From Senate Dem Whip. These pro forma sessions mean the Senate is never out of session for 10 days in a row = no Trump recess appointments. pic.twitter.com/PVDCpN3frA
— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) August 4, 2017
A Pro Forma session of the Senate is a couple of local Senators showing up, saying hi and then leaving. No work gets done. What is does is prevent the President from making recess appointments as the Senate will not be adjourned for a long enough period of time for the recess appointment power to be activated.
Pro Forma sessions have been commonly used when the Senate is controlled by the party opposite of the White House.
It is very odd that pro forma sessions are being used when the Senate and the White House are controlled by the same party.
This is what a slow split between the Republicans on the Hill and Trump looks like. It is incremental exertions of privilege and narrowing of option space. It is not (yet) grand gestures.
Doug R
Does this mean no Steve Bannon as head of DOJ?
eric
You mean no recess appointment to the Supreme Court?
No Bannon to the FBI?
phew
cain
Yes.. finally.. some backbone. Republicans are getting it. They are still cruel assholes.. but maybe just maybe our republic will survive.
Laura
Finally, a Not Normal that doesn’t freak me out. It doesn’t exactly reassure, but it’ll do for now.
A Ghost To Most
Hatreon, the funding platform for fascists and racists
eric
@A Ghost To Most: ‘Hatreon’ close to ‘Hateron’, coincidence? i think not.
Cermet
@cain: Not back bone so much as protecting one of their own – sessions. Those jellyfish thugs aren’t ever going to do anything resembling a back bone like the dems did with ACA.
Bruce K
At least this “not normal” is effectively an acknowledgement that something has gone badly wrong in Washington. Last year’s “lock out Judge Garland by any means necessary” being portrayed as just business as usual was a lot more worrying to me.
Yarrow
This made me laugh and laugh:
peach flavored shampoo
Why do you think that this will keep Trump from recess appointments? When has he ever cared about protocol, norms, or legality?
Mike in DC
The next big thing is passing one of those bills that block Trump from easily firing Mueller. I think, if they get to the end of the year and haven’t passed any part of their policy agenda, the turn against Trump will broaden and accelerate a bit.
Raoul
One suspects that the Senate GOP has started to notice that Trump will never have their backs. That he is a bumbling, incompetent fool who would, yes, sign bills they’d like to pass, but that he will do f*ck all to work with them on passage (but he’ll grandstand and backstab as needed to protect his own precious image of himself in whatever funhouse mirror any bill becomes).
He is not yet toxic to them, or at least they don’t yet think so. But clearly they don’t trust him politically. Do they really believe or care about the Russia thing? Maybe one or two of them. They care that he is starting to tank their brand. That, they care about.
ET
It is baby steps that may not become grown up behaviors, but at least in a very small and subtle way one branch of Congress has decided that it wants to remind everyone (including some of its own member) that they are SEPARATE and EQUAL branch of the United States government. Being jealous of it’s authority is likely the only thing that would have ever gotten some Senators to do (or not do) anything – even it is small.
Yarrow
Article along the lines of this post:
Raoul
@Bruce K: Unfortunately, that lengthy set of pro-formas makes this one seem slightly less strange, though it is every bit as much a drastic change in norms, and more strange as it is intra-party.
And I just saw last night that some conservatives still don’t care that Trump is otherwise a disaster, as they are getting the judges they want and they know how much havoc can be made in their favor that way for decades. The useful idiot is still marginally useful.
Chyron HR
@A Ghost To Most:
What, was “88treon” too subtle?
cain
@Yarrow:
I would be curious to see how this plays out with Fox News and alt-right radio. Trump supporters are in a Fox News bubble and I wonder what kind of fall out will happen. I suspect that we are going to be seeing a clash between Republicans and the base as well. It will be hard to imagine which side they will take since a lot of these supporters support the Republican brand but seem to be enamored of Trump. Will they ditch their party loyalty over the decades for the Tangelo Terrorist or what? What happens afterwards though after they make that decision?
gvg
@peach flavored shampoo: Well, he just can’t make them. He could SAY so and so is appointed, but the courts have already said it’s not valid, so whomever wouldn’t actually have any authority or get cleared or get paid. This has already been ruled on for Obama so it’s known. Probably people won’t even say they will take the job, since most people already know this.
