uh oh

Don't play with my head SEDER!

"this machine kills fascists"

i have ever seen

http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/taf.shtml?hp=1

all i have is a blank space after uh oh

I swear an Alien ship landed here with many wierdos and they infiltrated this planet. What other excuse could there be?
Glen Beck is one of them.

Maybe some mutant cells infiltrated bodies or something!

Wasn't there a movie like that?

toniD's Ya Think?

I'm not seeing anything either...

Uh oh indeed...

Alan Grayson came to the House Floor today to introduce the Public Option Act, which would allow all Americans to buy into Medicare at cost. The bill is 4 pages long, and calls for an unsubsidized option for any American to choose Medicare over private insurers.

The bill would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish enrollment periods, coverage guidelines, and premiums for the program. Because premiums would be equal to cost, the program would pay for itself.

“The government spent billions of dollars creating a Medicare network of providers that is only open to one-eighth of the population. That’s like saying, ‘Only people 65 and over can use federal highways.’ It is a waste of a very valuable resource and it is not fair. This idea is simple, it makes sense, and it deserves an up-or-down vote,” Congressman Grayson said.

grayson's going to do okay as long as he stays off wellstone airlines.

===

i am at a total loss to understand the big push for the current healthcare bill. i think its a brea rabbit bill for the insurance industry, meaning that all their pissing and moaning about don't make us take this bill is posturing.

i watch too much ed schultz and he has been over the top saying its our duty to support obama and that this is just the start of things. i would like to see the public option crammed down everyone's throat but graysons bill is even better. i don't trust the senate to follow thru once the house votes for the senate bill.

filling in for Rachel last night? Why didn't anyone tell me

(maybe because my computer was off all evening?)

i have fallen into this kind of routine, that during keith's show's commercials i switch to the TMC movies - most of the time i remember to switch back to msnbc, but sometimes the movie is so good and i just keep watching it until i fall asleep...

i have been missing rachel shows a lot....

i'll have to download last night's rachel's show from itunes

THIS regarding Glen Beck being an ass clown.

You don't actually have to log in.

what's scary is there's a whole lot of people in my neck of the woods that would agree with that.

and it would put your name on the sign. Jeff Farias just posted the same thing on facebook..

Read the details if you dare - Atlantic

I don't even know why he matters anymore. He quit.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pledged on Wednesday to take a serious look at revising the filibuster rules at the beginning of the next Congress, calling the current level of obstruction in the Senate unacceptable.

In a reflection of the party's commitment to changing the parliamentary rules, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) followed the majority leader by saying that his committee would address the topic soon.

"The rules committee is going to start holding hearings on how to undo the filibuster rule," said Schumer, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee. The New York Democrat told the Huffington Post after the speech that the hearings would take place two or three weeks from now.

In a speech before a gathering of progressive media, Reid compared the procedural games played by his Republican counterparts to the use of the spitball in a baseball game and the four-corner offense in basketball -- tactics in each sport that were ultimately outlawed.

"The filibuster has been abused. I believe that the Senate should be different than the House and will continue to be different than the House," Reid said. "But we're going to take a look at the filibuster. Next Congress, we're going to take a look at it. We are likely to have to make some changes in it, because the Republicans have abused that just like the spitball was abused in baseball and the four-corner offense was abused in basketball."

Reid's embrace of filibuster reform comes after he previously threw cold water on the likelihood of getting the rules changed. His reference to the "next Congress" stands out. To change Senate rules in the middle of the session requires 67 votes, which Democrats clearly don't have. But changing the rules at the beginning of the 112th Congress will require the chair to declare the Senate is in a new session and can legally draft new rules. That ruling would be made by Vice President Joe Biden, who has spoken out against the current abuse of the filibuster. The ruling can be appealed, but that appeal can be defeated with a simple majority vote.

Preceding Reid on stage, Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow also suggested that reform of the Senate rules was in the offing.
Story continues below

"We are trying to figure out that one right now," Stabenow said.

Noting that the origins of the word "filibuster" was from the days of piracy, she called the Republican tactic of holding up even mundane legislation "crazy" and pledged that both she and her colleagues would get more confrontational in the future.

"We are getting better on the strategy," Stabenow said. "Lets face it we know we've made some mistakes our biggest mistake was coming in this year and trying to govern, trying to get things passed... Republicans said 'wait a minute they are actually doing things, we should figure out a way to stop them.' And they did."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/harry-reid-filibuster-rul_n_493...

toniD's Ya Think?

Harry Reid Slams Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy For Campaign Finance Decision

The president and his aides aren't the only Democrats throwing unusually sharp and public jabs at the conservative members of the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he was "so disappointed" with the Court's swing vote -- Justice Anthony M. Kennedy -- for enabling the court's rightward, corporatist tilt. As for Chief Justice John Roberts, the majority leader castigated him as being out of touch and completely detached from political reality.

"Do you think John Roberts knows or cares how people get elected?" he said, referring to the role the chief justice played in crafting the court's Citizens United decision.

Insisting that the court was engaged in "activism" for allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on congressional campaigns, the Nevada Democrat insisted that the time had come to stop appointing judges to the bench.

"I think we've had enough of them," he said. "I think what we need are people on that bench who have been legislators, people who are lawyers, people who are academics. You look at our Supreme Court and all these people, all they know is working with people in black robes. We have got to change that."

Reid named names.

"I'll give you an example," he said. "Sandra Day O'Connor. She was a legislator. She was elected to the legislature in Arizona. She would never have let that case go forward. She would not have. She understood how hard it is to run for public office."

On the verge of further ripping "those characters" on the court, Reid paused. "I guess that's enough of that," he said, just as he was about to share his opinion of Justice Samuel Alito, another staunch conservative. The crowd of progressive media begged him to keep going. But he thought better of it and moved on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/harry-reid-slams-supreme_n_4935...

toniD's Ya Think?

Nancy Pelosi: Massa Is 'A Very Sick Person'

BC News reports that in an interview with Charlie Rose to be broadcast Wednesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls ex-New York Congressman Eric Massa "a very sick person."

Massa announced his resignation from his House seat last week amid allegations that he sexually harassed male staffers.

"This is a very sick person," Pelosi told Rose, according to ABC. "He has been diagnosed with cancer. Perhaps his judgment is impaired because of the ethical issues that have arisen, and he is no longer in the Congress."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/nancy-pelosi-massa-is-a-v_n_493...

toniD's Ya Think?

while i was looking for rachel i found this

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35721400/ns/travel-picture_stories/displaymo...

Unemployment Rises In 30 States In January

WASHINGTON — Unemployment rose in 30 states in January, the Labor Department said Wednesday, evidence that jobs remain scarce in most regions of the country.

The data is somewhat better than December, when 43 states reported higher unemployment rates, but worse than November, when rates fell in most states.

Still, five states reported record-high joblessness in January: California, at 12.5 percent; South Carolina, 12.6 percent; Florida, 11.9 percent; North Carolina, 11.1 percent; and Georgia, 10.4 percent.

Michigan's unemployment rate is still the nation's highest, at 14.3 percent, followed by Nevada, with 13 percent and Rhode Island at 12.7 percent. South Carolina and California round out the top five.

There were some signs of job creation. Thirty-one states added jobs in January, up from only 11 in the previous month. But the job gains weren't enough, in many cases, to lower the unemployment rate.

For example, California reported the largest job gains, of 32,500, though its unemployment rate also rose. Illinois, New York, Washington state and Minnesota reported the next highest totals of new jobs.

The lowest unemployment rates are still found in upper Plains states, with North Dakota's jobless rate of 4.2 percent the lowest in the nation. Nebraska and South Dakota had the next lowest rates, at 4.6 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively.

In January, the national unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent from 10 percent the previous month. Last week, the Labor Department said the national rate was unchanged in February at 9.7 percent, a better reading than most analysts expected.

State unemployment data for February won't be released until later this month.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/unemployment-rises-in-30_n_4934...

toniD's Ya Think?

Leading Senator Wants New Fed Governors Committed To Full Transparency, Consumer Protection (LETTER)

The chair of a Senate panel overseeing the Federal Reserve wants the Obama administration to appoint Fed officials committed to transparency, consumer protection and lowering the unemployment rate -- three critical areas that the Fed needs to beef up.

In a Wednesday letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) expresses his concern about the two current vacancies on the Fed's seven-member Board of Governors and the impending vacancy to be created with the June departure of vice chairman Donald L. Kohn.

With the three vacancies, President Obama can shape the direction of the Fed for years to come. Brown, acutely aware of the opportunity -- he refers to the openings as the equivalent of openings on the U.S. Supreme Court -- is pushing for nominees who will fill gaps in areas he feels have been ignored.

"The evidence presented to the Committee about the role that Fed policy decisions played in the financial crisis and the economic downturn has led me to conclude that the Fed's monetary policy has focused almost entirely on controlling inflation rather than maximizing employment," Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee's Subcommittee on Economic Policy, writes. "And that the Fed has too often put banks' soundness ahead of its other responsibilities."

Rather, Brown argues, Obama should take the opportunity to appoint economic policy makers who:

* "Possess the foresight to identify harmful economic trends, the courage to speak out about the necessity of addressing these practices before they inflict lasting damage to our economy, and the wisdom to listen even if their views are challenged";

* "Demonstrate dedication to protecting consumers and maximizing employment" and;

* Are committed "to releasing e-mails related to the Fed's involvement in the AIG bailout" because "[f]ocusing on candidates committed to full transparency related to this particular economic event would help to restore the Fed's stature and credibility in the eyes of many Americans."

Story continues below

Installing officials that meet these requirements would send a positive message, Brown writes.

"The American public has lost a great deal of confidence in the Federal Reserve. Selecting a Vice Chair and...members with the above qualifications will send the message that the Federal Reserve has learned from the financial crisis, and that the Fed's weaknesses are being addressed with more than just cosmetic changes."

READ the full letter below: at link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/leading-senator-wants-new_n_493...

toniD's Ya Think?

Richard Blumenthal, CT AG, Sues Moody's, S&P, Says They Knowingly Falsified Debt Ratings

NEW YORK — Connecticut's attorney general sued Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's over ratings the agencies issued on risky investments.

In the civil lawsuit filed Wednesday, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal alleged Moody's and S&P knowingly assigned false ratings to complex investments that pushed the country into recession.

The suit, which Blumenthal called the first of its kind against ratings agencies, is being brought under Connecticut's unfair trade practices law. The attorney general is seeking penalties and fines that could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

"Moody's and S&P violated public trust – resulting in many investors purchasing securities that contained far more risk than anticipated and that have ultimately proven to be nearly worthless," Blumenthal said.

The securities in question are complex bonds backed by pools of mortgages. Most of the mortgages were subprime loans given to customers with shaky credit history. Those investments have lost much of their value in recent years as mortgage defaults skyrocketed.

The attorney general called the ratings process "deceptive and misleading" during a news conference. He said lucrative fees Moody's and S&P received for rating the investments affected their objectivity in rating the debt. Companies issuing the investments paid Moody's and S&P to rate it.

Many of the investments were given top "AAA" ratings during the peak of the housing market between 2005 and 2007. Then the market turned. Defaults mounted, home prices plummeted and the investments lost much of their value.

Most of the ratings have since been cut severely by Moody's and S&P.

Steven Weiss, a spokesman for S&P's parent McGraw-Hill Cos., said, "We believe the claim has no legal or factual merit and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves against it."
Story continues below

A spokesman from Moody's said, "This state's attorney genera's suit is without merit and we are confident we will prevail once we have an opportunity to present the facts of the case."

Some pension funds have already sued Moody's and S&P as well as Fitch Ratings over their role in rating risky investments that collapsed during the recession and credit crisis.

Wednesday's lawsuit comes on top of past civil charges Blumenthal made against the ratings agencies claiming they created dual standards for rating government and corporate debt. In July 2008, Blumenthal accused Moody's, S&P and Fitch Ratings of giving cities and towns artificially low credit ratings that ultimately cost taxpayers millions of dollars in unnecessary insurance and higher interest payments.

That suit is still pending.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/richard-blumenthal-connec_n_493...

toniD's Ya Think?

US Vice President Joe Biden, on a trip to Israel, has condemned the plans for new homes in East Jerusalem.

The far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel majorly sandbagged Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, demonstrating once again that it has not the slightest interest in pursuing a just peace with the Palestinian people or in trading a cessation of its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for a comprehensive peace with the Arab world.

Biden went to the Mideast to kick off negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and reassured the latter of undying US support for them. On Chris Matthews' Hardball, Biden explained that when you marry someone, you tell them you love them, but that does not remove the obligation to keep saying it years later. Apparently, however, Washington is henpecked by Tel Aviv to the point almost of being a battered spouse. In response to Biden's loyal support for Israel over decades, the Likud-led government kicked him in the teeth. Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai abruptly announced that he would build 1600 new households (for 8,000 people?) in a part of the Occupied West Bank that the Israeli government had annexed to Jerusalem District. It was precisely such new and increasing Israeli building on Palestinian territory that had led Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to reject negotiations and to threaten to resign. The announcement put in doubt whether the negotiations would go forward, and made Biden and the United States government look like fools.

Joe Biden should have turned around and left the country. Instead, he showed up 90 minutes late to a state dinner hosted by Netanyahu and dared actually directly complain about the way he was treated, "I condemn the decision," he said, calling it "precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I've had here in Israel."
http://readersupportednews.com/opinion/75-politics/1201-israel-sandbags-...

No, no one is forced to switch their vote...However, what's the reasoning when the person you are (suggesting) tossing them to has diametrically opposed views on important issues from your own, and of your supporters....

Corrie Heads to Israel for Wrongful Death Suit Against Israeli Gov’t

Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old student from Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago as she stood before a Palestinian home facing demolition. Today, a trial opens in Israel in a lawsuit brought by Corrie’s family against the Israeli government. The eyewitness testimony is expected to challenge Israel’s version of events with evidence that she was clearly visible to the soldiers, standing before the bulldozer in her florescent orange jacket. We spend the hour with Rachel Corrie’s family: her father Craig, her mother Cindy, and her sister Sarah.

(and how it ends with taser-firing drones)

...
Penn State’s College of Medicine researchers agreed, contrary to accepted principles of medical ethics, that “the development and use of non-lethal calmative techniques is both achievable and desirable,” and identified a large number of promising drug candidates, including benzodiazepines like Valium, serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, and opiate derivatives like morphine, fentanyl, and carfentanyl, the last commonly used by veterinarians to sedate large animals. The only problems they saw were in developing effective delivery vehicles and regulating dosages, but these problems could be solved readily, they recommended, through strategic partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry.

