The COMCAST contract with NBC will of course have contained a stand-still clause ,standard in such agreements, under which MSNBC was required to avoid any major changes during this final period before the Closing,now scheduled for Jan 28.
The point of post-1945 European welfare states was to free the needy from dependence on private generosity, which tends to miss out the socially marginal, and to be least available when times are hardest. Welfare gave a sense of security and dignity that the less fortunate had never previously enjoyed. It was particularly important to continental societies that had seen how insecurity bred fascism.
Until now our National policy was to officially designate one group of our fellow citizens as inferior.While at the same time braying about our "Exceptional status". Yeah, we were exceptional.
There ought not to be any amount in the Trust Fund. It's a rip off.
As I've explained tediously , each year some money is subtracted from the TF to be paid out in benefits. And some is added by witholdings from workers' pay checks.
Some years ago, probably around the start of W's second term, PBS did a program on his brief campaign to privatize Social Security--just in time for us to have diverted our payroll withholdings into securitized sub primes.
At one point in the program they tried to make things more visual by showing the Fund. It was easy. It wasn't a room full of gold bars, or thousand dollar bills. Just a couple of filing cabinets about 4 feet by two feet.
This is a great achievement. Where's the applause? Where's the commendations for Barack and Harry and Nancy?
We are in full throat here when expressing our disapproval of some Administration fault or failure. And rightly so. But this great victory seems to have been welcomed with a resounding ho hum.
Is it more fun to punish someone? To write a stinging post dwelling on Barack's failure(s)? Or some other targets?
Wonderful. Finally joining the world's other normal countries. "Exceptional" no longer in this regard.
The vote to limit debate was 63 to 33 with six republicans joining 57 democrats: the 4 announced before :Collins, Snowe, Brown(Mass) and Murkowski plus two additional ones Kirk and Voinevitch.
The formal vote on repeal is to come later, sounds like this afternoon.
In 1960 Bobby Kennedy was addressing a lunch/rally in Cincinnati when in the middle of some comments about the impact of religious prejudice on Jack's campaign. His voice broke and he began crying.
We know what Gingrich did. They won't repeat that.
They could try and do a mini version of that by eliminating the funding for a specific department but I think they'd get a mini version of the Gingrich reaction
Otherwise the House,by itself,can't reach down within a department and order some specific action.
Had an appointment Wednesday with a doc who's a democrat.Very interested in politics, very smart. Husband is a reporter for the Times and one of her patients is the chief of staff of a well known very liberal dem.
The doc told the C.O. S. she had studied the health care bill and is unable to understand it. The chief of staff said neither could he.
Obama's perhaps fatal flaw is too much Adlai Stevenson and too little Ross Perot.
The media are projecting dem losses when the newly elected republican governors preside over the redistricting.
Maybe not.
Mostly we've lost the State Houses where we had very few representatives to protect. Conversely there's an encouraging list of battleground states which had Republican governors in 2001 and will have a dem this time.
The FT has many virtues. A defect which partially offsets them however is giving Christopher Caldwell a platform for a Saturday column for which meritricious would be too flattering an adjective.
Could Caldwell really be Dinesh D'Souza (thanks SleepinJeezus)in disguise ?
With respect to his fear when he sees someone in traditional muslim garb board his plane, that seems like an honest observation. Should he have said it pleases him?
With respect to his comment that we are at the beginning of a long lasting conflict with a militant muslim movement,that seems like a widely shared geopolitical judgement(Not mine BTW) rather than bias against a particular group.
