Call me an American Dissident. I believe in democracy and government of, FOR, and BY the PEOPLE. I do NOT believe in the plutocratic corpocracy this country is today, wherein government is made and administered of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy. I believe in wealth which is HONESTLY attained through hard work and merit. I do NOT believe in wealth attained by means of deceit, exploitation, or leverage. There is enough for all in this world. Greed is the major cause of poverty, and both are totally unnecessary.
NOBODY has wanted a meaningful health care reform bill more than I. By meaningful, of course, I refer to a bill that would provide universal overage, end discriminatory pre-existing condition exclusions and recision practices by greedy health insurance companies, end age and gender discrimination, and stop the unjustifiable, arbitrary, and continual rises in health care premium and prescription drug prices. But the current Senate bill does none of those things and is meaningless. The pro-insurance profits Republican congressional delegation, and insurance industry shills like Senators Joe LIEberman and Mary Landrieu have seen to that. The clip below sums up this unfortunate situation far better than I can.
This bill, as currently composed, is proof positive we have passed from being a democracy into being a PLUTOCRACY, as I mentioned in my previous post, Of, By, and For the Few. I stand with Keith Olbermann and Gov. Howard Dean when I now shout:
Jack, At a given point in time (may be as soon as tomorrow)I may regret this, but I got to agree with you.
It's been whittled down enough,it never did have single payer.The bastards wouldn't even offer it up as a big bargaining chip.
Time to man/woman up. Zapata said it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
People are dying. Kill the bill and let the people realize the Repubs and Blue Dogs betrayed them big time,hell almost all the Dems betrayed them as well.
Oso, I like your Zapata quote, and it's true. As Olbermann strongly suggests here, it is time to pass a GOOD bill through reconciliation. And as far as blue dogs and Repubs go, it's time for us progressives to proclaim, "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!" BTW, Yellow Dog over at Blue in the Bluegrass has a great post currently running on what we progressives should now do.
When the GOP held the House and Senate, they rammed through their extreme welfare-for-the-rich, screw-the-working-class agenda and the Dems sat around meekly and offered zero opposition. Now that the Dems have the House and Senate, they have utterly failed to do anything. I never thought I'd say this a mere year after the horrors of the Bush era, but I am completely and totally disappointed with Obama and the Dems.
Indeed, kill the bill. Why not? it is essentially worthless and is a mockery of what it could have been.
Oso says it all- " Kill the bill and let the people realize the Repubs and Blue Dogs betrayed them big time,hell almost all the Dems betrayed them as well."
Marc McDonald @ "I never thought I'd say this a mere year after the horrors of the Bush era, but I am completely and totally disappointed with Obama and the Dems."
Did you see the recent polling that says the American electorate [gasp!] is moving in the GOP direction! Obviously they have total amnesia or brain damage.
Marc, My sentiments exactly. We have been betrayed by weakness and political ineptitude! --------------- mud_rake, It shows how short-sighted and forgetful our political memories can be (some of us; the apathetic or peripherally informed ones). It makes absolutely no sense at all to return to power members of the same bloc who nearly sent us into a depression, who are making the rich richer at our expense, and whose total stonewalling in Congress are wasting our tax dollars by the millions every day. But many of these retards think if things aren't moving well, their only recourse is to vote Republican. It is astoundingly stupid!
@Jack, don't forget the GOP minority who have opposed this in lockstep, from the start, before it was even defined. Their obstruction is not an A Priori condition; they were bought long ago --and now is the time to start citing, VERY LOUDLY, just how many millions of dollars the GOP Senators are in the pocket for.
The Health Care Industry owns our Senate.
Granted the Democrats didn't hold together, but they shouldn't have to. Republicans should have more sense than to oppose something that directly helps so many.
You're right, SJ. I think one of my major projects for 2010 will be to do a series specifically on bought-out Reps and Senators, and list their major campaign contributors and amounts.
Earlier this week, I had little time to pay more than cursory attention to the U.S. health-care reform saga. Work, Copenhagen and other things were commanding too much of my attention.
