lies keep coming from Repubs

Preventing an economic depression required a great deal of spending on unpopular causes, such as bailing out bankers and automakers. Much of the structural deficit that exists is the result of decisions by previous administrations. All of that is true. So don't let these repblicans tell you otherwise.

President Obama's eleven month record

As the Senate prepares to pass its version of health-care reform legislation, Obama's advisers have portrayed a highly successful year pushing important bills through Congress, comparing his record to those of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, even as they note that Obama is operating in a more partisan time in Washington than those Democratic predecessors had.

The most important thing he did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse.

Also, 30 million uninsured Americans are projected to receive coverage, estimated savings of more than $1 trillion over the next two decades, a "patients' bill of rights on steroids," and tax breaks to help small businesses pay for employee coverage. Those elements are in the House and Senate versions of the legislation; their competing proposals will have to be reconciled in conference committee next year.

President Obama has just one term

If socialism is society providing healthcare for all and not government ownership of all assets, then I must be a socialist, which by the true definition I am not.

And the way I read it, so was Jesus by that definition. Why aren't Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurance Companies, who have the assets and control the healthcare delivery in our country through political donations and activity, pushing for adopting the Kaiser Permanente method of healthcare delivery? The anwer is obvious.

AND they are not going to unless they are forced and how do we do that. Well we haven't been very successful as Presidents have wanted to, since Truman. AND they are still fighting and controlling the actions and dialogue of the debate.

Finally, we are getting a little opening because we have a President that is not caring about getting reelected and is trying to work toward healthcare for all. You can bet their money that they have amassed over the years is going to destroy him by 2012.

AS for the cost, the Republicans spent a lot more in the false war in Iraq when they should have been going after bin Laden. Iraq has oil. Arabs have oil which is why President Obama is pushing for non-oil energy--he is also not in big oil's pocket--and they will be after him, and are already fighting "going green."

Big oil and big Drug-Insurance-Doctors Associations aren't patriots for our country, but patriots for their wallets. They are the "robber-barons" of our time. What was it Jesus said about the eye of the needle and something about the poor? AND what did he say about homosexuals? (not that I advocate converting)

Speical intersts capture of Republicans not new

The threat posed to our democracy by legislators being co-opted by powerful interests, such as Insurance Companies control of healthcare, was warned of as far back as the Founding Fathers. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 1 "Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected."

republican hypocrisy

On a 63 to 33 vote, Democrats cleared a key hurdle that should allow them to approve the must-pass military spending bill Saturday and return to the health-care debate.

After years of claiming that Democrats don't support our troops, just three Republicans supported the military funding. The republican leadership admitted that they were trying to use denying troop funding as a way to slow down healthcare reform. Talk about hypocrisy!

Our President

“Even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules,” he said, “I believe that the United Sates of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war … That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed … We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard

Americans elected him, and the Nobel committee awarded him the peace prize, in large measure simply because he wasn’t the republican, George Bush.

read today: The former vice president, Dick Cheeney, a leading republican, has brought dishonor to himself, his office, and his country. I am not aware of another former President or Vice President behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. (Aaron Burr might win the title, for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but Burr was a sitting Vice President at the time.

Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest. This behavior is directly from the republican playbook. Shame on them.

the current republican party

There is a difference between holding a particular tax or spending or health-care view and asserting that an American who supports another approach or is a member of a different political party is an advocate of an 'ism' of hate that encompasses gulags and concentration camps.

One framework of thought defines rival ideas; the other, enemies." As a result, "citizens of various philosophical persuasions are reflecting increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for modern-day democratic governance. This view is pushed by the current Republican Party.

And more bizarre, significant public figures have toyed with hints of history-blind radicalism -- the notion of 'secession. This is Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry's effort to ride to reelection by invoking a concept thatwas discredited in 1865.

healthcare reform vs. our republican senators

To our Senators---Right now, insurance companies deny coverage by claiming pre-existing conditions and other excuses to deny coverage therefore they have taken control of our health care away from our Doctors and are effectively denying treatments.

We didn't read that in your canned response. So, you just lost out support by talking around the real problem with healthcare in our country. Thank you

why iraq?

read today: Anyone who believes that the US attacked Iraq to take out a tyrant that we had for years armed, supported and funded is clearly mad, for just like we overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 to impose upon the Iranian people a murderous dictator like the Shah, we did the same thing in Iraq for no other reason than to line the pockets of US oil executives (i.e. G.W. Bush and his cronies).

Sure we provided record profits for the US arms dealers and mercenary contractors like Blackwater and other tax dollar thieves like Haliburton(Cheney's company), and killed over one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians, but in the end what we did makes what Saddam did pale in comparison.

why we didn't get Bin Laden???

"Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says."

Maybe they NEEDED Bin Laden alive, when you are down to one boogeyman and you are in the middle of two no-bid, big-profit wars, BOTH based on fear of that one boogeyman, you don't want to kill your boogeyman.

At least until that last no-bid billion has been wrung from the American taxpayer.

republican gut players get us false wars

President George W. Bush once boasted, "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player." The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach. President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured, even when critics accuse him of dithering. When describing his executive style, he goes into Spock mode, saying, "You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions."
It's that Bush's gut that got us into that false war in Iraq.

republican lies

The republican birther movement claims that Obama was born outside the United States and is ineligible to be president. The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. Birthers contend that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland.

Obama's Hawaii birth certificate along with birth notices from the two Honolulu newspapers were brought forward even before he took office. State officials in Hawaii have repeatedly confirmed that Obama was born in Honolulu.

right wing-nuts not good for our country

In modern memory, Capitol Hill has never been so polarized. With conservatives refusing to reach across the aisle, it will be hard to get even the most modest health-insurance reform through the U.S. Senate, where a 41-vote minority can block legislation. Without bipartisanship, forget about reducing the deficit or doing anything meaningful on the environment, immigration, or tax reform.

The Republican right is hellbent to crush the last scattered remnants of the old moderate GOP establishment--or any Republican who will work with the opposition. The talk-show shouters are cheering on the final purge, demanding purity.

By definition, populist movements run on a fervor that confuses honorable compromise with appeasement. Everything is reduced to us and them. This is particularly destructive when it occurs within parties.

During the Reagan-Bush administration, the Bushes of Texas (but really Connecticut) were never all that comfortable with the Reagans of Hollywood. But they worked at getting along. The easier course is to rant and rail on The O'Reilly Factor. That will get you a big cable-TV audience.

But it risks turning off the larger public to politics altogether. And that can't be good for the country.

republicans are no, no, no on everything

As of last Monday, the Senate majority had filed 58 cloture motions requiring 32 recorded votes. One of the more outrageous cases involved an extension in unemployment benefits, a no-brainer in light of the dismal economy. The bill ultimately cleared the Senate this month by 98 to 0.

The vote came only after the Republicans launched three filibusters against the bill and tried to lard it with unrelated amendments, delaying passage by nearly a month. And you wonder why it's so hard to pass health care?

How special interests are destroying good healthcare reform

One operative tried to enlist trade groups in Maine to oppose government-run health coverage. Another helped a member of a Las Vegas conservative group appear on local talk radio to criticize the proposal. A third persuaded a Louisiana activist to post an opinion piece on a conservative blog.

These below-the-radar activities were the handiwork of a law firm in Charlotte, N.C., that operates a secretive group called Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare. The organization's sponsors remain a mystery — its Web site offers no clues, and the law firm won't say.

Hassan's motive is clear to me

We, the Army and taxpayers, paid for his medical education. Now he doesn't want to fullfill his part of the bargain.

Why you ask? Here is the reason>>> "In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.” so said a Muslim.

If that is true, every devout Muslim should be riffed from military service, for his or her protection AND OURS.

What Healthcare Ins. Cos. are costing us

ANNUAL COMPENSATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY EXECS (2006, 2007, or 2008 figures):
• Ronald A. Williams, Chair/ CEO, Aetna Inc., $23,045,834; $24.3 million in 2008
• H. Edward Hanway, Chair/ CEO, Cigna Corp, $30.16 million
• David B. Snow, Jr, Chair/ CEO, Medco Health, $21.76 million
• Michael B. MCallister, CEO, Humana Inc, $20.06 million
• Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, $13,164,529
• Angela F. Braly, President/ CEO, Wellpoint, $9,094,771; $9.8 million in 2008
• Dale B. Wolf, CEO, Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million
• Jay M. Gellert, President/ CEO, Health Net, $16.65 million
• William C. Van Faasen, Chairman, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3 million plus $16.4 million in retirement benefits
• Charlie Baker, President/ CEO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, $1.5 million
• James Roosevelt, Jr., CEO, Tufts Associated Health Plans, $1.3 million
• Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million
• Daniel P. McCartney, CEO, Healthcare Services Group, Inc, $ 1,061,513
• Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555
• Todd S. Farha, CEO, WellCare Health Plans, $5,270,825
• Michael F. Neidorff, CEO, Centene Corp, $8,750,751
• Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555

Republicans have no shame

The White House on Thursday forcefully rejected criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans that President Barack Obama's Afghanistan decision is taking too long.

