Apparently not. Those Blue Dogs just keep on voting with the Republicans, helping the GOP block the very legislation, like health care reform and a bill to confront climate change, that brought the Democrats electoral success in 2008.

It’s no wonder that Blue Dog Coalition members like Bart Gordon and John Tanner are having to drop out of their re-election campaigns. They can’t convince Democrats to donate to their campaigns any more, because they’ve been running with the Republicans for so long.

Yet, along comes U.S. Representative Betsy Markey this week, announcing that she’s joining the Blue Dog Coalition. Her political perception is so out of focus that she doesn’t realize she’s jumping onto a sinking ship.

It’s time for progressives to howl against the Blue Dogs.

In this podcast: Senate Democrats behaving badly, on C-17 military waste, health care reform and government spying against Americans.

Look at where Lincoln is getting the money for her 2010 re-election campaign if you want to find the answer. She has raised over 4 million dollars for her campaign so far, and most of it comes from political action committees and funneled corporate money. A great deal of that money comes from organizations and individuals who profit from the health care status quo.

Of all U.S. Senators, Blanche Lincoln is the top recipient of donations from companies that manufacture and sell medical supplies. Lincoln also takes a great deal of money directly from political action groups set up by insurance companies. These are the sources of the money she’s using to run for re-election – so it makes sense, in a cynical kind of way, that these are the interests she is protecting by voting against Barack Obama’s public option.

War doesn’t seem to have been an effective tool in Afghanistan after all.

The BaucusCare legislation slashes the subsidies to help Americans pay for health care insurance that were provided in other reform proposals. Finance saves money, and working Americans are going to have to pick up the bill.

BaucusCare neglects the single payer health care strategy that could provide good health insurance to Americans at a significantly reduced cost. BaucusCare doesn’t even include the public option which would provide an alternative to private medical insurance and pressure insurance companies to stop abusing sick and injured Americans when they’re at their most vulnerable.

With BaucusCare, insurance companies can breathe easy, and feel comfortable with the promise of bigger profits than they could ever have made before. BaucusCare will require Americans to buy the products that private insurance companies offer, without providing for any mechanism that can be reasonably expected to significantly reduce the price we pay for medical insurance. American families who are struggling to keep their homes will lose their homes because of this requirement, and the people wealthy enough to own a chunk of the insurance companies will become even more wealthy at everyone else’s expense.

Members of Congress like Baucus, who has taken millions of dollars from people aligned with the insurance industry, will benefit at our expense too, gaining more political power by agreeing to become servants of insurance bureaucrats.

If Democrats in the Senate don’t stand up to Max Baucus and push for real health care reform that actually means something, 2009 will go down in history as the Year of the Empty Promise. BaucusCare could as easily be called BogusCare.

In this economic recession, I feel reluctant to pass up a chance at $2,500, but I don’t think I can go along with the Health and Human Services campaign of fear about H1N1. The way I see things developing, I don’t see how the fear, or the public service announcement campaign is based in a reasonable concern.

So far in the United States, as of the end of last week, 40,617 people have caught the new strain of swine flu. Only 263 have died afterwards, and many of those people already had frail health. That’s less than a 1 percent fatality rate.

So, I’ll make a public service announcement about H1N1, but not the one that Kathleen Sebelius had in mind. I think I’ll make a video on behalf of H1N1, which has gained an undeservedly nasty reputation.

This warning comes from the Loch Ness monster. Barack Obama said that there wouldn’t be lobbyists in his White House, but it now looks like what Obama said doesn’t match what he’s actually doing.

(Loch Ness Lobbyists mini video podcast)

(Inauguration 2009 Video Podcast Report)

(audio version)

For eight years, we have been struggling against the agenda of George W. Bush – against attacks on the Constitution such as government spying against Americans without a search warrant and electronic database dragnets, against anti-environmental shams such as the idea of “clean coal” and expanded offshore drilling, against the blending of Church and State through corrupt government kickbacks to politically active religious groups (known as “faith-based initiatives”).

We thought that if we were able to get rid of George W. Bush, we would get rid of these rotten programs and bring America back to its tradition of liberty and progress.

Now, we’re learning that the problems go far beyond George W. Bush. These issues aren’t just problems with Bush Republicans. They reflect a pervasive decay in American civic culture.

You see, with the 2009 change in the White House, we’re learning that Barack Obama supports every one of the right wing programs I just listed. Barack Obama, in spite of his promise of change, is following many of the same policies as George W. Bush.

It’s a disorienting thought, but the struggle against Bush’s ideas is far from over. The struggle has just entered a new stage that, in many ways, will present more of a challenge to our idealism than anything we’ve experienced so far.

When the champion of progress turns out to be its enemy, there’s no one left on the big stage to stand for us and tell us where to go.

We’re on our own.

(Moving Opposition Video Podcast)

Good night.

- one minute standing on a beach