Howard Dean: Kill the Senate Bill & Start Over!

Dr. Howard Dean says this is "basically the Mitt Romney bill in Massachusetts except it doesn't insure as high a percentage of people."

On MSNBC with Dr. Nancy, Dean reiterates his view that it is necessary to kill the Senate bill!

"We can't cave into the interests of special interest groups."

On the issue of pre-existing conditions, Dean says that the "insurance companies can raise rates up to 30%. Basically there is no cost control in this bill."

Dean says "critical mistakes were made early on when it was decided not to go for reconciliation."

Dean believes that Democrats are not tough enough. "Democrats don't have to be mean but they have to be tough."

Crooks and Liars also has the story.

Fanning the Flames of Joe Lieberman

William Rivers Pitt has a truthout Op-Ed about, Joe Lieberman and the Health Care Train Wreck.

When last we heard from Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, he was throwing sand into the gears of the Democratic push for health care reform by declaring he would filibuster any legislation containing the so-called public option. "I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement," said the senator back in November. "The government going into the health insurance business - I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote."

At the same time, Lieberman indicated his plans to actively campaign for GOP candidates during the 2010 midterms.

"There's a hard core of partisan, passionate, hardcore Republicans," he said at the time. "There's a hard core of partisan Democrats on the other side. And in between is the larger group, which is people who really want to see the right thing done, or want something good done for this country and them - and that means, sometimes, the better choice is somebody who's not a Democrat."

How did Democrats respond?

For some reason, these twin insults did not motivate the Democratic Congressional leadership to expunge this hypocritical cretin from their ranks. Lieberman kept his committee chairmanship and was not even mildly censured by his colleagues.

Biting back the hand that pats your head.

One month later, the decision to ignore his brazen disregard for his colleagues has come back to bite us all, for Mr. Lieberman has once again elbowed his way into the center of the health reform debate, and with a vengeance. "Mr. Lieberman threatened on national television to join the Republicans in blocking the health care bill, President Obama's chief domestic initiative," reported The New York Times on Tuesday. "Within hours, he was in a meeting at the Capitol with top White House officials.

Once again the Democratic response was to grovel at Lieberman's feet.

And on Monday night, Democratic senators emerged from a tense 90-minute closed-door session and suggested that they were on the verge of bowing to Mr. Lieberman's main demands: that they scrap a plan to let people buy into Medicare beginning at age 55, and scotch even a fallback version of a new government-run health insurance plan, or public option."

Sickening and Appalling

This turn of events is sickening and appalling on a couple of different levels.

First, of course, is the shameless reality that is Mr. Lieberman himself. During his 2004 presidential run, and again during his 2006 Senate campaign, Lieberman actively supported the public option's inclusion in any health care reform, and specifically supported the expansion of Medicare. As late as this past September, Lieberman continued to support such an expansion, as reported by The Connecticut Post. "As to how 47 million uninsured will afford coverage," said The Post, "Lieberman said only 12 million don't have insurance because they cannot afford it. By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured, he said."

That was then, and this is now. In one of the most astounding examples of political flip-floppery, Lieberman opened this week by declaring himself dead-set against the very health care reform policies he once championed, and once again announced his intention to don a Republican cloak and tear up the Democrats' legislative efforts. Again.

Why?

One would have to be deep into a severe state of personal denial to believe Lieberman has legitimate concerns about the impending health care legislation, given the fact that he very recently supported the exact provisions he now wants removed or destroyed. The only sensible explanation would seem to be that Lieberman is actively needling the Democratic leadership, and has become such an obnoxious obstructionist only to keep his name in the news. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo explains the situation, and what it means going forward:

The key issue senate Democrats now have in dealing with Joe Lieberman isn't his position on the Medicare Buy-In. They need to confront the problem that Lieberman isn't negotiating in good faith. No surprise that Republicans are giddy with what a problem he's creating for Harry Reid & Co. But in my conversations with them, it's as clear to them as it is to anyone else that he's now basically mocking his Democratic colleagues by moving the goal posts every time a new agreement is struck.

This puts the Democrats in an extremely difficult, politically untenable position. Yes, they need 60 votes. But they're not going to be able to hang on to Lieberman's vote long enough to get the bill passed. That now seems unquestionably clear. People who say that the Dems should just move to reconciliation don't necessarily realize the difficulties involved - either procedurally or politically, in terms of losing even more Democratic votes. Personally, I'd like to see them try it. But I don't know if it's possible.

Until a couple days ago I was close to certain a health care bill would pass. I still feel relatively confident one will simply because the Dems just don't have any choice but to pass one. Once it is passed, if it is, it's definitely time for the Democratic caucus to strip Lieberman of all the benefits he receives as a member of the Democratic caucus. But that doesn't accomplish anything at the moment. The only path I can see for the Dems is that they need to try to put 60 votes together with Sen. Snowe. Yes, that sounds crazy to me too. But I think she actually has a set of policy priorities that could be met. I don't think that's true with Lieberman. So further negotiating just means more game-playing.

The Solution?

The solution to all this, one would think, would be for the Democratic leadership in Congress to wrap Lieberman in bright red wrapping paper, slap on a bow, and ship him across the aisle to his ideological compatriots in the GOP as an early Christmas present. Strip him of his leadership position, show him the door, and publicly denounce him as nothing more than a stinking chunk of cholesterol clogging up the arteries of progress.

But no.

Of course that isn't going to happen. Instead, Democrats appear poised to once again knuckle under to this fraud and further denude what has already become a half-a-loaf bill. According to several sources, Rahm Emmanuel and the White House are actively pressuring the Democratic leadership in Congress to give Lieberman whatever he wants in order to pass some form of health reform legislation, no matter how ragged, damaging and useless the final product may turn out to be.

What about Joe?

The Senate won't vote on health care reform until next week, and the process has changed course two dozen times already, so the outcome of this latest idiot eruption is far from certain, but the writing does appear to be on the wall this time around. Joe Lieberman doesn't give a tinker's damn about the people he represents, the party that coddles him, his own positions on key issues or anything else beyond getting his mug in front of television cameras in the guise of someone who actually matters.

What about the Obama Administration?

The Obama administration is once again moonwalking away from doing the right thing on this issue, and the jellyfish pond that is Congress appears poised to do what jellyfish do: float, flop, flounder and drift with the scum in this rising tide.

In short, this whole thing is about to become a train wreck of galactic proportions. Stay tuned.

This isn't an issue of politicians standing up for the issues that they believe in. Once again we have a politicians acting on behalf of their own interests rather than the interests of the people who voted them into office and who they were elected to represent. This reality includes Lieberman as well as Obama and his administration.

Birthers, Jewthers, Whatever

Andy Borowitz says, Look who's Jewish now!

Obama Gives Hanukkah Wishes in Hebrew; Birthers now Claim He Was Born in Israel

Birth Certificate Reads 'Baruch Shmobama'

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - President Barack Obama's decision to wish Jews around the world a happy Hanukkah in Hebrew has added more fuel to the movement of the so-called Birthers, who now claim that Mr. Obama was born in Israel.

Orly Taitz, a leading Birther spokesperson, told CNN today that she had in her possession a birth certificate for Mr. Obama that was issued in Tel Aviv.

"If you look at the birth certificate, you will see the name he was born with, Baruch Shmobama," she said.

Six Foods to Absolutely Avoid!!!

According to AlterNet, "once upon a time, some brave scientists had a noble dream of ridding food of nutrients. That dream is closer to reality than ever."

Here are the 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods.

Once upon a time, some brave scientists had a noble dream of ridding our food of the plague of nutrients.

Today, at the start of the 21st century, the miracle of food processing has brought that dream closer to reality than ever before. From vitamin-free "blueberry bits" to spray-can cheese to avocado-free guacamole, food scientists have worked tirelessly to bring us new and exciting foods that contain as little nutrition as possible. Even apparently "healthy" foods such as soups have been ingeniously overloaded with so much salt you feel as if you’re eating French fries.

In this article, we’ll provide a handy guide to six uniquely unnatural processed foods that will hopefully serve as a blueprint for humanity’s eventual triumph over the tyrannical fist of Mother Nature.

