July 31, 2009 archive

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

Progressive Anthony Weiner calls for “The End” of Publicly Run Medicare

as reported on Rachel Maddow’s Thursday show:

Congressman Weiner’s bluff-calling, put-up-or-shut-up amendment to the House health care bill (H.R. 3200):

Really Republicans, don’t like Publicly run Health Care?

Would you care to put your Vote where your rhetoric is,

to eliminate a very successful Public Health Care Program — Medicare?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26…



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

So what happened?

Will Medicare be relegated to the “junk heap of history” as another “failed idea” of the Liberal Agenda? … well in a word, HARDLY!

Overnight Caption Contest

Photobucket

So Sad about Us 20090730

Some of you know that Mrs. Translator and I are in the process of a divorce.  It is not a happy time for either of us.

Fortunately, neither of us have any animostiy, at least overt, towards the other.  But that does not mean that it is not a sad event in our lives.

Last June, we “celebrated”, to use a word out of context, our 32nd wedding anniversary.  But things had not been right for a long time.

Rant: No, A Beer Won’t Fix Anything.

In advance, I ask your pardon for a rant I am unable or unwilling to suppress.  Today’s White House Beer Summit On Race Relations And Police Practices has enraged me.  Police Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge PD didn’t deserve an invitation for beer at the White House, he needed an appointment for a deposition in a federal civil rights case in which he and his superiors were the named defendants.  But according to the Trad MediaTM, all of Crowly’s vengefulness, his making an illegal arrest, his making a stupid, unjustifiable illegal arrest, his serving up a racist/classist illegal arrest of a person in his own home is now behind us.  We’re past all of the ugliness of his conduct.  It has now been chilled (unless you have to live with brutality and oppression on a daily basis) with some beer.  And pretzels.  This I hasten to point out might solve Police Sgt. Crowley’s immediate problem, including departmental discipline and federal civil rights action for damages, but it doesn’t solve my problem.  Or the country’s.  And I don’t think it solves Prof. Gates’s problem.  It certainly doesn’t solve the US’s police problem. Not one bit.

Dr. Izzeldin

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i…

U.S. Health Care: Mobilize Or Accept The Status Quo

Crossposted from Antemedius

Economist, Author, and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Richard D. Wolff, well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology and class analysis, Yale University Ph.D. in Economics, and Professor at The New School University in New York City, talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the current health care debate and the challenges or barriers standing in the way of a national U.S. single payer plan.

Wolff suggests keeping in mind some basic facts – the U.S. spends far more for far less health care “product” than any other advanced country in the world, and suggests a return to the the old American prideful mindset of “if we’re not producing the best quality at the lowest price we should go and find out who’s doing that and replicate their experience“, and points out that the number one thing standing in the way of doing this is the lack of will to challenge the status quo and to do what everyone already knows needs to be done: spend less to get more.

In other words, Wolff opines, Obama must “mobilize or accept the status quo” and “make his party vote for real health care reform“, instead of making the lame this is the best we can get excuses that may very well destroy his presidency along with screwing millions of Americans out of proper health care.

Load more