John Amato's blog

Lieberman will try and take credit for the passing of a "Progressive" health-care reform bill, as he calls it

John Amato — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:00:56 +0000

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Dana Bash interviewed the most hated man in America on The Situation Room and he had the balls to call what we have now a "progressive" health-care bill.

BASH: But you talked about the fact that on this particular issue, a Medicare buy-in, you have changed your position and you've said it's because things have changed. The deficits are high and Medicare is in more trouble -- the system.

LIEBERMAN: Yes.

BASH: But give me a little straight talk like your friend John McCain gives. Is it also that you philosophically have moved to the right a little bit?

LIEBERMAN: No, I don't think so. I mean, actually, this is a very progressive bill. The parts that I didn't like are taken out, I'm prepared to support. I've always believed that government has to be there when nobody else will be there to help people. But in this country we don't believe the government should take over everything. And for me, that's what's been on the line here. What kind of future are we going to have? And of course all of this goes to the debt -- the national debt and taxes. If government takes over everything -- the public option is something the public will pay for. And that means higher taxes. That's why I did that.

Didn't you know that John McCain won the election and put Lieberman in charge of health care reform?

There was nothing in this bill that could be considered a government takeover of health care in America, but don't ask a Villager to make Lieberman be honest about it. He has his bullshit fallback position and they just eat up his words and move on. Opening up Medicare to people at age fifty-five would have only helped Americans.

You know that if a health-care bill does pass, Joe Lieberman will take full credit for it. He'll be out there saying that it shows how incredible our system of government is. The media -- who love Lieberman and consider him a real independent soul who was forced out of the Dem party because of the dirty hippies -- will praise Joe's leadership on getting a bill passed.

Since the media believe liberals should always lose, they will relish the opportunity to promote Lieberman all over the TV because they know how much it will piss us off. Anybody who gives that lowlife props should be vilified early and often.

Right-wing "24" creator Joel Surnow will produce mini-series about the Kennedy family

John Amato — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:49 +0000

The man responsible for trying to make torture a moral imperative for America now gets the opportunity to produce an eight-hour miniseries about the Kennedy family.

Joel Surnow is swapping “real time” political intrigue for historical realism. The “24″ co-creator is executive producing “The Kennedys,” an eight-hour miniseries about one of America’s most iconic political families, for the History Channel. Unlike “24,” however, “The Kennedys” will be as historically accurate as possible and not feature any gimmickry.

“We’re not trying to be too clever about it,” said Surnow, who developed the project with Muse Entertainment for the Network. “We’re just telling the story on an episode by episode basis.”
Surnow says he and series writer Steve Kronish were most interested in cobbling together a dynastic story about family ambition. “That some of the most important events of the 20th century, such as the Bay of Pigs or the civil rights movement, is in the background, is almost besides the point,” he said. Focusing on the idea of a father living out his ambitions through his sons (”primarily Jack and Bobby, though Teddy was in the mix”), the series — which Surnow likens more to a season of the “Sopranos” than a traditional miniseries — will take place between the years of 1960 and 1968, but with plenty of flashbacks, such as Joe Sr. being rejected by a Harvard club.

He's not a partisan hack at all. He simply makes the case that the Kennedys are just like the Sopranos, who made sure to whack as many people after they ate their cannolis and espresso as possible.

He also decries anyone who may try to tie his conservative politics into the project. “My politics have never guided my interest in stories and movies,” he said. “I completely understand where critics are coming from, because of my creating the ‘1/2 Hour News Hour’ show for Fox News and the issue over torture on ‘24.’ But it’s honestly not going to have much play in terms of where this story comes out. Steve Kronish is politically different from me, and at the end of the day, we’re telling a story about a family. So it’s not about the politics.” (Fox News is owned by News Corp, as is the Wall Street Journal.)

Now why would we think Surnow is a right-wing hack simply for creating a TV show that had to scale back the amount of torture he depicted and a comedy show for FOX News that attacked progressives and Democrats entirely.

Using Limbaugh and Coulter as your stars was just in good fun for Joel.

How stupid are we to think his politics would ever seep into this production?

