

By Muriel Kane
Friday, December 25th, 2009 -- 8:11 pm

Share on Facebook Stumble This!

A Gallup poll of Americans' attitudes towards religion released on Christmas Eve found significant recent increases in those responding either that they have no religious preference, that religion is not very important in their lives, or that they believe religion "is largely old-fashioned or out of date."

Only 78% of Americans now identify as Christian, while 22% describe their religious preference as either "other" or "none."

Most of these changes have occurred since 2000 and represent the first significant shift since a sharp decline in religious adherence during the 1970s. Over the last nine years, the number with no religious preference has grown from a level of around 8% to 13%. The number for whom religion is not very important has climbed from just over 10% to 19%. And the number who believe religion is out of date and has no answers for today's problems has jumped from slightly more than 20% to 29%.

These changes do not appear to have affected the majority of Americans who still consider religion "very important" in their own lives. That figure remains at 56% -- roughly the same as for the last 35 years -- while 57% still say religion has answers to most of the world's problems.

The biggest difference is that in the late 1990s, up to 68% of Americans though religion had answers to the world's problems -- even though only about 60% said religion was personally very important to them. It seems as though over the last ten years a significant number may have gone from believing that religion is a positive factor in the world, even if they're not particularly religious themselves, to seeing religion in a far more skeptical or even negative light.

http://rawstory.com/2009/12/29-americans-religion-out-date/

There was a Polar Bear Club within our group of friends in the Caribbean. They were the five guys who never entered the sea except for a brief dip on New Years Day.

Both the sea and air temperatures are around eighty on January 1st. The club was hardly polar. The guys were somewhat bear-like though, much as you might imagine adult males who refuse to enter tropical water except to fulfill an annual pact.

They gathered at the bar (which wasn't the unusual part of the day) to steel themselves for the task ahead. A stone grotto with shallow water and a sandy bottom lay less than fifty feet away. Young mothers use the serene pool to introduce their babies to the sea.

Eventually, with drinks in hand, the Polar Bear Club led a gaggle of jeering onlookers to the grotto. The rules dictated that they completely immerse themselves at least once, which wasn't easy in water so shallow. There was no requirement for the duration of the dip. The first trip back to the bar for a refill usually marked the end.

I remember one year when they surprised everyone by staying in the water until they were sunburned.

After thirty minutes or so, the jeering crowd had grown bored and returned to the bar. After an hour, the wife of one of the polar bears walked down to the grotto to see if they were still in the water. She returned to the bar and said, "People have been bringing them drinks. I reminded them that they are getting sun in places that are usually under cover."

After another hour, she checked on them again. She reported back "They're burned but they're still jabbering away and having a good time." Someone else said, "They're too drunk to stand up."

She nodded her head, "I think that's what's happened. They haven't had to get their own drinks and they don't have to get up to pee."

France's ruling party says it plans to present a bill to parliament next month, which would ban the wearing of full Islamic veils in all public places. The party says the move should be seen as "a law of liberation."

Carla Bruni

Perhaps Sarkozy wants to remove the veil so Muslim women can be liberated like his wife, Carla Bruni. Now who's oppressed, Sederville?
--------

France's ruling party, the conservative Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), says it plans to present a bill to parliament in January, which would ban full Islamic veils in all public places. The bill is to be presented in the first two weeks of next month, just before the conclusions of a French parliamentary inquiry on the burqa and niqab are published.

Jean-Francois Cope, the parliamentary party leader of the UMP, said the measure was meant to defend France from extremists.

"There are principles at stake: Extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country," he said.

Veils "not welcome" in France

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said that veils that hide women's faces in public are "not welcome" in France. Most politicians say they would like to see the results of the parliamentary inquiry on the veils before they decide on the need for a law.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: French president Nicolas Sarkozy says Islamic veils are "not welcome" in France.

con't

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5052094,00.html

i was busy cleaning my kitchen and was wiping the counter. My hand caught the bottom piece of metal on the microwave and peeled my fingernail half off.

Hard to type. Chuck took me to a place where I could sit and the beer would come to me. It still throbs and my kitchen still has work pending but ask me if I care.

Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 5:13pm.
...peeled my fingernail half off.
--------
Oh man, oh man, ohmanohmanohman. This is the sort of story that gives me the willies and makes my toes curl and my jaws clench.

My best advice is for you to buy a box of throwaway exam gloves. The lightweight, translucent, synthetic type is cheap. A box of 100 goes for between $7 and $10 bucks if you shop around. The large size is a little sloppy on me but is easy to don and doff. The medium fits tight and makes my hands sweat.

You will bandage the finger fewer times if you wear an exam glove over it. Build the bandage so it pads the wound when you bang it on something (you will). Use moisturizer or talc on the rest of your hand depending upon how it reacts to being in an exam glove for long periods of time.

You can use soap and water on your bare and gloved hands while washing them in a sink just like you normally do with bare hands. When you shower, use an appropriately sized rubber band to seal the glove's gauntlet to your wrist.

Trust me on this. You already know that fingertip bandages are notoriously unreliable. You'll waste much less time coping with the gloved hand than you would lose by rebandaging the damaged finger six or seven times per day.

The wound will heal faster in a continuous smear of ointment than it would while being subjected to daily doses of soap and water and grime and shampoo and pizza grease and more soap and water, etc.

Sometimes I cut one of the fingers out of a glove, slide it over the bandaged finger, and tape it down around the cut edge. It won't survive more than a few hours if you use your hands like I do but it can give you a break from wearing an entire glove. Frankly, the whole glove works much better than any other method when you are doing dirty work or preparing food or when you have any other reason to wash your hands often.

white stuff already.

About 2 Hrs. ago

It doesn't matter if I can't type or if my hand hurts if there are friends around. It's pretty hard to notice pain when you have a grin from ear to ear.

The absolutely best part of blogging here is I consider all of the blooggers as friends.

As a medic in the AF I was assigned to assist several civilian doctors who were contracted because they were specialists we didn't have. There was a Dermatologist, Orthopod and a Podiatrist each came twice a month. The Podiatrist passed off a lot of the routine stuff for me like wart and nail removals because I could do all the followup and was just bright enough to know if something needed attention before they came back.

I did a lot of nail removals but burnin' or freezing warts was more fun. While it is true you need to keep the nail bed clean and dry, suffocating them for extended periods will retard, not expedite healing imho. Better to avoid the kind of activity that will get them dirty and let the wound heal faster.

Take a 2 week break from washing your nuts and call me in the morning.

..I'm just sayin'..

I'm not the champion of tough. I understand why the bamboo torture works. My ankle hurts from it.

Really, it doesnt matter because:

just hearing it is worse than nails on a chalkboard. along crankr's lines they also sell finger sized gloves that only cover a digit. think of them as condoms for republicans.

not to promote products but nexcare waterproof bandages do a good job. i keep my kitchen knifes real sharp and have done a julia childs impression more than once. they actually stick, keep water out, and promote healing.

and the beer has worn off.

;-)

Best fix them Bloody Mary's now so you can resume medication in the a.m. ;-)

I was just going to let it be and feel it. Happy to have the experience so to speak, biting lips...

Tylenol works too. The body does still repair itself if you wait. Right now I can't press the "L" without moving my hand across the keyboard to find it.

The snow is mid calf on me and they didn't plow the streets more than once. Drove home in ruts and slid to a stop at corners. Spinning wheels trying to catch to get started again with a little sidewards slide. Some lumps of snow in the middle of the ruts seemed to scrape the bottom of my car.

The parking lot hasn't been plowes so when I stepped out of the car, I stepped into mid calf deep snow and I wasn't wearing boots. Can't find them! So now my shoes are soaked and the lower third of my pants were snow covered and wet and I'm really pissed!!!

At work, one of the guys cleaned off my car and shoveled a path for me. I got the first handicapped parking nearest the door so he didn't have to shovel much, but I did appreciate it.

And how was your day?

toniD's Ya Think?

Now you must indulge in night mares?

You had me at mid calf. That's frightening. I would have been pissed too. Actually after peeing on myself for warmth.

tax cuts is not being able to get out of your driveway...in Minn/St Paul

..Is this the case in your Republican area?

State, city and village budgets are suffering right noe due to the Bankster wrecking our economy.

