McConnell Health Care Forum Closed to Public

Think Progress has the story:

Today, Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (KY), John McCain (R-AZ), and Kit Bond (MO) held a “Health Care Reform Forum” at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO. However, the event was closed to the public. ThinkProgress spoke with Barbara Mueth, vice president of community relations at Children’s Mercy, who confirmed that the attendees had all been invited by either the hospital or the senators.

...Although McCain has held town hall meetings, McConnell has largely avoided them. His spokesman Robert Steurer said that he is instead “speaking to Rotary clubs, chambers of commerce and hospital groups.”

President Obama's weekly address

The President discusses the steps being taken to finish the job of recovery from Hurricane Katrina as the fourth anniversary approaches.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

8 Ways Health Reform Matters to You

More McConnell hypocrisy

Think Progress busts Mitch McConnell for yet another hypocritical stance:

Yesterday — the same day he asked for Recovery Act money to be diverted — McConnell and Rep. Ben Chandler (D-KY) toured a construction site at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County, Kentucky. The facility, which is used to contain and destroy chemical weapons compiled during the Cold War, is in desperate need of repair and has leaked Sarin gas as recently as last year. McConnell quickly took credit for the new construction, noting that he and Chandler had inserted an additional $5 million into the 2010 budget. McConnell bragged:

“This is going to be a source of significant employment. At the peak, we could have up to 600 people working on this, and we believe the substantial majority of those workers will be Kentuckians.”

However, McConnell conveniently forgot to mention that even more additional funds for facility construction were awarded through the stimulus. A Defense Department report states that $5,876,000 has been allocated from the Recovery Act to the Blue Grass facility for repairs.

DSCC Response To Grayson's Announcement

In response to Trey Grayson’s formal entry into the Kentucky Senate race, Eric Schultz, Communications Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, released the following statement:

The people of Kentucky deserve an independent voice in the United States Senate – not a handpicked protégé of failed Republican leadership in Washington. If Trey Grayson can wrangle enough special interest money to overcome Rand Paul’s formidable grassroots fundraising, voters will know who in Washington he is beholden to. Democrats will target this seat no matter who the Republican nominee is.

Status quo is not an option

In her column today, Marie Cocco makes a strong case for the public option:

The Commonwealth Fund, an independent health care think tank, examined the models currently competing for congressional support and found that a public plan with payments set in accordance with Medicare rates would save the federal government, employers and individuals the most by far. The savings were three times greater than those achieved with competition only among private plans. Even a modified version of a public plan with provider payment rates pegged somewhat above what Medicare pays produced greater savings.

Nonetheless, what is emerging from Congress is a health overhaul that isn't as cost effective as it could be and doesn't guarantee against lost coverage -- yet gives insurers millions of new customers whose purchases will be subsidized by taxpayers.

This is change the industry can believe in.

What does health insurance reform mean for you?

All the President’s Zombies

In his column today, Paul Krugman takes on the right-wing's central tenet -- "government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good":

First of all, even before the current crisis Reaganomics had failed to deliver what it promised. Remember how lower taxes on high incomes and deregulation that unleashed the “magic of the marketplace” were supposed to lead to dramatically better outcomes for everyone? Well, it didn’t happen.

To be sure, the wealthy benefited enormously: the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans rose sevenfold between 1980 and 2007. But the real income of the median family rose only 22 percent, less than a third its growth over the previous 27 years.

Moreover, most of whatever gains ordinary Americans achieved came during the Clinton years. President George W. Bush, who had the distinction of being the first Reaganite president to also have a fully Republican Congress, also had the distinction of presiding over the first administration since Herbert Hoover in which the typical family failed to see any significant income gains.

The Guns of August

Be sure to check out today's excellent column by Frank Rich:

[Republican Senator Tom] Coburn’s implicit rationalization for far-right fanatics bearing arms at presidential events — the government makes them do it! — cannot stand. He’s not a radio or Fox News bloviator paid a fortune to be outrageous; he’s a card-carrying member of the United States Senate. On Monday — the day after he gave a pass to those threatening violence — a dozen provocateurs with guns, at least two of them bearing assault weapons, showed up for Obama’s V.F.W. speech in Phoenix. Within hours, another member of Congress — Phil Gingrey of Georgia — was telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that as long as brandishing guns is legal, he, too, saw no reason to discourage Americans from showing up armed at public meetings.

In April the Department of Homeland Security issued a report, originally commissioned by the Bush administration, on the rising threat of violent right-wing extremism. It was ridiculed by conservatives, including the Republican chairman, Michael Steele, who called it “the height of insult.” Since then, a neo-Nazi who subscribed to the anti-Obama “birther” movement has murdered a guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington, and an anti-abortion zealot has gunned down a doctor in a church in Wichita, Kan.

This month the Southern Poverty Law Center, the same organization that warned of the alarming rise in extremist groups before the Oklahoma City bombing, issued its own report. A federal law enforcement agent told the center that he hadn’t seen growth this steep among such groups in 10 to 12 years. “All it’s lacking is a spark,” he said.

President Obama's weekly address

President Obama debunks the myths around health reform, and discusses the public option proposal in which many of them are rooted.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

Bush administration politicized 'terror alerts'

AFP has the story:

WASHINGTON — Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.

..."Just like they did in Iraq, the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to cause fear in the public to further its political goals," [Senator Frank Lautenberg] said in a statement.

Misinformation widespread on health reform

From this morning's edition of the Today Show:

'Liberal media' regurgitates Mitch's false claims

Media Matters has the story:

In an August 18 Associated Press article, David Espo quoted Sen. Mitch McConnell's claim that health reform proposals will be paid for "through massive cuts to Medicare," without pointing out, as FactCheck.org did, that "[t]he claim that Obama and Congress are cutting seniors' Medicare benefits to pay for the health care overhaul is outright false." Additionally, Espo quoted McConnell's assertion that health reform will be funded through "taxes on small business," without noting that according to House Democrats, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that only 4.1 percent of small businesses would be affected by the surtax in the House Democrats' health reform bill or that the Senate HELP bill provides credits to help small businesses comply with the mandated coverage provisions.

Editorial comic roundup

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2009 Summer Fundraiser

The Kenton County Democratic Executive Committee is holding its 2009 Summer Fundraiser on Monday, August 31. Congressman Steve Driehaus will be our special guest. Please email us at KentonDems@gmail.com for more information, or use our online contact form.

Healthcare foes use fear, not reason

Today's column by Leonard Pitts is great:

...it would be really valuable to hear an explanation of [the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009] by those who presumably have read it, followed by vigorous questioning. Instead, the circus has come to town.

I refer, of course, to the chaos that has erupted at townhall meetings as Democratic lawmakers try to sell the bill. The New York Times reports shouting matches, fistfights, threats, injuries and arrests. Georgia Congressman David Scott says he's had death threats and a visit from vandals who painted a swastika outside his office.

If you wonder what the Nazis have to do with this, join the club. It's an incoherent protest, and where there is incoherence, naturally, there is Sarah Palin. The former governor of Alaska weighed in on Facebook with a claim that Democrats were proposing a "downright evil" system in which the fate of the elderly and the disabled would be determined by "death panels."

Why We Need Health Care Reform

Today's New York Times includes an op-ed by President Obama. Here's an excerpt:

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

President Obama's weekly address

The President talks about how the chatter and ruckus around health insurance reform on television obscures the reality of what's happening in America.

Republican Death Trip

Paul Krugman is great today, as usual:

Sure enough, President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.

This opposition cannot be appeased. Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.

...So much, then, for Mr. Obama’s dream of moving beyond divisive politics. The truth is that the factors that made politics so ugly in the Clinton years — the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia — are as strong as ever. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it was in the 1990s because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the G.O.P. with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

The Real Death Panels

Be sure to read today's column by Joe Conason:

When Republican politicians and right-wing talking heads bemoan the fictitious "death panels" that they claim would arise from health-care reform, they are concealing a sinister reality from their followers. The ugly fact is that every year we fail to reform the existing system, that failure condemns tens of thousands of people to die — either because they have no insurance or because their insurance companies deny coverage or benefits when they become ill.

The best estimate of the annual death toll among Americans of working age due to lack of insurance or under-insurance is at least 20,000, according to studies conducted over the past decade by medical researchers, and is almost certainly rising as more and more people lose their coverage as costs continue to go up.

They die primarily because they didn't have the coverage or the money to pay doctors and thus delayed seeking treatment until it was too late. They don't get checkups, screenings and other preventive care. That is why uninsured adults are far more likely to be diagnosed with a disease, such as cancer or heart disease, at an advanced stage, which severely reduces their chances of survival.

More Evidence of a Scandal

Today's New York Times includes this must-read editorial:

Documents released by Congress, including testimony from Karl Rove, offer powerful new evidence that the Bush administration fired top prosecutors who refused to use their offices to promote the electoral fortunes of Republicans.

Turning law enforcement into a tool of partisan politics is a serious offense, and a Justice Department investigation is under way. Congress must also continue its investigation and call Mr. Rove and others to testify publicly so the American people can hear for themselves how the justice system was hijacked.

The materials released on Tuesday paint an ugly picture of fair-minded prosecutors under siege by the White House for refusing to politicize their offices. And it puts Mr. Rove, former President George W. Bush’s chief political operative, at the center of it.

Right-wing militias on the rise in US: report

AFP has the story:

WASHINGTON — Incensed by the election of the first black US president, right-wing militia groups in the United States are rising again after a decade of decline, according to new research on extremist groups released on Wednesday.

Ideologically driven by racism and a virulent anti-government, anti-taxation and anti-immigrant agenda, the homegrown groups that thrived in the 1990s and spurred numerous deadly terrorist attacks are expanding, said the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

"This is the most significant growth we've seen in 10 to 12 years," said a law enforcement official quoted by the SPLC in its special report "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias."

"All it's lacking is a spark," said the official, adding it is "only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."

'The Daily Show' takes on right-wing lunacy

Jon Stewart is brilliant:

Something In It For All of Us

Averting the Worst

Another great column by Paul Krugman:

So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government.

...reasonable estimates suggest that around a million more Americans are working now than would have been employed without [the Obama stimulus] plan — a number that will grow over time — and that the stimulus has played a significant role in pulling the economy out of its free fall.

All in all, then, the government has played a crucial stabilizing role in this economic crisis. Ronald Reagan was wrong: sometimes the private sector is the problem, and government is the solution.

Rationing health care

Here's an excellent column from Clarence Page:

"Rationing" is one of the scariest words in the health-care debate.

It conjures up apocalyptic nightmare images from "Soylent Green," the sci-fi thriller about a future in which the old and weak are quietly lured into early extinction for the sake of future generations.

What the scaremongers don't like to talk about is how much our private insurers ration now -- mostly for the sake of their own profits.

Editorial comic roundup

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So much for bipartisan governing

Derrick Z Jackson has an excellent column today:

It was less than a year ago that angry Americans, concerned about the ditch the Republicans and the Bush administration drove this nation into over the prior eight years, voted in Obama and an increased Democratic majority in Congress. Only a half year into Obama’s presidency, the only strategy the Republicans have is to stoke so much anger in Americans that they forget what they want.

A May CNN poll found that 57 percent of Americans thought policies of Democratic leaders in Congress would move the country in the right direction. The same poll found that only 39 percent of Americans thought Republican leaders in Congress would move the country in the right direction. Republican Party ranting, raving, and road blocking may have pulled Obama’s favorability ratings ratings from 78 percent at his Inauguration to 64 percent in a CNN poll this week. But its obstinance has not lifted its own. While the favorability rating of Democrats in Congress was at 47 percent in a New York Times/CBS poll last week, the Republicans had a favorability rating of 28 percent, virtually the same as the 29 percent rating in a June poll by the Pew Research Center.

If the Republicans continue to get in the way of what Americans want - and it sure looks like they are from the conservative groups disrupting the Democrats’ constituent healthcare town halls around the country - then Obama has to seriously consider that bipartisanship is a lost cause. In 2008, the nation said Nay to the party of Nay. It is rapidly coming time for Obama to do the same.

President Obama's weekly address

President Barack Obama calls health insurance reform critical to our nations long-term economic strength and dispels the outlandish rumors being promoted by those who are defending the status-quo.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

The Town Hall Mob

Be sure to read Paul Krugman today:

There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind.

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

In a wing-nut world, Granny is toast

Today's column by Ellen Goodman is great:

We now have "The Birthers" manufacturing myths that President Obama was not born in the United States and therefore is serving illegally. They are following the business plan of those earlier entrepreneurs selling the idea that Obama had killed his grandma. Consider the scare-biz Internet scribe who penned the memorable line: "Obama flies to Hawaii to visit his grandmother and just a few days later she winds up dead. Coincidence?"

But now the industry has ratcheted up from accusing Obama of killing his grandma to accusing him of trying to kill your grandma.

...All in all, Fearmongers Inc. plays on the notion that advance directives are a sneaky way of cutting costs by cutting life short.

DCCC Launches HealthCareFactCheck.com

Here's a new press release from the DCCC:

The DCCC announced today the launch of HealthCareFactCheck.com, a new website dedicated to exposing the truth-twisting attack by Republicans and their fringe right-wing groups on health insurance reform. The site empowers grassroots activists to fight back against the false and misleading attacks being used by Republicans to protect the status quo for big health insurance companies.

"Republicans are trying to poison the debate on health insurance reform with lies, misleading ads, and scare tactics so we're launching healthcarefactcheck.com to set the record straight and empower our supporters to fight back with the truth," said Jon Vogel, Executive Director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "This website is just another way that we are holding Republicans and their fringe groups accountable for trying anything and everything to protect the profitable status quo for big health insurance companies at the expense of affordable health care for families."

HealthCareFactCheck.com is part of Health Care ER, Health Care Emergency Response, the DCCC's major advertising and grassroots offensive throughout the month of August. Activities include paid advertising, automated and live volunteer phone calls, millions of grassroots e-mails, letters to the editor, fact checks, and tele-town halls in targeted Republican districts.

What Are the Birthers Really After?

Today's column by Joe Conason is great. Here's an excerpt:

Consider the flight from reality of the so-called birthers, who claim that Mr. Obama was actually born in Kenya. To believe that canard, they must also believe that Mr. Obama's mother and grandparents conspired to publish notices of his birth in not one but two Honolulu newspapers in August 1961; that the current Republican governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, a dedicated partisan and strong supporter of her party's nominee, John McCain, conspired last year and is conspiring now to conceal the truth about Mr. Obama's birth certificate, along with a host of Hawaii state officials; and that one of several obviously forged "Kenyan" documents is the true Obama birth certificate.

Even [veteran pundit Patrick] Buchanan, who has spent a lifetime agitating white fear, admits that's nutty. But the mealy-mouthed spokesmen for the Republican Party, on Capitol Hill and in states across the country, dare not say so. They cower before the talk jocks and kooks who have seized the leadership of the right. Much of this madness is just cynical posturing, designed to increase ratings and hits, to sell silly books and fleece the rubes of their money. To understand the phoniness behind the hysteria, recall that anti-Obama propagandists Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon Scaife, the owners of Newsmax, used to traffic in all of the Clinton conspiracy nonsense — until they sought a reconciliation with the Clintons over the past few years and admitted that their old accusations were utterly wrong. Why would anyone trust their accusations against the president now?

Most Americans never will. But the clear purpose of birther propaganda is not to win a majority by democratic means, but to drive a minority of a minority into turmoil and even violence — as indicated by their behavior at this month's Congressional town hall meetings. Should we experience another tragedy like the Oklahoma City bombing, the blood and the ruin will be on their conscience.

Republicans' Health Care Plan: The Status Quo

Enough of the Mob

Editorial comic roundup

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GOP Rx for Health Insurance Reform

Supporting Our Troops: The Post 9/11 GI Bill

The White House issued this press release today:

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Obama celebrated the beginning of implementation of the Post 9/11 GI Bill. This bill, through its Yellow Ribbon Programs and partnerships with colleges and universities throughout the nation, will provide our service members with the most generous educational benefits package since the original GI Bill of 1944.

Over 3,400 agreements were received from the 1,100 schools participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program. The Yellow Ribbon Program, a provision of the new Post-9/11 GI Bill, funds tuition expenses that exceed the highest public in-state undergraduate tuition rate.

"Sixty-five years ago, a grateful nation offered a generation of World War II heroes the chance to go to college," President Obama said. "The original GI Bill paved the way to a better life for millions of veterans and their families while building the foundation of the American middle class. Today, the Post-9/11 GI Bill is affording a new generation of heroes a 21st century version of that same opportunity."

"The President and I know that the nation’s courageous service members and their families have shouldered the heaviest burden for our country’s security and safety over the past eight years," VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said. "This new GI Bill is a way for a grateful nation to tangibly demonstrate our heartfelt appreciation and abiding respect for their service."

"More than two and half years ago, we began with the simple concept that those who have been serving since 9/11 should have the same opportunity for a first class educational future as those who served during World War II," Senator Jim H. Webb said. "This bill provides a modern and fair educational benefit to address the needs of those who answered the call of duty to our country--those who moved toward the sound of the guns--often at great sacrifice."

With the implementation of the Post 9/11 GI Bill, our nation has an opportunity to honor America’s veterans in a very tangible way. The maximum benefit under the Post-9/11 GI Bill allows veterans, service members, Reservists and Guard members the ability to receive an in-state, undergraduate education at a public institution at no cost.

Further, to honor their many sacrifices, the Post 9/11 GI Bill allows for the transferability of unused benefits to eligible career service members’ families. More information on the transferability of unused benefits can be found HERE.

President Obama has directed Secretary Shinseki to create a results-driven, 21st Century VA. Since the signing of this monumental legislation, VA has made meeting the August 1 implementation deadline a top priority. As of July 30th VA has processed over 112,000 claims.

They broke it; now they refuse to fix it

Barack Obama -- born in the U.S.A.

In his column today, Leonard Pitts takes on the "birthers":

Last month, GOP Rep. Mike Castle was booed and shouted down at a town hall meeting because he dared vouch that the president is a citizen. If I were of that endangered species, the thoughtful conservative, I would find that deeply troubling.

...For a generation, the GOP has tolerated and encouraged this estrangement from reality because it played well at the ballot box. Rep. Castle's experience suggests the cost may now outstrip the benefits. Because the cost is the specter of a party rendered ridiculous -- and irrelevant.

You have to ask yourself: How far from reality can you wander before you can't find your way home again? If conservatives aren't careful, they may soon find out.

President Obama's weekly address

The President discusses the state of the economy amidst positive signs from the GDP. Making clear that this is little comfort to those struggling, he notes that we appear to have averted an even worse disaster and offers hope for the time ahead.