The GOP could have all voted against Sotomayor and Hispanics would not have cared. But going on the News shows and calling her a racist constantly on the news well Hispanics had no choice then but to pay attention.

The Republican Party, thanks to such stalwarts as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck has figured out just how to stay in power.

Their plan as you imply seems to be piss off Hispanics. I fail to see the logic in this. The GOP opposes Health Care when the issue has a 76% approval rating and the Swine Flu is coming.

It’s sarcasm

I know that but the GOP is taking this serious its Rush and Glen not Steele or Mitch choosing the GOP’s direction. they say stuff on the air and it dominates the GOP news cycle.
Your sarcasm is the GOP reality. The GOP’s plan seems to be ruin?

The Republicans want more. Their next serving is due in 461 days. Starting to look forward to it.

Good morning, pups. It’s Dowd and Friedman today. MoDo’s going for the prize for Longest Title of a Column today. In “Sarah Grabs the Grievance Grab Bag From Hilary” she says Sarah Palin has now morphed into what the Republicans always caricatured Hillary Clinton as: preachy, screechy and angry. The Moustache of Wisdom, in “59 Is the New 30,” says when Tiger Woods wins by 15 strokes, we are in awe. But when Tom Watson, a man our own age and size, whips the world’s best, who are half his age, we identify.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, the cold drinks are in the fridge, and I’ve got apple walnut muffins this morning. I’m constantly amazed by what people will actually believe. Last night my jaw hit the desk as I watched President Obama have to carefully explain to some loon that no, government agents were not going to come to her door demanding to know how she wanted to die. Where does this crap get started?

Good morning. I missed Howard Dean on Countdown. Tuned in just when it switched to KO talking baseball. I’m assuming the show was about healthcare. Was Dean persuasive?

One thing I did see last night was Bernie Sanders on Rachel. The thing he said that made the most sense was that one-payer is the best (and easiest) way to go. Once you scrap that it gets complicated.

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Did I mention I got a new job? Started Monday and I’m in a real mess. Been working late trying to figure things out and checking the net during the day is impossible right now. So, I’m feeling a little out-of-it, news-wise.

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I know that but the GOP is taking this serious its Rush and Glen not Steele or Mitch choosing the GOP’s direction. they say stuff on the air and it dominates the GOP news cycle.

Not just the GOP news cycle. For my taste, both Olbermann and Rachel spend way too much time talking about what Limbaugh, Steele, and Palin are doing. It was very refreshing watching Howard Dean on Coutdown last evening. He got right down to the issue of the day, healthcare and brought some very good information to the table.

I want one-payer not only to give people healthcare but just as importantly because I think it will save the U.S. economy. Does that ever get talked about? How it will relieve all businesses, schools, government entities of the burden (present and future) of providing ins. to it’s employees and retirees?
My new job guarantees me healtcare for the rest of my life. After retirement I have to kick in 5% of the premium. That’s a huge burden for a county government to carry.

Here’s the plot line in their rationing story.

We don’t have enough providers to serve everybody. The Obama healthcare plan will start rationing care based on need. That means that extraordinary and futile end-of-life care will not be allowed. Which means that seniors who would otherwise be on respirators for three months will die sooner. Which means that the government healthcare plan, either “Obamacare” or Medicare will be killing seniors.

There are so many false assumptions there, but putting them all together in this train of illogic just to prevent people who are not on Medicare from getting healthcare is beyond despicable.

If the motivation behind “healthcare” reform were to make healthcare affordable, accessible and efficient for all the single payer would be, and is, the answer however the motivation(s) is/are, apparently nothing to do with healthcare it is to do with profit. BO made it clear the other night when he talked about insurance reform. He, and the other recipients of the largesse of insurance company monies, have no interest in doing what is necessary to change access to healthcare. What they want is some way to change but preserve the insurance business but make it appear that better healthcare will come of it. Nuts, fuckin’ nuts.

I do hope your new job goes well.

Clean-up on aisles 9 and 11… Advertising spam.

Well now, speaking as a senior, as long as that includes the legal right to euthanasia I have no problem. I have no interest in “extraordinary” medical procedures with tubes sticking out of every orifice and 24 hours a day expensive attention. I want to be able to checkout when I want to and not on the whim of some damn insurance company.

Congrats on the Job I hope it works out.

I’ve said this a number of times;

rush is a secret democrat, he flipped during the second bush administration, he flipped just after the democrats won congress

his strategy is to have the country think he is the republican leader, then to say things so rediculous people leave the republican party in droves, and then to keep doing it till the republican party enjoys the same fate as the whigs

there is only one problem here for democrats though

now concervatives and right wing nuts are joining the democratic party and our party is moving to the right

if you look at our party today it is what the republican party was during the nixon administration

so I think the plan is two fold, first destroy the republican party, then have them enter the democratic party and vote like republicans

there, that’s it in a nut shell

[/snark]

lots of luck with new employment, I hope it is a job you fall in love with

We do react to the GOP to much even here we should debate our ideas for stuff more.

Me, too. Think about the math. My employer is now on the hook to provide ins. to my husband and myself for the rest of my life. If I live another 40 yrs, that’s minimum 400,000 they’re obligated to spend (and that’s a very low figure). This cannot be sustained.

Yep and how much of that is “healthcare” and how much insurance premium?

Just how much did healthcare costs drive up the price of an American care? Lets say its $1,000
Now if we had some final details of the Obama plan’s savings lets say 5% Then we could predict that car prices should drop 5% helping the consumer or GM was keeping that 5% and using the cash to pay back the tax payers which would strengthen the dollar.
I want to talk more about this its a great angle but we need final details.

Exactly. How much of our school taxes are going to insurance premiums for teachers and retirees? One payer will save us far more than it will cost us.

I knew it. President Obama was conspiring against us all 4.5 billion years ago! Thanks Attaturk for finally making it so clear! LOL

Wouldn’t it be great if the current bill is so mucked up, it doesn’t pass…and then President Obama directly puts through a single-payer bill? I think so! :-)

Other than insurance companies, I don’t understand why industries and small businessmen are not rallying behind one-payer. Why aren’t the car makers saying they need one-payer to compete?

This certainly illustrates how utterly fucked up the health care is in this country.

It was a Third World scene with an American setting. Hundreds of tired and desperate people crowded around an aid worker with a bullhorn, straining to hear the instructions and worried they might be left out.
Some had arrived at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Wise, Virginia, two days before. They slept in cars, tents and the beds of pickup trucks, hoping to be among the first in line when the gate opened Friday before dawn. They drove in from 16 states, anxious to relieve pain, diagnose aches and see and hear better.

I’m off. Work beckons.

Because some of the major investors in these mega corps are the insurance companies. What else are they going to do with all the vast profits they make other than buy up America?

congratulations. I think. Hope you overcome your present messiness amnd settle in. you’ll be missed.

The only reason steele and the rest of the right-wing pols didn’t show up at the La Raza conference is that they’re too afraid their leaders in the nut-wing media and, in turn, the base will come after them for associating with the organization they nailed Sotomayor about.

Seems a tad short-sighted imho but, if it puts a few more nails in the coffin of the rethug party, tant mieux.

Yes. Malkin has been ginning up shit about LaRaza for quite a few years now and she’s not the only one. That’s precisely why no one from the GOP showed up at that conference.

Morning all,
Then there is always the big La Raza fan, Lou Dobbs. Seems that he and Rachel have been going toe to toe of late.

Actually the GOP is still in power. All they needed was 3 Senators to go along with 3 Blue Dogs to call the shots on health care “reform.” Is this a system or what?

I think the GOP is still in power for another reason. They are now called Democrats. Just switched the party name.

The big problem in working out this health care delivery system for all american is that the insurance industry has inserted itself like a cancer upon the health care industry.

It sucks resources and provides nothing, but jobs for pencil pushers and enormous profit for owners and shareholders.

It’s not very “popular” to take down businesses, especially successful ones, with success being defined as making profits. Those profits are part of the retirement and savings portfolios of many upper middle and upper class americans. This segment CAN afford “the best health care” and makes money from their investments in the health services industry – pharma and insurance.

This is really a battle about largely unfettered capitalism in a sector which most believe is a right – health care – not a choice. For profit has insinuated itself into and destroyed several industries which has hurt the public at large – media/ telcom is one example. We can life without tele or cell phones, but health care, housing, food and water, a clean environment are “rights” and essentials. What the hell is for profit doing there when it excludes many people because it can’t make money from them?

This battle is how to get profit out of the health services industry so the services can be spread around to ALL – not diminished care, but care which doesn’t take the payer to the cleaners and financial ruin. Since it’s established that this is completely possible and takes place in every other country, the 800 pound gorilla is the insurance and for (enormous) profit health industry players who insist on having the teat to suck on forever. They will not go gently into the good night – non of these corporate sectors will.

And with money meaning access to the deciders (ref GWB) the people have little chance of having their interests served by their own government. The government IS the people, but it’s owned by the corporations which have an agenda which does not align with the interests of the people.

We need a second american revolution to take back our government from corporations – that is the only way forward. All this BS in congress is kabuki and not democracy in action.

It’s not a D or and R but a $ which is what is ALWAYS in power in congress (since … before I was born).

Little doubt it will be “mucked up”. Being suggested it’s over a 1,000 pages. Wonder how many pages of legislation they needed in GB, France, Italy etc. to provide universal single payer coverage for their citizens? The U.S. is morphing into a modern day Byzantine state ie. characterized by a devious and surreptitious manner of operations, labyrinthine

But it Clinton to figure that out for the Ds.

The shortage of doctors(esp.general practitioners aka your regular family doctor)is mostly due to insurance hassles(paying the staff one needs to handle all that paperwork isn’t cheap),repaying the cost of med school/starting a new practice and the cost of malpractice insurance. Specialists make more money in our system. If the insurance issues get settled,I’d guess there would be a percentage of docs who would go back into family practice and general medicine. We might still have shortages but perhaps there could be programs designed to help offset med school costs and other measures to help attract new doctors.

It’s about time we start calling the the sausage that the Senate is making for what it really is, insurance reform, not healthcare reform.

Do you really think there’s going to be any reform in the bill, including reform of insurance?

The congress is all about directing money to businesses – corporations in all sectors of the economy.

It has been decided long ago that government does not do services (for the most part) but make policy, offer contracts, and “outsource” to private industry.

The idea was that competition would mean better services at the best price and a free market would ensure that.

We don’t have a free market
We don’t have proper regulations and when we do as in the SEC or FEC it is not enforced
We don’t have competition, but monopoly capitalism
We don’t have effective labor unions

Essentially all the mechanisms to make capitalism work for the people are hobbled and only work for tha capitalist (class). American capitalism is perverted and a terminal cancer on the land and the world.

It’s all palliative these days and only a matter of time before the patient expires.

“Reform” means giveaway to the insurance companies. Big pharma apparently already has their giveaways and are pleased as punch. The Democrats and Obama will come out smiling and hailing this as a victory for the American people. Punked again.

What it looks like to me is that the insurance industry will get MORE revenue from taxpayer (government) mandated policies, perhaps at a lower profit structure, but certainly not cutting off their cash cow.

There will be a huge outcry and Obama and the congress will feel the heat of the people when they see what it has “given” them as health care reform. Some critters get it, most don’t, some don’t even care.

It should be an interesting mid term election…. if we are given some choices… which I doubt.

Yeah, the U.S. is headed to becoming a 2nd world state if not 3rd world. Of course the public will be told through their politicians and a corrupt media that the U.S. is still number 1 and most will nod their heads in agreement while standing in bread lines.

How would the dynamics of healthcare “reform” been changed had their been a million marchers on the streets of Washington D.C.?

HYPOCRITE REPUBLICANS! They threaten our seniors with ‘rationed healthcare.” Read this 4-year-old story from Daily Kos–Republicans have been doing this for a long time . . . if you’re poor, uninsured, “foreign.” This story–involving Gov. George Bush’s “Pull the Plug” (for economic reasons) law is about as sickening as any I’ve read>
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/14/151930/63

People don’t demonstrate with muscle here… Too strong of police presence which even intimidates peaceful demonstrations.

And then the media does an awful job at reporting on them, lying about the numbers, not discuss the issues presented AT all and balancing it with the counter view. People think … why bother?

Elsewhere in the world demonstrations HAVE impact.

maybe we need to have national interstate highway demonstrations for single payer. drive to the nearest interstate highway and park on the side at a certain time of day for 5 minutes to start. then add the right lane at the next demo, etc. should operate like the “spontaneous happenings ” we see done so effectively.