News, education, female superiority, and just about anything else
Or does it?
After last week’s propaganda debacle, MoveOn.org has released an amateurishly-edited video of Andrew Breitbart talking about his allegiance to al-Qaeda, proving that with video editing anything can be proven.
Breitbart and embattled RNC Chairman Michael Steele will be appearing side by side at an upcoming Republican event, just in case you’ve forgotten who works for whom.
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Okay. Didn’t we discuss this before?
Salon has a lovely article this morning updating us on Rand Paul’s current position on his board certification for opthalmology. You remember how he started his own certification board because he thought having to pay money to that other board was wasted, and he didn’t want to have to spend his time getting training or continuing education or taking tests when he could just jump in there and start operating, the free market at work.
His own certification board has no website and apparently no paper documentation. It is nothing but a PO Box in Bowling Green, KY. He did recently claim to be certified by that “other” board, which is nothing but a lie.
He’d like to get rid of government programs. But he thinks doctors are different. They should be guaranteed a comfortable standard of living by the government.
Does he inform his patients when examining them that his “board certification” is by himself, so they can make those “informed decisions” that lead to success or failure at the hands of the free market?
I wouldn’t want a doctor who had no need of certification and was unwilling to discuss his qualifications cutting open my eyes. Would you?
The guy is a liar, a creep, a fake, and a douchebag. Medicare ought to stop paying for surgery he does.
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Showing their true colors
The flotilla of ships carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid for Palestinians in blockaded Gaza was attacked last night by the Israeli navy. Commandos boarded the ships, which had put up no resistance, and massacred 19 unarmed civilians. The ships had been waiting in international water for months.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has called off Tuesday’s scheduled meeting with Obama, voicing full support for the navy’s actions – probably to prevent Obama from canceling first.
The White House said in a written statement that the United States “deeply regrets” the loss of life and injuries and was working to understand the circumstances surrounding this “tragedy.” Huffpo story
In other words, Obama is scratching his head, asking Rahm, “WTF were they thinking?”
The Israeli justification for murdering all those people is that they were attacked after they stormed the ship without justification. They did indeed seize the other ships uneventfully, and all have been towed to port.
So why did they seize the ships, which were moored in international waters? They wanted the goods and the ships. It was an official act of piracy.
How will the mainstream media manage to suppress this? Do you suppose this will show up on Fox News?
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So he canceled on his Meet The Press appearance this Sunday, only the third scheduled guest to do so in 62 years.
Maybe he is thinking that he needs to work on his message with his handlers. If this is what he’s doing, it means he thinks his message is not ready for prime time. He needs to work on his sound bites to take back control of the interview from real journalists. You can never tell when a journalist will ask an inconvenient question, and he’s just had a rude awakening about what a real interview is after all the fawning softball questions he was fielding.
He’s probably not thinking about the big gaps in libertarianism that might make it unworkable as a political system, the ones he might not want to be associated with even though he may fully agree.
Paul is new to politics and really naive. He previously had said very little about his opinions. Most people simply do not know what classic hard line libertarianism stands for, and Maddow was the first member of the press to ask him hard questions. He was under the impression that after hearing what he had said while campaigning, most people understood his positions and agreed. Like many who associate themselves with the Tea Party, he thought mistakenly that his personal beliefs and positions are some sort of a consensus in this country and that the polls are wrong.
If he was more politically sophisticated he would probably have had an answer practiced for the question she asked him, but for him that would have necessitated dealing with a campaign manager who believes in research.
Many people agree with a few of the positions of libertarians. Hardly anyone thinks that we should go back to an era where segregation was legal, and he wouldn’t take a stand against it.
The idea that someone who is running for public office has the right to keep their opinions to themselves and not tell us what they believe in is absurd. If he can’t stand the heat of honest inquiry, he shouldn’t be running at all. Right now it looks like he won that primary on his name and his pretty face.
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Last night Rachel Maddow spoke with Rand Paul, and he was evasive, to say the least.
I have read numerous blog posts about her interview, and I think there is a basic misunderstanding of his position on “rights”.
I think his difficulty (impossibility?) with answering the question “should a business owner be able to refuse to serve customers based on race?” is more than just evading that question itself.
It is a matter of trying to keep his philosophy out of sight. For all intents and purposes he seems to have succeeded in maintaining control of the issue. It doesn’t look good for him right now, but they aren’t asking him the questions he really, really doesn’t want anybody to hear.
