Friday Fish Wrap: November 6, 2009

Saturday will be a pivotal day inside the Washington beltway: a rare Saturday vote. Rare also in the sense that it will be history making whether it goes ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’. Those in favor of supporting the House healthcare (insurance) reform bill will be making history much the same way Congress did when they bucked the powers that be and enacted Medicare.

Those who vote against the bill will go down in history as obstructionists who would rather support corporate greed and campaign contributors above the common good of the American people, despite a bill that still isn’t all that it could be and is the best that compromise and ‘decision by committee’ can offer.

The obstructionists were courted, and cojolled and given just about every compromise possible, but they still won’t support it. There’s a message here: They wouldn’t have supported this bill unless it had be directly sponsored by Chuck Grassley and Goldman Sachs.

There’s still time, dear readers, to email your congresspersons and urge them to do the right thing for a change.

Here’s a wonderful excerpt by Robert Creamer on Huffington Post that says it all:

Only one small group of Americans would benefit economically from the defeat of the House health insurance reform bill: the private insurance industry. They want to be free to continue raising premiums four times faster than wages. They don’t want the government to prevent them from denying coverage to people who get really sick or have pre-existing conditions. Their profits and CEO salaries and bonuses have been heading skyward even in the midst of the recession.

They love being exempt from the anti-trust laws and the freedom that gives them to divide up insurance markets and raise prices without the fear of serious competition. They are thrilled that, according to an AMA study, 94% of insurance markets are “non-competitive.” Health insurance companies love things just the way they are.

Of course if, like CIGNA Insurance CEO Ed Hanway, you made $12.2 million a year ($5,553 per hour), you might also like things the way they are. Like the insurance industry, you too might have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to frighten senior citizens, confuse your colleagues and promote right wing myths like “death panels.”

We here at Rancho Maven were saddened and appalled at what happened down in Texas at Ft. Hood Army Base.

The unsupportable, unsustainable conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking lives even here at home. I think there’s another message here: get out of both places.

Furthermore, how sad is it that another shooting took place today in Orlando, Florida?

I don’t think the NRA has anything to fear from guns not being readily available. If they want to keep that warm and happy feeling they might want to help support background checks, since the ability of every nutcase to get a gun is sort of killing innocent victims and the NRA’s cause too.

Isn’t it entertaining when the most flag-draped and patriotic among us actually can’t remember the words to the Pledge of Allegiance? Rep. Todd Akin said “it will drive the Liberals crazy”… crazy with laughter, perhaps. What did any of this Pledge stuff have to do with passing a fair health insurance reform bill? Nothing, but it gets the nitwits all fired up.

Meanwhile, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, is still out there wrapping lies about health insurance reform in that same venerable flag. It makes me gag. Minnesotans should be embarassed by this woman, who has apparently had a little too much Botox.

“Nothing scares members of Congress more than freedom-loving Americans,” she said in a conference call with bloggers and activists Wednesday night. She urged reform opponents to confront lawmakers with video cameras. “I think that will absolutely scare these members of Congress so much that Pelosi will not get the votes and it will kill the bill.”

Sigh. This kind of rhetoric is so not helpful.

But Bernie Sanders always cheers me up. His newest video/blog post is right up my alley: If they’re too big to fail, then they’re just too big. This is about the financial giants that we the taxpayers bailed out - thanks to W. and Bernanke - so that they could grow even bigger …. and then (this is really arrogant ) get shipments of H1N1 vaccine for their employees so that pregnant women and children in New York could go without.

The people of Vermont need to always be proud of Bernie Sanders.

Doncha wish we had somebody like him here in Nevada?

Hey, take the time to read the Las Vegas Gleaner. It’s hysterical.

This is the blogger I want to be when I grow up.

Well, I gonna go have a cocktail now and listen to the faux news on the TeeVee. I get my real news off of NPR.

maven