Steve Benen, when discussing the fact that Democrats are looking at expanding Medicare, states the following:
The story of the day is not Ben Nelson introducing a Senate version of the Stupak language — the smart money is on it failing (I’d put the over/under at 43) — but rather a “sweetener” for the left, to make another public option compromise more palatable.
While Steve is focused on the Medicare angle, I think he is missing something rather big. What on earth can drama queens Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman do to get in the news tomorrow?
If the two are feeling creative, I’m predicting a candlelight vigil with Nelson and Stupak on the Capitol steps complete with prayer beads, Randall Terry, and placards of fetuses. Because if we have learned anything, Ben Nelson doesn’t give two hoots in hell about health care reform, all he cares about is his name in the news and that sweet, sweet, succulent insurance industry money.
If they are not feeling creative, probably just another filibuster threat, which, after the first fifteen of them, have become rather passé.
Tom Hilton
Nelson, yes. Lieberman not so much. He’s a douchebag on a lot of issues, but IIRC abortion isn’t one of them.
Tom Hilton
Now that I think of it, Lieberman has been squishy on choice, so I take that back (partly). “Rape-gurney Joe” springs to mind, from when he argued for the ‘right’ of Catholic hospitals to deny emergency contraception to rape victims. Still not in the league of someone like Nelson, though.
The Republic of Stupidity
Which leads us to the burning question of the day:
Perhaps we need to follow Steve Martin’s lead in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid…
We need to ask ben, “How much are they paying you?”
Then we just double it and have him beat THEM up instead…
Demdude
I think this is always their “get out of Jail Free card”. Whenever they want to block something, they throw in abortion. It makes it a “moral” argument instead of just saying “I’m whoring for the Insurance Companies”.
Sick For Profit
When the dust clears and we find out – “We did get fooled again” it’s time to dust off our pitchforks and go running after the Health Insurance Companies. Look here:
http://sickforprofit.com/ceos/
and then tell me why does an anti-trust exemption exist?
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200909/091709a.html
beltane
Does this mean that if we clap loudly at their next performance, they will be sufficiently mollified to go away quietly? Maybe we should be praising Lieberman instead of attacking him. MoveOn can send out “Joe is God” stickers to their members.
aimai
I really don’t understand who “the democrats” are negotiating with over this new medicare trial balloon? I mean, Snowe, Collins, Lieberman, Landrieu, Nelson, and Lincoln–not to mention Conrad and Carper–have proven over and over and over again that they are either too stupid to understand what is in the legislation, or too corrupt and ill disposed to vote for a good bill. In a bargaining situation where both sides want a bill to pass you can have one side trade something for another–but in a bargaining situation where pivotal voters want nothing at all to pass exactly what are you going to trade them to get their vote? Lieberman and Nelson have done everything but drop their trousers and shit on Obama and the other dems at this point. And collins and Snowe have done just about everything else to demonstrate that if the bill makes any difference at all to real people’s lives and hopes they will kill it. So to the extent that there’s lots of good stuff in the bill already can someone explain to me why the Democrats are acting like someone of this troglodyte trio is going to suddenly go “wow! this is a bill I can vote for!?”
This whole negotiation looks like this:
Democrats: here’s a lovely cat! and it can live in your house and just run in and out through the cat door.
Lieberman et al: well, I think it won’t fit through the cat door, why don’t you cut off its tail?
Dems: OK!
Snowe: “Yeah, I’d like the cat, just cut off its left front leg!”
Dems: OK!
Carper: “I know, how about if you cut off both its ears. It won’t hear so good, but I like a cat with a trim appearance!”
Dems: OK!
Nelson: hey, without one leg its lopsided. Cut off two more.
Dems–no way. Well, maybe just one more.
Dems: now will you vote and take the cat?
Lieberman, Carper, Nelson et al “hell no, this thing is dead.”
aimai
jl
Some lifer bait kabuki theatre might be in store from some of the corporate lacky Democrats. But it would be a transparent ploy.
I took a few stiff drinks this weekend and caught up on the status health reform legislation.
The only common theme I can see to the objections that Lincoln, Nelson, Bayh, Lieberman crowd is that any real reform might inconvience big health insurance and health plan companies. Just read their quotes over the last month or so, and that is about it.
In their minds, we are all here to pad health insurance and healthplan corporations profits. That is the purpose of America, now.
It all about payola and corruption, nothing more, IMHO. The best possible interpretation is that this crowd has been intellectually captured by information fed to them by the insurance lobby. But unless they have the critical faculties of a twelve year old, I cannot buy that explanation.
Or, well, OK, on second thought…
But whether best or worst interpretation is correct, big mony healthplan industry cash is all you need in our corrupt system to keep US citizens dying permaturely, crippling the rest of our private economy with outrageous health care bills, and bankrupting the national finances with health care prices that will bankrupt Medicare in the foreseeable future. That is the bottom line. Too bad.
We can’t wait another fifteen years to try again, unless you plan on being filthy rich soon, dying young and leaving a good looking corpse, or you can move to another country in time to get on their healthcare plan.
jl
Maybe if ONLY 30 other medium and high income countries had not figured out a way to get as good or better population health at far less cost to their national finances and private economy, and with more personal security for the average person, it would be different.
But it ain’t different, it is what it is.
It is just the corrupt gangster aristocratic crony capitalist decadence and decay and putrid corruption that is taking over this country, and nothing more.
That is all. Also.
aimai
My best case scenario for health care reform comes about if I imagine that Lieberman et al are simply buying time for their corporate masters to dump all the stock and get out of the health care business entirely. That’s the best case scenario if I imagine that eventually all the people with the lobbying money and jobs will have sold their shares and moved on to even murkier investment strategies and Lieberman et al are given the go-ahead to reverse course, vote for HCR, and screw the losers left holding the bag of now worthless insurance policies and stocks.
aimai
ford powers
laughed so hard i cried. and then i actually got sad…..
Ruckus
@aimai:
The clearest, most concise, funny if it wasn’t true or had pet injuries in it, description yet. I can actually see this crowd of obstructionists doing this to an animal just to prove they could. In fact other than money that seems to be the only reason they are doing it.
Notorious P.A.T.
Another 3 or 4 dozen threats to filibuster health care reform and the Democratic leadership might start to suspect that maybe there is no placating these guys, so perhaps budget reconciliation is the way to go.
asiangrrlMN
This was brilliant, Cole:
I actually want to see this happen.
Yutsano
So without trying Nelson single-handedly resurrects the Kennedy incrementalist plan he’d been seen fighting for since the early 80’s? I’m sorry, but this didn’t develop in a vacuum, and I refuse to believe Nelson has suddenly turned to favoring reform out of the goodness of his heart. He wants the Stupak amendment period, trust me if he doesn’t get it not only does this plan fall away but so does any votes for HCR period.