There was far too much wrong with the mandate.
1) Since the HCR act didn’t provide sufficient controls on the industry, the gift of 40 plus million new customers, often ones who will be charged signicantly more, will only be a boon to the private insurance industry.
2) Many will still be left out of the process.
3) Many will still not be able to afford the insurance. Anyone who believed then, and certainly now, that the GOP is going to allow sufficient funding for the assistance of those who have income limitations are kidding themselves. It will be very limited funding. And I have never seen if the “rebate” is not until the next year on the income tax form, how are people who don’t have the money now going to pay for it?

In the past, many insurance companies were mutuals, and rates were reasonable. Few are now, and the companies are soaking everyone. Yet it is the uninsured that are subsidizing the system, where if they had insurance they might have a $25 copay and the insurance company paying another negotiated $40 for the service, the uninsured often have to pay $125 for the same general practitioner office visit.

Obama went about it wrongly. He should have first, using the commerce clause, gotten the industry seriously regulated and made to end their abusing ways. Then, after that had gone through, then worked on a serious provider of health care needs for all Americans.

Another part of the reason that health care received so little attention in SOTU.

It shouldn’t be this difficult to get health care. And it wouldn’t be, if the GOPers weren’t ideologically incapable of seeing any solution that doesn’t involve war, deregulation, or a tax cut.

Boxturtle (Not sure which way the supremem will rule on this one)

“….one of the greatest unforced political errors in American politics.”

Sadly this is just the crowning glory of the democrats recent (and ongoing) dumbness.

“…the GOP is going to allow sufficient funding for the assistance of those who have income limitations…”

Nor will they sufficiently fund Medicaid to allow for the 12 to 15 million expected to become eligible under ACA. By the time it takes effect that number may well be 18 to 20 million.

.

The mandate is the bitter fruit of elitism. Those ignorant schlubs are there to accept orders from their betters. Gak!

.

Mandate is to buy insurance company products vs health care. Everyone SHOULD hate the mandates of Obamacare. Mandates only made sense if there was a PUBLIC OPTION where people could buy into Medicare coverage by transferring their company paid health care contribution and their own co-pay to Medicare.

Mandating purchase of insurance instead of health care is the poster child of failed Obamacare. Insurance rates have gone up 10% as US incomes dropped 10%, the usual 20% effective yearly increase in insurance product prices. And even those who can afford the insurance can’t use it due to $5K deductible and 20% copays that bankrupt them.

Obamacare GUARANTEES insurance companies (not MD’s, nurses, hospitals) 20% profit plus 20% overhead (to pay salaries, buy real estate, etc) and unlimited price increases (you will get a strongly worded letter from an Obamabot)

But such is Obamacare. Notice nothing on REAL health care reform in Obama’s last state of the union speech.

“The Democrats had both ample warning and ample time to replace it with a less controversial and unquestionably constitutional alternative to encourage individuals to get insurance. Such a modest correction would have been easy to make right before passage to increase support for the law.”

The only “easy” solution would have been to carve out a very basic benefit and pay for it by increasing the Medicare payroll tax a few percent. But that is single payer and Obama had promised the insurance companies that he would not allow single payer to be passed (to be fair only Hillary ever pushed back against the ins. co’s and demanded single payer, Bill made the same promise to the ins co’s in 93 as Obama made in 2009, and who can say for certain that Hillary would not have caved under pressure from the ins. co’s).

Vermont – the state by state approach to getting single payer – is the way the ACA gave us to get single payer – and it mimics the approach Canada had to adopt for its proveniences – except Canada got all but Quebec onto the same plan – and Quebec’s variation is not very different from the others.

The problem with the mandate has always been whom it rewards. It benefits private, non-public entities operating in an industry that has a cut-the- consumers-throat rentier pricing model, and in effect functions as a tax subsidy for the health insurance industry (which has enjoyed for several years double-digit profits). The mandate only reinforces an already broken system.

The mandate could have worked, like it does in many European countries, if the ACA actually focused on cost and pricing controls. But without a single payer model, or a strong public option, (or at the very minimum an effective regulatory mechanism) to offer price competition to keep the insurance industry honest, all the individual mandate accomplishes is an unfair tax on Americans who still get little guarantee that the system they pay into will actually deliver them health care when they need it.

