Yeah… its really PO or nothing. Everything else is just dancing around the issue.

“Bipartisanship” is just the cover that the powers that be are using to obscure the fact that the bill is a giant handout.

Who wouldn’t want a “bipartisan” bill?? The only problem is that almost nothing worthwhile was designed by committee. In the end, worthwhile results come from a strong leader or leaders, and the consensus solidifies around them afterwards.

Bipartisanship is a myth.

OK, now we have to ram this information down the throats of all Democratic members of Congress, with a note attached: No strong Public Option, no Deal. No Strong Public Option, you loose our support.

Let’s see– Medicare and Medicaid cover 40% of the US population. And they’re mostly seniors, the oldest and sickest Americans. So the government is already covering the oldest and sickest!! The insurance companies get to cover the young, healthy people, and they don’t even want to do that! They want to deny coverage, push 10 -20% of the bill onto patients, even though they collect outrageous premiums every month! Every working person who doesn’t support a public option is an IDIOT.

Agreed.

Bipartisanship is the excuse Obama is using to do the will of the insurance industry at the public’s expense.

It is a travesty.

You are exactly right. The only thing I can figure is that they believe that the base will get over their disgust about the healthcare betrayal by the time the next election rolls around. They think we all have attention deficit disorder like the news cycles. They count on the fact that progressives have no where else to go. I don’t think they realize the depth of our disdain for the way this is playing out and that a large percentage of us might just sit out an election or two. We might as well since our voice means nothing to them anyway. After all, if we don’t get anything from them, why give them our money, our time and our hard work? I am tired of being treated like a battered spouse by these people. I’m ready to move out of the Party. What have we gotten out of the relationship? NOTHING!

Let me get this straight… we’re still little baby birds in the nest peeping away about a “public option” (with our phone calls and our $25 contributions and our organizing…)

And yet we’re all tangled up in “bipartisanship” because — what? — the Dim party is more honorable than the Repugnants? I don’t think so.

Couldn’t be that the Dim party (using the excuse of the “big tent”) is just as interested in the corporate-friendly way of running gov’t as the Repugnants? We know the Repugnants are corproate hacks and puppets — that’s been leaking out all over the place during this season of ‘health care reform’.

But what about the Dims?

Couldn’t be that in the final analysis, that for the Dim party — from the Congress through the White House — the strategy is how to “smoke and mirror” some bullshit that abides the requirements of their pipeline to corporate campaign contributions while keeping us peeping like baby birds?

I get so sick of this masquerade ball, day after day after day after day…

The Dims and the Repugnants… stacked deck every god damn time… whatta country!

For those who haven’t noticed, the stories coming out of the NY Times on health care seem to be pre-approved by Rahm. But sometimes they let things slip by. For instance today’s front page:

“While Congressional leaders say they want to curb the explosive growth of health costs, it is unclear that the final bill will make a serious effort to do so. Every proposal meets resistance from health care providers who fear a loss of income, even as they stand to gain millions of paying customers if nearly everyone has insurance.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10…..th.html?hp

Ok, first of all, not making a “serious effort” to control health care costs should be unacceptable to the President, Congress, the press, everybody. That’s not health care reform.

Secondly, patients are still described as “paying customers.” That bugs the heck out of me! For those of us who have been fighting for health care as a right, not a for-profit business, clearly we still have a lot of work to do.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

What’s your take on Obama’s remarks today warnin’ Congress about any delays in a healthcare bill? I think it was a warnin’ to the progressives in both houses not to fight a bill with no public option. I have been sayin’ all along that Obama is too smart to lose his majorities in both houses and become a one-term President, but now I ain’t sure.

As I have said all along, this is boilin’ down to a game of chicken between Obama-Rahma and the congressional progressives. Until today I figured Obama was too smart not to realize that if he wins against the progressives he loses but if they lose the progressives and the Democratic Party will win in the long run. Maybe we need this ‘cuz I believe that if we lose on the public option the Democrats will come out of 2010 leaner but meaner and, most importantly, with new leadership.

Waddiya think?

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, WE WILL BE HERE LONG AFTER THE BASTARDS ARE GONE!!

I was in the monastery (Sant’Antimo) in Tuscany where this sculpture is located about 15 years ago.

