Recent Updates in Senate Healthcare Arguments

Senate healthcare debate stalls on drug reimportation amendment.

The New York Times (12/11, A31, Pear) reports, "Debating an overhaul of the healthcare system, the Senate found itself tied in knots on Thursday over a bipartisan proposal to allow people to import lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada and certain other countries." According to the Times, Senate Democratic leaders delayed the vote on Sen. Byron Dorgan's (D-ND) amendment, "in part because they feared that the proposal would be approved, potentially blowing apart a deal negotiated by the White House and the pharmaceutical industry."

The Washington Times (12/11, Haberkorn) also notes that Senate debate on the healthcare bill "ground to a halt" due to the amendment. "Some Democratic senators are fighting [Dorgan's amendment] as they, the Obama Administration, and drug companies say the safety of foreign-made drugs can't be verified." However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "tried to set up a vote on the amendment late Thursday, but Republicans objected, saying they had only just seen the 100-page proposal."

FOX News (12/11, Turner) further calls the healthcare reform drive "in a holding pattern" due to the controversy over the reimportation amendment, adding that "Dorgan, incensed by the block, told reporters he is prepared to hold up any action on healthcare reform over the matter."

The Los Angeles Times (12/11, Hook, Hamburger) calls the proposal "seemingly popular," leaving "Democrats divided over whether they should bow to the drug industry's fierce opposition." Support from the industry "is considered a key to passage," according to the Times, and during earlier negotiations with drugmakers, "it was widely believed that the industry would oppose the bill if such an amendment were included."

According to The Hill (12/11, Young, subscription required), "Tension between the White House and Democratic supporters of the so-called drug reimportation amendment is primarily behind the delay, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Thursday."

After the vote was put off earlier in the day, Bloomberg News (12/11, Jensen, Litvan) reports that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a supporter of the amendment, "accused Democrats of pandering to the pharmaceutical industry," saying, "If it passes, as it should, and allows drugs to be imported into this country, it breaks the agreement that the White House made."

CongressDaily (12/11, Edney, subscription required) notes that Democratic Sens. Thomas Carper (DE), Robert Menendez (NJ), and Frank Lautenberg (NJ) also have objections to the amendment. Still, "Dorgan said he expects to have the votes to pass his amendment." McClatchy (12/11) also covers the story.

Feedin' Da Beast: Reform Healthcare or Bust

The provincial choo-choo train has quickly morphed into a Bullet Monorail from here to eternity.
Hurry, hurry...come see Dr. Somnambula...his Oil Elixir of Change is new and unique. It will make the tall short, the short tall, the loud silent, the silent loud, the ugly beautiful and the beautiful feel awful. That is the claim. I think it will make the strong weak and the rich poor and the poor ... they will just continue to be poor...but somehow feel better. It's all for one and none for all...of us.
Another boondoggle 2000+ page monstrosity of something from the Twilight Zone of comprehension. Packed with stuff for those whose "need" exceeds there grasp. How benevolent of our fine elected officials to take care of us. We the children of our loving Uncle Sam.
If we were all sitting around the campfire...oops...forgot...global warming, toxic release, tree killing...If we were all sitting around the free-range bioluminescent glow candle and had to agree on the most efficient delivery system for something, on what would we agree???? Hmmmm???
I know... FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY !!!!
Don't know what took "us" so long. Federal (central) Government has historically been the most efficient and creative implementation, administration system. Oh God Help Us! Ooops again...
my bad... I mean Oh non-specific, undefined cosmic deity or otherwise Big Arbiter of all things earthly or semi-human....help!!!
When has a government created a bureaucracy that did not become bloated and inefficient (if it was EVER efficient). Since when did a government bureaucracy not serve those in the bureaucracy more so than the citizens meant to serve? With all the levels of power, prestige, authority, favoritism and power-brokerage...but this will be different! Right??? Somehow we are to believe (with our little child's eyes wide open not really "seeing" when the actor dons the beard and places the scarlet cap on his head and turns to us to exclaim to our delight..."HO,HO,HO") that this latest "gift" will be different. Different because the "players" are somehow "different". Somehow they are under a magical spell that has everybody on the "good" side acting in "our" best interest...with no more greed, avarice or stupidity. No more mega-ego trips and puffed up image of self as King or QUEEN. Different because we now know, more certainly than ever, that the "free market/free enterprise" system, that actually created this country and provided the inspiration and means for growing it, does not work. NOPE!!! It has just been a total failure. And NOW, only now, our benevolent, beneficent and omniscient FEDERAL GOVERNMENT will finally step in (long, long awaited) and straighten out this mess we free citizens, free marketers, free enterprise believing individuals have created. Well thank the Non-Specific, Un-Defined deity of your choice now folks cause we are finally SAVED!!!
It's like our FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has had no part in "free enterprise" until now. Like our Congress never created rules, regulations and laws and "guidelines" to "HELP" us along our way so things would be better and fairer and "more nicer"... GIMMEE A BREAK!!!!!
Let me be clear ... Changes need to be made in our healthcare delivery system, our health insurance system and our reliance on OUR government to give us everything we "need". The debate has begun. Great! Now let the Citizens and Private Enterprise work it out. Oh, no worry, the threat of our Government running the show should provide added stimulus and impetus needed to move it along. If not...we'll all have our Fed ID card and I'll see you in line.
gotta go now... boojang runnin' wild... gotta be reined in.................

