Kerfuffle

Apparently, some basic fact checking is all that's needed to demonstrate (again) what lying sack of poop Dick Cheney really is

The so-called "Underwear Bomber" story has been pumped and pumped hard by the GOP this week.  Their talking points have been repeated by habitual liars like Karl Rove, Pete Hoekstra and others on the cable news channels.  But the Republican's Darth Vader himself finally emerged from the ether to offer his memory-and-facts-be-damned take of the story.  As is to be expected, he found several points to criticize about the current administration, while completely forgetting or ignoring that the administration in which he served as co-president did exactly the same things and then some.

And what are Democrats doing about it?  Not much, it seems.  They're just letting these asshats bullshit their way through hypocritical and baseless talking points unchallenged.  I have to give Republicans props for sticking to the script, and knowing they can get away with saying almost anything since Democrats do have a penchant for spinelessness, and the media can't be bothered to fact-check all that much.

While FOX News,  with their fact-challenged straight face, is now promoting themselves as "Hard News, Real Reporting," MSNBC actually did some real reporting on this subject last night.  And all they needed to do was some Google searching to demonstrate what an evil asshole of a liar Richard B. Cheney is...

Well played, Rachel Maddow.

Sometimes the satirical truth hurts. President Obama hasn't really gotten a lot done so far.

It's been a subject that a lot of Democrats don't want to address.  It's a subject that get's one labeled a "concern troll" on progressive blogs if one is to write about it.  But, when it comes right down to it, Barack Obama doesn't have a whole lot to show for this first year in office.  And Saturday Night Live -- which can be wickedly accurate on some nights -- called him out for it:

Admittedly, this has been bugging me for a while.  Most all who voted for Obama were hoping for change, as the campaign suggested.  And they were hoping to get far, far away from the mess that George W. Bush and his Republican pals had made of the country.  I wasn't expecting miracles.  I wasn't even expecting a lot.  But I was expecting something. 

Make no mistake; I'm not bailing on President Obama.  Yet.  But I am growing impatient.  Much of my impatience is focused on the Democratically controlled Congress... especially the Senate.  While the GOP has truly been the party of "if Obama's for it, we're against it," at least they are more or less upfront about that fact.  Democrats, on the other hand, seem to have a real dilemma on their hands:  to vote with their constituents or their lobbyists.  Add to that the fact that small-staters are the ones fucking things up for the most part, and you have the makings of a poor showing in the off-year elections and you offer comedy gold to the satirists and late night comedians.

Nice going, you guys.

There are a lot of people who simply can't wait much longer for a public option

People against what they call "socialized medicine" and a "government takeover of health care" seem to either not know, not understand, or not care that there are a lot of people (including me) who cannot get insurance, or have certain parts of coverage denied due to pre-exisitng conditions.

To those who don't know:  Climb out from under whatever rock you are living.

To those who don't understand:  Educate yourself.  Reach out to people not like you who have different lives, and talk to them so you can understand that not everyone without insurance is some kind of lazy bum or otherwise less-than-human.  Read.  

To those who just don't care:  How can you sleep at night?  I mean, really.  So many people aligned with the conservative right in this country only see health care as a privilege that you get if you can afford it... like a new car.  Can't afford health care?  Tough.  And yet, they are the same who talked of death panels with great authority, choosing not to acknowledge that CIGNA and United Health Care give out death sentences every day in our current system.  Oddly, these people claim to be "Christians" while espousing this point of view.  How very unChristlike. 

Of course, not everyone of the Democratic side is happy either.  Evidence this email sent in reply to the person who sent around the video shown above:

"With the news that some in the White House are considering a "trigger"—a delay tactic designed to kill the public option—it's more important than ever to get the word out that we simply can't afford to wait for real reform."
 
It could be you or me without health care one day indeed. There but for the grace of god...
 
Oh, MAN. Therese, I just can't take this anymore. OBAMA IS THE SINGLE GREATEST DISSAPOINTMENT IN MY POLITICAL LIFE. Does anyone else I've CC'd feel the same? It's not just on gay issues, it's on everything. It boils down to this: Why is he in ANY way "negotiating" or "compromising"? The Democrats control the legislative and executive branches of our government. He was elected to do the things he promised, like health care for all. And he's worried about the fringe Republican minority?! He's been letting the Republicans frame the debate over health care, and other issues, when he, IF HE WERE A TRUE LEADER, should be defining the debate and not compromising for anyone. "Change you can believe in"? What an asshole. He is just another spineless Democrat who doesn't know how to govern and is a pussy when it comes to leading. Obama is nothing but the grandest political disapointment in modern American history. If he does health care reform without a public option, it's not health care reform at all, and the Republicans will have won.
 
