July 2009 archive

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

Progressive Anthony Weiner calls for “The End” of Publicly Run Medicare

as reported on Rachel Maddow’s Thursday show:

Congressman Weiner’s bluff-calling, put-up-or-shut-up amendment to the House health care bill (H.R. 3200):

Really Republicans, don’t like Publicly run Health Care?

Would you care to put your Vote where your rhetoric is,

to eliminate a very successful Public Health Care Program — Medicare?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26…



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

So what happened?

Will Medicare be relegated to the “junk heap of history” as another “failed idea” of the Liberal Agenda? … well in a word, HARDLY!

Overnight Caption Contest

Photobucket

So Sad about Us 20090730

Some of you know that Mrs. Translator and I are in the process of a divorce.  It is not a happy time for either of us.

Fortunately, neither of us have any animostiy, at least overt, towards the other.  But that does not mean that it is not a sad event in our lives.

Last June, we “celebrated”, to use a word out of context, our 32nd wedding anniversary.  But things had not been right for a long time.

Rant: No, A Beer Won’t Fix Anything.

In advance, I ask your pardon for a rant I am unable or unwilling to suppress.  Today’s White House Beer Summit On Race Relations And Police Practices has enraged me.  Police Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge PD didn’t deserve an invitation for beer at the White House, he needed an appointment for a deposition in a federal civil rights case in which he and his superiors were the named defendants.  But according to the Trad MediaTM, all of Crowly’s vengefulness, his making an illegal arrest, his making a stupid, unjustifiable illegal arrest, his serving up a racist/classist illegal arrest of a person in his own home is now behind us.  We’re past all of the ugliness of his conduct.  It has now been chilled (unless you have to live with brutality and oppression on a daily basis) with some beer.  And pretzels.  This I hasten to point out might solve Police Sgt. Crowley’s immediate problem, including departmental discipline and federal civil rights action for damages, but it doesn’t solve my problem.  Or the country’s.  And I don’t think it solves Prof. Gates’s problem.  It certainly doesn’t solve the US’s police problem. Not one bit.

Dr. Izzeldin

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i…

U.S. Health Care: Mobilize Or Accept The Status Quo

Crossposted from Antemedius

Economist, Author, and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Richard D. Wolff, well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology and class analysis, Yale University Ph.D. in Economics, and Professor at The New School University in New York City, talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the current health care debate and the challenges or barriers standing in the way of a national U.S. single payer plan.

Wolff suggests keeping in mind some basic facts – the U.S. spends far more for far less health care “product” than any other advanced country in the world, and suggests a return to the the old American prideful mindset of “if we’re not producing the best quality at the lowest price we should go and find out who’s doing that and replicate their experience“, and points out that the number one thing standing in the way of doing this is the lack of will to challenge the status quo and to do what everyone already knows needs to be done: spend less to get more.

In other words, Wolff opines, Obama must “mobilize or accept the status quo” and “make his party vote for real health care reform“, instead of making the lame this is the best we can get excuses that may very well destroy his presidency along with screwing millions of Americans out of proper health care.

Distinguishing Youreself From A Republican

I make the following hypothoseis for discussion:  The answer to this question will tell you whether the person asked is a republican or a democrat (no matter their party affiliation).

“If people can be fooled, should they be fooled?”

Pelosi Blasts Insurance Companies as “Villians”

From HuffPo comes the news that Nancy Pelosi is starting to kick ass.  This is what teh presdient must do.  People need a narrative of good guys v. bad guys.  They see it in books, TV, movies, daily life.

 The real “villains” in the fight for health care reform are insurance companies.

snip

They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way,” Pelosi said of the insurance industry after her weekly press conference. “It’s almost immoral, what they are doing,” she said, referring to industry lobbying against a public insurance plan option. “Of course, they’ve been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it.”

The current system works so well for insurers that they don’t even want subsidies, Pelosi claimed. “They’ve had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country,” she said, adding that it will be tough to keep them from getting their way. “This is the fight of our lives.”

