Confirmed

The fake opposition was never there and never had a chance against Obama's pick. All the media spin and attempted Conservative racism/intellect BS amounted to jack squat.

"The U.S. Senate has confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in a 68-31 vote, as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court."

Source: http://www.cnn.com/

Wanting To Save Babies, But Not Really

The US ranks 33rd in the world in infant mortality.

The Right Wing is anti-Universal Health and oppose successful child health care programs like S-CHIP care while categorically screaming about how evil abortion is. What they really mean is that they are just "pro-embryo" because they don't care about the child once it is out of the womb.

Think of how many infants could be spared an early death if the US just had a First World health care system?

Seniors: "I've Got Mine Now Get Off My Lawn"

Follow this logic:

Support for health care reform falls into two general groups, younger people who support reform and older seniors who oppose it. "Obama's plan is most popular among younger Americans and least popular among senior citizens," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

Republicans are targeting the older groups for support by spreading false information and, among other things, that the federal government might try to kill them if Democrats successfully pass health care reform. Scaring the shit out of them is their way of fear-monger governing.

Keep in mind people over 50 are disproportionately people who already have guaranteed single-payer government health care. [They have the most experience with it but somehow don't realize they are using it.]

Add to the Republican "they want to kill you" meme, the fact that conservatives ultimately want to cut Medicare benefits and wanted to privatize Social Security. A dangerous proposition when proposed, but even more so in light of the recent Wall St. meltdown.

How does any of this make sense?

So in summation, Republicans are "using" the older population, who gladly use guaranteed single-payer government health care, to stop any reform by telling them that status quo increased costs are the only answer, that future reduced benefits are on their to-do list, and that any improvement to the system will only be used to kill them. And even if they could be used to help younger people and make the system more efficient to years to come, screw it.

Sadly, the seniors eat this shit up. The devil they know is the devil they like. You can hear them yelling, "Keep your government out of my Medicare!"

We need to get the GOP claws off Grandma and Grandpa. Getting old is tough enough, having some shuckster scare you for your votes is too much.

Washington Monthly

Republicans Thugs Through History

The Republican bullying you are seeing in Town Hall meetings regarding Health Care reform is nothing new. Rachel Maddow gives a history lesson in the "shut it down" style of thuggery the GOP is most proud of.

"It's not about making one side of the argument in an argument. It's making sure there can be no argument"

Source: http://www.realitychex.com/

Fake Balance In News

The media has a problem with presenting issues with a fake balance. The need to give an opposing viewpoint even if it does not exist.

via Paul Krugman:

"Long ago I said that if liberals said the Earth was round, while conservatives said it was flat, the news headlines would read “Shape of the planet: both sides have a point.” But I encountered a new wrinkle today.

I was tentatively scheduled to be on a broadcast dealing with — well, I won’t embarrass them. But first they had to find someone to take the opposite view. And it turned out that they couldn’t — which led to canceling the whole segment."

People see these talking heads on cable news would assume it's a 50/50 argument, but it's not. All it does is enable the Right Wing to kick up dust and confuse. "Fair and Balanced" is their Trojan horse. Sadly, sacrificing fact and truth for the sake of "balance" is not just Fox anymore. Their ratings have forced others to follow.

I suggest Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow is you are looking for a good source for news. Keith Olbermann is you can handle his ego.

Source: Bob Cesca

Bill Clinton Takes Center Stage Again

Bill Clinton helps free 2 hostages from North Korea. After months in captivity in North Korea, journalists Laura Ling & Euna Lee arrive in Los Angeles.

Could you imagine Bush or Cheney doing something like this in 10 years?

Socialize Health Care Like We Did Firefighting

The Government runs a lot of things. I know this health care reform seems like a situation that Republicans want to scare you with, but just look how firefighting was once a for-profit private industry until the Government took over all fire departments.

I didn't realize this, but major U.S. cities had for-private enterprises competing for firefighting dollars. The first business to get to the scene and put out the fire got paid. As one might imagine, this led to systemic corruption and an ineffective system, and by the mid-19th century municipalities switched to a government-run, government-trained, publicly-financed system, which, not coincidentally, works very well.

Keeping this in context, Tina Dupuy, editor of Mediabistro's FishbowlLA, writes how the Republicans would spin a current day switch to Government run fire departments:

[W]e'd have socialism-phobic South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on the TV every chance he could get saying things like, "Do you want a government bureaucrat between you and the safety of your home?"

