I feel sort of like John McKay after being asked about his team’s execution. “I’m in favor of it.”

And health care reform relatively speaking should have been straightforward and is popular with voters. What the hell is going to happen when they tackle something hard (like climate change).

Ugh.

I share your disappointment that Rahm Emmanuel isn’t the thug I assumed he was going to be so Obama could stay classy and be the cool dude while skulls were getting cracked in the back room.

I’ve never worked so hard, or given so much, to any campaign (and I’m 63 fucking years old) as I did in trying to get Obama elected. Not because he’s tall, dark and handsome. Not because he’s smooth. Because I really believed that he was so smart that he could actually take the terrible mess Bush left and start making things right, and so decent that he desperately wanted to.

I didn’t expect miracles, but I sure as hell expected that they would take the landslide we gave them and use it to get things done. Watching the despicable Republicans in Congress giggle while they say they’re not going to do a thing but stop Obama from succeeding is a sickening display. Watching the White House refuse to give Reid and Pelosi any backing and, sadly, actually undercutting some of their attempts to twist arms, just makes me heartsick.

We wanted health care. We deserve it. People I care about are sick and have worked every day of their lives and can’t get the care they need. I worked for this president because he said he was going to fix it and I believed him.

Joe Lieberman should be held up to ridicule and disgrace and stripped of any shred of power or status he currently enjoys, but they let him play his sick little games and piss on those of us who are supposed to matter.

Burned the base. He did, indeed.

hemorrhoidectomy

Is there another operation in which you ADD hemorrhoids? ‘Cause that’s what I’d be rooting for.

xpurg8d: I feel your pain and totally agree.

Rahm’s willing to twist arms and throw jabs, but only progressives get the rude treatment. The wealthy party centrists get everything they want, and move on to the next goalposts.

Case en point: Rahm is almost certainly behind the primary challenge to progressive Representative Donna Edwards. (Who could probably use a donation or twelve hundred about now). If Rahm is going to run primaries against good reps like Donna Edwards, we have to respond.

It looks like the democrats in congress will lose seats to the GoP in 2010. We need to make sure all those on the way out are blue dogs.

Someone pointed out that the only one’s who have faced Rahm’s caustic tongue are liberals. He has fought us mightily but never a bad word for the conservatives.

I did the same and I’m 61. That’s what I get for ignoring my well-earned pessimism about politicians.

Remember the gleeful comments about how Obama plays chess? Now we know who the pawns are.

Well, Rahm, there goes your permanent eight year four year two year Democratic majority.

Two words and they ain’t “let’s dance.”

Tole ya so.

I agree with xpurg8d and Dennis. I’m older, fought hard for Obama, and now am becoming sorely disappointed. I think this all stems from Obamas ideal of trying to get everyone to work together and to all get along. He should have known better than to think the sore loser Rethuglicans would have any desire or reason to play along.

Hopefully Obama will shake off the newbie-ness and start cracking skulls, but I doubt it. My forecast is he will be painted as being unable to get anything accomplished and go down in very Carter-esque flames.

I don’t have a president anymore. Obama is nothing more that a posturing liar. He only pretended to be a progressive until he won the election then quickly sold us out to the money interests. Not-George-Bush isn’t good enough. Good luck in the mid-terms Democrats, this life-long vote-straight-Dem-in-every-election is staying home.

Get the gas and lighters ready.

Fire.

-G

Obama isn’t a liar. Joe Lieberman is. There is nothing Obama can do, no Jedi mind trick that will make Joe Lieberman and Abortion Ben Nelson to not be assholes. I think that’s why – all along – Obama has said the P.O. is not essential to the bill’s passage. Because perhaps they finally do understand that Lieberman is a mendacious little fuck.

Now, if Rahm really was Rahmbo and not just a foul mouthed DLC intern gone sour, he’d do the following:

He’d pass insurance reform (sans P.O.) through both houses and get it signed before the New Year. Then, tackle Finance Reform. If Traitormman and others obstruct THAT, you go to the mattresses (as Nate Silver suggests).

Then, come March or April, when you start thinking in earnest about the fall elections: Use reconciliation to force good public option down their throats.

Let Lieberman think he’s won. Wait. Then shiv him in the dark.

Heck, we’ve all read those pathetic NYT Magazine articles about Reid the ex-boxer who knows how to slug it out… Yeah, right, fighting like an asthmatic three-toed sloth on Roofies.

Rahm, on the other hand, has proven to be exactly the thug he was supposed to be — the only problem is, his prey of choice is any true Democrat — or anyone to the left of, say, Evan Bayh.

