Firedoglake, the Ralph Nadar of Health Care!

Why do some people take actions that go against their own self interests? It happens on the left and the right, a lot of the time it can be put in the hypocrisy column and other times it seems to be caused by some emotional reason that is overriding that person or organizations own goals and beliefs. Some of the folks over at Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher, Jon Walker, Emptywheel, David Dayan and others, seem to contort their own beliefs to justify their opposition to the health care bill. They are using very similar tactics as Republicans like using trite phrases, narrow interpretations, denial, suppositions that are false, clinging to old talking points that are no longer true, vilifying people and corporations unfairly and using that vilification to help bolster their flimsy reasoning and narrow agenda.

The biggest example of this is watching the “Hamsher Gang” talk as if we live in a socialist country all of a sudden. They talk from a premise that suggests that democrats somehow have 60 very liberal, progressive votes in the Senate. There is major denial going on in their camp about what is possible with the current makeup of the House and Senate. They expect President Obama to dictate to the congress single payer health care or at the least the public option as if all he has to do is say “you must do this now, I am King Obama.” Well, that ain’t how it works folks. I’ve visited FDL on occasion to try and figure out what their thinking is and have found in the comments section mostly right wing people who simply attack the President personally, attribute ideas and thoughts to him much like the tea partiers do, based in suspicion, rumors, hatred for Rahm Emmanuel and the president and basically no engagement on the issues at all. Sure there are some who are liberal or progressive who have chosen one anti corporation mentality that guides everything they think. When you challenge them on any point, they throw out the fact that insurance companies will make money off having more people covered. No acknowledgment that those people covered might actually get health care, they only focus on the potential money the insurance companies might make due to an increase in people covered.

I’m not a fan of big corporations that have gotten away with all sorts of things during the Bush/Cheney and to some extent the Clinton/Gore administrations, but I’m not one who thinks they are inherently evil, they are driven by profit in a capitalistic society…uh, it’s been that way for quite a while in this country. Did these folks just wake up from a lifelong dream of living in a socialist country. Did they just now realize that we are a capitalist country? Our country isn’t going socialist anytime soon, get over it people. I personally wish we were more socialistic, a delicate balance between being profit driven and exacting controls on them that protect the public. This balance was tilted far to the right during the W years and needs to be tilted back very quickly. Regulations need to be enforced, they are there for a reason.

I was challenged at FDL with a series of questions that asked about liberal principles and I answered them as I would, very liberally. I was then asked if Obama were to do the opposite of one of my answers, phrasing it as “throwing me under the bus”, and I realized that they are admitting that they are choosing one principle and holding firm to it. Now that idea isn’t necessarily bad, but when sticking to that principle causes you to lose all sense of perspective, all views of the bigger picture and the overall goal of a progressive movement, then it becomes self serving and really just plain stupid. When people can actually type “oh, the old people will die argument” and poo poo it as if people dying isn’t important. Now that is when I know that sticking to that principal has made them go off the rails.

Republican Lies Continue Unabated!

The latest pack of lies that the Republicans and their minions are pushing is about the procedure that is rumored to be under consideration for passing the health care bill. The Wall Street Journal led the charge with their lies and misinterpretations. One of the lies going around is that Democrats are avoiding voting on the bill.  From Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic…

In fact, they ARE taking an up or down vote on the Senate health care bill. They’re just doing it AT THE SAME TIME as they’re passing the reconciliation language, which countermands several controversial provisions. That is: House Democrats still have to vote for the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback,” and the “Gator Aid” provisions, but they’re going to do so while simultaneously passing the reconciliation fix that removes them. The two bills will essentially be merged into one vote.

It’s a procedure that’s been used many times by both parties, once again the Republicans have selective amnesia and the media just plays along with it for the most part. Norm Ornstein sums up their tactics pretty good…

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld).

Did you catch the fact that Republicans used it 35 times between 2005 and 2006, it worked well for them, heh. That liberal bastion, The Washington Post, cough….even weighed in on the misinformation with a blazing headline. Here is an excerpt from a story in the New Republic.

But the way that some journalists are describing it, you’d think the House Democrats were willing a bill into law by magic. “House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it,” blared a Washington Post headline. The Post’s only explanation of the tactic came from Nancy Pelosi, who said, “It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know.”

The one and only proud father Booman has a most excellent analogy for the situation, go read his blog if you haven’t already. From his post….

Tell me if you’ve ever faced the following situation. You want to carry two things upstairs. You are holding one, but because of the awkward shape of the second item you can’t pick it up without putting the first item down. In other words, you picked these two items up in the wrong order and you have to start over by picking the second item up first and then the first item after that. Has that ever happen to you?That’s the basic situation that the Democrats in the House are facing with the health care bill. They want to just vote on the reconciliation part of the bill because it doesn’t include the crappy stuff that is in the Senate bill. In fact, the reconciliation bill explicitly eliminates the crappy stuff in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, they have to carry both bills up the stairs and they can’t carry the reconciliation bill until they have first picked up the more awkward Senate bill.

I can’t believe how juvenile the Republican leadership has been, or maybe they really have no leadership and the fools are running the ship.

They are almost parodies of themselves, they lie unabashedly even though we can “roll tape” and expose their lies. They then just ignore the response and continue to lie, the media plays along, calls it an opposing view or something. They keep on lying….someone takes a poll to find out how well the lie worked. Bingo, the idiots are answering their phones for the pollsters and spewing forth the lies they heard Rush, Glenn, Bill O., and basically the whole cast of Fox News and the right wing radio cesspool spew forth.

We are living in a National Lampoon movie, I swear.

Morning Propoganda with Joe

Every morning I torture myself by watching Morning Joe while I drink coffee and shake out the cobwebs. It helps to get my blood flowing in the morning, sometimes it gets it flowing better than others. This morning they dedicated almost an hour to bashing the health care bill. They had Jim Cramer on to spew his fear of tax increases and big government. Lawrence O’Donnnell then joined the group and although being a democrat, Lawerence is the know-it-all kid on the block who worked for a Senate committee for ohhhhhhh, 2 years…and therefore considers himself the leading authority on how the Senate works. 2 whole years as a staffer on the Finance Committee…..wow, that’s a long time. For a while, we had Joe Scarborough who is an EXPERT on the House of Representatives because he served for ohhhhhhhhh, 6 years and then stepped down abruptly, which I’m sure had nothing to do with the intern that was found dead in his Florida office, suspicious circumstances for sure. Google it if you are curious.

Lawrence is Mr. Senate Procedure guy after working for the Senate for, did I mention 2 years. He claims that the Democrats are pulling something that is unprecedented and is the lone voice saying it’s not going to work, moving from conference to reconciliation mid-bill. The thing that sticks out to me as being unprecedented is the way the Republicans have been stalling our government, stopping every single thing that is attempted, even things they agree with. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented maneuvers. From what I’ve read and heard, the way the dems are going is well within the rules of the Senate, just like all the crap the Repugs are pulling. Two can play that game and when you are in the majority, you have an advantage in the game.

Joe Scarborough, who loves to cut off Lawrence when he’s defending people’s rights, but when he’s helping Joe pimp his conservative storyline, he lets Lawrence ramble on and on and you can just tell that Larry loves that spotlight on him. Larry loves to be the lone voice within the party, bucking the party and going rogue with his very narrow opinions. If I had time, I would dig up some of his previous pronouncements that never came true. But it is very revealing about Joe S. that he lets Larry go when he agrees with him, cuts him off and calls him crazy when he doesn’t. Gotta love propoganda in the morning, heh?

What Is Harold Ford Jr. Smoking, Anyway?

I can’t believe Harold Ford Jr. thinks the president should have worked harder to get a bi-partisan health care bill. What planet has he been on for the last year? He went on and on this morning on Morning Joke about it. To her credit, Savannah Guthrie schooled him on just how much they tried to reach out to the Republicans, way too much in my opinion. Is Harold Ford Jr. now angling to run for governor of New York? If he thinks he can get elected, he better head back south where democrats are conservative.

What The American People Want!

Whenever I hear anyone say “this is what the American people want”, I immediately discount what they have to say. “The American people” is made up of people of all sorts of different beliefs, liberal, conservative, moderate, libertarian, socialist, fascist, capitalist, communist…we have a myriad of opinions that can’t be boiled down to one question on a robo-poll.  It is never accurate to generalize what America believes or wants because “America” is not monolithic in its thinking. At the health care summit we kept hearing the Republicans repeat that the American people don’t want this bill. This poll from Newsweek (and polls are the problem here) shows that when you explain the details of the plan, they do support it.

When asked about Obama’s plan (without being given any details about what the legislation includes), 49 percent opposed it and 40 percent were in favor. But after hearing key features of the legislation described, 48 percent supported the plan and 43 percent remained opposed.

Either way, it’s not a huge margin and no one should claim what the American people want based on it. If one were honest, they would say something like a “small plurality” of the American people prefer, but even that is really not honest since the margin of error for that particular poll is +/- 3.6 % which means it could be as much as a 7.2 % swing either way. Who knows what the American people want? Morning Joe Scarborough is the worst at using polls to try to beat up politicians and put pressure on them. Just this morning on “Press the Meat” with David Gregory, David had a run of questions that were all laced with “what the American people want” or “going against the will of the American people”…..which American people? All of them? Or just those 200 who answered the poll question you are using to make your gross generalization?

I also have a problem with populist governing, let’s take a poll and then decide how we want to proceed. Let’s take a complex, detailed problem with all sorts of minutia and ask the general public what they think about it. How fucking stupid is that? This phenomenon lays open the opportunity for misinformation campaigns, distortions, lobbyist money, all directed at swaying the public so when they take that slanted poll (see link in the next paragraph), they can get the results they want. It becomes a battle of propaganda, who can con the American people the best.

Polls are becoming weapons, just ask Vic Snyder who decided not to run after getting ambush polled by Janey Hamsher. The tactics used by the supposed progressive Jane Hamsher and her organization is just one example of how methodology by pollsters can have a huge influence on results. So once again, how useful is the information gleaned from polls considering all the ways the numbers can be influenced or interpreted? It’s crap.

Now when it comes to election polls, as you get closer to an election the results start to get more accurate when done by reputable organizations with sound methodology. You always have the partisan polling groups on either extreme, but these serve more to try to sway public opinion using the “bandwagon” effect. They try to swing momentum one way or another by upsetting the ongoing narrative. So I guess polls serve a purpose as we get closer to election day, but really to the extent that they do sway opinion, it isn’t a good thing. Shouldn’t people vote for their candidate based on issues and leadership, not because it’s all the rage.

Pass The Bill – Democrats

It’s time for President Obama and the democrats in congress to just pass the bill. They need to do it quickly so there is time for it to start working before the November elections. The Republican plan all along was to stop the democrats from accomplishing anything and if they succeed in doing that, they can claim the Democrats can’t govern. Since the internal polls show that people like the reform when it’s explained to them, or the specifics are given to them, it isn’t exactly a risky vote.  I think part of the disgust with the congress is not doing anything and part of it is the partisanship.

Pass the bill, there is no other option. The Republican talking point that we should start over is so disingenuous. It’s like Lucy pulling the football away when Charlie Brown goes to kick it. What a bunch of blatant liars, not one of them really wants to pass anything and by making it sound like they really want to be a part of the process, bullshit! Where were they for the last year, if they were so concerned they would have taken up one of the many opportunities that the President and Democrats gave them. Don’t believe them lying bastards, they have a history.

