The looming prospect of a course-changing filibuster

Just tweak the Medicare system -- it is simple, but when did Washington ever think simple was possible.

I am truly disappointed in Obama and the Democrats. Is it too much to ask them to stand their ground just once? Every time the Republicans scream and yell at them, the Democrats retreat and run away. And why are they so obsessed with bipartisanship? When the Republicans ran the show, were they ever craving bipartisanship? HELL NO! Their version of bipartisanship was simple--DO THINGS OUR WAY OR ELSE, and the Democrats always caved in.

Obama insists on negotiating with Republicans and kissing their ass? WHY? Every time he talks to the Republicans, he trades an orchard away and begs for a single rotten apple in return. Why is he such a wimp? And Harry Reid, he reminds me of Dr Smith from the old Lost in Space TV show, a sniveling coward. Pelosi and Steeney the Weeney Hoyer are even worse. They have large majorities in both houses of Congress yet the Democrats are wimping out. IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK THEM JUST ONCE TO STAND AND FIGHT FOR SOMETHING INSTEAD OF SELLING OUT?

It looks like we're gonna get stuck with the Gang of Six's screwing on health care. So we're all going to be forced to buy worthless junk insurance because that's all we'll be able to afford, or we pay the Max Tax. But, wait a Second, didn't the President sing us the song about no preexisting conditions anymore and insurance companies will have to pay claims? Dream on. Wait for the court challenge which will surely come and the Whore Court will vote 5-4 to strike those provisions down. We'll all be screwed when Johnny and the Supremes gut the bill, make sure their corporate masters will reinstate the beancounters to ration care and you'll have to pay your tribute to Bill McGuire and if you cannot afford those junk polices, hey if you got a low income, the U.S. Taxpayer will fork over some help so you can pay your tribute to Bill McGuire, so he can fleece and screw you in ways Tony Soprano could only dream of. He'll cry all the way to the bank when he doubles his salary, after all that hard working man deserves to make 200 million a year exploiting us. Bill Mc Guire will steal even more and his stooges will kill even more people, Mc Guire makes Tony Soprano look like Mary Poppins.

Well, what will happen next after the Gang of Six and the Whore Court screw all of us. Well, does anyone remember those protests by rich senior citizens when they howled about the surcharges they had to pay when the Medicare Catastrophic Care was passed in 1987? Remember their protests? Remember how they cornered then Congressman Rostenkowski and almost got the chance to do a necktie party on him? You ain't seen nothing yet. Just wait till you see Dick Armey and Glenn Beck and the Fox News Whores whip up the masses to revolt against the health care mess. You'll see teabaggers on every corner, and the preachers and priests will agitate them in the churches. You'll see a full blown right wing rebellion all over the place that will let the Republicans get back in and repeal all health care.

As for me, I'm finished with the Democrats on a national level. We've passed single payer twice in California only to have Arnold veto it. I'll work with other Liberals (I AM NOT A "PROGRESSIVE" I WILL NOT HAVE JUNKIES LIKE LIMBAUGH, DRUNKS LIKE BECK OR CONVICTED FELONS LIKE LIDDY DEFAME THE WORD LIBERAL. I AM A LIBERAL AND PROUD TO BE ONE!) to look for a Tommy Douglas here in California who will sign Single Payer and tell Washington to go to hell. I won't look to Washington for help anymore. They're bought and paid for by their corporate masters and their press whores believe they live on a so-called "city on a hill". In reality, Washington DC is just the ultimate sewer polluting the world with it's slavish obsession to Ayn Rand and selfishness.

What a terrific, original, completely reasonable, and suberb idea -- Medicare Expansion.

This is what the country needs to hear. Period.  Beat them at their own game. Here's a sound byte one can take to the bank.

Most everyone has a family member and/or knows someone who receives Medicare, and where else can one generally get the straight scoop.

Medicare is wanting is some areas but its expansion to cover all would turn the page on this sorry state of affairs.  Myself, I'd also like some Single Payer (H.R. 676) features incorporated into Medicare (full dental, vision, mental health, substance abuse, long term care, etc.).  The money is there, it will not break the bank.

Again, thanks so much for sharing those two words "Medicare Expansion" and remember you heard it here at BuzzFlash.

Ed

If Obama had just named the "public option" the "Medicare Expansion" it would have easily passed . Americans are stupid. The program would essentially be the same thing, but Repukes wouldn't have been able to demonize "Medicare Expansion" and the sheep would have gladly gone along.  It seems so simple, you would have thought Obama would have thought of it. Maybe he did, and doesn't really want reform. He has quality tax payer paid health care after all.  All of the conserva- dems do.

Ay, there's the rub: he hasn't done it. Meanwhile, what he has done - coincidentally, pretty much what PM recommends - negotiate from weakness, hasn't exactly worked. We'll leave dismantled dignity for another post.

It's one thing to give a speech, quite another to actually follow through and get things done!  ....  Obama will live to regret ever saying he was determined to be the last president to have to deal with this issue.  All he has done is kick the inevitable can of defeat a few yards further down the road.

Hell, he made lots of speeches in 2008.  Here are a few tidbits, as I recall some of them:

I'll withdraw all American troops from Iraq within 16 months;

I'll provide affordable health care for every legal American citizen;

I'll bring openness to the federal government, and stop the spying on our own countrypeople;

I am offering you "change we can believe in".

In retrospect, WHAT A FUCKING CROCK OF SHIT, HUNH???

Here are examples of things Obama did NOT say in 2008:

I will consistently backpedal on my Iraq withdrawal pledge until I get to the point of Bush's stated withdrawal by 2011, but I am not even promising that (in fact and fairness, that piece of shit moron Bush wouldn't have gotten it done, either);

I will cut a secret deal with the Big Pharma crooks to keep them from raising their prices astonomically, but allow them to raise their prices at least quasi-astonomically;

I will choose an absolute bozo for my chief of staff, a man named Rahm whose political strategies have proven to be ridiculous, and pick cabinet members ranging from right-of-center to right-of-right;

I will protect, rather than prosecute as legally obliged to do, the rampant serial criminals of the rotten administration I aim to replace;

And finally, I will knowingly alienate the overwhelming base of progressives, liberals, and independents who will get me elected.

Now, how far would he have gone with those "honest pledges" about what he intended to do?  So, we can firmly establish that Obama is a sellout (and in almost record time!) but there is plenty of blame to go around in the Demowimp party, especially in the Senate.  They didn't pick Spineless Harry to be their Leader for nothing, you know; they chose him BECAUSE he's a pussy, and they could control him, rather than the other way around.  Meanwhile, there was Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, and even first-termer Jim Webb (just to name a few) who were obviously better qualified and suited for the job.

The coming collapse (again) of health care reform (or worse, the passing of a watered-down bill that will effect little and may do more harm than good), is an overarching political party failure, accentuated by Obama's lack of leadership and lack of will, but highlighted by the Dem's chicken-shit timidity to employ the very same tactics that the Republicrooks used against them when Dems were in the minority.

"Who knows? Such a dramatic extravaganza could result in political benefit for Republicans. One simply does never know with the American electorate."

No; potential outcomes are more easily predictable than you suggest.  If some sort of real debate is engaged against the Republican simpletons by the one guy on our side who commands the attention of every television camera (and who happens to be terribly charismatic, articulate, and erudite), then our side wins every time.  The problem is, "every time" for that scenario totals about three events in the past 30 years.

Currently we have an appeaser president who concedes all the salient issues before the contest begins, and who thereby actually loses policy debates to idiots like Palin, Beck, and Grassley.  Its absolutley tragic.

All I heard during Wednesday night's homage to corporate greed is that everyone will be forced to become insurance corporation slaves.  The only check on the size of our tribute payments would be an immediate public option. Obama's lack of support means that's now off the table.  Congress will be convinced to vote for a public option as long as it has a "trigger" (DC speak for it's never going to happen) and members can go home and bragg about how they did the right thing.

Obama will win two huge victories if REAL health care reform goes down the drain.  Insurance company profits will soar and so will their bribes to Democrats.  Obama can bragg that his anemic plan passed and he'll be praised as a reformer by the corporate media.

He and the Democrats will certainly lose my future votes. 

If Obama were truly interested in providing all Americans with decent health care, he would have used every power trick in the book. He would have twisted arms and played fast and loose with the funding of unrelated projects in the districts of his opposition to get their votes. Did not Reagan and the Bushes all do this when they were in power?

Because Obama did not, Occam's Razor insists that he's throwing the fight. Plenty of evidence is there for the taking! Even as a one-term president, he still gets a healthy pension to live on the rest of his life - and that's what skin he has in the game! Maybe once he leaves office he will receive a six-million dollar house as a parting "thank you" gift - as Reagan's supporters provided him - paid for out of the funds of 47 million new "customers" received under legal duress by the insurance companies. That way, he won't have to worry about making the mortgage payments like too many of the newly "insured" will.

  President Obama (or maybe Rahm) needs to sit the reluctant BlueBall Dems down and tell them that if they don't support this Health Care Bill they won't have a chance in hell of getting a future job cleaning toilets in an East L.A. Taco Time. If they do support the bill, or I should say "when" they support the bill, if it results in their losing their re-election bid, they'll be taken care of. Whether that means ambassador to Tahiti or whatever, they'll be taken care of. Otherwise, if they vote against reform, the full power of the Democratic party will be set in motion to assure they do not get re-elected. They will never get another penney of support from the Dems.

