December 2009 archive

Dec 17 2009

How Many Democrats To Become ‘Pre-Existing Conditions’ In 2010?

Olbermann’s Special Comment, Wednesday December 16:

“They must now not make the defeat worse by passing a hollow shell of a bill just for the sake of a big-stage signing ceremony. This bill, slowly bled to death by the political equivalent of the leeches that were once thought state-of-the-art-medicine, is now little more than a series of microscopically minor tweaks of a system which is the real-life, here-and-now version, of the malarkey of the Town Hallers. The American Insurance Cartel is the Death Panel, and this Senate bill does nothing to destroy it. Nor even to satiate it.”

“It merely decrees that our underprivileged, our sick, our elderly, our middle class, can be fed into it, as human sacrifices to the great maw of corporate voraciousness, at a profit per victim of 10 cents on the dollar instead of the current 20. Even before the support columns of reform were knocked down, one by one, with the kind of passive defense that would embarrass a touch-football player – single-payer, the public option, the Medicare Buy-In – before they vanished, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the part of this bill that would require you to buy insurance unless you could prove you could not afford it, would cost a family of four with a household income of 54-thousand dollars a year, 17 percent of that income. Nine thousand dollars a year. Just for the insurance,”

“That was with a public option.That was with some kind of check on the insurance companies. That was before – as Howard Dean pointed out – the revelation that the cartel will still be able to charge older people more than others; will – at the least – now be able to charge much more, maybe 50 percent more, for people with pre-existing conditions – pre-existing conditions; you know, like being alive.”



Part 2 on the flip…

Dec 17 2009

Evil does exist in the world

Photobucket

h/t gqmartinez @ correntewire.com

The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who…[couldn’t afford it.]

I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds…

I- like any head of state- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend [the profits of the ruling classes].

Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

And that is why helping farmers feed their own people – or nations educate their children and care for the sick – is not mere charity.

Let me make one final point about the use of force…

–Obama’s Nobel speech on vaporizing the poorest innocents at home and abroad

Dec 17 2009

For whom the bell tolls

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls”, since, today, it is for us, our children, and our childrens’ children for whom the bells toll across Denmark.

As Danish police assaulted peaceful climate activists, as fossil-foolish deceivers call climate activists Hitler Youth, as non-governmental organizations accredited to the COP15 face lockouts, and youth activists sit in protest inside the building calling for a FAB (not fabulous, but Fair, Ambitious, and Binding) climate treaty, Danish church bells tolled.

Today, the bells tolled for us.

Danish church bells rang 350 times (as did many around the globe) in a call for the international community, a call on international leaders to set themselves (and all of us) on a path to not just slowing the growth of CO2 emissions, not just eventually stabilizing CO2 emissions at some higher number than today’s levels, but actually striking a path to getting us back under 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2.

(Quick reminder: for a million+ years, the earth oscillated between 185 (massive ice ages) and 285 ppm (world climate in which human civilization developed). Today, we are at 387 and already seeing serious climate disruption chaos. Once, the scientific community thought that we could safely stabilize at 450 ppm (and, maybe 550 ppm). Current trajectory (BAU — business as usual) and we hit 950 ppm or so by the end of the century. There is nothing being seriously discussed by the ‘major’ powers in Copenhagen that would stabilize us below 550 ppm, let alone get us back below 350.)

Will the world’s leaders heed the calls for action?

Will the world’s leaders heed the island nations’ pleas for assistance?

Will the world’s leaders hear the tolling bells?

Will the wold’s leaders wonder for whom the bell tolls?

Dec 17 2009

Republican Calls Waterboarding “Torture”, Still Likes It

Last night on Hardball, when discussing why he was opposed to bringing Gitmo detainees over to a supermax prison in Thomson, Illinois, freshman Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) defended the use of waterboarding on detainees — with a slight twist.

Schock: “I would not limit our intelligence agencies’ ability to get information from people.  If they have a ticking time-bomb or some critical piece of information that can save American lives, I don’t believe that we should limit waterboarding or quite frankly any other alternative torture technique, if it means saving Americans’ lives.”

For the moment, leaving aside Schock’s boilerplate right-wing justifications for why he believes waterboarding is a good thing, I will give him a small, small modicum of credit for admitting what Dick Cheney will not — that waterboarding does, in fact, constitute torture.  I would even argue that Schock went one step further than even NPR, whose ombudsman Alicia Shepherd explicitly banned the use of the word “torture” when referring to waterboarding or other brutal interrogation methods authorized by the Bush Administration.

That said, Schock still has no idea what the hell he’s talking about, and calling it torture instead of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is mostly a cosmetic change when he’s still advocating for a reprehensible method of interrogating detainees.  He engages in the same denialism that Cheney does by stating earlier in the interview that “there have been no torture techniques, no alternative interrogation techniques, nothing negative in a bad way has happened at Guantanamo Bay,” despite the evidence from multiple reports that say otherwise.  He also justifies the use of torture with the “ticking time bomb” theory, even though counterterrorism experts have roundly debunked that scenario as a myth, and the fact that torture does not yield accurate or reliable information anyway (to say nothing of the evil and moral repugnance of the practice itself).

Still, while I doubt this young Republican’s admission will have any appreciable effect on the public’s opinion of torture (which, sadly, is supported either “often” or “sometimes” by a majority of Americans, including 47% of Democrats), Schock’s words do clearly illuminate exactly what right-wingers are cheerleading.  If only every major media outlet would muster up the same honesty to call torture precisely what it is and the courage to unequivocally condemn anyone who supports it.

************************************

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

Dec 17 2009

Overnight Caption Contest

Dec 17 2009

Bernie Sanders JOINS the Capitulators!

I don’t get it. I expected a lot more from Senator Bernie Sanders.

But tonight Bernie Sanders just caved in to pressure from Obama, Rahm Emanual and Reid to withdraw a formal consideration of his own single-payer healthcare amendment, after Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) had initiated a procedural manuever to force the measure to be read out loud on the Senate floor.

The amendment would have extended Medicare coverage to all who wanted it.

Senate aides estimated that the “bill reading” would have taken eight to 10 hours, which would have sidelined the healthcare debate on the bad “Obama-Emanual-Baucus-Lieberman” bill as Democratic leaders are attempting to pass it (a junk bill) by Christmas.

But why didn’t Sanders call their bluff and go ahead with the vote anyway? By pulling his own amendment off the table all by himself, this just further creates the unnecessary illusion that Medicare expansion is an unworthy subject to even discuss or consider.

Even though the Sanders amendment would never get close to 60 votes, the act of allowing the bill to go to formal debate and consideration would have provided a badly needed educational tool for the public, and it would have put each and every U.S. Senator formally on notice, and on the record as to the key question of whether they want to really solve the Health Care crisis, or whether they just want to keep the public held hostage to a corrupt Insurance Monopoly that steals their money.

I wanted to see that vote!

So did you!

Dec 17 2009

Water Covered Earth-Like Planet Discovered

The science journal Nature reported in a study published Wednesday that a new Earth-like planet that is larger than Earth and appearing to be more than half covered with water, and possibly with conditions allowing the existence of life, has been discovered by graduate student Zachory Berta, a co-author on the paper submitted to Nature with David Charbonneau, head of the MEarth Project of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory.

The UK’s Guardian has the story:

A giant waterworld that is wet to its core has been spotted in orbit around a dim but not too distant star, improving the odds that habitable planets may exist in our cosmic neighbourhood.

The planet is nearly three times as large as Earth and made almost entirely of water, forming a global ocean more than 15,000km deep.

Astronomers detected the alien world as it passed in front of its sun, a red dwarf star 40 light years away in a constellation called Ophiuchus, after the Greek for “snake holder”.

The discovery, made with a network of amateur telescopes, is being hailed as a major step forward in the search for planets beyond our solar system that are hospitable to life as we know it.

[snip]

The latest planet is only a stone’s throw away in astronomical terms, meaning scientists will be able to turn the Hubble Space Telescope towards it and analyse its atmosphere, potentially revealing signs of life. Charbonneau’s team has already requested time on the space telescope.

“Using the Hubble, we can look at the atmosphere and say not only whether it’s habitable, but whether it’s inhabited,” Charbonneau told the Guardian. “If we find oxygen in the atmosphere things will get really interesting, because on Earth all the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from life.”

