Leave it to Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew to find out.
Or, rather, leave it to Beaker to find out and the doctor to observe.
The results? Hilarious.
Enjoy!
I’m contemplating a restart of the "You Work For Us Summer Tour."
Last time, the issue was FISA. And all of us were seriously, seriously pissed. And there was a unified front on pushing better government and accountability from everyone all at once.
This time? Health care is on the plate in a big way in the national discussion prior to the August recess.
What I sense is a unified feeling of disgust and dismay from everyone. But not a central purpose and demand for action in terms of what ought to be done legislatively.
So, here’s my thought: LizH had a fantastic idea about meeting face to face with legislators and with staffers to tell individual stories about health care issues we’ve all had:
Do you think we could arrange a nationwide day/week to stand in line at your representative’s office? Everybody come armed with a health story and a demand that a public option be available to every citizen.
I guess I’d like to ruin their vacation, as so many lives have been ruined from the shameful lack of health care coverage in this country. I want what they have – health care.
She provided a link to something that NAMI has done on that in the past as an example of what could be done. While I’d love to work on a single day of action, I don’t think it is practical given that the right wing has big finances behind shoving "socialism" down the national throat as a rebuttal point for the rest of the summer.
Here’s the thing: we are the last line of defense on health care. If we want something better, it is up to all of us to push for it. And push hard.
We’ don’t have Dick Armey’s PAC money financing us, all we have is our own will to make things better. But, honestly? I’d match our determination and gumption against Freedomworks slick bullshit maneuvers any day if we all got off our asses and did something together.
The big question is? Will we.
It is awfully easy to sit on the sidelines and grouse about things not being perfect. It’s harder to get up and do something about them. And what I’m asking — before I put the rest of my summer’s effort into this — is: are you willing to make the effort for better health care? (more…)
MIKE ROSS: …You know, we have been trying to get healthcare reform done since Harry Truman, and our objective is to get healthcare reform done this year; that was the President’s original objective. And somewhere along the way, people started imposing this artificial deadline of get it done by August 1. We’ve done a lot this year. The American people are ready for us to slow down and to actually take the time to think about what we are voting on, to read what we are voting on, and by waiting until September, this gives every member of Congress, Democrat and Republican, the opportunity to go home and listen to their constituents, to make sure that we’re getting this right.
The American people are ready for you to slow down, cut the knees out from under the public option and water down the health care reform bill? Really?!?
Let’s take a look at a lot of America’s reality:
The grassy parking lot is full. Beyond the fence, the cars are stacked up for miles. A snake of headlights is visible in the semi-dark along the curvy length of Hurricane Road, waiting to access the Wise County Fairgrounds.
These are the modern-day breadlines: people desperate not for food, but for health care.
“We are working taxpaying jobs, paying taxes, and we can’t get insurance because we make $6.55 an hour,” said Laura Head, 32, of Rogersville, Tenn., the first person in line Friday for the first day of the Remote Area Medical clinic, an annual three-day event offering free medical care. “This is really a great beneficial thing, but it doesn’t have to be this way; we could all have insurance.”
A single mother of three who mows yards and moves trailers for a living, Head said she arrived at the fairgrounds Tuesday, to camp out at the fairgrounds until the health fair began Friday morning. Her motivation was simple: severe, constant pain.
Close to two years ago, her boyfriend smashed her teeth, she said – but, without the $6,000 needed to have the teeth pulled she has endured infection after infection, making literally 100 visits to the emergency room for antibiotics and pain medication.
At $6.55 an hour, Laura Head can’t afford to buy a lobbyist to stroll the halls of Congress, ply the media with tasty morsels and hang out in Max Baucus’s offices, now can she?
If Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs want to use the August recess to hear from constituents, what say we give them — all of them — an earful?
Who here thinks that a stern talking to from the President about renegotiating loans will send all those duly chastened financial giants out to be scrupulously honest?
Or that they’ll find redemption in being fair and decent because now they have a “verbal agreement” to be good little lenders?
*crickets*
Not when there’s money to be made, right?
Last March, 60 Minutes had a story on rural health care volunteers that really floored me.Marty Tankersley came with his wife and his daughter, asleep behind the front seats. Tankersley says he drove some 200 miles to get to the clinic and slept in the parking lot for hours.
“Just to have this done?” Pelley asked.
Why is it in this country that it feels like we continually back people into a corner. Sometimes of our own making, sometimes of theirs, but oft times a combination of both. And then we bitch about them being in that damned corner. But we never really bother contemplating how they got there in the first place.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Sotomayor SCOTUS nomination this morning, in a vote of 13 to 6.
This from Sen. Leahy’s speech covers the Democratic perspective for the most part: In her 17 years on the bench there is not one example, let alone a pattern, of her ruling based on bias or prejudice or sympathy.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is voting on the Sotomayor nomination this morning. It’s a full committee vote which will then send the nomination out to the Senate as a whole for a floor vote. Senators are giving a little colloquy on the reasons for their vote along with their actual vote.
