Senate Passes Health Care Bill, 60-39

While the good news remains good, I fear Congress may still be on the wrong track.

Senators (and Dem Senators!) are already asking for no material changes to the Senate bill by the co-joining with the House.

From where I sit, the Senate has to come in line with and incorporate quite a few items from the House bill before this even gets close to what this "reform" was supposed to be about in the first place.

Otherwise...in spite of what good news there is, we'll be looking at health care modification and not a whole lot of heath care reform.

Just my (not to often) humble opinion.

"I ain't sayin'. I'm just sayin'. Know what I'm sayin'?"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

McCain Emerges As Front Man In GOP Efforts To Claim Reform Mantle

This is how our system rolls.

One party proposes and the other obstructs.

When the party that issues a proposal has been beaten down in the name of compromise, the obstructionist party uses that to it's own advantage by claiming to be the champion of the people.

I've watched this process back and forth with the two parties interchanging ideologies, loyalties, positions and intent publicly for more years than I care to mention here.

It's a sham and a con game that has been repeated in perpetuity on the American people in particular and on the global community in general throughout the last 150 years. A nominal amount of research into American history is all that is required to make that embarrassingly clear to anyone that genuinely cares to see it.

This story about the chameleons of government, fresh on the heels of thhi recent defeat of the health care reform is ample truth delivered yet again on top of yet an already existent hard truth.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Accused Of Abandoning Health Care Principles In New Ad

Watch Obama's speech to Congress on Sept. 9, 2009 and from Minnesota Sept. 13, 2009 (The first is on Youtube...it's part of the infamous, Joe Wilson "You lie" speech) The second, you may need to search for.

There's no question that the President was At that time in favor and supportive of a public option and a litany of other health care proposals for the benefit of the people.

Unfortunately the effort wasn't sustained and his initial support started and ended much to early to be of any consequence when it was really neded when the House and Senate were deliberating.

We could have used him on this. And while I'm deeply disappointed as are so many others, rather than accuse him of negligence I think it's just his management style to assume that Reid and Pelosi would have follwed up on his proposals for HCR...and in Reid's case, that's where the ball was dropped.

Unfortunately, as in football, the team gets the credit for the wins but the coach gets the blame for the losses.

Either way, it's not a very promising piece of legislation at this point for the people of Ameria and it doesn't help to be smacked in the face with the reality that Congress (especially the Senate) is more accountable to business and industry than the people they were sent to Washington to serve.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Unemployment Programs In 40 States About To Go Broke

We have had better days.

And unless a new approach is applied, we may not see the likes of them again. This is not going well at all.

Obama is renacting the Dutch boy at the dike, trying to fill the leaks with cash, but everytime he does so, a new leak arises.

This was perhaps not the best plan for us.

Perhaps it would be different if we weren't locked into private banking and having a Fed.

Countries and gov'ts have the means and the right to print their own money, interest free without having to pay interest on it. Instead we're just incurring more and more debt.

The larger the debt, the more credit is extended and more interest is accrued which ensures more taxes to pay the interest while the debt still grows accruing more interest, requiring more taxation...and on and on.

A vicious cycle which has us hemorrhaging finacially with no tourniquet in sight.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Small Business Lending Programs To Get $30B In Bailout Assistance

"Better late than never" and "Better than nothing" are going to be the slogans that this administration is remembered for if they don't get their heads in gear and start taking a direct management approach to providing for this economy and the needs of the American people.

You can't just keep dumping money into the banks as though they are the financial equivalent of BlackWater/Xe and excpect to win the war on this economy.

For that matter, you can't use Congress as "contractors" either to promote an agenda to create a healthcare plan, as we have seen over the last few months.

This White House has got to become as interested/involved in and take ownership of these things to the same degree of ownership and hardship as the American people.

It's not a football team, and we don't need a coach. There's only room on the team for players and The White house is skirting becoming one by suffling all of our issues on to other interests for a huge price.

Where is the "boots on the ground", hands on leadership that most of us who voted for this president expected?
About Small Business
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Wen Offer No New Emissions Cuts -- China Blamed For Lack Of Progress

As a nation our leadership has the tendency to want to play the role of cartoonist Hank Ketcham's Margaret to the world's default enactment of Dennis Mitchell. We insist on when the tea party will take place, who attends, when and how the cups and saucers are arranged and God help Dennis if he doesn't want to sheepishly comply with every set condition, rule of etiquette or social agenda for the afternoon event because in a snit, Margaret will in whatever way possible lay the biggest guilt trip on Dennis and absolve herself of anything contrary to just trying to bring the best out of everyone for the sake of everyone involved no matter how intrusive and over bearing her "requests", demands or behaviors may be.

Yes, America has control issues which in and of itself isn't lethal. But when a solution may be needed for a dramatic peaceful, international coalition to help stave off a potential global threat from the environment, and America's leadership believes that not addressing the issue due to differences in stewardship is the only realistic and available option, or an existing, reasonable option at all... it could eventually turn out to be.

For everyone.

Bearing in mind that the world's collective body of failing solution seekers will be the last people on the planet negatively affected by those possibly disastrous results.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

'Obama Doctrine' Praised By Conservatives After Nobel Speech

Whether or not Obama saying he would stay the course in Afghan surprised anyone or not, is not the issue.

Doing the right thing according to the majority of Americans who put him in office and why and what is morally correct and in accord with the majority of all Ameircans and the better interests of this country is his primary responsibility.

Continuing a course that has been attempted for 8 years and has proven to be a drain on our economy, morally unqualified and in opposition to what most Americans asked wish our military to be involved in is of benefit to no one at this point but industry and the MIC.

The Afgha occupation is but the tip of President Obama's NOT "getting it".

We remain in Iraq. Almost 50% of our budget has been awarded to industry and banking in lock step with the past President's policies and what was to be a national health care reform is being chiseled away to a shadow of what has been working in other nations (36!) for years.

The people who voted for Obama are not seeing the implied and stated objectives of his presidency. But again and again some people hold up his dogged commitment to a futile war as a wonderful accomplishment as though he were fulfilling his promises to those who voted for him.

It's not. And the people who held him up long enough to gain the Oval Office know it.
About Barack Obama
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Obama Afghanistan War Plan Set To Get Congress' Backing, Despite Misgivings

As usual...th­e country is in the septic tank and far too many people use the opportunities given them to speak out by trying to generate a good spin for their party of preference.

There's only one party people.

That's why no matter who is in the White House or who has the majority in Congress evrything still remains a mess.

Look at the economy, unemployment, outsourcing of jobs to foriegn countries, uneven trade agreements, rising taxes, devalued currency, Iraq, Afhghanistan, Iran,Pakistan, past wars, our inefficient and hobbling social programs and ineffective regulatory system... All of these things took decades and both the Republicans and the Democrats working in tandem to get this country this funky.

So the next time you think you have to defend your poitical party by blaming or berating the other one....con­sider whether you're just blowing smoke up your own skirt because we only have one party in America.

And it has been failing us for a long, long time.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

EasyJet Causes Controversy With Holocaust Memorial Fashion Shoot

These camps, while a stark reminder of our capability for inhumanity, are not religious or sacred shrines to the whole of mankind.

If in the United States we can sculpt and erect larger than life carvings of the busts of US Presidents on the same sacred lands where millions of native American Indians were slaughtered and suburban housing and strip malls can be constructed, where are the proprieties of those who insist that taking photos in soveriegn countries other than their own can somehow be prohibited and repressed indefinitely?

Is it acceptable to explore , record and depict in photos the ruins of the people who were eradicated by the Spainish Conquestadors? Is it a social affront to use as a back drop for a photo shoot, the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

Then please let's stop this nonsense that these long ago evacuated camps in Europe should be held up as religious holy lands worthy of only global worship. We're closing in on nearly a century after this event. How and when will those who survived the halocaust, ever truly heal from it, if they can't (like so many other people of other brutalized civilizations ) put it to rest and move on beyond it??

Frankly, I'm very tired of having my nose rubbed in this chapter of history every month or so, to appease and console people that regardless of what the world has done for positively choose to remain inconsolable and appear to be victims.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Philip Morris Ordered To Pay $300 Million To Former Smoker

As a smoker of 45 years (minus the attempts to shelve it) I think this is judgement is absolutely out of proportion text book case of legitimized insanity.

If anyone that smokes tobacco, dosen't know that stuffing a paper tube with dried vegetation between your lips, lighting it and inhaling the smoke, 20, 30 or 40 times each day, year after year just might eventually lead to respiratory complications these people should have kept a date with the Grim Reaper long before they could have been rewarded for their stupidity.

Do these same people stand around a bonfire or a burning pile of autmn leaves and breathe deeply? No. They recoil and gasp for oxygen like anyone does. Instinctively they are painfully aware of the toxicity of breathing in fuming leaves. They know it too, regarding tobacco.

A $300 million dollar reward for feigning ignorance and holding someone else for your own negligence to yourself...and barring "feigning" ignorance and truly being unable to recognise or accept the possible consequences of your own actions...perhaps this is the best argument I've heard yet for leagalized euthanasia.

It's a sad day when awards are given to this sum for sheer ignorance, stupidity and lack of personal accountability, in any circumstance.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The 15 Biggest Congressional Recipients Of Wall Street Campaign Cash

It's nice to see that the Republicans and Democrats can work together on something.

Too bad it's on bipartisan greed and selling out the American voter for greed and profit.

But many of us knew this already.

It's time to see it and call it as it is. The American people no longer have the power of representation in government.

It's also time for more self representation through developing a national means to increase the opportunty for voter participation in the policy of America.

Can we afford it? Yes. If we stop nation building elsewhere and apply that capital here.

More self representation. Less republic.

More true democracy. Less hypocrisy.

If it doesn't change, America will never be a nation for, of and by the people.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Fed Chairman Blames Banks For Continued High Unemployment

Before the banks, came industry that demanded maximum output for minimum input. Look at the salaries of degreed people in social service, teaching, nursing, health services, janitorial maintenance, food services. Consider the under qualified, over educated people in even low and middle management positions in corporate America who perform as little more than liasons and messengers between upper management and production personnel.

The banks (through design and the Federal Reserve system) are responsible for what's going on currently. But before they became the black (economic) hole in America, our system and culture had already surrendered to the greed of industry in general. And education in particualr after becoming a national growth industry of equal status. We have been led to believe that they are necessary and inseperable regardless of their focus on developing a national dependance upon them, while the quality of their product diminishes year after year for sake of complicit profits.

Now, for some of the most mudane, repetitive employment opportunities people must meet or exceed the degree of education that earlier physicians and attorneys needed only to be awarded wages that deny the validity of their qualifications, whether good or badly taught.

There is no one thing that has brought our economy to the brink.

We are reaping what we and our predecessors have sown in the culture we created.

A gluttonus creature that remains insatiable until it devors even the people who feed it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Anwar al-Awlaki, Radical Imam, Becomes New Focus In Fort Hood Killings Investigation

Is he really sending out messages?

You really buy into that?

How do you know? Because the people that want to continue this insanity tell you he is??

Not good enough for me.

You're being sold one.
About Yemen
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Federal Reserve: Weak Recovery Means High Unemployment For Several Years

It's not as if the formula for a rapid and effective recovery has never been used before in America. Why must this gov't be so egocentric as to think it need reinvent the wheel each time something need be done for this nation and its people?

We need to first stop spending trillions on nuilding other nations which requires our military and those additional costs. Then we need to fund industries (small and medium) to begin developing and producing energy alternative to fossil fuels. We can also deploy Roosevelt and Eisenhower's means to creat employment and open up opportunities for people to be employed for repairing our infrastructure nationally­...without someone needing to be someone alreadyon the road crews relative. There are also plenty of social programs that could be funded to increase staffing and programs that could be implemented to get people (some are families with children) from having to sleep inthe streets of America...10,000 people are homeless in LA alone and live like refugees in a third world country!

There are things to do to expedite America's recovery. We just don't have the representation to get these things done, without politicians reinventing the wheel and cautiously taking care not to lose the benefits, perks and money from the lobbyists and industrialists that our representation is primarily concerned with.

Less republic.

More democracy.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Top Bailout Recipients Spent $71 Million On Lobbying In Year Since Bailout

Quite the inflammatory main.

What did anyone expect?

Credit card interest rates are being increased so that the taxpayer can help pay back the money that was loaned to the banks and credit industry by the same people that gave them the bailout.

And the banks took all that they could get and still appear squimish to lend any back...again to the very source of where the bailout came from...the US taxpayer.

The health insurance industry and the pharms have spent a ton on lobbyists to defeat a public option that would provide the American taxpayer some decent coverage and affordable meds and are raising their rates and prices as we speak so that again the consumers can pick up that bill.

And all the while, the politicains on bith sides of the aisle are dragging their feet, because they are highly motivated to not kill this csh cow none to soon.

$71 million on lobbyists isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

And I'm supposed to get all politically militant over a small slice of "business as usual" on Capitol Hill?

Not hardly.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The anniversary of hope. What was and will never be.

It should be becoming apparent to even the stanchest believers that the office of the President no longer wields the sort of power that it may have at one time in America.
The system is far too convoluted and fractionalized with those powers being distributed between industry, banking interests and the flow of capital from these entities and into the halls of our representation in Washington to the point where America itself has become a corporation, silently controlled by the will of huge financial investors equivelant to stock holders and proxied interests.
Our Presidents, (and specifically this President) have been reduced to just one more voice in the crowd (albeit a louder one) with no more control over the processes than steering the predesignated course of this country's real but unseen navigators and occasionaly standing on the bow of this ship alerting us when either shoals or rocks or land is visible from his vantage point.
The presidency (and again this President in particualr) is not lacking, faulty or broken. The system is.
The hull of this ship called America has been breached for 100 years and it is all we as it's crew or any given president can do but to bail and pump so that we don't swamp completely. And the water rises with each decision, each bill and each term served by elected officials.

Until we as a nation recognize and accept this for the reality that it is, we can never hope to make the necessary repairations to stay afloat and perhaps once again set sail on our properly intended course because we have handed the helm over to privateers and mutineers who have as much to gain or more through our sinking as they do with our returning to a safe passage.

Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing

The audacity of my hope was that Obama would enter office with pen a-blazing and he would repair the damage that the past POTUS and CO had inflicted on this country, our gov't and the office.

While the reality of his term is turning out to do otherwise, that hope has diminished to a large degree, to the point where much to my disappointment and unfortunately, less to my surprise, he appears to be just a more palatable version of the same type of champion of the status quo that any person who rises to this level of office turns out to be. I can remain as patient as most of us who voted for him, but I have better things to do than continuously listen with my ear to the ground for the earth to shake and give way to the new dawn for America that many of us thought putting Barak Obama in the White House would bring.

I still wish him well. I just no longer expect very much from him.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Clinton Makes Personal Bid To Resume Mideast Talks

Some people feel we are holding Israel hostage with the funding we provide them with on a regular, ongoing, annual schedule.
Funny (and not in a "ha-ha"way) the term "hostage" is used.
Because that is exactly the image that comes to mind when I consider the plight of the people in Israel who are not Israeli and confined to Gaza.
I'm not talking about the radical fringe, extremists who keep lobbing primitive fireworks on other people.
I'm talking about the everyday Palestinian that would just like to go to work each day, enjoy basic amenities we all take for granted like fresh water, sanitation, hospitals, schools and electricity... and would simply like to earn a living and provide for their children and families....like we all do.
These people can no better stop the Hamas from doing the harm they do to Israel than we in America can do can stop our gov't from the damage it has been responsible for in Iraq and Afghanistan for 8 years now. Quite certainly, they can do even less.

Perhaps, rather than having our Secretary of State beg to allow us to orchestrate their peace talks in Israel, we should accept the reluctance of that country for our services and withdraw our efforts and our contributions in the billions each year to their treasury as well.
What is the point of funding a people who refuse our efforts to help create peace when they insist that this accomplishment is beyond their own resources and obviously (as time has shown) they cannot accomplish this on their own?
It's one thing for us to come-a-courting with gifts and services, but do we need to do so as a spurned lover?
I don't think so. Not so much. It's too much.
About Hillary Clinton
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Seven Members Of House Defense Subcommittee Scrutinized By Ethics Investigators

Term limits, investigations, caving into industry pressures and approving multi-industrial bailouts to the point where it interfers and alters providing legislation in accordance with the will of the people on issues such as the use of our military, job creation, healthcare, the economy, credit and housing regulations (the list goes on) and the corruption of individual representative stemming from lobbyists as in this story creates a list of self serving pirates that gets longer every year. Over time, America as it was intended has experienced a silent yet totally effective coup.

Does anybody still believe there's any possible way this system will ever be fixed and made right again in any short order to save a sinking ship?

Electing a President (or a string of them) that promises change for the better, (even those with the best intentions) or sending any handfull of new Congress people to the Hill every cycle is not going to provide the needed cure for this patient called America.