Liberals will keep fighting

John Amato — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:00:12 +0000

As Harry Reid tries to push through a health-care bill in the Senate before Christmas, the ConservaDems and Queen Snowe had to make sure to cut as much out as possible that liberals wanted. Ezra Klein tracks the process as it unfolded, which many of us have followed just as closely:

To move the process forward, Reid had three options. The first, many would say, was reconciliation. But that would have required going back to the committees to refashion a reconciliation bill, and going back to the House of Representatives so it could craft a reconciliation bill, and then going back through the votes. There wasn't time for that, and even if there was, throwing the process so far back onto itself would have been an enormous risk.

The next was to cut a deal with Olympia Snowe. But Snowe had made it clear that part of any compromise with her was a deceleration in the bill's momentum. "The more they try to drive this process in an unrealistic timeframe, the more reluctant I become about whether or not this can be doable in this timeframe that we're talking about," Snowe told reporters. "There's always January."

That left Joe Lieberman. And Lieberman's price for signing onto the bill was the destruction of the public option and, unexpectedly, the Medicare buy-in provision. There would be no triggers, no opt-outs, no compromises. Lieberman swung the axe and cut his deal cleanly, killing not only the public option, but anything that looked even remotely like it. Some on the Hill remain worried that Lieberman will discover new points of contention in the coming days, as they believe he had signaled that he wouldn't filibuster the Medicare buy-in. They worry whether his word is good. But assuming it is, he can provide the 60th vote Reid needs to move the bill by the end of next week, and keep health-care reform on some sort of schedule.

Lieberman is not interested in helping the millions of Americans who need help, but screwing liberals who held him accountable for the Iraq war. Even Jay Rockefeller, who has been so strong on the public option, defended Joe's behavior, seemingly as a way to get a bill passed as soon as possible. Then the Medicare buy-in came up and we celebrated, but of course resident Lieberman couldn't allow to happen.

Digby writes:

Senate Democrats signaled their intention Monday to back away from a plan to expand Medicare, in a bid to break a deepening impasse on sweeping health legislation.
The move came at an evening caucus convened just off the Senate floor, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and other party leaders made clear they wanted to head off a widening dispute -- pitting centrists against liberals -- over a proposal that would open Medicare to people below the age of 65.

There you have it. Everyone knows that liberals must lose, so down goes the public option and the Medicare Buy-in. The question remains whether King Joseph will allow the government to help older people with long term care needs or any of the other things that anyone could possibly construe as liberal policies.

I think we have a way to go before this bill is bad enough for him and his cronies to allow the Democrats to commit political suicide with it.

Reconciliation doesn't seem to be the way Harry Reid wants to go because it's a slow process that might not produce any meaningful results.

mcjoan has a nice wrap-up and adds:

At this point, the assistance to the people who need it most is the critical moral and policy decision. Would it be a band-aid? Yes, but even a band-aid can staunch bleeding, and right now that's what we desperately need. The insurance reforms matter a great deal, too, and can be passed through regular process. It will be a lot harder for Senators to stand up and vote to allow insurance companies to continue to deny coverage to the American people.

We have to keep fighting to strengthen the bill before conference. There are millions of people who need our help. We still haven't seen the bill yet, so we're not sure how much it would help America. Howie and I wrote a bunch of posts during the whole general election process that Barack Obama wasn't a progressive, but a moderate Democratic politician.

Anatomy of a Right Wing Myth: Obama is the most liberal Democratic Senator

Anatomy of a Right Wing Myth part II: Obama is the most liberal Democratic Senator

Anatomy of a Right Wing Smear III-Hannity calls Obama #1 Liberal Senator

And here: Anatomy of a Right Wing Smear IV: Steve Doocy: Obama could be the most liberal Senator

That's what his voting record told us. We focused on the National Journal article that tried to paint Obama as the most liberal Senator in Congress -- which was a lie -- and we wanted everybody to be aware of it during the election. And that's where we come in now along with all the other great liberal groups. Many of us believed that one of our major tasks was to keep pushing for as much progressive policies as we could as soon as we took the White House.

Conservatism has been a complete failure as an ideology to govern America. George W. Bush had to promote himself as a new kind of conservative, a Compassionate Conservative who would do things differently, but as soon as he took office that was proved to be another lie. What we witnessed for eight years of Bush was an utter disregard for working class families and a foreign policy that sanctioned torture and the "preemption doctrine." A straw man was needed so Bush and Cheney could manipulate the media to justify an invasion of Iraq that didn't attack us.

