Government health care control- Does GOP truly want repeal? | read this item
Can the current GOP leadership lead a successful counterattack against the Obama faction’s bold thrust to establish socialist party dictatorship in the United States? Not while it suffers from a political case of split personality disorder. Clear evidence of the ailment appears in a report quoting John Cornyn’s remarks about the likely [...]
Wake Up America w/Special Guest Nick Bryant on WAPR.FM | read this item
I am proud to welcome Mr. Nick Bryant, Author of Book titled: The Franklin Scandal to Wake Up America (Radio Show) On WAPR.FM for an Interview about his book that unlocks one of the greatest crimes in recent history from its vault of secrecy and implausibility. THE FRANKLIN SCANDAL thoroughly documents [...]
Who is to be held a “higher standard” of accountability? | read this item
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Greetings, Fellow Americans,
Our forefathers did not intend for us to live in fear of our government in which they created for us as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Wherefore, it needs to be known again that “when the people fear their government, there is tyranny. [...]
The AMA Might Withdraw Support of Obamacare! | read this item
The AMA (American Medical Association) might be withdrawing their support for Obamacare on Monday. There is a sizable amount of members that are not happy with the AMA’s unilateral decision to sponsor Obamacare.
I Am Truly Glad That She’s On The Right Side Of History – My Response To A Friend’s Status Message | read this item
~ This is a message sent to longtime friend, Daria DiGiovani in response to a message she sent to those who are on the wrong side of history by believing that 9/11 was an “inside job”. I was only notified of this status by an email from a friend that noticed the status message from [...]
Sometimes we need to just step back and remember that politicians, yes, even Republican politicians, are just like the rest of us; people who love their children and whose first concern is for their health:
… Rep. John Culberson among hundreds of people lined up to get the swine flu vaccine at a public clinic at the Arlington County Public Health Division headquarters Wednesday morning.
That in itself isn’t terribly newsworthy — the Texas Republican was there to get his daughter vaccinated, a spokeswoman told HOH.
Isn’t that sweet? Taking time out of his busy day because of concern for his daughter’s health? It warms the cockles of the heart, doesn’t it?
Except for one tiny detail:
But our tipster noted Culberson’s visit to the clinic was “a little ironic since the Congressman voted against the funding that was used to purchase the vaccines in the first place.”
Naturally Culberson’s office dressed up his no vote as standing up for fiscal responsibility and in the interest of national security, but the fact remains, if Culberson had had his way, he wouldn’t have been able to make sure that his daughter was protected against swine flu. Oh, wait a minute, yes he would have — he has great health benefits.
Most of the gay-rights attention this election year is focused on Maine’s “Question 1,” which asks citizens to barge into their gay neighbors’ living rooms and tell them they’re not worthy of the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage. I’ve written quite a bit about the pros (lots) and cons (none) of voting NO, but I’m not going to today.
No, this morning I’d like to direct your attention to Washington State, where something similar is happening: Republican operatives in cahoots with religious extremists (or is that the other way ’round?) are trying to destroy the institution of domestic partnerships there.
Last May, Governor Chris Gregoire signed a bill that would expand the state’s domestic-partner law to include all the rights of marriage without actually calling it marriage. And, as they always do, the Stepford conservatives leapt into action to repeal it. Thus in 8 days Washington voters will see this on their ballot:
REFERENDUM 71 Ballot Title Statement of Subject:
The legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5688 concerning rights and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners [and voters have filed a sufficient referendum petition on this bill].
Concise Description: This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.
Should this bill be: Approved _ Rejected __
Here’s the ‘Yes on R 71′ campaign’s position on it:
Voting APPROVE on Ref. 71 is a vote to keep the domestic partnership law that provides legal protections for lesbian and gay couples and seniors who are in committed relationships:
>> To be able to take unpaid leave to care for a critically ill loved one, without being fired. >> To be able to cover a partner in family health insurance. >> To make sure hard-earned pension and death benefits protect children when a parent dies.
Approving Ref. 71 ensures that important protections are not taken away from committed couples, so that they are able to take care of each other, especially in times of crisis.
Their TV ads are excellent because they feature real people calmly explaining how their lives will be positively affected if it passes (and negatively affected if it doesn’t).
The opposition, like the ‘Yes on 1′ campaign here in Maine, is using children as their battering ram to muddy the issue and get it rejected. And the polling, like Maine’s, shows that voters are evenly split.
