When he was asking Americans to vote for him during the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said . . .

We’re looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington.  It’s a status quo that extends beyond any particular party and right now that status quo is fighting back with everything it’s got, with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face, whether those problems are health care that folks can’t afford or a mortgage they cannot pay.

Before Obama appointed Wall Street insiders to run his economic policies and a Blue Dog to be his chief of staff, he told us . . .

Make no mistake about what we’re up against.  We’re up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government, that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem and this election is our chance to say that we are not going to let them stand in our way anymore.

Obama’s not only letting them stand in our way, he’s helping them stand in our way.  He let lobbyists write the Senate Finance Committee bill.  He campaigned for the public option, but now he’s caving to the Republicans and Blue Dogs who are telling us we can’t have it. They’ve viciously attacked the public option from the very beginning and they’re continuing to viciously attack it.

When he needed our votes, Obama condemned the very people he’s caving to now . . .

There are those who will continue to tell us that we can’t do this, that we can’t have what we’re looking for, that we can’t have what we want.   But here is what I know.  I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of that elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day, an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside the envelope.

I’m not sure what you think you know, Obama, but here’s what she knows–she knows what Democrats used to stand for, she knows what they must stand for again.  She remembers when FDR showed America what real change looks like, she remembers him winning the fight for economic and social justice . . .  

From a wheel chair.  

FDR’s legs were paralyzed, but his moral courage wasn’t, his heart wasn’t, his determination to fight for the Americans who elected him wasn’t.  Unlike you, Obama, FDR wasn’t paralyzed by moral cowardice, he didn’t reach out to Republicans, he didn’t compromise with the liars and hypocrites of that degenerate party, he governed as a Democrat because that’s what he promised he would do.    

That elderly woman who sent you $3.01 remembers when Democrats were actually Democrats, she knows how desperately America needs another Democratic President like FDR.  She believed in you, Obama.  She trusted you.  She had faith in you.  She believed you when you told her last fall, when you told all of us last fall that . . .

We’re up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election.  But we know that this is exactly what’s wrong with our politics. This is why people don’t believe what their leaders say anymore. This is why they tune out.  And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again.

You’re throwing that chance away, Obama.  You’re letting the losers of that election kill reform, you’re shattering the trust so many Americans had in you, you’re giving us no reason to believe that anything will really change.

In an interview last week with Michael Smerconish, The Undecider said, “Winning the election is just the start.  Victory in an election wasn’t the change that we sought.”

I don’t know what change you sought, Barack, but letting the losers of the election dictate policy is not the change we sought.  That’s innovative change, no doubt about it, but it’s not change anyone who voted for you can believe in.  

Philip Elliot . . .

That election came with Obama’s promise of the government insurance option, a provision that Obama’s team now calls “preferred” but not mandatory.  Obama declined to call it a deal breaker.  He said “the press got excited and some folks on the left got a little excited” when he and top administration aides made statements indicating that a publicly run health insurance option was just one of several alternatives.

Since then, Obama has faced increasing criticism from his left flank.  “And even though some White House advisers seem to have forgotten, the reason the public option has become central to reform is simple: We’re fed up with the insurance companies and we need real accountability for them,” liberal MoveOn.org said in a message sent to its 5 million members. “They’ve had decades to fix the problems with our health care system, but they haven’t done it.”

One caller to Smerconish’s program said he sensed the administration was making a misstep. “I’m getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are bucklin’ a little bit,” said the caller who identified himself as Joe. “You have an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate, and you own the whole shooting match.  It’s very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with a lot of these people who aren’t willing to compromise with you.”

The Founding Fathers gave us democracy.

We have the moral responsibility to restore what was given to us, to take back what has been taken away by corrupt politicians of both major parties.  If the Democratic Party won’t restore American democracy, it will be up to Progressives to restore it.  If Democrats cave again and pass a travesty of a health care reform bill without a strong public option, there will no longer be any doubt that the two-party system has been corrupted beyond salvage.  If that happens, I believe progressives will have no choice but to dissolve all ties with the Democratic Party, establish the Progressive Party, and ask progressive Democrats in Congress and across this country to join us.  