I was just reading our Village Public Works info on snow removal and the budgets for it. It's all on line for which I am surprised and pleased. They have 14 drivers and one supervisor and are supplemented with contracts with snow removal companies with backhoes and dump trucks.

Main arteries should be down to pavement, semi-arterial roads may not be down to pavement but receive salt and the smaller neighborhood streets are shoveled but no salt. Their goal is to hit all the streets in the Village within 24 hours.

toniD's Ya Think?

on your vacation..

Alert Incubus that u might not have Interenets connectivity ? ;)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Urban Meyer steps down as U of Florida football coach..

Citing health concerns..

www.espn.com

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Father Of Would-Be Bomber, Abdulmutallab, Warned U.S. About Son

WASHINGTON — U.S. government officials tell The Associated Press that the Nigerian man charged with trying to destroy a jetliner came to the attention of U.S. intelligence in November when his father went to the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, to express his concerns about his son.

A congressional official said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, popped up in U.S. intelligence reports about four weeks ago as having a connection to both al-Qaida and Yemen.

Another government official said Abdulmutallab's father went to the embassy in Abuja with his concerns, but did not have any specific information that would put him on the "no-fly list" or on the list for additional security checks at the airport.

Neither was the information sufficient to revoke his visa to visit the United States. His visa had been granted June 2008 and was valid through June 2010. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because neither was authorized to speak to the media.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/26/father-of-wouldbe-bomber-_n_404...

toniD's Ya Think?

Submitted by maggiesboy on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 7:30pm.
...Better to avoid the kind of activity that will get them dirty and let the wound heal faster.
--------
You mean like, say, using the toilet? Does influenza ring a bell?

Back in the day (our day, ye olde maggiesboy) every wound was to be kept clean and dry for, like, ever. I remember sulfa powder all too well. It made a wound look like something that belonged on a corpse.

"If you get this cut wet, you will die and it won't be fast or pretty. First your hand will rot off, then your arm. After your lower jaw falls off you'll starve to death."

That's what my dad told me and he was a licensed professional. He also insisted that I got a sty because I had peed in the middle of the road, so you can see why I picked up the Merck Manual at an early age.

All of this to say that the times, they are a changin'. There's been a lot of back-and-forth in the past two decades (or longer) between the clean-and-dry camp and the upstart clean-and-moist camp.

Last I checked, results varied depending upon who you are, the type of wound, and its location. If I can maintain a generous ointment smear as a barrier to the evils of the outside world, the tissue below seems to heal better (if not faster) than it does under the most magnificent scab and surrounding mummy-like papyrus.

The exam gloves I use are loose, not tight. They allow some air to move around in them and are easy to put on and take off. I leave the glove inside-out while it's off so it will dry out. A second or third glove allows for rotating into a dry glove all day long. The main purpose of the glove is to protect the bandage and reduce the need to wash the bandaged hand...which ruins the bandage, soaks the wound, yada, yada. I have even slept with a glove on to keep myself from trashing a fingertip bandage by dragging it off under a pillow.

As often as not, I am trying to heal a cut. The bandaging is designed to keep the slice closed. If the cut is not kept consistently closed during the first few days, the healing takes three steps backwards. If the bandaging is knocked off, soaked in a sink, jammed up my nose and snagged in my zipper several times per day, the cut is not going to stay closed. The humidity in a loose exam glove is nothing by comparison to the damage I can do to a bandage before noon.

Besides, keeping a finger absolutely dry for several days is a fantasy. If it has sufficient bandaging to fully protect it from the rigors of daily life, the finger inside is sweating like a whore in church.

...I must admit the kid knows how to write a good movie and act.

There's a glitch with the Pilot Season discs. They will be coming shortly. I think he did this on purpose so you watch Who's The Caboose first.

Definitely 2 thumbs up.

Submitted by toniD on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 8:36pm.
The snow is mid calf on me...
--------
You have no idea how difficult this is.

The Polar Bear Club
Submitted by Crank Bait on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 4:14pm.
There was a Polar Bear Club within our group of friends in the Caribbean. They were the five guys who never entered the sea except for a brief dip on New Years Day.

*******

Damn ! I want to party with you,Lee Harvey !

*Dang,Couldn't find a pic..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

My god man, you have two hands! Think of the alternative.

Just man-up Fernando, spit on it, rub it in the dirt and get back to work.

No other person, well maybe just one other, would read what I wrote and find a joke in a literal reading of it!

toniD's Ya Think?

Thanks but no thanks.

(Sorry boys. Carry on.)

Isn't torture enough tD?
Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 8:45pm.

Now you must indulge in night mares?

You had me at mid calf.

(etc.)
=======

Don't worry tD. I know it must just be some kind of "Godfather" scenario. You have to be on some list somewhere by now.

that he's actually reading the blog?

Wendell Potter

CMD's Senior Fellow on Health Care
Posted: December 24, 2009 01:47 PM

Like many people who hoped the stars had finally aligned for a fundamental overhaul of our health care system, I have been going through all of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of grief and loss -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance -- as I've watched what has been happening in the Senate. I moved toward acceptance this morning as I watched the Senate pass its bill, but -- being an incurable optimist -- I'm still hopeful that the legislation can be improved when Senate and House conferees meet to determine what the final bill will look like.

But even if all the problems of the Senate bill can't be fixed in conference, Congress must send the president a bill to sign -- and soon. My position on this puts me at odds with many of the wonderful reform advocates I have met in the six months that have passed since I switched sides in this national debate -- going from being a spokesman for the health insurance industry to being a vocal critic of it -- in testimony before Senator Jay Rockefeller's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee last June.

Over the past few days, some organizations that have worked so hard for many years for comprehensive reform, especially those that have advocated for a single payer system like Canada's, have joined groups on the opposite end of the political and philosophical spectrum in calling for defeat of the legislation. "Kill the Bill" is in the subject line of many emails I've been getting lately.

I understand their frustration, but I believe that when they stop and think about the real consequences of what they demanding, they will realize that for all its disappointing compromises and flaws, even the Senate-passed bill should be viewed as a foundation that can be built upon in years to come. Ted Kennedy, who advocated for a "Medicare for All" type system before many of today's activists were born, would truly have been proud of this beginning. He would not have liked everything about the bill, that's for sure, but he understood what it means to live in a political world and that compromises -- even big ones -- almost always have to be made on the journey toward an ultimate destination.

We will not be arriving at that final destination with the bill that reaches the president, but we have started the journey. Progressives must keep in mind that even leaving the station has not been a possibility for 15 years. We must not forget what happened in 1994 -- the last time we thought the stars had aligned -- when opponents of reform prevailed. We must also not forget that many of the reforms in the Senate and House bills are critically important. Yes, insurance companies likely will try to game the system in their relentless quests to meet Wall Street's expectations, but many of the practices they have used for decades to do that will become illegal. We also must not forget the importance to lawmakers of the future of having a foundation to build upon. They will not have to start from scratch as current and past lawmakers have always had to do. And future lawmakers will be able to fix problems not addressed by this legislation as well as the unintended consequences that inevitably will arise.

Among the other wonderful people I have met over the past six months are people who were denied coverage -- or lost it -- because insurance companies had decided they had disqualifying "pre-existing conditions." Others, many with chronic conditions, lost coverage when they lost their jobs and have no idea how they will be able to eat, pay the mortgage and buy the medications necessary to stay alive. They are scared, and they are desperate. The stories I have heard have been heartbreaking. I just wish my former corporate colleagues, the tea baggers who tried to shut down even consideration of reform, and the "Kill the Bill" liberals could have been my traveling companions. I'm sure many of them, even the liberals who think we can wait until we can get more perfect reform, would have been stunned to hear the compelling evidence that the country they love, the country many opponents of reform continue to insist has the best health care system in the world, lets this happen to their fellow citizens. Looking people in the eyes as they tell their stories makes you understand in ways you couldn't before just how crucial it is to act now.

After speaking in Omaha and Des Moines at the end of last week, and hearing more heartbreaking and maddening stories, I flew to Tennessee to visit my parents. They had to move to an assisted living home over the summer after Dad fell and broke his arm, so I try to get down there to check on them as often as I can. I nearly panicked when I couldn't find them when I got there. Their bedroom was cold. I eventually discovered them, covered in blankets, in the common living room. Dad was sitting in the big recliner he had brought from home, so big it takes a lot of effort to get from one place to another.

