You know, the way O’Donnell framed that question really pissed me off too. Kent Conrad bashes liberals and progressives enough without Lawrence O’Donnell saying in effect “Look at what these filthy hippies are doing to poor Blanche Lincoln who, after all is such a wonderful ‘centrist’…” Don’t make me vomit. I used to like O’Donnell but he’s an establishment Democrat and the “wisdom” of bashing your own base has become far too entrenched for the party’s own good. Thanks Rahm.

A man of the people.
If your definition of “the people” is Amgen,
from whom Kent has received $42,000 in 2006.

It’s on Lincoln. She owns it, along with the other sellouts, I mean “centrists,” who’ve been screwing us all over. And she’s about to lose the seat because of it. Thank you, Lt. Gov. Halter, for stepping up to take her out.

It wasn’t the Chee-to eating bloggers who saddled her with the Cheneyesque approval rating of 27 percent, Blanche did that all on her own. Those dirty bloggers ARE the ones who raised over a million dollars for Halter in 24 hours though. With Lincoln’s help of course. Thanks Blanche!

The sad thing is, she’ll still have healthcare for life.

This is a horribly right wing country. What’s basically run of the mill policy in W Euro countries (healthy welfare state, medical care for all, etc.) is considered in this backward cesspool far left wing. I don’t know what it’s going to take to fix the broken Social Contract here–but I’m not very sanguine about the future. If you can’t agree that health care is a human right, I don’t know how a modern civilization can function credibly. I wish I knew the answer. I think the US is morally broken. And if anyone of you lackeys in the White House are reading this–that means YOU, too.

Did anyone else notice Lawrence O’Donnell saying Lincolin voted exactly how Obama wanted her to. The very horror of her to face a challange from the left.
O’Donnell can be an agressive interviewer at times, but I feel he’s too in love with “the proccess”(and his former position in it). Reminds me of Tweety’s man crushes of those in power, just in a more abstract way.

Tweety was all over the idea that Bunning “had a point”.

I mostly like O’Donnell, but agree that he is enamored of his former government position and mentions it at the drop of a hat. He was sure off on this particular interview.

OT a bit, but Froomkin has a good take-down of our buddy Rahm (and a couple of good pokes at the WaPo for good measure).

Rahm Emanuel: Obama’s Chief of Sabotage

The man is an establishment Democrat and has bought into the Rahm Emanuel strategy of running right at every opportunity. Hook. Line. And sinker. He’s been bashing the public option since that term was coined.

On NPR this AM – radical right and radical left equivocated into the same quicksand pit.

Radical Right = Overthrow government

Radical Left – Single Payer Health care – like the rest of civilization.

Radicals all. Thanks NPR for being so Centrist.

Mornin’, BT, pups.

Got a candidate in your district/state you can work for? Saddle up.

The public option is popular with the electorate, just it is the corporate-owned politicians who don’t like it.

To be honest though, with Olbermann using Transgendered Americans’ lives as a cudgel to bash Ann Coulter and now Lawrence O’Donnell taking “the left” to task for the troubles of poor little Blanche Lincoln, I may be done with Countdown. I can watch personal insults and unjustified attacks on FAUX “News” if I wanted to watch that kind of thing.

I actually had someone tell me this weekend (a Repug) when I shared how our insurance company approved a minor procedure and then decided not to cover it, tell me that I must not think the family member is worth what we had to pay (the entire bill).

No accountability for the business contract of the service of health insurance. No concern over the broken contract. And then pointed out, poor you, that a minor procedure, which if left untreated could, over time lead to death or becoming deaf. That had we not had it done or had no money to pay for it to be done that “that” was too bad and that I would have come to know what life is like for a mother of a child in a developing nation.

He said he didn’t care. That my experience was tough luck and to live with it.

All the people listening to our conversation looked at him like he was a total a—–.

He went on to say that we need to get to the point of realizing the reality that there are haves and have nots and to live with it. “There is no ‘social contract,’ he said.

I asked him to define compassion.

I asked him to define honor.

I asked him to define selflessness.

His hands and body started to tremble.

I noted his bodily response and stated, “See in the core of your being, you know you are failing to care about others or you are trying really hard not to slug a woman. Either way, both responses are pointing to a need for more compassionate living.”

I did get him to agree to live a more compassionate life and start doing more volunteering of his time and talents to make the world a better place.

Kent Conrad is doing everything he can to get healthcare reform passed. It’s not a pretty sight the way the Congress, particularly the Senate dysfunctions these days, but it is what it is, and he is making a sincere effort.

And I found his explanation of the sidecar reconciliation clear and straightforward yesterday on MSNBC. I took away that he could support the public option.

We may not like, heck we may loathe, what we’re seeing out of Washington these days, but it is where we have to function. We might do well look in the mirror from time to time ourselves.

Crap! I know that was snark but NPR is right wing as they come. So far they ahe had at least two “Week(s) of Conservative Though” that I’m aware of and exactly zero weeks of Liberal Thought. Until Obama purges all of the Bushies from every government entity, we won’t have “change” much less than I can believe in.

Wow! I didn’t know senate staffers frequented this blog, let alone Conrad staffers.

Conrad’s numbers are no better than Lincoln’s. That doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Compassionate living (non-violence and caring about those who are hurting) is now considered “quicksand”.

Nice job NPR.

Guess NPR is the psych-ops propaganda tool for creating a civil war.

Months ago, Matthews said he would always be a supporter of Bunning because he was a great pitcher for the Phillies. So, last night’s stupidity came as no surprise to me.

As for O’Donnell, I tend to like him when he’s part of a panel discussion, particularly with Pat Buchanan. He’s a pit bull in those instances. When he’s sitting in for Olbermann or someone, yellow journalism seems to take over and he wants to create the most tension possible in posing questions.

Centrists = DLC = neoliberal

No thanks.

Little chance of Obama purging anything detrimental to the Democratic Party. Obama NEEDS Republicans to define who He imagines himself to be. No Republicans, No Great Unifier. Also, imagine how horrifying it would seem to CHANGE HAS COME TO AMERICA Obama if the Republicans weren’t blocking just about everything.

As to NPR, Cokie Roberts, Juan Williams, and others are expert at appearing to sound centrist and even-handed when analyzing a situation. However, key, crucial elements are often left out of their descriptions, and the result is a right-wing bias posing as a centrist position is presented to a believing audience. Sad.

I can only watch Matthews in short doses. I find 7:00 a good time to catch up on last nights Daily Show.

Well said.

“promise to the House, hand on the bible type stuff, that we will do a reconciliation bill that will meet some of your objections to the Senate bill.”

H I l a r I o u s

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Irak: 4,380

US KIA Afghanistan: 1,012

Iraki and Afghan casualties: estimates vary to over 1.5M

US MBS: 7,564 and counting

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

O’Donnell is a Cylon, as are Bill Maher, Dan Moynehan and Kevin Drum. They simulate independent thought by randomness. That is, they randomly take the opposite position to feign independence.

Another example of O’Donnell taking a random position: during the Plame affair he insisted (without any evidence, of course) that the outing of Valerie Plame caused no damage to national security.

Everyone’s disparagement of O’Donnell here is spot on.

KO has definitely softened his reporting on HCR in general and the PO in particular, but I cannot imagine him phrasing that question – or anything even resembling it – to Conrad. I frankly can’t imagine KO wasting good TV time by having Conrad on the show at all, unless he intended to rip him a new one.

I’ve been saying for a long time that Larry O’Donnell is invested in the failure of HCR due, in no small part, to his and other Clintonites failure to get it through in ’94. That he got Conrad on the show and then set him up with this bullshit question only begs another: Why is he even allowed to do “Countdown”?

All of the commentary is painfully true.

What I think also needs to be said. The Obama administration wants his traditional Democratic core of the party politically dead. They are in my view more interested in killing us off as a force than any right wing opposition.

They want a party of what is fawningly called by the media “the centrist independents.” These folks are not independent. It is my opinion, if ever interested in politics, they have become so betrayed and confused. they have no firm principles and prefer entertainment to commitment.. They are on whole politically shallow single or simple issue voters and, yes. easily led.

This guy is creating his constituency.

“the centrists independents insipid.

