i've sort of kept out of the health care debate for the most part

i think big bid-nez runs that just like they run everything else. they're calling the shots and will continue to do so. period

that said, i think it's still possible for us to change, BABY STEPS (not like how i would want it, but that's how it has to be), for the GOOD of (almost) all.

what gets me is the bullshite that's coming out of some of the 'conservatives' talk shows or writing or radio or whatever. they're spewing not only falsehoods but outright evil. they're attempting to scare the shite not only out of the median population but ESPECIALLY OUT OF THE ELDERLY

they're telling the elderly the president and his buds are out to PULL THE PLUG on 'em just as soon as these proposed changes take effect

NOT TRUE. NOT NOT NOT

get the FACTS
Talk Radio Campaign Frightening Seniors
Provision for End-of-Life Counseling Is Described by Right as 'Death Care'

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer
A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia." The controversy stems from a proposal 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................

skewed data????????????

say it ain't sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. man, that's so hard to believe (that's sarcasm there my peeps)

as an aside, on the way home from work the other day, i heard the ceo or the president or someone at the top of kaiser permanente being interviewed (on npr). he was also taking questions. i hate to say it but he made a LOT of sense you can listen right here


do you know what a magician does? she or he is proficient in M I S D I R E C T I O N. seems so is this firm (and most all of our 'leaders' too)

Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer

By David S. Hilzenrath

Washington Post Staff Writer

The political battle over health-care reform is waged largely with numbers, and few number-crunchers have shaped the debate as much as the Lewin Group, a consulting firm whose research has been widely cited by opponents of a public insurance option.

To Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, it is "the nonpartisan Lewin Group." To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an "independent research firm." To Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is "well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country."

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers...............

mommy, daddy, i did something VERY naughty

(i'm a naughty lil' grrrl) can you pay off the person i was naughty to/at/with? pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeee

yeah right, like that would have EVER happened with my parental units (not a chance. they taught me to stand up for myself. be myself. accept my mistakes. own up to my mistakes. correct my mistakes). my father didn't make a fortune in the casino bid-nez either.

who is worse? someone who touts the 'sanctity' of marriage then knocks boots with a babe who has been a neighbor AND a family 'friend' AND has daddy pay her and her husband off OR the cuckolded husband leaking the story to the media? answer is i have NO idea who is worse. they're all worse. they're all OFF MY CHRISTMAS CARD LIST

Senator’s Parents Gave Mistress Thousands
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON — Senator John Ensign’s wealthy parents gave almost $100,000 to his former lover and her family, ostensibly out of concern for their welfare and as part of a “pattern of generosity,” his lawyer disclosed Thursday. A statement by his lawyer, Paul Coggins, on behalf of the Mr. Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, said that in April 2008 the senator’s parents each gave $12,000 apiece to Cindy Hampton, her husband, Doug, and two of their children in the form of a single check for $96,000...........

a little tooting of my own horn nere - i was NOT agog

i don't know very much at all about him. i know a couple of things and i didn't like those things at all. then when i heard he was missing and no one knew where he was i rather smacked my forehead and said ''hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm". then they all knew he was on the 'appalachian trail' "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm". I EFFING KNEW HE WAS OUT SOMEWHERE BOINKIN' SOMEONE (other than the missus that is). i've been on the appalachian trail and i knew damn well governor sanford was NOT on it (yeah, felt it in my bones).

by the way, it's NOT a republican thing. it's not a democratic thing. (although the republicans make a giant stink about the sanctity of marriage and how evil and sinful it is to cheat on your spouse (and most of 'em are doing it any damn way. lyin' weasels and no offense to weasels). it's a person (men usually, unfortunately) of power thing. no one gives a flying fuck if a person of 'lesser consequence' gets caught cheating. it's no big deal. BUT A PERSON OF POWER. wow! we all go apeshite. well, i for one have this theory. what you ask is it? i'll tell you. MOST (not all) MOST men in power have someone on the side

agog indeed. if after hearing the lame-ass excuses about the lame ass gov you didn't get an inkling of what he actually was doing, you are NOT on my christmas card list

SC agog over Gov. Sanford's confession of affair
By SUSANNE M. SCHAFER
The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Gov. Mark Sanford has always painted himself as a family man, a red state conservative whose annual Christmas cards featured pictures of his wife and their four sons.

