I hereby make a commitment

that, on the Third Friday and/or Third Weekend of every month, I will break my daily routine and take some action, by myself or with others, to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's the pledge that is at the heart of the Iraq Moratorium, whose[...]

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So Which Member of Congress Was Being Spied On By
The NSA

I don't know about you, but I always thought they were spying on Congress members, so this doesn't come as a complete shock. (Oh, and Spencer Ackerman does the legwork to narrow the field.)

The big story of the day will be this one in The New York Times reporting that the National Security Agency intercepted private emails and calls of Americans beyond the limits set by Congress.

But this detail buried in the article is particularly interesting. Seems a member of Congress was under surveillance:

And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact ? as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 ? with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman?s conversations, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.

Really? Note that there was an active attempt by the NSA to wiretap a member of Congress. Who was it? Seems worth finding out.

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http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/so-which-member-congress-was-being-sp

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Business as Usual

This is not an aberration. This is for-profit health care working as it must…

A state official in New Jersey has reviewed the cases of scores of elderly people who were kicked out of assisted living facilities ? simply because they could no longer pay at the highest rates. In a new report, Ron Chen, the state’s public advocate, concludes that state regulations in New Jersey and around the country fail to protect elderly residents.
John Myers, 93, and his wife, Mae, 88, went through about $180,000 of their savings in three years at an Assisted Living Concepts facility in Burlington, N.J. But late last year, John Myers lost a lot of his money in the stock market. The family asked about going on Medicaid; that would have meant they would pay about 20 percent less, according to Chen’s report. Instead, they were evicted.

The Myers ended up moving in with their daughter. John Myers died and his wife is now in a nursing home.

I am employed in maintaining the safety net that keeps elderly people in their own homes with caretakers who come to them. I see many people who could benefit from assisted living, but for most it is unaffordable. The problem is that the in-home support is underfunded and sometimes inadequate. There?s not enough mid-level between a few hours of CNA help in a dilapidated house and the palatial assisted living that few can afford.

A business like an assisted living has to maximize profits. A snake has to bite. It?s nature.

There are many levels of need in between total independence and the nursing home. For older people and their families it?s buyer beware. We have a responsibility to search for creative solutions to the problems of aging. We boomers are looking at our parents, and ourselves, not getting any younger.

It?s a shame the Myers didn?t get a legal contract they could enforce. Assisted Living Concepts might have been more ruthless than most, but there are many medical services that won?t accept Medicaid. The reimbursement is less.

Medicaid overall is a huge chunk of money. Medicaid is our tax dollars, it?s the safety net for young and old. It can be spent to build nursing homes or to bring the care to people living in their own homes. Rhode Island is in the process of deciding how our Medicaid dollar is spent.

For-profit health care has to follow its nature. That?s what we have now. Rationing is in process, according to where the money goes, which is why it is easier to get a surgeon to put a feeding tube in a man who is going to die tomorrow than to get a dentist to treat a dental infection before it damages a teenager?s heart. Save now, pay later.

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http://kmareka.com/2009/04/17/business-as-usual/

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It's time to pick a new name for Texas

As you know, Texas is now talking about seceding from the Union. Tom Delay, the former House Majority Leader who lost his job after being exposed as a criminal, is suggesting that Texas split into five separate states (which he says Texas is permitted to do), and then Democrats in Washington would be so incensed by the notion of ten new Texas Senators coming to DC that they'd kick Texas out of the Union.

My friend Chris has a great idea. Let's welcome dividing Texas up. It will be the biggest gerrymander in the history of the country. And along those lines, what should we call the five new Texas states, or five new Texas countries? What do you think? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, but you have to register with a real email address (it's the only way to stop the crazies, sorry).

More from Chris:

You know, the weird thing is that Delay?s right about Texas having joined the Union with permission to divide itself into as many as five states if it chose to do so.

I actually wouldn?t have a problem with it ? but oh the games one could play with drawing the boundaries. It could be the most epic gerrymander in history. The area around Austin could potentially be a liberal Nirvana.

