GI Joe Needs to Go to Washington

I think COBRA Commander must be running Congress because lord knows that COBRA Benefits for the unemployed are not.

In the 1980s cartoon G.I. Joe, COBRA Commander was a character with a mirror face, but when the mirror was removed, you found an evil snake like man-creature with a lisp and a penchant for all out drag queen temper tantrums. COBRA was an evil organization out the rule the world.

Outside of the lands of Hasbro, COBRA is a government program, created in the 1980s, that allows workers leaving or let go from their jobs to continue their health care benefits for up to 18 months by paying the associated premiums and a small administrative fee.

COBRA led by snake face is bad. COBRA led by the U.S. government is good.

Up until May 31, 2010, there was a provision that was included in the stimulus package that paid subsidies of 65% of COBRA benefits for eligible workers that lost their jobs. As quoted in an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, for a that has health care payments of $1,500 a month that subsidy drops the payments down to $525, a much more manageable figure.

As we all know, the latest unemployment figures still have unemployment hovering near 10% (9.7% to be exact), and while there has been slow growth in the economy, the numbers of jobs added have been pretty much pitiful. So it would seem to make sense that since the need for the COBRA subsidy is still great, and since the economy is only just beginning to recover that it would make sense to reauthorize the $7 billion dollar program. Right?

Wrong. Turns out that COBRA Commander (evil snake face) is alive and well and living in Washington. Blue Dog Democrats are howling at the moon because it is an election year and they fear that voting to re-extend the program, which will add to the deficit, will hurt their re-election chances.

Two notes here for you Blue Dogs, 1) Your job in Congress is to serve the people, not your re-election efforts, and 2) if you are an incumbent, you should start packing your bags any old ways cuz this year just ain't your year.

But, seriously, seriously, we are spending $12.2 billion dollars a MONTH on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan according to an article in U.S.A. Today published on May 12, 2010. That, ladies and gents, comes out to $145 billion (and some change) a year on those two wars. And, now we have some asshole Congressmen, such as Democrat Rep. Cardoza of California, magically worried about deficit spending of $7 billion for a year to cover millions of unemployed Americans?

We will pay to kill people living far far away, but we won't pay a fraction of that amount of money to keep our own people healthy and alive. Fail.

Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio are offering an amendment to re-authorize the COBRA subsidy program to a bill in the Senate to extend unemployment benefits. The bill has already passed the House where douchenozzle Rep. Clyburn of South Carolina led the charge to strip the COBRA Reauthorization from the bill. I think Clyburn should stop working for the EVIL COBRA and worry about the crazy shit going on in South Carolina right now in the gubernatorial and senatorial elections.

In the end, failing to reauthorize the COBRA subsidy is not only wrong and bad politics, it is bad economics. When those folks that have been able to maintain their health benefits are forced off of their private insurers, they will be forced to join the rest of the unemployed masses in using the country's emergency rooms as primary care facilities. This is absolutely the most expensive way to receive health care in our system, and it will only overburden and overtax a health care system while at the same time forcing local and state governments to pick up the costs incurred.

Smooth move, Congress.

Please contact your Senators and let them know that you support the COBRA extension, and, if necessary, that you support bringing in GI Joe to deal with Evil COBRA and the Blue Dog Democrats.

General Hawk signing out.

Health Insurance Companies Can Suck My Dick

After spending half a year working at the Center for Media Justice and basically deepening my distaste for the media to the point where saying FOX out loud is enough to make me projectile vomit down the nearest news anchor's open mouth, I have been reduced to scanning the headlines via Yahoo and watching CNN on the treadmill at the gym. I figure I can learn all of what I need to know in terms of distorted media biased issues reporting from one of those sources, in small spurts, without risking nausea or a brain tumor.

Today, though, I was reading an article on Yahoo that talked about the upcoming speech that Obama is planning to a joint session of Congress. First of all, joint sessions of Congress are extremely rare occurrences. The only time they happen regularly is during the State of the Union. Otherwise, they are generally reserved for things like announcing a formal declaration of war, the end of a war, the death of a someone of near God-like stature, or the annual Congress Christmas Party and Intern Rubdown.

In the aforementioned article, it happened to say, punnily, that one of the opposition points of the conservative lobby and GOPers is that they are worried about the health of private health insurance companies.

Excuse me? The HEALTH of private health insurance companies? Did United Healthcare come down with tuberculosis, AIDS, or malaria and I missed it? No? Until then shut the fuck up talking to me about some goddamn entity that exists on paper as having any health needs whatsoever. I have health needs...I need to be healthy; I need to be able to get sick and not have to worry about dying from a heart attack when I get the doctor bill; and I need to not have to decide whether or not I should spend money on electricity or Zoloft.

Health of health insurance companies. Nigga please.

This is the one time in all my life that I have heard Democrats advocating for a full on market system that will force private companies to play by the rules of capitalism by competing with a new and larger player that will force bloated, vampiric, profit mongering private health insurers to stop price gouging, price setting, and profiting from the illness, death, and misery of people and start looking at ways to keep people healthy, reduce costs and provide the most effective treatment for the lowest price. That is how the fuck you stay in business in any other damn industry...hey health care...suck my dick...I don't give a shit about the CEO of United Heath care raking in a salary of $124.8 million (and yes kiddies that is what former United Health Group CEO Bill McGuire made in 2005).

This is also the first time I have ever heard Republicans talk about protecting the market from competition. Excuse me...is Rush Limbaugh back on those pills? Is Trent Lott back to advocating for the return of the Dixiecrats? Is someone up in the Senate Office building smoking crack rock? I find it highly amusing the inviolate free market economy beliefs of Republicans are about as deeply held and inviolable as 13 year old boy at Neverland Ranch.

There is no health care reform without a public option. Period. Without a public option the health care reform becomes a minor tweak of the health care system where teeny changes will be made, that will save money in the short term, will not address the fundamental underlying problems with the system, will result in bloated health care premiums over the long term, and will inevitably lead to a return to the status quo or worse...the collapse of the U.S. economy under the burden of health care costs. States are already seeing this happen, for example, in Minnesota, the majority of every new tax dollar raised goes to offset state health care costs. When all of our money is going to pay for bloated programs that do not work and to premiums and systems that create poor care and massive numbers of underinsured or uninsured, why the hell wouldn't we do anything and everything possible to address the real issue: CREATING A HEALTH CARE PROGRAM AND SYSTEM ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE, AFFORDABLE TO EVERYONE, and SOLVENT!

Anticipating Obama's speech to Congress, I can feel the spirit of my Big Mama sitting with me. I am about to pull on my house coat, lube up my slippers, chew on some tobacco, and cut a switch. I am going to sit in the gallery in Congress, spitting in to my chaw bucket, and slappin' my switch menacingly on the bench...staring down at Obama and daring his narrow black ass to back off a public option. And the minute some cock-eyed, short dicked, Cadillac insurance carrying Republican member of Congress (or Blue Dog Democrat for that matter) opens his or her mouth to as much as yawn during or after the speech, I am going to lay into their asses like their Mama's should have and scream at the top of my lungs, "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You...You Don't Like A Public Option? Then YOU PUT THE 40,000,000 uninsured on YOUR health care plan."

Don't worry GOPers and Blue Dogs...the ass whoopin' you got comin' is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

No it ain't. Bend over and take it bitches. Cuz you have earned this whoopin', and I hope Obama tears your fat asses up.

Health Care is a Human Right: FUCK RON PAUL!

I was thumbing through Yahoo's news today, as I am wont to do, when I came across some bullshit. Ron Paul, erstwhile Presidential candidate, and Libertarian tardo declared, with a straight face, and a net worth of between $2 million and $7 million dollars that health care is not a human right.

As a matter of fact, read his pure tardations for yourself or click here to listen to him spout his idiocy in an interview:

As far as the Texas Congressman is concerned, health care is not a right. "I don't have a right to medical care," he emphatically states. In his view, the constitution only guarantees citizens "life, liberty and (the right to) keep the fruits of my labor."

The Texas Congressman, of course, is Ron Paul. He is the type of bassackwards anal wart in power that makes my blood boil. But, thankfully, it is not only common sense, and my belief in the innate value of human life, that states that health care is a human right...so does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the guiding document of the United Nations, of which, nominally, the U.S. is a member. The Declaration states: that every human being has the right to health, including health care.

Pardon me if I go ahead and get behind a guiding document acknowledged as the basis for global human rights doctrine and signed on to by every legitimate nation on the planet Earth versus the words of a hyper individualist college educated and medical school trained white man from the South, which basically signs him up for every form of social and political privilege and advantage available to a human being. He doesn't have to worry about little issues like human rights because his entire exists demands recognition of his right to determine what is or is not reality or just. I repeat: FUCK U.S CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL OF TEXAS. YOU FUCKING OVER PRIVILEGED JACKTARD ROTTED INVERTED SCROTUM HAIR.

Some of you may have noticed that my blogs, lately, have become a tad bit more angry than usual. I believe there is a direct relationship between an ending patience with certain people in my daily life, which, relationally, uses up any excess patience I have for assholes that have the power to vote yea or nay on my ability to life a full and healthy life. And, frankly, I don't give a damn if it costs 28 quadraseptabastanktrazillionplex dollars to ensure that every single person in this country has the same access to quality health care as the 535 members of the United States Congress that enjoy the BEST POSSIBLE HEALTH CARE PLAN ON THE PLANET EARTH. If a Senator sneezes they can pretty much get the Chief of Surgery to hold a tissue and said God Bless you, without paying a single co-pay, if it tickles their fancy or gets them hard. Hell they can get the surgeon general to be their personal fluffer if Viagra doesn't work.

Ron Paul, it must be hard to stand on top of a mountain of spaghetti, sucking down meatballs, all the while looking down from the mountaintop to the starving masses and declare, proudly, that they don't have a right to eat. You know what happens in that situation Mr. Paul? The motherfucking masses eat the damn mountain from underneath you and then eat your grizzly boney old ass as an after dinner snack.

Health care is a human right. It is a fundamental goddamn human right, and it is not only a shame but unconscionable that the richest nation in the history of the planet should have the WORST health care and the WORST infant mortality rate and the WORST life expectancy of any industrialized nation...hell of most nations. PERIOD.

Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. Being Groomed as Baracks Successor

Call me Negrodamus (thank you Dave Chappelle). I am predicting right here and now that barring any massive screw ups by Obama or Harold Ford Jr...that in 2016, Harold Ford Jr. will be one of the contenders for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

I was watching Meet the Press today while losing copius amounts of moisture from my forehead as I was doing cardio. There were a slew of politicos and pundits on the show today including former Republican House leader Dick Armey. Mr. Armey trotted out the old tired Republican lines about spending, big government, etc. He also tried to paint the TEA parties as some sort of grassroots movement that his Freedomworks PAC supported with technical assistance. Bullshit, ahem. His only moment of honesty was when he happened to acknowledge that the actual TEA party protests started in response to Bush and TARP and not to Obama.

Anywho...U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr (D-TN)...who recently ran and lost a race for the U.S. Senate...was the sleek and HOT rep from the Dems on the show. Talk about on point...this man could spin shit into sunshine and make quartz into diamonds. He was clear, concise, coherent, with a controlled passion that made Armey look like the dried up half baked Texas pseudo-intellectual he is. It was immediately apparent to me that this young, smokin' hot black man from the South is being groomed carefully for the White House. And whoever coached him for his appearance on Meet the Press needs to be behind the scenes before any Democrat anywhere speaks in public.

I will admit that I got off my cardio torture device only a half hour into the hour spot...but I will look into my crystal ball and predict that the rest of the show continued with Rep. Ford, Jr. smiley politely while tearing Armey a new one...with occassional interjections from a couple of the other guests.

I think we may have another President Ford. But this time, he's black.

British DTV Article

I was quoted in this article, and I didn't even know it ;-): http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45837

It's Not About Ugly Betty: The DTV Transition and Why It Matters

On May 3, 1963 the North was stunned as it saw broadcast images of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety, Bull Connor,turning fire hoses, dogs, cattle prods, and billy clubs on peaceful black protesters that had organized a campaign targeting the local business community. The response was immediate and profound. The public outcry forced President Kennedy to send a negotiator to the city. By May 10 the campaign was ended, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had won, and television was catapulted into the national arena as a tool for social change.

Over the next decade, images of violence from the Civil Rights movement and from the Vietnam War entered U.S. homes on the evening news. For the first time in U.S. history, people far removed from the realities of the South and urban black communities, people that could not find Vietnam on a map, found themselves staring at images of violence, death, destruction, segregation and apartheid. And the nation was moved. A national consciousness, begun by community organizers working in the streets and fields, was broadened and deepened by the family television set.

The right to information is a fundamental human right. More than 80% of American households still receive the majority of their news and the issues that impact them through their local television broadcasts. Anything that threatens easy and bountiful access to timely and accurate news and information has very real impacts on the lives of American people. The Digital Television Transition, ill conceived and corporate focused, is poised to strip millions of Americans of their ability to receive the information they need to make decisions about their lives.

Although Congress passed legislation changing the digital television transition date from February 17th to June 12th, 491 stations are choosing to switch early. Combined with those stations that have already made the transition, there will be more than 700 television stations broadcasting in digital after February 17th. And yet, at least 21 million households are either completely unready or will have significant problems when the switch happens. Indeed, already, the DTV Assistance Centers created by the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) in partnership with the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, have received hundreds of phone calls from families that are experiencing major difficulties, and some, after having followed the esoteric instructions for connecting the DTV converter boxes, are finding that they are still left with black screens despite their best effort and the promises of a smooth transition.

Fundamentally, the digital transition was ill conceived. From its inception it was focused on corporate media giants. Scarce resources were allocated for the transition, and poor outreach was done to ensure that those most impacted by the transition--people of color, low income communities, people with disabilities, and the elderly--were prepared for the switch. The federal coupon program ran out of funds more than two months before the switch. National retailers, looking to profit from the underfunded federally mandated switch, refused to carry the $40 converter boxes, creating an undue economic burden during a time of economic crisis. And local community organizations, already cash strapped and overworked, were left to pick up the pieces and develop solutions to problems created by Congress.

And, unfortunately, the public discussions about the switch have either been complaints with few solutions or have dismissed the switch as unimportant in the context of the current state of the U.S.A. From the left and the right, people have exclaimed that “TV is not a right!” And they are absolutely correct. TV is not a right. This transition is not about ensuring that folks get their Ugly Betty fix. This is about the fundamental human right to information and the the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that right is protected for the least as well as the privileged. And this right is directly tied to economic and racial justice.

When a transition occurs or a decision is made, and those impacted or left behind are people of color and working class people, it is clear that there are race and class implications to the decision. As we move forward with rebuilding our economy, those that have ready access to the most current information will be those that succeed in getting newly created jobs and finding new opportunities to support their families. When millions of low income people and people of color are locked out of the information system, they , too, are locked out of economic opportunities. As we continue with massive corporate consolidation, radio stations run remotely, and disappearing newspapers, television will continue to maintain its hegemonic place as the common green.

But it is not too late to close the gaps in this transition. There are solutions. MAG-Net is launching a national Socially Just and Responsible Transition campaign. The campaign is targeting electronics retailers with the aim of having the major national chains in multiple metropolitan and rural communities commit to providing a $40 converter box with analog pass through capability and closed captioning. Each retailer will receive a certification that they have taken the Socially Just and Responsible Pledge and will receive a designation indicting such.

Congress has included funds in the economic stimulus package geared at making sure that the coupon program is sufficiently funded. In addition, Congress must also provide significant funds to support the grassroots organizations across the country that are providing direct assistance to their communities to ensure that the 16.5% of Latinos that are currently unready in Phoenix and the 13% of the households in Albuquerque are prepared for June 12th.

Further, Congress should work with the FCC to create impact guidelines for future major shifts in communications policy. President Obama is committed to building a broad band infrastructure, the digital switch is opening analog spaces for public consumption, a battle is being waged over free speech rights on the internet with regards to content, “net neutrality,” and as new media and communications systems are developed new communications policies will be developed. The FCC and Congress should create guidelines focused on the racial and economic justice issues of major transitions. Questions should be asked, in advance, that will ensure that low income communities, people of color, immigrants, elders, and people with disabilities are not left scrambling to catch up. And resources should be allocated to ensure that government and community partnerships are able to make sure that America and not just corporate America is ready for these changes.

We now have the opportunity to rectify one of George Bush’s many mistakes. The work is happening on the ground, in San Antonio, Oakland, Seattle, Philadelphia, New York, Minneapolis, Kentucky, and elsewhere. Community organizations are stepping up to and doing work that they can ill afford to do. As we make our break with the corporate values of the Bush administration and re-center the value of the people in the national consciousness, we must act proactively, with vision, and use this transition to lay the ground work for future communications policy that works for the people instead of including the people as an afterthought. The air waves are a public trust. And the public should be able to trust that they will have their full use by June 12, 2009.