One more health care jerk around

The President today finally announced his health care plan. Why? Who the fuck knows. Sadly the plan wasn't "the House passes the Senate bill, the Senate passes the conference committee fixes through reconciliation." No, this is what the White House is calling the "opening bid for the health meeting". You know the one: where Democrats play school marm scold telling Republicans that they really, really need to help out on a health care bill for the good of the country and the Republicans tell the Democrats to cram it with walnuts, ugly. Except on TV this time, while they're all in the same room. You know, productive shit.

What is his "bill"? Well, it's not so much a bill as it is 11 pages of fixes to the Senate and House bills largely built on the framework of the Senate bill. The only new thing, I think, is a proposal federal oversight on the amount of money insurance companies can jack people for in rate hikes. It's all part of the plan.

"This package is designed to help us [use reconciliation] if the Republican party decides to filibuster health care reform," said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. "That was certainly a factor that went in to how we put this proposal together."

Pfeiffer said the White House views this as "the opening bid," for the bipartisan health care summit scheduled for this Thursday. The hope--a long shot--is that one or more Republicans can agree to support this proposal, allowing Dems to pass it via more standard legislative channels. But if that fails, reconciliation can be used as a backstop.

"The president expects, and thinks the American people deserve, an up or down vote on health care reform," Pfeiffer said.

I don't want to claim to be able to read minds or see the future (not over the internet without you being able to see my professional tarot setup and crystal ball), but I don't think the Republicans are going to sign on. I think they're going to filibuster. You know, like they do on everything. I think you're going to have to get the House to pass the Senate bill, and have the Senate pass these fixes, some other fixes, that "no seriously, we'll do a public option through reconciliation" thing that I know is just going to be a big, fuck-off joke, or kidnap the family members of the GOP leadership and force them to conduct themselves as responsible leaders.

You might know this as stuff that people have been screaming at you to do since you all decided you had a 41-59 minority. So why do we have to go through this pathetic theater to come to an obvious conclusion everyone saw coming over a year ago? Why couldn't this have happened a month ago? Ah yes, there was that jobs bill to get to that still hasn't been passed and your frantic search for spines. Oh well.

So, the Democrats have a plan of action. The country just has to wait until the meaningless summit where nothing will be accomplished happens. But they have a plan and Harry Reid is promising reconciliation action within 60 days. It's time to get your minuscule hopes for timidly moderate reforms up. I'll see you again when 10 Democrats decide that they aren't able to support the drastic, unprecedented action of using reconciliation and vote to kill the bill. You all know that's where this is going, right?

Time to get jerked around more on health care

It's clear what the main purpose of health care reform is: to jerk so many people around emotionally at such breakneck speeds for the purposes of our elected betters' entertainment. There doesn't seem to be any other explanation. It surely isn't "passing the best bill", as that option went off the table months ago.

If you remember where we last were in the health care debate, Scott Brown had just won in Massachusetts, giving Republicans their 41-59 majority. This of course caused Democrats to inexplicably start concocting new ways to fuck over people and make sure they get defeated in the 2010 elections as they all suddenly decided that finishing the work on the bill that both the House and Senate had already passed was a bad idea. The best solution forward, the House passes the Senate bill while the Senate passes the conference committee agreed upon changes through reconciliation, was jettisoned by House members for some undiscernable reason.

But because it is a new week, the House has a new opinion, and all is well in health care reform again.

But for the first time since last Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, it's clear that they're coalescing around the most widely discussed option: moving ahead with the Senate bill once it's clear that it will be changed through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process. Before they can move ahead, they need the Senate to make some real headway on their end of the bargain--and they're not getting the signs they need.

"I thought we could get the votes in the House to pass the [Senate] bill if fixes to the Senate bill can be done," House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) told reporters today.

"That would be a good option as far as I'm concerned," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), leader of the House progressives' health care task force. "I could support it. Reconciliation. Majority rule."

