Snubbing Dr. Dean--one more bone-headed mistake by BHO

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

Howard, Howard, Howard. You're doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Don't go over to the dark side with Arlen Specter and Crazy Joe Lieberman.

Undoubtedly, Dean coming out against the health care plan, while intellectually and politically grounded, had something to do with his cavalier treatment at the hand of Obama and his henchmen. My biggest question for President Obama is: why did you give Joe Lieberman the red carpet treatment, and ignore a Yellow Dog loyalist like Dr. Dean? What were you thinking?

NBC's Mark Murray thinks it does, too:

"Here's something else to think about: In retrospect, was Barack Obama's conspicuous snub of Howard Dean a big mistake, given the former DNC chairman's opposition to the Senate health-care bill moving through Congress?

"Remember that when Tim Kaine was tapped to be the new DNC chairman, Dean wasn't at the Obama-Kaine press conference announcing the move. Instead, he was in American Samoa, but his allies maintained he would have canceled that trip had he been given a heads up about the press conference.

"What's more, Dean never got a plum position in the Obama administration. Possibly adding insult to injury, few DNC aides who worked for Dean initially got top jobs in the Obama administration."

Whatever the case, Howard Dean still has a lot of pull in the party ('though some think this is debatable), and this was a boneheaded mistake by an administration scrambling for every single vote it can find. To alienate one of the most passionate national advocates for health care reform? Not so smart.
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ObamaCare -- The outsource shocker: Tijuana dentures, Bulgarian kidneys, Albanian hips, and Guatemalan rest homes

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That Medical Editor

In recent conversations, well-placed senior administration officials told All This Is That that the health care plan championed by President Obama and the Democratic leadership includes little-known provisions for outsourcing surgeries and medical procedures. One official told me "Let's say you need false teeth, uh...dentures.  We can get this work done for you in Tijuana for less than half what it would cost anywhere in the states.  And that's after adding in plane fares, meals and a couple of nights in a hotel."

Several independent sources revealed that the U.S. government is contracting for outsourced medical work in at least seven foreign countries.  In some cases, the U.S. Government has purchased or leased land, and is breaking ground on a series of medical facilities in "outsource partner countries."

Prospective plans include, but are not limited to, outsourcing kidney and liver procedures to Bulgaria, knee- and hip-replacements to Albania, and dental work to Mexico.  The most potentially explosive outsourcing initiative involves exporting virtually all geriatric, rehabilitation, and rest home care to Guatemala, where per-patient costs are a third of those in the United States.

As one government health services manager on Capitol Hill told me, "Change.  And you guys thought we were bulls***ing, didn't you?"
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Joe Lieberman has finally made Richard Nixon seem warm and cuddly

Reporting and analysis By Pablo Fanque, All This Is That National Affairs Editor

Illustrations and digital art By Jack Brummet, All This that creative director

Sen. Joe Lieberman ("Independent," Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill. The most shocking thing about the fallout from the left is that they were surprised when one of the most despicable and treacherous turncoats in the history of the Democratic Party stuck it to them once again. I wrote about Lieberman's duplicity here, in December, 2005: With Friends Like Joe Lieberman, The Democrats Need No Enemies.

The sawed-off turncoat appears to have second
thoughts as he marches onto the Senate floor
to vote against his former comrades in arms

Lieberman, caucuses with Democrats (but officially broke away), and positions himself as a fiscal hawk on health care on any bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out, as Reid's Senate bill will. Whatever the Dems propose will come out watered down, a husk of the dream. And yet the battle is not over. Who knows, we may see defections on both sides of the aisle. It's that kind of year.

"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now." Interestingly, he fails to mention reduced profits for his good friends in the insurance business, or that he enjoys his gold-plated government health insurance just fine.



When asked about Lieberman’s threat to filibuster a final vote on the Reid plan, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said: "I haven't seen the report from Sen. Lieberman or why he's saying what he's saying. I think Democrats and Republicans alike will be held accountable by their constituents who want to see health care reform enacted this year.”

Lieberman said that he’d vote against a public option plan “even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line." His comments confirmed that Reid is probably still short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill out of the Senate

Lieberman said he “very much” wants to vote for health care reform but that he’s worried about stifling “the economic recovery we’re in” or adding to the federal debt. Really? It doesn't have anything to do with the dozens of insurance companies headquartered in Connecticut, or the "donations" from those companies that flow so often and richly into his campaign coffers

You know from previous articles on All This Is That that we consider him a Republicrat at best, and at worst, a rat, a Judas Goat, and a turncoat spoiler, leading Democrats astray in the guise of moderation. Is anyone even listening to him except the Republicans? No. And the GOP don't trust him anymore than they do their own turncoat, Senator Arlen Specter. Any sane Democrat wrote him off years ago; he reinforced our thinking with his bumbling and pathetic run for the Presidency in 2004. He was a disastrous pick as Gore's Vice President in 2000, and his 2007/2008 defense of, and cozying up to The Bush White House was a clear signal that he would switch parties the moment it was most politically expedient for him to do so.

The Democrats continue to caucus with him for no other reason than he votes with us once in a while. With friends like this sawed-off weasel, who needs enemies? It's difficult for even the most conservative of Democrats to forget his spirited defense of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war and his continual toadying up to President Bush and his hatchet-man, Dick Cheney.


And still, Joe Lieberman lives.

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All This Is That awards President Barack Obama The Halo

click POTUS to enlarge

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Correspondent

For only the 11th time in five years, All This Is That is awarding The Halo, this time to The President. This is his second halo. I am not going to analyze the speech here. Go watch it on YouTube.

I do think, however, that as great at The President's speech was, in tenor and substance, his response to Representative Joe "douchebag" Wilson was anemic. Instead of merely saying"that's not true!" BHO should instead have called the cracker out right there in the middle of the speech. Or asked the Secret Service to escort the hillbilly out of the room. Or better yet, marched down to Wilson and clocked him, or even asked the closest Secret Serviceman to borrow his 9 .mm, and gone down and popped him once in each kneecap. But alas, such was not to be, and we'll just have to settle for the personal and professional ignominy that is currently, and will keep hailing down, on yet another member of the South Carolina delegation (and their former teammate, Democrat John Edwards).
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Atul Gawande - a thoughtful article on health care that BHO has made required reading in the White House

Atul Gawande has written an insightful and thoughtful article on health care, that since its publication, is purportedly required reading in The White House. Check it out here in the New Yorker.

"Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check."

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Video trailer for Michael Moore's upcoming "Sicko"

It's a good trailer, done in Moore's usual style, with great music, humor, and underlying horror.



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