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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Benny B on March 06, 2009, 11:22:30 PM
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March 7, 2009
Miracles Take Time
By BOB HERBERT
Barack Obama has only been president for six weeks, but there is a surprising amount of ire, anger, even outrage that he hasn’t yet solved the problems of the U.S. economy, that he hasn’t saved us from the increasingly tragic devastation wrought by the clownish ideas of right-wing conservatives and the many long years of radical Republican misrule.
This intense, impatient, often self-righteous, frequently wrongheaded and at times willfully destructive criticism has come in waves, and not just from the right. Mr. Obama is as legitimate a target for criticism as any president. But there is a weird hysterical quality to some of the recent attacks that suggests an underlying fear or barely suppressed rage. It’s a quality that seems not just unhelpful but unhealthy.
Mr. Obama is being hammered — depending on the point of view of the critics — for the continuing collapse of the stock market, for not moving fast enough to revive the suicidal financial industry, for trying to stem the flood tide of home foreclosures, for trying to bring health insurance coverage to some of the millions of Americans who don’t have any, for running up huge budget deficits as he tries to fend off the worst economic emergency since World War II and for not taking time out from all of the above to deal with — get this — earmarks.
Earmarks.
More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost since this monster recession officially got under way in December 2007, and we’ve got people wigging out over earmarks. Folks, get a grip. Some earmarks are good, some are not, but collectively they account for a tiny, tiny portion of the national budget — less than 1 percent.
Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns.
In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.
The bear market would no doubt have magically turned around by now, and those failing geniuses at the helm of our flat-lined megacorporations would no doubt be busy manufacturing new profits and putting people back to work — if only Mr. Obama had solved the banking crisis, had lowered taxes on the rich, had refused to consider running up those giant deficits (a difficult thing to do at the same time that you are saving banks and lowering taxes), and had abandoned any inclination that he might have had to reform health care and make it a little easier for ordinary American kids to get a better education.
As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: “The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his ‘big-bang’ agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.”
That’s a more genteel version of the sentiment expressed a couple of weeks ago by the perpetually hysterical Alan Keyes, a Republican who was beaten by Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate race in 2004. “Obama is a radical communist,” said Mr. Keyes, “and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true.”
I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn’t been revealed yet.
What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.
Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.
Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.
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This belongs on Obamaforums. It's that good.
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This belongs on Obamaforums. It's that good.
And you KNOW this, man. ;) There should be a forum that exists at a higher level than what the morons, dipshits, and dittoheads can reach. I place where the true intellectual giants reside.
In other words, ALL the stuff I post. 8)
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March 7, 2009
Miracles Take Time
By BOB HERBERT
Barack Obama has only been president for six weeks, but there is a surprising amount of ire, anger, even outrage that he hasn’t yet solved the problems of the U.S. economy, that he hasn’t saved us from the increasingly tragic devastation wrought by the clownish ideas of right-wing conservatives and the many long years of radical Republican misrule.
This intense, impatient, often self-righteous, frequently wrongheaded and at times willfully destructive criticism has come in waves, and not just from the right. Mr. Obama is as legitimate a target for criticism as any president. But there is a weird hysterical quality to some of the recent attacks that suggests an underlying fear or barely suppressed rage. It’s a quality that seems not just unhelpful but unhealthy.
Mr. Obama is being hammered — depending on the point of view of the critics — for the continuing collapse of the stock market, for not moving fast enough to revive the suicidal financial industry, for trying to stem the flood tide of home foreclosures, for trying to bring health insurance coverage to some of the millions of Americans who don’t have any, for running up huge budget deficits as he tries to fend off the worst economic emergency since World War II and for not taking time out from all of the above to deal with — get this — earmarks.
Earmarks.
More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost since this monster recession officially got under way in December 2007, and we’ve got people wigging out over earmarks. Folks, get a grip. Some earmarks are good, some are not, but collectively they account for a tiny, tiny portion of the national budget — less than 1 percent.
Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns.
In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.
The bear market would no doubt have magically turned around by now, and those failing geniuses at the helm of our flat-lined megacorporations would no doubt be busy manufacturing new profits and putting people back to work — if only Mr. Obama had solved the banking crisis, had lowered taxes on the rich, had refused to consider running up those giant deficits (a difficult thing to do at the same time that you are saving banks and lowering taxes), and had abandoned any inclination that he might have had to reform health care and make it a little easier for ordinary American kids to get a better education.
As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: “The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his ‘big-bang’ agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.”
That’s a more genteel version of the sentiment expressed a couple of weeks ago by the perpetually hysterical Alan Keyes, a Republican who was beaten by Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate race in 2004. “Obama is a radical communist,” said Mr. Keyes, “and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true.”
I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn’t been revealed yet.
What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.
Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.
Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.
QFT!
(http://www.jaguarenterprises.net/images/trophy.jpg)
Benny, I'm so glad you posted that. I was thinking the exact same thing myself.
My gosh people, give the man a chance. He didn't create this mess, ...but he appears to be far more level headed and in far better a position to get us out of it, but he's not capable of snapping his fingers and making it happen overnight. He's good, ...but he's not that good. ;)
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When u talk the markets into a panic and push through a socialist agenda at breakneck speed, we have a right to worry. Obama is a lying douchebag.
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When u talk the markets into a panic and push through a socialist agenda at breakneck speed, we have a right to worry. Obama is a lying douchebag.
he is most honest,,,man right now in countriy you need rleax a bit
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Yeah.....a thrill shoots up my leg everytime I see him.