So when he tearfully confessed a yearlong affair with a woman he visited on a secret trip to Argentina, reaction ranged from embarrassment over his behavior to pity for his family. But there was a common theme: surprise that the man named as a possible 2012 GOP presidential contender had been cheating on his wife.

"I was shocked, shocked," said Tom Daly, 42, a magazine editor in Charleston. "First of all, he's a Republican golden boy and he's a strict, staunch conservative. I'm so shocked. It was something I did not expect."............

not to worry though, faux 'news' is setting us straight (ONCE AGAIN)!!!!

Fox flubs again, declares Sanford a 'Democrat'
Source: MediaMatters.org

well well well

what have we got here?

Pro-War Group Offering Cash For Frats To Demonstrate At VP Debate

Sam Stein

In hopes of organizing a robust demonstration for the vice presidential debate this Thursday in St. Louis, the pro-Iraq War (and ostensibly pro-McCain) organization, Vets for Freedom, is resorting to offering local college fraternities hundreds of dollars if their members come and hold signs.

In an email obtained by the Huffington Post, Vets for Freedom field staffer Laura Meyer offered a fraternity at St. Louis University a "sizable donation" - plus free lunch - if it could use their pledges to demonstrate outside the VP debate.

"I was emailing you today," wrote Meyer, "because I am trying to find people who would be willing to hold up signs for a few hours in the afternoon this Thursday outside the VP debate site. It's only for a few hours and you can gain a lot from it.... first off, lunch for any guys who agree to volunteer will be on me. Secondly, they will get lots of media attention! My organization did a similar thing in Mississippi last week and a ton of them were on TV. Meaning, the guys could wear their [REDACTED] gear while holding up our signs and get attention for their frat. Also, they will get to hang out with a bunch of really cool Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans...........

i haven't watched him in forever

partly because my television has been rendered non-operational (oh i have another brand new one - still in the box. i'm just sort of grooving on NO tv at my house. i WATCH tv other places, just not here). but i've always watched and LOVED letterman. i cannot stomach leno and i have an even more averse reaction to o'brien. i cannot watch o'brien for more than 3 minutes without wanting to puke. i have tried many a time. he's popular. i feel i'm missing something. well, i just can't do it!

anyway, i love letterman EVEN MORE now!

and please note, mccain can't debate barack obama BUT HE HAS TIME TO TALK TO F**KING KATIE COURIC?????????????????? WTF????????????????????

McCain mocked by Letterman after 'Late Night' cancellation
After receiving a call from the McCain campaign canceling an appearance on tonight's Late Night with David Letterman, it was discovered that McCain stopped down the street to be interviewed by CBS' Katie Couric rather than rushing back to Washington to work on the proposed Wall Street bailout, as Letterman had been told.

"Hey Senator," Letterman mocked in front of live video of the interview, "can I give you a ride home?"

Letterman had earlier expressed suspicion at McCain's move to suspend his campaign. "This doesn't smell right," he said. "This isn't the way a tested hero behaves."

"I think someone's putting something in his Metamucil...He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second-string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?"
..................

the following video is a SCREAM and it's sad too. it's funny in that dave goes on for over 9 minutes about mccevil. he starts out saying how much he admires the man. what a hero mccevil is. THEN ...well, you just have to WATCH IT. it's worth it, i promise (the last line is precious)

20% my big fat ass!

ha!

(not to worry, it's rather like saying you have foreign heads of state experience 'cause you can see russia from your kitchen window whilst you were washin' dishes)

Palin for Energy Czar!

Gov. Sarah Palin "knows more about energy than probably anyone in the United States of America." --John McCain, ABC interview, Sept. 11, 2008.