Even holding the hope for a better America is becoming a scarce commodity in the face of the shape this government is in. And it has transformed (deteriorated) to such a degree, that it may never again be within the power of the American people to ever have the capital or influence to make it right again.

"Give me control over a nation's currency and I don't care who makes the laws.” ~ Mayer Rothschild~
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Inside The Tripper's Brain: Scientists Create 3D Maps Of Brains On Drugs (VIDEO)

I find it interesting that this video was every bit (or more) as much a piece of anti-hallucinogenic propaganda as it was (as announced) an information piece on the research being done in mapping the brain using hallucinogenics. It was not balanced in that only the negatives of the drug were highlighted to any real depth while the positives such as resultant individual consciousness expansion, the many positive uses it can and has been used for in the treatment of various psychiatric ailments and as a tool to help people release themselves from self destructive dependencies on substances such as alcohol. I am but a layman but I am an advocate of regulated use of certain types of pharmaceutical grade hallucinogenics being made available to the public for personal use in controlled environments and assisted by trained medical personnel in specially designed spa based clinics for the purpose of the occasional internal vacation which could vastly expand a person's view of the physical paradigm to the point where the average, everyday person's irrational fears, tensions and seemingly overwhelming daily obstacles could be reduced and exposed for the illusions they truly are.

Really, when you dig right down to the core of it, our society, culture, media, nationalism, politics, policies toward the world around us are all thier own form of hallucinogenics and illusion as things are, and having a cleansing alternative on occassion (under controlled conditions) would be an eye opening experience for anyone who has never experienced it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Feingold: No Public Option A "Strong Reason" Not To Support Reform

WHy the buzz?

Obama is either for it or against it but it's not in his hands at the moment.

If any bill for reform gets passed by the House and the Senate, Obama (if he's truly against it) can simply veto. If he signs it, it's law.

Either way, either the people get reform or Obama will face the consequences of killing the bill, a very hard thing for him to recover from after all these years of foot dragging from both sides of the aisle.

Then too, if Obama is even voicing opposition to reform at all, perhaps it's no maore than a face saving gesture so he can face his contibutors and honestly state that he did the best he could to oppose it on the Hill, whether he went through the motions for political purposes or not.

Bottom line?

Keep the pressure on the Senate and House for reform. And no matter what sort of buzz the media generates, remember, they as well as we only get half of any story until it's finalized.

So what happens prior to hitting the President's desk is all speculative. Until Obama signs or vetoes the reform bill, let's not count him out over the buzz created for "click counts", Neilsen ratings or paper circulation.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

White House's Fox News Boycott Attempt Prompts Network Revolt

In America the media can eliminate presidential candidates from scheduled nationwide televised debates based on whether or not the media considers any given candiate to be a credible contender or whether the media feels any candidate is or isn't electable, months before so much as a primary has been held.

No Problem.

But heaven forbid the White House elminate a "news source" from an interview that they consider less than credible and news worthy because of their obsession with blatant pontificating and base level, anti government, rabble rousing since January.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think they should have any sort of press block out against Fox or anyone else, but the perogative should be theirs under the circumstances and the nature of Fox News.

Just as Huff on occasion needs to rely on posting stories from the N.Y and Washington Times, People magazine and others, the news itself would have been available to FOx as well as everyone else that wasn't invited.

But the White House is spot on in their assessment of the caliber of genuine "news" that Fox brings to the public. And as such, if they wish to be included to events with the other news carriers, perhaps they should get in line and at least appear to be as legitimate in their delivery of the news of the day as the other journalists invited to the table.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Public Option? What is the Public Option?

I'm tellin' ya! This is scarey.
The people are so tired of hearing about HCR that they appear willing to just take whatever the Congress can sell us on as being "good enough" rather than us insisting that the best option is what they need make law and nothing less.

By the time this "Public Option" hits the table in it's final draft, it isn't going to look anything like what a lot of people think it's going to. It has purposly been made much more complicated than it need be, (or the Single Payer plan is) for just that sort of wiggle room so the politicans in Congress can equally appease the insurance industry while appearing to be serving "the people".

I am no expert on what the particulars are that were originally presented by "Public Option" or what they will ultimately turn into. But I can tell you what Single Payer is, by comparison. And it's not the game show that's taking place over and around the constant revisions of the Public Option as we told it might be.

Here's a link to the National Organization of Women web site where you can see at a glance the difference between Public Option and Single Payer.
You decide which offers the best and clearest plan to consider allowing Congress to settle upon on our behalf.

http://www.canow.org/.a/6a00e54ee7ad648834011570345bef970c-popup

Caught on Tape: Obama Adviser Explains How to Control Media

There is nothing here that compares to the last 8 years of press blackout that America has experienced or the draconian restrictions that the press were eager enough to give way to during that time.

Information blackouts on character and professional histories related to the President and Vice President, permissibl­e/allowabl­e questions provided for reporters before speeches and interviews, restricted coverage exclusively for favored imbedded reporters in Iraq, bans on photographs of so much as a flag draped coffin returning to the states, and networks cancelling "regular"programs and shows found to be questioning policy or leadership (Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect", for one).

It is necessary for any administration to develop a policy for themselves on how to interact with the press, especially with the wings of the press that regardless of leadership would care to paint a negative image of that administration. But developing a policy towards interacting with the press is far different than what preceded the Obama administration. It hasn't been until recently that journalism in America has even begun to once again address that their purpose is to inform and report to the people with out restraint.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Congressional Committees Quietly Kill Portion Of Derivatives Bill; No One Watching For Systemic Risk

This is starting to resemble the ol' razzle-dazle.

While the health care reform package is capturing everyone's attention, there's bill upon bill being whittled and stripped and made worthless regarding the banks and the necessary regulation of the money industries. Yesterday, a bill that makes 98% of the banks exempt from oversight, today it's more lieniency for derivitives and again exemptions of oversite in general.

There are a lot of consessions being made by our elected representatives in committee, on issues that demand no compromise.

The bailouts we were asked to afford these industries, appear to have gone to help several House and Senate members shore up their treasuries for future elections or God knows what. But not to aid the economy as yet and it's certainly doesn't appear that anyone in that crowd wants to stand behind enforcing the regulations that repairations to our economy demand.

So, while the health care reform continues to take center stage to Balloon Boy on one side and Beck crying on the other, keep your eyes on what's going on behind the Big Top.
That's where the real show stoppers are.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy

The beauty of this whole teabaggers movement is this, the tea party of historic fame was carried out by the Tories, or the "liberal" independence favoring colonists while the "conservative' or Whig party, which favored the monarchy of England over self rule we're opposed to demonstrations that opposed King George and often went out of their way to help the Brits bring the true people with the spirit to create this country in front of a British firing squad.

The humor is how the righties have absconded the whole tea party thing and the "we're the true patriots" cry, when to this very day, it's the Whig party that again opposes almost any progressive or forward moving idea that willl move this country into the future.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Senate Health Care Bill Will Get Every Democrat's Vote, Says Baucus

Having this health care bill, as it is, meet with bipartisan approval isn't going to make it for for the needs of the people or the consumer protection required for an industry gone wild with gouging an already injured consumer base.

This needs to be a tripartite bill with the third party in approval being the American people. Over 65% of the people in multiple polls have favored a bill that includes a public option with no hard lines drawn, but a strong preference being shown for a single payer platform similar to other existing systems elsewhere.

President Obama must show resolve in which ever bill he either vetoes or signs into law based on our future as a nation capable of the intelligence and compassion to tend to its own as even many lesser nations do.

The passage of a compromise bill into law which will require an overhaul within a decade or so is not likely ever get the attention a second time that it has now and will remain broken and falling almost immediately.

It is our duty to remember which Representative or Senator that does not ultimately vote according to the will of the people and the best possible health care option available and make certain that their political careers come to an abrupt close in the very next election cycle. Unfortunately, this would include our President himself if he can not show the leadership to provide for the needs of the people on this issue.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

NY Times On McChrystal's Long War

Just a thought. Aside from the cost to our economy at this particualr time, Americans mind and efforts might best be put to entertaining how we can get the domestic terrorism off the streets of Chicago, L.A.. New York, Philadelphia, Miami...and almost every other major metropolis in this country rather thanin Afghanistan.

If you do a little research you'll find that the death rate from homicides and injury rates from assaults are staggeringly exponentially larger than those being experienced in Afhanistan and/or Pakistan. And while the Taliban, is perhaps, maybe, potentially threatening. The terror right here at home is ongoing and prevelent already.

Afghani people may require protection from their domestic terrors, but so do Americans, and to a much larger degree. Our primary alligence is supposed to be to our own nation not Afghanistan.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Foreclosures: 'Worst Three Months Of All Time'

You can dish out bail outs all day long, but if you don't have any regulations with teeth in them to prohibit the very same business behavior that fueled the original problem, the stimulus won't stimulate and the bad practices will continue to drag the country and the economy down.

As things are, someone could have just driven by the houses of these housing jackels and just threw money out a car window and onto their lawns.

This failure to regulate the hundreds of billions which has in effect only further mortgaged America's future isn't human error. It's strategic. It's incompetent. It's "strategic incompetence".

A great way to placate the American people and appease the banks and the housing industry while serving, not the people, but the lobbyists.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Jaycee Dugard's New Photo & Interview: "I'm So Happy To Be Back"

[Def.] "Voyeurs: Obsessive observers of sordid or sensational subjects. (Compare to Peeping Tom)



The recovery and resilience of this woman and her children is a testimony to the human spirit.

But somehow, I don't think that is the part of the story that America is collectively and compulsively drawn to, is it. We, (thanks to television and media) are unexplicably drawn to the scene of road kill and revel in the repeated replay of the cringe inducing details of the events that led up to it.

While we have spent our energies since crawling from the caves and into scientific exploration attempting to change the nature of this very planet itself.

But have done very little to change human nature, other than to improve our access to our baser interests and fascination with the perverse.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Quietly Authorized 13,000 Support Troops For Afghan War

The Taliban is an internal affair for Afghanistan to deal with as their self determination dictates and allows them to.

It is by no means a moral objective warranting our presence, but a blind disguised as a defense concern and an undeclared matter of pride and revenge against a small group of apha goat herders with financial backing, visions of grandure and political aspirations to rule the country in which they are nationals.

In the course of 8 years and now two American Presidents, the lines between the facts have been deliberately blurred to keep us there indefinitely because certain powerful and select interests are making a fortune on it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

John Forehand: Man 'Asked Teen Daughter For Sex On Facebook' (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Despite my reluctance to subscribe to any of the "social networks" that have propagated on the internet, I suppose it's true. MySpace and FaceBook have opened great opportunities and new vistas for people and families to stay in touch with each other. Aside from the positives of allowing people to remain in touch and to express themselves they also present us an abject lesson in the nature of duplicity.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Insurers Mount Attack Against Health Reform

We've been discussing this, it seems forever. My dogs, by now have a better understanding of the pros and cons of health care reform and the difference/benefits involved with public option than it appears the well paid and pampered people who are putting this reform together for us are. If but one of them, or a family member had the immediate need for some sort of insured health care just now and couldn't afford it, as millions of Americans are experiencing, this bill would have been completed and signed with only the most convenient provisions months ago. Does Congress think the American taxpayer doesn't know this?? Many Americans are uninsured but that doesn't make them blind to being manipulated for the sake of what's good for politicians, lobbyists and the insurance industry.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Goldstone Report: Palestinians' Anger At Their Leaders Intensifies

