We must choose the more expensive, less efficient, crappier policy that saves the real harbingers of freedom and liberty, the health insurance company executive.

And makes Olympia Snowe happy!

Every vote the Blue Dogs and GOP make against healthcare as to expensive will be held against them if they vote for more war.

Girl is bought

good for pelosi. but it’s less sucky policy she is choosing, not better not even good.

still, better than any of the other crap we’ve seen from this congressional leadership.

So we push her farther Left if we can I think this shows Nancy knows she has to pass a better bill. A crappy bill gets her no love from us and the GOP will hate whatever she passes.

something very exciting is happening:

Just a few weeks ago the Mobilization for Health Care for All was announced (www.MobilizeForHealthCare.org). The Mobilization focuses on the denial of doctor-recommended care by the insurance industry. Sit-ins were planned at health insurance companies with demands that insurance corporations stop the denials. The Mobilization sought 100 people willing to sit-in at insurance corporations and risk arrest as people sat in at lunch counters two generations ago.

The response has been explosive, nearly 800 have signed up to risk arrest and thousands have signed up to join the protests. In the last 20 days 78 people have been arrested protesting the real death panels – the private insurance industry – who according to a California study deny doctor recommended care 20% of the time.

The Mobilization hoped to have “patients not profits sit-ins” in three cities last week, and instead it had them in nine cities. On the next Mobilization day, October 28th, there is likely to be twice as many cities protesting the insurance industry – just as Congress considers forcing Americans to buy insurance. This may be developing into the largest campaign of non-violent civil resistance since the Civil Rights era.

from the must read article: Can the Democrats Avoid a Populist Health Care Rebellion?

78 people arrested in the past 20 days. to put single payer on the table for comprehensive universal healthcare and cost control. no copays, deductibles, or coinsurance. first dollar coverage and everybody, no body out. that’s what we have to fight for if we believe healthcare is a human right.

I grew up thinking that the House was the inferior institution, but it in fact is the most progressive and responsive to the wishes of the people. The Senate, it seems to me, has lost a lot of its prestige because the filibuster rules render it dysfunctional.

This was an unexpected move Left against Corporate money Selise is right its not enough but Nancy moved Left with no direct push from us so this is good lets Push more.
They retreat we advance that which can be predicted can be manipulated and controlled! Time to start controlling.

It will NEVER EVER be enough.

Nit… :)

“Surely, this is the policy choice of tyrants and slave holders! We must choose the more expensive, less efficient, crappier policy that saves the real harbingers of freedom and liberty, the health insurance company executive.”

As “harbingers” is plural you should either refer to an obvious plural such as “executives” or ensure that “executive” is understood to be referring to the collective form of the word.

Pedantically yours,
The Other Management

Ok this needs front page attention and its own thing? like we gave Town Hall meetings. I’m going to sign up now.

Shoot for the Moon or Die tryin :) nothing is ever perfect why because by the time we fix Healthcare tomorrow’s Lefties will have a new problem however they will look on our struggle today and find hope and ideas.
And if we get Healthcare maybe I’ll be around to see it!

“The struggle itself…is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Fixed, thanks.

http://mobilizeforhealthcare.org/action/

I will risk arrest in a non violent sit in? Is a question they ask up front? These folks got Stones! I like the way they think!

Ok that brings me down a bit, but with nothing to fight about can Man be happy?

to raven @9:

more than 45,000 people dead in the country every year because they can’t get health care.

you’re not even close to being able to test that hypothesis.

Who said that in what context?

You could ask Maria Shriver :)

Camus

Who or what are you referring to Selise? No hassle your way intended just confused a bit.

over 800 have already signed up. and for those of us who can’t risk arrest, there are other things we can do to support their efforts: for example, make a donation (bail money!) and most importantly amplify their message by spreading news of their arrests, etc.

my bad for missing the reply button. was trying to reply to raven @9, have made an edit (refresh page to see it). appreciate the heads up on my incomprehensible comment. thanks.

Maria got marital problems or given her husbands term as Governor has she been forced to admit her husband is stupid and she only married him for his looks. Men normally get in this trouble is this equality of the sexes? Women making our mistakes?

my bad for missing the reply button.

