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TechnoratiLeaderless: Senate Pushes For Public Option Without Obama's Support
President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.
![[President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. (Huffington Post photo)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/obama-reid-2.jpg "obama-reid-2.jpg")
The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.
"The leadership understands that pushing for a public option is a somewhat risky strategy, but we may be within striking distance. A signal from the president could be enough to put us over the top," said one Senate Democratic leadership aide. Such pleading is exceedingly rare on Capitol Hill and comes only after Senate leaders exhausted every effort to encourage Obama to engage.
"Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."
But with fundamental reform of the health care system in plain sight for the first time in half a century, the president appears to be siding with those who see the Senate and its entrenched culture as too resistant to change. Administration officials say that Obama's preference for the trigger, which is backed by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, is founded in a fear that Reid's public option couldn't get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. More specifically, aides fear that a handful of conservative Democrats will not support a bill unless it has at least one Republican member's support.
The president's retreat leaves Reid as the champion of progressive reform -- an irony that is not lost on those who have long derided the Majority Leader as too cautious.
"Who knew that when it came down to crunch time, Harry Reid would be the one who stepped up to the plate and Barack Obama would shy away from the fight," emailed one progressive strategist.
On Thursday evening, after taking the temperature of his caucus, Reid told Obama at a White House meeting that he was pushing a national public option with an opt-out provision. Obama, several sources briefed on the exchange, reacted coolly.
Story continues below
"He certainly didn't embrace it and he seemed to indicate a preference for continuing to work on a strategy that involved Senator Snowe and a trigger," said one aide briefed on the meeting. Several other sources, along with independent media reports, confirmed the exchange.
On Saturday, the activist group Progressive Change Campaign Committee -- which just days earlier had targeted Reid in a separate campaign -- took out a new television advertisement in Maine accompanied by an "emergency petition." Titled, "Time to Fight," the spot featured a former Obama campaign volunteer pleading with the president not to abandon the public plan.
"If this once-in-a-generation opportunity to pass a public option goes down the drain after we were just a couple votes away in each house of Congress, everyone will remember exactly who was and was not willing to fight when it counted," said the group's co-founder, Adam Green, when asked why he aired the ad. "Our grassroots pressure is an attempt to get President Obama to live up to the mandate for sweeping change that was given to him in the 2008 election."
MoveOn.org rallied its base on Friday. "The President has said many, many times that a public option is the best way to keep insurance companies honest and lower skyrocketing health care costs. Senate Democrats are ready to fight for a public option -- if the White House gives up now, it would be a tragic mistake," said an e-mail to the group's membership.
White House aides responded to the pressure not by embracing Reid's more aggressive stance, but by denying reports that he was discouraging the opt-out proposal.
"The report is false," Dan Pfeiffer, a top White House aide whose portfolio includes health care, said of a story in Talking Points Memo. "The White House continues to work with the Senate on the merging of the two bills. We are making good progress toward enacting comprehensive health reform."
But the push-back, say sources with direct knowledge of deliberations between leadership and the administration, does not square with Obama's private indications to Senate leaders. The sources say that the president has left little doubt about his apprehension regarding an opt-out approach.
It is not philosophical, one White House aide explained, but is a matter of political practicality. If the votes were there to pass a robust public option through the Senate, the president would be leading the charge, the aide said. But after six months of concern that it would be filibustered, the bet among Obama's aides is that Reid is now simply being too optimistic in his whip count. The trigger proposal, said Democratic aides, has long been associated with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
"He's been so convinced by his political people from the beginning that we can't get a bill with a public option, he's internalized it. Even though it's now become obvious we can get a bill without selling out the public option, he's still on that path," said a top Democratic source. The White House, he said, continues to assure progressives it'll improve the bill in conference negotiations between the Senate and House, but advocates are unconvinced.
"If we're this close in the Senate and they're not helping us, I have a feeling they could screw us in the conference," said one.
Advocates of a public option largely consider a "trigger" the equivalent of no public option at all. A trigger would implement a public option only if insurance companies failed to meet certain benchmarks over time and it would only be implemented in the regions of the country where those benchmarks weren't met. The Medicare prescription drug proposal passed in 2003 includes a "trigger," but the public provision has never been activated despite soaring drug costs. The industry can help craft the trigger language and can game its stats to prevent it from becoming reality.
"The current state of our health system should be trigger enough for anyone who's paying attention," said a congressional aide in the middle of the health care battle. "The American people pulled the 'trigger' in November."
The intellectual father of the public option, Yale Professor Jacob Hacker, told HuffPost that the trigger proposal is a betrayal.
"The trigger is an inside-the-beltway sleight of hand that would protect private insurers from the real competition that a strong public health insurance option would create," he said in an e-mail. "It is unworkable in the current Senate bills, unwise as public policy, and unwanted by the substantial majority of Americans who say they want a straight-up public option."
78 Comments so far
Show AllForget the "Public Option". BHO is here to rape all of you to death for his "Masters" in the Oligarchy. This is ALL he has ever planned to do, this was the price of his Presidency and he was glad to pay. He is just another Overseer in this Hell On Earth slave plantation. The compass points of Hell on Earth by the way are: Authoritarian Patriarchy; (White) Male Supremacy; Gender Slavery; the Rights of Conquest; and Feral Blood Drinking Oligarchy as the glue that binds them all. THAT is American 'society' from top to bottom...
