As most of you probably know by now, Democratic Representative from New York, Eric Massa, has resigned his post, which he has held only since 2009.

The official House of Representatives website of the former congressman resolves into one, where Office of the Clerk informs that:

“Office of the Twenty-Ninth Congressional District of New York
Formerly the Office of Representative Eric J. J. Massa

The Washington, D.C. office and the district of the Honorable Eric J. J. Massa will continue to serve the people of the Twenty-Ninth Congressional District of New York under the supervision of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Representative Massa resigned on March 8, 2010. The vacancy became effective March 9, 2010.”

And what was the reason for the resignation? That’s all very unclear at this point.

The Atlantic’s Josh Green reports that Massa was “notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates” during his 20-year Naval career.

Massa, who is married and has four children, was never formally accused of inappropriate behavior. Asked by CNN’s Larry King if he is gay, he declined to answer the question and deemed it offensive.

The day before Massa told Fox News’ Glenn Beck that he had groped one of his staffers, though he said it had been non-sexual. He had previously said he told a male aide he should be “frakking” him while at a wedding.

Reports surfaced earlier in the day that Massa had been under investigation for allegedly groping multiple male staffers and behaving inappropriately with interns.

Eric Massa announced his resignation last week after it came to light that the House ethics committee was investigating him on sexual harassment charges. Massa said he had been pushed out because of his opposition to the health care reform bill, a charge the White House and top Democrats deemed ridiculous.

Massa has cited his battle with cancer as the primary reason he is leaving office.

As the Ides of March approach, we might all reflect on the age-old question: To grope, or not to grope?

Technorati Tags: cancer, congress, democrats, Eric Massa, groping, health care bill, resignation

Republicans and Democrats attending the a Bipartisan Meeting on Health Reform meeting at the Blair House across from the White House have very different definitions of the event.

President Obama urged lawmakers on both sides to focus on areas of agreement. An email from the so-called GOP Action Team in turn says in part: “After pledging to listen to Republican ideas at this Thursday’s photo op- er, “bipartisan health care summit,” President Obama has decided to stick with the Senate Democrats’ health care legislation, a bill that Americans have already rejected as a massive restructuring of our economy that is a short walk down the road to government run health care. He’s rejected alternative methods of tackling our health insurance crisis before hearing them. He’s betrayed the American people’s trust.”

Republicans and Democrats admit that they remain far apart on key provisions advocated by each side. There were also major unresolved divisions within the Democratic Party itself, whose leaders were looking beyond a meeting they expected to amount to little more than political theater and focusing on a final round of negotiations within the party.

The White House said discussions at the meeting would revolve around four main themes: controlling costs, reforming insurance coverage, reducing the federal deficit and expanding coverage.

Senator Lamar Alexander, speaking for the Republican side, said, “We want you to succeed, because if you succeed, our country succeeds.” But Alexander also said Republicans want to “change the direction” that Obama is pursuing, get rid of the bills already passed by the House and Senate and aim for less ambitious reforms.

Obama has said that his latest proposal, aimed at salvaging the stalled health-care legislation, would cover 31 million Americans who currently lack insurance and would cost about $950 billion over 10 years. It would require people to buy health-care insurance and would penalize large employers who do not offer it.

Republicans reject mandating the purchase of insurance and have advanced an alternative that would cover 3 million people at a cost of $61 billion.

What will the meeting actually achieve is anybody’s guess.

In the meantime, our health care and health insurance system needs reforming quite urgently. Are the GOPistas and the tea baggers listening?!

Technorati Tags: democrats, Health, obama, republicans, summit, white house

The  Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia, along with Scott Brown taking over Ted Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate have sprouted all kinds of suppositions, ” I told yous” and even a bit of a reshuttle at the White House.

There is no doubt that the Democrats have screwed up on many fronts. Having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate should have given them the opportunity to take care of many, long-overdue issues, but considering the fact that too many of them – Christopher Dodd comes to mind among others – were really taking care of somebody else’s business, things simply didn’t get done and the American electorate, including a whole slew of liberal Democrats felt downright betrayed.

There is the definite possibility that the Obama voters were really under the impression that the movement created around the candidate actually represented the man. Surprisingly, the man was and is different from what the voters imagined him to be. Just look at the bailouts of the messed up financial mills, which were ostensibly “too big to fail”. Now the biggies are paying multi-million-dollar bonuses, possible only because of the taxpayer-funded bailout.

Let’s not forget that in 2009 the U.S. has reportedly printed more money than in the entire 20th century…successfully bailing out the Wall Street shysters, called by some bonus-happy executives  “their best people”. Wouldn’t these “best people” be more appropriately employed producing our license plates for the next 20 years in some federal penitentiary?

In any case, practically exit Tim Geithner and finally re-enter Paul Volcker, who seems to have saner ideas. We also welcome the return of David Plouffe,  Obama’s campaign manager. As expected Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod says that there is no major White House shakeup in the works. Why not, we wonder?

In closing, enjoy another excellent cartoon by Washington Post’s Tom Toles. If one picture is worth 1,000 words, these two combined must be worth quite a bit more

Technorati Tags: democrats, Health Care reform, obama, politics, republicans

It isn’t hard to question the judgment, motives, and sanity of Joe Lieberman, the so-called independent senator from Connecticut, who has almost single-handedly derailed any meaningful health care reform legislation.

The strange thing is that for years Lieberman has been a strong advocate of universal health care. Campaigning for vice-president in 2000, he first proposed resolving the plight of the uninsured by allowing them to buy into Medicare and Medicaid – a plan he endorsed even in September 2009 in an interview with a Connecticut newspaper.

Yet when that very same plan was added to Senate health care legislation, Lieberman told Majority Leader Harry Reid that he could not support it. He also threatened to invoke the power of a one-man filibuster to prevent the legislation from even coming to a vote on the Senate floor.

It could in part be simple revenge. Ever since being rejected by the Connecticut Democrats in the 2006 primary, and somehow getting re-elected as an Independent, Lieberman’s been itching for payback. He endorsed John McCain for president, campaigned for him practically full-time and even spoke at the Republican National Convention, declaring Barack Obama as unqualified to be president.

For such a petty man and such a big ego, what better way there is to get even than to derail the president’s number one legislative priority, even if it means leaving 47 million Americans without health insurance?

As we always said, there’s no substitute for backbone, decency, honesty and intelligence.

And in closing, a very telling cartoon, by Bob Rogers from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Thanks to Cher from AskCherlock for pointing it out to us.

Technorati Tags: backbone, democrats, Health Care reform, Independent, Lieberman, mccain, obama, senate

Democrats united Saturday night to push the health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.

The Republican’s position does indeed appear to be a continuation of the campaign to defeat the president’s initiatives, rather than proposing anything constructive and helpful to the American people. The desire to “show him” seems stronger than the desire to actually achieve something that’s needed and at least in the long run – beneficial. That’s nothing new, of course. Just listen to the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other conservative blabbermouths. There is no doubt that the interest of the country as a whole has been put on the back burner, in favor of hurting, or even destroying anything that Barack Obama is doing.

The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who do not have it, control insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care.

Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of trying to prevent a historic debate that the nation needed.

“Imagine if, instead of debating whether to abolish slavery, instead of debating whether giving women and minorities the right to vote, those who disagreed had muted discussion and killed any vote,” he said.

The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell said the vote was anything but procedural – describing it as a referendum on the bill itself, which he said would raise taxes, cut Medicare and create a “massive and unsustainable debt.”

The fate of the Saturday night showdown had been sealed hours earlier, when two final Democratic holdouts, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced they would join in clearing the way for a full debate.

We will be watching the upcoming debate, although we do not intend to waste our time in hearing the usual, vicious opinions of the conservative pundits.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying the president was gratified by the vote, which he says “brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiraling health care costs, providing stability and security to those with health insurance, and extending quality health coverage to those who lack it.”

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide subsidies to those who cannot afford it. Large companies could incur penalties if they do not provide coverage to their workforce. The insurance industry would come under significant new regulation under the bill, which would first ease and then ban the practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

Congressional budget analysts put the legislation’s cost at $979 billion over a decade and said it would reduce deficits over the same period while extending coverage to 94 percent of the eligible population.

In relation to the health-care reform debate and to the Republican (and Joe Lieberman’s) opposition to it, it might be worthwhile to quote a letter by George Washington to his nephew supporting adoption of the Constitution, to which there was considerable opposition as well..

General Washington castigated critics of the Constitution and stated that they seek to “rouse the apprehensions of the ignorant & unthinking . . . [with] objections . . . better calculated to alarm the fears, than to convince the judgement of their readers.”

These comments seem equally applicable to those Republican senators opposed to health-care reform.

______________________________________________________________________________________

And since the new mammography recommendations seem to have brought outrage from both sides of the aisle, we would like to present another incisive cartoon on the subject from Washington Post’s Tom Toles.

Technorati Tags: bill, Clears, democrats, Health care, Hurdle, insurance industry, reform, republicans, senate