Barack Obama's 50 State Strategery.

The Washington Post's lead story in their online edition reads, Senate May Drop Public Option. The article then goes on to say that Harry Reid is "optimistic" the bill in its proposed form will pass.

Chuck Schumer, believe it or not, was listed as "the leader of the liberal faction" that was all too quick to give the rump party formerly known as the Republicans any concession they wanted. You want to know what a real liberal is? Listen to the words of Russ Feingold, who consistently finds himself on the right side of every issue:

"While I appreciate the willingness of all parties to engage in good-faith discussions, I do not support proposals that would replace the public option in the bill with a purely private approach," he said. He added, however, that he will base his vote "on the entirety of what is in the bill, and whether I think the bill is good for Wisconsin."

So, the "Democratic" Senate with its much-vaunted, long-sought after 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority, sold us up Shit Creek with an even smaller paddle, gave up on any pretension to any health care reform and prostrated themselves before the moral syphilitics of the shrinking and irrelevant Republican Party.

Then a moment later I saw this in, appropriately, my spam inbox, a personal message to me from Barack Obama:

Robert --

As we head into the final stretch on health reform, big insurance company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the status quo.

So I have a message for them, from all of us: Not this time. We have come too far. We will not turn back. We will not back down.

But do not doubt -- the opponents of reform will not rest. So I need you, the members of Organizing for America, to fight alongside me.

We must continue to build out our campaign -- to spread the facts on the air and on the ground, and to bring in more volunteers and train them to join the fight. I urgently need your help to keep Organizing for America's 50-state movement for reform going strong.

Please donate $5 or whatever you can afford today.

It leads you to a page in which you can have the opportunity to throw even more of your hyperextended bucks for this shadowy Organizing For America, one for which the President has agreed to be their point man.

Mr. President, not only is this sending the most mixed message imaginable, but it seems as if the lobbyists and their employers in the health care racket have won already. And it's not because "Americans (sat) idle while rising costs threaten our families, our businesses, and our economy." It was Congress that had for 6 to 7 decades sat idle, one successive administration after another that had either sat idle and did nothing, or made things worse (Nixon) or had tried to make things worse (Clinton).

It was inevitable. An army of 3300 health care lobbyists, or 6 to every lawmaker, one financed with $1.4 million a day was bound to win. It was a war of attrition and Obama's 50 State Strategery, let's call it, has about as much chance of regaining ground that was never even claimed than his surge has of reclaiming Afghanistani soil taken by the Taliban.

In a way, it's kind of ironic that Obama would be the point man for this so far stupendously unsuccessful 50 state coalition considering that Dr. Howard Dean's 50 state strategy was largely responsible for Obama carrying certain swings states and getting him into the White House. A fan of a single payer plan, Dean was then given short shrift and was never under serious consideration for HHS Secretary nor officially asked for his input re health care reform. But that's because any meaningful reform was never the idea. In fact, the antithesis was always the idea. Let's take a look at one of the signature issues from the President's hazy plan:

Creates a new insurance marketplace — the Exchange — that allows people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy insurance at competitive prices.

Sounds good in theory, doesn't it? Especially when you don't examine the holes in the porous language. But remember, one of the biggest concessions that the appeasement-minded invertebrates of the Democrat Party was in maintaining the GOP's insistence on letting the HMOs stay between the hashmarks. Instead of any real public option, this is the watery compromise we'll get, courtesy of the Wa Po:

Under the deal, the government plan preferred by liberals would be replaced with a program that would create several national insurance policies administered by private companies but negotiated by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees health policies for federal workers. If private firms were unable to deliver acceptable national policies, a government plan would be created.

Now, if 3300 lobbyists can so easily bribe, cajole, wheedle and threaten their way into the black little hearts of 535 lawmakers, how would the OPM be able to withstand a similar onslaught of HMO and Big Pharma lobbyists who, while negotiating, will never be trusted to act against their own bottom-line interests?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on Reid.

Harry Reid has proven to have about much testicular fortitude as his House counterpart Nancy Pelosi. Who else do you think allowed Max Baucus, who is, with few exceptions, the most flagrantly corrupt man in American politics since Boss Tweed, take point in the health care debate?

Why should we give money to yet another toothless, powerless entity called Organizing for America when the administration itself was caught red-handed cutting a smoky back room deal with Big Pharma, fronted by a mobster named Billy Tauzin, that capped drug company compensation to the gov't at $80 billion? Why should we give even a penny to an organization that cynically uses the campaign logo for a man who, despite courageous but vague campaign rhetoric, deliberately started from a severely weakened bargaining position in one prison bitch posture of appeasement after another to what was already a diminished rump party that is now less popular than the Tea Baggers?

Mr. President, with all due respect, go to hell.

How dare you ask for even a penny for your impotent 50 state strategy when you yourself publicly poo-pooed a single payer system, abandoned any public option as if it was an unwanted stepchild with lice and a harelip, when you have largely, while appearing to remain uninvolved, done everything in your power to kowtow to an insane, spittle-flecked faction that has called you a liar to your face on international TV, openly called you a communist and Socialist and has openly called for your impeachment. You have done all this at the cost of any real health care reform for countless tens of millions and have otherwise given us a cooler and hipper-looking third Bush term.

You have done your part to bail out Wall Street yet again while doing shit for Main Street. You will send 100,000 troops to Afghanistan before long and had started the process when we still had 130,000 troops in Iraq. You have done nothing to helping Americans get loans, for banks to get credit flowing again, done nothing meaningful to stem the housing crisis tsunami that's devastated entire neighborhoods, you have done nothing but look helplessly while the unemployment rate spiraled to double digits.

It is all too obvious by now that, as with the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005, real, actual reform without a sarcastic sneer was never the idea. The last thing that your overlords in the private sector wanted was an actual "Socialist" success story that could herald a domino effect across that self-dealing, self-interested private sector.

And you have the unmitigated audacity to ask us for money for what is obviously a doomed mission?

With all due respect, sir, and I say this with absolutely Cheneyesque sincerity, Go fuck yourself.