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By Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols $17.79
By Kevin Phillips $17.13
$19
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 AP photo / Alex Brandon
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By Chip Fleischer — Now that Tom Daschle has withdrawn his name from the running to be health and human services secretary, President Obama should revisit the idea of nominating former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean for the position, an idea he abandoned last November for all the wrong reasons.
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Barack Obama is coming out of the gate with quite the to-do list, not the least part being his new economic recovery plan, which carries quite the price tag at about $1 trillion. What is he thinking? Here, Obama gives some details in his weekly online address.
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What’s it going to take to jump-start the economy? How does almost a trillion dollars sound? That’s the amount that President Barack Obama is considering for his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which he introduced to the public in his weekly address on Saturday.
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By Amy Goodman — Fifty million Americans are without health insurance, and 25 million are “underinsured.” Millions being laid off will soon be added to those rolls. At this perilous moment, we need sweeping New Deal-caliber changes, not the impotent tinkering that has been proposed.
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In his weekly address posted on Change.gov Friday, Barack Obama explains why he’s starting his job before assuming office: It’s the economy, stupid.
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 AP photo / Rick Bowmer
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By Bill Boyarsky — With unemployment soaring, the need grows daily for guaranteed health care. But that may not happen in the coming year because of the desperate need to revive the economy and put people to work.
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By Marie Cocco — Over the past 10 months, as the hemorrhage of jobs began to push the national unemployment rate toward its October level of 6.5 percent, about 3 million Americans were thrown off the insurance rolls or had their incomes fall so much that they became eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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By David Sirota — If you’re having trouble remembering what the recent election was all about, rest easy: You’re probably not going senile – you’re likely experiencing the momentary effects of brainwashing.
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 Flickr / marcn
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Sen. Ted Kennedy has asked Sen. Hillary Clinton to take up an important post shaping landmark health care legislation. The offer comes as Clinton reportedly weighs continuing her work in the Senate against joining Barack Obama’s administration as secretary of state.
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 cosmosmagazine.com
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Now here’s one way to win elections: Government officials in Mexico City are offering free medication to hombres of a certain age who suffer from erectile dysfunction.
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 Reagan Library
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OK, so Ronald Reagan isn’t around to actually endorse anyone. But that doesn’t stop political operatives from invoking his presidency to boost their candidate. A new, liberal Colorado-based group called Progressive Future is bringing back the Gipper to put in a plug for Barack Obama, while the conservative Let Freedom Ring calls Obama the “anti-Reagan.”
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A devastating and growing problem is explored in Michael Paul Mason’s riveting new book, “Head Cases.”
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Tuesday night marked the second debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, moderated by NBC’s Tom Brokaw at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. While Brokaw struggled to stick to the script, the two candidates fielded questions about the current economic catastrophe and American foreign policy.
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 onechoicehealthcare.com
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Whoops! As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out Friday, presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain both have articles in the latest edition of Contingencies magazine about how they would reform America’s health care industry. In light of certain recent events in the banking world, McCain may want to reconsider his position.
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 AP photo / Jae C. Hong
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By Chris Hedges — Barack Obama’s health care plan coddles the corporations that profit from the misery and illnesses of tens of millions of Americans. The plan is naive, at best, and probably disingenuous when it insists that we can coax these corporations, which are listed on the stock exchange and exist to maximize profit, to transform themselves into social service agencies that will provide adequate health care for all Americans.
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By Marie Cocco — It is worth pausing during these orchestrated partisan celebrations to look afresh at entitlements. There is no more recent evidence of their enduring value than the latest report from the Census Bureau on the number of Americans who are doing without health insurance.
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The ailing senator from Massachusetts brought many Democrats to tears in Denver with a surprise speech at his party’s convention, during which he promised to lead the fight in the Senate to finally pass a form of universal health care.
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 AP photo / Charlie Neibergall
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By Bill Boyarsky — As Barack Obama moves into the Democratic National Convention, he should speak out more clearly and forcefully on an issue that clearly distinguishes him from his do-nothing opponent—national health insurance.
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John McCain has spent a small fortune trying to convince voters that Barack Obama is an out-of-touch celebrity (a tactic that appears to be working), but columnist Dave Lindorff argues that Obama’s dip in the polls is actually the result of his march to the right, much like the last two Democratic losers.
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By Marie Cocco — Before the energy-price crisis, before the mortgage crisis, before the credit crisis and the banking crisis, there was the crisis in health insurance that is in reality a crisis in care.
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By Marie Cocco — From the people who brought you the Terri Schiavo spectacle, the stem-cell research stalemate and the atrocious waste of tax money on abstinence-only sex education that has been shown not to work, comes a sequel: a proposal to redefine abortion to include some of the most common forms of birth control.
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 video.aol.com
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Dr. Marty Klein, author of “America’s War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty,” has some additional questions for John McCain—who flailed in the face of a perfectly reasonable query about Viagra versus birth control last week—as well as his rivals for the presidency.
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 AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Just when it seemed they wouldn’t have enough votes to pass a key Medicare bill, Democratic senators staged a dramatic coup by secretly whisking Sen. Edward Kennedy into the Capitol on Wednesday to cast his vote and make his first congressional appearance since he was diagnosed with brain cancer in May.
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 AP photo / Alex Brandon
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Canadians admire Barack Obama more than any other politician in either the U.S. or Canada, according to a recent poll. But there’s plenty of envy to go around. According to the same survey, a majority of both Canadians and Americans think Canada has a superior health care system.
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By Marie Cocco — More than halfway through a political season in which public concern about America’s porous, confusing and costly health insurance system has consistently emerged as one of the chief worries of a squeezed electorate, this is what we can expect when the new president takes office next year: not so much.
