Support for a proposal like Coburn’s idea to have undercover patients scouting out medicare fraud, when the legislation is about covering the millions of uninsured, who die by the tens of thousands because of their lack of coverage … is letting the kids decide on your family budget. Time for the adults to take charge.

Someone needs to remind Obama of the definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expecting different results. What’s it gonna take for him to realize republicans are not going to support anything. He needs to stop the ass kissing and be a leader.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say our President is a dim bulb. Don’t they have Republicans where he comes from?

I said the same things– a year ago. I am afraid that Obama will never learn, and won’t change. We are stuck with the Adlai Stevenson of process. Yes, he’s a thousand times better than Bush, but after Bush, settling for second best is somehow not satisfying. Ironically, I’m beginning to think that Obama’s “bend the arc” strategy will have to be employed against Obama. He will have to be eased out with baby steps and replaced with an as yet unknown, but better alternative. Hopefully, society won’t break down from the inertia in the interim.

OT
OK you “Old Hippy Women” how about this for a story.

My wife is in Women’s health care and she just got a notice yesterday that her, wholesale, price for IUDs has gone to near $700 from near $500. In canada the price, with insertion, is less than $200.

Gotta love the “free market”.

Noh is older, more intimate and regimented than kabuki. And of course you have the finely carved wooden masks with their static expressions. Kabuki is more operatic and ostentatious, no masks just heavy makeup, lavish costumes and the all important pose. Yeah, possibly more like the Dems. A better comparison for American political theatre might be bunraku, the meticulously choreographed traditional puppet theatre. The puppeteers are often women. No women actors in noh or kabuki. Me I’m partial to the kabuki. It’s got the best music and audience participation is encouraged. Though you do run into the occasional diva queen.

He is not only a disappointment, he is an embarrassment. Why he insists on trying to deal with the intransigent goopers is surely not because he is “stupid” it is only because that is what he is there for. He is a bought and paid for tool of InsurPharma.

I’d be scoping Mexico for alternative surgeries, but that’s just me.

thanks for the info.

D.C. is institutionalized insanity.

Good morning.

According to local news, a pre-teen girl was directing air traffic at JFK airport yesterday.

TPM starts the work that FDL should have done 2 days ago.

that was on my morning news, with apologies from the FAA, saying it was beneath their usauL professional standard.

Good morning, pups. It’s Dowd and Friedman today. Oh, saints preserve us. MoDo is in Riyadh, so there’s no telling what we’ll be subjected to in coming days. Today, in “Loosey Goosey Saudi,” she says Saudi Arabia dips a toe into modernity, even as it questions whether Israel is taking a step back. The Moustache of Wisdom has “A Word From the Wise,” and says a talk with the chief of Intel suggests that the U.S. needs to focus more on competitiveness in the global marketplace.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got apple walnut muffins. Condolences to Texas pups on Gov. Good Hair’s victory. I’m off to scrounge around in my medicine cabinet for something to make me stop sneezing. Maybe spring really is on the way — the whole town sneezes and sniffles during pollen season, and the pines may be gearing up… Have a great day.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head by suggesting bunraku, which has the added advantage of making it extremely clear that we’re dealing with puppets. Now, if we could force the puppeteers to wear costumes that clearly represented exactly who was pulling the strings…

thanks, Marion, maybe the Saudi cab driver had his baseball cap on backwards – next, great recipes for couscous?

Competitiveness usually is free market code for further abuse of workers.

I have very little “hope” for society. Obama has destroyed all idealism for hope and change in all demographics for decades to come. We are stuck with this laissez faire, free market capitalism, greed is good nonsense until we self destruct. The system is corrupt because as nomolos says they’re all bought and paid for and that’s just the way it is.

Are you sure it was a girl? The pilots were yucking it up with the dad but apparently the FAA didn’t agree with their reactions…..ie. lapse in judgement, anyone?

You people are such a drag, jesus.

…Gov. Good Hair’s victory.

did the secessionist vote put him over the top?

As an “old hippie woman” I’m way past the need for IUD’s or products of that nature. I’m more into colonoscopies now. Check out the price of those some time. Adds a whole new meaning to having it “broke off in you.”

thanks for the cheery note.