And, yes, I have to admit that it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that “bipartisanship is the excuse Obama is using to do the will of the insurance industry at the public’s expense,” as yellowsnapdragon put it.

And I’ve tried hard to keep hope alive.

Did you all here what Helen Thomas said to Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs?

“Is he going to fight for it or not?” Thomas snapped.

“We’re going to work to get choice and competition into health-care reform” was Gibbs’s vague response.

Thomas took that as a no. “You’re not going to get it,” she advised.

“Then why do you keep asking me?” Gibbs inquired.

“Because I want your conscience to bother you,” Thomas replied. The room erupted; Gibbs reddened.

It’s in an earlier thread:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/10…..on-parade/

Citizen neill:

And you think there is a political solution outside the Democratic Party? Tell me, pray tell me, where is the horse we can ride if we can’t saddle the Democrats? And if you even whisper Nader and the “Greens” you can go back under the bridge.

I don’t think the Democratic strategists even see what is coming. If the best the Democratic Party can do with its huge majorities is talk about healthcare with no substantive action, what is the point?

Now, I appreciate that voting Democrats into office changes the topic of daily discussion, and we are no longer talking about whether it is okay to preemptively invade other countries, torture, and spy on Americans in America.

But seriously! The dem strategists don’t understand that we don’t want to talk about change that never happens. We want the actual change.

Citizen xargaw:

Rahm is runnin’ the same game he ran in 1994 and in 2006 and the it will work out the same way except that Obama will hafta run as a Republican in 2012 if he’s gunna have a chance ta hold office.

I was in the monastery (Sant’Antimo) in Tuscany where this sculpture is located about 15 years ago

That is a fascinating piece. Do you know what it represents? I thought maybe it represents evil?

What bipartisanship. Where. What’d I miss?!

I defy anyone to show evidence of even an ounce of potential cooperation from the Republican side.

I don’t recall seeing our governance ever so discombobulated and out-of-touch with reality, not in my lifetime. As in the proverbial sound of “one hand clapping.”

All the Democrats would need to do is to stand up. Yes, we see a noble few and we appreciate their attempts to serve the nation.

Now, the REST of you folks in D.C. Anyone? Louder please.

i got no answers, there, fire mouth, appreciate the your concern for the Dims and your rancor at Nader, Greens and me… shows your priorities… and your Befindlichkeit.

Hey! I’m a Green, and I’m no troll. And had the Democratic party listened to the Nader voters back in ‘00, we wouldn’t have suffered 8 years of Bush and we wouldn’t be asking for the scrap of the PO. Just sayin’ Norske.

Even if the beltway is incapsulated in steel, these legislators hear from their voters. Are the Democrats really this stupid to be so deaf to public sentiment? In my own little community circle, even non-political friends and GOP leaning friends think we need something similar to medicare for all to ensure competition and lower costs. Even people that are opposed to big government think the health care industry is corrupted and needs to be reigned in. This is such a no-brainer, yet the Democrats apparently have no brain. It it isn’t even a matter of courage or corporate money at this point, it is just pure stupidity. They are committing political suicide.

The style is Romanesque. Honestly, I don’t think many of those Romanesque sculptures are supposed to be anything by decorative. For such a small monastery, Sant’Antimo is fairly well known because of its many sculptures like this one. If you click on the title below the image in Jon’s post, you can see several images by clicking forward to the right through the slides. There’s a stunning image of the church there!

Word. Democrats are committing suicide. And Republicans are committing murder-suicide.
http://www.thedemocraticstrate…..uicide.php

CNN’s political ticker just put up a story about Rep Grayson:

http://politicalticker.blogs.c…../03/71619/

I left the following comment:

If the insurance companies win, YOU LOSE
October 3rd, 2009 2:27 pm ET
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

After watching again Rep Alan Grayson reveal the essence of the Republicans’ contribution to health care reform, which amounts to “don’t get sick and, if you get sick, die quickly,” and after watching again his moving words in which he apologized to all those who have died in the United States because they did not have health care coverage, I made a contribution to Rep. Alan Grayson via FDL’s “Stand by Alan Grayson” at ActBlue.

We need more leaders like Rep Grayson, as well as Senators Rockefeller, Harkin, and Schumer.

