Spintested: April 2012

John Breaux Sees Democrats Embracing Paul Ryan's Plan To 'End Medicare'

Monday, April 30, 2012

Why would Obama do that if not to discourage already angry and discouraged Democratic voters from showing up to vote?

Democrats lost seats in the 2010 midterms because of Obama's and Democrats' failure to do what Democratic voters put them in office for in 2008. It was BlueDogs who lost seats in huge numbers, and lost Democrats control over the House and lowered the total in the Senate -- Progressives only lost 3 seats.

Since the midterm elections, Obama's tried to spin this as some mandate for more Republican-like legislation.

Do you honestly believe that the message of the midterms was to cut spending when the vast majority of Americans want no cuts to Medicare or SocialSecurity and want the wars to end now, ~~Bush~~Obama tax cuts to be repealed and taxes raised on corporations and the rich? Yet that's exactly what Obama and Republicans and the Democrats in the House and Senate who voted for this 'Super Congress' (including NancyPelosi) are trying to sell. Just this past week, Pelosi said she could sign on to Simpson-Bowles.
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John Breaux Sees Democrats Embracing Paul Ryan's Plan To 'End Medicare'

I'm praying the Democrats win an overwhelming majority and we go to a one payer system, like the civilized world has.

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What do you think you're voting for when you put Obama back into the WhiteHouse?

And if your answer is "populist policies", what makes you think that's what Obama supports?

Before the 2010 midterms, Obama broadcast that he would be doing more of the same, more caving,, to Republicans, more Republican-like legislation, even if Democrats remained the majority and in control of both Houses of Congress:

Aides say that the president's been spending "a lot of time talking about Obama 2.0," brainstorming with administration officials about the best way to revamp the strategies & goals of the White House.

And despite the predictions that Democrats may relinquish a large degree of legislating power, including perhaps control of the House & even Senate, Obama isn't thinking of the next two years as a period that'll be marked with the same obstructive nature from the GOP.

"It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, [Republicans] feel more responsible, either because they didn't do as well as they anticipated, & so the strategy of just saying no to everything & sitting on the sidelines & throwing bombs didn't work for them," Obama says. "Or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals & work with me in a serious way."

DickDurbin says Obama's post-election agenda "will have to be limited & focused on the things that are achievable and high priorities for the American people." TomDaschle says Obama has to reach out more: "The keyword is inclusion. He's got to find ways to be inclusive."

KEEP READING
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SIGAR Report Finds Afghanistan Reconstruction Compromised By Security, Corruption

MADDOW: America, it‘s your tax dollars at work. This is the war economy as translated to land-locked Central Asia. We dump a ton of money thinking that we are paying for our military effort. Everything that goes along with our military effort ends up letting - or in this case, directing like a squirt gun, instead of flooding -

ENGEL: The streets become rivers of mud.

MADDOW: But the money doesn‘t go to the country and trickle down its economy. It just goes to the elites and power brokers who can keep it for themselves.

ENGEL: A war lord system. There is a lot of money in war - contracting, supplying, shipping. And if you have been in power, you keep those contracts for yourself and you build neighborhoods like this. And maybe, you don‘t even live here. You live somewhere else, in a foreign country.

MADDOW: This is what it is like in Kabul. This is the exact same dynamic that we saw in Kandahar where you‘re talking with these counterinsurgency doctors and soaked military officers who are incredibly smart and have far reaching thinking about this sort of thing and they can because of that, they can see the basic contradiction at work that we‘re trying to do.

If the whole effort, all the money and everything, is to establish governance and - if the whole effort is to establish governance, all of our money, all of our spending here is only supporting the elite, the warlordism -

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SIGAR Report Finds Afghanistan Reconstruction Compromised By Security, Corruption

ENGEL: Exactly. And the reason the streets are still unpaved is that these government officials refuse to pay any taxes to the government. They are in a fight so the government won‘t come and pave the roads or connect it to any kind of sanitation system at all because the same government ministers won‘t pay to register the neighborhood.

MADDOW: So they won‘t throw their weight around to get their neighborhood taken care of, because they don‘t live here anyway.

ENGEL: They don‘t live here anyway. So you have these large homes, and some of these homes - you see this building right behind you?

MADDOW: That looks like a hotel.

ENGEL: No. No. No. They are all private homes.

MADDOW: This is a private home?

ENGEL: It‘s a private home. It probably has 25 bedrooms in it and garish, colonnades and unusual architectural features. And then, they‘ll rent that out to some western client and they‘ll charge either by the bedroom or by the floor or for the whole thing. And if you were to build this one - it‘s obviously under construction - that is a $1 million plus house in Kabul with no paved streets.

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SIGAR Report Finds Afghanistan Reconstruction Compromised By Security, Corruption

ENGEL: Because this was originally just empty land. You can see there is no real pavement or anything like that. When the Americans came in with the northern alliance (the northern alliance, which was the allies against the Taliban) took this land and then gave it away to all their cronies. They created a new war wealth neighborhood out of nothing.

MADDOW: And so we‘ve still got open sewers and we‘ve still got no pavement, but we have rococo castles. Nouveau riche castles.