Running through both Washington’s Referendum 71 and Maine’s Question 1 is a common thread and it is this: at the core of their thinking (though they no longer say so publicly because they would come off as utter monsters in the eyes of modern society if they did), conservative religious and political extremists simply want gays and lesbians to disappear. They don’t want to have to “deal” with us. They don’t want us to have a single right—not one. They want us to slink back into the shadows, where we lived for so many centuries as the “minority that dare not assert its existence”—where polite society didn’t have to see us, hear us, or acknowledge us. Fat fucking chance.
We’re seeing it here in Maine right now: when their “civil” arguments fall flat, they simply ratchet up the rhetoric and resort to ever-more-outlandish scare tactics. From “A flood of lawsuits” that will never materialize, to “gay marriage taught in schools,” to “gay sex taught to kindergarten students,” to “teachers who will be forced to distribute NAMBLA pamphlets,” to “S&M dungeon rooms exposed!” (Yes, the shrill warnings equating sadomasochism to civil marriage rights are flying fast and furious on the doom-’n-gloom Christian email circuit here—with SHOCKING PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF!!!)
It always ends up in the gutter with them, because the gutter is ground zero for their overactive imaginations and funding sources. Always will be, at least until they literally die of old age and are replaced with younger generations who know better. The emergence of GLBT Americans from the closet, in increasing numbers and at younger ages, only shows how utterly ordinary we are. And the opposition hates us for it—because it turns the tables and reveals them, at long last, as the real sickos. And when we win and their apocalyptic predictions don’t come to pass, they’ll be cast further into the margins. That’s why it’s so crucial to string together some solid victories at the ballot box. To use a Halloween analogy, each win is like a spritz of holy water on a vampire.
It’s my wish to wake up on November 4th and see tears of joy on the faces of our friends on the west coast because Referendum 71 has passed by a huge margin. Drop by their website and give ‘em some lovin’ as a donor or volunteer. They’d really appreciate it.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There’s Moreville… [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
But the teabaggers have come and gone, as have the cries of “death panels” and the demonstrations by Medicare recipients demanding that the government stay out of health care. And reform is still on track. Right now it looks highly likely that Congress will, indeed, send a health care bill to the president’s desk. Then what?
Democrats and liberals can scoff and try to dismiss such views, but they should realize that adherents hold these attitudes so intensely that they will be determined to vote in 2010, and that in a midterm election in which turnout is inherently lower than in presidential years, the most-motivated voters carry a disproportionate advantage. The intensity that Democrats and liberals had in their opposition to Bush and Republicans in 2006 and 2008 has transferred to conservatives and Republicans.
Democrats would have to set up machine-gun nests to keep these people from voting, while the lethargy among Democratic voters is palpable.
The congressional race in upstate New York’s 23rd District continues to create fascinating divisions in the Republican Party, and the reporting over the weekend in the district highlighted two national Republican figures going different ways.
This is the fight in which the Republican nominee, Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, faces not only a Democrat, Bill Owens, but also a third party Conservative candidate. As I reported in my column last week, many national Republicans have abandoned Scozzafava because they see her as too moderate, or even, God forbid, as a liberal. This gives Democrat Owens a chance to win in a district that, in its various configurations, has been Republican since 1871.
Some Democratic candidates running for local office around the country call the phenomenon the “Obama hangover.” It is proving tougher to recruit volunteers and get people to vote.
“It’s like the morning after the party,” Michael McGann, a Democrat running for clerk of courts in the Philadelphia suburbs, said in an interview. “The party was wonderful and exciting. The day after it’s like, ‘Gee, I don’t want to do that again for a while.’ ”
Dick Cheney has accused Barack Obama of “dithering” over Afghanistan. If the president were to quickly invade a country on the basis of half-baked intelligence, would that demonstrate his courage and decisiveness to Cheney? In fact, it’s not a bad idea for Obama to take his time, examine all options and watch how the post-election landscape in Afghanistan evolves.
A poll of opinion polls shows Americans’ attitudes are changing rapidly.
They are less and less thrilled about the country’s direction and Congress, according to Tom Bevan, executive editor of national polling aggregator RealClearPolitics. He says independent voters are shifting away from the polices of the Obama administration and Democrats.
“Independents have flipped negative,” warns Bevan. “That’s not a good thing for any party.”
