Brilliant at Breakfast: Where no one cashes in on unpaid writers

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde

"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25

"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

How about we have them refuse to cover Viagra instead?

Posted by Jill | 4:32 AM

Very light blogging this week, folks. I am on a killer project which runs until mid-September, but right now I'm in full-bore crunch mode, which is why I was up doing work at 3:45 AM -- an ungodly hour that by all rights ought to have a Jamaican beach as its reward. But today this ungodly hour has a week with 20 hours of meetings after which I still have about 60 hours of actual work to do.

But this little find caught my eye and I simply had to pass on the news from ThinkProgress that Your Democratic Party is willing to sacrifice women's right to legal health care options on the altar of bipartisanship with Republican nutjobs:

As Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) prepares to unveil the Senate Finance Committee’s bipartisan health care reform legislation later this week, several blogs are reporting that Republicans on the Committee are pushing legislation that would require insurers operating within the new Exchange to to deny coverage for abortion services. From Raising Women’s Voices:

The Senate Finance Committee has been writing a health care reform bill and struggling to create legislation that will have bipartisan support. Chairman Max Baucus (pictured left) considered several compromises to win Republican support, so they can claim it is bipartisan legislation. One of these potential compromises comes in the form of an abortion exclusion, which would prevent abortion services from being covered by some or all insurance plans in the Health Insurance Exchange. We fear that members of the Senate Finance Committee are considering such a compromise.

Should it pass, the Senate Finance version would be the only bill that specifically prohibits a medical service. As the Wonk Room points out, “if denying abortion services to women is the price of bipartisanship, then perhaps winning those one or two Republican votes isn’t worth the price of jeopardizing women’s health and well-being.”

Max Baucus, who is owned lock, stock and barrel by health insurance companies, is holding a gun to women's heads and saying "You choose. You can have your right to have your health care covered, or you can have the right to abortion. You can't have both.

In case you had any doubts that Mr. Brilliant has been right all along; that the Democrats are simply there to make it LOOK like you have a choice, when in reality, BOTH parties serve only the moneyed and religious crazies, here's your proof.

You know, I'm working 60-80 hour weeks pretty routinely these days. At one point I was delusional enough to think that I, my letters to my elected officials, and by extension, this blog, could help make a difference. But here we are, in 2009, with our party having what should be a filibuster-proof majority, and on the social issues that have been important to us for decades, our party is falling on the side of, and sometimes to the right of, the Republicans. So why the hell do I even bother?

(h/t)

Labels: Democratic sellouts, despair, Women's bodies, womens rights

6 comments

6 Comments:

Cujo359 said...

I've been saying for a long time that I'd prefer 41 progressive Senators to 60 Democratic Senators. This is why. Slapping a "Democrat" label on a politician doesn't make him someone who gives a shit about working people.

7/7/09, 4:51 AM

tata said...

I would like to say something encouraging.

Hang on...it'll come to me...

7/7/09, 6:47 AM

Ryan said...

Republican... Democrat... in this day and age you can barely tell the two apart except on very few issues.

7/7/09, 8:25 AM

Anonymous said...

Aside from the rage and despair your posts often feed in me, I just wanted to let you know that I seriously appreciate and admire your writing. Thank you, for your time and effort.

7/7/09, 12:05 PM

Anonymous said...

Don't sweat it. Don't waste time even talking about it. I swear that I am the only person in the world that watches the supreme court like a hawk.

Sotomayor is the sixth catholic on the supreme court.
Newt Gingrich is a slimy little weasel but he just turned catholic.

Now when Roe vs Wade is negated by the Pope's orders there will be singing and dancing and cheering by all of the clueless.

But when Obama converts and the clueless finally catch on,
it isn't going to be just the snake handlers and holy rollers who go ballistic.

You going to see Mormons and Baptists and Seventh Day Adventist make a recap of the
reformation look like a joke.
If I were catholic, I would move to Paraguay and change my name to Bush or Cheney.

I've been lightly dropping this on some of the duller right wing blogs. Haven't hit powder yet but I will.

I really want to see the current supreme court "justices" decorating lamp posts.

7/7/09, 1:00 PM

Bob said...

I've been thinking how wonderful America might be now had Robert McNamara never been Secretary of Defense. We'd probably in marking 40 years of a national health system.

7/7/09, 3:16 PM