Sharon: aren’t you getting tired of having to settle for the lesser of two evils. And Obummer is much worse b/c he “promised” to be something different. We have all been suckeerd.

We knew what we were gonna get with a Republican but Obama is worse in many ways. He has this veneer of slickness where he thinks he can dance among the raindrops and not get wet. Just make a speech while your technocrats like Rahm and the Three Blind Mice: Summers, Geithner and Rubin deliver to Obama’s corporate paymasters

Could you have imagined the Democratic apoplexy if Bush had put forward a health reform bill that had mandates and penalties with no cost controls while still ratifying the Insurance cartels anti trust status? The Dems would have cried bloody murder

JD…..You and I do have some common ground
      after all !!!!

canyon critter

“capitalism may be the unequal distribution of wealth but socialism is the equal distribution of misery.”

Wow! This is such clever word play. I’m really impressed. It’s short, to the point, and it does not require any facts. This kind of posting is minimalist, and I really appreciate minimalism. Can I play too?

How about this?

Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth but socialism is the equal distribution.

I think I’ve got you beat. Mine has 3 fewer words than yours, it’s more definitive, and it eliminates the misery.

If the Supreme Court declares the mandates unconstitutional, then perhaps we
can enact Medicare for all or a single payer substitute that many of us preferred
from the start.

Mr Robinson

Do you see the MANDATES of buying health care
insurance from private companies
passing through the Supreme Court?

I believe they will be stricken as unconstitutional

Then are we to be left in worse or better shape
after they are seen as unconstitutional.??????????

Go ahead. Pass this shitty bill with punitive penalties for the citizens who can’t afford the premiums; deliver 30 million more people into the pockets of the insurance cartel with no strings attached.

Then watch the House Democrats get slaughtered in November for a bill they, for the most part, hated from day one: no public option; mandates and penalties; no caps and I’m sure the toothless price commission will function about as well as the SEC did when the banks committed highway robbery.

Obummer is more comfortable with his Republican buddies; none of which will vote for anything he puts forward and the result will be civil war in the Democratic party. Idiots. But I’m sure Obummer will gladly take all the Big Pharma, Insurance and hospitals ca$h that he’s gonna need to be re-elected. What a bunch of whores

I recommend Glenn Greenwald’s recent post on salon.com on the game the Democrats play.

Quit printing spin from this corporate hack, like this:

“the Democratic leaders in Congress have only one rational course of action: pass the thing, and quickly”

Those are the orders from the Dems corporate sponsors, pass on Robinson. If he wasn’t a hack, he would not be allowed on TV.

The problem is that America’s fragmented for profit health care system costs twice as much as other modern industrial nations, and rates below average. We need single payer or government run, like they have. Just expand Medicare and Medicaid for now. Don’t listen to Robinson’s order that you must make the problem worse, for perceived political gain.

EUGENE

for your next exercise…
you need to put on a pair of combat boots
go imbed yourself in Afgan with the troops
write some fluffy stories about how much
the U.S. is loved over there
and why the troops are so committed to freedom
and democracy

I mean not even in local elections…..
or state elections
write independent on EVERYTHING…..

P.S. If Mr. Colin Powell did utter that we
    are the worlds richest nation, it could
    explain why our military is having so much
    trouble defeating a nation we softened up
    by starving them for a decade.
Last I checked we are still the worlds largest
debtor nation.

The great “individual”-ization machine is shaking itself to-pieces, in the face of the plain biological fact that no Human Being is now (or ever was or will be) able to “take care of his/her self.”  There is really no such thing as institutionalized “healthcare,” anyhow….but only the clever crunching-of-numbers ever more meaningless to the actual lives of actual people, while those actual people fall in ever greater numbers through ever-widening ‘holes’ in an always-illusory-anyway “safety net.” 

Like all pyramid schemes, those who got in early on this one made-out like the bandits they are.  Now the true costs are showing-up, and the ‘triage’ mongers are touting the necessity of letting the marginally- or non-‘productive’ fend for their eCONomically worthless selfs in the dog-eat-dog CONditions so beloved of those who’ve never been compelled to exist in them.

Those who find their way out of the suffocating shroud of their ersatz “individual”-ity, to get together where they actually live-and-breathe everyday and start taking care of each other (and our Mother Earth), have at least a chance (in the midst of this artificial hell) of living to tell the tale of these “interesting times” to their GrandChildren.  Those who can’t will go on crying for the CONtinued CONtrivance and provision of institutional crutches to support their illusion of ‘self’-sufficiency….until the zero-sum game ends in its inevitable whole-lot-o’-NOTHIN’.

Put your official and CONtract overseers out of ALL our misery, tame Sisters and Brothers.  Render them ‘redundant’ by abandoning the “civilization” CONtraption and getting all together free and wild back into The Tiyoshpaye Way.

That’s the real Medicine for what ails you.

Hokahey!

capitalism may be the unequal distribution of wealth but socialism is the equal distribution of misery.

Ever notice how its the ‘progressives’ in the Democratic party that are always told that they have to ‘hold their noses’ and accept a bad bill.

The Democrats never go to the Blue Dog conservatives and say “Hey, the party is about to revolt.  You guys have to agree to the more liberal proposal.”

The Democratic party is definitely a one-way street to the right.  Get off that road, because it always goes in the wrong direction.

If you read this article from the WaPo’s Democratic propaganda writer, you see what’s really important to the Democrats.

Its all about politics. Which means its all about power and who has it.

Notice that any thought of what actually improves the health care of the citizens is gone from the discussion.

They simply don’t care about that.

Get that message and stop voting any of these corporate-bought politicians from either party to office.

Its all a con.

The Democrats lie in campaigns pretending to help us with health insurance problems.  They do this while taking millions in contributions from the very corporations that are the problem.

Then of course, they hold a secret meeting in the White House (identical really to Cheney and the oil companies) where these big contributors get to define the health care plan that gets them the greatest profit in return for their investment in politicians.

True single payer isn’t allowed even to be mentioned, and any who try in the rigged hearings are arrested and led away in handcuffs. They didn’t make big contributions to the politicians, obviously.

A fake ‘public option’ is promoted as a replacement for the real alternative of single-payer.  Maybe at first it might have been decent.  But then its slowly whittled down and chopped apart until it becomes just a useless slogan that people argue about.

Then of course, since the big corporations need this bill to guarantee their profits and get their mandated customer laws and gifts of tax dollars, the Democrats then say its politically imperative that they pass this bill (2010 contributions probably hang on it), and so now any semblance of the public option is taken away.

Meanwhile, the big health corps get everything they want.

Its a long con.  Its a game.  You are the victim.  This was always going to be the outcome, and everything before was a lie and a con. You should be angry.

Please stop voting Democrat.  Don’t vote Republican either.  But please stop voting Democrat.

“House Democrats might not have dug in their heels over the need for a public option if they had known that, in the end, Obama wouldn’t call for one.”

That one sentence tells you how awful the Democrats are.  They simply don’t care about the people.  From the Democrat mind-set, the public option isn’t something that helps people get health care. Instead, its a political position that’s subject to later reversal.  If the President signals he doesn’t want a public option, the of course the Democrats in Congress all decide they don’t want one either.  Such strength of conviction is staggering.

More MSM swill. The nub of Robinson’s screed is that passing this crappy
corporate give-a-way “gives incumbents a much better story to tell when they
face the voters this fall.” Except that, like in Massachusetts, everybody will
recognize, and no one wants, a “story”. We want (polls tell us unequivocally) a
public option, if not single payer. If I wanted Belt-way nonsense like this I’d go to
Huffington Post.

I agree with Colon Powell’s observation that it is disgraceful that we have 31
million people or more uninsured. We are the wealthiest nation on the world and
the only one of the developed nations that does not acknowledge that access to
reasonable health care is a societal moral right.
If the Democrats refuse to act constructively on this fundamental moral issue, they
deserve to be defeated.
It is about more than health care. Jim Demint and the Republicans will have scored
a major political victory that will further weaken the Democratic party and the
administration thus impeding their efforts on all of the critical challenges our
nation faces.

Even in majority power, the Democrats are still the “loyal minority”.
Obama is promoting an essentially Republican plan, similar to McCain’s proposal. The Republicans oppose Obama on principal and will continue to press for more regressive policies. Obama always starts by giving them what they want and seeks “bipartisan” consensus in further efforts to water it down. In this way Obama can use them as cover in his intent to curry favor for corporate dictates. And this is why he operates behind the scene.
  The policy differences between the parties should not be arbitrary. The voters will see right through Obama’s proposed establishment of federal officials to oversee Insurance companies when they can’t presently restrain energy utilities. Robinson seems to suggest that if Obama was truly operating with a Republican mindset from the onset, the Democrats should back him regardless just to claim “reform” when, like Clinton’s efforts, it is an obvious disaster.

  I am so sick of these inside-the-beltway-know-nothings.

Mandates?? The Dems are so out of touch it’s breathtaking. The Repugs know how out of touch they are and they exploit it. The Repugs also know how bad this looks to Mandate coverage and will milk it for all it’s worth.

What’s sickening is that the Dems scoff at the notion that it’s the principle of it. On Principle oppose Mandates. But then they’d have to have some principles.

Stand for Something or You’ll Fall for Anything.
(MLK Jr)

When it comes to sharing the pie more equally, the two wings of one goose become very dysfunctional.
Congresspeople then, seems to me, fret only ab being re-elected and whether they’ll receive donations for their campaign. tnx

Where do the Feds get the authority to mandate citizens to purchase insurance from a for profit company?

Why have the Feds never mandated the purchase of a product or service from a for profit company before?

Why isn’t anyone asking these questions?

Can homelessness be cured by mandating the purchase of a house? Can hunger be cured by mandating the purchase of food?

If Democrats mandate the purchase of overpriced, private, health insurance, they will meet the same fate as in the recent Massachusetts election.