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How true.
And yet the health care reform bill is something worse than odd bits pulled together, churned and pressed into a tasty product. It’s a kaiju, a strange being cobbled together from parts and pieces, stitched in a desperate fashion, with hope that it will resemble a living functional entity at the end of the process.
But it will be a chimera which may not survive its freakish birthing process, and may terrify us if it does.
We’ll all of us, across the spectrum of politics, point at it while gasping as if we were Japanese villagers confronting Godzilla. We’ll be forced to make a life around this beast, and some of us may die at its hands. Over time we will come to own the creature and sublimate it into our culture like the scary things which arrive at our door every Hallow’s Eve and welcome with smiles and candy.
Tthe real monsters, thought, aren’t the unintended outcomes of the legislative sausage factory.
The real monsters are the ones who worked in the dark, outside of the public’s view, stitching away with bad faith and corrupted twine to create this beast, just as it was Doctor Frankenstein and not the poor creature he made which should have earned our enmity. Herr Frankenstein believed he was above and beyond natural law, working without regard for the impact of his handiwork on humanity, sewing up this beast in manner which suited his desires without respect for either the materials in his hands or the process by which he brought them to life.
It is this self-indulgent lack of awareness which is the immoral fundament of monstrosity.
It’s with this in mind that we recognize the real monsters, the true architects of this mashed-up mess.
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While cognizant of the prohibition against advocating violence here in threads, I will be checking my inventory of pitchforks and torches.
Jus’ sayin’.
Per TPM: Snowe claims Reid assured her today both public option and Medicare buy in are dead, still says she doesn’t know if she’ll vote for it. Kudos to Dem leaders for their deft stewardship of this matter.
It is getting harder and harder, isn’t it…
And chimera is a pretty good word for what we have.
So, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, with a brain from “Abby Someone”?
FWDiva
Chimera is much too classy a word for the shit sandwich in question!
FWDiva
ratfood — I want to buy a vowel, please. I’d have said “daft.”
newtonusr — yeah, chimera, and one which appears to have portions hacked off at every turn. [sigh]
And every day is another bite.
This theme stuck in my head much earlier today, when I accidentally referred to the senator from Connecticut as “Liebermonster.”
Abby Normal, for sure.
Is this bill being pushed for a quick vote the longer we delay or Joe delays I’m sure he will come up with a crazy last minute demand that Rahm rub his feet as he signs the bill the better chance we have of getting some polling on the bill.
I expect the polling will kill this bill.
Obama thanked Lieberman privately for his statement issued earlier Tuesday pledging support for the bill as long as the Medicare expansion and public option were eliminated from the bill, Lieberman said
So glad Obama is so happy with Liarman.
vampires! I knew it! vampires in the shadows are behind all this Congressional corruption! ;-)
So what Snowe wants Harry to beg now for her vote? Maybe she wants Harry to dance naked and sing a Britney Spears song as she votes? What else can she want?
Leadership is really going to put the screws on Sanders, Feingold, and Burris to capitulate.
McCain is a Renfield his wife has the Vampire looks, and Joe is a Renfield’s Renfield.
Yes, there are definitely blood-sucking leeches here at work.
Literally sucking the life’s blood out of Americans without coverage, on which to nurse their corrupt Congressional spawn.
Oh, but we still have the attempt by Nelson to hold this hostage over some Stupak/Pitts style abortion language.
You just know that Nelson has been watching Lieberman and taking notes on how it is done.
Lieberman, Snowe, Nelson, Collins, etc. are just giving the Dem leaders rope. Unfortunately it is the public who will be left hanging.
Burris is a Chicago pol who has nothing to lose and feels squeezed by Rahm lots of luck pushing him. After all its not like they can offer him support for a Senate run or given the investigation they can’t offer him any side deals.
I’m pretty sure Sanders already said that he’d fold. Burris still seems to be holding out and making the odd threatening sound. Dunno about Feingold. Was he one of the people at the WH meeting?
Nelson still says he isn’t on board ’cause the bill won’t bring back bloody coat hangers for American women.
That should drop it even lower in the polls:)
I agree, plus they did everything they could think of to prevent his being seated. I hate to say it but Burris might end up being our best hope to pull the plug on this monstrosity, in which case we should send a nice thank-you note to Blago.
nah. Joe’s the Great Troll of Stamford. Lives under a bridge. He may have some evil Leprechaun blood though. The rainbow ends in Hartford, at Aetna’s HQ, where there is a big pot o’ gold.
His insurance industry wife though.. begs the question. Definitely a hint of the undead in those eyes..
Where’s the brain bleach?
Another day, another banana republic.
My understanding was that all 60 hypothetical yes votes were present. IOW, a monumental Washington circle-jerk…
That explains his ‘charm’. Such as it is ….
Rayne, do you know, is there a reason that Senator Reid could not
force an actual filibuster, Mr Smith goes to Washington style?
Because those old guys would not last more than a couple of days
before their health would force them to end the filibuster. Near as I
can tell “cloture” is not really a filibuster at all, but an excuse
for whatever reason to avoid a filibuster.
Agreed plus Burris has a huge ego he named both kids after himself ones female he has a grandson named after him too.
Guys with big egos don’t like getting pushed around and they hold grudges plus I never heard of any scandals about him before the Blago thing and from what I gather all Roland wanted was the Senator job.
So he won’t be pushed around or charmed by Obama, can’t be bought because of the heat on him or blackmailed.
He might even filibuster this guy likes fame and he has seen how much attention Joe is getting:)
Hadassah the fugly is the leprechaun
Sorry Rayne does a post about sausage which Bismark said like laws nobody wants to see how they are made and when Harry is making laws well this entire post could easily need brain bleach if we focus on Harry more.
R E S P E C T !
I keep asking this myself, and hammering Rachel Maddow for not mentioning it.
The only thing I can think of is that Harry has no ballz.
FWDiva
Yes or maybe a witches Familiar?
Well said.
You know, I don’t fully understand what happened to the old fashioned filibuster…seems like there was some sort of horse trading which suppressed it.
The problem as I see it is that we have too many DINOs in the Senate to reliably allow a filibuster. They would throw behind the party of their corporate overlords to stop debate.
To think CT Dems had the sense to kick J. Low out. Leave it to Repubs, the ones in CT, to subject America to this monster again.
Our mission is clear. We need to continue the work we did with exposing Lieberme, and kick out the other monsters mentioned above, like Mary Launder, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln and a couple of others.
The collective might of the Liberals blogs focused on this clear mission could really have some success I think. Clear focus on the true enemy monsters is key though. Onward and Upward, Liberal soldiers!
I don’t know if the Illinois Dem party will allow Burris to run again but I’d vote for him in a second, especially if Rahm wants the job for himself.
Hubris notwithstanding Burris at the moment is closer to being an actual progressive than 97 other senators. I like Franken but it appears he intends to vote with the party on this one.
Burris will get tons from me if he filibusters this bill and given his ego I think he might.
No TV here how is the media coverage on this bill going? Is any one noticing that the Left wants this bill dead rather than passed now that Joe has gotten his way?
It’s a bit late in the process, but people are angry enough that you might still be able to field a totally different candidate.
Who else would be a strong progressive candidate in Illinois?
I only watch Countdown and Rachel.
Rachel seems to get it, Lawrence O’Donell (in for KO) seems close–he’s the one who booked Howard Dean and gave him a lot of airtime tonight…
FWDiva
One of my kids favorites (and mine)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2866407/aaahh_real_monsters_opening/
It’s not just that Lieberman got his way; it’s what’s left behind.
It’s a hash, the stuff that goes into a can of Spam, uncongealed bits of chimera-to-be, and it’s toxic.
Where are strong price controls? where are incentives for competition? where is the assurance that all Americans will be covered, and the cost to them will be cheaper than the existing system?
Just not enough there any longer.
The Illinois Dems can stop him legally from running or just cut off his funding? Cause if he stops this bill he could turn into a hero for our side granted he would have to do more like filibuster war funding to get enough cash out of us to run for the Senate but anything is possible.
I’ve been waiting for one Dem to go Left in a big way and show the other Dems they can get fame, love and cash from us just by going Left.
I also watch Faux. Oppositional research. Their coverage of all this is almost gleeful. Like I said, vampires…
The current Governor maybe.
Exactly. And to leave the Individual Mandate in is just insulting…not to mention immoral.
FWDiva
WOW WOW WOW WOW.
Sorry, totally O/T and meaningless to everyone else, but I JUST NOW watched the Howard Dean interview on Countdown, and I remember now why I was so enthralled with him in 2004.
He just said nearly every goddammed word I was thinking, verbatim. Goddammed it felt weird.
Why won’t folks listen to Dean? Because of ‘The Scream’?
That’s a big part of what’s wrong in this country today. We pre-judge the message based on the messengar. What he just said was 100% accurate.
Roland has kids who might want to run.
Here’s my kids’ favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrLumdqIrDM
It’s a remake of the original which I’d embedded above, but done in LEGOs.
My kids still love this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya-GuZJYWNY — always makes me think of TRex, who embedded this one here at FDL for us back in the day.
Obama is the President and all roads lead to and from him. Lieberman just did his dirty work. Maybe it was vanity, maybe he was doing Obama a favor. The public option was never, as we often heard, anything other than a bargaining chip. Obama never raised a finger to defend it. Anyway its role has been long gone and it was only a question of how to kill it. Enter one whining, whinging egomaniac from Connecticut. The rest as they say is history.
Damn near impossible for a non-anointed candidate to make a serious bid in Illinois, you either have to be aligned with the Chicago machine or the anti-Chicago machine (aka the rest of the state).
Lisa Madigan was discussed as a potential replacement for Obama but claimed she wasn’t interested. As the Illinois Attorney General it is harder to assess how progressive she is since she doesn’t have a voting record.
edit: I see Hugh has joined the discussion, he probably has a better idea of potential candidates.
The only way to force Congress to stop in its tracks before they make the biggest mistake of their lives with this now garbage bill is for the American people to boycott the private insurance industry by cancelling our health insurance plans with them. I know, most of you just uscked in air and grew quiet as you read this. However, nothing else will make one bit of a difference or change the direction this disastrous bill is going. Policies mean money to them, that is the only thing that is important to them, taking that away from them, even if temporarily, will be the only means to forcing them to change direction. Congress will screech to a halt when they realize that we mean business, and that the cost of caring for even more people without insurance through hospital emergency rooms will be staggering.
Protests don’t work, they (both Congress and the corporate barons) don’t give a rats ass how many of us march up and down the street protesting this disaster of a bill, phone calls, letters and visits to our representatives have not yielded much either. The only other option is a national boycott of the health insurance companies. Now the question is, are we fed up enough to do it? or are we just way too complacent and comfortable with our trusty little insurance cards tucked in our pockets to make a temporary sacrifice. Hunger strikes won’t do, this is the health care protest form of hunger strike.
Who is fed up enough and willing to really protest what is going on?
707
Are you referring to Roland, or Roland?
Can probably tell from her prosecutions and briefs. That might be a good question to ask Cynthia Kouril in a comment thread, since she has background in law enforcement and politics.
And perhaps anti-machine is the way to go; the machine brought us this mess, just a monster-maker-machine.
Lisa taught school in Africa I believe charity work she seemed ok when I lived in Illinois her Dad was Speaker of the House however and seemed like trouble.
Agreed, if Rahm and Obama represent the Chicago School of Politics, it is time for a change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Burris#Personal_life
Roland W or Rolanda
I have given that some thought, believe me. Knowing how much my spouse’s company pays out in health care benefits, I have wondered whether it wouldn’t be cheaper to put a physician on staff and pay for hospitalization as necessary. Might be cheaper to hire a dietician to come in one day a week, a physician’s assistant one day a week to do routine checkups and shots, and put in a small work out facility on site. Offer cash rewards to employees who keep their weight down and don’t smoke.
I really think it would be cheaper.
What do you all think of the alternative healthcare reform at operationhealthfreedom.com? a little snip:
the Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act of 2009, which provides all Americans with a tax credit for 100% of health care expenses, a tax credit for premiums for high-deductible insurance policies connected with a Health Savings Account (HSA), and allows seniors to use funds in an HSA to pay for a medigap policy. In addition, it makes all medical expenses tax deductible.
Also included are Ron Paul’s H.R. 2629, a bill that prevents the government from requiring people to purchase health insurance, and John Shadegg’s H.R. 3217, which permits the purchase of health insurance across state lines
I don’t much care for her role in the following. Who needs a steenkin’ warrant? From her wiki entry:
To kill the Machine we must get Daley is Fitz still investigating in Illinois? Its hard to believe Blago could be corrupt in illinois without da Mayor or his friends not getting a piece of the action.
