A party that is straight-up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, legalizing pot and steep, direct taxing of polluters?

Of course the line that got the biggest audience response was the “legalizing pot.”

Sad.

I also don’t understand why, when the country is SO much in favor of these issues [see Teddy’s list] and the Republicans have NO support, that Obama is being such a . . . well, “coward” about this.

If not now, when?

Yeah, but like The Daily Show, think of who goes to Bill Maher’s tapings….

teddy!

Right on Teddy, Mr Compromise and the Dem Congressional Choir needs to forking compromise with the super majority of We the people on these issues.

Hiya Suzanne! How was your weekend?

has been peaceful and that q word. how was yours?

Really, there’s very little else three-quarters of Americans agree on (investigating the Bush-era criminality, anyone?) but I don’t understand why folks aren’t making their wishes known. Time to start some action items, I guess.

Good statistics. However, nearly 100% of Democratic Senators care more about big business than they do about the American people. There is no other reason to keep thieving insurance companies in business other than the fact that the above mentioned senators own stock in said companies.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Oh, and BTW, fuck bipartisanship.

Teddy, you and Maher are 169 percent correct. And that’s why we have to find a way to present a candidate to oppose Barbara Boxer in 2010. It is VITALLY important to get her out of office. She supported Holy Joe and for that she cannot be forgiven.

I’d like to get Zoe Lofgren, who needed an avalanche of calls to her offices before she finally voted no.

I don’t want reluctant progressives, I want full-throated, ready to rock and roll progressives. The time to act is now.

YES! FUCK BIPARTISANSHIP!

And fuck waiting on the next election.. we have to make these critters do it.. or we really might not have a chance for a while.

And support them in their election bids. Although I’m beginning to think that their holdings, which were highlighted in Saturday stories in last weekend’s NYT and WaPo, need more spotlight than they’ve gotten.

You first. ;)

One of Maher’s better commentaries. When Dems were the minority they let the GOP frame every issue. Now that they are the majority they let the GOP frame every issue. The concept of a government FOR the people appears to be long dead and buried.

Yeah, I know. Have been emailing my senior senator, Mad Max Bauchus, on an almost daily basis about healthcare reform. Oddly haven’t gotten a response yet, even though I have been at it for more than 2 weeks and have specifically requested a reply.

Personally, I am not into date rape.

Maybe if you lived in a less populated state you’d get a quicker reply…

What he didn’t go farther to say is, until we can get the ultra-money corporate interests and their ultra-rich owners out of the campaign bribery business, we won’t get our democracy back again.

The reason our political class is so divorced from the population that supposedly elects them is that money has taken over Congress and controls policy.

We MUST have campaign finance reform if we want to free our representatives from indentured servitude to the corporations and wealthy people who hold their re-elections hostage. No progressive policies will survive Congress until we move to a system of publicly funded campaigns.

Even when it is consensual they tend to leave a sticky residue. Figs are no better.

True. After all we do have almost a million people and we have only the third lowest population density in the nation.

Somehow (and I do not know how) we absolutely have to get all corporate money out of the political process.

that act alone should weed out a lot of those in public service to ride the gravy train

Remember all Harry Reid’s whining about Sixty Votes and how the Senate could do nothing without Sixty Votes?

I can’t wait for Al Franken to take his seat.
Harry’s gonna have to sing a different tune to explain his capitulation to obstructionists.

And didn’t candidate Obama talk once upon a time about getting big money out of politics?

i can’t wait to hear the high falsetto as he realizes he’s gotten himself into a rather tight spot

President Obama hasn’t kept one promise that candidate Obama made durring the campaign.

Have to recruit a whole new crop then.

Yeah ans forget “The corporate douche bags” that are bleeding us like a leach.

We put it on the ballot in California and it was shot down if you can believe that.

“The whipping tool” and what else? Executive priviledge rules?

Hell of it is that with the current crop of corporate douchebags dominating the SCOTUS, any law passed would be overturned. They would try to tell us once again that corporations are “persons” and money is “speech.”

I’m certain he has been rehearsing. Would it be asking too much to have him include a dance number?

He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act, and he did some hocus-pocus on stem cells.

But otherwise, yes.

I’ve been calling my congressman several times a week. Up until a couple of weeks ago I got a letter after each call, but I think they just gave up. I wish he’d give up being a Blue Dog.

Hell, he has been giving us a song and dance for more than 2 years already.

It’s going to take a constitutional amendment that says money does not equal speech. Because that’s what our courts have decided. Whether we’ll ever see something like that enacted, I cannot imagine.

Is your Congressman a Blue Dog Democrat or a Blue Cross Democrat?

DiFi proved herself to be a Blue Cross Democrat today.

May I add that, with a few limited exceptions (property rights and legal standing), corporations are NOT persons.

Maher also asked why we don’t see Kucinich and other true progessives on tv. But we see plenty of Newt Gingrich.
There have been studies of repubs vs dems on the talk shows but, since Bill brought it up, when was the last time there was a real progressive? Have you ever seen anyone suggest cutting the military budget on MTP?

Mine is a double cross Democrat. While ushering through healthcare reform at a time when thousands of Montanans are without insurance, Max went fishing on the Madison River with healthcare lobbyists.

I do not remember seeing any on a regular basis since the 70s.

Maher has worked hard to try to change the makeup of his studio audience. And that just shows that Maher doesn’t understand his audience, either.

He’ll never be able to draw authoritarians into his audience, because he’s about as anti-authoritarian as anyone can be.

I was hoping for something GOOD like this.

You know who I miss? Phil Donahue. The Donahue from the 80’s and 90’s. His show was very effective at presenting the liberal viewpoint.

Easy, Dr. D. Public campaign financing, a la Maine.

Divert punitive damage awards into the public finance kitty instead of into the pockets of the plaintiffs. If a candidate exceeds the public campaign budget, two things happen. First, the fact that they are exceeding the budget is publicized; second, the public kitty pumps more money into the other candidates in the race.

Oh yeah. Third, broadcast media are required to air campaign materials at discounted rates and air candidate debates as a public service. They are public airwaves, after all.

Did you see last weeks show? Megan McCain was on. She’s not really very good on tv, her nerves show. And, of course it didn’t help when Begala slapped her around.
Begala: (mentions something that R.Reagan said)
Megan: “I wouldn’t know about that, I wasn’t born yet.”
Begala: “I wasn’t born during the French Revolution but I know about it.”

Barney Frank mentioned cutting the DoD budget by 25% shortly after the election, but no — not lately. And I haven’t heard Barney talk that way lately.

What’s a little fishing trip among friends? Cheney and Scalia proved long ago that fellow-fishers can’t be influenced by one another on policy issues, after all….

Except of course that Max charged the lobbyists to fish with him. Do you think they feel dirty after they ask the lobbyists to leave the money on the dresser?

If we cut it by 2/3 we would still have the largest military budget in the world by a substantial margin. As it stands we account for nearly half of all military spending on the planet, which is frankly insane.

Not Max, but then we mark former brothels as historic places in this state.

The longest day of the year June 21 2009 windy all day My congress critter is a nurse and is not supporyinh single payer won’t take calls or answer emails even from her close supporter. Do nurses take an oath to do no harm?

Bitch-slapped her, eh? Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.

we know what he is – tis just a question of establishing what his price is – can we get him so marked?

Cold and wet here and my congress critter (the only one in the state) is a totally useless Bushco Rethug, while my senior senator is playing footsie with lobbyists and will not answer my email.

I will give Max credit where it is due, he don’t come cheap.

Time for me to head out. One more week of corrupting young minds. Take care all.

no politician does

Campaign funding limited to public money equal for every candidate. Without that we are spitting in the wind…still have to keep up the efforts to move the progressive ball.
Executive Priveledge
Supremes rule
Need a new deck, new dealer and a new set of house rules. Albatross!

Barney was still euphoric enough about the election to think “change” was possible. It would take a lot more Dems with a backbone and some leadership from the president for significant defense cuts to be remotely possible. I think Obama is already looking at 2012, can’t give the Republicans reason to paint him as wimpy on defense, like that will stop them from doing it anyway.

g’nite dr dick

Good luck with your corrupting. Heading out too. see y’all.

g’nite ratfood

Evenin’ Teddy and Firedogs,

aw c’mon Doc, Max is willing to work twice as hard:

Lobbyists and political supporters will get their chance to cast fishing lines and drive golf balls with the Senate’s top tax writer at his Fly-Fishing & Golfing in Big Sky event. The cost is $2,500 per person, $5,000 for a political action committee. And for the same price, more fun lies ahead at Camp Baucus, the summer camp he holds for friends and their families in his home state between July 31 and Aug. 2

CQ Politics

Teddy – something else caught my eye in the article:

Now Baucus has emerged as one of his party’s fundraising champions

I literally gasped at what this portends

He seemed more progressive on health care than on any other thing when I voted for him in 2006. He said he realized from talking to hospital execs that most people in our area (whose hospital bills were paid) either were covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or government job insurance.

Good night, Dr (pause) Dick.

