Desperate For Publicity, Zack Wamp Berates Rush Limbaugh

Straighten your posture & prepare your apology, you silly Wamp

Zach Wamp is a clownish Republican from Tennessee's 3rd CD (Chattanooga and Oak Ridge) who's trying to run for governor. Wamp's undistinguished rubber stamp, zombie-like voting record has nothing whatsoever in it to recommend him and nothing that stands out from any other garden variety lunatic fringe Bible-thumper whose irresponsibility brought on the Depression. He hasn't been able to make any progress in the Republican primary contest against front-running multimillionaire Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam and also has to contend with Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey and Memphis D.A. Bill Gibbons. No one outside Chattanooga knows who he is... or cares.

So, in a quest for some coverage, he denounced Rush Limbaugh on CNN yesterday. That got him a tiny bit of notice and after he abjectly apologizes he'll get even more press. Wamp referred to the de facto leader of the Republican Party-- at least in terms of setting the agenda for the congressional caucus-- as a "mere 'entertainer,' and suggested that rather than listen to Rush, we should listen to 'serious' people on how solve our economic crisis." Expect to see poor, befuddled Wamp to wind up here soon. Or will he appear on the Tyra Banks Show next?

And while the clownish Wamp prepares his abject apology to the Republican's fearless leader, another GOP clown, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan found someone else to apologize to: Europe. Actually Ryan seems to think he's being a jokester but is further exposing the disarray in the GOP, this time about how the kooks and loons feel about Europe. Many on the lunatic fringe feel the same way as Mormon fruitcake, Bishop Rob Bishop who spent two years running around Germany in the early 70s unsuccessfully trying to persuade people to join the bizarre cult. Later he became head of the Utah Republican Party and has always harbored extreme hatred towards Europe-- and monkeys-- because of his daily rejection by German people when he tried getting them to just try on the funny underwear. “The European mindset is still government solutions to everything-- high taxes, high government spending, high government safety net, government resolution of all the problems," babbled an angry Bishop. Ryan, on the other hand, has come around to seeing Germany and other European countries as the model the U.S. should be following. I have a feeling he hasn't cleared this with Limbaugh yet. “We owe them an apology," explained Ryan, "because our budget is worse than theirs. To suggest that we’re turning our budget into a European kind of a budget is unfair … it’s unfair to Europe." [Throughout the partisan budget debate, Ryan warned that America is moving closer into turning into a European society.] Barney Frank is watching the Republican pie fight and scratching his head. "The argument that if you have a better social safety net then people will get lazy and won't work is an extraordinarily dumb and mean argument and it's contradicted by the facts," he tried explaining to Ryan, Bishop and the other bickering Repugs. "I know people on that side have a propensity to see socialists everywhere. But the people who are most lecturing the American Government are the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, two conservatives. So [this] invocation of socialists lecturing us is a further example of the propensity to see socialists where they are not.” Poor, Ryan just can't seem to get anything right. Maybe he should go back to being a lobbyist. You can help him with that.

The Battle Over Health Care Reform Is Joined-- Corporate Greed Vs American Working Families

If Wamp becomes governor, health care in Tennessee will be only for the rich

Obama seems to feel like he needs to instantly take on all the immense problems that were either not addressed, or addressed improperly, during 8 years of Republican misrule. While the GOP continues trying to distract the public with the bright, shiny objects-- the unseemly foibles of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele-- Obama plowed ahead with his health care reforms today. He knows the special interests, who have payed out billions to corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle (since 1990, legalized bribes to federal officials have amounted to $312,283,612 the from Insurance Industry, $61,918,128 from HMOs and corporate health services, and $276,648,336 from BigPharma) will field their hack political puppets, from corrupt corporate Democrat Max Baucus (MT- $2,689,501) to an array of some of the sleaziest Republicans to ever slither into the Senate and set up shop sucking up money from the corporations they are supposed to regulate, John McCain (AZ- $4,509,359), Arlen Specter (PA- $2,984,784), Orrin Hatch (UT- $2,798,997), Miss McConnell (KY- $1,949,622) and Richard Burr (NC- $1,599,124), to sabotage everything Obama wants to do and to slander him and his family and his administration, anything to keep him from providing healthcare reform for Americans.

“Those who seek to block any reform at any cost will not prevail this time around,” Mr. Obama said in opening a White House conference, where he promised to reduce health costs and expand coverage.

...The government estimates that the nation will spend $2.5 trillion on health care this year, or an average of $8,160 a person. Without any change in federal law, it estimates, health care will account for more than 20 percent of the nation’s entire economic output in 2018, up from 17.6 percent in 2009, and public programs will account for more than half of all health spending-- without any of the changes contemplated by the White House.

Liberals said Thursday that they were ready for a fight with the health care industry and would not be outmaneuvered as they were in 1993-94, when President Bill Clinton’s effort to guarantee insurance for every American collapsed.

“In 1993, interest groups sounded supportive and made nice at the outset, but then turned and used all their resources to oppose reform,” said Judith Feder, a Clinton administration official who is now a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. “They pretended to favor reform, and undercut it at every step. This time we are not going to let them get away with it.”

Judy is right... about some Republicans. Others don't even make believe they want to reform health care. To extreme right wing loons like Zach Wamp (R-TN), health care is socialism and a "privilege." Corporate media is ready for their role as well. Today MediaMatters released an analysis of a 75-year-old right-wing smear of what they call “socialized medicine” and how the media has worked hand-in-glove with the right to sabotage reform, from Roosevelt's attempt to include health reform in Social Security to Hillary Clinton's 1993-4 initiative.

Of course, reactionary wimps like Wamp weren't the only ones speaking out about President Obama's health care initiative. One of the Blue America candidates, Eric Massa, who went on to win his race in November, defeating a loon just like Wamp, has been a single payer advocate since the first time we started speaking with him back in 2006. Today he told his Upstate NY constituents that he was glad Obama "has placed healthcare reform on the front burner where it belongs."

For eight years, we've seen health care costs increasing across the board and the number of uninsured Americans climbing. In fact, right now approximately 14,000 Americans lose their health care coverage every single day because of this recession. There is a way to address this crisis and we are the only industrialized Nation that hasn't figured this out yet. Under a new President and a new Congress, we can move in a smarter, more cost effective direction. Many Americans worry about the cost of a national single payer system, but the statistics show this would lower per person costs significantly. We're not getting our money's worth from our current healthcare system, and I hope my friends on both sides of the aisle will join me in demanding a better way forward for all Americans.