We're #37

Today a lot of stupid people are protesting in DC against healthcare reform. Because they don't want their tax money spent on -- themselves, I guess? Just stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. I know some people who are there and while they are perfectly nice, they're not the sharpest tools in the drawer. If they have their way, we will go DOWN in healthcare ranking around the world. And right now we're number 37. This funny video tells us all the countries with better healthcare rankings than ours. I want to move to the Faroe Islands.

Tell Your Representative to Support Single Payer

Click here to fill out a form to automatically send a letter supporting Rep. Anthony Weiner's single-payer amendment to your U.S. representative.

From Physicians for a National Health Program.

Anthony Weiner Defends the Public Option - On Fox!

And now, representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, wearing the tan suit with a yellow tie, Jon Stewart's former roomate, New York Representative Anthony Weiner! I'll vote for this guy for President. I want someone to fight for what is right. Watch and enjoy.

New Name for The Public Option

Teddycare.

An Appropriate Memorial to Ted Kennedy

firedoglake: Name The Public Option, Not the Bill, After Kennedy

Put Kennedy's name on a weakened bill, and you'll likely be able to break the progressive bloc in the House in two seconds flat when "the Kennedy bill" comes out of conference with the individual mandate but no public option, and progressives are faced with having to oppose "the Kennedy bill." As strong as they've been on holding firm in their demands, putting the Kennedy name on a weak bill -- and remember, nothing at all prevents this -- can only drain their resolve.

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With the Kennedy Health Care Plan intact in the bill, there's no reason the legislative vehicle that creates it cannot also bear his name. But while there's still a fight ahead about just what will be in this bill, if we're going to lend Ted Kennedy's name to something, let it be done in a way that keeps him in the fight to fulfill his vision right to the last, and which keeps his name on people's lips when they are finally able to take their families to the doctor without fear of financial ruin, saying, "We're covered by the Kennedy Plan."

Whip The Senate Into Supporting the Public Option

Time to get the pusillanimous Democrats off the fence and lined up to support a robust public option available on day one of the healthcare reform legislation. Please take the time to send a fax to each of these fine recipients of buckets of cash from the healthcare industry. The fax will be sent by Howard Dean's organization "Stand With Dr. Dean".

* Send a fax to Mark Begich, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Tom Carper, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Jon Tester, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Mark Warner, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Ron Wyden, asking him if he supports the public option!

I took great pleasure in faxing all of them. I'm tired of trying to get more Democrats into office. From now on it's only better Democrats. If you're not with us you're against us.

Barney Frank to WhackJob: "On What Planet Do You Spend Most of Your Time?"

Excellent job, Barney. Time for the Democrats to stop letting the fringe monopolize the discussion.

Obama: Stand Up and Fight for the Public Option

The last tough Democratic President

OpenLeft: Public Option or Primary!

Any Democrat who does not vote for a "public option" insurance plan in health care reform must be challenged in a primary. And this includes any President who does not go to the mat and fight 100% for a public option.

I'll camp out in front of Howard Dean's door for a year to get him to run for President if Obama abandons the campaign promises he made to us.

No public option, not one red cent to any Democrat who opposed the public option. It's that simple. And that includes one Barack Obama. I hope he realizes that. If he does not fight for us he is just another in the long line of corporate shills who talk a good game to get our votes then go off and vote with the money guys.

He's either with us or against us. Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?

Conservatives: Bringing the Crazy Since the 1800s

Rick Perlstein, WaPo: In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition
Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage

[Rightwing anger is both crazy, and heartfelt.] If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

In the early 1950s, Republicans referred to the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as "20 years of treason" and accused the men who led the fight against fascism of deliberately surrendering the free world to communism. Mainline Protestants published a new translation of the Bible in the 1950s that properly rendered the Greek as connoting a more ambiguous theological status for the Virgin Mary; right-wingers attributed that to, yes, the hand of Soviet agents. And Vice President Richard Nixon claimed that the new Republicans arriving in the White House "found in the files a blueprint for socializing America."

