Archive for the ‘cloture’ Category

What bothers me so much about the senate bill is that it mandates we buy in, with penalty if we don’t, but the public option has been so diluted that it will only cover three to four million Americans.

This really chaps my ass.

The entire impetus of a public option all along has been to supply much needed competition for the Goliath, thereby forcing the whole clusterfuck bureaucracy into some modicum of accountability in terms of quality and affordability.   Well, do the math.  They bray at lung top that 98% will be covered, yet that number is egregiously misleading when it’s laid bare that it will be accomplished by forcing the majority to buy into the hopelessly corrupt monolith that has been selling death and discrimination to us for decades.  These numbers come not even close to establishing meaningful competition. Four million of 350 million living breathing Americans.

I beseech you, do the math.

Various Senators and representatives, including Anthony Weiner have come forward to say that it’s not perfect but a giant leap forward.  I like that guy, but the numbers are leaving my dick in the dirt.  Here’s another number:  The most important components of this bill, like the weak ass public option, are not due to manifest efficacy until 2013 or 2014.  Thus, the giant has five fucking years to mitigate, obfuscate, lobby with a million bucks a day to spend, to ensure that all protections and rights afforded us in the original legislation are stillborn.

This shit is fucked up from hell to breakfast.  Even if this legislation is passed intact, the fight will merely be in it’s infancy.  We get nothing for five long years and at the end of that road, we will be forced to buy insurance and our options might just suck more than they do now.  Forced to buy their product.  Forced.

Why is no one talking about that?

The great unwashed rail and stomp about a government usurping of free enterprise and democracy.  Fuck them in the neck.  Fools.  Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground?

The government takeover of health care will most assuredly be complete because the government is a plutocracy.  Not for, of and by the people but for, of and by the corporations.

I understand that the progressives and liberals are optimistic for momentum.  They are gleeful for potential.  They seek, against impossible odds to set the ball rolling toward the the pins of avarice and corruption.  Hoping that inertia befriends them.  Once in motion it stays in motion and they can coax or accelerate it’s velocity despite it’s initial mass.  I fear that that the ball has a balsa center, it’s being released far too slowly and by the time it reaches those pins, they will be obelisks bolted down.

And thus the idea of public funded health care or even *gasp* single payer health care dies an ugly, painful and protracted death.

There are significant merits in this bill, such as the language that prevents cancellation upon actually becoming ill or the rendering obsolete of denying care for a pre-existing conditions.  Yet realistically, they are euphoric sentimentality in the face of a mandate that we all buy in to whatever is available.  I’m calling bullshit on the whole thing.  We are required to carry auto insurance but it’s barely regulated, so those that can afford it get ripped off while a third go without in some states.

I can’t see how the exact same scenario is avoidable in this instance.  It’s a prescription if you will, pun intended, for the status qou.  With the exception being that the insurance companies bathe deeper in filthy lucre as the fines imposed on those who can’t or won’t participate go directly into their coffers.  That’s right, did you know that?  What kind of shit is that?

Now of course, the procedural vote for cloture, so the bill can actually be debated without filibuster, has yet to even take place.  Word is that it’s scheduled for Saturday night at 5 p.m. West Coast time.  At that point, amendments will be proposed, hard ass Republicans will wail and whine and the outcome is anyone’s guess.  The way I understand this procedure, after cloture is achieved, it tooth pulling time.  The proposed legislation, if it survives, will emerge with less teeth than it entered the arena with.

Picture a Roman Coliseum.

I’m no legal eagle, but I’m no dummy either. At the same time, I’m not an expert when it comes to Senatorial procedural logistics, but it’s worth pointing out that a lot of these guys are obstinate dicks.  I can only imagine that the future of this bill and health care will not be scrambling for sunglasses in anticipation of a bright future and there’s a chance there will be a rush for fresh dirt for the coffin.

Somebody talk me down.

Drinks for my friends

The latest figures indicate that the fiercely embattled public option will cover a mere two to three percent of the currently uninsured and the CBO says premiums will most likely be somewhat more than current market price.  Sounds like a wash to me.  Sounds like the sucking of a drain.  This whole thing is so fucking ridiculous.  Smoke and mirrors, dogs and ponies.  You can bet your ass, along with your lunch money, with those kinds of numbers, the whole thing is doomed to failure.

