February 25, 2010

  • (politics) Blame-o-geddon on Health Care

    Aspects of this post may assume you watch healthy doses of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX news.  Or unhealthy doses.  However you want to look at it.  :)

    Intro:

    In preparation for the outcome of the health care summit today, I was trying to garner in my mind a realistic overall assessment of what got us here.  Why has health care been such a big headache?  All the little reactionary factoids (and I use the root word "fact" loosely) floating around in the political part of  my head needed to be considered together in the same line of thought.  At first, like everyone else on my team, I blamed the GOP for being the party of "No."  But then there were those Blue Dog Democrats and that whole super majority that wasn't so super as a result.  The GOP could have been the party of "doesn't matter what they think" if not for the Blue Dog lack of rolling over.  But THEN...I started hearing little things like "Obama laid out a straight up bi-partisan stimulus bill from the get go and the Dems nixed it."  [Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe has been meaning that a lot lately.]  And supposedly it all went to shit from there. 

    So who is REALLY to blame?

    If what I laid out in the intro is true, that raises two questions.  Why did the Democrats do that and why did Obama let them do that?  Presuming that Democrats are politicians and not the saints  we'd be delusional to think they are, one imagines that if you have a super majority, they aren't  going to let that go to waste for the sake of their own special interests.  Why the hell do we have to have bipartisan bills feeding bipartisan special interests when we got elected into the majority?  Not fair!  Right?  So doing your own thing and trying to get a handful of Republican window dressings (by just trying to buy them off straight up, supposedly) to make it seem semi-bipartisan appears to have been the game plan (which is the theory the Sean Hannity's of the world are working with).  Perhaps it would have been a better compromise to lay out 2:1 ratio bipartisan bills to represent the honest majority.  All feelings could have been reasonably appeased with an affirmative action policy amendment style.  But that'd be like sharing.  Intentionally.   
     
    Apart from this, I started realizing the Democrats were likely the main problem since it had been common knowledge Obama had left Congress to sort itself out on health care.  This crystallized for me as I watched Obama kindly trounce the GOP at their retreat.  Why hadn't this conversation already happened a year ago?  Who's been in charge of these jokers?  Oh right...Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Bastards!  Just because Obama is awesome doesn't mean a single other Dem has somehow improved their game any.  I figured it might be peace and love in the epic speeches from Obama, but then the same old crap down in the trenches with the rest of the Democrats leading to a certain level of embitterment.  I just didn't realize it was more than just flavor. 

    So, what I'd like to know is, is it true that Obama laid out a truly bi-partisan stimulus plan?  Is it true that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (or whatever upper level Democrats) nixed it?  What  exactly was the rationale?  And why did Obama let that happen?  Perhaps it was a panic that a stimulus was urgently needed and he didn't have time to fight for bi-partisanship right out of the gate?  Could be.  Apparently, depending on whether this is all correct and there aren't compelling excuses, all this really could be Obama's fault.  And I'm going to feel less sorry for him as he tries to sort out his mess. 

    Most of the stimulus money hasn't been spent yet.  Albeit the common FOX news talking point is to just stop the stimulus where it is.  Obviously that's idiotic sideline "do whatever it is that you aren't doing" talk.  [Don't defend the ideology that you "can't spend your way out of a recession" versus "emergency CPR to the economy".  Don't present a viable alternative.  Leave the obvious problems we face up in the air, while you repeat the same objection a thousand times over the course of a year. etc.]  Given that it seems the stimulus is where most of Obama's political problems stem from, it might behoove him to renegotiate the rest of the stimulus money with ideas from his original plan.  I'm sure there are problems with that idea, but it's just a thought.  If he's actually interested rebuilding bridges for realz. 

    Apparently there was a much more bi-partisan jobs bill as well, that got nixed, too.  The talking point floating around that factietoid was that it was going to hurt the Democrats for some  unspecified reason [I think that's another Joe Scarborough talking point.  He routinely says these things without challenge on MSNBC where he could be easily challenged on his facts so I'm inclined to believe him.  Although, the regular co-hosts aren't exactly on their game in opposition necessarily, so there is some room for doubt.].  So a lot of this conspiracy is filtering through ideologically hostile sources and may not be entirely true (or may lack relevant truth components).  Also granted, is that the GOP still doesn't seem to have any viable solutions and is playing lots of bs games (rather than out-adulting the Democrats:  Here's our objectively better alternative plan posted online for all to see that isn't just a placeholder to be able to claim ((yay for political theater!)) we have a good plan that is being arbitrarily rejected.), but there may well have been a somewhat honest reason for them to not simply play along at first that royally complicated things. 

    Any thoughts?  What am I missing?  What am I getting wrong? 

    Outro:

    Well...I wrote all this out and then I saw this:

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    All of what I discussed above may well be true.  But apparently it's mainly responsible for making things extra ugly.  It's not what ultimately makes the process nearly impossible. 

    Ben

Comments (2)

  • I want to have Anthony Weiner's babies.

    Sure well point is a for profit system, no one blames them for that, the issue is their lack of competition. They are a T-Rex amid a world of cattle, they don't even need to try.

  • Furthermore all this bi-partisan BS seems to me to be misplaced and misused guilt the Democrats feel for being in power. WTF. Just do it. Stop holding the olive branch and do what your there to do. Maybe it's just too much of a slam dunk for the GOP to survive, or is it that the Dems just want to rub their nose in it for a few years until everyone see's it. I think everyone see's it that WILL see it now. 

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