Frank: I Hope Some GOP Senators Will Support Health Care Reform -- Because Without Them, Bill May Be Toast

Barney "on the take from Wall St." Frank, and corporate whore Rachel Madcow, these are the icons of the left. No wonder this former lib dem laughs so easily at your lot. You sat smiling while corporate shill Chris Matthews went on about thrills up his leg, and about Saul Alinsky, because like all Marxists you're fascists who conspire to impose slavery on free people. Delusional, because Matthews was a shill for neo-con Bush. But then again, neo-cons are Marxists too. No matter whether it's the far right, or far leftist extremes, you're all the same damn thing. I'd seriously consider booking a flight and emigrating to Europe, because your lot have lost power, and you'll never have another chance at it again. We're wise to your game.

Are f*&^ing kidding? I remember when you used to be one of the fiercest partisans out there. What the hell happened to you????

I think he's referring to passing the bill before Brown is seated... He's putting out a Webb statement, it seems. It's easy to read more into it than that, but I think it should be read narrowly.

So, "respecting the process" is requiring yet another vote of 60 senators? They can't just do it in the house? That's ridiculous.

This is the system that we all bought into. I didn't agree with it, and people - on this website - condemned me for acquiescing to it. But it's the way our party has decided to govern. It's too late for "I told you so". I'm so disappointed, not in out political process, but in our political leaders. We knew better, yet didn't act accordingly.

First, of all Dems have to pass a health care bill or they will lose one house this year and the other house + White House in 2010.

Second, if Dems can pass a bill with 60 Senate votes before brown is sworn in they should do it. The response has to be equal to the threat. Procedural problems are the reason this fight has been so bloody for Democrats. If they can use the same procedures to score a victory then good. They are already playing the "exploit the rules to ignore the voters game."

The lesson here is so clear, yet almost no one in mainstream land will see it.

Barack Obama could have skipped the great quest for the mythical "bipartisan" conservative (there are none, conservatives right now are extremists, that's just the times we live in) and gotten health care reform passed already with reconciliation. Then this fragile supermajority, which was going to collapse soon anyway, wouldn't matter so much when it did.

With the recession still taking a while to unwind, particularly with jobs, anyone in power was going to bear the brunt of it a year later, it was inevitable. In the meantime he could have pushed through what he wanted to, but that would have meant not abandoning base as he did.

Howard Fineman, of all people, nailed it in the quote put up here earlier: Obama took his winnings and handed them to Max Baucus.

Bad. Move.

Another gutless Democrat. I care about doing the right thing. Anyone who does not move to get the process going with a bill can can be improved in the future will have the blood of everyone who dies from lack of coverage on their hands. Social Security and Medicare, when eneacted, were far from what they are today.

As for the Senate. Here's what Oliver Cromwell said about the House of Lords 350 years ago:

It is high time for Me to put an End to your Sitting in this Place, which you have dishonoured by your Contempt of all Virtue, and defiled by your Practice of every Vice;

Ye are a factious Crew and Enemies of all good Government; Ye are a Pack of mercenary Wretches and would, like Esau, Sell your Country for a Mess of Pottage; and like Judas, betray your God for a few Pieces of Money; Is there a single Virtue now remaining amongst you?

Is there one Vice that you do not possess? Ye have no more Religion than my horse! Gold is your God: Which of you have not bartered your Conscience for Bribes?

Is there a Man amongst you that has the least care for the Good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes! Have you not defiled this Sacred Place, and turned the Lord's Temple into a Den of Thieves by your immoral Principles and wicked Practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole Nation.

Your Country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final Period to your Iniquitous Proceedings in this House, and which by God's Help, and the strength He has given Me, I now come to do.

I command ye, therefore, upon the Peril of your Lives, to depart immediately out of this Place; Go! Get out! Make haste, ye Venal Slaves, begone!

F..k Barney! Let him make his excuses to MA...if he runs fast he may be able to jump back on the train of progress later.

