You should do a show on Nancy Pelosi, Dick Cheney, and the CIA. Have Ignatius on with someone to balance him out on the Pelosi side. That story needs to be duked out.

If a white guy had said that wise white guys make better decisions that wise latinas because of their life experience would he have skated through his confirmation hearing? Heck, would he have been nominated? Or would every liberal hate-group in G-d’s creation have been calling for a high-tech lynching. I think we all know what would have happened.

I like the article by Doyle McManus, “The End of Obabamania”. Maybe the rest of the press corps will stop giving Obama preferential treatment and hold him more accountable.

Ahh yes the sweet smell of malice in the morning.

You right wing hacks need to find some more intellectual ways of making your points. Jeff your taking Sotomayor’s statements completly out of context to a speech she gave to a group of Latino students. If you read the whole speech, which you obviously did not, then you would have found out that all this talk of the “wise Latino” is a load of bunk. Of course you wont, because you have already made up your mind and for all I know take your talking points from the likes of Glen Beck and Limbaugh. Which seems to be the case as you sound as if your just parroting what these rubes say. How original.

not like any republicans say anything racist and still step down.

wait they do

Southern Congressman Calls Obama ‘Uppity’

Sen. Barack Obama has weathered his share of racially insensitive remarks over the past several months, but when a Georgia congressman referred to him and his wife as “uppity” last week it was a throwback to whole different era.

or
A Republican staffer for a Tennessee state senator emailed a block of paintings and photographs of U.S. presidents. The white presidents were shown in their actual likenesses–Obama was depicted as a disembodied cartoon set of eyes–get it?–he’s a “spook“.

or
A Republican newsletter in California showed candidate Obama surrounded by fried chicken, watermelon, and food stamps.
or
the boy comment about obama by another congressman

or the obama monkey at some of the republican rallies

or dont forget Cpac and one of there main speakers rush L.

of course by jeff standards would require these congressman should step down yet he and the rest are still there.

i think its not about Sotomayor comment but the republican party cant be openly racist anymore and has to code word it or fine ways to be it indirectly and they get royally pissed since they have to do it this way.

Fresh air with robin young had a great show yesterday about goldman sachs, can your guess talk about the payout goldman, citi and most the big banks got from AIG at 100 percent something like a 60percent profit, and than borrowing money from the gov at nearly zero rate. Or how Goldman is keeping all the profit and paying out there massive bonus, along with these banks buying back warrants so the government cant make profits from there success?

thanks,

fyi Sotomayor explain her comment (9 times in one day) just as those republican congressman tried to do.

For Karen – a Kaiser Health survey found increasing taxes on incomes of 250K was supported by 68 percent of Americans to pay for health care; could this be Obama’s solution to avoid taxing some employer-provided health benefits?

Kaiser link http://tinyurl.com/mos6h9

Edit 250K+ duh

Nate Silver’s take http://tinyurl.com/l3kgj2

At least the media has moved beyond the Jackson story.

Perfect – The Put calling the kettle hack…

Sotomayor didn’t give a single definitive answer to any question during her confirmation. Obviously honesty is not a requirement for being on the Supreme Court anymore.

The money that Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions may not reflect reality, but just an accounting trick, that unfortunately the Obama admin allowed.
It isn’t completely real, and they’re earning based on such huge losses from other companies.

As much as I want to be excited, it makes me nervous, because its business as usual. This is unsustainable.

Joe do your homework. Not one Supreme court nominee since Bork has answered a question. It’s all just political theater.

You know I don’t have any problems with your ideology even though I don’t agree with them. People are allowed to have their own political ideologies. What I object too is the lack of incite into the subjects you comment on and the constant use of parroted right wing sound bites.

The last caller is WAY off. The only thing people with obscene bonuses will ‘buy’ is more stock investments. As the guest noted, the people who will buy things are those living day to day.

Everyone should read Matt Taibbi’s article
The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression – and they’re about to do it again

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine

Goldman Sachs are no better then Enron, they have gamed the system and now control our government.

On health care, nothing less then single payer will do.
Unless we take the profit margin of the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations out of the picture noting is going to change. Obama’s plan and the house bill are nothing more then band aids. They are not dealing with the real issue, the INSURANCE CORPORATIONS!

Let’s learn something we did not know:

Does anybody here have any opinion or theory as to why the Suicide Bombers in Jakarta has hit J.W. Marriott simultaniously.