Skip ahead two chapters and you'll see: No health care for the 'plebs' at all, no SSI, no Medicare, no pensions, no savings, no jobs along with lots of drugs, guns, and alcohol. Just like Russia after Larry Summers got finished "helping" them back in '93. That's where he perfected his steel toe flamenco that he's about to dance on your head, and the heads of your children. Wonderful man Larry, BHO brought him in as his Chief Financial Advisor...any questions? Save the last round for yourself. Master's Overseers have been trained to degrade the meat thoroughly before placing it on the barbecue at Master's Cannibalistic Blood Feast. The only rules at the Blood Feast are the table etiquette and the only question is whether you're on the menu or one of the diners. That question has been answered. Did you get a high number or a low number?
Remember, this is what the White Majority chose for itself 45 years ago when it DEMANDED this society remain based on Exclusion and nothing else, see compass points above...
Do you think that Rahm Emmanuel and the rest of them really worry about losing the progressive vote? They don't. Do you think that they believe we will bolt the party? They are sure we can be coopted and accept what we are given. You want to punish them? Don't vote for them. Go Green. Form another party. Become a defined voting block that can challenge in primaries or turn an election. OR TAKE YOUR LUMPS.
Form another party? How about joining the Socialist Party USA? Take a look at that Party's platform, and I think you will find much to agree with.
Garbage.
What a transparent con act Obama is. The die has already been cast in his backroom secret deals requiring every American to pay tribute to the class that he aspires to--not the class that he is a traitor to.
Let the record state that he was paid his 30 pieces of silver.
If this doesn't prove to the Obamabots and Lesser Evilists that he's a fraud and a sellout to the health care industry, nothing will.
If the White House betrays its base by sabotaging the public option it will damage its credibility and lose political energy.
What credibility? Obama has none, never did. And he has betrayed his base since 12:01 on Jan 20, 2009 when the abomination took over from his white clone.
What has this creep actually done in office to please the left or fulfill one single campaign promise?
"The leadership understands that pushing for a public option is a somewhat risky strategy"
Well, I hope the leadership understands that NOT pushing for, AND GETTING, a public option is an EVEN MORE risky strategy!
And what's this about "leadership"? You've got to be kidding. Reid has his heels dug in so far he needs to buy new shoes twice a week. This guy moves after being dragged kicking and screaming, period.
the mighty xzorloc Sees Delesio's point here , I vent and obsess on my own powerlessness here on CD, like a junkie, my woman is really really worried about this vice... reading and getting frustrated, doing nothing.
What we really ought to be doing, it seems, is fulfilling our true hearts desire, BE IT- organizing, protesting, boycotting, asassinating, debunking, passive resisting, firebombing, networking, squatting, speaking truth to power, getting arrested, graffittti-ing, pamphleteering, sabotaging, evolving , revolutionizing, kidnapping, conspiring, barricading, overthrowing, sitting-in, loving -in, freaking out, bullhorning, underground partythrowing, self-liberating, potlucking, organic gardenning, perpetrating, neck risking, actually resisting this terrible thing that we behold.
Futile? maybe, but really ANYTHING beats this sick paralysing critiqe, as everything falls apart all around us.
Maybe this collapse is going to be somehow healing?? or grim, anything is worse than this paralysis, it's like waiting for a spanking from dad...
Mark Dalessio 7:26 pm:
This is a thoughtful and compelling post. Thanks.
In keeping with its paradoxical nature, though, for the moment I'm digesting it as a piquant morsel of cyberfood for thought.
Which, in operant conditioning terms, is a reward that reinforces the behavior...
· Yr Obd't Servant
I post here like many others, so I mean no criticism of anybody else in saying the following.
I think progressive venting sites like CD are part of the problem. Maybe even purposely so, however paranoid that sounds.
Cyberspace sites like this never become what they're purported to be -- organizing tools to connect live-to-live people for grass roots change.
They do no such thing.
Instead, they mostly draw off and squander human political energy.
Go back and read average people's posts on the major progressive websites, listed over the past 5 years.
There are many brilliant ideas, insights, and criticisms. But beyond raising money for phony candidates, you will almost never find any enduring political actions that get organized among live people as a result of all the online verbiage.
No one ever says anything like: Hey fellow posters, we here in my state/locality have really started to corner our congressperson on the issues, thanks to Common Dreams, or AlterNet, or Salon, etc. helping us organize in real time!
If cybersites like this didn't exist, I think many of us would ultimately and naturally build up an intolerable psychological pressure, inside ourselves, that would force the more committed of us to organize our friends and neighbors in real time, so as to take progressive actions in real time.
But that flesh and blood pressure can't build up in most of us cyber dissenters, as it used to during the pre-cyber 1960's, because now it gets relieved,, vented almost daily, by it being pissed away into the nothingness of trillions of blue blinking electrons that pose no real threat to people and systems whose power we mean to dethrone and supplant with something better.
We obviously can't banish such sites, such political energy sinks. Nor should we necessarily want to.
But we can and should begin to see more clearly what cyberspace seems do to our real time political energy, and then think about the phenomenon with more awareness.
By rights, this should be my last post. But it probably won't be.
Unfortunately, for the while, I'm as psychologically addicted to pretending something real is happening here in electronland, as most of you seem to be.
It's a real problem for many more folks than just me, so please don't come down on me just for naming and sharing it.
I've never been under any illusion about these sites or our chances of doing anything substantive. You might as well vent. Again, none of us are going to do shit.
Raising money, volunteering, and opining to congresspersons and newspapers are really the only things you can do without doing serious harm to your life.