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Although not an Obama fan, as an American, I am apalled at how much is asked of one president while the one who ROYALLY FUCKED our country for good received mild criticism. Let's face it, Bush's decisions, correction: Cheney's decisions, accelerated and even aggravated every possible crisis, be it economical, social... You name it!
So... why is it that we had NO BALLS to put Bush in the toughseat but all of a sudden ask Obama to reconstruct in three months what Bush took 8 years to destroy?
We best smarten up, ALL OF US, and fast too, because the empire is coming to an end. Look at all the other powers beginning to line up.
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Bump for a Miracle.
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Bump for a Miracle.
x2
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x2
Obama is going to need a miracle for re-election
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Obama is going to need a miracle for re-election
No, all he needs is a tea bagger like Palin to head the GOP ticket. :)
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No, all he needs is a tea bagger like Palin to head the GOP ticket. :)
Richard Ramirez or Madoff would get elected over Obama in 2012.
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Richard Ramirez or Madoff would get elected over Obama in 2012.
Keep talking that idiocy and 2012 will be a piece of cake. Meanwhile Obama is the President. Bite them apples. ;D
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Keep talking that idiocy and 2012 will be a piece of cake. Meanwhile Obama is the President. Bite them apples. ;D
Yeah, and he is the best gift to the right in my lifetime.
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Keep talking that idiocy and 2012 will be a piece of cake. Meanwhile Obama is the President. Bite them apples. ;D
This is the kinda shit that really gets on my nerves, yeah Obama is the POTUS and is running the country into the ground, but as long as you can get a shot in on the right its all OK. And people wonder why I think liberals are useless.
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Yeah, and he is the best gift to the right in my lifetime.
A lot more and more people are saying this. His screwups are doing more to persuade moderates than even some of the best conservative commentators could have done, such as Thomas Sowell.
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Bump
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BUMP
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Bump. how much longer do we need to wait for the miracle to happen Benny?
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Benny - when is the miracle coming?
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Benny - when is the miracle coming?
I don't know when the miracle is coming, ...but the day you stop screaming what a POS Obama is,
...we'll all know it has arrived.
I can't believe how ungrateful you are. Here Obama is giving you the greatest wealth creation opportunity that you will ever see in your lifetime, ...and rather than prepare for it and embrace it, instead you're screaming bloody murder. ::) This is why I didn't get you a birthday present... you're so ungrateful. :(
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I don't know when the miracle is coming, ...but the day you stop screaming what a POS Obama is,
...we'll all know it has arrived.
I can't believe how ungrateful you are. Here Obama is giving you the greatest wealth creation opportunity that you will ever see in your lifetime, ...and rather than prepare for it and embrace it, instead you're screaming bloody murder. ::) This is why I didn't get you a birthday present... you're so ungrateful. :(
so now its about individuals and not the country and community as a whole?
Facts are facts jag the economy is in the shitter and obama has directly and intentionally put his agenda before the welfare of the citizens of the US...that makes hime a POS
just b/c the situation, NOT OBAMA has created opportunities for certain individuals doesnt mean anything...
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A lot more and more people are saying this. His screwups are doing more to persuade moderates than even some of the best conservative commentators could have done, such as Thomas Sowell.
Yup - he had the opportunity of a generation and screwed it up by going hard left and letting his own radical agenda come before the immediate needs of the nation.
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so now its about individuals and not the country and community as a whole?
Facts are facts jag the economy is in the shitter and obama has directly and intentionally put his agenda before the welfare of the citizens of the US...that makes hime a POS
just b/c the situation, NOT OBAMA has created opportunities for certain individuals doesnt mean anything...
Yup - he had the opportunity of a generation and screwed it up by going hard left and letting his own radical agenda come before the immediate needs of the nation.
LOL! Now the both of you are sounding more like communists everyday! ;D
I can't save the entire world economy as a whole, ...neither can Obama, Bernanke, or even Ron Paul.
What I can do however is save my personal economy, and if Fed policy affords me the opportunity to do so, I will.
333386, as a student of judo, I'm surprised you so easily dismiss one of it's greatest principles.
btw Tony, Obama has created opportunity NOT just for certain individuals, ...but for EVERYBODY!
You just need to shut your mouth and open your eyes in order to see it.
You've been given two eyes and only one mouth for a reason. CHANGE is occurring right before your eyes.
Just because it hasn't come in the form you envisioned or anticipated, isn't sufficient reason for you not to embrace it.
Time and Tide waits for no man. Catch the wave, ...or be devoured by it.
You cannot control the upcoming storm, so rather than scream about it, learn how to dance in the rain!
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Enough with the poetry and metaphors.
Bottom line is that things have gotten drastically worse under obama by most measures.
UE - skyrocketing
People on Food Stamps - skyrocketing
ObamaCare going up - Grandma going down
National Debt exploded by 3 Trillion in record time.
Devaluation of the Dollar
States broke as hell
People on social assistance - record levels
etc etc.
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It's been 30 years and Benny still can't tie his shoe laces or remember which faucet in his kitchen sink produces hot water.
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Enough with the poetry and metaphors.
Bottom line is that things have gotten drastically worse under obama by most measures.
Bottom line is things have also gotten drastically better under Obama by those same measures
It really depends on which side of the equation you choose to sit
UE - skyrocketing
That's good for the EU and those invested in it then huh?
People on Food Stamps - skyrocketing
And in many parts of the world, people are rising out of poverty and entering the soaring ranks of the middle class
ObamaCare going up - Grandma going down
And people now covered by health insurance is going up --- as for Grandma... she was always going down.
National Debt exploded by 3 Trillion in record time.
