Connie Saltonstall of Charlevoix, a former teacher and Charlevoix County commissioner, plans to run against Stupak this fall for the Michigan First Congressional District seat he’s held for 17 years.

Stupak presents himself as a staunch defender of the sanctity of life, but he’s spent the past year threatening to kill health care reform because, he insists, the legislation would provide federal funding for abortions.

In reality, neither the House nor Senate bill would fund abortions, and by killing the bill, Stupak and his dozen or so anti-abortion zealots will ensure the needless pain, suffering and deaths of many already-born Americans.

But is Stupak right — that the Senate bill directly subsidizes abortions? The answer appears to be no.

For starters, let’s look at the pages that Stupak cited to Stephanopoulos. From pages 2,071-2,072: “If a qualified health plan provides coverage of services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i)” — i.e., abortion — “the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to [health reform's government-funding mechanisms] for purposes of paying for such services.

As Slate’s Timothy Noah, who fact-checked Stupak last week, writes, “That seems pretty straightforward. No government funding for abortions.”

Pretty straightforward, that is, to anyone who’s not dense as a fence post, dismissive of facts, intent on grandstanding and OK with death-dealing side effects.

Stupak would have us believe he holds life as something precious that shouldn’t be pre-empted by abortions of convenience. We’re with him on that. But here’s where we part company:

Stupak is so determined to eliminate the remote chance some woman might figure out a way to get a few federal bucks for an abortion that he’s willing to sacrifice the lives of about 45,000 Americans a year to keep it from happening. And, those 45,000 deaths annually aren’t remote possibilities, they’re a certainty.

Washington — (Reuters) – Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

. . .Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

Nearly every political action in D.C. has an equal and opposite reaction. Rep. Diana Degette, D-Colo., co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, appeared on the Rachel Maddow show last night, showing how that works in this case.

Congressman Stupak is completely wrong. The House version that we passed before — or the one we considered before his amendment — had a compromise that we reached in my committee which kept the status quo in place, because we want this to be a health care bill, not an abortion bill.

. . .what Congressman Stupak wants to do is to ban people who want to buy insurance with their own private money in these insurance exchanges from doing so. And that would be a vast expansion of a restriction on a woman’s right to chose, and we can’t agree to that.

After Congressman Stupak passed his amendment in the House version, which said nobody could buy insurance in these exchanges with their own private dollars if it included abortion coverage, I circulated a letter and the letter simply said to Speaker Pelosi, “We are not going to vote for a final version of the bill if it restricts a woman’s right to choose beyond current law.” Forty people signed that letter. I’ve gone back and checked with all those 40 people, plus additional people, probably about 10 or 15 more, who say if a final bill restricts a woman’s right to choose beyond current law, we’re not going to vote for the bill.

So, it’s clear Stupak isn’t satisfied with maintaining the status quo ensured by the Hyde Amendment, which for years has ruled out federal funding for abortions. His real mission is moving the ball down the field, making it harder for women to exercise their fundamental human right of choosing what’s done with, and within, their own bodies.

And to succeed in that mission, Stupak, defender of life, is willing to sacrifice health care reform for 30 million Americans who now have none, and with that, the lives of 45,000 people a year.

In announcing her intention to run, Saltonstall issued a statement, saying:

“I believe that he has a right to his personal, religious views, but to deprive his constituents of needed health care reform because of those views is reprehensible.”

Absolutely right. Go, Saltonstall!

Even so, it’s critically important for President Obama and congressional Democrats to get cracking on this at something better than the speed of continental drift.

First, if Democrats are to have any hope of benefiting in the November election for delivering on their health care reform promise, it will be important for voters to see at least some previously without insurance being able to sign up for affordable coverage.

Second, the more people signed up for health insurance before Republicans regain control of Congress and/or the White House, the less able Republicans will be to gut or repeal health care reform. And, if you saw MSNBC’s Countdown last night, you’re aware of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., threatened repeal the first chance Republicans get.

McConnell: Every election in America this fall will be a referendum on this issue. And there’s an overwhelming likelihood that every Republican candidate will be campaigning to repeal it. The Democratic leaders are misleading their members and suggesting to them that somehow by approving this, they will get it behind them. Approving it guarantees that it will be ahead of them.

Unidentified reporter: If, in the chance that Republicans regain control of Congress, would that be something, though, that you would, as a potential majority leader, would pursue?

McConnell: Well, I’m not going to predict the outcome of the fall election. Many of you tried in other encounters to get me to put a number on that. We hope to be in a better position next year than we are now. And I think all of our candidates will take their campaign commitment seriously and try to enact them.

So far, Democrats seem absurdly unaware of the need for speed. Their mating-porcupines act leading to an up-or-down, simple-majority vote apparently won’t take place until after the much-revised compromise legislation has been scored for costs and savings by the Congressional Budget Office. That will take several weeks.

To make matters worse, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, doesn’t seem to be in sync with the White House about timing.

While Obama said he wanted action within a few weeks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., seemed to hint a final outcome could take far longer. “We remain committed to this effort and we’ll use every option available to deliver meaningful reform this year,” he said.

A week or two ago, Reid indicated this ordeal would be over with by Easter. Now, it’s just “this year”?

We increasingly get the impression top-level Democratic officeholders have forgotten more than they ever knew about politics, about the need to look as though they know what they’re doing, and the importance of producing results in something approaching a timely manner.

That doesn’t apply to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There’s good reason to believe if she was president, names would’ve been taken, butts would’ve been kicked, Republicans would’ve been left wondering what hit them, and health care reform would have been a done deal well before Christmas.

Here’s how Taylor begins his report about Senate rejection today of a measure that would’ve given people collecting Social Security benefits a one-time bonus.

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a proposal by President Barack Obama to give people on Social Security a $250 bonus check.

Republicans and Democratic deficit hawks combined to reject the idea by a 50-47 vote. The plan, offered in the Senate by Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would have added $14 billion to the out-of-control budget deficit.

We expect Republicans to characterize our very large budget deficit as “out of control.” They’re in the business of saying anything that casts President Obama and Democrats in a bad light, including depicting them as wanton free spenders. We don’t expect an AP staff writer to do Republicans’ work for them.

That loaded reference was just the beginning. In subsequent paragraphs, Taylor provides more of the same (emphasis ours).

. . . The costly measure follows passage Tuesday of a stopgap $10 billion measure to fund several of the same programs through the end of the month.

The daunting price tag on the measure guarantees more complications and an even rougher path through the Senate than experienced by the bill passed Tuesday.

Judgmental and emotionally loaded descriptive terms have their place in “news analysis” pieces, commentaries and feature stories. They don’t belong in straight news stories.

We don’t know if Taylor’s writing in this story reflects his notions or pushes others’ point of view. We do know he needs counseling from a no-nonsense editor, one who will take him to one side and tell him to report it straight, saving his opinions for pieces clearly labeled “opinion.”

Bunning explained his selfish idiocy on the Senate floor today, revealing it as personal/political pique because Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently declined to send to the floor for a vote a bill co-sponsored by a Republican and by Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

The media are reporting Bunning’s outrageous stunt as his doing alone, and given what a thoroughly nasty piece of work he is, that could very well be the case. But having watched Senate Republicans oppose unemployment compensation extensions in the past, an alternative possibility came to our mind, inspired in part by a remark Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., made on the Senate floor today.

From a Huffington Post item on this:

Unemployment insurance “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended.

“I’m sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can’t argue that it’s a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it’s a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here,” said Kyl.

So, here’s the other possibility. Since Bunning is not seeking re-election and couldn’t care less what the voting public thinks of him anyway, maybe Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and/or other conservative Republicans put him up to blocking the $10 billion extension.

It might not just be a matter of withholding jobless benefits from slacker wannabes, either.

Republicans want people to feel they can’t trust their federal government or rely on it to help them in times of need. Wreaking havoc on hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans and their families by leaving them suddenly without expected unemployment checks serves this conservative end quite nicely.

Secondly, Republicans are looking to score gains in the November elections because the public is thoroughly disgusted with congressional incumbents, most of whom are Democrats. Republicans may believe anything that adds to public anger at members of Congress will ultimately work to their benefit on election day.

OK, we know what you’re thinking. If Bunning is a Republican, wouldn’t his selfish move work against Republicans?

The answer is, not necessarily. First, many people know nothing about Bunning, including his party. But even among those who know he’s a Republican, his antics are being framed by the media as the work of a Senate maverick, not the doing of his party.

And then there’s this. Those watching C-SPAN late last Thursday night, when Bunning began repeatedly objecting, thus blocking action on the extension, saw Democrats react strongly

But how many were watching then? Probably far fewer than saw Bunning repeatedly speaking on the Senate floor today, spouting blather about debt and fiscal “responsibility.” Those who watched also saw Reid and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., being only able to question, criticize and condemn Bunning’s action. They could neither persuade Bunning to withdraw his blocking objections nor force the legislation through in spite of him. Thus, Democrats came across sounding weak and appearing impotent in the face of a determined conservative Republican.

