Over 8 Million Uninsured Children In America

I am so incensed at this travesty of supposedly democratic representation in the House and Senate that I am literally having to stop reading...

...until my anger dissapates and I no longer want to kill.

Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option

Senate Bill Restores Abstinence-Only Funding

There’s Always Money for War

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY??

I am 10 million percent more pissed than the average teabagger and I have very good reason, not because of some fucking made-up shit about a birth certificate or nazis... about our elected representitives selling out the American people in favor of lobbying money. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!!!!!

____________________________________________________________________

Update: Poll: Majority Of Republicans Think Obama Didn't Actually Win 2008 Election -- ACORN Stole It!

TEH STUPID, IT BURNS AAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

How to stay alive without killing the planet

Thanks Skippy. This is really trippy and right on message.

No Mas Presents: Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden

Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburg Pirates on acid. The reason I post this, besides that it is fun for an old hippie to watch, is so people who were not around in 1970 can get a feel for the cultural differences between now and then. It seems to me we have been moving steadily toward puritanism since 1980. Imagine the shitstorm if this happened today.

The Dark Side of Sesame Street as Reported by Paranoid Right Wing Loons and Demolished by Stephen Colbert

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Sesame Street Turns 40

I remember watching this jazz/blues filled segment, produced in 1986, with my kids when they were 3 and 5. We liked it so much we taped it and watched it over and over as kids are wont to do. There are tons of cameos by musicians - Paul Simon, Winton Marsalis, etc. and other known celebs of the time including John Candy, Barbra Walters and Joe Pesci. Worth the 5 minutes. Very Cool.

Happy Veterans Day

Study: 2,200 Vets Died Last Year Because They Lacked Health Insurance

By Alex Seitz-Wald via ThinkProgress

On the eve of Veterans Day, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School has released a study finding that an estimated 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they did not have health insurance. That “translates to six preventable deaths per day” and more than twice the number killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

Being uninsured raises a person’s odds of dying prematurely by 40 percent. The researchers found that 1.46 million veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 lacked insurance in 2008. While most veterans are eligible to receive excellent care from the Veterans Administration, those who were not injured in combat and whose income is above a certain threshold are often ineligible. Others are assigned low priorities, providing them with less consistent and more expensive access to care:

“Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people – too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School. [...]

Dr. David Himmelstein, the co-author of the analysis and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “On this Veterans Day we should not only honor the nearly 500 soldiers who have died this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the more than 2,200 veterans who were killed by our broken health insurance system. That’s six preventable deaths a day.”

Unfortunately, health insurance is just one of many serious problems vets face. Up to one-in-five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while male vets face suicide rates double the national average. And, as the VA under President Obama recognized, veterans still account for up to a quarter of all homeless.

The fact that even veterans cannot receive adequate health care demonstrates that the current system is broken and in need of dramatic overhaul. A robust public option will guarantee that vets and all working-class Americans will be able to afford quality health insurance. Still, the study’s authors warn that the health care legislation “would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013” and would “leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run when reform kicks in,” leaving many veterans without care.

Update: Politico reports, "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) 'illogical' for holding up a veterans care bill Tuesday, criticizing the Oklahoma Republican for supporting war funding while blocking health care funding for veterans."

Poll: Snowe Could Lose 2012 GOP Primary In Landslide To Conservative Challenger

Olympia Snowe is my Senator from Southern Maine. Although I have never voted for her, I will admit that Ms. Snowe has done much good for the State of Maine over the years with the occasional party-line vote mistake like Sam Alito.

Unfortunately, doing good for your constituents has gone out of vogue with the Republican party these days. So, Ms. Snowe, instead of giving up on serving the citizens of Maine who want a public HC option overwhelmingly, just cross over the aisle (like I have wanted you to for years) and become the Democrat you always wanted to be. If not... the Teabaggers will have your head in the 2012 primaries.

They will eviscerate you and dance on the entrails. RINO is the new Liberal. You will lose your primary to some out-of-state funded Palin/Beck/Limbaugh blessed rabid conservative and the democrat will get your seat no matter who it is, so let it be you.

Don't take my word for it - Eric Kleefeld has the numbers:

"A new survey of Maine from Public Policy Polling (D) has some dire news for Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), with the moderate Republican potentially losing her 2012 Republican primary against a generic conservative challenger -- and by a landslide, no less.

The numbers: Conservative challenger 59%, Snowe 31%, with a ±4.8% margin of error. It is of course a long way from the idea of a generic conservative challenger to having an actual candidate, but the potential for success by just such an insurgent is certainly there.

Snowe's overall approval is 51%, to 36% disapproval. Democrats approve of her by 60%-29%, Republicans disapprove by 40%-46%, and independents approve by 51%-33%.

