OH Jane, how can you reference poor Dana that way.
Is it time for us to write Mr. D again?

Mr.Banality meet evil

With Democrats like these, who needs Democrats!

really.

took the words right outta my keyboard.

And this was a DEM Speaker of the House?!

Baybee Jebus on a Cracker.

FunnyWheelieDiva

this witchead was no better a pick for HHS

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/6018

Daschle is not on our side, and our side is working people.

Conservadems are the problem.

This was Obama’s first choice for HHS Secretary, as well as head of the WH Office of Health Policy.

Daschele’s corporate views were clear in his book ‘Critical: What Can We Do About the Healthcare Crisis’. (He also waxes effusive about the Federal Reserve Board, btw). Obama quite likely was on-board with all this, or at least uninsterested enough to study the issues more deeply himself. Likewise with Geitner and Summers.

Daschle was the Senate Majority Leader.

i believe the 47 million figure was from2006 when employment was not in the shape it isnow

Shorter Daschle: “If I only had a heart…”

Heh. I thought that would better fit Cheney. Until I realized that Cheney would say “If I only had a heart to eat“.

Ya know, I’m really beginning to like bein’ part of the boogeyman Rethugs, big Pharma and the insurance industry are so very, very afraid of.

Boo, bitchez!

There is nothing inherently divisive about reconciliation. If Republicans do not want Americans to have a public option, pure or otherwise, and they don’t, then reconciliation is where the public option can and should be written by Democrats who aren’t so gutless as to sell out 76% of all Americans who want a meaningful, or in Daschle’s words “pure,” public option.

Daschle wants for nothing. The Republican Senators were the ones who scuttled his nomination to head Health and Human Services, humiliating him in the process. Yet like Pavlov’s dog when the bell rings Daschle is all for designing a health care bill that primarily, if not exclusively, serves private corporate interests and screws over the 76% of all Americans who need and want an affordable health care option.

If “Milbank” is another synonym for wilted schmuck, then I concur. And he’s a bleeping asshole too!

It will come down to shaming these people–just make them look so greedy and having no sense of decency,mercy or compassion that shame overtakes any other motivation. The butthead behavior exhibited by these slimelizards truly does astound.

Who knew schmuck could wilt?

Did anyone here ever like Daschle?

They can’t be shamed – they don’t care what we think of them. That’s what makes it so madding. If they cared we wouldn’t even have to talk about this.

he makes a limpid Gooper

seems voting (D) means voting against your interests, in most cases, n’est ce pas?

every generation the spectre of serious health care reform raises up from the coffin the corporate interests who control both parties have put it in.

the role of the Democratic Party is to perform a frantic kabuki dance and pretend to enact ‘reforms’ that do not threaten their insurance industry donors.

even the bait is paltry this time, though nonetheless they will follow through on the ’switch’. John Kerry’s trigger option, anyone?

tru dat
real hustlers

Between Daschle and Feinstein, who needs Republicans?

Feinstein this weekend stuck her foot in it by speaking of a public option and present plans for HC Reform as being too costly, especially to the State of CA. She did this by also stating she doesn’t think that Obama has the votes for healthcare reform that includes a public option. Sick and sad of her to say so on CNN (I think it was) when the final proposals haven’t even been fully drafted, written and voted on yet.

She has since stated today she is not influenced one whit by pressure from the LEFT for a public health option. As a recipient of great amounts of the healthcare insurance and medical lobby, she continues to fail to support 73% of we the people polled clamoring for a public health care option to compete with private insurers (evil they are).

And the Obama Admin has repeatedly stated they favor a public health care option to foster competition.

Links are where you can find them, I’m assuming most Pups have read these things.

So today I called Feinstein’s SF Office (415) 393.0707 to complain.

Kirt, Curt,Kirk? was nice on the phone. I explained I was livid about Feinstein’s complete and utter lack of support for a public health option to compete with the insurers.

I stated she was the recipient of large amounts of lobby money from both healthcare insurers and the medical/hospital industry and it seemed apparent they were more important than the people who voter her into office.

I said that Feinstein was defying the wishes of we the people, who had MADE our wishes quite well known. I stated that Feinstein was going to encounter HUGE amounts of impassioned criticism and loss of support for her Senatorial future, for her potential Governership pursuit, and any OTHER political future she may want.

The gentleman sighed and said his office was FLOODED with calls today regarding these issues, and when I suggested that the DC Office might well be flooded with calls also, he actually said that was the case!!!

So, this Larue is really pissed at Feinstein, said so, and apparently many others across the nation are too!!

