Maybe he should have thrown in Park Place, too. We here at the BrokenCountry don’t get it. Politicians spend our money like its Monopoly money all day long. Perhaps this guy intended to run for office.
A man discovered bleeding from the head at a routine traffic stop in Witchita, Kansas, told police he was the victim of an angry drug dealer – upset that he paid for a hundred dollars worth of crack cocaine using Monopoly money weeks before, St. Louis‘ KSDK NewsChannel 5 reported.
“The man from whom he had bought the drugs was upset and invited him over to his house, and upon arrival struck him in the head several times with a handgun, and other people jumped into the fray,” Gordon Bassham, a spokesman for the police department, told NBC.
The man’s injuries were not life-threatening, and he has since stopped cooperating, but Witchita police are still determined to find the dealer and put him in the big house – without passing go and collecting $200.
“That was not a get out-of-jail-free card,” Bassham told NBC.
Lancaster CA- First of all, for those of you that don’t know it, Lancaster is the new Compton of Southern California. Its a desert community in Los Angeles County, and it has a rather large criminal element that moved from south central Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots.
What I want to know is why a person would bring a meat thermometer to a movie theater in the first place.
The woman who was talking on a cell phone during a movie didn’t take to kindly to being ’shushed’ by another moviegoer. Or at least her boyfriend didn’t.
In a drama that turned more lively than the one on screen, the boyfriend allegedly attacked and stabbed the ’shusher’ in the neck. With a meat thermometer.
The stabbing occurred last Saturday at the Cinemark 22 theater at 2600 West Avenue I in Lancaster, according to Detective Richard Cartmill of the Lancaster sheriff’s station.
Deputies say that while the movie was playing, a woman was talking on her phone and the victim asked her to turn it off.
The victim was attacked by the woman’s boyfriend and another man. Deputies say he was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer.
The stabbing victim is expected to survive and is recovering at a local hospital. Two others who tried to help the victim were also injured, according to KTLA.
According to Sheriff’s officials, the suspects were described as black males. One man was wearing an orange hat with an orange jersey and the other man was dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt.
SHAMED Macmillan nurse Sara Dale cared for cancer-stricken wives – then bedded their husbands after they died.
The attractive divorcee, 39, has been fired by hospital bosses over allegations she had THREE such romances.
And she has been “debadged” by the Macmillan cancer support charity.
Dale, who worked as a community Macmillan nurse for nearly 13 years, met the men through her job at Queen Elizabeth NHS Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
Their terminally-ill wives were being treated there.
And following their deaths, she embarked on relationships with the grieving widowers.
She currently lives with Stephen Ellis, 50, whose long-term partner Mel died of cancer last year.
An NHS source said: “Sara was a very popular member of the team at the hospital. When the allegations surfaced people were genuinely shocked.
“She has been off work for some time but her colleagues were only told she had been dismissed a couple of weeks ago.
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“It has been kept quite hush-hush although word quickly got round about the allegations against her.
“Macmillan nurses do an amazing job in supporting cancer patients day in day out. And this is a really unfortunate episode.”
Dale, who had two children with her ex-husband, was first hauled before hospital bosses last year.
They were alerted when a number of NHS Trust top brass – including the Head of Cancer Services, Director of Nursing and Chief Executive – were tipped off in anonymous letters.
Dale went off sick – and was fired in January following a hearing over her “professional conduct”.
Her case is expected to be referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
Dale, who is still free to work as a nurse, could be struck off if found guilty of bringing her profession into disrepute.
Her relationships came after her divorce and were not conducted at the same time.
She began one more than a year after her lover’s partner died.
She started dating Steve months after Mel passed away – and now lives with him in South Wootton, Norfolk.
No details are known about the third alleged romance.
Speaking to The Sun at her detached home yesterday, she denied the third fling.
She said: “The hospital was told I’d had three relationships with men who had lost their partners to cancer. But I have had two.
