zed

The House Bill sucks as well.

The right wing has unfortunately projected its myth that public service is old hat, via the media, to the Dems who think pragmatism is above their oath of office. Giving the public what the government is there for may just be the way to win that public back. They certainly aren’t impressed by the MA mistake, to demand we all have to buy insurance whether it’s functional or not.

Just sleepy, Phoenix Woman? Grijalva from Arizona. Good post.

[modnote: thank you.]

Nice post. Grijalva is an Arizonan. :)

[modnote: thank you.]

We could believe that all the mistakes gbush made could partly be attributed to his IQ and unfortunate upbringing. It is different with obama. We saw on the campaign trail , he was anything but slow.

His choices for chief of staff, and administration have been really dumb. rahm was facing a tough reelection in Ill. Never popular or diplomatic. Divider.Then his actions in not pushing for real health care reform and TARP, breaking promises more than keeping them. Surely the Mass. loss was not a surprise.

This is the Third Way. Destroy culture , the two party system and open up the flood gates to corporatism/fascism.Take your pick of words. No difference.Esp. when you take into consideration the war against browns. The miserable militarization of Haiti. Katrina all over again.

The OOPS WHO KNEW meme does not cut it when we have had 10 years now of overt fascism. Maybe we should have paid more attention to election theft. Don Seigleman did complain his election was stolen and he is still facing criminal charges…while Ted Stevens is free and Tom Delay is dancing with the stars. …

please correct your post! Raul is from AZ!! ‘Phoenix’ woman, lol
http://grijalva.house.gov/

[modnote: thank you.]

Nebraska purchase is no the only problem with the bill, so this Van Hollen
who is part of the corporative wing Obamico-Rham is not going to confuse me.Again and again the big problem with this despicable senate bill is the lack of true and real health care for the people,the lack of OPTIONS and the MANDATORY “MANDATE” to buy insurance to the same thiefs that have caused the huge disaster in health care.What this Van Hollen did not say was THE oBAMA complicity with big insurers and Pharma etc,etc.Van Hollen
is ignoring the central point.

I wish Raul Were from TX, but no such luck.

Re: WH apologists – I guess at this point there’s no reason to name establishment blogger names, but with regards to putting Party first I would just warn that the veal pen becomes uncomfortable after awhile, can’t move much you know, not to mention the ultimate end game, and water weighs 8.35 lbs/gal and gets really heavy after being carried for long periods of time.

Nancy Pelosi and the House liberals shouldn’t wait for the Senate. They should just write the reconciliation fixes themselves, write up a few variations of the fix bills to create choice, pass them in the House, or let the Blue Dogs kill them, and then simply throw it over to the Senate with the message pass the fixes and we’ll pass your bill.

Put the ball back in their court Nancy. If you don’t they will destroy the House progressive caucus with relentless attacks.

Do the work Madam Speaker. Pass the fixes in the House and put the ball back in Rahmbama and Reid’s court.

…

I’m gone – I’m over it – time for something new.

punch away you fucking sell out piece of shit scum.

I ain’t giving 1 dime, 1 second of time, or 1 vote for any partial progressive EVER again.

You sell outs think your policies are good for the global, usa, or local communities? FINE! Go for it! I ain’t gonna enable you with any more dukakis kerry gore clinton Big Zer0 … votes, time or money.

I was commenting to dkmich in the last few days. I remembered when I was 28 in ’88 and I supported the DLC cuz, after the Dim-O-Dinosaurs getting their asses kicked by that lying fascist lackey Raygun, I thought the DLC was going to:
1. change policies & strategies & tactics such that:
a. lying fascists would NO have traction with their fucking lies,
b. lying fascists would get to represent the 1/2 of the richest selfish pigs they represent, and NOT anyone else!

I didn’t the the DLC-ites were just fascist lite, OR, so politically incompetent that they should be fired.

Punch away assholes! You SHOULD fight, you corrupt motherfucking pieces of shit.

rmm.

Good Morning Phoenix Woman and Firedogs,

I’m relieved Van Hollen isn’t just reading the polling and then spinning it to fit some Masters of the Electoral Universe scheme like his predecessor -

Could our illustrious leaders HAVE screwed the pooch any worse than they did with all their maneuvering on this thing?

Rahm’s “political calculus” makes it look like he should go back to to Math 101

exactly!

If the senate bill gets killed, which I think it should, FDL and the “murderers” should be prepared to have a good explanation for the sob story tellers.

Maybe Manny was using Karl Rove’s math in his political calculus?

…

How to expand health care coverage to 40 million people with reconciliation:

Expanding Medicaid to everyone below 215% of the FPL, and expanding SCHIP coverage to all uninsured children, should give roughly 30 million more Americans insurance for a cost of just under $800 billion.

The Medicaid expansion could be structured to also work as a de facto extreme catastrophic insurance policy for people over 215% FPL. You could set it up so that if anyone suffered from a major medical emergency, which cost so much it effectively made their yearly income below 215% FPL, they would, at that point, be covered by Medicaid. This would effectively put an end to medical bankruptcy in this country.

Early Medicare buy-in could be added for people without insurance who are between 47-65. This is the group who, even if they have money, tend to have the toughest time finding affordable, quality health insurance.

Expanding Medicaid, Medicare, and SCHIP are all doable under reconciliation. A bill that does these three things would only need a simple majority in the Senate, would be cheaper than the current Senate bill, and probably be no more than 30 PAGES long.

Mr. President – you have allowed the Congress to create a 2000 page monstrosity and you call it success. Where I come from they call that B.S. Its time to come down from the clouds and make a critical decision. Are you for the people or against the people? The fate of the Democratic Party and the nation awaits your decision.

with special thanks to Jon Walker

I just sent this to the Obama White House. Maybe if a million people sent him this message, he’d finally get it.

You may be closer to the truth than any of us can stomach.
I think they forget that there really ARE some hippies left over who aren’t senile or on drugs.

I just sent this to the Obama White House. Maybe if a million people sent him this message, he’d finally get it.

I wish.

Somehow, I don’t see this happening…expanding ANYTHING for the people’s sake. See:
Obama Cuts Deal To Reduce Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid
I guess this is pretty much a done deal.

I think a million or two people ned to go STAND out in front of the WH or Capitol for several days maybe this spring. You know how they hate that

Which is why reconciliation is such a good thing — it gets rid of the stuff that sucks and keeps the stuff that’s good. The few good things that aren’t covered, such as stricter regs on insurance companies, can be dealt with as standalone legislation or tacked onto “must pass” bills (like defense spending).

FDL and the “murderers” should be prepared to have a good explanation

Luckily the work has been done, Sullivan via Glenzilla:

UPDATE II: Noting that even reasonable conservatives like Stephen Bainbridge are saying things like: “Obama and the Congressional Democrats (especially in the House) governed for the last year as though the median voter is a Daily Kos fan,” Andrew Sullivan writes:

This must come as some surprise to most Daily Kos fans. But if one had traveled to Mars and back this past year and read this statement, what would you assume had happened? I would assume that the banks had been nationalized, the stimulus was twice as large, that single-payer healthcare had been pushed through on narrow majority votes, that card-check had passed, that an immigration amnesty had been legislated, that prosecutions of Bush and Cheney for war crimes would be underway, that withdrawal from Afghanistan would be commencing, that no troops would be left in Iraq, that Larry Tribe was on the Supreme Court, that DADT and DOMA would be repealed, and so on.

NYT is talking about 51 votes – and Obama is backing off the pass only pieces that the GOP agree with approach – but Dodd says delay for 6 weeks – and the pass the Senate Bill as that is the best we can do is dead.

Seems the Senate may actually do budget recon – I bet the lobbying is fierce at this point as it is the equivalent of poker’s “all in” decision.

I’ve never demanded that all legislation have everything I wanted and nothing I did not want – an example of the left being screwed by those who know how to use that mindset against us being Bev Harris and Black Box Voting being used to kill the Rep. Rush Holt H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 – after I and others (like EFF) warned that it was a good needed bill and holding out for paper only was not a solution – indeed holding out for paper only was just Bev’s way of killing the bill (Bev has interesting GOP areas in her history).

E-voting machines have wreaked havoc and undermined confidence in our election system. Despite demonstrated technical failures — including the loss of thousands of votes and Oct 20, 2009 we got source code that showed some interesting Sequoia coding bits – AND 90% of the votes in Mass were on what- Diebold – ???????

But this case we are not asking for purity – we just want some good out of the mess that appears to be a welfare check to the ins companies with little that make health care better in this country – bad limited high out of pocket policies that are subsidized is not the way. Buy in Medicare makes a lot more sense.

This post is a good response.

So is this one.

Is there anyone out there spohisticated enough to figure out how we can, using the internet, get a million people to send this health care letter to the president and maybe change the course of history?

Mr. President – you have allowed the Congress to create a 2000 page monstrosity and you call it success. Where I come from they call that B.S. Its time to come down from the clouds and make a critical decision. Are you for the people or against the people? The fate of the Democratic Party and the nation awaits your decision.

How to expand coverage to 40 million people with reconciliation:

Expanding Medicaid to everyone below 215% of the FPL, and expanding SCHIP coverage to all uninsured children, should give roughly 30 million more Americans insurance for a cost of just under $800 billion.

The Medicaid expansion could be structured to also work as a de facto extreme catastrophic insurance policy for people over 215% FPL. You could set it up so that if anyone suffered from a major medical emergency, which cost so much it effectively made their yearly income below 215% FPL, they would, at that point, be covered by Medicaid. This would effectively put an end to medical bankruptcy in this country.

Early Medicare buy-in could be added for people without insurance who are between 47-65. This is the group who, even if they have money, tend to have the toughest time finding affordable, quality health insurance.

Expanding Medicaid, Medicare, and SCHIP are all doable under reconciliation. A bill that does these three things would only need a simple majority in the Senate, would be cheaper than the current Senate bill, and probably be no more than 30 PAGES long.

with special thanks to Jon Walker

TPM (aka “Centrist Central”) has some more bamboozlement about van Hollen here.

Here’s an excerpt from the link:

This is nonsense. The senate could pass a standalone bill stripping the senate bill of the medicaid deal and this wouldnt have any impact on the bill already passed (because Obama could sign it after he signs the Senate Bill)

The key in that statement is:

Obama could sign it after he signs the Senate Bill

(Emphasis mine)

I don’t think anyone trusts Obama as far as they could throw him.

I like the approach – you leave it to the ins ind to find a way to make their product affordable so they stop losing customers, as you take care of those who are not their customers now.

But the what is in it for me factor is what gets an idea made into a law – and the approach you suggest has non-voters getting theirs for $800 Billion – Medicaid folks tend to not vote – while voters get the buy-in Medicare at near no cost. I doubt it could pass.

I think they forget that there really ARE some hippies left over who aren’t senile or on drugs.

Actually, I suspect a lot of the hippies are still on drugs, it’s just that nowadays they’re prescription.

As long as we can afford them anyways…

:)

…

I think a million or two people ned to go STAND out in front of the WH or Capitol for several days maybe this spring. You know how they hate that

love you sweetie, but srsly, they could give a fuck.

For anyone who wants to write the president. His address is:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

I have been thinking on this deafness to great segments of the Dem. base, and other constituencies, and thinking and just about driving myself crazy.

They remind me of children in parallel play. Playing in the same room, none noticing the other. It is a normal developmental phase the should disappear by two or so…..check me on the age; my memory isn’t that great.

I have in various ways known a lot of celebrity type folks. So many seem to be supremely and I think pathologically narcissistic. In some it seems the regression is induced by the celebrity. Others are just that way. They lose their capacity if they ever had it to experience at a feeling level mood, wishes, preferences etc of others.

So how do you get to them? I have no answer but for me it is a beginning to try to figure out some of the how.

They make up for the lack by having a bevy of advisers representing various areas of need. Obama with his always quoting the “experts” has made me suspicious this is the level at which he usually operates. I think when we see the “growth of presidents in office” it is when they begin to hear more than their advisors and trust their own guts more. A good humiliation such as Bay of Pigs or maybe this MA elsction seem to often be icebreakers.

