Bill USA
Bill USA's JournalPBS Newshour gives troop of REpublicans a stage for unquestioned Big Lies
over the last couple of weeks it seems like there has been a stream or Republicans marching onto PBS's Newshour to proclaim one Big Lie after another while Gwen Awful and Judy Woodruff just accept these fabrications without batting an eye and proceed onto the next question without ever a questiion being put to the GOPer Blowhards about the facts which totally contradict the GOPer Fantasies.. For some reason almost none of these ner-do-wells interviews can be found on PBS Newhour's webstie - but I know I saw them and heard them on the show -where could the tapes and transcripts have gone????
The recent interview of Mitch McConnell is there on the Newshours web-site and McConnell, not to be left out, repeats one of the favorite lies of the GOP re the ACA: That Pres Obama lied when he said people will be able to keep their health insurance if they like it. But now many insurers are cancelling plans and offering something very similar but for more money which people selected by the GOP say they cannot afford. Therefor President Obama lied.
The fact is... the insurance companies are not allowed by law to sell these fake insurance policies where they can terminate your coverage because of some "pre-existing" condition. Of course, this invariably happens just when people need it -- when they get sick! Now, if people want 'fake' insurance, because it's cheaper, ... I'm sorry if you are willling to pay for coverage that can be denied you just when you need it - because you think it's cheaper. The only thing is, that is now against the law. IF you are selling health insurance to somebody NOW, it has to be REAL health insurance.
And when the GOPer demagogues say people now have to pay more for the same coverage ..THEY ARE LIEING.. IT'S NOT THE SAME COVERAGE --- IT'S REAL COVERAGE - WITH NO 'PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS' LOOP-HOLES, and no "life-time limits" for various kinds of medical treatments, and you can have your children on your family policy up the age of 26 now. These new policies are not the same as their old policies. Even if you wanted to be sold a 'fake' policy the insurance companies can't do that anymore.
Here's the link to McConnell's heaping the bovine fecal matter higher and higher...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec13/mcconnell_10-30.html
MeConnell: "and the president's principal promise that, if you had your health insurance and you liked it, you would be able to keep it, none of that would happen."
House Republicans Skip Obamacare Briefing They Furiously Demanded
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/house-republicans-obamacare-briefing_n_4178762.html?view=printFor all their fury, most of the House Republicans who had demanded their own closed-door briefing from the administration on President Barack Obama's struggling health care rollout were no-shows on Wednesday.
Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) told reporters that "about 20 members" attended the House GOP briefing, at which senior Health and Human Services Department official Mike Hash laid out some of the issues facing the Healthcare.gov website.
The meeting was scheduled after House Republicans cried foul when they weren't included in last week's closed-door session with Democrats. The White House said Democrats had requested the briefing, but Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), deemed the snub "all the more offensive after [HHS] Secretary Sebelius declined to testify" at a House committee hearing last Thursday on Obamacare.
(more)
Economists: Growth hobbled by shutdown
http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspxThe budget standoff in Congress is over for now, but the economy is likely to feel the hangover for some time.
Two weeks after Washington’s latest showdown, more than half of economists surveyed by USA TODAY are less optimistic about growth prospects than they were three months ago.
The survey of 41 top economists was conducted Oct. 23-24.
What’s more, repeated budget battles in Washington the past few years are having a cumulative effect. Sixtythree percent of the economists say the recurring standoffs are hurting the economy “some” or “a lot.” The remainder cite “a little” damage.
War of the Worlds broadcast - model for GOP Tea Bag Suckers -
...on PBS's American Experience they had a show about how Orson Welles 1938 dramatization of War of the Worlds making it sound like a news bulletin - without any provisos that it was a dramatization - caused panic all across the U.S. After the broadcast there was outrage that Welles would pull such a dangerous stunt and talk of legal action or legislation to preclude such actions in the future.
I was thinking how little general uproar there is about GOP tv (Fox) doing pretty much the same thing as what Welles did, every day. All you have to do is substitute "Obamacare" or "Obama the socialist/alien/Kenyan" for "Martian invasion" and it's pretty much a Fox Broadcast - or perhaps a Fox - Light (i.e. PBS) broadcast. Even Democrats just shrug their shoulders. There doesn't seem to be much offense taken these days at lies insinuated or delivered as a bald faced Big Lie. (John Stewart and Steven Colbert seem to be the only ones expressing disgust at the constant barrage of Big Lies from Fox, (even worse) aided and abetted by Corporate media for often repeating the Big Lie or slipping it into a sentence in an implied way)
Fox played a big role in promoting the Tea 'Party' early on, providing overplayed coverage of Tea Bag Sucker gatherings and incessant nearly daily discussions of the Tea Bag Sucker 'developments. Sure, GOP politicos were essential in organizing, hyping gatherings, writing press releases, and other 'professional' services, while being sure to not be seen at any of the soirées. But Fox's free airtime was also extremely important in whipping up the "grass roots" movement.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/worlds/player/
War of the Worlds
Shortly after 8 p.m. on the Halloween Eve, 1938, the voice of a panicked radio announcer broke in with a news bulletin reporting strange explosions taking place on the planet Mars, followed minutes later by a report that Martians had landed in the tiny town of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Although most listeners understood that the program was a radio drama, the next day's headlines reported that thousands of others plunged into panic, convinced that America was under a deadly Martian attack. It turned out to be H.G. Wells' classic The War of the Worlds, performed by 23-year-old Orson Welles.
Now Let us Praise New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone 4 calling-out GOP demagoguery in ACA website hearing
The Energy and Commerce committee has provided GOPers ample time to grill administration representatives involved in setting-up and or designing the beleagered ACA Federal web-site. GOPers who spent the last 3 years fighting the ACA and voting unsuccessfully to repeal it 48 times now seem to be overwhelmed with concern that people won't be able to get signed up for the program which Mitch MFer McConnell has called the ACA the "single-worst piece of legislation passed in the last 50 years.".
But, finally, somebody had enough. Last Thursday, Representative Frank Pallone, N.J., couldn't take the political theater anymore.... Rep Pallone unleashed his disgust on Rep. Joe Barton of Texas for pursuing a typically demagogic, (and hopefully headline grabbing) irrelevant line of cross examination of an administration representative before the committee. Praise the lord for honest talking men like Rep. Pallone of New Jersey.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/10/congressman-lashes-out-about-healthcaregov-hearing-monkey-court/70896/
Decorum broke down during the contentious House hearing over the buggy Healthcare.gov website on Thursday morning. Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas charged the witnesses with a violation of the law; New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone pushed back, calling the hearing a "monkey court."
Barton's critique focused on a portion of the source code of the insurance exchange website. In the code, Barton pointed out, is a line reading, "You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system." Barton asked the witness from CGI Federal how that stipulation could be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. That law set strict rules around sharing personal health information.
"How in the world can this be HIPAA compliant," Barton asked, "when HIPAA is designed to protect the patient's privacy and this explicitly says in order to continue you have to accept this condition that you have no privacy — no reasonable expectation of privacy?"
There are several ways in which Barton's analysis is incorrect. The first is that Barton says the language is "hidden" — because it's in the source code. "Source code," for those who don't know, is the tagged language that tells a browser how to display a website. It's "hidden" only because it's information about the web page, not the content of the page itself. Meaning it doesn't show up on the page, meaning that there's no way it could even be legally enforceable.
(Then Representative Pallone had had enough: )
[div class="excerpt" style="background:#FFCCCC;"]Pallone: I started out in my opening statement saying there was no legitimacy to this hearing and the last line of the questioning certainly confirms is that.
HIPAA only applies when there's health information being provided. That's not in play here today. No health information is required in the application process. And why is that? Because pre-existing conditions don't matter! So once again, here we have my Republican colleagues trying to scare everybody —
Barton, interrupting: If the gentleman will yield?
Pallone: No, I will not yield to this monkey court or whatever —
Barton: This is not a monkey court!
(more)
From bullied to bravery: One girl's story
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/24/from-bullied-to-bravery-one-girls-story/3184789/WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- It was 3 a.m. on a Monday when Wendy Del Monte awoke to a thud.
Thinking it was one of their cats, she wandered into her daughter's bedroom. There, she found her daughter Ally in the throes of despair, shaking, gripping onto a bottle of her father's heart medication. The thud had been the bottle falling to the ground.
"The world just stopped," Del Monte recounted. "She said, 'Mom, I don't think I want to live anymore.' "
Ally was 13 and in eighth grade.
(more)
Obama Admin: Half Of Young Americans Could Buy Insurance For $50 Or Less
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hhs-half-of-young-americans-could-buy-insurance-for-50-or-lessNearly half of young Americans eligible to buy insurance on HealthCare.gov could pay $50 or less a month for coverage, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a report released Monday. HHS is touting the affordability of insurance on the exchanges in part because young adults are crucial to making the health care reform law's finances work.
The conclusion was based on data from the 30-plus states where insurance is being sold through HealthCare.gov, for adults ages 18 to 34, who qualify for tax credits through the law. The analysis found that 46 percent could pay $50 or less for a bronze plan (which covers 60 percent of costs), and 66 percent could pay $100 or less.
“The health care law is making health insurance more affordable for young adults,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.
The administration has said it hopes to enroll 2.7 million age 18 to 34 (out of 7 million total) in the first year.
How much will you pay for insurance?...calculator - Kaiser Family Foundation - Wapo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/health-care-profiles/calculator/Use this tool from the Kaiser Family Foundation to figure out how much health coverage might cost you on the new online marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act. Pressing 'submit' will take you to your results on kff.org.
