Budget Monitor Says G.O.P. Bill Leaves Many Uninsured

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/budget-monitor-questions-impact-of-gop-health-bill/
Finally, the GOP has a bill.

But let's not celebrate just yet.

The Congressional Budget Office says the bill would have little impact in extending health benefits to the roughly 30 million uninsured Americans, but would reduce average insurance premium costs for people who have coverage.

The bill would do little to change the status quo, but would reduce future federal deficits by $68 billion over 10 years, compared to a reduction of $104 billion by the House Democrats’ legislation.

The nonpartisan budget office predicted savings reflected in the Republican plan would amount to $41 billion over 10 years as a result of provisions to limit costs related to medical malpractice lawsuits.

On this day in 1974: Watergate cover-up trial opens in Washington D.C.

Start:	Oct 1, '09
Location:	Washington, DC

Also called The Great Cover Up.

The Watergate scandal refers to a political scandal in the United States in the 1970s. Named for the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., effects of the scandal ultimately led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, President of the United States, on August 9, 1974. It also resulted in the indictment and conviction of several Nixon administration officials.

The scandal began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The men were connected to the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President by a slush fund and investigations conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, House Judiciary Committee and the news media.

President Nixon's staff conspired to cover up the break-in. As evidence mounted against the president's staff, which included former staff members testifying against them in a Senate investigation, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing that he had attempted to cover up the break-in. After a series of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president had to hand over the tapes; he ultimately complied.

Facing near-certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and a strong possibility of a conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned the office of the presidency on August 9, 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, would issue a pardon unto President Nixon.

Assessing the GOP brand

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/assessing_the_gop_brand.php
How weak is the Republican brand right now? This issue came up yesterday when a Media Matters criticized The Hill for failing to mention the GOP's poor polling numbers in a story on the 2010 elections. Similarly, I recently suggested that that the damaged Republican brand might limit the number of seats that the party picks up. But is the party really worse off than previous opposition parties at this point in the election cycle?

As a first cut at the question, I pulled all the relevant polling on approval of the party in Congresss and party favorability from the Roper iPoll database for the periods leading up to the four most recent midterms (1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006). In both cases, the results are consistent, but I'll focus on the favorability questions since Pew and CBS asked comparable questions about party favorables in each cycle.*

The overall finding is simple -- the GOP's standing relative to the Democrats on both measures is worse than any opposition party in the sample. For instance, the Pew data show that the Republicans are currently viewed more negatively than any minority party in the previous four midterms in terms of both net favorables and the difference in net favorables between parties:**

GOP files suit to block Massachusetts senator from taking seat

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27559.html
Another way in which Republicans are trying to delay the health care vote.

Conservatives Cast Obama as ‘Reluctant, Timid’

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=news-000003207575
In a preview of campaign refrains to come, prominent conservatives are saying President Obama’s foreign policy is hurting our allies and helping our enemies.

The “Obama as Carter” motif dominated the conservative Foreign Policy Institute’s annual conference, held in Washington Monday and Tuesday, with GOP headliners making unflattering comparisons to the 39th president to warn of a decline in U.S. international standing.

Obama’s stance on the presidential crisis in Honduras, willingness to engage Iran in nuclear talks and decision to scrap the Bush administration’s missile defense plans in Eastern Europe were popular targets.

“I think the president is communicating he is a reluctant and timid defender of freedom . . . time and time again,” said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a 2008 Republican presidential contender and a leading potential candidate in 2012.

“Neutrality has an inevitable corollary . . . you draw more close to your foes and create distances from your friends,” Romney said.

Why we're talking about race - again

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=690926
The Democrats have lost the healthcare debate.

For months now, polls have been showing that Americans don't want the massive new government controls, regulations, taxes, and spending that Democrats are pushing.

Latest Gallup polling shows 60 percent saying that President Barack Obama's proposal will not expand health coverage without raising taxes on middle-class Americans and without affecting the current quality of healthcare.



Forty-three percent approve of how Obama is handling healthcare and 52 percent disapprove.

You would be hard pressed to find a Democrat or Republican who does not agree that we can improve how we deliver healthcare.