If he cuts the DoD budget and Cheney gets his wish (another terror attack) we will never see the end of the national security state. But by the second term, Presidents seem so captive of the bad influences. This one has started early, though.

Interesting premises:

1. Comedians should influence policy?

2. Obama should govern based on polls?

Reality:

“June 21 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama may not have enough votes in the U.S. Senate to pass his effort to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein said”.

“I don’t know that he has the votes right now,” Feinstein said today on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “I think there’s a lot of concern in the Democratic caucus.” Controlling costs of the new system is a “difficult subject.”

We gave them a chance to serve (serve us, that is), via these seats in the Legislature. All we had to give them were our votes and some shoulder.
When The Supremes decided to call money ’speech’ and we didn’t immediately hit them (electorally) like a ton of bricks, it was all over.

Even some of the very best are with the bad guys, now.
It requires a Congressman to, in an average race, raise about $10,000.00 a week to float the next campaign.

Hi, Teddy, Hi Suzanne

edit:
s
c
r
o
l
l

Yep money and …time to stump. So not much time to read legislation. Ho hum that is what leg analyst do… recommend? Sticky stuff. Good evening… newtonser up for late night?

Evenin’ all !

Meghan tries to make ignorance into a virtue … kinda like her Daddy’s runnin’ mate. If she is the voice of future Republicans, Dems will have a looong time in power.

One thing we have, well two things, are shame and derision.
I know the people of CodePink. I know what they believe, and how helplessness has driven them to their tactics.

To them, it’s either make the stink they can make, or lose their minds. I understand their utter frustration.

What happened to “embrace the chaos” ? *g*

Scroll this – all your utterly inane off the radar nonsense about single payer – this country is not going to get any health care reform it looks like. Something about 1.6 trillion dollars – go figure.

I told you all for weeks now this is not a left leaning country. It looks like I was right. But keep holding hands and preaching to each other – that will surely get it done. (rolling eyes)

Redfish?

Do you know what the most influential news show is today? It’s Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. Why Stewart? Because the MSM have become shills for the corporatocracy.

So don’t let’s whine about comedians influencing policy. Journalists who thought J-School was Stenography school abdicated that a long time ago.

Petro!
No, that’s what I mean. We have thus far surrendered the system. We didn’t all see it until we looked into the rear-view mirror.

So let’s make it loud. You have a problem with making the irresponsible guardians of our power a bit uncomfortable?

redfish appears to be here to hijack the thread and create dissent.

again.

i plan on ignoring all of redfish’s comments as i believe they are not worth replying to

The military is so badly beaten up with this MidEast Clusterfuck that it is going to take lots of $$$ to rehabilitate all 4 Services. Then there is the talk of increasing conventional forces so “we” can begin the drawdown of Nuclear Weapons.

How can you say Jon Stewart is the most influential show today. A biased perspective? Or perhaps you have some empirical factual evidence to back up that statement.

Why would you believe anything Dianne Feinstein says about a public option for health care for other people? She’s been eligible for publicly funded health care since 1969 and long since pulled up the ladder behind her.

I’m with you, dude … make these imbeciles earn and keep their jobs by being active citizens and holding them to account.

Point taken, Suzanne. Don’t feed the trolls.

Hey Petro, hi newt!

I’m with ya, Suz … the quality of trolls has diminished even further than Obama’s resolve.

Obviously you haven’t noticed he’s got a rather full plate already. But, four years (maybe 8) is a long time, so who knows what might get done along the way.

(sorry)

Petro – did you see Senator McCheese on Face The Nation this morning, wrt Iran?

McCheese:”We need to act!”
Sheiffer: “What does that mean?”
McCheese: Act, dad-gummit!”
Sheiffer: “But Senator, what would you do different?”
McCheese: “I’d act!”

SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT

Nonsense. Who builds an airplane or a bridge or a building or a ship without insurance? And, if the world’s largest insurer disappears, then what happens to business activity and the jobs related to that?

Teddy ! Toronto had it’s Gay Pride Parade today but I don’t think Bruno showed up. *g*

I FU’d first, Teddy.

Sheesh … if he could act, Cindy wouldn’t be hanging around the Navy Shipyards !

The WH now has a dog. You’re full of it.

newt, you are adorable!

She was giving a realistic assessment of the reality in Congress today.

After the campaign embarrassment, when he tried to trade her to the bikers for some run – it’s peanut-shell covered floors for our Cindy.
Biker bars, dude.

Nah, you!

Oooooh, that’s a sharp cutting comment. Heh

That number could only be higher if the question was posed to Canadians. I do believe that Waxman, Rangel & Miller will see a strong public option through … – from HuffPo

We already know that Conyers & Selise are determined to get single payer through … and those congresscritters better not f*ck with Selise ! *g*

I applaud you Suzanne. Use some more elitist blogger phrases like “high jack the thread” and label those who disagree with you trolls. You’re utterly brilliant.

I think the only thing that is being high jacked much to my dismay is the Democratic party by fringe extremists on the far left.

What is the matter petrocelli? Encountering your intellectual superior doesn’t quite agree with you huh? LOL

She never forgot that “trollop” remark … he got a Ford Fusion instead of a Maybach … *g*

That’s the key statistic, Teddy.

Politicians are really good about ignoring data, but often come around when reality slaps them in the face. I’m going to post a diary tomorrow about politicians and polls.

With the agitation we’re getting currently for reform, we’ll get it. With 3/4 of the voters believing that an effective public option is a needed reform, it’s our task to make sure that it gets through.

Bingaman is making some of the right noises, but he needs to be educated. He thinks co-ops are an effective public option. I guess I’m one of the ones who will have to do the educating. He is my senior senator.

Good night folks.

Christine !

Did Mr. CE have a good Father’s Day ?

g’nite bct

I hope you are right.

nite bc

Get redfish outta my thread, please, mods.

will do teddy

The reform is going to happen.
The process isn’t done.
The costs do need to come down some.
The CBO needs to be bitch-slapped too.

He did, thanks!
Still looking for our darling kids in NYC and Brooklyn. We are now so old!

After that, a wife is entitled to parade her trysts directly in front of her oppressor.

OTOH, if those words had left my lips, directed at any woman I have ever known, I would have been dead a long time ago. I think he had her pretty well beaten down by that time.

hello Christine!

As you wish, Sir.

Gates is working on nuke reductions. If he achieves much it might save some money as well as making everyone a bit more secure.

He also cut some spending on big-ticket items in favor of more troops and other things we really need.

After Iraq is wound down we’ll automatically have less automatic spending and the military will look a little more sane.

Hopefully our AfPak efforts will succeed and then we might wind that down a little (though it might take a long time to end it).

A few years from now it might be wise to review our world-wide posture and consider ways to shrink.

Teddy, my dear!

… or she didn’t give a rat’s ass what he said …

BTW, didja see this great excerpt about that great Patriot and Savior, Donald Rumsfeld ? – from time.com …

… talk about a reacharound …

Reluctantly, yes.
He can polish all he likes – he is not going to make lemonade.

I’m having this fruit thing today…

Well, the antioxidants’ll do ya good ! *g*

Peachy!

AfPak is a discouraged construction nowadays, btw

Each country deserves it own name in discourse, don’t you think?

This is what’s so wonderful about Maher — he tells the truth.

We need a liberal/progressive party five minutes ago. To people who say it would hurt the Democratic Party, I say, “So what? Except for a few worthwhile ones, they’re all corporate whores, and hopefully some of the good ones would jump to the new party.”

redfish appears to be here to hijack the thread and create dissent.

again.

i plan on ignoring all of redfish’s comments as i believe they are not worth replying to

Thanks, Suzanne.

I think I’ll make a macro out of your comment so I can use it whenever redfish appears. Has he/she begged to be banned yet? It’s usually a part of the performance.

You guys do know that the healthcare poll conducted by The Times/CBS has already been completely discredited for extreme sampling bias right?

Last week I wrote about this in Huffington Post.

Maher vs. Obama — Score One For the President

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..16120.html

Bill Maher has decided to straighten out President Obama regarding health care, and the economy. I know no more about those subjects than anyone else, but one way we judge what people say is by looking at what they have said about subjects we do know something about. I learned quite a bit about Maher by watching his movie Religulous and listening to his commentaries on religion since then. That is something I know about.

As I explore in my chapter on Maher in my forthcoming book, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism),Maher’s “critique” of religion is a unique study in ignorance. I presume Maher knows about as much about health care and economics as about religion.

As readers of my books and blogs know I’m one of the harshest critics of American religion, given that I was raised by an evangelical leader, became one myself and quit. I think the right wing of evangelical American religion is a threat to our democracy. That said, Maher doesn’t get religion.

Maher’s Religulous, provided the atheist version of a church-going experience.

In a series of interviews, Maher set up pastors, evangelists, political leaders, and assorted other flakes and actors (these last at a religious theme park) to look their worst. Maher’s questions were those one might expect from a literal-minded, dim-witted ten-year-old stuck in Sunday school who was trying to annoy his teacher into throwing him out. The questions ranged from “How can you believe in a talking snake?” to “How could Jonah have lived in a fish?” to “How can God hear the prayers of everyone at once?” (To which one answer might be, if Google can do it, why not God?)

When approaching the biblical narrative through his handpicked interviewees (and how he edited their comments), Maher didn’t seem to “get” allegory, let alone literary imagination or the results of religious faith in ordinary people’s lives. For instance he seemed to think that religion, and Christianity in particular, is only about literal belief in the various biblical stories. It’s not. It never has been.

Yes, there have been literalistic fundamentalists shaping religion through a hard-edged fundamentalist “thread” running through Jewish and Christian history. Yes, many Christians following this literal-minded thread have done terrible things. Yes, the Jewish and Christian faiths are full of such people today. What Maher ignored is that there has been a parallel tradition, another thread, running alongside the literalistic tendency he caricatures. And here’s the irony — given today’s topic — President Obama is himself a great example of the more enlightened thread of faith.

To ignore the open and questioning tradition and to dwell only on the fundamentalist thread is disingenuous, or in Maher’s case more likely simply ignorant. It’s as if Maher had made a documentary on medicine and concentrated solely on the experiments done on duped prisoners and so forth, while ignoring Jonas Salk and his discovery of polio vaccine or the early African American leaders in nursing, such as the outstanding Mary Eliza Mahoney, who was the first black professional nurse in America.

Maher seemed unaware that there are intelligent contemporaries of his who are deeply religious and who have spent lifetimes thinking about faith in God in ways that are far from the absolutist verities of (mostly) North American evangelical/fundamentalism Maher set up to knock down. For instance, Maher ignored the late John Updike. (Updike was alive and well when the movie was being made.) Maher might also have interviewed then Senator, now President, Obama.

Had Maher interviewed Obama, he could have asked him about Obama’s 2006 lecture on religion and public policy, delivered at the “Call to Renewal” event sponsored by the evangelical Sojourners group.

On that occasion, Obama described his faith. He also talked about how faith should or should not impact policy making. Obama castigated the elements of the secular community (people just like Maher) for being short-sighted in their anti-religious views.

As Obama said:

At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word ‘Christian’ describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith…

I speak with some experience on this matter. I was not raised in a particularly religious household… It wasn’t until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma…

That’s a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans… It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values. And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at – to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own – then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse…”

Maher’s attempt to put religious belief in its place only reinforces the fact that for most people, one belief system is always replaced by another. In an act of unintended self-parody at the end of his movie, Maher preaches a fiery sermon against religion, even begging moderate religious believers to abandon their faiths and convert to his point of view.

Like some old-time evangelist, Maher wants to save us from his version of hell via his version of a born-again experience. It’s Maher’s way or the Apocalypse. Where have I heard that before? It turns out Maher is just another fundamentalist sure he has all the answers.

Maher is as unthinkingly pro-atheist as he is ant-religious. In 2008 Maher asked Richard Dawkins — who Maher worships — about Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Dawkins said little about the book’s content but exclaimed, “It’s sold a million and a half copies!” Then Maher, like an enthusiastic puppy scampering around a big dog, yelped, “And now it’s in paperback it will be even more available!”

Maher paused to take a breath then added, “I’m your biggest fan!” Then Dawkins (slipping into his rock star/guru mode) explained that he has so many fans because “I think people are getting a bit fed up with other people thrusting their imaginary friends down their throats.”

Prompted by Maher, Dawkins also explained one of his other big ideas.

“There is a scale of One to Seven of atheism,” said Dawkins, “but I’m only a Six on my scale.” Dawkins laid out the details of the Atheism Sincerity Scale. “A One is a complete believer in God and a Seven is a total disbeliever.”

Something was bothering Maher, and he asked, “Why are you only a Six? Why aren’t you a Seven?”

Dawkins didn’t miss a beat; “As a scientist I can’t definitely commit to anything, including that there are no fairies!” Big laugh and cheers from both Maher and his audience. I think I actually heard Maher squeal.

The intellectually rigorous Dawkins/Maher exchange put me in mind of one of my favorite scenes in This is Spinal Tap that also had to do with numbers, dumb interviewers and pompous Englishmen.

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don’t know.

With critics like Maher (and the Republicans) President Obama needs no friends. I trust the president will remain as fortunate in his detractors throughout his presidency. He looks, sounds — and is — way ahead of them all.

To say nothing of Maher’s rantings on religion or politics, but you would personally put yourself in a better position to gauge Obama’s performance if you bothered to learn about economics, healthcare, and American militarism. You might find your faith misplaced.