Catholic Churches Bishop Morlino Puts "Woman" in Her Place as Warning.

My Catholic mom was excommunicated when she married my dad, a Lutheran. My opinion of the mostly ceremonial authoritarian church has gone down from even that low point. Church created rules and regulations unrelated to biblical teachings has gone unchecked for years. I'm surprised that, to this day, more people aren't finding another church to join up with to show their dissatisfaction with these elitist conduits to God.

The following is another example of a devoted Catholic woman publicly denounced and cast out for having an opinion the church feels is threatening to its male authoritarian structure. And still people just let it happen, even while protesting the churches actions. Bishop "fat man" Morlino has a long history of controversial political activities in the Madison area so this isn't really that surprising. Ruth Kolpack is another "woman" with thoughts and ideas of her own, characteristics that run counter to her church and faith.

Help! There's a Gitmo Detainee in My Neighborhood. Maddow Explains..

The Republican fear card is once again in play, this time in the form of a video showing just how dangerous it would be to bring Gitmo detainees into the U.S., releasing them into our quiet little neighborhoods.

Washingtonmonthly.com couldn't help but parody, what would seem to many, an idiotic idea to begin with. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow brings some clarity to the phony GOP scenario of fear.

The Banks Own Congress. Sen. Durban Explains...

I still believe there are a few big differences between the two political parties, but the gap is getting narrower.

In this clip from Bill Moyers Journal, Sen. Dick Durbin describes is experience trying to get home foreclosure relief for the American public, devastated by the economic downturn, and the resounding NO vote from fellow Democrats. His take on the hedge fund bottom feeders willing to throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work is right on the "money" so to speak.

Consumers Scammed by Government and Private Corporations. Okay, there’s No Free Lunch, but this is Ridiculous.

I'm surprised no one noticed that because people have cut back on their use of energy through more efficient furnaces, water heaters, windows, insulation, thermostats, along with major industries closing energy using factories, we're being charged more to make up the difference in lost business. I'm serious. Utility companies are requesting rate increases due to low use and corporate closures.

No matter how much we save and take their advice to cut back on energy use to LOWER our bills, they are going to raise prices to make up for the shortfall.

Isn't anyone a little PO'ed?

Saving Energy: (AP) -- Wisconsin Power and Light Company says it needs to increase rates to offset slumping sales. WPL said one reason it needs more money is to cover the higher cost of doing business. Sales of electricity have fallen; factories and other Wisconsin industrial customers bought 15 percent less power from WPL.

Cheaper Prices: We hear all the time that our purchasing power has gone up because of the availability of cheap goods manufactured in China. Wal-Mart’s ads were suggesting that you “give yourself a raise” by taking advantage of their low prices. That’s not quite true though: The city of Middleton, Wisconsin charges $30 to pick up old appliances of any size, from refrigerators to the tiniest microwaves and portable TV’s. In some cases, that’s more that half the price of something new. Big savings huh? Pretty soon, it'll cost the same thing to get rid of an item as it is to buy it.

Health Care: We know Congress really isn’t working on the public behalf when they have narrowed the reform options down to three, where two highly favored compromise plans may do nothing at all:

Option 1-Create a plan that resembles Medicare, administered by the Health and Human Services department or Option 2-Adopt a Medicare-like plan, but pick an outside party to run it. That way government officials would not directly control the day-to-day operations.

What’s wrong with that? Both options would have no affect at all if Congressional special interests water down the final choice with this compromise: “…would the plan reimburse medical providers at discounted Medicare rates or the higher fees that private insurers pay? And would it be financed by tax dollars, or entirely from premiums?”

Does paying the same as private insurers; using an outside entity to administer the public program; and using premiums to finance the program, do away with the cost savings and a large pool of users to lower costs? Of course. Back to square one and back to unaffordable insurance. Yeh!

The obvious solution would be to get President Obama involved, drawing the line as to what has to be included or face a veto. But even that doesn’t look good:

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said the prospect of a "public option" for health coverage was raised, as an alternative to private insurance, but remarked that when he called it a "major problem" for him and many of his GOP colleagues, "there was no indication of any line being drawn in the sand."

It seems crazy to draw up reform without at least a basic, bottom “line in the sand” plan.

The math is simple, it's dumb ass politicians who are making this hard. Some facts:

The upfront tab could reach $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, while expected savings from wringing waste and inefficiency from the health care system may take longer to show.

Up to $1.5 trillion in ten years? What is costing us now, per year?

$2.5 trillion a year on health care, more than any other advanced country. At least one-third of that spending goes for services that provide little or no benefit to patients. So theoretically, there's enough money in the system to cover everybody, including an estimated 50 million uninsured.

The majority of Americans now get health insurance through private insurers, about 170 million people in all.

Since health care in this country is too expensive, discriminatory and broken, it would be crazy to propose an EXPANSION of private insurance and the disfunctional for profit system we have now. But Congressional Republicans are pushing just that.

Black Alabama? Where's the GOP Outrage?

This is just too funny:

NY Times: If the Kindle, which not only displays the news but also speaks it with a computerized voice, is ever to be the savior of print media, it needs to bone up on its pronunciation.

In particular, the voice of the Kindle mispronounces two important words that show up often in the pages of newspapers: “Barack” (the device rhymes it with “black”) and “Obama” (sounds like “Alabama”).

Oh my god! Anyone for a Second Amendment/Confederate flag protest in front of the capital?

When asked about the error in pronouncing the president’s name, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com, said, with his trademark laugh, “that’s unfortunate.”

Gitmo Detainees Released into U.S. Cities? That's What the Senate Republicans are Saying.

The Senate Republicans have gone back to what they do best, playing on public fear. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow gleefully shows us the GOP's frightful warning about what would happen if we closed Gitmo and brought the detainees to the U.S. We're all gonna die...

Travel Channels "Ghost Adventures" Hosts are Afraid of Ghosts, Run Scared!

I have watched and loved almost every ghost show on TV. Paranormal State, Ghostly Encounters, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Ghost Tracking and A Haunting. It's great watching adults, and sometimes tweens, investigate and go after an uninvited ghostly presence in buildings around the world. I wish I had their job.

But the Travel Channels Ghost Adventures features a couple of guys who first inclination, when faced with a creaky door or apparition, is to turn tail, run and scream like little girls.

It's like watching a chase scene out of Scooby Doo. How did they ever get a show?

Cut and Runners, Unpatriotic, Traitors...Republicans?

What was this thing about being more patriotic than Democrats? MSNBC's Rachel Maddow:

Boss Limbaugh Pulls Marionette Cantor's s Strings: What Listening Sessions?

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow takes us through the many steps of the GOP's self destruction...

Democrats, the Friends of Small Business and Public Health Care

Ed McKee, Pie Tanza Restaurant owner and host to the first big GOP "listening session," had this to say about the impact of the nations health care debacle on his small business. Ed Schultz has been turning up the heat on Washington to get something done, and this interview should get everyones attention.

Saving the Health Insurance Industry, One Lie at a Time. The Luntz Strategy.

One of the most successful argument posed by the Republican Party against a public health care option is the idea of "waiting lists." What they don't tell you now is that we already have waiting lists for everything except emergency care. There will always be waiting lists, as long as there are hundreds of million of people accessing the same health care system. Republicans also act as though there are no American health care horror stories, they couldn't tell you one, only those we hear from countries like Canada and England. That insinuates there are no real solutions. So at least someone can make money on its delivery.

The well oiled GOP has now fine tuned their message. Below Ed Schultz gets the message out:

AP-A 28-page presentation by Frank Luntz, who has long experience in advising Republicans on tailoring their speeches and phrase-making to achieve maximum political benefit. Poll testing rhetoric is a technique both parties use, and in his presentation, Luntz credits Obama with making skillful use of language. He's also got some pointed advice to Republicans eager to doom the as-yet unwritten legislation. "Your political opponents are the Democrats in Congress and the bureaucrats in Washington, not President Obama. Every time we test language that criticized the president by name, the response was negative even among Republicans," Luntz wrote. "

Americans want solutions, not politics." One section of his presentation is, "Which is the best reason to oppose Obama?" The most successful attack is, "It will lead to the gov't setting standards instead of the doctor who really knows best." That was followed closely by, "It will lead to the gov't rationing care, making people stand in line and denying people treatment like they do elsewhere."

