The known universe

From the American Museum of Natural History. Makes our problems, and our lives, seem incredibly insignificant, doesn't it?

Jon Stewart destroys Laura Ingraham for comparing health care to the Holocaust

(Huff Post)

Jon Stewart took on the most recent Tea Party protests last night. And while much as been made of the crowd itself, Stewart was quick to point out that the speakers were just as over-the-top as the rowdy masses.

Steve Lonegan, state director for Americans For Prosperity, tried to echo the sentiments of the crowd, exclaiming that "we cannot allow the pen to become mightier than the sword." Stewart knocked Lonegan for the statement, saying that the pen being mightier than the sword is "only the basis for our civilization."

But the speaker taking the cake was Laura Ingraham. The radio personality paraphrased a famous Holocaust poem, "First They Came, " in an attempt to make an analogy to her stance against health care reform. Her evocation of the Nazis was a tad hyperbolic in the eyes of Stewart, who seemed to doubt that Ingraham recognized that "came for" was a euphemism for "round up and kill."

Stewart closed by making a pledge to Ingraham:

"If the government begins to round up and kill the rich and the landowning and those who choose to exercise the right to bear arms...I'll speak up."

So this looks pretty good

It feels kind of pithy to post a movie trailer right now, but I'll admit that Iron Man 2 looks really good. But did they have to do anything to put Mickey rourke in character, or did he just roll onto the set like that?

Colbert: senile Lieberman goes from "Joe-mentum" to "Joe-mentia"

Fucking Lieberman and why we should pass the bill anyway

Recap:

Joe Lieberman didn't like the public option - an exchange like Travelocity where private insurance would have to compete with a government-run health plan. The public option would have forced competition on a monopolistic system and by everyone's guess, it would have meant lower end rates for the consumer.

But Joe threatened to filibuster the bill and since he's number 60, he got his way. Public option dead.

The next plan was a Medicare buy-in for those between 55 and 65. It would have given millions of people a lower-cost option to get good insurance. However Joe's corporate masters in Hartford didn't like it, so he again threatened to filibuster.

And Rahm Emmanuel and the White House caved and the Medicare buy-in is no more.

Which is where the first part of the title comes from. Lieberman even admits he came to oppose the Medicare buy-in - which he supported 3 months ago - because liberals and progressives liked it so much.

I was with Howard Dean in his "kill the bill" sentiments. At first.

However, notice the relative quiet from the GOP lately. They're letting Democrats kill each other in a circular firing squad. They're thinking "we don't need to touch this bill, Lieberman and the Dems will do it for us." So killing the bill plays into their hands.

Matt Yglesias notes the real reason not to oppose this bill: because human lives are at stake. Lieberman might not care but:

Lieberman has unlimited control over what happens, and no incentive to compromise, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s being uncompromising. Can’t liberals be just as stiff-necked as Lieberman? Sure, they could. But liberals members do have an incentive to compromise—the tens of thousands of people who die every year for lack of health insurance. The leverage that Lieberman and other “centrists” have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.

As Nate Silver writes, progressives would be crazy to oppose this bill. Is it flawed? Yes. has the Senate sold us down the river? Yes. But this bill will save families thousands of dollars on their health care expenses.


And as Bob Cesca observes, there is an alternate path to the end goal.

Tim F. at Balloon Juice has an interesting solution:

I say pass the Liebermanized bill and let the President sign it. Then use reconciliation to get the rest.

As he explains, all of the insurance regulations, which can't be passed via reconciliation, would remain in the current bill, and the public option, Medicare buy-ins, etc, would be passed with reconciliation.

Of course this begs the question: Would Lieberman filibuster the Senate bill anyway if he caught wind of the public option and Medicare buy-in being passed in a separate reconciliation bill? He might. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

Adding... Ezra Klein wrote about the same idea:

A lot of e-mailers have asked whether Congress could pass health care now and then come back in a year and pass the public option, or Medicare buy-in, through reconciliation. The answer is yes, they absolutely can. They'd need to plan for it in the budget, as reconciliation instructions have to be passed at the beginning of the year. But there's nothing stopping them from doing that.
The question, in fact, is not "can they," but "will they?" And that depends, I guess, on a couple of things. First, the amount of sustained attention activists give to the issue. Second, how the issue plays in the 2010 midterms.

Obama's worst enemy is his own party

Excellent reporting from Bob Cesca here and here. This is all his, I'm quoting verbatim:

Prepare to lose your shit.

Two key senators criticized the most recent healthcare compromise Sunday, saying the policies replacing the public option are still unacceptable. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) both said a Medicare “buy-in” option for those aged 55-64 was a deal breaker.

“I’m concerned that it’s the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option,” Nelson said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Lieberman said Democrats should stop looking for a public option “compromise” and simply scrap the idea altogether.

Motherf-ckers.

For the record, Ben Nelson is of Medicare age. I wonder if he enjoys single-payer health insurance. Anyone want to dig and find out if Nelson and Lieberman are on Medicare? Anyone?

Adding... Can someone tell me how President Obama could ever have pushed Medicare For All past these guys?

Also... It's clear that healthcare reform can't pass the Senate. If Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin can come up with a reconciliation path that doesn't eviscerate the bill, they should seriously be looking into it. If for no other reason but to hurl a gigantic "EFF YOU" in the direction of the Lieberdems who are crippling this process.

Benen on the political impact of writers like Taibbi (more on the Taibbi RS article here and here):

Over the last several months, the right has come to believe that the president is a fascist/communist, intent on destroying the country, while at the same time, many on the left have come to believe the president is a conservative sell-out. The enraged right can't wait to vote and push the progressive agenda out of reach. The dejected left is feeling inclined to stay home, which as it turns out, also pushes the progressive agenda out of reach.

My ongoing concern is the same as Benen's. Will this conflict on the left flank help to elect more Republicans? The more I (anecdotally) hear progressives revisiting names like Ralph Nader, I think the answer is yes. My memories of the 2000 election are still fresh -- as is my memory of pressing the button for Nader in the voting booth because I was disillusioned with the Democratic Party and (very mistakenly) thought Al Gore was Just Like Bush. Huge mistake.

Benen also adds:

Remember: nothing becomes law in this Congress unless Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman approve. Literally, nothing. That's not an encouraging legislative dynamic, and it's not within the power of the White House to change it.
It is within the power of voters to change it.

Obama has asked Congress to deliver on a pretty large-scale agenda. For all the talk about the president's liberalism or lack thereof, the wish-list he's presented to lawmakers is fairly progressive, and it's not as if Obama is going to start vetoing bills for being too liberal.

In short: if progressives get pissy and stay home, more conservadems and Republicans will be elected. This must not happen. Nothing the president does can change the fact that the Senate is ruled by five people right now.

It's also my contention that as soon as the far-left abandons the White House, the sooner the White House will grapple onto the conservadem middle. Regardless of whether Obama or his left flank is to blame for this, it's what could surely happen.

I know how easy it is to be angered and frustrated by otherwise friendly politicians. I also understand how there might be a lot of leftover angst from the Bush years and the Democratic primary campaign. I think the only way to improve the situation in our favor is to put mistakes and missteps into perspective, instead of kneejerking over every leak and compromise.

And finally, Matt Yglesias offers this:

The fact of the matter is that Matt Taibbi is more liberal than I am, and I am more liberal than Larry Summers is, but Larry Summers is more liberal than Ben Nelson is. Replacing Summers with me, or with Taibbi, doesn’t change the fact that the only bills that pass the Senate are the bills that Ben Nelson votes for.

Exactly. Ask yourself how President Obama can govern progressively with Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman filibustering with Republicans.

Obama caught in his own web on the PhRMA deal

Over the summer Obama made a deal with PhRMA, the drug companies lobbying arm, to cap drug cuts at $80 billion over 10 years in exchange for their support of his health reform.

Well, health reform as we knew it in July (ie: a public option, among many others) has blown up but the President is sticking by his deal. Or trying to. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has proposed a bill to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada. Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) is working to keep the amendment from coming to a vote, ostensibly at the behest of the White house, who intends to stand by its deal.

The amendment has the support of a number of other Republicans, including Sens. John McCain (AZ), Charles Grassley (IA), John Thune (SD) and David Vitter (LA).

Huff Post reports: Opponents of the amendment worry that many more Republicans may join the amendment not because they agree with it, but because they want to put the health care bill in jeopardy.

So the White House and the drug makers are trying to persuade as many Democrats as they can to oppose the amendment despite their previous support for it.

"I don't think that's going to get my vote," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said when HuffPost asked about the reimportation amendment. He said that even though he is a supporter of reimportation, he is concerned that if it passes it could blow everything up.

"I'm not messing around with anything without 60 votes. Nothing," he said. "And I'm a co-sponsor of the amendment."

Why the fuss?

According to Huff, Within a decade, reimportation would save consumers roughly $80 billion and the federal government $19 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But that would mean $100 billion more in lost revenue than the powerful Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) lobby agreed to bear-- in exchange for being supportive of the overall health reform effort.

Obama HAS to walk away from this deal. HAS TO. He cannot appear to be in bed with the pharmaceutical lobby in opposition to further savings for the American consumer. He cannot let the GOP get any leverage. Right now, they (along with Joe Lieberman) appear to be the whores for big pharma and big insurance - more interested in protecting their corporate masters than helping the American taxpayer.

That's HUGE leverage come 2010 and 2012. Obama must walk away.

The difference between a Pacifism Prize and a Peace Prize

Lawrence O'Donnell to Presidential historian Michael Beschloss on Obama's Nobel (start at 13:42):

...this is not the Nobel Pacifism Prize. This is the Peace Prize that went to President Wilson after World War One. The expectation that you have to be a pacifist to get it, has not been historically correct.

O'Donnell makes a great point about the difference between peace and pacifism. Although I have great reservations about the Afghan strategy, I can't say I didn't know it was coming. Obama campaigned on it.

I also refuse to be brought in as an accomplice of the right wing, who are using this issue to try to split progressives and liberals.