But the Democrats we elected do not have the balls to pull it off.
Or, they're too busy playing footsie with the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry to care about what we voters want.
What the hell happened?
A year of unbelievable theatrics and footdragging, a year of ugly teabaggers and their even uglier signs -- unbelievable that such a thing could be possible... What an accomplished child of Satan is Dick Armey and his Freedom Works.
Yes! As far as I'm concerned, they are Teabaggers and I won't dignify them with the politically correct term.
I'm done with PC. I totally hate PC! PC accomplishes nothing!
I want something accomplished! At this point, I don't give a damn about the cursed public option, when I remember with fury how Senator Baucus of Montana easily put paid to the single-payer option and I even had a public verbal duel with my congressman over the Baucus debacle.
Remember the original Teaparty!
The original teaparty which was not so much about taxation as about corporate monopoly and American anger at the East India Company:
Conventional wisdom has it that the 1773 Tea Act – a tax law passed in London that led to the Boston Tea Party – was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. In reality, however, the Tea Act gave the world’s largest transnational corporation – The East India Company – full and unlimited access to the American tea trade, and exempted the Company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the Company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea they were unable to sell and holding in inventory.
The primary purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders (which included the King and the wealthy elite that kept him secure in power), and to help the Company drive its colonial small-business competitors out of business. Because the Company no longer had to pay high taxes to England and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and tea houses in every town in America.
This infuriated the independence-minded American colonists, who were wholly unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the world’s largest multinational corporation, The East India Company. They resented their small businesses still having to pay the higher, pre-Tea Act taxes without having any say or vote in the matter. (Thus, the cry of "no taxation without representation!") Even in the official British version of the history, the 1773 Tea Act was a "legislative maneuver by the British ministry of Lord North to make English tea marketable in America" with a goal of helping the East India Company quickly "sell 17 million pounds of tea stored in England...
http://www.thomhartmann.com/...
Get a health care reform bill passed and signed and get the business done by the end of next week: 19 March 2010.
We have another battle abrewing -- the U.S. Supreme Court.
The original salvo in the SCOTUS brew was fired in the 2000 election, with a decisive hit on December 12, 2000, when George W. Bush was appointed president by five right wing justices.
As it happens, many of the players in the events in Florida, in 2000, regarding 2000 election results, came back to slam us int the teeth in the coming eight years -- and longer. Corporatist SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts was a major player in those events.
Roberts lied in his confirmation hearings but he managed to lie relatively low as the embedded tick of corporate empowerment until the Citizens United decision of 21 January 2010, a shot heard round the world...
Of course, Roberts hinted at his agenda in a Freudian gaffe on 20 January 2009:
Out of "an abundance of caution", Barack Obama has taken the oath of office a second time because a word was out of sequence when he was sworn in on Tuesday.
The surprise move came after Tuesday's much-noticed stumble, when the US supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, jumbled the words, prompting Obama to follow suit....
Unlike the bungled oath – which was delivered on the Capitol Hill platform before the watching world – yesterday's repeat performance took place in the White House map room in front of a small group of reporters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Frankly, I was delighted with President Obama's SOTU speech on 27 January, especially:
With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Roberts fired back on March 10:
In response to another question, Roberts said President Barack Obama's Jan. 27 State of the Union speech degenerated "into a political pep rally."
Obama criticized the Supreme Court, whose members were sitting before him in the House Chamber, for a ruling on corporate donations to political campaigns.
The comment caused many in the chamber to boo, while others cheered.
"First of all, I think anybody can criticize members of the Supreme Court," Roberts said. "But on the other hand, it is an issue of the circumstances and the setting.
"But the image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering, while the court, according to protocol, has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling," he said. "It does cause me to think whether it makes sense for us to be there."
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/...
I'm sure the volleys will continue to be fired back and forth for a time, but the more critical issue is the issue of the U.S. judiciary and corporate creep.
Corporatists, most especially, Republicans, want to cause Obama to be a one-term president in order to ensure right wing control over SCOTUS and other judiciary. Very likely, Justices Breyer and Ginsberg will retire before the end of Obama's term, and the present balance will be maintained.
But, it is also possible that Anthony Kennedy will also retire prior to 2016 ... and it would be very nice to retain Obama simply to secure a better balance of philosophy in SCOTUS. Also, it will give Obama some leverage to remove all of Bush and Cheney's embedded moles in the Justice Department, Defense, and other offices of the executive branch.
For Chrissake, pass health care reform and have done! I am tired of the endless diddling on this one item while our nation slowly crumbles into a pile of nothingness as its infrastructure falls over.
Pass a bill. Demand that its deficiencies be remedies in the immediate future. Do whatever is necessary to restore people personhood and we the people rights to our nation's laws. Restore our nation.
Get something done. Bury the filibuster!