So, I was talking with a friend of mine today and he said something that was so un-American, I had to share it. If you just look at him, he looks normal. He talks normal. He spent some time in the military. He has been working in hospitals for over 20 years. He is not a doctor, nor is he a hospital administrator. When he started talking about his finances, I thought it was going to be time to notify Homeland Security. He has no debt. None. He owns his own house. Both of his cars have been bought ...

15 or 16 months ago, many people began to ask me if Obama was a shoe-in to win the presidency. I pointed out that Democrats find ways to fumble the ball just before the goal line. I had an uneasy feeling for two weeks before the election. Even on election night, as every major state was going towards Obama, I still had that queasy feeling. Now, reports are coming in that health-care reform is in the bag. The Democrats have found a way to pass everything they need to pass in order to get a bill to President Obama within ...

Really tired. Spoke at a rally after work. Need to pass healthcare reform now. Call your congressman.

• Russian secrets are for sale.  This is very scary.

From Political Animal:

• Israel: “The discord between the United States and Israel over Jewish building in East Jerusalem deepened Tuesday with Israeli officials rejecting demands by Washington and expressing anger over the public upbraiding of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the Obama administration. On a day of scattered — although, in spots, fierce — disturbances by Palestinians in East Jerusalem, news emerged that Israel was moving ahead with a second building

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I’m going to work. More later - From Political Animal:

• Mexico: “President Barack Obama is ‘deeply saddened and outraged’ at news of the murders of a federal employee and two relatives of workers at the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, an administration spokesman said.”
• Netanyahu is sorry U.S. officials are upset, but Israel isn’t changing course: “In the face of sharp American disapproval of an Israeli plan for an East Jerusalem building project, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly rejected Monday any curbs on new Jewish settlements in and around Jerusalem.” (ed. This is a big deal. This is a very

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With Christopher Dodd coming out with his new financial rules to save Wall Street from auto digesting itself and 60 minutes interviewing Michael Lewis, author of the new book, The Big Short, I thought I’d post some of his interview with 60 minutes. This is very good. Please take your time and take in what this guy is saying. From NPR: Nearly the whole financial system bought into subprime mortgages and the securities that were backed by them — and amounted to bundles of bad debt. In his new book, The Big Short, Michael Lewis writes about people who ...

I have a feeling that Glenn is probably correct on this. It was easy to point at the R’s and say they won’t play fair. This is what the Dems have done. We could pass healthcare reform is it wasn’t for the big, bad Republicans. We have 54 or 55 votes. Well, now it is time to put up or get voted out of office. From Glenn: A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats:  all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic ...

It is the Ides of March. You should beware. Here is an explanation of what the Term Ides of March means. (Above–The Death of Caesar. This work was painted in 1798 by Vincenzo Camuccini.) What books can you read to learn about the events surrounding the rise of Julius Caesar and the fall of the Roman Republic? I can suggest three. A classic is The Roman Revolution by Sir Ronald Syme. This book was published in 1939 and has stood the test of time. A more recent title is Rubicon–The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland. This book was published in ...

This is really neat. It clearly shows what people are worried about and what they are thinking. From 538: Gallup did something pretty cool in connection with their latest health care survey, which was to provide the verbatim responses (.xls) of the rationales given by people who would tell their Congressman to vote for or against the current health care bills, respectively. I ran the responses through Wordle, a word-cloud generating tool, omitting certain words that were parts of speech or were otherwise nongermane. Here are the words that were used most frequently by the 45 percent of the country who ...

I’d like to start with last Friday in the Bill Moyers Journal. Wendell Potter was his first guest. Mister Potter used to work for the insurance industry and has since had an epiphany. Although Mister Potter points out some flaws in the Bill, he would vote for it. Moyers’ next guest was truly explosive. Doctor Marcia Angell is one of the representatives of physicians for a national healthcare program. She opens up on the current health-care bill in the Senate with both barrels. She is thoughtful, critical and informed. You can find the video — here. You can find ...

Portrait was one of those bands that had one GREAT CD then … not so much. Artist: Portrait Tune: Honey Dip ...

Matt Damon’s latest movie, Green Zone, is an entertaining tale about the beginning of the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the commercials sell this as another Bourne Supremacy movie. It is not. Those of us who’ve kept up with the small minute details of how we got into the war and how the Bush administration sold the war may be disappointed because all of the names are changed. The details are compressed. Nonetheless, I found this extremely enjoyable movie. Matt Damon plays a soldier whose job it is to find weapons of mass destruction. The movie picks up as Damon and his crew ...

I like this rule. From HuffPo: New Rule: Let’s not fire the teachers when students don’t learn – let’s fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, “Why blame our teachers?” and “Who’s President Obama?” I think it was Whitney Houston who said, “I believe that children are our future – teach them well and let them lead the way.” And that’s the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten – from a ...

The Board of Education in Texas has been a place were conservatives beat their conservative agenda into the heads of our youth. Now, this is taking ideology too far. This is simply wrong. From TP: The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”: – To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex ...

My father was listening to Taj Mahal in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Taj Mahal is still around and playing great music. Artist: Taj Mahal Tune: Queen Bee ...

Listen to Errington Thompson on Blog Talk Radio Today at 5 pm EST. I’ll have Heidi Shierholz from the Economic Policy Institute. I will also have Andy Coates from Physicians for a National Healthcare Program. This is going to be a GREAT show. Now, this is truly Progressive Radio. ...

As everybody knows by now representative Eric Massa resigned on Monday. The reasons for his resignation have changed over the week. Initially, he was resigning because of health reasons. Then the Dems were pushing him out over his healthcare vote (he voted against it). As the week unfolded, more and more allegations of sexual inappropriateness and groping with male staffers have come to light. Republicans saw this as an opening and immediately tried to blame Nancy Pelosi and stated that she knew more than she let on and tried to cover it up. ...

Do you remember Morris Day, the lead singer of one of the ultimate party groups, The Time? From the darkness, Morris Day would shout, “What Time Is It?” The music would start blaring and the party was on. It is time for health-care reform. It is time for us to have a universal program which covers everybody. We are currently spending 16% of our gross domestic product on health care. Personally, I think spending $2.3 trillion on health care is plenty of money. We should not have to spend any more to get everything that we want. We want access ...

He is trying to stop all abortions with his bill, at least abortions that aren’t paid for in cash. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy From C&L: The Rachel Maddow Show did some digging and it appears that Bart Stupak may not actually have all the votes he’s claiming he has to stop the health care bill from being passed in the House. As Rachel also notes, since Stupak’s requests for changes to the bill are either impossible to get passed under reconciliation or just based on lies about what’s even in the ...

I think it is kind of amusing that there are a large group of people who question the science of global warming (climate change secondary to man burning hydrocarbons). So, I thought the best way to illustrate the craziness of the deniers would be to ask, how do you know oxygen exists? Almost all of us had some sort of biology and chemistry in high school. We did some sort of experiment and hopefully did not blow up the lab. I think that most of us remember experiment that we did using a technique called electrolysis. Somehow we ...

I’m changing my comment system, again. Echo just hasn’t worked out. I’m moving to Disqus. There may be some bumps in the road but hopefully, everything will be stable by early this afternoon.  Thanks for your patience. ...