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Give the people what they want.
A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. ... access to affordable health care is at the top of the public's domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values.
As we learned from both our Senate and House last week, in the United States we must never "attack the honor and integrity . . . of members of the United States Armed Forces." All good patriots from both parties agree on this. That is why I was so shocked and outraged -- and more than a little upset -- when I went to FoxNews.com this morning and saw this.
The Raw Story and Keith Olbermann.
These people aren't gonna get away with this. I'm gonna go right where they live. Every corrupt media person in this country is on notice right now. I'm coming after you. I'm gonna hunt you down. And I mean it. Smear stops here. You're all on notice out there. I'm comin' for ya.--Bill O'Reilly, The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly
I've been telling friends for awhile that my plan for Iraq would replace military bases with hospitals defended by the U.S. military. Spend the capital on real care for Iraqis and we will definitely win over the hearts and minds of the people.
Looks like Thomas Friendman likes this idea for Guantanamo Bay.
You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.
Consider the evidence: Since the Kyoto agreement, many of the 36 industrialized countries that committed to reducing emissions are not on track to meet even minimal goals — since 2000, their emissions have gone up, not down. And both China and India are building a slew of coal-burning plants as their economies explode. "If China burns all the coal that it is set to burn between now and 2050," Shellenberger says, "we are super-deeply fucked."Even if every American SUV owner were to buy a hybrid tomorrow, that wouldn't come close to offsetting the environmental damage being perpetrated around the globe. In fact, all the standards, cap-and-trade limits, and emission reductions that environmentalists have been pushing for may slow, but will never reverse, global warming. And that is Nordhaus and Shellenberger's inconvenient truth. "There is simply no way we can achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions," they write in their introduction, "without creating breakthrough technologies that do not pollute.
We are updated on a daily basis about the ever mounting human cost of the Iraq war, but even the US military is now starting to ask questions about how much oil the "war over oil" is consuming. Last year, Major General Richard Zilmer sent the Pentagon a "priority one" request from Iraq for "a self-sustainable energy solution" that would include "solar panels and wind turbines". The US military's carbon footprint was not his concern - rather, that "by reducing the need for [petrol] at our outlying bases, we can decrease the frequency of logistics convoys on the road, thereby reducing the danger to our marines, soldiers, and sailors".Amory Lovins, the world-renowned energy consultant, agrees that the US military has a "fat fuel-logistics tail" and believes that this is a "very teachable moment for the military" on reducing its immense fossil fuel consumption.
And it is indeed immense: according to a report in Energy Bulletin earlier this year, the Pentagon is the single largest consumer of oil in the world. If the Pentagon was a country, it would be the 36th biggest consumer of oil. The US military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day, but this total only includes "vehicle transport and facility maintenance". What about the 130,000 US contractors in Iraq rebuilding the ruined infrastructure? (Lovins estimates that about a third of the military's oil is used to run generators, the vast majority of which power air-conditioning units.) And compared with the second world war, the military in Iraq and Afghanistan is using 16 times more fuel per soldier, according to a Pentagon report published this year.
Michael C. Jensen was an early inventor of bigger-than-life compensation packages for corporate chief executives, and nearly 20 years later, he still believes passionately in the concept of “pay for performance” that he championed.But along the way more than a few things went wrong, Mr. Jensen acknowledges, and now he is trying to find ways to fix the flaws that, in his evolving view, often allow mediocre chief executives — even outright failures — to become fabulously rich...
Mr. Jensen and Mr. Murphy say they abhor [huge non-performing CEO] payoffs. In his research, Mr. Jensen found that in 44 percent of all contracts for chief executives, even those convicted of fraud or embezzlement cannot be fired without a severance payment. In 94 percent of the contracts, he said, they cannot be fired for unsatisfactory work without a big severance package.
An attempt to grab power away from California has failed.
Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California's 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday's print editions, The Times' Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.