Years ago I accidentally bought a hardcore libertarian book by mail, and I was absolutely shocked what I read. I had no idea. I was young, but not quite so naive after reading that.
The “rights” they perceive are very different from the ones we would think of as “human rights”.
He feels that it is a basic human right to discriminate against anyone you wish to discriminate against for whatever reason you may have. It is infringing on that right for the government step in and say you can’t.
It goes far beyond the question of a restaurant owner discriminating against black people. It extends to hiring practices, housing, pretty much all are considered “business dealings” that the government should keep out of.
The potential hiree and the business owner have the “right” to negotiate their terms of employment. The government should not interfere with such things as labor laws, safety regulations, etc. It is up to the potential employee to either work out a deal to his satisfaction, go somewhere else, or buy a factory and refuse to hire the guy who discriminated against him.
There is no recognition of the idea that the unequal power in such a situation means that there can be no fair negotiation.
Environmental issues? They were not a consideration when this philosophy was carved in stone. Many people at the time thought that they would take care of themselves, or at least they would only happen in the poor part of town. It would be interesting to get his take on the BP disaster right now.
I’d guess he favors the Alan Greenspan notion that people will make reasoned decisions based on full disclosure when deciding who to take their business to, rather than the fact that given a completely unregulated situation, those with no ethics will steal everyone else blind.
Taxes? Please, rich people shouldn’t have to pay taxes at all. Let investor groups build roads and bridges and erect toll plazas to pay for maintenance.
The libertarian philosophy is the direct ancestor of the “culture of greed” that we see touted so often, even among those who are being repressed by it.
Libertarianism is basically anarchist at heart, but at least anarchists are realists about the violence that would exist. In the libertarian utopia, there is no need for enforcement, as money does all the talking that counts. If you need to protect your property, you can hire a goon squad security company to deal with the issues.
What sort of issues? Well, when they get rid of public education and illiteracy soars, some of those unemployable people might decide to exercise their Second Amendment rights to buy guns and then take back their country.
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Following up on the farce that the supposed ACORN tapes have turned out to be… The transcripts of the originals show that both the O’Keefe and Giles were dressed in street clothes. He was posing as a college student trying to help an abused prostitute escape with some underage prostitutes from her pimp, all the rest is creative editing and dubbing.
Nobody does it better than Stephen Colbert, if the “it” he does best is creative editing to make it look like someone is saying something they never meant to say.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Tip/Wag – James O’Keefe & Sean Hannity | ||||
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The Huffington Post has published an article Senate Democrats Consider Nightmare Scenario on Health Care Reform, which proposes that the ultimate “nightmare scenario” might be just around the corner, were the CBO to come back with figures that put the project in the red, based on the latest changes (concessions) made to Republicans and right wing Democrats who insist that they don’t want to spend too much money, but want changes made to make the project more costly.
I commented that I can think of several nightmare scenarios. It is rather short-sighted to think that this is the only one which would hurt the Democratic party or people who need access to health care but are not getting it.
Of course, nor do I believe in the sort of blind faith that I have been told to place in the President, who has given us no reason to believe that he is planning on fixing this in the foreseeable future.
But anyway, the “nightmare scenarios” I see involve access to healthcare in this country getting worse, with premiums and prices going through the roof, while apparently the worst abuses by insurance companies have been loopholed out of sight. They can still do just about everything to you they want, but now they can send you a bill for however much they want and you are forced to pay. They don’t have to approve your services and treatment. They can say it’s not reasonable and you will have no recourse.
They can and will set low annual limits on payments they are required to make.
So far we have not heard anything about how subsidies for the working poor would be managed. I suspect they will just go away, and people who don’t have 5K to pay for insurance (like, because it’s half their income) will get arrested and convicted for being poor.
There will be more rationing of health care than ever, now that insurance companies have permission to cut off granny’s benefits.
This is a disaster, both in the short term and long term. Good luck convincing people whose taxes skyrocketed long before it was decided whether they would even get benefits that they are better off.
This is no kind of reform at all. It’s only good for big health insurance and drugs. But I’m sure they’ll fix it coming up real soon. The proof is that absolutely nobody in the administration is saying they will fix it. Go blind faith!
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Or perhaps, those who take their orders from their god (or think they do, especially those who brag they do) should not be politicians.
I’ve heard plenty of times before about prisoners who took part in penitentiary bible programs having conversions and getting privileges because of this. But this is the first time I have heard where clemency in murder cases was apparently a result of supposed conversions to Christianity.
