What Reform Means To You?

No shouting of cut-and-paste talking points that make zero sense. No more misinformation, "death panels" or made-up conclusions to crafted, self-serving hypotheticals. You tried to scare us, now get out of the way of the peoples' mandate.

This is what health care reform is all about:

"What does health insurance reform mean for you? It means you can't be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition or dropped if you get sick. It means putting health care decisions in the hands of you and your doctor. It means lower costs, a cap on out-of-pocket expenses, tough new rules to cut waste and red tape and a focus on preventing illness before it strikes. So what does health insurance reform really mean? Quality, affordable care you can count on."

Source: Washington Monthly

Town Hall Screamers And Hyperbolic Rage, FAIL

Part of the reason there is so much hype on these town hall meetings is, unlike George Bush who pre-screened everyone and had them sign oaths to the Republican party before entry, Barack Obama is taking on his detractors more head on.

And thus, the cable news channels get to hype the narrative they've created by focusing on certain parts of the debate, i.e. the screaming hyperbolic cretins that think we are going to become Russia overnight. Who somehow equate tackling rising health care costs with "losing their country".

Jon Stewart does a good segment on this recent coverage, including the 15 seconds of fame the loonies are getting for screaming fantastical, self-predicted legends of how America, their America mind you, will be crushed by caring for each other with lower priced, competitive health care.

Considering they are yelling about a Bill that has NOT left the Congressional Committees yet in its final phase, what are they REALLY mad at?

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Do As I Say, Not As I Say

"Sarah Palin School Of Public Speaking" recent graduate on SNL perfecting the jumbled "do as I say, not as I say" narcissistic method of Sarah-speak.

Two days after calling Obama's healthcare plan a "downright evil" that will target her Down Syndrome baby with a "death panel", Palin has these words:

"[W]e must stick to a discussion of the issues and not get sidetracked by tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment. Such tactics diminish our nation’s civil discourse".

I wonder if Sarah's Borderline Personality Disorder [BPD] is covered by her health insurance now that she is unemployed?



Source: The Daily Dish

Quote Of The Day: Bob Cesca

When political failures are given a unchecked voice within their party, you get a certain kind of crazy that lives off the hype and headlines they once made. The GOP fantastical terror squad of misinformation and its TV-friendly rogues gallery has to be stopped.

"I tell you what, if any government panel tries to tell Sarah Palin that she has to euthanize her Down's baby, I will stand with her and Mr. "What If The South Won the Civil War?" Gingrich in vocally opposing this panel. As will the hobbits of the Shire and the munchkins of Munchkinland because the whole goddamn thing is an utter fairy tale!" -- Bob Cesca

The Right has always been great at creating a scenario that will never happen, then forcing the rest of us to defend the counter position. Reagan had his "welfare Queen and her Cadillac", Bush had his WMD. Their base eats it up, but at no point, once everything is disproved, do they ever atone. It's on to the next big lie.

Source: http://www.bobcesca.com/

Have You Ever Been Polled?

Considering all these polling numbers floating around used to influence our decisions, I have never been called by a pollster. My opinion has never been used about anything, let alone politics. And once you see how they get the information for these polls, you'll wonder who the hell do they actually talk to.

Phone polling depends on a set of assumptions: "You're at home; you have a phone; your phone has a hard-coded area code and exchange which means I know where you are; ... you're waiting for your phone to ring; when it rings you'll answer it; it's OK for me to interrupt you; you're happy to talk to me; whatever you're doing is less important than talking to me; and I won't take no for an answer -- I'm going to keep calling back until you talk to me."

Here is the world most of us live in:

However, the reality is much different: "In fact, you don't have a home phone; your number can ring anywhere in the world; you're not waiting for your phone to ring; nobody calls you on the phone anyway they text you or IM you; when your phone rings you don't answer it -- your time is precious, you have competing interests, you resent calls from strangers, you're on one or more do-not-call lists, and 20 minutes [the length of many pollsters' interviews] is an eternity."

Not to mention how the question is framed, the validity of modern polling is over. Plus, where people spend most of their time, online, is just too hard to poll because of the anonymity and the ability to rig the results [Stephen Colbert knows a thing or two about that, *wink*].

So with landlines being the traditional means and cell phones, text messaging and IM the unused new means, any model without all these factors is pretty useless.

As Jay Leve, founder of SurveyUSA, says, "If you look at where we are here in 2009, it's over... this is the end. Something else has got to come along."

