It does have community rating and recision ban. That’ll change the life of thousands of people.

Though… I don’t know if they’ll notice. I certainly hope so. I’ll notice.

My concern is that it won’t change anything no matter what Obama does. Remember most of the anti-Obama rage was manufactured out of thin air by the big funders behind the GOP months before the plan was as bad as it is now. Even a Medicare buy-in would be savagely attacked.

I don’t know what the most popular thing is, but at this point I say fuck it, throw in a Medicare buy-in for all, put it to the vote and let’s go down fighting. Fighting the Republicans, Lieberman and the other couple of asshatted teabagging fuckwads on the payroll of Big Insurance. Remember, the Alamo was a defeat too but by the gods, what a glorious defeat it was. For America, let’s give it all we’ve got.

The worst problems we have are 2) an America-hating Republican party, 1) a corrupt corporate press that pretends there is a right and left wing to itself, and 3) a far too substantial group of voters that believe what number 2) prints.

And oh yeah, 4) a worthless Democratic party that is the result of numbers 1-3. So if only those fuckers get their act together, hallelujah!

Hey, I’ll be happier tomorrow morning for sure, as I trudge off to my soul-destroying job working for corporate Amurka.

CHEERS!
~

I suppose we’re just too stupid here to govern our selves.
I remember in 2004 Nov, feeling like we had finally gotten that big dump done, passed the constipation through the system, and could get on to the hard work.
Then Kerry managed to fail.

Come look at us in California and see what self governance can do for you!

Well, I wouldn’t worry about Josh Marshall’s scenario. Congressional Dems have already been rushing to the cameras to declare health care reform dead. And Obama has decided instead to go all in on a deficit reduction commission that can get the budget back in balance via entitlement reform. Do he and certain members of Congress have a bet on who can finish wrecking the Democratic brand faster? Because the take home lesson of the MA debacle is apparently that it’s Herbert Hoover time.

people have to like the reform

No, the stakeholders have to like the reform. If Big Pharma and Big Health Insurance don’t like it, we’re toast.

Look, Brainiac, who’s gonna fund the 2010 midterms? People? Your average Joe Sixpack either just lost his job, or his home, or is about to get shipped to Fuckupistan for like his fourteenth tour. Like “the people” are gonna send in campaign donations! You so-called “liberal base” types may not like it, but Goldman Sachs (or the “big G-Spot” as we like to call them around here) could drop a few billion on us anytime with just a phone call. Do you know how much airtime that could buy? And besides, if you’re so smart, how come you’re not running policy from a big office in the White House like me?

Well, mds, the average citizen thinks spending your way our of a depression / recession is crazy talk. They really think it’s gibberish dressed up as a giveaway to poor people that don’t deserve it. Until the (D) folks can get it together and propound the truth, it won’t help.

And yes, it would help if Obama threw the liberal base a few obvious bones.

throw in a Medicare buy-in for all, put it to the vote and let’s go down fighting.

Agreed.

But Obama is a lover, not a fighter.

Remember, the Alamo was a defeat too but by the gods, what a glorious defeat it was. For America, let’s give it all we’ve got.

Bingo. And if we go down to defeat this year, then begin next year with single-payer as the starting point. (And mandatory jail sentences, bread and waterboarding included, for private health insurance CEOs.) Parade a claque of chained former private health insurance CEOs in front of the cameras ahead of the November 2010 vote, graphics screaming, “THEY KILLED MORE AMERICANS THAN AL-QAEDA EVER COULD.”
The only difference between Al Capone and private health insurers concerns the legal status of their business. Capone was a piker. (If he’d only been born as Prescott Bush, think of all the loot he could have stolen! Trading with the Nazis. Also.)

From what I’ve read, in places like Massachusetts that already have a semblance of UHC, people like it. Once you get it approved, it tends to stay. And, a lot of people have such a nightmarish vision in their heads built up of this bill that once they see that it’s not that bad, it will become more popular.

Look, I’m sorry for being the last left-wing optimist left in the country, and I’m really sorry for spoiling your GBCW pity party, but this country survived four years of Republican ownership of every branch of government: it’ll survive a lost senate seat and a crappy health care bill that is still an improvement over a mega-shitty alternative. Life goes on.

In another 15 years I’ll be on actual Medicare. Too bad for younger folks who could benefit from it now.

If Big Pharma and Big Health Insurance don’t like it, we’re toast.

Wow, Rahm, that’s funny, because they…kinda don’t.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/01/insurers-oppose-health-reform.php

Look, maybe I’m missing some obvious conspiracy here, but if the bill really was a giveaway to corporate America, seems to me like they wouldn’t be fighting it so hard.