Wouldn’t they have caused more damage and perhaps more killings if they did the two bombings 3-4 weeks apart?

Are they stupid?

Good point BHA, I had to laugh thinking of Reagan’s trickle-down voodoo from the 80’s. Recycling at its’ best.

I am getting tired of hearing Senate Republicans lecture Judge Sotomayor about objectivity and neutrality. She obviously has strived to be impartial and objective throughout her career. Her comments have simply acknowledged that objectivity is an ideal that no judge can live up to all of the time. All judges can be influenced by their personal biases, and the first step to overcoming one’s biases is to admit that they exist. White males (of which I am one) like to imagine that we are born impartial, but we have many prejudices that we either aren’t aware of or don’t like to admit to. A woman from a bi-cultural background (that is, a member of a cultural minority who also functions in the mainstream culture) is likely to have much greater self-awareness about her own beliefs and biases, and therefore in a better position to rise above them.

Twe different points:

1. What trickles down from the very well-to-do can be a meagre as a small leak from a sewer pipe. This is not to say that categorically all people of wealth are as nasty as sewage– far from it, but the idea of trickle-down is about as welcome as the trickle from a sewer pipe leak.

2. A few decades ago, the authors James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg were on a book tour; their book, based iirc on multi-millennial knowledge of history, predicted a real horror of a world-wide depression. There are those who say that we have kicked the economic can down the road for about five years or so, and are headed for much worse trouble. Let’s hope this is not to be our future.

Incidentally, it’s interesting to read several comments and see that spelling in them (such as “then” for “than” and vice versa) is consensus-misspelling, a fork in our written language that is coming to amount to a nascent dialect.

Jack, Bill Thomas is vice-chair of the ‘Pecora’ committee

NYT 7/16:
“The vice chairman of the panel, which has 10 members, will be Bill Thomas, the former Republican representative from California who led the Ways and Means Committee, who was selected by Republican leaders.”

Goldman Sachs are no better than Enron, they have gamed the system and now control our government.

On health care, nothing less than single payer will do.
Unless we take the profit margin of the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations out of the picture noting is going to change. Obama’s plan and the house bill are nothing mere band-aids. They are not dealing with the real issue, the INSURANCE CORPORATIONS!

Feel better Nicholas.

Tried calling……….On Obama’s comments at the NAACP dinner. We as a country and as African-Americans in particular have the capacity to hold two points at the same time. It reminds us of what historically a number of Black spokespersons have said, like Arthur Ash when he highlighted the odds of being a Black youth from “the ghetto” becoming a lawyer or physician vs the odds of becoming an NBA or NFL player which was ten to a hundred fold greater. Just because there may be and certainly sometimes is a climate or backdrop of discrimination and bias…one still has to step up to the plate with “your best game”, to be more than qualified and ready. Is it always fair, of course not; but to get ahead, to prevail, that’s what one has to do. Certainly in my family, that has been the pattern. My great-great grandparents were both born into slavery and I doubt that they could have imagined their grandson graduating from medical school in 1917 or a great-great grand-daughter being appointed by three different US Presidents. Education, working and fighting the same discrimination and never giving up-make the difference. I know it will NOT be the outcome for everyone BUT sitting back and being defeated by the same circumstances, NEVER works. We must BOTH fight the conditions AND be personally prepared, whether it is Harvard or the local community college…as the saying goes, many a man (or woman) with no family tree has had to “branch” out for themselves. Peace

Health care is for most Americans the single issue that is causing so much stress other than losing a job, which is related.

I keep hearing this nonsense about how do we pay for it.

Well I’m paying for it now. We, my wife and I, pay over $4000 per year for health insurance. HMO Blue rations our health care all the time. They recently informed my wife that they only cover one knee when she needed physical therapy. Not only that they also informed her that of the twelve sessions that the doctor prescribed they would only co-pay for eight.

Most Americans are paying through the nose for insurance that does not pay for health care. We are paying the insurance companies who in turn are dictating how we get health care. It’s obvious to me that they need to be taken out of the picture, period. We pay billions into a dysfunctional system that already rations health care.

Take the money we all pay put it into a non-profit health care system. Seems pretty simple too me.

All the rest of the chatter is just that, chatter and BS.
It’s all a smoke screen to keep the insurance corporations in the game.

