People will tell themselves lies. Everyone does it; it is part of making life more comfortable. They will say that what they do matters more than it does, that their activism has a bigger impact than it in fact does, that they are better looking or more popular than they really are. Most of the time there is not a lot of harm in these little lies. However when you are a United States Senator, these lies have the potential to do a great deal of harm.

The Senate has a lie that is causing a great deal of trouble, and the real problem is that only the Democrats in the Senate believe it. It is the lie of the “Greatest Deliberative Body In The World”. This is the idea that these 100 men and women who were elected by the people of their various states are somehow better able to dispassionately judge the needs of the nation and then act on their sage wisdom.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

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As of this post there are 24 Senators signed on to the use of reconciliation to not only pass comprehensive health care reform, but to use this process to add the public option back in. The White House and the House Leadership have made it clear this is going to be the Senates call from start to finish. If they actually get their act together and pass it, then the other two parts of this dance will be more than happy with that music.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Regardless of the fate of the Public Option, it is clear (has been clear since the Senate authorized itself to use this process way back in the winter of ’09) that reconciliation will be the only way to get anything passed in regards to health care. This is going to lead to a lot of gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by the Republicans and will be reported by the stenographic members of the traditional media as “trick” or side stepping of the processes of the Senate.

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Lately there has been a spate of diaries at such web sites as FireDogLake and "Open" Left wherein lay members — typically under attack from site moderators, who act as Democratic Party hacks and gatekeepers — have sought ways to bring back the Progressive Party, or join the Greens, or build up some other institution, that will allow progressives to act together as a cohesive political unit. (I posted an entry there myself, only to end up being attacked by site moderators, threatened with banishment, and ultimately banned when I refused to back down against their incessant bullying.)

FDL's iphelgix explains the reason for leaving the Democrats.

Fellow FDLer TalkingStick points out the wisdom of studying the teabaggers for ideas about how we progressives can rebuild our own movement.

Mason calls for progressives to join him in building a Progressive Party from the ground up, apparently not aware that it already exists in states such as Vermont and Washington, and as Green Party affiliates inMissouri and Wisconsin. He is joined in this effort by MadHemingway, who posted the 1912 platform the Progressive Party ran on.

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There is a tendency in politics to see everything in a small time horizon. The fight in front of you is the one that is most important one there is. The problem with this approach is that it lets the clock run out on issues that you should be able to see coming and address before they become a catastrophe. In the late winter and early spring of 2008 everyone knew there was something very rotten in the housing market. Prices were falling and the number of loans in default or foreclosure was growing every month. This would have been a good time take action to address it, but there was a presidential primary race and a big election coming up, so it went on, basically ignored until the weakness in housing caused the financial system to collapse.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

The wins that the President and the Democratic Party enjoyed in 2008 were due, in part, to the correct assessment by the public that the Republican Party did were to blame for the crisis and would not really do anything to fix it or prevent it from happening again.

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At what point do progressives stop being Democrats' whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama's latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.

How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.

My political activities now are focusing on the building of a viable third party as a tool of a reinvigorated and independent progressive movement. No efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within can succeed so long as the upper-level of the party establishment is able to crush dissent from within, as is explained here.

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Ben Bernanke, who helped preside over the collapse of the American economy, was confirmed to a second term as Federal Reserve Chairman so he can continue to destroy the economy. The re-confirmation vote was seventy to thirty, with most senators moving to kill a filibuster seventy-seven to twenty-three.

On a second vote, to confirm, the 30 dissents came from 18 Republicans, 11 Democrats and one independent, Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

Each and every single Democrat who voted to confirm Bernanke and who is up for re-election this year must be voted out of office. Each and every Democrat who voted to confirm Bernanke and who is up for re-election in 2012 should face removal as well.

The tally on cloture is here.

Voting yes on cloture:

Akaka (D-HI)
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Bond (R-MO)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Burr (R-NC)
Burris (D-IL)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)

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Last night the President did one of the things that he does better than almost anyone else, he gave a great speech. Taking the tone of confidence without arrogance, being willing to face the Republicans and put them in box by either applauding him or failing to applaud their own proposals, even by chiding them for their recalcitrance and stance of know nothingism. While it remains to be seen if he will push for the follow through which his speech called for it is interesting that the end of his speech was a political trope that should be dear to every politician.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

The Dogs Father taught one primary lesson to the hound as a pup – sometimes you get beat, but you only ever lose when you quit. This has lead to a life time of being beaten, but it also has lead to a set of victories personal, professional and public. This is the lesson the American people get, whether they had a father who harped on it or not. We intuitively understand that having a dumb faith in ourselves, an inability to see that the mountain is unassailable and that we would be better off if we just packed it in that is central to our experience.

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MSNBC's Ed Schultz talking at the AM950 Blue State Bash on Saturday night to a crowd of progressive talk radio fans in Minnesota lets go with both barrels at Robert Gibbs, at Barack Obama, at the "people who have infiltrated the Democratic progressive movement", and at the whole delusional idea of bipartisanship.

"I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him," Schultz said. "And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb the same way Senator Leahy got it on the Senate floor. I told Robert Gibbs, I said, 'I'm sorry you're swearing at me, but I'm just trying to help you out."

"I'm telling you, you're losing your base," he continued. "Do you understand that you're losing your base? And that the American people don't want public option, the American people want single-payer!?'"

Watch...

Remember that polls were out there before the voting began, both nationally and in Massachusetts, such as the Boston Globe poll indicating displeasure that Obama had not lived up to campaign promises.

For all too long the Democratic hierarchy has concluded that progressives will vote predictably on election day for the simple reason that they have no viable alternative to the Republican opposition.

Increased warnings of displeasure drew no more than a few shrugs, but now that Republican Scott Brown has won the Senate seat long held by progressive icon Ted Kennedy perhaps the Democratic Party high command will awaken before more of the same occurs. They should be well aware that if such a result can occur in liberal Massachusetts with its top heavy 3-1 Democratic registration that it can happen anywhere.

Remember what disgusted not only progressives but many mainstream moderates as well when Congress began considering a health care bill. It was made emphatically clear that the single payer system which has served as the model of America’s neighbor to the north, Canada, would not even be discussed in the wake of national polls indicating that a substantial majority of Americans favored such a proposal.

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Jon Walker over at Fire Dog Lake makes a very effective argument about why learning the wrong lesson from the defeat of Martha Coakley in yesterday's Massachusetts Senate race will lead to disaster.

Not only will Democrats lose badly if they adopt this strategy, but they will be laughed at. Republicans never had 59 Senate seats, and that did not stop them from passing the legislation they wanted. Trying to explain to the American people how, despite controlling everything, Democrats cannot do anything, because a mean minority of 41 Republican senators won’t let them, is a message that will go over like a lead balloon. If you try to use that excuse, people will think elected Democrats are liars, wimps, idiots, or an ineffectual combination of all three.

Right now the corporate-owned media is all atwitter with how the loss of the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in what should have been a shoe-in election stands as a repudiation of Obama's nonexistent leftist policies. Actually, his policies have been nothing but a continuation of Bush-Cheney (Glenn Greenwald has compiled some of the better entries describing how closely Obama mirrors Bush), but never let it be said that the right-wing media can be counted on to tell the truth.

The fact is that Coakley lost because of something comedian and political commentator Bill Maher pointed out last year that bears repeating:

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