O'Donnell Explains Reconciliation Guantlet

[theFrankFactor]

Run time: 07:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhAs7HOI628   Posted on YouTube: February 20, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 21, 2010 By DU Member: theFrankFactor Views on DU: 1419

 
This whole disgusting saga is a testament not to bipartisanship but to the utter failure of leadership and commitment to the voters and hard working citizens that elected Democrats to their positions.

Clear MAJORITIES of AMERICANS want single payer or the public option AND YET... Democrat majorities (which will soon be decimated) can't stop bowing to corporate power. The Democratic party is infested with corporate shills and spineless weasels. Will we do something about it?

Restoring Democracy and Taking Control of Our Nation Away From Corporations

Thesis: Elected officials from the present two party system represent the interests of corporations over and above the Constitution and the electorate. America has been lead into a dangerous and unstable condition due to the exploitation of the People’s government by corporate influence. There must be an accountability system that punishes public servant behavior that subverts electorate representation for corporate favoritism. The separation of corporations, as well as church and state, must be initiated and enforced.


Objectives

1. Make elected representatives answer to the electorate.
2. Remove corporate influence from all levels of public governance


Suggested Goals to Accomplish These Objectives

1. Publicly fund elections
2. Eliminate corporate person-hood
3. Initiate instant runoff voting
4. Eliminate electoral college
5. Ban exiting public officials from accepting lobbyist positions
6. Oversight of the Federal Reserve
7. Tax reformation
8. Budget reformation


Citizen Actions to Accomplish These Objectives

1. Strengthen and expand alternate media
2. Infiltrate existing party systems to affect changes
3. Exploit current means to pressure representatives
4. Prepare, support, and run Liberal/Progressive candidates

[The Northerner]

1. 60-vote hurdles?

Does anyone, who has any knowledge of Senatorial procedures, know how many of these 60 votes it'll take to the point at which only 51 votes are needed?

[skyounkin]

10. To my understanding- it still needs

60 votes to be allowed to be voted on...

A vote to be allowed to vote- I think.

Completely and utterly fucked up.

[Yavin4]

2. Bottom Line Is This: Dems Need To Pass The Public Option or Get Killed In November

They need something tangible and real to show to the voters that they can achieve good public policy. If they choose to hide behind the canard of bipartisanship, then it will be a death trap for them.

[Kablooie]

6. From their past behavior I don't expect this thing to pass anyway.

The Republicans are incompetent because they make bad, damaging decisions.

The Democrats are incompetent because they can't make any decisions.

If the public sees one side that makes decisions and another that doesn't, they will go for the decision makers even if those decisions are destructive.

We are likely to get a Republican run government again soon because the Democrats are so pitifully useless.

[bluestateguy]

3. O'Donnell

I'm so tired of his Inside the Beltway Establishment drivel.

[ProfessorPlum]

4. Don't be a hater.

[theFrankFactor]

5. That's Hilarious!

[tomm2thumbs]

7. You'd think the business folks would like getting health insurance off their books

Seems it would be giving small business a real advantage in competition by offering a public option instead of having to provide health care directly (and expensively) - and given the state of the economy, I don't know why it wouldn't be a huge win-win.

[destes]

8. To answer that, one must come to understand the.......

....lack of imagination which dominates the political thought of most American small business owners. Many of them still think that offering health insurance to their employees is an effective way to keep their current staff in a sort of servitude. Most of them still believe in Reagan's self fulfilling prophecy of "total government incompetence" and discount any change in health care coming from the government. They often maintain their allegiance to the GOP because they blindly follow the "vote pocket book, vote Republican" mantra bill-of-goods sold by mainstream "common sense" propaganda. They're scared because the whole economy is going too fast for them to understand where their advantage may lie so they struggle desperately to hold the status quo.

And not only that, they, as a demographic, don't carry the clout they once had. They too have fallen by the wayside, victims of American corporatization. Washington politicians generally can reliably depend more on corporate money than smaller contributors. Thus consolidation of campaign contributors, the watering down of business advocacy, is the only way small business has ANY voice. And so the GOP continues to use its destructive and meaningless "tax-cut candy", as it has been so successful as a banner under which small business owners can unite. But even that will soon fall by the wayside like so many ponzi schemes because a PAC composed of one international corporation provides a more reliable stream of the contributions which ensure election than a more loosely aligned group of any type (just ask the 5 justices on the SCOTUS).

Sorry, but I get so damn frustrated that I end up stating the obvious too much.

[tomm2thumbs]

12. thanks

that's a good lesson and makes complete sense given the circumstances. Corporations fighting each other for political favors - now that will be interesting. Seems as though the military machine will have the biggest check writers. Terrible.

[hmorehead]

9. Too many cowards in both parties and the public will be voting out incumbants left and right

[Bette Noir]

11. That's "gantlet." I don't blame you, much.

Most dictionaries have given up. They're different words, though, with different meanings, different etymologies, different pronunciations, and different spellings.
......................................................................................................................
Word History: The spelling gauntlet is acceptable for both gauntlet meaning "glove" or "challenge" and gauntlet meaning "a form of punishment in which lines of men beat a person forced to run between them"; but this has not always been the case. The story of the gauntlet used in to throw down the gauntlet is linguistically unexciting: it comes from the Old French word gantelet, a diminutive of gant, "glove." From the time of its appearance in Middle English (in a work composed in 1449), the word has been spelled with an au as well as an a, still a possible spelling. But the gauntlet used in to run the gauntlet is an alteration of the earlier English form gantlope, which came from the Swedish word gatlopp, a compound of gata, "lane," and lopp, "course." The earliest recorded form of the English word, found in 1646, is gantelope, showing that alteration of the Swedish word had already occurred. The English word was then influenced by the spelling of the word gauntlet, "glove," and in 1676 we find the first recorded instance of the spelling gauntlet for this word, although gantelope is found as late as 1836. From then on spellings with au and a are both found, but the au seems to have won out.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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