That’s it. Final solution.
Fix the health care system with one simple bill that eliminates the requirement that all Medicare participants be 65 years-of-age or older. Just open Medicare for everyone.
Problem solved.
Get over it already. If the Republican-coveted insurance companies want to survive, they’ll have to be competitive.
Personally, I don’t think they have it in them.
So, forget about them.
Open Medicare for everyone.
Problem solved.
Stop by the the Chicago Tribune. Clarence Page wrote a column about the scare tactics the birthers and other GOP servants are spreading regarding any attempts at true health care reform currently before congress.
They have been aided in this mission by a key figure in the killing of Bill and Hillary Clinton‘s proposed health-care reforms in the early 1990s. Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, a conservative health-care specialist, lit the spark on various op-ed pages and talk shows, including former Sen. Fred Thompson‘s radio talk show.
There she told Thompson that “Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”
McCaughey added that the bill “expressly says if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period, you have to go through that session again, all to do what is in society’s best interest or your family’s best interest and [basically] cut your life short.”
Nonsense. The provision would require Medicare to pay for advanced-care consultations, but it does not requireindividuals to take advantage of the benefit.
Nor does it require that a government bureaucrat intervene among the patient, the patient’s family or a doctor or nurse practitioner, as McCaughey insists it does.
Look: read Mr. Page’s column. We have to stay on message. We must reform health care. This will not be a repeat of the Clinton-era attempts at health care reform. We know those who object to reform for who they are: they serve the health insurance industry.
They do not serve the American people.
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Who are these angry white Republicans who are disrupting Democratic congressmen and women at their town hall meetings?
Turns out they’ve been sent to these meetings by D.C. lobbying groups with ties to the health insurance industry. Shouting out spoon-fed talking points from the insurance industry, they’re defending the millions of dollars these for-profit companies take in over our dead bodies.
Olbermann unmasked the Dems and GOP members of congress on the take from the health insurance industry. Now Rachel Maddow exposes the lying liars recently heard screaming for the corporations at these town hall meetings.
Watch this video closely. The insurance industry is actually claiming the proposed health care plans before congress with mandate sex change operations.
Don’t believe me? Let’s go to Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. Here’s their list of congressional town hall meetings. Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is a Washington D.C. -based lobbying organization that’s run by Richard Scott, a former hospital executive. According to Rachel Maddow, Scott was forced out of that company in the midst of a fraud investigation that resulted in the company paying a $1.7 billion fine.
That’s who these angry white Republicans are taking tap dancing lessons from. As Maddow reports, “This is a health care industry-linked lobbying group organizing uprisings at town hall events.”
Let’s look at Freedom Works, which gives instructions on how to scream and shout at town hall meetings for that perfect YouTube sound bite, ensuring there will be no discussion, no civil discourse, at these events.
Republican strategists are claiming these shouting matches are simply Democracy in action. What they are in fact is the absence of Democracy, wild attempts to stop dialogue, to make sure no intelligent discussion takes place. They scream and shout when anyone with a view different from their own begins to speak. They are the voice of the health insurance industry clamping down on Democracy and each and every one of us, the American people, doing everything possible to shove us down and shut us up, so the industry can pick our pockets at will.
We see them for who they are.
So we call out these GOP insurance-industry-worshipping know-nothings, and applaud the Democrats and Republicans in congress who are seeking true healthcare reform.
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Keith Olbermann at his best. Disgusting how these pols take millions, and pretend we won’t notice when dance for their biggest donors.
Click through for the video if you’re viewing this via RSS.
You go, Keith.
What a bombshell.
During my recent interview with FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds on the Mike Malloy Show, a caller had asked her opinion on whether she believed 9/11 to have been “an inside job.”
Edmonds replied by first specifying “As I have done for the past 7 or 8 years, I have basically stuck with what I know, first-hand, directly, my own knowledge, based on my own experience, based on what I obtained, which is not a lot, but it is extremely important.”
After explaining the difference between what she does and doesn’t know first hand, she went on to explain: “I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban – those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.” …
Her complete response, pulled from the lengthy interview (full, commercial-free audio here) has been transcribed by Luke Ryland, perhaps the world’s foremost expert in all things Sibel Edmonds related.
From Luke Ryland on the Daily Kos:
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).
In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”
These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.
Luke’s summary:
The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.
It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.
The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.
Puts an entirely different spin on Bush ignoring that PDB.
What did George W. Bush know, and when did he know it?
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Watch and enjoy as Rachel Maddow once again brialliantly unmasks Republican lies on the health care debate.
Republicans: defending the insurance industry over your dead body.
The GOP and conservative media are falling all over each other trying to save the for-profit health insurance industry from having to compete with a modestly-run government health insurance program similar to Medicare. Their efforts will no doubt become even more frantic in response to a just-released New York Times/CBS News poll:
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insuranceand that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.
Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.
That paradox was skillfully exploited by opponents of the last failed attempt at overhauling the health system, during former President Bill Clinton’s first term. Sixteen years later, it underscores the tricky task facing lawmakers andPresident Obama as they try to address the health system’s substantial problems without igniting fears that people could lose what they like.
Across a number of questions, the poll detected substantial support for a greater government role in health care, a position generally identified with the Democratic Party. When asked which party was more likely to improve health care, only 18 percent of respondents said the Republicans, compared with 57 percent who picked the Democrats. Even one of four Republicans said the Democrats would do better.
The ruling ultra-conservative wing of the GOP is doing everything possible to scare seniors to death over the proposals.
A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama’s calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life “rationing” and even “euthanasia.”
The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary (emphasis added).
But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as “guiding you in how to die,” “an ORDER from the Government to end your life,” promoting “death care” and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to “kill Granny.”
Note again, “The counseling sessions would be voluntary.”
I’m lucky, my doctor also teaches other doctors. He loves to talk and teach. Many physicians charge for advice. These sessions offer simple counseling about end-of-life options that no one likes to think about in advance, but we all know it’s wise to do so. A Living Will is a good thing. Right now Medicare does not cover this counseling.
Why would Republicans and the conservative media want to deny Granny and Grandpa the ability to receive counseling from the professionals uniquely qualified to offer such advice? Rachel Maddow calls this malicious crowd the “deathers.”
Granny and Grandpa can relax. And change the channel: turn off FOX Noise, shut off Rush. Watch Rachel and Keith.
They might also want to call their congressman and tell them to back health care reform. This plan is a huge step forward for all Americans.
Multiple sources in Alaska are reporting that Todd and Sarah Palin are planning to divorce.
First, from AlaskaReport:
AlaskaReport has learned this morning that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage have confirmed the news.
A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska.
The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other at last Sunday’s resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.
The Immoral Minority has more:
According to my source Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage.
She has purchased land in Montana (I wonder whose donations paid for that?), and may be considering moving herself and the children as far away from Alaska as she can get.
Do you remember all of that talk about her missing wedding ring during the three part going away picnics? Well it turns out that ring now sleeps with the fishes. Apparently in a fit of anger Sarah stripped the ring from her finger and tossed it into a lake. (No I did not think to ask WHICH lake so I cannot confirm if it is Lake Lucille, on which her house is located, or some other lake. I apologize for not getting clarification, but I was a little tired last night and so was my source.)
So it appears that the reason Palin has been so quiet, and has given her tweeting fingers a rest, is NOT because of any master plan, or carefully orchestrated new direction, but simply the result of the emotional stress that prevents her from communicating with her fan base or making any public appearances.
Palin’s representatives deny that these reports are true:
Sarah Palin’s spokeswoman is denying media reports that the former Alaska governor is divorcing her husband, Todd Palin. Meg Stapleton wrote Saturday on Palin’s Facebook page, “The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family…” Two Palin attorneys are also insisting that the claims are false.
Several online publications were reporting Saturday that the former Republican vice presidential candidate and her husband were divorcing. Web siteAlaskaReport.com cited “multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage” in their report.
Round and round we go.
I’ll post as more information becomes available.
One of the funniest things you’ll ever see. I had this on a news site I operate, but decided to give it a permanent home here on Turning Left.
Enjoy. And do click through for the video if you’re viewing this through a news feed.
Honestly, have you had enough of the stupid old white men repeatedly attacking Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over her “wise latina” remark? How can Republicans possibly waste the entire confirmation hearings focusing on speeches, and ignoring all of the nominee’s decisions?
Any Republicans reading this? I’d love to know your “approval rating” of the stupid white men you sent to the United States Senate. How can they dance for days without asking one substantive question?
By the sixth hour of the hearing, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham had dispensed with the formalities altogether. “If I may interject, Judge, [lawyers] find you difficult and challenging more than your colleagues,” Graham blurted, without irony. “Do you think you have a temperament problem?” A minute later, he had turned, weirdly, to personal advice: “Maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection.” Graham also cautioned Sotomayor to “appreciate the world we live in,” in which she could say something about a “wise Latina” and still expect to win a seat on the Supreme Court — since white men wouldn’t be able to get away with similar remarks. And he led her through a ritualized denunciation of al-Qaida, asking how women would be treated if the jihadists had their way.
What made his performance even stranger, though, was that Graham is likely to vote for Sotomayor’s confirmation. “Now, let’s talk about you,” he told her, just before haranguing her about her temperament. “I like you, by the way, for whatever that matters. Since I may vote for you that ought to matter to you.”
Honestly, Lindsey Graham showed his idiotic side this week. At times, he appeared juvenile in his attempts to bait the judge into an inappropriate remark. Too bad for him.
I found one media report amusing this week: before television, there were no lengthy Supreme Court hearings. Without a pulpit, these things just happened, and took little time.
Imagine that.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed and sworn in as a Supreme Court justice. She seems firm but fair. And she really knows the law.
That’s all we can ask.