monsanto man

How y'all be doing?

Markos Moulitsas To Kucinich: You'll Be Primaried If You Kill Reform

Damn! How are we going to stop this!!!

toniD's Ya Think?

But Thomas won't and he worked for Monsanto? Justice? Yah, right!

toniD's Ya Think?

Peace is Possible with a New Direction

Click here to view video.

Dennis here.

I get asked all the time if I believe that peace is really possible.
When you look at U.S. foreign policy throughout the last dozens of years, we've been involved in one military adventure after another that would defy the concerns of people and the ability of this nation to create peace. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan - three wars, which collectively have had an enormous impact on our nation and collectively have left a stain on this country's reputation in the world.

We need to take a new direction and tomorrow is exactly the opportunity that we should seize to take a direction out of Afghanistan and in a new direction with our international policy.

We need to challenge the thinking that the only way that we can change people's minds is to conquer them militarily. We need to change direction and use diplomacy and put a premium on diplomacy no matter how long diplomacy takes to keep using diplomacy.

We can insist on our nation defending itself, but our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have not made us more safe; it made America less safe. Because every occupation fuels an insurgency and creates resentment, particularly when innocent people are killed.

It's time for America to take a new direction. So contact your member of Congress and let them know what you think about the Afghanistan resolution. Let them know tomorrow is a chance that we have to be able to take a new direction. We need people's voices and their votes on H. Con Res. 248, the concurrent resolution which will take us out of Afghanistan.

Please join our efforts. Please sign the petition. And please be part of this growing effort to create a resurgence in the peace movement. The first opportunity that we have will be the vote on Afghanistan tomorrow.

Thank you.
DK

Just more evidence Hedges, Greenwald and now Moore are right. It's time to walk out on the Dems. I wish Dennis would do that now. They hate him anyway.
I asked Senator Sanders' intern, Bill Press, yesterday what party Bernie belongs to. BP didn't really like that.

Does anyone know Chairman Markos's position on the war in Afghanistan? Oh I know: We need to support our president in the war on terrorism.

When will you do TYT nooner again?

Is that a delicate question people are not supposed to be asking?

I thought you were gonna do last Friday.

MARKOS (3-9-2010): "Dennis Kucinich has always been a little prick, and that hasn't changed.
He's someone who deserves a real primary."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/9/844403/-Midd...

Just more evidence Hedges, Greenwald and now Moore are right. It's time to walk out on the Dems. I wish Dennis would do that now. They hate him anyway.
===
The people at CounterPunch have been saying that for a long time. The book "Dime's Worth of Difference" demonstrates how the Democratic Party gets in the way of social reform.

http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/02/comments-on-draft-environmental-impact...

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5673
from an old taozen's blog

Afghanistan Debate Begins in U.S. House Early This Afternoon

Click here to view video.

Today's the day.

This afternoon we're going to have a vote on whether or not the United States gets out of Afghanistan or stays there indefinitely.

It's time that Congress weighed in. The Constitution makes it very clear that the War Powers are vested in the Congress. Unfortunately, a series of Presidents have made decisions to take the country into a war and to keep the country in war without seeking Congress' expressed permission. So this is, in fact, a Constitutional issue and that should be of interest to members of Congress from all over the nation, whatever their political persuasion.

And it should also be of interest to people that we can't afford this war. When you consider the fact that you have 47 million Americans who don't have any health care, they don't have it because they can't afford the premiums. You have 15 million Americans out of work. You have another 10 million Americans, at least, who could be losing their homes this year due to foreclosure. You would think that we have other priorities. You would think that it would be time for us to focus on things here at home.

Well, today is our first opportunity to send the message not only to the White House but to the world that America is ready to work with the world community to meet the challenges of global security.

But we're also going to start taking care of things at home. Because Americans deserve the security of a job, the security of housing and the security of health care. And we have to start arranging our priorities to make sure that we take care of people here in this country instead of trying to tell people all over the world how they ought to live.

Thank you.

DK

Bank Shills Use "Socialism" Scare To Shaft Students, Serve The Wealthy
RJ Eskow, Monday

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/sallie-maes-jets-bank-shi_b_49052...

Two noted political shills for the banking industry -- Republican Lamar Alexander and Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal -- just trotted out the "socialism" boogeyman, so here we go again: another lie, another con, another ripoff. "School loan socialism" is the new Death Panel. But, hey, somebody's gotta keep Sallie Mae's corporate jets flying.