"My job has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." --Gov. Sarah Palin, Campaign event in Golden, Colorado, Sept. 15, 2008.

The woman touted by John McCain as the most knowledgable person in America on energy issues has been having a lot of trouble getting her basic energy statistics straight. Last week, Sarah Palin told Charlie Gibson of ABC News that her state, Alaska, produced "nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." Yesterday, she told a campaign rally in Golden, Colorado, that she had been responsible for overseeing "nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." Both claims are way off............

State	Total production	Percent of U.S. Total
Texas	10,829 Trillion Btu	15.6
Wyoming	9,154	13.1
Louisiana	6,760	9.7
West Virginia	4,061	5.8
California	3,198	4.6
Kentucky	3,097	4.5
New Mexico	2,752	3.9
Pennsylvania	2,694	3.8
Alaska	2,417	3.5

are pigs wearing lipstick?

holy shite! is hell freezing over? faux news shoots AND SCORES (one)

McCain Loses Fox News: Megyn Kelly Rips McCain Flack For Claiming Obama Would Raise Middle Class Taxes»

On Fox News today, host Megyn Kelly called out McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds for the campaign’s lies about Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) tax proposals. “I want to hold you accountable for what McCain is doing,” said Kelly. “Has your candidate gone too far, has he stretched the truth with the voters?”

Bounds initially attempted to dismiss her question, claiming that McCain has simply “gone to great lengths to discuss Barack Obama’s record.” “It is true that during a struggling economy, he proposes raising taxes,” declared Bounds.

“Not on the middle class,” shot back Kelly, noting that “virtually every independent analyst” has said that the McCain campaign is lying:

KELLY: But you guys have suggested he’s going to raise taxes on the middle class and virtually every independent analyst who took a look at that claim said that’s not true. He’ll raise it on people making $200,000 or $250,000, but not the middle class.

Bounds tried to push back by saying that Obama had voted to raise taxes in the past, but Kelly kept pushing Bounds to admit the McCain campaign was lying. “If that’s false, why would John McCain do that, Tucker? Why wouldn’t he just level with the voters?” asked Kelly: ............

at about 5:42 on the video timer

john mccain really really really DOES NOT ANSWER the interviewer's question.

the interviewer keeps asking "what experience does sarah palin have in the field of national security"

mccain FUCKING ANSWERS 'ENERGY'

energy? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

and john, just cause russia is next door to alaska, well that doesn't mean sarevil KNOWS who the last czar was


here's a link to the video interview. for some reason or another, the embed isn't taking

please go see it. you'll enjoy the dance

a little story about united airlines

and i would strongly encourage ALL that fly to NOT use them
(via americablog)

Bad airline stories are nothing like this
By Gerry Braun
UNION-TRIBUNE
As I watch the Olympics this week, my thoughts keep turning to Anita Cabral of Spring Valley, though she is not an Olympian, or even an athlete.

Cabral is a disgusted former customer of United Airlines, the official airline of the Beijing Games. I think of her whenever I see that United commercial with the orchestra of animated sea creatures playing Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue.”.........

..........

Cabral had meticulously planned this vacation, built around a family reunion in Hawaii and a chance for her grown children to see their father, Cabral's ex, who was in a hospice dying of cancer.

Eight people were making the trip: Cabral, her husband, her brother, her son, her daughter and her daughter's husband and two children.

One year out, they wrote a five-figure check to reserve a five-bedroom, five-bathroom beach house. They bought their tickets from United six months early. They booked a jungle excursion, a luau, a trip in a glass-bottom boat.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and they had a big investment in it, emotionally and financially. They even had it insured.

And all that planning unraveled in just a few hours.

The day before they were to depart, Anita's daughter, Deanna Kawasaki, received an e-mail from United telling her she could check in her party online. But the site would not let her.

When she called United to see what the trouble was, she was told the flight had been canceled.

But that made no sense. Her stepfather had just confirmed his seat, using a different reservation number, so the flight obviously wasn't canceled.

