Month: October 2009

Obama Pounces On Health Insurance Lobby

And if you believe that piece of fantasy, then I have some land in Florida that I will sell by the gallon…..

Recently the insurance lobby left the fold, so to speak, and issued a report saying that if the Baucus bill or one similar is passed then insurance premiums will go up and very considerably.  This report has been proven to be erroneous but it is still quoted as gospel by those on the Right.  This report is about as reliable as those coming from the Lewin Group, which is funded by the insurance industry…so to say that their findings would be cooked is an understatement.

In his defense Obama hit the airways:

This is the unsustainable path we’re on, and it’s the path the insurers want to keep us on. In fact, the insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest – to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions.  And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people. […]

It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, “Take one of these, and call us in a decade.” Well, not this time. The fact is, the insurance industry is making this last-ditch effort to stop reform even as costs continue to rise and our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits, bonuses, and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy – that often actually go toward figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.

Which his statements made me smile….why?…..he is attacking the industry for our behalf…but is he?

He has waffled on his statement in the past, that he would NOT sign a bill that did not have a public option in it…..now he saying that it is not necessary for a reform bill but that he would prefer that it contained an option.

There is more…..the Congress seems to be reluctant to lift the anti-trust exemption of insurance companies that give them a virtual free ride to run rough shod over the consumer.  This exemption allows insurance to be a virtual monopoly which in turn allows them to control the health insurance market…lets them fix prices, eliminate competition and make obscene profits with no need to justify the mistreatment of the insured.

Now that there is a bill in the Senate with a public option (well, sort of) the question now is, will the White House and the Dems truly go after the insurance anti-trust exemption?  If they do I am sure it will be the same sort of watered down bill that gave us the “public option”.  The industry has too much money on the buying of friends in the Congress to ever let something like this get in their way.

Far Right Makes GOP Shiver

I was reading in Politico about what is going on in the ranks of the GOP, in an article written by Jeff Vandehei and Mike Allen:

Many top Republicans are growing worried that the party’s chances for reversing its electoral routs of 2006 and 2008 are being wounded by the flamboyant rhetoric and angry tone of conservative activists and media personalities, according to interviews with GOP officials and operatives.

Congressional leaders talk in private of being boxed in by commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — figures who are wildly popular with the conservative base but wildly controversial among other parts of the electorate, and who have proven records of making life miserable for senators and House members critical of their views or influence.

Some of the leading 2012 candidates are described by operatives as grappling with the same tension. The challenge is to tap into the richest source of energy in the party — the disgust of grass-roots conservative activists with President Barack Obama and their hunger for a full-throated attack on his agenda — without coming off to the broader public as cranky and extreme.

I would like to say that this is a good occurrence that the “real” conservatives are worried about their future in politics…I said I would like to…but that is not the way I see it…..people like the Mitt-ster has done a good job of lying low during the craziness…but that may hurt him in the long run in 2012…it will depend on if the party implodes…..and then there is the chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele….he is suppose to be the front man for the GOP and yet he is echoing the accusations, lies and misinformation that is flying around the conservative talk radio ….that does not bid well for “real” conservatives…..

Then we have Rep, Bachmann from Minnesota who are calling Repubs like Dole and Frist agents of Obama and are non-pro-freedom (her term not mine)…is this what will continue to happen?  The GOP eating their own?  I guess if you think that the people of the US need health care then you are anti-freedom (my term not hers).

I think that the off year elections could be the most telling indicator…..if the GOP cannot capitalize on the rift that the Right wing activists created, then they, the GOP, will be doomed in the 2012 election….unless they can find someone that appears to be more centered in reality than any of the mouths they have now.

On The Road Again

Can you just here old Willie singing in the background?  Maybe you smell his weed burning brightly?  Anyway , enough jocularity……Here I am talking about the Tea Party Express….you know the bus tour full  hating teabaggers?

Yesterday, the Magical Mystery Tour began…the teabagger road show….part 2….

Surely you remember these people…the ones that tote guns, equate Obama with a clown or socialism or fascism, or whatever extreme BS they can come up with like the last round when a sign said “Bury Obama with Kennedy”, in other words wingnuts.

Well guess what?  The bus is to hit the road again on October 25 , travel through 17 states and make about 37 stops for the protests, no doubt FOX will be there….there?  Just where is there?  The “Countdown to Judgment Day” tour, as it is gonna be called, will terminate on November 17 in Orlando.

Remeber back in I believe September?  In many major cities there were numerous of these protests, Chicago, Washington, etc…well this time they will be a bit off the beaten path….and not many will be a city hall or the legislature or campaign headquarters….they will be a little further out than that….