Read our Q&A on the Affordable Care Act or see full coverage.
(more)
NRO Frantically Spinning As Legal Rationale For Voter Suppression Disappears
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/nro-frantically-spinning-as-legal-rationale-for/196577The National Review Online is trying to push back on the mea culpa of a judge who now thinks strict voter ID does in fact impermissibly discriminate, maintaining its long-standing position as supporters of election changes that have been widely denounced as blatant forms of voter suppression.
In 2007, well-known and respected conservative Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a voter ID law in Indiana that was the first in a wave of increasingly stricter restrictions on the right to vote passed by Republican-controlled legislatures. Affirmed by a splintered Supreme Court, as the sole high-profile legal decision on the sort of unnecessary and redundant voter ID laws that are now widely promoted by the GOP, Crawford v. Marion County Elections Board has been incessantly trumpeted by right-wing media as the legal underpinning for their obsession with election changes that are documented to suppress the vote.
Now that Posner has bluntly admitted he was wrong and the evidence shows that strict voter ID is "now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than fraud prevention," NRO is resorting to smearing the judge's integrity and intelligence.
Legal contributor Hans von Spakovsky, the repeatedly discredited champion of photo voter ID laws as the alleged "solution" to the virtually non-existent "problem" of in-person voter fraud, responded to the news of Posner's recent admission by claiming the judge had "been taken in" by the "Left's well-oiled propaganda machine." NRO's in-house legal expert, Ed Whelan, asserted that a switch in judgment by the judge was "weak" and praised a Washington Post columnist who attacked the judge as unethical for speaking publicly.
(more)
Bakken Shale Flaring Burns Nearly One-Third Of Natural Gas Drilled, New Study Finds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/bakken-shale-flaring_n_3669649.htmlNEW YORK, July 29 (Reuters) - Oil drillers in North Dakota's Bakken shale fields are allowing nearly a third of the natural gas they drill to burn off into the air, with a value of more than $100 million per month, according to a study to be released on Monday.
Remote well locations, combined with historically low natural gas prices and the extensive time needed to develop pipeline networks, have fueled the controversial practice, commonly known as flaring. While oil can be stored in tanks indefinitely after drilling, natural gas must be immediately piped to a processing facility.
Flaring has tripled in the past three years, according to the report from Ceres, a nonprofit group that tracks environmental records of public companies.
"There's a lot of shareholder value going up in flames due to flaring," said Ryan Salmon, who wrote the report for Ceres. "Investors want companies to have a more aggressive reaction to flaring and disclose clear steps to fix the problem."
(more)
R3 Sciences Begins Construction on Micro Plant Gas To Methanol Process
http://www.prweb.com/releases/gas_to_liquid/methanol/prweb3660304.htm
(emphases my own)
R3 Sciences announced today that they are building a commercial scale, skid mounted gas process system capable of producing up to 500,000 gallons per year of methanol. The R3 Sciences methanol production system is the first of its kind to employ several key advancements in micro-plant and gas-to-liquid technology. This gas-to-methanol micro plant represents the culmination of several years' work by both internal as well as external research team at R3 Sciences.
A world bank review states that "over 5.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are wasted annually" which equals about 25% of the United States total gas consumption. This gas flaring releases over 400 million tons of greenhouse gases as carbon dioxide annually.
Methanol is considered an essential chemical intermediate for many consumer products and fuel components. It is a building block for biodiesel and fuel cells are now using methanol as a hydrogen source worldwide to generate electricity. Here in the U.S. methanol production moved offshore years ago, taking advantage of cheap natural gas feedstock in other parts of the world. Methanol can serve as a valuable energy storage resource, allowing stranded natural gas to be converted into a more easily transportable liquid. Today, very little methanol is produced in North America, with most methanol produced in other regions around the world where large volumes of natural gas are stranded. In North America and in other regions, considerable volumes of smaller gas sources are simply flared releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The R3 Sciences gas to methanol micro plant process offers an alternative to simply wasting natural gas by burning it in a flare.
Until now, the predominant method for producing methanol has involved feeding large natural gas volumes into refinery scale, Fischer-Tropsch systems to produce methanol. These systems typically operate at high pressures and high temperatures. The R3 Sciences gas-to-methanol micro-plant will operate at much lower pressures and temperatures, which lower the cost and complexity of operations.
(more)
The methanol could be added to ethanol being blended with gasoline and reduce our imports of petroleum. In addition, of course, we should be making methanol from biomass sources to replace gasoline. We could make enough methanol to replace about ALL the gasoline we burn in cars and light trucks today.
Profile Information
Member since: Wed Mar 3, 2010, 05:25 PMNumber of posts: 6,436