United threw out another explanation – a computer “lost” their reservations. That made no sense, either. If her reservations weren't in the computer, why did she get an e-mail telling her to check in?...........

and they have the nerve

to call barack obama elitist? what do you call someone who has enough money to own EIGHT homes (when a TON of people are having trouble or losing the ONLY home they have)? what do you call someone who has (inherited) MILLIONS of dollars and doesn't share it with her sister? what do you call someone WHO DENIES SHE HAS A SISTER when it's a plain as day FACT

well you call them the mccains

Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden

by Ted Robbins

All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 · Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain's business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother.

"We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard," Portalski said.

His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley's daughter.

The Portalski family is accustomed to hearing Cindy McCain described as Hensley's only child.

She's been described that way by news organizations from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Newsweek and ABC............

picture:

Courtesy Nicholas Portalski

Portalski is shown with her late father, Jim Hensley, who also was Cindy McCain's father.

oh NO he di-ent!

oh YES he did

talk about giant stones. giant PETRIFIED stones
do you believe this?
holy shite
i'm stunned y'all. just stunned

Today in Chutzpah: Rove Rips NYT for Outing CIA Agent!
Posted by Satyam Khanna


On Sunday, the New York Times published an extensive article examining the CIA’s interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). The article identified the name of the CIA agent who interrogated KSM, Deuce Martinez.
Yesterday, on The O’Reilly Factor, Karl Rove slammed the New York Times for supposedly leaking the name of a CIA agent. “[T]hey’ve got a very callous view about our nation’s security and interests,” Rove charged:
ROVE: Well, I read their explanation. And basically, it sounded to me like they were saying we put his name out there because we decided we could. And I mean, they didn’t have a good explanation for it.
Rove claimed the United States is put at risk when a CIA agent’s identity is leaked. “Look, they put our country at risk when they reveal the details of a program that saved America from attacks.” Watch it. ......

so once again we're told

they're lying pieces of steamin' shite. i don't know the law. i AM guessing they broke it (AGAIN) from here to there. a wrist slap perhaps?

Report Sees Illegal Hiring Practices at Justice Department

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON -- Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”..........

THE three MOST absurd words in the entire universe are:

"Bush administration's interpretation "

ha

ha

ha

Administration Says Particulars May Trump Geneva Protections

By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer

The Geneva Conventions' ban on "outrages against personal dignity" does not automatically apply to terrorism suspects in the custody of U.S. intelligence agencies, the Justice Department has suggested to Congress in recent letters that lay out the Bush administration's interpretation of the international treaty.

Lawyers for the department, offering insight into the legal basis for the CIA's controversial interrogation program, reasserted in the letters the Bush administration's long-held view that it has considerable leeway in deciding how the conventions' rules apply to the harsh questioning of combatants in the war on terrorism.

While the United States is legally bound by the conventions' Common Article 3 and its requirement to treat detainees humanely, the definition of humane treatment can vary, depending on the detainee's identity and the importance of the information he possesses, a Justice Department official wrote last September and this March to a Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee..........

i don't know that much about dan froomkin

i DO know he has some clear insight in the following
Not to Be Trusted

By Dan FroomkinSpecial to washingtonpost.com
The Bush administration's latest story line about Iraq -- that Iran is now the primary problem there -- should be greeted with profound skepticism.
Not only is it the latest in a series of rationales for U.S. involvement in Iraq, most of which have turned out to be based on flawed intelligence, misrepresentations or outright dishonesty.
But there are at least two illegitimate reasons why the White House would want the American public to see Iran as a threat right now.
One is that President Bush needs a definable, demonizable enemy for public-relations purposes, to take attention away from the reality that U.S. troops remain perilously and indefinitely astride several civil wars and resistance movements. .......... (please DO read the whole thing. it's well worth it. how we can be so complacent and NOT challenge this buillshite is beyond me. i know the american people are smart enough NOT to believe it - weapons of mass destruction, COME ON NOW - but they're not brave enough or strong enough to say STOP. we've had it. this is BEYOND enough)