Last Call For Lost Plans

If you're wondering what the Republican plan for fixing America's health care system is after they magically repeal Obamacare, don't worry!  They still don't have one, but that's not actually stopping them.

Senior House Republicans — struggling to find consensus for health care legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act — are planning to test ideas in April at town-hall-style meetings that could provide a path toward a long-promised alternative to President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

The “House ObamaCare Accountability Project” is still months away from producing actual legislation. With Democrats opposed, Republican leaders will have a hard time finding enough votes for any plan, and Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio remains cool to guaranteeing a vote.

But a road map is developing.

“It’s important to show the American people that there is a better approach to improving health care for Americans than Obamacare,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority whip. “Unlike the president and congressional Democrats, we have been listening to the American people, and what Americans want is affordability, greater flexibility and access to care, which we are focused on achieving.”

"We just have no idea how to actually achieve that,"  McCarthy forgot to add.  And let's note that an accountability project doesn't seem to involve repealing Obamacare at all...

With every passing week, the Affordable Care Act is changing the political terrain, Republican leadership aides concede. The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Monday that enrollment in private health plans through the health care exchanges had passed the five million mark, with two weeks to go before the first sign-up period ends.

That may be below the goal of seven million set initially by the administration in internal documents, but the final number will not be far below that, and it does not count millions more enrolled through an expansion of Medicaid.

The reality is that Republicans lost this battle in 2010, plain and simple.  They will make gains in 2014 because of it, but those gains will be tempered by the fact they don't have anyone in 2016.  They know they've lost.  They're trying to figure out how to take 100% of the credit for "fixing" Obamacare problems that have largely been created by Republicans themselves in red states refusing to participate.  Once that all gets ironed out and states like Texas and Florida buy in out of necessity, the game ends.  The fact that Republicans are still trying to come up with a "road map" four years after Democrats passed legislation tells you exactly how dedicated Republicans are to do anything about health care.  That would require actual governance, which is something they are intellectually incapable of.

They're desperately trying to figure out a way to prevent Obamacare from becoming the law of the land, but they have no real plans for fixing anything, and they know it.

They're far too late.

Sanction You Very Much, Comrade

The US and EU slapped sanctions on Russian officials and Putin aides on Monday, and Russia's response is to ban US senators and members of Congress.  Josh Rogin:

U.S. senators, congressmen and top Obama administration officials are sure to be on Vladimir Putin’s sanctions list; a response to the Obama Administration’s announcement on Monday that 7 Russian officials and 4 Ukrainian officials would be barred from holding assets or traveling to the United States.

Putin is expected to release his retaliation list as early as Tuesday and while the final list is still being crafted, it will include top Obama administration officials and high profile U.S. senators, in an effort to roughly mirror the U.S. sanctions against Russian officials and lawmakers, according to diplomatic sources. At the top of the list in Congress is Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who recentlyco-authored a resolution criticizing Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

Durbin’s inclusion on Putin’s list would mirror Obama’s naming of Valentina Matvienko, the head of the upper chamber of the Russian Duma. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are not expected to be on the Russian sanctions list.

The response from US senators from both parties is exactly what you would expect.

Durbin told The Daily Beast in a statement Monday: "My Lithuanian-born mother would be proud her son made Vladimir Putin’s American enemies list."

Sen. John McCain, who traveled to Kiev last weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders, told The Daily Beast that he expects to be on the list and is happy about it.

“You think I’m not going to be on it?” McCain said. “I would be honored to be on that list.”

With so many gigantic egos involved, of course this is going to degenerate into comedy.  Too bad it's deadly serious for the Crimea region, Ukraine, and Europe.

As things stand today, Putin has announced that Russia will now formally annex the Crimea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, defying Ukrainian protests and Western sanctions, told parliament on Tuesday that Russia will move forward with procedures to annex Ukraine's Crimean region.

Putin signed an order "to approve the draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on adopting the Republic of Crimea into the Russian Federation". The order indicated the president would sign the treaty with Crimea's Russian-installed leader, who is in Moscow to request incorporation into Russia, but it gave no date.

Possession is still nine-tenths of international law, apparently.

Welcome Back, Mr. Silver

The new FiveThirtyEight has launched this week, now with ESPN (let's remember they started out modeling baseball stats), and Prognosticator Supreme Nate Silver explains his site's take on what he calls "data journalism" and what it means for the media landscape.  He starts out confessing that his modeling for the 2012 elections was in fact overrated because other folks came to very similar conclusions about Obama vs Romney, and for one other reason:

The other reason I say our election forecasts were overrated is because they didn’t represent the totality, or even the most important part, of our journalism at FiveThirtyEight. We also covered topics ranging from the increasing acceptance of gay marriage to the election of the new pope, along with subjects in sports, science, lifestyle and economics. Relatively little of this coverage entailed making predictions. Instead, it usually involved more preliminary steps in the data journalism process: collecting data, organizing data, exploring data for meaningful relationships, and so forth. Data journalists have the potential to add value in each of these ways, just as other types of journalists can add value by gathering evidence and writing stories.

The breadth of our coverage will be much clearer at this new version of FiveThirtyEight, which is launching Monday under the auspices of ESPN. We’ve expanded our staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and counting. Few of them will focus on politics exclusively; instead, our coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports.

So here's where we are in 2014:  fact-driven journalism is shiny and new, as opposed to endless punditry, opining, spin, and agenda-driven lying.  I can't think of a better person to fill this "niche" than Nate Silver.  Here's wishing him luck.

It's a pretty high bar, and judgement is so far reserved.

StupidiNews!

• A California man was arrested near the Canadian border on terrorism-related charges as the DOJ accused him of planning to travel to Syria to join Al Qaeda.
• The largest private collection of Beatle John Lennon's poetry and prose will be auctioned off by Sotheby's in June.
• As part of $100 million in cost savings, Sony Pictures will be laying off employees globally in its digital marketing division.
• Harvard scientists have discovered gravitational ripples that serve as direct evidence to support the Big Bang theory.
• For a brief period on Saturday, Google DNS server requests were routed to networks in Venezuela, although hacking attempts are not suspected at this point.

Last Call To Back Off, Vlad

President Obama made it clear speaking from the White House this morning that further actions from Russia on taking over Crimea and eastern Ukraine would be met with increasing sanctions.

The United States and European Union announced sanctions including asset freezes and travel bans on officials from Russia and Ukraine after Crimea applied to join Russia on Monday following a controversial weekend referendum.

"We'll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world," President Barack Obama said. "The international community will continue to stand together to oppose any violations of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and continued Russia military intervention in Ukraine will only deepen Russia's diplomatic isolation and exact a greater toll on the Russia economy."

The sanctions came after Crimea's Moscow-backed leaders declared an overwhelming 96.7% vote in favor of leaving Ukraine and being annexed by Russia in a vote that Western powers said was illegal. Turnout was 83%.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's parliament has authorized the call-up of some 40,000 military reservists.  Things could get very ugly in Crimea and fast should it devolve into a situation with shooting.  Russian military forces have been moving into Crimea for the last week.  We'll see where this goes and how Russia responds.

The House That Ruth Built

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Irvine's law school, takes to the LA Times to argue that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg needs to retire now in order to get a liberal justice appointed in her place on the Supreme Court.  It's a noble argument and it makes sense:

There likely will be many calls, publicly and privately, for Justice Ginsburg to resign before President Obama leaves the White House to prevent the risk of a Republican being able to appoint her successor. But simply leaving before the next election isn't enough. If Ginsburg waits until 2016 to announce her retirement, there is a real chance that Republicans would delay the confirmation process to block an outgoing president from being able to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. In fact, the process for confirming nominees for judicial vacancies usually largely shuts down the summer before a presidential election.

Moreover, there is a distinct possibility that Democrats will not keep the Senate in the November 2014 elections. The current Senate has 53 Democrats, two independents who vote with the Democrats and 45 Republicans. But in the November 2014 elections, Republicans have a far greater likelihood of gaining seats in the Senate than the Democrats. One recent study identified nine seats held by Democrats that could be won by Republicans, but only two seats occupied by Republicans that might be taken by Democrats.

But I'm with Steve M on this: If Justice Ginsburg retired tomorrow, the Republicans can and would block her successor for the next three years.  There's no possible way at this point that President Obama would be allowed to appoint anyone to the Court short of a second (and more militant) Scalia, and Democrats would revolt.

