Day: October 1, 2009

Shake It Up

Hate to break it to these guys: shaking a developing Polaroid is just like tapping the unopened top on a can of something carbonated. It’s just something to do while you wait around for equilibrium (can) or chemical reactions (Polaroid) to occur; these user-actions aren’t actually doing anything.

But, even if we accept the (wrong) notion that shaking a Polaroid picture does something: Why in the name of Christ would one want to implement said delay in the “development” of a photo on an iPhone? It’s beyond reason. It’s like paying to have the iPod app “warm up” for a few minutes when you launch it, complete with some simulated tubes glowing more and more brightly on the screen. Or making the YouTube app disappear slowly into a central dot when you close it and periodically lose vertical hold while you engage in spectation unless you beat the side of the phone a time or two (this app would also need a distant voice screaming not to hit the TV, you’ll break it! after each required series of phone-taps).

Other than that: great product, boys. Positively bully!

Shake It Up

Reconcile This

Ezra Klein muses on reconciliation:

“…a reconciliation bill should not look like the current health-care reform bill. It should be an expansion of public programs: Bring Medicaid up to 150 or 200 percent of the poverty line and allow people from 45 to 65 to buy into Medicare and give some of them tax credits to do so. I don’t know if there are votes for that strategy. But it wouldn’t run afoul of the Senate parliamentarian.”

Absolutely. Sounds good to me. And I think the surest way to bring your more recalcitrant conservative Democrats aboard (and maybe even a Republican or two) is to offer these as your legislative choices on the (much harder to deal with) Senate side:

1) Some modified Baucus bill type package with a Rockefeller-style robust public option (or per-state’s option to activate said plans) that goes through “normal” channels, gets 60 votes for cloture, and then 51 for final passage. Goes to Conference to line it up with the House’s existing version.

-or-

2) We put it through reconciliation as Medicare for all. You want to buy in, buy in. You can’t afford it, we’ll subsidize you. You like your current plan: keep it. 51 votes to pass, House has to pass something new to match.

I think there’d be a waiting line on option (1) about 45 seconds after the wheels were set in motion. And reconciling a Medicare-for-all with the House? I don’t see that as a big problem; they’d have something passed about 45 minutes later…after all, it’s essentially what a number of them tried to push through on the first go-round anyway. It’s my understanding that they failed because of a (perceived) lack of support for such a move on the Senate side (e.g. such a move would be DOA; better to pass something akin to what the Senate might be moving to pass).