I'll say this for the worst president in our history, GEORGE W. BUSH. He had an agenda and he got everything he wanted done. And he did so with a DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED LEGISLATURE! The spineless Democrats, as always. Bush did not compromiose and he got everything he wanted. I don't agree with Bush, OF COURSE, but my point is he led and did everything he wanted to do. Why the hell can't Obama do the same? I'll tell you why, because he is a FUCKING PIECE-OF-SHIT SPINELESS DEMOCRAT FUCK. Democrats, suck.
 
And now I'm back to being unable to watch the news. I had to stop watching the news during the Bush presidency because I got so steamed it threatened my mental health. And now I can't watch the news because of the tiny little decaying Republican party controlling the debate on every issue and the limp Obama exercising his FETISH FOR COMPROMISE. He's not going to get anything done unless he turns into LBJ and starts smashing some Democrats' heads. Obama is a piece of shit.

People are dying around us for lack of health care... in the United States of America... land of yellow "Support our Troops" magnetic ribbons., as if we are some Third World contry  People who supported the Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular are very unhappy.  And nothing changes.

As I've said before, we are, indeed, doomed.  So party on while you can.

This whole health care debate just makes me... wait for it... sick!

It's an easy pun for a complicated situation.  What at face value, health care for everyone, seems like such a noble and moral thing has become the political cage match we all knew it would.

Few people are opposed to health care as a concept.  Sure, some religious beliefs eschew modern medicine... which could in itself be considered a kind of mental illness.  And there are a lot of people who look at sickness and disease as god's will or some kind of heavenly punishment for bad behavior. (Again, see mental illness.)

What amazes me is how a significant part of my fellow Americans don't seem to mind -- and in some cases prefer -- that health care is a for-profit enterprise.  Senator and crackpot Jim DeMint of the very modern and progressive South Carolina has said health care is a privilege.  Is that like the "getting ice cream if you finish all your spinach at dinner" kind of privilege?  Or is it more like the "being able to take an expensive vacation because you can afford it" kind of privilege.  It apparently, for Senator DeMint, is not the "we're a great country with high moral values so we take care of our citizens' health care needs" kind of privilege.

Oddly, many of the very same politicians and pundits that shit on the idea of health care reform are the same ones that think government has a right to tell a woman what she can do with her own body, that homosexuals are of a lesser class, and that all people of Middle Eastern heritage are terrorists.  Religious fundamentalists who are about as un-Christlike as I can imagine. ("Not covered?  Screw him; let him die."  Oh, yes, Jesus would be sooooo proud of you.)  

Open minded people, they are not.  But, in fairness, they are fiercely looking out for one group.  They have the interests of large and oh-so-profitable insurance companies at the top of their lists, far ahead of the well-being of their average constituent.  I'm sure that has something to do with the relative campaign contributions from big insurance compared to little constituents.  Nice.

And then there are the outright lies.  Death panels.  Long waits for basic procedures.  Freeloading illegal aliens getting care on Joe the Plumber's dime.  Socialism.  Government takeovers.  Fascism. 

The Democrats... the majority, as one could almost have predicted, are losing to this crap.

I have to give it to the Republicans.  They stick together.  And when your only position is "No!" it is easy to stay on message.  Democrats all have their own variations of similar ideas, but seem to focus a lot on the individual points rather than the common goal.  Add in a Democratic White House that is either incredibly crafty or woefully inept at managing their message strategy and the "herding cats" visual comes to mind.

To further complicate things, there are some Democratic Senators (talking to you, Max) representing small-population states who seem to be far, far more concerned with representing big campaign donors from the business world.  How very, umm, Republican of you.  Throw in the so-called Blue Dogs in the House, who are really moderate Republicans in blue clothes that were able to beat freakishly conservative Republicans to get their seats, and we have the mess we're in right now.

Heath care is big business... for-profit big business.  The thing is, most of that profit isn't going to doctors or nurses or physical therapists.  It's going to insurance companies and their stockholders.  Just imagine if the US Army was all turned over to Blackwater.  Or your local fire department was a for-profit business.  Your house would burn down while the requisite proof of coverage paperwork was being filled out.

