The vote in favor of passing HR3962, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, was 220 in favor to 215 opposed in the House of Representatives last night.

While not a perfect solution to all of the flaws of the American health care “system,” this bill goes further to provide all Americans with health insurance coverage than ever before. And while I am personally in favor of putting all insurance companies out of business and adopting a government-run, single-payor system, I recognized the promise of this bill as one of a series of steps toward the ideal.

In short, this bill isn’t liberal enough to satisfy my ultimate preferences, but it is so much better than the status quo that I just don’t understand how anyone who was elected as a Democrat could vote against it.

And yet, 39 members of the Democratic caucus in the House did just that.

The New York Times has a very helpful chart of those individuals, including the percentage of “nonelderly uninsured” individuals in their districts as well as voting breakdowns from the 2008 election.

Let’s look at some of those figures, along with statements from the Representatives themselves, shall we?

First up, with the highest percentage of “nonelderly uninsured” at 29% is Congressman Dan Boren from Oklahoma’s second district — the eastern quarter of the state. The district has a population of around 690,000 people, according to the 2000 census, which means that approximately 200,000 of those people are the “nonelderly uninsured” documented by the NYT chart.

Dan Boren won his last election by 41%, even though his district voted for McCain by a margin of 32%. And why did he vote against insuring ~200,000 of his constituents?

Two reasons: abortion, and taxes. He’s a so-called “Blue Dog” Democrat, a fiscal conservative, and doesn’t want to spend a trillion dollars on health care by raising any taxes, especially if any of that money goes toward funding abortions.

Except that the anti-abortion amendment, the Stupak amendment, passed by a vote of 240-119. Proposed and championed by a Democrat from Michigan, the amendment forbids any insurance policy purchased through the federally-funded exchange created by the bill to offer any coverage for abortions.

So for Boren, it really came down to money in the end. Money, vs. ~200,000 people without health coverage.

Second is Congressman Harry Teague, from New Mexico’s second District, the southern half of my state, with 25% “nonelderly uninsured.” The district has just over 600,000 people over a vast geographical area, so that percentage works out to about 151,000 individuals without health coverage.

Harry Teague is a freshman Congressman, and won the election by 12 points in a district that went for McCain by ONE percent. And why did he vote against health care reform, insuring ~151,000 New Mexicans?

After waffling about “concern” over the public option, Teague’s official reasoning is that the bill doesn’t go far enough to rein in the insurance companies, or lower costs for businesses. While I am inclined to agree with this statement, I don’t see it as a valid excuse for voting against a bill that does so many good things — particularly abolishing exclusions for pre-existing conditions. And when you represent a district with ~151,000 individuals with no health care at all, I find this vote unconscionable.

For the record, Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio’s tenth district voted no for much the same reason — he is of the opinion that a single-payor system is the only way to go, regardless of the approximately 82,000 individuals in his district who currently have no health care.

There are 36 more Democratic Representatives who voted no, for all kinds of reasons.

And then there is Republican Congressman Joseph Cao from Louisiana, the ONLY Republican to vote for the bill.

I have to say that I personally respect Congressman Cao more than any of the Democrats who voted no because the bill “doesn’t go far enough,” because he actually took his constituents into account rather than pure politics. Louisiana’s second district, encompassing most of New Orleans, needs the health care coverage that this bill provides (PDF), regardless of what the Republican party leadership says, and Cao stood up for them.

I wish more Democrats had that kind of conscience.

I suspect that Congressman Cao will also be easily reelected, particularly if health care reform gets through the Senate and is actually signed into law. Likewise, I suspect the Democrats who voted “no” to face some tough primary challenges, and Republican victories in the general.

I will fully admit that Bill Maher, so-called comedian, makes me nuts. He’s obnoxious, he’s not funny, and I just can’t stand him.

But I can’t help but agree with him that it is high time for the Obama administration to give up on the experiment of “collaborating” with the Republican party to get health care reform done (video from his Tonight Show appearance last night can be found here, if you’re interested).

The Republican party, as a party, is just not interested. Sure, there are sane individual Republicans, such as Senator Johnny Isakson from Georgia, who proposed that Medicare actually pay for a voluntary counseling session between doctors and patients about end-of-life directives: living wills, or durable power of attorney, do not resuscitate orders, etc, and then got demonized as the creator of DEATH PANELS, BEWARE!! (For the record, here’s a great transcript from Ezra Klein about the whole thing.)

But when you put them all together, and have Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin whip them into frenzies about the “evils” of government and especially the “Democrat” party, which you know wants old people to be euthanized at age 65, just ‘cuz, they all turn into morons.

Sure, that’s a generalization, but I don’t really care at this point. Barney Frank has been getting alternatively lynched and sainted for daring to compare “debating” whether or not health care reform is a Nazi policy to having a discussion with a dining room table. I don’t think he’s worthy of sainthood, and he probably could have been just a little more polite, but the woman he was talking to wasn’t actually interested in an answer to her “question,” but merely to ask it in an inflammatory manner and get some attention.

It was high time someone called a spade a spade, but of course the media turned it into a story about “did he go too far?” rather than about the actual issue at hand — that the “debate” over health care, and about any other important matter before our lawmakers for that matter, has become an embarrassing mish-mash of he said/she said bullshit, reporting the fact that people have opinions rather than the validity of those opinions. What happened to civil, logical discussion of how to actually make laws that help people and make their lives better? Why aren’t we talking about what should be in those laws that will help the most people? Or about how to make sense of these tough issues using reason and good sense rather than vitriol and fear?

The President’s most recent YouTube address is great, and level-headed, but the people he’s really trying to convince just won’t have it.

They’re not even all that interested in being right, just in the Democrats being wrong. I’m talking about Betsy McCaughey, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, and you can name your own personal right-wing nutjob here if you like, especially the ones who aren’t famous but like to parrot what the famous ones are screeching on the TEEvee all damned day.

It’s not about facts any more, it’s not about real concerns over what might be in an actual health care reform bill, of which there isn’t just one at this point, it’s about winning. Barack Obama could sign an oath in the blood of Jesus on the flesh of an angel held by God Himself that you can keep your private health insurance if you want to, and these people are still going to make scary insinuations about socialism and government-sanctioned euthanasia of old people and babies with Downs Syndrome. That’s how they have been trained, and they’re not going to change, not for anything in the world.

So it’s time to call a freaking wingnut a freaking wingnut and get on with the business of fixing health care. There is no way to possibly hear every person out who wants to be heard, especially if they’re not interested in actually contributing to the issue at hand but just to the conspiracy theories and fear mongering and demonization of the Democrats’ motives.

So why am I posting this, if I think the debate is over before it has begun? Well, I’m an eternal optimist, and I’m hoping that there are folks out there with good ideas about what should be in the health care bill. And I think that conversation, free of the false dichotomy of winning vs. losing on the issue, could actually be interesting.

Personally, I believe that health insurance is a giant scam and should be eliminated entirely, but I understand that we have to take some baby steps. So, first off, I want to see a public option, Medicare-for-all kind of thing, something where we’re not requiring people to give money to private insurance companies. And secondly, I want to see much tougher, Federal rather than state-by-state, regulation of insurance companies, particularly over pre-exisiting conditions, actuarial tables, and they way they nickel and dime people over every aspect of care rather than allowing doctors to proscribe treatment — patients shouldn’t have to worry while they’re being treated about what it’s going to cost.

Those are my must-haves, though there are a lot of other great ideas floating around as well. What about you?

(And please note that any hint of hijacking the conversation for the above-ranted-about conspiracy theory bullshit will be immediately deleted. This is not the place. Period.)

Here’s a video run-down of just a few of the McCain campaign ads that have been called LIES by mainstream media sources (not just bloggers!):

The truth must be told.

Heart doesn’t want the McCain campaign using their song, “Barracuda,” as Sarah Palin’s theme song.

I’m finding it more and more amusing the number of musicians who have filed “Cease and Desist” complaints against the McCain campaign for using their songs without permission. The growing list includes ABBA, Chuck Berry, for “Johnny B. Goode,” John Hall of Orleans, for “Still the One,” John Mellencamp, for “Pink Houses” and others, Van Halen, for “Right Now,” and Jackson Browne, who is currently suing the campaign for copyright infringement, for using “Running on Empty” in an anti-Obama ad. Also, the Warner Music Group made YouTube remove a McCain video set to Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” and Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey objected to his use of a clip from “Wayne’s World.”

Even “mavericks” have to follow the rules sometimes. Awww.

If you’re going to write on your blog about national figures, no matter what you might say about them, at least spell their names right:

Barack Obama (one r, and a c before the k!)

Joe Biden (Way easy, but can’t believe the number of typos I’ve seen!)

John McCain (That one’s not so hard)

Sarah Palin (Sarah with an h!)

And for good measure: Joseph Lieberman (i before e, and only one n; though I don’t know why you’d want to bother)

If you spell them right, you’ll avoid looking like a complete idiot before anyone actually reads what you have to say. That is all.

So there’s lots of babble all over the interwebs about how “real” feminists shouldn’t criticize Governor Sarah Palin for her “fluffier” qualities, i.e. her beauty pageant days, her hairstyle, her youth, her kids’ names, her tendency to sound like a muppet (or Mary Murphy from So You Think You Can Dance, as my 7 year old daughter posited when the news was on last night), etc., because by doing so we play into the stereotypes of why “women shouldn’t be in politics.”

But here’s the thing. John McCain quite obviously didn’t pick her for her resume, because she doesn’t really have one. He picked her primarily because his party wouldn’t let him pick Lieberman, but beyond that because she’s a woman, an attractive one, an Evangelical Christian with so-called “traditional” values, and because he doesn’t think she’ll get in his way.

He picked her not because of her ability to help him govern, or to take over in case he keels over (not unlikely!), but because he thinks her image will help him win the election. She’s a mom, therefore moms will vote for her. She’s an Evangelical, so the right-wing Christianists will vote for her. She’s a woman, so anyone who supported Hillary will, of course, vote for her. Foreign policy experience? She won’t need that!

He picked her exactly because of all the superficial qualities that we’re not “supposed” to criticize her personally for. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that Cindy, for whom he cheated on and left his first wife, is also a pageant queen approximately half his age? These are women he thinks he can control, pat on the head, and say “Run along, now,” when he’s done with them. Whether or not there’s an interesting brain in her head, which it seems there is, that’s not what John McCain cares about.

So to say that Palin’s looks, etc., don’t have anything to do with the politics of this decision is to fundamentally misunderstand John McCain’s politics, and what this choice says about the kind of person he is and how he might govern this country. To him, she’s a Barbie, a token, a tool to win an election — and do you really want to vote for someone who treats people like that? I know I don’t, no matter their political positions.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t also discuss Palin’s politics, which on the national stage have started with a blatant, verifiable lie about the “Bridge to Nowhere” fiasco, but to point out that her politics are not why she was chosen for this position in the first place. She fits John McCain’s idea of what a female politician “should” be, namely window-dressing, and the rest of the women in the country shouldn’t worry our “pretty little heads” about the politics of it, because he’ll take care of everything else.

And it’s this attitude from him, the condescension and patronization of every woman in this country by choosing this woman for all the wrong reasons, that pisses me off. If Sarah Palin were instead Scott Palin, with the exact same record, inexperience, and family circumstances, do you really think he would have been anywhere on the map for this position?

How sad is it that all I can think is, “Awwww, it’s Vice President Barbie!”

I mean, seriously? You’re 72 years old, have a history of health problems including cancer, and you pick a vice presidential candidate who has been a governor for about two minutes of a state that ranks 47th in population, fewer people than Senator Obama represented in the Illinois State Senate. One who is currently under investigation for trying to get her sister’s ex-husband fired from the Alaska State Troopers, and has ties to Senator Ted Stevens, he of the “It’s a series of toooobs” description of the internet who is now under indictment for all kinds of corruption.