ENGEL: That lease for $10,000 to $25,000 a month, because it‘s a safe area. But here‘s the irony. Most of the government officials - and these are almost all owned by government officials - don‘t live in them. They rent them out to foreign companies, contractors. And they live in Dubai or have their families in Islamabad. So they are purely investment properties.

MADDOW: There‘s a sign right there in that one. It says, “house for rent.”

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John Breaux Sees Democrats Embracing Paul Ryan's Plan To 'End Medicare'

When politicians say that "Social Security is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their Corporate Masters. You don't see politicians putting campaign finance and election reform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on social safety net programs for the People.

To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), We The People are the problem. If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed. If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give and give and give to Big Business (privatize national resources that belong collectively to us all, We the People) and deregulate so that corporations wouldn't be constrained by anything, could become profit-making machines on steroids, unobstructed by piddling voter concerns, such as health, safety, environment, etc. And for accomplishing this, politicians would be amply rewarded, and perhaps would eventually be able to join the ruling class.

You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the Democratic Party (the DLC is referred to as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the pro-corporate branch), and that Democrats in Congress and in the White House have signed on to privatize public resources and utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constitutionally-required role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administrations -- What little regulating they've put in legislation the last 2 years is ineffective for a whole array of very sneaky moves). As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractors stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge-profit-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.

You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy. What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.

What's gotten lost in the news cycle the past few months are Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties (S. Korea and Colombia) which mean more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. And then there's Paul Ryan, Simpson-Bowles, the 'Super Congress', all with plans for gutting Social Security and Medicare, along with the Dream Act (which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages) creeping forward.

We The People are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
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SIGAR Report Finds Afghanistan Reconstruction Compromised By Security, Corruption

What's the objective, how is the military going about achieving it, and where are our tax dollars going?

Not long ago, Rachel Maddow walked the dusty, garbage-strewn streets of Afghanistan with RIchard Engel to see what exporting US-style democracy means, and what US nation-building actually builds. Watch this to see where are our tax dollars going, and learn how we are not "nation-building", not making us safer, and not helping the Afghans or building their nation at all (or a democracy). Learn how this has all been just a huge rip-off of the American people:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5BHnN__5M

Here's the transcript:

RACHEL MADDOW: There are very few countries in the world poorer than Afghanistan where abject poverty is almost everywhere. The keyword there is almost. There are super rich folks here. We visited their neighborhood in Kabul. They‘re garish, bizarre. What it looks like to be rich in poor, war-torn, land-locked Central Asian neighborhood.

MADDOW: So we are in a neighborhood now. Kabul. Talking about the distribution of wealth, in Kabul and the effect of -

RICHARD ENGEL: There is a distribution of wealth. This is where it is distributed. This is where it ends up. All of the money from contracts and association with the government and association with the U.S. military has ended up here.

MADDOW: Why?

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Arianna Criticizes Obama Over Bin Laden Ad

Romney has an all-too real propensity to allow religious dogma to trump common sense when it comes to birth control

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As an old, OLD liberal Democrat (a 'New Deal' Democrat) who has never voted for a Republican, never will, I can honestly say that I can't imagine ever voting for a Democrat again.

I never advise people to sit out elections, because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. It's what p!sses me off about Obama, and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying them that brung 'im. Because by shutting out liberals, the base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government.

And just as Obama is accusing Romney of flip-flopping on issues, so has Obama flip-flopped and reneged on campaign promises. The irony is that, if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, Romney's record as governor isn't all that dissimilar from Obama's in the White House. There were even moments of liberalism to Romney's record (gun control, state co-pays for abortion, etc.) - Certainly more progressive than Obama.
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Arianna Criticizes Obama Over Bin Laden Ad

All that Obama's been doing is trying to save unregulated capitalism and the lock that the 1% has on the other 99%.

With Obama's deal to preserve Bush's tax cuts for the rich (making it Obama's tax cuts for the rich), 99ers were cut off. Of the 6 million people who were then currently receiving unemployment benefits, Obama's deal covered only 2 million, and many of them got crumbs from his deal because, in spite of the 13-month extension, benefits were cut off for many of those when they reached 99-weeks. And only 25 states out of 53 states/territories in/of the US have 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, so that's even fewer still.

David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now! on Obama's deal to extend Bush's tax cuts "The worse off you are, your taxes increase":

"The bottom roughly 45 million families in America or households in America—and there are a little over 100 million households—they’re going to actually see their taxes go up. Republicans got an extraordinarily good deal, that raises, I think, basic questions about the negotiating skills of the President."

The payroll tax 'holiday' in the deal sets SocialSecurity up for its end. That's what Bush and GroverNorquist planned and why Bush believes he'll be vindicated as a great conservative in history: For ending the GreatSociety programs, by having bankrupted the nation so there's no way to pay out those benefits. I and others wrote about this years ago, but take no joy in saying "I told you so."

Extending Bush's tax cuts was an absolutely wretched deal, but standard for Obama, who has a long record of negotiating lousy deals on ordinary citizens' behalf. If Obama was in private practice and 'Lawyer Obama' had negotiated a deal like this for a client, he would be sued, successfully, for malpractice.

The purpose of the deal was so that Democratic political operatives could say, "Obama helped the unemployed"; most readers won't know the actual facts of how Obama sold out the American people. Again. Obama and Democrats have no jobs plan either. Both parties are thinning the herd.
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Arianna Criticizes Obama Over Bin Laden Ad

You say, "Why should Obama-Democrats do anything for you...." They ended the recession for g.'s sake.

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How did they do that?

I would argue that this isn't and hasn't been a recession but a depression, it's a fluid situation that the actions these past 3 years (by both parties) have been nothing more than throwing flash grenades to distract and confuse and divert attention while enabling the heist to continue (and go off in new directions). Nothing, NOTHING has been done to fix the problems that enabled the heist, new bubbles have inflated and the housing meltdown continues on.

There have been 3.5 million home foreclosures so far in this meltdown with another 11 million in the pipeline. 11 MILLION. That's 15 million families about to lose their homes. With these foreclosures come another wave of job losses, more business downturns which will lead to another round of both home and commercial real estate foreclosures.

Like all other deals that Obama has 'negotiated', more NAFTA-like trade deals (S. Korea and Colombia) mean more jobs moving overseas. The jobless rate, down about 1% in the last 3 years, is rising again, but the real jobless rate has never been officially acknowledged and is more than double. The solution to our economic problems has always been jobs, but Obama has bought into the Republicans' dogma on that. And as more American lose their jobs, that's less money going into Social Security and Medicare.

KEEP READING
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Arianna Criticizes Obama Over Bin Laden Ad

Entitlements under liberal or conservative governments have to be rethought. There just is not enough money. Massive government spending sends countries into bankruptcy. Expenditures for the war in Afghanistan will pale in comparison to those for future social entitlements.

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"Entitlement" has gotten to be a dirty word thanks to propagandists like Frank Luntz, who have coined new definitions for it.

People are "entitled" to Social Security and Medicare because they paid for them. From their paychecks, for decades. And the reason there are fiscal problems with them is because the money has been spent for other things. "We was robbed!", and We The People have been left holding the (empty) bag. It looks as if the 1% is going to get away with this heist, too.

There are simple fixes that would put both programs on sound fiscal footing, but both parties at this time refuse doing these fixes (raising the cap on SS and replacing ACA with expanding Medicare to cover everyone, are two) and are apparently committed to ending both programs.
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Arianna Criticizes Obama Over Bin Laden Ad

with a link that doesn't work

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It seems that website is doing upgrading, just as HP is, and the links I provided have changed to this, this, and this.
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Arianna Criticizes Obama Over Bin Laden Ad

After reading comments on this thread, it's apparent that Obama's 'most ardent supporters' are no different than Bush's.

Democrats condemned Republicans when they politicized 9/11, and rightfully so.

If you want to talk about 9/11 and OBL, then let's throw the windows open and get a real investigation. Starting with what actually happened (the 911 Commission was a cruel joke), the policies that led to 9/11, our response to it, the post-9/11 policies which have us in a perpetual state of war with Americans being no safer.

And anyone who says "Obama killed OBL", I ask, "How do you know?" The greatest terrorist attack on the US and the alleged perpetrator, ill with kidney disease, a towering figure of 6'4" living among 5 and-a-half-foot people, eludes apprehension for a decade, and when we ultimately get him we quickly dispose of the body where it can never be exhumed, refuse to release photographs or anything confirming the death ("Take our word for it") and hide the SEAL time and let conflicting accounts of what happened remain.

It's as likely to be true as the official account of 9/11, where the US sent all of the steel from the WTC to China, untested, to be recycled.

We don't do that. We salvage downed air planes from the bottom of the ocean and reconstruct them in hangars to find out what happened.
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Arianna Criticizes Obama Over Bin Laden Ad

The thought of the republicans taking over government in 2012 is a terrifying thought to me.

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I'm an old, OLD liberal Democrat and the "lesser of two evils"-argument just doesn't work anymore.

How can you expect to be taken seriously when you say that Republicans are by far worse when Obama's continuing just about all the BushCheney policies, even going BushCo one better:

How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, NDAA, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret? It's Pure Kafka.

I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this.

And it's Obama who's put SocialSecurity and Medicare and Medicaid on the table.

At this point, I'd argue that Obama-Democrats are worse. BushCheney make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are, whereas Obama-Democrats ran on knowing better.

Consider our elections as a business plan where the 'CorporateMastersOfTheUniverse' have charted their plans years in advance and then they select the politician with the personality that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments.

If you want to lie the country into war for oil and profiteering, then GeorgeWBush is your man to front it, with DickCheney (the former SecretaryOfDefense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier) actually running the operation from the shadows.

And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in and trust. BarackObama.

Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).

You continue to support Obama-Democrats at the expense of your own best interests. As long as his numbers remain high, he does the bidding of corporations and establishment elites.

Why should Obama-Democrats do anything for you if they know you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republicans?
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Second point: Medical loss ratio' is what you're talking about.

And the insurance industry has already figured out the way around it.

Don't believe me? Don't want to take my word for it? You don't have to. Go call Wendell Potter and Lawrence O'Donnell Iiars:

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblower Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislation, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.

What Obama has done is sell (and buy) insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money. Over-priced, lousy insurance policies, at that. That's a pretty neat trick, btw, to sell and buy. It's like playing chess with yourself.

Having insurance doesn't mean getting healthcare. BIG DIFFERENCE.

There are no cost controls in Obama's legislation, much less mechanisms for lowering the costs of medical care. No controls over co-pays, no controls on deductibles. The only "first step" this is is toward ending all public health programs. This goes in the wrong direction. It institutionalizes, sets in concrete, the privatization of healthcare and the insurance industry as the gatekeeper to who can access affordable quality medical treatment. If you think otherwise, then explain how, step-by-step, you see getting to affordable, quality medical care for everyone from ACA. Lay it out how you think that's going to happen.

With the nation going bankrupt, this is a first step toward ENDING all public healthcare programs. What we're going to see first is a state-by-state curtailment of Medicaid services.

If you think a Republican president would work to repeal Obama's healthcare legislation, then you need to ask yourself why Obama couldn't/wouldn't work to get the real healthcare reform that voters put him and Democrats into office to get.

FWIW, Obama's healthcare was designed by the rightwing's Heritage Foundation. If Republicans were to repeal it, they would get pass it again under their own name, with a new title, and neither you nor Republican voters would know the true origin -- Republican voters would love it because it had an 'R' on it, and you would hate it because of that 'R' on it.
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

Ms. Heckendom, you are misinformed.

To begin with, Democrats didn't need Republicans to pass healthcare reform legislation, and ultimately ACA was passed through a reconciliation bill (50 + vice-president is all that's necessary for reconciliation). The fact of the matter is is that we would've already had a public option (the votes were there) had Obama not nixxed it.

Obama's legislation isn't universal, it has no chance of expanding to cover everyone, and it leads to the end of all public healthcare programs (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.). That's a fact.

Obama's preserving an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care. It's government sanctioned racketeering. Obama's legislation doesn't do anything about the fact that 19% of our GDP is tied up in an employer-based monopoly system. Ending employment-based insurance was what everybody wanted.

In the last weeks before the legislation became law, Obama held a summit that was gamed to ignore public opinion, to override public DEMANDS for a public option, and railroad through the legislation that lets insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare with no cost controls.

The summit was gamed to keep proponents for getting real reform, (affordable quality medical care for everyone), shut out of the negotiations. Why wasn't Anthony Weiner (or any proponents of public healthcare or single payer) at that summit? Whether it was Republicans saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must have accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of us be preserved and protected, despite it bankrupting us and the nation.

Dylan Ratigan nailed it on a show he did right before Obama entered the last push to get legislation giving the insurance and pharmaceutical industries the keys to the Treasury no real restrictions, no cost controls, nothing that the insurance industry hasn't figured its way around.

Obama's healthcare legislation prohibits the government from being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.

KEEP READING
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

The CenterForMedicare & MedicaidServices estimated that after the legislation passed, our healthcare costs would rise more steeply than if we'd done nothing. The CensusBureau reports that the number of uninsured in the US jumped 10 percent to 51 million people in 2009. About 5.8 million were able to go on public programs, but a third of our population under the age of 65 was uninsured for some portion of 2009. The NationalHealthInsuranceSurvey estimates that we now have 58 or 59 million uninsured. And the trend is toward underinsurance. These faulty insurance products leave people financially vulnerable if they have a serious accident or illness. They also have financial barriers to care. Co-pays & deductibles cause people to delay or avoid getting the care they need. And all these trends will worsen.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/power_and_the_tiny_acts_of_rebellion_20101122/
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

“The Democrats & Republicans give the illusion that there are differences between them,” said Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition. We fight over whether a Democrat or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact aren't significantly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on SinglePayer. Not one. I don’t see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger & broader social movement.”

The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of healthcare. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.

“We're at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Healthcare providers, particularly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independent practice. We're seeing greater corporatization of our healthcare. Practices are being taken over by these large corporations. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the InsuranceCompany. They tell you what your reimbursements will be. They make it incredibly difficult & complex to get reimbursed. The rules are arbitrary & change frequently.”

“This new legislation doesn't change any of that. It doesn't make it easier for doctors. It adds more administrative complexity . We're going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they're giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporations like McDonald’s say they can’t comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna & Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with preexisting conditions announced they weren't going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the ObamaAdministration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Healthcare costs are going to rise faster.

KEEP READING

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

“You can’t effect change from the inside,” she has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won’t get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequaliti es, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independen t of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”

“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation ], for example, funds many public health department s. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-pay er. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/pri vate partnershi p. And we know this is totally ineffectiv e. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-pay er health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.

There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-pay er, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-pay er they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organizati on was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women’s rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

One of those removed, handcuffed and arrested:

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it's like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blacklisted by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on healthcare reform by the Democratic Party & liberal organizations such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room.

“The reform process exposed how broken our system is,” Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. “The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-payer advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politically feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns.”

“There was nobody in the House or the Senate who held fast on universal health care,” she lamented. “Sen. [Bernie] Sanders from Vermont introduced a single-payer bill, S 703. He introduced an amendment that would have substituted S 703 for what the Senate was putting together. We had to push pretty hard to get that to the Senate floor, but in the end he was forced by the leadership to withdraw it. He was our strongest person. In the House we saw Chairman John Conyers, who is the lead sponsor for the House single-payer bill, give up pushing for single-payer very early in the process in 2009. Dennis Kucinich pushed to get an amendment that would help give states the ability to pass single-payer. He was not successful in getting that kept in the final House bill. He held out for the longest, but in the end he caved.”

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

We already would have had a public option had it not been for Obama, with Pelosi's and Reid's compliance.

The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate was the one and only time a public option had any chance of happening until another generation passes.

A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconciliation anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.

Obama nixxed it.

The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"

After the (allegedly ) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse and stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the dead of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"

Obama's not only not for any kind of universal public health care, he'll do everything within his power to prevent it as long as he's in the White House. Because that was the deal that he made. Those who believe that Obama's healthcare legislation is "incremental change", it institutionalizes the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to medical treatment (requiring having a job, too), which is something that everybody wanted to end. And there never will be a public option or any kind of affordable, quality medical care for all as long as Obama and DLC-controlled Democrats are in office: "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Obama Never Was For It". Watch it and weep.

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

What hearings did you hear SinglePayer debated? All you or anyone saw at hearings was SinglePayer advocates removed from hearings, handcuffed and arrested.

There's rarely a majority in Congress to pass anything until a campaign's been mounted to sell it.

And when a president and his political party are swept into power to deliver affordable, quality medical treatment for all as Obama and Democrats were in 2008, and the one method that can accomplish it (and also happens to solve other unique problems facing us, i.e., a crashing economy, joblessness, etc.), and that president not only doesn't use his bully pulpit to sell, but unilaterally takes off the table, prevents discussing it, then the fix is in and that president is corrupt to the core.

Obama took SinglePayer (MedicareForAll) off the table, because if the goal's to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison. What Obama did was preserve a failed, anachronistic insurance industry- and employer-provided system for medical care that everyone except the insurance industry wanted to end. It's government sanctioned racketeering.

Obama doesn't want SinglePayer, much less a public option. He never did. And all evidence points to a scheme to eliminate all public healthcare programs.

In February2010, when proponents of a PublicOption were finally making some headway between the time that the House passed its version of healthcare reform and the time that the Senate passed its version (and it's important to remember that Obama never pressured BlueDogs or JoeLieberman, never used the power of the WhiteHouse and never took to the bully pulpit to advocate for a PublicOption), Obama held a 'make it or break it bipartisan summit' at the WhiteHouse which was gamed to prevent PublicOption proponents from getting real reform, (affordable quality medical care for everyone). PO proponents were shut out of the negotiations. Why wasn't AnthonyWeiner or any proponents of public healthcare, of a PublicOption, of SinglePayer, at that summit?

The summit was gamed to let insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare.

Whether it's Republicans saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must've accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of you be preserved and protected, despite it bankrupting the American people individually and the nation at large.

Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductibles, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.

KEEP READING
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Paul Krugman: Ben Bernanke Has 'Been Assimilated By The Borg'

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, WallStreet reform, environmental and energy issues, etc.).

And talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the RoveMachine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
About Video
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Yep, You Heard it Here First .. and More Proof Romney Would Not Have Killed Osama bin Laden

Where is the proof that Obama killed OBL?

Selective bin Laden Leaking - The White House tells a court the bin Laden raid is top secret, as it keeps leaking snippets to glorify the president
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

Saturday, April 28, 2012

There was nothing stopping 'children' (18-26) from getting insurance.

What about moms and dads who have lost their jobs, who have no insurance themselves?

Everyone needs to get into the pool to bring costs down and the insurance industry needs to be eliminated from the medical model. It brings nothing to the table, doesn't add a thing to the relationship between patients and medical care providers.

Medicare needs to be expanded to include all ages. Medicare does for 2-5% administrative costs what insurance companies do for up to 37%.

Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:

Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

The SinglePayerUniversalHealthcare system wouldn't have put the insurance industry out of business. It would've been a two-tiered system: Basic coverage for everyone and boutique coverage for those willing to pay for it. So nobody had to worry about poor Big Insurance and Pharma -- There would have been work for all. Big Insurance and Pharma would just had to have made smarter gambles, with no taxpayer bailouts.

The job creation possibilities were lost when the real reform proposed by single payer universal healthcare advocates was eliminated from even getting a seat at the table, and Obama chose to preserve an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care, which is government-sanctioned racketeering.

The 'job creation' reform that survived was billions spent on the Patriot Act-like invasion of citizens' privacy and the outsourcing of jobs that's involved with putting medical records on the internet -- All for a system that doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).

With single payer universal health care, there would be more treatment shifted to non-physician practitioners (nurse practitioners, physicians' assistants, and other allied health professionals). Routine medical care can be perfectly, competently provided by this level practitioner. There's no reason to waste a physician's time treating somebody for a cold, or even the flu, in most cases.

If universal health coverage were to become an official reality, we'd need to expand training programs for both MDs and non-MD providers to insure there were enough to go around, and in the long run it would mean cheaper and more effective service, along with job creation. As would a real stimulus bill (have been a job creator), and an alternative energy policy with a Manhattan-project style effort towards clean, green sustainables.

