Senate passes overhaul of food safety regulations:

The biggest U.S. food-safety overhaul in more than 70 years won Senate passage as lawmakers sought to curb food-borne illnesses that cost the nation an estimated $152 billion a year.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration would gain more power to police food companies under the bill that passed today in a 73-25 vote. The measure, backed by the food industry, public- health groups and consumer advocates, adds inspections and lets the FDA force recalls, rather than relying on companies to voluntarily remove contaminated foods from store shelves.

Emphasis mine. I'm still trying to find out the names of the 25 senators who voted against this bill but I know one of them is Sen. Coburn (R-OK), so it's fairly safe to assume the other 24 are likely Republicans.

Let me understand, the food industry (i.e. big business) backed this bill, AND food illness costs this country over $150 billion per year, and yet still many Republicans felt the need to vote against this bill....? Really? And Tea-baggers wish to "take back this country" and hand it back to these partisan idiots?

UPDATE: Yup, all 25 were Republicans -- including John McCain. Maverick my arse.

It didn't take long for preppie-rock gods Vampire Weekend to sell out to commercial interests. But then again, that's assuming they had any artistic integrity to begin with. I tend to doubt it.

Tom DeLay found guilty? But I thought he said repeatedly that he was innocent...? I guess he meant of things other than this....

Go ahead, click here and try to balance the budget without touching Medicare, Social Security or military spending, and without raising any taxes -- GOOD LUCK!

Is Glenn Beck sending coded messages? Sounds completely plausible to me.

Another study, another unsurprising verdict:

A third of Americans say they have gone without medical care or skipped filling a prescription because of cost, compared to 5 percent in the Netherlands, according to study released on Thursday.

The study is the latest in a series by the non-profit Commonwealth Fund showing that while Americans pay far more per capita for healthcare, they are unhappier with the results and less healthy than people in other rich countries.

The study published in the journal Health Affairs also showed that 20 percent of U.S. adults had major problems paying medical bills, compared with 2 percent in Britain and 9 percent in France, the next costliest country.

"U.S. adults were the most likely to incur high medical expenses, even when insured, and to spend time on insurance paperwork and disputes or to have payments denied," the report reads.

Yes, we better make repealing watered-down healthcare reform priority #1!

True dat, from The Economist:

As to hubris, the Republican freshmen bound for Congress next January are in danger of reading into the election a message of their own creation. Many see the mid-terms as a popular rejection of the president’s “extreme” policies. This is doubtful. Voters were more likely registering a protest at the economy than repudiating an ideology. Besides, to the disgust of his own progressive base, Mr Obama enacted no extreme policies. Obamacare is a good deal less radical than the plan Richard Nixon proposed in 1974 or Bill Clinton 20 years later. In fact it closely resembles the bill the Republicans put up as an alternative to Mr Clinton’s, and its central idea—the individual mandate—was introduced in Massachusetts by none other than Mitt Romney, who hopes to become the Republicans’ presidential nominee in 2012.

Summarizes the state of things quite nicely.

The always-insightful Frank Rich:

The G.O.P.’s arguments for extending the Bush tax cuts to this crowd, usually wrapped in laughably hypocritical whining about “class warfare,” are easily batted down. The most constant refrain is that small-business owners who file in this bracket would be hit so hard they could no longer hire new employees. But the Tax Policy Center found in 2008, when checking out similar campaign claims by “Joe the Plumber,” that only 2 percent of all Americans reporting small-business income, regardless of tax bracket, would see tax increases if Obama fulfilled his pledge to let the Bush tax cuts lapse for the top earners. The economist Dean Baker calculated that the yearly tax increase at the lower end of that bracket, for those with earnings between $200,000 and $500,000, would amount to $700 — which “isn’t enough to hire anyone.”