Rather then taxing people who make more than $350k get rid of the insurance corporations instead.

>>>Does anybody here have any opinion or theory as to why the Suicide Bombers in Jakarta has hit J.W. Marriott simultaniously. <<<

Looks like nobody wants to think about "inconvenient" topics. Or, we are brain-lazy.

Oh I read it and I listened to all three days of testimony and I never listen to radio other than NPR. But if throwing insults and evading my question is the best you can do, then I guess I know what your answer is.

$4,000 per year is nothing. If you were paying more, maybe the other knee would be covered. If we all paid more, more would be covered. Rationing healthcare is the only way to control health costs. Eliminate insurance cos. and it’ll be the gov. that does it. You need to think more than one move ahead. Non-profit, what a joke! I work for a not-for-profit (a c4), all that means is that we have a charitable purpose and pay out all we take in. Our salaries are completely in-line with the private sector. You’ll save very little going non-profit and you risk taking incentive away to innovate and attract the best and brightest.

Taxing those who make more than $350K is only the beginning, expect this level to come down significantly.

Why is that not one person in the media is talking about the truth of our health care mess, except Bill Moyers show last week.

The congressional bill is clearly a sell out.
This is not democracy at work, it’s special interest.

Pharma getting what they want
-50 Million new insurance customers (forced by law).
-Four years for insurance and pharma to have their paid-for congress disembowel the bill, piece by piece, quietly. (And four more years of people dying)
-Income contingent ‘Public Option’, with doctors free not to accept those patients. (AMA’s very happy about that one)

The health care system makes up 16%+ of our economy. I would hardly call the advocacy of those involved in the system a special interest. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, nurse practioners, chemists, biologists, bioethicists, accountants, executives, executive assistants, physical therapists, psychologists, medical waste disposers, cafeteria workers, ad agencies, patients and etc, all have a stake in this system and have every right to add input into how it should be reformed.

Jeff if you read her full speech then how is it you can come to your absurd conclusions. I’m not insulting you, I’m asking you think before you write what amounts to repeated sound bites. What Sotomayor said about being a Latino is not an issue, her jurisprudence is. She has been vetted and has passed with flying colors.

Interesting, so we should pay more than $4000+ a year to get the other knee covered. Give me a break. This is your solution to health care, people should just pay more premiums. That’s a pile of cow dung. The insurance industry is only interested in profits, they spend close to 50% of what we pay in premiums on executive compensation advertising and the shareholders. We the costumers are not considered at all. Unless it’s to drop us to save the bottom line.

I have lived in Great Britain and I had no problems with the national health care system they have there. Compared to what the French have it’s not as good. Compared to what I have here it’s a gold standard.

Our market-based system is broken. Name one country that has copied or is planning on using our market based system as a model. You can’t find any because our system is so absurd.

More than 70% of Americans want real reform, real reform means a public option. If Obama and the democrat’s can’t deliver this they will be voted out of office and he will have one term. Of course that means we go back to the republican party which is the party of “NO”. Things will get worse, maybe by then I’ll learn French well enough to emigrate.

I laughed out loud at the second hour.
Our government is just one big all encompassing infomercial.

Flipping channels the other night I saw a show on CNN or all places, where actor Henry Gibson has reprised his “Nashville” role as Haven Hamilton, the sequined-suit-wearing Grand Ole Opry performer with political ambitions, playing a meat-headed, mush-mouthed Republican Senator with a predelicion for crack-cocaine.

Got to love America, where a failed judicial candidate is the point person on attacking a candidate for the highest court, by condemning her speeches, not her judicial decisions. This ‘reality’ is truly a situation the late Robert Altman would have loved to skewer!

What Americans want is a healthcare system that costs less provides more and doesn’t require them to make any sacrifices. That is a dream.

England and Canada have much higher tax rates and patients can wait for months for procedures.

French hospital workers, doctors and nurses have all gone on strike in the last 3 years.

Goldman et al are making money because they can borrow money at rates that are virtually 0% because the Fed wants to stimulate economic activity. What do their trading earnings have to do with economic activity.

They also got $16 billion from the government rescue of AIG

Never, ever tell me again that the free market is efficient, attractive or desirable.

RE: Wall ST Bonuses – The needed reforms are nowhere to be seen. Wall ST + Pharma -Insurance companies have used their DLC friends to tie Congress in knots.

