Rallyfication…

Let’s jump right on in, shall we?

Yesterday, President Obama came to town to pitch health care reform in St. Charles.

Opponents to reform staged their own rally to rally support for…um, well…to rally support for not doing anything to reform health care.

Basically, the St. Louis metropolitan area was awash in rallyfication.

This bitch caught some of the rally against rallying support for health care reform on the news and I was struck by a certain theme of state sovereignty.

See, Missouri has a 10th Amendment movement afoot that seeks to establish state sovereignty and one of the key issues supporters are using to make their push is health care reform.

Now, now…I know that you know that I know that you know that the 10th Amendment does not grant absolute sovereignty to states in the union. That would make the union part of the Republic a wee bit fucked. Rather, it grants states the right to control shit that the federal government does not control or regulate. Like most of the Constitution, it lacks specificity…that is a good thing, since we the people don’t want to be limited by the specific definitions of 1790’s American society. But ‘tis that lack of specificity that has some Missourians attempting to break from the union without breaking from the union because they profess to love the union they are declaring sovereignty from.

Trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve witnessed a sovereignty event that puts forth an argument about how Missouri is our own sovereign government/state/area answerable to no one and no government…and that ends with everyone in attendance pledging allegiance to the United States of America.

Blink.

Yep, it’s really something to behold.

Oh, and these sovereignty folks love to issue non-binding resolutions.

Confession – a bitch finds issuing a resolution that holds no legal power to announce that Missouri doesn’t have to do anything the federal government mandates strange as hell if the foundation of the sovereignty argument is that the 10th Amendment grants Missouri the right to not do anything the federal government mandates.

But, what the hell…go forth and resolve without legal ramification to not do anything the federal government mandates.

It’s not as if Missouri state government has anything else to deal with.

Shit.

It’s enough to make a body long to establish sovereignty from other Missourians.

***logs off pondering the establishment of the Kingdom of Bitchitude in South City***

Crossposted from the Angry Black Bitch.

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Bart Stupak can kiss my brown ass.

I am tired of seeing Bart Stupak’s dumb ass on the telly. This sumbitch wants to make health reform all about abortion. Well, Rachel is willing to give this homophobic fuckwit an additional 15 minutes of fame. She is going after him and his connection to the C Street group known as The Family. Slap him around a bit woman…he fucking deserves it. Worthless fuck would take down the entire health reform bill just to make sure he gets his horseshit language regarding abortion into the bill. This isn’t about abortion, that federal fuckery was settled long ago with the Hyde Amendment.

Get him Rachel!!!! Transcript for this can be read here. If Stupak wants to push his anti-choice agenda the sumbitch needs to introduce a bill….so the majority of the Democrats can laugh at him and bury the damn thing. From ThinkProgress, some truth about Stupak and his anti-choice agenda:

While much of the attention on the health care debate in recent days has focused on the Senate, the House will have to vote to pass a reform bill as well, and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) is threatening to torpedo the whole effort if his unreasonable demands on abortion restrictions are not met. To reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills, Democratic leaders will likely have the House pass the Senate bill, then use the budget reconciliation process to “fix” the Senate bill, before sending it President Obama later this month. But due to two resignations, a death, and a likely vote switch by the only Republican who voted for health care reform the first time around, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has lost at least four votes, bringing the whip count to 216 — a majority of 217 is needed. But Stupak — who led a charge last November to insert a draconian abortion amendment to the House bill — is threatening to sink the effort again. Stupak claims there are “at least 12” House members who voted for the first bill that will switch their votes if the final bill includes the Senate’s abortion language. Stupak, his pro-life allies, and a leading group of Catholic bishops who have been deeply involved in the health care fight, falsely claim that the Senate bill will allow the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion and are demanding that the final bill include Stupak’s provision. Republicans have made similar accusations, but since they are unwilling to even consider voting for health care reform, it is Stupak’s bloc that would be responsible for killing health care reform, should it die in the House. Stupak’s amendment failed in a Senate vote, but the upper house included its own strict prohibition on public funding for abortions. Abortion language cannot be altered through the budget reconciliation process, meaning the final bill will look more like the Senate’s. The Catholic bishops “signaled” yesterday that they are willing to negotiate, saying “that if agreement is reached with House leaders on anti-abortion language, the church would work to get the votes needed to protect the provisions in the Senate,” even if it would require 60 votes. “Whether it would be enough to get to 60 votes, I can’t predict. We would certainly try,” Richard Doerflinger, an associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Politico. But Stupak is still not satisfied. “In the present form, the Senate health care bill is going nowhere in the House of Representatives,” Stupak threatened yesterday on the Fox Business Channel.