In ’06 a friend of mine was in a house seat primary for a vacant seat in upstate NY; he was the progressive candidate running against a Blue Dog D. Back then, Rahm was strutting his stuff as head of the DCCC, and he didn’t hesitate to throw his weight and party $$$ around in favor of the Blue Dog (even though the party is supposed to stay out of primaries — you know: let the voters decide and all that). He’s a nasty piece of work, and for Obama to pick that little shit to do his dirty work behind the scenes spoke volumes about the direction the Administration was headed. As Matt Taibbi pointed out recently, all the potential progressive advisors have been kneecapped or put out to pasture, while a posse of rancid insiders have slithered into power. And, so, our big bus continues off the cliff, albeit with our new, smiling & handsome driver at the wheel, and Rahm Emanuel walking the isles dishing out knuckle sandwiches to anyone who wants off or suggest that maybe changing direction would be a good idea.

Rahm is not a tough guy. Rahm is an Ivy Leaguer’s idea of a tough guy. (And I say that as an Ivy Leaguer.) Rahm is like the Harvard football team — the guys on the Harvard football team can kick some Harvard lab assistant’s ass, but send them to the Rose Bowl and they’re going to go home on stretchers.

Rove, Cheney, Rumseld, and Bush, by contrast, really were sociopaths, as are all the leaders of the contemporary GOP. Big difference.

I hope they enjoy their Pyrrhic victory because they just burned the base.

In case you haven’t noticed, “the base” of the Democratic victory in 2006 and 2006 is considered to be ultra-extreme leftist commie hippies who pray for the destruction of the United States. Or at least that’s how Washington and our press corps see the 54% of Americans who voted for Obama.

Does Obama (or anyone) give a flying shit what we think? Fuck no! They know that, no matter what they do or don’t do, we’ll be there next November, looking at a choice between the Republicans who want us dead by direct assault, and the Democrats who would simply rather see us die of neglect.

Some choice.

Like the Leftists in the 30′s coming to grips with the reality of the Soviet Union, progressives now are facing the reality of Washington. Emmanuel wants money from insurers and Big Pharma to go to Democrats next year and he promised months ago to strip from the reform bills anything that wrinkled their noses. Lieberman is just an excuse.

The “base” wasn’t disillusioned when the torture regime wasn’t indicted? The “base” wasn’t disillusioned over more endless war? Continued secret renditions? Indefinite detention? Telecom immunity? Illegal wiretapping? Some of these things are assaults on the basic values of our Constitution. Why should health care be any different? And the Wall Street bailout — anyone in the “base” upset about that?

The “base” is who should be marching on Washington demanding change. The Teabaggers have the right response to Washington — screwy reasons, but the right response: the system is screwing us.

What really shocks me about all this, is not the cowardess and hypocrisy from the Emanuels and Obamas of the world, it’s the short-sightedness. Yes, I believed these guys may actually fight this time and use the power we put in their hands. Am I suprised they didn’t? No. But these are sharp guys, supposedly. Do they really believe that passing any crappy healthcare bill is going to get out the vote next year? Look at the polls, man! Any idiot can see that you will lose much more of your support by caving in than passing nothing, or Jeebus forbid, actually forcing through a good bill. Everytime we put a knife in their hands, they never fail to stick it in their own eye.

Also. Fuck Joe.

…the Obama White House either never gave a shit about health care reform, or they managed health care reform so horrifically and incompetently that they are now willing to settle for a “win”, no matter how meager…

The former. I’m quite sure of it.

I hope they enjoy their Pyrrhic victory because they just burned the base.

Yup.

I just wrote to Senator Harkin:

Dear Senator Harkin:

Kill this bill.

Sincerely,
My name

Nothing else. I hope others will write the same to their “Progressive” Senators.

Not-George-Bush isn’t good enough.

And he isn’t really all that Not-George-Bush.

Give em hell,Harry, has given us just that. A hellish healthcare system. And Obama has done squat. I’m done with teh Dems.

“or anyone to the left of, say, Evan BayhSarah Palin.”

– Fixed

When Rahm took at two-year sabbatical from government work, he made $18M in the financial-services industry. I seriously doubt that he is working for Obama. If anything, I suspect that he is Obama’s minder.

NYT front page today: Poll reveals trauma of joblessness. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html One finding from national survey is that 47% of those polled said they were without health insurance or health care coverage.
It is obscene that this apparently is not seen as a serious issue by the White House or Democratic leadership. Should this community mount an effort to get Senate progressives to threaten to filibuster any bill that does not contain real health care reform (Sanders, Burris, Fiengold?) and push for reconciliation?

Just aside….T certainly writes well…thanks.

