Health care: run away!

It should be of little surprise, really. It was expected. I don't know why I thought that this time might be different. Health care reform is effectively dead for a while, which might just mean it is effectively dead. Why? Because Democrats have decided to assume their familiar position, one of grabbed ankles, pants around ankles, and a look that says "don't harm the plumbing too much back there." The Senate feels the health care issue, namely putting through reconciliation measures they were already going to vote for, to be too extreme a measure. Why? Because they can apparently see a future where not passing health care reform was a great idea.

So instead, because they can't do more than one thing at a time and literally every Senator is going to be working on this new priority, they've decided to pivot from health care to anything that anyone will throw at them in order to plausibly provide them with an excuse to get them away from health care. That thing is jobs, which they've decided is kind of important now after a year of not doing anything about it.

The White House on Thursday signaled the outlines of its strategy for breaking the partisan logjam holding up President Obama’s agenda, saying Democrats would move quickly to underline their commitment to fixing the broken economy and to build an election-year case against Republicans if they do not cooperate.

With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act first on job creation, reducing the deficit and imposing tighter regulation on banks before returning to the health measure, the president’s top priority from last year.

Yes yes, sure sure, good good. I'm sure the Republicans will hop on board to help you with an important priority. If there's one thing we've learned about the GOP it's that they certainly aren't interested in yanking the country down on itself if there's a slight chance it'll benefit them politically. Gee I wonder how the first attempt at this this year, where you tried to pass a measure the GOP supported, namely pay-as-you-go rules for the budget? What, they opposed in en masse? Including several GOP Senators who explicitly expressed support for the measure? Shocking.

I wonder what there contribution to the jobs debate will be. How does the New York Times phrase it? "[I]nstant Republican resistance to the jobs plan", a jobs plan which hasn't even been articulated. I'm sure this will go well.

So good job, Democrats. I'm sure that running shrieking from health care to the issue of jobs, because two things at once is hard, is going to work out for you. Hell, I foresee a future where both health care reform and an actual, working jobs bill are passed with enough time to be enacted before the election. The election being your only real concern at this point. This, like all your plans and legislative strategies, will totally work. Why shouldn't people trust you? You're the Democrats! Things things always go well for you and, by extension, the American people.

Compare/Contrast

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on health care:

As I said to some friends yesterday in the press, we will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will play in reducing the deficit.

Various and sundry Senate assholes on health care:

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said health care reform “is on life support, unfortunately,” and the president should have been more specific with how Democrats should move forward.
...
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) said it was “a real possibility that health care is at a stalemate and you can’t solve it this year.”
...
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on health care reform, Democrats are “thinking about it and how to move on it.”

But, he added, jobs are the current high priority and that is what we are going to work on for now.

Anyone still confident that health care is going to be acted on anytime soon? They've got to pretend they're doing something on jobs now.

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.

I hate you, Democrats

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D...ipshit-Missourah), fresh off he intellectual treatise on how passing legislation is hard and stuff, adds her voice to the chorus of idiot Democrats who think the best solution is to make sure that they royally piss off the last two remaining people who have faith in them and that the lesson of last night's loss is that quitting is the best option.

"As I said to somebody last night:, everybody needs to get the Washington wax out of their ears and listen and pay attention that people out there believe that we are going too far, too fast," McCaskill told POLITICO.

Yes, because if there's one thing that we've learned it's that the process surrounding the health reform battle that consumed nearly all of the year in an attempt to force some of the slightest and most incremental changes onto the health care system has been moving too fast and is trying to do too much. I know the one impression I've come away with in the health care fight is just the sheer speed of it all.

So there you are America, the lessons that a year long battle and a special election have taught us are that: hard work is hard, the glacial pace of the Senate is not slow enough, moving our health care system from about a 3 out of 10 to a 3.1 out of 10 is some gigantic leap that this country is unprepared to take, status quo uber alles, and that, when at all possible, doing nothing is the best option. Thanks for clearing that up Claire, I was worried there for a second that not enough Democrats were saying stupid shit and advocating for idiocy. Go sit in the shame corner with Barney Frank and Evan Bayh.

Speechishness

So last night, President Obama took time out of his schedule to talk to the nation about Afghanistan. Given the nature and timing of the speech, I'm not sure what made the public madder: escalating a war they aren't confident about or delaying both NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles. But throughout his speech the President laid out the goals, perils, pitfalls, and plans for his new Afghanistan strategy in one of the most serious and adult ways that any sitting Commander has ever done to the American people. It's just a shame it was in the service of a bad idea.

But that was just one of his audiences, what of his message to our elected betters who will be called upon to ratify this plan after he's already sent the troops over and started this strategy? Were their war boners mega-huge or just nominally huge?

On Capitol Hill, they will face a major fight over funding the war. In the House, as many as half of Democrats may oppose the administration's request for money to support the surge, forcing Obama to rely on a big block of Republican votes to get the legislation through the House and Senate.

