The Reality Of Obamacare

The reality at this point is that it's just not looking like there will even be a health care reform bill. Our corporate masters have seen to that, as BooMan notes.

Never mind that it is the provision of a public option that makes the Senate bill save more money in the budget than it costs. If Lieberman doesn't change his mind, and Olympia Snowe doesn't change her mind, then there will be no public option. In fact, the Senate bill simply won't pass. Reid will have to withdraw the bill and introduce Snowe's trigger as the base bill, or he will have to give up entirely and go to reconciliation. But I am not sure anymore that the House can pass a bill in reconciliation. I am not sure that they can pass a bill with a trigger, either.

I'm not saying the battle's lost. We all knew the last mile would be the toughest. But it's now clear that the House bill will never be voted on in the Senate, and the Senate bill will not contain a public option of any type. The insurance companies own their Senators, so it doesn't matter what the people want. Just like the banks and the defense contractors know, the U.S. Congress is the best lawmaking body money can buy.

Perhaps in another 16 years America will take another shot at it. Of course by then half of us will be uninsured, but hey...government is bad.

Zandar Versus The Stupid

You know you're a Winger if any time the House passes a bill, you have to post the Youtube of Star Wars Episode 3 of Natalie Portman saying "So this is how liberty dies; to thunderous applause."

Assholes.

Tea'd Off

Frank Rich has another great column this morning, this time on the Hoffman Effect and the lessons the GOP will fail to learn (emphasis mine:)

But first let’s make a farewell accounting of the farce upstate. The reason why the Democratic victory in New York’s 23rd is a mixed blessing is simple: it increases the odds that the Republicans will not do Democrats the great favor of committing suicide between now and the next Election Day.

This race was a damaging setback for the hard right. Hoffman had the energetic support of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox as well as big bucks from their political auxiliaries. Furthermore, Hoffman was running not only in a district that Rove himself described as “very Republican” but one that fits the demographics of the incredibly shrinking G.O.P. The 23rd is far whiter than America as a whole — 93 percent versus 74 — with tiny sprinklings of blacks, Hispanics and Asians. It has few immigrants. It’s rural. Its income and education levels are below the norm. Only if the district were situated in Dixie — or Utah — could it be a more perfect fit for the narrow American demographic where the McCain-Palin ticket had its sole romps last year.

If the tea party right can’t win there, imagine how it might fare in the nation where most Americans live. Some G.O.P. leaders have started to notice. Mitt Romney didn’t endorse Hoffman despite right-wing badgering to do so. On Wednesday, Michael Steele dismissed the right’s mantra that somehow Hoffman’s loss could be called a victory and instead talked up the newly elected Republican governors who won by appealing to independents and moderates. Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell are plenty conservative, but both had rejected Palin’s offers to campaign for them. They also avoided the tea party zanies, the fear-mongering National Organization for Marriage and the anti-abortion-rights zealots Hoffman embraced. They positioned themselves as respectful Obama critics, not haters likening him to Hitler.

In the aftermath of this clear-cut demonstration of how Republicans can win, the revolutionaries are still pledging to purge the party’s moderates by rallying behind more Hoffmans in G.O.P. primaries from Florida to California. And they may get some scalps. But Tuesday’s loss revealed that they’re better at luring freak-show gawkers into Fox’s tent than voters into the G.O.P.’s. As if to prove the point, protesters hoisted a sign likening health care reform to Dachau at the raucous tea party rally convened by Michele Bachmann on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

Should the G.O.P. avoid self-destruction by containing this fringe, then the president and his party will have to confront their real problem: their identification with the titans who greased the skids for the economic meltdown from which Wall Street has recovered and the country has not. If there’s one general lesson to be gleaned from Christie’s victory over Jon Corzine in New Jersey, it’s surely that in today’s zeitgeist it’s less of a stigma to be fat than a former Goldman Sachs fat cat, even in a blue state.

And I absolutely agree with Rich. Obama's real problem is still that the Democrats are beholden to the banking fat cats. The Republicans would be worse in every way, but corporate Dems are the ones who are going to lose, and the GOP could actually make some serious headway if they attacked ConservaDems and Blue Dogs as lackies.

They won't, because they have too much in common with the Republicans attacking them. So the Republicans will double down and go with the Teabaggers. They really have no choice. That ship has sailed, and now we get to watch it sink.

Harry Reid's Problem Strikes Back

Once again, Joe F'ckin Lieberman went on the Sunday shows to promise that he would never allow a public option plan of any kind to get a vote in the Senate.

LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.

But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt — $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.

WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?

LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

It's getting old, frankly. Once again, Joe F'ckin Lieberman has decided that Americans just don't deserve the choice. It's unnecessary for you to have one. The status quo works fine, you see. Why can't you shut up and just accept it?

Sometimes A Flower Is Just A Potted Plant

Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg makes a good point about Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan:

It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. This is the second time this year American soldiers on American soil have been gunned down by a Muslim who was reportedly unhappy with America's wars in the Middle East (the first took place in Arkansas, to modest levels of notice). And, of course, this would not be the first instance of an American Muslim soldier killing fellow soldiers over his disagreements with American foreign policy; in 2003, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar killed two officers and wounded fourteen others when he rolled a grenade into a tent in a homicidal protest against American policy.

I am not arguing, of course, that American Muslims, as a whole, are violently unhappy with America (I've argued the opposite, in fact). But I do think that elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims. Here's a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.

And Goldberg's point is if a non-Muslim shoots somebody, religion doesn't matter. If a Muslim shoots somebody however, it's proof that all Muslims are evil and that Islam is a cult based around killing all non-Muslims, and that we should take special action to segregate all Muslims from our society, for they are all The Enemy. Maj. Hasan's religion, because he is a Muslim, is the only possible explanation for why he killed.

Substitute "black" or "Hispanic" for "Muslim" and "race" for "religion" up there and the Wingnut mind starts to make more sense.

They always need an Enemy. If Maj. Hasan the Muslim had instead been named Maj. Harris the Christian, the same people instead be talking about all the horrors of war he had heard tales of as an Army psychiatrist at the largest Army base in America.

[UPDATE 12:11 PM] Steven D over at BooMan's place is starting to sound like me, the poor bastard.

House Bill Passes

The good news, the House Bill passed 220-215, one Republican (Joesph Cao again!) voted for the measure. The bad news, so did the Stupak Amendment, 240-194.

The FDL guys sum it up:

It’s like winning a huge battle, but half of your friends were killed or wounded.

36 million more people will be insured or become eligible for Medicaid
There will be a trillion dollars raised to help subsidize this.
There will be multiple measures to help control the costs of Medicare
We will stop subsidizing private insurers in Medicare Advantage
Closes the donut hole
Allows Medicare negotiation for drugs
Includes the seeds of a public option
Prohibits denials based on prior conditions; ends rescissions except for fraud
funds more education for doctors/nurses
Begins dozens of health prevention programs, pilots, surveys
Creates entities to evaluate and recommend better treatment, cost saving
And on and on.

It’s a massive achievement, but women, mostly poor, paid a price.

And as BooMan says, the 220-215 vote means there's no wiggle room. It will pretty much have to pass as is.

Here's who I'm particularly mad at: the Democrats who voted for the Stupak Amendment, but who voted against the final bill anyway. Those are the Dems who are going to be in trouble come 2010. They are:

Jason Altmire (PA)

John Barrow (GA)

John Boccieri (OH)

Dan Boren (OK)

Bobby Bright (AL)

Ben Chandler (KY)

Travis Childers (MS)

Artur Davis (AL)

Lincoln Davis (TN)

Bart Gordon (TN)

Parker Griffith (AL)

Tim Holden (PA)

Jim Marshall (GA)

Jim Matheson (UT)

Mike McIntyre (NC)

Charlie Melancon (LA)

Heath Shuler (NC)

Ike Skelton (MO)

John Tanner (TN)

Gene Taylor (MS)

Harry Teague (NM)

That's 21 Dems (all male, natch) who are going to lose in 2010. You 21 Democrats, do you think your Republican opponents will applaud your voting record? Do you think they won't attack you as a liberal fascist traitor to America and the universe? Do you think Democratic voters are going to turn out en masse for the guy who voted against health care reform?

Most of all, do you know you're on the wrong side of history?

Some of them may change their minds in the final vote. I don't know. But for now? I don't know how they can sleep tonight.

[UPDATE 11:46 AM] Going over the lists thanks to uggabugga, I missed:

John Adler (NJ)

Tim Holden (PA)

Daniel Lipinski (IL)

and Blue Dog leader Mike Ross (AR).

Twenty-five Dems, again, all male. None with the balls to vote for the bill after saddling it with the the Stupak Amendment.

The Party Of Hell No

Hey America, here's your GOP in action:



They're not even pretending anymore to be anything other than The Party Of Hell No. No solutions, no dignity, no respect, no tolerance, no no no no no.

They are nothing but petulant l'enfant terribles throwing tantrums like the children they are. No wonder the voters threw them out of power.

Ain't No Party Like A West Coast Party

The Republican civil war is moving on to Ahnold's replacement af the Governator of California. The corporate country club wing is behind former HP head Carly Fiorina, but the Teabaggers are lining up behind State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, and a look at DeVore's history shows why:

But who, exactly, is he? Not many people beyond Republican devotees and California political watchers know the guy. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza -- who is more plugged into local politics than most D.C.-based reporters -- copped to not really having a clue about DeVore just last week.

The assemblyman does check off the majority of boxes on the conservative purity test. He has a full pro-life record, opposed the stimulus package and the bank bailout, and has never met a tax cut he didn't like. His most famous moment in office may, in fact, have occurred when he resigned from his position as Chief Republican Whip out of anger over a tax increase agreed to by California's Republican leadership.

"We need to shake up the Republican Party," DeMint said, when announcing his endorsement. "He's gonna join the country, and not the club."

In addition to fiscal discipline, however, DeVore's closet includes some weird and potentially damaging associations. As pointed out by a Republican source, the assemblyman is connected to noted birther Floyd Brown. Brown, who is famous for creating the 1988 Willie Horton ad and, more recently, pushing an effort to impeach Barack Obama, was supported by DeVore in his efforts to attack Democratic candidates in the 2008 presidential primary.

"Poll after poll shows it works," DeVore said of Brown's deeply controversial product.

All of which is not to say that associations like these -- and his relative obscurity -- will trip DeVore up in a primary race. Indeed, he likely relishes his current frame as a man of the conservative fringe.

Eight Senate Republicans announced on Thursday that they would be backing Fiorina's bid for the nomination. The next day, the assemblyman put out a web advertisement that contained a direct dig at one of Fiorina's endorsers -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) -- for his ghastly efforts at working with a Democrat on climate change legislation.

DeVore's Birther ties only serve to further establish his bona fides for the Wingnuts in California and nationally. The question is how long before the GOP officially drops Fiorina in order to avoid another Hoffman Effect disaster?

For you see, there's no way they'll be able to. The more the Teabaggers insist Fiorina gets thrown under the bus, the more the Democrats stand to win when the civil war wrecks the GOP.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/06/chuck-devore-the-new-cons_n_348898.html&cp

Battle Lines

GOP Rep. Eric Cantor is taking on El Rushbo and the Teabaggers.

Cantor, in an interview today with Bloomberg, also offered some criticism of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh's comparison of President Obama to Adolf Hitler.

"Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?" said Cantor, who is the only Jewish Republican in Congress. "No, I don't, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful."

In a climate where Republicans who criticize Limbaugh come crawling back on their knees (see TPM's "Forgive Me Rush" photo feature), Cantor's office has pointed reporters to the story, emailing the link to Glenn Thrush's post on Cantor's remarks.

I wonder how long it will take before Cantor has to apologize to Leader Limbaugh.

I'm giving it until end of the week at most.

Dealing With The Blue Dogs

The big story this morning is last night's deal with the Blue Dogs to strip any and all abortion funding from the House health care reform measure. Today's vote will indeed continue, but Nancy Pelosi has been forced to allow an amendment vote to block not only the public option from being used to pay for abortions, but from any insurance plan offered in the so called health insurance exchange. As Steve Benen reports, Pelosi had no choice.

The House Democratic leadership didn't want to go this route, but was out of options -- they just couldn't get to 218.

The idea, at this point, is to allow a vote on the amendment. Pro-choice Dems can register their opposition, but the amendment is expected to have the votes pass.

