Wow, I thought this kind of thing was done away with years ago

[Jester]

Although, honesty, which is also as old as the hills, seems to be in short supply. Honestly, is there really any crisis in the last dozen years in America that requires rushing through legislation in 24 hours and emergency vote in Congress?

You're really big on this whole "emergency" thing - the meme that this is all being rushed through. But both houses have been arm wrestling over the ins and outs of possible plans, bills, deals, methods, etc... for well over six months now. If they're trying to close the deal when the negotiations finally work out, but before someone changes their mind, that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Everyone knows the issues at hand. They've been wrangling over them for ages.

Of course, the "rush" meme is being propagated by groups who benefit from delay - see below.

Well, it sure seems like confrontation of opposing forces, synthesis, resolution and due to the rapidity of the process it is not like a democracy where constituents are able to inform their representative of their viewpoints.

???

There have been polls day in and day out, town hall meetings since the beginning of the year, protests, media campaigns, etc, etc. Constituents have had more than ample opportunity to make their views known on the subject of health care reform - and anyone who cares to educate themselves should be more than able to negotiate the various possibilities being discussed (Triggers, opt-ins, opt-outs, etc...). None of this is secret, and I can only imagine that most politicians are receiving far more feedback than they can conceivably use at this point - much of it drummed up by one interest group or another.

What the polling does seem to confirm is that people want Congress to s**t or get off the pot. The longer they haggle, the more people get sick of the bickering, and turn against the Congress as a whole. If delay causes health reform to sink, who wins? The current rent-monopolizing HMOs, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical industries. Funnily enough, they're also the ones funding the campaigns of the key stallers in congress (Max Baucus, that means you.) I wonder how that happened...

Yes, I'm seeing it from both sides. Although, there is a difference between agitating your own political base, and the intellectually dishonest practice of working the solution backwards toward the crisis that needs resolution (e.g. PNAC developing plans for an Iraqi invasion).

This would be in reference to what, in the current situation?

-Jester