"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."

Besides, the previous top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, submitted a request for more troops that went unfulfilled by former President George W. Bush.

Obama partly granted that request in March when he ordered an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to go to Afghanistan this year.
Republicans will say and do anything.

racists are still with us

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist. Yeah right!

republicans side with the Taliban

Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? Glenn Beck has a conniption fit and demands that the president not accept what may be the world's most prestigious honor? The Republican National Committee issues a statement sarcastically mocking our nation's leader -- elected, you will recall, by a healthy majority -- as unworthy of such recognition. Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?

The Nobel Peace Prize is universally recognized as a stamp of the world's approval. Let the rejectionists fulminate and sputter until they wear their vocal cords out. Politically, they're only bashing themselves. "I'm With the Taliban Against America" is not likely to be a winning slogan.

let's call it what it is--racism

On Aug. 16, pastor Steven L. Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., told his congregation that he prays for the death of President Obama.

In a sermon titled "Why I Hate Barack Obama," Anderson preached: "I'm not going to pray for his good, I'm going to pray he dies and goes to hell."

In June, the Rev. Wiley Drake of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., said he was praying for the president's death.
Anderson, however, was explicit in his wish. "I'd like him to die of natural causes.

I don't want him to be a martyr; we don't need another holiday. I'd like to see him die, like Ted Kennedy, of brain cancer."

There's something loose in the land, an ugliness and hatred directed toward Barack Obama, the nation's first African American president, that takes the breath away. The thread of resentment is woven through conservative commentary, right-wing radio and cable TV shows, all the way to Capitol Hill.

Look back to Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night and South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson's crude "you lie" shout. Witness the boorish behavior in the GOP seats. They are an inspiration to Obama-haters.

The day after Anderson's "I Hate Barack Obama" sermon, Chris Broughton, a member of Anderson's congregation, appeared at Obama's speech in Arizona with an AR-15 and a pistol -- not to harm the president, Broughton said, but to exercise his constitutional right to have weapons.

Then there are the walking time bombs. Richard Poplawski of Pittsburgh slept with a gun under his pillow, hated Jews, feared Obama was scheming to take away his guns, and thought Obama got good press because he was black.

In April, Poplawski showed he meant business. He fatally shot three police officers and wounded a fourth when they showed up at his house in response to a 911 call.

Then there's George Sodini, who went to a Bridgeville, Pa., health club in August, opened his gym bag, pulled out a weapon and shot and killed three women and wounded nine others.

Sodini had planned the shooting for the summer, but delayed because, as he wrote on his Web site, he wanted to "stick around to see the [presidential] election outcome." Sodini wrote of Obama: "The liberal media LOVES him. Amerika has chosen The Black Man."

Right-wing ranters don't regard the president as a political opponent. Barack Obama, in their minds, is the enemy. Let's call it what it is------RACISM.

elephant in healthcare, racism?

Unlike all other wealthy nations, the United States lacks universal health care. Most health insurance is obtained through employers, and almost 50 million of the 300 million Americans are without it.

Barack Obama came to the Presidency in January with almost unprecedented bipartisan popularity and strong backing for plan to make health care accessible to all Americans. End of Story. (there may be another story, not spoken, but real).

more wing-nut republican lies

For all the right wing-nut Republicans howling about Barack Obama radically steering the government to the left and leading the nation toward socialism, some of his major appointments are Republican men and women of the middle.

Some of the former Bush appointees or republicans who Obama kept are: 1. Fed chief Ben Bernanke,2. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, 3. Sheila Bair as holdover chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, 4. Ray LaHood, a former congressman from Illinois, as Transportation Secretary, 5. former Rep. John McHugh from upstate New York, as Army Secretary, 6. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who was a Mormon missionary in China in his youth, as ambassador to China, 7. while not a republican, certainly a moderate in Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian, as director of the National Institutes of Health. The party just can't refrain from lying because that is all they have. So Sad!

Republicans being led away to extremes

Today, conservatives seem in a position closer to the one they occupied during the New Deal. The epithets so many on the right now hurl at Obama—"socialist," "fascist"—precisely echo the accusations Herbert Hoover and "Old Right" made against FDR in 1936.

And the spectacle of citizens appearing at town-hall meetings with guns recalls nothing so much as the vigilante Minutemen whom Buckley evicted from the conservative movement in the 1960s.

A serious conservative like David Frum knows this, and has spoken up. Instead, the republican party is being yanked ever farther onto its marginal orbit.

Biggest Republican lies about health-care reform

1. The government will have electronic access to everyone's bank
account, implying that the Feds will rob you blind.
2. You'll have no choice in what health benefits you receive.
3. No chemo for older medicare patients.
4. Illegal immigrants will get free health insurance.
5. Death panels will decide who lives.
6. The government will set doctors' wages.

more Republican health-care lies

The suggestion that Republicans might not receive care is included in a "Future of American Health Care Survey" containing 13 questions, most of which are critical of the Democratic health care effort. The technique, referred to as a "push poll," is used often in political campaigns.

The allegation is the latest instance in which some critics of the health care effort have made inflammatory unfounded claims — such as conservatives who claimed the legislation would create "death panels" that they said could lead to euthanizing elderly people.

Where's the GOP's Ted Kennedy?

Ted Kennedy's voice and leadership will be sorely missed in the effort to pass health-care reform. But when Republicans say that Democrats don't have anyone to take his place in achieving a bipartisan compromise, they are either missing, or deliberately obscuring, the relevant lesson of Kennedy's example.

The truth is that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, with the support of the White House, has worked hard for months to reach consensus with Sens. Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe and Mike Enzi on a health-reform bill -- incurring, for his trouble, more than a little heat from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

The truth is the Republicans are followers in jack-boot lock-step to guys like Limbaugh. They are not leaders for the working people.

torture anyone?

The Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program operated under strict rules, and the rules were dictated from Washington with the painstaking, eye-glazing detail beloved by any bureaucracy.

The required records, the medical supervisors said, included “how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment.”

Tom Parker, policy director for counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International USA, said the documents were “chilling.”
“They show how deeply rooted this new culture of mistreatment became,” he said.

weapons and fear

Those who openly carry weapons to Presidential meetings means they want you to see their weapons knowing the fear and intimidation that occurs when you do, unless you are trained in assaulting others with weapons, which is a minority even counting people who have carrying licenses.

Displaying does not indicate how fast and accurate they would be if directly challenged, face to face, by someone skilled in weapons combat?

war on us

The guns that are being wielded at these public events are not for the purpose of threatening the government, but the public itself.

Those who lost the election and are in the fringe minority are resorting to violent threats against those of us who won, and who want to continue creating change and live in a democratic civil society. They are declaring war on us.

republican lie on healthcare competition

One of the most widely accepted Republican arguments against a government medical plan for the middle class is that it would quash competition — just what private insurers seem to be doing themselves in many parts of the U.S.

Several studies show that in lots of places, one or two companies dominate the market. Critics say monopolistic conditions drive up premiums paid by employers and individuals.

republicans lie again

At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.

Investor’s Business Daily, a republican shill publication, tried to frighten its readers by declaring that in Britain, where the government runs health care, the handicapped physicist Stephen Hawking “wouldn’t have a chance,” because the National Health Service would consider his life “essentially worthless.”

Professor Hawking, who was born in Britain, has lived there all his life, and has been well cared for by the National Health Service, was not amused.

need for healthcare reform

Kenneth H. Bacon, 64, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was top spokesman at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration and later became a prominent advocate on behalf of international refugees, died Aug. 15 of melanoma at his vacation home on Block Island, R.I. His primary residence was in Washington.

After struggling with metastatic melanoma, Mr. Bacon wrote about his illness and his problems with insurance coverage in an essay published by The Post on July 21.

"My oncologist has spent hours filling out forms and arguing with the insurance company to arrange coverage for my chemotherapy," he wrote.

"Now my wife and I are waging our own fight with the provider to arrange payment for my daily brain radiation, which has been rejected as 'not medically necessary' even though the cancer in my brain is growing rapidly."

"For me and other Americans suffering from advanced cancer," he concluded, "the health-care debate this summer is no abstraction. It is a matter of life or death."


After struggling with metastatic melanoma, Mr. Bacon wrote about his illness and his problems with insurance coverage in an essay published by The Post on July 21.

