"Who is this Barack Obama who mocks the armies of the living God?" demanded James Lansberry, Christian crusader against government-regulated health care, last summer in the heat of the battle over reform.As Digby says:
Since the health-care reform bill passed last month, Lansberry has become a hot commodity on the conservative talk-radio circuit where he sings the praises of health-care-sharing ministries (HCSMs), Christian nonprofit organizations through which members agree to cover each others? health-care costs. As president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, Lansberry, and his team of lobbyists, had persuaded Senate lawmakers to exempt alliance members from the individual mandate. That exemption, Lansberry said, made those ministries "an island of freedom amidst this terrible piece of reform legislation" and "the last pro-life option for Christians of faith." [my em]
...
...All I ask is when these peoples' health care costs become socialized. You know, if it's not already, it will turn into an outrageous, ponzi-like scam. You know we're gonna have to bail the
Did any of you know about this exemption? I missed it. And it's very, very interesting because it's a loophole that will undoubtedly be very lucrative for the hucksters.
For Germany, WWI finally ends on Sunday
How nice for them!
For the rest of us, the horror unleashed by Gavrilo Princip's pistol shots on 28 June 1914 which led in an almost perfectly straight line of westerners' fuckups to today's Middle East situation continues.
Reagan never would have apologized for this:
"U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago."
This ghastly project was recently discovered by a professor of women's studies at Wellesley College in the course of her research on the Tuskegee experiment."
Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Sebelius will offer public apologies today for the role of the U.S. Public Health Service in the Guatemala project."
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Arianna's little people
Even though the Huffington Post can hire Howard Fineman, they can't pay Mayhill Fowler, the woman who wrote the "cling to your guns" story. The Huffington side of the story is that Fowler was a freelancer who pitched a couple of stories that they didn't bite on, just like many other freelancers.
Perhaps Huffington is right in this instance. Still, it's more than a little distasteful that she's completely unwilling to play pay bloggers at the same time that she's happy to shell out the kind of salary that a hack like Fineman demands. But maybe I'm just letting my disgust for Arianna Huffington and her Hollywood tabloid get in the way. I've never understood the appeal of her or her site, and the fact that it gets so much traffic looks like yet another indicator of national stupidity.
For example, the banner there at the moment is "Feds Sue Fox News". If you bother to read the story under the huge red headline, the substance is that one reporter has filed a discrimination claim that the EEOC ("the Feds") picked up. The headline and play of that piece is essentially a lie, yet 4,500 people have commented on it.
As far as I can tell, the Huffington Post is the Drudge Report for liberals, with a side helping of Star or the National Inquirer for celebutard gossip. Yeah, they pay a few reporters who got White House press credentials, but so does Fox News. If they're the future of media, which I doubt anyone under 50 who isn't bamboozled by Arianna Huffington believes, we're in big trouble.
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Abandoning all pretense "News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, contributed $1 million this summer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress, a source close to the company told POLITICO. ... It was the second $1 million contribution the company has made this election cycle to a GOP-aligned group. In late June it gave that amount to the Republican Governors Association."
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The government wants to add two new rules to offshore oil drilling. One says that offshore oil rigs need to have a spill contingency plan and practice it, and the other is about bore hole cement, maintenance and blowout protectors. Here's the response from industry shills:
"We cannot have an approval process that creates unpredictable delays that could place at risk the flow of domestic energy in our country," [...]
"While the ongoing important investigations into the Gulf accident are necessary and may lead to new safety measures, requiring industry to navigate a tangled web of new regulations will only lead to increased uncertainty for businesses and consumers and less investment in America's vast resources in the Gulf"[...]
Imagine if an airline said something like that after, say, the new crew rest rules that came about after last year's Colgan Air crash in Buffalo.
I think these fuckers need some more regulating.
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Big hands, cold heart.
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The White House explains Republican tax policy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma5np8PcaY8&feature=player_embedded
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Cool fossil evolution news of the week. "The fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago has been discovered in Peru. Scientists say the find shows that key features of the plumage were present quite early on in penguin evolution. The team writes in Science journal that the penguin's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins. It was nearly twice the size of an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species. The bird, named Inkayacu paracasensis, lived during the late Eocene period. It had a long, straight beak, much longer than that of its modern relatives."
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Just read this. Seriously, what purpose does the Senate serve? Name one constructive thing that they do. I dare you.
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The miracle of the Bush economy
More people signed up for Medicaid last year than at any time since the program's inception, as the recession wiped out jobs and workplace health coverage.
But the GOP wants to kill the program.
In related news…
The industries giving the most to Boehner: insurance companies, drug manufacturers and Wall Street firms, all of which now face new regulations adopted by the Democratic-controlled Congress. The political action committees and employees of insurance firms, for instance, donated nearly $426,000 to Boehner's campaign committees through June 30, according to the center's tally, compared with $118,000 in insurance industry donations to Pelosi's fundraising accounts. Don Seymour, a Boehner spokesman, said contributors know that Boehner "understands the best way to help create new jobs is to cut spending, stop all the tax hikes and end some of the uncertainty facing job creators."
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New license plate slogan, "Fuck that Utah guy"
Utah Congressman To Be In Charge of D.C., Put It Back Into Maryland
