Da Hawg Frog Blog

Mario Rubio, teabagger wannabe from south Florida said that we should not count legal or illegal aliens in the upcoming census. His obvious ignorance of what the census does if overwhelming. We’ve had a census in this country since before we back a nation.

Rubio still favors excluding illegal immigrants from the formulas that dole out $400 billion in federal aid and seats in Congress. His position puts him at odds with his opponent, Gov. Charlie Crist, and many other elected officials who say leaving out illegal immigrants would keep the state from getting its fair share.

“It would be pretty damaging to Florida,” Republican U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart said at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday promoting a thorough count. “The reality is, whether you like it or not, there are undocumented, illegal people in the state. Pretending they’re not there, not counting them, doesn’t make them go away.”

State Rep. Esteban Bovo of Hialeah, chairman of the Hispanic caucus in the Florida House and a Rubio supporter, said, “So much funding is tied to the census, and to be undercounted could have devastating effects down the line. … I really don’t want our community to get shortchanged.” (Source: St. Petersburg Times)

Instead of pretending they are not here, we should seek them out. Gather the numbers and get our share of federal tax dollars to cover some of the expenses they cost the state. If the federal government was doing their job we would have far less of these illegals sucking our resources dry. They overwhelm our health care, schools and public services. If we don’t have the tax dollars to help offset this problem then it all falls on the citizens of the state to carry the burden.

It is a shame that the Republicans in the State of Florida have no one better to run for senator. Rubio is clueless and would just perpetuate the “Party of  No” agenda in Washington. And Charlies Crist is just an empty suit who has done absolutely nothing as governor, except campaign for the brass ring in congress.

Corporate shills who call themselves patriots heckle Midge Hough. Mrs. Hough lost her uninsured daughter and granddaughter needlessly.

Her daughter, Jennifer,  ended up in an emergency room with double pneumonia that developed into septic shock, had a heart attack, a brain bleed and a stroke. The baby died and Jennifer died a few weeks later.

The Chicago Douche Bags heckled Mrs Hough and accused her of lying. It makes you ashamed to be an American when you witness this kind of display. These people do everything they can to stifle the democratic process as they do the dirty work of the health care industrial complex.

The Baggers are nothing more than today’s equivalent to the Brownshirts that plagued Germany in the 1930s. Hateful, disgusting cretins.

In my hometown, St. Petersburg, FL, we had a full field of candidates running for mayor this year. It was hard to make a choice because our local politicians all run on a non-partisan ballot. Personally I think this is a cowardly way to run for office and it made it difficult to make a choice. Finally the field was narrowed to two candidates, Bill Foster and Kathleen Ford.

Now the runoff election will determine who becomes our next mayor. Yet, even though both of these names are familiar with St. Petersburg voters, not a lot is know about where they really stand. But with a little research and some information from our local newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, we’ve learned a few things about Mr. Foster.

St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster believes, contrary to the overwhelming majority of scientists, that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. He believes the world was created in six literal days, and he once complained to school officials when his son was taught about Darwin’s theory of evolution in fifth grade.

Is that relevant to the campaign for mayor of Florida’s fourth-largest city?

“This city is trying to increase its employment base with respect to scientific organizations and trying to recruit scientific concerns to come here,” said St. Petersburg architect Michael Dailey, who supports Kathleen Ford, Foster’s opponent. “If our mayor has a belief system that basically rejects science, how can people take him seriously?” (Source: St. Petersburg Times)

This was enough information for me to make up my mind. I am sick and tired of these religious fundamentalist, lunatic fringe, creationist destroying our credibility in the eyes of the world’s scientific community. Their medieval ideas about the origins of man and the world around them quite frankly scares me.

Normally, candidates in the Tampa Bay area are not asked about dinosaurs or whether they believe the world is billions of years old or thousands, as some creationists maintain. (Ford said billions, Foster declined to answer.)