  Look at the discipline of the Republicans. As bad a shape as their party is in, they still stick together. Though it makes them look mean, bitter, racist and stupid, they still vote no.

"If history is a reliable guide -- and it usually is --".  So based on what happened before, we know what to do for our future? That's called steering the car by using the rear-view mirror. Doesn't ANYONE know the meaning of change?  With defeatist attitudes like those I'm reading here, it's no wonder Democrats lose. Stay in the fight, and ignore the past. Conventional wisdom may be the turgid meme in D.C. but we don't have to buy it or even consider it valid.          

Yes.

Let them stand up in front of the country and talk their mouths fuzzy. Let them rant and rant until the cows come home, get milked, and go back to the pasture. Let the cameras roll and shine a light into their myopic, bloodshot, soulless eyes. Let them bring the government and the country to a halt, if need be. Let them spew all of their gobbledygook from planet Moron until their antennae quiver in their tinfoil hats. My bet is that the 80% of the citizenry whose intellectual and emotional level is above the fifth grade will see in clear focus what their bankrupt agenda is all about: the perpetuation of greed. Maybe the lowest 20 percentile will get a glimmering of realization that they have been sucker-punched all along.

P.M., it must be really exasperating for you to make the bluedog case for the healthcare bill in every imaginable way you can think of and not win a single convert. If I were you I would begin questioning my rhetorical powers.

In any event, if the public option is no big deal to you and your ilk, why not simply let us have it? Why isn't the meme as follows--

"Are the bluedogs ready to vote against their president and party and side with the hated republicans on the most important issue of the day just to prevent there being a public option?"

No, it's this:

"Are the House liberals going to bring down the entire bill just because it doesn't contain a public option?"

And that meme is coming from the f**king White House.

So I really don't want to hear this "Obama is powerless" crap from you. He knows exactly what he is doing. He has chosen sides, and for the most cynical reasons.

Corporate cash, power, protection for blue dogs.

The only problem is, he hasn't told the liberals. In fact, he's been leading them on all summer that he's in their corner on the public option. And oh, are those Obamabots at DailyKos in for a surprise when they find out the truth.

He has boxed himself into a corner now, though. He can stick with the dirty deal he made with Big Healthcare last spring in which he dealt the public option away for corporate cash--and risk losing half his liberal base to the Green Party or apathy--or he can side with his base and the majority of the public, pass a robust public option, and watch his approval numbers soar--in which case that will be much more protection for the blue dogs than any amount of corporate cash or scuttling of the PO could provide.

He has made his choice.

Now it is up to the House progressives to stand in unison in the face of what is certain to be considerable White House and corporate media pressure to fold and accept a bill without a real PO. Seeing as how Pelosi has just accepted a fundraiser from the main lobbyist from US Health, I think we can see where that may be headed.

And Harry Reid? Making the republicans actually filibuster? I don't know what you're taking, but you might want to reduce the dosage. If there's a more spineless corporate-sellout than that weasily bastard, I haven't seen him.

So yes, we're stuck with a rotten, corrupt congress. And you'd like to completely exonerate Obama for not being able to reign them in or persuade the bluedogs to embrace his "stated" agenda. Hell, he hasn't even tried!

He gave the farm away before the game even started. And he's been lying to liberals about it all summer. But those chickens are about to come home to roost. DailyKos will be a dirge when the inemitable certainty of a rotten bill crosses the president's desk in December and he signs it into law.

It won't be a pretty sight.

There is, however, about a 5% chance the House liberals can hold the line on the PO. So all is not lost. There is still hope for liberals like myself. Just not much.

Carpy says, "On the other hand, it's still quite early on this Saturday morning as I write this. Maybe I'm still dreaming."

Sleep writing again, Carpy? These Ambien moments of yours are better suited for the MSM.

You try to tell us Obama has no power to pursuade the Democrats to do anything. Yet, Rahm has been "twisting arms" and "breaking bones" of the progressives from day one, effectively destroying any hope of change for another four years.

Could it be Obama does not want to use the threat of veto to assure a public option health care bill, because he is in fact NOT an "essentially progressive"? Could it be he is actually a Blue Dog DINO-Fascist in the pocket of big business and actually wants an ineffective health insurance nonreform bill?

In the end, Obama has only himself to blame for his loss of popularity. This happened because he abandoned his progressive base and all principles that defined him as a Democrat. The branding of Obama as a "LIAR!" is not without some truth. Ask any progressive who no longer supports him.

He has become Republican Light, and progressives know what happens to Republican Light candidates on Election Day. Too bad Obama and his fellow Blue Dog DINO-Fascists have forgotten. They should not have dumped Howard Dean, who could have reminded them. But now they stand to be reminded by losing their seats in Congress.

As a prelude to Obama's upcoming disasterous run for president in 2012, watch what happens to fellow Republican Light Harry Reid in his home state. If the ineffective Senate Majority Leader Reid is lucky enough to win his upcoming Democratic primary, he will lose in the General Election.

One way or another, we will rid Washington of the Blue Dog DINO-Fascists, even if we have to temporary lose a few seats to the Republicans to do it! Today the Blue Dogs may have the winning hand in Congress, but come Election Day, it is the progressives who will hold all the cards.

is to try and to fail so spectacularly at any and every effort to clean up the Bushevik clusterfux, and to fail to fulfill enough of his "promises," that the country will come to hate him MORE in four years than it hated Bush after eight, and thus pave the way for the recrudescence of "friendly fascism."

He already has a leg up, in that "race"....

Filibuster my afterburner. Before it comes to that, spineless dems will water down the bill even more, and then - they will probably issue an apology in the corporate media, to the repubies of course. They will apologize for the inconvenience, eliminate even a threat of a trigger for the public option. They will force everyone to carry insurance that costs a bundle and covers nothing. They will leave those with pre-existing conditions at the mercy of the death-for-profit companies.
Watch and see how it plays. I think, if there is no blood on the streets, if there are no executives dangling from lamp posts, if there are no corporate buildings going up in flames - there's no change. The powers that be, the establishment, will simply NOT let it happen, unless threatened with extinction.
Will the Stockholm syndrome sheeple do anything?
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

You don't try to reason with those who want to cut your legs from you and stab you in the back on your way down.

You can't change the minds of those who have their minds made up.

The Neganation knows only no.

You have got to stick with "those who brung you" to where you are.

Review the campaign statements you made.

As a predecessor said, "Spend your political capital" while you have the means even if it means encouraging reconciliation. In two previous bills, Republicans were given hundreds of amendments, yet not one of them voted for the bill for which they were given input. THEY WILL NOT SUPPORT ANY BILL PUT FORTH BY DEMOCRATS SO JUST DO WHAT YOU CAN WHILE YOU CAN.

The mentality that ruled Salem Village in 1692 is ruling the political right. Obama and the rest of the dems have to get the idea that you can't play civil politics with people who really would hang you on the basis of spectral evidence.

That element has always been there. But Reagan legitimized, nurtured but restrained it and Dubya let it off the leash. The Democrats have yet to adjust their game plan. The result is that the political center has been dragged to the right-wing 20 yard line.

In the meantime, in the warm motherly arms of the "best health care system in the world" people are suffering, dying and going bankrupt. Sometimes people commit suicide to keep their families from going bankrupt.

Why? Because, as George Carlin said, "the owners don't give a F#$% about you." What's absolutely amazing is that the owners can convince enough ignorant people that this is a fine state of affairs.

Sometimes, in my more misanthropic moments, I think the wrong side of the political spectrum is buying up all the bullets.

Obama sold us out. there is no other rational conclusion.

A mandate to hand over ever-increasing shares of our paychecks to the insurance industry leeches and big pharma seems to be on its way.

I expect to get screwed by republicans but Obama promised change.

When this is all said and done, people will slowly buy surely come the the realization that they have been screwed, and the republicans will have a bought-and-paid-for method by which to skewer the Democratic party.

I've voted for my last Democrat if I do not get a public alternative to handing 30% of my paycheck to insurance company parasites. I guess now I will become just what I've always advised against - a third-party "protest" voter. I have no other choice. I have been a loyal Democratic voter for 30 years. My party doesn't exist any more.

When Obama wanted to get elected he knew what to do. And now the Big D apologist P.M. Carpenter is trying to sell the idea that the Emanuel's and Axelrod's are suddenly brain dead?

First you cut off the TARP funds in their districts. You cut off DNC money to their re-election campaigns. If necessary, you find credible candidates to challenge them in the primaries. You rally your base. Anytime Ronald Reagan wanted something he went to the people. He asked his supporters to respond and flood Congress with phone calls, letters and faxes.

Obama hasn't asked us to do anything. Not one single thing.

The fact is, there is no healthcare issue. The only issue is money from the healthcare industry. Stop that. Focus on what's best for the people. Like Teddy Roosevelt who Obama is so fond of quoting, you use the bully pulpit to adminish the lobbyists and their clients.

Sadly, we've been hosed again. The only change Obama represents is who's bread is buttered. Sadly, it is not The People's bread.