I personally am angry, feel betrayed and more than a little paranoid about the character of Obama. But see that as a dead end. I think I am going to work more the premise he is emotionally deaf.

just copy and paste the letter, sharkbabe! Got to start somewhere! “The road of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Would you be the first?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

they wont ever accept any explanation – they are wedded to whatever fairy tales WH & DNC have spun about what this bill will do (and yeah, eCahn, I know you know this already :D)

“a bill that would mean we’d never be rejected for health insurance”

ooh what Bill # is that, ’cause that’s one we would all support

let’s forget about the twin 500 pound gorillas of Mandate and Choice for a moment, not a single one of these ‘believers’ has ever addressed the issue of lack of regulatory or enforcement infrastructure contained in the Senate monstrosity

and maybe one of them could point me in the direction of just where in the Bill it guarantees that their poor dad could afford any of the co pays, let alone treatment now afforded him through Reid’s ‘accomplishment’

The dirty little secret that the “Punch the Hippie” crowd won’t address is that reconciliation is not just the best way to HCR passed, it’s likely the only way to do so. That’s what my post today is about: We’ve let them do it their way for the better part of a year and guess what? It hasn’t worked.

Now, they’re going to still stay in Punch-the-Hippie mode because, to judge from the past few days, they can’t think of any other way to react to this inconvenient truth. But it’s increasingly going to be clear that if they really want a bill passed, it can’t be a candidate-destroying POS like the current Senate bill.

I’m still on beer and giggle weed. but in deference to aging, i’ve added lots of water, non-crap food, and exercise to my former regimen.

The ability of the corporatist media to ignore mass demonstrations done for good is amazing. Millions of people have had mass protests against our invasion and occupation of Iraq without ever once getting written up in the newspapers, much less on the evening TV news. But let five conservatives get together with signs and TV crews are right on the scene.

I think a million or two people ned to go STAND out in front of the WH or Capitol for several days maybe this spring. You know how they hate that

I agree. Numbers like in the 70s and camp out like the Bonus Army of the thirties.

Though now law enforcement ropes off such a large zone now it is easy for them to avoid.

See my #32

Wiggle weed is medication and beer an essential nutritional element.

sure, done, and i don’t mean to sound hopelessly cynical

i just think the bullshit system is so entrenched, all-powerful, and utterly out of control that the only thing that can fundamentally move it now is crashing its own physical and natural limits. our voices are less than ants to this monstrosity. still i’m a proud fighting ant, sure why not, and i don’t mean that snarkily but sincerely.

Unless, of course, Rahm Emanuel really does want to see the House flip to the GOP this November.

Well, of course – no doubt claiming credit for such a glorious victory right before his exit stage left into a plush corporate sinecure.

;>)

Here’s what TPM’s David Kurtz isn’t pointing out:

1) The Senate bill likely wouldn’t pay for the reader’s fathers brain scans (or pay less than whatever insurance the father has now)

2) The Blue Dogs — such as Stupak and Kissell — are bigger threats to the bill than is Grijalva. Grijalva wants to fix it; Stupak and Kissell want to kill it outright. Why isn’t anyone in the Punch-the-Hippie caucus going after them?

He certainly seems to have learned nothing from how his NAFTA push killed the Dems in ’94.

Not to mention taking credit for Howard Dean’s 50-state strategies and spinning his own electoral failures into the memory hole.

My opinion is that Rahm is in it for whoever writes the checks for Rahm, and if Obama has any desire to be more than a one-term punchline he’ll cut him loose before it’s too late.

;>)

I saw that one.
I was wondering why they think it’s going to be any better for them if the Senate’s piece-of-shit bill passes.
(I was also wondering why they think the entire health care system will vanish like fog if that piece-of-shit bill passes.)

sent.

PW, I wonder what would happen if we threw a demonstration with the ‘conservative’ signs being tear-away covers hiding the real ones.

But, as should have been apparent from the Coakley loss this week, all the demonization that the Punch the Hippie wing can muster is not going to suffice to counter the very real electoral damage that will be suffered by those Democrats who choose to embrace the Senate HCR bill as it currently exists — and not just in the House, either

thank you for this PW.

thanks,

i understand what you are saying and the recent Supreme Court decision only compounds the problem. you can’t be any more cynical than i am. my vote for obama was my first vote for anybody in 35 years! where the president fucked up was in surrounding himself with little weasels like Geithner, Rhambo and Summers. These clowns need to be dumped ASAP along with Bernanke. bring in a fresh face like Elizabeth Warren. some people with integrity like Dean, Grayson, Weiner to push a populist agenda. That includes reversing position on Afghanistan (dumb war, and the president has said that he doesn’t like dumb wars)and leaving Iraq immediately.

Also to include massive Infrastructure Bank to invest in american productivity and major jobs program. Decisions at Infrastructure Bank are not made by slimy pork-barrel politicians but infrastructure professionals.