No hassle I do worse all the time.

Any idea what the jail time on this is? It costs the county jail more to hold you if you don’t pay bail besides I got a Condo to show the less time I am there the less time I spend cleaning the place up.
Cripes I think dirt just follows me around waiting like Death’s annoying younger Brother!

“WASHINGTON, DC–(ENEWSPF)–October 20, 2009. The Center for American Progress and Maria Shriver has released “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” a comprehensive study examining a social transformation unfolding right now. For the first time in our nation’s history, one-half of all U.S. workers are women, and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in two-thirds of American families, also for the first time.”

I was joking because you used “Men”.

You are more much more learned than you let on I never read him yet, and they still gave me a B.A in Philosophy:)

And I thought you were being serious because she is the only brains in her kids gene pool.

Good morning. Seems to be a head of stead up early today.

Trying to keep it loose around here in the morning.

Good morning, pups. It’s Dowd and Friedman this morning. In “Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures” MoDo says publications once buoyed by splashy ads evoking drinking and sex are now conjuring ways to use those vices to subsidize the news. The Moustache of Wisdom, in “The New Untouchables,” says those who create services, opportunities and ways to recruit work can compete on the world market. That is the key to understanding our education challenge today.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got apple cranberry muffins that are still warm. My head feels like it’s full of cement, so I’m off to try another cup of hot tea and a hot compress to see if I can loosen up whatever goop has taken up residence in my ethmoids. Have a great day.

Cripes I think dirt just follows me around waiting like Death’s annoying younger Brother!

There are three things you can’t escape: Death, taxes and dusting. (I keep trying to avoid the latter, but then the dust bunnies get organized and attack the cats…)

Preparation “N” maybe :)

The Cali folk should do a series of posts on *cough* popular GOP great hope Arnold as Governor their insight into inside details would read like Mike Royko’s “Boss” only Arnold was Stupid and Used instead of Smart and Using Others in other words a Classic Tool!
But like da Mayor still evil!

Hizzoner is the descriptor you are looking for methinks.

Ok you had coffee already I take it:) …Need to score some Yerba Matte.

Nope, headed out with the pups as we speak!

The son da new mayor has been described as someone who speaks English as a foreign language so I’m sure Hizzoner still applies.

I got an email from my blue dog rep yesterday that I haven’t responded to yet. I think I’ll send him your post, Attaturk.

The Moustache of Wisdom is that yours Marion? oh and why does the Times print economic columns fron a guy who’s wife lost how many millions of dollars?

Tom Friedman has been the most aggressive and well-known spokesman for know-nothingist free trade, job outsourcing and sending blue-collar kids off to die in wars for oil. His advocacy is a form of loyalty to class, considering he’s spent most of his adult life as a guy who married into a billion-dollar fortune. I say “most of his adult life” because Vanity Fair reports that he’s now “only” a $25 millionaire thanks to the real estate bust brought on by the very boom-bust economy Friedman himself championed. Indeed, the company that created the family fortune he married into is on the brink of going bankrupt.

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9938

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman didn’t have a column in yesterday’s paper. Was it because the company that his wife’s fortune is invested in went bankrupt last week, and he’s too sad to type?

General Growth Properties filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, which is notable because it’s one of the nation’s largest mall operators, with 200 malls in 44 states—the Times called the company’s failure “one of the biggest commercial real estate collapses in United States history.”

It’s also notable because Friedman’s wife, Ann Bucksbaum Friedman, is an heir to the family that founded GGP, and her family still owns about a quarter of the company. Two years ago, a quarter of GGP was worth more than $4 billion. Today it’s worth less than an olive tree. Friedman does OK—incomprehensibly so—with his books and speaking gigs, so he’s got a little breathing room. Still, it’s got to hurt when your spouse’s family loses $4 billion.

http://gawker.com/5220143/thomas-friedman-will-have-to-sell-his-moustache-for-food

Any idea what he is worth now ? Why have him write on the economy Frakin Ben Stein is more accurate Frackin Kudlow and Cramer are better (for the record I hate all those guys).