WHAT THE BILL SAYS: It is clear that the final health care bill will not use taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. Neither the House nor Senate bills included outright public funding for abortion, but Stupak and other pro-life Democrats feared that taxpayer money would indirectly fund abortions, especially through government subsidies for low-income people to buy health insurance. Stupak’s amendment would have prohibited insurance plans that accept subsidies in the new exchanges from providing abortion services, except under the most extreme circumstances, even if women used only private money to pay for their abortion coverage. The Senate bill includes a deal orchestrated by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-NE) that does allow private health plans in the exchanges to offer abortion coverage, but only if their customers write two checks each month — one for the share of their premium that’s allocated for abortion services and one for all other health care coverage. Both checks would come from the customers’ personal funds, not government coffers. The Nelson provision also included language that encourages states to pass their own version of the Stupak Amendment, prohibiting insurers from offering plans with abortion coverage through the new state exchanges. The White House’s plan for health reform maintains Nelson’s approach in its entirety and is consistent with existing abortion restrictions, creating “a firewall between publicly- and privately-funded premiums and only allow[ing] private money to cover abortion costs.”

MOVING THE GOAL POSTS:  Stupak has consistently invented new demands when his old ones are met. Last year, Stupak first demanded that public funding for abortion be removed. It was. Then he demanded an up-or-down vote on his onerous amendment. It passed the House, but failed in the Senate. Still, Nelson’s provision was crafted with Stupak’s objections in mind, and it won the support of every pro-life Democrat in the Senate. Now, in order to keep up his crusade, ”Stupak has relied on a fundamentally dishonest interpretation of the Senate bill to argue that it would allow for public funding of abortion,” as the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky noted. Stupak appeared on MSNBC yesterday to argue his case, claiming, “In the Senate bill, it says ‘you must offer insurance policies that will be paid for by the federal government that covers abortion.’” In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America the next day, Stupak cited pages 2069-2078 of the Senate bill, claiming, “You will find in there that the federal government would directly subsidize abortions.” But those pages do the exact opposite, and clearly prohibit federal funding for abortions. In yesterday’s ABC interview, Stupak also objected to a provision that supposedly mandates that “every enrollee must pay one dollar per month into a fund to help fund abortions.” While it’s true that people who choose to purchase insurance with abortion coverage through the exchanges will pay the nominal fee, one can simply choose to purchase a plan that doesn’t cover abortion, and thus not pay the fee. Moreover, the $1 provision was included to allay the fears of pro-life lawmakers in order to make sure only private money is spent on abortion. The $1 comes from private premiums payments — not public dollars — and is a way of ensuring that carriers have sufficient funds to cover the services they offer. As Slate’s Timothy Noah observes, Stupak’s claims are “empirical, not ideological. And Stupak happens to be wrong.” There are a number of ways Stupak could try to get the results he wants in later legislation, and his stonewalling here shows that he cares more about his agenda than health care reform. But even if Democrats decide to change the Senate’s abortion language through a separate non-reconciliation measure, it’s still unclear that Stupak would vote for reform. On Monday, he told the Wall Street Journal that “abortion isn’t the only issue that will keep him from voting for the Senate bill if Speaker Nancy Pelosi brings it to the House floor.” “It’d be very hard to vote for this bill even if they fixed the abortion language,” he said. Asked whether there was any way he would vote for the current package, he had one word : “Nope.”

MOVING FORWARD: Americans are not interested in getting bogged down in an abortion debate on health care reform. A recent poll found that a large plurality — 47 percent — agreed that “[p]olitical differences on abortion should not prevent us from moving forward on an otherwise good health care reform plan.” Pelosi, Obama, and other leaders want to move forward as well. “Let me say this: This is not about abortion! This is a bill about providing quality, affordable health care for all Americans,” Pelosi said yesterday. “Let me say it clearly…there is no federal funding for abortion. That is the law of the land. It is not changed in this bill.” Indeed, independent observers agree. Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington & Lee University, and an independent “leading expert on health policy and law” recently released the findings of a “a thorough examination” of the Senate abortion language. While he found “significant differences between the House and Senate” bills in general, “the provisions governing abortion (Sec. 1303 of the Senate bill, pp. 2069-2078) are not among them. Both bills prohibit federal funding of abortions.” In other words, the Senate language is as effective as the House language, which Stupak wrote and voted for. Indeed, even the Catholic Hospital Association endorsed the Senate abortion language. The association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement in late December that it was “encouraged” and “increasingly confident” that the abortion compromise in the Senate health care bill “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.” Despite his unreasonable stand, House Democrats are still trying to court Stupak. After meeting with Stupak yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told TPMDC that “[s]eparate pieces of legislation could be passed” outside the reconciliation process to appease Stupak. “That’s a possibility,” said Hoyer. “I talked to Mr. Stupak today, and I’m going to be talking to him next week and he indicated he wanted to have some discussions with people. And I will do that.”

Now, sit down and shut the hell up dude.

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Gut wrenching…

It was simply gut wrenching to watch. KO makes tonight’s Special Comment about tomorrows ‘healthcare summit’  very personal. His father is going downhill fast, and I send both of them my love and prayers. He lost his mother last year. ;(

Leave your egos at the door, like KO says, gentlemen. Do NOT bring that political horseshit in w/you either. Healthcare for all Americans is a moral obligation. you sons of bitches.

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In Teddy’s name, they will get it done tomorrow.

I just watched the Senators wax poetic about the healthcare bill they are about to pass. Harkin did bring a lump to my throat when he spoke about Teddy and his assistant that still carried the torch for healthcare for all after Teddy died.

I do not call it a ‘reform’ bill because it does so fucking little in that regard. I still consider the bulk of it to be corporate welfare for the insurance companies. Fucking bendejo’s  do not need another handout..they have more than their share of those sumbitches.

Invoking Teddy’s name really kinda pisses me off too..this bill is that shitty.

So kiss my hairy ass you bunch of fucking bought bastards. You do not honor Kennedy’s legacy with this friggin bill. Not even close.

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End This

It’s past time that the wholly-owned whores LIEberman and Ben(edict) Nelson were prevented from doing the bidding of their health insurer Johns anymore.

The reconciliation process exists, and it was used to subsidize the offshoring of millions of American jobs. You can’t tell me that if it can be used for something like that, we can’t go ahead and use it for health reform-something that might actually BENEFIT Americans, for a change.

Is it any wonder Americans have become disillusioned with the health reform process? Whores like LIEberman, Nelson, and Baucus water it down to a point where it is almost meaningless-and then LIEberman more or less says that the only “reform” he’s willing to support is NO REFORM AT ALL.

Reid, and the President, need to get this the hell over with. Let these whores cry to their Johns about how badly they’ve been wronged.

Dashing the hopes of Democratic lawmakers Sunday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman signaled he would oppose a health care bill that includes a proposal to expand Medicare to people as young as 55.

The independent Connecticut senator has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, that he would vote against the Medicare at 55 proposal. He also said he would oppose cloture and work with the GOP if it ends up in the final version of the bill, two Democratic sources told CNN Sunday.