Nothing could serve congressional Republicans’ purposes better. They look strong and decisive, Democrats look weak and ineffectual. The Republican base revels in such spectacles. More than a few independents cheer a lone senator supposedly standing by his principles — oblivious to the fact that on at least two occasions, Bunning has voted for jobless benefit extensions that weren’t “paid for” with spending cuts, as Durbin pointed out today.

Again, this is speculation on our part. We have no inside knowledge or proof.

We can’t say it’s true, just that it’s well within the anything-to-win, scorched-earth tactics conservative Republicans are infamous for.

“. . . Republicans, we know, proudly believe in the genius and sanctity of tax cuts for the wealthy — make that, ‘the productive.’ The GOP’s answer to any problem — from declining Sunday school attendance to increased rush-hour congestion — has always been predictable: Cut taxes, especially the capital gains tax.

“. . . But why are not the majority Democrats, the self-proclaimed tribunes of working people, storming the barricades and demanding tax justice beginning with the immediate repeal of the tax preferences for the most affluent? Could the Democrats’ passive lack of urgency about changing the nation’s manifestly unjust tax laws have anything to do with the fact that candidates of the party of Jefferson and Jackson have lately been the principal beneficiaries of Wall Street contributions? It’s time for them to prove otherwise.”

Prevent another letdown

Obama the president seems less like Obama the candidate as time goes on, whether the subject is promptly ending our Mideast wars, closing Guantanamo, reforming the Patriot Act, consequences for Bush administration lawbreakers, health care reform with a public option, relying on Wall Street insiders for economic advice and policy, or financial reform.

The compromised loyalties and DLC/New Democrat agendas of too many congressional Democrats dovetail entirely too well with the actions and attitudes of the post-election Obama we’re getting to know.

We expect the next unwelcome surprise will involve not letting the Bush tax cuts expire. In simplest terms, that would mean the nonwealthy, not well-connected rest of us paying more and more, while the McCourts and others like them pay little or nothing to keep our country going.

We’re reminded, too, of something Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said a couple of weeks ago about dealing with the $1.4 trillion federal deficit. Conrad said if taxes were collected fully from everyone, in a very short time we wouldn’t have that deficit.

We intend to let the White House, our senators and representative know how completely unacceptable such a move would be. We not only want the Bush tax cuts to expire, but for the top marginal tax rate to go up to 85 percent.

If you don’t want to pay the freight for the McCourts and many others like them, you might want to do the same.

Sure, many Americans tell pollsters they want to see the partisan divide bridged.

Of course people are hesitant about House and Senate health care reform bills so riddled with compromises, so chock-a-block with back-and-fill changes, and so soiled by deals like the one DINO Sen. Ben Nelson extorted, that senators and representatives are hard put to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”

Way late in the game, Obama has massaged and synthesized key reforms in both big bills into a simpler proposal, one he vainly hopes might garner some trace of bipartisan support. You can read a good synopsis of his handiwork here.

Politically, the problem for Obama going forward is that, as Ezra Klein explains, even if his compromise of all compromises goes through, Obama has forfeited the chance to be a hero and look like a winner.

Obama can’t expect attaboys from the Democratic left, which comes out of this year of muddle and attempted appeasement feeling spurned, scorned and burned. What John and Jane Public wanted all along was solid results, with benefits they get to see and feel soon — not at some indefinite time between now and 2019 — rather than a sudden blossoming of bipartisan goodwill in D.C.

If our president doesn’t realize by now that his efforts to work productively with Republicans are futile, that his persistence looks more and more like sappiness, we are in for a political ride that mirrors his haphazard drive to get the health care reform Americans need and want.

Democrats up for re-election in November had better don their helmets, tighten their seatbelts and brace for the worst.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment, Christians would suggest.”

This Amazing Fact comes to us from a professional politician first elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1991, whose Web page describes him as holding bachelor degrees in history and philosophy from from Belmont Abbey College, North Carolina, and an MA in humanities from California State University. Remarkable preparation, those, for rendering sweeping obstetrical judgments.

But who needs education based on science, on provable facts, when one can rely on folk wisdom passed down verbally through generations, until finally written in ancient languages and subsequently translated to various other languages over centuries by people of various points of view and variable devotion to accuracy?

When it comes to accuracy, we can gauge Marshall’s by this, from the news story:

According to Marshall, Planned Parenthood receives “about $500,000 a year” from the state.

But Jessica Honke, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, said the only state funding Planned Parenthood receives is from Medicaid reimbursements. That amount was about $35,000 in the 2009 fiscal year, according to the Department of Medical Assistance Services.

Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of gynecological and other health services, from cancer screening and HIV prevention to birth control for low-income women. Honke pointed out that abortions represent a minority of the group’s services.

