BEND OVER, AMERICA!

Health Care reconciliation between the bills passed by The House and Senate is coming up.  I wrote to my Senators and Congresspeople last week…still no word on when they will tackle lobbying and campaign finance reform, which basically means, never.  And no, I didn’t send all of them the letter I posted here.  That was for special people.

I think it’s time to do something stupid, and by stupid, I mean really, really stupid.  As in, my-mother-always-worried-I’d-turn-out-this-way stupid, Parents-worst-nightmare stupid.

So, I’m off to my local VFW with a few friends, and we’re going to drive to Washington DC, and stand outside the Capitol building, bent over, with our pants pulled down.  You might recognize us.  I might even sew, into the crotch of my boxers, a somewhat melted Snickers bar, which we will ceremoniously light at the end of our Bend-Over-America-Fest.

How much do you want to bet that CNN won’t have the balls to show the signs attached to our butts?  You know, the ones that read, “ON YOUR KNEES AND EXPOSE YOUR BUM, LOOK OUT AMERICA!  HERE IT COMES!”

We take the cocksucking of our elected officials seriously, and it’s time Washington knew exactly what everyday Americans call their relationships with Lobbyists and PAC’s.  I think a few well-worded signs attached to a few mostly naked butts ought to get their attention, don’t you?

CROTCHBOMB

Christmas day, 2009, is a day which shall live in incredulity, as we remember it as the day of the Crotchbomb attack. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had a PETN Bomb sewn into the crotch of his Tighty-whities, in an attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253.  And no, I’m not calling him an “alleged” terrorist; it’s obvious he attempted to blow up the plane.  He was, after all, caught red-handed, literally.  Or was it red crotched?

No matter.

What is frighteningly, and a bit humorously apparent is that Al Qaeda has become desperate.  I’ve long assumed that the leadership of Al Qaeda must be a group of boy-buggering pedophiles.  Why else send every boy off to die in their cause if not to destroy the evidence of their child-rapes?  And if they truly believed in martyrdom, wouldn’t the leaders of Al Qaeda be the first to volunteer for any suicide mission?  Nope, it’s plain;  They are Pedophiles who rape young boys, indoctrinate them, and then send them out to die to destroy the evidence of their crimes.

But Crotchbombs?  Is this a Freudian slip?  Is this in some way meant to imply that the young boy is being purged of his “sin” by initiating the explosion from the area of his bunghole, or is it nothing deeper than one, final ass-raping?  Is it, as they claim, a clever attempt to hide an explosive device.    Could it be convenience and symbolism?  We may never know, but one thing is clear; Al Qaeda is back to buggering young boys regularly again.  The proof of that is in the number of young boys they are sending out on missions.  On 28 August 2009, PETN was used in an attempt to assassinate Saudi Deputy Minister of Interior Prince Muhammad bin Nayef .  The Prince survived, but the boy died in the blast.   A PETN Bomb was sewn into his underwear.  Some reports say the bomb was actually placed into his anal cavity.  Yikes!  And yet, further evidence of their pedophilic ways.

All of this leads to one question:  Should we be prosecuting Al Qaeda for terror attacks, or Pedophilia?  Both?

bin LadenBack Mountain

The lengths to which these sick bastards will go to hide their crimes against young boys…

TEN THINGS TO LOOK FOR IN 2010

Ten Things to look for in 2010

1.  Conservatives and Liberals, who normally disagree on everything, will find one thing to agree on in 2010:  It’s COLD in Wisconsin.

2.  Glenn Beck will be caught by NBC’s Chris Hanson, on To Catch a Predator.  During taping, he will be heard to say, “I was only here to tell little Bobby that it’s wrong to have sex with fifty- year old men.  He should be doing it with someone much younger…”

3.  The Pope will convert to Islam

4.  Al Qaeda will be awarded its own cooking reality show on CBS.  Special guests will include Martha Stewart and Dick Cheney.

5.  Bill Clinton will be voted Time’s Skank of the Year for 2010

6.  The Green Bay Packers will beat the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl 44

7.  Republicans will hold Townhall meetings, and manage to alienate their own mothers.  Wait…that already happened.

8.  My daughter will turn eighteen in June, and on that day, she will say to me, “You have to start growing up now.  I can’t take care of you forever.”

9.  Banks too big to fail will fail.

10.  Someone will explain to me why Twitter?

A STRONGLY-WORDED LETTER TO MY ELECTED OFFICIALS

The Senate has just passed its version of the Health Care Reform Bill.  This would be the perfect moment for them to start work on the next most important legislation; Lobbying, PAC, and Campaign Finance Reform.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  “Yeah, but Pooper, shouldn’t we have tackled that before we attempted health care reform?”

Bingo!  And why should we have done so?  Because watching this health care reform process was like having all of your teeth pulled under the influence of a sensory enhancer, while being seduced by Greta the five hundred pound gorilla.

Headlines could have read like the following:  Public option on!  Public option off!  Reform has enough votes!  Reform Dead!  Death Panels…oh noes!

The statistics for lobbying influence are staggering, but one statistic rises above all others:  In the last year, over $870,000 was spent a day by lobbyists and special interest groups trying to influence AMERICAN health care reform.  If the average health insurance premium was $12,000 per year for a family of four, 105,850 people could have received free health insurance for a year.  Instead, insurers spent that money finding ways to prevent those people from ever receiving health care.

But don’t blame the insurers, or the lobbyists, or the special interest groups, or the PACs.  It’s not their fault.  Criminals will generally do whatever they can get away with.  You see, your elected officials let them do this.  In fact, they invite it, welcome it, and foam at the mouth at the mere mention of ending it.  “That’s how business is done in Washington!”, they say.

So I wrote this letter to a few of our elected officials, to try and explain how real Americans feel about the way business is done in Washington.

Dear Senator Sellout,

It  came to my attention today that you helped pass a health care reform bill for America.  Congratulations!  I hope you are able to sleep better this Christmas eve, as you brag to your constituents about how you helped enable needed reform.  If you are a Republican, ignore that last.  I know you have no problem sleeping with a guilty conscience.  Sweet dreams, asshole.

I’d like to take this time to implore you to pass our next bit of badly needed reform; which, if you would allow me the honor of naming it, shall be called, “The American Act of Ending Congressional Corruption and the General Prostitution of its Members.”  Subtitled, “End the Bendover”

If you would also please allow me to explain why Americans feels  this is so necessary, I can sum it up in nine words:  We think all of you are on the take.  And it isn’t just a few of us who believe that.  All of us think it.  Do you get that?  Do you even understand the difference between “a few” and “all”, you dumbass?

Before you send me that form letter via email, please take some time to think about an actual response.  You see, Americans have been screaming at you for several decades to stop being whores.  We’ve been trying to get your attention, but apparently, voting you out of office every six years isn’t getting the job done.  So we’ve decided that some plain language is needed.

Senator, when are you going to stop bending over for Special Interests?  Don’t you even realize that what you are allowing when you accept soft money or lobbying dollars looks like outright bribery?  Wouldn’t it be better if all Americans had a reason to stop calling you a slut?

Which brings me to my next point.  One hundred percent of Americans who actually don’t have a lobbying job, or aren’t a CEO or a Congressperson, or have a twenty million dollar check of their own to buy legislation want you to end this assfucking.  It’s not fifty percent, it’s not fifty-one percent, or even sixty percent.  It’s one hundred percent, as in, all the rest of us.  So please, when drafting your response, do not use the excuse, “We are doing everything we can, but at this moment, public support for such change is softer than my pre-Viagra dick.”  I can assure you, Mr. Elected Official, if there’s one thing Americans have a Stiffy for, it’s corruption.

Now, recently, we saw how the health care reform bill was affected by all of that special interest money.  To which I can only ask, wouldn’t it have been easier to pass this bill without the mafia sending you offers you could not refuse?  I understand that you only make $170,000 a year, and that a cushy lobbying job paying you easily twice that much is yours so long as you never enact needed reform, but seriously, Mr. Elected Official, could you at least try to make it look like you aren’t a crook?  Would you please make one attempt, one pitifully small effort, at the very least, to introduce legislation ending the bending over?

You see, in the last three decades, you haven’t even tried.  Oh, you talk about it every time you run for office, because hey! That’s what Americans want to hear!  You kiss the babies, and recycle the same issues every two to six years.  Pardon me, Mr. Senator, but I don’t want you kissing my daughter with the same lips that just sucked the cocks of the entire board of Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  Could you at least disinfect them with Boric Acid?  I realize that I am implying you are an insect when I suggest you use an insecticide to disinfect yourself, but really, cockroaches shouldn’t have feelings, and neither should cocksuckers.

So the general gist of my letter to you, Mr. Elected Official, is that we, real Americans, know what you are.  You aren’t fooling us.  We aren’t stupid, even though you treat us like we are.  We call a spade a spade, and a cocksucking whore a cocksucking whore.   What part of “End the corruption in Washington!!!!!” don’t you understand?  Why do you insist upon making us call you names, like whore, cocksucker, crook, slut, traitor, bastard, liar, swindler, prostitute, butthole, buttfucking motherfucker, Nazi, Judas, Jesus-jumped-up-fuckstick, baby-kissing-antichrist, or just plain stupid?  Why?

We want to love you!  But you make it so goddamned hard!  You make us want to lynch you, instead.  Even using  plain language, like “Goddammit!  How could you take the side of the special interests who CAUSED our most recent recession” doesn’t seem to get your attention.

We want change.  We want it now.  All it takes is for you to get some balls, and stop relying on your sugar-daddies for your lovin’.  We already pay for your health care insurance, as well as your salary AND your complete retirement pension.  In exchange for that, you give us a continuous assraping that a Catholic Priest would be proud of.

And don’t tell me that Congress just won’t have the time to take up this type of reform for 2010, an election year.  You had the time to pass legislation naming 2009 as the International Year of the Reef.  Important legislation, I am sure, but I ask you…really?

What the fuck do you think we are?  Stupid?  You must, because you keep accepting bribes, and you never, ever even attempt to explain yourselves to the American people.  Do you know what that’s called?  Let me spell it for you.

I-L-L-E-G-A-L

As in, unconstitutional.  Nine-tenths of you passed the bar exam; I am sure you understand what I-L-L-E-G-A-L  means.  And if you don’t, maybe we ought to revisit just how difficult we make the aforementioned bar exam.  We like to think we send our best and our brightest to Washington.  I guess it’s turning out we really only send our biggest idiots there.

Well, Mr. Elected Official, we are sick of it.  We are tired of being told to bend over and take it up the ass while you fly away on your lobbyist-sponsored junket to the Bahamas.  Trust me, they don’t want you there.  And they don’t want you in Vegas, or Hawaii, or Iraq, or Mexico, or Vale, or anywhere else for that matter.  What they want is you, in Washington, doing your fucking job without your lips around the cock of the nearest lobbyist.  Do you get that?  We want it finished!  Do you need me to spell that, too?

N-O   M-O-R-E   C-O-C-K-S-U-C-K-I-N-G   O-F   L-O-B-B-Y-I-S-T-S   B-Y    O-U-R    E-L-E-C-T-E-D     O-F-F-I-C-I-A-L-S  !!!

Besides, it’s unsanitary.

Mr. Elected Official, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this, but if you’ve gotten this far, you probably already know that you ought to be thanking me for not doing what I really wanted to do, which was to send you a gun with one bullet, and an attached note saying, “Do the right thing”.  You see, I have a heart, too, plus, I couldn’t trust that you would understand that kind of note…I thought you might be tempted to use it on one of your staff instead.  And don’t act all indignant because I just called you stupid.  The evidence of your asininity is overwhelming; you haven’t understood what the American people have been telling you for decades.  Need I say more?

Indeed not.

Have a nice day.

Yours truly,

Politicalpartypooper

Ps:  The paper this letter was written on is ninety-two percent recycled.  Just before putting it in my printer, I wiped my ass with it…just in case you were wondering what that wonderful “bouquet” was.

TWITTER? WHY?

In 2006,Jack Dorsey created an application programming interface for sending and receiving short text messages, called Twitter.  In 2009, Twitter is one of the most popular ways for people to waste their time at the office…ahem, communicate with each other.  What I meant to say was, people are keeping in touch with friends, family, and news through their cell phones and computers, a little like Facebook or a blog, only the text is never more than 140 characters.

I have been told that tweeting (the act of sending an SMS message to all of your followers…updating them on what you are up to) is a fantastic way to network, as well.  To date, I wouldn’t know; I don’t tweet because I’m not on Twitter.  I can’t see myself ever signing up, either.

Which leads me to the gist of this post.  WTF is up with tweeting?  I’m 42 years old, and have sent precisely two text messages in my life (both to my daughter to prove to her that I knew how).  I have a facebook page, and stopped updating that about a month after signing up, because it just didn’t appeal to me.  That, and I can’t write as much as I want to, which, if you know me, is like Chinese water torture.  I like to talk, or write, and my comments or posts can tend to be long.

So I was lying awake in bed last night, my mind racing a mile a minute, about several different things.  But this post came about as a result of what I was thinking about last night.  I just didn’t get it.  I still don’t.  WTF is up with tweeting?  Why do people get such a high out of it?

Having recently become nearly addicted to an online interactive game, I guess I could see where some people might find Twitter to be indispensible.  But reading articles or blog posts around the ‘net has led me to believe that much of what takes place on Twitter, with tweets, is sheet (shit).  12:01    I’m typing this     12:07  I’m reading tweets     12:10  off to the gym     12:31  have arrived at gym, am stoked for WO    1:15  leaving gym   1:31   back at work.   1:35  i’m tired   1:42  brb   1:44  back…………………..

Or, how about following the CNN Twitter?  8:00  Tiger Woods second mistress thought she was only mistress   8:01 Is global Warming real?   8:02  Seven more alleged Tiger mistresses   8:03  more news at the top of the hour   8:04  catch Wolf Blitzer at 5:00 PM EST   8:05  Salahis on Good Morning America   8:06  Tiger pulls out of next tournament   8:07   Obama Nobel speech-Did he say enough?   8:08  Health reform bill has sixty votes   8:09  boy caught in balloon!!!!…………..

You get the picture.  How much information do we need?  And is personal tweeting more about “Look at me!” than “How are you doing?”  If it isn’t, why does anyone care how many people are following them?  And who are these people who are following you?  Are they following you because you are following them?  And what happens when you are no longer interested in following them?

I understand that we tend to lose touch with people, news, and information as we get busy.  But at what point does just enough information become too much information?  Do I really need to know that you had a long day at work, are tired, and hungry?  How is that different from every other day in your life?  How many different ways can I say, “brb”, or “I’m making supper”?

CNN’s page just showed this a few hours ago:

Tiger Woods’ popularity plummets after scandal,

No shit?  Really?  Wow!  What incredible news!  Yup.  Aren’t you glad you are following CNN on Twitter?

Okay, so I’m the Twitter Grinch.  But before you lynch me, please understand that I can see some of the benefits to Twitter.  One case that comes to mind is the news we received from Iranians during their post-election protests.  That was pretty real-time, and pretty substantial.  The trouble with Twitter is…almost everybody is doing it.  My guess is, they aren’t doing it well, but what do I know?  I have to go to the bathroom to relieve myself, and in two minutes…I’ll BRB.

This blog is my way of saying “Look at me!”…only, nobody knows who I really am.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS EXPOSES HOW ENTRENCHED LOBBYISTS INFLUENCED HEALTH CARE REFORM

An article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune by Andrew Zajac yesterday illustrates why Lobbying Reform is so necessary.  Entitled How Health Lobbyists Influenced Reform Bill, the article highlighted many of the reasons why Americans believe their government no longer listens to them.  Amongst some of the eye-popping statistics were these:

The lineup of insiders working for clients with health care interests includes at least 14 former aides to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and at least 13 former aides to MontanaSen. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee and a key overseer of the health care overhaul.

and

At least 166 former aides from the nine congressional leadership offices and five committees involved in shaping health overhaul legislation — along with at least 13 former lawmakers — registered to represent at least 338 health care clients since the beginning of last year, according to the analysis.

Their health care clients spent $635 million on lobbying over the past two years, the study shows.

How can normal people compete with lobbying firms that dish out hundreds of millions of dollars to influence legislation that impacts all Americans?  Why should Americans believe that their elected officials are representing them, when all evidence points to the contrary?  Even more importantly, why are our elected officials not doing anything about this?  Why is legislation that has been influenced by millions of dollars the norm?

Earlier this year, the Christian Science Church hired a former Kennedy staffer, Carolyn Osolinik, and three of her colleagues at the Mayer Brown law firm, all veterans of Capitol Hill. The firm has been paid at least $110,000 so far to push a provision requiring insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments.

Phil Davis, a senior official of the church, said the church wanted access to decision makers. “The noise level goes sky high. It’s hard to get in to talk to people,” he said.

Now we have churches hiring lobbyists so that prayer treatments can be included in a bill?  What’s next?  Will Vegas lobby Congress to include Federal dollars for oddsmakers to predict the final vote?  Maybe that’s a stretch; then again…maybe not.

Your Senator and Congressperson is being influenced by big money.  What this article shows is that not only does legislation bear the markings of bribery and cronyism, but that the revolving door between Congress and lobbying has been one of our nation’s most effective jobs program.

Kudos to the Chicago Tribune for including this link showing who the biggest offenders were.

A CORRESPONDENCE WITH BOB CESCA

I sent the following email to Bob Cesca earlier today.  I figured I’d share it with you.  Bob has been working tirelessly at his blog for months on the health care reform issue, in which, although we didn’t get everything we wanted, we still got a lot.  If you have a chance to read the Congressional bill, I urge you to do so.  It’s long,  but you begin to get a sense of how to pick the important parts out as you proceed.  Most importantly, passing HCR now would get us off of “stuck”, which is our biggest enemy.  There are a number of things in the current bill that can bring insurance companies to their knees, literally.

Bob,

I just wanted to take a little bit of time to first, thank you for your work on health care reform, which is near and dear to me, and second, let you know of a few things I found when reading the congressional bill.

You and I haven’t always agreed, but on this one issue, I think we both agree that the quicker we get to Single-Payer, the better off our nation will be in so many different dimensions.  I’ve been reading that Congressional bill, and although it’s verbose, it gets easier as you go to pull out the important pieces.  There really are a lot of good things in this bill.  Despite what Lee says, there are provisions that will be enforced which will cause insurers to end their practices of rescission, as well as rejection based on pre-existing conditions, or pricing structures based on the same.  While it is true that we won’t have a Public option,. as the bill stands right now, we will have mandated coverage, and fairly decent expansion of Medicaid (150% of Fed Poverty Level), as well as a streamlined Medical Records provisions which might go a long way toward cutting administrative costs at medical facilities.

The bill itself will not lead to Medicare for all.  But, the insurers will do that for us.  Let me explain.  I have said often that insurers cannot provide coverage for the sick at any cost, and this remains true.  Sooner or later, insurers will start to falter.  There are strict regulations already in place that dictate how much cash reserve any “insurer” must maintain.  Insurers will hit this bill hard out of the gate; raising premiums quite a bit across the board, and hoping that their risk-based premium structure doesn’t grenade.  It will.  It has to.  They must provide coverage, the bill dictates it.  Where they cannot, to the poor, medicaid is available.  Where a family or individual doesn’t meet the requirements for Medicaid, insurers must take up the slack, with Federal Subsidies on the premium side only, and there are limits to that, as well.

What this all boils down to is that Insurers will start seeing their cash reserves dwindle as claim experience, especially for the sick, begins to outpace premium collections, and drop perilously close to the minimum requirements.  When that occurs, they will have no choice but to alert the Federal Government.  The bigger the insurer, the larger the splash this will make.  The one reason I liked the PO was because it would provide America with a fallback position for when insurers started to go belly up…and they will go belly up.  What will the Fed do when the first insurer goes under?  No one can predict this as a certainty, but given our current economic situation, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the publicly traded insurers will all see their stock prices drop off the cliff as investors abandon them at a record pace.  Those “stocks”, those shares of ownership are part of how insurers maintain their cash reserves.  If the insurance industry tanks, it carries a high probability that they will hugely affect every facet of American healthcare.  Let’s face it, Bob, if insurers aren’t paying their bills, who is?

At that point, the Federal Government will have to make a quick decision.  Do we bail all of them out?  Or do we pay their ongoing debts, draft Single-Payer legislation (which is the only real logical solution), and never look back?

I can’t guarantee that things will happen this way.  But I know the history of HCR, I know the words that insurers have used, and I know that before now, not only didn’t they want to cover everyone; they literally couldn’t.  That hasn’t changed.  Getting millions of young, healthy new clients, and trying to balance premiums between them and the million of uninsured has always been an impossible task for them.  I do not see how they can pull it off unless they make insurance premiums so expensive that relatively few people can actually afford them.  They have no guarantees that they will gain enough healthy clients to balance out the costs of people who will be almost certain to exceed insurer’s former caps on yearly claims.  There are numerous insurers, and they will all fight for more business, trying to grab as many of the healthy that they can, lowering premiums to entice them, and then, WHAM!  “Oops, we aren’t collecting enough premiums to pay claims.”

This might be the perfect storm Bob.

Politicalpartypooper

NEXT

It looks like instead of a single-payer health care system, or instead of a Public Option, and instead of a Medicare buy-in for those aged 55 and above, and in the face of everyone now being forced to buy health insurance, we will have to accept the reform bill that the Senate is working on.  Details are very sketchy at the moment.  The only thing I can tell you is that there are real steps being made in health insurance reform, and although we didn’t get what we wanted (did anybody?), at least we may be able to overcome one of the largest enemies to real reform; inertia.

Which leads me to my next topic.  It’s time for Congress to pass a Lobbying/ PAC/Campaign Finance reform bill…with teeth.

Here is what I want:

1.  ALL lobbyist donations done away with.  Anyone who lobbys for a cause, an industry, a group, or any other type of special interest must be banned from personally or corporately contributing to a candidate’s campaign.  I have no problem with lobbying per se.  I believe we ought to be able to visit our elected officials, and bring our concerns to them personally and corporately.  But an idea or a concern ought to stand on its own merit, and right now, our system leaves too much temptation for elected officials and lobbyists to work the system to their advantage.

2.  PAC’s should be considered “Individuals”, and their campaign donations should be held to the individual limits.  Also, literature, commercial air time, TV ads and any other form of advertising should be considered as a campaign donation.  PACs work around contribution limits by claiming to be special interest groups not associated directly with any one campaign.  But we all remember those ads that were paid for by the “Committee to Fuck American Rules on Camapign Contributions By Claiming to be a Group of Concerned Citizens Not Associated in any way with (insert candidates name)”  A PAC is an entity, and if we limit their contributions and commercials, we will eliminate one more avenue of bribery.

3.  Public Financing for elections, of course, would solve most of these problems.  But I can hear the outrage by Conservatives already, so I’d settle for common sense limits to what can be spent on a campaign.

4.  Limit donations to political parties to the individual levels already established.  In other words, eliminate any form of group donation.

Why tackle this reform next?  Because it is now clear that the health care, health insurance, Trial Lawyer , and Pharma lobbies had undue influence on the health care reform bill being worked on in the Senate.  Almost 60 percent of Americans still support some form of a Public Option to keep insurers honest, yet Senators dropped it in the face of “staunch opposition”.  OpenSecrets.org is a good place to find out who accepted the most money from these industries.  It is very telling that contribution amounts from all four increased massively over the preceding twelve months.

They weren’t giving free money away because they were concerned about the well-being of you and me.  And the money wasn’t free.  It came at a price, and that price will now be paid by you and me.  Call all of your elected officials, and demand Lobbying, PAC, and Campaign Finance reform now.

WHY, JOE LIEBERMAN, WHY?

In 2000, Joe Lieberman ran alongside Al Gore as his Vice Presidential candidate in the Presidential election.  At that time, some eyebrows were raised, as it was believed that Lieberman was chosen for his ability to deliver the eastern seaboard, as well as his appeal to more conservative Democrats.  But it was also Lieberman’s position as President Clinton’s most vocal Democratic critic that made both perfect sense, and caused one to scratch his head in confusion.  If you recall, at that time, Clinton has just escaped his sexual scandal, and was basically retreating into silence in the last year of his Presidency.  Democrats needed someone like Lieberman to help win New York and Florida, and to grab some of the conservative Independents from the Bush Campaign.  Lieberman made perfect sense in that respect.  His criticism of Clinton over the Lewinsky sex scandal made him more appealing to Americans who saw Al Gore as four more years of a Clinton White House.

Since that time, Joe Lieberman has been a Republican.  Oh, I know he ran as a Democrat and then as an Independent, but he is a Republican through and through.  He is also an egomaniac, repeatedly drawing attention to himself as the only Democrat to vote against many domestic liberal agendas.  His most recent foray into the spotlight has shown Lieberman to support any health care reform that does not include a Public option; only to backtrack and tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he also won’t support a health care reform bill that has a medicare buy-in included.

Basically, that’s the stance that Republicans have taken for the last seven months.  No Public option!  No to ending insurance rejection based on pre-existing conditions!  No to ending rescission!  Yes to forcing every American to buy bad health insurance!

Why?  Why does Joe Lieberman support the health care status quo?  If you look closely, he has always supported it. Under the so-called “party of the people,” the Gore-Lieberman ticket supported globalization, the death penalty, limited expansion of health coverage, and the allocation of federal resources for debt reduction rather than to rebuild inner cities or reduce black infant mortality.  His position today against health care reform should be no surprise to Liberal Democrats.  He is, in most respects, a Republican masquerading as an Independent.

Amongst his top ten contributors for the last five years are Purdue Pharma and Aetna.  Also in that top ten were Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.  Simply stated, Joe Lieberman is in bed with the two industries that have either killed more Americans or cost more jobs than any other.  Maybe he comes off as the apologetic father in Alf, (he certainly sounds and looks like him), but make no mistake; Joe Lieberman is as anti-American- small-guy as there exists in Washington today.  He can frequently be found on the side of big business and corporations, and rarely votes in favor of issues that would benefit the little guy; you know, you and me.

All of this leads us to ask, why?  Why, Joe?  Why are you against health care reform?  Why are you for giving favorable treatment to corporations that allow Americans to die, or kill their jobs?  Why are you always for the big guy, and rarely for the little guy?  Why are you an almost total sell-out to big insurers, Pharma, and Wall Street?  Why are you against basic health care for all Americans, but for gigantic Wall Street bonuses?  Why are you for Aetna, and against every other American’s healthy life?  Why are you sleeping with Purdue Pharma while everyday Americans become sicker or die because they cannot afford the skyrocketing costs of medicine?  Why, Joe Lieberman, why?

Why have you sold the American people out?  Why have you sold your old party out?  Why are you so hellbent on giving Independents a bad name?  Why are you for Socialized Medicare for yourself while you leave the rest of America to fend for itself?  Why are you against the same type of health care plan for all Americans that you received for free as a Senator?

Why, Joe Lieberman, did you promise to support a Public Option in your 2006 campaign if you had no intention of keeping your promise?  Could it be because since the beginning of 2005, you have received over $1,000,000 in campaign contributions from the health insurance industry?  Did you know, Joe, that most Americans won’t earn $1,000,000 in twenty years of hard labor?  Yet you accepted more than that amount in the last five years from health insurers who use shady practices to withhold basic health care from all Americans while retaining very healthy profit margins.

Why, Joe Lieberman, why?  What does that look like, Joe?  Does it look like you have been bought by the health insurance industry?  Does it have the appearance of outright bribery?  Why, Joe Lieberman, why?  Why have you put yourself in a position to look as corrupt as you do?  Why does your stance against health care reform appear to be a position that health insurers had to give you more than one million dollars to purchase?  Why, Joe, why?

BOLD FRESH? WHA?

Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck are going on tour.  They call their tour Bold-Fresh.

Huh?  What the fuck is that?  Some kind of fabric softener?