Just like the MSM's decline, people will have to piece together aggregates from sources around the web to form their own "average" opinion.

Source: Political Wire

Get Your Boots On, Sarah Palin Is Talking Again

This would have sounded better from the helicopter as she is shooting the wolf with the high powered rifle.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."-- Sarah Palin

She was 100% behind Bush's "death panel" as they killed thousands of civilians, but I guess if you can make up the biggest lie and spread it lie fact, you can say just about anything.

I can see it now, people applying for "death panel" jobs, hanging out with rest of us as they kill all these Americans. How in the world could we stop this atrocity from happening? I mean, Obama will have power over all of them, directing them to kill as they stand before the panel. Will they be wearing black robes and hoods? What will the music be like? This "death panel" is just an unstoppable force, thank you, Sarah Palin, for giving us a view from your future.

At what point does actual shit start coming out of Palin's mouth?

Source: Facebook

Confirmed

The fake opposition was never there and never had a chance against Obama's pick. All the media spin and attempted Conservative racism/intellect BS amounted to jack squat.

"The U.S. Senate has confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in a 68-31 vote, as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court."

Source: http://www.cnn.com/

Wanting To Save Babies, But Not Really

The US ranks 33rd in the world in infant mortality.

The Right Wing is anti-Universal Health and oppose successful child health care programs like S-CHIP care while categorically screaming about how evil abortion is. What they really mean is that they are just "pro-embryo" because they don't care about the child once it is out of the womb.

Think of how many infants could be spared an early death if the US just had a First World health care system?

Seniors: "I've Got Mine Now Get Off My Lawn"

Follow this logic:

Support for health care reform falls into two general groups, younger people who support reform and older seniors who oppose it. "Obama's plan is most popular among younger Americans and least popular among senior citizens," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

Republicans are targeting the older groups for support by spreading false information and, among other things, that the federal government might try to kill them if Democrats successfully pass health care reform. Scaring the shit out of them is their way of fear-monger governing.

Keep in mind people over 50 are disproportionately people who already have guaranteed single-payer government health care. [They have the most experience with it but somehow don't realize they are using it.]

Add to the Republican "they want to kill you" meme, the fact that conservatives ultimately want to cut Medicare benefits and wanted to privatize Social Security. A dangerous proposition when proposed, but even more so in light of the recent Wall St. meltdown.

How does any of this make sense?

So in summation, Republicans are "using" the older population, who gladly use guaranteed single-payer government health care, to stop any reform by telling them that status quo increased costs are the only answer, that future reduced benefits are on their to-do list, and that any improvement to the system will only be used to kill them. And even if they could be used to help younger people and make the system more efficient to years to come, screw it.

Sadly, the seniors eat this shit up. The devil they know is the devil they like. You can hear them yelling, "Keep your government out of my Medicare!"

We need to get the GOP claws off Grandma and Grandpa. Getting old is tough enough, having some shuckster scare you for your votes is too much.

Washington Monthly

Republicans Thugs Through History

The Republican bullying you are seeing in Town Hall meetings regarding Health Care reform is nothing new. Rachel Maddow gives a history lesson in the "shut it down" style of thuggery the GOP is most proud of.

"It's not about making one side of the argument in an argument. It's making sure there can be no argument"

Source: http://www.realitychex.com/

Fake Balance In News

The media has a problem with presenting issues with a fake balance. The need to give an opposing viewpoint even if it does not exist.

via Paul Krugman:

"Long ago I said that if liberals said the Earth was round, while conservatives said it was flat, the news headlines would read “Shape of the planet: both sides have a point.” But I encountered a new wrinkle today.

I was tentatively scheduled to be on a broadcast dealing with — well, I won’t embarrass them. But first they had to find someone to take the opposite view. And it turned out that they couldn’t — which led to canceling the whole segment."

People see these talking heads on cable news would assume it's a 50/50 argument, but it's not. All it does is enable the Right Wing to kick up dust and confuse. "Fair and Balanced" is their Trojan horse. Sadly, sacrificing fact and truth for the sake of "balance" is not just Fox anymore. Their ratings have forced others to follow.

I suggest Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow is you are looking for a good source for news. Keith Olbermann is you can handle his ego.

Source: Bob Cesca

Bill Clinton Takes Center Stage Again

Bill Clinton helps free 2 hostages from North Korea. After months in captivity in North Korea, journalists Laura Ling & Euna Lee arrive in Los Angeles.

Could you imagine Bush or Cheney doing something like this in 10 years?

Socialize Health Care Like We Did Firefighting

The Government runs a lot of things. I know this health care reform seems like a situation that Republicans want to scare you with, but just look how firefighting was once a for-profit private industry until the Government took over all fire departments.

I didn't realize this, but major U.S. cities had for-private enterprises competing for firefighting dollars. The first business to get to the scene and put out the fire got paid. As one might imagine, this led to systemic corruption and an ineffective system, and by the mid-19th century municipalities switched to a government-run, government-trained, publicly-financed system, which, not coincidentally, works very well.

Keeping this in context, Tina Dupuy, editor of Mediabistro's FishbowlLA, writes how the Republicans would spin a current day switch to Government run fire departments:

[W]e'd have socialism-phobic South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on the TV every chance he could get saying things like, "Do you want a government bureaucrat between you and the safety of your home?"

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio would hold press conferences and ask, "Do you want your firefighting to be like going to the DMV? Do you want Uncle Sam to come breaking down your door every time some Washington fat cat says there's a fire?"

There would be 30-second TV spots paid for by the powerful firefighting lobby featuring stars and stripes graphics and the national anthem playing softly in the background with a booming voice-over trumpeting, "Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were volunteer firefighters. Support traditional values and oppose government waste. Tell your representative you want a bi-partisan solution to fire reform."

News programs would be interviewing sobbing people whose homes fell through the cracks and burned to the ground. "I don't want to see the government take-over firefighting, but I sure miss Momma's oil paintings."

And President Barack Obama would relay his childhood experience with a fire then point out the failure of the for-profit firefighting industrial complex that "threatens to bankrupt this country." And then those most in need of firefighting services would foam about his birth certificate and confuse Karl Marx with Charles Darwin on misspelled protest signs at events put on by covert firefighting lobbyists.

This is a great analogy. America is burning and Republicans just want the status quo to let it burn to the ground.

What is society for if not health care?

Source: Washington Monthly

An Intervention Is Needed For This Obsession

Bill Maher talking about "birthers" and how this "diluted, time-wasting Right Wing obsession" needs to be killed. "Dummies talking to other dummies" and cranks like Lou Dobbs highlight America's polite tendency to give the "special" people in the community more room than they need.

See a pattern? GOP obsessed on Clinton and Whitewater. Now it's Obama and a birth certificate. All pre-Presidential items used as distractions. They have to find something from the past because they have nothing in the present.

But with Bush, they could never see his past as an insight into what kind of guy he would be: lifelong C student, cocaine user, horrible business man, drunk until he was 40, never finishing his National Guard duty, fake Christian, Daddy Issues with zero respect for other points of view, the list goes on. And low and behold he is the worst President ever.

The GOP judgment is so off, I wish it were laughable, but it's much more sad, almost dangerous.

Frank Schaeffer Interview

Frank Schaeffer on John Whitehead's Friendly Fire. Discussing how the popular, yet marginal, Right Wing players are "encouraging the deranged".

Part One:

Dobbs Takes Rating Hit

This restores my faith in the maxim: "talk like an idiot, lose some of your ratings."

According to analysis of Nielsen data by the New York Observer, as criticism of Lou Dobbs has continued to rise over his questioning of President Obama's citizenship, his ratings at CNN have continued to go down.

In fact, Dobbs' audience has decreased 15% in total viewers and 27% in the all important age 25 to 54 demographic group since the start of the controversy.

Dobbs will of course spin this that he is a martyr and his "free speech" rights are under attack. Not quite. Aligning yourself with the most fringe element of the wacko Right and providing a forum to conspiracy theorists has consequences.

While stirring up controversy and public outcry is a time-tested method in cable news of juicing your ratings, for Dobbs it's FAIL.

Source: NY Observer

The Gang Of Six Represent 3%

We have to put the Gang of Six in context:

The "Gang of Six" senators involved in bipartisan health care negotiations represent six states with a total of less than three percent of the U.S. population (Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Maine, New Mexico and Iowa).

The diversity in those six states amazes me. Not. Do the four least-populated counties of western Kansas want to chime in?

That being said, it looks like the August break has prompted a "plan B" for the Democrats which should have been "plan A" from the get go:

Under the scenario now being discussed, bi-partisan talks would be aborted and parliamentary maneuvers used to force the bill through with a party-line vote."

You can no longer be bi-partisan with the insurance industry shills. They had their attempt to offer ideas. It's time to ignore the GOP.

Source: http://politicalwire.com/