Prairie Recommends: Frank Rich

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Just in case you didn't notice that the choleric rage from the right was about more than healthcare reform.
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Boehner-Cantor Tag Team

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The unabashed tag team of John Boehner and Eric Cantor have now spoken about the increasingly violent rhetoric and acts against Democrats who voted for healthcare reform, and Eric Cantor makes clear that it's red herring and blame-the-victim time. The false equivalencies are flying around, and political cowardice by the likes of John McCain excusing Sarah Palin's violence prompts are on full display.

It's a pretty wretched sight coming out of Washington these days. Will the media now further fuel the flames? Or will they referee the filibustering and blustering and fingerpointing and call them what they are?

Time will tell. But Mrs. McMahon will fit right in with this crowd if she wins in November.

Who knows, maybe she'd even call a tag team what it is....
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UPDATE: According to Eric Cantor, the Dems are flnning the flames of violence. Thus spake the arsonist.

Law of the Land

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The Rumpelstiltskins on the right can jump up and down and shout as loud as they want.

Healthcare reform is now the law of the land.

For Marcellus. For Natoma and her family. For President Obama. For the Kennedy family. For the Nixon family, even if he was not mentioned. For the Congress who made the hard votes. For the citizens who called, who wrote, who advocated. For you. And for me.
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What Change Looks Like

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Healthcare reform has passed.

All the hypocritical whining at the end of the day failed to overcome what President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi led.

As Craig Ferguson would say, it's a great day for America.
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UPDATE: I called my Congressman today to say "thank you." How 'bout you?
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Good Ol' Boys

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If you missed Thursday night on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart's tour de force about the crazy that is Glenn Beck and Stephen Colbert's scintillating skewering of all things Republican hypocrisy are must see. Must think about, too.

If you've been working and not noticed the misogynistic mindset that drives the likes of Rep. Bart Stupak in his dismissive attitude toward women's healthcare issues and the on-record support by Catholic nuns of healthcare reform.

If you think it's just all talk and smoke and mirrors and something you don't need to think about, then take a look at what a Republican state legislator in little ol' North Dakota thinks about one woman.

And ask yourself, isn't it time to elect more Democrats, not less? To support progress and change, even if it's not moving as fast as you'd like, rather than allowing the status quo to drag us down ever lower?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Defiant Diehards

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John Boehner makes it clear. The Republicans are united. They will continue to obstruct. They will continue to be the Party of No.

Lesson learned since the 2008 election? Progressives have been aggressive about electing more and more Democrats in 2006. and 2008.

Obviously we aren't there yet. More Democrats in 2010.

We're on the right track, the Rumpelstiltskin status quo crowd that got US into this mess are still holding their tantrums and their obstruction.

Send 'em home.

Vote more Democrats in 2010.
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It Happened Again....

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There we were, in line for lunch, a circle of women, achievers, successes in our fields, of a creeping certain age, and we shook our heads in bafflement.

Get it done, Washington.

Get it done, Democrats...it's why we worked so hard to elect you.

Get healthcare reform done. Now.

Stop dithering. Stop jumping at shadows.

Get it done.

Because job-building needs doing, too.

Now.
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"Hang it around their necks"

The Republicans have their talking point down. Todd the talking strategist told Chris Matthews this afternoon that if Democrats pass healthcare reform, come November, "we're going to hang it around their necks."

Hmmmmm.

Seems to me I saw something being hung around necks not so long ago ... gold medals.

In Sarah Palin's favorite healthcare destination.

Works for me....
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crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal

Thank you, Keith Olbermann

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As a "child" of an 85-year-old in the hospital this week, bearing witness to families around us in the ICU unit who are dealing with the trauma of trying to figure out arrangements for their loved ones and what will be allowed by insurance and what won't as they cope with the challenges of medical conditions....

As one who saw too much of the trauma of families dealing with the harshness of the healthcare coverage system amid their traumas of medical circumstance and care during the long years of my husband's illnesses which finally claimed him last July, I have just two words for Keith Olbermann's special comment:

Thank you.

It can't be easy for Mr. Olbermann to talk so publicly about his father's situation. And I thank him for his courage. It can't be easy to advocate so rawly for the reform the American healthcare system so desperately needs. So I thank him for his fortitude. It can't be easy to contain the full extent of the passion he brings to the table. So I thank him for expressing via his microphone what so many of us know and care about and do whatever we can, too, to advocate for.

We may not win this battle—the lobbyists and entrenched interests and too many gutless, selfish politicians and fools weigh against us.

But the cause is just, the need is real, and the people we love deserve no less than our full effort.

So thank you, Keith Olbermann. You honor your father.
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And for one day, this day, my heart is a bit lighter because we've stepped back from the brink, Mom's out of ICU and into a regular room. Go, Mom!
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crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal

With Headlines like These....

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Anthem Blue Cross raises rates 39%. Medicare Advantage rates going up 14%.... Can we please RECONCILE NOW...WITH THE PUBLIC OPTION???????

