Chasing the dragon, they are.
Problem is, they have managed to sell that same dragon to enough folks to obstruct.

They don’t have to win for the country to lose.

And Rachel and Bernie Sanders are hammering this as we speak.

I’ll cut Welcome Back McCotter some slack in that he might not have had time to read the healthcare proposal, since he’s too bust avoiding Mike Stark and submitting important legislation like this, which demands Obama apologize to the Gatesgate cop:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/…..esolution/

For the others, ah yes…the joys of the free market. They spent years aggressively pushing for “health savings accounts” and “retirement accounts” and had BigMedia pushing all their talking points about these for years, yet now crickets. Huh. Seems worthy of some coverage since these exact same people are claiming to know what’s best to do now, and if we would’ve enacted their proposals back then, the Great Depression would’ve seemed like the golden days compared to what it would be like today.

BASTARDS!!!

I meant that lovingly, of course.

Sincerely,
Grandma

I think Fred Thompson is really afraid of being turned into soylent green himself.
As well he should be. Useless sack of shit.

scarey video. it sure makes the point.

Our buddy Fred is going down hard. Dude sounds like he’s got just days left, so I can understand his chagrin, however self-inflicted.

They posture about protecting her life while they wait for a chance to grab her purse and push her down the stairs when no-one’s looking.

Which perfectly sums up the Republican attitude towards governing in general.
‘Evening, all.

This is their favorite thing to do, really. Accuse Democrats/liberals of being anti the very groups that they themselves despise. I believe that this is actually why they recruit gay, female and minority pundits, so that they can cry bigotry whenever we attack said pundits for being total raving asshats.

Hey, Liberals™ were after all the persecutors of teh Gannon/Guckert.
Shame on us!

Can’t wait until Al Franken gets more settled and starts taking on this kind of Repub hypocrisy…hard. He was warming up today during his remarks on the Judicial Comm:

Noting how court actions have overturned or threatened even recent precedent, Franken said, emphatically, “This is judicial activism. This is a court that’s willing to reverse itself … to achieve its own agenda of what is right. … A vote for Sonia Sotomayor is a vote against judicial activism.”

http://minnesotaindependent.co…..ism-sexism

Oh, this is gonna be sweeeeeet!

It’s awful to think what would happen to so many old people if SS and Medicare didn’t exist. I have both now and am pleased with the way the system works. I’m old but I’ve decided I’m not leaving.

Completely OT

My mid-Hudson house was built by trees harvested in 1817, with recycled wood from trees harvested in 1737 and 1774. I have just ordered a 15-star U.S. flag which was the U.S. flag from 1795-1817.

Yep, but they’ll have Al F. tied up and thrown down the stairs for speaking truth to power. “Here’s the way it works, Al. Either you get with the program or Minnesota gets shit. Unnerstand?”

If poor people can get health care nobody will want to be rich anymore. Without rich people, the GOP will be reduced to a motley collection of racists and religious zealots. Oh, they are? Nevermind.

It’s just like marriage! It becomes totally devalued if you let the wrong sort of people in.

Am I wrong to assume Rupert probably provides his Fox News people with health insurance? Even if he didn’t they could afford it. That means they MUST be telling the truth, because what would they gain by lying to us?

Sorry, long comment warning. Here’s what the hardcore fundies at American Family Association have sent out this week as an ACTION ALERT! (be afraid, be very afraid, ooga-booga…):

Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your entire e-mail list of family and friends.

Healthcare reform moving toward euthanasia
Rationing of health services advocated by Emanuel

July 27, 2009

Dear Friend,

President Obama’s new healthcare proposals move our country another step toward implementing euthanasia and rationing of health resources.

Time is of the essence. Please send an e-mail to your Representative asking him or her to oppose the healthcare “reforms.” Then follow up with a phone call.

For more information about this scary proposal click here.

Take Action!

• Send an e-mail to your Representative asking him or her to oppose Obama’s healthcare bill. Then follow up with a phone call. We suggest you call your Representative’s District Office. To find the District Office near you, click here.

• Please forward this to your friends and family. We must stop this socialized, government controlled healthcare bill before it becomes law.

Thank you for caring enough to get involved. If you feel our efforts are worthy of support, would you consider making a small tax-deductible contribution to help us continue?

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon,
Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

Couple of key points here, in case you missed them:

– There were NO links to any health care reform proposals from the White House, just a blanket statement that the President pushing euthanasia and rationing of health resources;

– “Emanuel” doesn’t even merit a last name – why? Do all fundies know him by his first name?

– This is supposed to be a 501c3 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values – and like most missives Wildmon sends out with strongly political overtones as “Action Alerts”, there’s not a reference at all to Christ or his teachings in this email. (What was Christ’s position on health care rationing anyhow?)

– Note the really spiffy dig for money at the end after “closing the sale.” Wildmon ensures there are several handy links at the end of this email for donors to use.

And that is the REAL issue at the heart of this matter when it comes to fear and intimidation of the oldsters. It’s about the money.

As of 2007, retirees needed to have $215,000 in savings on average for their health care, with projections showing the amount needed increasing 7 to 9 percent each year after that. That’s the money the health care insurance industry doesn’t want to see reduced; they want to milk out every plugged-in, wired-up, strapped-down health care dollar out of our retirees/elderly, no matter how crappy and painful and prolonged that last bit of life may be. You notice these guys are harping on euthanasia and not the extension of suffering for profit.

They’re also going after the folks most likely to be scared into giving up money for political reasons, literally asking for money to keep death at bay. It’s the most ridiculous, extreme extortion we’ve seen since Terry Schiavo and post-9/11 warmongering before that.

Eh, sonny, don’t let that socialized medicine take away my Medicare. I don’t want rationing on the basis of prognosis, I want my healthcare and I want it now and I want it for free but don’t raise my taxes to pay for healthcare for “Those other people” who never worked for it like I did.

Virginia Foxx is disgusting and it boggles the mind to think she once was the president of a community technical college. Not to go all Terry Schiavo, but do you think she might have senile dementia?

One of my relatives will be sending me this message soon. Thanks for the alert. I got something like it without quite the vitriol a week or so ago. These people probably mainline Wildmon.

That’s exactly what it is; extortion. And on a grand scale, as it’s not just AFA and other groups.

The whole “status quo” lobbying machine and their partners in Congress are extortioners if you ask me.

I say we don’t pay. If they don’t pass a bill with a public option we should do something very FRENCH! and organize a national and general strike.

Another very French thing we should do is to demonstrate in large numbers for what we want, healthcare-wise. Why is nobody organizing rallies in major cities, a march on Washington, etc.? We’re the 76%, dammit. Spirit of 76%!

I think a lot of people who have no experience with Medicare think it is free. It isn’t, there are still premiums and co-pays, they are just relatively affordable compared to private insurance. In my case, even with Medicaid kicking in for half my premium, my portion uses about a tenth of my disability insurance, which is my sole source of income.

In addition, people who need expensive meds quickly hit the Medicare Part-D donut hole and have to spend thousands out of pocket before coverage begins again.

Yep – there’s one for Marriage Equality October 10-11 in DC, and there really should be a healthcare one. At least some sort of coordinated National event that would dwarf the tea parties and all the noise.

You know, something BIG and UNAVOIDABLE!

Yep, but PhARMA won’t go for a full closing of the donut hole all at once. The House TriCommittee bill reduces it by half x months after passage and steps down the rest over years.

And the Medicare Advantage co-insurance policies are just scams.

The other thing which should be done — and unfortunately, should have been ongoing since Terri Schiavo’s funeral — is an ongoing discussion about the ethics of end-of-life.

We spend a ridiculous amount on care of terminally ill patients with little or no attention to their quality of life. I suspect if our society was less focused on the black-and-white of dead-or-alive and concentrated on quality of life issues, we’d be saving a considerable amount of money.

We also fail our fellow humans by neglecting to talk about another universal value, mercy. The article, “Born too soon” in Salon.com this week demonstrates how cruel we are to tiny infants and their parents, forcing nominally viable infants to live through hospital horrors. I wish this wasn’t a common story, but it is; both my family and my husband’s family have members among them who can count ridiculously premature births resulting in “million dollar babies” who died within days, weeks, months of birth after every possible procedure and surgery had been performed on them to “save them.”

Save them from what??? It certainly wasn’t from the horrors of our health care system.

Being a non-religious type, I never will understand this quest to live forever. Pope John Paul was a particularly blatant example for me. They believe in heaven, which sounds SO wonderful, but yet never seem to want to let go…no matter the suffering and dependence on others that they live with.

Why not just go to heaven when the time comes if they truly believe their religion? Why fight it so hard?

But more to your point, we need to look again at what is deemed a tax deductible religious organization. (C Street…)

Something along the line of a Million American March on Washington would send a good signal.

I’m so angry I could spit.

I know I’m preaching to the choir, but permit me, please?

Health care in the United States is rationed today! The rationing scheme is based on access to deep pockets, whether your own, your employer’s, or some insurance company’s.

The big problem for most Americans is that if the deep pockets they use to gain access to health care belong to an insurance company, they’ll be kicked out as soon as they start using the benefit. If the pockets belong to their employer, they risk being fired if they start using the benefit.

It’s long since past time for us to join the civilized world with a system that rations care in a reasonable way. Nobody’s advocating euthanizing grandma, not with barbituates, nor opiates, nor even dropping her on an ice floe. We do spend way too much on end-of-life care. As J.S. Bach noted, Alle menschen mussen sterben (all people die). Grandma needs to think through what sort of end-of-life measures she wants. Does she want to be kept in an ICU for six months or a year? She needs to think it through and make an informed choice.

I’m very grateful that my parents (80 and 84) have thought this through and left clear instructions about their care in the event that they are unable to make decisions for themselves. I can’t say that it will be easy to tell the hospital staff no extraordinary measures, but it’s what they’ve asked for. They decided that being tortured in an ICU when death is inevitable is not what they want. And I’ll see to it that their wishes are honored.

Medicare isn’t perfect, nor is the VA system. But either is a damned sight better than the designed-for-frustration system the rest of us have to put up with.

Thanks for letting me preach to the choir, ‘pups. I feel better now. Still frustrated, but better.

I think people often confuse “activism” and “organizing.” Two entirely different things, and while we’re seeing a lot of activism right now (petitions, online stuff, confronting politicians, etc.), which is great, outside of Obama’s campaign apparatus, there isn’t much organizing in America.

Organizing large groups of people to travel/act in unison is a fine art with a rich tradition that people go to school to learn about. Rosa Parks went to a famous school for organizing. So did Obama.

I think the balance is off in America at the moment and hoping Obama’s group and others continue to learn and grow, and shift that balance more to the organizing side. History shows that’s where really big change happens.

It’s Grampa’s Old Party, too.

Paul Stanley, Tennessee State Senator, Quits After Affair With 22-Year-Old Intern

Guess which Party he belongs to.

Wonder if he and Corkhead are drinkin’ buddies when Corkhead’s in town.

Studiously ignoring the populace. Seventy-eight percent isn’t really all that many of you peasants. It’s representative democracy at it’s finest…

How about 10 million? :)

I’m ridiculously Pollyanna-ish, but I really think that the issue framed and distributed correctly, millions could be motivated. Didn’t we just see that last year?

Hey, SD. It’s a shame it would be a HPAA violation to access said State Senator’s medication records. I’m wonderin’ if he’s a Viva Viagra guy, or Cialis helps him be ready when the time is right for both of them.

Palin/Jindal ‘12 … “Down With Granny”

Eli !

Hmmm. There isn’t room on the National Mall for 10M people. But we could hit every Federal Building in the country.

Yes we did. And a major reason was over health care reform. (Maybe second only to getting our Constitution back.)

Who’s running against Baucus and when’s he up for reelection? I’m starting to think that maybe reform will have to wait until 2011 so that it can be done properly.

Well, he’s only 47 and if he needs a little something for ED I’d say he needs to lower his stress level. Seems the problem with these Family Values guys is a condition known as Wandering Woody.

Pretty much everything they say is wrong about government healthcare is far, far more characteristic of private insurance.

And another thing I haven’t understood about the framing of healthcare PubOp/Single Payer.

Why don’t we put it into the narrative of global competitiveness? Wouldn’t our businesses compete better internationally if we used the same level playing field as the rest of the industrialized countries? Heck we might even export manufactured goods again instead of just being the Nation of Goldman Sachs, pushing money around.

Imagine that.

doG, I hope some real Democrat is going to primary Baucus.

I fear it may require a mass demonstration like that to force legislators to do the right thing. Probably impossible to organize in such a short time but it would be ideal if it coincided with their return to Washington at the end of recess.

Not to be rude, but who cares about how much room there is? :)

Bringing DC to a STOP would totally get their attention. At least I think so.

Petro!

I nominate DrDick.

Maybe he just wanted to “rock n roll all night, and party everyday?” It’s in Paul Stanley’s jeans after all.

