Note: The vote was called off immediately after this diary was posted.
The political elite think if they do really bad stuff after midnight, we won't notice, they're wrong.
You may remember the vote for Medicare D, that was another corruption ridden Repuglican fiasco. Votes were bought and sold right on the floor of the House. It seems it's happening again tonight. But it's all so pitiful because this bill is DOA in the Senate.
But I do have a little faith in the American people, and I do believe we will get even for this in 2012.
Seeing the disarray in the Republican party as night sets on the Capitol, I remember how these thugs pulled off the vote for the Medicare Modernization Act. Once again, if history repeats itself, they will do their dirty work under cover of darkness, as the American people sleep. But don't sleep my friends, watch this toxic dance with death and resolve to hold accountable those responsible for this national catastrophe.
Several years after that night in 2003, when money and access were exchanged for a vote for the pharmaceutical industry, Louise Slaughter wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about the revulsion she felt as the bribes were parceled out and the promises were made.
Many abuses undoubtedly took place that night. Representative Nick Smith (R-Mich.) later revealed what may have been the worst: that former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Representative Candice Miller (R-Mich.) tried to bribe him with political favors to change his vote — an infraction for which the House Ethics Committee later admonished them. Through these means, the Republican leadership succeeded in passing a bill whose goal was, according to Representative Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), to “end Medicare as we know it.”
We'll find out before too long how the 'lobbying' morphed into bribes and worse. Boehner's balls are being crushed by the extremist terrorists who've taken charge of the Republican Party and he'll do what it takes to get his 218 votes.
Stay tuned.