Hmmm... Politicians have been known to use highly legalistic language as a method of deception. If you read it carefully, the only thing he is specifically ruling out is passing the bill in conference (or by ping-pong) in the 10 days or so before Senator Brown is seated.
Of course there is a route which would not involve the Senate. They could pass the Senate Bill as is and send it straight to the president. Then the House could immediately introduce a progressive package including a public option via reconciliation. That would probably go nowhere in the Senate, but it would provide a campaign issue for 2010.
I thought the House should have done this Christmas Day. The Democrats seem content to jockey for position as months turn into years until they are no longer a majority in a year. I can only hope they will see the light and not shoot themselves in the head twice in a single generation.

(Matthew 6:24) . . .“No one can slave for two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stick to the one and despise the other. .......

Bipartianship does not work.

Shania Twain - Dance With The One That Brought You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBplbfXgSY

Dance With The One That Brought You and you can't go wrong.

The Democrats forgot who brought them to the Victory Party

This is a stunningly gutless statement from Rep. Frank! Because a democrat died, and a republican took his seat, we must now forgo the last year of toils and efforts and start from scratch. Are you sure that this statement isn't a hoax written by a republican?

Does anyone believe that if Senator Kennedy had lived and run again, that he would have lost? That should be the answer to your question as to the "meaning" of this special election. I'm really sick of all the meta-narratives applied to these types of elections. The whole "the people have spoken" crap. As if there is one thing they were trying to say.

Barney Frank should retract his statement. If Kennedy were still alive, he would be the needed sixtieth vote, but that was not meant to be. Now the House must pass the labors of the Senate, and appeal for reconciliation later to tinker with the tax issues. That would fulfill the purpose of the vacated MA Senate seat. Not this tripe advocated by the feckless Frank.

Sheesh, and to think I thought Frank had cajones. My bad!

Barney Frank is cursed with the ability to see what is in front of him, which as Orwell said,requires a constant struggle. What he sees is three Democrats in row(Deeds,Corzine,Coakley) losing statewide elections for positions previously held by a Democrat in the last three months.
Josh Marshall and Frank's other critics here(and evidently the White House) believe that these elections were lost because the public really does support the president's agenda and are just impatient with the party's inability to enact it.This is delusional. A decisive majority of Republican and independent voters now REJECT the president's agenda, and especially the health care plan,which strikes them increasingly as a special interest monstrosity. Ditto for cap and trade and a second stimulus. Such voters are worried about the deficit and the national debt and this country going the way of Argentina or Greece and don't believe the absurd assumptions about cost savings which underlie the CBO's that the health bill won't add to the national debt. If Congress disregards Frank's warning and passes the health care bill with solely Democratic support, such as by the House passing the Senate bill, last night in Boston will be repeated in Arkansas, Pensylvania, Ohio, and many other states come November and then the Republicans will make it impossible for the bill to take effect. This has turned into the Bridge on the River Kwai.

Last night the otherwise insuferably smug Lawrence O'Donnel and the otherwise bombastic Chris Mathews (i.e., the Cliff Clavin of American corporate media) pointed out that the five term mayor (i.e. Boss) of Boston had the machinery to get Coakley the win...but didn't...because he and his pals wanted another Kennedy or a Kennedy-lite...

as this is a "special election" isn't the seat up for grabs again sooner rather than later?

They further pointed out that had Coakley won she would have had the seat "forever" and they were against that...

Hardly the first time people in the same party fucked each other...

To borrow, and update a phrase:

"...is this a shank I see before my eyes..."

So it goes...and goes...the utterly inept Liberals and the utterly ruthless and inept Republicans...skull-fucking each other and the country while it teeters right off the cliff...

The Democratic Party has been a disappointment to me for quite some time now, its too business friendly. Over the years I've seen people in Congress I admired sell out to corporate America
on important votes. Now, with this statement and with the way he Chairs his committee, another one bites the dust, Barney Frank.

The whole goddamned system is corrupted by money. Democrats feed at the table with the Republicans, Corporate heads and the Wall Street Bankers. The public gets the scraps that fall off the table. We get supply side economics from the Republicans and supply side Government from the Democrats.

Obama/Geithner.....Clinton/Rubin, whats the difference?
All that's missing is the cretin Phil Gramm.