Sen. Baucus Takes Single Payer Health Care OFF the Table, But Feels our Pain!

The Democrats appear to have picked up some bad habits having watched the Republicans work their authoritarian magic over the last 15 years. I'm ashamed at their behavior and surprised that President Obama hasn't registered at least some disappointment. Here's the brief description from someone who was advocating a single payer health care plan.

OP Ed News: Yesterday morning, eight doctors, lawyers and other activists stood up for single payer health care. We stood up during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. The hearing was only to hear from the insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, HMO’s and business interests. They did not want to hear about a real national health care plan. I was one of the eight. -Kevin Zeese



Ed Tubbs wrote this about our current problem:

First, No US employer can carry a heavy sack of health premium rocks that are minimally four digits to the left of the decimal point for every employee, yet remain competitive. Second, it won't matter if everyone is insured, so long as this country is short the medical professionals … You suffer a long wait now. You'll continue to suffer. Third, We cannot continue to bleed out a quarter of the high school student body, under-train the remainder, and leave those who persevere through college and med-school with five- and six-figure debt.

Finally, whether it's in a private insurance model or a government single-payer system, someone --an insurance company clerk or a government employee--is going to be in the same room with you and your doctor. The only things that will change are the nametags and the name of the employer. The only dollars-and-cents difference will likely/hopefully be that the approximately 50% of private industry costs and profit will not be equaled in a government single-payer scheme.

Democrat Steve Kagen -- an allergist, turned down his Congressional health care coverage, I'll respectfully decline until you can make that same offer for all of my constituents," Kagen, 58, said to a Congressional human resources staffer, explaining his decision to turn down what many call the "Cadillac" of U.S. health plans. Since then, he's introduced his own health care reform bill— and remained healthy, at least through August, when we last checked in with him. Now he has a second term to stay healthy through.-scientificamerican.com

Rep. Paul Ryan Embarrassed by Not Knowing Anything about His Own Government Provided Health Care Insurance?

First the bad news: Barack Obama, a Democrat believe it or not, doesn’t believe in a single payer system of health care.

The Obama administration's Health and Human Services official, Kathleen Sebelius, said on flatly rejected the idea of the government taking over the nation's medical insurance system, saying the Obama administration does not want to assume management of health care coverage. "Dismantling the private market and having an entirely public option, a single-payer system, I think is not something that the president supports." -Newsday

The Good News: GOP rising star Rep. Paul Ryan looked clueless when it came to even the basic components of his own taxpayer provided health care coverage.

(Sebelius) reaffirmed Obama's commitment to creating a government-run insurance program to compete with private insurers --"Competition helps to promote innovation. It helps promote best practices and also can help to lower costs."

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told Sebelius, "The rhetoric coming from the administration sounds good, sounds familiar -- 'If you like what you've got, you can keep it. We're going to have more choice, more competition in health care.’ But when you look at what is being advocated here, in particular a public plan option, it just seems ... you're embracing contradictory principles."

Wrong again Paul.

Sebelius responded that state governments for years have offered government employees a choice between a public insurance program and private insurance plans for their health care coverage.

"It can work very effectively, and does work very effectively," she said, indicating that such arrangements could be a model for overhauling insurance markets nationally.

It looks like Rep. Ryan is taking his Congressional Cadillac health care plan for granted. What’s a matter Paul, haven’t you ever looked at a doctor bill or shopped for the lowest priced treatment?

Didn’t think so, dumbo.

R.I.P. Health Care Reform! Thanks Congress.

It’s hard for me to imagine that a public health care plan, one Americans will overwhelmingly sign up for, has been successfully portrayed as dangerous and not profitable.

I’ve already resigned myself to the reality that health care reform is not going to happen for another decade or so, sad but true, so every post on the subject is strictly for entertainment purposes. I also need to vent. I’m hoping the gamble I take as an uninsured family pays off in the meantime. If we do get sick and go broke, I will try and drain from the public safety nets as much taxpayer money as I can, until Republicans cut those programs too.

Because politicians can now openly defend insurance company profits and denounce a public plan as a threat to corporate bottom lines, even Democrats, the battle is lost for the uninsured, underinsured and insured who will be priced out of the market in a few years. We aren’t hurting enough yet, I guess. Here’s Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) arguing for the insurance industry:

“It’s a big problem,” Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) said. “It’s like putting an elephant in the room with some mice and saying, ‘Okay fellas, compete.’ There wouldn’t be any mice left after a while.”

Think Progress:

Alexander’s nonsensical analogy aside, Igor Volsky recently explained the actual impact of having a competing public plan, writing, “In an environment where private plans are forced to compete with a new efficient public program, inefficient, over-bloated insurers will go out of business, but private plans with good networks of providers or better services will continue attracting new enrollees.

If we’ve always been told by free marketers that private business can do a better job in a more efficient way, than why are they worried a government health care option would wipe them out? They have even argued that the actual administrated overhead of Medicare is about the same as the private sectors, and not the low 1 to 3 percent costs often mentioned in these debates. If that were true, then a public plan would not have the noticeable advantage, right?

Reader responses:

#1-I understood the credo of the Republicans to be that private enterprise can always provide better solutions than the government. Why are they unwilling to allow private enterprise to compete with the government in this arena? FedEx seems to do an okay job despite their being a United States Postal Service. There are plenty of charter bus, car, and taxi services despite the city providing public transportation. (Charter schools too).

#2-Let's see -- a public plan operating without profit might make things tough for private insurers who cherry-pick their customers, drop insureds as soon as they get sick, deny claims on technicalities in order to increase profits, spend more on
lobbying and advertising than they do on claims, and operate with a 40%overhead. And this is a bad thing?

One reader brought up the topic of “insurance insurance.” After reading the following story on such a plan, I would say we are pushing for change in the nick of time.

All Things Considered, December 3, 2008 · Just when you thought the nation's health insurance system couldn't get any more byzantine: Now you can buy insurance to protect yourself from losing your health insurance.

That's the … new product rolled out this week by insurance giant UnitedHealthcare. It's only for people who currently have coverage through their employers, but who fear they might lose it or may want to retire early and will need coverage to tide them over until they become eligible for Medicare.

You have to be healthy to enroll in a continuity plan … then you can select the plan of your choice and pay 20 percent of the premium each month to keep the plan on "inactive" status. When you leave or lose your job and the health insurance that goes with it, you can start your individual continuity plan even if you've developed medical problems in the interim.

Robert Laszewski, a health insurance industry consultant, says the product also assumes that efforts to overhaul the nation's health care system — including promises made by President-elect Barack Obama to ban the use of pre-existing condition exclusions in health insurance — will not come to pass. "It's a bet against Obama being successful," he says, "because if Obama is successful in the next few years, this product has no value."

Republicans Health Care Plan Explained!

Bill O'Reilly's health care solution centers on improving health choices. Wouldn't it be great if the sick "stopped drinking a quart of gin everyday?" It would be better if people lived healthier lives by cutting out junk foods and not sitting in front of a plasma TV all day. Just as long as they don't give up our right to SMOKE in bars and restaurants. Those nanny staters are trying to take away our freedoms.



MSNBC's Ed Schultz asks Grover Norquist how he would bring health care to everyone and lower the cost of premiums. If you were blaming the insurance companies and sweetheart deals with an area's most powerful hospitals for artificially high premium payments, you would be wrong. Trial lawyers. The hapless insurance companies have no choice but to charge high liability premiums for a lawsuit problem that doesn't really exist. If only doctors and hospitals were free to make a few mistakes without worrying destroying peoples lives or going to court.



No, really, Republicans were in charge of our government for about 15 years. Surprised at the results?

Anyone for a Tea Bag Protest for Tax Dodgers that end up Costing Americans Money?

Tax havens. Shelters for the business elite. Simple and to the point, the tea bag party should be up in arms about corporate freeloading. Oddly, they are willing to defend the indefensible. Rachel Maddow again explains in the simplest terms, why not paying their fare share is a bad idea for Americans.

Maddow Blows Lid Off Sen. Jeff Sessions Racist Past. I Didn't Know.

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, ... Jeff Sessions, the "fresh face" of the new party of racist fringers. Why hide it, right?

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow put together a frightening portrait of a very familiar face.

Hedge Fund “Speculators” Victims of Obama and Their Negative Public Image as Greedy Bastards

My conservative friend called to complain how unfair it was that the hedge fund bottom feeders were vilified for sending Chrysler into bankruptcy court. In his world view, this small group of owners with a 10 percent stake in Chrysler, should have the ability to liquidate the company assets over the objections of the majority stake holders. To my friend, making a little money for these few predator investors took precedence over the hundreds of thousands of workers getting their walking papers. Conservative writer David Brooks just wrote:

The party sometimes seems cut off from the concrete relationships of neighborhood life. Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom these days that they are no longer the party of community and order. The Republicans talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life. They celebrate capitalism, which is a means, and are inarticulate about the good life, which is the end.

So it’s hard to feel sorry for this group of poor misunderstood hedge fund investors, who threw the first stone by calling themselves "the Committee of Non-Tarp Lenders," now that their whining about their personal safety.

Reuters - The dissenting lenders, led by lawyer Tom Lauria, said some identified publicly in the politically charged reorganization have received death threats "which they perceive as being bona fide." Those lenders have notified police and the FBI, he said.

BUT this just in…

The judge overseeing Chrysler’s bankruptcy case in Manhattan ruled Tuesday afternoon that the group of dissident secured debt holders in the case must make their identities public … Judge Arthur Gonzalez said that the creditors could not benefit from court protection of their identities simply because they were taking an unpopular position. He questioned the validity of the threats, as cited by Mr. Lauria, which consisted of four or five anonymous postings on The Washington Post’s Web site. -NY Times

Kudos to the lawyer representing Chrysler and Fiat for this incredibly appropriate response:

“It’s a bit ironic, your honor, that what Mr. Lauria is complaining about is anonymous postings on the Internet,” a lawyer for Fiat said at court. “Anonymity promotes irresponsibility.”

Brooks Offers Republican Make-Over. But Will Anyone Listen?

I'm posting the entire comment from NY Times contributor David Brooks, because he just wrote the most important analysis of the Republican Party's problems I seen in years. Damn he's good.

The Long Voyage Home
By DAVID BROOKS

Republicans generally like Westerns. They generally admire John Wayne-style heroes who are rugged, individualistic and brave. They like leaders — from Goldwater to Reagan to Bush to Palin — who play up their Western heritage. Republicans like the way Westerns seem to celebrate their core themes — freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity.

But the greatest of all Western directors, John Ford, actually used Westerns to tell a different

story. Ford’s movies didn’t really celebrate the rugged individual. They celebrated civic order. For example, in Ford’s 1946 movie, “My Darling Clementine,” Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp, the marshal who tamed Tombstone. But the movie isn’t really about the gunfight and the lone bravery of a heroic man. It’s about how decent people build a town. Much of the movie is about how the townsfolk put up a church, hire a teacher, enjoy Shakespeare, get a surgeon and work to improve their manners.

The movie, in other words, is really about religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community. In Ford’s movie, as in real life, the story of Western settlement is the story of community-building. Instead of celebrating untrammeled freedom and the lone pioneer, Ford’s movies dwell affectionately on the social customs that Americans cherish — the gatherings at the local barbershop and the church social, the gossip with the cop and the bartender and the hotel clerk.

Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order.

They would begin every day by reminding themselves of the concrete ways people build orderly neighborhoods, and how those neighborhoods bind a nation. They would ask: What threatens Americans’ efforts to build orderly places to raise their kids? The answers would produce an agenda: the disruption caused by a boom and bust economy; the fragility of the American family; the explosion of public and private debt; the wild swings in energy costs; the fraying of the health care system; the segmentation of society and the way the ladders of social mobility seem to be dissolving.

But the Republican Party has mis-learned that history. The party sometimes seems cut off from the concrete relationships of neighborhood life. Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom these days that they are no longer the party of community and order.

This puts them out of touch with the young, who are exceptionally community-oriented. It gives them nothing to say to the lower middle class, who fear that capitalism has gone haywire. It gives them little to say to the upper middle class, who are interested in the environment and other common concerns.

The Republicans talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life. They celebrate capitalism, which is a means, and are inarticulate about the good life, which is the end. They take things like tax cuts, which are tactics that are good in some circumstances, and elevate them to holy principle, to be pursued in all circumstances.

The emphasis on freedom and individual choice may work in the sparsely populated parts of the country. People there naturally want to do whatever they want on their own land. But it doesn’t work in the densely populated parts of the country: the cities and suburbs where Republicans are getting slaughtered. People in these areas understand that their lives are profoundly influenced by other people’s individual choices. People there are used to worrying about the health of the communal order.

In these places, Democrats have been able to establish themselves as the safe and orderly party. President Obama has made responsibility his core theme and has emerged as a calm, reassuring presence (even as he runs up the debt and intervenes rashly in sector after sector).

If the Republicans are going to rebound, they will have to re-establish themselves as the party of civic order. First, they will have to stylistically decontaminate their brand. That means they will have to find a leader who is calm, prudent, reassuring and reasonable.

Then they will have to explain that there are two theories of civic order. There is the liberal theory, in which teams of experts draw up plans to engineer order wherever problems arise. And there is the more conservative vision in which government sets certain rules, but mostly empowers the complex web of institutions in which the market is embedded.

Both of these visions are now contained within the Democratic Party. The Republicans know they need to change but seem almost imprisoned by old themes that no longer resonate. The answer is to be found in devotion to community and order, and in the bonds that built the nation.

Democrats Decide a Universal Public Health Care Option Should Be as Bad as the Flawed Private Plans Now

After reading the following NY Times article, I couldn’t help but jot down a few quick responses. Let’s start with the premise brought up at the end of this piece:

“…some insurers and Republican lawmakers circulated a video clip of a recent speech by Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, in which she said insurers were right to fear that a public plan option could “put the private insurance industry out of business.” Ms. Schakowsky said that might happen because of “the superiority of the public health care option.”

The bottom line: The public plan smokes the competition. It is so much better in fact that people would abandon the failed for profit inhumane system we’ve had in place for years in a heartbeat.

Even with huge majorities in Congress and a Democratic president who ran on health care reform, it might surprise you to hear that this golden opportunity is about to pass us by, resulting in an unaffordable public plan cloned from the fatally flawed private sector. Beautiful!

Remember, with overwhelming public support for a total reworking of our current health care system, the Democrats have decided to require “the public plan to resemble private insurance as much as possible.”

Thank you Sen. Chuck Schumer for these jaw dropping compromises that are “looking for a middle ground that would address the concerns of political moderates:”

Democrats want to keep premiums unaffordable: “The public plan must be self-sustaining. It should pay claims with money raised from premiums and co-payments. It should not receive tax revenue or appropriations from the government.”

Democrats will not use its size and buying power to the lower costs as it does with Medicare, promising to pay MORE: “The public plan should pay doctors and hospitals more than what Medicare pays. Medicare rates, set by law and regulation, are often lower than what private insurers pay."

Democrats want to limit public plan health care providers: “The government should not compel doctors and hospitals to participate in a public plan just because they participate in Medicare.”

Health care reform?

Never mind!

Note: Check out Rocknetroots' look at health care: the next bubble to burst.