If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side . . .Drama queen.
A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.Needless to say, Frum is already being thrown under the bus by Col. Mustard and friends, who claim victory for stopping socialism, or Marxism, or communism, or whatever ism they are calling the plan this week.
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.
Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.
Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.
Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
Breaking News: Sources are telling NBC News that Rep. Bart Stupak WILL VOTE for the health-care bill.The vote will come very soon. CNN backs MSNBC's call.
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, announces that he, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House have reached an agreement that protects "the sanctity of life in health care reform."The rules debate continues as the GOP tries to run out the clock, but this is starting to look like a win for the Dems. Will the Senate complete the victory?
Stupak and other anti-abortion Democrats had said they would oppose the Senate bill because of concerns it would expand federal funding of abortion.
Moments ago, while members were on the floor for a vote, a protester stood up in the visitor's gallery and began shouting "Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill!" Clerks quickly removed him. But as they were doing so, a number of Republicans--at least half a dozen, from what I could see from a few feet away--were cheering the man.This isn't over. In fact, the real battle is just beginning. You thought they were deranged to the point of violence before? Just wait.
Representative Barney Frank, who was the target of yesterday's homophobic epithets, told reporters he was "appalled" and that he felt the Republicans "were encouraging him to resist. ... I've never seen members of the House cheering on a guy resisting being kicked out of the gallery. It's a dangerous situation and the Republicans are cheering him on."
Frank says he approached one of his Republican colleagues--I think he said it was Missouri's Roy Blunt--and told them his caucus should not be stoking this kind of emotion. Blunt apparently replied by saying he wasn't one of the Republicans cheering.
Meanwhile, conservative activists are staging a rally on the North lawn, which is right outside the House chamber. A trio of Republicans went to the House balcony and started waving hand-made signs saying "Kill...the...bill" as the crowd chanted. As a colleague of mine remarked, that scene was more farcical than scary--like a scene out of Evita. But there's something just a bit unsettling about all of this.
But former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.Yeah, that sure was sad to see all that damage that happened forty-five years ago when we stopped actively trying to deny minorities the right to vote. Hell, one's President now! Look at the damage to the Democrats! They'd never gain a majority in the House or Senate or control the White House ever again! We certainly wouldn't have any Democratic presidents from southern states like Georgia or Arkansas!
No one doubts that Johnson was right to push for those civil rights measures. And he was well aware of the potential damage they would do to a Democratic Party that was then a coalition including whites and African Americans, liberals from the North and conservative segregationists from the South.
Those battles over civil rights set off a political realignment that played out over decades and led eventually to a Republican domination of the South that continues to this day.
Boehner this is an immediate takeover of everything!Sad part is this really isn't parody.
Gregory: what else about the bill is bad?
Boehner it doesn’t kick in until 2014!
Gregory: the CBO says this will cut the debt and stave off disaster
Boehner: yes but we have a great plan that isn’t a dangerous socialist plan
Gregory: why didn’t you enact it before?
Boehner we didn’t know a skillful black guy would
be elected President
Gregory: you can’t trust the CBO - they like Obama’s plan and I hate it!
Hoyer: Calm down Fluffy
Gregory: Bohner will Democrats lose the House
in the fall?
Boehner well it’s a steep climb - after all everyone hates Republicans
Gregory: will you try to repeal this law?
Boehner well let’s not get crazy - after all people
like insurance
Gregory: so what is the GOP plan?
Boehner yell and scream that Obama will bankrupt this country
Gregory: anything else?
Boehner: file a lawsuit saying that we are all the Jews for Obama’s Indonesian cannibal cauldron of Sharia Kenyan Marxist Sacrificial Commission of Death
Gregory: well good luck with that
“Yes I will,” Kaptur said, when asked if she’d be supporting the Senate bill. Asked why, she continued:The Stupak bloc is crumbling hourly. The important thing is that some sort of deal is now in the works, and that brings us to Stupak's face-saving manuever so that he agrees to the vote.
“We received assurances last night that we will work with the administration and Secretary Sebelius and the President to ensure existing law is maintained.”
That’s a reference to HHC secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and appears to mean that the Stupak bloc was given these reassurances last night at the White House.
