Senators Behaving Badly

It seems as if our representatives have placed themselves above those they represent. I am sure that there were good parts to healthcare reform that republicans could have gotten behind and I am sure that meetings held behind closed doors without them could have been opened to allow them in. But none of this seem to happen.
As taxpayers we have seen one bill after another rushed into law, bills written and authored by who knows who, that will impact our lives for years to come. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is ok for Paul but we have leadership that is bound and determined to take everything Peter and his offsprings have to get Paul to vote for them. Incredible.

Republicasn can not have their cake and eat it.
They complain they were not included in any negotiations, yet anytime they tried to bring them in they would do everything in their power to scuttle the bill.
After Harry Reid had had it with the group of 6 (remember it had 3 Repubs), we all knew that all the Repubs wanted was NO BILL, NO REFORM, NADA, NOTHING.
They are not only the party of NO, but they are a bunch of hypocrites if they keep complaining that they were left out.

Seems like lumps of coal should be handed out.

Ever since Republicans put out their Contract on America, things have gotten really ugly.
Of course, ever since religious folks decided to enter the political arena and ram their religion down other throats, things have also gotten uglier.
Maybe if the U.S. were less religious, the interaction of its citizens would be less ugly.

The Senators are “at one another’s throats.” But not yet literally so. No brutal beating or roughing up, as (very occasionally) in the 19th century.

It’s a matter of the extremes being the loudest and most arrogant, but it’s not that new. Historically, the really “good old days” were just as bad, if not worst. Read about all the crap Lincoln took during his days of great leadership. What turns my stomach is the hypocrisy. Many times John McCain, the self-righteous critic of someone like Al Franken and others, has been an unadulterated and vulgar bully toward people he was grilling. I recall a woman on whom he used one expletive after another in a tape on television.
The truth is that during the Mansfield-Dirksen years there were many more moderates and fewer people who thought they could never be wrong. By the way, if anyone needed shutting up during this absurd wrangling about health care, it was certainly Joe Lieberman, who utterly failed to represent what the great majority of his constituents wanted from health care reform, a PUBLIC OPTION to make the greedy, monopolistic health insurance companies actually compete for once.

Yes, members from both parties are very vulnerable to the promised bribes of lobbyists. That’s as much the fault of our election and campaign systems presently than it is the fault of individuals. Presently, the situation is that you cater to the lobbyists and fat cats or you haven’t the funds to run an effective campaign. Consequently, should we throw our hands into the air and accept that we can’t do anything about it or should we move together to demand complete campaign reform to disarm the lobbyists?
Nothing, for example, is being said about the Supreme Court’s looking at rescinding the only piece of campaign reform legislation passed in recent history: the McCain-Feingold Bill. The conservatives on the court are claiming that this bill limits the “freedom of speech” of the fat cats such as Lockheed-Martin to outright buy elections. WE have to stand up and say: “NO, we need more limitations on special interests influencing politicians and election so that the voice of the people has at least a chance of being heard. We need a peaceful revolution against extreme bribery and undermining of our democratic processes, or they will become more and more the play things for the wealthy and powerful.

It seems to me both parties are at fault. All we seem to hear are half truths and see deceptive manuevers in Congress. How many have read the Health Bill and all the special ammendments?
Gone are the days when we could believe our leaders have the best interest of the country at heart instead of the special interests which rule this land.
All are at fault including the President, his Cabinet and his advisors.

Harry Reid claims on the senate floor that every 10 minutes 2 people die because they do not have health insurance.
No doubt another liberal lie. But if it is not a lie, then liberals must be O.K. letting over 400,000 people without insurance die while waiting for the legislation to take affect in 4 years.

Labels that people spit out like “liberal” are also signs of the lack of civility and decency in current politics. By the way, the word is “effect,” not “affect.”
Obama did not start this recession. It started in 2007 and even as fierce a laissez faire man as Bush’s Sec. of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, went begging to Congress for the bailouts because he knew their failed economic “trickle down” and the totally unethical Wall Street bankers (Thompson is a former CEO for Goldman-Sachs.) had brought us to the teetering edge of another Great Depression.
There have been Presidents ever since Teddy Roosevelt calling for reform in health care. At least Obama and his people are getting something done about it. The last administration did not even care about the millions of Americans denied access to health care.
It’s these kind of uniformed and fallacious opinions spread by the likes of Beck and Limbaugh that have made people too lazy to check them for facts and truths that have completely muddied the atmosphere so that problems cannot be objectively examined and solved.

Every ten minutes two people die because of lack of health insurance.
I am certain that this is true.
How many die every ten minutes with health insurance?
Just curious. This question is not meant to imply anything at all.
Here in New Orleans the uninsured or under-insured can get health CARE if you know where to look. It takes tenacity, but you will find health CARE when needed.
I foresee lawyers involved on both sides regarding this bill. I don’t know how it’s going to end up, but it will be interesting.
How come this bill (once passed) won’t start for another four years? Is that correct? Why? What about those two people every ten minutes?

Igorvitch wrote:
“Not a lie at all about people’s dying from lack of health insurance. ”
Yes, it is a lie.
The so-called study (that puports to show that 44,000 Americans die each year due to no health insurance) did not even bother to verify whether the subjects in the study that died had health insurance at the time of death or not.
The study was conducted by the head of an advocacy group that lobbies for a single payer system.
It is not an objective, nor a scientific study at all.
Its more junk science from the political left.

How can you not expect that kind of behavior. You’re dealing with people who have that job because they are not smart enough to do anything else for a living.

Bob: good comment and request. Although I don’t agree with the republicans and their “no” attitude, you have to give them credit for being in defiant, rigid lock-step. Standing together no matter even if it’s for the good of the country (think the recent stalling on troop funding and unemployment compensation). Telling the whole country to pick a finger for no other reason than just because. Republicans will never put aside differences as long as they are out of power. Given their attitude, they will not have power for a long, long time!