Fixing the problem doesn’t mean voting out the feckless Democrats or the obstructionist Republicans. It doesn’t even mean voting out Senator Lieberman. As long as our legislative process is held in thrall to an economy of influence that nearly requires members to play nice with the special interests, the will of the people — on the left and on the right — will continue to be stymied on every issue, in every Congress, under every administration.
“Meaningful” agreement reportedly reached in Copenhagen. Which, apparently, means it is an agreement of some fundamental semantic meaning of that word based on other words that do mean things in a strict, lexicographical sense. Erm: Victory!
But, really, it matters not. No agreement, however large or small, meaningful or symbolic it might be is going anywhere in terms of being ratified by these United States. You think 60 votes on some minor insurance reforms is a high hurdle? Try finding 67 when in the neighborhood of 40 members of the Senate seem to agree with Inhofe and generally feel he’s a little too soft on the issue. Just saying.
And, just like with insurance reform, the Democrats have ceded the entire messaging operation to the GOP for at least the last decade or so. So good luck with applying public pressure on this or any other difficult issue. Most of the country thinks, like Inhofe, that the UN and its jack-booted thugs cooked the whole thing up in a black helicopter to please their Hollywood paymasters.
This is what we need more of from the MSM here in America; Jim Inhofe parachutes into the global climate meetings, finds no one around, rustles up what reporters he can find, and is promptly notified of his own foolishness:
The senator didn’t have any meetings scheduled in Copenhagen, and he did not see chief U.S. negotiator Todd Stern or the members of the House delegation, who were not scheduled to fly in until later in the afternoon.
But Inhofe’s aides eventually rustled up a group of reporters […]
“We in the United States owe it to the 191 countries to be well-informed and know what the intentions of the United States are. The United States is not going to pass a cap and trade,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”
A reporter asked: “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?”
“It started in the United Nations,” Inhofe said, “and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.”
One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: “You’re ridiculous.”
Indeed he is. He just never gets to hear it from anyone in the MSM over here. Wouldn’t be polite.
Enjoy it for a second. Then remember that you and I, the American taxpayer, underwrote this whole nonsensical journey. And that, because he denies global warming, our MSM won’t question the carbon footprint of his idiotic, wasted journey. They’re too busy speaking truth to power by asking the conference attendees about that, repeatedly, and then glossing over the actual events of the meeting as “too complicated.” That it never once occurs to them that spending 1/1000th of the time they devoted to the carbon footprint canard would allow them to cover the conference at length and to a high degree of detail never occurs to them is a huge part of the reason why this country is disintegrating into an ungovernable morass.
Never mess with the internet. It may be a bunch of clogged tubes, but the truth will out.
Now:
McCAIN: I’ve been around here 20-some years. First time I’ve ever seen a member denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks. … I just haven’t seen it before myself. And I don’t like it. And I think it harms the comity of the Senate not to allow one of our members at least a minute. I’m sure that time is urgent here, but I doubt that it would be that urgent.
Then:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator’s time has expired.
Mr. DAYTON. I ask for unanimous consent that I have 30 seconds more to finish my remarks.
Mr. McCAIN. I object.
No. I don’t want health care.
Before, it was healthcare every 15 years, from now on it’s going to be [revisited] every single year.
ryking points out weakness in the Democrat by noting that:
Yeah, but where are the accomplishments? What was W’s healthcare? What historic game-changer did the man manage to pass? Certainly not what he tried hardest to do with his “political capital”: Social Security Privatization. The link notes these “accomplishments”:
– John Ashcroft nomination
– Iraq war resolution
– Repeated Iraq funding resolutions
– 2001 & 2003 tax cuts
– Patriot Act
– Alito
– John Roberts
– Medicare Part D
Pretty weak tea there. Let’s knock off the low hanging fruit first: Americablog and ryking seem to be forgetting that, back in them days, a President was deemed capable of choosing who would serve in his cabinet; anyone not utterly and plainly incapable or actively serving time in prison was generally passed along through without much of a fight. Thus Ashcroft (Brownie, Gonzales, Bolton, and a host of others. Seriously, it’s not hard to understand: GOP Presidents are given wide latitude in their appointments by Democratic Senators. Democratic Presidents are not afforded this luxury by the GOP Senate). Obama, specifically, is not allowed even the most controversy free, obviously overqualified appointments; all of them have been subject to secret holds and as many time-wasters and cloture votes as are possible to throw up. And that’s leaving aside the furor over (previously and entirely) non-controversial advisory roles (aka the Czars).Do the Democrats or our Liberal Media hold the GOP to any of this? Why, of course not. Any time there is a microphone around, a Democrat should be screaming into it that the GOP is killing babies because it won’t approve [insert name]. All the time, every time. Only then will things begin to change. But we hold ourselves above all that, apparently.
The tax cuts broadly fit under the same aegis: give the “winner” what he wants. Elections have consequences: The GOP was in charge of all three branches, it is they who should set policy (speaking here in the extremely broad strokes of Our Media Elite; you know, like Cokie Roberts). Democrats, mind you, are never afforded such a luxury, and furthermore forget said poor treatment “the next time around,” immediately sucking up to the furthest right-wing opponents they can find in the hopes of “rekindling bipartisanship.” Idiocy, but undeniable.
9/11/01 and the spectre of mushroom clouds being our wakeup call led to Iraq and the Iraq votes. Honestly, given the volume and velocity of the lies in and around that debate, it’s amazing any kind of push-back was managed, much less a successful one. Not that we’re going to investigate any of that, of course. Gotta keep ourselves focused on the future! That way it’s easier to repeat the past in four years. But, once we’re in Iraq, you’re not going to vote against the troops, are you? Why do you want to kill our troops? The votes follow. And continue to this day. However, the GOP is now merrily allowed to vote to kill our troops. The media: zzzzzzzzzzzz. Boooooooooring. Old news.
Roberts played his role perfectly. Exactly what in his confirmation hearings seemed so far right as to warrant a filibuster? Again, anyone from the right-wing of American politics is allowed wide latitude on appointments. Plus, by the time you got to Alito you had the Gang of 14, whose ranks included many of the right-wing Democrats now giving insurance reform fits. So a filibuster there, though widely discussed (and, IIRC, attempted), was functionally never possible. You couldn’t hold 41 votes against a cloture with those 14 avowed non-participators. That was the point. All of whom, by the way, completely lost interest in judicial filibusters right after Obama won the election. Amazing. The media has certainly put this whole thing into the memory-hole and so have ryking and Americablog, apparently.
Which leaves us with Medicare Part D. Broadly framed, Medicare Part D gets at a core Democratic issue: making health services affordable to as many as possible. Is it so hard to imagine why Bush peeled off lots of Democrats with such a move? This is the fundamental Achilles heel for the Democrat, something we touched on earlier today. Namely:
if a given piece of policy is flawed but ultimately in service to the greater good, then the Democrat will vote for it over their several reservations.
Republicans, however, show no such compunction. Obama and the Democratic Congress could offer them the complete elimination of the IRS and all non-tariff tax revenues and the GOP would lock-step against it. Period. Not invented here, so fuck off. This is ultimately and not coincidentally what Lieberman and his ilk are counting on:
I won’t be killing the bill, because these left-wing do-gooders will be too focused on getting something passed, no matter how fractional and/or dysfunctional the final product might be because of my actions
There is no point in the process where a Rockefeller or Brown will simply say “fuck it, I’m going to Wisconsin” and walk away. Thus, without a credible, bill-killing threat to sit on, it is the left that constantly is forced to give away while the right is constantly operating on the expectation of taking away that which the left most prizes. To the Liebermans of the world, it boils down thusly:
The more Kos and MoveOn squeal, the more likely it is we’re onto something that needs to be excised.
He said as much. What is needed, as Matthew Yglesias notes, is legislation that swings for the progressive fences but can be allowed to fail. Then you can bludgeon Senators X, Y, and Z over their murder of said (popular) bill; use that energy to launch a primary challenge from the left or unseat a Republican. Bank reform (which is what Yglesias suggests) might be a good one. But again, you need something that the left can walk away from. So, basically, it can’t be good policy but has to play in the media as though it is the best possible policy.
Good luck with that.
if I could construct a system in which insurers spent 90 percent of every premium dollar on medical care, never discriminated against another sick applicant, began exerting real pressure for providers to bring down costs, vastly simplified their billing systems, made it easier to compare plans and access consumer ratings, and generally worked more like companies in a competitive market rather than companies in a non-functional market, I would take that deal. And if you told me that the price of that deal was that insurers would move from being the 86th most profitable industry to being the 53rd most profitable industry, I would still take that deal.
To put it bluntly, the idea that Lieberman now finds the very same proposal a grave threat to the public good is simply not credible. And while I understand the rules of strategic gamesmanship, somebody who took health care reform seriously–somebody who genuinely cared about ending the misfortune that visits people without affordable medical care–simply would not have made such a strong stand, over such a tiny issue, at such a pivotal time.
The proof, I think, is in the actions of Lieberman’s adversaries. Sherrod Brown supports the public option just as passionately as Lieberman opposes it. The same goes for Jay Rockefeller. But Brown and Rockefeller have already made a series of huge concessions, because those concessions were necessary to move a bill through Congress. Last night, both men signaled they were prepared to make one last concession–to give up on the idea of a public plan altogether–because that’s what it will take to pass the law.
Brown and Rockefeller, in other words, acted to promote the greater good. I can believe some of their adversaries are doing the same. I find it hard to believe Lieberman is among them.
Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it’s the beginning of a road to single-payer,“ Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who’s a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, ‘This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.’
Lemkin 