Less than 24 hours from polls closing in New Jersey, the governors race has shaped up to be a referendum on the voters of New Jersey rather than the candidates themselves. Both candidates, the embattled incumbent Jon Corzine and the slovenly Bush lackey Chris Christie, are battling high unfavorables. Are the voters in NJ so desperate for change that they will hold their noses and vote for the foul-tempered, corrupt and completely devoid of policy ideas Republican? Or will they hold their noses and vote for the wildly unpopular former Goldman Sachs (two words which have joined the so-called “7 dirty words” in their vulgarity) Co-Chairman Democrat? With both of the major party candidates so disliked, could we see a big turnout for conservative 3rd party candidate Chris Dagget (endorsed by the state’s largest paper the Star Ledger, and currently polling at a robust and unsustainable 11%)?
Last November, in the wake of President Obama’s convincing march to victory, it would have been tough to imagine any Republican, especially a neo-con like Chris Christie, would be the favorite in a gubernatorial race in the Northeast. The fact that Christie is polling at about 40-45% instead of 30% comes down to a few things:
1. Incumbents face an uphill climb. With unemployment officially hovering around 9.8% (and more importantly U6 around 17%), any incumbent is going to face the pitchforks of the impatient local residents. Even 5 stump speeches by President Obama haven’t lifted Corzine’s numbers beyond 40-43%
2. Corzine’s Wall Street ties. Hating Wall Street is as en vogue in 2009 as hating Russians was a few decades ago. Right in the middle of the financial meltdown was Corzine’s former employer, Goldman Sachs.
3. New Jersey voters have never warmed to Corzine. Despite winning with 54% of the vote in 2005 (after the McGreevey debacle), Corzine’s favorability was at a paltry 35%.. After climbing to 50% in ’07, it plunged again as he (along with every other incumbent governor) had to make tough decisions to balance the state budget.
All things were looking good for a Republican takeover of the Governor’s mansion…..until they decided to nominate wingnut Chris Christie and his trail of corruption and long history of foul tempered antics. A more moderate Republican (like Jersey’s last Republican Governor, Christine Todd Whitman) would probably be a solid favorite heading into tomorrow’s election. Instead, the GOP has decided to embrace the far right and go with Christie. For awhile it looked as if Christie, despite his wingnuttiness, was going to win. And then voters got to know him. Predictably, they didn’t like what they found out…and his numbers tanked accordingly (of course his bizarre antics, daring Corzine to call him fat, didn’t help).
With just about every poll close (and a few outliers in each direction), chances are votes will be counted long into Tuesday night and early Wednesday. The deciding factor may well come down to which candidate can peel the most support from Independent Chris Daggett (the type of conservative that CAN win in New Jersey….thankfully the GOP doesn’t like sensible conservatives these days). Many pollsters, not all, seem to think that the Daggett voters are more likely to break for Corzine.
Also in Corzine’s favor is the fact that New Jersey has become fools’ gold of sorts for the GOP. In just about every election since 2000 the state has been a toss-up until the last minute. Democrats are hoping the Corzine can follow in the footsteps of Kerry, Menedez and Obama and pull off a comfortable victory come election day.
Anyone who has followed politics for a long time could tell you the possible ramifications of a Christie win tomorrow. When Whitman defeated Florio in 1993, the GOP was able to regain national momentum and the 1994 midterms reflected their new-found enthusiasm. Anytime the GOP can take down a “Northeast Liberal” who is supported quite visibly by President Obama, they will see a big spike in fund raising. Corzine epitomizes every aspect of the “Big Government, Family values destroying, big spending, tax hiking” Democrat the GOP brainwashes their ill-informed supporters into believing.
Posted in Uncategorized on October 19, 2009 by gopaint
From the wonderful state that has recently been shamed by Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst and Governor Mark Sanford’s prurient escapades and a Facebook comparison between Michelle Obama and a gorilla comes yet another “WTF are they thinking?!” moment. Two GOP county chairmen (Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer Jr.) came up with this statement in the op-ed in a local newspaper:
There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed
Perpetuating stereotypes one idiotic op-ed at a time. I’m sure the SC GOP will rush to these two morons’ defense, but the reality is that anytime you invoke a very well known (and historically damaging) stereotype of any group you deserve to be labeled as a bigot.
While this comment is offensive on its own, what is more troubling (but unsurprising at this point) is the continuing pattern of anti-semitic, xenophobic, racist, homophobic or sexist garbage being put into the media by the Party of Lincoln (who must be rolling in his proverbial grave at this nonsense).
