Its been a little bit since last I did this, but here you go:
Divided We Stand, United We Fall provides a thorough overview of the Brown-Coakley race in Massachusetts.
Kyle Cupp looks at coercion versus torture.
Over at NeoMugwump, Dennis Sanders takes a critical look at the conservative inclination towards a healthy skepticism of government metastasizing into deep contempt.
At City of Brass, Aziz Poonwalla calls out Pat Robertson’s un-Christian and cruel comments towards Haiti.
D.A. Ridgley of Positive Liberty reviews The Book of Eli.
Patrick Cahalan 
Cornelius 
wardsmith 
Tod Kelly 
Tom Van Dyke 
Murali 
James Hanley 
Jaybird 
Borat: “I do a picture, only small, of the Tishnik Masacre. Where many Uzbeks…crushed!”
Kindly Gray Hippie: “How did you feel when you drew this?”
Borat: “Very proud!”.
KGH: “I’m just listening with sadness…a little sadness for your people…?”
Borat: “Yes…no, it is not sad. It is us who do the kill!”
When in doubt,
{ 28 comments }
One of the things I wonder about in the Coakley-Brown race is that f Brown wins and the Dems have 59, then that means that overnight Lieberman loses all his leverage and utility. So how doesthat affect eth balance of power in the Senate? Suddenly Snowe becomes the Republicans’ Lieberman…
Health care reform is probably safe because Brown wont be seated unti February anyway and the dems can delay him the way the GOP delayed Franken. But for the rest of Obamas agenda, its a different story. Then again the Dems were gonna lose seats in November anyway so at some point Obama would have had to deal with the new reality anyway and adjust strategy anyway.
There were a lot of things shoveled into the bill to get folks on board (Ben Nelson provides a spectacular example). I reckon that Brown’s win, if he wins, will not make Obama’s knees tremble, particularly, but there are a lot of Senators who will say something to the effect of “I know that there will be people who lose their seats but *I* won’t be one of them!!!”
Which could easily turn into “there were too many problems with the bill” and there are any number of arguments any given senator could give. “My constituents wouldn’t be well served by sending more of their hard-earned dollars to provide health care to Alabama, of all places” or “we need to serve the interests of The People and not Special Interests like the insurance companies who wrote the bill”.
Along with the ever-popular “the Republicans prevented us from giving you the bill you deserve, American People!”
And all of those excuses at least have the benefit of being true, for once.
I’m sure that if the Democrats had 70 senate seats, they’d be able to cobble a good bill together.
Technically, this is the fault of the American People.
oh so haven’t noticed the issues with the filibuster and current requirement for a super-majority in the senate? Do you believe the R’s were negotiating in good faith or didn’t do everything they can to lie and smear HCR?
but on the bright side, if brown wins and we don’t get HCR people will be denied coverage due to having pre-existing conditions, recission will still occur and how millions won’t be able to afford health care.
Actually even if the Senate version of HCR does pass, people will be denied coverage due to having pre-existing conditions, recission will still occur and millions won’t be able to afford health care. At least until benefits start kicking in around 2013, and then millions still won’t be able to afford health care even when fully implemented in 2019.
ummm no…the provisions to eliminate pre existing coverages issues and recission start soon. There is plenty in the plan that starts this year. the deeper reforms and subsidies take some time to start.
but as i don’t hear much about stuff like pre existing conditions and such lately. i hear plenty about socialism and destroying america though, which i guess is reasonable. ( sarcasm button off)
And I hear plenty about evil Republicans obstructing this bill, even though it was, is, and will continue to be (until at least 2011) numerically impossible for the Republicans to obstruct anything. Simple fact. The worst thing you can say about the Republicans in Congress is that they chose not to provide political cover to the Democrats on this particular HCR bill, and failed to assist President Obama in overcoming the continuing Democratic Party obstruction.
oh lord, so another person who is pretending to be unaware of how the filibuster is being used. Saying the R’s have been massively obstructionist and acted in bad faith does not in any way mitigate the D’s tacticle errors ( like trying to negotiate with R’s among others). There is plenty of blame of different sorts to go around. However the obvious issue with Brown, is that R’s will be able to obstruct any reform if he wins, leading to the glorious continuance of people being denied health insurance because they have medical conditions and such.
