That was a lot of fun yesterday, quite a turn out, I think we had about 20-25 people there.
Thanks a lot to everyone who came and does anyone have any pictures?
by DougJ| 57 Comments
This post is in: Readership Capture
That was a lot of fun yesterday, quite a turn out, I think we had about 20-25 people there.
Thanks a lot to everyone who came and does anyone have any pictures?
by Zandar| 19 Comments
This post is in: Crazification Factor, Bring on the Brawndo!, hoocoodanode, Our Failed Political Establishment
Fresh off his success getting Congress to pass legislation to help find jobs for returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets, the next stage in President Obama’s push for jobs bill is a similar $1 billion measure to hire, train, and deploy healthcare workers.
The Obama administration will announce Monday as much as $1 billion in funding to hire, train and deploy health-care workers, part of the White House’s broader “We Can’t Wait” agenda to bolster the economy after President Obama’s jobs bill stalled in Congress.
Grants can go to doctors, community groups, local government and other organizations that work with patients in federal health-care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The funds are for experimenting with different ways to expand the health-care workforce while reducing the cost of delivering care. There will be an emphasis on speed, with new programs expected to be running within six months of funding.
“This will open the inbox for many innovators and organizations that have an idea to bring to the table,” Don Berwick, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in an interview. “We’re seeking innovators, organizations and leaders that have an idea to bring into further testing.”
On the surface, this seems like exactly the kind of program Republicans want in their approach to health care: venture capitalism for the doctors, hospitals, and medical device corporations to find better real-world solutions to lower Medicare and Medicaid costs. The reality is I fully expect Republicans to scream “Obamacare!” and unanimously vote against it because they are fully in the grip of The Crazy.
The fact of the matter is after Friday’s Senate vote to approve a jobs measure for veterans, the Tea Party will expect their wishes to be heeded on this, and you should expect to see a number of Republicans dismiss the measure as part of the President’s evil death panel machine or whatever.
It would be outstanding if I’m wrong on this preemptive hoocodanode, but I don’t think I will be. All that matters to the GOP is that Obama must be defeated so they can repeal this “horrible assault on our liberty” so we can die from not being able to afford healthcare like the Founding Fathers wanted, then turn around and pass the same legislation with the word “Freedom” in the title.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 25 Comments
This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment
Tom Watson, MP, the committee member who asked the best questions at the Murdoch inquiry, says:
Roy Greenslade has just revealed that six months ago, members of the DCMS Select Committee were the targets of covert surveillance by private investigators and journalists working for News International. This revelation became the third occasion that I know of in which I was a target of covert surveillance News Corp in the UK.
Watson is skipping a conference to consult with the Speaker and other members of his committee to see what he’s going to do.
Greenslade writes for the Guardian, but I can’t find the specific piece Watson is referring to. The Guardian’s story on Watson quotes Tory MP Louise Mensch as saying that the members of the inquiry committee had been tailed a number of times in the past.
Maybe those of you who are following this more closely can tell us whether this is a big deal or not, but it does show that Rupert’s troubles aren’t going away.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 24 Comments
This post is in: Outrage
Is anyone really surprised by this?
Schweizer: There are all sorts of forms of honest grafts that congressmen engage in that allow them to become very, very wealthy. So it’s not illegal, but I think it’s highly unethical, I think it’s highly offensive, and wrong.
Steve Kroft: What do you mean honest graft?
Schweizer: For example insider trading on the stock market. If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply.
Kroft: So congressman get a pass on insider trading?
Schweizer: They do. The fact is, if you sit on a healthcare committee and you know that Medicare, for example, is– is considering not reimbursing for a certain drug that’s market moving information. And if you can trade stock on– off of that information and do so legally, that’s a great profit making opportunity. And that sort of behavior goes on.
Kroft: Why does Congress get a pass on this?
Schweizer: It’s really the way the rules have been defined. And the people who make the rules are the political class in Washington. And they’ve conveniently written them in such a way that they don’t apply to themselves.