I learned that the building had lost heat during the snowstorm the night before -- and that Eddie the maintenance man had gone to the considerable trouble of hauling Dad's chair to the living room so that Dad would be more comfortable.

When Eddie took me aside and whispered that he wanted to talk with me about something, I was afraid he was going to give me some bad news about Mom or Dad. Instead, he told me that he had recently lost his health insurance when his employer at his second job laid him off. He had been able to get coverage for himself since then, but not for his wife. He asked me if I could help.

For the first time I had an idea of what it must be like for a doctor to tell a patient with a terminal illness that there is nothing he can do. I wish I could have given Eddie some encouraging news and some suggestions of where to look for insurance, but the reality is that his wife probably will not be able to get coverage in the United States of America unless she gets lucky and is hired by a company that offers benefits.

If Congress doesn't pass reform legislation, Eddie's wife might never again have health insurance. It is probably more likely, in fact, that she will be among the 45,000 Americans who die every year -- 123 every day -- because they don't have insurance. So even though the Senate bill is far from being the bill of our dreams, it will help people like Eddie's wife. It might even save her life.

It is tempting to join the "Kill the bill" folks, but it would amount to cutting off our noses to spite our faces. Big Insurance and Big Pharma will not be running out of money anytime soon to spend on manipulating public opinion and influencing votes on Capitol Hill. Part of every premium dollar we send to our insurance companies, and part of every dollar we pay when we pick up our prescriptions, end up in corporate piggy banks that overpaid executives tap to hire armies of lobbyists and PR firms whenever their profits are being threatened. These giant corporations and their trade associations have been saving up and preparing for this debate for years. I know because I used to be part of it.

Reform advocates do not have such an endless supply of money. After this long fight, their resources are already dwindling. Over the past several weeks, opponents of reform have been able to spend twice as much as reform advocates on advertising. And the opponents' ads are part of a campaign carefully and disingenuously crafted by the best PR and advertising people money can buy to scare people away from the very reform that would benefit them most. So it is little wonder that polls show Americans are having second thoughts about reform.

Although the effort to achieve health care reform has been arduous and ugly, progressives can't merely brush off their hands, move on to other issues and hope the stars will align again for "real" reform. When you stop and think about the bottomless pot of money that health insurance companies constantly replenish by diverting part of our premium dollars away from paying for medical care, it is in some ways remarkable that we have accomplished as much as we have with this legislation.

So instead of sending more "Kill the Bill" emails, we need to turn our attention now to leaders in the House, insisting they stick to their guns on important elements of their bill and improve on what the Senate has passed. It will not be easy to merge the two bills to the satisfaction of reform advocates, but at the very least the House should add language to strengthen the regulation of insurance companies and close the loopholes that would allow them to circumvent the intent of the legislation.

There will be plenty to do later -- including paying close attention to how this legislation is implemented, changing the way the Senate conducts its business and getting real campaign finance and lobbying reform enacted -- but let's get this part done now. Millions of people are counting on it. Many of them won't live to see the next debate if we do exactly what the opponents of reform hope we will do, and that is to join them in trying to "Kill the Bill."

Follow Wendell Potter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wendellpotter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-potter/why-im-not-joining-the-ca_b...

toniD's Ya Think?

Funkadelic - Alice In My Fantasies ;)

http://hypem.com/track/997267/Funkadelic++Alice+In+My+Fantasies

Not really P.. ;)
Hope u guys had a Merry Christmas..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

She's so short, she thinks her Corolla is an SUV.

How's yer holiday been so far? I think I'm still stuffed from yesterday's feast! Ah, but Santa brought us plenty of Xmas-recipe brews to keep us occupied.

Sunday's Talk Show Guest List is now up!
Brick TeeVee Good Bye 2009!
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5566

Look for everyone to demand TIGHTER SECURITY EVERYWHERE now that the Shoe Bomber II or Delta Bomber or whatever they've dubbed him tried lamely to do something teerroristical.

Look for a new push for RFID in EVERYTHING and surveillance cameras EVERYWHERE. Big Bro is a-comin' after ya to protect ya from SKEEEERY Islamo-fascists or something hell bent on Martyrdom to destroy America!

MAN THE BUNKERS!

Have fun Sam & Family, wherever you are going!

Iranian student killed in riots named 'person of the year'

Source: Haaretz

The British newspaper Times named an Iranian woman killed in post-election riots in Iran as its "person of the year."

The Times explained that 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan became a "symbol of opposition to tyranny" when a 40-second clip documenting her tragic death at the hand of Iranian authorities was seen by millions around the world.

The riots erupted immediately following the announcement of a landslide victory for incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's presidential election in June. Opposition supporters demonstrated en mass over allegations of election fraud.

"Ms. Soltan, 26, joined the protest because she was outraged at the way that the regime stole the presidential election," the newspaper said on its front page.

"Even if a bullet goes through my heart it's not important," Times quotes Soltan as having told her fiance. "What we're fighting for is more important. When it comes to taking our stolen rights back we should not hesitate. Everyone is responsible. Each person leaves a footprint in this world."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1137759.html

toniD's Ya Think?

I'm still waiting.
I ordered just WTC on 10/26

considering Sam's been busy moving and all
I'll wait a bit longer.

"I wish some of...the 'Kill the Bill' liberals could have been my traveling companions...Blah. Blah. Blah."

No need. Some of us know plenty.

So do your
"former corporate colleagues." Please. Do you want us to believe you are really such an idiot or that you just play one off teevee?

Wish I could have been your traveling companion while you were eating with your gold-plated flatware and not learned about this stuff till right now.

(Nothing against you tD. You know that.)-

However, do feel compelled to repost "our thing's ;) thing in its entirety.
----

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Killers Among Us (And Other Weak Arguments For The Senate Health Bill)

Have you heard? Progressives who oppose the Senate health bill are the moral equivalent of mass murderers. That argument is actually being made - along with the charge, ironically enough, that they're being too emotional. Other pro-Senate-bill arguments are pretty thin, too, but let's start with this one:

We have met the "death panels" and they are us.

Ezra Klein seems to have started the "killers" trope in a response to Markos Moulitsas's opposition to the bill. Klein cited recent figures showing that 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance. The Senate bill, he argued, would save "more than a hundred thousand lives, to say nothing of the people who will be spared bankruptcy, chronic pain, unnecessary impairment, unnecessary caretaking, bereavement, loss of wages, painful surgeries, and so on."

Pretty persuasive ... and as it turns out, pretty easily countered, too. First, while the Senate bill will reduce the ranks of the uninsured, it won't eliminate them. The CBO says 9 million will still lack insurance if it passes, which is very close to my estimate last year of 8 million. And given the weakness of the subsidies in the Senate bill, I'd revise that figure upward. So we already know the 45,000 number is overstated. I would argue that the Senate bill might save no lives at all (and, in any case, most opponents are arguing for a better bill, not inaction.)

Regarding bankruptcy, 75% of people facing health-related bankruptcies have health insurance. The Senate bill doesn't do enough to help them. Nor does it go far enough in addressing underinsurance, which affects roughly 25 million Americans.

And make no mistake: Underinsurance kills, too. The United States ranks 19th among developed countries in preventable deaths. While lack of insurance is a factor in those deaths, so is underinsurance. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reported, 53% of all Americans - most of them insured - reported cutting back on health care in the last year, with 23% of respondents saying they skipped a recommended medical test or procedure. Last year, Gallup found that 3 households in 10 put off getting care they needed, with 17% (nearly one in five) saying it was for a "very serious" or somewhat serious condition."

Tellingly, of those putting off needed care, the Gallup poll found that 77% of them have health insurance.

An HSC study had similar findings, and also found that "insured people also faced large increases in unmet need between 2003 and 2007." Other studies like this one support Gallup's finding that the chronically ill - the people most in need of help - face the greatest challenges, whether or not they have insurance.

If the Senate bill passes in its current form, there is a very real danger that it will reinforce a system that's designed to create underinsurance. What's more, its excise tax will actually make the uninsurance problem worse. The bill could lead to angoing death toll that offsets any lives saved, while permitting continued suffering from disease and financial hardship.

