President Obama is back on the case. He's shaken off whatever sleeping sickness affliction he had in that first 2012 Presidential Debate way back whenever weeks ago and came out gunning with smarts and strategy for the second debate this past Tuesday night. And now he really seems to be enjoying himself:
Whichever speechwriter came up with the phrase, "Romnesia," deserves a great position in the President's second term, if all goes well. The President uses the phrase to capture Romney's pandering as well as his untrustworthiness. What's key about the latter characterization is that it implies a not-so-hidden agenda, namely to ultimately serve the Republican objectives of privileged rules for the rich while shifting the most threatening burdens of risk from government onto a struggling American Middle Class populace, not to mention the poor.
Best of all, the President caps his diagnosis with a triumphantly received cure - Obamacare's coverage of pre-existing conditions. Good luck to GOP strategists who thought saddling the Affordable Care Act with that moniker would be a net negative - if Obama wins his second term and the law remains intact, it will be a trademarked Democratic legacy for all time.
If so, I expect that Fox News will eventually revert to calling it the ACA or maybe some new negative term they invent. You will see Republicans in 2024 or 2040 running on how they want to "preserve Obamacare" by turning it into a voucher system, and how dare their Democratic opponent threaten Obamacare by whatever mild reforms they may enact or advocate to keep it running.
Just like Medicare, the signature achievement of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Democrat.
Could it be his plan (now on hold) to put a car elevator (I kid you not) in his new mansion?
Could it be his pretzel logic on Leno regarding what he'd replace the Affordable Care Act with, seemingly come up with in the moment, making little to no sense?
At the outset of the call, Romney said he has some connections to Wisconsin.
“One of most humorous I think relates to my father. You may remember my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors … They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” said Romney. “And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin. Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign.”
Romney said he recalled a parade in which the school band marching with his father’s campaign only knew the Wisconsin fight song, not the Michigan song.
“So every time they would start playing ‘On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” said Romney, laughing.
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. should be grateful to the Supreme Court for refusing to allow cameras in the courtroom, because his defense of Obamacare on Tuesday may go down as one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court.
Stepping up to the podium, Verrilli stammered as he began his argument. He coughed, he cleared his throat, he took a drink of water. And that was before he even finished the first part of his argument. Sounding less like a world-class lawyer and more like a teenager giving an oral presentation for the first time, Verrilli delivered a rambling, apprehensive legal defense of liberalism's biggest domestic accomplishment since the 1960s—and one that may well have doubled as its eulogy.
Justice Elena Kagan wouldn't have screwed it up when she had the job.
So if America gets rolled back on health insurance reform, it''ll be partially due to Verrilli's poor preparation, and will be seen as such. But people need to see the big picture, that Republicans are causing a moral crisis in America, per Katrina vanden Heuvel:
It’s hard to point to a single priority of the Republican Party these days that isn’t steeped in moral failing while being dressed up in moral righteousness. This week, for example, they are hoping the Supreme Court will be persuaded by radical (and ridiculous) constitutional arguments to throw out some or all of the Affordable Care Act. Sure, you could argue that it’s really nice to make sure 31 million people who didn’t have health care can get it. Sure you could make the case that lifetime limits are a bad thing, that women shouldn’t have to pay more for health insurance just because they’re women, that the United States shouldn’t be a country where you die because you lost your coverage when you lost your job. But then again, liberty. Let’s not forget liberty. Also, freedom.
It is a very strange thing that the people who lecture most fervently about morality are those who are most willing to fight for policies that are so immoral. They watch Wall Street turn itself into the Las Vegas strip, take the economy down and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods. To that they say, “By God we need less regulation. Get me the hose, I have things to water down!” They see a CEO of a bank or a corporation, someone who passed off all of the risk and took on all of the reward, and they say, “Get that man a bigger bonus! In fact, get him two!”
The Supreme Court will issue their ruling in a few months, likely in June. Should they declare the mandate Unconstitutional but allow severability, a problem as it was not written as such in the entire 2000 page bill, then the bill may survive while insurance companies go mental.
Should their ruling kill the bill entirely, rolling back rights and programs already in place, then will that demoralize the Democrats...or give them the fire they need to not only hold the Presidency and Senate, but also flip back the House?
What the hell is going through the heads of the GOP candidates and leaders, if only from a political standpoint. You only want the votes of women who are against the right to control their own bodies? (And I don't just mean on the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.)