None of this is particularly new. The GOP has long played up fears of the “other” using code words and images to gain and maintain power for a certain segment of society (Lee Atwater’s “Willie Horton ad” being perhaps the most famous and effective example). What IS different is the bluntness and/or stupidity of the modern Republican party when it comes to sensitive issues. They are already a white, Christian male dominated party. Rather than trying to be more inclusive, they are going full steam ahead to make their party more EXclusive.
Posted in Uncategorized on October 14, 2009 by gopaint
It’s finally over. The Baucus bill was voted out of the Senate Finance Committee late this afternoon, passing by a vote of 14-9. Of course, most of the attention from the media and blogosphere alike has been on Republican Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine who bucked her party and voted for the bill. So what is the significance of Senator Snowe’s vote? What does it mean? And where do we head? Within minutes of the announcement of Snowe’s vote, writers, columnists and bloggers started filling pages upon pages with speculation. The Right seems unified in their response, as the leading Conservative blogs (RedState and FreeRepublic) have been littered with posts calling Snowe a “traitorous bitch” and that’s probably the nicest thing any of those folks had to say about it.
The left, however is a bit more diverse in reaction (shocking, right?). Some claim that this is great news for the reform efforts, others claim it is the beginning of the destruction of meaningful reform. The arguments are thus:
Snowe’s vote = Good! argument: We needed to get the bill out of the SFC. A Senate bill couldn’t go to the floor WITHOUT a SFC bill. Having the Baucus plan fail today would have at best stalled the process for a few months and at worst would have killed the reform efforts for the remainder of President Obama’s first term. Snowe’s vote was, in terms of passing the bill, irrelevant. The fact that she is willing to support some reform is a good sign, should the Democrats have problems getting their 60 votes for cloture (rumor has it somewhere between 52 and 57 Democrats would vote for cloture on a robust public option). If Sen. Snowe represents the “most conservative” that the bill will be, well that’s better than some conservaDem’s stances (Landrieu, Lincoln and the pair of Senator Nelsons). Her vote should be looked at as a way to get the bill out of committee, and to score points with her constituents (of which the vast majority favor a strong public option). As she said herself, her vote today is not indicative of her vote tomorrow.
Besides, we knew (at least those of us paying attention SHOULD have known) since June that whatever bill the SFC came up with would suck ass. The Baucus bill is awful – although perhaps less awful than some of us thought. The fact that the most conservative committee in Washington came up with the most conservative, piece of garbage bill, shouldn’t be a surprise. The important thing is that it’s out, it’s done and Max Baucus’ “gang of 6” have much less power going forward
Snowe’s vote = Bad! argument:By voting for this bill, Sen. Snowe has given herself, and her preference for a triggered public option, a lot of sway in the bill-merging process. Obama and the White House seem to be hellbent on getting “bipartisanship” which means giving Snowe what she wants. A triggered public option is probably worse than no reform, so Snowe has severely undercut real reform
Ultimately, there is no way to tell right now how Snowe’s vote will influence the process going forward. The most realistic scenario is that she will either vote against the bill, but for cloture, or she will get some pork to help her vote for the bill. At this point, I’m not sure what she has to lose by voting for the final bill. Perhaps Snowe, representing the fairly blue Maine, could provide some cover for the conservaDems and Blue Dogs who don’t want to vote for any bill including a public plan.
So on we go to conference, where the long-finished HELP committee bill, written by Chris Dodd and the late, great Ted Kennedy, will be merged with the Baucus Bill. Responsible for coming up with the final Senate bill are Sen. Baucus, Senate Majority Leader Reid, Sen. Dodd and President Obama/Rahm Emanuel. What can we expect to happen from here?
We know Sen. Dodd, the point man for the HELP committee will push hard for a robust public plan. For all his shortcomings with the financial meltdown which have left him extremely vulnerable in the 2010 midterms, Dodd is fairly reliable for the progressives. In fact, his political future and reelection probably relies upon getting a strong public option into the final bill. Regardless of his motivations, he stopped by DailyKos to write a diary on his involvement in the process:
[W]e have come too far, and worked too hard, to settle for “pretty good.” And that’s why I plan to take a stand.
First, and let me be very clear about this: I am going to fight for a strong public option. The simple, undeniable fact is that a public option will save money – and it will introduce more choice and competition into an industry that badly needs both. It is the single best way to keep costs low for middle class families – and keep the insurance companies honest. And I am by no means ready to back down on making that argument.
“‘My first choice is a public option, because I think it will create competition and make the insurance companies more honest,’ Reid said Thursday. ‘My No. 2 choice is the trigger that Snowe talked about.’ Reid said that he preferred the trigger, ‘which is a pretty doggone good idea,’ to the proposed co-operative model some moderate Democrats support.
