“I’m sorry, but your Condyloma isn’t covered by your insurance.”

“But, but . . . Obamacare passed!  We all have insurance now!”

“Yes, but there was no pubic option in the final bill . . .”

At least they got “socialism” right this time, poor ducks.

I for one am of the opinion that all Americans should have the freedom to exercise their pubic options.

Our founding fathers would have settled for no less.

What’s really sad is that Obama’s making noises about giving in to these fools. What can I say, way to go Obama. Soon you’ll be looking like Bill Clinton, but with less play and more wars.

No Pubic Option?

Does that mean the gay abortion mandatory sex changes are off the table?

Yeah Zifnab, I was wondering about my favorite program to turn all God-Fearing Americans into Muslim Communistikal Socialist Atheist Anarchists. Is the writing on the wall for GFAiMCSAA?

Is it just me, or is that woman trying to look like Anne Coulter?

Abstinence-only is back, I guess.

I think, though, that this shows astroturf isn’t quite the right name for the game these crazies are playing. It’s more as if the big players sowed a huge pile of kudzu seeds in everyone’s yard and are now pouring on the fertilizer.

You’ve gotten it all wrong. She was protesting outside of a day spa. She wants them to end the barbaric practice of the bikini wax.

NO PUBIC OPTION!

Dan,
I’m with you, only I wonder when it was any different. Sometimes it feels like the dumbest fucking people on the planet always dictate out pub(l)ic policy, and it’s only through sheer luck or response to a disaster that we manage to get anything done.

The dumbest people are not dictating public policy, it’s the smartest lobbyists throwing wave after wave of money at entrenched, challenger-less “centrist” Democrats in unpopulated states and for good measure jingling some keys in the form of town hall dumbasses to suitably distract us.

I mean, I really hope this is just a “laugh to keep from cryin’” post, insofar as ‘debating’ or ‘debunking’ placard-carrying morons is about important as me peeing on the UT Intramural fields to relieve 2.5 years of Austin drought.

I think ‘astroturf’ is the wrong way to criticize the Tea-Baggers. Yes, groups like Freedomworks and of course Fox news manipulate them and keep them going. But then, groups like MoveOn.org, SEIU, and UnitedforPeace.org influence what I do as well so how can I complain?

No, the thing to criticize about the Tea-Baggers is that their politics are paranoid, fantasy-based, and bad for the country. And that they express these politics in ways that are borderline-thuggish. They aren’t just stooges of FOX News, they’re a real genuine movement… just a counterproductive one, and possibly even a dangerous one.

The real problem is the obsolete nature of the Senate. It should either be abolished or at least have states with over (x) million people get a third Senator. Or failing either of those things, do what Sen. Sanders wants to do and elect Chairmans rather than have them retain their positions based on seniority.

Montana and North Dakota should not get to dictate the terms of health care reform to the rest of the country.

If we had a.unicameral legislature with just the House, this bill would already be signed.

Norbizness from #13

Yeah, debating with the Tea-Baggers is pretty useless. There’s a chasm between my view of the world (we should use the power of government in productive ways) and theirs (oh no, there are scary socialist monsters under my bed!).

Oh yeah, and fuck Harry Reid. Chuck Schumer or Russ Feingold for Majority leader, please.

Man, if I were a confidence artist I’d do anything I could to get my hands on the Freedomworks CRM database—contact list for dimwitted suckers like Pubic Girl would be like the Glengarry leads for someone working the short or long con.

I think ‘astroturf’ is the wrong way to criticize the Tea-Baggers. Yes, groups like Freedomworks and of course Fox news manipulate them and keep them going. But then, groups like MoveOn.org, SEIU, and UnitedforPeace.org influence what I do as well so how can I complain?

“Astroturf” is exactly the correct way to criticise the Teabaggers—they pretend to be spontaneous grassroots demonstrators, when they’re actually dim-witted suckers who have their talking points, their protest venues, and sometimes even their signage generated by Freedomworks and various other wingnut welfare rackets funded by the Kochs, by Scaife, and other oligarch families.

SEIU, UFP, and even move-on are pretty up-front about the sponsoring organisations.

