You're going to spoil us Purpleface.

Oh Joe!  How you crave the spotlight.  I know CT represents a bunch of the Insurance industry (Hartford) but polls show 68% of the residents want some form of Public Option in a Health Reform bill.  And Joe pulls a Joe.  I'm not pissed at Joe.  He does what he does.  I hope one thing will happen though.  I hope that if Joe does indeed vote against a cloture vote he would immediatly lose his Committee Chairmanship. 

I suspect the worst that will happen to the Health Reform bill is that in order to pass the Senate it won't have a Public Option.  I suspect the House's will and when the two meet for a reconcilation the Public Option will remain.  Then only 51 votes will be needed to pass it.  Yea Fox & the Republicans will scream.  Hell, they scream anyway so why not.  Let 'em scream.

Joe....enjoy your remaining term.  You won't get another.  More than likely he'll get a nice cushy job lobbying.

I'd post my score, but I don't want to draw any attention to myself. :)

 Quite astonishing.

 Blue Cross sends out a letter announcing a rate increase of 11% for next year. Good news! It's the best health care you can't afford.

 In the very same letter they ask that you protest any sort of health care reform!

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local_state/story/161435.html

Protecting the status quo? The annual rate increase mailer? Blue Cross is a 'non-profit'?

Where are the options. Where is the competition?

I would call this corporate communism.

Lew Borman, a Blue Cross spokesman, said he wasn't sure how many people got the flier urging them to contact Hagan, but he said the mailing relied on voter registration records, not a customer list.

 

Since the company controls more than half of the state's health insurance market, there was unavoidable overlap.

 

Borman declined to reveal how much money the insurer paid for the mailing. Blue Cross is a nonprofit, so its finances are not as open as public companies.

 

He acknowledged the timing was unfortunate, coming as the firm typically sends its annual notices about rate increases. But he said the two mailings were coincidental, hinged to current events in Washington.

 

"We said from the beginning we were going to be involved and would tell North Carolinians what kind of impact the health-care proposals would have, and that's what we've been doing," Borman said.

 

Jenny Warburg, a freelance photojournalist in Durham, said she wishes she could switch insurance carriers over the issue, but no other company will cover her.

 

So she's stuck, and that makes her even madder.

 

"You're over a barrel," she said. "You have no choice."

 

And that, she said, is exactly what Blue Cross is eager to protect. 

"Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance - where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks - the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong... Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken"

The answer: Friedrich Hayek, in The Road To Serfdom (Chapter 9).

   The famed George Soros, who has gained fame for making fortunes by understanding how markets really work, is going start a New Economic INstitute, to attract the best and the brightest to understanding economics. The goal is to establish a solid workable model for economics that goes beyond the old, unproductive free markets model, which brought us multiple bubbles and last years near collapse of the entire economic system.  

 For many the worry is that until and unless a better economic model comes forward, lobbiests will fill the economic void.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/219720

 "Does anybody know anything any more? Again, many of these debates go back to basic questions of economic wisdom. Even Adam Smith, the founder of free-market thinking, noted that banking should be treated differently than other businesses. Financial markets, constantly haunted by panics and manias, are more prone to failure and are more critical to the economy's health."

 The most dishonest analysis belongs to the famed, so called liberal NYT and reporter Adam Nagourney

  Are people really so stupid and senile that they forget what they read one day ago?

Tuesday Nov. 3rd:

 "Worst outcome for Republicans: Losing the New York congressional race, which has showcased deep divisions between moderates and conservatives over how the party should rebuild to return to power."

Wednesday Nov. 4th:

 "The Republican victories in the races for New Jersey and Virginia governors put the party in a stronger position to turn back the political wave President Obama unleashed last year, setting the stage for Republicans to raise money, recruit candidates and ride the excitement of an energized base* as the party heads into next year’s midterm elections."

 Courtesy NYT reporter Adam Nagourney**

___

*that energized base are the folks at RedState that are screaming that the party elite have betrayed them

**Dear Adam N,  can you explain this seeming glaring contradiction from one day to the next