View the devastation:
Willard Mitt Romney is the so-called "moderate" in the GOP Presidential race, but it's time the press woke up to his wildly extremist positions:
How easily it rolls off his tongue: "Planned Parenthood -- gonna get rid of that." First off, it's a private organization, so he's going to "get rid of that?" Second, the use of "that" indicates how far he's distanced from Planned Parenthood -- and the huge amount of good it does for women who don't get health services in other ways. And, finally, there's that good it does; Willard willing to dismiss it/cut it without a second thought? Who the hell's life is he trying to make better as President? No one but himself (and his fellow 1-percenters)?
Willard has veered so far into extremism that he won't even stand by his positions from the previous Presidential race:
And how testy that guy gets when challenged. Is this the guy who's finger should be on the nuclear trigger?
The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum. It is about pounding the most radical conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign, whether by Santorum himself, by Gingrich or Ron Paul, by an intimidated Romney, or by the Republican House majority. The Republican presidential campaign is about a lot more than the campaign for the presidency. It is about guaranteeing a radical conservative future for America.
...
Liberals tend to underestimate the importance of public discourse and its effect on the brains of our citizens. All thought is physical. You think with your brain. You have no alternative. Brain circuitry strengthens with repeated activation. And language, far from being neutral, activates complex brain circuitry that is rooted in conservative and liberal moral systems. Conservative language, even when argued against, activates and strengthens conservative brain circuitry. This is extremely important for so-called "independents," who actually have both conservative and liberal moral systems in their brains and can shift back and forth. The more they hear conservative language over the next eight months, the more their conservative brain circuitry will be strengthened.
...
The radical conservative discourse of the Republican presidential race has the same purpose, and conservative Republicans are luring Democrats into making the same mistakes. Santorum, the purest radical conservative, is the best example. From the perspective of conservative moral values, he is making sense and arguing logically, making his moral values clear and coming across as straightforward and authentic, as Reagan did.
Lakoff goes on to describe the differences between the Progressive moral worldview and the Conservative one. It's very much worth reading as a whole, particularly when he shows how the Democrats may be missing the point and, even if they win the Presidency this year, may lose other office elections and the overall, long-term war. And he lays out the Conservative "logic" that leads to the decimation of critical governmental programs and safeguards that actually help Americans:
Here's how that logic goes.
The strict father determines what happens in the family, including reproduction. Thus reproduction is the province of male authority.
The strict father does not condone moral weakness and self-indulgence without moral consequences. Sex without reproductive consequences is thus seen as immoral.
If the nation supports birth control for unmarried women, then the nation supports immoral behavior.
The conservative stress on individual responsibility means that you and no one else should have to pay for your birth control -- not your employer, your HMO, or the taxpayers.
Having to pay for your birth control also has a metaphorical religious value -- paying for your sins.
This is a classical slippery slope narrative. If no one else should have to pay for your birth control, the next step is that no one else should have to pay for any of your health care.
And the step after that is that no one else should be forced to pay for anyone else. This is, everything should be privatized -- no public education, safety nets, parks, or any public institutions or services.
It's war. On who is a great question -- because it isn't just women, no matter how much they are the target at the moment. If these GOoPers get in, kiss all the advances from the Affordable Care Act goodbye.
It's shaping up to be the most pivotal election of our era.
The GOP has come home to Rick Santorum. They've found their way back home: religious righteousness, Neoconservative war policy, grumpy negativism, discredited economics.
It looked like they were coming home to Newt Gingrich, but with a long enough look Republicans knew you couldn't really go home with Newt anymore. Three wives and too many nights he didn't make it home.
Mitt Romney is fighting a rearguard action after his ill-advised "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" back when President Obama authorized the auto bailouts. He's fighting a battle from four years ago while we've all moved on. He's trying to make us forget he opened that Op-Ed with this:
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.
Mitt is not where his party is, no matter how much he tries to pander to what he thinks it is. Rick knows where it is because he is part of what it is.
His youth doesn't hurt, either. For Mitt to knock off Newt or Rick Perry, thanks for doing the Party a favor. For him to knock off Rick Santorum, that'll be like killing the GOP's baby. The Bobby Kennedy of the religious Far Right.
Santorum has said so much crazy stuff, but he has conviction, national experience, and he's a good cover for plutocratic economics sand lobbyists, since he comes from a blue collar family -- even if he's in the 1% now.
