Reply #101: I have been stymied -- hoping each time would be different.

[Overseas]

This time I hoped, surely, after the Bush Crash and Bush Bailout, this time "pragmatic" would mean practical for the majority and our longer term survival. Millions had voted for the party of FDR after 8 years of destructive Republican rule. Now was our time.

And we had seen how vicious the right could get if given an inch or a foot of wiggle room. So surely Democrats would start off strongly with their mandate to implement the Democratic party agenda after the Bush Gang's mess. Bush Cheney Rule had pushed us into an ugly oligarchy that had bankrupted our nation, economically and morally. Surely the democrats would recognize the national vote to rebalance our economy and national security.

Single payer, Medicare for All, right off the bat, would have been a great, strong signal that times had indeed changed. It would have been the most practical, compassionate move-- with millions bankrupted by the Bush Crash, rampant foreclosures and medical expenses, facing continued economic turmoil. Giving the people a very practical, long overdue bailout, by having our government take on the health insurance burden like they had in most other modern democracies, would signal the change we could all believe in-- the power of the government to do good. Freedom from exorbitant privatized medical expenses would have given our desperate population a few more dollars to spend locally to keep their economies afloat after the Bush Crash.

But instead of a decisive Democratic beginning, we saw our Democrats groveling for votes from the very party that had crashed our entire economy. We gave the vicious right wing PR machines months in which to pump up their teabagger mythologies and stoke the racism they'd stirred up during the campaign. Convince people bankrupted by lack of government regulation that Socialist Big Government was the enemy-- it would decide when to pull the plug on grandma. And then having our supposed news media covering the teabagging movement as though it were genuine, happy to have the chance to pretend there was strong opposition to a public option.

Instead of insisting upon the most practical method of addressing the massive national distress caused by the privatization of healthcare, we got a return to the (already old-fashioned in the 90's) "New Democrat" style-- shoving aside the most practical Democratic ideas like Medicare for All, and gutting the proposed legislation to make it more palatable to the Republicans who had wrecked the economy already and were only promising one or two votes. "Gee Golly, you guys like Romneycare, so we'll go for that." Yes yes, we're supposed to accept that getting any help for the people past the corporate powers is a marvelous achievement. Some great legislation has had to be improved over time. But President Obama's team came into power with all of us knowing that whatever he did, it would be called horrible dangerous socialist invasion, so it was depressing to see them toss out the best available plan right off the bat-- scaling up Medicare to include everyone.

Bush Bailout, Bush Crash, then people's bailout, long overdue Medicare for All. National health security for all. The Democratic thing to do, especially when facing international economic turmoil. Easy to explain-- your grandma likes her Medicare. Medical services privately delivered, between you and your doctors. Cost controls publicly administered, accountable to all-- not obligated to devise ever more vicious new tools to bump up profits like recision to cut sick people off the insurance rolls.

Instead of a national time out on modern Republican values, with a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to examine the ugly war profiteering of the Bush Gang, especially in the war on Iraq, we were treated to too much pretending that the modern Republicans were still reasonable. The ugly vicious Judd Gregg was actually invited to be Commerce Secretary. And some Bush Cheney national security officials were retained in power-- even after all they had done to destroy our national security and international reputation. Even after all of that rampant war profiteering.

The "New Democrats" of the 90's were allowed to alienate the progressive base again, to demonstrate how "centrist" they were to reassure their corporate donors, even if that meant prolonging the economic distress of an already trampled majority of our citizens. The New Democrats served corporate power once again, shoving their most dedicated progressives aside because "where else are they going to go?" and they let the right wing drag out the healthcare "debate" for months with their professional right wing PR defining an even uglier opposition than ever before, and hyping the teabagger phenomena on Fox and the rest of our conservative dominated mass media.

But our 2009 New Democrats just kept playing the right wing game. Letting the extensive and varied right wing PR machinery keep pulling the country further and further to the right, professionally stirring up hatred in desperate citizens the Democrats could have swept up at the very beginning with the practical public bailout of Medicare for All to counter the Bush Bailout to mega finance.

And I'm left feeling silly and naive to have cherished my 21st Century Green FDR dream for its essential practicality. Thinking it was no problem that my new president was pragmatic because Medicare for All, massive green jobs programs, including taking care of the Bush Gang's heaps of deferred infrastructure maintenance, and a definitive withdrawal from Iraq would boost our whole society and economy. Practical results for the Democratic majority, new and old, for years to come.

Feeling like I should have accepted how very powerful the multinationals had been allowed to become and realized how little my dear new president could expect to achieve. And more appreciative of how much better he is than the worst US administration was.

And with the intense right wing machinery in place in the USA, I do feel inhibited about protesting the Obama administration because I don't want the Further Right to gain more seats in Congress. But I do wish the "New Democrats" would enter the 21st Century in which lots of good government will be required to clean up the messes of deregulated commerce, and support the progressive base in establishing the means of making our global market economies more sustainable.

I'm tired of zooming ahead, guns blazing, using up every drop of our precious fossil fuels in the chase after Lavish Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous for a precious few. We know we need to stretch out our use of those fossil fuels-- we get those "hey you use plastic don't you?" arguments tossed at us, supposing that means we should acquiesce to criminal negligence in acquiring those resources as cheaply as possible. No it doesn't. We know we will want to continue using plastics for a long time if possible so we are intent on conserving our precious fossil fuels, and thus outraged by the slashing of safety expenses by the oil giants just to boost their quarterly profits, ecosystems be damned.

We have been encouraged to mythologize serving the bottom line. Sorry folks, it's just that bottom line. Gotta cut that inspection staff. Times are tough. Quarterly profits rule, so let's not put that second backup blowout valve in there. Let's not build those relief wells in advance. Might not happen. Billions are earned on sheer optimism. Might not happen. Deregulated market imperatives were followed, The Bottom Line was served. Amazing giant industry moguls scrounging for oil deeper than ever before-- drilling in without a safety net or emergency exits.

So I say, yes please let's have more moratoriums.

When do we get the moratorium on supplements to the already bloated military budget? Giving the right wing teabag plan so much time to build itself up really helped keep that from happening.