tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226115002009-07-11T18:50:49.408-07:00<b>Progressive political commentary and news.</b> <p><b>Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.</b><p><b>"There can be no patriotism without permanent opposition and criticism."</b></p> <p><p><p><b>The "law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power."</b></p><b>"The American people would be much better off without a Pentagon."<p>"Democracy all the way through."</p></b></p></p></p>Stella by Starlighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16385761338190877425noreply@blogger.comBlogger4645125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-67257056096794307092009-07-11T04:30:00.000-07:002009-07-11T04:45:30.195-07:00

Americans were bequeathed the dream of a nation dedicated to valuing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have used that gift to achieve enormous inequalities, a dysfunctional, self-hating government and a grossly unjust health care system. Why?

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No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-33040794971788438802009-07-07T06:56:00.000-07:002009-07-07T06:58:57.120-07:00

WSJ:WASHINGTON -- It is more important that health-care legislation inject stiff competition among insurance plans than it is for Congress to create a pure government-run option, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Monday. "The goal is to have a means and a mechanism to keep the private insurers honest," he said in an interview. "The goal is non-negotiable; the path is" negotiable.

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-43660898557134865562009-07-06T19:49:00.000-07:002009-07-06T19:51:37.571-07:00

Common Cause:The major health interests have spent an average of $1.4 million per day to lobby Congress so far this year and are on track to spend more than half a billion dollars by the end 2009.Make yourself sick reading the whole report.

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"Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don't walk out of here depressed," Schwarzenegger said. Whatever happens, "I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight," he said. "I'm going to lay back with a stogie." [source]

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Roubini:The June employment report suggests that the alleged ‘green shoots’ are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure. The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market continue to be extremely weak, with job losses in June of over 460,000. With the current rate of job losses, it is very clear that the unemployment rate could reach 10 percent by later this

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Patti Smith - Declaration of IndependenceTell me, what was there to celebrate on this Fourth of July? We live in a land where the most powerful get away with mass murder, torture, and warrantless invasions of privacy, where police regularly kill with their tasers, where your health care and finances are subject to the whim of unregulated behemoths, where government serves the interests of the

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-89347169410037039962009-07-04T15:02:00.000-07:002009-07-04T15:04:29.964-07:00

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-86850292721497148352009-07-04T07:09:00.000-07:002009-07-04T10:04:07.501-07:00

With Mark Twain and Green Day.My name is no one, the long lost sonBorn on the 4th of JulyRaised in the era of heroes and consThat left me for dead or aliveI am a nation, a worker of prideMy debt to the status quoThe scars on my hands and a means to an endIs all that I have to showI swallowed my pride and I choked on my faithI've given my heart and my soulI've broken my fingers and lied through my

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-78974351557464928212009-07-04T06:45:00.000-07:002009-07-04T07:06:30.383-07:00

This pretty much sums up the way mainstream news media works these day. It's all about privileged access. Journalistic independence be damned. Sickening. N.Y. Times:Katharine Weymouth, the relatively new publisher of The Washington Post, is a lawyer who worked for the company for 12 years and was educated at the Harvard School of Business, so she is hardly a naïf in running a business.[...]As

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-57051452078466487912009-07-04T06:34:00.000-07:002009-07-04T07:01:56.431-07:00

Right Wing Political Productions, Inc., Bill Kristol, CIO (Chief Idiot On-Tap) promotes Palin's apotheosis.William Kristol:If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble - but it could be a shrewd one.After all, she's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world,

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-20894344655107668912009-07-03T12:06:00.000-07:002009-07-03T12:28:47.470-07:00

[source]Why does anyone want the public option? It is very disappointing to see that Digby has joined the Public Option crowd.Nurses and progressives support single payer.In a joint statement, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association and Progressive Democrats of America announced they are stepping up calls and other lobbying efforts to urge Congressional leaders to

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-59716496058402632009-07-03T08:59:00.000-07:002009-07-03T10:00:19.272-07:00

This is Paul Wellstone, from a HEALTH CARE AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM debate on the Senate floor, August 08, 1994: I have to say that much of the struggle over whether or not we will have a fundamental health care reform has to do with our failure to yet enact fundamental campaign finance reform legislation. I want to talk about that campaign finance reform bill in a moment.Citizen Action came

