If you claim you are going to actually fight for something, you better be prepared to step into the ring for a bloody, bare knuckle brawl.

this is gonna mess up some seriously expensive manicures.

and the female representatives are gonna hate it too.

Fuck Stupidpak and everyone like him.

The only people in congress willing to fight are religious nutcases or corp whores (apologies to whores who earn their livings honestly).

This is a beautiful illustration of how that which we reject is also exactly what we most need.

In the case of American politics, the conservative conservatives (the R’s) have always had spine, but that strength was used to ignore alternatives and stand up for less than the best in issues. The more liberal conservatives (the D’s) have listened to some alternatives and talked of more broadly representative solutions to problems, but had no spine to advance them. (You might note this is essentially a masculine-feminine dichotomy.)

The two halves of America that so reject each other are actually exactly what the other needs – if we’re willing to see and accept each other.

Of course, this is always true not just in politics, but in life.

I reject your framing. There was a day when progressives were willing to stand on principle, with spine. Then Clinton found the corrupt way. The reason why Ds don’t stand up for what they claim to believe in is because they can fool voters with speeches and then purposely do nothing of the sort while voting for their corp masters’ benefits.

I keep asking “what progressive caucus”

They are all BS artist,and I am so happy people are finally beginning to see through their “fight fot the PO BS”.

Democrats had plenty of spine in the 60s as I recall. And in the FDR period too.

I have a suspicion that Weiner will turn out to be one of the biggest BS artists. No evidence yet, but his district is in NYC and he is a Schumer protege. Probably gets big Wall St. contributions, which makes him suspect on first principles. (Sorry, I don’t know how to look up campaign contributions, otherwise I’d link.)

The Progressive Caucus needs start talking like Elizabeth Warren.

“My first choice is a strong consumer agency,” the Harvard Law professor and federal bailout watchdog said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.”

But change is hard so I’ll make a very simple suggestion for the CPC. Once HCR is settled this year, figure out what issues they agree with Bart Stupak on (pretty much everything but abortion) and for those issues (whether its in health care or in other areas), let him negotiate on their behalf. He’s gotten more leverage with his dozen votes than Woolsey ever has with her 80 votes. A guy like that, as LBJ crudely put it, you want in the tent pissing out instead of out of the tent pissing in.

Even on HCR, they should figured out how to make common ground with Stupak– easy enough, go back to Jacob Hacker’s original Public Option proposal that only the robust PO got taxpayer subsidies, private insurance would remain both unsubsidized and free of Hyde Amendment restrictions. The Public Option (like other government plans today) would be subject to Hyde. Once the deal was made, give Stupak their proxies and let him do his thing. :o)

The history you give (not that I agree or disagree) is basically irrelevant. Like treating a disease, one’s supposed health and fitness long ago is almost meaningless – what matters is the reality of the present.

Though to continue your line it’s then the supporters of those representatives who don’t have the spine to act with their convictions – since it’s silly to try to distinguish between politicians and the people who elect them. Attempting to do that is simply an attempt to avoid responsibility.

You’ve simply moved the framing with which you’ve disagreed to the next larger scale, where we can contrast the real actions of the Tea Party crowd with the anxious, thoughtful discussions and web posts of “progressives.”

My point is that the members of congress do not represent the voters, but rather their campaign contributors.

And when was history irrelevant to a person’s disease, assuming your medical analogy has any meaning in this context.

Many than most are “BS” artist and you are right on about BClinton.
Why BClinton is not viewed with absolute disgust is beyond my comprehension.He has played a major role in the descension of the country.

The difference between Woolsey and Stupak is that Stupak has principles. Odious, regressive, vicious, misogynistic principles, but principles none the less.

Woolsey either has none, or has none that are a higher priority to her than currying favor with the White House. Take your pick.

As I just responded to eCAHNomics, the character of dead politicians born in the 1800′s has as much relevance to our current problems as my ability to wear stage leathers years ago does to my current sartorial choices.

Those people (regardless of whether they might have been considered truly progressive or not) are not the ones in power now, just as the people alive then are for the most part not the ones alive now.

We need to respond to the reality of our present, regardless of labels, and regardless of whether we like it.