Regardless of what we do or say, we will never be seen as anything more than left-wing nutjobs in America. Nobody gets anything done any more without the support of corporate power.
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."--(?).
Change has often been made by people who risk serious harm to their lives. Change can happen, if we face the fear of our own losses, and put ourselves on the line.
Can you imagine any effective resistance movement in history asserting that "none of us are going to do shit"?
We are ALL going to die, that is not a question. The question is, how are we going to live? Cowering in self-fulfilling fear of our overlords? Living on our knees?
Rather than insist that "Regardless of what we do or say... nobody gets anything done", how about some bravery?
Not as a rhetorical foil to again express hopelessness, but as a positive question:
How can you effectively resist corporate power?
People on this site suggest a wide variety of answers every day, and bless every one that keeps looking for ways forward.
Wow.
i wrote my first reply immediately, before i read and replied to the others.
Thanks so much for your productive and provoking posting. You touched a place other people are also obviously thinking about.
One worthwhile thing is to repeat here that the need is for action, for acts, for organizing, and ask people to share what they are doing, and share what you are doing, and build an on-line culture of supporting activism, not just brilliant analysis (of which there is plenty along with plenty of disruptive baiting and lashing out).
i work at my local food co-op for adherence to our core principles of local economic democracy and ecologically sustainable systems, and what those core values mean to our everyday practices. It's not glamorous work but we need to work in our workplaces and our homes and our families and our neighborhoods to promote real action and real values and real holistic accountability for our actions and our values.
What are we doing in our communities? Not just what do we front here in cyberspace but how do we represent here in cyberspace the real work we are doing in our lives?
This also subverts the standard bleat that "you need to get off your asses and stop whining". If we regularly talk about our organizing and our real work that can't be bleated.
And CD helps when it publishes reports about actions and work, not that i don't love to read analysis and contextualization but there should be increased coverage of organizing and work that people do.
Thanks for your post.
Many ideas are shared here that people fit into their own special way of changing. It is this totality of differing efforts that forms the change dynamic. We are having an effect at the bottom. We are used to instant gratification but in this case the longer view is what is important. We can see a change in peoples attitudes and values at the bottom. Time will take care of the rest. The change dynamic is fluid and will form and reform again as deteriorating circumstances confront us. Fascism has won at the top but Democracy and freedom still reside at the bottom and that is where change takes place first. By changing you become a change catalyst. Communications in all directions is what is required for change to grow into a commonly shared vision. Common Dreams serves as part of that communication function. Once we change ourselves the path forward will be understood. Be patient, the people are awakening and change is taking place right under your feet. Look down not up, and you will see it.
An interesting premise. Some interesting underlying assumptions. However, I disagree with the gist of this posting by Mark Dalessio.
Here are some flaws.
You assume the majority of us live in places where we have friends who share our concerns. The area where I live is strongly republican. I live in a college town where most of the people I associate with are people who would call themselves both professional and progressive. Most of the people I know either think Obama is a communist or they will NOT tolerate any criticism of him. In fact, ever since I announced I was voting for Nader, people who I thought would be more understanding, have become much more guarded around me. They tell me they don't have time for my negativity (what they call negativity I would call an accurate assessment). I do not like being talked to as if I am a foolish child, so I also become more guarded in my interactions with "friends".
You assume that sites like Common Dreams "piss away" useful energy because you are not aware of any "enduring political actions" which have arisen out of such sites. Perhaps you can't see the forest for the trees. You do not have to read a single comment which follows an article to know that you are part of a consciousness which seeks justice in the face of the mountainous apathy and smugness in this land of the religion of capitalistic consumption.
Being an environmentalist in this nation is to live with daily, frequent, and diverse assaults upon my mentality and my emotions. I am constantly perplexed by how little people comprehend about what fascinates me and the extent to which they would rather watch football or go shopping. I keep trying, however imperfectly, to reduce my "carbon footprint" (even as those around me seem to keep expanding theirs) not so much out of a sense of superiority, but more out of love and thankfulness for what I see as a gift. I cannot make people care, and so I seek out cyber places where I can try to fine-tune my communication and learn from others.
There is much posted here that I do not agree with, but I also regularly find useful information.
Mark:
Here is a reply to your post that has some possibility.
The Constitution does give the little people the right to make a law or two.Some states call it prop xx and it does get on the ballot, and some times it does pass.
Example, in California there was prop 13 which made a limit of the amount of property tax that could be assessed on the little peoples homes.So far that has been in place since the 1970's and is blocking the State from using property taxes to bail out the current financial crisis California is in. Colorado has the TABOR act, as well as YES on Medical Marijuana like California.
The point for all us little people is we are NOT the Little People. WE ARE THE SOVEREIGN OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES..........
The path to victory is to use this voice in constructing a set of ballots that
call to duty the established legal structure, state courts ,Federal District courts,
and State supreme courts, reminding all that have already sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, to do their duty as reminded by the voices of the SOVEREIGNS OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES..............
Who, on CD has the legal expertise to construct valid ballot material?
Think about it.....
Hank
Thanks for your post too.
Here in Washington state we have a right-wing proto-fascist named Tim Eyman who crafts ballot measure after ballot measure, he has literally turned it into his career.
i've recently begun to think about launching a progressive ballot measure. There have been some successful ones here. i have a little experience crafting policy language, and i'm in the process of writing articles of incorporation for a new non-profit, a new business, and possibly a new cooperative development fund and a new land trust.