And that's when this might get a little trickier. If the Stupak/Ellsworth amendment is approved, Democrats who've withheld their support over this issue will throw their support to the larger reform bill. The angle to keep an eye on, however, is what happens to the strong, pro-choice leaders in the caucus -- will they switch sides and vote to kill the bill?

Most of the vote counts I've seen put the number of hard "no" votes in the Democratic caucus at 25. The majority can lose no more than 40. The vote is still expected for tonight, with top White House officials and cabinet sectaries working the phones and walking the halls of Congress, keeping the heat on wavering members.

On one hand, most private health insurance plans offered through the workplace simply don't cover abortions to begin with. Mine doesn't, for example. There's also a raft of state laws and limited doctors who will perform the procedure that make getting an abortion nearly impossible anyway no matter what the public option says.

On the other hand, the Dems are better people than to be misogynist assholes. The reality is this: Will the Blue Dogs who vote for the anti-abortion amendment vote for the House bill at the final vote?

I'm thinking no. If the measure dies in the House due to the abortion measure, well, there's no way anyone will ever touch health care reform in the future. Nancy just may have dealt herself into a corner, and the Blue Dogs may just end up putting the Dems out of business in 2010.

Hasn't anyone on Capitol Hill figured out that the reason the Republicans won in 1994 was because Democrats killed Clinton's health care reform?

[UPDATE 12:35 PM] BooMan argues that the price of getting this through the House is to throw women under the bus, and that the Stupak amendment is the de facto end of abortion coverage in America.

There will be a vote on the Stupak Amendment after all. And, no doubt, that amendment will pass. Private insurers will have to drop abortion coverage from plans that have it (which is most of them) in order to participate in the exchanges. The Public Option will not provide abortion coverage. People will get access to affordable health care, but they'll have to pay out of pocket for an abortion. If people want to move to a plan on the exchange, they'll lose the coverage that they currently have.

There is no guarantee that this language will survive the Conference Committee and become law, but it won't be easy to pass the Conference Report if it doesn't have the language. Once people vote for something once, they tend to get irritated if you just ignore that and remove it.

I didn't realize that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was a political party with elected officials in Congress. Now I know.

I have a difficult time arguing that he's wrong. I can understand the public option being banned from having abortion coverage, but banning any private insurance plan participating in the health insurance exchange will basically put a functional end to abortions being covered under insurance, period.

That's something I would expect from the GOP, but apparently that's the price of the Democrats as well.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• U.S. Customs officials have discovered that a '65 Volkswagen van bound for Germany was stolen in 1974.
• GOP officials are looking to carry out punishment against Dede Scozzafava for endorsing the Democrat in last Tuesday's NY-23 race.
• President Obama will go on a four-nation tour of Asia starting Wednesday.
• Yesterday's 10.2% unemployment numbers caused gold to hit another new high just short of $1,100.
• The cost of mapping an entire human genome is now down to roughly $5,000.

Afghanistan May Not Be Up To Obama

Because in addition to UK PM Gordon Brown threatening to pull out of Afghanistan unless the Karzai government gives in to major reforms, now the UN has pulled more than half of its staff out and is threatening to pull out completely unless those reforms are made quickly.

The United Nations today temporarily pulled half its international staff out of Afghanistan and threatened that a complete and permanent withdrawal could follow.

Amid an atmosphere of increasing gloom in Afghanistan, the UN Special Representative in Kabul, Kai Eide delivered a pointed warning to the government of Hamid Karzai.

“There is a belief among some, that the international community (presence) will continue whatever happens because of the strategic importance of Afghanistan,” he told a press conference this morning. “I would like to emphasise that that’s not true.”

He added that the Afghan government must demonstrate a willingness to reform and address corruption and the power of warlords.

Of the 1,100 foreign UN workers, 600 will now leave until the situation improves. The remaining UN workers are to be relocated inside Kabul from the current network of 93 different UN guesthouses, many of them privately run civilian houses, to a one large compound which is currently used for the European Union police training mission. The new arrangement will echo the ‘Green Zone’ found in Baghdad.

The move follows last week’s attack on a UN guesthouse in the heart of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in which five UN international staff were killed by gunmen and suicide bombers who were disguised in police uniform.

