While at the State Fair, Senator Al Franken appeared on Minnesota Public Radio, and during the segment, drew a map of the United States. Free hand. From memory.
The AP reports that after weeks of constant attacks by the right wing, Van Jones has resigned as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality. Below is the letter he sent to chair Nancy Sutley:
I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today.
On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.
I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to "stay and fight."
But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.
It has been a great honor to serve my country and my President in this capacity. I thank everyone who has offered support and encouragement. I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to the clean energy future. I will continue to do so, in the months and years ahead.
Once again, the White House throws progressives under the bus simply because it's politically expedient. Since Beck first started his rabid . . . and totally bullshit . . . campaign against Jones three weeks ago, he's lost 60 advertisers to Color of Change's boycott. And the White House, instead of seeing this as progress against the institutional racism that still seethes under the surface of this country, turns tail and runs. Nice.
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NATO promises to investigate itself regarding the airstrike that killed dozens, including citizen bystanders.
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Morford: Change you can freak out about.
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Lost world of fanged frogs and giant rats discovered in Papua New Guinea: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/07/discovery-species-papua-new-guinea
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Eugene Robinson - From 'do no harm' to torture http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/06-4
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The best health care system in the world
Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press:
In the past few days, 114,000 Michigan households have received bad-news letters from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, socking individual health insurance subscribers with premium increases averaging 22%, effective Oct. 1.
Blue Cross could have said, "Hey, things could have been worse. We asked for a 56% rate hike first and dialed it back to 22%"—but that probably would have just made folks angrier.
Instead, the Blue Cross letters simply stated, "We know every Michigan resident faces financial challenges, and we thank you for your business and loyalty to the Blues."
That, my friends, is a statistic, not a hypothetical.
Or what about this one? ....
How does it feel to have health insurance contributions deducted from your paycheck and then find out you didn't actually have insurance and now are expected to pay thousands of dollars in medical bills?
Ask employees of Turbine Airfoil Designs Inc. in Harrisburg.
TAD stopped paying toward its Capital BlueCross group plan in October.
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Things only a Republican could believe: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6476267
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Species are going extinct. Aquifers and fisheries are exploited at unsustainable speed. Soils are becoming saline, air quality is a huge cause of illness and death; the human population is unsustainable. So why are the world's leaders not lamenting this big picture as loudly as the climate component of it? - BBC
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OK this is getting bizarre. This mother breaks into tears when she thinks of the President of the United States speaking to her children in school. We are less than two days away from Obama's brain-washing, soul-crushing, communist-loving subliminal-laced speech to our children. By Wednesday, our schools will be little more than communes with kids calling for redistribution of wealth and reeducation of parents.
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Freedom Worship Baptist Church in Blanchester, Ohio wanted to demonstrate the fallacy of evolution of the human species and appears to have succeeded. The Church arranged for stunt driver Louis Re of New York to jump in a motocycle over a giant horseshoe crab — an example often cited by creationists to show creatures have not evolved since they were spontaneously created a few thousand years ago.
The crab is 12 feet tall, 24 feet wide and 68 feet long — which would certainly appear to support the idea of evolution since most crab fossils show a much smaller creature:
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The say anything brigade strikes again
This is a pretty potent combination of chutzpah and nonsense:
Obama, though, has shown some willingness to budge on the inclusion of a government-run insurance plan. But Republicans like Alexander are expressing concern that Democrats will ultimately throw up their hands in the effort to seek a bipartisan compromise and tap their majorities."Thumbing their nose at the American people by ramming through a partisan bill would be the same thing as going to war without asking Congress' permission," he said. "You might technically be able to do it, but you'd pay a terrible price in the next election."
Let's see if we can all follow along at home. According to Lamar Alexander, if both houses of Congress, filled with Representatives and Senators elected by the people, pass a bill and the President, also elected by the people in a landslide, then signs it, it is exactly the same as if both houses have no say whatsoever. Also, one is a war. The other is a health care bill. Additionally, even his follow-up is nonsense, because the Republicans GAINED seats in 2004 after George Bush went to war without Congress' approval.
I know it is hard to keep up with all of the nonsense, but at what point are journalists going to look at one of these clowns when they say something like this and ask them, point blank- "WTF are you talking about?"
Now of course, this was on Fox News, so of course no one would challenge him there. But they say shit like this all the time and John King and the rest of these idiots treat them like they are serious.
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Cow manure, other homegrown energy powering U.S. farms - from wind to sun to cow pies, farm-based natural resources are supplying an increasing number of U.S. farmers with homegrown sources of renewable energy - Nat Geo
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Government (that's you) pays legal bills for executives that defrauded the government:
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Obama picks ex-banker to serve as senior counselor for manufacturing policy and "provide leadership on policy development and strategic planning for the president's agenda to revitalize the manufacturing sector"
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Obama_to_name_ex_banker_to_manufact_09062009.html
...........
