...on the railroad, all the livelong day...

I'm sure harry Reid is humming this song to himself. I think back to that lost soul who came on here for a while. He just didn't understand what the term 'railroaded" meant. I wonder if he has a clearer definition now. I hope he has been watching as Harry has bribed and threatened his way to 60 votes. Perhaps if they had done all that stuff they promised about bipartisanship and transparency, we wouldn't be voting on cloture before the first word of debate and perhaps they could have gotten this bill done in the normal course of things, but from Day 1 the Dems have beeen on a mission to to completely exclude the Republicans (and their contituencies) from government. I had very low expectations of Obama and his administration, but I tried to step back and "give them a chance", as their supporters were so often saying back in the spring. I am sorry to say that they have failed to meet even the low expectations I had. I didn't think they could be much worse than I expected, but they are, and by a mile. Obama has really disappointed in the foreign policy front, especially Iran. I keep thinking he must be doing something right, to make chavez hate him, but what it is I don't know.

Alas, America.

My expectations were actually low enough that he has met them.

(12-21-2009 11:26 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  My expectations were actually low enough that he has met them.

Did he dive through them from above, as he did with me? I have learned that rockbottom is just the level over the basement... the first basement.

(12-21-2009 11:29 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(12-21-2009 11:26 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  My expectations were actually low enough that he has met them.

Did he dive through them from above, as he did with me? I have learned that rockbottom is just the level over the basement... the first basement.

I think he always started out low with me and has pretty much stayed there. I thought the most positive thing he did, by far, was let the on-scene commander make the decisions in the pirate/merchant ship captain situation, but I've heard recently that it wasn't his intent to do that, and that certain retaliatory actions may have been taken. If that's true, then I give him an absolute zero so far. I see nothing good that he has done, and nothing good to come.

I only hope and pray that the American people wake up and realize that they have made a horrible mistake before it is too late.

(12-21-2009 11:25 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  ...on the railroad, all the livelong day...

I'm sure harry Reid is humming this song to himself. I think back to that lost soul who came on here for a while. He just didn't understand what the term 'railroaded" meant. I wonder if he has a clearer definition now. I hope he has been watching as Harry has bribed and threatened his way to 60 votes. Perhaps if they had done all that stuff they promised about bipartisanship and transparency, we wouldn't be voting on cloture before the first word of debate and perhaps they could have gotten this bill done in the normal course of things, but from Day 1 the Dems have beeen on a mission to to completely exclude the Republicans (and their contituencies) from government. I had very low expectations of Obama and his administration, but I tried to step back and "give them a chance", as their supporters were so often saying back in the spring. I am sorry to say that they have failed to meet even the low expectations I had. I didn't think they could be much worse than I expected, but they are, and by a mile. Obama has really disappointed in the foreign policy front, especially Iran. I keep thinking he must be doing something right, to make chavez hate him, but what it is I don't know.

Alas, America.

On health care and Republicans being excluded . . .

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Sen Jim DeMint

"Death Panels" Sarah Palin and a celestial cloud of other R's

My congresscritter - Mike McCaul - R., on a "virtual" town hall meeting (he doesn't do in person town halls thanks the geography of DeLay's gerrymandering) was trotting out the "death panel" canard as late as October.

McCaul spouts R-talking points - independent thinking ain't his strong suit.

R's made a tactical move to kill health care rather than play ball . Other than a few outliers, that's the way it played out.

I suspect every Republican (other than McCain) grumbling about bribery would have given their left ovary to be in Landreau or Bernie Sander's position.

The holier than thou noises coming from the minority make me puke.

As has been commented on elsewhere, including Nate Silver's site below - health insurance stocks at a historic high.

Since I'm taking a couple of days of virtual office in the big easy - I've distracted myself by surfing the web . . . interesting sites, commentary, that might raise your blood pressure:

Was all this just a sell out? Deal made with big pharma and big insurance?

See this interview: Moyer's - Obama Sellout?

Nate Silver on voting for Senate version v. killing ala Howard Dean:

Left Right Convergence, Kill the Bill?

It'll be interesting to see what comes out of reconciliation.

Whether Obama's tactical move of tossing this to the Congress has worked, time will tell. It's going to be Obama's bill once he signs it.

The LSU-Rice game didn't have a thread? Great game.

R's were never seriously invited to participate. If you believe otherwise, then when was it?

There are no ideas that R's had on health care that are reflected in either the house or senate bill. If that's incorrect, what R idea or ideas are included? You can't have a bipartisan bill without some ideas from both sides, and there has been a concerted effort to exclude any republican ideas. You simply cannot deny that unless you don't wish to be bound by facts.

There will be "death squads." Palin just misidentified the source; what she got killed was not the death squads but the PR department for the death squads. The Council of Comparative Outcomes and the Health Choices Commission will ultimately function as death squads. There's simply no other way to control costs. Every universal system has something like a death squad. The better universal systems provide an out to get health care another way if you get "death squadded"--the Bismarck-type plans in France, Holland, Germany, Switerland let you go to a private system that works like our current system, with private health insurance.

UK tries to do the same thing, but they try to make NHS a lot more comprehensive than the Bismarck-type basic insurance plans, and as a result the private insurance option in UK is frightfully expensive. Canada doesn't even allow that. I'd rather UK than Canada as our ultimate destination, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why we didn't just go straight to the Bismarck approach.

That would have been a good thing for republicans to pursue, instead of being the party of "no." But given Obama's stated preference for single-payer, I don't imagine Bismarck would have gone very far.

David Brooks summarizes some of the pros and cons for supporting the bill. Needless to say, the cons ring more true to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/opinio...yt&emc=rss

Owl 69/70/75, as he noted on his pro #3, there are a lot of little programs to try things out. Some of these are actually Republican ideas, or have been in the past. But in general, I agree with your contention that their ideas were largely ignored. Of course, the Rs played the game largely like how the Ds played the game on Social Security with GWB. In this case, the Ds had numbers on their side, unlike the Rs in 2005.

aus - The LSU thread is over there. As for McCain, perhaps this is actually an area where he is in alignment with the party. Considering your hammering of the death panel line as being the part of the broken R line of thinking, I certainly don't recall McCain going down that line.

As for death panels, the insurance companies already have them, based on the definition of what is generally understood. It's nothing new, in private or public practice.

(12-21-2009 11:48 PM)gsloth Wrote:  As for death panels, the insurance companies already have them, based on the definition of what is generally understood. It's nothing new, in private or public practice.

With one HUGE difference. If my insurance company won't cover what I need, but another one will, I can change insurance companies. That option won't be available under a single-payer system (if we get there, and I still think that is the ultimate objective, so it still belongs in this discussion). Nor is it likely to be available under the kind of heavily regulated, one-size-fits-all insurance industry that we will most likely end up with over the next few years.

This is one of the beauties of the Bismarck approach. With basic coverage in place, there is great flexibility in the supplemental coverage. IIRC, in France you can even buy policies to cover things like holistic medicine and organic medicine. That makes for much more competitive supplemental insurance markets than we are going to have here (or indeed, than we have here now).

I've heard a couple of times when discussing the abortions compromise that Barbara Boxer was in the room. What Republicans were in the room? None. Ever.

Why was it written in a closed room? Didn't Obama promise these debates would be held on CSPAN? Where is the transparency? Wait a minute - what debates? Wasn't debate closed before it opened?

To answer your "sell out" question - Yes.

Why don't the Dems want any debate? Isn't the vote going to be 60-40 whether there is debate or not? Answer - they don't want people to know what is in the bill. Especially their own.

Republicans were excluded from Day one.

The holier than thou noises from the majority make me puke.

CBO has said that if everything does not work out exactly as projected, reductions in service are likely. That doesn't mean one aspirin instead of two - it means that some old coot like me may not be considered a good candidate for certain expensive procedures. Peath panel.

AusOwl, I want YOU to be a panel of one declaring whether or not i get certain treatments. I trust you more than the Obama Administration. You have never lied to me. Maybe with you taking care of me, it becomes a Life Panel.

Let's see, justifying bribery by declaring that you "suspect" every Republican would love to bribed also. You (and I) can suspect all we want, doesn't make it so. even if yiou are right, doesn't make ot right. Doesn't the fact that they were offered nothing prove the lack of bipartisanship?

The other tactic besides bribery is armtwisting and threats. How many Republicans do you think wish they had been threatened with base closings if they didn't go along?

There are two issues here - the bill and the procedure. The procedure stinks, and so does the bill.

It's nice to learn that nobody who owns or uses a tanning salon makes over $250K/yr. Didn't know that.

Interesting that when a Republican opposes a bill on principle, they are just out to get the president, but when a Democrat opposes a bill on principle, their principles can be bought off for some largess for their state.

Wonder if Texas could have been bought off, but since we had no Democrat Senators, we'll never get a chance (of course we weren't excluded - how silly. Our invitations just got lost. No lack of bipartisanship there).

Interesting that when Reid was questioned about the bribery, he said "That's what this bill is all about".

Reconciliation between who? Not the House and Senate - between the House Democrats and the Senate Democrats.

(12-21-2009 07:54 PM)ausowl Wrote:  .

R's made a tactical move to kill health care rather than play ball . Other than a few outliers, that's the way it played out.

