Bipartisanship Runs Aground At Health Care Summit

Did you watch? Did you enjoy this latest fucking kabuki theater? Were you impressed with McCain's clownish behavior? Did you honestly expect any other God damn outcome?

Somewhere I read the key to such negotiations is both sides have to know what they need and then to discuss these needs with the other side to see what commonality is there.

I disagree. The absolute prime condition required is for both sides to believe, before the negotiations begin, agreement is possible. The GOP didn't believe that at all or they decided they would not allow agreement under any circumstances. I lean toward the latter.

The 'summit' [stupid fucking word fed us by the media] was ridiculous. You were smothered by the politics in the room. The whole point was to posture for November 2010. Hell, Obama even specifically mentioned November.

President Obama’s face-to-face effort to forge a bipartisan agreement on health care overhaul appeared to fall short Thursday, as differences that have plagued the process for months re-emerged during a meeting at Washington's historic Blair House.

Although Democrats maintained that the two sides were actually close to a solution, Republicans insisted that neither they nor the American people can stomach the bill as it now exists.

“Mr. President, what we've been saying for a long time is, let's scrap the bill,” House Republican Leader John Boehner said. “Let's start with a clean sheet of paper on those things that we can agree on.”

Obama wrapped up the nearly seven-hour session by asking Republicans to do some "soul searching." He held out some hope that compromise could be reached and that a bill could be finalized within a month to six weeks.

"And if we can't, then I think we ought to go ahead and make some decisions and then that's what elections are for,” the president said. “We have honest disagreements about the direction of the country and we'll go ahead and test those out for the next several months till November."

And they forgot the damn decent intermission. Not good theater at all. A complete waist of time. Better to have grabbed a DVD and some popcorn.

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