Rick Santorum said that a woman who is impregnated by raped should not be allowed a legal abortion, since still carries "a gift." Most Americans would not agree, but it won't keep him from winning his Party's nomination. I believe he can be their idealized version of themselves.
As for the President, could the timing of the contraception Obamacare bru-ha-ha have come at a better time? Rebranding the entire GOP -- and Rick Santorum in his own words -- as anti-contraception.
But when you examine what Obama said on Saturday -- to business leaders at the APEC summit in Hawaii -- it's pretty clear that his critics are taking him out of context. He wasn't calling Americans lazy; rather, he was callingU.S. business practices to attract foreign investors lazy. In fact, you could interpret his full remarks as a call to arms to improve on that front.
MR. McNERNEY: I think one related question, looking at the world from the Chinese side, is what they would characterize as impediments to investment in the United States. And so that discussion I’m sure will be part of whatever dialogue you have. And so how are you thinking about that?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, this is an issue, generally. I think it’s important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world. And there are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity -- our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture.
But we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted -- well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America. And so one of things that my administration has done is set up something called SelectUSA that organizes all the government agencies to work with state and local governments where they’re seeking assistance from us, to go out there and make it easier for foreign investors to build a plant in the United States and put outstanding U.S. workers back to work in the United States of America.
Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has been lying about the difference between his healthcare plan enacted for that state and the one enacted by Congress under President Obama -- so says his own former advisor, not mincing words:
He credited Mitt Romney for not totally disavowing the Massachusetts bill during his presidential campaign, but said Romney's attempt to distinguish between Obama's bill and his own is disingenuous.
"The problem is there is no way to say that," Gruber said. "Because they're the same fucking bill. He just can't have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it's the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he's just lying. The only big difference is he didn't have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes."
The danger is that lies become memes and they harden into "truthies" in the minds of low or mid-information voters. Hard to battle, but it must be done.
So do you think there might be a connection between this:
The Obama administration’s pursuit of an expedited U.S. Supreme Court review of its health care law is a roll of the political dice with enormous implications for the president and the 2012 campaign.
While the signature issue of Obama’s presidency has already figured prominently in rhetoric on both sides, an expected ruling on its constitutionality by June guarantees a dramatic pre-election debate in which Obama may have the most to gain.
A victory for the Affordable Care Act in a high court dominated by conservatives could tame the most fiery criticism from the right, undermining charges popularized by the Tea Party that the administration usurped its constitutional authority.
A ruling against it, while a setback to the law itself, could serve to embolden the argument Obama has already been making that Republicans across all branches of government have become obstructionists without solutions.
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday called for a federal investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars on annual financial disclosure forms.
Led by House Rules Committee ranking member Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), 20 House Democrats sent a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States -- the entity that frames guidelines for the administration of federal courts -- requesting that the conference refer the matter of Thomas' non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice.
The letter outlines how, throughout his 20-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Thomas routinely checked a box titled "none" on his annual financial disclosure forms, indicating that his wife had received no income. But in reality, the letter states, she earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007 alone.
Hmm.
My theory: Obama wouldn't get into a fight unless he had a long-range plan for winning it. Especially not now that he's pivoted from acting like Neville Chamberlain to Ronald Reagan.
If nothing else, he's certainly set up a huge hurdle. And he must have known the Affordable Care Act would come down to those eleven jurists before it would be settled law. Big questions if the GOP can force Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself for being Solicitor General during the legislation of healthcare reform. If so, this is bench-one-of-ours, bench-one-of-yours ploy.
But if they can knock out Thomas, on possible felony charges, and keep Kagan (without any of the other left-leaning Justices getting sick or worse), then those are odds Obama would like to have.
At some level, who really cares? So Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), one of the brightest, funniest, most committed progressive members of Congress did some sexting over Twitter. In his come-clean statement today, teary and regretful, he made it clear that there was never any physical contact. Even though he was fairly recently married to an attractive woman, he went outside the marriage for some fantasy interactions with your women, he says all on his own electronic equipment, on his own time, the shame being mainly for stupidity and embarrassing his wife. And trying to lie about it in the lamest media strategy ever.
I'm guessing the big shame is that his masturbatory practices have been exposed. Morally, this can't be nearly as big a sin as Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) having sex with his close colleague's wife and trying to pay them off, or Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) paying for prostitutes in direct violation of the law, or former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) knocking up a Los Angeles climber while his wife was sick with cancer. Or even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cheating on his wife and dumping her while she was sick with cancer. Or the closet homosexual liaisons of several Republicans in Federal government.
Whacking off to someone 3,000 miles away just does not rise to the same level of offense. Embarrassment, sure. Criminality, doubt it. And extra points to Rep. Weiner for not insisting that his wife stand next to him in shame and smouldering anger while he told the world of his humiliatingly flawed behavior.
And never, to my knowledge, has Rep. Weiner ever run on marital or sexual morality. Not abstinence, not homophobia, nothing like when GOoPers who have voted against gay marriage etc. have been caught in the act.
I'd like to see him bounce back, win re-election next year and eventually become Mayor of NYC. Maybe a little humility will be good for the Weiner. I hope he and his wife work it out, and if they don't I hope he finds someone who alleviates his need for Internet liaisons.
Most of all, and here's where I think he may have been particularly targeted by the rightwing Internet trollers who outed him, I hope he can continue to work on the potentially monstrous conflict of interest that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has with his wife accepting money from anti-healthcare reform organizations, if and when the Affordable Care Act comes up for judicial review.
That, or may someone of equal or greater effectiveness pick up the cause, ideally of disbarment.
The poll indicates that 58 percent of the public opposes the Republican plan on Medicare, with 35 percent saying they support the proposal.
Ryan's sorry voucher plan was designed to pander, by making it affect only those age 55 or under. However, if the GOP thought that meant they'd keep the seniors in their camp, they may have actually helped push them into the Democratic column for 2012:
"Half of those we questioned say that the country would be worse off under the GOP Medicare proposals and 56 percent think that GOP plan would be bad for the elderly," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Opposition is highest among senior citizens, at 74 percent, suggesting that seniors are most worried about changes to Medicare even if those changes are presented as ones that would not affect existing Medicare recipients."
That means even the people you'd most expect to be for Ryan's Ayn Rand dream date -- those on the Right -- are against it as well:
"A majority of all demographic groups don't favor the GOP Medicare proposals," Holland adds. "That includes conservatives - 54 percent of them don't like the plan. As a result, rank-and-file Republicans are split right down the middle, with 48 percent favoring the GOP plan and 50 percent opposed."
Ryan's been lying about the healthcare reform passed last year, saying it "kills Medicare as we know it," which I thought would even be beneath him. I guess not -- he's that desperate for his plan to somehow be accepted as "bold" and "smart" when it is merely another gussied up attempt by GOoPers to dismantle New Deal and Great Society advances in order to better allow the wealthy to keep all the money in America for themselves.
But thank you, Lyin' Ryan, for -- even better! -- helping to bolster public support for the Affordable Care Act, i.e. health insurance reform, or what the GOP disparages as "Obamacare" -- a phrase they may come to regret as it becomes more popular in implementation:
But the most surprising numbers -- and possibly the best one for Obama -- are the results showing that political messaging against the Ryan budget may actually increase the numbers who support the Obama's health care law. The legislation is enemy number one for Republicans heading into 2012, who hope to use continuing wariness about the bill to attack the president and Democrats this fall.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who took his first steps into the Republican presidential field as a moderate, has over the past month turned himself into something far from the center when it comes to Medicare. From throwing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) more love than anyone to grabbing onto Ryan's Medicare-destroying budget with both hands, Huntsman's separating himself from the pack: No one running for president, it seems, is more excited about the Republican budget plan than him.
In an op-ed published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, Huntsman calls Ryan's plan an "honest attempt to save Medicare" and he calls on critics to put up their own plan or shut up about the GOP's. But that's among the more subtle love he's thrown Ryan and his budget in the recent past -- on Tuesday, Huntsman called Ryan one of the two Republicans alive he admires most.
My own conviction is that anyone who follows the "teachings" of crank Ayn Rand, like avowed devotee Paul Ryan, should not be allowed near a position of governmental responsibility.
This Assad was supposedly the good-guy doctor trained in the West, not his brutal old man. Well, unless he's a puppet, he's still in charge, and he now deserves the meathook for his deeds.
On top of all the slaughter of protesting civilians, this boy, Hamza al-Khateeb, is now a cause. Stupid, evil dictators. I guess I haven't paid all that much attention due to my feelings about Syria in relation to Israel as well as its collaboration with the current Iranian regime. But these are the people speaking, Arab Spring, repressive edition.
Fascism means deputizing the most sadistic and base to strike terror into the populace. It never lasts forever, but it can be on so many lifetimes, taken.
An incendiary device found along the route of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was "likely capable of inflicting multiple casualties," the FBI said today.
