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Do You Want the AIG Option, Or The Public Option?

This is a follow up to dday’s excellent diary, which talks about the Baucus bill and Trojan Horse of “allowing people to buy insurance across state lines”: http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

While they didn’t realize it, the Republicans and their Big Insurance enablers have actually given us a rhetorical sledge hammer. “Allowing people to buy insurance across state lines” is code for insurance deregulation, and what just happened the last time when an insurance company was allowed to do business in a deregulated environment?

Teabaggers And “The Most Dangerous System in America”

Much has been made by teabaggers in the healthcare debate that we need to “return to the country our founders envisioned”. With all due respect to the founders who – as Enlightenment thinkers – got a lot of things right, this would be like asking Henry VIII for relationship advice.

Ted Kennedy Was My Neighbor

There’s been rumblings lately among some on the other side of the health care debate that neighbors should take care of each other, and I couldn’t agree more.

You see, Ted Kennedy was my neighbor. He was your neighbor, too.

When my two children were born with autism, a developmental disability, Ted Kennedy was there speaking out about the need for head start, a program that my son used to help him make eye contact and understand that he could communicate his needs with words, and not just with crying: http://www.tedkennedy.com/jour…

GOPers, Sotomayor and the Soft Bigotry of…Soft Bigotry

Yvette Melendez from Glastonbury, Conn., who is sitting in the nominee’s VIP section in the hearing room, said she winced inwardly when Sen. Tom Coburn said, “You’ll have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.” But Melendez says she didn’t feel offended. “I personally did not think it was appropriate,” she told me in an interview. “But I’m sure he said it as a joke.”

link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/…

And looking at the clip it feels that Yvette Melendez from Glastonbury, Connecticut is pretty much spot-on:

Okay, Look, You Stubby Blowhards

You. Yeah, you. You pontificating white males (so unrepresentative of the vast majority of your fellows in race and gender) that think that one bloody word in one speech years ago, a membership to an organization with a Spanish name and a decision upholding a city’s move to limit its liability and scrap a bad test because its results uniformly favored one racial group over another one…

…get real.

You think that Judge Sotomayor is worse for the country than the Confederacy winning the Civil War? You seriously believe that Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would have locked arms with you in protesting her nomination to the Supreme Court?

You believe that if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today he would be on the Sunday talk show circuit talking about how she’s a “reverse racist”?

Boehner’s Climate Change FAIL on This Week

Presented for your…well…just check it out:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That’s my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide. And so I think it’s clear…

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you don’t believe that greenhouse gases are a problem in creating climate change?

BOEHNER: … we’ve had climate change over the last 100 years — listen, it’s clear we’ve had change in our climate. The question is how much does man have to do with it, and what is the proper way to deal with this? We can’t do it alone as one nation. If we got India, China and other industrialized countries not working with us, all we’re going to do is ship millions of American jobs overseas.

link: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek…

Help Fight The Religious Right…TODAY

One of my relatives on the other side of the political spectrum forwarded an email to me from a group called the American Family Association (why oh why do these folks have to usurp such a nice concept like “family” and twist it into indecipherable political contortions?). Seems that they’re trying to do a writing campaign to the White House to force President Obama to backtrack on his rescinding the Bush administration’s rule that would allow doctors or hospitals to deny people health care if their religion trumped the need of the person standing in front of them asking for help.

Leahy At ProgressiveBlue: Stop By And Tell Him What You Think

I normally wouldn’t post a diary on something so short, but I think this would be of interest to the Docudharma community. Senator Patrick Leahy has posted his proposal of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission at Progressive Blue: http://www.progressiveblue.com…

As this is a boutique blog in the style of Docudharma, I think there’s a fair chance that the senator or his staff will read all of the comments in the thread. With that in mind, feel free to stop on by and voice your praises or concerns with his idea.

Many thanks 😉

In Defense of Bipartisanship

Way, way back in the heady days of the primary, before we knew who the Democratic nominee would be, while we were still duking it out for our respective favorite candidates, I wrote the following about Obama’s “big tent” style approach to politics:

This isn’t Clintonian triangulation. It’s actually worse than that. It’s unilaterally disarming before the first shot’s been fired.

and I quoted Ian Welsh when he said:

The time for the failed politics of compromise is over.

So, you’d think I’d be the last person sitting here defending Obama’s bipartisanship to the progressive left.

But that’s exactly what I find myself doing.

The REAL Problem With Prager’s Remarks On Sex and Marriage

After following some of the comments in the threads of bonddad’s diary, “Dennis Prager Endorses Marital Rape” (link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/… and Yosef 52’s response, “No, Prager is NOT Advocating Marital Rape” (link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyo… , with respect to both diarists I think they’re missing the point. The crux of the problem with Prager’s arguments in his – ahem – piece, “When A Woman Isn’t In The Mood, Part 1” is where his make this gem of an argument:

Compared to most women’s sexual nature, men’s sexual nature is far closer to that of animals. So what? That is the way he is made. Blame God and nature. Telling your husband to control it is a fine idea. But he already does. Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control. He has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual nature’s desire for variety for the rest of his life.

link: http://townhall.com/columnists…

Tapper: SCOTUS Rejects Case from “Fringe Anti-Obama Activists”

Remember the “OMG! Obama’s Birth Certificate! OMG! He’s Still A Foreignur Regardless!” nontroversy?

The Supreme Court has now delivered the ultimate thumbs down to the Black Helicopter crowd, and as ABC’s Jake Tapper notes:

As is the custom, the court did not make any comments regarding the denial.

linky: http://blogs.abcnews.com/polit…

Our Long National Nightmare is Over…and now…

Tuesday night we were all fixated to the polls. We all cried (or at least I know I did – it was John Lewis that broke my dam on that front). I even cried yesterday, and I wasn’t the only one. Here in Blue Connecticut there were many tear stained faces, many relieved looks, even a pervasive, genuine happiness.

I bought the paper with Obama’s picture on it and the caption, “Mr. President” at the grocery store. The young woman ringing me up said, “I’m really glad he won yesterday.”

Obama’s remade the electoral map. Now it is time for us to remake our ideological maps – or specifically, I would advocate, completely rip those maps into shreds and start over.

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