Category: Action

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    If you missed the last two nights of Countdown with Keith Olbermann you missed a lot of new details in the Health care Reform debate, and I don’t want to sound bleak, but things do not look good. The main points are these.

Wendel Potter:      “If there’s not a public option, the plan that is passed, if it’s passed and signed by the President, will not be sustainable. And it ultimately will be a disaster for the middle class and ultimately be a disaster for the Democratic party . . .

~snip~

    “We’ll be paying a lot more out of our own pockets. We’ll have the appearance of being able to afford premiums but we won’t be able to afford health care. That can not be sustained.”

    You can watch the video here

    And then there is the news that Rahm Emanuel will be representing the White House in the presumably upcoming Houuse-Senate Conference committee. Thus the title “If you wanna kill the (Public Option) you gotta do it yourself.

    More below the fold, and it ain’t pretty, with a call for action that puts it all on the line.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the committee, told CNN that there is a preliminary investigation of Ensign’s actions. “We will look at all aspects of this case, as we do whenever there is a case before us, and try to get to the bottom of it as quickly as we can in fairness to all,” said Boxer, D-Calif.

huffingtonpost.com

    John Ensign, of C Street and extramarital affair infamy, will get off scot free here, because the game is rigged. What a surprise, the Select Senate Committee on Ethics is Unethical.

    Regarding C Street and The Family, Senator Mark Pryor is up to his eyeballs in this scandal.

Who sits on the Senate Ethics Committee?

Chairwoman

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Mark Pryor (C-Street) (D-AR)

Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Vice chair

Johnny Isakson (R-GA)

Pat Roberts (R-KS)

Jom Risch (R-ID)

    My bet, Ensign walks away without a slap on his wrist, 2 -4 bipartisan vote in favor of corruption and sex scandals.

    More on this and a call to action below the fold

UPDATE: this trial has now been postponed until after the first of the year. I will be covering it then.

Miep

John and Jackie Stower run the Manna Storehouse in LaGrange, Ohio. Last December their organic food coop and homeschool were raided by a SWAT team, who invaded their home with guns drawn, held them and their family captive for six hours, and confiscated a large amount of food. No charges were ever filed. The Buckeye Institute is helping the Stowers sue the The Lorain County General Health District, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The trial will open October 8 and 9 at 8:30 am.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    In a startling article at huffingtonpost.com by Andy Worthington, author of “The Guantanamo Files”, puts together an absolute must read in my opinion.

False confessions obtained through torture

   The judge also noted the significance of the evidence in the record indicating that al-Rabiah “subsequently confided in interrogators [redacted] that he was being pressured to falsely confess to the allegations discussed above,” and also the significance of the fact that, although “al-Rabiah’s interrogators ultimately extracted confessions from him,” they “never believed his confessions based on the comments they included in their interrogation reports.”

    After noting — again with a palpable sense of incredulity — that “These are the confessions that the Government now asks the Court to accept as evidence in this case,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly proceeded to demolish them all . . .

From Huffingtonpost.com

Bold added by diarist

     More below the fold

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Two weeks ago, on 9/15/09, a few good men, actual Marines, told chickenhawks Ex VP Daddy Cheney and his Brat Daughter, who have never served in the military, to STFU, cause your not helping.

    Former Marine commandant Charles Krulak and former Marine general Joseph Hoar, who succeeded Schwarzkopf at Central Command, dress(es) down former VP Cheney on the issue of torture.

    “… we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas — and his scare tactics.”

~snip~

    “What leaders say matters. So when it comes to light, as it did recently, that U.S. interrogators staged mock executions and held a whirling electric drill close to the body of a naked, hooded detainee, and the former vice president winks and nods, it matters.”

ricks.foreignpolicy.com

Bold added by the diarist

      If you like that, it gets even better below the fold.

Today we live in a world where the overwhelming majority of war casualties are civilian, and the majority of those are women and children. Women are typically the most marginalized people in a war-torn country, and when these countries sanction violence against women, we tend to look away and dismiss it as cultural. We throw our hands in the air because we think there is nothing we can do. We need look no further than to the Taliban.

But women are also the people who hold their families and communities together in times of war. To a large degree, they are the ones who create stability and rebuild — and they are left to care for the survivors.

Empowering the women in war torn countries is powerful way to create stability and peace.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Beatings of a rhetorical sort, of course

    Senator Olympia Snowe all but admitted that a Trigger on a Public Option is total bull yesterday. She basically proved that she is NOT bargaining in good faith, and that if there were any illusions that the trigger she supports is designed to never be pulled, they are totally gone now. How do we know this?

    Because Sen. Snowe VOTED AGAINST a Public Option twice.

    This proves (HELLO! ARE YOU FRAKKING LISTENING DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS?) that Sen. Snowe WILL NOT vote for an actual Public Option, just the idea of one, or rather, the idea of the idea of one.

    And why? What is Olympia Snowe, the Republican Party, the Insurance Lobbyists and at least 5 DINO Republocrat Senators afraid of?

    This quote from yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing sums it up best. . .

    “What are we afraid of? That Americans might actually like it?”

       ~ Senator John Kerry (D-MA)

    Yes. That is EXACTLY what they are afraid of.

    More and a call to action below the fold.

This is a story about a guy I used to do business with, when I worked at a cooperatively owned organic/health food store in Los Angeles many years back. We had a lot of neat customers, but he was one of the most striking. We called him “The Voice.”

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    “Insurance executives don’t do this because they’re bad people; they do it because it’s profitable.”

President Obama – 9/9/09

     With all due respect, Mister President, I beg to disagree.

     Therefore, I submit this as evidence to the fact that Insurance Executives are in fact bad people, very, very bad people.

ThinkProgress.org

    As you can see, our 9/11 heroes who ran into the burning flames of the WTC and survived can be denied insurance because of their occupation. An expecting father can be denied health care insurance. He might as well be having the baby himself, in their opinions, and, if that were the case, they would still deny him coverage anyway.

    Therefore, I respectfully disagree with what you have said, President Obama. I understand why you said it, after all Insurance Execs are people too. At least, one must assume so.

    With all due respect, Mr. President, I appreciate your attempt to avoid demonizing anybody, even Insurance Executives, as I assume you do so for the sake of decency, President Obama, really, I do. I understand that it is beneath the office of the President to do so. I simply disagree with your statement, but with respect, of course.

    So I will say it for you.

    Not only are insurance execs bad people who do what they do for profit, they are clueless, heartless, greedy bastards who would let you die for a dollar. That is not just bad, I’d say it’s evil, but since you can’t say that, Mr. President, I will for you.

    Insurance Executives are EVIL, greedy, clueless, heartless leeches who would sooner watch your family die than lose a dollar of profit, profits that go to pay their big, fat salaries.

     More of the cold, hard Truth below the fold, and a call to action as well.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    After reading Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH10) DKos post titled The Private Mandate Sausage Machine which explains how Health Care Reform may/will be twisted into a bill mandating that I purchase private insurance but lacks all content of reform, I would like to make the following statement.

    Dear Dems, Feed me a Sh!t/Sausage Sandwich on Health Care Reform and I’ll BURN THIS MFing TENT TO THE GROUND!!!!

    If the Private Health Care disaster is addressed by making it madatory that I buy junk insurance from the bastards that caused this mess, I will make it my personal business to drive the Corporate snakes from the tent and burn the tent to the ground.

    Simply put, if Dems pass a HCR bill with mandates and no public option, I will kick these Dems frakkin asses, and you should too.

    More below the fold and a call to action..