Stop Drinking and Start Doing, Dem Dumb Dumbs

Sober up, Dems.

You started sucking suds when you captured the Congress in 2006. Since 2008 you've been binge drinking with Congress and the Prez. You even nibbled on some hot wings and pub nuts. Burp!

And now the bartender just cut your drunk, lazy, liberal, progressive, leftie ass off. You dig, Dem dumb dumbs?

You thought you could just party like it was 1999. You can't take a beer bong and pour healthcare reform, trillions in spending and bailouts to fat cats down the average 'Merican's throat and not expect a fight. But, as usual, you didn't fight - you just kept doing Jager-bomb shots.

Let's not only blame the Prez for this election. Just go straight down the line - all the way to the grass root dumb dumbs who didn't lift a finger to dial up fellow dems to get them out of the bar and into the polls.

Too many Dems turned away after 2008, assuming the Prez and the Congressional majority would take care of "our" business. We drank up, while they did what we asked them to do. But, we didn't follow up on our end of the bargain - work our butts off to help them stay in office.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Can you say you worked as hard in 2010 as you did in 2008? Did you bring your neighbor to the polls? Did you give $$ to a candidate? If you didn't do that, how can you expect Joe the Bartender, Joe the Plumber, or any average Joe, to understand the complexities of the issues of the day?

How can you expect Joe to deal with this: the worst economy in two generations; soaring debt; jobs lost; home foreclosures, etc. That stuff scares the crap out of people. If you don't help them to understand that you're trying to solve their problems today - and for tomorrow - they're going to do exactly what they did: vote for the other team.

You have to expend energy to inspire 'Mericans to vote. Let's make a quick list of the "no shows" when it came to putting energy into this fall's campaign: Chris Dodd (thanks for nothing), the Prez, the Veep, Rahm "Windy City" Emmanuel, Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, Al Gore, etc. I'm sorry - you can't count the Prez's work in the final week as really getting it done; he should have been out there since labor day. Were you all having a beer in the Rose Garden?

Who deserves real credit for working his tail off? William Jefferson Clinton. He was busting his hump out there, putting his stent-laden heart on the line 24/7. Let's give the man some credit.

Learn from Bill: you have to work hard to win elections. Not other people - YOU! You have to get it done. You have to contribute time, energy, $$. If you can't contribute any of these, then you can't complain about the outcome.

To bring it back to a local level, look at Chris Murphy. He worked his butt off! I saw him in New Milford a few times - and I never saw Sam Caligiuri (if I had paid $100 to attend the RTC's Reagan Dinner, maybe I would have caught a glimpse of Sam C).

And I saw Ann Cutter (local Dem) leading Chris Murphy around the Harvest Festival. She worked hard the entire election cycle - organizing phone banks and other get out the vote efforts. Where was the rest of the local Dem leadership? Show up or shut up!

Here's the deal: You've gotta work hard lefties, or the righties are gonna kick your butt in 2012, too.

Note to Simmons and McMahon: Crystal Balls and Teabaging don't mix

Smash mouth political commentary from Linda McMahon and Rob Simmons:

"Isn't it sad that after 30 years in Washington, Chris Dodd is still writing letters and putting out press releases after the fact,'' Ed Patru, spokesman for Linda McMahon, said in a press release. "The H1N1 shortage didn't just occur over night - it has been months in the making. Connecticut families deserve to have H1N1 vaccine availability, but they also deserve a Senator who puts timely leadership ahead of late-to-the-game outrage."

And Rob Simmons, another one of Dodd's GOP opponents, compared the government's handling of the flu vaccines to its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

"It is intolerable that H1N1 vaccines have arrived on Wall Street before they found their way to the most vulnerable on the Main Streets of Connecticut where infections grow by the day,'' Simmons said in a statement. "This situation is quickly becoming Katrina-like in its mismanagement, and it is providing an early glimpse at how government-run health care would operate under Senator Dodd's plan."

We could solve the real problems, the shortage of swine flu vaccine, by removing the source of the problem...

The failed free market unable to react to the needed production of vaccine.

U.S. health officials expressed frustration Wednesday with the nation's struggles to produce vaccines against the H1N1 flu strain and told lawmakers they cannot guarantee that supply problems won't resurface.

The new flu strain is spreading faster than the U.S. can make vaccines against it. Equipment problems and the slow pace in growing the new flu strain in laboratories for vaccines scuttled plans to have 161 million vaccines available by October. Today, just 32.3 million doses are available, far less than the 159 million needed to cover all those at highest risk from the H1N1 flu, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden said at a House Appropriations subcommittee briefing Wednesday.

Or we could be stupid republicans and ignore the real issues in healthcare. The government does not produce the vaccine. Free marketeers do. If they can't keep up with the demand, perhaps they are in the wrong business?

This is the free markets' bathtub. Let them drown in it.

As for the "letter after the fact"? What the ???

Was Dodd supposed to go all Reagan and ask astrologer Joan Quigley to divine the future on what he should do to solve all of the h1n1 problems before they even existed?

For all of you that advocate crystal balls and teabaging?

"By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care. But Bachmann overlooked this irony as she said farewell to her recruits."

Pick up your teeth on the way home, Okay Teabagrrrs?

Senator Dodd On Snowe Delaying Legislation

ctblogger uploaded this video and I thought I would yank it from him because it shows a lot slicker version of the material I covered:



Pay no attention the Blogging geek asking the question nor the mug of Sam Adam's Octoberfest beer on the counter behind him.

Senator Chris Dodd on Obama's Afghanistan Strategy

In this video, taken on Saturday, September 26th, '09, Senator Chris Dodd makes sense on the situation in Afghanistan. It starts with Nutmegger John Kantrowitz, from My Left Nutmeg and the Conn-Post Blogs, discussing the shades of Vietnam parallels. But there is an 800 pound guerrilla that too many ignore that I try to point out at the end of the video:



Just so you understand what I am talking about at the end of the video, General Petraeus re-wrote the doctrine for dealing with counterinsurgencies:

The first chapter of Petraeus's manual calls for a "force ratio" of 25 counterinsurgents (here meaning US, allied, and Iraqi soldiers and police) per 1,000 residents. In Baghdad that would require a total force of 120,000. But even with the additional 17,500 US troops President Bush has called for, and a reallocation of Iraqi troops from the North to Baghdad, the total force will be approximately 80,000, a full third less than what the manual prescribes.

I was shooting from the hip and based on my faulty memory, but the numbers I was talking about were sufficiently close to make the point. Thinking in terms of the situation in Afghanistan a quick look at the math tells you what you need to know.

The population of Afghanistan is 28,150,000 according to wikipedia - And the math based on 25 soldiers per thousand residents?

703,750

By Genral Petraeus' own standard that is how many soldiers would be needed to effectively stabelize Afghanistan. Accounting for US, UN and even the Afghanistan soldiers that have been trained up to provide security there are nowhere near enough. And there will never be anywhere near enough without a draft. That is an 800 pound guerilla that nobody will address.

Little wonder why Obama may be suffering from buyer's remorse on campaign statements and early decisions after he was sworn in:

Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a “comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.” All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.

As it happens, this was never Obama’s “war of necessity.” It was always Petraeus’s. And the new report from McChrystal and the Surgettes is undoubtedly Petraeus’s progeny as well. It seems, in fact, cleverly put together to catch a cautious president, who wasn’t cautious enough about his war of choice, in a potentially devastating trap. The military insistence on quick action on a troop decision sets up a devastating choice for the president: “Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure.” Go against your chosen general and the failure that follows is yours alone. (Unnamed figures supposedly close to McChrystal are already launching test balloons, passed on by others, suggesting that the general might resign in protest if the president doesn’t deliver — a possibility he has denied even considering.) On the other hand, offer him somewhere between 15,000 and 45,000 more American troops as well as other resources, and the failure that follows will still be yours.

It’s a basic lose-lose proposition and, as journalist Eric Schmitt wrote in a New York Times assessment of the situation, “it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal.” No wonder the president and some of his men are dragging their feet and looking elsewhere. As one typically anonymous “defense analyst” quoted in the Los Angeles Times said, the administration is suffering “buyer’s remorse for this war… They never really thought about what was required, and now they have sticker shock.”

At this moment in time the Generals are asking for more troops and, even by Petraus' own standards, they aren't asking for enough to deal with the issue. And that is assuming the strategy of more boots on the ground is even an effective one. It isn't because the whole strategy is based on loonytunes logic [emph. mine], according to Pen and Sword's Jeff Huber:

Obama said that he would only approve another escalation if he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be." McChrystal’s report is incoherent on the subject of strategy.

It says, “We must conduct classic counterinsurgency operations” and states that success depends not on “seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces” but on “gaining the support of the people.” That’s laughable in light of the fact that classic clear-hold-build counterinsurgency operations involve seizing terrain and destroying the insurgent forces that occupy it.

The notion that we can separate the Afghan people from the insurgents is as ludicrous as the idea of invading Mexico to separate the Hispanics from the Latinos. Nor can we pretend to be the good guys when the Karzai government we prop up is as bad or worse than the insurgents. McChrystal admits that Afghans have “little reason to support their government.”

McChrystal says he sees no sign of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So, his argument goes, in order to disrupt al-Qaeda terror network, we need 45,000 more troops to occupy a country al Qaeda is not in to make sure it doesn’t come back. And what exactly is this al-Qaeda juggernaut we’ve come to quake in fear of? As former CIA officer Philip Giraldi recently noted, “An assessment by France’s highly regarded Paris Institute of Political Studies [suggests that] Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not.”

If McChrystal and his allies get their way, we’ll have deployed over 135,000 troops to Afghanistan—on top of the roughly 130,000 troops still in Iraq—for the purpose of rounding up fewer than a dozen bad guys. Daffy Duck and Wiley Coyote could come up with a better strategy than that. Our military leadership and its supporters are a thundering herd of buffoons whose only real objective is to keep the cash caissons rolling and the gravy ships afloat and the wild blue budget sky high.

I still have a pile of video to sort through and edit from this event, and more from another event that featured Ned Lamont and Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

Support For Public Option In Connecticut By District

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com did a great job of breaking down some poll numbers for the Public Option on a district by district level and across the nation. I did a quick cut and paste of the numbers just for Connecticut:

The results beg the question of why some more of Connecticut's Congress critters are not leading the charge for the Public Option? They know the people want it and they have to know that it is the right thing to do.

It is an all around political winner and just plain old common sense good public policy.

Some important notes on this from Nate Silver:

We can systematize these results by means of a regression analysis that accounts for the Obama vote share and the poverty level in each district. (Technically, we'll be using a logistic regession, treating each of the voters included in one of these surveys as a separate data point.) This analysis finds that support for the public option nationwide is about 55 percent, against 36 percent opposed, similar results to what I believe to be the most reliable polls on the subject.

What's more interesting, though, is where we project the public option in individual districts. We find that:

-- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 291 of the 435 Congressional Districts nationwide, or almost exactly two-thirds.
-- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 235 of 257 Democratic-held districts.
-- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 34 of 52 Blue Dog - held districts, and has overall popularity of 51 percent in these districts versus 39 percent opposed.

Obviously, there is a margin of error inherent to this analysis when applied to any individual district. The polls that inform this analysis themselves have a margin of error, and there is an additional layer of error introduced by the statistical process that we apply to the data.

There is some pretty good reasoning behind this data to tell the few Blue Dogs trying to stand in the way of the Public Option to suck it up and do the right thing, as well. Go and take a look at the data yourself. The information is a real eye opener as to where there is some really strong support for the Public Option even in some supposedly "conservative" districts.

Dump Dodd advocating FOR Suicide?

When I got to the healthcare event yesterday, these "Dump Dodd" nuts were out there screeching about communism and socialism. Never mind that they were essentially calling Medicare, the VA and the military's Tricare "Communist and Socialist":



They are now advocating FOR suicide?

"How come we don't just give Chris Dodd painkillers? Like a handful of them at a time! He can wash it down with Ted Kennedy's whiskey...!"

Yeah. They are crazy. Sorry. I couldn't wait around long enough for them to spout the communist stuff again. But many were there for this healthcare event and heard these fringe nuts and can corroborate that fact.

CTNewsjunkie has a great write up on the healthcare event and some more on the Dump Dodd crazies, and My Left Nutmeg does a great job figuring out who these Dump Dodd nuts are.

[update] Both Rachel Maddow and KO on Countdown picked up this video which I saw on the late night repeats after some at MLN and on twitter told me about it. Anyways...

Josh Marshal points to a post at TPM DC where they picked up the Dodd suicide video, as did The Political Carnival where GottaLaff was nice enough to link to ePluribus Media when she found out I did the video. Also, it was put up early this morning by tparty at MLN when I pointed it out to them. Thanks kindly for picking it up. Via avahome: AMERICAblog picked it up too. I guess it is going a bit viral now? Well? "Dump Dodd" was complaing that they didn't get any exposure from the event... You are welcome! /snickers

An Interview With Senator Chris Dodd

An exclusive interview with Senator Dodd on healthcare, single payer, the public option and a bit about Senator Jeff Merkley's recent statements. Sorry if it is just a wee bit shaky... I am just an amateur. Thanks to the Connecticut State Democratic Party for sneaking me into this event.

I still have a bit over an hour of video from the meeting in Hartford that I wrote about earlier to edit and process. And Yes. The first few seconds of the video is pretty darn emblematic of my skills as an interviewer... BLACKOUT!

A little healthcare video coming...

I will have an interview with Senator Dodd coming up soon, as well as a little over an hour of footage from a meeting in Hartford between Dodd, Sebelius, DeLauro and some small business advocates that I was at today. Thank you kindly to the Connecticut State Democratic party workers that snuck me in there - it was closed to the public - and to Senator Dodd for giving me the time to take some shaky and slightly comical footage. :) (Note to my amateur self... Next time, open the lens protector for the camera BEFORE starting an interview)

Sadly, and though she had said she would give me few moments, I missed out on putting some questions to Rep. Rosa DeLauro because she had to go while I was interviewing Dodd.

I think you'll find the questions I put to him pretty good. The kind of of questions he probably does not typically get from others out there.

Final notes: I was even asked for a statement from a Tea Party representative there. I'll see if I can find the message on the net (might be at the Dump Dodd site?) since after making the statement in conversation he asked me to record it for him. Not sure if he agreed OR not... But he said he would put it out there unedited. We'll see.

As well, a FOX news correspondent, Shelly Sindland, took some information from me after my interview with Senator Dodd. She said she would try to send me some pics that she had (Ed. Note: updated with a photo and attribution link now), as well. And I bumped into Ken Kreyeske there, covering the event either for his Blog or a paper. I did not get much of chance to say more than hello and shake his hand.

Senator Dodd Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer

Via the Hartford Courant:

U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd has been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer. Dodd is scheduled to undergo surgery during the Senate's August recess and said he expects to be back at work after a "brief recuperation" at home. "It's something that's very common among men my age,'' said Dodd, who is 65 and the father of two young daughters. "In fact, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during their life.'' Dodd, a Democrat who is up for re-election in November 2010, said he feels fine. "As you have probably noticed, I'm working some long and hard hours lately,'' he said. "And that will continue."

I am certain that everyone wishes him the best in his treatment and hopes for a speedy recovery. We need his voice to help fight for changes in health insurance and healthcare so that every American can have a chance to receive the kind of treatment he will receive. Via tparty, An email from Sen. Dodd to supporters:

Dear Friend,

I wanted to let you know that I've been diagnosed with an early stage of prostate cancer.

This diagnosis is very common among men my age. In fact, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during their life.

Luckily, a routine test allowed my doctor to catch it at a very early stage, and my prognosis is excellent - we expect a full and speedy recovery.

I want to assure you that I'm feeling fine. As you know, we've been working hard to pass health care legislation and reform our nation's financial system to protect consumers, and that hard work will continue.

After the Senate adjourns at the end of next week, I'll have surgery to remove the cancer. After a week or two of recuperation, I expect to be right back to work.

After all, as a Member of Congress, I have great health insurance. I was able to get screened, seek the opinions of highly skilled doctors, consider all the available options, and choose the treatment that was right for me.

And I know you'll agree that every American deserves the same ability.

We have health care legislation to pass - and an election to win. And I can't thank you enough for your support.

Sincerely,

Chris

A press conference is scheduled for 2pm today.

Senator Dodd Wants to Know What YOU Think About Healthcare Reform

More specifically, he wants to know your likes and dislikes in the admittedly dysfunctional American Healthcare system:

I am thinking that this is another opportunity to drive home the message of support for Single Payer!

Have at it right over here:

Senator Dodd asks: Is your health care working? What changes would you like to see? Add your ideas at YouTube's Senate Hub at http://youtube.com/senatehub

Democratic Senators are writing a major health reform bill. Rising costs are hitting families and businesses and now 46 million Americans live without health coverage. We need reform. Respond now with your ideas as the Senate writes health care legislation. You can help.

What are you still doing here?

Dodd and DeLauro Get Hammered on Single Payer

Yet again, protesters turn out to demand single payer at another forum on healthcare:

A “town hall discussion” on health care reform held at Griffin Hospital Saturday became contentious when advocates of a single-payer health insurance system shouted at U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd to put the plan back “on the table.”

A group of Yale School of Medicine students also challenged Dodd and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, on the issue, but they didn’t repeatedly shout their questions without being called upon. And so, unlike the earlier advocates, they were not taken out of the building by security guards.

At least 200 people jammed the hospital cafeteria for the session, which gave the public a chance to ask questions of not just Dodd and DeLauro, but also Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform.

Some basic and indisputable facts in this debate:

• The majority of Americans want a single payer healthcare system.
  
• The majority of Americans are willing to pay more taxes for a single payer healthcare system.
  
• The majority of doctors want a single payer healthcare system.

Special interests and lobbyists are the only ones that are trying to force insurance companies into the middle of the Doctor patient relationship. And politicians are obliging them like their special-interest-life-after-politics-retirement-funds depended on it.

Yeah... We get it. For your viewing pleasure, a series of YouTubes from the event and of others that get it:

singlepayeraction.org 5/16/09 A group of doctors, lawyers, Yale medical students, and universal health care activists called on Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut), Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), and Obama health care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle to put single payer health insurance back on the policy table.

Who are they kidding here?

From the NY Times - 7th paragraph of the article:

The bill also would increase the borrowing authority for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to $100 billion from $30 billion, a move that will save banks billions of dollars by reducing the extra premiums that they would have had to pay to shore up the deposit insurance fund.

Title of the article:

Senate Approves Measure to Reduce Home Foreclosures

And the relief for home foreclosures?

The new Senate bill does not include additional money to aid mortgage borrowers, but it does draw $2.3 billion from the Treasury’s $700 billion financial bailout fund for various provisions.

This is a joke:

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the banking committee, said at a news conference after the vote. “The bill does other things, but certainly, a major target is to deal with peoples’ housing issues and try to stem the tide.”

Another $70,000,000,000.00 giveaway to the banks and measly 2.3 Billion dollars taken from the already pissed away 700 billion is about helping homeowners? And no cramdown either.

Note to the NY Times and Sen. Chris Dodd:
A fine fuck you to you two, too!

I may be furious at Dodd

for his position on health care, and Countrywide, and the credit card indentured servant act, etc., BUT it appears he may have done something right here.

Credit where credit is due, Senator Dodd, and all of that.

As for a brain drain at these insolvent banks? If those idiots in the "top leadership" leave... Then they are even dumber than the complete and utter failure of the banks they lead into destruction proved they were.

IOW: Please, Mr. and Mrs. Corporate Welfare Banker, leave and don't let the doors on the bank vaults you looted hit you on the ass on yer way out!

On Dodd's VIP Countrywide Mortgages

"I am not a crook!"

Senator Chris Dodd released the details of his Countrywide mortgages. In a statement released with it he said that he would refinance the loans. But, please, pay no attention to this fact:

"Jackie and Chris have "decided to refinance (their) homes", which seems unremarkable, given that they had an ARM that guaranteed their rates for 5 years and the rates re-set last July or so, I gather. Who wouldn't at least try to refinance?"

h/t to ctblogger and greenpeas, with more commentary, videos and documents available at the link.

Class War coming to neighborhood near you?

How the heck can we fight for a better America in this very real class war when the evil and criminal CEO masterminds of America's failure turn tail and run like the weak-kneed American breed of foolish elitists that they are?

Don't they understand that there are going to be less and less places on this earth where they can hide? And if they find somewhere new to hide? We will take it to them there.

We are not amused by their actions.

The 1 percenters of the world, and their hired yes men, are so far removed from reality and will never get it until they are kicked around for real. They cause all of the problems and reap windfall profits from it. And playing on the other side of the street on TV for a week will never teach them what it is like to look at a child as a poor parent, a child wanting and needing just the basics in life. And knowing that child will not get that, the most basics, which, just as every other human being, they have a right to.

Food.

There is a hidden epidemic in the United States. All over this country it is striking Americans of every age group and ethnicity, whether they live in cities or rural areas. And so, despite the diversity of targets, those suffering in this silent epidemic have two things in common: they are poor or low-income, and they are increasingly going without enough food. Although politicians talk about “poverty in America,” decision-makers avoid specifically mentioning the growing, and often deadly problem of hunger. George McGovern said in 1972, “To admit the existence of hunger in America is to confess that we have failed in meeting the most sensitive and painful of human needs. To admit the existence of widespread hunger is to cast doubt on the efficacy of our whole system.” Three decades later, evidence indicates that the existing system is failing a vast number of Americans. This Fact Sheet documents the epidemic.

A home.

Although single men constitute about sixty percent of the homeless population, families constitute about one third of all homeless and are the fastest-growing group of homeless. The homeless elderly will also be an important group as America ages in the next decades (Rosenheck, Bassuk, and Salomon*; Burt, Aron, and Lee*). Although about seventy percent of the homeless live in central cities, rural homelessness is a hidden problem. The rural homeless are more likely to be families that are homeless for shorter periods of time, often as a result of domestic violence (Singleton et al.*). One of the hardest groups to reach, however, is the one fourth of homeless who have been homeless for at least five years (Burt*).

Some basic medical help when they are sick.

Dodd and Larson Get an Earful on Healthcare

Via Mark Pazniokas of the Hartford Courant, 675 angry and frustrated people showed up to this healthcare forum at Goodwin College:

On the first day of a listening tour on health care, an issue pivotal to the new Congress and his own re-election, U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd got an earful Friday.

The first comment came from a furious homeless shelter manager: He and his clients have no coverage, yet insurance giant American International Group got an $85 billion federal loan.

Over 90 minutes, the Democratic senator heard from a string of constituents, who waved their hands, hoping for a chance to describe a struggle to hang onto middle-class lives after losing jobs and affordable health care. A few were angry, others just scared.

On the way out, Dodd embraced one woman who burst into tears as she described losing health coverage for her disabled 2-year-old. Dodd held her until she stopped sobbing.

Dodd says that Tom Daschle, Obama's pick to guide healthcare reform, will be coming to Connecticut to discuss the issue. I say that they better be prepared to get another earful because the incremental changes being proposed will not answer the massive problems we are facing.

Problems like this:

"[the forum] included the president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a reassuring signal to Connecticut's insurance industry."

Yep! Dodd and Larson think that these people are supposed to be our allies on this issue.

MA regulators: Did Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Partners HealthCare collude to fix prices and raise rates 75%?

Partners, insurer under scrutiny

Attorney General Martha Coakley has launched an investigation into whether the state's largest health insurance company and its largest healthcare provider may have illegally colluded to increase the price of health insurance statewide over the last nine years, according to several legal and government sources.

The attorney general sent formal demands for information to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Partners HealthCare late last week, the sources say, calling for a detailed account of their contract negotiations in recent years.

Since 2000, Blue Cross has boosted the rate it pays for medical care by Partners doctors and hospitals by 75 percent, dramatically more than the increases given to most other Massachusetts hospitals. Blue Cross now pays $2 billion a year to Partners, parent company of Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals.

Why do we put up with this?

I don't want these insurance industries' input into my healthcare in any way, shape or form. This is the kind of health care the insurance giants have provided us thus far:



H/t nyceve for the video, where I encourage you to go read the entire piece and watch all the videos:

We all know that during the Bush regime, American citizens never saw the coffins of our fallen heroes coming back from Iraq.

Americans are also shielded from the brutal ugliness of our collapsed healthcare system. The traditional media is ill-informed (what else is new?), and rarely, if ever, give us frank and candid reporting about the grotesque realities of the U.S. healthcare catastrophe. So the BBC picks up the slack.

One last quote from Dodd:

"I hear people talking about a single-payer plan and the like," Dodd said. "That isn't going to happen. It's going to be a combination of public, private."

Why might Dodd hold the view of "hearing" what we are saying but not listening?

Jackie M. Clegg Dodd serves on the board of health care, pharmaceutical, and financial services companies.

Here's a list:

Director , Brookdale Senior Living Incorporated
Brentwood , TN
Sector: HEALTHCARE / Long-Term Care Facilities

Director , Cardiome Pharma Corporation
Vancouver, B.C. , CN
Sector: HEALTHCARE / Drug Manufacturers

Director , CME Group, Incorporated
Chicago , IL
Sector: FINANCIAL / Diversified Investments

Director , Javelin Pharmaceuticals, Incorporated
Cambridge , MA
Sector: HEALTHCARE / Drug Manufacturers

Through these directorships she's earned more than $1 million for the Dodd family.

You want to stay in Congress with these kinds of answers, Senator Dodd?

"That isn't going to happen."

Not only will all of you hear us, but you will start to listen...

Are you starting to get the picture concerning exactly what we are up against? And it goes beyond just the little people that are really losing this war.

As the one percent of the planet that holds the preponderance of wealth and the other 99% of the planet wake up to the fact that we ARE in a Class War, things are about to get interesting. Especially IF the 99% wake up to the fact that the 1% is killing the planet we all share ...unnecessarily... just so that they can make even more money.

As if money will save them.

Dodd and Larson Get an Earful on Healthcare

Via Mark Pazniokas of the Hartford Courant, 675 angry and frustrated people showed up to this healthcare forum at Goodwin College:

On the first day of a listening tour on health care, an issue pivotal to the new Congress and his own re-election, U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd got an earful Friday.

The first comment came from a furious homeless shelter manager: He and his clients have no coverage, yet insurance giant American International Group got an $85 billion federal loan.

Over 90 minutes, the Democratic senator heard from a string of constituents, who waved their hands, hoping for a chance to describe a struggle to hang onto middle-class lives after losing jobs and affordable health care. A few were angry, others just scared.

On the way out, Dodd embraced one woman who burst into tears as she described losing health coverage for her disabled 2-year-old. Dodd held her until she stopped sobbing.

Dodd says that Tom Daschle, Obama's pick to guide healthcare reform, will be coming to Connecticut to discuss the issue. I say that they better be prepared to get another earful because the incremental changes being proposed will not answer the massive problems we are facing.

Problems like this:

"[the forum] included the president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a reassuring signal to Connecticut's insurance industry."

Yep! Dodd and Larson think that these people are supposed to be our allies on this issue.

MA regulators: Did Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Partners HealthCare collude to fix prices and raise rates 75%?

Partners, insurer under scrutiny

Attorney General Martha Coakley has launched an investigation into whether the state's largest health insurance company and its largest healthcare provider may have illegally colluded to increase the price of health insurance statewide over the last nine years, according to several legal and government sources.

The attorney general sent formal demands for information to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Partners HealthCare late last week, the sources say, calling for a detailed account of their contract negotiations in recent years.

Since 2000, Blue Cross has boosted the rate it pays for medical care by Partners doctors and hospitals by 75 percent, dramatically more than the increases given to most other Massachusetts hospitals. Blue Cross now pays $2 billion a year to Partners, parent company of Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals.

Why do we put up with this?

I don't want these insurance industries' input into my healthcare in any way, shape or form. This the kind of health care the insurance giants have provided us thus far:



H/t nyceve for the video, where I encourage you to go read the entire piece and watch all the videos:

We all know that during the Bush regime, American citizens never saw the coffins of our fallen heroes coming back from Iraq.

Americans are also shielded from the brutal ugliness of our collapsed healthcare system. The traditional media is ill-informed (what else is new?), and rarely, if ever, give us frank and candid reporting about the grotesque realities of the U.S. healthcare catastrophe. So the BBC picks up the slack.

One last quote from Dodd:

"I hear people talking about a single-payer plan and the like," Dodd said. "That isn't going to happen. It's going to be a combination of public, private."

We already have a failed combination of public and private. We need the proven model of single payer and private practitioners. You want to stay in Congress with these kinds of answers, Senator Dodd?

"That isn't going to happen."

Why not send Senator Dodd a message?

"Single payer IS on the table!"

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd
448 Russell Building | Washington D.C., 20510
Tel: (202) 224-2823 | Fax: (202) 224-1083

Ya might want to mention the problem with his Blue Cross buddies, as well.

Senator Pat Leahy Makes Me Miss Vermont

Only because if I still lived there I would not have a Neoconservative piece of Lieberjunk as a Senator:

Today, Daily Kos diarist terjeanderson caught an interview on Vermont Public Radio with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), during which the senator broke from the pack and said that Lieberman deserved to lose his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee:

I’m one who does not feel that somebody should be rewarded with a major chairmanship after doing what he did. … I felt that some of the attacks that he was involved in against Sen. Obama, whom I did support — I was one of the first in the Congress to support him — I thought they went way beyond the pale. I thought that they were not fair. I thought they were not legitimate. I thought that they perpetuated some of these horrible myths that were being run about Sen. Obama.

I would feel that, had I done something similar, I would not be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress.

Listen here:

A new Research 2000/DailyKos poll shows that Lieberman is increasingly unpopular among his constituents. Sixty-one percent disapprove of his Senate performance. Among his Democratic constituents, Lieberman’s approval rating stands at just 22 percent.

It seems like Senator Bernie Sanders agrees:

"Appointing someone to a major post who led the opposition to everything we are fighting for is not 'change we can believe in,'" Sanders continued. "I very much hope that Senator Lieberman stays in the Democratic caucus and is successful in regaining the confidence of those whom he has disappointed. This is not a time, however, in which he should be rewarded with a major committee chairmanship."

Nutmeggers seem to agree with this, as evidenced by the most recent poll numbers:

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 11/11-13. Likely voters. MoE 4% (6/30-7/2 results)

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Joe Lieberman is doing as U.S. senator?

Approve 36 (45)
Disapprove 61 (43)

If the 2012 election for U.S. Senate were held today would you to reelect Joe Lieberman would you consider voting for another candidate or would you vote to replace Lieberman?

Reelect 35
Consider Someone Else 18
Replace 48

Brutal. It seems that the people of Connecticut don't like the Republican version of Lieberman, the one that trashed Democrats on the campaign trail with John McCain, the one that spoke at the RNC convention, the one that failed to hold the Bush Administration accountable in Congress, and the one that pretended Katrina never happened.

Are you getting that, Joe? Et tu, Chris Dodd? Connecticut overwhelmingly disapproves of Joe Lieberman's warmongering and Neoconservative ways.

How Does Obama Offer an Olive Branch for FISA Capitulation?

This may be one way:

Obama Seeks Info on Dodd in Vice President Search - TIME

Barack Obama's presidential campaign has requested information from Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd as part of its search for a possible vice presidential candidate.

The former White House hopeful and Connecticut lawmaker indicated Wednesday that he has been approached by the campaign. "There's been some inquiries, yeah," Dodd said. "They ask for a lot of stuff. I'll leave it there."

Senator Dodd may not make the final Vice Presidential cut, but the choice would go a long way towards repairing the minor rift among his supporters that resulted because of Obama's participation in eviscerating the 4th amendment. Needless to say, McCain was even worse on this issue because he wasn't man enough to actually show up and vote on it - something McCain does almost every time there is an important vote. Spineless Republican.

Dodd was the most vocal Senate opponent of protecting the telecoms from civil suits arising from their aiding the bush administration's illegal spying on Americans. CTNewsJunkie has more on the possible implications of Dodd as VP candidate.

If you are currently stuck in a foreclosure battle...

Do you think the judge should know about this:

Yesterday, the FBI disclosed that it has launched criminal investigations against 17 companies “in the fallout of the subprime mortgage collapse.” Two Justice Department officials have confirmed that Countrywide Financial is one of the companies under investigation.

Ya know... Courts might not want to be rushing to judgments in these cases. There is nothing routine about what is going across America in this mortgage crisis. The article discusses some of the problems they see:

While the bureau will not comment on the companies that are under investigation, two Justice Department officials confirmed to ABC News reports in last week's Wall Street Journal that Countrywide Financial is under investigation.

FBI and Justice Department officials declined to comment on any open cases after the recent troubles of investment bank Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan Chase bailed out earlier this week by purchasing the company.

But in an interview with the Reuters news service Tuesday, Neil Power, section chief of the FBI's Economics Crimes Unit, alluded to a possible probe, saying, "Common sense would indicate that we would look at something that big."

"The problem is that banks weren't doing their due diligence," Power said.

It would seem to me that a lack of due diligence on the part of the banks would make them more responsible for any foreclosures on people that should not have had mortgages offered to them in the first place. We expect Joe and Suzy Sixpack to be a little bit ignorant in how these things work and the risks involved but banks should bear a greater responsibility since this is their field of expertise. It seems to me that anyone being foreclosed on in these kind of situations (ARMs, balloon payment mortgages, etc.) should be looked at as somewhat of a victim to a crime.

Also being looked at are hedge funds, like Bear Sterns, and their investments and transactions surrounding all of this. There are some emails that suggest some serious problems in Bear Stern's management. It is also a seemingly ever changing investigation:

Though the list of companies under investigation has grown, one FBI official said the number of firms under investigation is "fluid," as some of them may not pan out, some of them might close and more firms could come under scrutiny as these long-ranging investigations continue.

The FBI Criminal Investigative Division currently has 1,253 mortgage fraud investigations into all types of mortgage fraud and schemes around the country, including illegal property flipping, home equity schemes and check fraud cases.

Currently in the works is some possible relief for those that are suffering under looming foreclosures:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) are introducing legislation “aimed at stabilizing financial markets by helping as many as 2 million homeowners avoid foreclosure.” The separate bills look to give the Federal Housing Administration “a key role in helping to renegotiate distressed mortgages and would provide up to $300 billion in guarantees to new lenders.”

Hopefully this is not too little too late and - unlike handing out corporate welfare to the likes of Bank of America, Countrywide and Bear and Sterns - this will offer some real help to the American people that need it.

[update] via C&L, America is becoming a tent city nation:

Why doesn’t our media cover stories like this? They talk about the economy and mortgage crisis, but they aren’t showing the real effects of it. Instead we have to rely upon foreign news to hear about tent cities popping up in America, full of citizens that once owned their own homes.

Chris Dodd Definitely Endorsing Obama

From My Email inbox and confirming Scarce's diary concerning rumors of an impending endorsement of Barack Obama by Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd:

Dear Stephen,

We have been through a lot in this past year and your friendship and support have meant so much to me. That is why I wanted to let you know of my decision to endorse a Democratic candidate for President - and that I have decided to support Barack Obama.

We all understand how much is at stake in this election and that it is more important than ever that we put a Democrat in the White House.

And while both of our Party's remaining candidates are extremely talented and would make excellent commanders-in-chief, I am throwing my support to the candidate who I believe will open the most eyes to our shared Democratic vision.

I'm deeply proud to be the first 2008 Democratic presidential candidate to endorse Barack Obama. He is ready to be President. And I am ready to support him - to work with him and for him and help elect him our 44th President.

Put simply, I believe Barack Obama is uniquely qualified to help us face this housing crisis, create good jobs, strengthen America's families in this 21st century global economy, unite the world against terrorism and end the war in Iraq - and perhaps most importantly, call the American people to shared service and sacrifice. In this campaign, he has drawn millions of voters into politics for the first time in their lives and shown us that we are united by so much more than that which divides us.

That is why I believe the time has come for Democrats to come together as a Party and focus on winning the general election. The stakes are too high not to.

The last seven years have been as difficult as any I can remember. More than ever, we need a President who will inspire us to take part in the political process and change our country's path.

Today, when we need it most, we are hearing a new call from Barack Obama. And I hope you, like me, will answer it in the affirmative.

Please get involved in Barack Obama's campaign now: http://action.barackobama.com/doddsupporters


Sincerely,

Chris Dodd