This Is It, Folks
It’s the 59th minute of the 11th hour. The only path to national health care reform is to pass the Senate bill. Unless Nancy Pelosi and the House leadership can herd three distinct groups of cats — the Blue Dogs, the Stupak coat-hanger crowd and the progressives — HCR is going down in flames, quite possibly for another generation.*
This is where we’re at. It sucks. It also blows, a seemingly self-canceling phenomena that is only witnessed in the rarest, most ass-tasting conditions. And we are witnessing such conditions this very day — a perfect storm of sucking and blowing.
That said, if passing the Senate bill verbatim is a once-in-a-lifetime Suckicane meeting a Category 5 Blowphoon head-on, then NOT PASSING ANYTHING AT ALL takes us into the Bruckheimer-Emmerich territory of summer blockbuster-class suckstinction-level blowvents.
Again, not passing anything at all is a defeat of epic proportions. This cannot be stressed enough. Ask yourself if, in nine months time, when GOP Congressional gains have eliminated the possibility of rebooting HCR for years, you will be happy that at least the Senate bill didn’t pass. Ask yourself the same question, only now it’s 10 or 15 years in the future, and you are toiling away at another long-haul, uphill process towards reform, faced with the same entrenched opposition and the next generation of teabagging nitwits at every turn. Ask yourself how smart you will feel when you turn to your now-grown kid and tell him or her that back in 2009 you helped take HCR through the muck and slime of a year of hell to within inches of the finish line, and got bupkis as a result.
All the reasons liberals are very, very angry about this are absolutely valid. We’ve played the battered wives to the vainglorious douchebags in the Senate Club For Ass time and again throughout this whole nasty process, making concession after concession to the likes of Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. It’s very, very tempting to finally say, enough is enough, you cannot pass.
This is not a minor thing, to further enable these patrician asswipes. Nor is it a minor thing to essentially validate the ascendancy of the Senate — an archaic, obstructionist, anti-Democratic relic of a bygone time — in the hierarchy of institutional power. Nor is it a minor thing at-fucking-all to have to accept that HCR has no public option, is full of blatant bribes, screws unions and shovels piles of cash into the insurance companies, among other things.
Sadly, we just have no other options.** There is a ray of hope that the House may be able to wheedle out some assurances from the Senate that post-passage bill-fixing will be done in reconciliation. That’s increasingly less likely to happen, however. I would argue that even without such assurances, Congress could still fix some of the most objectionable parts of the Senate bill post-passage. And in ways that could actually present Dems with some minor but meaningful victories — for example, a straight vote on eliminating the Ben Nelson bribe seems like it would pass easily and even with the bipartisan support that the Villagers so frantically demand.
At any rate, my wish — a wish that I wish I didn’t have to wish — is that everybody please hold your noses one more time and urge your Reps to pass the Senate bill. Balloon Juice has great guidance for how to do this, check it out and check out the roll call they are also putting together.
And please stop the blame game. There’s plenty of time for that later. We’re racing across the savanna with a ravenous lion at our backs towards a lonely, rickety tree that just might save our lives. There’s no time to stop and bicker about who it was that suggested the goddamn African vacation in the first place.***
*If Pelosi can pull this off, it would be the singular achievement of her career. She would immediately vault to the short list of greatest legislators in US history. The extent to which this would enrage the wingnuts is reason alone to urge the House to pass the Senate bill.
**How classic would it be if Pelosi somehow manages to rally the House to pass the Senate bill, only to have Reid fail to pass his own bill in an up-or-down vote? I almost hope this happens, for the jacked-up, adrenaline-fueled rush of pure outrage it would set off.
***Of course, we could always throw Jane Hamsher to the lion to slow it down. That’s where the analogy breaks down, but you know what I mean.
It’s very, very tempting to finally say, enough is enough, you cannot pass.
If I’m guessing right, who’s the Balrog?
I think it’s Lieberman. Has anyone checked to see if maybe he has a flaming whip hidden somewhere?
Lieberman is the Balrog … definitely works for me.
I see no .torrent file.
Keep in mind though, that not passing the Senate bill is almost certainly a victory for Lieberman in his own diseased mind.
D. –
I agree with your position. You’re title, however, has this written all over it.
“Your,” too, for the literate among us.
N_B – better than the Huey Lewis reference I set myself up for, anyway!
Yes, call them and tell them that you’ll vote for them again once you have health insurance (they don’t know if you have it now or not). Underline the rapidly closing window of opportunity. They are going down in flames this fall whether they get this done or not. They need to know that no one will be showing up to vote for them even after they go down in flames if they don’t get this done now. And it’s not like the Republicans will do anything to fix healthcare after they take over again.
So Democrats, do the right thing today and you will live to see another day. Do the wrong thing now, and you’ll never hold power again (at least not in your lifetime) because as long as I don’t have healthcare, I won’t be voting for a Democrat.
Lieberman is the Balrog … definitely works for me.
Of course, now who else is who?
I mean, after all, it’s not worth it to bring up a pop-culture reference to political happenings unless you’re going to carry things ‘way too far in a Crow T. Robot-esque fashion.
ummer blockbuster-class suckstinction-level blowvents
Brilliant, simply brilliant!
I’ll call Eliot Engel, who’s awesome, hopefully the insurance industry giveaways can be excised from the Senate Bill… in the long term, we should consider forming a national insurance co-op based on the credit union model, in order to bypass the major insurance companies.
Slightly OT, but I was initially surprised that Jon Stewart didn’t totally take them apart last night. Then I thought about it, and figured he’s probably still too pissed off at them right now to be funny when talking about it.
Stewart’s takedown of Olbermann was classic, though …
TROLL!
once our valiant Democratic leaders pass the mediocre health bill perhaps they’ll figure out a way to stand up and push back on the republican-cancer-riddled SCOTUS and write some neat laws that reverse the decision that corporations can now buy government outright.
Unless that might perturb the Republicans. Lord knows we can’t hurt their feelings.
Find a nice retirement hobby, dear Dem senators and Reps. You’ll need it when we vote you the fuck out.
i really wish u ppl would stop calling my office i cant do nething a/b hcaare cuz david broder might get upset w/me
Find a nice retirement hobby, dear Dem senators and Reps. You’ll need it when we vote you the fuck out.
Well, they’ve got the pensions and the lifetime health coverage, and they’ll have cushy lobbying jobs waiting for them.
Yeah, it’ll be a case of IGMFY all over again.
Well I really hope you meant rebooting Health Care Reform (HCR) in your 4th paragraph, as opposed to rebooting Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC). I think it was merely Freudian, but I hesitate to interpret your convoluted mind. 😉
I meant the House Rules Committee, actually. But I really meant fine Corinthian leather. Thanks for the spot, I will fix …
Bbl, gotta go run call my Rep and tell him to vote for a bill that President Fucktard made sure included a requirement for citizens to enrichen private companies by forcing them to buy private insurance or be fined and possibly jailed.
Next up, Preznit Failbama will make it law that all US citizens buy Ford F150s or be fined.
