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I, for one, won't be obsessing about exactly which pieces of proposed reform he emphasizes — because that's not what's driving the politics. Americans haven't become skeptical about Obamacare because they'd rather shave an extra $30 billion a year off the cost; they have not, contrary to "centrist" fantasies, been turned off by the details of the stimulus plan or cap-and-trade. What has been missing is a vision. And this is probably the last chance to supply that vision.
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Personally, being the cynic that I am, I believe it will be a chance squandered. We'll see, but I don't expect much. As long as 25 - 30% of Americans won't listen to a word he says anyway, and another 20% have been scared shitless by the Republican (insurance industry backed) Noise Machine, anything he says will be ineffectual. As long as the Republicans are dead set on sabotaging and derailing any initiative, the best we can hope for is more insurance company welfare with the burden, once again, falling on us. From what we've seen so far, there ain't enough testicle in the White House or Dem 'leadership' to do what needs to be done.
The 'public option' is little enough (single-payer should still be on the table), without it, there's no point in bothering.
According to the Center for Defense Information, the estimated cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $864 billion by the end of fiscal year 2009.
| In billions of budgeted dollars | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operation | FY 2001+ 2002 | FY 20031 | FY 20042 | FY 20053 | FY 2006 | FY 2007 | FY 2008 | FY 2009 | Total |
| Iraq | $53.0 | $75.9 | $84.6 | $101.9 | $133.2 | $526 | $657 | $1,631.6 | |
| Afghanistan | 20.8 | 14.7 | 14.5 | 20.9 | 19.1 | 36.8 | 140 | 173 | 439.8 |
| Enhanced security | 13.0 | 8.0 | 3.7 | 2.1 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 28 | 5 | 61.0 |
| Unable to allocate | 5.5 | 5 | 5 | 15.5 | |||||
| Totals | $33.8 | $81.1 | $94.1 | $107.6 | $121.8 | $170.4 | $700 | $864 | $2,172.8 |
"There are a lot of the President's ideas that I wouldn't want my children discussing in a public school. It's not appropriate, the place for that is in the home." Florida GOP press secretary Katie Gordon, on Obama's upcoming address to schoolchildren Link
But lady, if your kids can only learn from you, they might turn out like you and who wants that?
Go ahead - admit it. The truth is you don't want some "ni**er ideas" in your kid's head.
Here's the Florida GOP state chairman who started all the indoctrination silliness saying The Carebear changed the speech he was going to give kids because of all the pressure coming from Wingnuttia.
Clearly last week there was a plan with the Department of Education," said Greer. "When you ask students to write a letter to the President on, how we can help you with your new ideas, Mr. President, that is leading the students in an effort to push the President's agenda. Now that the White House got their hand in the cookie jar caught, they changed everything, they redid the lesson plans, they released the text, and tomorrow he's gonna give a speech that every president should have an opportunity to give.
– Jim Greer, FL GOP State Chairman
He has no proof that The Carebear changed a word, of course, but that never means much in Wingnuttia. So, mission accomplished, right?
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"Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark. the vulgar Pigboy, from Top 10 Racist Pigboy Quote Link
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Food Is Power and the Powerful Are Poisoning Us - by Chris Hedges
Our most potent political weapon is food. If we take back our agriculture, if we buy and raise produce locally, we can begin to break the grip of corporations that control a food system as fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse as our financial system. If we continue to allow corporations to determine what we eat, as well as how food is harvested and distributed, then we will become captive to rising prices and shortages and increasingly dependent on cheap, mass-produced food filled with sugar and fat. Food, along with energy, will be the most pressing issue of our age. And if we do not build alternative food networks soon, the social and political ramifications of shortages and hunger will be devastating.
The effects of climate change, especially with widespread droughts in Australia, Africa, California and the Midwest, coupled with the rising cost of fossil fuels, have already blighted the environments of millions. The poor can often no longer afford a balanced diet. Global food prices increased an average of 43 percent since 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund. These increases have been horrific for the approximately 1 billion people-one-sixth of the world's population-who subsist on less than $1 per day. And 162 million of these people survive on less than 50 cents per day. The global poor spend as much as 60 percent of their income on food, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
More: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/07-3
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Digby on Wall Street's newest Big Idea: to buy up your life insurance policy for a lump sum and bet you die earlier than you were supposed to:
I don't know why anyone is worrying about risk. These entities are all "too big to fail" so the taxpayers will bear the risk, while the players will reap gargantuan, unrestricted bonuses as long as the party continues. And if their "too big to fail" corporation gets sued after the whole thing falls apart, the taxpayers will even pay their legal fees. It's an awesome scam.
If this is what constitutes free markets, no wonder all the rich people love them.
Just call Wall Street by its right name: Scams-R-Us.
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".....And so I'd like to see Barack Obama melt like a snail. I'd like to see the teeth knocked right out of his head. I'd like to see him perish just like an abortion. That's what David preached. That's what he prayed to God...."