I found myself taking a fresh look at Dr. Frist a few years after he left public office, when he appeared on the Real Time with Bill Maher and was quite sane and humanitarian, something he and his party were not especially known for during the W. Bush years on GOP dominance. I especially liked when he gently, but firmly, rebutted Maher on anti-vaccination b.s., one of Maher's most misguided positions.
So credit where credit is due, to the FBI and Dr. Frist. Happy Day After MLK Day.
Is Obama's healthcare reform plan in trouble? A federal district court judge in Virginia just declared the individual mandate unconstitutional. This is a key element of the plan, and if removed the entire plan could collapse.
But wait. There's something about Judge Henry E. Hudson that might, just might, have bearing on his decision:
Federal judge Henry E. Hudson's ownership of a stake worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in a GOP political consulting firm that worked against health care reform -- the very law against which he ruled today -- raises some ethics questions for some of the nation's top judicial ethics experts. It isn't that Hudson's decision would have necessarily been influenced by his ownership in the company, given his established track record as a judicial conservative. But his ownership stake does create, at the very least, a perception problem for Hudson that could affect the case. ...
The rules are pretty straightforward: if a judge is invested in a company that is a litigant in a case, he or she can't be involved. But in cases where a company owned by a judge has an interest in the outcome of a case but is not a direct litigant, the lines get much more murky.
If we lose the House, Obama may be better positioned for 2012. If we lose both the House and the Senate, we're in for a lot of trouble. Vicious stuff all aimed at slowing any follow-through change for our President, who's been delivering it too fast for the right and too slow for the left.
It's not worth the risk. Get out and vote for any Democratic fed that you can. Otherwise don't whine after when your health care reform gets strangled.
Here's a first for Nettertainment: I'm linking to Erick Erickson at RedState because he's slamming the "new" GOP "Pledge For America" for being milquetoast garbage. While I diverge from Mr. Erickson on political issues (all?), I admire his integrity here towards his own side. As he closes, "I will vote Republican in November of 2010. But I will not carry their stagnant water."
And, of course, in the Internet Age we find out immediately that:
In a draft version of The Pledge that was being passed around to reporters before the official release, the document properties list "Wild, Brian" as the "Author." A GOP source said that Wild -- who is on House Minority Leader John Boehner's payroll -- did help author the governing platform that the party is unveiling on Thursday. Another aide said that as the executive director of the Republican leadership group American Speaking Out, Wild's tasks were more on the administrative side of the operations.
Until early this year, Wild was a fairly active lobbyist on behalf of the firm the Nickles Group, the lobbying shop set up by the former Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Don Nickles. During his five years at the firm, Wild, among others, was paid $740,000 in lobbying contracts from AIG, the former insurance company at the heart of the financial collapse; $800,000 from energy giant Andarko Petroleum; more than $1.1 million from Comcast, more than $1.3 million from Exxon Mobil; and $625,000 from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc.
I actually don't find the Democratic water at all stagnant. I like that there are healthcare reform benefits going into effect tomorrow. I like that Obama/Clinton have Middle East peace talks going again. I'm all for rescinding the Bush Tax Cuts for those who are doing estimably well while so many Middle Class and less fortunate Americans are not. I was delighted to hear Obama's old friend from Harvard grad, Elizabeth Warren, on NPR today talking about how she's setting up the new Consumer Protection Bureau to help average families across America keep more of their money from unscrupulous and predatory business practices.
California is a state without the media narrative enthusiasm gap. Jerry Brown is pulling ahead of Meg Whitman in the polls, while she's spending upwards of $115 million. Barbara Boxer is looking good against Carly. We need to keep the enthusiasm growing, beat back this reactionary threat that wants to (in the Pledge itself) dismantle the very health insurance reform advances we'll start experiencing this week. (And yes, there will be glitches, dodges and learnings as it works through the system -- and that's important to go through as well, pragmatically.) Their agenda is something the Dems and the White House should run against: it's a rollback agenda.
American moves forward, GOoPers. It's what's took our nation from frontier to superpower.
Young Barbara Bush, as opposed to the nightmarish grande dame of that family, seems pretty smart, or at least has her heart in the right place, dare I say progressive, per Huffington Post:
Barbara Bush, daughter of president George W. Bush, appeared as a guest on "Fox News Sunday" this week to discuss her non-profit Global Health Corps, whose mission is to bring health equity to the U.S. and Africa, and she made some comments that surprised host Chris Wallace.