We know where Baucus stands, unfortunately. So that leaves us with the White House. What will President Obama and Rahm Emanuel push for? Obama supports the public option, but has repeatedly said he is open to other ideas (co-ops, triggers). However, he must be smart enough to realize that a weak public plan, or no public plan will be political suicide for the Democrats. According to Sen. Rockefeller on the Ed Schultz show today, Obama is prepared to push strongly for the PO (Rocky seemed quite confident, in fact).
So one nightmare is over, the next has begun. The final Senate bill should be crafted within the month (so they say) and hopefully the merging of the House and Senate bills can commence (and finish?) by Thanksgiving.
On and on the health care reform debate goes. The teabag protests came and went in August, as millionshundreds of thou… a bunch of misguided conservatives with hate in their often confused and wild eyes took to the streets armed with their ignorance, racist signs and placards and cheesy slogans. The ever-so-patriotic teabaggers threw their American Flags on the ground and in the trash (literally ) and went home. As anyone who has followed the debate closely knows, the 6 weeks since the teabagging outbursts have been full of frustration and setbacks. But then a curious thing started happening….progress was being made. At a pace which makes continental drift look quick, Democrats in the Senate seemed to finally realize that they need to get on board with health care reform. Well most of them anyway (Sen. Nelson and Landrieu….what are you waiting for?).
Of course, the last couple of weeks have been spent focusing nearly entirely on the maddeningly frustrating Senate Finance Committee and Sen. Max Baucus’ pile of shit bill. We had Republican Sen. Jon Kyl work himself into a lather about not caring about maternity leave being covered by health insurance. We had this doozie from Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe supporting Republican Jim Bunning’s amendment to delay the process by 2 weeks
“I don’t know what’s happening that this has to be put on a fast track”
backdropped by a recent study showing that 45,000 Americans will die this year due to lack of health care. That works out to be about 1730 in those 2 weeks Sens. Snowe and Bunning. Yeah but, no rush. Seriously, take your time as hundreds and thousands of Americans die off, succumbing to treatable illnesses. It’s not like we haven’t been trying to fix this problem for nearly a century. It was the forefather of “Conservatism” (when that actually meant conserving our natural resources and finances), the great Teddy Roosevelt who first mentioned that we need universal health care. That was 94 years ago.
As it stands, the SFC’s garbage bill will hopefully come to a vote this week. Ironically, it is two Democrats – health care reform hero Jay Rockefeller and the disgruntled Ron Wyden – who may stall the process due to concerns over the bill. Assuming that is just posturing, or Baucus can wrangle some support from the moderates on the Right side of the aisle (i.e. Snowe), the bill will get out of committee and we can start fretting over what the SFC bill will look like when merged with the Senate HELP bill.
“Sometimes people fight you just to fight you…They don’t want Reagan to get it, they don’t want Obama to get it, so we’ve got to kill it…Health care is one of those things. Now we’ve got to do something.”
Aside from the fact that Dole was one of the key figures in killing then-President Clinton’s health care reform bill in 1994, he is making some sense. Or is he merely reflecting the mood of the country? The Public Option remains at 65-75% support nationwide. The CBO, which is getting far too much consideration in this matter, projects even the shitty Baucus bill will CUT the federal deficit by $81B. Although, as is pointed out in the Salon.com article:
“The point of health care reform is not to reduce the deficit,” says Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, a labor-backed organization that wants reform to include a public insurance option and lower costs more. “It’s to make health care more affordable for America’s families and businesses. Every penny of the $81 billion should be used to help correct the fact that families still won’t be able to afford premiums and out-of-pocket costs under the Senate Finance bill as it stands now. The bill leaves health care much too expensive.”
The fact that health care reform is getting semi-serious traction as a way to reduce the enormous Republican-created deficit (although all us progressives have known this for awhile) makes it tough for the GOP to sell their talking points lies that reform will bankrupt America. Perhaps more importantly, the push to emphasize the fiscal logic of a reform bill will give cover to the spineless and corrupt jellyfish Blue Dog Democrats. Not that that crowd NEEDS cover, as the Public Option polls extremely well in the vast majority of states represented by Blue Dogs.
But it gets even better. Dole wasn’t through making a pitch for the GOP to come to their senses:
“This is one of the most important measures members of Congress will vote on in their lifetimes,” the former Republican Senate majority leader and presidential candidate told an audience in Kansas City today. “If we don’t do it this year I don’t know when we’re gonna do it.
