Many of us have argued against the Iraq War for some time now and more of the cost and scope of the failure in that war is emerging as it begins to come to an end. At a time when America is debating whether to invest in it's own people or not, I think we should remember that a great many of the Senators that will be debating Universal Healthcare if they even vote to do that were all for the extended war in Iraq and the wasted money invested there.

The amendment mandates that banks essentially could not lend out or invest more than 12 dollars for every dollar they keep in reserve -- It passed by a unanimous voice vote.

Today, the House Financial Services Committee passed an amendment to their financial regulatory reform bill that would mandate an audit of the Federal Reserve. The Paul-Grayson amendment, named for its chief sponsors, Reps. Ron Paul and Alan Grayson, passed the committee by a count of 43-26. Supporters of the audit the Fed effort were concerned that a competing amendment by Mel Watt would gut whatever Paul-Grayson added in transparency to the Fed. After heated discussion today inside the committee, it appears that Paul and Grayson have won this round.

"A Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) member said there's 'growing consensus' among liberals that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should step down. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Wednesday that he and other liberal House members are becoming increasingly tired of Obama administration economic policies that they say are too focused on maintaining the stability of Wall Street firms and largely ignore 'Main Street.'"

Some 57 senators voted to defeat a Republican proposal that would have prohibited the use of funds to construct or modify prison facilities to hold individuals currently being detained at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The ongoing absolutism in Congress in trying to prevent women--or at least poor women--from obtaining abortions is one of the more shameful spectacles in America. The sanctimonious Blue Dog Democrats and the Republicans, who almost unanimously opposed any right to abortion, present two basic arguments. One is that abortion is murder, and therefore must be illegal, or, in more nuanced form, they say that they or their constituents oppose abortion and therefore it is wrong to have their tax money paying for the procedure. Of course, for most of those who argue that abortion is murder, there is a towering hypocrisy in the fact that with rare exceptions, those who argue this view also support capital punishment, which is also murder.

Statements in the congressional record by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies (subsidiary of Swiss company, Roche). E-mail messages show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans. The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

I know you're in a tough spot. It would be bad enough if you only had to get Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln on board, but anyone who has to kiss Joe Lieberman's derriere deserves a congressional medal of honor. But Harry, you really need to take on future health-care costs. The House bill fails to do this. The public option in the House bill is open only to people without employer-provided health insurance. That will be too small a number to have bargaining clout to get good deals from drug companies and medical providers. And it will mainly attract people who have more expensive medical needs, which is why the Congressional Budget Office decided it would cost more than it would save. You also know a public insurance option that's open to everyone would cut future health costs dramatically by imposing real competition on private for-profit insurance plans. That's why the private insurers hate the idea. Even if states were allowed to opt out of this robust public option, the big states would almost certainly opt in, giving it the scale needed to negotiate great deals from drug companies and medical providers. This would put pressure on any state that opted out because their citizens would soon discover they're paying far more. [Note: Good suggestions, even if I don't agree with everything this author says.]

Members of Congress who noted "no" on health care reform legislation late Saturday night have received $2.3 million more in campaign donations from health insurance interests than those who voted in favor of the legislation to overhaul of the nation's health care system, according to an analysis released by a coalition of campaign reform groups.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled legislation requiring Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to name banks whose collapse may shake the economy and break up the firms in a year, fueling efforts to end taxpayers bailouts. “If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” said Sanders, a Vermont independent. “We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy.” The legislation would give Geithner 90 days to list the commercial and investment banks, hedge funds and insurance companies deemed “too big to fail.” Those firms would be broken up within a year, he said. Representative Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is considering a measure in the House that would break up large financial firms.

"Republicans already let the world know they will unanimously oppose the health care bill tonight, but now they are mocking Democratic divisions as more members of the majority party announce they can't support the plan in its current form."

The US House of Representatives passed the Health Care Bill, moving the process on to the Senate now to take up their own version of a Health Care plan. The bill garnered Republican support from a single member, Joseph Cao (pronounced Gow) from Louisiana. The final vote 220-215. In the end, only 39 Democrats voted against the legislation and, again, Republican support from across the aisle was gained with a single vote of support by Rep. Cao (R-LA) Read more: http://www.cspan.org

Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement: "Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war? "The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer's money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive. "People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on Main Street. "Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively little money to build things in the US. "The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional $50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies... When we were promised change, we weren't thinking that we give a dollar and get back two cents."

Short video and transcript. “The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive."

