Spintested: 03/02/11

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

By the way, Aytch-P has a filter that prevents duplicates, so your 'help' isn't necessary.
About Obama Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Those weren't duplicates -- Learn to read.

I've just reported your abusing your ability.
About Obama Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Obama's Daily Schedule - Wednesday, February 23, 2011:

7:00 AM

8:00 AM

9:00 AM

9:30 AM Obama receives the presidential daily briefing.

10:00 AM

11:00 AM

12:00 PM

12:45 PM Obama departs the White House en route Bethesda, Maryland.

1:00 PM

1:15 PM Obama visits the National Naval Medical Center.

2:00 PM

2:45 PM Obama arrives at the White House.

3:00 PM

3:45 PM Obama meets with Hillary Clinton.

4:00 PM

5:00 PM

5:15 PM Obama delivers a statement on Libya.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Obama's Daily Schedule - Thursday, February 24, 2011:

7:00 AM

8:00 AM

9:00 AM

9:30 AM Obama receives the presidential daily briefing.

10:00 AM Obama meets with senior advisers.

11:00 AM

12:00 PM

1:00 PM

1:45 PM Obama holds a meeting with the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

2:00 PM

3:00 PM Obama meets with Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.

4:00 PM

5:00 PM

7:15 PM Barack and Michelle Obama host music legends and contemporary major artists for "The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House"; Joe and Jill Biden also attend.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Obama's Daily Schedule - Friday, February 25, 2011:

7:00 AM

8:00 AM

9:00 AM

9:30 AM Obama and Biden receive the Presidential Daily Briefing.

10:00 AM

11:00 AM Obama and Biden meet with Democratic governors.

12:00 PM

12:30 PM Obama and Biden meet for lunch.

1:00 PM

2:00 PM

3:00 PM

4:00 PM

5:00 PM
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Obama's Daily Schedule - Monday, February 28, 2011:

7:00 AM

8:00 AM

9:00 AM

9:45 AM Obama and Biden receive the Presidential Daily Briefing.

10:00 AM

11:00 AM Obama and Biden meet with a bipartisan group of governors.

12:00 PM

12:30 PM

1:00 PM

2:00 PM

2:10 PM Obama meets with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

3:00 PM

4:00 PM

5:00 PM
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Obama's Daily Schedule - Tuesday, March 1, 2011:

7:00 AM

8:00 AM

9:00 AM

10:00 AM

10:45 AM Obama receives the presidential daily briefing.

11:00 AM

11:15 AM Obama meets with senior advisors

12:00 PM

12:30 PM

1:00 PM

2:00 PM

3:00 PM

4:00 PM

4:30 PM Obama and Biden meet with Robert Gates.

5:00 PM
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP Governors & Obama At Impasse Over Medicaid

Obama's Daily Schedule - Wednesday, March 2, 2011:

7:00 AM

8:00 AM

9:00 AM

10:00 AM Obama and Biden receive the presidential daily briefing.

10:30 AM Obama meets with senior advisors

11:00 AM

12:00 PM

12:30 PM Obama and Biden meet for lunch.

1:00 PM

1:45 PM Obama awards the 2010 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal; Michelle Obama also attends.

2:00 PM

3:00 PM

4:00 PM

4:30 PM Obama and Biden meet with Hillary Clinton

5:00 PM

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How Democrats Can Become Relevant Again (And Rescue the Nation While They're At It)

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like living wages, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, Wall Street reform, environmental & energy issues, etc.).

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How Democrats Can Become Relevant Again (And Rescue the Nation While They're At It)

During the Bush years, Democrats said if the People wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did.

Nothing changed.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting Bush-Cheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.

They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".

In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the Democratic Caucus. And, we gave them the White House.

Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old r@c!st America, than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. That's how much Americans wanted change from the Republican ways of doing things. Voters did it because of Obama's ability to persuade, that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- Obama was going to be the People's president, not a corporate t00I.