The purpose of the government is to make laws requiring US citizens to give money to private for profit companies or go to jail.
sparkletits – it’s a foot in the door for health care reform. We’ve never ever had that before, we’re closer to it than we’ve ever been before, and history shows that the absolute hardest thing to do is get that foot in the door. What history doesn’t show is if it is possible to improve things after you’ve got the foot in the door, because again, we have never ever had a foot in the door.
Alternately, you can call your reps and let them know that if HCR fails, you’ll be sending their campaign contributions to me instead, to help fund my research toward making ass cancer airborne, contagious, and genetically keyed to policticians.
It’s dangerous to jam your foot in a door when you don’t have health insurance.
With that foot in the door comes a foot up our asses. The benefits no longer outweigh the negatives. The senate bill is too fucking corrupt. I am tired of being ruled by corporate whores.
Alternately, you can call your rep and let them know that if HCR fails, you will be sending their campaign contribution checks directly to me instead, to fund my groundbreaking research into making ass cancer airborne, contagious, and genetically keyed to politicians.
correction – politicians, and WordPress.
forcing them to buy private insurance
I think this is where we are forced to be creative and work our goddamn asses off- if enough persons decide to form a truly not-for-profit health insurance company, we can accomplish something. This will mean redirecting all the time, effort, and cash-ola we pissed away on the Democratic Party towards more narrow ends. If the damn party won’t serve us, we’ll serve ourselves.
I imagine if you try that then Obama’s corporate puppetmasters will simply make your efforts illegal.
Yeah, we got creative and worked our asses off for Kerry in 2004 and that jagoff knuckled under like a typical Democratic coward. We got even more creative and worked our asses off even .more for Obama, and it turned out he was flat out lying to us about his positions, platform, and goals. Goddamn liar.
Jonah Goldberg:
sparkletits – but the foot up our asses happens with no passage of any bill, also, with extra feet for pre-existing asses.
If Conan O’Brien was a Wall Street guy getting $45 million, Obama would have given him Geithner’s job of fucking over average voters for his friends’ corporate greed.
This will mean redirecting all the time, effort, and cash-ola we pissed away on the Democratic Party towards more narrow ends. If the damn party won’t serve us, we’ll serve ourselves.
To paraphrase Howard Zinn – we won’t get universal health care because some nice men in Congress decided to give it to us.
We won’t get it by voting in politicians who swear up and down they’ll fight tooth and nail for healthcare either, because that was just a blatant lie they told as a candidate and not something they ever really meant.
I guess there is some small hope in the idea that once health care is universally required, there will greater political pressure to make it universally affordable.
Also, now that corporations are people, maybe we can all be corporations.
Jonah Goldberg:
But if [Conan] O’Brien was a Wall Street guy gettingt $45 million for failing,
Putting aside the issue of whether or not Conan failed (I disagree, but since the last time I watched the Tonight Show the host was Carson, I may not be the man to judge this), his severance is $32 million. The remainder is what he negotiated for his staff, because he has balls and a conscience.
He is therefore, empirically, not a politician.
I’m very skeptical that the bill would ever be fixed. Why would they even want to ‘fix’ this huge giveaway to insurance companies? The fact it was made in the firs place should be a clue as to where their interests and priorities lie. And it isn’t with the American people.
To paraphrase Howard Zinn – we won’t get universal health care because some nice men in Congress decided to give it to us.
In other words:
No rights were ever given to us by the grace of God
No rights were ever given by some United Nations clause
No rights were ever given by some nice guy at the top
Our rights they were bought by all the blood
And all the tears of all our
Grandmothers, grandfathers before
KWillow – do you think passage of the Senate bill would result in worse health care access for Americans over time than no change to the system at all?
I am tired of being ruled by corporate whores.
Get ready for a whole lot more of it, tired or not, because the Roberts Supreme Court just said that corporations have super-citizenship rights (as much as their billions of dollars and teams of lawyers can buy), which means that in ten years or so, every senator (not just Joe Biden) is going to be “the Senator from MBNA.” Or Wal-Mart. Or Chick-Fil-A, or Morton Thiokol, or Boeing, or Halliburton, or General Motors, or General Dynamics, or General Electric*, or…or…or…
Ten years after that, there won’t be a developed country on earth that isn’t completely corporately owned. Thanks, SCOTUS!
So that’s why if I were you, I’d get what reform you can in while you can, because it’ll be harder to undo once it’s done than it would be to ensure that it just never happens if it isn’t.
_____________
* This is the modern military junta — we are about to be ruled by a bunch of Generals.
Lieberman is Wormtounge, duh.
Rahm Emmanuel is the Balrog.
The extent to which this would enrage the wingnuts is reason alone to urge the House to pass the Senate bill.
Isn’t that tribalistic, spiteful attitude something you make fun of them endlessly for?
We won’t get it by voting in politicians who swear up and down they’ll fight tooth and nail for healthcare either, because that was just a blatant lie they told as a candidate and not something they ever really meant.
Then what’s your advice, sunshine?
What DO we do?
As I said in an earlier thread, I called my congressman (McDermott, bless his heart), both my Senators and dropped an email to the White house.
Will it make any difference? Probably no more than the amount of discouragement I can bring to this blog. Still, I got to feel, for a few minutes, like I was doing something.
FBB is right. America is over. Welcome to AmeriCo.
Isn’t that tribalistic, spiteful attitude something you make fun of them endlessly for?
Which is why I was so deadly serious about the idea as to make it a throwaway joke in a footnote.
I told some DNC money-grubber on the phone last night that there would be no soup for him unless they pass HCR. Felt good, too. Plus I wasn’t going to give him any money anyway.
Hrm, I should call the DNC directly. Good idea.
Yeah, it was really obvious that you weren’t serious. Funny, too.
Both the Senate and House versions of so-called HCR suck. (Or blow, depending on your viewing angle) The Senate version just sucks more.
The proposal that can work, be comprehensible, and be able to get broad public support is Medicare for All, aka single payer. Given it’s effectiveness economically and politically, we have to wonder if this months-long stagecraft to create a bill that insurance companies love while still getting liberal support is indeed the actual plan from the O Man and company. The answer: Sadly, Yes!
“Then what’s your advice, sunshine? What DO we do?”
Quit!
I’m going to. I’m lucky enough to ‘have mine’ and since no one I worked so hard to get elected seems to care anymore, I don’t either!
I’ve had this schadenfreudtastic fantasy of forming a group who pledges to contribute monthly to a “sniper fund”, and using that fund to “get the backs” of the fine citizens of some small-population state when they cancel their health insurance and the state insurance market implodes.
You know, some state with a half a million – million residents. Start an organization and get a few million folks to pledge $100 a month for 6 months, and you could take down the insurers in a small state market.
Then you move on to the next state and again, presto-blammo.
After just a couple of these markets imploding, we’d get some fucking health care reform, because the insurers would be demanding it, begging to be allowed to stay in business under a Swiss-style model.
Here’s my other fantasy idea: a constitutional amendment to the effect that only citizens eligible to vote (real people) may contribute to political campaigns, candidates, or parties, and stipulating that all broadcast political advertising conducted by anyone outside of organized campaigns, candidates, or parties must include the legal name of the entity which was the original source of funding for the ad. (In other words, bye-bye industry PACs.)
