Texas Blockade of Tar Sands Continues Despite Use
of Pepper Spray, Tasers (VIDEO)

post from Taylor Marsh on 01 October 2012 02:01:08 PM. © Taylor Marsh

The efforts to stop the construction of the Keystone / Tar Sands pipeline in East Texas continue. Before a few details, a reminder that this project is supported by both Obama and Romney. From FDL:? … I?m directing my administration to cut through[...]

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Why Its Probably Not Time To Freak Out About The
Supreme Court Getting Back Into The Health Care Business

post from ThinkProgress on 01 October 2012 02:00:31 PM. © ThinkProgress

Earlier this morning, the Supreme Court asked for the Solicitor General to respond to a conservative university’s petition seeking to reactivate a challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Normally when the Court calls for such a response it means they are taking the petition very seriously. As SCOTUSBlog explains, the petition tries to breathe new [...]

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Is Ex-Im Bank President Fred Hochberg
Underwriting Destruction Of The Great Barrier Reef, Again

post from ThinkProgress on 01 October 2012 02:00:11 PM. © ThinkProgress

by Justin Guay, via the Sierra Club The U.S. Ex-Im Bank and its president Fred Hochberg have never met a coal project they didn’t like. At times it’s so bad we don’t know what century the institution thinks it is operating in. Now, despite a worldwide uproar over the Bank’s interest in one of the [...]

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Remember, Kids: Guns Don't Keep You Safe - Safety
Habits Do!

post from Crooks and Liars on 01 October 2012 02:00:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

When you think about it, "gun safe" is kind of an oxymoron. Nothing safe about this gun safe! Sounds like it was a problem with gunpowder storage, since guns don't typically explode, left to their own devices. (I have a family member who was badly burned at an indoor firing range when gunpowder on the floor ignited a fireball, so I pay attention to the danger it presents.) I hope Mrs. Wood comes out of this okay, and I also hope this horrible incident reminds people to treat gunpowder with the extreme caution it demands:

An Idaho state representative?s wife was injured Saturday after a room converted to a gun safe exploded at her home.
Amy Wood, wife of Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, as taken by air ambulance to an unspecified Utah hospital suffering from second-degree burns to her face and hands.
The incident occurred at 8:11 p.m., according to Burley Fire Chief Keith Martin. On Saturday evening, Martin said the owners of the home at 100 S. 147 E. were eating dinner when ?they heard a sound like a 747 coming from the basement.?
Martin said an explosion from a room that was converted to a gun safe lifted up the patio slab at the back of the home and collapsed the patio roof. Martin said the patio slab appeared to be the roof of the gun safe room. Amy Wood was on the patio when the explosion occurred. The cause of the explosion is unknown at this time.

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Andrew Cuomo Pressured Into Delaying Approval on
Fracking

post from Firedoglake on 01 October 2012 01:55:24 PM. © Firedoglake

Here?s a story about the power of independent, outside movements to advance policy arguments. The story about fracking in New York was that it would simply happen, without much resistance from the state government. The special interests were too[...]

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Arkansas Teams Up With Private Insurers To
Overhaul State Medicaid Program

post from ThinkProgress on 01 October 2012 01:45:26 PM. © ThinkProgress

Continuing the post-Obamacare trend toward efficient cooperation between governments, private insurers, and care providers, Arkansas is kicking off a first-of-its kind Medicaid reform program. The state will partner up with its two largest insurers, Blue Cross Blue Shield and QualChoice, in an attempt to provide medical cost transparency to practitioners, increase the efficiency and quality [...]

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Monday Afternoon News Roundup

post from Where Is The Outrage? on 01 October 2012 01:43:43 PM. © Where Is The Outrage?

Monday Afternoon News Roundup On Thursday, Ann Romney told a local television station that her biggest concern that if her husband collected president would be for "his mental well-being." I don't know. I just find the whole thing strangely worded. It makes it sound as if Mitt Romney has some sort of mental disorder. It

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Movers & Shakers, Givers & Takers

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 01 October 2012 01:29:48 PM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

I find myself bugged by several things this week not least among them the attitude of a lot of right wing types toward people who, for whatever reason, didn't have an opportunity to become wealthy or even financially independent during their working lives. These RW folks need to simply face the freaking fact that there are 330 million people in this goddamned country and obviously, not all of them can be millionaires. The few that can, can only do so through the efforts of the rest of us and for every new millionaire, there are literally thousands of people who had to work their asses off for less than a living wage to make it possible for him or her to reach that status.