Finally. How about it Senate? Just pass the ideas you had already agreed to support in the conference committee through reconciliation and we can bang out this bill and have it signed by next week?

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, deflected questions about health care. “We’re not on health care now,” Mr. Reid said. “We’ve talked a lot about it in the past.”

He added, “There is no rush,” and noted that Congress still had most of this year to work on the health bills passed in 2009 by the Senate and the House.

Great job, Harry. Make sure to also thank Landrieu, Bayh, Lincoln, Lieberman, Pryor, Begich, Nelson, and McCaskill, who have all come out a bitched to various degrees about using reconciliation to vote for something they would have voted for had Martha Coakley been elected. But the beauty of reconciliation is that those 8 assholes, plus one more asshole can be jettisoned and the reconciliation bill can still be passed. So of course there's movement on making sure health care is passed, right?

No, most of the Senate is content to sit around and go "rush, what rush" and dick around supporting the easy and obvious thing to do to get health care reform passed. I'm sure that'll change next week... at which point the House will invariably have a problem. And on and on and on until somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million people have their heads explode from the inanity of their elected betters, thus solving the uninsured crisis.

So just a word of thanks to Congress. You may be slow on action and bad at legislating, but you are experts at dicking around, blame shifting, kicking back, and fucking around. Here's to the next seven dramatic shifts in the health reform battle. Seven dramatic reversals, that's all I can deal with before I'm out.

Quote of the day

Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi on why he finds it so personally rewarding to be a part of the Finance Committee's so called Gang of Six:

"If I hadn't been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care," he said.

"Someone has to be at the table asking questions," Enzi said, showing a flash of passion.

He later quoted a favorite saying: "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu."

"It's not where I get them to compromise, it's what I get them to leave out," Enzi said.

Wonderful. Let's all thank Max Baucus for finding yet another valuable and worthwhile negotiating partner for health care. I mean not only does he gleefully take credit for the fact that this country would already have health care if it weren't for him, but then he proudly swears it as his duty to get Democrats to weaken and compromise a bill that he in fact has no plans of ever supporting.

If this is what good faith negotiations look like, I'd hate to see what bad faith health care negotiations look like. I guess this does raise one interesting question: what exactly does someone have to say before Baucus eventually gets hip to the fact that they have no interest in getting health care reform passed? Is Enzi going to have to scream "Fuck health care!" while firing off a Tommy-gun in the senate parking lot? Because apparently stating your fervent opposition to getting anything done in simple terms isn't registering with Max.

Broken In Brief: Fox commissions, cancels idea Joss Whedon just had

HOLLYWOOD—In an unprecedented move, Fox Broadcasting has decided to take the extraordinary step of almost simultaneously commissioning and canceling a new series conceptualized in the bathtub earlier this morning by Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. This announcement comes as his current show, the low-rated Dollhouse, has found itself in danger of not being renewed for a second season.

“We just like being in the Whedon business,” said Fox Director of Programming Tom Niven. “We really enjoyed putting Joss’ last two shows, Firefly and the about-to-be-canceled Dollhouse, in rough timeslots, showing episodes out of order, forcing last-minute rewrites and reshoots, and generally jerking him around by the balls so the projects never find their audience. But like everyone else, we've been forced to make cutbacks lately, so we decided to eliminate everything that traditionally comes between optioning a Joss Whedon project and mercilessly running it into the ground for no apparent reason."

According to Whedon, the show, conceived while he decided to add more hot water to his morning bath, was to be called Robo-something or “something with the word Mech or Mecha in the title." The series, which was to chronicle a robot or possibly a group of robots on the run from… something, or possibly time traveling, was to star Felicia Day and David Boreanaz. During the application of shampoo to his hair, Mr. Whedon definitely thought it would be cool if it were possible to have Han Solo or a 25 year-old Paul Newman to function as the villainous group of… whatever… chasing the robots, perhaps even starring as the corrupt Time Police. Or something.

