The money shot (re: Global "whatever"): If the impact of our behaviour on humanity at large is much greater or more rapid than ever before then we shall have to find ways of dealing with that which do not involve sacrificing the most enlightened form of government ever devised. There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way.
#1
ION WAFF > ORTHODOX PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE:TURKEY HAS NO PLACE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION. Opined that Turkey is not the same country it was in the near past + contemnpor Turkey may ultimately prove to a covert Muslim "Trojan Horse" that destroys Europe???
* SAME > INSURGENT ATTACKS FOLLOW A UNIVERSAL PATTERN OF TIMING AND CASUALTIES [UoMiami Pert + Team believes Insurgency as a form of Human Behavior can be "measured" or quantified unto RELIABLE PREDICTIVE MODEL???
Harry Reid got his 60. Ben Nelson resorted to the typical Washington expedient in such situations and bought into a few window-dressing compromises, in exchange for an enormous Medicaid benefit to his state. The Cornhusker Kickback joins the Louisiana Purchase as the latest evidence that theres nothing like a hundred million or so in federal dollars to alleviate a senators deeply held concerns about the substance of Obamacare. Nelsons sellout is a gigantic step toward the passage of the bill, but its not over yet. Here are five obstacles that still stand between Reid-Pelosi and a White House signing ceremony: Go read the rest of it.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/21/2009 09:38 ||
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#1
Well, that was sheery, and the really good news is that all the cheer is bad news for progressives!
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/21/2009 12:09 Comments ||
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#2
Cheery, not sheery, Sheesh!
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/21/2009 12:16 Comments ||
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#3
"The unions hate the Cadillac tax, since they enjoy such plans themselves, the fruit of collective bargaining. If the House gives in, it will create even more unrest on the Left."
The Left will not hold up this Bill but their votes will come at a price. Unions are their meal ticket. Look for Card Check and Immigration Reform to percolate to the top of the legislative docket early next year in the House.
#4
1) Public revulsion doesn't seem to be slowing the Democrats down any. The timeline is exactly what Reid wanted.
2) The Stupak dozen don't matter. The House vote was 220 in favor because Pelosi let some of her votes go 'no' to save them. But she can get them back if she needs them.
3) Payment will get resolved in the way Landreau and Nelson were taken care of -- the unions will get an exemption and the rich will be told to suck it up.
4) Blue Dogs are going to take the hit. Pelosi and Axelrod think they can save their majority by ramming this through and then spending the next year hand-waving and blaming everything that is bad on George Bush. Why not -- it's worked since 2006. But there are a lot of liberal Dems who would be happy to pass the health care bill, take a 'temporary' hit in the House, and plan on winning in 2012.
5) The Left has nowhere to go. They could sit on their hands like libertarian-Repubs did in '06 and '08 (how'd that work out for you, Bill Quick?) but generally they're smarter about those sorts of things. And regardless, ACORN and the SEIU will be rustling every vote they possibly can. So the Dems can reasonably count on little defection from the Left.
Unfortunately this sucker is going to get through. God help us all.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/21/2009 12:46 Comments ||
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#6
Unless the Donks are going to pass this and then use it to claim that the republicans are going to take way all healthcare. They did it before - claiming that a 7-8% increase was a social-security slash which would force seniors to eat catfood, etc... It was a lie. The MSM knew and admitted it wasn't the truth - and then went and continued the claim.
I can hear it now:
"The republicans are going to take away your health insurance! The republicans are going to take away your health insurance! YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!"
With the MSM harping this from the rooftops for 6 months
C.K. MacLeod, "Hot Air" This is IMPORTANT. Please read it all.
The history of Western democracy includes some truly stunning partisan wipe-outs, but we dont need to dwell on what today seems a remote political possibility (as remote as, say, a ca. 60-Democrat Senate seemed in 2002). Dismantling, impeding, nullifying, and, in the end, fully repealing this bill does not require 60 Republicans or 60 conservatives: Greater legal, legislative, and historical minds than mine must already be studying the precedents and gaming the scenarios, but we can observe here that, if passing popular legislation in the Senate always required partisan super-majorities, we wouldnt have had a major piece of legislation signed since 1979. We dont know yet how the final votes in the Senate or for final passage after a House-Senate conference may go, but reversing them down the road would merely require a popularly backed majority joined by a passel of fence-sitters, perhaps including Democratic senators who in the current session vote for cloture but against final passage, perhaps including a few changes of heart. It could be as simple as that.