We’re going to stop playing around and get this thing done. And then we’re going to work on getting Americans back to work.

And then we’re closing Gitmo. And then we’re out of Iraq. And then we’re done with Afghanistan. And then, and then, and then.

Yeah, whatever.

All I know is, if the Dem cobags all jump ship on HCR, that’s it for me. I won’t be voting again, because it’s pointless. When Democrats win and have huge majorities, they accomplish nothing more than a brief respite from sinking ever further into the shit. They don’t pull us out of the shit – if we start out their term in shit up to our ankles, we end their term in shit up to our ankles. Then the Republicans take over again and we go into the shit up to our armpits. And the cycle repeats.

Why the fuck bother? Voting for these worthless fucks is a complete waste of my, and everyone else’s, time. A significant portion of this country wants to be over their heads in shit. And the guys we support seem to think their job is to not get in the way of letting those people get their wish. So what the fuck – let’s make their job even easier, and just let the Republicans have it back and smash the fucker into the ground all the way into a 100′ deep pit. We’re going to get there soon enough anyway.

A medicare buy-in for all would give the economy a big boost. The insurance companies would adapt, perhaps create a symbiotic relationship with Americans, rather than a parasitical one.

On the other hand, the sopping wet pantload, has of course, another reading of the DCCC & DLC cock-up in Massachusetts:

As Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley is learning, the Democrats are unpopular now because they’re rightly perceived as arrogant, ideological and fixated on an agenda not supported by the people.

As opposed to running a nonexistent bad campaign, and taking the voters for granted. Oh, yeah, and majorities in the House & Senate (Still!) are merely ways the voters have registered their complete disgust for the Democratic brand.

Just wait until they REALLY hate us, and elect a Democratic President, and… oh, yeah… they did.

Oh, PENIS.

but if the bill really was a giveaway to corporate America, seems to me like they wouldn’t be fighting it so hard.

For the health insurers, the well-funded tantrum is just a way of improving the sugar to medicine ratio.

Any who can blame them? It’s been working for them.

That’s exactly the pattern:

–Republicans make the country and the world worse off.

–Democrats do nothing.

–Republicans get another chance to make the country and the world worse off.

So the direction is ever downward. At some point, of course, reversing the damage becomes impossible. I’m guessing we only have one more iteration of this. When Obama loses in 2012, that’s pretty much it. The next Republican president will make Bush look like a piker.

I disagree. I think they’ve pretty much got to pass the Senate bill, with Nancy & Co. whipping the Progressive Caucus into as much shape as possible on that particular turd. It sucks, but it’s got some good parts, blah blah blah. A foundation to build on, etc.

What’s the downside? Is the Senate bill worse than the status quo? Worse than the status quo will be in five to 10 to 15 years? If not, or even if it’s a coin flip, you have to pass it, IMHO, given the Kennedy card re: missed opportunities to do something, anything that literally play out over generations.

And I don’t think it gets overturned by even a GOP takeover of Congress in 2010 (barring perhaps an overwhelming takeover, which ain’t gonna happen). It’s hard as fuck to dismantle such a massive government initiative once it’s in place. In fact, that’s actually turned into a major selling point of this sprawling catch-all of an HCR bill — it’s so goddam big and intertwined that it’s going to be difficult to undo.

Another thought — passing HCR as currently formed in the Senate bill may not please many, as Brad says. But passing it has some indirect positive effects, and I mean on Dem chances in the mid-terms. For one, it helps job creation initiatives. One reason businesses aren’t hiring (not the only one, of course) is that they don’t know what their health care commitment is going to have to be going forward. They don’t know this because there’s no HCR bill that’s been passed and signed into law. Hold your nose, sign this piece of shit and let’s get on with our lives.

Or put it another way – if you think that passing the Senate bill is losing, then really fucking loseringly losing in the losingest possible way is NOT PASSING ANYTHING AT ALL for at least 15 years.

Because the second one is EXACTLY what the Republicans want. In fact, that is them WINNING.

The next Republican president will make Bush look like a piker.

No kidding.

At least Bush always publicly maintained that the United States did not torture, even if Dick Cheney did seem to spend a lot of time in undisclosed locations. Now open promises to introduce “enhanced interrogations” are a major campaign platform for Republicans.

Why the fuck bother?

Because timid careerists are a whole lot better than delusional nutcases. Because picking up your toys and running home to Momma Galt guarantees that the delusional nutcases get to do what they want.

the well-funded tantrum is just a way of improving the sugar to medicine ratio

…adding: the medicinal concentration of health care reform is at homeopathic levels right now.

sfp – the delusional nutcases do what they want anyway. Just not all the time. But they’ll get their up at bat soon enough.

