I’ve been angry for days about what we won’t hear from the President tonight. Together, Talib Kweli and Thom Yorke say everything he won’t:

You can download the mashup by popping the little down arrow at Soundcloud.

Via LGM, it seems Republicans are whining about procedural roadblocks that are getting in the way of them failing to repeal health care reform, and doing so with a level of hypocrisy that is dazzling to see:

But a bill to repeal the health care law drew the full force of both parties Tuesday as debate on the measure opened in the House, launching a two-year battle over President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

Ahead of the vote Wednesday, House Republican leaders pressed a new line of attack, accusing Democrats of thwarting the will of the people by not committing to give the bill an up-or-down vote in the Senate…...

“We are here because we heard the American people in the last election,” Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on the House floor. “We said we’d do a straight up-or-down vote to repeal this health care law and that’s what we’re doing here today.”

Here’s a chart measuring the rise of the filibuster after Democrats got the majority in the Senate:

As Ezra notes, this chart actually underestimates the number of bills killed with the mere threat of a filibuster.  The House passed over 400 bills that died in the Senate because they never reached the floor for an up-or-down vote. 

Conservatives have ceased speaking English nowadays, and speak only in Bullshit. I get that.  I read Roy Edroso and see things like, oh, wingnuts claiming if MLK had lived, he’d now wish he’d voted for Goldwater and objected to the Civil Rights Act. But this was such a swift heel turn that it leaves me breathless, especially since I imagine the filibuster as usual will continue in the Senate.

Yesterday, House Republicans led a reading of most of the Constitution.  You see, they decided to leave out portions of it that had been amended.  The ongoing rationale for the omission is that you don’t read parts of the Constitution that are superceded, because they’re no longer applicable.

But if the purpose of the reading was to remind people of the contents of our fundamental law and to symbolize Congress’ commitment to adhering to that law, then it makes no sense to read portions of document that no longer apply. The reading Jackson and others wanted would make sense only if this were a history lesson. But it was not. History lessons are for speeches by individual members, each of whom has his or her own view about which aspects of history to emphasize. What all members of Congress have in common is their oath to uphold the Constitution as it stands today.

The predominant conservative view of constitutional interpretation is based on strict textualism and original intent.  The short version of this is that we look at the words in the Constitution and we look at the historical background when the words were written to determine the full meaning of the language.  The problem with originalism is that it’s both incredibly lazy and remarkably fungible.  It allows you to hitch a ride on whatever version of history you find most appealing and declare any competing interpretations apostate.  But the core of it, at least, is that every single thing in the Constitution means something, and that it all means exactly what it says and what it meant when it was written.

Originalism and original intent, however, become incoherent when you no longer interpret the Constitution based on the words it still contains. The Three-Fifths Compromise is inoperative, but it still shows a fundamental calculation that went into the construction of the Constitution and the Union.  The same thing goes for appointment of Senators by state legislatures.  The 21st Amendment needs the 18th Amendment in order to be fully understood.  The amendment process is not a deletion process; it’s an override process.  If you’re going to tell me that the Founders’ intent is the guiding light for our country, you can’t pretend they didn’t mean part of what they said because it was changed by later acts.

The beauty of America is that we neither forget our history nor find ourselves overly bound by it.  But if you contend that we are bound by the understanding of men at the end of 18th Century in all that we do, then you can’t say that a later alteration of the Constitution changes their intent.  It’s a self-nullifying argument, and it makes any attempt to interpret or enforce the Constitution through that lens a complete joke. 

Dave Weigel’s suggestion for a Palin tweet index is clever and sadly on target.  It is true that the number of words exhausted on every little tweet and flutter from her has gotten out of control.  I suppose you could say this post is an example.  But, what I realized his post was that while the main reason that Palin probably loves the brevity of Twitter is that coming up with more than 140 characters can take her all damn day, there’s also something else going on in her favor.  Either she stumbled upon this by accident and is working it (the likeliest explanation), or she’s an evil genius.  Either way, it’s working.  I realized that the brevity of Twitter makes it easier for Sarah Palin to be a cipher for the various strains of wingnut out there.

The example Dave whips out demonstrates this perfectly.  It all started when Tammy Bruce, whose racism outweighs her pro-gay concerns enough to drive her into the Republican party, tweeted:

But this hypocrisy is just truly too much. Enuf already—the more someone complains about the homos the more we should look under their bed.

