But our winner, the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Where are you guys? Three major Native American reservations in South Dakota, particularly the Cheyenne River Reservation, have been buried under snow and ice with major power failures, for two weeks.
I was pretty exhausted from moving again for the third time in six months for good reasons, although I had to sweep a few streets till I got the job I moved for. Pictures weren't hung up yet when this racial utterance came out of Steele's mouth.
Olbermann's Special Comment, Wednesday December 16:
"They must now not make the defeat worse by passing a hollow shell of a bill just for the sake of a big-stage signing ceremony. This bill, slowly bled to death by the political equivalent of the leeches that were once thought state-of-the-art-medicine, is now little more than a series of microscopically minor tweaks of a system which is the real-life, here-and-now version, of the malarkey of the Town Hallers. The American Insurance Cartel is the Death Panel, and this Senate bill does nothing to destroy it. Nor even to satiate it."
"It merely decrees that our underprivileged, our sick, our elderly, our middle class, can be fed into it, as human sacrifices to the great maw of corporate voraciousness, at a profit per victim of 10 cents on the dollar instead of the current 20. Even before the support columns of reform were knocked down, one by one, with the kind of passive defense that would embarrass a touch-football player - single-payer, the public option, the Medicare Buy-In - before they vanished, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the part of this bill that would require you to buy insurance unless you could prove you could not afford it, would cost a family of four with a household income of 54-thousand dollars a year, 17 percent of that income. Nine thousand dollars a year. Just for the insurance,"
"That was with a public option.That was with some kind of check on the insurance companies. That was before - as Howard Dean pointed out - the revelation that the cartel will still be able to charge older people more than others; will - at the least - now be able to charge much more, maybe 50 percent more, for people with pre-existing conditions - pre-existing conditions; you know, like being alive."
Hopefully you saw Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on the sorry state of the Health Insurance System in American. And hopefully, you were moved to action, like I was. There's still time to pony up, if it slipped your mind. Let's give Keith some ammo when he resumes the fight next week.
Wow. Some days I have nothing. Today I have at least two, maybe three things I want to write about. I will try & spin them into this one. If that doesn't work, you will never read these lines. Heh. I'll have to edit them out.
First let me lead in with something excellent. I WORSHIP this man. I even can forgive him for doing those Aruba commercials, he is so good. Besides Aruba is dreamy. His analysis of the two party system is PRICELESS.
That brings me to RANT ONE:
All the pretty little pundits are calling odds on the 2010 midterms. Will we {gasp) keep the majority of seats, or will we (moan, gnash of teeth) lose seats broadly like we did in 1994?
I say: FUCK IT! Lets all vote for the craziest wing-nut motherfuckers out there, every goddamned rapture sucking corporate vampire there is. Let them impeach Obama and crown Palin Queen.
Lets knock the legs out from under David for once and for all and see how Goliath does unfettered. Lets see how they like their Giant Champion when he stomps through town smashing their 401k's and how much "individual responsibility" they take when he eliminates Social Security and Medicare. Lets see how the Cheney's of the Country like it when their daughters like Mary have their children stripped from their "lesbianic" homes and go to jail for child endangerment, and their other daughters are forced to bear rapists' seeds.
Let them inherit the economy, the wars, the fucktitude. Lets just stock up on potable water and canned goods and ammo and let them burn it down. All hail martial law and door to door searches!
Every taboo is meant to be broken, so think of it as dirty pleasure:
VOTE NEO-CON NOW!!!
I'm just warming up. On to the Health Care Question.
If you missed the last two nights of Countdown with Keith Olbermann you missed a lot of new details in the Health care Reform debate, and I don't want to sound bleak, but things do not look good. The main points are these.
Wendel Potter: "If there's not a public option, the plan that is passed, if it's passed and signed by the President, will not be sustainable. And it ultimately will be a disaster for the middle class and ultimately be a disaster for the Democratic party . . .
~snip~
"We'll be paying a lot more out of our own pockets. We'll have the appearance of being able to afford premiums but we won't be able to afford health care. That can not be sustained."
And then there is the news that Rahm Emanuel will be representing the White House in the presumably upcoming Houuse-Senate Conference committee. Thus the title "If you wanna kill the (Public Option) you gotta do it yourself.
More below the fold, and it ain't pretty, with a call for action that puts it all on the line.
With all the uproar over Republican gloating over American failures, this bit of news has been almost totally overlooked, but it trumps any posturing over the Olympics by a long shot.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has announced that he will be visiting Honduras today to meet with the de facto regime of acting Honduran President Roberto Micheletti in sheer defiance of the position taken by the US government and (the) international community . . .
Senator DeMint (R-SC) has been revealed as a member of the C-Street Family, a fundamentalist Christian group that admires Hitler and believes in the Supremacy of a Free Market supporting Jesus, and has just violated the Logan Act, a law that states that ONLY unauthorized citizens are forbidden from negotiating with foreign Governments. As of now, DeMint is acting against American interests.
Ed Schultz: This wasn't flippant, Grayson just took it to them 'by the rules'. And he doesn't have to apologize to nobody for anything. And you know what, there are a lot of Lefties around this Country, in their living rooms tonight saying, 'YES! this is how you got to handle these folks!'
