Gunmen in Pakistan have torched at least 10 oil tankers carrying fuel for Nato vehicles in Afghanistan in the latest such attack in recent days.
A driver died in the ambush near the south-western city of Quetta.
The number of attacks on tankers has soared in the last week since one of the main routes into Afghanistan was shut by the Pakistani authorities.
...
In a new paper, I've tried to correct some of the misinformation that critics of Social Security have been spreading about the program.As Digby sez: "Do yourself a favor and print this out. Or memorize it. Read it at least."
Here are the facts. Social Security is a well-run, fiscally responsible program. People earn retirement, survivors, and disability benefits by making payroll tax contributions during their working years. Those taxes and other revenues are deposited in the Social Security trust funds, and all benefits and administrative expenses are paid out of the trust funds. The amount that Social Security can spend is limited by its payroll tax income plus the balance in the trust funds.
The Social Security trustees — the official body charged with evaluating the program's long-term finances — project that Social Security can pay 100 percent of promised benefits through 2037 and about three-quarters of scheduled benefits after that, even if Congress makes no changes in the program. Relatively modest changes would put the program on a sound financial footing for 75 years and beyond.
Nonetheless, some critics are attempting to undermine confidence in Social Security with wild and blatantly false accusations. They allege that the trust funds have been "raided" or disparage the trust funds as "funny money" or mere "IOUs." Some even label Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" after the notorious 1920s swindler Charles Ponzi. All of these claims are nonsense.
...
O'Donnell get elected to the United States Senate, the World's
Greatest Deliberative Body® will become even more what it
aready is: a joke without a punchline.
Over the weekend, the Mormons held their semi-annual conference. All of the leaders of the Church, or as we call them, "General Authorities," speak at these events. It's how they spread word of the latest revelations the Lord has given them.
I always enjoy Elder Packer's "talks*," not only because he's almost a homie--he got his start as a seminary** teacher at my my high school's nearest rival, Box Elder High in Brigham City, UT--but also because he's God's point man on social issues. He sits down with the Lord, and his son, Jesus Christ, regularly, and they shoot the breeze about things like ladies rights, bad touching, and the importance of lying. Then, at the next Church conference, Elder Packer tells us what God had to say.
Apparently, God went on a rant about homosexualism the last time they got together, because that was the subject of Elder Packer's conference talk last weekend. You can watch or read it at Pam's place, but essentially he said: homosexualism is a choice; it can be cured; and it's a wickedness that shouldn't be legal.
Inasmuch as the blogs are all abuzz with Elder Packer's talk, I thought it might be interesting to go back and provide a few quotes of things he said in other talks. It'll help you get a full measure of one of the Church's most powerful Apostles--he's next in line to become the Prophet if he outlives the current one.
Elder Packer on Miscegenation:
We've always counseled in the Church for our Mexican members to marry Mexicans, our Japanese members to marry Japanese, our Caucasians to marry Caucasians, our Polynesian members to marry Polynesians. The counsel has been wise.
--At BYU
I am for protecting the rights of a woman to be a woman, a feminine, female woman; a wife and a mother.
--Thoughts on the Equal Rights Amendment
The woman pleading for help needs to see the eternal nature of things and to know that her trials -- however hard to bear -- in the eternal scheme of things may be compared to a very, very bad experience in the second semester of the first grade. She will find no enduring peace in the feminist movement. There she will have no hope. If she knows the plan of redemption, she can be filled with hope.
--Speech to All-Church Coordinating Council
I have a hard time with historians, because historians idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting. The truth destroys. And historians should tell only that part of the truth that is uplifting, and if it's religious history, that's faith-promoting. Historians don't like doing that, and that's why I have a hard time with historians.
--to historian D. Michael Quinn (who was later excommunicated for writing heretical history)
Some things that are true are not very useful.
[...]
One who chooses to follow the tenets of his profession, regardless of how they may injure the Church or destroy the faith of those not ready for "advanced history," is himself in spiritual jeopardy. If that one is a member of the Church, he has broken his covenants and will be accountable. After all of the tomorrows of mortality have been finished, he will not stand where be might have stood.
[...]
In the Church we are not neutral. We are one-sided. There is a war going on and we are engaged in it. It is the war between good and evil, and we are belligerents defending the good. We are therefore obliged to give preference to and protect all that is represented in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we have made covenants to do it.
[...]
I have on occasion been disappointed when I have read statements that tend to belittle or degrade the Church or past leaders of the Church in writings of those who are supposed to be worthy members of the Church. When I have commented on my disappointment to see that in print, the answer has been. "It was printed before, and it's available, and therefore I saw no reason not to publish it again."
You do not do well to see that it is disseminated. It may be read by those not mature enough for "advanced history," and a testimony in seedling stage may be crushed.
--at the 5th Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators' Symposium
** All Mormon teens are expected to attend seminary classes. They are held during school hours in Utah and before school everywhere else.
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Joe Miller is running for Senate in a, you know, popular election. He's opposed to the legitimacy of his own candidacy.
Meanwhile, he also believes unemployment benefits are unconstitutional. And yet...
Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller admitted Monday that his wife had received unemployment benefits in 2002 after she left a job serving as his aide.
Seriously not embarrassed. And somehow too many of these contradictory amateur dumbstupids are going to win their elections. We're not a very bright nation.
As Maddow says: "They're not embarrassed." Which says a lot about their character. Such flagrant inconsistencies and lies, yet they can grin and move forward.
First, this:
Beck explained -- without benefit of actual fact -- that Obama's advisers favor health-care rationing and sterilants in drinking water, and then he went on to endorse Sarah Palin's allegations that Americans would have to stand before Obama's "death panel" so bureaucrats could decide who was worthy to live.
Yes, the president supports sterilants in drinking water, according to Beck. Now you might be thinking: Oh, that's just a crazy conspiracy theory. Whatevah. Here's why we ought to care:
He averages more than 2 million nightly viewers on his Fox show, brings in $32 million in annual revenue from his various ventures, according to Forbes magazine, and is an unofficial leader of the tea party and its mass anti-government rallies.
I don't buy into this popular notion that if we ignore him he'll go away. He won't. So while he's broadcasting such insane nonsense in the guise of this ridiculous punch-me-face character, we have to be tenacious about calling bullshit on him. We ignore Beck at our own peril.
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The conservative group Alliance For Truth and Joe The Plumber for this:
A conservative group in Missouri is picking up the backing of the Tea Party and Joe The Plumber in its quest to stop the Humane Society and other animal rights groups from passing "radical" anti-puppy mill legislation.The measure, which can be read in full here, is called Proposition B or the "Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act." It aims to help eliminate the "3000 puppy mills" in Missouri that constitute "30% of all puppy mills in the U.S.," according to Michael Markarian, the Chief Operating Officer of the Humane Society.
I think the far-right is so against abortion because vigorously defending fetuses is their idea of penance for all of the truly awful, awful, horrible, wicked things they support. Like this thing. I mean, they're seriously defending puppy mills? Puppy mills?!
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With all the firefighting discussions yesterday, we missed the dust-up over Tom Daschle's new book. In an interview at TAP, Daschle admitted that a deal with the hospital and insurance lobbies kept the public option out of the healthcare reform bill. Though he walked it back almost immediately, it's apparently part of the book:
In his book, Daschle reveals that after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House convinced hospitals to to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years on July 8, the hospitals and Democrats operated under two "working assumptions." "One was that the Senate would aim for health coverage of at least 94 percent of Americans," Daschle writes. "The other was that it would contain no public health plan," which would have reimbursed hospitals at a lower rate than private insurers.I'm willing to accept that a whole bunch of ugly deals were made in back rooms in order to get HCR done. What I don't get is why Democrats thought it was a good idea to pretend that the public option was a possibility long after the deal to kill it was in the bag. Millions of pixels were spilled, thousands of calls were made, and all kinds of energy was wasted in a manufactured drama over whether "we" would get a public option long after "they" had decided it was impossible. I know that some progressive wishful thinking went into the mix, but a lot of it was driven by occasional hints that the public option could be added back into the bill.
You can't blame the scumbags. They know where to go to get the best return on their money.
The insurance industry is pouring money into Republican campaign coffers in hopes of scaling back wide-ranging regulations in the new healthcare law but preserving the mandate that Americans buy coverage.
Since January, the nation's five largest insurers and the industry's Washington-based lobbying arm have given three times more money to Republican lawmakers and political action committees than to Democratic politicians and organizations.
The largest insurers are also paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists with close ties to Republican lawmakers who could shape health policy in January, records show.
"The industry would love to have a Republican Congress," said Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna Corp., one of the country's biggest insurers. "They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington."
It should be clear to everyone by now that the health care reform battle will not be won by way of clear logic or compassion. As long as those opposing the current bill view health care as a privilege and not a basic right for every citizen, throwing numbers at them or attempting to appeal to their humanitarian side is futile. Well-to-do conservatives simply don't give a damn for the well-being of the masses as long as they themselves have the financial means to obtain the best health care available. As for middle class or poor conservatives, well they're simply operating on the basis of ignorance. They have bought into the lies and misinformation being fed to them by lobbyists, Republican politicians and right-wing media. The saps just don't realize that the big boys see them as tools to be used to sway public opinion and increase their profit margins.
So, what to do?
Elect Democrats into office who can continue with the reform process and know that when all Americans benefit from new health care measures, lies and spin will have lost their effect. Lower costs and greater access to health care will eventually be the most convincing argument of all.
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I haven't written about that Tennessee fire department letting the house burn down for lack of a $75.00 fee because it's just so depressing and so many others weighed in that I didn't have the heart.
But I can't resist sharing this from Beck's radio program today:
