The Morning Plum
* The White House is worried that further delays in reform could be politically catastrophic. Imagine Dems having to return for the extended Christmas break to again face constituents with no health care bill completed?
* Which explains why Obama explicitly said over the weekend that he looks forward to signing reform into law “by the end of the year.”
* Serious hurdles ahead: The politics of abortion could prove an even worse obstacle in the Senate, and it remains a serious problem in the House. That link offers a good overview.
* Shocker of the day: Senator Joe Lieberman goes on Fox News, again says he’ll filibuster health care bill with public option. How many times does he have to repeat this before we stop treating it as news?
* Josh Marshall: The real danger health care reform poses for the GOP is that the public may like it. In case you missed it, my similar take here.
* E.J. Dionne: “Only rarely do those who believe in active government take the argument head-on and insist that many of the things government does are necessary and, yes, good.”
* The latest on the Fort Hood shooter is going to get ugly:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
* Despite all the criticism, the House health care bill is basically the length of a Harry Potter novel. Note to purveyors of the “too long” criticism: It isn’t the early 1990s anymore.
* Maybe Sarah Palin is reviving the death panel tale because she’s feeling the heat from Michele Bachmann’s rise and wants to recapture some of that old magic?
What else is happening?
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AP says the health care glass is half-empty in the Senate:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_CARE_OVERHAUL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-11-08-11-39-15
Good analysis from staff at Dem Strategist… http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/ 4:04 AM post
“The amendment goes beyond long-standing prohibitions against public funding for abortions, limiting abortion coverage even for women paying for it without government subsidies.”
From your link Greg, this is even worse than I thought. They’ll have to change this before passing a bill, I don’t think they’ll get the votes otherwise. The Stupak (sepsis) Dems will need to back down.
Lieberman probably gets 50k worth of donation from insurance PAC’s every time he says the word filibuster.
He also gets “special” cookies from the Fox News green room, why else would he keep going back there?
And Greg, elections will be happening in January in Iraq. Successful elections mean we can begin to draw down troops there and maybe even exit with a smidgen of satisfaction that we prevented an ongoing civil war from happening.
Wer need to check how many stock of the big insurance company’s stock are owned by Joee LIEberman. Rachael Madow showed the trend of the stock prices for the big health care insurance companies from when Majority leader Ried released his health care bill and when LIEberman started his treat of fillibuster. I wonder what their stock prices will look like today that house has passed its own version of HCR..I won’t be supprised if LIEberman is doing this to be able to dump his stock at a fairly good price.
It’s just a little bit harder to feel sorry about a national tragedy like Ft. Hood, when the killer just breezed into “Guns Galore” (for real) and bought a cop-killer gun and cop-killer bullets.
We ask for this s*h*i*t in America by letting people run businesses like “Guns Galore.”
*sigh*
The real danger health care reform poses for the GOP is that the public may like it.
Kos made the same point in that interview where Tancredo walked off the set.
It’s difficult not to notice that when one considers that possible outcome in light of the popularity of Social Security and Medicare, and the GOP’s opposition to those measures when they were passed.
Ah but don’t forget the great thing about the stock market is you can make money on good news and bad news. You just have to know how.
Wer need to check how many stock of the big insurance company’s stock are owned by Joee LIEberman.
Isn’t his wife on the payroll of big insurance?
Oddjob… I think that might be Bayh’s wife.
I don’t see how Lieberman can filibuster if he was telling the truth about running again. It’s Connecticut, for god’s sake. He isn’t running from Oklahoma if he runs again.
Bilgeman | November 9th, 2009 at 08:00 am
Morning, Plumbers!
I think I’m going to be following the Dow Jones pretty closely today to see how the market reacts to the passage of Socialist Utopiacare.”
Looks like Socialist Utopiacare is a huge hit!! Markets surged this morning!!!
“Looks like Socialist Utopiacare is a huge hit!! Markets surged this morning!!!
”
So far, Socialist Utopiacare for seniors has been a huge hit for over 60 years and Medicare has been a huge hit since it was passed.
Socialism is popular, once it’s in place.
You know the GOP would throw 59 fits and fall in them if this country ever decided that we deserve time off like they do in Europe and passed legislation giving everyone a month to 6-weeks vacation, like they do in Europe. You just know the GOP would fight that.
Quality of life for the faceless masses? What’s that? Only the rich get quality of life, as far as the GOP ia concerned. You not only have to earn it, you have to get all the lucky breaks, too.
Look I’d rather have what conservative Republicans are calling our utopia than their idea of utopia; an America covered coast to coast and beyond with oil and gas rigs, coal factories dotting the country side and everyone working and buying cheap **** at Walmart.
That would be the conservative Republican free-market capitalism utopia.
Thanks, but no thanks.
# Andy | November 9th, 2009 at 09:30 am
Oddjob… I think that might be Bayh’s wife.
………………………..
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/10/29/joe_lieberman/index.html
” Why does Joe Lieberman oppose healthcare reform? Ask his wife
Both Lieberman and Evan Bayh have spouses who have profited from the healthcare industry
The Lieberman family’s financial ties to the health industry are no secret, yet their full extent remains unknown. During her husband’s 2006 reelection campaign, Hadassah Lieberman’s employment as a “senior counselor” to Hill & Knowlton, one of the world’s biggest lobbying firms, briefly erupted as an issue, especially because the clients she served were in the controversial pharmaceutical and insurance sectors. Exactly what she did for those clients has never been disclosed.”
“Look I’d rather have what conservative Republicans are calling our utopia than their idea of utopia; an America covered coast to coast and beyond with oil and gas rigs, coal factories dotting the country side and everyone working and buying cheap **** at Walmart. ”
That’s what we’ve got right now, essentially. And you can’t run a country that way; you just run it into the ground.
We’re lagging a couple decades behind the Japanese,now. They went through this 20 years ago when everyone in Japan pretty much moved out of their homes into their work placesa and just stayed there. They discovered working all the time isn’t any way to live. They don’t do it anymore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html
Paranoia Strikes Deep.
By Paul Krugman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html
Excerpt:
“What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.
The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?
But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.”
…………………….
Worth reading his entire column. However, I think that he is wrong about it’s role within the GOP being new.
He appears to have forgotten about the Senator Joe McCarthy(R) era.
I think the military is going to get hit hard for not weeding this guy out. He clearly did no wish to be there, his performance was suffering, and he was even (reportedly) talking up losses of fellow servicemen and women as if it were a good thing. At what point do you let this guy go and ship him off to some sort of religious rehabilitation/de-radicalization program?
Liam… good catch I did not know that.
Paranoia Strikes Deep.
By Paul Krugman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html
Excerpt:
“What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.
The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?
But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.”
…………………….
Worth reading his entire column. However, I think that he is wrong about it’s role within the GOP being new.
He appears to have forgotten about the Senator Joe McCarthy(R) era.
“some sort of religious rehabilitation/de-radicalization program?”
I don’t think there is such a thing.
And I think it was complicated by the fact that they guy is a psychiatrist.
“He appears to have forgotten about the Senator Joe McCarthy(R) era.”
Yeah, he does. He thinks the GOP is paranoid NOW? How old is Paul? The single most paranoid president ever was Richard Milhouse Nixon. He frakking barricaded himself in the White House and fired everybody one weekend – remember? Jeeeez, Paul = you honestly aren’t that bright except with numbers, are you?
Tena said: “We ask for this s*h*i*t in America by letting people run businesses like “Guns Galore.”
Well, this is a bit awkward given my proprietorship of Bernie’s Bazooka Barn (grenades are over there in the bulk bins). Our motto – ‘A man without a bazooka is a man without balls.”
What could be worse is our intelligence agencies working in silos. I thought we learned how dangerous that can be.
“Well, this is a bit awkward given my proprietorship of Bernie’s Bazooka Barn (grenades are over there in the bulk bins).”
LOL
But, Ihave to say it would be funnier if I couldn’t actually envision the place for real. I mean, there is a place called “Guns Galore” and it doesn’t get much more surreal than that, to me.
Bernie, you know I have trouble distinguishing parody from reality sometimes, especially coming from the Right. Don’t mess with my mind. Like Tena, I had no trouble envisioning your little store.
” Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?
”
There’s nothing new under our sun. This is the same war that we’ve fought since forever. It’s the war between two different views of life, two different approaches to living, that are always at war with each other.
And that entire struggle is largely generational – it’s based on age as much as anything else. Anyone look at one of those Tea-Bagger Rallies and try to average the ages of the folks there? Those were not young people by and large.
It’s stasis vs. change; but it’s really every duality we live with – it’s a constant struggle. That’s why I love Obama so damn much – he’s a dialectition. He goes for the synthesis and I love that.
Everyone knows I hate G-O-Politico, but they have a pretty decent article that mirrors my thoughts on the Stupak amendment vote. Imho, that vote was just as much a reflection of who Nancy Pelosi is as a leader as it was about abortion.
“”"But the speaker’s decision — like so many others she made during the drafting of this bill — showed Pelosi, a Roman Catholic and committed supporter of reproductive rights, to be more ruthlessly practical than her frequent caricature as an activist, upper-crust liberal from San Francisco would suggest.
It wasn’t just that she was disappointing some members over a last-minute change they disagreed with. She had to take on her closest and senior-most lieutenants on an issue that for many of them is like an article of faith, a defining tenet of what makes them a Democrat. And when she needed the votes, that’s what she did.
[...]
But if Pelosi defied her caricature in one regard, she lived up to another part of her reputation — as a diligent vote counter, who knew when to stroke the needs of her diverse membership and when to make the hard decisions to deliver the bill she and others in her caucus have long dreamed about.”"”
Imho she showed America (particularly moderate Republicans and Independents who are anti-Choice) that she is a leader of the people and a proponent and practitioner of real honest-to-God (no pun intended) Constitutional democracy.
Ethan – I think Madam Speaker Pelosi is a fabulous speaker and I think history will agree.
I’m damn proud of our Speaker – the first woman Speaker of the House. That still gives me goosebumps.
And I love especially that the Right hates her bitterly. That’s how you know she’s effective.
Three quarters of a loaf is better than no bread.
Speaker Pelosi did what she had to do, in order to pass the bill.
“Politics Is The Art Of The Possible” JFK
“Politics Is The Art Of The Possible” JFK
“Dennis Kucinich Is The F@rt Of The Impossible.” Liam
Tena, First Read too:
“”"It was an impressive performance; she had her share of backseat drivers in all parts of official Washington, and she pulled it off. By the way, the NEXT health care vote in the House should be easier to get, given that what comes out of conference (the “opt out” or the trigger) will likely be a tad easier for moderates to support. That said, the abortion issue could still end up a problem at some point in this process. But the way she navigated the bill over the weekend should re-shape the C.W. on her a tad. As the L.A. Times notes, she’s a lot more pragmatic than her opponents want to paint her. And now you know why she was able to become leader of her caucus and why she’s Speaker until either the voters decide — or she decide she doesn’t want the job anymore.”"”
Let’s see how far this reportage goes.
Will the Pelosi “not-a-Nazi-Liberal-activist-attack-dog” meme it make it into the MSM news tonight?
their idea of utopia
It was called The Gilded Age. McKinley, Karl Rove’s special favorite, was the last president of that era.
“Will the Pelosi “not-a-Nazi-Liberal-activist-attack-dog” meme it make it into the MSM news tonight?”
Well that kind of depends on who you consider to be part of the MSM.
Pelosi, a Roman Catholic and committed supporter of reproductive rights, to be more ruthlessly practical than her frequent caricature as an activist, upper-crust liberal from San Francisco would suggest.
She grew up in one of Baltimore’s most prominent political families. Wasn’t her dad the mayor at some point?
Pelosi is extremely effective, and maybe if the MSM closes their gaping jaws long enough, they’ll bother to type that down.
Meantime, I think this abortion exclusion/rider b.s. is unconstitutional, but if they have to keep it in their to get the law done then strip it out later, so be it.
And maybe somebody could redo the video with those soccer players and have Sarah Palin yanking Michelle Bachmann by her ponytail.
Back to work, see you later.
Tena, good point. I guess I should have said CSM (corporate sponsored media)… so imho that would cover the TV nets and news divisions (not op-ed) of major newspapers.
Oddjob, from NP’s whorunsgov profile:
The sixth child and only daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. and Annunciata, Pelosi was raised in the Little Italy section of Baltimore. She was introduced to the political world as a child because her father served as a Maryland House Member from 1939 to 1947 and then Baltimore mayor for 12 years. Her brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, was mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971.
As part of a heavily Catholic family, Pelosi’s mother wanted her to become a nun.(!!!!!) But instead, Pelosi attended Trinity College where she met her husband, Paul Pelosi, now a wealthy real-estate developer. …
I think this abortion exclusion/rider b.s. is unconstitutional
It might have been with the Burger court that ruled on Roe v. Wade, but that’s not a bet I’d take with this Rogers court.
“It’s just a little bit harder to feel sorry about a national tragedy like Ft. Hood…We ask for this s*h*i*t in America”
Words fail me…
“It’s difficult not to notice that when one considers that possible outcome in light of the popularity of Social Security and Medicare, and the GOP’s opposition to those measures when they were passed.”
There’s a lot of commentary that passing h/c reform will destroy the GOP. And yet, passage of Social Security and Medicare did not. I’m not so sure that even passing h/c reform will kill off that party.
I don’t know that it would kill off the GOP. Whether it killed the GOP would depend very much on how the GOP subsequently behaved. If it clings with ever increasing strength to only the Dixiecrats and John Birchers it will sooner or later vanish into third party irrelevance, but there’s no guarantee that will happen.
Whether it does or not those opposed to SS, Medicare, & a popular healthcare coverage regime will not go away. Sometimes the fragments of a once strong party aren’t able to resurrect themselves after a spectacular debacle, but that doesn’t mean everyone else in the country automatically supports the dominant political party that won the particular contest that destroyed its opponent.
sbj:
“Words fail me…”
Don’t bother…she’s an ignorant idiot who thinks with her ovaries.
As soon as she posted “cop-killer” gun and bullet, you should have known it was quackspeak.
If anything, it was lucky that Fundamentalist Muslim Terrorist Major Hasan used an FN Five-SeveN pistol.
The 5.7 mm round,(that’s a .22 caliber), fired from that handgun was marketed as being able to penetrate soft body armor, (and it doesn’t do that very well, even in the police/military loadings), The 40 grain 5.7 civilian legal ammo is essentially about equivalent to a .22 magnum or the old .22 Hornet.
It moves very fast, but is very lightweight, so it “drills” a small wound channel rather than dumping all of it’s energy into the target.
It’s essentially the difference between getting hit with an ice-pick as opposed to getting hit with a spear.
If Hasan had used a .40 caliber or a .45 ACP, or even the Smith and Wesson .357 he was also carrying, the death count would have been higher, although the number of people shot would have been lower,(from the lesser magazine capacities of the more potent calibers).
And of course it was an armed victim who shot Hasan and stopped his rampage.
“Don’t bother…she’s an ignorant idiot who thinks with her ovaries.”
I realize that comment was not to me, but seriously Bilgeman could you be any more condescending. That won’t get you very far in a country that houses over 50% of the “finer ***”.
Bilge, why do you have a total disrespect for human life?
lmsinca:
“I realize that comment was not to me, but seriously Bilgeman could you be any more condescending. That won’t get you very far in a country that houses over 50% of the “finer ***”.”
You’re assuming that that 50% are similar idiots incapable of rational and logical thought.
I know that that’s not the case, so where does that leave you?
You want to coddle a blowhard ignoramus because she happens to share some estrogen with you?
Be my guest.
But then don’t get your “feelings” hurt when people talk over some dim-bulb’s head like they’re a spoilt child having a hissy-fit.
“That’s why I love Obama so damn much – he’s a dialectition. He goes for the synthesis and I love that.”
LOL that is funny for so many reasons. He’s a dialectical materialist, I suppose one could make the case.
Bilge, waiting on your answer, thanks.
Right winger Bilgewater wants to go back to the days of slavery (literally) and thinks women are responsible for their pregnancies without any exception for rape and incest.
He’s a perfect ally for nickleback.
Both of those right wingers are intimidated by the size of even a single Harry Potter book.
It’s why right wingers operate so well in the limited thought capacity of the 144 character restrictions of Twitter.