The Closest Thing to REAL Free Money Youll See
This Year

post from Jutia Group on 13 March 2009 09:42:45 AM. © Jutia Group

It’s the dozen highly indebted companies I shared with readers of my investment advisory in December. I call these companies "Debt Traps."

In every case, the firm’s debt exceeds the value of its equity. Many of them won’t earn enough money this year to…

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jutiagroup/~3/Df3Rf1BVsQc/

Digg this

CNBCs Jim Cramer Serves Himself Up

post from Taylor Marsh on 13 March 2009 09:41:19 AM. © Taylor Marsh

If you want to know why Jim Cramer has survived so long, last night’s “Daily Show” interview with Jon Stewart is the reason. He knew Stewart had the goods on him (and his entire cable crew babbling for bucks class), so when he showed[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/03/13/cnbcs-jim-cramer-serves-himself-up/

Digg this

Working Kansans' Agenda Blocked

post from Everyday Citizen on 13 March 2009 09:40:35 AM. © Everyday Citizen

At the start of the 2009 legislative session, Democrats in the Kansas House and Senate unveiled a[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/03/working_kansans_agenda_blocked.html

Digg this

Southern Pride and Ignorance.

post from Redneck Liberal on 13 March 2009 09:35:00 AM. © Redneck Liberal

You know, being a redneck doesn't mean that you have to be ignorant. Just because you're born a working class, white guy in a southern state doesn't mean that you have to be the lame caricature of the under educated, closed minded, Limbaugh listening doofus. If you don't have all the things that your heart desires, it's not the fault of African Americans, immigrants, New Yorkers, Democrats or liberals. It's pretty much your own fault for believing the crap that's put out by the Right Wing Propaganda Machine. That's right, those Republicans that you look to that are somehow going bring back those halcyon, antebellum days when all the white folks down south were wealthy and got the respect that they deserved. Dream on. It ain't going to happen. If you're working your butt off for a less than living wage, chances are it's because of the way you vote. If you're voting for the person because they wave the flag and thump the Bible, because they wear a little flag in their lapel, because they blame someone else for your low wages, because the NRA tells you to, because they're white or because you're just too damned lazy to check the facts yourself, then you're screwing yourself and your family. In other words, you're proudly ignorant and see no reason to change. That's no problem. It's a free country and I would fight for your right to stay blissfully ignorant. I mean, if you don't mind being played for a chump by the people you vote for, that's your business. Cheap labor. Even more than race, it's the thread that connects all of Southern history -- from the antebellum South of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis to Tennessee's Bob Corker, Alabama's Richard Shelby and the other anti-union Southerners in today's U.S. Senate. It's at the epicenter of a sad class divide between a desperate, poorly educated workforce and a demagogic oligarchy, and it has been a demarcation line stronger than the Mason-Dixon in separating the region from the rest of the nation. In their zeal to destroy unions and their hard-fought wage-and-benefits packages, the Southern senators could not care less that workers in their home states are among the lowest paid in the nation. Ever wonder why the South remains the nation's poorest region despite generations of seniority-laden senators and representatives in Congress? The idea of working people joining together to have a united voice across the table from management scares most Southern politicians to death. After all, they go to the same country clubs as management. When Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker warned of Democratic opponent Ronnie Musgrove's ties to the "Big Labor Bosses" in this year's U.S. Senate race, he was protecting the "Big Corporate Bosses" who are his benefactors. The South today may be more racially enlightened than ever in its history. However, it is still a society in which the ruling class -- the chambers of commerce that have taken over from yesterday's plantation owners and textile barons -- uses politics to maintain control over a vast, jobs-hungry workforce. After the oligarchy lost its war for slavery -- the cheapest labor of all -- it secured the next best thing in Jim Crow and the indentured servitude known as sharecropping and tenant farming. It still sees cheap, pliable, docile labor as the linchpin of the Southern economy. Think about it. Later

Read The Full Article:
http://lowdownsplace.blogspot.com/2009/03/southern-pride-and-ignorance.html

Digg this

Health Care Friday

post from Daily Kos on 13 March 2009 09:30:03 AM. © Daily Kos

Chris Hayes at The Nation has a must-read piece about Rick Scott.

By 1994, Columbia/HCA was one of the forty largest corporations in America, and Scott had acquired a reputation as the Gordon Gecko of the healthcare world. "Whose patients are you stealing?" he would ask employees at his newly acquired hospitals.

Read the whole thing. Scott wants to lobby against your health reform.

Congressman Pete Stark, a veteran of the last bruising round of fighting over healthcare reform, remembers Scott all too well. Stark recently sent his colleagues a letter hoping to refresh their memories. Calling Scott a "swindler," the letter said, "If he is the conservative spokesperson against healthcare reform, there is no debate."

OrangeClouds115 covers health IT.

Bird flu is still out there.