Does Anybody See the Emporer's New Clothes?

I clipped the below article from Ann Coulter, an avowed Right-Wing commentator/author person who, in my opinion, is very anti-left. I don't endorse all of her ideas and believe that she usually has the same "I hate everything any Democrat says" mentality (which I believe is just as ignorant as any Democrat who thinks the "I hate anything any Conservative says" is ok). However, she does bring to light, although she is not the only one pointing out that some high profile media personalities jump on every word Palin utters and completely ignore the troublesome "void of reality" comments made by "I can't keep my mouth shut" Biden, how biased some in the media are toward the Obama ticket. When Hillary made her famous "I was under attack when our plane landed in Iraq" comment she was ripped by everyone. Biden says he was under sniper fire on his visit (a similarly fabricated reality) and I don't hear a word. Just treat them the same way...which will not happen....It isn't necessarily Biden's ridiculous comments that bother me...it's the lopsided media coverage that I react to so negatively. If Palin can't tell you the size of Neil Armstrong's moon boot she is portrayed as an Alaskan Buffoon...Biden thinks FDR addressed the nation on TV during the 1929 Great Market Crash and he is a sensitive and brilliant savior.... It's the media that runs this country now...If a citizen doesn't spend the time to research everything on multiple information platforms then they only know what they are told...whether it's Fox or MSNBC or Michael Moore...very scarey... So let's you and I keep digging and talking with each other...maybe we'll be the only ones to notice that the Emporer is Butt-Naked.....
...gotta fly...the 'jang is rumbling........

Here is the clipped [partial] article from Coulter:
While Gov. Sarah Palin is being grilled on her position on mark-to-market accounting rules, the press can't bother to ask Joe Biden if he could give us a ballpark estimate on when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president -- or maybe take a stab at guessing the decade when televisions were first available to the public.
Being interviewed by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Biden said: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"
For those of you who aren't hard-core history buffs, Biden not only named the wrong president during the 1929 stock market crash, he also claimed a president who wasn't president during the stock market crash went on TV before Americans had TVs.
Other than that, the statement holds up pretty well. At least Biden managed to avoid mentioning any "clean" Negroes he had met.
Couric was nearly moved to tears by the brilliance of Biden's brain-damaged remark. She was especially intrigued by Biden's claim that FDR had said the new iPhone was the bomb!
Here is Couric's full response to Biden's bizarre outburst about FDR (a) being president and (b) going on TV in 1929: "Relating to the fears of the average American is one of Biden's strong suits."
But when our beauteous Sarah said that John McCain was a better leader on the economy than Barack Obama, Couric relentlessly badgered her for evidence. "Why do you say that?" Couric demanded. "Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama? ... Can you give us any more examples of his leading the charge for more oversight?"
The beauteous Sarah had cited McCain's prescient warnings about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Couric, the crackerjack journalist who didn't know FDR wasn't president in 1929, demanded more examples from Palin.
We are currently in the middle of a massive financial crisis brought on by Fannie Mae. McCain was right on Fannie Mae; Obama was wrong. That's not enough?
Not for the affable Eva Braun of evening TV! "I'm just going to ask you one more time," Couric snipped, "not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?"
This would be like responding to someone who predicted the 9/11 attacks by saying: OK, you got one thing right. Not to belabor the point, but what else?
Obama was not merely wrong on Fannie Mae: He is owned by Fannie Mae. Somehow Obama managed to become the second biggest all-time recipient of Fannie Mae political money after only three years in the Senate. The biggest beneficiary, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, had a 30-year head start on receiving loot from Fannie Mae -- the government-backed institution behind our current crisis.

