Republicans are up in arms over the possibility of the Democrats using a “deeming resolution” to pass health care reform “without a vote” …[W]hat “deeming” would do is allow Democrats to get around the political hurdles they’re facing in terms of passing the House bill before the Senate fixes, but they wouldn’t actually be “passing health care without a vote.” Deeming resolutions have been used several times in the past.
Well, that’s not the funny part. This is:
In any case, Republicans are really nervous health care is going to actually pass, so they’ve gotten a bit desperate. Matt Lewis and Michelle Malkin approvingly tweeted this post from David Freddoso quoting Georgia Congressman Tom Price, who says “We’re pretty sure there’s no verse about ‘deeming’ in Schoolhouse Rock.” [bold mine]
This isn’t bad either:
It doesn’t say anything about filibustering either. I guess the filibuster is unconstitutional. Or maybe you can’t fit everything there is to know about congressional procedure in a three-minute cartoon video for kids.
The thing is, the reductio ad schoolhouserockum probably resonates with the base. Not to mention the fact-allergic media.
It’s got a funky beat, and I can bug out to it!
March 12, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I, a good boy, called Nancy Pelosi’s office and told her to stand tall for single payer option and Girl Scout cookies.
Follow me, I’m a geriatric rock star!
March 12, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Sorry guys, I’ve really got to disagree on this one. If the basic premise of this post is that we should pass the current healthcare abomination based soley on the fact that it’s “the best we can get” and the further fantasy that “we can make it better once it’s enacted,” well, count me unconvinced.
Accusations of Republican obstructionism aside – which I am ENTIRELY sympathetic with – in this case, the stupid bastards might be doing TRUE LIBERAL democrats a bigger favor than they could ever know by rejecting this piece of shit bill. This is nothing more than pure capitulation to the moneyed interests that are currently raping the private sector, guaranteeing that the public sector will chip in to their profit margins as well, with no guarantee whatsoever that the current business as usual won’t recommence after a suitable period of “introspection.”
Had we been having this discussion a year ago as WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN when Obama and the Dems first gave away single payer and the public option BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN INTRODUCED AS NEGOTIABLE OPTIONS(!!!), we might have something to talk about. As it is, meaningful change has already been negotiated off of the table, the Dems have already lost enough political capital that they’re majorities in 2010 are almost assuredly lost, and this political appeasment based bill will MOST ASSUREDLY be blamed on them either way. As it should be.
To blow this issue has been TRULY shameful, but the time to fess up has arrived. Locking in further enormous deficits based on dubious “bipartisan” claims of cost savings at the margins is truly criminal. Not even delivering on them once they’re promised and paid for is, well, what else can you call it – SIMPLY CAPIALIST!
March 12, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Of course that last was meant to be “SIMPLY CAPITALIST!”, but there I go again missing my mark. Story of my life really. Sigh!
By means of reparations:
March 14, 2010 at 2:27 pm
If the basic premise of this post is that we should pass the current healthcare abomination based soley on the fact that it’s “the best we can get” and the further fantasy that “we can make it better once it’s enacted,” well, count me unconvinced.
Understandable. I look at it the other way. Name a giant federal social program — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — that hasn’t improved with age?
Look at how Social Security has improved over the decades. It was expanded to cover the disabled, surviving dependent children of widows, and, rather belatedly in the 1970s, surviving dependent children of widowers — and further amended to cover surviving dependent children during college.
March 14, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Social Security was enacted in the wake of the Great Depression and in a time where deficits and debt had not grown to monumental proportions and the political will to address same was still existent. For its entire lifetime, it has been an unfunded liability, as trust fund (social security and medicare) revenues have never been segregated from the general fund, serving only to enhance federal surpluses in a few rare years (most notably post WWII), and to defray them in all the rest.
Now then, when entitlement reform finally becomes a hot button issue (and Bernanke has already publicly hinted as much), as it simply MUST, since it represents so much of our net deficit (especially in the years 2020~2035, when both SS and MC begin hemorrhhaging money hand over fist), THAT will be a total political game changer, no matter which party is in power and fudging the numbers. Entitelement enhancements over the past 70 years have ALL been bought under the illusion that someone down the road would have to pay for them. Guess what? That someone is about to be revealed as… wait for it… YOU AND ME! Fortunately, I’m 52 and don’t plan on living to 100. How about you?
But back to the issue of healthcare. One of the MANY issues with this bill is (and this is a classic bait and switch) that it starts collecting taxes immediately to pay for benefits that won’t kick in til later (~2014?) in order to understae its true costs. That should be reason enough ALONE to distrust the whole thing based on Democratic disingenuousness and Republican opportunism. Surely you can’t believe that the bill will pay for itself after that (if it even does in the interim), OR that the Repubes are gonna let this stand once they regain control of congress in the first place?
Confusing altrusim and politics/economics is entirely understandable, albeit in this case completely misguided. You won’t find a harder left leading liberal than myself, but believe me, there’s nothing good to celebrate about this bill, and the Repubes and a good share of the Dems damn well know it.