So i'm working on building my expertise with language, maybe i will work on language for a ballot measure here.
Anyone else involved in dirty grass-roots politics at the state or local level?
i should add that the business i am working to start is a worker co-op urban farm.
Benjamin Franklin used pamphlets and papers to build popular support for his ideas. Then once public opinion was swayed, he would make a proposal and organize some changes.
I get a lot of ideas and information here. Ideas are important. But there is little connection to things we do in the neighborhoods or organizations we belong to.
You raise a good point. People keep talking about an action clearinghouse. Perhaps it is another project. Considering the scattered and contentious nature of the "left", it is a big order.
Joe
Hello -- I am one that appreciates your thoughts and concerns. Thank you.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
To Dalessio:
The inclination towards armchair politics of the American masses with respect to the great issues of the last 40 years began long before internet sites like CD existed. The Reagan era was notable for an almost complete lack of public engagement. That is when some commentators began to refer to Americans as "sleepwalking through history" and "driving with their eyes closed." I personally believe it began with the disillusionment brought on by the Nixon era, calcified under Reagan and is now geologically layered in three decades of the increased ignorance and apathy of most Americans.
A site like this hosts a wide variety of posters. Some exchange much information that is useful to them and progressive groups they associate with offline. Some waste their time and energy. But overall it serves as a more authentic arena of public debate than the manufactured "public debate" that is broadcast 24/7/365 by America's corporate broadcast media and their rehashes of the contemptible print propaganda sheets to which our formerly respectable "newspapers of record" have long since devolved.
i agree, and the potential for development of sites like CD remains to be written.
i try to wade through the distractions and disruptions and continue to see this site as having tremendous potential for sharing effective strategies and seeding effective action in communities everywhere.
And i try to appreciate the tightrope that Craig Brown and the other people who work on this site walk, in attempting to nurture the possibilities while managing the disruptions and distractions...
Rahm Emanuel: A ballet dancer with something to prove:
"The profiles of Rahm Emanuel in the early days of the Clinton White House depict an almost comically vain spoiled brat. The Washington Post called him a “wiry-thin, foul-mouthed ballet dancer” [Rahm studied ballet dancing] whose “brash, punish-your-enemies style apparently reflected a White House in which certitude sometimes outpaced judgment.”
Mother Jones called him “arrogant, rash and power hungry” and described how he once “sent a rotting fish to a former coworker with whom he had parted ways.” Later in that article an unnamed colleague said, “Nobody says he’s dumb, but everyone says he’s an asshole.” He let the Mother Jones writer see his impatience, snapping rubber bands, tapping pencils, and shifting in his seat. He said he saw no point in joining a feeble journalistic expedition to find profound meaning in his life. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but if I want introspection, I’m gonna pay a hundred dollars an hour.”
The story went on to describe Emanuel indulging for a moment in some recreation—on the bike path in Washington’s Rock Creek Park, shirtless and in tight shorts, shouting “left!” as he zipped past “hapless yuppies and their children. . . . His furious pace doesn’t slow for tight corners or low overhangs. Most people find bike rides relaxing, but Emanuel rides as if he’s being chased by the Headless Horseman.”
...Following this analysis, Emanuel had to transform his public image, at least during the campaign. He could no longer play the role of the arrogant power broker who didn’t give a damn about the people he insulted.
He had to show he cared, not just in a grand public-policy sense but in a personal way. He had to demonstrate that he understood something about the people whose hands he was shaking. He could no longer divide the world into winners and losers—losers get to vote too. In short, he couldn’t strip to his bare chest and barrel down the bike path of life, screaming at pedestrians to get the hell out of his way. No, he had to be more like his old boss, Clinton, oozing charm and not disdain. He had to apply the lessons he’d learned from the master."
http://www1.chicagoreader.com/obama_reader/rahm_emanuel/
Some people take pride in being called a Liberal. Some people run from it.
Obama is a bald face liar. Last week he appeared before a crowd of friendly supporters and said, "trickle down economics has not trickled down." Now he wants to put TARP funds in the hands of smaller banks. That is still trickle down economics and he knows it. The only thing that makes sense is a good paying federal jobs program.
Obama treats people as if they are stupid and so far people have proven him right.
This is the season to just BOO!
Now it's called "Bend Over Economics".
Turn about is fair play. I prefer to practice Cut Their Willi's Off Economics. That's where you fake a bend over and then neuter them. When you stop borrowing money from banks and cease to purchase items from national corporations you do just that. Caring about and helping your neighbor and community completes the cycle. If people are still on the fence then they are the ones who are still bending over.
Personally speaking, I am not going to vote for anyone or anything this Nov 3, 2009. However, I am sending my officials this blank ballot with the phrase "HEALTHCARE FOR ALL" written across it. I may decide to mail this blank ballot to the White House directly. There is one referendum I would like to support (among the many candidates I know nothing about beyond their expensive and wasteful mailings), but I think the stakes at this point in American politics fall down squarely on health care as the most important issue facing our country. I kinda wish I had saved all the mailed and worthless flyers because I think I'd send that to the White House too along with the blank ballot saying "HEALTH CARE FOR ALL". But, in sum, we simply must mobilize our energies here and be willing to cut a few losses in order to send a clear message to leadership that we will not accept their charades on behalf of the health insurance industry and its lobbyists. In order to put the heat on all to lend their voices as well. In order to let them from the bottom up that their number's up. The American people have been writing, emailing and phoning their representatives about health care for years now. There are surveys aplenty on public support for single payer, on casualties and death, on costs and savings ... If we don't hit them in the smaller elections to let them know we mean business, they will simply continue with business as usual. Because they know, when Obama runs for reelection, all will turn up to send the wusses back to Washington because they are afraid of who else they will get. So we need to show them that we're not afraid. For myself, I do know that if a strong public option doesn't pass, I won't be voting for Obama again. That was compromise enough on single payer. I want them to know it.