Spruce Goose bitches.

It will flop like Gerald Ford coming down the steps of Air Force One but it won’t ever get up again, at least not in my lifetime.

Good job everybody.

Jackasses.

The only customers it’s poised to attract will be our sickest and least likely to succeed.  No prom kings or queens here.  Bottom of the gene pool, unhealthy, lowlife, walkin’ the dog saps.  So it will be fiscally overburdened by virtue of our lowest common denominator and our last shot as the richest nation on earth to provide health care for our citizens will probably not even enjoy another attempt for at least half a century.  Good job Democrats, you fucking pussies and even better job Republicans you obstructionist, plutocratic, avaricious, disingenuous, lying pieces of self serving shit.

I really hate you guys.

Did I say that or just think it out loud?

Is there a difference?

Well, let me say this:  Fuck, fuck, fuck, snot and mucus and bile and shame and fear and stupid and puke………

You, Joe Lieberman, who’s state is ground zero for health insurance HQ’s and who announced publicly the intention to filibuster the very debate,  and you, John Boehner lay off the embarrassing spray on tan and you, Chuck Grassley you lying prick and you, Mitch McConnel with more chins than a Chinese phonebook and you, Max Baucus who can suck my caucus and you, Kent Conrad and you, Blanche Lincoln, you Democrats in name only………every single one of you has sold out the best and most important life or death interests of the American people in general and your own constituents in particular for what you know will line your pockets, get you you re-elected and is nothing more than a pack of aspersions, distortions and preposterous calumny.

Whomever the asshole was that declared health care reform to be Obama’s Waterloo, forgive me it was Jim DeMint, might just have been exactly right.  I don’t care who you are, that there’s fucked up.

This party might just might be over.

Have you no shame?  No decency?

Y’all negotiated and philandered, lied and decried, wrung your hands and whined like little bitches while thousands died and ended up with the pussy party (D), still being able to save face with a donut hole public option, the asshole party (R), still able to fool some of the people most of the time while still screwing them with an atomic fucking jackhammer that put them there and paid there salaries and benefits all of the goddamn time.

Sick.  Fucking sick.  Pun intended.

Everyone got what they wanted, what they imagined they needed, while the lobbyist pimps, four to one for every legislator, spent a million bucks a day to make sure they and their corporate sugar daddies maintained the status quo and everyone got paid.  You and me excepted, of course.

Because a horse is a horse of course of course and what does that make a dumbass donkey?

Cigars and cognac all around.

Some one hundred and twenty two people die every goddamn day because they lack the insurance to pay for what is killing them and the naysayers would have us debate socialism.  Government takeover.  Bullshit.  Not just a theater but an opera house, with excellent acoustics, of the shrill and reverberating absurd.

I’m needing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Seriously.

Some tomato soup.

Mission Accomplished.  Major combat operations are at an end.  It’s all over but the shouting.

If I did my job as well as you do yours, I wouldn’t have one.  Either that or I’d be a CEO.

This health care bill, all 1990 pages of it is going to be such a charade, facade and so spectacular a bellyflop of POLITICAL PORNOGRAPHY, so profound and disgusting, that any chance of, or attempt at, meaningful reform in banking, civil rights, justice, execution and prosecution of wars, foreign entanglements, energy, food supply, federal aide, education, accountability by any bureaucracy, institution, agency, corporation or industry will be so stained and suspect and blood spattered from other more egregious crimes, that this administration, all it’s good intentions intact, will experience a serious faceplant and we will all have been complicit in climbing decades backwards.

There’s you and there’s me, rip off the mask and let’s see.

We’ll march I guess, with rotting teeth and stage four cancer and we’ll get coupons for nachos and Hostess products at the 7-11.  They’ll sell those bacon wrapped franks along the quarter mile route.  There will will be tents for the overexerted at the halfway point.

Watch your NASCAR and your World Series while the politicians dither away at your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  By the way, I was more than happy to see the Phillies hand the the Yankees their ass tonight and did you see the wrecks on Sunday at Talladega?  Nice that both Newman and Martin walked away.  But by the time both contests are actually decided, your life or death fate will most likely be determined well in advance.  If you are uninsured, it is likely you will remain uninsured.  Categorize yourself as therefore fucked.

