Now it's Nelson

It's bad enough that Senator Joe Lieberman has been a roadblock to the recent health care bill being debated in the Senate, but now Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) is the lone hold-out who won't become the desperately needed 60th vote to pass the bill unless it contains stronger language banning abortions. I see this as a backdoor attempt to reverse Roe v. Wade via a health care bill. It was bad enough that the Stupak-Pitts amendment made it into the House health care bill, but now Nelson wants even stronger language written into the Senate bill that will all but make abortions illegal in this country. I'm not at all happy with this health care bill as it is so I don't quite know what to think about Nelson's actions, but I know that there is a strong contingent of conservatives who desperately want Obama to fail in this particular part of his domestic agenda because they see it as their road back to the White House in 2012. From Day One of the Obama administration, their goal has been to throw up roadblocks in Obama's way at everything he's tried to do. They refuse to work with him and all it's doing is paralyzing Washington even more than it's been in recent years. Obama's goal of breaking the partisan gridlock in Washington seems all but dead as both sides become more defensive and angry. And the Democrats who were elected to Congress in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles are of a more conservative bent and less likely to want to go along with their fellow Democrats and progressives, so Obama is going to have a tough time holding on to Democratic majorities in both Houses come midterm elections next year because of the appearances of getting nothing done when there were such pie-in-the-sky expectations of Obama when we elected him President last year. And now this disaster of a health care bill, which is basically corporate welfare for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries is causing a bit of an uprising in the progressive ranks - as well it should - so there seems to be rebellion on all sides over this health care bill. It seems like no one really likes it but we're being told that half a loaf is better than none. I just don't want the rotten and moldy half, that's all. So throw it away and start over again. This time don't rush it. This time, ask for testimony from real Americans about what real health care reform ought to look like. Hold hearings in Congress and invite real Americans to speak and to tell Congress to get it right and don't hand out corporate welfare to insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Let our voices be heard. After all, they must remember that they work for us and not the other way around. If Congress won't do that, I propose that each and every one of us buy a copy of the movie "SiCKO" and send it to our Congressmen and women and our respective Senators as a Christmas present and flood their offices with copies of that movie to remind them of why real health care reform must happen now, not five or ten years from now, but now. It's time for the people to take charge of where this thing will go, not politicians who are basically in the back pocket of the corporations from whom they receive campaign contributions. People, you want health care reform, real, meaningful reform? We have to be the ones to make that happen and we'd better get started now, because we don't want Congress to hand us a bad half a loaf when we deserve so much better.