REPUBLICANS: Disingenuous, Inc.

Last August 21 (2009) I wrote the following on my WhereTheGuysAre.com web site: “Plainly, the Health Care Reform act of 2009 will NOT be passed with ANY Republican participation. It's time to give up on any illusions of bi-partisan support from the party of 'No!’ and move on.” If it hadn’t become clear to the Democratic majority, it certainly was clear yesterday when the Republicans participating in the historic “Health Care Reform Summit” at Blair House went around the table stupidly parroting the same 3 or 4 “talking points” that mostly amounted to “scrap this bill and start over”, “a better approach is to go step-by-step” and “starting with a clean sheet of paper”. (Matthew’s production staff put together a sound-bite montage that frankly scary in revealing the obvious collusion between the various Republicans. I hope you’ve had a chance to catch it on YouTube or MSNBC.) What these same Republicans fail to mention is that they, for the most part, totally abdicated on input to the bill as it was developing, steadfastly taking the position that "all this health care reform stuff really isn't what the country needs". Well, perhaps not YOUR millionaire friends, Senator McConnell or Congressman Boehner, but I daily see ordinary American citizens who are struggling with the "realities" of their health care (or lack of it, or the threat of it being about to disappear) and that seems like a pretty apparent NEED to me.

The day before on “The Rachel Maddow Show” (also on MSNBC) guest Barney Frank (congressman from Massachussetts) made the plain and simple statement that the “dominant Republicans today do not want Barack Obama to succeed either in job creation or in deficit reduction and that’s why you get this intellectual inconsistency. It’s not intellectually inconsistent—it’s dishonest.” To me this combination of the collusion of the talking points to kill health care reform and in plainly WISHING FOR the worst outcome for the country as far as jobs and the deficit/economy removes ANY bit of credibility from 95% or more of those who have ‘R’ by their name as their party designation.

How can these folks consider themselves patriotic Americans if what they hope for is the “failure” of an administration and majority party that is working so hard to put thing right for common working folk? It was the departing Bush administration that left the country with the biggest deficit in history (following on the heels of inheriting the largest SURPLUS in history on Bill Clinton's departure). A country and world financial system literally teetering on the edge of collapse and a pending (and mostly in-place) TRILLION dollar bail-out package put together by Bush's departing Treasury Secretary Hank ("take good care of my buddies at GoldmanSachs") Paulson.

It’s obvious who the masters of these Republicans are because of their constant emphasis of pushing for tax “relief” for the top 1% of the population while at the same time having complete and total disregard for those who are daily losing their health care whether through collusion on the part of the insurers, rising and crippling insurance costs or other unregulated measures designed to maximize profit and the nice big bonuses for upper management.

Health care reform MUST be passed and RECONCILIATION is the way to do it. It simply galls me that the Republicans now are trying to re-sell reconciliation as “the nuclear option”. (It never was.  The “nuclear option” was something the Repubs threatened the Democrats with when some judicial appointments were being held up procedurally by Democrats. And while we’re at it, it’s important to put some facts on the table: Republicans in the Senate used “reconciliation” 16 out of the past 22 times it was used.)

It’s time to bypass these nay-sayers and get ‘er done!

As Chris Matthews said today on MSNBC’s “Hardball”: “No more yelling ‘No!’ from the belfry.”

Time for put-up or SHUDDUP!

We've now had a solid YEAR of the "party of NO" and it's time to get the business of the national government seriously back on track. The notorious filibuster has been used TWICE AS MUCH since the Democratic party (not "Democrat party" you ignoramus insulting Rethuglicans!) gained control of the U. S. Senate in November 2006. And it's really not "the filibuster" but the threat to block a vote on a particular bill or a single up-down vote.

It's time to squash this and get back to simple majority rule. I've done my first Twitter poll here, so join in the fun and make your choice visible (though anonymous) and public.

Democracy is about coming to grips with our problems--NOT just slamming on the brakes (except for the pork barrel projects that you are holding the rest of the Senate hostage for -- YES: that means your Senator Shelby and your pork-barrel demand that the Senate overturn a successful Boeing bid in favor or AirBus Instrusies just because they have an assembly facility in Alabama!)

Time for a new WAR!

It’s not Iran, but right here in the United States SENATE. Today it’s the warfare of the minority Republicans holding anything but pork-barrel bills hostage to the “filibuster”. Senator Sherod Brown’s speech on the topic of confirming the latest “hostage” (Greg Becker, nominated in April 2009 to head the National Labor Relations Board) was a riveting plea for some common sense among the Rethuglicans to do something besides just saying “no!” and attempting to hand the President a political defeat that they hope will bring them benefits in the November elections. This is politics of the most revolting and cynical design and it’s time to draw a firm line in the sand and say “put up or shut up!”  At a time when the financial health of the country (and to no lesser degree the global economy is at peril) it’s just not very bipartisan to say “let’s start over on a Health Care reform bill that can’t pass Congress”. 

Uh, wake, up, folks! It HAS passed—including the 60-vote filibuster override. The polls the Rethuglicans cite reflect the confusion that they have introduced, along with their co-conspirators, the for-profit healthcare industry. Only in a delusionary-induced could “death panels” and other fictional horrors of “socialized medicine” creep into what purports to be a serious discussion about how to improve our lot.

ENOUGH! Every Democratic Representative and Senator needs to pick up whatever gumption got them there and RESIST this tomfoolery. To expect anything less at this time borders on national insanity. Get past Health Care Reform, throw in some legitimate and rational tort reform (limitations), put some true competition in place (removing the authorization for the health care monopoly that has stood for so many decades) and expose those congresspersons who are in the PAY of big Pharma, the health care cartel and those who really don’t have the true “public interest” in mind.

Make a clear comparison between government that is legitimate and working for the “common man” and the party that brought us the financially irresponsible tax cuts for the super-wealthy. It’s time!