The irony of death panels is that it’s a reality here and now.  The irony of health care rationing is that it exists and is practiced without compassion today.  The irony of socialized medicine, which we have now via Medicare and Medicaid, is that no country that enjoys it would ever give it up, us included.

There is no irony about the lies and obfuscation.  They are simply lies and and obfuscation.

The idea of single payer health care is among the most humane, compassionate and progressive notions ever implemented by modern states, governments and societies.  It is growth and progress where the human condition and even evolution are concerned.  After all, it does serve to affect the perpetuation of our species in a constructive way.  To utilize a small portion of the proceeds from our labor and largess to care for the people who are responsible for it, is a profoundly good idea from the perspectives of either the often mutually exclusive concepts of morality and commerce.

It makes fucking sense.

At least pot is legal in LA.

Drinks for my friends.

I rocked at Jeopardy tonight.  Even nailed the final Jeopardy question.  Rock of Gibraltar.

Shall we do a little politics?

First up, the alleged war between FOX and the White House.  Here’s my take:  FOX lies egregiously and irresponsibly.  Consistently.  They are shameless propagandists.    Therefore, they lose.  This President or any other has every right to neglect them, ignore them or even cast the occasional aspersion their way.  FOX is full of shit and any thinking, attentive American knows it.  It’s Obama’s prerogative.  It’s just that simple.  I kinda like that he’s dismissing them while saying he’s not losing any sleep over it.

Um, looks like the public option is alive once again.  Harry Reid says as much.  He told us yesterday he has the votes.  Turns out he probably doesn’t.  Olympia Snowe is blanching, or posturing as though she will, as I can’t imagine her blanching any more.  That bitch is pale.  Translucent.  Then there’s Lieberman.  Benedict Fliptop.  The little droopy eyed cartoon jowled prick announced he’d get behind a Republican filibuster on the public option.  You know he’s a former Democrat, now an Independent, allowed to retain his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs by virtue of tacit agreement between he and Mr. Reid that he would play ball on domestic policy.  Just so happens he’s the junior Senator from Connecticut, the finest and most luxurious mall in the country for health insurance corporations.  He’s taken over a million bucks in the last five years from the medical plutocracy.

Without even a conversation, not so much as a memo, Benedict Fliptop should be stripped of his chairmanship and barred from even caucusing with the Democrats.  This should happen yesterday.  He should be made to eat peanut butter and jelly on the steps or dine with his stinky Republican abominogs.  If possible, he should be ejected from his DC residence, have his single payer health care revoked and be issued a shopping cart, a hoodie and fingerless gloves, maybe a few cans of Sterno.  This fucker needs to understand that it’s politicians like him what cause unrest.  His own goddamn state favors a public option by some 68%.  What an asshole.

Let the asshat obstructionists filibuster if the Democrats can’t get their house in order enough to vote for cloture.  Force their hand and make them embarrass themselves and their party on C-Span.  Mr. Reid, you boxed.  You’re tough.  I know because you signed and inscribed your book for me at the respectful behest of my mother.  Bring in the cots, order pizza and throw Senate decorum out the goddamn window, at the same time throw tomatoes and rotten fruit.  Roll up your sleeves Harry, get a nurse for the elderly members.  Make the Republicans actually filibuster.  This is one one of the most important issues of our time.  Popcorn and porn for the junior members and Geritol, sponge baths and plasma for the senior ones.  Do I need to remind you that what happens here is not at your convenience but quite possibly at our abrupt financial inconvenience and physical well being?

I joke but I’m serious.  If it comes down to it and the Republicans aren’t forced onto the floor for days and weeks to read from their favorite children’s books, we will be justifiably far beyond angry.  Shame them.  Make them pay for attempting to prevent what every citizen of the richest country in history deserves.  For five fucking percent of our defense budget this would be a done deal.  Get this done.  How long did you want to be Senate majority leader anyway?  This is a cruel joke.  The debate is for and by the stupid.

If we can pay for these ridiculous wars we can pay for the health and welfare of our people and that’s right out of my mothers mouth.  The very first campaign I ever worked in was for you as Lt. Governor, I think I was seven and you were a “Goldust Twin” along with Dick Bryan.  You simply must do everything you can and give this everything you have, or I will campaign against you next year.

Let’s talk about the war.  You know, that one in Afghanistan where more of our men and women have been killed this year than any of the other seven?  The one Darth Cheney has the prunes to accuse Obama of “dithering” over.  The one he and Dumbya dithered over for seven years and ultimately bequeathed this mess of way too much technicolor that mother Cheney made for us?  Darth Cheney has my vote for most evil, most ineffective, most dishonest and most destructive President never elected in the 21st century.  The epoch is young but we should pray he prevails.

My money is on him and I can only hope it’s how history judges him and his little dog too.

I have to tell you I don’t envy our President.  He inherited a shitstorm of clusterfucks.  The electorate is flirting with disappointment.  The village folk grow restless.  The goddamn unscrupulous Republicans are pouncing on anything that moves even if it’s in the throes of death.  They’re stockpiling pitchforks and fagots (no, like torches).  I admit my own handful of discouragements.

We would do well to remember however, that a mess this size took eight long years to manufacture and the public was complicit for at least five or six.  Most of you have just woken up and are still rubbing the shit dust from your eyes.  We may not be all about a rose garden economically but the entire worldwide system is no longer staring into the mouth of the dragon and withering from it’s breath.  Jobs is what we need but jobs is always the last to appear.  It’s dicey yet, but we are closer to some modicum of meaningful healthcare reform than we have ever, ever been in an effort nearly a century old.  Troops are coming out of Iraq and he’s doing his damnedest to figure out Afghanistan.  There is legitimate effort in Gitmo and I’m not sure we’re done torturing or wiretapping but I know we’re up to far less of it these days.  He’s reaffirmed his promises to the the Gay, Lesbian and Transgender community and I believe he will follow through.

You can’t always govern with the President you’d want, you have to govern with the President you have.  I for one am still absolutely confident we picked the very best man.  There is not a doubt in my mind.

Drinks for my friends.

Did ya guess I’m furious?

Where exactly does the rub lie you ask?

I’m a little at a loss for words here.  Don’t worry, it won’t last.

Heh.

It’s just that this is so important.  In a country as wealthy as ours, health care is not a privilege, it’s a right.  Fuck me, every living being deserves it.  How embarrassing that far poorer nations are getting it?  Until we can make it available to us and for us equitably and fairly, how can we even advocate for it with a straight face for anyone else?  It’s moral and ethical and shouldn’t be political but it is and that’s just ugly.  Fucking disgusting.  The very idea that it’s being debated in our corridors of power just confounds me.  We have the money and the resources and everyone wants it.

We stood up against the Nazis and humiliated Japan.

For this most humane of causes, we battle our own.  We fight those elected by us to advance our very best ideas, interests and needs.  The fight for what we deserve is with our own alleged democracy.  They mock us by allowing it to even be a contest.  What is right is clear.  What we expect is obvious.  Why they represent us is clear.  What we want is clear and still, the outcome is in question.

You inglorious fucking bastards.

Ahem.

We’re talking about the public option amendments proposed by Chuck Schumer and J. Rockefeller today before the Senate Finance Committee in the precipitously spectator friendly fight for health care reform.  Note to elected reps, you’re being watched.

Okay, I understand this is the first authentic punch in this fight.  I’m well aware that it was meant to be ceremonial; a shot across the bow if you will.  Schumer and Rockefeller admitted as much.  Both amendments pretty much went down in flames.  The reckonings were 15 opposed to 8 and 13 opposed to 10.  Chuck was all smiles for the post game, saying that they did better than he’d anticipated and momentum is building.  I’m a little lukewarm on Schumer but I admit to having a soft spot for him.  His assessment is likely more cogent and certainly better informed than mine.

Pisses me off when he defends Baucus though.  Shumer wishes they weren’t running those ads.  Buacus is a pawn and an officious prick.  He deserves it and we’ll be talking about it here in a minute.

