One more go around

As the baby Jesus plans to bury most of the mid-Atlantic in another ice age (is it bad when the daily forecast icon is a laughing Satan wielding a dagger made of ice?), our elected betters have decided to make one last stab at health reform before our world is encased in another 20 feet of snow, permanently freezing our society for study by future alien archaeologists.

Is that plan actually passing a bill? No. God no. The plan is one more bullshit "bipartisanship" summit where the President hopes to take televised questions from the GOP and Democrats in order to negotiate a supposed way forward. .....Great. Can someone remind me again how that all worked out last time? Ah yes, numerous Republicans involved themselves in the process, slowed things down dramatically, got hundreds of amendments and concessions made, comprised half the group of six that essentially wrote the Senate bill, and then unanimously opposed it as they spent months completely lying about the content of the bill while spinning horror stories of death panels, socialism, government takeovers, and Bolshevik plots. I'm sure their plans and contributions will be equally constructive this time.

Eric Cantor’s office responds to Obama’s announcement of a bipartisan summit on health care with the most explicit and direct assertion I’ve seen yet that the only way Dems can win bipartisan cooperation is to fully embrace the GOP health care plan and nothing more:

After going it alone on health care reform for nearly a year, President Obama has decided he wants to bring Republicans into the conversation. Here’s the problem: unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.

Completely scrap health care and do what we want. Sounds great. Of course that's even if they bother to show up for all the "bipartisanship", as they're already complaining about being expected to negotiate in good faith.

I know Democrats think that if they just ask "pretty please" enough and reserve the right to add "sugar on top" at a later date that the GOP, contra to the last two decade's of worth of examples, will finally make an attempt to govern without naked political calculations in mind. Here's a helpful hint: Republicans don't want a health care reform bill, nothing you say will get them to contribute constructively as their goal is to completely kill what you are trying to do.

So, can you at least get that point through your thick Democrat skulls and just move forward, the House passing the Senate bill and then the Senate passing the conference committee changes through reconciliation, before we're all frozen to death? Not for the sake of this country. No, as I've said: most of us will be encased in ice by tomorrow. I'd just prefer it if the aliens that will be defrosting us in a thousand years won't be observing us at the pinnacle of our circle jerk government failing us yet again. It's probably probably too late to avoid that, but I'd like for us to try. Just so the aliens aren't totally embarrassed for us.