Perhaps there wouldn’t be as many of them around if someone was to show them, by way of example, what a responsive and functional government looks like when someone is making an effort to deliver on it.

DA — I’ve generally come down on the “pass the bill for a victory” side of things but if they’re not committed to fixing the worst parts of the Senate plan — and really, I heard from some union guys today who voted Brown just because they weren’t confident that their leadership would fix the Senate Cadillac tax — then you’ve got issues. In fact, I’d say you’ve lost some real bit of perspective on why you got into this whole “help out the little guy” business in the first place.

One thing the Senate never seemed to forget when crafting their Grand Compromise was to not actively piss off people who consistently vote for you.

Brad – I hear you. I hope to hell they can be creative enough to fix certain things in the Senate bill in reconciliation without forcing another cloture vote. That’s got to be a tricky proposition, though.

Anyway, it’s kind of lame to play the blame game at this point, but No. 1 on my enemies list is US CONSTITUTION (that was for Gary) … well, the whole institution of the Senate itself, anyway. What a spectacularly shitty barrier to getting anything worthwhile done …

Something will pass—even if the House merely passes the Senate bill verbatim. If that’s what happens, in the real world, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. You’re right, this bill is some weak-ass shit. But…it’s going to help a number of people anyway, with the preexisting condition part if nothing else.

The important thing to remember is: this isn’t the real world, it’s the political world. The existing HCR is nothing spectacular—the bare minimum actually, but these assholes have been screaming bloody murder and getting everybody worked up to the point where it’s going to seem like tectonic plates have shifted. The Democrats promised HCR, and they passed it—in the face of all the screaming. The momentum will be there to do more in the next session, and people are going to discover they like not dying in the gutter because they had acne when they were 16. None of this will be possible to roll back, and incremental improvements will be added over time.

DA — would also add that it’s a progressive messaging failure that has been hurting us for decades. As Somerby smartly notes over and over again, we have to make our cases for policies when we’re not in power repeatedly. We have to point out the inefficiencies and injustices of our health care system (which, btw, are only going to get worse with the status quo left intact… we’ll have no shortage of opportunities to attack it) on a regular and consistent basis. We have to let people know that they’re being completely ripped off by the stakeholders, from the insurance companies to the pharmaceutical companies. And finally we have to explain in concise terms that much better alternatives exist to going bankrupt when you can’t pay out-of-pocket expenses.

I’m looking better all the time !!!

“the delusional nutcases do what they want anyway. Just not all the time. But they’ll get their up at bat soon enough.”

Well yeah. Which it’s why it’s important to stay in the game. Slowing them down isn’t terribly inspiring as a project, but it’s a hell of a lot better than NOT slowing them down.

Americans are rich and lazy. Even poor Americans are rich and lazy compared to the rest of the world. Oh, we have our hard-driving entrepreneurs and our magnificent military, but the res publica of America is not going to do anything that it does not absolutely have to do. If you just won political office, you own them. The ideologues will stay with their old alliances, but the rest of them will come to the fundraiser to retire your campaign debts. You can ignore the ideologues, and so long as you look like you’re winning, the rest of them will whore for you.

Shorter Art Chance;

“Americans will always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possible options.”
– Winston Churchill, the world’s greatest conservative

Yeah, but I’m not an irrisistably attractive political appointee any more.
Achance Tuesday, January 19th at 11:09PM EST (link)
That’s the way it works – unfortunately.

In Vino Veritas

The problem here is that the Senate leadership/Democratic leadership decided that the peepulz luved them soo much, they could do what they wanted! Which was to sit around harumphing about comity and bipartisanship, while they all practiced their Samuel Leghorn impressions.

Of which the recent Mass. election is a great example. The lesson learned by these shitbags is that they should keep doing what they’re doing, and if elections results turn against them, they should keep doing the same thing, but harder.