The Republicans are demanding an apology for the same reason they are offering Amendments about Czars -- They have nothing to offer in the Health Care Debate!
[...]
Ed Schultz: Congressman Grayson do you take anything back?
Alan Grayson: Absolutely NOT! -- the people WHO should be apologizing are the Republicans -- they're the ones who should be apologize for dragging us all through the mud here, while we are just trying to improve Health Care in America.
I have missed K. O. the past several days on his show, but I understand with which he has to deal. The standins are OK, (I would like to see more females in the slot), but they are not K. O.. He is back tonight, with a vengeance, and that is a good thing.
He is likely the most expressive and passionate advocate for our cause that is not on shortwave radio. I am glad that he was able to come onto MSNBC tonight.
Beck's new book "Arguing on behalf of with Idiots" is a real gem, which includes this piece where Beck explains why SLAVERY is good and Uhmerican, just like the Founding Fathers wanted it.
Provision Beck praised actually "barred Congress from ending the international slave trade before 1808."
Beck praises "Migration or Importation" tax provision in taking cheap shot at "immigrants." In the chapter, Beck reprints and then praises Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution. Beck specifically highlights in yellow the phrase "ten dollars for each person":
This might be the most thorough assesment of the Republican party, the media, The Religious Right, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, you name it, Dan Savage nails it. In an interview with Keith Olbermann, Dan Savage lays the truth down, hashes it up for all to see and then serves it with a bag of chips and a cup of STFU for the GOP.
Dan Savage: I really do think the Michelle Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and, consciously or subconsciously, trying to get, I'm just gonna say it, trying to get the President killed.
Full transcript and my own take on the issues below the fold.
"... Dick Cheney isn't sorry about any of it." In his ABC News interview he "betrayed no second thoughts - and certainly no remorse - about the policies pursued by the administration that he both served and, according to some, led.
But Cheney's role is an old, if still developing story. After all, he warned us five days after Sept. 11 that our government would work on the "dark side." He told the late Tim Russert, "We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies." ...
Last night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA35) discussed overt Republican racism {specifically her colleauge Rep Lynn Jenkins (Racist-KS2) call for a Republican Great White Hope to thwart the obviosly not white President Obama.}
As Keith Olbermann so eloquently put it regarding Rep. Jenkins half assed, half apology.
KO: "The old conditional apology. It's your fault if you're offended that an active politician in 2009 should use the most demeaning of racist phrases, vintage 1909."
Following that nail on the head statement, Keith defers to Congresswoman Maxine Waters, whom I deeply respect, and can only imagine what it must feel like to be in her shoes, or any other member of the African American caucus in the Democratic party. I would say the same of African American republicans in congress if there actually were any African American republicans in congress, but I digress.
More, and a transcript of Representative Waters's response below the fold.
Dr. Dean on Keith Olbermann video at bottom of diary
The GOP is hoping that all the old people in America will freak out over whatever they can say to scare Grampa, but it isn't working on anybody else.
It's easier to scare older people than it is younger ones.
What is interesting here, other than the majority support after all the GOP scare tactics and the media hysteria, is that even though people like what they have, they understand that what they have is quickly vanishing, 14,000 people a day, and that what they have now will cost more each coming year if the GOP and the status quo has their way.
And though it may work on the wingnuts and the low information McCain voters, it simply isn't working on anyone else.
Well, when I look at some polls based on age, something really glaring comes out.
Has anybody in our idiot media noticed that there are ZERO young or minority Americans at these astroturf heavy town halls? (not counting children dragged along by their wingnut parents)
This seems to be the response the GOP wishes to receive from our nation's elderly.
The good thing is, it isn't working to move the entire 60-65+ demographic towards the GOP. Rather, it is turning off anyone who isn't a rabid wingnut to begin with.
The plaster the founding fathers and claim 1st amerndment rights. The problem isn't their first Amendment rights, but how they use these images to influence the easily deceived to act against their own interests and in favor of special interests.
Free speech is not a problem until special interests try to buy up yours.
Meet the kings of phony astroturfed protest groups opposing change, reform, President Obama and whatever else you got except free market ideology and cutting taxes (for the rich).
How do Joe The Plumber, racism, Republicans, Nazis, Ron Paul supporters, NWO CT theorists, ACORN CT theories, teabaggers, Oil industry insiders, free market advocates and health care opponents all tie in together?
Natuarally?
No. Only professionals are capable of this sort of co-ordination.
The stupidity is just icing on the home made Entenmann's cake.
"The American way of life is being systematically dismantled and destroyed. The Republic is in danger. We are tired of everyone in the U.S. Congress, Democrats, Republicans, everyone, and they don't care, but believe me, they better start. Otherwise, as I said on O'Reilly last night, we are entering the most dangerous time in American history."
- Glenn Beck
"It is not time to pick up guns . . . It is not time to blow anything up"
I call bullshit on Beck's pre-emptive Cover Your Ass job.
Glenn Beck and his insane on air ravings are brought to you by billionaire Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation.
March on Washington