When in the course of Democratic betrayals it becomes necessary for Progressives to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with the Democratic Party, and to establish ourselves as a New Party in the political system, our respect for the Constitution and the rule of law compels us to declare the causes which impel us to this separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that the Democratic Party is complicit in war crimes, that it is complicit in illegal NSA spying, that it is complicit in massive Wall Street fraud, that it no longer believes that all men are created equal, that it serves only the corporate masters of America, that it has granted them unalienable Rights, that among these are the right to plunder the Treasury, the right to control the media, the right to subvert the banking system, to corrupt the electoral system, to ravage our economy and reap the illicit profits of shock doctrine capitalism.

To enable the voices of citizens to be heard in the corridors of power, political parties have been instituted among Men, deriving their power from the support of their members. Whenever any political party becomes destructive of these ends, its supporters have the right to withdraw their support, and to establish a new party.  As Progressives, we have no choice left but to establish a new party, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in accordance with our responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the progressive values upon which it was founded.  

Present circumstances dictate that a political party long established should not be rejected for light and transient causes; but when a long train of abuses and betrayals, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce an entire nation under corporate Despotism, it is the right of Progressives, it is the duty of Progressives, to condemn that party, and to establish a new party for their future security.  

Can this actually be happening?  

Are Democrats who’ve been riddled with RePug bullets for 30 years finally Bringing a Gun To a Gunfight ? ? ?

House Democrats are probing the nation’s largest insurance companies for lavish spending, demanding reams of compensation data and schedules of retreats and conferences. Letters sent to 52 insurance companies by Democratic leaders demand extensive documents for an examination of ‘extensive compensation and other business practices in the health insurance industry.” The letters set a deadline of Sept. 14 for the documents.

When asked for comment, an insurance industry spokesman mackerel pulled three hooks out of his mouth, bled all over the place, and said: “This is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition designed to silence health plans.”

The Tide Is Turning . . .

ActBlue has raised more than $150,000 in only 24 hours for progressive Democrats who took the pledge to not vote for any bill without a public option. House Democrats expressed strong support for the public option in their weekly caucus meeting, with everyone in support of it because their constituents had pressed them on it.   Labor is warning Democrats that they’ll sit out specific elections if any members oppose a public plan.

SOMEONE’S fucking stupidity has turned an electoral mandate for change into a RePug/Blue Dog ass kissing festival.  If that fucking stupidity doesn’t come to a screeching halt, support for “Democrats” is going to come to a screeching halt.  

I’m going to explain this to you, Rahm.

It’s called democracy.  

It’s called telling your barking Blue Dogs to shut the fuck up.

It’s called taking the Democratic Party back.

Get used to it.

Progressives are very reluctant to talk about the possibility of Obama’s assassination, they don’t even want to think about it.  Well we’d better start thinking about it, we’d better start talking about it, we’d better start doing something about it, because right wing talk radio thugs are inciting assassination, they’re inciting it every day, they are not only inciting violence against the government and the President of the United States, they are glorifying it, they are sanctifying it as a moral obligation, as a patriotic duty.  They are telling the rabid RePug base that violence against the government is justified, that President Obama is the enemy, that he’s a tyrant, that he must be stopped.

These talk radio thugs aren’t directly inciting assassination, but they don’t have to.  When they compare Obama to Hitler, when they condemn him as a fascist, when they denounce him as a tyrant and brand him a traitor, kill him is the message being sent and received, kill him is the message being heard and acted upon.  Assassination threats against President Obama have increased 400 per cent. He is being threatened with assassination 30 times a day, 300 times a month, and the number of threats is increasing as the incitement escalates and the reaction intensifies and the compulsion to kill him spreads like a plague through the batshit insane Republican base.

What else do progressives have to see before they call this what it is?  

I don’t have to see any more of it, I’ve seen more than enough to call this what it is.

In his essay, “Senator Conrad Says He’ll Vote Against the Public Option” Slinkerwink at Firedoglake notes . . .

In a town hall meeting with his constituents, Senator Kent Conrad, D-N.D. pushed his co-operative plan, and said that he would vote against the public option in any Senate health care package.  Conrad presented his cooperative health care proposal Thursday and said he would not vote for a government-run health care program.  The proposal has received bipartisan support for several reasons, he said. The cooperative would offer a non-profit insurance option to compete with private health care. It would not be government run, he said.

In response to Conrad’s dog and pony show “co-op plan”,  Slinkerwink notes that . . .

Conrad’s been pushing the co-operative line ever since the debate over health care reform heated up earlier this spring, and he’s a part of the Senate Finance Committee that is keeping the rest of the Senate Democrats out of their caucus talks.  And he knows full well that his co-op plan wouldn’t help the majority of his constituents.  In what’s been leaked about the Senate Finance bill, the co-operative plan actually is a series of regional co-operatives, which wouldn’t do anything to lower health premium costs for American families.

I’ve learned the hard way that it’s impossible to sway RePug “Christians” with fact-based arguments about health care reform or anything else.  They don’t care about facts.  They won’t believe a word a liberal tells them, they won’t believe what scientists say about global warming, they won’t believe Obama was born in Hawaii, they won’t believe that Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck are lying to them about health care reform and everything else.  

But they believe the Bible.

Verily, my experience said unto me, the only way to have any chance at all of penetrating the thick skulls of Republican “Christians” in my state is to grab a Bible and beat them over the head with it.  

So . . . I grabbed a Bible and beat them over the head with it.

Letter to the Editor: What Would Jesus Do About Health Care Reform?

Jesus taught us to have compassion for one another, to help the sick and the poor among us.  Liberals have always tried to do that, they believe we all have a moral responsibility to help those in need, not only as individuals, but as a society.  President Obama and liberal Democrats are trying to ensure that everyone in America can have access to health care when they need it.  They want to help those in need.  They’re doing what Jesus taught us to do.  

But what has been the response of Republicans?  Angry bellowing about socialism.  Threats of violence against the President of the United States.  Lies that President Obama wants to euthanize everyone’s grandmother. Disgusting townhall spectacles of Republicans demanding their free speech rights while shouting down everyone else who tries to speak.  

Health care reform is not a political issue, it’s a moral issue.  Helping those in need is not a political issue, it’s a moral issue.  I’m not telling you that.  Jesus is telling you that.  I would advise every Republican in this country who claims to be a Christian to heed what Jesus said in Matthew 25:41-45: “Whatever you did not do for the least among you, you did not do for me.”

If Republicans continue to ignore the teachings of Jesus, if Republicans continue to demonize liberals for wanting to help those in need, if Republicans continue to protect the rich and blame the poor for their poverty, Republicans will hear these words from Jesus on Judgment Day: “Depart from me, you who are cursed.  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and you did not look after me.”

You have a choice to make, Republicans.  You can keep listening to the lies of Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck, or you can start listening to the Son of God.

Robin Wells . . .

Are we having fun yet?  Birthers, Limbaugh’s diatribe equating Obama to Hitler, fistfights at town halls, an enormous increase in death threats against the president.  And now our diva moment, with Sarah Palin–in full victimhood throttle–charging on Friday that an “Obama death panel” could deny health care and pass a death sentence on her Down syndrome child.

In an unbroken line from Goldwater to Limbaugh and Palin, the Republican Party has committed itself to scorched-earth tactics that have shredded the economic, political, and moral fabric of this country.

New millennium.  Same RePug tactics.    

blueintheface . . .

Rahm Emanuel, the man who dismissed the 50-state strategy that led to the political revolution that the 1994 Republicans could only dream about, the Democratic leader who made it his priority to nurse a petty grudge against the man who pioneered the grassroots internet campaign instrumental in Democrats gaining control of the House, Senate and Presidency, recently held a meeting to slam Democratic activists for pressuring the legislators who are holding up healthcare reform, calling their ads “fucking stupid”.

New millennium.  Same Democratic tactics.

The Health Insurers Have Already Won . . .

The insurance industry has succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable.

New millennium.  Same corporate fascism.

The lunatics are on the grass,

The lunatics are on the grass,

Limbaugh and Beck keep stoking their demented wrath,

Got to keep the loonies on the path.

The lunatics are in the hall,

The lunatics are in the hall,

The Batshit Insane Brigade howls hatred from the floor,

And every day, Hannity sends more.

Rightwing talk radio thugs, RePugs in Washington, and their lunatic base think they’re back on the path to power, but the path they’re taking is a path to nowhere, it’s the path to electoral suicide, it’s the path to political oblivion.  

The raving lunatics who comprise the Repug base are bound and determined to make obnoxious asses of themselves the entire month of August.  

So be it.  

For far too long, I’ve heard progressives say we have to be polite when we contact the politicians who keep betraying us.  For years, I’ve heard them say we can’t be “rude”, we have to be civil, we have to be respectful. Although they’ve acknowledged that war criminals and their enablers in Congress don’t deserve any respect, they insist that we have to be respectful anyway.  That’s what we’ve been told, that’s what we’re still being told.  

I’ve had my fill of that.  This isn’t complicated.  We can either be progressives, or we can be hypocrites.  From what I’ve seen, being respectful hypocrites hasn’t accomplished a whole lot.  Except for Kos, he has a Newsweek column now, and respectful hypocrite traffic at that Democratic Fan Club of his is at an all time high.  This has been presented as an encouraging development, and who can possibly disagree, for as the graph below clearly demonstrates, there’s a direct correlation between higher Daily Kos traffic and spectacular Democratic triumphs in Washington . . .  

Yet somehow, many Democrats still feel an extremely compelling urge to betray us.  Bush and Cheney went on a crime rampage for 8 years, but Democrats won’t hold them accountable.  They won’t prosecute Wall Street criminals for gutting our economy, they’re rewarding them for it.  Our health care system is a travesty, the corporate media is a propaganda shithole, the Fed is a Machiavellian nightmare, rightwing madness is escalating, the fuse of economic collapse is still burning, and Congress is still a snakepit of corruption.              

Many long, blood-drenched and greedy years ago, before Vietnam, before Watergate, before Iran-Contra and Enron and Wall Street wars for profit, Jack Kerouac watched America going by and asked, “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

America went on a long roadtrip, Jack.  We’ve put a lot of miles behind us, but we’re no closer to where we want to be than we were when we started.  It’s been a rough trip.  There were a lot of potholes on the Silent Majority Tollway, but we managed to make it through NixonLand relatively intact.  Back then, many of us thought the worst part of the journey was behind us, but we discovered otherwise.  

The Check Engine light started flashing on the Ronald Reagan Expressway, but the Gipper just grinned, cranked up the radio, and we got our first earful of the tirades of some shithead named Limbaugh as he bellowed on and on and on and on about blacks and feminists and unions and liberals destroying everything in sight.      

By the time we took the Thousand Points of Light Exit we were burning a lot of oil, the transmission was shot, the radiator was steaming, and something was on fire in the trunk.  In other words, major repairs were required, but Poppy just had Gomer fill ‘er up, clean the windshield, kick the tires, and off we went again.  

The Progressive Movement is busy being born.  

The Conservative Movement is busy dying.  

New media is busy being born.  

Old media is busy dying.  

Multicultural America is busy being born.  

Racist America is busy dying.  

Why are they howling and screeching with such fear and fury?  

Because they’re dying.

And they know it.