Trump does do things like fake signing ceremonies and giving “orders” by tweet without doing any actual paperwork or follow through, so he could make a fool of himself again.
randy khan
Apparently Murkowski had something to do with this. I guess she sees value in maintaining her distance from the Administration.
At a certain level, though, the issue was forced by the Dems, who threatened to filibuster the motion to recess if there weren’t pro forma sessions.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m seeing rumors that Mueller’s investigation includes looking at Hannity. Sweet FSM. Please make it so.
Mnemosyne
@gvg:
I’m still feeling cynical today, so I have no doubt that if a new case makes it to the Supreme Court, the conservative justices will reverse themselves because blah blah rules are different for a white president.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well if anything Trump’s doing something that denyied Obama for eight years – getting Congress to do it’s job and not just dump it on the Presidency.
A Ghost To Most
@Chyron HR: I’m betting that their mission statement is 14 words long.
LAO
Am I the only one who thinks this is related to Senate Republicans desire to cover Sessions’ ass? I’m mean they don’t care about the Russian investigation but they seem morally offended on behalf of that racist piece of shit… I mean their former colleague.
geg6
@Iowa Old Lady:
Oh, that would be just too delicious.
Patricia Kayden
@A Ghost To Most: How wonderful that now cops who kill unarmed Black people can have a forum to raise unlimited cash to fight against charges.
NotMax
Happy birthday, Mr. Obama!
germy
Maxine Waters is on The View
oldster
Did Dem Senators need assistance from Republicans for this?
I mean: could Schumer have arranged this on his own, or did he need the Turtle’s help?
Serious question–I don’t know enough about Senatorial procedure to know how it works.
If it were just a matter of “a couple of local Senators showing up, saying hi and then leaving,” then we would not need any Republican buy-in. So maybe there’s more to it than that? Just curious.
A Ghost To Most
Jeanine Pirro on Fox. Bring it, bitches!
germy
Here’s something I noticed:
I watched the Marcy Wheeler segment on DemocracyNow. She called Butowsky a ratfucker.
I like Amy Goodman. I used to listen to her every day (decades ago) but haven’t tuned in for a long time. And I agree that Butowsky’s a ratfucker.
But here’s the part I noticed: During the interview, Wheeler said the whole Seth Rich conspiracy was “invented” by Fox News.
But isn’t that giving them too much credit? They didn’t invent it. They merely amplified what Julian A. put out there. And yet absolutely NO MENTION was made of Julian or wiki during the interview.
SFAW
@A Ghost To Most:
Moron. She should listen to James Spader’s/Alan Shore’s closing argument re: the woman who was on trial for refusing to pay her taxes. Then cry into her booze glass.
LAO
@A Ghost To Most: I really have to laugh (rather than cry) when Pirro was DA in Westchester County she led one of the most aggressive prosecutor’s office in NY. She is some piece of work.
Also — I laughed so hard when her husband went to jail.
germy
@A Ghost To Most:
Pirro (like Hannity) are trying to incite violence. They used to be more subtle about it. I predict in a few months they’ll be screaming for a “cleansing fire” or “blood in the streets”.
SFAW
@Yarrow:
And Shitgibbon has hands tiny enough to grab onto his “stick.”
Maybe I should start referring to him as Lying Littletwig, instead of the default nickname?
Eric U.
it has been bothering me that no republican has really come out and said “coequal branches” to trump. BITD, they wouldn’t have put up with this treatment.
Chris
@SFAW:
I don’t remember that one. You wouldn’t happen to have a link, would you?
SFAW
@LAO:
I didn’t know she was from Buffalo.
lurker dean
the talk of rick perry to DHS, manchin to energy, then wv gov. justice selecting a 50th vote for healthcare has me pissed off – how many times can they resurrect that piece of crap bill and torture people with its possible passage.
germy
@Iowa Old Lady:
I thought it was the opposite. I thought Hannity was investigating Mueller.
Jeffro
@cain:
These are the kinds of questions…and the kind of intra-party battle…that the GOP was able to pull off a while, thanks to their Russian friends. Not for too much longer, though…
MomSense
@Iowa Old Lady:
If we win the trifecta of Trump family and cronies, Hannity, and Netanyahu all going down as criminals I will pledge eternal devotion to FSM.
