Buh-Bayh!!

Good riddance to bad rubbish:

“We want them doing more hiring, more investing…” When these companies’ taxes were at the higher rates during the Clinton years, they were doing plenty of hiring. So this idea that we have to cut their taxes or they can’t “create jobs” has been completely debunked. The Bush tax cuts were enacted nearly a decade ago and hiring has DROPPED.

Corporatist whores like Evan Bayh are the LAST thing we need. He’s leaving. Blanche Lincoln is probably going to lose her seat. Other Blue Dogs are hanging on by a hair. What the election of these corporatists proved is that it isn’t enough to work to elect people with (D) after their names. Republicans have succeeded in selling the American public a shit sandwich and telling them it’s caviar. We have the message that ought to resonate with the Tea Party, but the Democrats have for far too long been willing to accept the fair-weather friendship of corporations who will yank away the football the minute a Republican shows them the bling. The programs that even Tea Partiers hold dear are the creation of Democrats, not Republicans. We should be proud of them instead of trying to sweep them under the rug, as “Democrats” like Evan Bayh would.

Just sayin’ is all

Perhaps if Barack Obama had just gone and danced with the ones what brung him, he wouldn’t seem like such a hapless dupe of corporatist Blue Dogs in his own party now.

But instead he listened to that little Napoleon Rahm Emanuel, who put most of them in there. And now the media smells blood in the water and is determined to turn Barack Obama into Carter II: Electric Boogaloo.

Nice work, Rahmmy. Did you get paid to do it?

What part of "You won" does Harry Reid not understand?

It’s time to send this useless POS back home where he belongs — and all the other corporatist, on-the-take, Democratic obstructionists who parrot Republican talking points, vote with Republicans, and are perfectly willing to go off to their cushy vacations, secure in the knowledge that their boating accidents will be fully covered by there state-of-the-art health insurance:

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday abandoned plans for a vote on health care before Congress’ August recess, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s ambitious timetable to revamp the nation’s $2.4 trillion system of medical care.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., delivered the official pronouncement, saying, “It’s better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through.”

His words were a near-echo of Republicans who have criticized what they have called a rush to act on complex legislation that affects every American.

Obama shrugged off the delay.

“That’s OK, I just want people to keep on working,” Obama told a town hall meeting in Cleveland. “I want it done by the end of the year. I want it done by the fall.”

Reid said the Senate Finance Committee will act on its portion of the bill before lawmakers’ monthlong break. Reid then will merge that bill with separate legislation passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this month.

The process will be difficult since Finance, led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is seeking a bipartisan deal while the health committee bill was passed by Democrats on a party-line vote.

Obama had pushed for votes in the House and Senate before August to ensure that lawmakers had enough time to meld the two bills into comprehensive legislation by December — before the start of a politically charged congressional election year.

Obama has made nearly daily appeals for the overhaul in the past two weeks and has summoned more than a dozen lawmakers to the White House to make his case. At stake is a massive remaking of the system. So is Obama’s credibility.

Well, I don’t know about that, except for the fact that the mainstream news organizations are going to make damn sure that it’s spun as a question of Obama’s credibility. What it IS demonstrating is the contempt that Obama’s own party has for him.

This is starting to look like Clinton Redux — someone who isn’t from the Washington Insider’s club is elected President, and his own party helps the Republicans to make sure he isn’t re-elected. Some of this may just be a question of the refusal or the inability by nature of Democrats to fight back, except that we’re seeing Democrats like insurance company shill Max Baucus and the equally on-the-take Blue Dogs fighting back against the President in their own party. I realize that the Democrats are more comfortable as a minority party, mewling in the corner about how the big mean Republicans are bullying them. But there are people’s lives at stake here, and I frankly don’t give a shit who’s bullying them. If Harry Reid and the rest of these useless fucks didn’t want to play hardball, they should go the fuck home and let someone take office who can — and who will.

"Political realities": Translation: Don’t piss off the Blue Dogs because they’re so mean we can’t control them

In case you had any doubts that Washington DC was one giant hackocracy full of venal, greedy bastards from both parties who just want to shovel as much corporate cash into their pockets, and listen not one whit to the American people, here’s your proof:

All was well within the Democratic Party, which had finally received that elusive 60th caucus member. The Republican filibuster would be no longer be a threat.

Or maybe not.

Franken is expected to come to Washington after the July 4th recess. But not everyone is convinced that his presence will make a huge political difference. The reality, which few in the Democratic Party are willing to talk about openly, is that there are really only 58 caucusing members. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, has been out for nearly all of the current Congress on medical leave. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, while released from the hospital on Tuesday morning, continues to face health issues of his own. Meanwhile, moderate Democrats like Mary Landrieu, D-La, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., have made it almost a point of pride in not allowing their votes to be taken for granted. And on specific issues, the party has proven strikingly allergic to philosophical unison.

“It is good news for the Democrats and it is bad news for the Republicans. That is a simple fact,” said Mo Elleithee, a Democratic strategist who has worked on Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe’s campaigns. “Having said that, you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself here. It is not like the caucus is unanimous on every issue.”

Talking on condition of anonymity, some Democratic strategists were even blunter. “Sixty is an imaginary number,” said one operative. “You are always going to lose the Ben Nelsons and all the centrists. This is why 2010 proves to be so important because it can set a buffer for that 60 threshold.”

The threshhold for a filibuster-proof majority is now exactly one more than the number of Democrats you have.

Useless sacks of shit.

Isn’t it funny how Republicans never thought like this? They had 51 seats, they were king of the fucking world. But Harry Reid is folded in a fetal position in the corner, lest Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh and the other corporatist suckup say mean things.

Can we please vote these weasels out of office and get some Democrats with some stones in there? It’s things that make me miss Paul Wellstone more every fucking day. And even though Al Franken has finally taken back that seat from the people who murdered Sen. Wellstone, I’m not convinced he’s going to be significantly more progressive than the blue dogs.

I am hoping he’ll surprise me.