It’s Harry and Louise fixing to f*** us all over again. Let’s party like it’s 1993 …

Pretty much everything Harry and Louise warned us about happened.

And I well know that it’s true. I just finished up an analysis for an ADA case: the plaintiff was fired shortly after his employer discovered that the FMLA leave he was taking was for colorectal cancer chemotherapy. It was very pleasing to be able to show through the employer’s own records that their basis for the firing (employee was not getting his time/contacts in and hence was under-performing).

The defendant settled under pressure from the judge after I submitted my report.

No chance if Harry “The LionHeart” Reid is his BFF …

A crazy right winger at the health care reform rally I attended informed me that Obama wanted to euthanize me because I am not physically perfect. (I use a wheelchair.)

Well. I do. I don’t handle crowds very well.

Summer finally showed up, if only for an overnighter …

*heaving Buckets of Chilled Belgian Brew onto teh toobz for my friends & Lurkers and Bud Light Lime for the Trolls* *g*

Dear doG, we really ought to have some sort of voting standards besides being at least 18 years of age and having a body temp in excess of 95 F.

So Glenn Beck was right !

Seconded !

I’m gonna wash your mouf out with pHisoHex for using that kind of language.

Yeah, and surely you know how much the Republican Party has done for the disabled American…

*crickets*

Then we can probably get you a job for the 10 Million in DC gig in the FDL control booth. :)

Well Done ! It must feel great to help the good guys win one.

He’s a year younger than me and I’d probably consider anybody under the age of 35 too young. Then again, I’m not a big-shot state senator with unfulfilled needs (just a poor schlub with unfulfilled needs).

Hey Doctor P.

We’un’s is holdin’ us’ns a nominatin’ commission and we wants Dr Dick to run against Baucus in 2010.

They enlist them !!!

Hope you gave him what he deserved, or as much as is legal anyway.

It does feel good.

how many right wing repiglicans turn down medicare when they become of age? social security?

***crickets***

I don’t suppose we need to tell the doctor right away that he’s running, do you?

That would be something on the order of running over his toes. Repeatedly.

Spirit of 76% – beautiful sloganeering! Me LIKE!!

I like Kelly C’s idea too. If the left doesn’t energize and become activist very soon they might as well just roll over and get run over by the teabaggers, birfers, creationists, teabagging birfing creationist, and guys like this dude. (OT, but you MUST click this to believe it)

I swear to Gawd, the hellbound handcart America is riding in seems to be picking up speed since the last election.

It’s like a very malicious game of Telephone.

Any natural number less than 1, Bets.

Need some custom rims like the chariots in Ben-Hur.

LOL … nah, let him enjoy his vacation … *g*

Congrats!!

I have decided to order a new Birf Certificate from Honolulu and then see my mom and ask her why I was born in Mombasa.

So I read. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled, no matter what he says.

Well hello there my favorite Canuck!

I wouldn’t have minded except that Cassie was with me and started wondering if somehow someone might decide that. (She’s a bit of a worry wart.)

I have to say that the VA hasn’t ever rationed anything at all to me-and in my state of health there is no upside to their spending very much money on me. They have spent on conditions which are not related to anything related to the Military. Once again the Regressives have been allowed to out-Luntz us. Either we are playing with a line up of the caliber of the Washington Generals and no one could be that inept, they’re throwing the game for profit or the wily ensemble of McConnell, “Crazy Lips” Inhoffe, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Big John Cornyn are simply brilliant strategists and have out maneuvered them at every juncture.

I have not had the perception that Congress, with a few notable exceptions, was ever exerting a generational effort on this issue. Those without Healthcare do not, as a rule, vote. Nor do they have financial influence. Our duly elected Representatives weigh these factors and are led to the inevitable conclusion, “Who cares?”

Good point. If they were true patriots, they’d send the money back to the treasury.

Aw heck, let’s go ahead and tell him!

Careful, we’ve got a lot of Canucks around here, shouldn’t play favorites.

Amen.

Old Navy proverb:

Eight to eighty
Blind, crippled or crazy
If they can’t walk
I’ll carry ‘em

It’s insane enough that it should be pretty easy to laugh off. Now maybe if someone said it of a Republican president who already denounced Social Security & Medicare as socialism and an unfair drain on those hard workers who power our economy, then I might be worried…

Jeez. Bet the officer was back from Iraq or Afghanistan and had been trained by someone who liked the torture. That’s another whole issue we’ll be dealing with for many years.