Despite the dubiousness of the "45,000 dead" figure, the bill's defenders keep spreading it around the Internet. This comment in Nate Silver's hyperbolic defense of the bill is fairly typical: "(I)f it's okay with you for 45,000 + people to die every year because of bad (or no) insurance -- then yeah, Kill Bill." Or this one, from Bob Cesca's blog: "They should spray paint 'Kill the Bill' on every tombstone and ashes urn that belongs to a person who has died ... since Bill Clinton's ... (t)hen they spray paint 'Kill the Bill v.2' for every one who dies until the next President is foolish enough to take on the right AND left."

Oh, but, commenters will be commenters, right? Surely the bill's responsible defenders have repudiated these attacks, haven't they? Not that I've seen (with the exception of Jonathan Cohn, who expressed some misgivings.) Instead, as Glenn Greenwald demonstrates, bill critics have chosen to personally demonize opponents like Matt Taibbi and Jane Hamsher in much the same way Howard Dean was attacked by members of the White House staff. Klein even went so far as to call Hamsher's critique of the bill "purposefully misleading."

That's a particularly unfortunate choice of words, since Klein overlooks a rash of recent studies in the same piece to can keep defending the flawed "Cadillac tax." (UPDATE: Ezra has responded thoughtfully to my earlier criticisms, and my thoughts about his response are here.) His other defenses of the bill are open to debate, but Ezra's continued defense of the tax is particularly shaky. He continues to insist that average readers "probably don't have these plans," despite evidence showing that one in five employee plans will be affected. And he continues to insist that the tax is "tilted towards the rich, not the middle class," despite multiple studies proving otherwise. (For evidence, see here, here - pdf, and here - pdf, and that's just for starters.) There are a total of 18 recent papers or studies (pdf) that contradict Klein's assertions.

(David Leonhardt of the New York Times also repeated these discredited claims about the excise tax in touting the Senate bill yesterday.)
The fact is, Jane Hamsher is right about the excise tax. Her statements square with the latest analyses from impartial experts (including one from a respected actuary that I summarized here), while Klein's and Leonhardt's do not.

Meanwhile, while the bill's defenders were slamming the character of those with whom they disagree, those fighting against the bill in its current form were getting things done. Among them is Bernie Sanders, who won billions of dollars to provide primary care to as many as 25 million people. Other significant improvements, noted here, seem designed to mollify progressives unhappy with the overall bill. Score a few points for the "killers."

That said, I've noticed that some of the bill's defenders are quietly shifting their stance from 'pass it' to 'improve it and then pass it.' That's progress. In fact, it essentially brings them in line with Howard Dean's position. And how can it be improved if not through resistance? Progressives will have no leverage left if they embrace it in its current, highly flawed form.
As I've said, I'm still agnostic about the 'pass it/kill it' debate. But, while I can't go as far as Hamsher and Taibbi - yet - I find the bill's defenders less and less convincing as time passes. And the personal aspersions being cast on the bill's opponents are completely unacceptable.

We need to make this debate less personal and more about the substance. Otherwise, the only thing that's certain to be 'killed' is a lot of good will among people who should be allies.

(Note: I am currently working eith the Campaign for America's Future to overturn the Senate bill's excise tax provision. See www.NoMiddleClassHealthTax.com for more information.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-killers-among-us-and_b_402163...

====
Ooops. He said LESS personal. Oh well. I'm not a Buddhist. What can I say?

By: GRITtv Friday December 25, 2009

Con't..
Video interview with Laura Flanders..

http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/12/25/harry-shearer-unwigged-a...

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Cat Chew @ 10:04 am about this

http://www.salon.com/news/the_year_in_crazy_2009/2009/12/16/glenn_beck

========================

Actually, if it weren't for Glenn Beck's craziness getting more strident, Old Dick Cheney's outbursts would have gotten Old Dick the award, don't you think?

I would go so far as to say that Beck's antics were increased to take attention off Dick Cheney's craziness and add oomph and followers to Dick's cause. Beck was some kind of foil for the purpose of aiding as well as protecting Cheney and making Cheney look less crazy by comparison!

Why are we 'turning the page' and 'moving forward' as if nothing happened?

Quote from Simon Wiesenthal (Nazi hunter):

"Those who ignore the murderers of the past, pave the way for the murderers of the future."

Demonstrating several forms of levitation that can be experienced at home. The first is based on gyroscopic suspension of opposing magnetic forces. The second is based on the diamagnetism between pyrolytic graphite and neodymium magnets. The final, Citrus Ionic Levitation, appears to lie in the realms of magic rather than science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGSu9nb93Es

**

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/photo/view/levitation_at_home/42855

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Activists turn up the heat on Chevron--

(Article is at Alternet under "Corporations & Work" heading)

[excerpt]

Hordes of Angry Activists and a $27 Billion Court Case Is Making Oil Giant Chevron Pretty Nervous

By Peter Asmus, East Bay Express. Posted December 24, 2009.

A dozen nonprofits are going right after the company's greed, and the outcome will likely have repercussions in the oil industry for years to come.

The oil industry is more powerful today than at any other time in history save the early 20th century. Thanks to last year's record run-up in oil prices, seven of the world's most valuable corporations are now oil companies. Yet just one of those companies has become the focus of intense consumer ire.

Perhaps the largest coordinated activist campaign in history is being launched against the San Ramon-based Chevron Corporation. Foregoing boycotts and other traditional market campaign techniques, non-governmental organizations are creatively communicating the business case for why Chevron should change its ways, focusing on mobilizing company shareholders and consumers to compel the company to come clean and pursue social and environmental leadership.

This unprecedented campaign to make Chevron the poster child of corporate irresponsibility has already persuaded pension funds in California, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania to consider selling a total of $12 billion in Chevron shares on the grounds that the firm is mismanaging its operations around the globe. The prime focus of this ongoing anti-Chevron effort has been the company's annual shareholder meetings, but protests at the Richmond refinery and a series of movie and PR stunts have been also been effective tactics.

[end excerpt]

Were they hired to do that and make sure Americans pay even more for medications? Why should Medicare enrollees have to purchase pricier drugs? This is very disgusting, very telling:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/Generics...

[excerpt]

Generics cos in the cold as big pharma has its way in US

WASHINGTON: The massive US Senate healthcare reform measure passed on Thursday with support from the multibillion drug industry, but makers of
cheaper generic rivals are feeling left out in the cold. Generic drugmakers face several obstacles in the bill backed by Democrats that they worry will dampen a potential increase in use even as more people gain access to health insurance and prescription medicines.

The hurdles include extensive protections against generic versions of pricey biotech medicines, an incentive for Medicare recipients to use more brand-name drugs, and a possible end to payments from brandname makers to delay the launch of copy-cat medicines. “The bill passed by the Senate unfortunately amounts to a treasure trove to brand drug companies,” said Generic Pharmaceutical Association president Kathleen Jaeger, whose group represents Mylan, Watson Pharmaceuticals and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, among other companies. President Barack Obama has often pointed to generics as a key way to cut costs, but big pharmaceutical makers such as Pfizer and Merck came to lawmakers and the White House with an $80 billion, 10-year pact to cut prices and pay additional taxes to help fund the expansion of health insurance coverage.

Generic drug makers are hoping they can influence the final shape of the bill as the Senate version must still be combined with an earlier version passed by the House of Representatives before it becomes law. To be sure, roughly 30 million more insured Americans are expected under the Senate’s $871-billion bill, giving them access to prescription medications, including generics that already make up about roughly 60% of the US prescription drug market. But Bill Marth, chief executive of Teva’s North American operations, said Democrats missed a chance to further boost use: “It’s frustrating,” he said. “Maybe some people have just lost sight of what the bill is supposed to do.”

Most notable is the setback for generic versions of biotech drugs, also known as biogenerics or follow-on biologics. Like the House bill, the Senate bill gives the Food and Drug Administration power to allow biogenerics onto the US market. Such protein-based medicines treat cancer and other conditions but can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year per patient. Generic makers welcomed the pathway to approval, but the bills provide for a 12-year period of exclusivity for brand-name drugs before a biogeneric can be approved. The Obama administration had sought just five to seven years of protection.