Alexander's op-ed for the Washington Post is a buzzword symphony, a scare-tactic sonata, a cascading chorus of Pavlovian terminology designed to elicit the predictable autonomic response. "Starting in July," he writes, "all 19 million students who want government-backed loans will (cue scary music here) line up at offices designated by the U. S. Education Department." (It's more likely they'll go online to make their selection. But that "lining up" sounds so Stalinist, doesn't it?)

[...]

U.S. House to vote on pullout from Afghanistan Updated at 11:58 AM

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - In a test of congressional support for President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan strategy, U.S. lawmakers are set to vote on Wednesday on a resolution that would direct him to pull U.S. forces out of the war.

The resolution by liberal Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich is not expected to pass. But it could be an important indicator of how Obama's Democrats feel about the war, particularly ahead of November congressional elections in which Republicans are expected to make gains.

It is the first legislative challenge by the Democratic majority Congress to U.S. involvement in the conflict since Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and an offensive began last month to retake the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province.

Supporters of the resolution say it is time for U.S. lawmakers to consider if they want to continue the nearly nine-year-old war in which about 1,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed. The United States is already planning to pull its forces out of Iraq by the end of next year.

"This (debate) is a first step. It's like an alarm going off and people begin to wake up," Kucinich told Reuters.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09179683.htm

toniD's Ya Think?

Gates: Early pullout reliant on 'conditions' in Afghanistan

Source: CNN

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- After surveying training camps in eastern Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates hinted Wednesday that U.S. troops could be leaving earlier than the announced July 2011 troop withdrawal date.

Without giving details, Gates said that any early pullout and handover of control to Afghan forces "would have to be conditions-based."

"We will begin that transition no later than July 2011, but the pace will depend also on conditions on the ground," Gates said after watching training exercises at Camp Blackhorse, where U.S. and British forces train Afghan soldiers.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/10/afghanistan.gates

toniD's Ya Think?

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/afghanliveblog

For anyone who cannot do audio at work, etc.

Clarence should have recused himself from Bush V. Gore in 2000. One or two of the other Fabulous Five had big conflicts of interest as well.

Last night, speaking for the entire institutional Left, Markos Moulitsas made a bold prediction about fellow denizen of The Left, Dennis Kucinich. Asked if Democrats should offer a primary challenge to the Ohio Democrat if he votes against the final health care bill, Markos said “I don’t think he gets a pass” and that his actions of making common cause with Republicans on the bill are a perfect excuse and rationale for a primary challenge. This set other members of The Left buzzing about this titanic struggle on The Left for the soul of the Democratic Party. What will happen? Who will win out? The Left or The Left?

There’s a tiny problem with all of this.

That would be the fact that Dennis Kucinich isn’t going to get a primary challenge this year.

...more

That would be the fact that Dennis Kucinich isn’t going to get a primary challenge this year.
================
My beef with Markos is his arrogance. I notice that Kucinich has responded by pushing legislation to end the US war on Afghanistan. What a "little prick" he is!

We should encourage Markos to move to Cleveland and run against Dennis Kucinich himself.

Yeah, he's a real Republican kissup.

[text from his email today]

Today's the day.

This afternoon we're going to have a vote on whether or not the United States gets out of Afghanistan or stays there indefinitely.

It's time that Congress weighed in. The Constitution makes it very clear that the War Powers are vested in the Congress. Unfortunately, a series of Presidents have made decisions to take the country into a war and to keep the country in war without seeking Congress' expressed permission. So this is, in fact, a Constitutional issue and that should be of interest to members of Congress from all over the nation, whatever their political persuasion.

And it should also be of interest to people that we can't afford this war. When you consider the fact that you have 47 million Americans who don't have any health care, they don't have it because they can't afford the premiums. You have 15 million Americans out of work. You have another 10 million Americans, at least, who could be losing their homes this year due to foreclosure. You would think that we have other priorities. You would think that it would be time for us to focus on things here at home.

Well, today is our first opportunity to send the message not only to the White House but to the world that America is ready to work with the world community to meet the challenges of global security.

But we're also going to start taking care of things at home. Because Americans deserve the security of a job, the security of housing and the security of health care. And we have to start arranging our priorities to make sure that we take care of people here in this country instead of trying to tell people all over the world how they ought to live.

Thank you.
Dennis

For too long we have been complacent about the workings of Congress.

Many citizens have no idea that members of Congress can retire with full pay after only one term, that they don't pay into Social Security and that they have specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment).