Jon Walker,

The only reason anybody’s even heard of Lynn Woolsey is because she’s one of the few who ARE fighting. Just not effectively.

I thought you’d like to know.

Clinton’s good will probably stems from the fact that the economy flourished under him, not only employment growth, but even real wages per worker rose toward the end of his tenure, for the first time since the 1960s. For most, that’s enough. You have to peel back another layer to see how his economics team planted the seeds for the shitty economy that followed.

Completely ineffective fighting is worse than none at all. It gives people false hope and co-opts actual pressure to improve.

If she has no intention of going down swinging from time to time, she should step out now and let someone else give it a try.

We civilized progressives must wish each and every powerful person long life and continued good health so they can continue doing what they do forever. Anything else would be inappropriate. Better that every monster out there have the maximum opportunity to destroy the lives of countless innocent,regular, hard-working, rule-following people, than that we should ever dilute our own perfect purity by having anything but the best of wishes for them. Spiritual purity is the only way to win any fight in the real world. Everybody knows that.

I’d disagree with your characterization of Stupak. Except for the abortion issue, he’s a fairly liberal Democrat.
http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Bart_Stupak.htm

I agree. One of my age-old Qs is whether lip service is better than no service at all. After years of saying that, I finally figured out the answer. Lip service is better if it is the initial stage for something happening. Lip service is worse if it’s a smokescreen for doing nothing. And as Jane pointed out earlier today. Woolsey has a history of being in the second category.

Lynn Woolsey can’t go down swinging even if she tries because her constituents support her politics.

Stupak’s position on HCR imo cancels out anything good he might have done in the past. He is willing to let 44,000 already alive people die per year just to obey the orders of some men in dresses. Incoherent.

To underscore your point, that underlayer included NAFTA, “Free-Marketeers” Greenspan and Rubin who pushed for the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act.

The mergers of banks, insurance companies and investment houses after the repeal of Glass Steagal lead to the mortgage, real estate and construction market pump and dump and the trillion dollar derrivatives ponzi schemes they pulled on us.

You saw the Taibbi piece in Rolling Stone. Goldman Sachs, Nations Bank and the rest of the TARP beneficiaries took their zero interest billions and bought T Bills to earn three percent interest from the government that loaned them the billions for free.

They get their money for nothing and their chicks for free.

Bill Clinton is the one who developed the corporate model of Democratic governance while Obama perfected it. The problem is that too many people put an emphasis on a D being next to someone’s name so they become selectively blind – such blindness by those who are normally the protectors results in the Democratic politicians actually able to pass far worse things than Republicans could get away with. However, what is surprising is how nobody is coming to Massa’s defense – I want to know how what Massa did was worse than the perjury that Bill Clinton did…so far all I’ve heard is that he made some stupid remarks when he was drunk at a wedding, which at most I could see him getting censured by the House rather than run out of town on a rail. I’d think that Rahm for instance is on public record having said stuff equal to or worse than Massa, so why isn’t Rahm being run out of town for his conduct? – Of course I think the answer is that the rules are only enforced based on whether or not you toe the line where you can break the rules to your heart’s content if you vote the right way, but must be pure as the driven snow if you vote the wrong way.

My point is that the members of congress do not represent the voters, but rather their campaign contributors.

While the current members of Congress may not respond to the needs of most voters in the way an infantile and irresponsible populace might prefer (though I would argue they respond faithfully and perfectly to the population’s deepest transformative needs), your statement also reveals where you miss the essence of this. The members of Congress, in the broadest sense, completely represent the voters – because they’re exactly like the voters who elected them. They represent the voters in the most literal and fundamental sense: they allow the voters to truly see themselves.

That some voters may want to be in denial about this doesn’t change it.

And when was history irrelevant to a person’s disease, assuming your medical analogy has any meaning in this context.

It’s irrelevant when it’s used to ignore the reality of the present – arguing that one’s health at some earlier stage somehow changes one’s present diagnosis.

Diagnosis and care – and most generally, health, since that’s what we’re discussing – starts with an openness and willingness to accept reality.

Awesome.

So glad you, and you alone, know the innermost beings of members of congress. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I might add.