[snip]

Little more was heard about the Pentagon’s “advanced riot-control agent” program until July 2008, when the Army announced that production was scheduled for its XM1063 “non-lethal personal suppression projectile,” an artillery shell that bursts in midair over its target, scattering 152 canisters over a 100,000-square-foot area, each dispersing a chemical agent as it parachutes down. There are many indications that a calmative, such as fentanyl, is the intended payload—a literal opiate of the masses.

Here we have the completion of the perfect police state. Citizens are monitored from cradle to grave. Any signs of anger or rebellion are swiftly squelched with medication or “peace officers.”
...

http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2010/03/07/normalizing-the-police-s...

around the necks of the people. With Clarence Thomas and the fucking supreme court.
I cant stand the way
"they"ganged up on Paterson gov from NY;

I have heard from very wealthy people that the real crash is coming and they dont know what to do with their money.

Tamla, 1968

If you need a clear illustration of America's utter incompetence and stagnation in this century, look no further than the health care nonsense.
First, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a young, healthy man. Every member of my family (and extended family) except my grandmother is perfectly healthy. If we fell ill it would not bankrupt us. So, yeah, I have no personal vested interest in this.
BUT who in the hell can say that this neverending bullshit about healthcare is the sign of a robust nation? If you need proof that this nation is hopeless at corraling corporate interests and getting real reform done, HERE IT IS.
By the way, do something NOW. I don't give a fuck what it is. People need JOBS, MOTHERFUCKER. I have a few, but many people don't AND IT'S DRAGGING ALL OF US DOWN.
GET THIS HEALTHCARE BULLSHIT SORTED OUT AND SQUARED AWAY. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING MORE ABOUT IT.PEOPLE NEED JOOOOOOOOOBSSSSSSS. MOVE ONTO THE JOB CRISIS.

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

-"Ralph Nader paved the way for eight years of George Bush," Moulitsas explained to O'Donnell on Tuesday, referring to Nader's third-party campaign for president in 2000...."
...

Nuff said...

If You use Firefox browser, go to Tools, top left tool bar,
Drop down to add-ons. Look for Flashblock and add it to Firefox.

Instead of the video, you will see a script F. Click on that F and you will be able to play the video when you want to.

toniD's Ya Think?

chris hayes doing rachel

trying out some of rachel face mannerisms and visuals, doing a good job

i turned to the vodcast of last night's show because i couldn't stand watching ed tonight and there's really nothing worth watching any longer other than keith and rachel (my tcm viewing being pushed earlier and earlier, sigh) ed telling us we've gotta support obama because because the cost of doing nothing and bla bla; hey, asshole, nobody is saying "do nothing" other than the repubs, what we're saying is "do the right thing" pass the right bill, not this abomination!

And he also had Howard Dean on.

Dean said he heard that the bills will be presented at the same time in the House and Senate. The House will pass the Senate Bill and the Senate will pass the Reconciliation Bill.
I hope he's right, that may work and Bill Nelson of Florida signed the Public Option letter.

Grayson said he has signatures in the House for the Medicare Bill and that the Senate has a built in option where to put the public option with a buy in to Medicare.

So yes Ed was crying about passing the bill but he had a couple of good guests on.

toniD's Ya Think?

i guess i should have had more patience

but he really got to me with his support obama and diss kucinich...

on cuntdown

ezra klein is always good to watch

oh shit, i just noticed my typo.... not gonna correct it!

i so want this thing to be over one way or another; it's becoming so painful to watch and follow

no matter what they say, i do not trust the senate to keep its promise on the reconciliation "improvements"... i agree with dan on this, i have a bad feeling

Bill Nelson comes out for public option, now 41 (Actually 44) Senators in favor with 50 in sight

Bill Nelson comes out for public option, now 41 Senators in favor with 50 in sight
by: Chris Bowers
Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 16:38
Bill Nelson is in favor of passing a public option through reconciliation:

............................

Nelson, asked by HuffPost if he would vote for a public option on the Senate floor, was unequivocal. "Yes," he said firmly. "I've already voted for it in the committee, in the Finance Committee."

Two big implications for the Senate whip count:

1. On Reconciliation
That makes 54 Senators publicly open to using reconciliation to finish health reform. It is actually 55 if you trust Joe Lieberman, which no one should.

Only Blanche Lincoln is opposed. Kay Hagan, Mark Warner and Jim Webb have not taken a stance.

2. On the public option
That makes 41 Senators in favor of passing a public option through reconciliation. Additionally, Tom Harkin, Claire McCaskill and Herb Kohl all support the public option, and support reconciliation, but just haven't stated they would support a public option in reconciliation. So really, the number of public option supporters is 44.

http://www.openleft.com/diary/17767/bill-nelson-comes-out-for-public-opt...

toniD's Ya Think?

MIRE!!!

my better half is doing report cards and owns the tv tonight. time to turn on itunes and sit back and relax.

all i can think about at this point is what a big disappointment this was; i can still recall seder on the majority report being so excited about this progressive democrat being elected in a conservative district, his own district i believe, little did we all know...

anyway, at this point it's just turning into the usual media freak show americans love so much

do you remember blagojevich, how he was on the tv every day and night for a while, and where is he now? this massa too will pass

Pelosi says House has votes for healthcare if vote were held today
By Michael O'Brien - 03/10/10 12:05 PM ET

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Tuesday evening that Democrats would have the votes to pass healthcare legislation if it were taken up today.

Pelosi, in an interview with Bloomberg and PBS host Charlie Rose, hinted that she could pass Democrats' healthcare plans through the House if they were brought up this week.

"Yes," Pelosi said when asked if she believed the House would end up having the votes to approve healthcare.

"If we took it up today, yes," the Speaker quickly added.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/85975-pelosi-says-house...

toniD's Ya Think?

Wendell Potter Says "Take The Deal," Kucinich Says "No Way"

* I am very reluctant to go along with Potter, yet, he may be correct here. I am more about fighting until the
bitter end...what are your thoughts folks?

By Ruth Conniff, March 9, 2010
Monday night on the Ed Schultz Show former CIGNA V.P. and insurance-industry whistle blower Wendell Potter came out strongly for pulling together behind the imperfect health insurance reform legislation the President is trying to push through Congress.

Potter's take is significant, because he understands the details of health insurance policy, and the kinds of loopholes industry lobbyists manage to write into law.

As the President goes on his barnstorming tour to rally support for health care reform, I had been wondering about Potter's take on the current plan. Is it worth it, or is it, as Dennis Kucinich calls it, "a giveaway to the insurance industry"?

Back in September, I interviewed Potter when he came to Madison. He expressed worry that the health reform plan Obama was backing was turning out to be far less than it should be. "If he reverses himself on both the public option and the mandate requiring people to buy insurance, that will just be a gift to industry," he said.

The argument that we can’t start from scratch with a whole single payer system is "just bogus," he said. "The President has unfortunately been influenced by industry," Potter added.

http://www.progressive.org/rc030910.html

toniD's Ya Think?

House Roll Call: US forces in Afghanistan

The 356-65 roll call Wednesday by which the House rejected a resolution directing the president to remove U.S. military forces from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

A "yes" vote is a vote to pass the measure.

Voting yes were 60 Democrats and 5 Republicans.

Voting no were 189 Democrats and 167 Republicans.

X denotes those not voting.

There are 4 vacancies in the 435-member House.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8983747

My rep, Stupid Stupak actually voted yes with Kucinch.

Texas Education Agency lashes out at Fox Network for 'highly inaccurate' reports

Source: Dallas Morning News

By TERRENCE STUTZ/ The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN — The Texas Education Agency lashed out Wednesday at the Fox Network for "highly inaccurate" reports about the State Board of Education and its work on social studies curriculum standards.

The TEA, in a news release, cited a half dozen errors in a March 10 broadcast of Fox & Friends, such as Texas proposing only to teach U.S. history from 1877 to the present.

The TEA said U.S. history "has and always will" be taught from beginning to the present. Early history is covered in the eighth grade, and the period 1877 to the present typically is presented in the 11th grade.

It also chided Fox for reporting the board had removed George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Christmas, Independence Day and Veterans Day from textbooks. Those haven’t been removed, and the board will not adopt history textbooks for a couple of years.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/031110d...

toniD's Ya Think?

Congressman Alan Grayson discusses the Public Option Act - H.R. 4789 which he introduced in the House March 9th.

http://www.wewantmedicare.com/

toniD's Ya Think?

Senate passes jobless aid, business tax breaks
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 50 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Wednesday to extend key pieces of last year's economic stimulus measure, including help for the jobless and money to help financially strapped states pay for health care for the poor.

The 62-36 vote came over protests from conservatives who say the bill adds too much to the $12.5 trillion national debt. Six Republicans joined all but one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, in voting for the bill.

The plight of the jobless and the political power of an annual package of tax breaks powered the measure through the Senate, even though it would add about $130 billion to the budget deficit over the next year and a half.

"The bill is not a second stimulus, but it's going to deliver badly needed relief to Americans who are hurting," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "It would be cruel, even inhumane, to tell these people that their unemployment benefits expire."

The measure is the second piece of the Democrats' much-touted "jobs agenda" to pass the Senate this year, with more elements promised, such as help for small businesses suffering from a credit crunch. Concern over out-of-control budget deficits are a big challenge to the success of the agenda.

In fact, the bill chiefly resurrects elements of the stimulus bill that expired at the end of last year, including more generous unemployment benefits, health care subsidies for the jobless, and Medicaid aid to cash-starved states. They have been temporarily extended twice but would again expire at the end of this month.

snip

Wednesday's larger bill would provide unemployment benefits of up to 99 weeks in many states for people mired in joblessness as the economy slowly recovers from the worst recession in decades.

The measure illustrates the great extent to which direct help for the jobless and the poor makes up a large portion of Democrats' election-year agenda on jobs — and threatens to squeeze out other items amid concerns about a budget deficit.

The sweeping bill cleans up a host of unfinished congressional business from last year that languished as the Senate focused on health care. It would also prevent doctors from absorbing a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments and extends through December a generous 65 percent subsidy of health insurance premiums for the unemployed under the COBRA program, at a cost of $10 billion.

Wednesday's larger bill also provides the annual extension of $26 billion worth of tax breaks for businesses and individuals that are popular with senators in both parties and swung support from business lobbyists behind the legislation.

The $59 billion cost of providing additional months of unemployment checks — the core benefit is 26 weeks — is added directly to a budget deficit expected to hit $1.6 trillion this year. Unemployment insurance typically provides recipients with about one-third of their lost wages.

But Democrats said it would be heartless to cut off unemployment benefits to the long-term jobless and contended that the benefits inject demand into the economy, helping to lift it.

Federal cash to help states with Medicaid adds about $25 billion more to the legislation, with the money helping states not only keep poor people on the program but in many cases free up resources to forestall layoffs of teachers, police and other public employees.

The tax breaks include a property tax deduction for people who don't itemize, lucrative credits that help businesses finance research and development and a sales tax deduction that mainly helps people in the nine states without income taxes. more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_bi_ge/us_jobless_aid_taxes/pri...

toniD's Ya Think?

Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5
Women of all races bring home less income and own fewer assets, on average, than men of the same race, but for single black women the disparities are so overwhelmingly great that even in their prime working years their median wealth amounts to only $5.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10068/1041225-28.stm

toniD's Ya Think?

toni

Democrats To Upend Seniority System In Senate: Brown

Senate Democrats intend to elect the chairs of committees when the next Congress convenes, which could upend a tradition that prioritizes seniority over party loyalty, legislative effectiveness or any other merit-based criteria.

During a question-and-answer session with progressive media, video blogger Mike Stark asked lawmakers why the Democratic caucus hasn't yanked Sen. Blanche Lincoln's chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee, considering her opposition to Democratic legislative efforts. In Arkansas, her gavel is a top selling point as she battles a progressive primary challenge.

"We're going to elect committee chairs next year," said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). "The current chairs that are sitting there now understand that we'll be electing chairs next year," he added, saying the idea had been cleared with Senate leadership.

Under current rules, members of the caucus can weigh in by objecting to an overall Senate organizing resolution, but don't have an up-or-down vote on each chair.

Historically, the seniority system has been one of the chief obstacles to legislative progress. It is more difficult to continuously get elected to the Senate -- or to get elected at a young age -- in a big state, rather than a small state. That imbalance means that the most senior members of the Senate are almost all from rural, conservative states, giving them outsized influence in a chamber where they already have outsized influence because of minority protections and the two-per-state makeup of the chamber.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) chairs the Steering and Outreach Committee, which oversees the organization of the caucus. But the process is effectively controlled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

"I don't think Sen. Reid has decided, but that is something that has been proposed," Stabenow told HuffPost, calling it a "serious proposal."

At the same time, she said, "It's important that people feel comfortable." Upending seniority would bring about a lot of discomfort for those at the top.

The new strategy being pushed by Brown and others, of course, assumes that Democrats will still have chairmanships to revoke. Brown didn't specify which exact chairs might be pulled, but said that each one would face an up-or-down vote.

"I'm not predicting who or [that] anyone will be defeated, but they're certainly going to get a message. And one or two might [be defeated]. There's going to simply be a yes or no. Should Tom Harkin stay as chairman of health? Yes or no? And it will be yes for him, of course. But for some others, it may not be," said Brown.

Consumer advocates are also deeply concerned that Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), who has a history of supporting Wall Street and payday lenders, is in line to take over the Banking Committee. Johnson, too, would face an up or down vote.
...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/democrats-to-upend-senior_n_493...

toniD's Ya Think?

Principles Before Heroes
by Robert Reich

B y taking steps to prevent the financial crisis of 2008 from turning into a broader financial meltdown, President Obama prevented another Great Depression. For that, we should be thankful. Yet ironically, a larger-scale economic crisis might have summoned the political will to reverse the long-term trend of increasing concentration of wealth and power, as it did in 1933. Now, with the immediate crisis contained, political support for major reform has slackened. Consequently, we find ourselves almost as far from meeting the progressive ideals of equal opportunity and robust democracy as we were before the crisis began.

If anything, the Great Recession has accelerated the trend toward greater concentration. Under its pressure, more firms have discovered how easily they can increase profits by shrinking their payrolls and laying off their workers, and how cheaply jobs can be done using computers and advanced software or using the Internet to outsource jobs to foreign workers who have become nearly as productive as Americans, but charge far less. This means many more Americans are facing the Hobson’s choice of joblessness or lower wages. At the other end of the income ladder, top corporate and Wall Street executives and traders with reputed "talent" and connections–those charged with discovering more ways to increase profits–are commanding ever higher salaries and bonuses.