Thanks to reader R for sending this in.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 25 Comments
This post is in: Our Failed Political Establishment
The Legion of Super Committee Members isn’t going to agree on anything, and nobody gives a shit because the mandatory Armageddon of budget cuts that spawned this freak show won’t go into effect until 2013.
The do-nothing aspect of the Super Committee is a slight additional negative for the 7% approval rating Congress, but overall I think the lack of publicity is good news for the GOP. In a state notable for the stupidity of its Republican politicians, Texas’ Jeb Hensarling still stands out as a moronic gaffe monster. If the Super Committee deliberations had received any notice, we’d have seen a phenomenon similar to what John mentioned earlier this morning — the stupidity and repellent moral callousness of Hensarling acting in the co-chair role would have given voters a peek into how bad things really are in the Republican party, just as the debates have. Instead, the committee has been shown to be what it was all along, an escape hatch that Boehner used to run away from his Tea Party caucus’ desire to burn it all down. I wonder if the TP will realize that, as usual, they were played for chumps by their own party.
This post is in: #OWS, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
(h/t commentor Dee Lorelai)
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Now that it’s clear lousy weather and a drop-off in the number of tv-news cameras haven’t been enough to discourage #OWS and all its offshoots, more local authorities are attempting variations on Richard Daley’s maxim, “The police aren’t here to create disorder — the police are here to preserve disorder!” The NYTimes believes that that “OWS Protestors [are] Shifting to College Campuses“, including a certain Bay State university:
The Harvard encampment, much like the university itself, is highly exclusive. After protesters set up about 30 tents in Harvard Yard last week, university officials closed the gates to the yard, allowing only students with IDs to enter.
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“Securing access to the Yard is necessary for the safety of the freshmen and others who live and work there, for the students who will be sleeping outdoors as part of the protest, and for the overall campus,” the university’s provost, Alan M. Garber, said in a statement.
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Harvard protesters set up their tent city a week after a student walkout of Economics 10, an undergraduate course taught by N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor and former economic adviser to President George W. Bush.
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“We think that Harvard is complicit in propagating the ideology that made the current crisis possible,” said Amanda Haziz-Ginsburg, a camper who is a student at Harvard Divinity School.
(Oh, that Tom Lehrer were living still writing at this hour… )
Our Very Serious Media is still quite, quite uncertain as to the proper attitude towards this whole disorganized, non-hierarchal, unbranded movement. Noreen Malone at NYMag‘s Daily Intel points out that “Occupy Wall Street Is Making You Think About Income Inequality“: “Since the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement, published mentions of the term “income inequality” have increased more than fivefold… While lots of the coverage of the protests has been on the arrests, the scandals, and the branding, it seems as if the basic message organizers were hoping to get promote is very much a part of the conversation.”
This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment
Just fucking shoot me:
NBC is to announce on Monday morning that it has hired Chelsea Clinton to become a full-time special correspondent for NBC News.
The appointment is immediate. Ms. Clinton will show up at the news division offices oon Monday morning, said Steve Capus, president of NBC News, and will begin work on stories that NBC expects to use as part of its “Making a Difference” series, which runs on “NBC Nightly News.”
Ms. Clinton has been a national figure since her father won the presidency in 1992, but she has remained — first by her parents’ request and then by her own choice — largely out of the public eye.
Mr. Capus said an intermediary contacted him in July with word that “she was kicking around what she wanted to do next.”
Mr. Capus said he had met with Ms. Clinton and had a long conversation that began with a simple question. “I asked her: ‘What are you interested in doing?’ ”
Ms. Clinton told him, he said, that during her mother’s campaign for president in 2008, she had been moved by stories of people making personal contributions.
“What we talked about was if she were to come on board that’s the kind of thing she would be interested in doing. We knew she wasn’t going to do the lead story. But having somebody who was going to do really captivating feature assignments for the ‘Making a Difference’ franchise really kind of synced up,” Mr. Capus said.
Maybe she can do a roundtable debate show with Luke Russert and Meghan McCain as the other panelists.
All I have to say is I hope I am dead before the Trig Palin Power Hour Comes to Fox News.