John McCain's Response to Financial Crisis: Katrina-Like

Obama nails McCain on the economy in Michigan yesterday:



Jed Lewison, HuffPo: Obama: McCain's Economic Crisis Response "Katrina-Like...Just Sorta Stood There"

"Senator McCain just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand that the storm hitting Wall Street hit Main Street long ago. That's why his first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a Katrina-like response. Sort of stood there. Said "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." That's why he's been shifting positions these past few weeks, looking for photo ops, trying to figure out what to say and what to do."

What Is It With Republicans and Fudge?

yahoo: Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R[epublican By Day, Democrat By Night]-S.C., right, speaks during a news conference in front of Schmidt's Fudge Haus in Columbus, Ohio, Thursday, July 24, 2008. As presidential rival Barack Obama toured Berlin, McCain told reporters he would love to give a speech in Germany. 'But I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for president.'
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Democratic Underground: Romney at the Fudge Factory

I managed to restrain myself before I added a picture of Larry Craig. Whew.

Compare and Contrast

President Shit-For-Brains at the Air Force Academy Graduation, Colorado, 2008
[hat tip to Dependable Renegade: Preznitial Dignitude]

Future President Barack Obama takes tour of school in Thornton, Colorado yesterday
[hat tip to BAGNewsNotes: New Hope On The Uniter/Divider Front?]

Operation Photo Oops

Official caption from whitehouse.gov: President George W. Bush visits with residents in Americus, Ga., March 3, 2007. The President toured tornado-damaged areas in Alabama and Georgia. White House photo by Paul Morse

Potential, real captions:

How's this pose, Turdblossom?

I'm already bored

Bush grows bored with photo op, calls Condi, tells her she's been replaced with younger woman.

Bush calls Laura to tell her his latest fantasy

Calling all morons

You make the call

Can you hear me now?

Ya think this'll make 'em forget about Walter Reed?

I saw this picture on Huffpo: Reading The Pictures: The "Fly By" That Won't Die

Supporting The Troops, Republican Style

Smile for the photo op, soldier!
whitehouse.gov caption: President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush talk with Sgt. Patrick Hagood of Anderson, S.C., Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005, during their visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. White House photo by Paul Morse
WaPo: THE OTHER WALTER REED
The Hotel Aftermath
Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons

Returning veterans who have served in the army of AWOL McFlightsuit and five-deferments-I-had-other-priorities Darth Cheney are treated like shit by the underfunded Veterans Administration. But aren't you glad millionaires are getting all those great tax cuts!

This may be the worst story in the article; this poor double amputee was left off the guest list for a White House ceremony because his missing legs would show. Sick.

Perks and stardom do not come to every amputee. Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

David tangled with Walter Reed's image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee, a Mexican national who was being granted U.S. citizenship by President Bush. A case worker quizzed him about what he would wear. It was summer, so David said shorts. The case manager said the media would be there and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row.

" 'Are you telling me that I can't go to the ceremony 'cause I'm an amputee?' " David recalled asking. "She said, 'No, I'm saying you need to wear pants.' "

David told the case worker, "I'm not ashamed of what I did, and y'all shouldn't be neither." When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

Here's the link for the first part of the story from Sunday's WaPo.

Support the Troops is Just a Catchphrase in Bushworld

Hey, man, we're just here for the photo op.
WhiteHouse.gov caption: President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush talk with Sgt. Patrick Hagood of Anderson, S.C., Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005, during their visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. White House photo by Paul Morse
Here's your compassionate conservatism. Walter Reed Army Medical Center is a frightening labrynth where soldiers and their families are left to cope basically on their own, a direct result of the starvation diet veteran's programs have been on via Bush's tax cutting war budgets. Plus, Chimpy McFlightsuit would rather scatter $10 billion dollars to a bunch of lowlife leeches like Halliburton than fund care for the soldiers he sends off to fight his war. Shame. Maybe Bush's handlers could send him into Building 18 so it will get cleaned up for the photo-op?

