Wow. Wow. Wow. That was something else. I must say after watching that, I sat in mute shock for quite some time. I don’t even like Arlen Specter, but that was one of the more horrifying things I have seen in a while. My only question is where were these people when the ‘lil shrub was actually shredding the Constitution while he was leasing the White House?
Oh yeah, I remember. These are the same folks who helped the ‘lil shrub steal the election. Anyone recall the Brooks Brothers riot? Rachel Maddow illustrates the event.
If you need to jog your memory of the events in 2000, check out None Dare Call It Treason By Vincent Bugliosi. It is a good read.
I was channel flipping (and flipping out) all day yesterday, as I lay in bed with idle time on my hands due to a toothache. Attempting (in vain) to find coverage on the tube of SoS Hillary Clinton’s discussions and remarks in the Congo on the rape of women in the region. The AP had this story:
Clinton will personally comfort survivors of sexual violence and meet in the town with DR Congo’s President Joseph Kabila, whom she said she will be “pressing very hard” to take action to stop the assaults.
The top US diplomat, one of the most prominent female leaders in US history, told students in DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa on Monday that the sexual violence in the country was “one of mankind’s great atrocities.”
According to the United Nations, at least 200,000 women have been raped in the eastern DR Congo since 1996 with the pace of atrocities growing even worse after troops launched the offensive in one of Africa’s most tragedy-struck nations.
Health care is the top story these days. Despite the insanity surrounding the issue, I am pleased to see any sort of coverage on one of the most important matters facing our country.
Monday August 10, 2009 in 100 seconds brought to you by TPMtv.
The President took time today to speak about the issue as well.
I understand that he will be hosting a number of town hall’s over the next few weeks to discuss health care reform.
So what is all of the hype about. Click here, and turn to page 424 (section 1233) of the House health care bill to judge for yourselves.
… or at least that’s what an organization called The 60 Plus Association thinks. They supposedly represent older folks like me as we stand in the face of possible Health Care Reform. And, indeed, they are representing us older folks with a new television ad:
So, here I am sitting back in my big chair with my evening insulin shot and miscellany of pills, knowing that this organization is representing me and my age group against a government that wants to put me in front of a “death panel.”
We’ve seen the new meme as of late by Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the corporate anti health care enablers to call President Obama a racist and compare him to Adolf Hitler. Thankfully, there’s a lot of push back to this disturbing trend, ranging from the last wails of a dying breed to fascism on the rise.
As a German, I’m not only part of my people’s long collective struggle to come to grips with our past, but I have personally grappled with my own family history and how to approach a subject so fraught with emotion and almost mythical proportions. I am so reluctant and utterly shocked to even write in response to such a patently absurd comparison that borders on the mental fringes between frightfully deluded and clinically insane. However, as painful as it is, there are times when we are asked to fearlessly descend into the darkest corners of our consciousness in order to evolve and transcend, and this is one of those times.
This week, some in the mainstream media and blog-world have illustrated that omitting facts in its reporting about Israel has become more than commonplace.
I sat a table tonight with five fairly liberal friends of mine who worked their feet raw last year for Obama. Today, as we sat around watching mixed martial arts, I brought up healthcare and mentioned that the right wing was outnumbering the Democrats and Obama’s plan may be defeated.
The response I got was “Gee, that sucks. I hope healthcare passes.”
It’s 3:30 in the morning and I should be asleep. Instead, I’m reading about health insurance reform on the web. My late night reading may have been worth it. These are some of the best words I’ve read about health insurance reform. The whole speech is worth reading or watching, but I found the ending to be especially good.
From Barack Obama’s Weekly Radio Address:
…That’s why, under these reforms, insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage because of a previous illness or injury. And insurance companies will no longer be allowed to drop or water down coverage for someone who has become seriously ill. Your health insurance ought to be there for you when it counts – and reform will make sure it is.
With reform, insurance companies will also have to limit how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. And we will stop insurance companies from placing arbitrary caps on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime because no one in America should go broke because of illness.
In the end, the debate about health insurance reform boils down to a choice between two approaches. The first is almost guaranteed to double health costs over the next decade, make millions more Americans uninsured, leave those with insurance vulnerable to arbitrary denials of coverage, and bankrupt state and federal governments. That’s the status quo. That’s the health care system we have right now.
So, we can either continue this approach, or we can choose another one – one that will protect people against unfair insurance practices; provide quality, affordable insurance to every American; and bring down rising costs that are swamping families, businesses, and our budgets. That’s the health care system we can bring about with reform.
