Al Franken, Daily Kos, CQ, Health Care, and NO EXCUSES

As CQ Politics alone has just pointed out, again, for the gazillionth but hardly final time, Al Franken's ascension (or descent, if you prefer) into the now-60-Democratic-member U.S. Senate means less than elementary math might tell us.

It's more like a job for theoretical physics, perhaps even metaphysics, for "In a caucus that now spans the ideological spectrum from Franken on one end to Arlen Specter on the other, the Democrats" -- our nation's fuzziest, most insubstantial word -- "can’t actually do whatever they feel like doing."

CQ emphasized its didacticism with a specific senatorial example -- that being the Democratic-caucusing Joe Lieberman, who, having received in the past four years $423,644 from insurance companies, $359,870 from health professionals, and $297,090 from "pharmaceuticals/health products," according to OpenSecrets.org, is now selflessly "skeptical" of a public option in any health-care reform bill.

So, bingo, right there, on just this one issue, you see, the Dems are down to 59.

The online publication then moved on to educating Markos Moulitsas, of the Daily Kos, who, on MSNBC yesterday, said "Let’s do what the American people have asked Democrats to do, and let’s not use any excuses like this 60-vote nonsense, which is now obviously no longer an issue."

That "statement proves," wrote CQ's David Nather, that "Moulitsas doesn’t really understand the Senate. But there are lots of people who will agree with him."

David, count me among the willfully ignorant. Because you know what, David? When it comes to the paramount, three-score-old issue of comprehensive health care, Mr. Moulitsas and I, as well as millions of other Americans, do not, to be really blunt about it, much give a sympathetic shit about the theoretical physics and higher mathematics of Democratic seat-counting.

No, we hired these clowns to do a job -- one which, by the way, they, as a party, had already promised to do.

When they hire staffers, do they accept excuse after excuse when pressing tasks are left undone? Of course not. They can them. Results -- that's what the good senators demand, and no excuses are allowed.

Well guess what, senators. It's your turn. We don't care how you do it, we don't care how many corrupt bargains you must cut, we don't care whom among you has to be blackmailed into doing the right thing on health care. Just do your damn jobs, as you promised you would. And no excuses.

Comments

[Ahsan]

Bravo!! I hope messages as blunt as this one, get noticed by Dems who might be thinking of selling us out, for the right price.

[Kennesaw's Unknown Soldier]

Smash your head against the wall and see which shatters first. Have you not yet seen enough to convince you that neither party is about to do anything which benefits the American people?

[Bevin Gilmore]

The math is simple. On one side of the ledger the industrial world has single payer (Germany, Italy, Sweden, Japan, France etc). The US car industry can't compete with them because of healthcare. Decades ago, the industrial world was getting impatient with America barking financial orders to them because as far as they were concerned, it wasn't THEIR fault that the U.S. couldn't get its act together in terms of a health system. We are ALONE on the other side of the ledger. Guess who has to change. It's a simple intelligence test.

That situation is a thousand times worse today. It all collapsed in August 2008. We shoveled money to the banks and insurers, we shoveled money to the car companies… but they will NOT be competitive until a comprehensive healthcare system compatible with the rest of the world (single payer) is in place.

Until that happens, all the money we've been shoveling is getting flushed down a GOLDEN TOILET to a privileged few. Our system will not heal itself. Our economy will NOT recover. Unemployment increases the #s of the un- and underinsured. It's been a slow-motion disaster that has been accelerating rapidly in the last few years.

And it's not just auto companies. Nonprofit hospitals/medical systems are in trouble. They need a comprehensive solution that enables them to sustain themselves.