Reactions Tuesday night illustrated the challenging environment for the president. Liberal Democrats expressed opposition to any escalation, while Democratic leaders signaled their reservations by saying they will take time to study the plan. Republicans applauded the troop increase but almost uniformly warned about sending mixed messages with talk of leaving.

Ahh Republicans, you filibuster everything but war. But it's nice to see our debate so clearly lined out: Democrats who are wary of adding troops and Republicans who are wary of ever letting them leave. But we all know where this will be headed: the "centrist" Democrats who fuck up any good legislation and cry about "fiscal responsibility" when it looks like money is going to be spent on actual humans, will help grease the skids for this escalation. It is their way.

So there we are, this is already a foregone conclusion, and the default consensus of our media and political elite is "if the President wants to bomb it or invade it, then he must have a good reason. Let's all shut up now". The troops are going, escalation is happening, and all that's left is a showpiece "debate" two months from now where funding is passed and the debate over the worthiness or intelligence of this plan is reduced to "do you want to win against the terrorists or are you still a pussy?" Ain't America grand? Onward ho! More war forever.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.25

Banks fight to kill proposed consumer protection agency
This is part 3,874 in our Not Learning Anything: The Global Financial Apocalypse and You series, in which banks decide that since almost nonexistent and un-enforced regulation worked out so well for banks and the public at large last time, why not try to handicap any efforts to provide any new oversight. Sounds like a good plan. Maybe next go around we can have every bank fail, or at least be consolidated into one super bank. This seems like the smartest way to go.

Democrats Are Jarred by Drop In Fundraising, Complacency, Absence of Big Donors Cited
Yes Democrats, after a summer in which you spent all your time fucking over the priorities of your base, dicking around on health care, not doing all that much to overturn Bush terrorism policies, and generally just spitting in the face of people who would be willing to give you money, you want to say it's complacency that's making your coffers a little light. That's half right. It's complacency from Democratic leaders, who think they can piss on everyone's shoes and tell them it's raining, that's the reason people can't seem to find money for people who can't seem to find the time to try to do what they ran for election on.

Mount Vernon council distances itself from honor for talk-show host
This is odd. Who would have ever thought that there would be people who would be mortified that their mayor was going to honor Glenn Beck with a Glenn Beck Day and a key to the city? I mean who wouldn't want to tie that crazy albatross around your neck and promote the fact that America's foremost aardvark lover was born and raised in your fair town? Build a statue to him, he's earned it.

Water Found on the Moon
You thought the Fiji and Voss water people were insufferable beyond all belief, wait till you meet the Moon Water people who drink their water from a moon aquifer that has never even touched an atmosphere, let alone air impurities. That's right, the friggin' moon has friggin' water on it. Don't worry, they're going to investigate this in the best way they know how: by crashing a spacecraft called LCROSS into it. Eat it Japan! We're the moon smashing water kings now.

Ford China Plant: Automaker Will Build $490 Million Facility
That's how you rebuild the American car industry....by packing it up and putting it in Chongqing, which I'm pretty sure was named after the villain in Van Damme's Bloodsport. Let's see, they have a plant in China, with Chinese labor, making cars under Chinese manufacturing standards, for sale in the Chinese market. Those goddamn things must be so cheap they actually give you money to take one. But I guess Ford are the smart ones, they're the ones we didn't have to bail out.

My God.....have they finally learned?

I'm about to blow your mind here, so sit down. On the first time in decades on an issue of any importance, it seems that Democrats are finally tired of playing the eager Charlie Brown to the GOP's football holding Lucy, and are willing to go it alone on an issue. As squadrons of pigs take to the skies, Democrats may have decided they're moving towards using their own numbers and ideas to pass a health care bill. To go it alone.

Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

Really Rahm? You're just coming to that conclusion now? I think anyone who reasonably pays attention to politics could have told you Republicans were going to oppose any and everything you came up with. But then again, we don't get paid hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars for our supposed political acumen.

But before we get too excited, let's just observe that all this does is set us up for a new kind of disappointment. Instead of the GOP killing a bill or making it worse, now we all get to contend with Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, and House Blue Dogs making the bill worse or eventually killing it if they don't get to make it worse. SO instead of shrugging our shoulders and saying "well at least they tried, but the GOP killed it", we just get to rage at the Democratic party as a whole once again as we wonder why Rahm Emanuel didn't bayonet Blanche Lincoln to show Arlen Specter the White House means business on health care. Have we just traded one bad outcome for another bad outcome? Say, a flupocalypse for a nuclear apocalypse? Possibly. But at least Democrats are going to make the attempt. Maybe. They might recant all this tomorrow.

EDIT: Like clockwork...

Too lazy to work

Earlier today word came down from useless human Harry Reid that the Senate was not going to vote on a health care bill before the August recess because not only might it cause them to miss a few precious days of the vacation that they so richly deserve, but that it might otherwise distract from all the nothing they're getting done. And why not? It's not like they're the ones without health care. They have pretty good coverage. It's most of the rest of us who are fucked.

