Watching the conservative echo chamber in action is a frightening experience that most people don’t have to stomach on a daily basis.

The latest misinformation parroted by the rightwing machinery is that President Obama is buying votes on health care with judicial nominations.

As usual, it all starts with just a simple question. This time the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard got the ball rolling.

Read the entire story on Examiner.com

Almost all politicians stretch the truth, or outright lie, to convince people that what they’re doing is for their benefit. But what’s happening right now regarding a possible parliamentary move by Senate Democrats to use reconciliation to pass health care reform is just too much.

There are so many Republican lies whizzing across the media landscape about reconciliation it’s hard to keep up. The two biggest whoppers that GOP Senators and Fox News are disseminating are that Republicans would never dream of using reconciliation to thwart a filibuster, and that the use of the existing reconciliation rule (created in 1974) is the so-called “nuclear option.”

Republicans and Fox News are counting on no one looking at the public record and uncovering their blatant fabrications. If you look, you’ll see that Republicans have used reconciliation way more often than Democrats have. In fact, in the more than 20 times it’s been used, Republicans are on record with using reconciliation 17 times.

Most recently the GOP chose reconciliation to pass the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005.

And as far as the so-called “nuclear option” is concerned – that has absolutely nothing to do with reconciliation – nothing, nada, zip, zilch.

It was Republicans who coined the “nuclear option” phrase back in 2003 when they threatened to change Senate rules outlawing the filibuster. They were pissed at Democrats who were trying to filibuster judicial nominees. It had nothing to do with reconciliation.

Watch this video. Stop watching Fox News. Think. Read. Research. Be critical. The information is there. “The truth is out there.” — Fox Mulder

President Obama appears to have finally realized that Republicans will never support any effort to reform health care. On Wed., Obama is expected to release a plan to pass health care reform. According to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the president would like Republicans to not filibuster the bill in the Senate and allow a simple up-or-down vote, but that’s not going to happen.

Now Republicans know they have lost this battle and they’re freaking out. One can only hope there’s a special place in hell for these so-called Christians who lie through their teeth.

The filibuster is the issue I’m tracking today. There’s a lot going on with Senators seeking to change rules, Republicans threatening more filibusters and pundits trying to figure it all out.

Here’s what I have so far.

Former Senate parliamentarian: Biden could play big role in reconciliation process Washington Post

Former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove discussed the history of reconciliation on MSNBC Monday morning. “Reconciliation has been used a lot, and I would never use the term illegitimate with regard to reconciliation,” he said of the Senate maneuver, which was created in 1974 and revised in 1980 to restrict it to purely budgetary matters.

Political systems of nations: Germany Ezra Klein Washington Post

As the dysfunctions of our political system have become a more prevalent theme on this blog, I’ve gotten a large number of requests for a series exploring the political systems of other countries. How England runs its health-care system is a lot better understood than how England passed the law that created its health-care system, even though the latter is arguably more important for our purposes.

Solid Evidence Emerges of Senate Republicans’ Unconstitutional Abuse of Power Alternet

Nearly 300 Bills Have Passed in House Since Current 111th Congress Took Office Nearly 14 Months Ago — Many With Broad Bipartisan Support — Only to be Tied Up by Unprecedented Brick Wall of Republican Filibusters in Senate; Minority Party Has No Constitutional Authority to Hold All Legislation Hostage by forcing 60-Vote ‘Super Majority’ in 100-Member Chamber

Should Democrats Call The GOP Filibuster Threat? Press

Holding up bills in the Senate is the Republican plan to prevent Obama and Democrats from scoring any political points. To accomplish this goal, Republicans are threatening to filibuster more than ever, and some Democrats want Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to call their bluff.

Hypocrisy abounds on filibuster issue Inside Bay Area

“THE RIGHT to extended debate is never more important than when one party controls Congress and the White House, and in these cases the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government.”

“Change in the Senate rules — that really, I think, would change the character of the Senate forever (and would be) simply majoritarian absolute power on either side (of Congress), and that’s not what the Founders intended.”

Analysis: Republicans setting filibuster record Associate Press

The filibuster — tool of obstruction in the U.S. Senate — is alternately blamed and praised for wilting President Barack Obama’s ambitious agenda. Some even say it’s made the nation ungovernable.

Hartford Courant Crossing Party Lines

Monday, Republican Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Kit Bond of Missouri and George Voinovich of Ohio broke ranks with their party and voted to cut off debate on the jobs legislation. The vote to end debate was 62-30. The bill passed the Senate and now faces action in the House.

Holding up bills in the Senate is the Republican plan to prevent Obama and Democrats from scoring any political points. To accomplish this goal, Republicans are threatening to filibuster more than ever, and some Democrats want Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to call their bluff.

“It’s not only good policy but good politics to call them out now,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) told US News and World Report last month. “The American people need to see who really is the roadblock here.”

Several House Democrats are saying it’s time to stop running away from the Republican filibuster threats.

Up until now, “we’ve been playing into the hands of people who don’t want to get anything done,” Grijalva told US News and World Report’s Anna Mulrine.

But a modern filibuster is likely to be much less satisfying than some House Democrats imagine. “It reflects a common misperception among House members in the U.S. – that somehow you can force Republicans to filibuster in such a way that it will be embarrassing to them,” Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers, told Mulrine.

Baker said that the days when Senators read from the phone book or waxed poetic about old girlfriends are no more. “This isn’t Strom Thurmond’s 1957 filibuster against civil rights,” Baker said.

However, polls show that most Americans believe that it’s Democrats who are trying to get something accomplished and Republicans are merely obstructionists.

“The Democrats don’t need the public to be watching the debates with bated breath,” Duke University Political Scientist David Rohde told Mulrine. “What the Democrats need is the public to think that they are trying to act and that the Republicans are trying to stop them.”

Steven Hurst of the Associated Press reported today that based on the number of cloture votes, the GOP’s frequency of filibusters and the threats to use it are record setting.

A cloture vote is a way for the majority to test whether it has the 60 votes needed to end debate.

Last year, the first of the 111th Congress, there were a record 112 cloture votes. In the first two months of 2010, the number already exceeds 40.

That means, with 10 months left to run in the 111th Congress, Republicans have turned to the filibuster or threatened its use at a pace that will more than triple the old record. The 104th Congress in 1995-96 — when Republicans held a 53-47 majority — required 50 cloture votes.

Democratic Senators Tom Harkin and Jeanne Shaheen introduced legislation last month to change Senate rules by lowering the number of votes needed to end a filibuster. But Majority Leader Reid sees this is as nonstarter. It takes 67 votes to change Senate rules.

Here are all of the three documents released on Friday by the House ethics panel admonishing Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) for ethics violations.

All bad news gets released on Fridays.

Republicans are calling for Rangel to step down. The congressman said that he shouldn’t be held responsible for errors by his staff.

The committee found no evidence that Rangel knew about the corporate sponsorship for his trips to the Caribbean. On the other hand, they were his staffers and he’s the boss.

The House ethics panel documents are long and can be found here, here and here.

Read Talking Points Memo breakdown of the ethics investigation.

Today the US House of Representative passed a bill removing the anti-trust exemption from insurance companies.

The legislation passed 406 to 19 after hours of debate over an amendment by Rep. Daniel Lungren (R-TX) that would provide a data-sharing exception to the bill. The amendment was not added to the bill, but Lungren still voted in favor of the final bill.

A Republican filibuster is expected in the Senate to prevent the anti-trust exemption from becoming law.

Here’s the complete transcript and video of President Obama’s remarks before the bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders. The transcript was prepared by the White House and downloaded from WhiteHouse.gov on Feb. 9, 2010 at 10:45 p.m.

10:21 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. Well, I want to thank both Democratic and Senate Leaders — Democratic Senate Leaders, Democratic House Leaders, as well as Republican Leaders from the House and Senate for joining us.

As I said in my State of the Union, part of what we’d like to see is the ability of Congress to move forward in a more bipartisan fashion on some of the key challenges that the country is facing right now. I think it’s fair to say that the American people are frustrated with the lack of progress on some key issues. And although the parties are not going to agree on every single item, there should be some areas where we can agree and we can get some things done even as we have vigorous debates on some of those issues that we don’t agree on.

A good place to start, and what I hope to spend a lot of time on in these discussions today, is how we can move forward on a jobs package that encourages small business to hire, that is helping to create the kind of environment where now that we have economic growth people actually are starting to add to their payroll. I think there are some ideas on both the Republican and Democrat side that allow us to potentially, for example, lower rates for small businesses on their taxes, to help spur on some growth. And my hope is is that both in the House and the Senate we’ll see some packages moving over the next several weeks that can provide a jumpstart to hiring and start lowering the unemployment rate.

Another area where I hope we can find some agreement is on the issue of getting our deficits and debt under control. Both parties have stated their concerns about it; I think both parties recognize that it’s going to take a lot of work. I have put forward the idea of a fiscal commission and I’m going to be discussing both with my Democratic and Republican colleagues how we can get that moving as quickly as possible so that we can start taking some concrete action. I think the American people want to see that concrete action.

I’m also going to just be talking about some more mundane matters, things like making sure that we have our government personnel in place on critical positions — in critical positions that involve our basic government function and seeing if we can accelerate that and try to find some agreement in those areas.

And then I’m going to spend some time listening because there may be some priorities that both the Republican and Democratic Leaders have that they want to raise at this meeting.

My hope is this is not going to be a rare situation; we’re going to be doing these on a regular basis. And I’m very thankful that everybody here has taken the time to come. I’m confident that if we move forward in a spirit of keeping in mind what’s best for the American people that we should be able to accomplish a lot.

All right. Thank you very much everybody.

END
10:24 A.M. EST

David Nexon had a big problem. An early version of national health care legislation contained a $40 billion tax aimed squarely at members of the medical device trade association he represents.

Read Chicago Sun story explaining US failing legislative process.

In terms of health care, how did we get where we are today? What most people call our “health care system” is anything but a system. It’s a mix of health insurers, hospitals, doctors, employers and their army of lobbyists on the front-line in our nation’s capitol protecting their financial interests.

Opponents of the current effort by Congress to reform health care scream that if it passes the government will takeover the entire health care “system.” If that happens, the free market won’t function properly because the government will strong-arm the industry to artificially reduce costs.

Of course, even a cursory examination of our current health care system reveals that it is not a free market.

First of all, health insurance companies are allowed to collude and fix prices because of an anti-trust exemption dating back to the 1940s.

But the biggest anti-free market component of our health care system is the employer-provided shenanigans.

Employers have been setup as the middleman between customers and the health insurance industry. This separation of customer from service provider has been a great way to hide the real cost of health insurance. Most workers have no idea how much their employer pays for their health insurance premiums. It’s kind of like the hidden payroll taxes, but that’s another story.

You see, health insurance is provided by employers as a benefit. And like all benefits, it costs the company money. Now theoretically, if your company wasn’t paying hundreds of dollars a month for your health insurance premium, you’d make more money or the business would be able to hire more people.

The actual health care cost for the average worker is about $500 a month.

If you really believe in the free market, you’d support eliminating employer-provided health insurance. How much your employer currently pays for your premiums could be added to your paycheck. And then you can go purchase your own health insurance, or just buy health care without insurance.

Of course, for this to work, we’d need to do something about that anti-trust exemption, but it would be a start.

A free market can not work if the consumer doesn’t know what they’re purchasing and how much it costs.

It was a joke – I think. But during an interview with Politico, Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Missouri, when asked what the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus does, he said “We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.”

Harper was probably kidding. Here’s the Politico interview.

President Obama continues to make the same mistake over and over again. From bankers, to members of Congress and even the American people, Obama keeps hoping everyone will just get along and find common ground.

While Obama keeps waiting for everyone do to the right thing, unemployment continues to go up, small businesses are struggling or failing, people are dying from lack of health care, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and bailed out investment bankers are rolling in taxpayer dough.

It’s time for Obama to stop his audacity of hope campaign – what we need is action, leadership and some asses kicked (I’m looking at you Goldman Sachs and AIG).

Perhaps critics of candidate Obama were right when they said he lacked experience. He’s been in the White House for nine months and he’s accomplished nothing.

Health care reform continues to flounder in Congress.

The war in Iraq is still sucking the US Treasury dry and snatching the lives of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

In Afghanistan, Obama is thinking about sending more troops, but he appears to be hemming and hawing over that decision.

When the banking industry, which created the current financial mess we’re in thanks to laissez-faire regulation, was on the ropes Obama didn’t take that opportunity to force regulation down their throats, but rather he handed them billions and billions of taxpayer money and hoped that they’d play nice and be cool with regulatory changes later. Wrong.

Before Congress started debating health care reform, the president should have laid out his requirements for a bill he would sign. Obama should have started out with single-payer and made the case for it. There’s a good argument to be made for single-payer, but Obama didn’t even try. Instead, he left it all up to Congress to run wild with and boy did they. Now we’re looking at heavily compromised bills that will likely result in a lot of people paying too much money for health insurance that doesn’t cover anything. Thanks, but no thanks.

And what has he done to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Nothing. We can’t win either of these wars because there is no definition of victory. No one has ever conquered Afghanistan, and neither will the US. And what’s the exit strategy in Iraq? Hope?

Obama’s hope machine has run out of gas. Hope is great, we all need a little bit of it from time to time, but it’s no excuse for inaction. This is politics. It’s partisan.

The time for leadership is now, because let’s face it, pretending that partisan politics is something that can, or should, be avoided is no recipe for success. Obama needs to stop his wishful thinking. Conservatives and liberals will not march on Washington, DC hand-in-hand singing Kumbaya – it’s not going to happen. Wake up or step aside in 2012 to make room for a real leader.

Here’s the transcript and video of President Obama’s Weekly Address yesterday about health care reform. Obama praised the Senate Finance bill. He said the bill would make coverage affordable to millions of Americans. Health care for all is now health insurance for all. This year’s health care reform has been brought to you by Cigna.

Source: White House

The historic movement to bring real, meaningful health insurance reform to the American people gathered momentum this week as we approach the final days of this debate. Having worked on this issue for the better part of a year, the Senate Finance Committee is finishing deliberations on their version of a health insurance reform bill that will soon be merged with other reform bills produced by other Congressional committees.

After evaluating the Finance Committee’s bill, the Congressional Budget Office – an office that provides independent, nonpartisan analysis – concluded that the legislation would make coverage affordable for millions of Americans who don’t have it today. It will bring greater security to Americans who have coverage, with new insurance protections. And, by attacking waste and fraud within the system, it will slow the growth in health care costs, without adding a dime to our deficits.

This is another milestone on what has been a long, hard road toward health insurance reform. In recent months, we’ve heard every side of every argument from both sides of the aisle. And rightly so – health insurance reform is a complex and critical issue that deserves a vigorous national debate, and we’ve had one. The approach that is emerging includes the best ideas from Republicans and Democrats, and people across the political spectrum.

In fact, what’s remarkable is not that we’ve had a spirited debate about health insurance reform, but the unprecedented consensus that has come together behind it. This consensus encompasses everyone from doctors and nurses to hospitals and drug manufacturers.

And earlier this week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg came out in support of reform, joining two former Republican Senate Majority Leaders: Bob Dole and Dr. Bill Frist, himself a cardiac surgeon. Dr. Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush, supports reform. As does Republican Tommy Thompson, a former Wisconsin governor and Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. These distinguished leaders understand that health insurance reform isn’t a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but an American issue that demands a solution.

Still, there are some in Washington today who seem determined to play the same old partisan politics, working to score political points, even if it means burdening this country with an unsustainable status quo. A status quo of rising health care costs that are crushing our families, our businesses, and our government. A status quo of diminishing coverage that is denying millions of hardworking Americans the insurance they need. A status quo that gives big insurance companies the power to make arbitrary decisions about your health care. That is a status quo I reject. And that is a status quo the American people reject.

The distinguished former Congressional leaders who urged us to act on health insurance reform spoke of the historic moment at hand and reminded us that this moment will not soon come again. They called on members of both parties seize this opportunity to finally confront a problem that has plagued us for far too long.

That is what we are called to do at this moment. That is the spirit of national purpose that we must summon right now. Now is the time to rise above the politics of the moment. Now is the time to come together as Americans. Now is the time to meet our responsibilities to ourselves and to our children, and secure a better, healthier future for generations to come. That future is within our grasp. So, let’s go finish the job.

Nicholas Kristof tells it like it is. If you oppose real health care reform, you are morally challenged, to say the least. Members of Congress who do not support real health care reform should loose their health insurance. They should be forced to rely on emergency room visits when they get sick and when their children get sick. They should be the ones who die from lack of access to health care. It is their fault we don’t all have access to proper health care – period.

Read Kristof’s column and then call your Senators and Representatives. If we don’t get real reform, vote them out of office. If we don’t get some real leaders in this nation, it’s time we the people fight back with everything we have. It’s time for a revolution.

I was an idiot to believe him, but I really did think Obama meant what he said on the campaign trail about cleaning up Washington by ridding it of the influential lobbyists that craft legislation in our nation’s capitol. But according to Frank Rich’s latest column, and the shape of health care reform bills, it appears Obama has done nothing to stop the corrupt power of corporate money in DC.

Oh well, maybe next time we’ll elect a president and members of Congress that aren’t bought and paid for, but then again, is that really an option?

Read Frank Rich’s column and then cry yourself to sleep tonight.

Let’s face it – idiots say lots of idiotic things. One “reason” to not reform the health care system to provide access to everyone is that “health care is not a right.” They’re right that the words “health care” are not mentioned in the Constitution, but they’re wrong that that is a reason to not help those 46 million people without proper access to health care.

You see, this is why some of the founders of our country didn’t want specific rights (i.e. the Bill of Rights) included in the Constitution. They believed that if they were to list certain rights, it would allow people to use that against others to deny them other rights that are not listed in the Constitution. They were correct.

However, just because a specific right isn’t enumerated in the Constitution doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that simply because a modern problem that afflicts this country didn’t exist when it was founded that we can and should simply ignore it.

You see access to education is not a right specifically spelled out in the Constitution, yet most people believe that access to a proper education is vital to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Folks with little or no access to education will certainly struggle in life and not reach their fullest potential. From my perspective, if we all do better, we all do better. In other words, if 46 million children had no access to education, people would be rightly freaking out because we’d have throngs of uneducated people who can’t take care of themselves. I’m not suggesting that we solved our education problems, but most of us agree that education is fundamental to the pursuit of happiness. Education is a right.

Health care is a little different. Where education is important in our formative years, health care is usually most vital as we age. Can a person achieve his or her life dreams without health insurance? Probably, but they’d be doing so while accepting a tremendous financial and personal risk.

I’m 37-years-old and I haven’t had health insurance since 2005. I’m one of those people who frankly chooses to not have health insurance because I’m healthy and feel like I can get by without it. If, however, I required some sort of emergency procedure, I could be wiped out financially. This is a serious financial risk that I’m willing to take but I don’t feel like I should have to take.

My problem is that I’m not dirt poor, so I can’t throw myself on the mercy of the government, I’d be expected to pay my bills and I would. But I’m self-employed and don’t make that much money, if I were strapped with $100,000 worth of medical bills, it would cripple me and likely force me back into a 9-to-5 job sitting in a cubicle writing code. While that’s not the end of the world, it’s not what I want to do.

I should not have to base my life decisions on whether I do or don’t have health insurance. Everyone should be able to live their life based on what they want to do with it – what they’re best at. Why should computer programmers, marketing execs and project managers have access to affordable health care, but musicians, artists and self-employed people don’t?

My point is that access to health care is a right and my guess is that people who don’t think so already have access to health care. Well they do now, but as wages continue to fall and the health insurance industry continues to pull in record profits (cough recession), they may not forever.

–
More information:

• A penumbra is when rights are emanated from the Constitution but are not enumerated. The most famous case involving penumbra is Griswold v. Connecticut.
• Wendel Potter has a story on CBS News in favor of health care reform called “America Needs A Choice“
• Opposing the public health care plan is Rob Schlossberg with his story called “Public Plan is Unfair Competition“
• Watch a discussion on CBS new with Dr. LaPook with Potter and Schlossberg here
  

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