by ilene - January 12th, 2010 10:43 pm
Does anyone care more about Scott Brown’s posing naked than the chance to stop the ObamaCare bill? Just asking. – Ilene
Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock Wow!
The special Senate election in Massachusetts is already way more exciting than anyone thought it would be.
And now get this… the insurgent Republican posed naked in Cosmo in 1982
Will it derail his campaign, which in itself could end up derailing healthcare? Maybe not.
This was 27 years ago, and his big problem is name recognition, which this helps solve.
(via Mediaite)
*****
Source: Republican Senate Candidate Scott Brown Posed Naked In Cosmo
Ilene here:
In the beginning:
Cosmopolitan dug through their archives to find a June 1982 issue featuring a very naked chap by the name of Scott Brown playing centerfold model. Flattering, in a certain light, but possibly problematic for Brown, who is running for Ted Kennedy’s United States Senate seat in Massachusetts. “Vote for Brown. He Has One Hell of a Stimulus Package,” the lady mag suggests as a slogan.
See also: Mass. Senate race becoming proxy on health bill
BOSTON (AP) – The race to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has turned into a proxy battle over the fate of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
A once-pedestrian contest between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown has coarsened with a week to go, as the two have cast themselves as custodians of the pivotal Senate vote to determine the bill’s fate.
"As the 41st senator, I can stop it," Brown said last week during a debate, highlighting his potential to be the breakthrough Senate vote that upholds a GOP filibuster.
by ilene - January 10th, 2010 12:49 pm
It’s still hard to believe a Republican could win in deep-blue Massachusetts, but if you’re interested in healthcare reform you must pay attention to the election that will take place on January 19th.
A new poll from PPP has GOP candidate Scott Brown leading Democrat Martha Coakley by 1 point.
How could a Republican win in a state that Obama carried by more than 20 points. It’s simple. Republicans are motivated by the chance to pull a gigantic upset and torpedo healthcare reform. Democrats aren’t so motivated, so the conventional wisdom is that the makeup of the electorate will be way different than it was last election day.
See Also:
by ilene - January 1st, 2010 1:51 pm
This is a terrific article on health care reform by Ellen, who also wrote the books Nature’s Pharmacy and The Key to Ultimate Health . Another excellent article on the subject by Charles Hugh Smith is "Why "Healthcare Reform" Is Not Reform, Part I" (here). – Ilene
Courtesy of Ellen Brown, at The Web of Debt
“Let them eat cake,” the notoriously callous words ascribed to Marie Antoinette, were probably said a century earlier by Marie-Thérèse, the wife of Louis XIV. But whoever said them, the mindset the statement conveys of an aristocracy oblivious to the realities confronting the poor is still with us today.
“Congressmen, what shall we do about the 30 million Americans lacking health insurance?”
“Why, that is simple. Force them to buy it. Fine them heavily if they don’t!”
“What if they don’t have the money?”
“Then take it from those who do!”
The health reform bills now coming through Congress are not focused on how to make health care cheaper or more effective, how to eliminate waste and fraud, or how to cut out expensive middlemen. As originally envisioned, the public option would have pursued those goals. But the public option has been dropped from the Senate bill and radically watered down in the House bill. Rather than focusing on making health care affordable, the bills focus on how to force people either to buy health insurance if they don’t have it, or to pay more for it if they do. If you don’t have insurance and don’t purchase it, you will be subject to a hefty fine. And if you do purchase it, premiums, co-pays, co-insurance payments and deductibles are liable to keep health care cripplingly expensive. Most of the people who don’t have health care can’t afford to pay the deductibles, so they will never use the plans they are forced to buy or be fined.
To subsidize those who can’t pay, the Senate bill would make families earning two to four times the poverty level who don’t have employer-sponsored insurance surrender 8% to 12% of their income to insurance payments, or pay a fine. In another effort to make the insurance payments “affordable,” the Senate bill calls for the lowest cost plan to cover only sixty percent of…
by ilene - December 29th, 2009 12:52 am
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
"Healthcare reform" is a simulacrum reform; beneath the public relations, it does nothing to challenge the status quo "sickcare system" which is impoverishing the nation even as the health of the citizenry declines.
There are two fundamental reasons why the "healthcare reform" which passed the U.S. Senate on Christmas Eve is a simulacrum of reform: it does nothing to lower cost or limit the diversion of national wealth to a few cartels, nor does it address the food-diet-nutrition-lifestyle causal chains which are dooming the nation to an explosion of preventable chronic disease and diminishing lifespans.
Here are two documentaries you need to see: Borrow, rent, or buy, whatever it takes, but see these:
And two more which directly address the fast food industry:
The central tenet of the Survival+ critique is that no problem can even begin to be solved without an integrated understanding of the interlocking chains of causality which create the problem.
In the U.S., healthcare costs are exploding for a number of powerful reasons, but the most important one is the deterioration of the citizens’ health which can be causally traced to the nation’s deteriorating food supply, diet, nutrition and fitness--all integrated parts of a massively unhealthy lifestyle.
While we don’t know everything about human health, of course, we do know that extra weight (obesity) and lack of exercise are causally linked to a number of interlinked chronic diseases, all of which lead to early death (Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, etc.).
The obesity epidemic can be viewed visually via this slideshow map of the U.S. I recommend you view this slideshow which depicts the obesity epidemic on a state-by-state basis:
Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Obesity Trends 1985-2007
Here’s a chart of global obesity (BMI is not a perfect metric, but this certainly suggests some obvious conclusions)
Some question whether poor diet, excess weight and inactivity actually increase healthcare costs; this chart from the State of Minnesota shows that inactivity does have costs.
The terrible truth is that the "sickcare" industry, agribusiness, and the fast-food/ packaged food industries all profit immensely from poor diet/ nutrition, widespread ignorance of the principles of human…
by ilene - December 20th, 2009 12:06 pm
Never before has there been a party-line vote on a bill this unpopular
Courtesy of Business Insider, by Megan McArdle
by ilene - November 8th, 2009 5:15 pm
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
Do we live in a Constitutional Republic any longer?
The 16th Amendment made lawful the income tax – that is, a direct tax on Americans.
But nowhere in The Constitution is the power found to force people, under penalty of law (including fines and imprisonment), to pay private parties for services they do not desire to purchase.
Yet that is in the bill passed last night.
Yes, we have Congressfolk – both men and women, and all Democrats (save one Republican) who voted for this.
This sure appears to be blatantly unconstitutional – and, I would argue, those who voted for the bill know it.
If you watched CSPAN yesterday you heard the speeches. All those who rose in favor of the bill talked not about The Constitution and how this bill was a solution to the problems facing America’s Health Care System – a system that consumes some 17% of our GDP – but rather it appealed to how individuals with specific circumstances would be helped.
But a desire to help someone is not the test for legislation. All legislation by definition is designed to help someone. The test is whether whatever is being proposed comports with the black-letter requires of The Constitution, and the even-blacker-letter requirements of the laws of mathematics.
This bill meets neither essential test of all legislation; it instead proposes to destroy our Constitutional system of government.
Yet despite member after member rising last evening in opposition and stating that these mandates were unconstitutional not one rebuttal of that point was made by those in support.
The "Holy Grail" for the so-called "private" insurance businesses is forcing everyone onto one of their plans. This is due to the problem of "adverse selection" – that is, you would not buy insurance until you got sick if it is quite (or very) expensive. The more expensive the insurance gets the worse this problem becomes and the "insurance" ceases to be insurance at all. Remember, "insurance" is a thing you buy to protect against an unlikely outcome – if you’re already ill or believe you will become ill the outcome isn’t unlikely – it is either probable or known.
Yet the desires and demands of private business do not give license to use The Constitution as toilet paper.
…
by ilene - November 1st, 2009 7:05 pm
Courtesy of James Quinn at The Burning Platform
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
Declaration of Independence
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“The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country.”
Lyn Nofziger
When I decided to tackle the national healthcare issue, I thought a good start would be examining the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to see what they had to say about the right to healthcare. I hunted and searched the various documents which created our country. I found that according to the Declaration of Independence, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Fourteenth Amendment states, No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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I did not find the right to healthcare in the Bill of Rights. I also did not find the right to an Ivy League education, the right to a well paying job, the right to a fully paid for pension, the right to drive a BMW X5, the right to a beautiful wife, the right to reside in a 6,000 sq ft McMansion, or the right to get into Heaven.
I did discover that government derives their JUST powers from the consent of the people. I also found that if those who govern use their powers in a destructive manner, the governed have the…
by ilene - October 29th, 2009 12:54 pm
By Cody Willard
So I’m sitting here at my desk and I’m actually reading a big part of these 1990 pages of new laws that the Republican/Democrat Regime in power are trying to pass in the name of "health care reform". I got very scared about this part of the bill I stumbled onto when I got to page 1391 (and no, I haven’t read every single page…but I am reading a lot of it). On that page, the bill starts to describe a new program called the "No child left unimmunized against influenza" program.
Say wha???
To see what else Cody Willard says, click here. >>
by ilene - September 15th, 2009 12:20 pm
Courtesy of Robert Reich at Robert Reich’s Blog
Let’s be clear: The Street today is up to the same tricks it was playing before its near-death experience. Derivatives, derivatives of derivatives, fancy-dance trading schemes, high-risk bets. “Our model really never changed, we’ve said very consistently that our business model remained the same,” says Goldman Sach’s chief financial officer.
The only difference now is that the Street’s biggest banks know for sure they’ll be bailed out by the federal government if their bets turn sour — which means even bigger bets and bigger bucks.
Meanwhile, the banks’ gigantic pile of non-performing loans is also growing bigger, as more and more jobless Americans can’t pay their mortgages, credit card bills, and car loans. So forget any new lending to Main Street. Small businesses still can’t get loans. Even credit-worthy borrowers are having a hard time getting new mortgages.