A financial bubble was allowed to proceed because without that bubble, Bush's tax cuts and conservative philosophy would have been exposed as another conservative failure before the 2004 election. The end result was a global financial meltdown.

And we can't forget about Hurricane Katrina. We witnessed firsthand how conservatives protected our country during a natural disaster.

We fight as progressives because we have to. America is not a Bill Kristol academic exercise. It's full of real Americans who are worth fighting for as they try to survive. If not for us, who will speak for them?

McCaskill Says CBO Score Will Determine Her Vote on Health Bill

John Amato — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:00:40 +0000

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Claire McCaskill of Missouri is just another Democratic deficit scold and she proudly said that she wouldn't vote for a health care bill that didn't totally reduce the deficit. With friends like these, conservatives need no enemies. She ratifies conservative beliefs. Thanks Claire.

The wonderful and all powerful OZ, the CBO, will guide her vote as if it came from GOD! And she was so proud to be in a bipartisan agreement with Mr. Wingnut himself, Judd Gregg, that she almost couldn't control herself.

Transcript:

Senator McCaskill, do you know enough about the Reid compromise to say whether you’ll support it?

MCCASKILL: Well, the whole reason we’re doing this bill is to bring down cost, first for the American people in health care, and secondly for the deficit. So until we get the numbers back from the Congressional Budget Office, we’re all on hold.

Until -- I have to be assured that this is going to bring down the deficit and it’s going to bring down health care costs for most Missouri families. WALLACE: And if it doesn’t?

MCCASKILL: Well, then we are going to have to go back to the drawing board. I’m optimistic we’re going to get a bill. There’s a lot of good stuff in this bill. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this bill. So I’m optimistic we’re going to get a good piece of legislation passed.

But all of us are focused on those two very important ingredients, bringing down the deficit and bringing down health care costs for most American families.

WALLACE: Senator Gregg, do you know enough about the Reid compromise to be able to say whether or not you’ll support it?

GREGG: I don’t think anybody’s seen it. Basically, it’s being drafted in camera, behind closed doors, by Senator Reid and a few folks. We’ve seen the outlines of it, which are very, very suspicious relative to their effects on cost, which Claire has outlined is one of the primary concerns.

We just got an actuarial summary of the present bill, the present Reid bill, which was done by the president’s actuary, CMS. They said that the cost curve goes up under the Reid bill by $235 billion.

In addition, we know that if you let people buy into Medicare at age 55 instead of going on Medicare when they qualify for it in the 60s that you’re going to definitely get the people who are the sickest buying in, and therefore the cost of Medicare is clearly going to go up.

Now, Medicare is already a bankrupt program. It’s got $38 trillion of unfunded liability out there. And I think putting more people into Medicare is going to simply aggravate the bankruptcy of the program which is coming at us.

WALLACE: Senator McCaskill, those were two of the points I was going to raise with you. I mean, the Reid plan would expand Medicare, which is already in serious financial trouble, and no one knows how much this plan will cost.

Isn’t it crazy to talk about passing a plan that affects a sixth of the economy in the next couple of weeks?

MCCASKILL: No, it’s not. We’ve been working on this for months and months. There’s...

WALLACE: But not this part of it.

MCCASKILL: Well, there have been all kinds of things in this bill that the Republicans -- in fact, there’s a lot of Republican amendments in this bill that we’re debating right now.

And here’s the thing. We’ve got two different analysis of this bill, and the bill’s not complete yet. Both of them say that this bill is going to extend the life of Medicare. Both of these -- both CMS and CBO say we’re going to extend the life of Medicare.

And both of them say we’re going to reduce the deficit long term.

And both of them say for most Americans it’s going to stabilize the cost of health care over time and begin to bend that cost curve.

So we’ve got to stay focused on the positive things in this bill. You know, there’s a lot of politics around this thing. This is the time of year not only do the planes stack up in terms of legislation we’re considering, but it’s also the time of year that we drift away from policy and start playing bare-knuckled politics.

President Lieberman was for the expansion of Medicare just three months ago!

John Amato — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:01:18 +0000

On Face the Nation yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that he not only wants to strip out the public option, but also the Medicare buy-in at fifty-five.

"You have to take out the Medicare buy-in. You have to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the class act which was a whole new entitlement program that will in future years put us further into the deficit," Lieberman told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday.

"I want to tell you, we could pass a health care reform bill this week with more than 60 votes and it would be bipartisan if we just took a few things out of the bill as it is today," said Lieberman.

Lieberman wants to pass a Republican health care package, which is no plan at all. This bitter man is hijacking the entire health care reform effort for no other reasons than his petty, narcissistic agenda. He is a traitor to the liberal policies that once, as a vice-presidential nominee in 2000, he would have never signed onto.

Greg Sargent comes up with video proof which exposes Lieberman of being a bad-faith participant in health care negotiations. Holy Joe just three months ago was saying that he supports a Medicare buy-in plan. Oh, my!

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What would David Broder say about that?

In the vid, Lieberman appeared to go further than the current Senate deal, which would expand Medicare to those aged 55-64, saying he supported the idea of expanding it to people aged 50 and over. Lieberman referenced his proposal along these lines during the 2006 campaign, and added:

“My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid…

“When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare.

“What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money.”

It’s not entirely clear that Lieberman was offering a full-throated current endorsement of the proposal, but his tone is clearly positive and approving. It’s yet another sign, as if you needed one, that Lieberman’s current opposition to the Senate proposal doesn’t appear to have any roots in a genuine policy disagreement.

It appears that Holy Joe wants to destroy health-care reform because his feelings have been hurt by liberals who disagreed with his warmongering behavior. The pettiness he holds dear to his heart is being used to destroy any chance that working-class Americans will be getting meaningful health care reform. You can't go lower than that.

Again it boils down to leadership, and President Obama and Harry Reid have not led this fight well from the beginning. They knew they had to deal with Joe, so he was bowed down to. The problem is that he felt no repercussions after he threw his full support to John McCain in the 2008 election. "He's with us on everything except the war," was what Harry Reid said. How did that work out for ya, Harry? Joe is destined to destroy health-care reform altogether.

Digby writes:

People need to send the link to this to all the press and the villagers they can think of to show just how perfidious their favorite "man of integrity" is being on this. Thy won't care about the substance, but this helps expose Lieberman's pettiness which villagers always find uncomfortable. (The exposure, not the pettiness.)

The PCCC has set up another action against Lieberman:

Please sign this petition to progressive Senators Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Roland Burris, and Sherrod Brown:

PETITION: "Don't let Joe Lieberman win! Americans need you to stand strong and block any 'compromise' without a strong public option. If necessary, demand that Sen. Harry Reid and President Obama support budget reconciliation and pass a bill with just 51 votes -- at which point, Joe Lieberman will be irrelevant and the public option can be made even stronger."

Key Democrats have said they won't support a bill without a strong public option:

Please sign on to it. The more we expose him as a fraud the better.
Joe's wife is also a major player in Lieberman's thinking process and part of his obstructionism that is responsible for Joe's switching of positions and trying to hold health care hostage.

Matt Yglesias writes:

That said, I agree with Chris Bowers that in a lot of ways the real story here is that the Senate leadership has, at every step of this process, underscored that a “reconciliation” path to a health care bill is off the table. That means Lieberman has unlimited control over what happens, and no incentive to compromise, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s being uncompromising. Can’t liberals be just as stiff-necked as Lieberman? Sure, they could. But liberals members do have an incentive to compromise—the tens of thousands of people who die every year for lack of health insurance. The leverage that Lieberman and other “centrists” have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.

ACORN wins injunction against Congress, and Glenn Beck defenders are forced to apologize to COC for their race-baiting lies

John Amato — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:00:38 +0000

You can always count on Congress to do the wrong thing when conservative hissy fits come into play, but at least a judge saw the light.

A Brooklyn judge Friday delayed enforcement of a new federal law that cut off funding to the controversial community organization ACORN.

Judge Nina Gershon said the government violated ACORN's right to due process before enacting a law that threatened to financially destroy the organization.

"The question here is only whether the Constitution allows Congress to declare that a single, named organization is barred from all federal funding in the absence of a trial," Gershon wrote in a 21-page decision.

She said ACORN had proved it would suffer "irreparable harm" if the money was cut off.