Over the last couple of days, this the part of Ausowl's post I keep coming back to.

Apparently the view he has taken is that the Dems, in the spirit of bipartisanship, offered the Republicans a seat at the table to develop a healthcare initiative, and the Republicans, meeting behind closed doors, meanly rejected the olive branch and decided to do everything in their power to bring down the healthcare bill and Obama with it. Most of the time that this is suggested, it is stated that the reasoning behind this was that they just hated the idea of a black man in the White House. To his credit, ausowl did not say this or imply it, but the people whose reasoning he is following say it all too often.

First, to the history. There was never any effort on the part of the Dems to include the Republicans at any stage in any significant way. If they could pick off a couple of them, fine, but the party as whole was ignored. A few amendments offered by the minority in committees, supported by a Blue dog or two, maybe have sneaked by, but in the main, the bill was written free of Republican and Blue Dog influence.

Second, the republicans are viewed as just being obstructionist for the sake of opposing Obama, when in fact they are just being true to their principles. There seems to be an idea that Republicans should just abandon their positions and rubberstamp everything the dems want because either (a) the Dems won and that's that, or (b) they need to show they aren't racist. Did the Dems abandon their principles in '94 when the Rebublicans swept into power in the House and Senate or in 2000, 2002, and 2004? No - but now when the Reps do the same things the Dems did as minority party, suddenly they are evil, just want people to die early, are bent on imperialism, etc.? Maybe we will see how the Dems react in 2010 - will they say" You won the elections, let us do your bidding?" I think not. They may well become the next Party of No. Tag, you're it.

Third, while Senators and Congressmen have a duty to their contituency, they have a duty to the country also. Some of them have apparently put duty to state and party and themselves above duty to country. I wish my representatives would have, could have, read the bill and then would have, could have, worked out some of the mistakes, loopholes, and unfairnesses in debate. I wish everybody's representatives could have. Somebody denied them that chance. Know who? My understanding of the rush to pass this before allowing the Christmas recess, which should have come a month ago, is not a worry about people, but a worry that the people will talk to the representatives and some will change their mind. Good grief, can't have anyone changing their mind after talking to their constituents. How UnAmerican. Who gains from the hurry? Obama, to be sure, the liberal branch of the Democratic Party, yes, and...nobody else.

Not to deflect too much from the health care debate, but as another example of unintended consequences from current legislation (this one the carbon tax bill), current agriculture decisioning models suggest large-scale moves away from farming to tree planting if the current bills get passed.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009...ure-chief/

Of course, there are probably problems with the model, too, but I have a hard time believing that that large of a change can be easily explained away on faulty assumptions, given that the model seems to have been relatively accurate up until now.

And I will acknowledge that the source of this article can be expected to spin this story in a more negative light. I still have a hard time believing it is insignificant.

To get us back to the health care debate, our legislators continue to play games with their accounting and promises - stuff that would get a corporate executive thrown in jail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/health...ealth.html

The CBO still stands by its deficit reducing estimates for the bill, though.

And the funny piece is buried at the end, in a quote from the chief Medicare actuary about the $500B over 10 years being considered:

Quote:But, Mr. Foster said, some of the estimated savings “may be unrealistic” because they assume increases in productivity that can probably not be attained by hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies.

(12-29-2009 10:30 PM)gsloth Wrote:  To get us back to the health care debate, our legislators continue to play games with their accounting and promises - stuff that would get a corporate executive thrown in jail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/health...ealth.html

The CBO still stands by its deficit reducing estimates for the bill, though.

And the funny piece is buried at the end, in a quote from the chief Medicare actuary about the $500B over 10 years being considered:

Quote:But, Mr. Foster said, some of the estimated savings “may be unrealistic” because they assume increases in productivity that can probably not be attained by hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies.

I can hear the rhetoric now, as the Dems try to push through another tax increase to cover the increases in the deficit due to this. It will be needed because there was no way these cost increases/revenue shortfalls could have been anticipated when this legislation was passed, and in any case, it's Bush's fault.

Both the Republicans and Democrats have been known to use "fuzzy math" to suit their legistative agenda.

Still what worries me is that you won't get an accurate accounting as to the real cost until 2013 when it starts fully paying out. In the meantime taxes get paid into the kitty.

What upsets me the most are the Republicans who are going to campaign in 2010 and 2012 on "repealing" the Heath Care Bill. I agree with Mike Cannon at the Cato Institute.. the only sure way to kill the Bill is to cause as much public discontent as possible before a Conference report is completed and cause a fracture among the Democrats based upon abortion and the fiscal costs. You won't be able to "repeal" the Bill later on.

This isn't like Prohibition..it doesn't have significant opposition from both parties.