Rahm shares something with Joe that transcends politics in America – or any other host country.

Rahm will serve Joe and not Obama because they share a bond that may not be spoken aloud… yet continues to destroy every country that allows it to go unspoken.

Until and unless we speak the truth of who is running Washington, our foreign policy, our media, academia, and the FED – we are doomed.

Ask yourself… when Mr. Hasan shot up Ft. Hood… what story was buried?

THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

When 9/11 ‘happened’ — what story was buried? — THE DURBAN CONFERENCE and Desmond Tutu’s condemnation of Israel as the NEW NAZI’s.

We know more about Tiger Woods infidelity than how many Pali kids have been sold for body parts.

This is NOT about anything but ethnocentric control.

and these are perhaps my last words… because sooner or later – one of them will have me silenced.

Americans are not allowed to rattle their chains.

This is a replay of what Rahm did to the Clintons and the Dem Congress in 1994. Rahm still thinks that not having signed HCR legislation — even the crappy-ass watered-down product that was finally killed off two months before the election — is what made Dems stay home. In fact, it was Rahm’s ramming NAFTA down our throats that made millions of Dems stay home that year.

A-yep. Just as he was for the Clintons in the 1990s — and he screwed the pooch then, too.

I have come to the sad conclusion that it no longer matters who youvote for–the system is so corrupt that voting is merely a pasttime to placate the masses. My hopes and dreams are in shambles and I will probably not vote again–ever.

Never attribute to fiendishly evil brillance that which is adequately explained by pigheaded stupidity. Rahm learned the wrong lessons from 1994 precisely because he doesn’t want to admit he was wrong to have rammed NAFTA through Congress.

That’s something you should write as a letter to the editor of your local paper — and CC to your local Democratic org.

Do it now, before the DINO spinners start saying that the Dems lost next year for being too “liberal” — which is part of the myth built around 1994.

So all I really wanted for Christmas was a Karl Rove of our own who would make all of our Obama wishes come true, even if he had to kick Evan Bayh’s mushy skull in to accomplish them. Someone who, I had hoped, would make Joe Lieberman’s life something akin to a hemorrhoidectomy gone horribly terribly wrong.

Such is not the case

What on Earth makes you think that Emmanuel is not carrying out Obama’s wishes? Obama is the President, Emmanuel works for him, not the other way around. Those still suffering under the delusion that Obama was some kind of populist firebrand who would fight against the oligarchic interests that control the country need to wake up.

Your support, donations and effort needs to be behind a progressive agenda, not tied to the latest info-tainment, flavor-of-the-month politician (and yes, that’s always been an apt description of Obama) who will tell you anything to get elected. Yeah, Obama’s a smart guy. So are a lot of right-wingers (just because they support a sociopathic agenda doesn’t mean they’re stupid). And Obama may be playing some masterful, 11-dimensional chess game but it’s progressives and the progressive agenda that’s his opponent.

And Obama is doing a replay of the Clintons’ error in trying to make deals with the health insurers: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7114

In response to fredcdobbs @ 33

What on Earth makes you think that Emmanuel is not carrying out Obama’s wishes? Obama is the President, Emmanuel works for him, not the other way around. Those still suffering under the delusion that Obama was some kind of populist firebrand who would fight against the oligarchic interests that control the country need to wake up.

I agree that Obama has the responsibility and the authority to take charge and that he is the true culprit in all of this. I also note that it is the policies that Rahm embraces, not those that Obama claims to espouse, that get implemented.

Burned the base to the ground is what they’ve done. I just can’t wait for the next phone call from some Democratic organization or candidate begging for money. I’m giving mine to the ASPCA. At least animals generally do not bite the hand that feeds them.

Strikes me we finally know how craven the Obama White House and Democratic leadership in Congress is – we need a different way to deal with them. Please take a look at: http://www.progressive-independence.org/diary/459/for-a-full-court-press

Its gonna hurt at first but its one way to bring about change in the Democratic Party.

We need to change the system, and that begins by changing ourselves. There is a hierarchical state of mind amongst liberals and/or progressives (or conservatives for that matter) who seek to follow someone who thinks like them but isn’t them. We are not inclined to take decision making into our own hands by creating a network of the pissed off (right and left) whose desires are expressed in unmistakable terms. We prefer to say 72% of the people support health care reform and/or doing something about global warming, when all we have to back us up are a few polls of questionable accuracy. Are there alternatives to despair? or more of the same? How do we the people come to be heard? Stay home? Write nasty or pleading letters? Refuse to contribute? Don’t think so. We need something completely different, but most likely you don’t want to talk about that.

