MOMocrats™

Bill Maher takes on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and challenges them to take a stand. (And he's right.)

Did you all see Real Time this past weekend? Bill Maher delivers one of his best commentaries ever and the Rally to Restore Sanity is in his sights.

Did the rally leave you cold? It did me. The thing about it that bothered me was the constant driving home of the point that both sides—liberal and conservative—share the "insanity" blame. I strongly disagree, and Maher's best line from his commentary cuts directly to the heart of the matter:

"Martin Luther King spoke on that Mall in the capital and he didn't say, 'Remember folks, those southern sheriffs with the fire hoses and the German shepherds, they have a point too.' No, he said I have a dream, they have ...a nightmare...Liberals, like the ones on that field, must stand up and be counted and not pretend that we're as mean, or greedy, or short-sighted or just plain bat-shit as they are. And if that's too polarizing for you, and you still wanna reach across the aisle ... try church"

 

Watch now:

-Stefania Pomponi Butler

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.

MOMocrats Meet Valerie Jarrett at BlogHer

At the BlogHer '09 conference, five MOMocrats writers were among a group of women bloggers who met with White House Adviser and Public Liason Valerie Jarrett to talk about health insurance reform. Representing MOMocrats.com were BlogHer Political Director and MOMocrats contributor Erin Kotecki Vest, MOMocrats Founding Editor Stefania Pomponi Butler, PunditMom creator, Huffington Post contributor, and MOMocrats writer Joanne Bamberger, MOMocrats writer Sheila Bernus Dowd, and MOMocrats writer Jaelithe Judy.

Also in attendance were:

• BlogHer Community Manager Denise Tanton and BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone
• Jenny Prokopi, the founder of an online community for women living with chronic health conditions, ChronicBabe.com
• Kerri Morrone Sparling, author of Six Until Me, a blog about living with diabetes.
• Loolwa Khazoom, journalist and founder of the Dancing with Pain chronic pain management website.
• Kim McAllister, who writes about her life as a nurse at Emergiblog.
• Liz Henry, tech blogger, momblogger, disability rights advocate and BlogHer contributor.
• Kelly Wickham, a public school administrator, writer of the blog Mocha Momma, and BlogHer Content Editor.
• Daphra Holder, Manager of Mobilization Marketing for the charitable organization Donors Choose. 
• Katie, who has written about her experiences as a brain surgery patient at Overflowing Brain.
• Casey Mullins from Moosh in Indy, who has written about her struggles with depression, endometriosis and infertility.
• Loralee from Loralee's Looney Tunes, who has written about her experience being denied insurance coverage for a high risk pregnancy.

Here is the official BlogHer liveblog of the Valerie Jarrett meeting, written by Denise Tanton as the meeting happened.

Is Release of Torture Photos Necessary? The MOMocrats Debate Obama's Decision.

Last Wednesday, under the advice of Pentagon officials, President Obama reversed a decision to comply with an appeals court's May 28th deadline for the public release of dozens photos depicting acts of abuse and torture perpetrated on detainees in U.S. custody by U.S. military personnel. The President now argues the public release of the photos should be withheld from public view because the situations depicted in the photos have already been investigated by the Pentagon, and some of the U.S. personnel who perpetrated the abuses have already been punished. Obama said in a May 13 press statement:

[. . .] this is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action. Rather, it has gone through the appropriate and regular processes. And the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.

It's therefore my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.

Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse. And obviously the thing that is most important in my mind is making sure that we are abiding by the Army Manual and that we are swiftly investigating any instances in which individuals have not acted appropriately, and that they are appropriately sanctioned. That's my aim and I do not believe that the release of these photos at this time would further that goal.

Now, let me be clear: I am concerned about how the release of these photos would be -- would impact on the safety of our troops. I have made it very clear to all who are within the chain of command, however, of the United States Armed Forces that the abuse of detainees in our custody is prohibited and will not be tolerated.

When we at MOMocrats discussed President Obama's decision to fight the court-ordered release of these photos, we discovered that our writers held a range of views on the pros and cons of the President's new position. Here is what six of the MOMocrats had to say about whether or not more photos of U.S. troops abusing and torturing prisoners should be publicly released:

Tea Parties = Tea Tantrums [or signs of the GOP's imminent implosion]

We've been puzzling over this tea party concept ever since we've heard about it. From what we can figure Conservatives across the country are holding parties to protest being "Taxed Enough Already" (get it?) among other things. This despite the fact that President Obama has just passed the largest middle class tax cut in history. Remember during the campaign how the GOP was telling everyone that Obama would raise your taxes? Makes you wonder if Republicans 1) ever read Obama's proposed tax policy and 2) ever read the news.

The tea baggers are also protesting other things like the government spending, immigration, bank bailouts, the new design on the Tropicana orange juice carton, the Burger King Sponge Bob commercial, and the best way to send tea bags to Somali pirates. (Hint: By ship! Preferably ships also carrying oil, tanks, or weapons.) Because if you can't decide on what to protest about just protest everything, goshdarnit! (Oh, and I may have made some of that protesty stuff up.)

Is this a sign that the GOP is officially dead?  When I read things like this, I really think so. Can't you just feel the passion? Isn't it stirring? Don't you feel like getting out there and DOING SOMETHING?! Sigh. That's their activism strategy? It's just how the Obama campaign did it. Not. If that's how the conservative revolution will be won, folks--we don't have anything to worry about. When they start listening to Meghan McCain (on the 12th of never) that's when we should be a little concerned.

Andrew Sullivan refers to the tea parties as tea tantrums, and we (and others) whole-heartedly agree. It makes us giggle and picture wrinkled, swinging scrota. Or at least I do.

Stefania Pomponi Butler wonders if the conservative immigration protest will be called the Dirty Sanchez movement. Yeah, I went there, but after tea bagging, where else is there to go, really?

Michelle Obama: We never knew how much we needed a First Lady like you until now

Watch this video clip of Michelle Obama visiting a girls' school and have a stack of hankies at the ready.

She makes me proud to be a woman, proud to be a mother, proud to be a mother of daughters, and proud to be an American.

Michelle Obama, with your "quiet strength and dignity," you are a shining, beaming symbol of hope that girls can be anything they wish to be. But more than that, you are a modern day living Lady Liberty who represents to world everything that is so great about our country. We can come from modest means, work hard, use our intellect and creativity to follow our dreams, and end up being an inspiration in the process. In these trying times, while your husband works to clean up the mess he inherited, you are our reassurance that everything is going to be okay.

Like you, we MOMocrats are educated women who are moms-in-chief. We feel no shame in staying home if we have to stay home or working if we have to work. Our children, like yours, will benefit from our smarts, values, and good judgment. You've shown us how important it is for children to have a place to play (where their lucky father can see them from his office), to plant own food so that our children can know where their produce comes from (and to grow extra to share), and you've shown us how to have compassion for others.

I feel the love you have for the people of this country every time you smile. I never knew how much we needed you to be our First Lady until I saw the Queen of England put her arm around you.  Thank you, Mrs. Obama.

—Stefania Pomponi Butler

Conservatives blame poor people for housing crisis [De-bunking the CRA myth]

This morning I received a coded message across the super-secret liberal journalist hotline an email directing my attention to an article in the Washington Independent which puts the kibosh on the misguided-but-popular-with-conservatives notion that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 is the cause of the housing crisis.

A little background: the CRA "requires banks to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered,' regardless of income levels. The law was enacted to prevent banks from denying loans (home, small business etc.) based on the poverty levels of certain neighborhoods — a practice known as redlining." In other words, yes, the law was designed to promote lending in low-income areas. It was not, however, designed to promote risky, sub-prime loans. In fact, the CRA penalizes banks for reckless and irresponsible lending practices. This is an important distinction.

The GOP and conservative pundits would have us believe that this law is the root cause of the nation's housing mess. In other words, poor people got risky loans and defaulted on their payments because they couldn't pay their bills. This argument puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of low-income homeowners while letting their lenders off scot-free.

Ah, but if only it were the true. Federal Reserve Board analysis in 2006 found that "CRA-covered banks operating in CRA-targeted neighborhoods accounted for just six percent of the risky, high-cost loans largely responsible for the housing crisis."

According to the NCRC, sub-prime lending practices exploded two decades after the passing of the CRA and reached their peak—nearly doubling—from 2000-2006. These were made by unregulated mortgage companies because let's not forget that it was the George W. Bush Administration's "roll back of regulation and oversight of banks, insurers, lenders, and credit raters" that left Wall Street with "no cop on the beat."

A top federal regulator went before Congress last week and didn't mince words:

“I can state very definitively,” Sandra Braunstein, director of the Federal Reserve’s consumer and community affairs division, said during a House Financial Institutions subcommittee hearing Wednesday, “that from the research we have done, the Community Reinvestment Act is not one of the causes of the current crisis.”

Yet, according to the article, "some myths don’t die easy." Republicans, backed by the financial and banking industry who continue to lobby hard and make campaign donations even in the wake of recent and on-going bailouts, "appear as willing as ever to blame the CRA for the collapse of the housing market."

So remember, the cause of the housing crisis wasn't bad loans or predatory lending or poor underwriting practices. It wasn't the non-CRA-covered banks who targeted CRA-covered areas to to push risky, high-cost loans, and it certainly wasn't failed regulatory oversight.

It's the poor people's fault.

Read the entire article here.

MOMocrats co-founder Stefania Pomponi Butler wishes she really did have access to a super-secret liberal journalist hotline. Because that would be some badassery right there.

If this economy teaches us anything, I hope it's to love our neighbors more

Cross-posted from CityMama.

One evening about a month ago, I received a phone call from a woman who attends my beloved hippie church asking me how I was doing and if I wanted to talk to our beloved minister about any issues relating to the economic downturn. She was reaching out to all the members of our community to ask if we were facing a job loss or home foreclosure or anything else that might be causing financial hardship. I didn't know this woman, but still, she wanted to know if I need to talk. She also let me know about a new group forming at church—the "Recession Riders"—and that its members were planning on weathering the economic storm together. "Brilliant," I thought.

I've heard people saying that the area I live in (Silicon Valley) is "recession proof." Restaurants are packed, people are out and about doing their thing, but I wonder: when it gets worse, and it will, will this area crash that much harder? How many people in my community are barely keeping it together or putting up fronts or needing help but are too afraid to ask?

Conservative Republican David Frum on conservative Republican Rush Limbaugh in this week's Newsweek [but will they listen?]

Rush Limbaugh has been in the news a lot lately, and frankly, I don't mind it. The more he talks, the worse off the Republicans are. The more he pontificates, the more he alienates the voters that the party desperately needs to reach, namely women and independents.

And that's not just my opinion, noted conservative David Frum wrote a scathing cover story on Loud-mouth Limbaugh in this week's Newsweek. My subscription paid for itself this week with that one article. It's a searing indictment which makes it all the more delicious to read, but at the same time, I kind of wish he'd kept his mouth shut.

"I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak hammered..." [Rachel Maddow is Awesome]

Japan's "Timothy Geithner" copes with his country's financial crisis like so many other people apparently do: by getting completely shit-faced.