Looking further ahead, speculatively, the President himself would likely remain a roadblock to formal repeal, but, even prior to the election of 2012, the damage control that Instapunk describes, involving excision of particularly obnoxious elements of the bill, might effectively impede its implementation. Moreover, its well worth keeping in mind that removing the budgetary heart of the bill can be achieved via the Senate reconciliation process on a simple, unfilibusterable 51-vote majority (especially easy to justify if Obamacare finally passes on party line votes as narrow as Pelosicares in the House). If virtual repeal on this basis looks achievable as early as, say, 2011, the President might veto an O-care-destroying budget, while hoping for a re-play of the Clinton-Gingrich government shutdown confrontation of 1995, but such a battle could unfold in many different ways. After Obama is gone, a conservative president and conservative majority, at the crest of a continuing or revived conservative wave, could much more easily achieve effective or formal repeal.
The only reason to consider such outcomes impossible would be belief that the public will change its mind, that we do not face a looming fiscal and economic crunch, and that entitlement programs, once enacted, cannot ever be rescinded.
The first two propositions are at minimum debatable, and the tides of opinion and economic projection currently seem in conservatives political favor . . . As for the third point, on the supernatural immortality of entitlement programs, we hear and read variations on it frequently sometimes offered with a knowing laugh, lately from conservatives who have been attempting to gin up opposition to O-care but, if and when the bill passes and is signed, the embrace of this perspective would be defeatism pure and simple.
It would also remain an exaggeration, because entitlements or their equivalent have repeatedly been cut or eliminated around the world and throughout history though frequently, it must be admitted, only as a result of economic or political breakdown. The modern European welfare state has indeed been extremely difficult to unravel, but it hasnt been around for very long. For most of the time that it has been in existence, progressivism, socialism, and their variants were historically new and on the rise, and were further supported by economic and political contingencies (including military and economic support from the US of A) that cannot last forever.
As for this specific entitlement, what makes anyone believe that any guarantee it entails or calculation it depends on will be sustainable for very long, much less become permanent? We will soon have to make some difficult fiscal choices on an almost incomprehensible scale, or have them made for us via national bankruptcy under which latter situation all such entitlements would merely entitle the citizen to go searching with devalued dollars or theoretical guarantees for scarce to non-existent goods and services. The crisis of debt-supported, obligation-deferred, risk-displaced welfare state capitalism that exploded last year is not over. Its hardly even in abeyance, and Obamacare promises to deepen and accelerate it.
Before the next reckoning is reached, a coherent political force can achieve things that previously seemed politically impossible. That sort of change, believed in or not, has happened before in history, several times in our own history, and sometimes far ahead of the schedule set by the change agents themselves. Furthermore, as has been pointed out by many observers ever since the polls turned decisively against Obamacare, no legislation this sweeping, partisan, and unpopular has ever before been passed. To use one of the Obama Administrations favorite words, enactment of Obamacare would be truly unprecedented. We should therefore consider that unprecedented events tend to imply unprecedented responses, and unprecedented political events require and ensure unprecedented political responses: The only real question is how long the equal and opposite reaction can be denied and suppressed.
If Obamacare, on its own terms or as implicated in approaching fiscal catastrophe, remains anywhere near as unpopular over the coming years as it is now, there is no fundamental reason why it cant be rescinded piece by piece or all at once. I therefore remain convinced that the proper response by conservatives to its passage cannot and must not be despair certainly not yet, certainly not while a popular wave against the prime perpetrators is rising, and not while the tools of democratic self-government are still within reach. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
12/21/2009 08:05 ||
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After Obama is gone, a conservative president and conservative majority, at the crest of a continuing or revived conservative wave, could much more easily achieve effective or formal repeal.
#2
As I mentioned on another post, what one Congress enacts, another can rescind. The crisis of debt-supported, obligation-deferred, risk-displaced welfare state capitalism that exploded last year has a mathematical necessity about it that cannot be avoided regardless of politicians. The only questions are who will suffer, how much, and when?
#3
Jesus said we should pray for our leaders. In Psalm (I can't remember wich one) there is a prayer I say every day for Obama. "May his days be short and his leadership soon taken over by another".
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/21/2009 11:41 Comments ||
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It might be a nice start if we could have massive protests around the country on the day of Obama's State Of The Union address, to help set the tone for the year. It needs to be made clear to our elected officials that the turmoil and strife is not going to fade into the background once the bill is passed. Let no member of Congress (or the administration) feel secure enough to say, "We've settled the health care issue, now we can put that aside and go back to business as usual".
Sir, Perhaps it would be letting Schrödinger's cat out of the bag to suggest that there was a special reason for selecting the Danish capital for the forthcoming conference on global climate change. Each participant will be able to leave with a "Copenhagen interpretation", where climate change can both exist and not exist at the same time. This is not dissimilar from the synonymous problem that has plagued quantum physics.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
