The media has arrived at the Black Teen = Violent Thug = No Crime part of the Trayvon Martin tragedy… http://t.co/…— @SharkFu via web (Tweet)

The Greatest Canadian

With the PPACA being adjudicated in the Supreme Court one can’t help but look north to Canada and the great Tommy Douglas. Douglas was able to get single payer universal health care in Saskatchewan and then as Canadian Prime Minister was able to expand it to all of Canada. Those on the rightwing spew a lot of lies about the Canadian system, but it is much more effective for all at half the price that we pay for a crap system known as Tea Bagger Health Care.

Related: Insurance companies want to keep Mandates
It should come as little surprise that insurance companies want to keep the mandates for people to buy insurance. It’s those darn consumer protections that they don’t want. So in that vein, they want to elect Republicans to help strip any health care regulations that are left of consumer protections while keeping competitors like Medicare for all out of the market.

Best Buy to close 50 stores
Not sure what this means. My best guess is that Republican brakes on the economy have taken hold in some sectors. With Republicans fighting hard to wreck the economy in order to blame it on Obama and democrats working hard to put in place some common sensesolutions that will drive the economy, I think we can expect more reports of the economy advancing on some fronts while sputtering on others.

PPACA parts are popular.
According to the Kaiser Foundation poll that has been polling on health care issues for a long, long time, when people are asked about their views on the PPACA in general the reaction is split positive and negative pretty evenly. Yet when asked about individual parts of the PPACA (such as tax credits for small businesses) reactions are overwhelmingly positive. Conclusion: In general people have no idea what is in the bill, but they sure seem to want what is in it. Way to go media (especially Fox) on your misleads and lies.

American irony.
Dick Cheney, a man who is arguably responsible for a huge number of deaths, receives a new heart and hope for an extended life. At the same time much of America is in a rage over the death of a young, unarmed black youth in Florida whose life was ended by a lone vigilante when the black youth decided to go to the local convenient mart at the wrong time.
The black youth was 17 and looked to be on the verge of a life of hope also. Of course as we all know the vigilante is still free, despite admitting to shooting the black youth.
Stories like this illustrate the huge tension that exist in this country between the promise that America holds out to its citizens and the realities that face those same citizens every day.

Bull Connor must be smiling somewhere
Anyone else have thoughts of Bull Connor when hearing stories of the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida? Sure, the Sanford police department isn’t as heavy handed as Connor used to be, but some of the same old strains of race relations and the police seem to be returning.

The party of Life
Republicans continue to want to make it impossible for a woman, any woman no matter the medical situation, to get an abortion. At the same time they push to let anyone and everyone have a gun along with laws that allow them to shoot and kill someone and then walk away without so much as an investigation.
Maybe the purchase of a gun should come with an intra-cranial ultra sound that could search for signs of psychopathology?
here is another take on the same idea –