Robertson ordered plaintiff's attorney John Hemenway of Colorado Springs, Colo., to show why he hasn't violated court rules barring frivolous and harassing cases and shouldn't have to pay Obama's attorney, Bob Bauer, for his time arguing that the case should be thrown out.
Mike's Blog Roundup at C&L has an interesting trio of heatlhcare diaries put together today.
"David Sirota: If private insurance is so awesome, why would it lose a competition with government health care?"
I like it. I could've told them that even if I had nothin' to do wit' dat one. :) He also has a bunch of other interesting things to link out to, as per usual.
Not really. But they are becoming less and less relevant to the political equation in what is clearly a center-left America:
The Democratic Leadership Council — a group of centrists that dominated politics during the Clinton presidency but is laboring to remain relevant in the Obama era — is on the brink of a major shake-up.
Al From, the DLC’s founder and leader since its creation 24 years ago this month, said he plans to step down within the next couple of months, handing the chief executive reins to his longtime protégé, Bruce Reed.
At the same time, the Progressive Policy Institute, an influential think tank closely affiliated with the DLC, will soon part ways with the council. Will Marshall, who heads the think tank, said the recent Democratic electoral gains and a massive new agenda being pushed by the Obama administration “require us to think anew.”
Hot off the front page of the burnt orange...
Is it me or is it getting hot in here? Even the media is ratcheting it up a notch.More proof we are a center-right nation from CNN:
Seventy-two percent of those questioned in recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey say they favor increasing the federal government's influence over the country's health care system in an attempt to lower costs and provide health care coverage to more Americans, with 27 percent opposing such a move. Other recent polls show six in 10 think the government should provide health insurance or take responsibility for providing health care to all Americans.
Yet again, Republicans seem more interested in obstructing any and all remedies proposed by the majority than, you know, actually doing something. Instead, what do we hear from the right wingnut idiot factor?The Center for Responsible Lending, whose work I cited the other day in looking at the number of projected home foreclosures in 2009 by Congressional District, has come out with a revised set of numbers.
And those revisions are... substantial. Both in terms of the numbers of foreclosures predicted, and in terms of where those foreclosures fall. It really changes the picture on both counts.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are on the warpath about a bill that would allow bankruptcy judges change mortgages to help homeowners stay in their houses.Americans are fed up with you, Boehner. Yes, we hate the bailouts that you and the GOP are largely responsible for necessitating. There are so many reasons why Americans think more of communist China than Republicans right now:The Democratic-controlled House is scheduled to vote today on the measure, which would let judges reduce the principal owed, cut the interest rate, or extend the length of the loan.
House GOP leader John Boehner's office calls the legislation a "textbook example" of why Americans are increasingly fed up by the series of bailouts and rescues coming out of Washington.
USA Today/Gallup Poll. Feb. 20-22, 2009. N=1,013 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3."Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Republicans in Congress are handling their job?"
Approve 36%--56% Disapprove
Gallup Poll. Feb. 9-12, 2009. N=1,022 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.Tell Boehner that what we want right now is for republicans to, you know, do something other than just obstruct and bloviate the nation into more failure. And they can shut up about "Socialist Obama policies" since Americans clearly prefer communists over the GOP."Next, I'd like your overall opinion of some foreign countries. Is your overall opinion of [see below] very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable, or very unfavorable?"
China: Favorable 41%--51% Unfavorable
Single-payer isn't socialism - March 5, 2009To be honest... I would support socialism in health care - it is the only issue that I am in the left on big time. Well? That and the socialist military and police which we already have in the USA.
B. Jason MacLurg, M.D. | Letter to the Editor | Seattle Post-Intelligencer
As a long-time Seattle physician, I was pleased that the P-I supports health care reform toward a single-payer system (Opinion, Wednesday). Most Americans now fully understand that our health care delivery system is too expensive, too complex, too fragmented and overwhelmingly frustrating. Although some still believe that America has the best health care in the world, the truth is that our reimbursement system is killing us.
Taking place Aug. 13-16 in Pittsburgh. You can start by submitting your ideas on what to work on. And if you want to register to attend go here. Here are the rising registration costs below:
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From my email inbox to you - and a job to be had in D.C., if you are interested:
Last week President Obama spoke to the nation and said he wants healthcare reform within a year! We do too. But we want it done the best way, the simple way, the economical way, the humane way - the HR 676 single-payer way!
We've got our work cut out for us. President Obama's health advisors have all been exposed as big insurance and big PhRMA types. And we continually hear that single-payer isn't politically feasible.
