Tuesday, June 30, 2009

No More Excuses? ???

Norm Coleman finally grows a conscience. Al Franken's in. Sixty votes.

Let's get some shit done that benefits the country, eh?

  1. End the War to Enrich Halliburton
  2. Close Guantanimo
  3. Reform healthcare... and that means reFORM, not... reword, review, rearrange, recapitulate...
  4. Reform the Bankster Industry
  5. Investigate/Prosecute Bush's war crimes
  6. Bring back the Fourth Amendment by repealing/reworking FISA
  7. Repeal the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act and bring back the rest of the Bill of Rights
  8. Un-Fuck our election processes
  9. End "Don't Ask Don't Tell"
for starters.

And if Holy Joe and Arlen try to fuck up the works, then cut them loose and do everything by reconciliation or put an end to filibusters. Do what has to be done to put an end to this tyranny of the minority. Replace Harry Reid with a real leader maybe; like Bernie Sanders.

Hopefully I can retire this tag: And now for another spineless moment from Congress

Thursday, June 25, 2009

My Maria

And no, I don't mean the Sanford Maria. Although, who knows?

Senator Maria Cantwell (Dumbocrat, Corporatia) once again totally misses the point. As the following, from her website, shows:

Senator Cantwell Proposes Common Sense Health Care Legislation

I have always felt that Washington state can provide a blueprint for nationwide improvements in health care. For years, we have been at the forefront of innovation, and developing practices to improve the quality of care and make it more affordable. Over the past few months, I have heard from thousands of Washingtonians and met with groups of health care experts across our state to ensure that national reform legislation offers practical solutions to the problems in our current health care model.

Over the next few weeks, Congress is going to start debate in earnest over possible health care proposals. As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which will play an integral role in reforming our country’s health care system, I am working to ensure that any proposal increases access to quality care for patients while reducing costs.

Earlier this month, I introduced the Medical Efficiency and Delivery Improvement of Care (MEDIC) Act, a bill which provides common-sense solutions to many of the most critical problems besetting our health care system. While every piece of the health care puzzle requires individual attention, one common thread connects them all: the need to improve the quality of care patients receive, while bringing down costs.

The MEDIC Act aims to accomplish this goal through the following means:

Medicare Payment Improvement -- For years, Washington state has been penalized under the Medicare program for providing efficient, high quality care. My proposal is designed to address this longstanding problem by providing incentives for providers to ensure the care they are giving to patients is high quality and low cost. It would create a new physician payment component that rewards the quality, and not quantity, of services.

Our state already ranks 16th out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia in keeping costs per Medicare beneficiary under control, with an average of $5,280 statewide. If we could achieve this nationwide, the country could save close to $55 billion a year.

Physician Workforce Enhancement -- The MEDIC Act will improve access to health care by increasing the number of physicians trained in high-need specialties. And it will expand the nation’s graduate medical education training capacity to a larger number of suburban and rural hospitals.

Preserving Patient Access to Primary Care -- In our current health care system, there is a critical shortage of primary care physicians and an inefficient system of Medicare reimbursements that do not reward a coordinated approach of patients’ health care needs. My proposal specifically addresses those problems, and will also help provide cost effective, prevention oriented care throughout the country, especially in underserved and rural communities.

Washington can take pride in having two great examples of integrated care systems which would qualify as patient-centered medical homes. Group Health and Providence Health and Services provide excellent care coordination, and thus are able to offer better and higher-quality care. Despite these successes, the current Medicare reimbursement structure doesn’t reward integrated providers like Group Health and Providence. I will work to change that reimbursement structure so that we no longer penalize preventive and quality care.

Project 2020: Building on the Promise of Home and Community-Based Services -- My proposal is also designed to fix a deficiency in current law that prevents people from accessing long-term care information or services until they have spent their entire life savings, and become poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. By this time, it is often too late to provide cost-effective home care, and people end up in nursing homes, where all too often they spend the rest of their lives.

I want to ensure that people have the resources they need to pay for the services and support they need to stay in their own homes and communities, without being forced to spend down their life savings. This investment will save money over the long term and significantly improve access to care.