Have no fear of accidentally contributing the election of Repuks. Repuks can't run the country. They will default very quickly. And this opens up huge opportunities for the people. Vote third party progressive with full awareness of potential consequences.
You know, in France, they vote blank as an accepted political act. It is called "Voting White." France, where they have achieved the number one health care system internationally, and we trail with our 37th and still falling, 45,000 dead per year, etc etc.
You have the right to use your ballot as you see fit, but it is not possible to get a party progressive in high office in the United States with them still remaining a party progressive. Wake up. It's the nature of the American political system.
Well that's where they always get you right? So they can move ahead with their plans on (not reforming) health care and not-to-worry, you'll scuttle back to the polls for the same old-same old. Which is, that Repuks ARE running the country. STILL. This coming election is pretty small on the face of things compared to when they'll be racking up the heat for the reelection and the Dark Forces that will come into office if you don't vote for them. So I send them my blank ballot with full awareness of the potential consequences, moreso than your independent vote come reelection time. IMO.
(Meaning, too, that come reelection time I may very well be voting independent. Or once again, sending back their ticket to nowhere. This time, with all election mailings saved and added on.)
The liberals and conservative Democrats USE the progressives quite a bit. So step back, send in the blank ballot, and let them work a little harder. I mean, what are they doing for you and yours these days? Hm? Just keep telling them to deliver on healthcare. Then we'll talk. It's kind of like parenting. You want your child to do their homework? Don't allow certain things until the job gets done. But the public has to be very ISSUES focused and mobilized. Not ever looking for "candidates" to save them. Candidates are products of a system. There's not much "free will" in the equation.
Hey, Health Care Industry...Is that Obamma in your pocket, or are you just happy to be screwing me again?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
'The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid'
Most important to me is that we encourage those who voted for this poser to vote for future posers as well. This requires continued elite control over the media, so, I'm throwing my support behind the appropriate lobby groups.
don't expect human authenticity from civilian population killer - who doesn't respect all lives, doesn't respect any
edweg
Infuriating behavior by the President. He could lift a finger, get on TV and turn the whole thing around.
When I was a child I would ask myself why God didn't lift a finger to save children in the Holocaust and in other situations. Let's just adapt the old riddle about God to one who is reputedly the most powerful human individual on earth.
Is Obama willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not very competent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing?
Then he is evidently irrelevant?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him Mr. President?
This is a country of corruption, violence, inequality and abandonment of the people. Nobody will come to the rescue. Anything that happens is up to us.
Joe
Clintonian Triangulation.
Pretending to be in as many different places at the same time so that you can "win" in this game which is played upon the backs of the poor and the middle class and wherein the "players" occasionally become too bored and/or intoxicated to cover their asses because of their belief in the inevitable end results.
I find myself wondering which is more cynical - Bushs' blatant indifference and viciousness or Obama's pretensions and viciousness - and then I realize I am splitting hair from the same head.
Thank you Ralph, Matt, Cynthia, Rosa and all of your supporters.
As one who actually believed in Obama, I keep trying to understand why President Obama is the total reverse of Candidate Obama.
I just learned that the German Supreme Court has outlawed electronic voting in Germany. Their decision came down many months ago, yet there has been nothing about it in the U.S. news.
http://dailycensored.com/2009/10/19/
a-censored-headline-and-why-it-matters/
Why the black-out on media coverage of this very important story? Because we have electronic voting, and so our votes are worthless. I think that the Democrats, Republicans, and those who control electronic voting in the U.S. have a deal, which would explain why Obama can sell out his base with total impunity, in order to advance the interests of the corporate bosses.
So Obama expects to win the next election, anyway, because the fix is already in.
petrkrop:
I don't see that Obama is the opposite of the Obama who ran for the job. He gave nice-sounding speeches but said nothing specific when he was Candidate Obama. Since then he's changed practically none of Bush's policies and refused to do anything about the massive law-breaking and constitution-wrecking of the Bush gang.
Still gives beautifully emollient speeches. Still says nothing. But now he does nothing, too.
On balance, the scale most always tilts to the side giving the biggest bribes.
no, bribe is powerful, but human soul is stronger
edweg
One thing is sure. Barack Obama, whether savior or sham, is the best chance we have for social justice. For at least the next three years, he will be our president, and we must do all that we can to make our voices heard. I wonder how many of you are activists? How many of you make a real effort to speak out in protest? I think that its fine to criticize Obama in an honest way, but trashing him is pointless. It only adds to the negative atmosphere that is poisoning this country. Being president, especially after eight years of the Bush catastrophe, must be the hardest job on earth. In fact, it may be impossible to fix the horrific damage that has been done; to the economy, to the military, to the environment, to the gov't itself. I'm beginning to think that this toxic society is now on its last legs, and the best thing we can do may be to just let it fall, as far and as fast as it can. (Bring on the Republicans!) Then we can create a new one, a society that really is of the people, by the people, and for the people. One where justice really is for all. But if the American people refuse to get involved, if all they want to do is sit back and complain, then that good dream will never be a reality.
Being president, especially after eight years of the Bush catastrophe, must be the hardest job on earth.
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On the contrary, it would have been the EASIEST job on Earth because Obama could have done practically anything --except what he in fact did, which was to be Bush 3-- and it would have been seen as manna from heaven.
So far, he hasn't done one damned thing for us. The only 'change we can believe in' is that his complexion is darker than Bush 2's.
But if the American people refuse to get involved, if all they want to do is sit back and complain, then that good dream will never be a reality.
===========
ultimately -- that is what it amounts to .
:"becoming involved" does not mean - just voting - for voting has shown that it has produced a sham.
becoming involved is actually having the courage to SPEAK to neighbors, to fellow workers, to CORRECT misinformation among groups when people discuss things , to CHALLENGE self-appointed "leaders" among groups of people and point out inaccuracies or misleading notions.
I find myself having to do that time and again - when someone at work says "oh -- these foreigners....blah blah"...
"oh these barbaric afghanis and terrorists"....
"oh these russians , these chinese...oh these illegal immigrants"....
and I - knowing i coudl BE at risk for responding - tell them off with no compromises...even when supervisors or the "CEO" is walking around fluffing up his chest .
and I tell them "sorry --but that's wrong...the reason there are illegal immigratns in the USA is because that is the result of decades of american CHAMBER OF COMMERCE instigated policies to cheapen the lives and resources of south americans -- so where do they RUN? they run NORTH to the country that took away THEIR self-determination so YOU end up complaining about the cheap labor or them taking away your jobs...if you want to blame anyone, BLAME YOUR OWN managers and CEOS and Chamber of Commerce RIGHT HERE , RIGHT NOW who walk around telling YOU you should be happy with slave wages".
or i tell them "sorry - but if you are blaming russians for causing problem in eastern europe - think first about what the USA is doing meddlng where it doesnt belong and then think about the corporations wanting to control OIL and GAS which the US doesn't OWN - and then see how your own sons and daughters are dying for THAT...so -- DON"T blame the russians or chinese blame your own fellow americans who are too ignorant to bother learning about the rest of the world"
and they shut up - probably eyeing ME for "report" to the FBI or some future system of "terrorist" collection agency .
but they SURELY - from looking at how they avert their eyes - KNOW I am telling them the truth.
that's the ONLY way to confront issues. HEAD ON. even at cost to one's self. because the cost to oneself is alread present REGARDLESS - and even more so - were one to stay SILENT and COMPLICIT.
this is an outrage to our presidents reputation. he will
reply as soon as he climbs out from under the insurance
cos. desk takes off his knee pads and gargles.
Mordechai:
I enjoy your comments, the words of an intellectually honest observer. I am sure the a little anger and rebuke is attached to the phrase
ganef and paskudnyak. An English translation would make my day.
Hank
All respect is lost on this President, I wonder how Michelle enjoys the ride.........
Hankamatic,I googled the Yiddish, ganef(A steal,a bargain for/from a thief)puskudnik,puskudnyak(ugly,revolting,evil,person,nasty fellow) peace
Thanks Johnny, I didn't have my thinking cap on to realize that i could have googled.
The net is a wonderful tool, answers are there if I tried harder......again thanks.
Hank
When this fantastic tool is a real threat to the establishment, changes will be made.
The fall of any nation is never a nice event. History has too many examples of the blood that must flow for any kind of change to take place.
We all know it, yet we are institutionalized to our little environment that we inhabit.Look around, what you see is cubicles of the mind.....isolation by design....
A window , THE NET, is open for all, yet no power is available to escape. The banding together of farmers with pitch forks against the Bankers of the depression era has passed and with it the guts of the people to collectively and effectively make a real change.....UNLESS...someone with a real set of BALLS stands up against the criminals that are the enemy within..........
Obama is a president with slim electoral experience and is somewhat naive, therefore he relies more than most on his aides and seems to be unable to take a strong stand even on the healthcare issue he supposedly cares so much about. So long as DLC (repug with a D disguise) champion Rahm Emmanuel is his chief advisor, we will get Emmanuel's choices. He is the one advising the trigger, because he is always the one advising the conservative choice, supposedly as the better political choice for the election or the next election.
He has a long history as DCCC chair of knocking out the progressive House candidate and putting in a more moderate candidate as a better choice against the Rs, but his candidates often don't win, precisely because the progressive was the more popular choice. (The best example of this is in the formerly Henry Hyde district in IL, where the progressive woman ran so well that Hyde retired. In the next election in 2006, Emmanuel knocked her out in favor of a "moderate" military vet woman, who lost the election.) Also he was adamantly opposed to Howard Dean's 50-state strategy, in order to maintain the mainly Wall Street contributions of the Clinton Administration. He was very, very ugly about it, but fortunately Dean won. Without Dean's strategy bringing in more Dems in 2006 and 2008, there would not be the Democratic majority we have today. No surprise that Dean was not kept on as chair of the Dem Party as a reward for success, now that Emmanuel is Chief of Staff. Dean is now working for a good health care bill, which Emmanuel opposes.
Obama thinks that Emmanuel is very smart, but he could lose the next election himself by relying on Emmanuel's advice.
I don't think Obama's naive, but he has either no interest in or no clue about the concerns of his base. He chose the people he wanted and they are all DLC-Democrats or Republicans and anyone who has paid even a casual attention to political events in the last 10 years knows exactly where Rahm Emanuel is on the Left-Right axis: he's at best a DINO and a nasty control freak to boot. He's a few other things, too, but they should have been the first two reasons to pass over him.
