Matt Taibbi on Lara Logan

Lara Logan, CBS foreign correspondent, criticized the Rolling Stone reporter who wrote the General McChrystal story. Here is Matt Taibbi's awesome response.

Lara Logan, You Suck -- RollingStone.com

Random Thoughts

Here are my thoughts on some current events:

Tina Fey on SNL - I'm a bit disappointed with her Sarah Palin sketch. My favorite part was the re-edited Katie Couric interview, but I guess I wanted a skewering.




Supreme Court - With Justice Steven's retirement, I really hope President Obama doesn't enable the court to shift more to the right. Nominate a liberal and don't let the Republicans scare you into going moderate... PLEASE!

Nuclear Treaty - See Jon Stewart for brilliant counter to bullshit Republicans are spewing. President Obama is doing nothing more than President Reagan himself aspired to do. And Fox News is allowing straight-out lies to fill their airwaves. The treaty specifically excludes biological attacks from the agreement to not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries. And, hello? We have a lot of powerful bombs that are not nuclear do we not? We can certainly bomb the shit out of a country without using nukes...see Iraq.

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ACORN hoax - See The Brad Blog for amazing story that finally hit the mainstream media with Rachel Maddow. Remember that horrifying ACORN tape that came out with ACORN workers giving advice to an outlandishly dressed pimp? Well, apparently, the tape was doctored after the fact. The "pimp" was actually dressed in normal college student attire when he actually visited ACORN offices, and the story he gave ACORN workers was that his girlfriend was trapped by a pimp. Didn't know that? Yeah, because even after it was determined the tape was a hoax, nobody reported it for months. Meanwhile, ACORN may be no more. What a shame.

Erin Kotecki Vest, BlogHer Political Director, on CNN

I just watched Erin Kotecki Vest, BlogHer Political Director, on CNN discussing the gender gap when it comes to politics. My view is that the Republican Party is, for the most part, by men and for men. Democrats are much more attuned to what women care about, issues like education, health care, and equal rights. Republicans are for the status quo, which historically has benefited white men.

Thank You, Dennis Kucinich

Today, Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio announced that he will vote yes on the health care reform bill, and I want to thank him. Although the bill is far from perfect, and I am disappointed it does not include a public option, it does contain provisions that will help many Americans. Here are the top ten immediate benefits according to the House Democrats:

• Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
  
• Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
  
• Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
  
• Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;
  
• Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
  
• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
  
• Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
  
• Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
  
• Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
  
• Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

Representative Kucinich, by changing his vote, is helping millions of Americans. And when this legislation takes effect and brings visible benefits and is not the boogieman that the Republicans are making it out to be, that will pave the way for further reform.

Finally, it is so important that we not allow the Republicans the victory of defeating this legislation just for the sake of hurting President Obama. Because that is all it is about for the Republicans. They don't care about anything but political victories.

So thank you, Dennis Kucinich, for making this courageous move. And for all the progressives out there who are criticizing him for it, please look at the bigger picture. This is not a harmful bill. It just doesn't go as far as we would have liked. Don't allow the Republicans a victory because we can't unite. If the liberals contribute to the bill not passing, they are just as bad as the Blue Dogs.

Citizens United: A Week Later

The founding fathers had no intention of granting corporations freedoms of individuals. This Supreme Court decision is a travesty.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Go Left, President Obama, Go Left!

A lot has been written about the election in Massachusetts and what it means for the the Democratic Party and President Obama's agenda. Of course, the Republicans have been all over the airwaves insisting that this means that the country is not in favor of President Obama's "far left" agenda. My fear is that the Democrats are listening. I contend that the Massachusetts election results mean that the Obama Administration hasn't gone left enough, and here is why.

When President Obama was elected, the country was going through a severe financial crisis and dwindling support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was swept into office on a sea of hope and change. It appears that the President was hopeful that the seriousness of the situation our country was facing would be the catalyst for true collaboration between the Democratic and Republican parties for the good of the country. However, he underestimated the tenacity of the Republicans and how much they prioritize politics and power over country. He got caught in a trap of seeking common ground and compromise, while the other side never intended to compromise at all. A perfect example is what happened with the stimulus package. The final bill was a watered-down version, including a huge percentage of tax cuts instead of job creation components. Economists, such as Paul Krugman, said it was no time to worry about the deficit and that we should have spent way more on the stimulus for it to be highly effective. And what did Obama get for this compromise? Not one single House Republican vote. And watered down stimulus meant watered down results.

The same thing happened with health care reform. The Democrats actually started from a position of compromise by not even putting single payer on the table. Then, they gave away public option, all to appease these supposedly moderate Republicans and conservative "Democrats". Time was squandered with negotiation and compromise until the Democrats lost their sixty-vote super-majority anyway.

Obama has increased troops to Afghanistan, has not repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", has not investigated the war crimes of the Bush/Cheney Administration, and has not pushed financial industry reform.

So, the end result is that progressive Democrats are disappointed and even though there are signs of improvement in the economy, many are still hurting. For those people, it is easiest to blame the party currently in power and to forget about the eight years of Bush policy that led us here.

By watering down the platform, President Obama has watered down the passion that got him and many other Democrats elected. He has succeeded in finding a middle ground but one that no one is happy with.

That is why I say now is not the time to move even more towards the middle. If we stand on the principles that economic stimulus and health care reform are good for the country, that the wars are unjustified, ineffective against terrorism and a drain of our resources, that the financial services industry need to be regulated so that those who caused the global financial crisis are not still raking in billions of dollars in bonuses and still capable of making the same mistakes that got us here, then we cannot buy the self-serving analysis from the right. Now is the time to stand on principle and go left, President Obama, go left!

Best Jon Stewart Line Ever

I just watched tonight's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", and it led off with the situation in Massachusetts, which I wrote about earlier today. Leave it to Jon Stewart to lend some perspective, basically pounding on Democrats for being so gutless that they are allowing the Republicans to wield immense power as a minority party. The video isn't up yet, but here is Jon Stewart's best. line. ever.

"Let me see if I have this straight. You need to replace perhaps the most beloved liberal in the history of the Senate with a candidate that believes Curt Schilling is a Yankee fan, because if this lady loses, the healthcare reform bill that the beloved late Senator considered his legacy will die. And the reason it will die...is because if Coakley loses, Democrats will only then have a 18-vote majority in the Senate, which is more than President Bush ever had in the Senate when he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do."