Patrick Murphy Speaks Out For H.R. 3962

The following Guest Opinion from Dem PA-08 U.S. House Rep Patrick Murphy appeared in the print edition of the Bucks County Courier Times last Sunday; for some reason I cannot comprehend, the paper didn’t think it was important enough to publish online at that miracle of technology (snark) known as phillyburbs.com…

A Bucks County woman recently lost her job as a copy editor, along with the health insurance that covered her and her husband. She shopped around on her own, but was turned down by insurers because of a pre-existing condition: pregnancy.

Instead of celebrating this wonderful news, they’re terrified about how they’ll afford maternity care without coverage. I support health insurance reform because, in a nation like ours, this should never happen to middle-class families.

Over the past eight months, I’ve listened to thousands of constituents – doctors, patients, folks with insurance and without – about reform, and I’ve heard the same question repeatedly: How will this impact my family? How will it affect Medicare? How are we going to pay for it? I’d like to address those questions and explain to you why I support the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

First, this bill finally prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

What does that mean? If your job offers health insurance, you get coverage regardless of your health. But today, if you aren’t offered coverage through work, or become unemployed and need to buy your own, you’re turned down if you’re pregnant, have cancer, or are diabetic, among other reasons.

Mr. Bogie from Tinicum (Township, Bucks County) told me of his otherwise healthy wife who was denied coverage because she took blood pressure medication. An insurer can also charge higher rates because of those conditions or a host of other reasons, including being female or being a victim of domestic violence. Reform would put a stop to this, too.

Many folks who have insurance report that they’re happy with it, but too often that coverage is taken away when it’s needed most. Today, an insurer can look for any excuse to terminate your plan should you become “too expensive.”

Jay Doroshow from Langhorne never expected to be uninsured, but as soon as he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, his insurance company kicked him off his plan. Reform would end this practice, putting you, not insurance company CEOs, in the driver’s seat. As the American Medical Association said in its endorsement, reform “empowers patient and physician decision making.”
What about folks on Medicare? Reform opponents have targeted their worst scare tactics at seniors, when in fact reform strengthens Medicare and improves benefits. It finally closes the “donut hole” that leaves seniors like David Jones from Warminster paying over $4,000 out-of-pocket for prescription drugs. David worked hard and saved his entire life, but when he developed Crohn’s disease, his medication bills began piling up; he now falls into the donut hole by April every year.

Seniors will also have access to lower-cost prescription drugs, as the government will now be able to negotiate with manufacturers to get better deals on medications. And Medicare beneficiaries will have free preventive care services to help them stay healthy and active. This is why the AARP has wholeheartedly endorsed this bill.

The bill also cracks down on Medicare fraud that drains billions from the system. It includes a bipartisan bill I introduced, the Improve Act, which closes a major loophole in Medicare fraud. My legislation finally gives law enforcement the tools they need to track down scammers and protect taxpayer dollars.

Finally, I support reform because the bill meets two basic requirements I laid out months ago: it does not add a dime to the federal deficit – in fact, it reduces the deficit by $129 billion – and it lowers our national health care spending. Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and other industry groups – who will see millions of new customers – are contributing hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for insurance reform. And a portion of the bill is paid for with a surcharge on only those with annual incomes over one million dollars, which would impact less than 0.3 percent of households.

It has been 16 years since Congress’ last attempt at reform. Since then, over 700,000 people have died because they lacked access to affordable coverage, and premiums continue to rise four times faster than wages. We simply cannot afford to fail again.

For these reasons, I stand with nurses (ANA), doctors (American Medical Association), the AARP, and my constituents to support long-overdue health insurance reform.

To contact Congressman Murphy, click here.

The Unbearable Awfulness Of Joe Pitts

Putting aside the fact that he doesn’t give a damn about issues involving families, the economy, the environment, and just about anything else you care to name (noted here), I just have a question for him as long as he felt it was necessary to grab face time on C-SPAN over this cruel amendment he co-authored with the just-as-useless Bart Stupak (abortions aren’t even allowed when paid for by subscriber premiums?),

What about health savings accounts, Joe?

What about tough new restrictions on funds in health savings accounts used for abortions? What about criminalizing all parties involved if funds for health savings accounts are used for abortions? And that includes companies that contribute to those accounts on behalf of their workers.

Do you care about the unborn or don’t you, Joe?

Update 11/9/09: This is the best description of the utterly awful Stupak-Pitts amendment that I’ve yet seen. Basically, as far as these two and the other signatories are concerned (to say nothing of the Catholic Church of course), women are little better than cattle (and to do something about PA-16’s useless meat sack, click here).

Tuesday Mashup (11/3/09)

As noted here, ten years ago today, Morgan Lee Pena, all of 2 ½ years old, died when the car in which she rode was broadsided by a driver who failed to stop for a stop sign while using his cellular phone.

