McCain staffer says something stupid (hard to believe, isn't it)

Just in case you had any delusions that Sen. McCain understands the world in which we live, here’s more proof that not only does HE not understand, but his surrogates (those that will get places of high importance in a McSame Administration) don’t either I present you this.

The man who assisted in the drafting of the McCain campaign’s health care plan (such as it is) believes that no American should be considered uninsured… and his use of logic, a term I use very loosely in this case, is fuzzy at best and incredibly idiotic at worse.

From today's Dallas Morning News; “But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.) […] So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.”

So let me get his straight… by his logic, anyone who can get into a hospital emergency room is able to access health care, and therefore shouldn't be considered uninsured. In other words his solution to the health insurance crisis in this country is to simply re-define the word that causes the problem.

Lovely... now this isn’t the first time republicans have changed the definition of something in order to get the embarrassing numbers down as they did it to the definition of unemployed under President Nixon or maybe it was Ford… bah, they’re almost one in the same anyway.

It’s true that emergency rooms are not allowed to turn people who are in need of emergency medical care away, but the federal statute that designates that simply requires emergency room staff to stabilize people that come to their hospitals in need of urgent medical care. Meaning once they’re stabilized, the hospital is free to transfer or discharge them, no questions asked. Additionally, if you do go to an emergency room and need treatment, the hospital is still going to send you a bill as their ER services are not free, and if a patient doesn't pay, the hospital will sue.

Besides, our emergency rooms were not designed to be actual health care centers, they were designed for, imagine that; emergencies.

Add to that the fact that every medical professional would tell you that preventative health care not only costs a hell of lot less than waiting until a problem becomes so severe that a person has to go to the ER… but the impact of waiting on one’s personal health is monstrous and only exacerbates one’s medical maladies.

McCain and his cronies say there’s no healthcare crisis in this country because they themselves don’t have a problem with healthcare, which in their narrow, convoluted minds means no one in the country could possibly have a problem with healthcare.

McCain’s campaign apparently never saw the study that shows the U.S. is ranked 37th in the world for quality of health of its citizens.

You read that right… the United States is ranked 37th in the world for quality healthcare for its citizens… but according to McCain and his handlers… there’s no uninsured in the US.

Uninsured Americans are less likely to seek health care, which in turn means they are more likely to die because of a lack of insurance. An Institute of Medicine Report estimated there were 18,000 unnecessary adult deaths because of a lack of insurance while the Urban Institute estimates that 22,000 have died in 2006 for the same reason… yet the McCain campaign believes these people were “effectively insured.”

Talk about being out of touch.

Oh…and if you need more proof that a McCain presidency would mimic a Bush presidency… in July 2007, “President” Bush said; “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

As President Clinton and Sen. Clinton have said over the last two days; "They want us to reward them for the failures of the last four years with four more years. The third time is not the charm”… “No way. No how. No McCain.”

UPDATE Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign is trying to distance itself from John Goodman, with a campaign spokesperson telling The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn that Goodman is “not an advisor” despite the Dallas Morning News reporting him to be one… and as recently as last month, the WSJ labeled Goodman as an “adviser to the McCain campaign” when he wrote an op-ed piece that fellated praised McCain’s health care plan.

Uh-huh…thanks for clearing that up guys.

Who has the unity problem again?

During yesterday’s ‘Daily’ I mentioned Oklahoma Congressional Democrat Dan Boren who said he is refusing to endorse his party’s nominee, Sen. Obama.

One Democrat says he won’t endorse his party’s candidate and it dominates the news. You surf news sites and you see headlines like ‘Not all Democrats falling for Obama” and “Not all Democrats going for Obama”…

News about 14 of them coming out and saying they wont’ endorse their party’s candidate should be BIG news too, right?

Apparently not, because that’s what’s happening to Sen. McCain, and so far the main-stream media has been abnormally silent on the subject.

From The Hill; “At least 14 Republican members of Congress have refused to endorse or publicly support Sen. John McCain for president, and more than a dozen others declined to answer whether they back the Arizona senator [...] McCain’s campaign seized on some Democrats’ reticence about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), issuing a release on Tuesday that highlighted that Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) is not endorsing the presumptive nominee. While some conservative Democrats have yet to endorse Obama and didn’t back Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004, there are both centrist and conservative Republicans representing various parts of the country who are not embracing McCain. [ …] Republican members who have not endorsed or publicly backed McCain include Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Reps. Jones, Peterson, John Doolittle (Calif.), Randy Forbes (Va.), Wayne Gilchrest (Md.), Virgil Goode (Va.), Tim Murphy (Pa.), Ron Paul (Texas), Ted Poe (Texas), Todd Tiahrt (Kan.), Dave Weldon (Fla.) and Frank Wolf (Va.).”

Now… unless my math is wrong (and it’s not), I count at the least 26 republicans that are trying to distance themselves from McCain.

Some of the names included are meaningless as they are not running for re-election and are lame-ducks; would YOU want an endorsement from Larry Craig?

We knew Ron Paul and his supporters wouldn’t support McCain (especially since they still have a notion of getting the nomination), and Hagel isn’t a surprise either considering that Hagel is a very vocal opponent to the Bush(whacked) Administration's policies on Iraq (and thus McCain’s policies on Iraq) and is a co-sponsor of the Webb GI Bill proposal that McCain vehemently opposes.

Having said all that, while some of the names are meaningless, some aren’t and carry a stigma with not getting their endorsement.

Some of those refusing to endorse McCain are facing serious challenges to retaining their seats such as Virgil Goode, Don Young and possibly Frank Wolf.

And still others seem in no jeopardy to lose re-election (Jeff Sessions, Buck McKeon, Rodney Frelinghuysen, Rep. Randy Forbes) and one is forced to wonder why they have either the opposition or the reluctance to endorse McCain?

We know McCain is not the favorite of quite a few republican Senators (Pete Domenici and Chuck Grassley immediately come to mind when you consider Senators who have been turned off by McCain's previous actions and words), but these lists represent a substantial chunk of the republican membership of the 110th Congress.

That’s not even taking the Bob Barr campaign into account.

And consider this also; last week, Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Democratic Network, said at a forum that McCain was the “worst presidential candidate” in the nation’s modern political history, and contended that there was a “25% chance” that he would be replaced as the Party’s nominee.

Could you imagine that? While it’s true that there is no role for super-delegates in the republican party like we have in the Democratic party, there are more than a few republicans worried that McCain's campaign has the potential of inflicting some serious damage down-ballot.

They see the gaffes, the mis-statements, the disorganization and worry that at some point the press narrative might flip-flop themselves and, rather than be overtly friendly and give McCain a pass on his screw-ups, and start delving deeper into this errs, thus making the narrative, implicitly, raise questions about McCain's readiness for high office… could enough stories about him not remembering his own legislation or statements he has previously made on the record be the start of a discussion of whether he is too old or lacks the "necessities" of meeting the demands of the office?

We Democrats are right to not take anything for granted, especially when we’re still this far out from the actual election… before VP selections are made and convention speeches are given and joint appearances are made… but I AM encouraged by the apparent disunity in the gop…

Granted, some of Clinton's voters are still being antagonistic, but almost all of the Congressionals that HAD supported her are now moving their support to Obama… and when you contrast that with the lists above, it makes you want to know one thing.

Explain to me which party has the ‘unity’ problem again…