Jul 29 2009
Yes… it’s back. Me. Whiskey. A darkened room. A keyboard. And Docudharma!
Tonight, we’ll try to focus on:
– Republican’s that love interns.
– Right-Wing theory that healthcare reform will “kill the elderly”.
– Lou Dobbs’s and his insanity.
So… off we go… through the fog…
Jul 29 2009
Bill Kristol was Jon Stewart’s Daily Show Monday night guest. He also thinks that YOU don’t deserve healthcare equal to what the military receives.
Stewart skewers him.
RawStory: Bill Kristol admits govt.-run health care can be better than private
On Monday night’s show, Kristol worked to explain why he didn’t support a public health option, arguing in essence that the existence of Medicare and Medicaid provided health coverage to those most in need.
“So no public option, even though that’s good enough for the military – not good enough for the people of America?” Stewart asked.
“They do not deserve the same quality of health care the soldiers fighting deserve, and they [the soldiers] need all kinds of things we don’t need,” Kristol said.
“Are you saying that the American public shouldn’t have access to the same quality of health care that we give to our better citizens?” Stewart asked.
“To our soldiers? Yes, absolutely,” Kristol responded, to a chorus of boos from the audience.
An incredulous Stewart asked: “Really?”
Moments later, Kristol added that “one of the ways we make it up” to soldiers that they receive relatively low pay is by “giving them first class health care. The rest of us can go out and buy insurance.”
That’s when Stewart struck.
“Bill Kristol just said … that the government can run a first-class health care system and a government-run health care system is better than the private health care system.”
“You trapped me somehow,” a visibly uncomfortable Kristol responded.
Jul 29 2009
Crossposted at Daily Kos
A group called “Patients First,” a project of the lobbyist-funded Americans for Prosperity, has been going around the country and hosting tea parties in opposition to “government-run health care.”
Yesterday, AFP decided to hold a protest in front of the offices of Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil’s (D-MD1) office. Despite the fact that Rep. Kratovil has yet to take a stance for or against health care reform, the AFP protesters felt it would be appropriate to voice their concerns by hanging him in effigy.
And I thought calling the Congressman or writing him was the best way to influence his opinion! I didn’t know this was an option.
It’s not an option, of course, unless you have lost your mind or you are a hate mongering sociopath.
Now, if I were Rep. Kratovil, I would vote for health care reform just to spite this proto-lynch mob.
Unfortunately, I am not he, and I don’t know how Congressman Kratovil will respond to this.
This is not the first time a Democratic Politician has been threatened with hanging by voices empathetic to the GOP. Recently Sam Joe The Plumber the Propaganda machine suggested that someone should String up Senator Chris Dodd.
And then of course there are the tea baggers, the Obama is a socialists, the Obama is a fascists, the Obama is a Kenyan, and on, and on, and on.
This is not Democracy of We The People. This is not the rule of law decided by fair elections. This is how to intimidate citizens through threats of violence. This is the rule of mob.
I do not know if the goal is to threaten Kravotil into opposing Health Care reform or if these tea baggers are just so mindlessly hateful and violent that this is the only way they can express themselves. I honestly do not know what the fuck these clowns are thinking when they do this kind of shit.
But I do know what the goal is. The goal is to use threats of violence to achieve their political means.
And that is the definition of terrorism.
So when is the line in the sand drawn? When do We The People who voted for NotTheGOP put our foot down and say ENOUGH to these Corporatist psychotic brownshirts?
Jul 29 2009
Original article, by Kate Randall and Barry Grey, via World Socialist Web Site:
The New York Times is spearheading the campaign for President Obama’s health care proposals. His drive for an overhaul of the health care system, far from representing a reform designed to provide universal coverage and increased access to quality care, marks an unprecedented attack on health care for the working population. It is an effort to roll back social gains associated with the enactment of Medicare in 1965.
Jul 29 2009
How much money is $100 million bucks? That’s like Powerball Lottery money, for most of us a nearly unthinkable sum of money, something of which we can only fantasize.
But for Citibank, it’s just a bonus to a guy who is already super-wealthy, a guy who owns this castle in Germany:
The guy’s name is Andrew Hall, and he makes “a boatload of money for Citigroup as head of Phibro, the bank’s energy-trading unit.“
Jul 28 2009
Last week the Colorado Springs ‘The Gazette’ had another very disturbing report, in two parts, following up previous reports of soldiers of OIF and OEF who committed murders. These, from all I can find out, were just regular teens, no trouble out of the ordinary prior to their military service. But once sent to these occupations, sometimes more then once, they returned like many of our brother ‘Nam Vets, very troubled and not getting the help needed or not seeking because of the nature of military service, added to their situations of multiple tours, longer tours then we served and little down time between, their nightmares caught up to them by abusing drugs and alcohol, by acting out in rage, by loosing control.