Good Morning TBogg and Firedogs

The lie is my expense
The scope of my desire
The Party blessed me with its future
And I protect it with fire

Bottom line is that the progressives will vote for
whatever ends up in the bill. All talk no action.

Here’s the problem. When I first heard Obama articulate his vision for America, early in the campaigns, I heard something quite different from most of us, it seems. I heard a desire to “change” back to something like the Reform governance movement in American cities before WW1, with aspects of Johnson’s Great Society thrown in for good measure.

This “change” was intended to be away from the drama and passions of partisan extremes toward Moderate “Clean Government” run by competent, centrist technocrats who could transcend the political fray. In short, Obama wants to be the Reform Mayor of America.

This message appealed to many Americans, especially to the young, who grew up during the last, intensely partisan two and maybe three decades (if you count Reagan). The promise of a return to calm, drama-free technocracy was a relief compared to the shrillness coming out of the Palins – and the Kucinich’s – of the world.

I saw people like Rahm as the enforcers who would help achieve this intensely centrist and moderate vision.

The problem is, this vision was flawed, as Obama didn’t (and may still not) understand just how corrupt the American center is – that technocrats like Baucus and Lieberman conceal the rot at the center today.. of compromised corporatism.

I’m not in any way defending this vision. I didn’t vote the guy until I absolutely had to, against McCain, for precisely this reason. But I do feel it is important to try to understand what ObamaCo is about. From his perspective, he did not sell out. He was never with us in the first place. And neither were his men, like Rahm.

How about a general strike? Everyone’s out of work anyway. We’re getting pretty close to that “nothing left to lose” place that might drive people into the streets. I’ve have had my pitchfork and molotov cocktails sitting next to the front door since Reagan, but so far all of us progressives insist on playing nice and working within the system. This past decade has proven that the system is hopelessly broken for everyone but the owning class.

there are times when the pragmatic course is to fight.

How are people going to strike when they don’t have a job?

Reply to xpurg8d December 15th, 2009 at 12:41 am:

Thanks for saving me composition time and keystrokes. Same age, same circumstances, same feelings of futility.

you people with this pitchforks and molotov’s are so full of shit it’s amazing

I’ve have had my pitchfork and molotov cocktails sitting next to the front door since Reagan, but so far all of us progressives insist on playing nice and working within the system.

Reminds me of a Tim Allen quote (modified):

“Reps. are pigs. Too bad they own everything.”

I’m such a sentimentalist. I wrote to Mary Landreiu asking what, exactly, what she would wish her legacy as a Senator from Louisiana to be. You’d think at least some of these assholes would aspire to greatness like Ted Kennedy. Despite all his many personal failings, Kennedy will be remembered for many years to come for so many of his great achievements and battles for ther least of his fellow citizens.

But, fuck it. Blue-Dog Landrieu is just a another piece-of-shit, money grubbing, corporate cunt, just like John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston proved to be before her, and falling just shy of the “human-turd” status of Billy Tauzin. Forgotten within a decade, no record of achievement to carry a legacy beyond creating great wealth for her fucking kids and grandkids.

Kee-rist on melba toast. At least Diaper David Vitter has proven to be EXACTLY what I expected as a GOP senator. A freaking pervert, adulterer, corporate whore, chickenhawk, etc.

You are correct that there is nothing that obamarahma can do to get joeLIE to change and support real reform, but that is primarily because that is not what they want. obamarahma and harry stood firm in getting joeLIE back into senate leadership even after he was rejected by dims in CT and after joeLIE supported saint john mccain for president. They all got what they wanted: obama to be the face, rahm to do the dirty work, and joeLIE to provide cover for the DINOs and mislead the reporters. In fact, joeLIE is even called courageous as he flip-flops on all fronts.

i didn’t like emmanuel as obama’s CoS since 2006… people have such short memories (or don’t read much)… hear were / are some classic quotes:

9/17/06 – Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D) boasts to Newsweek magazine about leveraging the prospect of his position as a majority member on powerful committees to raise campaign cash from K Street lobbyists. “‘We’re working outside of traditional banks,’ he says proudly, ‘into the private-equity world, the hedge-fund world, the distressed-debt world.’”

here’s a great article about how emmanuel reforged the Dims into a money-raising powerhouse… from his hometown newspaper

oh… and this gem from C Hardin Smith from here at FDL captures the ‘real’ rahm emmanuel (and shows that we should have expected that we would get ‘here’ with him at the wheel… (money quote from CHS):

Let me get this straight, we have just taken back the House and, looking more likely as of this morning, the Senate, and Rahm’s first priority is to shore up his power base and his ties to KStreet. Heckuva job, Rahm. (Oh, and “other top Democratic members?” Hi, Steny. Sheesh these people are transparent, and the media is either too tired or too dense to call them on this crap. Pathetic.)

Please do not blame Rahm for this mess. Barack Obama is President. Rahm and other staffers are only playing this exactly the way President Obama wants it played. Blaming Rahm allows President Obama avoid direct criticism. Rahm is just following the Presidents wishes.

Nice mouth.

What I was imagining was a general strike AND everyone who’s unemployed out in the streets. I know it’s counterintuitive to think that people would be willing to strike when jobs are so scarce, but something’s gotta give. Citizens of other countries don’t take this shit . . .

Obama played the base…
It was very clear during the debates he is a politician not a statesman. Not a Lincoln type at all. Won’t take the hits for our causes and won’t get the support from the Dems to avoid a bruising battle. He played the gullible who wanted to hear nice. He knows what he is doing just has different goals and values.
How do we make the most of it as the corporate stranglehold on government and business continues to tighten?

So Raven, how’s that “voting” for a “representative” in our “democracy” working out for you so far?

Yes – Obama is just a poor naif,and totally without responsibility for any of this clusterfuck.

“Obama played the base…”

In the end, I guess that’s how we’ve got tot look at it. It’s just like how fuckhead Bush played the Bible thumping troglodytes. Yammer on to the rubes about Jeebus, fags, forced abortion, guns to get them out to vote and then massively cut taxes for zillionaires, be asleep at the wheel for a high-casualty terrorist attack, and drunk-drive the economy into a ditch — a fucking ditch with two dumbass wars going on in it.

I still think our base is smarter. Not by much, tho.

I’m with xpurg8d@2, only I’m SIXTY-FOUR fucking years old! I expected them to take the landslide we gave them and DO something with it. What has transpired since is the greatest catastrophe and failure in national politics of my entire adult life. “Heartsick” doesn’t begin to describe it. This gang of wealthy insiders are criminals of the worst order who deserve imprisonment for life.

And I will not be taken for granted, not one minute longer.

You know, we’re wasting our energy with these clowns. We know they’re owned by corporations, so why not hit them where it hurts? We have enough progressives to lay some serious smackdown on the health insurance racket.. er, industry. Here’s what I have in mind: pool our money (all tens of millions of us) and use it to buy into the nonprofit health insurance network with the best combination of price and options. Then, we dump Aetna, UnitedHealth, and every other for-profit insurance company we can find. Once we do, we open up our network to anyone who wants to leave their insurance company behind and we bankrupt those pinheads.

Actually it is the case. Rahm is acting like Rove to accomplish his masters wishes. The misjudgement here is what Obama was wishing. We thought he was wishing for universal health care and fiscal regulation of the banking industry. As it turns out, he would more than satisfied with some cosmetic efforts to look like reform. Rahm is the enforcer. Obama is the the director. You need to stop scapegoating the muscle for following through on the leadership’s policy direction.

I just wish Obama would have a few more “in the air tonight” and “Mama” like moments.

yea, so you and these remington raiders are going to bring down the government, let ME know how that work out

Should this community mount an effort to get Senate progressives to threaten to filibuster any bill that does not contain real health care reform (Sanders, Burris, Fiengold?) and push for reconciliation?

Yes.

This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.

That’s the best idea I have seen. Definitely worth exploring.

Please do not blame Rahm for this mess. Barack Obama is President. Rahm and other staffers are only playing this exactly the way President Obama wants it played.

Quite correct, and it’s a page from the Reagan playbook. Reagan let Anne Burford, James Watt, etc., take the heat for his extremist policies so that he could sort of float above the fray, but a president’s appointees do exactly what he wants them to do or they get fired. It’s their JOB to catch flak for him.

American people = abused spouse?

Some of the upthread comments suggest that analogy isn’t completely off the mark.

Quite striking — what has happened to all the Obamaniacs that used to linger around here? Less than a year ago you couldn’t so much as frown at one of Obama’s dick moves (doing a 180 on telecom immunity… picking Rahm to run his little shop of horrors… Tim Geithner… letting Pastor Warren do his God-not-Gays schtick at the inauguration…) without being slammed by his acolytes and being told that we should give him the benefit of the doubt, that it was all part of his great strategery of hopey-changey goodness for all. Where are they now? I mean, I want to hear them tell me they’re so very, very psyched with how it’s all played out on bank bailout, healthcare, Afghanistan, transparency in governement, etc.

Helloo? Anybody?

Obama isn’t a liar, it’s all big bad Joe? Dream on. Sounds like you got a bad case of hero worship. Obama insisted Joe stay as Homeland Security chairman, remember? Ever hear of “good cop/bad cop?”

From going to war, to health care “reform,” we’re getting jacked by carefully scripted myths, our bogus holy wars and the 60-vote hurdle being among the most glaring. No one should be taking anything these myth-making bastards say at face value.

One great advantage the propagandists enjoy over us is the successful dumbing-down and conditioning accomplished over the last 5 or 6 decades of deliberate efforts to jack public opinion. The Pentagon calls them “strategic domestic disinformation campaigns.” AKA “battlefield psy-ops.”

Speaking of electorate-jacking myths, most Americans believe in the myth of the two-party system as our only viable means of governance.

It’s nowhere in the Constitution. IMO, it’s a perfect example of “regulatory capture.” And who controls the backstage deals? Our out-of-control-by-design national security state. When the gov’t makes secret deals with drug lords and enforces them with violent acts by as many mercenaries as soldiers, what’s that make that country?

It makes us a narco-terrorist police state. All the rest is window-dressing. This obscene Obama/Lieberman charade being foisted on us as “reform” should be the dead give away.

No wonder it’s said, it’s always darkest just before dawn. My hope is that their imperial overreach will be their undoing, same as it’s ever been. Still, some sort of coup de grace may be necessary. It may fall to any one of us to deliver the metaphorical stroke that sets us free.

That assumes, though, that as they begin to tip, we’re there to recognize our chance and, acting from within, finally assert our self-sovereignty over these usurping bastards.

Hang around. They’ll be here any minute.

Fewer of them, but they are very, very, committed, I’ll give ‘em that.

Even as life goes on without them , those you are missing are engaged in intense debates.

These debates are occurring quietly, away from the attention of the MSM.

The debate is so intense that the posting of the resolution of the debate has been delayed; said resolution not yet being reached.

The topic of debate: You say 11 dimensional chess to fool the opponents; but you are wrong, I say it is 12 dimensional chess.

Both sides have already agreed that whether in 11 or 12 dimensions victory is assured. Said victory to be revealed by some amazing success not yet thought of, but that will be recognized for what it is when it occurs.

Be patient: victory is on track and coming soon to your TOOBZ monitor.

You shall know that the moment is here when they triumphantly return screaming:
“We told you so!”
“You should have believed in n-dimensional chess.”

Reid is a pussy. Rahm is overrated. Obama could’ve worked harder at making the case.

but, as others have mentioned, the real problem is not Obama, it’s the 60 vote requirement and the fact that there aren’t actually 60 Dems. there are 55 Dems, one dead guy, and a few fuckwits who delight in being important simply because they position themselves as the only way the Dems can get to 60 votes – since the GOP insists on acting like children.

if we had 60 Dems, we’d have a better bill. but we don’t. and no amount of arm-twisting is going to turn Lieberman into a well-behaved Dem as long as Lieberman remains the potential 60th vote; he is more powerful, even without his committee seats, as the potential 60th than he is as the reliable 30th.

if you want progressive outcomes, elect more progressive Senators.

I think that they’re all over at Cole’s place. I dropped in this morning and the gist of the comments was that caving on the health care bill to everyone (Stupak Amendment, for example) except the progressives is a good thing because this way the real reforms can be added either by the reconciliation process or by amendments in future Congresses. Those are nice thoughts, they just overlook the fact that those doing the reconciliation are the same assholes who created this joke bill in the first place. Future Congresses will do as much to improve this bill as they’ve done to improve NAFTA, The Commodity Futures Modernization Act or No Child Left Behind. The remaining Obamaphiles are still convinced that there’s a pony under all of the horseshit.

I urge everyone to contact Sanders, Burris and Harkin to KILL THIS BILL!

“…the real problem is not Obama, it’s…” [insert strawman of choice here]. Repeat ad nauseam.

It’s odd that while de Tocqueville and others oo’ed and aah’ed the American model as the perfect division of power with checks and balances neatly in place, it now appears that what we’ve really got is the perfect model for abdication of responsibility: “it’s not the president’s fault, it’s those darn senators…” or “it’s not their fault, it’s the special interest groups” or “the media” or “the lethargic electorate.”

But if government & politics is about leadership, about vision and the courage to do the difficult shit in spite of it all, then this really, really is about Obama right now, not Lieberman. It’s about the Democrats, not the obstinate GOP or some has-been wanker from Connecticut.

My Concern does not lie in the republican party and Joe smoe obstructing the bill, I am more concerned about the cowards our progressive senators are!

Obama and the blue dogs are getting exactly what they want, no public option and a water downed bill written by the insurance company that force the middle to low income people to shell out their last couple of dollars to the Obama supported insurance companies.!
Dont be fooled folks, Obama is getting exactly what he wants and our concerns should be focused on the cowards we have leading the progressive movement in the senate and the softball questions our msnbc talk show hosts are feeding them!

Hope was goddamned springing eternal and we all got caught up in it.

Phil Collins was a great (not merely good) drummer that brought jazz chops to rock via his work with Genesis. Anything that came later can be attributed to his success as a solo artist and the fact that the band he now fronted went from art to pop with equal success.

People don’t change just for the hell of it, the times require people to change to survive.

Oh, Lord, deliver us from progressives who thought Barack walked on water when he was really walking on the semi-solidified pool of excrement that is Chicago politics. Rahm has always been bobbing on the surface–full of shit and covered in shit–which gives a truer meaning of what passed for movement politics over the last few years.

“The remaining Obamaphiles are still convinced that there’s a pony under all of the horseshit.”

Ding!

Go to think progress you’ll find them all there living in denial .

Will everyone just take a deep breath, calm the fuck down and read Nate Silver’s reality check? Maybe spend about thirty seconds chewing that over before you re-read Matt Taibbi’s bullshit, whip yourselves into a lather, and form the ever-popular progressives’ circular firing squad? Would it help to remind yourselves what you would have gotten from McCain in the way of HCR–the same damn thing you got from the last Republican president, or the one before him, or the one before him?

For fuck’s sake, people. This is why we can’t have nice presidents.

Lotsa concern trolling going on here, by the way.

Hey, trolling Republitards, we can fight amongst ourselves and keep working together. Go back to doing what y’all do best: Go fuck yerselves!

But if government & politics is about leadership,

it’s not. it’s about votes.

look at the House. the House passed HCR, no problem, because there are more than enough Dems to do it.

but there are not 60 reliable Democrats in the Senate. there aren’t even 60 ostensible Democrats in the Senate. the Dems do not have enough Senators to pass something as big and as controversial as HCR. QED.

i suppose you can blame Obama for failing to get more Dem Senators elected, if you want. why not… makes as much sense as blaming him for not forcing the Senate to do his bidding.

People are not ready for general strikes IMHO. Terrible to be the only one at the general strike which is the problem. We are not organized, that is we are not networked. The network I think we need goes down to town levels and in the beginning it doesn’t concern itself with federal policy. That puts the cart before the horse. Suppose each town put on a talent show on the same night which millions attend. That demonstrates the power of the network, to participating citizens as well as the powers that be. Doesn’t have to be talent shows, but it should be non violent, legal, and if possible fun. There’s always time for trouble. Let’s do the easy before the difficult.

Silver’s piece left me more appalled by the bill than I was before. The pony is that health care costs will be lowered for some simply by connecting the gov’s money spigot to the health care companies. Now there’s an incentive for lowering costs that you can believe in. With enough government money flowing in the health care industry is bound to become at lest as cost conscious as Lockheed-Grumman.
Silver states that the penalty for not having insurance isn’t very harsh, even for low-income families. How is taxing a low-income individual an additional $700 per year or a family an additional $1500 per year because they don’t have the money for health insurance not harsh? “They don’t have enough money so we’ll take some more money from them.” Fuck me: are there no workhouses?

True. But I think some are heading for the exits because we have a perceived ineffectual president, who is perhaps a little deeper in the pockets of big buisness than we hoped for, and the mandate we worked so hard on is slowly slipping away.

I frankly don’t give a shit if it’s idiot savant Obama or fratboy Rahmbo or Lieberhole or Reid the rudderless. The point is that these pigs have majorities in the Senate and the House and the presidency. The supposedly stupid Bush managed to get more through with 51 fucking votes. These incompetent pricks can’t pass decent healthcare reform. If these pigs think that I am going to show and vote for them next November go fuck yourselves. And Rahmbo you prick I live in a red district with a Dem. Representative. I will not vote for the guy not because of him, but because you and your asshole buddies can’t get your shit together. Change I can bereave in is what I’m getting. Better to get fucked by a Republican like you expect, than to get date raped by a Democrat.

Good point. Ronald Reagan famously asked about George H.W. Bush (his veep), “What does he stand for?” Evidently we should be asking the same question about President Obama.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

Don’t stay home. Vote Green,DSUSA or any third party to shake up the establishment.

Hey, Phil Collins was a very respectable drummer before…maybe the analogy does hold; Rahm was, before…

Yeh, those third party votes really get us where we need to be.

Twat.