Health Care Summit, Republican Smackdown Round 2

Unfortunately I won’t be able to watch it live for very long, I get to go sit in a dentist chair and then go to work. I hope it is as good as the last event where the president showed us why we elected him. All signs point to the Republicans acting like children and lying like crazy. You would think they learned their lesson the last time they were humiliated by the president. But that would mean they actually think, not much of that happening in the Republic Party these days. Let the fun begin. I’ll weigh in later during my dinner break at work.

Dems Grow Some Balls! Hamsher Gets Whiny….AGAIN!

I just came across this story that says that the Senate democrats will pass health care reform within the next 60 days. They will do it by using budget reconciliation to pass a series of fixes to the bill they passed in November. I’m still skeptical whether it can really happen, given so many loopholes in the rules in congress, but it’s great to hear that they are at least considering doing it. I think the democrats are screwed in 2010 if they don’t pass something. From The Hill…

“We’ll do a relatively small bill to take care of what we’ve already done,” Reid said, affirming that Democrats would use the reconciliation process. “We’re going to have that done in the next 60 days.”

The move would allow Democrats to essentially go it alone on health reform, especially after losing their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate after Sen. Scott Brown’s (R) special election victory in Massachusetts.

Of course the Republicans are crying fool play, which just cracks me up. They think it is a “hyperpartisan” move to ram through the bill. Now I guess using a 41% “majority” to stop EVERYTHING including low level appointees….well, that wouldn’t be hyperpartisan, would it? This is the height of hypocrisy.  They also are saying that this really makes the bipartisan health care summit moot, and of course what have they been saying since the summit was planned? More hypocrisy for you from the party of No!

Speaking of hypocrisy, Jane Hamsher and her Firedoglake brigade are showing us once again, that hypocrisy isn’t just a conservative thing. These so-called progressives are fighting the president not just on healthcare, but many other things. I read a post from Jane herself where she scoffs at the public option coming back, makes several snarky comments, the usual crap she and her gang trot out. Here is a particularly snarky comment from Janey…

The last of the rationalizations for ditching the public option have been peeled off the pundit apologists, who now stand naked and exposed atop their piles of selectively chosen factoids and statistics. (And therein lies the danger of laundering “tips” fed to you by “anonymous sources” who keep their hands clean while you affix your name — you ultimately have to own it.)

Her posts are always stream of consciousness rants, that often make no sense not just because of the lack of support, but for the confusing wording. But she does throw in her buzzwords periodically as red meat to the brainwashed supporters she has tapped into. I wonder what exactly she means by “selectively chosen factoids and statistics”? Would that be oh, pre-existing conditions, not being able to drop peoples coverage, expansion of child health care, community clinics, children being able to stay on their parents insurance till age 26, subsidies for poor people? Are these the “factoids” she is demeaning? What a complete absence of compassion for those who would benefit from any versions of the bill.

In another segment of her rant, she says this…

But the bottom line is that the health care bill that the White House drafted, the one they pushed through the Senate, the only one they ever wanted, is dead. There is not enough graft and payola in the world to get the Blue Dogs to line up for Martha Coakley duty.

Now, I could go and weed through all her previous bullshit posts and find where she criticized the president for letting the congress write the bill. They railed against Obama for not writing the bill, but now that the congress has made the sausage, she wants to put it all in Obama’s lap. It’s only recently that the White House has tried to pull together all sides in the debate and this is because they didn’t want the repeat of Hillarycare, which was criticized for not including the congress in the process. Remember? So her above statement is pure propoganda, she’s trying to appeal to those teabaggers she has been reaching out to and apparently lying is her best tactic. It’s pretty sad, really. The Martha Coakley comment to me reads like she is dancing on her grave, a democrat. Her gang was part of the chorus trying to spin the loss in Massachusetts as a referendum on Obama, another democrat. Hmmmm, what’s wrong with this picture.