President Obama appears to have completely "sold out." His approval rating plummeted, not because of Republicans, but because of how he is "negotiating" health care reform. Single-payer should have been used as a bargaining chip.

To compromise both single-payer and a public opton is to trade out health, financial stability and our nation's solvency in exchange for Blue Dog and Republican votes. This is a direct affront, and duplicitous act, against the very people who put him in office and gave him a majority in Congress to work with.

Finally, some are beginning to see the FAIL in front of their eyes. But I must say, what the hell took you so long? First, the Obama "reform" fiasco should have been obvious since last year when he did everything from repeatedly calling his plan "universal health care" when it obviously wasn't to demonizing universal mandates, including running Harry & Louise ads. But if that wasn't enough (and it should have been!) Obama also kneecapped single-payer from the beginning of his "reform" efforts as president. Why else would he do that unless health care wasn't what he was fighting for?

A quick review of what has survived an unbecoming process of deal making exposes the dismaying reality. For starters: no public plan; no wealth tax to help pay for cost incurred; no right for the government to bargain with Pharma on drug prices; no meaningful enforcement mechanisms to ensure that vested, for profit interests comply with whatever undertakings, explicit or tacit, that they have made. What do we gain? Not much. A commitment that everyone must be insured, yet with a much weakened employer mandate to accomplish it. An elimination of the most egregious practices of insurance companies re. e.g. pre-existing conditions, arbitrary termination of coverage. Some small subsidies for the working poor. These last are minimal. Someone earning $20,000 a year will get no subsidy unless insurance premiums reach $2,400 -- according to the Finance Committee bill. Good luck all you folks who work for $10 an hour -- you'll need it.

To be fair to the Obama administration, it's clear their top priority is saving corporate profits so it's not "technically" a FAIL from their point of view.

Nearly every media outlet has had their say on Obama's first 100 days in office. Now it's Correntewire's turn.

As I mentioned before, Obama created an incredible White House Council on Women and Girls that will normalize gender throughout top levels of government. Here he is delivering a great speech on why gender equality is so important to us all:

President Obama took a step forward on equality in creating a White House council on gender that will be chaired by his trusted friend and adviser, Valerie Jarrett:

"The mission of the Council will be to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families," reads a memo describing the move and obtained by The Fix.

On Single Payer Healthcare

As a candidate you have promised to treat issues in a truly bipartisan manner. On most issues this has clearly been the case.

Single payer is the one single issue that transcends all politics of the American people and they are almost all (65%) clearly in agreement with.

We all want single payer health care.

In the last couple of years I have seen fundraisers for 4 local people in order to pay for their health care because either their insurance refused to cover legitimate costs or they had absolutely zero coverage.   Read more…

Many, including "progressive" bloggers, insisted that it was acceptable for Obama to remove contraceptive funding from the stimulus bill, particularly if it could get GOP votes. Besides the fact that such a move rendered zero GOP votes, appeasing the GOP is equivalent to begging to be shot in the head, and the selling out of poor women and girls has misogynistic overtones to it, the removal of this funding also took aim at the economy (Read the whole article).