All that said, agreed on the nature of the Teabaggers—they’re living in cloud-cuckooland, and loving it. It’s no use debating them, but liberals and progressives have to start countering them at every turn (not just in blogs) instead of giving MSM fair-n-balanced respect to their logic-challenged, uninformed views.

I was at the town hall meeting in Durham held at NCCU.  Didn’t get into the actual event, but the theater of democracy outside was amazing.  There was a small group of anti-reform/anti-Obama protesters outside and one had a big sign advocating “rebelion” against socialism in our government.  I really wanted to ask him a) if he had been homeschooled, and b) how he felt about the “socialism” of the federal highway system.  The huge number of the rest of the crowd really overwhelmed the wingnuts though.  Funny how the antis were ALL middle white men while the rest of the crowd was all ages, genders, colors, all levels of abilities, etc, and mostly positive about wanting to DO something.

Any chance we can identify some people in this crowd as Brooks Brothers Rioters? I’m betting there’s staffers from PhRMA and lobbying groups there..

Let me put it another way, and by putting it I mean using a Simpsons analogy:

Bart: Lisa, here is—as the French say—le fake diorama.  I’ll create a diversion and you make the switch [walks to center of gym]. Hey everybody, whoa!  Look at me, I’m over here.  Turn this way right now!

Sherri: Hey, it’s Bart!

Milhouse: And he’s doin’ stuff!

[everyone turns to look, fascinated. Lisa grabs Alison’s diorama, leaves the fake one in its place, and hides Alison’s in a trap door in the gym floor]

Skinner: Bart, stop creating a diversion and get out of here!

No socialism? Well, I guess they can kiss their social security checks and federal mail service good-bye. Not that I had much faith in my fellow citizens to start with, but seeing the reaction to Obama’s proposed health care reform is very depressing. I only wish we could have health care like that of the UK or France. Short of moving to Canada or Europe, I don’t know if I’ll ever see universal health care.

This rally was about three blocks from my house. Something that has been driving me nuts, every news report I have seen cites 250 people or so as attending…yeah, only if 180 or so were Invisible People.

The dumbest people are not dictating public policy, it’s the smartest lobbyists throwing wave after wave of money at entrenched, challenger-less “centrist” Democrats in unpopulated states and for good measure jingling some keys in the form of town hall dumbasses to suitably distract us.

That really is the other piece of moldy bread in this shite sandwich we’re being served: many of these Dem legislators (and not just from underpopulated states) are essentially “on the take” in the form of donations from and special access granted to corporate “persons.” As it happens, today I read Chris Hedges’ review of Sheldon S. Wolin’s Democracy Inc. which encapsulates the situation as follows:

Wolin uses the term inverted totalitarianism to describe our descent into despotism. “Inverted” totalitarianism does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, as “classical” kinds of totalitarianism do. The power centers of inverted totalitarianism are corporate and usually anonymous. It does not openly discredit democracy. It pays homage to the democratic ideal, patriotism, and the Constitution while quietly subverting democratic institutions.

The large corporate interests are working it from both ends: propaganda via the Teabaggers and Faux News, and influence-peddling via the lobbyists.

I for one am of the opinion that all Americans should have the freedom to exercise their pubic options.

Our founding fathers would have settled for no less.

Ben Franklin, certainly.

Best analogy seen yet for the possibility of Barack Obama and the (still hypothetical) bill with a public option dropped:  King Solomon waving half a bloody baby about and wondering why everyone seems so upset at his compromise…

If we had a.unicameral legislature with just the House, this bill would already be signed.

If we had a unicameral legislature, Bush would have done a lot more damage.  The Senate was the only thing standing in the way of Bush and his stooges completely gutting this country.  It works both ways.  The Senate keeps conservatives from destroying the country and hold liberals back from fixing it.  All in all, I’d rather have the Senate in place.  There are too many batshit crazy people in this country for my liking.

I agree with you a bit, keshimeshi, but Senate Democrats also did a great imitation of a toreador on some really destructive stuff. I’m all for keeping the Senate, but the filibuster needs to go.

I read an opinion that the anti-healthcare “riots” are a combination of astroturf (big pharma, insurance companies, and Faux News) and real outrage.  He said (I really need to look up who wrote this) said that there was too much genuine emotion for it to be fake, but that the opponents were going on wrong information. 

So I guess the strategy is to put out false, upsetting (“they’re going to make you pull the plug on Granny!”) misinformation to low-information voters, and then sit back and watch them get spun up.  And, of course, the protester are indignant that they’re being dismissed as stupid, which makes them get louder, which brings more media coverage, which emboldens other low-information voters to feel that the “elite liberals” are laughing at them, which brings people like Pubic Girl…. it’s all a downward spiral to the lowest point of debate.

I really think it comes down to a class issue:  if the liberal, east/west coast elites think it’s a good idea, then by God, any red-blooded middle American (regardless of of income or location) will of course oppose it.  Regardless of what *it* is.  As much fun as it is to point and laugh at people like the woman in the photo, it only fuels their sense of injustice.

Nothing different from the last election, but this time it makes even less sense. But unless there’s an IQ requirement for voting, we just have to come up with a better message and not let the right-wing take over the narrative any more than it has.

I wonder when it was any different. Sometimes it feels like the dumbest fucking people on the planet always dictate our pub(l)ic policy…

Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.
—-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

My grandmother was a kindergarten teacher in an area where many of the families were not well-educated. One day she got an absence note that read something along the lines of, “Please excuse little Ignatz’s absence last week, as he had a rash in his public area.”

I’m with Keshmeshi.  We need the filibuster, or at least the threat of it, to prevent conservatives from running amok next time they’re in power.  Without it Gingrich and his Senate buddies would have enacted the Contract with America, and Shrub would have abolished Social Security and put all the money in the stock market.

Ditto three Senators - remember the Federalist Papers?  As horrid as it sounds, right now it is working *exactly* the way Madison et al. intended:  giving someone from a small state as much power as someone from a large state.  It’s worked for liberals, too, or have you forgotten all the times that Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were the only things that stood between this country and a right-wing rout? 

Seniority…that should probably be limited.  But again, please remember that the sole reason Barney Frank, a gay liberal from an elite East Coast city, is so damn powerful is because he’s been in the House almost thirty years.  Ditto Tip O’Neill before him.  Yes, there are real disadvantages to the current system, but we’ve used it to our advantage over the years and will need it again when the Republicans (or whatever they call the party in a few years) are back in power.

I’m with Keshmeshi.  We need the filibuster, or at least the threat of it, to prevent conservatives from running amok next time they’re in power.  Without it Gingrich and his Senate buddies would have enacted the Contract with America, and Shrub would have abolished Social Security and put all the money in the stock market.

I don’t oppose the filibuster, I oppose the rule that allows one party to merely “threaten” a filibuster to kill any legislation they don’t like.

They need to go back to the days when the use of the filibuster only had power if the party wanting to filibuster was actually willing to… filibuster.  As in, get out the phone book and talk nonstop, shit and piss in their pants (bathroom breaks aren’t allowed in a real filibuster), if they really want to kill legislation.

The rules that are currently in place have effectively nullified the Constitution, which only requires a simple majority in the Senate to pass legislation.  The Founders never intended for the Senate to need a supermajority to get everything done - only in the event that they wanted to override a veto.

So yeah, let’s keep the filibuster.  And anytime one of these Republican fucknozzles wants to use it, let’s make the rules say that they must actually do a real, live filibuster, and if they stop talking - even to use the bathroom - the filibuster dies.

The mere threat of a filibsuter should never have the same weight as an actual filibuster, but it effectively does.  If someone wants to stop the Senate majority from executing its will, they should be forced to actually work to blockade it.

Um…I thought that was only a lack of nerve on the part of Harry Reid, not an actual rule.

There’s an interesting piece on Daily Kos about Howard Dean’s appearance on Morning Joe today, in which Dean laid out exactly how health care reform with the public option will happen. Basically, the Obama administration knows they can’t get a bill with the public option out of the Senate, but they don’t have to. All they need is for the Senate to act positively on some sort of bill. All the dancing around by the administration is to keep the Villagers of the MSM, who have a bipartisanship fetish happy. Meanwhile, the House passes a bill with the public option. So, now the two bills go to a conference committee, where Pelosi calls all the Blue Dog Dem’s bluff. Are Conrad, Nelson and their ilk really going to support a filibuster against their own adminstration’s bill? No! So, the Republican attempt to filibuster will die.