That debt must be repaid to someone, ...why not you?
Devaluation of the Dollar
When the dollar goes down, something else goes up. Get into what's going up?
States broke as hell
And other jurisdiction getting richer by the day.
People on social assistance - record levels
People rising out of poverty also by record levels
etc etc.
etc. etc. etc.,
Did you scream about the introduction of the scanner? You do know that put an awful dent in photocopier sales?
Did you scream about the introduction of of the VCR? You do know VHS put porn theatres out of business?
Did you scream about DVDs and Home theatres? Do you know how that has decimated the film industry?
And then there was that damned Henry Ford who destroyed the horse & buggy market.
Even Hermes knew enough to embrace that change, and reinvent themselves. Now they are the #1 handbag manufacturer in the world with people paying them as much as $10,000 for a single handbag deliverable in 3 years.
You see that light at the end of the tunnel... It's a big frikkin train, and if you don't shut up and move your ass, it's gonna run you over!
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I swear- someone who is a complete retard can change their avatar and user name 10000 times, and it's still plainly obvious that they are retarded.
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I swear- someone who is a complete retard can change their avatar and user name 10000 times, and it's still plainly obvious that they are retarded.
The only miracle I see so far, is that Obama has managed to single handidly unite the GOP in less than two years after the mess Bush left.
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The only miracle I see so far, is that Obama has managed to single handidly unite the GOP in less than two years after the mess Bush left.
Well he did campaign on being a uniter from across the aisle. :D
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Well he did campaign on being a uniter from across the aisle. :D
Ha ha ha - but I did not think that uniting the GOP after the Bush years so quickly was what he had in mind. ;D ;D
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Bump - the miracle is going to happrn on Teusday.
After 2 short years of the bush disaster - the gop is poised to take back congress.
Ha ha ha ha.
How freaking awful is this admn?
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BUMP -
Benny how long until the miracle occurs?
1. Seeing that the Asian tour is being reported as a flop.
2. Stim Bill = FAIL
3. QE2 needed because there is no recovery at all.
4. ObamaCare helped usher in the largest GOP victory of all time.
I'm just wondering - when are we going to see this miracle from the messiah?
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Stilll waiting - when does the miracle take place?
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March 7, 2009
Miracles Take Time
By BOB HERBERT
Barack Obama has only been president for six weeks, but there is a surprising amount of ire, anger, even outrage that he hasn’t yet solved the problems of the U.S. economy, that he hasn’t saved us from the increasingly tragic devastation wrought by the clownish ideas of right-wing conservatives and the many long years of radical Republican misrule.
This intense, impatient, often self-righteous, frequently wrongheaded and at times willfully destructive criticism has come in waves, and not just from the right. Mr. Obama is as legitimate a target for criticism as any president. But there is a weird hysterical quality to some of the recent attacks that suggests an underlying fear or barely suppressed rage. It’s a quality that seems not just unhelpful but unhealthy.
Mr. Obama is being hammered — depending on the point of view of the critics — for the continuing collapse of the stock market, for not moving fast enough to revive the suicidal financial industry, for trying to stem the flood tide of home foreclosures, for trying to bring health insurance coverage to some of the millions of Americans who don’t have any, for running up huge budget deficits as he tries to fend off the worst economic emergency since World War II and for not taking time out from all of the above to deal with — get this — earmarks.
Earmarks.
More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost since this monster recession officially got under way in December 2007, and we’ve got people wigging out over earmarks. Folks, get a grip. Some earmarks are good, some are not, but collectively they account for a tiny, tiny portion of the national budget — less than 1 percent.
Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns.
In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.
The bear market would no doubt have magically turned around by now, and those failing geniuses at the helm of our flat-lined megacorporations would no doubt be busy manufacturing new profits and putting people back to work — if only Mr. Obama had solved the banking crisis, had lowered taxes on the rich, had refused to consider running up those giant deficits (a difficult thing to do at the same time that you are saving banks and lowering taxes), and had abandoned any inclination that he might have had to reform health care and make it a little easier for ordinary American kids to get a better education.
As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: “The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his ‘big-bang’ agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.”
That’s a more genteel version of the sentiment expressed a couple of weeks ago by the perpetually hysterical Alan Keyes, a Republican who was beaten by Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate race in 2004. “Obama is a radical communist,” said Mr. Keyes, “and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true.”
I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn’t been revealed yet.
What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.
Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.
Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.
Benny - can you tell us when to expect a miraclefro Bama?
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13M get unexpected tax bill from Obama tax credit
(AP) – 1 day ago
________________________ ________________________ ___________
WASHINGTON (AP) — About 13.4 million taxpayers may be getting unexpected tax bills because they were awarded too much money under President Barack Obama's Making Work Pay tax credit, a government audit said Thursday.
The tax credit, which expires Jan. 1, was designed to increase take-home pay by about $8 a week through new tax withholding tables. The credit was capped at $400 for individuals and $800 for married couples filing jointly.
However, the credit put millions of taxpayers at risk for not having enough taxes withheld from their paychecks, resulting in a tax bill when they file their returns, said the audit by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
Those at risk included people with multiple jobs, married couples who both work, Social Security recipients who also work, and young workers who are also claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns.
"The Making Work Pay credit is a key tax credit designed to increase spending and stimulate the economy," George said. "However, many taxpayers who are accustomed to receiving refunds when they file their tax returns may have owed taxes and incurred penalties in 2009, and may yet again in 2010, because they were advanced more of the credit than they were entitled to claim."
The Internal Revenue Service reported that the average tax refund was $2,892 in the 2010 filing season, up from $2,663 in 2009. However, the number of refunds dropped by 3.5 percent, to 93.3 million.
The audit says the Making Work Pay credit could have been a factor in the reduced number of refunds.
The credit was Obama's signature tax break in the massive economic recovery package passed in 2009. The IRS moved quickly to start getting the new tax credit to workers, issuing new tax withholding tables four days after Obama signed the law.
About 122 million families and individuals have benefited from the credit, according to the agency's written response to the audit.
The IRS says it undertook an aggressive campaign in 2009 and 2010 to warn at-risk taxpayers that they might not be withholding enough money from their pay, including public service announcements and YouTube videos.
The agency regularly advises taxpayers to check their withholding so they don't get a surprise tax bill when they file their returns.
"This provision was specifically intended to help taxpayers through the severe economic downturn by putting more money into their hands right away, in each paycheck," wrote Richard Byrd, commissioner of the agency's wage and investment division.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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BUMP
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Messiahs are supposed to perform instant miracles.
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Still waiting for that miracle Benny.
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Shortages of key drugs endanger patients
By Rob Stein, Published: May 1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/guy-patients/2011/04/26/AF1aJJVF_print.html
Doctors, hospitals and federal regulators are struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge in drug shortages in the United States that is endangering cancer patients, heart attack victims, accident survivors and a host of other ill people.
A record 211 medications became scarce in 2010 — triple the number in 2006 — and at least 89 new shortages have been recorded through the end of March, putting the nation on track for far more scarcities.
The paucities are forcing some medical centers to ration drugs — including one urgently needed by leukemia patients — postpone surgeries and other care, and scramble for substitutes, often resorting to alternatives that may be less effective, have more side effects and boost the risk for overdoses and other sometimes-fatal errors.
“It’s a crisis,” said Erin R. Fox, manager of the drug information service at the University of Utah, who monitors drug shortages for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. “Patients are at risk.”
The causes vary from drug to drug, but experts cite a confluence of factors: Consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry has left only a few manufacturers for many older, less profitable products, meaning that when raw material runs short, equipment breaks down or government regulators crack down, the snags can quickly spiral into shortages.
“It seems like there were a lot of things happening with consolidations and quality issues and more things coming from overseas,” said Allen J. Vaida, executive director of the Institute for Safe Medicine Practices, a nonprofit group that helped organize a conference last fall to examine the issue. “It just reached a point where the number of shortages was slowly going up and up, and now we have a national crisis with this huge shortage of critical medications.”
While the dearth that has garnered the most public attention is — ironically — for a barbiturate that is hindering prisons trying to execute inmates, the scarcities are having a much broader impact on keeping people alive, especially in emergency rooms, oncology wards and intensive care units.
No one is systematically tracking the toll of the shortages, but reports are emerging of delayed treatments, anxious searches for desperately needed drugs, devastating injuries from mistakes and less-adequate drugs, and even possible deaths.
Federal regulators have been rushing to alleviate the shortages, sometimes helping firms resume production more quickly or approving emergency imports of supplies from overseas.
The Food and Drug Administration eased a shortage of the anesthetic propofol last year by allowing foreign importation, for example, and this year approved bringing in several other medications, including two cancer drugs.
“The types of products we’re seeing shortages of are really concerning,” said Valerie Jensen, who heads the FDA’s Drug Shortages Program. “This is affecting oncology drugs, critical-care drugs, emergency medicine drugs. We’re doing everything we can under our current authority to try to deal with this situation.”
In Congress, legislation has been introduced to address the problem. For example, a bill would require companies to notify the FDA in advance about anything that might cause a shortage and give the agency new powers to try to assuage them.
“We can’t put patients’ lives at risk simply because there’s some snafus in a process or a manufacturer decides it’s less profitable to make a certain drug,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). “Patients deserve better than that.”
‘Very global supply chain’
Many of the shortages involve older, cheaper generic medications that are less profitable, causing many firms to stop producing them and leaving fewer sources. Most involve “sterile injectable” medications that are more complicated to produce and therefore are more prone to manufacturing problems.
In addition, drug companies increasingly rely on raw materials from other countries.
“We’ve certainly reached a very global supply chain for drug products, with the active ingredients typically made outside of the United States,” said Gordon Johnston, vice president for regulatory sciences at the Generic Pharmaceutical Association. “It could be Europe, India — some cases China. If there’s a problem at a facility in Italy or India, it leads to disruption of the drug supply in the United States.”
Some industry representatives blame part of the problem on increased oversight by the FDA, which has made drug safety a higher priority after coming under intense criticism for being too lax.
“As you know right now, FDA has taken a heightened approach towards drug safety,” said Maya Bermingham, senior assistant general counsel at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. “FDA has stepped up inspections. The more you look, the more you may discover problems.”
While acknowledging that the industry needs to do a better job of coordination, some company officials said the agency should coordinate enforcement actions and drug shortage issues more closely to avoid administrative requirements that cause interruptions.
“We’re not sure how much of that is going on recently because we’ve seen more and more shortages in the industry. We think that maybe some of those coordination issues can be worked on,” said Joshua Gordon, vice president and general manager of specialty pharmaceuticals at Hospira, the largest producer of specialty generic sterile injectables.
Shortages of pre-loaded epinephrine syringes and propofol, for example, occurred when suppliers dropped out just as the FDA was demanding additional documentation, he said.
“They are very focused on taking quick and and aggressive action,” Gordon said. “We applaud the agency’s role in assuring quality, but it can slow things down significantly.”
FDA officials dispute that greater government oversight is a major factor, saying manufacturing problems were the cause of most shortages.
“There has not been a significant increase in domestic enforcement actions (seizure or injunction) for this class of products in recent years,” Jensen wrote in an e-mail.
‘Too many . . . will die’
Whatever the causes, many of the affected drugs are mainstays of medical care, such as the potent painkiller morphine, norepinephrine, which is commonly used in emergency rooms, and electrolytes, which are often given to patients in intensive care.
But shortages have been reported in many categories of drugs, including antibiotics, and drugs central to the treatment of many cancers, forcing oncologists to delay or alter carefully timed chemotherapy regimens.
“We have heard some horror stories where patients are really begging to get the drugs from other sources and where practices or institutions are forced to kind of triage patients and save the drugs for those — quote — most curable, where they have the best prognosis and using substitutes where there isn’t a cure possibility,” Michael Link, president-elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
The drug cytarabine has caused the most concern and gotten the most attention because it is highly effective for treating several forms of leukemia and lymphoma but must be administered as quickly as possible, especially to patients with acute myeloid leukemia.
“With this drug they can be cured and without this drug too many of them will certainly die. That’s the simplest way to put it,” said Deborah Banker, vice president for research communication at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. “The disease progresses so rapidly that untreated patients can sadly die within days. There is no time for delay and no certainty of a good outcome if you can’t get a full dose.”
Many hospitals are running low, and some have run out completely. That has required many facilities to ration the drug, giving priority to those who need it most urgently.
“It’s so unbelievable,” said Mary Collins, 57, of La Crosse, Wis., whose husband, Michael, 66, had problems obtaining cytarabine to fight lymphoma. “A cancer diagnosis is a long, very, very stressful circumstance. And then to learn that a particular drug is no longer available to you and that there seems to be no formalized mechanism in place to correct it just makes it worse.”
Cytarabine’s scarcity was caused by hitches that two out of the three manufacturers hit in obtaining raw materials, as well as the discovery of crystals in some shipments.
The third manufacturer was unable to make up for the shortfall. Some of the problems have been resolved, however, and the FDA is working on importing the drug.
The shortages are forcing hospital pharmacists to juggle supplies and hunt for new sources. Many hospitals, including several contacted in the Washington area, say they are usually able to patch together solutions.
But some resort to paying inflated prices or buying from unfamiliar suppliers, increasing the risk they may be getting counterfeits.
“When it becomes clear that some drug may be in short supply or going into a shortage, what happens is sometimes there are unsavory folks — small distributors — who buy up whatever is left and sell it back at exorbitant prices,” said Roslyne Shulman, director of policy development for the American Hospital Association.
‘Panic in the pharmacy’
When shortages occur, physicians turn to less optimal alternatives or find out too late that the drug they need is unavailable. Mark Warner, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, described two calamities that occurred in the past year because of shortages. In one, a 16-year-old boy suffered brain damage because doctors did not have one muscle relaxer needed to treat a complication from jaw surgery.
In another, a middle-aged woman was left in a permanent vegetative state because doctors did not have the drug epinephrine after she experienced complications from heart surgery.
“These are tragic cases,” Warner said. “It’s one of those things most anesthesiologists in the country think about when they are driving to work every day. We don’t know where the shortages are and they come on very quickly. ”
Nurses and doctors responding to emergencies, meanwhile, are losing precious minutes when they must work with unfamiliar substitutes or recalculate dosages, increasing the chances of overdosing or under-dosing patients. One of the biggest problems is a shortage of syringes pre-filled with precisely measured doses.
“Grabbing the right medication out of a crash cart that’s already in a syringe is a big advantage over having to get out the syringe, get out the needle, get the medication and get the measurement right,” said Angela Gardner, an emergency medicine physician at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and immediate past president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Those minutes are lives.”
Many hospitals are recalibrating electronic medication delivery systems or preparing the correct doses ahead of time, especially for the emergency room, to minimize mistakes.
“We’ve been extremely fortunate using strategies in cooperation with our medical staff,” said Jay Barbaccia, head pharmacist at the Washington Hospital Center. “We’ve had a lot of panic and inconvenience but minimal, if any, impact on our ability to provide care. It makes my life miserable — the panic is in the pharmacy when we’re scrambling around to find alternatives.”
Nevertheless, a long list of errors and near-misses have been reported, including incidents in which patients required emergency care to save them.
At least two patients reportedly died from overdoses of hydromorphone they received because of a morphine shortage.
At least 19 patients were sickened and nine died in Alabama this year after being infused with a solution through their feeding tubes that was apparently contaminated with bacteria by a pharmacy using an unfamiliar ingredient because of a shortage.
The shortage occurred because the manufacturer had trouble getting the product’s packaging.
“It’s horrible. It’s something that shouldn’t have happened,” said Donald J. Mottern of Alabaster, Ala., whose 71-year-old mother was one of the victims. “We lost the matriarch of our family. The loss to our family has left each of us very hollow.”
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Still waiting Benny.
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Bump.
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Benny - how much longer we have to wait?
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http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-ally-got-340-million-to-set-up-health-care-co-ops/article/2522229
Obama ally got $340 million to set up health care co-ops
The Washington Examiner ^ | February 21, 2013 | Richard Pollock
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2013 11:33:25 AM by george76
A health insurance company headed by an old friend from Obama's days as a community organizer got a $340 million federal loan to establish Obamacare co-ops in New York, New Jersey and Oregon despite having a chronic record of consumer and regulatory complaints.
The New York-based Freelancers Insurance Company has been rated the "worst" insurer for two straight years by state regulators, and data compiled by a national insurance association show an extremely high rate of consumer complaints.
The firm was founded in 2008 by Sara Horowitz, who worked with Obama before his career in elective politics to launch Demos, a left-wing, New York think tank funded in part by George Soros.
Before May 13, 2011, the Demos website described Horowitz and Obama as members of the founding group in 1999 that became "the core of Demos' staff and Board of Trustees."
Sometime between that date and Nov. 6, 2011, the Obama reference was deleted, according to cached versions of the site stored by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
...
In 2011, the New York State Insurance Department ranked FIC last among commercial insurers with the most complaints and 49th of 50 among all the state's insurance providers, including health maintenance organizations.
In 2012, the Empire State insurance regulator again ranked Freelancers "worst" in complaints and 51st among 54 rated New York-based insurers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
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March 7, 2009
Miracles Take Time
By BOB HERBERT
Barack Obama has only been president for six weeks, but there is a surprising amount of ire, anger, even outrage that he hasn’t yet solved the problems of the U.S. economy, that he hasn’t saved us from the increasingly tragic devastation wrought by the clownish ideas of right-wing conservatives and the many long years of radical Republican misrule.
This intense, impatient, often self-righteous, frequently wrongheaded and at times willfully destructive criticism has come in waves, and not just from the right. Mr. Obama is as legitimate a target for criticism as any president. But there is a weird hysterical quality to some of the recent attacks that suggests an underlying fear or barely suppressed rage. It’s a quality that seems not just unhelpful but unhealthy.
Mr. Obama is being hammered — depending on the point of view of the critics — for the continuing collapse of the stock market, for not moving fast enough to revive the suicidal financial industry, for trying to stem the flood tide of home foreclosures, for trying to bring health insurance coverage to some of the millions of Americans who don’t have any, for running up huge budget deficits as he tries to fend off the worst economic emergency since World War II and for not taking time out from all of the above to deal with — get this — earmarks.
Earmarks.
More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost since this monster recession officially got under way in December 2007, and we’ve got people wigging out over earmarks. Folks, get a grip. Some earmarks are good, some are not, but collectively they account for a tiny, tiny portion of the national budget — less than 1 percent.
Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns.
In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.
The bear market would no doubt have magically turned around by now, and those failing geniuses at the helm of our flat-lined megacorporations would no doubt be busy manufacturing new profits and putting people back to work — if only Mr. Obama had solved the banking crisis, had lowered taxes on the rich, had refused to consider running up those giant deficits (a difficult thing to do at the same time that you are saving banks and lowering taxes), and had abandoned any inclination that he might have had to reform health care and make it a little easier for ordinary American kids to get a better education.
As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: “The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his ‘big-bang’ agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.”
That’s a more genteel version of the sentiment expressed a couple of weeks ago by the perpetually hysterical Alan Keyes, a Republican who was beaten by Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate race in 2004. “Obama is a radical communist,” said Mr. Keyes, “and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true.”
I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn’t been revealed yet.
What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.
Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.
Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.
actually agree with most of whats in here. i do find it funny that when GWB was in office liberals incessantly came up with conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory about how GWB was infiltrating America and trying to destroy the land of the free, making secret deals with terrorists and attempting to take over the world once he got his grimy hands all over their very lucrative oil supply. Like a fuckin movie right!???!!
So Obama wins in 2008 and now they're all consummate pragmatists. Now that the onus is on them and they can see this shit isn't the "hope and change" Obama promised, they preach to their lemmings that "government is complicated". "It's hard to create jobs".
Ridiculous. He's being treated no more unfairly than GWB was. I mean GWB was accused of planning 9/11 remember? Well he didn't. OK? It's funny for the life of me I can't find anyone anymore who admits that they believed that shit.......but so many did. Bottom line is the cycle continues. If you don't like it. Don't perpetuate it. If you perpetuate it, then deal with the blowback and don't bitch about it.
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http://www.examiner.com/article/bill-cosby-republicans-who-didn-t-cheer-obama-s-sotu-like-segregationists
LOL - some miracle we have goin on here
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http://www.examiner.com/article/bill-cosby-republicans-who-didn-t-cheer-obama-s-sotu-like-segregationists
LOL - some miracle we have goin on here
This is another proof that not everyone becomes wise with age.
Interesting line in that article:
But no one said anything when rapper Snoop Dogg posted a vulgar, racist list of reasons for voting against Mitt Romney.
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Miracles like signing a "financial reform bill" that actually makes Too Big To Fail law and guarantees protection of these very institutions with tax payer money.
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World poll: Image of U.S. declines
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By KEVIN CIRILLI | 3/13/13 1:50 PM EDT Updated: 3/13/13 3:01 PM EDT
Worldwide approval of U.S. leadership dipped considerably during President Barack Obama’s fourth year in office — but it increased in some countries, including Mexico.
The median approval rating for U.S. leadership for 130 countries was 41 percent in 2012, down 8 percentage points from the 49 percent approval during Obama’s first year in office, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.
\
Gallup asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of the United States?”
“This shift suggests that the president and the new secretary of state may not find global audiences as receptive to the U.S. agenda as they have in the past. In fact, they may even find even once-warm audiences increasingly critical,” Gallup’s Julie Ray wrote.
(Also on POLITICO: Obama weighs in on pope pick)
In Mexico, U.S. leadership had a 37 percent approval — an 11 percentage point increase from 2011, according to Gallup.
“Some of the increase may stem from Mexicans’ optimism about future U.S.-Mexican relations after Obama welcomed then-President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto to the White House in late November 2012 and pledged cooperation on trade and immigration reform,” Ray wrote.
