Kemstone's Journal

Last week, Dylan Ratigan held a “Fix-It” week on his MSNBC show in which he focused not only on the biggest problems our country is facing but also the possible solutions.

One of the biggest problems we have is the influence of money on electoral politics. A congressperson in the House of Representatives serves only a two-year term, which means that as soon as they get elected they have to start campaigning for re-election. They have to spend more time fund-raising than actually governing.

To make matters worse, money really does seem to be the most important thing. In 2008, 9 out of every 10 House races were won by the candidate who spent the most money.

Two possible approaches to a solution were put forward:

Democratic strategist Jimmy Williams advocated for public financing of elections, and gave an interesting fact. There were 130 million tax-returns filed last year, and if everyone had checked a box giving $4 to fund elections, that would have provided all 535 House and Senate members with $1 million for their campaigns. If the public provided all campaign financing, there would be no need to cater to corporate special interests, and you’d have more of a level playing field.

The second good idea, strangely enough, came from a Republican, California representative Darrell Issa, who wanted TV and radio stations to provide air-time for candidates to hold debates on the issues. Equal air-time to all candidates including third-parties would obviously be an enormous improvement to our current system of he-who-can-bombard-us-with-the-most-30-second-campaign-ads-wins. The 30-second campaign ad is the worst possible way to inform voters, but sadly it’s how most voters get their information.

If they gave me carte blanche to change the whole electoral system, I’d make campaigns funded exclusively by the public (corporations can still make ads if they want) and force TV and radio stations to allocate certain portions of time, maybe even just one hour a week, to give equal time to candidates to state their positions on the issues and make their case to the American people. Politics should be driven by arguments again—not just sound-bytes.

These fixes wouldn’t solve everything, of course, but they’d be a good start.

In keeping with my new tradition of sharing petitions I find important on my blog, I’m offering up this link to a petition telling congress that we demand the restoration of Glass-Steagall like rules the prevent banks from gambling with taxpayer money.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Glass-Steagall Act was a regulation put in place after the Great Depression which prevented regular banks from engaging in the kind of risky trading that investment banks do. For decades it prevented another market crash until it was removed during the Clinton administration, and what followed was the inflation of a giant financial bubble on Wall Street and ultimately the financial collapse of 2008 which has brought us to the recession we’re still stuck in.

Thanks to a progressive primary challenge to Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, she tried to boost her progressive credibility by offering one of the strongest amendments to the financial reform package still being worked out in congress, and in spite of Wall Street’s best efforts it still hasn’t been killed.

And it’s obvious why. Telling banks that they can gamble all they want–just not with taxpayer money–is the most obvious thing in the world. It would ensure that if another crash comes, it won’t be our money but Wall Street’s money that’s lost.

Anyone who votes against the re-instatement of Glass-Steagall like laws is, without a doubt, a complete and utter tool of Wall Street. Sign the petition and let them know you understand that.

A very illuminating piece at the Daily Kos informs us that:

The world’s millionaires and billionaires — now totaling 10 million — saw their overall wealth jumped 18.9 percent last year, to $39 trillion.

While when it comes to the rest of us:

It’s been a full three weeks since lawmakers failed to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits, to prevent a 21 percent pay cut to doctors who see Medicare patients and to provide states with $24 billion in Medicaid assistance. The House passed a bill at the end of May, but the Senate adjourned for its Memorial Day recess without acting. Since then, Senate Democrats have been unable muster the 60 vote supermajority needed to get the legislation done.

It’s no wonder the Tea Partiers are so pissed off at the government. They’re getting absolutely nothing done for the average American. Ironically, it’s the Tea Partiers who insist that the government should be doing nothing.

You’d have to be blind not to see that the world’s most powerful people are engaged in a calculated effort to funnel all of the world’s wealth from the lower to the upper classes, thus ensuring that they and their families remain at the upper echelons of power for generations.

Yet they must be blind too if they think they can get away with it. America had a strong middle class for decades–we know what it’s like and we notice that it’s slipping away. My generation will grow up to enjoy a lower standard of living than our parents and grandparents did, and that pisses us off. Not only that, but my generation uses the internet, where we can obtain information without the filter of corporate-propoganda you get on TV news.

Let’s hope the internet remains neutral, that this kind of information keeps spreading, and we somehow figure out a way to use this technology to take the power back.

I write a lot about America’s problems in my blog, but this time I’ll actually offer a solution. It’s not an original idea—I’m sure we’ve all thought of it at one time or another—but it’s such a simple and obvious measure we can take to get government working on behalf of the people again that it bears repeating as often as possible.

We’ve all heard the term “revolving door congress” which refers to the implicit bribe that public servants have to cater to big industries at the expense of their constituents. Spending time as a congressman or senator may not earn you a great deal of money while you have that job, but it will earn you significant credentials for any future job. Whether it’s a place on the board of directors of a major corporation, or merely a job as a lobbyist, you can earn a lot more money when you move from the public to the private sector.

But the revolving door isn’t only in operation for actual congressmen—it works for their staffers as well. A huge portion of staffers on Capitol Hill, perhaps even the majority, are only in it for their resume. They work in Washington, make connections with the power-players, and put those connections to the service of lobbying firms once they’re done. The staffers are the ones who actually write the legislation, and if their main goal is to be a lobbyist for a big corporation, they’re going to make sure they write that legislation in a way that benefits, to the greatest degree possible, the corporation they intend to work for. That corporation will reward them with a nice fat salary when they’re finished. It’s not bribery per se, but it’s pretty damn close.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks gave a perfect example on the show last week. Having just returned from a protest they organized in Washington, he’d had a few conversations with Washington insiders which provided some additional insight into the situation. His source wanted to remain anonymous, so he couldn’t be very specific, but there was a provision in the Financial Reform package that was so transparently helpful to Wall Street and harmful to Main Street that not even the republicans could openly support it and it was removed from the bill. But when a new draft came along, the same provision had miraculously reappeared, and had to be removed again. The same thing happened a third time, and finally they realized that staffers at the Federal Reserve, who had been given the task of actually writing the legislation, had been slipping the provision back into the bill with each new draft.

How can we expect Washington to produce any legislation that works in our favor if the very people writing that legislation have a vested interest in making it work in the corporations’ favor? Public pressure made the financial reform bill much stronger than many of us expected it to be, but once the debate in front of the cameras was over the bill got fatally weaker. When all is said and done, there will be enough fine print and loop-holes so as to make Wall Street feel as though the whole legislative battle had been nothing but a dream and things can continue exactly as before.

The solution is painfully obvious, so obvious that it’s a wonder the public isn’t demanding it so loudly and forcefully that congress has no choice but to act: close the revolving door.

There are already rules that prohibit congressional staffers from lobbying their former colleagues for at least one year after they leave those jobs. But a mandatory year-long waiting period is a joke. Of course they’re just going to wait out the year and go to work for the lobbying firm the minute they can. For a huge portion of them, that’s their exact plan. Help to sabotage financial reform, wait a year, then go to work for a Wall Street bank. Help to sabotage health insurance reform, wait a year, then go to work for a private health insurance company. Now, help to sabotage energy legislation, wait a year, then go to work for an oil company.

Some say we should insist that they expand the waiting period to five or ten years, but we all know what happens when we start from an already-compromised position. We have to insist that they completely prohibit all public servants and their staffers from ever working as lobbyists for as long as they live. Don’t just slow down the revolving door—destroy it completely. If we keep demanding this, we might reach a compromise whereby the waiting period is extended. That will at least improve the situation a little.

But what’s wrong with demanding the life-long ban? Why shouldn’t we insist that if you want to work as a public servant, you must give up the opportunity to be a lobbyist? The government’s job is to work on behalf of the people, to protect our interests from the interests of giant organizations—be it a country or a corporation—whose interests conflict with ours. If you want to work for the government, why shouldn’t we say that you then have to give up your right to lobby the government on behalf of those organizations?

There should be no financial incentive to work for the government. The only incentive any public servant should have is to serve the public. Destroy the revolving door and all those single-minded greed-driven individuals who only use government as a springboard for their future careers will have to find another path to success. The government will once again be composed of principled people whose only desires are to do some good for their communities and their country.

If anyone who reads this knows anyone with the know-how, the skills, and the resources to organize a campaign to demand this badly needed change to our system, I hope you’ll encourage them to take up this fight. This is a cause that Americans from across the political spectrum would support, and if enough of us demand it we can’t possibly be ignored.

For those of you who get most of their information about the health care reform situation from my blog, I’ll start with a quick explanation of what’s going on right now.

In spite of all the celebrations, it’s not quite over yet. The Senate has to pass the portion of the bill that the House amended, and then it has to go to the president’s desk for a final signature. If anything that passed the House gets changed by the Senate, it has to go back to the House once again for another vote. But it’s unlikely that Senate democrats, who now just want this thing to be over, will allow any new amendments in. But if they do, it’s extremely unlikely that any House democrats would suddenly turn around and change their vote, thus killing health reform. At this point, it’s a political certainty that the thing is going to pass.

The most important thing going on right now is the reaction from the left. Much of the left is raving about what an amazing accomplishment this is, which only emboldens democrats to continue doing what they’ve been doing, which is ignoring the wishes of their progressive wing and catering to the wishes of their corporate donors instead. As long as they can count on progressives to put their disappointment behind them and continue to rally around them in spite of everything, they won’t have to bother satisfying any of their demands.

Every single democrat who held back on their support for the bill because it wasn’t progressive enough eventually folded. Even Dennis Kucinich changed his vote at the last minute, though I can’t be too angry with him because I also ultimately decided that something was better than nothing. It would just be nice if occasionally the democrats who draw lines in the sand would actually remain behind those lines. When republicans draw lines, that’s it. They’re not budging because they don’t give a damn if the whole thing fails. But when a democrat draws a line in the sand you can take it with a grain of salt because as we’ve seen time and time again, when all is said and done the advocates of reform would rather have something than nothing.

Once again it comes down to simple Game Theory. You don’t negotiate with someone you know will accept any offer you give them. If you know your opponent is going to fold no matter what you do, why give them anything? This is exactly why bills always move further and further to the right. Obama should have begun with a far-left bill, demanding single payer and then reluctantly capitulating until we were left with nothing more than a strong public option. Instead he started by offering a strong public option and then let it grow weaker and weaker until it disappeared altogether.

It’s a disastrous strategy for liberal supporters of the president to throw a victory party for him. Democrats look at that and say, “See, throw the plebs a few coins and they’ll be dancing in the streets. You don’t have to give them what they want, just give them some of what they need and they’ll reward you for it.” As for the corporations, just give them everything they want so they’ll keep giving you the money you need to pay for ads that continue to convince the people that you’re really on their side. For liberals, the proper strategic response to this bill is to say, “Fine, thanks for passing it. Congratulations. Now fix it. And don’t expect us to vote for you unless you do.”

How should they fix it? Very simple. Open up Medicare for anyone who wants to pay for it. You don’t have to give free health-care to everyone, just let people buy this government-run plan if they can afford it. The money won’t come out of taxpayer’s wallets, and the insurance companies will actually have real competition.

Anyone unfamiliar with Cenk Uygur of the web-based, totally independent news commentary show “The Young Turks” really ought to check him out. Cenk has been making the extremely good point that the celebration of democrats right now has a very unsettling “Mission Accomplished”-banner feel to it, in that they’re selling the American people on the idea that the problem is solved and we can all go home now, when in fact the problems are just beginning.

Here’s what’s going to happen unless they fix the cost-control problem: Without a non-profit, government-run competitor to the private insurance companies, they’re just going to keep raising the rates higher and higher, which will actually lead to more uninsured people. There’s really nothing in this bill to stop them from doing that. Rates will go up and people will wonder what the fuck is going on since they were told that everything was fixed.

Now that the bill has passed, republicans are very worried that all of the lies they told are going to be exposed as the utter bullshit they were. When people notice that the government has not in fact taken over the system, that they can keep their doctor, that no bureaucrat is knocking on grandma’s door to pressure her into committing suicide, they might start to realize that the republicans were full of shit.

BUT these people have incredibly short memories and as long as there’s something wrong, they’ll follow their leaders blindly. Insurance companies will raise their rates, and the republicans will blame it on reform. “The democrats told you they solved the problem, but it just forced the insurance companies to raise their rates and now the American people are suffering. Vote for us and we’ll repeal it!” And the Tea Party wingnuts will just fall into line. No government death panels necessary—you won’t hear the phrase “death panels” at all anymore, and everyone will act like that claim was never made. Whatever happens, the republicans will just say “We told you this would happen” and they’ll have an entire news network to back them up on it.

Everyone who thinks this is over is sadly mistaken. Health care will remain an issue going into the elections, and the democrats are at a major disadvantage as long as there are no real cost controls in the bill. Sure, a few kids with pre-existing conditions will get health care, a few college students will be able to remain on their parents’ plans, and a few people here and there will see benefits immediately. But there’s nothing to stop the insurance companies from raising their rates across the board, and this will affect everybody.