And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election & a filibuster-proof Senate (tentative yet, with 2 senators, Kennedy & Byrd, at deth's door), Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises & sloooooowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans", after Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep.

Obama's political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation -- Everything was to flow through his operation. If you knew anything about politics, you'd know that this is a ded giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement.

Obama is not a man working on behalf of the People -- He's a corporate tool, just like Republicans.

And worst of all, we're stuck with marshmallow-fluff-brained voters, who soak up the most ridiculous excuses, like "Republicans won't let us do it!", when, in fact, Obama and Democrats don't even try. Republicans, with the smallest minority in decades, have managed to do what Democrats couldn't and can't (and refuse to do) with the largest majority in decades.
About Republicans
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

A non-abusive and on-topic comment purged by mah-der-ators on one shift is allowed through on the next shift.

Why is there any mah-der-ashun if it's not to sen-sir in an effort to shape public opinion?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

The mah-der-a-shun here has reached a point where the negatives of visiting this site outweigh the positives. Aytch-P has become nothing more than tabloid, reprinting news stories published elsewhere and op-ed articles by political operatives that can't be countered with comments pointing to factual refutation.

When all is said and done and the reason for incivility in public discourse is examined, it'll be because of the frustration to conditions at sites like this one, where readers were unable to express non-abusive and on-topic responses to what they're reading online.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

It is d@mned near impossible to have a reasoned discussion on these threads due to the BS mah-der-ation going on here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tom Coburn Jabs Newt Gingrich Over Presidential Ambitions

Why would Republicans want Gingrich or any divisive character when Obama so effectively does the job for them of bringing Democrats to the Republicans' side and Democratic voters are so taken in by Obama's 'democrat-ness'?

With Reagan reborn in the body of Obama in the White House, Republicans have dled and gone to heaven.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How Democrats Can Become Relevant Again (And Rescue the Nation While They're At It)

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromising change to our campaign financing system, until corporations are no longer 'persons' and prohibited from participating in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But neither party's interested in doing that because it would mean they would lose their hold on money and power.

Any party that doesn't have that as their first order of business (particularly after the Citizens United decision and the overwhelming public support for reform) is d!rty, r0tten and corrupt to the bone.

I'm an old, lifelong Democrat saying that. I've never voted Republican, and I can't see voting for another Democrat again. But I think it's too late for that, for this "noble experiment" continuing the US as we've known it and as it was intended (a democratic republic) by the framers. What's at the root of the problem could only have been remedied had Obama come into office investigating and prosecuting the Bush administration and restoring the 'rule of law'.

Bush and Cheney exploited the inherent weaknesses in the Constitution: The precarious balance of power between the three branches of government.

As president, you've got to really want the US to work, to exist, to not exploit the loopholes in the Constitution that keep our three-branches of government precariously balancing the democracy. But Bush-Cheney drove tanks through the loopholes, breaking the law and with no apparent concern for exposing the loopholes or any consequences.

That fact alone casts suspicion on Obama's good intentions after his failure to investigate and prosecute and his continuing Bush's 'unitary executive' practices (and expanding them, with "indefinite preventive detention" of American citizens and the k!IIing of Americans with no due process or oversight).

There was a coup d'etat in this nation, a bloodless one, but a coup nonetheless. And both parties are in on it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How Democrats Can Become Relevant Again (And Rescue the Nation While They're At It)

Democrats, Republicans, they're both the same. They're controlled by the same people.

Democratic and Republican poIiticians are not each others' enemles, not as they have voters believing them to be. Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their Corporate Masters.

Think of them as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. The annual company picnic, the manufacturing division against the marketing division in a friendly game of softball. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.

Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what we thought they were.

Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.

Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

You ARE voting Republican whenever you vote Democrat these days.

Democrats, Republicans, they're both the same. They're controlled by the same people.