LAO
@SFAW: ???
Barbara
@A Ghost To Most: An uprising to protect one or more of the Trump children or Jared Kushner? I don’t think so. Knowing Trump, he will be downright relieved to find out that they are going after someone else besides him and somehow he will reconcile himself to a little jail time for his spawn. And his supporters will barely register the news. Their support is highly specific and personal to Trump.
Barbara
@germy: They might scream for it, but more than anything else, the Trump demographic wants to sit back and let Trump perform some kind of magic. Moreover, they tend to live in highly segregated locations. This threat is far more serious when immigrants are fingered as the bad guys. Screaming about liberals or prosecutors is unlikely to foment the same kind of potential violence.
Doug R
@cain: Both Republicans and trump supporters are losing numbers. I’d say the Republicans are losing numbers faster. So will fox “news’ follow trump down or try to shore up Republicans? Enquiring minds want to know!
A Ghost To Most
@SFAW: um, Buffalo is in Erie County, across the state from Westchester.
Or am I missing an internet tradition? I admit that Pirro politically aligns with many of the racist morons in WNY.
SFAW
@Chris:
Here’s a YouTube (abbreviated) version, static background
Here’s a transcript
Another Scott
In other news, maybe the freakout about the July 28 DPRK missile test is overblown. TheBulletin from August 1:
Of course, they will keep trying. But they still don’t have a “real” weapon yet. We can’t get steamrollered into a war when there are other options.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Iowa Old Lady:
Let’s send up those thoughts into the universe.?
SFAW
@A Ghost To Most:
I grew up on LI, I have a pretty good idea where Westchester is.
It’s not an internet tradition.
I was riffing on one of the more obscure aspects of NY history. To wit: when Norman Mailer ran for Mayor of NYC, part of his platform was proposing that NYC become the 51st state, and the rest of New York — Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, even Nassau and Suffolk (Horrors!), and all the rest — would be renamed “Buffalo.”
Some of my “jokes” are passable, a much higher proportion get a response like yours. This is why I don’t do stand-up, nor try to make a living as a comedy writer.
Doug R
@Another Scott: I’m not sure that North Korea’s “nuclear” bomb actually works, although the latest yields suggest ignition. Even a failed nuke still could make a nasty dirty bomb, though.
A Ghost To Most
@SFAW: Ah, I am unaware of all internet traditions, then. Sorry.. She is much closer politically to my racist, ammosexual, WNY family than the average Westchester voter, I suspect.
SFAW
@Another Scott:
Maybe, but I’m thinking that a nuke that blows 3 km up can still kill a lot of people and destroy a lot of terrain. Standard disclaimer: not a nuke scientist, etc., etc.
patrick II
For anyone who has Netflix you should check out “Get Me Roger Stone”. It is very hard to watch, because he succeeds not just with what he does to the news, but because he succeeded with me — at least towards him — with his motto, which is “hate is stronger than love”. It’s very informative and very frustrating to watch, because his goal is to manipulate your worst emotions at which he succeeds.
germy
@patrick II: I usually hate commenting on the physical appearance of people, but what’s with Roger’s head? Have you ever seen him in profile? He looks like a pinhead. I’m not exaggerating.
LAO
@SFAW: I got it now.
Patricia Kayden
Schmidt decries Trump’s speech in West Virginia as a hallmark of totalitarian regimes. Everything about this presidency is not normal.
SFAW
@A Ghost To Most:
You’re fine. I edited to note that it’s not an internet thing. In fact, it’s not any kind of thing, other than something an old fart pulls from the recesses of his not-so-sharp memory.
Not sure how old you are, but I figure you’re probably too young to have been tuned in to that stuff in 1969.
Here’s a Wikipedia link, by the way, although it doesn’t mention Buffalo.
Jeffro
@A Ghost To Most: I think Trumpov’s hard core are going to be surprised at how few folks are willing to resort to “2nd Amendment solutions” in order to protect Don Jr.’s right to commit treason.
SFAW
@LAO:
Sorry, I completely missed your “???” comment, otherwise I would have replied to you sooner.
As I said to “Ghost,” just one of those dark/obscure memories.
