Just say no to Jim Cooper to head HHS
By John Amato Thursday Feb 05, 2009 9:00amOK, this might be a bogus report, but the Politico mentioned Blue Dog Jim Cooper as a possible replacement for Daschle.
But some potential replacements for Daschle could include former Vermont Gov. and DNC Chair Howard Dean, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.)
Digby writes about the media's suck up to Cooper's foray into the health care debate under Clinton:
Jim Cooper is an enemy of universal health care. He will, however, work to ensure that the insurance industry and the Big Pharma gets more of your tax dollars.
Read this report and weep.
The country cannot afford another giveaway to Big Insurance and Pharma and desperately needs a complete overhaul of the system in order to get costs into line and get people covered. This recession is going to end up making more than 50 million people without health insurance, very possibly more than that. Many more are terribly underinsured. Obama cannot put some slimy Blue Dog opportunist in charge of it.
Make sure to read Digby's entire post. I Like Howard Dean very much and hope he gets the job, but what Obama cannot do is appoint fraking Blue Dogs to help pass Universal Health Care. It's going to be a tough fight even if Americans voted in Obama to do exactly that. You can be sure that the media will adopt right wing talking points and feature members from the conservatives in Congress and Gingrich types to set the tone to help defeat universal health care. The economic stimulus debate so far has been a primer for what's to come.
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Oh the Blue Dogs. But that's what you get when Republicans want to run in districts that have been Democrat since the 1830s.
Please, sign it right away, we can show Gov. Dean and the White House
how much this means to us that he become our next Secretary of Health
and Human Services! Let's get this circulated!
http://www.petitiononline.com/sec4hhs/petition.html
see which one gets stinky...
The pols listen when they need your vote...
Other than that, you just go ahead and fucking pound sand...
Enough with that analogy.
that would be a good one. come on Obama, put a real Dem on your team.
Too polarizing, too divisive...
chuy, these people are gutless asswipes, top to bottom
Wow... so far we are getting DLCers, blue dog dems, or straight GOPers as part of Obama's cabinet.
LOL... As usual I am hoping this is just another case of the Politico getting high on their own supply.
Obama never said that change would be immediate. Trust me, every day Obama will give you something to be pissed off about...including being angry that Obama selected a guy he hasn't actually selected.
Pre-outrage.
That's in the job description.
Izzit you object to the lies or the calling on it?
Dammit, and he hasn't solved all of the world's problems. WTF? What's taking him so long?
Snark!
This thread is about Obama's possible nomination of Jim Cooper to head the HHS. Which some of us object...
You may be OK with obvious corporate lackeys heading the HHS during one of the worst economic crisis in our recent history. I beg to differ.
Unless you guys can come up with reasonable arguments to the effect of how a feller like Jim Cooper directing the HSS is a good thing, color me unimpressed.
You may now resume some of your condescending tangential retorts if it makes you feel better, I gues...
it may be a bogus report. Don't get your panties in a twist.
As usual I am hoping this is just another case of the Politico getting high on their own supply.
pre-outrages are so pissed at Obama because he didn't go after Lieberman, or he has Repukes in his cabinet, or he's pushing a stimulus plan to dare TRY and create jobs, before giving his decisions time to work...you people should [Deleted. C'mon, L&L. You know better-Sitemonitor]
where were you?
its struthianism posing as sarcasm
so I have no clue what you just wrote.
I would not call Obama a liar, but so far his actions are in clear divergence with both his rhetoric and my interests. So he can go pound salt for all I care.
It must suck that now that he is presidenting, you can't simply ask people to "wait and see." Although I am sure, you will come up with yet another arbitrary deadline for when it is OK to critizise our new glorious leader.
As far as you are concerned, you could not even fathom Obama doing anything wrong. I have at least been able to recognize when he has been correct in my opinion.
Lol. And I don't care if you are ever fair with the guy...I'm simply calling you out on declaring the man a failure after two weeks...I would do the same to Hannity or Rush but they don't need to come to this site since you carry their water.
I believe everyone commenting should have a complete list of who is on their Ignore list added to each post.
I don't ignore anyone. Even if I think a poster is a jerk, he/she still has the right to speak up. It's too much fun seeing democracy in action. (Unlike freeper sites, where you can get banned for just stating an opposing view.)
as they are on thread, non-strawman, thought provoking comments as assessed by people who have not ignored them.
mostly those that have nothing to add to the discussion other than insult and/or condescending retorts.