Sorry for the shouting.

But for all the wasted time of the past year trying to get votes out of the Republican side of the aisle when they made clear from the get-go that they would obstruct and delay and obstruct and delay right into the 2010 elections, you'd think the Democrats in Congress would at long last stop with the foot-dragging hand-wringing and let reality return.

Maybe they need to be force-fed an endless loop of that scene from Gladiator when Russell Crowe convinces the other men in the ring they must stick together to survive and they must fight back. But that would take "men"...and "leadership"...and I digress....

As NorthDecoder reminds us today in yet another local example, Republicans will not cooperate, will not admit success of the stimulus, will do their darnedest to deny their states got any stimulus funds, just those ginormous photo-op checks in their staged media events [see any recent episode of Rachel Maddow's stim-pocrisy watch]. We can only succeed if we toot our own horn...

And pass legislation worth tooting about.

Reconciliation. We've missed the early part, so let's go for often. Reconcile on health care reform. Reconcile on financial reform. Reconcile on energy. Reconcile on...

Reconcile on delivering what Americans have been voting for. It's past due.

Then shout it from the mountaintops.
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crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal

One Person's Story

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Lots of sturm und drang about healthcare reform has been flying around Washington and the blogosphere and the media and... well, it truly all comes down to this:

We need reform. Postponing. Delaying. Putting it off until everybody feels all nicey-nicey about what's in the bill just isn't going to cut it. I feel strongly about this. I know lots of my friends and fellow bloggers feel vehemently different.

But it's been six months...and I still remember the haunted faces of caregivers I got to know in Rochester at Mayo's hospital. How they each worried for their loved ones. How they dreaded the financial toll. I can't get that out of my mind. There but for the grace of God, for we had good insurance.

Big numbers get thrown around by the chatterers. Too big to absorb...the cost, the number who die uninsured... but how many live? In quiet desperation at the effort just to survive and the unrelenting anxiety of how to pay for treatments and medicines and meanwhile the vampires take their bites: profiteers whose coin is blood.

And then in the quiet of a stormy Saturday morning, a message on the phone. Call me. And it's a dear friend who needed me to know she hasn't been in touch lately because she has breast cancer. And surgery's next week and then....

One person has a story to tell at Josh's place, too. Please take time—our most precious commodity—to read what he has to say. Because time's a-wasting.

I'm not so cynical as Josh's editor's blog to call his commenter's words a "sob story." Nor my friend, because I know in my heart she will be fine. Nor myself and my own loss last summer and the people who had their own experiences to share along the way.

These aren't sob stories. Nor spin. Nor posturing. Save that for the vampire profiteers and politicians and ghoul media enablers. These are our life stories. And just as hard as we fight, for ourselves, for our loved ones for survival, so, too, we must fight for healthcare reform whatever it takes to get it done.

Because the alternative is death.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

UPDATE: For more on the battle, the marathon, for healthcare reform, read emptywheel's Some Thoughts on Healthcare and digby's suggestion that Someone Tell Tweety

Call Your Friends & Family in MA Now!

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If you know someone in Massachusetts who hasn't yet committed to VOTE for Coakley, I'm beggin' you...call them now. Don't wait for a group to do organized calling... you do it.

Because we can't afford to let the last term of Edward Kennedy be upended and totally turned 180 backward by the Republican candidate for his seat in the Senate.

Health care reform is on the line.

A Democratic loss in Massachusetts will set back not only health care reform, but the banksters of Wall Street are just slavering at the opportunity to buy themselves another senator and stop financial reform right in its tracks, too. The Bush eight years of destruction weren't enough for them, they want to keep right on pillaging and plundering the American middle class.

We can sort out later who got us in such a mess that the whole nation will suffer if Democratic doldrums and independent antipathy keep the voters away. We can't afford to squander any more.

This is triage time.

Don't wait for someone else to do it. You know what a mess the healthcare system is. It has to be fixed. And if the patient doesn't survive, all the arguing in the world over what the best medicine is won't mean a damned thing.

Call your friends and family in Massachusetts now and get their promise to vote for Coakley on Tuesday.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Prairie Recommends: Frank Rich Rides the Tiger

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NYT columnist Frank Rich reminds us we've been here before: bamboozled by our leaders, led into willfully reckless disregard of what's right before our eyes if we'd only pull down our fingers to see.

Oh, he's talking about Tiger Woods, and the Iraq War, and Enron, and Ben Bernanke.

But really, aren't we seeing yet another past is prologue in the healthcare reform?

No public option. No true competition. Trust us, say the leaders. Trust us, say the insurance companies. Trust us, say the big pharma companies. Trust us, say Ben, and Olympia, and Joe and all the rest.

When will they ever learn?

When will we ever learn?
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A Very Few Good Gladiators

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One of my alltime favorite movies is Gladiator. Small wonder for a liberal. It shows a man of courage, standing up for his principles and his family values against a corrupt and cowardly status quo coupled with some genuine evil.