Wiggle weed is medication and beer an essential nutritional element.

I think a lot of aging boomers are of the opinion that wiggle weed is more effective than six ibuprofen and five naproxen taken at once. Nope, nothing quite like that ‘ol rabbit baccy for those aches and pains, or for going to sleep at night when afflicted with poison ivy or earaches.

I’ll see God when I see Her.

You’re welcome. The White House and its allies over at TPM and elsewhere are pretending that Grijalva’s a “monster” for wanting to fix the Senate bill, yet as Marcy points out here, Bart Stupak and the Blue Dogs want to shoot it down outright — so why aren’t they being demonized?

Excellent idea, eCAHN, looking ahead and seeing our way through this mess, instead of remaining on the defensive.

Here’s a thought that occurs to me:

There’s a bill that would mean we’d never be rejected for health insurance or have it canceled. Health insurance that could ease our final years, or maybe even save us. [One Reader's Sob Story, TPM, just 2 hours ago on 1/23/10.]

As we all know, coverage ain’t care. That’s been an insidious bait-n-switch, and many have noted it. The question remains, will this bill actually provide the guarantee of care the writer seems to assume?

I’m not much of a numbers guy (although I was an AP math student in high school; too many head injuries, hangovers, and bong hits, I’m guessing). So can one of you math wizards address this in detail?

Thanks, cbl2, that gives me a framework for the debate I ask about below @52.

Name calling any process, such as changing health care system “reform”, does not explain anything. After all, the more US reforms ‘laws’, other practices, the more wars, poverty results.
Obviously, forming-reforming-rereforming can go on forever; especially when vast majority is much or totally excluded from any of the congressional [re]forms. tnx

Below, above, whatever.

Thanks! Need. More. Coffee….zzzz…

It’s a big job, but I wish SOMEONE could go in and demonstrate to all these “sob story tellers” how the Magic Health Care Bill is NOT going to solve their problems.

Okay, fine: you have a tear-jerker story. But the Magic Health Care bill is not a magic wand that will be waved over your family and the Ill Person, and suddenly medicine will be free/affordable, medical care will be available and affordable, insurance companies will never again deny you the “opportunity” to purchase their product or disallow your claim.

These “10-15 million currently uninsured will be covered” memes are just distorting people’s view of reality. Do they really think that all those hungry leopards and tigers are are going to change their stripes and spots?

Edit: now that I read the rest of the comments, I see that cbl2 beat me to this wise observation @ 54.

BTW, with regard to forming our more perfect Union, I found this post by Harper’s Scott Horton very reassuring. Esp. after writing a diary, the funniest thing ever posted at FDL, of course, that garnered not a single comment.

Thomas Merton–The Value of Essential Works
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.

–Thomas Merton, in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton (W. Shannon ed. 1993).

Oops, that was #34.

oh, please don’t let the number of comments determine the influence of a diary, some diaries are easier than others to comment on. Speaking for myself, I often read diaries but am not in a communicating mood so may not put my reaction into words.

I remember your diary and enjoyed it. Keep on posting.

Most diaries speak for themselves and most of the time I have nothing to add. I always enjoy them so I guess we should comment to show our appreciation for the work that goes into them. And we DO appreciate it. The Seminal is great.

Very kind of you to say. Same here, and same to ya.

I don’t pretend to know the difficulties that faced this Administration when they walked into office a year ago. We all know they were considerable and the economy was probably worse than any of us really knew. That said, perception is everything in politics and governing. The perception that Obama laid out with the appointments of his economic team, the retention of his Defense team, and the deals he cut with corporate health have been a massive betrayal to his electorate and there are others as well. Couple that with the arrogant and spoiled Congress and it is no wonder we are all sick and enraged. It is incomprehensible that an Administration could be so deaf and blind as they continue to alienate voters at a record pace. You have to really work at it to alienate voters on the right, the center and the left all at the same time.

Unless, of course, Rahm Emanuel really does want to see the House flip to the GOP this November.

Thanks, Phoenix Woman. I’m embarrassed to admit that until now it never occurred to me that what Rhambo wants is a GOP Congress in 2011 so he can get the legislation he really wants. The MA election was just step one.

As for Obama, I just can’t decide if he has a clue what’s going on in his name.

This is definitely not snark.