Boy, these insurance companies really have hearts of gold, don't they? They finally agree they won't kick out sick kids - "but it'll cost you." They're going to milk every last dime out of this until the new law kicks in:

Insurers said they would comply with regulations the government issues requiring them to cover children with pre-existing conditions, after a dispute with lawmakers over interpretation of the new health-care legislation.

The Obama administration has made near-immediate coverage for sick children a priority in its health-care overhaul. But shortly after the bill's passage last week, insurers contended that the law didn't require them to accept sick children until 2014.

The insurance industry's lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, initially said the law meant only that they needed to cover treatments for sick children who already were customers.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, sent AHIP president Karen Ignagni a letter Monday pledging to issue new regulations in coming weeks to clarify that insurers must take applications from sick children starting in September. "Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system," Ms. Sebelius said.

AHIP said de-linking the requirement to insure sick children from the law's mandate that everyone buy health-insurance coverage, which goes into effect in 2014, could drive up prices in the meantime. But the group said it would do whatever HHS tells it to do.

[...] Roughly eight million children remain uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, but just 1% to 2%—or 80,000 to 160,000—have a health condition such as cystic fibrosis or cancer that would disqualify them from private insurance coverage, said Sara Rosenbaum, chairwoman of the health-policy department at George Washington University and a children's health-care expert. Many of those children's families were unaware they could qualify for Medicaid or CHIP assistance or enroll in an employer plan, she said.

"We're talking nationwide about a handful of children" who might benefit from expanded private coverage, Ms. Rosenbaum said. "I can't imagine why insurance companies are fighting this so hard."

You go, girls.

Jodie Evans: You outed a CIA officer, you lied to take us to Iraq. You ruined the country. You totally ruined the country.

Wonkette:

Fancy book-author Karl Rove went to Beverly Hills last night to take questions about his very very gay dad. But then Code Pink showed up to make a citizen’s arrest, and Karl had no security! Was he able to beat up these ladies good? Also, someone brings up the Downing Street Memo, which Rove calls a fabrication — just like in 2005!

Lying us into a war is the kinda thing that can get people a tad bit upset. Does Rove really think he's going to be welcomed at book events like he is with Jay Leno or on FOX News? Poor Michele Malkin was shaken to her core over the event. I'd figure it would just roll off her back since she stalks children and family's like Graeme Frost because she disagrees on a policy level. Hey, she even goes to their homes for a little chat.

UPDATE: TP commenter Mr. Ed notes that Malkin visited the Frost’s home and business today. A coworker of Mr. Frost tells Malkin that the family is “struggling,” but she refuses to believe it.

Jane Hall was on FOX and was shocked that the right wingers attacked a 12 year old boy.

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Jane Hall on the Frost family: Right Wing bloggers swiftboated a 12-year old boy!"

Malkin and her kind are shocked that Rove would be confronted by the very un-scary Code Pink, but takes pride in stalking children. Nice.

Also read: Malkin Debases Herself With Further Attacks On A 12 Year Old. C&L Exclusive Quote!

They can sure dish it out, but they can't take even a light little pink-colored whiff of it.

Thom Hartmann has a suggestion for the Tea partiers. If they hate Socialism so much then sign this pledge.

Stop My Benefits!:

This site was mentioned on Thom Hartmann’s show. He gave great advice that people can dress up as Uncle Sam at “tea party” events and hand the form out to people to fill out and have taken their benefits taken away as they wish.

h/t The Political Carnival

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Bill O'Reilly was all worked up last night on his Fox News show, claiming that the "liberal media" are waving the bloody shirt again, using the violence and extremism and racism of a handful of joiners to smear an otherwise entirely innocent movement.

First, his Talking Points Memo segment was devoted to the notion that "the Tea Party as a whole is not responsible for the loons who may lurk among them."

Which is, you know, pretty much true. Unless, of course, the movement seems to attract a high percentage of loons, and especially if the movement itself employs loons as their speakers and representatives.

Which is the case with the Tea Parties.

This is pretty funny, really, coming from the guy -- as Matt Corley at ThinkProgress notes -- who only a couple of years ago was culling off comments at DailyKos to smear the entire liberal blogosphere as the equivalent of Nazis.

O'Reilly brought on Rev. Al Sharpton, who seems to have figured out how not to let O'Reilly make him into a punching bag, because he pretty effectively rebutted most of O'Reilly's points. Nonetheless, Monsieur Falafeloofah managed to assert that the "liberal media smear" of the Tea Parties by blaming them for their kooks is "unfair!"

This was followed by a segment with Mary Katherine Ham and Juan Williams. And Williams set off O'Reilly by pointing out that the Tea Parties are fundamentally a rebirth of the Patriot/militia movement of the 1990s:

WILLIAMS: You know, people who's have a lot of hateful attitudes towards President Bush and then somebody who is extremist on the fringe, yes. And if that was also to be then the case with the Tea Party, yes, that's too much and unfair. But, when you start to see militia groups start to associate with the Tea Party --

O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me stop you there. I haven't seen militia groups associating with the Tea Party.

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Stephen has some advice for the Republicans now that the health care bill passed. Allow the Democrats to have some more "Waterloos".

