But Mr. Stranahan, candidate Obama was, in the primaries, in favor of excluding candidates Kucinich and Gravel from the candidate debates. Wasn't this what we might call "a clue?"

Yes, kudos to Kucinich for a principled stand, but shame on the reflexive supporters of a party who react with surprise and indignation when the same old betrayals occur in the same old way for the umpteenth time. The big secret here is that reflexive support enables exactly that surprise and indignation that will happen again.

And again.

On July 30th of this year, 57 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said this about health care reform:

"Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates -not negotiated rates -is unacceptable. It would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal of"keeping insurance companies honest," and their rates down."

Incredibly, in a display of mass cowardice before corporate power, only two of the 57 kept their commitment, Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa.

The other 55, the cowardly, lying 55, broke their word to the American progressive citizenry.

My only hope for them is when the final bill comes back from conference committee, surely in even less-progressive condition, that they will re-examine their consciences and vote no. But based on this betrayal of their written commitment of July 30, I have no hope that they will. They have no spines. No courage. No commitment to anything they say. They caved. They are worse than the conservatives who at least have the courage of their corporate convictions.

Here are the 55 traitor:

Lynn Woolsey

Raul Grijalva

Carolyn Kilpatrick

Jerry Nadler

Phil Hare

Lucille Roybal-Allard

Keith Ellison

Earl Blumenauer

Mel Watts

Donna Edwards

John Olver

Dennis Kucinich x
Laura Richardson

Maxine Waters

John Conyers

Judy Chu

Maurice Hinchey

Hank Johnson

Diane Watson

Jackie Speier

Bill Pascrell

Lloyd Doggett

Marcy Kaptur

Mazie Hirono
Bob Filner

Linda Sanchez

Marcia Fudge

Barbara Lee

Andre Carson

Sheila Jackson Lee

Michael Honda

Jim McDermott

William Lacy Clay

Jim McGovern

Yvette Clarke

Chellie Pingree

Jesse Jackson, Jr.

Elijah Cummings

Bennie Thompson

Gwen Moore

Donald Payne

Fortney "Pete" Stark

Ed Towns

Corrine Brown

Alcee Hastings

Nydia Valezquez

Luis Gutierrez

Grace Napolitano

Albio Sires

John Tierney

Mike Capuano

Chaka Fattah

Jose Serrano

Sam Farr

Bill Delahunt

Eddie Bernice Johnson

I personally will never again trust what these individuals say, only what they do. They have violated the trust of progressives with their cowardly caving to corporate power. They are liars all.

Dear Barack Hussein Obama and most of the United States Congress: DRINK SEAWATER!

The People are going to be offered a Shit taco called Reform at the end of the day. They won't even be given the option to take it ot leave though. Instead, the clueless political tone deaf Dinocrats are going to essentially stick a gun in all of our faces with their assine Forced mandate. YWe are all going to be forced to either BUY the lousy monopoly products offered to us or else pay IRS imposed fines. The Dems. IMO are committing political hari kari with this stupid ill thought out bill and it's only going to get far worse in the Senate. In the Senate my guess is the weak PO will be striped out and replaces with some kind of trigger to make Olympia Snowe (R) maine happy so the Dems. can past the 39 Gopers and Liberswine's votes to filibueter the bill. In the end of this whole process will be something so watered down and so Pro-Big Health mafia that it won't even beable to call itself Reform. It will be aan almost total sell-out of the people who voted for Obama and the Dems. It's nothing more even now then a tax payer financed give away to the same thieving Big Corps. already sucking us all dry.

Another Liberal "lite" from the Huffington Post crowd duped by the fraud in the White House. And Michael Moore is still hoping that Obama will somehow magically become a progressive???

Never was going to happen, never will happen.......

Mr. Stranahan, couldn't you see this coming? Obama continually supported the War in Afghanistan "before" the election, and what about his about face on FISA........

Did you ever see Obama give a speech on the poor?

His silence during the massacre in Gaza?

Were these the actions of a Progressive?

It's over for this Presidency and the sad reality is that this country will veer EVEN FURTHER to the RIGHT as a result of this charade......

This is why I wrote Dennis Kucinich in for Prez in 2008 and shall do so again in 2012

Big Whoop----

Did it matter? Really now.

The Democratic Party have become WORTHLESS!!!!