These meetings of protest and disgust will be held in such sites as in LA Griffith Park Pad D, in Amarillo, Texas at John Stiff Memorial Park, picnic area #4, some very interesting sites and about half of the dates do not have a site as of yet….such as the ones in Mississippi and Alabama, or Atlanta  just to mention a couple……

The website says:

Let’s stand up and stop the bailouts, cap and trade, out-of-control spending, government-run healthcare, and higher taxes…….

That is humorous to read such…..But once again this is a rally or should I say rallies for the fringe whacko on the Right.  Wonder where these concerned citizens were when the past admin was running up the deficit, out of control spending…in short, is this genuine concern or just a bunch of nuts that do not like the Prez?   It will NOT be about the things that are mentioned on the site, but rather Obama bashing with all the guns, signs, lies, misinformation.

Federalist #10…….Teabaggers?

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  American History/Current events

First of all, if anyone out there knows what the term “teabagging” means then keep it to yourself, but you will understand why I found the term “teabaggers” so amusing……

This past summer we had our protests….fondly known as the teabagger protests…..these people met and marched and protested and yada yada….but what does that have to do with the Federalist Papers?

Federalist #10:

Madison begins perhaps the most famous of the Federalist papers by stating that one of the strongest arguments in favor of the Constitution is the fact that it establishes a government capable of controlling the violence and damage caused by factions. Madison defines that factions are groups of people who gather together to protect and promote their special economic interests and political opinions. Although these factions are at odds with each other, they frequently work against the public interests, and infringe upon the rights of others.

Read it again….James Madison did a pretty good job of describing the “teabaggers”.

First this faction known as “teabaggers” went after Obama because of non-existent taxes…then they went after Obama over health reform….now they are after Repubs that they feel do not stand with the GOP on other issues….they are attacking people like Lindsey Graham as a RINO…only a matter of time before they hit on the two Senators from Maine….

Okay, I guess that Federal #10 by Madison was basically about those factions within the government….but if Madison were alive today he would put these “teabaggers” in the same category….Fed 10 was a call for bi-partisanship, Madison saw the dangers of being partisan…..

Teabaggers, of course there are many others, but for the sake of this post, it is they, are part of the factions that Madison was referring to in #10…..these people are forcing the country into two seperate camps and in doing so are forcing partisanship…….

If Madison was writing this today….he would be referring to all those that are fighting against the will of the people…that was my scholarly reaction…..now for the real deal….the founders, including Madison, their thoughts were never what was best for the people, but rather what was best for the government and the country…..the people were a necessary evil that had to be dealt with…..

But the teabaggers and others are using the Constitution to defend what they are attempting to do…….(that is for another post)…….

Wait! Could That Be A Public Option?

Holy Moly!  I may have been wro…..wro……mistaken when I said in past posts that the public option was near dead in the Congress and I predicted that it would not be part of any bill that is sent to the prez……it is beginning to appear that I could be mistaken….

I was trying to remain silent on the whole health reform thing until iot was closer to a final count….but as hard as I tried..I could not do it…..

I guess I can thank the CBO for its latest report…it is on the costs of the House Health Reform Bill…..it stated three things that jumped out at me:

1–it would cost less than the $900 billion predicted

2–it would reduce the deficit over 10 years

3–it would cover a great portion of the uninsured in the US

Now this is good news…..those three items were a sticking point for the Blue Dogs and now they can shut the hell up and support the bill like they should have from the beginning….News has come out as I am writing that the House has a commitment for the 218 votes the Dems need,,,,another piece of good news….

Okay the Baucus bill was a good report from the CBO and now they gave a favorable report to the House bill with a robust public option…if this does not get the ball moving then I worry that the Dems are beyond help….

It will be fascinating to see what the Repubs will do now……the CBO report in both cases shot a hole in their arguments the size of a football field….about the only thing they will have left is the trivial BS of the misinformation offensive of the summer.

Damn! It Is Working!

I guess you would like to know what is working, huh?  All the clap trap about the idea that climate change/global warming is nothing more than a made up phenomena of the Left, the Liberals, the …..basically, all the propaganda out there disputing the existence of global warming…..

After a couple of years of attacks by conservative, pro-business lobbyist against any reforms that would lead to the reduction of green house gases and all their hard word, even though most of it is misleading and in some cases out right lies, has had a positive effect for the lobbies that get paid huge dollars for their efforts.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper has a story about the successes of the anti-warming groups:

The number of Americans who believe in global warming has plummeted, falling 20% in two years, a survey said today.Only 57% of Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming, said the poll of 1,500 people by the Pew Research Centre for the People & the Press.

