Sign our petition to Congress and President Obama: The Senate health care bill must be killed. Click here to sign our petition. Hi Jonathan – The Senate’s health care bill must be killed. It is an ungodly mess of errors, loopholes, and massive giveaways. When the American people find out what’s actually in this bill, they will revolt. Congress and President Obama have no choice but to do better for health care than this bill. Sign the petition: the Senate health care bill must be killed. How bad is the bill? Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to […]
RUSS FEINGOLD: Obama Killed The Public Option
RUSS FEINGOLD: I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill […]
STUDY: Earth Headed For ‘Epic Die-Off’
SFGATE: The analysis by Barnosky, research associate Marc Carrasco and Penn State’s Russell Graham was published this week in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. It compares the extinctions of mammals in North America after humans arrived 13,000 years ago to the five mass extinctions on Earth over the past 450 million years. The least severe of those extinctions wiped out the dinosaurs 68 million years ago and killed off 75 percent of the species on the planet. Although humans clearly did not have anything to do with the previous extinctions, many scientists are afraid that global warming and other environmental […]
Eagles Fans + Snow = Fire + Gasoline
GONZO: Before the game, I was talking to one of the Eagles’ front office employees. She was saying what a good job the Lincoln Financial Field workers did removing the huge mounds of snow from the stands. She was right. It took 45 minutes to help shovel my friend’s car out yesterday. Imagine how hard it was to clear a 67,000-seat stadium. But despite the valiant effort, they couldn’t get it all. There was still plenty left over when the gates opened and the fans trickled in. The first snowball was launched from the upper deck at 2:46 p.m. It […]
RIP: Actress Brittany Murphy Dead At 32
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Los Angeles police have opened an investigation into circumstances surrounding the death of actress Brittany Murphy. Police have been dispatched to Cedars-Sinai and to the Los Angeles home where Murphy, 32, went into cardiac arrest earlier today. Police sources emphasized that their inquiry was preliminary, adding they could not say whether it would point to any criminal conduct. [Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the house was located in West Hollywood.] L.A. city firefighters responded to a call from the home in the 1800 block of Rising Glen Road. Murphy was transported to Cedars-Sinai […]
RATM Busts Up Simon Cowell’s X-Mas Monopoly
THE INDEPENDENT: Rock band Rage Against the Machine ended Simon Cowell’s four year domination of the Christmas charts tonight after a hugely popular Facebook campaign helped the Los Angeles nu-metallers snatch the Christmas number one slot from X-factor’s Joe McEdlerry. More than half a million people downloaded the band’s famously anti-authoritarian and expletive laden track “Killing in the Name” in what was seen as a broad protest against the increasing influence of manufactured pop music. It is the first time a non-X-Factor song has made it to Christmas number one for four years and represents a major snub to the […]
AVALANCHE: ‘Storm Of The Century’ Shows No Mercy
INQUIRER: On the eve of the winter solstice, the most potent December snowstorm in 100 years — complete with thunder and lightning — has left the region under as much as 20 inches of snow. And for the rest of the week, the faintest sunlight of the year will glance off a bright and dense cover, which may affect weather for several days. And for the rest of the week, the faintest sunlight of the year will glance off a bright and dense cover, which may affect weather for several days. Temperatures may not get out of the 30s until […]
CINEMA: Dark Ride Of The Moon
AVATAR (2009, directed by James Cameron, 162 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Avatar has been unleashed! Aided by ever-faster microchip technology James Cameron has given us a future world we’ve never seen with such clarity. With his audience goggled up for 3-D like motocross racers, Cameron’s long-gestating sci-fi fantasy zooms you through foreign jungles with hitherto unseen big-screen spectacle. For people looking to sit in a theme park ride two hours and forty-some minutes, your moment has arrived. People love roller coasters, I love roller coasters, but I don’t receive the emotional jolt from those four-story drops that […]
GAYDAR: Dumpstas Vs. Octomom
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR The Dumpsta Players, that raucous band of merry drags, pulled out all the stops last Wednesday night at Bob and Barbara’s with they’re Christmas tabloid scalping of Jon and Kate + Hate in Outerspace! B&B’s tight quarters were especially packed that night; those present, making as much of a scene as would be expected from a crowd jiving with the DP’s prescription of dissolute theater. Kicking off the show was the bellicose but buoyant Mr. and Mrs. Ponzio (Mr. Ponzio played by the Jackal Jester himself, Ricky Paul), belting out a reel of “Jingle Bells” […]
ORAL ROBERTS: The Last Of The Tycoons
THE GUARDIAN: His message was a simple promise of health, wealth and salvation: Jesus wants you to be saved, healed and prosperous. It was a message that struck a natural chord with Americans, appealing to the desire for both material and spiritual success. His preaching gained traction far beyond Pentecostal circles. His message and his manner gained traction with me, too. As a Pentecostal teen, “on fire for the Lord,” I went through a period of devouring his writings and his broadcasts. It was the 1990s, when the UK received its first Christian satellite station, and footage from the old […]
BE VERY AFRAID: Winter Storm Warning In Effect
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: … WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM SATURDAY TO 6 AM EST SUNDAY… THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MOUNT HOLLY HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING… WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM SATURDAY TO 6 AM EST SUNDAY. SNOW IS EXPECTED TO OVERSPREAD THE AREA FROM SOUTH TO NORTH LATE TONIGHT AND SATURDAY MORNING. THE SNOW MAY FALL HEAVY AT TIMES AS THE STORM MAKES ITS CLOSEST APPROACH TO THE NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE COASTS. WARMER AIR MAY PUSH IN FROM THE OCEAN AND CAUSE A MIX OR CHANGE TO PLAIN RAIN ALONG THE […]
NOPENHAGEN: Obama Brings Nothing To The Table
ASSOCIATED PRESS: “We are running short on time,” he said. “We are ready to get this done today. But there has to be movement on all sides.” And yet Obama arrived in snow-covered Copenhagen with no new proposal from the U.S. side. Some had hoped he might increase Washington’s emissions-cut pledge, now only a fraction of those from other developed countries, or put a specific dollar amount on America’s expected contributions to short- or long-term aid funds to help poorer nations deal with the effects of climate change. Obama planned to spend only about nine hours at the summit. He […]
WORTH REPEATING: Bring Back Barkley, Too
GONZO: The Sixers need something to keep the fans interested while simultaneously distracting them from a team that has just six sad wins and the fourth-worst attendance in the NBA. They need a big personality to get the city talking about pro hoops again. They need to make a bold move. They need to hire Charles Barkley. A few months ago, Barkley told the Boston Globe he’d like to become a general manager. It’s Charles, so you have to wonder how sincere he was when he made that statement. In the past, he has said he’d like to become a […]