"Ordinary" citizens must live under all those laws. The latest travesty is that Congress will exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem quite right.

We do not have an elite class that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrats, Republicans, Independents or whatever. The self-serving must stop.

This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ".

Each person contact a minimum of twenty people on their email address list, in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In approximately three days, all people in the United States of America will have the Message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around. =

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

Blue Roots Radio

that were his main driving force... (peace)

can think outside of the party line, unlike that totalitarian-minded Markos.

Kucinich would not have tossed his voters to the wolves ...
=====
You can toss me to the wolves...or better yet, down that rabbit hole.

Or at the convention?

Was it absolutely written in stone that Dennis delegates/voters had to follow his lead/suggestion?

Sorry don't have time to research it. Could you refresh my memory please, if you do have time?

Iowa caucus. Kucinich suggested that his delegates go to Obama. He chose Obama over Clinton (and Edwards). Kucinich got about 1% if my memory serves me.

January 1, 2008, 4:11 PM
Kucinich Tells Supporters to Caucus for Obama
By JEFF ZELENY
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/kucinich-tells-supporters-...

I am very pleased and excited to present to you our latest project Cuéntame and your hosts Axel Caballero and Ofelia Yañez.

Join us as we tackle wide-ranging subjects from latest in Latino culture, music and arts to exposing Tea Party racism and Glenn Beck's dangerous hate speech.

- Robert Greenwald

¡Hola James!,

As hosts of Cuéntame we want to tell you a bit about ourselves, the project and about our latest campaign against Tea Party racism and violence.

Both Ofelia and I have seen with great sadness and frustration how Tea Partiers have unjustly and unfairly targeted the Latino community to further their political agenda. This is why our latest campaign exposing Tea Party racism has hit a nerve, not only within the Latino community but also with many folks across the country who like us are fed-up of all the hatred, the violence and the bigotry peddled by teabaggers.

From calling Mexicans "filthy, stinking animals," to listening the likes of Tom Tancredo and Sarah Palin deliver hateful speech after hateful speech to the increase use of violence in their words and actions, Teabaggers have come out in full force against our community.

We are fed up and are ready to fight back. You can help us not only by watching and spreading our videos, but also by joining our page and recruiting your friends - Latino or not - to do the same:

Watch the first video: "Exposing The Racism"

Watch the second video: "Demand An Explanation"

Watch the third video: "The GOP Supports the Teabaggers"

Tea Partiers boast a presence of hundreds of thousands on social networks and in order to be able to expose their true colors we need as many of you, your family and friends to join Cuéntame and take action.

Cuéntame is a community of Facebook users where Latinos and the general public can connect and interact with fellow Facebook fans, activists, artists, bloggers, public figures, musicians journalists and other community members. In Spanish Cuéntame has a double meaning: "Count me in," and "Tell me your story."

Both Ofelia and I are very proud to be part of this project. As Latinos living in Los Angeles, we are thrilled to be able to inform and engage our community around the most important issues nationwide that are impacting the daily lives of our friends and families.

Ofelia was born in Mexico City. Her parents, wanting to flee the heavy crime and in an effort to provide a better education for their children, decided to migrate to the U.S. about 20 years ago when Ofelia was six years old.

I was born in the northern city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico three hours from the border with Nogales, Arizona. I am what you would consider a border child, always going back and forth between both countries until finally residing permanently here in the United States eleven years ago.

We are looking forward to seeing and talking with you directly on Facebook and want to thank you in advance for becoming part of this project.

Hasta pronto,

Axel Caballero, Ofelia Yañez
and the Cuéntame team

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

Blue Roots Radio

Thanks for the link.

are splendidly progressive. Why does he do so poorly in the presidential primaries? (And don't say it is because of his looks.)

Friday, April 2, 2010 in Cambridge, MA
WHEN: 3:30pm
WHERE: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Building 26-100, Cambridge, MA
DESCRIPTION: Please join Amy Goodman for a conversation with Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things and Field Notes on Democracy, and MIT professor of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, author of Hegemony or Survival and the forthcoming book, Hopes and Prospects, as they discuss the threats to democracy in the United States, India, and worldwide. Sponsored by the Technology and Culture Forum and the Program in Women's and Gender Studies at MIT.
TICKETS: This event is free and open to the public, however tickets will be required to attend and there is a two ticket limit per person. For tickets, please contact cenglish@mit.edu.
http://tour.democracynow.org/2010/04/cambridge_ma_2.html

Dennis helped corporate media discredit Left sentiments and values by associating them with clownish narcissism, cultish mysticism, and laughable irrelevance.

