Call me Miss Cleo or believe that I am channeling the spirit of the now deceased Zelda Rubenstein (aka Tangina) but I have a feeling that some shit is about to break off up in this piece sometime very soon.
We got angry white men flying airplanes into IRS buildings and the media refuses to call it what it is: Terrorism (fucking racism)
We have angry ass white men in Tennessee calling for a return to Jim Crow (fucking teabaggers).
We have an angry white woman in Washington State calling for the lynching of U.S. Senator Pat Murray (more fucking teabaggers)
Finalists are being eliminated from American Idol for shenanigans and skulduggery (fucking FOX)
And I got the shits.
Oh yeah...something real is about to break off up in this piece.
Obama has reached up inside himself, grabbed his nuts, and pulled them out of his abdomen and is letting the Republicans have it.
The Republicans are firing back a full 41 gun salute in the Senate (damn you Massachusetts). And Nancy Pelosi is off getting Botox when she should be in Harry Reid's office slamming his forehead into his desk.
And Carnie Wilson has gained all that weight back that she lost from gastric bypass surgery.
The world is going straight to hell.
The good news is that the economy has rebounded, some. And I know a lot of gay boys in finance that are making money hand over fist or fist inside anus, however you want to phrase it.
But even with that...my Spidey Sense tells me that something for real for real is going to break off this week. Something unexpected or perhaps some shit we should have expected but thanks to a gaff by the CIA, NSC, FBI and PBS we are going to be caught with our pants down, our cheeks spread, and a baby Jesus butt plug in some hard to explain places.
Call me Nostrahomodamus....but grab your implants boys and girls...we are in for some real shit, really soon.
Showing posts with label Harry Reid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Reid. Show all posts
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Near Universal Health Care vrs. A Woman's Right to Choose
Last night the United States cleared a major hurdle and took a huge step towards near universal health care coverage for all U.S. citizens. (Please dissect this sentence: near universal means 96% of Americans covered, it is not a singer payer system, and it will only cover citizens and not undocumented workers...which leaves huge amounts of work to do).
Of course, in grand U.S. fashion, there is also direct and immediate work to do in that in order to pass the House version of the bill last night, an amendment passed that would restrict any federal insurance programs from providing abortion services to any woman except in the case of rape, incest or a direct threat to the health of the mother. Conservative Democrats and Republicans banded together to add this piece of Religious Right assault on a woman's right to choose to the health care bill. The hope for the amendment was two fold: 1) conservative Democrats and GOP members hoped that by restricting a woman's right to choose more liberal Democrats would change their vote and the whole bill would fail or 2) the bill would pass and the amendment would survive through the Senate version and make it into law.
Thank God that liberal Democrats stuck to their guns and passed the bill. I hate the attempt by the Right to restrict a woman's right to choose, but I still support the House bill. Here's why:
The Senate version of the bill does not include the language restricting abortion rights nor will it. The make up of the Senate simply does not require that the language be included in order to gain 60 votes. Frankly, no Senate Republican, except perhaps the two women Senator's from Maine, will back the Senate version of the bill. The fact that it is two women from Maine are moderates and Sen. Snowe has supported reproductive rights for women. I am not sure what the viewpoint of Sen. Susan Collins from Maine, also a Republican, happens to be on the issue.
Now let's remember how a bill becomes a law. In general the House takes the lead in the legislative process. Traditionally the Senate will not debate or vote on a bill (other than treaties, Presidential appointments or other Constitutional procedures that need action by the Senate only) until the House has passed a version of its own. Both chambers often work on bills simultaneously but the House acting as the chamber of the people is given first dibs to present their bill. Once a bill has been passed by the House, the Senate goes into debate mode. In general, the Senate does not consider the content of the House Bill other than in broad generalities. The Senate is comprised of individuals with tremendous power that have all sorts of interests. The Senate then passes its own version of the bill at hand (or fails to pass a bill, which either kills or restarts the process from the beginning). Once the Senate version of the bill has passed the for real for real work happens
Here's the part that most U.S. citizens really do not know or understand: the Conference Committee.
The Constitution requires that both houses of Congress pass IDENTICAL bills. Both houses pick members of a conference committee. The Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, specifically, choose these people. In general there are a few token members of the committee from the minority party in each house and a larger delegation from the majority party. Now pay close attention here, the conference committee almost has carte blanche to re-write the bill into the form that is most likely to pass both chambers. They, themselves, can add or subtract provisions of the bill...it is during this most undemocratic of processes that all kinds of pork barrel projects end up getting inserted into bills. The President, also, tends to have folks in or near the room to make sure that the key provisions in the bill backed by the White House are in the final bill. The committee then sends its final version of the bill back to both chambers for a final vote. Often, but not always, big differences in the two bills are axed.
This is why we have to act NOW. First of all, we need to put pressure on our U.S. Senators to get a good final Senate bill passed and make sure that there is no anti-choice language in the final Senate version of the bill. Once the final version of the Senate bill is passed, it will then be our work to make sure that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that whoever they appoint to the conference committee better know damn well to make sure the anti-choice language does not end up in the final bill.
The Republicans, which are in the minority, know that they will not be able to pass any anti-choice stand alone legislation themselves. They also know that right now the only branch of government firmly in their control is the judiciary. If, God help us, the anti-choice language makes it into the final bill passed by the House and the Senate, it will be the best chance since Roe v. Wade that the Right will have to strike a blow, at the Supreme Court, over abortion rights. Simply put, the restriction worked into the bill would, most likely, under Roe v. Wade be declared unconstitutional. Except, of course, if in reviewing that section of a new health care law the Supreme Court decides that, in fact, the Roe v. Wade decision was wrong and reverses it.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the insidious and diabolical intent behind forcing the language into the House bill, and it is why we all need to do what we need to do in order to make sure it doesn't end up in the final bill and become law.
Even with the language in the bill, I believe that covering nearly all U.S. citizens with health care is worth it. It is my commitment as a man to fight like hell to make sure that the final bill that becomes law does not, once again, create a win on the backs of women's rights.
Of course, in grand U.S. fashion, there is also direct and immediate work to do in that in order to pass the House version of the bill last night, an amendment passed that would restrict any federal insurance programs from providing abortion services to any woman except in the case of rape, incest or a direct threat to the health of the mother. Conservative Democrats and Republicans banded together to add this piece of Religious Right assault on a woman's right to choose to the health care bill. The hope for the amendment was two fold: 1) conservative Democrats and GOP members hoped that by restricting a woman's right to choose more liberal Democrats would change their vote and the whole bill would fail or 2) the bill would pass and the amendment would survive through the Senate version and make it into law.
Thank God that liberal Democrats stuck to their guns and passed the bill. I hate the attempt by the Right to restrict a woman's right to choose, but I still support the House bill. Here's why:
The Senate version of the bill does not include the language restricting abortion rights nor will it. The make up of the Senate simply does not require that the language be included in order to gain 60 votes. Frankly, no Senate Republican, except perhaps the two women Senator's from Maine, will back the Senate version of the bill. The fact that it is two women from Maine are moderates and Sen. Snowe has supported reproductive rights for women. I am not sure what the viewpoint of Sen. Susan Collins from Maine, also a Republican, happens to be on the issue.
Now let's remember how a bill becomes a law. In general the House takes the lead in the legislative process. Traditionally the Senate will not debate or vote on a bill (other than treaties, Presidential appointments or other Constitutional procedures that need action by the Senate only) until the House has passed a version of its own. Both chambers often work on bills simultaneously but the House acting as the chamber of the people is given first dibs to present their bill. Once a bill has been passed by the House, the Senate goes into debate mode. In general, the Senate does not consider the content of the House Bill other than in broad generalities. The Senate is comprised of individuals with tremendous power that have all sorts of interests. The Senate then passes its own version of the bill at hand (or fails to pass a bill, which either kills or restarts the process from the beginning). Once the Senate version of the bill has passed the for real for real work happens
Here's the part that most U.S. citizens really do not know or understand: the Conference Committee.
The Constitution requires that both houses of Congress pass IDENTICAL bills. Both houses pick members of a conference committee. The Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, specifically, choose these people. In general there are a few token members of the committee from the minority party in each house and a larger delegation from the majority party. Now pay close attention here, the conference committee almost has carte blanche to re-write the bill into the form that is most likely to pass both chambers. They, themselves, can add or subtract provisions of the bill...it is during this most undemocratic of processes that all kinds of pork barrel projects end up getting inserted into bills. The President, also, tends to have folks in or near the room to make sure that the key provisions in the bill backed by the White House are in the final bill. The committee then sends its final version of the bill back to both chambers for a final vote. Often, but not always, big differences in the two bills are axed.
This is why we have to act NOW. First of all, we need to put pressure on our U.S. Senators to get a good final Senate bill passed and make sure that there is no anti-choice language in the final Senate version of the bill. Once the final version of the Senate bill is passed, it will then be our work to make sure that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that whoever they appoint to the conference committee better know damn well to make sure the anti-choice language does not end up in the final bill.
The Republicans, which are in the minority, know that they will not be able to pass any anti-choice stand alone legislation themselves. They also know that right now the only branch of government firmly in their control is the judiciary. If, God help us, the anti-choice language makes it into the final bill passed by the House and the Senate, it will be the best chance since Roe v. Wade that the Right will have to strike a blow, at the Supreme Court, over abortion rights. Simply put, the restriction worked into the bill would, most likely, under Roe v. Wade be declared unconstitutional. Except, of course, if in reviewing that section of a new health care law the Supreme Court decides that, in fact, the Roe v. Wade decision was wrong and reverses it.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the insidious and diabolical intent behind forcing the language into the House bill, and it is why we all need to do what we need to do in order to make sure it doesn't end up in the final bill and become law.
Even with the language in the bill, I believe that covering nearly all U.S. citizens with health care is worth it. It is my commitment as a man to fight like hell to make sure that the final bill that becomes law does not, once again, create a win on the backs of women's rights.
Monday, October 26, 2009
I'll Take A Public Option for $900 Billion, Alex
Hot diggity damn. I was tooling around Yahoo this evening, just minding my own business, when what too my wondering eyes should appear but a miniature clause in the Senate Health Care Reform Bill that would create a public option for reindeer Americans and the rest of us too.
WOOOOOOHOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!
Sorry...I just had to let that out.
But before anyone goes and puts on their happy pants and starts making appointments for backne surgery, you better pick up your phone. As it stands, Harry Reid doesn't know if he is going to be able to wrangle up the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster on the bill. And though Miss Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine voted in committee for the health care bill, she doesn't sound so tickled now that there is a public option included in the bill that will go before the entire Senate.
Confused as to how she could vote a bill that included a public option and not know it? Well. She didn't.
Harry Reid is a sly mo'fo. Basically the Senate had a whole mess of a number of bills that emerged from the Senate Health Care Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Since no one bill emerged whole from either committee that was identical, Senator Reid, as the Almighty God of the Senate, basically gets to put together what he likes from either bill (and what he thinks has the best chance of passing) and can then lay out that bill for a full Senate vote.
Now comes the tricky part.
The Senate and the House differ in a number of aspects but the two biggest differences between the Senate and the House are that in the House there can be no amendments offered to a bill that are not germane to the primary motion and there is no filibuster in the House. In the Senate there are no predetermined limits to debate unless those limits are established at the outset of debate on a bill AND once a Senator has been yielded the floor the Senator has the right to continue speaking and/or control the floor until he or she remands the remainder of his/her time back to the President of the Senate. This is where the filibuster comes in...if you can't limit debate from the outset it becomes a game of wills and stamina. Also, in the Senate almost all amendments are germane to the main motion whether or not the amendments have anything to do at all with the motion at hand. To translate from Geek Speak that means that you could be debating a bill in the Senate about Hamburger Helper and Senator X can stand up and offer an amendment to your bill that would cut off food stamps to the elderly. In the House, the rules are much more strict and if you are debating a bill on Hamburger Helper you could perhaps offer an amendment that would change it from Hamburger Helper to Tuna Helper but if you tried to shut off granny's foodstamps, your motion will be ruled out of order as being not germane to the main motion.
What this usually means is that in the Senate if the opposition wants a main motion to fail they will attach a rider to that motion that is targeted at a pet project of the majority. So now you have to vote not only on a public option but also you have to decide if the amendment that passed that will strip a federal subsidy for a rail line through your home state that your constituents want is more important to your political future than making sure that millions of uninsured, only a fraction of which are voters in your home state, have a viable public insurance option. See the trap there?
There is a way to keep those sorts of amendments from being offered (they are called riders) on the Senate floor but that takes almost as much procedural wrangling as getting a cloture vote (cloture is what the vote is called that sets a predetermined time for debate and makes a filibuster impossible, a cloture requires 60 votes, once cloture is passed then a bill only needs 51 votes to pass).
So now that we have a public option in the bill, it is time for all of us to do our work. We need to be on our Senators like a Leather Daddy on a Pig Bottom. You need to call, write, fax, and stalk your Senators and make sure they know that you will not tolerate any health care reform bill that does not include a public option. With the right amount of public pressure, Senators will tow the line. But if even one Democrat or Independent gets a bug up his or her ass and decides to not follow the Majority Leader's lead...we are up shit creek without a public option.
WOOOOOOHOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!
Sorry...I just had to let that out.
But before anyone goes and puts on their happy pants and starts making appointments for backne surgery, you better pick up your phone. As it stands, Harry Reid doesn't know if he is going to be able to wrangle up the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster on the bill. And though Miss Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine voted in committee for the health care bill, she doesn't sound so tickled now that there is a public option included in the bill that will go before the entire Senate.
Confused as to how she could vote a bill that included a public option and not know it? Well. She didn't.
Harry Reid is a sly mo'fo. Basically the Senate had a whole mess of a number of bills that emerged from the Senate Health Care Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Since no one bill emerged whole from either committee that was identical, Senator Reid, as the Almighty God of the Senate, basically gets to put together what he likes from either bill (and what he thinks has the best chance of passing) and can then lay out that bill for a full Senate vote.
Now comes the tricky part.
The Senate and the House differ in a number of aspects but the two biggest differences between the Senate and the House are that in the House there can be no amendments offered to a bill that are not germane to the primary motion and there is no filibuster in the House. In the Senate there are no predetermined limits to debate unless those limits are established at the outset of debate on a bill AND once a Senator has been yielded the floor the Senator has the right to continue speaking and/or control the floor until he or she remands the remainder of his/her time back to the President of the Senate. This is where the filibuster comes in...if you can't limit debate from the outset it becomes a game of wills and stamina. Also, in the Senate almost all amendments are germane to the main motion whether or not the amendments have anything to do at all with the motion at hand. To translate from Geek Speak that means that you could be debating a bill in the Senate about Hamburger Helper and Senator X can stand up and offer an amendment to your bill that would cut off food stamps to the elderly. In the House, the rules are much more strict and if you are debating a bill on Hamburger Helper you could perhaps offer an amendment that would change it from Hamburger Helper to Tuna Helper but if you tried to shut off granny's foodstamps, your motion will be ruled out of order as being not germane to the main motion.
What this usually means is that in the Senate if the opposition wants a main motion to fail they will attach a rider to that motion that is targeted at a pet project of the majority. So now you have to vote not only on a public option but also you have to decide if the amendment that passed that will strip a federal subsidy for a rail line through your home state that your constituents want is more important to your political future than making sure that millions of uninsured, only a fraction of which are voters in your home state, have a viable public insurance option. See the trap there?
There is a way to keep those sorts of amendments from being offered (they are called riders) on the Senate floor but that takes almost as much procedural wrangling as getting a cloture vote (cloture is what the vote is called that sets a predetermined time for debate and makes a filibuster impossible, a cloture requires 60 votes, once cloture is passed then a bill only needs 51 votes to pass).
So now that we have a public option in the bill, it is time for all of us to do our work. We need to be on our Senators like a Leather Daddy on a Pig Bottom. You need to call, write, fax, and stalk your Senators and make sure they know that you will not tolerate any health care reform bill that does not include a public option. With the right amount of public pressure, Senators will tow the line. But if even one Democrat or Independent gets a bug up his or her ass and decides to not follow the Majority Leader's lead...we are up shit creek without a public option.
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