Is it any wonder that Congress has miserable approval ratings?

Nope. Look at their list of “accomlishments”. Even if there is a bill passed it will likely (thanks to the party of “no” and the party of “no spine”) be a joke.

Is it surprising that independents, who want their government to solve a few problems, are becoming impatient with the current majority?

So what? The so-called independents are as ineffectual as anyone else.

Normal human beings — let’s call them real Americans — cannot understand why, 10 months after President Obama’s inauguration, Congress is still tied down in a procedural torture chamber trying to pass the health care bill Obama promised in his campaign.

Easy, rather than pass the reform items that Both parties and most Americans could support and already have passed the democrats are trying to push through their wish list from decades past and holding up meaningful reform in those areas where everyone agrees. They want a partisan agenda more than bipartisan reforms that could immediately go into effect, trying to substitute a pipe dream for reality.

Last year, the voters gave him the largest popular vote margin won by a presidential candidate in 20 years. They gave Democrats their largest Senate majority since 1976 and their largest House majority since 1992.

They won an election against a candidate who didn't run…George Bush, not much if anything more.

Obama didn’t just offer bromides about hope and change. He made quite specific pledges. You’d think that the newly empowered Democrats would want to deliver quickly.

*chortle*

He offered mostly general non specific statements, and many of the specifics he did offer regarding healthcare didn't come to pass so far. Lets see, there was that C-Span coverage he promised for negoations, and instead we got him cutting backroom deals with Big Pharma

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promise…

There was that campaign attacking of Hilary clinton during the primary about folks going to jail and paying fines for not having mandatory healthcare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnDxqboVxMY

and what are the democrats trying to pass now? the same thing candidate Obama spoke against.

LOL, to say the Democrats have a mandate due to the election to break their election comments and promises is utterly ridiculous.

The Democratic party needs to get back to the things the American people approve of, and not this agenda that the people didn't give them a mandate for or there will be hell to pay in 2010 and 2012 at the ballot box, just like in Virginia and New Jersey .

That would leave the faithful unhappy or upset at such failure or questioning of “progress” or “solutions.”

Besides, it's not as if the faithful are willing to read the legislation (as long as it has “health care” on it and they're told it's a solution, great), or even able to read and understand it.

At this point, “progress” will likely be paramount and we'll see little or no delays in getting to conference.

Given the depth of the Demmie base, it's no surprise. Hence even Obama himself bashed the insurers.

The Dems have overreached progressively this year and their excesses led to their own disruption.

Now they're trying to recover. It's especially noteworthy that the Senate, in addition to the House, pulled itself out of its splayed-on-the-ground position and actually resumed making “progress.” They may now be back on schedule to produce bad legislation on this issue, too, by the end of the year. That has been the record so far, and it stands to reason (among reasonable people, if not the dregs who support the “reform” effort with little to no intellectual or moral substance, or proper direction) that the Senate bill is bad, and the only question now is how bad, or worse, the Senate-House conference “product” will be.

Shouldn't every committee in the SEnator start up with hearings on the specifics of the bill instead of blindly voting on something that has not been read or reviewed.

I was trying to remember when the filibuster rule was changed from a delaying tactic to a requirement of a super majority to get anything passed and the answer seems to be in the eighties or nineties with little fanfare.

This is a good article that explains quite a bit and why I don't remember, before the eighties filibusters being such a big deal and that's because they weren't.

http://scriptamus.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/solu…

“But today, a Senator has to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a day for his or her campaign. The Senator has public and private speeches to give, constituents to see, funds to raise. The modern Senator with air travel takes a 3 or 4 day weekend to go back to his home state. An old fashioned filibuster would really inconvenience ALL the majority senators and the filibustering minority as well. They just didn’t want to suffer that inconvenient. “

The real answer is to change the rule back.