WaPo: Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[]

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

'His flop sweat was palpable'

In this video frame grab taken from television, President Bush addresses the nation from the White House library in Washington, Wednesday Jan. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/APTN)

The final word on the escalation speech:

Frank Rich, NYTImes: He’s in the Bunker Now

PRESIDENT BUSH always had one asset he could fall back on: the self-confidence of a born salesman. Like Harold Hill in “The Music Man,” he knew how to roll out a new product, however deceptive or useless, with conviction and stagecraft. What the world saw on Wednesday night was a defeated Willy Loman who looked as broken as his war. His flop sweat was palpable even if you turned down the sound to deflect despair-inducing phrases like “Prime Minister Maliki has pledged ...” and “Secretary Rice will leave for the region. ...”

TimesSelect wall; also here

Blogtopia* Roundup, Monday December 18th, 2006

Tagged shearwaters are tracked as the birds criss-cross the Pacific. (Tagging of Pacific Palagics)
Professor Juan Cole says Elliot Abrams, war-loving felon, must go.

Atrios points out another instance of mindless journamalism. Note to corporate media: Both sides of every story are not equal and do not deserve equal billing!

Americablog links to a New York Times article on the imprisonment of an American in Iraq and the depravity of our Iraq policy.

Digby on Guantanamo and the psychopath in charge of the innocents held there.

The photo, above, is taken from a Washington Post article on how technology is allowing science to learn even more about and understand the sea and its creatures: Technologies Changing Insight Into Seas


*yes, skippy coined that phrase!

Dead Man Blustering

Washington Times: Resign, Mr. Speaker

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

Of course, being the Moonie Times, they call on the House to appoint Henry Hyde (D-Hypocritical Adulterer) to take his place.

Another Reason To Support Eric Massa (NY-29) For Congress

Cheney is campaigning for his opponent, the Shotgun Senator, Randy Kuhl:

Raw Story: Cheney to stump for GOPer who bullied wife with guns

Roll Call excerpt:

If readers recall, widely reported divorce records showed that Kuhl, currently running for his second term, pulled not one but two shotguns on his wife during a 1994 dinner party at their home. Kuhl's ex-wife also described him as an abusive drunk who "hustled women."

Cheney, the man who may always be remembered for accidentally shooting his good friend on a hunting trip, has agreed to do a private photo-op at a Sept. 22 fundraiser for Kuhl in Rochester, N.Y. And, yes, you guessed it, Kuhl is considered vulnerable this year.

As one Democratic operative told HOH, "I can't tell what Cheney likes best about him—Kuhl's penchant for rubber-stamping the president or for combining beer with firearm use."

Eric Massa for Congress 2006

MainStUSA ActBlue Page

Operation Photo Op, September 11th Edition, Day 1825

Surrounded by all the New Yorkers who love them, President My Pet Goat and the Laurabot snuck into Ground Zero for a photo op yesterday.


U.S. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush pay their respects at a pool of water after laying a wreath at the site of the World Trade Center in New York September 10, 2006. (Gary Hershorn/Reuters)

So they could take closeups like this, like it's a real ceremony:


U.S. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush lay a wreath into a reflecting pool at the site of the World Trade Center in New York September 10, 2006, during a ceremony to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. (Keith Bedford/Reuters)

Hat tip to STOPGeorge on dailykos.

Operation Photo Op, Katrina Edition, Day 362

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks beside Hurricane Katrina survivor Rockey Vaccarella at the White House August 23, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)

Cake eating, guitar strumming President Bush is continuing to fight Hurricane Katrina with.....more and more powerfully staged photo ops.

Will Bunch at Attytode deconstructs the latest fakery.

"Rockey I": If it sounds too good to be true...

