Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Sunday, March 21, 2010

HISTORIC! YES WE DID!







WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT! 

SPEAKER PELOSI! 

DEMOCRATS! 

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!




"For now, the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor enough (Medicaid), fortunate enough (working for an employer that offers coverage, or able themselves to bear expenses), or in some other way specially positioned (veterans; elected officials)... TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period." --James Fallows



Obama's Victory Of Persistence
Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish
21 Mar 2010 10:10 pm

"Yes, in the end, he got all the primary delegates House votes he needed. Yes, he worked our last nerve to get there. But, yes, too, this is an important victory - the first true bloodied, grueling revelation that his persistence, another critical Obama quality, finally paid off in the presidency. He could have given up weeks ago, as the punditry advised (because they seem to have no grasp of substance and mere addiction to hour-to-hour political plays). But he refused. That took courage. And relentlessness. The biggest shift in social policy since welfare reform - but involving far more people. My view is that it will also empower Obama abroad, because there is a linkage between domestic success and foreign policy clout."

17 comments:

Gordon Scott said...

Congratulations! And now that you've established a new precedent for slamming through legislation that the people hate, via the tyranny of the majority, just imagine what another political movement can do, once they're in the majority and the White House. Oh, and you know that day will come.

Just imagine.

Joe "Truth 101" Kelly said...

Oh good. Gordon's here so I don't have to visit his blog to gloat.


I imagine the next movement will be more progressives runing in primaries to knock off the DINO's Gordon. Then we will have a true majority of legislators who will work for the hope and change we voted Obama to the presidency for.


Your side is in it's death throes thanks to Dick Cheney and the neocon cabal Gordon. There's nothing left but bigots, homophobes and idiots to call your base. And even bigots and homophobes need health care so you may be losing them once they get signed up. You'll still have the idiots though to keep you from getting too lonely.

Jim said...

Congrats to our friends in establishing the change; USSA. Now, try to enforce it.

Leslie Parsley said...

Thrilling, absolutely thrilling. Somehow I don't consider over 55% of the American people as the minority.

dmarks said...

"Dick Cheney and the neocon cabal Gordon."

Ah yes, the mostly mythical neocons, which are actually few in number, an don't even number Dick Cheney among them. As prevelant in Gordon's "side" as the communists are in Truth's: that is, hardly at all.

Arthurstone said...

Nothing mythical about it. These folks hopped behind the wheel of government and ran it right into the ditch. They said what they wanted to do and then did it.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.httm

USSA is a nice touch. O woe is us...

Comrade.

dmarks said...

Thing is, they never got behind the wheel. Cheney and Bush are/were not neo-anything. Not did they run the country "into the ditch" (a laughable idea considering that Obama's deficit spending for his first two years well in excess of any of Bush's years).

Shaw Kenawe said...

Half the people of this country want this health reform. Half.

Only the GOP is characterizing the passage as a "ramming and slamming" action--and that's because it wasn't able to stop it, and their anger is understandable.

But it is not accurate to say no Americans wanted this reform.

Half the country does.

Including the Catholic nuns.

Elections have consequences--the American people elected Democrats to majorities in 2006 and 2008--and put Mr. Obama in office knowing he would initiate health care reform.

All through this agonizing process, the people were divided. Evenly.

We'll have to wait to see what another political movement can do.

We did live through one during the Bush years, when the GOP controlled the three branches of government, and we survived.

It is understandble that Gordon and others are angry and predict dire consequences.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Paul Krugman's take on it:

"And let’s be clear: the campaign of fear hasn’t been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment. On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way. Politicians like Sarah Palin — who was, let us remember, the G.O.P.’s vice-presidential candidate — eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Senator Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue. On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that “freedom dies a little bit today” and accused Democrats of “totalitarian tactics,” which I believe means the process known as “voting.”

Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately. But the question was, would it actually be enough to block reform?

And the answer is no. The Democrats have done it. The House has passed the Senate version of health reform, and an improved version will be achieved through reconciliation.

This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out."

Arthurstone said...