It bears mentioning that any science-based, statistical study of handicapped offspring born to women who’ve had an abortion would have to screen for a variety of relevant factors before and during pregnancy. Those include family history of abnormal births; injury during pregnancy; workplace or other exposure to toxic substances; poor diet; lack of proper primary and OB/GYN care; and use of alcohol, tobacco and potentially harmful drugs.

But what’s a little bearing false witness when one is on a mission from God and out to score political points with the wilfully ignorant?

Well, there is this. Somewhere there are probably women who will read and believe Marshall’s bloviating, and suffer terrible, unfounded guilt and anguish thinking they caused their child to be handicapped.

Way to go, Marshall. You’re a real Republican piece of work.

On a day when the Internal Revenue Service came under literal attack, the agency reports that the nation’s 400 highest-earning households reported an average income of $345 million in 2007 — up 31% from 2006 — and that their average tax bill fell to a 15-year low.

Bloomberg writes that the elite 400’s average income more than doubled that year from $131.1 million in 2001, the year Congress adopted tax cuts urged by then-President George W. Bush.

The dominant U.S. political-economic policy approach of the past 40 years has been to lavish benefits on the wealthy, well-connected few, sparing them from taxation commensurate with their advantages and gains, so that they will spend, invest and make our economy grow like topsy. Trickle down, in other words.

Far from growing the economy for all, on repeated occasions when their greed ran amok, super-rich big-time operators turned criminal, giving us the savings and loan debacle, the Enron outrages and a housing bubble that burst. Through it all U.S. policy has been to make disastrous losses taxpayers’ and shareholders’ responsibility, while keeping obscene profits and private gains private.

All the while, unlike those other countries, America’s middle class has carried the burden of $800 billion annual defense budgets so we can police the world. Middle- and working-class Americans watched their jobs and whole industries being sent abroad, the better to make the rich richer. They’ve also paid the freight whenever Uncle Sam rushed to the aid of poor countries beset by famine, disease and natural disasters.

What have super-wealthy Americans done, besides periodically wrecking their fellow Americans’ financial security, mostly with little or no prison time resulting; socking money away in hidden bank accounts overseas; and accelerating and expanding the outsourcing of well-paying jobs to wherever labor is cheap and regulation is nil?

The rich have used their money and clout to play our political system like a vending machine. A key result of their power wielding has been the near elimination of American manufacturing — something that produces wealth, grows the economy for all, helps balance our wildly out-of-balance trade position, and generates tax revenues for the public benefit. Now, the leading sector of our economy is the financial industry, whose sharp operators make money pushing money around, routinely perpetrate frauds and hire armies of lobbyists to protect their wealth and ability to amass more wealth.

The super rich intend to have the best government their money can buy. They get it, too, by stoking the campaign coffers of radical-right conservative Republicans hellbent on reducing their benefactors’ taxes. Those Republicans have worked like termites, reducing the top marginal tax rate to ridiculously low levels, drastically cutting the capital gains tax and fighting the inheritance tax as if it were the greatest evil this side of Pol Pot’s slaughter of Cambodian innocents.

The fruits of conservative Republicans’ labors are everywhere to be seen. As in the huge numbers of job seekers who show up wherever a new big-box store full of imported goods is opening. As in rundown streets, highways, bridges, schools and decrepit rail service in the few places that still have rail service. See it also in federal and state parks, and in local libraries, shut down or operating on sharply reduced schedules and budgets.

Check around among people you know, asking how many have had one or more of young-adult offspring move back home because they can’t support themselves well enough and long enough between recessions to live independently. Then consider this:

Each household in the top 400 of earners paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992, the Internal Revenue Service statistics show.

. . .Their average effective tax rate was about half the 29.4 percent in 1993, the first year of President Bill Clinton’s administration, when taxes were increased. The top 400 earners reported an average of $46 million of income that year.

. . .The top 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992, the data show.

. . .Almost three-quarters of the highest earners’ income was in capital gains and dividends taxed at a 15 percent rate set as part of Bush-backed tax cuts in 2003, the statistics show.

Now, re-read the above, keeping in mind that the average American’s real income, adjusted for inflation, has declined over the same period, at a time when millions of those who need full-time jobs have been early-retired or limited to having to accept part-time, temporary or occasional jobs.

Then consider this, from an excellent post at Firedoglake, on how nonwealthy Americans fare in comparison to average people in other nations.

When it comes to ensuring working families have the bread-and-butter basics, the United States is an outlier, there’s no doubt. For example:

* 177 nations guarantee paid leave for new mothers; the U.S. does not.
* 74 nations guarantee paid leave for new fathers; the U.S. does not.
* 132 nations guarantee breastfeeding breaks at work; the U.S. does not.
* 163 nations guarantee paid sick leave; the U.S. does not.
* 48 nations guarantee paid time off to care for children’s health; the U.S. does not.
* 41 nations provide leave that can be used for child education needs; the U.S. does not.
* 33 nations provide paid leave to care for adult family members; the U.S. does not.