Here’s what chaps my ass.  Max, four million bucks in campaign contributions from big pharma and big insurance, Baucus.  After a suspiciously protracted process of negotiation, Baucus puked up a bill so lame, so transparently in favor of not just maintaining the status quo but adding bulkhead after bulkhead to protect and enrich insurance companies at the expense of the common American,  I’m simply in awe anyone in what was once the world’s greatest deliberative body can pretend to take him seriously.

I harbor dark oozing contempt for this man.

Let me give you an example.  His bill mandates that every American, regardless of income level, purchase health insurance.  Any American citizen who does not not purchase health insurance would be subject to a fine.  Either way, whether an individual buys in or not, monies for premiums or penalties for not buying in, go directly to health insurance corporations.  No reach around, just straight up cash.  All it does is give access to the money of the forty or fifty million uninsured to the insurance industry they haven’t otherwise been able to get their hands on.  Needless to say, without a public option to foment reasonable competition for rates and service, his bill is nothing less than a totalitarian dictate to further enrich an industry that has been ripping off the average American for decades.

Max Baucus really sucks.

Max tells us today on national television that his job is to deliver a bill that will garner sixty votes on the floor of the Senate.  Bullshit.  Where is that written?  Where does it say that his job as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is to do anything but deliver a fair and equitable bill in the best interest of his constituents and as committee chair, a bill that reflects the will of 65% of the American people?  Just what is with this sixty fucking votes thing?  It’s absurd.  It takes fifty one votes to pass a bill.  Sixty votes guarantees cloture and therefore prevents filibuster.  But it only takes fifty one votes to pass a goddamn bill and there are sixty of you spineless bastards.

The Democrats are so terrified of fillibuster they won’t bust a move without being able to prevent it?  So what?  Make the filthy Republicans actually filibuster.  Bring some sandwiches a cot and a laptop loaded with porn.  Have your aides set up a tent if you need to spank it.  Pretend you’re at the DMV.  Outlast them if it’s something you believe in and it’s the right thing for the American people.  You ARE the majority you know.  This is a walk in the park.

Why, why, why do the Democrats insist on being such pussies?  I’ll tell you why.  Because so many of them just as shamelessly beholding to the same forces as Baucus.

Procedurally, if Democrats stand together, they have enough votes to prevent filibuster on specific amendments.  What is the goddamn problem?  This is doable.  We have a majority in congress because the people have spoken.  65% of Americans favor a public option.  Between the congressional majority and the overwhelming majority on the part of the electorate, we have what I like to think of as a motherfucking mandate.

Fer fuck’s sake, do the math you retards.

It’s no secret that during the last decade profits have rocketed towards what Baucus and friends intend to be an apogee, while service, care and the number meaningfully insured has cratered below sea level.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely and dickheads like Baucus don’t give a mad fuck about being re-elected because his next gig will be with the very cabal of ruthless, greedy swine he’s now representing instead of the interests of the people who elected him.  The same can be and is said by me for Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper.  Spineless, greedy sycophants all of them.

Cowardly inchoate vaginas that are looking forward the next cush gig.  Man, I hate these guys.

There is nothing wrong with prostitution as far I’m concerned.  It’s a contract, a transaction between two consenting parties.  You want to fuck for money?  Have at it.  Baucus however, is a filthy, disease ridden whore.  His entire reason is to let someone else screw you without your consent and get paid by them and you simultaneously.  He wouldn’t do it if it hadn’t worked so far.  How’s that make you feel?

Sucker.

He thinks you’re stupid.  He underestimates you.

Maybe.

Sucker.

Like I said in my last blog, shave a few points off defense spending, end the reprehensible, ineffective and exorbitant War On Drugs  and we’ll be swimming in cash.  Health care will be an “oh yeah, let’s do that” kinda type a deal.  Free cable and comic books for everyone.  The return of $4.99 buffets and all you can eat breakfasts.  We’ve got plenty of money, we’re just really stupid.

Sucker.

And for the record, fuck Roman Polanski.  He gave drugs and alcohol to a thirteen year old girl and raped her.  If I believed in hell, I’d advocate for him to roast on a spit there.  Guess I’ll have to settle for throwing the prick bastard in prison, introducing him to Big Jim Slade and tossing the key.

If more Americans believe in UFOs than oppose a public option, where does that leave me?

Drinks for my friends.