NYT:

How so many people could make so much money on a company that has been driven into bankruptcy is a tale of these financial times and an example of a growing phenomenon in corporate America.

You'll never guess who ends up under the bus and without anything they didn't manage to hide in their own mattresses:

The deal was a fiasco for the employees. As part of the buyout, Simmons stopped contributing to its pension plan, since the stock ownership plan shares were meant to pay for the employees’ retirements. But then the bottom fell out of the housing market and Simmons, with its large debt, stumbled.

NYT:

Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.

The report by experts in the International Atomic Energy Agency stresses in its introduction that its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations.

But the report’s conclusions, described by senior European officials, go well beyond the public positions taken by several governments, including the United States.

"CDC does not recommend 'swine flu parties....'"

Old story:

New story:

A. When you're in your right mind.

My response to Natasha on why she's quite right to worry about "Conscience Clause" expansion and other slip-sliding further into a rightwing agenda:

Sadly, progressives have done the opposite of giving themselves leverage on issues like this.

Most are reticent to criticize Obama or "make him do it," and most are content amusing themselves with the foibles of the rump Republican Party (Look, over there -- Sarah Palin! How about that Joe Wilson!)

Go, read Stop Me Before I Vote Again.

To be fair, Melissa Harris-Lacewell doesn't expect that we're actually going to get any ponies. Instead, we should continue to enjoy the benefits that come from expecting to get a pony. Well, not benefits exactly, but there's a meta-pony payoff in there somewhere for continuing to act as if we still believe. Or something.

Natasha:

The health financing reform fight has been no exception to this trend, and I don't know if I'm even capable of conveying how angry it makes me that Obama's signaling he's willing to gut reproductive health coverage in even private insurance plans, and almost certainly to exclude it from any public option, just so he can stake a claim to being the "last" president to deal with health care.

Go, read.

I'm bracing myself to find out how far "progressives" will go in, well, sanctioning a program of draconian sanctions against Iran. Maybe a "strategic" strike or two. Or more?

If The One ratchets it all the way up to full-scale invasion, don't worry. He'll lubricate it, and us, with the Greatest War Speech Evah.

Who knows, the Lightbringer may be satisfied just to starve the Iraqi people and create powerful alliances among countries with resources we covet. That may be 11-dimensional genius enough to seal his legacy. But don't count on it.

Fineman:

Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words "I" and "my." (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.)

Lakoff:

...Hillary talks about "I," I," "I" (the crafter of the policy) and Obama talks about "you" and "we" (the people who demand it and who jointly carry it out).

(via)

A "public option" update from the Museum of Bad Art of the Possible.

I can't put on a cable TV show without seeing someone light up or pop some pills.

Some shows are specifically about drugs: "Nurse Jackie," "Weeds," "Breaking Bad." Others, including "Mad Men" and "Californication," have it as an incidental element.

I don't watch all that much TV (there are about a half-dozen shows I watch regularly, and some with short seasons), but I've been checking out a few other shows of late and am surprised how pervasive drug culture is on the telly. What's up with that?

___

Vastleft's TV list:
* "Mad Men"
* "Dexter"
* "The United States of Tara"
* "Lost"
* "Hung"
* "In Treatment" (will it come back???)

As the flap about Obama's all-points TV broadcast to schoolchildren didn't fascinate me much either way, I missed some of the details.

Apparently, evil conservatives didn't like the sound of children being told to "help the president."

No doubt, if schoolchildren were being directed to "help President Bush," we'd have all thought that was a grand idea.

Carlson:

Let me just say that very clearly it was the Obama campaign that first brought up the race question. It was the Obama people that smeared the Clintons as racists. Bill and Hillary Clinton. They made the case to reporters off the record, including me, that the Clintons were racists.

There's no way this could be true, of course.

When last we left moose and squirrel at Big Insurance Bites Falls, your humble typist was being forcibly switched from a prescription that worked (and had for years) to one that not only didn't, but which gave me a debilitating, long-lasting headache.

The nurse at my doctor's office had also personally found that formulation a FAIL, but my kindly insurance provider decided it was more profitable to move me to the crap meds, so after my unpleasant results with it, I tried to go untreated.

Dear American Citizens:

Although we have the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress, and although single-payer is the obvious clear solution to the problems of health-care cost and access, we have chosen a different path.

The American economy and the fiscal and physical well-being of you and your families are less important to us than currying favor with the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and other health-related profiteers.

Regardless, please continue to vote for us as if your life depended on it.

Thank you,
The Democratic Party

Susie's chat with Howard Dean. Go read... and comment!

It's a really unfair comparison, at least if you think gay marriage is an important right.

So, yesterday I used up my last dose of a medicine that actually worked for a chronic condition. I had used it for years, with no side effects.

My insurance company up and decided that, instead, I should be a guinea pig for medicines that didn't impinge so much on its god-ordained profits.

I had my first dose today and have had a splitting headache for hours. That's odd, because I almost never get headaches. But now, I have a whole new body chemistry! Yay!

Chris Floyd:

Even if you break through somehow, momentarily, and hold up a fragment of the truth, most people have no context for dealing with it. It's like a bolt from the blue, they can't process the information. And so the sea of lies closes over us again, and again, and again.

But I don't know what else we can do, except to keep on telling as much of the truth as we can find, to anyone who will listen: reclaiming reality, fragment by fragment, one person at a time.

It's an endless task -- maybe a hopeless task -- but the alternative is a surrender to the worst elements in our society -- and in ourselves.

It's nice that celebrities took the time to promote health-care reform. But is "a public option" or "the public option" in fact a real plan to deliver the benefits they espouse? That would be nice to know, if it's not too much trouble.

(If you're having trouble viewing the video, click here).   Read more…

It's a good question.

Another good one is, who's running progressive activism? And how's their driving?

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

From the beginning of Western thought, religion and morality have been closely intertwined.

Via No Blood for Hubris:

Jessica Banks, 65 was the pastor of a small church in Riverside County, California and adopted five girls about five years ago. She was convicted in July of 16 felonies for child abuse, and this week was sentenced to 36 years and 8 months in prison, along with two consecutive terms of 15 years to life.

In comments at C&L:

What IS "The Public Option"?

Hasn't anyone noticed that not one single person has been able to verbalize exactly what it is?

Who would be eligible for it?
How much would it cost?
How would the costs be decided? What criteria?
Would there be age discrimination? Discrimination for pre-existing conditions?
What would be covered?
If you think it's a better deal can you dump your private insurance and join?
What are the restrictions?
And add about another hundred or so pertinent questions regarding "The Public Option".