The cost to Americans is profound.

* Every year Americans lose income and homes when they get sick with serious illnesses.
* Restaurant workers, health care providers and co-workers spread disease when they go to work with infectious diseases.
* Infants fall sick at 1.5-5 times the rate when they are not breastfed-by mothers who have little choice.

Are the wealthy well-connected few the least bit grateful, willing to say enough and anxious to put things right in the land that has been so good to them and done so much for them? Some might be, but you can get a better understanding of the attitude of many by reading this.

Keep these things in mind, as the financial industry, the wealthy and their conservative Republican agents in Congress fight tooth and nail against desperately needed reforms.

Keep these things in mind — and be prepared to raise hell like you’ve never raised hell before — if President Obama backs off his campaign pledge to end the Bush tax cuts, and if congressional Democrats develop Jell-O knees syndrome when called on to end those tax cuts.

America is supposed to belong to us all, supposed to be a land of freedom and opportunity. It’s failing on all counts, and that won’t be fixed unless the nonwealthy, not-well-connected majority of us roll up our sleeves and fight for what’s fair and right.

We clicked this link and signed, and hope you’ll do the same.

This is important. Even if Democrats pass some health care reforms, without the competition for commercial insurers a public option will provide, the measure will be less than half a job.

Think about it: more than 47 million Americans uninsured; health insurance corporations jacking rates up as much 39 percent a year while dropping customers and pricing others out of being customers, all the while declaring record profits and lavishing obscene pay and bonuses on their CEO’s and top executives.

Meanwhile, taxpayers, charities, hospitals and health care professionals wind up footing the bill for the ever increasing number of people who can’t afford insurance and, too often, can’t pay for needed medical care.

The system is badly broken and will only get worse if it continues under the current setup.

Help fix it by joining the 18 Democratic senators who’ve endorsed the letter. Read the full text and add your name at Democracy for America’s site. Then contact your senators and representatives to get on board, and encourage everyone you know to do the same.

This would be a substantial and controversial change to a policy that has been successful for two decades. It would also present yet another challenge to our military at a time of already tremendous stress and strain. Our men and women in uniform are fighting two wars, guarding the frontlines against a global terrorist enemy, serving and sacrificing on battlefields far from home, and working to rebuild and reform the force after more than eight years of conflict. At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen had testified before a Senate panel that the time had come to end DADT, prompting McCain’s annoyed rebuke – an about face from the senator’s position of a few years earlier.

Despite static from some on the right, the change is under study, and Mullen himself is doing some fact finding in the field, hearing from troops stationed in Amman, Jordan, this week that the prospect of gays serving openly doesn’t bother them.

. . . Mullen . . . was nearing the end of a 25-minute question and answer session with troops serving here when he raised a topic of his own: “No one’s asked me about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” he said.

As it turned out, none of the two dozen or so men or women who met with Mullen at Marine House in the Jordanian capital Tuesday had any questions on the 17-year-old policy that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military – or Mullen’s public advocacy of its repeal.

. . .those gathered at Marine House made it clear they’ve already accepted the idea of gays and lesbians serving among them.

Of far more interest to them were other areas, they told Mullen, such as allowing women to serve in infantry units. They also asked about relations between the military and the State Department and, more narrowly, when a key Defense Department official would be assigned to Amman permanently.

Indeed, since Mullen appeared on Capitol Hill earlier this month and told a stunned Congress that in his personal view, gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve, the response among members of the military has been little more than a shrug.

This speaks well of our people in uniform. They’re serious people, many of them involved in stressful, sometimes dangerous work. They have more important things to be concerned about than whether Johnny has a crush on Jimmy instead of Joanie, or if the person in the next shower stall might think they’re kind of cute.

It stands to reason Mullen has a much better handle on the attitudes of military members than does McCain, who last served in uniform decades ago. And it’s to the admiral’s great credit that, unlike McCain, he’s had the good sense go around asking the people who will be affected, rather than grandstanding at a Senate hearing.

A commission is to formally study the changeover to having gays serve openly before the final order is given. We trust that order will at long last replace prejudice based on ignorance and fear with a policy treating all our soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen with the rights and respect they deserve.

McCain and others fit to be tied should look to our people in uniform for leadership on this. That’s because our military members are clearly way ahead of them — and not encumbered by a desire to score political points with 20-some percent of the electorate.