Hi Jane! Since they didn’t sign in alphabetical order, can you say which signature you can’t read? Like ‘it’s the 5th signature in column 2′

We did it collectively so I don’t have that, but I’m thinking the most likely culprit is Earl Pomeroy, who was dead set against pegging a public option to Medicare.

It was chicken sh!t for them to sign illegibly when their names weren’t printed. Many of them have their signature on their house.gov home page,they should all have to do that.

Hopefully someone gets this before Monday. Otherwise, I’ll print it out then and go through it. Some are relatively easy to figure out. Others aren’t. But I’m not gonna try to do it on a laptop screen. I’ll go blind.

Was the ad to tell Mike Ross and Blanche Lincoln to stop doing the bidding of the insurance companies supposed to air this evening during the Troy ASU game? If so, did it? On which network? I had the game on CSS for a while and didn’t see it.

The demands of the Blue Dogs are conflicting and incoherent because they don’t really want what they’re calling for as much as they obviously want just to delay and block REAL reform.

Assertions like “any health care reform legislation that comes to the floor must be available to all Members and the public for a sufficient amount of time before we are asked to vote for it” are obviously pulled from the Republican playbook and are intended to achieve the same results.

Each time they make their demands, the pressure must be turned ON THEM.

Keep making a lesson of guys like Ross because that’s the only way they will get a grip on themselves. They need to know that their secrets will be out in the open, their lies won’t be believed and their seats will be in jeopardy no matter what Rahm thinks he can do to protect them. We’ve got to clean house of these so called representatives who don’t give a shit about what poll after poll tells them the people they represent want or we’re done for as a country. I’ll keep cutting back on other expenses to support those efforts. I’ve got kids who are going to have to live here long after I’m gone and I owe it to them to do my best to give them half a chance of living in something other than a banana republic.

Assertions like “any health care reform legislation that comes to the floor must be available to all Members and the public for a sufficient amount of time before we are asked to vote for it” are obviously pulled from the Republican playbook and are intended to achieve the same results.

Where were these guys when the Patriot Act was on the table?

The Blue Dog’s original complaint was that Medicare reimbursement is too low in rural and underserved areas, and therefore a Public Option which pays based on Medicare rates would be unfair.

So… let’s increase the payments. We need to get these guys on board and go after the corporate shills in the Senate who are the real obstacles to reform.

Yup. I wish more people would realize this — there really is a problem with Medicare reimbursement rates, and the fix is to recalibrate them to be fair to all states. We can work with the Blue Dogs on this.

Frank Kratovil of Maryland signed the letter, as I compare the signature on his website homepage to the signature at the bottom of the second signature page, in column 1 (the 15th signature in that column, right under Ben Chandler):

http://kratovil.house.gov/index.html

Deciphering a number of these scrawls took some doing by the FDL detectives, but, thanks to their work, I was able to discern a vague resemblance to certain signature scrawls for the names Collin C. Peterson, Christopher P. Carney, Jim Costa (or at least a J for Jim…, just above Leonard Boswell – could that be Joe Donnelly instead?), and Charlie Melancon and Heath Shuler (the second signatures in the second and first column, respectively), using some imagination. However, I don’t see a scrawl that matches up with Gene Taylor, though he’s listed above.

The one other signature I don’t account for, therefore (because I can’t make Gene Taylor fit it), is the artistic signature that’s seventh in column 2, right under Jason Altmire. A possible candidate from the remaining membership of the Blue Dog Caucus, as far as I can tell, is Bill Foster – if the B is written backwards… Because the first name seems to be either Jim or Bill (with an i in the middle, anyway), and the last name seems to have a t in it. On the other hand, those don’t look like double l’s in the first name, and that doesn’t look much like an F at the beginning of the last name.

We cannot simply “add” new consumers to a broken system.

Oh, so I get to go without health care because you fuckers in Congress have been sitting with your dicks in your hands while the system fell apart and Big Insurance was pulling the biggest smash-and-grab robbery in history over the last 14 years?

Fuck that. Fuck a whole lot of that. Insuring the uninsured, so we don’t fucking die in the gutter of treatable illnesses in the richest fucking country on the planet, is non-negotiable, no matter what else you fuckups manage to fuck up.

You can go take a flying fuck at your manifesto.