In Europe, U.S. leadership dipped from 42 percent in 2011 to 36 percent for last year.
Ray wrote that the data suggests that “the U.S. was likely shouldering some of the blame for the ongoing financial crisis in Europe.”
The Gallup poll included 1,000 individuals aged 15 and older in 130 countries last year, and pollsters said that with 95 percent confidence that the margin of error is as high as plus or minus 4.8 percentage points, reflecting the influence of data weighting.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/world-poll-image-of-us-declines-88816.html#ixzz2NTbUb7mG
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LOL at the OP. America is FUCKED. And if you can't see it you are stupid as mud.
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Miracle coming!!!!
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Miracle coming!!!!
Where is Benny to ever defend these threads?
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:(
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Obama administration acknowledges thousands of illegal immigrants released from jails
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By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 3/14/13 11:40 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration reversed itself Thursday, acknowledging to Congress that it had, in fact, released more than 2,000 illegal immigrants from immigration jails due to budget constraints during three weeks in February.
The director of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, said his agency had released 2,228 illegal immigrants during that period for what he called "solely budgetary reasons." The figure was significantly higher than the "few hundred" immigrants the Obama administration had publicly acknowledged were released under the budget-savings process. He testified during a hearing by a House appropriations subcommittee.
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W.H.: Not involved in ICE decision to release detainees
Napolitano: Immigration ‘No. 1 priority’
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W.H.: Illegal immigrants released
Morton told lawmakers Thursday that the decision to release the immigrants was not discussed in advance with political appointees, including those in the White House or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. He said the pending automatic cuts known as sequestration was "driving in the background."
"We were trying to live within the budget that Congress had provided us," Morton told lawmakers. "This was not a White House call. I take full responsibility."
The Associated Press, citing internal budget documents, reported exclusively on March 1 that the administration had released more than 2,000 illegal immigrants since Feb. 15 and planned to release 3,000 more in March due to looming budget cuts, but Napolitano said days later that the AP's report was "not really accurate" and that the story had developed "its own mythology."
"Several hundred are related to sequester, but it wasn't thousands," Napolitano said March 4 at a Politico-sponsored event.
(CARTOONS: Matt Wuerker on immigration)
On March 5, the House Judiciary Committee publicly released an internal ICE document that it said described the agency's plans to release thousands of illegal immigrants before March 31. The document was among those reviewed by the AP for its story days earlier.
The immigrants who were released still eventually face deportation and are required to appear for upcoming court hearings. But they are no longer confined in immigration jails, where advocacy experts say they cost about $164 per day per person. Immigrants who are granted supervised release - with conditions that can include mandatory check-ins, home visits and GPS devices - cost the government from 30 cents to $14 a day, according to the National Immigration Forum, a group that advocates on behalf of immigrants.
(PHOTOS: 9 wild immigration quotes)
Morton said Thursday that among the immigrants released were 10 people considered the highest level of offender. Morton said that although that category of offender can include people convicted of aggravated felonies, many of the people released were facing financial crimes. Four of the most serious offenders have been put back in detention. Other people released include immigrants who had faced multiple drunken driving offenses, misdemeanor crimes and traffic offenses, Morton said.
After the administration challenged the AP's reporting, ICE said it didn't know how many people had been released for budget reasons but would review its records.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/illegal-immigrants-released-88871.html#ixzz2NY69SXDD
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The Obama administration is demanding the nation’s two biggest shipping companies police the contents of Americans’ sealed packages, and a FedEx spokesman is warning that the move “has the potential to threaten the privacy of all customers that send or receive packages.”
FedEx and UPS are in the Justice Department’s cross-hairs for not flagging shipments of illegally prescribed drugs the companies say they had no way of knowing were in their possession.
Criminal charges could be coming against the carriers, even though the government has not alleged any deliberate wrongdoing by the companies.
FedEx spokesman Patrick Fitzgerald said his company has a 40-year history of actively assisting the government crackdown on any criminal conduct, but he told WND this probe was very different from the start.
“What is unusual and really disturbing is it became clear to us along the way that FedEx was being targeted for some level criminal activity as it relates to these medicines that are being shipped from pharmacies, and we find it to be completely absurd because it’s really not our role,” Fitzgerald said. “We have no way of knowing what is legal and not within the packages that we’re picking up and delivering in this situation.”
“At the heart of the investigation are sealed packages that are being sent by, as far as we can tell, licensed pharmacies. These are medicines with legal prescriptions written by licensed physicians. So it’s difficult for us to understand where we would have some role in this. We are a transportation company that picks up and delivers close to 10 million packages every day. They are sealed packages, so we have no way of knowing specifically what’s inside and we have no interest in violating the privacy rights of our customers,” Fitzgerald said.
In addition to the unrealistic expectation that the federal government seems to have for the companies to know what’s in every package, Fitzgerald said protecting the rights of customers is paramount and the issues go hand-in-hand.
“They clearly are attempting to put some responsibility for the legality of the contents of these packages. That’s why for us it goes far beyond even just the online pharmacy situation. This really has a chilling effect. It has the potential to threaten the privacy of all customers that send or receive packages via FedEx because the government is assigning a role on us as law enforcement or taking on their role in a way that is not appropriate,” Fitzgerald said.
FedEx sought to diffuse the standoff by offering to stop doing business with any pharmacies that the government suspected to be involved in illegal activities. The Justice Department declined, citing the potential for the pharmacies to sue over a lack of due process.
