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In a lengthy interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Congressman Dennis Kucinich explained why he would not vote for the present health care bill and defended his position against attacks from people on the left like Markos Moulitsas. He also spoke about the subjects of Afghanistan, campaign finance, and the passing of activist Granny D.
I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There's about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, "Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure's building. Just forget about it," actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it's really critical to take this stand, because without it, there's no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.
Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos. We'll be here all weekend.
This is an open source project, so feel free to add your own insights. Here's the news I found lurking around the Internets...
Adam Green of the PCCC has decided that the White House has a loser mentality because they think the public option doesn't have the votes in the Senate.
Obama is telling America, "No, we can't." But we've been showing more and more each day, "Yes, we can" pass the public option. If President Obama doesn't think the votes exist in the Senate, he needs to name which senators would oppose it. If he can't or won't, there's no reason for House progressives to be part of the White House's loser mentality
I'll name names Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Tom Carper, Bill Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Claire Mccaskill, Jon Tester, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Kay Hagan, Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad, Mark Warner, Jim Webb. There are 10 No votes in there for any type of a decent public option, 6 of those no votes are for sure.
Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos.
No real programming notes today, so here's the news...
Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos. We'll be here all weekend.
We were busy yesterday watching this summit thing. This was actually pretty historic. Someone feel free to correct me, but I can't remember a time when the President had a major sit down with Congress since George HW Bush's budget meeting at Andrews Air Force Base in 1990. The elder Bush was forced to break his "no new taxes" promise. That one was done in secret, by the way.
Anyway, here's the news. But the summit is so yesterday, and I'll get to that eventually.
In a post on Salon today, Glenn Greenwald reveals to readers the essential tactic of the Democratic Party leadership. It's not trying to get Republican support, it's not filibuster reform, it's not registering people to vote. It's much more manipulative than that.
It is an explanation for the "lack of spine" that Democrats are often said to have - which, we can now see, is merely a convenient illusion for prominent Democrats. It is a scapegoat that they can use so that progressives will continue voting for them even though we get nothing that we ask for, and instead have to take whatever crumbs are given to us.
So what is it?
This is what the Democratic Party does; it's who they are. They're willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it.
Last Sunday on Face The Nation Colin Powell debunks the right wing claim that America is less safe under President Obama.
Transcript below
Bob Schieffer: Let's talk a little bit about national security the Vice President, the former vice President, you just saw him there. He has almost on a weekly basis said something about the President is putting the nation's security at risk. He talked about dithering, he talked about how we should still have the option of waterboarding if necessary when we catch these terrorists. Are we less safe? Has Barack Obama made this country less safe?
Colin Powell: Well first of all let me start by laying out some. The transportation security administration created by George Bush is still at our airports. They take care of me everyday that I go to an airport. The director of national intelligence was created by George Bush and under Barack Obama is still hard at work. Counterterroism authorities and forces are hard at work. Law enforcement are hard at work. We've gone after the enemy in Afghanistan with 50,000 more troops, more predators are striking Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. We have continued the policies that President Bush put into place with respect to Iraq. And so I don't know where the claim comes from that we're less safe. The point is made that well we don't waterboard anymore or use extreme interrogation techniques. Most of those extreme interrogation techniques and waterboarding were done away with in the Bush administration. And they've been made officially away with in this current administration. The issue about sending people to military commission, we're not using military commissions like we should. Any time you lock someone up or catch a a terrorist lets give them a military commission. In 8 years military commissions have put 3 people on trial. Two have served relatively short sentences and are free, one guy is in jail. Meanwhile the federal courts are article 3 regular legal court system have put dozens of terrorists in jail and they're fully capable of doing it. So the suggestion that somehow that military commissions are the way to go isn't borne out by the history of the military commissions. I think some people just think give them to the military and the military will handle them. Well guess what? Officers in the military are obliged to follow the Constitution. Military lawyers are obliged under their oath to give the best possible defense to the defendant regardless if he's a terrorist or not. And so you didn't get out of the military commissions what a lot of people thought in the beginning you would get and a lot of us didn't think it was a good idea in the beginning.
Bob Schieffer: So your bottom line is
Colin Powell: My bottom line answer is that the nation is still at risk. The terrorists are out there and they are trying to get through. But to suggest that somehow we have become much less safe because of the actions of this administration I don't think is borne out by the facts.
Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos.
On a programing note, you still have time to kick in a vote for this series. We are up for a kOscar (it really was an honor just to be nominated). You can vote for this series here nominated in (#7) "News or Political." The other diary for more categories is posted here. Many thanks to Laughing Planet and Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse for their work on this.
A story I would have never noticed had I not been in Hawaii and picked up the Honolulu Advertiser all week. Conversely, the fringe right has already gotten a hold of this article. When I travel, I love to get a sense of what is going on politically and culturally. Being on vacation, I tried to recharge my batteries and stay away from politics and scouring for news. However, I'm always curious and hence the update.
There were a lot of stories about the cutting of government services something unfortunately all too common on the mainland. Of course when you have to deal with idiotic requests like these discussed you might have a problem.
More than a year after his historic election, requests for President Obama's birth certificate continue to pour into the state's understaffed Health Department from people on the Mainland who refuse to believe he was born in Honolulu in 1961.
In an attempt to stem the flow of requests, the agency recently set up a special page on its Web site devoted to the issue of Obama's birth certificate and who is eligible to get the records.
But the requests for the president's birth certificate keeping coming at a rate of 40 to 50 a month, according to Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo, who has been handling the requests since Obama became a serious presidential candidate in 2008.
"They're spurred on by these 'birther' blogs who direct them to bombard the Health Department even though they have no legitimate right to the information," Okubo said.
"They've been misled to believe that the state of Hawai'i gives out birth information to anyone who requests it, but really our law protects birth information. We're entrusted with protecting people's vital records. To open them up would mean opening them up to identity theft and other types of concerns."
State law allows birth certificates to be issued to family members, legal guard- ians, representatives of a person's estate, or by court order or other legal purposes.
Pass this on, make it a talking point for Democrats, make it viral.
GOOD NEWS! Suck on that, Dick Cheney
Two senior Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent days inside Pakistan, officials said Thursday, as American and Pakistani intelligence agents continued to press their offensive against the group's leadership after the capture of the insurgency's military commander last month.
Afghan officials said the Taliban "shadow governors" for two provinces in northern Afghanistan had been detained in Pakistan. Mullah Abdul Salam, the Taliban's leader in Kunduz, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan were captured about two weeks ago in a raid on a house in Akora Khattack, according to a leader at the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqaniya madrasa there.
To the people such as myself who would NEVER, EVER make an alliance with Grover Norquist or support him or any of his allies, I present to you a guy who is so FULL OF SH1T I simply did not know what to do with myself.
Evidence of how full of shit this person is can be found below the fold.
Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post your manifestos.
On a programming note, this entry is going to be a bit thin and probably rather bitter. The Federal Government is closed for the second day in a row, costing $100 million in lost productivity. Tomorrow's not looking very good, either. Now I'm from Pennsylvania but this is getting ridiculous. And it really isn't helping that a quarter of the district's snowplows are out of order.
Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos. We'll be here all snowy weekend.
All the Hill news that fit to blog is over the fold...
At a DNC fundraiser last night, President Obama had an interesting exchange with a Democratic organizer about health care reform, wherein he appeared to suggest that Congress could drop the ball and fail to pass a bill--and that voters should judge them harshly if they do.
"[I]t may be that -- you know, if Congress decides -- if Congress decides we're not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not," Obama said.
From today's meeting between President Obama and Senate Democrats today comes this gem . . . .
"If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression -- we don't tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don't put in place any insurance reforms, we don't mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they're doing now because we don't want to stir up Wall Street -- the result is going to be the same," he said. "I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us into this fix in the first place."
Middle class Americans, Obama said, "are more and more vulnerable, and they have been for the last decade, treading water. And if our response ends up being, you know, because we don't want to -- we don't want to stir things up here, we're just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don't know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us."
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