Meanwhile, the political power that comes with wealth has shown no sign of abating. The Great Recession notwithstanding, Wall Street’s generous campaign donations, its ubiquitous lobbyists, and its numerous revolving doors into the Treasury and other economic posts have all but assured the Street that financial "reform" will not drastically cut into its profits or the take-home pay of its denizens. Big Pharma and Big Insurance, likewise, are running victory laps around the deal they struck on health care, which virtually guarantees them big payouts in future years. And although marginal tax rates on the very wealthy are slated to rise, they will barely nick incomes that are rising even faster.

Obama might have had more success if he had framed the challenge in broader terms. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson saw and described the economic and political challenge the nation then faced in structural and historic language: to use the power of the federal government to reduce poverty among the elderly and the chronically poor, to widen the circle of prosperity, and thereby to complete the agenda begun by Franklin Roosevelt and taken up by John Kennedy.

But Obama defined the economic crisis he inherited not in structural or large historic terms but, rather, as a cyclical downturn–albeit an especially deep one–after which, he assured Americans, the economy would return to normal. He thereby missed an opportunity to expose the longer-term structural trend toward increased concentration of wealth and power, and its dangers. As late as 1980, the top 1 percent of income earners in America took home less than 9 percent of total income. But income and wealth have been concentrating since then in fewer hands; by 2007, the top 1 percent took home over 23 percent of total income. The President could have explained to the public that such a degree of concentration is not only unfair but economically unstable; it makes it impossible for the middle class to have the purchasing power it needs to keep the economy moving forward without going deep into debt. Instead, the President left the public with a diffuse set of ongoing economic problems that appear unrelated and inexplicable–rather like Bill Clinton left the public in 1993 when he declared the recession over, although median wages would continue to stagnate for another 15 years and inequality continue to widen. more...

http://democracyjournal.org/robert_reich_principles_before_heroes.html

toniD's Ya Think?

MaddowBlog

"this machine kills fascists"

Happened to come across it and thought I'd post it. I'm not usually home for Ed's show. I'm working. so I figure I can watch one day a week.

There's some decent vids at Democratic Underground mire.

They seem to catch some that other don't also.

toniD's Ya Think?

absolutely toniD...we only get what we are willing to settle for....the progressives need to stand their ground and fight like hell...the only thing that gives people like Grayson and Weiner strength is people like Kucinich...the holdouts are creating PO mo...44 and growing...

don't let the Obama-Dems and short-sighted idiots like Kos wear you down...for them this is not about health care, it is about a "win" for obama...

The DNC couldn't resist taking a shot at Marco Rubio and Governor Charlie Crist, two GOP Senate hopefuls in Florida, over their recent spat in which Crist accused Rubio of possibly getting his back waxed and charging it to Florida tax payers. They released this silly video lampooning the whole affair.

Watch here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/rubio-back-waxing-video-s_n_493...

toniD's Ya Think?

Been doing my homeonwners bullshit work tonight and it took my whole evening. Wah, wah, wah.

Now it's done and TRMS is almost half over.

I didn't even think about Wednesday night Ya Think? No one said anything so I shudda just shut up.

Time for an adult beverage, brb.

Are you smarter than a 5th-grader? New math, English standards could make it easier to tell

EATTLE (AP) — Governors and education leaders on Wednesday proposed sweeping new school standards that could lead to students across the country using the same math and English textbooks and taking the same tests, replacing a patchwork of state and local systems in an attempt to raise student achievement nationwide.

But states must first adopt the new rigorous standards, and implementing the standards on such a large scale won't be easy.

Two states — Texas and Alaska — have already refused to join the project, and everyone from state legislatures to the nation's 10,000 local school boards and 3 million teachers could chime in with their opinions. (Not surprised)

The public is invited to comment on the proposed new standards until April 2, and the developers hope to publish final education goals for K-12 math and English in May.

The state-led effort was coordinated by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Experts were called in to do the writing and research, but state education officials and teachers from around the nation were actively involved.

After the standards are complete, each state will still have to decide whether to adopt them as a replacement for their existing education goals.

The stakes could be high. President Barack Obama told the nation's governors last month that he wants to make money from Title I — the federal government's biggest school aid program — contingent on adoption of college- and career-ready reading and math standards.

Already, the federal government has opened bidding for $350 million to work on new national tests that would be given to students in states that adopt the national standards.

But some critics worry the federal government, which is enthusiastically watching the project but not directing it, will force them to adopt the results.

"Texas has chosen to preserve its sovereign authority to determine what is appropriate for Texas children to learn in its public schools," Robert Scott, Texas' commissioner of education, wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "It is clear that the first step toward nationalization of our schools has been put into place."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is helping pay for the effort, believes most states will value the new national standards. more...

LINK

toniD's Ya Think?

Is in da house.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday assailed the White House for purportedly wasting a year vying for Republican votes on health care reform, alleging that the protracted debate weakened the bill and damaged the party’s standing among progressives.

“We have wasted month after month negotiating with people who do not support serious reform,” he said at a progressive media summit on Capitol Hill. "It's been a year now and I think the White House finally got that message."

President Obama advocated for a bipartisan bill last year and worked extensively to court Republican votes, offering major concessions in the process. But only one Republican – Rep. Joseph Cao (LA) – in Congress wound up voting for it, and even he has since backed out.

But Obama has struck a more aggressive tone in recent weeks, demanding an up-or-down vote on the health care bill and championing the use of reconciliation to amend it. Better late than never, said Sanders, who also claimed Democrats made a strategic blunder by ignoring the single-payer option.

"I think [Sen. Max] Baucus [(D-MT)] made a mistake and would admit it when he said single payer was not on the table," the senator said.

A self-described Democratic socialist, Sanders is an ardent proponent of a Medicare for all insurance system. He ripped Democrats in his speech for refusing to seriously consider the idea -- if even to use it as a bargaining chip for a stronger bill -- noting that it has support among millions of progressives.

The Vermont senator blamed the White House in part for the Democratic timidity, alleging Obama should have focused on the substance of the bill "from day one," rather than dwelling on the elusive goal of bipartisanship.

He said the senate has 50 votes to pass strong health care legislation and urged Democrats to move forward aggressively with the proposal, describing it as flawed but nonetheless an important step forward.

http://rawstory.com/2010/03/sanders-one-year-white-house-it/

toniD's Ya Think?

WASHINGTON – House Democratic leaders announced Wednesday that they will ban the much-criticized practice of using annual spending bills to direct pet projects to companies that often return the favor with campaign contributions.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations panel, told reporters that he hopes the step will mean 1,000 fewer earmarks and break the linkage between campaign contributions and earmarks that has sparked intense criticism and resulted in ethics probes of several lawmakers.

But the move sparked strong opposition from Senate Appropriations panel chair Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, his Senate counterpart and a long-standing defender of earmarking. He issued a tartly worded response defending the current system and calling Obey's move "quizzical."

The election-year step comes after the ethics committee investigated seven members of a Pentagon spending panel for rewarding earmarks to companies whose executives and hired lobbyists showered them with campaign cash. The panel found no linkage and absolved the lawmakers.

Republicans, meanwhile, are weighing giving up earmarks altogether in an appeal to voters frustrated with Washington's free-spending ways.

The subject of earmarks has over the years brought criticism of Congress that's often generated by wasteful earmarks such as the $200-million-plus "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that was supposed to connect an island with a population of just 50 or so to the mainland. But among congressional watchdogs the more odious element has been the pay-to-play culture in which campaign cash flows from earmark beneficiaries into the coffers of lawmakers.

"For-profit earmarks are really where the rubber meets the road as far as corruption," said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group that has been critical of earmarking. more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100310/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_earmarks

toniD's Ya Think?

nice to see ya...would prefer to read ya, though..

"this machine kills fascists"

US President Barack Obama's administration is under pressure from Congress to emphasize labor rights, democratic values and market reforms in talks to forge a trans-Pacific trade deal.

Obama's top trade official Ron Kirk met lawmakers for consultations Wednesday ahead of negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) linking the United States with an initial group of seven nations -- Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

The meeting focused on issues including labor and environmental standards, food safety, procurement rules, democracy, services deregulation and foreign investor rights, congressional aides said.

"If other countries are going to try to get their foot in the door for expanded trade here, then these nations must respond by opening their markets to the United States," said Louise Slaughter, the chairwoman of the House of Representatives rules committee.

"There must be fair and reasonable reciprocal access to all markets to bring our trade policy to a place where workers are not the primary losers," said the New York lawmaker from Obama's Democratic party.

Congress is led by Democrats, many of whom have been skeptical about free trade agreements that had been signed under Obama's predecessor George W. Bush's administration with South Korea, Panama and Columbia.

The agreements have yet to be implemented and the Obama administration is seeking renegotiations on various issues, including market access for US autos and beef with South Korea and labor issues with Colombia.

Lawmakers told Kirk at the meeting Wednesday that "issues such as democratic values, labor rights and food safety should be emphasized" at the TPP negotiations beginning in Melbourne, Australia on Monday, a congressional aide said.

"We believe it is critical to approach these negotiations as an opportunity to redefine and redirect US trade policy," said Maine Democratic lawmaker Michael Michaud, also the chairman of the House trade working group.

"We must replace the failed policies of the past with those that deliver good paying jobs for American workers and a level playing field for our businesses."

Kirk, the US trade representative, said the meeting Wednesday was "an honest, constructive dialogue aimed at finding common ground."

"Our goal, as always, is to craft job-creating proposals that serve the interests and deserve the support of elected leaders and of the citizens they represent," he said.

Obama has set a bold goal to double US exports over the next five years in a bid to support two million new American jobs at a time when unemployment is hovering near double digit levels.

The US leader wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the first major trade initiative under his administration, to be the engine for a "high-standard, broad-based, 21st century regional trade agreement," officials said.

US experts say more countries could eventually come aboard, including possibly Canada, Japan, Mexico and South Korea, and Malaysia.

US officials want to focus first on talks with the seven in order to establish "a baseline" for expanding the partnership, according to experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The deal will add free trade with "small" economies Brunei, New Zealand and Vietnam and upgrade existing US free trade agreements with Singapore, Australia, Peru and Chile to incorporate the new "platinum" standard on such issues as labor, environment and intellectual property, the experts said.

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_Congress_pushes_reforms_in_Pacif_0310201...

toniD's Ya Think?

but I think this old mac which is 3.9 is not going to function right until I try to up grade it. I couldnt find flash block when I dropped down to add ons.
Lets see if my friend can get it to handle tiger 4.0 ,what ever.. thanks

It is torture to hear that Glen beck audio as I moved around trying to get to flashblock so I turned it off but this glitch and the Healthcare/reality check has turned me off.

the two oil states texas and alaska dont want to educate the masses.It iis obvious to me.

Thomas to judge the monsanto case? that is a real kick in the stomach.

good night/|\

Dems expect CBO score on health reform today or tomorrow
By Michael O'Brien - 03/10/10 10:42 AM ET

Democrats expect a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of their latest healthcare proposals today or tomorrow, a top House chairman said Wednesday.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said that the majority is hoping to receive the final numbers on their health reform proposals soon, which would enable the legislation to move forward.

"I think we get a report back from the Congressional Budget Office today or tomorrow, and then we'll know the last few changes that need to be made to take it to the House and the Senate," Miller said during an appearance on CNBC.

But Miller, echoing other House Democratic leaders, pressed back against a White House deadline for the House to pass the Senate's healthcare bill before March 18th, when President Barack Obama leaves on an international trip.

"I don't know that it'll be by March 18th," Miller said.

Nonetheless, the veteran lawmaker, an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calf.), said there had been productive meetings and that Democrats are moving toward getting the votes they need to proceed on the bill.

"We had a very good session between the House and Senate leadership last night," he said. "I think we can see the votes from here."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/85935-dems-expect-cbo-s...

toniD's Ya Think?

Stupak primary challenger just started up an interim campaign site w/ActBlue page

"CHARLEVOIX, MI – Democrats in Michigan’s First Congressional District will now have a choice in the August Primary. Connie Saltonstall has announced she will challenge Bart Stupak for the Democratic Nomination for United States Representative. This week supporters of Saltonstall launched a petition drive to collect the 1,000 signatures required to place her name on the August primary ballot.

Saltonstall, a life-long Charlevoix resident, declared that one of her top priorities is to work for affordable, accessible healthcare for all Americans and to support what the Supreme Court has ruled as a woman’s right to privacy. Saltonstall states, “Our Congressman has let us down. Bart Stupak has threatened to block healthcare reform unless the Amendment that bears his name is included in the final bill. I believe that he has a right to his personal, religious views, but to deprive his constituents of needed healthcare reform because of those views is reprehensible.” Saltonstall has heard from Democrats throughout the First District who are outraged by Stupak’s hard line on this important issue and demand a candidate who will support real healthcare reform."

If you think the Lincoln primary was big for Progressives...this one should be bigger...it's bound to be a battle royale between pro-choice and anti-choice...HUGE!!

This guy has got to go!

"this machine kills fascists"

Entire Senate GOP vows to block policy changes in health bill
By Michael O'Brien - 03/10/10 04:40 PM ET

All Senate Republicans wrote Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday, vowing to oppose any policy-driven changes to the healthcare bill in the Senate.

All 41 GOP senators signed a letter to Reid pledging to uphold the "Byrd rule," which requires that all elements of a bill passed using budget reconciliation rules be strictly related to the budget.

The GOPers' pledge amounts to a threat to block any changes sought by Senate Democrats on issues like abortion or immigration, or perhaps the reintroduction of the public option to the healthcare bill.

"We wish to inform you that we will oppose efforts to waive the so-called Byrd Rule during Senate consideration of any reconciliation bill concerning health reform," the senators wrote. "As it takes 60 votes to waive the Byrd Rule, we can ensure that any provision that trips the Byrd Rule will be stripped from the bill, which will require that the bill be sent back to the House for further consideration and additional votes."

The letter has the effect of putting Reid and Democrats on notice that any attempt to go beyond the scope of budget reconciliation rules will be met with fierce GOP opposition.

The reconciliation process is being considered to make changes to the Senate's original healthcare bill in order to placate enough House Democrats' concerns about that bill. The process would allow senators to approve changes with a simple-majority vote, instead of the 60 votes typically needed to end a filibuster.