Folks expect (hope) the Supreme Court will take care of the individual mandate because they are afraid that the Republicans would roll back the entire law, including all of the provisions that have helped people with pre-existing conditions, that require higher medical loss ratios than before (even though the public doesn’t understand the words “medical loss ratio), and the extension of benefits to offspring up to the age of 26. The best result for folks interested in single payer health care would be for the court to make a narrow ruling on the individual mandate itself. If it strikes that down, the insurers will pressure for easing the medical cost ratios if not a repeal of the act entirely. The politics then favor a single payer solution so long as it is framed as “Medicare for all”.

So folks interested in real solutions should gear up for a campaign starting now and peaking in 2014 in favor of Medicare for All, which requires only the removal of age qualifications on Medicare and rolling all other medical coverage (VA, Medicaid, etc) into Medicare, eliminating deductibles and co-pays, and funding it out of the general tax fund as an entitlement to cover costs. That system is simple enough for folks to understand.

It is time to start putting that campaign together to make it visible as part of this year’s issues and to lay the basis for strong political support that requires whoever is elected as President and whoever is elected to the Congress to have that done before the exchanges begin operation in 2014.

The preconditions for that is a fundamental change in the political culture so that people can make more informed choices. The Occupy Wall Street movement is one strategy for accomplishing that change in political culture. There other complementary strategies that must be developed that are not focused on electoral politics but on the environment in which campaigning and governance occurs.

If you would not steal from low-income Americans by forcing them to buy low actuarial-value health insurance that won’t cover shit for medical bills then you have no business voting for Barack Obama again.

Essentially Obama had four options:

- socialized medicine

- single payer (e.g., Medicare for All)

- a public option (e.g., opening Medicare to anyone who wanted in)

- continuance of private insurance, but for everyone.

The last, and worst, requires a mandate in order to work, however inefficiently and however bad for the future of health care. It’s a windfall for the 1%. Without a mandate the tendency will be for healthy people to stay out of the system, putting upward pressure on premiums for those in it.

The first option was “unthinkable.” But the second and third were certainly salable. Obama immediately dumped the second and almost as quickly the third.

It takes a Rip Van Winkle not to understand the sequence of events.

Those who’ve been awake over the past three to four decades have noticed: massive upward redistribution of income and wealth; a politically activated 1%; concentration of media ownership; creation of propaganda mills in the guise of think tanks; marketing of neoliberalism; both Democrats and Republicans dependent on private funding in our public elections; legal barriers to alternative parties and candidates; a pro-corporate makeover of the judiciary; debilitation of unionism; et cetera; et cetera.

Is it any surprise that Obama and his party have undermined what should have been a liberal moment?

Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, the next elections will, at best, be choices between bad and worse until fundamental changes occur. These will have to be bottom-up. “Change” and “hope” will not come from the top down.

Of course people hate the insurance purchase mandate. It doesn’t cover everyone, cuts people’s finances, enriches the insurance corpses, and doesn’t become fully engaged for two more years. This was a ham-handed gift to an industry under a veneer of helping the people. The fact that it was easy to see through didn’t matter to 0; he had an agenda and he slipped it through behind closed doors. he has certainly lived up to his promise of a transparent administration.

The fact that both the tea-pottiers and the progressives are, generally speaking, agin the thing, should nail just how fucked up it is. They hate it because it”s “Big Government” telling them what to do, and we hate it because it forces about 30 million people into the arms of the robber barons. (Along with doing piss-little to reduce the obscene amounts of money that are made off of sickness and aging in the USA.)

The “big government” we needed (past tense—Obama couldn’t find his political ass with both hands, now…) was, of course, a reform bill with a strong public option, not a presidential “mandate” to bend over and spread cheek for the leeches who’ve attached themselves to the american people.

I’m really convinced that by the next election, it won’t matter who you vote for; the result will be predetermined. It is almost the case now, because the repugs have put up the worst possible seemingly to insure the reelection of 0 in order to continue the destruction of the nation as 0 does his best for the repugs.

“…liberal moment…”

With the political clout that the voters gave him, it should have been a liberal first term.

You know, I hate to think that we’re so locked into protecting the corporate status quo that there is an unspoken conspiracy for this result, but it’s sure as hell looking like it.

As Allan said: “Romney’s just insurance…” For the 1%, that the boat won’t get rocked.

And that’s what really disgusts me about Obama. All he had to do was TRY, and he could have put the assholes on the run. He didn’t need to win every legislative battle, in fact, if he’d run a real healthcare reform bill up to the hill, and, if the repubs filibustered it, then KEEP running it up, while reminding americans of his promises, they would have collapsed in a few weeks, if not days, and he would have been FDR at the peak of his power.

Instead, he ran from that opportunity like a cur dog.

The status quo: if you’re uninsured and get seriously ill, you’re bankrupt. Guess who pays your unpaid medical bills? The individual mandate is not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

Something occurred to me; part of Gingrich’s popularity may be that despite all of the evidence to the contrary, and all of the shit-baggage he carries, he’s pitching himself as a “reformer”., and damn the reality; he’s going to keep ranting.

It’s like Obama, so fearful of triggering real changes, has left this leadership and “reform” vacuum, and this neo-fascist turd is happily taking advantage of it.

Do you appreciate how HUGE the gulf is between “perfect” and “better than nothing” ?

“…but it’s better than nothing…”

Absolutely!

And that is clearly Obama and the democrats campaign strategy…which is why we hammered the republicans in the mid-terms.

Two things that were part of the sell-out deal that Obama cut with the healthcare thieves, that didn’t get a lot of pub when they happened:

He told Reid to kill the Dorgan amendment that would have allowed for the re-importing of inexpensive generic foreign drugs…

And, a bit later, he told Pelosi to stuff the effort by some House Democrats to strip Humana, United Healthcare, Blue-Cross/Blue-Shield, etc., of their exemption from the anti-trust laws…

When those went down, it was the 8 ball in the side pocket for the healthcare leeches, and it also meant that Obama was philosophically committed to selling out the american people in order to sustain corporate profits.
That “deal” wasn’t forced on him; the spin that it was the best he could have gotten is foul horseshit. He had the political numbers in congress, and he had a clear majority of the american people who would have stuck with him down the line, if he’d only forced the issue.

He rolled over and peed himself, and the rest is history.

American People Still Really Hate the Individual Mandate

Which is why it was incredibly stupid of Romney surrogate Norm Coleman to do this:

Norm Coleman, an adviser to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney whose advice was once described as “critical” by the candidate, believes that his boss — or any Republican — won’t be able to repeal Obamacare if they defeat Barack Obama.

“You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president,” Coleman told BioCentury This Week in an interview that aired Sunday, according to The Hill. “You can’t whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what’s been done.”

Most people who go bankrupt from medical bills have health insurance.

Overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance.

Your beloved individual mandate won’t change this because the types of policies that low-income folks will have to buy will not cover all their the medical bills.

Also, the notion of employment-based health insurance fails when the worker gets sick and loses their insurance.

“…Only Hillary ever pushed back against the insurance companies…”

On that, you are neither fair, nor accurate.

As the now-disgraced John Edwards said when I saw him speak here in South Carolina:

“HIllary wants to keep the health insurance companies in the equation. I want them completely out of it.”

In the context of his screwing around on his dying wife, and getting caught for it, speculation about what he might or might not have done, is just…speculation.

But for a serious candidate to say that, and to say it in Georgetown, South Carolina, took one hell of a lot more political courage than Hillary ever showed, when she drank the koolaid for bush’s war, and then kept on drinking it, for five years of bloody, expensive, chaos.

All of your comments are spot on. Keep up the good analysis.

When do courts make rulings on laws that do not exist? As I undersztand it, for a court to hear a case a plaintiff must have standing. This means the planitiff is arguing damage to themselves. Since nobody has been damaged by the mandate yet, how can the SC even be taking this up? Unless it is to play politics and screw up the election for Obama. That would be my guess.

I’ll settle for halfway between perfect and better than nothing. You know, some sort of hybrid, New Deal, capitalist/socialist, old-style Democratic Party platform. :-)

But that’s not where I’m setting my goalposts. :-P

Barack Obama explicitly represented the interests of the health insurance industry against the interests of the American people.

He chose to support the parasitic health insurers who do nothing but skim money out of the health care system and drive costs up.

He could have either stood up for his constituents or for this special interest group. And nobody who doesn’t own insurance company stock (or suffer from Stockholm syndrome) should be defending this sellout.

George W. Bush pitched himself as a Washington outsider and a reformer in 2000.

Max Baucus thanks you for not looking under the bonnet (UK meaning).

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Constitutionality
(laws presumed Constitutional, interstate commerce
has often worked hand-in-hand w/ affirmative requirements–
this is actually old hat)

got car insurance?

Every difficult fix needs a dash of realpolitik.
W/0 the mandate you can buy ins. only when you get sick.
But you’re on your way to the emergency room sooner or later
(hopefully much later)
even if you don’t have coverage but denial instead.
And technology is hopping along and some day your kids will
help make it work out.

If one can’t buy health insurance absent
mental health parity, what’s that but a mandate?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcuhhJ1BaMk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQegsqYhuZE&feature=related

then generally at YouTube: psychetruth

But, there’s definitely a crucial role for psychiatry.
We know that from the pepper sprayers abusing the world’s
most altruistic youngsters, and then, visibly paricularly
girls.

More generally, we know it cause Patch Adams could have helped
his girlfriend’s murderer if he got to him in time.

(Reconcile the above? That’s the easiest thing in the world:
stop the drug cos.’ lobbyists from corrupting the profession.)

But Obama actually leaves the cream for the ins. cos.
and subsidizes caring for those who will cost money.
That’s entirely consistent with Medicare, which is National
Health Insurance for those the ins. cos. don’t want to
do business with.

That’s a wonderful thing if you’re in the ins. business
and should not be confused with the public option.

If the ACA mandate gets past the courts, and the GOPers can’t repeal it, the next move for the GOP is to start moving Medicare recipients into the mandate scheme.

And how can the Dems argue against it without making the young think the Dems are treating them like 2cd class citizens? What’s good for the goose….. The Democrats have totally set themselves up for a fu*king on this one.

The main difference between Hillarycare and Obamacare is that Hillarycare used regional federal exchanges instead of state exchanges and Daniel Patrick Monyihan was chair of the Senate Finance Committee instead of Max Baucus. And Hillarycare originated in the White House, while Obamacare originated with Max Baucus’s legislative aide for healthcare, who just happened to be the former VP Government Relations for Wellpoint.

What? The voters hate the individual mandate? The healthcare industry loves it. 41 million new {forced) clients.The SCOTUS voting against big business interests? Get serious.

So folks interested in real solutions should gear up for a campaign starting now and peaking in 2014 in favor of Medicare for All, which requires only the removal of age qualifications on Medicare and rolling all other medical coverage (VA, Medicaid, etc) into Medicare, eliminating deductibles and co-pays, and funding it out of the general tax fund as an entitlement to cover costs. That system is simple enough for folks to understand.

Hear! Hear!

After wading through three changes of insurance in the past 3 months, and helping my daughter wade through another change after a job loss, I am flummoxed by the incredible complexity of the current system. Your solution is the most appealing proposal I’ve seen.

Obamacare and the individual mandate may even further fragment the system. It’s unnavigable for anyone but the most highly-educated health savvy consumers, basically a series of traps and gotcha’s laid by insurance companies to amass the most profit and pay out the least.

I thknk the SCOTUS will have an interesting conundrum with THE ACA. That being, “forcing people to buy something is “bad” but is it OK if you force them to but it from BIG CORPORATIONS???????

You know what they say, “Give a man fish, he eats for a day. TEACH a man to fish and you can charge himmoney EVERY year for a fishing license, boat registration, lauch fees, gas, oil, beer and ice.”

This assumes(d) that obama is a liberal which he is not. It was all bullshit to sucker us. He’s hoping the same bullshit rhetoric works again.

I wonder if there is a dilema in the court. They wanna help their corporate buddies by keeping the mandate. At the same time 5 of them want to help repu politicians running against obamacare. Certainly a conundrum!

