various headlines

Mortgage Loan Officers: They're Ba-ack  http://bit.ly/VBw7e

Obama's Town Hall: Full Transcript http://bit.ly/11oKeC

Experts Warn of Potential Cyber War http://bit.ly/rXmHc

Mexico might not have the U.S. to kick around anymore http://bit.ly/atVQP

Vitaminwater's Empty Calories Are at the Heart of What's Wrong with the Beverage Industry http://bit.ly/19UftY

Health Policy Expert Chuck Norris Weighs in on Reform Debate http://bit.ly/xA4YG

What is behind the opposition to the Obama healthcare plan? http://bit.ly/3ODlmc

US corporations squeezing more output from workers and paying lower wages http://bit.ly/48dNDk

The Google Book Search copyright settlement and the future of information—Part 1  http://bit.ly/19H3rQ

Strapped with a loaded gun, William Kostric carried a message from the GOP's "break Obama" campaign. http://bit.ly/19sLo8

The insurance industry has agitated the far right to prevent health reform, but they don't know whom they're messing with.  http://bit.ly/T16SA

How the White House's Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy.  When an industry gets secret concessions in return for a promise to lend its support to a key piece of legislation, we're in big trouble. http://bit.ly/InmWu

Rush Limbaugh's "Nazi" Rhetoric: Where's the Outrage? Why are so many corporate news outlets silent about Limbaugh's offensive Hitler comparisons?  http://bit.ly/lbZan

What's In It For Jim?  Millions of Americans are in real need of health care reform. Here are just a few of their stories.   http://bit.ly/q5Lc4

E-Mail Reveals Rove's Key Role in '06 Dismissals.  WASHINGTON — Thousands of pages of internal e-mail and once-secret Congressional testimony showed Tuesday that Karl Rove and other senior aides in the Bush White House played an earlier and more active role than was previously known in the 2006 firings of a number of United States attorneys. http://bit.ly/P81cX

Survey Finds High Fees Common in Medical Care.  A patient in Illinois was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. In California, a patient was charged $20,120 for a knee operation that Medicare pays $584 for. And a New Jersey patient was charged $72,000 for a spinal fusion procedure that Medicare covers for $1,629. The charges came out of a survey sponsored by America's Health Insurance Plans in which insurers were asked for some of the highest bills submitted to them in 2008. The group, which represents 1,300 health insurance companies, said it had no data on the frequency of such high fees, saying that to its knowledge no one had studied that. But it said it did the survey in part to defend against efforts by the Obama administration to portray certain industry practices as a major part of the nation's health care problems. The health insurers, saying they felt unfairly vilified, gave the report to The New York Times before posting it online on Tuesday, explaining that they wanted to show that doctors' fees are part of the health care problem. The group said it had used Medicare payments for comparison because Medicare was so familiar and payments are, on average, about 80 percent of what private insurers pay. "It's the wild, wild West when it comes to prices of anything in the U.S. health care system, whether for a doctor visit or for hospital charges," said Jonathan S. Skinner, a health economist at Dartmouth. The situation is so irrational, said Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton, that it simply cannot go on. "We will not emerge out of this decade with this lunacy," Dr. Reinhardt said, adding, "You worry about credit card charges, you scream for consumer protection — why not scream for it here?" rest at http://bit.ly/urLQv

China's Incinerators Loom as a Global Hazard.  SHENZHEN, China — In this sprawling metropolis in southeastern China stand two hulking brown buildings erected by a private company, the Longgang trash incinerators. They can be smelled a mile away and pour out so much dark smoke and hazardous chemicals that hundreds of local residents recently staged an all-day sit-in, demanding that the incinerators be cleaner and that a planned third incinerator not be built nearby. After surpassing the United States as the world's largest producer of household garbage, China has embarked on a vast program to build incinerators as landfills run out of space. But these incinerators have become a growing source of toxic emissions, from dioxin to mercury, that can damage the body's nervous system. And these pollutants, particularly long-lasting substances like dioxin and mercury, are dangerous not only in China, a growing body of atmospheric research based on satellite observations suggests. They float on air currents across the Pacific to American shores. Chinese incinerators can be better. At the other end of Shenzhen from Longgang, no smoke is visible from the towering smokestack of the Baoan incinerator, built by a company owned by the municipal government. Government tests show that it emits virtually no dioxin and other pollutants. But the Baoan incinerator cost 10 times as much as the Longgang incinerators, per ton of trash-burning capacity. rest at http://bit.ly/JbuLK

Madoff Aide Reveals Details of Ponzi Scheme .  http://bit.ly/QYHlK

How 'Idol' and Abdul Parted Ways http://bit.ly/tzq9l

Texas Judge rules Microsoft can't sell Word anymore  http://bit.ly/WstmG