With that in mind, this story tells us the following…

OXFORD, England — Inside the imposing British Crown Court here, Phillipa Curtis, 22, and her parents cried as she was remanded for 21 months to a high-security women’s prison, for killing someone much like herself. The victim was Victoria McBryde, an up-and-coming university-trained fashion designer.

Ms. Curtis had plowed her Peugeot into the rear end of Ms. McBryde’s neon yellow Fiat, which had broken down on the A40 Motorway, killing Ms. McBryde, 24, instantly.

The crash might once have been written off as a tragic accident. Ms. Curtis’s alcohol level was zero. But her phone, which had flown onto the road and was handed to the police by a witness, told a story that — under new British sentencing guidelines — would send its owner to jail.

In the hour before the crash, she had exchanged nearly two dozen messages with at least five friends, most concerning her encounter with a celebrity singer she had served at the restaurant where she worked.

They are filled with the mangled spellings and abbreviations that typify the new lingua franca of the young. “LOL did you sing to her?” a friend asks. Ms. Curtis replies by typing in an expletive and adding, “I sang the wrong song.” A last incoming message, never opened, came in seconds before the accident.

With that as evidence, Ms. Curtis was sentenced in February under 2008 British government directives that regard prolonged texting as a serious aggravating factor in “death by dangerous driving” — just like drinking — and generally recommend four to seven years in prison.

And to tell you what Pennsylvania is doing by contrast, this tells us of Senate Bill 1097 currently working its way through the legislature that “stipulates mobile telephones and hand-held communication devices. Similar to House Bill 1827, Senate Bill 1097 has exceptions built in for law enforcement and 911 calls. The fine for a violation of this law is $100. Hands-Free devices are allowed under the proposed driving law.”

H.B. 1827 stipulates a fine of $50, by the way.

As opposed to 21 months in a high-security prison for “death by dangerous driving.”

You tell which country is serious about trying to fix this problem and which one isn’t.

I believe that most people know to conduct themselves behind the wheel, but for the benefit of the few knuckleheads who may be reading this who actually don’t, I have a simple (if unoriginal) message:

Hang up and drive.

Also, I got a kick out of the following remark here from Mississippi Repug Governor Haley Barbour concerning the NY-23 U.S. congressional fiasco, in which Barbour claimed that the voters were “cheated” out of a primary between Dede Scozzafava (who of course dropped out and endorsed Dem Bill Owens) and conservative independent candidate Doug Hoffman (who, based on this, is apparently not a whiz at math).

In principle, Barbour is partly right, but all he cares about here is nursing his grudge over the fact that Hoffman wasn’t officially “blessed” by the New York State Repug politicos in advance of the general election (as opposed to that “values-voter” infidel Dede Scozzafava).

It’s hard to take seriously any pleas for good government from Barbour who, as noted here, was ordered to move the candidates for last year’s U.S. Senate race to the top of the ballot where they belonged in accordance with state law (the corrected ballot stood, by the way).

But just remember anyway that Barbour complained about the absence of a Republican primary in NY-23.

On CNN.

We’ll have to “leave it there.”

And finally, in last Sunday’s New York Times, Tom Friedman opined as follows here (just getting to this now)…

More and more lately, I find people asking me: What do you think President Obama really believes about this or that issue? I find that odd. How is it that a president who has taken on so many big issues, with very specific policies — and has even been awarded a Nobel Prize for all the hopes he has kindled — still has so many people asking what he really believes?

I don’t think that President Obama has a communications problem, per se. He has given many speeches and interviews broadly explaining his policies and justifying their necessity. Rather, he has a “narrative” problem.

…

“You can’t get nation-building without shared sacrifice,” said (Harvard political theorist Michael) Sandel, “and you cannot inspire shared sacrifice without a narrative that appeals to the common good — a narrative that challenges us to be citizens engaged in a common endeavor, not just consumers seeking the best deal for ourselves. Obama needs to energize the prose of his presidency by recapturing the poetry of his campaign.”

Yeah, maybe Obama can come up with something to rhyme with “Suck. On. This.,” eh, Tom?

And this was a “poetic” moment too, wasn’t it?

More On Jamie Leigh Jones From “Pap”

And I’m sure that, as I type this, Kathleen Parker is writing another column about how those 30 GOP senators are good “family values” Republicans who are merely getting a bad rap here from those dastardly liberals – spare me.

Update 11/01/09: Vitter deserves all this, and more.

Friday Mashup (10/30/09)

Over at the AEI blog, Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich opined as follows on Wednesday (here, specifically concerning health care legislation)…

…Senator Jim Bunning (R-I Hear Voices) recently introduced an amendment that would require legislators to make all bills public for 72 hours, with legislative text and an official budget analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), prior to being considered. Democratic senators blocked the amendment.