But it is feasible. We know it. The polls and experience around the world show it. Most doctors, nurses, and patients say it. It's the only way to cover every U.S. resident without increasing our national spending on healthcare. Healthcare-NOW!'s network of activists amplifies this messages every day.
Our efforts helped forge a strong and united national single-payer coalition that can claim 20 million constituents. Because of thousands of phone calls and visits our activists have made, HR 676 now has 60 co-sponsors since it was introduced in the 111th Congress.
We organized a briefing in the Rayburn House Office Building last week that brought in experts to expose the Massachusetts mixed public/private insurance plan for the failed mess that it is. Our activists personally delivered an invitation and package of materials about the MA plan to every House office.
Our work over the past five years helped generate new CBS News/NY Times polling data showing that 59% of Americans believe the government should provide national health insurance, vs. 40% who believed that in 1979. Our work helped win HR 676 endorsements from the US Conference of Mayors, and big cities such as Philadelphia, Seattle, Baltimore, and Boston.
We need your help to keep Healthcare-NOW! running at full speed. We do lots, but we could do more. We need a part-time staff member in Washington. We need to bolster our communications with tens of thousands of people in our networks all over America. We need to strengthen local coalitions in key Congressional districts around the country.
This year is crunch time for our movement time to deliver the pressure necessary to make the Obama administration and Congress do the right thing. We hope you can help us.
You can donate via our web site. You can designate how your funds will be used for lobbying, which is critical now or for tax-exempt educational purposes.
Thanks for helping to keep us running at full speed. The times demand it.
Thanks for all that you do,
Marilyn Clement
Healthcare-NOW! National Coordinator
Nature at its finest... And yes! I know a porpoise is really different from a dolphin. But I like the title, damnit! lolCaptain Rue: "It was absolutely stunningly pink.
"I had never seen anything like it. It's the same color throughout the whole body and it looks like it just came out of a paint booth.
"The dolphin appears to be healthy and normal other than its coloration, which is quite beautiful and stunningly pink.
"The mammal is entirely pink from tip to tail and has reddish eyes indicating it's albinism. The skin appears smooth, glossy pink and without flaws.
"I have personally spotted the pink dolphin 40 to 50 times in the time since the original sighting as it has apparently taken up residence with its family in the Calcasieu ship channel.
A California software company has filed a lawsuit against Diebold and its subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions, claiming that PES' electronic voting machines violate its copyrights.
Artifex Software, of San Rafael, Calif., claims that PES systems infringe on its copyrighted Ghostscript PDF interpretation and printing software. Artifex claims PES is using Ghostscript in its electronic election systems even though Diebold and PES "have not been granted a license to modify, copy, or distribute any of Artifex's copyrighted works," Artifex claims in court papers filed late last month in U.S. District Court for Northern California.
Obtaining GNU GhostscriptAs (h/t) lambert at Corrente pointed out, under GNU General Public Licensing, if Diebold and PES used Ghostscript to create their product they may be legally bound to make their product's code open for our inspection, as well.
GNU Ghostscript is a copyrighted work; it is distributed under the GNU General Public License. You can get the current version of GNU Ghostscript by Internet FTP from ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ghostscript from any of the GNU distribution sites; likely, alpha versions may be available on alpha.gnu.org/gnu/ghostscript.
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. The GPL is the most popular and well-known example of the type of strong copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft. Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licences, of which the BSD licences are the standard examples.Heck! We may be legally able take and modify Diebold code if it is true.
Read More on Artifex Software, Inc. licensing of Ghostscript. What licensing rules apply may depend on the version that Diebold and PES allegedly stole.Ghostscript is a copyrighted work whose copyright is owned by Artifex Software, Inc. Some versions of Ghostscript are distributed freely under the name GPL Ghostscript or (for older versions) GNU Ghostscript; these versions are distributed with a license called the GNU General Public License (also known as the "GNU License", the "GPL", or "copyleft"), which allows gratis and commercial distribution under certain conditions, most particularly, source complete source disclosure.
Versions of Ghostscript between version 4.03 and 8.54 were also distributed under a more restrictive license disallowing commercial redistribution entirely. These versions were labelled "AFPL Ghostsript" or just "Ghostscript", and were governed by the Aladdin Free Public License.
The full GPL is included under the name COPYING in the GPL Ghostscript fileset, and can also be obtained directly from the Free Software Foundation:
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF)
59 Temple Place, Suite 330
Boston, MA 02111-1307 U.S.A.
+1-617-542-5942 telephone
+1-617-542-2652 fax (including Japan):
gnu@gnu.org
http://www.gnu.org/The GPL gotten directly from the FSF or the contents of the COPYING file are authoritative, but for those unfamiliar with the GPL, we now summarize its provisions.
As a candidate you have promised to treat issues in a truly bipartisan manner. On most issues this has clearly been the case.
Single payer is the one single issue that transcends all politics of the American people and they are almost all (65%) clearly in agreement with.
We all want single payer health care.
In the last couple of years I have seen fundraisers for 4 local people in order to pay for their health care because either their insurance refused to cover legitimate costs or they had absolutely zero coverage.
We, as a country, are bound by United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a treaty initiated and signed by the US government, under article 25 to provide health care to every citizen of the USA as a basic human right:
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
Treating this basic human right as vehicle for profit is irrational and unconscionable. None of the for-profit answers will ever address all of the issues we are duty bound to resolve. I refuse to watch any politician subsidize insurance companies' profits so that they can continue to provide their death insurance.
Only single payer health care will eliminate the immoral and distinctly unequal practice of rationing for profit.
At the very minimum, medicare - the most cost efficient program in the USA - should be opened up to all Americans that wish to participate and let it compete openly on the free market with the life threatening privatized options.
Everyone voted for real change in the last elections, and we voted for an honest reflection of what bipartisan answers should be. Bipartisan answers from politicians need to reflect the true wishes of the American people if they are ever going to be truly transformational. Not the faux bipartisan wish lists of politicians and their special interest lobbyists.
Any attempts to "Stay the Course!" with the failed private death insurance for profit systems will be viewed as complete and utter failure on the Obama administrations part to fulfill their campaign promises of a responsive and accountable government to the citizens of the United States of America. And it will prove there is truly no bipartisan hand being outstretched to all. Just to the political elite that have sold out to lobbyists and their unethical corporate interests.
(Just a letter I sent to President Obama because nyceve is at it again over at dkos)
As much as I was against most of the tax cuts, since we really need the money to bail out the failed republican economy of the bush years, it will be entertaining to watch the far right wing try to explain this.The compromise stimulus plan includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Bush's first two years of tax cuts amounted to $174 billion. A second batch in 2004 and 2005 cost $231. And those were thought to be bigger than the tax cuts offered by Reagan, Kennedy or others.
"I shall not rest until right wing conservatives are 4th party gadflies limited to offering minor corrections on legislation once or twice a year."
Filings for one of the most common forms of personal bankruptcy have increased by more than 60 percent in 2008 in Connecticut, according to a report released Monday by The Warren Group.
According to the report, Chapter 7 filings of the U.S. bankruptcy code increased 66 percent last year, from 3,417 in 2007 to 5,676 in 2008 and more than doubled since 2006. Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the most common option for individuals seeking relief from debt, wipes away most debt after non-exempt assets are used to pay off creditors.
When combined with Chapter 13 filings, which permit repayment of debt, filings are up 51 percent in the state since last year.
Under the Chapter 58 legislation in Massachusetts, law currently mandates the purchase of private health insurance for all individuals not eligible for a public option. Those who are uninsured in Massachusetts are subject to fines. The lack of primary care physicians in addition to the high deductibles have not created universal access to care in the state.
In the most recent election, local ballot initiatives supporting single payer and opposing individual mandates passed by landslide margins in all ten legislative districts of Massachusetts where they appeared. With almost all precincts tallied, roughly 73 percent of 181,000 voters in the ten districts voted YES to the following: “Should the representative from this district be instructed to support legislation creating a cost-effective single payer health insurance system that is available to all residents, and oppose laws penalizing those who fail to obtain health insurance?”
Does anyone doubt that a vote on this issue in Connecticut would come pretty close to 73 % support for Single Payer health care? You would have to be crazy to think otherwise.
Keeping in mind that, just like Connecticut, we are talking about another very liberal state, this is not some tiny poll sample of a thousand or two thousand people. This is 181,000 people voting for the record. 181,000 people that have already lived the failure of mandated "health care for all for profit".
for his position on health care, and Countrywide, and the credit card indentured servant act, etc., BUT it appears he may have done something right here.
Credit where credit is due, Senator Dodd, and all of that.
As for a brain drain at these insolvent banks? If those idiots in the "top leadership" leave... Then they are even dumber than the complete and utter failure of the banks they lead into destruction proved they were.
