Once in a while, actually quite frequently lately, a politician will say something so idiotic on its face that it becomes a test of the national credulity. For example, when they tell us they will really, really try to pass a public option later.

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Once in a while, actually quite frequently lately, a politician will say something so idiotic on its face that it becomes a test of the national credulity.

Harry Reid made such a statement a couple days ago. But first, there is an amazing conversation on the policy merits going on over at the new "Independent Voters" page. The current disapproval rating of Congress is 83%, including both Democrats AND Republicans. If independents coordinate and assemble themselves into a organized base, 2010 WILL be the year of the independents.

This is an opportunity for you to get in on the conceptual ground floor of this coming political tsunami on this new Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/Independent.Voters

You do NOT have to be a Facebook user to follow the dialog. And if you want to participate in the discussion all you need is a Facebook ID, even if you do nothing else on the Facebook site.

OK, here is what Harry Reid said, in defense of the fact that NO vote on any kind of public option was being allowed in the reconciliation bill for health care reform.

"I will work to ensure that we are able to vote on the public option in the coming months."

And when exactly would that be, Harry, AFTER the Senate goes back to requiring 60 votes to pass anything? Let us be clear, 51 senators WERE on the record that they supported a public option, even if it were only as weak as the one passed by the House. All they had to do was take a vote on it NOW, and it would have been the law of the land.

How stupid do they think we are?

Do they think they can chalk up 50 plus votes sometime later when it won't actually count at all and expect us to believe they really wanted to do it? NO!!! If they really wanted to do it they would have done it when they had not only the votes but the procedural path (reconciliation only needing 51 votes) to do it. All else is just a patently duplicitous fraud.

The argument we've been hearing from so many progressives who should know better was that this health care bill was "better than nothing". How much better than nothing? Barely? Hardly much? Did all of you work your buns off getting a new President and Congress elected to be told the best we can do is "better than nothing"?

The fact is the Democrats COULD have put real structural reform in place, instead of just throwing a couple colored sprinkles as selling points on top of this massive pile of corporate corruption being passed off as a health care bill. Instead of just a couple community health centers to sell our policy soul for we could have gotten what the compelling majority of the American people WANTED, which was a robust public option.

It could have been an expansion of the low overhead existing Medicare program. It could have been some other form of a single payer system. It could have provided for real competition for drug prices by allowing reimportation or government bargaining. It could have freed the states from the oppression of industry law suits through ERISA to stop them from caring for their own citizens. It could have done any of these things if just ONE member of Congress had put their foot down, and KEPT it down, demanding any of these things.

In short, we could have had a health care bill that would have been wildly popular with the American people, instead of a rallying flag for its own repeal, which is what we've got.

How stupid do they think we are?

Predictably, we got an email from the President, and if you are one of the other 13 million hopers on his mailing list we are sure you got yours too, talking about "This is what change looks like." Sorry, but no. This is what dyed in the wool corruption looks like. This is what legislation looks like that has been manipulated every step of the way by corporate special interests. This is what it looks like for the American people to have been entirely shut out of the debate for their own health care future.

Yes we can? Do they mean that as some kind of sick joke? Yes we COULD have gotten real reform. But tragically, for the Democrats and all their supporters, and especially their progressive supporters, NO WE DID NOT!!! If real change could ever happen under their "leadership" this was the moment and the opportunity to do it. If they ever had any intention of putting real reform in place, and not just a couple cosmetic talking points, this was when it would have happened.

And it will not stand. Despite all the paper thin "hooray for our team", rah-rah partisan talk of the moment, the individual mandate is going down. At least 38 states are going to fight this to the death. And if you consider yourself a Democrat this should be especially sad for you, because it's going to take down the entire Democratic party with it.

There is now NO safe Democratic seat in Congress in the coming general election. If the Kennedy Senate seat was not safe, having now gone even further to perversely defy the will of the American people, how is that not even more the case now with them all.

http://www.facebook.com/Independent.Voters

Forget the Republicans. The American people at large like them if anything even less than the Democrats. The 83% of us who disapprove of Congress must organize ourselves into an independent base. We must preemptively select and rally behind one and ONLY one independent challenger for each political office in the country. Because when the Democrats go down, there must be some other alternative meaningful choice for the American people. And the link above is the site which will make it all possible, if only you will join in the discussion there now.

So mark our words. And take careful note of any person who is telling you now that we needed to vote for this bill as it was. Any such person who has said such a thing is forever marked as someone whose judgment CANNOT trusted on an important policy matter in the future. Any person who tries to sell you that this was a good deal, or even an acceptable deal, is at the end of the day nothing more than a corporate collaborator, whether witting or unwitting. Without exception they are either a coward, corrupt, or a corrupt coward. And you tell them we said so.

How stupid do they think we really are?

Authors Bio:

The Pen is a real person, and the creator of UTalk, a revolutionary new internet radio interface, to make advocacy messages as facile and easy as possible. With this goal in mind we pioneered one click action pages in the political realm, now imitated by virtually all other action sites on the internet.

The premise behind the resource has always been twofold. If people are speaking out to their members of Congress in sufficient numbers one of two things MUST happen. 1) Either our representatives will heed the voices of their constituents and we will have the policy change we want, or 2) People will personally experience being ignored by their members of Congress, and then we have a base of people motivated to seek their replacement.

Last year we also added to its resource options fax sending capability, so that messages can be sent by fax to recipients who might not be reachable by web input form or regular email.

Besides our own action alerts and pages, many other activist groups have been set up with their own action page creators, including building this capability into the writer article submission interface for OpEdNews itself, to empower them in their own policy missions. And all of these services are provided for absolutely no charge to anyone, supported only by whatever kind donations individuals choose to make from time to time.