OT and Reposted but I think it's cute. Plus, no doubt we will have to whip the Conservadems in the very near future. Here's some leverage:

HARRY: Hi Blanche, Joe, Ben and Mary, we're going to have a cloture vote on health care in 10 minutes.

BLANCHE, BEN, JOE & MARY: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We need time to ... make some phone calls.

JOE: What EXACTLY is the vote? Be VERY specific because if not I'm going to whine in a really annoying voice.

HARRY: We're voting to close debate and pass the final bill.

MARY: Well, nobody from Upjohn mentioned it to me and --

JOE: Or Aetna --

BLANCHE: Not even United ---

MARY: I think I just wet my pants.

HARRY: That's right. We just decided.

JOE: Oh, reaaalllly?

HARRY: That's right. And we expect each one of you to vote with the caucus.

JOE: Oh, reaaalllly?

HARRY: That's right.

JOE (winking at Blanche and Mary): Well, Harry, I'd love to help you out but I happen to know that Ned Lamont favors one sub-clause of the fifteenth sub-section of part Q and, well, I just don't see how I can bring myself to vote Aye on this. Sorry.

Ben: And one other thing, Harry. The way the bill is written it is theoretically possible that some of the money allocated could, if stolen by al Qaeda and laundered through the poppy trade, it could end up getting used for an abortion in Afghanistan. I'm sorry, Harry but I'm with Joe.

HARRY: It's non-negotiable.

JOE: Oh, reaaalllly? (Mary, Ben, and Blanche laugh uproariously).

20 MINUTED LATER (AFTER THE VOTE)

JOE: Hey, Blanche you're kind of cute in this candlelight next to the HVAC.

BLANCHE:. Thanks, Joe. But it's so cold here in the basement. Are you sure we did the right thing?

BEN: Anybody got a pen? I'm gonna write a very strong letter.

MARY: All they gave me is a pencil. But it's not sharpened.

JOE: Let's get the staff in here. I want a pencil sharpener.

BLANCHE: But Joe, remember, all we have for staff is Ayla Brown and she went back upstairs. She said it was too dark and cold in here. And she said something about . . . losers.

MARY: I wet my pants again.

Sounds like maybe reality is beginning to set in.

Pass the Senate bill in the house, do some fixes in reconciliation, move along.

Thank you John Dingell for behaving like a grown-up.

(and just to be clear, every loss of a progressive piece of the legislation - Single Payer, PO, Medicare buy-in, has been like a knife to the gut for me - but insuring 31 million Americans, subsidies for middle-class families, allowing young adults to remain on their parents insurance, and some basic rules of the road for the insurance industry is still a hell of a lot - certainly it's a start that can be improved on)

pass the Senate health care bill along with a separate bill amending it in a variety of ways.

this is the way things are gonna go. The Senate bill will not be passed "as is"

There's a brilliant effing cartoon over at balloon juice. A football team with "Dems" is in the huddle. The ball is down next to the goal line. The QB is saying "okay, we're five points down. It's the last play of the game. It's fourth and one. The ball's on the one yard line. Should we punt or go for a field goal?"

Repeating my message. Most of the people in the House just aren't that bright. We don't like to believe it, because, at some level, we need to feel like our leaders possess at least a modicum of shrewdness, if not actual brains. And it ain't so. They come from city councils and state legislatures and, on balance, most of them aren't really that much smarter than the people they left behind. Not one in ten of them took a course touching on game theory. Most of them have no more ability to face hard facts or grasp the obvious than the manager in your office who drags meetings out for hours trying to brainstorm "creative" ways to avoid dipping into the horded money in his budget to replace the broken copier.

You can't push the thickies into accepting the obvious. They'll run away or dig in their heels. They have to think they've gotten there on their own. So it just takes them a little time to blunder their way to the obvious conclusions that the smart ones reached immediately. And there's the danger because during that time, panic can either damp down or completely unbalance their reason.

Having said that, I really could have done without the "bare down" image. There aren't more than two or three members of the House I'd care to see naked and there are probably a hundred who'd make me question whether that "legally blind" thing wasn't a viable alternative to continuing to spend money on glasses.

Glad that Dingell gets it. He's been around long enough to see that delay plays into the Republicans' hands.

Dingell seems to get it. ALL of it.

Thank you, Congressman Dingell. Hope your caucus members will stop their collective bedwetting and posturing and get with the program.

Dingell has the right idea, but there is no fucking way the rest of the feckless, quivering, pants-pissing Democrats will go along with him.

I don't have much sympathy for Obama in all of this, either. He sent a loud and clear message a year ago to the GOP and more importantly to members of his own party that you can kick him in the balls and he won't do a goddamn thing, when he refused to take advantage of a heaven-sent opportunity to kick Joe Lieberman out of the caucus. All of the hand-wringers who were opposed to kicking Holy Joe out were whimpering that it would jeopardize the holy grail of 60 votes, as if Lieberman's vote was ever going to be reliable. So Obama sent the clear message that you can abuse him and his party with no consequences, and he ends up losing his 60th vote anyhow. Irony's a bitch, and the Dems are the GOP's bitch.

Excellent!

It is going to take someone like Dingell to buck up the House and get this thing passed.

Toles!!!

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/toles1.JPG

And of course he admits in the very next paragraph that his whole "ask for the Republican cooperation" "strategy" is a complete charade that is to be put on before they try to ram through a bill using reconciliation.

Pass the Senate bill in the House and the Democrats have signed their death warrant.

Obama is the most pathetic leader I have ever seen. He preached about "bipartisanship" from the start and got burned on the Stimulus and now Health Care. But guess what? In his weekly address, he criticized the Supreme Court ruling overturning limits on corporation funding of campaigns, and said that he would seek a "bipartisn" solution to this problem!!!???!!

The Republican Supreme Court made this decision precisely because they feared that his fundraising juggernaught would kill the Republian Party. So why does he think that the Republicans would have any interest in a bipartisan law to limit the effect of this ruling, given that they are already the party of corporations?

I honestly think Obama has a psychological problem, a neurotic need to reconcile two irreconcilable sides. Probably the effect of being a Black child raised in a White family.

I don't get what Obama is thinking. Does he think we will all finally get together and forget what that lying sack is saying called McCain?
Does he think his dreams and his praying will give him the idea that we will get close enough to believe him?
Good luck, John.
You and Sarah will make a marvelous couple in 2012.
I will walk the streets constantly hoping that we get the win from some crazy rule that puts Al Franken in office until everybody chills out.
Go Al!
Now, he is the guy who pushed me to get involved so we can make the Al Franken decade complete.