So, except for his knuckle-dragging insistence that women are a second class of citizen and more of them should die from sepsis, Bart Stupak is a fairly liberal Democrat.

Well gee, when you put it that way.

Stupak and others of his ilk enjoy a major tactical advantage, because they don’t give a shit whether the healthcare bill passes, so they can afford to dig in their heels and stonewall. Progressives will always be in a difficult position, because we care about policy outcomes, and sincerely want to help people. It’s a lot harder for us to play hardball.

The Progressive Caucus has folded like a cheap card table every time there has been a chance to stand firm on health care reform. If Woolsey’s and Grijalva’s behavior were unacceptable to the majority of the caucus, they wouldn’t be in charge. Much as I dislike being lied to, Woolsey is by no means the root of this problem. She’s a symptom.

I don’t know what to do, other than stop rewarding this kind of behavior.

Stupak is a caveman. Stupak is a front-man for “The Family”. Not the mafia – the religious C-Street creeps who control a bunch of congresspersons.

Stupak paid $600 per month rent at the C-Street House. Ensign and Mark Sanford were also recent residents.

It’s for this reason that I no longer call myself progressive but instead a member of the Kucinich bloc. We mean what we say.

I think a $ignificant part of the problem for too many “leader$” on the progre$$ive $ide i$ that they’re from a profe$$ional / managerial cla$$ living in the leafy neighborhood$, product$ of the leafy neighborhood$.

Success for these social classes has been based upon the right high school classes, the right SAT scores, the right kind of colleges and universities, the right kind of grad schools and professional jobs. They have NOT had to fuck people over to get what they’ve got, and IF they’d been fucked over too many times themselves they wouldn’t be living where they live … ! duh.

This health care debacle isn’t about rationally and reasonably allocating resources, it isn’t about some clash of ideologies and interplay of philosophies and 7 months later the SCOTUS delivers the 5-4 or 6-3 or 7-2 decision from on high -

this is about greedy, selfish piece of shit pig motherf***ers who will give up NOTHING unless you take it, OR, you make holding it toooooooooooooo painful.

While it is admirable that the non sell outs on “our” side are driven more by Mr. Smith Goes To Washington than by The Prince, their political effectiveness is pathetic and incompetent.

rmm.

There is no reason for her to be co-chair of the progressive caucus, her bubblehead constituents can piss off.

He was just on msnbc saying he’d vote against senate bill, even if he were the marginal vote that would bring it down.

44,000 a year eh? So delaying “guaranteed” coverage till 2014 means 176,000 already alive people will die waiting for Obama’s health care plan to get going (other than some weak tea reforms that start sooner– high risk pools that will quickly become unaffordable and of course the tax increases that start immediately).

In contrast, LBJ had every senior enrolled in Medicare within 11 months (and that was in the 60′s, before the internet, personal computers or, umm, an existing Medicare system) and Clinton signed the SCHIP program into law in August 1997 (via a reconciliation bill). By that October, states began enrolling children in the program.

If her constituents are stupid enough to support someone who pledges, in public and in ink, to do one simple thing, and then reneges on it, they deserve what they get.

We, on the other hand, deserve better.

That’s my man.

Bubblehead voters. Has a certain ring to it. Unfortunately not alliterative.

Obama’s plan won’t save more than a fraction of those people. An insurance policy whose copays you can’t afford, or a tax that you get nothing in return for… doesn’t extend your life expectancy.

And it’s designed to preclude a better system being instituted later, which might actually save them all.

Thanks for that. Someone explained that the delay in benefits related to the budget impact. Get young healthy workers to pay in for years with little draw on the system, and the benefits to others are delayed, so that the ‘reform’ comes out budget appropriate. Since you are good at arithmetic, you can calculate exactly the price that the USG puts on those 176,000 lives. My advice is not to hold your breath waiting for the media to report it that way.

I’m getting there. Found Kucinich offputting in his early days, but by now he’s about the only voice of sanity.

Yes, indeed, I am the purest example of spiritual purity one could ever hope to have at their back in a fight to the death. So nice that you recognized my exalted status.

Yeah, I saw that, too. WTF?