“If the government were to come to us and give us the name of a customer that’s engaged in some level of illegal activity, we can immediately stop shipping for that customer. We will not tolerate any illegal activity within our networks,” Fitzgerald said. “What we want here is a solution that will apply for the entire industry and serve the public’s interest. That’s why we find it completely absurd and, to a large degree, stunning that the government is not working with us on that solution as they have with other problems in the past. As long as they’re not doing that, there’s really no solution even if they were to pursue an investigation or criminal charges against a specific company. There needs to be an industry-wide solution that will put a stop to this problem.”
That leaves FedEx and UPS with the task of stopping illegal shipments from sources the government will not divulge.
“The comparison that we’ve made is a no-fly list. It’s as if the government were to go to major commercial airlines and accuse them of some level of criminal activity if they were to allow somebody on the no-fly list onto one of their planes without providing them a no-fly list,” Fitzgerald said. “What we want here is the no-fly list for online pharmacies. If they are aware of some level of illegal activity by some number of pharmacies, simply provide us that list and we will stop providing service. It’s a very simple solution.”
Fitzpatrick said no other private carriers are being targeted by the Justice Department, and he has no evidence to suggest this probe is designed to boost the financially strapped U.S. Postal Service at the expense of private competitors.
UPS is currently negotiating a settlement with the government, but FedEx is fighting this all the way.
“Settlement is not an option for us when there’s no illegal activity on our part,” Fitzpatrick said.
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March 7, 2009
Miracles Take Time
By BOB HERBERT
Barack Obama has only been president for six weeks, but there is a surprising amount of ire, anger, even outrage that he hasn’t yet solved the problems of the U.S. economy, that he hasn’t saved us from the increasingly tragic devastation wrought by the clownish ideas of right-wing conservatives and the many long years of radical Republican misrule.
This intense, impatient, often self-righteous, frequently wrongheaded and at times willfully destructive criticism has come in waves, and not just from the right. Mr. Obama is as legitimate a target for criticism as any president. But there is a weird hysterical quality to some of the recent attacks that suggests an underlying fear or barely suppressed rage. It’s a quality that seems not just unhelpful but unhealthy.
Mr. Obama is being hammered — depending on the point of view of the critics — for the continuing collapse of the stock market, for not moving fast enough to revive the suicidal financial industry, for trying to stem the flood tide of home foreclosures, for trying to bring health insurance coverage to some of the millions of Americans who don’t have any, for running up huge budget deficits as he tries to fend off the worst economic emergency since World War II and for not taking time out from all of the above to deal with — get this — earmarks.
Earmarks.
More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost since this monster recession officially got under way in December 2007, and we’ve got people wigging out over earmarks. Folks, get a grip. Some earmarks are good, some are not, but collectively they account for a tiny, tiny portion of the national budget — less than 1 percent.
Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns.
In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.
The bear market would no doubt have magically turned around by now, and those failing geniuses at the helm of our flat-lined megacorporations would no doubt be busy manufacturing new profits and putting people back to work — if only Mr. Obama had solved the banking crisis, had lowered taxes on the rich, had refused to consider running up those giant deficits (a difficult thing to do at the same time that you are saving banks and lowering taxes), and had abandoned any inclination that he might have had to reform health care and make it a little easier for ordinary American kids to get a better education.
As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: “The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his ‘big-bang’ agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.”
That’s a more genteel version of the sentiment expressed a couple of weeks ago by the perpetually hysterical Alan Keyes, a Republican who was beaten by Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate race in 2004. “Obama is a radical communist,” said Mr. Keyes, “and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true.”
I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn’t been revealed yet.
What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.
Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.
Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.
-
Haven't you heard? Somehow, the Republicans have stifle the omnipotent power of the dumocrats' messiah. ::)
Well at least the oceans' level have receded. Oh, wait...
At least Gitmo is closed. Oh wait...
At least we have 5.6 UE. Oops.
Yeah, yeah, gasoline is cheaper than when it was when Bush was in office. Oh, it's not?
I know, I know. Lil barry cut the defict in half in his first term in office as he stated he would. Not yet?
The stock market is over 14,000. That must count for something. The economy must be roaring back. Right? Right? :-\
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Haven't you heard? Somehow, the Republicans have stifle the omnipotent power of the dumocrats' messiah. ::)
Well at least the oceans' level have receded. Oh, wait...
At least Gitmo is closed. Oh wait...
At least we have 5.6 UE. Oops.
Yeah, yeah, gasoline is cheaper than when it was when Bush was in office. Oh, it's not?
I know, I know. Lil barry cut the defict in half in his first term in office as he stated he would. Not yet?
The stock market is over 14,000. That must count for something. The economy must be roaring back. Right? Right? :-\
Racist post reported.
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Family Research Council (FRC) officials released video of federal investigators questioning convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who explained that he attacked the group’s headquarters because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a “hate group” due to their traditional marriage views.
“Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups,” Corkins tells interrogators in the video, which FRC obtained from the FBI. “I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that.”
The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reported that Corkins, who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, said in court that he hoped to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard.” As Bedard explained, “the shooting occurred after an executive with Chick-Fil-A announced his support for traditional marriage, angering same-sex marriage proponents.”
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The Southern Poverty Law Center still lists FRC as an “anti-gay” hate group on the “hate map” Corkins used. “The SPLC’s reckless labeling has led to devastating consequences,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. “Because of its ‘hate group’ lists, a deadly terrorist had a guidemap to FRC and other organizations. Our staff is still reeling from the attack, and the chilling effect this could have on organizations that are simply fighting for their values is outragEous.”
From WashingtonExaminer.com
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