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House, his proposals to anchor America's nuclear defense in intercontinental ballistic missiles -- instead of long-range bombers -- and form closer ties with Eastern Bloc outliers such as Yugoslavia were taken as evidence that the young president was secretly disarming the United States. Thousands of delegates from 90 cities packed a National Indignation Convention in Dallas, a 1961 version of today's tea parties; a keynote speaker turned to the master of ceremonies after his introduction and remarked as the audience roared: "Tom Anderson here has turned moderate! All he wants to do is impeach [Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl] Warren. I'm for hanging him!"

Before the "black helicopters" of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a "civil rights movement" had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would "enslave" whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn't lack for subversives -- anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and '50s.

Read the entire piece.

Lawrence O'Donnell Needs His Own Show on MSNBC

Republican opposing "socialist" healthcare plan handed his hat by O'Donnell. Fun.

Fight For Healthcare

The millionaires who own the conservative airwaves have whipped the right wing into a frenzy to defeat Obama's healthcare initiative. Mobs of the deranged are descending on the open forums being held by members of Congress. They're intent on disrupting things and shouting down any rational discourse. The left needs to show up the public events and let them know what the public really wants: a healthcare plan with a strong public option.

Here's a list of Congressional events put together by firedoglake. Go to one in your area! Stand up for government working for the people. It's time our government stopped subsidizing health insurers.

Obama Slams McCain Healthcare "Plan"

Obama yesterday in Roanoke, VA attacks McCain's terrible healthcare plan which would slash Medicare and tax benefits for the first time ever. "Every single American has a right to affordable, accessible health care."

New Obama Ad: "It Gets Worse"

John McCain's plan would destroy the already fragile healthcare system in this country.

New Obama Ad: "Taketh"

Good, as McCain's healthcare plan is horrid.

McCain Will Slash Medicare and Medicaid

How does John McCain plan to pay for his horrible, no good health care plan? By making huge cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, according to this article in today's Wall Street Journal.

John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.

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...Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain's senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 is estimated at $457.5 billion.

In other words, John McCain, wealthy beyond belief, plans to balance the budget by slashing medical care for elderly, poor and disabled Americans.

Millionaire guts medical care for peopole who can afford it the least. Who in their right mind would vote for this guy?

"[T]he McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking."

And Paul Krugman is terrified:

Paul Krugman, NYTimes: Health Care Destruction

Mr. McCain [] wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.

Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.

As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.

So what would happen?

The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.

In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all....the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.

Hit Him Again, Hit Him Again, Harder, Harder

New Obama ad on McCain's healthcare plan:



McCain's healthcare plan would be the largest middle class tax increase in history.

New Obama Ad: "Prescription"

This is a great issue to attack John McCain on. His health care plan is a joke, a gift to the greedy health insurance industry. How does a $2,500 tax credit help me, paying over $5,000 for health insurance this year (probably over $6,000 next year)? And he's going to tax what benefit I do get from my employer as income. And if he taxes benefits, taking away the tax benefit employers get for providing health insurance, that is the death knell of employer-provided health insurance.

New Obama Ad: "The Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere" *Updated*

I jumped off the couch when Biden delivered that line last night. Great line, a huge weakness of McCain's that we need to exploit. McCain's healthcare plan would kill employer-funded health insurance -- and he has no back-up plan. We should all marry a beer heiress. Or get one of those (dwindling because of Republicans) good union jobs with good benefits.

UPDATE: My brother calls me to tell this story. He watched the debate with my three nephews last night. They all liked the "ultimate bridge to nowhere" line. The 9-year-old said, that was the best line of the debate, dad! And when said 9-year-old woke up this morning, he rolled over and said, "The ultimate bridge to nowhere."

My nephew is a political genius! The kid has a future in politics. He knows way more about foreign policy than Sarah Palin. He can name every country in Africa. I'd like to see those two debate Africa. My nephew would wipe the floor with her. Heck, he could wipe the floor with her in any debate. Being nine, he would take the cuteness factor off the table, and when you take away the winking and the folksiness, what does she have left? An empty dress, that's what.

Obama On the Stump in Daytona Beach

On fire yesterday: