Conservatives Long for “The Good Old Days†– What were those good old days without government interference when we had those freedoms the Constitution promised us and before the government took them away?….Let me think — (as nostalgic harp music plays):
Why can’t we go back to the time when we just let banks fail and people lost their money without these bailouts and FDIC insurance? What about those happy days when we could employ 10- and 11-year-olds in our sweat shops, before those child labor laws? Or stop or bust labor unions without those pesky labor laws? How about the time when you could take advantage of employees before the minimum wage laws spoiled it? Remember those good old days when old people couldn’t buy food or pay their rent without Social Security or could not get health care without Medicare?
Or when poor people starved without welfare and couldn’t get health care without Medicaid? And what about the greatness of G.I.’s coming home from the wars, many of them wounded, who couldn’t get a college education, and now that damn government comes along with this G.I. Bill. And how about guns. 30,000 people could get killed every year and 70,000 wounded and we could have automatic weapons. Oh, wait a minute. We still have that. Forget that.
Remember when unemployed people would have to shift for themselves and just get a job, before unemployment benefits came along. Remember when we could keep “those people” out of our neighborhoods, clubs, restaurants, and jobs and discriminate against women before those damn civil rights laws were enacted. We could get lung cancer from cigarettes, take defective drugs and eat poisoned food before that meddling FDA began telling us what was good and what was bad for us.
And now we want everyone to have health care. They want their America back! (Who needs death panels when we can kill people the good old ways: capital punishment and war?)
In Move to Appease Critics, Obama Promises to Extend Health Care Coverage to Morons 😉 – Facing opposition to his health care reform proposals, President Barack Obama has decided to reach out to a key demographic: morons.
Starting this week, Mr. Obama will host a series of town halls to roll out new features of his health care plan which will extend health care coverage to “all idiotic Americans,” in the words of one White House source.
“We clearly underestimated the role that doofuses and dimwits were going to play in this debate,” the source said. “We want to send them the message that this plan will give them coverage — but we need to come up with a one-syllable word for ‘coverage.'”
But critics of the president’s new plan worry that extending coverage to every American who is a few bricks shy of a load could triple the size of the nation’s deficit.
“The sheer number of lamebrains in the U.S. is much greater than the administration estimates,” says Davis Logsdon, who studies the demography of idiots at the University of Minnesota. “Just look at Glenn Beck’s ratings.”
News Over-Hypes the Differences on Health-Care Reform – Despite all the debate and protesting being featured in the news, there is actually broad agreement about 85 percent of what’s being proposed for health care reform.
Here are the things that, broadly speaking, legislators agree about:
- Insurance market reforms, including community rating, guaranteed issue, an end to rescission, an end to discrimination based on preexisting conditions, and an individual mandate.
- Subsidies for low-income Americans.
- Delivery system reforms.
- Health insurance exchanges.
- An expansion of coverage to about 95 percent of legal residents.
- Prevention and wellness policies.
- Retaining and strengthening the employer-based insurance market.
- Creating some kind of incentive for employers to offer, and keep offering, health benefits.
- Expanding Medicaid to about 133 percent of poverty.
Here are the things that legislators disagree about, but are discussing, and will probably figure out:
- Whether subsidies should reach 300 percent of poverty or 400 percent.
- Whether there should be an employer mandate or something milder.
- Whether medium-size employers should be eligible to enroll in the health insurance exchanges.
- Whether health reform should cost $1 trillion over 10 years or $1.4 trillion over 10 years.
- Whether it should be paid for through new taxes on the wealthy or a change to existing tax subsidies in the health-care system.
Here are the things legislators don’t agree about:
- Whether we should have a public option that is open only to the minority of Americans on the exchanges or a co-op option.
- How to handle abortion.
- How to handle geographic disparities in insurance costs.
Dancing Behind Bars – Some may be surprised that Tom DeLay will be doing the two-step this season on Dancing with the Stars. Not us. DeLay has demonstrated quite a bit of fancy footwork over the years avoiding jail time. Here are some of the DeLay’s political moves that Dancing With the Stars audiences may not be familiar with:
Cha Cha Cha Ching – DeLay laundered at least $190,000 in corporate funds through the Republican National Committee to spend on Texas Republican House cronies like State Rep. Dwayne Bohac (R-138). (Source: Austin American-Statesman, September 1, 2008)
Tango and Cash – DeLay paid his wife Christine and daughter Dani Ferro $350,000 from his various campaign accounts. (Source: The Houston Chronicle, May 10, 2007)
Hammer Hustle – DeLay convinced imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff to pay for a golf trip to Europe. (Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 26, 2007)
Backroom Jitterbug – DeLay convened Energy Lobbyists to help write energy legislation that “would allow the costs of deregulation of electricity to be passed on to their customers.†In exchange, DeLay received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from the lobbyists. (Source: Texas Monthly, May 2006)
Redistricting Rumba – DeLay forced through a mid-decade Texas congressional redistricting plan that robbed our state of nearly 100 years of seniority and three powerful committee chairmanships, leaving Texas with arguably the weakest large state Congressional delegation in the country. (Source: Austin American-Statesman June 28, 2007)
Beltway Boogie – After he was indicted and faced the possibility of losing re-election in a safe Republican seat, DeLay cowardly abandoned his constituents and fled the State of Texas for the suburbs of Washington, D.C. (Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 20, 2006)
Military Institutes New ‘Don’t Tell, Let Me Guess’ Policy (More humor, we need it.) – WASHINGTON—Pentagon officials announced Tuesday a new policy toward homosexuals in the armed services, the so-called “Don’t Tell, Let Me Guess” system, which gives Pentagon brass the opportunity to state their opinion on a soldier’s sexual orientation, provided it’s followed by the phrase “Am I right?” “These new guidelines allow homosexuals to serve in the armed forces, as long as they don’t show any outward traits that would tip us off and ruin all the fun of guessing,” said Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who purports to have “excellent” gaydar. … Pentagon officials said soldiers who are correctly guessed to be homosexual will face immediate dishonorable discharge, unless they can prove they have killed at least 10 enemy combatants in a particularly brutal fashion. 😉
Dirty Energy Astroturf Rally in Houston – Last week we learned just how low dirty energy interests will go to block clean energy legislation. Greenpeace USA obtained a leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute (API) that details plans to launch a national astroturf campaign to stage “Energy Citizen” rallies and attack clean energy legislation at staged public events.
So, on Tuesday, August 18 (tomorrow) Public Citizen and 1Sky will work together to show the public the difference between a real campaign and corrupt astroturfing by hold a counter-rally outside the Houston, TX “townhall”!
Regards,
Jim
Andy Hailey