More calls, more pressure, more visits . . . to each and every dirty, tainted lobby money grubbing pol who denies the will of the people who vote for them in lieu of the lobby money that pays for their campaign costs.

Here’s A Royal Harumph For Senator Feinstein, may her offices be deluged with the dissatisfaction of we the people!!!

that sums it up neatly…nice touch

For myself, no.

My first (perhaps belated) clue about Daschle, besides his (not) commanding speaking voice, was after 9-11 when his priority was subsidies for the airlines his wife was representing.

Awesome. Just awesome.

Again it seems that the Repoodles were right…Daschle is an ass, it seems.

well…these days everything is too costly for California!

they’ve done the same shtick every time . . . Hillarycare, and this Bill Moyers episode alludes to even Jimmy Carter doing it.

Bill Moyers Journal on healthcare reform efforts under (D) admins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi1acHg3mhw

its not just low-information, low-income voters who are historically or culturally Republican who consistently vote against their own interests.

High information, highly educated voters who would benefit like everyone else are voting against their interests by voting (D).

all the entreaties to the likes of Sen Feinstein will do naught to change this, because of, as Larue points out, the:

large amounts of lobby money from both healthcare insurers and the medical/hospital industry and it seemed apparent they were more important than the people who voter her into office.

If Congress and the president were truly interested in paying for health care Single Payer would be the only option on the table. Saving $3 out of every $10 currently expended on insurance would go a long long way to providing health care for every american.

I don’t want to agree with you, but I know what you say is true.

No wonder Feinstein was sooooo enthusiastic about Obama. The corporate interests are truly bipartisan! Tellingly, Feinstein is the only dem that my wingnut can get say he might possibly like because she supports business.

The Senate can only get excited about being a bunch of Senators. It’s awesome!

Money for war. Money for airlines. Money for banks. Money for IMF. etc. etc. etc.
No money for health care, no money for proper equipment for our troops, no money to help our states and cities.
I’m so tired of this.

I wrote Feinstein about this early last week and haven’t heard back. Course, I haven’t heard from Boxer either.

Thankfully I heard back from Issa, but you can imagine the response. I had to respond to the response it was so horrible.

can we sue senators for malpractice?

I really appreciate your efforts, Jane, but more and more, it appears we are a dysfunctional nation.

Poor Obama got all those votes and super approval ratings, but he doesn’t appear to have a clue. If someone like that doesn’t have the courage to rally Congress and the country in the cause of what we all deserve, i.e. universal health care that’s real, then we just turn into Big California: rising anarchy, lower quality of living, and no one who already “has theirs” gives a damn.

A sad, sad, state of affairs…

That message from Daschle was not intended for us, and I’m surprised it was delivered in a way that we were allowed to become aware of it. He’s talking to the Republitards, and telling them, “Boys, you can join the game over here or you can play for matchsticks over there. But if you play for matchsticks, you’re gonna be left out when the pot gets divvied up over heah.”

Personally, I’d rather the Republitards played for matchsticks over there. They are irrelevant to the discussion, they aren’t going to vote for it in any event. Why do we bother with them?

And yeah, okay, maybe we have to pass this through budget reconciliation. It won’t be the first health care reform to pass that way, and I’m betting it won’t be the last one, either.

Is it just my computer, or are the repower America ads getting more and more intrusive? I can’t read the first paragraph in the Oxdown diaries.

God, I wish.

Poor millionaire Daschle, telling the wealthy to wake up and defeat public health insurance – and to spend big bucks with his firm to do so.

What if they don’t. Their incomes will hardly change a dot. But America will be healthier and better prepared for disasters because of it. Employers will gradually cede their obligation to obtain health insurance to a publicly run company that can do it better and cheaper than the private sector. Employers will obtain healthier workers and pay a smaller direct cost to do so. That will avoid long term accrual costs, which will directly benefit older workers, because there will be less incentive to riff them away.

Families will be safer and healthier, and so will their local schools and towns. The bankruptcy court will eventually have less to do, and so have more time to deal with the impeding business bankruptcies in addition to Delphi and GM.

What’s not to like? (Unless you’re a insurance CEO expecting a big bonus for stiffing another family that needs medical care you aren’t going to provide.)

Obama is a conciliator, he instinctively seeks middle ground. The problem is that he hasn’t figured out yet that there is no such thing as middle ground to the current crop of Republicans.

He seeks middle ground with them, makes concessions to them, and when it’s time to vote they vote against it.

Or, in comic strip terms: Obama is Charlie Brown, whatever he’s trying to get done is the football, and the Republicans are Lucy van Pelt.

Adblock Plus on Firefox works like a charm. No ads.

Middle ground is a far different place when single payer is on the table.