Why does the Times do half the things it does? It actually used to be a paper worth reading, back in the day when MoDo really wrote columns that didn’t make you gag. I’ll never forgive them for The Pasty Little Putz… (I’m pretty sure Moustache of Wisdom is mine, and if it’s not I can’t remember where I heard it years ago…)

http://gawker.com/5220143/thomas-friedman-will-have-to-sell-his-moustache-for-food

I got two spaces but it only despite edit is all lumped together:(

The link I have seems to be quoting you and yes you were the first person I read to call him that and I read and delivered that paper for 2,3 ? years.

Someone calling him/herself The Tiny Mexican left the best comment on that:

In a hilarious twist of fate, Friedman will be forced to drive taxis around the newly impoverished US while some Indian journalist in the backseat dictates a new column into his cellphone about how a seemingly trivial facet of their cross-cultural conversation has given him new insight into The State of the World.

Snort!

Only in Corporation controlled America can the Broke biggest seller of globalization still get to right about the *cough* benefits of Globalization.
Whats next Typhoid Mary writing a column on Swine Flu?

That is Classic:)

Modo thinks newspapers can be saved by online sports betting? I assume writing the News I get at the Lake is out of the question?

Organized Dust Bunnies maybe the GOP does have a reason to fear Unions:)

Actually covering actual news means actually going out into the actual world and actually, you know, INVESTIGATING stuff. It’s much more fun to make up conversations between famous people, rag on Teh Clenis and play on-line poker.

another example of different strokes for different folks, i guess. to me, investigating stuff sound like much more fun than online poker. but then, i’ve never tried the online poker thing.

“Golly, it’s good policy, it covers far more people, it’s popular with the public, it saves money in the budget.”

And, who knows, might help win an election or three.

*spew*

You just made my morning!

This problem will be reversed only when the decline in worker competitiveness reverses — when we create enough new jobs and educated workers that are worth, say, $40-an-hour compared with the global alternatives. If we don’t, there’s no telling how “jobless” this recovery will be.

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

Moron I used to deliver your paper I made the same money delivering 100 papers when I started as I did delivering 520? when I left. Rather than get paid more for quality of service I was forced to do more work and maintain low quality of service to get a raise.
Tom if newspaper delivery jobs did not have such a high turn over ( new drivers make more mistakes) then maybe you could sell more papers?
Or to put it another way high corporate profits not shared with workers or used to improve productivity over the long run cost corporations money.

Before 9/11 the Chicago Tribune was thinking of buying an automatic newspaper bagging machine like they have in Europe. Bagging papers by hand takes time time is money evil Morning people want their paper early plus when it rains we had to double bag papers because the Trib as a cost cutting measure stopped buying bigger rain bags.
Double bagging increased our work so guess what instead of driving up and down both sides of the street to give a closer throw of the paper to homes we all everyone in my warehouse changed our routes so we only made one pass down a street to save on gas.
Sure this resulted in more customer complaints and lost customers but after 9/11 gas went up and we got not enough cash in return. So we saved drive time, gas and the Trib never new why customer complaints and customers leaving went up.
Its not like they could replace us once wages get low enough job turnover and new employee mistakes makes one’s job invulnerable.
They pretend to pay us we pretend to work.

I got an email from Organizing for America asking me to call my congress people to see if they were supporting President Obama’s health insurance reform.(http://my.barackobama.com/TTDCall) So I called them all. The thing is I called just past 5:00pm local time to their local offices.

Everyone answered and everyone was up to speed on health insurance reform. All were more than happy to talk about it for as long as I wanted to talk.

I thought the local Democratic offices would be closed by 5:00pm but none were.

So I am kinda wondering if this whole ‘call your rep’ thing was a push for support from the top down. I hope it was.

The last president did not need the support of the people because he had the backing of the ‘haves and the have mores’.

President Obama really needs our support to get this reform through and the more vocal we are the better off we are.

Hey, if the Pentagon can pay $400/gallon for gas for our combat vehicles in Afghanistan and every 1,000 troops is costing the American taxpayer $1 BILLION each and every day, THEN I THINK WE CAN AFFORD A CHEAP PUBLIC INSURANCE OPTION FOR THOSE AMERICANS WHO DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE AT THE MOMENT!

Olympia Snowe is against this idea, of course. She would rather support George Bush’s atrocious wars & policies today, because she wants to impress the 20% of republicans in America! See? She’s a snake in the grass. More concerned with the MIC profiting and high speed internet connections than she is with Americans losing their homes because they had emergency gallbladder surgery with no insurance to help pay for it!

I hate her.

By the way, a friend on Facebook said she tried calling Snowe & Collins offices all day yesterday but kept getting the answering machine. Geee, now why is that? Oh wait! THESE TWO RIGHT WINGER FRINGERS DON’T CARE ABOUT MAINERS OR YOU! Nope. They act like they do, but as republicans, calling their office to beg for the public option is no different than bums begging for money on the streets. See? They would walk by you if you were sitting on the sidewalk starving and in need!

Or to put it another way guys like Thomas Friedman brag about Globalization fiddling while Rome burns and the New York Times and his wife lose lots of money. The Moustache of Wisdom of course sees no connection between the two.

Good sign thanks for the on the ground report:)

i don’t see how it will be popular with the public if costs aren’t controlled.

Snowe does not want her office to answer afraid someone will leak just how many calls her office got Girl is scared of her voters.

Is there anyone here who thinks mandates won’t be incredibly unpopular? selise, what has been the experience in MA?

No?

We the people vs Corporate Scum! The self serving corporate aristocrats “abuse” the American people daily manipulating law and basically eating our own. The lust for profit is a “dysfunctional addiction.” Just as the drunk comes home and beats his wife and children, infused with the twisted logic of a “Drug Addict,” the money addicts have raped America, like a molester rapes a child! And they are getting away with it as Jefferson warned!!!!

“Surely, this is the policy choice of tyrants and slave holders! We must choose the more expensive, less efficient, crappier policy that saves the real harbinger of freedom and liberty, the health insurance company executive.”

FINALLY you understand!!!!!!!!
That IS indeed the only rational argument and the only american way to proceed!

I bet the lobbyist have her private cell!

True we win on this or America will be a land of immigrants…going to Europe to get health insurance!

So what’s gonna happen to the Ds in the next election?

Sorry I can’t stay around. Got a bus to catch.

She is scared. Both of them are! I know for a fact that Susan Collins ONLY talks directly with CEO’s/Presidents of Maine’s largest companies. I know this because a customer of mine is a president of a on-again/off-again Fortune 500 company and he has Collins’ personal cell phone number! He can call her ANYTIME. We Mainahs? We get the answering machine! Neither one of these women cares about any of us. Seriously.

Man, I can’t stand either one of these women! They’re not moderates. You can’t call yourself a moderate when you spent 80% of your votes casting them in favor of George Bush’s economic & foreign policies!

And the fact that my FB friend kept getting the answering machine and not a message (or an office worker picking up the phone to answer!) that the machine was full….IS BECAUSE SNOWE & COLLINS WERE DELETING THE MESSAGES AS THEY WERE LEFT! They were cleaning up the evidence. They were not answering their phones. President Obama sent out alerts on FB to have Americans call their representatives in support of the public option…..and Mainahs couldn’t get through!

Not surprised.

Unemployment is high we lose. We get a Selise approved Healthcare bill or a Real Job stimulus plan we win.
Fake but not to bad healthcare better but not great unemployment numbers we as the party in power lose seats.
However the GOP might not gain at our expense they are way lower than us in the polls.
They think they will get votes because they are the only other woman on the island. That and they sell themselves to the 20%ers as the only other woman on the island plus the world will end in 5 minutes!
I think a GOP third party will emerge and split the GOP vote this might give us more seats even if Obama messes up.
Or the GOP could run on real issues next election instead of fear and hate…Bwhahaha!

Can we get Rachel or KO to send a staffer to try and call her instate at her office like a regular person? Then send a lobbyist to call her G.E has lots of lobbyists on call.
If not I suggest a Diary.

don’t think mandates are ever popular, but no big protests or anything. however, MA was a very different case than most of the country.

first, because we already had good regulation on community rating and guaranteed issue, premium costs were already very high (i’d expect costs to increase with these regulations – forcing insurance companies to pay for healthcare is a good thing, but it does increase cost of insurance). so the year the mandates were implemented, premium costs did go down a bit (since then, we’re back to big yearly increases in premiums and increases in cost sharing).

not many people were affected by the mandate because we already high levels of insurance coverage (over 90%). commonwealth care (the subsidized programs), was an improvement for people with low income.

the big problem, imo, is that the costs are out of control. the state is cutting back on money to public hospitals (so some of the really needy are worse off), etc.

as costs continue to increase (both premiums and cost sharing), i expect the mandate is going to be more and more of a problem. but no big protests yet, as far as i’m aware of. yet.

although we are not as far along as PA or CO, there is big organizing (bless pda) for state based single payer here. although the state dems are corrupt and have to be dragged kicking and screaming.

Can the Democrats Avoid a Populist Health Care Rebellion?

in case you come back to this thread after your bus trip. have fun!

Tape record the number of attempts to call show that she either is erasing messages from her voters to hide their support of healthcare or she has the longest answering machine in history:)

p.s. more on mandates from digby (via ian): The Light Dawns

David Price describes how the Pentagon is recruiting PhDs to fight its counter-insurgency campaigns: today Afghanistan, tomorrow the world

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese10202009.html

Wingnut NeoCon welfare? Is Harvard giving Legacies PhD’s ops sorry Bell Curve proved that read Bell Curve wars its funny to see all the college freshman mistakes and lies pointed out in the Bell Curve Wars short book should be available at library.

http://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Wars-Intelligence-Republic/dp/0465006930

Place your order now its an old book but I recommend this for the FDL book club. Pleasssse:)

When you call my house and get the answering machine, it means one of two things: WE’RE NOT HOME OR WE’RE NOT ANSWERING OUR PHONE! See? And if thousands of you are calling my house at once and are leaving messages to fill the box, but the next 1000 callers get to leave a message, that means I’ve deleted the first 1,000 messages for you to do so!

A Portland lawyer contacted me through my WNI email account and left me his number. I called him. He suggested I do what you guys are suggesting above: buy a phone recorder to record this nonsense! For $100 it would be worth it. Here in Maine you can record another’s voice without their permission (unless it’s in a private place like a bathroom etc).

Thanks for that. I needed it this morning

Pelosi has balls and she is doing the people a great service for which she should be rewarded. The thanks to the others in the CPC is merited as well.

Stock should be taken now as to who has impeded progress and highest on the list is Obama. His lack of support for the PO while others did all the work warrants that he should be punished come the next election. It would be a travesty to reward this miscreant by allowing him to share in the hard work of others who had to overcome his efforts to derail the PO. A challenge from Sherrod Brown or some equally deserving candidate should get the support of those on the left.

Obama is a pretentious patronizing spewer of platitudes incapable of working hard at anything. He is basically an inept wingbag and we should not have to suffer this clown any further

Indeed!

It was all about keeping the insurance and health lobbies from running ads 24/7 attacking reform, and even (if possible) keeping their campaign contributions from being redirected back to the GOP, where they’ve historically gone. As Jane has explained repeatedly over the spring and summer and now fall, privately promising to insurance companies to ditch the PO (while publicly praising it) is how Obama kept the health/insurance lobby from running “Harry and Louise” ads day and night for the past six months.

Except now the public option is very much alive despite that promise, so the Big Health lobby has pulled off the gloves and started running scare ads (as a cursory viewing of most any televised football game or baseball playoff game shows). And that’s now why Obama and the Congressional Dems are suddenly talking about zapping the antitrust exemption for these companies.

It’s a different game now, and it’s because Jane Hamsher wouldn’t let the PO get kicked to the curb. Amazing, what the rallying efforts of a few committed people, who understand how to work around the system, can do.