The Public Knows the GOP is Lying

posted by Betsmeier

I keeping asking that if we all know what’s going on then why are some of the Democrats falling into a trap of believing the Republicans, or is it just a matter of campaign funds. I don’t know which but I think it’s time that the public lets the Dems know that we want the Public Option. No more playing games with the Republicans, they are doing nothing but delay, delay, delay.

Sept. 24, 2009 | “I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist. In my country, you’d be considered a conservative.” — President Obama, Sept. 20, 2009

There have always been two basic arguments for health insurance reform: one based in morality, the other self-interest. For a documented 45,000 persons to die prematurely in America each year because they can’t afford proper care is a national disgrace. Almost everybody apart from “conservatives” whose moral imagination is limited to judging other people’s sex lives understands that.

The current cruel, wasteful system is indefensible. Surely that’s why almost three-quarters of physicians polled by the New England Journal of Medicine favor genuine reform. About 63 percent of doctors surveyed nationwide support a public option; 10 percent would prefer a single-payer system, basically Medicare for everybody.

For all the hullabaloo, it appears alarmist rhetoric hasn’t scared ordinary people as much as it has cable TV anchors. A Bloomberg poll asked which right-wing objections people found legitimate, and which were “scare tactics.” Basically, voters rejected GOP rhetoric almost 2-to-1. About 63 percent think Sarah Palin’s “death panels” are a distortion, versus 30 percent who fear them. It’s 61 to 33 percent on the claim that health reform means government-paid abortions, 58 to 37 percent on the false claim that illegal aliens will get subsidized insurance, etc.

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Breaking News—FBI: Sparkman Was Found Touching Ground, Not Hanging From Tree

Posted by Audiegrl

Bill Sparkman Was a 51-Year-Old Single Father Pursuing Teaching Degree

TPMMuckraker/Zachary Roth—Bill Sparkman, the Census worker found dead in Kentucky recently was not found hanging from a tree, according to an FBI spokesman. Rather, David Beyer told TPMmuckraker, Sparkman’s feet were planted on the ground. A rope around Sparkman’s neck was attached to a tree.

An anonymously sourced AP report said that Sparkman was hanging from a tree, and that he had the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest.

Beyer, a spokesman with the FBI’s Louisville, Kentucky filed office, declined to comment on the accuracy of the “Fed” detail. But he was at pains to ratchet back speculation that Sparkman was killed in an act of anti-government sentiment, saying that investigators had not yet determined even whether the death was a homicide.

Previous reporting “left the impression that [Sparkman] was found strung up in a tree because he was a federal employee,” Beyer said. “At this juncture that’s not accurate.” Beyer added that Sparkman died of asphyxiation.

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Area where census worker died has troubled history @

***Update from TPM: The local coroner has confirmed that the word “Fed” had been written on Bill Sparkman’s chest when he was found dead earlier this month.

Jim Trosper, the Clay County coroner, confirmed the information to TPMmuckraker moments ago, adding that the word appeared to have been written in felt tip marker. He declined to give additional details.

***New AP Update: Witness: Census worker’s hanging body naked, bound

Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was among a group of relatives who discovered the body of 51-year-old Bill Sparkman on Sept. 12.

“The only thing he had on was a pair of socks,” Weaver said. “And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something.

“And they even had duct tape around his neck. And they had like his identification tag on his neck. They had it duct-taped to the side of his neck, on the right side, almost on his right shoulder.”

Weaver said he couldn’t tell if the tag was a Census Bureau I.D. He said he didn’t get close enough to read it.

Arkansas players ends game with noble gesture

posted by Betsmeier

This is a feel good story. But the first part of it is a sad story. The player that made the noble gestures shows us that our teenagers are still good kids. I just thought that this was a good story to post because it’s such an unselfish story. Okay, so they were way ahead, still it shows the kind of kids that we have today.

Thamail Morgan took the kickoff and headed up the field.
He was at the 20 … 30 … 40

He had been avoiding, dodging or just simply running through tacklers on the way. Football always had come easily for Morgan. This game was no different. By the time he hit midfield, only open space was ahead of him. The two-time Arkansas all-state selection was headed for a touchdown.

