US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

Why it matters how we talk about abortion coverage in health care, at my local, fucking painful-to-think-about level.

Years of softening the position in order to gain traction/get compromises results in shit like this, and will continue to do so. Thanks, everybody for whom reproductive health is a nifty bargaining chip. I'm sure the women of Wake County appreciate you as much as I do. Please note that I'm linking the article from when they were considering it, but now it's a done deal.

reading that article makes it sound like its pretty unlikely that abortion cov'g will be taken away?

oh sorry missed your last sentence

note the "update" at the top of the article

Wake's Republican commissioners raised the abortion issue after it debuted in Apex. There, a Republican town council led by Mayor Keith Weatherly voted in mid-January to eliminate coverage for abortions, unless they were deemed medically necessary for the health of the mother.

As The Cary News reported, while the issue in Apex "was couched initially as a decision of fiscal responsibility, moral and political undertones loomed large." Weatherly was quoted in the newspaper as saying, "Apex can't actually prohibit abortions, whether it's for an employee or not. But our plan can."

Weatherly, who worked for strident choice foe Jesse Helms years ago, now is an assistant to N.C. House Minority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, an opponent of abortion rights throughout his career.

Stam's role in the Apex and Wake County maneuvers isn't clear. He refused to be interviewed by the Indy.

But Stam's Twitter feeds indicate that he's been closely following the national debate on health insurance, so doubtless he's aware of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would make it illegal for any insurance plan to cover elective abortions if the federal government subsidized the purchase of the plan in any way.

This is why, when the president makes a point of assuring the GOP that abortion won't be included in federal health care, it matters. These are the results of moderate slow-progress Democrats deciding that the right to choose is negotiable within health care.

It makes me angry.

I don't see why the discourse should be restricted to liberal, conservative, and the degrees in between (centrist, left-center, right-center, lukewarmish-center, etc).

Because then it would be less easy to control political discourse. For the most part all those terms work towards describing a remarkably narrow set of political beliefs while giving the inverse impression by polarizing. Note how 'bleeding heart liberals' don't mind continuing the War On Terror, and 'neocons' vote for giant socialist bailouts for banks.

I guess that statement belongs in the "Are Democrats and Republicans The Same?" thread...

it would be best for the democratic party and everyone in general if evan bayh was voted out of office in november, frankly

― max, Tuesday, January 26, 2010 5:48 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

looks like your wish that Bayh leave is about to come true

So long motherfucker.

What an absolute bitchnose.

"Congress is... hard"

Fucking the Democrats twice-over even as he retires:

http://www.swingstateproject.com/diary/6407/insen-bayh-retiring

i wonder why he isn't running. that line about "i can do more meaningful work outside of congress" is a pile of nonsense. he is a bland, robotic political operative. and he's a moderate, so it isn't like he's all for a hard-left agenda that's been frustrated by the gop.

democrats' chances in 2010 must be worse than even the typical midterm election cycle.

He was running as late as last week, so this is sudden and very very fishy. Another IN Dem has to file by Friday to run for that seat. What a selfish douche.

OR MAYBE AN EXCITING SEX SCANDAL IS ON THE HORIZON

EVAN BAYH <3 HOOKERS

hard to tell whether bayh is fucking over the democratic party more when hes in the senate or when hes not in the senate imo

purge all the Bayh types

man it's like that great moderate middle... doesn't even exist. what has david broder been telling me?

purge all the Bayh types

you are either with us or against us

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/02/more_weirdness.php

heckuva job, bahyie

WHO WILL THE INDIANA DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINATE?

so does this mean that barring a big swing in public opinion or the economy, GOP is favored to take the senate?

He's the one with a wife running a major health insurance thing, yes?

so does this mean that barring a big swing in public opinion or the economy, GOP is favored to take the senate?

that would take a 20-seat swing for the gop, i believe. not sure how big a swing that is, historically, for the party in power during an off-year election.

oh man, feel the genius here

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjZhNmU5ZjEzMGJkZmQ3ZGE0OWU3YzJjM2FjZDJmZTQ=

One of Goldberg's readers shows as much acumen:

Hi Jonah,

I know things are looking bad for the Dems right now but I would have thought Bayh had a secure seat. Any chance he wants to lay low for this election cycle and then challenge Obama in 2012? As Democrats go, Bayh occasionally shows a bit of common sense (and winning in Indiana suggests the voters think so to).

If 2010 turns out to be a bigger wipeout than 1994 then Obama will face a challenger. Bayh could point to his record of warning fellow Democrats of the mistakes Obama was making and a 2010 debacle would suggest he was right. I don't know if he could defeat Obama in a primary challenge but he could have a shot, especially in states with open primaries and states with a a more moderate (i.e. White) base. Running as the savior of a party must have some appeal to Bayh.