You can lower costs by having a public option and reimbursement rates set by Medicare, and make people who buy health care and insurance happy. Or you can raise costs by having no public option and reimbursement rates set by “the market,” and make people who sell health care and insurance happy. But it’s one or the other, and if you can’t see it, you need to pull your fucking heads out of your asses.

Until people are angry and desperate enough to get out on the streets with pitchforks, torches and bricks in hand these fuckers (Congress, Republicrat Party, Wall Street, big pharma and insurance corps.) will continue to destroy the working and middle classes. Congress by and large is a traitor to the American people.

Right. It’s the same delaying tactic that the wingers have been using since the Dems came into power, to keep the public from being served by anyone – since they were not doing their jobs and don’t want that to be obvious.

The Blue Dogs just want to have it both ways: avoiding being rightfully tarred by progressives while keeping their corporate overlords happy. Everybody who signed that letter should be primaried. Hell, I wouldn’t be averse to primarying the lot of them. If they want to run as Republicans, so be it. At least they will be partly honest about it that way. My fantasy is that they will make themselves irrelevant and that Obama will fire Rahm.

My rep’s on there (Mike Arcuri). So ticked. I donated to his campaign, my daughter was a volunteer and we celebrated mightily when he won. I’ve written countless letters/email….to no avail. Well, I’ll just have to write again.

Arcuri just might lose this time to a repub. I wish he were primaried.

Nope, sorry Jane. I’ve always been horrible with signatures. I can’t read fully half of them.

Isn’t just awful that it’s come to that? I just don’t like it when people push me into being someone I don’t like. Ergh.

Is it possible that more than a few of the signatures are forgeries? This could develop into a lawbreaking scandal of the sort the Republicans could get behind investigating — it would involve Democrats! Letter-gate! Independent prosecutor! Could there be blow-jobs involved?

Interesting that at the end of the letter, they write that they stand ready to help support “Obama’s goal”. Isn’t lowering the cost of healthcare to this country through whatever means their goal?

The decision not to include printed signatures (as would be appropriate in any letter) can be described with two words. The first is “chicken” and the second is not “salad.”

G’morning Jane. My, you’re such a stickler. heh.

Whaddaya think those signah-farious folks who include a straight-liner right thru their monikers possibly meannnnnnnnnnnnn?!

Courage and Stubborn are good. I told Voinovichy to follow and copy everything Sherrod Brown did. *g* Got a nice reply tiptoe-ing around about 75 other subjects. Must be hard of hearing.

*sigh*

amen.

Feathers?

poop.

Hi Dragon. Pat the tigers for me, my good man.

nor hawks

and am off to do things, pls note;
Money isn’t what it’s all about, our value system is screwed up. Even to economists.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8476

We’re seeing, for perhaps the first time, the full four corners of how an election can be won based on a promise to implement a set of policies, and once in office, the abandonment of almost all of those policies and, more importantly, values.

Others have abandoned portions of their platforms as they’ve transformed their electoral coalition into a governing coalition, but Obama is breaking new ground on the extent to which his governing coalition is hostile to his electoral coalition.

It seems logical that they don’t have 40, thus illegible.

Hehe. I thought I saw Mickey Mouse on the list. Someone should pass a law against Blue Dogs.

I will take a guess. Without seeing the scrawled signature, I suspect my Congressman Rick Larsen D-WA. The supporting evidence would be the comments he has made in the town halls in which he bragged about being part of a coalition of States who want higher payments from Medicare and the PO not tied to Medicare rates.
Ask him if he is #40.

Dear Marcos – the Democrats have been refining this strategy for most of the last 4 decades, it has become who they are.

Many predicted this outcome – are they soothsayers? no, they were just able to predict future actions from past behavior.

And they will keep doing exactly as they are doing, until members of the constituencies that are always being played manage to impose some accountability, and break a couple pieces of the kabuki machine.

it is an open question even whether one of the most promising Netroots formations, Accountability Now, is willing to put the principle of Accountability ahead of some self-imposed restriction on only working within the rigged structures of the Democratic Party.

but the same tendency to pre-cripple that leads progressive ‘pragmatists’ to remove Single Payer (that they sometimes claim to really want) from the realm of the politically possible also leads many to pre-emptively remove the very notion of supporting 3rd Party or (I) challengers.

Its like a big, strong union that promises, as a matter of first principle, never to go on strike!