After Obama: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/05-5
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Major discovery in Alzheimer's research
That is not a photoshop job, it is the cover from his next book, if by "book", you mean "the printed rantings of an insane moron."
One might that Beck will grow a toothbrush moustache for his next book.
Update: The link will take you to the Amazon page. Scroll down and read the tags. They are not keyboard safe.
The Financial Times tells us…
The number of working Americans turning to free government food stamps has surged as their hours and wages erode, in a stark sign that the recession is inflicting pain on the employed as well as the newly jobless…
Less attention has been paid to those still in the workforce, whose incomes are also being squeezed. The average working week is now about 33 hours, the lowest on record, while the number forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time work has risen more than 50 per cent in the past year to a record 8.8m. Wages and benefits have decelerated.
And so there you have it. But in the meanwhile, the GOP is focusing on a speech that The Carebear will give to children, and fighting tooth and nail to ensure that healthcare is something only the elites can afford.
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Glenn Beck has released a statement, pledging to go after "other radicals in the administration":
The American people stood up and demanded answers. Instead of providing them, the Administration had Jones resign under cover of darkness. I continue to be amazed by the power of everyday Americans to initiate change in our government through honest questioning, and judging by the other radicals in the administration, I expect that questioning to continue for the foreseeable future.
David Weigel writes that Cass Sunstein is likely to be Beck's next target.
And in a related story, Keith Olbermann wants any information he can get on Glenn Beck, his producer Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes.
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Famous failure to run George Bush's think tank
Former President George W. Bush took a step closer Thursday to establishing an 'action-oriented think tank' alongside his future presidential library by naming James K. Glassman, the longtime journalist and former administration official, as its founding executive director." This post is complete. NYT via Matt Yglesias
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Time to send them more money!
Israel on Monday gave the go-ahead to build hundreds of new housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank, defying warnings that the move jeopardises any resumption of Middle East peace talks.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak authorised the construction of 455 units, most of them in the large settlement blocs that Israel has said it wants to keep in the event of a final peace agreement.
The move -- coming just days ahead of a planned visit to the region by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell -- has sparked criticism that it will undermine US-led efforts to restart the stalled peace process.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Defiant_Israel_to_build_455_new_set_09072009.html
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FDL: Health care & poverty: we are failing our most vulnerable
As a nation, we are failing the most vulnerable members of our society.
The number of homeless schoolchildren, uprooted amidst the financial turmoil of the last few years is rising:
There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.
With schools just returning to session, initial reports point to further rises. In San Antonio, for example, the district has enrolled 1,000 homeless students in the first two weeks of school, twice as many as at the same point last year.
Between foreclosures, job losses and catastrophic illness costs, it's not just the very poor who are feeling the pinch. The middle class is hurting, too, as families who never had to ask for assistance in the past suddenly depend on it just to get by from week to week.
These days? We're all a paycheck away from disaster, it seems.
And the elderly? New analysis shows that the poverty rate among those over 65 is far worse than previously thought:
Nearly 20% of Americans over 65 would be considered poor if the government updates the way it calculates poverty, which hasn't considered medical costs, regional variations and other factors since its creation in 1955.
Currently, the poverty rate for that age group is 9.7%, or 3.6 million people. If the government adopts a revised formula by the National Academy of Sciences, that figure would jump to 18.6% — 6.8 million people...
Recently, a United Way group in Illinois tried to give its volunteers a glimpse into life for the "other half." The lessons learned were some hard ones:
Participants were separated into six different low-income family types and assigned a role to play under various situations, including being newly unemployed, a new applicant for government assistance or a part-time employee relying on food stamps.
Families had to keep their home secure, pay their bills, feed their families and keep the utilities on for a month using various income and debt scenarios. Services such as an employment office, pawn shop, banker, food pantry and grocery store were available. To reach them, though, every person had to use a $2 transportation voucher, which grew scarce as money ran low.
If you have never had to face unexpected poverty, or didn't grow up around it as a child, then these situations might sound dire. For folks who have lived barely scraping by? It sounds like a whole lot of life.
Certainly personal responsibility plays a big role: bad choices make for bad results for a lot of folks. But for young kids who didn't choose the families into which they were born? Or for the elderly who have seen retirement savings shrink over the past few years while prescription doughnut holes have expanded?
Who wants to tell their grandma the fact she has to choose between her medicine and food is her own damned fault and to stop whining about prescription drug profit margins.
There is a Kathy Mattea song that I love called "Seeds," where she says that we're all just seeds in God's hands -- we start the same, but some of us land on fertile soil and some of us get sand at the start. Compassionate people understand it from the get go.
Would that everyone did, because we are failing those who are most vulnerable in this country.
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Attempting to win more hearts and minds, U.S. troops stormed through Afghan hospital, tied up staff.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/07/us-troops-stormed-through_0_n_278627.html
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