Q: Isn’t the affordability related to the exchanges and subsides? So wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that if you can afford H.I. but are being denied, that would fail but otherwise…nothing would change until 2013? Or am I missing something?
Have you noticed that the dems actually *HAD* 60 votes there, for a while?
Hey, maybe the House will use the “pong” technique and children will have free health care by Valentine’s Day!
How many children are you, personally, killing by not screaming for your congressman to pong the bill up to President Obama to sign?
i am sadly quite aware of the D’s foibles and self inflicted struggles. I don’t think anyone would deny that. It is also clear R’s have insisted on a super majorty for every single vote, even simple procedural matters, in an attempt to obfuscate and delay. They have used the filibuster far more then it ever has been. Its ridiculous to suggest, if you are, that the only reason for the trouble passing HCR is D stupidity.
Just curious, do you think the R’s were negotiating in good faith?
It also seems unarguable that if HCR fails for whatever collection of stupidity and bad faith, the bad things i mentioned wouild continue. There are some real life consequences to politics.
Do I think that the R’s were negotiating in good faith? Heck no.
That seems awfully precise, however. I mean, if all 100 senators were not negotiating in good faith, it seems kind of weird to focus on how the Republicans weren’t negotiating in good faith.
Greg, the bill was written by *INSURANCE COMPANIES*.
THIS IS REGULATORY CAPTURE.
You should recognize it by now.
Did the insurance companies have a far bigger role in bill then i would like yes and yes. However i think the political calculus, correctly, saw that hurting any of the big stake holders to much ( insurance companies, Pharma, hospitals, doctors, AARP) would result in not getting enough of the bought and paid for pols to support anything. It was either compromise with them or nothing.
That being said, no the insurance companies did not write this bill, although they did have influence. Some of the bills elements, national exchanges, having to take all people and community rating are not good for insurance companies in the long run since they they make the companies less important gate keepers.
And even for the bills faults, which i admit, it still does a lot of good things, like lower the deficit( based on CBO projections), insure almost everybody, stops recission, pre exsisting condition issues, does have various cost controls and starts moving in us the direction of a better system. I think the good outweighs the bad and i don’t think much better reform is possible at this time.
If we had different politicians and a different way of paying for campaigns and they could focus just on coming up with the best system, well then…thats a nice thought, and thats about it. How do you see any better bill getting passed? Can anybody give the insurance companies the finger and still something passed? Which of the powerful stake holders can be effectively ignored?
I’m not going to go to bat for the GOP here, but I do have to wonder, isn’t there a point at which blaming the rump, minority for not giving your party any room for error, going to be kind of beneath the left? That’s kind of like CBS blaming NBC for a decline in the networks’ viewership, I mean sure they’re not helping but when they’re in a distant last place…is it necessary or even gentlemanly?
You’re defending PATRIOT with that speech too, you know.
The TSA as well.
This is regulatory capture, Greg.
You should recognize it by now.
you know…I’ve always suspected the American People….
Regardless of whether Brown wins, the Republicans in Congress remain completely irrelevant and impotent to do anything about the passage of the health care reform bill. The only way the Republicans can become anything more than the peanut gallery on this bill, is if the heavy Democratic majority in the House of Representatives chooses to empower the Republicans in the Senate by obstructing the explicit legislative wishes of President Obama.
The bill that Obama is pushing, is the bill that already passed the Senate. There is no need for that bill to ever return to the Senate. If the Democrats want to put a Health Care Reform bill on the president’s desk, they can do it one day. They just need to take a straight up and down vote in the House of Representatives on the Senate Bill. If Nancy Pelosi can get 218 of the 256 Democrats in the House to vote for it, it is law.
That magic 218 is amusingly important, given all the talk and frustration about the filibuster. You can kiss goodbye getting traction from complaining about the “nebulous and nefarious anti-democratic Senate” killing reform, if it fails in the distinctly majoritarian house.
220-215 was kind of astoundingly close and if the House can’t stomach the bill and/or doesn’t gamble on reconciliation to fix it, well then hello 90′s the sequel, with that same great taste and only twice the deficits…err wait.