Republicans have already said they'll oppose that process, and the Senate's second-ranking Republican, Minority Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.), said Wednesday he thinks the GOP has enough votes to stop some parts of the reconciliation bill.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/86055-entire-senate-gop...

May the piss of a thousand camels descend upon them!

toniD's Ya Think?

FCC considers free wireless
new
Submitted by toniD on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 10:04am.
FCC considers free
wireless internet for US
The United States could soon offer an enticing perk: free Wi-Fi.

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/fcc-considers-free-wireless-intern...
========================================================

Sounds like a way to get the taxpayers to pay for the infrastructure, which could them be handed over to the private sector later in Privatization.

No single payer but we get 'free' wi-fi? I'm skeptical of the motivation. If we got it, I think we'd get the start up costs, but then we would not get the wi-fi 'free' for very long.

you're forcing yourself down my throat...
quit it, nora, it's not fun any more
i can't, sandy, we're not married
i told you, ms_a, no touching below the belly button

Wingnut Mail Call
by digby
Wednesday, March 10, 2010

I got this email today. I thought I would share it with you so that you can see the full spectrum of batshit crazy paranoia that's broken out on the right. I think you'll find the projection especially fascinating:

Good Americans from sea to shining sea are grappling right now with how to
mentally process what they're witnessing in Washington, D.C.

The spectacle of a far leftist president literally forcing socialized medicine
down the throat of an unwilling center-right America is reminiscent, perhaps
more than any other contemporary metaphor, of date rape.

A woman determined to have her way with ono may start off seducing him with
lies, flattery and the usual pretense of caring about him. But at a critical
moment, when he says, "Stop, I'm not comfortable with this and don't want to go
any further," she has a choice: Either do the right thing and back off, or
abandon all prior pretensions and take him by force. ...

more please
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/wingnut-mail-call.html

ok, if you insist
have your wicked way with me....
as queen victoria would say
i'll lie down and think of england

: )

– Subcomandate Marcos, January 1, 1994

As a history buff, I recently started to re-read a book of essays from Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos that I read more than 8 years ago. I was struck by the prescience of Subcomandante's essays. Even when he seemed to offer no predictions for the future, more than a decade later, many of his arguments, though he offered them with Mexico in mind, remain remarkably applicable to the state of the Western financial world today.

His following essay, "The Fourth World War Has Begun" originally appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique in September of 1997. It is a critically important essay because 12 years later, the intimate link that Marcos speaks of between globalization and the fraud of our global banking system has now in 2010, washed upon our shores.

When Portuguese novelist and Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago visited Chiapas, Mexico to meet with Subcomandante Marcos, he stated: "The issue that is being fought out in the mountains of Chiapas extends beyond the frontiers of Mexico. It touches the hearts of all those who have not abandoned their simple demand for equal justice for all."

Here are excerpts from this important but forgotten essay below.

...
In this new war, politics, as the organiser of the nation state, no longer exists. Now politics serves solely in order to manage the economy, and politicians are now merely company managers (emphasis mine). The world's new masters have no need to govern directly. National governments take on the role of running things on their behalf. This is what the new order means – unification of the world into one single market. States are simply enterprises with managers in the guise of governments, and the new regional alliances bear more of a resemblance to shopping malls than political federations. The unification produced by neoliberalism is economic: in the giant planetary hypermarket it is only commodities that circulate freely, not people.

Injustice and inequality are the distinguishing traits of today's world. The earth has five billion human inhabitants: of these, only 500 million live comfortably; the remaining 4.5 billion endure lives of poverty.
...

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3935127

donate my body to science
or put me in a museum

Does anyone know Chairman
Submitted by Leah on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 12:06pm.
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.
==========================

That I don't admire. Imperialism stinks. The Reps technique is to cover Imperialism's stench with the Scent of Fear. The Dems technique is the to cover Imperialism's stench with the Magic Perfume of When Dems War It is for A Noble Cause. It is still Imperialism no matter what the fake perfume cover-up.

Moulitsas does seem authoritarian alot. And his background in the CIA or something like that has made me uncomfortable. His website is so beautifully designed; and seems so complete in its perfection; was the website born whole in its perfection? Because that was before my time accessing the Internet and I don't know. I wonder who designed it. Are they famous? They should be.

i'll lie down and think of england

*******

lol.. :)

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

MMRules

and he hung himself
got an auto-erotic erection
and came again

"oh, the injustice"

i took one for the team

RULE BRITANNIA!

i'm old enough to remember when we sung god save the queen at school
and i'm still fond of that anthem

us europeans
but better us than them...
//the remaining 4.5 billion endure lives of poverty//
and we need to redress this

...in our current debate, the litmus test would be Obama's healthcare plan. If you think it's a necessary compromise that's better than nothing, you're a liberal. And if you think it's a Republican trick to get us to subsidize insurance companies and worse than doing nothing, you're a progressive.
...
http://biobrain.blogspot.com/2010/03/liberals-vs-progressives.html

by Vanessa Davis

From: http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com

In September, 1978 Waits released Blue Valentine. The back cover and inner sleeve picture Waits and Jones posing as quasi lovers (inner sleeve has Chuck E. Weiss in the back). The international press hadn't really noticed Rickie Lee Jones yet (or Chuck E. Weiss for that matter). Jones being on the cover of Blue Valentine was referred to as "the mysterious blonde". In the late 1970's Waits actually never mentioned her in interviews, nor did interviewers ask Waits about her. Blue Valentine has the Waits-Weiss-Jones trinity all over it. One might expect more direct references to their friendship, but there aren't any to be found. Still, Waits having Weiss and Jones on the cover of the album is reason enough to assume he wanted others to know Weiss and Jones had been some kind of inspiration.

i need a good strong woman by my side
and you are that woman, mmr...
here's 50 bucks
go buy yourself something pretty
you slut

Kucinich would not have tossed his voters to the wolves if
new
Submitted by Alice on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 12:37pm.
that were his main driving force... (peace)
...
==========================

I wonder about that too. But I think alot of people bought that Messiah symbolism surrounding Obama and his rhetoric of "Change" (and forward-moving 'change' is progressive territory; it has taken over a year for many Progressives to realize that Obama-style change is status quo and reactionary change). When Kucinich's brother died suddenly during the primary push in California on the eve of a high-publicity train ride the length of the state, I was very disappointed. I thought it was when THAT sad, unexpected, (disturbing?) personal event happened, I thought it was then that Kucinich reconsidered his candidacy and made that recommendation for his delegates to throw in with Obama....So I don't hold it against Kucinich under the circumstances.

Be nice to me now..

I'm the only one paying any attention to you here.. :)

So far..

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

MMRules

her majesty mmr is in the room
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN9EC3Gy6Nk

god, it's moving
i'm actually shedding a tear

;)

New Web site includes digital recordings of famous figures

By Joe Rubino For the Colorado Daily

Internet users can get free access to the Conference on World Affairs' extensive historical archives thanks to a new Web site set up by event organizers and the University of Colorado Libraries.

Featuring streaming digital recordings of famous figures such as Henry Kissinger, Yitzhak Rabin and Ralph Nader, the site showcases some of the conference's most memorable moments between 1959 and 1994. Copies of original programs, panelist biographies and photographs are also available.

"It's really one of the greatest resources for public thought that is this accessible," said project manager Ramsay Thurber.

Some of the audio materials, recorded on obsolete reel-to-reel tape, were in danger of degrading beyond use after being stored in the attic of the Hellems Arts and Sciences building in the 1970s and '80s.

The archive program retrieved them from Conference on World Affairs offices after the death of conference founder and CU professor Howard Hickman in 1994.

"There was a real immediacy and urgency to the project," said Bruce Montgomery, faculty director of library archives. "We had to go through a long process of testing to see if (the tapes) were even viable. If we don't begin to digitize them now, they may be irretrievably lost."

The Web site launch was funded by a bequest from the estate of Bernice Shawl, in honor of her family friend and conference co-chair Jane Butcher. In-kind donations by G.W. Hannaway and Associates and SmartMove Branding provided much of Web site design, audio digitalization and technical advice for the project.

"I think it's pretty amazing what the CWA was able to put together basically for free," Thurber said.

Currently the site features only a tiny portion of the conference's audio and video archives. Eighty of an estimated 8,000 hours of material have made it on the site to date.
...

http://www.colorado.edu/cwa/archives

can Kiss My Irish Ass !

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

MMRules

"i recognise you from the pain"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDTVFbTHB5w
(lol)

maybe toni can translate it better

have another spud, mate

you're irish
my dick

sending his voters to Obama's camp...I do not have the exact wording...but Kucinich brings up a lot of things that are so relevant and they seem to end in a fizzle...

Reminds me of William Wilberforce.... but different....

But look how much taller and better looking Barack Obama is than Dennis...and none of us have any idea how they would do on American Idol so how can one simple American decide the best course...?

See ya..

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

MMRules

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopography
Prosopography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

In historical studies, prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis.[1] Prosopographical research has the aim of learning about patterns of relationships and activities through the study of collective biography, and proceeds by collecting and analysing statistically relevant quantities of biographical data about a well-defined group of individuals.

http://www.colorado.edu/cwa/archives/archive_prosopogrophies.html

that they're irish if they're descended from the irish
yeah, you got a yearning for the homeland
it's laughable

but why
does it somehow relieve you of the pain for squishing the native americans

"we were oppressed, too"
(boo-hoo)

just admit it
it was & still is a dog-eat-dog world
and 500 years ago you would have done the same thing
as would i

if big bad dennis hadn't sold us out
and delivered obama
we'd all be living in paradise

kucinich
you bastard!

we all got blood on our hands
if we didn't civilize the red-skin
they'd still be eating beaver stew every night
instead of hot-dogs

seems the pale-face from down under
has charmed us once again
& emptied the house

Submitted by maggiesboy on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 9:41pm.
Submitted by 60th Street on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 9:56pm.
----------
Greetings. I am still reading both of you and toniD and a few others while honing my scrolling skills to an Ockham's razor edge.

There is no shortage of opportunity.

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

(and the bastard dane is maude lebowski)
(and crank is donny)

Walter Sobchak: Am I wrong?
The Dude: No you're not wrong.
Walter Sobchak: Am I wrong?
The Dude: You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole.
Walter Sobchak: Okay then.
The Dude: And, you know, mmr's got emotional problems, man.
Walter Sobchak: You mean... beyond pacifism?
The Dude: Yeah, well. The Dude abides.
The Stranger: The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners... I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself.
Walter Sobchak: Fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling.
Maude Lebowski: Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr. Lebowski?
The Dude: Uh, is that what this is a picture of?
Maude Lebowski: In a sense, yes. My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina.
The Dude: Oh yeah?
Maude Lebowski: Yes, they don't like hearing it and find it difficult to say whereas without batting an eye a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson.
The Dude: Johnson?
Maude Lebowski: Do you like sex, Mr. Lebowski?
The Dude: 'Scuse me?
Maude Lebowski: Sex. The physical act of love. Coitus. Do you like it?
The Dude: I was talking about my rug.
Maude Lebowski: You're not interested in sex?
The Dude: You mean coitus?
Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story, Donny?
The Dude: Walter...
Donny: What?
Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story?
Donny: I was bowling.
Walter Sobchak: So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know...
The Dude: (interrupting) Walter, Walter, what's the point, man?
Walter Sobchak: There's no reason - here's my point, dude, there's no fucking reason why these two...
Donny: Yeah, Walter, what's your point?
Walter Sobchak: The man in the black pajamas, Dude. Worthy fuckin' adversary.
Donny: Who's in pajamas Walter?
Walter Sobchak: Shut the fuck up, Donny.

who's the stranger then?
um, fernando?

Love Dance, 7" 20th Century, 1974 - mp3

Destroying The World, One Nation At A Time

How now
infinite cow

But I know I can swim, under the

Tahitian Moon, Porno for Pyros

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

It reminds me of him - *spits* - too... :)

Um...

I've noticed you around.

I find you very attractive
Would you... Um...?

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

ah, the good old days
when i loved alice
*spits*

:)

and don't be a stranger
that part is already taken
by fernando

Yeah.

:)

since I saw you and A. around.

Probably gonna keep bein' a stranger, but 'nando appears to have things well in hand.

(Is this where I'm supposed to *spit*?)

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

and I know it's gonna be ...

that's my vote.

great memories
i was still drawing then
(sheds a tear)
but let's not dwell on the past
let's make the future in our image,
again...

eh, gtg
take care, buddy
(and how can i fall out of love with you, alice)
(silly girl)
(and regards to e.b.)
(*sniff* miss him, too)

thanks for the tunes, guys

That's really all I'm saying...

Laters, goofball - who should draw again because that was f*&^ig funny stuff...

Oooh...a cartoon swear..you must make me feel like a proper lady...

HAHAHAHAHA... ! :)

... What a luverly song ;)

Agreed... I like his version of Lean On Me also...

Kucinich made a point on so-called health care reform: They promised to go back and fix NAFTA, too, but that never happened.

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

RE: Kucinich's end the Afghanistan occupation proposal--These are the most recent polls I can find in a quick search and it says KUCINICH IS IN TOUCH WITH WHAT THE MAJORITY WANTS-- 52% do not support the Afghanistan War.

http://www.pollingreport.com/afghan.htm
also
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/afghan.war.poll/index.html

Is there a more recent poll? I don't see one. And if newer poll figures could be skewed by LYING propaganda -- like about 'success' in Marjah per Ghettodefender's post -- that would be amazing timing. --

[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... ]

-----
Marjah example: Isn't the administration's 'look-how-great-we're-doing' deceit what is called "engineering consent" by the Edward Bernays crowd of propagandists?

-----

Anyway, from the CNN poll in January it doesn't look like it is Kucinich who is out of touch with The People; Kucinich is on target. Rather it is THE REST OF CONGRESS which voted against his proposal 356 to 65. These pro-war legislators don't indicate that they represent us; but they sure represent the War Machinery of the Military Industrial Complex!

http://www.examiner.com/x-25653-FBI-Examiner~y2010m3d10-FBI-indicts-Colo...

[excerpt]

FBI indicts Colombo crime family members in extortion in World Trade Center demolition
March 10, 3:46 AMFBI Examiner
Virginia McCabe

Eight men allegedly connected to the Colombo crime family in New York are under indictment for alleged extortion and kickback schemes at the World Trade Center.

The indictment unsealed in a Brooklyn court Tues. morning included charges against Theodore Persico, Jr., Michael Persico, Thomas Petrizzo, Edward Garofalo, Jr., James Bombino, Louis Romeo, Alicia Dimichelle, and Mike Lnu.

