No balls, whatsoever.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Add to that:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1955837,00.html – Air America goes into bankruptcy.
Health reform is dead.
SCOTUS stabs the constitution in the heart.
And of course, John Edwards finally fesses up. Not that I care. But it’s just one more thing on an already horrific day.
This has to be one of the worst days I’ve ever had, and that’s really saying something.
The only thing I’m looking forward to is getting together with some neighborhood Dems tonight. At least I won’t have to rail alone.
they should get voted out. I have no sympathy Booman.
Had he stood up and carried the flag on health care the nation would have gotten behind him and the Republicans would have been carried along in the flood.
Do you know, even now, what Barack Obama wants America’s health care to look like? Is he proud of the Nebraska Compromise?
still sticking with the magic ponies and rainbows theory, Ed?
but Obama.
You quoted Truman earlier. Where the hell does the buck stop in 2010?
We’d have a better chance with a magic pony than a weak president.
the point is, we don’t HAVE a magic pony. We have only a man. And he’s STILL better than any of the alternatives would have been.
Why attack him?
Put your thinking cap on and see how we can help. Dissing Obama gets us nowhere at all.
I’m really curious: what’s you obsession that everybody should dump on Obama about, anyway? It’s like you just can’t stand that there’s anybody out there that’s not screaming that he’s a piece of shit. What’s in it for you?
on health care?
Has he pissed away the most powerful year of his administration on it?
Has he resurrected the Republican Party which one short year ago was widely considered to be dead?
My sincere hope is that the President will wake up, take off the gloves and start fighting. But he’ll never do that if there’s nothing but a chorus of Boomans telling him he’d be doing a great job if it weren’t for his advisers or Congress or the Republicans or Wall Street or whatever.
Where do you get the idea that I think he’s a “piece of shit”? I think he’s a weak president who has the potential to be a strong one. If he doesn’t make that transition we’re all fucked.
An interesting question that probably has an interesting answer.
It’s not so much magic ponies but look:
Whatev?
Josh Marshall | January 21, 2010, 4:22PM
I’ve been very hard on the House in this Health Care train wreck. But what we’re learning now is that the White House does not seem to be lifting a finger to move things. From what we can tell, nothing. Robert Gibbs’ statement at the briefing today seems to embody the White House’s stance at a much deeper level than I’d imagined. They just don’t seem to even want to hear about it.
This is what has continually astounded me. Why is he seriously doing nothing? I simply do not understand why that is happening. There is no plan to ever prepare for what happens when nothing passes (if that’s even possible) or rebuild after the bloodbath. I simply don’t follow.
the White House response today was terribly weak and disoriented. Sure, let Reid and Pelosi talk to their caucuses and report back, but now is not the time to lay back.
I’m enormously frustrated too, but I’m wondering what the correct play is for Obama in this situation. The Congressional Dem Caucus has been just waiting for an opportunity to bolt and cut deals with K-street.
When you start off calling it “no balls”, seems like you’re suggesting that the whole debacle comes from cowardice. So what’s your beef with Ed’s claim?
Massachusetts voters have just said they are more concerned about the economy than healthcare, and what do Dems do? They propose to spend the next few months devising and passing a whole range of Health care bills. And with precisely what assurance that they can get 60 votes for anything else worthwhile?
The Republicans will happily let them debate health care all the way to November when the electorate will have its revenge for lack of action on the economy. What planet are these guys living on?
Pass the Senate Bill, get it out of the way. And then debate improvements to be worked out through the reconciliation process or attached to some other bill. But get the main job done NOW! The public will not countenance further procrastination.
You’re right. You can’t separate health insurance reform from the economy:
Make no mistake: the cost of our health care is a threat to our economy. It is an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It is a ticking time-bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America. [Obama’s Speech to the AMA, June ’09]
I don’t know. If they put up small bills that do the overwhelmingly popular stuff like ending preexisting condition denials, forbidding recission, expanding medicare/medicaid, subsidizing premiums, and adding a public option, it seems like the Reps and the turncoat Dems would have a much harder time standing up and stopping them from talking about it in the Senate. The 1000-page mess gave the insuranceco shills a lot of cover as being “concerned” about the sheer complication. If they can come up with a 12-page bill that covers all the above, or a couple 5-page bills that do, how is that not all to the good? If they can do it by budget reconciliation, so much the better.
I’m not suggesting that the current Senate Bill is great, but that it is a matter of political survival now for the dems to be seen to have passed something substantial. By all means cherrypick some nice smaller objectives the Republicans will find difficult to oppose – on Healthcare, on Bank Bonuses, on Bank regulation, on jobs etc. and dare the republicans to oppose – Obama is already doing that on the Banks.