Unanimous Republican opposition so far means Senate Democrats need all 60 votes in their caucus, which includes Lieberman, to pass the sweeping bill.

Earlier, on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Lieberman and moderate Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska cited necessary changes to the bill before they would vote for it.

Lieberman outlined steps that he said would ensure the bill passes the Senate with support from Democrats and some Republicans. Forget about the government-run public health insurance option, Lieberman said, as well as the Medicare measure that was proposed last week as part of a package of alternatives to the public option.

Forget about ANYTHING that might cut into the profits of health insurers (and not coincidentally, his wife’s employment and his own campaign contributions.) Right, Joe?

It is past time this righteous little shitbag got his mouth shut for him. Not only does the Senate need to use reconciliation to finish the health reform process, they need to send Holy Joe over to his pals in the Rushpubliscum caucus. Somebody, grow a fucking SPINE, for Dog’s sake.

Crossposted at Reconstitution.

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Read the Senate healthcare bill and the CBO analysis

Here is the Senate bill and here is the CBO analysis of said bill.

Bring your lunch as the bill is over 2000 pages. It’s 2,074 pages to be exact.

We have to know wtf we are talking about..so as to address the fuckery the rightwing nutters will be unleashing very soon, if they haven’t started on this bill already.

Here is ThinkProgress’s analysis of ‘the bill’ which is sort like the Cliff Notes version.

Enjoy!

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Watching history on Cspan:‘‘Affordable Health Care for America Act’’

I have had the telly tuned into the House since 5am this morning. I was anxious for the debate to begin.

Well, it finally has. It’s incredible to watch the fuckwits with the (R) after their name, talk shit about HR 3962(pdf). The outright lies they have the audacity to recite. The bullshit they toss out as if it is the truth and nothing but the truth. I took the time to sift through the 1900+ pages of it. How many of the R’s actually did that I wonder..

Watching my own representative Kevin McCarthy (R) was an exercise in futility and frustration for me. The “S” word, oh lawd..the “S” word used again and again and again. The dreaded single payer health care, said like it’s a dirty word, a horrible illness in and of itself.

But then, I also got to watch my favorite, Henry Waxman. He was eloquent, he was spot-fucking-on. He laid out what the bill will fix, what it will do away with. Facts, just the facts..no fearmongering like the (R)’s.

Does this bill make me happy? Fuck no..far from it. I am a supporter of single-payer. But it’s a start in the right direction, and it will curb the carpetbaggers at the insurance corporations who have been fucking us for decades.

There will be four hours of debate..tune in and watch a little history folks. Read the bill for yourself..or at least tab through it. Watch the debate online at Cspan.org.

Because it’s taken almost 100 years to get this close to change. It’s worth your time.

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Public Option killed by Blue Dogs in Senate Finance Committee

Twice today the Senate Finance committee fucked the voters. Read it and weep:

The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected by 15 to 8 a “public option,” or government-run health insurance plan — the first significant setback for the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Five Democrats joined all 10 Republicans in opposing the plan, suggesting that more trouble lies ahead when the House of Representatives and full Senate consider the legislation in mid-to-late-October. Four committees, three in the House and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, previously had backed the government-run option.

Want to know which Democrat’s fucked us? Here they are:

Democratic opponents of a public option cited a variety of reasons for their opposition, including concerns about the impact of a public plan on rural areas and its ultimate cost. Democrats opposed to a public option were Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., Tom Carper, D-Del., Kent Conrad, D-N.D., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.

Fucking DINO’s. Punk ass bitches. Newsweek’s take on today’s bullshit:

The committee then voted on a similar, if slightly less liberal, amendment offered by Chuck Schumer of New York. It was shot down 13-10 with two Democrats, Nelson and Carper, switching their positions.

Prospects for a public option aren’t entirely dead. There’s still the possibility of a public-option trigger that Olympia Snowe, who voted against Rockerfeller today, has expressed support for. It has yet to be discussed by the Finance Committee.

Not once but twice the fuckers fucked us. Ain’t that some shit.

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Baucus bill is bullS&*t.

First off, you can read the 223 page bill here.

Below is Anthony Weiner on Countdown last night, discussing the horseshit bill coming out of the Senate Finance Committee.

Rep Weiner is a truly wonderful progressive member of the House. I want this man to run for President..seriously.

In this NYT article, three economists grade the Finance committee bill. One is Dean Baker, who I read regularly.

None of the three give Baucus’s bill a passing grade.

Heavy sigh my friend..heavy-fucking sigh..

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Ted Kennedy’s words on healthcare for all..from 1980

They ring as true today as they did 29 years ago. From MoJo:

We cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for a national health insurance. We must—we must not surrender—we must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real controls over what doctors and hospitals can charge, and let us resolve that the state of a family’s health shall never depend on the size of a family’s wealth.

The president, the vice-president, the members of Congress have a medical plan that meets their needs in full, and whenever senators and representatives catch a little cold, the Capitol physician will see them immediately, treat them promptly, fill a prescription on the spot. We do not get a bill even if we ask for it, and when do you think was the last time a member of Congress asked for a bill from the federal government? And I say again, as I have before, if health insurance is good enough for the president, the vice-president, the Congress of the United States, then it’s good enough for you and every family in America.

It’s like he said them yesterday…sadly nothing has changed in the 29 years since he said them to the Democratic National Convention.

Time Magazine will publish a commemorative issue September 7th.

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Is the media killing healthcare reform?

Many of us that pay attention and watch the media circus known as 24/7 cable news think they are.

From The Nation article:

Most agree the issue of healthcare is getting sufficient coverage and exposure in the mainstream media, but is it getting the right kind of coverage? The topic has often been belittled to another means of partisan divide, and most citizens still lack basic knowledge of reform plans in favor of rhetoric from one side or the other.

I really don’t know..which side is the media on? Why do they report the lies spewed by the rightwing nutters with regard to what Obama’s healthcare package will and won’t do?

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Ah, the great healthcare debate..

I refuse to enter into it, ‘the debate over healthcare’. It should be a no-brainer as far as I am concerned.

But the rightwingers are using lies and obfuscation. This severely jerks my chain. The talking points are all the same, and frankly, I can’t believe people are buying into them.

Even my friggin orthopedic surgeon’s office is on the bandwagon. I went to the doc’s this morning and at the end of the ‘visit’, I brought up Obama’s speechifying to the AMA yesterday.

The short of it is this:

The Physician’s Assistant (whom I always see instead of the actual doctor) used the word socialism to describe Obama’s plan. He is against socialized medicine.

What does he think the Workers Compensation system is for Christs sake? His boss makes a fortune off of work injuries..enough to finance a horsefarm…I shit you not.

Yet, he is against socialized medicine. Free Market, thats the ticket!

But The Big O’s plan allows for free market health insurance. He said so yesterday at the AMA. He said anyone that tells you otherwise is full of shit. Not quite in those words of course.

My medical provider then said we will have less people that want to be doctors and especially specialists. The years spent going to school will not turn into a huge money making empire for the students when they graduate in 6-8 years he said.

I thought most medical professionals got into it to heal and help the human race. Lofty goals eh?

Pardon the fuck outta me for being so delusional and silly to think that.

Guess they are aiming for the same things those fuckwits on Wall Street are…money money and more money.

Maybe that explains the lack of ‘bedside manner’ in most doctors I see these days. With the exception of my primary care physician..most of them are assholes acting like they are doing me a favor by seeing and/or treating me. They hate being asked questions or as one of them put it recently:

Being grilled by you Miss Taylor.

Asking a lot of questions about your illness and treatment options doesn’t go over too well with a lot of doctors these days.

I just don’t know anymore…who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

The lines  get blurred.

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