"...Later, Sonny Hostin raises the really relevant point:
Yes, why aren't Repubs talking about that?The issue here is that everybody knows that waterboarding is torture. And that was an approved policy. It is torture! Everyone knows that. And that was the policy of the Bush administration. Why don't we talk about that?
| Senator | Credit Card Interest Rate Caps | TARP I Bank Bailout Oct 2008 | TARP II Bank Bailout Jan 2009 | Lifetime FIRE Donations |
| Akaka (D-HI) | No | Yes | Yes | $551,095 |
| Baucus (D-MT) | No | Yes | Yes | $4,633,243 |
| Bayh (D-IN) | No | Yes | No | $3,988,480 |
| Bingaman (D-NM) | No | Yes | Yes | $492,042 |
| Byrd (D-WV) | No | Yes | Yes | $421,000 |
| Cantwell (D-WA) | No | No | No | $1,828,540 |
| Carper (D-DE) | No | Yes | Yes | $2,160,628 |
| Hagan (D-NC) | No | N/A | Yes | $545,000 |
| Johnson (D-SD) | No | No | Yes | $3,025,166 |
| Kaufman (D-DE) | No | Yes | Yes | $0* |
| Landrieu (D-LA) | No | No | Yes | $2,388,634 |
| Lieberman (ID-CT) | No | Yes | Yes | $9,981,924 |
| Lincoln (D-AR) | No | Yes | No | $1,672,292 |
| Murray (D-WA) | No | Yes | Yes | $1,394,807 |
| Nelson (D-FL) | No | No | Yes | $2,667,406 |
| Nelson (D-NE) | No | Yes | No | $3,058,968 |
| Pryor (D-AR) | No | Yes | Yes | $1,322,948 |
| Shaheen (D-NH) | No | Yes | No | $659,000 |
| Specter (D-PA) | No | Yes | Yes | $5,757,910 |
| Stabenow (D-MI) | No | No | Yes | $1,736,406 |
| Tester (D-MT) | No | No | "Present" (Yes) | $473,226 |
| Warner (D-VA) | No | Yes | Yes | $1,950,479 |
Regardless, oil prices continue to rise even though demand has hit its lowest level since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Crude inventories are at their highest levels since 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
"In my mind, this is a market that is looking for an excuse to go higher," said Phil Flynn of Alaron Trading Corp."
Supply and demand my arse. Profiteering is more like it.
Got Flu? Thank Susan Collins!By: Teddy Partridge Monday April 27, 2009 10:09 am |
"Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill? No, we should not." Susan Collins bragged about stripping pandemic flu preparation money from the stimulus bill in February. Doesn't seem so moderate now, does it?
Watch her brag about it right here.
Her website still posts a glowing Wall Street Journal article about her wonderful leadership on the stimulus entitled "GOP Wields More Influence on the Stimulus Bill" [that page as now been scrubbed, but we saved it as a PDF -ed.]
After meeting with Mr. Obama, Sen. Collins expressed concern about a number of spending provisions, including $780 million for pandemic-flu preparedness. "I have no doubt that the president is willing to negotiate in good faith, that he wants to have a bipartisan bill," Sen. Collins said
Hope we sure get more of that wonderful good-faith negotiation with the GOP soon!
As I often tell myself, there is rarely any situation in which the attentions of the Republican party can't make it even worse. Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest points out one major problem:
We face a potential swine flu pandemic, and we do not have the people in place in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that we need. Why not? The Republicans are blocking confirmation of Obama’s nominee, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
Why are they blocking this nomination? Because Gov. Sebelius won’t approve Kansas Republican bills to block abortion even if the abortion will save the mother’s life. They say she is “an enemy of the unborn,” because she thinks doctors should be able to save the mother’s life.
So as you worry about this possible flu pandemic, think about why your government is not yet fully up and running to do its part and protect us. As we saw when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, government-hating Republicans destroyed our ability to respond to emergencies, and instead set up a system where contracts were awarded to cronies who collected the cash but never delivered the services. And now they continue to block our government’s ability to protect us, because they think that a mother’s life is not as important as a fetus.
The Democrats should start a big public relations push to get the Republicans to drop their opposition for the sake of the country.
It might work, but who knows? After all, Republicans always put party above country. Because guess what the Republicans (including "moderate" Susan Collins, helped along by Karl Rove's attacks) stripped out of the stimulus bill? You guessed it: pandemic flu preparedness! (They insisted it had nothing to do with the economy.) From John Nichols in today's The Nation:
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse -- with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.