Felonius Monk
But then the President is not normal or even sane.
patrick II
@germy: That sometimes happens to babies when they are left to always sleep on their back. The bones of the head are still soft, and the back of the head straightens out. Although his seems an extreme case. Maybe someone dropped him on it.
StringOnAStick
It was mentioned below that the one place where Team Trump is being effective is in getting judges nominated and approved. I’d say this has Gorka and Bannon’s fingerprints all over it; taking over the judiciary is how Hungary has now become a de facto fascist state. Faster, Mr. Mueller, please!
Patricia Kayden
Chris Cillizza finally gets something right in his argument that Ken Starr is a hypocrite for critiquing Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference as overly expansive.
Perhaps Cillizza can be saved.
A Ghost To Most
@SFAW: got it. I was probably in Nebraska when that went down, and so don’t remember it.
@Jeffro: I hope you are right. The wingers I know (family and their friends) are all armed to the teeth, and talk like they are itching to get started with “taking back their country”. I tend to discount it, since they have been so gutless in how they lived their lives.
LAO
@SFAW: No worries. I thought I remembered you were from the Island, so it confused me. My snark/joking meter was broken by this election.
Elizabelle
@StringOnAStick: I’d suggest we contact moderate GOP members and ask them to slow the confirmation process for the judge nominations. A far right federal bench is not in their interest either, and the Trump administration is elevating the worst of the worst.
Lifetime appointments for the worst of the worst? No. We need a federal judiciary that is broadly acceptable.
This is as important as GOTV for the 2018 midterms. We should do some blogposts on it.
We can thank our Democratic reps for standing strong.
Frankensteinbeck
I would say a veto-proof bilateral bill that blocks Trump from ending sanctions on his a Russian paymasters qualifies as a grand gesture. The head of a committee with the power to do it declaring Sessions will not be replaced if fired is at least medium sized.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: They are also underestimating how many angered liberals and moderates are out there. Women’s marches and the march for Science, anyone? Dwarfs the rightwing stuff.
Felonius Monk
@SFAW: Well played, sir. Some of us New Yawkers are historically rusty. Glad you’re the repository of such information.
Frankensteinbeck
@Elizabelle:
The angry response from liberals in the past six months is unprecedented, and more against the GOP congress than Trump at that, thanks to the AHCA. The problem with an unprecedented swing is that we have no idea how long it will last or what the practical effect will be. Here’s hoping.
Chris
@SFAW:
Thank you. I do remember that speech, one of the classic moments of that show. I just forgot what the proximate reason for it was, namely the client who refused to pay her taxes.
Jeffro
@A Ghost To Most: Gutless is exactly right.
@Elizabelle: True – they underestimate the liberals, moderates, and even the number of their conservative brethren who would support them acting out like this. They can ‘open carry’ their silly selves to their hearts’ content (they’ll likely just end up shooting themselves) but in the end the vast majority of the country is not with them.
germy
@A Ghost To Most:
There’s a new movie coming out, a remake of “Death Wish” about a guy who gets fed up and starts shooting the bad guys.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Barbara:
Good point about the rubes rioting locally. Maybe they’ll burn down an evangelical mega church or feed store.
Villago Delenda Est
@germy: Starring Bruce Willis, who is a RWNJ all by himself.
germy
@Villago Delenda Est: All it takes is one unbalanced idiot to watch that movie and start acting out.
A Ghost To Most
@germy: Gee, I wonder who the “bad guys” are.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Ah, Liberally Biased Hollywood.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
The ones acting out already happen. As sad as that is, it is nothing like the widespread violence conservatives have been claiming they’ll launch any day now for decades.
germy
@A Ghost To Most: I watched the trailer and it looks like he kills a few white biker-looking types, as well as the “gang-bangers”.
germy
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
“The Night They Burned The Old Piggly Wiggly Down”
Uncle Cosmo
@Another Scott: Just FTR, bringing a payload traveling at 15,000 mph down from space in one functional piece is anything but trivial. (Cf. Columbia.) It took years for the massed expertise of the US missile program to solve that. As President Eisenhower put it in a national address of 7 Nov 1957,
The Eisenhower administration was serenely unconcerned about the Sputniks because while the Soviets could put something the size of a megaton H-bomb in orbit there was no sign they could bring it back down in good enough order to blow up anywhere near where it was supposed to. As Ike put it later in that same speech, “Earth satellites, in themselves, have no direct present effect upon the nation’s security” – & that didn’t change until after Gagarin’s flight showed that they just might be able to.
