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Being a pantload pays
The Doughy Pantload inks a million dollar book deal for a book based on the idea in this column; a column that, regardless of one's political beliefs, is easily one of the most poorly-written things you will ever see. It is approximately at the level of a high school newspaper, and not a good one.
Reform should also include malpractice reform and health exchanges, which would offer different plans for varying costs and coverage for individuals or small businesses, he said.Lieberman added that he supports mandating that no one can be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and that everyone be required to have health insurance.
As to how 47 million uninsured will afford coverage, Lieberman said only 12 million don't have insurance because they cannot afford it.
By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured, he said.
To arrive at his position, Lieberman said he reached out to "every conceivable group" in the state, including residents, providers, doctors and hospitals.
Here's video of Lieberman's Medicare insurance buy-in endorsement from September: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIb13mYoy0Q&feature=player_embedded
The economic argument for never giving another gift.
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"If expanding Medicare is good for people aged 55 and up, why isn't it good for everybody? Why isn't it a good idea to provide cheaper insurance for people in their preventive care years, so that they cost Medicare less as they do get older?" Matt Taibbi who, as far as I can tell, didn't tell any lies on those two sentences Link
He's got a point. If medicare is good for the 55-and-olders, why not the 45-and olders? And 35-and-olders?
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CIA & Blackwater - same thing? Link
Excerpt:
Private security guards working for Blackwater participated in clandestine CIA raids against suspected insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, The New York Whore Times reported Thursday.
Blackwater's role points to a much deeper connection between the company and the spy agency than has been previously disclosed and raises concerns over the legalities of involving contractors in the most sensitive operations conducted by the U.S. government.
The "snatch and grab" raids took place regularly between 2004 and 2006, the Whore Times reported, when the insurgency in Iraq was escalating and security throughout the country was deteriorating.
Asked for comment on the report, CIA spokesman George Little did not confirm the role that the Whore Times said Blackwater played but defended the use of contractors on intelligence missions.
I doubt we'll ever know the extent of the crimes the Bush bastards pulled off.
By mixing Blackwater and the black-budget CIA, they were able to empty the Treasury completely.
Not only did they empty the bank daily, we're on the hook for trillions more in debt.
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Living in a garbage truck: http://dumpslikewhat.blogspot.com/2009/12/living-in-garbage-truck.html
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Joe "Collywobble" Lieberman, the worst human being since Abraham Lincoln, is featured in a terrifying New York Times mini-profile for tomorrow's edition in which — and maybe this is just us? — we detect a little bit of venom on the reporters' pens, as their editors force them to speak to and write about this rancid, catastrophic mass of pimple pus, frozen diarrhea, and the cloned membranes and bone marrow of Beelzebub and Pol Pot, respectively. How do you write about this person objectively? How do you sit in a room, watch him grin, and not spontaneously combust? MORE »
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Dems on healthcare: "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"
That's our Wimpy Dems for yah. Here we got a terrible bill that even Gregg Levine finally agrees ain't worth the trouble it will take to Walk Holy Joe across the street for the filibuster.
You will find no more staunch advocate for helping people when the opportunity is given. I do not believe in destroying the hamlet in order to save it. Philosophical arguments don't impress when forced to stand next to real suffering. I do not believe the revolution is just a kiss-off away. But if the final health care reform act resembles what I describe above (quite possibly with some not-quite-but-damn-near Stupak language further restricting access to abortion), I say: Kill the bill.
I say this with a heavy heart. Failure to pass health care legislation, even terrible legislation, will be a great loss for the Obama administration and for Democrats in Congress. But passing a bill as bad as the Senate's eventual endpoint could be a bigger defeat for the Democratic majority we really want—one that takes progressive action on behalf of the voters.
Because, as I see it, a bill without the competitive force of a public option, or the opportunity for millions to buy into Medicare, without cheaper pharmaceuticals or meaningful controls on premiums, without bans on benefit caps or loophole-free safeguards against rescission, but with an individual mandate, will do nothing for the 30 million uninsured that advocates of the bill like to talk about helping—but it will do plenty for the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
This is becoming a bill that nobody except Obama and the conservaDem leadership want, and they only want it so they can say they did it. It doesn't matter a damn to them if it helps any real people or not so long as it doesn't upset the health insurance industry's or Big Pharma's profits, and they can run on it in '12, conning people yet again by bragging that they did something for people that those people haven't figured out quite yet they didn't do. It's a shell game. It's about illusion and imagery and feeding the coffers with corporate donations. It has nothing to do with healthcare, except possibly in Alice's Wonderland.