Yeah, I know. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
Yeah, it was really obvious that you weren’t serious. Funny, too.
Okay, I apologize for not making it clear that I was not being serious about that. I am not actually suggesting we pass HCR for the convoluted purpose of making Nancy Pelosi look good so as to piss off right-wingers.
Are we cool?
No rights were ever given to us by the grace of God
No rights were ever given by some United Nations clause
No rights were ever given by…………..
New Model Army… takes me back:
“A toast to the Luddite Martyrs, who died in Vain”
Now witness as the entire Democratic establishment we elected drops trou and shows us their ass to let us know our place.
Rahm and Barack then part their cheeks and pinch log on us as thanks for our hard work electing them.
It’s mooning in America.
Let it die. The House version was bad enough.
Maybe we need to go there first. We’re certainly headed in that direction on every other front.
But if [Conan] O’Brien was a Wall Street guy gettingt $45 million for failing, Obama would be all over it.
Haha, because O’Brien’s getting SEVERANCE for “failing” while Wall Streeters are getting PERFORMANCE BONUSES for failing so hard they crippled the global economy for the foreseeable future it’s like so totally exactly the same!
Her’s the answer to all your silly “What Do We Do?” questions:
Don’t waste your time attempting to convince whores that you have more money than your corporate bosses, even whores know better.
Get your asses out there & start tearing the social organization to pieces!!!
Here’s my other fantasy idea: a constitutional amendment to the effect that only citizens eligible to vote (real people) may contribute to political campaigns, candidates, or parties
The funny thing is, many on the right would support that too, because they are so paranoid about the influence of unions and undocumented immigrants. The trouble is, corporations would hate it – and so would unions.
New Model Army… takes me back:
Kept me sane during the Bush years- I’d put on No Rest for the Wicked and pummel a heavy bag til my knuckles were sore.
pedestrian – well, this is one of those cases where pissing off both business and the unions actually would be the fairest and smartest way to approach it. Neither of them are actual persons; it’s those of us living in the meatspace world who feel the impact of law and government in the real world – so we should be the only ones who get to directly participate in choosing that government that will be making those laws.
In practical terms, there’s not much left of the unions anyway, and the funding advantage that the corporations give to the right is at least a hundredfold the advantage that unions give to the left.
But neither of them – or PACs, or anyone other than an actual living citizen should be allowed to give to any party or candidate anyway.
This is it…
Well, if it’s good enough for DJ Spooky, it’s good enough for me
“Then what’s your advice, sunshine? What DO we do?”
Quit!
Fuck it, dude, lets go bowling.
Excellent post.
Call your congresspeople, folks. Because the Tea Party shits are certainly calling theirs.
The House switchboard is (202) 224-3121.
It could be a foot in the door. Or it might end every hope we had for it, because now they can say “look they can get coverage. These are criminals who don’t get their children insurance” and it will be true.
Whereas if we do nothing, things will be so bad in 8 or 12 years they might actually do it right.
But I doubt either is going to work at this point. Our most serious flaw as a nation is the 20% of the population that votes republican no matter what, and that isn’t going away. 2nd up is the 50% that doesn’t vote at all.
I see Liebermann as more of a Gollum, personally, although “ball-rag” certainly describes his usefulness in other ways.
I’m dropping in just to say that I’m too busy following the Prop8 trial to contribute much here. That, and praying for Scalia et. al. to die. By tomorrow.
Fuck it, dude, lets go bowling.
“Let’s go do some crimes, man!”
“…Yeah… Yeah! Let’s get sushi – and not pay!”
Gonna call congress, than go out drinking!
Here’s my other fantasy idea: a constitutional amendment to the effect that only citizens eligible to vote (real people) may contribute to political campaigns, candidates, or parties
What I don’t understand is if corporations are people, why aren’t they subject to the same $2400 per candidate per election funding limits people are?
BECAUSE SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY!
I would gladly throw Jane Hamsher to the lions regardless; hell, I’ll pay to have the lions shipped over here. That worse-than-useless self-aggrandizing asshat has ruined everything she’s ever touched, from the films she produced to Ned Lamont’s campaign to this.
And, yes, I know that she’s not really responsible for this debacle in any measurable way. I’m still so fucking pissed off about this, and I can’t even yell at my own congresscritters; my senators are both Democrats that actually helped the process, such as it was, and my representative is a completely-beyond-hope GOP closet case whom I suspect may have actually and literally fellated W. I just need to blow off some steam while I’m arranging to have Stately Wayne Manor, Batcave and all, airlifted to greater Toronto. But seriously, Grover Norquist? That’s like me teaming up with the Joker to urge Clark to quit the JLA because he didn’t fully disclose what he uses his X-Ray vision for. The only reason why I’m not over in FDL doing some epic threadshitting is because one of TBogg’s dogs just died and I’m being respectful.
Goddamnit.
*kicks over giant penny and T. Rex in the Batcave*
Stupid things are just styrofoam props, anyway.
Then how come the giant penny hurt Hush when you fought in the Batcave?
You know, it may sound crazy, but we could probably do worse than revive the Wobblies.
One thing they definitely knew how to do is connect working people to the Left, by pointing out it was in their own best interest and treating politics as something everyone did rather than waiting for an academic panel to formulate a properly focus-groupped policy.
Maybe I”m just being nostalgic for an age I wasn’t even alive for, like a College Republican pining for the black & white days of World War 2… but I’ve yet to hear a better suggestion from the “fuck ’em they’re all corporate stooges when things get bad enough everyone will vote the right way” Paulistas and Naderites.
My former Rep is for it but my current Rep is Tim Murphy, a first class Obama might not be a citizen wingnut. I’ve called and e-mailed both Casey and the spectre but who knows what they might do.
One major problem with this strategy is that it completely ignores… well, strategy. Hmm I wonder how the republicans will do in the midterms once the democrats pass what is likely to be a deeply unpopular health care bill that will hang around their necks all season? This bill essentially writes off 30 million voters as a complete loss. Who is going to vote for the party that mandated shitty health care? What is clear is that the republicans get the exact bill that [i] they[/i] wanted without having to take any blame for its shittyness. Rah! Rah! yay us!
*sigh*
Yes, it would have been SO much better had McCain won.
We might even be well into Palin’s presidency by now, and boy would that have made health care so much easier to pass, what with everything being Dubya turned up to 11 and stuff.
*snerk*
Also, public financing of elections, eliminate the Electoral College, & the death penalty for “investors” & other such parasites.
Followed by employee ownership & control of corporate entities.
What are you waiting for?
Kept me sane during the Bush years- I’d put on No Rest for the Wicked and pummel a heavy bag til my knuckles were sore.
BBB,we are showing our age
Had forgot all about them, ans spent the last hour on utube reminding myself how raw they were. Summed up the Thatcher years for me…. saw them in Glasgow and didn’t regain hearing for about 2 days! thanks for the memories, pal….
See they are still going, they must be in their 50’s….
excuse me for my snooze-inducing attack of seriousness, but
i’m glad to see that there are still some forums on the left that support this very important bill
it would essentially (by 2014 at the latest) make it illegal for an insurance company to deny health insurance coverage. this would be a fundamental restriction on the ability of insurance companies to fuck with people
the bill is not, repeat, not a “shit sandwich”, as too many of our erstwhile fellow progressives have insisted on calling it. we desperately need to take this chance to begin to restrict the abusive practices of health insurance companies who cherry pick the healthiest and most well-off to insure, while denying coverage to those who most need it
having said that, i sincerly promise to stop being serious right now, and will never let it happen again
p.s., i meant to say ‘forums’, and not ‘fora’ for god’s sake we’re speaking english here so we can use english plurals not latin ones!!!
Everyone is always calling their senators and congressmen, when they do things wrong. Have you guy actually considered calling them when they do things like you want them to, and thank them, tell them to keep up the good work, etc?
Don’t forget the carrot…
Yeah, I’ll give Harry Reid a carrot, all right…
Shorter “Sadly No!”: shut up and eat the shit sandwich or starve!
shut up and eat the shit sandwich
not making it illegal to deny health insurance would be the real bread based meal containing excrement
Tacitus – I’m with you. All my rants over the past few days have been predicated on the assumption that the House won’t do the obvious thing and pass the damn Senate bill and work out their issues in reconciliation. If they go ahead and get it done, I’ll still be on board with them. But if not…I’m done.
And it’s the Democrats we’re talking about, so my prediction is they won’t get it done.
Shorter “Sadly No!”: shut up and eat the shit sandwich or starve!
Well, uh…yes. That’s basically what it has come down to.
The alternative is that we’ll get some mish-mash saying you can’t do recissions or deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions – at best. That is as good as it will get. Gone will be mandates, and with them, cost control of any type. Gone will be federal assistance for insurance premiums, and with them, at least 20 million people who need but can’t afford insurance. And looming ever closer will be the iceberg, which we will hit full-steam ahead within the next 10 years or so, while in the meantime, we will have pissed trillions of dollars into a failed system – dollars that could have been spent better on other things, even things like paying off debt.
Those are the practical consequences of not eating the shit sandwich. The political ones…well, after one party has spent the entire past year warning of economic doomsday if we don’t get this done, while meanwhile upwards of 50 million people have been waiting for some relief…would you want to be the guy who has to go out and say, “oh, all that disaster stuff I was telling you earlier – really, it’s nothing big enough that we need to worry about it enough to address it in any meaningful way”? Because, you know, first off it would prove you to be a shameless lying tool, and second of all, it’s going to piss off the upwards of 50 million people who are waiting for relief something awful.
Shorter “Sadly No!”: shut up and eat the shit sandwich or starve!
Considering what the SCOTUS just did to campaign finance reform, I think it’s safe to say now that this really is the best bill we’re gonna get for the next thirtysomething years. So yeah, it’s this or starve.
Also, for political implications — if, in reconciliation, they can tack on the Medicare buy-in, that IMMEDIATELY turns a conservative-leaning demographic that votes (55-65 year olds) into Democrats.
BTW, for sadlynaughts in the Bay Area or SoCal, who feel fired up enough (i.e. not too drunk) to brave the rain, there are rallies being held in SF and LA.
cyntax – thanks. I’ll be at the SF rally. Anyone for a drink-a-thon following the rally?
Everybody on the toobs seems to be really fired up right now. Maybe you should take it to the streets with this guy. Use the anger, people.
Second, I like Jennifer’s idea of state by state destruction but it sounds too organised for lefties. Instead, those of you who can should just refuse to play. I’m sure there’s gonna be a bunch of teabaggers doing exactly that. Now that would be some bipartisanship!
Finally, those of you who are going to withhold your votes, or vote for some lame third party need to get the air in your heads checked. In this game, not playing is the same as losing only with more guilt shame and remorse.
Obviously there isn’t much time before the corporations bring on their newly enhanced interrogation techniques. why are you still here?
D, your footnote is irrelevant because the Senate already passed it – it goes immediately to Obama’s desk.
Just imagine where we’d be if bipartisanship wasn’t declared to be the highest good. This would have passed 6 months ago. If only there was someone, with whom the buck stops, who could have done something
sparkletits: uhhh… ’cause he was a wimp? I guess?
Or to join them, because they’re still around. Sure, there’s not a lot of them right now, but there’s not somehow going to be more Wobs if nobody joins up.
The one positive thing I have some hope to come out of this thing is for American leftists to start recognizing the power of direct action. The American political system is a game of poker where some of the players get to pick their own cards. Even if we manage to draw to a straight, the corporations will have a royal flush. The only solution is to find another game and kick the dealer in the teeth while we’re at it.
By the way, that’s the whole fucking POINT of refusing to vote for Democrats, god DAMN it. It’s not just “democrats suck forever let’s just get drunk,” although that’s often how it turns out and I’ll admit that’s how I feel lots of the time. I’m sympathetic to the argument that the Democrats are the least shitty option so we should support them, but where did we get this diseased idea that the only thing we should be doing is supporting “more and better Democrats?” The unions didn’t win rights for workers by marching with signs and witty puppets. The civil rights movement didn’t win rights for African-Americans by writing to their representatives. I’m not in any way claiming that I’m any good here, either, but fuck.
FUCK.
For everyone who is saying (or thinking) that maybe we need to let this HCR bill die and allow the “Bruckheimer-Emmerich … summer blockbuster-class suckstinction-level blowvent” happen because it will demonstrate to everyone exactly how crappy health care is in this country and maybe then people will finally act…
Please explain how this differs from the wingtards who were praying for a devastating terrorist attack on a major US city so those treasonous liberals would wake up and see how important it is to shut up and let BushCheneyRoveCo establish their police state.
Oh, I know the difference: dumping HCR will kill far more people.
Anyone for a drink-a-thon following the rally?
Not a bad idea–though I should be refreshing my lesson plans.
Re: “eat the shit sandwich or starve” — why the hell can’t we just pass the popular, obvious parts of the bullshit Senate bill? Take out the subsidies, take out the mandate, regulate away recission and preexisting conditions (do it soon, not 2014), and expand the age cutoff for children receiving parents’ insurance coverage to 26. It’s not as good as single payer, it’s not as good as the public option, but it is MUCH better than nothing at all, and it is MUCH better than the crooked bullshit in the current bill. That small set of changes will help a lot of people as soon as they come into effect, and it will make it more likely for November to be a recoverable and temporary reversal for the Democrats than a bloody slaughter. The Republicans will not be able to fight it with their current slanders, because the expense will be minimal and it won’t be possible to sell it as a “goverment takeover.”
And it’ll be a significantly less horrible base on which to add a Medicare buy-in and/or public option.
“not making it illegal to deny health insurance would be the real bread based meal containing excrement”
oh come on. Any insurance can make a shitty, overpriced “Yugo” health plan that means people with preexisting conditions simply pay more, have huge deductibles, higher co pays, and limited doctor options. Which means yeah, you still have insurance, but you can’t afford to go to the doctor anyway.
They already use this technique. Getting insurance doesn’t matter if you still can’t go to the doctor.
oh come on. Any insurance can make a shitty, overpriced “Yugo” health plan that means people with preexisting conditions simply pay more, have huge deductibles, higher co pays, and limited doctor options
you didn’t read the summaries of the bills. overpricing is also specifically limited
besides, you do realize that people are being thrown off of insurance, and denied insurance, which practices both would be outlawed under the bill – which makes you supposed point “They already use this technique” incorrect
in software we have the principle of RTFM – Read The Fucking Manual, fercchrissakes
in regard to legislation, we should enfore Read The Fucking Bill. ok, nobody actually reads the bill. Read The Fucking News Reports, ferchrissakes
“why the hell can’t we just pass the popular, obvious parts of the bullshit Senate bill?”
Because that opens it all up to the whole sausage making process, which allows the insurers to fuck with it and Holy Joe to perform even more fellatio on them and the Republicans to demagogue the whole thing.
At this point, I’d say a snowball has a better chance in Mt. Doom.
All right, I did it. I called my Rep and told him to vote for the Senate bill, then I called my Senators and told them to support a bill that addresses the House’s concerns.
Grumble mumble rutabaga rutabaga watermelon cantaloupe.
Why can’t we keep the Senate under pressure to use reconciliation, by having the House wait to pass the Senate bill until reconciliation is a done deal. If the House passes the Senate bill prior to this, how likely is it the Senate would use reconciliation? 1% chance? probably even less even if the Senate gave a promise to use it. It’s pretty clear how much a promise from a Senator is worth if you aren’t a large corporation
Oh, I know the difference: dumping HCR will kill far more people.
Ouch. As soon as you find a specimen of liberal who is hoping that health care reform fails – so that thousands of people die – so that an outraged populace votes for more liberal politicians, you be sure to stick a pin in her and tack her to a board for posterity.
All of the Leftist opposition to the House and Senate bills that I’ve seen assumes that rejecting this POS will get us something better, and soon. It also assumes that under the currently proposed legislation thousands of people would continue to die needlessly and reform would also die for a generation or more, since everyone who “matters” will have already gotten everything that they want.
Disagree if you want, but please don’t equate it to Republicanism. That’s below the belt.
Gotta say, the SCOTUS decision is kinda the last nail in the coffin of American liberalism. I for one welcome our new masters in the Trade Federation.
My hopes were that liberals could at least stop the slide backwards, but with the corporations now openly able to bid on and buy their own congressman with no limits at all, I’m not even sure that’s possible. Social Security and Medicare, if they survive, will do so as scraps from the table of power to the peons – and the corporations may be too greedy to even realize why that’s a good thing for them in the long run. New Gilded Age, until such time as the corporations finally fuck up so badly (Great Depression) that the people finally realize that letting them run the world might not be the best idea.
But that’s so far in the future I may not even be alive to see it (and I’m 22). When it does, one can only hope there’s a Roosevelt around to set things back on track at long last.
Man, I hate urging a generally very good rep to vote for this piece of shiat. But that’s where we are.
Left a message in DC and talked to a staffer at Sam Farr’s Salinas office. He’s still officially undecided. I said either we pass the Senate monstrosity or that’s it for another 15 years and the party goes down in flames.
The truly sucktastic part is that he would be voting against it for the right reasons, because Whoa Nellie that is one disgusting sausage. I also think what bothers some reps is that voting for it is basically acknowledging that our political system is essentially dysfunctional and that steaming piles of corporatist, bribe-laden garbage like the Senate bill is the best it is capable of producing. It’s like you spend your career working at a giant machine that is supposed to spin dross into gold, or at least a goldish substance, and what it actually produces is an endless rope of turds containing just enough undigested corn kernels and cashew fragments to sustain life if you can pick them out and wash them off. And now a bunch of people who clearly consider themselves the management and you the machine-tending rube are demanding that you climb the nearest hilltop with a megaphone and praise their goddamned corn. I would not like it much either.
Still, that’s where we are and that’s the government we have. Hold your nose and salt the cashews.
(cross-posted from Balloon Juice)
Revolution has come!
(Off the pig!)
Time to pick up the gun!
(Off the pig!)
(Repeat until someone picks up that gun.)
“But that’s so far in the future I may not even be alive to see it (and I’m 22). When it does, one can only hope there’s a Roosevelt around to set things back on track at long last.”
There’s either gonna be a new FDR or a new Robespierre. It’ll happen, sooner or later.
Funny thing is, despite the various whinings over the years from the usual John Bircher types along the lines of Roosevelt being “a traitor to his class”, FDR basically saved America’s ruling class from itself. I wonder if that’s gonna happen this time?
Or to join them, because they’re still around. Sure, there’s not a lot of them right now, but there’s not somehow going to be more Wobs if nobody joins up.
Well, yeah, but how many people even on our side think they went out with the Thirties, if they even recognize the name?
Seriously, I keep thinking about this. What was it that the IWW did that connected with working people, to the point that folks working fourteen, sixteen hour days were still making time to get politically aware, and how can we emulate that now? How do you get it across to Joe Worker that, no, the Glenn Blecks and Limbaughs don’t have his best interests in mind? Because they don’t, and it’s shit-easy to demonstrate that they don’t.
The American public isn’t stupid, just ignorant. And ignorance is a cureable affliction.
IIRC the wobblies really didn’t accomplish very much
Barney Frank is Sam (so gay)
And ignorance is a cureable affliction.
You have to want to take that pill, Ubu. To do that, you have to realize something is wrong.
Do you think this guy has any idea how sick he is?
Or this guy, for that matter?
What was it that the IWW did that connected with working people, to the point that folks working fourteen, sixteen hour days were still making time to get politically aware, and how can we emulate that now?
‘Murkins don’t work those hrs. anymore (mostly, but it ‘s central to my point) & even those who have to hold down (What, is the damn thing floating away?) two gigs or are over-worked, underpaid, etc. are either too beat (Most Wobblies didn’t have the commute times of today’s wage-slaves, & didn’t have to pay attention during the ride) or are too fucking stupid &/or easily distracted, & there are one hell of a lot more distractions.
Hah, see? Typing idly results in a serious concept: The IWW was pretty much a pre-WWI affair, as I remember (Yes, I was there!) & therefore pre-mass distraction media. The anti-radical stuff & Roaring 20s economic whatever may have undercut the Wobs as well. (Maybe the question is, what happened to them?)
The psychological & physiological differences between 12 hrs./day of physical labor & 8-10 hrs./day of fooling around in your cubicle, staring at a screen, posting here & so on may enter into it.
Good question, mon Père.
Ouch. As soon as you find a specimen of liberal who is hoping that health care reform fails – so that thousands of people die – so that an outraged populace votes for more liberal politicians, you be sure to stick a pin in her and tack her to a board for posterity.
All of the Leftist opposition to the House and Senate bills that I’ve seen assumes that rejecting this POS will get us something better, and soon.
Upthread:
Hey, where’s the think piece I just blew five min. on? Is it me, or is it FYWP time?
Because that opens it all up to the whole sausage making process, which allows the insurers to fuck with it and Holy Joe to perform even more fellatio on them and the Republicans to demagogue the whole thing.
It’s worse than that, it means the 41 can filibuster it and stop it from passing. That’s why the only options on the table are passing the Senate bill exactly in the House and maybe doing something in reconciliation later.
Any other option that is not backed by the willingness of 51 Democratic Senators (and that could include Joe Biden) to use the nuclear option and eliminate the filibuster won’t pass the Senate.
Brown just campaigned, and won on being the 41st vote to block health care reform. This isn’t a quiet filibuster anymore, Republicans are taking this show to Broadway, only with more bathroom sex and less talented singing.
Neither did the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, in terms of specific reforms ascribed to their actions. But you’d better believe that white America knew that behind Martin Luther King, Jr. there was a revolution brewing.
India’s independence is credited to Gandhi, but men like Gandhi gain their power in part from men like Bose.
The progressives would have never made the strides they did if the Wobblies and the Socialists weren’t out front facing the bosses’ guns. FDR wouldn’t have even been elected or at least able to do half of what he did without the ruling class believing that he was the only way to counter the bonus armies and the Communist agitators.
Political action is noble, and it is effective. It also is not sufficient.
MB – I checked to see if your comment was hung up in the admin site, but nope, didn’t see anything …
But what was the gist of it? The elevator pitch. C’mon, I haven’t got all fucking day kid
“FDR wouldn’t have even been elected or at least able to do half of what he did without the ruling class believing that he was the only way to counter the bonus armies and the Communist agitators.”
Based on the way they reacted to him at the time, I think most of the ruling class were too stupid to realize that while he was flipping them the finger, he was also saving their necks.
Look, guys, the reason behind the mandate is if you’re going to introduce a bunch of sick, expensive people into the system, you need to introduce cheap, healthy people to make up for those costs. It’s not about “forcing people to buy shitty insurance”, or someone paying off their buddies in the insurance company, it’s about making sure reform is remotely economically sustainable, and that it doesn’t collapse like a house of cards, thus poisoning the notion of HCR for years. Yeah, none of this would apply if we had a publicly funded system, but news flash, we fucking don’t. And your response to that is hoping that the reforms will fail by taking away the one thing that could possibly keep them in the black?
I don’t like it, nobody likes it, even the insurance companies that everyone accuses of getting a sweetheart deal are fighting tooth and nail, trying to kill this reform, any and all future reform. But can we please give this a basic economic run-through before we begin the visceral teeth-gnashing? Jesus Christ, you guys should know better.
Aw, I was just blathering in response to P. U. wondering why the Wobblies could get people organized & angry in the right direction, & we can’t today.
Nothin’ special. Must’ve been my sausage-like fingers & this devil-box lap-top keypad, plus going to a new tab rather than waiting to see if my staggering work of whatev posted.
Sorry, my state attorney general, Bill “Impeachment Team” McCollum, who is running for governor by the way, says the mandate is unconstitutional, so no go.
OFFS people. Do I have to get all Bismarckian on you again? It aint what anybody wanted. It is, however, a vast improvement over the status quo. It’s a fucking start, damnit.
I am reminded of some recent …conversations, shall we say, with a few people who kept trying to pull the “stimulus has failed” thing. True, the stim,ulus did not achieve the stated goals. True, the economy still sucks. But that’s entitrely the wrong way to look at it. The proper question is, how much worse would things have been with out it?
Same deal here. Swallow yer fucken pride, hold yer nose and get, as Bismarck would say, what’s possible.
Insurance companies already have provisions in their policies that deal with people who wait until they are sick to buy insurance. If I buy a policy tomorrow you can bet that there will be tiny print near the end which says that I can’t file a claim for a year or more, for this very reason.
The idea that the poor, poor insurance companies will be ruined without a mandate is nothing more than propaganda.
Consequently, if we are going to have mandates, we need a public option. Otherwise you’re just forcing people to pony up money to crooks or get fined by the IRS.
It’s NOT a vast improvement over the status quo.
Aw, I was just blathering in response to P. U. wondering why the Wobblies could get people organized & angry in the right direction, & we can’t today.
….and the gist of it was?
Eat your heart out, Chevy vs. Ford!
willf – the HCR bill changes that particular way insurance companies are able to do business, hence the mandate.
Well, A) What happened to the Wobblies, why didn’t they keep going & do better? I figured WWI, Roaring 20s, anti-radical stuff.
B) Difference between being an actual Industrial Worker, doing those 12-14 hrs. of physical labor, & some softie in a cubicle staring at a screen & surfing the web 8-10 hrs. then commuting for an hr. or so & a ton of mass-media distractions awaiting him or her at home.
No more (Or at least not enough any more.) Industrial Workers.
God, can’t we at least put an income floor on the mandate? Because I KNOW people who are fucking poor and can’t afford even shitty ass health insurance and probably won’t be able to even with the meager-ass subsidies and regulations, and they are scared as FUCK that they’re going to have to choose between rent and not breaking the dang law.
Look at how many people already don’t buy auto insurance for the same dang reason.
Sorry, my state attorney general, Bill “Impeachment Team” McCollum, who is running for governor by the way, says the mandate is unconstitutional, so no go.
Republicans are so funny. The individual mandate was a Republican idea, put forth by John Chafee in the 90’s to derail Hillary’s call for an employer mandate, and now all the sudden the same people fighting for them in the 90’s are shocked, shocked that such a thing might even be considered. This is what happens when you don’t pass something, the limits of allowable reform are pushed to the right. What do the R’s say they’ll accept this time, because next time that’ll be too liberal. They did the same thing with cap and trade.
Yeah I know, M. As a certified computer-drone softie, I know. I have fucking sweet potato fries baking in my dang oven right now, and cheap whiskey and video games. I’m not getting the shaft myself. Part of it is just that globalization allows the real nasty shit work to be done by (brown) people that the bosses can just cold mow down with government machine guns if they even thought of fighting back. Capitalism has changed in a way ol’ Karl never could have imagined, bless his necrotic heart.
No more (Or at least not enough any more.) Industrial Workers.
They had some good songs, though.
the HCR bill changes that particular way insurance companies are able to do business
Just my read of it… but yes and no.
As to overpricing and garbage plans to the poor – “Affordability” is opnly a requirement for insurance companies participating in the Health Exchange. These are State-Wide so you only have to own your state legislature in order to ignore the rules. Also, these will be open to something like a sixth of the population. I can very easily see an insurance comapny saying “thanks but no thanks” and makiong out like robber barons – and that’s in comparison to other insurance companies.
Why? Currently healhth insurance is adversarial. Insurance companies profit by the amount of care they deny. You load them up with a batch of poor folks who only have a lawyer on their side if one is appointed by the court – it’s gonna be farcical.
Asked of KWillow: do you think passage of the Senate bill would result in worse health care access for Americans over time than no change to the system at all?
I really don’t know. Banning pre-existing condition discrimination is good, but I don’t know how that’s going to be enforced. Hundreds of billions in subsidies, even if craptons of it are going simply as bonus checks to insurance execs ought to be able to do something – at least until it’s time to write up a budget that contains a line item for “hundreds of billions in subsidies to poor folk”. There’s also a couple of small things – Community Health Centre funding – less than 0.1% of the bill is money well spent, and might be small enough to fly under the deficit reduction radar next budget season. That’s the sum total of the good – as I see it.