Home and Community Balancing Incentives -- The final piece of my MEDIC Act reforms state long-term care systems. By offering an enhanced federal Medicaid matching rate to states that are willing to implement programs geared at promoting home and community based services, we can help seniors stay out of nursing homes and enable them to access quality, individualized home- and community-based care.

As you can see, I am focused on three key aspects of reform: updating Medicare’s pay structure so that it rewards quality of care, not quantity of care, as in the current structure; expanding and improving long-term care services and programs to provide patients with options and alternatives to nursing homes; and, increasing the number of practicing primary care physicians to ensure coordinated care for patients.

Our state has been at the forefront of efforts to lower health care cost and improve care. Over the next few weeks, I will work to share our successes and include our innovative ideas in upcoming health care reform legislation so that we can develop similar models nationwide to ensure that every American is eligible for high-quality, affordable health care.

I've made several calls to her offices during the past weeks, and I've yet to get a straight answer as to where she stands on the issue of a public option for healthcare. She can't seem to screw up the courage to back Bernie Sanders on single payer, and she can't seem to admit to backing Kent Conrad's sham of an option either. However, she can come up with a bill that has nothing to do with the real problem: Making healthcare affordable and available for all.

I say, "Once again," because back when Jim Webb introduced his bill to restore the benfits to veterans that were taken away by Reagan, Bush and Bush, I called Cantwell's offices and was asked if I'd heard of her bill. Not an amendment to Webb's bill, but a stand alone bill that took away all sunset provisions on GI Bill benefits. Of course it would have been nice if there were beefits to use, but... She restored nothing, granted nothing new, just gave them their remaining lifetime to use what they didn't have.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is her way of hiding: Create a smoke screen and hope that when her bill dies, she can vote against the public good and no one will notice..? ??? There's nothing "wrong" with her MEDIC Bill; it would go nicely as an amendment to a single payer bill. There was nothing "wrong" with her GI Bill; it would have made a nice amendment to Webb's Bill (which if you remember, could only get passed as a rider to a War to Enrich Halliburton funding bill). They just miss the true mark by a mile. They both totally fail to address the true problem.

Add these to her vote to invade Iraq, sending soldiers to die for nothing, and her continued failure to admit to the fact of and magnitude of her fuck up... Why do we keep electing her? Who does she represent? I think we need to ask ourselves:

What's Darcy Burner doing in 2012? ???

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Feyyyyyyyyenally...

A mainstream-medianite states the obvious:
The opposition's (refuckyoucan's) position says, "We can't have government bureaucrats getting in between you and your doctor," when right now we have insurance agents in between you and your doctor. When do you go to a doctor and not hear what your insurance company will or won't allow?
Cokie Roberts on Stuffalupugus

What the fuck took so long...? ???

and Robert Reich
There is no money in the hands of consumers, so there will be no business investment because there are no customers. (DUHHH!!!! People need jobs) So without that flow of money, money must come from the government which creates deficits. Keynesian Economics 101.

Read up on 1931,32 and Hoover's attempt to follow the present refuckyoucan/conservatard notion of balancing the budget.

Is this Obvious Day, not Father's Day? or are the concepts synonymous? or did someone come out with a memo to counter the "No Facts Allowed" rule on network news. I had to leave the tube for a moment; I couldn't handle the bombardment of truth. TWO facts in ONE show? ???

don't pinch and wake me.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Greetings from Vacationland w/ Good Morning Update:

A Junky is a junky, vacationing or not. So... A couple of quick Qs:

For all these DC dumbasses bitching and whining about how the poor insurance syndicates can't survive against a government option or single payer care, this would be because of the inherent efficiency of private enterprise? ???

And for all the DC dumbasses bitching and whining about how innefficient and poorly run a government program would be, Please name for us the private insurance carrier you use. Since after all you would want your health in the hands of the BEST care system the world has ever seen. right? ???

Speaking of which...

For all you DC dumbasses bitching and whining about the imminent destruction of the finest healthcare system the world has ever seen, Why is it that no other industrialized/civilized nation in the world is trying to emmulate us? Am I missing one? What nation out there is fighting the good fight to provide privatized care because of the demands of a grass roots movement? Finally...

For all you DC dumbasses bitching and whining about tax dollars actually going places and doing things that will actually provide real services to real people, little people, people who actually pay taxes... Why don't you just shut the fuck up and let some adults with progressive ie useful ideas take over for a while. Dumbasses.

UPDATE: And see that banner right over there? (till the next post pushes this out of the way) Here's another reason why it's still there.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Party of...

I was about to write about the "Party of No," morphing into the "Party of Slow," in regard to their whining and crying about being rushed to confirm Judge Sonya, but then there's the "Party of Jello," as in the continuing saga of the party in search of(?) a spine: The Democrats and their lack of a stand on health care.

I give Ed Schultze credit for his introductory rant and rave to open his radio show yesterday. I've been pissed in the past at Ed for being a Bush-Toady like Obama water carrier. I will never forgive Obama for helping to pass the Freedom Is Superfluous Act, and I get sicker by the day as Obama continues to further trash the Constitution, in grand Bush fashion, by helping to whitewash Bush's torture regime. Ed gave Obama a free pass in the first case, and a couple of weeks ago, I called him on the carpet for continuing to do so.

Apparently I wasn't the only one pissed at Ed; yesterday he knocked it out of the park. In a nutshell: Grow a pair Dems. You're the MAJORITY. Act like it. Do what you were elected to do. If the refuckyoucans want to obstruct, make them go all the way. Make them filibuster. And not just for one night. Make them show their true colors. Act like you represent the American people for once.

I know Ed feels in part that there's no point in trashing Obama, since the refucks are already all too ready, willing, able and happy to do so. But we're not Refucks. We're better than them. We have principles. Unlike them, we'd rather DO good, than look good. We'd rather DO right than appear right. Or at least that's how I believe it should be.

I don't know where you can go to hear his rant, but it's got to be out there in a podcast or some such thing. It's well worth a listen.

Put that in line with Thom Hartmann today. A little more calm and subdued, but no less urgent: Call your Senators and Representative and let them know your preference for a single payer healthcare option. I did so, and I'll write up the results in the morning. I was NOT totally pleased.

You know, If you're not insured through your employer, and you need a coronary bypass or some such procedure, assuming you don't plan to roll over and die, you have three options:
1) Spend the rest of your life in debt
2) Go bankrupt*
3) Commit a crime and go to prison where health care is provided.
*Oooopppsss.... can't do that any more. Not since our Obama's vice preznit got together with Bill Frist to take care of the Frist family's Hospital Corporation of America through "reform." They left us the prison option. And homelessness. So sweet of them. So... My calls...

First I called Jim McDermott. Good old Bagdad Jim. (and I use that as a term of endearment) According to his aid, he's been in favor of Single payer since... I forget the year. 93...?

Next up was Patty Murray. She's in favor of the "public option." According to her aid, she can't/won't back single payer because there isn't the backing necessary to pass it. 'scusa me... The way something gets the backing it needs to pass is by people backing it. It gets lonely out there in the lead sometimes. You're not a rookie Ms Murray. This is your third term. Lead. Secondly, the public option is a compromise position. You don't start the negotiations at the compromise. That's where you end up. You start by shooting for the moon.

And finally, Maria Cantwell: No position as yet. WTF? ?...but as she's a member of the Senate finance committee..." The Committee chaired by Max Baucus? Yes. Who didn't include anyone representing single payer insurance to the hearings on reform? Yes. The one who had defenders of single payer insurance arrested? Uhhhhh... Has she voiced an opinion, issued a statement on those arrests? Uhhhhh...

and she has no opinion. Way to go Ms Maria. I really wish we could get rid of you.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Sotomayor...

OK. Here's the deal:

They hate her, because Obama picked her.

Fucker never learns either. He bends over backwards to try to meet these assholes in the center and they still fling shit at him.

Who was the C'tard on the Judiciary Committee who walked out of the hearings on Roberts/Scalito after saying that the issue of SCOTUS appointments was settled when Dubya stole his election(s)?

Of course we know the things Refuckyoucans say, don't apply to them.