"Why do, basically, people with money have good health care and why do people who live on lower salaries not have good health care?" Bush asked. "Health should be a right for everyone."
"What do you think about Obama health care reform?" Wallace asked.
"Obviously the health care reform bill was highly debated by a lot of people," Bush responded., "and I'm glad the bill was passed."
The link above gives video as well. Fox's Chris Wallace seems just on this side of patronizing, but like Megan McCain, there appears to be hope in the next generation of GOP scions, female.
Not to be too facetious but Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sue Lowden is suggesting that we repeal health care reform and go back to barter for medical treatment:
"And I would have suggested, and I think that bartering is really good. Those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter, and that would get prices down in a hurry. And I would say go out, go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor."
Is this a woman who's lived without health insurance and had any kind of serious medical issues in her adult life? Does she really think that there's enough barter out there to pay for, say, breast cancer treatment?
She also suggests socking away $20,000 in a health savings account. Again, does she have any sense of what catastrophic medical treatment costs?
What's crazy is that she doubles down today on a local news show:
My favorite line: "I'm telling you this works." Sure, back in the 1860's.
Look, my father was an OB-GYN, and we had some pretty incredible artwork and craft items around the house from some barter deals he did with patients who were cash-strapped artists back in the 1960's and 1970's, maybe even into the 1980's. It was a very small percentage of his business, and he was actually instrumental in forming a regional doctors-owned HMO that went in direct competition with the big corporate outsider HMO. So I get that there's always room for other types of transactions between individuals.
A chicken, we'd have no need for. Well, maybe if it came plucked.
Scary thought: this removed-from-reality woman could end up replacing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
I hope that the new healthcare reform includes ample mental health insurance subsidies, via TPM:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told reporters he believed over 10 lawmakers have been threatened since they voted for the health care bill on Sunday.
Appearing before reporters alongside House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), Hoyer expressed concern about the recent spat of incidents targeting lawmakers, and blamed the violent rhetoric surrounding the health care debate for creating a potentially dangerous atmosphere.
"When people start talking in the rhetoric of putting people on firing lines, that if they don't do something they will have physical harm done to them... or they put a target on their faces, with cross-hairs -- that activity aught to be unacceptable in our democracy," Hoyer said, making reference to a Sarah Palin Facebook post that uses cross-hairs to identify members of Congress who voted for health care reform.
Who are the terrorists now and who's siding with them, arguably enabling them emotionally and philosophically, even mirroring them with undisguised sore loser abuse of Congressional rules, threatening our national security?
Vs. those who have legislated as the clear majority of voters, making their ballot booth choices in a free and democratic election, elected them to do?
Is it somehow okay now to be a sore loser if you've read enough Ayn Rand?
I'm a hope (and change) kind of guy. But here's a fear scenario that James Vegas lays out very plausibly, based on America's long history:
While some leading conservatives are continuing to stoke the flames, others are already trying to back away from the Pandora’s Box they have opened. It is not possible, however, for them to reverse the effects of an entire year of irresponsible rhetoric -- calling Democrats Nazi’s, fascists, Storm troopers and so on --with a few brief statements to the press. To the extent that many grass-roots conservatives have become sincerely convinced by the grotesque accusations against Obama and the Democrats, it becomes no longer irrational for them to think that violent resistance may be required and justified.
Unfortunately, the problem is inevitably going to become significantly worse in the coming period because of several reinforcing social trends:
• First, the failure to defeat the health care bill will cause many of the more moderate and less committed anti-HCR protesters to become demoralized and fall away, leaving a smaller hard-core group of the more extreme protesters in control of the websites, message boards and discussion threads of the anti health care movement. This hard core will include both traditional organized extremist groups – neo-Nazi, skinhead, White Power, LaRouche followers -- and individuals mobilized by the new generation of Fox News and internet-based commentary and social networks.
• Second, within this reduced group, the failure of legal protest to stop the health care bill will generate a strong pressure in favor of more extreme acts. The inability to stop the “slide into fascist dictatorship” will be offered as “proof” of the need for violence and also provide its justification. This social process of radicalization was evident in the 1960’s and early 1970’s – in the U.S. in the case of the Weathermen and Weather Underground and in Europe with the German Red Army Faction and the Italian Red Brigades.
• Third, a vicious cycle will quickly develop. Provocative acts like those noted today force federal and local authorities to begin investigations. To the hard-core protesters, their actions then “prove” the existence of the imminent fascist takeover and justify and stimulate more extreme acts.