Then, when October 16th rolls around, the bill goes into Reconciliation, where it only needs a one-vote margin in each house to pass. Voila, we win.

Um…I thought that was only a lack of nerve on the part of Harry Reid, not an actual rule.

It is part of an actual rule, called Senate Rule 22 - it deals with “procedural filibusters”, in which 41 Senators only need to state their intent to filibuster to effectively force a filibuster.

Rule 22

The filibuster is related to “cloture,” a rule adopted almost 100 years ago requiring a two-thirds vote. At times this was two-thirds of those voting; for a limited time, it was two-thirds of membership.

In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes needed to invoke cloture to three-fifths (60) of Senate membership. At the same time, they made the filibuster “invisible” by requiring only that 41 Senators state that they intend to filibuster; critics say this makes the modern filibuster “painless.”

The Senate practice of giving as much weight to a procedural filibuster as they do to a traditional “Strom Thurmond going on a racist tirade for 24 consecutive hours” filibuster long precedes Harry Reid’s spineless leadership as Majority Leader.

And since the “procedural filibuster” was added to Senate rules in 1975, the number of filibusters attempted has increased exponentially.  In the 1960s, when a filibuster required yapping for an endless number of hours, there were never more than 7 filibusters in any one Congressional term.  The 110th Congress required 112 cloture votes by the end of 2008 to kill threatened filibusters.

They need to do away with “procedural filibusters” and go back to the rules which require an actual floor filibuster to prevent legislation from moving forward.  The current rule isn’t a true filibuster, it’s a de facto requirement that 60 votes are required to get anything passed in the Senate… which isn’t what the Framers intended.

Yeah, DTG, what you seem to be saying is not that the rules need to be changed, but that the Dems need to *enforce* the rules and make the Republicans decide what they really think is worth the struggle.

Yeah, DTG, what you seem to be saying is not that the rules need to be changed, but that the Dems need to *enforce* the rules and make the Republicans decide what they really think is worth the struggle.

No, I should clarify… the rules do need to be changed.

In order for a bill to be passed by the U.S. Senate, it only requires 50% + 1 of the current membership to get passed - usually 51 members, though if there was one vacanct seat (as was the case for the first 7 months of this year before Sen. Franken was seated), it would only be 50.

However, if the minority party wants to prevent a vote on the bill from even taking place, they have the right to filibuster the bill.

In the old days, this required that there be members of the minority party who would be willing to talk endlessly on the floor for hours, even sometimes days at a time to prevent the vote.  The opposite party had two choices - ride it out, or make changes to the bill to try to get the opposition to back away from the filibuster.  In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 consecutive hours - without moving away from the podium to even use the bathroom (as required by the rules) - to try to kill the Civil Rights Act.  Ultimately, his attempt failed, as the opposition refused to bend on the legislation, and a vote was taken after his filibuster ended and the bill passed.

In 1975, the rule was changed to basically do away with floor filibusters.  The new rule dictated that the opposition didn’t actually have to speak endlessly on the floor to mount a filibuster, they only had to get 41 Senators to say that they would filibuster in order to invoke a filibuster.  The only way to override the filibuster would be to get 60 Senators to vote for cloture, which effectively killed the filibuster and would allow a formal vote on the bill to go forward.  Once cloture is invoked, the actual vote on the bill only requires 50% + 1 to pass the bill.

So the current rules are in fact being enforced - 41 Senators saying that they will filibuster has the exact same procedural effect as an actual floor filibuster, and thus it is much easier to filibuster a bill today than it was before 1975, when it required an opposition senator to actually be willing to talk for hours at a time.  It puts the majority party in the position of functionally needing 60 votes in order to get legislation passed, because most partisan legislation requires a 60 vote cloture before an actual vote can take place.

The only way to change this is to actually change the procedural rules of the Senate, and eliminate the rule which allows a filibuster to be mounted simply by getting 41 Senators to say that they will filibuster.

