President working on fiscal controls

This morning the President’s Bipartisan Fiscal Commission held its first meeting, taking on one of the most difficult challenges facing any government. The Commission was established by Executive Order in February, when the President appointed co-chairs former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Senate Whip Alan Simpson, along with four other members a week later. The other dozen members of the Commission were appointed by Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress
The President talked briefly with the Commission before they began their meeting, and said a few words about the importance of their mission. He spoke about the work he has done already towards trying to restore a stable fiscal path, from asking Congress to restore the “pay as you go” rule, to going line by line through the budget for more than $20 billion in savings, to challenging long-entrenched but outdated defense projects, to proposing a freeze in most of the discretionary budget for the next three years

Arizona vs patriotic Americans

Stopping people on how they dress or look, and they are guilty and will be hauled to jail unless they can on-the-spot prove their innocence is now the law in Arizona --that is how it will work on the streets and highways. It reminds me of what the Nazi's did to the Jews in the early Thirties in Nazi Germany.

Well, as our relatives are in California, we used to make several trips a year, stopping at noon time and overnight in Phoenix, seeking entertainment, etc, and the next day continue on to California.

NO MORE. We will not SPEND ONE MORE DIME IN ARIZONA. (and I am what is called an Anglo) and by the way there is a better solution, just arrest the small business owners who hire the majority of illegals-don't hold your breath on that one. (There comes a time when one must be a man and take a stand for the good of our Country. Now is that time).

Political Party Differences

Republicans are reading people out of the party in droves for lack of ideological purity and that's not a winning or wise electoral strategy, either.

The republicans were strongest when they could accommodate people with a range of views. In that long-lost era, staunch conservatives, such as Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, coexisted with New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, NOW,

There are two types of political parties and churches, one where members hunt for heretics to kick them out(the Republicans)the other where people go out looking for converts to bring them in(the Democrats).


Well these right wingers finally got rid of me, a moderate to most people.

don't you just love these republicans

All republicans are not racists, but when you meet a racist or read their comments, it is likely these days that he/she will be a republican.

We are just thankful we got out of that party after 50 years. When they lie they call us liars. When they hate, they call us haters. When they spew racism, they call us racists.

THAT'S AN OLD GAME AND WE ARE ONTO IT. Moderates are fleeing that party as fast as they can.

government for and by the people

If we had had no Federal government, the South would have been successful (almost was) and there would have been two countries with one still likely having slavery. These right wingers are still "fighting" the Civil War. Even republican Governor Perry of Texas has recently advocated secession ( ssssshhh--- means get rid of a black President.)

Why?-- he is running for re-election and he knows that stuff appeals to redneck people, no matter that that act would be treasonous and anyway it was settled by the Civil War, which many of these people would like to fight again.

Going to televised political meetings with sidearm's, openly carried, is not about rights, it is about intimidation. It substitutes for the white sheets of the Klan used to intimidate others (and by the way they promote violence against not only blacks but Jews and Catholics as well) which along with other so called "christian militia groups" are on the rise. I am like Bush, " I hear the voices" When these fanatics start bombing us all (like Tim Mcveigh--- Okla.) hopefully we have a central government that will respond accordingly.

Healthcare
Taxes that poor people pay (payroll, property, on sales, etc) go into the common good but they cannot access cheaper and necessary healthcare. When they finally go to emergency rooms which is way more expensive, we end up paying the entire bill, they pay nothing, directly.

In the healthcare reform, they pay something into the healthcare system. And If I don't want to participate in the healthcare system, Iand all others am required to contribute something to it on my tax return for the common good. Seems fairer to me.

Law
The Supreme Court is packed with republican conservatives--I call them right wingers (appointed by republican Presidents), with a 5 to 4 majority which soon could be larger. Republican Senators are calling for filibustering even before the President has nominated anyone to replace Justice Stevens. The existing court recently overturned a 100 year old law prohibiting Corporation money from buying and controlling elections. So much for precedence, "legislating from the bench" and "activist judges" from the liberal side.

tea baggers, republicans, religious hypocrites

Doing away with social security, medicare, medicaid for those who cannot get even any medical treatments for their life on their own, civil rights, preservation of park land, all federal taxation, in fact all federal laws would not make our country better or improve the living conditions, provide for the common good or make our /MY country better for its people. Oh it sounds good to the shallow thinking cagle of jackleg rednecks and rightwing fanatics and religious bigots. Real patriots that love our country know better.

Oh, I hear and see the tea baggers and the Fox radio commentator bigotry and racism, and yelling "get the government our of my healthcare"--while those hypocrites are getting medicare---a single payer government program, and the outright lies that they spew and believe., "death panels, pulling the plug on grandma, gov't can take money out of your bank account, and on and on". Lies, lies, lies.

