MOMocrats™

Health care is a human right, and to quote a nice, elderly man from my hippie church "We all need to get off our asses and make sure this thing passes!"

It's been a long time since I've posted on MOMocrats, the blog I started along with Glennia and Beth because, after 8 years of Bush "leading" our country, there was no way we were going to allow a Republican to become president.

After the election of Barack Obama, I was completely burned out. So much of my time, effort, brain space, and blogging was devoted to getting a Democrat elected that I needed a break. I just didn't expect that it would last 9 months.

I can't remember the last time I watched Olbermann. I don't hit refresh on Huffington Post or Politico or factcheck.org multiple times a day like I used to. My papers stacked up so I finally canceled my subscriptions. I have been content to focus on other aspects of my life feeling as if now, our country is finally in good hands. And it mostly is.

Except that over the last month or so, as I have watched the people who are working so hard to reform our failing healthcare system and to pass HR676 having to do battle against a well-funded, lie-spreading machine, I have gotten angrier and angrier. How people like Sarah Palin are STILL being so careless with their words. Death panels and socialized medicine? And people believe it.

How members of congress who have accepted hundreds or millions of dollars in donations from insurance and pharmaceutical companies are allowed time on the floor.

How Democratic members of congress (I'm looking at you, Feinstein) can say, "I am not for a public option."

And the guns.  Don't even get me started on the guns.

As I sat in my beloved hippie church today, listening to our speaker, Lynn Huidekoper, one of the founders of the Single Payer Coalition, share information on this landmark healthcare decision—a reform that could finally bring the United States in line with the other 27 highly developed nations of the world—I knew that it was time. Healthcare reform was my path back to MOMocrats. I know that my sisters here have been carrying on the healthcare fight for months now, but now is the time that I need to step up and do my part.

We MOMocrats did so much good before sharing our thoughts and combating lies and getting the right person elected president, that it's time to do it again. Healthcare needs to be our change we can believe in. If you believe that our current system is broken and that healthcare is a basic human right—that access to good healthcare is something that all people should have—then you, too, regardless of your political or religious affiliation, must take up this fight. It is only through the efforts of a very passionate and vocal grassroots effort that we are going to get HR676 passed.

So what can you do? 

First, let's counteract the lies and untruths with what Huidekoper calls, "no-brainers." These are the simple facts that you can copy and paste and include in an email to all your family and friends, and they are:

1. Healthcare is a human right.
2. We are not starting from scratch--we are taking an existing program, Medicare, and expanding it.
3. Medicare is a single payer program for those 65 and older. (We know what it is.)
4. Single payer means expanding Medicare to cover all. (Take something we are already doing and make it cover all Americans, not just those 65 and older.)
5. 5% overhead instead of 30% (Think about how much insurance and pharamaceutical companies spend on advertising. I never saw ads for erectile dysfuction, eyelash lengtheners, overactive bladder, or hyperactive leg syndrome on TV 10 or 15 years ago.)
6. It will cost less.
7. Everyone is covered, no denials, no preexisting conditions.
8. It is NOT free.
9. Employees and Employers pay into the system. Look at your pay stub, we already know how to do it.
10. Business will be paying 4.75% payroll instead of 16%.
11. A rich benefit package will be available to all.
12. All will have long term care, vision and dental covered (individual state plans right now may not, but federal will).
13. No more bankruptcies due to health care bills.
14. It is NOT socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is where government owns the hospitals, doctors, and everything in it. There are only a handful of truly socialist medicine systems in the world and guess what?  One of them is in the United States: it's called the VA.
15. Health care delivery remains private. Under HR676 patients continue to see private doctors in private hospitals. Government claims will be processed by private insurance companies not government agencies. See #14: It is NOT socialized medicine.
16. Total choice of health care provider. Under single payer you can go to any doctor, not just the ones in your plan. HMOs are more restrictive NOW.
17. More money will go to health care.
18. No more middle man between doctor and patient, contrary to what opponents say. The middle men are the insurance companies who currently tell doctors what tests and medications they will and will not allow.
19. Doctors will regain control of healthcare--which is why 60% of doctors support single payer.
20. No more deaths due to uninsurance or denial of care. Twenty thousand people a year die yearly because they are not insured, are under insured, or have been denied care.  That is an outrage.
21. No more obscene salaries for insurance CEOs.
22. No more inhumane waits in ERs for primary care.
23 We will join all the other industrialized nations in covering EVERYONE.

So Much Shouting, So Little Laughter: A Maryland Health Care Town Hall

"Well, I won't be going inside." -- Jane Aitken, New Hampshire Teabagger in response to MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan's opportunity to pose a question on health reform to President Obama

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums it up nicely. Anti-health care reform folks are very interested in appearing on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox but totally, completely, and utterly disinterested in the facts.

Such was the case last evening at Senator Ben Cardin's (D-MD) health care town hall. Despite the 97-degree heat, code red air quality, and oppressive humidity, hundreds of people turned out in an attempt to claim one of the 500 seats at Towson University.

"'I know some of you don't want me to mention the facts, but listen to the facts,' the senator said early on, drawing an angry response from opponents in the room and applause from supporters - who were both outshouted and outnumbered." -- Baltimore Sun

A Response to Sarah Palin's "Death Panel" Comment from a Parent of a Child with Special Needs

Sarah Palin, you are not my advocate. You do not speak for me. You do not speak for my child.

You do not speak for the many good friends of mine who have children with chronic medical issues far more severe than my own son's neurological disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder. You do not speak for all parents of children with Down Syndrome. You do not speak for the member of my extended family who has Down Syndrome.

What you said on your Facebook page, about mythical Obama "death panels"?

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.  -Sarah Palin

If enough people believe it — if enough people are scared by it into opposing any kind of health insurance reform — that politically motivated statement deliberately promoting a dangerous rumor that has been proven to be patently false could cause tens of thousands of children with special needs in the United States to continue to suffer without adequate health care for years to come.

In the United States, children with chronic health issues are often denied coverage by private health insurance companies that consider their health concerns to be a pre-existing condition. Some of those children denied coverage under private health insurance are, thankfully, able to qualify for public health insurance through Medicaid or SCHIP — two of our country's existing socialized medical insurance programs — but some are not. And those children who do have private insurance coverage are often forced to pay high co-pays for routine procedures, and are frequently denied authorization for recommended medical care.

Every day in the United States, children with autism or cerebral palsy are denied occupational therapy. Children with juvenile diabetes are denied insulin pumps. Children with asthma are denied inhalers. American parents of children with chronic health conditions must fight a tangled bureaucratic health insurance system constantly to make sure that their kids can get access to the care recommended by their doctors.

And that's why the National Down Syndrome Congress supports health insurance reform. That's why the Autism Society of America supports health insurance reform. That's why Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, the American Diabetes Association, and the March of Dimes all support health care insurance reform. Because all of these organizations are advocates for children with special needs.

Go Watch It: White House Pushes Back Against Health Reform Myths

In this new YouTube video released by the White House, White House Health Reform Office Communications Director Linda Douglass succintly addresses the false internet rumor that President Obama plans to eliminate private health insurance coverage and force everyone to join a public health insurance plan.



I hope this video is only the beginning of a Major Health Insurance Reform Rumor Beatdown, MythBusters style. There are plenty of myths circulating about the Democrats' health insurance reform plan that could use a good solid debunking straight from Pennsylvania Avenue.

The insurance industry spin machine is working overtime to confuse the public about what the government is actually planning in an attempt to scare American citizens into opposing health insurance reform — the health industry lobby is spending over a million dollars a day trying to prevent the government from passing a meaningful reform bill.
 
And Republicans, so determined to see the President's centerpiece initiative fail that they've openly declared they hope health reform will be his Waterloo, are actually going so far with their lies about health reform legislation that they have outrageously, falsely claimed the President and Democrats in Congress want to encourage the elderly to commit suicide. (This is not true. Repeat, not true. Read the link already.)

The White House, unfortunately, will have to work overtime too just to stay on top of manufactured rumors like these if they want health reform to succeed. This video is a good start.

August 4, 2009: Happy Birthday, President Obama

Would you pay $5 to say, SHUT UP FOREVER ABOUT THE BIRTHER THING? How about $10? I just did.

There's a section of Wingnuttialand peopled by those who believe our president is not a citizen of the United States of America--the very nation whose Constitution he swore to uphold, whose domestic and foreign policy he shapes, and the nation he represents to the world. You know, the country whose approximately 60 million inhabitants of voting age and the Electoral College actually elected him to office. Wingnuttians instead believe that Obama's a Kenyan citizen by virtue of his father's having started and ended his life there after immigrating to the US and fathering Barack Obama.

Well, that's crazy. And xenophobic. With dollops of racism swirled in.

Conservative Shadowboxing on Sonia Sotomayor

This week's Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor closed Thursday, not so much with a bang, but a whimper, with the confirmation committee's ranking Republican member Senator Jeff Sessions going so far as to say to the judge, "I will not support and I don't think any member of this side will support a filibuster or any attempt to block a vote on your nomination. I look forward to you getting that vote before we recess in August."

Sessions' remarks were a fitting coda to match Republican Senator Lindsay Graham's statement during opening remarks on the first day of the hearings, "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you are going to get confirmed." But Republican politicians and conservative pundits managed to fit quite a show of political theater in between.

For a nominee who is apparently almost guaranteed to be confirmed, and may even garner a few Republican votes, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has faced quite a gauntlet of unfounded accusations by conservatives this week. Here are a few of the talking points most frequently aimed against her:

DADocrat Post: Sotomayor, Empathy, and Objectivity

As someone whose professional specialty is (in theory) the philosophy of law, listening to the news from the Sotomayor confirmation hearings so far has been a bit frustrating – not just the lines of questioning, mind you, but Judge Sotomayor's answers as well.  Among the many things on which Sotomayor has been questioned are her infamous “wise Latina” comments.  The judge herself has responded by backing away from the comments, saying that they were a poorly-executed rhetorical flourish.  What is frustrating is that she is doing this when her claim that there are cases in which a wise Latina might make better judgments than a white man is not only almost certainly true, but represents a much more sophisticated understanding of “objectivity” than that on display in the hearings. 

The charge against Sotomayor is that, if she thinks there are cases in which a Latina would make a better legal judgment than a white man (let's assume they are otherwise equally wise), she must be an identity-politics warrior who believes that latinas are morally and/or intellectually superior to white men (and she probably thinks that Che Guevara should replace Shakespeare in high school English classrooms, too).  But this is an unwarranted inference.  A Latina might make a better judgment because she can see the issue from a different perspective than a white man – which helps her objectivity, rather than competing with it.

Congress Reaches Compromise on Guantanamo Trials

For months, Republicans in Congress have fought loudly and strenuously on the public stage against President Obama's plans to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay and bring several of the detainees currently being held there -- many of whom have been now held without trial, or even officially released criminal charges, for several years -- to trial in courts in the United States.

Despite the fact that the United States has successfully tried and conviced both domestic and foreign terrorists in U.S. court for decades, and despite the fact that U.S. prisons on U.S. soil currently hold 355 terrorists, none of whom have escaped, Republicans (and some Democrats) continue to claim that even bringing Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil for trial would seriously endanger the American public.

In May, RNC Chairman Michael Steele went so far as to say, "Putting these terrorists on American soil is dangerous, naïve and a threat to America's national security." And it seems Republicans have been taking every opportunity to accuse Democrats who support the closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo of irresponsibility, often misrepresenting the facts to smear their political rivals.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney has been making the talk show rounds for weeks, arguing in support of her father's unconstitutional and unlawful "enhanced interrogation" policies and backing the Republican party line that bringing terrorists to actual justice in our own nation's justice system would somehow endanger the United States. (Liz was caught revising history to bolster her case in a recent debate on the Campbell Brown show by claiming President Bush never planned to bring Guantanamo prisoner's to U.S soil for trial; in fact, Bush did publicly state his plans to try some detainees in U.S. courts in 2006.)

Guest MOMocrats Post by Miguelina: Calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist? Make sure you have the facts first.

The MOMocrats welcome guest poster Miguelina who has a few things to say about the nasty tactics the GOP is using to try to smear Sonia Sotomayor.  Playing the racist card? You better come correct.

To Understand Takes Time and Effort, Something that Not All People Are Willing To Give

I'm not even going to pretend that this a political blog (or I should more accurately say, a judicial watch blog) but the constant exposure to Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" quote, taken out of context is -- to put it mildly -- disappointing to me.

Dirty GOP politics is nothing new, but that the mainstream media keeps repeating the quote out of context thus doing the GOP's dirty work for them is pretty scary.

Sigh.

Why such a sophomoric smear campaign? In Sotomayor's own words,

To understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give.

You could argue that those words are proven right by the storm brewing around her right now, but I'll let you decide on your own. I trust that my fellow Americans are capable to form an opinion based on facts, something that talk radio seems to think is impossible.

I'm not even going to pretend that this a political blog (or I should more accurately say, a judicial watch blog) but the constant exposure to Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" quote, taken out of context is -- to put it mildly -- disappointing to me.

Dirty GOP politics is nothing new, but that the mainstream media keeps repeating the quote out of context thus doing the GOP's dirty work for them is pretty scary.

Sigh.

Why such a sophomoric smear campaign? In Sotomayor's own words,

To understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give.

You could argue that those words are proven right by the storm brewing around her right now, but I'll let you decide on your own. I trust that my fellow Americans are capable to form an opinion based on facts, something that talk radio seems to think is impossible.

Funny, G. Gordon Liddy Doesn't Look Like An Expert on Women's Health

This is G. Gordon Liddy.

Yesterday, G. Gordon Liddy said on his conservative talk radio show that SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor was a member of La Raza, "which means in illegal alien, 'The Race.'"

WOW. There's now a language called "illegal alien."

And then he said:

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Now, take a second look at the picture above. Does that look like a man who knows anything about Latinos, women, or Latinas? Female reproductive cycles? Common sense?

Obviously, no.

A few conservative politicians have issued tepid reprimands.

What I want to know is--where are the conservatives who howled that Sarah Palin was being treated in sexist fashion? Where are the conservative women--Republican Latinas, even, if such people exist--who are decrying this ridiculous Neanderthal racism and sexism as something that should crawl back to the stone age where it belongs?

Feel free to leave any examples of right-wing outrage at what Liddy said in the comments. I'm curious to see if there are any.

They don't even have to be wingnuts. They could be members of the media.

For example, if anyone sees Campbell Brown declaring "Free Sonia Sotomayor," like she did for Sarah Palin, please let me know.

So far?

I mostly hear crickets.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.