There, fixed it. s/

Rangel news conference live msnbc/cnn

Waaaaaaah!!!! Stop picking on the DINO’s like Conrad!! Waaaaaaah!!!

Centrists = DLC = neoliberal

= neo-conservative criminal war profiteers

Just stepped down as Chair of Waysn Means.

O’Donnell is a Democrat/politician in the finest D.P. Moynihan Tradition. In short, that tradition is “Sir, I have MY principles in this matter, but yours will do just as nicely.”

“…Larry O’Donnell is invested in the failure of HCR due, in no small part, to his and other Clintonites failure to get it through in ‘94″
Never looked at it from that aspect but I’ll bet you’re exactly right. He doesn’t want others to succeed when all of his sweat went for naught.

Crap! I know that was snark but NPR is right wing as they come.

I used to think NPR stood for Nice Polite Republicans, but now more and more I realize that it stands for Never Provoke Republicans.

As far as Bill Kristol is concerned the terms neoliberal and neoconservative are interchangeable. The main difference I see is that the neocons use force faster than neoliberals.

Temporarily

Too bad he couldn’t use his experience to further benefit sound health care policy and be proud his past hard work “paved the way.”

But that would require a selfless mindset.

Would have been nice to have Wendell Potter on as an expert voice to talk reality, not politics.

Agree with all above. Add KO and TRMS to the list. Can’t watch either anymore.
The more both get behind Obama, for the sake of getting behind Obama, the more they lose me.

This is NOT health care reform, Rachel.

I say,now youve got it my fine gentleman

Personally I think it’s clear that O’Donnell doesn’t give a flying footfuck about HCR.

He doesn’t seem to have a clue about the netroots either.

New post up top…

But that would require a selfless mindset.

In short, it would require him to drop his politics and become a human being but Tweety has shown us all just how unlikely that is.

But that would require a selfless mindset.

I think we agree. You’re just more bold.

Except the comments are turned off. I can’t stay though. I have the wonderful privilege of buying new tires today but first I have to put the spare on the right rear. Like I can afford this expense!

Centrists = DLC = neoliberal

= neo-conservative criminal war profiteers

Funny how the one seems to enable the other as they try to trick the American people into seeing only Democrat vs. Republican…

He’s an elite, he doesn’t have to worry about it. He can afford anything that happens to him or his family.

About 3 weeks ago – near the height of Michael Bennet’s loudest support for doing HCR through reconciliation, Scott Horsley reported on Obama’s trip to CO to do a rally on Bennet’s behalf.

Needing a pithy kicker (funny, NPR reports never needed them back in the day – could it have been because the reporting itself was pithy??), Horsley said something like, “Throughout the rally, a woman sat holding a sign with the number 51, showing that, for most Democrats, simply holding a majority in the Senate this year will be good enough.”

NO, Scott. She was showing support for reconciliation on health care, and had you spent some time with the Senator – or even reading up on his latest work – before parachuting in to cover the event, YOU’D HAVE KNOWN THAT.

And we wonder why our electorate is uninformed.

They appear to be on for me.

This should be expended into a diary. Well stated.

Thank you.

I bet it would be front paged too!

That’s a problem I have from time-to-time. Been working with RBG to try to find the cause. I haven’t seen it for a few days. Margaret, if you can, send a screen shot to fdlsiteadmin@gmail.com and report how you got to the page with comments off.

I heard that. He presented it as though he were some sort of Truth Teller, sent from On High. When he makes these idiot assertions, how is he any less of a fuckin’ dipshit than the cretins over at Fox?

Thanks klynn. I’ve been working on one called, “Why the media suck and what you can do about it.” Horsely’s report will be an example I include.

This is the same Kent Conrad who said we had to bail out the banksters.

And went on the Ed radio show to say to get anything done, we had to elect more than 60 democrats. I wonder how many Kent needs.

I wonder if O’Donnell is trying to subtly tell democrats, here we are, all pissed at Lincoln and yet she is only doing exactly what Obama wants. After all, Obamas’ approval ratings are much higher other Democrats and he is the one who sold us out to the for-profit hospital lobbyists regarding the public option. And yet he stays above the fray.