Dunno. More and more Dems just aren’t gonna vote in 2010. No reason to call the third party people names now. There are hardly any actual Dems worth voting for. Voting for my local Blue Dog against a republiKKKan isn’t gonna get me where I want to be.

And the other two parties are getting us exactly where? I’ve been voting for forty years and it appears to me that we now have the Conservative Party and The Even More Conservative-Bordering-on-Lunacy Party. Because two parties have a lock on the system they seem to have devolved to fighting over the spoils simply because they don’t have to worry very much about anything else.

Gore Vidal said just that in 1982 in The Second American Revolution. He even called it the Banksmen Party. Right then, right now.

Somebody wrote on another blog a couple of days ago that, if the Democrats passed a single payer bill that covered everybody, did the whole national health care thing that we’ve all been talking about, the program would become your new instant third rail: untouchable by either party, as Social Security was until Reagan came along and lied about it enough to convince people that it needs to be radically altered. This, even though it’s easily one of the top five most popular government entitlement programs. By the same token, people don’t want to have to worry about medical care, expecially when we get old. Take that worry away and, wow, how popular would you be?

That the Dems–and Republicans, who at least put on the appearance of being human–either can’t or won’t acknowledge that simple reality, and instead are moving in the opposite direction, is one way that this era will be marked: by the widespread and obvious kowtowing to interests that are definitely not those of the majority in this country. Sad. And Obama is about to cement his image as the avatar of that philosophy of government, which is also sad, given his promise and the pride we all felt last January 20th.

We were supposed to have hope. Well, hoping that Obama is not playing some weird mind game on us is not what I got out of that slogan. Yeah, I read the article a few days ago about “Don’t give up on Obama yet, look at what he’s actually accomplished.” I’m not sure those things outweigh the what he’s doing on things like health care. Is he stupid? What is his goddam goal? Who is he fighting for, if “fighting” is what you would call it.

He’s supposed to be our guy, not theirs, in other words, and I don’t know if that’s the case.

Burned the base? How about burned the electorate and the next several generations of Americans.

“Universal Health Care.” Sure don’t seem like it to me.

I said during the primary that Obama, of the three candidates, was the one who didn’t have the gut moral outrage at the inequity and iniquity of the American Way of Healthcare. It’s not something he’s passionate about. And as such, he was prepared to negotiate with himself and then sell the farm to JoeHo and the other whores.

Oh well. I’ll be leaving the US and returning to the civilised world sooner than I thought.

It’s about priorities. Having a bank go under? That’s a Bad Thing and money must be spent. Having one bunch of guys with beards take Afghanistan from another bunch of guys with beards? That’s a Bad Thing and money must be spent. Having 35,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health care? Look, the fuckers were going to eventually die anyway and helping them would cost too much.

Obama thanked Lieberman privately for his statement issued earlier Tuesday pledging support for the bill as long as the Medicare expansion and public option were eliminated from the bill, Lieberman said.

Obama actually serenaded Joe with a rendition of Natalie Merchant’s Kind and Generous

it was by all accounts moving

Oh well. I’ll be leaving the US and returning to the civilised world sooner than I thought. pseudonymousinnc

where you headed?

They know that, no matter what they do or don’t do, we’ll be there next November, looking at a choice between the Republicans who want us dead by direct assault, and the Democrats who would simply rather see us die of neglect.

I want to make this very clear for those of you who keep saying this: NO MORE. I’ve voted Dem (or third party) in every election since I became old enough to vote. NO MORE. The rethugs can nominate Bible Spice for all I care, — I will not be going to the polls to vote for Obama. Nor will I ever again vote for a “centrist”, a DLCer, etc. Stone-cold liberal is all I will be voting for. I’m finished with this bullshit, and I’m mad as hell.

I’m late to this here party and haven’t the stomach to read all the posts.

So, I’ll just say: I’m not happy with all of Obama’s actions or decisions, but he’s a centrist and pragmatist and that’s what I wanted and that’s what I think we need now.

Re health-care: I’d prefer a single-payer Medicare for All, or even pay-in for 55 year olds since that’s around the corner, but… Isn’t a new insurance exchange that allows individuals & small businesses to band together better than nothing at all or the status quo?

We’re dealing with Democrats (and Holy Joe) here. You dance with the party that brung you.

After all, there ain’t nothin’ else out there for us.

“This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth,” said [Sen. Russ] Feingold.”

boom!

hee hee feingold understands obama – the hard truth that obamabots are going to have to face up to is that obama don’t care two shits about ya’ll

I don’t know where you have been, but I called him out for war crimes a month after his inauguration, jackass.