It’s unclear right now whether this means the White House agreed to an executive order reaffirming the ban on Federal funding on abortion, or whether White House aides made more general assurances.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Sunday morning that he is close to striking a deal with the Obama administration on abortion provisions.Of course, that's what the Senate bill does now anyway, the Stupak language was always an attempt to go well and beyond the existing federal rules and make health insurance that did cover abortions impossible to get by kicking out any plan that did cover it from being eligible for subsidies, effectively pricing them out of the market. Stupak lost that fight yesterday, now he's getting a chance to atone. That's a smart move by Pelosi to fix a moronic one by Stupak, and that's what House Speakers are supposed to do: keep the big picture and the long haul in mind. Stupak's vote will be needed again in the future for the rest of Obama's agenda. Allowing him to save face instead of torching him makes the rest of 2010 a bit easier.
"We are close to getting something done," Stupak said in an interview with MSNBC.
Stupak said he engaged in talks late into Saturday night.
The possible deal would focus on an executive order that would specify there would be no public funding for abortions in the healthcare bill.
"We're close but we're not there yet," Stupak said.
Health care reform has been central to the Democratic Party since well before any Democratic member of Congress was even serving. It has been central to the Democratic agenda since before most of them were even born. That any Congressional Democrat is running away from this is a scandal. What did they expect to be voting on when they ran for Congress? Why on earth are they even a Democrat if they're not going to vote for health care?Amen to that. Given the centerpiece of Obama's campaign was health care reform, every Democrat that ran and won in 2008 knew this vote was coming. If you're not supporting health care reform, why are you a Democrat?
I understand that politics is a messy business. I understand that Democrats have a big tent. I understand that ideological differences and political realities will require some Democrats to part company with their peers on many issues. But health care is different. I can forgive a vote against health care in only a handful of truly difficult districts. The rest of them have no excuse.
Mr. Obama is imposing a leftist revolution. Since coming to office, he has behaved without any constitutional restraints. The power of the federal government has exploded. He has de facto nationalized key sectors of American life - the big banks, financial institutions, the automakers, large tracts of energy-rich land from Montana to New Mexico. His cap-and-trade proposal, along with a newly empowered Environmental Protection Agency, seeks to impose massive new taxes and regulations upon industry. It is a form of green socialism: Much of the economy would fall under a command-and-control bureaucratic corporatist state. Mr. Obama even wants the government to take over student loans.No mention of the Slaughter Rule there in the heart of his tirade. Gee, I'm going to take this as a "No, we're going to try to impeach him anyway as soon as we can" kind of thing.
Yet his primary goal has always been to gobble up the health care system. The most troubling aspect of the Obamacare debate, however, is not the measure's sweeping and radical aims - the transformation of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, crippling tax increases, higher premiums, state-sanctioned rationing, longer waiting lines, the erosion of the quality of medical care and the creation of a huge, permanent administrative bureaucracy. Rather, the most alarming aspect is the lengths to which the Democrats are willing to go to achieve their progressive, anti-capitalist agenda.
Obamacare is opposed by nearly two-thirds of the public, more than 60 percent of independents and almost all Republicans and conservatives. It has badly fractured the country, dangerously polarizing it along ideological and racial lines. Even a majority of Democrats in the House are deeply reluctant to support it.
Numerous states - from Idaho to Virginia to Texas - have said they will sue the federal government should Obamacare become law. They will declare themselves exempt from its provisions, tying up the legislation in the courts for years to come.
Mr. Obama is willing to devour his presidency, his party's congressional majority and - most disturbing - our democratic institutional safeguards to enact it. He is a reckless ideologue who is willing to sacrifice the country's stability in pursuit of a socialist utopia.
Leading by one against the colossus of the bracket, Ali Farokhmanesh stood at the 3-point line, no one around. The prudent play? Pull it out, burn some clock.America will remember how to spell "Farokhmanesh" in the future, I think. Rock, Shocked, No Jayhawk.
Not a chance.
Taking his shot at history, Farokhmanesh let fly from the wing.
Swish!
The biggest upset in a tournament full of them was done. Northern Iowa had taken down mighty Kansas.
Playing with poise down the stretch and getting another big 3-pointer from Farokhmanesh, Northern Iowa pulled off one of the biggest NCAA upsets in years by knocking No. 1 overall seed Kansas from the bracket with a program-defining 69-67 win on Saturday.
''If anybody's going to shoot that shot, I want it to be Ali,'' UNI's Jake Koch said.