http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/us/politics/30obama.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
I encourage all my friends to watch the video.... most fascinating political exchange in my memory. I hope we get more opportunities for open debate like this. Well done!
Watts
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"Angry attendees in the crowd interrupted Graham with cries of, 'You're a country club Republican,' 'Sotomayor!,' and 'You lie.' Outside the event, right-wing activist Julliet Kozak picketed the town hall with a sign decrying all 'Unconstitutional Anti-Christ Socialist Federal Deficit Spending Programs.'" Brad Johnson, meanwhile, collected reactions to Graham from prominent far-right blogs, where the South Carolinian has been called a "fake Republican," "RINO" (Republican in name only), a "traitor," "disgrace," "asshat," "democrat in drag," and a "wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy."
It's worth taking a moment to acknowledge Lindsey Graham's voting record here. The right is livid about his vote to confirm Sotomayor and his support for reforming U.S. energy policy, among other things. But given the apoplexy, one might think Graham had suddenly moved to the center. He hasn't.
In the always-helpful VoteView analysis, Graham is the 83rd most conservative senator in the current Congress, meaning only 17 senators are to his right. Graham is not only more conservative that most of the Senate, he's more conservative than most Republicans."
The Museum of Tropical Queensland in Australia is featuring one of my 3D anaglyph photos in their new Train exhibition."We might actually be able to change the conversation in America about religion.
Is that important? Yes, like it or not religion will not go away. It motivates the worst in the American psyche and some of the best too. It is Joe Wilson's religion of hate but it also motivated Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps a generation from now the image of a typical Christian won't be a hate-monger like James Dobson but rather a lover of peace such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, or a literary giant like John Updike, and yes, a President Obama.
The only real answer to the hijacking of Christianity by the Religious Right, the longevity of religion-based racism, and the backward and inward looking movement we now call "American Christianity" is not to talk everyone out a having faith but rather to fight for the humane and ancient thread found within the Christian tradition. Blaming everything on race is too easy."
Erosion of the Old Bald Head Dune from July to August 2009
The pictures are from different angles, but should be close enough to get the idea.
Weiner goes all the way, to the heart of the matter, something that my favorite compromizer, Pres. Obama, has been unwilling to do (so far). I say it's time to jettison bipartisanship and own this, Democrats. You're not going to get the Repubs on board without making things worse for our health care system. The problem to a large degree IS the health insurance companies. Partly because there is no real competition (I could choose at most between 2 companies, but what's the difference? They both have the right to disown me if it suits their needs), partly because of natural capitalist greed that works for most things we barter and buy, but not health care (or military).
"Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday's Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you're right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine!
Well, he didn't use those exact words, but Joe did seem to finally get that America has granted insurance companies the right to create bottlenecks in the financing of healthcare in order to extract profits out of the suffering of ordinary people--without providing any actual healthcare whatsoever.
"Why are we paying profits for insurance companies?" Weiner asked Scarborough. "Why are we paying overhead for insurance companies? Why," he asked, bringing it all home, "are we paying for their TV commercials?"
Weiner, who recently warned that President Obama could lose as many as 100 votes on a health bill if a public option is not included, really wants single payer--Medicare for all Americans is his goal. What a crazy, way-out, reckless notion, Joe went into their encounter believing. But Weiner asked some simple, direct questions that no politician, much less Obama or HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has managed to pose:
What is an insurance company? They don't do a single check-up. They don't do a single exam, they don't perform an operation. Medicare has a 4 percent overhead rate. The real question is why do we have a private plan?"It sounds like you're saying you think there is no need for us to have private insurance in healthcare," Joe asked at one point.
Weiner replied: "I've asked you three times. What is their value? What are they bringing to the deal?"
Scraping the bottom of a seemingly bottomless pit of spin, Joe is repeatedly left speechless, "stunned" and "astounded," he said, by the questions themselves. Indeed, when confronted with unfettered capitalism's massive failures, the right usually has nothing to say. The "free market" is supposed to eternally grow, not crash under its own greed. They're left ideologically crippled."
Where are the Christians? Wouldn't Jesus say that the poor & sick deserve health care? Where are the farmers who accept gov't subsidies to not grow crops? Where are the potential entrepreneurs who stay working for "the man", 'cause they're the only ones have reasonably priced health care plans? More to come on that...."To all rightwingers trying to subvert The Nation via neurotic nonsensical diversions ...
You didn't rage when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount & appointed a President.
You didn't rage when Cheney allowed energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn't rage when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn't rage when the Patriot Act took away so many of our rights.
You didn't rage when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn't rage when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn't rage when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn't rage when you saw the Abu Grahib photos (except like Rumsfeld to fume that they were ever allowed to be taken).
You didn't rage when you learned we were torturing people.
You didn't rage when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn't rage when we didn't nab Bin Laden.
You didn't rage when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
You didn't rage when we let a major US city drown.
You didn't rage when the deficit hit a trillion dollars.
But you finally start raging when the government decides that people in America deserve the right to see a doctor when they're ill."
Posted by sloper at 08/21/2009 @ 06:18am
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