The DREAM act is not controversial. Nothing is controversial about this.

One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12.

via My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant – NYTimes.com

There needs to be more attention to the Republican sponsors of the bill who bailed on it for political expediency.

Our health care system? Socialized with a mix of government (more efficient/inexpensive) and private (less efficient/expensive) payers:

But 1986 does seem to me to be the real moment when America socialized medicine – under Reagan! In a real Ron-Paul style free market in healthcare, where everyone has to buy their own insurance or not and deal with the consequences, chronically sick poor people must, in principle, be left, at some point, to suffer and die alone or bankrupted. Something in the American psyche does not want that to be America. Whatever part of the psyche that is, it sure isn’t inspired by Ayn Rand. It wants to put a floor under human suffering and sickness, to have a minimal baseline for care. We don’t want to see people dying in the streets.

via Emergency Care Isn’t Health Care, Ctd – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

The ACA will reduce these emergency room visits which every insured health care user already pays for. The Republican party wants to enact policies that will make ER for neglected care trips or desperation moves like this, neccessary:

The Washington Post reports that, according to the inmates handbook, prisoners in North Carolina typically only have to pay a $5 to $7 co-payment for most visits or emergencies.

“However, no one will be denied access to healthcare whether they have money or not,” states the handbook. “You will not be charged for visits about life- or limb-threatening emergencies, referrals to specialty clinics, defined chronic disease such as TB, HIV, high blood pressure, diabetes, pregnancy care, vaccinations, and periodic health assessments.”

State prisoners in North Carolina absolutely have better health care then the average American.

The cost of health care for the average American in 2010? $8100/year according to the NIHCM report on health care spending. Also, 5% of the population is responsible for 50% of the health care spending as obesity becomes a greater cause of superfluous health care need. In 1997 health care spending was $4166/person. From 2005 to 2009 spending rose 18.4%.

Justice Prosser previously called Justice Bradley a “bitch” in a previous dispute. From the Wisconsin State Journal:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck in an argument in her chambers earlier this month, according to three knowledgeable sources.

But a different account of the incident emerged Saturday, and Prosser said the allegation “will be proven false.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted sources saying Prosser made contact with Bradley to defend himself after she charged toward him.

Details of the incident, investigated jointly by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, remain sketchy. The sources spoke on the condition they not be named, citing a need to preserve professional relationships.

[…]

The sources say Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs was notified of the incident. One source says Tubbs came in to meet with the entire Supreme Court about this matter. Tubbs, contacted by WPR, declined to comment but on Saturday he told WPR he would issue a statement Monday.

via Sources: Argument between Prosser, Bradley becomes physical.

The police better investigate this carefully. And if this is being investigated by police, what’s up with the meeting with the entire Supreme Court?

UPDATE: From TPM

Dane County Sheriff’s office opens investigation of Supreme Court ‘chokehold’ incident.

Good.

President Barack Obama is expected to announce this week that 30,000 U.S. “surge” forces will be fully withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, an administration official has told CNN.

via Obama to announce plan to pull 30,000 troops out of Afghanistan – CNN.com.

Here’s Obama in 2008, almost 3 years ago to the day:

Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday that United States needs to focus on Afghanistan in its battle against terrorism.

“The Afghan government needs to do more. But we have to understand that the situation is precarious and urgent here in Afghanistan. And I believe this has to be our central focus, the central front, on our battle against terrorism,” Obama said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Obama said troop levels must increase in Afghanistan.

“For at least a year now, I have called for two additional brigades, perhaps three,” he told CBS. “I think it’s very important that we unify command more effectively to coordinate our military activities. But military alone is not going to be enough.”

via Obama calls situation in Afghanistan ‘urgent’ – CNN

He did what he said he would with regards to Afghanistan and now the President must begin to execute a plan to extract our military from Afghanistan without a total descent into chaos.

Learn more about the American holiday commemorating the end of slavery.

The estate tax has a net positive effect on the economy:

So does the estate tax, as it is currently formulated, constrain economic growth? If it does, the impact is probably very minimal and could be minimized with an exception that applies to small businesses. But in other ways, the existence of an estate tax likely does more to encourage economic growth than it does to discourage it. While there may be some decent moral arguments for eliminating the estate tax, but the economic arguments don’t hold up.

via Does Taxing Inheritance Harm Growth? – Daniel Indiviglio – Business – The Atlantic.

Also, it only affects estates of the deceased that exceed 5 million dollars in worth. Yes, just 2% of Americans.

We shouldn’t let facts get in the way.

Consider the trends: The effective federal tax rate of the wealthiest 400 Americans dropped from 29 percent to less than 17 percent over the past 15 years. Americans have one of the lowest rates of taxation in more than half a century. And according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, federal, state, and local income taxes consumed 9.2 percent of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950.

The gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has grown wider as that tax burden has declined. The United States at the same time needs federal investments in health care, energy, education, and defense.

Plain and simple: Estate Tax Holiday has helped to increase the deficit.

Tantrum protests are that involve some sort of mildly belligerent spectacle meant to embarrass a public figure. Glitter bombs are a tantrum protest. No one knows why a public figure was glitter bombed, pied in the face or whatever when it is reported, people just know that they were mildly bullied.

