Daily Archives: September 12, 2011

September 12, 2011 · 10:53 PM

Tea Party Debate Audience Cheers Idea Of Letting Sick Man Without Insurance Die (VIDEO)

 

These people have no soul and no compassion.  That’s why they didn’t care if the United States defaulted on their debt.  The fact is that most of the teabagger politicians are multi-millionaires and think their money would not be affected if the country defaults.

TPM2012

The last two Republican presidential debates have been some of the most macabre on record. Last time around, at the Reagan Library, the crowd gave the biggest applause of the night to the 234 executions that have occurred in Texas while Rick Perry was governor.

In Tampa, Florida at the CNN/Tea Party Express debate Monday night, the tea party-filled audience literally cheered aloud for the uninsured to be allowed to die.

The moment came during an exchange between moderator Wolf Blitzer and Ron Paul, whose libertarian views often make for good theater at Republican debates.

Blitzer asked if under Paul’s libertarian philosophy, a sick man without insurance should be allowed to die in the hospital rather than have the state pay his medical bills. Before Paul could answer that question, shouts of “yes!” and cheering bubbled up from the audience.

Watch:

Related articles

10 Comments

Filed under Ron Paul

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 4:48 PM

Zakaria destroys Rumsfeld’s Iraq war talking points | Solid@rity Institute

Comments Off

Filed under Uncategorized

· 3:01 PM

Empire State Of Mind

The Empire State Building.

Image via Wikipedia

I love my home town, New York City.  The warmth of it’s people, the way we come together in times of crisis, the enormously talented children and adults.  I could go on describing so much of what I love about My City.  However, let me show you what I mean.  Spike Lee and State Farm did an awesome job on the following video(s).

Part I

Part II

1 Comment

Filed under New York

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

· 2:40 PM

Get Krugman!

Paul Krugman, Laureate of the Sveriges Riksban...

Image via Wikipedia

I agreed with Paul Krugman’s editorial and I agree with Dave Weigel’s assessment…

Dave Weigel – Slate

Early on Sunday morning, as the rest of NYTimes.com was turned over to 9/11 anniversary, Paul Krugman vented his spleen. Years of columns were condensed into a few pithy lines. “What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful,” he wrote. “The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.”

These were sentiments he’d expressed before, but he knew they’d set people off. He turned off the comment section. “I didn’t have time to sift through the predictable vast pile of obscene and threatening stuff looking for the rare entries that were fit to print,” Krugman says. So the reaction occurred away from the blog, on Twitter and in other columns. Jennifer Rubin accused him of “hatred and contempt for his countrymen.” Donald Rumsfeld picked up the essential tool of the angry op-ed reader:

Screen shot 2011-09-12 at 11.49.04 AM

On a day when everyone else was flashing back to 9/11/2001, I was flashing back to the days and months later, when criticism of the Bush administration returned, and the practitioners of it became, briefly, Emmanuel Goldsteins. Remember Susan Sontag? Remember the Dixie Chicks? Remember the campaign to “revoke the Oscar” from Michael Moore? There hasn’t been much criticism of the substance of Krugman’s remarks; denying that 9/11 and counterterrorism strategy became “wedge issues” is denying a few years of political history. The criticism is of Krugman for expressing it. He brushes the criticism right off.

“I’m not saying anything in that post that I wasn’t saying back in 2002, when people like him were riding high,” says Krugman. “And isn’t Rumsfeld ‘sweep everything up, related and not’ the poster child for 9/11 exploitation?”

If you’ve forgotten the “sweep everything up” reference, there’s a refresher here.

Related articles

3 Comments

Filed under Paul Krugman

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 9:12 AM

Secret Service probes Facebook White House threat

The Grio

The Secret Service is investigating three threatening messages that were posted on the White House’s Facebook page.

The messages included a picture of Osama bin Laden. One said, “We’ll come back 11/9/2011 to kill u all.” Another showed small plane icons and said, “Today we’ll come 11/9/2011.”

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan says the agency has referred the messages to its Internet threat desk.

Donovan says the Secret Service has a process in place to handle the wide spectrum of Internet threats, social media posts and tweets brought to the attention of officials.

