{"id":370040,"date":"2010-02-27T14:00:44","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T19:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=69268"},"modified":"2010-02-27T14:00:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T19:00:44","slug":"watching-the-nolympics-patriot-act-extended-health-care-reform-kabuki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/370040","title":{"rendered":"Watching the Nolympics: Patriot Act Extended, Health Care Reform Kabuki"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div class='hitEmbed_right'><object width=\"300\" height=\"243\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/QEwNGgNXr9U&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;rel=0&#038;color1=0x006699&#038;color2=0x54abd6&#038;border=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/QEwNGgNXr9U&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;rel=0&#038;color1=0x006699&#038;color2=0x54abd6&#038;border=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"300\" height=\"243\"><\/embed><\/object><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Thursday&#8217;s developments perfectly sum up the completely ineffective nature of Obama and the Democrats: the Patriot Act was extended and there were hours of staged histrionics on health care reform that will go nowhere.<\/p>\n<p>Here is <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/nm\/20100226\/pl_nm\/us_usa_congress_security\">Reuters describing the Patriot Act extension<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class='wbq'>\n<p>Legislation to extend expiring provisions of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act won final congressional approval on Thursday, with Democrats unable to add additional civil liberties  protections.<\/p>\n<p>On vote of 315-97, the House of Representatives approved the bill, a day after it cleared the Senate. It now heads to President Barack Obama to sign into law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Pity the poor Democrats.  They control the White House and huge majorities in both chambers, but they just can&#8217;t manage to restore civil liberties taken away by the Republicans under Bush.  Those mean Republicans will just say no.<\/p>\n<p>Also on Thursday there were over seven hours of highly staged &#8220;debate&#8221; on health care reform.  Even though the Olympics are in Vancouver, the Republicans put on a gold medal performance in foot stomping in the Washington Nolympics.  I&#8217;ve included the exclusive footage I found.<\/p>\n<p>And again, the Democrats are left muttering to themselves about just how hard it&#8217;s going to be to get reform all on their own.  They&#8217;ve only been trying for a year, and now they don&#8217;t even &#8220;control&#8221; sixty votes in the Senate, so what do we expect from them anyway?<\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/seminal.firedoglake.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-this\/share-icon-16x16.gif\" alt=\"Share This icon\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=69268&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"Email, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_69268\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"noindex nofollow\">&nbsp;<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p><br style='clear:none' \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday&#8217;s developments perfectly sum up the completely ineffective nature of Obama and the Democrats: the Patriot Act was extended and there were hours of staged histrionics on health care reform that will go nowhere. Here is Reuters describing the Patriot Act extension: Legislation to extend expiring provisions of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act won final [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}