Those in the higher reaches aren’t investing in creating new jobs even now, when the full Bush tax cuts remain in effect, so why would extending them change that equation? American companies seem intent on sitting on trillions in cash until the economy reboots. Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ranks the extension of any Bush tax cuts, let alone those to the wealthiest Americans, as the least effective of 11 possible policy options for increasing employment.

Love that small business nonsense the GOP has stooped to offering as reason to extend tax cuts. Completely ludicrous.

But then while on the subject of what's ludicrous and nonsensical, Kevin Drum points out a sad fact, one that has been the case for decades:

This comes from the LA Times, but I think it could be the lead story in pretty much any newspaper in the country:

Californians object to increasing taxes in order to pare the state's massive budget deficit, and instead favor closing the breach through spending cuts. But they oppose cuts — and even prefer more spending — on programs that make up 85% of the state's general fund obligations, a new Los Angeles Times/USC Poll has found.

That paradox rests on Californians' firm belief that the state's deficit — estimated last week at nearly $25 billion over the next 18 months — can be squared through trimming waste and inefficiencies rather than cutting the programs they hold dear. Despite tens of billions that have been cut from the state budget in recent years, just a quarter of California voters believed that state services would have to be curtailed to close the deficit.

Well, there you have it. This is America in a nutshell.

Americans have always been all for cuts in "wasteful" spending -- just as long as those cuts do not affect any spending that benefits them. Nothing will ever get resolved with that kind of ass-backwards, delusional thinking, but you can count on politicians refusing to explain and force voters to recognize their flawed logic, fearing an angry backlash. Thus, we remain in this increasingly worsening state, seemingly paralyzed and sinking.

I could probably add another 20-30 items to the list, but not bad for starters.

I think we've known or suspected this for quite some time: "Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate"

RUN SARAH RUN!

Most global warming skeptics are ignorant about many things when it comes to that which they deny, this study not withstanding.

Whereas these folks seem to judge the veracity of global warming research based on daily weather patterns in their immediate location (!), the fact remains this subject involves highly complex and sensitive matters that go way beyond whether or not it happens to be inordinately cold in city/state/region "X" of the country. Ocean currents play a huge part in this complicated equation and as the study points out, it doesn't take much to skew the balance of seawater salinity (due to global warming) to significantly alter the direction of currents.

And we already know the ocean salt balance is changing. Weather patterns are already likely changing as a result.

But not to worry, it's all just cyclical, or due to sun spots, or something.... Let's get back to focusing on truly important things, like tax cuts for the wealthy.

I wonder why the Tea Baggers never have a misspelled sign angrily protesting this (the fact that many bankers haven't been prosecuted). Instead, they choose to focus solely on getting rid of the African-American in the White House. Quite telling.

It's been quite a long time since my last post (!) -- did you miss me? Bet you thought I died, or better yet with the election of Obama that I was content to stop blogging now that our national nightmare (GW/Cheney) was over. Wrong on both counts.

Admittedly, with the Bush reign of incompetence no more, I did find fewer things to raise the blood pressure. However, by no means has the new guy in the White House been a bang-up success, and many of his supporters -- including myself -- will tell you about our great frustration with how he has let us down, repeatedly. His excessive willingness to proffer compromise with Republicans who only wish to see him out of office, his seemingly inability to grow a spine and fight for what he believes in ala FDR, his fear that he will be perceived as a -- brace yourself -- "liberal" despite the fact that right-wingers portray him to be much farther to left than he actually is, ultimately alienating the many who put him in office just two short years ago.... The list goes on and on.

Anyway, I'm back and I hope to return to my schedule of posting entries daily. As always, I'd love to receive emails from readers.

As always, Rachel is dead-on correct:

That guy right there, last guy there was Phil Gingrey. He was the one at the end, right after John Boehner — Phil Gingrey expressing his grave concern about how much this [health-care bill] costs.

To be clear, the CBO is projecting that this bill will cut the deficit by $138 billion over 10 years. You can see it right there. $138 billion, not added to the deficit, but subtracted from the deficit.