The problem is profoundly exacerbated in the United States today because of the increasing number of states with “Open Carry” laws for firearms and the growing movement among conservative gun owners to aggressively assert these new rights by gathering and openly carrying their weapons in public places like coffee shops and political meetings.
It is therefore likely that there will soon be organized very intentionally provocative marches and demonstrations that feature the ostentatious display of both guns and also signs expressing clear threats to use them against Democrats. There will also be the creation of secessionist “militia camps” like those in the 1990’s that will violate various kinds of state and national laws in order to deliberately dare and provoke law enforcement officials to come in and create an incident.
Interesting that this appears on the 30th anniversary of the brutal assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, killed by right-wing death squads:
Our stories laid out, in the Salvadoran rightists’ own words, a vast plan to physically eliminate their political enemies and grass-roots activists based on “dirty war” techniques originally carried out by the governments of Guatemala and Argentina against rebellious segments of their own populations.
Although D’Aubuisson’s role as a leader of the death squads was always reported in the American press as “alleged,” curiously even by our own newspapers, he easily confessed to us that he had participated in death squad activities, and that he had drawn up a secret terror plan (a copy of which we had) that had become the basis of the political-military organization that evolved into the Arena Party. His lieutenants boastfully confessed to manufacturing false propaganda against the “left,” participating in arms smuggling, attacks against Jesuit priests, and assisting the security forces in identifying and killing opponents.
We just came through eight years where Vice President Cheney orchestrated a monarchical reading of Presidential powers including the ability to arrest anybody at any time without showing evidence just by calling them a threat to national security. Any legitimization of violent, democracy suppressing behavior, especially by Republican members of Congress, is legitimization of the thug class, one of the earmarks of fascism. So the Republican leaders need to start speaking out now, as McCain did quite decently at one of his campaign rallies, and that includes beginning the break with Palin.
I'll be interested to see who among them has the decency.
Gotta love Vice President Joe Biden. He talks like an American:
In case you couldn't hear, Biden told Obama this was a BFD, as if Baracky needed to be reminded. He does know that it ain't the world-ending disaster the GOP and their 'bagger buddies threatened:
And by far my favorite victory photo:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hillary '16.
Here's just ten things the healthcare reform bill bring to our nation over the next six months:
Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
Free preventative care for all
Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can't lose your insurance because you get sick.
Step back a minute, take a deep breath and tune out all of the spin and yammering to consider the magnitude of what has been achieved with the House vote on HCR: For starters, America will very soon be a country where no insurance company can deny health coverage to a child because of prior illness or condition. That alone is a truly monumental reform, which honest opponents of the bill will acknowledge.
Every family in America can now breathe a little freer with that knowledge, and great credit is due to the President his staff, Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Hoyer, as well as the courageous House members who risked their careers to do the right thing. There's more, much more, that can be said about the positive impact of this bill, as well as the problems associated with it. But for now, the immediate health security it will provide for millions of children is a very great accomplishment for America, and not incidentally, the Democratic party.
Winning has a way of transforming public perception (it’s true in sports and in politics). Obama has gone from appearing unable to tame an unruly process to triumph and he will now sign a historic bill.4 This will alter the way a lot of people view the President, and in a way that will generate political capital.
Likewise, the GOP are now going to be perceived as losers. While this is not a permanent condition, it isn’t where any party wants to be.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is angry. So, too, are his fellow Republicans. And, McCain says, there will be consequences.
"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during a radio interview Monday. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."
Listen to the man. Even if something that he should agree with comes along, he's too pissed to help. Which is odd, considering how little The Party of No has helped out this past year.
In fact, it's become The Party of Anger. Sure, I was angry during the Cheney years (oh, and Bush was there, too, I guess) as were many people I knew -- tricking America into a war and allowing the country that never attacked us to be trashed in the process, the people subject to unspeakable horrors, trashing the U.S. reputation in the world, trying to destroy Social Security and, I'll continue to content, allowing the worst terrorist attack on American soil to happen due to gross negligence and discontinuation of policies under previous President Clinton. Oh, and creating conditions for the sub-prime crisis and crash of the economy, leaving yet another Democrat to clean up after yet another Bush.
