Sadly, this is not an exaggeration. They really don’t care.
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Cartoon of the Day
December 22, 2009 By
On Health Care, Old Men and Snow
December 22, 2009 By
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There is something wrong with this.
At 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon — nine hours before the 1 a.m. vote that would effectively clinch the legislation’s passage — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) went to the Senate floor to propose a prayer. “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight,” he said. “That’s what they ought to pray.”
It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) who has been in and out of hospitals and lay at home ailing. It would not be easy for Byrd to get out of bed in the wee hours with deep snow on the ground and ice on the roads — but without his vote, Democrats wouldn’t have the 60 they needed.
Actually there are a couple of things wrong with this.
A) When an issue as important as health care reform hinges on a 92-year-old man showing up to vote at 1 AM with a pile of snow on the ground, there’s something seriously flawed with the system.
B) There should be no 92-year-old Senators.
The finale…
Byrd was wheeled in, dabbing his eyes and nose with tissues, his complexion pale. When his name was called, Byrd shot his right index finger into the air as he shouted “aye,” then pumped his left fist in defiance.
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Playing For Change
December 21, 2009 By
This is beautiful. Crank up the speakers.
Playing For Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.
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Open thread.
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As Good As It Gets…For Now
December 21, 2009 By
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Andrew Sullivan puts the Senate health care bill in perspective.
I keep waiting for this obvious fact to sink in. What Obama has done is force the existing system to insure 30 million more people at a modest cost, and to include a swathe of (still-insufficient) varieties and strategies of cost-control. This is huge – the biggest first year achievement of any president since Reagan. If you consider that he did this while also managing the steepest down-turn in decades, revamping America’s image in the world, preventing a banking implosion, and prosecuting two unresolved wars in the face of almost deranged opposition, it’s pretty damn impressive.
Yes, it is pretty damn impressive.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the hyperbole concerning what the health care bill doesn’t contain that we lose sight of the remarkable fact that it is the greatest advance in health care reform in the last 60 years. And maybe, just maybe, the Senate bill IS the best that could have been achieved under the current conditions. A public option and a Medicare buy-in would have been wonderful but just not ‘t doable at this time.
The Dems calling for the bill to be scrapped are not thinking this thing through.
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Defeating ‘Republicans For Rape’
December 21, 2009 By
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President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 into law over the weekend. Why is that a big deal?
Within the Appropriations Act is Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) amendment prohibiting defense contractors from restricting their employees’ abilities to take workplace discrimination, battery, and sexual assault cases to court. The measure was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. Many Republicans opposed the legislation — saying it was an unnecessary attack on their allies in the defense contracting business — and faced intense political blowback over their positions.
Original story here. For a list of Republicans who voted against Franken’s anti-rape amendment see Republicans For Rape. Their stinking faces should be up on giant billboards across the country.
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