"My oncologist has spent hours filling out forms and arguing with the insurance company to arrange coverage for my chemotherapy," he wrote. "Now my wife and I are waging our own fight with the provider to arrange payment for my daily brain radiation, which has been rejected as 'not medically necessary' even though the cancer in my brain is growing rapidly."

"For me and other Americans suffering from advanced cancer," he concluded, "the health-care debate this summer is no abstraction. It is a matter of life or death."

What's going on here?

Thomas Jefferson once said, "The tree of liberty must be replenished from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots." He added his own words: "It is time to replenish the tree!"

Timothy McVeigh, who detonated the Oklahoma City bomb that killed 168 people in 1995, was wearing a T-shirt with Jefferson's words when he was arrested. Last week, a pistol-carrying protester outside an Obama town hall meeting in New Hampshire carried a sign that said, "It is time to water the tree of liberty."

James W. von Brunn, who killed a guard at the U.S. National Holocaust Museum in June, had a history of hateful writings about religious and ethnic minorities and a felony conviction for attacking the Federal Reserve headquarters, but he was not the subject of a criminal investigation before the shooting.

Now Hal Turner is threatening judges.

Lies about health care reform

From Republicans:

Healthcare reform

---creates death panels for Granny---A Lie

-----will ration health care---A Lie

---transfers money out of our bank accounts--A Lie

---allows the government access to your bank accounts--A Lie

---uses government money for abortions--A Lie

----okays euthanasia in healthcare--A Lie

----causes government to be between you and your doctor--A Lie

The Truth

---The above Lies are promoted by the pharmacy and health insurance industry with the Republican Party and republican operatives for their distribution and organizing. This has been documented.

Last year executives of these firms took $12.7 Billion in salaries and bonuses out of healthcare. Millions have been given by the industry to senators and representatives. a FACT!
Health Insurance Companies are currently between the patient and their doctor. a FACT!
47 million people are without healthcare insurance so when they go to ER's who pays? We end up paying for their treatments AT A HIGHER COST.

republican lies vs. the facts

CLAIM: The House bill "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia," House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said July 23.

Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey said in a July 17 article: "One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years ... about alternatives for end-of-life care."

THE FACTS: The bill would require Medicare to pay for advance directive consultations with health care professionals. But it would not require anyone to use the benefit.

Advance directives lay out a patient's wishes for life-extending measures under various scenarios involving terminal illness, severe brain damage and situations. Patients and their families would consult with health professionals, not government agents, if they used the proposed benefit.

CLAIM: Health care revisions would lead to government-funded abortions.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says in a video, "Unless Congress states otherwise, under a government takeover of health care, taxpayers will be forced to fund abortions for the first time in over three decades."

THE FACTS: The proposed bills would not undo the Hyde Amendment, which bars paying for abortions through Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor.

But a health care overhaul could create a government-run insurance program, or insurance "exchanges," that would not involve Medicaid and whose abortion guidelines are not yet clear.

Obama recently told CBS that the nation should continue a tradition of "not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care."

The House Energy and Commerce Committee amended the House bill Thursday to state that health insurance plans have the option of covering abortion, but no public money can be used to fund abortions. The bill says health plans in a new purchasing exchange would not be required to cover abortion.

CLAIM: Americans won't have to change doctors or insurance companies.
"If you like your plan and you like your doctor, you won't have to do a thing," Obama said on June 23. "You keep your plan; you keep your doctor."

THE FACTS: The proposed legislation would not require people to drop their doctor or insurer. But some tax provisions, depending on how they are written, might make it cheaper for some employers to pay a fee to end their health coverage. Their workers presumably would move to a public insurance plan that might not include their current doctors.

CLAIM: The Democrats' plans will lead to rationing, or the government determining which medical procedures a patient can have.
"Expanding government health programs will hasten the day that government rations medical care to seniors," conservative writer Michael Cannon said in the Washington Times.

THE FACTS: Millions of Americans already face rationing, as insurance companies rule on procedures they will cover. Denying coverage for certain procedures might increase under proposals to have a government-appointed agency identify medicines and procedures best suited for various conditions.

Obama says the goal is to identify the most effective and efficient medical practices, and to steer patients and providers to them. He recently told a forum: "We don't want to ration by dictating to somebody, 'OK, you know what? We don't think that this senior should get a hip replacement.'

What we do want to be able to do is to provide information to that senior and to her doctor about, you know, this is the thing that is going to be most helpful to you in dealing with your condition."

CLAIM: Overhauling health care will not expand the federal deficit over the long term. Obama has pledged that "health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it."

THE FACTS: Obama's pledge does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase Medicare fees for doctors. The White House says the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration's policy.

who is he?

"Lincoln's my favorite president and one of my personal heroes," he answered. "I have to be very careful here that in no way am I drawing equivalence between me, my life experience, or what I face and what he went through. I just want to put that out there so you don't get a bunch of folks saying I'm comparing myself to Lincoln."

He paused. "What I admire so deeply about Lincoln -- number one, I think he's the quintessential American because he's self-made. The way Alexander Hamilton was self-made or so many of our great iconic Americans are, that sense that you don't accept limits, that you can shape your own destiny. That obviously has appeal to me, given where I came from. That American spirit is one of the things that is most fundamental to me, and I think he embodies that.

"But the second thing that I admire most in Lincoln is that there is just a deep-rooted honesty and empathy to the man that allowed him to always be able to see the other person's point of view and always sought to find that truth that is in the gap between you and me. Right?

That the truth is out there somewhere and I don't fully possess it and you don't fully possess it and our job then is to listen and learn and imagine enough to be able to get to that truth.

"If you look at his presidency, he never lost that. Most of our other great presidents, there was that sense of working the angles and bending other people to their will. FDR being the classic example.

And Lincoln just found a way to shape public opinion and shape people around him and lead them and guide them without tricking them or bullying them, but just through the force of what I just talked about: that way of helping to illuminate the truth. I just find that to be a very compelling style of leadership.

How Health care works now.

Private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.

And in their efforts to avoid “medical losses,” the industry term for paying medical bills, insurers spend much of the money taken in through premiums not on medical treatment, but on “underwriting” — screening out people likely to make insurance claims. In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care.

Still, most Americans do have health insurance, and are reasonably satisfied with it. How is that possible, when insurance markets work so badly? The answer is government intervention.

Most obviously, the government directly provides insurance via Medicare and other programs. Before Medicare was established, more than 40 percent of elderly Americans lacked any kind of health insurance.

Today, Medicare — which is, by the way, one of those “single payer” systems conservatives love to demonize — covers everyone 65 and older. And surveys show that Medicare recipients, a government plan, are much more satisfied with their coverage than Americans with private insurance.

KIll Granny is a Republican lie

One proposal in the health care plan is only to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills.

Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary.

Republicans are turning this into a "Kill Granny" lie which is their usual tactic coming and it comes from the Insurance Compannies.

In the past two weeks, AARP has fielded a few thousand calls from people who mistakenly think the legislation would require every Medicare recipient to "choose how they want to die," said James Dau, a spokesman for the organization.

The American Medical Association, which supports the provision, has received similar inquiries and protests from patients who fear doctors will begin denying care late in life.

"These are important discussions everyone should have when they are healthy and not entering a hospital, so they are fully informed and can make their wishes known," said association President J. James Rohack. "That's not controversial; it's plain, old-fashioned patient-centered care."

Remember Harry and Louise from the 1980's.

drug and Insurance companies pay for no public option

The roiling debate about health-care reform has been a boon to the political fortunes of Ross and 51 other members of the Blue Dog Coalition, who have become key brokers in shaping legislation in the House.

A look at career contribution patterns also shows that typical Blue Dogs receive significantly more money -- about 25 percent -- from the health-care and insurance sectors than other Democrats, putting them closer to Republicans in attracting industry support.

Most of the major corporations and trade groups in those sectors are regular contributors to the Blue Dog PAC. They include drugmakers such as Pfizer and Novartis; insurers such as WellPoint and Northwestern Mutual Life; and industry organizations such as America's Health Insurance Plans.

The American Medical Association also has been one of the top contributors to individual Blue Dog members.

cops,citizens-respect is a two way street

President Obama was right the first time, that the encounter had a stupid ending, and the second time, that both Gates and Crowley overreacted. His soothing assessment that two good people got snared in a bad moment seems on target.

Gates said that Crowley was so “gruff” and unsolicitous “the hair on my neck stood up.” Crowley says Gates acted “put off” and “agitated.”

But the strong guy with the gun has more control than the weak guy with the cane. An officer who teaches racial sensitivity should not have latched on to a technicality about neighbors — who seemed to be outnumbered by cops — getting “alarmed” by Gates’s “outburst.”

Besides, after ID clearly established that Gates was in his own house, the cops should not "asked" him to step back outside. Cops can be (not all) nasty, arrogant and itching to egg you on so they can arrest you; also they can lie. I have personally witnessed such behavior.

