STARTs and stops

Obama notes the recent progress in strategic arms reduction treaty talks with Russia:

“It cuts – by about a third – the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy,” Obama said describing the agreement. “It significantly reduces missiles and launchers. It puts in place a strong and effective verification regime. And it maintains the flexibility that we need to protect and advance our national security, and to guarantee our unwavering commitment to the security of our Allies.”

He should have added:

and, despite “frequent communication with lawmakers from both parties” there is no way in hell that this gets 67 votes.

So, in light of this, my friends in the GOP caucus want me to remind everyone to, please, go die in the streets when Our Nuclear Armageddon comes; it will make cleaning out the remaining buildings that much easier and will eliminate any need for an unpleasant government takeover of nuclear-cremains and/or partially incinerated body-parts removal. This is why I’m proud to announce bipartisan agreement today that Halliburton has been selected out of a lengthy, no-bid process to provide for all post ONA nuclear-cremains removal and storage. God bless America. Goodnight.

Seriously, does anyone believe that any move by the President, no matter how important, no matter how useful, no matter how “unrelated” to domestic politics will garner even a single GOP vote, much less eight? Anyone? (Looking at you, Code Brown) And yet lots of pundits and bloggers seem to be rather sure that this time the GOP will set aside its whiny-ass titty baby shtick in favor of actual good governance. As if. They could care less. This will be yet another whirlwind for Obama to inherit. Period. And yet here we go again, walking blithely into the buzzsaw, no pre-messaging, no talk of any kind to inoculate the general public to the shitstorm that will inevitably erupt from this.

Carve it in stone: START is a dead letter if it needs to be ratified under a Democrat. Better plan right now for some sort of executive agreement sidecar, or however it is that one goes about reducing the nuclear weapons census by A THIRD in the face of uniform, unyielding, and certainly unthinking GOP obstructionism:

Maybe these egg-heads in New England “think tanks” and “colleges” who like to do things like “read” think it’s wise to reduce nuke-you-lar weapons by a third in the face of our 47 ongoing wars, but we here at the GOP want to increase them by 89%, which will pay for itself by cutting taxes on the rich. Hell yes we do! Hell yes we can!

And so forth.

On Jan 3rd, 2011, please do eliminate the filibuster using 51 Democratic votes and a ruling by Joe Biden. Don’t “look at it” don’t consider it, don’t reform it, eliminate it. Period. It’s precisely what the GOP plans to do the second they hold the Senate and the Vice Presidency. May as well get some things done in the meantime.

A President that edits. Clearly too reliant on the teleprompter, though.

From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers, they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is – and what it isn’t. They’ll have to finally acknowledge, this isn’t a government takeover of the health care system.

Barack Obama. I hope he’s right, but doubt he is. The Democrat is functionally incapable of this sort of messaging.

The Doc Fix Myth

By far the best analysis I’ve seen on this total non-issue.

For the tl;dr sect: right-wingers have built a closed information loop based on false premises re: true cost of healthcare reform with regard to a key pre-existing condition that’s not addressed by the reform package at all (this being the annual “doc fix” legislation). A permanent doc fix, when and if it comes, will either be paid for or not; it won’t alter the cost or savings of the reforms as passed one way or the other.

The Doc Fix Myth

This graph clearly requires some lightly paraphrased Diamond Joe Quimby:

You people don’t know what you want! I am flip-flopping!

Alan Grayson (D, FL) predicts exactly what was going to happen (that an amendment to the already passed healthcare bill goes through reconciliation alongside ping-ponged Senate bill), gets laughed out of the room by Chris Matthews. I’m oh so sure that Matthews is duly chastened as of this morning…

For the CSPAN caller last night claiming we were embarking on a $10T (as in trillion) spending spree. Not so, and never was. They have lied to you. Repeatedly. Systematically. You might want to make them pay a price for that come November.

Hopey Changey

James Fallows positively nails it:

the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor enough (Medicaid), fortunate enough (working for an employer that offers coverage, or able themselves to bear expenses), or in some other way specially positioned (veterans; elected officials)… TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period.

-and-

this [set of reforms and all the attendant process arguments] will not seem anywhere near as poisonous seven months from now as it does today. Jobs jobs jobs is what will matter most then.

So very true. If unemployment is at or near 10% in 2012, Obama will not be reelected. Period. If the economy continues to pick up this year, Democratic losses come November will be not-so-bad…not that they’ll be presented that way, of course. Anything short of a 100 Democrat Senate will be treated as an Historic Upset of the “normal order,” which, of course, currently has many Democrats representing historically red districts. But, back to Fallows:

There are countless areas in which America does it one way and everyone else does it another, and I say: I prefer the American way. Our practice on medical coverage is not one of these.

Nancy Pelosi touched on this point last night in her floor speech: that losing the fear of living insurance-free will let a thousand startups bloom. Folks locked into their current jobs simply to maintain a safety net for their kids can now think solely on the basis of how good they think their idea is. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. This is where the much longed-after “new economy” will ultimately come from.

Memo to David Brooks: hey, what do you know, the House actually voted on the “Senate” bill, passed it, then actually voted on the House reconciliation package that goes to the Senate to be actually voted on using the increasingly aptly named reconciliation rule. Remarkable.

The Ballad of El Gibby

I don’t reckon Alex Chilton remembrances can get much better than this story:

The Players

The night of the Butthole Surfers appearance at the huge Pandora’s Box festival in the Netherlands, [bassist Mark] Kramer went to fetch [singer Gibby] Haynes for a sound check. “It is firstly most important to state that, on this night, Gibby had eaten an entire handful of four-way acid tabs and drank an entire bottle of Jim Beam before the sound check had even begun,” Kramer notes.[Guitarist Paul] Leary was furious at Haynes for getting wasted for such an important show. “Fuck that stupid-ass motherfucker,” he snarled to Kramer. “I hate this fucking band. I swear to fucking Christ on a stick, I hate this fucking band more than I hate myself. And that’s a lot. I don’t even care if we ever play again. If you can’t find him, fuck it. FUCK IT!!!!” With that, he began smashing a couple of guitars with his bare fists.

The Setup

Haynes was only pretending he’d been knocked out, and as the hired thugs walked away, he rose to his feet and began screaming at them, “DUTCH FAGGOTS!!! GODDAMN FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!!! A WHOLE FUCKING COUNTRY FILLED WITH NOTHING BUT FUCKING TURD BURGLING FAGGOTS!!!! I FUCK YOUR ASS IN HEAVEN AND HELL!!!! FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOU!!”

“The ensuing chase and capture was the stuff dreams are made of,” Kramer says. “Stark naked like the day he was born, beaten, bruised, bloody, and tripping, this icon of modern music ran like Jesse Owens through the entire complex, down the halls, up the stairs, grabbing beer bottles from people’s hands as he went and throwing them down on the concertgoers below. A hail of beer cans, bottles, and miscellaneous garbage rained down upon the Dutch persons as I finally caught up with Gibby just as a throng of the biggest security guards I had ever seen caught up with him

The Hook

[…] Haynes then made a successful run for the dressing room and slammed the door behind him. Kramer could hear Leary and Haynes screaming at each other inside, and when he finally worked up the courage to open the door, he found the two of them smashing guitars, bottle and chairs in what Kramer calls “the most potent example of bad behavior I have ever seen. To this day, more than fifteen years later, I have no more vivid memory of the effect a life in music can have on a human being.”

Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. “BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!! Haynes screamed, eyes flashing in delerious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.

“I’m Alex Chilton,” the man answered calmly.

Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and guestured at them as if to say, “Take anything you want.”

(Many thanks to merlin for bringing this story to our attention.)

Oh, and I guess we can’t end without