Continue reading "Dems on Healthcare: "I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday For a Hamburger Today"" »
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Lieberman the Faithless
There are things we can all agree upon; the sky is blue, water's wet, zero degrees Fahrenheit is cold, etc. I think another thing we should add to that list is that Joe Lieberman is a horse's ass. That seems like a pretty safe one to me. As Lieberman's fourth term as the junior senator from the state of Connecticut goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer that the voters of that state have made a tremendous mistake. If you guys want a Republican, then elect a Republican, not this wishy-washy, fence-straddling pile of "Look at me!"And that's Sen. Joe Lieberman in a nutshell; he isn't about good governance or reasoned debate, he's all about Joe Lieberman. It's telling that, when he lost the Democratic primary 2006, he founded the "Connecticut for Lieberman Party" to run as a third party candidate. Lieberman is for Lieberman, even though the party he founded no longer is, and anyone who believes otherwise is ignoring the evidence.
Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/12/lieberman-faithless.html
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"White House contractors" have located 22 million emails missing from the Bush Administration's eight-year crime spree
The Bushies repeatedly denied (LIED) that there were missing emails and later insisted that any emails that were missing could not be found. Now, 22 million missing White House e-mails have been found, according to two public interest groups who reached a settlement over the records.
The Bush Administration and Justice Department, however, will have achieved its goal of delaying any review of the emails since they will now go to the National Archives and Records Administration for the glacial process of reviewing and documenting the emails. The public will not view the material until 2014 so not only did the Bush Administration avoid direct consequences for the emails but it succeeded in burying the emails for a decade.
The question is the lack of investigation into prior false statements in the case and that fact that two experts were able to find 22 million e-mails that the United States government could not locate for years.
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Wingnuts Want Obama's Nobel - I guess they've confused the words 'nobel' and 'nobility'
According to the American Family Association, President Obama has 60 days to turn his Nobel Prize over to Congress because he didn't get their permission to accept it.
A clause in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states: "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office or Trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state." That raises a question: Is the Nobel Peace Prize an "Emolument" -- a gift arising from one's office which includes some sort of monetary award with it? Matthew Spalding, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, says since the award is technically the property of the United States, Obama has under 60 days to turn the award over to the appropriate authorities for proper disposal.
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Must see video of an octopus using a coconut shell for a home.
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Sketchy Santas: http://www.sketchysantas.com/search?updated-max=2009-12-12T01%3A41%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=10
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Morford on Tiger Woods.
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From the 'be careful what you wish for' file
For months we've seen progressive bloggers snarking about how the Republicans should "Please, please, PLEASE nominate Sarah Palin!" -- as if it were a shoo-in that Barack Obama would clean her clock in a head-to-head matchup.
But with Barack Obama having ignored Main Street in favor of Wall Street, escalating the war in Iraq, showing signs of being willing to sell out health care reform to Joe Lieberman just to get SOMETHING (even if that something means a mandate that everyone buy health insurance the premiums for which skyrocket every year and cover nothing), still having Guantanamo Bay open, and leaving in place many of the worst excesses of the Bush Administration, the fresh-off-her-book-tour Sarah Palin is starting to get a second look: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/12/from-be-careful-what-you-wish-for-file.html
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Some holiday dancing: http://padremickey.blogspot.com/2009/12/even-more-holiday-dancing.html
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Congress considers relocating to Nevada
Nevada just legalized male prostitutes.
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Franken slams GOP on Senate floor: 'You're not entitled to your own facts': http://rawstory.com/2009/12/franken-slams-gop-senate-floor-youre-entitled-facts/
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New right wing Christmas carol: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/14/christmas-song-parody-immigration/
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Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), nicknamed "Smokey Joe" for his persistent advocacy on behalf of polluters, sat for an interview with C-Span this weekend to discuss a variety of environmental issues.
Barton expressed concern that regulation of carbon dioxide pollution would restrict his "convenient" and "modern lifestyle." "I don't want to go back to the 1870s where my great-grandparents lived on a dry land cotton farm in Texas with no running water and no electricity and their power source was their own muscles or animal power," Barton feared.
He then argued that the warming of the planet is actually a "net benefit" for humans: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/14/smokey-joe-warming/
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Schwarzenegger Is Cynical About Sarah Palin's Commitment To Roguery: http://wonkette.com/412724/schwarzenegger-is-cynical-about-sarah-palins-commitment-to-roguery#more-412724
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4,371 soldiers killed in Iraq; 935 in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Coalition Military Fatalities By Year
| Year | US | UK | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| 2002 | 49 | 3 | 17 | 69 |
| 2003 | 48 | 0 | 9 | 57 |
| 2004 | 52 | 1 | 7 | 60 |
| 2005 | 99 | 1 | 31 | 131 |
| 2006 | 98 | 39 | 54 | 191 |
| 2007 | 117 | 42 | 73 | 232 |
| 2008 | 155 | 51 | 89 | 295 |
| 2009 | 305 | 100 | 87 | 492 |
| Total | 935 | 237 | 367 | 1539 |