Obama, racism, cops, Gates

Obama commented on the issue again on Thursday, telling ABC News he was "surprised by the controversy surrounding" his remark. "I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home," Obama said.

"I think that I have extraordinary respect for the difficulties of the job that police officers do," Obama said. "And my suspicion is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates and that everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed. That's my suspicion."

we will remember when voting

Senate Republicans on Tuesday slowed down the anticipated confirmation of U.S. President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Republicans invoked their right to postpone for a week a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee to send the nomination for consideration to the full Democrat-led Senate, which is widely expected to confirm Sotomayor, perhaps overwhelmingly.

more on the sellout of health care reform

Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the Public Citizen advocacy group, said the continued fundraising by Baucus during the health-care debate is "very troubling."

"He's doing all this fundraising right in the middle of this effort to mark up a bill," Holman said. "When you put these events close to matters concerning these lobbyists, clearly it's a signal. You are expected to show up with a check."

Baucus and Grassley, bought and paid for

Most Companies which are giving all that money to the Senators on the Baucus's/Grassley Committee are major insurers, and they strongly oppose a public insurance option, which is favored by President Obama and top House Democrats.

The public also favors a public option but it has not received support from Baucus's committee. The committee members are being bought and paid for by the insurance companies no other conslucion is logical.

why we can't get health care reform

At the table on May 26 were about 20 donors willing to fork over $10,000 or more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, including executives of major insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care firms.

Health-related companies and their employees gave Senator Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate.

Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking Republican, received more than $2 million from the health and insurance sectors since 2003. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) took in $1.6 million from the health sector and its employees over the past two years; ranking Republican Dave Camp (Mich.) received nearly $1 million.

Money gets you in the door. The only thing the other side can do is march around and protest outside.

failed republican policies

Joe Stiglitz is the leader of a school of economics that, for the past 30 years, has developed complex mathematical models to disprove the idea of economics devoid of regulations. The subprime-mortgage disaster is almost tailor-made evidence that financial markets often fail without rigorous government supervision.

The work that won Stiglitz the Nobel in 2001 showed how "imperfect" information that is unequally shared by participants in a transaction can make markets go haywire, giving unfair advantage to one party.

The subprime scandal was all about people who knew a lot—--like mortgage lenders and Wall Street derivatives traders—--exploiting people who had less information, like global investors who bought up subprime- mortgage-backed securities.

As Stiglitz puts it: "Globalization opened up opportunities to find new people to exploit their ignorance. And we found them."

The Republican party demolished what economic regulations that existed when they came to power in 2001 while ignoring for nine months the warnings about Al Qaeda, used as one justificaton for invading Iraq.

more republican hypocrisy

Two Bush appointees have already moved the Supreme Court in a markedly more conservative direction. Chief Justice Roberts won 22 Democratic confirmation votes, not only with his obvious legal credentials but his bland assurances that he saw the job of a justice as akin to that of a baseball umpire -- enforcing the rules, not rewriting the rulebook.

There is a long list of significant decisions on which Roberts and Alito have led or joined a 5-4 majority, overruling precedent and narrowing individual rights. So, the Republicans complaining about activism with Sotomayor is just another lie filled with hypocrisy.

Republican family values?

The wealthy parents of Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) gave $96,000 last year to the staffer who was then his mistress and to her family, his attorney said yesterday. Ensign has said that the sexual affair with Cynthia Hampton began in December 2007 and continued until the following August.

Since Ensign admitted the extramarital affair several weeks ago, he and his defenders have accused the Hamptons of making exorbitant financial demands but denied that Ensign provided any severance payments or other financial assistance for the couple. Ensign has said he has no plans to resign his office.

In an interview this week, Douglas Hampton also alleged that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a close friend of Ensign's, urged Ensign to end the affair early last year and suggested financial compensation for the Hampton family.

Yesterday, Coburn told the Roll Call newspaper that he would refuse any attempts to compel him to testify in court or at the Senate ethics committee about his role. Coburn, an obstetrician, claimed a legal privilege against such testimony as his physician and religious adviser.

the republicans-more on Sen's Ensign, Coburn

The sex scandal engulfing Sen. John Ensign deepened Wednesday after his former mistress's husband revealed new details about the relationship, saying the Nevada Republican paid the woman more than $25,000 in severance when she stopped working for him.

Doug Hampton also provided a letter to the Las Vegas Sun that he claimed was a handwritten apology from Ensign to Cindy Hampton, a former treasurer for the senator's campaign committees. "I used you for my own pleasure," the letter reads, later adding. "Plain and simple it was a sin."

He also detailed a February 2008 meeting in which he, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and others encouraged Ensign to end the affair, as well as the working relationship with the Hamptons. Hampton said Coburn and others tried to encourage Ensign to compensate the couple and help them relocate.


The letter and interview with the newspaper mark another embarrassment for Ensign, a 51-year-old Christian conservative who abruptly came forward last month and confessed to the affair. In addition, a severance payment could pose campaign finance and ethics issues for the Republican if the amount was not disclosed.

Palin with republican hypocrisy

When you're up to your waders in barracuda, blame the media.And quit your job. And say you did it for the people. And hire an agent. And try to keep a straight face on your way to the bank.
It's a win for the Republican Party because she was the female version of [George W.] Bush in some ways. She is not intellectually curious. Republicans need to have smart, competent alternatives.

Alaskans lately have turned against the once-popular governor and filed complaints that have run up legal fees in the $500,000 range.

Nobody wants that, surely, but that's chump change for Palin, whose supporters tossed $400,000 her way the first month SarahPAC went online.

As a public speaker, Palin will be golden. Other rumors circulating suggest a television show, a possible newspaper column (but remember, Palin hates the mainstream media), and fundraising gigs where the erstwhile vice presidential candidate can retain her hot spot on center stage.

GOP, a frightening reality

Naming Palin to the GOP ticket -- a top-down choice by McCain -- was the most reckless decision any national politician has made in the longest time, and while it certainly says something about McCain, it says even more about his party. It has lost its mind.

Recall, after all, that Palin was not McCain's first choice. That was either Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge. Both were rejected by the party establishment because of their appalling moderation on social issues over which the president has little direct authority anyway -- abortion, above all -- and in Lieberman's case because he had been a Democrat.

In desperation, McCain turned to Palin. Was there a scream of protest? No. Did the Republican Party demand to know of McCain what the hell he had done? Again, no. Was it okay with the GOP if the person a heartbeat away from the presidency was -- pardon me, but it's true -- a ditz with no national experience whatsoever? You betcha.

The party had cracked up, accepting a nullity because she was antiabortion over a seasoned senator and former governor because they were not. Ideology won. The nation lost.

As for the other GOP candidates, all of them must be vetted by the party's Grand Inquisitor, Rush Limbaugh, a belch from the gutter. But when the chuckling stops, you have to ask yourself what in the world she was doing on the GOP ticket and what would have happened if McCain had won. Only part of this is alternate history. The rest is frightening reality.

republican brand sinking

Republican leaders like Palin, Sanford, Gingrich, Rove, Ensign, Limbaugh, Hannity, Romney, Jindel, Barber, Steele, and that crazy lady from Minnesota (Bachman)...all these and more are coming to power as a result of all the hubris of the past 10 years of decay in the GOP (grand OLD party).

ABA on Sotomayor nomination

The American Bar Association on Tuesday gave U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor its top rating, boosting her anticipated confirmation as the first Hispanic justice on the highest U.S. court.

The ABA said its Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary based its unanimous "well qualified" evaluation on a review of Sotomayor's professional integrity, competence and judicial temperament

Republicans Sanford, Ensign and now Palin

Was she launching her 2012 presidential campaign? Or could there be a looming scandal? No one knew, since Palin herself used vague and enigmatic phrases to justify her decision -- "because it's right," because "sacrificing my title helps Alaska most," because she has a "higher calling." But what is that higher calling? If you don't tell us, we have to guess -- or make jokes about it.

Palin's statements: that "Washington and the media" cannot understand her decision because "it's about country." In other words, for the past nine months, Palin has avoided difficult questions, preferring Runner's World to another Katie Couric interview; she has dragged her family into the spotlight when it suited her (baby Trig was in Runner's World, too) and grown angry when the spotlight became too strong; she has eschewed reason and logic (not to mention spelling and grammar), yet reacted in horror when her critics were unreasonable and illogical in response.

Then, after all that, she smugly asserts the right to decide who is a patriot and who is not. It's not about "country," in other words, it's about hypocrisy. And Sarah Palin is full of it.

Cheney told him to?

Vice President Dick Cheney talked with top White House officials about how to respond to reporters' inquiries into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative, according to a court filing.

Also, Cheney told the FBI about his recollection of discussions with his former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and other White House officials as asked for in the media's questions.

The FBI interviewed Cheney in 2004 as it was investigating the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters the year before. Her name was revealed after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The leak touched off a lengthy inquiry that led to Libby being convicted on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters. Libby told the FBI it was possible that Cheney ordered him to reveal Plame's identity to the media.

Why is that important? Because, if true, leaking an intelligence agent's name is a crime.

The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last year seeking records related to Cheney's FBI interview.

Senators taking millions from insurance/health care companies

Democratic and Republican senators are taking millions of dollars from insurance and health-care interests and getting lobbied by those donors so they are coming out against a position that 76 percent of Americans agree on, that is a public option.

The history of Obama and the republicans

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is smart, handsome, principled—and no longer a political threat to President Obama in 2012. After going AWOL and admitting to an extramarital affair in Argentina, the now resigned chairman of the Republican Governors Association and oft-mentioned presidential candidate is political toast. But Sanford's pain is Obama's gain.
By my count, Sanford is no less than the 10th horndog whose comeuppance has benefited Obama. This happily married president always seems to get a piece of the action.

Obama first realized the political benefits of sex scandals in 1995 when his congressman on Chicago's South Side, Mel Reynolds, resigned (and went to jail) for having sex with a 16-year-old.

A local state senator, Alice Palmer, left her seat to run for Congress in a special election; Palmer lost to Jesse Jackson Jr. and decided to try to reclaim her seat. But it was too late: Obama challenged her petitions, kept Palmer off the ballot and won election to public office for the first time.

Obama also benefited from the mother of all sex scandals, President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Had Clinton managed to keep his pants zipped, his vice president, Al Gore, almost certainly would have been elected president in 2000. (A big George W. Bush campaign theme was to "restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office").

If Gore had served two terms, in 2008 the country would have been ready for a different kind of change—the Republicans. No Monica. No Obama.

A footnote to the impeachment drama came when then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had blasted Clinton for Lewinsky, was himself revealed to be in an extramarital affair with a staffer. Just as the House was voting on impeachment, his successor, Bob Livingston, was outed as an adulterer (by Larry Flynt) and forced to resign.

The double whammy undermined the Republican revolution; the new speaker, Denny Hastert, proved a weaker leader than Gingrich and the GOP slowly lost seats. This put control of the House within the reach of Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats in 2006.

Emanuel succeeded that year in retaking the House for many reasons, but the one Republicans pointed to most often was the case of Florida Republican Mark Foley, the GOP representative who tried to seduce underage House pages online. By some accounts, the Foley scandal, which erupted just weeks before the '06 midterms, cost Republicans 12 seats. President Obama now enjoys a comfortable Democratic margin in the House that lets him put a progressive stamp on legislation.

But Obama wouldn't have been elected to the U.S. Senate, much less president, without a few more sex scandals yet. In the 2004 Illinois Democratic Senate primary, Obama badly trailed multimillionaire Blair Hull for months. He and Michelle agreed that if he lost that race, he was out of politics. Then divorce papers revealed that Hull's wife had accused him of physically assaulting her. (Hull said he didn't want to "relitigate" his divorce.)

Obama was already moving in the polls, and he had to fend off other candidates, but after the scandal he surged into the lead and won the primary.

At first the general election pitted Obama against GOP Senate nominee Jack Ryan, a popular banker expected by many to win handily. Until, that is, Ryan's wife, TV actress Jeri Ryan, said her husband pressured her to accompany him to sex clubs and have sex in front of strangers.

Ryan withdrew from the race and Obama cruised to victory against fringe candidate Alan Keyes.

During the 2008 campaign, John Edwards had an affair with Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer. Edwards dropped out earlier than expected, before Super Tuesday, and his campaign said at the time that money wasn't the reason. Top staffers urged him to quit; according to George Stephanopoulos, they had secretly agreed among themselves to blow up Edwards's campaign rather than let him win the nomination and risk destroying the party's chances in November.

Had Edwards stayed in, he would have siphoned votes from Obama (he took very few from Hillary Clinton) and, in an extremely close race, likely tipped the nomination to Clinton.

Obama won the general election without the help of a sex scandal, but the surprisingly strong Democratic tide (minus the backlash against New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was caught frequenting prostitutes) was at least partly attributable to disgust with Republican hypocrisy.

There was Sen. David Vitter, whose name was in the little black book of the "D.C. Madam," and Sen. Larry Craig. Craig's arrest for loitering in the men's room of the Minneapolis airport—and his "wide stance" explanation—turned Republicans into laughingstocks.

The embarrassments for the GOP continued: just last week, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, a "family-values" conservative like Vitter, admitted to an affair with a staffer. Vitter has survived politically, and Ensign might, too. But these scandals hardly seem like they will enhance the party's image as it enters into major domestic policy negotiations with Obama.

The Republicans' most promising 2012 nominee would be a smart, fresh face with a reputation for tolerance and a strong connection to the party's conservative base. Despite his problems in South Carolina, which were fueled by his refusal to accept stimulus money, Mark Sanford fits that bill. Or did. Now the party is more likely to go with Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin (or Haley Barbour, a former lobbyist turned Mississippi governor)—or someone easier for the president to beat.

republicans, the party of just NO

A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy says, "There's a certain inevitability to these Cold War analogies. But the president has been right on the money in asserting the need to keep us out of this debate."

Obama has condemned the violence as "unjust" and endorsed the "universal principle" of peaceful protest, an approach informed by a sense that America's troubled place in Iranian history would undermine the demonstrators by coloring their cause as a U.S. interest.

His Cairo speech sought to clear the air -- in Iran's case, by acknowledging the U.S. role in the 1953 coup that toppled the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh.

Translated into Farsi, the speech was delivered to Iranians in real time through a State Department-sponsored text-messaging service.
Obama's advisers say the outreach may have contributed to the defeat in Lebanese elections a few days later of a coalition led by Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed party, that had been predicted to win. In recent days, administration officials have pointed to the Iranian demonstrations as further evidence of Obama's possible influence in the region.

Republicans cannot seem to resist being just the party of NO.

let's get some new Democrats

Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public.

Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a “deal-breaker.” Why? Because he didn’t think private insurers could compete: “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day.” Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

And Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota offers a perfectly circular argument: we can’t have the public option, because if we do, health care reform won’t get the votes of senators like him. “In a 60-vote environment,” he says (implicitly rejecting the idea, embraced by President Obama, of bypassing the filibuster if necessary), “you’ve got to attract some Republicans as well as holding virtually all the Democrats together, and that, they don’t believe, is possible with a pure public option.” Bull!

Yes, the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex and relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America. Give us the health care 72% in the latest poll of the people want and deserve.

Americans want public health option

Two recent news media polls have found public support for a government plan, even if many people are unsure about its implications.

The most recent survey, a New York Times-CBS News poll released Sunday, found that 72 percent supported the idea, including half of those who identified themselves as Republicans.

The polling data backs up our substantive view that to make health care reform work, you need a public option.

republicans wrong AGAIN

President Obama has struck the right tone in his public statements, calling on Iran's government to stop "all violent and unjust actions" and making clear that Washington and the world are watching.

And he is right to avoid becoming more deeply involved in Iran's post-election political crisis, both practically and morally
How many American experts, officials or members of Congress have been to Iran in the past 30 years?

It is Iran's 66 million citizens, not tough rhetoric or token assistance, who will determine how events in the country unfold. Recognizing this, it is not only unproductive but dangerous for the United States to play too visible a role in Iran's domestic disturbances.

The United States encouraged Hungarians in an uprising against their communist leaders in 1956, only to watch as the brave individuals who chose to stand against their regime were killed mercilessly by their own government because they lacked sufficient internal or external support to succeed.

If the American people are not prepared to offer real help to the protesters in Tehran's streets -- up to and including military force to ensure that they win -- it is profoundly immoral to urge Iranians to action from the sidelines.

Those who truly want to see political reform in Iran would do well to stay out of the way. Republicans are on the wrong side of another issue.

the next republican shoe to fall?

Read today: "Let's have a real investigation of the rumors about South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who … has been rumored to be gay for years," Signorile says. "Like Larry Craig, Graham has voted antigay — including for the federal marriage amendment — while people in South Carolina and Washington have discussed what some say is an open secret for a long, long time."

The comments about Graham are not new, but they haven't seen this kind of prominence since Graham's 2002 election to the U.S. Senate. Early in the campaign, state Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootlian said Graham was "a little too light in the loafers to fill Strom Thurmond's shoes."