The White House referred all questions to the Secret Service. The messages were first reported by WNBC in New York.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Internet Threats

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 7:43 AM

Political comic books super success

This sounds interesting…especially for comic book aficionados.

Politico

Given the low approval ratings of so many U.S. politicians nowadays, it’s hard to imagine lawmakers as superheroes. But two individuals are doing their part to change that.

Darren Davis and Jason Schultz are, respectively, the president and executive vice president for business development of Bluewater Productions, a Washington state-based comic book company, and in 2009, they began giving politicians starring roles in their illustrated stories.

Believe it or not, it’s worked.

“Nobody thought we’d be popular,” Davis said. “They think that comic books should be superheroes in tights.”

Defying that stereotype, Bluewater produced comic books starring Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton. Bluewater used those books to launch its “Female Force” series focused on empowering women.

“Back during the last election, we noticed how unfair Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were being treated in the media. People were commenting more on their clothes than their actual résumés,” Davis said.

More than 25,000 copies of both Clinton and Palin’s comic books were sold, and Davis and Schultz haven’t looked back since, going on to produce comic books on political figures including Colin Powell, Ronald Reagan, Bill O’Reilly, Caroline Kennedy, Al Franken, Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and George W. Bush. Comic books featuring Jon Stewart and Gen. David Petraeus are currently in the pipeline, and you can expect some cartoon versions of the 2012 presidential hopefuls to hit the shelves in the near future, too.

Continue reading here…

Related Articles

Comments Off

Filed under Political Comic Books

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 12:32 AM

The $1.2 Trillion Trap: What America Gave Up For 10 Years Of War Since 9/11

Think Progress

[...]

By spending this much money on wars that ended up being America’s longest in history, the United States in some ways fell into Bin Laden’s trap. This money could’ve been used in ways that would’ve invested in America — securing access to health care, a decent education, and infrastructure for alternative energy. Using NPP metrics, ThinkProgress has assembled ten alternative policies that the United States could’ve pursued instead with this money that has been spent on the wars so far:

– Provide 63.3 Million Scholarships For University Students Every Year For Ten Years

– Give 58.9 Million Children Low-Income Health Care Every Year For Ten Years

– Give 23.6 Million People Access To Low-Income Healthcare Every Year For Ten Years

– Provide 20.68 Million Students With Pell Grants Worth $5,500 Every Year For Ten Years

– Provide 15.12 Million Head Start Slots For Children Every Year For Ten Years

– Provide Veterans Administration Care For 14.7 Million Military Veterans Every Year For Ten Years

– Hire 2.01 Million Firefighters Every Year For Ten Years

– Hire 1.76 Million Elementary School Teachers Every Year For Ten Years

– Hire 1.73 Million Police Officers Every Year For Ten Years

– Retrofit 69.4 Million Households For Wind Power Every Year For Ten Years

– Retrofit 26 Million Households For Solar Photovoltaic Energy Every Year For Ten Years

These numbers reflect only the monetary costs of the wars. The human costs are much more difficult to calculate, both because it is it impossible to quantify the value of a human life and because calculating the death toll among Iraqis and Afghans is very difficult. But over 6,400 American soldiers have perished in Iraq, Afghanistan, or supporting theaters and death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan combined are in the hundreds of thousands.

The cost in blood and treasure of these wars since 9/11 demonstrate that they enacted a heavy toll on our country, and this data should inform our actions in the future.

Related articles

2 Comments

Filed under Mid-East Wars

Tagged as , , , , , ,

· 12:03 AM

Krugman: 9/11 made Bush, Giuliani become ‘fake heroes’

Paul Krugman, Laureate of the Sveriges Riksban...

Image via Wikipedia

I’d have to agree with Nobel prize winner in economics, Paul Krugman on his assessment…

The Raw Story

This story may not be going away for a long while.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman lashed out at the commemoration of the 10 year anniversary of September 11th, labeling George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani as “fake heroes.”

On his “Conscience of a Liberal” blog Sunday morning, the Princeton economics professor didn’t lack in showing any temerity in his comments that certainly will upset conservatives.

“What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful,” he wrote. “Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.”

Krugman, who normally allows comments, also wrote that he wasn’t going to allow comments under this post “for obvious reasons.”

Related articles

1 Comment

Filed under Paul Krugman

Tagged as , , , , , , ,