But this anger is something different, something dark from our violent, reactionary, Klannish past. This is cries of n****r and f****t by a vocal minority who are now calling the tune for one of our two major political parties, rapidly turning from The Party of Anger and Fear to The Party of Hate -- per Stephen Schlesinger:
First there are the insensate attacks on those who dare to disagree with the party's views led by the Republican Minority leader John Boehner in his final remarks last night assailing the health reform legislation. Then there are the Republicans who cheered on the hatred and ire of the Tea Bagger protesters encircling the capital from the balcony of the House of Representatives over the weekend. Then there are the Tea Baggers themselves who hurled racial and homophobic slurs at various Democratic Party legislators.
And what about the vitriol mouthed through the months without any Republican regrets by the right-wing radio hosts like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and their cadres. All of this -- hatred, churlishness, pique, resentment, snarling, incivility -- has become the face of a political party which once reflected the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan. Let me ask -- when was the last time a political party gained power in America on anger alone?
In Germany, sure. They called themselves the Nazi Party. And if President Obama is successful in shoring up the Middle Class, as Bill Clinton did before him and as George W. Bush emphatically did the opposite (see tax breaks for the rich and personal savings wiped out), we may yet avoid a rightwing revolution.
The most dangerous aspect of this is how the GOP pretends they are the will of the people -- even through they were trounced in the last two national elections, even as they cry about "the tyranny of the majority," as James Zogby points out:
A Republican talking point repeated ad nauseam during yesterday's debate pounded on the theme that they, and they alone, had the right to speak for "the will of the American people." This took different forms: "the American people have spoken," or "you (Democrats) are ignoring/imposing your views on the American people" or "the American people have sent a message," etc. All making the same point -- that the GOP speaks for the American people.
Of course, the American people have spoken, and in November 2008 elected a Democratic White House and Senate and House of Representatives. But, elections and the workings of our democracy including the idea that the losing party respect the outcome of elections appear to be alien concepts to today's GOP.
The idea that the minority party represents the "will of the people" (not some of the people, but "the people") is the seedling of a totalitarian mindset. In this mindset -- democracy doesn't matter, ideas are not to be discussed, and opposing views are not to respected. What matters is that they alone have truth, they alone are metaphysically connected to the "mind of the people" can interpret their will, and because they have truth and speak for the people, others represent a threat and must be silenced and stopped.
This was a major concern last summer as violent demonstrators disrupted "town meetings" -- with angry chanting mobs claiming to represent the "will of the people" arrayed against the elected Congresspeople and their constituents who had freely assembled to discuss issues. The mobs didn't come to discuss or even debate. They were mobilized to disrupt discussion and silence debate.
The Republicans, stuck in a hermetically-sealed intellectual cyclone of extremist fantasies, are moving farther and farther from the American mainstream. Their willful confusion of socialism (or, more mildly, "government control") with government regulation of an untrammeled and imperfect market was an act of breathtaking dishonesty. Their use of this Big Lie almost derailed a middle-of-the-road health care reform bill. But it didn't succeed. They didn't prevent Barack Obama, and the American people, from enjoying this historic victory.
I'm not sure how many electoral defeats it will take. I have a friend who believes one assassination by this wing will snap America out of its stupor and finally put a bridle on them, but I doubt it. There's too much self-justification amongst these people, too much self-centered, self-righteous anger.
Sure, there are legitimate discussions to be had about cost and change and even individual mandates without a Public Option. But the GOP didn't make those points the centerpiece of their opposition. They senselessly repeated "government takeover of healthcare" like a mantra and it's just plain wrong. It is government regulation of health insurance, thank God. My friends further on the Left aren't celebrating -- they believe the rise in insurance company stocks today shows how hopelessly capitalistic the bill really is.
Well, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has informed the GOP that even though they fought the bill with $144 million, they will not support repeal, only fixes. And, as Joe Conason points out, the GOP arguments against the bill depended on it not getting passed in the first place:
The answer could be found in the subtext of Boehner’s speech, which did not dwell on the bill’s specific provisions, beyond its alleged expense. He knows that arguing the bill’s specific provisions is very dangerous to his party, because so many of them are quite popular and the public will hold Republicans in disrepute for opposing them.
An informed public was always the ultimate peril for the Republicans in this process, so distorted during the past year by wild propaganda about death panels, government takeovers, and the entire mythology of the Obama administration’s socialist-communist-Nazi-totalitarianism.
Creating those crazy expectations was a strategy that depended on the bill never passing. If and when people learn what is actually in the legislation, many of them will realize that they were misled, and will end up appreciating most of what the Democrats have passed, after all.
