David Pleasant

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is conducting a survey. Here are the details from an email I received. Please note, often times campaigns use these tactics to get you on their mailing lists. Obviously they want to do that, but giving them input can’t hurt. (Emphasis in original.)

Last weekend health insurance reform took another big step forward when the House passed their bill on Saturday night. With each passing day, we’re getting closer to finally fixing our tragically broken system.

The bill we merged from the Finance and Health committee versions is being scored by the CBO this week, and hopefully next week we’ll be able to begin debate and continue moving this monumental legislation forward.

Our petition in support of a public option has been so successful (thank you 50,000+ signers!), I want to continue our conversation about health insurance reform. So today, we’re launching an informal mobile survey that you can participate in via text message or online.

To vote, simply take out your cell phone and choose an option below, or participate online by clicking here. We’ll text you the results, and you’ll be registered to receive mobile updates from my campaign in the future.

What’s the most important aspect of health insurance reform?

TEXT A to 42779 for:
Making sure people with preexisting conditions can get affordable insurance

TEXT B to 42779 for:
Prohibiting insurance companies from dropping people when they get sick

TEXT C to 42779 for:
Creating a public insurance option to lower costs by creating competition

TEXT D to 42779 for:
We should not reform health insurance, status quo is ok by me

TEXT your answer (A,B,C or D) to 42779 (HARRY) to vote

If you’d prefer you can take our mobile survey online by clicking here. Either way, thanks so much for participating, we’ll be in touch with results soon.

Since Harry Reid doesn’t have a spine, we’ll have to settle for humor.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is pulling a Sarah Palin by blaming his ineptness on the media.

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday blamed Capitol Hill media for setting an August deadline for health reform and Republicans for blocking the bill’s progress.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Conference Secretary Patty Murray (D-Wash.) also acknowledged that critics will "pour it on" during the coming August recess and they plan to respond in kind.

Reid said reporters created a fictitious deadline of a successful vote by the August recess, and downplayed the fact that the chamber won’t meet that mark.

“That is a deadline that you created,” Reid told a group of about 75 reporters. “It’s not like we don’t have a product. Significant progress has been made … The mere fact that this wasn’t done by last Friday or by five o’clock doesn’t mean we’re not going to get a quality product."

The absence of a spine is what Reid should be focusing on, not the media for reporting precisely what he set forth.

I wonder if the Democrats are ever going to grow a pair. For years now they have offered excuse after excuse as to why they must kowtow to the demands of Republicans. Before 2006, they said they were powerless because they were a minority; they didn’t have the votes to do anything. But, they promised prior to the 2006 elections that if they had a majority in Congress they could storm the gates and push through progressive legislation along with stop the abuses of power by the Cheney administration.

The American voters gave them precisely what they asked for in 2006 – majority control of the Senate and the House – and what did they give in return? Excuses. Notwithstanding their majority control of Congress they declared they were powerless; they didn’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (60 votes). Again, they must let Republicans dominate the agendas regardless of the Republican’s minority status. But, if the American people would just give them a filibuster-proof majority in 2008 they could ensure the progressive agenda would move forward.

They could investigate the Cheney administration’s crimes, they could pass health care reform, they could reform regulation of the financial industry, and they could stop mortgage foreclosures. The list goes on and on. All they needed was the Holy Grail: a 60-vote super majority in the Senate. So the electorate gave them the Holy Grail, and now what do the American people get in return? Zip, nada, nothing. More excuses and now a watered down health care bill that is not remotely close to health care reform or anything similar to their campaign promises.

Just marvel at what that spineless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now saying about health care reform.

At a press conference today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) declined to get into details about the Senate Finance Committee’s health care negotiations, but he declared that his number one priority is moving toward–and supporting–something that can get 60 votes.

"What I think should be in the bill is something that I will vote for according to my conscience when we get this bill to the floor," Reid said. "That’s my number one responsibility and there are times I have to set aside my personal preferences for the good of the Senate and I think the country."

That’s right. Harry Reid has his precious 60 votes, but he can’t get a Democratic bill through. He has to kowtow to the Republicans and their health care lobbyist-owned Senators like Max Baucus.

I’ll say it again. If we can’t get Congress to push through a progressive health care reform bill, we’re screwed from here on out. If this country can’t do what every other developed nation in the Western world did many, many years ago, what can we do?

Corruption is what leads the day, every day, in Washington, not what’s right for the  citizenry. I can’t remember the name of the case/ruling at the moment, but One of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made was in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, when it ruled that corporations had the same rights as citizens.