The rule needs to revert to the pre-1975 rules, which required that Senators had to actually talk for endless hours without moving in order to filibuster a bill.

DTG - didn’t know that…but still, don’t the Democrats have sixty votes, or enough to prevent a filibuster?  Yes, this filibuster rule should be changed, but Harry Reid is not blameless.  He needs to be a leader right now and he’s not stepping up. 

Also, three senators is still a lousy idea, for the same reasons it was back in the 18th century.  I live in a small state that is almost certainly going to lose a Representative after the 2010 census.  Taking away the legislative means by which my state and its interests get an equal voice alongside a high population state (one of which is right next door) is not fair, and not what Madison and the other Federalists had in mind.

DTG - didn’t know that…but still, don’t the Democrats have sixty votes, or enough to prevent a filibuster?  Yes, this filibuster rule should be changed, but Harry Reid is not blameless.  He needs to be a leader right now and he’s not stepping up.

I think you summed up the question we all want the answer to right there.

“Don’t the Democrats have 60 votes?”

One would assume they should, and thus far none of the Democrats (or either of the independents who caucus with the Dems) has come out and said that they would actually support a filibuster on healthcare legislation.

But here’s where we are… Senator Baucus, who heads the committe that is crafting the Senate bill, is insisting that he will not let a bill come out of his committee that doesn’t have the support of Senator Grassley.  And Senator Grassley has said that he won’t support a bill that he cannot sell to a large number of his fellow Republicans.

Baucus is refusing to abide by any sort of deadline, even though Obama wants him to wrap up his committee work by September 15th.

So it is in gridlock, and both Baucus and Conrad are basically saying that they won’t let a bill come out of committee that has a public option, because they know that a bill with a public option won’t get one single vote from the Republicans.  And President Obama is supporting this position by agreeing that the bill should be able to get bipartisan support.

Hey Kent and Max… here’s a hint.  No bill that does anything to impose any restrictions on the private health insurance industry is going to get any Republican support whatsoever.  There is no Republican support for ANY healthcare reform, aside from tax credits and tort reform, both totally useless and regressive policies in this debate.

So it’s time for the Democrats to face the reality that Republican support is non-existant for any bill that will truly reform healthcare.  And President Obama needs to acknowledge that as well.

Then it is time to see where these Democrats really stand.  Bring a bill to the floor, a strong bill that contains a public option, and let the Republicans push for filibuster.  The Republicans have 40 guaranteed votes on their side for a filibsuter, but to get to the magic 41, they have to get at least one Democrat to jump the fence.  The Republicans don’t have enough votes in their own ranks to filibuster the bill, even if it has a public option.  They need at least one Democrat to jump the fence.

Which Democrat is going to go against his own party’s president and side with the Republicans to filibuster the single most important piece of legislation of President Obama’s first term?  Which Democrat is going to put the White House in jeopardy for his own party in 2012?

Which Democrat is going to stab his own constituents in the back and by voting as if he were a Republican, despite his constituents’ desire to have a Democrat in his seat?

Who is gonna be that guy?

It’s time for these people to quit hiding behind the anonymity of 100 faces and step forward and show where they really stand by casting a vote.  If you care about your party, your president, and your constituents, the choice is easy… you don’t stab the people who put you into office in the back by voting with the right wing.

They don’t even have to go on record as liking the bill, or even say that they will vote for the bill in the end.  They just have to be willing to vote down the filibuster.  If they’re willing to do that, nine of these blue dog assholes can go running back to their masters, because once cloture is attained, then only 51 votes will be needed for final passage of the bill.

But right now, these lowlifes need to be willing to show their faces for who they really are.  If they are so damned dead set on preventing a public option, let’s put a bill out there with a public option, take a vote for cloture, and see which one is gonna be the asshole who sides with 40 Republicans to kill the bill.

And when that asshole steps forward and shows his face, let’s let him know that his political career as a Democrat just died.

this shows astroturf isn’t quite the right name for the game these crazies are playing.

Have we considered the possibility that the astroturfers are smart enough to realise that spelling mistakes make you look more authentic?