Gulf Coast Beach, Alabama – the first thing that hits you is the indescribable beauty of the beach, impossibly white sand meeting neon-turquoise water. The second thing is the overwhelming smell of gasoline.

A lot of people lately have asked me why, as a supporter of President Obama, and someone who worked for months to help get him elected, I’m so pissed off about his handling of health care reform. It’s a fair question. I’ll answer the best I can.

Want to follow up this health care reform bill with another that sets up a public option?

Hell, want a shot at even getting this lame-ass health care reform bill passed to begin with? Want to repeal DADT sometime in our lifetimes? How about a climate change bill? Clean energy? Or a jobs bill that does more than cut taxes for the super rich?

Because none of that has even a chance of happening if a Republican takes Teddy Kennedy’s seat in Massachussets on January 19th. And according to the latest polls, there’s a 50/50 chance that Democrat Martha Coakely could lose to Republican Scott Brown.

This summer, our journey ended with our wonderful girl, Jonesy, after an 18-month battle with lymphoma. We were lucky – we could afford the treatments that kept her healthy, happy and cancer free for most of that time. This holiday season, please consider giving the gift of life for pet owners who don’t have the [...]

President Obama could have saved us all a great deal of trouble if he had just said from the outset, “No public option, no way”. Instead, he decided to play a shell game of “Now you see it, now you don’t”.

Today on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews thought it might be fun to trot out the Obama administration’s talking point du jour, that Democratic critics of the Senate health care bill are really just a bunch of irrational cheeto-eating surrender monkeys. MATTHEWS: I don’t consider them Democrats, I consider them netroots, and they’re different. And if [...]

For me, one of the more frustrating aspects of organizing against the Stupak amendment has been comments I’ve heard – usually from younger, more affluent women – that they just didn’t think the Stupak amendment was that big a deal. Surely it wasn’t enough to jeopardize the entire health care reform bill over. After all, why [...]

Yesterday, Venice For Change and FDL Action PAC announced “One Voice For Choice”, a unique phone bank effort that will call into the districts of Democratic lawmakers who voted for the Stupak amendment. We are targeting likely voters who are pro-choice and asking them to tell their member of Congress to vote for a final health care reform bill that’s free of the Stupak ban.

The response has been tremendous. In only 24 hours, over half a dozen phone banks have popped up in my home state of California, and one in the heart of liberal Texas – Austin!

November 7, 2009 should have been a day for me to celebrate. After months of organizing phone banks to call our reps and dealing with Tea Party insanity, the House finally passed a health care reform bill that would cover 96 percent of Americans, and even included a reasonably strong public option.

I should have been ecstatic. Instead I was numb. Because apparently the White House and Nancy Pelosi had to trade away my reproductive rights at the 11th hour to pass the bill.

Amid the drama today regarding the Senate cloture vote (It passed 60-39. Yay, us), was another, more insidious drama taking place behind the scenes.