"It seems to go counter to what we're doing in Connecticut," state Sen. Andrew Roraback, R-Goshen, the ranking Republican senator on the General Assembly's Public Health Committee, said Monday.
"We're trying to broaden the net. It's not just us -- it's what many states are trying to do. This sounds like moving in the opposite direction," Roraback said.
State Sen. Gayle Slossberg, D-Milford, who is vice chairman of the Public Health Committee, said based on eligibility standards, the new Bush Administration rules could disqualify 4,000 to 8,000 children from HUSKY.
"This is a trap," she said. "Its effect will be for children to lose health insurance."
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Monday threatened to sue the federal government on charges that new regulations on children's health insurance violate an existing program that covers children from lower-income families.
At issue is New York's plan to expand coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program to children whose parents earn up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, from 250 percent currently.
But under new federal regulations that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published on August 17, states would have to cover 95 percent of poverty-level families before expanding access to middle-income children.
The rules also require children to have no health coverage for a year before they can join the state plans.
I hope Blumenthal will jump into a lawsuit if Spitzer decides to move forward on this. Though, I would have preferred it if we had a President that actually cared about the health and welfare of American children so that lawsuits like this - that waste taxpayer's time, resources and money - would never have to be considered.
Of course, none of this would ever be an issue if we had single payer universal healthcare.
In the last year, we've seen public opinion building around the principle that no American should be denied health care. The president has answered that call by attempting to limit eligibility for the State Children's Health Insurance Program. SCHIP is a program that provides health care to children whose families make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private health insurance.
The president is trying to tell governors like me across the country that until we enroll 95 percent of those eligible for S-CHIP in households making under 200 percent of the poverty line ($41,300 for a family of four), we cannot provide health care to children in families making above 250 percent of the poverty line ($51,625 for a family of four).
Make no mistake. This is a poison pill meant to deny thousands of children health insurance.
While state governments make every effort to enroll as many eligible kids as possible, there will always be some individuals who fail to take advantage of this important program. In New York, we currently enroll 88 percent of children in families making below 200 percent of the poverty level. No state has yet cleared the 95 percent hurdle.
Since many states already enroll children at income thresholds above 250 percent of the poverty level, this means that these new regulations will have the effect of forcing children who already have coverage out of the program. Moreover, New York's historic effort to provide universal coverage for children through SCHIP will not be able to get off the ground because of this bureaucratic sleight of hand.
The president surely knows this. But then that begs the question: Why would he choose to pursue this path?
This isn't about fiscal restraint. The initiative is paid for through a tax on unhealthy cigarettes and other revenue sources. This isn't about good public policy. SCHIP has been wildly successful in providing health care for nearly seven million of our nation's vulnerable children.
The actions of the White House speak to what we've all known for far too long. When faced with the choice of covering thousands of children, they'll bring up the "big government" bogeyman and then stick their heads in the sand, ignoring the realities facing working families across the country.
He denounced the longstanding probes by the Statesman -- he called it a "witch hunt" -- for inspiring him to plead guilty to the offense even though he said he was actually innocent. He said he had been "viciously harassed" by the newspaper. "I am not gay," he said twice. "I love my wife."
...snip...
His full remarks on The Statesman read: "For eight months leading up to June, my family and I had been relentlessly and viciously harassed by the Idaho Statesman. If you’ve seen today’s paper, you know why. Let me be clear: I am not gay and never have been.
Sen. Larry Craig is a weird dude. I can't relate. But it's important to remember that Craig tried to weasel out his arrest.
After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, "What do you think about that?" the report states.
Nice attempt to pull rank, dontcha think?
You can snigger about Craig's sexual proclivities and hypocrisy...he deserves it.
This story would not matter if Craig wasn't using his position to advance the Republican Party's officially homophobic agenda. In November, 2006, Craig flamboyantly endorsedIdaho's successful anti-gay constitutional amendment, HJR 2, which banned gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in his state. Pam Spaulding has more background on Craig's anti-gay voting record here. It's also worth recalling Craig's 1999 interview with Tim Russert in which he mocked Bill Clinton as a "naughty boy" for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Craig is up for re-election in 2008. Will his carnality in public restrooms put an end to his career in public life? Idaho conservatives may be willing to reward bigotry, but lying is another matter.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has reported that Larry Craig has resigned his appointment as co-chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, and the campaign has accepted his resignation.
...snip...
Sen. Craig has issued a statement in response to this story: “At the time of the incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct. I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”
You remember a little while back we brought you the story of Florida McCain campaign co-chair, Rep. Bob Allen (R). Right on the heels of Giuliani Southern Regional Chairman David Vitter's exposure as a serial user of prostitutes, Allen got caught in a Titusville park restroom offering to pay an undercover police officer to allow him to perform oral sex on him.
Now it turns out that Allen revealed the true reason for the alleged park-john-offer in a tape recorded statement he made just after his arrest.
"This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park," said Allen, according to this article in the Orlando Sentinel. Allen went on to say he was afraid of becoming a "statistic."
I guess this raises the question of whether if you thought you were about to get mugged by a group of stocky black guys, your first plan of escape would be to try to give one of them a blowjob. But I guess maybe you had to be there.
One day the politicians in the GOP may figure out that most people, even most black people, actually use restrooms to go to the bathroom. The fact that some in the GOP seem think it is only a sexual playground or a boxing ring may explain why they are so full of shit.
[update]Something I wrote over at BooTrib in comments when I first read about this just in case I haven't been clear on my personal view of this in the previous snark:
How do you ascertain what a person is doing in the bathroom stall without illegally invading their privacy... I suggest that gay men find a better way to pick up guys than ever try and stare into my stall 'cause I'd kick the stall door into their face. Not because they are gay, I could care less about that... But because I have a right to privacy. And unless I have clearly heard them ask me to pass them some TP because their stall is out, I am crushing their hand if It comes under the partition because I am thinking about the wallet in my pants down there on the floor around my ankles.
And now we return to our regularly scheduled snark:
Dan Balz of The Washington Post previews tomorrow's announcement of the International Association of Fire Fighters' endorsement of Chris Dodd for President.
Democratic presidential candidate Christopher Dodd picked off the first significant prize in the competition for labor union endorsements yesterday, winning the support of the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) in what his advisers believe will be an important boost to his campaign.
The firefighters count 281,000 members, making them only the 10th largest union in the AFL-CIO federation. But they are among the most politically active and symbolically prized labor groups in the country because of the heroic actions of firefighters in New York and at the Pentagon when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001.
The IAFF also was the only union to endorse Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) before the 2004 Democratic primaries and helped sustain his candidacy at a time when he was flagging in the polls and floundering on the campaign trail. ... Schaitberger said firefighters play an integral role in communities across the country and, perhaps more significantly, understand the caucus process in Iowa "better than all the highly-paid Washington types."
Look forward to more news and updates to come - as well as a live stream of the official announcement tomorrow morning at 11 AM EDT.
The firefighters did great things for Kerry in the early 2004 contests. If this and other potential labor endorsements don't jump-start Dodd's campaign out of the lower single digits (and asterisks) in Iowa and NH, it's hard to see what will...
Unions like this have an awesome record of getting out in the streets and making things happen for candidates. This may be just what the Dodd campaign's spin doctor would've prescribed... Matt says to "check out these stories in The Hill, Hartford Courant, Associated Press, and The Washington Post on the IAFF endorsement of Chris Dodd for President."
Matt also asked that you do something about the situation in New Orleans on this two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating landfall:
Today is the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall on the Gulf Coast. A new project called When the Saints Go Marching In is organizing to help the rebuilding of infrastructure lost in the disaster and they're encouraging people to lobby their senators in support of Senator Dodd's Gulf Coast Recovery Bill to assist the reconstruction.
This is the message on their site:
It's been two years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region, and still there are tens of thousands of families without homes. 30,000 families are scattered across the country in FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in trailers, and hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt.
We put together this short film, "When the Saints Go Marching In," to tell several heartbreaking stories. The Aguilar family lost their home and only received $4,000 from the insurance company. Mr. Washington, an 84-year-old man and former carpenter, owned three homes prior to the storm, but is still living in a FEMA trailer. Julie can't return to her job and normal life because the government won't open the public housing she lived in prior to the storm. There are thousands of stories like this.
The bill is expected to come to a vote soon. Its passage will be an important step toward rebuilding the infrastructure in the Gulf Coast region. In addition to S1668, please also encourage your Senators to go further in helping the public and low-income housing residents who lost their homes in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Please pass the video on and encourage people to sign the petition. It's important we all support the Gulf Coast region's right to return home and put the needed resources toward rebuilding these families' lives.
Last night’s broadcast of Countdown on the mothership, NBC, was a major coup for Keith Olbermann and his MSNBC program.
For all the clamoring for attention that goes on amongst the cable news kiddies, they are all fighting for slices of a relatively small pie. The ratings leader, Bill O’Reilly, averages about 2 million viewers a day. The lowest rated network news program (CBS) pulls in over 6 million. So graduating to the network opens millions of doors to a cablecaster.
