Barney Frank Calls It As He Sees It…An Idiot Is An Idiot! Is That A New England Hardwood Table Barney?
"Sometimes you just have to speak to people on the level they understand!"
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GO BARNEY! |
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The FOX Response: Psychotic Bachmann Sorry Idiot: Single Payer, Public Option Guarantees 2012 Obama Re-Election! |
| ……………………… | Luntz's "Gambit": Fearmongering That Obama Is "Declaring War On Medicare" On Fox News' Hannity, GOP consultant Frank Luntz forwarded the false conservative talking point that President Obama plans to cut Medicare benefits, claiming that it "is almost like he's declaring war on Medicare because it's the only way for him to pay for health care," and that it is a "fact" that "[t]hey're talking about lowering the reimbursements for Medicare." In fact, as FactCheck.org noted: "The claim that Obama and Congress are cutting seniors' Medicare benefits to pay for the health care overhaul is outright false." From the August 18 edition of Fox News' Hannity: LUNTZ: That's half of it. And the other half is that he's actually attacking Medicare. And that is something that's really important for your audience, whether you're 65 or older, you've got parents who are 65 or older. Barack Obama -- from this language -- I've got the text -- it's almost like he's declaring war on Medicare because it's the only way for him to be able to pay for health care. It's an interesting gambit, Sean, and I don't think it's going to work. [...] LUNTZ: I think that this debate can and should be conducted in a civil and meaningful manner. That said -- again, I point to the language that -- "Not these wild misrepresentations." I've started to read the bill. They're talking about lowering the reimbursements for Medicare. That is not a misinterpretation. That is a fact. And every senior has the right to know exactly what will be paid for and what won't be. And every doctor, Sean, has the right to know whether they're going to be reimbursed for their service or not. FactCheck.org, AARP have rebutted notion that health reform will reduce Medicare benefits FactCheck.org: "The claim that Obama and Congress are cutting seniors' Medicare benefits to pay for the health care overhaul is outright false." From FactCheck.org's August 14 article, "Seven Falsehoods About Health Care": False: Medicare Benefits Will Be Slashed The claim that Obama and Congress are cutting seniors' Medicare benefits to pay for the health care overhaul is outright false, though that doesn't keep it from being repeated ad infinitum. The truth is that the pending House bill extracts $500 billion from projected Medicare spending over 10 years, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, by doing such things as trimming projected increases in the program's payments for medical services, not including physicians. Increases in other areas, such as payments to doctors, bring the net savings down to less than half that amount. But none of the predicted savings -- or cuts, depending on one's perspective -- come from reducing current or future benefits for seniors. The president has promised repeatedly that benefit levels won't be reduced, reiterating the point recently in Portsmouth, N.H.: Obama, Aug. 11: Another myth that we've been hearing about is this notion that somehow we're going to be cutting your Medicare benefits. We are not. Is he wrong? Not according to AARP, by far the nation's largest organization representing the over-50 population. In a "Myths vs. Facts" rundown, AARP says: AARP: Fact: None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services. To be sure, Obama hasn't always thought that Medicare "savings" could be accomplished without actual cuts in benefits. Last fall, his campaign ran two television ads accusing Sen. John McCain of wanting "a 22 percent cut in [Medicare] benefits." The basis for the ads was a newspaper article in which a McCain aide said the Arizona Republican would cut Medicarecosts. But the aide said nothing about cutting benefits, in fact quite the contrary. We called the claim "false" when Obama made it against McCain, and it's still false now when Obama's critics are making the same accusation against him. [FactCheck.org, 8/14/09] FactCheck.org: "Congress isn't proposing to cut [Medicare] benefit levels." According to an August 18 FactCheck.org article, "None of the 'savings' or 'cuts' (whichever you prefer)" to Medicare in the House bill "come from reducing current or future benefit levels for seniors." From the article: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the House bill would result in "savings" of $219 billion after all increases and decreases are netted out. The House bill would trim projected increases in payments for hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and others, including home health care providers and suppliers of motor-driven wheelchairs. But it also proposes what CBO estimates is a $245 billionincrease in spending for doctors, by canceling a scheduled 21 percent cut in physician payments. None of the "savings" or "cuts" (whichever you prefer) come from reducing current or future benefit levels for seniors. [FactCheck.org, 8/18/09] AARP says idea that "Health care reform will hurt Medicare" is a "Myth." From the AARP's "Myths vs. Facts" on health care reform: Myth: Health care reform will hurt Medicare. Fact: None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services. Fact: Health care reform will lower prescription drug costs for people in the Medicare Part D coverage gap or "doughnut hole" so they can get better afford the drugs they need. Fact: Health care reform will protect seniors' access to their doctors and reduce the cost of preventive services so patients stay healthier. Fact: Health care reform will reduce costly, preventable hospital readmissions, saving patients and Medicare money. Fact: Rather than weaken Medicare, health care reform will strengthen the financial status of the Medicare program. Bottom Line: For people in Medicare, health care reform is about lowering prescription drug costs for people in the "doughnut hole", keeping the doctor of your choice, improving the quality of care, and eliminating billions in waste that is causing poor care and medical errors. [AARP, accessed 8/18/09] Medicare scare is a GOP talking point Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly claimed that health reform proposals will be paid for "through massive cuts to Medicare." As Media Matters for America noted, in an August 18 article, the Associated Press quoted McConnell claiming that health reform proposals will be paid for "through massive cuts to Medicare," without pointing out, as FactCheck.org did, that "[t]he claim that Obama and Congress are cutting seniors' Medicare benefits to pay for the health care overhaul is outright false." From the August 18 edition of Fox News' Hannity: LUNTZ: But here's an example where the Republicans initially react favorably, but when Obama finishes his statement, boy, do the Republicans not like it at all. Let's listen. OBAMA [video clip]: If you don't have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need. And we will do this without adding to our deficit over the next decade, largely by cutting out the waste and insurance company giveaways in Medicare that aren't making any of our seniors healthy. HANNITY: You know what's amazing to me, Frank? This attack line against the insurance companies seems to work only with Democrats. Democrats believe in government. Is that -- that's my read on it. Yours? LUNTZ: That's half of it. And the other half is that he's actually attacking Medicare. And that is something that's really important for your audience, whether you're 65 or older, you've got parents who are 65 or older. Barack Obama -- from this language -- I've got the text -- it's almost like he's declaring war on Medicare because it's the only way for him to be able to pay for health care. It's an interesting gambit, Sean, and I don't think it's going to work. [...] LUNTZ: I think that this debate can and should be conducted in a civil and meaningful manner. That said -- again, I point to the language that -- "Not these wild misrepresentations." I've started to read the bill. They're talking about lowering the reimbursements for Medicare. That is not a misinterpretation. That is a fact. And every senior has the right to know exactly what will be paid for and what won't be. And every doctor, Sean, has the right to know whether they're going to be reimbursed for their service or not. |
Why Holder And Obama Have Not Fired The Bush Appointed, Rove-Vetted DOJ Attorneys
by Rob Kall | www.opednews.com--
It's an unprecedented outrage. There are scores of attorneys-- partisan, engaging in serial prosecutorial misconduct, like the cases of Gov. Don Siegelman and Cyril Wecht, and these Bush-appointees are still on the job, doing damage to the US, to justice and innocent victims.
I offer a theory why this breach of trust by Obama, why he has failed to do what every president before him has done.
The progressive media should be raising an outcry about this daily, pointing its light at the abuses of the individual prosecutors.
The mainstream media should be covering the abuses. All the media should be asking "Why?"
Why are Holder and Obama not firing and replacing these attorneys, as every other president taking office has done? Why are they leaving these partisan appointees, the worst, most partisan bunch in recent history, possibly ever?
I have a theory. Obama and his people, probably starting with Rahm Emanuel, are saving them to trade favors with key Republicans. You see these toxic, partisan attorneys have real value to Republicans, especially when you pair them with Bush appointed Federal judges. Put them together and they can prosecute a frog for hopping, and a public official who pissed off a Republican senator for breathing in the wrong direction. There are so many thousands of regulations and rules that a federal prosecutor inclined to abuse prosecutorial privilege can put the screws to the most honest person in the state.
If a senator, often the most powerful party member in a state, wants to take out the most powerful members, or most up and coming members of the opposition party, the DOJ attorney can be a powerful ally in making it happen. That's what happened to Don Siegelman and Cyril Wecht. They were targeted and accused with charges that were absolutely ridiculous and unreasonable. Wecht had the worst judge imaginable, who was later reversed by a Republican, Bush-appointee.
So, here's my guess on why Holder is holding back. Obama and his advisory team have decided that they can, when the crunch comes, for the next trillion dollar bailout, or when the final push comes to pass the health care bill, trade retention of a toxic Bush-appointed Federal attorney for a vote.
It's reprehensible, unacceptable, but, at a point when history has always seen the DOJ attorneys replaced, we must ask why this has not happened.
There's another hypothese a colleague has offered-- that Obama is bending over backwards not to make waves, to remain non-partisan, or rather, to maintain the lie of non-partisanism in this increasingly ugly, toxic partisan millieu that this 111th congress has been marinating in.
I'm not satisfied with that explanation. It goes against history without enough of a possible payoff, without enough of a reason for keeping the actively destructive prosecutors in place.
One study shows that 85% of the targets of these prosecutors were Democrats. It is insane to leave them in place, doing the same dirty work when the nation elected a Democratic president.
Take Alabama, where the prosecutor who has vilified and terrorized Gov. Don Siegelman is still at work. We have two republican Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions. They had plenty to gain getting rid of a powerful and popular Democratic governor, hurting the state's top democratic leadership. They have plenty to gain keeping things that way. And hey, Shelby is ranking minority member of the senate Banking committee. See the possibilities?
To me, this has the fingerprints of Rahm Emanuel, who never met a conservative or DINO he wouldn't sell out a progressive for, all over it.
It's time that progressive talk radio hosts and TV personalities-- Maddow, Schultz, Ratigan and Olbermann-- start counting down the days that these rogue attorneys are still allowed by Holder and Obama to remain in office. They should not be accepted as viable chips to be cashed in. America deserves the DOJ attorneys they voted for as part of the package of electing a president. Obama is letting us down one more way. His defenders say to give him time and that may be a fair request for some things. But he is way past the normal historical time for firing the past administration's attorneys. There's no excuse, no justification that is tolerable. They have to go.
The fruit is rotten, moldy and reeking, crawling with maggots and here, in late august, it is only going to get worse. The Rove-vetted, Bush appointed DOJ attorneys should be fired before the congress returns. Cyril Wecht suggests that the ones Rove had fired should be re-hired. They proved their integrity by refusing to serve their partisan bosses.
Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, more...)
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The Bottom Line!
When Health Care Does Become A Negotiation
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/when_health_care_does_become_a.html
As long as we're talking strategy, it's also worth saying a bit about how these pieces fit together in the legislative process. There are three distinct phases left to complete: First, the bills have to clear the House and the Senate. That means going through committees, overcoming a filibuster and attaining a majority. Then they go to conference committee to be merged. Then they come back to each chamber for a final vote.
The White House has said that its primary goal is to get a bill through the Senate and through the House and to conference committee. This is where health-care reform stops being a campaign and actually does become a negotiation. It's a fairly safe bet that the House bill will include a public option and the Senate bill will have a weak public option or some version of a co-op plan. Then the two will meet. What happens then?
The members of the conference committee are chosen by the leadership. They include the relevant chairmen of the committees -- Max Baucus will be there, and Chris Dodd will probably serve in Ted Kennedy's stead, and they will meet with Henry Waxman and Charlie Rangel and George Miller -- and a handful of others. The final bill needs a majority of both the House and Senate negotiating teams. That will be no problem on the House side. If Harry Reid stacks the Senate team with enough left-leaning senators to ensure a majority for a liberal-leaning bill (this is where Jay Rockefeller, chairman of Finance's health care subcommittee, and Barbara Mikulski, chairwoman of HELP's retirement and aging subcommittee, could play a role), a liberal-leaning bill, with a public option, is a pretty good bet.
That bill would easily pass the House. The Senate is trickier. But the conference report can't be amended. It can't be changed, or held up in committee. It can be filibustered, and it can be voted against. Those are the options. If three Democrats opposed the legislation and wanted to kill it, they would literally have to filibuster it (this is assuming that Democrats have 60 votes, which is not certain given Kennedy's health). That would be a very hard thing to do at that stage in the game. It would isolate the obstructionists, ensuring funded primary challenges and the enduring enmity of the Senate leadership and the White House. Kent Conrad can say that there aren't enough votes for a public option and imply that he's just protecting the final bill from defeat. But is he willing to be one of those "no" votes? Is he willing to filibuster? That's a different game indeed.
The White House has worked hard to imply to its liberal supporters that they need to be patient with the disappointments of the Senate process but confident in the outcome of conference committee. On July 20, Obama spoke to a group of liberal bloggers on a conference call andarticulated the strategy quite explicitly:
Conference is where these differences will get ironed out. And that's where my bottom lines will remain: Does this bill cover all Americans? Does it drive down costs both in the public sector and the private sector over the long term? Does it improve quality? Does it emphasize prevention and wellness? Does it have a serious package of insurance reforms so people aren't losing health care over a preexisting condition? Does it have a serious public option in place? Those are the kind of benchmarks I'll be using. But I'm not assuming either the House and Senate bills will match up perfectly with where I want to end up.
This strategy, of course, relies on a lot of trust, and that's not something the White House has these days. But that's the administration's argument: Phase one is not a negotiation, and you can't demand a perfect product out of both chambers. In this period, the White House will do whatever is necessary to clear a bill out of the Senate, and if that means bargaining away the public option, so be it. Phase two is a negotiation, and you should trust the White House to produce a good piece of legislation. And phase three, well, that's the easy part. That's passage. Hopefully.
TEN GOOD REASONS TO SUPPORT HEALTH CARE REFORM BILLS
RNC Takes McCain-Feingold to Court
The Republican National Committee is asking a federal court to restore the ability of national parties to raise unlimited amounts of money in a case that focuses on the hotly contested governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia. Read More
Health Care As A ‘Moral Imperative’
A group of religious leaders launches a health care blitz Wednesday that will be highlighted by television ads, sermons and a nationwide “call-in” to the White House that will stress the “moral imperative” to extend affordable coverage to the nation’s uninsured.
The “40 Days for Health Reform” initiative by the interfaith groups will include prayer services in congressional districts, meetings of religious leaders with members of Congress and a “Nationwide Health Care Sermon Weekend” with preaching from the pulpit on the need for a health care overhaul. The leaders say they’re the ones who see up close the problems with the insurance system and the need for change.
The event is being sponsored by denominations and groups such as the National Baptist Convention USA, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, United Methodist Church General Board of Church & Society, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, the Episcopal Church, Unitarian Universalist Association, African Methodist Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ and Islamic Society of North America.
Jim Wallis, an evangelical and president of the Christian social action group Sojourners, said Aug. 11 that the intent is not to “get into the weeds” on the specifics of what should be included in health legislation pending in Congress or take positions on highly controversial issues such as the public option, employer mandates or abortion coverage.
But he said religious leaders do want to counter those who have “demagogued” the issue at town hall meetings over the past few weeks — thus thrusting the faith community into an ongoing battle between Democrats and Republicans over health care, marked by town hall meetings involving shouting, fights and even arrests.
“There are people in the country who want to stop an honest, fair, civil and moral conversation about health care. They’re organized and they really want to shut down democracy and we can’t let that happen,” said Wallis. “The faith community is literally going to stand in the way of those who want to stop a conversation.”
He and others said inviting President Obama to take part in a conference call on health without an accompanying Republican viewpoint does not make it into a partisan event. Obama is not expected to discuss the details of his proposal but rather the moral perspective of extending coverage to the 47 million uninsured, they said.
“It wasn’t the president who turned this into a partisan issue, it happened to be the way it played out,” said David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. “I truly think he believed this would stand above partisan politics. ... the president set out a moral vision that resonates deeply with the consensus views of large segments of the religious community, even some who may disagree with particular legislation Congress is doing.”
The idea is also to encourage conversation within congregations. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the 13,000-member Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., said his congregation is probably 60 percent Republican and he considers himself a centrist. “Part of the need.... is to allow folks from varying sides to have a chance to speak about this issue and to do so in a way that allows people to hear the issues and not just the rhetoric,” he said.
Saperstein said the people falling through the cracks “are as likely to be a Republican as they are a Democrat.”
Other groups organizing the health overhaul push are the PICO National Network, which engages in faith-based community organizing; Faith in the Public Life, a nonprofit group;Faithful America, an online organizing group; and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
The group also is sponsoring a 30-second TV ad that criticizes unnamed “special interests in Washington” seeking to block health overhaul. “Killing reform will boost their profits,” says Rev. Stevie Wakes of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kan., in the ad. The ad will run on national cable networks and District of Columbia cable while fundraising continues to try to run it elsewhere.
Prayer services and advocacy will be targeted to specific congressional districts, said Gordon Whitman of PICO. “It’s really an overlay of Blue Dogs and moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans and areas where religion is especially significant to public life,” he said, to convey the message that there is a middle ground in the health overhaul debate.
John Hay Jr., an evangelical leader from Indianapolis, Ind., said the “40 Days for Health Reform” effort is “really an effort to refocus where the central moral issue is — it seems to have been derailed or taken off track by a lot of voices over the past couple of weeks.”
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