Democracy’s Failing Light
July 8, 2009 at 7:45 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
If dreams are thwarted, then yearning must take their place, If reunion is impossible, then longing must take its place.
The Atheist Missionary
June 30, 2009 at 8:40 am | In Uncategorized | 1 CommentThank you Brother Sam!
While I am waiting for you to respond in some way, shape or form, I will recite The Atheist’s Prayer:
Our brains, which art in our heads, treasured be thy names. Thy reasoning come. The best you can do be done on earth as it is. Give us this day new insight to resolve conflicts and ease pain. And lead us not into supernatural explanations, deliver us from denial of logic. For thine is the kingdom of reason, and even though thy powers are limited, and you’re not always glorious, you are the best evolutionary adaptation we have for helping this earth now and forever and ever. So be it. (reproduced from friendlyatheist.com)
t r u t h o u t | CIA Fired Interrogation Contractors Linked to Waterboarding
June 15, 2009 at 2:42 pm | In Torture | Leave a CommentNo excuse for these not to be prosecuted~
Panetta said John Helgerson, the recently retired CIA inspector general who investigated the interrogation program in 2004, told him that no officer still working at the agency went beyond the legal boundaries set by the Bush Justice Department. But the magazine reported that Helgerson, who is not a lawyer, said he told Panetta only that he knew of no prosecutable cases but that “continuing work was being done.”
Helgerson also said he had sent several cases involving CIA interrogations to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. In one from November 2003, termed a homicide, an Iraqi detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison died from asphyxiation after being hooded and hung by his arms while suffering from broken ribs.
At Justice, according to the magazine, the cases have languished.
t r u t h o u t | CIA Fired Interrogation Contractors Linked to Waterboarding
Max Baucus – insurance industry whore
May 23, 2009 at 7:53 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentHe sure doesn’t want to frighten off his campaign donors:
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) also indicated Thursday that his panel’s version of the healthcare reform bill also will include some type of public plan.
“I do suspect that a version will be there,” Baucus said. “Now, by saying that, I don’t want to frighten people, particularly on the industry side. … All I’m saying is, there are ways to skin a cat. There are ways to find a solution.”
t r u t h o u t | Kennedy Affirms Support for Public Health Care Plan
Baucus Flees From Single Payer Advocates
May 21, 2009 at 7:36 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
“Senator Baucus is charging us with ‘disruption of Congress,’” Mokhiber said. “But who”s disrupting what? Here is the architect of health care reform in Congress. And he’s taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the drug and health insurance corporations. And sixty Americans are dying every day from lack of health insurance. And single payer is the only proven way to save the hundreds of billions of dollars in administrative overhead and profits needed to insure everyone. And the majority of Americans, doctors and health economists support single payer. And Baucus doesn’t even allow one person out of 41 over three days of hearings on health care reform to testify on behalf of single payer? How corrupt is that?”
Kevin Zeese, another one of the Baucus 13 arrested on May 5, also wanted to question Baucus this morning.
Zeese is the executive director of ProsperityAgenda.US.
“Senator Baucus is putting the interests of the insurance industry ahead of the health care of Americans,” Zeese said. “He is living up to his reputation as the ‘Senator for K Street’ and should no longer be considered the senator for Montana.”
Use Jobless Time to Build Better World
May 12, 2009 at 4:41 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
But the first step, as in any 12-step program, is to overcome denial. Job searching is not a job; retraining is not a panacea. You may be poorer than you’ve ever been, but you are also freer – to express anger and urgency, to dream and create, to get together with others and conspire to build a better world.
Max Baucus Should Not Be Deciding Health Care for America | Physicians for a National Health Program
May 11, 2009 at 9:32 pm | In Law, Politics | 2 Comments
Max Baucus Should Not Be Deciding Health Care for America
The “Senator for K Street” is Putting Campaign Donor Profits Ahead of the Basic Needs of the People
by Kevin Zeese
OpEdNews
May 10, 2009Senator Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee are too corrupted by corporate health industry profiteers donations to give America the health care policy it needs.
Health care is 15% of the U.S. gross domestic product. Health care costs have been rising rapidly for several years. U.S. health care expenditures surpassed $2.4 trillion in 2007, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990. The cost of health care is projected to reach $4.4 trillion by 2018. There is a lot of room for corporate profiteering in the increasing cost of health care. So, the millions the health care industry has invested in Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee could turn out to be a very profitable one.
It is evident that any bill that comes out of the Senate Finance Committee will be a pro-industry bill that will ensure trillions in profits for the health insurance industry, HMO’s and pharmaceutical industry.
Baucus has held two hearings so far and has refused to allow advocates for the most popular reform — a single payer national health policy — to even testify. Single payer, improved Medicare for all, is favored by more than 60% of Americans as well as majorities of doctors, nurses and economists. It is the most cost-effective and efficient way to provide health care to all Americans from cradle to grave.
Why aren’t single payer advocates allowed to testify before Baucus’ committee? Follow the money. Campaign donations explain why and demonstrate that the Senate Finance Committee should not be in charge of health care. Senator Reid should remove the health care reform bill from Baucus and start all over before the Health Committee in the senate.
Here’s why Baucus is not doing the peoples business:
According to OpenSecrets.org over his career he has taken donations from:
The Insurance Industry: $1,170,313
Health Professionals $1,016,276
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry $734,605
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $541,891
Health Services/HMOs $439,700
That is a grand total of $3,902,785. Can we trust Baucus to put aside the profits of the industries that have kept him in the senate? Will he put the people’s necessities ahead of the profits of his contributors? Baucus has shown his bias and should be removed from leading the health care reform effort by the Democratic Party leadership.
In 2008 Baucus had virtually no challenger in Montana. A little-known Republican was on the ballot, Baucus won with 73% of the vote. But, Baucus sought big donations from big business anyway. He used his connections to corporations with business before his committee to raise an immense campaign fund of more than $11 million. In 2008, 91% of his donations come from individuals living outside of Montana, which is why he is more the “Senator for K Street” then the Senator for Montana. Corporate health profiteers who invested in Baucus will now benefit from his stewardship over health care reform. His 2008 donations from health care profiteers included:
Insurance $592,185
Health Professionals $537,141
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $524,813
Health Services/HMOs $364,500
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $332,826
That is $1,826,652 Baucus took from industries who he can now make wealthier by deforming health care reform.
The health care profiteers knew that Baucus would determine their fate and ponied up. Now the only thing standing between them and their payback is a single payer national health care plan. Single payer, which would end private insurance and control the cost of pharmaceutical drugs, is not being considered — not even allowed to participate in the conversation before Baucus.
And, it is not just the chairman of the committee who has received massive donations, the full Finance Committee is a gluttonous embarrassment of campaign pay-offs. In 2008 the full committee received a total of $13,263,986 from industries affected by health care reform. Can we trust this committee to put the interests of the people before their donors? The donations to the Finance Committee in 2008 included:
Insurance $5,103,900
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $3,308,831
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $2,809,353
Health Services/HMO $2,041,902
These industries expect to be rewarded with billions, even trillions, in profits and hundreds of millions in corporate welfare. Senator Baucus’s behavior shows they have made a good investment and bought a senator who should be called Chairman Blagojevich, as I said when I was arrested last week protesting before the committee, See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52BGI5_fcUM&feature=related. He is doing his best to make sure the single payer message is not heard because he knows it is the fairest, most efficient and cost-effective way to ensure health care access for all Americans but it would put some of his donors out of business and control the profits of others.
It is time to remove Baucus from the leadership of health care reform. It is time to move the critically important priority of reforming America’s health care system from the Finance Committee and put it before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. At least their mission is health care not money.
Kevin Zeese is Executive Director of the Campaign for Fresh Air and Clean Politics (www.FreshAirCleanPolitics.net) whose projects include Voters for Peace (www.VotersForPeace.US., Prosperity Agenda (www.ProsperityAgenda.US), True Vote (www.TrueVote.US and www.TrueVoteMD.org) and Climate Security (www.GlobalClimateSecurity.org). He is also president of Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org).
Max Baucus Should Not Be Deciding Health Care for America | Physicians for a National Health Program
18 fun atrocities straight from the Bible [The More You Know] | I Heart Chaos
May 9, 2009 at 9:13 am | In Religion | Leave a Comment
18 fun atrocities straight from the Bible
18 fun atrocities straight from the Bible [The More You Know] | I Heart Chaos
Torture: An Author and a Resister
May 3, 2009 at 10:22 am | In Law, Politics, Torture | Leave a Comment
In September 2003, another Mormon, a woman soldier, US Army Spc. Alyssa Peterson, said she refused to use the interrogation techniques that Bybee had authorized on Iraqi prisoners. An Arabic linguist with the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division at Tal Afar base, Iraq, 27-year-old Peterson, refused to take part in interrogations in the “cage” where Iraqis were stripped naked in front of female soldiers, mocked and their manhood degraded and burned with cigarettes, among other things. Three days later, on September 15, 2003, Peterson was found dead of a gunshot wound at Tal Afar base. The Army has classified her death as suicide.
Jay Bybee, in thanks for his being the loyal soldier to the Bush administration’s policies of torture, was nominated and confirmed by the US Senate as a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he sits to this day in his lifetime appointment. Jay Bybee, an author of torture, reportedly has a placard in his home for his children that reads, “We don’t hurt each other.”
Alyssa Peterson, for saying no to torture, is dead, perhaps by her own hand.
To help Army Spc. Alyssa Peterson rest in peace, I say we should demand accountability from our officials and IMPEACH the torture judge, Jay Bybee.
CIA Waterboarded al-Qaeda Suspects 266 Times
April 21, 2009 at 3:05 pm | In Domestic Violence, Law, Politics, Spirit | Leave a Comment
The question just begging
BillyDoc
The question just begging for an answer here is this: How many times would we have to waterboard Dick Cheney or George Bush to get them to confess to the 9/11 attack?”
t r u t h o u t | CIA Waterboarded al-Qaeda Suspects 266 Times
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