40 … 30 … 20

He glanced at the clock and saw the final seconds ticking away. He realized his team, Cave City, was on the way to a victory over Yellville-Summit, comfortably ahead, 34-16. He also realized two other things: This wasn’t an ordinary game. And he wasn’t the same Thamail Morgan.

When he reached the 2, he stopped. He took a few steps back and took a knee at the 5-yard line.

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Schumer And Rockefeller: “We Will Get Public Option”

posted by GeoT

Senate Hearings Live:

The public option is headed for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee on Friday.
Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). They are confident — very confident — that health care reform will include a public option.

“The health care bill that is signed into law by the President will have a good, strong, robust public option,” Schumer said.

How that will happen remains an open question. But the Senators assured reporters on the call that we’re all going to get a taste of their passion and persuasiveness on this issue at the ongoing Senate Finance Committee hearings on Friday.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Rockefeller said of the public option. “Chuck Schumer thinks it’s a great idea. And we’re going to be all over it tomorrow.”

Schumer said there will be a “full-blown debate” and that “even though the public option might be the underdog in the Senate Finance Committee, don’t count it out.”

“Tomorrow is the opening day in our big fight,” he said.

More @:

**44-Update**

Poll: Public Option Favored By 65% Of Americans

related story:
U.S. Senate panel backs health insurance requirement

G-20 march turns chaotic on streets of Pittsburgh

posted by GeoT

PITTSBURGH – Protesters and police are clashing on the streets of Pittsburgh after police tried to break up a march oppposing the Group of 20 summit.
Protesters rolled trash bins toward police and a man in a black hooded sweat shirt threw rocks at a police car, breaking the front windshield. Some protesters also are using pallets and corrugated steel to block a road.
Officers fired gas at the protesters. Some of those exposed to the gas were coughing, complaining of eyes watering and stinging.
The march began with several hundred protesters. It did not have a city permit and police declared it an unlawful assembly. The group broke into smaller groups after being confronted by police.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE From AP news Click for more

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Police threw canisters of pepper spray and smoke at marchers protesting the Group of 20 summit Thursday after anarchists responded to calls to disperse by rolling trash bins and throwing rocks.

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Me Talk Presidential One Day

posted by Ogenec

Former President George W. Bush

Matt Latimer worked as one of Dubya’s speechwriters during the president’s final twenty-two months in office. He was there to help sell the surge to a skeptical public. He was there as we pretended that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. And he was there to see a president who failed to grasp his own $700 billion bailout package—even as he was pitching it to the American public on live TV. A disillusioned insider reveals for the first time just how messy things got

GQ Style/Matt Latimer—As a speechwriter for George W. Bush during the final years of his presidency, I’d seen crises and controversies. But nothing prepared me for the imminent collapse of America’s free-market system.

I was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with another speechwriter, a young man named Jonathan. (His last name was Horn; the president nicknamed him Horny.) We were chatting casually when the president’s favorite speechwriter came in. Chris Michel was in his midtwenties, with sandy blond hair. He was usually chipper, though at the moment his face was so pale he must have been the whitest man in the Bush White House. And that was no small accomplishment. Chris had just come from a secret meeting in the Oval Office, and without so much as a hello he announced: “Well, the economy is about to completely collapse.”

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New UN resolution aims at nuclear-free world

posted byGeoT    Imagine

United Nations

UNITED NATIONS – With President Barack Obama presiding over an historic session, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution Thursday committing all nations to work for a nuclear weapons-free world.
Russia, China and developing nations supported the measure, giving it global clout and strong political backing.
The resolution calls for stepped up efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote disarmament and “reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism.” It calls for better security for nuclear weapons materials and underscores the Security Council’s intention to take action if such material or nuclear weapons get into the hands of terrorists.
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related story:

Queen Noor: “We Are Reaching A Nuclear Tipping Point”

Op-Ed— Mr. Policy Hits a Wall

posted by Ogenec

Op-Ed by David Broder, The Washington Post

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A new publication came across my desk this week containing an essay that offers as good an insight into President Obama’s approach to government as anything I have read — and is particularly useful in understanding the struggle over health-care reform. (read it here:) Obama and the Policy Approach by William Schambra.

