[Click HERE to enlarge] WORLD NET DAILY: California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication.[…] “I’m forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond,” she said. “Before, they said, ‘You don’t have anything backing your claims,’” Taitz explained. “Now I have something. In fact, I have posted on the Internet more than Obama has. My birth certificate actually has […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR With the record business decimated by illegal downloading, the live concert represents the ailing music industry’s biggest source of revenue. But as journalist John Seabrook reports in The New Yorker, the live concert business has yet to reconcile two competing sides of its identity. For the world’s leading concert promoter and ticket seller — LiveNation and Ticketmaster, respectively — a concert is a moneymaking venture. For diehard fans of top-grossing touring artists like Bruce Springsteen and U2, it’s a unique experience of “instant cousinship” with other fans (as one pioneering promoter puts it). Meanwhile, Internet scalping on sites […]
White House Plans Counter-Offensive Against Insurers
NEW YORK TIMES: With Republicans mobilizing against the proposed health care overhaul, President Obama, Congressional Democrats and leading advocacy groups are laying the groundwork for an August offensive against the insurance industry as part of a coordinated campaign to sell the public on the need for reform. […] Revamping health care is the president’s top legislative priority, and people on all sides of the debate agree that August, when lawmakers leave Washington to take the pulse of constituents, will be crucial to shaping public opinion. With Republicans making headway by casting the legislation as a costly government takeover, Democrats have […]
MAKING NICE: The Beer Heard Round The World
[Courtesy of THE OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTOSTREAM] BOSTON GLOBE: They did not link arms, and there were no public apologies. But a subdued meeting over beers on the White House patio last evening appeared to achieve President Obama’s goal of encouraging a deeper dialogue on race between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley. The White House, which carefully choreographed the event, kept reporters out and would not disclose what was said after the unlikely trio, joined by Vice President Joe Biden, sipped their cold ones. But after the images of a peaceful dialogue were […]
SPITZER AGONISTES: Vanity Fair Investigating Whether Or Not Client #9 Was Set Up By Wall Street
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] GAWKER: The idea that Eliot Spitzer’s downfall was engineered by the financial industry whose profits he threatened with regulation has made the rounds on the internet for a while. Now Vanity Fair is siccing two investigative reporters on the story. Gawker has learned that Vanity Fair‘s Craig Unger and John Connolly are currently looking into the prospect that the banking and financial interests that Spitzer took on during his tenures as attorney general and governor of New York tipped off the feds to Spitzer’s proclivities and launched the investigation. MORE PREVIOUSLY: INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Was The Spitzer […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
[Click image to enlarge] FRESH AIR Economists Paul Krugman and Stuart Butler discuss the way America’s health care system is financed — and how it should be. A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, Krugman argues in a July 25 New York Times column that free markets alone cannot fix the health care system. He’s a professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and his books include The Conscience of a Liberal, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century and The Return of Depression Economics. A native of Britain, Butler — the vice president […]
Senate Finance Committee Drops ‘Public Option’
ASSOCIATED PRESS: After weeks of secretive talks, a bipartisan group in the Senate edged closer Monday to a health care compromise that omits a requirement for businesses to offer coverage to their workers and lacks a government insurance option that President Barack Obama favors, according to numerous officials. Like bills drafted by Democrats, the proposal under discussion by six members on the Senate Finance Committee would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to any applicant. Nor could insurers charge higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. But it jettisons other core Democratic provisions in a reach for bipartisanship […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Century Foundation fellow Maggie Mahar is the author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Healthcare Costs So Much, published in 2006. A former financial journalist for Institutional Investor, The New York Times, Barron’s and Bloomberg, Mahar writes the Healthbeat blog, a Century Foundation project. She has also contributed to Dartmouth Medicine, covering Medicare spending and the possibility of reform. Money-Driven Medicine argues that, over the past century, the history of U.S. health care has been shaped by corporate interests’ gradual encroachment on physician autonomy. According to Mahar, this has produced a system of costly and inefficient competition among […]
BOTTLED WATER: Lies And Propaganda
GOOD: Tappening, the tap-water campaigners, has taken its gloves off and is fighting the bottled-water business the dirty way. Using the old beat-them-at-their-own-game approach, Tappening’s new Start a Lie campaign takes on truth in advertising by allowing you to create your own viral lie about bottled water. Because, as they say, “If bottled water companies can lie, we can too.” MORE RELATED: There is so much wrong with bottled water that it’s hard to know where to begin (read Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania, for starters). But let’s start with the fact that bottled water is the most brilliantly marketed product ever […]
LOSE YOUR ILLUSION: Quitters Never Win
WASHINGTON POST: Whether her ultimate goal now is to seek the presidency in 2012 or later is not known. Those who have some insight into her frame of mind believe she departs elected office without a real plan to make that happen — or even a plan for what to do with the next six months of her life. Palin left office about 18 months before the end of her term. In her farewell speech, she lashed out at the media, which she accused of “making things up,” and warned about encroachments from big government in Washington. “Be wary of […]
I’M WITH STUPID: Cambridge Police Union President Says Obama Owes Cops Everywhere An Apology
CNN: President Obama should apologize to members of the Cambridge Police Department for saying they acted stupidly, the president of the city’s police union said Friday. Dennis O’Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, said at a news conference that Obama should not have criticized officers’ actions in last week’s arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Sgt. James Crowley, the officer who arrested Gates for disorderly conduct, has previously said he was dismayed by the president’s remarks and that Obama had offended police in Cambridge and elsewhere. MORE PHAWKER: So, let us get this straight. The […]
Cops Investigate Domelights Death Threats; Black Officer’s Union Prez Under Police Protection
INQUIRER: Philadelphia police are investigating threats directed toward the president of a black officers league after her organization accused the now-disabled Web site Domelights.com of hosting racist material. After the Guardian Civic League sued Domelights last week in federal court, several postings on the site attacked league president Rochelle Bilal. One said she “deserves to be gang-raped.” Bilal, a sworn officer who works in narcotics intelligence, has been assigned officers from the dignitary protection unit to guard her during the investigation. Two uniformed officers accompanied Bilal Wednesday night at a meeting at Guardian Civic League headquarters. MORE PREVIOUSLY: City Blocks […]
CAVE IN: Reid Defies Obama On Health Care Vote Deadline, Gives GOP Evildoers What They Want
WASHINGTON POST: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Thursday the full Senate will debate and vote on healthcare overhaul legislation after it returns in September from a monthlong recess. Reid told reporters he expected the Senate Finance Committee would approve its version of the legislation before the Senate starts its recess August 7. MORE RELATED: GOP — Gang Of Obstructionist Pricks RELATED: Why We Can’t Have Nice Things — Meet Dick Scott Health Care Reform’s Public Enemy Number One THE GOOD NEWS FLOWER HOUR: Meet Health Care Reform’s Public Enemy #1