I believe that debating different points of view is vital for a working democracy. But I have no patience for those whose idea of "debate" is bullying other people into submission...
The irony of it all, is that I saw the same attitude by some of the die hard Hillary supporters during the primaries, for criticizing her sort comings and because I dared support Obama. Now that I dare speak my mind about issues in which I disagree with Obama, same crap happens. The more things change...
The only way a democracy can survive is when you point the flaws and make them an issue to be tackled. Not by pretending that everything is just fine... that to me is denial, and it tends to make problems worse.
...Obama's "political decisions" Nov.5th...pre-outrage. Lol.
Not the babbling inside them.
GOL. Then lie back and admire the intellectual candle power behind it.
Typical bully...miss Dubya much? Lol.
now if you did not insult and bully those who disagree with you on Obama... that would be peachy.
A) how does one bully with a blog comment?
B) how did you know he used the bully charge if you only get his headlines?
L&L IMHO went off the deep end after the election and became just too much to bear with his personal attacks, whenever I dared say anything mildly critical of Obama.
I decided to ignore him then. Live and let live is my motto.
Honestly, I have seen a few posters behave erratically after a certain threshold. LA Confidential comes to mind.
It is a very odd thing to see...
and caring.
I dunno, Left. If Obama picks Cooper, it's a mistake. At some point, you have to admit that he hasn't given true progressives much input into the administration. Appointing Dean would calm a lot of people's nerves.
This Nation's in the fucking toilet and we need to use the best human resources possible. If these people indeed fail, Obama will deserve a tidal wave of criticism.
But I'm not as bright as Tyler Nostradamus...I'll give Obama a little time to clean up this little mess, thank you.
In all seriousness, I'd like your opinion on something.
1.Besides possibly Hilda Solis, which, if any, of Obama's picks do you feel is a true liberal? It seems Obama has picked a lot of talented people but few of them are really liberal.
2. Are there any of Obama's appointments you have reservations about?
You are very supportive of Obama (rightfully so) but tend to not allow others their reservations about him (and yes, I know many who criticize have been exceedingly quick and shrill about it.)
I'm just interested in you input.
Thanks.
Thu, 02/05/2009 - 10:27 — Matt in Texas
"Are there any of Obama's appointments you have reservations about?"
________________________________________________________________
The Director of the Department of Indian Affairs?
Bada-BING!!
But my beloved Cub's haven't won a championship in over a hundred years. I would gladly take some of the despised southside players to win. I hate the racist, exclusive Republican party, but I recognize that Republicans have made great contributions to this Nation's success...we need them...we can fight politics later. I don't think during WWII, soliders gave a shit about the politics of the guy in the foxhole with him.
This mess is so serious that we cannot afford to not use our most capable fellow Americans. I just think Obama knows this.
WWII analogies.
"I don't think during WWII, soliders gave a shit about the politics of the guy in the foxhole with him."
No, they only worried about sexual preference.
We all know Alexander the Great could have conquered more than just the "Known World" if his army's morale had not suffered due to his open homosexuality.
No. They were worried more about the guy's ethnicity. The service was segregated. In today's foxhole, it's all about teh gay.
If our Government long ago instituted justice pertaining to those social issues it would be virtually nonexistent today.
I'll clarify...during battle with lives on the line, a person's gender, color or sexual peference is irrelevant. The old and the new attitudes of a typically American football team is an example of this change.
you write: "This mess is so serious that we cannot afford to not use our most capable fellow Americans"
the question is, for many of us: ARE these people the "most capable fellow Americans"????
was daschle the most capable to head HHS?
is geithner the most capable to head up the treasury?
your analogy implies that those that don't support obama's nomination are, somehow, not serious about saving america from its multi-pronged troubles. this is a poor read of a lot of people's obama criticisms...
How does anyone know if a person can do a job that they were hired for until they actually start working, performing?
so, borrowing your argument: would you have any problem with george bush taking over ownership of your beloved cubs?
would you hold your tongue until you saw how he performed?
Dubya is a mass murderer. Who was given a CHANCE to lead and failed.
When Bush owned the Texas Rangers baseball team he was a prototypical owner and no one was killed, we had a national surplus, and the constitution still had all of it's pages.
.
Sorry, but Obama will make many people angry during the long (and eventually successful) season.
but your analogy just crept into the realm of authoritarianism.
we are not fans. fans in the sports analogy are just that: spectators watching with little or no input in how the game is being played.
we are citizens in a representative democracy--and it is our duty to make our voices heard. not just in election years, but all the time.
i know you were just continuing your analogy, and intended to do no such thing, but it was a problematic analogy to begin with.
Unless Obama does something impeachable, he's our (elected)guy the next four years no matter what we think.
We have a right to express our displeasure with the way things are going. I believe in the President, and support him, but at the same time, I'd like to see something tangible in the way of progress. I feel this is turning into "New day, same shit."
That said, we all know what happened to Jimmy Carter when he bucked the Washington Tide.
THAT said, we aren't going anywhere except down the crapper if someone doesn't take the root of the word 'progressive' to heart. And I don't mean just President Obama. I mean all the mopes working alongside him, and us too.
It's simply a philosophical disagreement I'm having with some who IMO never gave the guy a chance. They literally started Nov. 5th. I feel people(in any job) deserve time, a chance to succeed or fail, they don't agree. Gotta go. gna.
and, god forbid, i don't want to be co-president. (and neither does anyone else. unless you want legalized pot, and a 50% tax rate for the uber-wealthy)
but i don't think speaking/writing and giving opinions is being a "co-president".
do you?
Understood. But you didn't answer my questions re: who you think is a true liberal and about whom do you have reservations.
I'm not concerned with those people's politics. Let the Repukes keep that schoolyard bullshit up. The country is sick of that crap...Obama's ahead of a lot people...again. All Obama has to do is succeed and turn this economic tide.
Every "progressive" Obama loses, he will win a conservative.
No, I guess I was curious which of Obama's picks you liked the most and which you liked the least. That's all.
I really don't know yet.
He's too polarizing of a figure and Obama still believes in his post-partisan future.
that as a governor actually implemented a successful health care reform in Vermont is really "polarizing."
LOL.
Hold your breath waiting for his appointment. One less Durden..
I never claimed that Dean was gonna get the nomination. I just was pointing out that you had bought into the whole bullshit rhetoric that Dean is a "polarizing" figure.
has no intention to pursue Universal Care.
Just in case you had any vestigial delusions...
I don't recall Obama ever claiming to want to provide universal health "care" - he only spoke of universal health "coverage". A HUGE difference.
It's a fucking sop to his many BEEEEG donors in the industry.
It still leaves decisions with bureaucrats.
The only even remotely rational, cost-effective solution is Universal Care.
That's what I recall too.
that Obama has been proposing a corporatist solution all along. the money is still to come out of pocket, not out of taxes. health care is still a consumer commodity, controlled by the megaInsurance industry.
Here, boy, here's a nickel. Don't spend it all in one place...
I thought the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party won. I'm still glad we have Obama over Hillary Clinton don't get me wrong. But we have a lot of work to do in order to move toward the Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democratic Party. Politics is about shifts and we need more shifts in that direction. Enough with the DLC corporate wing shit.
but it looks like we got hillary and bill again.
oy: daschle nomination, the cooper-rumor, the lack of any real challenge to the for-profit health system, etc...
"Jim Cooper is an enemy of universal health care", and so is obama. "enemy" is a loaded word, granted. but i don't see an effort to truly reform the failing system. merely dance around the edge.
i feel like i am just shadow boxing over here in pointing out the failings of obama nominees if obama, himself, leans towards a continuation of the insurance-dominated healthcare system
has been changed in the Senate bill. The republicans have stripped out an important House provision. I just wrote my congresscritters again; here's my e-mail with a link to the HuffPo article
.
http://wexler.house.gov/htbin/formproc_za/wex...
Dear Robert,
I just read that Senate Republicans have stripped out a very important COBRA provision in the stimulus bill.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/04/heal...
This is not helpful!
Snip
The sifters found some noteworthy nuggets in the bill. Combing through his section of the bill, law professor and health care author Timothy Jost noticed that the Senate had removed the House provision that would allow people 55 and over who are laid off to continue COBRA coverage at a subsidized rate until they're 65 and eligible for Medicare. The House version also made folks who were laid off temporarily eligible for Medicaid; the Senate version strips that out, Jost found. Every one percent increase in unemployment throws more than a million people into the ranks of the uninsured.
snip
Please don't let them get away with this disgusting action.
Sincerely,
My name….
