Keith Olbermann Devotes Entire Show To “Special Comment” On Health Care and Donates $50,000 for Free Health Care Fairs

Posted by Audiegrl

Keith Olbermann and his dad

Keith Olbermann delivered an hour-long “Special Comment” Wednesday night on the urgent need for health care reform. Drawing on his personal experiences with the system, especially the ordeal of his father falling gravely ill and being hospitalized, Olbermann describes a decaying system that is failing to fulfill one of the most important priorities we have as a nation: taking care of our citizens.

Olbermann particularly targets the insurance companies, illustrating how their business models are more focused on making money than helping people, which leads to very perverse incentives. The insurance companies are concerned about profit, which is why they’re fighting against health reform. Olbermann concludes, “The insurance companies are at war with America.”

Free clinic in Los Angeles

At the end of the show, Olbermann states that he is going to demonstrate his support for reform by donating money to help the establishment of free clinics in the capital cities of each of the states of the six senators who are blocking reform.

Tonight Olbermann announced that he will be donating $50,000 to NAFC for the five state capital cities where free health fairs can be held. Olbermann believes by donating he will accomplish three things. Medical good, humanitarian good, and political good for the entire nation.The Democratic Senators who are dragging their heels on true health care reform are on the Wall of Shame:



U.S. Senator Harry Reid (Democrat -Nevada)


U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln (Democrat-Arkansas)

U.S. Senator Mark Pryor (Democrat-Arkansas)




U.S. Senator Max Baucus (Democrat-Montana)




U.S. Senator Ben Nelson (Democrat-Nebraska)




U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (Democrat=Louisiana)

In the clip below, Olberman and Nicole Lamoureux of the National Association of Free Clinics, discuss how Americans can show their support for health reform by supporting the NAFC and its efforts to help all Americans without health care. Watch…

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In a hour long Special Comment, Olbermann explains how the American health care system is broken, and why it’s so important that the government steps in to fix it. Watch the full hour here.

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National Association of Free Clinics

Embrace the selfless individuals at the National Association of Free Clinics and make a statement in support of health reform. Find out what you can do here.

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Why America’s medical industry hates the NHS

‘We Will Overthrow The Government’ — Calls For Violence Repeatedly Stoked By Conservative Voices

Posted by Audiegrl

Anybody who is not taking the radical right-wing seriously, needs to start keeping it real. Listen to the man from Oklahoma who tells radio host Mike Signorile how his group of 200 fellow Oklahomans plan to come to Washington to ‘bear arms‘ and participate in a coup to overthrow the government. Listen to the crying woman who tells Signorile that her own mother is harboring racists thoughts and praying for “Jesus to come back and overthrow Barack Obama.”

Its time for elected politicians, political pundits, bloggers, and everybody else to stop pretending that extremist threats against our President, are just the ravings of lunatics. As any student of history can tell you, we are hearing the same inflammatory rhetoric that preceded the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and more recently Dr. George Tiller.

The time for pretending is over. We all need to report any threats we hear or read to the Secret Service immediately. The cowardly people who make these threats think they can hide from justice behind their phones and computers, lets show them just how wrong they are.

ThinkProgress/Lee Fang—Last week, the right-wing media outlet Newsmax — which receives 4 million unique monthly visitors and 130,000 print subscribers — published a column by conservative author John Perry arguing that a military coup could “resolve” the “radical left…Obama problem.” After being widely criticized, Newsmax retracted the column. However, the column appears to have encouraged an already angry group of anti-Obama radicals who have been plotting violence against the government.

While discussing the Newsmax column on his XM Sirius radio show last week, Michelangelo Signorile heard from a caller, “Jim from Oklahoma,” who explained that the idea of a coup is already being planned.

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It’s time for all of us to contact the Secret Service anytime we read a threat against the President or his family on the Internet. In this country it is illegal to make a threat against the POTUS. This is the only way we are going to help stop this climate of hate.

Secret Service’s contact page is here

A list of Secret Service local offices numbers are here, to call them and alert them.

Father of Palin’s Grandson to Pose for Playgirl

Posted by HershelWellingtonIV

Attorney says Playgirl shoot next up for teenage father of Sarah Palin’s grandson

Ex. Gov Sarah Palin and Levi Johnson

AP/Rachel D’Oro—Levi Johnston is going for the ultimate exposure — the 19-year-old father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild will pose nude for Playgirl, his attorney said Wednesday.

To get ready for his close-up, Johnston is training three hours a day, six nights a week at an Anchorage gym with a local body builder.

A formal agreement hasn’t been reached with the online magazine, but the photo shoot is a “foregone conclusion,” said Johnston’s attorney, Rex Butler.

Johnston fathered a son with Bristol, the 18-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate who resigned as Alaska’s governor in July.

Publication of the photographs could be a source of embarrassment for Palin, often mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential candidate. Her memoir, “Going Rogue,” will be published next month and pre-sales already have made it a national best seller.

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Let Congress Go Without Insurance by Nicholas D. Kristof

Posted by betham37

Op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof

Nicholas D. Kristof

New York Times/Nicholas D. Kristof—Let me offer a modest proposal: If Congress fails to pass comprehensive health reform this year, its members should surrender health insurance in proportion with the American population that is uninsured.

It may be that the lulling effect of having very fine health insurance leaves members of Congress insensitive to the dysfunction of our existing insurance system. So what better way to attune our leaders to the needs of their constituents than to put them in the same position?

About 15 percent of Americans have no health insurance, according to the Census Bureau. Another 8 percent are underinsured, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research group. So I propose that if health reform fails this year, 15 percent of members of Congress, along with their families, randomly lose all health insurance and another 8 percent receive inadequate coverage.

Congressional critics of President Obama’s efforts to achieve health reform worry that universal coverage will be expensive, while their priority is to curb social spending. So here’s their chance to save government dollars in keeping with their own priorities.

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Dad’s Life or Yours? You Choose by Nicholas D. Kristof

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery

Posted by Audiegrl

Fraser Robinson III and his wife, Marian, with their children, Craig and Michelle, now the first lady.

New York Times/Rachel L. Swarns & Jodi Kantorr—In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the First Lady.

Viewed by many as a powerful symbol of black advancement, Mrs. Obama grew up with only a vague sense of her ancestry, aides and relatives said. During the presidential campaign, the family learned about one paternal great-great-grandfather, a former slave from South Carolina, but the rest of Mrs. Obama’s roots were a mystery.

Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.

The findings — uncovered by Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and The New York Times — substantiate what Mrs. Obama has called longstanding family rumors about a white forebear.

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One Paper Trail to the White House

Click here for research

Recent research from Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and reporting by The New York Times offers previously undisclosed details of First Lady Michelle Obama’s family tree. The findings provide the first link to a white ancestor in Mrs. Obama’s past, and trace the steps her family members took as they journeyed from slavery to the nation’s most storied house in five generations. Click here to view.

The Family Tree of Michelle Obama, the First Lady

Click here for the interactive family tree

Revelations have emerged recently from the research of Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and from reporting by Rachel L. Swarns and Jodi Kantor of The New York Times. Click here to view.

One Family’s Roots, a Nation’s History

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed and others discuss what Michelle Obama’s family tree says about America. Click here for the discussion.

Obama channels Ali in health care prize fight

posted by GeoT

Will the president’s ‘rope-a-dope’ strategy prevail?

ANALYSIS
By Howard Fineman
The Beltway consensus, aka the conventional wisdom, has turned on President Barack Obama.
Pundits, including me, are stressing his flaws and mistakes. So now is the time for me to get ahead of the crowd again and suggest that perhaps he actually knows what he’s doing — at least on health care.

Whether he will achieve real reform is a different question, but he does seem to have a strategy for getting a bill to his desk.

Ali's "Rope-a-dope" in action

A fan of Muhammad Ali, the president is deploying the political version of the Champ’s most famous tactic. It’s called the “rope-a-dope.”

By not committing to one plan — by not moving to the center of the ring — Obama is leaving himself free to try to pick and choose among the elements of the five different bills now on the table. Sen. Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take the lead in boiling them down.

Read the story:

Related:

HMO stocks drop after reform bill budget analysis

Voters Back Obama Over Republicans on Health Care, Poll Finds

posted by GeoT

Months of Republican attacks on President Barack Obama’s health-care proposals appear to have hurt the GOP, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

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The survey found 64 percent of voters disapproving of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their jobs, with 25 percent approving. Also, 53 percent had an unfavorable opinion of the party in general, while 25 percent rated it favorably.
The performance of Democratic lawmakers was disapproved of by 56 percent, with 33 expressing approval. For the party in general, 46 percent expressed disapproval, 38 percent approval.
Asked who they trusted to do a better job on the health- care issue, 47 percent said Obama, 31 percent said the Republicans. The president’s overall approval rating was 50 percent, unchanged from a similar survey in late July and early August.
“President Barack Obama’s approval rating has held at 50 percent over the past two months of high-intensity debate on health care and other issues,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Hamden, Connecticut-based university’s polling institute. “And while the spotlight is on the president, Republicans are taking a public-opinion pounding.”

Public Option

The poll found voters support a government-run plan to compete with private insurers 61 percent to 34 percent. Obama backs creating such a program, which has been the focus of much of the health-care debate in Congress. House and Senate Democrats are divided over the proposal, known as the public option, while most Republicans oppose it.
The survey of 2,630 voters was conducted Sept. 29-Oct. 5 and has an error margin of plus-or-minus 1.9 percentage points.

Full story: Here

Related:

Sen. Schumer: Opt-Out Public Option Being “Very Seriously Considered”

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Moderate Democrats Warm Up to Proposal for Public Plans for States

Public Knows the GOP is Lying

HMO stocks drop after reform bill budget analysis

Gun Show Undercover: Illegal Sales At Gun Shows

Posted by Buellboy

October 7th Announcement of undercover investigation of illegal sales at gun shows

Gun Show Undercover—The City of New York launched an undercover investigation to expose how a dangerous loophole allows guns to get into the hands of criminals.

The vast majority of people who either visit or sell guns at gun shows are law-abiding citizens and dealers.

However, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms , and Explosives (ATF) reports that 30 percent of guns involved in federal illegal gun trafficking investigations are connected to gun shows.

This multi-state undercover investigation exposed how easy it is for criminals to buy guns at gun shows.

The City of New York investigated 7 gun shows in 3 states involving buys from 47 gun sellers using hidden cameras.

The investigation videos showed that 35 out of 47 sellers approached by undercover investigators at these gun shows sold guns illegally.

The term “gun show loophole” is often used to describe the fact that federal law allows private sellers to sell firearms without background checks or record keeping.

While private sellers are exempted from running background checks no matter where they make the sale, this loophole is associated with gun shows because they are the largest and most central marketplace where these private sellers can easily connect with purchasers who wish to avoid detection.

More @ Gun Show Undercover

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‘Second Stonehenge‘ Discovered Near Original

Posted by TheLCster

‘Bluestonehenge‘ found by archaeologists less than two miles from world-famous prehistoric monument

Stonehenge

Guardian.co,UK/James Sturcke & Maev Kennedy —Archaeologists have discovered evidence of what they believe was a second Stonehenge located a little more than a mile away from the world-famous prehistoric monument.

The new find on the west bank of the river Avon has been called “Bluestonehenge“, after the colour of the 25 Welsh stones of which it was once made up.

Aerial view of the site of a 'second Stonehenge' (Photo: Aerial-Cam/Stonehenge Riverside Project)

Excavations at the site have suggested there was once a stone circle 10 metres in diameter and surrounded by a henge – a ditch with an external bank, according to the project director, Professor Mike Parker Pearson, of the University of Sheffield.

The stones at the site were removed thousands of years ago but the sizes of the holes in which they stood indicate that this was a circle of bluestones, brought from the Preseli mountains of Wales, 150 miles away.

The standing stones marked the end of the avenue that leads from the river Avon to Stonehenge, a 1¾-mile long processional route constructed at the end of the Stone Age.

The outer henge around the stones was built about 2400BC but arrowheads found in the stone circle indicate the stones were put up as much as 500 years earlier.

Parker Pearson said his team was waiting for results of radiocarbon dating which could reveal whether stones currently in the inner circle of Stonehenge were originally located at the other riverside construction.

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Movie News: Marlon Wayans Replaces Eddie Murphy in Richard Pryor Biopic

Posted by Audiegrl

EW/Nicole Sperling—Funny man Marlon Wayans is in advanced discussions to play one of comedy’s most iconic figures in the biopic Richard Pryor: Is it Something I Said for Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Prods. and Sony Pictures. The project has been written and will be directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls). Eddie Murphy was originally attached to star in the project, but he dropped out over conflicts with Paramount Pictures, which was previously on board to finance the film.

While Wayans is primarily known for his comedic roles in Wayans Bros.’ movies such as Dance Flick and White Chicks, he received critical acclaim for his dramatic turn in 1999’s Requiem for a Dream. Sources tell EW.com that Wayans fought for the role, blowing the producers away with a 13- min screen test where he “transforms into Pryor.” The movie depicts Pryor’s controversial brand of comedy and his battle with drugs and is currently budgeted at $20 million. Chris Rock, Pryor’s widow Jennifer Lee Pryor and Mark Gordon are also lined up to produce.

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