a good dose of political satire... loved it! (Although likewise, I don't agree with the not voting part)

that would shock even his most assimilated followers into staying home on Election Day.

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

on this will be proven one way or another soon. Lieberman boasting about Obama picking him supposedly appeared in the Hartford Courant.(subscription needed for archives) Myself, I can't get past him supporting Lieberman over Lamont.

One statement is correct. On statement is incorrect. It's as simple as that. The leadership assigned Lieberman as Obama's mentor. That's it. Let's deal in facts, please.

As for Lamont, I don't know that Obama supported Lieberman in the general as he didn't campaign for either in the general election to my knowledge. I also think he said during the primary that he would support the Democratic nominee...the position of most of the Senate Dems at the time. I do know that Lamont has endorsed Obama's presidential bid, however.

somebody will get the copy and it will show if Lieberman said it or not. That is the only way the story will go away. If it makes Lieberman a liar- great. I can't help but wonder about Obama's decision making tho. Also I don't get why Obama has no problem with Lieberman's support of the Iraq War but has problem with Hillary's stand.

Obama rallies state Democrats, throws support behind Lieberman

By Stephanie Reitz, Associated Press Writer | March 31, 2006

HARTFORD, Conn. --U.S. Sen. Barack Obama rallied Connecticut Democrats at their annual dinner Thursday night, throwing his support behind mentor and Senate colleague Joe Lieberman.

Obama, an Illinois Democrat who is considered a rising star in the party, was the keynote speaker at the annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey Dinner.

Lieberman, Connecticut's junior senator, is under fire from some liberal Democrats for his support of the Iraq War. He was key in booking Obama, who routinely receives more than 200 speaking invitations each week.

Some at Thursday's dinner said that while they were pleased with Lieberman's success in bringing Obama to Connecticut, they still consider Lieberman uncomfortably tolerant of the Bush administration.

Obama wasted little time getting to that point, calling it the "elephant in the room" but praising Lieberman's intellect, character and qualifications.

"The fact of the matter is, I know some in the party have differences with Joe. I'm going to go ahead and say it," Obama told the 1,700-plus party members who gathered in a ballroom at the Connecticut Convention Center for the $175-per-head fundraiser.

"I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf," he said. more

Check out this letter of support by Obama to Ned Lamont...after Lamont won the primary.

http://nedlamont.com/blog/1976/barack-obama-writes-emails

but it doesn't explain campaigning for one of Bush's biggest war supporters and enablers. I get he was Obama's mentor but if Obama becomes president what will come first : owed political favors or the will of the US citizens?

To be fair:

Clinton 6yrs of earmarks
Obama 2yrs of earmarks

On average he isn't that far behind.

the voters didn't get their moneys worth LOL

Has Obama's vote in favor of the bankruptcy bill ever been explained? When I heard about it, I was stunned, because even then I expected him to try for the presidency.

This recent article from WaPo certainly gives the impression that his legislative record is more progressive, but it's impossible to determine a trend from one example (and the other three that are briefly mentioned.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html

I've just been checking into this online, and lo and behold, it appears that he actually didn't vote for it, though also he didn't vote in favor of an amendment limiting interest rates.

I wonder how I got such a wrong idea, because it's kept me from trusting his intentions for the last couple of years. I think I'd have supported Edwards anyway, but who knows?

Does anyone else remember hearing that he voted for the bankruptcy bill, or was it just me?

(I still wish there was a way to see a well-annotated timeline of candidates' voting records)

...of his voting against the 30% limit (which he did because he thought the limit too high). Of course they imply that he wanted no limits and omit that he opposed the bill.

1) the notion that Obama voted for the bankruptcy bill has been very very widely repeated, especially in comment sections of blogs

2) he voted against the bankruptcy bill, AND against cloture (the real vote)

3) however, at around the same time, he voted for the tort reform bill, which was another GOP pile of shit

4) his comment regarding that bill -- "sometimes you have to trim your sails" -- was widely reported. this was in like March of 05, just 4 months after his election

5) the tort reform bill passed with a veto-proof supermajority. i don't know if Obama voted against cloture or not.

6) amid all the contemporaneous blogospheric outrage over the bankruptcy bill (which could have been defeated in the cloture vote), these two narratives got conflated, and now A LOT of people think Obama voted for the bankruptcy bill. you are most definitely not alone in this.

--------------

Someday soon, I'm sure we shall find out definitively if Obama chose Lieberman as his mentor or not. Most precedent suggests that mentors are assigned by leadership, but, Lieberman has claimed on the record to the hometown paper that Obama chose him. Since it will probably blow up at some point, now that Lieberman has endorsed McCain, we shall probably find out for certain one way or another. Generally, it hasn't been to Obama's advantage politically to stiffarm Lieberman, and once you've made it through the primaries, the political advantage of stiffarming him decreases even further. Still, the McCain endorsement may make the subject unavoidable. We shall see.