These are all good things, but Obama and Democrats have chosen the dark side. The corporate side.
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

Seriously, what makes you believe that?

ACA Unlikely to Stem Medical Bankruptcies

Having health insurance ≠ medical treatment.

Obama's healthcare legislation doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).

People who voted for Obama and Democrats voted to get affordable, quality medical treatment. That was NOT a vote to protect and further enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats into power to entrench the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to being able to get medical treatment. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats to Washington to continue tying insurance benefits to their employment.

Yet that is precisely what Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats did.

Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:

Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.

Obama's healthcare legislation is nothing more than a massive giveaway to the health insurance industry. It is one of the most corrupt pieces of legislation ever enacted by our government.

The health insurance industry provides no real service. All it does is take money out of the system. It's nothing more than a blood-sucking middleman.
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John McCain: Obama Playing Politics With Anniversary Of Bin Laden's Death

Let's start with a body.
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John McCain: Obama Playing Politics With Anniversary Of Bin Laden's Death

The only "destabilization" is what's going on in your mind.

There's one he//uva lot that you believe to be true that is the result of your taking it "on faith". And in people whom you don't know, have never met, are themselves creations of public relations makeovers. They have much invested, personally and professionally, in not telling the truth.

We do not "take on faith" what our elected representatives to government do in our names in a democracy. We oversee, we have checks and balances, we have sunlight and transparency to insure that what is alleged to be happening in our names is indeed what is being done.

I repeat: How do you know that OBL is dead?
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

Health insurance agents and brokers will no longer be getting paid to tell sick people about a government-backed health insurance plan that can't turn them down.

====================================

There was little compliance from insurance agents and brokers in the first place. I'm in regular contact with people without medical insurance, turned down due to pre-existing conditions, who as recently as 3 months ago were turned down for insurance and had no idea about PCIP until I informed them of it and where they could go to get it. No insurance agent or broker ever informed them of the alternative available to them.

Even then, they were told by PCIP that they had to wait 6 months from when they first applied to PCIP to qualify for it, which isn't the case.

ACA and PCIP have been a boondoggle from the very beginning.
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

When politicians say that "Social Security is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their Corporate Masters. You don't see politicians putting campaign finance and election reform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on social safety net programs for the People.

To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), We The People are the problem. If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed. If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give and give and give to Big Business (privatize national resources that belong collectively to us all, We the People) and deregulate so that corporations wouldn't be constrained by anything, could become profit-making machines on steroids, unobstructed by piddling voter concerns, such as health, safety, environment, etc. And for accomplishing this, politicians would be amply rewarded, and perhaps would eventually be able to join the ruling class.

You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the Democratic Party (the DLC is referred to as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the pro-corporate branch), and that Democrats in Congress and in the White House have signed on to privatize public resources and utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constitutionally-required role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administrations -- What little regulating they've put in legislation the last 2 years is ineffective for a whole array of very sneaky moves). As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractors stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge-profit-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.

You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy. What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.

What's gotten lost in the news cycle the past few months are Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties which mean more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. And then there's the 'Super Congress' (and its plan for gutting Social Security and Medicare), along with the Dream Act ticking along (which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages).

We The People are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
About Health Care
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John McCain: Obama Playing Politics With Anniversary Of Bin Laden's Death

What part of that don't you understand?

The greatest crime against our nation since Pearl Harbor, and the alleged perpetrator's body is disposed of at sea where it's impossible to exhume? When the official account is loaded with contradictions, and the team that allegedly carried out the mission is unavailable to the media.

We're a nation of laws, or we used to be. We don't take things on faith, on the word of elected officials. We collect evidence, artifacts, and store them in our national institutions like the National Archives and the Smithsonian, as tangible proofs that can withstand scientific analysis and testing. Yet we're to believe a tale that contradicts our style and practice, and sounds suspiciously as if it could have been dreamed up by the same architects of the Jessica Lynch fable.

The Obama administration, that campaigned on transparency and returning the US to rule of law, even fights the release of photographs of the dead OBL and has prevented media access to the alleged raid's participants.

Sorry, but when Obama chose the path of media blackout on OBL's "death", he lost the rights to add it to any list of 'accomplishments'.
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Politicians WANT a high deficit so that they can create a fiscal crisis that forces us to cut vital safety net programs. It's what Grover Norquist (president of Americans for Tax Reform, and George W. Bush's once-a-week lunch buddy for the 8 years of the Bush-Cheney Administration) meant when he said,"Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub."

During the 2000 election, when Gore was talking about "lock box" and Bush was campaigning on tax cuts ("We gotta get the money out of Washington or else the politishuns'll spend it!"), I was writing about how Bush and Grover Norquist intended to bankrupt the country as a back door to ending the Great Society.

I was writing about conservatives frustration over their futile attempts to end Social Security and other New Dea/Great Society programs, and how even their own (Republican politicians in Congress) would do it directly because it was so popular with the People. It would end their political careers if they went at ending Social Security with a head-on vote. They would have to go about it indirectly, lining up the ducks in a row, for the step-by-step dismantling of the singlemost effective program in the history of the US for lifting people out of poverty.

The way they would do it would be to get the nation into so much debt, into bankruptcy, that there would be no money left in SocialSecurity. That's how they would kill it.