ACORN lawyers expect the feds to open the purse strings soon. The Justice Department said the decision is under review.

Here's the pdf of the ruling.

On another matter, ColorofChange threatened to sue the defamatory website that was started to defend "phony tears" Glenn Beck because they used false information supplied by extremist sites like NewsMax. DefendGlenn was forced to post an apology on their website stating that they used patently false information -- lies, basically, to attack their opponents.

ColorofChange:

After ColorOfChange.org took on Glenn Beck for his race-baiting and fear-mongering, Beck's supporters fought back using lies, distortions, and more race-baiting to defend him. DefendGlenn.com was the worst, mounting a campaign to scare advertisers into staying on his show.

After we threatened them with a lawsuit, DefendGlenn.com has backpedalled. It should make clear to advertisers who have pulled their support that they've done the right thing...read on

Conservatives will say and do anything to smear and destroy a contrary belief. It's right out the Nixon "dirty tricks" book club.
Take a look at a screen grab of their apology below to Color of Change.

Sen. Inhofe Pushes The Crooked Science Argument About Climate Change After Wallace Said This Decade Warmest One Ever.

John Amato — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:00:31 +0000

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Chris Wallace pushed the phony "Climate-gate" story on FNS today and actually tried to make an argument supporting the deniers, but no matter how much Kim Strassel says otherwise, the hacked emails taken out of context prove nothing. Chris Wallace's logic is that since these freaks don't believe in real science, then science should welcome the debate.

Wallace: Now, oftentimes that phrase is used -- Holocaust deniers. But the Holocaust was a historical fact. We’re talking here about science, and science usually welcomes opposing views.

Huh? When science is explained then the discussion is over. It's that simple. Let's say the conservative crazies were arguing that the earth is flat and science comes in and disproves that hypothesis and proves that the world is round then there is no debate or an opposing view any longer. It's settled. The earth is round and no matter how many of the Inhofers cry that the earth is still flat, it's immaterial. What the Inhofers are doing is scientifically proving that they are certifiably insane.

Sen. Inhofe is a notorious global warming denier and after Chris Wallace promoted the fraudulent Climate-Gate hacked email story, he asked wacko Sen. Inhofe to explain the fact that this decade has been the warmest ever recorded if there is no such thing as climate change. here's what a conservative crank responds.

WALLACE: Whatever you want to say about the e-mails, Senator Inhofe, the fact is that just this week, the World Meteorological Organization said that this decade is the warmest on record and that 2009 is the fifth warmest year on record. Does that mean nothing?

INHOFE: It -- well, it means -- it means very little because that was based on the same flawed science, the IPC science, that we have been looking at.

Now, we have to say on the science thing that this is something that -- we saw this coming years ago, and for those individuals who doubt the fact that it’s flawed science, listen to what the U.K. Daily Telegraph said. They said it’s the worst scientific scandal of our generation. Publications all over have looked at this and decided that.

You see, proof means nothing in conservative circles. Science means nothing to conservative nitwits. The earth is flat dammit!

Transcript via CQ Politics:

WALLACE: Wait, wait. Gentlemen, let me bring in -- because I’m sure our viewers are screaming at this point. They want to hear about “climategate,” and they want to hear what the two of you have to say. And this, of course, are the hundreds of e-mails that were either leaked or hacked from one of the leading climate research centers in the world that happens to be in Britain.

And let’s put up just two that have caused some of the greatest concern. From 1999, “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years, i.e. from 1981 onwards, and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” And he’s talking about to hide the decline in temperatures.

And from 2009, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. Our observing system is inadequate.”

Congressman Markey, I was laughing because you’re bringing up this prop here. Let me ask you, how damaging are those e-mails? And let me ask you a larger question, because you and Al Gore talk about climate deniers.

Now, oftentimes that phrase is used -- Holocaust deniers. But the Holocaust was a historical fact. We’re talking here about science, and science usually welcomes opposing views.

MARKEY: Well, here is the comprehensive study done by thousands of scientists around the world that is the definitive study that was used by the United Nations and the nations of the world to say that we must do something about climate change, we must do something about global warming.

Here on page 473, and on other pages, is the discussion of those e-mails, the discussion of the subject material in those e-mails -- Siberian tree rings, OK?