Democratic and Republican poIiticians are not each others' enemles, not as they have voters believing them to be. Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their Corporate Masters.

Think of them as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. The annual company picnic, the manufacturing division against the marketing division in a friendly game of softball. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.

Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what we thought they were.

Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.

Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

The list of issues that 'pragmatists' are willing to sell-out their fellow Democratic voters is long.

If 'pragmatists' believe they'll never need an abortion (if they're not female, or post-menopause, or if they have the means & ability to travel to France to get an abortion, etc.), then assaults on a woman's right to choose aren't 'deal-breakers'.

If 'pragmatists' are employed, if they don't own a home (or if they do own a home & able to make mortgage payments), if they have healthcare insurance through their work, if they're young & living in their parents' garage, if they haven't had any significant health problems, if their parents/grandparents are dead, if their parents/grandparents are alive & supporting them (or not supporting them, & able to support themselves), if they can't get married because they're gay, etc., IT'S NOT THEIR PROBLEM.

[Here's another example of the folly of 'pragmatists' & their ig.no.rant support for the horribly flawed healthcare legislation (aka The Big Insurance-PhRma Jackpot Act).]

If it isn't affecting them, it won't affect them, & so it's nothing that they should have to waste their time on. Or in their 'bottom line'.

There's nothing "pragmatic" about these people. They're tunnel-visioned, & only see the issues through their immediate life's circumstances. Some might say that they're in denial. Others might say they're selfish, "narcissistically-in clined". Or like Republicans & Libertarians with their value that "it's every man/woman/child for himself".

But it's certainly not a Democratic value.

And as no discussion on the !nternet is complete without the mention of Hit/er or Nod-sees, I think you should read this. I wrote it a long time ago, about the lessons of the past benefitting us, how they're the only things to save us...But first we must learn them.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

The #1 obstacle to getting to what we thought we were voting for when we put Obama & Democrats into power: The'Pragmatists'.

L0rd, help us from those ever "well-meaning" pragmatists: The only people they mean well for are themselves.

We hear about "pragmatism" a lot from Obama's 'most ardent supporters'. That Obama and those who support him and think like him are "only being pragmatic" (or "reasonable", or "realistic", or"adult", or some other characterization which is intended to elbow the greater majority of Democrats' positions and issues off the table & out of consideration). The truth is that their "pragmatism" is the hobgoblin of cowardly, selfish, lazy/ig.no.rant minds.

'Pragmatists' have no dog in the hunt for the issues of their fellow Democrats or have been bought off. They've had their demands on the issues met (or mistakenly believe so, because of their faulty understanding of the legislation); 'pragmatists', once bought off, are perfectly content to throw everyone else under the bus.

'Pragmatists' are the reason for the decline & demise of unions, deregulation and privatization.

Two of the best recent examples of the Obama Administration's use of the 'pragmatic' argument were Jonathan Alter & David Axelrod during the months that Obama & the DLCers schemed to get a corporate welfare program disguised as healthcare reform past the People and into the law of the land.

See here.

And here.

And here.

And here.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

FYI, there's rarely a majority in Congress to pass anything at all until a campaign has been mounted to sell it.

And when a president and his political party are swept into power to deliver affordable, quality medical treatment for all as Obama and Democrats were in 2008, and the one method that can accomplish it (and also happens to solve other unique problems facing us at the time, i.e., a crashing economy, joblessness, etc.) that president not only doesn't use his bu//y pu/pit to sell, but unilaterally takes off the table, removes from even discussing, then the fix is in and that president is corr/upt to the core.

Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison. What Obama did was preserve an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care that everyone except the insurance industry wanted to end. It's government sanctioned racketeering.