Pelosi referred to the health insurance industry’s campaign against reform — specifically, the public option — as “carpet bombing” and “shock and awe” during the press conference.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

I think the President will build on this.  I hope so.  Obama, Pelosi and Reid (yech) must speak with one voice to win.  

Good and evil, right and wrong.  It’s now up to the President, for Nancy has shown a light on the way to success.  He must courageously take the fight to the immoral insurance companies.  No more everyone at the table.  

Progressive Caucus Press Conference/Protest on Cspan Now!

Link http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-…

Cspan 2 on teh TV.

GET The Gotdam Votes! ( +Huzzah for the ProgCaucus!)

First let us praise the Progressive Caucus in the House for standing up and making their voice and power heard on Health Care. This is a great development, whatever the eventual outcome. A strong bloc of Progressives is an absolute necessity on every important issue going forward, so….

HUZZAH, HUZZAH, HUZZAH!!!

Next it must be noted that as ALWAYS….the Republicans are  On that there is only one entity to blame, The White House. A good PR campaign was essential to get a good health care plan passed. Where is it? The polls out today all point to the same conclusion…the Repub Fear campaign is working. As ALWAYS. IF we lose on Health care, that is THE biggest factor right there, eroded public support due to the GOP Winning the Spin. When will the Dems learn?

Finally , on to the self fulfilling prophecy that has dominated the CongDems consciousness for years now, if not decades:

We don’t have the votes.

I have said it before and I will say it again….the purpose of Politics is GETTING the votes.

The famous aphorism of “Politics is the art of compromise” is a sugarcoated version of the truth.

Politics is the art of making deals.

Last night CornSyrupAwareness wrote a great diary at Daily Kos 44 Senators Support A Public Option wherein s/he laid out the current vote count and the status of what can only be called the undecided Dem Senators.

Only TWO “Democratic” Senators have come out firmly against the Public Option.

Only TWO ….out of Sixty. Out of the 60 votes needed. And Olympia Snowe makes up for one of those, since she has said she WILL support the PO. The TWO who are a firm NO are Mary Landrieu.  And of course …..Joe Lieberman.

That leaves 14 Senators who have at least technically are uncommitted. If they are technically uncommitted, that means that they are open to…..a deal.

Another Public Option

Are Liberal Netroots Groups Helping Obama Fail?

by Jeff Cohen

I’ve started deleting them as spam.  

I’m not talking about the enlarge-your-penis emails or “You’ve Won the Lottery” notices.  

I’m talking about the increasingly-urgent emails coming for weeks from liberal Netroots groups calling for a “public option” for health care — a government insurance plan citizens could choose to pay for instead of private insurance.  

Never has so much passion been so misdirected.  If what these liberal groups ultimately wanted out of President Obama and corporate-funded Democrats in Congress was a topnotch public plan to compete with the first-rate private plans, the wrong way to get it was to make that the demand.

Especially of a president whose instinct is toward conciliation and splitting the difference with big business and the right wing.

Sure, Obama was a community organizer once.  That was decades ago when Russia was still our mortal enemy, Nelson Mandela was still an official State Department terrorist threat and the White House was still funding Islamist fanatics in Afghanistan.  

For the last dozen years Obama has been a politician — and a consummate compromiser at that.  Have we failed to notice?

Activists must recognize the surest way to get a strong public option that could compete with the Cadillac of health plans. We needed to mobilize millions of Netroots people, almost every union and 150 members of Congress to endorse a maximum demand: National health insurance . . . enhanced Medicare for All.  In other words, a cost-effective single-payer system of publicly-financed, privately-delivered healthcare that ends private health insurance (and its waste, bureaucracy, ads, sales commissions, lavish executive salaries, profiteering).

Had liberal groups sent out millions of emails building a movement that posed an existential threat to the health insurance industry, Sen. Baucus and Blue Dog Democrats and their corporate healthcare patrons might well be on their knees begging for a comprehensive public option — to avert the threat of full-blown Medicare for All.  

Read the entire article…

Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America .  

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