Day: February 26, 2010

Most of the credit [for the Health Summit discussions, such as they were] goes to President Obama. The man really knows how to lead a discussion. He stuck to specifics and tried to rein in people who were flying off into generalities. He picked out the core point in any comment. He tried to keep things going in a coherent direction.

David Brooks.
Remarkable that the teleprompter was both completely concealed and updated with detailed information in a screamingly fast, near real-time way. Must be an NSA project.

We don’t have a philosophic disagreement. If you agree that you can’t be dropped [by your health insurance provider], that there has to be dependent coverage, that there’s no annual or lifetime cap, then, in fact, you’ve acknowledged that is the government’s role. The question is how far to go.

Vice President Joe Biden, emphasis mine, repeating at yesterday’s summit (and nearly verbatim) my side of a “conversation” I once had with someone whose main response was that my brain must be made of shit. Wonderful, thoughtful people those “conservatives.” If we could get down to arguing over “how far to go” you’d have what we like to call a “functional government.”

The “Philosophical” Difference

Louise Slaughter (D, NY): I even have one constituent — you will not believe this, and I know you won’t, but it’s true — her sister died. This poor woman had no denture. She wore her dead sister’s teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you ever believe that in America that that’s where we would be?
Rush Limbaugh: I mean for example, well what’s wrong with using a dead person’s teeth? Aren’t the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don’t have any teeth, so what? What’s applesauce for? Isn’t that why they make applesauce?