But in this election Foster has been dogged by questions about his religious beliefs after he sent a controversial letter to the Pinellas School Board, urging members to allow discussion about alternatives to the theory of evolution, such as the Genesis account. His letter suggested that Darwin contributed to the rise of Hitler and the Columbine massacre

Foster insists he was merely promoting free speech for students. (Source: St. Petersburg Times)

I simply can’t vote for anyone who believes the Flintstones were real people. I’m fed up with these loonies running our country. And though he failed to reveal his true party affiliation during this race, I think everyone can pretty much figure it out. Our youth deserve better. I’m tired of us sending a bunch of dumbbells into the job market that are not equipped to survive in the world today. Bill Foster would like to take us all back to the dark ages.

This is a question on everyone’s mind. The internets have been all over this rumor the past few days. And rather than provide the evidence necessary to prove he did not, Glenn Beck has chosen instead, to attack the First Amendment Rights of the blogger who posed this rhetorical question to the American public. Mr. Beck, a conservative comedian with the Fox News Network, is now the brunt of tactics he uses regularly on his show to damage the reputations of those he does not like or agree with.

The controversy started a week ago in the Fark forums, where someone picked up on an old Gilbert Gottfried roast of the “comedian” (scare quotes fully intended) Bob Saget. During the roast, Gottfried repeatedly said (watch the video) that Saget had “not raped and killed a girl in 1990.” The Fark forums took the joke about the power of insinuation and applied it to right-wing talk show host Glenn “Obama is a racist” Beck.

One of the Fark readers then took the forum meme to the next level, registering a domain name and launching a web site in order to make a point about talking head TV demagoguery. “Why won’t Glenn Beck deny these allegations?” asks the site. “We’re not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990—in fact, we think he didn’t! But we can’t help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won’t he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?” At the very bottom of the page was a small text disclaimer saying that the site was satirical.

I spoke to the anonymous owner of the site, who tells Ars that launching it “just felt right”—it flipped the “birther” non-falsifiable conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth and citizenship around and applied the same tactics to one of the biggest talking heads (no pun intended?) on cable news. It’s just “using Beck’s tactics against him” and is a small way of “directing all this frustration” with Beck and others into action. (Source: ARS Technica)

Like everyone else who’s read about this online rumor I have questions about its verity. So like so many others I went to the Yahoo answers page and found some enlightening and thought provoking answers to the question “Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990. Their best answer was:

Look, I don’t know if it’s true that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, but if it isn’t, Glenn Beck, alleged 1990 murderer and rapist, should produce the girl he didn’t rape and murder in 1990 so that this matter can be cleared up. All we want is proof. What is he trying to hide?

Oh, and when he produces the girl he allegedly did or didn’t rape and murder in 1990, it won’t be accepted unless she’s in the long form.

Source(s):

No sources, as the MSM seems to be covering up the story of Glenn Beck allegedly raping and murdering a girl in 1990. (Source: Yahoo)

Needless to say this was a very disturbing non-answer to my question and left more questions than answers. We all know that Mr. Beck is not beyond talking about murdering Nancy Pelosi. And we also know about Mr. Beck’s perchance for violence. In 2001 he talked about people he’d like to beat to death. None of this readily available information reflects kindly on Mr. Beck.

So then we had to visit the website that brought this whole fiasco to the public eye. It is an obvious parody site, full of satire, but very fair and balanced in its presentation.

But like so many in America, now we will wonder why Glenn Beck hasn’t produced the police report clearing him of these insinuations?

More than 60% of the bankruptcies in the United States are the result of  medical expenses. The high rate of default on home loans are the result of bankruptcy. It is not only the banks who are breaking the economic backs of the American people, it is also the health care industry in its present form. Our health care providers are in a for profit industry. They make their money on how many of their customers they can deny services to. The pharmacutical companies rake in enormous profits while they gouge the American people for more than other nations pay. Most of us are only one serious illness away from loosing everything we’ve worked for all of our lives.

The outrageous costs of health care threatens small businesses across the country. Offering health care for employees is a good practice and helps retain productive workers.