That is a fall of 77% from 2007. The number of people who believe that human activity is causing global warming also fell to just 36%.

The public uncertainty about the evidence behind global warming comes as the Senate prepares to begin debate next week on climate change legislation. Yesterday, 18 scientific organisations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming.

The decline was sharpest among independent voters and Republicans. Republicans in Congress have almost uniformly lined up against climate change legislation. There were also regional differences, with people in the mid-west and Rocky mountain states less inclined to see climate change as a serious problem.

But the perceived lack of concrete evidence for global warming did not necessarily hurt the prospects of voting on climate change legislation, Dimock said. Half of Americans polled remain in favour of putting limits and carbon emissions and making companies pay for their emissions — the basics of the cap and trade bill now before the Senate.

A majority, 56%, also want America to join other countries in a global agreement on climate change.

If you consider the results of the survey then the money spent by companies was well spent…..all the misleading BS like “clean coal” is working, or that drilling off shore will give the US independence from foreign oil, are among the most popular twists being used by the lobbyists….and Damn!  It is working!

Ladies? Is This The Party For You?

May I please see a show of hands of the ladies that are members of the GOP?

This is the party of the absurd…sorry…but if you are a woman and still think the GOP is the Party that best represents your interests in the political world…then you should hold hands with Rep. Bachmann and pray…..this party seems to dislike blacks and hispanics and now it has shown its true colors in its thinking towards women…..

About now…you are wondering just what the Hell I am talking about….right?

I read this story in personalmoneystore.com written by Steve Tarlow:

Following one of the more vile incidents against a woman in American history, the Senate has voted in favor of Sen. Al Franken’s amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that gives the government the right to withhold defense contracts (no small cash loans, either) from companies like Halliburton/KBR (not just that company) that deny employees from taking “workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court,” reports Think Progress.

If you aren’t already aware, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR co-workers in Iraq during the year 2005. After the tragic incident, she was imprisoned in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed. If small cash loans could have bought a human conscience, perhaps her captors could have found it within themselves to stop.

She was told that if she went against the company’s mandatory arbitration clause and sought treatment and justice outside, she’d lose her job.

30 Repub Senators voted against giving the woman any satisfaction for being gang raped…..30 out of 40 Repub senators…..who were the infamous Repubs that voted against the issue?  Glad you asked!

  • Alexander (R-TN)
  • Barrasso (R-WY)
  • Bond (R-MO)
  • Brownback (R-KS)
  • Bunning (R-KY)
  • Burr (R-NC)
  • Chambliss (R-GA)
  • Coburn (R-OK)
  • Cochran (R-MS)
  • Corker (R-TN)
  • Cornyn (R-TX)
  • Crapo (R-ID)
  • DeMint (R-SC)
  • Ensign (R-NV)
  • Enzi (R-WY)
  • Graham (R-SC)
  • Gregg (R-NH)
  • Inhofe (R-OK)
  • Isakson (R-GA)
  • Johanns (R-NE)
  • Kyl (R-AZ)
  • McCain (R-AZ)
  • McConnell (R-KY)
  • Risch (R-ID)
  • Roberts (R-KS)
  • Sessions (R-AL)
  • Shelby (R-AL)
  • Thune (R-SD)
  • Vitter (R-LA)
  • Wicker (R-MS)

If you think these guys shafted the woman in her pursuit of justice and your senator/s is on the list then write, email, call them and voice your displeasure with them.

If this is the way the Repubs are trying to reinvent themselves to move into the 21st century then they are more idiotic than I ever anticipated….with all their moves they seem to move further and further away from reality….not a good start for any reinvention of self…..

You Call This Education?

Daily Agitator

I have written a couple times about just how poor our education system is and that it is NOT educating the children…..

Let me reiterate….

The US is lagging behind Kazakhstan in math and science…and in my state the test scores for the US are the bottom…number 50……there is more……recently a study was done in Oklahoma and the high schoolers were asked who was the first president of the US…only 18% (I believe) knew the answer was Washington…

In a recent show Jay Leno went out on the street to ask some geography questions…he aired a couple of the answers…..he asked a woman in her mid twenties what country was our northern neighbor…her answer was Mexico…..Then he asked a male about the same age where Lap Land was?……his answer was is that where Santa lives?……oh, there is more…..finally he asked another same age woman what was the official language of Canada…he let her know there were two……her answer was Canadianese…….

I now asked the question that I have asked before….what the Hell are they teaching these kids in school?

In the South where I live they spend time teach the kids about abstinence in sex….and that has worked so well that my state leads the nation in teen pregnancies…..

I recently gave a lecture at the local community college on foreign policy and I began the class with passing out blank map of the world and ask them to identify Iraq and Afghanistan…..out of 22 students I got 3 accurate answers…..and this was in 2003 when Americans were fighting and dying in the two countries…..

This whole thing scares me…Americans are learning,  if they are learning,  then they are not being taught subjects that need to be taught….they are being taught the superficial stuff that makes them ignorant and hollow…..

We want them to be “good” citizens but we do not teach them the stuff they need to be that “good” citizen….we want them to vote but we do not teach them anything about the system that they are suppose to be in control of when they get to voting age……

Please do not misunderstand…there are a wealth of excellent teachers out there…but unfortunately they can only teach what they are allowed to teach…..the state is failing future generations and we only have ourselves to thank….why?……we find other things that are made a priority and in doing so education suffers badly….

Is It Propaganda?

To preface my post I need to include a bit of personal history….I was a grunt in Vietnam…wounded a couple of times….and found NOTHING positive about my experience in combat…with the exception that it gave me a burning desire to see that Americans would not die needlessly for some vague concept issued by the government…my concept was the “Domino Theory”.

The Army Times is reporting on the “positive” aspects of combat:

Research appears to show that many people can emerge from traumatic experiences with greater self-confidence, a keener sense of compassion and appreciation for life, says Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director of the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. Cornum and other experts call this concept post-traumatic growth.

Although the military focuses attention on troops who develop mental health conditions in combat, Cornum says, the majority of war veterans do not suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other problems.

During remarks at the American Enterprise Institute recently in Washington, Tedeschi said some servicemembers found the changes in their lives so profound after combat, they expressed gratitude for having gone through it — even if it cost them permanent physical damage.

The experience forces survivors to “try to figure out ‘Who am I now? … What’s my life supposed to be about?’” Tedeschi says. “We certainly would like to find ways of helping people move in this direction, because it’s a way of mitigating the affects of this trauma.”

All this study was given to a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and it therefore smells like propaganda……they are attempting to try and put some sort of positive spin on the war…..let me state for the record….THERE IS NOTHING POSITIVE ABOUT WAR!

Could this be a response to the latest poll that shows Americans are all for the invasion of Pakistan to get the bad guys?  Americans also overwhelmingly do not think that Afghanistan is another Vietnam, that from the same poll…let me ask….I already know how short the American memory is….but does the names Laos and Cambodia mean anything to them?  (I pause here for reflection)……thought that it would not mean anything….let me help…..Laos and Cambodia were countries that bordered on Vietnam and we crossed the borders in pursuit of the bad guys….remember how well that went (another pause for reflection)…..please do not hurt yourself…it did little to change the outcome of the war in the end.

“Those who do not remember history are destined to repeat it”…….sound familiar?

How Progressives were DUPED!

It began at the ballot box…the primaries….the ads…the election……

Back in the day there was a candidate that brought such hope to the progressives, they had found their champion….a fresh face….a winning style and an oratory like no one could ever imagine….progressives joined in and cheered and voted for a soon to be a great man and  thge sun will shine again on the Democratic Party.

Sorry guys……but you were DUPED by bullsh!t!

Read:

10 Things To Consider In The Voting Booth

NO Change Is Coming!

What Change?

Read those and you will see that I have said that NO real change is coming….so far I have been proven correct…..look at health reform…

Somewhere I recall Pres. Obama saying, “I woill not sign a health reform bill without the public option”…….strong words and a delight to the ears of us liberals…..but…just yesterday the trained monkeys of the admin had this to say…….

Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Obama believes the public plan is still the “best possible choice,’’ but she said he’s not demanding it.

“It’s not the defining piece of health care. It’s whether we achieve both cost control, coverage, as well as the choice,’’ Emanuel said.

Now Progressives is that the man you voted for in 2008?

So the strong hard words of the past are just that…..from the past…..looks like the Progressive Obama has made his deals with the insurance companies.

I have said “I told you so” but it does not seem to set in to the mind of the voter…..they continue to vote for the person or they have no freakin’ idea how Washington and politics work.

They delude themselves that they are well versed on the issues….but all they really have is the talking points given to them by the 30 second story on the tube.

The American voter would do better if they spent less time watching the nauseating crap billed as “Reality TV” and check into the issues that will control their lives….But as usual I am pissing into the wind….why?…..I am dealing with low information voters listen to the morons on the air….

Health reform is NOT the only area that they were duped on….look at war…look at energy….look at special interests…..nothing is changing…..business as usual…just as and others said would happen…..someone needs to remove their heads from their anal cavities…that pie in the sky just hit you in the face…..happy?

Now I ask the Progressives…how you like him now?