March Madness: The OTHER win-or-go-home games.

The Countdown to Reform Wire from TPM is the fastest updating site, as far as I can tell.

Daily Kos is a close second with more on a potential executive order deal with Stupak. (In a perfect world, we'd be able to do this without Bart and his selectively anti-choice stance.)

The AP breaks down the bill. The link goes to HuffPo, but the article is all AP. As Wonkette says, It is not scary. It is so, so comically un-scary.

Speaking Wonkette, they are ready, willing, and able to provide the driest of the dry sarcasm needed.

Are you tired of all the bullshit political shenanigans? Rep. Weiner can sympathize.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And, lest you get too hopeful, please remember that this has to go to the Senate next. I'm sure everyone will behave like the grown-up democratically elected representatives that they are.

Douche and Douchier.

HINT: Al Franken is not the douche.

The Death of the Public Option

Senator Palpatine Flip-Flops

Consequences for Insurance Lapdogs

"...mandating that all people pay money to a private interest isn't even conservative, free market or otherwise."

Not Health, Not Care, Not Reform

Howard Dean: Kill the Bill

Twenty Questions For Bill Killers

Twenty Answers

Tom Coburn Delays Vote on Troop Funding by demanding that Bernie Sanders read all 700+ pages of his doomed single-payer, Medicare for all amendment. Bernie Sanders, unlike Coburn, is in possession of both a conscience and a brain. He yielded the floor, and it's as if his amendment never was.

Final Word from Senator Sanders of Vermont:

He was against it before he was for it

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Texas and Health Care Reform

From The Houston Chronicle

Here are the facts:

• • Families USA recently found that health insurance premiums for Texas families have increased 92 percent — more than 4.5 times faster than income.

• • The US Census Bureau reports that with 24.5 percent of our citizens without health insurance, Texas has the nation's highest rate of uninsured.

• • The American Medical Association ranks Texas 43rd in the number of doctors per capita and reports that more than half of Texas counties have an acute shortage of primary care physicians. This critical scarcity of physicians compelled lawmakers to raise taxes earlier this year to fund projects designed to attract physicians to rural areas.

• • Texas Medicare spending is growing 16 percent faster than the national average. In fact, 10 of the 15 health markets with the highest Medicare spending per enrollee are in states in which the medical and insurance industries successfully lobbied for severe limits on patient rights. Four of the nation's most expensive health markets are right here in Texas.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement for Texas as a model for the nation.

From Bay Area Houston

In 2003 the Republican controlled Texas house ushered in sweeping tort reform, limiting medical malpractice suits to $250,000. These limits were supported by the insurance industry, some of the medical community, and their front groups calling themselves “Texans” and “Citizens” against lawsuit abuse. As they are doing today with national health care reform, they promised lower health care costs, lower insurance rates, and expanded health care availability. Instead, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured in the nation and our cost of health care and insurance has skyrocketed out of control. Tort reform didn’t work in Texas. It won’t work on the national level either.

Rabid Republican and former Texas Congressman Dick Armey is now spearheading the 'tea-bagger' movement against health care reform. This is what we call 'privilege'.

and people wonder why my generation gets their news online.

OTHER PLACES TO GET NEWS:

Rachel Maddow (the sanest news anchor on TV)

Crooks and Liars (politics, with fact checking)

Jezebel (women, feminism, and the mass media)

The Daily Show (for media criticism and slapstick comedy)

The Colbert Report (for media criticism via slapstick comedy)

Any other suggestions? I mean, for the love of dog, the media is just crazy making.

I may have to move to Orlando.

I have to get on the road, but I would just like to say that Alan Grayson is just winning.



I promise that this whole thing won't be taken up with political stuff. But Alan Grayson is awesome. And I'm going to post about him again, because he's been awesome for a while now.

Okay then. On to Walnut Grove.