Feeling stabby-stabby over the almost erstwhile public option

What is it with [progressive] Democrats?  Can they not step up for their constituents–who, by the way, are composed of more than the 55 to 60-year old population–or are they permanently cowed?  Our country is bleeding from the eyes over health care, yet Dems dither around as if most of us can afford to have  sub par or zero  insurance coverage.

Yes,  I said “dither. ”  So shoot me.

I would really like to know why Lieberman still has a chairmanship, why no one is sitting on the Blue Dogs until they howl for mercy.  Because someone should.   You know, a leader.  If we have any leaders to speak of anymore.

I feel stabby-stabby that our elected officials are such wusses.

Obama wussed out on health care such that he can’t be seen or heard in leaks ever saying he’d ram it through Congress come hell or high water even though Americans voted him into office for just that.  He would rather be all “bipartisan”  (which is a joke when the hard right Repubs remain so rabid) and take presidential  credit for a vote that could be construed as remotely positive than do what’s best for the citizens of this country.

Pelosi has muchos cojones when it comes down to it, but I don’t think she’s got a majority as Reid does.  Nope.  Pelosi would have to scrounge 32 votes for a majority.  Reid not so much.

Reid totally wusses at almost every opportunity. It makes me sick.

I saw Howard Dean on CBS earlier this morning and he seemed resigned to the slight expansion. Sure, Rockefeller’s all happy because he’s wanted to include 55+ year olds in Medicare for a racoon’s lifetime, but that bit of reform excludes  so many people it’s tragic.

I wonder how other progressive Dems feel about their elected representatives’ behavior during the health care debacle.  I know I’m all stabby-stabby, but I wonder whether they are or not.  Maybe most of the people who voted Obama into office don’t even notice.  Maybe they think their part is done so the new-ish administration and the Democratic Senate should have a handle on things while they’re not watching.   Guess what, folks?  NOT.

My letter to “Organizing America” the former Obama campaign site

(Written while unsubscribing, as a protest.)

I am not a Democrat.

I was a Democrat for a little over 30 years–until Diane Feinstein started acting and voting like a Republican. I told her I would never vote for her again and I won’t.  My point? Barack the president seems to have forgotten the promises he made as Barack the candidate. I have never seen such timid leadership in my life. No, wait:  the Democrats have behaved in such a manner all the way through the Bush administration. They kowtowed to the Republicans (who played serious hardball) while there was a big, wistful to-do in the MSM over “bipartisanship” that never happened because the Republicans were nasty and excluded the Democrats from almost every opportunity to make a difference. Perhaps the Democrats and Barack the president believe they should take the alleged high road and refuse to behave as the Republicans did.

With all solemnity, I adjure you… Now is not the time to abandon progressive ideals because a minority of crazy, hard right, radical Republicans–who don’t have much of a party left, mind you–are playing up the rhetoric and the lies and inflaming the wingnut populace against the president’s erstwhile agenda, inciting the crazies to riot and possibly to assassination.

Elegance and grace will not give us single payer and/or a public option or even decent health care. Besides, it would appear Barack the president and the rest of the Democrats have given up on both. If events unfold as I see they might, the insurance companies will realize even more profits if health insurance is mandated. How middle class and lower class Americans will pay, I don’t know. Tax deductions will not help. They are actually rather worthless. Americans need real help, upfront.

I cannot tell you how sickened I am with the current state of affairs. Single payer (with an option to retain private health insurance as is possible in the UK) is the right thing to do. Allowing Blue Dogs to mark this territory and bark orders to the rest of us is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and slightly insane into the bargain. While Teddy Kennedy was alive, you had a majority and you could have passed a good bill that contained both. Now all you have is mush.

What we Americans needed was an FDR on the economy and an LBJ on civil rights and health care. This administration hasn’t come close to giving us either one. What I see is a money-grubbing party that’s still beholden to big business, a party without backbone.  It’s appalling, truly.

And it’s not just health care. Barack the candidate was worrisome when he voted on FISA. But Barack the president has abandoned all principle on warrantless wiretapping as well as in legal cases concerning Guantanamo detainees, doing precisely what the Bush administration did before him, or worse. Barack the president did not seek to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He has left it to Congress, whose members will do nothing, ever. Barack the president has set up another Guantanamo in Bagram, and created an environment where anything will go by alleging that because Bagram is not on American soil (WTF?! It’s a US air base! Does that mean McCain isn’t really a US citizen? Hmph.), people detained there will have no right to habeas corpus let alone any Constitutional right to due process within the US legal system.  Barack the president still allows extraordinary rendition.  Barack the president has allowed the same people who destroyed the economy (think Wall Street investment bankers, Goldman Sachs, the New York Reserve, and the Fed) to retain control over the economy. Nothing has changed in that respect. Barack the president doesn’t want to do anything about the Bush administration higher-ups who approved torture and created an ethos where it could thrive and become even more twisted than Gen. Miller and John Yoo originally planned. Barack the candidate wanted to remove us from theaters of war while Barack the president is digging in in Afghanistan.

Barbara Boxer might give me hope, but it’s not yet clear she won’t do what she’s told by the White House, by the so-called Democratic leadership, or by the insurance and drug companies. But Barack the president and the rest of his administration? No, I have no hope at all.

I’m writing in the hortatory subjunctive now:  Look to your principles once more, recall the promises you made and work to fulfill them. Think of the people who voted for you, Barack & Company. Think about why they voted for you. It wasn’t simply your “soaring rhetoric,” you made promises that voters wanted kept. I urge you to reconsider your path, which thus far is filled with so many broken promises (after only nine months!). Remember that we who voted you and other Democrats into office can just as easily vote you out of office. Or, as in my case, simply not vote at all. There is no one worth voting for anymore.

Ignore me at your political peril. You will fail otherwise. A pity, but it’s true.

Sincerely yours–

On Sarah Palin’s resignation

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I think a tiny bit of schadenfreude is in order.