HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a brief conference call with SEIU members this afternoon.

She hailed them as her “brothers and sisters” and urged them to show up at town hall meetings.

She gave the same stultifying mini-lecture about the sanctity of Medicare. “Change is not easy,” she droned. “We need to roll up our sleeves.”

No mention of how SEIU thugs rolled up their sleeves and attacked a black conservative protester in St. Louis or ran interference in Tampa Bay.

In an attempt to reassure SEIU members that senior citizens would not suffer under Obamacare, Sebelius said “Saving lives saves dollars.” Which might come as news to Zeke Emanuel.

Sebelius thanked an SEIU member who showed up at the Tampa Bay melee and urged more to get involved. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

SEIU heavy Dennis Rivera then took over, taking calls from scripted SEIU members who read statements (one of which was painfully, barely coherent).

Rivera closed by railing against the “radical fringe” of “right-wingers” and urged his “Purple Army” to fight “terrorist tactics.”

Pot and kettle.

***

Fun fact about Anna Burger’s staff from Culture of Corruption:

Another Stern administration protégé, Annelle Grajeda, rose to power after the SEIU president installed her as president of the 80,000-member Local 721 in Los Angeles. She ascended to positions on the union’s state council and international executive board. Like Freeman and Jackson, Grajeda had been voted onto Stern’s official administration slate at the SEIU convention in 2008. The Times published damning details of how Grajeda’s ex-boyfriend, SEIU official Alejandro Stephens, collected multiple salaries and consultant fees from the union while also pocketing a salary as a Los Angeles County health services employee. Grajeda had arranged an eight-month leave of absence from the job on behalf of her ex-lover. He was fired after he refused to return to work. Grajeda quit her California posts after catching public flak and found a new job – as special assistant to SEIU secretary-treasurer Anna Burger in Washington, D.C.! Her former chapter heralded the move. Grajeda will now oversee efforts to “partner with the Obama administration” to secure more public funds for SEIU projects. What could go wrong?

Former SEIU 721 President Annelle Grajeda assumed her new role as special assistant to the International Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger for the Public Sector Mar. 9.

According to a staff announcement from the International Union in Washington, D.C.: “With more than two decades of service, Annelle has played a critical role in winning strong contracts for tens of thousands of union members, preserving trauma centers in Los Angeles County, fighting for health care reform, defeating ballot initiatives in 2005 that challenged working families’ livelihoods and uniting more than 80,000 workers into SEIU 721 for greater strength and a stronger voice for public service providers. She brings this wealth of experience and talent to the national level in her new role.”

…The International’s announcement went on to state “While there has been no finding of wrongdoing on Annelle’s part, she has decided to change the capacity in which she serves the Union in order to take on the challenge of developing quality public services at a time when funding is threatened like never before.”

In her new role, Annelle will expand SEIU’s work in the public sector partnering with the Obama Administration to secure more funds for key infrastructure projects and core public services including care for the elderly, health care, education and social services.

Cowardly Lion: Eric (“nation of cowards“) Holder or Algore (“unusual weather we are havin, aint it?” [the snow in the poppy field seen])

Scarecrow: Joe (Bozo) Biden (needs a brain). “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television …..”. “First mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”.

Tin Man: Nobody, that is the problem with progressives; all heart and no brains (besides, none of them would be caught dead chopping down a tree).

Apple Trees: SEIU, UAW, and various other union thugs.

Dorothy: Sarah Palin (We are not in Alaska anymore!) Give her time folks, she is on a journey.

Wicked Witch of the West (Coast): Nancy (“I see swastikas”) Pelosi. “The ice-caps are mellllllllting! Mellllllllting! Oh, what a world! What a world! …….“Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of SPEARS!”

Glinda, the Good Witch of the North (pole); Michele Bachmann (“You have no power here! Now begone, before somebody drops a house on you!; Only bad witches are ugly”)

Flying Monkeys: ACORN

The Lollipop Kids: Barney Frank, Waxman, and Prick Durbin

The Emerald City: Utopia

The Wizard of “O”: BHO, The Won, The Trickster.

“I am the great and powerful “O”! (“I won!”)

“Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful O!”. (‘I am cleanin up yo mess, so do not be talkin!)

“Frightened? Child, you are talking to a man who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe… I was petrified.” (self explanatory)

On the economy: “I cannot come back! I do not know how it works! Good-bye folks!“

And finally: “Pay no attention to that man behind the …..teleprompter!:

“We’re on a precarious road — and wherever it leads, it’s not toward democracy.”

– By Robert Reich

The White House deal with Big Pharma undermines democracy

Obama’s agreement with Big Pharma may help healthcare reform pass, but it may also mean higher drug prices for you
Aug. 10, 2009 |

Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices.

That’s basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it’s proven a bonanza for the drug industry. A continuation will be an even larger bonanza, given all the Boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade. And it will be a gold mine if the deal extends to Medicaid, which will be expanded under most versions of the healthcare bills now emerging from Congress, and to any public option that might be included. (We don’t know how far the deal extends beyond Medicare because its details haven’t been made public.)

Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher healthcare costs for the rest of us, which is one reason why critics of the emerging healthcare plans, including the Congressional Budget Office, are so worried about their failure to adequately stem future healthcare costs. To be sure, as part of its deal with the White House, Big Pharma apparently has promised to cut future drug costs by $80 billion. But neither the industry nor the White House nor any congressional committee has announced exactly where the $80 billion in savings will show up nor how this portion of the deal will be enforced. In any event, you can bet that the bonanza Big Pharma will reap far exceeds $80 billion. Otherwise, why would it have agreed?

In return, Big Pharma isn’t just supporting universal healthcare. It’s also spending lots of money on TV and radio advertising in support. Sunday’s New York Times reports that Big Pharma has budgeted $150 million for TV ads promoting universal health insurance, starting this August (that’s more money than John McCain spent on TV advertising in last year’s presidential campaign), after having already spent a bundle through advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA.

Full Column at Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/10/pharma/print.html

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.txt.pdf

I just lost the link to the pdf of the legislation.
Anybody have it? Thanks!

Like the song says:

Daddy don’t drive in the El Dorado no more
He don’t get tight ev’ry night
Pass out on the barroom floor.

I mean Obama is elected, and we already had the party and everything, right?

Kids that age have short attention spans and are always looking for the next new thing.

Plus, the Obama love is fading fast as some of the college-aged folks are facing the facts that 1) mommy and daddy don’t have a lot of money any more and 2) there aren’t a lot of jobs out there.

I’m back in school right now and I see this.

So I went back to the fish store.

Fishy, I thought that the bait they were selling looked like a 1000 page Healthcare bill, so I reported it.

Fishy, I thought,The salmon boats were all at dockside.

How much “fishyness” does it take outsource our government?