The lesson for the future is: smaller simpler bills that have a clear and saleable rationale and don’t attempt to solve all problems all at once.
But we are where we are, and that is staring a major defeat in the face – one that will deface the rest of Obama’s Presidency if it is not overcome. Pass it. Sell it as a victory. Fix/address any issues that arise or improvements that become possible in a more focused way. But move on before the electorate leaves you completely.
You’re right. That’s exactly what Raul Grijalva wants to do. Whenever there’s a choice between a quick accessible solution and more sausage making, the Congress proves how much it loves sausage.
Massachusetts doesn’t care about health care because they already have health care. They have a generous state run health care policy already. Something like 98% coverage.
More like “no overies”, if you ask me.
How about a nice, gender-neutral term?
I’m glad the Senate’s Health Insurance Industry Enrichment Act is dead. It doesn’t provide a public option to balance mandated participation. It doesn’t offer expanded Medicare. It undercut the viability of exchanges by pushing them down to state-level, etc.
The whole damned legislative process of appeasement and compromise turned health care reform into a friggin’ poison apple and I’m glad the House isn’t going to swallow it whole! I say they’ve got balls to resist the pressure to pass something/anything when they know it’s no good.
It would be nice if The Hill could get its story straight so we’d at least know what we’re talking about here:
But then:
So what the hell does the proposal really say?
It doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, just like an agonized mess like the 1000-page bill didn’t seem like such a good idea. How do you sell something that can be described as just about anything because nobody really knows what it says? What’s so terrible about Pascrell’s idea, if it can be passed, maybe through budget reconciliation? It sounds better in some ways than what we would have got out of the Senate bill. What am I missing here?
l think you’re missing the true import of the whole HCR [rip] kabuki that we’ve just witnessed.
both the democRATss and RATpublicans have accomplished exactly what their corporate overlords wanted…destroying, for all intents and purposes, any chances that we’ll see anything remotely resembling a reasonable health care policy in this country…read single payer/public option…for at least another generation.
an oscar worthy performance it was, too…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
we/ve been had.
Wow, I am so depressed and pissed off at the team that I spend my life defending. Cheney was right about the White House dithering but just picked the wrong topic. This is beyond pathetic and I do not understand how politicians can be so god awful at politics.
Democrats play politics like Billy Joel drives.
Wow. I came here to get away from that depressing blackwaterdog post at dkos. Didn’t I just leave this party?
The big question is, what went on behind the scenes. I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama made it perfectly clear to the the Senate and House leadership what he wanted, and that they, or at least the Senate, then went ahead from day one and did it their way, fucked the entire thing up, and he’s so pissed off he doesn’t really know what to do now.
Remember when he said to Harry Reid, “I hope you know what you’re doing?” That may have been a small glimpse of it. Obama wouldn’t have said that if Reid had been following Obama’s directions.
Anyway, if I were writing this novel, that would be the story.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/07/harry-reid-i-dont-work-fo_n_155838.html
I don’t know. We never heard one rumor or whisper about Obama being firm. It was always “the president needs to take the lead,” or “Obama talked about how it was historic” never anything more hands on. You’d think we would have heard a peep if it was something else from somewhere.
What I really don’t get is how they prepared no message for the loss. Even if you can’t spin it badly, at least have all the Dems say “we still have a 18 seat majority. As for Scott Brown I caution him to watch how he votes or lose his seat.”
See? How hard is that?
We never heard it, that’s my point. Obama had been a senator himself, he knew them all and he knew how the Senate worked. Did you read the article I linked to? Why did Reid even make that statement? It doesn’t add up, I tell you. Does Reid still regard him as a junior senator?
Whatever the reality, I get mighty sick of the so-called lefties that assume they know everything that went on offstage. There’s no reason to claim he didn’t spend all the political capital he had for something better and still didn’t get it. With assholes like Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln and 40 Republicans, plus a legislative atrocity like the US Senate to overcome, this constant assumption that he could have just made it happen strikes me as at least as asinine as some sign carried by a teabagger.
We’ve been here before.
http://www.princeton.edu/~starr/20starr.html
/The Republicans enjoyed a double triumph, killing reform and then watching jurors find the president guilty. It was the political equivalent of the perfect crime. /
Gee that sounds familiar…
That comment could have been said in mid-2009 when Max Baucus arrested the single-payer advocates who were demonstrating because a single-payer expert did not testify to the Senate Finance Committee.
And many times since then. Now for understanding what “balls” means, consider this from Jesse Unruh:
Nothing like a little bit of justice here in Jersey..
http://www.bluejersey.com/diary/14237/inmates-being-released-without-explanation-as-fbi-invetsigates
-camden-police-officers