We are already starting to see how the mandate is fucking us. Premiums are skyrocketting. By the time ACA fully kicks in, you’ll have to have or buy expensive insurance or if you’re too poor the government will be handing over tons of money to the insurance. This all courtesy of Barack Obama.

The manchurian candidate is doing a masterful job of destroying public perception of some sort of socialized medicine and perhaps even socialism itself because the repubs are calling every policy bo involves himself with as socialism.

Politicans like to parse word. Give a new meaning to word not the meaning meant by the orginal speaker or writer.
In the preable of the US Constitution it callsfor the governemnt to PROVIDE for the common defense and PROMOTE the commom good. Two words (provide and promote) that have entirely different meanings. Evenin today’s Webster’s Dictionary they stand apart but checked the definitions in Webster’s Dictionary, printed 1823 and which is now in reprint. These definitions are what the people meant two hundredyears ago. A man’s or woman’s word was their word or as it is said “A IS A”, no quibbling.

True, but Bush was never the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He had been the governor of Texas, from which position he was never forced to resign, nor was he censured and fined $300,000.

For Gingrich to present himself as the solution to our problems, and for him to pretend to outraged “morality” over Obama’s three years of limp-dick “leadership”, is enough to gag a maggot.

Having said that, the only downside to his resurgence is that it helps Obama. Turns out that’s not quiiiite enough to offset my pleasure at watching the burgeoning hatchet-fight in the GOP. :o)

Of course they do,because it’s a gift for Insurers,affects individual freedom
,in practice is not true that the mandate will drop down prices and cost for individuals.
Supreme Court agrees with the mandate,that’s a fact.

Folks, we all know how this one is going to turn out and it ain’t good. We need to think seriously about Cenk/Robert Reich/etc. idea of putting most of our effort into a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United specifically and campaign finance reform in general. With the internet and money put in a more accountable place in our politics, we have a decent chance at a “representative” democracy again. With out it, it’ll be more of the “same old, same old” until the inevitable collapse.

Thanks. After three years of Obama’s protecting the corporate status quo, no level of corruption or cronyism shocks me.

And the various “plans” all had that status quo as their base. In that, I’m like Edwards: get the leeches completely off us. Again, the money that’s made off of sickness and aging in america is an obscenity. Any of the (mostly fabricated) shortcomings of “socialized medicine” can be fixed a lot more painlessly than what most americans suffer when we get run through the private meat grinder.

A lifetime of servitude to the health insurance industry in return for access to medical services? Tell you what, take the $2,090,000,000,000 America will blow out the tailpipe and squander in the next five years, after buying gasoline to get to work, and apply it towards healthcare services access! Protect the slave-owners? WTF!

IMO Gingrich is the most despicable person to seriously run for president since George Wallace. As a human being, he has absolutely NO redeeming social values. He’s a crook, a hypocrite, a liar, a serial adulterer, and a narcissistic, sociopathic opportunist.

The only acceptable mandate would be one that mandated free health care for all US citizens. It should be a right, not a privilege.

Like affirming the enslavement of Dred Scott, adjudicated property, for the benefit of a property owning class?

I’m always amazed when people extol the “virtues” of the neoliberal, corporatist hawk Hillary Clinton and promote her as a champion of the people.

I agree! The greatest nation on earth????
Congress protected the institution of slavery as did the SJC. This is our model! Take the $2,090,000,000,000 America will blow out the tailpipe and squander in the next five years, after buying gasoline to get to work, and apply it towards healthcare services access! Protect the slave-owners? WTF!

The Individual mandate is more than what it seems. It will control the masses and disenfranchise them from property ownership. Also, if you are born with a bill in your hand, there will be no one that can be unemployed for any reason weather it is poor health or whatever.

Why will millions be disenfranchised from property ownership. Those who can’t pay their mandatory health bill will be put into what is essentially a Welfare Program. If you are not able to earn the payments to health care, you will be forced to stand in front of some kind of authority and decisions on your behalf will be made. This is a welfare program and to qualify you must not own anything. If you own a home and aren’t earning , you will have to sell. Welfare recipients are not allowed to own homes and get assistance. It doesn’t work like that. Your financial history is completely reviewed about three times a year. They want your bills itemized, signatures from landlords and employers for every adult and child in the household, list of assets, any benefits now or in the future, trust funds, any conceivable thing of value. They even ask if you own a burial plot and how much money is on your person.

