@KMH,

Grayson's bill is in the House, which is a completely separate animal than the Senate.

In just two days, Alan Grayson has piled up 50 co-sponsors to his Medicare buy-in bill, which is designed as a stand-alone bill rather than as an amendment to the health reform bill. Here is the complete list of 50 co-sponsors:

50 CURRENT COSPONSORS : Bob Filner, Jan Schakowsky, Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich, Donna Edwards, Jared Polis, Chellie Pingree, Sheila Jackson Lee, Carol Shea-Porter, Diane Watson, John Lewis, Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez, Keith Ellison, Loretta Sanchez, Hank Johnson, Maxine Waters, Luis Gutierrez, Lynn Woolsey, Marcy Kaptur, Charles Rangel, Patrick Kennedy, Raul Grijalva, Donna Christian-Christensen, John Olver, Corrine Brown, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Marcia L. Fudge, Danny K. Davis, Pedro Pierluisi, Grace Napolitano, Alcee Hastings, John Hall, Shelley Berkley, John Conyers, Jim McGovern, Phil Hare, Betty Sutton, Jim McDermott, Gregorio Sablan, Maurice Hinchey, Carolyn Maloney, Barbara Lee, Elijah Cummings, Gregory Meeks, Edolphus Towns, Al Green, David Wu, and Rush Holt.

Did Bernie co sign Grayson's (Hartmann's ) Medicare E? Even Dennis Kucinich signed it! Grayson was on Alan Colmes show last evening. The bill is only 4 pages long. It is Medicare for anyone who wants to pay for it, Grayson said.

What does Bernie think of Grayson's Hartmann's Medicare Part E

[Grayson also ripped off Stephanie Miller's just die. Sure Grayson would want to give credit where credit is due, but can you imagine the football that would be for the right....]

Medicare for anyone who wants to pay for it Sign Petition Pls RT http://bit.ly/cUI2ue via @alangrayson

What does Tom Tancredo have in common with Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, besides having an almost psychopathic fascination with brown-skinned people? They are all of Italian descent, and they are just a few of the people with Italian names that strangely seem to appear rather frequently whenever someone is raving about Latino immigrants or people who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. You may notice that whenever they try to justify their bigotry, they always mention something about how their parents or grandparents came from Italy or whatever. So that’s supposed to explain it? The novelist John Fante, who was Italian-American, did offer an explanation in his novel “Ask the Dust,” which was made into a movie a few years ago. The novel rather strongly resembles “Of Human Bondage”: the Mexican barmaid Camilla Lopez is desperately in love with an Anglo who despises her, while rejecting the overtures of a man with the disappointingly un-Anglo name of Arturo Bandini—not difficult to do because he frequently speaks to her in demeaning stereotypes. In a line that was in the movie but not the novel, Bandini ruefully observes that Lopez wants to be a “Mrs. White.” Eventually he finds his place in the world as a successful author, while she becomes a dope addict and goes insane.

Anyways, Bandini confesses to us that the reason he treated Lopez so badly could be traced to his own pain, when as a youth in Colorado he was called various uncomplimentary names because of his Italian heritage by the Aryan youth there, and how he knew he wasn't one of them and could never be. And now, looking back, he was ashamed of the way he had behaved.
It is interesting to note that Fante—who was himself raised in Colorado—was able to confront the failings of society and his own faults so honestly. Compare this with that other Italian-American from Colorado, Tancredo, who clearly has inferiority complex issues that for him can only be dealt with by out-bigoting the bigots.

I also happened to read in the local sports page yesterday that black baseball player Torii Hunter, while decrying the apparent decline in the numbers of African-American players in MLB, was quoted in USA Today thus concerning Latino players who had black skin like himself:

"People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American. They're not us. They're impostors. Even people I know come up and say, 'Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?' I say, 'Come on, he's Dominican. He's not black.' "

What are we to make of this? There are many people of African descent in Latin American. Except for their names and native language, they are no different from any other black person in the U.S. The Dominican Republican just happens to share the same island as Haiti, where, it seems, a lot of people of African descent live. I also doubt that Guerrero and Manny Ramirez would say that they are playing for a “bag of chips.” What this does show us is that anti-Latino immigrant sentiment encompasses even the absurd.

Seriously.

@harry ashburn, thank you for the info on Thom's 2-5 PM show (CST). I have added it to my favorites' column.

Here Thom:
Bank of North Dakota makes about 70 percent of the student loans in its home state, but if the Obama Administration has its way, the $3.5 billion-asset bank would be out of the origination business by this time next year.

Like most stuff on your website, most is just messed up.

@Zero G: I agree with you wholeheartedly; but I feel the USA is sliding into fascism, with the corporations calling all the shots. That doesn't excuse Chavez for his excesses.

he made MY case today!

US journalists in bed with the CIA...

@harry

Compare that report to the one Amnesty issued for the USA for the same year - would you call the USA a dictatatorship? Alright, I may have been guily of calling Bush a dictator (I don't recall that), certainly I called him a fascist.

2009 Annual Report for Venezuela
Head of state and government Hugo Chávez Frías
Death penalty abolitionist for all crimes
Population 28.1 million
Life expectancy 73.2 years
Under-5 mortality (m/f) 24/19 per 1,000
Adult literacy 93 per cent

Attacks on journalists were widespread. Human rights defenders continued to suffer harassment. Prison conditions provoked hunger strikes in facilities across the country. Some significant steps were taken to implement the 2007 law on violence against women but there was a lack of commitment from many of the authorities responsible. Lack of arms control contributed to high levels of violence and public insecurity.

compared to

2009 Annual Report for USA
Head of state and government George W. Bush
Death penalty retentionist
Population 308.8 million
Life expectancy 77.9 years
Under-5 mortality (m/f) 8/8 per 1,000

The Pentagon announced the release from the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of 22 non-US nationals held there, bringing the number held in the base at the end of the year to approximately 250. One detainee was transferred from secret CIA custody to Guantánamo in March. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Guantánamo detainees had the constitutional right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in US federal courts. By the end of the year there had been rulings in the cases of only eight detainees contesting their detention as “enemy combatants” in habeas corpus petitions. The first two trials by military commission were held at Guantánamo and several others, some of which could potentially result in death sentences, remained pending at the end of the year.

There were continued reports of police brutality and ill-treatment in prisons, jails and immigration detention facilities. Dozens of people died after police used Tasers (electro-shock weapons) against them. The first successful prosecution in a US court for torture committed outside the USA took place in October. There were 37 executions during the year, the lowest annual total for 15 years.

***************************************************

Those were just the highlights of the reports. Did you ever hear the NYTimes or any other news media talk about the USA as a dictatorship?

As far as the treatment of journalists in the US, look what happens to (some) people who try to pry back the veil:

We All Failed Gary Webb
By Robert Parry
December 10, 2008 (A Special Report)
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/120908.html

You might also check out Carl Bernstein's "CIA and the Media, Rolling Stone Magazine" written after he left the Washington Post. Look it up.

@Harry: Very scary