kirk murphy

After five decades of destroying any national government, head of state, or aspiring leader who posed the remotest prospect of standing between the Seven Sisters and those pesky brown people living over the Sisters' oil, now Langley and the Pentagon see the rewards for their triumphs. As do we.

This morning the NYT reports President Obama's ready to throw the public option under the insurance companies limousines. According to The Associated Press, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is suggesting the White House is ready to accept nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run public option in a health overhaul plan. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ms. Sebelius says Mr. Obama still believes there should be choice and competition” in the health insurance market — but that a public option is “not the essential element.”

We activists have years to defeat corporatism: single payer is one front in that very long war. Many of the indigent patients I've seen these last years - like many of the other 40 million uninsured Americans - will perish during that long war. With a robust public option this year, most of these patients will survive.

Arnold ran for ofice promising to destroy 4 billion in annual revenue from recent increases in the state's vehicle license fee. He won and slashed back the fee. Since the 2003 recall, annual lost revenue may have grown to exceed 6 billion. Net cost in lost revenue: 20 billion to nearly 30 billion. Size of California's deficit? 21 billion...up to 40 billion for this and "next" year. Now that Arnold's created the crisis, he's vetoed an oil depletion tax. But he wants to open California to offshore drilling - for $100 million. As a loan. The state would have to pay the $100 million back to Big Oil. They'd get the billions: California gets the spills. Shock Doctrine's up!

Obama's EPA approves 42 of 48 mountain top destruction permits. Did Obama throw Appalachia’s mountaintops under the bulldozers? Yes. Looks like the Mountain Justice Summer and other local campaigns as well as a whole lotta enviro attorneys will need help.

Jeremy Scahill reports America tortured detainees with germ warfare and gasoline enemas. Do war crimes and crimes against humanity make you sick, too? Does seeing our generals, President Obama, and other public "servants" jump to protect America's official war criminals and conceal their atrocities make you even sicker?

So we're choosing among a plan resembling Medicare administered by HHS or a Medicare-like plan where government officials don't directly control day-to-operations. Perfectly clear.

Tara C Smith at Aetiology reports the viral genome from "Mexican swine flu" patients in Texas and California is most closely related to the viral genome in a 2007 Ohio swine flu outbreak.

Travel restrictions won't stop the flu that's already here, but Janet Napoltiano today announced we'll "isolate" ill travelers at teh border. Why is Lou Dobbs running America's public health policies?