I love it. Two terms for GWB/Draft Dodger Dick and the new America thugs.

Enthusiastic support for his wars and his brush cutting & his gutting of regulatory powers, his military build up etc etc.

But wait...

'They never got behind the wheel'.

Thanks for the laugh!

dmarks said...

Arthur: Neoconservatives never got behind the wheel. Bush and Cheney were not part of this group of supposedly primarily Jewish former leftists.

Cheney is more more a draft-dodger than is Obama a non-US citizen. Both are equal kinds of lies made up by the fringe haters.

Cheney, like Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, sought student deferments. That's quite legal, and I have no problem with any of these men having done it. Yes, not even Bill Clinton.

"Enthusiastic support for his wars"

The wars were started by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein's regime. However, Bush (along with members of the left such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton) wisely pushed to retaliate against these aggressors.

I suppose that Hillary and Biden were members of this nutty conspiracy too?

I shake my head at those who constantly trump up barely-existent forces and rave about Bush and the "New American Century" and Neocons..... which is just like those who rave about Obama and Saul Alinsky and his being controlled by communists. There's nothing to any of it.

dmarks said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dmarks said...

From Wikipedia:

" Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Howard Dean, Dan Quayle, and Dick Cheney have all been accused of being draft dodgers on the grounds that they never saw combat in Vietnam, even though none of them received a conscription notice (Bill Clinton received one that arrived after the date he was to report, due to having been sent by surface mail to the United Kingdom. As he had already begun another term at university, regulations allowed him to complete the term before reporting, but he applied and was accepted for an ROTC program 11 days before the new induction reporting date [7])."

There, we can put the lie about Cheney being a draft-dodger to bed now.

Hey, by the logic of the liars sling the false "draft dodger" lie on people just because they never saw combat during Vietnam, I count as a draft-dodger, along with Barack Obama. Both of us were alive during the Vietnam War and never fought in it. Sure we were top young, but that's a legal exemption from service, just like student deferments. No excuse, right?

Arthurstone said...

Heh. Heh.

At least you managed not to drag David Duke into it.

The New American Century crowd described how they viewed the world and the role America should play and set about making it happen during GWB's initial campaign and subsequent two terms as President.

Nothing to 'trump up' at all. It's what happened. Dick would be disappointed if we didn't credit him with being there at the organizations beginnings. He always has expressed that line. The fact it hasn't turned out very well doesn't faze that ilk even now.

Arthurstone said...

Forty odd years ago America was involved in another dubious, illegal military misadventure. Then as now we fought to 'preserve our way of life' and we fought 'over there' so we wouldn't have to 'fight them here' Then as now Republicans like Dick Cheney sold the war as the defining issue of our time yet, unsurprisingly, they found 'other priorities'.

All these years later the criminal Cheney sent young Americans off to war under a cloud of lies and pretexts on
another useless war much like the one he himself
avoided.

The conversation about Dick Cheney and his contribution to our way of life is bookended by those events. Draft-dodger? A matter of semantics.

Liar and coward?

Without question.

dmarks said...

Arthur said: "At least you managed not to drag David Duke into it."

Duke is quite appropriate to bring up as an equivalent figure to Van Jones (both having professed in a well-documented fashion adherance to branches of socialism that believe in killing many millions of people). But.. Duke has nothing to do with this subject.

The New American Century crowd described how they viewed the world and the role America should play and set about making it happen during GWB's initial campaign and subsequent two terms as President.

Sounds like the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals", the common conspiracy-control theory of the equally unhinged right-wing critics of Obama. That is, as equally unhinged as those who flabber the PNAC theories.

"Nothing to 'trump up' at all. It's what happened."

I already showed you what happened. The draft dodging case dies to to lack of evidence.

"The fact it hasn't turned out very well doesn't faze that ilk even now."

A major terrorist leader vanquished in an action that went to the root cause of terrorism. Iraq an actual democracy. Well, it hasn't turned out very well if you like tyranny and terrorism.

Arthurstone said...

Iraq an 'actual Democracy'.

Discuss.