JABbering Stooge

This is why we lost two governors in the special election last night:

WASHINGTON — In a blow to the White House, the Senate’s top Democrat signaled Tuesday that Congress may fail to meet a year-end deadline for passing health care legislation, leaving the measure’s fate to the uncertainties of the 2010 election season.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., spoke as Democratic officials said it could be December before Senate debate begins in earnest on the issue atop President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda, months after senior lawmakers and the White House had hoped. The drive to pass legislation has been plagued for months by divisions within the party’s rank and file.

US House: UN report on Gaza “war crimes” is biased

• Silly Richard Goldstone! Don’t you know that the only truly Fair & Balanced™©® report is one that says that the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian?

“Shorter” concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard and given a beneficial mutation by the fine folks at Sadly, No!
I am aware of all Internet tradtions.™

So, Judas Iscariot shows his true colors once more, eh?

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told reporters today that he would in fact filibuster any health care bill he doesn’t agree with—and right now, he doesn’t agree with the public option proposal making its way through the Senate.

“I told Senator Reid that I’m strongly inclined—I haven’t totally decided, but I’m strongly inclined—to vote to proceed to the health care debate, even though I don’t support the bill that he’s bringing together because it’s important that we start the debate on health care reform because I want to vote for health care reform this year. But I also told him that if the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill.”

When will the Senate Dems wise up to the fact that Joe Lieberman has not voted for one damn thing that they have wanted since 2001, and likely never will so long as he remains a Senator? When will they punish him for constantly stabbing them in the back?

When pigs fly, if Sen. Chris Dodd has anything to say about it.

*SIGH*

How did I end up in a party of co-dependent wimps and corporate whores who keep making excuses for their abusers?

If you missed last night’s hour-long Special Comment (You sad, sad person!), here it is in all its glory:

Amen. If the Rethuglicans manage to kill comprehensive health care reform, well…

“Weep for the future, Na’Toth. Weep for us all.”
— G’Kar, Babylon 5, “Revelations”

Sidebar: My only quibble with the Special Comment (and it’s a very, VERY minor, nit-picky quibble) is that he got the capital of Montana wrong: It’s Helena, not Butte.

First the Rockefeller amendment to put a public option into the Max Baucus (D — CIGNA) health care “reform” bill fails by a vote of 15-8.

Then the Schumer amendment to add a (very watered down) public option to the Baucus Baka bill fails by a vote of 13-10.

Can we get some real Democrats in office in 2010? You know, ones who aren’t willing prostitutes for the murder-by-spreadsheet cartel?

Also.

Over at The Grist, David Roberts explains why now-former Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Van Jones is not the scary bogeyman that Glenn Beck makes him out to be. The rest of the piece is a good, serious read, but I could help but laugh at this line:

A while back I lampooned a Glenn Beck segment on Van Jones, who’s an advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to Beck, Jones is the man on the inside for a vast cryptosocialist conspiracy involving the Apollo Alliance, Color of Change, the Center for American Progress, George Soros, ACORN, Al Queda, and the Trilateral Commission. Everything that goes bump in Beck’s closet at night.

Back then I still thought the Gomer Pyle meets Father Coughlin shtick was harmless, too clownish to be taken seriously. Ah, those innocent days before the nation was locked in a room with frantic teabaggers.

Thanks, Dave. After Glenn Beck’s high-tech lynching of Van Jones, I needed some levity.

Sidebar: I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Glenn Beck’s petulant revenge fantasy has eerie parallels with Bill O’Reilly’s jihad against Dr. George Tiller. While the scalp claimed by Beck was fortunately metaphorical rather than literal, we’ve already seen how quickly right-wing lunacy can spiral into violence. And it’s just going to get worse the more Obama caves to the lunatic fringe.

Please tell me this isn’t true:

PHOENIX — The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.

The “public option,” a new government insurance program akin to Medicare, has been a central component of Mr. Obama’s agenda for overhauling the health care system, but it has also emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said the public option was “not the essential element” for reform and raised the idea of the co-op during an interview on CNN.

Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., when a university student challenged him on how private insurers could compete with the government.

Seriously, Mr. President, if you and the Congressional Dems pull a France in this fight and surrender without a shot being fired, you deserve to lose in 2010 and 2012. We are dangerously close to losing this country to the fascists, and the health care reform battle is probably the make or break point. This is how Germany slid into fascism: a weak government all too willing to make concessions to an opposition that would be satisfied with nothing less than the utter destruction of the ruling party.

We are in the river, Mr. President, and the scorpion is rearing back to strike. Do the right thing. If you fail, I will be watching the death of the America I was raised to love and defend from north of 49^th parallel.

The DNC finally awakens from its overlong slumber to smite the GOP for their “mob rule” on behalf of the murder-by-spreadsheet cartel:

Glad to see you finally join the party, DNC.

Welcome back, KO. We missed you.

Baucus Could Lose Chairmanship Over Stalled Health Care Negotiations

Oh, pleasepleasepleaseplease PLEEEEEEEZZZZEE let this happen! Nothing could be sweeter than for the DINO who had single-payer advocates arrested and then joked about it to have his chairmanship yanked out from under his fat, murder-by-spreadsheet industry-protecting ass.