Obama is fucking blowing it.
Did you see Harry Markopolous? He reports that the SEC was incompetent, but the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is utterly corrupt.
And who was in cahrge of FINRA?
None other than Mary Schapiro, the cementhead Obama has put in charge of the SEC.
And who gave Bernie Madoff's son Mark a job at the National Adjudicatory Council — the division that reviews disciplinary decisions made by FINRA?
Why, Mary Schapiro, that's who!
Larry Summers is corrupt.
Obama had arch-deregulation criminal Robert Rubin as one of his economic advisors, even as Rubin was taking Citigroup down the toilet.
Then Tom Daschel and now this?
These people are corrupt. Obama has to know it, or else he is a fool. He is not savvy enough to know we can vet his appointments on the net? Does he take us for fools?
We need to organize and make our voices heard, even if it means stannding out on the street with a picket sign in freezing weather.
Ken Salazar who was prevented from selling off lands which are our national treasures to oil & gas by a student posing as a bidder.
Photoshop a Palin wig on Salazar Drill baby Drill.
We in Co were fooled into believing we were electing a decent dem and the second he hit the senate he kept company exclusively with thugs.
This is only the beginning of the damage we'll witness as Salazar rapes our national parks and sells off our land.
Thanks Obama! We never knew love so like contempt.
somehow we seem to have made it through an entire 2 year long campaign during which one and only one candidate was proposing 'universal health care', and he lost very, very badly.
there is NO single appointment that Obama will make in this area who will work towards universal health care! it will definitely, 100% not happen, because he never promised it in the first place.
what he promised, and what we might get, is increased access to insurance, with a vague promise to make that insurance 'more affordable'. so, basically more people will have insurance, it will be slightly less overpriced than it used to be, and will still try to screw people over every chance they get. they'll just have millions more customers to defraud and refuse to cover during an emergency.
get used to it.
Fuck bipartisanship. Let's whoop their asses and leave them in the dust.
"How did the Bush administration and the Republicans Congress get through two major tax cuts without a 60 vote Supermajorit, but Now the democratic Congress and President can't get anything passed?"
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o139/blueo...
Bipartisanship is for Dummies: Republicans in the Senate will not agree to anything reasonable. If President Obama is smart, he'll cut them out of the negotations entirely.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-nelson/bip...
that there are some liberals in his cabinet.
So far all I am seeing DLCers, blue dogs, and GOPers in his nominations.
I am sorry, but there is nothing "bipartisan" there. If anything he is being rather "partisan" don't you think?
If this guy is in fact Obama's response to Daschle's folly, he can go and pound salt for all I care.
Hilda Solis is the only one I can believe is a progressive.
I predict.
She's too much a member of the working class...
Unreliable, divisive, not bi-partisan enough, yano?
Obama is willing to use his bully pulpit to rail against the repugs and force them to vote. Will he do it? Doubts..
he gives the repugs what they want. Obama is not as sneaky as harry reid, apparently.
I do not expect the corporatists, including Obama, to give a rat's ass if Cooper is repug lite.
It's not the GOP who is against Howard Dean, it's Rahm Emmanuel.
Emmanuel and Chuck Schumer HATE Howard Dean with a passion. Dean criticized Emmanuel's and Schumer's 2006 strategy of only funding Democrats who had a good chance of winning in the midterms in blue states. Schumer and Emmanuel were running the DLC's (not the DNC's)election campaign in 2006 and they personally picked "moderate" Democrats (Republican lites) to run for office and gave them DLC money.
Howard Dean was investing the DNC's money in the 50 state strategy. He believed that nobody was going to vote for a Democrat in red areas if the Democrats never showed their faces in those areas. He was not in favor of writing off the south or anyplace else. He believed that if people in those areas saw the Democratic party cared about them, if they saw a Democratic HQ in their area staffed by nice local people who listened to them, they just might flip. He knew it wouldn't happen overnight, but we had to start building a base in places other than reliably blue areas. He helped ferrit out those blue spaces you saw on the map inside overwhelmingly red states in the 2008 elections. Dean knew that all politics is local and you start on a local level. In red states, that meant opening democrtaic headqurters in counties with favorable demographics.
There are people who actually believed Jews had horns and tails until they met a Jewish person and found it wasn't true; they'd been lied to. Same with Democrats. If there are no Democrats in an area, the people are going to believe any craziness about Democrats that they hear from the opposition. .. unless they actually meet and talk to some Democrats.