At Least Sarah Palin Listens to Me Sarah Palin is going to Chicago and NYC for some specific TV appearances but beyond that, her book tour is strictly through flyover country; in other words, the places where people vote for Republicans. The Anchorage Daily Worker’s, er, News’ story is here: http://www.adn.com/palin/story/1000006.html

link to redstate

Take out the trash! Get the holdover Democrats out of your government! Most state and local governments were either built by Democrats or model the federal government, which was built by Democrats. No Republican could find enough loyal competent Republicans to fill all the political appointments in a Democrat built government so they put their friends in the visible places and in places where they really need change and otherwise leave the government in the hands of Democrats. Then they wonder why they’re constantly leaked, thwarted, and sabotaged. Now, when that Republican got elected, some “friend” told him/her that he couldn’t fire too many people because it would be too disruptive and the government had to be kept running smoothly. That is an outright lie! The very hardest thing you could try to do is to stop a government from running. The only thing that was threatened with disruption was that “friend’s” contact list in the bureaucracy. Fire everybody that you have a colorable legal right to fire, and a few extra just to show you can; God and the courts can sort it out. The left/media will whine and snivel about how the heartless Republicans savaged these dedicated public servants and they’ll probably have somebody’s wife with cancer who just lost her health insurance on the 6 PM news the night you do it. It’ll all be lies but in this game lies are better than the truth if you can get fools to believe them. You just stay the course, say you’re going in a new direction, and let them bleat and wail. The news cycle is very short and it won’t be long before a car chase, a missing baby, or a celebrity sex scandal chases those selfless former public servants off the news. [HTML edited by the management.]

I still have 2 V-8s – with 4-barrel carburetors!
Achance Monday, January 18th at 1:14PM EST (link)
Until the nice political commisar comes and takes it away, my boat has 2, count ‘em 2, GM/Mercruiser 300 cubic inch V-8s and they make a joyously patriotic rumble and roar.

In Vino Veritas

Next time, there’s be people like me and people I’ve trained
Achance Saturday, November 14th at 4:37PM EST (link)
and we’re simply going to exterminate Democrats in goverment. The “nice” Republican is a thing of the past and we’re going to start smashing, literally if necessary people like you. Remember, we have you lefty castrati surrounded and most of us, unlike you punks, are armed and know how to use the weapons. Many of us actually fought for this Country to make it safe for smartass little nutless punks like you.

In Vino Veritas

Actually It’s Easy To Sack Civil Servants

In Vino Veritas

I would not sentence anyone to actually reading postmodernist drivel; if you are at all rational, it just doesn’t make any sense anyway[5]. But, the essence of it is that these people deny rationality; there is no Truth, there is just what is true for me, right for me. This is where all the celebration of diversity and “it’s not wrong, it’s just different” crap comes from. What makes these people difficult politically is that they view reality totally differently from we sane people; we are astounded by their willingness to lie and do not deal well with being constantly lied about – think “Bush Lied, People Died.” But they are not lying. You and I can lie if we know the truth and choose to say something different. These people deny that there is truth in any absolute, objective sense; there is only that which they believe to be true, a license to say and do whatever they want. Nobody has learned to deal with this yet and it is the reason that President Bush’s numbers were in the thirties or lower near the end of his term. Foucault and his ilk say that the only role of the intellectual is to criticize and foment change; they never have to pose a solution, they just say what you’re doing is wrong. Sound familiar?

At the beginning, the NSDAP, the Nazis, were actually a pretty rational response to hyperinflation, predatory reparations, and communism within Germany. Unfortunately, like some even here in America today, Hitler and his followers were convinced of a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the financial system and thus Germany and the Western World and held that conspiracy responsible for the “knife in the back” of German in the Kaiser’s War.

By the late ’30s the Nazi’s had essentially made Jews into a Weberian “other;” they were non-persons in Germany and essentially had no civil rights. You could treat a Jew the same way you could treat a dog in the World before PETA came along. As the war began, the Nazis became more inclusive; Poles, Slavs from Eastern Europe and Western Russia, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled persons, and most anybody the Nazis didn’t like became “others” outside the reach of civil justice.

Art Chance, it’s amazing how much that article makes sense if you switch the words “Republican” and “Democrat” around. The whole thing is a self-description. I’ve always thought that there was more than just simple stupidity or unconscious projection in the way Republicans consistently accuse their enemies of being what they themselves actually are (draft-dodgers, ideologically blind, racist, even postmodern…). It’s the old Orwellian tactic rejuvenated once again.

Up until this last part, however;

“The Romans had it right: Metuant dum Oderant – they may hate so long as they fear. Our Founding Fathers wanted to emulate the Roman Republic; we Republicans now contend for the purple of the American Empire. If you will govern, you will be judged by the quality of your enemies. It is OK to be hated, so long as it is the right people who hate you. If you are a Republican, the Democrats, the press, the elites, the academy, the unions, and the bureaucracy must hate and fear you. If they do not, you are doing something wrong.”

That, on the other hand, is perfectly accurate. Republicans have wanted to turn the Republic into an Empire since the days of William F. Buckley at least – it’s just rare to find someone who’ll say it so openly and matter-of-factly.

let the health care situation get even worse and try again in another 15 years. Wheeeeeeeeee.

You’re assuming that you’ll have another opportunity as good as this again in 15 years – or ever.

Seems you’re much more of an optimist than you let on.

PS – Thanks to Art Chance for his special cameo appearance – funny his jewels of wisdom are abundant here, yet completely absent from the post he links to, since he’s its star. Perhaps medication & therapy can one day enable him to grasp contemporary history, or for that matter close his tags. Until then, let’s all bask in the blue glow of his rampant pathology, & hope he can get the help he so plainly needs before it’s too late.

I think somebody’s shopping-cart is double-parked.

This is what happens when the government takes an old man and tells him that they’re going to put him and his son in jail for the rest of their lives and leave his family destitute if he doesn’t sing and dance for them. That’s what the government did to Bill Allen. He made a plea deal with them that saved his family at the price of divesting of the company. The government continues to hold the sentence over his head but he’ll ultimately take the fall for the prosecution teams failures in the Stevens case and now this one.

And I was able to wait until the very last sentence to tell some of you, “I told you so” about those corruption charges you were so worked up about.

Now, I know some of you think that I and a few others are whack jobs over our assertions that we are in the midst of a coup d’etat. The Manchurian Candidate fully intends to make the US into a socialist state with a Labor Party made possible by card check and an alliance between that Labor Party and the Democrats. I know you don’t believe it, but believe it. I’m not certain that he CAN do it, but I am certain that He and, more importantly, the people who pull His strings want to do it. And I can only add that I’ve spent most of my adult life dealing with communist-trained union and community organizers – most of you haven’t.

On the upside Montana with Max Baucus and Jon Tester now has a more progressive Senate pair than Massachussetts.

And what color is the sky in your reality?

Not that! Anything but a labor party!

Although after Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980s), Venezuela (2002) and Haiti (2004), there are those who would say, not without justification, that it would be poetic justice to see a coup in Washington. Let the U.S. have a brutal, authoritarian government it doesn’t want imposed on it by foreigners and see how much we like it.

If Liebercare becomes law without significant changes, people will hate it and it will wreck the Democratic brand basically

Yea, I know you were being hyperbolic, but even this is extreme for that. The public has an extremely short memory for the “branding” of candidates. Fuck, if it wasn’t for M.C. Steele being a total douchebag and Rush and Palin being the de facto mouthpiece of the Republicans, the Brown election wouldn’t be the only thing Democrats would have to worry about in November — we’d be royaly fucked! Thankfully, for the most part, Republican candidates are retarded, so the massive era-ending Obama-should-resign-as-a-failure paradigm shift of November 2010 will be no more or less than any other average mid term election.

But I digress. If the electorate had any sort of political memory greater than about three months, how the fucking fuck could any Republican anywhere POSSIBLY get elected to any post higher than School Board Assistant Janitor after eight years of Bush and six years of Bush + Bat Shit Insane Congress?!

No, the Democrats can fuck this shit up like a motherfucker, lose a shitload in November, maybe lose Obama Part Deux in 2012, and still be back at a 60 vote Senate majority before the dust settles in 2014 when Howard Dean and Al Gore go on a fifty state Bitch Slapping tour where they personally smack every registered Democrat with a wet rubber duck.

Not that waiting until then actually helps anybody, but that’s not my point. My point is basically the electorate is stupid when it comes to history, so no political party is ever infinitely fucked unless they basically run out of money from their big corporate overlords.

“But I digress. If the electorate had any sort of political memory greater than about three months, how the fucking fuck could any Republican anywhere POSSIBLY get elected to any post higher than School Board Assistant Janitor after eight years of Bush and six years of Bush + Bat Shit Insane Congress?!”

Because the glibertarian shit-sellers who run conservative media rehabilitated the movement in the blink of an eye by saying “Bush was a liberal,” and that all the things that had gone wrong over the last eight years (you know, these same things they were defending to their dying breath until November 2nd, 2008) went wrong because they were liberal and that the problem of the GOP is that it’s not conservative enough and that only by being even more purely right-wing can we solve things. That’s why you’ve seen such a stream of people leaving the far-right Republican Party for the my-mind-is-talking-a-walk-off-the-map Tea Party.

I wonder if we could absolve ourselves of our problems by doing the mirror image here? We certainly have a lot more cause than they do; Obama and Clinton have both been very close to the center, and even Carter was a pretty moderate guy. The problem is we don’t have the media infrastructure to make the message stick. Blast and damn, this sucks.