Pelosi willing to get real about health care reform

I admit that I didn’t used to care much for Nancy Pelosi. I’ve come a long way and it’s statements like this - on bandaid fixs for health care - that did it for me:

“There are some things that sound easy, but you might as well send somebody a get well card, because they don’t have any more impact, except maybe they make you feel good for the moment,” said Pelosi, who paused and rethought her comparison.

“Maybe a get well card might be more effective, as a matter of fact, because it’s sincere,” she said.

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Robert Reich nails the gutlessness of both House and Senate bills

“I’m still not giving up. I want every Senator who’s not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a “Ted Kennedy Medicare for All” amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a “Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All” amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn’t have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.”

Robert Reich

Gosh, he is spot on once again. Reich expresses exactly why I half-heartedly battle on for this tired, compromised, bastardized excuse for a health insurance reform effort. Had this been back in the olden times, and a real life baby, the midwife would have taken pity on the sleeping Mother, done the only right thing and taken the malformed and hopeless child out to the river in the dark of night.

In a futile effort to be all nice, warm and fuzzy … oh, and bipartisan, Dems have given away the store, their daughters and signed the country and citizens over in a bizarre insurance reverse mortgage called a ‘public option’.

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Fox: Breaking News - elevator music!

If you weren’t exactly sure that Fox took news seriously …

No! Health insurance 'co-ops' ain't gonna make it.

Nossir! No how!

This is purely a case of the Obama administration backing away in a lame and desparate attempt to make nice and keep peace among fueding kinfolk.

Within both houses, fortunately, there is continuing support for the only thing that makes any sense: a ‘public option’ for health insurance.

In the Senate, where negotiations are now focused, John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.) said that a public option, as the plan has become known, is “a must.” Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.) said that “without a public option, I don’t see how we will bring real change to a system that has made good health care a privilege for those who can afford it.”

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Nothing to say? Then, attack, attack, attack.

Matt Lauer’s expression at the very end of this ridiculous interview with the ‘other Ann Coulter’, Michelle Malkin, is priceless. It’s like he can’t figure out what planet this woman just beamed in from … and he dare not speak its name on camera.

This is exactly how the far right spin machine frames important national issues … by personal attacks. They don’t stop with the President, but go after his wife as well. Oh, and a claws-bared swipe at Sen. Lindsay Graham, for not being party line enough for her tastes. It doesn’t end there.

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Friday Fish Wrap: May 15. 2009

Well this has been an interesting week. I’ll start my weekend having a cardiac catheterization - getting a very small camera shoved through a slit in my femoral artery into my heart. That’s why I got all my gardening done today - no lifting or exertion for a few days afterward. Thank heavens for cable, Kindle and Sudoku. Friday is National Bike to Work Day, and I’d participate but well….

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McCain - Leahy face off on torture

If there were ever a moment when the point was any more clear on just how tired, irrelevant and clueless John McCain would have been as president, this interview with his fan Bob Schieffer of CBS Face the Nation nails it. McCain is a man for whom the lack of a viable party has left him as another bobble-head of the Karl Rove contingent.

Even worse,

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