Dec 17 2009

Kos Gets in the Weeds

Markos can be a statesman:

Let me say up front that my disagreement with the “support the current bill” crowd is based on policy and political considerations, but I can see how reasonable people can come to the opposite conclusion. I don’t think supporters of this wreck of a bill are stupid or compromised or anything like that.

Classy.  Fair.  Ha ha ha ha ha.

All right, I’m a fool to be sarcastic.  Sorry.

Then he goes all weedy and deals with two prominent folks who have disagreed with him – Ezra Klein and Nate Silver.  Nate Silver’s “20 Questions for Bill Killers” really brings out the classic old-skool blogger in kos, the whole blockquote your opponent and then slam him in return comment.

Nothing new there, folks have been saying this for months and now events are giving “informed opinion” the resonance and weight of “fact.”

As to the ambiance of the blogosphere, I am not among those who feel this way:

Regardless, this is a fantastic debate. For critics who bemoaned the lack of policy discussed on blogs, this year has certainly proven that when we do have the opportunity to impact policy (i.e. a Democratic-run government), we certainly can get into the weeds on policy.

I don’t think this has been a “fantastic debate.”  And as immigration is just now beginning to come up as the topic du jour (am I spelling that right) for the intelligentsia to discuss, I am going to have a really really really hard time if the quality of “debate” is as “fantastic” as that of the one over HCR.

Dec 17 2009

Water Covered Earthlike Planet Discovered

The science journal Nature reported in a study published Wednesday that a new Earth-like planet that is larger than Earth and appearing to be more than half covered with water, and possibly with conditions allowing the existence of life, has been discovered by graduate student Zachory Berta, a co-author on the paper submitted to Nature with David Charbonneau who heads the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

The UK’s Guardian has the story today:

A giant waterworld that is wet to its core has been spotted in orbit around a dim but not too distant star, improving the odds that habitable planets may exist in our cosmic neighbourhood.

The planet is nearly three times as large as Earth and made almost entirely of water, forming a global ocean more than 15,000km deep.

Astronomers detected the alien world as it passed in front of its sun, a red dwarf star 40 light years away in a constellation called Ophiuchus, after the Greek for “snake holder”.

The discovery, made with a network of amateur telescopes, is being hailed as a major step forward in the search for planets beyond our solar system that are hospitable to life as we know it.

[snip][

The latest planet is only a stone’s throw away in astronomical terms, meaning scientists will be able to turn the Hubble Space Telescope towards it and analyse its atmosphere, potentially revealing signs of life. Charbonneau’s team has already requested time on the space telescope.

“Using the Hubble, we can look at the atmosphere and say not only whether it’s habitable, but whether it’s inhabited,” Charbonneau told the Guardian. “If we find oxygen in the atmosphere things will get really interesting, because on Earth all the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from life.”

Dec 17 2009

Pony Party: Science Fiction Cats

funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Pony Party is an Open Thread.  Please do not rec the party: but please contribute your own favorite sf stuff in the comments.

Dec 17 2009

Olberman Goes There: Calls For Civil Disobedience

I didn’t think he had it in him:

(from DK)

With great sadness – and with full acknowledgment that this is hardly all his doing – I must also address this president directly, about his lack of leadership.

And he concludes:

There are many who can act here but the leadership must come from the White House, or we will see enacted into statute the equivalent of Medical Mobster Protection Money, the forced purchase of a product, by the citizens of this country, which is significantly regulated only in the establishment of a law requiring us to buy it.

     And in that event, I feel – and will express tonight – the necessity of violating any such law, as obviously, frequently, and loudly as possible.

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

He’s right, and it may well be our only recourse.   Maybe it always was our only recourse.  

Dec 17 2009

Beck:Guy Who Wants Change and is Executed is Ultimate Progressive Story

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Gone to far.

   Well, let’s think like someone in Massachusetts.  Okay. Let’s think like the progressive movement here. It’s still, even if you don’t believe in the whole Jesus story and you’re like ‘whatever.’  Let’s, can we learn anything from this. Let’s just assume that you’re a progressive and you’re like ‘he didn’t rise from the dead.’

   What was the story.  A guy who wanted change.  He speaks out against an oppressive government.  And, they execute him. What? For progressives, that’s the ultimate story.

~ Glenn Beck

     Really.

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