The caller who put her faith in “trickle down economics” was a howl. Despite GOP propaganda, not even the Cato Institute could prove that any has made it all the way down. We need to move to “spending up economic.” When the poor, disabled & elderly have extra $$ to pay for food, Rx drugs, MS appts, rent & other necessities. The Wall ST bonuses will just recycle as more insider “investments.”

We need Universal Single Payer [Enhanced Medicare for All] so that we aren’t spending $1 T more than we nned. There are also public health reasons that USP can address that are not in our current “anti-system” insurance giveaways.

It’s time to stop business as usual on Wall ST & in the Hartford insurance cabal. Let Congress & POTUS know that is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

What Americans want is a healthcare system that costs less provides more and doesn’t require them to make any sacrifices. That is a dream.

I want a health care system that is not going to make CEO’s and stockholders rich. I also don’t want to go bankrupt from having a serious illness, is too much to ask for?

England and Canada have much higher tax rates and patients can wait for months for procedures.

They get more their money. Your second statement is not based on any real facts. It is a typical scare tactic used by those who oppose doing away with our arcane system. I use to live in Great Britain and never had to wait at all to see a doctor. Our doctor made house calls at any hour of the night.

My ex’s mother in law had a rare liver disease; if she had been in this country she would have been denied coverage and would have died. Her only delay was the time to took to find a liver that matched. She passed away recently but her life was a full one and had she not received the transplant she would have died 18 years ago.

French hospital workers, doctors and nurses have all gone on strike in the last 3 years.

The French still are the most satisfied people of any of the industrial nations with their health care system which is one of the best in the world even with the strikes. Go figure.

In the past 3 years how many people have been denied care by their insurance companies?

In the past 3 years how many people have filed for bankruptcy due to medical bills?

In the past 3 years how many people have lost their jobs and coverage?

In the past 3 years how many people how many people have been ripped off by the health insurance companies that take their money but have such huge deductibles that it makes the insurance worthless?

In the past 3 years how many senior citizens have to choose between medication and eating?

In the past 3 years how many people have to wait months to see a specialist? Then be denied the care the specialist prescribes.

In the past 3 years how many people how many people are denied coverage after they are found to have a serious illness such as cancer. The most common way this is done is the insurance companies look at every document you ever made out to prove you lied about that cancer.
Or they will deny treatment by calling it “experimental”.

In the past 3 years how many people can say they are satisfied with this market-based system?

Let’s try this again with corrections, it was my mother in law. Sorry it’s late…

What Americans want is a health care system that costs less provides more and doesn’t require them to make any sacrifices. That is a dream.

I want a health care system that is not going to make CEO’s and stockholders rich. I also don’t want to go bankrupt from having a serious illness, is this too much to ask for?

England and Canada have much higher tax rates and patients can wait for months for procedures.

They get more for their money. Your second statement is not based on any real facts. It is a typical scare tactic used by those who oppose doing away with our arcane system. I use to live in Great Britain and never had to wait to see a doctor. Our doctor made house calls at any hour of the night.

My ex’s mother had a rare liver disease; if she had been in this country she would have been denied coverage and would have died due to her preexisting condition. Her only delay was the time to took to find a liver that matched. She passed away recently but her life was a full one and had she not received the transplant she would have died 18 years ago.

French hospital workers, doctors and nurses have all gone on strike in the last 3 years.

The French still are the most satisfied people of any of the industrial nations with their health care system which is one of the best in the world even with the strikes. Go figure.

In the past 3 years how many people have been denied care by their insurance companies?

In the past 3 years how many people have filed for bankruptcy due to medical bills?

In the past 3 years how many people have lost their jobs and coverage?

In the past 3 years how many people how many people have been ripped off by the health insurance companies that take their money but have such huge deductibles that it makes the insurance worthless?

In the past 3 years how many senior citizens have to choose between medication and eating?

In the past 3 years how many people have to wait months to see a specialist? Then be denied the care the specialist prescribes.

In the past 3 years how many people how many people are denied coverage after they are found to have a serious illness such as cancer. The most common way this is done is the insurance companies look at every document you ever made out to prove you lied about that cancer.
Or they will deny treatment by calling it “experimental”.

In the past 3 years how many people can say they are satisfied with this market-based system?

I agree totally with Jack Beatty’s politics!