Following up on Chris Hayes question: Other appropriations bills signed, and their votes in the senate, include

Ag 76-22
Energy and Water 80-17
homeland security 79-19

all cost more than the health care ...

If a Democrat had said this, would the right be all right with it?

Who cares what the right thinks? Do you want to achieve healthcare or are you just using this as an issue to bash the right?

Health care is indeed more important than 9/11 - particularly the yellow ribbon, flag waving, Blackwater exploitation of it.

What is odd - to say the least - is that the left is apparently alright with the failure of Democrats to say this.

As far as not an easy day for Clinton, I'm sure that those who have run from violence in Pakistan have days that a bit tougher.

My candidate for the Quote of the Day:

But for the right wing, the story was simply too good to be fact-checked.

In this particular case, Think Progress applies it to the story of the White House visitor log (Friday afternoon document dump) and the names of William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright which were found there (*not* the "famous" ones) and made much do about. But, it could be applied to almost any- and every- thing that the nutters say.

Just this afternoon, I got an email -- all caps! all colours of the rainbow! every font size known to my 'puter! -- about how the Congresscritters don't contribute to the Social Security but suck in millions (millions, I tell you!) in life-time pensions, no matter when they retire. I'm nearly illiterate when it comes to "things 'puter", so it took me all of 3 minutes to pose my search question (to Snopes) correctly, before getting an answer. The person who sent it to me (as a forward) and who-knows-how-many-others could have checked it a whle lot faster. But, no. Really... Sometimes it seems to me that the Repubs have a gray-cell *soup* in their skulls, instead of functional brains.

Done venting :)

Re: Chris Hayes question whether anyone noticed that we're (still) paying per year almost as much as healthcare reform will cost over the next ten years. Hell, yes, I noticed. It's the only thing I've noticed in the past week.

We're still indentured to the military-medical-financial industrial complex. Of course none of those industries want health care reform. They rely on the mass psychosis of a public that doesn't realize their slavery to the masters that profit so obscenely from those industries. A healthier, saner public would destroy them.

Oh, I understand the succubus of corporate America has its problems too that sensitive Americans, even their slaves, must keep in mind while we debate whether their wealth is more important than our health. I've kept it in mind and I decided a long time ago that their profit matters less than my welfare. None of my old friends made the same decision. They like being slaves of the corporate oligarchs. They seem to like it. I'm fairly certain they don't even see it as long as they can afford the trinkets they get as compensation for selling their souls.

I'd rather not be a slave.

you could probably develop an argument that Bush Sr. and his spawn are just not very bright. I know, I know, Yale and all. Well, Yale has graduated plenty of legacies who were idiots.

And maybe for me intelligence has to include at least a modicum of genuine compassion and humility. It seems as if none of those three would even understand what those words mean.

Prescott may have been the last Bush with any real intelligence. 'Course there was George Herbert Walker, but he wasn't a Bush. He WAS a real piece of work though..

For Jeb, and Shrub, and Poppy, capitalism is one thing: no interference in my god-given right to screw anyone I want with a very long broom-handle. Period.

I predict that now that the White House has released some of its visitor logs, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck are going to spend most of next week talking about how our nation is being run not by Obama, Biden, Clinton, Reid, Pelosi, et al., but by a covert cabinet made up of William Ayers, Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson, Michael Moore, George Soros, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright.

It is a shame that Liz Cheney gets to dog the President, giving her opinion, when Cheney's Bush
and Bush himself never went to Dover to honor the troops, in a multitude of years. And Lawrence O'Donnnell on Olbermann wisely and concisely tells her not to let her dad parade her like this.
She, in her partisan way, claimed Obama is not taking it seriously,
this wonderful, respectful visit Obama had. She is totally partisan.
The policy of not having cameras with the dead was a Cheney/Bush policy. She is so way off. O'Donnell reminds us--Let's not forget Cheney had five deferrments. And:
Ironically, his last deferrment had to do with having a child==LIZ.

