Weekly Pulse: Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Christine O’Donnell, Condoms, and Concussions

HuffPo tonight reports with some new details on Obama’s opposition to a PO now that it is becoming reality. Obama is now actively discouraging members of the Senate from siding with Reid on the PO. As the reporter points out, many on the Hill feel Obama is abandoning them at the moment of triumph. It looks as if we are a few votes away from the public option in the Senate. But these few conservadems won’t go along most think unless Obama gets off the trigger option and tells them to go for the pub. opt.

We have some major developments on the Hill tonight. The whip count from CPC is complete and was shown to the leadership today. According to the Hill at least 150 House members have signed on to a Medicare tied PO. Of great NOTE -46 DEMS SIGNED A LETTER TO PELOSI STATING THEY WONT SIGN ON TO THE BLUE DOG NEGOTIATED RATE PO. Also, they stated they WILL NOT VOTE FOR A NON MEDICARE PO.

According to wapo, http://tinyurl.com/nszus8 , its groundhog day in DC. the dynamic remains the same. Blue dogs trying to kill the bill. Progs ready for civil war after watching climate change, stim bill and more being watered down and Rahm disrespecting them. WH still thinking Baucus will save them. No leadership to be found. Its chaotic and dangerous to me. Its so bad one wonders if the ehalth bill is done. This week will be very telling.

For the past few days, I’ve been trying, by e-mail, to get the participants in the Northern Virginia Move-on Council to take my advice about the best way to get a good, strong, public option. Namely, to abandon the public option advocacy in favor of all-out support for “Medicare for All,” and specifically for HR 676, John Conyers’ bill. My efforts at this have been quite unsuccessful.

Today, I went to a face-to-face meeting called by the Council to plan activities for the rest of this month to provide explicit support for a “strong public option.” At the meeting I questioned the continuing strategy of Move-on calling for support for a strong public option. In one way or another, I made most of the points I made here.

Statement released this morning from the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee

By agreeing to speak no ill of the public option concept, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and likeminded others (categorized here as “public option pragmatists”) help ensure that the only critiques most Americans hear of this flawed idea come from corporatists and lunatics. In the process they facilitate the further marginalization of the solution they, and most Americans, support: profit-purged (aka single-payer) health care financing.