Moonbats for Moonbeam

From the Sacramento Bee: The California attorney general’s office opened an investigation Thursday into allegations that the state’s largest health insurers were rejecting medical claims at alarming rates. The inquiry was prompted by a report released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association. The report suggested that the insurers rejected a fifth of all claims received [...]

The State of Labor

Every now and then, someone will sum up a concept so clearly and elegantly that truth cannot be missed.  I only wish Dean Baker had written it last year when Chris Bowers and the rest of Whole Foods Nation were in the “You like me!  You really LIKE me!” stage as the Obama campaign was [...]

Monday News Blast

Fighting over Frida Kahlo In Mexico, the emergence of work said to be made by the artist has led to a very public debate about its authenticity. The Times’ art critic has seen the pieces. I don’t quite get how you have a “signature issue” and yet only now are ready to “draw some lines [...]

Open Thread: Is Obama a Socialist?

If only he was! We might be getting real Health Care Reform right now. Google defines a Socialism as follows socialism (uncountable) Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making, and public control of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists. The socialist political philosophies as a group, [...]

Dear Mr. Fantasy…Dreaming of 2012

This story is a couple of days old; but since I don’t watch TV anymore, I didn’t hear about it until today. It seems that two of MSNBC’s most enthusiastic koolaid-slurpers, Keith Olberman and Eugene Robinson, had a discussion on last Thursday night’s Countdown about whether President Obama could find himself with primary challengers in [...]

Van Jones resigns

We haven’t been following the saga of Van Jones here at The Confluence because we try to ignore the VRWC Noise Machine and we have been focusing on health care reform.  Here’s the latest news from the Washington Post: Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, resigned [...]

Kiss my ass, Dave

David “M-M-M-My” Sirota has written an accurate yet ridiculous piece about last year’s election: Though the 2006 and 2008 elections were billed as progressive movement successes, the story behind them highlights a longer-term failure. During those contests, most leaders of Washington’s major labor, environmental, antiwar and anti-poverty groups spent millions of dollars on a party [...]

Your Breakfast Read Saturday Edition

Health-Care Mess My peeps at Black Agenda Report want us to stop blaming everybody under the sun: There’s a clear culprit. Who’s Blocking Health Care Reform Now? Blue Dogs? Senate Dems? House Progressives? Or the White House Itself? In less than a year, Democrats have transformed themselves from the party of change to the party [...]

Things that make you go Grrrrrr. Pet peeve open thread.

It’s Friday night.  You’re up.  What’s bugging you?  We all have them — pet peeves.  Those annoyances we encounter on a regular basis that get our goat every time. I hate: People who talk loudly on their cellphones about unimportant stuff while a) in a restaurant b) in line at the grocery store; 0r c) [...]

Friday Morning News

California Wildfires Arson caused California blaze A massive fire that has charred nearly 145,000 acres in Southern California and destroyed dozens of homes north of Los Angeles was caused by arson, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman said Thursday. A homicide investigation has been initiated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department into the deaths of [...]