He later said he didn't know what "too light in the loafers" meant. Apparently he didn't know what too thick in the head meant either.
The pattern seems to be that you don't come out until befallen in scandal, what with New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's hiring his honey, Congressman Mark Foley's chasing former pages, and pastor Ted Haggard's paying for "massages" and meth from gay hookers and now republican Senator Ensign.

Considering the state's recent same-sex marriage ban, gay politicians see good reason to stay in the closet, says Truman Smith, president of the South Carolina Log Cabin Republicans.

republicans and racism

Rusty DePass, a South Carolina Republican activist recently "joked" that an escaped zoo gorilla was probably an ancestor of Michelle Obama.

The South Carolina House of Representatives twice tried to pass a resolution expressing regret to the first lady, but they were defeated by the Republican majority.

This tell us volumes about the Republicans who control their party.

words have consequences

In April, a prescient Department of Homeland Security memo predicted that the election of the first African American president and the advent of economic hard times could worsen the threat from "right-wing extremist groups."

In particular, the memo warned of an increase in anti-Semitic activity by extremists who buy into the whole Jewish-banker-secret-cabal paranoid fantasy -- and would blame "the Jews" for engineering the global financial crisis, just as they blame "the Jews" for everything.

The Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world pretended to be outraged. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele accused the administration of trying "to segment out Americans who dissent from this administration, to segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration, and labeling them as terrorists."

Republicans seem to have decided that telling the truth isn't nearly as important as the high-temperature exercise known as "firing up the base."

The Homeland Security memo made the assessment that "lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States."

There's profit for the pundits, and perhaps personal advantage for some politicians, in calling President Obama a "socialist" and calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a "racist Latina" and claiming that Democrats want to "take away your guns," but words have consequences.

we are doing something wrong?

read today:
Here are the facts about America's prisons, according to Webb:
The United States, with 5 percent of the world's population, houses nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners.

As Webb has explained it, "Either we're the most evil people on earth or we're doing something wrong." We incarcerate 756 inmates per 100,000 residents—nearly five times the world average.

Approximately one in every 31 adults in the United States is in prison, in jail or on supervised release. Local, state and federal spending on corrections amounts to about $70 billion per year and has increased 40 percent over the past 20 years.

the Employee Free Choice Act

Most U.S. companies take full advantage of current labor law to try to keep workers from exercising their full rights to organize and collectively bargain under the National Labor Relations Act.

Far from an aberration, such behavior by U.S. companies during union organizing campaigns has become routine, and our nation's labor laws neither protect workers' rights nor provide disincentives for employers to stop disregarding those rights.

In 34 percent of the elections studied, companies fired employees for union activity. In 57 percent of elections, employers threatened to shut down all or part of their facilities, and in 47 percent, employers threatened to cut wages and benefits.
In 63 percent of campaigns, supervisors met with workers one on one and interrogated them about their union activity or whether they or others were supporting the union.

In 54 percent of the elections, supervisors used these one-on-ones to threaten individual workers.

A key aspect of proposed labor law reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, concerns revisions to the rules surrounding arbitration of the first contract. Workers may organize free from the kind of coercion, intimidation and retaliation that so taints the election process in the private sector.

Republican hypocrisy re Judicial Activism

In the debate over Roe v. Wade, adherents of that decision clearly represent the "activist" side. Roe represents Court activism but remember, it came from a Supreme Court with seven Republican appointees, and Earl Warren was gone -- replaced by Nixon-appointee Warren Burger.

That doesn't mean the critics of Roe are right on the merits. It means that "activism" is a near-worthless concept, and comparative activism is nonsense.

Many opponents of Roe would not be satisfied with merely seeing it overturned and the issue returned to the states. The Republican Party platform effectively calls for a litmus test for judges. Will they rule abortion illegal in all 50 states no matter what the people want?

Now that would be judicial activism with a vengeance.
Constitutional arguments can't be settled by pointing a finger and shrieking "activist" whenever someone supports a use of the Constitution that you oppose. Some days, the shoe will be on the other foot.

good news for Democratic Party

Conservative commentators have made much of a recent Pew survey showing that public reaction to Obama has been more polarized than to any previous president: Democrats really like him, and Republicans really dislike him.

But the poll's most striking statistic was how few Americans now self-identify as Republicans. For the past year it has hovered around 24 percent, the lowest in three decades.

It's not so much that the Republican base has shrunk, as Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz points out in a recent essay: the Democratic base has expanded. When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, the Democratic base was 30 percent of the electorate; swing voters were 43 percent and Republicans 27 percent. Last year Democrats made up 41 percent; swing voters dropped to 32 percent and Republicans stayed put at 27 percent

Globalization, immigration, more working women and college graduates—all these have changed America over the past two decades.

In a detailed study for the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin point out that 67 percent of Americans now think favorably of the term "progressive," a 25 point increase in five years

Obama report card

Barack Obama's performance in the first 100 days of his presidency draws strong public approval in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Obama's overall rating remains high, with 69 percent of Americans approving of his job performance.

He gets solid marks for his handling of the economy, maintaining a better-than-2-to-1 advantage over congressional Republicans on the issue. Majorities said that Obama has exceeded their expectations in his first three months in office, has accomplished big things and has kept his main campaign promises.

Two-thirds of those polled approve of how Obama is handling international affairs in general, up slightly from last month, just before he embarked on his first European trip.

Majorities of Americans also approve of how he is handling health care, global warming, taxes and Cuba, four areas in which the administration has tried to stake new ground in its first few months.

lies about President Obama

There's an email whipping around the internet, supposedly written by a Navy SEAL who complains that President Obama delayed decisions to deploy the Navy SEALs because he wanted to resolve the hostage standoff with Captain Richard Phillips "peacefully."

There's enough background detail in the email to suggest it was in fact written by a SEAL, but several senior military officials who were involved in the direct planning and execution of the mission -- including in consultations with the White House and President Obama -- tell NBC News the claims are bogus.

Two senior military officials who talked to NBC about this both said essentially they have no reason to carry President Obama's water on this, but that he and the White House responded quickly and positively to the military's request.

Given some of the details included in the email, military officials say it could very well have come from a "disgruntled" Navy SEAL who had no idea what the White House and senior commanders were planning or executing.

In addition, the email was originally passed around by a former admiral who retired in 1982 who told Navy officials he doesn’t know any Navy SEALS and has no idea where the original email came from.
There is a connection to the false email about Obama's treatment of the US soldiers during the 2008 campaign when then candidate Obama visited Afghanistan. There was also a email campaign to stated that Obama did not want to play basketball with soldier...... another lie republican lie.

Shame on the republicans for trying to politicize the military. It was just a minor thing when Obama was just a Senator but now he is C-I-C and to undermine him is actually a threat to the security of the nation. These are the same people who think that the answer to losing an election is succeeding from the union.

Arizona / ASU hypocrisy

Recent recipients of honorary degrees at ASU include Wu Qidi, vice minister of education of the People's Republic of China and they say that they don't award honorary degrees to sitting politicians.
Rubbish! A President gives prestige to a University when he speaks at their Commencement. President Obama should not speak there.

the new Republicans

Gates is unapologetic about cutting back on big-ticket items such as the Army's Future Combat Systems. The program's lightly armored vehicles, he notes, have 18-inch clearances and flat bottoms -- perfect targets for roadside explosives. On the other hand, Gates's missile defense cuts are relatively small.

Republicans want to polarize the budget debate. For example, the Obama administration, according to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) is "willing to sacrifice the lives of American military men and women for the sake of domestic programs favored by President Obama."

In this case, the charge rings with irresponsibility and outright lies. While the total defense budget will be larger in a time of war, it focuses resources and attention precisely where they are most needed: on our war fighters. Eisenhower, who was my first vote for President, warned of the "military industrial complex."

Bush-Pres. Obama difference

It appears to me that President Obama is about first going after and isolating the Bin Laden group , the people who attached us, which is what we should have done instead of getting bogged down in Iraq killing millions of civilians and 4,000 of our troops trying to get Iraqi oil.

I believe all that was due to Cheney, the Darth Vadar of the 21st century, who saw that Iraq was weak and there was money to be made by interupting the oil flow from Iraq.

We are going to be lucky if we don't have more to pay for that. We need to attack those who attacked us. I thought this from the beginning, so did lots of people. They just got scared into it by Bush-Cheney and their lackeys spreading a fear of WMD.

That was what the Wilson/Plame affair revealed. Whoever thinks that Scooter Libby outed Wilson's wife without Cheney is a fool. It defies logic and common sense.

republicans still clinging to smoke and mirrors

Abu Zubaida's revelations after waterboarding triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms.

The interrogations led directly to the arrest of Jose Padilla, the man Abu Zubaida identified as heading an effort to explode a radiological "dirty bomb" in an American city.