I discovered that “Raven’ was Sam Houston’s tribal name.
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/indian/early/page2.html

MY cheery note?

I have very little “hope” for society. Obama has destroyed all idealism for hope and change in all demographics for decades to come.

As “some” people here know, Raven was the most wonderful little cocker spaniel ever!

‘You people’ however, was not directed toward anyone in particular, therefore applied to all of us as used.

that is correct

Do not consider either myself or the company in general here to be a drag.

[sniff] My itsy, bitsy feelings are hurt… [dances soft shoe off stage, waving hat]

Yes, the Japanese have ambiguity down to an art. They tend to look to the US for lessons on transparency.

And that’s the biggest problem. Even if we find a legitimate candidate–a true progressive who does mean CHANGE when he says CHANGE—who will believe him? People will roll their eyes and mutter, “Yeah–Obama.”

That sort of damage is not easily undone.

I’m old enough to remember when crap like this would be considered anti-American:

In Utah, a move to seize federal land

The state House passes a bill allowing the use of eminent domain to take protected land from the federal government. Utah wants to develop a stretch outside Arches National Park and other areas.

This is what Obama’s refusal to restore the rule of law gives aid and comfort to.

Suitor Obama remains fully committed to engaging the Republican Party to assist in the success of the Obama Presidency.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and god knows where Obama is from.

Hieee!

Swim is up…

As Archie Bunker said: “Too much of both, and not enough of neither.”

I’m more hopeful about Obama than most of the poster’s here, though I share the dismay. Here’s a story. I worked in an academic department that for more than 20 years was a dog pit — fighting over things, as Kissinger used to say, because the stakes were so small. It was very destructive and ruined several otherwise promising careers. I escaped by the skin of my teeth. We were like the Democrats and the Republicans. Finally, a friend of mine (a conservative Democrat who supported the Iraq war in the beginning) took over the chairmanship. He bent over backwards appeasing the ‘other side’. It drove me and my friends crazy because he seemed always to be giving in to blackmail. But in time — and it took half a dozen years at lest, things settled down, and we began to function like a normal group of academics.

My point is that the system in Washington is clearly broken. It’s worse than my department because the current crop of Republicans are truly evil, rather than simply lazy and venal. There is also the extra problem of big business having bought and paid for Congress. We have a basically liberal President. What exactly can he do against the forces massed against him, ready to do to him what they did to the Clintons? He has to be patient and work the corners. The rest of us have to do the heavy lifting. I don’t see any alternative. We don’t want to see him end up like Jack Kennedy.

kissing ass is what he is a leader in.It is disgusting to watch him crawl on his knees and beg for republican support and at the same time dismiss any ideas that progressives offer. I cant wait to see his timid scared ass booted out of office.

I disagree. First of all, the bending over is not backwards, its forward, and the bending is being done by the American public, not Obama. FDR relished the hatred of his enemies. Johnson poked his finger in their eyes. Obama French kisses them. The American public cannot afford this kind of courtship. And of course, no thinking American wants him to end up like Jack Kennedy, but that doesn’t mean he should end up like Jimmy Carter either. Although I doubt it will happen, let’s see some Y chromosones from this guy. America will be a better place.

I can’t speak to the psychological dynamics of your department, but I can speak to political reality.

Obama can’t get himself to quit smoking, yet he is trying to get mortal political enemies to lay down with him to create a successful Obama presidency. This concept is dangerously delusional. It goes against the U.S. political structure, it goes against the reality that many powerful people profit from these diversionary tactics of divide and rule, that it goes against some human characteristics MORE ingrained than nicotine addiction. To believe that a “Can’t we all get along?” modeling of behavior by one person can overcome all these mentioned interests and behaviors is dangerously delusional. Obama clearly sees his obtaining the presidency as the result of something other than a mass (52%?) revulsion from an eight-year nightmare. No Barack, we don’t think you’re The Transformational One. We think you’re The Delusional One.

And Nancy wished him luck. I wonder if what she was saying was, “maybe you should put in something for the democrats to vote for it.” Wouldn’t that be a novel idea for Obama.