It is unfortunate that the Democratic leadership has decided it would be easier to rush their legislation through rather than honoring the people’s right to know. At healthtransformation.net, we have posted a petition to Washington to support the principle of Senator Bunning’s amendment by requiring Congress to make all bills public for 72 hours before voting.

Openness is never a bad thing, I realize, even though this is tantamount to a publicity stunt by the about-to-retire Sen. “High And Tight” Bunning (can YOU read a nearly 2,000 page bill in three days? I can’t). And Gingrich is right that the amendment was voted down in the Senate.

However, this TPM story from last month tells us the following…

Accepting Republican demands, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised to post health care reform legislation online for 72 hours before a final vote on the bill, The Hill reports.

House Republicans, including Minority Leader John Boehner, have introduced a petition to require three days for lawmakers to read the final bill before voting. Two Democrats, Brian Baird and Walt Minnick, have also signed on. At today’s press conference, Pelosi said she would “absolutely” support the petition.

Besides, House Bill 3200 has been available from the House HELP site for months (how else do you think Bucks County’s big mouth pundit J.D. Mullane was able to supposedly find his “angel of death” clause?), as has the HELP bill from Sen. Bob Casey’s site, among other places.

Oh, and the following should be noted from here concerning Mr. Former House Speaker Who Resigned In Disgrace and his alleged “openness”…

Gingrich was the author of an infamous secret memo to GOP leaders in 1995 titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, which one of America’s foremost linguists called an outline of a strategy to frame the word “liberal” as “something akin to traitor” in the media. This was in line with his once-described goal of “reshaping the entire nation through the news media” (New York Times,12/14/94).

And I’m still waiting to hear about Newt’s space-based air traffic control system, by the way (from here).

Repug Senators Orrin Hatch and Jim DeMint also inflicted us with the following from the Murdoch Street Journal site today (here, opposing the Net Neutrality rules proposed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski)…

Ten years ago, we effectively had no broadband marketplace. Dial-up Internet was common, but not ubiquitous. Consumers had a choice of service providers, but they were typically confined to walled gardens of preselected or preferred content. The broadband revolution led us out of that desert. Instead of dog-paddling, we could surf the net, choosing between broadband service offered by traditional phone and cable companies and, now, wireless companies as well.

Compare that to the last decade of success at government dominated companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM or Chrysler.

Of course (as alluded to here, concerning what is probably the “granddaddy” of all the Repug big lies out there, right next to Casey Sr. not being allowed to speak at the ‘92 Democratic National Convention because he was pro-life), if it weren’t for the “government,” there probably wouldn’t be an internet at all, something the Journal and their Repug playmates are counting on people to forget (heaven forbid that Al Gore actually get any credit here, right?).

Also, it’s a good thing Hatch and DeMint opposed the “stim” and the 7.2 billion for “complete broadband and wireless Internet access,” right (here – snark)? Especially since the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report from the summer of ’08 that lists the U.S. as 15th in broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants (here, with Japan, France – sacre bleu, wingnuts! – and Korea 1, 2 and 3 respectively).

And it wasn’t that bad “gumint” that was found guilty of violating Net Neutrality principles by “secretly degrading or blocking peer-to-peer traffic — specifically that used by BitTorrent,” was it? Nope, it was Comcast (here).

And by the way, to learn more about the principles of Net Neutrality (which, not coincidentally, debunk in total this ridiculous Journal column), click here.

Finally, House Repug John Shadegg of Arizona patted himself on the back as follows (here)…

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. It is a time for women across America to highlight the importance of prevention and to celebrate the millions of breast cancer survivors across our nation. This year, it is also a time to recognize the looming danger of government-run health care and what it could mean for America’s women. If Democrats in Congress pass a bill that allows Washington to take over health care, future generations of American women may be at risk.

Shadegg then goes on to say that he “offered an amendment that would have ensured that US (breast cancer) survival rates remain high and women had the option of choosing (another health care plan). But Democrats shot it down.”

This tells us more about Shadegg’s amendment, which would have…

… require(d) the Government Accountability Office to perform an annual study of breast cancer survival rates. Based on the study’s findings, if five-year survival rates for breast cancer decreased by more than .1 percent, women and families with at least one female member would be allowed to purchase health insurance that does not meet the requirements set forth in the bill, 22-36.

So basically, the amendment would not have “ensured” anything, except portability of insurance if the GAO allowed it.

