Tuesday, December 22, 2009
10 Reasons to Kill the Senate Bill
FDL has become the go-to place for coverage of the health care bill due to the work of our incredible team. Jon Walker's second-to-none knowledge of the health care bill has made the policy and political analysis he offers up at FDL Action a driving force. Dave Dayen's reporting at the FDL News Desk, Marcy Wheeler 's research and in-depth analysis at Emptywheel, Laura Flanders' interviews at GritTV, our FDL team of writers and editors, and our community members at The Seminal provide the most independent and comprehensive picture of what's happening moment-by-moment on the health care debate to be found anywhere.
So, I asked them to help make it simple: how do we let people know what's going to happen to them if the Senate bill passes. Everyone put their heads together and came up with a list:
Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill
- Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations - whether you want to or not
- If you refuse to buy the insurance, you'll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
- Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can't afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums
- Massive restriction on a woman's right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court
- Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays
- Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won't see any benefits - like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions - until 2014 when the program begins.
- Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others
- Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
- No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years
- The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year - meaning in 10 years, your family's insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.
Background information on each point:
- Hardship Waiver And Restrictions On Immigrants Buying Insurance Undercut Arguments For An Individual Mandate, by Jon Walker
- What's in the Manager's Amendment by David Dayen
- MyBarackObama Tax by Marcy Wheeler
- Emperor Ben Nelson: All Your Uteruses Are Belong To Me by Scarecrow
- The Senate Bill is Designed to Make Your Health Insurance Worse by Jon Walker
- Best way to "Fix It Later" Is With No Individual Mandate Now by Jon Walker
- The Senate Health Care Bill is Built on a Mountain of Sand by Jon Walker
- The Devil in Anna Eshoo's Details by Jane Hamsher
- Liveblog of the Dorgan Reimportation Amendment by David Dayen
- Answering Nate Silver's 20 Questions on the Health Care Bill by Jon Walker
The Senate bill isn't a "starter home," it's a sink hole.
The Wrong Stuff
A terrifying show about compulsive hoarders.
Compulsive hoarding is the excessive collection of items, objects, things, stuff, and, quite literally, sentimental junk. On each installment of Hoarders, A&E profiles two people suffering from the disorder, and the channel does so in a way consistent with its gravelly voice. Throughout A&E's transformation from a network airing footage of the cellist Pablo Casals to one scheduling performances by the bounty hunter Dog, it has kept up its interest in noir tales and investigative narratives. Hoarders announces its link to that tradition with a bit of text appearing on-screen near the top of each episode. Rendered in a central-booking typeface, it reads, "More than 3 million people are compulsive hoarders. These are two of their stories." The hoarders stand accused of violating standards of personal hygiene and public health, the laws of the fire marshal and the feng shui master. Having hit bottom, they may be faced with eviction or losing custody of their children. Their homes are crime scenes, and the evidence is everywhere.
Americans Judge The Bush Decade: ‘Awful’ And ‘Not So Good’
According to the poll, a combined 58% said the decade was either "awful" or "not so good," 29% said it was fair, and just 12% said it was either "good" or "great." [...]
Asked what they thought had the greatest negative impact on America this past decade, 38% cited the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 23% picked the mortgage and housing crisis, 20% said the Iraq war, 11% chose the stock market crash, and 6% said Hurricane Katrina.
But 37% said it lost ground on the environment, 46% said it lost ground on health and well being, 50% said it lost ground on peace and national security, 54% said lost ground on the nation's sense of unity, 55% said it lost ground in treating others with respect, 66% said it lost ground on moral values, and a whopping 74% said it lost ground on economic prosperity.
Census Bureau figures released in September largely support the public's pessimistic take on the last decade:
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially. [...]
Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. … But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.
The poll comes as loyal Bushies are attempting to rewrite the former president's legacy and delude the public into believing that the country's current problems are all the fault of President Obama.
Bush Admin Raised Terror Alert Based On Con Man's Al Jazeera 'Decoding' Scam
by Justin Elliott
A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy.The report deals another blow to the credibility of the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terror alert system, and comes after Ridge's claim that the system was used as a political tool when he was DHS secretary.
The man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree. His former lawyer calls him a "habitual liar engaged in fraud."
Working out of a Reno, Nevada, software firm called eTreppid Technologies, Montgomery took in officials in the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and convinced them that technology he invented -- but could not explain -- was pulling terrorist-produced "bar codes" from Al Jazeera television broadcasts. Using his proprietary technology, those bar codes could be translated into longitudes and latitudes and flight numbers. Terrorist leaders were using that data to direct their compatriots about the next target.
But Montgomery's "technology" could not be reproduced, and the Playboy piece explains how he fell out of favor after word of what was going on spread in the CIA:
Sphere: Related ContentThe federal government was acting on the Al Jazeera claims without even understanding how Montgomery found his coordinates. "I said, 'Give us the algorithms that allowed you to come up with this stuff.' They wouldn't even do that," says the first officer. "And I was screaming, 'You gave these people fucking money?'" ...