I noticed this morning that FDL alone raised over $6,500 for Grayson, and that he has gained something like $140,000 across ActBlue!

He totally deserves it.

Sul fianco del portale dell’abbazia di Sant’Antimo, Siena. Un’unica testa per due mostri, uno visibile da destra e l’altro da sinistra: il cubismo non ha inventato niente. E neanche la politica italiana!

Don’t read Italian but this seems to say something about a unified monster and alter of evil (or on the left side?) and that it invited no one…and something about representig the poltics of Italy.

Anyone?

no public option = one term President

Citizen yellowsnapdragon:

I feel for ya Citizen ’snapdragon, because admitting that you are still a Naderite in the light of history and now that we know that like Hamas in Palestine, the Greens and Nader have been takin’ money from the fascists for years, makes you look pretty bad…but WHAT THE FUCK: “…and if Democratic party had listened to the Nader voters in ‘00 we wouldn’t have had 8 years of Bush.” How is the weather on your side of the moon…JEEsus, if it hadn’t been for Nader and you Nader voters, we wouldn’t have had Bush at all!! God save us from lunatics and Nader voters!

would like to know how much he got from people going directly to his website.

I have been outdone by fast talking men before today, but I have never in my life seen the outright gall of these people to stand before a camera and with a straight face say they can’t pass a public option. Moreover, I don’t know why it hasn’t occured to these simpletons that they could just open up Medicare for purchase. The structure is there. I am sick, sick, sick of voting for losers.

Isn’t it ironic that the Democratic Party isn’t democratic anymore, and the Republican Party is? How can we keep voting for these people when 3 senators can overrule the wishes of the majority of 300 million people?

We need a new political system in this country. Our elected representatives, including Mr. Obama, don’t represent us.

Citizen neill:

You and your little Naderite trolls remind me of the Stalinists that came outta the closet in 1972 after the purge of the the real left wing from the heart of the Democratic Party and the University campuses. The vacuum in the left in politics today is directly linked to Nader and folks like you.

I didn’t say I was a Naderite, Norske. I said I was a Green who voted for Nader in 00. And the ideas that are discussed around here regularly are the same that are stated in the Green Party platform. Like making elections publically financed so that no one needs to take money from anywhere but a dedicated public fund.

Had Gore fought the obviously corrupt results of ‘00 (and listened to the fleeing democratic wing of the democratic party) we would not have suffered through the last 8 years.

We are in the same fight with the Democratic Party now that we were back then. It’s just that more Democrats in the base are starting to figure out just how bad the D party really is.

Sul fianco del portale dell’abbazia di Sant’Antimo, Siena. Un’unica testa per due mostri, uno visibile da destra e l’altro da sinistra: il cubismo non ha inventato niente. E neanche la politica italiana!

Next to the portal of the abbey of Sant’Antimo, Siena. One single head for two monsters, one visible on the right and the other on the left; Cubism hasn’t invented anything. Nor has Italian politics!

Oh, and yeah, yeah, yeah…the loss of the 2000 election was completely the fault of Nader voters, whatever. If the Democratic Party was a rat in a cage, it would shock itself to death. (Sorry for that image)

altar of evil

“l’altro da sinistra” just means “the other on the left.”

Like I said, I don’t read italian. Hahaha.

My reading what a classic case of projecting onto the unknown what I thought was there. Heh.

I remember Grayson during an interview the other day saying that thousands of supporters have contributed to him.

It was the same interview where he said in response to his using the word “Holocaust” something like “My words aren’t what’s important. Saving lives is what’s important.

Across ActBlue, there have been over 4,300 supporters who contributed!

Well, I won’t harp on my theory about Michele Bachmann’s projecting when she reads “school-based health clinics” and thinks “sex clinics.”

destra = right

sinistra = left (though the origin of calling left “sinistra” does have to do with a Christian notion of where evil goes when God separates the good from the evil)

Maybe some of the other Dems in DC will figure out that we really do and will stand behind them if they do the right thing. nah

Here’s a clue NorskeFlamethrower… even a third grader can read:

I’m no Naderite.
I’m no Green.

I’ve been a disgruntled but active Dim since 1972.

You have a weird projective sense of preciousness. You label incorrectly. You might just be missing something. i know I am. Especially wasting time on you.

I think they know, but are being dragged away into the abyss by some unknown force.

Frankly, I think it’s even too simplistic to say that $ is the source of that uknown force that is dragging them…

yeah, like the manus sinistra, left hand. That is where I got the inkling sinistra might be directional rather than meaning sinister.

I have to admit that I have concluded that it’s a waste of time, energy, and money to support third party candidates in national elections.

There are only a few historical moments when a third party has any chance of winning in a national election. At this time, they can’t win in our system of government.

So, all you’re doing is trying to send a message to Democratic candidates who can win but who don’t perfectly represent your values and interests.

If you want to send them a message, I’d suggest writing Democratic candidates letters instead of wasting your time, energy, and money to support third party candidates in national elections.

[The views expressed in this comment are my own and do not reflect on the views of FDL or anyone else!]

All right, you wanna know what I think? The very ESSENCE of what Ralph Nader was trying to tell this stupid nation is playing out right now before our very eyes. There isn’t a damn bit of difference between these 2 corporate butt-kissing parties. When people said he was giving the election in ‘00 to Bush at the expense of Gore, his response: “AT LEAST YOU’LL BE GETTING A WOLF IN WOLF’S CLOTHING.” Now we have the sainted Obama. Who everybody thought was going to be so wonderfully, gloriously liberal. And deliver us from evil. But it was just sheep’s clothing. As I said before, he IS one of “them” or he never would have gotten past the 2nd primary. Think Gore would have been THAT much better? Think again. Read your own earlier post today. “I figured obama was too smart . . . but now I ain’t sure.”
Obama’s not stupid. He’s just owned. And even if he were inclined to fight the POWERS, he wouldn’t – cause he doesn’t want a replay of Dealey Plaza. He loves his kids too much.

I think the main difference between the Dims and the Repugnants is simply that some of the Dims wish they weren’t owned by the corporations. I wish they weren’t either.

I advocate voting one’s conscience with only one eye on strategy. I vote for Green Party candidates along party lines locally (they actually have a chance of winning in my hippy-infested area), and vote my conscience upticket. That way I get values and the option of using strategy.

My Rep is Lynn Woolsey, for example, who I never miss a chance to cast a ballot to support.

Democrats televised the proceedings when a fight within their own party caused a huge rift last year. Remember when they couldn’t decide what to do with the votes from Michigan and Florida during the primaries?

Democrats running the Senate Finance Committee held and televised substantive proceedings last week regarding their health care bill, showing the good and the ugly, all of it.

You’re free to think that the Republicans have the same culture of leadership as the Democrats, but I’d say you’re wrong.

Besides, I will take the Party that has people like Maxine Waters and Alan Grayson and Rockefeller and Harkin, thank you very much.

Sadly, I guess that’s a pretty fair definition. But, before I go out and slash my own throat, let me say that it can’t hurt to keep on pushin’, pushin’, pushin. Facts are stubborn things and if the crisis gets bad enough something will happen.

Point taken. A friend of mine used to say that the Dems are bad, sometimes really bad. But the republicans are just plain awful.

*sigh* I keep expecting that each new crisis will be bad enough that something will happen. But change never seems to come.

Well the thesis that the Dims are just 1950s existentialist “bad conscience” politicos doesnt work anymore than coming up with people you can call “stalinists,” but there is the regrettable fact that the corporations have gained power my whole life, and never been turned back by anyone in washington.

i agree that maxine, (my guy) da fazio, barney, and some others are more helpful than not.

but the deck is stacked, the game is crooked.

To Neill @ 43

If wishes were horses … then all politicians would ride into the legacy class (for them and theirs) without having to compromise their precious little souls … and sell off bits of their virtue for embarrassingly tiny sums …

However, the dear, artificial ”persons” (created and empowered by and through the whims of an American federal court clerk, without ANY basis in ”settled” law, at all), will tolerate nothing less than EVERYTHING, that being their sole and only legal brief – ”Make lots and lots of money, for it is divine and surely the virtuous will be rewarded for the cleverness with which they part people from their money and their lives, all in the name of good, clean free-enterprise, American democracy, and God-inspired Capitalism.”

There is nothing to be seen, anywhere in our ravaged political landscape, about creating actual wealth or building and maintaining a civil society, because then, by force of expectation and tradition, politicians would have to act from principle and not automatically plan on becoming lobbyists to butter-up other members of The Club.

Does either ”major” political party currently extant in this nation, or their ”leadership”, exhibit any inclination to actually move in that direction, either leading or following?

There may be ”regret”, but conscience has not yet stirred sufficiently to DO anything …

What other measure than the ”doing” of humanly necessary ”change” has any true meaning but abject and cynical failure and the refusal to confront the dis-comfort of reality?

I think you’re replying to NorskeFlamethrower October 3rd, 2009 at 11:45am @ 28.

I don’t recall ever calling anyone a Stalinist in my entire life, and I have no idea what “1950s existentialist ‘bad conscience’ politicos” even means.

But please do look at my comment to you @ 45 again, or don’t.

Also, I think we ALL should start ignoring neill unless he refrains from calling Democrats “dims.”

It’s not entirely pointless, but it is just annoying.

The Republicans in Congress stand on the House floor and call the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party” all the time as a way of winking knowingly to the least development members of humanity, er, the base of the Republican Party.

Maybe, just maybe, this is enough justification for Democrats like me to respond by calling them members of the “Republeak Party” as we all smile knowing to each other, knowing that that means that they’re a bunch of fucking evil idiots who have no ideas for improving our country, who like to have sex with married employees and then ask mommy and daddy to pay off a mistress’s family or with anonymous men in public bathrooms or with prostitutes, and who only want to rape the country in the name of helping thousands of executives achieve riches beyond the dreams of avarice at the expense of millions and millions of Americans.

We might be justified in modifying the name of their Party as a way of defining them negatively, seeing how they do it to Democrats from the House floor daily.

But being called a ‘dim’ is just not acceptable.

i appreciate your thoughts and they are familiar.

i do a few things. i do a lot locally — little things, things i can do.

i get word out about how i see the world.

how screwed up the corporations are making it, because that is what they need to do. that is how they work. no one has figured out how to tell them to stop and do it differently. so it may all have to collapse.

i think so. i hope it does before i die so i can help try to rebuild and not leave the whole mess to my kids and grandkids.

i still push and push and push and push “obama and them” — luckily, in most areas, da fazio is already out there…but i’ll give ron the dickens and the strokes, and maybe a few bucks… our new senator, too, merkley is helpful. they aint maxine or barbara lee, but they’re good guys.

once more miscommunication and resentment… boy.

here we go:

my view is that Dims (aka the Democrats of the Democratic Party) are bought by the corporations, too — similar to the Repugnants (aka the Republicans of the Republican Party). It is just that some have consciences and wish they weren’t bought by the corporations. Okay? That’s me with the J-P Sartre motif of “bad conscience.” And I said, I wish they weren’t.

Now I said thatthe whole “bad conscience” thesis does not work any better than (yes) the flamethrower’s “stalinist purge of 1972″ but it was the way i felt about the Dims.

I also closed in my responde to your #45 in agreement that Maxine, Frank, De Fazio, et al were a heck better’n any Repugnants and i was with you on that.

But perhaps, like flamethrower, you think i am not pure enough. good for you…

neill, Let me just try to convince you one last time that you do not come across as a sincere or thoughtful person (which is all you have going for you to support any of the arguments you are making) when you invent names to call people en masse.

I don’t resent you. You’re not worth a moment’s feeling.

I do resent what you represent, because it’s no better than the shit you’re railing against.

Grow up, or go away.

well, mr. knoxville,

i’m always open to accepting ways of doing A; but in your case, given the linguist essentialism that burns yer hide, i’ll take B…

Who’s neill?

americans will get what corp america says they can get

oh the demos will look tough but they will fold like a deck of cards

they know who butters their bread come election time

give up your demo card and become an independent voter

the demos no longer represent you

wake up smell the stink in wash

it is a swamp ie corp fascism

heh, Dim is kind of funny.

rather than putting on a funny hat and trying to be the terminology police, why not put some effort into refuting
Neill’s thesis, namely:

Dims (aka the Democrats of the Democratic Party) are bought by the corporations, too

’cause, y’know, thats the root of the problem here.