So the logical conclusion we'd expect now from well-intentioned people would be that we go back to square one. We do what Obama promised but never did -- have a truly open, bi-partisan discussion, with all ideas are on the table, to generate the best possible product for the American people.

Why is this not happening? Because it's not about healthcare. It's about ideology.

Despite claims from our Democrat administration that it wants civility, it does not. It wants control.

This nation is already torn apart ideologically. In the last four months, we've witnessed two cold-blooded, ideologically motivated murders. An abortion doctor shot in a church, and a pro-life demonstrator murdered in a drive-by shooting in front of a school.

There are fewer and fewer "self evident truths" about which we all agree.

The current charade to paint ideological differences with our president as racially motivated dangerously pours gasoline on the burning embers of our differences.

But this is what Democrats want. They have lost the healthcare debate on substance, so they want to make it emotional. They want to intimidate. And nothing intimidates and polarizes like race.

Continued at the link:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=690926

The Wrong Side of History

The all-white crowd gathered round, seething with anger about change, which they felt was being shoved down their throats.

Some pumped demoralizing signs into the air, others shouted down anybody they didn’t feel were on their side. It didn’t take long for the name-calling and insults to commence.

“Somebody started yelling. Lynch her! Lynch her! I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd — someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”

These are the words of Elizabeth Eckford. She is not talking about town hall protesters or tea baggers. Eckford, one of nine black students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., was recalling how hundreds of white protesters — with backing from powerful politicians — tried to block her and eight other children from entering a public school in 1957.

They became known as the Little Rock Nine.

Protesters faced by the nine youths repeatedly warned that if blacks were allowed into “their schools” (much like the “their country” sentiment currently being echoed) it would harm their children.

It is ironic that thousands of angry, mostly white protesters converged on Washington last weekend at the same time I happened to be reading Cooper v. Aaron, a 1958 Supreme Court case stemming from the Little Rock Nine. The case is about Arkansas Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus and his refusal to obey federal orders to integrate the state’s schools. His defiance caused Republican President Dwight Eisenhower to send in federal troops to force Faubus to follow the law.

Chaos erupted. Vitriol and rowdy demonstrations spread not only throughout Arkansas, but across the country.

The nation was so polarized that it was nearly impossible for most people to foresee what many now take for granted: Integration would benefit the whole country, not just a particular demographic group.

We also now know that those screaming protesters were on the wrong side of history.

Some may ask what the Little Rock Nine story has to do with the current health care debate, especially when the apparent villain in the case was a Democrat and the hero, a Republican.

Here’s a clue: This column is not really about race. It’s about the way history repeats itself, and about our place in it.

Faubus’ opposition to allow black children to integrate Arkansas schools was politically motivated: He risked losing political support if he sanctioned integration, even though it was the right thing to do. Just like Republicans now risk losing political support if they show agreement with President Obama’s health care ideas — or any of his ideas, for that matter.

Click here to continue.

Another Tea Party Meltdown

This stuff is so common now that it has become a general rite of passage for these tea party people to fall over themselves in abject stupidity.

But I'm posting this anyway because it is way too funny to keep to myself!

Frank Schaeffer: Glenn Beck and The 9/12 Marchers: Subversives From Within

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/glenn-beck-and-the-912-ma_b_284387.html
Who are these people?! Where do they come from?! Ordinary Americans might wonder why anyone would stoop so low as to follow Glenn Beck, Fox News and Dick Armey (and their corporate sponsors masquerading as "FreedomWorks") as they organize their "9/12 March On Washington" to cynically exploit the 9/11 attack.

Patriotic Americans might question the organizer's aim to provide a media forum for dimwitted right wingers to scream "Liar!" "Socialist!" "Antichrist!" "Muslim!" "Death Panels!" "He's not an American!" and so on and on and on about the commander in chief charged with defending us from further attacks. And some people might even cry "shame on you!" to the more mainstream Republicans participating that include Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, as well as GOP Reps. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Pence of Indiana, Tom Price of Georgia, and South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint.

Ordinary folks from Planet Earth may ask why the Republican Party, right-wing activists and members of the Religious Right seem so unreachable with mere facts let alone decency and decorum. (As the proud father of a US Marine who fought in Afghanistan, I'm particularly outraged that these people would exploit the 9/11 attacks after my son and others were prepared to give their lives in response to our enemies.)

As a former Religious Right leader, who was raised (and home-schooled by my Evangelical-leader parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer) in the movement, let me explain just why the ordinary rules of decency don't apply to the right these days.

Let me also answer this question: Who are these people?

You have to finish reading this one:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/glenn-beck-and-the-912-ma_b_284387.html

Joe Wilson's Dirty Health-Care Secret

 

 
All in the Family: Rep. Joe Wilson (left) and his son, Alan Wilson, who is running for attorney general in South Carolina. Both men, and three of Rep. Wilson’s other sons, get free military medical coverage.

By Adam Weinstein

Poor Joe Wilson. The conservative Republican representative from South Carolina stepped in it Wednesday night when he broke with centuries of decorum by screaming, "You lie!" at President Obama during his health-care speech to a joint session of Congress.

Cut the man some slack. He's passionate! I know this because he told me, in the sole message that blazes across his campaign Web site: JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!

Except that he's not─at least not when it comes to his, and his family's, government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one's commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE.

Yes, it's true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate the finer points of the public option, employer mandates, coverage for undocumented immigrants, and who's more Hitler-like, they seem to miss a larger point: the United States has single-payer health care. It covers 9.5 million active-duty servicemen and women, military retirees, and their dependents─including almost a 10th of all Californians and Floridians, and nearly a quarter of a million residents of Wilson's home state.

Military beneficiaries like Wilson─who, as a retiree, is eligible for lifetime coverage─never have to worry about an eye exam, a CT scan, a prolonged labor, or an open-heart surgery. They have access not only to the military's 133,500 uniformed health professionals, but cooperating private doctors as well─whose fees are paid by the Department of Defense. It's high-quality care, too: surveys from 2007 and 2008 list TRICARE among "the best health insurer(s) in the nation" by customer satisfaction. Yet Wilson insists government-run health care is a problem.

To be fair, Wilson has been consistent in his policymaking if not his personal life: according to his last congressional opponent, Wilson voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted "aye" for the Iraq War (during the debate on the war vote, he even called one Democrat "viscerally anti-American"─several times). He voted to cut veterans' benefits─not his own─to make room for President George W. Bush's tax cuts. He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused─repeatedly─to approve Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan─and many lost access to their civilian work benefits when they did so.

There's one other notable exception to Wilson's tough-on-government record: In July, when the health-insurance debate just started heating up, he offered an amendment that would exempt TRICARE from any system of employer mandates in a health-care bill. It's not clear whether this is necessary, since most such bills in Congress keep government benefits exempt from the rules as a matter of course. But Wilson took the opportunity to make his stand.

"As a 31-year Army Guard and Reserve veteran, I know the importance of TRICARE," he said in a press release. "The number of individuals who choose to enroll in TRICARE continues to rise because TRICARE is a low cost, comprehensive health plan that is portable and available in some form world-wide." He went on to call TRICARE "world class health care," concluding on a personal note. "I am grateful to have four sons now serving in the military, and I know that their families appreciate the availability of TRICARE," he said.

What does that mean? Nothing─except that Joe Wilson was against government-run health care before he was for it. And now he's against it again. Just not when it comes to his own flesh and blood.

 Adam Weinstein, an Iraq veteran, is a freelance journalist. He is uninsured.

Inside Sarah's Church

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-05/inside-sarahs-church/?cid=hp:mainpromo2
I know, you ask, why should we care? Well, I read this paragraph and couldn't help but laugh...

“Oh father, use her to turn this nation around,” Bishop Muthee shouted, his left palm on Sarah Palin’s head, “so that the curse can be broken.”

So Palin losing means that God's will was done, and she should sit down and shut the heck up, right? I mean, we are supposed to pray for God's will to be done, not to ask for selfish things-- like winning elections.

So Palin's loss, for those Christian conservatives out there, was divine intervention and the curse was broken... That is if you really believe in what this pastor preaches.

Could Kennedy’s Successor Be A Republican?

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000003196818&mp=Most_Viewed
Republicans are largely an afterthought in the ongoing discussions over who will succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in heavily Democratic Massachusetts.

Yet members of the state's GOP think that if they play their cards right, a Republican could have a legitimate shot at winning the special Senate election on Jan. 19.

Really?

Tort Reform Unlikely to Cut Health Care Costs

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=az9qxQZNmf0o
Annual jury awards and legal settlements involving doctors amounts to “a drop in the bucket” in a country that spends $2.3 trillion annually on health care, said Amitabh Chandra, a Harvard University economist. Chandra estimated the cost at $12 per person in the U.S., or about $3.6 billion, in a 2005 study. Insurer WellPoint Inc. said last month that liability wasn’t driving premiums.

I'll blog about this more later.

Excuse to Brainwash?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20090903/pl_ynews/ynews_pl888_1
Obama goes back to school, has some right-wingers crying foul.

The "Intolerance" Party? GOP Strategists Worry Ideologues Are Bad For The Party's Future

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/02/the-intolerance-party-gop_n_274355.html
A major rift has emerged within the Republican Party. On one side: Ideologues who are inciting the base with wild rhetoric and banking on a "great American awakening" that will sweep conservatives back into power. On the other: Strategists, who see the party's growing intolerance as a prescription for minority status.

So far, the ideologues are winning.

Cheney In 2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/01/cheney-in-2012-some-key-g_n_273470.html
Oh say it ain't so!!!

On this day in 1974: President Gerald Ford pardons Richard Nixon

Start:	Sep 8, '09
Location:	Washington, DC

On September 8, 1974, one month after President Richard Nixon resigned the presidency amid the Watergate scandal, his successor, President Gerald R. Ford, announced his decision to grant Nixon a full pardon for any crimes he may have committed while in office.

The Watergate scandal stemmed from a break-in that occurred on the night of June 17, 1972, when five burglars entered the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office complex in Washington.

Subsequent investigations revealed the burglars were actually agents hired by Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President. A long chain of events then followed in which the President and top aides became involved in an extensive coverup of White House sanctioned illegal political activities. The coverup snowballed as Nixon and White House aides attempted to use the prestige and power of the presidency to obstruct justice.

After a two year battle against the news media, government agencies, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and the U.S. Supreme Court, Nixon wound up resigning amid the likelihood that he would not survive a full impeachment vote in the Congress.

Ford's decision to pardon Nixon ended the possible spectacle of private citizen Nixon going on trial and also likely ended Ford's chances for re-election to the presidency in 1976.

Both the decision and its timing came under severe criticism. The pardon was announced by Ford on a Sunday morning, taking advantage of an off-beat time for Washington newsmakers in an attempt to minimize the initial political fallout.

It was a vain attempt, however, as the decision caused a firestorm of anger in the press and indignation among those who wanted to see Nixon go on trial and possibly to jail.

But among others, the decision evoked sympathy for Nixon, the only President ever to resign. Many saw Nixon as a victim of political infighting in Washington and considered much of Nixon's behavior to be no worse than several of his predecessors in the Oval Office.

The result was a further polarization of a nation already traumatized by the events surrounding Watergate.

Years later, Richard Nixon would make a bit of a political comeback, writing books and granting TV interviews commenting on Watergate and international politics.

By contrast, former President Gerald Ford was destined to political obscurity after losing the 1976 election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

On this day in 1995: Senate Ethics committee votes 6-0 to ask for expulsion of Bob Packwood

Start:	Sep 6, '09
Location:	Washington, DC

Robert William "Bob" Packwood, a Republican Senator from Oregon was forced to resign from the United States Senate, under threat of expulsion, in 1995 after allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault of women emerged.

Idaho GOPer Jokes About Hunting Obama

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/27/rex-rammell-idaho-goper-j_n_270751.html
An Idaho Republican gubernatorial hopeful insists he was only joking when he said he'd buy a license to hunt President Barack Obama.

Freudian slip or bad taste?

"A Proud Right-Wing Terrorist"

GOP Representative Wally Herger of California smiles and nods as man decleares himself "a proud, right-wing terrorist."

"Amen, God bless you," Herger told the man, named Bert Stead. "There is a great American."