Senate and WH bozos really working hard ...

... to figure out how to nix or emasculate the public option without getting killed (politically speaking).

White House, Senate Principals Discuss Public Option, But Reach No Decisions--Talks Continue Tomorrow

What a dilemma! Poor babies. Do they do their jobs as representatives of the voters or do they do the bidding of their corporate masters. The script just isn't so easy to write as usual. Which will they choose? It's obvious what they want to do ... but what will they do?

Crazy, but true ...

I like the way Krugman summarizes Bush's 'presidential' accomplishments:

The symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome, in its fullest version, are that you believed

1. That the Bush tax cuts were sold on false pretenses, and were fiscally irresponsible

2. That the Iraq war was sold on false pretenses, and that invading Iraq was a mistake

3. That for all his posturing, Bush was actually doing a bad job of fighting Al Qaeda

4. That the use of torture was ineffective as well as immoral, and was hurting America

5. That the economic expansion of the middle Bush years, such as it was, was driven by an unsustainable housing bubble

6. That the Bush administration was distorting science to avoid taking action on climate change

Crazy stuff, with one common theme: it was all true.

This could be interpreted as ...

... on education Obama wants what he wants but on health care Obama wants what the Republicans and the killers of the sick and injured in the insurance industry want; that is nothing ... or worse.

Senate Using Reconciliation On Major Piece Of Obama Agenda – Not Health Care, But Education

But then again how could anyone get that impression from Obama's hot and cold behavior?

Killer Kyl is just not sure that having no healthcare is a killer ...

Kyl: 'I'm Not Sure It's A Fact' That Lack Of Health Insurance Causes People To Die

Gregory then asked, "And is it a necessity to tackle the fact that there are more and more Americans who die because they don't have access to health insurance?"

Kyl's response:

I'm not sure that it's a fact that more and more people die because they don't have health insurance. But because they don't have health insurance, the care is not delivered in the best and most efficient way.

I imagine Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) -- of "Republicans want you to die quickly" fame -- might have a field day with this one.

Now Jon Kyl, an embarrassment to Arizona second to John McCain, is not Bush-stupid. So he must be making this up as he goes along. Like McCain does.

There's reality:

• 45,000 deaths are linked to lack of health insurance coverage each year
• uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher death risk than their privately-insured counterparts

Then there are the Republicans ...

Today's quote, oh well, let's make that two ...

... When corporate gains are privatized and losses are socialized, you think maybe the working people have finally had enough of picking up the slack? ...

-- The Wealthy Are Very Upset That People Are Angry. Oh, Stop Your Sobbing. by Susie Madrak

---------------------------------

... many Americans don't ever think much about the huge gap between what we claim about ourselves and what we do. But much of the rest of the world -- certainly including the Muslim world -- sees that discrepancy quite clearly, often up-close. ...

-- David Rohde's insights into what motivates the Taliban by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

Today's quote ...

... That is so very, very unexpected: that policies designed by former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson, ultimate Wall Street servant Tim Geithner, and the banking-owned United States Congress would redound to the personal benefit of investment banking executives but not the general public. ...

-- Another Goldman executive named to key government post as its profits skyrocket by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

Today's quote ...

I now see that it does not matter how many Democrats are elected. The Democratic leadership values “bipartisanship” above principles, the needs of working class Americans, or keeping their promises. The Democratic party in Washington insists on handing over complete control to whichever Republican senator will take it.

-- My Apology To Former Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee by Jon Walker

Yeah, yeah ...

When it comes to making law enforcement decisions, however, she said the FTC will go after the cases that are black and white. “We’re not interested in playing gotcha in the gray areas.”

We're not interested in gray areas ... right, except when we want to get someone who annoys us.

So we continue using Afghanistan for one of our wars ...

... so that Dianne Feinstein's husband Richard Blum (among others) can increase his millions through the deaths of thousands of Americans (and others).

Democrats and Afghanistan: what's at stake

I didn't know ...

The last I knew, being a commercial pilot was a high paying job.

Michael Moore: Do You Want Airline Pilots to Be Working Two Jobs?

Today's quote ...

It's often forgotten or obscured, but the central political fact now is that the Democratic Party controls everything in Washington -- from the branches of government to favors doled out to lobbyists to the policies that Congress and the President enact. Wars that are fought and bills that are or are not passed and policies that are maintained are, by definition, Democratic actions. The dreaded Right can't dictate or stop anything. That's the burden of having massive majorities in all areas -- everything that happens is the result of what the Democratic Party does, and that's why the divisions and conflicts that truly matter are ones with the party itself. The "right v. left" and even "Democrat v. GOP" drama dominates most of our discourse, yet at this point it is a distracting and largely irrelevant food fight. It's the Democrats who have won the last two elections by large margins and wield all the power, and increasingly the defining conflict is between those whose overarching allegiance is to Obama and the Party as ends in themselves, and those who see those things as mere means to more important ends.

-- Gay issues, the "Fringe Left" and the liberal veal pen by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

The future looks ....?

Glenn Greenwald writes:

As Kaptur said, given the size and scope of "the largest transfer of wealth from the American people to the biggest banks in this country," one would expect there to be massive public interest in what happened and why, and, more so, whether any of this is being fixed (it plainly isn't). One would particularly expect the Democratic Party -- which has long branded itself as being the populist party against Wall Street -- would be leading that charge, for political benefit if not for substantive reasons. But that's clearly not happening, and the primary reason why is because both political parties, as institutions, are dependent on and thus controlled by the very industry that is at the heart of it.

Among the two parties, there's no outlet for the populist anger that Kaptur understands and is voicing because each party is eager to serve the interests of those who fund them. And that's why Democrats have largely ceded the populist anger over Wall Street to GOP operatives who are exploiting the "tea party" movement as the only real organized citizen activism over these issues. ...

[...]

This is hardly unique to the banking industry. This is how the political system works generally. Earnest, substantive debates over this or that policy are so often purely illusory, as the only factor that really drives that outcomes is the question of who owns and thus controls the political system. That central fact subsumes just about everything else.

I keep hoping that I don't live to see how far the US will go along this road ... which means that I hope that we can restore some for-the-people, by-the-people and of-the-people to our government and if that does not happen that at the very least the worsening does not completely stop my enjoyment of life ... as in reality I'm in no hurry to leave it.

Today's quote ...

The whole thing is disgusting: Obama sneaking these in in a last-minute classified briefing. Doing so under cover from Jeff Sessions (what? DiFi and Pat Leahy don’t want responsibility for this??). Pat Leahy letting that happen. A voice vote, so no one will ever hold Leahy and DiFi and Whitehouse and Franken and others responsible for doing this.

-- Obama’s Bipartisanship: Hiding Behind Jeff Sessions’ Skirts When Eliminating Privacy Protections by emptywheel, firedoglake.com

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize ...

TPM has an interpretation of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize that helps with my reaction that isn't this too soon? That Obama actually talks to other nations, is not an embarrassment and has command of the English language are some of the things that I like about him:

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

I guess I'm jaded but I still feel that the reward is being given before the performance. Then we just 'hope' that the performance follows. Not unlike the rest of political and corporate structure in these here --no-health-care, decimated-retirement funds, increasing joblessness, increasingly homelessness for the not-rich and not-elite-- United States.