Schambra, like many others, was struck by the “sheer ambition” of Obama’s legislative agenda and by his penchant for centralizing authority under a strong White House staff replete with many issue “czars.”

Schambra sees this as evidence that “Obama is emphatically a ‘policy approach’ president. For him, governing means not just addressing discrete challenges as they arise, but formulating comprehensive policies aimed at giving large social systems — and indeed society itself — more rational and coherent forms and functions. In this view, the long-term, systemic problems of health care, education, and the environment cannot be solved in small pieces. They must be taken on in whole.”

In one policy area after another,” Schambra writes, “from transportation to science, urban policy to auto policy, Obama’s formulation is virtually identical: Selfishness or ideological rigidity has led us to look at the problem in isolated pieces . . . we must put aside parochialism to take the long systemic view; and when we finally formulate a uniform national policy supported by empirical and objective data rather than shallow, insular opinion, we will arrive at solutions that are not only more effective but less costly as well. This is the mantra of the policy presidency.”
Schambra’s essay anticipated exactly what is happening on health care. Obama, budget director Peter Orszag and health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle grasp the intricacies of the health-care system as well as any three humans, and they could write a law to make it far more efficient.

But now it is in the hands of legislators and lobbyists who care much less about the rationality of the system than they do about the way the bill will affect their particular part of it. Everyone has a parochial agenda. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for example, wants to be sure a new cancer treatment center in Nevada has favored status.

Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the progressives and their heirs, including Obama, want to admit. No wonder they are so often frustrated.
read the entire Op-ed @

King: Same-Sex Marriage Is ‘A Purely Socialist Concept’

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

ThinkProgress/Matt—Earlier this week, the Des Moines Register released a poll showing that “Iowans are almost evenly divided about whether they would vote for or against a constitutional amendment to end marriage for same-sex couples.” It also found that “the overwhelming majority of Iowans – 92 percent – say gay marriage has brought no real change to their lives.” Asked about the poll, King complained that many Iowans do not have “a very good understanding of what same-sex marriage does to the overall institution of marriage.” After claiming that “Rick Santorum was right” when he said that expanding gay rights would lead to a “right to incest,” King asserted that same-sex marriage is “a purely socialist concept”:

KING: But if, there also would be no rational argument against group marriage. And I just take this along the rationale even further and would say if relationships between individuals cannot be prohibited by the state legislature then there is no ban that can actually be constitutional that would ban group marriage. And it wouldn’t have to be for reasons of, let me say, love or lust. It could be reasons of profitability or avoiding taxes or accessing benefits.

So in the end this is something that has to come with a, if there’s a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together, living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone. That is, this is one of the goals they have to go to is same-sex marriage because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation. They want access to public funds and resources. Eventually all those resources will be pooled because that’s the direction we’re going. And not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis.

There’s more

Listen here for Kings offensive statement:

For those of you that would like to email Congressman King to discuss his theories on Socialism and Gay Marriage, please click here. You can also contact him through his Washington office by phone: 202.225.4426 or fax: 202.225.3193.

DeMint: Obama ‘Puts Our Troops At Risk’ By Working On Health Reform

Posted by Audiegrl

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Well, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) (Mr. ‘this will be Obama’s Waterloo’) is at it again. This time he says that President Obama is putting our troops at risk by pursuing health care reform.

ThinkProgress/Ben Armbruster—The Washington Post reported this week that Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has recommended that more U.S. troops be sent there or the conflict will “likely result in failure.” However, the Obama administration is currently reviewing its overall Afghanistan strategy before anymore troops are deployed.

On ABC’s Top Line today, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) attacked Obama. “A lot of us are concerned that the President is putting off listening to the recommendations from his generals because he’s getting so much pressure from the left,” DeMint complained. When host David Chalian noted that Obama simply “wants to make sure that the resources are there to fit the strategy,” DeMint accused Obama of abandoning Afghanistan to focus on health care, which DeMint suggested is not a priority for the country:

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