Germany's animal health authority said on Wednesday it sees no increased threat from bird flu following the discovery of a case in a wild bird.

The European Union on Wednesday said H5N1 bird flu, the EU's first case of the lethal strain of the contagious disease this year, was found in a wild duck shot on Jan 10 during a hunt near the town of Starnberg in the south German state of Bavaria.

We still don't know everything we need to about how the virus spreads, but surveillance remains a big part of pandemic preparations.

There's health care, and there's health care journalists.

The Future of Health Care Journalism

A new report examining the state of health care journalism and a survey of the members of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) were released at a Washington, D.C., discussion about the future of health care journalism.

The survey and report detail how the financial pressures on the media industry and the fierce competition to break news on new and expanding platforms on the Internet are affecting the quality of health reporting. The difficulties cited in the new findings have caused many in the industry to worry about the loss of in-depth, detailed reporting and the influence of public relations and advertising that could color news content. The turmoil in the news business is affecting all beats in journalism, not just health. Indeed, although AHCJ members report facing many difficulties in the current climate, they are more optimistic about the future of health journalism in particular than they are about journalism in general.

Left and Right Blogistan on health care reform, via National Journal.

What is the likeliest outcome this year of the current health care reform debate?

Want the professional insiders' view, same topic? They're here.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/JkuSzfGRLhs/707835

Digg this

THE WHITE HOUSE'S FAVORITE COLUMNIST.

post from Ezra Klein on 13 March 2009 09:29:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

This is a bit of an inside baseball observation, but it's becoming clear that the columnist with the best access to the White House is, improbably, David Brooks. A month ago, Brooks got the first word on the banking plan and a rare one-on-one interview[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=03&year=2009&base_name
=the_white_houses_favorite_colu

Digg this

Presented By:

post from Talking Points Memo on 13 March 2009 09:28:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

[...]

Read The Full Article:

Digg this

I'm Mad as Hell!

post from Talking Points Memo on 13 March 2009 09:28:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

In case you missed it (speaking for myself, I was watching UCONN-'Cuse 6 OT madness), here's Part III of the Jon Stewart-Jim Cramer showdown. By this stage in the interview, Cramer is a whipped puppy, and Stewart has long since dispensed with any comedic[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/dBLN2C4uvKw/im_mad_as_hell.
php

Digg this

Ventris Gibson, Or Marie Kennington-Gardner: FAA
Mystery "Some Pig"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/13/national/main4863784.shtml
(CBS) CBS3 in Philadelphia has the story of a homeless pig found near the airport in Philadelphia.Rescuers dubbed her ?Runway? after finding the [3]50-lb porkerhanging out with stray cats.?I think she must have been a pet somewhere along the line and she just got too big?,said Lori McCutcheon of the Last Chance Ranch, the animal rescue group where ?Runway? ended up.
McCutcheon is now trying to find a home for the pig.
Here?s the story and video at the above link.

Read The Full Article:
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com/2009/03/ventris-gibson-or-marie-kennington.html

Digg this

"Having [Rick] Scott lead the charge against
healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation."

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 13 March 2009 09:16:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

The insurance industry has started its campaign to derail the Obama health care reform agenda. In DC at least, we're seeing ads from the "Conservatives for Patients Rights" with its chairperson Rick Scott.

In a piece at The Nation, Chris Hayes gives the background on the guy the right wing has chosen as a spokesperson. He's a real sleazebag. If you care about health care reform (and you should), read the whole article. For starters:

Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation. You see, the for-profit hospital chain Scott helped found--the one he ran and built his entire reputation on--was discovered to be in the habit of defrauding the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, big surprise that this guy wants to make sure there is no real reform. Typical right-winger. But, this is apparently the best the anti-reform side can do. Yet, the traditional media falls for it, of course:

But in Washington there's no such thing as permanent disgrace, and as the healthcare debate heats up, Scott has established himself as a go-to source for reporters looking to hear from the opposition. He's been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He's been on Fox, of course, railing against President Obama's efforts to control healthcare costs. He appeared on CNN, where (as Media Matters noted) host Jessica Yellin never saw fit to notify viewers that the man she introduced as running "a media campaign to limit government's role in the healthcare system" once ran a company that profited mightily from ripping off that government.

Indeed, if there's one thing that's most galling about Scott's antigovernment jihad--and most emblematic--it's that for all his John Galt bluster, he made his fortune (which, yes, he still has) in no small part thanks to steady contract fees from the Great Society's entitlement programs.

There is somebody calling out Rick Scott:

Congressman Pete Stark, a veteran of the last bruising round of fighting over healthcare reform, remembers Scott all too well. Stark recently sent his colleagues a letter hoping to refresh their memories. Calling Scott a "swindler," the letter said, "If he is the conservative spokesperson against healthcare reform, there is no debate."

A swindler. Sounds about right.