They are charged with racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, extortion, and embezzlement of union benefit funds.

The defendants, who were arrested early Tues., were arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge James M. Orenstein, at the U.S. Courthouse.

...

As alleged in the indictment and the detention memorandum filed today by the government, Theodore Persico, Jr. is a member of the administration of the Colombo organized crime family of La Cosa Nostra; Petrizzo is a Colombo family soldier; and Michael Persico, Garofalo, and Bombino are Colombo family associates. The indictment is the product of a multi-year investigation in which the FBI used a cooperating witness to infiltrate the Colombo family and make hundreds of consensual recordings.

The charges include the Colombo family’s use of a trucking company they controlled, All Around Trucking to execute a kickback and extortion scheme for debris removal subcontracting from Testa Corporation, a demolition contractor headquartered near Boston. The Colombo family carried out the scheme at locations including the World Trade Center construction site, and the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant on the border between Brooklyn and Queens. Specifically, as detailed in the detention memorandum, Theodore Persico, Jr., Michael Persico, and others agreed that, in exchange for All Around obtaining debris removal subcontracting with Testa, All Around would kickback a portion of its profits as a commercial bribe to a Testa foreman. After All Around secured subcontracting work with Testa, Colombo family associates threatened Testa employees when Testa failed to pay All Around on the timetable set by the crime family. Consensual recordings captured defendant Michael Persico directing Bombino to threaten Testa employees, and captured Bombino reporting back to Michael Persico that, when Bombino made the threats, the Testa employees were “shakin’ in their boots over us.” Other charges in the indictment include an extortion of a furniture store owner, in which Michael Persico forced the furniture store owner to give Bombino control of the store until the owner repaid a loan owed to Colombo family associates.

The indictment also charges Colombo associate Garofalo and his wife, Alicia Dimichelle, with embezzlement from the welfare benefit plan and pension benefit plan funds operated on behalf of union laborers of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 282. As described in the detention memorandum, Garofalo and Dimichelle engaged in a double-breasting scheme in which they used Colombo-controlled non-union shell companies, including DM Equipment, Big R Trucking, T&E Leasing, and Roman Sand and Stone, to circumvent Local 282 collective bargaining agreement union benefit contribution requirements.

[end excerpt]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/huffington-post-kills-jesse-venturas-piece-o...

[excerpt]

Dick Russell (Ventura’s Co-Author)
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, March 9, 2010

As I noted in an item yesterday, Jesse Ventura has a new book out, co-authored with Dick Russell, called American Conspiracies, which includes an excellent chapter on election fraud and its connection to the likely murder of Mike Connell.

Well, this morning, Jesse had a front-page piece on 9/11 up at HuffPost: a front-page piece that quickly slipped off that front page–and then completely disappeared.

Here’s what you’ll find there now (or will, until they take that down as well):

Jesse Ventura
Author, American Conspiracies
Posted: March 9, 2010 11:00 AM

Editor’s Note: The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories — including those about 9/11. As such, we have removed this post.

All that’s up there now are the comments left by 65 of HuffPost’s readers.

It’s worth noting that HuffPost already ran an excerpt from another chapter of American Conspiracies , about the US “war on drugs,” and they had no problem with that subject.

But this one is, as we all know, taboo. Clearly, even to question the official story of 9/11 is to engage in “conspiracy theories” (as if the official story weren’t itself a “conspiracy theory,” and a preposterous one at that). Such is always the response of the US mainstream media (the foreign media tends to be more open-minded)–and it’s also the response of our left/liberal media, as this amazing act of censorship makes clear.

So here is the offending piece. Please read it; and let’s all try to locate the particular points that are so obviously wild and baseless that HuffPost had to kill the whole piece insantly.

MCM

Huffington Post/Jesse Ventura – Article #2 (”American Conspiracies”)

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON SEPTEMBER 11TH?

You didn’t see anything about it in the mainstream media, but two weeks ago at a conference in San Francisco, more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.

That’s right, these people put their reputations in potential jeopardy – because they don’t buy the government’s version of events. They want to know how 200,000 tons of steel disintegrated and fell to the ground in 11 seconds. They question whether the hijacked planes were responsible – or whether it could have been a controlled demolition from inside that brought down the Twin Towers and Building 7.

Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, put it like this: “The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction.” He’s especially disturbed by Building 7, whose 447 stories came down in “pure free-fall acceleration” that afternoon – even though it was never hit by an aircraft.

...

Some people have argued that the twin towers went down, within a half hour of one another, because of the way they were constructed. Well, those 425,000 cubic yards of concrete and 200,000 tons of steel were designed to hold up against a Boeing 707, the largest plane built at the time the towers were completed in 1973. Analysis had shown that a 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour (and those had four engines) would not cause major damage. The twin-engine Boeing 757s that hit on 9/11 were going 440 and 550 miles an hour.

Still, we are told that a molten, highly intense fuel mixture from the planes brought down these two steel-framed skyscrapers. Keep in mind that no other such skyscraper in history had ever been known to collapse completely due to fire damage. So could it actually have been the result of a controlled demolition from inside the buildings? I don’t claim expertise about this, but I did work four years as part of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams, where we were trained to blow things to hell and high water. And my staff talked at some length with a prominent physicist, Steven E. Jones, who says that a “gravity driven collapse” without demolition charges defies the laws of physics. These buildings fell, at nearly the rate of free-fall, straight down into their own footprint, in approximately ten seconds. An object dropped from the roof of the 110-story-tall towers would reach the ground in about 9.2 seconds. Then there’s the fact that steel beams that weighed as much as 200,000 pounds got tossed laterally as far as 500 feet.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started its investigation on August 21, 2002. When their 10,000-page-long report came out three years later, the spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest a controlled demolition. But Steven E. Jones also says that molten metal found underground weeks later is proof that jet fuel couldn’t have been all that was responsible. I visited the site about three weeks after 9/11, with Governor Pataki and my wife Terry. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but they had to suspend digging that day because they were running into heat pockets of huge temperatures. These fires kept burning for more than three months, the longest-burning structure blaze ever. And this was all due to jet fuel? We’re talking molten metal more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Probably the most conclusive evidence about a controlled demolition is a research paper (two years, nine authors) published in the peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal , in April 2009. In studying dust samples from the site, these scientists found chips of nano-thermite, which is a high-tech incendiary/explosive. Here’s what the paper’s lead author, Dr. Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen’s chemistry department, had to say about the explosive that he’s convinced brought down the Twin Towers and the nearby Building 7:

“Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel.” [i]

Richard Gage is one of hundreds of credentialed architects and structural engineers who have put their careers on the line to point out the detailed anomalies and many implications of controlled demolition in the building collapses. As he puts it bluntly: “Once you get to the science, it’s indisputable.”

[end excerpt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/africa/10somalia.html?ref=global...

[excerpt]

As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from needy people to a web of corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local United Nations staff members, according to a new Security Council report.

[end excerpt]

and mentioned Huffington Post...

Goodnight, nora... xo

It happens every where I'd guess...

But if a lot of people you pass on your way to deliver aid are also starving an/or hurt and what not, it makes sense you'd have to give them something to get past them...in the world we live in..and maybe have always and will always live in...

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/03/promoting-universal-health-care-the-re...

[excerpt]

...

Do you know how much money Americans spend — and in large portion waste — for no good purpose over a lifespan on their own health? Well, let’s do the math. Average western European or Canadian spends $3500 a year, over a say 75 year lifespan that’s in the neighborhood of quarter million dollars. The typical American outlays $7000 a year — right there we could all be saving a cool few thousand a year if we went down the universal care path. Multiply the $7000 by 75 and that’s about half a million over a life. In other words, for the privilege of living shorter lives Americans are literally being ripped off to the tune to a quarter of a million bucks that they could keep if only we did what the Europeans and Japanese are doing!

That, dear supporter of universal health care, is the one thing that if all Americans knew — that they could save up to six figures over a lifespan – that could push enough Americans to opt for an all out universal system. Far from paying higher premiums and taxes if a full-scale universal system is put in place, or worsening the national debt America as a nation and especially most Americans as individuals would cash in big time. As it is we are already spending about as many tax dollars for medicine as do other westerners, the extra costs involve the private side of the cost equation. And the damage being done to the finances of the middle class by the transfer of wealth into that private side of health care is terrible.

Every year about 8% of a typical American’s income is being sent to the medical, drug, insurance and credit industries with no practical return in services, the money ending up in the pockets of the elite. It’s a classic pyramid scheme. Charging hundreds of millions of Americans a few thousand beyond what is needed for quality medicine on a yearly basis — and driving many into interest demanding debt in the process — is one way the fiscal elite are transferring huge amounts of wealth up the economic pile as they absorb an increasing share of the national economic pie. It is nearly a trillion dollars a year. That average Americans are being defrauded of a quarter million over their lives helps explain why their wages are stagnating, why they are having trouble saving for retirement and for college, and why the regular family is feeling so hard pressed, with many going into bankruptcy in part because of overwhelming medical bills.

...

[end excerpt]

and all your dear cat friends...

Health insurance reform battlefront.

Now re-choreographed as yet another huge corporate bailout - this time for the big extortionist/leach "insurance/medicine" consortium.

Poisoned bill. And we pay for the privilege of ingesting this poison? 'Cause it looks good on the curriculum vitae?

Kucinich is right - Don't eat that green cake.

Hey! It's good to see (read) you all again - in this store window on my walk home from accelerating busy-busy these days.
You're looking good. Don't quit.

CropLife -- a coalition of pesticide and FrankensteinSeedGMO corporations pushing biotech agriculture and seeking new markets for biotech agriculture -- is the source of an Obama nominee for Chief Ag Negotiator for the Office of the US Trade Representative (OTR).

http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2010/03/07/obama-nominates-pest...

Story on Organic Consumers Assoc. site and via Democracy Now video:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27042

[excerpt]

Hearing Held on Chief Ag Trade Negotiator Nominee
Siddiqui defends his record during hearing.
Compiled by staff
Published: Nov 6, 2009
The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Islam "Isi" Siddiqui to be chief agricultural trade negotiator in the U.S. Trade Representative's office. Critics say if confirmed he would favor big agribusiness over small farms and organic farmers. Siddiqui spent time during the hearing defending is position, and 46 mainstream agriculture groups have signed letters backing Siddiqui's nomination.

A senior farm trade official during the Clinton era, Siddiqui has been a vice president since 2001 at the chemical trade lobby CropLife America. Environmental groups say that job should disqualify him from consideration for the new position. Siddiqui deflected criticism when he told committee members, "All the allegations ... and attacks which I have seen are directed at the trade association that I worked for, for eight years. There is no evidence in my public service of 32 years where I made any disparaging remarks against organic or sustainable development."

...
[end excerpt]

------------

http://www.nffc.net/Pressroom/Press%20Releases/2009/PR%2011.04.09%20Sidd...

[excerpt]
* As a USDA official in charge of overseeing the first proposed organic standard in 1998, Siddiqui admitted USDA had overruled the stances of the National Organic Standards Board by proposing that GMOs, toxic sludge and irradiated food be allowed “organic” status. Siddiqui had cited the concern that banning GMOs in organics in the United States would be “inconsistent” with the position of U.S. trade negotiators in forcing the European Union to accept GMOs. Only after 230,000 consumer comments flooded USDA were the organic standards strengthened. [Food & Drink Weekly, 1/19/98]

Dr. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Senior Scientist at Pesticide Action Network North America, noted that Siddiqui also failed to say if he agrees or not with his former employers’ aggressive lobbying to weaken international regulations over toxic pesticides, expand allowances for pesticide testing on children and keep persistent and acutely toxic pesticides such as endosulfan on the market, despite a global movement towards a ban. “Siddiqui is trying to sidestep his association with CropLife America, but to our knowledge, he has not yet disassociated himself from the extremely harmful positions that his employer has taken that put corporate profits ahead of public health,” Ishii-Eiteman said. She added, “We also thank Senator Ron Wyden for questioning Siddiqui on his views of organic and sustainable farming. Siddiqui’s reply that he welcomes all kinds of agriculture glosses over the fact that so long as we continue to push global markets to support our failed chemical-intensive industrial model of agriculture, we will never truly transition to the ecologically sound, clean and healthy farming that the planet needs.”

The National Family Farm Coalition expressed concern for Siddiqui pushing a globalized free trade model for agriculture that has devastated both family farmers and ranchers here in the U.S. and in foreign countries....

[end excerpt]

-----------

Islam "Isi" Siddiqui made it passed the Senate Finance Committee in Dec. 2009 but I can't find anything else about the subsequent hearing and approval stage. Am I lousy researcher or where did this go? Did Obama make any recess appointments or did that stop at the threat stage?

http://farmfutures.com/story.aspx/hearing/held/on/chief/ag/trade/negotia...

------------

There is some indication in the materials I did see that Bunning (yes that Bunning) was holding up Siddiqui's nomination amongst others. Bunning probably did not know there was a valid reason to hold up Siddiqui's nomination! But now that Bunning has stepped back to allow nominations to move along, will this mean the Siddiqui appointment vote will be put on a fasttrack even though it still deserves the strongest scrutiny and ultimate rejection if it still doesn't pass the sniff test?

This is a NYTimes editorial indicating that Obama's nomination of Mr. Siddiqui is a 180 degree turn away from all the "sustainable" and green agriculture word pictures Obama painted during his many campaign addresses and, indeed, CONTINUES to paint! Barack H. Obama. That 'H.' is beginning to stand for 'Hypocrit'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/opinion/04wed4.html?_r=3&th&emc=th

Weedkiller a killer of the Garden of Eden....

http://current.com/items/92261975_new-study-shows-roundup-pesticide-kill...

[excerpt]

Roundup is one of the most widely used pesticides in the world. But it increases the incidence of disease in fish, a new study shows. And yet it looks like the government is about to greatly expand the U.S. acreage where it is applied by approving planting of vast swaths of genetically engineered alfalfa. These “Roundup-Ready” hayfields worry opponents of GE foods, and this latest news about the effect on fish is bound to stir the pot some more. (The opportunity for public comment on allowing GE alfalfa ends soon, btw.) The new fish study, out of New Zealand, showed that when applied at recommended rates on fields near a freshwater stream, Roundup didn’t kill young freshwater fish outright. Score one point for Monsanto, Roundup’s manufacturer. However, what Roundup did at this relatively dilute concentration was to increase the production of worm that’s a parasite of the fish, and comes from a particular snail. And the combination of more parasites and moderate levels of Roundup – aka “glyphosate” – produced what scientists called “significantly reduced fish survival.” They concluded: "This is the first study to show that parasites and glyphosate can act synergistically on aquatic vertebrates at environmentally relevant concentrations, and that glyphosate might increase the risk of disease in fish. Our results have important implications when identifying risks to aquatic communities and suggest that threshold levels of glyphosate currently set by regulatory authorities do not adequately protect freshwater systems."

