Adding to the building pressure this week from his Senate colleagues who have openly demanded a public option in the health care reform bill, comes the news that President Obama would support a government-run insurance plan if Harry Reid signs onto it.
From tonight’s Rachel Maddow interview with Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:
At its CPAC conference, a young, rising star among conservatives, 30-year-old Jason Mattera accused President Obama of snorting cocaine and likened the 2008 presidential election to Woodstock.
The insults the right wingers are throwing at President Obama are much worse than any of the “Dubya is stupid” stuff I’ve ever seen or heard.
At its CPAC conference, a young, rising star among conservatives, 30-year-old Jason Mattera accused President Obama of snorting cocaine and likened the 2008 presidential election to Woodstock.
Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is the latest senator to join the appeal to urge Majority Leader Harry Reid to use reconciliation to pass health care reform that includes a government insurance plan, usually referred to as the public option. He brings the current tally to 17.
In his e-mail to supporters, Schumer wrote: READ FULL POST
You probably thought, given the banishment of moderates from its ranks, the current incarnation of the Republican Party is a pretty conservative enterprise. Well, not conservative enough, it turns out, for the denizens of the alternate universerse occupied by attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.
This morning’s session kicked off with an address by Marco Rubio, the Tea Party-favored candidate in the Florida primary for U.S. Senate — and the candidate not favored by the GOP establishment, which has put its money on Gov. Charlie Crist.
Rubio played on his Cuban heritage to suggest that President Obama was seeking to turn American into just the sort of country his parents fled after the communist revolution launched by Fidel Castro.
The rumors of a possible partnership by John Paulson and Goldman Sachs in the speculative attacks on Greece, which I first reported on last week, are now heating up in Europe to the point where one French journalist has multiple sources corroborating them. No one can point to hard evidence, just yet, because these are opaque, unregulated markets. But the news is quickly rising above the status of rumor.
The French financial newspaper Les Echos picked up on my post on John Paulson and Greece yesterday. Here is my (rough) translation:
Joseph Stack, the 53-year-old software engineer who piloted the plane that slammed into an IRS building in Austin this morning, posted an online suicide note railing against the federal government. The note, unearthed by the Statesman.com, blasts taxes, the legal system, corporate execs, and the bailout.
“If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time.” writes Stack.
“We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all,” he continues.
“We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.”
Stack goes on to condemn the federal bailout, writing, “Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?”
Stack also takes a shot at the health care system, and the Washington stalemate that has
hindered reform:
Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.
What appears to be a right-wing Facebook group celebrating Stack has 198 members. The site features the Gadsden flag and the following description:
Finally an American man took a stand against our tyrannical government that no longer follows the constitution and is turned its back on its founding fathers and the beliefs this country was founded on.
Two people have been hospitalized, and one is unaccounted for. A hospital spokesperson says that one person was admitted with minor injuries and smoke inhalation, while another is in serious condition and being treated for burns, reports the Statesman.com. . (as of late Thursday, two bodies had been pulled from the wreckage).
Update: Federal officials told NBC they were trying to diffuse a bomb that Stack left at the Georgetown Municipal Airport.
The results of a series of randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials assessing the efficacy of inhaled marijuana consistently show that cannabis holds therapeutic value comparable to conventional medications, according to the findings of a 24-page report issued earlier today to the California state legislature by the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR).
Four of the five placebo-controlled trials demonstrated that marijuana significantly alleviated neuropathy, a difficult to treat type of pain resulting from nerve damage.
“There is good evidence now that cannabinoids (the active compounds in the marijuana plant) may be either an adjunct or a first-line treatment for … neuropathy,” said Dr. Igor Grant, Director of the CMCR, at a news conference at the state Capitol. He added that the efficacy of smoked marijuana was “very consistent,” and that its pain-relieving effects were “comparable to the better existing treatments” presently available by prescription.
A fifth study showed that smoked cannabis reduced the spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis. A separate study conducted by the CMCR established that the vaporization of cannabis – a process that heats the substance to a temperature where active cannabinoid vapors form, but below the point of combustion – is a “safe and effective” delivery mode for patients who desire the rapid onset of action associated with inhalation while avoiding the respiratory risks of smoking.
Two additional clinical trials remain ongoing.
The CMCR program was founded in 2000 following an $8.7 million appropriation from the California state legislature. The studies are some of the first placebo-controlled clinical trials to assess the safety and efficacy of inhaled cannabis as a medicine to take place in over two decades.
