Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever…
Author: internal3m
Experts begin destroying Syrias chemical weapons arsenal
A team of international experts began the process of destroying Syria’s chemical weapons on Sunday, according to the United Nations. The group consists of international inspectors from the Netherlands-based watchdog Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons along with a U.N. team. Under their supervision, “Syrian personnel used cutting torches and angle grinders to destroy or disable a range of items,”…
Yes, the White House Is ‘Winning’
Still, it is true that the Obama administration is winning the zero-sum contest. One way to measure this is polling, which already shows movement toward the Democratic side. Another way to measure it is that Republicans, who have spent months refusing any budget deal, are suddenly desperate to make a budget deal. A flurry of…
$11 a month? Obamacare super-cheap for some, feds find
Bare-bones health insurance could cost just $11 a month for a family of four in Indianapolis on the federal governments new exchanges, which start serving customers next week. A similar family in New Orleans might pay as little as $23 a month, although they’d have to shell out $282 for a more generous “silver” plan,…
The Biggest Myth About Obamacare
When Congress wrote the law known as the Affordable Care Act, their idea was to maintain Americans current health coverage as much as possible, to boost consumer protections in the health insurance market for individuals, and to cover the uninsured. That doesnt mean all workers will keep what they have. The Congressional Budget Office predicts…
GOP Congressman Pushes For Obamacare Repeal: “This is not a Democracy”
Doug Collins, representative from Georgia came on Politics Nation and it was no surprise when he started spouting the typical one-sided nonsense about how they weren’t shutting down the government and were in fact funding the government – as long as it didn’t include the affordable care act. Nothing shocking there, but what may have…
Florida Among States Undercutting Health Care Enrollment
As many states prepare to introduce a linchpin of the 2010 health care law — the insurance exchanges designed to make health care more affordable — a handful of others are taking the opposite tack: They are complicating enrollment efforts and limiting information about the new program. Chief among them is Florida, where Gov. Rick…
48 Million Americans Remain Uninsured, Census Bureau Reports
The rate of uninsured Americans dropped slightly for the second consecutive year in 2012, from 15.7 percent to 15.4 percent, largely a result of more people enrolling in Medicare and Medicaid, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The closely-watched report found that about 48 million Americans were uninsured in 2012, down from 48.6 million in…
Republicans Like The Affordable Care Act More Than Obamacare
Republicans like the 2010 health care law better when its called by its proper name — the Affordable Care Act — instead of Obamacare, according to a new Fox News poll. Republican support for the law jumped eight percent, from 14 percent for Obamacare to 22 percent for the Affordable Care Act, when pollsters…
UN Inspectors On Syria: Clear And Convincing Evidence Chemical Weapons Were Used On Large Scale
The inspectors report said “the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used … in the Ghouta area of Damascus” on Aug. 21. “The conclusion is that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in…
Obama May Have Played Us All And Won–That Is Leadership
In one chess match the President was able to make the rank and file Republicans seem like doves, the neocons look reckless, the Tea Party wing seem like flip flopping buffoons all while potentially shutting down Syria’s use of chemical weapons without firing a shot or dropping a bomb. The Right Wing would have none…
U.S., Russia Reach Deal – Syrian Weapons May Be Destroyed In Less Than A Year
After days of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia reached agreement Saturday on a framework to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 and impose U.N. penalties if the Assad government fails to comply. The deal, announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, includes…
Syria Napalms Kids, Americans Bury Their Heads
I have to shake my head at the level of American ignorance displayed in regards to the Syria conflict. People talk about Muslims and say they will never stop fighting. AMERICA has never stopped fighting. Our last war is still going on! Just because we take our fights out of our country does not make…
With the World Watching, Syria Amassed Nerve Gas
Now, as President Obama confronts enormous difficulties in rallying a reluctant Congress and a skeptical world to punish the Syrian government with a military strike over what is said to be its apparent use of deadly nerve agents last month, he appears to be facing a similar challenge to the one that allowed the Assads…
Nine facts about terrorism in the United States since 9/11
It’s the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Both Washington D.C. and New York City are commemorating the occasion with ceremonies this morning. And this seems like an apt time to go back through the history of terrorist attacks in the United States and see how things have changed since Sept. 11. First,…
Why the Push for Syrian Intervention Is About More Than Just Assad
This is the dilemma facing Obama today. If the United States cannot extricate himself from the geopolitical imperatives posed by Iran’s continuing threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the safety of Persian Gulf oil supplies, it cannot extricate itself from the turmoil in Syria. Because a failure to confront Assad’s excesses could be viewed as…
The Good News About Race And Crime In America
Civil rights leaders and progressive activists have cited Zimmermans acquittal and the proliferation of robust self-defense laws as evidence of a “war on black men” — or, similarly, that its now “open season on black men.” Meanwhile, Zimmerman supporters and many on the political right have used the case to bring up old discussions of…
Senate Republicans block FEMA disaster relief funds
A package of disaster relief funding worth $7 billion was blocked from coming up for a vote by Senate Republicans on Monday, drawing sharp condemnation from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) who lambasted the conservative party for abandoning Americans in need. Cantor last said “The funds will be there.” Now he’s blocking them. -TRP…
Terrorism Expert: Since 9/11, Only 33 Deaths From Muslim Terrorism Vs. 150,000 Deaths From Murders
In an interview with ThinkProgress yesterday, Kurzman told us that “evidence so far over the last decade” is that the threat of terrorism committed by Muslims “has not been growing.” Kurzman’s comprehensive analysis of terrorist plots since 9/11 finds that 186 individuals of the Muslim faith had become radicalized towards violence. Thus, he…