If the NK payload broke up at altitude, it suggests they haven’t quite figured it out yet. (ETA: Not that they can’t or won’t – the basic technology for putting a one-time-use ablative heat shield on a nose cone can’t be all that different from bonding no-stick ceramic liners onto aluminum frying pans,)
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@germy:
Ha! Maybe they’ll take over another seasonally-closed ranger station.
SFAW
@LAO:
Based on no particular evidence, I’ve been assuming that you’re somewhat younger than I, so there’s no reason you should have gotten the joke. If I started talking about former Mets catcher Chris Canzoneri, would you feel bad because you didn’t get the joke, i.e., realize that was not his actual name?
Of course, if it turns out you’re an old fart like me, then …
… then ,,, then … nothing, I guess.
SFAW
@Felonius Monk:
For a little while longer, at least. My CRS seems to be increasing daily.
Also, my CRS seems to be increasing daily
Cheryl Rofer
@Uncle Cosmo and Another Scott: Not everyone agrees with Elleman that the reentry vehicle broke up. That video is from far away, and it’s night. You can see what look like pieces, but we don’t know whether the reentry vehicle broke up or if it was other debris.
I also doubt that North Korea has 21 nuclear weapons, the figure I saw this morning, undoubtedly derived, as most of them are, from dividing the estimated amount of fissile material by the guess for what is needed. Those two numbers are in doubt, but I think they are not the greatest source of uncertainty. That would be how the North Koreans are planning out the use of their fissile material, and how far along they are with a bomb design, both of which are even more unknown. I went into more detail here.
That said, North Korea will get to a deliverable weapon some day. Every test brings them closer. So I agree with Jeffrey Lewis’s op-ed in the New York Times. We need to move toward negotiations with them.
Raoul
@patrick II: I tried to watch that a month or so ago, and 15 minutes in, my efforts to maintain non-violence were gone. I wanted to kidney punch the f*ker 30 times. So I turned it off.
Jebus is he morally depraved, and a dangerous combination of stupid and very determined. Also, I get the vibe that he probably visits places like Thailand to meet some very creepy and illegal sexual needs. I mean, what’s the schtick about dressing and grooming like such a dandy?
Vile, terrible person. Maybe g-d loves him, but I can’t imagine who else could.
SFAW
@Raoul:
Stone may be lots of things, but “stupid” ain’t one of them.
I commend you on your fortitude re: being able to last 15 minutes. I probably would have needed a new TV after about 3 minutes.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Raoul:
Why would a hypothetical god love him? He diminishes things. He brings ruin and degradement.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@germy:
For the 1974 movie. Nothing fucked up about this at all. Why would they choose to make this movie at this particular moment in time? It’s dangerous and irresponsible
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@germy:
He’s an equal opportunity fascist vigilante!
SFAW
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
And THAT is a great refutation of the concept that there exists a Just God.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cheryl Rofer: See my ETA in #84 supra–we more or less agree that there’s no reason they can’t build a workable reentry vehicle even if they haven’t already.
Bad as it would be for Kim Young’un =;^D to be able to lob a 40-50 kt nuke at us, I hope to high heaven someone’s keeping tabs on what they’re doing with three key substances: tritium, deuterium, & lithium. Tritium to boost yield in a fission bomb; lithium & deuterium to make lithium deuteride, H-bomb fuel. (You know that, Cheryl, but some readers may not.) TBH I’d be much more inclined to lose significant sleep over a Teller-Ulam device hidden in a shipping container – but maybe that’s only because I live in a major container port <50 road miles from DC.
Frankensteinbeck
@SFAW:
I’m not sure I agree. Either he always was or has reached a point where he is so insane with hatred, the advice he gives Trump is suicidally idiotic. He was a big voice in firing Comey, and now thinks Trump should arrest Obama, Clinton, and I believe Holder.
SFAW
@Frankensteinbeck:
I figure he would not have been as successful as he has been — and he has, unfortunately — were he merely evil and stupid. Being as evil/amoral/vicious as he has been can only get you so far if you’re stupid.