Lets look at her whole record sometime but no I am not a fan now.
Great use of mythical monsters to reveal our real, live ones.
This Senate thing is even worse than I imagined. In fact it is so bad and so counter to the people’s wishes and expectations that once people know the fine print it may actually become a tipping point. Much as I want to go out and sharpen the pitch forks now perhaps getting the details out while voicing skepticism, but not open rebellion (yet) will be more productive.
It is so clear that this is nothing other than extending the corporatizing of a universal necessity. It was indeed clearly written by the Randians. .
Need to read them, devil’s always in the details. Why weren’t the Repubs pushing these hard?
As for Shadegg’s 3217 — going to take more than purchase of health insurance across to state lines for that to work. We’d have to ensure the repeal of 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, while addressing the issues of licensing and certification as well as quality controls at state level. States are going to complain about this, yet at the same time there is insufficient competition with 3000 health insurance providers all inflating costs instead of driving them down against each other. The next challenge would be the dynamic tension between allowing acquisitions and mergers in order to realize economies of scale across state lines, while assuring the providers don’t get too big to fail and are still adequately monitored to prevent fraud and assure improved patient outcomes.
Oh, I see our team must have been on the same wavelength tonight…
Lisa Derrick is up next:
Late Night: Democrats More Likely to Believe in Ghosts, Past Lives, Mediums
Yeah. About that.
Perhaps it’s because we really have seen monsters walking among us, among other things.
Must vent.
I can’t believe all this hard work is for naught ,that one egotistical Senator can put a stop to any kind of real reform.
This country is supposed to be a democracy ,and in a democracy the majority rules, But no ,not in this country ,we have something called the filibuster. A Senate procedure that gives the minority power ,and if progressives think healthcare will be the only issue settled by filibuster ,think again.
We will never get any progressive legislation passed unless we have 70 or 80 seats, and we know that ain’t gonna happen . The 2010 elections aren’t gonna be too kind to the Democrats they can forget about their congressional majorities.
This was our one chance to pass health reform and we blew it,. It will be another 20 or 30 years before this issue gets revisited .
I’m sick over this , this bill in it’s current form should fail it should go down in flames.
Kill this bill !!
Yes, I always was a little skeptical of Madigan. There is the Governor Pat Quinn. I always thought that Jan Schakowsky was angling for the seat, not that she has been that progressive since getting elected. Jesse Jackson Jr. is definitely interested probably Bobby Rush too. In fact, just look at the Democratic Representatives.
give me a breaaak……
what are you talking about?
stop talking in such flowery language! jesus. this isn’t poetry hour, this a political blog. get to the point.
sheesh, so lame…
Rep. deLauro (CT-3) lashed out at Joe today.. called for CT to recall him.. unfortunately there’s no provision in law to do so, but I gather it’s pretty unusual for a House Member to attack a Senator from one’s own state and delegation like this.
http://www.theday.com/article/20091215/NWS12/912159983
Once again, though I was assailed and trampled upon I will say it again. We do no good here. We are not the creators of reality and will not ever be in this state of being. We can complain and vote, make phone calls and send faxes – to no avail.
The created or perceived reality is a creation or in this articles usage a “monster” that is brought to life by only one thing that most of those commenting have neither of – money and will.
Who remembers when U.S. Army troops marched on and drew bayonets on American citizens in Washington D.C. and why it happened?
How many of us does it take to have control of enough resources to shape reality or the perceived reality?
When will we stop paying our health insurance premiums as a show of force – never.
The collective liquid assets of the poor and middle class controls reality against our expressed will and we do nothing about this fact.
And yet curiously here you are shouting into the wind with the rest of us.
Yes, and why would that be?
Rayne, silver has good points EXCEPT For this:
“Sixthly, because the threat to use reconciliation is only minimally credible — it could be done, but the bill that emerged could easily be worse from a progressive standpoint than a bill passed under regular order without a public option, and the attendant political fallout would be damaging to all Democrats.”
If the Repubs could push thru tax cuts for the wealthy using reconciliation and having Cheney cast the tiebreaker, then the Dem’s -BY SILVER’S COUNT !- COULD HAVE DONE THE SAME !
And per Silver, “they got up to perhaps as many as 48-52 for a strong-ish public option”; that’s the 51 votes needed and doesn’t count Biden voting.
He blew his own arguments with this one gambit.
I have no idea why you do what you do. I fight for what I believe. If I lose, then I bear witness to what happened. What I do may or may not change others but it does change me.
This is what we do here: turn anger into poetry, turn anger into votes, turn trolls into thinking people ….
Welcome to neofeudalism, where corporate lords own us.
haaaah! it’s always hilarious to see people throw in a little passive aggressive statement. calling me a troll and all, and implying that i’m not a thinking person. F*** you. how’s that for passive aggression?
you have no idea what my typical comment looks like. it’s usually very constructive. i was sharing my opinion that i think lame poetic verse is the wrong way to communicate a political message. it was a perfectly valid point.
so next time you want to reply to my comments, don’t throw in some pathetic little insult at the end.
Yes, we are supposed to read your mind and guess your intentions since you are so inarticulate and poor at expressing yourself. I am surprised that you even show up because this mindreading stuff could just as well be done in your absence. I know your absence would certainly work for me.
what? your response makes absolutely no sense. there were no intentions to even have to read. what i was saying was clear as day: i’m not a fan of this poetry, especially because the subject matter is politics. my message was clear; no mind-reading necessary.
it’s perfectly acceptable for me to express my opinion about a post on this blog, and it wasn’t overly hateful. the poetry above is terrible hippie nonsense. i’m a fan of direct calls to action, while this poetry nonsense is the opposite of that.
and when someone decided to make a passive aggressive comment towards me in response, i defended myself. i loathe people that don’t have the integrity to criticize people in a more direct fashion. passive aggression is a pathetic, cowardly way to communicate.
so i don’t know what you’re talking about with this ‘mindreading’ stuff. seems to me that you just like that to use that word a lot. and i’ll be around, don’t worry. to give my two cents on meaningful issues, and possibly to again point out how unappealing this combination of poetry and politics is.
is that articulate enough for you? jeez, you guys need to just lay off and let a guy give his opinion once in a while.
We make a lot of direct calls for action on this site. In fact, I make a lot of them myself, daily and at a personal level.
But we do need to vent — just as you did — and sometimes we need to be able to spend time concentrating on what is we are up against, not just shooting at anything which moves.
For instance: now that we’ve had a little time to think and called the beast by its name, it’s pretty clear we put the cart before the horse.
We should have gone for the throat and completely gutted campaign finance law. NO CORPORATE MONEY. MONEY ONLY FROM CITIZENS/VOTERS.
This might even involve a Constitutional amendment over time, but so be it. We will make no headway until we sever the umbilical cord between corporate money and political whores.
Monsters, the lot of them.
Now you’ve had your opinion here, you’ve had your chance to vent. What the frick are you going to do today to change this situation? Maybe you need to stop spending time harassing people for taking the time to think and write and more time doing some of that action you expect us to call for.
There were several flaws in Silver’s argument, including the numbers he was using which were older.
But he’s right, there were at least four senators who sold us out this summer. There was no intention to do anything but sell us out.
i just really didn’t like the poetry, i’m sorry. my opinion shouldn’t matter to you that much. let’s face it, this is the internet. people vent different opinions all the time, anonymously even.
i know this website makes a lot of direct calls to action. i just thought the execution of your message was a bit pretentious. but that’s one man’s opinion. many other people on this site enjoyed it and that should make you feel good about it.
if you’re worried about receiving negative feedback, you shouldn’t be publishing work on the internet. but i’m glad that we’re on the same page politically, i respect you for that. i do apologize for not being more diplomatic about it.
i realize that i came off as somewhat belligerent. i just believe that people need to take into appeal to a very wide audience when communicating a political message. I was put off by the fact that this, to me, seemed to be written in a way that would only appeal to a select group of people. it was a bit masturbatory, for lack of a better word.
but please don’t project onto my personal life, i didn’t do that to you. my call to action involves going to work every day to raise money for progressive groups like HRC and the NRDC as examples. so don’t even try to suggest that just because i spend a few minutes criticizing someone online it means i don’t actual do anything productive.
take into account*, not take into appeal.