Nonetheless, at the moment, outside of NY-23 there’s only two parties to go to, at least in 2010.
Jack M. Balkin, Professor of Constitutional Law, Yale Law:
Barack Obama’s Administration is the first Administration that both faces a dominant and hostile new party press and has publicly recognized it as such. It is seeking to change politicians’ (and Presidents’) relationships to a media that has already changed for better or for worse. It is the first Presidency to recognize and adapt to the rise of a powerful party/partisan press, which, if the current decline of traditional newspapers continues, is likely to be an increasingly dominant form of journalism in this century.
Whether the Obama Administration’s current strategy will be successful, it is clearly correct for it to identify and name the changed conditions under which future Presidents will have to operate.
Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread: 350 ppm | read this item
International Day of Climate Action on Saturday brought forth people around the globe in 5200 locales and on thousands of blogs to support 350. That’s 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, the level at which many scientists believe the temperature rise associated with climate change will stay at more or less reasonable limits. Currently, the level is 387 ppm. Climate change legislation already passed in the U.S. House and being considered by the Senate would allow at least 450 ppm, something critics like Bill McKibben at 350.org believe would be disastrous.
Here at Daily Kos, 20 diarists officially participated in Saturday’s 350 blogathon organized by Patriot News Daily Clearinghouse. And five others also looked at the issue.
All that talk, here and at those other blogs, and all those actions are more important now than ever. Because American opinion, according to the latest survey by the highly respected Pew Center for the People & the Press, indicates that Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of Global Warming:
There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures. …
Despite the growing public skepticism about global warming, the survey finds more support than opposition for a policy to set limits on carbon emissions. Half of Americans favor setting limits on carbon emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if this may lead to higher energy prices; 39% oppose imposing limits on carbon emissions under these circumstances.
This issue has not registered widely with the public. Just 14% say they have heard a lot about the so-called “cap and trade” policy that would set carbon dioxide emissions limits; another 30% say they have heard a little about the policy, while a majority (55%) has heard nothing at all. …
Opinions about global warming changed little between 2006 and 2008. In August 2006 and January 2007, 77% said there was solid evidence that the earth’s temperatures were increasing; that figure fell modestly to 71% in April of last year.
[...]
There also are strong regional differences in opinions about global warming; fewer people living in the Mountain West (44%) and the Midwest (48%) say there is solid evidence of warming than in other regions. Similarly, there have been sharp declines since April 2008 in the proportion who say the earth is warming in the Mountain West (75% to 44%) and the Great Lakes region (69% to 49%). Both regions have also seen large drops in the percentage who say that warming is caused by human activity.
We obviously have our work cut out for us.
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Green Diary Rescue appears on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. The rescue begins below and continues in the jump. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.
• • • • • • •
lineatus showed up with another Dawn Chorus Birdblog: Citizen Science Rules!: “I love citizen science. It seems so utterly appropriate for a site focused on participatory democracy – science doesn’t have to be something that you just read about, you can get out there and do it yourself! Most of us don’t have the means of doing particle physics, but we can contribute to the natural sciences like astronomy, botany, marine science and of course… ornithology. ( “> Dawn Chorus reflects that – guest hosts and I have written about Christmas Bird counts, Project Feeder Watch, the Great Backyard Bird Count and eBird, and many other programs have been discussed in comments. But the citizen science program nearest and dearest to my heart, for nearly 20 years now, has been the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO). This weekend, GGRO is celebrating its 25th anniversary – and here’s what makes it worth celebrating.”
Tonight’s Diary Rescue was brought to you by the rescue team of jlms qkw, srkp23, YatPundit, HoosierDeb, Blank Frank, and Got a Grip, with vcmvo2 editing.
The Diaries up for Rescue are:
Bullies: Human and Dinosaur
the girl writes an informative diary about an emotional topic in Stop Bullying Now. Part 1. (vcmvo2)
There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.
Despite the growing public skepticism about global warming, the survey finds more support than opposition for a policy to set limits on carbon emissions. Half of Americans favor setting limits on carbon emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if this may lead to higher energy prices; 39% oppose imposing limits on carbon emissions under these circumstances.
Opinions about global warming changed little between 2006 and 2008. In August 2006 and January 2007, 77% said there was solid evidence that the earth’s temperatures were increasing; that figure fell modestly to 71% in April of last year.
lineatus showed up with another 
