Ha! The President said "wee-wee"

And then last year just about this time, you'll recall that the Republicans had just nominated their Vice Presidential candidate, and everybody was -- the media was obsessed with it, and cable was 24 hours a day, and "Obama's lost his mojo." You remember all that? There's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up. I don't know what it is. But that's what happens."
— President Obama

America still supports the public option

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

Even the exceedingly Republican-leaning Rasmussen survey shows heavy opposition for any plan lacking a public option.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 57% oppose the plan if it doesn't include a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

Insurance reform explained on 4 cocktail napkins

Healthcare Napkins All

View more documents from Dan Roam.

Harrison tribute: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison, and check out Prince's blistering end solo

America's Affordable Health Choices Act - READ IT

Bob Cesca has posted a summary of the House bill entitled America's Affordable Health Choices Act. It's not a public option, but it's not bad.

The CBO has even confirmed the bill is deficit-neutral over the 10-year budget window, and even produces a $6 billion surplus.

Read again, Republicans: $6 billion SURPLUS.

SUMMARY

ENTIRE BILL

GOP is and has been lying, will never even vote for health REFORM

Asked by ABC News about a package of insurance market reforms that have been endorsed not only by President Obama but also by the insurance industry, Sen. Jon Kyl came out against all three proposals.

In particular, the Arizona Republican signaled that he opposes requiring insurance companies nationwide to provide coverage without regard to pre-existing conditions; requiring them to charge everyone the same rate regardless of health status; and requiring all Americans to carry health insurance.

In other words, "we want reform as long as nothing changes and the status quo prevails".

Not only don't they want universal health coverage, they don't even want to to reform the current broken system.

It's clear that if the Democrats want any kind of reform, never mind a public option, they'll have to regroup and go it alone. Why they continue to let the Republicans even be relevant in this debate is beyond me. Which part of "overwhelming mandate" don't they get?

Stewart gives Barney Frank snaps

You better hope Blue Cross doesn't consider ugly a pre-existing condition.

Your momma is so dumb she thinks the public option is a porta-potty.

Ohhhhh damnnnnn.....

Tom Ridge: Bush Pressured To Raise Terror Alert in '04 Election

US News and World Report
Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Barney Frank to protester: "on what planet do you spend most of your time?"

(AP) Rep. Barney Frank lashed out at protester who held a poster depicting President Barack Obama with a Hitler-style mustache during a heated town hall meeting on federal health care reform.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked the woman, who had stepped up to the podium at a southeastern Massachusetts senior center to ask why Frank supports what she called a Nazi policy.

"Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it," Frank replied.

He continued by saying her ability to deface an image of the president and express her views "is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated."

Meanwhile, check out this class act... a town hall protester who yells "Heil Hitler" at a Jewish man relating his health care sory.

Colbert rushes to the defense of GOP pundits

"If pundits want to save America, they have to do what's wrong to prove they're right." - Stephen Colbert

Health care starting to churn; Dems to go it alone?

In a conference call with reporters, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said that while some progressives view the co-op proposal as an unacceptably watered-down alternative to a public insurance option, Republicans think it's still too similar. He indicated that both he and the party would oppose them.

This quote is no surprise, it's been the argument all along. The GOP DOES NOT WANT health reform. They wanted to kill the public option with co-ops, and then when the public option was dead, they'd kill the co-ops.

However, Obama's grass roots folks haven't gotten off the ground. Somehow they trusted that the filibuster=proof majority in the Senate would get the real health care we need. But it hasn't happened. The Congress fractured and the Netroots have been quiet.

Until this week. Once the White House suggested they were willing to soften their position on the public option, all hell broke loose. The Progressive Democratic wing of the House has refused to cast their 60+ votes for any bill that doesn't contain a robust public option.

Around the conference table at TNR, we've been saying for weeks that what Obama really needed was a group of equally vocal, equally zealous critics on the left, pulling the debate's center of gravity in the other direction. And, wouldn't you know, that's exactly what's happened over the last 48 hours.

Bob Cesca
Now, I have no idea if the White House's intention was to soften on the public option just enough to infuriate, then mobilize and activate the left to revive its push for the public option. But, as Noam writes, that's exactly what has happened.

Here are the immediate consequences of the president's and Secretary Sebelius's remarks from this past weekend:

1) The netroots are re-activated and are furiously talking policy and mobilizing again.
2) The House progressives have declared an ultimatum in support of the public option.
3) Congressman Weiner has emerged as a terrific spokesman in Congress.
4) The AFL-CIO has drawn a line in sand in support of the public option.
5) The debate has shifted back to policy and away from crazy wingnuts. As long as healthcare reform is about policy, the Democrats win.
6) Complacent, the far-right prematurely tipped their hand on their opposition to co-ops, weakening their position and signaling that no amount of comprise will win their votes.

And now comes the news that - finally - the Democrats have seen that the cries of bipartisanship were a ruse to kill health care. The GOP never had any intention of playing along with any group other than big insurance.

Now, if a solution is to be had it looks like it's coming from within the ranks of the Democratic party.

New York Times
Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

What's with the gun-toting?

There's something wrong with this country when:
1) People are allowed to tote assault rifles in public
1a) ...while the President is around
1ai) ...without getting shot by the Secret Service
1b) ...if it's not 1858 and this isn't the New Mexico territory
1c) ... and those gun-toters are not universally derided as small-penis-compensating pussies.

(Arizona Republic)
A man, who decided not to give his name, was walking around the pro-health care reform rally at 3rd and Washington streets, with a pistol on his hip, and an AR-15 (a semi-automatic assault rifle) on a strap over his shoulder.

"Because I can do it," he said when asked why he was armed. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms."

Tough enough to carry a gun. Too much of a pussy to give his name.

The stupid, unwitting mass of sheeple

"So the next time you hear someone warning against a "government takeover" of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the "slippery slope toward socialism," know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry." — Wendell Potter, former Vice President of Corporate Communications at CIGNA

So even if the healthers would never admit they're being played by the insurance companies, the insurance companies have figured out how t play them without their even knowing it.

A new poll shows that it also turns out that a majority - 57% - of Republicans either believe in death panels or aren't sure. As Bob Cesca points out:

How can anyone negotiate intelligently with people who believe nonsense posted on Sarah Palin's Facebook page?

If Sarah said that unicorns exist, would GOP polls numbers jump? Or is that they believe anything on Facebook?

They certainly seem to buy Beck's argument about having the Greatest Healthcare On The Planet (TM). Here's the truth:

Bill Maher Presents: American Death Panel

Obama calls out "death panel" liars, cites his own grandmother

(AP)
Now, it's personal. President Barack Obama invoked his own anguish over the death of a loved one as he challenged the debunked notion that Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation's health care would include "death panels."

"I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it's like to watch somebody you love, who's aging, deteriorate and have to struggle with that," an impassioned Obama told a crowd as he spoke of Madelyn Payne Dunham. He took issue with "the notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma."

"When you start making arguments like that, that's simply dishonest — especially when I hear the arguments coming from members of Congress in the other party who, turns out, sponsored similar provisions," Obama said.

Paul Begala: Sarah Palin is "about half a whack job"

Paul Begala and Newt Gingrich have decidedly different views on whether former Governor Sarah Palin can make a political comback. Gingrich outlined his strategy for Palin to reemerge on the national scene to Politico, but Begala remains deeply skeptical any such strategy would be effective.

In an interview with CNN, the Democratic strategist slammed Palin as "flaky and an intellectual lightweight," and "about half a whack job."

While Begala respects Gingrich's political skills, saying Palin would do well to listen to him, the Democrat ultimately sees Palin as a lost cause:

Here's the problem. He is trying to treat her like a serious person. She is not. OK? She is about half a whack job. She does not have the intellectual heft of Newt Gingrich or almost anyone else in the Republican Party, and I think she has proved that.

Glenn Beck's hate speech brought to you by....

Glenn Beck makin' shit up again

(Media Matters)
On his program today, Glenn Beck told the life story of scientist Stephen Hawking (a recent recepient of the Presidential Medal Of Freedom) from an interesting perspective. In Beck's version of history, Hawking dealt with his illness (ALS) without any handouts, pulling himself up via his own bootstraps and apparently without the sort of health care system Beck claimed was a form of goose-stepping.

Beck's version of history is disputed by... Stephen Hawking, however, who recently gave credit to the maligned (by conservatives) British National Health System (NHS):

The British physisist spoke out after Republican politicians lambasted the NHS as "evil" in their effort to stop President Barack Obama's reforms of US health care which will widen availability of treatment but at a cost to higher earners who will pay higher insurance premiums.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he said. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."