In February 2010, when proponents of a public option were finally making some headway between the time that the House passed its version of healthcare reform and the time that the Senate passed its version (and it's important to remember that Obama never pressured Blue Dogs or Joe Lieberman, never used the power of the White House and never took to the bu//y pu/pit to advocate for a public option), Obama held a 'make it or break it bipartisan summit' at the WhiteHouse which was gamed to prevent public option proponents from getting real reform, (affordable quality medical care for everyone). PO proponents were shut out of the negotiations. Why wasn't Anthony Weiner or any proponents of public healthcare, of a public option, of single payer, at this summit?

The summit was gamed to let insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare.

Whether it's Republicans saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must have accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of you be preserved and protected, despite it bankrupting the American people individually and the nation at large.

Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductibles, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

“The Democrats & Republicans give the illusion that there are differences between them,” said Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition. We fight over whether a Democrat or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact aren't significantly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on SinglePayer. Not one. I don’t see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger & broader social movement.”

The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of healthcare. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.

“We're at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Healthcare providers, particularly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independent practice. We're seeing greater corporatization of our healthcare. Practices are being taken over by these large corporations. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the InsuranceCompany. They tell you what your reimbursements will be. They make it incredibly difficult & complex to get reimbursed. The rules are arbitrary & change frequently.”

“This new legislation doesn't change any of that. It doesn't make it easier for doctors. It adds more administrative complexity. We're going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they're giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporations like McDonald’s say they can’t comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna & Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with preexisting conditions announced they weren't going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the ObamaAdministration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Healthcare costs are going to rise faster.

The CenterForMedicare & MedicaidServices estimated that after the legislation passed, our healthcare costs would rise more steeply than if we'd done nothing. The CensusBureau reports that the number of uninsured in the US jumped 10 percent to 51 million people in 2009. About 5.8 million were able to go on public programs, but a third of our population under the age of 65 was uninsured for some portion of 2009. The NationalHealthInsuranceSurvey estimates that we now have 58 or 59 million uninsured. And the trend is toward underinsurance. These faulty insurance products leave people financially vulnerable if they have a serious accident or illness. They also have financial barriers to care. Co-pays & deductibles cause people to delay or avoid getting the care they need. And all these trends will worsen.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/power_and_the_tiny_acts_of_rebellion_20101122/
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

“You can’t effect change from the inside,” she has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won’t get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequalities, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independent of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”

“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation], for example, funds many public health departments. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-payer. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/private partnership. And we know this is totally ineffective. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-payer health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.

There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-payer, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-payer they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organization was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women’s rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”

KEEP READING
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it is like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blacklisted by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on health care reform by the Democratic Party and liberal organizations such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room.

“The reform process exposed how broken our system is,” Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. “The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-payer advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politically feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns.”

“There was nobody in the House or the Senate who held fast on universal health care,” she lamented. “Sen. [Bernie] Sanders from Vermont introduced a single-payer bill, S 703. He introduced an amendment that would have substituted S 703 for what the Senate was putting together. We had to push pretty hard to get that to the Senate floor, but in the end he was forced by the leadership to withdraw it. He was our strongest person. In the House we saw Chairman John Conyers, who is the lead sponsor for the House single-payer bill, give up pushing for single-payer very early in the process in 2009. Dennis Kucinich pushed to get an amendment that would help give states the ability to pass single-payer. He was not successful in getting that kept in the final House bill. He held out for the longest, but in the end he caved.”

KEEP READING
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

Incremental change means going in the correct direction. Obama's legislation doesn't.

Having insurance doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care.

Think about that for a minute, because I do understand how, after hours/days /months of spin by professional spinmeisters (politicians), you might not appreciate the distinction.

All that these bills do is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) and into insurance companies' pockets.

There is NO LIMITATION on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services.

There is NO REQUIREMENT for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.