Dennis Kucinich has respect for the Constitution and providing simple legislation such as HR 676 to solve the insurance crisis of health care while at the same time telling government to get out of people's health affairs but instead pay them the dues that they paid government in taxes in full faith. Obama has never promised anything on health care reform other than allowing the meddlesome Congress to take bribes from insurance and drug giants before making judgments. Some people hate libertarians but this libertarian follows the principled platform of NO CORPORATE WELFARE ! Until government can stop meddling for the corporate interests, it must be abolished and rebuilt.

The author wrote:

"I voted for the Barack Obama who opposed the individual mandate, who said the negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and who campaigned against backroom deals with PhARMA."

That Obama was a fake. You and anyone who supports this charlatan has been royally duped. A little research and less wishful thinking would have prevented this.

Are you going to continue to be duped, or just keep on wishing? Obama is a fake through and through, including his not being constitutionally qualified to even BE president. Barry isn't a natural born citizen, hence his crack team of lawyers hiding his birth certificate and school papers.

It would be simple - but not easy - to get this stooge out of office. Demand that he prove his natural born citizenship. He cannot! Why? His father was a British citizen. The corporate powers that be, though, wanted this particular puppet in the highest office in the world. Why? I think the answer is obvious. If not, read your article again.

Bring America Back !!!!

***We Progs really knew Team Obama would cave-in to Big AMA and Big MED, just as they did to all their other campaign promises., which turned out to be outright lies !! INstead of reforming and changing the culture of corruption in DC, they have become part and parcel of it.

Dennis Kucinich for President !! Dump Team Obama.

***When Obama threw Single Payer Healthcare under his Bus,
he pitched 45 million uninsured Americans under it too !
Let's hope every one of them are registered voters.

More and more I have come to admire Dennis Kucinich for his courage, honesty and moral backbone.

Here is a lucid, thorough explanation of the reasons that this bill SUCKS:

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/11/05/health-care-reform-2009-no-bill-is-better-than-a-bad-bill/

Obama is a fraud. The insurance industry has no place in health care. Since 1970 200% increase in number of physicians, 3000% increase in administrators. How can the US have health care when we have no tax base? Support Audit the Fed HR 1207 without the Watt amendment to gut HR 1207's provisions to audit Central Bank transactions and domestic monetary policy. Goldman Sachs bet on mortgage values tanking even as they sold $1.5 quadrillion of derivative filth backed by those very same mortgages. Aerospace moving to Mexico in 2010, Seattle to be the next Detroit. Next fraud to come: The Carbon bubble. Gore is the first carbon billionaire, whose carbon credit (indulgences) scheme was cooked up by Enron's Ken Lay (now residing in Paraguay, most likely). Check out 31,000 real scientists who deny the conclusiveness of Gore's assertions, including that there is consensus on carbon dioxide being the main driver of climate change (as opposed to solar cycles). The so-called consensus is among the 2000 or so UN affiliated scientists who are mostly nonpracticing bureaucrats. http://www.oism.org/pproject/. The planet is cooling now, and Gore's next video is about carbon-control being more a religion/cult than an activity based on solid science. All of the above is about centralized / govt control that WILL lead to increased authoritarianism, limitations on health options, and even limitations on movement (bad carbon footprint). Who killed the electric car? The very same people pushing this crap. Who started the American Cancer Institute? The Rockefeller foundation because they owned the chemo patents. Illness and death are more profitable and enjoyable for the higher ups.

Peace

You need to include Erik Massa of New York's 29th district alongside Kucinich. And the retired Naval Commander from Corning did not hem and haw over it until the last minute, either.

Would Dennis Kucinich introduce a bill to get money out of politics and get to the heart of the matter, if only to bring this most important issue to the forefront?

"In response to the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) to limit contributions to candidates for federal office. FECA was immediately challenged as an infringement on first amendment rights; the plaintiffs argued that "limiting the use of money for political purposes constitute[d] a restriction on communication violative of the First Amendment, since virtually all meaningful political communications in the modern setting involve the expenditure of money."

In BUCKLEY V. VALEO, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the FECA law, thus saying in effect that pumping private money into elections is a form of free speech. This decision has allowed the wealthy to positively shout in elections, drowning out the voices of the majority of Americans --a situation clearly not consistent with our one-person-one-vote democracy."

http://www.ejnet.org/rachel/rehw427.htm

This is an issue we could all get behind and put the con Supremes on the spot.

Voting with conservatives can't possibly be a good strategy.

Would DK state that con Dems taking over the Party is the real problem and that they should be voted out?

So long as the corporate oligarchs and their political frontmen/puppets run the show, the US will never have any substantive change or progress toward a more humane society. The oligarchs have only two all consuming major agendas: continuing the finance capital schemes of Wall Street with bankster/gangsters in strategic positions ala Summers and Geithner, and the attempt at global military domination as some sort of Pax Americana which involves endless wars further impoverishing the general population and enriching the military industrial congressional complex. Until this system collapses of its own internal corruptions--too bad the near miss of 2008 didn't do the job--or is replaced by a people's revolution, there will be no domestic policies to serve and uplift the people via national universal healthcare, or a rational rail mass transit system, or the funding of needed upkeep and repairs to basic infrastructure, or action on global warming/climate change, or other actions on behalf of the deteriorating environment.
Amid sustained applause for the announcement of the House action in passing the fraudulent healthcare bill, a few of sat on our hands at the local UU church this morning. Until activists on many issues from healthcare to the environment, from education reform to infrastructure rebuilding, from transit activists to food/nutrition educators---only when all these people and the groups they work in come to see the corporate capitalist system as at the heart of every major problem facing us, and that the empire of Pax Americana is spiritually, financially, politically, environmentally destroying everything will we have what must change in focus.. Nothing substantive will happen through expending vast quantities of energy thinking that the current system will grant the changes we need. They are doing fine with the system they have created and rule over. To this point they will perform some bits of political theater for the distracted public and do the real stuff behind closed doors and then present us with inaction ala climate change or a healthcare plan benefiting the drug/insurance/hospital chain criminals, not the people. But over and over, liberals and Democrats resist linking their issues to capitalism and empire and hang on to the hope that somewhere, somehow, sometime they can wheedle the powers that be to grant just a bit of what they want, always avoiding facing the reality that the capitalist empire system is the problem, not the solution.

Well done Mr. Kucinich and the 38 others who voted no. Those need to stay. All the rest need to go in 2010.

Kucinich statement sez: "Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies."

***
Ayuh.
Now in possession of all of your dollars, the Wealth Care Industry will use the conference committee 'negotiations' to extract the dimes, nickels and pennies. And stamp out the few stray embers of competition that have not already been doused.

If you think the current system is bad ...

I have no way of proving this, but I would bet the house that if the House had been evenly split and Kucinich's vote was the tie-breaker, he would have closed ranks with the Democratic Party hacks for whom he urges everyone to vote during every election cycle.

His vote was not needed, so he could afford to indulge in some "principled" speechifying.

Granted, this is a mere hypothesis, but there is ample evidence for it in his inexorable calls for people to vote the straight Democratic line, even though he knows those Democrats will trample everything he claims to stand for.

If he places party loyalty above political principle during EVERY election cycle, he would probably do so in a crunch like this.

But his vote was not critical--so he can continue to play the role of the Democratic Party's "useful progressive idiot."

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to a simple extension of Medicare for all. We were hijacked by the greedy cleptocracy. Good old honest Dennis, I'm glad I sent money for hie re-election.

Eric Massa from NY was at least one more that voted no for the right reason

The author did not pay attention to the fact that Obama voiced his opposition to single payer and that his "public option" support was for Big Insurance. I'm glad that the author realizes that this "public option" is completely flawed and that the Republicans will attack it anyway. How can Dennis Kucinich be helped when people such as this author didn't support Dennis Kucinich back in the primaries where it counted? And this author almost made my blood boil when he barely mentioned Ralph Nader who he did not support in the general election either. Thanks for recognizing Kucinich's bravery but you allowed him to be persecuted and marginalized all along like this and now we are stuck with a crappy Congress and White House that weilds the power to sludge us !

I often read comments such as this one published here: "How can Dennis Kucinich be helped when people such as this author didn't support Dennis Kucinich back in the primaries where it counted?"

I can tell you as one who was for a period involved in his campaign, it was horribly disorganizeed and chaotic. One could not look at it closely and honestly say he was ever interested in being a serious candidate. He enjoys the role of idealogical gadfly, but had neither stomach nor talent for mounting a real campaign. I decided reluctantly it was not an honest effort.