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posted 21-01-2010 23:59
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That seems to have it exactly right. What I don't understand is why so few Congressional Democrats seem to understand that. It's not like they don't have a long string of precedents for this. I'm no fan of the Senate bill, but failing to pass any bill now would be far, far worse in electoral and (in the long term) practical terms than passing the Senate bill.
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posted 22-01-2010 02:01
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Hertzberg's attempt to answer that question is as good as any I've seen:
It feels to them like surrender, like humiliation. They are tired and emotional and angry and fed up with being taken for granted.
Josh Marshall described the Hill as suffering from a type of shell shock. It's clearly emotional, rather than rational, and there is also very clearly a lack of leadership (at least in public). I can only hope that people are being talked off the ledge in private, because there isn't much time.
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posted 22-01-2010 02:13
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a) Scott Lemieux rocks very hard, but Dave Noon's Brock Lesnar piece forges new frontiers in snark.
b) Massachussets has universal healthcare, of just the sort this bill concerns. If the election has a healthcare-related message, the only coherent interpretation of it is "fuck you, we got ours."
c) Rick Hertzberg rocks.
d) Reconciliation can only be used on budget related items. But it isn't time-limited, and only budget items are now in question between the House and Senate bills.
e) I don't actually think Baucus can be much faulted. His commitee produced a bill well to the left of what Presidents Lieberman and Nelson would accept. But his moderate/habitual caver-in cred limited their pisstaking. I'd say he well outperformed expectations.
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posted 22-01-2010 02:58
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Is d) the case? Do all of the open points satisfy the Byrd conditions?
I honestly don't know.
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posted 18-03-2010 12:46
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Come on, did you watch the guy throwing dollar bills at the dude with Parkinson's? Classic.
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Etienne
Life sorted but now lacking time for OTF
Posts: 6670
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posted 18-03-2010 12:47
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You can't buy class like that.
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posted 18-03-2010 15:24
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Ginger Yellow, that's a great cartoon, but what are those protruberances extending from the players' helmets? (If the players are meant to be donkeys, then they appear not to have any tails.)
I'm sorry.
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posted 21-03-2010 13:07
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The Dems are out in force on the Sunday morning shows saying they've got the 216 to win a vote in the House.
Jesus, this thing might pass!
Fingers crossed, knock on wood, whatever, etc. but man...what a tremendous accomplishment.
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posted 21-03-2010 17:16
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MSNBC says that Stupak is voting yes.
House is debating now.
And CNN says Stupak is a no.
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Last Edit: 21-03-2010 17:23 By Incandenza.
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Etienne
Life sorted but now lacking time for OTF
Posts: 6670
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posted 21-03-2010 20:40
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Stupak says Yes at Press Conference (along with several others and says Dems "well past 216 votes".
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posted 22-03-2010 00:15
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I'm watching Bill O'Reilly right now and I'm pretty sure he's drunk.
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posted 22-03-2010 00:20
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How can you tell?
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posted 22-03-2010 00:30
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OK, a civics question:
What can a Presidential Order do, exactly? It's not a law, ir's not a regulation - what is it? Presumably you can't override a law via an executive order, can you? Basically, how does satisfying Stupak via Presidential Order differ from satisfying him through legislation?
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posted 22-03-2010 00:30
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Well, he seems a bit labored in forming his speech, slurring things, and the speech itself is particularly loose cannon-y.
Check out this bit of clarity from the National Review's Mark Steyn:
Well, it seems to be in the bag now. I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it's hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be "insurers" in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that's clear we'll be on the fast track to Obama's desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.
If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It's a huge transformative event in Americans' view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Their bet is that it can't be undone, and that over time, as I've been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada and elsewhere.
More prosaically, it's also unaffordable. That's why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the US is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.
Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side...
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posted 22-03-2010 00:41
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I know that Steyn bloke is a clown, but what on earth is he on about there? Governments- all of them- do healthcare cheaper than the US have so far. Won't that lead to more money to spend on weapons, if that's what they chose to do?
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posted 22-03-2010 00:48
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'The US' pays more for health care right now, but it's not 'the US government' footing the entire bill. If we do real government run health care eventually, defense spending would have to come down.
That would be a good thing, mind. There's probably a way to defend the free world without spending nearly as much as we do currently and often pointlessly.
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posted 22-03-2010 00:55
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Antonio Gramsci wrote:
OK, a civics question:
What can a Presidential Order do, exactly? It's not a law, ir's not a regulation - what is it? Presumably you can't override a law via an executive order, can you? Basically, how does satisfying Stupak via Presidential Order differ from satisfying him through legislation?
I don't know the answer exactly, but you may remember that Charlie Savage, then of the Boston Globe and now of the NY Times, won a Pulitzer for a series of articles on "signing statements" made by Bush. These statements were issued when Bush signed laws passed by Congress, and said essentially I'm signing this law, but by issuing this signing statement, I'm saying that one part of the law is unconstitutional and I'm ignoring it..
www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwa.../26/savage_interview
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posted 22-03-2010 01:08
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I don't get that, Bruno. Sure, taxation goes up to pay for the government run healthcare. But it saves far more in private payments for health. You could still pay all of the defence costs and still be better off.
Is there some iron economic rule about what the percentage of taxation can be? Isn't the key how much money you've got left over after you've paid tax, healthcare and everything else that's essential?
The lower defence spending in Europe and Canada is more likely to be to do with having less powerful military industrial complexes than that they've spent more on health and can't afford it.
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Last Edit: 22-03-2010 01:08 By Tubby Isaacs.
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