“One of them was long-term and we were together for nearly ten years. And the other is the one I am in now, who I love.”
She added: “I have never had an affair with a patient’s partner.” Last night a spokeswoman for the NHS Trust confirmed a nurse had been sacked.
She said: “A Macmillan nurse has been dismissed following an investigation into allegations made regarding her professional conduct.
“A hearing took place under the Trust’s disciplinary policy and procedure at which one of the allegations was upheld and she was dismissed with immediate effect.
“The matter will now be referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s conduct committee.
“As a result of the hearing this individual is no longer a Macmillan nurse or entitled to hold the Macmillan name in her job title.”
Steve Richards, Macmillan director for London, East Anglia and the South East, said: “This individual was employed by the Trust as a palliative care nurse in 1998 and Macmillan funded the post until 2000.
“After that date no charity funds were used to pay for the post. We support the Trust’s decision and the nurse no longer holds the Macmillan name.”
Mr Richards added: “There are over 4,500 Macmillan health professionals in the UK who give much-needed support and care to hundreds of thousands of cancer patients and their families.
“This is an isolated incident and all our nurses are expected to maintain the highest standards of care and professional conduct.” There was no mention of the sacking on Dale’s Facebook page last night – and she was still listed as working at the hospital.
Under her personal details she has written: “I have worked as a Macmillan Nurse for the last 13 years and love it – except the NHS is a challenge.
“Oh i also have a mad labrador who sheds lots of hair and speaks. I am hoping to start writing as i need a new challenge.”
KURT GORMAN had no idea that his Texas girlfriend of four years was on the Internet calling herself JihadJane.
Colleen R. LaRose, whom he met in Ennis, Texas, left the couple’s Montgomery County apartment Aug. 23, the day after his father’s funeral, without telling him, he said.
“I came home and she’s gone. She packed up and left. Didn’t see it coming, didn’t know,” Gorman told the Daily News last night. “I was upset, worried. Maybe something happened to her. You don’t know.”
Yesterday, Gorman, of Pennsburg, 48 miles northwest of Philadelphia, said he finally found out – by reading about her on the Internet.
A federal grand jury indicted LaRose, who also called herself Fatima Rose, allegedly for providing material support for terrorists and for plotting with others to kill a Swedish artist who had depicted the pro-phet Muhammad as a dog.
“I don’t know the details. I don’t want to know them,” said Gorman, who appears to be an easygoing guy with a mustache and beard. Interviewed at his office in Quaker-town, he was dressed in a green and black plaid shirt, black jeans and work boots, and was holding a half-smoked cigarette.
“She never talked about international events, about Muslims, anything,” he said. “It’s very strange. I still can’t believe it.
“The whole thing is crazy.”
A few weeks after LaRose, 5-foot-2 with dirty-blond hair, disappeared, taking most of her clothes, two FBI agents visited him. He said they questioned him, including what she did during the day and whether she used the computer. Nothing to tip him off, he added.
In November or December, Gorman said, he was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to testify. He said he had been asked about his passport, whether he had given it to her. He said he told the jury no. She was charged with stealing the passport in the indictment.
Prosecutors and agents told him that they were in the middle of an investigation and could not share the details.
He said he figured: “Let them do their job. I don’t want anything to do with it.
“She seemed normal to me. She got mad about some things and happy about others,” he said. Asked what she would get mad about, he replied: “If I was not home when I was supposed to be, that I don’t spend enough time with her, that I work too much.”
As owner of a company that manufactures custom parts for radio towers, he said, “I work until the job gets done.”
The couple lived with his father in a second-floor apartment in a four-unit building on Main Street in Pennsburg. “She was a good person, taking care of my Dad, taking him to the doctor.”
His father sat in a lawn chair on the balcony, said neighbors. “He asked me to go for a cup of coffee,” said Joan Noon, 66, a next-door neighbor.
LaRose didn’t work, and had not graduated from college, but, he said, she was fun to be with.
“I wouldn’t have stayed with her if she was not nice,” he added.