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(Spiro Agnew - the 1972 concept of Federalism would roll eyes now)

(Gordon Skene: My apologies for not posting the past week. Due to circumstances beyond my control - namely a very dead computer, it was impossible to post anything during a crucial period in our history. Timing is never perfect and I suppose there is no such thing as the perfect time for a computer to crash. My thanks to all of those who hung in there and dug around the site. Hopefully you found something you missed the first time around. We're back and glad to be back. Gordon)

I wonder just what our Tea Party friends would have to say about this Spiro Agnew address from October of 1972. The subject being The New Federalism and the concept of Revenue Sharing on the State and Local level. I imagine had George McGovern (the Democratic candidate for President) offered the same concept, screams of Socialism would have erupted. How the world has changed since 1972.

Spiro Agnew: “The new Federalism, as you City and County officials well realize is not a label, it’s a philosophy. It’s a belief that’s deeply held by Richard Nixon and by those of us associated with him that for too long, power has flowed from State and Local governments. It’s a determination to reverse that flow and send power back into the grassroots of America from whence come our tax dollars. It’s a decision to work, to bring Government closer to the people and to make it more quickly responsive to the citizenry. We’ll be witnessing in a few days Congressional enactment of the cornerstone of that philosophy, that which we call Revenue Sharing.”

Of course, in the midst of a heated campaign, lots of glowing promises are made but never kept. And as was the case with Nixon's second term, it was overshadowed by Watergate and Vietnam. But its interesting to consider when Republicans discuss Social issues it's called Compassionate Conservatism but when Democrats discuss Social Issues it's called Socialism. Funny, that.

As I've noted before, Haiti's earthquake recovery problems were exacerbated by the economic and trade policies pushed on them by the United States. Now Bill Clinton has admitted as much:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat. It may also have shaken up the way the developing world gets food.

Decades of inexpensive imports - especially rice from the U.S. - punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.

While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.

They're led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton - now U.N. special envoy to Haiti - who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti's rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

Clinton and former President George W. Bush, who are spearheading U.S. fundraising for Haiti, arrive Monday in Port-au-Prince. Then comes a key Haiti donors' conference on March 31 at the United Nations in New York.

Those opportunities present the country with its best chance in decades to build long-term food production, and could provide a model for other developing countries struggling to feed themselves.

"A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have ... resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. "That's a global phenomenon, but Haiti's a prime example. I think this is where we should start."

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Larry King allows former speechwriter for George Bush, former speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and former spokesperson for George Bush Scott McClellan come on and pretend there's anything left of the Republican Party that anyone could describe as "centrist". Just because a politician isn't acting like these screaming banshees from this Tea Party movement doesn't mean their policies are not far right.

David Frum who just got fired from his job at AEI apparently isn't done with making false equivalencies for Republicans yet. He and former speechwriter for Rudy-a-noun-a-verb-and-9-11 Avlon both agree that Rudy was the "center of gravity of American politics". Ah yes... the guy who decided to scare the crap out of everyone about the possibility of another terrorist attack and use that fear for his own financial gain with his "national security" consulting firm was a "centrist". Yeah right. Why? Because he only decided to pretend he hated gay people after he found it politically expedient?

And he's "strong on national security" because of what exactly? Putting the Emergency Command Center in the basement of the World Trade Center? He represented the "center" of the Republican Party's reelection strategy we've watched for the last nine years or so. Fear, fear, fear, fear and more fear (and tax cuts). Be afraid and daddy is going to keep you safe from the mean terrorists. Although he does seem to be having trouble keeping his fear mongering talking points straight any more.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Michael Steele says either STFU or fire me.

Michael Steele is the gift that keeps on giving. In a depressed economy this man is asking for private jets and spending thousands on hotels in Beverly Hills. Well, the bigwigs of the GOP aren't too happy.

On Monday morning, the Daily Caller reported that the RNC spent thousands of dollars on high-end travel arrangements, swanky hotels and, most remarkably, "meals" at a lesbian-and-bondage-themed nightclub in West Hollywood. The latter expense, naturally, grabbed most of the attention and the cleverest of headlines -- prompting the RNC to simultaneously state that it would investigate the expenditures and that it wasn't Steele who went to the club.

But the damage had already been done. While several GOP strategists are willing to grant Steele a pass -- under the rubric that one has to spend lavishly to raise lavish amounts of money -- several big donors and party officials are completely baffled.

"For those donors who truly believe in conservative values, this latest news about Steele has to be very disturbing," said Douglas MacKinnon, former press secretary to Majority Leader Robert Dole. "No matter which side of the aisle you find yourself, if you are giving a political party your hard-earned money, you should have no doubts that it is going to be spent as advertised and not to provide a spoiled, egocentric, out-of-touch chairman with frivolous luxuries which are out of reach of the vast majority of the American people. Michael Steele needs to resign and let the RNC vote in a man or woman who understands that his or her needs do not come before the needs of the nation or the party."

Steele knows he's in the driver's seat because if they boot him he can play the racism card. As much as conservatives try and lie and write bogus articles claiming that since people are just yelling 'n--ger' at African Americans, racism is long gone. Funny how that makes no sense, but it's conservatives.

It would appear that conservatives are leaking these embarrassing stores to hurt him, but Marc Ambinder makes an observation.

The flashy implications of the story are going to hurt Steele, who absorbs body blows (like the leak of a devastating internal fundraising memo) as if he had guts of, well, steel. But the sad truth for the RNC chairman is that he escapes censure because his party isn't organized enough to censure him, because Steele wields too little power to be considered a threat, and because the locus of Republican energy these days can be found in the House. These last two errors have been made by staffers, but they point to a culture of casualty at the RNC. No one, it seems, is afraid of enough the boss to go out of their way to avoid embarrassing him or the party.

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March 29, 2010 NBC Jay Leno Show