Rule #1: Do not wear your teabag hat out in the rain.
John Avlon, author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, writes of a scary new Harris poll that says volumes about the level of political literacy in this country. If this is to be believed, it’s appalling stuff.
67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”
38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did”
Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”
Considering all of the ridiculous hyperbole from the Right—have any of you been watching Fox News?—David Frum, former speechwriter to President George W. Bush is the one character on either side who really nailed the political significance of what happened on Sunday: The Republican Party is toast!
Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.
It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. [...]
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. [...]
So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.
Here are ten benefits which come online within six months of the President’s signature on the health care bill:
1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can’t lose your insurance because you get sick.
Effective short film from Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films (who I know through my days at Disinformation, of course) that exposes the evil, predatory practices of the very insurance company where I have my own individual policy, Anthem Blue Cross of California. Each month I pay an exorbitant fee—which is about to be nearly doubled—and I’ve not been in the hospital since I was born. And it doesn’t cover anything, not even name brand prescriptions! I plan to switch over to Kaiser-Permanante as soon as possible. I hate Anthem Blue Cross. It’s run by a bunch of vile assholes.
If there was an American Idol for total assholism, the guy in this clip—you won’t wonder who I’m talking about, either—would be the unanimous winner. By national acclaim. A round of applause for the biggest fuckwit in America, please!
Hell, Chris Matthews even got Republican Mike Spence to admit this guy/these people is/are “despicable.” This is pretty much as low as it goes. Watch as this idiot literally starts throwing dollar bills at a man with Parkinson’s disease who is pro-health care reform. This turned my stomach in a way that not one lousy clip of the wingnuts and morons at the McCain/Palin rallies in 2008 could. This man (and the rest of these low IQ tea partying meanies) is a vile piece of shit. You have to wonder what went through his tiny mind (pride?) when he saw himself on television last night.
If that man can somehow be identified—anyone in Columbus, Ohio recognize him?—he should be fucked with mercilessly (identity theft would be a nice start). If there is a God, he’s not on this man’s side. Karma’s a bitch, shithead. I can’t wait until it comes back to bite your dumb ass…
But there is actually some good that comes out of incident like this, something that is so repulsive and mean and just… dumb: Eventually the public looks at creeps like him, especially younger people, and it turns them right off to anything the Republican Party have to say to them. Forever. GOPers, tea partying ignoramuses, your days are numbered. You are the past, not the future, of America. The demographic tide will bury you and there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing at all. Good riddance. Fuck off. America doesn’t need you.
A UCLA study finds a jump in 2009 to 8.2 million adults and children from 6.4 million in 2007 stemming largely from job cuts and the loss of employer-sponsored coverage amid the recession. 1 in 4 people do not have health insurance in the richest and most populous state in the country? This is simply astonishing news and yet there are still people who doubt the need for universal health care? It pains me that people really exist who are so mean and so cheap they’d deny their fellow man a life free from worries that they’ll go bankrupt or become homeless as they go through chemo. It’s sick. It could be them next time! Do these idiots not realize this?
People who were uninsured for part or all of 2009 accounted for 24.3% of California’s population under age 65—a dramatic increase from 2007 driven largely by Californians who lost employer-sponsored health insurance, particularly over the last year.
Among those over age 18, nearly 1 in 3 had no insurance for all or part of 2009, the UCLA researchers found. The ranks of uninsured children also grew.
First there is Vernon Robinson for Congress. This is just fuckin’ terrible. He’s really trolling after the low IQ voters, isn’t he?
And then there is this one, for Diane Benson from Alaska. I think the message here is supposed to be “She’s got experience cleaning up messes” (and of course “She loves dogs!”) but they don’t really spell that out all that well and the ad goes from being merely ineffectual to actually being confusing for the viewer. Ultimately it gets no point across whatsoever.
The same cannot be said about the video below…
The problem I have with this one is simply that it doesn’t have the courage of its convictions. If he’d had the balls to portray the evil, grinning Wall Street magnate actually pissing on the little people, this man would be in office now (or at the very least have made a guest appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live after a fleeting YouTube viral video success).
And then there is this one where the old guy forgot to take his meds, then throws a rock in the lake. What’s he supposed to be running for???
This is the second major strike this week. All news broadcasts and public services—including schools and all public transportation—were canceled and even the police and fireman—who cannot strike—let it be known that their sympathies were with the people. Additionally there was a huge protest last Friday that involved tear gas and a lot of property destruction. Keep it up, Greece!
The strike grounded all flights and brought public transport to a halt. State hospitals were left with emergency staff only and all news broadcasts were suspended as workers walked off the job for 24 hours to protest spending cuts and tax hikes designed to tackle the country’s debt crisis.
Riot police fired tear gas to disperse rock-throwing protesters at one point of the demonstration as more than 10,000 strikers and protesters marched through central Athens, banging drums and chanting slogans such as “no sacrifice for plutocracy,” and “real jobs, higher pay.” People draped banners from apartment buildings reading: “No more sacrifices, war against war.”
The demonstrators included a group of about 100 youths wearing crash helmets and ski masks, some of whom smashed windows of a department store and bank, and sprayed riot police with brown paint. Shopkeepers along the demonstration route scrambled to roll down their shutters, while a few blocks away, people sat at outdoor restaurants, continuing their meals.