Having an insurance policy doesn't have anything to do with being able to get affordable, quality medical treatment. With this legislation, insurance companies can sell you an insurance policy with your pre-existing condition, but can exclude treatment for your pre-existing condition. Or they can charge you more for a policy to include treating your pre-existing condition. They can increase your co-pays, increase the deductibles. They can also deny to pay your claims for treatment of your preexisting condition entirely, in violation of the terms of the policy, and only have to pay $100 a day in fines. When we're talking about pricey treatment and pharmaceuticals, $100 a day gets them off cheap. And if you want to sue, if you're still aIive to get your day in court, the coming tort reform will stop you in your tracks. Yes, Obama has put tort reform on the table.

There is only one reason that the Establishment Elites of the Democratic Party (the DLC) were and are behind the insurance- centered legislation: Portability, pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps.

Because the legislation does nothing to limit co-pays, costs and premium prices, we're talking about a very particular group of people (employed, rich, very comfortable elites) who benefit. That includes people who were in front of the cameras in the media pushing this legislation, like Paul Begala, Jonathan Alter and David Axelrod. Alter and Axelrod's adult daughter who have reached their lifetime limits on medical care and/or can't qualify because of pre-existing conditions . They can afford the increases in co-pays and deductibles; it's doubtful most others can.

And as the economy worsens, more won't be able to as more lose their jobs and insurance coverage, as more can't pay the premiums, and as more fall to Medicaid (which is bankrupting states -- States are cutting Medicaid services, and some states are looking to opt out of Medicaid entirely).

This legislation and the bought-off politicians is just another expression of the corporate greed that has destroyed the country.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

To believe that Democrats were "caught off guard" is to go de@f, dvmb and bIind about years of pro-corporate acts by Democratic politicians that have brought us to this point.

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like reproductive freedom, living wages, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, Wall Street reform, environmental & energy issues, etc.).

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

No matter what those things are that are getting done?

Democrats accomplishing Republicans' agenda is just fine with you.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

Obama's healthcare legislation IS Republican healthcare legislation.

There is no mechanism for lowering the costs of treatment. Obama put a fox in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler) to write and enforce the regulations. Her most notable actions to date have been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.

Obama's healthcare legislation prohibits the very thing that was the top issue in the 2008 election: The government being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.

Obama's healthcare legislation is Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (which was a $700 billion + giveaway to Big Insurance & PhRma), Part 2.

Not only doesn't Obama's healthcare legislation accomplish what Obama and Democrats were put into power to get (affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, lower drug prices), it is, in fact, a giant leap toward ending all public healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.).

Obama's healthcare legislation puts more people into Medicaid, which the states are required to co-pay along with the federal government. The states are already going bankrupt, and moving toward eliminating Medicaid services as a result. States' options are limited, especially those states with constitutional requirements to balance their budgets. So while people may find themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that should all else fail you've got Medicaid as your safety net, guess again: Medicaid won't cover c/hit.

Having insurance (which is all that Obama's legislation does, and not even for everyone, just for a few million more) doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care. All that Obama's healthcare legislation does is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) to there (into insurance companies' pockets).

There is no limitation on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services. There is no requirement for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.

Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictions in the bill. The con game in the legislation -- Medical loss ratio. The amount of money insurers must spend on healthcare, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

The Tea Party is an effective nemesis for Obama: A paper tiger. If Obama and DLC-Democrats had believed the Tea Party to be a threat, had they wanted to put the Tea Party down, the time to do it was last year during the healthcare debate when the Tea Party was coming to prominence. When Democratic members of Congress were cancelling Town Halls because of the escalating threats of violence by gvn-toting teabaggers, disrupting Americans' long-honored traditions of peaceful debate in the public square.

Instead of taking to the bully pulpit, announcing increased security on government properties hosting these events, Obama disappeared from the healthcare debate (to cut secret deals with Big Insurance, PhRma, hospitals, the AMA, etc., and then l!e about it) as the Tea Party grew & bullied at Town Halls.

What Obama did instead during the same Town Hall time period: Unleashed federal security forces to Pittsburgh to break up peaceful protests of the G20 meeting (using the new weaponry on dissenters who the 'establishment elites' really fear) and stem the unrest that actually threatens the 'elites', i.e., the American people taking back their government -
Obama has no problem quelling dissent or inspiring our better angels when he wants or needs to.

Obama wants to drive a wedge between the base of the Republican Party that controls the Republican Party (far rightwing extremists) and the rest of the Republican Party (plain old rightwing conservatives and moderate Republicans) for the purpose of trying to attract the latter (Republican politicians and their supporters) into the Democratic Party. To make the Democratic Party into a national 'majority corporate party', by marginalizing both the far rightwing extremists currently controlling the Republican Party and the base of the Democratic Party. In order "to govern, from the center, for 100 years".

The Tea Party serves this end it several ways. Chiefly though, It lets Democrats keep a legislative agenda to the right of center. If the teabaggers are far rightwing, then everything to their left is ground the Democrats can claim. And that's a lot of corporate-money ground.

Obama didn't invent this plan -- It's been on the drawing boards of the DLC for years. The midterm elections did nothing to change the plan.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

First of all, it doesn't matter the percentage of the black population; it matters how they are necessary for "running the table" to get to the nomination.

You don't get the nomination without getting the base of the Democratic Party on board, and Obama had no credibility, no following, no support with the base, the left, the liberals. He had no history, he came from nowhere. The black portion of the base was allied with the Clintons, and unless Obama won over the old guard blacks, those who walked with MLK, his campaign wasn't going anywhere.

That happened in Selma. Selma was symbolic, and Obama wove a BS narrative to get the vanguard to accept him (and PS, his wife wasn't and isn't running for office, and for the record, she's a corporate lawyer whose job it was when working for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to extricate facility from having to treat the indigent).

Obama himself was raised by a white banker, in expensive and elite private schools, and those are the values that define him, and that we see in how he governs. There's nothing populist about his administration. It's Goldman Sachs, and just about every policy he's got going is a continuation of Bush-Cheney.

Obama is a fr@ud.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

Democratic voters need to find independent candidates and finance those candidates.

To finance the DLC-controlled Democratic Party is like a chicken advertising KFC.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

Good info, but you've discounted the fact that most of the voting block was (and is) right of center.
==================================================================

As an old old liberal Democrat (an FDR Democrat), I've lived our history first hand and don't believe for a moment what you've said. I know that it's popular dogma, but it's inaccurate.

Most Americans, when informed on the issues, agree with liberal policies and solutions. The problem is that most Americans are not informed, and are kept ill-informed and in a state of fear just so they will support calls for heavy-handed authoritarian rule.

Nixon did promise "to end the war", and just like Obama the d3viI is in the details. To these warmongers, they mean and mean "ending it" by escalating it. If any conservative could have won over McGovern (and presumably any anti-war Democrat) then dlrty-tricks campaigning (like the Canuck letter against Muskie, or the Scoop Jackson letter, or the Humphrey letter, etc.) wouldn't have taken place.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

Why bother voting for Republicans when you can get the same policies from DLC-Democrats like Obama?

In the NYT:

"Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat"

Americans, particularly Democratic voters, are getting played, big time.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

The base of the Democratic Party, 70% of Democratic voters, controlled the outcome of the midterms. Liberals lost 3 seats in all. Democratic voters not showing up is what caused Blue Dogs and others to lose.

Obama can't win in 2012 without the base showing up. He knows this, and it's why I believe that no sooner did he get into the White House than he and Rahm Emanuel went after Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, two people with no official roles in the Republican Party. After the 2008 election, Republicans were on the mat, down for the count, and Obama pardoned them. He never, still doesn't, go after Republicans.

Obama did as much to elevate the Tea Party to prominence as the Koch brothers and Dick Armey. He's counting on Sarah Palin being the Republican Party's nominee in 2012, and running a campaign of fear. That's not just to get Democrats to show up to vote for him out of fear of Palin, but moderate Republican politicians and their supporters, too. He's hoping for crossover voting, in big waves.

