2/5/09

Ginsburg Hospitalized for Cancer...

NY Times has it...

The court announcement said the cancer is apparently in the early stages.

In 1999, Ginsburg had surgery for colon cancer and had chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The only woman on the court, she has been a justice since 1993.

The pancreatic cancer was discovered during a routine, annual exam late last month at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

2/4/09

DeLauro and Emanuel Involved in a Scandalous Affair?

I doubt it. And NO! Not that kind of affair. Gawker says that they are sharing a single dwelling in Washington, something that is very common among legislators trying to save a few bucks.
He's the cheapskate of staff. Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's right-hand man, lives in a basement apartment on Capitol Hill rented to him by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. Just one problem: He's not allowed to live there.

That's what private investigator Joseph Culligan discovered after asking questions of D.C. officials. A zoning administrator responded to Culligan's inquiry and told him that DeLauro's house at 816 E. Capitol St. NE was listed as a single-family dwelling, and as such, could not be rented out.

She rents a place and they share it. I am trying to figure out what the real scandal is? Empty space in newspapers and on Blogs that need to be filled?

Get back to me with pictures of them messing around in a hot tub together with some Playboy bunnies while some Chippendale guys are swinging from the chandeliers butt naked with their asses painted candy apple red and pissing pissing on the crowd. Then you might have have a real scandal.

Anyways... Emanuel is looking for new DC digs already.

I gotta say that I do find it interesting that one of the more lefty leaning members of the Democratic party, Rosa Delauro, and the brass knuckles more conservative type politician, Rahm Emanuel, are able to accomplish the feat of co-existance under the same roof without some kind of nuclear dust up? Sounds like "fly on the wall" type fun.

Republican strategy summed up...

Republicans are crapping in one hand and wishing in the other. Over here on the reality side, we really want you Republicans to get back to us on which hand fills up first?

Nevermind... You still don't get it. Obviously, you never did.

Here is an interesting post on soldiers, suicide and some health care issues that is well worth the read. The post is not all doom and gloom as The Political Cat also offers some humor to lighten up your day.

2/3/09

Daschle pulls his name...

On the heels of Killefer withdrawing her name to be the first chief performance officer... Obama accepts Daschle's withdrawal from consideration as health care Czar due to his tax embarrassment.

Good! We don't need junk like them. Geitner should offer his resignation, as well.

[update] Who will replace Daschle? As much as many in the left have put out this name... Don't make it Dean. He wants the Obama approach too:

Excusing the pun in light of the recent troubles in the auto industry, Dean said the reform doesn't have to be a Cadillac; it can start simply. "It's a false debate whether we should have a single payer or not. That's not the issue. What matters is, how [reform] evolves. We have to proceed at a pace of comfort for the American people."

Americans want single payer NOW!

I doubt it would be him, anyways, given the rift between him and Obama's inner circle. If Obama were really honest about a team of adversaries? Kucinich or Conyers comes to mind...

The Senate Stimulus Vote is in the Bag

Think about it. Obama just tapped Republican Senator Judd Gregg, who stood there at the press conference and said he supported the stimulus package, to be his Secretary of Commerce. If Obama was worried about it passing would he have pulled the one vote he needed to assure it passing in the Senate? If he did, he would have to be stupid. I doubt that is the case.

The only other reasoning there would be is if the Conservative Dems were trying to strip stuff or or the progressive caucus were holding it hostage to get more...

Someone get the video, please? lol

Side note: If anything needs to go from the stimulus, consideration for funding the mythical "clean coal" should be tossed. And the coal industry funded Obama local ads on TV aren't swaying me from that reality.
President Obama has been a longtime supporter of "clean coal," the still-illusory concept of coal-fired power plants that can capture and store the carbon emissions that they generate.

The environmental movement tends to view "clean coal" with skepticism at best and derision at worst -- and few projects epitomize the contentious debate over clean coal more than FutureGen, the $1.8 billion dollar plant slated to be built in the downstate town of Mattoon, Illinois.

The state's congressional delegation, including a pre-election Sen. Obama, has been pressing to restore government aid to FutureGen since the Bush administration abruptly cut off money for the project last year, citing excessive construction costs.

On Dodd's VIP Countrywide Mortgages

"I am not a crook!"

Senator Chris Dodd released the details of his Countrywide mortgages. In a statement released with it he said that he would refinance the loans. But, please, pay no attention to this fact:

"Jackie and Chris have "decided to refinance (their) homes", which seems unremarkable, given that they had an ARM that guaranteed their rates for 5 years and the rates re-set last July or so, I gather. Who wouldn't at least try to refinance?"

h/t to ctblogger and greenpeas, with more commentary, videos and documents available at the link.

2/2/09

On Judge Curtissa E. Cofield

With permission from Wayne Bennett, AKA: The Field Negro, a lawyering kind of guy sometimes seen running the streets of Philadelphia. A local Hartford Judge gets in trouble for a DUI, and then makes matters worse for herself:

Here Come Da Drunk.



Before I start this post, let me say congrats O man for getting your stimulus package passed in the house today. I know the rethugs are fit to be tied, but fuck em, they don't have a party anymore; they are totally irrelevant.

Okay now that I got that off my chest I want to talk about Judge Curtissa E. Cofield.

Honestly, I don't want to pile on the good judge, lord knows she has been getting it from all quarters, and rightfully so. Getting busted for DUI was bad inexcusable behavior for someone who sits in judgement of others, but what really set me off about this story was her behavior after she was arrested. This happened back in October, but this is the You Tube age, and the video of her little ep. recently went public.

Seriously folks, the self hatred that some Negroes display on a daily basis is astonishing to me. Now here is a supposedly educated woman calling out an African American police officer for doing his job. "Well, they got the head n----- in charge and he … Which one, the head n----- in charge?" Now Judge, was that really necessary? "Oh, no. We don't. We're ghetto Negroes. We don't have Triple-A." Well Judge, I hate to break it to you, but you are a serious "ghetto Negro". I don't care where you live, or what you do for a living. Being a "ghetto Negro" is a state of mind. And your state of mind is seriously fucked up. Ahh but come on field, this was black on black hate, what's the big deal? It's a huge deal. Because a lot of our problems as a community stem from black on black hate. And for a Judge, of all people, to be displaying these characteristics, just makes the story even more sad.

In the Islands we have an expression for Negroes like the good Judge: "Neva si cum si" Translated: Never had shit, but now they do. Mrs. Field calls these people "new". As in that Negro done got "new". This Judge obviously can't get over herself, and it only took a little alcohol in her system to bring out the.....well, "ghetto".

Oh well, here is hoping that the good Judge won't allegedly drink and drive anymore. It's a dangerous a deadly practice. Hopefully she will have learned a lesson, and here is hoping that she writes a long letter to that state trooper apologizing for her ignorant and crass behavior.

Apparently the Judicial Review Board might have the final say in this episode, and honestly, I am not from Hartford, so I don't know what type of jurist this woman is. But what I do know is that she might just want to do some serious soul searching.

"I'm not signing anything, because when it comes down to the bottom line, who's smarter — me or you? We'll figure it out, won't we?"

Judge, we already did, and it ain't you.


----------------------------
Well said, Wayne...

We have already established that the client is a fool,
she does not need a lawyer that is one.


While these actions and statements are reprehensible from someone in a position of authority, especially given Judge Cofield's unique position on the bench, I think that Helen Urbinas is beyond a little harsh in this Courant Blog post condemning the judge for taking the basic actions that any lawyer would be a fool not to suggest as the way to go for a client. In this case it would seem the lawyer has the herculean task of protecting the client from herself.

And as bad as what Judge Cofield did clearly was, she, like anyone else, deserves honest representation and a fair trial.

1/31/09

Class War coming to neighborhood near you?

How the heck can we fight for a better America in this very real class war when the evil and criminal CEO masterminds of America's failure turn tail and run like the weak-kneed American breed of foolish elitists that they are?

Don't they understand that there are going to be less and less places on this earth where they can hide? And if they find somewhere new to hide? We will take it to them there.

We are not amused by their actions.

The 1 percenters of the world, and their hired yes men, are so far removed from reality and will never get it until they are kicked around for real. They cause all of the problems and reap windfall profits from it. And playing on the other side of the street on TV for a week will never teach them what it is like to look at a child as a poor parent, a child wanting and needing just the basics in life. And knowing that child will not get that, the most basics, which, just as every other human being, they have a right to.

Food.
There is a hidden epidemic in the United States. All over this country it is striking Americans of every age group and ethnicity, whether they live in cities or rural areas. And so, despite the diversity of targets, those suffering in this silent epidemic have two things in common: they are poor or low-income, and they are increasingly going without enough food. Although politicians talk about “poverty in America,” decision-makers avoid specifically mentioning the growing, and often deadly problem of hunger. George McGovern said in 1972, “To admit the existence of hunger in America is to confess that we have failed in meeting the most sensitive and painful of human needs. To admit the existence of widespread hunger is to cast doubt on the efficacy of our whole system.” Three decades later, evidence indicates that the existing system is failing a vast number of Americans. This Fact Sheet documents the epidemic.
A home.
Although single men constitute about sixty percent of the homeless population, families constitute about one third of all homeless and are the fastest-growing group of homeless. The homeless elderly will also be an important group as America ages in the next decades (Rosenheck, Bassuk, and Salomon*; Burt, Aron, and Lee*). Although about seventy percent of the homeless live in central cities, rural homelessness is a hidden problem. The rural homeless are more likely to be families that are homeless for shorter periods of time, often as a result of domestic violence (Singleton et al.*). One of the hardest groups to reach, however, is the one fourth of homeless who have been homeless for at least five years (Burt*).
Some basic medical help when they are sick.

Dodd and Larson Get an Earful on Healthcare

Via Mark Pazniokas of the Hartford Courant, 675 angry and frustrated people showed up to this healthcare forum at Goodwin College:

On the first day of a listening tour on health care, an issue pivotal to the new Congress and his own re-election, U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd got an earful Friday.

The first comment came from a furious homeless shelter manager: He and his clients have no coverage, yet insurance giant American International Group got an $85 billion federal loan.

Over 90 minutes, the Democratic senator heard from a string of constituents, who waved their hands, hoping for a chance to describe a struggle to hang onto middle-class lives after losing jobs and affordable health care. A few were angry, others just scared.

On the way out, Dodd embraced one woman who burst into tears as she described losing health coverage for her disabled 2-year-old. Dodd held her until she stopped sobbing.

Dodd says that Tom Daschle, Obama's pick to guide healthcare reform, will be coming to Connecticut to discuss the issue. I say that they better be prepared to get another earful because the incremental changes being proposed will not answer the massive problems we are facing.

Problems like this:

"[the forum] included the president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a reassuring signal to Connecticut's insurance industry."

Yep! Dodd and Larson think that these people are supposed to be our allies on this issue.

MA regulators: Did Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Partners HealthCare collude to fix prices and raise rates 75%?

Partners, insurer under scrutiny

Attorney General Martha Coakley has launched an investigation into whether the state's largest health insurance company and its largest healthcare provider may have illegally colluded to increase the price of health insurance statewide over the last nine years, according to several legal and government sources.

The attorney general sent formal demands for information to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Partners HealthCare late last week, the sources say, calling for a detailed account of their contract negotiations in recent years.

Since 2000, Blue Cross has boosted the rate it pays for medical care by Partners doctors and hospitals by 75 percent, dramatically more than the increases given to most other Massachusetts hospitals. Blue Cross now pays $2 billion a year to Partners, parent company of Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals.

Why do we put up with this?

I don't want these insurance industries' input into my healthcare in any way, shape or form. This is the kind of health care the insurance giants have provided us thus far:



H/t nyceve for the video, where I encourage you to go read the entire piece and watch all the videos:

We all know that during the Bush regime, American citizens never saw the coffins of our fallen heroes coming back from Iraq.

Americans are also shielded from the brutal ugliness of our collapsed healthcare system. The traditional media is ill-informed (what else is new?), and rarely, if ever, give us frank and candid reporting about the grotesque realities of the U.S. healthcare catastrophe. So the BBC picks up the slack.

One last quote from Dodd:

"I hear people talking about a single-payer plan and the like," Dodd said. "That isn't going to happen. It's going to be a combination of public, private."

Why might Dodd hold the view of "hearing" what we are saying but not listening?

Jackie M. Clegg Dodd serves on the board of health care, pharmaceutical, and financial services companies.

Here's a list:

Director , Brookdale Senior Living Incorporated
Brentwood , TN
Sector: HEALTHCARE / Long-Term Care Facilities

Director , Cardiome Pharma Corporation
Vancouver, B.C. , CN
Sector: HEALTHCARE / Drug Manufacturers

Director , CME Group, Incorporated
Chicago , IL
Sector: FINANCIAL / Diversified Investments

Director , Javelin Pharmaceuticals, Incorporated
Cambridge , MA
Sector: HEALTHCARE / Drug Manufacturers

Through these directorships she's earned more than $1 million for the Dodd family.

You want to stay in Congress with these kinds of answers, Senator Dodd?

"That isn't going to happen."

Not only will all of you hear us, but you will start to listen...


Are you starting to get the picture concerning exactly what we are up against? And it goes beyond just the little people that are really losing this war.
As the one percent of the planet that holds the preponderance of wealth and the other 99% of the planet wake up to the fact that we ARE in a Class War, things are about to get interesting. Especially IF the 99% wake up to the fact that the 1% is killing the planet we all share ...unnecessarily... just so that they can make even more money.

As if money will save them.

1/30/09

McConnell Exits Stage Right...

When he says this:
"We're all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us. And we should be concerned that, as a result of all this, the Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one," McConnell told the gathering.
And this is part of why you are not only a regional party, now, but your regional party is in serious jeopardy of becoming the 3rd party in this two party country. A country that no longer needs nor wants neoconservatives, far right wing authoritarians, obstructionists, childish name calling mud slingers, warmongers, haters, the criminals and the corrupt. We are done with all of the epic failures and political theatrics that the GOP brings to the political stage.

The problem is not that people stopped listening to you.

It is that they started listening to what you say and comparing it to what you do. And it is because they started looking at those actions and matched them up to the actual results that they are living through right now.

The real problem with your party is that people actually started paying attention. And it will continue to be the problem with the GOP as long as the the GOP continues to do what they have already done before. And, so far, they are.

Take a bow Mitch McConnell...

This could very well be the GOP's final curtain call on the national stage. And you, Mitch McConnell, had a grand part in it all...

[update] The Existentialist Cowboy gives a great rundown of some of the many reasons for the GOP's problems. But, as you can see, the GOP just does not get it..

An Economically Created Health Care Disaster

And your state is sure to be suffering:

Medicaid rolls are surging, by unprecedented rates in some states, as the recession tightens its grip on the economy and Americans lose their employer-sponsored health coverage along with their jobs.” In many states, Medicaid rolls grew by 5 to 10 percent in the last year, often double the growth the previous year. Congress is likely to extend Medicaid aid to states in the upcoming stimulus package.
And, as early as March, Obama will be moving forward on health care reform, according to the Politico:
The move signals Obama’s intent to keep one of the most ambitious and politically crucial campaign promises at the top of his agenda. On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to provide universal health care by the end of his first term, but the severity of the economic downturn has raised doubts about how quickly he can deliver on that promise. Obama and his point person on health care, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, have staffed up like they plan to push forward with it, lining up a roster of communications and policy strategists to assist in the effort.
I wrote last week on a Tom Daschle statement that could be taken as a signal of which way Obama wants him to go:
Be still my single payer heart...

Via DCblogger at Corrente and emphasis mine:

Mercury News
Daschle, the point man for Obama's campaign to revamp the health care system, supports the concept of "a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare." It would, he says, give consumers, especially the uninsured, an alternative to commercial insurance offered by companies like Aetna, Humana and WellPoint.

But the proposal is anathema to many insurers, employers and Republicans. They say the government plan would have unfair advantages, like the ability to impose lower fees, and could eventually attract so many customers that private insurers would be driven from the market. "The public plan option is a terrible idea — one of our top concerns in the health reform debate," said James Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Why would employers object to a public plan that would be better and cheaper for their workers?
Here, not only do we have the right wing Chamber of Commerce health care Czar telling you flat out that the for profit health care providers can not compete in a free market with Medicare, a government run single payer program... But the fact that it starts with a Tom Daschle hint of things to come that damn near made me have a heart attack.
If this is the starting point of the health care debate than it is already over... (And, for a change of pace from the last 8 years, America wins!)
Anok, over at identitycheck, expanded on what this looked like to herself. And President Obama has this up at the White House website:
HEALTH CARE

On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes -- government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. President Obama and Vice President Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong, and that’s why they’ve proposed a plan that strengthens employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference.

The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors, and plans. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.

Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Make Health Insurance Work for People and Businesses -- Not Just Insurance and Drug Companies.


  • Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums.

  • Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit to help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees.

  • Lower costs for businesses by covering a portion of the catastrophic health costs they pay in return for lower premiums for employees.

  • Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.

  • Make employer contributions more fair by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees' health care.

  • Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.

  • Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a tax credit for their premiums.

Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family up to $2,500 as reforms phase in:

  • Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs, and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.

  • Require hospitals to collect and report health care cost and quality data.

  • Reduce the costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and their employees.

  • Reform the insurance market to increase competition by taking on anticompetitive activity that drives up prices without improving quality of care.

The Obama-Biden plan will promote public health. It will require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings, and increase state and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

A Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility: Barack Obama will pay for his $50 - $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.

In the boldly reddened part the key part of the plan is the opening up of the plan available to Congress members. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) offers many different choices for people that all include prescription drug benefits. While wildly varying in co-pay costs depending on the plan, the FEHBP offers no savings over a plan such a Medicare.

Another problem is the fact that NOWHERE does Obama's plan address the serious issues with private plans that create "Death by Spreadsheet", clearly the most immoral aspect of private plans.


  • No indication of how they would address insurance workers being paid bonuses for depriving clients - patients - of services that they have paid for in their premiums. Some have suffered for long periods of time battling for their rightful services to be paid for. Other people have died under these scenarios. That is a fact.

  • No indication of addressing caps on services - either over single delivery of a service, a short period of time (a month? a year?) or over a lifetime. I.E.: Last year I had some dental surgery done. That one procedure maxed out my benefits allotted for the year for surgical procedures. I have had to wait for January to roll around in order to schedule work that I needed done because I could not afford the costs out of pocket above the severely low maximum.
Similar problems are seen in all private plans.
A "maximum annual cap" on a health insurance policy is actually the total amount that the insurer will pay during a year. If you see this on your policy benefits sheet, you'll want to pay attention; a low maximum annual cap makes the policy nearly worthless. After all, the idea of insurance is to protect someone from high medical costs.
The black ink in the ledgers is being balanced by the red blood of those that die in the name of profitability.

I discussed Daschle's previous statement that would, IMHO, begin the end of private health plans that prey on its victims through their various uses of "Death by Spreadsheet." It is the long road plan to single payer and will expose the fact that the for-profit plans can not compete on a level playing field with any single payer program in the free market. The far right wing knows this and, considering the fact that 65% of Americans want single payer health care, the rest of America knows this as well.

Sixty-five percent of those polled said the United States should adopt universal health insurance that covers everyone under a program such as Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers. Fifty-four percent went where politicians dare not tread, saying they supported a "single-payer" health system whereby all Americans would get their health coverage from a single government plan financed by taxpayers.
To be clear, Medicare is a form of a single payer program.

But the republicans have so polluted discourse on this subject in the past that some Americans think that Single Payer is socialist. A blatant lie that the majority has seen through as they became better educated on this issue. Hell... There is even a Republican group for single payer, now. That is how mainstream this demand is becoming.

Via DCBlogger at Corrente, America has changed a lot in the last few years:

Let me explain where we are right now, it is like 1989 in Moscow. Glasnost is in effect, the old regime has lost what ever legitimacy it ever had and ordinary people are losing their fear. It still looks very formidable, but it is about to crumble.

That is where we are with health care. Everyone is still refighting 1994 without noticing that the entire political landscape has shifted. We didn't have anything like HealthCare-Now, Physicians for a National Health Plan, or California Nurses in 1994. We didn't have a National Day of Action with picketing in cities across the country. Single payer activists are playing the same role dissidents played in the fall of the Soviet Union. We are saying the unsayable and we keep saying it until it becomes obvious.

Specifically how do we get a bill passed? Given our support in the House of Representatives, I am confident that we can get a bill to pass. So how do we win the Senate? Well, to switch historical analogies, we need a Republican Senator to play de Klerk to Conyers Mandela. Someone needs to break ranks, and if we maintain pressure, someone will do so.

Which Republican Senators do you think we have the best shot of winning over?

The people want single payer and we need a strategy on how we can go about getting them one or two Republican Senators to support a plan like H.R. 676. The most popular single payer health care solution and one that will be a direct route to the holy grail of health care and eliminating the need to wait for the free market to prove what everyone already knows and aknowledges on all sides, as evident even by the other sides arguments.

It is all the cover the Democratic party needs to pass single payer and that is what it may come down to if we want to get what we deserve.

Which Republican Senator is really bi-partisan or, at least, bi-partisan enough to walk away from the insurance company Astroturf groups and the far right wing corporatists to support what the vast majority of Americans want and really do need if we are going to weather the shitpile created economic shitstorm?

Arlen Specter and the women on the Republican side of the aisle have shown a more reasonable record of supporting women's rights issues (Equal Pay - Pro-Choice) in the recent and distant past. Is it possible to exploit this for our important issue? I honestly don't know if the statistics of women's support for single payer would make this a feasible avenue to explore?

A good healthy portion of the information linked here is unashamedly and liberally taken from Corrente, though, this piece is written/assembled by myself (blockquoted text excepted) for my Blog and to share in ePpluribus Media's ongoing health care discussions - I believe that Corrente deserves a lot of props for the great work they are doing FOR YOU right now. You could thank them by financially supporting their efforts. Or even just stopping by their site and saying thanks. We need to kick the tires on all of the proposed health care solutions so we know what, exactly, they are trying to sell us.

Previous ePluribus Media pieces:

by Carol White:


  1. An Addition to the Discussion on Health Care Coverage

by Connecticut Man1:

  1. Be Still My Single Payer Heart

  2. How do you know Obama's health plan is bad for YOU?, Tue, 01/13/2009

  3. All That I Want..., Wed, 12/24/2008

  4. Single Payer Health Care Would Help Auto Industry, Tue, 11/18/2008

And a MUST-MUST read by DrSteveB:

  1. The Most Complete & Honest Comparison of Health Proposals...so far, Tue, 01/13/2009


[ed note] 1. 12:44 A.M. Jan. 23rd, 2009 - Extensive edits from the White House information on down to the end. 2. 4:32 P.M. Jan. 30th, 2009 Bumped to the top for more views - originally written 1/22/09 2:05 PM. CM1

Note to Jim Amann

Up is not down...

Via ctblogger at MLN, Jim Amann appears to be a slow learner:
Jim Amann on supporters of Ned Lamont August 2006:
"Shame on all of us if we allow a shrieking minority to hijack the primary."
Amann today:
"That's all in the past. During this campaign, I have met many supporters of Ned Lamont who now support us."

As ctkeith notes in the diary:
"Jim Amann, like George W Bush, Makes his own Reality"


The Jim Amann for Governor 2010 campaign song:



Just come back where I came from,
Looks the same as something's wrong.
And all my friends that used to be,
Have gone and turned their backs on me.
Everyone's got different views,
Now I'm all shook up and all confused.

East is West, left is right,
Up is down, and black is white,
Inside-out, wrong is right,
It's back to front and I'm all uptight.

I've just come back from fantasy,
Right back to reality.
Stayed away too long but now I've found,
My world is turning upside-down.
I don't fit in but I don't stand out,
I should stay cool but want to shout.

East is West, left is right,
Up is down, and black is white,
Inside-out, wrong is right,
It's back to front and I'm all uptight.

No one knows where I come from,
(Who the hell are you and what do you want?)
You've thrown away all that we had,
It's down the drain, it's all gone mad.
The word is out, I've seen the sign,
So you go your way, I go mine.

East is West, left is right,
Up is down, and black is white,
Inside-out, wrong is right,
It's back to front and I'm all uptight.
East is West, left is right,
Up is down, and black is white,
Inside-out, wrong is right,
It's back to front and I'm all uptight (alright).
It's back to front and I'm all uptight (alright, alright, alright, alright).

Are you listening?
(NO!)
Well then, I'll have to do it all over again!


The Kinks, Back to Front