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Sunday, November 08, 2009

Twenty Three Skeedaddle

Sixty-four Democrats voted "Yes" to the vile Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House healthcare bill, a completely gratuitous anti-abortion amendment that would constitute the greatest restriction of a woman's right to choose in over a generation. Yes, healthcare reform that exacts as its cost a restriction of access to healthcare for women. And you thought patriarchy was dead, eh, "post-feminists"? And it took a Democratic President with Democratic majorities in Congress to get all that done! Needless to say, I'm assuming -- hoping? -- that a whole lot of ugly sausage-making maneuvering and ass covering for conservadems idiotically afraid of their more "conservative" districts in a center-left nation, and general nasty theocratic signal sending was playing out there (hence the surreal pile-on of support there at the end), and that this abomination will vanish in Committee, especially since it is unlikely to find an evil twin even in the Senate version the evil Lieberdem allows through the puke funnel. Anyway, for me the Democrats who need watching closest are the twenty three (all males, I do believe, natch) who voted "yes" on the anti-woman's-health amendment to the health bill and then went on to vote "no" on the bill anyway, thus not supporting their Party's efforts to pass a bill they had themselves worked to make more evil, less effective, and less useful to their own party's future and their own positions in it.

These twenty three assholes are:

Jason Altmire (PA-4) 202-225-2565
Bobby Bright (AL-2) 202-225-2901
John Barrow (GA-12) 202-225-2823
John Boccieri (OH-16) 202-225-3876
Dan Boren (OK-2) 202-225-2701
Ben Chandler (KY-6) 202-225-4706
Travis Childers (MS-1) 202-225-4306
Artur Davis (AL-7) 202-225-2665
Lincoln Davis (TN-4) 202-225-6831
Bart Gordon (TN-6) 202-225-4231
Parker Griffith (AL-5) 202-225-4801
Tim Holden (PA-17) 202-225-5546
Jim Marshall (GA-8) 202-225-6531
Jim Matheson (UT-2) 202-225-3011
Mike McIntyre (NC-7) 202-225-2731
Charlie Melancon (LA-3) 202-225-4031
Collin Peterson (MN-7) 202-225-2165
Mike Ross (AR-4) 202-225-3772
Heath Shuler (NC-11) 202-225-6401
Ike Skelton (MO-4) 202-225-2876
John Tanner (TN-8) 202-225-4714
Gene Taylor (MS-4) 202-225-5772
Harry Teague (NM-2) 202-225-2365

Redemption may be possible, I suppose, if these scum-bags support the final bill, even a version fumigated of their patriarchal priggery, but at the very least keep your eyes peeled for the primary challenges to oust these twenty-three in particular. I am the last person to demand purity of members of the Democratic Coalition -- but it is impossible for me to make sense of an anti-choice anti-healthcare reformer who still wants to call himself a "Democrat" unless he is just an opportunistic jerk who wants to be on the winning side even if the winning side wins because it represents everything he doesn't.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I saw a health policy panel-thing in which a bunch of left-wing health policy experts/activists commented that in other countries with excellent government health insurance plans the plans and policies were developed and put into place in incremental stages and over time. But 70 years and counting is a bit much.

I think the congress should pass the ERA and then work on further reforming health insurance policy. Assuming the ERA is genuinely equal rights for all, then there will be certain parts of health care that they won't be able to skirt around in debate. When self-righteous men have to depend on the law to claim their superiority, that's a pretty good sign of their insecurity.