It was in response to this scandal. I’d be curious to see if you guys can get to the tweet, since I’m not authorized to see it, which may mean it’s closed off to the public now or that Tammy Bruce blocked me from seeing it after I made fun of her for having shit for brains, the proof of which will become evident soon. 

Sarah Palin retweeted this, in an action that seemed incredibly mysterious to anyone not familiar with the Palin Corollary of Occam’s Razor, which is, “If stupidity is a plausible explanation for her choice, it’s the likeliest explanation.”  And indeed, you can see how Palin retweeted this out of sheer dumbheadedness. Without knowing that Bruce is a lesbian or much about the context, with a side dose of not reading it too closely, it’s possible that she just saw the word “homos”, thought it was a gay joke, and thought to retweet it. 

But Bruce has really worked her ass off to interpret this retweeting as some sort of evidence that Bible-thumping Sarah Palin is a secret Friend of the Gays.

When it comes to Sarah Palin’s position on DADT, I have never asked her about it and she has never spoken to me about it–but I assess her as a Conservative with Libertarian influence. Both her husband and son are Independents, with Mr. Palin serving as his wife’s primary adviser. I will remind people of things already in the public realm about the governor–she refused to veto partner benefits legislation as governor of Alaska and is a firm believer in fairness and “live and let live.” She is not a Culture Warrior, however. She is, which should be apparent by her Facebook postings and opinion pieces, a Policy Wonk. She is also, which is clearly evident, a charismatic leader who remains grounded by her character, faith and family.

I’m sorry, but someone who makes eating cookies vs. eating vegetables an occasion for culture war is a dyed-in-the-wool culture warrior, and have I mentioned the word “abortion” yet?  The only reason that Todd Palin isn’t a Republican is because he has aligned himself with parties that see the Republicans as too left wing, and he’s thrown in with the Alaska Independence Party, an offshoot of the Constitution Party that wishes to turn America into a theocracy.

This is how they feel about gay people:

The law of our Creator defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman. The marriage covenant is the foundation of the family, and the family is fundamental in the maintenance of a stable, healthy and prosperous social order. No government may legitimately authorize or define marriage or family relations contrary to what God has instituted. We are opposed to amending the U.S. Constitution for the purpose of defining marriage.

We reject the notion that sexual offenders are deserving of legal favor or special protection, and affirm the rights of states and localities to proscribe offensive sexual behavior. We oppose all efforts to impose a new sexual legal order through the federal court system. We stand against so-called “sexual orientation” and “hate crime” statutes that attempt to legitimize inappropriate sexual behavior and to stifle public resistance to its expression. We oppose government funding of “partner” benefits for unmarried individuals. Finally, we oppose any legal recognition of homosexual unions.

Basically, no gay marriage, and really, the fundamentalist Christian church should have all power to say who is and isn’t married.

Of course, Bruce also thinks Palin is a policy wonk, so she’s far off into fantasy land.  Palin also took a couple of swipes at gay people in her latest book “America by Heart”. 

Anyway, the point.  And that is Palin says something cryptic on Twitter, almost surely due to straight up dumbassery.  But because it’s cryptic, her fans can read whatever fool thing they want into it.  She’s all things to all wingnuts.  No wonder she’s so popular.

As you’re likely aware from the heroic battlefield missives issuing forth daily, Republicans are taking a stand against basically everything until they get their way on the budget and tax cuts. 

They are, predictably, in a stage of revolution-like revolt over the omnibus spending bill, which has the following terrifying problem:

Republicans poring over a 1,924-page overarching spending bill proposed by Democrats to cover the rest of the fiscal year are threatening to grind the legislation to a halt, citing massive earmark spending, which, if passed, would be enacted into law without debate in the full Senate.

MASSIVE spending with NO DEBATE in a FULL Senate.  (It’s the last adjective that’s the most fearsome of all.)  However, just how massive is this pork package?  And is the pre or post-Extenze?

The $1.2 trillion bill, released on Tuesday, includes more than 6,000 earmarks totaling $8 billion, an amount that many lawmakers decried as an irresponsible binge following a midterm election in which many voters demanded that the government cut spending.

In case you don’t have your mathboxes handy, we’re going to hold up funding the government (and extending unemployment insurance and enacting the START Treaty and ending discrimination against gays and lesbians in the miltary and…) because of grave philosophical reservations to .7% of the federal budget.  Add in the $5.6 billion for unemployment benefits, and we’re now seeing a threatened shutdown of the American government for 1.2% of the budget. 

This isn’t just petulant, it’s pretty much nonsensical.  We now have Claire McCaskill joining ranks with Republicans in order, presumably, to show that she got the message of the 2010 election cycle: Americans want their elected representatives to waste their time fighting over the most meaningless shit imaginable, and then completely refusing to do their jobs unless largely meaningless steps are taken to confront problems that don’t need to be dealt with.

UPDATE: Whiskey Fire lists some of the worst parts of this earmark spending, such as money to keep our food supply safe.  I want viruses to ravage our grapes, goddammit, and I don’t want any socialists keeping me knee deep in jam and wine.

The day after an incredibly corporate-friendly health care bill with few, if any protections for women’s reproductive rights barely passed the House, Nancy Pelosi is Satan, according to the Republican Party.

Part of me wishes that we could pass this bill on a weekly basis, though, because the right has gone straight stupid over this.  John McCain has promised that the GOP will obstruct for the rest of the year.  Megan McArdle is theorizing that Republicans will end Medicare and Social Security just to get back at Democrats.  The nation’s first black teabagger (complete with 1995’s sweetest Marvin the Martian hoodie), rather than exploding as matter meets antimatter, decided to threaten Barack Obama’s life.  PowerLine is legitimately afraid of death panels.  Representative Steve King is proposing secession (although, to be fair, it seems like Republicans increasingly propose secession as a solution for everything). 

What does this all mean?  Mainly that the continued futility of the Democratic Party in doing anything renders any accomplishment, no matter how ad hoc, no matter how iterative, the absolute worst fucking thing that’s ever happened in the world.  Republicans have spent so long warning about the evil terrors of a Democratic agenda that’s largely been stymied since the Clinton years that this baby step forces them to go face-lickingly insane over it.

It’s the irony of having a Republican Party that’s been largely politically ascendant since the 1980s struggle - Republicans have been incredibly successful at stopping the Democratic agenda, largely by ever-increasing doomsday rhetoric.  When Democrats do win, even as flawed a victory as this, 30-plus years of rhetoric rears its ugly head.  Everything Democrats have wanted to do will lead to the end of days - from a minor rise in the minimum wage to health care reform to changing the food in the House cafeteria.  When Democrats do win at anything, the Kool-Aid drinkers have to keep drinking lest anyone realize how full of shit they are. 

This is why so many people outside of the conservative movement worry about conservative violence as the Obama presidency continues.  They fancy themselves heroes against tyranny, where tyranny is defined as the slightest inconvenience or discomfort.  And all tyranny should be answered with the utmost resistance - especially when the tyranny compounds and compounds into a new liberal fascist republic where your taxes are slightly lower and you can’t get kicked off of your insurance because of a preexisting condition.  Oppression has been defined so far downward for them that they are justified in threatening armed rebellion for the equivalent of being told that they aren’t going to the park today because it’s raining.

Quick!  Name the Senate Parliamentarian! 

Well, everyone knows who Alan Frumin is.  Or will, once the Republican Party gets done making him out to be a democracy-murdering terrorist-humper. 

Senate Republicans are waging a pre-emptive strike against the Senate’s parliamentarian — a hitherto little-known official who could determine the fate of the Democrats’ health care reform efforts.

In interviews with POLITICO, several Republican senators and aides cast Parliamentarian Alan Frumin — a 33-year veteran of the Senate — as someone who is predisposed to side with the Democrats if they attempt to use the reconciliation process to pass parts of their bill.

{...}

The reconciliation process has been used — by members of both parties — 22 times since 1974. But Republicans say that if Frumin allows Democrats to push through health care reform using reconciliation, he’ll experience a personal backlash and the Republicans will bring the Senate to a halt with procedural maneuvers of their own.

Of course, future fascist sockpuppet Frumin has presided over four Republican uses of reconciliation in narrow, partisan votes when Republicans held Congress (and Bush held the White House), which was fine, because of the patriotism and whatnot.  However, now is totally different, because it’s now “nuclear”, which we remember from the 1950s and Rudy Giuliani’s entire life is real bad!

I hope Mr. Alan Frumin enjoyed the life that he knew before he decided to be the government functionary who stood to destroy all that Republicans had worked to, er, destroy. 

I really don’t understand how multiple Republican Senators saying that people are voluntarily unemployed because of unemployment benefits isn’t blaring from every cable pundit’s mouth and every Democrat’s press office as the worst thing anyone’s ever said (seeing as how it kind of, er, is).

Politico, of course, has the Republican response to Jim Bunning’s comments as a feature story, because what really matters is how Republicans position themselves on this issue rather than, say, the single Senator assuring that millions of people don’t have money to eat this week. 

The Humble Libertarian asks why the rest of the Senate doesn’t just capitulate to Bunning’s demands, which is sort of like asking why the person whose bed is getting shit all over by the crazy man doesn’t run out and get some plastic sheets at the hardware store.  Bunning claims that his unilateral stoppage of unemployment benefits (among a myriad of other programs) is designed to stop deficit spending, which would make sense except that dude is all about Bush’s deficit-expanding tax cuts. 

And what’s funny is that conservatives still don’t get it.  From Rick Moran:

By the reaction, you would think that Bunning was trying to throw poor people out into the street, force grandma and grandpa to eat Meow Mix, strip soldiers naked and send them into battle, while singlehandedly increasing his carbon footprint to the point that the ocean drowns Los Angeles in a wave of melting arctic ice due to global warming.

Well, actually, when you indefinitely suspend the only source of income for people who can’t find jobs, you’re doing exactly what one and two mockingly refer to.  In general, when you have no more rent money, you do get thrown out on the street and have to eat the lowest-cost food you can (which might not be Meow Mix, but instead the dollar menu at Burger King…so, yeah, Meow Mix).  When you can’t even accept the fact that unemployment benefits aren’t just something tossed on the luxurious existence that is not having to drive to the office every morning, you render yourself morally and intellectually incapable of discussing this. 

Of course, pointing this out to the public at large requires a more robust PR effort than Congressional Democrats seem willing to mount.  How hard is it to say, “Look at this, and look at the fact that Susan Collins is the only Republican willing to go on the record and support continuing unemployment benefits in a recession.  If Republicans are too partisan to support keeping unemployed people off the streets in a recession, how are we ever supposed to work with them anything that requires the least bit of foresight, sympathy or rationality?  We can’t.  Ergo, these people are assholes.  I yield my time.”

Catching up on reading Balloon Juice, I saw that John Cole was thinking what I’ve been thinking: Democrats need to be saying the phrase “up or down vote” until they’re blue in the face. I’ve been amused all this past week, watching Rachel Maddow run a contest to see who could rename the filibuster problem in a way that was soundbite-friendly and attention-grabbing.  When people ask my advice on getting people engaged with your message online, I tend to suggest just this—-reward them for creativity and listen to their opinions, and you’ll find progressives respond really well to that.  And that’s what her show is doing with this contest, driving people to the website and, more importantly, getting them to really think about and care about the filibuster issue so they’ll talk to friends, blog, and call their Senators.  I also applaud the daily touting of Senators who answered their calls, which is a good way to shame those who didn’t. 

Here’s the “but”.  But the problem is that the winner—-“The Tarantino”—-is cute but not actually a good frame, since it doesn’t make you think about the actual problem, but about a bunch of movies.  Granted, the intention of the contest was never to actually come up with decent framing of the filibuster issue so much as to raise awareness of the “boring” problem to political junkies who don’t think it’s actually boring, and to have an excuse to talk about it when the news cycle doesn’t produce any impetus to do so.  But I think it’s time to talk about the actual frame to use.  And luckily, the Republicans have done all our work for us, both in terms of coming up with the phrase and popularizing it.  They even perfected the tone of moral indignation with which to pronounce the phrase.

“Up or down vote”. 

God, it’s a brilliant phrase.  (Another reason I vote “evil” in the “stupid or evil” debates, because many Republicans are good at being simple in a way that’s deceptively hard to do.)  Why?  Well, it’s simple and descriptive.  You don’t have to know the particulars of how a vote is being blocked to know that it’s going on, and to relate immediately to the frustration being expressed.  It conveys the idea that the minority party threatening to filibuster is preventing the government from working, and this pisses people off, because we fund their paychecks.  But above all other things, the phrase taps into Americans’ deep and understandable loathing of interminable meetings.

This loathing is why movies and TV shows that have cops impatient with meetings and protocol that decide to cut the crap and do it their way are endlessly popular.  Few of us have escaped a work environment where you and probably some to most of your colleagues just want to start to work on something, and you feel you know what needs to be done, but oh my god, someone’s called another meeting where everyone can rehash the same issues over and over again.  And while you’re sitting around discussing the work, the work is not getting done, and you have that dreadful feeling you get when you begin to realize that while you thought you had a lot of time to finish your work, it’s getting eaten up by fucking meetings and you’re beginning to panic.

Or worse!  You’ve been in a work environment where the bosses prefer to call meetings to tell their disempowered underlings things that would have been communicated nicely by a memo, thank you very much.  If you’ve worked in service, you’ve experienced these meetings.  Everyone is forced to come in an hour early so the boss can tell you that you need to wear 20 pieces of flair now, asks for comments, and then gets aggravated because no one has anything to say because the whole fucking thing is a farce anyway, and no one is unaware of the fact that speaking up and arguing with the boss will mean exactly nothing. 

The filibuster is both these meetings rolled into one. The Republicans are both wasting time for the hell of it, and playing the role of the aggravated boss man who feigns interest in having a discussion and gets pissed when you correctly assess that he’s full of shit and won’t—-or can’t—-budge an inch.

The phrase “up or down vote” is the cop who plays by his own rules in this system.  It hits on a major fantasy enjoyed by the vast majority of voting Americans who’ve been subject to boring meetings, that you could simply cry foul and take a vote that would shut down the meeting so you can all do something that isn’t a meeting.  Democrats should be using the phrase to describe the issue both because it’s a good phrase, and also because you can demonstrate that the Republicans feigning outrage were singing a different tune when they were in power.

No final decisions have been made, but the White House is floating a nastygram balloon for all of us out there who have pre-existing conditions and know how health insurance companies have gotten away with murder denying people coverage. And this was one of the primary reasons reform is needed in the system.

It was one of the promises Barack Obama made to Americans when he was on the campaign trail. And it’s a common sense reform at that, particularly since some companies, so greedy to protect every last dime in their coffers, have gone so far as to make being a battered wife and the state of being pregnant pre-existing conditions. Everyone knows a horror story about this.

Yet here we are, with a watered-down bill that already does little and in a state of panic to pass something, ANYTHING, the Democrats are turning on the big bus, revving the engine, and Pelosi, Reid and the President are fighting to

floor it

and run over all the people with diabetes, MS, AIDS, and any other chronic, expensive illnesses who have been waiting for…what was that word? Oh, that’s right—CHANGE. It’s been pared down to cover pre-existing conditions only for children under the age of 19.

From the NYT:

Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, said the 2,000-page House bill might have been “too much, too ambitious for an anxious public.”

But Mr. Connolly said, “Doing nothing is not a good option.”

Lawmakers, Congressional aides and health policy experts said the package might plausibly include these elements:

• Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.
• Insurers would have to offer policyholders an opportunity to continue coverage for children through age 25 or 26.
• The federal government would offer financial incentives to states to expand Medicaid to cover childless adults and parents.
• The federal government would offer grants to states to establish regulated markets known as insurance exchanges, where consumers and small businesses could buy coverage.
• The federal government would offer tax credits to small businesses to help them defray the cost of providing health benefits to workers.
• If a health plan provided care through a network of doctors and hospitals, it could not charge patients more for going outside the network in an emergency. Co-payments for emergency care would have to be the same, regardless of whether a hospital was in the insurer’s network of preferred providers.

The package could also include changes in Medicare, to reduce the growth in payments to doctors and hospitals while rewarding providers of high-quality, lower-cost care. To help older Americans, it could narrow a gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs, sometimes known as a doughnut hole.

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, said the proposals were “totally doable” and could help perhaps 15 million people.

WTF? 15 million? How many people are there in the U.S who are uninsured or under-insured? According to CNN, 86.7 million Americans were uninsured over last two years, and an additional 25 million have insurance, reports CBS, but not enough to protect them from potential financial ruin by a health crisis.

I fail to understand why there is a lack of support, other than being bought off by the insurance companies, for barring denial of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. The fact is that for those who cannot receive their medications to treat chronic health issues, will end up getting care in the ER, where it is most expensive, or, they’ll simply die. I suppose that’s one way to keep costs low—the GOP way.

Something like this is not better than nothing. These concessions will only delay political action on the necessary reforms that will be tossed onto the shoulder of the road. And after this last SCOTUS ruling on corporate “free speech” re: ads, expect are already hogs-at-the-trough pols to be oinking away as more $$$lop goes into political races, with going back to do additional reform placed permanently on the back burner.

This may seem like a little inside baseball, but bear with me, because it will directly affect some of your favorite blogs.

Over at my blog, my contributors and I have inboxes overflowing with emails asking us to cover this story or that event—from advocacy organizations, tips from readers, PR firms, and the news media. It’s pretty clear that the equality rights movement is highly dependent on blogs and citizen journalism to analyze, report and advocate in the unique way that we do.

Many of these LGBT-based blogs are done as a labor of love because there’s certainly not enough money out there to quit our day jobs. Bloggers like myself, who subsidize the site with an unrelated day job are about to get a big F-You from Chuck Schumer if the roof isn’t raised. Ad revenue is irrelevant here, btw; you have to be employed by an entity to be covered.

A recent amendment to the federal shield bill being considered in the Senate will exclude non-”salaried” journalists and bloggers from the proposed law’s protections.

The law, called the Free Flow of Information Act, is intended to prevent journalists from being forced to divulge confidential sources, except in cases such as witnessing crimes or acts of terrorism.

Well, read the fine print to see how citizen journalists are left legally hanging out to dry. Schumer’s amendment draws a distinct line between bloggers and “real journalists” that:

limits the definition of a journalist to one who “obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity–

a. that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means; and

b. that—
1. publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;
2. operates a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier;
3. operates a programming service; or
4. operates a news agency or wire service.”

So there’s no doubt that independent bloggers are the target here. At once we’re considered irrelevant and so dangerous they have to legislatively set up a slippery slope that can land us in the clink or left penniless just for trying to participate in citizen journalism. Wow.  The real issue here, however, is less the shield law than placing a definition of what is a journalist on the books. That will alllow pols, news outlets, state governments, etc. to deny citizen journalists press access because they are not “journalists” as defined by federal law. It’s a huge slippery slope and a loss for independent reporting by bloggers if this definition clears.

Marcy Wheeler of Firedoglake confirms that we’re screwed:

To to be a journalist in Chuck Schumer’s eyes, you have to both have a boss (at this point, you generous readers and Jane would count as my boss, but Jane doesn’t have a boss, for example) and that boss’ company must disseminate news on some other medium, in addition to the Toobz. Even free-lance writers or people like IF Stone (in the period when he ran his own newsletter) would be excluded from this definition of journalist.

Now, I’m on the record as a skeptic that this new law is going to work out the way the media thinks. I fear that the national security exemption will mean the law will protect people like Judy Miller mobilizing smears or the Rent-a-Generals spreading propaganda, but not protect Dana Priest or James Risen and their sources.

Still, this move pisses me off because it’s a transparent bid to grant a powerful industry special privileges.

This is about ensuring that there is a wall between real journalists and the perceived unwashed masses of ignorant, unqualified bloggers who are mucking up the system. This is a serious issue, because I believe that reliable citizen journalists do have the respect of traditional media in some circles, but this legislative bid to create a firm wall is declaring war on us.

Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward, who previously noted the House’s different definition of journalist, also expressed concern. “The shield law obviously needs a definition that limits its scope, but the professional definition, which now seems inevitable, would exclude student journalists as well as bloggers with a day job,” he wrote.

More below the fold.

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“‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ clearly isn’t working for our military, and it hinders national security and military readiness at a time when America is fighting in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. My time in Iraq taught me that our military needs and deserves the best and the brightest who are willing to serve- and that means all Americans, regardless of their orientation. Discharging brave and talented servicemembers from our armed forces is contrary to the values that our military fights for and that our nation holds dear.” —Congressman Patrick J. Murphy

On Friday at Netroots Nation I had the pleasure of interviewing the main sponsor of the legislation to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (H.R. 1283, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act), Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA-6th).  I asked him about whether we’ll be able to track public whip counts, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness and whether he expects her to represent the opposing viewpoint on the Hill again during hearings, and his commitment to get rid of a law that is affecting our national security. I also asked him about his opposition to a stop-loss order while Congress addresses repeal.

Transcript is below the fold.

Read All...

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC5) is a stain on the reputation of my state. She continues to belch out the most ignorant garbage on the floor of the House.

Yesterday she decided to weigh in on the health care reform debate with this doozy. Keyboard protection on.

Rep. Foxx: The Republican plan would "make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."

WTF is she talking about?! Media Matters has to straighten out the mental confusion of Rep. Foxx (since I doubt she's able to navigate the complexities of the subject at hand to actually do anything except regurgitate winger talking points):

The Democratic Legislation Actually Provides Professional Guidance For Seniors' Difficult Decisions - NOT To Encourage Euthanasia Like other Republicans before her, Rep. Foxx is basing her statement on a clause in the House bill guaranteeing seniors free counseling to help them with complex decisions.

"Advance Care Planning Consultation" Would Provide Seniors With Professional Advice On Will Preparation, Power Of Attorney, And Other Complicated Issues. PolitiFact.com reported: "Indeed, Sec. 1233 of the bill, labeled 'Advance Care Planning Consultation' details how the bill would, for the first time, require Medicare to cover the cost of end-of-life counseling sessions. According to the bill, 'such consultation shall include the following: An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to; an explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses; an explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.'" [PolitiFact.com, 7/16/09]

• Medicare Will Pay For Increased Counseling If The Senior Citizen Becomes Ill And Would Like Additional Information. According to PolitiFact.com: "Medicare will cover one session every five years, the legislation states. If a patient becomes very ill in the interim, Medicare will cover additional sessions." [PolitiFact.com, 7/16/09]

• Counseling Is NOT Mandatory. In regards to the "mandatory" assertion, PolitiFact.com reported: "For his part, Keyserling said he and outside counsel read the language carefully to make sure that was not the case. 'Neither of us can come to the conclusion that it's mandatory.' he said. 'This new consultation is just like all in Medicare: it's voluntary.' 'The only thing mandatory is that Medicare will have to pay for the counseling,' said Dau." [PolitiFact.com, 7/16/09]

***

You might recall that last year Foxx managed to make KO's worst person in the world for calling the hate crime of Matthew Shepard's murder a hoax:

Rep. Foxx: "The bill was named after a very unfortunate incident that happened, where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery. It wasn't because he was gay. The bill was named for him, the hate crimes bill was named for him, but it's, it's really a hoax, that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."[House Floor Speech, 4/29/09]

Foxx had to go into serious damage control mode. She issued a standard non-apology after the uproar, saying it was "a poor choice of words," and sent a note to Judy Shepard that said "if I said anything that offended her, I certainly apologize for it and know that she's hurting, and I would never do anything to add to that."

When that went over like a lead balloon, the Congresswoman for the 5th district attempted to play the victim—she said that she was receiving death threats at her office. However, that tactic didn't exactly work out since the Capitol Police reported that no one in Foxx's office had alerted them about any threats and that there was “no ongoing investigation” of the matter.

Please—the good people of the 5th, I beg you—bounce her out in 2010.

UPDATE: People have pointed me to this DKos diary, where it appears Holmes was not diagnosed with a brain tumor, but a cyst, and she has repeatedly appeared on TV claiming the tumor story. While that’s not particularly surprising, that even underscores the bottom line is her story proves we need reform because she had to put a second mortgage on her home, borrow from friends and her husband took a second job to be able to afford the $100k U.S. surgery.

Q of the day: do you have a health care horror story to share? Was it denial of service or meds by your insurance, or hospital bureaucracy, or something even more onerous, like poor quality care?

***

I have to agree with this assertion over at Eschaton—“The reality is if you get real sick, no matter if you’re insured or not, you’re probably financially fucked.” The partisan bickering over how much it is going to cost is ludicrous—the cost is just one part of the problem, the fact that we have so many people uninsured and worse, under-insured, is the reality of too many Americans and to get everyone adequate care will likely cost trillions.

Those of us who do have decent insurance, are rightfully concerned that government mucking around in the system and playing politics with something that should be a right—equal access to GOOD medical care for all—is going to end up a big mess.

I’m not going to debate the merits of one plan or another here; I’m just looking at health care as a “frequent flyer” consumer with pre-existing conditions who sees doctors and specialists several times a year, and has adequate insurance that still has left me with long waits to see a specialist (3 months is not unheard of), and dealt with substandard care.

In our current system nearly everyone has horror stories about waiting for insurance to approve the most basic common sense things—like one extra day in the hospital after a c-section, or trying to get a medication not yet in generic form that you and your doctor know works and the insurance company insists on a different generic substitute or you pay outright. The number and type of what I call “drive-by” surgeries, where they kick you to the curb a couple of hours after you’ve been opened up on the table is astonishing— they wanted to do that for my gall bladder surgery and I begged to stay overnight because I’ve had complications after ambulatory surgery before that landed me back in the ER the next day. Thankfully it was approved, because I was right—I developed a fever and had serious difficulties that I wouldn’t have been able to manage at home.

But what if the insurance company had said no. That happens all the time. It happened to me several years ago, I wasn’t able to stay overnight and went into the drive-through surgery; I developed a serious staph infection. It required a

a couple of weeks later. Oh, and I had to pay a lot out of pocket for that second surgery even though I wasn’t responsible for the need for it, even with insurance. A little time and attention would have saved everyone a lot of grief.