The mega-bailout of Wall Street accomplished little. The only big winners have been top bank executives and traders, whose pay packages are once again in the stratosphere. Banks have been so eager to lure and keep top deal makers and traders they’ve even revived the practice of offering ironclad, multimillion-dollar payments – guaranteed no matter how the employee performs. Goldman Sachs is on course to hand out bonuses that could rival its record pre-meltdown paydays. In the second quarter this year it posted its fattest quarterly profit in its 140-year history, and earmarked $11.4 billion to compensate its happy campers. Which translates into about $770,000 per Goldman employee on average, just about what they earned at height of boom. Of course, top executives and traders will pocket much more.
Every other big
…
by ilene - September 8th, 2009 10:15 am
James Kunstler discusses his Sunday morning moment-of-nausea. I’ve been feeling this way for a while, and James is always up to the task of identifying causes.
Courtesy of James Howard Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation
One national moment-of-nausea this Labor Day weekend struck Sunday morning, when CNN’s John King led off his 10 a.m. State of the Union show with a valentine to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, on her becoming anchor of that network’s evening news. (This was the most important news of the week???) The old legacy networks have taken on the role of dishing out reassurance to an anxious and insecure public as job number one, and the subtext of the Sawyer lede was that a Mommy figure would soon be in place to soothe the multitudes even as the nation free-falls into bankruptcy and disorder. This is supposed to be a counterpoint to the chorus of smug, braying rabble-rousers who inflame the crowds on Fox News and MSNBC, and CNBC — the Glen Becks and Keith Olbermans and Dennis Kneales — who work the anger regions of the brain.
The inherent conflicts arise from a nation that simply cannot bring itself to try getting its house in order. Instead of adult leadership, we prefer good parent / bad parent therapy — a psychodrama of alternating messages of reassurance and punishment that provides distraction from problems and conundrums too horrible to face. One unfortunate result is the evaporating legitimacy of anyone or anything in authority, and that is extremely dangerous at a time like this because it creates the perfect opportunity for the rise of a corn-pone Hitler who will beat a path straight into a national ordeal-by-fire, and make everybody feel better by telling them clearly what to do.
President Obama rolls out his much-awaited message on health care reform to a joint session of congress this week after a summer of chaotic and often mendacious debate. The system now running is so unjust and ruinous that a citizenry unmedicated by psychotropic drugs would have burned down the insurers by now (and perhaps torched their doctors’ BMWs). As a tactical matter, the best Mr. Obama can do about the "public option" is to endorse it while kicking the can down the road, since the stark insolvency of the US treasury obviates any real ability to make it happen.
…
April 26th, 2012 6:14 pm
Courtesy of Lee Adler of the Wall Street Examiner
Improvement in first time unemployment claims is slowing. Actual, not seasonally manipulated data, including an adjustment for the usual weekly upward revision, shows that the year to year rate of change is on the cusp of a possible upside breakout, which would be good news for stock market bears if it happens.
Initial Unemployment Claims Chart- Click to enlarge
Here’s why it’s mind blowing. I’ve plotted it below on an inverse scale with the S&P 500 overlaid.
Unemployemt Claims and Stock Prices - Click to enlarge
That speaks for itself. As the i...
April 4th, 2012 4:33 pm
Today’s tickers: S, FTR, JTX & SBUX
more from Caitlin
November 9th, 2011 5:48 pm
Courtesy of John Nyaradi.
Major US Markets including (NYSEARCA:DIA), (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NASDAQ:QQQ), and (NYSEARCA:IWM) dropped over 3% each on Italian bond fears and an increased worry that Europe will not be able to bail out its 4th largest economy. Furthermore, the iShares MCSI Italy Fund (NYSEARCA:EWI) wiped out over 9% today, further illustrating the dire situation in Italy and the European Union: ...November 4th, 2011 9:51 pm
Courtesy of Doug Short.
The S&P 500 broke its string of four-consecutive weekly gains with loss of 0.63% for the day and 2.48% for the week.
The index is back in the red year-to-date, down 0.35% and 8.09% below the interim high of April 29.
From an intermediate perspective, the index is 85.2% above the March 2009 closing low and 19.9% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
Below are two charts of the index, with and without the 50 and 200-day moving averages.
August 29th, 2011 10:52 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Submitted by Tyler Durden.
The second economic disappointment of the day comes from the Dallas Fed, which dropped from -2.0 to -11.4 on expectations of -9.0- this was the 4th consecutive negative print month. The report was, in a word, horrible, with just 2 of the 15 constituent indices posting an increase, and the bulk solidly in the red, led by Unfilled and New Orders which dropped 16.8 and 11.2, respectively: not good for economic growth. On the employment side there was nothing good either, with both employment and hours worked declining by -...
May 25th, 2011 4:59 pm
Courtesy of Benzinga
Bloomberg reports that Diana Containerships (NASDAQ: DCIX) files to offer stock up to $172.5M. Diana Containerships says that Diana shipping will also buy $20M of stock.
Visit Benzinga >
...March 12th, 2011 12:00 am
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...March 6th, 2011 11:25 pm
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Here's the newest Stock World Weekly: Illusion Based on a Fantasy
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...March 1st, 2011 9:42 am
February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
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