The continuing story of the media and the message.
Apologies to Tennyson

Extremists to right of them, (supporting health insurance to the deserving)
Extremists to left of them, (supporting health care to those in need)
Extremists in front of them (supporting health insurance premium reductions)
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the Democratic party right wing.

The brave right wing of the D party soldier on against the secretly powerful fifth columnists.

Going back to last year, Firedoglake has been putting progressive House members on the record on various HCR issues: The public option, individual mandate, and so forth.

Since Speaker Pelosi is at present attempting to round up enough House Democrats to pass the Senate bill, does anyone have any idea how many of those progressive House members will vote against a bill (the Senate bill) without a public option?

We’ve seen a lot of vote-counting by the media among the DINOs that voted against the health care reform bill in the House last November, as well as estimates as to the actual numbers of Stupak supporters…but how many of the progressive House members that promised Firedoglake they wouldn’t support any HCR bill without a public option will honor that pledge, and vote against the Senate bill?

I haven’t seen any analysis of their vote count, other than Kucinich and Massa.

The problem with Senator Kent Conrad’s comment is that he implies that he’s a centrist. Nothing could be further from the truth, Sen. Conrad is and has been a hard conservative since coming to the Senate, and one of the reasons why nothing got done when the Democratis had 60 votes in the Senate this past year.

What Lawrence O’Donnell was trying to do was expose that President Obama is the one behind the failure of the public option. As O”Donnell said Linocln was only doing what Obama told her to do. So maybe we need to look at a primary challenger for President come 2012.

Really? Seems to me he’s been doing everything possible to either kill any REAL reform ( like a Public Option / Choice) suggested or adding more and more Corporatist nonsense to it.

The underlying motive for most people’s view of the world is economics, I think.

In the case of the US once you are able to tap into profit or investment generated wealth then you have a vested interest in favoring the status quo. This position is terribly short sighted because the system that allows for that sort of wealth is at heart corrupt and based on theft from the many to the few. Moral considerations take a back seat.

Democrats in Congress and the WH are there to protect this scheme and will not wander far from it. We on the left fall outside that scheme for good and obvious reasons and are a threat and therefore treated that way.

The absurdity is that most people are abused under the current economic scheme and their interests lie in fundamentally changing it. But that is definitely not an easy task. Thankfully there does seem to be some burgeoning widespread recognition of the need for fundamental change as the spontaneous rsponse to unseat Blanche Lincoln shows.

The task at hand for the left is to ignore all the mainstream chatter and not give up their task of unseating as many Democrats as possible, such as Conrad or whoever else feels threatend by the left. Let’s make no qualms about who we see as obstructionist in our attempt to further our interests.

Let them bitch as much as they want. This is the response from them that we should be prepared for. It will not let up.

Wonderful, absolutly wonderful….

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi

They are fighting. What else could Conrad say?

Cardigan had an IQ of 70.

Hey Kent… Give Blanche a call and see how her re-election campaign is going!!!

Another crook down, about 1,000 more to go (just in the greater Washington DC area alone).

Pleae do your homework…European Health Care models are dismal. Been there done that….What a misleading statement re: Healthcare in Europe.

Those miss-perceptions and miss-analyses happen far too often to lean to the right-wing ideology to be simply reporter’s ignorance. They are endemic to NPR.

it is very ugly that transgender jokes are used by KO.
someone will alert him and perhaps his decency will expand.

there are legit ways to tag coultergeist.

A neutered, limited, probably won’t enroll 1M people ‘public option’ is now an “extreme” policy. This should be very telling for those people, organizations, and blogs that kept single payer off the table last year. If you expected anything else from ‘Democrats’, you’re a chump.

Conservative Democrats are making it very clear that they’ll switch their vote and kill the bill down the line if the public option doesn’t get stripped out of it.

This is by far the best thing that could happen with this monstrosity whose first aim is to enrich insurers and pharmaceutical manufacturers. HR 3590 will not pass the House, though, making most of this debate acedemic. Bet on it.

“Since Speaker Pelosi is at present attempting to round up enough House Democrats to pass the Senate bill, does anyone have any idea how many of those progressive House members will vote against a bill (the Senate bill) without a public option?”

This is the key question. Where oh where is Anthony Weiner?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlPE1lV_5Y