Now, what’s happening now is that the deniers want to create a Siberian tree ring circus. They want to take a small percentage of this entire study, a couple pages of it -- 1,000 pages -- and throw out the conclusion, the overwhelming conclusion, of scientists in the world that there is dangerous global warming.

The real scandal will be...

INHOFE: I thought the Senate was supposed to be filibustering.

MARKEY: The real -- the real scandal will be -- is if we don’t solve this problem...

WALLACE: OK. Let me bring...

MARKEY: ... for coming generations...

WALLACE: Let me bring...

MARKEY: ... of young people...

WALLACE: Let me bring in Senator Inhofe.

MARKEY: ... on our planet.

WALLACE: Whatever you want to say about the e-mails, Senator Inhofe, the fact is that just this week, the World Meteorological Organization said that this decade is the warmest on record and that 2009 is the fifth warmest year on record. Does that mean nothing?

INHOFE: It -- well, it means -- it means very little because that was based on the same flawed science, the IPC science, that we have been looking at.

Now, we have to say on the science thing that this is something that -- we saw this coming years ago, and for those individuals who doubt the fact that it’s flawed science, listen to what the U.K. Daily Telegraph said. They said it’s the worst scientific scandal of our generation. Publications all over have looked at this and decided that.

But let me say this, Chris, because I know we’re running out of time. Four years ago on the Senate floor, I gave a speech -- it’s in my Web site, inhofe.senate.gov -- you can look it up -- and at that time I outlined what all these scientists had come to me saying how they were denied the opportunity to give their view to the IPCC.

It’s all cooked science. And now when this “climategate” came out, all that did is just verify everything I said four years ago. Look it up. It’s there.

Newest Teabagger Lunacy: 'Government Waiting Rooms' or 'Attack of the Dangerous Idiots'

John Amato — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:30:56 +0000

The sickness known as "teabaggers" are preparing another shameful display of their utter contempt for the American people.

Via Digby:

This is lovely:

So here’s the plan. On Tuesday, December 15 at 8:45 AM thousands of us will meet in Washington, DC at the fountain in Upper Senate Park. From there we will march to the Senate offices, go inside, and demonstrate our opposition to the government takeover of health care. We call this plan “Government Waiting Rooms”. The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave. A backup location for this demonstration will be announced if they block us from entering the offices.

We need as many of you as possible to be there to make our point loudly and clearly. Please make plans to attend. We know it’s a sacrifice to do this right before Christmas. But throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty. Now the burden (and the honor) falls on us.

Of course, they don't actually have to stage some demonstration of the horrors of health care rationing. We have examples of exactly that happening in real life right this minute. Here's one in Kansas City

--
Maybe these teabaggers think that those people don't count and that somehow they'll personally all be spared from these circumstances if they lose their jobs or get sick. I hope for their sake it's true. But the truth is that among those who are staging this little stunt, it's extremely likely that a percentage of them are going to be participating in this rationing in real life at some point. And there is no way of predicting which ones it will happen to. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...

When karma hits, these psychos will surely face the same fate as all those Americans who went to the Kansas City Free Clinic. Someday they will witness the health of people they care about collapse, and without decent insurance, and they won't be laughing about it. But they are so hypnotized by the wingnut propaganda that when their own loved ones face the same fate at a later date, they then will blame the federal government for doing nothing. These are dangerous idiots.

If health care reform is to fail, then let it be the ConservaDems who kill it

John Amato — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:00:20 +0000

I had a dream.

I've been reading and listening to all the arguments made who are for and against the supposed new Senate health-care compromise bill that Harry Reid has sent to the CBO to be scored before they present it to us. Even as we see the Senate shut down because politicians don't want big PharMa to take a hit, thanks to an amendment being pushed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada.

I've talked to a few sources myself and Greg Sargent's account comports with what I've heard as well. It's confusing because it's been kept secret, and so staffers didn't know what had transpired at the end of the day. I have heard from sources today who said it's not as bad as was first thought, but the bottom line is that we'll know soon enough. Harry Reid knows it will be impossible to spin it when it does surface so why the chicanery? Anyway, the process is still a long way from being over and Congress should not take a single day off until they have a great bill finished before the New Year. They can at least act like working Americans for once instead of crying about working weekends. This new bill is not the final bill that will eventually be voted on to reform our health care system. The House is very much in play although the Senate seems to think that they alone are the Guardians of the Gate and they have to weigh in and not let it get watered down into a bag full of beans.