The thing is, I don’t know if I give a damn at this point. The November mid-term elections will be a disaster no matter what the outcome. Both sides will get the wrong message from the results, whatever they may be. If republicans pick up seats, they’ll see it as a vindication and endorsement of their block-everything strategy and they’ll double-down, making it impossible for Obama to do anything at all for the rest of his presidency. Democrats will assume they have to move further to the right, and the bills they propose will become more and more conservative even though they won’t pass anyway.

But if democrats win, the results won’t be much better. If the democrats maintain their large majorities they’ll see it as tacit permission from their supporters to continue on with their strategy of watering-down every bill and making every piece of legislation as corporate-friendly as possible. If they know they can cater to their corporate sponsors and still count on the people they’re screwing over to vote for them, there’s no chance in hell of them changing course.

American voters are faced with yet another awful decision. Either reward the republicans for their strategy of obstruction, or reward democrats for their strategy of capitulation. Either way, we lose.

I’m as sick of writing about health care as you probably are of reading and hearing about it, but with the recent near-resurrection and subsequent re-death of the public option I can’t resist pointing out what most of the media seems to have glossed over—that the Democratic party has now been completely exposed for the pathetic bought-and-paid-for subsidiary of Corporate America that it is.

Poll after poll conducted in state after state shows that the public health insurance option which would provide people with an alternative to for-profit insurance remains extremely popular. When asked if they support the current health care bill, only about 30% answer yes. But when asked if they support a government-run public health care option, about 60% say yes. So the American people are clearly in favor of a public option and would rather have a bill with it than without it.

How about the president? Well, he obviously wanted to bargain it away from the very beginning, but he has consistently supported the idea in his statements. So at least in theory, he supports it.

How about Congress? Well, the House of Representatives actually passed a health care bill with a public option, so that’s one chamber. What about the Senate? If you’ll recall, it was Joe Lieberman and one or two other senators who demanded the public option be removed or else they’d filibuster with the republicans and deny the Democrats the 60 votes necessary to overcome the filibuster. So presumably you have about 57 Democrats who would support the public option, but only couldn’t get it because they were aiming for 60 votes. But with Scott Brown’s election 60 votes became impossible so now they’re going to do this through reconciliation, in which case you only need 51 votes.

Okay then. The American people, the president of the United States, and majorities in both houses of Congress want the public option.

SO WHY THE FUCK AREN’T WE GETTING A PUBLIC OPTION?????????????

Seriously, this is such unbelievable bullshit, such plain and naked balls-out duplicity, I can’t believe progressives aren’t up in arms! I guess they exhausted all their energy last year defending themselves against the Tea Parties and their Death Panel bullshit.

But is it not completely obvious what’s happened here? Supposedly a majority of senators would have voted for the public option, but they needed a supermajority. Now we just need a majority, and somehow we don’t even have that?

Joe Lieberman was obviously doing a lot of his fellow senators a big favor by being the one to take the political heat for killing the public option. The public option was Enemy #1 for the private health insurance industry, and the private health insurance industry not only owns every single Republican but also most Democrats as well. Democrats, unlike Republicans, have to pay a lot more lip service to progressive causes and policies that might benefit the working-class at the expense of the big corporations, but at the end of the day their loyalty is to the corporations. They want to be able to say they support the public option, but they won’t let it pass because their insurance industry financiers can’t abide that. So they let Lieberman, Nelson, and the Blue Dogs take the fall. They can have their public option cake and eat it too. Their constituents are happy that they “tried”. Their corporate financiers are happy that they “failed”.

People, the need for a sweeping revolution has never been clearer. Two years ago we stood up and got behind the presidential candidate who seemed to be our best hope for delivering the change we need so badly—a change whereby the balance of power would be shifted back from the wealthy elite to the average citizen. That president has proven to be at worst a total sell-out, and at best an ineffectual lame duck. Unless he suddenly changes course and decides to follow through on the change he promised, it’s up to the people to do this ourselves.

It’s time for average people to start running for office. I’d fucking do it myself if I had any people skills and if I weren’t so loose with my tongue (not to mention a half a dozen other things in my closet that would destroy me). But we really need people from outside the system to get in there and replace the shills who now dominate both parties.

If an extremely popular policy that supposedly has the support of the president and majorities in congress can’t pass because the health insurance industry won’t let it, we’ve already lost our country. The system isn’t just broken—it’s infected with a deadly disease, gasping for its last breaths. The only way to rid ourselves of this disease of corporate influence is to tear everything down and start again or purge the system of the infection by replacing every bought-and-paid for representative with a political outsider vowing to take no money from corporate interests whatsoever.

It has to be time to change the old paradigm where money buys votes. Don’t believe a single thing you see in a campaign commercial. This is all corporate-funded propaganda. Ignore it, and ignore all candidates who take that blood money. The current level of anger in this country might just be enough to overcome the typical electoral status quo whereby the candidate with the most money wins. Pay attention to where the candidate gets his money, and vote according to that.

You’ll know much more about a candidate by how he funds his campaign than anything he actually says. By refusing to pass the public option even though they could if they wanted to, Barack Obama and at least half the senate democrats have proven that.

It is a common misconception that the U.S. Senate consists of 100 members, with the Vice President as its president and tie-breaking vote. Actually, there is a 101st senator that not many people know about, a senator who actually has the power of nineteen senators, who never has to worry about re-election, who has been around for over two hundred years but who only recently has begun to exercise his true power. That senator’s name is Philip Uster, and it’s time we got rid of him.

For the majority of his two centuries of public service, Senator Philip Uster has laid pretty low (with the exception of a key role in Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). He would rarely ever show up to Senate debates, called in only when the minority needed his help to defeat a piece of legislation they felt strongly about. He would do this by getting up and speaking continuously against a bill until he could either speak no more or the senators in the majority party would give up on trying to bring the bill to a vote. To get him to stop speaking so that they could vote, two-thirds of all senators would have to vote to make him stop. That meant a minority as small as 34 could call upon him to block legislation that as many as 66 senators supported. Philip Uster, for all practical purposes, had the power of 33 senators, enough to make up the difference between the minority and the majority. That catch, however, was that his power lasted only as long as his vocal chords, stomach, and bladder would allow.

