Not Enough Toilets For The New Women In The Senate

Calling Out The Hounds

Interesting piece over at Crooks and Liars.

A trio of progressive House members took direct aim at their colleagues in the Senate on Saturday, declaring that the upper chamber "sucks," has a "toxic effect" on the legislative process, and would cost House Democrats seats in the 2010 election.

"They say the senate has a luxury of time, six-year cycles for elections," said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus. "But these last 18 months have, in memory, have not only been the most frustrating but the inertia created in the Senate is what is jeopardizing Democrats and progressives' opportunities in the midterms. It is not our lack of action. It has been their lack of action."

"I think [we] feel a frustration because my constituents don't necessarily distinguish between the House and the Senate," said Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "And so when they see something not getting done they are not really tolerant of my argument which is, 'Well it passed the House.' That doesn't really wash. They hold us all accountable for the failure of these issues moving forward. I personally think the 60-vote requirement in the United States Senate is a bastardization of the United States constitution."

"It sucks," said Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), "and I mean it literally. It sucks the energy out of the room and it sucks the urgency out of what we do... The lack of urgency from the Senate on these jobs bill is soul-crushing."

There's really nothing more for me to add. I feel their pain. Our government is not governing. They are playing keep away like children do at recess and they don't give a fuck what the consequences are to the American people. They truly do not care.

James K. Galbraith"s Opinion

Quite frankly, I could not agree more with this assessment.

I'm tempted to say that the United States is plainly unable to cope with the economic crisis in a serious way. The barriers are philosophical, procedural, and constitutional. So long as economic thinking is mired in a world that disappeared with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, so long as any action requires 60 Senate votes, and so long as political capital erodes from the start of a fixed four-year presidential term, we're stuck.

Technically it would have been fairly easy, 10 months ago, to get this bus back on the road. There could have been open-ended fiscal assistance to stop the budget hemorrhage of the states and cities. There could have been a jobs program and effective foreclosure relief. There could have been a payroll tax holiday. There could have been a strategy for sustained massive effort on infrastructure, energy and climate. There could have been prompt corrective action to resolve, instead of coddle, the worst of the banks.

I mostly don't blame President Obama; he and his team went as far as they felt they could. I blame the head-in-the-sand politicians in Congress, the over-optimistic forecasters, the half-educated press, and the power of the financial lobby. I blame the avatars of fiscal virtue, the public debt scare-mongerers, the astrologers for whom thirteen significant digits (a trillion) for the stimulus package was just too much. I blame the Senate, which hands the balance of power to small states at the expense of disaster areas like California, Florida and New York. I do blame the Bush-Obama financial policy team, who either believed that "credit would flow again" if you stuffed the banks with money, or knew that it wouldn't.

What Is Wrong With Obama? Still Using Blackwater Ops In The Middle East?????

You know, every day, every week, every month, something new comes out about Obama that makes me wonder if he really is a Democrat. Perhaps, like Bush, he thinks God ordained him to be president. I don't know exactly what to make of it, except that what the man said while running for president, and what he's actually done as president, has damaged the Democratic party in ways that will have serious consequences in the 2010 elections. And I, for one, would hate to see all the work we did as netroots in securing the majorities in the House, Senate, and of course, the White House, evaporate becase Obama has turned out to be spineless.

This piece is just disgusting.

The Obama administration is using mercenaries with the firm formerly known as Blackwater to kidnap and assassinate high value targets in Pakistan, according to a published report.

The program, operated out of the US Joint Special Operations Command, "is so 'compartmentalized' that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence," an unnamed source with direct knowledge of the program told The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill.

War, war, war, war, war, war, war ....

Money down the drain, and lives (Americans and others) lost for absolutely no fucking good reason. I know historically, there have been the "good" wars and the "bad" wars, but honestly, since World War II, what fucking war has come up with any "good" attached to it? And I am speaking globally, not just for Americans.

The world economy is crumbling, despite what "media" tries to tell you. The small amount of the very rich in the world dominate, along with the corporations that control the vast majority of the world.

But, just here in America, it does not bode well that politicians are panning true health care reform (mostly because they are taking money from the insurance and big pharma groups -- not because they really and truly feel that Americans would fall into socialism based on reform). As for the financial industry, Obama has let the foxes run the hen house, and as a result, taxpayers have propped up the richest of the rich in that industry, and have shown absolutely no backbone in curbing the disgusting salaries and bonuses of a handful of people and corporations.

And then there are the wars. For one thing, doesn't anyone in the ruling government today have any knowledge of the ass kicking the middle east did to the British the last century when they tried to control and rule there? Ideologically, western modernism is not going to be implemented in the middle east, and the sooner our government gets this, the better off we will be. But knowing that the Obama Administration is still employing the rogue Blackwater group in Afghanistan and Pakistan is especially galling. Americans are not going to make any progress or difference in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India or whatever. I guess the guys (and gals) on the Hill just like masturbating (well, who doesn't, except, of course, the religious right wing ... well, they do, they just won't admit it). WE started two wars without any idea why, and without any real plans for how to run it or finance it. Hell, we might as well just have our government play a game of Risk and let that run our foreign policy ... I'm serious!

At least this story proves the point that money and the fucking health insurance industry aren't the be all and end all in medicine.

Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa's cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery.

The approach has transformed health care in India through a simple premise that works in other industries: economies of scale. By driving huge volumes, even of procedures as sophisticated, delicate and dangerous as heart surgery, Dr. Shetty has managed to drive down the cost of health care in his nation of one billion.

His model offers insights for countries worldwide that are struggling with soaring medical costs, including the U.S. as it debates major health-care overhaul.

"Japanese companies reinvented the process of making cars. That's what we're doing in health care," Dr. Shetty says. "What health care needs is process innovation, not product innovation."

At his flagship, 1,000-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital, surgeons operate at a capacity virtually unheard of in the U.S., where the average hospital has 160 beds, according to the American Hospital Association.

The future of health care in the United States will be leaving the United States for affordable treatment. The meme that millions come here for expert medical treatment has lost its luster and its truth, as the reality is clear that Americans are leaving the U.S. and seeking affordable medical treatment elsewhere.

The last bastion ... the line drawn in the sand, as it were, has been and is the health care reform bill. As it stands, neither version (House or Senate) offers true reform, and since it appears that whatever actually gets passed will only benefit the insurance industry and big pharma at the expense of Americans, I simply don't see the Democrats keeping the majority they got. Their base will simply not donate any more money to a dying party with no principles, and will stay away from the voting booth. The unfortunate outcome of that will be an open door for the nutjobs to take over government.

God help us when that happens.

Franken - 1; Diana Furchtgott-Roth - 0

This is an excellent video of Senator Al Franken (I love saying that) at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning medical bankruptcies.



Because Franken is a comedy writer, a lot of people who have never read his political books or listened to him when he was on Air America, have no idea just how brilliant he is, how cool and calm he is when he smacks you in the face with your bullshit and lies, and quite frankly, I am glad he finally ran for office, won, and is now in there fighting for the rights of real Americans.

H/T to Think Progress.

Congratulations, Senator Franken

(heads up - there is a music podcast unrelated to this post, so if you want the music to STOP, just scroll down to player and pause it!)

Amazing! Just amazing. And the spontaneous and long standing ovation and applause was great to hear (and see). Finally, the Democrats have a 60 seat majority in the Senate. And a pretty good comic, as well ! Not to mention that Franken is pretty astute when it comes to politics, and he is a true progressive.

Congratulations, Senator Franken! (Has a weird ring to it, doesn't it?)

60 In The Senate Just Got One Person Closer

The blogs are all a twitter (lol) about Specter switching parties. The lefties are sure he's a Lieberman "democrat," and I concur. But hey, once Franken gets seated, the Dems do technically have the 60 votes that have come to define the Senate voting process.

Politics makes such strange bedfellows!

Stimulus Or Not, Brace Yourselves, People, The Depression Is On Its Way

No, I'm not being Rush Limbaugh, but I just do not see the Obama stimulus plan having any real impact. This is not because the stimulus plan is a bad idea. This is because Obama is still letting the minority party dictate the crap out of the stimulus plan.


First, despite the House passing its version, it still contained at least 25% of worthless tax cuts, and yet, ZERO Republicans voted for it, when the damn tax cuts were put in it just at their behest!


Now that the Senate is debating (and I use that word loosely) the stimulus package, it appears the tax cuts are up to 40% of the entire stimulus, AND it's been trimmed by about 100 billion dollars!


Obama ... fuck them, all of them, the Democrats and Republicans. Just put out the most proper stimulus plan (hint -- Paul Krugman -- hint, for starters), and if our stupid, self-serving representatives (again, using that word loosely) in Congress don't vote for it, you can rest assured that American voters in 2010 will be looking toward more progressive people to elect to represent them in Congress.


Don't be afraid. Just because the Congressional Republicans and a few mealy mouth wussie Democrats want you to fail, doesn't mean the American public will blame you for the depression that will happen on your watch. And, try to remember ... there may be 300 million Americans, but mass media is only read and/or watched by less than 10% of them (see earlier post of mine on that subject), and even less will be watching them/reading them because of our stupid congresscritters taking out the expansion of cable and internet from your stimulus package. Not to mention, as one tightens ones belt, cable goes! Food, cable, food, cable? Guess which one goes first!


The package passed by the House wasn't all that great, but it had a small fighting chance. The Republicans lining up in lock step and voting "nay" only showed where they stood on helping America. What is transpiring in the Senate is just a complete joke. I am embarrassed for you, Obama, and more pissed off that after the 2008 elections, the Democrats still cannot get off their asses and do something good for this country, instead of always looking out for their corporate buddies.


I'm telling you, 2010 will be a watershed election, which is probably why many in Congress are gearing up for their campaigns now instead of actually doing their work right now in Congress. That work, by the way, is to get off their asses and represent the American people and pass a stimulus bill that will get this country moving forward.

The New Republican Ethic - Insurgency!

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

That agreement, as Sessions described it, involved a promise from Pelosi to preside over an "open, honest, ethical Congress." Obama, Sessions added, has pledged to diminish the political rhetoric in Washington and work in a bipartisan fashion.

"If they do not give us those options or opportunities then we will then become insurgency of a nature to where we do those things that are necessary to making sure the American public knows what we think the correct answer is," Sessions said during the 60-minute interview. "So we either work together, or we're going to find a way to get our message out."

WHAT FUCKING MESSAGE, YOU IDIOT?

Have you NOT noticed your dwindling numbers in Congress, dude? Have you NOT heard the American public say NO NO NO to you and your beliefs? And now you think that by identifying your "tactics" as "insurgency" and invoking the Taliban is helping your position?

Keep on, keeping on. 2010 and your party will just be a memory ... a distant one, at that.