It's not happening.  The only way a Democrat gets to appoint another justice is if we get 60 in the Senate.  That may be a prospect somewhere in Hillary's term in 2020 or something.  Justice Ginsburg is just going to have to hold on until then,

Abby Huntsman Is As Useless As Her Father

I'm not sure how Abby Huntsman ended up on MSNBC's The Cycle...scratch that.  I know exactly how she did, spouting her dad's same No Labels nonsense for the Millennials. LA Times econ reporter Michael Hiltzik has her pegged.

Abby Huntsman is really, really upset about Social Security. We know this because the television presenter, a daughter of former GOP Presidential contender Jon Huntsman, went on an extended rant about it Thursday on MSNBC's "The Cycle." The show is aimed at a younger audience of news consumers and Huntsman, 27, is one of the four youthful co-hosts.

She thinks Social Security is going bankrupt, leaving her and her generation with nothing. "This is infuriating," she said, bouncing up and down in her chair like a petulant toddler, "because none of our elected officials seem to care enough to do anything about it."

Unfortunately, almost everything she said about Social Security in the name of making it "sustainable" for her generation was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Huntsman wants to tell it like it is, but she fails due to lack of information. And if her generation believes what she said, it's going to be in deep trouble.

Let's get one thing straight:  Nobody in my generation (the youngest Gen Xers) and younger believes we'll ever see a dime of Social Security.  I still have a minimum of 35 years of work ahead of me.  For those in their early 30's, it's 40, and those in their 20's it's 45 or 50.  I understand the appeal of "after the Boomers drain the system, odds are really good there won't be a lot left for us."

But that's simply not true.

The most dire projections of the program's future say that "doing nothing about it"--no benefit cuts, no tax increases--will leave the program still able to pay 75%-80% of scheduled benefits. Not "nothing at all." And that 75% to 80% would still be much more per month 75 years from now than retirees get today.

By the way, it's also untrue that President Obama's budget plan makes "no mention of entitlement reform. None," as Huntsman claims. His budget proposes a very damaging cutback in Social Security disability, as we documented here, as well as changes to Medicare payment formulas to save money.

Huntsman has stitched her spiel together out of scraps and tatters of misinformation, of a sort we've heard from the older generation for years. They're no more accurate coming out the mouths of a "millennial." But it's tragic to see that what she's learned from her elders is how to mislead her public.

Which is exactly the platform her dad ran on in 2012.  She's just as useless.

StupidiNews, St. Patrick's Day Edition!

• Brewery giant Guinness is the latest beer sponsor to pull out of today's NYC's St. Patrick's Day parade due to LGBTQ groups not being allowed to openly march.
• Crimean officials say that with a near 75% turnout, a whopping 95% of Crimean voters have approved secession from Ukraine to join Russia.
• French billionaire Vincent Bollore is putting his money where his mouth is on green transportation, starting an electric car sharing service in London.
• Toyota management has locked out unionized workers in Bengaluru, India over wage disputes and threats to plant management.
• European Union lawmakers have come to an agreement that smartphone manufacturers will have to come up with a universal mobile charger standard by 2016.

Last Call For Going It Alone

Steve M on the hand-wringing in the Village Media about Millennials not trusting institutions:

Under Obama, millennials can't get jobs and can't pay off student loans, and their parents have been struggling financially for years -- but millennials didn't exactly see their elders thrive even during the supposedly better days of the Bush presidency, when the only way a non-rich person could get an extra sliver of the pie was by tapping into what turned out to be hyperinflated home equity. America's military might was more or less useless under Bush, and it's not much use under Obama. Churches, then and now, were overpoliticized and scandal-plagued. D.C. has been reduced to permanent dysfunction by a cabal of nihilists -- we know they're Republicans, though most millennials probably assume, because they're constantly told this, that "both sides do it."

Maybe millennials think institutions suck because institutions suck.

Guy has a point.  Hell, Chris Hayes wrote an entire book about said point.

Ross Douthat however just thinks we're leaving the door open to fascism because, hey, the Internet.

You don’t have to see a fascist or Communist revival on the horizon (I certainly don’t) to see this argument’s potential relevance for our apparently individualistic future. You only have to look at the place where millennials — and indeed, most of us — are clearly seeking new forms of community today.

That place is the online realm, which offers a fascinating variation on Nisbet’s theme. Like modernity writ large, it promises emancipation and offers new forms of community that transcend the particular and local. But it requires a price, in terms of privacy surrendered, that past tyrannies could have only dreamed of exacting from their subjects.