The members of the Faithful Word Baptist Church have gathered to affirm their support for their pastor, Steven L. Anderson, who has called for the death of President Barack Obama and said he would like him to be "melted like a snail." Anderson went out of his way to reaffirm his desire to see Obama die.
A couple dozen members of the Faithful Word Baptist Church carried Bibles and rallied around their hate-filled preacher, who they insisted is a "caring human being." One member appropriatedly wore a shirt reading "Hating is not a Crime." I agree, though I doubt that he was stating a constitutional principle as much as a personal preference.
Anderson wants to spread God's word by calling for the death of those with whom he disagrees. What is scary is not just his shaping his family but his religious flock.
Here's an excerpt:
`As a snail which melteth', Barack Obama, since you want to use your salt solution to kill babies in this country, Barack Obama, you're going to REAP what you SOW because one day, Barack Obama, you're going to be burning in HELL and you're going to feel a burning sensation all over your SKIN – which was the same sensation felt by every baby that was aborted in his mother's womb.
And David, praying, is saying, `As a snail which melteth.' See, I'm very scriptural when I brought up about snails being salted. He said, `as a snail which melteth let every one of them pass away like the untimely birth of a woman.' He's saying `like an abortion,' right ? Like a miscarriage. Because that's what an untimely birth is. He's saying, let Barack Obama perish like an abortion. Let Barack Obama perish like a miscarriage. – `As the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.'
Let me tell you something – somebody needs to abort Barack Obama. It's true. Now, I'm not to do it. I'm not saying vigilanteism. I'm not saying that somebody should go kill. I'm saying there should be a government in this country that, you know, under God's authority, that takes Barack Obama and aborts him. On television. For everybody to see in the whole world.
Story here.
I think it's so cool that churches are tax free.
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Start over on the health care debate: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/014409.php
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The White House has released the text of Obama's speech to school children.
Comment from FARK.com: "No, little snowflake, you shouldn't listen to Obama when he tells you to stay in school and study hard. You should grow up to be a retard like mommy and daddy and Michelle Malkin."
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Farmers warned to get ready - climate change will change their lives...and ours.
Even if global temperatures rise slowly, climate change could slash the yields of some of the world's most important crops almost in half, according to a new study co-authored by a N.C. State University scientist.
The study, recently published online in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at three frequently used scenarios for global warming. It found the average U.S. yields for corn, soybeans and cotton could plummet 30 percent to 46 percent by the end of the century under the slowest warming scenario, and 63 percent to 82 percent under the quickest.
"There are some caveats, but this is a real cause for concern," said Michael Roberts, an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at NCSU. - Bradenton Herald
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Should self-proclaimed "re-birthers" be allowed to adopt?
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Another great one from Margaret and Helen.
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Juan Cole: Where have All the broad Shoulders Gone? Or, Labor Day in a Kleptocracy
Excerpt:
Reagan-Cheney between 1980 and 2008 created a new American aristocracy, a small sliver of super-rich, who buy and sell legislators, create whole "news networks" to present far rightwing fantasies as "news," have their lackeys invade and occupy whole countries, hold themselves above the law, falsify financial statements, and suffer little or no punishment for stealing billions from the pensions of "working families" (i.e. those of us about whom P.T. Barnum remarked, "one is born every minute".) The Republican Party has come to represent these super-rich. Since .1% of the population couldn't actually win elections, they ally with other groups in society. About two-thirds of evangelicals have joined up with them, about a third of Latinos, significant numbers of midwestern rural families, and obviously large numbers of white southerners. In some cases these are lower middle class people on the make, who want to hitch their wagons to the brightest stars in the sky. In others, they share with the super-rich various resentments of the federal government. This alliance of odd bedfellows (think of Paris Hilton married to Joe Sixpack) is what produces the wackiness of Republican Party politics and media. They can't come out and say that they want the country run for the benefit of 300,000 multi-millionaires and billionaires (almost all of them white), so they say they are all in favor of guns, apple pie, Jay-sus and the Confederacy. Sometimes, as with Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, the pretense is so forced as to be implausible even to their minions. Clearly, racism and fear-mongering are also key irrational talking points for the plutocrats seeking support from the white lower middle class (though this route can backfire, as it did in 2008 when Republican fear-mongering about Latino immigration alienated most Latino voters and drove them into the arms of the Democrats.)
Go and read all of it.
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Despair for the Democrats.
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Hypocrisy, thy name is David Bradley The Texas BOE member who has been screaming the loudest about President Obama's back-to-school message to children and denouncing it as "indoctrination" is one of the forces behind the push in Texas to remove the civil rights movement from social studies textbooks to make room for Reaganomics, Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly.
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We have a winner Bonnie Goldstein says what we are all thinking. The reason so many are in a lather over President Obama addressing school children is that they don't want a black man talking to their kids. It's the racism, stupid.
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Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) claims that health system worked 'very well' for bankrupt cancer survivor with no health insurance.
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