-------
For some time now, I've been giving a quiet and indirect sort of tribute to Dennis Kucinich. I've been praising him for backing progressive policy proposals and initiatives that "mainstream" (corporate) Democrats refuse to embrace: single-payer health insurance, de-funding the illegal occupation of Iraq, investigating civilian Iraqi casualties, the impeachment of Cheney-Bush and so on. I've been mentioning him as the only truly Left candidate in the Democratic presidential race.

And all the while a little voice in the back of my mind has been saying, "but you know he's really kind of a pathetic jerk who helps make the Left look stupid."
Paul Street
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add...

Build America Pays Off on Wall Street
Brokerage Firms Net $1 Billion-Plus for Selling the New Bonds, but Say It Can Be Hard Work

By IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN
[BUILD] Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

BRIDGE TO RICHES: The new government bonds will help pay for a rehab of the Brooklyn Bridge. Above, during one of last month's storms.

Wall Street firms have received fees exceeding $1 billion in less than a year selling "Build America Bonds" meant to spur jobs in struggling cities, often charging municipalities higher costs than for traditional bond deals.

These new bonds were rolled out in April 2009 under President Obama's economic stimulus plan to create jobs building roads, schools and hospitals. Unlike conventional municipal debt, the new bonds are taxable and generally carry higher interest rates.

The U.S. pays 35% of the interest, so the bonds have enabled local governments to borrow during a credit crunch and save money at the same time, making the higher costs a wash for them.

A provision from the stimulus act has resulted in a small boom to Wall Street, Ianthe Dugan reports on the News Hub panel.

The underwriting fees come as Wall Street continues to recover even as many municipalities remain in poor financial shape.

The Wall Street fees are "surprisingly high," says Edward Prescott, a Nobel-prize winning economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and a professor at Arizona State University.

The banks confirm charging higher Build America fees, but say the costs are coming down as the bonds become more popular. Bank officials say the higher fees are justified because they are working harder to sell the bonds to investors who wouldn't traditionally buy municipal debt, such as pension funds, insurance companies and foreign investors.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is the top seller of Build America Bonds, with $9.79 billion in sales, according to research firm Thomson Reuters, followed closely by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Barclays PLC, Bank of America's Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

On average, the underwriting fees for Build America Bonds are $8.20 per $1,000, according to Thomson Reuters. By comparison, the standard fee for tax-exempt issues is $5 to $6 per $1,000, according to Wall Street banks. Thomson Reuters says 984 deals have been done since April. Underwriting fees were disclosed in just two-thirds of those, totaling nearly $1 billion. Spokesmen for all the banks declined to comment.

The Treasury Department says that Build America fees have dropped and are becoming more comparable to tax-exempt fees.

One of the biggest deals was a $1.3-billion Build America Bond issued in October to rebuild the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and make it earthquake-resistant. The Bay Area Toll Authority, the agency handling the project, paid $11.37 in fees per $1,000 in bonds to a syndicate led by Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, or more than $14 million.

That was about twice what it would have paid banks to underwrite traditional tax-exempt municipal bonds, says Brian Mayhew, chief financial officer of the agency. And the interest rates paid to investors are higher. But the U.S. government pays 35% of the interest, bringing the amount that the Bay Area Toll Authority pays to just 4.07% over 40 years compared with 5.5% it would have paid with tax-exempt bonds, Mr. Mayhew says.

Mr. Mayhew says he believes the underwriting fees were justified because they also included management fees and structuring the deal, which involved calculating toll collections and income streams. A piece of the bridge broke the day before the issuance, making it an even tougher sell.

"These bankers had a lot of work to do," Mr. Mayhew says.

He says it is difficult to measure the direct jobs stimulus. The bridge project began in 2000 and employs hundreds. "This may look like more Wall Street greed," he says, "but for my transaction, we felt pretty good."

For Wall Street, Build America Bonds are a fast-growing and significant business. Since the program began in April 2009, $78 billion worth of these bonds have been sold, according to Thomson Reuters.

By the end of this year, bankers estimate that as much as $150 billion more of the bonds will be sold—more than one-third of the municipal bond market. Sales could increase in the wake of the jobs bill passed by the Senate last week and under consideration now by the House.