“I’m in the business to do auto repair,” England said. “I’m not in the business of trying to find out how to provide health coverage and how to get the right sort of plan…. And it’s not easy.”

David Guernsey, who employs 170 people at his office supply business in Virginia, has struggled with the same rising costs to cover his employees — some years, premiums have gone up 25 percent.

His small company can’t hope to compete with the benefits much larger companies can afford to offer their employees. (Source: CNN)

The right rails about the importance of small businesses and their owners. They say that the small business owner is the backbone of the American economy. Yet the do nothing to protect these businesses from the predatory practices of the health insurance industry.

Both sides of the aisles of congress have their ideas about how this should be accomplished.  The right and left are both firmly in the pockets of the insurance and pharmacy lobby, but the progressive left sees the hand writing on the wall and realizes that something serious has to be done. Rather than tackling the minefield that is the “single payer” plan, the left is pushing “choice”. Either keep the plan you have or enroll in a government run health care program.

The debate among lawmakers over how to take control over the rising costs of health care echoes sentiments heard two years ago in Wisconsin, when the state Senate pushed for a universal health care plan. Elements of that plan are similar to what Obama has outlined for nationwide reform.

The major divides in Wisconsin were over how to pay for the program and what role the government should play. The measure, known as Healthy Wisconsin, passed in the Senate but eventually stalled over funding.

The Healthy Wisconsin plan would have provided coverage for all residents of the state not already covered by another government plan, like Medicare. Those using the plan would participate in a health care pool, where they would chose from a number of plans. (Source: CNN)

The Wisconsin Plan offers choice, which the GOP isn’t too keen on either. The GOP has no real plan, other than to obstruct and protest every idea suggesting change. How do they stand on the “single payer” proposal? When you look at the salaries made by the CEOs of our present, for-profit health insurers you wonder how anyone can justify not correcting the industry. It is no wonder we have the most expensive and least responsive health care systems in the modern industrialized world.

How serious are the Republicans in squashing single payer? The Washington Post’s health care reform blog reported Tuesday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has hired an outside PR firm to put together a video campaign assaulting Obama’s public plan. And this month alone, the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is spending more than a million dollars for attack ads. They’ve hired a public relations firm called CRC, Creative Response Concepts. You remember them, the same high-minded folks who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the gang who savaged John Kerry’s service record in Vietnam.

The ads feature the chairman of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, Rick Scott who was a former deputy inspector general from the Department of Health and Human Services.  Scott is not a doctor, he is a convicted felon who took two hospitals in Texas and built them into the largest health care chain in the world, Columbia/HCA. In 1997, he was fired by the board of directors after Columbia/HCA was caught in a scheme that ripped off the Federal and State governments for hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus Medicare and Medicaid payments, the largest such fraud in history. The company had to cough up $1.7 billion dollars to get out of the mess.

FierceHealthcare reports the following top 10 CEO salaries for 2008.

* Ron Williams – Aetna – Total Compensation: $24,300,112.
* H. Edward Hanway – CIGNA – Total Compensation: $12,236,740.
* Angela Braly – WellPoint – Total Compensation: $9,844,212.
* Dale Wolf – Coventry Health Care – Total Compensation: $9,047,469.
* Michael Neidorff – Centene – Total Compensation: $8,774,483.
* James Carlson – AMERIGROUP – Total Compensation: $5,292,546.
* Michael McCallister – Humana – Total Compensation: $4,764,309.
* Jay Gellert – Health Net – Total Compensation: $4,425,355.
* Richard Barasch – Universal American – Total Compensation: $3,503,702.
* Stephen Hemsley – UnitedHealth Group – Total Compensation: $3,241,042.

When American patients trust their health to a for-profit insurance company, they’re doing nothing less than gambling with their lives in a game where the odds are stacked in favor of the insurance company. (Source: Article Base)

Looking at these numbers and the philosophy behind them it is easy to understand that the present system is not in the business of looking out for the public health. They are in it for the money. And the way they make their money is by providing less services at high prices.