Jul 28 2009
Spiegel reports Banks reopen the global casino. “Investment banks… are making serious money again, thanks in part to government aid… They are benefiting from the crisis they helped to create. As profits go up, so do salaries — only this time, it’s the taxpayers who are shouldering the risks.”
The casino is open again, worldwide. Many investment banks are raking in massive profits once again, driving up risks and attracting talent with high salaries. It’s as if nothing had happened, and as if it hadn’t been precisely this type of behavior that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse last fall and then plunged the world economy into its worst crisis since World War II.
The collapse of the financial system was averted, but only through colossal public spending, as governments bolstered ailing banks with loan guarantees and equity injections and central banks pumped billions in liquidity into the markets.
But now that the worst seems to be over, banks are back to behaving the same way they did before the crisis. Even worse, thanks to government guarantees for the financial sector and cheap money from central banks, it has never been easier for banks to make money…
“The taxpayer is paying for the chips in the casino,” the head of the German operations of an international investment bank says quite openly, but anonymously nevertheless. “It doesn’t get any better.” … Investment banks, for their part, have bought the securities with money they borrowed from central banks at ridiculously low rates.
Meanwhile, the CS Monitor reports Fed chairman Ben Bernanke defends bailouts – and himself. “Bernanke’s term as chairman of the Federal Reserve expires at the end of January”. “He’s running to keep his office and defend the Fed,” says Robert Brusca of Fact & Opinion Economics in New York.
Bernanke DOES NOT merit reappointment, but I doubt Obama sees it that way. Instead of Bernanke doesn’t get the nod, speculation is that Larry Summers, Obama’s economic policy head, will get the job, which, of course, will be even worse.
For his part, Bernanke wants MORE power for the Federal Reserve. Last week, the AP reported Bernanke told the Senate a new consumer protection agency isn’t needed, because the Fed is doing such a good job protecting the consumer already.
“Bernanke also said he did not think conflicts existed between the Fed’s consumer protection and bank oversight roles.” And the Independent reported that Bernanke warned against meddling with Fed. Bernanke doesn’t want legislation passed by Congress that “would subject the Fed’s actions in these areas to audits by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.”
“Financial markets, in particular, likely would see a grant of review authority in these areas to the GAO as a serious weakening of monetary policy independence,” Bernanke said.
Four at Four continues with more banks behaving badly, Eric Holder, and calls for a Congressional inquiry into the CIA.
Jul 28 2009
From Stephen Webster at RawStory:
GOP congressmen run from blogger asking ‘birther’ questions
Mike Stark of Firedoglake and Huffington Post thinks he has stumbled onto the reason George W. Bush was elected to the presidency twice: The GOP’s base, as exemplified by this ubiquitous “birther” nonsense, must be Insane.
In the video below, he puts the birther fictions before a series of Republican congressmen on the hill, and their reactions are priceless.
Notes Jane Hamsher over at Firedoglake:
Jul 28 2009
In Republican/Blue Dog America, only one thing matters, power.
And only one group gets to have power:
BILL O’REILLY: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I….
The context and attributions can be found here: Preserving the ‘white, Christian, male power structure.’
In Republican/Blue Dog America there is only one goal, screw everyone else to claw your way to the top ….so that then you can REALLY screw everyone else.
Jul 28 2009
Now that we see the shape of the bill that will come out of Sen. Baucus’ (Insurance Lobby, MT) finance committee it is there are some things we need to recognize. First off, just because he and the other lily livered Dems on that committee can’t seem to get a real bill that meets not only the President’s minimum requirements and the countries minimum needs does not mean it is all over. There was always going to be a Conference Committee on this set of reforms. So just because Sen. Baucus (Putz, MT) has drunk the bipartisan Kool Aid does not mean the game is over.
“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“
Jul 28 2009
Crossposted at Daily Kos
We are about to learn exactly what was going on and where under the Bush/Cheney “Extra-ordinary” rendition program.
Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, who spent some seven years in US custody, five of them at Guantanamo, say that Jeppesen UK, a subsidiary of Boeing, has agreed to the presentation of evidence about the “ghost flights” it allegedly operated for the CIA – off-the-grid private jets that transferred terrorist suspects to sites where they would be tortured.
Binyam Mohamed, if you recall, had his genitals mutilated by either the CIA or one of the host countries where he was tortured.
Mutilating genitals.
What could possibly justify genital mutilation, or even the torture program itself? It’s not like the Bush/Cheney Administration was above bald faced lying to us. In my opinion they did it because they can.
The Object of Torture IS Torture.
The Object of Power IS Power.