While I am not so negative on Obama, I have a history as a strong Hillary supporter. I did so on the basis of the knowledge of her policies and the awareness that this is a very smart woman who lays out what she is going to do and then she does them. That is her history, and that is the way she works. It always has been. She is also passionately interested in children, a very strong policy interest of mine.

I also know her ability at executing her policies is probably the absolute best of anyone. She CAN get this stuff done. It reminds of of the movie Brubaker. The prison wardens all get up and give the same speech, but when Brubaker gets up and gives the speech he then proceeds to implement the reforms that everyone else has rhetorically said they would do, with no intention of doing it. What happens, well of course in the movie he is fired. No one really wants this stuff do they??

When folks vote for Obama they are voting for a great feeling, a great speech, etc. But policy is not in their thoughts. So no they do not know what they are getting. It is how we got Bush, it is how Nader was able to gather votes from one of the greatest environmentalists of all time - Gore and give the election to the one who has probably done more damage than any other.

We do not sit down and rationally think, what do I believe in and who believes what I believe. Or we project, see a smiling face and they come to inhabit our fantasy of a better future.

Hillary would be a really great president, and if we elected her we would get universal health care that would be fantastic. We would be on our way with alternative energy solutions, and a whole host of other things.

Obama is a greater unknown, and he is certainly more conservative, more conservative than Hillary and way more than Edwards. It is why Edwards is struggling right now. Obama is also unknown, he does not lay out the kind of detail Hillary does. But that said, I think we are entering a period where events will be out of the control of the President, and indeed out of the control of the United States. And perhaps we need at this moment a great orator who can talk us in off the ledge, explain what is happening, give fireside chats.

Who knows? I will vote for Obama if he is running, and I will vote for Hillary if she is running. The Nation will I believe be better off with Hillary, more will get done. But Obama will be a great president in my view too, maybe greater. The great presidents have always tended to be great speakers, great orators. But I have no illusion here, less will get done.

so has proposed a version of the mitt romney mass. plan instead

i don't have it right now, but i posted on it some weeks ago. Mass health care professionals by the hundreds, signing a letter declaring "fuck no, america, don't do it!" re: mitt's mass health plan. people not getting covered, not getting care, a nightmare of cost and inefficiency. it's worse than nothing, to many.

a friend of mine once suggested that "half asssed health care" plans that mandate people spend money they don't really have, will kill the popular will for USPHC. i hope he's wrong, because it certainly looks like any of the majors' plans is doomed to failure as they are written now. c'mon pols, what about "cheaper and increases productivity" don't you understand?

She proposes subsidizing those who can't afford a plan, plus there is a cap on the percentage of income which can go toward healthcare.

That, along with opening the federal employees insurance plan to anyone who wants to choose that is a very big deal to me. More than $800 less per month for this individual payer for an Aetna HMO plan, based on 2007 rates.

For those who can't get insurance bcz of preexisting conditions, this would be salvation, a dream achieved. It is heartrending to read comments by cancer patients who cannot afford full treatments bcz they don't have insurance. They know they are compromising their lives, they know they often can't get the best recommended treatment. It's also terrifying, bcz if I lose my current expensive insurance, my cancer will not be covered and I'll be right there with them....

This appointment of Jim Cooper is terrifying to me and should be a warning to all who want universal healthcare.

According the Kuttner, all three, Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, have very similar plans. Hillary and Edwards have mandates for all, not just for parents to pay for insurance for their children.

What appears to be a sharp difference is that Hillary and Edwards both wanted universal care now. Their entre to the federal program creates a path to single payer.

I am so worried that we will get next to nothing out of an Obama administration--based on his saying that a big deal of his plan is that it will save $2500 per year, apparently from "savings"--a very Republican phrase. What is really thinking of doing?????

The appointment of Jim Cooper is not indicative of a program which will hold the insurance companies' feet to the fire. His approach in the 90's was to work the insurance companies. Thanks a lot, former Representative Cooper.

dissolving Democratic solidarity and his role in defeating the plan in the 90's.

He's now Obama's spokesman on healthcare.

Anyways, voting on the basis of health care plans is a pretty vacous method.

Not for those of us who, at age 26, have to look forward to a lifetime of post-cancer checkups and the possibility of it coming back and needing yet more surgery and more chemotherapy. Healthcare is a top priority for me. Strong enough that we're very much thinking about moving to Canada once we're both done with school.

I was only talking about health care being irrelevant because presidents don't really have the ability to propose health care initiatives aside from grabbing even more financial power from Congress.

No proposed plan was going to be enacted. At best, it only gives a hint on how plans might be *recieved*. It's more of a point to consider whether any of the three canidates would have been *hostile* to a too-conservative plan. I'm not sure there's enough info to judge on that score...

The door is wide open - Canada needs people like you.

Aside from the people who couldn't vote for a black man but could for a white woman, I think most of Clinton's supporters are about as "progressive" as Obama's folks are

way to play the race card when no one was. and the whole point about HRC's folks isn't that they are progressive and claim it, but that they are moderates and understand they are working to elect a party insider and centrist. more than one commenter at my place has said they've been driven to the HRC fold, simply because they are or recognize the extent of moderate/centrism in this country and were driven away from BHO by fanatical supporters who go ballistic when some say, "as far as moderates go, i prefer HRC to BHO." saying so seems to make one a racist traitor to true progressivism, or something.

have no question frightens me. It may all turn out fine, but...

Screw universal health care. It is more corporate welfare disguised as helping "the poor" and "the children"

Could you please explain? Are you talking about the proposals currently put forth by the Dem candidates (in which case you are largely right) or about single payor-style health care that excludes the insurance companies (in which case you are mostly wrong)?

And I struggle with it. Was the Bush extension of drugs in the Medicare plan a good thing? On the face of it, it was. But drug use by seniors went up after the plan. Do they really need all those drugs?

Does a universal plan just entrench dependency on crisis medicine, when long term holistic options continue to lack funding, that keep us all healthy in the first place.

But then I am one of those who remains healthy, has no overweight let alone obesity problem, no autoimmune disorders, and a family history with no health problems and grandparents who routinely live to 100. I have never been seriously sick let alone needed to see a doctor or hospital outside of my $100 routine annual.

I still have health insurance provided by my employer, I don't smoke, barely drink. So not a fair assessment. I feel universal care is important and I support it. But this post was an intersting take.

I read a buddhist text one time that indicated that medicine as envisioned in the West is crazy. Medicine in the east is always viewed as preventive, and if you get sick, really sick, you die. We do nothing preventive, and then when we get sick we spend a bajillion to try and stay alive. Basically the opposite of holistic.

When I asked my doctor how I got thyroid cancer, he told me "bad luck."

I did grow up in the Midwest, in an area which had higher than normal radiation exposure from the above ground atom and nuke bomb tests. Not as high as those much nearer to the test sites, but perhaps it was enough.

My doc said no way to tell.

But there was absolutely nothing I could do to control my "health" that would have made any difference.

That's why we have insurance. Being usually healthy or young and healthy is no guarantee against any number of health emergencies. But I do wish you continued best of health.

as much self-delusion about the candidate from Clinton's side and Clinton ain't in the lead.

My analytical point is this: Obama and Clinton aren't much different. Obama is not progressive. When I go into comments on blogs these days I see a ton of self-delustion about Obama -- lots of folks arguing that he's keeping how progressive he is to himself and will turn left when elected and such.

I don't like it, and I don't trust it. I think too many people are deceiving themselves. Heck, even on Iraq the difference is a lot less than folks make out - Obama's vote record is essentially identical to Clinton's.

And I don't trust his advisors on key domestic issues (his foreign advisors are pretty good). Haven't for a long time. I don't trust most of Clinton's either, as far as that goes, but somehow none of Obama's advisors have got the deserved raking over the coals that Mark Penn, for example, did.

Anyway, take it as you find it, ignore it if you wish. At the end of the day what I'm saying is that there isn't even a candidate making a sincere effort to pretend to be progressive in the campaign any more and it beffudles me why folks who are ostensibly progressives are so hopped up for Obama.

why folks who are 'ostensibly' progressives are going for Obama. They see him as the only chance. It is clear to all that Clinton has a poor record as a progressive on key issues (NAFTA, Kyle-Lieberman), that she is deeply connected to the corporate sector (Walmart), and that she embraces military 'toughness' (cluster bombs) as a tactic to blunt conservative criticism. Obama may not be much better, but there is less objective evidence that he has the same drawbacks, and this creates room for hope. In addition, his relative youth and inexperience cast him as an 'outsider'. Finally, he is the only candidate left standing who opposed the Iraq invasion. If you are going to cast a progressive vote, I don't see that you have any other choice. Like drowning men, we are clutching the last chunk of floating debris.

...for running a crappy campaign, not for attempting to influence foreign elections by producing rigged polls.

To end your beffudlement: For all but 2 years (first 2 of Clinton) of the last 28, progressives have been thwarted, villified, mocked and degraded. They need to feel excited about something. Your counterproposal (that they'll be disappointed anyway, so they might as well get it over with) is singularly unappealing.

according to Brooks will take down the newest progressive movement ;)

is morally inferior to the average maggot

If an article rings true but goes against your beliefs, then attack the author. It's common practice here.

Brooks is a rightwing ass and thats on a good day.

eom

(that they may as well hope against reason, and thus be played for suckers) is singularly unappealing.

Still, I suppose there's a small chance he'll govern as a progressive despite not legislating as one. People do change their stripes.

Rarely. Not never. But rarely.

But I'm afraid I'm of the "hope is not a plan" camp rather than the "audacity of hope" camp. I like to have a reason to hope.