The wealthy have redistributed the wealth of this country UPWARDS by shifting jobs overseas for the cheap labor meanwhile they pocket the difference. If Jesus came tomorrow I believe he would not side with and defend the wealthy and powerful.

I believe Jesus would stand with and advocate for the needy, the poor, the afflicted and the common good, working, spiritual working men and women of all counties, not the privileged or the institutional churches filled with hypocrites.

And who am I?? Just a sinner who deserves to burn in hell for all eternity. If he asks me , "and what was your attitude toward the poor?" I will say, "I did what I could for them. I advocated for them. I cried for them when they suffered." And he will have seen that in my heart. If that is enough, I will be saved. End of story.

Republican/Voyeur morality

AND WE thought the repubs were zombies. From now on they are THE VOYEUR PARTY spending their "stimulus money," and preaching morality to the rest of us. Such hypocrites!

Republican Party should be named the Voyeur Party

The Republican party at the Voyeur night club (which features topless dancers wearing horse bridles and other bondage gear while mimicking sex acts) spent $1,946.25 of donors money for "meals was attended by a group of Republicans who had been at an official party event at the Beverly Hills Hotel the same night. The attendees are part of the Republican National Committee program to cultivate future donors.

How Republicans spend your money

The Republican National Committee's latest expense filings captured widespread attention for expenditures at a risque nightclub: $1,946.25 for "meals" at Voyeur in West Hollywood, which features topless dancers wearing horse bridles and other bondage gear while mimicking sex acts.

They also spent $17,000 for private jet service; more than $35,000 for upscale hotels; and more than $43,000 in expenses, not including airfare, for the committee's winter meeting in Hawaii.

First year benefits of Healthcare Reform

- Health insurance providers cannot deny any child coverage because of a pre-existing condition
- Insurance companies can no longer drop someone when he or she becomes ill
- Young adults can stay on their parents' health insurance plan up to their 27th birthday
- Health Insurers must now reveal how much money is spent on overhead
- New health insurance plans must cover checkups and other preventative care without co-pays
- New measures will be implemented to help eliminate health insurance waste, fraud, and abuse
- Small businesses (fewer than 50 employees) will get tax credits covering up to 50% of premiums
- Seniors on Medicare will get a rebate to fill the "donut hole" in their drug coverage
- Insurers will be required to put more premiums dollars toward actual health care services, not administration, advertising, or profits
- Insurance premium increases will be have to be reviewed and justified
- Lifetime caps on the amount of insurance a person can have will be banned
- A temporary high-risk pool will be set up to cover adults with pre-existing conditions

CBO analysis shows cuts in deficits

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation awaiting the president's approval would extend coverage to 32 million Americans who lack it, ban insurers from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and cut deficits by an estimated $138 billion over a decade. If realized, the expansion of coverage would include 95 percent of all eligible individuals under age 65. They are usually conservative in their estimates.

racists protest at House healthcare passage

Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., told a reporter that as he left the Cannon House Office Building with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the civil rights era, some among the crowd chanted "the N-word, the N-word, 15 times." Both Carson and Lewis are black, and Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones also said that it occurred.

"It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, a large former police officer who said he wasn't frightened but worried about the 70-year-old Lewis, who is twice his age. "He said it reminded him of another time."

Pass the Bill

Congressional Democrats say the final version of their comprehensive health-care plan -- set to be unveiled Thursday and likely to be voted on Sunday -- would cut the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next decade and $1.2 trillion 10 years after that.

The legislation would cost an estimated $940 billion over 10 years and deliver on the White House's top domestic priority: providing insurance to more than 30 million people who currently lack it. The bill would expand insurance coverage through a combination of tax credits for middle-class households and an expansion of the Medicaid program for low-income people.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters the legislation is "the largest deficit-reduction bill that members will have a chance to vote on" in most of their congressional careers -- a key enticement for a bloc of undecided Democratic lawmakers who fear that the legislation would run up the mounting federal deficit. The savings estimates came from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Texas republicans

Historians on Tuesday criticized proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum by the right wing republican controlled State Board of Education as appointed by Texas Govenor Perry (the right wing republican who suggested Texas should part from the Union). Historians say that many of the changes are historically inaccurate and that they would affect textbooks and classrooms far beyond the state's borders.

The board is made up of 10 whites and 5 minorities. It also deleted references to minorities and minority leaders. All this and more in a state, Texas, which is a state where Anglos will be the minority sooner than in most states.

The new curriculum also plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, and questions the separation of church and state. Among other things, there were changes that asserted Christian faith of the founding fathers. Historians say the founding fathers had a variety of approaches to religion and faith; some, like Jefferson, were quite secular.

Ex-republican Massa from NY-hypocrite

New York Rep Masssa says he resigned so as to not put his wife through the inquiry but on the radio he says to ask his wife about his sexual preferences. He says the Democratic Leadership was after him but he hits on a male staffer at an after-hours party. He says they were after him but instead of s staying to vote, he resigns in disgrace. We know what he is and it says a lot about what his Republicans buddies like Beck and Limbaugh are--

Republicans AGAIN lie about reconciliation

In a Feb. 23 USA Today op-ed, Republicans wrote that the dastardly Dems were planning to use "special rules to circumvent bipartisan Senate opposition" and "jam this bill through Congress." But that's A LIE, and they know it. Why? Because they were actually in the Senate on Dec. 24 when Obama's bill passed. Sixty yea votes, 39 nay—which is nine votes more than the Dems needed, at least according to the U.S. Constitution. (A few weeks earlier, the House passed its own version of the bill, 220–215.)

Furthermore, the opposition in the Senate was hardly bipartisan: every one of the 39 senators who voted against the bill was a Republican, and every one of the 60 senators who voted for it was a Democrat.

So Obama doesn't need to resort to reconciliation to pass health-care reform. He's already passed it. What he does need it for, however, is passing the revisions necessary to get the House and the Senate to agree on a single version of the legislation.

This means that after the House passes the Senate version of the bill, the Senate will approve what's known as a "sidecar"—a small package of budget-related tweaks designed to make the House happy. These revisions represent the only part of health-care reform that Senate Democrats are seeking to pass through reconciliation, i.e., with a simple majority rather than a supermajority. This is less ambitious than the usual reconciliation process, which typically applies to entire bills, not more.

As it turns out, every major health-care innovation of the last three decades has been done through reconciliation, including COBRA, the popular law that allows people to keep their health insurance after losing their jobs, and the Children's Health Insurance Program, which, together with Medicaid, provides access to health care for one third of American children.

And remember: these bills were passed in their entirety through reconciliation. Obamacare, on the other hand, passed the Senate with a 60-vote supermajority; it's only the sidecar that Democrats plan to pass with less.

Reconciliation has never been used for legislation this substantial? Really?
Last month, Repbulican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said reconciliation "has never been used for this kind of major systemic reform"; later, Republican Lamar Alexander told ABC's This Week that "there's never been anything of this size and magnitude and complexity run through the Senate in this way."

But THAT IS A LIE, as reconciliation has not only been used to pass major health-care initiatives, it's actually been used to pass major initiatives of all sorts, including the Republicans' favorite "major systemic reform" of the last 20 years (the 1996 welfare-reform bill) and at least two bills (Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts) that cost about twice as much over 10 years ($1.8 trillion) as health-care reform is estimated to cost ($950 billion).

Top 30 Reasons to Oppose Gun Control

Read today:
1. In over two hundred years of American history, the courts have never invalidated a gun control law based on the second amendment, but the NRA knows more about the law and the Constitution than the courts.
2. Patrick Henry opposed adding the second amendment to the Constitution. That's why quotations from Henry are used by pro-gun activists to support their interpretation of the second amendment.
3. The Founding Fathers intended to create a libertarian utopia. That's very evident from reading the following quotations:
James Madison wrote, "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." (Federalist 51).
John Jay explained, "Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers." (Federalist 2)
4. Guns don't kill people, they just make the bullets go faster so that they can kill people.
5. It's a good idea to own a gun at home because a gun is more likely to be used to kill a friend or family member rather than a criminal.
6. There have been gun control laws for over 200 years in America, but because of modern day circumstances gun-control is no longer needed.
7. The NRA knows more about American history than historians do.
8. Although firearms are inanimate objects and therefore can't kill people, they do somehow have the magical power to keep a person safe from criminals.
9. Although firearms are inanimate objects and therefore can't kill people, they do somehow have the magical power to protect a person against political tyrrany.
10. Guns are a protection against political tyrrany. For example, private ownership of guns was very common in Iraq while Sadam Hussein was in power. Guns are the reason the Iraqi people have enjoyed so much more freedom than people in England where guns have been banned.
11. It's a good idea to make it easy for criminals to obtain guns.
12. According to the British Crime Survey, crime in England has gone down. However, the NRA is the best source of information about crime.
13. Using Gary Kleck's methodology it could be shown that millions of Americans have seen spacecraft from another planet or have been visited by aliens. Despite this, Kleck's studies reveal the truth about defensive gun use.
14. John Lott is a reliable source of information although he kept changing his story about where he got his information for a study in his book More Guns Less Crime.
15. Gun advocate Gary Kleck commented in his book Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control, "More likely, the declines in crime coinciding with relaxation of carry laws were largely attributable to other factors not controlled in the Lott and Mustard analysis." Kleck and Lott contradict each other so they both must be right.
16. During the 1980's the NRA tried to convince President Reagan to abolish the ATF, the law enforcment agency in charge of enforcing federal gun control laws. This is because the best way to enforce current gun laws is to abolish law enforcement.
17. It's a good idea to always have a loaded gun around when you lose your temper.
18. Children are safer if they have easy access to guns.
19. The International Crime Victim Survey found a positive correlation between gun ownership and increases in homicide and suicide, but the right to life doesn't matter.
20. Pro-gun propaganda is very good logic. Let's apply pro-gun propaganda to cars to demonstrate this- Cars don't kill people, people kill people. That's why stop signs and speed limits should be abolished.
21. Criminals don't obey laws and that's why all laws should be abolished.
22. Gun violence means more freedom. Just ask the family of any gun violence victim to verify this.
23. James Madison's first draft of the second amendment was "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." It is clear from this that the term "bear arms" refers to rendering military service and not to carrying guns for personal purposes. However, modern day circumstances have changed the meaning of the second amendment.
24. In United States v. Miller the Supreme Court recognized that the "possession or use" of a weapon must be reasonably related to a well regulated miltia to enjoy second amendment protection. That's why there is an individual right to own any military weapon whether or not its possession or use is related to militia activity.
25. In United States v. Miller the Supreme Court stated that the purpose of the second amendment is to promote an effective militia. That's why the first part of the second amendment doesn't matter.
26. Assault weapons crime decreased after the passage of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Gun crime went down the most in states that didn't previously have their own ban on assault weapons. That's why the ban was ineffective.
27. There is much more gun violence in the US than other industrialized nations, but it's better to face an armed criminal.
28. Chanting a lie over and over again will somehow make it come true.
29. The gun industry should have a special immunity to lawsuits that isn't enjoyed by other industries. The gun industry should not be held responsible when it's negligent.
30. Most murders in the US are commited with guns, but killing is not the purpose of a gun.

the Second Amendment

Amendment II reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Read today:--Setting aside the issue of "incorporation" the Second Amendment to our Constition does not say, 'individually armed citizens, being necessary to the security of a free state . . . . ' The Amendment explicitly refers to the 'militia,' a collective organization and a specific kind of militia at that, one that is 'well regulated.' It is hard to imagine individuals being 'well regulated' by the government. They are only 'regulated' as a group. Otherwise, why is the "well regulated militia phrasse in there?

undestanding reconciliation

The republican underlying "principle" seems to be that it's fine to pass tax cuts for the wealthy on narrow votes in reconciliation but an outrage to use reconciliation to help middle-income and poor people get health insurance.

It's not just legitimate to use reconciliation to complete the work on health reform. It would be immoral to do otherwise and thereby let a phony republican argument about process get in the way of health coverage for 30 million Americans.

gun control myths

MYTH: Keeping guns in the home increases personal protection.
TRUTH: Obviously, self defense is not a good argument against gun control since those who own firearms are actually more likely to be victims of homicide. Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine revealed that keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of both suicide and homicide.

Keeping a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be a victim of homicide in your home (in almost all cases the victim is either related to or intimately acquainted with the murderer) and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide . Guns make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful than if other means were used such as sleeping pills.

MYTH: Guns are used defensively 2.5 million times each year in the US.
TRUTH: Gary Kleck conducted a survey which concluded that 2.5 million people in the US each year use guns to defend themselves. One percent of the US population is between 2 and 3 million. So if only one percent of the survey respondents had answered the survey dishonestly that would make the results of the survey inaccurate by millions. According to the NCVS (National Crime Victim Survey) guns are used defensively less than 100,000 times each year. The NCVS surveyed over 90,000 people. In contrast, Kleck only surveyed about 5,000 people.

Thus it would be reasonable to conclude that the NCVS provides a more reliable estimate of the number of defensive gun uses in the US. An article published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern)87 (1997): 1430 revealed that using methods similiar to Kleck's, it could be concluded that nearly 20 million Americans have seen aircraft from another planet and that one million Americans have had contact with aliens.

MYTH: A decrease in crime in Kennesaw, Georgia after it passed a law which required people to keep a firearm in their homes shows that guns reduce crime.
TRUTH: Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig explain, "The case of Kennesaw, Georgia, which adopted an ordinance in 1982 requiring every household to keep a gun, has been prominent. There have been several published analyses of the burglary trends in Kennesaw around the time of the ordinance, with contradictory results. In any event, this is not a good test of the deterrence hypothesis, since the ordinance was purely symbolic.

Most homes in Kennesaw already had a gun before the ordinance, and it seems unlikely the ordinance had any effect on prevalence since there was no penalty specified in the law for refusal to comply." ("Guns and Burglary", Evaluating Gun Policy, pages 81-82)

MYTH: People in Switzerland are heavily armed. There is an assault weapon in every Swiss home.
TRUTH: It's true that Swiss soldiers are required to keep their assault rifles at home. How big is the Swiss Army? 400,000 . There are about 3 million Swiss households . 400,000/3,000,000= 0.133. Therefore, there is a military assault rifle in about 13% of Swiss homes. Switzerland also has rather strict gun control laws. In Switzerland a permit is required in order to purchase a weapon (The permit shows that you are at least 18 and don't have a criminal record).

A permit is also required to carrry a weapon. Such a permit is mostly issued to people who work in security-type occupations. To obtain this permit, you have to demonstrate that you need to carry a weapon and that you know how to handle a gun safely and have knowledge of the law regarding firearms use. Soldiers in the Swiss Army are required to store their military weapons at home under lock and key and to undergo regular training. Strict gun laws in Switzerland minimize the dangers of gun ownership.

However, such dangers can not be completely eliminated as illustrated by the case of Friedrich Leibacher who rushed into a session of parliament in the Swiss town of Zug. He used his Swiss Army assault rifle and a grenade to murder fourteen people. Eleven of these people were lawmakers.

MYTH: The 1976 handgun ban in Washington D.C. caused an increase in crime.
TRUTH: The handgun ban has prevented 47 deaths each year Gun control has saved lives. Let's look at a graph that displays information about the homicide rate in the District of Columbia a decade before the ban and a decade after. There are random fluctuations in the crime rate from year to year so it's best to look at homicide data from many years. In the decade preceding the ban, the homicide rate exceeded 35 per 100,000 4 times. In the decade following the ban this happened only once.

The average homicide rate of the ten years that followed the ban was lower than the homicide rate of the previous decade. Was this part of a general decrease in homicide that would have happened without the ban? If that were so you would expect the non-gun homicide rate to have declined as well as the gun homicide rate. However, there was only a statistically significant decrease in the number of homicides that involved firearms.

MYTH: If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns.
TRUTH: If you outlaw guns, very few criminals will have guns. In America guns start out legal. Then they enter the black market one way or the other . So if you have less legal guns then there will less guns entering the black market and consequently less outlaws owning guns. Think about it. Nations with very strict gun control laws such as the UK, Australia, and Japan have much lower gun crime rates than the US.
The most probable explanation for this is that criminals in the US have much greater access to guns due to less gun control. Saying "If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns" is very misleading and completely absurd. If you outlaw guns, less outlaws will have guns. Would you rather have more or less outlaws owning guns? The answer is obvious.

MYTH:Gun ownership is a protection against political tyranny.
TRUTH: Private ownership of guns was very common under Saddam Hussein's regime .It certainly didn't protect the Iraqi people against political tyranny. Gun ownership was legalized in Germany in 1928, five years before Hitler rose to power. Despite the claims of pro-gun activists, gun ownership did nothing to stop a tyrant like Hitler from seizing power. In 1938, Germany's gun laws were relaxed except in the case of Jews.

Although the gun lobby has tried to associate racism with gun control, white supremacists have often praised the Nazis for being pro-gun and have opposed gun control. An example of that is this quote: "If you register your gun with anybody, you're a nut! When the conspiracy comes for your firearm, give it to 'em like this grand dragon is going to - right between the eyes." -Klu Klux Klan (Richmond Times- Dispatch, July 5, 1967)

real wishes of American People re healthcare

There's anger in the land, no question, but a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation makes clear that that anger is directed more at congressional dithering than at the actual elements of the Democrats' plan.

More than 70 percent of Americans support the establishment of the exchanges, the extension of coverage, and the elimination of lifetime limits on overall coverage and of the "doughnut hole" in Medicare drug coverage. Fifty-eight percent say they'd be angry or disappointed if Congress threw in the towel on health reform.

To those who "speak for God"

In the roughly 4.2 billion years that the earth has been in existence, the nation known as the USA has been in existence for less than 250 years of those 4.2 billion years. (And bits of it have been part of the nation for much less than that.)

If America was such a good idea, why did God wait so long to make it such? And why did God depend on refugees from other nations to make it so? And why did its discovery by disease-ridden riff-raff depend on chance? (They were looking for something else entirely.)

And was it God's intention to have a predominantly white, slave-owning nation (as it was)? Or a multicultural nation with freedom for all and whites in the minority (as it will be, very shortly)?

And what do you think God's punishment will be for those Republicans who insist on the freedom to pollute and despoil God's "chosen" country?

BTW, how did you learn the U.S. was God's nation? Who told you this? And what was the chance of that person being in error? What is your authority to speak for God?

Is Lomborg's climate research a fraud?

Read today: Author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in "Cool It." The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is "a mirage," writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. "[I]t is a house of cards…Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature" of Lomborg's work.

For example, he argued that no more than two (of 20) groups are declining in population, that their numbers are not falling overall, and, in places where they are, that it is not a result of global (or Arctic) warming.

For his claim that the polar-bear population "has soared," Lomborg cited a 1999 study (scroll down to the paper by Ian Stirling). But that study described declining birthrates and other threats to the bears, blaming warmer spring temperatures that cause the sea ice to break up. Overall, since the mid-1980s polar-bear numbers have fallen, which experts attribute to global warming.

One of Mr. Lomborg's most interesting claims is that global warming will avert more deaths (as fewer people die of cold) than it will cause. But three of the five sources he cites (including this and this) reached the opposite conclusion. Flawed research produces fraudulent conclusions.

Military Commanders responsible shoud be demoted and fired

Some in the military are speaking out and believe the Afghan desire to secure Barge Matal, for whatever reason, may have cost 17 Americans lives: four in Barge Matal itself, five at Ganjgal and eight at the Keating base.
U.S. commanders failed to resume their plans to evacuate COP Keating, and delays seem to have begot more delays which caued the eight deaths at the Keating Base

Also look at the pic to see that the base is surrounded by higher ground. The Military Commanders responsible shoud be demoted and fired.

current republican party

Today's republican congressmen had an idea, put it in a bill, sponsored the bill and ended up voting against their own bill when they found out President Obama was for it.
As an ex-republican that is all I need to know about those now in charge of that party.

republicans trying to re-write history

The Iraq war mistake has cost the United States support from other nations around the world. More than 4,370 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq since the Republican President ordered the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded or killed. U.S. is likely to bring home from Iraq some 90,000 combat troops by summer's end.

Under Obama 12 of the top Al Queda 20 people have been eliminated and 100 of their associates have been taken out. They are in fact not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run.

Obama inherited a shrinking economy with financial institutions that were on the edge of collapse, threatening to move the world into a depression. The economy expanded at 5.8 percent during the last quarter and the U.S. has "stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs." There is tangible evidence that the economy is moving in the right direction. Republicans like Dick Cheney are trying to rewrite history.

right wingers run moderates out of the republican party

McCain has moved to the right on several issues, Hayworth, who will officially launch his campaign Monday, began using his talk show on conservative radio station KFYI to drum up opposition to McCain. "You have a consistent conservative challenger and an incumbent who calls himself a maverick but in fact is a moderate," Hayworth said, outlining what he views as the central choice for conservative GOP primary voters in August.

It is horrible to wing-nut conservatives who have taken over the republican party if you are a "moderate."

Dick Army's Republican tea-baggers

The Republican tea-party movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams.

The tea partiers are the same old hate filled racists of old. Their villain list includes almost anyone who is not one of them. Their established scripts of New World Order conspiracy theories, which have occupied the dubious right-wingnut fringes of American politics since the days of the John Birch Society.

They spout that Washington, D.C., liberals had engineered the financial crash so they could destroy the value of the U.S. dollar, pay off America's debts with worthless paper, and then create a new currency called the Amero that would be used in a newly created "North American Currency Union" with Canada and Mexico. Nevermind that it started In December 2007 on their republican watch.

At a recent conference, organizers showed a movie to the meeting hall, Generation Zero, whose thesis was only slightly less bizarre: that the financial meltdown was the handiwork of superannuated flower children seeking to destroy capitalism.
And then, of course, there is the double-whopper of all anti-Obama conspiracy theories, the "birther" claim that America's president might actually be an illegal alien who's constitutionally ineligible to occupy the White House.

This point was made by birther extraordinaire and Christian warrior Joseph Farah who told the crowd the circumstances of Obama's birth were more mysterious than those of Jesus Christ. (Apparently comparing Obama to a messiah is only blasphemous if you're doing so in a complimentary vein.)

And they talk of cesession from the Union, which is an idea that was settled in the Civil War with over 600,000 killed. This crowd includes Texas republican governor Rick Perry.

republicans blocking President Obama

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama has been blocking Senate confirmation of about 70 government appointees nominated by President Barack Obama, his office said.White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday, "If you needed one example of what's wrong with this town, it might be that one senator can hold up 70 qualified individuals to make government better because he didn't get his earmarks."

another Republican hypocrisy

Last week the opposition party wrote a startling new entry in the Annals of Obstruction: Republicans were so determined to deny President Obama an achievement that a group of them voted against their own proposal.

A month ago, a bipartisan group of senators asked Obama for his "strong support" for a commission to solve the national debt crisis. "We don't recommend this special process lightly," they wrote, calling it "the best way to reach a lasting bipartisan solution that will put our nation back on a sound long-term fiscal path."

One of the signatories, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), issued a news release trumpeting his sponsorship of the legislation. "Now is the time," he proclaimed.

But when the proposal came to a vote on the Senate floor Tuesday, four of the Republican signers -- Crapo, Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and Robert Bennett (Utah) -- voted no.

So did three other Republican senators who had also been co-sponsors of the legislation -- 2008 presidential nominee John McCain (Ariz.), Sam Brownback (Kan.) and John Ensign (Nev.). An eighth co-sponsor, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), didn't vote. ANOTHER REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

Republicans repeat their lies, I repeat the facts

Lest we forget, all the following were on the REPUBLICAN'S WATCH: 1 the false invasion of Iraq, 2. the financial collapse (begun in Dec 2007)and TARP was started in Sept 2007, and 3. the 9/11 attack. They are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.

Call the Republican's bluff

President Obama went to the House Republican Caucus meeting yesterday but insisted that it be televised, and for once stood up for himself. They continuously attacked him with their talking points. He, for once, defended himself and us. He won hands down as they sounded like school children parroting and outright lying, which he rebutted time after time with facts. My advice, don't cave in to the Republican threats to filabuster, make them do it, time after time so the American people can see their party of NO.

republicans continue their hypocrisy

Republican Senator Hatch to Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday regarding health care.....

Hatch said Thursday that using reconciliation would be “one of the worst grabs for power in the history of the country” that would permanently impact relations between the two parties. “It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules,” Hatch said. “If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators.”

Which is interesting, because Hatch voted for.....
* The College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, which passed through reconcilation;
* The Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Reconciliation Act of 2000, which passed through reconciliation; and
* The Taxpayer Refund and Relief Act of 1999, which passed through reconciliation.

republican hypocrisy

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, every suspect apprehended on U.S. soil has been initially held under federal criminal law, including shoe bomber Richard C. Reid. David C. Headley, accused of scouting out locations for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, and Adis Medunjanin, arrested in an alleged plot to target New York, are providing the FBI with intelligence after being read their rights, officials said.

The Republicans arguing that a different action should have been taken in this case were notably silent when dozens of terrorists were prosecuted in federal court by the last administration, and thus are HYPOCRITES.

facts republicans want you to forget

It is a fact that when the President took office a year ago, he faced an array of historic challenges: an economy in freefall; job losses averaging almost 700,000 a month; a middle class under assault; two wars and badly frayed global alliances; and a staggering $1.3 trillion budget deficit.

remember it was the Republicans

Lest we forget, all the following were on the REPUBLICAN'S WATCH: 1 the false invasion of Iraq, 2. the financial collapse (begun in Dec 2007)and TARP was started in Sept 2007, and 3. the 9/11 attack. You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

conservative and republican heroes

James O'Keefe, who 31 Republican congressmen signed a resolution calling him an American hero, was the leader among four men who created a ruse to enter the lawmaker's downtown office, saying they needed to repair her telephones, according to court records unsealed Tuesday. O'Keefe used his cellphone to take pictures of two men, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who are accused in an FBI agent's sworn affidavit of impersonating telephone company workers. Stanley Dai is accused of aiding the Jan. 25 plot.

All four were taken to a suburban New Orleans jail and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. If convicted, each man faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

O'Keefe is well-known, but Flanagan, Basel and Dai are not. Flanagan worked last year as a paid intern for Rep. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.); he now works at the Pelican Institute as a blogger.

Dai, who is from Alexandria, is a Chinese immigrant and was president of the Conservative Student Union at George Washington University in 2005, student records show.

Basel, a Mankato, Minn., native, and O'Keefe became friends as fellow founders of conservative newspapers at their respective colleges, O'Keefe at Rutgers and Basel at the University of Minnesota-Morris.

Since Watergate, Republicans have been rewarding their goons with Talks Shows.

republican facts

Lest we forget, all the following were on the REPUBLICAN'S WATCH: 1 the false invasion of Iraq, 2. 9/11 and 3. the financial collapse (begun in Dec 2007). You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

government by and for big corporations

The Supreme Court on Thursday upended and reversed a century's worth of campaign finance law. The court has moved sharply right. Chief Justice John Roberts has mustered five votes for a conservative rule by corporations. It is hard to remember an instance where the justices reached so far to make major constitutional law. It will have immediate political consequences.

Business managers now will be able to spend, at will, Bloomberg-level sums in congressional races across the country and thus control the congress and create a corporate government. No more government by the people but government by and for the big corporations, banks included.

The Republican gang of five (out of nine) have made law from the bench for and on the beholf of the Republican Party and their corporate giants, not the people.

questions for republicans-- Limbaugh and Robertson,

I visualize God asking each of us his first questions when we arrive at the gates: " 1. What was your opinion on helping the poor people of Haiti?"
and 2. "Did you look for lies and excuses not to help?" Limbaugh/Robertson, what would your answers be?

the GOP spin doctor and his propaganda

The president of Fox News and republican political hack is, by default, the closest thing there is to a kingmaker in Anti-Obama America. And that, in turn, makes him the de facto leader of the GOP. In a relentless (and spectacularly successful) hunt for cable ratings, Roger Ailes has given invaluable publicity to the tea partiers, furnished tryout platforms to GOP candidates, and trained a fire hose of populist anger at the president and his allies in Congress.

While Beltway Republicans wring their hands or write their tracts, Ailes has worked the countryside, using his feel for Main Street resentment to attract and give voice to this year's angriest—and most powerful—voter-viewers: those who hate the Feds, the Fed, and the Ivy League. It was Ailes who put the "party" in the tea parties by giving them a round-the-clock national stage. Next month the Fox propaganda machine will have priority access to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

oh how they lie

Those who think President Obama caused this terrible Republican economic disaster that nearly triggered a global depression must have slept from 2001 to 2009.

The rest of you who are whining and name calling are typical of people with limited intelligence who make up their own facts and are outright liars like Gulianii who yesterday on TV claimed that there were no terror attacks on us during the republicans watch, thus lying about 9/11, the shoe bomber and others.

republicans lie again

on Jan 2, I published (below on this blog) that "9/11 happened on these republican's watch and let them try to lie out of that" and today Rudy Juliannii, ex mayor New York on 9/11, said on national TV that "Obama is weak on terror as the republicans had no terror attacks, but Obama already has had one."

HOLY COW! THEY MUST BE READING MY BLOG!

Cheeney of 9/11

worthy of reprint: 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 Cheeney 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.

Cheeney 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 him AND them.

al-Shabab and the Sheikh

Read today: "In Somalia, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, a spokesman for the Somali group al-Shabab, supported the alleged attack on the Danish cartoonist. "We welcome the brave action he did," Rage said. "It was a good and brave step taken by that Somali man against the criminal cartoonist — we liked it."

republican 9/11

just for the record: 9/11 happened on the Republican's watch. Watch them try and lie their way out of that.Ha-

On Jan 9, I added the following comment to this post:

"and they did that just days later after I published this post. Isn't coincidence grand. Ha."

republican family values

It is not Rove's fault. Rove inherited this divorce, from, er, his previous divorce. Er, Newt Gingrich, Guiliani, Fred Thompson, and John McCain's divorces. Lesson: don't throw stones preaching family values if you don't have them yourself.

more republican lies and hypocrisy

The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against terrorists. He said it as a candidate. He said it in his inaugural address: "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." He has said it since.

As Cheeney well knows, unless he has lost even the most tenuous grip on reality, Obama's commitment to warfare as an instrument in the fight against terrorism has won the president nothing but grief from the liberal wing of his party, with more certainly to come. Hasn't anyone told Cheeney that Obama is sharply boosting troop levels in Afghanistan in an attempt to avoid losing a war that the Bush administration started but then practically abandoned?

Cheeney knows this. But he goes on to use the big lie -- that Obama is "trying to pretend we are not at war" -- to bludgeon the administration on a host of specific issues. Here is the one that jumps out at me: The president, Cheeney claims, "seems to think that if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war."

Interesting that Cheney should bring that up, because it now seems clear that the man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was given training -- and probably the bomb itself, which involved plastic explosives sewn into his underwear -- by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

It happens that at least two men who were released from Guantanamo appear to have gone on to play major roles as al-Qaeda lieutenants in Yemen. Who let these dangerous people out of our custody? They were set free by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheeney.

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.