Welfare people are subject to summon and forced requirements on top of that. you will become answerable to the government that says it doesn’t want to provide health care like you never have before. This is so sinister, people will freak if it ever goes into action. Wait and see.

“Folks expect (hope) the Supreme Court will take care of the individual mandate because they are afraid that the Republicans would roll back the entire law”

Ironic that Obamacare mandates will be ruled unconstitutional because Obama failed to do what he promised (and the only thing people wanted) and include a Public Option.

If Obamacare had required participation in a health plan and offered a government option (Medicare participation) the law would be as legal as current Medicare payments. Basically saying one could opt out of Medicare for All if one purchased private insurance. Germany has a system which has similar rule.

But Obama was too dishonest, too weak, too arrogant, too cynical and too poor a politician to fulfill his campaign promise on public option.

Considering it is a right wing court and the mandate favors insurance companies over individual rights, it is plausible the Court will uphold the mandates which would allow GOP to mandate purchase of all kinds of private products. On a legal basis, it hard to see the difference between mandate to purchase health insurance and car insurance, both private insurance products.

Your description of Newt fits Bill Clinton as well.

The plans had the status quo as a base because every previous attempt to go to single payer healthcare (or Teddy Roosevelt’s national health service) were shot down by status quo interests. Those interests killed Hillarycare flatout. What Obama did was bribe them in order to get a few meaningful reforms. With the public mad as hell over the individual mandate and wanting to preserve Medicare, Medicare for all does both of those by bring a huge number of mostly healthy people into the Medicare system. Which lowers the actuarially-determined costs of Medicare.

By 2014 also, there might be less concern about protecting the jobs of employees of the health insurance industry. Those companies continue to shed jobs.

If the Supreme Court upholds the individual mandates (showing their complete venality), the public reaction will again play toward single payer coverage. The problem is getting Congress back under control of the people. And there’s another two years of so to work on that.

“The Individual mandate is more than what it seems. It will control the masses and disenfranchise them from property ownership. Also, if you are born with a bill in your hand, there will be no one that can be unemployed for any reason weather it is poor health or whatever.”

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” Thomas Jefferson

The mandate was a bad idea. If allowed to stand, it would be easy to see mandated exercise since the amount of exercise someone does affects their health and hence health costs.

Far fetched? Not long ago people would have thought it far fetched that people could be held in a jail in Cuba indefinitely without charges.

To me, the best system would be to take the total health costs of the previous year, divide by the total population, and that’s your premium per person.

‘Guy, you’re right about Gingrich. He is all those things. We progressives know it, and are repelled by it, but a substantial number of americans obviously don’t care.

But here’s the catch: a MORE substantial number of americans, and not liberals, are also repelled by Gingrich, and yet he’s one state away from becoming the front-runner for the republican nomination, if he’s not already there.

I speculate; I wonder; I go back-and-forth…but finally, I don’t believe he can be elected; not even against an incompetent fool/sellout, like Obama. I think that he’s sort of like a male Palin, only cleverer. As it stands now, all I think he will accomplish is to divide the republicans and scare the hell out of the “moderate” leadership, such as it is. The calling in of the loon bartab, on the “moderates”, is long overdue…which is why I say: “Run, Newt, Run!” At the same time we talk about what an unmitigated shit he is. :o)

Of Hilllary: ‘Bull, I’ve been reading and talking with Papau for a while now. I think his heart’s in the right place and I agree with a lot of what he says, but he’s obviously so emotionally attached to the IDEA of Hillary that he hasn’t yet completely dealt with the reality of her. He’s not alone in that. Periodically, in the threads where we’re getting after Obama, we get someone who brags about “knowing-all-along” that Obama would really hose us, once he was elected, and that they NEVER fell for his B.S.

The obvious question they then should answer, is “Who did you support?”. Usually, they don’t want to answer, but if had to bet, I’d bet that it was Hillary, which, given her campaign-run willingness to smooch all manner of rightwing butt, kind of shoots down any claim about laser-perception about what a two-faced sellout Obama has been.

That reluctance to abandon Hillary isn’t hurting us (yet), and while I think that the political landscape is going to look a lot more chaotic by mid-summer than it is, even now, it will take an unlikely sequence of events for Hillary to decide to run this year.

The emotional attachment that really hurts, is that so many liberal democrats are so willing to be shit on, yet again,
that they’re willing to reward Obama for his basically throwing progressives under the bus, as he has utterly squandered an historic opportunity . They shriek and scream about how bad the republicans are, usually ignoring that Obama is only marginally better, and they also don’t want to talk about how “We suck less!” got our asses handed to us in the mid-terms. Now that we have the White House, nominally speaking, they have fainting spells about the republicans getting it back, and there seems to be nothing that Obama can do that would make them turn their backs on him. As has been said, time and again, Obama had the best opportunity for our side to go on offense, since FDR.
I’ve been a good liberal/progressive, all my life, but I’m sick of playing defense, especially, when the defensive posture of our having to bend over and grab our ankles has been imposed on us, not by republicans, but by the most liberal-SOUNDING democratic candidate in a long time. And that was why he was elected; he ran as someone who was, if not diametrically opposed to the policies of the Bush administration, then as someone who at least would stop implementing them and try to mount a salvage operation. This, he has not done. Not even close. I think that if we muster up for him again, instead of at least trying to find someone to challenge him, then we will be politically neutered for a long time to come. At this point, I’m pretty sure that I’m breaking ranks. :o)

“The problem is getting Congress back under control of the people.”

The undue influence of “monied corporations” utilizing the liberty extracted from Americans, will not permit congress being accountable, to the governed. This is not going to end! Greedy bastards do anything, to protect cash cows. A way of life for some?

The problem is getting Congress back under control of the people. And there’s another two years of so to work on that.

LMAO.

The system is not correctable at this point.

We cannot vote our way out of this type of corruption. American “democracy” is utterly compromised.

When our best hope – the Democratic Congress and presidency of 2008 – reveals its true colors and sells out the people, exactly who remains out there for us to look to?

The Democratic Party is complicit in defrauding the American people. The Republicans are plain shit. The media works hand in hand with both of them. We are fucked, pal.

When the car is totaled, it cannot be rebuilt.

Well put. Once again, we are faced with a “lesser of two evils” choice. Gingrich will not get the GOP nomination, I feel certain of that. But that leaves us with Romney and Obama. I don’t think anybody knows WHAT kind of president Romney will be. Will he have both houses (R)? Both houses (D). Will the current “split” remain intact? All that will likely effect what a Romney presidency WILL BE.

And, what would a second term Obama do???? He has let the middle class down BIGTIME and failed to deliver on may things that were very important to a large portion of his supporters. GITMO, bankster prosecution, end of tax breaks foir the rich. He has ignored the “Occupy” movement and left the invasive “Patriot Act” in tact. FRankly, why exactly would he kill the pipeline project. His moratorium on offshore drilling from one isolated BP fiasco crippled the oil and gas industry. I don’t know if I can vote for him again.

Without term limits and significant campaign finance reform you are correct.

The chances of either is slim.

They won’t be rolling back the law. This is about a servant class that can’t own property. Ironically, hoodwinked into existence by a black man. Expect it to pass with flying colors and expect pay for working people to be adjusted because its available. This will come in the form of NOT raising the already too low minimum wage. It will work like Welfare does now to perpetuates low wages because people are saved from starving while their employer pockets money they would normally need to pay if workers were actually starving while working for them. Don’t forget, the Heritage Foundation wrote this bill and it was dictated by Wall Street.

People have to get up to speed on this..Obama IS a Trojan Horse. He will be worse in the Lame Duck. You can take that to the bank.

Im not saying Repubs are better, Im saying we have to find a way to demand someone not backed by Wall Street is elected and that means no Dem or REpub PERIOD. Voting for either party is a vote for WALL STREET. Also the voting process is a sham and owned ultimately by Goldman Sachs.

Just How Corrupt Will The United States Voting System Be In 2012?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVS5TIppad8&list=FL87vr2xwsbZWfaVhXvbr7ZQ&feature=mh_lolz