With no viable alternative – a Medicare buy-in or Public Option, I can quite easily see this HCR leading to more pain for the less fortunate. It’s basically making it illegal not to get fucked in the ass by the Health Insurance Industry with the added stigma of “but aren’t we shelling out massive excise taxes to pay the bulk of their coverage?”
Djur – that’s the subsidy portion of the bill. Those who cannot afford to buy health care, but are mandated to do so, get a price break or a complete subsidy.
DKW – yeah. But I don’t think we should undersell the potential of getting this foot in the door. We’ve never had that on health care before.
There are still workers, though. And they’re being screwed with a lot of the same games the bosses played back in the heyday of the IWW.
It’s harder now for workers since the unions have been gutted. But on the other hand communication has improved thousandfold.
Point is, what did work? ‘Cause what folks like the Wobs did helped get us OSHA, worker’s comp, the eight-hour day and piddly shit like that. So they accomplished something, regardless.
..imagine a worldwide union movement in our outsourced, globalized, sweatshop world – IWW, after all. If the supremes can do it for corporations, surely they can do if for labor? (Yeah, right…!)
Overlord Base, did you get the transmissions I sent over containing the IP addresses of blog commenters discussing union organizing at the sadlyno.com honeypot … oh, shit is this going out live … fuck
…oh, organizing.. I thought we were talking about bullshitting.. oh, look – the cat needs to go out…
This.
Be the change you want to see, indeed.
Imagine Aetna having to hold bake-sales to pay the rent – & their only customers are ants & flies.
What DO we do?
We breathe in, we breathe out . . . but seriously, this national stuff will break. your. heart.
Like Mickey Mouse said in the great Mad magazine Pogo Possum parody, “Learn politics and join parties? Lord no, that’s the kiss of death! I said ‘learn parlor tricks and go to parties’!”
Crap.
Don’t try to tell people that the thing the corporatecrats wanna pass is gold.
This is only going to let the repukelicanliars win the game (some more).
Just like they’re now winning pretending that the Puke party champions the little guy.
Gawdamned Wall Street Whores ripping you off? Who you gonna call?
PukeLickans! Right On!
Did I say crap yet?
~
Too bad Canadians can’t help you guys out. As you know, we’ve had public health care since 1966. It’s just normal up here. It astounds me that conservatives have managed to make it seem poisonous, treasonous, and heinous, when it’s one of the best social programs any country can offer its citizens. Conservatives in Canada are hellbent on turning Canadians against public health care by continuously saying it’s “unsustainable.” They never say that about any war though.
I wish you the best and hope you can overcome the turds who are spoiling the hope and change party most Americans celebrated in 2008. It’s just amazing to me that a handful of teabaggers funded by corporations and rich Republicans have ruined what was thought last year to be a sure thing.
You guys are screwed, after the decision that corporations are people and can spend all they want on a candidate this is going to die fast. Ah the sweet smell of fascism in the morning, get used to it.
Look, it’s crap, a shit sandwich etc. etc. Couple things – when’s the last time you’ve seen your government move towards major new regulation of a specific industry rather than privatization? Also, we just handed over $1 trillion (or $14 trillion, by some counts) of taxpayer money over to the banks and what did we the people get out of it? This bill will hand over $1 trillion to the insurance companies (as presently constituted, again it does theoretically open the door for gov’t option or even single-payer) but it will also get 30 million or so uninsured people covered, up to 95 percent of all Americans covered.
when’s the last time you’ve seen your government move towards major new regulation of a specific industry rather than privatization?
Like, now, with financial regulation? Just sayin’. When people are pissed off about obvious damage caused by private interests trying to make more money, it isn’t hard to rally them in opposition.
HCR could have easily been a crusade against private insurers. They’ve caused far more tangible, human damage than the banks. That was never highlighted. So instead we’ve gotten the exact opposite: massive opposition to the very idea of HCR, mostly for barely-comprehensible, bogus reasons.
The Volcker Rule, the only actual regulation of the financial sector with any teeth, is nowhere near as close to reality as HCR, though.
Also, I guess the insurers made you choose between losing your house or your life, whereas the banks just made you lose your house, so maybe you’re right that the first did more damage …
Well, I’ve been thinking about all this (here she pauses to imagine that anyone cares)…Being Cap’n Downer and all, I think the SCOTUS handed Karl Rove what he wanted: a permanent Republican majority. There will continue to be Democrats in Congress, of course, and some of them even liberal; they just won’t make any difference.
No, I think the interesting thing here is how, once the cheering and gloating has stopped, the civil war will only accelorate in the GOP. After all, your average Wall Street corporation isn’t interested in the teabaggers, probably actively dislikes the unhinged and thus uncontrollable populism they represent. Peasants with torches and pitchforks: not generally good for business. So, I believe that the bait-and-switch that Frank Thomas described in _What’s the Matter with Kansas_ will likely continue: talk a good line of red meat but never actually toss it to your rabid followers.
Now, abortion may be toast–Mobil probably doesn’t have any particular opinion about it because it doesn’t affect their bottom line. Coors, Domino Pizza and Curves (among others) care desperately however, and loud voices in a vacuum, etc. And in a way it will be a relief to see Roe v Wade go–I am so tired of being held hostage over it, of being told to incrementally give up these rights because I need to prove I’m a good Democrat and “take one for the team.” Fuck that. Give this country a generation or two of shock treatment, all those women suddenly finding that they will have to carry a fetus to term, all those men looking at eigthteen years of child support…And we can go back to the good old days of “visiting an aunt in Kansas City.” Good times, good times…
But our corporate overlords will protect us from teabagger excess. I don’t think that business generally thinks much of creationism, for example, and the average megabank I am sure looks askance at the prospect of Christian-style Sharia law. Who knows, Mobil may be willing to shaft the insurance companies and create universal health care since it probably helps their bottom line.
Sure, we can wave bye-bye to unions, watch every feasible aspect of the federal government will be privatised (but even the prospect of at last being a soldier of fortune won’t get the 101st Keyboardists to join up) and see Social Security destroyed. But we may be starting fewer wars than you might fear, since war may be good for some businesses and not so good for others–one of many fractures that will running through the new overclass.
And, hey, at least we aren’t going to put into FEMA camps: not profitable enough.
But we may be starting fewer wars than you might fear, since war may be good for some businesses and not so good for others–one of many fractures that will running through the new overclass.
Oh sure, but you end too soon. Once we’re all serfs (due to the mechanism through which one corporation siphons money from another), we’ll eventually be absorbed wholly in thrall to a singular corporation. At this point in the the end-game the wars start in earnest. Once basically everyone is too poor to buy anything and your slaves are too beaten and whipped to produce the amounts that you crave you’re just going to have to revert to the old tried and true methods: kill other people to take their shit. Corporate war-making will flourish each with their own army and underclass to supply it and man it.
Raffles –
Two thoughts (because I care enough to move the cursor two inches to the comment box):
Give this country a generation or two of shock treatment, all those women suddenly finding that they will have to carry a fetus to term, all those men looking at eigthteen years of child support…And we can go back to the good old days of “visiting an aunt in Kansas City.” Good times, good times…
You’re probably right about the outcome. The problem with shock treatment is the lives damaged or destroyed in the process. I’m never a fan of “let it get worse without trying to make it better” because there are real consequences to letting “it” get worse. For example, our political parties are corrupt, but do you think that the people running around in 2000 saying that there was no difference between Bush and Gore and therefore they were not voting were right?
But our corporate overlords will protect us from teabagger excess. I don’t think that business generally thinks much of creationism, for example, and the average megabank I am sure looks askance at the prospect of Christian-style Sharia law. Who knows, Mobil may be willing to shaft the insurance companies and create universal health care since it probably helps their bottom line.
Except that the last generation’s archetypal big corporations, the car companies, actively lobbied against last generation’s health-care reform even though it would have saved them money. Big corps are run by people just as irrational as everyone else. If I though big corps made rational, Galtian choices I would still not trust them, but I wouldn’t be worried that they would pump billions into idiocy. To use your example, I’m worried about a company like Domino’s spending hundreds of millions or billions lobbying for the agenda of the RCC, which is irrational in terms of their bottom line.
>sparkletits – it’s a foot in the door for health care reform. <
No offense, D, but it's MY fucking foot in the door and the cobag Dems, led by Rahm Emmanuel, who are slamming the insurance industry on it, over and over–then making me pay to get it fixed. Tortured metaphor, but it's mine goddammit and I'm sticking with it.
I don't buy all the "it's better than nothing" bull–let's just fucking ban pre-existing conditions and be done with it, since that's everybody's darling in this bill. The rest is pure shit.
And D, did you ever think that your attitude, which is very common, is the very thing Dem leaders know they can count on to keep the unruly “fringe” in line? If everyone of these monsters knew there would be consequences for their betrayal of us then we wouldn’t have these sick compromises to vomit over every day. We need less kumbaya bullshit and more goddamn pitchforks.
It may be the “59th meeting of the 11th hour” but it’s only the 38th second, so we’ve got lots of time.
I’ve got a “pre-existing condition” that will put me in a grave before I become eligible for medicare. It’s an easily treatable condition but it’s expensive. I can’t get insurance, and I’m not going to bankrupt my wife and daughter just so I can live a normal lifespan.
This shit is life and death for me, and I really don’t want to hear about why there shouldn’t be a single-page bill, today, in congress that says “Insurance companies shall not deny people based on pre-existing conditions”. No, it wouldn’t help the entire health care system, but it would save lots of lives.
Instead, we have to get this “comprehensive” shit which really means “giveaways to insurance companies”.
Fuck that. The pre-existing conditions parts of the bill before congress doesn’t even kick in for 5 years, during which I should just have “hope”.
Kill this fucking bill instead of “just passing” the Senate version, I say. Start over. What do I care.
Well once again, old man Heinlein called it. In Friday, corporate states rose and battled it out, with Coca-Cola ending up with the eastern part of the former United States (the part that Canada didn’t take over, anyway). I think he missed on the western half though – I don’t see the California Free State coming around as much as China East.
‘Twill be interesting indeed. I do look forward to Citgo pushing pro-Venezuela positions – that will drive the teabaggers (more) insane.
Hmmmm..in Friday the first space elevator was in Quito, but looking just now I see the southern part of Venezuela sits on the equator, or perhaps they annex Equador. Either way, I see that possibility having become *much* more likely now that we’ve just become for sale on the international markets.
I’m so sick of hte Dems right now that I’m ready to donate money for primary challenges for the first time. I’ve always thought primary challenges a waste but now I say throw the bums out. Grijavja, Weiner, Nadler, Frank. Fuck them if they won’t vote to get something done.
PopeRatzo,
Please read page 45 of the health care bill. You won’t have to wait 5 years for the “pre-existing condition” parts of the bill to kick in. You’ll have to wait ninety days.
here
OTB – I hear you. I was against this Senate bill up to the point where it has literally become the only plausible option for any health care reform at all. We need more pitchforks, but we don’t have more pitchforks – actually, they’re in the hands of the teabaggers, pointing at the wrong set of scoundrels.
In “The Last Remake of Beau Geste” (Marty Feldman, M. York) there is a scene where the Bad Guys make off with the Good Guy’s Flag.
M. York: OMG! They’ve taken our FLAG! We must get it back!
Marty: Haven’t we got another?
Better health care bills CAN be legislated.
Don’t worry, Pope Ratzo. Thanks to God-Emperor Obama and the totes extra-awesome corporate-owned demotard party, you’ll be put into a pre-existing condition insurance category that will have deductibles so ruinous you’ll fall over dead just reading the rates. Then, after you’re dead, you can haunt the lackwit dnc shills of SadlyNo for the rest of eternity for the sub-moronic lesser-evil dipshittery that killed you.
Won’t that be fun?
N_B, re: Raffles:
It’s bizarre to say, “Wouldn’t it be terrible to walk into that buzzsaw?” as we do it, but we seem determined to take that walk.
The consequence of passing the bill will that some people get health insurance, a lot of unwanted children will be born and some women will die. But it’s better than nothing – for you.
Maybe you all shouldn’t have taken the last month to call those of us on the left whiny little children who need to grow up and stop being insane every chance you got.
What are the odds you’ll get us to side with you now? I’m just going to get a bag of popcorn and watch you all lose your minds and cheer, just like you cheered as our dreams were shattered and our hopes were destroyed.
You get what you give, and you give what you get.
Shut up, child.
I’ve got this idea. Just fuck all the laws of this nation. Why not? The wealthy and elite certainly don’t bother with ’em.
I’ll just take what I want when I want it with as much arrogance and self-entitled swagger as the elite have. I figure if you put on a brave enough face you can get away with anything.
“And please stop the blame game…..***Of course, we could always throw Jane Hamsher to the lion to slow it down. ”
Well, good thing you aren’t playing the blame game.
But I’m sure if no health care bill passes, you’ll be right here blaming the liberals again. Because it’s always our fault, dontchaknow.
And if the House does pass the Senate bill, a bill you and everyone but Nelson and Lieberman think both sucks and blows, you’ll castigate us all for not saying that the crap sandwich tastes wonderful come November. “It’s better than nothing!” — True, but not a winning campaign slogan, is it?
And by the way, thanks Harry Reid and all you “sensible centrists” for taking reconciliation off the table from the beginning. Boy, imagine if you’d listened to liberals about that. I mean we’d be much worse off than now, right? Why, health care reform might be dying right now if we’d done that. Or, you know, maybe we’d actually have a decent bill instead.
“If you can’t win, don’t try.” “Why negotiate when you can capitulate?” Thanks as always, centrist Dems.
it’s a foot in the door for health care reform. We’ve never ever had that before, we’re closer to it than we’ve ever been before, and history shows that the absolute hardest thing to do is get that foot in the door. What history doesn’t show is if it is possible to improve things after you’ve got the foot in the door, because again, we have never ever had a foot in the door.
You have Medicare for chrissakes!! It’s nationalized health insurance and a superior system to this patched together ‘reform’. Medicaid etc. are worse, but they’re already there too. But you have been brainwashed to think that these don’t count, so you need to go looking for some club foot with elephantitis to jam in the door. “Medicare? This is not the foot in the door of public health care you’re looking for.” (jedi handwave)