Now far be it from me to suggest that the movie version of health care reform should feature River Phoenix as Joe Lieberman, but...what the heck. Why not. And then there's Jane Hamsher as played by Connie Nielsen. And Russell Crowe? Well, I'd give him the Dylan Ratigan part. I would've assigned Viggo Mortenson, but he wasn't in the original.

Gladiators come more and more to mind these days as you watch the bread and circuses and thumbs-downing that's going on in Washington. Bellicose Senators who quisle and cave at the first opportunity. [They call it "compromise"]. Vandals and scourges leaving the rest of us rabble to struggle to plow through the arcane paperwork so that all the Sopranos can dip their beaks along the way. But I mix my moviesque metaphors....

And where does it leave us? The progressives and liberals and hope-fulls who voted for change last year? Damned dispirited that we are seeing so much of the same ol' same ol'.

And where will we be when the healthcare "reform" bill passes? Another day older and deeper in debt, said ol' Tennessee Ernie some years ago. And some things never change.

Clotheslineblogger Barbara posed a question to me about whether the efforts of the Jane Hamshers of the healthcare reform battle will be effective--with the parenthetical, I'm thinking, that voices like Barbara's and mine, no less passionate, are so much fainter in the loud cacophony of teabagger screeching and Big Insurance/Pharma $$$$spinning and Rethuglican fearmongering.

I answered her thusly, and I think it bears repeating:

Jane is dogged and I understand where she's coming from, and dang it, she's right. Like Dylan Ratigan is right on MSNBC--just heard his Reality Check on the banksters and why we need windfall profits tax. These are Gladiators. And the Coliseum is full of good ol' boys who are way too cozy with each other. One of the reasons her action on Hadassah Lieberman is such a flashpoint is that way too many Senators have spouses, or children who are essentially doing the same thing as the Liebermans.

We may not get what we want this go-round on healthcare, but we've gotten people's attention. And I think that matters. Next time around, instead of giving away the farm before they even get started, maybe we can just get them to give away the outhouse.

Disclaimer: Barbara and I met online at firedoglake.com. We've both gone through the agonizing process of caregiving and ultimately losing a beloved family member to cancer. The Senate, the Congress, the White House should consider this notice that although people like Jane and Dylan, each on their issues, may seem like out-there lonely voices, they speak for Legions.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal and Clotheslineblog

Prairie's Reading: Wendell Potter on Medical Ratios.

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Over at Huffington Post, Wendell Potter, former Cigna executive who is now doing heroic advocacy for healthcare reform, blogs about a healthcare amendment you need to know about. Senators Franken and Rockefeller are pushing to hold for-profit insurance companies to account by mandating they spend 90% of every premium dollar on medical care.

It's called MLR -- medical loss ratio.

An interesting twist of phrase. Actually providing the service for which people are paying their insurance companies is considered a "loss."

It should be Moral Leadership Return.

Insurance companies actually having ethics, moral responsibility, you know, all those old-fashioned values that the values crowd corrupts to line the pockets of Wall Street, buy the yachts and the Bentleys and Gulfstreams and the penthouse lofts and mcMansions.

Dancing around their 21st century version of the Golden Calf while turning a blind eye to the parable values of the Jewish guy with the loaves and fishes and healing touch.
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crossposted at Firedoglake's The Seminal and Clotheslineblog

Meet One of My Favorite Talking Heads

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Maybe because he also uses his head to think, not just shoot his mouth off.

Dylan Ratigan.

Would it be too much to hope this guy were hosting Meet the Press? Real questions...competent to follow up. 'tis to dream....
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Pass It On....

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A scathingly brilliant idea to solve the healthcare reform debacle, courtesy Susie Madrak over at Crooks and Liars.
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Prairie Recommends: Mayo CEO on Healthcare Reform

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Friday, Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the appearance before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. of Mayo Clinic CEO, Dr. Denis Cortese.

Mayo has a tradition of putting patients first. The Sunshines experienced that firsthand this summer. We believe in the Mayo model because we've been there.

Just in case you missed Cortese's appearance, here's the link.

Yeah, I mean you, Kent...Max....Olympia...Ben... step away from the lobbyist cocktail wienies. And listen.

And put patients first.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal
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Prairie Recommends: Wyden on Healthcare Free Choice

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In the New York Times this morning, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden explains why offering people the same kind of choice that he and Max and Kent and Olympia and the rest of the gang have really makes sense.

Sense. Maybe there'd be more of it in the halls of Congress if there were fewer dollars waved under their noses by their lobbyist cronies.
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Prairie Recommends: Froomkin on Obama's Healthcare Speech

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What Obama needs to say. Because, as 475 Bobcat workers in Bismarck—along with the hundreds of thousands of other Americans—have found out this week: we are all stakeholders in healthcare reform now. Whether we acknowledge that, or not.
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Healthcare reform now. With the public option.
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