The good news is that CNN seems to have finally stop obsessing over John Mark Karr. Instead, they've found a new soap opera to go ga-ga over, Katrina survivor Rockey Vaccarella, who drove his FEMA trailer from his home in ravaged St. Bernard Parish to Washington with "the hope" of convincing President Bush to meet with him.

[]

And, whaddya know? Turns out that the earthy Vaccarella -- a highly successful businessman in the fast-food industry -- is indeed a Republican pol, having run unsuccessfully under the GOP banner for a seat on the St. Bernard Parish commission back in 1999.

[]

And in fact, Vaccarella seemed very confident that he would be meeting with Bush when he left home, to the point where he had a date scheduled and everything:

Dinner with the President is planned for the evening of August 22nd

Couldn't they just spend the money on the victims? I guess not.

Rockey even got a swag bag! Karl thinks of everything.
Rockey Vaccarella shows off some of the gifts given to him by President Bush, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2006, after meeting with Bush at the White House in Washington. Vaccarella, 41, of Mereaux, La., said he wanted to thank Bush for the federally provided trailers that have provided temporary housing to many in the region who lost homes, but also to keep the pressure on. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Welcome To The Doughnut Hole

Democrats running for Congress this fall must emphasize, over and over, that the Medicare Part (D)isaster bill was pushed by the Republicans and has been a huge boon for one group: pharmaceutical companies, because the bill BARRED Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices.

WaPo: Bills Soar As Many Hit Gap in Drug Plan
Medicare Provision Jolts Some Seniors

Although the Medicare handbook clearly describes the coverage break, critics say most Medicare recipients, bombarded with advertising from private prescription plans, focused on deductibles and premiums and the drugs included.

"There was a lot of emphasis on signing up seniors. It was a crusade almost," said Stuart Guterman, a Medicare expert with the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund. He doubts that many companies highlighted the doughnut hole in their marketing push. "That's not a selling point," he said.

Previous posts:

Medicare Part (D)isaster Doughnut Hole Is Here (May 21, 2006)

'Part D is a complex system of subsidies to private insurance companies' (May 15, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster Penalties: Will Rethugs Blink? (May 13, 2006)

Bush To Old People: Drop Dead (May 10, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster, Incompetently Administered, Misleading Poor Seniors (May 7, 2006)

Most Severely Ill Senior Citizens Already in Medicare Part (D)isaster Doughnut Hole (April 27, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Watch Out For That Hole (April 12, 2006)

President Out-of-Touch Moron Meets the Seniors (March 19, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Making the Mentally Ill Sicker (February 6, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster Creating Havoc at Social Security Administration (February 4, 2006)

Right Wing Blogs Exhibit Myopia Over Medicare Part D(isaster) (January 24, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster (January 20, 2006)

Operation Photo Op, Medicare Part D edition, 1.0 (January 18, 2006)

'Horrific at Best' (January 9, 2006)

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism: Sunday, January 8, 2006 (January 8, 2006)

Is The Media Ready to Cover Politics Substantively?

Paul Krugman asks, will America get fooled again? When he says 'we', he means the public and the press. I say, the public voted for Gore in 2000, despite the relentless drubbing he took in the corporate press, including the New York Times. This article really should be aimed squarely for the media. Will the media cover the issues? Or is PR and image everything? Will the media once again cover Karl Rove photo ops as substance, when they are merely showtime?

Paul Krugman, NYTimes: A Test of Our Character (TimesSelect wall)

the concluding grafs:

Why, after all, was Mr. Gore's popular-vote margin in the 2000 election narrow enough that he could be denied the White House? Any account that neglects the determination of some journalists to make him a figure of ridicule misses a key part of the story. Why were those journalists so determined to jeer Mr. Gore? Because of the very qualities that allowed him to realize the importance of global warming, many years before any other major political figure: his earnestness, and his genuine interest in facts, numbers and serious analysis.

And so the 2000 campaign ended up being about the candidates' clothing, their mannerisms, anything but the issues, on which Mr. Gore had a clear advantage (and about which his opponent was clearly both ill informed and dishonest).

I won't join the sudden surge of speculation about whether "An Inconvenient Truth" will make Mr. Gore a presidential contender. But the film does make a powerful case that Mr. Gore is the sort of person who ought to be running the country.

Since 2000, we've seen what happens when people who aren't interested in the facts, who believe what they want to believe, sit in the White House. Osama bin Laden is still at large, Iraq is a mess, New Orleans is a wreck. And, of course, we've done nothing about global warming.

But can the sort of person who would act on global warming get elected? Are we — by which I mean both the public and the press — ready for political leaders who don't pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies? That's a test of national character. I wonder whether we'll pass.

The full article, from Ed Strong.

Medicare Part (D)isaster Doughnut Hole Is Here

Harry DiOrio, KRT
Heart transplant recipient Frank Furfaro, of Patchogue, New York, can no longer afford his life preserving medication since his plan adopted the new Medicare drug benefit.
Every Senator and Congressman who voted for this (D)isaster should have it hung around his neck for the November elections.

Knight-Ridder: Millions face a `doughnut hole' lapse in Medicare coverage

Last year, Frank Furfaro of Patchogue, N.Y. had drug coverage through his Medicare managed-care plan that he felt was adequate. But when his plan adopted the new Medicare-drug benefit, things changed. First, his premiums increased. Then he noticed that the plan covered fewer of the drugs he took.

Furfaro, a disabled heart-transplant patient, found out that he'd hit the doughnut hole last month when he tried to fill a prescription for two immunosuppressant medications. Instead of two $25 co-pays, the pharmacist charged him $661 and $329 for the prescriptions.

"I threw a fit," he said. "What am I supposed to do? I don't have $661 in my pocket." Furfaro said he wasn't told about the doughnut hole when his Medicare HMO changed its coverage in January.

Furfaro, 47, left the pharmacy empty-handed, thinking that without his drugs he was going to die.

"I thought, `That's it. It's over.' The three years I put into the transplant, the waiting and everything. It was a waste of time because I can't get my medicine."

His father helped him purchase the cheaper drug of the two. But Furfaro has gone more than three weeks without the other drug, the one that helped him overcome severe organ rejection after the transplant in 2001. Disabled since 2001 and living off a monthly Social Security Disability Insurance payment of $1,171, he recently took a job as a security guard to earn money for his medications.

He's already feeling weaker and tired. "I lay around a lot. I don't have a lot of energy. I'm short of breath. I don't feel well at all," he said.

If his health deteriorates further, Furfaro said, he'll just get admitted to a hospital and receive his medicine that way, as Medicare will pay all bills if he's hospitalized.

That scenario will be duplicated at hospitals nationwide once more people hit the doughnut hole, said Bob Hayes, the executive director of the Medicare Rights Center, a New York-based advocacy group.

[]

As it stands, the doughnut hole stands is an insurance industry anomaly.

"It's not something we've ever seen in any other insurance product that I'm aware of," said Juliette Cubanski, principal policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Previous posts:

'Part D is a complex system of subsidies to private insurance companies' (May 15, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster Penalties: Will Rethugs Blink? (May 13, 2006)

Bush To Old People: Drop Dead (May 10, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster, Incompetently Administered, Misleading Poor Seniors (May 7, 2006)

Most Severely Ill Senior Citizens Already in Medicare Part (D)isaster Doughnut Hole (April 27, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Watch Out For That Hole (April 12, 2006)

President Out-of-Touch Moron Meets the Seniors (March 19, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Making the Mentally Ill Sicker (February 6, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster Creating Havoc at Social Security Administration (February 4, 2006)

Right Wing Blogs Exhibit Myopia Over Medicare Part D(isaster) (January 24, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster (January 20, 2006)

Operation Photo Op, Medicare Part D edition, 1.0 (January 18, 2006)

'Horrific at Best' (January 9, 2006)

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism: Sunday, January 8, 2006 (January 8, 2006)

Operation Photo Op, George W. Bush Posturing on Immigration Edition

Commander Codpiece has a new war, the war on his falling poll numbers. The next front in that war, another war of choice, is the Mexican border. (Why not Canada? It has its own game already. Dead or Canadian? (Examples: Pierre Trudeau? Both! Steve Nash? Canadian.)

The next powerfully staged photo op of the Bush Administration's continuing series of powerfully staged photo ops takes place in the Oval Office tonight, on prime time television. It will lead to the next powerfully staged photo op, the sight of National Guard troops riding little ATVs on the Mexican border, brandishing M-16s and looking tough. Maybe Commander Codpiece will go to the border for his own powerfully staged photo op, wearing one of those weird semi-military jackets with the Presidential seal embroidered on the breast pocket.

But it's all a ruse. The real Border Patrol have been cut by the Bushies, so they can give tax cuts to millionaires.

Bush campaigned in 2004 on a pledge to hire 2,000 new Border Patrol agents each year for five years. But his '06 budget scrapped those plans and asked for only 210.

'Part D is a complex system of subsidies to private insurance companies'

You say (d)ebacle, I say (d)isaster; let's call the whole thing off.

Krugman, NYTimes: D for Debacle (Like Bush will tell us tonight about Mexico, NYTimes has National Guard patrolling to keep Krugman behind his wall)

Today is the last day to sign up for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. It appears that millions of Americans, confused by the array of competing plans or simply unaware of the cutoff date, will miss the deadline. This will leave them without drug coverage for the rest of the year, and subject to financial penalties for the rest of their lives.

[]

[P]rescription drug coverage didn't have to be bafflingly complex. Drug coverage could simply have been added to traditional Medicare. If the government had done that, everyone currently covered by Medicare would automatically have been enrolled in the drug benefit.

Adding drug coverage as part of ordinary Medicare would also have saved a lot of money, both by eliminating the cost of employing private insurance companies as middlemen and by allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices. This would have made it possible to offer a better benefit at much less cost to taxpayers.

But while a straightforward addition of drug coverage to Medicare would have been good policy, it would have been bad politics from the point of view of conservatives, who want to privatize traditional social insurance programs, not make them better.

[]

So what we got was a drug program set up to serve the administration's friends and its political agenda, not the alleged beneficiaries. Instead of providing drug coverage directly, Part D is a complex system of subsidies to private insurance companies. The administration's insistence on running the program through these companies, which provide little if any additional value beyond what Medicare could easily have provided directly, is what makes the whole thing so complicated. And that complication, combined with an obvious lack of interest in making the system work, is what led to the disastrous start-up.

[]

And that's why when it comes to actual policy as opposed to politics, the Bush administration has turned out to have the reverse Midas touch. Everything it gets its hands on, from the reconstruction of Iraq to the rescue of New Orleans, from the drug benefit to the reform of the C.I.A., turns to crud.

Ed Strong has the full article.

Previous posts:

Medicare Part (D)isaster Penalties: Will Rethugs Blink? (May 13, 2006)

Bush To Old People: Drop Dead (May 10, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster, Incompetently Administered, Misleading Poor Seniors (May 7, 2006)

Most Severely Ill Senior Citizens Already in Medicare Part (D)isaster Doughnut Hole (April 27, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Watch Out For That Hole (April 12, 2006)

President Out-of-Touch Moron Meets the Seniors (March 19, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Making the Mentally Ill Sicker (February 6, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster Creating Havoc at Social Security Administration (February 4, 2006)

Right Wing Blogs Exhibit Myopia Over Medicare Part D(isaster) (January 24, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster (January 20, 2006)

Operation Photo Op, Medicare Part D edition, 1.0 (January 18, 2006)

'Horrific at Best' (January 9, 2006)

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism: Sunday, January 8, 2006 (January 8, 2006)

But It Was A Powerfully Staged Photo Op, Wasn't It

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

--Stephen Colbert, White House Correspondents Dinner, 2006



dailykos: Meanwhile.... (in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans, 8.5 months later)



People living outdoors in camping tents, in America, 8 1/2 months after the federally-built levees broke.

