But fear not, I’m sure somehow Joe Lieberman’s non-brave brand of courage will still somehow leave him rewarded.

I’m not so sure about this. Lieberman must have anticipated that the CBO score on the weak medicare buy-in deal was not going to be good news.

Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Reid now has the CBO score and realizes that he can’t go from his “good” news on Nov 18 to total bad news now and say at a press conference,

“Look, it’s worse than every other plan out there, but trust me, Americans, you’ll love paying more and getting less.”

Lieberman knows he’s about to lose and is doing some preemptive push back.

Either way, Reid now has an either/or choice: either with the American people, or against them.

Let’s pressure Reid: Reconciliation = Majority Rule.

These people are spineless and sickening:

“Joe Lieberman has forced his will on the Senate Democratic caucus and the nation as a whole. After the party reached a compromise last week to effectively drop the public option in exchange for allowing 55- to 64-year-olds to buy into Medicare, that compromise is now in doubt.

Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, told Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Sunday that he will block any bill that includes the buy-in. As the 60th vote needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, he can do that.

Following a caucus-wide meeting Monday evening, the measure was all but scuttled.

“It’s looking like that’s the case. I can’t guarantee it. At this point, at this stage, that seemed to be the case,” acknowledged Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Asked why it had been dropped, he said, “I didn’t confirm that now. It’s just a matter of getting support from 60 senators.”

No. 60 himself emerged from the meeting looking at ease and spoke with reporters at length. He was asked if he’d been given a specific assurance from Reid that the Medicare provision was out. “Not an explicit assurance, no,” he said.”I liked to be kissed first,at least.

The citizens of the great state of Connecticut should hire Hadassah as a lobbyist.

I am so angry and disgusted at the Democrats that I am now looking into launching a Progressive-Independent Party, if there is not already one out there. Also, I will be writing in Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich for Prez in 2012. I have sent emails to my local reps, U.S. Senators etc stating that, altho a loyal Dem for more than 50 years, I am thru w/the party.

I would rather have the Rethugs back in power – after all, if you’re getting screwed in the you know what, better to have it done by someone who is at least honest about their intent. What the Dems have done with health care is to cave in to the conservatives, Rethugs and scum like Lieberman. They have thrown us liberals and progressives under the bus.

So I propose that all of use liberals band together, create our own party and project power in a unified fashion. Sure, we may not win the White House, but we can become a more powerful player in Congress. If Dems wanna pass anything, they’ll have to go through us. Time to start thinking like the British or Israeli Parliament, where you have multiple parties more robustly reflecting the wishes of their constituents.

I would urge all of us to disengage from the current version of health care reform. Let things fester and get worse for the next 2 or 4 years. Then, perhaps, the crisis will become so untenable that even the “Blue Dogs” find moral courage to do what their own constituents are asking.

A number of people these days want to start another party but actually there are other parties already, Green etc.
There are also a number of Progressive groups not yet coalesced into a Party as such… easy enough to locate with “The Google”.

Also plenty of Progressive candidates running for elective office throughout America, even in neanderthal places like Kansas and Montana, It is important to support these candidates no matter what office they may be running for as today’s Councilman may be tomorrow’s Madam Senator. What is very important is to stop supporting the Democratic Party as it now stands. Send no money, support no candidate, write in a Progressive candidate, and maybe, just maybe, these bastards will eventually get the message.

Good morning, pups. Bob Herbert is off today, so it’s Bobo and Cohen. Bob Herbert is off today. Bobo holds forth on “Obama’s Christian Realism” and says President Obama has revived a cold war liberal doctrine — that evil must be fought without succumbing to the sinfulness within — and tried to apply it to a different world. (As an aside, as a graduate of the University of Chicago he claims to know a great deal about Princeton’s commencement addresses…) Mr. Cohen, in “Japanese Obsessions,” says Japan is rich enough, bored enough with national ambition, strait-jacketed enough and gloomy enough to find immense attraction in playful electronic escapism.

Here they are.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got bagels and cream cheese this morning. My contempt and loathing for Joe Lieberman knows no bounds. Have a great day.

Let’s not kid ourselves, this catastrophe was all Obama all the time. HIs deals with PhRMA and big insurance are what won here Leiberman is just the president’s loyal ally who agreed to take the public fall. Obama sold out the country, it’s budget and its healthcare to the 9th and 3rd most profitable industries in the country. Making him a one termer is not nearly punishment enough for him or the DC dems.

Apparently Ms. Kornblut has excellent insurance and has no idea of the fear we uninsured feel everyday with being one illness away from homelessness.
The Senate passed the spending bill Sunday with 57 votes. Bush tax cuts were passed with less than 60. Why do we need 60 fucking votes. If you take out the public option and Medicare buy-in what the hell is left?
Maybe Mr. Transparency can ask the insurance companies to make nice like he did the Wall St. thieves yesterday.
To spinninghorsevideo, count me in. As the wonderful documentary The People Speak shown on the History channel Sunday night demonstrated the answer is organize, organize, organize. And we must be willing to fight for our beliefs.

If you take out the public option and Medicare buy-in what the hell is left?

What’s left is the mandate — the only thing that really matters to Obama and company.

Harry’s mythical “60 votes needed” is nothing but a scam to prevent anything meaningful from passing…. or even getting to the floor.

Of course all we need is 51 votes if the will is there and it is not. These buggers are making way too much money from various corporations to allow any change to be made to the system. To think that the Dems are any different to the goopers is fantasy. They are all part of the same Party of Corporate America where the rich get richer and the rest get fucked. We need a serious revolution as nothing, no faked voting system and no “change” president CEO, will work to break the stranglehold that Big Money has on us. WE must take to the streets by the million, with pitchforks if need be, and literally drive these bastards from office.

The bill has become Polonium-210 wrapped in an abortion inside of a miscarriage.
The only hope now is to kill the bill in the House.

knoxville, i’m with nomolos. it’s a scam. the convenient procedural hurdle of 60 votes, lieberman playing badguy (just because he is a bad guy doesn’t mean he’s not playing a role now – in fact it makes him the perfect actor for the part), backroom deals apparently run out of the white house and the senate is the stage on which the corrupt scam is being played. the role we have been given is the one of audience, not citizen. that is not a roll i intend to play — i am a citizen, not a member of their audience.

All the “liberal” Senators look like they’re in the process of swallowing turds. Sherrod Brown was on Olbermann last night, trying to convince himself and the nation that this is an acceptable bill because it will insure a fraction of a decimal point of uninsured people. He was telling activists to “keep fighting.” Piss. Why don’t the “liberal” Senators just vote no? Fight back a little themselves? I’m so sick of guys like Brown and Harkin. They haven’t been there when we’ve needed them for a long, long time.

Not ‘Citizen’….”Consumer”…..that’s how they view us. More than one politician has called us that. Our role is to fatten the wallets of tptb.

for the latest (the story, not the scam), pow wow has a thread going. imo a must read:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/18788

excellent point. you’re right. thank you.

This entire Passion Play of Health Care Reform is making Professional Wrestling look like the work of Shakespeare. Lieberman is simply the intended Fall Guy in sacrificial place of the majority of Senators who are in indirect employ of big pharma and the insurance cartel. Joe will not run again. Joe kept his job after supporting McCain, because it was previously decided that he would be the pivotal character in the 2009 production of The Death of Meaningful Reform. How can one NOT imagine Joe strutting around the wrestling ring, sneering at the outraged patrons throwing tomatoes at Joe the Horrible?

Just as the “Bipartisanship” of Barack Obama is nothing more than Obama’s innate desire to avoid making hard choices (and hard enemies) which could be politically damaging because of his excessive lack of temerity, the fix was in from the very beginning, with Reid playing the waffling Hamlet, and Lieberman doing a terrible Lady Macbeth.

I wouldn’t pay a nickel to watch this stuff.

Out you dammed political hustlers and con men. Damn out with the entire bunch.

It always takes courage to beat up on the less powerful in American, dontcha know. Most wienies are afraid of America’s stated values of democracy and fair play and truth and justice. It takes courage to blow those off shamelessly.

That kind of courage, Ms. Kornblut?

I doubt that this will get the 60 votes. I don’t see Sanders (I-VT) or Feingold voting for it. Time for Reconciliation, and kick the so-called “Centrists” to the curb–with prejudice.

But more important, time for a viable third party. If the Dems ruin HCR, then they will not, under any circumstances, get a vote from me in my life time again–even if Palin is run for Pres. I’ll be done with them.

I didn’t doubt myself when I voted for Nader, a true public servant. I’d vote for him in a second again after seeing what a disaster O-Bomb-A is turning out to be.

for deep background, not to be missed series:

Two-thirds of Americans support Medicare-for-all (#1 of 6)
Two-thirds of Americans support Medicare-for-all (#2 of 6)
Two-thirds of Americans support Medicare-for-all (#3 of 6)
Two-thirds of Americans support Medicare-for-all (#4 of 6)
Two-thirds of Americans support Medicare-for-all (#5 of 6)

part 6 coming soon…

The same behavior that is “courage” for “centrists” like LIEberman is obstructionism for Progressives.

from the huff

Rahm Emanuel Personally Pressed Reid To Cut Deal With Lieberman: Sources

here’s the deal liebermann wants;

“reform that benefits the corporate world not the middle and lower class”

What if Democrats around the country call their insurance companies and tell them get us single payer and until then we will withhold our premiums for 3 months?

or you could sign this petition

http://bit.ly/public_option

or etc.

I think the question to be asking is, “What would put Lieberman and Rahm on the same page?”

Personally, I see a very short list of answers. And it appears our country is high-jacked financially and compromised in it’s national security. Perhaps we need to revisit the national security issues of the Clinton years to get a bit of clarity.

What if Democrats around the country call their insurance companies and tell them get us single payer and until then we will withhold our premiums for 3 months?

We’d quickly join the uninsured.

perris, you don’t think lieberman isn’t doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing according a script he did not write?

we love to hate him and that makes him the perfect shiny object to distract us from who’s deal this is.

Thank you. First one very interesting looking forward to reading the rest today.

What if Democrats around the country call their insurance companies and tell them get us single payer and until then we will withhold our premiums for 3 months?

Wendell Potter has a suggestion pretty close to that suggestion as a means for bringing change.

single payer puts insurance companies out of business for medically necessary treatment. imo, that’s the fight we need to have.

thanks for reading it. i hope everyone does.

We need to be asking how much will Goldman Sachs benefit from a Rahm Lieberman stunt?

This is not just health care. This is the financial industry and the health care industry performing a take down with the R-L team working their magic.

Thanks for the links selise.

A bright shiny turd…. how interesting

AIPAC

I think the question to be asking is, “What would put Lieberman and Rahm on the same page?”

Both realize that the Obama’s finger prints must not be on the corpse of the public option.

I doubt that Joe has anything against the public option, and he has been pitching Medicare buy-in for the 55+ folks from 2000 until three months ago. But Team Obama needed all alternatives to commercial health insurance killed because of deals made with the insurers. I suspect they made Joe an offer he couldn’t/wouldn’t refuse.

“How’d you like to keep your chairmanship, Joe?”

“What’s in it for me if I do your dirty work?”

“Money, endorsements, and our eternal love, Joe.”

i don’t see it as the R-L team. too many moving parts unrelated to either of them (as far as i can see).

love to hate them both, but think there is a more pervasive (cultural? class?) corruption that has created the environment to nurture all kinds of scams.

but, what do i know?…. there is evidence and there is speculation, and this comment is just speculation.

that i buy.

plus the widespread belief among dem party insiders that above all else, the insurance industry (like the finance industry) must be appeased (a little fake fighting is all we ever see)

I have great respect for Wendell Potter, but I don’t see that tactic going anywhere.

HAve you been reading the WH emails?

plus the widespread belief among dem party insiders that above all else, the insurance industry (like the finance industry) must be appeased.

It the same you-can’t-fight-city-hall mentality that doomed the Clinton’s health-care efforts.

Krugman had an excellent article about that early in the primaries. He pointed out how the Clintons made it a point to appease the insurers during the creation of the proposal, and then got stabbed in the back by them when the legislation was on the table.

That worked so well last time that Team Obama insists on trying it again.

Damn. I wish.

i don’t know as much as i should about what happened during the clintoncare debacle (but have a couple of books to read). but the “must appease the power of the corps” is a strain of thought that runs through all neoliberal thought as far as i can tell.

listening to democracy now! (reporting from copenhagen this week and last), and it’s an even bigger outrage of the powerful attempting bully and even destroy those who get in their way.

… off to make more coffee, nice chatting with you all.

Let things fester and get worse

Isn’t that what we’ve been doing since 1994??

PS Good morning all!

It’s all about corporate welfare (the moral entitlements of power).

We spend 16% of our GDP on health care. The rest of the industrial nations spend 10%. That is to say we spend 60% more as a percentage of our larger-than-most GDP and still can’t cover everyone. So the natural question is: “Where does that incremental 60% go?”

I used to think that it went to outrageous salaries for MDs and relatively inflated salaries for nurses — not that they don’t deserve it. But per this article, U.S. health-care workers (on average) make 1.4 times the per-capital GDP, while those in other nations make 1.3 times their per-capital GDP. That small increment, less than 10%, certainly can’t account for the fact that we spend 60% more of our GDP on health care than the rest of the industrialized world.

Great article and insight — yes,it is the men and women everyday who go to w ork without insurance that have courage. Lieberman is not courageeous but Corrupt! Corrupt on Greed. We must root out this greed within Congress. They do not serve the Public Trust. At least we are able to recognize it and also shed light on it. For darkness cannot survive in light.

I appreciate the response to my post. Bottom line, all progressives need to unite under one party with a clearly identified name – hence Progressive Indepedent Party. Green Party doesn’t cut it, in marketing terms. We have to launch a new entity, brand it as outright liberal and progressive and get all progressive candidates who want to run for whatever office to run under that Party. We need to show our financial and other support for this entity (lots of progressives looking for a place to send money to right now)and build it smartly.

In any case, I’m officially launching this, even if it is initially a party of one. And, for now, I am voting in all upcoming state and national elections for Republicans, as protest. Let the Dems get kicked out in 2012. A protest vote for Rethugs will send them the loudest and clearest message, not just “sitting out” an election. Make the pain real. Then get behind the Progressive Independent Party and vote in Kucinich/Sanders in 2012.

Even if we don’t win a lot of elections initially, the time is ripe for a revolution of sorts. And its not gonna be just Tea Partiers who will be raising hell. Us progressives have to get mad, stay mad and transform that into political will. I think we’ll find a lot of independents who will support us, certainly in the northeast and on the west coast.

Anybody ready to join this grassroots movement? I can be reached at spinninghorse119@aol.com. Let’s git her done, as they say in Texas.

the moral entitlements of power

yep. and sadly it’s not just at the top, it’s permeated much of our culture. a little bit of power is widely as entitlement to bully, or whatever.

….

thanks for the link! (fixed, i hope, here)

my take is that insurance overhead and associated administrative costs (on the provider side as well), look like the biggest piece of waste (something like $400 billion a year?).

i don’t care so much that we spend 16% of gdp (although it does seem outrageous), what really irks me the most is that we don’t get what we should and could for that amount (first dollar coverage for everyone).

What you seek is the Green Party of the U.S. (http://gp.org). All Medicare for All, all the time.

Well said, that’s what I’m on about! We’re getting jacked by carefully scripted myths, the 60-vote hurdle being the most glaring. No one should be taking anything these myth-making bastards says at face value.

One great advantage the propagandists enjoy over us is the successful dumbing-down and conditioning accomplished over the last 5 or 6 decades of deliberate efforts to jack public opinion. The Pentagon calls them “strategic domestic disinformation campaigns.” AKA “battlefield psy-ops.”

No disrespect, but the many comments about forming other parties, when other parties already exist, supports my point. Most Americans believe in the myth of the two-party system as our only viable means of governance.

It’s nowhere in the Constitution. IMO, it’s a perfect example of “regulatory capture.” And who controls the backstage deals? Our out-of-control-by-design national security state. When the gov’t makes secret deals with drug lords and enforces them with violent acts by as many mercenaries as soldiers, what’s that make that country?

It makes us a narco-terrorist police state. All the rest is window-dressing. This obscene Obama/Lieberman charade being foisted on us as “reform” should be the dead give away.

No wonder it’s said, it’s always darkest just before dawn. My hope is that their imperial overreach will be their undoing, same as it’s ever been. Still, some sort of coup de grace may be necessary. It may fall to any one of us to deliver the metaphorical stroke that sets us free.

That assumes, though, that as they begin to tip, we’re there to recognize our chance and, acting from within, finally assert our self-sovereignty over these usurping bastards.

Whenever Sir Humphrey suggested that some scheme Jim Hacker wanted to pursue was ‘courageous’ that was a signal to Hacker that he best avoid it.

hee hee ho ho
/bows to the king of photoshop

I would rather go to jail than buy their fucking over-priced, trash insurance. Since my options seem to be bankruptcy, death, or jail; jail is sounding pretty damn good. Mayber there I would get mdical care. This should be good business for our prison businesses.

If only a small percentage of those favoring a public option showed up, that would be a helluva lot of people on the natioal mall. I’m sooo ready.