Cries of anger immediately went up among Whedon’s large and loyal fanbase. Message boards caved under the traffic as the portly and pale-skinned horde lamented the untimely demise of what they were certain was going to be another genre classic. They hope that by showing their support for the project and by buying the upcoming book release of the conceptual ideas behind the show, including an authentic reproduction of a drawing on a napkin of a stick figure human with a stick figure robot in a headlock with the cryptic question “Laser eyes?” above it, will prove to Fox that there is enough loyalty surrounding the project to forestall cancellation.

Bipartisanship

"But I invited them over for cookies, what happened? No support?"

So yesterday the House had their vote on the $820 billion stimulus package Obama wanted to get through. He had a hope and vision to get it passed with lots of bipartisan support and possibly bluebirds fluttering around him and a baby deer walking up and eating food out of Nancy Pelosi's hand. He pulled out all the stops, choked down brisket in the presence of Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, invited a dozen GOP moderates up for cookies and soda with Rahm, had about 22 members from the House and Senate up for a White House kegger, and had a sleepover out behind the White House where he told the spookiest ghost story ever and made Eric Cantor wet himself. The result? The bill passed 244-188, with not one single Republican voting for it.

This after he went into the process offering up a watered down version of the bill with increased tax cut proposals his own advisers deemed ineffective in an attempt to win over the support of Republicans. Whoops. This will also get no Republican support in the Senate. Whoops. A word to the wise Mr. Barry, you have the numbers to pass whatever the hell kind of stimulus you want. Republicans are going to oppose it no matter what. They view a stimulus package not solely based around tax cuts as either the abandonment of capitalism or the murder of capitalism or at least the drunken grope of capitalism. So why not try and craft the best bill you and your advisers feel will do the most good and pass that? Because in two years when they hold midterms and in 4 when you're up for re-election, you aren't going to get judged on how hard you tried to work with people, you're going to get judged on the results.

Or try another cookie party......but with bigger cookies!

Russia leaving Georgia. For real this time. Honest.

Send the message missiles, we are leaving.

Mass the tanks, prepare firing solutions, fix bayonets, the cease fire and withdrawal has been found! Don't let anyone leave the cease fire alive!

Columns of Russian tanks were gathering on the road to Gori today as they appeared to be preparing for a mass withdrawal from the area.

Troops identified as peacekeepers, however, continued to man some checkpoints deep inside Georgia away from the agreed buffer zones where Russia is permitted to station its forces. The position of a checkpoint at Natsreti close to Gori raises questions about the extent of the security zone that Russia will continue to operate on Georgian soil.

Well played Russia. Call a cease fire, then move deeper into Georgia destroying as much infrastructure as you can, announce a withdrawal, but don't actually withdraw, just destroy more infrastructure, mass your tanks near the border and arbitrarily decide to operate your 'security zone' inside Georgia. I assume the next step is to say you've completely left when the tanks are still visibly inside Georgia? Brilliant.

I do like the peace plan you're working on. No mention of Georgia's territorial integrity or where Russian forces will be deployed in future. Magnificent. This is how you swat an annoying gnat. Bush, you aren't even the best at this kind of shit anymore. How far you've fallen. For shame. Hope you wanted to be a part of Russia again, Georgia. I think that's about a month away. Try and look surprised.

Our ally Pakistan: Closer ties to militants than us

On Monday President Bush praised Pakistan as 'a strong ally in the fight against terrorists' and as 'committed to securing its border with Afghanistan'.

The reality? They aren't that committed.

A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.
...
The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Maybe we need to give them more jets. Same story, we say we want them to do more, they say they are committed, they do nothing and possibly hinder our efforts in the border region, we say we understand their difficulties, we send money, we're worse off, repeat. Expect a few meaningless raids on border groups, no arrests, more statements about 'commitment', requests for cash in non-sequential bills, and further reports that the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse.