The Democratic Party - The End

Something I've been thinking for a while now has nicely been stated over at Democratic Underground in a post by Yavin4.

Turns out that the Health Care Reform (HCR) act is more than just a gift to the Insurance Industry. Its actually setting the Democratic Party up to be a fall guy for all that the Insurance Companies do in the future. As Yavin4 so nicely puts it:

This HCR amounts to a merger between the Democratic party and the health insurance industry. Every rate hike, every denial of coverage, every annual benefit cap, every dirty trick thought up by the evil people who populate these industries will become the property of the Democratic party, lock, stock and barrel.

I hope all the money that Rahm & Company gets for selling us out is worth it because when the bill starts coming in its gonna be hell on wheels.

madfloridian explains today's Democratic Party

This post at Democratic Underground explains a great deal about today's Democratic Party. As you will see it certainly isn't the Party we think it is - referring to the Democratic Party madfloridian says:

Now it is about far more than health care. Party's true face has been shown.... this week since Howard Dean took head in hand and dared to suggest the bill was not all it should be. A true face of what the Democratic party has become emerged. It took since the 80s, but it is now complete it seems.

"ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

"Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

That has come into full bloom now.

The health care bill will pass with flying colors; even the ones who have been on MSNBC telling the truth about it have caved and will vote for it. One even said it was a bad bill, but he would vote for it anyway.

So it has moved beyond the bill now.

It has moved into the realm of what a party does when it is in total control of the power seats. It shows who they are and what they stand for.

Howard Dean is a private citizen who once ran for president, who was chairman of the party when it won back all 3 seats of power. He was then shunned by those in leadership.

Someone posted here at DU a question to the effect should Dean really be allowed to speak out like that. Well, yes, the answer is yes.

When he spoke out this week against the bill he was speaking as a private citizen who is irate that we have been sold a sorry bill by catering to just a minority of corporate Democrats.

He put himself in a position to be slammed by this administration who never criticizes the right. He most likely knew he was doing that. I guess he figured since his future roles in the party are pretty much nil, he might as well speak out in honesty.

Here are some of the words used against him just by the WH spokespersons...irrational, irrelevant, insane.

And the blogs and groups that espouse White House policy are just getting warmed up today. I won't post them, they don't deserve the attention. The bloggers who want to keep access, the congressmen who want their seats and committee positions will vote for the bill, and they will criticize Dean though they once agreed with him.

The Center for American Progress, John Podesta's think tank formed to push Clinton's policies....was for a while posting Howard Dean's health care policies and pushing the public option. They were supportive.

Not anymore. Think Progress is now having to support the WH position on health care. Of course they would.

I realize this is politics. So many here talk to people like me in terms that make it seem like we are wrong because we are not politically "astute".

Oh, I may not be politically savvy, but I am no fool. I find myself more and more seeing things more clearly. The things I have believed in I believe in more strongly now. I thought my party believed in those things but not so much anymore. Unions are having to fight for existence, especially teachers' unions which are treated with scorn. Women's rights are not deemed very important, not like I thought they would be under Democrats. Stricter now on women's rights, and not much improvement in rights of gays. DADT and DOMA still around.

I expected there to be separation of church and state, instead I see a church group sitting down with the House Speaker to write a bill.

When the WH turned this into personal attacks on Dean they were sending a message to those who might agree with him. That message was toe the line.

So now it has gone beyond health care into something else. We saw this week who the party leaders value. It is not us.

Its so clear now that all the Progressives were actually out working for a Corporate Dem in 2008. Sad to say that there weren't any other alternatives - Hillary was just as bad.

So, what are our options? Well take a look at the Full Court Press. Its time we get serious about holding Democrats accountable.

A good rant!

Personally I always wondered if Joe Lieberman was doing what Obama wanted all along. Found this over at Democratic Underground. It seems reasonable to me -

by: debbierlus

You know why the democrats don't take away Joe's chair?

It isn't complicated.

The democrats are USING Joe as a scapegoat for their wholesale sell-out to the health care industry.

They NEED Joe.

He is playing bad cop to their 'good cop'. The democrats aren't interested in creating a bill that will help the people, they are interested in creating a bill that serves their corporate masters. It is getting mighty tough to continually justify selling out to corporations with the majorities in the House & Senate. So, they use the mere THREAT of a filibuster as the excuse to
take out any meaningful reform.

They don't even TRY to fight. They could take away his chair. They could MAKE him filibuster for days on end. They could force the opposition's political hand.

But, they dont.

Why do you think there is such a mad rush for passage by Christmas? Why do you think this legislation has been written behind closed doors and the contents of the legislation haven't even been available to the majority of the Senate or House Members.

They don't want anyone to have a chance to see the giant turd they are about to deliver to the American people. They know full well, if the people have a chance to dissect the language of this bill, they will be united against it.

This bill is SHIT. It enslaves American citizens to the very industry that has been responsible for the deathes of hundreds of thousands of Americans. It mandates health insurance with no gurantee of health care. It is a betrayal of the worst kind.

Joe Lieberman is a self serving, vain, narcisstic, egotistical, and pathetic little worm of a man. But, he is not acting alone. He is just playing his role.

Don't be fooled by their games.

Democratic Senators who have sold out to Big Pharma

Here's the list of Democratic Senators or those that slum with them that have sold us out to Big Pharma by voting against North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan Amdt. No. 2793 to the disaster know as the Health Care Reform bill.

Akaka (D-HI), Nay
Baucus (D-MT), Nay
Bayh (D-IN), Nay
Burris (D-IL), Nay
Cantwell (D-WA), Nay
Cardin (D-MD), Nay
Carper (D-DE), Nay
Casey (D-PA), Nay
Dodd (D-CT), Nay
Durbin (D-IL), Nay
Gillibrand (D-NY), Nay
Hagan (D-NC), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Nay
Kaufman (D-DE), Nay
Kerry (D-MA), Nay
Kirk (D-MA), Nay
Landrieu (D-LA), Nay
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Nay
Lieberman (ID-CT), Nay
Menendez (D-NJ), Nay
Mikulski (D-MD), Nay
Murray (D-WA), Nay
Reed (D-RI), Nay
Reid (D-NV), Nay
Rockefeller (D-WV), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Nay
Tester (D-MT), Nay
Udall (D-CO), Nay
Warner (D-VA), Nay

So, send them your thanks because they have required that you will spend 300% to 500% more for drugs than the rest of the world.

Not much else to say but if Obama wasn't such a coward and a liar this whole thing would have turned out very differently.

Naomi Klein explains much -

While Global Warming is an interesting topic it was Naomi's aside at the end of an interview with Amy Goodman that explains why I and so many others are jaded with Obama, the new Big O -

To hear this part of the interview go to the 53 minute mark in the show and listen to the end.

Ultimately it comes down to this - Obama is a super brand and as Namoi says "We think we hear the message we want to hear, but if you really parse it, the promises aren’t there, it’s really" our "emotions" that we are listening to -

That's just the nature of a super brand - its amorphous, more apparent than real - something that we create in our own mind and project onto an entity.

She goes on to say "I think that that explains in some sense the paralysis in progressive movements in the United States where we think, Obama stands for something because we" allowed or made ourselves believe he cares for the same things we do. The nasty reality however is that he doesn't and that "we don’t really have much to hold him to because, in fact, if you look at what he said during the campaign, like any good super brand, like any good marketer, he made sure not to promise too much, so that he couldn’t be held to it."

So, the more we go back and examine what Obama has said and done the less good news there is for the progressives in the Democratic Party. What we are going through right now is simply a process of realizing that the Big O ain't who we think he is. Once we have gotten over that its time to focus on the real issues (the war, health care, banking/wall street reform, global warming & etc-) and realize that Obama ain't our friend - he's just another obstruction on the way to reaching our goals.

Glenn Greenwald on Rachel Maddow discusses Democratic crooks Lieberman and Bayh

Glenn Greenwald on Rachel Maddow explains why Senators Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman are ready to destroy health care reform for their own personal gain.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Please note the system described by Greenwald where Senatorial families rake is large dollars by selling influence to the highest bidder is widespread. Essentially hubby gets into the Senate and then wifey sells her name and her husband's ear to large corporations for large $'s into their joint checking account. Its just a different way to market and profit from influence peddling. Certainly it is business as usual in both the Senate and the House. We in New Mexico don't have to look any farther than our own Senator Jeff Bingaman to see the same game being played.

Finally a Progressive group calls Obama out on Health Care Reform

Its been clear to me for quite some time that Obama was the Public Option's real enemy in the Democratic Party. Finally other folks are starting to see this - thanks to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee for calling Obama out on this.

Thank God - she done gone and said it-

Finally, someone in the mainstream press has put in print what has been obvious to me, a Southern Expatriate, for quite a few months. Racism is alive and well in the United States and the proof is easy to see. It ranges from the Birthers, to the Deathers, to the screams and shouts over Obama's address to school children last Tuesday reaching a crescendo with Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst last Wednesday night. Maureen Dowd has finally said it. These are the words that broke the silence of the mainstream press:

Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

As she rightly points out what Wilson really said wasn't just "You lie!" but rather "You lie, boy!". Certainly that's what my Southern ears actually heard. Its no coincidence that the first President to be heckled in a joint session of Congress was also the first black President and that the first heckler was a Southern Republican.

Unfortunately, Maureen hasn't made the final leap to a deeper understanding of the situation. I grew up in the 60's South and watched the old racist Southern Democrats become Republicans. They didn't loose their racism when they left the Democratic Party rather it was because of their racism that they became Republicans. Unfortunately the Republican Party greeted the racists with open arms and has never looked back. Nor has it ever challenged the racists in its midst as it slowly adopted their view as its own. Thus, in a sad historical twist the party of Lincoln has become their natural home. Racism is the reason the South moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party and while polite people do not speak of it and they work hard to hide it those views and attitudes are still there. Taken to a larger whole, racism is a defining element in the world view of a real and sizable percentage of the Republican base and it shouldn't surprise anybody that it shows its ugly face from time to time. As Dowd rightly concludes the fact that Obama is a literate, well spoken black man only tends to make matters worse. To paraphrase her, a good chunk of the racist Republican base simply can't cope with the fact that a black man is President.