The simple fact is that very few of the real movers and shakers in this country today got to where they are on their own. Anyone who was born with the proverbial silver spoon up their gazoo probably has the least right to talk about the 47% and their so called "entitlements". These are the so called "privileged" few who have adopted the stance that they are entitled to all of the country's wealth simply because a tiny little of number of them already control most of it. They have no other rationale. Virtually anyone else who manages to reach the millionaire rung on their little ladder does so mostly on their coattails by providing various financial "services" to the real barons and earls and moving various piles of their money around for them in some manner or other. In short, capitalism has become just another industry, one of which depends on our output for its existence and that we are required to pay into but which we are not allowed to take from.

And of course we have the common garden variety slugs and thugs who somehow seem to find ways to become millionaires by holding elective office or occupying various slots in the bureaucracy that enable them to funnel more of the country's wealth to the big dogs by outright manipulation of the economy in return for for a few crumbs from the master's table. Like the popular concept of Judas, they count their thirty pieces of silver as a major accomplishment of their own and take great pride in their status as running dogs for the elite but one only has to look at people like Darrell Issa and Joe Walsh to know the true depth of their character.

The rich are indeed different than you or I and truly, it can be no other way. For each taker, there must be thousands of givers... or at least people to be taken from... and of course it's our basic mindset that is the main factor in determining which we are. Most of us (barely... that opinion may be subject to change on November 6) are still givers. We understand the need to do just that tad more than the law requires in order to have a decent country for us all to live in. The takers,,, not so much.

The problem for the rest of us is that the number of takers is growing due to the fact that like other predatory animals, they tend to breed... a lot... and each succeeding generation has to have more than the last simply not only because that's the nature of the people involved but simply because their numbers have increased. In other words, the rich are the only ones left who can actually hand off a better world to their larvae than the rest of us lowborns can to our own kids for blatantly obvious reasons.

A case in point of course, would be Willard Mitt Romney and his five sons, all of whom might as well have been cloned from skin scrapings from his right ass cheek. The Romney family epitomizes the attitudes toward the rest of us that was so ably caricatured by Jim Backus as Thurston Howell III so many years ago while the excesses of the one percent were still a joking matter and before they had become literally a matter of life and death. They have been brought up to think that the measure of a human being is not taken by weight of his or her contributions to society as a whole but solely by the amount of wealth and power they they contribute to the Romney dynasty and far from resenting the fact that they have reached the point of virtually stealing the food from our children's plates in order to satisfy their lust for more and more, the rest of us are actually supposed to admire them for it.

That's why they apply high sounding titles to themselves like "Maker" or "Producer" or the latest example, "Job Creator" (in spite of the fact that they actually make or produce nothing tangible and there is no evidence that the deregulation of American corporations has produced anything but a net LOSS of jobs in the US over the past 30 years) and that's why Mitt can utter... with a straight face... statements to the effect that anything his boys do that furthers the fortune of the Romney family is equivalent to say... fighting and dying in one of the never ending wars that are a major part of the agenda by which they make their money... or that "corporations are people too, my friend".

This is the man... and the mindset... that the ultra right feels is not only an acceptable choice to lead this country but actually worthy of anything they have to resort to in order to get him into office up to and including not only everything we've seen so far... the lies, half truths, innuendo, gridlock and outright race baiting... but even deliberately and methodically openly depriving millions of those most likely to vote for the other side of their very right to vote. This is the man and the mindset that has become their line in the sand... their final stand at the Alamo. The sorriest candidate in history, running the sorriest campaign in history and if they have their way, he just may be running the sorriest failed country in history as the US openly capitulates to the Fascist/Corporatist oligarchy without even a bang or a whimper.

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Mark Zandi Doesnt Understand Housing Very Well

Court jester economist for power Mark Zandi tried to pull a fast one by readers of the Washington Post, by actually making the argument, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that the Obama Administration successfully fixed the foreclosure crisis.[...]

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