This President rocks. It's daunting to think about how many warehouses of socialist mops and vats of extra strength socialist Lysol we'll need to clean up Republican Texas.
Aside from the need for socialist mops, the really good news this week is that it looks like we are getting closer to HCR that includes a public option. We have the AHIP (American Health Insurance Plans) to thank for this. According to Paul Krugman of the New York Times AHIP's threat to increase rates b/c it didn't like the Baucus bill backfired.
A Hatchet Job So Bad It's Good
It seems that a bunch of selfish greed mongering fat cats had become so desperate and crazed by the mere thought of losing one penny that the fat cats blew up the very building they were protecting.
Shall we cry 'em a river folks?
I didn't think so.
Meanwhile, there were other pressing developments at the U.N and in the U.S. Congress:
Big thanks to the 44 Diaries for sharing this with us.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann smacks down the obstructionist Republicans and Blue Dogs who are getting major contributions from the health care industry.
PBS pointed out that the health and insurance industries are spending more than a million, 400 thousand dollars a day, just to destroy the "public option" - the truly non-profit, wieldy, round-up and not round-down, government, from helping you pay your medical bills with about a billionth of the recklessness with which it is still paying Halliburton and its spinoffs to kill your kids.
And much of this money is going to, and through, Republicans.
But that's the real point tonight.
Not all of it is going through Republicans...
Not to mention YES to affordable health care benefits for members of Congress.
So, it was OK to vote to burn billions if not trillions on a ginned up war. It was OK to vote for trillions in bailouts for a bunch of thieving financial crooks and sharks. Now these very same sharks are earning billions and giving themselves fat bonuses again. Hopefully someone bothered to ask them to pay back the bail out bucks.
Our tax dollars are paying for all of the above including BMW level health care insurance for members of Congress. If John McCain had to find his own health care insurance company, like so many other Americans, he would be turned down because of pre-existing conditions. If he would be lucky enough to find a willing provider, McCain would be out of pocket thousands of dollars for or bankrupted by treatments desperately needed but not covered or flat out denied by his plan.
Why are we paying for top notch care for our esteemed lawmakers when many of them are against the same for us? If they say no to us, we should say no to them and demand that the federal government rescind all taxpayer funded health care coverage for members of Congress. Let our revered leaders buy their own freaking insurance like a vast number of Americans have to do. Some may learn they cannot afford to pay for it and college tuition for their kids.
(Really solid post w/ lots of videos. - promoted by Phillip Martin)
First, from the Texas wing of The Party of Torture and Tax Cuts.
Senator John Cornyn, prominent member of the Party of Torture and willing player in the Bush Administration's
Journey to Depravity must think Democrats are quaking in their boots because, according to The Huffington Post he attempted to bully and blackmail them on the torture issue.
Cornyn apparently prefers to sweep the recent revelations of torture under the rug. That or pin the blame on Democrats who served on the Foreign Intelligence Committee at the time, and/or stick it to low level military and CIA officers at the bottom of the torture chain of command.
If Democrats insist on probing the Bush administration's program of detainee torture, they'd better be careful, a senior Senate Republican said Tuesday, because they might find blood on their own hands as well.
"To sit quietly and to let this happen and then to come back later and say people ought to be prosecuted criminally, not just here in the United States but perhaps internationally, to me is inconsistent, to say the least," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
For immediate release.
Contact: Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann
Robin Cravey today announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2010. He was recruited to run in the Republican primary by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in a secret full moon meeting at Barton Springs Pool.
The announcement came just one day after Cravey withdrew as President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Two Wheelers amid revelations that he underreported his tip income as a cabdriver in 1975.
It seems that some of these naughty, nasty boys charged their palling-around-with-call-girl activities on their corporate credit cards.
Uh oh. Are these guys still in charge of their businesses? Are they the ones who received the bailout money?
The scandal may have happened pre-TARP, but this kind of behavior should make us wonder about what kinds of scumbags and whackos we have bailed out.
According to Raw Story and ABC News today these boys used a $2,000 per hour call girl service where the "firm's" Madam disguised the charges as business related, e.g. "computer consulting, "roofing construction," etc.
As we all know, this week is the last of the G.W. Bush Administration. Given a national Democratic landslide election and George W. Bush's recent approval rating, there is little doubt that there is more than a tad of dancing taking place in a plethora of streets throughout the U.S. and the world.
For much of their eight year term in office, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have remained tightly entrenched behind iron gates. They avoided the press and media as much as possible. They steered clear of the public and chose to helicopter in and out of their homes and offices whenever feasible. And yet for the past two weeks both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been parading around on the Sunday morning talk and political news circuits. In their final days in office both men desperately tried their darnedest to re-write history. I imagine at this time, after Bush's farewell address, both men are securely ensconced back in their delusional bubbles in undisclosed locations.
With regard to Presidential exit interviews, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan is one of many who offered commentary on Bush's farewell address.
"It's hard to talk about moral clarity when you have tarnished our government's moral standing in the world," McClellan said. "If you look at the speech it was really a feel-good farewell speech. It was designed one final chance to burnish his legacy by highlighting his humanity, showing his humanity, his compassion, his inner decency and good intentions."
But "there are really two problems they don't seem to get," Bush's ex-press secretary remarked. "First of all, the public trust. The president long ago sadly lost the public trust. They are no longer listening to what he has to say or buying what he is selling. Unless he is willing to come out and talk candidly about his own mistakes, his own policy mistakes, and address those issues openly with the American people they are not tuning in."