And as far as Shadegg’s record on women’s health issues is concerned, the following should be noted from here…

• (He) twice co-sponsored legislation to override the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone (RU 486), a safe and effective early abortion medication. [H.R.3453, 108th Cong. (2003); H.R.1079, 109th Cong. (2005)]
• Twice co-sponsored legislation crafted establishing “personhood” at the moment of fertilization. [H.R.552, 109th Cong. (2005); H.R.618, 110th Cong. (2007)]
• Co-sponsored legislation forcing women to undergo a medically unnecessary ultrasound procedure before receiving abortion care. [H.R.5032, 110th Cong. (2008)]
• Voted to de-fund Title X, the nation’s only federal program dedicated exclusively to family planning and reproductive-health services. [House vote #614 (8/2/95)]
• Voted five times to deny federal employees the right to choose a health plan that covers abortion care. [House vote #526 (7/19/95); House vote #320 (7/17/96); House vote #288 (7/16/98); House vote #301 (7/15/99); House vote #422 (7/20/00)]
• Voted against contraceptive equity for federal employees – a provision of law that ensures health plans cover birth control equally with other prescription medications. [House vote #493 (10/7/98)]
• Voted twice to eliminate funding completely for all international family-planning programs. [House vote #358 (9/4/97); House vote #360 (8/3/99)]

And to get an idea of how this has worked for Shadegg’s constituents, this tells us that teen birth rates have risen sharply in his state. Also, this Think Progress post tells us more about Shadegg’s flair for demagoguery; he claimed that the congressional Democrats are trying to give us “full on Russian gulag, Soviet style health care.”

Actually, given Shadegg’s contempt for basic women’s health care, a gulag might one day be more preferable as a location to obtain services than his own state if it continues on its present, ruinous path.

Update 11/7/09: Wow, I’d never consider bringing the young one to my job, and he’s way older than this baby Shadegg uses as a prop here (words fail me).

Some More Words About Chris Dodd

This story tells us that a deal was reached to “extend the soon-to-expire $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.”

Who got the deal done? Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd.

This story tells us that a credit card interest rate freeze was proposed after one card rate hit the usurious level of 29 percent.

Who proposed the freeze? Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd.

This post tells us that the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee made sure that the public option was included into the Senate health care bill. The individual who formerly chaired that committee was Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Who chairs that committee now (and kept up the fight for the public option)?

Chris Dodd, that’s who (and this story tells us of an upcoming fundraiser; Dodd has closed the gap against challenger Rob Simmons to approximately five points).

I would ask that you remember this the next time the Murdoch Street Journal and right-wing media sites start caterwauling again about alleged sweetheart mortgage deals (and I think it’s also instructive to remember this when considering Dodd against the wingnut Simmons, whose antics are on display here).

Update: Based on this, the Connecticut senator who should be in trouble is this soulless shill, not Dodd.

Friday Mashup (10/23/09)

I happened to come across the following highlighted story at the Fix Noise site…

Oh mah gawd, I thought to myself; I’d better click on this story and read it right away!

And after I did, I found this (with the very different headline of “Google CEO: Vast Web Changes Coming Within Five Years”).

And just to make sure, I searched the story for “government” and “screw” and found nothing.

So just to reiterate, Fox “News” ran a story with an imaginary quote from the story subject in the headline.

And they actually have the gall to whine when they’re not treated like a reasonably serious news organization (more here – unless they were really trying to criticize this but were too lazy and/or cowardly to do it any other way).

And in another somewhat shocking development, I came across the following item from The Hill by none other than U.S. Congressional District PA-16’s very own waste of space, Pancake Joe Pitts himself…

There is one thing that people across the ideological spectrum can agree on when it comes to the issue of energy—the United States needs to produce far more clean energy from a source that does not rely on the whims of tyrants in far off parts of the world.

Fortunately, there is a technology out there that produces clean, emission free energy without the need for raw materials imported from unstable countries. Our green energy future is a nuclear future.

I believe that we need to provide for a regulatory process that will encourage an increase in the production of this clean, alternative energy.

I don’t think we should charge headlong into developing nuclear reactors as a means of lessening our oil dependency, but I grudgingly admit that nukes should be part of the picture (of course, it doesn’t hurt that Limerick, the site of an existing reactor, is in nearby PA-06, but I guess Jim Gerlach, that district’s rep, is too busy trying to run for governor to sign onto this also).

However, as I read the text of Pitts’ bill, I came across a little item of concern (the very last section, actually)…

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 shall not be used to arbitrarily prevent uranium mining from taking place on Federal lands. The Federal Government shall not collect additional leasing fees, beyond that which are currently applicable, to mine uranium on Federal lands. Any fees collected in association with commercial uranium mining on Federal lands that should be applied for remediation purposes, shall only be applied to the remediation of sites that incurred damage as a result of commercial nuclear activities. Such fees shall not be applied to the remediation of any sites that incurred damage as a result of Government or Government-sponsored activities.

So basically, Pitts is proposing that the Act not be enforced to “prevent uranium mining,” huh?

This story from last July tells us the following…

WASHINGTON – The Interior Department announced Monday it is temporarily barring the filing of new mining claims, including for uranium, on nearly 1 million acres near the Grand Canyon.

The land is being set aside for two years so the department can study whether it should be permanently withdrawn from mining activity, according to a notice published in the Federal Register online. The notice covers 633,547 acres under the control of the Bureau of Land Management and 360,002 acres in Kaibab National Forest.

The announcement comes ahead of Tuesday’s congressional hearing on a bill to set aside more than 1 million acres of federal lands north and south of the canyon. The bill’s sponsor, Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and environmental groups had been looking to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for temporary protections at the Grand Canyon while the legislation is pending.

…

The Interior Department under President George W. Bush was unresponsive to efforts to ban new uranium mining claims. The House Natural Resources Committee invoked a little-used rule to stop any new claims for up to three years, but Interior officials refused to recognize the action and continued to authorize additional mining claims.

…

Former Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger said he would welcome any protection that (Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar offers, but permanent withdrawal is the goal.

“Are we prepared to allow the landscape to be torn up adjacent to the park, to threaten the hydrological and the natural resources of that park?” Arnberger said. “My answer to that is no. Don’t open it up to exploration.”

So, if Pitts wants to advocate for more nukes, that’s his right. However, don’t try to play these cowardly and environmentally destructive games in the meantime.

Given al of this, I guess I shouldn’t complain so much when Pitts regularly votes No, since that’s usually not as detrimental as episodes such as this, when he actually decides to do something but ends up flirting with catastrophe for his (and our) trouble.

Finally, former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm opined as follows from here…

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, who recently taught Americans the federally-approved way to sneeze this season, was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

She was trying to explain widespread delays in the delivery of the H1N1 vaccine across the country.

Basically, of course, she said it wasn’t the Obama administration’s fault, that as soon as the vaccines come in, they’re being shipped out immediately by the many thousands of doses.

You know how everyone talks about Americans not making things anymore, that so many manufacturing jobs, for instance, have been shipped overseas?

Well, Sebelius was essentially saying the same goes for flu-vaccine-making.

Four of the world’s five makers are foreign. And we all think we know what that means.

Huh?

Members of Congress could have been exploring this subject last winter when their latest automatic pay raises took effect.

Instead, Wednesday they expressed shock and dismay at the situation now that it’s October and thousands are already falling ill with the H1N1 virus…

Also, Purdue University researchers reported the late deliveries may not matter because by the end of this year 63% of Americans will be infected anyway. So, too many doses, too late.

Well, this wasn’t helped one bit by the following, as noted here last April…

Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: “Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill? No, we should not.”

Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate’s version of the stimulus measure.

And as noted here by Dana Milbank at the WaPo (experiencing a welcome moment of clarity, describing how a certain furry red muppet was called upon to make the case for flu preparedness)…

This reliance on (PR stunts) rather than medicine is not the fault of the Obama administration, which has done about the best it could with limited tools. It’s the result of years of failure to build adequate vaccine-manufacturing capacity in the United States. Too little work on new vaccine technologies means producers of flu shots still rely on the ancient method of making inoculations with chicken eggs. And the anemic public health system will almost surely buckle this fall as flu sufferers flood emergency rooms.

If there’s any good news, it’s that the government may be jolted into building an adequate vaccine and public health infrastructure before a more severe pandemic comes along with the potential to kill millions of Americans instead of mere thousands. In the meantime, the best the feds can do is try to slow the spread of the germs until the vaccines arrive…

And just remember which political party favors delay and obstruction on health care reform as you read this, including fighting the creation of the infrastructure Milbank is talking about.

Which is nothing to sneeze at, if you will, as the number of flu cases rise across this country (it’s a shame that there’s no similar vaccine to stifle pundit idiocy, or else Malcolm would require multiple injections).

Friday Mashup (10/16/09)

I really try not to waste everyone’s time with trying to refute the nonsense of some of the right-wing media’s most visible suspects, but I have to say something about a certain Flush Limbore being denied a shot at owning the St. Louis Rams football team.

As noted here, this has provided an opportunity to assorted culprits in the wingnutosphere to claim that Flush lost out because of “political correctness,” resurrecting some quotes that may have been falsely attributed to him (such as supposedly claiming that James Earl Ray deserved a posthumous Medal of Honor and slavery keep the streets safe…or something).

Yes, well, I have an extremely hard time feeling sympathy for an individual who used some really cowardly code language to criticize Donavan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles (I’ve gotten ticked off at McNabb in the past, speaking for only myself, but I would never imagine that there was a “social concern” in somehow allowing him to become a top-flight NFL quarterback). And for more supposedly “color-blind” Limbore commentary, click here.

Also, aside from his typical race-baiting antics, Limbore seems to have a preoccupation with a particular portion of the anatomy (Salon.com took note of that here; I’ll merely let you choose to read the incidents in question for yourself, dear reader, to find out how truly odious an individual he is).

Beyond all of this, sportswriter Dave Zirin of The Nation tells us the following here (from HuffPo)…

(Flush’s) ownership group, led by St. Louis Blues boss Dave Checketts, dumped Rush without ceremony or pity. Checketts issued a statement saying, “It has become clear that his involvement in our group has become a complication and a distraction to our intentions; endangering our bid to keep the team in St. Louis. As such, we have decided to move forward without him and hope it will eventually lead us to a successful conclusion.”

His comments came the day after Rush insisted on his show that they would fight this to the bitter end. But Checketts, like most owners a long time donor to right wing causes, had no desire to link arms with Limbaugh for a public crusade. You might think Rush would have gone on the air to slam Checketts’s absence of a spine. You might think he would have called out the hypocrisy of NFL owners who give prodigiously to right wing candidates and causes, but insist on doing it in the shadows. You might think he would rail against those who see their conservative support as something sordid and best done behind closed doors. You might think Rush would howl at the moon at those who think that being an open, unreconstructed right winger, actually hurts the almighty bottom line. You might think he would say that the right wing has failed a major test by refusing to back him. Or maybe you might think he would take a different tack and accept personal responsibility for why a group of billionaires wouldn’t want his presence affecting their bottom line.

But no.

Flush “accept personal responsibility”? That makes about as much sense as the Eagles continuing to run that idiotic “wildcat” formation with Michael Vick, which, thus far, has generated comic relief but not much else.

This Op-Ed on the Fix Noise site from Doug Schoen tells us the following…

The White House is making a profound political mistake by targeting Fox News and deliberately deciding to exclude them from interviews and access to the administration. And not only that, they are making a mistake on both a practical and a political level.

Frankly, it just doesn’t make sense.

Actually, what doesn’t make sense here is Schoen’s supposition that the White House intends to cut off access to the “news network”; as White House Communications Director Anita Dunn pointed out here…

“Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.”

And here is more Schoen shilling for his corporate “betters” by the way (so he definitely knows about “profound political mistakes” – and it gets better with Schoen)…

Fox News’ news programs are straightforward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Most importantly, Fox News’ audience involves a substantial number of independents and moderate Republicans who should have access to, and might be persuaded by, some of the administration’s arguments. To simply believe that you can target Democrats and some of the independents through the rest of the mainstream media, and write off an audience of between two and four million people, is just plain illogical.

I love the way that Schoen basically assumes that the “blogosphere” (still don’t like that word, but can’t think of a better one) doesn’t exist, as if our corporate media is the only means by which voters can be accessed.

And if you want to get an idea as to exactly why the Obama White House would look upon Fix Noise this way, I think this story gives a bit of a hint (and I think you can consider this as a response to Dunn’s entirely accurate comments, by the way).

Update: Good – this is all they understand.

Update 10/19/09: Yep, I think this is curious also (h/t Atrios).

Update 10/21/09: And here is some perspective on this, by the way.

Finally, U.S. House Rep Virginia Foxx wrote the following from here…

This week I introduced the Fairness in Representation Act, legislation that requires the Census Bureau to determine the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

The decennial census is not currently required to collect data regarding the legal status of immigrants in the U.S. This means that states with high numbers of illegal immigrants stand to gain additional seats in Congress in the once-every-10-years process of reapportionment. This also means that the law-abiding residents of states with low numbers of illegal immigrants stand to lose seats to those states with high numbers of illegal immigrants.

That is not fair and equal representation in Congress.

Sooo…basically, because the Repugs couldn’t get their act together on immigration reform when they ran Congress, they decided to “punt” the whole issue of trying to find out exactly how many illegal immigrants we have in this country to the Census Bureau.

Nice; also, this USA Today story tells us about the obstacles that Senate Repugs “Diaper Dave” Vitter and Bob Bennett ran into when they tried to do the same thing as Foxx, namely as follows…

The amendment comes less than six months before 2010 Census questionnaires are mailed to 135 million households. About 425 million forms have already been printed, according to the bureau. Some are in different languages; others are duplicates that will go to houses that do not respond to the first mailing.

The Census Bureau is launching an outreach campaign to persuade Americans that next year’s national head count will be a simple, painless process.

The “Take 10″ campaign promotes the idea that the Census form has only 10 questions and should take just 10 minutes to answer. Adding questions would require designing new forms. “It’s operationally impossible,” says Steve Jost, Census associate communications director. “The forms are printed, folded. We have bilingual forms. … We’re printing 1.5 million forms a day.”

…

Some Latino groups such as the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders are calling for immigrants to boycott the Census unless laws are changed to give those here illegally a chance to gain legal status.

“Already the public fears that the Census is too intrusive,” says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which opposes both the amendment and the boycott.

“Asking about citizenship status “would raise more questions in the public mind about how confidential the Census is,” Vargas says.

Just file this under another failed attempt at intelligent governance by this country’s minority political party in Washington, D.C. (and God help any illegals who could be victims of hate crime, since Foxx has an awful record on that score too, as noted here).

Update 10/21/09: More from the New York Times on this here…

Rousting Another Repug Ruse On The “Stim” (Updates)

Uh oh, here comes another “Dems are doomed in 2010” story, highlighting our moribund economy (I would say that it’s too early to make blanket generalizations, though that will never stop our corporate media, of course)…

The longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression has claimed 7.2 million jobs since it began in December 2007. Analysts figure 750,000 more jobs could disappear over the next six months.

If you add in people who have stopped looking for work, or who are working part time when they want a full-time job, the unemployment rate is a whopping 17 percent, according to the Labor Department.

“If you’ve got an effective unemployment rate of 17 percent and if this goes on for any length of time, a year or more, then everyone’s cushion will run out,” said Republican consultant Rich Galen. “There are going to be serious implications, culturally and politically.”

Galen said it’s understandable that Republicans would use the state of the economy to pound Obama and Democrats who control Congress. Still, “it’s not something we should either make fun of, be amused by or play politics with,” he said.

Oh, this is to laugh truly, my fellow prisoners (Update 10/13/09…and as far as the Repugs supposedly gaining ground, the only issue has to do with the Dems losing theirs, as noted here).

Galen thinks the Repugs shouldn’t “play politics” with the economy, huh?

Seriously, has this man been living under a rock for the past six months or so? I ask that because his party has done NOTHING BUT THAT since President Obama was inaugurated!

I’m sure Repug U.S. House Rep Trent Franks of Arizona (who, as noted here, has flipped back and forth so many times on the question of Obama’s birth certificate that it’s a wonder he isn’t in traction) wasn’t “playing politics” when he told the lie about the stim funds for the rail from Disneyland to the Moonlight Bunny Ranch (here).

And I’m sure Louisiana Governor Bobby (Don’t Call Me Piyush) Jindal wasn’t “playing politics” when he faced off with fellow Repug U.S. House Rep “Joseph” Cao from his state about light rail funding (here). And I’m also sure Jindal wasn’t “playing politics” when he made light of “stim” funding for volcano monitoring (here) shortly before Mount Redoubt erupted (here).

And I’m sure other Repug party members weren’t “playing politics” when they stripped pandemic preparedness funds from the “stim” here (just remember that as cases of H1N1 start piling up).

And I’m sure Repug Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison weren’t “playing politics” with the economy when they voted against stim funds before they realized that they needed NASA funding and, at the last minute, decided that it should come from the stim here.

And I’m sure Repug U.S. House Reps John Mica and Don Young weren’t “playing politics” when, as McClatchy tells us here, they “touted projects” from the stim bill that they also opposed.

I guess this is to be expected from a partisan like Galen, I realize, who claimed here that former Repug presidential candidate Fred (Find My Pulse ’08) Thompson wasn’t dropping out in early January ’08 (which was true), though Grampa “Law And Order “ ended up bailing three weeks later after his microscopic vote total in South Carolina, as noted here.

And oh yeah, one of the Repugs making the most noise about the stim according to the story is a certain House Minority Leader, who, based on this, has to answer for his own antics as well.

Update 10/13/09: I forgot about this guy also.

Update 10/19/09: And how could I forget about this waste of space also (once again, no word on whether or not he ever found his flag lapel pin).

Update 10/21/09: More to add to the list here…

Wednesday Mashup (10/7/09)

This tells us the following…

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — At least 47 school-age children in Chicago have been killed in homicides, mostly by guns, since the month President Barack Obama took office.

The latest youth homicide in his adopted hometown was different only in that the attackers used splintered railroad ties and were captured on video broadcast globally.

The Sept. 24 attack prompted Obama to send his attorney general and education secretary to Chicago today after the killing tarnished the city’s drive to win the 2016 Olympics.

Oh, so NOW we’re being told that Chicago lost the 2016 Olympics because of gun violence? What a joke (not the violence, which is all too terrible – just this ridiculous attempt at an explanation).

And get a load of this…

Chicago’s violence has long burdened Obama’s political career, including the embarrassment of a missed vote as a state senator that hurt his 2000 bid for Congress.