I'm sure there will be more Osama Bin Laden tapes surfacing right before the election, along with news all over the media about thwarted t3rr0r attacks and how it was all due to our lost privacy rights, and how necessary it is to "keeping us safe".

When you're talking about trillions of dollars that can be borrowed in the names of Americans and their children and then stolen, there are no lengths these politicians won't go to.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

Obama's made his bed with the corporatocracy -- To work for and with the left means enacting Democratic policies, spending for social, populist programs. That's not Obama.

Obama is a DINO and the DLC has been working to move the Democratic Party even farther to the right-of-center than it already is, marginalize both the base of the Democratic Party (left) and the extreme rightwing of the Republican Party, attract moderate Republican politicians and their supporters into the Democratic Party, so that it can "govern from the center for 100 years".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

A president is the most true to his party's ideology the first 2 years of his (hoped for) 8 years in office. Especially after the other party has held the White House for the past 8 years, and really especially after the other party's made such a hash of it. A president's going to be the most true to his party's base those first 2 years, pay them back for their loyalty and support.

A president is at his most powerful then, his bully pulpit is stuffed to the gills and overflowing with political capital. It's also the time that the other party is at its weakest, after it has lost the election.

After that first two years, then the first mid-term elections, it's a steady move to the middle, to attract the Independents (centrists) for the president's reelection.

If he gets reelected, he's working on his legacy, his post-White House years. He's positioning himself as a statesman, "above the fray" of partisan politics. He's looking for his place on the world stage.

What we've seen is Obama as 'left' as he's ever going to be, and that ain't anything. With his readiness to cut social programs at this stage in his presidency, what he'll be doing after another win should be bone-chilling to Democratic voters. Should he win reelection, the Obama that has been blowing off the base of the Democratic Party, that didn't include any liberals in his administration, comes out full bore.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

McGovern lost because of one mistake too many (choosing and sticking with Eagleton too long after it was reported that Eagleton had had electroshock therapy a decade earlier to treat depression), after Democratic disappointment after disappointment (from the deths of JFK, RFK, MLK to Ted & Chappaquidlck) in a race with the very Republicans who invented modern day 'dirty tricks'-campaigning (Nixon). McGovern's delay in dropping Eagleton from the ticket spelled the end for what would have been a landslide in favor of Democrats for years to come.

Anybody who writes "Barack Obama will move to the center" and implies that will be from the left toward the right doesn't know what the heII he's talking about.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

First of all, it doesn't matter the percentage of the black population; it matters how they are necessary for "running the table" to get to the nomination.

You don't get the nomination without getting the base of the Democratic Party on board, and Obama had no credibility, no following, no support with the base, the left, the liberals. He had no history, he came from nowhere. The black portion of the base was allied with the Clintons, and unless Obama won over the old guard blacks, those who walked with MLK, his campaign wasn't going anywhere.

That happened in Selma. With a BS narrative. And his wife wasn't and isn't running for office. Obama himself was raised by a white banker, in expensive and elite private schools, and those are the values that define him, and that we see in how he governs. There's nothing populist about his administration. It's Goldman Sachs, and just about every policy he's got going is a continuation of Bush-Cheney.

Obama is a fraud.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

George McGovern and the Tea Party

George McGovern lost because of one mistake too many (choosing and sticking with Eagleton too long after it was reported that Eagleton had had electroshock therapy a decade earlier to treat depression), after Democratic disappointment after disappointment (from the deths of JFK, RFK, MLK to Ted & Chappaquidlck) in a race with the very Republicans who invented modern day 'dirty tricks'-campaigning (Nixon). McGovern's delay in dropping Eagleton from the ticket spelled the end for what would have been a landslide in favor of Democrats for years to come.

Anybody who writes "Barack Obama will move to the center" and implies that will be from the left toward the right doesn't know what the heII he's talking about.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

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