During the Civil Rights movement, Senator Philip Uster was called upon frequently by Republicans to help them prevent black Americans from being granted equal rights. While ultimately unsuccessful, Uster managed to make things so difficult that the Democrats used their huge majority in 1975 to reduce the number of senators needed to stop Mr. Uster from 67 to 60, thus reducing his influence from 33 senators down to 19. The new number a minority would need in order to call upon Philip Uster’s services was 41. Adding Uster’s 19 votes to the 41-vote minority would give them effectively 60 votes, one more than the majority’s 59.

Weakened but not defeated, Philip Uster’s power continued to grow as the country became more and more polarized and the political parties more and more partisan. As long as the gap between the minority and the majority remained within 20 votes, and it almost always did, Uster could be called upon to block any legislation the minority opposed. As the parties increasingly looked out for their own well-being and decreasingly for the well-being of the country as a whole, Mr. Uster was called upon more and more to provide his obstruction services, his power increasing every time his name was invoked. Eventually, his power became so great that he no longer even needed to show up on Capitol Hill. Nowadays, a senator need only threaten to call him and the majority will simply throw up it hands in defeat.

There is always talk among the few who know about Philip Uster as to whether he should be retired. Occasionally, a majority frustrated by Uster’s ability to obstruct their agenda will threaten to reduce his power even further, or to kill him completely. Republicans threatened to kill him in 2005 when the Democratic minority was holding up Bush’s judicial nominees. Today, Republicans are using him to block dozens upon dozens of Obama’s nominees, but there is very little talk among Democrats about going after Philip Uster now. They know that one day (perhaps very soon) they will be in the minority again and they will need his help. This is why he has managed to remain in the Senate for so long—sooner or later somebody is going to want to have him around.

But the current state of affairs is more dire than ever before. The Republican strategy during the Obama administration is extremely simple: obstruct everything. If Obama supports it, oppose it. If Obama opposes it, support it. Even if you once supported it before, even if you proposed it in the first place, you must stop Obama from passing it at all costs. That means you call Senator Philip Uster all the time. And indeed, for nearly every single nomination or piece of proposed legislation since Obama took office, that call has been made. Even during the brief interlude in which Democrats technically held 60 seats, theoretically enough to overcome Uster’s influence, the Republican minority could find one or two of them to join the minority (Lieberman, Nelson, etc.) and thus hold the necessary 41-vote minimum to block legislation. With Scott Brown’s recent election, they no longer need to pull any votes from across the aisle, and can use the power of the 101st senator to block anything and everything the president and the majority party want to do to improve the country. The United States government is effectively being held hostage by Philip Uster and the Republican minority.

If Democrats actually want to get anything done, they have two options. One is to call Philip Uster’s arch-nemises: Rick Unciliation. Mr. Unciliation has the power of ten senators, enough to boost their 59-seat majority to 69, well above the 60 votes the minority has when using Philip Uster. The only problem is that Rick Unciliation is only allowed to participate in budgetary matters, and can only use his ten-vote power if the deficit will be reduced as a result. The other option open to Democrats is to kill Philip Uster, just as the Republicans threatened to do in 2005, through a process known as the ‘nuclear option’ which need not be described in detail here. It’s enough to know that if they wanted to kill him, they have the silver bullet needed to bring him down.

But the real problem, of course, is not Philip Uster himself or the Republican party’s insistence on using him to completely neutralize the ability of the American government to govern America—it is those things, but it’s also something much more insidious: the unwillingness of Democrats to do anything about it, lest they actually accomplish something positive for the American people. Like Republicans, many (if not most) Democrats are owned by the powers-that-be, special interests and giant corporations with armies of lobbyists all over Washington doing everything they can to make sure that the rich continue to get richer at the poor’s expense, that the energy industry continue to burn coal and drill for oil at the planet’s expense, that private companies maintain a monopoly over the health insurance industry at the average citizens’ expense, that the military industrial complex continue to build weapons and fight wars at the world’s expense and the expense of the soldiers, their families, and the countless civilians they kill—neither Republicans nor Democrats actually want to stop any of these things. Democrats have to tell their constituents that they want to change the status quo, but it’s this very status quo that keeps them in their jobs, that gives them an easier time raising money for re-election, and that in many cases guarantees them a lucrative position in one of these industries once they leave Congress.

Democrats can say, “We’re trying to make the changes we promised. We’re trying to bring about real health care reform, to regulate the financial industry, to fight global warming, and to strengthen the middle-class. It’s just that Philip Uster won’t let us!” If something terrible were to happen to Mr. Uster—say, he got into a bad car accident on the way to the Capitol—they would no longer have that excuse. They would either have to vote for a bill that would hurt the industries that fund their campaigns, or expose themselves as the corporate shills they really are.

It’s awkward enough for them to have to feign this absurd interest in bipartisanship. With such a large majority their inability to get anything done makes them look ridiculous. It was even worse when they had 60 votes to 40, rendering even Philip Uster’s 19 votes inconsequential. The only remedy to this problem was to profess a strong desire for bipartisanship, to work with the other party even though they didn’t need any of their votes. Obama and the Senate Democrats worked very hard to undermine their own progressive legislation, particularly with regard to health care and financial reform, to produce bills that were industry-friendly in spite of overwhelming public opposition to those industries. And even after all that unnecessary compromise, Philip Uster is still being called in to prevent even the most modest reforms from going through.

The Senate will never let Philip Uster go. He’s way too valuable to the powers-that-be, and they will protect him with everything they’ve got. The only chance the American people have is to learn his name and speak out against him vigorously and repeatedly. No one senator should have the power of nineteen senators. In a democracy, the will of the majority should prevail, and that majority should be accountable to the people for what it can and cannot do. Philip Uster is too convenient an excuse for the majority to remain weak and ineffectual, and too easy a tool for the corporate-controlled minority to undermine the principle of majority rule that constitutes the very foundation of democracy.

Tell the Tea Parties to step aside for a moment as we march on Washington holding signs of our own: “Philip Uster Must Die”

[Disclaimer: While the characters Philip Uster and Rick Unciliation are based on actual Senate rules, they are entirely fictitious and any similarity to any actual persons living or dead is unintentional. The author of this piece does not advocate violence of any kind directed at anyone with the unfortunate name of Philip Uster.]

An actual “Liveblog” is a running commentary of a major event as it happens. I can’t really do that because I live in Europe, and being 6 hours ahead of Washington I don’t really feel like waiting up until the wee hours of the morning to watch primetime events live. I just watch them online the next day, then write about them when I get a chance. I don’t have much to say overall about the President’s first state of the union speech, so I thought I’d simply have a little fun and do a running commentary of my own that can hopefully be enjoyed even by people who didn’t see the speech.

I’ll post noteworthy quotes when I feel an urge to respond to them, and when I’m responding to something visual (like Republicans applauding or not applauding) I’ll try to make that clear.

Full disclosure: I already watched the speech once and took in some commentary, so some of my opinions are influenced by other bloggers, pundits, and columnists. But in most cases I’m writing the immediate reaction I had the first time around.

[re: the stimulus] Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted, immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.

You lie! Things may get better in the short term, but there’s just going to be another storm because you’re not doing anything to prevent it.

[re: the American spirit] It’s because of this spirit — this great decency and great strength — that I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight.

The first applause line. Apparently everybody loves hope.

Despite our hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit. We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit.

You lie! Yes we do. Have you never even watched cable news?

[re: the bank bailouts] But when I ran for President, I promised I wouldn’t just do what was popular – I would do what was necessary.

Then why don’t you?

To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn’t keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.

Apparently republicans don’t like the idea of paying back taxpayers for rescuing the banks.

Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95% of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend on gas, and food, and other necessities, all of which helped businesses keep more workers. And we haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.

Apparently republicans don’t like tax cuts either. And Obama calls them out, saying “I thought I’d get some applause there.” John Boehner is amused.

But I realize that for every success story, there are other stories, of men and women who wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from; who send out resumes week after week and hear nothing in response. That is why jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight.

Republicans are standing now. Everyone likes jobs. Or at least everyone likes pandering to the unemployed.

[re: job creation] We should start where most new jobs do – in small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides its time she became her own boss.

Lifted directly from every one of Bush’s speeches. And Clinton’s. And Bush Sr.’s. And Reagan’s…actually every speech by every president in history.

[re: infrastructure] There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products.

You lie! There is a damn good reason—their governments actually do stuff.

And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it’s time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs in the United States of America.

Also lifted from every State of the Union address ever given.

[re: the jobs bill] Now, the House has passed a jobs bill that includes some of these steps. As the first order of business this year, I urge the Senate to do the same, and I know they will. They will.

You lie! They won’t, and they know it.

You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China’s not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany’s not waiting. India’s not waiting. These nations aren’t standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place.

If these other nations jumped off a bridge, should we do that too?

The House has already passed financial reform with many of these changes. And the lobbyists are already trying to kill it. Well, we cannot let them win this fight. And if the bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform, I will send it back.

Hah! You’ll sign anything they manage to deliver to you, and you know it. Luckily for you, they won’t be able to deliver anything.

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.

Yeah! Drill baby drill! Clean coal (which is utter bullshit)! Wahoo!

[re: global warming] But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future – because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.

Why? Why not let some other nation lead the global economy for awhile? Our recent track record hasn’t exactly been fantastic.

[re: free trade] And that’s why we will continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia.

This time, only republicans are standing. That could only mean this is a bad idea.

To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer-subsidies that go to banks for student loans. Instead, let’s take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants.

Now the republicans are sitting on their hands. I guess they’re opposed to kids being able to afford college.

And it is precisely to relieve the burden on middle-class families that we still need health insurance reform.

Republicans, as expected, are not in favor of health care reform…wait…oh now they’re standing. I guess someone finally realized how bad they’re making themselves look.

Now let’s be clear – I did not choose to tackle this issue to get some legislative victory under my belt. And by now it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on health care because it was good politics.

You lie! You behaved exactly as though you were just trying to earn a legislative victory. Otherwise you would have actually fought to get a good bill.

And by the way, I want to acknowledge our First Lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity and make our kids healthier.

Damn, there are some angry vibes coming from that woman. She really seems to hate her husband now. That was quick. I didn’t think Hillary started hating Bill until a few years into his presidency. Can’t blame her though. She knows more than anyone in that room just how empty his words are.

[re: health reform] Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.

Well, that’s music to my ears. But why aren’t you explaining it now? We’re listening.

But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. I’m eager to see it.

Actually, I think I remember a guy who had a much better approach than the one currently on the table in Congress. I think he ran for president back in 2008. What was his name? Oh yeah…Barack Obama.

So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight. At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. That was before I walked in the door.

Republicans also hate being confronted with the fact that America existed before January 20, 2009.

[re: spending $1 trillion for economic recovery] I am absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do. But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight, I’m proposing specific steps to pay for the $1 trillion that it took to rescue the economy last year. Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years.

This is the stupidest idea in the speech, designed to pander to the uninformed independent who doesn’t understand the difference between a family budget and a government budget. The only way you get out of a recession is to spend your way out. A spending freeze didn’t work under Hoover, it didn’t work under FDR, and it didn’t work under any other president during any other recession. This is a cheap political gimmick that won’t have any positive effects.

It won’t win any republican support, as whenever the president moves to the right they just move the goal-posts. It certainly won’t help the economy recover. The only thing it will do is give the conservatives the ammunition they need to go on pretending that fiscal restraint is the right approach to an economic recession, in spite of all the economists who say otherwise and all the historical evidence to the contrary. Obama should have been explaining why the government needs to spend money in a recession, but instead he’s just conceded the argument to the side he knows is wrong, purely for the sake of a gimmick that won’t help him politically anyway.

I know that some in my own party will argue that we cannot address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting. I agree, which is why this freeze will not take effect until next year, when the economy is stronger.

Some laughter in the chamber, which is appropriate. The economy may be a bit stronger next year but not enough to justify a spending freeze.

Oh, but they’re probably laughing because they think he should start the freeze this year. Obama responds with a “That’s how budgeting works.”

Even stronger laughter, though I’m not sure from whom or why. Are they democrats laughing back at the republicans who didn’t seem to understand that you plan a budget a year in advance? Or are they republicans laughing at how naïve that line made him seem? “Look mommy, I know how budgeting works!”

Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let’s try common sense. A novel concept.

Did the president just give props to Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck?

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why – for the first time in history – my Administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

You lie! Lobbyists are still writing policy. They wrote most of the health reform bill.

And it’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.

Okay, that was awesome at least. The president chastises the Supreme Court (rightly so) directly to their faces while they’re sitting a few feet away from him! I find out later that Justice Samuel Alito was mouthing the words “Simply not true” in quasi-Joe Wilson fashion!

Okay, Sam, it’s not true? What exactly is not true about it? Please, I’d like you to explain exactly why you aren’t responsible for handing the entire United States government over to giant profit-seeking corporations on a silver platter. I really want to hear you explain that to me.

I’m also calling on Congress to continue down the path of earmark reform.

Pandering to the McCain voters now. Why didn’t we just vote for him?

Now, I am not naïve. I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony, and some post-partisan era.

You lie!

But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We cannot wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about their opponent – a belief that if you lose, I win. Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can.

Yes, absolutely. Look at the republicans sitting there smiling knowing that’s exactly what they’re doing and that they have no intention of stopping.

The confirmation of well-qualified public servants should not be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual Senators.

The republicans are sitting on their hands to indicate that they are totally in favor of holding up the confirmation of well-qualified public servants for the sake of political grudges.

Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, is just part of the game. But it is precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it is sowing further division among our citizens and further distrust in our government. So no, I will not give up on changing the tone of our politics.

And you will not stop failing miserably in doing so.

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills.

Democrats applaud, apparently not in favor of running for the hills. This indicates a major shift in strategy for them.

And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

Republicans remain seated to indicate that they are in favor of practicing short-term politics that serve their own ambitions at the expense of citizens. They get points for honesty.

[re: national security] So let’s put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough. Let’s reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values. Let’s leave behind the fear and division, and do what it takes to defend our nation and forge a more hopeful future – for America and the world.

That ought to convince Dick Cheney.

We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.

You lie! Or to put it another way: Simply not true. Maybe most combat troops will come home but there will be troops there and military contractors for a long, long time.

[re: the troops] And just as they must have the resources they need in war, we all have a responsibility to support them when they come home.

Ooh, pandering to the troops. That’s politically risky.

That is why we stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan; we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran; and we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea. For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.

He’s channeling Bush again.

This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.

You will? I’d like to see that. Honestly. Even if you are just pandering.

We are going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws – so that women get equal pay for an equal day’s work. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nations.

Pandering to women and pandering to xenophobes in the space of two sentences!

Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Republican values or Democratic values they’re living by; business values or labor values. They are American values.

Oh man. China called. They’re missing a Pander-Bear (zing).

Unfortunately, too many of our citizens have lost faith that our biggest institutions – our corporations, our media, and yes, our government – still reflect these same values.

You l…actually you’re totally right. I wonder why we’ve lost our faith…

I campaigned on the promise of change – change we can believe in, the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change – or at least, that I can deliver it.

No shit. I guess this is the part of the speech that was focus-tested on disillusioned progressives like me.

Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.

Thanks for explaining your strategy like that.

Our administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved. But I wake up every day knowing that they are nothing compared to the setbacks that families all across this country have faced this year. And what keeps me going – what keeps me fighting – is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism – that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people – lives on.

Man, you almost had me. I was almost ready to give you some credit and line up behind you to support your agenda. Then you went and turned it back into more ass-kissing of “the American people”.

[re: the American spirit again] It lives on in the struggling small business owner who wrote to me of his company, “None of us,” he said, “…are willing to consider, even slightly, that we might fail.”

Does every president think every American is a small business owner?

We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment – to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.

Great, I’m ready. So what do we need to do? You told us what you want to do, but you still haven’t called on the people who supported your candidacy to get behind you and stand up and fight the powers-that-be. All you did was propose small-ball legislation that, if you keep governing as you’ve been governing, will end up getting so compromised and watered down as to be completely ineffective.

Most importantly, you’re still doing your whole “There are not Red States and Blue States” schtick, speaking the language of bi-partisanship even though you know full well that genuine, constructive bi-partisanship is hopeless in today’s political climate. You refuse to take a stand on anything that might make anyone angry (except Sam Alito) and try to keep winning with the same playbook that got you elected: be as vague as possible about your own convictions so that everyone can just project their own political beliefs onto you.

Well, that won’t work anymore. You really have to pick a position and fight for it. There was nothing in this speech to indicate that you would.

Don’t get me wrong—it was a brilliant speech from a rhetorical standpoint, and you delivered it masterfully. You’re a really likable guy, way more comfortable to watch than W and almost everything you say—also unlike W—is something I agree with. I just no longer believe that you have a real desire to back up these words with actions.

I could be wrong. Maybe you really are going to undergo a course-correction and really turn things around this year and start fighting. Then I’ll take back all my “You lie”s and start writing about what a great president you are.

But this speech sounded only like you have people working for you who watch the news, who read the blogs, who talk to people from across the political spectrum and know what they’re thinking, and speech-writers who know how to seamlessly blend the cares and concerns of everyone into one coherent message. On the one hand, I suppose that’s the nature of a State of the Union speech, so I can’t really blame you for that. But on the other hand, you ran on a platform of Change, so you have to expect to be called out when what you deliver is simply more of the same.

In conclusion, if you’re really telling me that Change is coming, that the economy is turning the corner and the middle-class will rise again, that health care reform will finally be delivered, that we’re going to succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that we’re going to break the stranglehold of major financial institutions on our government, I have two words for you.
(Hint: one of those words begins with a Y, and the other with an L)

The most important American political news story of the year went by without much attention. The year is young, but it will probably remain the most important story, and even when its first effects begin to take hold during this Fall’s mid-term elections, the mainstream media still won’t be talking about it.

I’m referring to the Citizens United case recently brought before the Supreme Court in which it was left up to the nine justices to decide whether or not corporations should be allowed to contribute unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. In other words, should it be even easier for corporations to buy politicians? John Roberts and four other justices, in their infinite wisdom, decided that yes it should.

Well thank heaven! Those poor corporations have been left out of the political process for far too long. Constantly having their wishes overruled by the tyranny of the majority, the ignorant masses, the commoners, the street-rabble, the plebs…it’s been terribly unfair. All the corporations want to do is exercise their God-given right to maximize their profits at everyone else’s expense, but how are they supposed to do that when their hands are tied by lawmakers insisting that they can’t use their profits to buy the votes they need? Well, those dark days are over now. Corporations can finally have a seat at the table in Washington and hopefully get them to pass legislation that will allow them, once and for all, to do whatever they damn well please with no accountability. Just as God intended.

Obviously I think this is a horrible decision, the worst the Supreme Court has made since Bush v. Gore in 2000. That led to the eight most disastrous years in recent American history. This decision completely buries any hope we had (and to be fair, there wasn’t very much to begin with) of undoing the damage from within the existing system. That system is now effectively owned and operated by Corporate America. The U.S. Capitol is now officially the property of Goldman Sachs.

“But wasn’t Washington already owned by large financial institutions and corporate special interests before this decision?” one might ask. The answer is, to a large extent, yes it was. Corporations could still make campaign contributions and spend as much money as they wanted on political ads. The difference is that now they can spend unlimited amounts of money on ads either endorsing or attacking a particular candidate. It may be true that most of the lawmakers in Washington have been operating out of pure self-interest with no regard for the public good for quite some time, but there are at least enough honest, well-intentioned representatives in Congress to put up a fight. Now the corporations can systematically target every congressperson they don’t have in their pockets and inundate the airwaves with attack ads, manipulating the already heavily-manipulated electorate into voting against their own best interests.

We’ll basically see everything that’s already wrong with the political system start to magnify itself to absurd proportions. If you thought political candidates were little more than brand names before, wait until you see what happens now. Candidates will not merely be comparable to retail products, but they will actually be products, each virtually a registered trademark of whatever corporate industry offers the highest bid. That industry will then market them just as they market a product, all substance will be brushed aside and people will choose which candidates to vote for in the same way as they decide which laundry detergent to buy. Again, this is already happening now but thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision it will get exponentially worse as time goes on and non-corporate friendly candidates are gradually purged from Washington.

So what can we do about it? Well, we can sign petitions and call our representatives, but that won’t do any good. Is a politician really going to lift a finger to try and undo this decision? Almost nothing short of a constitutional amendment can undo a Supreme Court ruling, and how many members of congress are actually principled enough to stand up and fight this fight? Certainly not two-thirds. Most congressmen see this as a potential gold-mine. It certainly makes their lives much easier. Now they don’t need to bother going to the public for small donations a few hundred bucks at a time, but can simply find a corporate sponsor to provide them with everything they need to hold on to their seat, just as long as they do everything the corporation wants them to. Mark my words—this decision will never be undone from within Washington. The payoffs are too lopsided, and for an individual congressperson the strategy of going with the flow strongly dominates that of standing up against it. One thing we can count on is that things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

We have to step back and look at the bigger picture of what’s been happening to government for the past several decades. The Citizens United decision is merely the latest step in a long series of maneuvers on behalf of Corporate America to tilt the balance of power away from government and back towards private industry. The further that pendulum swings in favor of the corporations, the greater the gap becomes between rich and poor, the more eroded the middle class becomes financially, and the less power the people have to actually stand up and do anything about it. Certainly with the middle-class in as bad a shape as it’s currently in, you couldn’t possibly expect a candidate fueled purely by small donations from individual donors to compete with candidates bolstered by corporate money. The corporations have all the money right now. They have all the power, and they are using it to accumulate more and more.

Most importantly, the corporate powers have zero interest in helping restore the standard of living that average Americans used to enjoy. As long as unemployment is high, wages are low, and everyone is living in fear of the next financial blow to their already debt-ridden bank accounts, there will be a seething undercurrent of anger that the corporate powers can use to their advantage if they play it right. Major media outlets, themselves all owned by major corporations (who surprise surprise have not been paying much attention to this story at all) are quite adept at misdirecting this anger, pointing it away from private industry and at the federal government. The more the federal government is weakened by the corporate powers, the angrier people get at the federal government.

Meanwhile, by consistently presenting every issue in a right vs. left framework and focusing almost exclusively on left vs. right culture war issues like abortion and gay marriage, they block the only chance average people have of coming together to fight against the powers that are oppressing them. The tea-bagging right-wingers hate the government and the big banks, but not as much as they hate liberals. Whiny left-wing bloggers such as myself are profoundly disappointed in government and hate the big banks too, but most of us still spend a great deal of energy going after the tea-bagging wingnuts.

But almost nobody stops to point out that the whiny bloggers and the tea-bagging wingnuts aren’t actually separated by as wide an ideological gulf as it appears. We may have irreconcilable differences over issues like abortion and gay rights, but these issues can take a back-seat in the face of our common enemy, the enemy of all free people: the consolidation of power.

Misinformed conservatives believe that too much power is in the hands of the government, but many of them, angered by the bailouts and Wall Street bonuses, might be open to the idea that it’s actually corporations and not the federal government that has too much power. What they perceive as the evils of government are actually the evils of the corporations operating through government. They may insist that too strong a central government is a bad thing, but we don’t necessarily disagree with that. We’re against the consolidation of too much power wherever it might be, whether it’s in the hands of the federal government or private industry. We only disagree over the facts—that right now it’s private industry—not government—where the power is consolidated.

Certainly plenty of conservatives won’t be willing to listen and they’ll just go on believing whatever Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh tell them to believe. But I honestly think that there are enough reasonable conservatives out there who can be persuaded to lay down their arms for awhile and join forces with liberals to attack this problem that threatens all of us.

Every revolution begins with too much power in the hands of too few at the expense of too many. I’m waiting anxiously for the moment when the corporations—who will only continue to accumulate power at our expense because it’s in their very nature to do so—finally overplay their hand and the kettle finally boils over. The passion and fury of the tea-party conservatives, combined with the knowledge and insight of the left-wing intellectuals, would be a force that not even Corporate America could reckon with.

One thing is for sure—change only comes from the bottom up. Politicians spewing their rhetoric about hope and change will inevitably bend to the will of those who run the system, and the system will never be changed from within. The Supreme Court’s decision this week only solidified that truth. How much longer are we going to wait while politicians lie to us and the media manipulates us? When are we going to finally take to the streets and demand that they return the power they’ve taken from us? If not now, when? What are we waiting for?

It’s been a long, brutal battle that progressives in the United States have been fighting this year to get real, solid health-care reform enacted. These soldiers—the progressives—have fought battle after battle, backing up their commanders on the field—Democratic senators and congressmen—as well as the general himself—President Barack Obama—and in each instance the battle has ended with a cease-fire agreement—a compromise—that the soldiers did not like but decided they “could live with”. Now as we approach the end of the war the soldiers find themselves engaged in a final brawl between a commander they hardly respect—Harry Reid—and a treasonous weasel who should have been hanged long ago—Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticuit, who has vowed to join a Republican filibuster of the Health Care bill if it contains a public option. Lieberman, who has been secretly fighting on the side of the Enemy—private insurance companies—the entire time, can not be punished for his treason, as he knows he will never win back the support of Democrats no matter what he does, and when his term ends he can make his treason official by either earning a fat paycheck on the board of directors of one of these private insurance companies or simply switching sides to join their army—the Republicans, who will welcome him as the Hero who Killed Health Care Reform. The only option for the progressive army now seems to be an attempt to recruit a soldier from the other side—Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine—whom they can only get by making yet another concession, a trigger for the public option designed to never let it be triggered, a concession far too great for them to be willing to make.

And what hangs in the balance anyway? If the progressive army prevails against Lieberman even without recruiting Snowe, what exactly have they achieved? A public health insurance option available only to those currently without insurance and to those living in states in which the political leadership decides not to opt-out of the plan. That’s not what they’ve been fighting for, of course. Many have been fighting for a single-payer system, a health insurance industry free of a profit-motive altogether, in which the government pays for everyone’s medical expenses without regard for increasing the bottom line, satisfying the shareholders, or providing the C.E.O. with a high enough salary to purchase a few extra summer-homes. Most of the soldiers have long-since given up on that idea, and have instead been fighting tooth-and-nail over the past few months for a public option, a government-run insurance company, to merely exist in the marketplace and compete with the private-insurance companies, something available to everyone so that those unhappy with their profit-driven insurance company could switch to the non-profit public option and thus force the private companies to lower their prices in order to compete. These soldiers have one last commander in the field—Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon—who is proposing an amendment which would create just that—a public option available to everyone—but which hardly has a prayer of passing. Instead, the opposition has been so strong that what the progressives are fighting for now so desperately is a public option available to 5% or less of the population—something so watered-down and impotent as to be virtually ineffectual within the broken system they’ve been trying so hard to fix. If the Enemy, the private insurance companies, come out of this war with nothing more than 3% of the market to compete for, it will be almost akin to a victory for them.

The only thing about the Bullshit Public Option that everyone is now pushing so hard for that is the least bit satisfying to progressives is the potential it has to one day grow into something larger—and that’s the only reason the Enemy is still fighting it, now by unleashing Lieberman as the final obstacle in its path. If a government-run insurance company is created to cater to those without health insurance, and those who are lucky enough to be eligible for the public plan like what they have, then what’s to stop a future army of progressives from taking up arms again for the purpose of expanding this program to make it available to all Americans? The Enemy knows that it’s much easier to expand an already existing program than to enact a new one from scratch, which is why they’re fighting so hard to prevent even this compromise-to-end-all-compromises from seeing the light of day.

No, if those who have been fighting for real Health Care reform all year want to see a bill actually get to the floor and receive an up-or-down vote, they’re going to have to watch Commander Reid bend over for either Joe Lieberman or Olympia Snowe, and make yet another concession, this time to kill the public option altogether or impose a trigger-that-will-never-be-triggered, thus destroying the last remaining shred of anything resembling real reform and handing the Enemy a total, blow-out victory. Remember, one of the concessions that has already been made is an Individual Mandate, meaning the Enemy will receive millions of new victims (customers) who will now be required by law to buy their evil product. Without a government-run option available to people without insurance, they will have no choice but to buy their insurance from the private industry, who unfettered by competition will proceed to bleed them dry through insane premiums, and find any possible loophole to deny them coverage when they actually get sick.

How did it come to this? How is it that proponents of Health Care reform are fighting so hard now for this bullshit watered-down pussy-ass public option compromise? And how is it that they might not even get that? Exactly who or what is to blame for all of this? It’s not entirely Joe Lieberman’s responsibility, as if it weren’t him it would be someone else, and if any Republican at all were actually acting on good faith in the best interests of the American people, he wouldn’t even be an issue because then we’d have the 60 votes necessary to move the bill to a vote without him. It’s not all Harry Reid’s fault either because while he may suffer from a complete lack of testicular fortitude, he can’t do anything about these ridiculous rules that say although you only need a majority to pass a bill, you need a super-majority to allow that bill to be voted on in the first place. Nor is it entirely the fault of Max Baucus, the asshole who spent all summer watering-down the health-care reform bill in a faux effort to achieve “bi-partisanship”, nor is it the entirely the fault of Olympia Snow, who very cleverly flirted with the idea of voting for the bill just so that all of this watering-down for the sake of “bi-partisanship” could actually seem justified. Nor is it the fault of the corrupt and spineless Blue Dog Democrats like Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu, all of whom oppose the public option in spite of majority support among the people of their own states and overwhelming majority support among Democrats. These are just players in the system—a system that has always rewarded these kinds of players because they’re the ones who are able to sell their votes in behind-closed-doors negotiations, where all the real legislating in this country is done. This is just the way the system works, and no one person within the system has the power to change it.

So what about the general himself—Barack Obama—the man supposed to be leading the charge for real Health Care reform? Well, apparently “real” reform to him is whatever can pass—not necessarily anything that will actually make a difference. He’s been consistent throughout this whole debate in terms of his words—he believes that a public option is the best way to keep insurance companies honest—but his actions have consistently displayed his willingness to throw the public option overboard for the sake of the passage of a bill, any bill, that he could then point to and claim victory. “Look, I got Health Care reform passed!” he can say, and I suppose he genuinely expects to get credit for it.

What he doesn’t seem to realize is that the army that has been fighting his cause all year—with shockingly little actual leadership from him—is not full of blind sheep who worship him as a demi-god. Progressives are not Republicans who just line up behind a charismatic leader-figure and repeat whatever they’re told and excommunicate all who think differently. Progressives follow their ideals, not leaders, and when the leaders they supported for the sake of those ideals wind up betraying those very ideals, they find a new leader. Barack Obama raised a lot of hopes when he took office, particularly with regard to real change in the Health Care system, and if something passes without a public option which he then claims is a victory, those hopes will be dashed and Barack Obama can expect a very tough re-election campaign in 2012 as all his disillusioned followers stay at home, unable to summon the will to go out and cast a vote for this fraud a second time.

The war is almost over, and in its wake lies the blood and corpses of Hope and Change—the Hope that was born and cultivated last year when a young black man with a bold progressive agenda actually managed to rise to the rank of the President of the United States. The general of an army of progressives which had mobilized to put him in that position—a position from which he could continue the fight and make a real difference in the lives of Americans—he would finally bring about the Change the American people were starving for, the Change he promised they “could believe in.” But in taking on the Enemy, the general and his commanders turned and sold out the very soldiers who were fighting for them for the sake of a bullshit Peace Treaty they could call a “victory”.

If the public option passes, it will be a victory, but one so close to a defeat as to make very little difference in terms of the faith that progressives have already lost in Obama. If it fails, it will be a defeat, the progressives will know it’s a defeat, and the moment Obama rises to the podium to declare it a victory, as he inevitably will if any bill whatsoever gets passed, that will be the end of his presidency—the last and largest casualty of this long and bloody war.