BBC whitewashes coverage of Pope in Israel

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 11 May 2009 02:19:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

It's nice to see that even the vaunted BBC can be as pathetic as the American press from time to time.

Seriously, though, how does the BBC do a story about the Pope condemning Holocaust deniers and not mention that the reason the Pope is even saying this at all is because he welcomed a Holocaust denying Bishop back into the church a few months ago, causing a massive scandal?

How does that little fact get dropped from the story?

Oh, and the BBC also conveniently forgot to mention the little fact that the Vatican has historically been accused of turning a blind eye to the plight of Europe's Jews during WWII. Perhaps the BBC should be reading Reuters. They at least got the story right.

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Sleep Deprivation as Torture

post from Moue Magazine on 11 May 2009 02:05:33 PM. © Moue Magazine

Three years ago, I suffered a severe allergic reaction to the birth control shot. Because the shot is given once every three months, I essentially had to wait it out while the allergen worked out of my body. During that time I had numerous health[...]

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Healthcare Industry Offers to Shave $2 Trillion
in Projected Increases

post from Crooks and Liars on 11 May 2009 02:03:33 PM. © Crooks and Liars

My reaction to this news was, so what? So the for-profit health insurance industry, which spends untold millions to lobby Congress every year, announces they will shave future increases in the cost of health care and everyone's jumping for joy. I just don't understand the heavy media play on this, nor the administration's excitement. It just sounds like a desperate ploy to cut off the public plan option. Will the administration drop any real reform plans because of this?

I mean, is there anyone of you who doesn't get that these alleged savings are far too likely to come out of our hides? Call me a cynic, but I'm not jumping on the bandwagon just yet:

Volunteering to "do our part" to tackle runaway health costs, leading groups in the health-care industry have offered to squeeze $2 trillion in savings from projected increases over the next decade, White House officials said yesterday.
The pledge comes amid a debate over how, or whether, to overhaul the nation's health-care system, and Obama administration officials predicted that it will significantly increase momentum for passing such changes this year.
The groups aim to achieve the proposed savings by using new efficiencies to trim the rise in health-care costs by 1.5 percent a year, the officials said. That would carry huge implications for the national economy and the federal budget, both of which are significantly affected by health-care expenses.

New "efficiencies." Hmm. Gee, I wonder exactly who those new efficiencies will affect? For instance, do you suppose they'll be cutting the rate of increases in executive salaries? Of course not! Why do I suspect this means that the claims denial system is about to kick into even higher gear? Whee!

Representatives from half a dozen health industry trade groups are scheduled to make a formal offer today in a White House meeting with President Obama.
"I don't think there can be a more significant step to help struggling families and the federal budget," a senior administration official said in a conference call with reporters. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the offer remains tentative.

So this morning I wrote a friend who's working in D.C. on health reform, and here's her reply:

Actually, what they are talking about is eliminating administrative costs. Like, you wouldn't need a referral for an MRI. If your doctor says you need it, then you just go get it. We don't need 5 forms and 10 employees to put up barriers there. However, the industry is just trying to cooperate so that they can stop the momentum of the public health insurance plan. The good news is that the WH is saying, "That's nice, but we still want the public health insurance plan, too because the only way that you are going to keep your promise to do this stuff is if there is a government plan that is doing it, and people can choose it over you if screw up."
So, it's always scary when industry has access to power. But another way to look at it is that usually these deals are made behind closed doors, and they are being forced to keep it public because frankly, nobody in DC likes them very much right now. Their access is not as good as it used to be.

That makes sense, and I feel a lot better now.

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Health-Care Industry Offers to Shave $2 Trillion
in Projected Increases

post from Crooks and Liars on 11 May 2009 02:03:33 PM. © Crooks and Liars

I mean, is there anyone of you who doesn't get that these alleged savings are far too likely to come out of our hides? Call me a cynic, but I'm not jumping on the bandwagon just yet:

Volunteering to "do our part" to tackle runaway health costs, leading groups in the health-care industry have offered to squeeze $2 trillion in savings from projected increases over the next decade, White House officials said yesterday.
The pledge comes amid a debate over how, or whether, to overhaul the nation's health-care system, and Obama administration officials predicted that it will significantly increase momentum for passing such changes this year.
The groups aim to achieve the proposed savings by using new efficiencies to trim the rise in health-care costs by 1.5 percent a year, the officials said. That would carry huge implications for the national economy and the federal budget, both of which are significantly affected by health-care expenses.

New "efficiencies." Hmm. Gee, I wonder exactly who those new efficiencies will affect? For instance, do you suppose they'll be cutting the rate of increases in executive salaries? Of course not! Why do I suspect this means that the claims-denial system is about to kick into even higher gear? Whee!

Representatives from half a dozen health industry trade groups are scheduled to make a formal offer today in a White House meeting with President Obama.
"I don't think there can be a more significant step to help struggling families and the federal budget," a senior administration official said in a conference call with reporters. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the offer remains tentative.

So this morning I wrote a friend who's working in D.C. on health reform, and here's her reply:

Actually, what they are talking about is eliminating administrative costs. Like, you wouldn't need a referral for an MRI. If your doctor says you need it, then you just go get it. We don't need 5 forms and 10 employees to put up barriers there. However, the industry is just trying to cooperate so that they can stop the momentum of the public health insurance plan. The good news is that the WH is saying, "That's nice, but we still want the public health insurance plan, too because the only way that you are going to keep your promise to do this stuff is if there is a government plan that is doing it, and people can choose it over you if screw up."
So, it's always scary when industry has access to power. But another way to look at it is that usually these deals are made behind closed doors, and they are being forced to keep it public because frankly, nobody in DC likes them very much right now. Their access is not as good as it used to be.