What I really want him to be is “the late Roger Stone”; can’t happen soon enough.
patrick II
@Raoul:
Me too. But that is what he loves. He is a sadist who loves to stir up hate and powerlessness to increase his own sense of power and joy at inflicting pain. The reason I recommend watching it is that the type of person is fits a general theme on the right, including the president.
Chris
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
“At this particular moment in time” is one of the things that pisses me off about this. I can actually understand where the impulse for movies like this would come from in the seventies and eighties, when crime and violence were absolutely out of control. Nowadays, when crime is as low as it was in the Eisenhower years, there’s really no excuse for this shit.
But this gets back to a point that Abigail Nussbaum has been beating on for a while now at LGM and on her own pages; racism, authoritarianism, and the other impulses that power vigilante/”tough on crime” crap are not a reaction to anything that’s happened in the real world. On the contrary: people are taught and nurtured into these ideologies first, and then they go out and look for real-world justifications for what they want to do anyway. The crime wave of the seventies and eighties made a nice justification for this kind of crap at the time, but as far as the viewers for whom it resonated the most are concerned, the same movie made today would resonate just as well.
Cheryl Rofer
@Uncle Cosmo: Tritium, deuterium, and lithium are more difficult to track than uranium and plutonium. We simply have no idea how much of those they have or can make. They were trying to sell lithium-6 a while back, though. Not good.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
It can, but there’s a huge difference between a nuke that is properly detonated and one that disintegrates because its reentry vehicle isn’t up to scratch. Nukes are surprisingly fragile things; they have to work just right or you wind up with a very expensive and not terribly effective dirty bomb. DPRK is not going to want to put one of its very limited supply of nuclear devices on an ICBM until it’s quite confident the whole thing works.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
I’m betraying my ignorance here, but I was assuming that, if the delivery vehicle breaks up at 3 km, then they could set it to detonate at something above 3 km, rather than wait for the breakup to initiate things. Sounds like my assumption was incorrect?
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
That’s a theoretical possibility, but I don’t think it’s a very prudent approach. If the RV disintegrates at 3 km, how much damage has it already taken by the time it’s at 4 km? And are you really confident that it will fall apart at 3 km every time, or did you just get lucky this time and next time it will fail further up? If you were really desperate, you might take that risk. If you think you have some time, you’ll work through the engineering and get stuff right before you start deploying the things.
Cheryl Rofer
@Roger Moore: Part of the issue comes before the RV breaks up. How robust is the bomb? Has it survived the vibration and g-forces? Did wires come loose? Did a detonator spark? It’s the design and manufacture of the bomb as well as how it mates to the RV and then the RV itself.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: Yup. The Elleman article cited by TheBulletin says he estimates it was going around 6km/s. So there really isn’t that much time between 4 km and 3 km (~ 170 ms assuming a uniform velocity). If it’s really being destroyed that quickly, then the DPRK would have to have a very good understanding of the physics to try to detonate it at just the right time before it’s destroyed by the re-entry forces and temperatures…
Cheryl’s right that we can’t assume that this video is being interpreted correctly by Elleman (I think he makes a good case myself, but I’m no expert). Maybe they intended for the “warhead” to burn up so that it wouldn’t be analyzed by whoever found it (if it were to be found). But it illustrates yet again how difficult this problem really is. Throwing up a big rocket is only part of the technology needed.
Cheers,
Scott.
David Smith
What I dislike most about Pirro is from her book about her exploits as the DA of Westchester. To read her, she was the only person in America who cared about children being sexually abused and it was a long lonely crusade, defying deeply entrenched forces, that ended in her triumphing over evil.
Jumbo76
David, at some point, could you talk about this:
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/12/15955782/health-care-senate-conservative-ideas-universal-catastrophic-coverage
I don’t hate this idea, but I wonder what the experts think. In some ways, it makes sense to me to have the government cover all the extraordinary health spending. I have a pre-existing condition, and I would love to never deal with an insurance company again. And it make some sense to me to have insurance companies cover preventative care and other normal expenses. I wouldn’t design it like this exactly, but I like the idea of single payer with the option to buy additional insurance, and I have wondered if it’s possible to structure something where, as I said, the government takes extraordinary costs while the private market handles other stuff. Not a health care policy expert, so forgive my inarticulate descriptions.