Apparently the Community ReInvestment Act cited was altered in 1975 (i believe) when then prez Clinton directed his Sec of Treasury Reich to make it easier for peeps to qualify for mortgage loans. Sadly, although many (including GWBush) raised or claim to have raised warning flags since 2003 concerning the direction of the mortgage lending market, nothing was done, any efforts were seemingly met with the evil eye...."you just don't want poor people to have a house". Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are among those that appear to have had their hands on the wheel...(see video on You Tube 2004 session Democrats Defend Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac from Regulations) but there are plenty of helpers and those who stood silent or had their pockets open receiving money from the mortgage industry. They should, Democrat and Republican, fired and fined. Now we have to clean up the mess. I am not wholly in favor of this "free lunch" bailout. I am, however, a bit nervous like most people since I don't know the extent of the fallout. I do not expect that the government will bail me out if I cannot meet any of my debt obligations. I'm not in the correct socio-economic strata...yet.... Consider for a moment the social engineering involved in having the government, through regulation/deregulation of lending institutions and legislation like the Community ReInvestment Act and more, put every American (citizen or not) into a home...whether or not he/she can afford that home. While declaring that this financial activity is "private enterprise" and simply execution of capitalism (freddie mac and fannie mae), the truth is sadly revealed when the GOVERNMENT jumps in to "save" these "private" financial institutions from themselves and their ignorant, greed-soaked decisions by buying up/guaranteeing all this "bad paper",
with TAXPAYER money. And it appears that, at least, some of the lenders who resisted freeing up funds to the "sub-prime" market may have been tagged as prejudiced and/or discriminatory and "pressed" to join in the movement...be "patriotic"... or else suffer exposure to the media as being EVIL, MONEY-GRUBBING ELITIST.
Plenty of hands in the cookie jar on this one....OUR cookie jar. Not many choc chips left.
Fear not...the sun will rise in a little while...things always look better in the sunlight.

E-mail to Daughter

[I have a very intelligent, very talented, highly educated adult daughter steering her ship through the current storm taking place in OUR country. She wants dialogue. She is trying to separate fact from fiction (Ooooo...that's a tough one when it comes to our politicians). But the great thing is that she wants a dialogue and she is trying not to swallow the Kool-Aid of either camp.]

In the past 8 months or so I have received many emails from friends forwarding Obama and some McCain stories, supposedly factual. In almost all of the Obama cases the stories were not accurate or completely false. After getting bunches of these I started emailing back to tell the friend that I had discovered that the story was false. Then I started suggesting that, at the least, they run the story through Snopes (although not 100% accurate it is a pretty good source...and easily accessible) before spreading it around. I also told them that although I was not voting for Obama it was/is not because of his color or because of this misinformation...it is for other reasons.