Does anyone mind if we put a little extra time into our own 300 + year old country and the mess we have to get on top of here for awhile rather than continue to wail and moan over the Middlle (frakkin') East and their 2000 + years of discord which they' seem quite content to carry out for the next 2000 years??? If they were as worried about it as much as America has been since 1948...they could have found a resolution by now. It's theirs. They created it. Let them wallow in it. So we can make our own needs our primary focus for a change. I know, I know...that sounds very much isolationist. And I really have no guilt over it at this time. America doesn't seem to mind being isolated as far as the genocides and tragedies occuring throughout Africa for the last 100 years are concerned, but let someone so much as sneeze in the Middle East and our media, DOD and the people in America go up 2 DEFCON levels because someone showed them a bright, shiney sparkly thing half way around the world.

Our country and gov't is at the moment in worse shape than at any time since the Civil War.

Give it a break people. America can not afford to visit the blood-mobile and donate, because we're already hemorrhoraging all over ourselves from a head wound.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Iran To "Blow Up The Heart Of Israel" If Attacked, Says Top Official

We have much more pressing issues that warrants occupying our attention in America than this weekly barrage of empty threats from a country without nuclear capabilities, making angry overtures about how they would defend themselves from attack from an even smaller country which has an active and ready nuclear arsenal and (most likely) the international sympathies that would allow them to use them.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

NASA Moon Bombing: WATCH NASA's LCROSS Mission Crash The Moon (LIVE VIDEO, PHOTOS)

NASA or the United States does not own the frakkin' moon! By what rights does anyone have the ownership to deface the moon under any circumstances?? And look...it's not like they've run out of constructive things to do in space. Nasa hasn't figure everything out yet. The way I see it, we're all equal owners of the moon. Next time you want to rape it, call me first. I'll remind you of that while I'm saying, "No". Kids!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

There ar 2 points I fear many here today are missing completely. 1) This should be a good day for America. OUR President (whether you voted for or like him or not) has won a very prestigious award which reflects well on our country and all of us. And 2) It doesn't matter one iota whether you think he should have won this award. It's not within your jurisdiction or "field of entitlement" to have any say in the matter... any more than it would be if you thought he should have won it and didn't. Try to remember your limitations and humble out, a bit on occassion. Not every decision on the planet requires your approval.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dennis Miller on the O'factor....Show me the funny!

No one argues that Fox Broadcasting isn't a master at media manipulation, choosing just the right people (no pun intended) of any given stereo type because the messenger better carries the message. And too, they do manage with news and programming to cater to the baser wave lengths of the public as much as possible because it (through no fault of Fox) is an easy draw audience. The argument is that Fox dilutes it's news coverage so much with innuendo, subtle (and not so subtle) coded affronts to the current administration and plays upon the fears, insecurities and limited critical thinking of their viewership who oft times more than not are not inclined to question a talking head.

This was not the critical approach Fox afforded to or uses when a republican administration (specifically the Bush Administration) is at the reigns, by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyone can deny or discredit this claim, but you may want to view a montage of Fox over the years beginning with Bush I and all the way up through Clinton, Bush II then Obama.
See if you think, you're watching a "fair and balanced" news station.
So is Fox good at media manipulation? You bet.
But so was Joeseph Goebbels. So that doesn't say much for the worthiness of their content.
Read the Article and see the viddie at HuffingtonPost

New Baucus Bill Would Cover 94%!

Uh,...lessee...94% of 360 million...­h-m-m-m-m. That would leave 21 million Americans in the same boat that approx 20 to 45 million of them are already in now.
H-m-m-m. What does Baucus think we are, idiots??
Back to the drawing board fellas. If it were your family in that 6% of Americans uncovered, you never would have brought it to the table.
Why, oh why is this guy even on this committee???
He's reportedly accepted approx. 3 million in campaign funds from the very industries he's supposed to be designing this bill to protect us from and he's already come out with 2 ugly as hell options...in my book that's 3 strikes.
He should be outta' there.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Afghan War: 8 Years of Americans Being Kept In The Dark

Whether we stay in Afghanistan or we leave it to it's own self determination (I propose the latter) it's time, once and for all for our government to finally openly state exactly what the need and purpose for our presence there honestly is and to what specific end. It is not the Taliban. And if it is, Afghanistan needs to pony up and handle this or any threat to their country and government the same way we would, the same way Israel does and every other country that isn't afforded the luxury of having billions of American dollars and thousands of American troops at their bidding for their personal "homeland security". That being said, the reason we are in Afghanistan is not bin Laden either. If you or I or anyone else in our own country "disappeared" for 7 years, we would be pronounced as legally dead and our possessions would be placed in estate to be divided between our next of kin. Well, aside from the occasional video or audio tape, which may or may not actually be Osama, I think it's safe to say that if he is not dead, he is most certainly an inert element in this Afghanistan mix, having no affect on Afghani existence one way or the other.

The reasons we are in Afghanistan appears to many Americans to be no more than a military expansion and strong hold to further destabilize other countries in the Middle East and ensure both a means to improve the opportunities to encroach upon Iran and Syria in order to ultimately enable the prospect of a land based delivery system (pipeline) for fossil fuels. In the end, all of this amounts to just so much speculation however, because Americans have not been factually informed on what the preoccupation is that their taxes, military and government are being put to use for. I think it's time that we genuinely begin to demand an honest explanation. 8 years without one...and we cannot afford to remain silent any longer. Ditto for Iraq.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Arab States Have Launched Secret Moves To Stop Using U.S. Currency For Oil Trading

Well, that's just about a wrap. Now the Arab oil barons don't even want to touch American currency, because it isn't worth a penny more than the paper it's written on. This is how empires fall. Anyone want to stop all the "We're number 1!" attitude yet and take a sincere and long look at what America's status is becoming in the world? And how's that Federal Reserve national banking system working out for everybody on Main Street?