When I saw Rep. Weiner supported the bill, I figured it couldn't be that bad after all.
Then I looked into it a little more, and saw Dean's reaction. It's crystal clear to me now, Jack: U.S. citizens would get totally buggered by this sham reform.
Do Dems really want to be known as the party that forced Americans to buy insurance from private corporations with records of deceit and heartlessness? Is this the legacy the current Congress wants to leave? I should hope not.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon, BTW, figures Obama probably never cared much about the public option all along. I hope he's wrong, but ...
- Most Senate Democrats supported a good bill. The problem here is the Senate rules which require a 60-vote super-majority. Were it not for that quirk, a bill with a public option would have passed the Senate easily.
- Using "reconciliation" to get around the super-majority requirement would involve serious problems.
- Obama has consistently put pressure on progressives to compromise with Lieberman and the Blew Dogs rather than pressuring the latter to get in line. The failure to get a good bill is much more Obama's fault than that of Congressional Democrats.
- What's being talked about is the Senate bill, which will need to be combined with the House version to produce the final product. The House version is a lot better, since the House does not have a super-majority requirement allowing the minority to hold things up. We don't know what the final version will look like yet.
- Why should we be surprised that polls show voters swinging against the Democrats, when so much attention is being focused on the health-bill failure and the blogosphere is full of overheated rhetoric denouncing the Democrats in general rather than putting the blame where it actually belongs -- on the Senate's procedural rules and on Obama personally?
- I predict we will next see a wave of idiots threatening to vote third-party in 2010 or just stay home. If that happens, the Republicans will just get Congress back (or at least make substantial gains), and if you think it's hard to get things done now, wait till after that happens.
Jack, neither Dean nor Olbermann said to kill the bill. They said to change the bill, and if Traitor Joe and the right can't take the changes, let them kill it, aqnd we'll take it to reconciliation.
Stimpson, Really, for much of the past 15 years or so, the Democratic Party has let us down by going "Republican Lite" and not standing up strongly for labor and the poor as they did from 1930-1980. They have become timid, divided weaklings, and that's the problem. It's very frustrating for progressives like us. --------------- Infidel753, There is much truth in all you present here. Obama's and the "Blew Dogs'" wishy-washiness has really fouled things up. Obama, LIEberman, and Nelson have all been inconsistent in their positions, and that has really fouled things up. As for third parties, I see that as a problem both for the Dems AND the GOP. Rather than being conciliatory and attempting bipartisanship, Obama now needs to get really tough and be the strong leader we need to gut this thing through.He needs to better use the bully pulpit and be a bigger bully. Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ would serve as good role models for him to study and follow. --------------- TomCat, You are exactly right. Rather than kill the bill entirely, we need to kill THIS iteration of it and only pass the good things. But that mandate has got to go!
You and me both baby. Jack, you do a lot of homework, and I respect your views. I'm glad to know I aligned with you instinctively on this. Oso uses his words as a thrifty assault for why to do it. This just sux, don't it?
We are in agreement. As a volunteer for the 2008 Obama campaign in Nevada, I have been disappointed, shocked, and now angered by what has happened, especially to the Senate version of the health care reform bill.
If there was any way that the Senate bill could be amended to put in a real public option, I would say let's go for it. But since President Lieberman has chosen not to compromise on his hypocrisy and hope for the 2012 Republican Party nomination, I join with Jack and say "KILL THIS BILL".
Gwendolyn, According to a link to TomCat's 11/25 post in Politics Plus (which I evidently missed) in the body of Infidel753's comment, reconciliation would cause the bill to be sent back to blue dog Kent Conrad's budget committee, which would enable HIM to further peck away at it and screw it up. I was unaware of that, and Conrad has shown he's no friend of a public option OR of a Medicare expansion. BUMMER! --------------- Thanks for stopping by, Wayne, and please do so again. I am glad you believe as we all apparently do that a public option is the ONLY weapon we have against the insurance and pharma cartel which is bleeding our wallets dry. LIEberman has me so fired up I'm thinking of actively campaigning against him in 2012, and were that pompous weasel even to TRY running as a Republican, I KNOW I would! I am fed up with his wishy-washy posturing---all it does is aid our real enemy, the health insurance industry!
Yeah, I'm seeing this and looking over more online... it's a bummer any which way including loose right now... my instinct is to clobber the thing back to Nancy Pelosi... a CAN DO WOMAN if ever there is one... gee.
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15 comments:
Jack,
At a given point in time (may be as soon as tomorrow)I may regret this, but I got to agree with you.
It's been whittled down enough,it never did have single payer.The bastards wouldn't even offer it up as a big bargaining chip.
Time to man/woman up. Zapata said it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
People are dying. Kill the bill and let the people realize the Repubs and Blue Dogs betrayed them big time,hell almost all the Dems betrayed them as well.
Oso,
I like your Zapata quote, and it's true. As Olbermann strongly suggests here, it is time to pass a GOOD bill through reconciliation. And as far as blue dogs and Repubs go, it's time for us progressives to proclaim, "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!" BTW, Yellow Dog over at Blue in the Bluegrass has a great post currently running on what we progressives should now do.
When the GOP held the House and Senate, they rammed through their extreme welfare-for-the-rich, screw-the-working-class agenda and the Dems sat around meekly and offered zero opposition.
Now that the Dems have the House and Senate, they have utterly failed to do anything.
I never thought I'd say this a mere year after the horrors of the Bush era, but I am completely and totally disappointed with Obama and the Dems.
Indeed, kill the bill. Why not? it is essentially worthless and is a mockery of what it could have been.
Oso says it all- " Kill the bill and let the people realize the Repubs and Blue Dogs betrayed them big time,hell almost all the Dems betrayed them as well."
Marc McDonald @ "I never thought I'd say this a mere year after the horrors of the Bush era, but I am completely and totally disappointed with Obama and the Dems."
Did you see the recent polling that says the American electorate [gasp!] is moving in the GOP direction! Obviously they have total amnesia or brain damage.
Marc,
My sentiments exactly. We have been betrayed by weakness and political ineptitude!
---------------
mud_rake,
It shows how short-sighted and forgetful our political memories can be (some of us; the apathetic or peripherally informed ones). It makes absolutely no sense at all to return to power members of the same bloc who nearly sent us into a depression, who are making the rich richer at our expense, and whose total stonewalling in Congress are wasting our tax dollars by the millions every day. But many of these retards think if things aren't moving well, their only recourse is to vote Republican. It is astoundingly stupid!
@Jack,
don't forget the GOP minority who have opposed this in lockstep, from the start, before it was even defined. Their obstruction is not an A Priori condition; they were bought long ago --and now is the time to start citing, VERY LOUDLY, just how many millions of dollars the GOP Senators are in the pocket for.
The Health Care Industry owns our Senate.
Granted the Democrats didn't hold together, but they shouldn't have to. Republicans should have more sense than to oppose something that directly helps so many.
-SJ
You're right, SJ. I think one of my major projects for 2010 will be to do a series specifically on bought-out Reps and Senators, and list their major campaign contributors and amounts.
Earlier this week, I had little time to pay more than cursory attention to the U.S. health-care reform saga. Work, Copenhagen and other things were commanding too much of my attention.
When I saw Rep. Weiner supported the bill, I figured it couldn't be that bad after all.
Then I looked into it a little more, and saw Dean's reaction. It's crystal clear to me now, Jack: U.S. citizens would get totally buggered by this sham reform.
Do Dems really want to be known as the party that forced Americans to buy insurance from private corporations with records of deceit and heartlessness? Is this the legacy the current Congress wants to leave? I should hope not.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon, BTW, figures Obama probably never cared much about the public option all along. I hope he's wrong, but ...
A few things to keep in mind:
- Most Senate Democrats supported a good bill. The problem here is the Senate rules which require a 60-vote super-majority. Were it not for that quirk, a bill with a public option would have passed the Senate easily.
- Using "reconciliation" to get around the super-majority requirement would involve serious problems.
- Obama has consistently put pressure on progressives to compromise with Lieberman and the Blew Dogs rather than pressuring the latter to get in line. The failure to get a good bill is much more Obama's fault than that of Congressional Democrats.
- What's being talked about is the Senate bill, which will need to be combined with the House version to produce the final product. The House version is a lot better, since the House does not have a super-majority requirement allowing the minority to hold things up. We don't know what the final version will look like yet.
- Why should we be surprised that polls show voters swinging against the Democrats, when so much attention is being focused on the health-bill failure and the blogosphere is full of overheated rhetoric denouncing the Democrats in general rather than putting the blame where it actually belongs -- on the Senate's procedural rules and on Obama personally?
- I predict we will next see a wave of idiots threatening to vote third-party in 2010 or just stay home. If that happens, the Republicans will just get Congress back (or at least make substantial gains), and if you think it's hard to get things done now, wait till after that happens.
Jack, neither Dean nor Olbermann said to kill the bill. They said to change the bill, and if Traitor Joe and the right can't take the changes, let them kill it, aqnd we'll take it to reconciliation.
Stimpson,
Really, for much of the past 15 years or so, the Democratic Party has let us down by going "Republican Lite" and not standing up strongly for labor and the poor as they did from 1930-1980. They have become timid, divided weaklings, and that's the problem. It's very frustrating for progressives like us.
---------------
Infidel753,
There is much truth in all you present here. Obama's and the "Blew Dogs'" wishy-washiness has really fouled things up. Obama, LIEberman, and Nelson have all been inconsistent in their positions, and that has really fouled things up. As for third parties, I see that as a problem both for the Dems AND the GOP. Rather than being conciliatory and attempting bipartisanship, Obama now needs to get really tough and be the strong leader we need to gut this thing through.He needs to better use the bully pulpit and be a bigger bully. Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ would serve as good role models for him to study and follow.
---------------
TomCat,
You are exactly right. Rather than kill the bill entirely, we need to kill THIS iteration of it and only pass the good things. But that mandate has got to go!
You and me both baby. Jack, you do a lot of homework, and I respect your views. I'm glad to know I aligned with you instinctively on this. Oso uses his words as a thrifty assault for why to do it. This just sux, don't it?
Whats so bad about reconciliation?
Jack and fellow comment writers,
We are in agreement. As a volunteer for the 2008 Obama campaign in Nevada, I have been disappointed, shocked, and now angered by what has happened, especially to the Senate version of the health care reform bill.
If there was any way that the Senate bill could be amended to put in a real public option, I would say let's go for it. But since President Lieberman has chosen not to compromise on his hypocrisy and hope for the 2012 Republican Party nomination, I join with Jack and say "KILL THIS BILL".
Gwendolyn,
According to a link to TomCat's 11/25 post in Politics Plus (which I evidently missed) in the body of Infidel753's comment, reconciliation would cause the bill to be sent back to blue dog Kent Conrad's budget committee, which would enable HIM to further peck away at it and screw it up. I was unaware of that, and Conrad has shown he's no friend of a public option OR of a Medicare expansion. BUMMER!
---------------
Thanks for stopping by, Wayne, and please do so again. I am glad you believe as we all apparently do that a public option is the ONLY weapon we have against the insurance and pharma cartel which is bleeding our wallets dry. LIEberman has me so fired up I'm thinking of actively campaigning against him in 2012, and were that pompous weasel even to TRY running as a Republican, I KNOW I would! I am fed up with his wishy-washy posturing---all it does is aid our real enemy, the health insurance industry!
Yeah, I'm seeing this and looking over more online... it's a bummer any which way including loose right now... my instinct is to clobber the thing back to Nancy Pelosi... a CAN DO WOMAN if ever there is one... gee.
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