This stuff is better than following sports. I hope you and your family are doing well.

obama v. bayh in 2012, for the lols.

i.e. White base

tbh, i doubt bayh would pander to that base (but he might see it as a natural constituency). he'd be a pretty weak challenger/rallying cry for that base, tho.

Running as the savior of a party must have some appeal to Bayh.

oh, the funny things that right-wingers say ...

now, were hilary clinton to abruptly resign in the next year or two, then i'd wonder about a rematch (which would be ugly).

sorry, hillary clinton.

(alfred, do you read other people's posts? that's the exact thing i linked to, right above yours)

man so the fuck long evan bayh you slimy piece of shit

btw this asshole can make do more meaningful work outside of congress where "meaningful work" means for his bank account not the public

btw this asshole can make do more meaningful work outside of congress where "meaningful work" means for his bank account not the public

yeah, that sounds just about right. even nowadays and wr2 Blue Dogs, it isn't quite kosher for Democratic elected officials to just come right out and say that they're going onto the lucrative lobbying/whoring circuit instead of cutting loose w/ some pious-sounding malarkey about "meaningful work" and "public service" and that kind of shit.

He's the one with a wife running a major health insurance thing, yes?

― extra awesome blossom (suzy), Monday, February 15, 2010 5:34 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

xxxxxp
would be interested to know if this is true - lieberman's wife's involved in a health charity, would be super depressing if they're both so ironically sidekicked.

When he was governor, Bayh’s wife, Susan, was a lawyer for [Eli] Lilly. After it became clear he was going to be a senator, she started stacking up memberships on the boards of health-care corporations.

Susan Bayh got paid a little over $2 million for her service between 2006 and 2008. Her husband had a good 2008 also, collecting more than $500,000 in campaign donations from the health-care industry.

Bayh's wife is on the BoD of WellPoint and about five other similar companies.

Hadassah Lieberman also has a place on the board of a breast cancer charity, yes, but there was a push to remove her a few months ago because of Joe and her own place on health-related boards.

Anyone read the Holder profiles in the NYT this morning and last week's New Yorker? Grisly stuff. Digby:

after reading this thoroughly depressing profile of Eric Holder this morning in the NY Times, I think we can assume that Dick Cheney could go on television and admit to personally torturing KSM on the rack and nothing would be done. Eric Holder is no longer a non-political actor by his own admission. Or, rather, as a member of the Obama administration, he's now operating as a functionary of the Republicans and the national security state.

In case you were wondering, Lindsay Graham is now the de facto Attorney General and he will be deciding all the legal questions surrounding terrorism. It's an unusual arrangement, but the constitution does say that regardless of the outcome of elections, Republicans must be in charge of national security and criminal justice at all times.

Sullivan is correct that Cheney is now an admitted war criminal. But it will not be a problem for him in the United States. He might want to let that passport lapse though. He may not get such favored treatment in another country.

it's pretty maddening that bayh is getting top billing in the news today with his sound bite about the senate not working correctly when he's easily one of the worst "good guy" senators in the congress. he's tearing a page directly from the sarah palin playbook & i doubt that anyone in the media is going to hammer him on it like they (rightfully) did her

yeah this stuff about lindsay graham is utterly insane

it's pretty maddening that bayh is getting top billing in the news today with his sound bite about the senate not working correctly when he's easily one of the worst "good guy" senators in the congress.

Yeah. As Digby said, Bayh is right for the wrong reasons.

hey does anyone here understand the deficit? because I fuck as hell don't, not on a micro or even macroeconomic scale. but help me counter someone who keeps throwing this at me:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.html

my take on this:

1) this is a comparison between actual historical spending and 'projected' spending during a time of extreme economic volatility, assuming slow recovery
2) deficit spending during recessions is not inherently bad, in fact, it is probably necessary, because if money does not circulate during a recession it freezes up
3) uh, dunno.

why do I get in these online arguments with a childhood friend who has gone insane? I do not know.

akm, you should read krugman's nyt blog, has lots of v. readable stuff on the subject

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/opinion/05krugman.html?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/opinion/28krugman.html?em

I actually think that Brad DeLong does a way better job of putting the deficit into perspective than Krugman does. Check out his blog.

Pretty sure the guys over at Baseline Scenario have discussed this issue in the past month or so as well. Both them and DeLong are reliably liberal, if that matters to you.

these for example

http://baselinescenario.com/tag/deficit/