Perhaps the Repugs will have gone too far and they'll alienate more people than now support them.
There's a need to publicize this wanton fit of pique so voters know who the supporters of the Tea Party on Capitol Hill really are. This, along with the death threats and the personal attacks, need to stay front and centre until November.
It's not going to get any better and the repugs and the brownshirts aren't going to be acting any "nicer", so it's important to keep tabs and to keep everything nasty in the foreground.

This is the "democracy" that the Republican Institute is promoting for Honduras, Cuba, Iraq.....?

Vote Repug if you hate this country, they will finish the wrecking job they used for eight years.

People will be repulsed only if the actions of these idiots are publicized. If enough veterans make sure that the public knows what is going on, it may do some good - not to stop these childish actions, but to get rid of a few of them in the next election. But that can only work if the names of these idiots are known.

Can someone explain to me why the identity of this domestic terrorist is kept secret? Who all is complicit in this anyway?

This probably has to do with their new attack on doing anything, they are insisting that they have to quit at 2:00 p.m. every day. They show up at 10:00, have lunch at noon, and now they are insisting on leaving at 2:00. Where the hell do *I* go for a job that pays nearly a quarter million a year and I only have to work for 3 hours a day, and only about 9 months of the year? And I get free health care and a pension for life just for 3 hours a day? Damn, that is one hell of a deal.

Republicans have stopped anything from happening, and those in the senate are the worst. There are 219 bills that have been passed by the house that are just sitting there in the senate, NO action being taken at all on them. But then, if you are only working 3 hours a day, it's awfully difficult to get anything done at all, isn't it?

If this is how well the senate works for the country, then I say we disband the damed thing. It's not doing anything, they refuse to work, and they do nothing but stand in the way of things the country desperately needs. The senate is hopelessly broke, I say we just scrap the damned thing. It's time that millionaires have to work for their money and benefits just like everyone else.

Correction to your opening sentence - you could scrap the phrase "vote to provide healthcare to Americans" and just substitute the word "election".

I find it hard to believe that this Senator can remain anonymous, this is nation news.

Once again we see how the wheels of power are greased in the senate. Those wise founding fathers, praised by every color in the spectrum, realized they needed stop-gaps to keep us chumps from ever gaining real equality. If the majority someday woke up and realized they were being fleeced, there had to be a mechanism for a few brave capitalists to stop them. The electoral college was cooked up for the same reason. I mean, what could be simpler than counting the votes and declaring a winner? Oops, forgot about Florida. Nevermind.

Just the very make-up of the body is a joke. How can two senators from Alaska, the Dakotas and other tiny states wield the same power as any of the larger ones? What happened to one person, one vote? I've heard it explained as protection for agricultural states but that's bs. The red state strategy is focused on the senate for a very good reason.

And then this weird notion of 60 vote majority. Last I calculated, 51 constituted a majority. It's just another way to stall the process. Toss in other arcane rules of the senate and any hope for a true democracy is next to impossible. It preserves the status quo which is just fine with the ruling class.

I forgot to mention something for those who think the system is so corrupt it doesn't matter anyway.

For a few moments I want you to suspend any sense of reality and imagine that every democrat in both houses was a member of the Green Party and each has voted for single payer. Couldn't you just picture someone like Inhofe (and with all due respect to Bachmann, he is the dumbest, sleaziest creature ever to crawl the halls of congress) day after day standing at the podium during his filibuster, defending the rights of his fellow citizens until eventually being wheeled in on a gurney. Between his last dying coughs, he utters, "They may take away our lives but they'll never take away our fascism!"

Disturbing to consider a handful of politicians can grind an entire nation to a halt.

-"I don't get it. I don't get what the purpose of saying no is"

I'm a little confused. You want a party that is progressive. You don't like it that the Dems pretend to be progressive, and then cave. But you "don't get" why the Republicans fight for their causes?

The Republicans are the "supposed" opposition party to the government. It is their job to make the government look bad. It is their job to show the country that the government is being run defficiently, and that they, the Republicans should be in charge. It is not their job to hold Obama's hand. It is not their job to be happy as they are in the minority.

By most accounts, they are succeeding. They may gain control of one or both houses next election. Is that really hard to understand? That is how political parties are supposed to function, no?

What is wrong with your system is not the parties supporting corporations and the rich. What is wrong is the leftist parties, the labour parties, the Greens. What the heck are they doing? They have a natural constituency that vastly outnumbers the filthy rich. They have internet tools and intelectual resources unheard of in years gone by. But instead of mobilizing, you are complaining here that the Republicans are spoiled brats. Oooooh, I'm sure they care what you think,....wait, do you have a million dollars? No? Then, no, they don't care.

You need to get on the ball. organize the progressive parties. take out the Democrats, your natural competition for left leaning voters. The results of this latest health insurance "reform" should help. If you sign up everyone who goes broke due to medical bills between now and the next presidential election, you will be swamped with new members.

I admire and root for Col. Wright, but in the wake of the No Insurer Left Behind debacle it seems more important than ever to get past the illusion of partisanship manufactured by the permanent duopoly in power.

By coincidence, this morning Robert Johnson was a guest on "Democracy Now" (discussing Dodd's bogus "sweeping" financial reform bill, another pig in a poke to match the health insurance corporation bailout). Johnson, former economist at the Senate Banking and Senate Budget Committee, is very much a respectable, buttoned-down Establishment wonk.

Amy Goodman raised the issue of Johnson's abortive testimony before the House Financial Services Committee last October; she actually began with a dry witticism: "Rob Johnson, I almost missed your testimony in October, because I blinked."

Long story short: Democrat Melissa Bean, a very bankster-friendly rep chairing the committee, cut Johnson off at the knees because his testimony was critical of the status quo, i.e. that the banksters are able to make out like bandits in the absence of responsible government oversight and regulation.

This is in no way to excuse or condone Republican thugs or "spoiled brats"-- but, as with the recent discussion of Tea Partiers and other wingnut rowdiness and violence, the partisan framework obscures and distorts the real conflicts.

The anonymous GOP senator was the "spoiled brat" today; Bean was the "spoiled brat" last October.

It's all part of the duopoly's Great Good Cop / Bad Cop Dance. I think this is as much an instinctive, emergent phenomenon as anything; I'm not implying that each "camp" met in a smoke-filled back room long ago to work out this routine.

Like method actors, each "cop" internalizes the big picture, and sincerely and naturally acts it out; they're "lost" in their characters, and confer a verisimilitude to the production conducive to the willing suspension of disbelief.

Rotten and nasty though they may be, the moral of this story is not that Those Rotten, Nasty Republicans Are at It Again.

Does anyone care about homeless veterans; those who could not take long lunch breaks in the mud of some far away jungle or the burning sands of a place whose name they cannot pronounce? The millionaires who run this country avoid people who are dirty and smell...help them..let them help themselves they say, after all it's their fault they didn't die for their country. Or did they?
Old veterans of all nationalities cry and the young do not ask why because those who never served take long lunch breaks in thick carpeted restaurants where you can find relative...

Peace

3/25/10
Mad over health care, North Carolina's Burr scuttles hearing
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/24/1545466/mad-over-health-care-north-carolinas.html

WASHINGTON — With a few simple words — "I would have to object" — Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina derailed a Senate Armed Services hearing today in which generals had traveled from Korea and Hawaii to testify about the Pentagon's needs for the next year.

Burr, joining his GOP colleagues' outrage at the new health reform law, used an obscure Senate rule to prevent the Armed Services committee from meeting this afternoon – even though he said he personally wanted the hearing to occur..... (continued)

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