Tag: News

Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion.

snip

In the early 1950s, Walt Disney began designing a huge amusement park to be built near Los Angeles. He intended Disneyland to have educational as well as amusement value and to entertain adults and their children. Land was bought in the farming community of Anaheim, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and construction began in 1954. In the summer of 1955, special invitations were sent out for the opening of Disneyland on July 17. Unfortunately, the pass was counterfeited and thousands of uninvited people were admitted into Disneyland on opening day. The park was not ready for the public: food and drink ran out, a women’s high-heel shoe got stuck in the wet asphalt of Main Street USA, and the Mark Twain Steamboat nearly capsized from too many passengers.

Disneyland soon recovered, however, and attractions such as the Castle, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Adventures, Space Station X-1, Jungle Cruise, and Stage Coach drew countless children and their parents. Special events and the continual building of new state-of-the-art attractions encouraged them to visit again

Yes, our Progressive, Democratic President who was elected on Democratic Platform that supports a woman’s right to choose has banned abortion to women who buy into the “high risk” health care insurance pool. That is if they are lucky enough to qualify, afford or be accepted into that pool.

From RHRealitycheck:

Obama Administration Applies Stupak Amendment to High Risk Pools

This week, a commotion  arose over the question of whether Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans, also known as high risk pools, can include abortion coverage.  The Obama Administration responded immediately by imposing a total ban on abortion coverage in the pools that echoes the Stupak Amendment, even though nothing in the law requires such action.

PCIPs are temporary health insurance pools that states or the federal government must establish or expand in every state to cover people who do not currently qualify for individual health insurance because of a preexisting condition.  PCIP coverage will expire in 2014 when enrollees become eligible for the new health insurance exchanges that will become operational that year.  PCIPs will be funded with a combination of federal, state, and private money.

Women entering these plans are, by definition, those who have experienced serious medical conditions-so serious that insurers are unwilling to sell them insurance.  In other words, those who get pregnant are already at a heightened risk for needing an abortion for health reasons when compared to the general population.

There is noting in the health care bill that was passed to put such a restriction on women.

From the ACLU press release on this:

   

Even using their own private funds, individuals would not be able to buy policies that cover abortion in these pools. The only exemptions would reportedly be for women who have been raped, who are the victims of incest or who will likely die if they carry the pregnancy to term.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP stops Gulf oil flow for first time since April

by Allen Johnson, AFP

Thu Jul 15, 7:18 pm ET

 What Digby said Goldilocks Triangulation

There’s a ton of discussion this morning about this article in which unnamed White House functionaries run to Politico to complain that nobody understands them. I think it pretty much speaks for itself, but there are some points worth discussing.

First of all, the central premise seems to be that liberals should be happy that Obama has “gotten something done” without regard to what that “something” is. But the fact is that professional politicians always rattle off a legislative laundry list while activists care about process, politics and policy — and average voters only care about the results. (The press cares about “the score”, however they decide to define it that day.) A successful president is expected to know how to manage all of that — and browbeating his voters is rarely a winning strategy.

Therefore, his political advisers should know that when the country is still reeling from unemployment and foreclosures after nearly two years, the passage of an inadequate stimulus bill, which unrealistic benchmarks and a giddy victory party ensured would be the only chance they got, the only people who will consider that a “success” would be beltway insiders. They should have realized that a health care bill that nobody in their right minds would have designed from scratch, the worst aspects of which liberals will be asked to defend for years to come, would be met with dampened enthusiasm by those who watched the process devolve from a sense of progressive purpose to an exhausting farce. They are expected to be able to predict that financial reform without accountability for what’s gone before, combined with the administration’s unwillingness to confront the civil liberties abuse of the last administration — indeed expanding on them in some cases — would show a lack of fundamental concern for justice among those who care about such things.

snip

Still, running to Politico to complain about the immature liberals would seem to be even more counterproductive than usual. Indeed, it’s so counterproductive that I have to assume this is a conscious triangulation tactic. After all, if what you are upset about is liberals failing to be properly supportive, it hardly seems wise to take to the Drudge Daily to complain about them, does it? But then even these anonymous whiners can’t be so stupid as to think browbeating a bunch of liberal bloggers has any meaning among anyone but the Village elite so that’s obviously what this is about — creating a Goldilocks meme among the media that says because Obama is criticized by both the immature bloggers and the radical tea party, he must be juuust riiiight. That won’t do the Democrats any good in the short run, but it sounds like a 2012 strategy in the making.  

On this day in 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the Manhattan Project comes to an explosive end as the first atom bomb is successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Bhagavad Gita

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 39 Top Stories.

1 BP stops Gulf oil flow for first time since April

AFP

19 mins ago

On this day in 1971, President Richard Nixon startled the country by announcing he would visit the People’s Republic of China.

During a live television and radio broadcast, President Richard Nixon stuns the nation by announcing that he will visit communist China the following year. The statement marked a dramatic turning point in U.S.-China relations, as well as a major shift in American foreign policy.

Nixon was not always so eager to reach out to China. Since the Communists came to power in China in 1949, Nixon had been one of the most vociferous critics of American efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese. His political reputation was built on being strongly anti-communist, and he was a major figure in the post-World War II Red Scare, during which the U.S. government launched massive investigations into possible communist subversion in America.

By 1971, a number of factors pushed Nixon to reverse his stance on China. First and foremost was the Vietnam War. Two years after promising the American people “peace with honor,” Nixon was as entrenched in Vietnam as ever. His national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, saw a way out: Since China’s break with the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s, the Chinese were desperate for new allies and trade partners. Kissinger aimed to use the promise of closer relations and increased trade possibilities with China as a way to put increased pressure on North Vietnam–a Chinese ally–to reach an acceptable peace settlement. Also, more importantly in the long run, Kissinger thought the Chinese might become a powerful ally against the Soviet Union, America’s Cold War enemy. Kissinger called such foreign policy ‘realpolitik,’ or politics that favored dealing with other powerful nations in a practical manner rather than on the basis of political doctrine or ethics.

Can the Obama administration get any more corporatist? Just what do they owe Max Baucus and his health insurance pals?

Baucus staffer who led health reform drafting moving to Obama administration

Liz Fowler, a key staffer for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus who helped draft the federal health reform bill enacted in March, is joining the Obama administration to help implement the new law…

Fowler headed up a team of 20-some Senate Finance Committee staffers who helped draft the bill in the Senate. She was Baucus’ top health care aide from 2001-2005 and left that job in 2006 to become an executive at WellPoint, the nation’s largest private insurer. She was vice president of public policy at WellPoint, helping develop public-policy positions for the company. In 2008, she rejoined Baucus to work on health reform legislation.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Crunch decision due on BP oil test

by Mira Oberman, AFP

1 hr 41 mins ago

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP praying cap will end Gulf oil nightmare

by Mira Oberman AFP

Tue Jul 13, 12:32 pm ET