When GeorgeWBush got into the White House after the contentious 2000 election (when Republicans stole the election), when Bush rammed those tax cuts through, no Democrats talked about "what about if we need that money for a rainy day?" Or "find ourselves in a war?"

Around 2006, when Democrats won the election and talk was rampant about Bush's legacy, when even conservatives were repudiating Bush, Bush was saying that he was certain he'd be vindicated in history as " a great conservative".

Even conservatives didn't see what he was talking about (that what Bush is counting on is the end of the Great Society programs, like Social Security and Medicare, vindicating him as both a great president and a great conservative).

By the way, not one journalist asked Bush why he thought he'd be vindicated by history; they still don't, as he's made the rounds of his book tour since leaving the White House.

Democratic politicians aren't stupid, by the way. They knew what Bush and Republicans were up to, and they let it happen.

Why? Why would Democratic politicians want to end Social Security and Medicare?

KEEP READING
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John McCain: Obama Playing Politics With Anniversary Of Bin Laden's Death

We Democrats complained, and rightly so, about BushCheney inserting images of 9/11 in their 2004 campaign commercials. There's no difference now with Obama resurrecting OBL's image in this campaign season.

What's provokes more cynicism than usual is how Obama wants the glory of an OBL kill, when he's been unwilling both at the time and even now to provide the proof and details of the kill, with his very strange methods for handling OBL's body and refusal to provide the witnesses for media scrutiny and questioning. It's very much like how BushCheney shipped the WTC steel to China, refusing to let forensic testing on the site's rubble.
About Osama bin Laden
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John McCain: Obama Playing Politics With Anniversary Of Bin Laden's Death

The Obama administration found and killed Bin Laden.

==============================

How do you know?
About Osama bin Laden
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Friday, April 27, 2012

I'm aware of his plan, but it (and Goldman, himself) has significant problems.

Goldman, like Randi Rhodes, is a "vote for the lesser of two evils" proponent. As bright as he is, he's naive (or intentionally deceptive) in his suggestions.
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Read this thread.
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around. And we'd better do it because with each passing day it becomes impossible to turn this all around. This week's primaries swept out a bunch of incumbent Blue Dogs.

I say this as an old, OLD liberal Democrat (a 'New Deal' Democrat) who has never voted for a Republican, never will, but I can honestly say that I can't imagine ever voting for a Democrat again.

I never advise people to sit out elections, because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. It's what p!sses me off about Obama, and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying them that brung 'im. Because by shutting out liberals, the base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government.
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

What am I going to do?

I've been doing #6 and #2 for a couple of decades now and the Democratic Party and the government have moved farther to the right. Clearly those aren't the solutions.

The solution has always been as plain as the nose on my face, and it's what I've been saying for 30 years and it's what got Obama elected in the first place but has refused to do:

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.

The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when Ronald Reagan, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism , and how liberals were responsible for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgvnned by election dirty tricks & fraud.

When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.

KEEP READING
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

#6 - Continue the Insanity, meaning we keep doing the same thing* over and over again hoping for a different outcome.

[* - Same thing = Continue to refuse to believe our own 'lyin' eyes', keep doing what we've been doing for the past 20 years, continue voting for DLC-controlled Democrats, vote again for Obama in the hopes that he's a closet liberal playing 12-dimensional chess, believing that he's got a plan, a strategy, that nobody can see or figure out, but because he's the smartest, grown-uppiest in the room, in all of Washington (on the whole planet, even) his scheme eludes and confounds us, so we just need to be like Republican voters and have blind faith in our political leaders.

Clue: There aren't any grown-ups to save us; we're 'it'.]

What happens when millions are out of work, no jobs, no money, no hope. London, Philadelphia, where next?

"Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer..." - Roy Neary, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind

KEEP READING
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

#4 - A Third Party Challenge
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around.

#5 - The "Oh, F R I C K it, let's get it over with - Vote for Republicans"-plan

The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way. It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.

It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together...

Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?

By the way, while our Tea-Party/Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--can't be what, more than $60K a year.

While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.

Really, just let these frickers get what they want; we'll pick up the pieces later.

KEEP READING
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

#3 - Primary Obama
Two powerful arguments for challenging Obama from the left:

MichaelLerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.

RalphNader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and no, he's not running again).

MichaelLerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington, what's happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties), has been thoroughly corrupted.

Up until recently I was saying that, to begin with, no one in the DemocraticParty would do it. Due to the hierarchical system of party government, it would be suicide for any professional politician in the DemocraticParty to run against the party's sitting president.

Liberals/progressives within the DemocraticParty, no matter what their rhetoric, no matter what they say, they march to Obama's/Reid's/Pelosi's tune. They vote as they're told to from up top or else they risk the full weight and power and tools of the office of the president, the DNC and the CorporateMasters controlling them. The Party will cover them as best it can, get as many votes as it needs from Democrats in safe districts first, and will only call upon liberals/progressives to betray their constituents from safe districts if it needs them, accompanied by threats/promises of national party help when it comes time for their reelection bid (AlanGrayson, DennisKucinich, 2 examples).

The DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the WhiteHouse and a Democratically-controlled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropping abilities (I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's really impossible to deny in light of things like this).

As I said, that was up until a few months ago. Word has it that a challenge is coming, but it's really not a serious one, not intended for anyone to get the nomination from Obama. But that would only happen if Obama's numbers went down, and like the idea of the Republicans having a brokered convention, Obama's 'most ardent supporters' would have to wake up and realize that he's sold the people out again and has made more deals with corporations in order to keep any 'normal', moderate Republican from getting into the election.

So unless Obama drops out (in which case another corporate tool will take his place), the only legitimate challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republicans or Independents). And the most likely way that Obama would drop out is if his numbers plummet.

So what's left?

KEEP READING
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Then what is a progressive voter to do? Sit it out and let the TP take over? There isn't even a "lesser" of the two evils anymore.

==================================================

I get this question regularly so bear with me for a moment as I explain the situation as I see it, the options available, possible solutions, etc.

#1 - Sitting Out The Election
I never advise people to sit out elections because the first rule of politics is, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu". It's what p!sses me off about Obama (and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying "them that brung 'im") because by shutting out liberals, the Democratic base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, by putting Social Security and Medicare on the table, by eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government much less a seat at the table.

#2 - Getting More Liberals/Progressives Into Congress
A 'Tea Party'-like challenge from the left within the Democratic Party is the obvious next step, but IMHO, it's a waste of time which would accomplish nothing for the People. Obama and the DNC have been working their butts off to prevent real Democrats, real progressives, from getting into office - Their strategy for getting more Democrats into office has been to run Democratic candidates who believe in Republican ideology and support Republican policies and legislation.

One variation on this is if, A) Obama doesn't pull an LBJ (drop out) or, B) another Democrat or third party candidate doesn't challenge him, then take the money and shoe leather that you were planning on spending for Obama and use it to make both Houses of Congress overwhelmingly 'blue' and let the chips fall where they may (Obama sinks or swims on his own, or a Republican gets into the White House) and we go to work immediately finding a real Democrat for 2016.

Given how effective Republicans (with the smallest minority in decades) have been at stymieing Democratic legislation and policies, you would think Democrats could do the same for any Perry/Bachman/Romney/Palin/etc. administration.

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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

No sooner had I hit the 'Post Comment' button did your very thought cross my mind.

The list of what the Frank Luntzes have done to the language of our body politic is really mind-boggling.

Maybe the only response should be to keep correcting the false notion that it's somehow a freebie, someone else's money and not our own.

And you, too, (me, a fan of yours).
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

'Entitlement' isn't a dirty word. They're called entitlements because we are entitled to them, we paid for them.
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

During the Bush years, Democrats said if the People wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did.

Nothing changed.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting Bush-Cheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.

They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".

In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the Democratic Caucus. And, we gave them the White House.

Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old r@c!st America, than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. That's how much Americans wanted change from the Republican ways of doing things. Voters did it because of Obama's ability to persuade, that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- Obama was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.

And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election and a filibuster-proof Senate (tentative yet, with 2 senators, Kennedy and Byrd, at death's door), Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises & sloooooowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans", after Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep.

Obama's political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation -- Everything was to flow through his operation. This was a dead giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement.

Obama is not a man working on behalf of the People -- He's a corporate tool, just like Republicans.

Since Obama has gotten into office, he's continued most of Bush's policies & his 'accomplishments' are being spun as "reform" when, in fact, they're Republican in nature.

There could be 100 "progressives" in the Senate and 435 in the House, and they and Obama would still find a way to deliver to corporations instead of the People. And then try to blame it on Republicans.

Worst of all, we're stuck with marshmallow-fluff-brained voters, who soak up the most ridiculous excuses, like "Republicans won't let us do it!", when, in fact, Obama and Democrats don't even try. Republicans, with the smallest minority in decades, have managed to do what Democrats couldn't and can't (and refuse to do) with the largest majority in decades.
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Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Pelosi says this leading up to an election. Just like when she took impeachment off the table a few weeks before the 2006 elections. So that if/when Democrats took over the majority, she could say that it was what Democrats ran on.

Obama is the gr!fter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor and middle classes. It began with part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls), continues with more *AFTA treaties (outsourcing more Americans' jobs) and "payroll tax 'holidays'".

There should be tax HIKES on corporations and the rich. There should be massive cuts to the military. Banks should be threatened with nationalization unless they begin lending to small businesses. There have been more than 3.5 million home foreclosures but there are 11 million more in the pipeline -- There must be principal write-downs.

Democratic politicians should be beating this drum, loudly, constantly, and pushing the People's Budget instead of working off of a set of corporate lobbyists' plans.

Why aren't Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Democrats talking about the Progressive Caucus's budget and plan to balance the budget (reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion)? It beats Obama's AND Republicans' plans.

As Krugman has said, the Progressives' budget:

"balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall on higher incomes, raising the cap on payroll taxes (takes care of Social Security's solvency forever)... and unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense."

But Obama takes solutions that work for the People, the vast majority of Americans, off the table. Whether it's ending Bush's tax cuts or the wars, the '14th Amendment Solution' (and it was, indeed, a legitimate option), etc., Obama kneecaps and handicaps the Democratic voters who put him and Democrats into power.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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