There is so much misinformation being spread about all of the candidates how can citizens tell what is true and what is bull. It can take a lot of time. Also, human nature is to more easily accept as fact those things which tend to support our own bias (conscious or subconscious). This is the way it is for most people and we often times go through our lives daily without really recognizing this. Of course, I am no different than you on this. I do feel that I, unfortunately, tend to be in the annoying position of seeing both sides of many arguments, situations, conflicts. In some cases, like with the Obama misinformation, people mistakenly think that I am for a particular thing when I argue some point which seems to support it. As with Obama....I am not FOR Obama... I am against all of the BS "facts" (Oh...there is that "fact" thing you spoke of) that fly around the internet and are all too readily accepted as gospel by those who happen to already have a bias for or against whatever it is.... It is just accepted.... I don't care who the misinformation is about... Several months ago this was bothering me so much I wrote about it on my blog. I have not written anything is a couple of months.
So...Butt-Faced Muffin... I am passionate about defending people....whomever.... Obama, Palin, McCain and Biden (not that much about Biden...something strange about him... but mucho experience in Washington)...
I gonna watch to Sicko flick.... I also gonna be pulling some info from different sources for other issues...where possible I will cite sources....this means I not gonna be having time for some other things....oh well.....I will still have to make time to work...
all for now... I try to remember what the Holacaust survivor told me in 1975 while we were in a poetry writing class at C of C....she said that as a child in Germany she had learned
"believe half of what you see and none of what you hear".
interesting philosphy....from one who witnessed a government perfect the propaganda/misinformation machine to subvert citizens' sense of compassion and destroy others.
Whoa.....I better stop now..... OK...... we will pick this up again.... for now... I happy you are interested in what is happening in your country....
old but not completely irrelevant..........................................."farty"

[gotta go now... no head-ache but I gotta go do my "patriotic" duty (as Joe Biden says) and go to work so I can gen some tax revenue for my government to distribute to those who surely need it more than I. So when the Cancer Society or Heart Association or Relief Fund calls I can truly say
"I Gave At The Office". I really gotta go now. I do feel a head-ache comin' on.]

Turn Out the Light

and how about the article in last Sunday's paper regarding our Illegal Immigrant Health Care problem????? I don't see why taxpayers should complain about footing the bill for millions of human beings who have entered our once sovereign country illegally???? We have much more than we need and certainly much, much more than we deserve. We are all just too damn selfish. I think we should run buses, trains, transport planes...anything necessary...to get all of the sick and employment challenged peoples of the earth here...to our paradise....then lock the door as we quietly slip out...to go somewhere else and start over...building another nation like we did this one (using the lessons learned from our historical perspective...not taught in public schools now)...oh...we will sneak out without telling all of the "citizens" who think taxing the citizens to death, especially all those "rich" ones to pay for welfare programs for illegal immigrants is a good, no, great idea. Let them pay for it themselves. We will be somewhere else..toiling, sweating and having hope that the hard work of today will bring a better tomorrow...without our government taking it away because we don't really need it all!!!!
Oh...I am energy conscious and I do believe in nurturing the environment so I will flip the switch on my way out...Good luck.
gotta go now and drink my mug-0-boojang

Press "1" for English

I am finding it hard to believe that learned people (I know there are some), especially someone like a Social Anthropologist, are not screaming and tearing their hairs out, or at least clenching teeth at night, over the deconstruction of speaking American English. I believe that over the course of Human history it is evident that one of the precursors to a cohesive and productive society is a common language. What can make us more alike and less "foreign" than common language. It was, in my opinion, one of the stumbling blocks in uniting great countries like Italy and great continents like Africa. Just too damn many languages and dialects. Now when I think about the difficulties a New Yawkah has coming down South, or vice versa, it makes it all the more mystifying that there are those who are silent or even very pro-active in making other languages common or even mandated in America. While I do agree, and have maintained for several decades, that Americans would do well to learn a foreign language (or God forbid several) starting in pre-school or, at least, elementary school. And also that many Americans travelling abroad are way too "expectant" in assuming (or demanding) that everyone else in the world speak English. I also fully believe, and maintain, that by not instilling an "English is for Americans" imperitive in all those who seek to come to this country and become one of its citizens are insuring the gradual but certain deconstruction of America. Hey friend...I am happy for you to come here legally and be productive. Hell, I will do what I can to help you. But if you don't see the value in learning to speak "our" language and become part of the fabric of this still great nation (yeah...I know it's a little rocky now)...and you think that it is better to make a little space here to recreate a little "mini home country". Then I don't want you here. Embrace your heritage, be multi-lingual, have a day a year when you eat the Sauerbraten or dance the polka or toss that big rock...whatever it is....but the next day.....we are all back to being Americans...together....we may disagree on some or many things...but at least we don't need an interpreter.
I gotta go now....my Rosetta Stone language course is waiting for me....ACHTUNG !!!!!
.....almost had my boojang workin'