Franken’s anti-rape amendment becomes law
The provision was sparked by the gang-rape of a 19-year-old Kellogg, Brown & Root employee by her coworkers in Iraq. After returning to the United States, Jamie Leigh Jones found she couldn't sue the company because of a clause in her employment contract.
Franken's amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act prohibits companies from using employment contracts to bar litigation over sexual assault or discrimination.
When the Senate took up Franken's measure, 30 Republicans voted against it. None cared to explain why, with some suggesting it's simply not the government's business to rewrite employment contracts.
In an especially well-publicized confrontation, a tearful Jones asking Senator David Vitter (R-LA) why he wouldn't support the amendment. He simply walked away.
The group of Senators eventually become a target of a satirical Web site called "Republicans for Rape."
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/frankens-antirape-amendment-law/
Upset over health care, McCain compares Democrats to Bernie Madoff
Tempers are flying high over the successful health care cloture motion, and the reputedly hot-headed senator on Monday accused Democrats of engaging in a Madoff-like ploy to rip off the American people.
"It's one of a great Bernie Madoff gimmicks that anybody's ever seen," McCain said on ABC's Good Morning America. "Republicans were never brought in to the negotiations. This is what you get — a split country — when American people are opposed to what we're doing."
"That's nutty stuff," McCain added. "And by the way, it's unacceptable."
McCain, who was visibly angry late Sunday night on the Senate floor, said several times that the negotiations were one-sided. His colleagues agreed, but none of his them appear to have taken the accusation so far as to compare Democrats to the greatest financial swindler of all time.
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/mccain-compares-democrats-bernie-madoff/
Monday, December 21, 2009
I'm Really Pissed Off About Health Care Reform
I'm pissed off at health care reform. I'm pissed off at this endless process of emotional highs and lows and exhilaration and dejection and history and infamy.
I'm pissed off that President Obama "thanked" the independent senator from Connecticut even though the senator nearly killed health care reform this week.
To that point, I'm pissed off at Joe Lieberman. I'm pissed off at his childish, vengeful, opposite-day hackery. I'm pissed off at his giant pie-shaped head and his passive aggression. I'm pissed off that he enjoys government-run Medicare benefits while opposing government-run insurance for the rest of us.
I'm pissed off at the Senate. The whole Senate. The rules, the senators, the color of the walls, the fact that a doof like Chuck Grassley can actually be elected to it. Multiple times. I'm pissed off that even though we finally have a 60 seat supermajority, it's dysfunctional and Harry Reid is in charge of it. I'm pissed off that senators of both parties receive government-run primary care from the Office of the Attending Physician, while denying it to everyone else.
I'm pissed off at cable news and the establishment press for focusing more on The David Letterman & Tiger Woods Underpants Party than the substance of health care reform.
I'm pissed off at Rahm Emanuel and I'm pissed off at the "scary profane a-hole" mythology that's built up around him, and how he only seems to use his powers of intimidation to bully the left.
I'm pissed off at the Republicans. I'm pissed off at their ongoing self-contradictions and lies and bumper sticker sloganeering. I'm pissed off that around 55 Republicans are on Medicare, yet they oppose government-run health care for the rest of us.
I'm pissed off at Tom Coburn's bulbous Dirk Diggler haircut.
I'm pissed off at having to compromise while a handful of lopsidedly powerful conservadems get whatever they ask for.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/im-really-pissed-off-abou_b_394943.html
Scientists crack 'entire genetic code' of cancer
Professor Mike Stratton: "This is a fundamental moment in cancer research"
| By Michelle Roberts |
Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.
Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.
Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer.
The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth.
China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas.
Dumbest business moments of the decade
1 of 10
Jan 10, 2000: You've got disaster!
AOL and Time Warner (Fortune's parent company) announced a $165 billion merger, promising to marry the best news and entertainment content with the distribution medium of the future, the Internet. To say it was a bad match is an exercise in understatement. In 2002, AOL Time Warner posted the largest-ever U.S. corporate loss as it wrote off most of the value of the merger. The next year, the company bid adieu to the managers who created it and stripped AOL from the corporate letterhead.
This month, Time Warner and AOL finally parted ways, nine years later and more than $100 billion poorer. So much for the deal Ted Turner once gushed was better than sex.
2 of 10
Jan 25, 2001: The Maestro's dubious debt warning
Just days after President George W. Bush took office, Fed chief Alan Greenspan admonished budgeteers about the dangers of -- get this -- too little federal debt."At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses currently projected imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government," Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee.
As it turns out, the United States has been able to kick its nasty surplus habit, spilling at least $158 billion of red ink every year since Greenspan's testimony. Yet thanks to the financial sector debt crisis that precipitated bailouts such as TARP, the feds ended up accumulating huge amounts of private assets anyway. We've got 7.7 billion shares of Citigroup -- any takers?
NEXT: July 19, 2002: WorldCom's bankruptcy
Weathering the storm of stupidity
By Gene Lyons
The spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought. --P.B. Medawar
So what's next? A series of essays by Sarah Palin about the Large Hadron Collider and the mysteries of dark matter? An MIT lecture series by Rush Limbaugh regarding the thermodynamics of black holes? A Festschrift of Sean Hannity's scholarly articles on plate tectonics and volcano formation? Glenn Beck performing live heart-lung transplants on Fox News?
Everybody understands that these things couldn't happen. That when it comes to serious scientific endeavor, years of study and professional apprenticeship are required. In a word, expertise.
Ex-beauty contestants, drive-time DJs, TV sports announcers, hairstylists, newspaper columnists -- basically anybody whose math skills topped out in the 10th grade -- rarely have anything substantive to add to the sum of technical and scientific knowledge. That's what they most resent about it.
It's not impossible that such persons could educate themselves sufficiently to have an informed opinion, but it's rare. Most of us, most of the time, are like historian and blogger Josh Marshall: "The fact that the vast majority of people with specialized knowledge in the field think there's a problem is good enough for me," he wrote. "I can't be knowledgeable about everything. And I'm comfortable with the modern system in which the opinions of really knowledgeable people with expertise counts more in cases like this than people who know nothing at all."
Unless and until, that is, scientific endeavor impinges upon either A) religious belief, or B) the ability of tycoons to keep making money in precisely the way they or their ancestors have always made their money. Then it's every man and woman a climatologist, and every genuine expert an "elitist" enemy of God and the American way -- creationism with a thermometer.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/12/16/stupidity/print.html
Marvel Universe President Obama versus Fox News President Obama – Who’s Worse?
by Avi Brand
The recent blockbuster news flash that Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 Billion made me wonder once again who is the worse President of the United States: Barack Obama as portrayed by the Marvel Universe, or Barack Obama as portrayed by Fox News. Well, I decided to stack them up head-to-head to settle the question once and for all.
The newly elected Marvel Universe Barack Obama made one of the most infamous cabinet appointments of all time, choosing Norman Osborn (formerly the murderous and insane Green Goblin) as head of all global peacekeeping agencies, including the revered Avengers. This version of Barack Obama has literally handed the reins of world peace and safety over to one of the most evil men on this or any other planet. Osborn has already clandestinely allied himself with Doctor Doom, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Loki the Norse God of Mischief, and the Criminal Syndicate Boss/Demon Sorcerer The Hood in an attempt to cement his power base and further extend his villainous tentacles into every corner of the Marvel Universe. Meanwhile, his agents are hunting down heroes like Tony Stark (Iron Man) and even Captain America, the very symbol of American power. And all with the Marvel Universe Obama's tacit approval. Makes Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers look like kindergartners.
The Fox News Barack Obama is a shady, smooth-talking totalitarian communist who is on an unholy mission to strengthen the federal government by any means necessary to a deadly sharp edge at home while systematically weakening our military oversees. His failed economic policies have destroyed this great country that we grew up in, and he will stop at nothing to blame America first for any problem anywhere in the world. Under his iron-fisted rule, the US will devolve into a Soviet-style, Nazi dictatorship that will enforce mandatory abortions on women, Koran classes on men, and euthanasia for old people. After barely seven months in office, he is already the worst president this nation has ever had. He is certainly the most anti-American. Makes Stalin and Hitler look like amateurs.
So who's worse?
Tom Friedman, museum exhibit
This might be one of the most self-contradictory episodes in the annals of American punditry:
Tom Friedman, The New York Times, yesterday:
A corrosive mind-set has taken hold since 9/11. It says that Arabs and Muslims are only objects, never responsible for anything in their world, and we are the only subjects, responsible for everything that happens in their world. We infantilize them.
Tom Friedman, over and over and over, for the last two weeks, on Afghanistan:
I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby.
The person who has spent weeks depicting Afghanistan as a "special needs baby" is now lecturing us about the "corrosive mind-set" of "infantilizing" Muslims. And the person who is now inveighing against seeing ourselves as "subjects" and Muslims as "objects" was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq on the ground that our invasion would "put Iraq on a more progressive path and stimulate some real change in an Arab world."
The "point" of Friedman's column yesterday is to call for a "civil war" in the Muslim world. Calling for wars is what Tom Friedman does most frequently. Today's not one of those days when I'm willing to wallow in the muck of his "argument," but Daniel Larison's superb response makes that unnecessary. Suffice to say: if I had to identify one fact that would illustrate for historians the rot and destructiveness of American political and media culture in this era, I would point to the fact that the trite, sociopathic, and grotesquely muddled mind of Tom Friedman is widely considered by political and media elites to be deeply Serious, profound and oozing great wisdom.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/17/freidman/index.html
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