There are many Americans who are suffering needlessly because they cannot afford basic health care. The U.S. is the only developed country that does not have universal health care. Democracy doesn’t mean you have the right not to get health care when you need it or go broke trying to pay for major conditions such as cancer care. Basic health care should be the right of all citizens. It should be a national priority.

If the problem is the owning class’ ruling elite “not getting it” and their systems are not only in place but actively pursuing the subterfuge, seems to me the owning class is long overdue for a public beating.

These are the people, Republicans, Wall Street and Conservatives who trade in shame and fear. If it is the only ‘thing’ they understand or listen to; I believe it is time to shove it into their lives where they cannot ignore it any longer.  These greedy politicians and insurance companies are truly a bunch of thieves. They all have health care and they do not care about anyone in America who lacks it. The single payer option is the only answer, but I fear too many Americans are so brainwashed by the free market propaganda they get from all sides (that’s right, it’s even taught in ‘Economics 101′ classes) that they do not even support what is good for them and their families. (Source: Article Base)

Where the author above thinks the single payer system is the only one that will work, I think we could benefit by simply having the choice between private and public run. If someone is satisfied with pay with shoddy health care and lining the pockets of greedy politicians and CEOs, then by all means let them have their way. But, for the rest of us who would rather opt in for a public system, it is time we had the choice. The thing the GOP really fears is that within a short time most people will sign on to the public system. Then their gravy train is over. The health and pharma lobbyist will no longer be able to afford the bribes they have been paying the congress for years.

It is refreshing to see the Pakistani people rise up against the Taliban thugs in the northwestern provinces.  We have gotten so used to doing the fighting for these oppressed middle eastern countries that it comes as a pleasant surprise to find some willing to stand up on their own. Of course, they may be afraid it they don’t overthrow these Taliban thugs themselves that the United States will impose their “Democracy” on them.

Outraged over a suicide attack on a local mosque during Friday prayers, about 400 residents formed the militia early Saturday and began battling Taliban militants. The attack on the anti-Taliban mosque killed at least 40 people and wounded 80 others.

The militia has surrounded Taliban fighters in Shat Kas, a village where the Taliban have local support, according to officials in the Upper Dir district. The Taliban have dug into bunkers and are putting up a strong resistance, he said.

The fighting marks the first major battle between the residents of northwest Pakistan and Taliban militants. (Source: CNN)

American troops have been struggling for five years to get the Iraqi military in shape to handle their own security. But, the Iraqi’s don’t seem to have the motivation and drive to do what the Pakistani’s have done. Perhaps it is because the country endured decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule and lost their will to resist.

Hopefully the Pakistani’s neighbors in Afghanistan will able to rid their own country of these vermin rather than depend on the USA to do it for them.

It is amazing how the Bush/Cheney apologists try to divert attention from the last administrations crimes by pointing a finger at Nancy Pelosi and accuse her of being complicit in those crimes. Pelosi is probably lying, but then that what politicians do. One thing is for sure, she had no say in the conduct of  interrogations under the Bush administration. Meanwhile, the people who were the architects of these war crimes, are doing their best to justify them.

During the last election campaign cycle, all three years of it, the Republicans tried to distance themselves from the Bush administration. Bush/Cheney were the lepers of the neocon movement to every one except the most die hard right wing extremist of the party. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck  and Bill O’Reilly come to mind. They all mouth the same talking points. Hannity even went so far as to offer to be waterboarded to prove it was not torture. Keith Olbermann immediately offered to donate to charity $1,000 for every second Hannity endured the torture.

The debate over torture is getting personal for two of cable TV’s prime-time hosts. After Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity made a seemingly impromptu offer last week to undergo waterboarding as a benefit for charity, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann leapt at it. He offered $1,000 to the families of U.S. troops for every second Hannity withstood the technique.

Olbermann repeated the offer on Monday’s show and said in an interview Tuesday that he’s heard no response. He said he’ll continue to pursue it.

“I don’t think he has the courage to even respond to this — let alone do it,” Olbermann said.

Fox News Channel representatives did not respond to requests for comment. (Source: USA Today)

I’d like to see that on prime time TV.  It would be worth watching, even if I had to tune into Faux News to view it. So far Sean Hannity has avoided responding. Instead all we see it DICK Cheney. Eight years this guy hid in an undisclosed location and directed his minions in the art of torture. He needs to shut up. Better yet, he needs to be waterboarded until we get the truth out of him.

So now the Party of No is trying to rebuild their image. Their idea of change is finding a new slogan and having the same, tired, old crooks mouth it every night on the news. They have no new ideas. They offer no solutions. Yet they expect the new administration to listen to their tired old shit and take heed. To President Obama’s credit, he is not listening. He offers them a place at the table and when the cry babies refuse to show, he gets along with his agenda without their input, which is nothing but negativity anyway.

But the leadership of the GOP often waxes nostalgically about President Reagan. You know him, the co-star of Bonzo the Chimpanze in many old 1950s movies. The senile old windbag who got his movie career mixed up with his military history. He was a lieutenant in the Army reserve during WWII. The architect of deregulation that led to the economic mess we’re in today. The union busting crusader that put us all in peril by firing all the air traffic controllers in the 1980s.

The neocons are historical revisionist of the first order. They have canonized St Ronnie and worship his image and await his second coming. Yet they conveniently forgot that in 1983 Reagan had his Department of Justice prosecute a Texas Sheriff and his staff for . . . waterboarding prisoners.

George W. Bush’s Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn’t even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case – which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later – was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.

The failure to cite the earlier waterboarding case and a half-dozen other precedents that dealt with torture is reportedly one of the critical findings of a Justice Department watchdog report that legal sources say faults former Bush administration lawyers – Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury – for violating “professional standards.” (Source: Truth Out Org)

It makes you wonder what is going through these neocon bastards minds. They must really think that Americans are stupid. You simply can’t rewrite history or cover it up in the 21st century. There are too many resources at the public’s fingertips to get away with these outright lies today. But that is exactly what Bush/Cheney’s legal stooges tried to do.

That law was not in existence when the Texas sheriff, James Parker, and his deputies were prosecuted and sentenced in the 1980s. But Bybee, Bradbury and Yoo had a duty to their legal profession to cite the case as it would have changed the substance of their legal opinions, said Scott Horton, a human rights attorney and constitutional expert.

“Any competent legal adviser would, among other things, have looked at the techniques themselves and checked to see how they have been treated in prior cases,” Horton said in an email. “Obviously the Anti-Torture Statute itself is a very recent invention and it has no enforcement history, so saying that and then suggesting on this basis that the situation is tabula rasa is highly disingenuous.”

Horton suspects that Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury were well aware of the case law, but simply chose to ignore it in order to give the Bush administration what it had asked for. (Source: Truth Out Org)

We have a moral obligation to insure that this never happens again in our name. Those who brought this shame on us must be punished. What punishment is warranted? 10 years like the Texas lawmen got? Or what we meted out to the Japanese water boarders after World War II?

They used water boarding to extract justification for their political motivations to attack Iraq. It was a war crime. Justice is due. Bush/Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the whole damm lot of them should be brought before an impartial tribunal. The evidence shoud be presented and justice rendered. Obama needs to pull his head out of his ass and straighten this out or history will not judge him kindly for letting this slide. They have disgraced this nation and the only way to regain our integrity is to openly and honestly go forward with prosecution ourselves. Let’s not wait until the UN or Spain begins proceedings. We have an obligation to take care of our own dirty laundry. Their actions put every member of our military in danger. They threw out the Constitution, trashed the Geneva Convention and thumbed their noses at the rest of the world. Send them all to Gitmo, water board them and then try them based on the confessions we extract.

For thirty years Senator Specter has represented the State of Pennsylvania as a Republican.  Specter has always been a moderate voice for his party. Now he discovered that the lunatic fringe of the GOP has taken over and they want him out.  Senator Specter made the cardinal sin of voting for legislation that his party opposed. This immediately brought on the wrath of the likes of Hannity and Limpballs. His bipartisan stand will not be tolerated in the party of NO. The GOP is galvanized against him and he stands no chance of winning the Pennsylvania primary in the party he has represented for years.