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 AP photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
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John Edwards announced his endorsement of Barack Obama on Wednesday. Edwards’ support has long been coveted by both Democratic candidates, particularly because of his populist appeal. Indeed, he won about 7 percent of the vote in West Virginia, despite having dropped out of the race at the end of January.
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 AP photo / Kevork Djansezian
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By Bill Boyarsky — On May 5, the day before Barack Obama all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, I visited Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., because I was sick—sick of stories about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his most famous parishioner and of television close-ups of Obama drinking beer and Hillary Clinton belting straight shots in efforts to show their inner blue collars.
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 time.com
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It’s not going to be an easy campaign, but anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has made good on her pledge to try to take over Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat this fall. Sheehan filed Friday to run for the House in Pelosi’s San Francisco district—but she has to collect over 10,000 signatures before she can make her bid official.
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By Amy Goodman — As the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race continues to focus on lapel pins and pastors, America is ailing.
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Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s health-care plans contain some form of mandate—a requirement that Americans purchase insurance. At least one legal scholar wonders whether that’s constitutional. At the very least, Karl Manheim argues in an Op-Ed article, it’s “certainly unprecedented.”
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By Marie Cocco — Add doctors to that growing list of Americans who would like to see some form of national health insurance.
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 AP photo / Carolyn Kaster, file
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By Bill Boyarsky — I’m afraid Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are giving the game away to John McCain on the most important matter facing the country, the Iraq war. I hate to sound like one of those middle-aged jock-loving MSNBC pundits, but as I sit here on the sidelines I want to scream, “Quit playing defense.”
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 factcheck.org
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Hillary Clinton was so irked by a couple of Barack Obama campaign mailers that a few days ago she publicly scolded him and said “every Democrat should be outraged.” Clinton herself has been accused of sending misleading mailers to voters, including one that went out shortly after her now infamous “shame on you” news conference. For inundated Ohioans, it’s a question of whom to trust. Updated.
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Now that Fidel Castro’s got a bit more time on his hands, documentary überdirector Michael Moore has a suggestion for how he might spend his first official weekend out of office—as long as he’s got a penguin suit handy.
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With mere days left before Super Tuesday and down to just two candidates, Thursday’s Democratic debate in Los Angeles gave voters a crucial eleventh-hour look at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who kept things friendly enough while staking out their differences on several key issues—health care, the economy and, most importantly, the Iraq war.
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 AP photo / Steven Senne
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By Bill Boyarsky — As the candidates press forward in the final hours before the state’s primary, the war and health care stand as prime issues. But no one is fully facing up to the fact that the latter cannot be properly addressed as long as the U.S. is paying for the former.
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Who knew that Reese Witherspoon window-shops for shoes? Or that Ben Affleck glues elaborate doll houses together? Or that Jeremy Piven eats what appears to be gruel on a lush outdoor patio? These intimate celebrity vignettes were captured for the AARP’s ad campaign for its “Divided We Fail” intiative calling for “red, blue ... liberal, conservative” (and, apparently, “rich, famous”) Americans to unite for the causes of health care and long-term financial security.
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By Eugene Robinson — Not only are Rudy Giuliani’s figures about prostate cancer survival rates in the United States and Britain wildly misleading, but he’s also wrong on his general point: that a single-payer system, of the kind that Republicans call “socialized” medicine, inevitably would deliver inferior care.
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By Marie Cocco — Sometime before the average price of gas topped the $3-a-gallon mark, an inevitable moment arrived. The economy beat Iraq as the issue of most concern to Americans.
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 AP photo / Erik Perel
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Rudy Giuliani’s factually challenged claims about how he probably would have fared in his battle against prostate cancer had he sought treatment in Britain instead of America might have raised only a small stir, but, for his part, columnist Paul Krugman thinks it should have been a much bigger deal.
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By Eugene Robinson — In slamming Clinton-style reforms, “America’s mayor” uses data in a way that shows disregard for the truth. Does that remind you of any other famous politician? Maybe the one in the Oval Office?
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 politico.com
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House Democrats managed to pick up a few more votes for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, but not enough to override the president’s veto. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to keep fighting for the overwhelmingly popular program: “In the next two weeks we will send the president another bill that insures coverage for 10 million children.”
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After the House failed to override Bush’s veto of the SCHIP children’s health care renewal bill on Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark berated the administration and the bill’s opponents. In light of their attitude, he questioned whether the nation’s kids would “grow old enough for you to send [them] to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”
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By Marie Cocco — The elderly are paying for waste in the GOP-crafted Medicare drug benefit. Rep. Waxman, D-Calif., is lifting the lid on this kettle, and what’s inside ain’t pretty.
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By Will Durst — Oooh. He’s clever. And obviously knows exactly what he’s doing. This is all a setup, people. Has to be. Yes, I’m talking about George Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Who but a total stoned horned ogre would do that? Maybe an ogre with something up his sleeve, eh?
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By Joe Conason — Once among the most frightening epithets in American political culture, “socialized medicine” seems to have lost its juju. Today that phrase sounds awfully dated, like a song on a gramophone or a mother-in-law joke or a John Birch Society rant against fluoridated water.
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Yeah, so it sounded like a great idea—raise taxes on cigarettes in order to fund children’s health care initiatives—but apparently President Bush didn’t think so, as he hit Congress’ proposed SCHIP reauthorization bill with the veto stick on Wednesday. Thankfully, we have Jon Stewart to help us vent our collective frustration through the magic of satire.
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 foxnews.com
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President Bush may not have done his party any favor in coming elections by exercising his veto privilege—the fourth time he’s done so—to deep-six a bipartisan bill passed by Congress that would have renewed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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