Jack & Jill Politics

Ho hum…..

Keith Olbermann, Rikyrah? Seriously?

I use this quote quite often if not everyday. “Once One Understands, Action Is Easy”. The White House has not sold this plan well at all.

There has been more success in the selling of the joker RACIST T-Shirts than folks understanding what Health Care Reform will do for their future.

In addition, they really need to do something about that JIM JONES (wanna be) pastor in AZ…Wanda Sykes talk about RushBO's kidneys failing and caught a ton of flack. This man prays for our Presidents Death and NOTHING???? OK, back to my Frosted Flakes…Morning!

KO has NADA, ZILCH, ZERO credibility when it comes to this and any other politcal debate. The bastard didn't even pull the lever November 4, 2008.

Plus, he's yet to call out his racist comrad, Pat BKKK on his racist rants against blacks and other POC…. not to mention Pat's his divine love for Hitler.

Fuck Keith Olberman!

I'll help you to say it!

Keith can go straight to hell!

Can you say TIME TRAVEL?

Hey now!
I seem to remember maybe two weeks before the election a PSA on MSNBC asking people to vote and I remember seeing Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman on the PSA.
But…you say Keith didn't vote…NOOOOOOO!

I hear you, keke12, but what have your local elected reps have to say about the public option? Where do they stand in support of IT and President Obama?

People,people slow down and take a deep breath.Breathe in Breathe out.Now no matter what Max Baucus gets out of his committe it still has to go to conference where the house has the upper hand.Pelosi has said no public option , no bill.Everything at this point is just what we call when we set up sound “White Noise” That is all.

Rikyrah, co-sign. I'm not the least bit interested in an insurance industry giveaway, palmed off as “health care reform”.

That's funny,I remember Tom Delay stripping out all the provisions of the Medicare drug bill that senate dems had put in there.Maybe I'm wrong but that's how I remembered it.

Well you know Dennis the menace would be one.Maybe Joe LIEberman or a DLC stooge such as Evan Bayh.

Some people are going to remain in denial no matter how much evidence you show them. Even after the betrayal they will still make excuses. This beggar's banquet Obama has planned for next Wed is it for “health care”.

The Public Option was ALREADY the BIG COMPROMISE. Single Payer should have been kept. The one thing Bush did was act on his own and he didn't give a hoot what we thought about it. He managed to stay in office 2 terms despite all the havoc. Obama has capitulated time and time again.

Certain black people who read this blog do NOT want to see it. Oh well. I hope those with some common sense are preparing themselves. If we end up with a legit health care plan it will be DESPITE Obama not BECAUSE of him. Unemployment has just gone up by the way. Symbolism of a “black” president means nothing if the standard of living and quality of lives of those that voted do not improve.

When blacks finally figure that out perhaps the collective will start getting the change that was promised. So far it's all pixie dust and requests for more time.

Thank you. If you're not going to vote do be quiet and let the people that actually do vote be in charge. I don't care if you voted Republican, at least you voted.

And who is Keith kidding lol he is very political, and one sided. He still hasn't had the balls to do his job and call out his network and Uncle KKK Pat on his hate speech. Whatever, you're good for a laugh but other than that I don't think Keith is worth a damn.

Tell it!

He calls out everyone else on their racism but yet have the Grand Dragon of them all sitting right next to him & constanly turns a blind eye!

Kiss my ass Keith!

Eugene's disappointed, you can hear it in his voice.

So..who's going to be the first person big enough to kiss my ass, and say 'sorry TruthSeeker…you told us so'?

KO continues to bring on a man named Dan Savage to speak about issues.
Dan savage was one of the white gay men who got on TV and stated AA's prevented gay people from getting married in California.
Dan Savage stated AA's were bigots because of the way they voted blah blah blah. I still have not seen that man apologize to AA's for making false statements once it was found out the poll used for that info was bogus.

rikyrah, I admire and respect your dedication to the cause, but the tone of your posts are really depressing. We can push the President to do the right thing and support a robust public option. I've been linking the petition by Progressive Change Campaign Committee on my facebook page and trying to get my friends to sign the petition and forward it. But this tone of yours over the past several weeks is disrespectful of the President and in way similar to the teabaggers.

I just finished reading about how schools are allowing students to skip class if they don't want to hear the President speech Tuesday. We may have a black president, but for all intents and purposes, the white establishment still thinks he's only 3/5 of human being. When I come to Jack and Jill politics, the last thing I expect to read is the same vitriol towards the President that I can get from Redstate or Townhall.

I would ask that you, rikyrah, and others calm down. That doesn't mean I'm asking for a lovefest of Obama here at JJP. I'm saying hold the President accountable, but be respectful and refrain from using language like “sellout”.

Vitriol??!!!…

You think that single, benign paragraph she just posted is vitriolic?

You want to know what is depressing? Your animal farm, 5 of 9 bullshit is depressing. I'm just about ready to slash my damned wrists.

Yeah–you're one of the folks who needs to calm down.

And you need to wake the fuck up.

How about you just go to sleep, instead?

What is so unfortunate about this entire debate is that everyone seems to have forgotten about the goals of healthcare reform and instead are fighting for their ideological views to prevail. The idea that its better to walk away with nothing if there is no public option is foolhardy. Do you really think that the person who has no insurance will make the same assessment when new legislation could afford them the ability to get coverage?

What's about the people who can't get insurance because they have a pre-existing condition or who are paying astronomical out of pocket expenses due to caps or the people losing their insurance when they get sick? Legislation that addresses those problems in the private insurance market will have a very significant impact for many people.