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And why would you want to do that to yourself? George Stephanopoulos is advertising his show: We've also got a terrific Roundtable.George Will is back. He'll be joined by Liz Cheney, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker and former Bush-Cheney strategist and ABC News contributor Matthew Dowd to talk about comedian turned Senator Al Franken and what his addition to the senate means

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And it won't happen with Obama. Looking back at this quote, I'm beginning to feel that he was sending us a message: DON'T COUNT ON ME.Obama: "When I first got to the US Senate, I opened up the drawer of the desk where I was assigned. And it has the names of some of the great senators who have served. They carve their names in their own hand into the desk drawer, and one of those names was

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No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-20034296215141758142009-07-02T20:44:00.000-07:002009-07-02T21:06:59.116-07:00

"But what we are still seeing is too many jobs lost," said Obama, commenting after new government figures showed the unemployment rate had risen to 9.5 percent last month. [source]Hey, the recession is still young. I'm sure Obama's economic pals, recruited from Wall Street, will find ways to stick it to us even more. That is, if they aren't too preoccupied with all the dinners and parties given

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Hope? --> Nope! --> Dope.TPM:Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at this point. But the latest example of the Obama administration mimicking the Bushies in opting for secrecy over openness feels like one of the most infuriating yet.The Justice Department is declining to release Dick Cheney's interview with federal investigators looking into the Valerie Plame leak, arguing -- as it did under

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-5896555735284209532009-07-02T06:17:00.000-07:002009-07-02T06:21:27.063-07:00

Steve Benen:...the 9.5% unemployment rate climbs to 16.5% if we include those who are working part-time but want full-time employment, or those who've simply given up. This number, often referred to as the U6 measure, continues to be at its highest point since the government began keeping track in 1994.There have now been 6.5 million job losses since the start of the recession in December 2007.

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-5730117578346523802009-07-01T21:12:00.000-07:002009-07-01T21:22:24.195-07:00

Uprising:The Environmental Protection Agency released a report last week calling Los Angeles County out for having the nation’s deadliest air. The report represents a “snapshot in time” for the cancer risk assessment of a lifetime of chronic exposure to 124 inhalants. While the average cancer risk across the nation is 36 cases among 1 million people, LA County residents experience a whopping 1200

No. 44noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-51739079008035291732009-07-01T20:47:00.000-07:002009-07-01T20:51:08.824-07:00

He's officially in charge of peace and reconciliation in Iraq now.Dennis Perrin wonders why:Let's briefly review Joe Biden's take on Iraq.First, he supported Bush's "enforcement strike," as Biden put it in 2002, talking out of both sides of his ass, authorizing the invasion while worried that, over time, it might not be as successful as he would like. Sort of like John Wayne Gacy being concerned

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-17325232968953968112009-07-01T18:15:00.000-07:002009-07-01T20:53:38.391-07:00

[source]Raw Story:Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) called the newly-certified senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, a "clown" on Wednesday and said Franken's presence in the Senate -- which gives the Democrats a "super-majority" of 60 votes -- won't be enough to pass health care reform."I’ll tell you what a lot of people are thinking, and that is it looks like things are going to be over and we are

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-35779722470608054832009-06-30T19:06:00.000-07:002009-06-30T19:08:07.838-07:00

We need single-payer.BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A 65-year-old couple retiring in 2009 will need approximately $240,000 to cover medical expenses in retirement even with Medicare insurance coverage, according to Fidelity Investments’ latest health care cost estimate. This figure is a 6.7 percent increase over the 2008 estimate of $225,000.Fidelity Investments has calculated an annual retiree

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-44692506800459257272009-06-30T18:48:00.000-07:002009-07-01T10:55:10.048-07:00

He has already declared that he will be willing to compromise. Ugh.Update: Here's Franken on single-payer:A single-payer system would be the most effective in terms of reducing administrative costs, and I would be thrilled to support such a system. But I believe that today’s political environment requires a creative and flexible approach to covering every American.The compromising he spoke of

No. 44noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22611500.post-22641496031779165462009-06-29T18:55:00.000-07:002009-06-29T19:20:23.229-07:00

"We hate our government. And we have really hated them off and on, mostly on, for a long, long time." - Michael Stipebmaz (via Emptywheel):The facts are incontrovertible, the United States instituted a designed and dedicated regime of brutal torture in contravention of national and international norms. The American Executive branch under George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney created a bureaucracy

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