Padilla was held in a naval brig for 3 1/2 years on the allegation but was never charged in any such plot. Every other lead ultimately dissolved into smoke and shadow, according to high-ranking former U.S. officials with access to classified reports.

"We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms," one former intelligence official said.

Despite the poor results, Bush White House officials and CIA leaders continued to insist that the harsh measures applied against Abu Zubaida and others produced useful intelligence that disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives.

Two weeks ago, Bush's vice president, Richard B. Cheney, renewed that assertion in an interview with CNN, saying that "the enhanced interrogation program" stopped "a great many" terrorist attacks on the level of Sept. 11.

"I've seen a report that was written, based upon the intelligence that we collected then, that itemizes the specific attacks that were stopped by virtue of what we learned through those programs," Cheney asserted, adding that the report is "still classified," and, "I can't give you the details of it without violating classification."

Since 2006, Senate intelligence committee members have pressed the CIA, in classified briefings, to provide examples of specific leads that were obtained from Abu Zubaida through the use of waterboarding and other methods, according to officials familiar with the requests.

The agency provided none, the officials said.

republicans buying guns in economic depression

There’s less wealth to spread around now as trillions of dollars has evaporated with increasing speed in the deepening crisis. In housing alone, more than $5 trillion has vanished. The gap between rich and poor, a gap of Third World proportions, has not changed. A full-time worker, on average, made $37,606 last year, considerably less than in 1973, adjusted for inflation.

While CEOs made 45 times as much as workers in 1973 they make more than 300 times as much today, according to Holly Sklar, author of “Raise the Floor, Wages and Policies that Work for All of US.”

To what extent those gaps will shrink under Obama remains to be seen and the outlook for swift action is not promising. There are, in fact, not many things for which the outlook is promising. Exceptions include Smith&Wesson. They expect revenue to double within the next three years.

Class warfare from the upper class

The reality is that, if the government had not stepped in to take over Fannie, Freddie and AIG; had not recapitalized Citigroup and Bank of America; had not provided the guarantees to allow for the orderly sale of Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns; had not become the buyer of last resort for commercial paper and home mortgages, then the entire financial system would have melted down by now and taken Wells Fargo and its arrogant chairman with it.

Rather than bellyaching about how un-American it all is, Kovacevich, the chairman of Wells Fargo, ought to be thanking the government and asking what more he could do to help.

Like it or not, we're all in this together now. It's cooperation and compromise, not the usual every-man-for-himself competition, that is going to get us out of this mess. And the sooner people on Wall Street embrace that reality, the better it will be for everyone.

Was 9/11 a hoax?

read today about the 9/11 event at:

and there is a lot more.


"Regarding Flight 77, which allegedly hit the Pentagon, Capt. Wittenberg said, ”The airplane could not have flown at those speeds which they said it did without going into what they call a high speed stall.

The airplane won’t go that fast if you start pulling those high G maneuvers at those bank angles. … To expect this alleged airplane to run these maneuvers with a total amateur at the controls is simply ludicrous ... It’s roughly a 100 ton airplane.

And an airplane that weighs 100 tons all assembled is still going to have 100 tons of disassembled trash and parts after it hits a building. There was no wreckage from a 757 at the Pentagon.

The vehicle that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77. We think, as you may have heard before, it was a cruise missile."

republican discipline and control

"It would be a pretty unseemly thing to launch an attack on Steele from within, that's not a Republican-style thing to do," said John Ryder, an RNC member from Tennessee. Humbug, that is exactly how they exact discipline and control in the Republican Party.

why republicans cannot solve the real economic problem

Republicans always say, "Small businesses are the job creators, they create jobs so we need to give them the breaks." Rubbish.
If that were true, why aren't they creating jobs now. Why are they laying off workers and going out of business.
The real and correct answer is that working men and women that have money to spend create the jobs, not small businesses.

Also, our big businesses are buying from and taking our jobs to overseas countries. That is the truth and it's not complicated.

republican diplomacy

These republicans think that the only way to deal with countries is by issuing a series of maximalist demands. This is not foreign policy; it's imperial policy. And it isn't likely to work in today's world.

New drug policy-reduce demand

The White House said yesterday that it will push for treatment, rather than incarceration, of people arrested for drug-related crimes as it announced the nomination of Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske to oversee the nation's effort to control illegal drugs. Well, it's about time.

Republican Idol

With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – the exact oposite of Barack Obama.

And those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we will be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Republican hypocrisy watch

Republicans need to be careful about opposing the budget that was created with and by them last year. Earmarks in excess of 40% of the total in the bill were inserted by REPUBLICANS so they could have it both ways as they knew it would pass. Talk about Republican hypocrisy.

Republican Uncle Tom

Michael Steele was suppossed to appear as a black face in the Republican Party but keep his mouth shut, so says Rush Limbaugh, now the Republican's driving force and leader. So what is the problem?

Well, Stelle also likes to talk and that is not what Limbaugh and his dittoheads wanted. They wanted what used to be called an "Uncle Tom" or a "house negro" and Michael Steele does not want to be known that way. Bravo for Michael Steele.

republican hypocrisy

Mark McKinnon, a top adviser in President George W. Bush's campaigns, acknowledged the value of picking a divisive opponent. "We used a similar strategy by making Michael Moore the face of the Democratic Party," he said of the documentary filmmaker. "That's why we gave him credentials to cover the 2004 convention and then turned the spotlight on him."

Republicans are hypocrites to complain too much about their "Boss Limbaugh" episode."

republicans afraid of Limbaugh

These Republicans are all afraid of Rush Limbaugh, including even Michael Steele the Chairman of the Republican National Committee who had to bow down and apologize for saying that Rush is just an entertainer after Rush chewed him out on his radio show.

So now for Republicans it is "all hail to Rush," the guy who had his maid go out on the street to buy illegally obtained drugs. How nice!

republicans redistributed wealth upward

The central issue in American politics now is whether the country should reverse a three-decade-long trend of rising inequality in incomes and wealth.

After this moment's big spike -- necessary to get the economy moving -- federal spending will account for 22.8 percent of U.S. gross domestic product between 2010 and 2014, up from 21 percent in 2008.

Obama's opponents need to admit that increasing government's share of the economy by less than two percentage points is hardly a form of wild-eyed state socialism

And before the howling on the right gets too loud, consider that we have just gone through a long era involving a far less frank form of redistribution -- upward.

"Over the past two or three decades, the top 1 percent of Americans have experienced a dramatic increase from 10 percent to more than 20percent in the share of national income that's accruing to them," said Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. Now, he said, was their time "to pitch in a bit more."

remember Republican's bad economy

Gross domestic product, a measure of the goods and services produced across the nation, shrank at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent in the last quarter of 2008, according to the Commerce Department, far worse than the initial estimate of 3.8 percent and the 5 percent most analysts were expecting.

The downward revision means the economy began the year from an even weaker position than previously thought, AND these Republican hypocrites are already trying to blame President Obama with his a little over a month in office.

the sin of the USA

read today: San Diego County sheriff's deputies escorted the pregnant woman out of her Poway home. It didn't matter that she had no car to drive and nowhere to go. It didn't matter that her baby was due the next day. The uniformed men had no choice, the North County Times reported.

As a country, we have lost compassion which would not please any deity that you wish to recognize.

Republicans strategy

What the Republicans are doing is just obstructionism. That's a well-trodden path that could consign the GOP to minority status for a generation.

republican baloney

Their idea of a good public face for the G.O.P. is a sound-bite dispenser like the new chairman, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor. Steele’s argument against the stimulus package is that “in the history of mankind” no “federal, state or local” government has ever “created one job.”

As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign.

This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets.

Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that’s not the hand America has been dealt.

As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning. That’s the steady course he upheld when much of the political establishment was either second-guessing or ridiculing it, and there’s no reason to change it now.

The stimulus victory showed that even as president Obama can ambush Washington’s conventional wisdom as if he were still an insurgent.

Obama up, republicans down

Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington’s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can’t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.

In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president’s job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) — not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote.

republican fat-cats get the goodies

Fred F. Fielding, Emmet T. Flood, William A. Burck and Daniel M. Price worked together at the White House under George W. Bush. Less than two weeks before leaving office, Bush made sure the senior aides shared a new assignment, naming them to an obscure World Bank agency called the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

The appointments are for six years and are potentially lucrative, paying up to $3,000 a day plus travel and other expenses if an appointee is chosen to hear a case. Bush also named two other prominent Republican lawyers to the agency, which attempts to broker international finance disagreements.

Bush made more than 100 such end-of-term appointments to a constellation of presidential boards and panels, such as the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and the U.S.-Russia Polar Bear Commission. He turned to close aides and top political supporters to fill the last-minute postings, many of which will outlast President Obama's current term.

Nearly half of Bush's appointments after Election Day were filled by donors who gave a total of nearly $1.9 million to Republicans since 2003, according to an analysis of the postings. At least 20 of the positions were filled by former Bush aides, plus others filled by old hands from the administrations of Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. These republicans have no shame.

do-nothing republicans

These republicans are still stuck in the shadow of President Herbert Hoover who essentially did nothing to address the republican economic mess from 1929 to 1932 which caused ten years of economic Depression.

Fortunately, the people now are better informed and will not tolerate that do-nothing republican attitude.

republicans, America's Taliban

Republicans are relishing the opportunity to make a big statement. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) suggested last week that "the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban, and the GOP these days does have the bravado of an insurgent band that has pulled together." So there you have it, out of their own mouths.

Republican dirt 1-1

Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.

republicans not likely to change

Even if Steele were inclined to try to reinvent the party, it's not clear the party would let him.

Many current Republicans like it pretty much the way it is. A new Rasmussen Reports survey found little appetite among Republicans for ideological moderation.

Indeed, 55 percent of Republican respondents said the party should be more like Sarah Palin—which means, that the GOP needs to become prettier and more belligerent.

republicans say one thing do another

Republicans claim to be the party that America trusts on national security, but their intelligence failures and poor planning led to the fiasco in Iraq.

Republicans claim that they are the party of fiscal responsibility, but they have bankrupted our country.

Republicans were once a party of human rights and equality but now are the party of exclusion rather than inclusion. We have to watch what republicans do, not what they say. We didn't leave them, they left us.

RNC fooled again

I still can not get over the STEELE DEMOCRAT bumper stickers his campaign gave out in 2006. If the RNC new Chairman was proud to be a Republican why did he try to deceive voters into thinking he was a Democrat?? These republicans must be in desperate.

republicans have destroyed our economy

"That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful," Obama said on Thursday, responding to news that Wall Street paid out $18.4billion in bonuses to their executives for 2008.

In the previous few days, Obama and his spokesman had weighed in against Citigroup's decision to buy a $50 million corporate jet ordered in 2005, prompting the bank to cancel the contract, and attacked former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain for spending $1.2 million on renovating his office.

One Democratic senator on Friday even proposed a law that would prevent bank executives from making more than $400,000 a year while they receive government financial support.

Republicans re-distributed the wealth of our country upward to those who have the most when they were in power and have destroyed our economy; AND they are now crying for Obama to fix it after only a week in office. Now that is the height of hypocrisy.

republicans stuck in the past

In truth, what really gets Republicans hot and bothered is the thought of government taking on more responsibility to fight this deepening recession, and the huge amount of public spending it will take to pull the economy out of the doldrums.

It so happened that the Republican standard-bearer in the 1920s, Herbert Hoover, felt that way, too.

Hoover's distaste for government, and his belief that business was the answer to the country's economic tailspin, got Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected president in 1932 and re-elected for three more terms

In their slavish devotion to Hooverism, today's Republicans are repeating the mistakes that banished their party to the political wilderness in the '30s.

economics 101

Republicans keep saying, "give the recovery money to business owners." Those are the people that have been supporting the republicans for the last 15 or so years. So they keep saying, "give it to the owners because they create jobs."(trickle down theory.)

NOT TRUE. Middle class working men and women that have money to spend create the opportunity for jobs.

If these republicans don't get this message, they will "hear from all of us" at their next election.

republicans reap defense spending

read today: The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people.

Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle.

As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.

republicans threatened Iraq inspectors

A former UN chief weapons inspector says he is ready to testify about the false US allegations which led to the Iraq war before a tribunal.

Hans Blix, in a Sunday interview with Al Jazeera television said he and the Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, were subjected to implicit threats from US Vice President Dick Cheney in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Republicans don't want test of spying on Americans without authority

With a mere 64 minutes left in its last full day in office, the Bush administration asked a federal judge to stay enforcement of a ruling that would keep alive a lawsuit which tests whether the president can bypass the Congress and eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.

republicans hide from past deeds

Last week, leading Republican Senators including John Cornyn (Tex.)are holding up the confirmation of Eric Holder, demanding that Eric Holder commit to NOT launching criminal probes of intelligence operatives, lawyers and high-level Bush advisers who took part in debates over warrantless wiretapping and detainee interrogations.

This smells like they have a lot to hide.

Republicans using detainees for their own boogymen

The CIA and other intelligence agencies under Bush were reluctant to share information on suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and that the Bush administration's focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.

Why do you suppose the data is strewn all over governmental agencies and no one knows where it is? Obviously the Republican Administration didn't want the data to be known and in one place which would be needed for prosecution.
.
Now we know. If they had intended to prosecute they would have gathered the information together.

republican spin

Read today: In the last eight years the party of hate held the White House, a majority of the Supreme Court and 6 years had the majority in both houses of Congress.

The financial melt down? Not our fault, blame Barney Frank (2 years in the Majority). Blame Bill Clinton, he was president 8 years ago and left a surplus not a trillion dollar deficit.

Phony evidence allowed Bush to invade Iraq. not our fault, everyone had that same evidence. Yes we were responsible for the evidence being correct but it's not our fault. The evidence came from Italy. Good enough, let's attack Iraq.

Hannity, Morris, Limbaugh, Matelin, Buchnan, Coulter, Barnes, Robertson and Delay? They don't speak for us!

Depending on and soliciting the vote of the Klan to help elect Southern Republicans? not our fault, every party has it's radicals.

Where does that leave them? Right where they belong. Smack dab where they belong, defending the indefensible.

Lee's advice for republicans

While the coalition of voters that supported Obama reflected the increasing diversity of America, and while Obama made gains across almost all demographic subgroups, the majority of his support came from white voters.

Sixty-one percent of his supporters were white, 23% were African-Americans, and 11% were Hispanic. In contrast, 90% of John McCain’s supporters were white. There were fewer white voters to win or lose. This pattern is a huge and we believe it will only increase in future elections.

Note: It is not a good idea for republican candidates for the Republican National Committee Chairmanship to be circulating a CD with the cut of "Obama, the Magic Negro." on it and making funnies about it.

religious condemnation

Read today: No matter what someone has done, their church should be there for them. Fundamentalist churches especially seem to be overfond of preaching Jesus Christ, and then conveniently forgetting Christ's admonition to love one another, and instead, use the Apostle Paul to punish someone who has sinned.

They'd stone people if the law in America let them get away with it. Abuse is love, they say. Separation is love, they say. God is not a God of separation; he is a God of union. What Ted Haggard did wasn't right, according to ethics or secular law, but he deserves to be forgiven. He should have been allowed to stay in church, where he could have gotten real spiritual help, instead of being tossed out to deal with things on his own.

Christ said he came to the sick, not the well, yet the church seems obsessed with keeping the sick out of the congregation in order not to spread "spiritual infection." This only forces the congregation to drive real problems underground, so they don't get thrown out too.

Churches need to stop being afraid of humanity's weaknesses, and HELP people instead of judging them. When Katrina and AIDS happened, the churches were the first ones to judge and condemn. It makes me angry to no end to see "Christians" use their religion to separate people, rather than being willing to dig in and get their hands dirty and I don't know, actually acknowledging sin as a weakness in man and HELPING people become better.

Most fundamentalist Christians are arrogant, self centered, judgmental, hard, unloving and unkind. this is the antithesis of the fruits of the spirit that Christians should be showing (not broadcasting) to the world.

Repent, Christians, and maybe more people will be moved by your example to Christ. Christ judges those Christians who discourage others away from Him by their words and actions. What does judge not, lest ye be judged mean anyway? You don't have to be part of the person's sins, but that doesn't mean you don't help them.

Helping people by booting them out of church as they did with Haggard is not help. It's condemnation, and doesn't make those who sin repent. Christ didn't boot people out--he got down and dirty and helped them on their level.

republican middle east policy

The Republican Bush administration argued that it had an overall approach to the middle east region: launch a war with Iraq, start up democracy there and everything would somehow come right in the peace process.

"The road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad" was the line we heard in Bush's first republican term. It was, of course, nonsense. The idea that Palestinians who wanted their land and homes back might be pursuaded by democracy never added up. And war, by itself, only made things worse.

what are these republicans hiding?

A federal judge yesterday rejected the Bush administration's latest attempt to keep secret the identities of White House visitors, and he declared that the government illegally deleted Secret Service computer records.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth concluded that the deletions took place before October 2004, when the Secret Service transferred large numbers of entry and exit logs to the White House and then deleted copies of them.

Also,we discovered that in the spring of 2006, amid an influence-peddling scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement declaring that the logs are not open to the public.

Four months later, Cheney's office told the Secret Service in a letter that visitor records for the vice president's personal residence "are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody and control of" the office of the vice president.