“In 2007, the increase in health insurance premiums was about twice the rate of inflation and not quite twice the increase in workers’ pay,” Kaiser vice-president Gary Claxton said in a webcast.
More depressing statistics about health insurance costs can be found at Raw Story.
Pres. Bush Speaks to Nation
During his address to the Nation this evening, Pres. Bush gives his support to the recommendations of Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq, and Amb. Ryan Crocker. He is expected to announce a reduction of some 30,000 troops. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) offers the Democratic response to the President.
If you’re a masochist, you can watch the speech at C-SPAN at 9:00pm. Hopefully Reed will hit Bush hard in the rebuttal.
This week’s winner of the Stubbed Toe Award is…..John Boehner!!
Yesterday afternoon, after Wolf Blitzer asked John Boehner (R-dingleberry) how much longer the U.S. taxpayers will have to shell out the big bucks for this war, and how much more blood will the troops have to shed in Iraq, Big Boehner said this:
I think General Petraeus….blah, blah….success…..blah, blah….continue our effort….blah, blah….in investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.
That’s right, Ladies & Gentlemen (and Pedro), 3776 dead American troops, but hell it’s a small price to pay for political gain the safety of our country, right Boney? Not to mention the small price kids pay for having a dead mommy or daddy!
Here’s your Stupid Fuck Stubbed Toe Award, Boehner — no blubbering, m’kay?
UPDATE: From DailyKos
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News
Armed Madhouse: Don’t become a victim of voter fraud in 2008
Book review by Mark Groubert
via: Crooks and Liars
Armed Madhouse, which came out in 2006, has been re-released in paperback with a new bonus chapter/afterward entitled Busted …and How to Steal Back Your Vote. It is mandatory reading for anyone interested in how the Republicans are going to steal the next election in 2008. The Chicago Tribune said it is composed of, “stories so relevant they threaten to alter history.” Powerful stuff.
Palast is also the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a New York Times bestseller and is a frequent guest on Air America Radio with Randi Rhodes and Robert Kennedy, Jr.
You can read the rest of this review at Crooks and Liars.
I have my copy of this book but haven’t had the chance to sit down and read it yet. It is next on my list of things to do. I have seen a number on interviews on video with Mr. Palast and have read many of his articles, and I have the utmost respect and gratitude for him for all he has done to bring the voter fraud issues of 2000 and 2004 to light. He is now sounding the warning bells of what is coming with the 2008 elections. I hope people take heed and do something before we get to November of 2008 and it is too late.
Here is a great little gem I just happened on to by Miss Eliza Jane. Time for a ‘hoedown’ (or perhaps a ‘hosedown’).
It is called “SOS”. It can be WATCHED HERE. Give it a whirl!
This is about voter fraud.
H/T: The Brad Blog
Apparently the MSM and Pentagon need to milk out the recent 9/11 anniversary. In a newly released audio tape, we get recycled information regarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the purported “mastermind” behind 9/11. I could have sworn the mastermind was some other guy named Osama Bin Laden. Mohammed was quoted in a written statement “I was responsible for 9/11 from A-Z”. Interesting he uses the non-Arabic alphabet to illustrate his mastermindedness.
Posted by Dave
Oil Hit New High Above $80
via: Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil hit an all-time high over $80 a barrel on Thursday after Hurricane Humberto forced the closure of some U.S. Gulf refiners, stoking concerns of fuel supply shortfalls.
So, how high will it go? Especially when Bush decides to go after Iran. How high will it go then? $100 a barrel? $200 a barrel? How much money is enough for these greedy bastards?
Imperial Autism: The Petraeus Moment Blots Out the World
By Tom Engelhardt
via: Truthout.org
To grasp the Petraeus moment, you really have to re-imagine official Washington as a set of drunks behind the wheels of so many SUVs tearing down a well-populated city avenue – and all of them are on their cell phones. They hardly notice the bodies bouncing off the fenders. For them, the world is Washington-centered; all interests that matter are American ones. Nothing else exists, not really. Think of this as a form of imperial autism and the Petraeus moment as the way in which the White House and official Washington have, for a brief time, blotted out the world.
I loved this analogy. How very colorful.., and so very accurate.
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World
Scott Ritter in Conversation With Robert Scheer
via Truthdig.com
This is a video (in 5 parts) of Scott Ritter in an interview with Robert Sheer. It is absolutely packed full of very good information from someone who knows. It addresses the looming confrontation with Iran that our administration is pushing so hard for.
The former U.N. weapons inspector, who was scorned for saying there were no WMD in Iraq, speaks with Robert Scheer about American ignorance, the lies that led us to war, Iran’s nuclear program and more.
Here’s a story we should be hearing about in the Corporate-Controlled Media, but aren’t:
The mainstream media has failed to report the agreement reached between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Iranian government in regards to the Iranian nuclear energy program. An understanding has been reached between the two. The IAEA has given Iran’s nuclear program a clean bill of health.
Why is the U.S. media not reporting on this matter? Why do the U.S. and its Western allies continue to threaten Iran with punitive bombings for its alleged non-compliance, when everything indicates that Iran has a bona fide nuclear energy program and does not have the capabilities of developing nuclear weapons?
You can read more here, including a link to the full report.
Iraqi insurgents kill key US ally
A key Sunni ally of the US and Iraqi governments has been killed in a bomb attack in the city of Ramadi, Iraqi police and media say.
Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was the leader of an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes that rejected al-Qaeda because of its methods and worked with the US.
He was killed in a bomb attack near his home in Iraq’s western Anbar province.
Abu Risha was among a group of tribal leaders who met President George W Bush during his visit to Iraq last week.
BBC News has more. And if you think you’ve heard the name, perhaps you heard it here.
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News
I am loathe, as a rule, to chime in on speculation. However, Israel’s mysterious air raid in Syria in the early morning last Thursday, what’s more, the lack of reporting on this occurrence, makes me suspicious.
There should have been an outcry, protests all over the Middle East and a statement by Israel that they would no longer suffer the ongoing attacks on their territory. But eerily, only silence. The BBC reports on speculations around this.
When I take the redeployment of British troops to the Iraqi/Iranian border into account and add the fact, that the current administration has only about a year in office left, I’m getting nervous. President Bush has claimed before, he wouldn’t leave the “problem” Iran to a successor, so maybe this was a test run for Iran after all.
When I opened the “Reuters“ page this morning, the first news was Humberto has unexpectedly strengthened into a Hurricane shortly before landfall in Texas. This years’ hurricane season is maybe not as active as predicted, when it comes to the number of storms, but I’m struck by the unusually rapid and thorough strengthening of the systems. There were two storms making landfall Mexico, Dean, and Nicaragua, Felix, as Category 5 hurricanes and this is a new record. Am I thinking “Global Climate Change”? Definitely, yes.
Italy is currently hosting a conference on climate change. The average temperature there has risen four times as fast as in the rest of the world, 1.4 degrees centigrade in 50 years as compared to 0.7 degrees centigrade worldwide in the last 100 years. They fear for one third of their coast line becoming virtually lost to the country, add to that the fires and droughts that will cause major problems in the future. The rivers are losing water and the glaciers are receding. The estimated costs of this development are at 50 billion Euros a year. The information was found here and here.
While Global Climate Change is a huge issue, the burden that man has put on our planet is very visible in other areas, too. Environmental pollution has an effect on the health of our children. But does it change their behaviour? Most certainly yes, says “The Lancet” (you may have to register to get access to the full article).
Nature is more powerful than we will ever be. A stark reminder of Mother Nature’s strength are the severe aftershocks to yesterday’s earthquake in Indonesia.
Elsewhere:
Sex sells! So who am I to leave this story of Germany’s Naked Civil Servant out of my morning round-up.
And, lastly: Ambition and the General
Remember: There is always someone willing to spill what you once said.
Have a good morning all of you and take care!
Have you ever wondered where the word “Testify” comes from? You might be surprised, or terrified. In Ancient Rome, to “testify” meant that the man in the Roman court was swearing to a statement made, by swearing on his testicles. Imagine if every male from this administration, including Karen Hughes, or from the military chain of command, who has ever had to testify to Congress, had to do so under this definition, do you honestly think their “testimonies” would have been the same? I don’t.
“… all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”—H.L. Mencken, journalist and satirist (1880 – 1956) from the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
You tell me, America. Are we there yet? Because it sure looks to me like we are. When you fail to see the plain evidence that what you believe to be the case isn’t really so, just because you are convinced that eventually, at some distant time down the future, at who knows what cost in blood and treasure, you might possibly be proved right, could it be because you are too stupid to see that you’ve been wrong all along? I ask you, America, “Is the White House adorned by a downright moron?”
I was reminded of this song today. This was my very favorite song when I was a freshman in high school. I had no idea what he was singing about then. This particular video is interesting. It touches on another time when there were was another war. It also remembers a few good artists who died too young. (Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and Janis Joplin).
Bill O’Reilly has certainly been known to say some stupid and even false things, and sometimes at the same time. Remember how he twice claimed that at Malmedy in WWII, it was Americans soldiers who gunned down unarmed Nazi SS officers. It was, of course, the other way around. But what Bill O’Reilly said in response to the testimony of General Petraeus was inhuman. Horribly, despicably, vilely inhuman.
“My feeling is that we should allow General Petraeus the resources he needs within a year’s time. After that, the Iraqi army must step up and provide their own security with a few American battalions in support. For the future of both the USA and Iraq, that is probably the best course of action in a truly painful situation.”
Okay, Bill, I have only one request of you. I want you to go to Iraq, anywhere you think you need to, and walk up and put your hand on the shoulder of the first one of those soldiers that you thought should die before this is over, and tell him to his face that you okayed his death. You inhuman bastard.
