Tag: Democrats

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    I’d like to share with you all this comment that was placed in my diary yesterday by Dkos User lascaux, as I think it sums up what we as Progressive activists and the Democrtaic base MUST accomplish in order to effect REAL CHANGE we can believe in.

What I learned

What this reform fight has taught me:

it is not enough to elect a progressive president, we need to elect liberals and progressives in congress as well.

    The frustrating inability of this Democratically controlled Congress is PROOF that our job did NOT END when Obama won the Presidential election in 2008. In fact, our work has just begun, and we must face it with the same dedication, intensity and enthusiasm that we did in 2008, or we WILL lose, because we simply don’t have the money to compete with the special interests that control our Government.

    But we DO have the people, and they can’t beat that.

    So, here’s how we should FIGHT BACK.

Instead of real health care reform (Medicare for all, everyone in and everyone pays) the Democratic health care bills in the House and the Senate are just expanded Medicaid with a public option that isn’t an option to the public at all.  Thanks to Stupak, they’ll pay for prayer therapy and Viagra while restricting payments for abortions.  Apparently Stupak has no problem with killing 45,000 born babies and their parents each year.

Like the bank bailouts and Medicare Part D, Democratic health care reform is just another corporate rip off of the middle class; and for this privilege, they cut Medicare benefits and raised Medicare’s monthly premiums.  So much for no increases to people who make fewer than 250K a year.  

With Democrats like Stupak in Washington, it really doesn’t matter which party wins election because Republicans and religious zealots like Stupak win either way.  Instead of lipstick on a pig, a local official in the local newspaper on a totally different subject said in this way: “it’s like putting whip cream on a turd”.  

They will pass a corporate health care bill, declare victory, and expect applause.   Maybe if we clap hard enough, we can make them all disappear.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    They don’t just hope HE (President Obama) FAILS, they hope America fails, and they (The Republican party) are helping it happen by obstructing reform and fighting job growing legislation that will help America recover.

    They hope you lose your job and go broke so that you are pissed off and miserable, and they hope this lasts until 2010 and 2012 so you can take it out on the incumbents who are in office, and when we “throw the bums out” Republicans will finally get back the political power that they crave so much.

    The Republican party is sabotaging America’s recovery for political gain.

    This is the new meme that we as Democrats should push in order to expose the elected Republicans for what they are, fake patriots who put politics above the best interests of their own nation.

    More below the fold.

According to a post on Pennsylvania blog, House speaker Nancy Pelosi will allow a mere twenty minutes of debate on single-payer, albeit indirectly.

The debate will actually be on an amendment put forth by Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York’s 9th District, which would effectively transform the corporate giveaway that is HR 3200 into something very close to the single-payer form offered by Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers’s HR 676.  According to David Swanson, the debate on the Weiner amendment is being used as cover for dropping Kucinich’s amendment, which would allow states to create their own single-payer health insurance systems.

This is probably our last, best chance to improve what is shaping up to be a disastrously bad bill that will force Americans into buying unaffordable insurance.  Click on the House Telephone Directory link, call as many representatives as you can, and demand that they pass the Weiner amendment.  This may be our only shot at getting something that will work for all Americans, instead of simply further enriching Big Insurance.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Of all the screwed up things the Republican party and their Corporate Media enablers have done maybe the worst is the souring of the debate on whether President Obama is doing the right thing or not. When the “faithful” opposition in American politics is more concerned with ACORN and socialism than it is with Corproate malfeasance or the corrupt status quo, it just isn’t worth debating with, but that debate is necessary and our system does worse without it.

    Similarly, the left has been conditioned by the raving right to interpret ALL criticism of President Obama as an attack on him. Many on the left see activists who criticize Obama as if they were joining in on the hyperbole, and they fear that Obama, and Democratic majorities, might fall if pressure from the left and the right becomes overheated. These people are often the loudest defenders of Obama, but are they really helping his cause?

     I firmly believe that we MUST, as activists and voters, be able to hold President Obama and the Democratic party accountable, otherwise they will walk all over us. In order to do this, we MUST be able to constructivly criticize our leaders, and since the right wing of American politics long ago left the reality based world, it is the left which must provide this criticism. The problem is, will others on the left allow it to happen?

    More below the fold.

It was a long hot August for those who would like to see health care reform, as rabid “Town Hall” protesters proffered visions of public options that would lead to death panels and socialism and government tax collectors with special alien mind control powers that would use sex education and child indoctrination and black helicopters as the means for gay people to impose their dangerous agenda on the innocent, God-fearing citizens of someplace in Mississippi that I’m not likely to ever visit.

Part of the reason that opposition was so rabid was because health care interests were spending millions upon millions of dollars doing…well, doing whatever the opposite of giving a distemper shot to the angry mob might be, anyway.

So wouldn’t it be great if all the CEOs of all those health care interests were to gather at one time and place so you could, shall we say, gently express your own thoughts regarding the issues of reform and public options?

By an amazing coincidence, that’s exactly what’s going to happen Thursday in Washington, DC, as the Patient Centered Primary Care Cooperative (PCPCC) holds its Annual Summit.

Follow along, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   

    “A Democrat with Guts, people think of it like a mythological creature, like a Unicorn.”

~snip~

    “Bipartisanship is a Weapon of Mass Distraction.”

   ~   Rep. Alan Grayson

    A Democrat with GUTS deserves an electorate that will FIGHT for him. That is how we will encourage more Dems to grow guts and learn how to fight.

    A short transcript and more below the fold.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Alan Grayson (BIG D-FL08) is my new hero. We need this guy in Congress for years to come!

    But first, on to the show, and what a show it is!

    Full transcript of the can of whoop@$$ unleashed by Grayson on Republicans AND weak kneed Dems below the fold.