This surrender could prove to be benign. But it’s still noteworthy that today’s vaguely totalitarian arguments don’t usually come from political demagogues. They come from enthusiasts for the online Panopticon, the uploaded world where everyone will be transparent to everyone else.

That kind of future is far from inevitable. But as Nisbet would argue, and as the rising generation of Americans may yet need to learn, it probably cannot be successfully resisted by individualism alone.

To recap, the Glibertarian is worried that without enough religion and/or government regulation in our lives(!), we'll all become victims of digital totalitarianism because when given the freedom to operate away from the failed institutions that bind us, human nature isn't all about the online utopia, but Orwellian control.  It's almost like we need a certain amount of baseline societal norms in order to operate without becoming alpha male dickweeds.  Call them "rules of the road" even.

Mull on that point for a second.

Well If Karl Rove Thinks So...

Good news, Democrats!  Looks like we might be off the hook in November, because Karl Rove sees the GOP taking back the Senate, and Karl Rove hasn't been right about anything in 6 years.

"With 14 seats in play on the Democratic side and a couple of seats in play potentially on the Republican side, I think it's highly likely that Republicans pick up the majority,” he said on "Fox News Sunday."

Rove identified seven potential pickup opportunities for the GOP in West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana, where Democratic senators are retiring, and in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, where Democratic incumbents face serious challenges. The Republicans need a net gain of six seats to retake the Senate.

He dismissed worries that tea party candidates might cost the GOP winnable races, as in 2012, when Republican Senate hopeful Todd Akin's numbers tanked after he said victims of "legitimate rape" rarely become pregnant.

"I think it's going very well. First of all, it's not about beating the tea party candidate, it's about keeping us from having Todd Akins," Rove said, adding, "So we've got to avoid situations like that, and if you take a look at the Republican candidates ... we have a very good cast of characters that are running."

Fourteen Democratic seats aren't "in play" first of all.  The number is really the seven he listed there, and Republicans would have to effectively run the table.  Remember, in 2012 the Democrats were "doomed to lose the Senate" and ended up gaining seats because of how awful their individual Tea Party candidates were.

The simple fact of the matter is if Democrats show up to the polls, we win.  If we stay home like in 2010, the Republicans will.  Period.  Senate races are 100% about turnout.

The Huckster Never Changes

Headlines like "Huckabee: Abortion is a winning issue for GOP" will never change, folks.  Neither will the GOP.

Former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee spoke out against abortion on Wednesday, but he said the issue can help Republicans win elections.

“If we teach the generation coming after us that it’s okay to terminate a human life because it represents a financial hardship or social disruption, what are we telling them?” Huckabee said at a gala put on by Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, according to Politico. Huckabee also reportedly suggested that the same justification that is used to terminate a pregnancy could be applied to end-of-life decisions about the elderly.

Liberal abortionists are going to Death Panel(tm) Grandma!  We got 2014 sewn up for sure!

Huckabee – who has hinted that he may run for president in 2016 and who has shown some promise in polls – urged Republicans to focus on abortion during the midterm elections.

“This is not an issue that we should abandon,” he said, according to the Hill, adding that opposing abortion is a way the GOP can “win elections.”

Actually, the only way the GOP wins elections is if Democrats don't show up to the polls.  But the GOP has that covered, too by going after voting laws in 2012 swing states:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) wants a voter ID law in place in his state “before the next election,” even if his state’s supreme court strikes down the specific voter ID law that he signed in 2011. Walker will also be a candidate for reelection in the next election, so he has a personal stake in whether such a law is in place this November. In 2012, numbers guru Nate Silver estimated that a strict voter ID law could “reduce President Obama’s margin against Mitt Romney by a net of 1.2 percentage points.”

Do that in enough swing states, and suddenly they aren't swing states anymore, but red ones.

Last Call For The Fickle Finger Of Fate

Dana Milbank is convinced that either Millennials are suckers for counting on President Obama, or that President Obama is a sucker for counting on Millennials, he's not quite sure which.

What went wrong? The president and his aides failed to keep his youth movement engaged. But part of the problem also is the inability of the millennial generation to remain attached to a cause. The generation that brought Obama to power is connected online but has no loyalty to institutions — including, it turns out, the Obama White House.

Either way, when everything goes to hell in November, Milbank's got his bases covered on blame.  It's those damn kids, but also That Damn President.

Young voters, after playing a big role in the campaign, became little more than an e-mail list for the White House and Obama’s Organizing for Action group. Then came health-care reform. The millennials, very liberal overall, saw Obama’s plan as too timid; they were disillusioned by his failure to fight for the “public option” of government-run health plans.

This cost Obama the young activists he would need to rally enrollment in Obamacare. Polling by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that, while the generation looks more favorably on big-government solutions than do older generations, the millennials disapprove of Obamacare in the same proportion as the rest of the population.

Even if Obama had worked harder to keep his youth army engaged, it’s not entirely clear that the effort would have succeeded. As a group, the generation’s attachment is fickle.

We didn't get the public option, so apparently the Millennials have all turned into libertarian dudebros who will back the GOP now.  If they even vote at all, because CRUSHING ENNUI.

The millennials are at least as passionate as earlier generations and more entrepreneurial, but they lack ties to institutions — unions, political parties, churches — because of their online existence. “The organizational structure they’re growing up in is so weak,” Tufts’ Levine tells me. As a result, “there aren’t very many durable institutions that can capitalize on their enthusiasm. They’re being asked to do it themselves, online, and it’s a tall order.”

It's the internet's fault, really.

Running Terrified

The failure earlier this month of Senate Democrats to find even 50 votes for Debo Adegbile's nomination as the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division is apparently only the beginning of their cowardice.  Not only does defending someone accused of murder make you ineligible to serve in the DoJ, now being a doctor with the notion that guns may present a public health risk makes you history's greatest monster, unfit for Surgeon General.

Facing a possible defeat in the Senate, the White House is considering delaying a vote on President Obama’s choice for surgeon general or withdrawing the nomination altogether, an acknowledgment of its fraying relationship with Senate Democrats.

The nominee, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, an internist and political ally of the president’s, has come under criticism from the National Rifle Association, and opposition from the gun-rights group has grown so intense that it has placed Democrats from conservative states, several of whom are up for re-election this year, in a difficult spot.

Senate aides said Friday that as many as 10 Democrats are believed to be considering a vote against Dr. Murthy, who has voiced support for various gun control measures like an assault weapons ban, mandatory safety training and ammunition sales limits.

Nice to know the National Rifle Association runs the Democrats in the Senate and not the vast majority of Americans who support gun control measures who voted for the Democrats in the first place.

Your Night Of Moosed Have TV

In the age of streaming TV, why be a grifter with your own cable TV show, when you can get your own cable TV network?

Fox News contributor and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be launching her own digital video channel, tentatively called “Rogue TV,” a source familiar with the project told Capital.

The channel will be available through Tapp, the digital video service founded by former CNN chief Jon Klein and former NBC Universal entertainment executive Jeff Gaspin. Subscriptions will cost $10 per month.

Rogue is expected to launch in April or May, and it would be one of the first of the digital channels offered by Tapp.

Palin’s channel will feature video commentaries from the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, discussing current events and political issues.

“Think of it as a video version of her Facebook page,” the source said.

That said, Rogue is also expected to feature footage of Palin and her family in Alaska, much as the 2010 TLC reality series, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” did. (TLC’s parent company, Discovery Communications, is an investor in Tapp.)

It will also have advice and guidance from Palin, such as tips for parents and recipes. There are also tentative plans to have subscribers engage in regular video chats with Palin.

All Palin, all day, for just $10 a month.  Why depend on news outlets with journalistic integrity or cable channels with agendas, when you can just stream your own permanent word salad infomercial 24/7?  It's a dream come true for her.  It's the 700 Club for people who own Mossy Oak and Carhartt.  She's going to make millions.

Which of course is the point.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• US officials are warning Americans in Russia to beware of possible violence ahead of Sunday's Crimea referendum to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
• Tennessee becomes the latest state ordered by a federal judge to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages under the Fifth Amendment's equal protection clause.
• Analysis of satellite information shows that missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 may have been hijacked thousands of miles off course and ran out of fuel over the Indian Ocean.
• The Obama administration says the United States will hand over control of internet naming domains to a non-governmental organization in 2015.
• Microsoft's Xbox One matched Sony's PlayStation 4 in sales for the first time in February, but still remains well behind Sony's console in US sales.