Tuesday Stuff

I now give you today's regularly scheduled lies from Willard Mitt Romney (here)...

…and “demand a plan” indeed (here)…

...and we're into the single digits now, people...

#10, Jack Kingston
#11, Patrick McHenry
#12, Spencer Bachus
#13, Jim Gerlach
#14, Cliff Stearns
#15, Jean Schmidt
#16, Phil Gingrey
#17, David Schweikert
#18, Virginia Foxx
#19, Pete Sessions
#20, Charlie Dent
#21, Cathy McMorris Rodgers
#22, Chris Smith
#23, Todd Akin
#24, Buck McKeon
#25, Kristi Noem
#26, Hal Rogers
#27, Lou Barletta (Two bonus selections: Boren and Ross)
#28, Paul Broun
#29, Mary Bono Mack
#30, David Dreier
#31, Marsha Blackburn (including backgrounder)

…and that brings us to #9 on our list of U.S. House Repugs opposed to health care reform, and that would be none other than Joe Pitts (the mistake of PA-16) in our beloved commonwealth.

There are so many levels of awfulness to Joe Pitts that it’s hard to categorize them, though I know I’ve tried (oh, and on the health care law, I give you this). There’s the Joe Pitts that’s the utterly craven shill of big bidness (insurance, pharma, what have you), the Joe Pitts that claims to be a model of supposed fiscal rectitude for everyone else, the Joe Pitts who missed the proverbial boat on the issues that matter long ago, not that he’s had anything worthwhile to say or do on that score anyway (Please note here his “memorandum on creating jobs and fixing the economy” from last November! And by the way, I skimmed over it and had to wade out of it before the dookey got too deep), and on and on.

However, I believe there is no more level of awfulness associated with Pitts than that of the supposed paragon of “family values,” the “culture warrior” who would see women relegated to a permanently subservient status to men and utterly incapable of managing their reproductive health. There was no more proof needed as to what Pitts stood for than during the entire circus concerning the so-called “Stupak-Pitts Amendment” to the Affordable Care Act (named also for Democratic congressman Bart Stupak who, mercifully, is no longer in Washington). As Media Matters points out here, the amendment was dutifully “reported” by our corporate media stenographers as a ban on federal funds for abortion. The problem is that such a ban is already in place from that amendment named after a serial Republican philanderer in the U.S. House. What Stupak-Pitts was really all about was an attempt to roll back reproductive rights also for women in private insurance plans that received no federal funds (more information is here).

(And by the way, when it comes to the Affordable Care Act and women’s health, I would ask that you read this, something you’ll never hear about from Joe Pitts of course.)

Returning to the health care law overall, though, Pitts told us the following from here two years ago…

It’s just been four months since President Obama signed the new health care law, and already Democratic leadership is conceding that portions of the bill will harm the economy. We cannot create a massive new government entitlement program without someone footing the bill.

Small businesses all over America have just been told that they will have to pay billions more in taxes to foot the bill for Obamacare. That’s money that might otherwise go to job creation. That’s just one reason why America isn’t creating more jobs.

And as I noted at the time from here, the PPACA (the proper acronym) will reduce the deficit, something the Republicans pretend to care about. Also, as far as health care reform supposedly hurting the economy, how can something “hurt” that isn’t scheduled to be fully implemented until 2014 (when, God willing, the exchanges are set up in each state and we have competition among health care providers for real, at long last, as noted here…more health care-related propaganda from Pitts is here...last bullet).

And on top of all of this, did you know that Pitts voted against funding COBRA benefits for the long-term jobless and to help states meet Medicaid obligations, among other social safety-net outlays (here)? Or that he voted against expanding SCHIP four times among many other odious votes listed here, as well as cutting the federal gov’t share of Medicaid by $13 billion? Or that he also voted against a bill empowering the FDA to regulate cigarette content, requiring disclosure of product ingredients, banning cigarette marketing to children, and requiring more prominent health warnings (this is pretty sick, and I mean “sick” as in “truly awful” – see the previous link)?

If, somehow, someone from PA-16 happens to be reading this, I implore you as strongly as I can without using profanity to click here and support Aryanna Strader, who is running for Pitts’ PA-16 seat. It is long past time to send Pitts packing (someone else who reneged on a term-limit pledge, it should be pointed out). And though it pales in comparison to his other antics, I give you the following video clip to remind you of what an utter embarrassment Pitts truly is (and my admittedly juvenile response is here)…



…and in light of this story about more Russian human rights misery, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the protest of three other brave young women in a singing group (putting up the video again perhaps as an expression of solidarity, but also because I like it as a piece of music by itself).