But I can see why they wouldn't want to rush plans that have been sitting around and being worked on for six months. I means it's not like 14,000 people a day and 100,000 people a week lose their health coverage, is it? It is? Well, it's not like they'll ever meet one at a cocktail party or at their vacation house.

Bush is laughing quite hard at this moment

So the Democrats are really serious about this auto bailout. Not serious enough to actually bring it up for a vote or strong arm their majority of members into voting for it. See they've sent George Bush a strongly worded letter. And they used the phrase "or else."

Democrats sent a clear message to the White House tonight - make some of the $700 financial industry bailout money available to the domestic auto industry or else. And they want an answer by Friday.
...
The White House and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have rejected the notion of using money from the so-called TARP - a $700 billion package passed by Congress in October to stabilize the financial industry.

But in a letter Thursday night, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate told President Bush he must commit funds from either the TARP or the federal reserve or they will be unable to pass anything in Congress.

I'm sure Bush wet himself at that tersely worded "or else." I'm sure he'll get right on it. I mean he's been so on the ball for the rest of this financial horrorshow that I'm sure he's going to call up Paulson and tell him to stop stuffing dollar bills into the g-strings of bankers and start stuffing them in Detroit's frilly panties.

Hey Democrats, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Bush is running out the clock and shirking duty at a furious pace. He's moved from fiddling (or banjo pickin') while Rome burns, to tossing gas around and setting up a grill to cook endangered species on. Have you ever tasted spotted owl smoked to perfection on the smoldering remnants of our economy? He's not going to do anything and he's not going to make Hank give out billions to those dirty laborers. In case you haven't learned anything over the past few years let me spell it out: Democrats have to be the adults here. You're going to have to be the ones to do something. So do something. Maybe get that Muslim guy to start cracking the whip.

D-Day for Liberman

Today all the Senators meet in the secret chambers beneath Washington to vote on whether or not Joe Lieberman gets dipped slowly into a hot vat of acid or given a bag of money. Also whether or not he keeps his seat on the Homeland Security Committee. Democrats like Pat Leahy, Byron Dorgan, and Tom Carper all believe Holy Joe should face some sort of consequences for his constant campaigning for McCain, his slamming, dissembling, and lying about Obama and his policies, his RNC speech, his campaigning for Republican senators like Norm Coleman, and stuff like his statement that he didn't know if the US could survive 60 Democrats in the Senate. They generally think a man who does this shouldn't really be rewarded with a committee post that came about as a result of Democratic control, when all Joe did was fight for Republican control. Also, he already had the chair and did absolutely nothing with it for 2 years.

There are senators like Amy Klobuchar and Evan Bayh who think that Lieberman should be let back in if he makes a really sincere apology and says he's really really sorry. Others just think he should be let back in anyway, because they're Democrats and are terminally stupid. Reid already discussed stripping Joe of his chairmanship and he reportedly threw a snit and threatened to go over to the Republicans.

His empty threat to go join with a group of powerless individuals with no committee chairs and dooming himself to election defeat in his home state apparently scared some of the Democratic caucus and because they are big spineless lady boys they are expected to let him stay, give him control over Homeland Security, and at worst strip him of his Environment and Public Works subcommittee chairmanship. Though if he stamps his feet and holds his breath over that the Democrats will probably make him Majority Leader instead, perhaps impeaching Obama and replacing him with Lieberman. Obama should be thrilled with that since he made so many calls to people asking to keep Mr. Sanctimonious in the caucus.

So unless there's a major finding of a spine in the next few hours, Joe Lieberman gets everything he wants. I'm sure all those Senate Democrats are going to be real surprised when he continues to dick them over in the Homeland Security Committee and generally act like the personification of smug self-centered obsession. You earned it Democrats. Congrats.

America's punching bag?

Nate Silver takes his best guess at why, after being convicted on seven felony counts last week, Alaska Senator Ted "HULKSMASHTUBES" Stevens is leading Democrat Mark Begich in their Senate race. This is especially interesting because it asploded all of 538's projections, which were dead-on in virtually every other race:

There are three plausible explanations I can think of to explain this discrepancy. The first and most likely is that the Democratic vote became complacent and did not bother to turn out. The outcome of the presidential contest was not going to be close in Alaska, and Barack Obama's victory in the Electoral College was apparent as of about 4 PM local time. Begich supporters, moreover, may have looked at the polls and concluded that their candidate was far enough ahead that they didn't have to bother to vote.

In other words, while many of you were initially inclined to look at this race and mock your backwoods brethren for endorsing a convicted felon, perhaps those self-righteous fingers are better pointed at Anchorage liberals who figured, "No way this state is going for Obama and Begich has to have it in the bag, right? Right?"

Right.