Were it not for the FBI's action, the informant says he is "one million percent positive" the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks could have been prevented.
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"There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants," the president said, shooting down a popular right wing lie. "This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."
It was here that Rep. Joe Wilson felt the need to shout out, "You lie!" Obama was accused of lying about Republican lies. A little ironic, since the accusation in itself was a lie, but mostly it was just good old Republican hypocrisy.Nancy Pelosi shot up straight in her chair, obviously shocked. Then she looked out into the chamber with the same expression I'd imagine she'd wear if she were saying, "I think I can get a clean shot." Vice President Biden just shook his head. Then everything went on.
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And that's where things stood last year. Needless to say, the 2009 numbers that will be released a year from now are going to be noticeably worse. A lot more people will have lost their jobs, and with it, their health insurance. Median household income will take another big hit. Poverty will take another big jump up.
But enough depressing stuff. You know how the wingnuts (including loudmouthed Congresscritter Joe Wilson (dumbass - SC)) are paranoid about the possibility that universal health coverage will insure a lot of illegal aliens?
As the press release said, there were 46.3 million uninsured in the U.S. last year. Guess what region 20.2 million of those uninsured are in? That's right, nearly half of the uninsured live in the South. (Flip to Table 7 on p.28 (by Adobe's pagination) of the big-ass PDF.) I bet they're mostly not illegal aliens. Just a hunch.
PDF is here.
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h/t Tim
Keep clicking on the words for new variations: http://joewilsonisyourpreexistingcondition.com/ (FYI - his opponent has raised over $700K. It seems to me that the Blue Dogs couldn't help but notice how quickly the netroots helped make Joe Wilson a pariah. They might want to keep that in mind.)
How dumb is this guy? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/09/state/n111248D02.DTL&tsp=1
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The space butterfly via the Hubble telescope:
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God works in mysterious ways
A very devout Catholic was trapped on an elevator for a while, and after it was working again, rushed to church to thank God. Then, something unfortunate happened:
He seems to have embraced a stone pillar on which the stone altar was perched and it fell on him, killing him instantly. We have found his fingerprints on the pillar. We are now investigating the case further.
Now, you see, if he'd rushed off to thank the elevator repairman, that wouldn't have happened. Given his bad luck, the repairman might have been a demented homicidal maniac who would have clubbed him to death with a spanner, but no altar would have fallen on him. Therefore, religion is bad for your health.
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Quotes That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Shove a Mint Julep Up a Man's Ass:
"That's offensive to me that they would take my heritage and make it into a Holocaust era type description." - South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, back in November 1999, when he was still a state senator, regarding African Americans being upset that the Confederate flag was being flown over the statehouse.
"[W]e have a dictator, Saddam Hussein, who has chemical and biological weapons, who is developing nuclear capabilities." - Wilson, now a U.S. Congressman, on CNN, September 28, 2002.
"Sean, as usual, you're absolutely correct. In fact my wife also wants to tell you how cute you are." - Wilson to Sean Hannity on Fox "news," May 7, 2002.
"With the death of Strom Thurmond, South Carolina has lost its greatest statesman of the 20th Century." - Wilson on June 27, 2003.
At least if you're wrong and an asshole, Joe Wilson, you've been wrong and an asshole your whole life.
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h/t Dick
Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-handler/have-you-no-decency-sir-a_b_282395.html
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If we all just agreed to pay an extra $200 a month for our health insurance this wouldn't be necessary ...
Baucus & Conrad are going to put in a proof of citizenship requirement to participate in the new health exchange: http://www.americablog.com/2009/09/baucus-conrad-cave-again-toughen-health.html
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The long war just got longer, by fiat of Minister of Peace Robert Gates. In an interview with al Jazeera's Abderrahim Foukara, Gates said, "both Afghanistan and Pakistan can count on us for the long term." To paraphrase the punch line to a joke about asylum inmates, we're freaking nuts and we're never getting out of there.
...
We're gonna be paying for our mistakes there for a long time, on many levels. If anyone in the White House has any sense, they should be running around with their hair on fire telling everyone who'll listen that we have to get out now. Our involvement in Afghanistan won't, can't, end well.
You cannot bring people who prefer to live in the 10th Century into the 21st in a decade. They have no understanding of what we expect from them, no frame of reference (don't forget, for the last two generations, they've only known war) for 'democracy'. All we will do is waste money and lives until we realize it's a futile, dry hole.
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In that while he is railing about the government health care, he has been taking full advantage of government-supplied (ie, single payer) health care and health insurance for most of his adult life.
As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one's commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE
But he is sort of consistent, in a sick and twisted way, for as a lawmaker, Wilson has never let an opportunity slip by to try and slash benefits for active-duty military and for veterans:
Wilson voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted "aye" for the Iraq War (during the debate on the war vote, he even called one Democrat "viscerally anti-American"─several times). He voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room for President George W. Bush's tax cuts. He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused─repeatedly─to approve Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan─and many lost access to their civilian work benefits when they did so.
So let's sum up, shall we? According to Wilson: A whomping humongus tax cut for the rich is a good thing, providing benefits for our servicemen/women and for veterans is a bad thing.
But also note that Wislon has been against reducing benefits to legislators. So he is just another Wingnut hypocrite.
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Entire Army unit gets the munchies
Ooops.
Rocky Mountain high: U.S. military didn't mean to grow marijuana!
Story Contributed by CBS 4 Denver Reporter Shaun Boyd
Military marijuana? The U.S. Army planned to cover a chemical weapons site with grass and weed – but not the kind of grass and weed that's actually cropping up – the kind that's illegal.
The army's Charlie Scharmin, who's in charge of the cleanup, was caught off guard by the discovery. "Not something you expect in an environmental cleanup job," says Scharmin. "It was a little surprising."
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Dirty coal group's 14th forgery impersonated American veterans: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/10/veterans-14th-letter/
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Census report: number of uninsured Americans grows to 46.3 million
A new Census report finds that, in 2008, the number of people without health insurance increased from from 45.7 million to 46.3 million (the number of uninsured has increased by 7.3 million since 2000). The report suggests that a weakened economy and rising health care costs are pushing more Americans towards so-called safety-net coverage. According to the data, "the percentage of people covered by government health insurance programs increased to 29.0 percent in 2008," up from from 27.8 percent in 2007. The uninsured rate declined significantly for Americans under 18 and over 65 — the two groups who are eligible for government-sponsored coverage. The Wonk Room has more on the importance of public programs.
Sarah Palin's least-favorite almost-son-in-law Levi Johnston will not vanish from the public eye, ever! He's doing a photoshoot with a website called Playgirl, which, despite its gender specific name, is actually a site for gay men who like to look at photographs of other men, naked. There is nothing wrong with this! And, you know, we are pretty happy that of the two unlikely Wasilla-based media sensations of September 2008, Sarah Palin is now an unemployed twitterer and Levi Johnston is the celebrity (?) of September 2009. Who could've predicted it? [Gawker/Violet Blue/The Sword]
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