If the bill improves choice and competition, increases coverage, regulates insurers to provide consumers greater security, is deficit neutral and doesn't tax middle America. Isn't that the main goals of reform? The public option is a mechanism to achieve some of the goals, but it's an ideological mechanism. I have experienced and believe that a single payer system that provides basic coverage along with an employer-based private insurance is optimal but I'm also pragmatic about what can be achieved legislatively.

I think the President should push for a public option and go to the mat for it, but take the best deal he can if the effort fails. Walking away with nothing is a win only for the ideologues on both sides. That woman who can't get insurance because of a pre-existing condition will hopefully live to tell her story in a tv ad for reform 16 yrs down the road and her neighbors will help her pay for her medical bills for the foreseeable future.

If only rikyrah was posting write ups like this to galvanize Obama supporters.

” Grass-roots mobilization raises the stakes, identifies the obstacles to reform and puts the opposition on the defensive. The right-wing fringe understood this simple organizing lesson and seized the momentum. Its leaders used tactics that energized their base, challenged specific elected officials and told a national story, enacted in locality after locality.

It is time for real reformers to take back the momentum.

In the past two weeks, proponents of Obama's health-care reform finally woke up. They showed up in large numbers at town hall meetings sponsored by elected officials across the nation.

The president himself used his bully pulpit with more resolve, attending public events and addressing conference calls with religious groups, unions and others to urge them to mobilize on behalf of reform.

What's needed now is a campaign to shift the ground beneath Congress. First, it must concentrate on winning support for a specific bill that incorporates the key principles Obama has been advocating: universal insurance coverage, no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, the public option and controls on exorbitant drug and insurance industry costs. The Limbaugh loyalists know what they are against. But Obama and his allies have to be clear about what they are for.

Challenging the right wing's framing of the issue, Organizing for America and the activist groups need to recruit volunteers to reach out to friends, neighbors and especially the “undecided” public with the same urgency, energy and creativity that they showed in the election.

Second, the campaign must focus attention on the insurance companies that are primarily responsible for the health-care mess. This means organizing public events across the country that can articulate Americans' frustrations with the current health insurance system and polarize public opinion against the insurance companies and their allies.

Americans who are paying the price of our failure to act — people who lost family members because they were denied coverage for preexisting conditions, people who can't afford health insurance and fear that a medical emergency would wipe them out, families who went bankrupt and lost their homes because of out-of-pocket medical expenses, and businesses that suffer because of the high cost of insurance for employees — need opportunities to publicly confront those responsible for their plight. It is time to put human faces on the crisis by contrasting their stories with the insurance companies' outrageous profits and top executives' exorbitant salaries and bonuses.

This requires “movement” tactics, from leaflets, vigils and newspaper ads to nonviolent civil disobedience — such as occupying insurance company offices and picketing the homes of insurance executives — to focus attention on the companies and individuals who are the major obstacles to reform. As long as the real source of the problem remains faceless (or can hide behind seven conservative Democratic senators), the right remains free to demonize “big government” rather than greedy corporations.

Third, the campaign must educate constituents of the Baucus caucus about their senators' political and financial dependence on the insurance industry and other opponents of reform. They need to ask these conservative Democrats: Which side are you on? If they won't support real reform, they should know that a primary challenge is likely.

This strategy could begin to restore the combination of hope and audacity that drives successful reform movements — and that put Obama in the White House.
Kennedy understood that reforming health care is a moral obligation, and that the responsibility to heal the sick is at the heart of every faith tradition and is required for a civilized society. He was hoping to live long enough to see it happen. Obama and people of conscience cannot allow that victory — and that tribute to the late senator — to slip away.”

Peter Dreier teaches at Occidental College and is a co-author of “Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century.”

Marshall Ganz teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and is the author of “Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement.”

Dispatches from the bubble

OK, here's something that's not going to happen in any serious way, another bizarre moment in this season of irrationality.

Keith Olbermann:

He's compromised on everything so far and as self-defeating as it may be, the progressive caucus and progressives would abandon him if necessary, if this was to be the policy of this administration into 2012. If it's necessary to find somebody else to run against him, I think they'd do it, no matter how destructive that may seem at face value.

The “progressive caucus” might run a Kucinich-type candidate against him in the Democratic primary. But the idea that it would matter — much less be “destructive” — is a hothouse Beltway illusion, a sign of how detached the engaged minority can get from the actual electorate, even the Democratic primary electorate.

There are any number of data points that show this, including the rise in Obama's popularity among Democrats in August, with the right-wing assaults on him far more compelling to Democrats than the details of health insurance policy. He's now at 88% among Democrats, in the poll I linked. Good luck with that primary challenge.

But the notion of a leftist uprising against Obama is profoundly limited for another reason. It relies on ignoring that the American “left,” the anti-war base, and the voters who'd like to see expanded government health care, among other

But second, and perhaps more finally, because all this talk of the “left” ignores how heavily the American left is African-American. And it's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which the first black president loses that support. Pollsters have noticed the extent to which he's still buoyed by firm support from that base: As Marist put it last month, “Overwhelmingly, African American voters approve of how the president is dealing with health care. 87% report President Obama is handling the situation appropriately while just 6% think he is not.”

The Congressional Black Caucus has been pushing hard for the public option. But it will be very difficult for black members to defy a president so overwhelmingly popular in their districts. And so fantasies of a progressive revolt — of which there's no particular evidence outside the activist core — depend on a view of a much dimished, white-dominated left.

This isn't a primary, safe to say, that Rahm Emanuel and Patrick Gaspard are losing a lot of sleep over.