It doesn’t embarrass any public figure worth protesting. The brief, surprising interruption and spectacle serves to anger and energize that politicians’s staff and loyalists and it annoys people who work the venues because they have to clean up the mess. Most folks who see or hear about the protest decide that the tantrum protester is someone with time to waste and is limited to the ingenuity of a schoolyard bully. The tactic is the focus.

It worked for Tea Partiers in town halls because they sought to derail, not to build. Liberal political action requires a base of consensus and calculated action to achieve a new goal to improve social justice and/or the value or efficiency of governments function. Blasting people with props from the local costume store doesn’t seem to aid that cause.

President Reagan needed the debt ceiling raised. The Obama administration is circulating Reagan’s reasoned argument in favor of a debt ceiling hike. From the pen of the role model for all republicans:

This country now possesses the strongest credit in the world. The full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result.

via First Read – WH invokes Ronald Reagan in effort to raise debt ceiling.

How soon until someone whack job alleges this letter was forged.

Over a year out from the November 2008, Senator Obama was a blip on the radar and Senator Edwards was the big challenger as both campaigns were trying to lay the groundwork to steal Iowa from the inevitable Senator Hillary Clinton who was gearing her attacks and infrastructure towards the general election not her opponents in a proportional primary.

Romney’s pundit declared “win” in the 2nd debate of the season against a field isn’t completely set and in front of a voter base that isn’t completely dialed into the 2012 election is a qualifying heat. There are many more heats to run before they even get to the Pro tour: primary season.

Here’s the deal: When there is huge complex problem that we as a country have to deal with (Al Qaeda, Energy, Unemployment, Poverty, Education, Credit Crisises, Drug usage) the first ideologue that delineates an extreme solution is known as being the adult in the room. Even if the implementation of the law is hasty, the design of the plan ignores the subtleties of context, the import of expert empirical analysis, and the most likely or real outcome of the legislative/executive action is exacerbation of the complex problem, the solution is still regarded by the punditry as serious, bold and courageous.

Why? Because the punditry all claim: no one else suggested an alternative solution. Except, in most all cases, someone did propose an alternative.

Then when the plan is implemented, and things go wrong, the pundit reaction is to protect their ignorance and their favorite bureaucrat with statements like: “who could have known?” or “it’s no ones fault”. These very serious people are The Bold & Courageous. Two prime examples?

Boehner is leading his party against raising the arbitrary debt ceiling without massive, recession generating spending cuts:

As one who’s been arguing that the US is sleep walking off a cliff by flirting with defaulting on the federal debt for the first time in the nation’s history, even I’m a little stunned to see news that some of the biggest US banks are already making plans (sub.req.) to cut their use of US Treasuries in August as a preparation for default.

via On to Catastrophe | Talking Points Memo

Paul Ryan’s budget is another example.

Over the last 24 hours, media pundits have been heaping praise on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) for releasing a proposal with massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. New York Times columnist David Brooks called it the “most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes.” Time’s Joe Klein said it was “without question, an act of political courage.”

via VIDEO: Pundits Gush Over Paul Ryan’s ‘Courageous’ Rip-Off | ThinkProgress.

As we know from both initiatives they can not actually be called insane.

Now watching Morning Joe live from Los Angeles, with kids in the room for their Education Nation show Brewing Together with Crenshaw High School suddenly, congressman sexting is not that important of a topic.

What I’ve never understood about “what will the children think” is that it is always applied to something trivial, usually to consensual sexual relations among adults. No one ever asks “what will the children think about genocide in the Sudan?” or “what will the children think about the government torturing people?”. I can remember as a kid, listening to the news and hearing of horrible atrocities and being genuinely troubled by it (truth be told, I still don’t like to listen to that stuff, even though I think it’s important that it be reported).

via Balloon Juice » What will the children think?.

We don’t teach our young people enough lessons that deal with harsh realities of our country or world. (e.g.taking the word nigger out of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or the Founding Fathers as infinitely virtuous men). We shield them from what they can handle. When these people grow older, the news caters to our youthful historical diets not to the import of the issue with regards to our adult lives. We are in three wars in four countries that cost billions a day and thousands of lives per year, think about the 1st month of coverage of those military efforts received from network and cable news. Today we are lucky if you get 1/6 of a news show dedicated to all three of costly military actions.Without a good grasp of history and news we lose the ability to process political and determine our reaction with perspective.

My first job out of university, I remember a co-worker who was smart, industrious, a great colleague was about to celebrate her birthday. She was excited because her father bought her and her sister diamonds for everyone of their birthdays. As a young liberal, I felt it was my duty to bring up blood diamonds. She hadn’t heard of that before. Me I was beside myself not because she didn’t know about blood diamonds, but that she didn’t believe that anything I said had a chance of being true. What I never thought about until well after that moment: watching news like ours, she probably knew way more about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky (and not the rest of the Whitewater investigation) than about geo-political pressures in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, the Congo or Angola.

Really?

Unlike what was widely reported by various news outlets, Haim Saban has not sworn of Obama. Greg Sargent actually checked the supposed source and got a direct statement from the Saban:

“If solicited, I will absolutely write a check to the level allowed by law,” Saban said. “I don’t agree that he’s anti-Israel.”

via Billionaire Israeli donor: Obama is not anti-Israel – The Plum Line – The Washington Post.

Seriously, screw Japanese Nuclear authorities for:

1. Keeping Fukushima reactor online longer than it was scheduled to be prior to the Tsunami.

2. Lying about how bad A NUCLEAR MELTDOWN WAS!