If you follow the link above to his voting record, he’s fairly liberal in most issue categories except for abortion votes.

Having said that, Hackworth’s link @30 is disconcerting, to say the least. There’s no excuse for that (Stupak’s C-Street connections I mean, not Hackworth’s post). :o)

could it be that the conservative shadow government only allows certain causes to be promoted and the personal characteristics of congressman have little bearing. The whole thing seems so far gone to me on so many levels

As an example of how far south things have gone in DC, this ranks right up there among the best.

Hint on voting record: lotsa “libruls” vote for the issues only when it’s safe. Mine in Manhattan, Maloney, is one of those. She usually votes the ‘right’ way, but is spineless, and subject to even a tea-insy bit of pressure. So her voting record is meaningless. She said at her town hall yesterday that the HCR bill won’t have a PO, as though that were the most boring piece of news she could convey.

Got that right.

And I don’t care. If a person is willing to steal the human rights of half the population, I don’t give a damn what their other ‘issues’ are. They’re a monster.

Till a few reporters got to close, Stupak used to live with the creepiest of Republicans at the DC C-Street House. C-Street deeded the property last December to someone named Marty. Marty is a relatively unknown member of the board.

They can only run so far. If they had deeded it to me I would have ratted them all out.

The Family intend to pretend that they don’t hold sway over congress. All the while they had boasted about it in the past.

Stupak is a Neanderthal.

Is there another D who is a member of the Family? I recall vaguely from Rachel’s stellar reporting on this.

I, too, am vigilant over precious bodily fluids.

Seriously though, you made a very good point about the absurdity of defending “our leaders” in the face of misbehavior – and in an entertaining way.

Ask and google replies. Mike Doyle of PA.

Bill Nelson. IIRC, Hillary is a former member.

I guarantee that the rep you voted for is garbage compared to Woolsey. What does that make you?

The whole of congress coddles The Family at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The more you look at this statement the more jawdropping the bullshit of it becomes. It’s complete doublespeak.

—

Piecemeal tweaking of the health insurance system will not address this growing problem. We need to reform our health care system, and the public option must be included.

I will fight to include the public option in the final version of the health care reform legislation.

If it is not included, however, it will rise from the dead once again.

The day after I vote for a bill without a public option, I will introduce a bill calling for the public option.

—

IIRC, they participate in Family sponsored prayer breakfasts, which, from what little I know (haven’t read the book) is The Family Lite, in the sense that many members of congress, who don’t want to be outed as hard core, participate.

$1.214 trillion over four years.

Using the EPA’s value of $6.9 million per human life multiplied by 176,000 lives.

give Dennis a heads up for standing firm!

He’s the best up there, IMO.

Hello people we must come to realization there are no real progressives in congress at the present time.

Once Obama and the Dems pass this Health Care Scam, What is the day after going to be like?

The Day after the Obama, Max Baucus, Insurance written health care bill passes ALL HELL IS GOING TO BREAK LOSE! Period

Few to any DEMS will survive the ATTACKS from CRAZY and INSANE RIGHT and FURIOUS LEFT.

From the ASHES will grow HARD CORE RIGHT WING POLITICIANS and HARD CARE LEFT WING POLITICIANS with one AGENDA kill the status QUO by any means necessary.

The Political Elite in DC will have ground pull from under them.

Of course all the so call liberals, progressives, will come crying, begging, lying, to left asking them for help, asking for money, saying the GOP is evil, etc. etc. while these spineless Dems are asking the Real Left for help, A NEW DEM WILL RISE, ONE WHO IS MORE VICIOUS, LESS TOLERANT, one that ACTUALLY CAREs ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS, a modern day ROBIN HOOD.

The Day after HCR scam passes Obama will tell Mitchell and his kids to enjoy their last couple years in the WHite House, Obama will knows his Political Career will end once this HCR scam bill passes. If he does not know Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod, and David Plouffe will know and will tell him the PARTY is OVER.

The DAY after the HCR scam bill passes will ursher in a new day of Politics in the USA.

Hold on it is going to be a very, very, bumpy ride the next couple of years.

Fuck Stupidpak and everyone like him. We need single payer and public Option. I will fight for it.