Medicare Part (D)isaster Penalties: Will Rethugs Blink?

Monday, May 15 is the deadline for seniors to sign up for the Medicare Part (D)isaster prescription drug plan. If you don't sign up by Monday, no matter what your circumstances, you face a lifetime of escalating penalties for missing the deadline. Read the last paragraph of today's WaPo article: they have already waived the deadlines and penalties for the poorest seniors. I wonder if all this Bush blather about enforcing the deadline was just a bait-and-switch to get seniors signed up (to the benefit of the real beneficiaries of the plan, the pharmaceutical companies) and then give his Rethug supporters the chance to look good by doing the right thing on May 15th?

WaPo: GOP Wavers On Penalties In Medicare Drug Plan

As older Americans face a nationwide deadline Monday to sign up for Medicare prescription drug coverage, key Republicans are examining ways to remove or reduce financial penalties the Bush administration plans to charge people who try to join the program after the enrollment cutoff, according to lawmakers and legislative aides.

GOP lawmakers are reluctant to talk openly of their plans before midnight on May 15, for fear of counteracting a cheerleading blitz that President Bush and his top health advisers have undertaken to spur a last-minute surge in enrollment.


Still, motivated by Republicans' concerns about their prospects in the fall elections and by persistent confusion about the new drug benefit, several of Congress's architects of the program have concluded that it would be unwise to punish people who miss the deadline. The rethinking of the penalties, by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), House Ways and Means health subcommittee Chairman Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), and others, marks the first time Republicans have broken with the White House over the program.

[]

The financial penalties are an attempt to motivate relatively healthy Medicare patients to sign up right away, rather than waiting until their health falters and they need more prescription drugs. The late fee, based on 1 percent of the national average price of the insurance premiums for the drug coverage, starts out relatively small. It starts at an extra $1.98 per month if they sign up later this year, but it mushrooms the longer people wait to get coverage.

[]

Of the 6 million people who still lack drug coverage based on the administration figures, a disproportionately large share -- about 3.2 million -- have relatively low incomes. CMS announced a few days ago that it would eliminate deadlines and penalties for that group.

Previous posts:

Bush To Old People: Drop Dead (May 10, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster, Incompetently Administered, Misleading Poor Seniors (May 7, 2006)

Most Severely Ill Senior Citizens Already in Medicare Part (D)isaster Doughnut Hole (April 27, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Watch Out For That Hole (April 12, 2006)

President Out-of-Touch Moron Meets the Seniors (March 19, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Making the Mentally Ill Sicker (February 6, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster Creating Havoc at Social Security Administration (February 4, 2006)

Right Wing Blogs Exhibit Myopia Over Medicare Part D(isaster) (January 24, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster (January 20, 2006)

Operation Photo Op, Medicare Part D edition, 1.0 (January 18, 2006)

'Horrific at Best' (January 9, 2006)

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism: Sunday, January 8, 2006 (January 8, 2006)

Operation Photo Op: Dennis Hastert Loves Hydrogen Cars For the Cameras

House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill., center, gets out of a Hydrogen Alternative Fueled automobile, left, as he prepares to board his SUV, which uses gasoline, after holding a new conference at a local gas station in Washington, Thursday, April 27, 2006 to discuss the recent rise in gas prices. Hastert and other members of Congress drove off in the Hydrogen-Fueled cars only to switch to their official cars to drive back the few block back to the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Yes, that is the actual Yahoo caption. Hat tip to Crooks & Liars.

Hastert couldn't keep up the pretense even for a few blocks.

WaPo: Phony War on Gas
Attacks on 'price gouging' make good politics, but they don't help consumers much.