1. Spray-Can 'Easy Cheese'

2. Oreo Cookie Death Filling

3. Condensed Soups

4. Spam

5. Artificially Flavored Blueberry Bits

6. Kraft’s Avocado-Free Guacamole

Read the article for why each of these products should be avoided!

It's Time to Grow Up

The following excerpt is from several speeches given by Joe Bageant at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University at Lexington, and the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago. He was invited to speak on American consciousness and what he dubbed "The American Hologram," in his book, Deer Hunting With Jesus. They are put together in this article, Escape from the Zombie Food Court.

Yet it all seems so normal. Certainly the psychologists who have prescribed so much Prozac that it now shows up in the piss of penguins, saw what they did as necessary. And the doctors who enable the profitable blackmail practiced by the medical industries see it all as part of the most technologically advanced medical system in the world. And the teacher, who sees no problem with 20% of her fourth graders being on Ritalin, in the name of "appropriate behavior," is happy to have control of her classroom. None of these feel like dupes or pawns of a corporate state. It seems like just the way things are. Just modern American reality. Which is a corporate generated reality.

Given the financialization of all aspects of our culture and lives, even our so-called leisure time, it is not an exaggeration to say that true democracy is dead and a corporate financial state has now arrived. [...]

So how is it that we Americans came to live in such a parallel universe? How is it that we prefer such things as Facebook (don't get me wrong, I'm on Facebook too), and riding around the suburbs with an iPod plugged into our brain looking for fried chicken in a Styrofoam box? Why prefer these expensive earth destroying things over love and laughter with real people, and making real human music together with other human beings -- lifting our voices together, dancing and enjoying the world that was given to us? Absolutely for free.

And the answer is this: We suffer under a mass national hallucination. Americans, regardless of income or social position, now live in a culture entirely perceived inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation and world that does not exist. Our national reality is staged and held together by media, chiefly movie and television images. We live in a "theater state." [...]

The TV goldfish bowl

You may or may not watch much television, but the average American spends almost one-third of his or her waking life doing so. The neurological implications of this are so profound that they cannot even be comprehended in words, much less described by them. Television constitutes our reality in the same fashion that water constitutes the environment in a goldfish bowl. It's everywhere and affects everything, even when we are not watching it. Television regulates our national perceptions and our interior ideations of who we Americans are. It schedules our cultural illusions of choice. It pre-selects candidates in our elections. By the way, as much as I like Obama, I fully understand he is there because he was selected by the illusion producing machinery of television, and citizens under its influence. It is hard to underestimate the strength of these illusions. [...]

It is fair to say that television and the American culture are the same thing. More than any other factor, it is the glue of society and the mediator of our experience. American culture is stone cold dead without it. If all the TVs in America went black, so would most of America's collective consciousness and knowledge. Because corporate media have replaced nearly all other previous forms of accumulated knowledge. [...]

The media have colonized our inner lives like a virus. The virus is not going away. This commoditization of our human consciousness is probably the most astounding, most chilling accomplishment of American capitalist culture. [...]

Americans are conditioned to reject any affective attachment that does not have a happy ending. And in that, we remain mostly a nation of children. We never get to grow up.

Much truth in Bageant's assessment of society. The schism in our society between right and left, religious or not, war and peace is deepened and made more viral from relentless media hype and corporate control. Truth has certainly been compromised in our corporate driven society.

The Ice Melt...

Small ice figures are seen on the stairs of Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, Germany, On Sept. 2, 2009, as part of an art project by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). One thousand ice figures by Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo were placed there to melt to symbolize the effect of global warming. The figures melted within 30 minutes. Photo: AP

Promises, Pressures and Busted Banks



Originally published on Friday, November 13, 2009

Barack Obama Campaign Promise - October 27, 2007

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."

We still have troops in Iraq while we are increasing our troops in Afghanistan. So much for campaign promises. Barack, I am disappointed!

Obama is not the problem. We are!

Chris Hedges is fed up with liberals. He thinks Liberals are Useless.

Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. [...] He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered. [...]

The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.

Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens?

The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back? We may lose if we step outside the mainstream, but at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity. [...]

If liberals had even a bit of their fortitude we could have avoided this mess. But they don’t. So here we are again, begging Obama to be Obama. He is Obama. Obama is not the problem. We are.

Whether you agree with Hedges or not, it is fair to say that being a Democrat does not equate with being a liberal or a progressive. The Blue Dog or 'conserative' Democrats exemplify that point. Not only are they useless when it comes to liberal/progressive values but they are antithetical to the concept.

Add to the equation, the supposedly 'liberal' Democrats who don't stand up for what they say they believe in. They don't fight for the values they say they represent. They don't support the issues that are important to their constituents. Democracy is about representation. When our representatives fail us, then the system fails us.

The Story of Oil & Water

The environmental impact of oil production in the Athabasca Oil Sands

H2oil animated sequences from Dale Hayward on Vimeo.

How and Why the Health Insurance Industry Wants to Kill Health Insurance Reform

Two words explain why the health insurance industry does not want health reform: Status Quo! That actually translates to one word: Money!

The insurance companies using lobbyist and think tanks have spent a fortune in order to keep the status quo. ThinkProgress now has the story on how lobbyists from Blue Cross Blue Shield are working behind the scene to have health reform declared unconstitutional.

ThinkProgess has documented how the private health insurance industry is waging a duplicitous, “two-faced” campaign to kill health reform. Because the industry understands that the public views it in a largely negative light, the industry presents itself as proactively working hand-in-hand with legislators to produce reform. However, behind the scenes, the industry is coordinating a massive effort to kill all reform — employing attacks from front groups, allied politicians, think tanks, lobbyists, and right-wing media.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which is a lobbying group representing 39 independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans, is also engaged in this two-faced campaign. Like most of industry, the BCBS Association says it fully supports the concept of health reform, but continually demands drastic changes to the bills in Congress. Some have begun to question the BCBS Association’s claim of support given its new study attacking reform legislation in the Senate. The criticism of BCBS is bolstered by a new revelation that BCBS Association lobbyists are helping to orchestrate a right-wing movement to invalidate all of health reform.[...]

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), founded in 1973 by conservative activist Paul Weyrich, is a DC-based front group which helps state lawmakers craft corporate-friendly legislation. As the Atlantic has noted, ALEC developed template health care “states’ rights,” legislation to declare aspects of health reform unconstitutional. ALEC has promoted this “tenther” legislation using its network of mostly far right Republican state lawmakers. The bills, which have been adopted in some form in 24 states so far, aim to invalidate federal regulations of health insurance, the public option and the individual mandate using the Tenther Amendment. [...]

Private insurers have already been caught using a stealth lobbying firm to send employees to rowdy town halls (and radical tea party events), sharing lobbyists with slash-and-burn anti-health reform attack groups, and paying a number of conservative pundits who regularly appear in major media outlets to slam health reform. Now that it is clear that BCBS helped write the script for the radical tenther movement, any claim that the industry supports reform must be viewed with heightened skepticism.

Wendell Potter, a former VP of communications at health insurance giant CIGNA, spelled out precisely how insurance companies have prepared to defeat meaningful reform.

WATCH:

Gaming the System

The Democrats want a public option. The Republicans don't. In an attempt to ridicule the public option, two Republicans, Senators Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and David Vitter (R-La.), sponsored an amendment (SA 2864) to the healthcare bill which would require all members of Congress to use the Public Option, if it is included in the Senate Health Care bill.

Via Crooks and Liars:

Sherrod Brown explains to David Shuster why he decided to co-sponsor Tom Coburn and David Vitter's amendment which would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option ends up being passed in the health care bill.

Brown: Yeah, you often find out about amendments going on on the Senate floor and if my staff and I like one of the amendments we'll call an office and say, Republican or Democrat, I'd like to co-sponsor. We do that as a matter of course it happens across party lines all the time, hundreds of times a day. We did that with Sen. Coburn, nine times we said we wanted to co-sponsor--usually it takes once and they say yes--I've always accepted that. So has everybody I know in the Senate. Nine times we asked to co-sponsor and their office either just said we'll get back to you or ignored our calls and our emails because it was all a sham.