IOW: Please, Mr. and Mrs. Corporate Welfare Banker, leave and don't let the doors on the bank vaults you looted hit you on the ass on yer way out!
h/t to rose is a rose for this Raw Story piece:
Unredacted documents reveal
prisoners tortured to deathThe American Civil Liberties Union has released previously classified excerpts of a government report on harsh interrogation techniques used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These previously unreported pages detail repeated use of "abusive" behavior, even to the point of prisoner deaths.
Note to Senator Leahy: I am still trying to figure out why anyone would think truth commissions are needed? The truth is out there already, if you were paying attention at all?
Judd Gregg has a Jack Abramoff problem.At the very least, Abramoff and his team had easy access to Gregg’s Senate staff and were able to use that access to help their clients by stopping unfavorable legislation while getting earmarks and favorable legislation passed into law.
As it stands right now, Gregg’s best defense is that he is a terrible manager and that "bad apples" joined his staff, went "rogue" and traded favors in his name. And to be fair, Gregg may be that dense. After all, look at the sloppy and moronic way he withdrew himself from consideration as Obama’s Commerce Secretary: it was not the actions of a competent man. On the other hand, it was the actions of a man distracted other things. Gregg strikes me as a nervous man deeply worried about another shoe dropping.
Perhaps he is clean of scandal, but I suspect that Gregg had a fair understanding of what his staffers were doing in his name. After all, Kevin Koonce is not the only link between Senator Judd Gregg and Jack Abramoff.
Like most Republicans since 2005, Judd Gregg denies that he ever knew or had anything to do with Jack Abramoff. The money he returned from Abramoff’s clients was just a coincidence. In fact—to hear Gregg or one of his fellow Republicans explain it—any of the growing list of links between Abramoff and Gregg or Abramoff and the Republican Party are just random points of unrelated data. Yeah, right.
They are tap dancing in the graveyard.
Perhaps it was Jack Abramoff who best explained why this line of BS is so hard to believe when he told Vanity Fair in 2006:
"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn’t know me is almost certainly lying," he says. Such lies are not just, well, lies, but dumb to boot, he adds, for, as his own humiliations suggest, old e-mails never die; they just sit on hard drives, waiting to be subpoenaed and then to be leaked to the press. "This is not an age when you can run away from facts," he declares. "I had to deal with my records, and others will have to deal with theirs."
It is looking like Judd Gregg will have to deal with his Abramoff record. Perhaps this is why he withdrew as the Commerce Secretary and why he has decided to retire from the Senate at the end of this term.
"What the heck is this about? I may be Pub-going, loose and forward but I am not a woman?"Then she explained about it being against oppression and violence against woman. That is when the facebook group started to make sense...
But this is very clearly a story about violence and oppression of women, religion and freedom:India, as a nation, adores Valentine's Day. Indians embrace it as a holiday that goes beyond just being nice to your partner. Everyone – from the coffee guy to the gym receptionist who tried to hand me a red rose – was full of non-lecherous cheer. So I was shocked the next day to find the news awash with stories about far-right Hindu activists – from Shri Ram Sena to Bajrang Dal – who had beaten up unmarried couples and blackened their faces as a mark of shame for celebrating Valentine's Day. Their justification was that the day is a western practice, and promotes "lust not love".
This year, the same groups are out again in force. However, while the Indian government has been slow to act against these self-styled moral police, there's a keen sense that the winds of change are turning against these groups.
For a start, although it is a serious issue, it is hard not to laugh at the blustering of Pramod Mutalik, leader of Shri Ram Sena. Mutalik insists that his men will roam Bangalore armed with video cameras, capturing any unmarried couples found celebrating Valentine's Day and then force them to get married. In response, the brilliantly titled Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women has started a campaign on Facebook – which now has a whopping 28,496 members and counting – that calls on people to send the Sri Ram Sena a pair of pink chaddis (meaning underwear in Hindi) on 14 February as a sign of protest.
A group of reasonably outraged Indians has started a movement to send pink panties (known as chaddis) (and oh how I love that) to the fundie organization. They have a blog and a lovely Facebook group with panties images I'm destined to steal.Smart and funny women and men around the globe are coming together and the people who started this have garnered even more attention to this cause than the shocking and violent video ever would ever have.I also love that this horrible incident of violence against women can be met with direct action non-violence that gets lots of well-deserved attention. Fundies don't have a chance against activist women with a strong sense of self and humor.
PS. Our good friend L says we should not colour-discriminate. So if you really, really can't send pink chaddis, send those in other colours.
PPS. Both Women and Men are invited to send in their chaddi's/ pictures of chaddi's.
Below is hijacked in its entirety from DrSteveB at dKos:
Celebrate Lincoln's birthday by supporting single-payer healthcare.
Thursday, February 12th is the third National Call-In Day to support real universal national health care, single-payer healthcare, HR 676!
Call Congress and the White House. Every call counts!
If you don't know your Representative, or want a script, all of the information you need for a successful call is here on HealthCare-Now's National Call-In Day page.
If you know your Representative, the Capitol Switchboard number is 866 - 338 - 1015 . Ask to be connected to your Representative, and then ask him or her to co-sponsor HR 676.
The White House number is: 202- 456- 1414 .
Please fill out the form on HealthCare-Now's Call-In Day page to let us know who you called.
Learn more about single payer and HR-676 here, and wonk yourself out on it here.
HR-676 had 93 co-sponsors in the last congresssional session
Just reintroduced two weeks ago on January 26, 2009 (timed to keep the HR-676 number), it currently has 42 co-sponsors so far", a number that is growing daily.
One important short term goal is to get over 100 co-sponsors and demand that the Congressiomnal Budget Office do an honest and thorough analysis of it. Just as they have done for other bills with far less natiowide support.
Additional Single Payer News:
1. National Campaign Launched with Change.org
Last week, Healthcare-NOW! was selected by Change.org, as part of their "Ideas for Change in America" competition, to sponsor their single-payer healthcare "idea." Change.org presented their ten winning ideas to Macon Phillips, Director of New Media for the White House, who said, "I can speak with authority that a lot of people in the transition were paying attention to the competition."
2. Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care Officially Launches
On Janury 28th, Healthcare-NOW! took part in the official launch of the single-payer coalition in Washington, DC.
Member organizations include the California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, HealthCare-Now, All Unions Committee for Single Payer, Americans for Democratic Action, American Medical Student Association, American Patients United, 1199 SEIU United Health Care Workers East and West, A. Philip Randolph Institute, Act-UP, and a whole bunch of other organizations. Find out more at guaranteedhealthcare4all.org.
3. Americans Should Not Stand for Lock-down on Single-Payer Discussion
As an ardent advocate of single-payer healthcare for many years, I am more than a little frustrated by Washington insiders—beholden to healthcare corporations—telling the American people that passing single-payer healthcare reform, specifically HR. 676, the United States National Health Care Act, can’t happen.
The fact is they are standing in the way of it happening.
4. Another Poll Shows Majority Support for Single-Payer
A New York Times/CBS News poll released last week shows, yet again, that the majority of Americans support national health insurance.
The poll, which compares answers to the same questions from 30 years ago, finds that, "59% [of Americans] say the government should provide national health insurance, including 49% who say such insurance should cover all medical problems."
Only 32% think that insurance should be left to private enterprise.
Read the full report here (.pdf)
end of DrSteveB's most excellent action item post. Reprinted with permission too!
Our current system is failing the patients. People are having to choose between feeding their families, paying their bills, or filling their prescriptions. Copays and other fees are so high that even people with health insurance are opting not to see a physician. Further, the most simple, cost-effective, and efficient medical procedures, such as check-ups, physicals, and other preventative measures, are being forgone for more expensive, reactive treatments.This is an awesome way to come out swinging! Go read the whole thing and cheer him on! And to be clear: He isn't talking about single payer... But it looks like it is game on for the debate. Arm yourselves with healthcare knowledge.For years, people made the case against a heath care overhaul, claiming it would ration medical care. I would say that because of our failure to act, that is what we now have. Instead of taking care of our people, the best health care goes to those who can afford to pay for it.
Health care providers themselves are unable to navigate the inefficiency of our health care system. Primary care doctors, our first line of defense and the physicians most likely to serve underserved populations, can no longer maintain their practices. They can't keep up with payroll because of slow turn around on constantly shrinking reimbursements. We are driving doctors running small family practices into merging with mega-offices, where patients do not experience the kind of personal, quality care Americans need.
Our failing health care system is also hurting our businesses and industries. Everyday, our businesses are forced to choose between providing much needed health care for their employees or surviving to see another quarter. Many years ago, my father and Walter Reuther used to discuss how health care would eventually break the back of our industries. Our current system has placed American businesses at a competitive disadvantage in the world market. I see it nearly every day in Michigan with our automakers, which need a leveled playing field to compete with automakers in countries with national health care. In a time of such severe economic crisis, we simply cannot afford to let our companies fail under the weight of our inaction.
