First Door on the Left

The United States Senate will pass their version of health care reform as the sun rises on Washington, D.C. tomorrow morning…

Health-care bill clears last Senate hurdle before passage

Overcoming a final procedural hurdle, Senate Democrats cleared the way for Christmas Eve passage of a landmark health-care bill that would provide coverage to more than 30 million people and begin a far-reaching overhaul of Medicare and the private insurance market.

Senate Democrats turned back the third and final Republican filibuster of the $871 billion package on a 60-39 vote that came late Wednesday afternoon. Lawmakers are scheduled to return to the Capitol at 7 a.m. Thursday morning for one last roll call to pass the bill…

Republicans fought the Senate bill with every parliamentary weapon they could muster, raising a series of motions on Wednesday afternoon that all failed along party lines, and the rhetoric grew more harsh as the afternoon wore on. After the Wednesday votes, Democrats sought an agreement to move up the final vote to Wednesday night, to aid lawmakers and staff trying to to beat a Midwestern snowstorm. GOP senators refused the deal.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

You kind of have to give our Republicans credit, though. They stuck together in their fight to deny Americans health care (and protect the mansions, limousines and private jets of the insurance company executives) right to the bitter end.

President Obama sat down for an interview the The Washington Post in the Oval Office earlier today. He told the interviewer that there is no difference in the health care plan that the Senate is about to pass and the health care plan upon which he campaigned, adding “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”

Obama rejects criticism on health-care reform legislation

President Obama rejected in an interview Tuesday the criticism that he has compromised too much in order to secure health-care reform legislation, challenging his critics to identify any “gap” between what he campaigned on last year and what Congress is on the verge of passing.

“Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill,” Obama said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post about his legislative record this year. “Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”

Actually, that is not quite true.

The following is from an article published in The New York Times on May 29, 2007…

Obama Offers Health Care Plan

IOWA CITY, Iowa, May 29 — Senator Barack Obama proposed a major overhaul of the nation’s health care system today, aimed at covering the nearly 45 million uninsured Americans, reducing premium costs for everyone else, and breaking what he asserted was “the stranglehold” that the biggest drug and insurance companies have on the health care market…

Mr. Obama would create a new public plan open to individuals who cannot get group coverage through work or the existing government programs, like Medicaid or the State Childrens Health Insurance Program. He would also create a National Health Insurance Exchange, a regulated marketplace of competing private health plans that would aim at “reforming” the private insurance market and giving individuals other, more affordable options for coverage.

Then there is this screenshot taken just a few moments ago from a page on the White House website entitled “The Obama Plan: Stability & Security For All Americans.”

There is no public option in the health care reform bill that will be passed in the United States Senate this coming Thursday morning. One does exist in the House bill, but it is highly doubtful that it will survive conference (the merging of the two bills into one that will be presented to the President for his signature).

The health care reform bill that will eventually emerge from conference, though it will likely not be all we might have hoped for, will be a vast improvement over the health care system we currently have in this country. Still in all, this is probably not the best time to be making statements that are so easily shown not to be accurate. That is best left to the Republicans. They have, after all, perfected it into an art form.
 

As you may have heard, the Democrats defeated the Republican filibuster on health care reform in the Senate very early this morning. It wasn’t pretty, but a win is a win (or so they say). The Republicans, of course, immediately started throwing the temper tantrums for which they have become famous. Here’s the king of the tantrum throwers himself, ‘President’ Johnny McCain, on ABC’s Good Morning America this morning…

Pretty good at making up numbers and cute names, isn’t he?

It never ceases to amaze me how selective the memories of the Republicans can be. They remember only what they want to remember, it seems. I would call their attention to a couple of previous posts in this very blog from 2003, here and here. Of course, Johnny doesn’t recall any of that stuff happening, just like he conveniently forgot about the time he objected to another Senator having a few extra moments to finish what he was saying.

Get some sleep, Johnny. Your dementia is showing.

Our Republicans are a boatload of fun, aren’t they?
 

A dubious honor at best:

PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘Death panels’

Liar of the Year

Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

“Death panels.”

The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn’t made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.

Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, “Death panels? Really?”

The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural “Lie of the Year.”

Sarah finally has something of which she can be proud (I guess). I usually don’t pay much attention to Mrs. Palin unless it’s to poke fun or to shake my head in amazement that so many people do pay attention to her, but I found this report amusing. And factual. And not too surprising. And honorific. I mean, come on, of all the lies told by the conservatives this year, you must admit that to have your lie chosen as the “Lie of the Year” really is quite an honor. Way to go, Sarah!

P.S. While browsing the webs a bit earlier today, I happened upon this photograph. It was labeled “Sarah Palin’s new campaign slogan.”

Priceless.
 

Dr. Howard Dean (medical doctor, former governor of Vermont, former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee) was interviewed by David Gregory on this mornings Meet the Press. The talked about the health care bill that is about to be passed in the United States Senate…

Me, personally? I think we should be listening to Dr. Dean. The health care bill as currently constituted in the Senate is, in the long run, going to do much more harm than good. I’m holding out hope (though that hope is fading more by the day) that it can be repaired in conference with the House of Representatives. As things stand now, though, bare-knuckled partisanship and lobbyist dollars have won out over the welfare of the American citizenry.

(Full transcript of today’s Meet the Press available here. David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama, appeared to speak in favor of the Senate bill.)
 

From the White House weblog:

The President looks back to the bipartisan Patient’s Bill of Rights, a bill that was defeated in Congress at the hands of special interests and their supporters, and notes that health insurance reform covers the same ground and much more in terms of giving the consumers the upper hand over their insurance companies. He calls on the Senate to allow an up-or-down vote, and for those opposing reform to stop using parliamentary maneuvers to drag it out.

Click below to listen to the audio only:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The transcript of the president’s weekly address, as prepared for delivery, is available after the break.

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Each and every Friday evening for some time now we have been bringing you the best and brightest editorial and political cartoons published during the week just ending. Here is this week’s crop. Always remember that your mileage may vary. Click on the thumbnails to make them bigger or to start a slide show. Enjoy!

As always, our thanks go to the talented and observant cartoonists who, each week, help us smile through the pain.
 

Al Franken is the Junior Senator from the state of Minnesota. He has been on the job for going on six months. Joe Lieberman and Johnny McCain have been in the Senate since dirt was invented. Watch as Franken makes complete asses of the two senior senators on the floor of the Senate yesterday…

As you watch Johnny McCain throw his little temper tantrum, keep in mind that he is the man that, had the Republicans had their way, would now be the President of the United States of America (with Sarah Palin at his side). It may also be worth remembering that Johnny and Joey are BFFs.

P.S. I would be remiss if I did not share with you Fox Snooze’s reaction to the above incident. It’s quite hilarious…

UPDATE: See “Flashback: McCain Refused To Grant 30 Seconds Of Time During Iraq War Debate.” Yesterday Senator McCain stated “I’ve been around here 20-some years. First time I’ve ever seen a member denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks… I just haven’t seen it before myself.” Is dementia setting in? Will these clowns at Fox Snooze now be fired, since they seem either incapable of or disinterested in doing a few minutes’ research?

UPDATE #2: Senator Franken was simply following orders from the Senate leadership to keep all speeches to their ten minute limit. Will an apology be forthcoming from Senator McCain for his offensive and partisan attack on a fellow Senator?

UPDATE #3: The following video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Dec. 21, 2009.

It happens every year just about this time. The “religious” right wing extremists start howling about how they are persecuted.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good persecution story.

Making the story more compelling, the boy’s father held court for much of the day at his girlfriend’s apartment, granting interviews to reporters from Providence to Boston, demanding that the school district compensate him for his family’s pain and suffering.

“It hurts me that they did this to my kid,” Chester Johnson, the boy’s father, said in an interview with the Globe. “They can’t mess with our religion. They owe us a small lump sum for this.”

A small lump sum?

Priceless.
 

Howard Dean explains why the Lieberman Health Care Bill should be killed in the Senate:

I’m with Dr. Dean on this. Those who are now crying that “something is better than nothing” are simply wrong. It isn’t. The health care bill that is headed for passage in the Senate is not the health care reform that is so badly needed in the United States. And the idea that it will be another 20 years before reform is again considered if this does not pass is ridiculous. We are in a health care crisis in this country. The status quo simply will not survive for another 20 years.

Insurance company executives and their lackeys in the United States Congress (on both sides of the aisle) have held this country hostage long enough. Please call your Senators and Representatives today and let them know that you support real health care reform in the United States. Tell them that your family is more important to you than the mansions in which the insurance company executives live and the Bentleys in which they are chauffeured. (You may also want to call the White House while you’re at it.)

The following video is from ABC’s Good Morning America, broadcast Dec. 16, 2009.

Enough is enough. We have been fighting for health care reform for over six decades now. The notion that we need to roll over and accept whatever scraps the insurance companies and their congressional lackeys are willing to throw in our direction is simply ludicrous.

UPDATE: “Health-care bill wouldn’t bring real reform.” (Washington Post op-ed column by Dr. Howard Dean.)

I know health reform when I see it, and there isn’t much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America.

And the final nail in the lid of the coffin…