Put your neon-orange tin-foil hat on

From Steve's Lou Dobbs link:

In a phone interview conducted yesterday, Sgt. Stephen Jones, a NJ State Police spokesperson, chuckled out loud after he heard about Dobbs' account of the gunfire incident. Jones commented that he "wouldn't classify it as very unusual." He also confirmed that there are hunters in the area, and stated that, "at this time of year hunter complaints go up."

...

Another New Jersey State Police spokesperson, Sgt. Julian Castellanos, noted that "it's a wide open area and there are hunters in the area." Castellanos explained that the bullet had hit the house in vicinity of the attic; it "hit the vinyl siding and fell to the ground" without penetrating the vinyl, he said.

* Weak consumer confidence has consequences. -- Steve Benen

No surprise, here...

No amount of paper shuffling among banks is going to change anything, until people start producing and buying stuff. But people ain't gonna start producing stuff, unless the banks lend them money for expansion -- which the banks have not been doing,'cause they need all the loot for bonuses.

And people ain't gonna buy stuff (except for the "volatile" bits, like food and energy, which never make it to the index), unless they feel secure in their jobs. And they ain't gonna feel secure in their jobs, while we're still bleeding three times as many jobs as we're managing to save via the stimulus money...

The trouble with sugar water (drummed up false optimism) as your main source of sustenance is that its nutritional value is pretty much zero; once the original burst of energy is gone, you have nothing for all the trouble except exhaustion. It's perfectly OK for getting one over the finish line but, for long-term, it's neither sustaining nor sustainable.

Oy. Ole Tom Cleaver (TCinLA) is really gonna explode...
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/gavin-newsom-drops-out-of-california-gubernatorial-race.php?ref=fpblg

Tom Cleaver is TCinLA? Damn, I had no idea. I'd been wondering where he got to after the migration here from CBR. During the election, I figured he was too busy pounding pavement for GOTV stuff, and didn't have time to post comments. How did I not figure that out? LOL So HI Tom, LTNS! I still miss CBR.

Will the public plan have higher premiums than private insurance? Ezra Klein takes a closer look.

Klein is on to something. Will the public option actually be required, in practice, to abide by the same "actuarially sound" risk/premium adjustments that the other policies in the exchange are required to abide by? Or will it be permitted to run at a loss, permitting either "cost-shifting" (requiring increased premiums of the non-public options), or else tax subsidies to make up the deficit?

Regardless of what the law actually says, there will be pressure on congressfolks to adjust the premiums of the public option to enhance their services to their constituents and increase their re-election chances. That is, the public option will be permitted to run at a loss, with the difference made up by borrowing, cost-shifting, or taxing the non-public options (directly or indirectly.) Neither Social Security nor Medicare/Medicaid has ever been actuarially sound, as was predicted by opponents from the start.

Claims that the public option will be required to adhere to the same standards as the commercial options are not credible.

If I were in the position of the Iranians, I wouldn't accept assurances of either europeans or americans on anything. My understanding is that the French reneged on some deal in the past, and that the French are part of the currently proposed deal. So perhaps, the Iranians are not so confident the French will live up to their part this time. However, in the usual fashion, the western countries are revealing their true agenda, to emasculate Iran for the Israelis, and expressing outrage that their assurances to the Iranians are being questioned. How dare those dirty Iranians ?

"Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) has a habit of saying remarkably dumb things."

Remember, for every member of the House that you have highlighted for saying such dumb things, there are a host of constituents back in their home districts who voted them into office. Probably for saying those dumb things in the first place.

Is there any hope?

Actually I thought Hillary did a fantastic job in Pakistan except she should have just come out and told the audience that the Pakistani government has approved the drone attacks (one assumes they have since no formal complaints have been filed).

By the way, the drone attacks are clearly illegal until the Pakistani government says something - let's hope Hillary forced that to happen.