Help save healthcare reform from Joe Lieberman

This just in from Firedog Lake:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is bending over backwards to give Joe Lieberman what he wants on the health care bill.

Public option - GONE. Medicare expansion - GONE. Joe says he’s looking around for other things he might want to take out of the health care bill, because “Democrats haven’t given up enough yet.”
But if there’s one thing Reid fears more than Lieberman, it’s losing his own seat.
He’s up for reelection next year, and with a 38% approval rating, the Senate Majority Leader is trailing “generic Republican opponent” by ten points.
We need to immediately raise at least $120,000 to run a TV ad in Reid’s home state of Nevada to save health care reform from Joe Lieberman and the insurance industry. Click here to donate now.

Friday Fish Wrap: December 11, 2009

Watching this depressing health care reform dance take place in the Senate this week has removed any  hope that, as a country, we can pull together and do the right thing anymore. I’m not so naive to think that political agendas and jockeying for position haven’t always been with us, but in times of crisis the one thing American’s could count on was our leaders ability to put the petty bickering aside until things could heal or sort themselves out.

Not so anymore, and both sides are to blame.

The Dems have their hands just as deeply in many of the same corporate pockets as the Repubs. That’s were the real problem sits. But, then there is the frighteningly bitter and irrational hatred for all things ‘government’ that has become the GOP - the party of ‘no’ - that really puts the poisonous icing on the cake.

Take a look at the ever changing health care reform bills and the pathetic attempts to rein in abuses by the financial services industry.

Any gutted, picked over carcass of legislation that finally reaches Obama’s desk for signing will be, as Tom Friedman calls it “suboptimal”. We produce suboptimal, because that’s all you can get agreement on and not leave dead lying about the hallways of power anymore.

It’s become just that toxic.

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