[end excerpt]

------
===================

Before the advent of the Roundup family of herbicides, herbicides were developed to be weed specific; one would kill grasses, another a major regional "weed" liek chickweed or something. But then the Chemical Manufacturers discovered the glyphosate/Roundup poison -- which can kill the plants it touches, even the crops. That was why the herbicide makers wanted to create crops (via dna manipulation) that would not DIE in the presence of these herbicides. (Farmers didn't like when the herbicide application DRIFT would cost them crops.) In other words, the reason GMO is being forced on us to the point of domination, the reason it all started was the desire of these Chemical Manufacturers to continue to sell these deadly materials even though they were known to kill all kinds of plants and organisms, and they FELT/BELIEVED they needed to CREATE something that would NOT die when touched by these herbicides. Are we going to lose bio-diversity and bio-integrity because these Chemical Manufacturers want to continue to have a market for this ONE family of deadly herbicidal substances packaged as an agricultural/HomeGarden product? Doesn't it sound like insanity?

eye-roll! but by jove, "they" finally got it!

Actor Corey Haim-80’s matinee idol found dead!By munchkin87 Oakdale : NY : USA | about 20 hours ago 8
3 Views: 1,376
Actor Corey Haim, born in Toronto, was found dead on Wednesday at his Oakwood Apartment near Burbank. According to the LAPD, Actor Corey Haim died because of an apparently accidental drug overdose.
/|\)0(

...Keep On Keep'n On...
/|\)0(

http://www.rules.house.gov/Archives/byrd_rule.htm

Under the Byrd rule, the Senate is prohibited from considering extraneous matter as part of a reconciliation bill or resolution or conference report thereon. The definition of what constitutes "extraneous matter" is set forth in the Budget Act; however, the term remains subject to considerable interpretation by the presiding officer (who relies on the Senate Parliamentarian). The Byrd rule is enforced when a Senator raises a point of order during consideration of a reconciliation bill or conference report. If the point of order is sustained, the offending title, provision or amendment is deemed stricken unless its proponent can muster a 3/5 (60) Senate majority vote to waive the rule.

Subject matter - The Byrd rule may be invoked only against reconciliation bills, amendments thereto, and reconciliation conference reports.

====

of course the conservatives are threatening to invoke the byrd rule to kill recounciliation, but it seems that the key point is that their ability to do so based on something being extraneous is decided by the Presiding Officer and the Parliamentarian

CRAMMING SPEED!!!

will be the Vice President.

toniD's Ya Think?

Miss. prom canceled after lesbian's date request

JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi county school board announced Wednesday it would cancel its upcoming prom after a gay student petitioned to bring a same-sex date to the event.
"Due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events, the Itawamba County School District has decided to not host a prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School this year," school board members said in a statement.

Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old senior at Itawamba, recently challenged a school policy prohibiting her from bringing her girlfriend as her date to the April 2 prom. McMillen, who is a lesbian, and the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union urged school officials to reverse the policy both on McMillen's choice of date and attire. She also wanted to wear a tuxedo to the dance.

ACLU attorney Christine Sun said her organization receives requests for help every year from students facing anti-gay prom policies. The complaints are especially prevalent in the South where attitudes toward sexuality are more conservative, she said.

In the announcement, the school board encouraged the community to organize a private prom. "It is our hope that private citizens will organize an event for the juniors and seniors. "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes anyone," the statement concluded. School officials did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The announcement alarmed McMillen.

"Oh, my God. That's really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one," she said. "A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this."

Obama touts plan to cut waste in Medicare, Medicaid
Pitching his healthcare reform legislation in suburban Missouri, the president announces a broadened initiative to block fraud in government health programs.
By Noam N. Levey

Promoting a new initiative to reduce waste in Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs, President Obama traveled to suburban St. Louis on Wednesday to keep up momentum behind his push to complete work on a health overhaul this month.

Obama redoubled his warning that failing to step up regulation of the insurance industry as part of a broader healthcare overhaul would leave more Americans struggling with rising premiums.

And in a campaign-style speech delivered with his shirt sleeves rolled up, Obama called for an end to political gamesmanship in Washington and a swift vote on his healthcare plan.

"The time for talk is over," Obama told a crowd in St. Charles, Mo. "I'm tired of talking about it."

The president's trip -- the second this week -- came as administration officials and senior Democrats on Capitol Hill worked on arranging a series of votes that will be needed to send Obama's healthcare legislation before Congress recesses for spring break.

With Republicans opposed to a sweeping overhaul, Democrats are trying to hold the first vote next week in the House, where party leaders hope to pass the healthcare bill that the Senate passed in December.

They then hope to use a process known as budget reconciliation to push a package of changes through the House and Senate.

Budget reconciliation measures require a simple majority in the Senate, rather than the 60-vote supermajority usually needed to squash a filibuster -- something Democrats could not do now with a 59-41 edge.

But the biggest hurdle confronting Democrats is in the House, where many rank-and-file lawmakers are leery of voting for the Senate bill, which includes unpopular provisions such as a new tax on high-end "Cadillac" health plans that could hit union members and a special provision providing federal aid to Nebraska.

Further complicating the hunt for votes, congressional rules will probably force the president to sign the Senate bill into law before House and Senate lawmakers can vote on the package of changes, another unsavory prospect for House Democrats worried about being on record backing the Senate legislation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other senior Democrats were working Wednesday to finalize both the package and the procedure going forward.

Assisted by Obama, they will then begin a final push to persuade wavering Democrats to rally behind the finished package.

Elsewhere Wednesday, the Obama administration kept up its criticism of the insurance industry, which Democrats have used as a foil in their final drive to push through a healthcare overhaul.

Speaking to a group of insurance executives gathered in Washington for an industry conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned that insurer opposition to the Democratic healthcare overhaul is shortsighted.

"There's another choice," she said. "Instead of spending energy attacking the parts of the proposal that you don't like, come to the table with (proposals) strengthening the parts that are there. . . . The second choice really may give up some short-term profits, but we also, working together, could create a sustainable health insurance market where Americans will still be able to buy coverage."

After the speech, Karen Ignagni, president of the industry lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans, promised that insurers would provide specific suggestions to improve the legislation.

Obama's new fraud initiative builds on a proposal he made ahead of his White House summit last month to woo Republicans, who have long complained about waste in government health programs.

Last year, the Medicare and Medicaid programs for seniors and low-income Americans made $54 billion in unwarranted payments to healthcare providers, according to White House.

To combat the problem, Obama has proposed expanding a program to reward private bounty hunters who find waste by auditing government payments through what are called "payment recapture audits."

The White House reported that a pilot program in California, New York and Texas yielded $900 million in Medicare savings between 2005 and 2009.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-obama-health11-2010mar11,0,3119175.sto...

toniD's Ya Think?

CDC Traces Outbreak with Shopper Cards

As of March 2, 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counted a total of 245 individuals infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Montevideo in 44 states. Among the 2,500 serotypes of Salmonella, according to the CDC, Montevideo is in the top 10 most common serotypes.

Because the main Salmonella Montevideo outbreak is so common in the United States, public health investigators had an extremely difficult time detecting the source of the outbreak. However, during its investigation, CDC employed a unique and novel technique that enabled it to trace the source of the bacteria--shopper cards used across the country by millions of Americans.

Initially, CDC and public health officials were able to identify a possible source by conducting a study comparing foods eaten by 41 ill and 41 well persons. The results suggested salami as a possible source of illness, with data showing ill persons were significantly more likely to eat salami than well persons in the days before they became ill (58% v. 16%).

====

an interesting use of science, databases, etc. but how long till some dick decides that people who eat lamb, coucous, and olives are terrorists?

Smart debt, dumb debt -- there is a difference

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, March 11, 2010; A21

Because we never face up to how much we need government to do, there is a pathetic quality to our discussion of big deficits.

It's a debate also characterized by a politically convenient amnesia. Just a decade ago, we were running surpluses so big that Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, worried about what would happen once our national debt was liquidated. We had this problem well in hand until we started waging wars and cutting taxes at the same time.

What would a rational approach to the budget look like? It would begin by accepting that running deficits at a time of high unemployment is a good thing. We would celebrate the fact that the world's governments were far wiser in this downturn than their counterparts were during the Great Depression.

It is a hugely underrated achievement of international cooperation that the world's 20 leading economic powers pumped trillions of dollars into the global economy to prevent collapse. Catastrophe was averted, and growth, although sluggish, has resumed.

True, unemployment in our country is still too high. But the lesson here is not that President Obama's economic stimulus failed but that it was too small to do all that was needed. Those who would repeal stimulus spending -- the bright idea of the House Republican Study Committee -- would take us backward.

Yet no one should doubt that we must put our long-term fiscal house in order. The discussion should not be confined to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. We need to ask a basic question: What do we want government to do, and, yes, how much will taxes have to go up so we can pay our bills?

Like it or not, government must grow in the coming decades because the private economy will not offer the same security it once did through employer-provided health and pension plans.

On health care, the status quo means that more Americans will find themselves without insurance because an ever-growing number of employers simply won't be able to afford the expense. This is unsustainable. Enacting health reform now will allow us to plan how government can take on these costs gradually.

As for retirement security, most Americans know their private pensions will be nothing like those enjoyed by their parents or grandparents.

So reforming Medicare and Social Security can never be a simple matter of cutting spending. We have to look at the entire health-care picture and rethink our whole retirement system.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has gotten credit for doing a version of this in his "Roadmap for America's Future." He proposes to balance the budget by, among other things, turning Medicare into a voucher program and partially privatizing Social Security.

Ryan gets points for being a genuinely nice person (no small thing in our mean moment) and for saying outright what many other Republicans only mumble. But the path he suggests is exactly wrong. Weakening social insurance is the opposite of what the country needs, and it doesn't even get us to fiscal nirvana. Ryan's plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would still leave a deficit of 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2034 (partly because of the tax cuts he also proposes) and would only start shrinking after that. (He was on Dylan's show yesterday and Dylan bought his ideas. Dylan needs to rethink this!)

Nor does our current debate address what government must do to keep our country competitive. Our schools, roads, bridges and airports are crumbling. This calls for new investments in transit and energy, in higher education, and new technologies and research. We have forgotten the Dwight Eisenhower lesson: that government investment is essential to private-sector growth.

So how should the various deficit-reduction commissions, including the one Obama created, proceed? Here are three suggestions.

First, start not with "entitlements" but with a broader assessment of what we will ask government to do over the next two generations. Be candid about priorities. This includes entitlements and what we should spend on national defense.

Second, offer a menu of the fairest and most economically efficient ways of raising the needed revenue.

Third, propose a capital budget for the federal government so debt can be used the way it's supposed to be used. Except in bad economic times, we shouldn't borrow to cover government's day-to-day costs. But government activities that enhance the prospects of future generations should be financed over time, much as successful companies use debt for long-term investments. There's smart debt and there's stupid debt. We need to recognize the difference.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR201003...

toniD's Ya Think?

why is it that the only terrorists busts that seem to get made involve idiots and stupid people?

Mass school closures approved in Kansas City, Mo. (AP)
"- 4 hours ago"

AP - Facing potential bankruptcy, the board that governs the once flush-with-cash Kansas City school district is taking the unusual and contentious step of shuttering almost half its schools.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_re_us/us_closing_schools

toniD's Ya Think?

Look at some of the teabaggers! Idiots and stupid people?
They are easy targets. Many get inflated egos when they can speak at more than one person and like water seeks it's own level. And the "smart" (devious) people take advantage of them by using them for their own agenda.

I think there also is a bit of lack of mental stability involved in someone like Jihad Jane.

toniD's Ya Think?

Who Do You Love, Part II

Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future has drawn a lot of admiring commentary from self-described reasonable conservatives — which just goes to show that no matter how many times Lucy pulls away the football, Charlie Brown will keep on trying to kick it.

Read Ryan's plan here:
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/

In fact, the plan is a huge gift to the very, very well off, while actually raising taxes for 60 percent of tax units.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=412046

Oh, and the claims that it’s fiscally responsible are phony; basically, Ryan pulled a fast one by having the CBO evaluate his spending proposals but not his revenue-bleeding tax proposals. (This I knew but Dylan didn't address yesterday when he interviewed Ryan and thought Ryan's plan was so good.)
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3114

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/who-do-you-love-part-ii/

toniD's Ya Think?

Senate Bill on Finance to Include Agency That Tracks Financial Risk

Source: NY Times

WASHINGTON — Senate Banking Committee members from both parties said on Wednesday that they had agreed to include in their regulatory overhaul bill a new Office of Research and Analysis that would provide early warnings of possible systemic collapses.

The proposed agency, which has sometimes been referred to as the National Institute of Finance, is intended to give federal regulators daily updates on the stability of individual firms as well as that of their trading partners, including hedge funds.

By standardizing financial instruments and reporting mechanisms, the agency would give regulators a broader view of the health of participants in the financial markets and the potential for problems to spread. The idea’s supporters say that kind of information was lacking in recent years as the housing bubble burst and troubles spread from firm to firm. more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/business/11regulate.html

toniD's Ya Think?

Schumer vs. Durbin: An Early Fight to Replace Harry Reid

Schumer vs. Durbin: An Early Fight to Replace Harry Reid
By Jay Newton-Small / Washington

No one remembers exactly when they started, but there is no doubt that the campaigns for Senate majority leader are raging on Capitol Hill. They have not been formally declared, of course, and for good reason — the position is still filled. But as Harry Reid's November re-election has looked increasingly imperiled, his two top deputies in the Senate have become more overt in their quests for his job. And in a Senate that is already near paralyzed by partisan rancor, the two Democrats' maneuverings are threatening to further gum up the works.

Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, and New York's Chuck Schumer, who is No. 3, for several months now have been trying to one up each other in wooing their colleagues. Schumer's speeches to the Democratic caucus are filled with shout-outs to all those whose hard work he appreciates. Durbin lavishes praise on a long list of contributing senators on his bills. They both are racing from issue to issue — health care, jobs, filibusters — trying to position themselves as the next leader for the party. "It certainly is premature," says one Democratic senator, who asked not to be identified. "We need to be all hands on deck with one focus: keeping this majority and passing legislation that's critical for the country. Anything else is a distraction that is undesirable and unnecessary."

The first time leadership aides noticed something was amiss was during the health care debate last November, when Schumer made some notable overtures to the progressive wing of the party. He'd previously taken flack from progressives for his championing of Kirsten Gillibrand, a moderate Dem from upstate New York who was appointed to Hillary Clinton's seat. Just after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus passed a bipartisan health reform bill out of his committee, Schumer demanded that the public option — a liberal provision that provided government competition to private insurers — be put back in. Reid initially bowed to Schumer's pressure, but weeks later had to drop the provision in order to secure all 60 Democratic votes to overcome a Republican filibuster threat. That delay would come back to haunt the Democrats after the New Year, when Scott Brown's surprise victory in the Massachusetts Senate race cost them their critical 60th vote. Even last month, Schumer joined 23 progressives in signing a public letter to Reid asking that the public option be put back in the bill during reconciliation, the parliamentary procedure that the party hopes to use to pass reform by a simple majority vote. "Either way, Schumer came out smelling like roses: if it goes down he's the progressive champion; if it passes he's the one who got the public option in," says a Senate aide. "It's typical Schumer — he doesn't care about collateral damage, he only cares about self-aggrandizement."

Schumer is considered more of a political animal than Durbin, and thus has spent much of the year burnishing his legislative credentials, sponsoring a provision in Baucus' jobs bill with Utah Republican Orrin Hatch and toiling with South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham on an immigration reform bill. It's Schumer's background as the Dems' Senate campaign chief that may be his ace in the hole: most observers believe that the 14 senators he helped to elect in 2006 and 2008 when he ran the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee owe him their loyalty. "Who wins? Schumer," says a senator he's helped at the polls. "There are loyalties that override secret ballots and this is one of them." more...

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1971255,00.html#ixzz0hs...

toniD's Ya Think?

Hightower: Why Obama and Dems Seem Incapable of Taking a Firm Stand on Anything
The Obama-ites seem incapable of firm stands. They excite us by boldly addressing our economic woes. But when it comes time to follow through -- it's droopsville.

March 11, 2010 |

You know what we need to juice up the performance of our weak economy? Viagra.

Yes, America needs a new Viagra, specifically targeted to stiffen backbones -- in particular, the limp backbones of Barack Obama's team, as well as the flaccid spines of Democratic congressional leaders. Where's the drug industry when we really need it?

The Obama-ites seem incapable of firm stands. They excite us by boldly addressing our economic woes, then they seduce us by proposing stout actions. But when it comes time to follow through -- it's droopsville.

Take America's job crisis. Obama and the Democrats eloquently empathize with the plight of struggling families who are falling out of the middle class. They point out that after Wall Street banksters crashed our economy and created the Great Recession, which began in December 2007, the number of jobs available to Americans has plummeted by more than 8.4 million. Since then, another 2.7 million jobseekers have come into the workforce. That leaves us in a hole that is 11.1 million jobs deep.

The White House and Congress correctly note that our economy must not merely stop losing jobs, it must create more than 400,000 new positions a month for the next three years just to get us out of this hole. Nothing is more important, they tell us, blowing kisses of compassion and promising satisfaction. ............(more)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add...

toniD's Ya Think?

Right on cue...Morning Joe and the media make Massa incident about Nancy Pelosi

Edited on Thu Mar-11-10 08:09 AM by Atman
Why am I not surprised? This was just too tempting for them.

toniD's Ya Think?

By David Swanson, FreeSpeechForPeople

The damage from the Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United v. FEC" continues to spread as feared. Newly emboldened corporations are suing to overturn state laws that restrict corporate spending on politics:

"A pro-natural resource development group [how's that for spin?] and a Bozeman painting company asked a Helena District Court on Monday to strike down Montana’s 1912 ban on corporate donations and expenditures to political campaigns to comply with a January U.S. Supreme Court ruling."

Meanwhile, the new third branch of government (the other two being the Democratic and Republican parties), the institution that had predicted in an amicus brief that it would be the largest beneficiary of "Citizens United," is now becoming just that. Here's an LA Times headline:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce grows into a political force: A swelling tide of money could put the business group in a better position to sway elections.

It's worth reading a bit of this:

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is building a large-scale grass-roots political operation that has begun to rival those of the major political parties, funded by record-setting amounts of money raised from corporations and wealthy individuals. The chamber has signed up some 6 million individuals who are not chamber members and has begun asking them to help with lobbying and, soon, with get-out-the-vote efforts in upcoming congressional campaigns.

"The chamber's expansion into grass-roots organizing -- coupled with a large and growing fundraising apparatus that got a lift from Supreme Court rulings -- is part of a trend in which the traditional parties are losing ground to well-financed and increasingly assertive outside groups. The chamber is certainly better positioned than ever to be a major force on the issues and elections it focuses on each year, analysts think."

But this is not just about registering people to vote. It's also about misinforming them so that they vote against their interests:

"[T]he recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations have a free-speech right to spend money to help elect or defeat candidates not only struck down a century of laws limiting such spending, but it also made many business executives feel more comfortable about using corporate money for political purposes. Industries that are the most directly affected by Washington policies and regulations -- pharmaceuticals, for example -- have always spent lavishly on lobbying and politics. But many others have held back, deterred by concern over violating the complex laws on campaign spending and by a general sense that putting money into politics might open companies to criticism. The Supreme Court decision appears to have allayed those concerns, according to corporate lawyers and others involved in the process."

I think that's a fair depiction, if you substitute the word "prosecution" for "criticism". This issue has also been examined by the Huffington Post, which found that companies are now a lot less concerned about "criticism" when they pressure their employees to vote and canvas for political candidates. Want to keep that job? Get out and raise money for the people who will take it away from you! Want a promotion? Turn out the voters for Wall Street and wars, and maybe your kids will still get an education somehow.

Grassroots pushback is coming from many angles. At http://stopthechamber.com a campaign has been launched to dissuade any candidates from accepting money from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Meanwhile state and federal legislation is moving forward to partially undo the damage. And Constitutional Amendments to fix the problem in a major way are being introduced in Congress at a surprising pace. All of this activity is chronicled at http://freespeechforpeople.org on these pages:
at link

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/50657

toniD's Ya Think?

I'm watching Geithner from yesterday's
C-Span Budget Request thing yesterday,
he always does that thing with his right
hand - he put's his thumb & 1st finger
together as if to say >> "don't u know"
He really BUGS me.

Anyone need any java??

Quote of the Day
"I think that there is a real shot we are going to get slaughtered in elections this fall if we aren't leading the efforts to reform Washington. We campaigned in '06 and '08, and if voters don't see that change, we haven't lived up to that promise."

-- Steve Hildebrand, deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, in an interview on CNN.

toniD's Ya Think?

Conyers's Wife Sentenced to Three Years
Monica Conyers, the wife of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), was sentenced to 37 months in prison for taking bribes, the Detroit News reports.

She "is the only Detroit elected official convicted so far in a long-running corruption investigation that has netted 10 guilty pleas."

The Detroit Free Press notes that "after months of silence," the "combative and unpredictable" Conyers "erupted during her sentencing in federal court Wednesday: first, repeatedly asking to withdraw her guilty plea, then exclaiming she wasn't going to jail for something she didn't do."

However, a plea document Conyers signed last summer said she "waives any right to appeal her conviction or sentence" as long as she was sentenced her to five years or less.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/03/11/conyerss_wife_sentenced_to_...

toniD's Ya Think?

New Emails Contradict Ensign
The New York Times reports that "previously undisclosed e-mail messages" turned over to the FBI and Senate Ethics Committee "provide new evidence about Sen, John Ensign's (R-NV) efforts to steer lobbying work to the embittered husband of his former mistress and could deepen his legal and political troubles."

The messages "are the first written records from Mr. Ensign documenting his efforts to find clients" for his former aide and they "appear to undercut the senator's assertion that he did not know the work might involve Congressional lobbying, which could violate a federal ban on such activities by staff members for a year after leaving government."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/us/politics/11inquire.html?hp

toniD's Ya Think?

/|\)0( {Whatever is needed... }

HSUS MySpace Page | Get web badges

Dems Inch Closer To A Deal On Reconcilliation
Brian Beutler | March 11, 2010, 8:27AM

It's been almost two months since Sen. Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts special election nearly derailed health care reform, but soon, Democrats will know if they have what it takes to fully rebound: This morning, House Dems will meet to review and assess the final health care reform package--a combination of the Senate's bill and a separate reconciliation bill (the details of which remain undisclosed) tweaking several of its key provision.

This step is key. It will largely determine if, how, and when Speaker Nancy Pelosi can muster the votes for the paired package, bringing the year-long fight over health care to a close. The vote will be extremely tight, and though leadership confidently predicts passage, at least one major issue--abortion--will have to be resolved before Pelosi can bring it to the floor.

Separately, House principals will have to move the reconciliation bill through the Budget Committee--a process that could take several days--and determine how to conduct the floor vote.

As recently as last week, House Rules Committee chairwoman Louise Slaughter told me she believed Democrats would have to pass the Senate bill first, followed by the smaller reconciliation bill. But leadership is now considering a track that would allow the House to pass both items with a single vote: a so called self-executing rule, which would hold that the Senate bill should be considered passed, if the reconciliation bill passes. The difference sounds technical, but for House Dems desperate not to cast a vote for the unpopular provisions in the Senate bill, the politics are crucial.

If that all sounds complicated, well, it is. But the process here will be instrumental in determining whether House Democrats will be able to take this final jump. And with the White House in a hurry to get the bill signed before Easter, time is of the essence.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/house-democrats-prepare-to-ta...

toniD's Ya Think?

to Impeach Judge Thomas Porteous for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Res 1031 would remove the Judge from U.S. District Court.

Taking bribes from 2 attorneys.

They are calling the House now for a vote.

I know a few more judges that should be impeached for treason!

toniD's Ya Think?

How Pay-Day Lender Pal of Sen. Corker Helped Weaken Financial Reform

In the wake of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, a high-living, politically connected Tennessee businessman who made a fortune by lending money to the poor at sky-high interest rates has ties to a successful effort to water down financial regulatory reform.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/high-living_pay-day_le...

toniD's Ya Think?

Simon Johnson

MIT Professor and co-author of 13 Bankers
Posted: March 11, 2010 08:36 AM

For nearly two years now we have waited for a speech. We need a simple speech and a direct speech -- most of all a political speech -- about what exactly happened to our financial system, and therefore to our economy, and what we must do to make sure it can never happen again.

President George W. Bush apparently did not consider giving such a speech, and Secretary Paulson could never talk in this way. President Obama seemed, at some moments, close to making things clear -- when he talked on Wall Street in September and, most notably, when he launched the Volcker Rules in January. But President Obama has always come up short on the prescriptive part -- i.e., what we need to do -- and his implementation people still move as if there were lead weights in their shoes.

Without a definitive speech, there is no political reference point, there is no convergence in the debate, and there is not even any clarity regarding what we should be arguing about. Without the right kind of speech, there are just many lobbyists working the corridors and a lot of backroom deals that most people do not understand -- by design.

Thursday, hopefully, we should finally get the speech. Not - sadly - from the White House, not from anyone in the executive branch, and not even from within the Senate Banking Committee (although Senators Merkley and Levin took a big step today), but rather on the floor of the Senate.

On Thursday, Senator Ted Kaufman (D., DE) is due to deliver a strong blow to the overly powerful and unproductively mighty within our financial sector. He will say, according to what is now on his website,

1. Excessive deregulation allowed big finance to get out of control from the 1980s -- but particularly during and after the 1990s. This led directly to the economic catastrophe in 2007-08.

2. We need to modernize and apply the same general principles that were behind the Glass-Steagall, i.e., separating "boring" but essential commercial banking (running payments, offering deposits-with-insurance, etc) from "risky" other forms of financial activity

3. We need size caps on the biggest banks in our financial system, preferably as a percent of GDP.

4. We should tighten capital requirements substantially.

5. And we must regulate derivatives more tightly - on this issue, he likes at least some of the steps being pushed by Gary Gensler at the CFTC.

To be sure, a speech is not legislation. And, as yet, this is just one senator's point of view. But because the administration so completely lost the narrative regarding what happened and why, there is now a free, open, and fair competition to explain what we need to do.

The lobbyists will still prevail on this round. But a big debate around the nature of our financial system is exactly what we need.

People who want to defend finance as-is now need come out of the woodwork. Senator Kaufman has set a very high standard. If you wish to oppose this agenda, speak clearly and in public about why we should not pursue exactly what the senator proposes.

If opponents of reform do not come out and argue the merits of their case, people will reasonably and increasingly infer that Senator Kaufman and his allies are right on all the substance.

Reform is blocked by a perverse combination of bankrupt ideology and deep-pocketed corporate interests. The only way to break through is to bring a lot of sunshine into the true affairs of finance -- including by speeches like the one we will hear Thursday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/the-speech-for-which-we-h_b_...

toniD's Ya Think?

Dodd Financial Regulation Bill: Bipartisan Talks Failed, Senator Plans To Introduce His Own Bill

WASHINGTON AP) – Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd plans to offer his own version of a financial regulation bill as bipartisan talks have failed to yield agreement on consumer protections and other sticking points.

In a statement Thursday morning, Dodd said that his talks with Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee produced areas of common ground but a "few outstanding issues remain."

The development raises new questions about one of President Barack Obama's top priorities. Congress and the administration have been trying to assemble legislation overhauling financial system regulation in hopes of preventing a recurrence of the economic crisis that hit the nation in the fall of 2008.

Dodd said that some of the issues that he and Corker did agree on will be incorporated into his proposed legislation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/dodd-financial-regulation_n_494...

toniD's Ya Think?

Jon Stewart On Beck's Massa Interview: Why The Night 'Wasn't A Total Loss' (VIDEO)

On Wednesday night, Jon Stewart made the case for why Glenn Beck's now notorious interview with recently forced out Congressman Eric Massa wasn't a 'total loss.' At the end of the hour with Massa, accused of 'groping' his staffers, Beck declared to the camera, 'America, I'm gonna shoot straight with you. I think I've wasted your time. I have wasted an hour of your time. And I apologize for that.'

Stewart: "It appears that Glenn Beck has come up with his new sign off phrase. His 'Good Night and Good Luck.' Every show he can now end with: 'I think I've wasted an hour of your time. And I apologize for that. See you tomorrow.'"