Not only did Mike Huckabee give clemency to the guy who is the only suspect right now in the police shooting that killed 4 officers, he gave clemency or pardons to other violent criminals who went out and killed again, granted based on their word and the word of his religious advisors. He completely ignored the advice of correctional officials.
This is a secular country where people are free to practice whatever religion they please or none at all. The Huckster would crack down on all our private lives to force us to obey the rules he is imagining that his god decrees for us, yet he is so gullible he does not even bother to examine the facts when making decisions that impact public safety.
He cares about our souls, but doesn’t give a damn about our lives.
Sarah Palin is on a mission from God, too. She wants to start Armageddon and bring about the End Times.
Mike Huckabee’s Fatally Bad Judgment
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Hello? Is there anybody in there?
Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here.
So sorry, Susan, you failed big time with this one. I can just imagine the little wheels turning in your brain as you sift through right wing talking points to decide which ones you can make mileage on.
I receive Susan Dearest’s press releases in my email periodically. I am sure they did not read the opinion I sent to her office on some subject or another which triggered my being added to her mailing list, as my opinion did not agree with her position. I don’t always read these emails, because sometimes they get me upset. But the subject title, “$95 million for CMP Smart Grid, H1N1 vaccine shortages, and more updates” caught my eye this time, and I said to myself, “I bet I know what she is saying about the H1N1 vaccine shortages, since she just copies and pastes the Republican party line.”
I was right. Yup, she is blaming the Obama administration and demanding an investigation to find out which of them is to blame.
In a letter Monday to Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Senator Susan Collins, Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, asked for urgent explanations on the availability of the H1N1 flu vaccine. Her letter follows the committee’s recent hearing, “H1N1 Flu: Monitoring the Nation’s Response,” held Oct. 21 to examine safety, supply and delivery issues.
In her letter Monday, Senator Collins, R-Maine, expressed additional concerns and questioned why some of the vaccines won’t arrive until after people have been infected with the virus. Senator Collins requested answers to her inquires by Friday. The full text of the letter follows:
Senator Collins demands urgent explanation of H1N1 vaccine shortages, delays
Let’s step back a minute here and breathe, Susan. Think. Remember that economic stimulus package you hated so much and wanted to get rid of entirely? But you couldn’t, and you decided to gut it to get political mileage out of it? Remember that provision for pandemic flu preparedness that you bragged about removing? Remember when I contacted your office expressing concern that a potential H1N1 epidemic might require that preparedness and was told by some mouthpiece employee of your that this was not the time or the place to achieve that goal, and you would work on that to get it done? Okay, I don’t see any reason why you would remember a human being who votes in Maine contacting your office to express a contrary opinion, since every time I have contacted your offices by phone or in person the people there have tried to argue with me and been just generally rude.
But seriously, did you? Did you enact a flu pandemic measure to take the place of the one you removed from that bill? No, of course you did not. So why not? And why do you think you should get any kind of credit at this point for blaming the Obama Administration for what you are responsible for?
Did you do anything at all? No? Then why are you not to blame for these deaths, when you could have done something but did not, just as you have worked hard to deny health care to so many of your constituents, some of whom die every day thanks to your political opportunism?
So what’s the issue? Do you think we have short-term memory loss? Do you? Is it fair to say that you think we are stupid? Or as I often say about politicians, do you just think we are as stupid as you are?
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A tiny army of us stalwarts gathered in front of the office of Olympia Snow on a dreary and damp day, prepared to read the first pages of a health care report that had just been released and tell our stories. A photographer showed up from the local newspaper and took some photos and notes. We didn’t actually go inside the office, as the report had actually been presented to them the day before.
Olympia is hung up on some damned “trigger” that she hasn’t been able to define especially well and nobody supports, even in her own party. The purpose of the “trigger” is to give the insurance companies an extra decade to see if they can find a way to provide affordable health care to Americans. The 17 years since the last health care reform plan they killed clearly wasn’t enough.
You know, I’d almost say the trend is going the wrong way here, since things are getting worse, not better.
Well, actually everybody knows that the real purpose of the trigger is to give corrupt politicians the chance to collect millions of dollars more from lobbyists and then kill the whole thing when nobody’s looking. And then retire and not worry about the 45,000 people who died each year they refused to enact reform.
So when Olympia says she wants a trigger, she is saying that the country would be better off if millions of Americans just like me had no access to health care. I am her constituent.
It is her finger on the trigger, and the barrel of the gun is pointing at me. Thanks, Olympia!
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