You’ve got to be fracking kidding me! What can that POSSIBLY have to do with what this story is supposed to be about?

Yes, the vote in question was detrimental to Obama at the time, but I think the following should be noted from here (about the vote McCormick goes out of his way to mention)…

…Obama didn’t help his record in Springfield when he failed to come home from a Hawaiian vacation to vote on the Safe Neighborhoods Act. His vote wouldn’t have made a difference, but Obama’s been a strident supporter of gun control, so a lot of voters thought he’d disappeared when his voice was needed most. Obama takes his family to Hawaii once a year to visit his 80-year-old grandmother, Toot. Both his parents are dead, and Toot is the only living relative he knew growing up. This year he almost canceled the trip because the fight over the Safe Neighborhoods Act went on until December 22. The Obamas managed to get out of town on Thursday, December 23, and planned to fly back the following Tuesday, so Barack could be in Springfield when the legislature reconvened the next day. But on the day of the flight, Obama’s 18-month-old daughter came down with the flu. He decided to stay in Hawaii one more day. If Malia seemed to be recovering, the Obamas would go home together. If not, Barack would fly out alone. On Wednesday Malia was well enough to fly, and the family returned to Illinois.

“I made an assessment based on the fact that I didn’t want to leave my wife and daughter alone without knowing how serious her condition was, and my assessment was based on the fact that this was a largely political vote, in the sense that either Pate Philip was going to agree to a compromise, in which case the bill was going to pass, or there were going to be negotiations taking place,” he says. “We put our families through so many sacrifices in this process anyway that every once in a while you have to make a decision in terms of what you think is best for your family, and I think that this was one of these decisions. Politically, I took a big hit.”

And by the way, since John McCormick has no interest in balance here, I believe that it’s incumbent upon yours truly to provide the following information, showing how Obama has balanced supporting common sense gun measures with the legitimate rights of gun enthusiasts and sportsmen (and women).

It seems like the latest attempt to kill any semblance of a public option that could still yet emerge in the battle for a health care reform bill is the notion from Republican-lite senators such as Tom Carper and Ben Nelson that states could provide their own “public option” instead of one federally mandated.

However, as Think Progress tells us here…

Large progressive states like New York and California will likely embrace this proposal; more conservative states may wait to see if these public plans save money.

And it’s not clear that they will. State-based public options would enter concentrated markets (already dominated by one or two private insurers) and lack the market clout to negotiate significantly cheaper rates or institute reforms that change the way care is paid for. Existing state-run employer plans (and Medicaid in many states) have already given up on the ‘public’ aspect of their plans and outsourced the work to private insurers. As a result, they have failed to significantly lower health care costs or bring any real change to the market place. In other words, like Carper’s proposal, they are ‘public plans’ in name only.

And by the way, as noted here…

The (report by the Commonwealth fund, a health policy research organization) analyzed the rate of growth of U.S. health care spending between 2010 and 2020 under three possible reform scenarios. One plan would include a public option with healthcare providers paid at Medicare rates; another includes a public option with providers paid at rates midway between Medicare and private insurance plans; and the final plan would have no public option, instead relying exclusively on private insurers.

…

The researchers found that, compared to cost projections if the nation’s health system remains unchanged, reform would “bend the cost curve” — that is, health care spending will still rise, but at a slower rate. They found that reform that includes a public plan tied to Medicare rates would save nearly $3 trillion through 2020, a public plan with higher reimbursement rates would save $1.97 trillion and an insurance exchange with only private plans would save $1.2 trillion.

By the way, Keith Olbermann will present an hour-long “Special Comment” tonight on health care on “Countdown.” I’ll either watch on the teevee or online, but I’ll catch it somehow, and I think we all should.

And finally here’s some crackpot history from The Old Gray Lady and columnist David Leonhardt (here)…

Democrats dominated the middle part of the 20th century, thanks in part to their vigorous response to the Great Depression. They used the government to soften the effects of the Depression and to build the modern safety net. But they failed to see the limits of the government’s ability to manage the economy and helped usher in the stagflation of the 1970s.

In response, I give you Paul Krugman (here)…

Stagflation was a term coined by Paul Samuelson to describe the combination of high inflation and high unemployment. The era of stagflation in America began in 1974 and ended in the early 80s. Why did it happen?

Well, the textbooks basically invoke two factors. One was a series of “adverse supply shocks”, mainly the huge runup in the price of oil. The other was excessively expansionary monetary policy, especially in 1972-3, which allowed expectations of inflation to become entrenched.

…

But where is the Great Society in all this? Nowhere. The claim that stagflation proved the badness of liberal ideas is pure propaganda, which not even conservative economists believe.

What a shame that David Leonhardt doesn’t even read his own newspaper.