This is the person who, if they somehow manage to win in November, has a likely possibility of actually being the President within the first term when the man from Old keels over.

And to add to the media circus, she’s a former beauty-pageant queen with five kids named Track, Bristol, Piper, Willow, and Trig who belongs to the Assemblies of God denomination, better known as those-what-speak-in-tongues and practice faith-healing.

Wow.

It’s sad, because she actually seems like a bright person, and I admire the work she’s done to clean up some of the more obvious corruption in her state, but the Vice Presidency? You’re kidding, right?

What is it with male politicians who can’t keep it in their pants and then lie about it, repeatedly, with the full knowledge of their wives?

And what is it with the wives who let them?

I’m all for being human, and having flaws and failings, but there’s a time when I think someone has an obligation to say, “Hey, look, that’s WRONG and you have to not only QUIT IT but also COME CLEAN about it (not just when it looks like you might get caught), especially if you’re holding/running for the highest office in the land where loyalty and honesty are pretty much requirements of the job.”

Disgusting.

If you have any interest in or concern for the future formation of Unitarian Universalist ministers, I suggest you take a look at the materials posted at Celestial Lands regarding proposed fundamental changes at Meadville Lombard Theological School.

On the public relations side of things, the school is touting their road ahead as nothing but positive. Underneath, however, is a painfully familiar story of opacity and stubbornness on the part of the administration, particularly noted by the lack of involvement by both the students and the faculty in the changes to the educational program. Add to that the turnover of at least 14 staff members in the last few years, and you have one hot mess.

I can’t say I’m surprised. I was struck, repeatedly, during our four years in Chicago while I supported my husband through this program, by the sheer myopia of the administration, especially in regards to their dealings with students and alumni/ae. The students were and still are consistently left out of formative discussions, told that the school would “take care of them,” while the alumni/ae were and still are consistently pumped for funds without regard for how they were treated as students, or the cost of a seminary education that continues for years with astronomical student loan payments.

The faculty, on the other hand, seemed to be much in the same boat as the students — their input belittled, their resources limited, their ranks thinned in favor of more administrative positions (like the highly paid new provost) — and yet still managed to provide outstanding academic grounding to the students, and support on many levels during the process of ministerial formation. It should be noted that the faculty and the administration are completely separate entities.

Institutional issues aside, what troubles me most about the proposed changes to the academic curriculum is the seemingly arbitrary decision that a full year’s internship in a congregation is no longer a necessary step in the formation of a parish minister.

Sorry, but this is simply wrong. I speak as someone who has witnessed the formation of four years’ worth of seminary students, through their internships. They leave the school after two years of classes, still as students very much grounded in theory, go off for a year of internship, and come back secure in their authority and callings, having been through the trenches of an entire church year with all that entails. Not to mention that this internship is required by the Fellowship Committee, as a good measure of the kind of ministry this student will practice, and it doesn’t seem that committee has signed on to the proposed elimination of it from the M/L program, though the students have been “assured” otherwise. Not to mention that when a first year graduate is in search for a full time job in a congregation, the experiences of their internship provide a good measure to the search committee of what kind of ministry they might be getting.

Would you want to hire someone to run your church right out of seminary, if they have not served an internship under the supervision of a senior minister? It’s the equivalency of a doctor’s residency, before they are permitted by licensing boards to go into private practice.

It may seem that I’m talking out of my ass about things that I’ve only witnessed from the outside, so I’ll close by referring you to the words of one of the most valued and respected members of the M/L faculty, not to mention throughout the Unitarian Universalist movement, Rev. David Bumbaugh:

“We’re headed for a trainwreck.”

If you believe ministry is important to this movement, this is something to which attention must be paid. Are we witnessing the death-march of one of our most valuable institutions, one of only two Unitarian Universalist seminaries? How indicative of more widespread problems in our movement is the brokenness of this institution?

Is it time for a louder call from the outside of the value our movement holds for our ministers and our seminarians?