This stupid anti-woman rhetoric from the ConservaDems and the Right I hope is removed from the bill.

Women are constantly used as escape goats in many social debates and considering what happen to Dr Tiller earlier this year, women as well as minorities are going to have to stand up and say enough is enough.

Nobody Pro Choice likes Abortion, they just don’t seem to get that. So we have to constantly run around this invisible issue when its largely a non-issue in other Western Countries.

Marsha Blackburn can go to bloody hell.

Up here in Canada, we are proud of how many folks with high risk of complication have been immunized against H1N1 already (ie. 20% of the total population in my province which likely represents up to 75% of high risk folks in just two weeks since the publically-funded vaccine was rolled out).

What we do hate, however, are the selfish bastards of privilege who have been using the thin edge of the Anti-Universality wedge (ie. private clinics) to jump the queue and take vaccine from people that could actually die if they were to suffer complications due to this virus.

Bastards like this.

And this.

Marsha Blackburn is a shill and a liar.

It’s as simple as that.

(sorry for the interruption)

.

What I do vehemently disagree with is McGovern using that fact, or failure, or Party-blinded description of our federal representatives as any sort of justification for blocking all but one amendment offered by House members on this bill (including from experienced physicians not on the committees of health reform jurisdiction) from reaching the House floor (and/or refusing to lengthen the debate beyond one day, so members might use more than a minute each to say something). But that’s what McGovern was doing, both with his words, and with his democracy-hostile race through the votes to defeat every Republican attempt to bring amendments to the floor (including Democratic amendments).

[It's dawned on me that Waxman's unexplained absence from the Rules Committee yesterday is probably because he was pulled into the closed-door negotiations with Stupak, et al, to try to make the sale, while the Rules Committee waited around to receive the pre-approved (abortion amendment-containing) rule that Alcee Hastings eventually obediently read off of a blue piece of paper when the moment was right, two-three hours after Stupak and Kaptur had unhappily departed the closed-door Party meeting(s).]

In other words, I’m not content to let our representatives defer to a top-down-controlled Party until the Party says ‘the time is right’ for action on x, y, z. I want Members of Congress who think for themselves and self-direct – and if they are members of a Party because of a Party platform they believe in, that will manifest in their votes, without backroom deals and power plays from unaccountable leaders forcing them into conformity. I know this can’t happen overnight, because of the current stranglehold the Parties have on Congress, but it does have to happen, and it has to start somewhere, if we are going to get our Congress back, and our federal government under the control of the people.

[Thanks, Elliot @ 187 - I think I've already pretty well covered the general subject to the best of my ability, in my recent diary here. Last night's performance just further cemented things for me, even knowing what rubber stamps the members of the Rules Committee are 'hired' to be. The thought of the rarely-filmed Rules Committee quietly deep-sixing amendments along rigid Party lines, in the middle of the night on the third floor of the Capitol, so they'll never reach the House floor below, is a haunting, evocative image for me of the top-down strangling of democratic self-government that is the Party's House today, equally now as when the Republicans were doing the same thing.]

he’s got smart people on his staff. his knowledge isn’t limited to what he reads.