This is the same Phil Gingrey and the same John Boehner who voted for the Medicare Part D drug benefit in 2003. When the CBO scored that bill, at that time, the CBO said that bill would raise the deficit by $394 billion, and yet, Phil Gingrey and John Boehner now so piously concerned about how much things cost, happily voted for Medicare Part D anyway.

When Republicans passed the Bush tax cuts that same year, the CBO score of that one at that time said that legislation would raise the deficit by $349 billion. And Republicans, including Phil Gingrey, had no problem voting yes. When Republicans passed the first Bush tax cuts in 2001, the CBO score of that one at that time said it would raise the deficit by $1.3 trillion — trillion with a “T.” And Republicans, including John Boehner, went along for that ride, too.

So, let‘s just make sure we‘re here on the same page, OK? Phil Gingrey and John Boehner say yes to adding $400 billion to the deficit for Bush‘s Medicare thing, yes to adding $350 billion to the deficit for Bush‘s first tax cuts for rich people, yes to adding $1.3 trillion to the deficit for Bush‘s other tax cuts. Those three votes projected to add $2 trillion to the deficit. Votes yes on all of those.

Lack of consistency? Hypocritical? Nah, it's just liberal spin and mumbo-jumbo from that leftist, pinko Rachel.

Never mind that she cites non-partisan CBO numbers through out. To reiterate, Republicans didn't seem to have a problem with adding $2 trillion to the deficit when voting in favor of Bush-era legislation. However, they are more than willing to get hysterical and cry foul about costs now that they're in the minority -- even though the health-care bill is projected to cut the deficit by $1.3 trillion. So we're talking a total swing of $3.3 trillion, not chump change by any means.

Let's see if the mainstream media can convey to the public this fairly straight-forward contrast in absurdity.

The CBO says the health-care bill will reduce the deficit by $130 billion in the first 10 years, and cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion (with a "T") in the second decade.

In other words, Obama's health-care reform effort will eventually pay for Bush/Cheney's (illegal) war.

Michael Tomasky writes:

And remember, as I've said several times now: take the poll numbers on reform with a grain of salt. Republican opposition is like 95-5, which skews overall polls. The important thing is how it plays among independents. They're opposed now, but hardly by overwhelming margins. By changeable margins, if they can be persuaded to see the benefits.

It's my understanding that health care reform in the state of Massachusetts was at first not all that popular, but has since become very popular.

This is the GOP's and insurance companies biggest fear that they're not telling us: that this reform will eventually work, that it will eventually effect beneficial change for many, and that it will eventually become very popular. And when that happens, the Republicans will starkly, nakedly be seen on the wrong side of the issue, and if the Dems properly manage it (always a big "if"), it will spell doomsday for the GOP come November.

It's this very probable scenario that drives the GOP and insurance companies to try as hard as they can to block reform. Their livelihoods and positions of power depend on its failure -- and they're certainly not going to make the real reason for their stiff opposition widely known or plainly evident.

Anthony Weiner kicks some GOP butt. Always refreshing to see a Dem with a spine.

More encouraging signs:

Recent successes in killing or capturing top Taliban leaders have shaken the confidence of the militant organization and raised gnawing doubts in the minds of front-line fighters, the top allied leader in Afghanistan said Thursday.

"You see a weakening of the organization's confidence," U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal told USA TODAY at his headquarters in Kabul.

If this series of successes were occurring under Bush/Cheney, you'd be hearing about it via a two-ton megaphone. Instead, this enormously significant progress in the region is receiving woefully inadequate coverage -- certainly when compared to what we were accustomed to with the prior administration.

Recall the many Republicans who conveniently used the recent spate of cold weather and ample snow (to think, for this to happen in the winter!) to scoff at climate change. Once again, they have to eat their words.

"January, according to satellite (data), was the hottest January we've ever seen.... Last November was the hottest November we've ever seen, November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen...."