Thankfully, that is not the strategy the union movement chose in their time of greatness. Maybe someday well intentioned ‘progressives’ will reconsider their continual pre-capitulationism that has brought us into the vale of what is barely distinguishable from Bush/Cheney’s 3rd term in office.

updated! JH says in the previous thread that Accountability Now will also work with electing Libertarian flavored (R)’s within the Republican primary system.

this is great, as many Independents who are culturally (R) leaning but despise what the party has become might come out and vote in the primaries and the general.

but what about Accountability via 3rd Parties and (I)’s? unknown.

I say this with all sincerity.I agree with you and considering the
subject matter,I agree with the wording of your response.
THIS IS NO GAME!!

Just offhand, have you studied the Nixon Administration? Price controls? The EPA? A lengthening southeast asian war, detente with Russia and visits to China? Lotsa promises broken there; not sure Obama can ever match that record.

Can I have the money back that I donated to Chris Carney at the suggestion of …….

But they LIKE their heads up there. Its all warm and toasty, you can’t hear the names people call you and after awhile you dont even NOTICE the smell!

Here’s my list:

Left column

Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie (SD)
Cuellar, Henry (TX-28) ?
Ross, Mike (AR-04)
Barrow, John (GA-12)
Griffith, Parker (AL-05)
Davis, Lincoln (TN-04)
Berry, Marion (AR-01)
Peterson, Collin (MN-07) ?
Childers, Travis (MS-01)
Marshall, Jim (GA-08)
Boren, Dan (OK-02)
Matheson, Jim (UT-02)
Boyd, Allen (FL-02)
Chandler, Ben (KY-06)
Kratovil, Jr., Frank (MD-01)
Murphy, Patrick (PA-08)
Michaud, Mike (ME-02)
Nye, Glenn (VA-02)
Bright, Bobby (AL-02)
Space, Zack (OH-18)

Right column

Hill, Baron (IN-09)
Melancon, Charlie (LA-03) ?
Cooper, Jim (TN-05)
Bishop, Sanford (GA-02)
Arcuri, Mike (NY-24)
Altmire, Jason (PA-04)
Costa, Jim (CA-20)
Donnelly, Joe (IN-02)
Boswell, Leonard (IA-03)
Gordon, Bart (TN-06)
Carney, Christopher (PA-10)
Tanner, John (TN-08)
Salazar, John (CO-03)
Dahlkemper, Kathy (PA-03)
Moore, Dennis (KS-03)
Scott, David (GA-13)
Holden, Tim (PA-17)
Minnick, Walt (ID-01)
Giffords, Gabrielle (AZ-08)
McIntyre, Mike (NC-07)

Relied in part on this FDL doc.

I gave support last round to Patrick Murphy, Mike Acuri, Chris Carney and Gabrielle Giffords but I won’t do that again. I hope ActBlue/Blue America is smarter next go round. These folks must not be very intelligent if they can’t read what the CBO has said about the amount of money save with a PO.

Yep, it’s Mike McIntyre

alank, you’ve nailed it, I think, with one exception: I’m pretty confident that Heath Shuler is the second name in the first column, not Henry Cuellar (who has a very legible signature, according to the other letter containing the printed names of its signatories, which you’ve helpfully linked).

So I wrongfully fingered Bill Foster, whose signature is very legible. Instead the ‘artistic’ signature that stumped me clearly belongs (again thanks to a comparison with the other letter’s signatures) to Jim Costa, and the name I thought might be Jim Costa’s (just below Jason Altmire) is apparently a very poor rendition of Joe Donnelly’s signature, as alank indicates. [That name could be something else, though; I’m least confident of that one, in comparing it to the quite legible signature of Joe Donnelly in the other letter - in this version there seems to be a J and a D, but everything else is pretty much just a line.]

alank apparently doesn’t see any version of Gene Taylor’s signature either.

In sum: We would both remove Gene Taylor from the list, and add Frank Kratovil and Joe Donnelly to make the 40. [And alank would tentatively replace Shuler with Cuellar.]

The whole letter looks fake to me. Just saying…

Correction: The signature I thought might be Jim Costa’s (and now think is probably Joe Donnelly’s) is the one right above Leonard Boswell’s, in the second column. [Jim Costa’s signature (right below Jason Altmire’s) is just above Joe Donnelly’s.]

I was least confident about the Cuellar choice. Heath Shuler makes perfect sense. Thanks for the correction.