I know what Saul Alinsky would do, he’d organize the people younger than 65 who have 100% paid-for health insurance, he’d convince enough of them to overload the insurance companies, to see their doctors and complain of something somewhere, the doc okays a specialist, the specialist examines and orders tests, if they’re non-invasive and there’s no harm, fine, and well, it starts to get expensive way beyond the corporate projections, and after maybe a month of this, maybe the insurance companies won’t be able to pay the doctors or the clinics, and the next thing you know, the US gov’t with its Treasury will have to step in: And guess what? Treasury won’t bail out the insurance companies, the doctors and the clinics will get paid, more or less like they have been for like 50 years.

Doesn’t FDL earn an income from everyone that clicks on an ad

E.J. Dionne on The Ed Show just now: “Max Baucus wants Chuck Grassley’s vote so badly on health care that he’ll probably make ethanol a medicare-reimbursable drug before he’s finished.”

Yes, but I don’t click on web ads anyway, so I’m not costing them anything, and I contribute anyway.

And clicking on ads just to drive up the click count is a violation of some sort. Not sure what, but not ethical in any case.

Who decided that single payer was off the table? You’re right – if that was on the table, public option would be middle ground.

As in there is no middle ground?

Contemporary sabot-age. Throw a bunch of shoes into the works… of course, they’d detect the increase from normal usage, and use recission on everyone who got checked out negative.

But that could lead to a bunch of verrry eeenteresting lawsuits, too.

Some of them are worthwhile. The repower america one above is a petition supporting Al Gore’s plan.

clues and courage have nothing to do with it for Obama, or the power structure he represents.

He is playing his part perfectly, and it involves consolidating most of the Republican policies of the last 8 years and beyond, and making them the foundation of the new bipartisan, beltway consensus.

in other words, the Ratchet effect:

The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Republican role is fairly clear; the Republicans apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward.
The Democrats’ role is a little less obvious. The Democrats are the pawl. They don’t resist the rightward movement — they let it happen — but whenever the rightward force slackens momentarily, for whatever reason, the Democrats click into place and keep the machine from rotating back to the left.

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain……ter02.html

our role is to kvetch all we want in odd numbered years, and dutifully vote (D) in even numbered years, and the system will continue to work as designed.

Alinsky used PR to threaten with plausible hypotheticals. If enough people got organized in that way, the insurance companies would probably hold a retreat to workshop all the meanings of ‘competition’.

I dub Mr. Daschle, “Douchebag Daschle.” That’s his new name that I will always use whenever referring to him.

Yet you will line up to vote for the Daschles again and again, telling yourself that “at least they’re not Republicans”. What a con job corporates have run on you!

That looks like a rollover ad – at least in firefox. Try refreshing the page and keep your mouse over to the left.

Your call reminded me that I haven’t voiced my outrage to Feinstein’s office in recent months (outrage with Feinstein is an ongoing experience) and her lack of support for a public option is simply another f.u. to her constituency. When I called I was told by Kayla she hasn’t commented on the public option yet. It’s always great when you have to inform the senator’s office of the comments the senator has already made!

on topic: I used to wonder how Tom Daschle lost South Dakota given his leadership position. I wonder no more.
He’s a sleazy money grubbing pol and I guess the people of South Dakota knew that better than the rest of us.

clarification: comment at 57 in response to Larue at 22

Don’t forget L-3.

Yep. I’m banking on a political revolution sooner than later.

Calitics is a good site to read about how it will take a constitutional convention to redo the impact of prop 13, in particular the 2/3 majority legislative vote required to pass legislation.

The republicans have ridden the back of that animal to subjugate any attempt at governing effectively in this state since Prop 13 was passed in ‘78 and Jarvis/Gann slipped the 2/3rd’s provision into it.

The people of CA were stupid to not pass recent Props that would have allowed us to borrow some and stay afloat and not cut services to the poor and underserved (not to mention fire, police, sherriff’s, CHP, etc). It would have staved off what’s coming (which is gonna be brutal and put us 5 years deeper into joblessness, and please recall CA was 4 years AHEAD of the rest of the nation with respect to jobs losses and generally depressed econ conditions, we were headed downhill back in ‘04).

But despite our stupidity (collectively this past ballot) there’s an upswelling anger that’s gonna drive some change, and will likely SCREAM for a constitutional convention to eliminate the 2/3rd’s majority provision.

When that happens, we’ll be on our road to recovery . . . . I hope.

Just a quick thanks to those who responded to my #22 . . . the dialogue continues, and my blood pressure continues to rise cus our elected offals won’t hear us.

Bodies in the streets. That’s what it took then, it’s what it will take now.

This ain’t Vietnam or Civil Rights per se, but it’s as evil and essential now as our bodies were in the streets then.

Peacefully, but en masse, by the millions upon millions.

Till then, they won’t hear us. The Village has Max’s Cone Of Silence in a chip that’s embedded in all of them.

Yes, a long time ago, in a different scenario, I respected him. I’m over it.

It doesn’t matters because all you’ll get from her is a form letter that might have nothing to do with what you wrote. (Been there, done that.) She’s worthless.

Click on the ads from those you don’t support: it will cost them money, and help FDL too. Like all those ads from ‘Tom Campbell for Governor’: I wouldn’t vote for him if he were the only one on the ballot, but I’ll click on the ad.

Where is the pro life movement in the health care reform debate? Why aren’t they out picketing and shouting for health care that works for people instead of modeled by “acceptable losses” and rinky-dink co-op schemes?

Oh, yeah, I forgot, their leaders are cozy cronies in the Immediate World of the Village, too.

Healthcare reform could help a lot of people AND entities like state governments and corporations.

It’s an essential part of the foundation of our economy.

That’s a great line! I can just imagine Grassley main-lining ethanol.
Next thing ya know he’s hammered. *sigh*

Actually Grassley, despite his voice, is one of the less irritating Republicans. I hope he can find a way to vote for the healthcare reform bill. Actually, if Daschle’s ‘warning’ is right, I can imagine a handful of them ‘finding a way’ to vote for it. Who knows. We’ll see.

thanks. I was being snarky with Sen. Feinstein. :]

I really appreciate your efforts, Jane, but more and more, it appears we are a dysfunctional nation.

Poor Obama got all those votes and super approval ratings, but he doesn’t appear to have a clue.

I just watched Hardball [don’t usually do so, but husband had it on]. Chuck Todd was in for Idiot Matthews, and his “guest” was WH Press Secretary Gibbs.

Gibbs was going on and on about O’s accomplishments and “bi-partisanism,” pointing with pride to the x-100 Republican amendments they’d included in the energy bill.

It was all I could do not to hurl a shoe at the screen, while I was screaming about the idiocy of worshipping at the altar of bi-partisanship, and querying whether all those amendments a) had done anything worth doing and b) had attracted any Republican votes. [No on both I suspect.]

Crap, I couldn’t listen to or watch the news during Bush, and it’s approaching that state under Obama, after only 6 months.

on topic: I used to wonder how Tom Daschle lost South Dakota given his leadership position. I wonder no more.
He’s a sleazy money grubbing pol and I guess the people of South Dakota knew that better than the rest of us

Part of the reason for Daschle’s loss was voter suppression on Native American reservations — more of Rove’s dirty tricks.

His replacement — Republican Tool Thune — is a stupider, uglier Norm Coleman.

It was, and continues to be, a lose-lose situation

The response doesn’t really matter [’cause you’re not gonna change Congressional minds, and it’s the staff grums who write those things anyway].

It is important, however, to drive up the NUMBERS of contacts howling for a public option. Write, call, e-mail to both the DC office and to local “district offices” [contact #’s can usually be found on the web site].

All that’s really important is staff reporting to the Congresscritter, “hey, we’re getting swamped with communications from constituents clamoring for that ‘public option’ thing.”

This is usually more effective in a House district than in the whole state a Senator represents.

Republicans used reconciliation all the time when they governed.

I can see why the South Dakotans through Daschle out in 2004. They put an actual Republican in there, not a faux Dem who acts like a Republican.

When you have a choice between a Republican, and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they’ll choose the Republican every time…Harry Truman….

We knew what we were doing.
We have a governor who’s not quite smart enough to realize that we have to tax the rich as well as the poor and the middle class, and a legislature that’s hamstrung by a double handful of overgrown children (most of them members of the party of No).
What we need to do is (a) get rid of the supermajority requirement in the legislature and (b) require more signatures on initiatives, to guarantee real public interest – at least 5 percent of the electorate (without paid signature collectors), and preferably 10 (with paid signature collectors, but preferably without them).

I’ve hit Feinstein’s e-mail at least three times in the last few days. Also the WH, at least twice.

I’m considering the pitchfork.

Understood. However, the point is Thune doesn’t pretend to be anything than the tool you describe.

Good on you!!!

Got any family members, neighbors, co-workers, friends you can sic on her? [Maybe even offer to do it for ‘em.]

The L-3 story (and Linda Daschle) are DC horror stories in need of wider exposure and public outrage.

Tom and Linda are the couple from Hell. (Right up there with Mary and James.)