That makes sense, and I feel a lot better now.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/healthcare-industry-offers-shave-2-tr

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Pete Sessions (R-TX) Has A GOP Alternative To
Obama

post from DownWithTyranny! on 11 May 2009 02:00:00 PM. © DownWithTyranny!

Pete Sessions hosting a recent GOP fund-raiser for lobbyists in Vegas
Republicans are hysterical over the possibility-- remote as it is because of corrupt, reactionary Republican-like Democrats such as Max Baucus and Arlen Specter-- of Congress passing real health care reform. What, asks the Republican Party's in-house newspaper would Democrats have done if Tom DeLay had forced through the GOP's all-time biggest dream, abolishing Social Security? No doubt one or two of the worst of the worst Blue Dogs-- say a Gene Taylor (MS) and an Alan Boyd (an actual co-sponsor of the failed Bush plan to do away with Social Security) would have gone along for the ride, but most Democrats would have waited happily for the next election day to watch the voters decimate the GOP even more than they have since DeLay was kicked out.

The last time the GOP responded to a Democratic president trying to solve a dire national crisis created by GOP excesses by claiming his proposals-- like Social Security-- were socialism, was in the 1930s at the depths of the Great Depression. Not one single Republican in the House voted for Social Security and, in fact, they were exactly as obstructionist as the current crop of like-minded reactionaries are today. The voters didn't approve of these tactics and the GOP found itself, over the course of 4 election cycles and unstinting lock-step obstructionism, losing almost two hundred seats!

When Hoover won re-election in 1928, the GOP won 270 seats in the House. Then along came the culmination of Republican policies, the 1929 stock market crash and Depression, and the next year the GOP lost 52 seats (giving the Democrats a one vote majority). The GOP went on an orgy of obstructionism and all you heard was "Socialism!" screeched every time any of them opened their mouths. The voters responded in 1932 with a landslide for FDR and a well-earned defeat for another 101 Republican congressmen. They didn't learn a thing and, like Cheney, Limbaugh and the rest of the kooks, angrily struck out with more obstructionism and more lies about socialism. The voters had really had it with them by the 1934 midterms and the GOP lost another 14 seats. By this time there were no Republicans left in the House but the craziest extremist fringe and they actually got worse, not better. When 1936 hit there weren't many Republican seats left for the Democrats to target, but the GOP still managed to lose another 15, bringing their total to 88 seats (as opposed to 334 for the Democrats (and 13 for progressive minor parties).

What brought the history lesson on? One of the most corrupt shills in the House, Texas congressman Pete Sessions must have found an old GOP briefing book from 1933 and decided to read it out loud to the New York Times, not having had the foresight to figure out the results of when the "argument" was used last time. Sessions used the same tactic on Obama that the Republicans had tried against FDR-- namely that he was aiming to "diminish employment and diminish stock prices" so as to "inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it" and then "divide and conquer" America in a power-grab!

Is it any wonder that only 1 in 5 people identify themselves as Republicans or that the approval rating for the Republican congressional leaders, like Sessions, is so low that it's heading to statistical margin of error territory? You can't say Sessions has lost his mind because that would presuppose he once had one which a careful examination of his record shows clearly he never did. He represents a conservative North Dallas district (TX-32) that he helped Tom DeLay gerrymander for himself. That said, George Bush won 64% of the vote there in 2000 and 60% in 2004 and last year McCain only managed to scrape by with 53%. The district's burgeoning Latino population should end Session's career within a few years; he was one of only 4 Republican incumbents (of 19) in Texas to fail to reach the 60% re-elect number last year. Only 8 Republicans have perfect zeroes (100% obstructionist on everything for the current congressional session-- Pete Olson (R-TX), Kenny Marchant (R-TX), Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), Todd Akin (R-MO), Steve King (R-IA), Sam Johnson (R-TX), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), and, of course Pete Sessions.

Sessions is the head of the NRCC and his counterpart at the DCCC, Chris Van Hollen responded to his outburst today:

The American people want leadership to address our economic challenges, yet the Republicans are responding with one ridiculous sound bite after another while refusing to offer a constructive alternative to their failed economic policies of the last eight years. The latest remarks by NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions have no place in our current economic debate and reflect a Party more preoccupied with offering bizarre conspiracy theories than offering credible solutions to get our economy back on track. Families coping with the loss of a job, their home, or their health care need solutions from Washington, not more of the same broken politics embodied by Chairman Sessions and the Republican Leadership in the House, and talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

If the Republican Party is serious about offering credible alternatives to Obama's proposals, they should stop fighting among each other, dump divisive extremists like Sessions (and Michael Steele) from their leadership and replace him with a sincere mainstream conservative. Otherwise they really are going to be looking at a 1936 scenario in 2012.

video details and more

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Recognizing the presence of adult illiteracy

post from Everyday Citizen on 11 May 2009 01:58:36 PM. © Everyday Citizen

Adult illiteracy plagues our society, yet it is a problem that we are often unaware that exists.[...]

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Recognizing the Presence of Adult Illiteracy

post from Everyday Citizen on 11 May 2009 01:58:36 PM. © Everyday Citizen

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What Is The Subconscious Mind

For many years I had a recurring dream that I was in the Brown University Bookstore on Thayer Street in Providence, Rhode Island. (Above you see a picture of the Brown University Bookstore I took last year. The store is the grey building on the left. To the right is Thayer Street.)After some years of this dream, [...]

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What Is The Subconscious

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Everyone's Looking for Redemption

Email advertisement we just received for a new book from conservative publishing house Regnery: "General Curtis LeMay: Villain or Hero?[...]

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