News Shots 07-04-09
Fittingly, this is going to be the mother of all news shots. Here goes.
Shaming Congress into voting for health care
Send this guy some support! I’ll just quote:
Lawrence Lessig’s new anti-corruption organization Change Congress recently used online ads to shame Sen. Ben Nelson in his home state for opposing President Obama’s public health insurance option while taking $2 million from the health and insurance interests that are leading the fight against it. And it worked. After an 11-day public fight, Nelson switched from calling the public option “a deal breaker” to saying he is open to it and promising not to join Republicans in a filibuster against it.Now, Lessig has set his sights on Sen. Mary Landrieu, who also opposes the public option and took $1.6 million from the same special interests. Today, Change Congress announced a new TV ad targeting Landrieu and they are asking the public to chip in to help air it in Louisiana. Democracy for America and MoveOn.org are also partnering on this ad. It features Karen Gadbois, a local hero who helped root out corruption after Hurricane Katrina — who shares her compelling personal health care story:
Here’s a link to his main site
Speaking of shaming people, what about Joe Lieberman?
Says he’s for universal healthcare when he’s running but when it comes to a vote, it’s a different story.
We won’t have Sarah Palin to dribble around anymore
This link goes to Ezra Klein’s comments about the official transcript. He gives a short analysis of the text, coming to the conclusion that this was hastily written by the barracuda her self. His evidence includes the eighth grade level grammar and punctuation, the poorly thought out metaphors and the use of ALL CAPS for emphasis. Let this serve as a guide, or well, Cliff’s Notes on how to read between the lines of Newspeak no matter which side is saying it. Includes a brilliant basketball analogy.
Here’s the official transcript
Tears are practically coming to my eyes at how much I’m going to miss her ineptitude. As an homage, I’ll post a version of it, as if I were an junior high school English teacher correcting for style.
Of course, a move like this couldn’t happen unless:
There’s maybe a massive and unavoidable embezzlement scandal on the horizon
Apparently her family didn’t even know what she was going to do until they were standing next to her near the lake in Wasilla.
Meet the Right Wing Lunatics, same as the Left Wing Lunatics
Actually we already know the Lunatic, Rush Limbaugh, who is already saying Obama is laying groundwork for a third term. I seem to recall however the Left Wing conspiracy theorists using the same argument. The argument has never carried weight and only serves to discredit whoever is saying it. It’s going to be fun to watch Rush erode hi sown audience as they see more and more of this kind of thinking.
Oil producers are sitting on a glut of oil which could bring prices down
All the cost of storing it is adding up and they may want to dump it.
Of course, then there’s assholes like this guy
Holy shit! now brokers are going rogue. What’s next? Cats and Dogs living together? Gay marriage? At least he lost $10 million dollars on the deal.
Meanwhile, it’s total stylistic anarchy in Wisconsin
Wisconsing State Government Accountability office gets a new logo that is a cleaner version of the Anarchy symbol.
The recent environment bill And part 2
I’m the first person to support environmental causes, but I hope this one dies in the Senate. 1,200 pages plus a 300 page amendment dropped the morning of the vote. That makes for very shaky laws. We should tear this one apart, look at the science, do what makes sense in smaller, more focused and reasoned bills, and take out the clauses to be named later, Barney Frank.
Politicians in Pennsylvania have some explaining to do
39 Subpeonas. Wow. Way to go. Shame though, at 40 they would have gotten a free travel mug.
A Turkish game show is putting leaders of the major religions on TV trying to covert atheists. Whoever wins gets a free pilgrimage. Oh, please, oh, please.
Going to prison for the rest of your life? Hire a consultant to help you find just the right one
Madoff… What else needs be said? And just how do you become this kind of consultant?
Meanwhile, internal people at the SEC had been warning about Madoff for five years
Seriously, is the SEC capable of ANYTHING in its mandate?
Barney Frank: Let’s spend TARP profits before taxpayers can get their hands on it
I’ve got no problems with the government making a profit on the banks that caused this whole meltdown shindig, but spend it? Barney Frank, we can come up with a better, less conflicted solution. Maybe we can pay down some of our deficit? It would at least be a drop in the bucket that we don’t have to pay more interest on.
New Challenges on Faith Based healing deaths
This article talks about how hard it is to keep up with new religions who espouse prayer over medicine. I say, we should let them continue along unimpeded, this is God’s way of weeding out the stupid and reintroducing natural selection.
Is Goldman Sachs creating bubbles and profiting from their bursts? You decide
So much going on that Michele Bachmann got bumped to the bottom of the page