Americans hail historic Senate action on health care!

How 'bout Harry Reid and his super-special back-room wheeler-dealer mad skills?

Ideally, he would have busted them out in aid of something better than health care legislation that may or may not be better than nothing and oh by the way we probably won't know until 2015 or so. But now is not the time for some Nevada leftist to dare question the wisdom and magnificence of the Great and Powerful Harry Reid (it never is).

Meantime, while a snowbound U.S. Senate (if Gleaner did metaphors ...) shuffles through the rest of the preciously dysfunctional farce that has become that ridiculously self-important institution's legislative process, real America is busy embracing the true spirit of the season.

And so your Gleaner wishes you and yours the very best as you celebrate the birth of Santa like the Founders intended.

Comments

[judy]

You must have been channeling Palin to arrive at that last sentence Gleaner.

Freaking spooky..............

[dave404]

Governor Gibbons and eTrepp in the national news, and Playboy Magazine, once again!

talkingfpointsmemeo

[Rich]

Screw the Democrats...this abortion of a health care reform is pure dreck, i.e., no strong public option, no expanded Medicare and no reimportation of drugs. The Senate is a dead vestigal organ with no higher leader. I have never been this disappointed with what we elected from the top down.

[d4]

Rich,

...on a positive note, perhaps once the sausage is agreed to and made, condiments like re importation, public option and death of health insurance anti-trust exemption can be added later.

On the other hand, there are a lot of elections between now and 2015, so there may not be any condiments and the sausage itself may be thrown away.

[ColinFromLasVegas]

Yes, a very Merry Christmas to you and yours.

I've already got my Christmas gift. Courtesy of Senator Harry Reid.

I just love watching these RepublicaNOs going apeshit. All the RepubliCANNOTs are stating they are fighting this tooth and nail, along with all their stupid talking points of "one sixth of the budget" and spending money like crazy. As if RepublicaNEGATIVEs in the 21st and 20th century have all watched their spending before. Gimme a break.

I just love watching RepublicaNO,NO,NO,HELLNOs all lining up in front of cameras and microphones to spout out their blather. I've even seen an incredible about face of the esteemed Mr. McCain. He used to have the most sensical approach, but not now. He's fell in line with the RepublicaNOSHITs.

Okay. I've had my say. I've run out of ways to bastardize the name of their crappy party that don't participate in anything constructive the U.S. Government is trying to do. I do truly wish them a Merry Christmas though. Even though they act like they have indigestion from having health care reform shoved hard down their throats. Ho, ho, ho, you assholes....

[Rich]

Colin, this is NOT health care reform it is a gift to the health insurance industry, so much so that the market is up led by the health care industry stocks.
So, who's the asshole?

[judy]

Colin - here is the best name for the GOP: Now it stands for Grandstand, Oppose, and Pretend.

Rich - how many guesses do we get?

[Rich]

Judy-it's crude but my interpreation of GOP is, GOP is what I get when I pick my nose, btw ever notice how Mitch McConnell looks like the straw man from Wizard of Oz? He had no brain too.

[Goldy]

Most scientists put the birth of Santa somewhere in the first week of April.

[Nevada Ned]

Many Gleaner readers will want to hear Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vermont) make the case on the floor of the Senate for a REAL reform, the single-payer (Canadian) system.

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/12/17/sen-sanders-floor-speech-on-his-single-payer-amendment/

In the coming months and years, the faults of the current miserable healthcare "reform" bill will be increasingly obvious, so interest in single-payer ought to revive.

[Nevada Ned]

I hope that many Gleaner readers are familiar with Doug Thompson's excellent website "Capitol Hill Blue". Here's what Doug Thompson says today about the current health care bill:

Health Care 'Reform' is Obama's Waterloo.

President Barack Obama may regret making health care "reform" the benchmark of his Presidency.

If the bastard child of the Senate legislative morass that passed on a 60-40 party line vote becomes law it will stand in history as the benchmark of failure for Obama's over-promised, under-performing, one-term Presidency.

Crafted by lobbyists, gutted by compromise and bloated with pork to win support, the 2,000-pages-plus bill scheduled for a vote on Christmas Eve benefits insurance companies and leaves Americans facing higher heath care costs under a system even worse than the one it is designed to replace.

read the whole rant at http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/20998

[By the way, before you start blasting Thompson as a Republican swine, you should know that he was **extremely** critical of the George W. Bush regime.]

[vegas tea room]

I find it interesting the variations in the Santa Story as to whether he was born in an Igloo or an Ice cave when the three Toy Merchants came to visit after they had seen the Great Guilder in the sky.

[Dwayne]

I just returned from a fund raising cruise for The Nation magazine, which included political seminars and discussions led by such folks as Bob Scheer, William Greider, and Howard Dean. As you know, Dean has been one of the strongest advocates for a public health care plan, and said during the cruise that if there is no public option, he would campaign against passing the bill. Dean also advocated something my wife and I had already decided to do: Contribute money only to specific candidates who truly advance progressive causes, and stop making contributions to the DNC, the DCCC, and the DSCC. All of these organizations will funnel money to any candidate who claims to be a Democrat, and we have seen over the last few months that many of these DINOs got in the way of any meaningful reform.

This battle was lost, in my opinion, when Obama failed to offer a detailed plan and let Congress indulge in an orgy of catering to the medical-industrial complex. Right after the inauguration, I believe that a bold vision of extending medicare to cover everyone could have passed both houses -- we should have started with a PUBLIC health care plan with a PRIVATE option. By making the public component the option, we lost control of the language.

I keep thinking of JFK's start of the space program. He could have advocated a modest effort to put more satellites and American astronauts in orbit than the Russians could manage. Instead, he proposed a bold, extremely ambitious program to put people on the moon within 10 years. That was leadership.

I don't believe we will wind up with a better health care system by incremental changes. I also think we are in for a very rough election in 2010, because we have blown the best chance in decades for real reform, and have failed to offer immediate help to all the unemployed and underemployed. Anyone care to guess how many more people will wind up homeless due to foreclosures between now and next November?

[Goldy]

The more interesting question is whether Santa has a blood line. If you really examine the famous painting of Santa on the bottle of Coca Cola, you can see the outline of one, "Mrs. Claus" who many say is burried under the Getty in Malibu. The Claus blood line can be traced to 7 living people; one of whom is Nevada's own Bill Raggio. Faith is a marvelous thing....

[ColinFromLasVegas]

I don't delve into Santa Claus stuff too much.

I was disappointed though when I found out there was no such person as Santa Claus.

I guess I was naive.

For all those years of my life til I turned 34, I always believed in him too.....

[Scorpiogal]

@VTR
Amen!

Happy Holidays!

[Michael Green]

I will break my promise and rule not to post here simply to provide a link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-health-ticktock24-2009dec24,0,2438755.story

It explains how, while so many people here were revealing how little they know about Senate procedure and American politics, Harry Reid was trying to pass a bill that will get 30 million previously uninsured Americans insured and eliminate pre-existing conditions as a way for insurance companies to deny coverage. Meanwhile, Republicans were rooting for Robert Byrd to die, and some on the left were demonstrating that they are morons.

[Milly]

d4 said:

...on a positive note, perhaps once the sausage is agreed to and made, condiments like re importation, public option and death of health insurance anti-trust exemption can be added later.

Ah... it almost brings tears to my eyes to know there are still people naive enough to believe this.