By the way, don’t always take what the Repube majority says (what they’re for or against) at face value. These bastards play the game of political poker quite a bit better than their sometimes comically honest Democratic brethren. Shit, that’s why they win even when they’re in the minority.
March 12, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Democrats must be punished for not passing a perfect health care bill. They should lose their majorities in Congress in November. Then we can get perfect health care reform, dammit!
March 13, 2010 at 2:04 am
exactly. as soon as the GOP retakes Congress…good stuff
March 13, 2010 at 2:17 am
How about if we only target, say, the top 10 worst democratic congresspersons, then we would still have a majority. Would that be OK with you?
March 13, 2010 at 8:33 am
By all means, primary all the bastards. It’s been proven that 59 Senators isn’t a damn bit better than 51. But I’d prefer that Obama’s first two years be only 70% fail, rather than 95% fail.
March 13, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Where’s our 911?!?!? Dems deserve their decade-defining paradigm-trashing event! Like maybe Republican ass-roots activists flush all their toilets at once: a flush mob catastrophe.
On April Fool’s Day. So we can say “4-1-1 changed everything”.
March 13, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Dems deserve their decade-defining paradigm-trashing event!
They had it. It was called the Bush administration. But apparently no one told them about it — except a few patchouli-smelling commie hippies.
March 13, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Which therefore means that wasn’t it. We need something that everyone stares at on TV and gawks, and weeps, and freaks…
I mean, when people watched Bush on TV, the most common response was they’d scratch their heads and cock them like a cterrier.
That’s now how they reacted to 911.
We need something truly jaw-dropping, like Wall Street CEs turning into lizard-men and hissing world domination screeds on national TV…
March 13, 2010 at 11:32 pm
I imagine everyone would stare at the TV & gawk, & weep, & freak if the health care bill were deemed passed…
March 14, 2010 at 1:59 am
I can hear it now (Harry Reid): “HCR changed *everything*!”
March 14, 2010 at 9:06 am
I gawked, wept, and freaked every time I saw George W on my TV.
March 13, 2010 at 8:02 pm
I like Mr. Scruff. How about you?
March 14, 2010 at 9:10 am
I dig it.
March 14, 2010 at 1:39 am
The thing is, the reductio ad schoolhouserockum probably resonates with the base. Not to mention the fact-allergic media.
There it is. I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe the way I feel lately, and there it is. Everything has regressed to a grade school level of discussion.
Like this bit from politico:
Two former Bush administration officials said the brief’s acknowledgement that accused terrorists could go free if their cases were heard through the normal judicial process contradicted Holder’s public statements justifying the FBI’s reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged underwear bomber, his Miranda rights.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34233.html#ixzz0i8bGxkNO
Amazingly, in our system of justice, the outcome of a trial is not known beforehand! How could Holder have hidden this from us?!
This is a time when important, adult people are constantly making statements that are uninformed by even a middle school grasp of history or civics, and the media acts like they’re raising issues that nobody has ever thought about before.
It’s terrifying and oppressing; it’s like living in an after school special.
March 14, 2010 at 1:55 am
Great line from Wlliam Gibson’s last novel, as one of its protags looks down over USA from an airplane: “He remembered when the grownups were still in charge.”
March 14, 2010 at 9:23 am
Has the world changed, or have I changed?
The Queen is dead boys..
March 14, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Depends…
March 15, 2010 at 10:04 am
Punk was the last gasp of user-based rock; Simon Cowell took things over after that.
As proof:
March 14, 2010 at 11:33 am
Time is so cruel…
March 14, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Man, Smith looks like he’s 12.
March 14, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Handsome lad, wasn’t he?
March 14, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Isn’t pissing off the Republicans a good thing anyway
March 14, 2010 at 5:19 pm
We’re pretty sure there’s no verse about ‘deeming’ in Schoolhouse Rock”
I wasn’t aware that we now based Senate/House procedures on a cartoon. Fitting for Republicans though.
Not to mention the fact-allergic media.
I’m surprised they don’t have a medication for this yet. Those pesky facts can really give someone a headache when they’re trying to “report news.”
March 15, 2010 at 4:26 pm
And you know what else sucks? Daylight savings time, that’s what else sucks.
March 16, 2010 at 6:03 am
damn straight, I mean the convenience for a few CEOs to get in a round of golf after work is paid for by the hardship of the rest of us getting up in the fucking dark — agayne. Plus, the kids don’t wanna go to bed “‘cuz it’s light outside…”. Less sleep for all concerned, hechuva job, buttholes.
March 16, 2010 at 6:58 am
I hated it more than anyone until this year when I am strangely ambivalent.
March 16, 2010 at 6:07 am
So instead of seven and a half months of Daylight Savings Time, why don’t we just have it ALL YEAR LONG, eh? That way I can just ignore it entirely and go on secondharmonic time which is one hour later.
March 16, 2010 at 2:59 pm
I propose a compromise: Split the difference.
Interesting related trivia: Know how many time zones there are in China? One. How cool is that?