As Stewart points out, Beck began the interview with much higher expectations. Before the show he tweeted "All Americans need to hear him."

"But the more Beck struggled the clearer it became that he was opening Al Capone's vault only to find some dog eared well combed over old men's fitness magazines."

Watch at link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/jon-stewart-on-becks-mass_n_494...

toniD's Ya Think?

Moulitsas is Wrong About Kucinich

...
Moulitsas repeatedly compared Kucinich to Ralph Nader. Unbelievably, Moulitsas blames Nader for 8 years of Bush. The problem wasn't Nader, and it isn't Kucinich.

The problem is that the Democratic Party continues to alienate their progressive base by moving further and further to the right. Mr. Moulitsas has provided us with yet another example.
...

http://www.redstateprogressive.com/2010/03/moulitsas-is-wrong-about-kuci...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw1Aji8FzJc

From An Unreasonable Man

by Henriette Mantel (who happens to have played Alice in The Brady Bunch movie)

http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/twitter-follow-stats/

thanks for the bit on rome mire - - nostalgia....

agree, alice

I am trapped in the pretzel factory with two red-necks from hell and I have to work through lunch to finish up so I won't have to come back tomorrow...

I swear to fucking Christ, if I have to listen to one more ridiculous comment about how Federal over-taxation is causing our local school closures they are going to be pulling keyboard pieces out of this guys ass for months...

"In the Server Room no one can hear you scream."

Maybe they want to become a Christian organization.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/dobson_and_focus_on_th...

Sounds more like the nut factory my friend. We feel your pain.

.I'm trying to educate the masses with your help!

just remember to hit that big "do not touch" button on your way out. maybe a good dose of halon will put some sense into them.

Big majority wants Wall Street regulation
82 percent of Americans want the government to clamp down on excesses

WASHINGTON - An overwhelming majority of Americans wants Wall Street subjected to tougher regulation in the aftermath of the bank bailout and the bonus scandals that have rocked the U.S. financial sector, according to a Harris poll released on Thursday.

The findings suggest that 82 percent of Americans want the government to clamp down more strongly on Wall Street excesses, with a particular emphasis on bonus schemes that have rewarded employees at loss-making companies such as American International Group.

A Harris release on the February 16-21 telephone survey of 1,010 adults did not specify how financial regulation should be applied but said three-quarters of Americans believe Wall Street companies should pay bonuses only while in the black.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

Harris said the U.S. public does see value in Wall Street itself: nearly 60 percent say the financial sector is an essential benefit to the United States.

But a slightly larger majority disagrees that what is good for Wall Street is good for the country, while about two-thirds harbor strong negative views about the people who work there.

By a margin of 66 percent to 29 percent, Americans agree that "most people on Wall Street would be willing to break the law if they believed they could make a lot of money and get away with it," pollsters found.

Sixty-five percent say most successful people on Wall Street do not deserve the kind of money they make.

A similar majority said those in the financial sector are generally less honest and less moral than the general public.

"Those who manage large banks and other financial institutions can draw some comfort from the majorities who believe that Wall Street is essential and benefits the country, even if these numbers are much worse than they were before the 2008 crash," Harris said in a statement.

"On the other hand, there is no evidence that the American people have begun to forgive the people in Wall Street or to forget the huge problems that they caused."

Harris did not provide a margin of error for the poll.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35817048/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

toniD's Ya Think?

Sean Penn: Journalists who call Hugo Chávez a dictator should be jailed

Sean Penn has defended Hugo Chávez as a model democrat and said those who call him a dictator should be jailed.

The Oscar-winning actor and political activist accused the US media of smearing Venezuela's socialist president and called for journalists to be punished.

"Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."

Penn, who has visited Chávez in Caracas, said Venezuela's poor majority had willingly embraced his leftist revolution, but that this view was concealed from Americans.

"We are hypnotised by the media. Who do you know here who's gone through 14 of the most transparent elections on the globe, and has been elected democratically, as Hugo Chávez?"

Penn, speaking on Bill Maher's HBO chatshow, is part of a small but vocal pro-Chávez Hollywood group which includes Oliver Stone and Danny Glover....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/11/sean-penn-hugo-chavez-venezu...

Shuting almost HALF the Schools! This is wrong!
Submitted by toniD on Thu, 03/11/2010 - 8:05am.
Mass school closures approved in Kansas City, Mo. (AP)...
-------------------
I know nothing about the K.C. schools situation so I am not qualified to offer an opinion. However, the article linked by toniD states the following:

"During a news conference Thursday, Covington thanked the board for its vote. He said the district was spreading itself too thin by educating less than 18,000 students in 61 schools."

18,000 divided by 61 is 295.08. I assume that some of the schools have many more students while other schools have fewer students than the average of 295.08. Even so, the average seems pretty small for all of the costs associated with operating a school.

Again, I know nothing about the subject so I don't have an opinion. It might be the case that well-funded school districts elsewhere in the nation operate many schools with an average of 300 students each.

(Spare me the "smaller schools are better" lecture. I admit ignorance of the K.C. school district details but I don't need instruction on unrelated educational matters from someone who knows as little about the K.C. schools subject as I do but is incapable of admitting their own ignorance as I have.)

Thanks for the reminder (elsewhere) ellwort.
I hadn't looked at Jan Sorensen's work in awhile.
Paranoia at Slowpoke

Shiny things will save you from the continuing economic chaos at This Modern World

We don't have the votes. Sighing a lot at Tom Toles

Thanks Michele! I should go to Facebook more. Just not into it that much.

toniD's Ya Think?

British activist saw Rachel Corrie die under Israeli bulldozer, court hears

Richard Purssell describes 'shocking event' in Haifa court on first day of civil suit brought by Corrie family against Israel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/10/rachel-corrie-civil-case-isr...

The WH just got its perpetual war money, and public education just got a little harder to receive.

Half of Kansas City's schools to close by fall
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8985085

Gregg: GOP Gameplan Is To Sow Doubt On Reconciliation

Hoping to trip up health care reform as it enters its final procedural stages, leading Republicans are trying to sow doubts in the minds of House Democrats that the Senate will end up fixing the legislation in ways that they like.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) admitted, during a press conference organized by health policy journal Health Affairs on Thursday, that his role now is to make skeptical House Democrats even more doubtful that the Senate can change the bill it passes using reconciliation. He insisted that tough votes on non-health care related topics are bound to come up, raised the specter that the reconciliation process will shut the Senate down, and even questioned whether the president can use reconciliation in the first place.

Asked by the Huffington Post if he was trying to stir uncertainty among Democrats, the New Hampshire Republican replied: "Absolutely. We are trying to open the eyes of our colleagues on the Democratic side who are being solicited with goodies that the boat into which all these goodies are being put may not ever come to dock."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/gregg-gop-gameplan-is-to_n_4948...

-----
And they are now pushing the Massa story and trying to reopen the Ethics problem in the House. They are saying the Dems and Pelosi new this back in October.

GOP wants Massa ethics probe reopened
By ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press Writer Andrew Miga, Associated Press Writer 39 mins ago

WASHINGTON – House Minority Leader John Boehner said Thursday he wants the ethics panel probe of former Rep. Eric Massa reopened to find out what Democratic leaders and their staff knew about the allegations.

The Ohio Republican said there are many unanswered questions surrounding the sexual harassment allegations that were made against the New York Democrat. Boehner said he plans to file a House resolution on the matter later Thursday to "get to the bottom" of those questions.

Seeking to recapture control of the House in the midterm elections, Republicans have been portraying Massa as the latest symbol of Democratic ethical misconduct.

Republicans are mindful that GOP ethical misconduct was one reason the party lost control of the House in the 2006 elections. The Republicans were badly damaged by the case of then-Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida GOP lawmaker who sent sexually suggestive messages to former male pages. The party's woes worsened when it was learned that Republican leaders knew of the misconduct and took no action.

A Boehner spokesman said Thursday that the congressman's resolution will direct the ethics panel to fully investigate what House Democratic leaders and their staffers knew prior to March 3, 2010 about the allegations against Massa, and what actions they took after learning of the charges.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, House Democratic Campaign Committee chairman, confirmed earlier this week that the ethics panel had ended its investigation of Massa's alleged harassment of male staff members after Massa surrendered his seat.

But Van Hollen quickly acknowledged in an ABC News Web cast that Massa staff members who complained of harassment can still pursue the case in other forums.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_go_co/us_massa_republicans/pri...

toniD's Ya Think?

i read the link and the comments at the link and my impression is that kc has been kicking the can down the road for quite a few years failing to deal with a shifting set of circumstances and they've run out of road.

Senate Liberals Dissed on Health Bill
March 11, 2010
By Emily Pierce and David M. Drucker
Roll Call Staff

Senate Democratic leaders are concerned about the amount of mischief their own Members could create if or when a health care reconciliation bill comes up for debate. And sources said some supporters of creating a public insurance option are privately worried that they will be asked to vote against the idea during debate on the bill, which could occur before March 26.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) acknowledged Wednesday that liberals may be asked to oppose any amendment, including one creating a public option, to ensure a smooth ride for the bill. “We have to tell people, ‘You just have to swallow hard’ and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen,” Durbin, who supports a public option, told reporters. “We have to move this forward. We know the Republicans are likely to offer a lot of amendments, and some of them may be appealing to Democrats, but we have to urge them to stick with the bill.”

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a leading centrist, suggested Democrats should be able to avoid blowing up a reconciliation package if there is ample negotiation on it before it hits the floor. But Carper appeared to warn his Democratic colleagues that any move to amend the reconciliation bill, however noble the policy aims, would only lead to chaos.

“If we have an agreement with the administration and the leadership of Senate Democrats and House Democrats on what should be in the reconciliation package, I’m sure I could think of plenty of ways to change it, and I’m sure every one of my colleagues could as well,” Carper said. “But that’s a slippery slope I don’t think we want to get on.”

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_102/news/44084-1.html?type=printer_fri...

toniD's Ya Think?

Senator Calls For Aggressive Financial Reform (Break-up Banks) Deplores Current 'Incremental' Steps Updated at 1:15 PM

Source: Huffington Post

A senator is calling for the break-up of megabanks and a firmer separation between Main Street banking and Wall Street trading, joining the ranks of leading economists and business titans demanding aggressive financial reform far beyond what the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are pushing.

In a Thursday morning speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) blasted the "incrementalism" approach to fixing the nation's broken financial system, laid bare by a financial crisis that wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth and sent the economy into a tailspin not seen since the Great Depression.

Rather than nibbling around the edges, Kaufman wants to impose strict limits on financial firms' activities; significantly cut them down in size; and wants Congress to act more forcefully because federal banking and securities regulators failed to protect the public from an increasingly dangerous financial industry.

The fact is, he intoned, "the government's response to the financial meltdown has only made the industry bigger, more concentrated and more complex." more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/senator-calls-for-aggress_n_494...

toniD's Ya Think?

CBO: Senate HCR Bill Reduces the Deficit by 118 Billion!
by Bensonola

Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 08:02:13 AM PST

Breaking Right now, from the director's blog the Senate HCR bill will reduce the deficit by 118 billion over 10years.

http://cboblog.cbo.gov/

Estimate of the Budgetary Effects of the Senate-Passed Health Bill

CBO has just released an estimate of the budgetary effects of the health bill, H.R. 3590, that passed the Senate on December 24. Today’s estimate differs from the estimate for a slightly earlier version of the legislation that we released on December 19 in that it encompasses all of the amendments that were adopted by the Senate, reflects a revised assumption about its enactment date, and incorporates some technical revisions. We and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) prepared this updated estimate in preparation for further consideration of health care legislation. However, the changes we have made do not result in an estimate that differs substantially from the earlier one.

CBO and JCT now estimate that, on balance, the direct (mandatory) spending and revenue effects of enacting H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $118 billion over the 2010–2019 period. (Direct spending—as distinguished from discretionary spending—is spending that stems from legislation other than appropriation acts.) In our earlier estimate, the budgetary impact was a net reduction in deficits of $132 billion.

The gross cost of the proposed expansions in insurance coverage over those 10 years is now projected to be $875 billion, reflecting subsidies provided through insurance exchanges, increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and tax credits for small employers. Those costs are partly offset by revenues from an excise tax on high-premium insurance plans and net savings from other coverage-related sources, leaving a net cost of $624 billion for the coverage provisions. Other provisions affecting direct spending save $478 billion, on net—mostly in Medicare—and other provisions affecting revenues reduce the deficit by $264 billion, on net. Thus, the net effect on deficits of the bill as a whole equals $624 billion less $478 billion less $264 billion, or a reduction of $118 billion over the 2010-2019 period. In total, CBO and JCT estimate that the legislation would increase outlays by $355 billion and increase revenues by $473 billion between 2010 and 2019.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/11/834578/-CBO:-Senate-HCR-Bill...

toniD's Ya Think?

THREAD:
http://samsedershow.com/node/5708#comments

Texas Earthquakes May Be Linked to Wells for Gas Mining
by Dan Vergano

Saltwater pumped deep into the earth in a natural gas mining operation offers a "plausible," though not definitive, explanation for small earthquakes in Texas in 2008 and 2009, scientists say.

On Oct. 31, 2008, small (magnitude 3.0) tremblors shook homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Similar shakes (3.3) occurred again last March.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/11-3

the Brainiac Brothers are back from their lunch at the local bucket o' blood, apparently having survived the pork rind special...

even with blogging I managed to get more done in the 90 mins they were gone than we did all morning...just being in close proximity to some people reduces brain function...

...dan, I'd love to trip the halon extinguisher, but somehow I think they'd enjoy it....

my unqualified take on kc schools
Submitted by dan on Thu, 03/11/2010 - 1:23pm.
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This is what I know.

When I was a Catholic school third-grader playing on the basketball team, we did not have a gymnasium.

We crossed the Missouri River into downtown Kansas City to play our games at an ancient Catholic parish. It had a gymnasium so old that Lewis and Clark were said to have played a little one-on-one there.

The opposing teams were comprised of inner-city Black and Irish and Italian kids except for one pituitary giant of indeterminate heritage (and a five-o'clock shadow).

By the second half, they waited under their goal while we raced to the other end to shoot forty or fifty times unmolested until we scored. They were filled with the grace of charity, or so we were told.

Our coach was a nun. The other teams had male coaches...like the Brother brother who got religion after he blew out his knee playing for UCLA.

Thank god we only had to play Catholics.