"Everybody in, nobody out, a single-payer health care plan, universal health care plan — that's what I'd like to see," he said. "But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately, because first we've got to take back the White House. And we got to take back the Senate, and we got to take back the House."
Obama has said repeatedly that he doesn't now support a single-payer system — where the government is the sole provider of health insurance across the country.
"This will be a police state, no question," says a Western diplomat with long experience of Iraq. "It'll take two or three years. But it's coming."
Heckuvajob, Chimpy. A trillion dollars, over five thousand American lives to transform Iraq from a police state that was hostile to Iran to a police state that is more or less aligned with Iran.
The mullas in Qom must be laughing themselves sick.
Jones argued that the alleged gang rape was not related to her employment and thus, wasn't covered by the arbitration agreement. Finally, two years later, a federal court has sensibly agreed with her. Tuesday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2 to 1 ruling, found her alleged injuries were not, in fact, in any way related to her employment and thus, not covered by the contract.
One of the judges who ruled in her favor, Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, is a West Point grad, Vietnam vet, and one of the court's most conservative members, a sign, perhaps, of just how bad the facts are in this case. It's a big victory, but a bitter one that shows just how insidious mandatory arbitration is. It's taken Jones three years of litigation just to get to the point where she can finally sue the people who allegedly wronged her. It will be many more years before she has a shot at any real justice.
"We do not hold that, as a matter of law, sexual-assault allegations can never 'relate to' someone's employment," wrote the court. "For this action, however, Jones' allegations do not 'touch matters' related to her employment, let alone have a 'significant relationship' to her employment contract.
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Go Jimmy ...
President Jimmy Carter disparaged the Afghan elections as fraudulent in a talk given to donors to his Carter Center for Human Rights Tuesday. "Hamid Karzai has stolen the election," he told the donors. "Now the question is whether he gets away with it."
And this from Wonkette:
Hey junior crime-solvers, President of America Jimmy Carter has solved our country's most terrible mystery, which is exactly just how racist is Joe Wilson? The answer? It was Mr. Wilson… in the House chamber… motivated by TONS OF RACISM. Wilson has vehemently denied being a guilty of racism, which exactly how a guilty person would act. Nice try. Like you, Jimmy Carter finds the whole thing "dastardly."
It turns out that Wilson's racist hate speech is part of America's rich history of racism, which goes back to the German "Nazis," a bunch of total Nazis from whose ribs this Wilson was created.
"I think it's based on racism," Carter said at a town hall held at his presidential center in Atlanta. "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president."
The Georgia Democrat said the outburst was a part of a disturbing trend directed at the president that has included demonstrators equating Obama to Nazi leaders.
"Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care," he said. "It's deeper than that."
In other words, comparing America's black President… to… Nazis… is itself Nazi-ish. "Dastardly" is one word for this, yes. The Scranton Times
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Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL) is proudly hanging a sign outside his Capitol office in support of Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-SC):
Several Republican lawmakers have been rushing to stand by Wilson, including Reps. Steve King (IA) — who defended Wilson's support for the Confederate flag — and Michele Bachmann (MN) — who thanked God for Wilson.
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Frothy!
Rick Santorum asks for supporters to pray for him to help him decide if he should run for president in 2012, uncork his fetus-in-a-jar for 'family game night.'
Speaking to a room full of prominent US Catholic leaders and altarboys Friday night, Rick Santorum was challenged to run for the Republican Presidential nomination. Responding to a room already thick with applause and santorum, the former Senator revealed that he was indeed "thinking about it" but asked for prayers and detailed his thinking on the matter.
Boston Globe commentary: "Let's not mince words here: We now have an entire political party that is not only dedicated to the mediocre. It is dedicated to the nearly deranged."
What is under the radar is something more recent and more terrifying for the health of our political system: The Republican Party has become a small minority of out-of-mainstream people (think Representative Joseph Wilson's outburst to the president this week) but, by virtue of its history, of the media attention it receives, and, frankly, by default, it still occupies a central place in our political life. In any other Western democracy it might have become a far-right splinter party. In America, we don't really have splinter parties. When one of our parties goes crazy, it doesn't slide to the margins.
[Some repuke] party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid.
Insiders' criticisms have been dismissed by some conservative leaders, who argue that the party needs an energized base -- even if it's extreme -- to gain in future elections.
The Repuglican Party is impossible to deal with: a Duh! Magazine exclusive -
[Democratic] Party leaders do not act with any sense of urgency even though the world recognizes America is in a free-fall. Our house is on fire, but the firefighters are more concerned with their personal appearance and uniforms. And, crazily, they're concerned how best to get along with the guys that ignited the fire.…Exactly. Get with it already, you spineless idiots! More here.
The problem isn't with the GOP campaign operatives who lie, cheat, steal, hack voting machines, eliminate and intimidate minority voters, and storm and burglarize offices, etc. The problem is with the Democratic Party. How many more decades will we have to suffer as a nation waiting for them to smell the coffee?