They don't, they clearly don't like the public option. They were making fun of it. Their whole game is to delay and deceive and to play political games. And when they offer an amendment saying sign up for the public option to force--tell members of Congress they have to join the public option--I think I should. I think we all should but they don't evenn like it themselves. And so it's just a little partisan game they're playing, and this is too serious for them to play those kind of games.

The bottom line is that all the compromises that the Republicans and blue-dog Democrats want made are really shams and create an ineffective the public option.

From Salon's War Room--Coburn, Vitter plan to ridicule public option backfires:

Now, as the Senate's debate over its version of reform legislation kicks into gear, two Republicans -- Sens. Tom Coburn and David Vitter -- have picked up that theme and are running with it. The two authored an amendment they want attached to the bill; it would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option the final legislation creates, if it includes one.

Both Coburn and Vitter are vehement opponents of the public option, and they're hoping to prove themselves right by showing that no senator who's in his or her right mind would want their healthcare covered by it. They've gotten a surprise, though: Genuine support for their amendment from someone on the other side of the aisle -- and a proponent of the public option, at that -- Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Continue reading...

Senators Franken, Dodd, and Mikulski also joined Sen. Brown in co-sponsoring the amendment. Here's Sen. Franken weighing in on the Senate floor.

If members of Congress don't want to receive the healthcare that they are voting on, why should we. A robust public option is necessary and and this stunt shows that anything less is not acceptable.

Are We There Yet?

​

Holiday No-No's

A list of 10 companies to avoid when buying holiday gifts.

Air America put together a list of companies that you should think twice about before handing them your money. Their research is based on descriptions from The Blue Pages: A Directory of Companies Rated By Their Politics And Practices. This is a super handy little book that tells you about companies' environmental, human rights and labor practices and also which political parties they give money to and how much. There are probably hundreds of ‘10 worst' (or best) lists you could come up with from the book, but Air America at least got the ball rolling.

Here's a little info on what they found. You can read the whole thing on their website and you should, there's lots more there. Also check out the book. It's handy to take along shopping. Or maybe it will just be an iPhone app soon anyway (or maybe it is?).

1. Children's Place: "It gets its products from places with human rights and labor violations and had to pay $1.5 million in a settlement alleging that they violated the Securities Act.

2. Hanes: "...went the extra step to be cited for ‘egregious labor violations.'" Oh, and they have not even an attempt at an anti-discrimination policy for sexual orientation and gender identity.

3. JC Penny: "D- on Green America's scorecard and D+ from the NAACP."

4. Limited Brands (this includes Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works): "The now scarily common ‘sourced from countries with widespread, well-documented human and labor rights abuses' rears its head here..."

5. IBM: "It's been sued for improperly converting employee pension plans and for exposing them to toxic chemicals." Oh and also for "aiding and abetting South Africa's apartheid regime."

6. Albertsons: The gamut of really bad labor stuff — "Unpaid overtime, punishing employees for opposing discrimination policies ... intimidates workers into refusing unions ..." and the list unfortunately goes on.

7. Chiquita: This is a good summary: "Everything is contaminated."

8. L'Oreal: Still getting it for their lack of policy on animal testing (oh, and using banned chemicals).

9. Target: Bad on the environment, racial discrimination and of course ‘‘sourced from countries with widespread, well-documented human and labor rights abuses.'"

10. Wal-Mart: Obvi!

Sadly, this is just a few of the companies out there that you should avoid. I'm sure we can come up with more, but better yet, what are the 10 companies that deserve our cash?

If It's Not One Mistake It's Another

Via The Seattle Times:

Sarah Palin, in her new book "Going Rogue," incorrectly credited a quote — in short, "Our land is everything to us ... our grandfathers paid for it with their lives" — to legendary UCLA coach John Wooden instead of Cheyenne activist John Wooden Legs.

Bill Littlejohn commented: "I can't wait to get to the part where George Washington Carver crosses the Delaware."

GOP Raises New Hope For Leadership

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP (via The Onion)