Stupak has been collaborating with his friends at C Street for quite a while now. Remember his co-sponsor on the abortion amendment? Are the Family using Stupak as a trojan horse for splitting Dems on abortion/choice issues? His new-found audacity seems pretty suspicious.....

Once again I want someone to ask Stupak,

With over 44,000 Americans dying every year because they don't have health insurance, do you believe human life in sacred from the moment of conception to the moment of birth? But afterwards you don't give a damn?

I really hate the fact that I'm left hoping that %$#holes like Stupak, Lieberman, and Nelson manage to shut this thing down.

"The compromise isn't exactly a pro-choice victory."

Kudos to you Steve on your understatement-of-the-year nomination.

He does not mind hanging around with his christian, whoring around friends on C street, expecting the women to take care of the reproductive part alone. All these compromised holy rollers, including the sexually compromised catholic clergy the women have to conform to their conscience not the woman's own conscience and live with consequences dictated by them. Bas*ar*s!!

So NOW opposes this bill?

Hippies.

"When a Democratic lawmaker's office is coordinating attacks with Republicans and the religious right on the Democratic Party's signature domestic policy priority of the last seven decades, goodwill in the caucus is likely to disappear."

'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'

@SteveT - have you ever noticed that the anti-abortion people tend to almost always also be pro-death penalty?

"Pro-life"? Don't talk to me about pro-life...

...odious anti-abortion amendment into the legislation.

Pro-coathanger amendment, Steve. Get it right.

Republicans don't take that crap from their own, do they?

Why is it always a new frame? why is it suddenly a scandal that Stupak is doing WHAT HE HAS ALL ALONG BEEN DOING?

WTF?

This aint news. Nor are Ben god damn Nelson's antics...

The cloudiness of these discussions really is a pisser.

1 - Corporate America aint gonna let health care reform -- real health care reform -- happen.

2 - Obama aint gonna fight Corporate America. Therefore, it is over...

3 - The trade-off of hard fought and won women's rights for "health care reform" is just a tactical weapon in the war.

4 - Obama is okay with it, as are the allegedly pro-women's rights Dims in the clown car senate. They'll 'squawk' but it'll be all an act.

5 - And Stupak is hunkering down with his god damn catholic bishop friends and the god damned Repugnants?

Whoopie-doo...Big surprise...I'm shocked, shocked...

This is all about Corporate America consolidating all its pawns and rooks and bishops... to bust any real reform in a "health care reform bill."

And they will do anything to defeat it...and hurt anybody to defeat it. And the Dims are in collusion as much as the Repugnants... Right, Benny-boy?

Oh, I doubt if Stupak's going to get the cold shoulder treatment from his fellow Dems. Hell, Rahmbo will be the first one to come in and kiss his ass. He'll get the full Obama treatment with Chicago cheesecake and kisses on his feet. Hell, Obama will probably do a stemwinder of a speech extolling the virtues of Bart Stupak and his wonder midwestern catholic working class values. And then there'll be Steny Hoyer who'll offer him another $200k in money for his next election campaign. Chris Van Hollen will swoop down and offer him another $250k to deal with those awful DFHs.

Neill, not as much. That isn't great, but the Repugnants are so awful now that false equivalence is dangerous. The Naderites were wrong that Gore wasn't all that different from Bush. Yes he was, don't you think now?
It would have been much easier to get the better version of the HCR Bill if voters had elected even more Democrats in 2008, and earlier of course. It's mostly their fault, really.

Stupak is farting in the wind; last-minute deals with the devil will not uphold his lame-asss nonsense now.

As for Mitch McConnell, how can one have so many chins, yet have no chin at all?

Wouldn't Mitch McChinless look perfectly in his element in a powdered wig and judges' robes, condemning witches to be burned to death in 1692 Salem?

