Mike Keefe, Keefe, The Denver Post This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Miss Kimberly Munley, the mother of a three-year-old daughter, and a civie policewoman, is in stable condition, with injuries to the upper leg and thigh. General Cone said her fearless response to gunman at Fort Hood, had saved countless lives. Trained in active-response tactics, she rushed into the building where Major Nidal Malik Hasan began firing on comrades as they prepared to deploy to Afghanistan and...

Nancy Pelosi has assured us that there will be. Of course, the job of House Speaker is much like being a bookie for organized crime… you never take a bet when you don’t know how the game will end. Byron York explains how this is putting a lot of Democrats under the gun. The House is in the final rush toward passage of a national health care bill, and there’s one thing Speaker Nancy Pelosi absolutely,...

In 1960, President Eisenhower warned us of the growing influence and power of the Military Industrial Complex. He was right and we ignored him. Today our country has the world’s largest total annual Military Budget of over $650 billion, additional defense-related spending of over $350 billion, more than 1.5 million people serving in its Armed Forces in over 100 countries around the globe, and is currently...

This MSNBC.com headline certainly won’t help the feeling that many Americans have that the wealthy get taken care of and the rest are left to hang: Amid shortage, big NYC firms get swine vaccine Rules allow company docs to request vaccine, distribute to high-risk groups NEW YORK – Some of New York City’s largest employers – including Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and big universities...

This says it all, doesn’t it?

President Obama may think he’s getting a bill to sign soon, or at least this year, but it looks like Congress will postpone legislation until the new year: Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News [yesterday] it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was “absolutely confident” he’ll be able...

The subject of veteran suicides rises every so often, like a dark island that floats off shore, but lays submerged under the water most all the time. Only small boats with intrepid rowers that are strong enough to go out past the riptides can see the sleeping dead under the water. But every so often the ocean heaves and there it is again: the landmass rises and you see that it has been weighted down by huge...

Attention deficit disorder:

It’s not what you might think. It’s not dying in battle. It’s not losing your life. It’s losing your mind, your heart, your soul, and the life force inside you that makes you want to survive.

What Physicians Know by Joel S. Hirschhorn I had a long conversation with my favorite physician, who has operated on me twice successfully. He is an incredibly kind person without an ounce of greed or pretense. Like other physicians I have spoken to, he spoke eloquently about the terrible times he consistently has with private health insurance companies. While he praises Medicare for its simplicity and certainty,...

Via Ezra Klein. At the end of his post, note the link to the full package of charts. The last chart in that package, in particular — see below — caught my eye, begging many questions. Bruce McQuain chimes in. H/t casualobserver.

WASHINGTON — The next health care fight has already started. It’s the battle to define the bill that President Obama will eventually sign as a victory for consumers, taxpayers and the common good. You might say this view is premature. Legislation has yet to pass the House or the Senate, there are differences between the two bodies, and some moderates still have doubts. But barring astoundingly...

A koan is a short, often paradoxical idea, meant to tell the truth, or cause the ego to give up, or cause enlightenment, or all three. Old well known koans: What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the sound of a tree falling in the forest, if there is no one there to hear it? I try my hand at koans. I’m no good at it, but I try. Why it is so easy for ‘the base’ of any side to fall...

Sen. Joe Lieberman told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation today that Democrats are sabotaging health care reform by insisting on a public option. Schieffer, however, got Lieberman to admit that he would prefer no health care reform bill at all to a health care reform bill that included a public option (emphasis in original):

Jonathan Safran Foer (and Michael Pollan) notwithstanding, Nicolette Hahn Niman argues it’s factory farming, not meat eating, that wreaks environmental havoc: In contrast to factory farming, well-managed, non-industrialized animal farming minimizes greenhouse gases and can even benefit the environment. For example, properly timed cattle grazing can increase vegetation by as much as 45 percent, North Dakota...

The style book says elected politicians be identified by abbreviations of their political party and state after their names which is why I find it rather amusing that Sen. Joe Lieberman is (I-Conn). That Lieberman is conning progressive Democrats is paramount in their frustration directed at the man selected as their party’s vice presidential candidate in 2000. They overlooked a quirk in Lieberman’s...

As we dig deeper into the behemoth House health care bill, the blatant honesty of Howard Dean shines through the extensive document. You may recall when the former DNC chair said, “the reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth.” Plain...

Just to be clear, I have not read the entire House health care bill which dropped on our heads like a roughly 2,000 page albatross yesterday. (I’ve gotten through the first hundred or so, and my hat is off to anyone who reads fast enough to have finished the whole thing already.) However, Americans for Tax Reform have the manpower to split up the job and have helpfully identified the laundry list of new...

I live walking distance to Fort Logan National Cemetary. Every day, every every day come the black hearses, and color guard, the rifle squads and the often old VFW bugler. I can hear taps sometimes when the wind is just right. Military wife here (USAF 21 years of service by my DH). Working in post trauma recovery at VA over decades now, the men who volunteer to be escorts see it as silent duty, dont brag about...

From a Politico email alert: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a health reform bill Thursday that would cost $894 billion over 10 years and includes a public option. It meets President Obama’s goal of not adding to the federal deficit, cutting the deficit by about $30 billion in the first 10 years. And now it gets interesting. Full story here.

It’s now nearing three weeks since three people died and 21 were injured and hospitalized in a “sweatlodge” “wealth-making” five-day event at a ranch near Sedona, Arizona. The joint was run by James Ray who teaches people how to become wealthy. It appears that a huge ‘lodge’ was constructed at the event, many times the capacity of a real sweat lodge. By some reports...

I predict that the “public option” in healthcare reform will be a completely useless Rube Goldberg concoction in order to please and displease everyone simultaneously. However no one on the left or right should fear it because it will never come into existence even if it written and passed into law. The public plan that will emerge from the joint conference committee between representatives of the U.S....

This is what Democrats in Congress get for allowing Lieberman to keep his prestigi0us committee chair assignment.

Per a breaking news email from Politico: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says he will join a Republican filibuster against the Senate Democrats’ health care reform bill unless the public option is removed. More here. From CNN: Also Tuesday, conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska warned that his vote remains uncertain for a bill with a public option. From the same story: [GOP Sen.] Snowe has...