Chances are the Right will ignore Dole. They have a tendency to cannibalize their own when they stray from the party-line. We’ll hear “Conservatives” far and wide renounce former Sen. Dole and claim he was “too weak” and “out of touch” and “never any good anyway” and whatnot.
However, as the health care reform debate marches on, it is becoming increasingly difficult for anyone with a shred of common sense to oppose some sort of meaningful reform.
The dog days of summer are upon us and still the battle for health care rages on. The GOP, becoming increasingly desperate, would like us to believe that they are playing the part of the Seventh Coalition to President Obama’s Napoleon Bonaparte. It was the predictably loathsome Republican South Carolina Senator Jim Demint who decided that the new GOP strategy was to draw comparisons between health care and the famous Battle of Waterloo:
“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
Side note for Sen. DeMint: The French have the best health care system in the world by most metrics. Using anything related to France as an anti-health care talking point seems quite shortsighted.
The implication, of course, is that by preventing a health care bill from being passed, the Republicans can effectively neuter Obama’s administration just 6 months in. Far fetched? Not so much. It was 15 years ago when the GOP managed to pull off a “victory” in similar style. President Clinton’s ambitious agenda never really came to fruition due in large part to the Republican smackdown of “Hillary Care”. How many innocent Americans have died in the last 15 years because they couldn’t afford health care? And what have the Republicans offered us to fix this mess? Nothing. Well, they have given us more hilarious talking points. This time however, it looks like the Left has a chance. President Obama fired back early this week, in some of the strongest statements he has made on health care:
“I know that there are those in this town who openly declare their intention to block reform. It’s a familiar Washington script that we’ve seen many times before. These opponents of reform would rather score political points than offer relief to Americans who’ve seen premiums double and costs grow three times faster than wages.”
ust the other day, one Republican Senator said, and I’m quoting him now, “if we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. It is about a health care system that is breaking American families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy.
The somewhat amusing story that most people are ignoring, is that DeMint isn’t coming up with anything new here (shocking, right?). It was Dick Morris, the tax-cheating, prostitute-soliciting, former Beltway insider turned Faux-News talking head, who originally came up with the Health care/Waterloo comparison in his aptly titled column (published in June) in The Hill “Healthcare: Obama’s Waterloo?”:
Of course, the prudent thing to do is postpone healthcare changes until the economy generates some revenues and trims the deficit. But the socialist in the White House can’t do that. He’s got to strike while his congressional majority is hot. So he is forcing his administration and his party to choose among unpalatable choices to finance his program. His demand may be a bridge too far, endangering his popularity with the American people.
Good to see that the talking points haven’t really changed. My question is, where the fuck were Morris and his merry band of fiscal hawks when the Bush administration handed out trillions of dollars for their misadventures in the Middle East? You can throw the ConservaDem Senators like Ben Nelson into that grouping as well. Here we are, with a healthcare system which is worse than some third-world countries and yet costs TWICE as much as any other industrialized country, and fixing it is “too expensive” for the Conservative do-nothings in Congress. Never mind that much of the financing for healthcare will come from reallocating money already in the system. Never mind that President Obama has laid out a pretty cut and dry method of paying for it. Never mind that President Obama has repeated that he wants any reform to be deficit neutral. All of those things matter not to the Conservatives in the nations capital.
The stakes are high for all of us. The healthcare industry is crippling this country economically and killing tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Americans every year. That’s what’s at stake for you and I. For the Republicans, they know that if they lose here, and I tend to think that they will eventually, they will become utterly irrelevant politically for a few cycles. Imagine a world in which the Democrats are known as the party which “Brought you affordable health care”. Even shitty Democrats like Nelson, Bayh, Landrieu et al could win on that platform. Which is why the GOP is fighting so hard. It has nothing, NOTHING to do with fiscal conservatism. It has NOTHING to do with having better or different ideas. The GOP has, for all intents and purposes, admitted they don’t have anything new to offer. It has NOTHING to do with saving (and improving the quality of) American lives and stabilizing the economy. It has everything to do with the GOP realizing that their proverbial goose is cooked if they lose on healthcare. The reality is that if the GOP wins on healthcare reform, we all lose.
Posted in LOLeadership on July 14, 2009 by gopaint
These guys (and gals) make it too easy, don’t they? The party of old white men is back at it. Despite it only being Tuesday, there have now been three new cases of racism within the GOP this week.
First, and perhaps most egregiously, the Young Republicans elected the utterly despicable Audra Shay to be their national chairman. As The Huffington Post reported:
After an effigy of Sarah Palin was hung, she said “What no ‘Obama in a noose? … I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose.”
John Avlon, over at the Daily Beast originally broke the story that one of Shay’s Facebook friends had posted the following:
“Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals.”
