This President rocks. It's daunting to think about how many warehouses of socialist mops and vats of extra strength socialist Lysol we'll need to clean up Republican Texas.
Aside from the need for socialist mops, the really good news this week is that it looks like we are getting closer to HCR that includes a public option. We have the AHIP (American Health Insurance Plans) to thank for this. According to Paul Krugman of the New York Times AHIP's threat to increase rates b/c it didn't like the Baucus bill backfired.
A Hatchet Job So Bad It's Good
It seems that a bunch of selfish greed mongering fat cats had become so desperate and crazed by the mere thought of losing one penny that the fat cats blew up the very building they were protecting.
Shall we cry 'em a river folks?
I didn't think so.
Meanwhile, there were other pressing developments at the U.N and in the U.S. Congress:
Big thanks to the 44 Diaries for sharing this with us.
As we know by now, there is very little, if any, competition in the health insurance industry. Some states have only one provider. Everyone and that would be everyone involved in the discussions about health care reform knows this is the case nationwide.
So why is the very notion of introducing competition into the health insurance industry such a big deal for Congress? It should be a no brainer. I mean, isn't capitalism and the belief in free markets as the be all and end all of everything perfect and sacred all about competition?
If members of Congress truly embrace the principles of competitive capitalism they would not obstruct health care reform that includes a public option. Indeed, by resisting a competitive force in the health insurance industry Republicans, especially, clearly demonstrate their unbending support for non-competitive monopolies.
Monopolies!? But I thought that is what Communism is all about.
Yesterday MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan had a debate with Betsy McCaughey, a well known Republican opponent of health care reform. Her remarks about health care reform and its impact on seniors have been so extreme that AARP found it necessary to call her out. The organization said her remarks bordered on the cruel.
Cruella McCaughey obviously did not like Ratigan's questions, especially when he described the current state of health insurance as
Corporate Communism.
Predictably, when a Republican does not like the questions, (s)he will hammer the interviewer. When an interviewer will not let a Republican hack spew talking point BS non-stop, the hack will always go for the jugular.
There they go again. Texas Republicans continue to bring embarrassment and shame to the people of Texas. This time Kay Bailey Hutchison is busted for lying on national TV. She called the public option in health care reform a "government takeover."
Please. Enough already. No more lies!
No wonder Texas is the butt of national derision and provides great material in the stupidity and jackassery departments for late night comedy.
Reality Check. What a public option really does mean.
My U.S. House Rep (Houston) never fails to embarrass the living daylights out of many of his constituents. That would be those of us who are not invited to Culberson's orchestrated town hall meetings.
GOP Playbook, Chapter I: When you don't like the question posed by a journalist or if you simply can't handle it, change the subject.
Chapter 2: If the journalist won't let you change the subject, ties you into a pretzel and if you fall into his/her trap, attack the interviewer's network.
What happens when none of the above works?
Play dumb.
Or
Throw a tantrum. Look like a deer caught in the headlights because you really, really believe your own fabricated spin.
It was so very naive and silly of me to suggest that the GOP should step up and take responsibility, as any adult would do, by calling a halt to the brown shirt shout downs at town hall meetings on healthcare reform.
Silly, silly me. That won't happen. Never. Ever. Even if hell freezes over and the entire country is in the throes of death, the answer remains to be no, never, in your dreams, not even if hell freezes over.
Despite GOP cries for freedom, its flag waving, its prominence of lapel wearing flag pins, its highly orchestrated scenarios of patriotism and noble words about freedom, the GOP's behavior has nothing to do with any of the principles mentioned above.
Actions speak louder than words. Shouting down and shutting out the questions and opinions that fellow Americans want to ask and share with their elected representative is:
anti-democratic,
anti-patriotic and
anti-American.
When political rhetoric goes over the top, inaction by a party's leadership is the same as blind acquiescence.
According to former right wing Republican and evangelical Christian leader, Frank Schaeffer, the GOP, its conservative pundits and the self-serving corporate sharks in the healthcare industry know no bounds in pulling off what is best for them.
For right wing Republicans, conservative pundits, the corporate sharks and their now enabled fruit loop nut jobs, it is a fight to the death.
According to the some of the renowned Viet Nam War draft evaders and right wing war hawks
Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Bill Blunt, Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Phil Gramm, John Cornyn, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage
Nancy Pelosi personally ordered the CIA to find a link between Iraq and Al-Qaida. The GOP sissy boys also insist that when no links between the two evil doers could be found, Nancy the D Girl unilaterally ordered heinous torture to bring about the results the sissy boy cowards needed to gin up their war on Iraq.
Hats off to Ed Shultz of MSNBC for calling the Sissy Boys out on their psycho babble.
As one would expect Karl Rove blatantly lied about Senator Arlen Specter's motivation for switching his Party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
In a statement issued earlier today, Senator Specter said his former Party had moved too far right.
Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.
Speaking from FOX Looney Tunes News, Rove said Specter had lurched left.
(Really solid post w/ lots of videos. - promoted by Phillip Martin)
First, from the Texas wing of The Party of Torture and Tax Cuts.
Senator John Cornyn, prominent member of the Party of Torture and willing player in the Bush Administration's
Journey to Depravity must think Democrats are quaking in their boots because, according to The Huffington Post he attempted to bully and blackmail them on the torture issue.
Cornyn apparently prefers to sweep the recent revelations of torture under the rug. That or pin the blame on Democrats who served on the Foreign Intelligence Committee at the time, and/or stick it to low level military and CIA officers at the bottom of the torture chain of command.
If Democrats insist on probing the Bush administration's program of detainee torture, they'd better be careful, a senior Senate Republican said Tuesday, because they might find blood on their own hands as well.
"To sit quietly and to let this happen and then to come back later and say people ought to be prosecuted criminally, not just here in the United States but perhaps internationally, to me is inconsistent, to say the least," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
According to Gail Collins of the New York Times (see below) Rick Perry and other Republicans are behaving like gerbils that just bit an electric wire.
I don't think anyone could have said it better. Ms. Collins is absolutely right and she is not the only one who thinks so.
The words "looney talk" "nuts" and "whacko world" are the terms used by Hardball's Chris Matthews when he refers to Rick Perry and Tom Delay's views on secession and state sovereignty.
So, we've been hearing a lot of chatter on cable TV this week about a Fox News/GOP Tea Party Revolution. Fox News and the right wing fringe of the GOP have obviously gone completely bat bleep crazy over something. They are screaming day in and day about something. I am not sure what it is at this point. I've heard rants like "taxation without representation."
Huh? As I've mentioned before, we had an election recently that did not require lawsuits or recounts. This week President Obama has a 66% approval rating. The Democratic Party is at 51% while the Republican Party has a 26% approval rating. A majority of Independents and some moderate Republicans support President Obama's agenda.
So why is there so noise spewing from the right? Is this tea party thing merely a childish tantrum thrown by a bunch of sore losers and clowns?
Let's explore a few events of this past week to try to find an answer.
