Democrats= "The Party of Liars"

Either Obama and the Democrats are lying or it simply must be everyone else. Even Democrat Howard Dean has admitted that ObamaCare will cost several trillions of dollars and the Dems are not being honest. Want better news?

Well, the libertarian think-tank, Cato, went through the ObamaCare bill and said the Dems are using gimmicks to keep the cost below the magic threshold of $900 billion…

One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019).  Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”

Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance.  When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax.  When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending.  But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending.  That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan.  And it hides maybe 60 percent of the legislation’s total costs.  When I correct for that gimmick, it brings total costs to roughly $2.5 trillion (i.e., $1 trillion/0.4). …

When we correct for both gimmicks, counting both on- and off-budget costs over the first 10 years of implementation, the total cost of ObamaCare reaches — I’m so sorry about this — $6.25 trillion.  That’s not a precise estimate.  It’s just far closer to the truth than President Obama and congressional Democrats want the debate to be.

If this bill passes, the bill will be pushed down to the generations under us. The Democrats, lead by the proven liars like Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, know that this bill will cost more than the $849 billion price tag that was put on it. The purpose of this bill is to extend Medicaid, which just happens to be another multi-trillion dollar, unfunded, government-run program.

Libertarians, Republicans and Independents are all lying of course. The Democrats will say that everyone is racist, wants people to die in the streets and loves the insurance companies. They tend to say this often so they can continue telling their lies. We should call them the “Party of Liars,” because this is the only thing they have successfully accomplished since 2007.

Dean: Obama Care is a Bailout That Makes AIG Look Cheap

Howard Dean admits that ObamaCare will cost a trillion dollars and offers no real reform and says the bill is harmful. Dean sounds like he could lead a tea party protest.

Via NakedEmperorNews

That angry, hateful Howard Dean. He obviously is a racist and wants people to die in the streets. He must love those insurance companies too. Do you idiots, who believe everything Obama tells you, see how stupid your claims have been?

Did you hear Howard Dean admit that if you get sick, you should expect to pay three times as much as you pay now? Dean then turns around and admits that you can’t afford health insurance if it’s twice as much or three times as much. This is what the Republicans have been screaming since day one of the health care debate.

Dean also admits this is nothing more that a “trillion dollar bailout” similar to the government bailout of insurance giant A.I.G. “This is a bailout that makes A.I.G. look cheap,” Dean proclaims during his interview on the Bill Press Show. “$60 billion dollars a year goes to the insurance companies under this bill, now if we get a public option I think that’s ok…but if you don’t have a public option, why would you want to stick the taxpayer with yet another bailout… They bailed out the banks, they bailed out AIG…this is a trillion dollar bailout.”

That’s how a Democrat thinks. Dean goes through and points out how bad the bill is, but in the same breath he says he can deal with all that as long as the health care bill has the public option.

Also listen very closely to Dean admitting that the Republicans are right and that this bill takes “TRILLIONS of dollars over several decades from our kids.”

Hate to say it but “TOLD YOU SO!”

What does the former head of the Democratic National Committee and almost Democratic presidential nominee Howard Dean say about Obama Care in its present form?

“…there’s really no insurance reform in this bill…” says Dean. “I just figured this out in the last few days… You can be charged twice as much for insurance if you have a preexisting condition…”

A Public Option is the only part of the bill that makes it worth voting for, according to Dean, apparently because he’s so confident the PO will drive the private insurers under. The rest of the bill represents a gift to the insurance companies, he says.

You know, what this is is a giant bail-out. This is a bail-out that makes AIG look cheap. Sixty billion dollars a year go to the insurance companies under this bill. Now if we can get a public option, I think that’s OK, but if you don’t have a public option, why would you want to stick the taxpayers with yet another bail-out? They bailed out the banks, they bailed out AIG. This is a trillion-dollar bailout.

Dean’s fear over the nature of this legislation if passed without the Public Option reveals just how dangerous it is overall. His faith in the PO reveals his mistrust of the private sector. For those of us who fear the impact of government involvement, the dangers are even greater.

If you don’t get reform, you got the system that we have today, you are gradually going to start uninsuring people, because we are not going to be able to maintain this system. This does nothing to control costs.

This is going to sting.  A lot.

DEAN: There is something worse than passing no bill. This bill isn’t very strong. In fact, the only piece of reform left in it is the public option. The insurance reform is gone, essentially, because what they did is they have guaranteed issue — they have to, er, the insurance company has to ensure you — the problem is they don’t have community rating any more. They, they, they, the Senate bill, I think, charges three or four times as much for sick people as they do for healthy people, and the House bill is twice as much. …

Screamo Deano also said “The Republicans are right about the rhetoric of the bill”, which a lot of people have jumped on.  I guess it is a strange thing for the current DNC chairman to say.  Just because the GOP is led by a dude that says wacky stuff that annoys the party base doesn’t necessarily mean the Democrats have to have the same type of leader.  So yeah, maybe this is a sorta big deal on its’ face.

Or did Hollerin’ Howie throw a shovel load of dirt on health care deform for another reason?  Ed Morrissey speculates that Dean is putting himself into a better position to run for President in 2012 in the wake of a future Obama failure to pass the Democrats socialized medicine scheme.  In this scenario, St. Barry shits the mattress on health care and Howard Dean gets to ride in as the white knight leftist that can effectively get progressive legislation signed into law.

I don’t think this hypothetical situation is likely to occur for several reasons.  One, the GOP would have to kick all kinds of ass in the 2010 elections.  They would then have to make a serious effort to thwart every Obambi agenda item to make Teleprompter Messiah completely ineffectual; no Olympia Snowe handjobs across the aisle, no Lindsey Grahamnesty Gang-of-RINO jackassery.  Finally, Dean would have to ignore the massive pile of fail that has befallen dudes who have run against a sitting president from their own party.

Are all those planets gonna line up just right?  Probably not.  But what is amazing is the fact that little over a year after his Ascension, Barack Obama is hemorrhaging so profusely that people are speculating about an intra-party presidential grudgematch in 2012.  To me, that’s stunning.  Here was a guy every leftist media douche was creaming their jeans over in 2008.  His supporters were convinced that they had elected a super genius political wondergod.  All it took was a year into the reign of Barack the First for all of the glorious luster of Campaign ‘08 to get sandblasted away.

I know I keep saying this, but we’re seeing yet another sign that Barack Obama is severely wounded.  If the right gets cold feet now, we’re idiots.   All our side has to do is keep pushing and this horse is going to spit the bit.

You may have heard that there is  a new book coming out tomorrow. Shouldn’t be an event that is very newsworthy. After all, there are around 250,000 books published annually in the United States( including re-releases) and the vast majority are like  95% of the Screen Actors Guild membership. They get very little notice. It is estimated that the average paper back sells about 15,ooo copies while such numbers are hard, if not impossible to find for hardcovers. Interesting as to why, but not really important. Suffice to say that most books are published with little acclaim.

However, a book is coming out that has already been widely cussed, discussed, analyzed, fact-checked and perhaps even read. It is Going Rogue by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. If the adage holds that any publicity is good as long as one’s name is spelled correctly, this book will be a whopper. By the way, Rush will interview Ms Palin tomorrow. She has spoke with Oprah already and I believe Barbara Walters is due.  There have been several folks talking about the book as well.

First, the Associated Press, who used a total of 11 people to fact check the book. They found a total  of 6 errors which figures out to about 2 people per error. Wonder if they fact checked either of the President’s books. Nah, already know that answer.

Anyway, here we go. So called conservative David Brooks says you can’t taker her seriously  and she is a joke. CBS elder statesman Bob Schieffer called her an amusement with no political future.  Good old MSNBC  guy, Joe Scarborough said comparing her to Howard Dean is an insult to Dean’s intelligence. Former Vermont gov, DNC chair, Howard the screamer, one and the same. Sure are talking a lot about someone who doesn’t matter, huh?

Robbie Williams rejoining Take That aside, there’s some other new at that camp. Mark Owen, the original heartthrob, has finally tied the knot with his long-term girlfriend and best friend Emma Ferguson. “The bride wore a long, white, beaded, V-neck 1920s gown and embroidered vintage veil. Her bridesmaids were also in white 1920s-style beaded dresses. Fellow band mates Gary, Howard and Jason flew to Scotland on a 17 seater Lear Jet to attend the festivities. Robbie was said to have been arriving by private jet. Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow were also said to be guests of the couple. Mark and Emma already have two children together, three-year-old Elwood Jack and one-year-old Willow Rose.”

Once upon a time, in Orlando, Fla., I defied everything inherent to my upbringing and vowed to support the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.  Gov. Howard Dean, a Vermont liberal turned media rock star, had claimed another soul; how could I turn down anyone who promised health care for virtually every American, help to ensure the survival of the middle class, and end the War in Iraq?

A good, Christian Texas guy like me surely could get behind all that sugary goodness.  My internship with the Walt Disney Company might have also had something to do with my radical change, a place where good triumphs over evil to see the world through to a happily ever after each day.

While Howard Dean was clearly Sorcerer Mickey, the liberal media sucked me in to the idea of George W. Bush and the Republican Party were the enemies to be defeated after hours and hours of loyal viewership.  I guess being a journalism student and self-described news junkie didn’t help my early political development, either.

And so it was in the fall of 2003, I became a self-avowed Democrat.

Six years later, I found myself trapped at the Sam Houston Race Park, an elected Democratic precinct chair, fighting the very last battle of a dramatic 2008 primary which hinged on just a few votes for the other guy.  On the day of the Democratic County Convention, where my precinct cast what few votes we could for Hillary against the juggernaut campaign of another liberal rock star, Barack Obama, I began to wonder: How did America get to be stupid?

Around me sat huddled masses of sweaty, talking points-recitin’, complainin’ liberals.  The sound was almost as overwhelming as the stench.  We literally were the party of the ass, as the race park’s air conditioning broke down in the heat of a July Texas summer as we attempted to get out of the convention in just under 10 hours.

As I heard Obama supporters speak, it reminded me of how idealistic… how naive… I had been as an 18-year-old, energetic Howard Dean supporter. 

“Barack Obama commits himself to expanding social programs…”

“Barack Obama will pull all our men and women from Iraq on day one…”

“I don’t have to worry about paying my mortgage or for gas anymore…” (Okay, I borrowed that one.)

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I thought, “Government was never supposed to be the crutch for the retired, the sick or the lazy.”  And looking around at the District 7 Democrats, the huddle masses of whining liberalism, I realized I had made a massive error in judgement.

George W. Bush wasn’t perfect, but thank God he was re-elected; while Iraq and Afghanistan was a mess, and the economy was less than stellar, President Bush had the backbone (until the bailout) to fight against the liberal policies we now saw flourishing (and choking the life out of everything) around us. 

We didn’t need liberals preaching to us about how we need to help all these poor, unfortunate people; the people needed to preach to the liberals to take a hike!

For too long, the liberals and progressives of both the Democratic and Republican parties became enablers for an American electorate marching toward the end of civilization: a large segment of our population today is so lazy, so uncreative, so unprepared and so willing to take responsibility that they wouldn’t believe their was a time in our country’s history where a handout wasn’t available! 

People actually used to rely on themselves and never needed a government handout in their lives.  Boy, things have changed, thanks to the myriad entitlement programs and social programs paid for by taxpayers.

Meanwhile, we’ve lost our national conscience: abortion, the deterioration of the family, the deterioration of the man as the leader of the home (i.e. masculinity), politically correct bull, and worship of false gods (materialism, drugs, sex, Obama) is contributing to our decline.

I was fed up, and I, too, wanted change in 2008.

And so, on Nov. 4, I found myself in the gymnasium of a northwest Houston middle school, acting in my capacity as an election judge on behalf of my Democratic constituents, but secretly hoping and praying that within that room and rooms like it across the country, a miracle would happen.

In the end, Obama won, but maybe the miracle was after the indoctrination of my young mind by the left, I came through to see things as I should have all along: good government isn’t about ’spreading the wealth.’  It is about ensuring our republic survives by advocating responsible self-governance of our private lives while our elected leaders do only that which is afforded them in the Constitution.

Conservative principles, personal freedom and limited government, nothing more, nothing less.  Now that is a government worth fighting for.

Today I received an e-mail from Organizing for America*, the remnants of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, titled “One year ago.” It’s meant to be nostalgic.

 Ah, yes – memories:

It was almost one year ago, on November 4, 2008, that I walked into my neighborhood polling place knowing that I’d vote for either Democrat Barack Obama or independent Ralph Nader, for whom I had voted in 2000 (when he ran for president on the Green Party ticket). Even as I walked through the polling-place door, I still wasn’t 100 percent sure which of the two candidates ultimately would get my vote.

In the end, I ended up darkening, with my black ballpoint pen, the oval next to the name “Barack Obama.” I knew that he’d win California anyway, and in the end I found the opportunity to vote for the nation’s first non-completely-white president to be rather irresistible.

Today, I wish that I had resisted.

Barack Obama has turned out to be pretty much another Bill Clinton — a “centrist.” Which means a coward. An appeaser. A politics-as-usual kinda guy.

There was nothing “centrist” about the eight long years of nightmarish rule by the unelected BushCheneyCorp. When the Repugnicans have the power, they don’t hesitate to use it. Remember when Gee Dubya was “re”-elected in 2004 with only 50.7 percent of the popular vote, but the members of the Bush regime called this a “mandate” from the American people nonetheless?

Here is Obama, having been elected by 53 percent of the people, which by the opposition’s definition, anyway, is a huge ol’ fucking mandate, and here is Obama with both houses of Congress dominated by his party, yet what accomplishments has he made?

That “Saturday Night Live” skit in which Obama reassures his opposition not to worry because thus far into his presidency he’s done nothing — it’s pretty accurate.

While the Democrats, led by the Obama White House, aren’t owning their power, I see that the wingnutty Repugnicans (which, in most cases, is redundant) were even successful in forcing out the Repugnican candidate in a U.S. House of Representatives race in New York state (the special election is on Tuesday and she dropped out of the race yesterday) because they consider her to be too moderate — and I think: Damn, why can’t we progressives force out those “Democrats” who are too moderate?

Instead, we have “Democrats” like Harry Reid and my U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, whom I have always thought of as Mrs. Joseph Lieberman.   

“Base sends GOP warning shot in NY-23,” a Politico headline reads, and I think, Why isn’t the base firing warning shots at the “Democratic” obstructionists in Washington?

Why can’t we progressives be as aggressive as the wingnuts are? Especially when they’re wrong about just about everything and we’re right about just about everything?

It’s too early to know whether the wingnuts’ victory in New York state in pushing out the Repugnican candidate they deem to be too moderate will help or harm the Repugnican Party in the short term, I suppose, but, it seems to me, pushing out the woman candidate (Diedre Scozzafava) for yet another conservative white male candidate (Doug Hoffman) will harm the Repugnican Party over the long term because, although the stupid white men are trying to fight it, rule by stupid white men is going the way of the dinosaurs in an increasingly diversifying nation. 

That Hoffman is running on the “Conservative Party” ticket doesn’t seem to bode well to me. It was when the Southern racists broke off from the Democratic Party, apparently starting with racist Strom Thurmond’s running for president on the “Dixiecrat” ticket in 1948, that the Democratic Party lost the South.

Should the wingnuts succeed in gaining some third-party strength, it seems to me, this will only help the Democratic Party. As The Associated Press notes, in the 1992 presidential election, billionaire businessman Ross Perot’s third-party ticket (the “Reform Party”), which had a bent to the right, won 19 percent of the popular vote; “Perot vastly altered the dynamic of that contest,” the AP notes, adding, “Democrat Bill Clinton was the beneficiary of that three-way contest, taking away the presidency from [Repugnican] George H.W. Bush with just a plurality of the vote.”

Any third party that might emerge over the coming years that comes even close to the success of Perot’s Reform Party in 1992, it seems to me, probably would stem from white angst and thus probably would siphon away Repugnican votes.

That scenario probably wouldn’t give progressives much leverage, however, because the Democratic presidential candidate could win with a plurality, like Bill Clinton did in 1992.

Those of us on the far left and the far right aren’t really represented in Washington, D.C., however, and I’d be fine with a four-party (or multi-party) system: the Democratic Party could be for those who are center-left, the Repugnican Party could be for those who are center-right, the wingnuts could have their own party (the “Conservative Party” or whatever the fuck they want to call it), and we progressives could have our own party, too — the Green Party, preferably. 

Or maybe it just needs to be a fight to the bitter end, a (bloodless, hopefully) rematch of the Civil War. That seems to be what those on the far right want, and as a member of the far left, I say: Let’s give that to them.

*Remember when the remnants of Howard Dean’s failed campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination became Democracy for America? Damn, are the Obama people copycats… They act like Obama did it all on his own, when, in fact, Obama only rode in on the wave that Dean and his supporters created…

Here is an interchange betweenKarl Rove and Howard Dean from a live debate yesterday that I wish I had seen. Rove had said that Medicare rejects claims twice as often as the overall health insurance industry, and he promised to put the proof in his Wall Street Journal column next week:

“That’s a made up statistic, Karl Rove. . . . For the first time tonight, I’m calling you on it. You made that up.”

- Howard Dean

“And I would appreciate it if you didn’t question my integrity. . . . Mr. Dean, you just called me a liar and I don’t appreciate it.”

- Karl Rove

If only Rove was called on it more often.

The politically polarized nature of any discussion on American health care was on display Tuesday night at University Park, when Republican strategist Karl Rove and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean debated the topic at Eisenhower Auditorium. The event, part of the Student Programming Association’s Distinguished Speaker Series, provided some entertaining moments. Tony Madonna, a Penn State undergrad and aspiring photographer, captured this one: the moment when Rove, apparently disagreeing with Dean about the costs associated with reform, pulled out a prop to emphasize his point.

Entertainment value aside, the debate doesn’t appear to have solved anything. As one student told the Daily Collegian afterward, “I thought it was a circus… there were no winners, just varying degrees of loss.”

Ryan Jones, senior editor

Baby Boomers.  You knew them as the “me” generation or maybe the “feel good” generation.  As they aged, they have apparently become the “to hell with you” generation.  A demographic that was going to change the world has, well, have you looked around lately?  They have made a colossal mess of things.

The Town Hall meetings in the summer of 2009 may have put the final nail in the coffin of America’s “can do” philosophy.  Instead of masses turning up to support and demand equal health care for their fellow citizens, they embarrassed themselves and our country by their crude, selfish and heartless greed.  Why is it that those with insurance want to deny it to others?  The answer: A lack of concern for our brothers, our neighbors and the worry it might cost them something.  Why is it that health insurance is expected to be paid by small businesses, breaking the financial backs of many small entrepreneurs before they have hardly begun?  The answer:  greed, or better yet, “I have mine and to hell with you.”  After all, our employers are not sent a bill to pay the tolls that I have accrued on our national highways.   They don’t pay for my homeowners insurance so why on earth should they have to pay for our health insurance?   Health care in the 21^st century is indeed a well earned right in a country that likes to think of itself as a super power.  For all of the taxes I pay and tens of thousands in property taxes, a grade-A Congressional-level health care plan should be mine, compliments of Uncle Sam for all of the ways we support this country.  Why is it the biggest financial meltdown in decades (we’ve heard ‘since the Great Depression’ so many times that we are numbed to it) is blamed on hard working families trying to fight for a few crumbs of the American pie.  The answer:  Can you say scapegoat?  I am a pro-business man but corporations have raped this country and abused our citizens for so long we often don’t even see it anymore.

There may be few innocents among us but the big picture answer, it seems to me is selfishness.  I have mine and to hell with you.  This is the core belief of the crowd that loves Rush Limbaugh; usually the lower to middle class republicans with a libertarian streak who may struggle to hold it all together financially yet they are taking their cues from a man who makes upward of $90 million a year, pedaling his hatemongering to them.  And these listeners who apparently have nothing better to do during the day when his radio gig is broadcast across America, eat up each and every talking point he utters.  Limbaugh is nothing if not a top notch salesman, and as the PT Barnum of the modern era, he convinces his ditto-heads to march to his beat.  Their collective refrain is often the same old “well, life is full of choices and if health insurance is so important to you, you probably shouldn’t be creating art that no one wants but go to work for corporate America instead.”

There are so many things wrong with this thinking I don’t know where to begin.  Corporate America is flailing about because even they cannot compete internationally due to their stifling legacy costs that no other enlightened country should impose upon their businesses.  And do we really want to smother the creative ingenuity of risk-takers who dare to dream a vision that could enhance all of our lives and someday change the world; even just a little bit?  Just think of the capital that could be unleashed into new research and development if companies big and small did not have to commit enormous resources for health care costs that are not their responsibility?  Think of the explosion of entrepreneurs and the creativity and ingenuity they would unleash.  They are men and women who would be free to live their dream if they didn’t feel somehow ball and chained to their corporate masters for health care in the event they or their loved ones become sick?  Millions of lives with dreams deferred that in other countries would not pose such a detriment.

There is a deep divide in America.  The safety net for the average citizen is fraying away and becoming so thin as to be almost meaningless.  As a Gay man, I have lived my entire adult life as a first class taxpayer and as a second class citizen, so I am used to receiving little in  return for my contribution.   But all Americans, Gay and non-Gay alike deserve so much better from their government.  So, haven’t you ever wondered where does all of the money go?  Why are other, more advanced nations able to provide for their citizens in ways that we can’t.

I love America, if not out of habit from a half of century of supporting it.  But if we can all stop chanting “USA! USA!” long enough, why have we fallen compared to the rest of the world in home ownership?  Why are our kids doing so poorly in international tests?  Why does the average American have such a shorter life expectancy?  Why are our children the sickest in the world and infant mortality the highest of the industrial world?  Why do Americans toil away at their work many more hours than our European compatriots yet we perversely celebrate the hours of our lives passing away that could better be spent with our families and community?  Doesn’t this equate to some sort of corporate or national brainwashing that we should gleefully work more hours to receive less, and yet feel it should be bragged about?   Is that a capital “L” on your forehead or are we being suckered?  Why are we such a violent nation, yet insist on “clinging” to our guns?  What are we the best at, other than the capacity to end all life on planet earth, that we are compelled to shout “USA! USA!”

The world use to admire us.  Many nations respected us.  Now they resent us.  Some still fear us.  Many nations loathe us.  But saddest of all, many countries pity us and it is most difficult to accept their pity.  We were a great country.  We had achieved greatness, and raised the bar to historic proportions.  But the world is watching as we decay from within and our superiority becomes nothing more than shallow slogans.   We will go down defiantly and the process of becoming “one of many” will be ugly and painful to watch, as we will not accept the dethroning of the United States with any grace and dignity.  Howard Dean was right when he cited Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers.  He and his presidential campaign took a substantial body blow for speaking the truth.  Great powers do fade away.  I believe the world will come to mourn the day when the USA is not a steadying force.  For better or worse, the USA is in decline and I fear it will ultimately be replaced with a power that will not sit well with Americans. 

 We have silently allowed our Chinese bankers to become our financial masters, who enable all of our vices, not the least of which is our addiction to oil which we attain from powers that turn around and use our dollars to kill fellow Americans.  Yes, it is a complicated world, but it has also become devoid of any morality.  Our politicians pander to the masses, having no backbone of their own.  They all make a grand fuss to deny me the right to marry in my own country on the grounds of some twisted moral grounds, but go about being an accessory to the murder of our men and women in uniform in a distant land that does not directly endanger our nation.

Martin Luther King was right when he said “We all may have come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”  It is time for Americans to start acting like it, all rowing in the same direction.  We can all see what selfishness has brought us.  Why don’t we all aspire to serve our communities first and foremost.  We have in the end, nothing left to lose.  Oh, and great job, Boomers!  I can only imagine how proud you feel of the world you created.

Everyone on the Sunday talk shows yesterday optined that the health care reform effort was moving closer to passage. 

“We’re entering the final stage, and everyone is maneuvering to get the best possible deal,” said Drew E. Altman, president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “The odds of passing legislation are steadily moving up.”

The final bill will not be perfect, but I believe it will contain a public option of some kind.  The other big questions are financing  and affordability.  The reason I think the bill will have a public option is because a friend my husband  was talking to the other morning supports one.  He is not a political activist, tends to be conservative, and is a veteran.  He talked about the rise in premiums he had experienced and the fact that vets have now come to understand that they won’t lose their coverage under VA – or have to pay for it – but that others will gain  the kind of health care they have.  He thinks this is a good thing.  And the opinion polls show others are moving his way.

I think there will be an opt out provision for the states, but, unlike the stimulus funding, the governors will not be able to “refuse” to implement the reforms at all.  I think it will end up will a 3 to 5 year trial period after which a state could opt out or a similar period during which the insurance companies in a state would have to lower premiums or they would have to become part of the government provided health care.

There are a lot of details to negotiate.  Like how to pay for reform.  We will have to see if the President has, in the end, provided the weapon to defeat the bill .  Is his 900 Billion cap going to mean a bad bill or no bill?

Howard Dean has a great feature on his health care reform webpage.  The vote tracker allow one to sort for public option supporters.  Dean, like President Obama, is not supporting a particular bill, but iw helping to keep an eye on the votes in support of the public option.  His latest count is 218 house votes and 51 in the Senate.  We need to work on those undecideds in the House, but it appears that if all Democratic caucus members vote against the filibuster, the Senate can then pass a bill with a public option.  Go to his list and filter for undecided Democrats and if your Congressperson or Senator is on the list, give them a call.

Even John McCain now thinks Congress will pass a bill with some kind of public option.

“I think the Democrats have the votes, and in the House, Blue Dogs bark but never bite,” Mr. McCain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” using the nickname for conservative Democrats . “So I don’t think they have a problem over in the House side. In the Senate I think the Democrats are very aware that they don’t want a repeat of the Clinton failure in 1994. So I think it’s very likely they will get something through. But it’s not clear to me what it is.”

The Democrats need to forget the Republicans and get the votes in the party.  Even Senator Ben Nelson appears to be moving toward support of some type of public option.

The remaining big pitfall is abortion and whether the bill has a provision to pay for the procedure under the public option.  Right now, I have to say that will be a compromise point and reproductive choice will remain a choice only for those that can afford a choice.

It’s a well-known fact of the American political system: The candidate with the most money wins. An Open Secrets report found this to be true for the 2008 presidential election and 9 out of every 10 congressional elections.

But what do you do when you’re a little-known candidate with limited funds to get your message out? Use the greatest invention since the printing press, of course: the free and open World Wide Web!

The trend in online campaigning and fundraising has roots in then Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s 2003 presidential campaign. Although this Green party candidate lost, he revolutionized the use of online tools for political communication and raised $27 million in online contributions. He used MeetUp.com to organize groups of like-minded people online to meet in person off-line. He also incorporated blogs-”Call-Action”, later re-named “Blog for America,”  on which he still posts comments regarding his stance on current political issues.

In 2008, Congressman Ron Paul, a candidate on the opposite side of the political spectrum, used the free communication medium to set an online fundraising record raising $4.2 million in a single day. This video features Paul’s finance director attributing their online transparency to the success of the “money bomb.”

That December, Paul’s campaign broke their own record, raising more than $6 million with their “money bomb” technique.

This August, Ron Paul’s son, Rand, followed his father’s successful online strategy and raised more than $400,000 on a single-day internet drive toward his senate campaign. Congressional Quarterly hailed the return of the ‘money bomb.’

Furthermore, on Nov. 5, Rand hopes to benefit from the ‘largest one-day multi-candidate donation event in history’ through ThisNovember5th.com.

The site boast the mug shots of a list of candidates along with the number of pledges and dollar amount they’ve received. The total number of pledges with a countdown to the deadline is featured at the top of the page, with links for visitors to share the site via the Facebook group or other social sites. I will be interested to see how well this online push fares for the candidates come Nov. 5!