Most Democratic lawmakers sided with the longer period backed by the branded industry and its lobby group, the Biotechnology Industry Organisation. BIO argued the longer period was needed to recoup development costs. With both the House and the Senate supporting longer protections, that seems unlikely to change during negotiations on the final bill despite calls from generic companies to drop the provision altogether and tackle it separately next year.

[end excerpt]

[get to page two of this story at the link]

Did I do something, or was it already like this when I arrived? Dang....

Nora,I think your URL on your
"End Chevron Crimes from Richmond [CA] to Iraq" reads placard post, is too long..

Use tinyurl.com..And,copy & paste the new tiny url where the BIG one was.. :)

http://tinyurl.com/

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Since it's fresh in my experience, because a nearly cut off the tip of my left index finger while pruning a few months ago, I want to share what helped me.

For the first 6 days or so, not only bandage well and protect from water, but wrap gently (NOT tightly of course) with LOTS of gauze or papertowel padding as well so that every time you are touching something, navigating through doorways and changes of clothing, ETCETERA, the impact on your wound will be minimal. It is amazing how that protection will prevent the pain. It's clumsy and looks silly, but when I tried to do without the padding, the pain experience from the slightest bump was too much.

Subsequently, I relied on latex gloves as described by CB. I found I could not tolerate a snug glove size though; just made my hand sweat and feel awful; I went a size larger -- baggy, but air and oxygen or something got in to lessen the discomfiture.

If my dangling hunk of flesh could re-attach to my finger and be healed in six weeks, then I think there is hope for you, too.

Good luck, Fernando.

Getting rid of that unstretched it, alright.

Never had that problem before....

Also, when I tried to use the tinyurl link, some program closed Sam's webpage on me for protection.

I'm just relieved to have unstretched the blog. So THANKS!

I've done worst trying to figure out html code & post pictures here..

I locked up this blog for about 15 to 20mins once,
trying to post a pic,when I was a newbie..
Thank goodness Sammy came along & posted a new thread..

I had to apologize for 2 days..But,I learned the ropes thanks to Toni,SJ,Alice,and the gang..

I don't know why tinyurl closed the blog here when you tried it..

It usually just asks to use your clipboard,whatever that is,u click yes and u get a tiny url..

And,
yep..If all else fails,just get rid of the long url, like
you did.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Liz Phair - Winter Wonderland

http://hypem.com/#/track/997660/Liz+Phair++Winter+Wonderland

*Plus, she's hot.. :)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by Beatles

I keep looking for songs that embody our time.

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Sunday Talking Heads: December 27, 2009
By: Elliott Sunday December 27, 2009 3:00 am

Morning! Robert Gibbs is making the rounds this week, Jake Tapper auditions (perhaps) on This Week. The other usual suspects are out and about. And as we re-learned this week, the Dirty F@#*ing Hippies Were Right! (video h/t Dregs of the Future)

Washington Journal: 7:45am – Barbara Slavin, Washington Times & Jonathan Broder, CQ Weekly. 8:45am – Stephen Hess, Brookings Institution & Dan Thomasson, Scripps Howard News Service.

ABC’s This Week: Jake Tapper sits in for George Stephanopoulos. Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Roundtable: Matthew Dowd, Ruth Marcus, Paul Krugman, and David Brooks.

Amanpour.

CBS’ Face The Nation: Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary. Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Rep. Peter King (R-NY). Dan Balz, The Washington Post, Jodi Kantor, The New York Times.

Chris Matthews: Katty Kay BBC; Howard Fineman Newsweek; John Heilemann New York Magazine Norah O’Donnell MSNBC. Topics: Annual Holiday Highlights Show! Greatest Hits and Worst Moves of 2009! The Chutzpah Prize, Cad of the Year, and Who Surprised Us On the Upside?

CNN’s State of the Union: White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod “about health care reform, the U.S. economy, and the administration’s role at the climate change summit.” Rebutted by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Just back from Copenhagen, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), talk climate change. And Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, gets ‘The Last Word’.

Fareed Zakaria – GPS: Replay of the interview with Russian President Dmity Medvedev. Then Malcolm Gladwell.

Fox News Sunday: Health care reconciliation with Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). “Then, from the economy to the deficit to climate change, we’ll discuss the upcoming legislative agenda with four key senators”: Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA); Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).

NBC’s Meet The Press: Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary. Roundtable: America in the Next Decade: “Four of the country’s key political thinkers share their insights” NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Fmr. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA), and NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell.

60 Minutes: Running Dry – A three-year drought in California is bringing a decades-long fight over water to a head, forcing tough choices. Out of the Shadows – Henry Crumpton, the ex-CIA operative who secretly ran the war against terror in Afghanistan after 9/11 describes using local might to oust al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts – a strategy he says is needed in Pakistan now, where terrorist leaders are hiding. Birdmen – In the latest craze that has killed several extreme sports enthusiasts, men don wing-suits, jump off mountaintops and glide down at speeds approaching 140 miles per hour.

http://firedoglake.com/2009/12/27/sunday-talking-heads-december-27-2009/

toniD's Ya Think?

Not green energy, not conservation, not sane control of corporate-generated pollution. No, the main response to 'global warming' the Oligarchy desires is "Global Governance".

Alex Jones on the aftermath of Cophenhagen15:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fl9fESYVFY

States With Expanded Health Coverage Fight Bill
By KATE ZERNIKE

States that have already broadly expanded health care coverage are pushing back against the Senate overhaul bill, arguing that it unfairly penalizes them in favor of states that have done little or nothing to extend benefits to the uninsured.

With tax revenues down and budgets breaking, the states — including Arizona, California, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin — say they cannot afford to essentially subsidize other states’ expansion of health care.

The bill passed by the Senate on Thursday would move toward universal health insurance coverage in large part by expanding Medicaid, a program whose costs have traditionally been shared by the states and the federal government.

But the roughly 20 states that have already expanded coverage in some form will pay a greater proportion of their new Medicaid costs under the bill than those states, largely in the South, that until now have covered relatively few of their poorest residents.

Medicaid covers about 60 million Americans, mostly low-income families and pregnant women, though some states have expanded eligibility to include childless adults under 65. It accounts for about one-fifth of state budgets, on average.

States that have expanded coverage have generally broadened eligibility to include parents with relatively higher income levels and a greater number of childless adults. Even governors in some states without expanded coverage are suggesting that their budgets cannot afford a widened program without additional federal assistance.

“There is always an issue with Medicaid that different states are in different places,” said Diane Rowland, the executive director of the Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Do you reward the leader states as well as the laggard states, the good states versus the bad? How do you equalize the assistance? That’s at the heart of this.”

The states with expanded coverage would get more relief from the cost-sharing provisions of the health care bill passed by the House in November.

In memorandums explaining the legislation, the drafters of the Senate bill argued that states without expanded coverage would need more help from the federal government to defray the costs of broadening their programs. But governors in the states that have done more to broaden coverage are now lobbying their Congressional delegations to eliminate the discrepancies as the two chambers reconcile the bills.

“We are, in a sense, being punished for our own charity,” Gov. David A. Paterson of New York said last week.

Wendy Saunders, New York’s deputy secretary for health, Medicaid and oversight, estimated that it would cost about $30 billion over 10 years to adjust the financing formula so that the Senate bill matches the more generous provisions of the House bill.

“Because it’s not a huge cost in the context of what is happening, we’re optimistic that it can be worked out,” Ms. Saunders said.

Massachusetts and Vermont, the states providing the broadest coverage, have already received some relief for the anticipated Medicaid costs in the negotiations that led to the passage of the Senate bill.

To secure the crucial 60th vote from Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, Senate leaders permanently exempted his state from paying to expand Medicaid. But other states, many of them strong supporters of an overhaul, have been left in the lurch.

Existing Medicaid coverage varies widely. Arkansas, for example, extends Medicaid to working parents who earn up to 17 percent of the federal poverty level, and Alabama offers coverage for those making up to 24 percent of that level. Minnesota covers working parents making up to 215 percent of the federal poverty level, and New York, up to 150 percent. New York also covers childless adults up to 65 making up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level.

In Arizona, where state revenues are down 31 percent, the governor called an emergency cabinet meeting last week as the Senate bill was advancing and ordered the state to stop accepting applicants to its children’s health insurance program. The state, where voters approved an expansion of Medicaid in 2000, projects that in the first seven years of an overhaul, its share of Medicaid would be $17 billion under the Senate bill. Had Arizona not expanded coverage, the state’s share would have been $1.4 billion, the state estimates.

“You’ll have taxpayers in Arizona raising taxes on themselves not only to support their program, but to cover all the other states expanding,” said Thomas J. Betlach, the Medicaid director in Arizona. “I work for an insolvent entity; we can’t afford the program we have.”

The House bill would take effect in 2013 and expand Medicaid to cover Americans earning up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, currently about $29,300 for a family of four and $14,400 for an individual. The Senate bill would begin in 2014 and extend Medicaid to Americans making up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

Under the Senate bill, the federal government would pay the entire cost of expanding Medicaid to those not already eligible under state coverage for the first two years of the program. The following three years, states that do not now have expanded coverage would be reimbursed at a higher rate than those states that do — in general, the states without expanded coverage would be paid back 95 percent of their costs, while those that have already expanded coverage would be reimbursed between 80 percent and 95 percent. Medicaid reimbursement rates are based on per capita income; wealthier states have smaller shares of their costs paid back.

The biggest hit to states that have already expanded will be in covering the people who are eligible now but have not signed up for coverage under the state’s current program. They are expected to enroll because the new legislation will require almost all Americans to have insurance.

States that have expanded already would not get any new matching funds for those people. The Senate bill provides additional money only for those who are “newly eligible.”

For example, the federal government would pick up the entire cost for the first two years and 95 percent of the cost for the next three years for newly covered working parents in Alabama, which now covers only those making up to 24 percent of the federal poverty level.

But it would pay just 50 percent of the cost for most of those newly enrolled in California, because California already makes eligible working parents earning up to 106 percent of the poverty level and its Medicaid assistance is set at 50 percent. California would get a more generous reimbursement, about 83 percent, only for parents earning from 106 percent to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

“We support the policy, but we need to make sure the financial reality aligns with the policy,” said Toby Douglas, the Medicaid director in California.

New York expects nearly one million people who are currently eligible for Medicaid under a state expansion to sign up under the federal legislation.

Because the state has expanded coverage, the federal government would pay just 50 percent of the cost for all but about 100,000 of those people, Ms. Saunders said. The Senate bill would cost the state $1 billion a year, while the House bill would provide an additional $4 billion a year.

The House bill largely eliminates the problem of signing up people who are now eligible under state programs by counting anyone who signs up as “newly eligible.”

The recession has swelled Medicaid rolls already.

“We’d be having a very different discussion if the economy was humming and everyone was back to work,” said Carol Steckel, Alabama’s Medicaid director and the chairwoman of the National Association of State Medicaid Directors. “But I still think you’d see the different philosophies about who is responsible for the costs. There has to be a balance.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/health/policy/27states.html?_r=1&pagew...

toniD's Ya Think?

;)

Abstinence proponents look for aid from new health bill

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A03

Proponents of sex education classes that focus on encouraging teenagers to remain virgins until marriage are hoping that the rescue plan for the nation's health-care system will also save their programs, which are facing extinction because of a cutoff of federal funding.

The health-care reform legislation pending in the Senate includes $50 million for programs that states could use to try to reduce pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease among adolescents by teaching to them to delay when they start having sex.

Under the federal budget signed by President Obama, such programs would no longer have funds targeted for them.

"We're optimistic," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association, which is lobbying to maintain funding for the programs. "Nothing is certain, but we're hopeful."

Critics of sex education programs focused on abstinence, however, are fighting to permanently end funding, saying there is clear evidence that the approach is unsuccessful.

"This is a last-ditch attempt by conservatives to resuscitate a program that has been proven to be ineffective," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based advocacy group. "This is the failed abstinence-only model that research has shown is ineffective." more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/26/AR200912...

toniD's Ya Think?

White Tea, just 4 U... ;)

re: gloryoski on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 2:42pm.
;)

When they invest in more coal-fired plants, it hardly looks like they want to control CO2 emissions!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6836112.ece

[excerpt]

September 16, 2009

World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations

The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all nations in a report today to “act differently on climate change”.

[end excerpt]

Glory iz such Trouble TeaHee ... Pink & Red Rasberry in
new
Submitted by Ms_Anthrope on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 8:06am.
White Tea, just 4 U... ;)

re: gloryoski on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 2:42pm.
;)

-----
Nope...never was one. ;)

Thanks! MMRules
for the link to the 23:53 video segment.
That is great:)

what a chore

Your Mic is on..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Liz Phair - Winter Wonderland

*Plus, she's hot.. :)

===================================
I was at a show of hers
back in _ 1993 _

Nevermind..

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

Submitted by Jmach1JP on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 8:58am.
Liz Phair

*******

That must have been fun..

I've never seen her perform..
Wish I had..
I really like her older stuff..
Like, Exile in Guyville..
And,I'm a sucker for female singers,
if you haven't noticed.. ;)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

.
.
.
_ _ _
B R R

according to the Japanese:

Benevolence
Justice
Courtesy
Integrity
Wisdom

Question: What are the American (USA) Virtues?

Submitted by MMRules on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 5:04am.
...I locked up this blog for about 15 to 20mins once...
----------
Uh oh. I FedExed a stinkbomb to the wrong person.

Greed
Apple Pie Movies
A Non Free Press
Teabaggers/Religious Wackjobs
War
Nation Builders-Everyones but ours
Privatizes Everything
Torture
Stealing Elections
Wiretapping Your Own Populous
Corporate Federal & State Elections
Non-Transparency Of Government
No Accountability Of Government
Bailing Out Banks That Almost Caused A Depression By Their Own Actions

A Hard Working Populous Looking For Work

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

bluerootsradio!

Is an a cappella group out of the Black Baptist tradition ?

Shit Happens
new
Submitted by Crank Bait on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 10:15am
Uh oh. I FedExed a stinkbomb to the wrong person.

*******

If you haven't frozen up a blog at lease once,
you don't know what fun is.. ;)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0981576982?tag=brillatbreak-20&camp=14573&creat...

Review
Rarely has a book been released at a time when it's been more relevant than David Neiwert's The Eliminationists. Neiwert, an award-winning journalist and blogger at Orcinus and of late, at Crooks and Liars, has focused for years on that fine, scary line where heated rhetoric gives way to pure hate speech, and where fantasies of inflicting violence morph into the real thing. With the killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a white-supremacist radical, an understanding of the right-wing extremists now deeply embedded in the modern conservative movement is more important than ever.

And lucky we are to have such a guide as Neiwert, who over the years has become the absolute master of the study of hate speech, authoritarianism and violence. His new book is the culmination of decades of watching the far right, listening to talk radio, tracking militias and extremists, and cataloging incidents inspired by false facts and the stoking of paranoia. Heck, for the naming of the phenomenon alone, he should be thanked:

Eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.

Admit it: We all knew there was a better word we were waiting for. Finally, it has arrived. While we're at it, let's have him define an overused (but strangely enough, underdefined) term for us at the outset:

Fascism is passionate nationalism, allied to a conspiratorial dualism and a crude Social Darwinism, voiced with resentment toward the forces, or conditions, that restrain "the chosen people."

Sound vaguely familiar? It should. As Neiwert shows, this country since the 1990s has been undergoing what he terms para-fascist tendencies going mainstream as those once on the fringes have begun infecting one of the two major political parties and co-opting conservatism, making of it the paranoiac, reactionary--and, most frighteningly--increasingly violent crew we now hear regularly on Fox News and on talk radio.

The first portion of The Eliminationists lays out in careful detail the evidence, in cite after cite, of

... a particular trend that has manifested itself with increasing intensity in the past decade: the positing of elimination as the solution to political disagreement. Rather than engaging in a dialogue over political and cultural issues, one side simply dehumanizes its opponents and suggests, and at times demands, their excision. This tendency is almost singularly peculiar to the American Right and manifests itself in many venues: on radio talk shows and in political speeches, in bestselling books and babbling blogs. Most of all, we can feel it on the ground: in our everyday lives, in our encounters, big and small, with each other.

His insistence on the right-wing nature of modern eliminationism holds up, despite cries from the conservatives that "liberals do it too." Neiwert acknowledges that leftists have been known--less frequently--to toss around talk of assassination or insurrection but, he points out, they tend to focus on threatening talk toward an individual (think Cheney or Bush), not an entire category of human beings. The far right, on the other hand...

In contrast, right-wing rhetoric has been explicitly eliminationist, calling for the infliction of harm on whole blocs of American citizens: liberals, gays and lesbians, Latinos, blacks, Jews, feminists, or whatever target group is the victim du jour of right-wing ire.

This distinction is crucial, and Neiwert makes an alarming case for the fact that the rhetoric that leads up to violent crimes against whole classes of individuals is a necessary ingredient to the carrying out of the penultimate acts, that without the vicious cheerleading, many of the acts would not be carried out because, he says, "such rhetoric has played a critical role in giving permission for it to proceed, by creating the cultural and psychological conditions that enable the subsequent violence." At the bottom of such rhetoric is a savagely anti-democratic, American-hating ethos too, despite the flag-cocooning in which the shouters participate.

Indeed, one of the more disturbing elements in what we are currently witnessing on the right is the "mainstreaming" and normalizing of extremist talk through "patriotic" transmitters. Neiwert explains:

"Transmitters" of fringe ideas into the mainstream have two audiences. The first (and by far the largest) is made up of the many millions of ordinary mainstream conservatives who tune in and log on to the Right's army of media talking heads and movement leaders. The second includes their xenophobic counterparts on the far Right, where the memes come from in the first place. For the latter, these transmissions signal that their formerly unacceptable beliefs are gaining acceptance; they hear these transmissions as an invitation for them to move into the mainstream without having to change their views. The former hears them as an invitation to think more like the latter without shame.

The result of all this perversion of nationalism and so-called patriotism is not just sprees of deadly shootings such as we saw in Pittsburgh. "This kind of rhetoric is, in effect," Neiwert writes, "the death of discourse itself. Instead of offering an opposing idea, it simply shuts down intellectual exchange and replaces it with the brute intention to silence and eliminate." And at the heart of democracy lies the belief that no matter our differences, we are committed to communication. When silence falls, democracy loses, and the author here maintains that when hate rhetoric is employed, at its base it really is a hatred of America itself--with its stated ideals of pluralism--that is the unacknowledged target.

"Eliminationism--including the rhetoric that precedes it and fuels it--expresses a kind of self-hatred," Neiwert claims. "In an American culture that advertises itself as predicated on inclusiveness, eliminationism runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart, hate the very idea of America."

The sub-textual paradox that the second half of the book balances against such anti-American ideation is ... that such tendencies have been part of America from the start. This latter portion of the book is at times nearly too much to bear as the history of white European domination and eradication of Native Americans is detailed, as well as the lynchings of African Americans, the backlash against Chinese immigrants and the round-up of Japanese Americans for internment bears witness. Indeed, as Neiwert points out, nearly identical language is unleashed today against Latino immigrants as there have been against different waves of "others" in our collectively shameful past; even such modern "heroes" as the Minutemen can trace their lineage back to the lynching mobs and vigilantism of the early 20th century.

Tendencies toward fascism, both in our historical past and in our current political climate, can be triggered by what the author calls "the mobilizing passions." As a checklist, it's probably one of the most useful I've run across:

1. A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.

2. The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, both universal and personal, and the subordination of the individual to it.

3. The belief that the group one belongs to is victimized, which justifies any action without legal or moral limits against the group's enemies, both internal and external.

4. Dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.

5. The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.

6. The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny.

7. The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason.

8. The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success.

9. The right of the "chosen people" to dominate others without restraint from any human or divine law, "right" being decided solely by the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.

While most of these sound at least vaguely familiar, Neiwert goes out of his way, repeatedly, to point out that America is in no way in the throes of true fascism. Even some of the above criteria, he claims, remain clearly unmet. But that "permission" factor, the precursor that hate language brings, is most certainly present.

What, then, is the way out (or back)? How do we, both as individuals and as a country, begin to put the brakes on such eliminationist language? Well, Neiwert has some tough words for liberals, who are, in his estimation, making a bad situation worse:

For all its logic and love of science, a consistent flaw weighs down modern liberalism: an overweening belief in its own moral superiority. (Not, of course, that conservatives are any better in this regard; factoring in the religious Right and the "moral values" vote, they are objectively worse.) This tendency becomes especially noticeable in urban liberal societies, which for all their enlightenment and love of tolerance are maddeningly and disturbingly intolerant of the "ignorance" of their rural counterparts....

If we want to look at all those red counties and come to terms with the reasons the people there think and vote the way they do, it's important to come to terms with our own prejudices, our own willingness to treat our fellow Americans--the ones who are not like us--with contempt and disrespect....

In the end, we cannot prevent fascism from happening here by pretending it is something it is not; it must be confronted directly and straightforwardly, or it will not be confronted at all. Yet, at the same time, those who are the targets of its eliminationist bile must resist the temptation to wield this recognition like a cudgel. We cannot dehumanize and demonize those who have fallen under its sway. And we cannot stop the forces of hate by indulging it ourselves.

Ultimately, Neiwert argues, both sides--liberal and conservative--need to surrender the unhelpful idea that they are the "heroes" of the American story. For in order for there to be a hero, he explains, we need a demonized other from which to "rescue" the nation. True heroism in a democracy is not killing "bad guys" or rounding up scary people or shouting fellow citizens into silence, effectively forcing them to eliminate their voices and themselves from the democratic scene. Rather, it is recognizing the human in the other, the messy nuance of competing interests and sub-cultures, honoring the ability to disagree (strongly) without wishing death or silence on one another. True heroism can look, from the outside, kind of drab and lacking in drama.

And sometimes it can lie in writing a book about a disturbing subject that makes us all take pause and pay attention to the political scene around us in a new way. --Daily Kos

This chilling indictment of modern conservatism concludes that the traditional Republican Party (the author was raised in a Republican blue collar home in Idaho) has been infiltrated by a far-right movement that views liberals, gays, and minorities as un-American elements deserving to be eliminated. Neiwert, a journalist who won a National Press Club Award in 2000 for his reporting on domestic terrorism for MSNBC.com, indicts such conservative icons as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck for inciting the lunatic fringe to remove all undesirables, much as Nazi Germany did to the Jews and Gypsies.

The cheerleaders, or "transmitters" as Neiwert calls them, of eliminationism are not limited to talk radio hosts but also include prominent politicians like onetime Senate majority leader Trent Lott and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Palin was "the most significant transmitter in recent years," according to the author. This account of far-right power in America concludes that domestic terrorism might increase like it did during the Clinton years now that America has its first African American president and that a fascist state is a real threat. Readers will decide for themselves just how far to the right the Republican Party has been pushed and how widespread the fanatical far right is. This provocative narrative will stir interest in public libraries. -- ForeWord

ethics, compassion, sustainability.

god within!

excellent!

2009 Chosen Year Of The Year

For the first time ever, 2009 has been declared Year Of The Year. The vote was nearly unanimous with only one nod going to 2008, although it was later learned that 2008 has been written in the dateline of his checks for over seven hundred days.

The competition was thinned when more than two thousand years were determined to be too old. The years beginning with 2010 and numbering beyond were found to be uneventful.

i like the puppy comments during the show.

The left [that's anything left of the teabaggers] sees that if health care isn't passed it is political suicide.

The ball is in the house progressive caucus court. Is that caucus in agreement? Do they have a 'this is what we want' position?

Are they willing to push it? Will they say

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/lawsmade.bysec/final.action.html

can they?

under Request for a Conference
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/lawsmade.bysec/final.action.html

If there is objection, the Speaker may recognize a Member for a motion, if offered by the direction of the primary committee and of all reporting committees that had initial referral of the bill, to: (1) disagree to the Senate amendments and ask for or agree to a conference; or (2) insist on the House amendments to a Senate bill and request or agree to a conference. This may also be accomplished by a motion to suspend the rules with a two-thirds vote or by a rule from the Committee on Rules. If there is no objection to the request, or if the motion is carried, a motion to instruct the managers of the conference would be in order. This initial motion to instruct is the prerogative of the minority party. The instructions to conferees usually urge the managers to accept or reject a particular Senate or House provision or to take a more generally described political position to the extent possible within the scope of the conference. However, such instructions may not contain argument and are not binding on House or Senate conferees. After the motion to instruct is disposed of, the Speaker then appoints the managers, informally known as conferees, on the part of the House and a message is sent to the Senate advising it of the House action. A majority of the Members appointed to be conferees must have been supporters of the House position, as determined by the Speaker.
...
The number is fixed by the Speaker and majority party representation generally reflects the ratio for the full House committee, but may be greater on important bills. The Speaker also has the authority to name substitute conferees on specific provisions and add or remove conferees after the original appointment.
...
If the Senate agrees to the request for a conference, a similar committee is appointed by the Presiding Officer of the Senate. Both political parties may be represented on the Senate conference committee. The Senate and House committees need not be the same size but each House has one vote in conference as determined by a majority within each set or subset of conferees.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
...
Custody of Papers

The custody of the official papers is important in conference procedure because either body may act on a conference report only when in possession of the papers. Traditionally, the papers are transmitted to the body agreeing to the conference and from that body to the managers of the House that asked for the conference. The latter in turn carry the papers with them to the conference and at its conclusion turn them over to the managers of the House that agreed to the conference. The managers of the House that agreed to the conference deliver them to their own House, which acts first on the report, and then delivers the papers to the other House for final action on the report. However, if the managers on the part of the House agreeing to the conference surrender the papers to the House asking for the conference, the report may be acted on first by the House asking for the conference.

At the conclusion of the conference, each group of conferees retains one copy of the report that has been made in duplicate and signed by a majority of the managers of each body. The House copy is signed first by the House managers and the Senate copy is signed first by its managers.

A bill cannot become law until it has been approved in identical form by both Houses of Congress. When the bill has finally been approved by both Houses, all the original papers are transmitted to the Enrolling Clerk of the body in which the bill originated.

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Sounds Good MB
I'll have to WATCH it later.

.
.
.
_ _ _
brr

good tune!

post the link to it here!

what a sweetie!

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

But it started with the televangelists, I think. They convinced their viewers and radio listeners that, via contributions, they could purchase a holier-than-thou state that made them superior and entitled them to boss the rest of us. Yeah, talk about 'entitlements' -- the real 'entitlement' is what the American Taliban/Fundamentalists/Dominionists feel is theirs and moves them to act 'radical' now.

right on gang!

wow - very awesome

Submitted by jbenet on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 11:14am.
---------
My guess is the pictured eagle has been raised in captivity.

1.) The handler is not wearing gloves.
2.) The eagle is not struggling.
3.) The eagle has not used its beak to peel all of the flesh from the pictured hands.

timesonline.co.uk Iranian protests popup slide show
["slideshow" re center column]

mighty mouse

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

I'm cleaning my garage. So I'm tempting fate.

Beautiful, wow that is a beautiful Harpy Eagle...

Golden - look @ those talons.

The text under the photo at

http://www.everydayandeverynight.com/node?page=3

reads as follows:

Golden Eagle in Plummer's Hollow: pic by Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta, blogger/poet/naturalist at Via Negativa and Plummer's Hollo, documents the capture of a young golden eagle. His land is right on the path of a regular golden migration route. Scientists were on call, ready for the capture in order to put a transmitter on one of the birds for purposes of study.

With awe, reverence, and excitement Dave masterfully documented the happenings in words and photos.

"She spent four or five minutes trying to straighten her ruffled feathers and get used to the feeling of the harness against her skin and the strange new backpack. Finally, she launched herself into the air, circled low over our heads once, twice, then headed off to the south along the ridge. We were awed and humbled by the experience, and still have a bit of a hard time believing that our far-from-wild ridge twice a year becomes a highway for these archetypal denizens of the northern wilderness."
-----------------------------------
I am stunned if people who know better are handling a recently captured, completely alert eagle without gloves.

I wouldn't hold a recently captured blue jay without gloves.

[Golden Eagles][thanks for that link cb, I only did a pic search. Was looking for a photo I saw a few days ago of the tripod and camera tipped over on the ground and the eagle attacking -- this pic may be related to that]

A hunting golden eagle attacks a cameraman during an annual hunting competition in Chengelsy Gorge

A hunting golden eagle attacks a cameraman during an annual hunting competition in Chengelsy Gorge, some 150 km (93 miles) east of Almaty, December 5, 2009. When it snows on the steppes of eastern Kazakhstan, hunters saddle up and gallop off with eagles on their arms in search of prey. Many in Kazakhstan see eagle hunting as a symbol of their nation's nomadic past and a throwback to an oft-romanticised era before these steppes turned into a geopolitical battleground between competing regional powers Russia and China. Picture taken December 5.

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

;)

all I can do is laugh at that pix :D
;)

Submitted by jbenet on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 12:08pm.
...A hunting golden eagle attacks a cameraman...
------
I wonder if cameramen are good to eat?

thanks for taking the time to be on it.

WTG MB!

i also in awe at those tallons and handler not wearing gloves...

Iranian protests popup slide show
Submitted by jbenet on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 11:53am.

thanks
CJ
_ _ _

Thanks SJ for supplying the link, very timely.

Against tables, chairs, floors, walls and ugly people.

fixed the link for the Iran protest pics.

supra - 5564#comment-387611

the lone woman caught my eye

~`ordinary's just not good enough today - olp`~
Jamesbenet

Tom Harkin May Reintroduce Legislation To Kill Filibuster [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told the Washington Post that he would introduce legislation to reform the filibuster in January.

I'm going to reintroduce that again in January. And people are going to say I only worry about this because I'm in the majority. But I come with clean hands! I started when I was in the minority! ...

We've entered a new era here of outright stoppage at all costs. So that's what I'm trying to address with this amendment. I doubt anything will happen. But at least we'll start the process.

* * * * *

With the news that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) plans to filibuster the current health care bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) options are looking increasingly limited. But one Democratic senator may introduce legislation that would make health care reform a lot easier.

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa told reporters this weekend that he might reintroduce legislation to end the filibuster, something he first proposed in 1994. The Hawk Eye reports:

"I think, if anything, this health care debate is showing the dangers of unlimited filibuster," Harkin said Thursday during a conference call with reporters. "I think there's a reason for slowing things down ... and getting the public aware of what's happening and maybe even to change public sentiment, but not to just absolutely stop something."

Under Harkin's proposal, debate could be prolonged by the minority -- just not forever.

"You could hold something up for maybe a month, but then, finally you'd come down to 51 votes and a majority would be able to pass," Harkin said. "I may revive that. I pushed it very hard at one time and then things kind of got a little better."

When Harkin fought the filibuster 15 years ago, one of his top allies was none other than Joe Lieberman.

"[People] are fed up -- frustrated and fed up and angry about the way in which our government does not work, about the way in which we come down here and get into a lot of political games and seem to -- partisan tugs of war and forget why we're here, which is to serve the American people," Lieberman said at the time. "And I think the filibuster has become not only in reality an obstacle to accomplishment here, but it also a symbol of a lot that ails Washington today."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/14/tom-harkin-to-introduce-l_n_391...

toniD's Ya Think?

conservative...George Nash "Reappraising the Right" span 2

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5567#new

Reno

http://www.onthemedia.org/

The Wilhelm
In a galaxy of Hollywood stars, one cameo player can boast the longest career by far. But chances are you've never seen him and you never will. He's appeared in some of the most popular movies ever, but he isn't an actor, though he was probably created by one. Wilhelm is a sound effect, more specifically a scream. In a piece that has become a favorite from our archives, David Serchuck reports on the Wilhelm.

[[The audio is available at the link.]]
------------------------
The Wilhelm is a subject from which The Rajah could rif for hours. I know I could.

The Wilhelm is the original and quintessential scream of death in the movies "ah-AAAH-ah" which is louder and higher in pitch in the middle syllable than the opening and closing syllables. You have heard it many times thanks to foley professionals who, it is revealed in the radio article, go out of their way to sneak it into every film possible.

You have heard it uttered by a man being eaten by an alligator and from a Union soldier just as he took an arrow and lost a stirrup. There is no more corny death scream.

...which is why sound men try to slip the Wilhelm past their directors. It's a challenge and a success noticed and admired by sound artists around the world.