And, honestly, one of the biggest barriers to statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico has been the fact that we?ve been stuck on a round number of states for 50 years. LOL.

So, what the heck? Let?s split Texas into five states (West Louisiana, South Oklahoma, East New Mexico, Nirvana, and Hell ? the last of which would be Houston or wherever Tom Delay is living at the time).

And actually, that suggests the idea of a naming contest for the five Balkanized states of the former Republic of Texas.

So that gets us to 54. Then we could add Puerto Rico, D.C., the Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas, American Samoa and Guam.

Which puts us at 60 ? another nice round number that will make us feel all warm and fuzzy again.

Palau, of course, is completely screwed in this scenario, since they?d be 61, but if you want to make an omelet?.

You have Chris' suggestions above for the new names of the five balkanized states of Texas. He of course left out Jesustan.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/NMxHpymu41E/its-time-to-pick-new-na
me-for-texas.html

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Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Friday!! What do the pundits have to say?

Paul Krugman: This recession thing? It' ain't over just yet, whatever the WH wants to believe.

David Brooks:

Israel is a country held together by argument. Public culture is one long cacophony of criticism.

Robert Reich:

No one likes to pay taxes, so tax day typically attracts a range of right-wing Republicans, kooks, and demagogues, all of whom tell us how awful we have it.

Ross Douthat:

They resemble nothing so much as the anti-war protests during Bush's first term.

Only much smaller, less world wide, and more incoherent. And even those protests were pretty ineffective compared to the hard work of successfully primarying a senior Senator. But it's all we got, ya know?

Eugene Robinson:

The protests were all over the map and thus hard to take seriously. A reality check would show that Obama's approval rating is running higher than 60 percent in most recent polls. Surveys indicate that Americans blame Wall Street and the Bush administration for the woeful state of the economy. Generally speaking, the polls show that most Americans are willing to go along with the president's agenda, at least for now, and realize that it will take time to begin seeing results.

But the polls also point to what looks like a reservoir of simmering discontent.

There's us vs them to be exploited here. Not that the GOP can do it, but it's there to be done.

EJ Dionne:

Two days before the rescue, John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, told Fox News that the episode offered "a clear case for the use of force by the United States," then added: "I am very concerned, however, that both the administration and many of our friends in Europe have fallen into the trap of seeing this as a law enforcement question, which it most certainly is not."

This rote argument, which conservatives have been using against liberals since Sept. 11, 2001, just happened not to be true. Obama didn't say much. He just relied on the skill and bravery of our Navy SEALs.

Michael Gerson:  

Is "Christian America" dying? And if so, should we mourn or cheer?

Charles Krauthammer: Snarf. Grumble. Don't get too close or I'll bite you.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/gjU5_RnnTsc/-Your-Abbreviated-Pund
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Will The New Republican Party Motto Now Be "The
Party Of Sore Losers" Jim Tedisco Meets Rick Perry

Which dittohead is the bigger clown?
Every day this week, the expanded vote count in NY-20's special election increased Democrat Scott Murphy's lead over confused reactionary Jim Tedisco and his team of professional election thieves (led by one of the architects of the Bush-Cheney Florida 2000 theft, Roger Stone). By Thursday evening Murphy's margin of victory had increased to 178 264 votes-- and Tedisco's best hope for a turnaround, Saratoga County, was all wrapped up, every vote counted and no salvation for the Secession Party.

Not that Team Tedisco thinks that should stop him. He went to the Dutchess County Supreme Court and demanded they declare him the winner. Desperate, nearly hysterical and frothing at the mouth, Tedisco is shrilly demanding that all votes, both machine and paper be recounted and re-examined-- except, of course for the hundreds of absentee votes from Democratic areas that he has challenged; those he demands stay forever unopened.

The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate?s lawyers, and while Tedisco?s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco?s have challenged 258.

At this point Tedisco and the Republican Party know that, like Norm Coleman, he has been rejected by the voters. So the game plan is to tarnish his opponent's victory, keep him out of office for as long as possible with frivolous lawsuits and time-consuming challenges, and persuade the Republican grassroots that they're being robbed, adding to their sense of victimization and grievance, a world view-- as we saw in their teabaggery this week, in which they thrive. Meanwhile, encouraged by Rush Limbaugh's insistence that Texas' outgoing secessionist Governor is not a fringe kook, and despite being denounced by newspapers across Texas, Rick Perry senses that playing up to this sense of victimization is a good political move-- at least in terms of the Republican Party primary, a contest that polls show that he is currently losing by a landslide (56-31).

Real losers never accept defeat with grace and dignity. Life's real losers are assholes like Norm Coleman, Jim Tedsico... and Rick Perry, who, when they don't get their way, want to wreck the board for everyone else. And that's not your father's grandfather's Republican Party. I think Oklahoma, the most anti-Obama state in the Union, wants to secede too:


video details and more



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Early Morning Swim

Torture under Bush/Cheney.Sullivan has bloggy reax. Investigating NSA. On the road to recovery or not? It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, Steve.What's the problem? Just deport 'em.Wimp.[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/17/early-morning-swim-133/

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"Were American seamen. Were union members. We
stuck together and did our jobs."

Corporate leaders and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are on a multi-million dollar mission to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, even as many of them, like Bank of America, take federal bailout money. The Wall Street crowd, with their private jets and huge bonuses, almost destroyed the American economy. People like Bank of America's Ken Lewis represent the worst in America. They've conspired to destroy the financial security of working Americans.

But, if you want to meet real union workers, the people who make the economy function and the people Lewis and his fellow CEOS wants to screw, meet the men from Maersk Alabama over at the AFL-CIO NOW blog:

The AFL-CIO Maritime Trades Department (MTD) salutes the courageous efforts of the all-union crew aboard the Maersk Alabama for maintaining control of their vessel, as well as the heroic efforts of the U.S. Navy in rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips from his Somali captors.

Union members like John Cronan, third engineer and son of a merchant sailor, who summed it up this way on NBC?s ?Today? show:

We didn?t have to retake the ship because we never surrendered it. We?re American seaman. We?re union members. We stuck together and did our jobs.

Think Progress has a clip of Cronan and his colleagues from NBC News last night:
video details and more


I'd side John Cronan and his union brothers and sisters over Ken Lewis and his crooked corporate cronies any day.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/el-0SBg2TG8/were-american-seaman-we
re-union-members.html

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"Were American seaman. Were union members. We
stuck together and did our jobs."

Corporate leaders and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are on a multi-million dollar mission to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, even as many of them, like Bank of America, take federal bailout money. The Wall Street crowd, with their private jets and huge bonuses, almost destroyed the American economy. People like Bank of America's Ken Lewis represent the worst in America. They've conspired to destroy the financial security of working Americans.

But, if you want to meet real union workers, the people who make the economy function and the people Lewis and his fellow CEOS wants to screw, meet the men from Maersk Alabama over at the AFL-CIO NOW blog:

The AFL-CIO Maritime Trades Department (MTD) salutes the courageous efforts of the all-union crew aboard the Maersk Alabama for maintaining control of their vessel, as well as the heroic efforts of the U.S. Navy in rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips from his Somali captors.

Union members like John Cronan, third engineer and son of a merchant sailor, who summed it up this way on NBC?s ?Today? show:

We didn?t have to retake the ship because we never surrendered it. We?re American seaman. We?re union members. We stuck together and did our jobs.

Think Progress has a clip of Cronan and his colleagues from NBC News last night:
video details and more


I'd side John Cronan and his union brothers and sisters over Ken Lewis and his crooked corporate cronies any day.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/el-0SBg2TG8/were-american-seaman-we
re-union-members.html

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KS-02 FEC Report: Jenkins Pays Herself $100K+
from Campaign Coffers

Back today with another FEC report- this one from KS-02 Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins.Jenkins first[...]

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