Tag: Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi Blasts Insurance Companies as “Villians”

From HuffPo comes the news that Nancy Pelosi is starting to kick ass.  This is what teh presdient must do.  People need a narrative of good guys v. bad guys.  They see it in books, TV, movies, daily life.

 The real “villains” in the fight for health care reform are insurance companies.

snip

They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way,” Pelosi said of the insurance industry after her weekly press conference. “It’s almost immoral, what they are doing,” she said, referring to industry lobbying against a public insurance plan option. “Of course, they’ve been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it.”

The current system works so well for insurers that they don’t even want subsidies, Pelosi claimed. “They’ve had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country,” she said, adding that it will be tough to keep them from getting their way. “This is the fight of our lives.”

Pelosi referred to the health insurance industry’s campaign against reform — specifically, the public option — as “carpet bombing” and “shock and awe” during the press conference.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

I think the President will build on this.  I hope so.  Obama, Pelosi and Reid (yech) must speak with one voice to win.  

Good and evil, right and wrong.  It’s now up to the President, for Nancy has shown a light on the way to success.  He must courageously take the fight to the immoral insurance companies.  No more everyone at the table.  

Overnight Caption Contest

RNC calls Nancy Pelosi – PussyGalore..

Crossposted to MotleyMoose

Just when you think, RNC, and the Republicans in general, have realized that this country have moved on and left them in the dust. No more appeals to our worst and base instincts with racism, sexism and homophobia are going to work with majority of the folks. RNC releases this misogynistic video to make their point about Nancy Pelosi.

Senator Specter says CIA has a “bad record” on “Honesty.”

Understatement, perhaps.  ðŸ™‚

This is surprising, but I’m glad he said this.  Nancy Pelosi has her faults, but the attacks on her for telling the truth about the CIA, i.e., that they lie, are wrong.  It’s misdirection by Republicans to avoid justice for Bush and Cheney (and many others) for violating international law. Pelosi did not shine on this (an understatement) but she is not Bush or Cheney.  She may not have stopped it (and she may not have been able to do so), but she did not create the criminal policies.  

Arlan Specter coming to the rescue.  Well, it’s a start.  Now he needs to support EFCA.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to – I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild – to honesty,” Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.

snip

“Director [Leon] Panetta says the agency does not make it a habit to misinform Congress. I believe that is true. It is not the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to misinform Congress,” Specter said. “But that doesn’t mean that they’re all giving out the information.”

http://thehill.com/leading-the…

A Good Week On Torture Accountability

Okay so the Dog has not been around this week (if you care he has been at Caterpillar Production System for Dealers training, which is a 6 Sigma Lean methodology for transforming value streams instead of single processes. Everyone’s eyes glazed over yet?) so of course it is likely that most of the hot topics have been blogged to death, but cut a hound some slack as he sits at O’Hare waiting for his flight home, eh?  

Weekly Torture Action Letter 9 – China And Rule Of Law

Welcome to the 9th in the Dog’s letter writing campaign series. This series is dedicated to taking action (even if it is a small action) every week on the issue of torture. Here is how it works, each week the Dog writes a letter highlighting some aspect of the torture issue and making the point this requires investigation. The Dog sends these letters to the President, the Supreme Court, AG Holder, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and Rep. John Conyers, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Your part, if you chose to act is pretty easy. Simply cut and paste the letter and send it under your own name.  

What did Congress know about torture and when did they know it?

 

Over the past 16 months, what members of Congress knew and when did they know it has slowly emerged in newspaper accounts. Four select members of Congress were notified in September 2002 when the CIA gave a secret high level briefing regarding the use of “harsh interrogation” and “overseas detention sites”.

U.S. law requires Congress be informed of covert activities, but allows for limited access to briefings in sensitive matters. In this meeting, four members of Congress were informed. They were Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Porter Goss, and Senators Bob Graham and Richard Shelby. The ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees sometimes described as the “Gang of Four”.

According to the Washington Post in December 2007, the four Congress members raised no objections to the “interrogation” techniques described, including waterboarding.

Weekly Torture Action Letter 6: Time Is Running Out To Investigate

Welcome to the sixth of the Dog’s letter writing campaign series. The Dog usually posts these on Monday’s but his Step Dad was having major heart surgery and the Dog could not focus very well yesterday (he is fine BTW). The basic premise here is to, on a weekly basis; write a letter to the President, the Attorney General, the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, urging them to investigate the apparent State Sponsored Torture program of the Bush Administration. In order to get their attention, every week the Dog writes from a different perspective about the issue, so that on the off chance that they read more than one of these letters it is clear that it is not the same thing over and over. This series also offers the reader the chance to write their own letter or cut and paste the Dog’s letter and send it in. The more people that we have sending weekly letters the higher chance that we will be heard on this issue, so if you could take the time to send this along it would be greatly appreciated.

Weekly Torture Action Letter 5: Investigate, It Might Prove Them Innocent

Welcome to the fifth of the Dog’s letter writing campaign series. The basic premise here is to, on a weekly basis; write a letter to the President, the Attorney General, the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, urging them to investigate the apparent State Sponsored Torture program of the Bush Administration. In order to get their attention, every week the Dog writes from a different perspective about the issue, so that on the off chance that they read more than one of these letters it is clear that it is not the same thing over and over. This series also offers the reader the chance to write their own letter or cut and paste the Dog’s letter and send it in. The more people that we have sending weekly letters the higher chance that we will be heard on this issue, so if you could take the time to send this along it would be greatly appreciated.  

Weekly Torture Action 3 – “Criminalizing Policy” Letter

Welcome the third week of the Dog’s letter writing campaign about torture. This is a small effort to keep the decision makers of our nation aware that we as a people will not and can not simple draw a line under the State Sanctioned Torture policy of the criminal Bush administration. The basic premise of this series is that the Dog will write a letter every Monday to the President, the Attorney General, and the Justices of the US Supreme Court, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, reminding them of one or another point about the State Sanctioned Torture policy of the last Administration. Those that wish to join the Dog in this endeavor are more than welcome to cut and paste the entire thing or write their own on the topic of the week.  

Failure in Government

I have supported Barack Obama, but every time he appoints a rightwinger or a centrist (who are nothing more than rightwingers with apologies IMO) I lose a little hope.

I quote my friend TocqueDeville in DrSteveB’s earlier diary, Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General – worse than I thought:

I see it as a continuation of the same battle (20+ / 0-)

I’ve been having for the last 20 plus years.

If this pans out then it will be just another failed Obama appointment, along with a couple of good ones – maybe.

All of his appointments combined demonstrate what the late professor Carroll Quigley, of Harvard Princeton and Georgetown described about how the American political system is rigged so that we can have a great big election and real power never really changes hands. [emphasis my own ~ OPOL]

by TocqueDeville

The real power never really changes hands.

BOOOOO!!!!

.

House speaker re-elected

1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) – The woman who made history two years ago by becoming the first female speaker of the House has been re-elected to that post.

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