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio would hold press conferences and ask, "Do you want your firefighting to be like going to the DMV? Do you want Uncle Sam to come breaking down your door every time some Washington fat cat says there's a fire?"

There would be 30-second TV spots paid for by the powerful firefighting lobby featuring stars and stripes graphics and the national anthem playing softly in the background with a booming voice-over trumpeting, "Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were volunteer firefighters. Support traditional values and oppose government waste. Tell your representative you want a bi-partisan solution to fire reform."

News programs would be interviewing sobbing people whose homes fell through the cracks and burned to the ground. "I don't want to see the government take-over firefighting, but I sure miss Momma's oil paintings."

And President Barack Obama would relay his childhood experience with a fire then point out the failure of the for-profit firefighting industrial complex that "threatens to bankrupt this country." And then those most in need of firefighting services would foam about his birth certificate and confuse Karl Marx with Charles Darwin on misspelled protest signs at events put on by covert firefighting lobbyists.

This is a great analogy. America is burning and Republicans just want the status quo to let it burn to the ground.

What is society for if not health care?

Source: Washington Monthly

An Intervention Is Needed For This Obsession

Bill Maher talking about "birthers" and how this "diluted, time-wasting Right Wing obsession" needs to be killed. "Dummies talking to other dummies" and cranks like Lou Dobbs highlight America's polite tendency to give the "special" people in the community more room than they need.

See a pattern? GOP obsessed on Clinton and Whitewater. Now it's Obama and a birth certificate. All pre-Presidential items used as distractions. They have to find something from the past because they have nothing in the present.

But with Bush, they could never see his past as an insight into what kind of guy he would be: lifelong C student, cocaine user, horrible business man, drunk until he was 40, never finishing his National Guard duty, fake Christian, Daddy Issues with zero respect for other points of view, the list goes on. And low and behold he is the worst President ever.

The GOP judgment is so off, I wish it were laughable, but it's much more sad, almost dangerous.

Frank Schaeffer Interview

Frank Schaeffer on John Whitehead's Friendly Fire. Discussing how the popular, yet marginal, Right Wing players are "encouraging the deranged".

Part One:

Dobbs Takes Rating Hit

This restores my faith in the maxim: "talk like an idiot, lose some of your ratings."

According to analysis of Nielsen data by the New York Observer, as criticism of Lou Dobbs has continued to rise over his questioning of President Obama's citizenship, his ratings at CNN have continued to go down.

In fact, Dobbs' audience has decreased 15% in total viewers and 27% in the all important age 25 to 54 demographic group since the start of the controversy.

Dobbs will of course spin this that he is a martyr and his "free speech" rights are under attack. Not quite. Aligning yourself with the most fringe element of the wacko Right and providing a forum to conspiracy theorists has consequences.

While stirring up controversy and public outcry is a time-tested method in cable news of juicing your ratings, for Dobbs it's FAIL.

Source: NY Observer

The Gang Of Six Represent 3%

We have to put the Gang of Six in context:

The "Gang of Six" senators involved in bipartisan health care negotiations represent six states with a total of less than three percent of the U.S. population (Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Maine, New Mexico and Iowa).

The diversity in those six states amazes me. Not. Do the four least-populated counties of western Kansas want to chime in?

That being said, it looks like the August break has prompted a "plan B" for the Democrats which should have been "plan A" from the get go:

Under the scenario now being discussed, bi-partisan talks would be aborted and parliamentary maneuvers used to force the bill through with a party-line vote."

You can no longer be bi-partisan with the insurance industry shills. They had their attempt to offer ideas. It's time to ignore the GOP.

Source: http://politicalwire.com/

Boston Cop: "Banana Eating Jungle Monkey" Not Racist

Justin Barrett, a Boston cop and National Guardsmen, sent an email to the editor of the Boston Globe and to colleagues at the National Guard calling Henry Louis Gates a "banana eating jungle monkey."

He claims he was not being racist. His remarks were published.

Barret then wrote the Globe writer with these choice words: "You are a fool. An infidel. You have no business writing for a US newspaper nevermind detailing and analyzing half-truths."

"Infidel"?. What a great word to use. Conjuring up Al Qaeda. Well played.

The National Guard suspended him. The "language contained in the e-mail violates policies of the Massachusetts National Guard and what it stands for in its commitment to uphold and protect the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Constitution of the United States."

Can't say a racist cop in Boston surprises me. If these is what he says in emails, just think what is said in private.

Source: RawStory

Prof. Gates' Unconstitutional Arrest

via The Atlantic:

"Lucia Whalen, whose 911 call led to the arrest of the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home, made her first public comments Wednesday, saying at no time did she ever mention race to the responding police officer.

...[also] repeatedly mentioning that they might live there."

So Crowley made the assumption that they were black and treated Gates as a criminal because he was a black man in a nice house. It happens. And Gates got mad. It happens.

So that brings up the core issue here: freedom of speech. Crowley thinks he can arrest you for it. Harvey Silvergate at Forbes adds:

"if one accepts Crowley's claim that he dished out to Gates equal treatment under the law, this case stands as a dire warning to all citizens as to the dangers inherent in exercising one's constitutional right to free speech when in an exchange with a police officer."

Gates ended up being arrested for uttering mere words. Not breaking and entering. Not disturbing the peace.

"This gets us to the heart of the matter. Under well-established First Amendment jurisprudence, what Gates said to Crowley--even assuming the worst--is fully constitutionally protected."

So the same losers who said Gates deserved it, are probably the same losers who say the Constitution has to be protected against non-American born U.S. Presidents. Which one is it? You want to protect Constitutional rights, but only for the people you like?

That being said, even if you hate Gates for other reasons or think he was over the top for asking for the officer's name and badge, fact is:

"Even if Professor Gates were wearing a "Fuck You, Cambridge Police" jacket, the officer would have been obligated to leave the house without its occupant in handcuffs."

Granted, Police work is tough. It's what you signed up for. Underpay someone and over work them and you'll get some tense people. I have respect for authority, but as this story unfolds with all the "he said, she said", one thing is certain, we need to stop confusing a police report with the truth.

Power to the little man!

Source: Forbes

Factcheck.org Certify, Birthers' FAIL

Not that birthers were ever interested in the truth.

FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Funny that "birthers" have no problem with Palin never showing the birth certificate for her son, Trig.



Source: factcheck.org

Consumers Like Medicare Better

Consumers give Medicare higher marks than private insurance plans. The majority of Americans who are experienced with "government-run" health insurance, i.e. people over 65, like what they have and don't want to change it. It's now up to educate all the other younger Americans to know what they are missing. We need the option. All other roads lead to ma$$ive corporate profits.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found 62 percent of Americans expressing support for "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans."

67 percent in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in April support a public option.

72 percent in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll want a public option.

More importantly, the higher scores [pictured below] for Medicare are based on perceptions of better access to care. All the myths of the GOP and Blue Dogs simply don't hold up.



Source: National Journal

Filing "Disorderly Conduct" Just Because

Obama tries to explain the police state we live in, vis a vis Gates, he gets the brush back. [The situation of disagreeing with the police has little to do with the quality of the service, but more about the attitude/mood of the officer.]

Here's another example of the police mentality in America:

Police in Mobile, Ala., used pepper spray and a Taser on a deaf, mentally disabled man who they said wouldn't leave a [Dollar] Store's bathroom ... Police tell the Press-Register of Mobile that officers shot pepper spray under the bathroom door after knocking several times. After forcing the door open, they used the stun gun on Antonio Love.

Then they tried the Crowley option: arresting him for disorderly conduct. Mercifully a judge threw the charge out. But notice the disorderly conduct charge filed even after all the facts are known. The crime - disabled while taking a shit - is just asking to be tasered and pepper-sprayed.

Surprise! - the guy is African-American. Pretty brutal. They held the guy for 6 hours, then dropped him off in his apartment complex parking lot without notifying anyone. Sounds like someone feels like they fucked up.

What ever happened to Police trying to diffuse situations, not escalate them? They pepper sprayed the door before they even knew who was inside, or what condition they were in. This happened in a Dollar Store?! The South has done it again.

NOTE: Pointing at a police officer is "assault", touching him is "battery".

Source: The Daily Dish

The GOP Sideshow Craziness

Rachel Maddow sums up the sideshow craziness from the conservative Right regarding health care reform. It's not about the public option, to the Right, it's all about a secret plan to kill old people.

And it's not just the fringe and Rush "dittoheads", it's elected members of Congress spreading the fear.

For example, an attempt to encourage people to make out "living wills" is shamelessly morphed into the government is telling you how to die. Repeat that enough times on right-wing radio, add a few Fox updates, and you have the echo chamber the Private Insurance companies paid for working to slow down proper reform.

The Right has an easy job of making stuff up because their base is so willing to believe it. 8 years of Bush will make you deny just about anything.

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