Realizing he didn’t stand a chance of winning in Pennsylvania as a Republican again Specter announced he was changing parties and joining the Democrats. This was an act of rank opportunism reminiscent of Senator Joe Liberman. When the voters of Connecticut got tired of old Joe’s hawkish support of the Bush administration it became clear he could not carry his party again. So he formed the Joe Lieberman party and became an Independent.  Senator Specter should have done the same thing. He is not a Democrat and made clear the party could not count on him as the 60th vote in the senate.

Arlen has been welcomed into the party by the leadership. But then remember, the leadership of the Democratic Party is sorely out of touch with the people. Not as badly as the GOP, but still blind to the will of the people. Senator Specter was exactly where he belonged. He did the country more good as a moderate influence in the Republican party than he ever will as a conservative voice in the Democratic Party. Don’t expect any stellar ideas to come from this newly minted Democrat.

It will be an enormous mistake on the part of the Democratic Party if they throw their support behind Specter in a race against another Democrat from Pennsylvania. He is not really a Democrat and he can not be counted on in a fight on the floor. He is in it for his own self interests, not those of either party. He should stand down, accept defeat and retire. He’s been in Washington long enough. He may be a senior senator, but he is no statesman.

Looney legislator, Rhonda Storms, who’s name evicts visions of a lap dancer more than a senator has proposed and passed a new license plate for Floridians. The Jesus plate seen above. While the states drowns in debt and our budget cuts services to the bone, these right wing religious zealots waste time shoving through a pretty gross license. Why is it that Christians love to show images of a  man, tortured to death, hanging from a cross?

Because why worry about a budget impasse or property insurance when you can spend more than an hour talking about Jesus, the devil and license plates?

Religious specialty plates offered by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, made it onto a bill Friday even though many members had not seen images of those plates and none was produced for the debate.

Siplin didn’t mince words when asked what his “Trinity” plate looks like, saying, “It has a picture of my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” It, along with a “Preserving the Past” plate offered by Siplin, would benefit the Toomey Foundation for the Natural Sciences. (Source:  St. Petersburg Times)

So while the state budget and services swirl down the toilet this is what the legislature is debating. And the Toomey Foundation? That is a creationist group trying to add their moronic superstitions to our science curriculum in the state schools. They’ve got an explanation for everything, facts be damned.

So what is next? There is already talk about introducing plates with the devil on them now. Personally I think that is not such a bad idea. After all the Governor, Charlie Crist, and I are alumni of the same high school. Our logo is a Green Devil.

So, if you are a University of Florida graduate who loves manatees, you can support both on your tag. Crist, who will offer the amendment Monday, said the senators he has talked to really like the idea.

But those options would come too late for Friday’s debate in the Senate, where Sen. Larcenia Bullard, D-Miami, invoked the devil to make her point: “What if someone comes next year and decides to vote on something that has the devil on it, and horns, horns on each side. I know that people are called the devil, but if the symbol of a devil is on it, I would not vote for that.”

I’m all for petitioning the Governor for our alma mater on a license. Meanwhile, Rhonda needs to get a life.

Thanks Robby for the heads up on this. Go Green Devils!

Governor Perry and some GOP whiners are talking secession these days. What a laugh! Let them. And let them take George W with them.

If they had brought this nonsense up during the last administration they would have been invaded. After all, Texas does have oil.

On a more serious note, if Texas does decide to secede Governor Perry doesn’t stand a chance. Chuck Norris would kick his ass in a gubernatorial race for the President of the Republic of Texas.

All I can say is they are a bunch of asshats who are showing their true colors. The rest of America endured eight years of a phony cowboy’s tenure in the White House and these crybabies can’t make it three months without talking about breaking up the Union. These people are talking sedition and should be prosecuted.