"Well you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changing!"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

TARP Watchdog's Report: Treasury Misled Public On Bailouts

Uh...we have no "treasury" in the common understanding of the word.
Since 1913 when we embraced the Federal Reserve, our "treasury" has been reduced to an accounting firm that merely tracks the money that we ask the "Fed" to print up for us and the skyrocketing interest vs principle that we ( after 100 years) will never escape from under.
While the term "treasury" provides some illusion to our independant solvency as a nation and a people, it is hardly representative of vaults filled with precious metals and such that provides genuine solid worth to our country's dubious fortunes or the value of our currency.
We're in debt because we bought into more a than questionable financial arrangement with national (and now international) banking systems rather than maintain a "pay as you go with currency spent, for the equal value of currency held, and now the piper must be paid; in much the same fashion as paying off a mortgage on a house or in these times, facing foreclosure.
The banks aren't failing. The banks are the Federal Reserve, collectively.
It's the Federal Reserve that is failing because it's purpose has run it's course. It and we as a nation are over extended beyond any hope of making good on even the interest on our loans, leaving both the lender and the borrower unable to secure either payment or capital on debt(s) outstanding. We are living in an economic structure best portrayed as an open ended spiral moving downward.
But be sure. We unfortunately do not have a "treasury" per se. And that's the real problem.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

As Layoffs Persist, Good Jobs Go Unfilled...(So were told.)

Either these companies are throwing up a smoke screen to make it appear that they are busy and solvent and hiring (when they aren't) or they've removed the word "training" from their vocabulary.
I don't care what a person's education or work history is, when entering a new work place there is always a period of training in order to orient the employee to the administrative, technical and procedural environment they are entering. Saying that nurses, engineers and other people specialized and educated to that purpose simply don't fit these jobs is pure bunk.
Minimal training on exactly how the company would like these people to use their skill sets (even at a temporarily lower pay scale) would certainly fill the needs of that company and help unemployment roles and the unemployed.
This is a thin veil that helps companies appear financially vital at a time when many companies are not and hiring has been frozen, not due to lack of skilled, educated people but because of the economy we're in and industry's something for nothing insistancy.
I don't care if you apply at Starbucks and have experience making coffee elsewhere...some training is required. The same applies to these companies and more so in the sciences.
Someone is selling a load of goods when they say they "just can't find the right people" for these positions. Make them the people you need. Or stop broadcasting to the main stream media your hardship in not being able to "find" people to work for you as if you're doing all you can to actually hire to fill your corporate needs.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Goldman Sachs To Be Paid $1 Billion If CIT Fails; Taxpayers Would Lose $2 Billion

How does this work exactly? Goldman Sachs get 1 billion if CIT goes down, but the American taxpayer takes a loss of 2.3 billion? If this is how the banking industry does math, there's no wonder the economy is in bad shape.

The way I see it, (as simplistic as it may be,) is that a Republican President signed the original 700 billion TARP bill in 2008, when much of this debacle began. He could have, (it was well within his power to do) but didn't veto it. And Bush vetoed plenty of other things. Also, people keep making reference in the news about the treasury and it's dealings with the current economic deflation.

People. We haven't had any more than the illusion of a national treasury since 1913. Since then we've only had the Federal Reserve, which is basically a bank that prints and lends money to the United States on demand. It's a national sized A.T.M., nothing more, nothing less except every transaction brings interest on the priciple, just like a home mortgage.
The only reason the banks are failing is because the cost of running a country this way has over-extended our reliance on the Fed and the interest we need to pay them has reached a point where securing 100 years of these "loans" has finally surpassed the possibility of them ever being paid off .
The banks aren't failing, friends. The Fed and the way we run this country financially is failing...if not failed already. And unfortunately we have listed past the tipping point.
Our relationship with and the Federal Reserve or the banks/federal Reserve will never regain momentum or even a happy medium.
It's a concept who's time has gone. The bloom is off that rose.
We need an alternative to the way we've been doing things.
And considering the way the kids on Capitol Hill can't work together, that alternative will not present itself until we've slid even futher into this money pit.

About Goldman Sachs
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

SNL Sketch Takes A Poke At BO

I support Obama, but I like to laugh too.
More often than not, the best humor comes from pointing out the truths around us.
This was a very funny skit.
And who knows, perhaps BO will see this and start to better understand that the people who most support him, (his base) are getting antsy these days.
Thanks SNL for showing that still, nothing is beyond humor.
And let's be serious for a moment. What ever did Bush/Cheney do benefit America or Americans in 8 years?

Whether BO is a smashing success at everything he does or simply redirects America from the arrogant, obstinate, imperialism that the world has come to expect us to be, Obama is at the very least credited with repairing America's image internationally, presenting himself as an intelligent and articulate representative and the type of individual that Americans can be proud of electing for their leadership. And even the short list of things he has accomplished shows he remains genuinely interested in serving the people, rather than just the industrialists in this country he voluntarily serves.

What did Bush/Cheney do for this country for 8 long years???

And that shit, isn't funny at all.

Read the Article and see the viddie at HuffingtonPost (click this link)

Tony Blair Set To Become Europe's First President: Report

Is the MSM so Amero-centric that this process of unionizing Europe has gone so far as to have but one more country (Ireland) needed to sign on to the program... and the first many of us here hear of it is after a potential President is earmarked to take the reigns? Is this part of some grand scheme that was hatched during, prior to or as a result of Europe's participation in the "Coalition of the Willing"? It appears to be a rather big deal with ramifications for the whole global village. Why was the American public kept in the dark until nearly the last minute on this? How can anything benign and above board be played out so discreetly in a country like America where we are supposedly the roost of the most free and far reaching press in the world?
This was kept on the DL for a reason people. What that reason is, I don't know. But anything played this close to the vest is rarely a good thing. Will we be left out in the dark until the last minute before there's a President choosen for the PanAmericas?
I'm beginning to believe they could do that, any time they chose to, after this.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Jon Stewart Nails The Dems

Why do we think the likes of Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Arianna Huffington and Michael Moore are such proponents of health care in America?

Do you think they've been somehow bought? They certainly don't need the cash. Neither do they need to be "bought" by someone in order to support something. Whom would they possibly sell themselves to on this health care issue? They can afford the best health care celebrities can buy.

Maybe it's because like millions of other Americans, they think it's what the people of America need, which is obviously in sharp contrast to what the people we've elected seem to think.

Gee, are the very people we've elected to represent us "bought"? Duh. Ya' think!? The reluctance leading to the impotence of the Democrats in Washington and the convoluted logic of the opposition couldn't be put up for all to see any better, by anyone than what Jon Stewart's commentary video shows it to be.

The state of our Union, when we have so many politicians who can no longer simply approach an issue in the scope of health care reform, without grandstanding and creating their own twisted reasoning to justifying their own ignorance of the needs of the people, is negligent and pitiful. Ours is the country that spends trillions of dollars to "bring democracy" to third world countries while our legislators create fantasy scenarios to further their lucrative dependancies on industries that fund their war chests for relection that the majority of them have have lost touch with their constituencies and the very purpose they were sent to Washington in the first place. They display a veneer of national loyalty and a sense of patriotism that makes one wonder just where the point is in believing we have representation by these very grifters who are bringing this country to a stand still on the health care reform issue in particular and ultimately to her knees.

This is not a sad day for America. This is a sad era for America. And the people who we've sent to represent us, we the people, have taken the last 100 years to lead us here.

See Jon Stewart's comentary at:

http;//www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/01/stewart-destroys-dems-for_n_305948.html

Or at http://ComedyCentral.com

Art from: http://analogartsensemble,net

Dan Rather Lawsuit Against CBS TOSSED In Entirety

So this falls under the sub-title that, you'll never win when you take on the media moguls. Did the courts even bother to validate Rather's story on whether or not Bush was given preferential treatment during his Vietnam War-era service in the Texas Air National Guard? Or was the money all that mattered? The bigger debate (and more frightening for CBS) was why he was released and whether or not the story that got him fired was true and factual to begin with... provided anyone was interested in the pursuit of justice. If this was the case, the money is secondary and payment could have been dismissed. But a truth and a blatant unfairness and cover up could have been none the less exposed and revealed. The press,including (and especially) the major networks were bound and gagged when it came to questioning the Bush administration. But I see this did not concern the court very much. It's all "show me the money!"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Public Option Amendments Fail In Senate Finance Committee

National polls have shown that (of those polled) 65% of the American people are in favor of the public option. SO why the debate? Unless the message behind it all is that we are not truly represented and what the people may want in this instance or any other is irrelevant. We are not governed by the will of the people. We are ruled by the few and the elite who will decide what they think is best for us. It is time for us to flood these "servants of the people" with emails, letters and phone calls until they wake up and listen to the voice of the people! Then write down their names so you can help vote them out in their next bid for election. I sure hope this gives some perspective to the flag waving, rah-rah crowd and the "let's bring democracy to other countries" set. Who's going to bring democracy to America?? Because it was nowhere to be found on the Senate Finance committee today. Damned Skippy!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Public Option Debate Poised To Explode In Senate Tuesday

I got an idea, get these grifters to stop modeling their Brooks brothers suits, get them in jeans and working clothes like the majority of Americans wear, put them in chamber and lock the doors from the outside until they come up with something that truly serves the people of America. Make them stop the posturing and the false sincerity and pompus "gentlemen" stump speeches and speak in plain down home terms and stop skirting around every tangent outlying the issue and get something done without hiding behind the formalities. And then, once they've hashed something out, let the peope vote on it. Sure that might be expensive, but we spend lots more in the country for less. And let's start replacing tv sitcoms, reality TV and CSI dramas with live coverage from the floor on every channel so the American people can't avoid but get a little civic information to replace the mindless "entertainment" that helps keep them in the dark on these issues and who actually works in gov't and who is just taking up oxygen....Oh, if only I ruled the world!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

U.S. Seeking Tougher Sanctions Against Iran

The Iranians claim they filed the changes in their nuclear programs 18 months before completion as it is stipulated. They have agreed to the inspections. And still, even over a weekend, more and more calls for tougher and tougher sanctions continue to fill the news. What more need the Iranians do in order to comply with the nonproliferation treaty they willingly signed not as a punishment but as an act of cooperation and good will. I'm afraid that this situation, just like the Iraq situation in 2002/2003 is about to begin spiraling out of countrol until it becomes irrepairable and once again civilians will pay with their lives. One need not send in troops or jet with missiles to create collateral damage. Unecessary overbearing sanctions will do just as well to destroy an economy, starve people, decay infrastructure and deny people basic services which are needed ty the people. Sanctions are little more than what was known as extortion in an earlier time. Play ball with the mob...you did ok, DOn't play with the mob, you find your shipments don't arrive on time, another black maket replaced free enterprise. Hospitals do without and at the lowest level people like you and I find shortages in basic everday goods and services. Make our governmet think twice about this approach. The sabre rattling grows stronger even with every consession the Iranians concede to. This could get ugly soon...over nothing. We've seen it all before.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost