Protecting Their Private Petting Zoo's

Republican Conference Secretary John Carter (R-Texas) is trying to build momentum for a Congressional Review Act (CRA) challenge to a recent regulation that requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of their premium dollars (85 percent in the large group market) on healthcare services.

Healthcare executives take our healthcare dollars and use them to buy everything from multiple mega-mansions and private petting zoo's to elections. At the same time they maximize profit by spending as little as possible on actual healthcare. It's no wonder the Republicans are going after this critical provision or the new healthcare law first. They need to make sure their sugar daddy's at the insurance companies have the cash to fly around in private jets and bankroll their campaigns.

Contrast And Compare

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) noted this morning that President Obama and the Democratic Congress have created “more jobs in 2010 than President Bush did over eight years.”

This chart speaks for itself

Fox In The Hen House

A few days ago, incoming Agriculture Chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) announced the hire of Ryan McKee as the senior staffer to oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. McKee is currently a lobbyist working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s division dedicated to deregulating complex derivatives products. In her new role working for Lucas, McKee will be liaising with regulators in charge of implementing new rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to overhaul the over-the-counter derivatives market. She will tell you she's fighting to “kill” financial reform:

“We want to make sure that we hold all the Republicans and are able to influence enough Democrats to have a working majority to kill this thing outright or modify it to the point where it’s palatable to the business community,” Jason Matthews, the Chamber’s director of congressional affairs, told the callers. Ryan McKee, a senior director at the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets, was even more direct in response to a question from an caller: “We’re fundamentally trying to kill this,” she said.

These people wrote rules that enabled them to loot the financial system for their own gain. And now they're fighting the fix from within the Republican party, presumably so they can do it again. Stop them or you can kiss your 401k and your economic future good by.

Not Seeing It Our Way

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) , incoming chair of the House Science and Technology Committee. In an interview with the Dallas Morning News this month said of the gulf oil spill: "As we saw that thing bubbling out, blossoming out- all that energy, every minute of every hour of every day or every week - that was tremendous to me. That we could deliver that kind of energy out there - even on an explosion."

19 Americans died on that rig. The regional economy was decimated. And the Gulf of Mexico fouled in the worst way. But this guy thinks it was tremendous. The reason for this is probably because when he sees oil, he sees money and power. And he just doesn't give a rip about anything else.

Council of Hate

Earlier this week, Southern Poverty Law Center added the Family Research Council to its list of hate groups due to anti-gay speech from its leaders. In a statement, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins calls that designation a "slanderous attack and attempted character assassination. This is a deliberately timed smear campaign by the SPLC. The Left is losing the debate over ideas and the direction of public policy so all that is left for them is character assassination," Perkins said.

The SPLC is primarily about combating racism and bigotry. It's instructive to hear that people like Tony Perkins see that function as something belonging to the other team. Doesn't say much for his team, but then again that's why the SPLC put them on the list.

Dickens

Raw Story: Socialism" as a series of defined political systems did not emerge until the world's great industrial revolutions drove laborers to unite -- but don't tell that to Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO). Akin, according to a speech given on the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, instead believes it started much earlier. He claimed that the first group of settlers to set sail for the new world were fleeing an "unbiblical" socialism that had gripped their homeland.

What the hell kind of political party believes ruthless capitalism is God's law? Perhaps more disturbing than the revisionist rhetoric from Todd Akin is that they've been able to condition the GOP base to respond to it. The whole lot is dangerously deranged.

War Party

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, speaking at at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada told reporters that there will come a point where Iran's nuclear program will reach the state that a conventional limited air strike "won't take them out."

So he's advocating war. Seems two bloody, corrupt wars are not enough for the GOP.