As Avlon reports:
Eight minutes after that, at 2:02, Shay weighed in on Piker’s comments: “You tell em Eric! lol.”
Sounds an awful lot like Ms. Shay is supporting her friend’s position that the “mad coons” (The Obama family, one would assume) have taken over the country.
The second case of GOP racism came from an unlikely (sort of) source: Michael Steele. The RNC Chair, nothing more than a token minority given a leadership position as a response to the election of President Obama, has quickly become famous for his outlandish and absurd comments. Remember this one?:
We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”
But, he elaborated with a laugh, “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”
Now obviously Steele recognizes the plight of the GOP with minorities. Right now, only 5% of Black voters identify themselves as Republicans. (And this has been the case since well before President Obama arrived on the scene). Since 2004, the GOP has lost huge ground with Latino voters. Ben Smith points out:
[McCain] got 31 percent of the Latino vote to the 44 percent that George W. Bush took in 2004, according to exit polls
It’s stupefying, really it is. Steele, of all people, should understand the idiocy of reinforcing racial stereotypes.
The third incident comes from an unsurprising source – the noted racist Republican Senator Jeff Sessions. A quick recap of Sessions’ racist past:
During a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.”
Just one in a long line of racist anecdotes about Sessions. Another doozy:
J. Gerald Hebert, a career Justice Department lawyer, testified that Sessions had once called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” He said that they “forced civil rights down the throats of people.”….Hebert also testified that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases.
Check out Rachel Maddow commenting on Sessions here
Which brings us to today’s comments from Session at Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing:
(Thanks to ThinkProgress for posting the video so quickly)
You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit, and in fact, your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could have changed that case. So in truth you weren’t bound by that case.
As I listened to this live, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What does Judge Cabranes’ ethnicity have to do with the court ruling question? Sessions, rather blatantly, is showing that he thinks Puerto Rican’s are monolithic in their interpretations of the law. It’s no different than saying “Well they all look alike” about a particular racial group.
In a party already struggling to overcome the label of being an exclusionary party, embracing racists like Shay and Sessions confirms what we already know: The GOP isn’t interested in a “Big Tent” philosophy. They know that they can’t win with minorities, because their core principles are against minorities’ best interests. Whether it is the continued neglect of the urban poor, the ignored realities of gender discrimination in the workplace, the anti-gay rhetoric dressed up in the guise of religion or the anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim xenophobia and paranoia, the GOP time and time again shows itself to be an antiquated, loathsome dinosaur of a political party.
Anyone who has followed the health care debate in the slightest knows that one of the Republicans’ biggest talking points against health care reform is that we, as a country, have “too much on our plate” and reforming health care is “too ambitious” and President Obama needs to “focus on our current problems” (like the economy which the GOP broke and those pesky illegal wars the GOP started….). This argument shouldn’t come as surprise, as it’s the same tired refrain that Conservatives have used for more than 60 years,
Back in 1947, President Truman introduced the idea of a universal health care plan. Conservatives shot it down, criticizing it for being too ambitious. We had just gotten out of WW2 and were quickly heading into Korea. Conservatives argued it just wasn’t the right time.
56 years later, President Clinton introduced a health care bill which acquired the nickname “Hillary Care” due to then First Lady Hillary Clinton’s strong advocacy. Again, the Conservatives in Congress, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich defeated the bill. It was too ambitious they said. We had too many other problems to deal with first.
16 years later, many Republicans are still pushing this meme. I guess their idea is to continue kicking the ball down the road, while millions more Americans die unnecessary deaths and our economy continues to crumble. Not that I don’t understand their logic. The GOP damn well knows that a successful health care reform bill will all but cripple their already floundering chances for national political relevancy.
The independent Commonwealth Fund recently released some grim numbers. Their research indicates that
The United States places last among 19 countries when it
comes to deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care….If the U.S. had performed as well as the top
three countries out of the 19 industrialized countries in the study there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths in the U.S. per year by the end of the study period.
So 101,000 Americans dying unnecessary deaths, hundreds of thousands more (one every 30 seconds) declaring bankruptcy due to medical costs, health premiums rising between 15-30% a year, America falling behind even some third-world countries in terms of infant mortality rates, life expectancy and mortality of pregnant women, a total boat anchor weighing down our economy…….dealing with this is just “too much”. We don’t have time for this, the Republicans claim.
Now, a quick refresher on Sen. Brownback. He is one of the staunchest anti-gay crusaders in a party full of them. He represents the Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian core of the post-Bush GOP. His new piece of legislation that he has, apparently, been working on quite diligently is titled the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2009. Brownback’s statement:
This legislation works to ensure that our society recognizes the dignity and sacredness of human life…Creating human-animal hybrids, which permanently alter the genetic makeup of an organism, will challenge the very definition of what it means to be human and is a violation of human dignity and a grave injustice
Emphasis added by me to illustrate the perverse and hypocritical nature that oozes off of every press release a Republican makes these day. The GOP doesn’t give a DAMN about the dignity of life once you’re outside of the womb.
Just to recap:
– 101,000 Americans will die this year due to lack of affordable health care
– Preventing these deaths is an issue that President Obama and Congress doesn’t have time for
– Banning mermaids is essential to ensuring the quality of American’s lives
Well, that didn’t take long. There are few things in this world more predictable than Harry Reid’s spinlessness. Just a day after Reid made some strong comments regarding health care reform, he is apparently in full backpedal mode. As a refresher, on Wednesday:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised Wednesday not to leave Republicans out while shaping the health care bill, GOP senators said.
The Senate isn’t the only problem all of a sudden. Even the far more progressive House is having issues:
The drive to remake the nation’s health care system suffered yet another setback in Congress on Thursday when a pivotal group of House Democrats demanded numerous changes in legislation the leadership was drafting on a fast track.
The difference though is:
Nancy Pelosi is actually taking a firm stand on a public option and putting her political capital on the line by guaranteeing any bill that comes out of the House will have one
The House Progressive Caucus is much larger than the “Blue Dog” group.
That said, today’s reports were full of bad news for progressives. “Democrats” like Heath Shuler – quickly becoming as much of a failure in Congress as he was as a NFL quarterback in the 90’s – aren’t helping the cause with garbage like this:
More than 60 Democrats signed a letter authored by freshman Rep. Debbie Halvorson of Illinois and second-term Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina asking Waxman to jettison his plan to reinstate drug price controls to help low-income seniors. Instead, they are asking Waxman, Rangel and Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) to support the drug industry’s offer to spend $30 billion help cover those costs – a deal that is backed by the White House and the Senate Finance Committee.
To which I say:
Screw the Blue Dogs in the House and in the Senate. These sorry excuses for Democrats bend over backwards to appease the GOP. Why? Not because they’re concerned with their constituents. I can buy that crap on things like EFCA which is a political loser in places like Arkansas (where Wal-Mart is conveniently headquartered) but when it comes to health care reform? I call bullshit on the Blue Dogs. The vast majority of Americans, all across the country, want a strong public option. The Blue Dogs are willing to go back to their voters and tell them “Sorry, not happening”. The only way they’d do that is if there was a big motivator. Say, millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions?
As a vomit-inducing bonus, The Boner chimed in with the weekly GOP address:
Earlier this week, when I flew to Washington, the flight crew gave me a note. And I — I woke from a nap, and here was a note from the flight crew: “Thank you for standing up and fighting against the government taking control of our health care.”
And it was signed by the captain and the — and his — his co- captain, and the flight attendant. Now, if you don’t think people in America aren’t beginning to understand what’s going on here in Washington, just let me tell you, they’re understanding pretty quickly.
Americans won’t support a plan that raises costs, increases taxes, and let bureaucrats take care — or take — deny the care that their family and their children need.
Oh that silly Bo(eh)ner. He’s a barrel of spray-tanned laughs!
If you’re one of the 48+ million Americans that are living without health insurance, or if you’re one of the 20,000 Americans who will die of a treatable illness this year due to a lack of health coverage, and haven’t been following the health care debate, you should familiarize yourself with these two bespectacled bozos:
On the left, we have the senior Republican Senator from Iowa, Chuck Grassley. He’s been in the Senate since 1980, in which time he has accomplished….well….not a hell of a lot. He’s currently the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and pats himself on the back a lot for helping to curb wasteful spending. Hmm…guess he wasn’t too effective under Saint Ron in the mid 80’s and under the various high-spending, handout and kickback-loving Bush administrations. In fact, for a guy who has been around for nearly three decades, Grassley’s only real noteworthiness came this fall when he claimed that AIG employees who took home huge bonuses after their company got bailed out should “resign, or go commit suicide.”
Next to Grassley is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Hailing from Kentucky, Mitch McChinless has a reputation for being against anything that is actually good for the country. Take, for instance, the McCain-Feingold (aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act). On the other hand, if it’s unConstitutional and/or damaging to this country, McChinless loves it. He introduced the loathsome “Protect America Act” which lets the Government tap your phone (or monitor your internet communications) without a warrant. He was also at the forefront pushing for the U.S. to go into Iraq. This past summer, when commodity speculation was driving oil prices past $4 a gallon, McConnell ignored the economists who said it was a speculation bubble and led the charge for “Drill Baby Drill!” and “Drill Here! Drill Now!”.
