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Stupak Amendment, Redux: Roll Call Vote Live Blog

post from Firedoglake on 07 November 2009 09:56:50 PM. © Firedoglake

The Stupak Amendment went down about 8:12 p.m. ET, more Nays than Yays; Rep. Stupak asked for a roll call vote. Watch the vote with us after the Republicans finish their unilateral debate about their own substitute health care bill.[...]

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Stupak Amendment, Redux: Recorded Vote Live Blog

post from Firedoglake on 07 November 2009 09:56:50 PM. © Firedoglake

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Health Care Reform passes House - Video

post from The Politics of Jamie Sanderson on 07 November 2009 09:55:00 PM. © The Politics of Jamie Sanderson

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-house-video.html

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One GOP Vote

post from Talking Points Memo on 07 November 2009 09:36:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Roll Call reports that the House Dems may be able to pick up one Republican vote for the health care bill: Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-La.) A former Jesuit seminarian, the Dems move to allow a vote on the pro-life "Stupak amendment" appears to have been[...]

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What is that orange guy talking about

post from Daily Kos on 07 November 2009 09:33:27 PM. © Daily Kos

The unusually-tinted Minority Leader of the House, John Boehner (R-OH) has been to the floor repeatedly today to try to extract promises from the Democrats managing the health insurance reform bill that if the Stupak amendment is adopted, they'll work to ensure that the amendment's language survives as a part of the final conference report. To their credit, no one has given that pledge.

And their reasoning has been sound. The fact is that nobody can really guarantee what will come out of a conference with the Senate. And that's not to mention the futility of trying to strike deals with an opportunist like Boehner.

But does Boehner have a point in insisting that the floor managers, who are the chairs of the three committees with jurisdiction over the bill, and therefore will likely be the main conferees in the part of the House, can speak with some authority on what's likely to happen in conference, and could even commit if they wanted to to voting in support of the House's official position on the amendment? Sure.

Does that entitle him to such a commitment? Absolutely not.

What's more, Boehner's sputtering apoplepsy at their refusal to give it is either an act, or evidence of his total disconnection from the everyday realities of the legislative process. Actually, I'm betting on a little bit of both.

Boehner's complaint is similar to the one expressed in last night's Rules Committee meeting by the odious Virginia Foxx (R-NC), that Republican amendments adopted in various committee markups of H.R. 3200, the precursor to the bill on the floor today, disappeared from the bill when the three versions were merged into today's product. It's 100% true: things change as bills move from one stage of the process to the next. Happens all the time. And it's been the bane of legislators who thought they'd had a victory under their belt since, well, forever.

In fact, it's often what happens to those annoying Republican motions to recommit that sometimes pass when the Blue Dogs are freed to "vote their districts" (i.e., pretend they're kind of Republican). Rather than allow the actual Republicans to set them up for attacks by forcing difficult votes on those motions, Dems occasionally will just get out of the way, voting to agree to a particularly stupid motion to recommit, often with the knowledge that the language will ultimately be removed in conference, anyway.

So strong is the tradition of giving independence and flexibility to conferees, in fact, that even when the House goes out if its way to specially adopt motions instructing the conferees to take certain negotiating positions, those instructions are non-binding, and well known to be so. And public option activists who participated in the effort to get progressive House Members to commit to demanding the inclusion of the public option all the way through conference will doubtless recognize that they often encountered much of the same difficulty that Boehner's having, for much the same reason.

Annoying? Yes. Confusing? Sure. Frustrating? You bet. Susceptible to Rumsfeldian sets of repetitive rhetorical questions? Absolutely.

But also entirely routine, and common enough that for Boehner to express any real surprise is fairly ludicrous, not unlike his skin tone.

Just thought you might like to know.

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Health care reform, lying and GOP hypocrites

post from Daily Kos on 07 November 2009 09:10:33 PM. © Daily Kos

Wow, what a frothing frenzy of flat-out fabrications and 200-proof bullshit we've had. But we're nearly there. Votes are coming in around 9:30 EST, on both Stupak and the Republican substitute--though it's not clear at the moment which is coming first.

But in the meantime, here's a little refresher from the Republicans long day of prevarication. Here's just one small example.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R, Blatant Liar-VA):

The Republican alternative makes it illegal for an insurance company to deny coverage to someone with prior coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition.

Politifact does its thing:

[Debbie] Wasserman Schultz says GOP alternative health care plan allows insurers to continue denying coverage for pre-existing conditions....

Wasserman Schultz was correct when she said the GOP plan does not prohibit health insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. We found nothing in the 219-page Republican plan that would do that.

While that obviously puts the matter to rest, it's still worth strolling down memory lane for seeing just what could get Republicans in Congress to stand on their feet for their presidential nemesis ... when cameras were rolling:

video details and more

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Ex-Blue Cross Hack: Health Insurance 'Worst
Product in History'

post from Crooks and Liars on 07 November 2009 09:00:25 PM. © Crooks and Liars

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Via Raw Story. Actor/comedian Andy Cobb once did ads for Blue Cross in Florida. And now CIGNA's Wendell Potter has someone to talk to:

Teaming with the liberal Brave New Films, a former Blue Cross pitchman is now pitching against Blue Cross.
Andy Cobb, who once tried to sell Floridians on a Blue Cross health insurance plan, says he's fed up with the industry.
"I was a spokesman for BlueCross and Blueshield of Florida," Cobb says. "Call me a spokesjerk. People who make money for buying things you don't need. And we're telling you lies."
"They, by which I mean I, make money by standing in the way of reform," Cobb says in the ad, which appears as a spoof of something like a freecreditreport.com ad. "It's time for change."
"That's why I'm calling on leaders from the spokesjerk industry," Cobb continues. "The freecreditreport.com guy. The Shamwow dude. And Senator Bill Nelson, recipient of big money from insurance companies -- to lead us. To walk away from their cash cows and tell American people the truth.
"And us spokesjerks, we'll be fine," Cobb adds. "There's plenty of room in entertainment for people who tried to sell you the worst product in American history. Private health insurance."

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Shadegg (R) To Vote Present On Stupak Amendment

Ah, Republicans. So used to obstruction that they'll obstruct their own priorities.[...]

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Remember the Women

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 07 November 2009 08:30:00 PM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

As Congressional Democrats prepare to reinstate the reign of back-alley wire-hanger abortions, Ann Jones in The Nation reminds us how difficult it is to overcome lethal misogyny, whether here or in Afghanistan.

At this critical moment, as Obama tries to weigh options against our national security interests, his advisers can't be bothered with--as one US military officer put it to me--"the trivial fate of women." As for some hypothetical moral duty to protect the women of Afghanistan--that's off the table. Yet it is precisely that dismissive attitude, shared by Afghan and many American men alike, that may have put America's whole Afghan enterprise wrong in the first place. Early on, Kofi Annan, then United Nations secretary general, noted that the condition of Afghan women was "an affront to all standards of dignity, equality and humanity."
Annan took the position, set forth in 2000 in the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325, that real conflict resolution, reconstruction and lasting peace cannot be achieved without the full participation of women every step of the way. Karzai gave lip service to the idea, saying in 2002, "We are determined to work to improve the lot of women after all their suffering under the narrow-minded and oppressive rule of the Taliban." But he has done no such thing. And the die had already been cast: of the twenty-three Afghan notables invited to take part in the Bonn Conference in December 2001, only two were women. Among ministers appointed to the new Karzai government, there were only two; one, the minister for women's affairs, was warned not to do "too much."
SNIP
The UNAMA report attributes women's worsening position in Afghan society to the violence the war engenders on two domestic fronts: the public stage and the home. The report is dedicated to the memory of Sitara Achakzai, a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council and outspoken advocate of women's rights, who was shot to death on April 12, soon after being interviewed by the UNAMA researchers. She "knew her life was in danger," they report. "But like many other Afghan women such as Malalai Kakar, the highest-ranking female police officer in Kandahar killed in September 2008, Sitara Achakzai had consciously decided to keep fighting to end the abuse of Afghan women." Malalai Kakar, 40, mother of six, had headed a team of ten policewomen handling cases of domestic violence.
In 2005 Kim Sengupta, a reporter with the London Independent, interviewed five Afghan women activists; by October 2008 three of them had been murdered. A fourth, Zarghuna Kakar (no relation to Malalai), a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council, had left the country after she and her family were attacked and her husband was killed. She said she had pleaded with Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar Provincial Council, for protection; but he told her she "should have thought about what may happen" before she stood for election. Kakar told the reporter, "It was his brother [President Karzai], the Americans, and the British who told us that we women should get involved in political life. Of course, now I wish I hadn't."
SNIP
Threats against women in public life are intended to make them go home--to "unliberate" themselves through voluntary house arrest. But if public life is dangerous, so is life at home. Most Afghan women--87 percent, according to Unifem--are beaten on a regular basis. The UNAMA researchers looked into the unmentionable subject of rape and found it to be "an everyday occurrence in all parts of the country" and "a human rights problem of profound proportions." Outside marriage, the rapists are often members or friends of the family. Young girls forced to marry old men are raped by the old man's brothers and sons. Women and children--young boys are also targets--are raped by people who have charge of them: police, prison guards, soldiers, orphanage or hospital staff members. The female victims of rape are mostly between the ages of 7 and 30; many are between 10 and 20, but some are as young as 3; and most women are dead by 42.
SNIP
So there's no point talking about how women and girls might be affected by the strategic military options remaining on Obama's plate. None of them bode well for women. To send more troops is to send more violence. To withdraw is to invite the Taliban. To stay the same is not possible, now that Karzai has stolen the election in plain sight and made a mockery of American pretensions to an interest in anything but our own skin and our own pocketbook. But while men plan the onslaught of more men, it's worth remembering what "normal life" once looked like in Afghanistan, well before the soldiers came. In the 1960s and '70s, before the Soviet invasion--when half the country's doctors, more than half the civil servants and three-quarters of the teachers were women--a peaceful Afghanistan advanced slowly into the modern world through the efforts of all its people. What changed all that was not only the violence of war but the accession to power of the most backward men in the country: first the Taliban, now the mullahs and mujahedeen of the fraudulent, corrupt, Western-designed government that stands in opposition to "normal life" as it is lived in the developed world and was once lived in their own country. What happens to women is not merely a "women's issue"; it is the central issue of stability, development and durable peace. No nation can advance without women, and no enterprise that takes women off the table can come to much good.

It's a long, hard slog changing a culture that views half the population as subhuman and dispensable, but the least we can expect is that long-standing, hard-won victories won't be cast aside because of political cowardice.

Overthrowing the Taliban didn't improve the lot of Afghan women and girls, and Congressional Blue Dogs would rather destroy the last chance for decent health care in this country than support a 35-year-old Supreme Court decision that saves women's lives.

I don't see a whole fucking lot of difference.

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Into the mouths of babes ...

Another stellar Republican moment: John Shadegg (R-Upchuck, AZ) grabs a baby as a prop and inserts free-market pablum ventriloquism into the already infantile Republican health care arguments ("Maddy believes in freedom.... Maddy believes in patient choice health care.").

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Maddy, as soon as she reaches the age of majority, is probably going to sue the living shit out of you, Mr. Shadegg. There's so much wrong with this videotaped moment, I think we need a poll.

Update: How fitting that this coincides with the beginning of the debate on the Republican "substitute." The one that everyone's been laughing at for the past week.

Procedural update: We'll have about an hour of debate on the R substitute, then the votes on the two amendments--Stupak and the R substitute. If you're working the phone on Stupak, keep at it.

After the amendment votes, there will be a motion to recommit, and the rumor is that the Rs are going to use that to demagogue about not letting brown people have health care.

After that, the final vote. I've seen numerous reports that leadership is confident they have the votes for final passage.