What I can't explain is how Obama came to think that what this country wanted after 8 years of GWB and right-wing Republican nuttery and failure was another Republican administration. I can only assume that he has paid absolutely no attention to what's been going on in the political life of this country for the whole of his adult life. It's as if he just woke up one day and decided he could run for president and win without knowing anything about either the job or the context.
Yeah. When I was five I thought I could be a fighter pilot . . .
I have to agree with Stone. I'm tired of seeing Obama let off the hook because of his supposed naivete. Maybe he was snoozing during the time he was in the Senate. Yes, I know it was a short time. Less than two years before he was off campaigning to be President. But he had to have learned something. And this relationship with Rahm I'm sure did not start the day he chose him to be his Chief of Staff, and the Dean snub was no accident.
My thoughts too. Let's not forget the Max Baucus-Jim Messina-Rahm Emanuel connection either, and insofar as how it helped Obama win western states like Montana and North Dakota. It's ever "pay back" time, the problem being that we have to strongly remind them that we have a lot more to collect on, and we have to do it in a way that makes it impossible for Obama (or them, for that matter) to do anything other than. We "need" him back in office for another term, but they need him there moreso, I think. We just have to let them know, that we know.
Stop letting Obama off the hook. He is a Harvard educated person and the buck stops with him. He is clearly attempting to sabotage health care reform and anyone who believes otherwise is in denial. OBAMA IS NOT A MAN OF THE PEOPLE
I agree, with the exception of your last statement. I would say he is a man of conflicting ties -- who would LIKE to be a man of the people, but cannot (and WILL NOT BE) unless the people make him accountable as such. The naivete is in the public. He must be "good" or "evil". The reality is that it's politics in America. The electorate put him there, but so did many other interests and big bucks. He needs an excuse to act. The public must provide that excuse.
ap ------ I strongly disagree, a majority of USAan's Have been shouting from the rooftops for six months for single payer. No Obama is just a MF to the right of Herr Reid.
All these "practical" fools in the Dem party think they're very smart, and when they get a majority in both houses they still find plenty of ways to plead impotence before their Republican masters. "We can't get the votes!" They don't WANT the votes, because the insurance industry wants paralysis and inertia, and the Dembots take their orders from those assholes. Emanuel (not "Emmanuel", btw) is there to insure solidarity among Blue Dogs and other wafflers, and to kneecap all progressive efforts to promote anything to the left of the DLC. Obama has already lost the next election, for, as you say, relying on Emanuel's reactionary bias on health care and every other issue.
"The Medicare prescription drug proposal passed in 2003 includes a "trigger," but the public provision has never been activated despite soaring drug costs. The industry can help craft the trigger language and can game its stats to prevent it from becoming reality."
This has to be the truest and most relevant thing said in this article. And it doesn't apply only to the "trigger" provision that might be attached to the bill. It applies as well to the provision (well-beloved of progressives) for the public option that would allegedly provide a means of containing medical costs by creating competition for the health insurance industry. Isn't it the essence of corporacratic control of our country that the industries supposedly being regulated by a piece of legislation will "craft" its terms and "game" the stats of their operations to subvert whatever regulation the public had hoped to gain? So let the (suddenly) progressive Senator Reid engage in his mighty fight to defeat the efforts to frustrate the public demand for real health care reform. The final result of their bill will be a well crafted piece of industry-friendly legislation that can easily be gamed by the health insurance industry.
Excellent point, exactly what i was thinking as i read the article.
If "we" "win" this "fight", we "win" a crappy sold-out corporate-friendly agglomeration that can be gamed forever by corporate gamers, at the expense of all us "non-corporate" persons - we human beings.
The inevitable result of starting the "fight" by refusing ever to consider the one best option, single-payer.
Inevitable result, unless there were an actual organized opposition among "we the people", despite whatever the shadow-puppets who play at being our leaders present to us, in the grand theatrical presentation that pretends to be our democratic process.
The question that gets asked every day here at CD - so how do "we the people" organize an actual opposition?
USans allow elites to craft public policy because we are told, and too many believe, that the society will fall apart if we craft it ourselves. This paranoia has been taught by Big Teacher.
Electronic medical records hold huge potential to streamline healthcare. With encryption, each individual and/or a guardian, controls the record. The patient gives the licensed healthcare provider read access to the record and write access for additions but nobody can erase any of it. The patient can opt to provide his/her record to the public research data pool. This data pool enables a large volume of research to be performed at very low cost. The use of these records in diagnosis and research will allow the healthcare providers to increase value, i.e. bang for the buck. USan industry generally provides poor value today due to the pressure to "grow the economy", i.e. mass slavery means more bucks churned, all the more for elites, all the more for the Pentagon.
There are plenty more healthcare policies that increase value. Preventive care is a big one. Nutrition is another. Others get more into the social sciences, empowerment, information access, reducing stress, enhancing general well-being. Of course getting rid of the profit motive is number one. All the answers are easy to see once you remove its blinding influence. As for these agents of profit in the US government, we can all help to get rid of them by voting third party next time.
Abandon ye all hope when you enter Obamaland!
Sadly, the insurance companies rule---along with the banks, Wall Street, the Pentagon...
Two possible titles for the picture accompanying this story--
"Shuck and Jive practice their act"
and
"Dialog of the clueless"
Poet
So, the teabaggers, dittoheads and Blue Dogs run the country. Obama has shown over and over he cares a thousand times more what they want than anyone else. When the milquetoasty Harry Reid is clearly more progressive than this imposter in the White House, we know beyond any doubt we have no representation. Obama is letting a tiny handful of Blue Dogs and Republicans absolutely determine this crucial issue. If that isn't the definition of political cowardice, I don't know what is. Unless, of course, he's in full agreement anyway with these reactionaries who want NO reform of this broken system, which is more likely the case. In that event, Obama is proving how courageous he is, by standing firm with rightwing reactionaries everywhere, on every issue of the day.
"So, the teabaggers, dittoheads and Blue Dogs run the country."
And they're the minority! That what is so terrifyingly sad about all of this. 57% of Americans and close to 90% of Democratic voters want either a single payer or a strong public option, yet Obama works against it. It is clear, his loyalty is to the insurance industry, not the people.
With Democrats in possession of the coveted triple majority, they choose to blow it. The operative word here is "CHOOSE." There is no excuse other than they have been paid by the insurance industry to keep health care from the American people.
If you're still a Democrat, I advise you to rush out to your nearest "abuse counselor." How many times will we allow ourselves to be treated like rats?
This corporate whore is pathetic. What sickens me even more is all the Obama worshippers who WILL vote for his ass next time, despite his doing literally NOTHING he promised, and EVERYTHING for his corporate masters at our expense.
Wake up, Obama supporters. You are PRECISELY as bad as the Bush supporters who stood by their man regardless of what he did. Rub the stars out of your eyes and start standing up for DEMOCRACY and PRINCIPLES.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis, "It Cant Happen Here", 1935
Good point about the Obomba worshipers. One problem is that America, despite it's pretensions of being "a democracy", is a closed political system. The closed nature of the US political system renders the whole "vote the rats out of office" threat impotent and moot. As such, there is only the perennial strategy of "lesser evilism" for oppositional politics in the US. The problem with lesser evilism is that the Democratic Party, as the Obomba administration clearly shows, answers to much the same ruling class elements as does the Republican party.
The fact of the matter is that progressives and bona fide leftists (and I don't count "liberals" as part of the left) have *no* voice in American politics. If you have ever tried to get a third party candidate on the ballot or even qualified as a write in candidate, you know that the election laws are stacked against such efforts. In terms of national political discourse, when has anyone in America ever seen Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky or other important left intellectuals appear on the mainstream media? Never, and you never will, because their views are outside of the views allowed by the US political system.
We live in a corporate dictatorship. Get used to it, and get used to the fact that real chage, if you are up for it, entails more than voting for the slickly packaged corporate candidate of "Hope and Change" every four years.
Exactly White Rose. Most of us here I imagine are participating in an informal corporate boycott. We are purchasing locally when possible. Corporations shudder at this action because the world is in recession and there is nowhere to sell their goods. Now is the time to turn up the heat on corporations. End their negative impact by breaking them financially.
The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage.
While there is much to be outraged about, there is no confusion. Obama is a hopelessly corrupt Clinton/DLC/corporate/money mad yuppie pirate. Anyone out there still making excuses for this ganef, this paskudnyak . . . let it all go once and for all. The emperor has no clothes . . . no conscience, no scruples. . . no nothing.
But he wears his no clothes with such graceful style.
Joe
*snork* And even now does it so well that many still doubt the evidence of their very eyes.
Sovershennaya pravda, ehto.
So the worser is the enemy of the worst?
Manchurian Candidate. If you look closely you can see the holes the insurance industry drilled into his head for the implant.
What is the big problem? Tell Obama if he can't help the senate onthe option, then they will not help him rip the tax payers off to support the repugs war with money or troops. If he is going to act like a republican then let him run on the repug ticket next term. There is doubt he can make it on the democrats again.
Obama delivers for the 1% at the expense of the 99% once again.
Hmmm
So not only is Obama a liar he is now a coward. Once again we have a president striving not to do what is right for the majority, not to do what he promised, not to take the moral high ground, no we have a president that wants more than anything to be seen as a "winner". His vanity takes preference to basic health care for millions of women and children. I do believe that if the president and his staff along with congress had to depend on say, Walmart health insurance doled out to the rank and file this issue would never even been subject to debate. The public option would have passed within weeks of its introduction. For without the public option there is no real competition. Without public competition there is no way to stop the run away price increases. (most of which now goes directly to administrative expenses) Most countries with public healthcare spend about 5% on administrative expenses. In the US over 30% goes to "admin" and this figure is rising. In the US "admin expenses" are a code word for outrageous corporate salaries and bonuses. Without the public option this "reform" is merely a rubber stamp to rip off the consumer for decades to come.
Don't forget that he got, what, $18,000,000 from the "industry" in bribes...er, contributions.
We'll never "Know' how sold out he is, either, unless the people who so passionately campaigned for him, are willing to passionately campaign for the issues. He is correct, essentially, in his political philosophy. He can do anything IF the American people are behind him. A lot of people think they put him there and now it's all supposed to happen. That's not the way it works. That's just the beginning. Or the end, of course.
The American People were behind him last November and he has betrayed them. Trying to lay the blame for the President's failure of courage on the people who elected Obama is scurrilous and you should be ashamed of yourself.
The voters put Obama in office and he's supposed to live up to his campaign. That IS the way it works.
Obama is a pussy.
q