Bleat, Goes the Guv

South Carolina's Guv and Chief Hypocrite just can't stop spinning. He distributed an essay to the state's Sunday papers yesterday 'splaining how God was working through his life in a special way, that all that sneakin' 'round was just what God wanted him to do so that he could be exposed (crucified) for the greater glory of the Lard.

Don't know what the Guv was inhaling when he lived in that "Christian" Frat House on C Street in D.C., where other recent strutting Republican adulterers also bunked, but apparently it leads to blessed self-congratulation.

At least the other recently exposed hypocrites like Sen. John Ensign have chosen to remain (relatively) silent. Sanford can't stop yapping about how God has graced him with absolution. Would that God would grace the rest of us with a little gubernatorial silence.

The Wanker Democrats

Guest Blogging: Irmaly

Yesterday (Friday) was an interesting day in the health care reform movement. Without getting into all the details, things were swimming along until three wanker Democrats in the U.S. Senate (and one wanker "independent Democrat") wrote a letter saying, "Whoah. We're moving too fast. We must stop this. We must get more information. We can't get this done before the August break."

They said this because also yesterday (Friday) the insurance lobby, already spending $1.4 million a day to move Congress critters in their direction, was all in a dither because the chances of a government public option passing the Congress moved from "no chance" to "distant possibility" (according to insiders on The Hill).

You see, if they could just slow things down enough, the insurance lobby would have more time to buy off more congressmen and scare the public more.

Here's a list of the wanker Democrats who are trying to stop health care reform in its tracks:

Wanker Ben Nelson (202) 224-6551
Wanker Mary Landrieu (202) 224-5824
Wanker Ron Wyden (202) 224-5244
Wanker Joe Lieberman (202) 224-4041

President Obama appeared in a non-scheduled press conference at 4 pm yesterday (Friday) and laid it down: "We WILL pass health care reform THIS YEAR." In his weekly address this morning (Saturday), he drew a line in the sand, saying (among other things) there had to be a public option.

We are where the rubber meets the road. Will the people win? Or will the insurance companies?

Spread the word. Hit the phones. And remember this scene from "The West Wing" when you call the wankers:

JOSH Forgive my bluntness, and I say this with all due respect, Congressman, but vote yes, or you're not even going to be on the ballot two years from now.

KATZENMOYER How do you figure?

JOSH You're going to lose in the primary.

KATZENMOYER There's no Democrat running against me.

JOSH Sure there is.

KATZENMOYER Who?

JOSH Whomever we pick.

KATZENMOYER You're bluffing. I'm in your own party!

JOSH Doesn't seem to be doing us much good now, does it?

KATZENMOYER I'm an incumbent Democrat. You'll go to the press and endorse a challenger?

JOSH No sir. We're going to do it in person. See, you won with fifty-two percent, but the President took your district with fifty-nine. And I think it's high time we come back and say thanks. Do you have any idea how much noise Air Force One makes when it lands in Eau Claire, Wisconsin? We're going to have a party, Congressman. You should come, it's gonna be great. And when the watermelon's done, right in town square, right in the band gazebo .... You guys got a band gazebo? Doesn't matter, we'll build one. Right in the band gazebo, that's where the President is going to drape his arm around the shoulder of some assistant DA we like. And you should have your camera with you. You should get a picture of that. 'Cause that's gonna be the moment you're finished in Democratic politics. President Bartlet's a good man. He's got a good heart. He doesn't hold a grudge. [puts on sunglasses] That's what he pays me for. [walks away]

Those Pure Conservative Values

An object lesson in the corruption of big money, involving an amusing example of "pay-to-play" by the American Conservative Union, headed by one David Keene, who has never been shy about strutting his "traditional moral values" along with his "commitment to a market economy." Turns out his moral values are highly sensitive to whatever the market will bear.

Keene tried to extort $2-$3 million from FedEx to support its side with "op-eds and articles written by ACU's Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU's board of directors" in a legislative battle with UPS, FedEx's bitter rival in the package delivery business. When FedEx refused to play (ahem, pay), David Keene began writing those op-eds and articles in support of UPS.

The ACU is denying that it took any money from UPS. Somehow, we doubt that denial.

Local Champion

Justin Grimes's two-part series on the health-insurance crisis in Watauga County concludes in this week's High Country Press. (Part I, which focused on the Community Care Clinic, launched here in 2006 as a wholly volunteer free service, was published July 9.)

While Madam Foxx turns a blind eye and a hardened countenance on the need for real health-care delivery reform, our own state Senator Steve Goss emerges in Grimes's second article as a knowledgeable local champion.

The big villain? Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina, which holds a virtual insurance monopoly in the state. Fined $1.8 million in 2003 for knowingly underpaying some 146,000 emergency room claims, Blue Cross/Blue Shield has most recently been violating the spirit if not the letter of its "non-profit" status by running TV ads opposing the president's health-care reform ideas.

It's outfits like Blue Cross, along with politicians like Madam Foxx, who'll try to frighten citizens into passive acquiescence to the broken system we have, a system that benefits Blue Cross and Madam Foxx immensely, though not the rest of us.

Give Shuler Credit

...for this, at least.

Blue Dogs & Sick Puppies

Thanks to Gordon at Scrutiny Hooligans for directing us to this Nate Silver piece of statistical gold: that the Blue Dog Democrats in the U.S. House usually represent districts in which a publicly subsidized health-insurance plan is desperately needed.

Like Heath Shuler's 11th District in N.C., where over 23% of his constituents are uninsured. Gordon computes that to about 150,000 people hanging out there without a health-care safety net, other than the emergency room at the local hospital.

Gordon goes a lot easier than we would on Shuler's recent grandstanding against the public option, hoping that gentle persuasion might work. Maybe so. Saddled as we are with the hopelessly callous Madam Foxx in the 5th, we could only long for the problems that a Blue Dog might give us.

The Face of the Opposition

Powerful article by Bob Geary about some of the North Carolina people who went to Washington last month and confronted Sen. Kay Hagan about her waffling on the need for a "public option" for health insurance in any so-called "reform" bill. Gives insight into the reaction of community activists in the Durham region to hearing Rahm Emanuel say that maybe a public option wasn't necessary. That's non-negotiable, community organizers in the Triangle told White House ambassadors. People are tired of high-costs, of obscene insurance company profits, of people losing their insurance for "pre-existing conditions."

People are sick and tired of the deniers -- those who poo-poo the idea of millions upon millions of Americans who are uninsured -- and whose every response to reform is to scream "socialism," as though that word contained any content whatsoever beyond its apparent power as a club to beat down the already sick.

People with lots of money are very pleased with their health-care. People like Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. She has the best health insurance money can buy and pays precious little for it. We subsidize it for her. She's got it for the rest of her life, along with her family.

Meanwhile, Foxx blithely denies the statistics on the uninsured. She was in a college class at Gardner-Webb's satellite campus in Statesville in March 2008 when she told the students that she didn't believe in universal health care. A nursing student asked, "Then what are you in favor of?"

This was Foxx's response, as reported in the Statesville newspaper (the article is no longer on-line, but we grabbed the quote at the time here:

...Foxx said that the number of Americans without health insurance was typically given as 47 million.

She broke that number down by saying one-third of it was made up of illegal immigrants, one-third was of those who were uninsured for only a portion of the year but not all of it, and one-third was of people who have access to insurance "but choose not to take it."

"Choose or can't afford?" another student asked.

Foxx compared health insurance to homeowner's or automobile insurance and said health insurance was initially designed for "catastrophic" events and "not for maintenance."

"A huge portion of health insurance funds go into the last 18 months of a person's life," Foxx said.

What do we make of that?

1. She's a grade-A, Olympic-size denier. The only uninsured Americans in Madam Foxx's world-view choose to be that way. Or else they're illegal immigrants and deserve to be run over in the road.

2. If you cut off your hand (a "catastrophic" event), you maybe deserve a little health insurance. But not if you have, say, adult-onset diabetes. Health insurance should not be "for maintenance." Unless it's for her and her family.

3. Old, sick people ... what a drag.

What to do about health-care reform in America? For Madam Foxx, the answer is always the easiest one: zilch. Because nothing whatsoever is wrong in the world beyond the tip of her nose.

AND INCIDENTALLY
Sen. Hagan did vote for the bill passed out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee yesterday, which contains health insurance coverage for nearly all Americans. And is now bragging about her vote. Good for her.

Taking the Wind Out of Alternative Energy

The attempt to cripple wind power in the North Carolina mountains continues apace in the N.C. General Assembly, led principally by two mountain Democrats, Martin Nesbitt of Buncombe and Joe Sam Queen of Haywood counties.

What's worse (we won't quite say "nefarious" yet) is that the attempt to ban the wind generators that might actually produce some serious alternative energy is being wrapped up in a seemingly high-minded environmentalist doctrine ("the mountain views, O my brethren!") while in reality it serves the interests of the worst polluters on the planet, Big Oil and Big Coal, industries which are openly hostile to wind power.

The big "tell" in this proposed legislation is that the bill, as introduced by Steve Goss in March, was originally designed specifically to exempt wind turbines from provisions of the "ridge law." But other senators got their hands on it and completely reversed its thrust, first to ban effectively wind power in the mountains ... now merely to cripple it decisively. For example, the bill currently would severely limit how much wind-generated power the Big Boys like Duke Energy would have to buy for their monopolized grids. That's a sweet deal for Duke.

If there is a justifiable concern about huge wind farms invading our mountain ridges, give counties the (ahem) zoning power to control their location (as Watauga has already done).

It's transparent what political ideology is leading the fight against wind energy. Just take a look at any of the jillion John Locke Foundation websites and blogs in the state (like this and this). Their "free market" fundamentalism includes an impulse to squeeze the life out of anything that might free us from fossil fuels.

Palintology

Speaking of Sarah Palin (and how can we not?), Mike Murphy, the veteran GOP operative, characterized the Republican rank-and-file who are head-over-heels in love with the Alaskan Doofus: "People at the grass roots see a charismatic personality who is popular with other people at the grass roots. But their horizon only goes so far as people who think like them." In a column published last Thursday in the New York Daily News, Murphy called Palin a "political train wreck," "an awful choice" for vice president, and her resignation an "astonishing self-immolation."

Murphy's opinion and that of several other Republican political professionals are tallied in today's LATimes under the headline, "Republican Pundits Open Fire on Sarah Palin." Which just makes the Republican grassroots love her all the more and declare that she was sent by God to lead their party out of the wilderness (and onto the frozen tundra?).

What are Republicans in Alaska saying about her since she declared "So long, suckas"? Max Blumenthal catalogs a few of those, including this one:

"Honestly, Sarah's resignation was complete bullshit and I'm saying that as a Republican," a Republican political veteran working in the legislature told me. "In all my years in politics, nobody has left Alaska in such a mess. Everyone here is just shocked." ...

Apparently, it'll take a special session of the Alaskan legislature to untangle the knots, including the Palin unilateral decision to refuse Economic Stimulus money.