liberal N proud
liberal N proud's JournalWalmart's New Health Care Policy Shifts Burden To Medicaid, Obamacare
The Huffington Post
Under the policy, slated to take effect in January, Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours -- something that happens with regularity and at the direction of company managers.
Walmart declined to disclose how many of its roughly 1.4 million U.S. workers are vulnerable to losing medical insurance under its new policy. In an emailed statement, company spokesman David Tovar said Walmart had “made a business decision” not to respond to questions from The Huffington Post and accused the publication of unfair coverage.
Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/walmart-health-care-policy-medicaid-obamacare_n_2220152.html
International Space Station flying over dancing auroras and other amazing things
Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. A compilation of such visual spectacles was captured recently from the International Space Station (ISS) and set to rousing music. Passing below are white clouds, orange city lights, lightning flashes in thunderstorms, and dark blue seas. On the horizon is the golden haze of Earth's thin atmosphere, frequently decorated by dancing auroras as the video progresses. The green parts of auroras typically remain below the space station, but the station flies right through the red and purple auroral peaks. Solar panels of the ISS are seen around the frame edges. The ominous wave of approaching brightness at the end of each sequence is just the dawn of the sunlit half of Earth, a dawn that occurs every 90 minutes.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120305.html
The whole thing is just awesome.
Man Faces Death Threats and Jail for Pointing Out That Weeping Jesus "Miracle" Is Just Faulty...
Man Faces Death Threats and Jail for Pointing Out That Weeping Jesus "Miracle" Is Just Faulty Plumbing
When water started trickling down a statue of Jesus Christ at a Catholic church in Mumbai earlier this year, locals were quick to declare a miracle. Some began collecting the holy water and the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni began to promote it as a site of pilgrimage.
So when Sanal Edamaruku arrived and established that this was not holy water so much as holey plumbing, the backlash was severe. The renowned rationalist was accused of blasphemy, charged with offences that carry a three-year prison sentence and eventually, after receiving death threats, had to seek exile in Finland.
Now he is calling for European governments to press Delhi into dropping the case. And on the first leg of a tour around EU capitals on Friday, he warned that India was sacrificing freedom of expression for outdated, colonial-era rules about blasphemy.
"There is a huge contradiction in the content of the Indian constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and the blasphemy law from 1860 under then colonial rule," Edamaruku told the Guardian in an interview in Dublin.
http://www.alternet.org/man-faces-death-threats-and-jail-pointing-out-weeping-jesus-miracle-just-faulty-plumbing?paging=off
I suspect Buffalo Wild Wings: Sprinklers interrupt Seattle-Miami game
MIAMI - Even for the Seattle Seahawks, the mid-game shower was a novelty.
A computer glitch caused stadium lawn sprinklers to douse the Seahawks and Miami Dolphins during the third quarter Sunday. The computer was erroneously working on its Saturday schedule, a Dolphins spokesman said.
Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson said the Seahawks were unfazed.
"I think they're used to the rain," he said.
On a cloudless afternoon, the sprinklers came on between plays and covered most of the field, drawing a cheer from an amused crowd and prompting a brief delay. The sprinklers were quickly turned off, and players toweled off before the action resumed.
"I never saw that before, not even in high school," Miami receiver Davone Bess said. "It was pretty cool."
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/49957586/ns/sports-nfl/
Poetic Justice: Romney to Finish Election at 47 Percent
21 November 12
hen all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup. Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says new votes in from Maryland put Romney at 47.56 percent. He predicts with certainty that with all of New York and California counted, Romney will end up below 47.5 percent of the vote.
Rounded, of course, that would put the final tally at 51-47. Anticipating this moment, Markos Moulitsas has inaugurated the 'Romney 47 percent watch.
At risk of piling on, a 47 percent finish would represent a perfect conclusion to the Romney political saga. If Romney ran a campaign of unprecedented dishonesty and lack of transparency, virtually all of it was geared towards misleading people about the true nature of his - and his party's - actual beliefs and governing agenda. This was the case on multiple fronts, from Romney's dissembling about the size of the tax cut he'd give to the rich, to his evasions about the overhaul he and Paul Ryan planned for the safety net, to the obscuring of the massive upward redistribution of wealth represented by the Ryan agenda - the GOP's central governing blueprint for nation's fiscal and economic future.
It was fitting that Romney himself unmasked his own apparent beliefs and the broader ideological implications of the larger GOP agenda and the ideas driving it - in private remarks to those who would likely benefit from his policies most. As Jonathan Chait put it at the time:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/14654-focus-poetic-justice-romney-to-finish-election-at-47-percent
Pailin 2016
Conservative pundit endorses Sarah Palin for 2016 nomination
If you were waiting with bated breath for the "Draft Palin" movement, it's your lucky day! Conservative columnist Charlotte Allen has endorsed Sarah for the 2016 GOP nomination in today’s Los Angeles Times. Allen argues, apparently with a straight face, that "large segments of the electorate neither know nor care much about serious economic and political issues," and that Palin is the ideal Republican vehicle for "appealing to voters' emotions." Continuing her penetrating political insights, Allen adds that the former governor’s good looks are key to Republican success, since "men love Sarah Palin, and she loves men." We'll just let that sink in.
http://now.msn.com/sarah-palin-endorsed-by-charlotte-allen-conservative-pundit-for-2016
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