I'm no Harry Markopolous, but I somehow sense there is something amiss with the financial engorgement of Government Sachs...err....Goldman Sachs, in the midst of being incessantly told how "we" are in the worst financial "crisis" since the 'Great Depression'. I see working Americans scrimp, sacrifice, and save each day by the sweat of their brows. But then I also see rapacious government (at all levels, mind you) along with a handful of well-connected robber-barons, hand-in-hand...partying like it's...well...1999. So how do us working shlubs get that gig? Oh, right, we have to sell our souls to fascist Democrat government lifers. Yeah, that's right Democrat neo-liberals (and all you Bushies too, while I'm at it)...YOU. ARE. FASCISTS. If you have any soul, repent now. Actively renounce head fascist Barack Obama. He is nothing but a song-and-dance showman for the greediest, most vile elements of our society. You are suckers if you honestly c...

From AP : WASHINGTON — Stormy weather in Congress is threatening President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, but some see a silver lining: the lobbyists are still mostly on board.... The industry groups have invested heavily to make sure their views get taken into account. The health care sector gave $167 million in campaign contributions to congressional candidates in the 2008 election cycle, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets.org. Health care companies poured $484 million into lobbying efforts in 2008, and are on pace to exceed that this year. Separately, the drug companies have offered up $80 billion over 10 years to reduce prescription costs of seniors if a deal goes through, while major hospital groups agreed to a $155-billion reduction in Medicare and Medicaid payments to free up funds that would help subsidize coverage for the uninsured. The political infighting on Capitol Hill has strengthened the hand of the health care groups, since liberals have been thwarted...

Dana Garrett is currently trumpeting the supposed 23% return the US government received on its bail-out investment in Goldmann Sachs: Boo hoo for you conservative Republicans and Libertarians. Instead of the dire consequences you predicted, the bailout is already starting to work for both the companies it helped and the taxpayers. Goldman Sachs is ALREADY giving us a 23% return on our tax dollars. We are ALREADY making a good return on the bailout--just like what happened in Sweden. This is GREAT NEWS! Because, you see, it means we now have a funding mechanism for Health Care reform: we just keep sending bail-out money to America's mega-banks. It will work like this. First (h/t ABC ) we spend $23.7 Trillion on the Troubled Asset Relief Program: "The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the gover...

Back to Gandhi: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Libertarian thought is emerging--one might even say oozing out around the edges--into the political discourse these days. One reason, I suspect [and hope], is that Libertarians are becoming more and more willing to stand up and confront social conservatives, who were never really small-government advocates, and who have proven [at least the political leaders] to be quite willing to use both force and fraud not only to maintain their hold on power, but to remove essential civil liberties from the American people. Or maybe--as Robert Heinlein would have put it--we're just in the silly season . But when you see Libertarianism used in such throwaway fashion as the NYT does here: No one really knows what to call the 150-pound pig roaming free in Panama City, Fla., but by eluding the authorities for five months, shaking off a Taser and four tranquilizer darts on Tuesday, the porker has beco...

The President who campaigned on getting the government out of the hands of corporate lobbyists has now appointed the ultimate corporate lobbyist to be food czar at the FDA: From HuffPo : [Michael Taylor] had been Monsanto's attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA. Soon after, he became Monsanto's vice president and chief lobbyist. Michael Taylor is the man placed by the biotech industry into the FDA during President Clinton's first term with the mission of ignoring the warnings of the scientific community regarding Genetically Modified Organisms [GMOs or genetically modified foods]: When the FDA was constructing their GMO policy in 1991-2, their scientists were clear that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to "different risks" than conventional foods. But official policy declared the opposite, claiming that the FDA knew nothing of significant differences, and declared GMOs substantially equivalent. This fiction became the ratio...

She writes a good piece noting why ObamaCare is sinking fast , and it isn't because of Washington game-playing. It is bad enough having political elitists with the cocky Obamesque self-assurance that they know what's best for all of us. Worse that they are shoving their gargantuan economy-killing cure-all agenda down the country's collective throat. But even worse is what this portends for all of us should Americans' health and health care become inalterably subject to the whims of the ilk that would use the force of state to dictate our day-to-day lives in the name of collective "health". "We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of . . . let’s call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next. Mr. Obama’s own choice for surgeon general has come under criticism as too heavy. ...