Many municipalities are racing to issue the bonds this year to qualify for the 35% subsidy. The Obama administration has proposed making the program, due to expire at the end of 2010, permanent and scaling back the subsidy to 28%.
more...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870486930457510410146341046...

toniD's Ya Think?

Marjah: The Non-Existent City the Military Said We Conquered in Afghanistan
Marjah isn't even a town, but rather one of the clearest and most dramatic examples of a war of perception as outlined in the US's counter-insurgency doctrine.

...The COIN manual asserts that news media "directly influence the attitude of key audiences toward counter-insurgents, their operations and the opposing insurgency". The manual refers to "a war of perceptions, conducted continuously using the news media".

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the ISAF, was clearly preparing to wage such a war in advance of the Marjah operation. In remarks made just before the offensive began, McChrystal invoked the language of the counter-insurgency manual, saying, "This is all a war of perceptions."

The Washington Post reported on February 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marjah was intended largely to impress US public opinion with the effectiveness of the US military in Afghanistan by showing that it could achieve a "large and loud victory".

The false impression that Marjah was a significant city was an essential part of that message.
http://www.alternet.org/story/145971/marjah%3A_the_non-existent_city_the...

Special Interest
by James Surowiecki

It’s the time of year when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of deductions and write-offs. One select group of Americans, though, has a more pressing tax-season task on its mind: preserving a lucrative loophole in the I.R.S. code. The provision allows money managers at privately held partnerships—like hedge and private-equity funds—to treat most of the money they make as capital gains rather than as ordinary income. That means that their income is often taxed at fifteen per cent, a much lower rate than it otherwise would be. In December, the House of Representatives passed a bill closing this loophole, the third time it has done so in three years. But it’s an open question whether the Senate will even take up the bill, let alone pass it.

In a typical private-equity fund, the managers get paid two per cent of assets as a regular fee, plus twenty per cent of the fund’s profits. They pay regular income tax on the two per cent. But on their share of the profits, which is called “carried interest,” they usually pay only long-term capital gains—even though they put up hardly any of the fund’s actual capital, most of which comes from outside investors. The difference in tax rates saves private-equity managers billions of dollars a year, and means that they pay taxes at a much lower rate than, say, your average lawyer. It also means that their taxes are lower than those of people who do the same kind of work, or get the same kind of pay, as they do. A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others. But the carried-interest tax break upends this rule. If you manage money for a mutual fund or a public company, you pay regular income taxes; do it for a private fund, and you pay capital gains. Similarly, when a corporate executive gets stock or stock options as a bonus for a job well done, it’s generally subject to income taxes; carried interest, which is also performance-related, isn’t. Like the rest of us, fund managers are being paid for their labor, but, unlike the rest of us, they get to pay taxes as if they were capital.

Opponents of reform have suggested that it will have a “chilling effect” on investment at a time when the economy needs all the help it can get. But doing away with the tax break for fund managers won’t change the incentives for the investors who actually put up the money for these partnerships, because their capital will still be taxed at the capital-gains rate. And while there have been worries that changing the rules could hurt other businesses that are set up as partnerships, like law firms or even mom-and-pop stores, it won’t: the reform proposals currently out there are restricted specifically to the investment business. more...

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/03/15/100315ta_talk_surowie...

toniD's Ya Think?

American Elites Abandon Their Faux Regret Over Iraq
by Glenn Greenwald

The New York Times' Tom Friedman, who did as much as any single individual to persuade large numbers of Democrats and "moderates" to support the invasion of Iraq, today writes:

Former President George W. Bush's gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing....
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/10-9

By ROBERT JABLON - AP

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100310/ap_on_en_mo/us_obit_haim

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

MMRules

Kathleen Sebelius To AHIP: Stop Attacking, Start Lowering Premiums

Speaking before a crowd of insurance industry officials on Wednesday, President Obama's chief health care aide Kathleen Sebelius argued that they should embrace reform of the system rather than fighting it -- or else suffer the consequences in the form of lost customers.

"I'm hopeful that you will take the assets that you have, the influence and the bully pulpit that you have and use it to start calling for comprehensive reform to pass. Start looking at giving Americans some relief," the Health and Human Services Secretary said. "Instead of spending energy attacking parts of the proposal that you don't like come to the table with strengthening the parts that are there that you talked about from the beginning are central to comprehensive reform."

Sebelius's speech came on the second day of a conference hosted by the major insurance industry lobby group -- America's Health Insurance Plans -- in Washington D.C. One day prior, a host of union officials and progressive leaders had led thousands of protesters in a demonstration outside the same conference, accusing insurance giants of being "dark titans" and "domestic enemies" and calling for citizen arrests.

The Secretary's approach was a bit tamer. While she did occasionally take a tough tone with the AHIP crowd, the remarks were more conversational than lecturing. Indeed, some of the toughest snippets of the prepared remarks that the White House sent out to reporters were toned down in the actual address. Instead of calling out the lobby for launching a late-stage million-dollar ad campaign to defend their opposition to reform, Sebelius spoke more broadly about how the president's plan and AHIPs demands actually weren't that far apart.

"Over the last year we have seen tens of millions of dollars spent by the insurance industry spent on ads to help kill health reform and we started with a conversation a year ago saying this was an important step," she said. "And it might be understandable if the president or Congress was proposing something radically different than the plan you put forward yourself. For example if we started with the premise that we should just eliminate the private insurance market in order to do some kind of single payer system like Europe and Canada. And as you know there are members of congress who favor that kind of structure. But the president believed we should build on the existing system."

The somewhat cordial tone was set from the start, when Sebelius insisted that, despite the hype, she was not there "to vilify hardworking employees of insurance companies across the country." (The crew from the Daily Show, which grabbed and filmed attendees as they left the room, will probably take care of that.)

That said, Sebelius did make the case that health care reform was an economic imperative, both for the country and, longer-term, the insurance market representatives sitting in the ballroom.

"You can continue the opposition to reform, and if you do, and reform fails, I can give you a pretty good prediction of what happens next," she said. "By next march, when you are meeting again, premiums will take even a bigger bite out of American's wages, your market will shrink even further, more Americans will lose their employer sponsored insurance and we will have a situation where the market is unsustainable."

Adding a human element to the speech, she urged attendees to put themselves in "the shoes of your remaining customers for a moment" -- citing reports of sharp increases in premiums throughout the country. Sebelius asked those in attendance to pledge to be more transparent about their billing practices, including providing justification for the rate spikes.

On this narrow request -- and on her broader hope that AHIP offer constructive suggestions to improve the health care bill -- she was taken up on her offer.

"We accept the secretary's challenge to come back to her in a very short period of time with specifics to be added to the legislation that can help with cost control," said AHIP's CEO Karen Ignagni. "We will follow the AHIP practice of sharing information, making sure we are doing absolutely everything to insure that where we have diagnosed a problem we are doing everything we can to find solutions."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/kathleen-sebelius-pushes_n_4931...

toniD's Ya Think?

The U.S. Army accuses Capt. Ernest Medina and four other soldiers of committing crimes at My Lai in March 1968. The charges ranged from premeditated murder to rape and the "maiming" of a suspect under interrogation. Medina was the company commander of Lt. William Calley and other soldiers charged with murder and numerous crimes at My Lai 4 in Song My village.

......Only 14, including Calley and Medina, were eventually charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, who was found guilty of murdering 22 civilians. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a "scapegoat," Calley was paroled in 1974 after having
served about three years.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/army-captain-charged-with-my-...

Is firing with bothbarrels today. He is a lawyer and he is rockin the Supreme Court. He is challenging the weak healthcare bill and he is sounding like the democrat WTP could put up with.

"Obama is just another run of the mill politican who lied his way into office."

Norman Goldman filling in for Big Ed
Submitted by taozen on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 2:18pm.

Fill in for Thom today. Chris Hedges on right now.
I wish Norman would replace Ed.

Norman Goldman has his own show -
http://normangoldman.com/listen/

will do, Bgurl's mom is not improving, she's spending time back and forth to the island. stomach cancer...

one day at a time eh?

Not easy! My best to her and her mom and to you.

Sound like you are tying up stuff. It's good you and Bgurl back up each other.

Best wishes for your daughter also.

toniD's Ya Think?

He says he's always been a Dem but when they do wrong he's not going to back them.

We need more of Sam now.

toniD's Ya Think?

it is because of his looks

over here:

http://samsedershow.com/comment/reply/5707

Gosh SJ. Is there any calamity you haven't face in the last 12 months? Good luck bud.

I get that crazy Glen beck video. I cant turn it off . I s this happenening to anyone els?

Are you using IE or Firefox?

If you are using Firefox browser there is a download that will stop videos from looping and playing every time you load.

It's called Flashblock. Go to Tools and then add ons and request Flashblock.

toniD's Ya Think?