Olbermann, not surprisingly, benefited from this. The early results show him with 4.1 million viewers. That only earned him a third place finish, behind “60 Minutes” and “America’s Funniest Videos,” but it was good enough to quadruple his average MSNBC audience. What’s more, (and this has to hurt) it is twice what Bill O’Reilly does on an average night.
Lies about Countdown are most assuredly forthcoming from Rupert Murdoch's Republican stooge, O'Liely, any minute now... You can read more at News Corpse about why there is still room for growth in those numbers for KO and Countdown.
This is a good showing for a brand new entry in the time slot. I suspect that the football game shown afterwards may have helped his numbers a little with people tuning in expecting a pre-game show, or just not wanting to miss kick off. I wonder how his numbers compared to the game's numbers?
The key here is to see if he can replicate (or increase) those numbers when he gets slots like that again. Another good measure of how well he did might be if there is a spike, even a little one, on his regular 8 pm (EST) and midnight slots. That might be some of those NBC viewers going out of their way to find his show on MSNBC. I hope that does happen... One of his Special Comments on a prime time network would probably shake a few viewers out of their seats.
"We didn't announce it...and it's not that big a deal, but we're going to do a real-time live blog for tonight's show. For all you folks on the West Coast, tune into Countdown AFTER the game for the big show."
Go on over and give'em all some well wishes and kudos for their efforts and successes. And since many of you are probably interested in knowing... Here are the "Worst person in the world!" winners for the NBC broadcast:
Sen. Larry Craig is a weird dude. I can't relate. But it's important to remember that Craig tried to weasel out his arrest.
After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, "What do you think about that?" the report states.
Nice attempt to pull rank, dontcha think?
You can snigger about Craig's sexual proclivities and hypocrisy...he deserves it.
This story would not matter if Craig wasn't using his position to advance the Republican Party's officially homophobic agenda. In November, 2006, Craig flamboyantly endorsedIdaho's successful anti-gay constitutional amendment, HJR 2, which banned gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in his state. Pam Spaulding has more background on Craig's anti-gay voting record here. It's also worth recalling Craig's 1999 interview with Tim Russert in which he mocked Bill Clinton as a "naughty boy" for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Craig is up for re-election in 2008. Will his carnality in public restrooms put an end to his career in public life? Idaho conservatives may be willing to reward bigotry, but lying is another matter.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has reported that Larry Craig has resigned his appointment as co-chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, and the campaign has accepted his resignation.
...snip...
Sen. Craig has issued a statement in response to this story: “At the time of the incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct. I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”
The original news story that broke on this apparently had it backwards. I am updating this with an explanation via TPM's Josh Marshall:
Okay, finally the definitive story. Last night we were bringing you the latest on the proxy fight between the Giuliani and McCain campaigns over who could have the most prominent or outrageous campaign official involved in a prostitution scandal. Where we left things was whether Florida state Rep. Bob Allen (R), Florida co-chair of the McCain campaign, had offered to pay a Titusville plain clothes police officer for oral sex or whether he had asked to be paid for oral sex. The price, in either case, you'll remember was to be $20.
Well, mystery solved. Courtesy of TPM Reader VS we were able to track down the arrest report. As officer Kavanaugh explains in the arrest report "Allen engaged me in a conversation in which it was agreed that he would pay me $20.00 in order to perform a 'blow job' on me."
So, advantage Rudy.
Too bad that the newspapers do not correct their mistakes so easily, or willingly... But I apologize for the misinformation and the use of a news paper that turned out to be a poor source. (End of edited update except for a minor tweak at the end.)
Now... I figured I would try and find out if this guy had any of those "Family values" issues out there to hang around his neck, much like Vitter, but I figure it has to be worse than that considering the Florida Rainbow Democratic Club rates him as a "Wicked Witch", the worst rating they give ("Reserved for the absolute worst of the worst") for candidates considering support of their issues on their "Friend or Foe" page:
State House District 32 Next election: Primary 2008
If anyone has any ideas on just what he did to get a rating that low from a gay and lesbian group in Florida please chime up, cause I am guessing it will probably be another example of just how hypocritical republicans always are. He must of pissed off them off to get that rating.
If you go to his Government homepage you can check out his bio:
They need to demand a special prosecutor to investigate all of this politicization in exchange for meeting halfway in any nomination.
This is the one opportunity they have the leverage to do so.
Here is the announcement of his resignation:
And a little correction on Gonzales statements.
Public service is noble only when it being served by someone that is not completely and totally corrupt and the morally bankrupt. You did no public service in your time as AG.
You served the GOP, and the GOP only. And you, Gonzales, butchered democracy.
"Sometime Monday afternoon, after Congressman Kucinich took a commanding lead in ABC's own online 'Who won the Democratic debate' survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website."
But reduced prominence apparently wasn't sufficient. By Monday afternoon Kucinich was winning handily, so ABC replaced the original survey with a second one, perhaps hoping the candidates the network is hawking would be more successful.
For a time, they were - U.S. Senator Barack Obama took the lead in early voting Monday afternoon and evening - but by late Monday / early Tuesday, Kucinich regained the lead by a large margin in this second survey.
Both Ron Kaul and Denis Kucinich can't get a fair shake in this game for the simple reason that the establishment media and their favourite candidates in both the Democratic party and the Republican won't allow them.
'George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes, praying to God you were going to call on me," joked Rep. Dennis Kucinich, in answer to a question on prayer.
The crowd, and the moderator, erupted with laughter.
"You have a direct pipeline, Congressman,' joked Stephanopoulos.
Unfortunately for America the media is the biggest joke in American politics...
Many of us are familiar with the Political Compass. Some at MLN even had their compass score in their signatures for a while, and even took the time to chart some of their own personal scores in March. But do you know where the 2008 Presidential Candidates sit on this political chart?
Perhaps you've heard of the Political Compass website, where you can take a test that places you on a grid based on the degree to which you are "left" or "right" on the economic scale as well as how socially libertarian or authoritarian you are.
I'm damn near as moonbatty as it gets: -6.50, -6.67, which puts me in, for lack of a better term, the "deep Southwest" of the grid.
Anyway, thanks to a recent article on London's TimesOnline, we can see how the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates fit on the grid.
This should worry those on the left, and I know that many at MLN scored even further left than I did (I am a Liberal, but I am a moderate Liberal), as they watch the next candidate chosen for the Democratic party who is nothing less than a conservative. That is, if they chose anyone other than Kucinich or Gravel. And right now they aren't even counted in the top 3 contenders.
This is where the Democratic party is failing miserably. They are not really providing any different ideology than the GOP, just a moderate version of it, if they choose any of those conservative candidates on that chart.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden... They are all conservatives, as moderate as some of them may be, they are conservatives nonetheless.
I guess 'pull[ing] the rug' is a kinder, gentler Americanized version of 'stab in the back'. But the core message is the same. There are the troops on the one hand and their domestic enemies at home. And who will win? Andrew Sullivan has a good post on this today. Also look at Jon Chait's piece in The New Republic on Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard.
Militarism and proto-fascist thinking isn't just something to be studied about the 1920s and 1930s. You can see it today as a growing part of our political discourse, even as the support for it in absolute terms diminishes. It is all of a piece. You cannot separate the bogus war for democracy abroad from the war against democracy and the rule of law at home. --- Josh Marshall
It is more than just a few turns of the word, though that is always a part of it. It is, unfortunately, the actions that speak louder than any words ever could.
It is not that long ago that this nation was shaken to its core by some hard cold truths and the constant barrage of theories concerning the American government's alleged ties to groups and individuals that should never have had the chance to wield such power over the political directions of this nation:
A subtext in Talbot’s argument is that John Kennedy was killed for his opposition to the militarism that led to Vietnam, Granada, Iran-Contra, and finally the Sunni Triangle of Iraq. Obviously the mixed record of JFK’s foreign policy—with its deployment of special forces and covert operations in places like Indochina and the Caribbean—contradicts the thesis that Kennedy was killed only because he believed in pacifism. But it is impossible to read Talbot’s account of the Bay of Pigs or the Cuban missile crisis and believe that JFK would have given the Joint Chiefs a blank check in Vietnam. He quotes a 1954 statement that Kennedy made on intervention: “I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, an ‘enemy of the people’ which has the sympathy and covert support of the people.”
The fact that I am loitering with skepticism near the Grassy Knoll or reviewing the confessions of E. Howard Hunt and James Files does not mean I am ready to blame JFK’s death on the mob, the CIA, Lyndon Johnson, anti-Castro elements, J. Edgar Hoover, Clay Shaw, right-wing extremists, or Lee Oswald. (Sadly, we need all the government documents and yet another investigation, with the most modern forensics. This time the Internet guys can run it.) At the same time, Talbot’s book has let me embrace the empiricism of the conspiracists, who bring to the democracy something absent in the Warren Commission: common sense and inquiring minds.
We will never really be truly certain about much of what happened in those times until all of the "Top Secret" information is finally cleared to released to the general public, and even then there may be gaps left to fill in. The longer we wait , the harder it will be to define what the real truth is.
But we can take what little information about today's politics, the bits and pieces that aren't classified, and make our best judgments based on the facts available to us. Some common sense and inquiring minds...
When the fuck does this get taken seriously by the opposition party?
The video to your right is a shocking KSLA news report which confirms that so-called "Clergy Response Teams" are being trained to by our federal government to "quell dissent" in the event of a declaration of martial law. Pastors and other religious representatives could become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" and how to participate in property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.
Now I'm not a fan of many clergy. I've known a few who were rat bastards including the minister who fucked his teenage congregants, the boss' minister father who has sooooo saddled her with baggage that she lives her life in incredible fear, the Catholic priest who took in my boyfriend when he had to get out of his parents' house, only to try to convince him that god's will was guiding him to express his love physically for the 18 year old kid.....Pat Robertson, James Dobson, that smiling freak Joel Osteen, Creflo "Show me the money" Dollar, shall I go on?
This is an action that is here and now, and documented. The melding of the government and the church is a strong sign of fascism on the move, and a sign that we dare not ignore, especially when it is having an corrupting threesome of "quelling dissent" under a martial Law power orgy.
Past actions that should raise alarm bells, as well, as we watch them repeat themselves in the current corrupt administration are well documented throughout the internet, but rarely used as references by our corporately owned and obedient media. They would prefer to stick to the corporate scripted versions that paint beautiful hues of Democracy, Freedom and Nation Building, which are little more than codewords for empire and fascism when they are actually put into action by this government.
Since the American revolution, democracy has been said to be the best form of government. The notion of 'democracy' strengthened in the 20th Century as authoritarian regimes were imposed in Russia, Germany, and Italy. So, 'democracy' became a common refrain, not only during the run-up to our current Iraq war, but throughout the exercise of our foreign policy since the end of World War II. The truth is that America does not support democracy. Our foreign policy hasn't changed--it's the same as it's been for decades. Propping up dictators in Latin America didn't end in the 50s or the 70s.
It ain't a pretty picture... But as the first excerpt from TPM - from a Blogger that is only slightly to the left of the average American politician - shows that fascism ain't just a word to be used by the tin foil Bloggers anymore. It has gone mainstream with it's resurgence in today's faux Conservative politics and pretty much defines the GOP's neoconservative movement.
Sit back and think real hard about the ramifications of such a policy, effectively taking away all rights of Congress to create the law and putting it in the hands of presidential appointees to rewrite as they see fit.
July 4th is a good day to start calling it what it is -- "absolute Despotism." When you use "signing statements" to gut the meaning of new laws, you're a tyrant. When you hold people in prisons without even telling them what they're charged with, you're a tyrant. When you appove the use of torture by agents of the government, you're a tyrant. When you use your armies to attack another nation that has not attacked you, you're a despot. When you mislead your people about the reasons for a war, you're a despot. When you ignore a law you find inconvenient, you're a dictator. When you send your henchmen out to destroy your legitimate critics, you're a dictator. When you overturn the work of a rightful judge and jury to protect one of those henchmen, you're a tyrant.
Let's use the right words from now on. George W. Bush is not a knave or a fool or a bully. He is a tyrant, a dictator, a despot. He has ruled as a king on the soil of a democracy. His instincts are those of a cruel and perfidious monarch.
We now have a DiC that refuses to listen to the American people.
And to this day, bush still refuses to act on the will of the American people... And the criminal bush administration constantly redefines the boundaries of how bad the American government can be in the hands of the the most corrupt when allowed to by the easily corruptible. The worst that America has to offer. And all the while, the citizens of America are losing more and more rights, and the government is giving more and more control of the levers of power to the corporations. And in the meantime the corporations are bankrupting our economy and, even more importantly, both the government and corporations are morally bankrupting our nation.
You may as well cue the fucking Taps and burn the flag so you can bury it properly along with the icon of freedom that this nation used to provide if things don't change real soon.
Your inability to grasp how we are emerging as a major force in the new media is as disturbing as your many two-faced positions concerning the occupation of Iraq.
There is no doubt that we are better than the press in many ways, and that will remain the case until the American press decides that it will represent the people of America and the world the way they used to do.
It appears that Bob Adams (aka CtBob), sending a message to Senator Chris Dodd and the rest of Congress, can do two things at once:
Notice how he delivers biting political commentary AND leaves you walking away laughing at the same time... If only Congress critters were this skilled.