These two guys are the leaders in the movement to kill meaningful health care reform. Grassley is all over the political news shows spewing his “No way, no how” bullshit:
Uh-huh. So, with 72% of Americans supporting a public option, Grassley’s answer is “We need to make sure there is no public option”. You couldn’t make stupidity like this up.
“Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us ‘time to deliver’ on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.”
“Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a ‘hammer’ u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL.”
With all that “workinWKEND” business, you’d think the GOP would “hve sum ideas”. However, Grassley keeps spewing the same nonsense over and over. Check out his stumbling and rambling answer to George Stephanopolous:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said President Barack Obama’s plan to include government-backed health insurance for the public is a “non-starter” for most Republicans considering health care reform….”All of that really ought to be put aside if we want to get a truly bi-partisan proposal”
If you have a strong stomach (or tolerance for Frank Luntz talking points), you can watch Senator McConnell discuss Health Care reform:
Tort reform! Government takeover! The private companies (the ones who raise your premium 20-30% every year and/or deny you coverage) will go out of business! Funny shit.
Or maybe not so funny, considering that these guys seemed to be driving the health-care debate. These 2 of 40 Republican votes are beating the 59 (now 60) Democratic votes in the message wars. If the polls are any indication, the public isn’t having any of Grassley and McConnell’s bullshit. 72% want a public option, and nearly 6 out of 10 are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The problem is that the Democratic Senators seemed to be buying into this garbage. Or, as the ever-brilliant Nate Silver pointed out, the Democrats seem to be getting nervous about losing their big contributions from the Health Insurance Industry:
Lobbying contributions appear to have the largest marginal impact on middle-of-the-road Democrats. Liberal Democrats are likely to hold firm to the public option unless they receive a lot of remuneration from health care PACs. Conservative Democrats may not support the public option in the first place for ideological reasons, although money can certainly push them more firmly against it. But the impact on mainline Democrats appears to be quite large: if a mainline Democrat has received $60,000 from insurance PACs over the past six years, his likelihood of supporting the public option is cut roughly in half from 80 percent to 40 percent.
And then….a funny thing happened. Democrats started to….get it? With Al Franken now officially seated, the Democrats have no excuse not to get meaningful (read: at LEAST a strong public option) health-care reform done. Are they feeling the heat? As the unreliable, but suddenly tolerable Chuck Schumer points out:
“I think Democrats, now that we have 60, it’s an opportunity but it’s a greater responsibility,” said Schumer. “And unity among ourselves is very important.”
Even more importantly, perhaps, is Schumer’s swatting of the Kent Conrad “co-op” nonsense. From the same interview:
“I don’t think the co-op way can work,” Schumer added. “So let’s go back and do what we should be doing: a public option.”
Then yesterday, we got mixed signals from the White House. First, Rahm Emanuel issued a vague statement signaling that perhaps the administration would accept a “trigger” on a health-care option (the idea key Democrat Max “Bought by the Health Insurance Industry” Baucus seems to love), or even the aforementioned “co-op” plan:
Mr. Emanuel said one of several ways to meet President Barack Obama’s goals is a mechanism under which a public plan is introduced only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own.
Within hours, President Obama issued a statement from Russia:
“I am pleased by the progress we’re making on health care reform and still believe, as I’ve said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest,” read the statement. “I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals.”
My man “America’s Senator” Bernie Sanders, a true hero for working class folk in this country fired back at Emanuel’s apparent betrayal:
“Emanuel is dead wrong,” Sanders said. “The triggers are meaningless. The American people have shown in poll after poll their contempt for private health insurance companies. They don’t trust them and for good reason.
“Now, where we are right now politically is the HELP Committee, of which I’m a member, is going to bring forth a public plan,” Sanders added. “The House of Representatives is supporting a public plan. And President Obama ran for office talking about a strong public plan. Why, with that political reality of the American people wanting it, the House going forward, the Senate HELP Committee going forward, would Rahm Emanuel suggest that we would compromise on this issue?”
Nothing new from Senator Sanders, who has been taking on the ConservaDems for awhile:
“Emanuel is dead wrong,” Sanders said. “The triggers are meaningless. The American people have shown in poll after poll their contempt for private health insurance companies. They don’t trust them and for good reason.
Rahmbo is apparently quickly going into a backpedal:
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reassured House Democrats on Tuesday night that President Barack Obama strongly backs a government-run health insurance plan, seeking to quell a firestorm among liberals upset at Emanuel’s comments in the Wall Street Journal that suggested such a plan could be delayed.
