OFA urging Obama's supporters to call Congress
and ask for real health insurance reform with a public option

Organizing for America (OFA) is asking its supporters to call their members of Congress and ask them to support the health insurance reform bill. Via Greg Sargent:

The move is interesting because Organizing for America ? and Obama himself ? have been criticized for not throwing enough weight behind the provision.

The new email, to go out from OFA chief Mitch Stewart, calls on Obama?s supporters to flood their members of Congress with calls in support of the House health care bill:

The House?s first full vote on health reform legislation may come as early as this week. It?ll be the first time in more than 60 years that the full body votes on comprehensive reform, and we expect it to be very close?

Can you call your representative right now and tell them to vote in favor of real health insurance reform??

The House bill incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans to guarantee security and stability for those with insurance, provide affordable options for those without ? including the choice of a public insurance option ? and reduce costs for families and small businesses, all while decreasing the deficit.

Many representatives are standing with the President and fighting hard for reform. They need to know that they have our thanks and our support.

To be sure, the final tell will be whether Obama puts his prestige on the line to persuade centrist Dems to get behind the public option if the Dem Senate leadership can?t put together 60 votes for a bill with a public option in it, and subsequently, when the House and Senate merge their bills in conference.

The OFA email doesn't get too specific. But, at least they're engaging. They're going to have to get much, much more engaged if we're going to succeed. Because, the GOP and its allies in the insurance industry are desperately trying to kill Obama's health insurance reform agenda. Which makes me wonder why Obama's political arm felt compelled to tell us that "the House incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans." Republicans? Really? The only idea that's come from Republicans is to block and undermine real reform -- and they will continue to do so. Why does OFA give them credit? I find it hard to believe that the RNC or any GOP operation would ever credit Democrats for anything.

Someone at OFA should include Obama, Rahm and Messina on this email. Be great if they actually started calling members of Congress "and tell them to vote in favor of real health insurance reform..."

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rters-to-call.html

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The Hatch Truth: GOP Blocking Health Care to
Prevent Permanent Democratic Majority

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A gaffe, Michael Kinsley famously mused, is what results when a politician inadvertently tells the truth. And so it was Monday when Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch came clean about his party's scorched-earth opposition to health care reform being championed by President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Hatch acknowledged, as I've long argued, that the GOP is worried not that Obama's health care initiatives might fail, but that they might succeed.

As he did in his pivotal effort to block Bill Clinton's health care efforts starting in 1993, conservative strategist Bill Kristol warned his Republican allies then as now that that a victory for President Obama would earn his party the thanks of a grateful public and guarantee Democratic majorities for the foreseeable future. In an interview with CNS Monday, Senator Hatch revealed that was his darkest fear as well:

HATCH: That's their goal. Move people into government that way. Do it in increments. They've actually said it. They've said it out loud.

Q: This is a step-by-step approach --

HATCH: A step-by-step approach to socialized medicine. And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, "All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party."

Q: They'll have reduced the American people to dependency on the federal government.

HATCH: Yeah, you got that right. That's their goal. That's what keeps Democrats in power.

Of course, President Obama and the Democratic Party have no interest in fostering dependency among Americans, but instead seek to remedy the crippling health care crisis which threatens their financial security and the nation's future. As with their staunch opposition to Social Security and Medicare, programs which dramatically reduced poverty among the elderly, Republicans now want to stop at all costs the third pillar of the Democratic social contract.

For that, grateful American voters would doubtless reward Democrats at the polls. On that point, Orrin Hatch is absolutely right. And, for once, telling the truth.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/hatch-gop-fears-permanent-democratic-majority

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"The Super Bowl of Freedom!"

If you're going to be up on Capitol Hill on Thursday, watch out! That's when Rep. Michele Bachmann is holding her Capitol Hill Tea Party. They'll start on the Capitol steps and then fan out into the halls of the building until they see the "whites of[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/WJd6wXAxyRw/the_super_bowl_
of_freedom.php

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Despite Rhetoric About Preexisting Conditions,
Boehner’s Health Care Plan Doesn’t Bar Denials

While leading GOP opposition to health care reform over the past few months, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) has simultaneously insisted that Republicans believe in helping Americans with preexisting conditions get health care. Currently, “in 44 states, it’s legal for health insurers to deny coverage to people who have previously been sick, or charge them more for treatment.”

“And so there are a number of things that Republicans believe are essential,” Boehner told NPR in September. “We believe that making sure that people who have preexisting conditions have access to affordable health insurance.” On Fox News last week, Boehner said that Republicans wanted to focus on helping “those with preexisting conditions“:

BOEHNER: Most of the 36 million that they say they’re going to cover already have access to some type of government program, or even their employer program, or have chosen just not to have health insurance. When you really boil this down, there are about seven or eight million people in America, those with preexisting conditions, those who are what I would describe as the working poor, and some early retirees who have a difficult time getting health insurance. We can help those people get health insurance and still bring down the cost of health insurance for the 85 percent of Americans who have it and think they pay too much for it.

Watch it:

video details and more

But when Boehner previewed the House Republicans’ alternative health care plan for reporters yesterday, he admitted that the GOP’s proposal “will not prevent insurance providers from barring clients based on preexisting conditions.” “We do encourage more states to have high-risk pools,? said Boehner, which he called “a place where people with preexisting conditions will have an opportunity to get affordable health insurance.”

Roll Call points out, however, that “most states have such pools, but they often are much more expensive than regular insurance and have had only limited success in reducing the ranks of the uninsured.” President Obama and the Senate Finance Committee have also embraced increased funding for high risk pools, but only as a stop gap until 2013, when insurers would be prohibited from denying people coverage based on preexisting conditions under their legislation.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/03/boehner-preexisting-conditions/

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Travel day for me.

This is an Open Thread.

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Flashback

I've been at this so long I remember going head to head with John Fund about his bogus charges of vote fraud against Indians during the South Dakota senate race (Thune v. Johnson) in 2002. Good times. [...]

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NY-23: Teabagging Republicans pick a strange
ground zero

The strangest thing about today's election is that Republicans have come to see NY-23 as ground zero in their bid for renewed relevance. Leave aside the fact that the GOP candidate has withdrawn from the race and endorsed the Democrat, these teabagging Republicans have convinced themselves that electing a conservative like Glenn Beck Doug Hoffman in NY-23 will prove that they have come back from the dead.

To make the case that a Hoffman victory would be remarkable, teabaggers point to the Obama-McCain vote in the district, which tilted narrowly to Obama. (President Obama carried NY-23 by 5 points, compared to a 27-point margin in the state as a whole.) But the thing that teabaggers don't like to mention is that for at least the past three decades, Democrats have been unable to break the 38% mark in any election. Check out the Democratic congressional performance in the district since 1982:

2008 - 35%
2006 - 37%
2004 - 29%
2002 -  0%
2000 - 23%
1998 - 21%
1996 - 25%
1994 - 18%
1992 - 21%
1990 - 38%
1988 - 25%
1986 -  0%
1984 - 29%
1982 - 28%

(NY-23 was known as NY-26 from 1982-1990 and NY-24 from 1992-2000. Data: Office of the Clerk.)

That span includes two open seat races -- 1982 and 1992 -- but Democrats couldn't crack the 30% barrier in either of those years.

Now, in 2009, the Democratic Party -- for the first time in decades, if not ever -- actually has a shot winning the seat.

Even if Hoffman manages to win this election, how can the GOP possibly claim tomorrow's results as some sort of big win? Sure, teabaggers will be excited that they rolled Scozzafava with a right-wing loon, but they'll also have turned NY-23 into much more competitive seat than if Scozzafava had won. Suddenly, the NRCC will be forced to defend a seat they had expected to take for granted.

If that sort of scenario is what qualifies for a victory these days in GOP circles, then this won't be a story of a party that has finally found its footing: it'll be the story of a party that doesn't have any idea how far it's fallen.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/d_GmaHhDLoM/-NY-23:-Teabagging-Rep
ublicans-pick-a-strange-ground-zero

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Is Jeff Goldberg Of The Atlantic Loyal To The
United States

I will answer that question right off. As far as I know (and that is all that I can legitmiately comment on) he is.

The only reason I ask the question is because Goldberg, the Atlantic blogger, has joined with the usual neocons suspects to assert with ugly vehemence that the Iranian-American scholar, Trita Parsi, is not a loyal American but an operative of the loathsome Iranian regime.

Read this (there are now a dozen similar pieces on the web) describing precisely who Trita is, what he stands for and what the neocons (now hell bent on an attack on Iran by the end of the year) are saying about him. Why Trita? Because he is the most effective advocate for diplomacy with Iran rather than listening to the Israeli hawks and their boys here and.

Using Goldberg's standard, I could ask about his loyalties. How can an American who served in the Israeli army be a legitimate commentator on Arab-Israeli affairs? You know how many Americans join the Israeli army. Pretty much none. Even the most rightwing AIPAC kid in your high school or college never dreamed of fighting in the IDF because he or she is an American and we have our own army, navy and air force. A pretty good one too. (I never served in any army. Members of my immediately family served in various American war beginning with WW1 and ending with service in Vietnam. I would not serve in Vietnam because I opposed the war and because I did not want to be killed. One thing that never crossed my mind was choosing some other army to serve in.)

My guess is that it is legitimate to ask any American who chooses to enlist in the Israeli, French, or Indonesian military: why, if you felt the call to national service in the military, did you not choose our military? Yes, some Americans, impatient, and rightly so, to fight the Nazis joined the Canadian army to get into the war faster. But that was because they knew that FDR was hamstrung by Congress in his effort to help the allies. The fought alongside the Canadians and Brits as Americans, in a war they knew American would soon join.

That is not the case with an American joining the IDF. Those few Americans who join the Israeli army are utterly devoted to Israel and its interests. That is fine. But one has to question if they should recuse themselves (1) from questioning the loyalty of Americans of immigrant background who are "guilty" only of their foreignness by birth and (2) from reporting on Middle East affairs period. If Israel is the passion of your life, write about Japan or Africa. Don't even pretend (and Goldberg barely pretends) that you come to Middle East issues with any sort of obectivity whatsoever.

Note: Trita Parsi was in exile in Sweden. He did not join the Iranian Army.

United States - Middle East - Warfare and Conflict - Israel-Palestine - Congress

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Poll Closing Times

The biggest races of the day are NY-23, VA-Gov, NJ-Gov and the Maine Same-Sex Marriage vote. Here are the closing times for the races:

Virginia: 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

New Jersey: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Maine: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

New York: 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Let us know in the comments when you think each race will be called.

Stay tuned to DCW. We'll keep track of the results as they come in.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.Demconwatchblog.com/diary/2707/poll-closing-times

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Or Maybe Not

Contrary to reports out this morning, Reid communications director Jim Manley tells TPMDC: "We do not yet have an understanding with Senator Lieberman."Just as a bit of background, it's worth knowing that these kinds of things are seldom black and white[...]

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