Quote of the day

One America's most entertaining sane congressmen Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on his interactions with the Tea Party movement.

“I follow Twitter for the Tea Party and just show up to fuck with them,” he said. The crowd of 20-somethings crowed.

“No, I don’t actually do that. I just sit at my desk and they send me talcum powder every couple of weeks.”

I guess that's a badge of honor then. Or are you disappointed that it was only talcum? You have to keep your hopes down, the right wing fringe groups only break out the anthrax for the big dogs. Just keep plugging at it, pushin' for liberal stuff and someday soon I'll bet some poorly read terrorist with a copy of the Turner Diaries signed by Sean Hannity will cut out a letters from a magazine to concoct a poorly thought out threatening letter and dust it with the good stuff.

Hang in there. Low level demonization by half-wits is still something to be proud of.

Everything is fucked, we're all going to die

As you may have heard, the voters of Massachusetts stood up in unison last night and said "It's probably better for this country if absolutely nothing gets done for the rest of the year" and put Scott Brown into their open Senate seat changing the balance of the Senate from 60-40 to 59-41, effectively allowing Republicans to succeed with the filibusters they do on every single bill. Apparently voters get mad when you can't fix the problems Republicans spent eight years creating in one year and thus feel the need to hand more power back to them to create even more problems and gridlock. Makes sense.

Were there any lessons learned? Yes, Ted Kennedy is a complete asshole for dying. Also, Massachusetts has a real "fuck you, I got mine" attitude towards public health care. Any positives? Well, Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson are no longer the penultimate votes, so they'll probably no longer infuriate you with their childish demands. You also won't have to concern yourself with bills that get passed or learning new laws as none will be passed now.

But what does this mean for health care? Well there are a few options. One: hammer out a compromise bill and vote on it before Brown is seated. This is what's known as "what the Republicans would do", so of course the Democrats will not even attempt it. Second: the House passes the Senate bill. This would make sense and get this country to make some minor progress towards better health reform, but it would involve House progressives taking some sort of metaphorical political defeat and not allow them the delusion that their bill is all that different from the Senate version, so this will probably never happen. Third option: form a circular firing squad, despair as all hope is lost, get to the business of killing health reform dead, and cement the fact that you will lose horribly in November. Ding ding ding, I think we have a winner.

Yes, before Martha Coakley's body was even cold Democrats were out in full force trying to shoot off their feet, cave immediately, and commit political suicide. Barney Frank was out talking absolute shit about no being able to continue on the current health care path and engaging in some utter fantasy that Republicans will now be eager to join in and offer meaningful dialogue and compromise. Anthony Weiner was alternately saying health care reform should stop or that it should continue, but that he was opposed to voting for it and passing it. Jim Webb was all for letting health care come to a screeching halt and so was Evan Bayh, who took additional time to blame this on liberals who didn't win one single battle in the health care fight against middling "centrist" douches like him.

Gee, sure looks like we're going to get a health care bill real soon. So the conventional wisdom is that quitting and doing nothing, pivoting to some nebulous jobs bill that no Republicans will support, looking incredibly weak, and generally getting nothing done is the only way that they'll be able to save their own hides. Well, who can argue with the political acumen of the Democratic party. I mean they're so often right and prone to picking the most successful path. I'm sure this will all work out for them. Because there's nothing this country likes more than quitting, weakness, and failure.

Congrats on completely fucking up, Democrats. Not passing health care reform is the final step and you seem well on your way to doing it. Thanks for the memories, it sure was a great year. I'll remember to act surprised when you all lose your jobs in November.

We are governed by adults

In case you were worried that our health care debate wasn't consumed enough by childish spite and political gamesmanship when it wasn't being consumed by corporate cronyism, Joe Lieberman, the Only Senator That Matters, stepped in to remind you that the Senate is a serious place for serious thought by serious individuals.

But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.

And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.

“Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it’s the beginning of a road to single-payer,” Mr. Lieberman said. “Jacob Hacker, who’s a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, ‘This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.’”

That's right, Joe Lieberman scuttled a plan to expand Medicare that he supported as the VP Candidate of the Democratic party and one that he was advocating as little as three months ago, because he thought some liberals liked it too much. That was the basis for denying Medicare coverage to everyone in this country aged 55-64, making liberals angry. And not only was he so oblivious to how childish that was that he openly gave it as the reason he got the Medicare expansion dropped, the debate and the media coverage of the debate has degraded so much that he'll still be treated as a serious man of principle who has coherent thoughts on important issues.

So when you look back and wonder why a major initiative to take some of the most at risk and expensive people in the insurance market off the private rolls and onto Medicare, reducing risk, costs, and premiums in everyone else's plans, remember that it wasn't because it was a bad idea, or because analysis showed it wouldn't work, or because it was unpopular. No, you didn't get cheaper and better access to health care cause a guy wanted to stick it to liberals an punish them for liking something. Well done, Joe. We're all very sorry voters actually said they preferred Ned Lamont to you in the Democratic party. I can't even think of why they would think that. Well, you sure showed us. Thanks for acting like an adult.

Shaming

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is quickly becoming one of my favorite elected representatives in the health care debate. He fights for a robust public option, seems to understand obvious truths, tries to humiliate and shame liars in public forums, makes a hell of a lot of sense on the issues, stays within the realm of fact, and his last name is Weiner, which is of critical importance to someone as childish as myself. Now, he's also getting into the 'shaming Republican hypocrites' business, which is admittedly easy, but he still does a good job of it.

WEINER: It’s more another way of looking at this debate, this discussion about the public option, to put it in focus. We went, just out of curiosity, looked at how many members of Congress get the public option. And I know a lot of people have said, “Well under the new bill, how many of you members of Congress would choose the public option?”

Well there already is one; it’s called Medicare. And we found 55 Republicans and 151 members of Congress are on Medicare right now. So they’re already getting the same type of public option that we’d like people who are without insurance to be able to get. And I guess the purpose of this list was to kind of point out some of the hypocrisy of this debate.

Yes, he's done his own study, naming names on who is full of it on the health care debate. These 55 oppose a public option while they themselves not only have a public option, while they not only have government run health care, but are using single-payer government run health care in the style of the Socio-fascist League of Homosexual European Freedom Haters that they despise so much.

Now there is one critical flaw in Weiner's plan: he is trying to point out hypocrisy in politicians and shame leaders who have no capacity for acknowledging hypocrisy and had their sense of shame removed in a procedure paid for by Medicare. Plus he's doing it in a media environment that can't find time to give srious proponents of the public option interview time, but can find time to let Overlord McCain warble on and on about nothing for the millionth time. And why not, Gramps won so convincingly a year ago. Still Mr. Weiner (tee-hee), the effort is appreciated. Maybe next time you'll want to accuse the 55 leeches of seeking to kill health reform because they want everyone's grandmother to die bankrupt. It's pretty much the only way to get on TV nowadays. Unless you've got a precocious kid who is willing to hoax the media about a balloon mishap. Don't know how you'd tie that into the health care debate.

Sounds like he gets it

Rep. Anthony "I drink Betsy McCaughey's milkshake...I DRINK IT UP!" Weiner (D-NY) pointing out the obvious: that if the insurance company itself is making the claim that even the tepid incremental reform being offered is going to cause massive premium spikes (as opposed to the massive premium spikes that have happened over the past few decades for shits and giggles) then doesn't that pretty much make a public option the obvious solution? At not just "obvious to regular people obvious", so obvious that even Democratic leadership has to notice it.

Sure the insurance companies are talking absolute shit, but doesn't it provide "moderates" with the precious political cover they need to do anything for the benefit of the American people? Am I just getting my hopes up unnecessarily? I thought so. I'll go sit down.