Rahm Emmanuel and Chuck Schumer are two massively egotistocal men. There are jokes about being mortally wounded if you try to get in between a camera and Chuck Schumer. (It's only half-joking, believe me.) They did not like Howard Dean saying that their approach was shortsighted. They decided Dean was their enemy. Emmanuel, in particular, loathes Dean. That is why Howard Dean was not offered any position in the Obama administration or any reward whatsoever for all the hard work he has done. Hard work which was proven to be sound strategy.
I just hope the DNC doesn't abandon Dean's approach. They may be under pressure to do so now that Dean is gone.
fired. Or we'll end up with the Hilary Clinton Presidency, which, I was given to understand, was not the winner in the contest.
And, may I add, Rubin and Summers.
.
and clear out some of his fair weather supporters too.
Open things up for some stout hearted progressive veterans of the threads.
It's Not Going to Be OK...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090202_...
I posted on it the other day.
The part I liked was "inverse totalitarianism." It has the same explanatory clarity as the "Shock Doctrine" did when articulated so smartly by Naomi Klein...(I'd consider converting for her, b tw)...
??
Converting from what to what??
it was a great article
the concept of 'inverse totalitarianism' is very similar to the ideology underlying the 'shock doctrine' (see, neoliberalism).
in both 'inverse totalitarianism' and 'the shock doctrine' the will of the people, ie politics, is forced to take a back seat to economic concerns. undermining democracy, and any notion of the popular will.
time and time again it can be seen in countries forced into IMF-dictated structural reforms.
How about this guy? He's a doctor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3npKFQfjyY
Harkin Backs Dean For Health And Human Services: First Big Endorsement
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/05/sen-...
Dean is a commonsense and an excellent choice.
I don't know if he and Obama don't get along or not - but here's a chance to act like grownups if they don't. They can do this.
*
Let's call them 'Thugs' and get it over with.
We really don't have time to equivocate and euphemise. We need to call these toe rags what they are -- Not-So-Closeted Republic Party members.
And If this is true, what a huge disappointment for all of us who had some hope for a moment, and had the Presidents back in the run up to the election. This sort of shite is not why people voted for Barack Obama.
Several posters suggested Dean or Kucinich for the post over the past few days. These are two guys who seemingly have nothing but the welfare of our country and its people in mind.
We need to change the culture, do something DIFFERENT, because the same old ways aren't working anymore. We aren't going to get anything new or different or change shit, if we keep doing it the Corporately driven way. You're nuts if you think otherwise.
The re-Thuglics are making it quite clear that they mean for nothing to change and indeed, are working to assure Obama's failure.
*
This always makes me feel better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ygvg3E54mg
I don't want any blue dogs anywhere near HHS.
*
What the heck did he do to "O",did he hit on Michelle or something. I can't understand why this very good man is being shut out? I think it's a shame not to give him the HHS job plus he really wants it and is highly qualified to do the job. Also why is no one in the media asking question about the head of the party being shuffle off to the side. Is Howard Dean the crazy uncle no one wants at the dinner table, this is so weird.
My vote is for former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber or Sen Ron Wyden. Both have done an excellent job in their respective offices and have a wealth of experience and integrity.
Kitzhaber is a former physician. Check his blog at... http://wecandobetter.org/Kitzhabers_Blog
Check out Wyden at...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ro...
If Obama pulls Cooper off of the House floor and makes him head of HHS, he HAS to play ball whether he likes it or not. He now serves, "at the pleasure of the President."
If he stays on the House floor, he can do a lot more damage to universal health care. There's enough wiggle room in the House that they can roll the dice in TN in a special election and have it flip. No loss.
I think it may be a smart move.
Cooper's ripe dick is another molestation against the american people.
So butts up for another routine shafting.
And you know what? We'll freak, he'll ignore and find another way to bypass the will of the people like he did Brennan in the back door.
Consider it done and he'll call it good. Nice job O. A rose is a rose...and some are more equal than others.
universal health care, because many people (even lib/progressives) didn't think that just a few months ago. They think that America should enact Obama's plan that he mentioned during the campaign. The one that does nothing except insure a few more people and does nothing about the bogus state of health insurance in America.
on a-Hopin` babies. You can hope indefinitely pretty much. Lookaddat war over There...a couple of new wars is Change. Well it is Change, isn't it?
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