The same number that will avoid the cures that Stem Cell Research provide because they’re so agin it !

I swear to Gawd, the hellbound handcart America is riding in seems to be picking up speed since the last election.

Wha? The amount of positive movement in America in almost every aspect has been incredible since Obama took office. Some want things to happen faster, but it’s clea we’re going in the right direction, and we must stay engaged to build upon the momentum. The BigMoney stringpullers are backed in a corner and bearing teeth.

Of course, you might be just trying to stir things up, but if not, just open your eyes.

I’d ask the R’s to name me just one industrialized country without socialized healthcare… but they’d probably just say that’s what proves American exceptionalism.

Nah, it’s okay … I’ve got the same magic mirror as Bill Kristol, that says “I’m the fairest of all !” *g*

I hope you did roll over his toes.

I have had the same experience at the VA nonplussed!! Of course they are kissing my ass these days for the misdiagnosis they did to me!
And yes these congressional critters could care less about those who do not donate to their campaign coffers!
How ya doing NP??

Nahant !

Any pix of the meetup ?

The worse things get in the US the better I feel about being in Canada. As Ex-Governor S. Pewlin’ would say, “North, to the Future!”

BTW, public option is a very watered down sort of ‘reform.’ You should be agitating for nothing less than single payer. It’s tried and true. It covers everybody, which is one of the reasons that you save a lot of money on it. Anything else leaves a multiplicity of providers, and a rat’s nest of people whose function is not to diagnose then provide treatment (the def. of health care, BTW) but to chase money and print invoices.

It seems to me your system is already too involved with the money side of things.

He is a she and I did worse than that. I sent Cassie over there armed with a mouth, pride in her aunty, and lots and lots of facts.

he’ll be thrilled and immediately start raising $. and he won’t worry at all about illegal substances from his um past finding their way into oppo research.

he’ll no doubt be happy to forgo fishing and walks along the river to serve the good people of montana and of our country.

Well, SBT IS my fav Canuck, amongst many admirable Canucks.

We’re blogmates over at the unrulymob for a long time now. :) And he’s Professor Emeritus of the Pink Floyd Political University.

Teddy put them up at Flikr… Let me find them for you..

Because nobody’s talking about rationing anything. Except Regooplicans.

My ex-Father-in-Law got most of his medical through the VA. I have been traipsing around the edges of the medical system since attending the UCLA School of Public Health a long time ago. I never had the impression that he got anything other than first-class medical care from the VA. And I was watching his care closely.

Good on ya! And Cassie, too.

But you still should have rolled over her toes.

“The amount of positive movement in America in almost every aspect has been incredible since Obama took office.”

That isn’t what I’m hearing, but let’s not get into that — what I meant was that the reight wingnuts seem to be getting nuttier by the minute in reaction to having a scary black man in the White House.

Did you click on my link @67? That’s what I’m talking about.

Thanks, I saw 6 pix that Teddy put up … was wondering if there were more …

Okay gang, it’s going to cost $10 to get a nice green computer printed copy of my State of Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth. I have a white-on-black photocopy with raised seal and all the rest of the happy horsesh*t. Is it worth it to ask a birfer if I was born in Mombasa too?

They will start to spin the “You just can’t trust the Gubmint !” crap anyways …

I am starting to think that Obama is a frikkin’ genius or just plain lucky … teh GooPers keep banging themselves over the head with one stupid cause after another.

Email me at nahanter at the G mail thingy and I can send you all I have… You do have a high speed connection???

So much of what he does is just the “give ‘em enough rope to hang themselves” strategy. Couple that with maintaining the high road, you’ll always come out on top eventually with this gang!

Hey! I was there. Or so I’m told by my mom, who was there too. Of course she was drugged at the time, so maybe her reports are unreliable.

Gee, maybe I was born in Mombasa?

I feel the same way about you KC. You’re my favorite Coloradan, and I’ve got family there.

Yes, I have high speed … e-mailing you now and thanks !

petro and nahant – i’ve got some up at my place – click on my name

Cool Suz and thanks!! How ya doing??

Suz !

Thanks … going there now

ROFL … kewl moderator sign !

Suz – HAH! I have those same 2 speeds! [grinning]

You have EMAILS!!!

nahant – ygm.

suz – thanks for the routing to see the pics.