Placebo-controlled clinical crossover trials are considered to be the ‘gold standard’ method for assessing the efficacy of drugs under the US FDA-approval process.
“These scientists created an unparalleled program of systematic research, focused on science-based answers rather than political or social beliefs,” said former California Senator John Vasconcellos, who sponsored the legislation in 1999 to launch the CMCR. Vasconcellos called the studies’ design “state of art,” and suggested that the CMCR’s findings “ought to settle the issue” of whether or not medical marijuana is a safe and effective medical treatment for patients.
“This (report) confirms all of the anecdotal evidence – how lives have been saved and pain has been eased,” said California Democrat Senator Mark Leno at the press conference. “Now we have the science to prove it.”
Full text of the CMCR’s report to the California legislature is available at online at: http://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu/CMCR_REPORT_FEB17.pdf.
This post was originally published on Think Progress.
At a town hall event in Utah last night, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)warned Tea Party activists that they should work with the GOP, or risk electing liberals:
“If we fractionalize the Republican Party, we are going to see more liberals elected,” Hatch warned a crowd of 300 at a town meeting at American Fork Junior High School on Wednesday night, amid jeers from Tea Party supporters.
Hatch blamed the Tea Party movement for the loss of Sen. Gordon Smith, a politically moderate but fiscally conservative Republican from Oregon.
Hatch said if the Tea Party had not backed a constitutionalist candidate in that race, Brown wouldn’t have lost to Democrat Jeff Merkley, whom Hatch described as “the most liberal senator,” by 45,000 votes.
Tea Party activists in the crowd were not pleased, with one telling Hatch, “I think you guys are as out of touch as you can get.” Tea partiers may also have been offended at being blamed for Merkley’s election in 2008, despite the fact that the Tea Party movement startedin early 2009.
Hatch’s comments reflect a growing divide among Republicans about how to deal with the Tea Party. Karl Rove writes today, “The Republican Party and the tea party movement have many common interests right now. But they are, and should remain, distinct from one another.” But some party leaders, like Hatch, are pushing in the opposite direction. Sarah Palin, for instance, said, “we have a two-party system, they’re going to have to pick a partyand run one or the other: ‘R’ or ‘D’.”
As ThinkProgress has documented, many Republican Party activists have used the Tea Party movement to make a profit. The Alantic’s Max Fisher wonders, “Will the movement and the leadership clash, or will Republican[s] finally make the Tea Party a force of their own?”
Racketeering: The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (18 USC §§ 1961-1968) prohibits (1) acquiring, establishing, or operating an enterprise with illegally derived income, (2) acquiring or maintaining an interest in or control of an enterprise through illegal activity, and (3) using an enterprise to commit illegal acts (Extortion, Blackmail, Etc. , 31A Am Jur 2d).
As fearless nonviolent protestors occupy the corporate office of a life-threatening and violation-ridden mountaintop removal operation in the Coal River Valley, West Virginia this morning, hundreds of thousands of American citizens are jamming the social media networks today, calling on JP Morgan Chase to end their financing of arguably criminal mountaintop removal coal mining operations in Appalachia.
Al Gore may have called mountaintop removal “a crime and ought to be treated as a crime,” but God bless veteran activists Mike Roselle, Joseph Hamsher, and Tom Smyth and the footslogging Climate Ground Zero nonviolent campaigners who are willing to put their lives on the line to stop mountaintop removal mining.
God bless the Rainforest Action Network and their broad alliance of citizens groups and environmental organizations that are bringing the deadly realities of mountaintop removal–from forced removal of American citizens, devastated communities and economies, poisoned watersheds, and unacceptable levels of blasting and fly rock–to the Wall Street bankers that earn millions of dollars every year from the sacrifice zones in the Appalachian coalfields.
Last year, RAN and other organizations effectively convinced Bank of America to stop lending money to mountaintop removal outlaws.
Daring and effective groups like RAN and Climate Ground Zero deserve as much financial support as possible–write and tell Chase Community Giving to make a huge donation to their work.
By Tammy Johnson
Cross-posted from RaceWire
This weekend the National Governors Association gathers in Washington to discuss budget cuts, stimulus funds and a litany of state policy proposals. Things have changed dramatically since President Obama’s election. Many observers embraced the moment as the start of a post-racial era. But that same morning 52 percent of voters in Florida chose to cling to the past by refusing to repeal a 1926 constitutional amendment prohibiting property ownership by Asian Americans. The convergence of societal shifts around race and the reality of institutional racism embedded in our laws is an ever-present challenge for elected officials, from the White House to the statehouse.
