Obama says insurance companies holding U.S. hostage

From the NYT:
Winning a Promotion

"Mr. Foggo's success in Frankfurt, including his work on the prisons, won him a promotion back in Washington. In November 2004, he was named the C.I.A.'s executive director, in effect its day-to-day administrative chief."

[Then he begins a mini-putsch, a reflection of the larger behavior within the Bush Administration; see also Rove and the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, or, closer to home, the Valerie Plame scandal, for examples]

"Mr. Foggo soon became embroiled in agency infighting.... Mr. Foggo... almost immediately began firing top C.I.A. officials..."

[Never forget that The Torture Bureaucracy will always have fascist aspects]

"I needed something done by someone I trusted in private industry," Mr. Foggo said."

Now that Britain has betrayed them on Health Care.

And will John Mackey be consulted?

Everyone screams:

"No more business as usual!"

They are offered reform, and scream:

"We don't want it!"

Is that the summation of our contemporary behavior as we move through whatever stages are relevant to a nation? And from what developmental stage are we maturing, if that summation is an index?

The terrible twos?

It certainly doesn't look like adolescence; and if it was (oh, the irony!) a stage of adolescence, dollars to doughnuts the adolescent would at best be medicated, if not outright institutionalized.

This is how a national maturation looks, how it behaves, how it reacts, if someone molests the body politic as it passes through natural developmental processes.

Turns out that one of the architects of The American Torture Bureaucracy was apparently bred from a potato farmer. Which is about as relevant as any of his other experience.

The psycho in question was probably rooted from a piece of the potato farmers foreskin; unfortunately, that would make him a dictater.

The other guy just blew up shit.

Anne Coulter is back; and I was right: she's just jealous of Orly Taintz. Together, they provide a perverse justification of Julie Brown's opinion.

It seems that there is still some question about whether the internet makes you stupid. Something Awful was apparently not consulted; though it has many nano-stories on the subject.

And it's still well before noon.

Someone elsewhere on TPM wrote:

"During the run-up to the Iraq War and throughout the previous administration's tenure, the current crop of home-grown right-wing jihadists insisted that Free Speech Zones were necessary to ensure public order."

The problem: that is not what happened. The people described as "...home-grown right-wing jihadists..." did not insist on any such thing.

In fact, no such group had any role in setting up the Free Speech zones. Had the individual done some homework, he might have learned:

"Many colleges and universities earlier instituted free speech zone rules during the Vietnam-era protests of the 1960s and 1970s."

"During the 1988 Democratic National Convention, the city of Atlanta set up an official "free speech area""

"Free speech zones were used in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention."

"The Bush administration has been criticized by columnist James Bovard of The American Conservative for requiring protesters to stay within a designated area, while allowing supporters access to more areas."

And so on and so forth.

Speaking out of school often ends badly. Some may wish to re-consider these words as relevant:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

Choose one.

Clearly, some need it spelled out in tiny words:

The lack of Free Speech zones is a Good Thing.

Notice anything missing?

"The most prominent examples were those created by the United States Secret Service for President George W. Bush and other members of his administration."

Notable is the utter disparity: at no time did, for instance, Brett Bursey pose a real threat...he was not armed.

We've all seen the reaction, from right-wing extremists, when they are called right-wing extremists and it is noted in that labelling that they pose an actual threat.

How many reports, to date, are there of armed individuals entering these meetings? Yet I've heard no reports of Free Speech Zones to segregate right wing extremists; never mind Concealed Carry Zones.

I'm still waiting on something from Profiles in Courage. Is there no Charles Sumner among them? Even someone with the faults of Lucius Lamar ?

Air Force used Twitter to track NY flyover fallout

...call each other Hercules and have Maria Muldaur Karaoke Nights; Gary Trudeau seems to think something similar is occurring.