The committees have to be appointed by Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid as they head to conference and now it will fall on them to finalize the health care bill that will be voted on.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a champion of the public option has said he will not vote for the Senate bill as it now stands while Americans still favor the public option by a wide margin in the newest polls. Howard Dean has found some comfort in the idea of expanding medicare to cover people fifty five years old.

It appears that committee heads George Miller, Henry Waxman and Charlie Rangel of the House probably will be part of the conference coming out of the House, and I say let them do their part to strengthen the bill against the pressure from the Senate side so that when it comes out of conference the ConservaDems like Baucus, Landrieu, Conrad and Lieberman will be faced with two choices. Either act like our elected politicians that are representing Americans or be exposed as health insurance shills and if the bill is to go down then put it on the shoulders.

Let President Snowe use her fantasized veto pen to sign away our health care. Let Lieberman have to cast the vote that will kill a historic day in American politics.

Let Ben Nelson get in front of the cameras and explain to people like the thousands who were being treated at the Kansas City free clinic, with the incredible help of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann who had nowhere to go for care and tell them that he had to kill health care for them because he valued the profits of the health care industry over the well being of their families.

Let the ConservaDems go down in flames and burn to ashes with the bill if they choose to abandon the campaign promise that President Obama ran on and the mandate they rode in on with his victory in November.

We will keep fighting to make this bill a better because it won't be us that abandon the American people.

It will be the members of the House of Lords who value their positions of power over the less of us, the same as us and the more of us that inhabit this great country. It it by their pettiness that America regresses. It is with their utter contempt for the people that elected them that health care reform will fail. And all of America will know you because we shall speak. And all of America will despise you because they will know. Even those that oppose you will begin to suffer as the months go by and they too will realize that your cowardice has hurt their families even in their blindness to reality.

A Scarlet Letter will forever be burned into your foreheads for all to see.

O'Reilly freaks about 'Law and Order SVU' character, tries to prove he's not a xenophobe. Lotsa luck with that, Bill.

John Amato — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:00:34 +0000

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Bill O'Reilly is such a narcissist that he didn't bother discussing President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech -- which was one of the most newsworthy items of the day yesterday -- until the second half of his show. Nope, first on his list of priorities was to rant and rave about a fictional TV show that dared to have a character who openly called out O'Reilly and his conservative colleagues for the hatemongering nativists they really are.

That's all it takes to set off patented BillO Rampage. 'Law and Order' is just out of control for O'Reilly, and the show's creator, Dick Wolf, is his target.

L&O: Garrison, Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, all of them. They are like a cancer spreading ignorance and hate. They have convinced folks that immigrants are the problem, not corporations that failed to pay a living wage, or a broken health care system.

O'Reilly: That is defamatory.

Bill, this is not reality. Then again, Bill believes George C. Scott's portrayal of Patton was real too. BillO then proceeds to play a few select clips from 2005 and earlier where he actually sounded (albeit ever so briefly) like he was defending poor illegal immigrants on his show. Sorry Bill, we know better, and so does Geraldo Rivera. I guess he forgot this meltdown between the two over BillO's vilification of illegals in the country.

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Here's a flashback from Apr 04, 2007:

GERALDO: "Cool your jets! It has nothing to do with illegal aliens...it has to do with drunk driving! Don't obscure a tragedy to make a cheap political point. It is a cheap political point and you know it!!"

As Silent Patriot noted, Bill did the same thing with the tragic Bronx fire just the month before. He just loves exploiting these isolated incidents to, as Geraldo says, to make "cheap political points."

Back then, Oliver Willis pointed out: "A young girl was tragically killed by a drunk driver. But this was not enough for O'Reilly. Instead, because the criminal was an illegal alien he added this incident to his ongoing crusade against the brown people. Luckily Geraldo was on the show and he - to his credit - called out O'Reilly's xenophobia for exactly what it was. This drove Bill O'Reilly insane. I was almost certain he was going to reach across the table and hit Geraldo."

Ah, but really, he's a nice guy now. Really.