Wojtek
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The idea occurred to me in early summer 2009 during the healthcare bill debates. Barbara Lee held a couple of district phone conferences here. She is co-chair of the Progressive Caucus. She told us that we, the voters were supposed to fight for keeeping the public option as part of the bill. It really pissed me off. How exact are `we' supposed to do that? Isn't that your job?
So I looked up several of the districts of the members in that caucus. The ones I looked at seem to be districts very much like her's, safe, generally very liberal, with a good mix of ethnic and white. Grijalva's base for example included Tucson which is liberal by Arizona standards. Maxine Waters had the more liberal white area of LA as well as many of the black and mixed ethnic areas, etc.
So, I began to wonder why the fuck that caucus didn't stick Pelosi and Obama hard. Keep this or else we vote against the bill. They had twice as many votes as the asshole Blue Dogs. I looked up some of the Blue Dogs. Most were in districts with thin liberal support from student areas like Missoula, Montana, or Boulder, Colorado.
About this time, Obama was inviting the Blue Dogs over to the White House, while the Progressive Caucus had asked for an appointment and was still on hold. By the time he did meet with them, the public option had been turned into a state level option, outside the bill. In other words the states were not forbidden to write their own public healthcare option. Thanks a lot asshole. I am still not sure if the federal guidlines exclude abortion and other reproductive and women's health services. Abortion is just a cover. The real issue is that women (and children) use more healthcare services because of child baring and rearing needs---where private insurance usually excludes these services or charges much higher rates for coverage.
I hope the Republicans do kill that bullshit bill. Grijalva told Democracy Now, the way they will probably do it is by defunding the appropriations for the sections of the bill they don't like.
Then there was Haiti. Obama sent the Marines to protect the NGOs? The money promised and supposedly managed by viceroy Clinton is still languishing somewhere because the US will not hand it over to the government and doesn't seem interested in working with the government but only through the NGO systems.
Then there was BP. What was the Coast Guard doing coordinating with BP? Covering up the vast extent of the disaster, excluding scientific teams and journalists. NOAA shut down some of its satellite images on its web site used to map the scope of the slicks out at sea, and only focused on the coast areas. NASA has the capability of mapping the whole Gulf. You can use different wave lengths to see below the surface---where the fuck are those images? Then the FDA certified fishing was safe? Obama renewed drilling and leasing? Fuck you. I wouldn't eat sea food from the Gulf, unless you put a gun to my head.
There was Copenhagen. Then more recently the refusal to put a moritorium on foreclosures.
The list of doing nothing or covering up a mess is now very long.
Once you realize what's going on from my perspective you can see a systematic cover-up of large scale government and corporate wrong-doing. And I haven't even mentioned the wars, the CIA drones, Honduras, Israel, or Eric Holder's bullshit DoJ.
Obama had a majority in the Senate and House. You just can't blame the Republicans, a filibuster threat, or the tender sensibilities of the white male swing vote. What is that bullshit about?
Don't get me started...
CG