Health care for all people is, to me, a moral obligating... not a privilege that poor people or people with pre-existing conditions should be denied.  That is about as immoral as it gets.  We'll let people die because they are not profitable for the industry.  And this position from the people who yammer on about so-called death panels.  These are the same ones who shriek about getting some government person between them and their doctor.  As if the insurance company worker who is rewarded for boosting profit (by denying coverage) is not coming between you and your doctor?  How fucking stupid are you people? 

Political butt-wipes like Jim DeMint may well be correct.  If the Republicans can kill health care -- doing so for purely political reason in spite of what is best for the citizenry -- it may be President Obama's Waterloo, and lead to losses in the next election.  It's all about power and control for Republicans.  It's all about empathy and doing what's best for the average person (whether the average person realizes this or not) for Democrats.  Kind of like the bullies (R) vs the nerds (D).  And in these kind of playground battles this has become, we know who usually wins.

It doesn't have to be this way!

The President needs to stop dicking around with bipartisan hopes once and for all.  The Senate Majority Leader has to either grow a pair or get out of the way.  And anyone with a D after their name needs to remember they represent the voters that elected them, and what that D means.  And we all need to keep up the pressure n any and all of the Democrats that want to make googly eyes at Republicans and their corporate benefactors.  The time for talk and compromise has long passed.

Whether this makes sense or not, I had to express it.  Pollyanna as it may read, I am so fucking frustrated with all this. 

[cross-ranted on Daily Kos]

The problem in getting health care reform through Congress, explained in pictures

 

Matt Davies, New York Journal News

Matt Wuerker, Politico

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Tony Auth, Philadelphia Inquirer

:::

It's about the money... the BIG money.  When Sarah Palin, nincompoop that she is, spews lies about "Obama's death panels," she seems to oblivious to the fact that insurance companies have de facto "death panels" right now.  Every time they drop someone or deny coverage, they are making a decision about someone's future based on cost.  How many of those decisions end in death, I must wonder.

Marcy Wheeler calls a blowjob a blowjob on MSNBC. And she does so while making a pretty good point about why we need to investigate Cheney and the DOJ's facilitation of certain equally indelicate matters... like torture

This pretty much speaks for itself...

And the quick apologies at the end apparently speak for Marcie Wheeler, who had this (and more) to say on her blog afterwords...

At some point, though, we as a country have to be willing and able to weigh what the Village did in the late 90s against the massive illegality of the Bush White House and, finally, realize there are more important things than a blow job, and we need to take those more important things at least as seriously as that magic blow job that captivated the press for so long under Clinton. 

I don't know whether my efforts today helped or hurt those efforts. Next time I'll just repeat, endlessly, torture torture torture. It'll probably cause the same kind of outrage.

Offensive?  The phrase "blow job?"  Gimme a fuckin' break.  DOJ maneuvers leading to illegal torture... orchestrated by Darth Cheney in the shadows... now that's offensive.

I'll have a cup of the soup, the shrimp scampi and a side of health care

[San Francisco] It's all in the fine print.  Yesterday, on both the lunch and dinner menus, it crawled across the very bottom in something close to six point type.

"A charge of 3.5% will be added to fund the Healthy San Francisco ordinance."

So what is that?  Not even The Google can easily explain it in exact terms, but a few news sites and several blogs weighed in about the program that began last year.  From Medical News Today...

Some restaurants in San Francisco are adding a surcharge to customers' bills, increasing food prices or charging a flat fee to help pay the cost of workers' health insurance under the city's Healthy San Francisco ordinance, the Los Angeles Times reports (Lifsher, Los Angeles Times, 3/17). The program is intended to ensure access to health care services for San Francisco's 82,000 uninsured residents at local clinics and the city's public hospital.

Under the program, which was launched on Jan. 9, private employers with at least 20 workers and not-for-profit groups with at least 50 workers must provide health care benefits at a cost that meets minimum spending levels or help cover the cost of the program. Other funding comes from tax revenue and member premiums. The Golden Gate Restaurant Association has filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that the program violates a federal law that prohibits state and local governments from regulating employee benefits (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 2/22).

So it's not a food tax.  Rather, it's a mandated small business employee health care thing.  Either a business owner provides health care, as ordained by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, or it gets charged for its employees to participate in the city-run program.  I think.

The Wall Street Journal's Health Blog had this take...

Since the beginning of the year, San Francisco businesses have been required to offer health insurance to employees or pay a fee to the city to fund health care.

Some restaurants are passing the fee on to consumers in the form of a health surcharge, which shows up on the bill as a flat fee ($1 per person, or so) or as a percentage (like sales tax).

Restaurants have been pretty unhappy about the ordinance all along. The Golden Gate Restaurant Association sued the city, arguing that the rules about employee benefits can be set only by the feds.

A thing like this can easily morph into a mutated urban legend.  I liked this one found on a Yelp topic page...

So, my friends and I were having dinner in the city this past weekend, when we were hit with the "health tax" on the bill. Hmmm....never heard of this, so we asked the waiter, who told us the mayor has recently enforced a health tax of 50 cents on each food item sold throughout restaurants in the city. The money is pooled and then distributed to the homeless. They get $500 CASH to better their lives! Is it just me, or is this a bad  idea? I only see homeless people now calling up their buddies to come on down to SF to cash in monthly! Also, I don't think that they'll be spending this allowance primarily on food and shelter.    [emphasis mine]

Is it wrong of me to assume that this person (a) took the waiter's word for it on this interpretation of the law, (b) invented a few things, and (c) likely voted for John McCain in the last election?

A blog called Yellow Limes seems to be saying this screws consumers and workers...

And now we have this. The San Francisco city council, in all their infinite wisdom, now mandates that all businesses offer health care to their employees or pay a fee to the city to fund that care. So, as we all know, it's the consumer that bites the bullet in the end.
:::
The real question is, when workers get laid off because their employer can no longer afford to keep them on payroll, who's going to support them then?

The nutroots of the San Francisco city council would be wise to make an attempt to understand the law of unintended consequences.

I still can't figure out what the hell the thing actually is, and am not going to make a huge effort to learn more.  But one thing I'm sure of:  this is why San Francisco gets tagged with that "Nancy Pelosi and those San Francisco liberals" labels by jackasses like Bill O'Reilly.  As if it is a bad thing to try and make some people's lives better.  Yeah, it might be a badly flawed attempt.  But at least they are trying something.  Given the precarious financial situation of the State of California, the city knows it can't count on help from those guys.

Last I checked, there is an H & R Block storefront office in every town. Politicians might want to look into that.

For fuck's sake, why is it that people who should know better suddenly have little -- or in Tom Daschle's case, huge -- tax problems that only come to light during intense vetting?  Are they so stupid they just don't know how to do taxes?  Doubt it.  Do they figure it will slide?  Not in today's hyper-partisan, instant media culture.  Are they, umm, crooks?  Maybe so.

Way to go, Mr. Daschle.  Nice job making the new President of the United States look bad.  Thanks.  Thanks so much.  Bye bye, now.

Many years ago, when I could no longer file a 1040-EZ tax form, my boss and mentor advised me to find a good accountant, and hooked me up with the firm that did his taxes.  Twenty years later, "Honest Pat" O'Malley is still my guy. I call him Honest Pat because the first year he did my returns, he included some deductions I didn;t know I could take.  Like a doofus, I asked him, "Are you sure this is legit?"  He smiled and said, "Dave, please understand that as much as I like you, I am not about to risk my livelihood to get you a couple hundy off your taxes."  I've trusted him with everything ever since.

Some may think accounting to be a boring profession.  I find it to be an invaluable service.  Too bad politicians like Daschle apparently don't see it that way.  Or they have really bad judgment in selecting an accountant.  Or, they are, umm, crooks.

As for our sterling crew of Washingtonians and others wishing to be there, I defer to Trapper John over at DK for his suggested memo to all comers:

MEMORANDUM

To: Anyone who sent his or her resume to my transition team
From: The President of the United States
 
Please pay your taxes. We kinda need them, what with the financial crisis and the massive stimulus spending and whatnot. Thanks.

____________

PS: In case you're confused -- personal gifts are things like sweaters and bottles of wine, or -- if you're really lucky -- maybe a Wii or Sox-Yanks tickets or something. If you're honestly deluded enough to believe that daily use of a goddamn Town Car and a goddamn chauffeur is a "gift," you're probably too divorced from everyday reality to work for the people of the United States.

kthxbai, POTUS

Well said, TJ.

Honestly, some days it is really hard to be a Democrat.  But is sure beats the alternative.