“Many years ago, people in states across America planted the seeds of single payer health care. Those seeds have sprouted and borne fruit where powerful state citizens’ movements exist to create not-for-profit health care. This led to passage of an amendment to the Health Care bill which protected the rights of states to pursue single payer. Unfortunately that amendment was taken out of the bill, and we must try to get it into the conference report."

At a time of growing US poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair, imperial wars without end, and the Obama administration even worse than its predecessor, Venezuela: -- is a model participatory democracy; -- holds free, fair and open elections; -- respects the rule of law, civil liberties, and human rights; -- doesn't intimidate its neighbors; -- uses its resources responsibly for the people; -- provides essential social services for the needy; -- champions judicial fairness and the rule of law; -- has a model free and open media; -- wages no foreign wars; -- doesn't torture or imprison its adversaries; -- conducts effective operations to halt illicit drugs trafficking; -- promotes global peace, solidarity, equality and social justice; and -- its only threat is its good example that shames its northern neighbor. -- -- -- At a time of growing US poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair, imperial wars without end, and the Obama administration even worse than its predecessor, Venezuela: -- is a model participatory democracy; -- holds free, fair and open elections; -- respects the rule of law, civil liberties, and human rights; -- doesn't intimidate its neighbors; -- uses its resources responsibly for the people; -- provides essential social services for the needy; -- champions judicial fairness and the rule of law; -- has a model free and open media; -- wages no foreign wars; -- doesn't torture or imprison its adversaries; -- conducts effective operations to halt illicit drugs trafficking; -- promotes global peace, solidarity, equality and social justice; and -- its only threat is its good example that shames its northern neighbor. -- In contrast, America: -- is a serial belligerent and world class bully; -- spends more on militarism than the rest of the world combined at a time it has no enemies; -- backs the world's worst dictators and faux democrats like Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, a man closely linked to the country's paramilitary death squads and drug cartels; and -- through the CIA, has actively engaged in global drugs trafficking since the agency's 1947 founding; it profits hugely from its dealings with local traffickers; so do major US banks and other powerful business and financial interests. In addition, Washington -- serves the rich at the public's expense; -- tolerates corruption at the highest levels; -- subverts democracy through electoral fraud; -- has a closed, corrupted dominant media system serving the powerful, not the greater good; -- incarcerates hundreds of political prisoners; -- uses torture as official policy; and -- wages state-sponsored terrorism and global wars.

Rep. Alan Grayson reads the number of dead from each of the Republican congressional districts if the health care bill doesn’t pass.

The US House of Representatives has condemned the UN Goldstone report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes in its 22-day war against the Palestinians in Gaza. By a vote of 344 to 36, the members of the lower house of Congress approved a non-binding resolution that calls the report “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” The harshly worded resolution calls on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration" of the critical report. South African judge Richard Goldstone recently challenged the United States to justify its objections over his report about the December 27-January 18 Israeli war on the Gaza Strip that killed over 1,400 Palestinians, with many of the victims women and children. Goldstone recommended that the conclusions of the report be forwarded to the Hague-based International Criminal Court if the sides involved in the Gaza war failed to conduct credible investigations within six months.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was none too happy when House leaders stripped his single-payer provision from their $894 billion health reform proposal. Today, he’s urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to reinstate it. “Like many other important reforms included in the underlying bill, the Kucinich amendment is the object of attack by the insurance industry,” Kucinich wrote in a letter. “Unlike other reform measures, Leadership has chosen to strip the Kucinich amendment of the protection it deserves.” Kucinich’s provision, which would allow states to set up single-payer health care systems modeled after Medicare, passed the House Education and Labor Committee in July, but was stripped out by Democratic leaders as they pieced together their final bill from the various committee proposals. Kucinich concedes that the provision represents “incremental reform.” “But,” he adds, “it allows the country to move incrementally in the direction that is needed.” If Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) is right about there being no floor amendments, this plea could be Kucinich’s last shot. Update (4:46 p.m.): Democratic Reps John Conyers (Mich.), Eric Massa (N.Y.), Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), Janice Schakowsky (Ill.), Lynn Woolsey (Calif.) and Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) have also signed the letter.

"...Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats will unveil the health care bill they plan to bring to the floor this morning. The long awaited legislation will come in at under $900 billion. Like the Senate bill, its public option will reimburse providers at negotiated rates--though unlike in the Senate bill, states will not be allowed to opt out. ... The employer and individual mandates will be more robust than in the Senate bill, and, as a result, the bill is expected to cover millions more Americans. The $900 billion will be covered by a mix of taxes on high-income earners, industry contributions and savings wrung from existing government health care programs."