Exactly. The disingenuous carping about Republican obstructionism is laughably absurd in the face of the reality on the Hill. The only obstruction to the HCR bill that President Obama wants, is Nancy Pelosi and the large Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Full stop.
Jay- Well if you say i was defending PATRIOT then i guess i must have been even if i didn’t know it.
I think regulatory capture is a real problem, however i think a good libertarian can, and does, say that about almost everything. therefore i don’t see how we start to get anything done.And i like i said, i don’t actually think this is a wonderful dream for the insurance companies. and oddly unless we would go to single payer, the insurance companies would be involved in some way with covering people. In just about every case insurance companies would be getting a lot more companies.
I also think you are ignoring the good things that will come from the bill, what about those things? Is some degree of regulatory capture worse then recisssion or pre-existing conditions clauses?
Kyle- I love your metaphor of NBC and CBS. that is exactly the problem we to often have. parties viewing each other solely as competitors not as also parties in working together to run the country well. You have exactly stated the criticism i have with the R’s, they put their own political success above the country. They wanted to win more then solve a problem, a problem most of them have acknowledged. That does not in any way mitigate the very much admitted problems and mistakes the D’s have made. Things can be multi-causal. My best case wouild have been for R’s to actively participate to make a good bill, not as cover, but to , get this….make a better freaking bill. I don’t think legislations crafted by only one party is the best option. In fact if both parties participate to come up with good legislation it might lessen Jay’s concern about regulatory capture, since two parties have some different constituencies and it is harder to buy two parties then one.
I asked Jay the question about whether i thought R’s had bargained in good faith, so same question for you? I already know what i think about that. I think there is a tendency among conservative leaners to just want to blame D’s so as to absolve R’s, even if they aren’t R’s, of their behavior. Maybe i’m wrong, but i am just puzzled by people who don’t seem to admit that the BS storm of death panels and killing grandma and using the filibuster in a wholly unprecedented manner solely to make the process not work, wasn’t sleazy. I can understand it if you are a partisan R, but i didn’t take you as that. And wouldn’t that kind of behavior bother a libertarian.
Anyway the word of the day is multi-causal.
Do you not see how that exact speech you gave, with *VERY* little tweaking, could be used to defend the legislation that gave us PATRIOT? Could be used to defend the legislation to give us the TSA?
And now you’re using it to defend the legislation that will give us health care coverage?
Does that not give you *ANY* pause?
I’ve been thinking about this all day.
First, I think on one level you’re dead right about the NBC/CBS metaphor highlighting a problem with
modernpolitics. On another level, however, both D & R stand for ideas as much as people and in a democracy, ideas do compete. So I’m not quite sure where the line is between good competition and distractingly bad competition.With regards to the R’s that did see defeating healthcare as the first and maybe last stop on the Nobama Express, words fail to express my disappointment and disapproval. They are holders of the public trust and in that regard playing political games at the expense of governance or action in the public interest is reprehensible maybe, unconscionable. (words really do fail)
However, as sure as I am that some R’s did play politics with health care, I’m also sure that some honestly believed that this health care bill or one likely to pass this Congress would not be in the best interests of their constituents or the nation. That position may be ill-founded or well-founded but it is honest and I can’t really fault them for that position, any more than I would a passionate pro-choice Democratic senator filibustering a pro-life judicial nominee. Of course, from the outside it’s nearly impossible to tell whose opposition is honest and whose isn’t. Except, in Ben Nelson’s case.
As for the good faith bargaining, I really don’t know what to think. My impression is that many of the Republicans would have good faith not-bargained for health care, some negotiated in bad faith, and still others negotiated in good faith.
I also think, the Democrats’ strategy (and not without good reason) was either brilliant in conception and failed in execution or disastrously bad in conception and, unfortunately for them, competently executed. Looking back, it was quite clear Grassley wasn’t negotiating in good faith, so why do it? Either they didn’t realize, were bamboozled by personal relationships, or did realize it and used “negotiations” as a wedge to further the narrative of the obstructionist GOP. It wouldn’t be the first time it was done, and certainly not the first time a party used an important issue as a wedge issue.
On the other hand, Wyden-Bennett had enough Republican votes to hit cloture and then some, not to mention passage. So why not call the R’s bluff – if it is one and I don’t, I think it was genuine – and send it to the floor? Probably lobbyists and just as probably, Democrats thought they could get more of what they wanted through the Dodd-Baucus (Reid) bill.
Basically, I think there were quite a few GOP members who do fit your description but I don’t think the whole party was that way and I’m not entirely sure D’s didn’t set up negotiations to fail for political gain. Basically the “GOP is all political” meme doesn’t pass the Judd Gregg test, why would a retiring New England Republican hold a line that wouldn’t benefit him in the least?
As for August, the one-month debacle of townhalls and the like, two comments. First, I think as the go-to “see how crazy the R’s were” example not as much of the GOP embraced the cited lines as people think, quite a few repudiated them. Second, the GOP operatives who did stoke those populist fires preyed on the anxieties of Americans, particularly the elderly and that’s cheap and hurtful to the nation. If you go around frightening Americans for political gain you’re more terrorist than patriot.
Winding down the mini-post response, I’d like to think I call out deserving things on both sides of the aisle, but I also don’t think it’s unfair to hold a party with indomitable control of two branches of the government to a different standard than the rump opposition.
As a final thought, I’m enormously skeptical that current critics of the GOP’s position would’ve had kinder words to say had they participated in the process. Right now it’s “look at how terrible this bill is, because the effects of the GOP’s checking out.” Had the GOP actually participated, I think we’d be hearing a lot more “look how terrible this bill is, because good policy was sacrificed upon the altar of bipartisanship.”
After the stimulus, the policy-destroying effects of bipartisanship were lamented. During healthcare, the policy-destroying effects of unipartisanship or monopartisanship are lamented. The GOP may not be “ready to lead” but they’ve established, through their absence, that the prime commonality between the unpopular stimulus, bailout, and healthcare bills is the hot mess known as the Democratic Party.
actually no i don’t see that. Content matters. You explain it to me. Everything has good and bad in it, i don’t believe there is any perfect legislation. Ever. In a democratic society, all legislation will involve the stake holders ( even if it is more involvement then you or i would like). Thats democracy. Tell me how we do things differently.
And again what about the positives from the current bill and how the hell do we get anything done to solve the problems we have with health care? Am i forgetting something, do you think our health care system is just peachy?
It’s not a question of “do I think that our health care is just peachy” any more than I wonder if our “homeland security” in 2000 was “just peachy”.
The question is not “do I think we are rolling in clover” but “do I think that the government acting in collusion with all sorts of interest groups is likely to make things better or worse while distracting us from rational thought while screaming how our women and children are at risk”.
Hey, Greg. Do you think that the government, acting in collusion with the corporations, are going to come up with something better than what we have now? Are you being distracted by how the bodies of dead children are being waved in your face? Are you sure?
I think this is the only gov we have and i don’t have any other options for how to go forward. I don’t see you offering a postive direction forward, just pointing, often correctly, the problems we have. Yes i think the current bill is better then the status quo. I want recisssion and pre-exsisting condionts exemptions ended, among many other reforms.
what is your road forward?
FWIW, my son was born with major heart problems so i have seen several hundred thousand dollar medical bills and faced the prospect of being told, “sorry you exceeded your lifetime spending limit, no more insurance for you” and the fear of not being able to get health insurance and bankruptcy. This is not just trying to “wave dead children” in your face at all. Its very real, not rehtoric.
My road forward? At the very least, burn everything to the ground and start over.
Anything else would be worse than that.
Is this “anything else”?
If so, we need to stick with the status quo until we have enough torches.
Do we have enough torches? Or are there too many people saying “this will be different from PATRIOT and the TSA, seriously, we mean it, the right people wrote the bill this time”?
WTF does burn everything to the ground mean? Seriously what are you proposing, is it remotely possible and how does it help? Would there be unintended consequences for burning everything down? So you want more and more people to be screwed and America to fall down to exactly what point so you can get the system you think is best? Will we have the “right” people when we have enough torches? Does the frenzy that goes with torch bearing revolution lead to the best impulses in man or the worst? Won’t some powerful interest be selling torches and “burn it down” bumper stickers to the crowds?
This clearly sounds like a well thought out non-morality based proposal of governance.
Comments on this entry are closed.