Despite the clamor for more dialogue, we probably won't be seeing Republicans stage another get together with President Obama anytime soon.

Speaking to House Republicans in a televised question-and-answer session last Friday, Obama took Republicans to task for some of the outrageous claims they've made to derail important legislation.

Obama said Republicans made the health-care bill sound like a "Bolshevik plot." And he faced down those who returned home to their constituents with scripts saying he was trying to "destroy America."

Meanwhile, more people continue to lose their health insurance coverage every day. Hospitals continue to use emergency room care for the uninsured.

We'll continue to see double-digit annual increases in our premiums, while insurance companies look for fewer ways to provide coverage. And we'll all continue to pick up the tab for the uninsured.

Nice goin' guys!

Obama made an appeal for bipartisanship, since gridlock helps no one.

Still, only hours after their Friday meeting, the bronzed John Boehner couldn't pass up an opportunity on camera to say Americans don't want health-care reform.

A piece written by James Fallows for The Atlantic, "Why Bipartisanship Can't Work," begins with a conversation between two Congress members, one a Republican and the other a Democrat.

The Democrat makes a change to a bill to satisfy his Republican colleague. The compromise is complete, but the Republican votes ‘no' anyway.

Republicans, as Obama correctly noted, are painting themselves into a box preventing them from agreeing with anything he proposes, even if he's lifted it straight from the Republican playbooks of conservatives like Ronald Reagan.

They are frightened of their new groupies, the Tea Partiers, who won't let them be centrists, rational, or effective.

They can't even be seen as helping the American people through one of the roughest periods in the country's history. Their only option is to feed the populist anger.

Democrats, for their part, are as splintered and skittish as ever. Whatever they say they stand for today, they'll probably abandon tomorrow.

So here we sit with nothing getting done.

US domestic policy is stuck.

The folks in Congress ride around in limousines, while many of us can't afford gas. They have the best health insurance, while someone lost their insurance in the time it took to read this.

Goodbye compromise; welcome to populism.