The pollster's analysis notes the importance of her vote for a health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee: "Snowe's numbers are steady with independents but down with both Democrats and Republicans compared to three weeks ago, an indication of the perilous political position she finds herself in. Republicans are mad at her for supporting any Democratic bill, while Democrats still are not completely happy with her because of her hesitance to support a public option."

So, fellow Mainer's, (and everyone else) warm up your dialing fingers and let Olympia know where you stand on Health Care Reform and a robust Public Option.

Wash. DC - Office: (202) 224-5344
Biddeford, ME - State Office: (207) 282-4144

If one is busy, dial the other. Make sure they spell your name right. Be nice!

Lies and the Lying Liebermans Who Tell Them

How much longer will our Dem leaders tolerate this bullshit from Lieberman? You can't spell Lieberman with using the word "lie".

Here is a great summary by Bob Cesca:

Joe Lieberman is insisting that the public option adds to the deficit, which, of course, is a total lie.

Ezra Klein:
This has been Lieberman's standard argument for the past few weeks, but he has not, to my knowledge, explained how it works. Every analysis of the public option I've seen has concluded that it will reduce federal, and consumer, spending. Indeed, the stronger the public option is, the more it reduces the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a public option paying Medicare's rates would save the government more than $100 billion in the first 10 years, and more after that.

I want to hear how Lieberman has knowledge that eludes the CBO.

Jon Stewart Does Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is one of the most destructive voices from the vast, shrill, fact-challenged right-wing noise machine today, possibly derailing democracy as we know it in favor of ratings - the irresponsible asshole.
Jon does a great job of skewering this shameless freak.

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This is the Most Disconnected Line of Reasoning I Have Ever Heard in My Life!

Goldman One-Ups Gordon Gekko, Says Jesus Embraced Greed. by Matt Taibbi

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

via Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman Invokes Jesus – Bloomberg.com.

I didn’t believe this story was true at first — thought it had to be a spoof. But it turns out to be true. The great banks of the world have gone on a p.r. counteroffensive in Europe, and are sending spokescrooks in shiny suits into churches to persuade the masses that Christ would have approved of the latest round of obscene bonuses.

Goldman Sachs international adviser Brian Griffiths explains it this way: that Christ’s famous injunction to love others as one would love oneself actually means that one should love oneself as one would love oneself. This seemingly baffling outburst by a Goldman executive in what appears to have been a prepared speech — someone actually wrote this, and thought about it, before saying it out loud — gets even weirder when one tries to figure out what could possibly have motivated this person, and by extension his employer Goldman Sachs, to make such statements in such a place as St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Because there are only a couple of possibilities, and both of them are equally unnerving. One is that they know how preposterous this is and are just saying this shit because they think enough people will fall for it that it will end up being a net plus, optics-wise.

I seriously doubt this and think the converse is much more likely: that they actually believe this to be true, or are trying to believe it is true, and by making the case publicly hope to persuade the world to see the light (and just maybe reaffirm to themselves in the process) and embrace the Orwellian propositions that greed is love and taking is sharing. Read the rest here.

I believe this is a more accurate portrayal. Max nails it 20 seconds in:

GOP Health Plan Would Allow For ‘Sweatshop Insurance’

Republicans want to "Offshore" your health care insurance

By Igor Volsky via Think Progress

Under the Republican health care alternative filed in the House, young and healthy individuals can purchase policies from insurers that don’t abide by local benefit or rate standards.

The Republican bill allows the health insurer to choose a “primary state” “whose covered laws shall govern the health insurance issuer” and sell policies to people in other states without adhering “to all of the consumer protection laws or restrictions on rate changes of the state.”

Over at MYDD, Bruce Webb calls the provision, “Sweatshop Insurance.” This bill goes far beyond merely “stripping states of power over insurance rates and conditions,” he notes. It “explicitly expands the definition of ‘State’ to include not just D.C. and Puerto Rico, which makes some sense in context, but adds BY NAME the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and Jack Abramoff’s favorite client-the Northern Marianas home of the ‘Made in the USA’ Chinese-owned close to slave labor sweatshops.”

From pages 121-122 of the bill:
In 2001, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands famously hired corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff to enlist his support in stopping “legislation aimed at cracking down on sweatshops and sex shops in the American territory.”

“Given the record of corruption in the N. Marianas,” Webb writes, “and the willingness of various Caribbean and Atlantic Island nations to let themselves be used as off-shore banking and tax shelter entities, you can bet Aetna and WellPoint are slavering at the prospect of ‘basing’ their plans out of a PO Box on some tropical nation.”