The Far Right handed democrats the tool with which they killed themselves. So desperate for improved health care coverage, they compromised themselves to death. What remains of the HCR is a self-inflicted kill shot to electoral majorities. Badly played, Senate Democrats. How naive can you apologists be? The store has been given away so we can hurt the most ardent voters financially. Wait for your employer to shed its insurance policy.

I don't like the bill any better than anybody else (although I'm in the "pass it" group -- partly because in my extended family there are uninsured people who could impoverish _me_ unless our luck holds). However, the "unnecessary burden" of abortion insurance is a bit exaggerated. During my entire life between puberty and menopause I carried extra "maternity insurance" because it was always possible that I might get pregnant. My insurance policies did not routinely cover maternity, so I had to add this rider. Abortion strikes me as the same situation. A pregnancy could go wrong, so you carry insurance for that possibility. I don't understand the problem characterized as "forcing women to anticipate that they might need ...". The larger problem, of course, is putting women's health needs like maternity and abortion in some kind of bizarre "extra" special category, while issues specific to men's reproductive health are routinely covered. This is where we need to focus.

Good. Go Stupak. Kill this fucking bill and show these candy-ass losers what happens when you make deals with the devil.

Democrats: The most worthless party ever. 50% too weak to do the right thing, and 50% too corrupt. 100% pathetic.

I hope you all enjoy seeing the 2010 election returns and finding out what happens when you jettison the party's base in order to reap those drug company donations.

neil b,
yer mostly right, and i am just describing how my head is exploding...which makes for a little hyperbole and remonstration...

it's so rare that i lose control...

Yeah, it's the Naderites and leftists who've been making deals with the Republicans. Almost-Vice-President Lieberman must be the most Naderite of all.

Jesus. More liberals who would rather punch left than deal with the real problem...

Oh, I doubt if Stupak's going to get the cold shoulder treatment from his fellow Dems.

I wouldn't be so sure. Stupak's a Congressman, not a Senator. If they want to make an example of someone to shore up their left, he's the perfect choice -- he sounds important, and he pisses off reasonable people and other DFHs, but Pelosi and her whip team can in a pinch work around a single House vote while Stupak is busy pouting.

Yeah, probably not. But not definitely not, as in the case of Ben Nelson.

have you ever noticed that the anti-abortion people tend to almost always also be pro-death penalty?

And pro-war for any reason: right, wrong, or manufactured.

Apparently God doesn't care if families are blown up in Iraq because a Republican needs a reelection boost, but He sure doesn't want an American zygote to meet an untimely end. I wonder why the Almighty holds such a double standard....

I'm with the pass it group too. Also the "let's primary Stupak" group.

Any chance of that, anybody know?

I'm certainly glad we have a chorus on the left supporting the rise of POLITICO (all caps being the appropriate honorific). Between TPM and TPMs former co-horts, we have a veritable choir aiding them.

And may Lieberman, Nelson, and Stupak lie down on beds of coathangers this season.

Conservatives ruined this bill. Never forget. Primaries are the only solution.

The larger problem, of course, is putting women's health needs like maternity and abortion in some kind of bizarre "extra" special category, while issues specific to men's reproductive health are routinely covered. This is where we need to focus.

It's one of the few things that have been really bugging me, that abortion is obsessed over and the price of pregnancy/prenatal care/childbirth is completely ignored. I for one would like to have kids someday, although since I'm self-employed the difference between a policy that covers pregnancy/childbirth and one that doesn't is $300 per month. (And you can't get a policy covering it after you're pregnant since then it's a "pre-existing condition.") It's one of the major reasons I want to see HCR passed-- in my life it might be the difference between having a family and not.

That's exactly how you know the "pro-life" crowd is full of crap-- because if they really wanted more women to choose to have babies they'd make maternity and childbirth coverage FREE.

"That's exactly how you know the "pro-life" crowd is full of crap-- because if they really wanted more women to choose to have babies they'd make maternity and childbirth coverage FREE."

Amen. I wish I heard this more because it gets to the heart of the moral bankruptcy in the American "pro-life" movement. Their concern for human life ends at birth.

