Terminological addendum: It's not "The Big Fail." It's "The Big FAIL." Because the FAIL is BIG. (And there's that subliminal pun on "capital"... )
]]>The stimpack:
So what do we have to counter this scary prospect? We have the Obama stimulus plan, which aims to create 3 ½ million jobs by late next year. That’s much better than nothing, but it’s not remotely enough.
The a
dministration:
Do you remember the administration’s plan to sharply reduce the rate of foreclosures, or its plan to get the banks lending again by taking toxic assets off their balance sheets? Neither do I.
"So many" economists:
]]>Democrats in Congress — including openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) — say their party doesn’t currently have enough votes to overturn the law. Public opinion polls show that a vast majority of Americans believe gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military.
(PS My kid's up on crutches & doing fine. The other kid and his new kitten -- the one who hid in the fan shroud of his truck and broke a leg and got her head gashed being flung out by the fan -- is here for a visit.
]]>]]>THE ANSWER LIES IN THE WORLD OF WEYMOUTH: By complete happenstance, Lally Weymouth’s first salon was going to be about health care.
]]>Celebrate Medicare’s 44th Birthday by showing Congress and President Obama the people, unions, doctors, nurses, seniors, faith groups, and Americans of every stripe support a single-payer system.
As President Obama says, “We must build on what works and leave out what doesn’t.” Medicare has
successfully provided care to seniors and people with disabilities for almost half a century. Medicare is a truly American-made system that other health care systems around the world have since been modeled after. With little over 3% administrative overhead, we must look to this American solution to our health care crisis.
Business is back on Wall Street. If the good times continue to roll [!!!], lofty pay packages may be set for a comeback as well.
Based on analysts' earnings forecasts for 2009, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is on track to pay out as much as $20 billion this year, or about $700,000 per employee. That would be nearly double the firm's $363,000 average last year, and slightly higher than the $661,000 for the average Goldman employee in fiscal 2007, according to analyst estimates reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Yay!
]]>
Terminological addendum: It's not "The Big Fail." It's "The Big FAIL." Because the FAIL is BIG. (And there's that subliminal pun on "capital"... )
]]>Love the Orwellian language! That's the fifteen trillion dollars we're all on the hook for to bail out the banksters, right? No?
]]>“Let me also address an illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system," Obama said.
And if not, in what direction do they envision public option evolving?
Well?
]]>Tomato plants have been removed from stores in half a dozen states as a destructive and infectious plant disease makes its earliest and most widespread appearance ever in the eastern United States.
Late blight — the same disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s — occurs sporadically in the Northeast, but this year's outbreak is more severe for two reasons: infected plants have been widely distributed by big-box retail stores and rainy weather has hastened the spores' airborne spread.
The disease, which is not harmful to humans, is extremely contagious and experts say it most likely spread on garden center shelves to plants not involved in the initial infection. It also can spread once plants reach their final destination, putting tomato and potato plants in both home gardens and commercial fields at risk.
Meg McGrath, professor of plant pathology at Cornell University, calls late blight "worse than the Bubonic Plague for plants."
"People need to realize this is probably one of the worst diseases we have in the vegetable world," she said. "It's certain death for a tomato plant."
Tomato plants have been removed from Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Lowe's and Kmart stores in all six New England states, plus New York. Late blight also has been identified in all other East Coast states except Georgia, as well as Alabama, West Virginia and Ohio, McGrath said.
Here's a suggestion:
]]>]]>For those who are worried about the health care reform that's being hashed out in congress right now because you believe that single payer is the only answer, I would just ask if you think that France, Holland and Germany should change their systems? They all offer universal coverage, their statistics are far superior to ours and their people would probably kill you before they'd let you change them. And none of them have what we think of as strict "single payer" plans.