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Thursday, January 21, 2010

News The Morning News: They're Still Finding Survivors in Haiti, John Edwards Admits He Is the Father, and Belgium Is Running Out of Beer

Posted by Megan Seling on Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 8:38 AM

The Good News: Eight days after the massive earthquake in Haiti, rescue workers are still finding survivors in the fallen buildings.

The Bad News: Earthquake survivors are dying after not being able to get treatment for injuries and officials fear outbreaks of infection.

NO H8: McCain's wife and daughter support NOH8, a gay rights group opposed to Proposition 8.

"Work sets you free": Officials have returned the stolen Auschwitz sign to the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum.

Hack the Planet!: "The US has called on Beijing to investigate the recent cyber attacks on Google, which have prompted the search giant to threaten to leave China."

You ARE the Father: John Edward's admits he is the father of Rielle Hunter's two-year-old.

It Keeps Going Up: Washington's jobless rate hits 9.5%.

It's Official: Conan's last show on NBC will be Friday.

Don't Panic, Drunks: But Belgium is starting to run low on beer.

Oops: "A US Airways passenger plane was diverted to Philadelphia on Thursday after a religious item worn by a Jewish passenger was mistaken as a bomb."

Now here's a video of Samuel l. Jackson playing the game Guess Who. Shouldn't be funny, I know, but it sort of is:

Comments (13) RSS

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Nothing about Obama launching unilateral preemptive strikes against health care reform?

http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/bu…

Posted by rob!

on January 21, 2010 at 8:51 AM

that's funny, i always mistook those things for the headlamps miners wear.

Posted by ellarosa on January 21, 2010 at 8:53 AM

robi@1. obama, whatever you may say about him, is a expert strategist. with the loss of kennedy's seat to a repug, he sees the writing on the wall, and ramming the bill thru as is before the new repug is seated is not going to fly, according to the very article you linked. so in order to retain some shreds of a bill, he is making concessions now. he is not a miracle worker, despite what many expected of him when they voted in 2008: he's up against a whole right-wing bloc of legislators who have openly vowed they would stop at nothing to humiliate him and make him a one term president--no matter the cost to the country. that's what he's dealing with.

Posted by ellarosa on January 21, 2010 at 9:00 AM

@1 Between that and the Supreme's ruling on campaign finance, it is a sad day for democracy.

Posted by meowmeowkitty on January 21, 2010 at 9:01 AM

ellarosa @3, I don't think the bill as-is should be rammed through before Brown takes his place. But take a close look at the third paragraph:

...a new approach that could still include these provisions: limiting the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage to people with medical problems, allowing young adults to stay on their parents' policies, helping small businesses and low-income people pay premiums and changing Medicare to encourage payment for quality care instead of sheer volume of services...

LIMITING denial of coverage is a far, far cry from FORBIDDING. Nothing about rescissions. Nothing about caps. Nothing about exchanges. Nothing about electronic health-care records or fee-for-results. This has gone from potentially helping nearly all of the 47-50 million uninsured to 40 million, to 30 million, to ...what? 10-20 million? Just to avoid having this slagged as a "debacle" or "failure"?

Posted by rob!

on January 21, 2010 at 9:18 AM

*[nothing about] fee-for-results for the non-Medicare insurance world.

Posted by rob!

on January 21, 2010 at 9:21 AM

I take comfort in the fact that the Belgian Beer Crisis is only affecting their shitty Beers.

Posted by sasha on January 21, 2010 at 9:21 AM

Megan, you used to be my favorite SLOG commenter. What happened -- where have you been?

Posted by Shelby on January 21, 2010 at 9:34 AM

robi@5. to answer your question: yes. i didn't say this wasn't a fucking tragedy. i just said this is what obama thinks he has to do to appease the repugs and their owners. and he's not a stupid man, so i assume he's correct in this assumption. sad. maybe things will loosen up for him in his second term. which he won't get if the repugs manage to completely defeat this bill.

Posted by ellarosa on January 21, 2010 at 9:36 AM

@7 Thank you. Can we stop re-purposing the Anheiser Busch InBev press releases? The multinational corporation with the largest market share is in the middle of a labor dispute. (And I'm totally down with labor movements preemptively shuttering a business before layoffs even take place. "Oh, you want me to be thankful that you're just firing my colleagues and be grateful that I will still have a job doing more work and longer hours? Well screw you!")

So you can't get a Stella or a Jupiler? There's still Maes for industrial beer and several hundred independent and artisan brewers in Belgium.

They are NOT running out of beer. Nice work by the AB InBev PR department to get their one side of the story out worldwide. If a labor dispute shut down sales of Budwieser products in Washington, would you write a story that Seattle is running out of beer?

Posted by BornAgainInBellevue on January 21, 2010 at 10:05 AM

I dislike greatly those 'artisan' Belgian beers.

Posted by douchus on January 21, 2010 at 10:09 AM

10
we're a little touchy this morning...
don't worry-
those EU beauracrats will have your beer restored in no time!

Posted by *hic!* on January 21, 2010 at 10:09 AM

I'm not that bitter except that the coverage of the story is ridiculous. No thought about the labor side of the issue. I actually had someone forward me a version of the story (yes, I'm a beer nerd, people send me these things) that suggested that Belgians could no longer find beer to purchase. That is a silly statement that a moments worth of thought or research on the part of the journalist would disprove.

Just because the press release you're re-typing says it, doesn't make it true.

Posted by BornAgainInBellevue on January 21, 2010 at 10:23 AM