I hate that abortion is not covered, but this shouldn't be a deal killer. Given where the republicans have taken us in recent decades, it's not even a precedent, although it entrenches a bad practice. To put it in terms that affect me more personally, if they had to dump coverage of diabetes to create a cheap enough bill to be able to get it passed, I'd still view that as a reasonable deal. The solution to this problem (and others) is not to toss out the bill and not to throw Nelson over to the Republicans but to replace Voinovich of Ohio with someone like another Sherrod Brown or Tim Ryan (a local up-and-comer) or some other more reliably progressive democrat, and to do that in about five other states, which wouldn't be that difficult if we had an electorate that was reasonably aware to their own self-interests. That way the Nelsons and Liebermans and Bayhs of the senate (or whomever else can't line up with everyone else on the team on a given issue) become delightfully irrelevant. With a long-term view and a bit of determination, these problems and lack of abortion coverage and the like are fixable, just not immediately.

So I am from Stupak;s district, and spend a lot of time there last year. As I have said before, here is a classic case of a single issue warping the process. Stupak's district is composed of a huge percentage of elderly, and the place stays afloat only because of federal dollars for Medicare, federal lands management, etc. There are several great prisons that could have replaced Gitmo, and it is a sad, cold, unemployment ridden rural sad sack place.

So, what the place really needs is an anti-choice fanatic. Yep. That really helps all the 85 year olds in nursing homes. Good job Bart.

>"Rep. Bart Stupak (D. Mich.) held the House reform bill hostage in November, forcing an odious anti-abortion amendment into the legislation."

Wow! He has the power to single-handedly force amendments into bills. This kind of anti-democratic legislative process seems to dwarf the unfairness of the much more well known Senate filibuster. Why haven't we heard more about it? Or wait, this couldn't be just be the way a liberal describes a majority of the House voting for a conservative amendment could it? I guess it's not just the tea-baggers who are prone to talk about majority rule like it is actually some kind of evil conspiracy.

". . . [T]he new measure places burdensome restrictions on women receiving coverage through federally subsidized insurance who may want to exercise their legally-protected reproductive rights."

Where is the burden on the right to reproduce?

Can anyone provide a link to a writing (more recent than the demise of the Shakers) in which any serious public figure has called into question the right to reproduce? For that matter, is there anything more recent than the 1927 opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell ("Three generations of imbeciles is enough") wherein the right to reproduce was seriously questioned?

Conflating "reproductive rights" and abortion rights--the right to avoid reproducing--makes as much grammatical sense as claiming that rape and rape prevention are one and the same.

I couldn't care less what NOW says. I have always referred to them as the National Organization of Some Women (i.e. white, middle class women). Have they ever spoken out for the women who get paid peanuts while they take care of the children/parents of the middle class? If they have it hasn't been loudly. This doesn't surprise me in the least.

Anybody want to tell the bishops to butt out and STFU. The legislative process is not some sacrement.

They can continue to tell their congregations all the stupid dogma they like and get ignored (in practice if not to their face). But get the hell out of politics.

Or give up your tax exemptions.

Same for CLDS (and anybody else) on this, gays, or any other issue. Don't be using your resources and money to interfere in the secular.

The Conference of Catholic Bishops is aiding Stupak in opposing abortion? I though all they cared about was defending child molesters.

So with all the recent invective over Stupak, Nelson, and Lieberman lately, how are people feeling about Arlen Specter and the decision to bring him into the tent?

*pokes with stick*

I'd still much rather have Sestak, but to give Specter due credit, he has toed the party line on health care, reportedly pushing hard for the public option, as well as additional funding for the National Institute of Health, better enforcement against Medicare fraud, and repeal of the antitrust exemption for health insurers. Whatever you think of the outcome, without Specter on board, all the health care work would have cratered short of 60 votes at a much earlier phase.

If NOW and the Religious Right both hate the compromise, then Reid must be on to something.