And prescription insurance—well big pharma makes us all pay for the price controls in other countries. I totaled up medications I take each month to see what they would cost if I didn’t have insurance—over $900/month! That’s insane. John’s story is no better, and again, he

I didn’t know what my good plan covered until I got asthma as a result of my allergies. Now I know that my asthma drugs cost a whopping $471 a month. That’s $5,652 a year. After Blue Cross’ paltry share, that leaves me with $4,152 a year in asthma drugs (not counting any other prescriptions I may have to take for other unrelated problems that may arise). My insurance costs me nearly $420 a month. That’s another $5,040 a year. And the premium goes up around 25% a year. Imagine how much it’s going to be in ten years when I’m 55. And the joke, Blue Cross will still only give me $1500 in prescription drug coverage ten years from now - that’s the way their policy works. I got $1500 when I started 12 years ago with them, and I’ll have $1500 in ten years.

The problem here—and I’m calling out all of the elected officials on the Hill—is that while they are bickering about numbers (it will be huge no matter what we end up with I want all of them to answer one question: do they believe every person in the country is entitled to the same health care choices and offerings as Congress? If not, why not?

“It’s too expensive” is not a legitimate answer.

That answer is loaded with the difficult truth underlying the debate—a lot of people determining the fate of our health care system believe there should be a tiered level of care—that some people are deserving of A+ quality care with all the options available, and some are not, and should be satisfied with something less, or fewer options because they poor or underinsured. If this is the case, state it now.

If Congress is satisfied with their current care, why not price out that model to cover everyone, and work the numbers. Obviously Dear Leader didn’t put a price tag on his war adventures and we’re still running up an endless tab that produced death and destruction that Congress keeps funding.

The high cost of health care is also due to doctors and hospitals covering their butts with extra unnecessary tests to avoid lawsuits, emergency rooms flooded with people who have no insurance and cannot pay, so the cost is passed on to those who can. Big pharma counts on us to boost the profits they cannot extract from countries with price controls; doctors have to carry high liability insurance because we’re such a litigious society…the list goes on and on.

Employer group policy deductibles keep rising each year, or services are reduced because the employer cannot afford to underwrite the costs to hold the line on premiums. No one should have their health care plan tied to their employment. It has to be portable and stable.  COBRA, intended to provide portability of a policy for those who leave a job, is often too expensive.

And remember, if your plan is tied to your employment and you’re have pre-existing conditions, you better find a large company with a big group policy and never leave that job, since small businesses are more likely to have crappier policies or heinously high premiums—or offer no insurance at all.

The whole system is broken—except when it’s not and works just fine for a good number of people.

Why is it so difficult to put that level of priority setting on health care? Maybe I’m missing something.

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Look, I have no idea why being a conservative, a law professor and a blogger seems to automatically turn your mind into a blob of fetid goo.  Perhaps there’s a neuro-blogger who can explain why this is a more effective method of destroying rational thought than any totalitarian regime has yet accomplished in the history of the civilized world; repeated exposure to nuclear radiation doesn’t destroy brains cells as fast as voting for Bush in ‘04 did.

Glenn Reynolds links to a piece reproducing a devastating e-mail forward about Social Security.  (If you at any point think that an e-mail forward is the foundation and/or totality of a good argument, you are hereby banned from arguing in any venue other than the open bar at a comic book convention.  And you may only argue that Bishop is the greatest X-Man of all time.)

  Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent “Trust” fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it?

  A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.

  Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

  A: The Democratic Party.

  Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

  A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the “tie-breaking” deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.

  Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants who had not paid into the Social Security system?

  A: Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.

Have a nice day.

Now, I knew two things: one, Social Security annuities started being taxed in the Reagan administration.  Two, it’s an e-mail forward, so the entire thing is probably wrong.  Lo and behold, within twenty seconds of Google, I was proven absolutely right.

The most glaring error is the third (which party started taxing annuities).  As you’ll see on the Social Security page, another stupid question was actually left out - Reagan signed the bipartisan bill that allowed the annuities to be taxed; the tax was increased as a part of the omnibus budget bill of 1993.  The last question is nonsensical, confusing Social Security with SSI benefits.  The first and second questions are simply wrong, because Social Security’s never been moved from any fund to any other fund, nor was there even an income tax deduction for FICA withholding (which doesn’t make sense - why would you have an income tax deduction for what’s effectively a flat income tax?). 

So, the entire argument about Social Security presented here is that in some alternative reality where Social Security worked entirely differently than it ever has or ever world, Democrats are evil.  I wonder if we all have goatees, too?