More importantly (from the same article):
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was reassured by Emanuel. “He doesn’t stand by that trigger,” Waxman said. “He said the president and his administration and he are for a public plan as one of the options.”
The ultimate sign of snowflakes in Hades? Harry Reid, Mr. Milquetoast, is even (seemingly) starting to come around:
According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.
Lastly, I want to know why more media talking heads and self-proclaimed pundits aren’t talking about the difference between voting for cloture and voting for passage. In the clip of Senator Sanders above, he brings it up – making him the only person I have seen raise the issue. The “Blue Dogs” like Landrieu, Nelson, Conrad etc can vote against passage of a public option if they want (assuming there are still 50 votes FOR passage, which there should be) as long as they vote for cloture on the bill. Will they? Despite tonight’s seemingly good news, I remain skeptical. There is a ton of money (nearly $1.4 MILLION a day being spent to lobby against the public option) on the other side. Until the President himself draws a line in the stand – which, frustratingly, would be uncharacteristic – there is no time for us to let up.
As Thom Hartmann always ends his show with, “My friends, democracy begins with you, get out there, get active, TAG you’re it!”. Call your Senators and Congresscritters and let them know that you DEMAND a strong public option.
It’s finally over. Unlike Freddy Kreuger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, Norm Coleman really is finished. 32 weeks since election day, Minnesota has its full representation in the United States Senate. With former SNL comedian/best-selling author/newest Senator Al Franken on board, the Democrats now have the supposedly crucial 60 votes needed to break any filibuster that the Party of No can muster. Unfortunately, the REAL nightmare the last few months hasn’t been the tedious and insane goings ons in Minnesota. The real boogeyman in all of this isn’t Coleman, whose political career is completely toast. Instead it has been the “60 votes” mantra spewed by Democrats of all stripes. From the true progressives like Russ Feingold to the Republican-Lite “Democrats” like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. Well, now they have their 60 votes….and like clockwork the talking points have been adjusted accordingly.
Anyone who has followed politics with any interest should realize that 60 votes means very little. George W. Bush never had 60 votes. Yet, he managed to get everything he wanted passed. Why? Because the GOP is better than the Democrats when it comes to sticking to an agenda. Republicans fall in line easily, even if they have reservations about a particular piece of legislation. Democrats on the other hand, are like a bunch of cats hepped up on catnip. Completely scattered and impossible to corral. Of course, it doesn’t help that Harry Reid is one of the weakest Senate Majority leaders of recent times.
So while Al Franken finally takes his rightful seat in the Senate, a new nightmare is beginning for us all. The talking points, which some Democratic Senators are already spewing, are now:
“Democrats aren’t monolithic on any issue”
“Having 60 Senators doesn’t mean anything because we won’t see votes down party lines”
The first one is usually spun as a positive. “Hey! Look how diverse in thought we are!” The second is probably true, but where the hell is Reid in all this? Rahm Emanuel? They’re probably sitting in a back room acquiescing to every Republican that crosses their path.
More to the point, where is the President on this? In his online town hall last week, he reiterated his support for the public option. But he did so with the same enthusiasm that you would expect from him if he were talking about what he ate for breakfast this morning. While it’s reasonably encouraging that President Obama is being publicly supportive of the public option, his demeanor tells me that he is willing to explore other ideas (like Senator Conrad’s putrid “co-op” plan). If recent history, we’ll hear the same old bullshit excuses. “We didn’t have the votes”, “We need something that will work for everyone”, “We needed a bipartisan bill” etc etc.
It’s all code for “We like our big fat checks that we get from the health insurance companies”. I was never under the illusion that President Obama was anything other than a left-leaning centrist. What I didn’t expect was the milquetoast manner to which he’d present his domestic agenda:
EFCA – deafening silence
DADT/DOMA – no action
Banking reform – Weak, ineffectual “reform bill”
Energy – The house bill is weak, I shudder to think of what will come out of the Senate
Trade policy – More of the same NAFTA/CAFTA policies which have crippled the middle class
Health care – ?????
At this juncture, it’s no longer about politics . Surely President Obama and most of these Senators realize that come midterms, the GOP is going to run against ANYTHING the Democrats do between now and then. The Democrats could cure cancer and the GOP would run a campaign claiming that it was a “Government takeover” and “put the private sector cancer facilities out of business” (and 25-30% of Americans would agree) So, if you’re going to lose political points regardless, why not put the most effective, progressive bill out there? As Puff Daddy (whom I never thought I’d be quoting here) once said “It’s all about the Benjamins”
GOPaint 
