Barack Obama wins healthcare battle in tight vote

NEWS
Barack Obama wins healthcare battle in tight vote
Monday, March 22, 2010

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to pass a landmark healthcare reform bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

The bill was passed by 219 votes to 212, with no Republican backing, after hours of fierce argument and debate.

It extends coverage to 32 million more Americans, and marks the biggest change to the US healthcare system in decades.

“We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things,” Mr Obama said in remarks after the vote.

“This legislation will not fix everything that ails our healthcare system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction,” he said.

Mr Obama is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly.

But a new challenge is expected in the Senate, where Democrats hope amendments to the bill will be enacted by a simple majority. Republicans say the move is unconstitutional and plan to stop it.

We will be joining those who established Social Security, Medicare and now, tonight, healthcare for all Americans.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Historic vote
He has been tough and tenacious – some might say stubborn – in pushing this legislation after so much opposition and so many setbacks, our correspondent says.
This is the most significant victory for the president since he took office 14 months ago.
When the vote count hit the magic number of 216 – the minimum needed to pass the bill – Democrats hugged and cheered in celebration and chanted: “Yes we can!”

Under the legislation, health insurance will be extended to nearly all Americans, new taxes imposed on the wealthy, and restrictive insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions will be outlawed.

However, our correspondent says it has become a rallying point for Republicans, who are convinced the American people do not want the changes and that it will be a vote winner for them come the mid-term elections in November.

They say the measures are unaffordable and represent a government takeover of the health industry.

“We have failed to listen to America,” said Republican party leader John Boehner.

Speaking moments before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the health care reform honoured the nation’s traditions.

“We will be joining those who established Social Security, Medicare and now, tonight, healthcare for all Americans,” she said, referring to the government’s pension program and health insurance for the elderly established nearly 50 years ago.

Although Democrats pushed the measure through with three votes to spare, 34 members joined Republicans in voting against the bill, worried about paying a political price in November.

In a last-minute move designed to win the support of a bloc of anti-abortion lawmakers, Mr Obama earlier on Sunday announced plans to issue an executive order assuring that healthcare reform will not change the restrictions barring federal money for abortion.

Next steps
The bill’s final approval represented a stunning turnaround from January, when it was considered dead after Democrats lost their 60-seaty majority in the Senate, which is required to defeat a filibuster.

To avoid a second Senate vote, the House also approved on Sunday evening a package of reconciliation “fixes” – agreed beforehand between House and Senate Democrats and the White House – amending the bill that senators adopted in December.

The president is expected to sign the House-passed Senate bill as early as Tuesday, after which it will be officially enacted into law. However, it will contain some very unpopular measures that Democratic senators have agreed to amend.

The Senate will be able to make the required changes in a separate bill using a procedure known as reconciliation, which allows budget provisions to be approved with 51 votes – rather than the 60 needed to overcome blocking tactics.

The Republicans say they will seek to repeal the measure, challenge its constitutionality and co-ordinate efforts in state legislatures to block its implementation.

But the president has signalled he will fight back.

The White House plans to launch a campaign this week to persuade sceptical Americans that the reforms offer immediate benefits to them and represent the most significant effort to reduce the federal deficit since the 1990s.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the healthcare bill will cut the federal deficit by $138bn over 10 years.

The non-partisan body said last week that the legislation would cost about $940bn over the same period.

The reforms will increase insurance coverage through tax credits for the middle class and an expansion of Medicaid for the poor.

They represent the biggest change in the US healthcare system since the creation in the 1960s of Medicare, the government-run scheme for those aged 65 or over.

[Via http://dominicstoughton.wordpress.com]

HAPPY HEALTHCARE, USA

After decades of debate, attempts, and failures, real Health Care Reform has finally come to America with the passage of HR3590. Obama has brought real change to America.

Final vote: Yay - 219, Nay - 212 PASS!!!

I have followed the debate closely over the past year and have written several posts which can help you to understand the content, context, and importance of this bill: check them out here.

Let’s all hope that Rush Limbaugh now makes good on his pledge to leave the country if this legislation passes:

Good night and good luck!

[Via http://freshmandenial.wordpress.com]

Wind and Dust and Real Wild West

Two days in the desert—driving, hot wind roaring, through the pebbles and boulders, palm groves and dusty towns, the strange angles of the Joshua trees, arching up towards something, a sky as pale as eyes. It’s not hard to imagine infinity in the desert, that’s it’s all still at the bottom of some great prehistoric sea, that the sky were the lid of the sea and we were all swimming through it, rattling highway through it—the wind, waves; the dust, sand; the crunch under your sneakers some kind of ancient asking.

I arched over the hills, my tired car chugging, and arrived in Joshua Tree, went teeth-chattering down an unpaved road that dead-ended at open lot of strange, scavenged art. I’d read about the Noah Purifoy Foundation on Trazzler, and it immediately rose to the top on my list of things to do .

An LA artist that moved to the desert for more space and peace, Noah Purifoy erected whimsical sculptures out of found and salvaged materials—toilets, old vacuum cleaners, scrapped tin. During the 60s he’d directed the Watts Towers Art Center, and you can definitely see the influence of Simon Rodia—though Purifoy’s creations are more folksy, more political, less abstract. In fact, one of the most powerful pieces in the wind-swept lot was a piece made from materials found after the Watts Riots. To take a tragic, violent event, to sift through its remains and piece them together to create something new, something beautiful—this seems to be what Noah Purifoy was all about.

Admission to the Noah Purifoy Foundation is free; there’s a couple pamphlets at the entrance that guide you through your wanderings. There were only a couple other people there, and I hadn’t read about the place anywhere else. Except that, the next day, I saw on Twitter that it’d been featured in the New York Times. So much for having the edge.

Then it was off into the park itself. You hear a lot about the strange spiritual power of Joshua Tree, and I gotta say, they aren’t exaggerating. The terrain was other-worldly, to say the least. The tumble of boulders looked as though they’d been piled up by a toddler’s hand. The arms of the Joshua trees twisted and reached, fists full of beige spring flowers.  The shrubs had a slight purplish haze, like an old woman’s hair, and the air was full with a charged silence, the sound of wind.

I of course made a beeline to the site of Gram Parson’s impromptu cremation, something of a pilgrimage site for fans and aficionados of the bizarre. I drove out to Cap Rock and walked slowly around the massive formation, searching for the tributes and messages written on the rock that would signal the spot. And you know, I have to say, sitting there, the whole thing seemed much less odd. Well, the bit about stealing the body and having it actually burned on the spot is still a bit far-fetched, but being there—listening to the wind and watching the lizards dart—it seemed less like some kind of opiate-inspired fit of fancifulness, and more like an honest yearning to become a part of the place. It felt like somewhere, very far beneath the surface of it all, those plutonic intrusions that caused the rock formations were still boiling, still shooting up through the crust of the earth, and it didn’t seem so strange to want to become a part of it—to become smoke, twisting; dust, dancing; and at last the wind.

Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold.

John Fante, “Ask the Dust”

The next day it was off find the Wild West. I’d been stoked about Pioneertown, for nothing more than the kitsch factor. An old movie and TV set from the 40s, my trip to Pioneertown seemed ill-fated from the beginning. The Pionnertown Motel suddenly “closed indefinitely” the week before I left, and Harriet and Pappy’s Palace, billed as the best honky tonk west of the Mississippi, was closed the night I wanted to go boogie down. So I headed out in the morning and I have to say, if it would have been monumentally disappointing if Ice Cube hadn’t been there, in a poncho and a sombrero hat, filming a new video.

I headed back on the highway, through squat, peopleless towns of gas stations and boarded-up buildings. Did you know they grow dates in the California desert? I didn’t. Or that a date milkshake is god-damn delicious?

I made it to Niland, a windy little town with a couple shops, a no-name gas station and a stretch of trailers. There were two big sights there that inspired me to go 2 1/2 hours out of my way: Salvation Mountain and Slab City—the real, modern-day Wild West. It’s fitting that most people know about these places, if at all, from the movie and book Into The Wild, because they capture the kind of not-for-profit weirdness that can only take place in California.

Salvation Mountain is Leonard Knight’s neon, latex-paint monument to God. Really. Radioactively bright, the art installation is covered in biblical passages, odes to God, and topped with a cross. The old dude came out to the desert in 1985, shortly after he was saved by Jesus, and began building the tribute, fueled by some kind of insane passion and other-realm vision.

Leonard was there that day, as he is most. Weathered, red-skinned and still mostly coherent, Leonard showed a small group of us around, spouting his message of God’s love and keeping it simple. He had a 10th grade education, he told us, and was one of the dumbest creatures on Earth, but because he’d repented, God had enabled him to build Salvation Mountain. He didn’t do it for money, he didn’t do it for fame—he did it spread the message.

His paint-stained pants were hitched up high, one of the legs tucked into his sock. The Velcro straps of his stained sneakers flapped, and he’d missed a button on his shirt. Three long hairs grew out of the top of his nose; he had a cold sore and one long thumb nail. He looked like a man that had become the desert, was the desert. He gave us each a handful of postcards and asked us to distribute them. He wanted nothing in return, just for us to spread the word. He repeated “keep it simple” like a mantra.

A quarter-mile down the road was the legendary RV squatter encampment of Slab City—”the last free place,” the sign read. Pebbly and stark and covered with trailers, Slab City is a piece of land no one wants. The government bulldozed a military base that was there in the mid-40s, leaving nothing but concrete slabs, covering the ground like graves. Word got out in the squatter community, and it became a wintering place for “snow birds.” There’s no water, no bathrooms—nothing, again, but wind and dust.

There were a number of “yard sales”—tables and blankets were random stuff was displayed, on sale for passer-throughs like myself. I pulled over to one and chatted with the people there, a desert-skinned man with a scabby elbow on a bicycle, and a sun-visored woman with obese ankles and a gap where a tooth once was. I asked them about life in Slab City, about the community and why they were there.

“There’s no rules here,” they told me. “No one bothers you, and you can do whatever you want.” They let the statement linger, and I didn’t ask what “whatever” was. As long as you were sociable with your neighbors and didn’t steal, anything went.

They told me how they easily lived on $200 a month in government assistance and food stamps, how people helped each other without payment or reward, how there were weekly live music shows and how the cops wouldn’t come out there (since Slabbers provide all the income for the nearby town Niland, they claimed). They talked about local goings-on, about drunk neighbors who’d stabbed each other and a dog that had recently died, a new church that had opened and was going to start giving out food on Sundays. Last year a trailer had burned; there was nothing to do but watch it blaze in the night.

“By April 1,” the guy told me, “everyone will be gone.”

“Where do they go?”

He shrugged. “Oregon. Canada. There’s not many free places left, places like this.”

He looked around the shrubs and dirt, squinted under the heavy sun—a place that had etched itself onto his skin, his sharp blue eyes. This was no OK Corral; this was the realeast Wild West I’d ever seen.

[Via http://lonelygirltravels.com]

What's in a name

Another entry in the “US politics is deranged” file – Fox News interrogating Obama about what procedural method the Democrats might use to get a straight vote on the healthcare bill:

“Deem and Pass” sounds so much more sinister when you pronounce it “Demon Pass” and introduce it as “the Slaughter Rule”, doesn’t it?

What next? For the remainder of the Obama Administration, will they start calling the power of the President to veto legislation the “Obama Skullf*cks Your Grandmother Rule”?

[Via http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com]

Warfare between Christ and Islam

Stand for truth in politics, law, education, media, and culture. However, continue to rest in the works of Jesus Christ. “It is finished.” Indeed, the state of this world distresses us, and we must pray and work in the Spirit against the continuous stream of new versions of the old lie; however, let us not be tempted to think that this is a war against Christians and Muslims.

Muslims are victims of the lie of Islam. Islam shall be defeated by the weaponry of our Lord; pitting foolish Muslim weapons (demographics, politics, war, terrorism, lies, protests) against Muslims will not defeat Islam. The living God is the Powerful. We will not send out a fat Goliath with a flashy costume to impress or intimidate men. We will be weak, we will have faith, and we will be strong in the Lord.

Even as the spirit of Islam conquers Europe and invades North America, it is rotting from the inside-out. Souls in the very heart of Dar al-Islam are crying out for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nobody can stop the work of our Lord. When they say Christianity is dying, it is a sure sign that it is just beginning.

A Muslim’s greatest shame is that a tiny nation called Israel remains in the middle of Islam’s headquarters. Heavy militant action since 1948 has not removed this thorn that even stuck the gut of prophet Muhammad until his death, even though hungry dogs surround Israel on all borders. This shame cuts to the core, not only of Muslim politics, but also of their personal service to their dead god. This question haunts them: “What have I done wrong, Allah, that this stain will not be removed?”

Even as the strong-man Islam cannot wipe out the puny nation of Israel, so much more shall he not wipe out the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He cannot touch it; God’s will forbids it. Christ’s kingdom is not even of this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, where our King is preparing a place for us.

Let us show love to our Muslim neighbors. Let them see our weakness, for weak we are. But just as the Philistines saw in young David, they will also see that the God of Israel is the living God. Our strength is in the Most High. The Jew, the Muslim, and the Arminian Christian struggle and fuss to please the God of Abraham, but they altogether disgust Him. No dead man can work from his filthy heart to impress God.

[Via http://looseassociations.wordpress.com]

Obama Sides with RIAA, MPAA; Backs ACTA

From: OS News

And thus, our true colours reveal. Since Obama was the young newcomer, technically savvy, many of us were hoping that he might support patent and/or copyright reform. In case our story earlier on this subject didn’t already tip you off, this certainly will: Obama has sided squarely with the RIAA/MPAA lobby, and backs ACTA. No copyright and/or patent reform for you, American citizens!

Obama made the remarks in a speech at the Export-Import Bank’s annual conference in Washington.

“We’re going to aggressively protect our intellectual property,” Obama said in his speech, “Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the
American people [...] It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.”

“There’s nothing wrong with other people using our technologies, we welcome it,” Obama continued, “We just want to make sure that it’s licensed and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately. That’s why the [US Trade Representative] is using the full arsenal of tools available to crack down on practices that blatantly harm our businesses, and that includes negotiating proper protections and enforcing our existing agreements, and moving forward on new agreements, including the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.”

It seems that the RIAA, MPAA, and similar organisations have been successful in lobbying the US administration into supporting their cause. This means that the US government will continue to (financially) support an industry that is simply outdated, and has failed to adapt to the changing market – which seems remarkably anti-capitalistic and anti-free market, even for a Democratic president.

Full Article

[Via http://noriots.com]

Affirmative Action part 2 of 7693

There is nothing that winds me up more than affirmative action. In Australia it’s a problem, but nowhere near the level that it is in America where they have affirmative action doctors. God help me if I ever get sick there. However, we have a situation at the Melbourne Fire Brigade (MFB) that desperately needs to be nipped in the bud:

The MFB recently applied for an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to give preference in pre-training to indigenous people and ethnic minorities, while the gender plan was trying to boost the number of women firefighters.

Thankfully, the backlash has been significant. And guess what, the main opponents for this moronic plan are the same people that these arseholes are claiming to help.

The Lefty Age reports that:

NEARLY half the women firefighters at the Metropolitan Fire Brigade have publicly rejected claims of a ”closed culture” and say setting diversity targets is ”patronising and forever taints applicants”.

Can we hear that again? Can I underline it, bold it, highlight it, etc. etc. without appearing to labour the point?

”patronising and forever taints applicants”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. This is the evil, yes EVIL, that is affirmative action. When you give a group a preference for employment that trumps merit, you forever doom that group to be looked down upon. This is because you have undermined them. Before, their employment meant that they had met the standard, that they were qualified to deal with the real life demands of the job, that they were competitive and that they deserve to be there. It means that the people they work with view them as equals – they are good enough.

The moment you change that, you instantly destroy all the hard work of the people of that group. Suddenly, they don’t deserve to be there. Future employees of that group may not deserve to be there. They might, because they are hard working and qualified for the job, but they also might not, because there is a short cut available to them. And the reality is that the question mark is how they will be viewed forever.

If you want to help, do it at the source. I don’t have a problem with proactive help to those who were disadvantaged from the moment they were born. But reactive “help” at the point of employment is fucked. It is patronising and it leads to resentment.

If a minority goes for a job who is qualified and hard working, and if they are then denied the job on the basis of their gender, country of birth, or their race, I will be the first to complain. That simply isn’t fair and it goes against the principles of Equal Opportunity. But if you favour a person over others on the basis of their country of birth, gender, or race, then you are basically saying to everyone else who belongs to that group that you can’t cut it… that you are so worthless that the only way you can contribute to society is by hand outs.

That’s bullshit, and it is contrary to everything I believe in.

We need to stop this insanity before it spreads.

[Via http://jesscon.wordpress.com]