“That’s why when I came home and she was gone, it was a shock to the system.”
Two women suing Dr. Phil McGraw and CBS Television alleging they suffered trauma when they were exposed to a naked man during an episode of the television psychologist’s program can move forward with their suit, a judge ruled today.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Allen White rejected a motion by attorneys for “Dr. Phil” McGraw and the network that maintained the suit by Shirley Rae Dieu and Crystal Matchett infringed on their First Amendment right to air a topic of public interest.
“There is no discernible public interest in these two plaintiffs,” White said, adding that their complaint focuses on their treatment by the show’s staff and not on statements made by anyone.
Dieu, 56, of Irvine, and Matchett, 26, of Westland, Mich., filed separate suits last year that were later consolidated by White into one complaint. The allegations include fraud, negligent misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Dieu and Matchett agreed to take part in a 2007 episode of the show in which they spent a week in a residence called “The Dr. Phil House,” which was wired with cameras and microphones, according to the defense’s court papers. The women participated with four other people and the show’s topic was the difficulties they all had in interacting with other people.
At one point a nudist came to the house to join the others for dinner, defense court papers state.
“This incident was part and parcel of the scenarios being used at the house
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to focus each of the participants on their ability to tolerate unique individuals and situations, and to resist their own judgmental character,” the defense court papers state.
The claims of both women also are barred by releases they signed agreeing to appear on the show, McGraw’s attorneys contend.
But in a sworn declaration, Matchett said she was offended by the nude man’s appearance.
“As a naked man ran into the house, I was in shock and total disbelief of what was happening, feeling violated and disgusted,” Matchett stated. “I heard … Dieu scream, ‘How dare you’ while covering her eyes and running into the bedroom.” Matchett also says she was pressured by a show staff member to sign the release and never had the chance to read it.
Dieu says in her declaration that after she and Matchett retreated to a bedroom “horrified and crying,” a show staff member banged on the door yelling, “Come out, come out Shirley and see the naked man.”
The location for “The Dr. Phil House” was a “cramped, windowless … house on a sound stage in a bad neighborhood,” according to Matchett.
Kelli L. Sager, a lawyer for McGraw and CBS, declined to comment on the ruling.
First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.
Penn, appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.
“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it” said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. “And this is mainstream media, who should — truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”
It was just the beginning of a busy weekend for Penn. When asked on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” about those who question his motives for his humanitarian work in Haiti, he said:
“Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah. You know, but I’m not going to spend a lot of energy on it.”
Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst, said the same constitutional protection that applies to journalists also applies to Penn, who can say pretty much anything he wants in the “political arena” — aside from an immediate incitement of violence.
“What he is saying is protected, as wacky and weird as it is,” Napolitano told FoxNews.com. “But the substance of what he’s saying would be absolutely contrary to the First Amendment, which fully protects all political opinions. So if a journalist says Dick Cheney should go to jail, the journalist is privileged to say that.”
“Mr. Penn is calling for a communist-like regime in which journalists who criticize the government are sent to jail because of that criticism,” Napolitano added. “That is utterly un-American and hasn’t happened here since the Civil War.”
Lis Wiehl, a former federal prosecutor and Fox News legal analyst, echoed Napolitano’s comments, saying Penn’s statement is “completely counter” to First Amendment protections.
“Unless you’re yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre, i.e. stirring up immediate violence, you have the right as an American to voice your opinion, even if others (including Penn) disagree,” she wrote FoxNews.com. “And, yes, Penn has the right to voice his opinion as well — that’s the beauty of the First Amendment. And, don’t forget, truth is an absolute defense to any defamation or slander lawsuit.”
According to a study by the Business and Media Institute, news coverage pertaining to Chavez from 1998 to 2006 found the Venezuelan president’s human rights record was mentioned in only 10 percent of stories, and he was described as a leftist in 12 percent of stories.
Napolitano, meanwhile, said Penn apparently prefers “thuggery” to democracy.
“In light of his ignorance of freedom of speech, his wishing rectal cancer on his detractors, and his embracing tyrants, Mr. Penn obviously prefers thuggery to democracy,” he continued. “Were he free to do so, he’d be a tyrant. Now we’ll see if he can get me jailed for saying that!”
Now here is one I just could not pass on. Women went to a to an alleged doctor to get ass implants, and this alleged doctor comes at them with a caulking gun, and they thought that this was normal?
Listen ladies, there are a lot of crazy ways that licensed doctors change a persons appearance, but using DAP caulking is not one of them.
The only logical conclusion one can make is that these are six of the dumbest women on the planet.
The women checked into hospitals in the county after their procedures, apparently administered by unlicensed providers, went horribly wrong, state health officials said. The women underwent surgery and were given antibiotics. No arrests have been made.
Different from medical-grade silicone, the substance used in the botched procedures was believed to be a diluted version of nonmedical-grade silicone.
“The same stuff you use to put caulk around the bathtub,” said Steven M. Marcus, executive and medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, who learned about the bizarre procedures through a committee he sits on that monitors outbreaks in the metropolitan area.
“What a tragedy,” said Gregory Borah, chief of plastic surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.
Using over-the-counter silicone can cause abscesses that he said resemble “a big zit.”
Borah, also president of the New Jersey Society of Plastic Surgeons, said the botched procedures underscore the need for patients who seek augmentation to have it administered by a licensed professional in a sterile setting.
A plastic surgeon doing buttocks augmentation would make an incision to develop a pocket underneath the muscle and shape the buttocks with inert medical-grade silicone, Borah said. He noted it is a relatively uncommon procedure in most practices and that he has done only two in his 24-year career.
By the time he tells patients of the potential risks — from anesthesia, scarring and silicone shifting when patients sit down — they often change their minds.
Breast and cheek augmentations are the most common procedures, he noted. Borah said buttock augmentation is more popular in some cultures than others.
The state Department of Health and Senior Services did not identify the women or release any details about their ethnicity. It also did not say where the “unlicensed medical provider or providers” performed their procedures.
“Fortunately, these women are being treated and are recovering,” said Tina Tan, the state epidemiologist. “But there is the potential for more serious complications if these infections are not treated early and properly.”
Investigators have not determined if the six cases, which began to be reported in mid-February, are related, but they have stoked concern among officials that such injuries are more common than previously thought.
Health officials issued an alert to state hospitals and doctors about the cases and the potential for more victims.
Marcus said there have been other incidents over the past couple years of providers providing implants of nonmedical-grade silicone, then getting put out of business — only for other shady providers to surface.
“Caveat emptor: Buyer beware,” Marcus said. “If it looks too cheap, there’s probably a reason it’s too cheap.”
Zachary Tucker, left, and Sean Fitzgerald were arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of second-degree tampering.
COLUMBIA, MO. — Two students on Friday apologized for scattering cotton balls outside the black culture center at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
Zachary E. Tucker, 21, who is from the St. Louis area, and Sean D. Fitzgerald, 19, used “inexcusable judgment,” according to a joint statement issued by their attorneys.
The incident was part of a series of foolish acts last Friday that included riding a tiger statue and hoisting a pirate flag at the ROTC building, the statement said.
The two were arrested Tuesday evening on suspicion of a felony hate crime and were released on bond. Neither has been charged, and prosecutors are not likely to decide what, if any, charges will be filed until Monday, said Ryan Haigh, an assistant Boone County prosecutor.
Both students have been suspended from the university.
Police said that between 1:30 and 2 a.m. on Feb. 26, cotton balls were scattered across the front lawn and sidewalk at the front door of the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.
The incident offended students who felt it harkened to days of slavery on cotton plantations.
Police arrested Tucker, a senior majoring in psychology, and Fitzgerald, a freshman majoring in political science, after receiving an anonymous tip.
The statement from the attorneys notes that neither man has a criminal record.
“This type of behavior is totally out of character for these young men, and they hope for the opportunity to prove this to the community,” the statement said. “Fitzgerald and Tucker apologize to each and every person who was hurt and offended by their actions.”
Marcus Mayes, a graduate assistant with the culture center, said he had not seen the statement but based on what he heard, he felt it was “a start.”
“It’s good they acknowledged what they did was wrong,” he said.
Tucker’s attorney, Christopher A. Slusher, said his client wants to continue attending school but declined to discuss what university officials told him about that possibility.
Tucker has met with Nathan Stephens, director of the Black Culture Center, to personally apologize. Stephens said he accepted the apology and offered to help mentor Tucker in cultural sensitivity.
“My desire for him is to learn and grow from this and to become a better person,” Stephens said.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.
Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president’s chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”
That kind of now-or-never campaign means America can expect a debate consumed by health care, again, for weeks.
The White House is trying mightily to focus it on real people and the human cost of inaction. But there will be no escaping the same slog that turned off so many people in 2009 — congressional process, arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric.
So what unfolds over the next few weeks will affect millions of Americans and alter the course of Obama’s presidency. He has a shrinking window in which to find enough votes within his party to pass health care legislation so he can free himself to spend more bully pulpit time on the single issue that has stoked the public ire since he became president — disappearing jobs.
Polling shows the economy remains a bigger personal worry to people than the cost, access and coverage problems endemic to the health care system.
There is a huge economic element to health care as people struggle to pay premiums or keep their insurance. Yet to many, the astounding loss of jobs is a singular issue that demands constant, bold attention.
It is just this competition — the economy versus health care — that helped define Obama’s grueling first year in office and prompted howls within his own party for a recalibrated jobs-first agenda.
Obama responded with a State of the Union speech on Jan. 27 that was remarkably focused on the economy, dwarfing all other issues. “Creating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010,” Obama emphasized the next day at a stop in Tampa, Florida.
Yet it was always the reality that Obama would consolidate his attention on health care again, at least for one last blitz. Beyond all the policy implications, Obama has spent a year on it and never intended to let that effort go to waste.
The White House’s political calculation is that the next few weeks are their last chance to push through an overhaul of health coverage. But aides also know it cannot drag on, as every day focused on process overshadows their message.
There is no expectation within the West Wing that voters’ moods will change until they see their lives improving. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the plan is to keep plugging away on an agenda to shore up the economy for the long haul.
“We’re going to still be out there on jobs,” Axelrod said, dismissing any worry that the economy-first message will be obscured. “We’re going to be focused on health care for the next few weeks, but we’re still going to be doing jobs.”
To get votes, Obama is lobbying lawmakers, many of whom are teetering in this election year. He’s calling on his 2008 campaign supporters to push Congress for a vote. He’s staging health care events in Philadelphia and St. Louis this coming week.
“They are looking at the election in November, and they need to have one big victory that they can claim,” said Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “This is not the victory they would have chosen, because even if it does help the economy, it won’t help most people for years to come. The problem is, there just doesn’t seem to be the ability to do anything significant about jobs this year.”
The House and Senate have passed versions of a $35 billion bill that offers a tax break to companies that hire workers and extends federal highway programs, but even supporters doubt it will create many jobs. By comparison, the economic stimulus bill enacted last year — and not nearly spent out yet — was an $862 billion measure.
Lawmakers plan more steps this year. But there is less political will to keep spending on big jolts to the economy.
Obama has always argued that overhauling health care is not just about health, but also an economic imperative for families who will suffer “if we let this opportunity pass for another year or another decade or another generation” — a message he conveyed Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.
Part of Obama’s final argument to Democratic lawmakers is that getting health care done will give them momentum on other issues. It’s possible that the opposite is true, and a defeat now could undermine him on other fronts.
Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley said Obama understands that the rising costs of health care are hurting U.S. economic interests long term. Still, he urged Obama to finish up this priority and pivot back to a heavier jobs message.
“If we wrap this up, if we get this passed, it will become clear that health care was always about jobs,” he said.
Jamie Dimon, chairman of JP Morgan Chase, has warned American investors should be more worried about the risk of default of the state of California than of Greece’s current debt woes.
Everyone knows that California is a greater risk financially than Greece. The socialist machine in Sacramento will simply take any monies from any source and spend it on welfare and illegal immigrants. J.P. Morgan Chase understands this.
California is broken. Its one of the reasons I named this site BrokenCountry.Com. Its been broken for more than 25 years, since the hippies from the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco decided to run for office.
These socialist assholes have ruined California and turned the state into a mecca for degenerates and low lives from every corner of the planet. Now the state is bankrupt because these same socialist spend every penny sent to Sacramento on their unions, which run the state, and their social programs that they create to ensure that they are re-elected. JD
Mr Dimon told investors at the Wall Street bank’s annual meeting that “there could be contagion” if a state the size of California, the biggest of the United States, had problems making debt repayments. “Greece itself would not be an issue for this company, nor would any other country,” said Mr Dimon. “We don’t really foresee the European Union coming apart.” The senior banker said that JP Morgan Chase and other US rivals are largely immune from the European debt crisis, as the risks have largely been hedged.
California however poses more of a risk, given the state’s $20bn (£13.1bn) budget deficit, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is desperately trying to reduce.
Earlier this week, the state’s legislature passed bills that will cut the deficit by $2.8bn through budget cuts and other measures. However the former Hollywood film star turned politician is looking for $8.9bn of cuts over the next 16 months, and is also hoping for as much as $7bn of handouts from the federal government.
Earlier this week, John Chiang, the state’s controller, said that if a workable plan to reduce the deficit and increase cash levels is not reached soon, he will have to return to issuing IOU’s, forcing state workers to take additional unpaid leave and potentially freezing spending.
“I can’t write checks without money; that’s against the law. My main goal is to keep the state afloat, but I won’t be able to do it without the help of new legislation,” said Mr Chiang.
So let me get this straight. The leader of the free world, who is telling us we need his health care reform, smokes cigarettes? Imagine that. Aren’t these the same leftist guerrillas in Congress that made the tobacco industry the bane of society by vilifying them and suing them for medical costs associated with smoking cigarettes?
How in the hell are we to believe in a man that’s too weak emotionally to quit smoking cigarettes? Bob
President Obama’s doctors hinted Sunday that he still might be sneaking smokes when Michelle and the kids aren’t around to yell at him.
Obama’s routine physical at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center found him in “excellent health” and “fit for duty” but the docs also included a cryptic recommendation that he “continue smoking cessation efforts.”
Obama should continue his “nicotine replacement therapy – self-use (gum or the patch),” the doctor said.
Obama owned up during the 2008 presidential campaign to falling off the wagon occassionally in his effort to quit with the help of nicotine gum.
Obama has also said that First Lady Michelle Obama, and kids Malia and Sasha, have been all over him to break the habit.
The initial report on the physical from Dr. Jeff Kuhlman, director of the White House Medical Unit, also suggested that Obama may have lost some of the jump on his jump shot.
The report said his knees sometimes ache and the docs recommended a “lower extemity muscle strengthening program.”
WASHINGTON- In yet another stunning show of disdain for American voters, President Obama had his left wing radicals all over the Sunday morning news shows trying desperately to keep health care reform alive.
Obama has demanded what the White House calls “a simple up or down” vote on the massive spending bill designed to nationalize the U.S. health care system.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and compared passing health care reform to selling pie. Pelosi said “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”
We are still trying to figure out what selling pie has to do with health care reform, especially in light of the fact that the legislation contains a special tax on pie to help fund it.
In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama’s intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.
Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama’s only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.
“We’re not talking about changing any rules here,” DeParle said. “All the president’s talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?”
DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation’s advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand.
“I think we will get to that point where we will have the votes,” predicted Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. “I believe that we will pass health care reform this spring.”
In a sober call to arms, Pelosi said lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public. “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”
Pelosi said it took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, “and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”
It’s unclear whether Pelosi’s remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmaker unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.
Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.
Her comments seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall—maybe a lot. They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.
“Time is up,” she said. “We really have to go forth.”
Her comments somewhat echoed those of President Barack Obama, who said at the end of last week’s bipartisan health care summit that Congress should act on the issue and let voters render their verdicts. “That’s what elections are for,” he said.
The White House is redoubling efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against that bill. A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts in January, however, left Democrats one vote shy of the number necessary to overcome GOP filibusters.
As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters.
Exactly what the legislation would look like remained a matter of negotiation within Democratic ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, “is working with his caucus, the White House and the House leadership on strategy and next steps,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Sunday.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky renewed his party’s demand that Obama and the Democrats start over and write a bipartisan health care bill. He said that while the reconciliation process has been used to pass legislation in the past, it should not apply to health care legislation.
“There are a number of other Republicans who do not think something of this magnitude ought to be jammed down the throats of a public that doesn’t want it through this kind of device,” McConnell said.
Pelosi said that “in a matter of days” Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.
“When we have a bill,” she said, “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”
Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” DeParle was on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while Menendez appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and McConnell spoke on CNN.
Is nature out of control? MSNBC Proves How Incredibly Stupid They Are
Is it just me or is this the dumbest headline you have ever seen? Nature out of control? Has nature ever been “in control” in the first place? The article from MSNBC never asks this pressing question.
Its the same thing with the global warming myth. Can you imagine a time when mankind has become so egocentric that we believe that we can control nature?
So here is MSNBC doing what all news agencies do to keep the sheeple watching their crappy network. Trying to scare the masses into believing that somehow humans are responsible for all these earthquakes.
Now that the global warming issue is being debunked, I can already see the next big socialist cause. Global Earthquakes. Somehow a correlation will be made to scientifically prove that man is responsible for earthquakes.
I got it. Its because our automobiles are putting extraneous forces on the earth’s crust, thus causing the planet to to be pulled in a million different directions at once, creating the earthquakes we are having today. That’s the ticket . . .
Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.
One scientist, however, says that relative to the time period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so.
The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, originated on a hot spot known as a subduction zone, where one plate of Earth’s crust dives under another. It’s part of the active “Ring of Fire,” a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.
“This particular subduction zone has produced very damaging earthquakes throughout its history,” said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The largest quake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, occurred along the same fault zone in May 1960.
Even so, magnitude-8 earthquakes occur globally, on average, just once a year. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, an 8.8-magnitude is much more intense than a magnitude 8, and so this event would be even rarer, said J. Ramón Arrowsmith, a geologist at Arizona State University.
Is Earth shaking more?
The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were hit with a 7.0-magnitude quake on Friday night. News of that tremor, the Haiti quake and now Chile may make it seem as if Earth is becoming ever more active. But in the grand scheme of things, geologists say this is just Mother Nature as usual.
“From our human perspective with our relatively short and incomplete memories and better and better communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent,” Arrowsmith said. “But this is probably not any indication of a global change in earthquake rate of significance.”
Coupled with better communication, as the human population skyrockets and we move into more hazardous regions, we’re going to hear more about the events that do occur, Arrowsmith added.
Thousands rattle the Earth daily — but only a few cause utter devastation.
However, “relative to the 20-year period from the mid-1970s to the mid 1990s, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years,” said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the earth’s lithosphere.” (The lithosphere is the outer solid part of the Earth.)
While the Chilean earthquake wasn’t directly related to Japan’s 7.0-magnitude temblor, the two have some factors in common.
For one, any seismic waves that made their way from Japan to the Chilean coast could play a slight role in ground-shaking.
“It is too far away for any direct triggering, and those distances also make the seismic waves as they would pass by from the Haiti or Japan events pretty small because of attenuation,” Arrowsmith told LiveScience. (Attenuation is the decrease in energy with distance.) “Nevertheless, if the Chilean fault surface were close to failure, those small waves could push it even closer.”
In addition, both regions reside within the Ring of Fire, which is a zone surrounding the Pacific Ocean where the Pacific tectonic plate and other plates dive beneath other slabs of Earth. About 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur along this arc. (The next most seismic region, where just 5 to 6 percent of temblors occur, is the Alpide belt, which extends from the Mediterranean region eastward.)
Colliding plates The Chilean earthquake occurred at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. These rocky slabs are converging at a rate of 3 inches (80 mm) per year, according to the USGS. This huge jolt happened as the Nazca plate moved down and landward below the South American plate. This is called a subduction zone when one plate subducts beneath another.
(Over time, the overriding South American Plate gets lifted up, creating the towering Andes Mountains.)
The plate movement explains why coastal Chile has such a history of powerful earthquakes . Since 1973, 13 temblors of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred there, according to the USGS.
Surfs up here in So Cali. Turns out that we could have 25 foot waves out there from a south easterly direction. Get out your boards dudes. Tsunami Surfing is the all the rage today. Oddly enough, the local media is telling us all not to try and surf the tsunami. Gee . . . Ya think? LOL JD
LOS ANGELES – Southern Californians were urged to avoid going to the beach Saturday after a massive 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile prompted the National Weather Service to warn that a minor tsunami could strike the local coastline.
If a “wave fluctuation” of as much as three free happens today it would probably occur at 12:25 p.m. at Santa Monica, according to the NWS. There is no threat of major damage.
“The Coast Guard strongly encourages waterfront users to take extra precautions in preparation for the possibility of a surge, to include securing vessel mooring arrangements and possible sources of pollution,” stated the U.S. Geological Survey.
The 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck about 200 miles southwest of Santiago, Chile at 10:24 p.m. Los Angeles time.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday that he’s ready to compromise with Republicans if they’re serious about it but that his health care overhaul must go forward.
Obama’s comments in his weekly Internet and radio address, two days after an all-day bipartisan summit across from the White House, were the latest sign that Democrats are girding to try to plow sweeping health care legislation through Congress with no Republicans on board.
Success will require colossal efforts on the part of Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress to round up votes after a year of corrosive debate and a Senate special-election upset that threw the overhaul effort into limbo last month. But Obama and the Democrats reject the piecemeal approach sought by Republicans and have no intention of scrapping their 10-year, $1 trillion bill and starting over as the GOP demands.
“I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care if the other side is serious about coming together to resolve our differences and get this done. But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge,” Obama said.
“The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.
“It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done.”
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Obama’s legislation would insure some 30 million more Americans over 10 years with a new requirement for nearly everyone to carry insurance and would end insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans generally oppose mandates that make everyone get insurance, and although they want people with pre-existing conditions to be able to buy insurance, they would try to address the problem without new requirements on insurance companies.
Obama plans to unveil an updated proposal this coming week, likely on Wednesday, according to press secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs suggested it would include concepts put forward by Republicans at the summit. One Republican who was there, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was contacted Friday by the White House and asked to submit details of suggestions he made on rooting out waste and fraud from the medical system, Coburn’s spokesman said.
Spokesman John Hart said that Coburn views Obama’s legislation as a government takeover and would not be able to support it even if it’s changed to include some of his proposals.
Adding Republican ideas is not likely to win Republican votes because the GOP insists Democrats should start from scratch. But Obama would be able to say that he’d listened to Republicans and attempted to meet them part way, and that could give Democrats political cover to move forward on their own. Doing so would require use of controversial Senate rules that would let Democrats pass legislation with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote supermajority they no longer command.
The approach infuriates Republicans and is opposed by some Democratic moderates because of its partisan nature.
Coburn, the GOP’s weekly address, argued against a Democrats-only bill.
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