Kabul is coming apart. The Karzai government has no international legitimacy, and no factual control over anything outside the Green Zone. Gordon Brown and Kai Eide will say what Obama will not: that the mission in Afghanistan may beyond hope, and it could be time to cut losses and leave.

What Obama wants to do in Afghanistan may not matter in the end.

Three Cheers For Bernie And Paul

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pennsylvania Rep. Paul Kanjorski will say and do what needs to be done on Too Big To Fail: break the banks.

An independent U.S. senator on Friday introduced a bill that would give the government the power to identify and break up financial firms that are "too big to fail," an idea that is catching on.

"If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," said Senator Bernie Sanders in a statement.

"We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy," he said.

Sanders is an independent outside the U.S. political mainstream. But he is not the only one looking at break-ups.

Representative Paul Kanjorski, the Democratic chairman of the capital markets subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives, is working on a break-up power amendment.

It would give a new government systemic risk council break-up power, with clearance from the president.

"It's the natural action of capital to grow and exceed. Now we're going to contain it," Kanjorski told CNBC television.

He said large banks oppose his amendment because it would threaten them. But, he said, mid-sized and smaller financial institutions would be helped by it because they would be better able to compete if mega-firms were downsized.

"When the people's money is being used to bail out these large companies ... We certainly have to have someone to tell them what to do in order to save them," he said.

The idea seems exceedingly simple, so much so that you have to wonder why it hasn't been proposed. We have already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that any bank that represents a global systemic risk is too large to function safely. Rescuing these banks cost trillions of dollars and will continue to cost trillions. It has all but wrecked the dollar and with it our economy. The only way to assure this never happens again is to break the big banks, period.

And of course this legislation will never, ever get near a vote. It will never get out of committee. Our Congress is too corrupt, regardless of party affiliation.

We'll see.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Perhaps House Republicans should spend more time actually voting in the House than hanging out at photo ops with Teabaggers. Turns out several GOP House members missed some key Patriot Act amendment votes sponsored by Republicans, and those amendments failed because of their absence.

They were too busy on the podium screaming how Obama was shirking his duties to national security, you see.

And people wonder why nobody takes the GOP seriously.

Something Happened On The Way To The Forum

You see, that historic House health care vote tomorrow? Not gonna happen tomorrow...

House Democrats acknowledged they don't yet have the votes to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system, and signaled they may push back the vote until Sunday or early next week.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters in a conference call Friday that the make-or-break vote on President Barack Obama's push to make health coverage part of the social safety net could face delay. Democrats were originally hoping to pass the bill on Saturday.

The apparent problem: Democrats have yet to resolve intraparty disputes over abortion funding and illegal immigrants' access to health care. They cleared one hurdle Friday when liberals supporting a government-run Medicare-for-all system withdrew their demand for a floor vote.

Story continues below ↓

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The White House said Obama remains hopeful of getting an overhaul bill this year and plans to go to Capitol Hill on Saturday to try to rally support.

Hoyer sought to pin the blame for any possible slippage on delaying tactics expected from Republicans, who unanimously oppose the health care remake.

"Nice try Rep. Hoyer, but you can't blame Republicans when the fact is you just don't have the votes," said Antonia Ferrier, spokeswoman for House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio. Republicans could stall the bill by demanding roll-call votes on parliamentary matters.

What I don't get is that the clear message from Tuesday is that Democrats win when they stick to their guns, and lose when they run away from Obama (or in Jon Corzine's case have a crapload of personal negatives.) Creigh Deeds said as Virgina's governor, he would opt out of the new health care legislation if given the choice, and said the public option wasn't necessary. Of course Democrats didn't turn out for the guy. I wouldn't have voted for him either.

By the same token, Bill Owens in NY and John Garamendi in California both stated their support for the public option. They won even in off-year elections, and Owens won in a blood red district. Even if you combine the Hoffman-Scozzafava vote it would have been 50-50, and in a blood red district like NY-23 this race never should have been close enough for Owens to win period.

And yet voters went with the person supporting the public option when voting in a guy like Hoffman would have been a message that the public option was in trouble, especially just days ahead of the vote.

If there is a Blue Dog who would be vulnerable, it would be Bill Owens. He's behind the public option, turns out...and was never against it. Voters elected him anyway.

The lesson here is that the public option is a winner, guys. Try getting out more.