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

i mean there's your third party politics right there, morbs should be thrilled

yah, eff you ;) I don't think Paul would get in the same room w/ Palin OR Bruno.

O Rly?

http://rlv.zcache.com/palin_paul_2012_tshirt-p235552561671167117oc6d_400.jpg

it's on a shirt, it must be troo

plz put what Obama believes in on a shirt asap

hmm paul was palling around with michele bachmann so he does have a high tolerance for crazy i guess

plz put what Obama believes in on a shirt asap

http://www.libertyshirtmarket.com/v/vspfiles/photos/1007-2T.jpg

no problem!

man I had a whole bunch of good answers for "put what obama believes on a t-shirt" but by "good" I mean "shit that would get me yelled at for bein a dick" so n/m

paul is so far off the ideological reservation he seems nuts, but he's not ACTUALLY nuts. there's a funny serenity about him that looks like psychosis but i don't think he'd have anything to do with an actual psychotic.

http://totallylookslike.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/ron-paul.jpg

no wonder he wants to go back to the gold standard, then he puts on magneto costume and then we get ron paul: world's first trillionaire

Updated Lakoff essay from Truthout, where he makes a point to show how Obama has changed in his communication style since the election and also made several mistakes in understanding conservative thought patterns.

It's a bit of a read, but it's worth it.

Just when I didn't think the Dems could appall me more, they do it again: now that they've threatened to use reconciliation, they STILL won't include the public option? It makes no sense.

i don't think the public option can be part of reconciliation? isn't that right?

like, technically?

Until this week Senate Dems bitched about needing sixty votes to include the public option; now that, presumably, they need only fifty, why can't they fight for its inclusion. The only conclusion is that they didn't want it in the first place.

Until this week Senate Dems bitched about needing sixty votes to include the public option; now that, presumably, they need only fifty, why can't they fight for its inclusion. The only conclusion is that they didn't want it in the first place.

^^^^^^^^^

well, duh

fwiw tho--if theres one (living) senator who can be said to have made health care reform his lifes work, its jay rockefeller. not to make the mistake of trusting a politician but if rockefeller says public option thru reconciliation will kill HCR... than i kind of believe him.

wtf? Jay Rockefeller also said last summer and fall that he believed in the public option absolutely. Now look at him waffling. Fuck him too.

I swear I posted before I read Greenwald a couple of minutes ago, but he's OTM:

Rockefeller was willing to be a righteous champion for the public option as long as it had no chance of passing (sadly, we just can't do it, because although it has 50 votes in favor, it doesn't have 60). But now that Democrats are strongly considering the reconciliation process -- which will allow passage with only 50 rather than 60 votes and thus enable them to enact a public option -- Rockefeller is suddenly "inclined to oppose it" because he doesn't "think the timing of it is very good" and it's "too partisan." What strange excuses for someone to make with regard to a provision that he claimed, a mere five months ago (when he knew it couldn't pass), was such a moral and policy imperative that he "would not relent" in ensuring its enactment.

according to rockefeller, doing the public option thru reconciliation could kill HCR in the senate. i tend to believe that his first priority is to get HCR passed, with or without the PO.

i would feel a lot more mad if they were talking about a 'strong' public option. the 'weak' public option that they could marshall 50 votes for wont make enough of a difference to be worth risking the bill as a whole.

greenwald's becoming almost as good at reading minds as keith olbermann!

i love greenwald but i think hes kind of overboard here. why does he imagine that 5 months ago rockefeller "knew it couldnt pass"? iirc, we lost the public option because of a single senator, droopy (i - ct)--thats hardly a sure thing to not pass.

His priority last fall was passing health care with a public option, max. Don't change the terms of the argument.

greenwald's becoming almost as good at reading minds as keith olbermann!

Not as good as max at reading Jay Rockefeller's mind, apparently.

yeah, and... his priority has changed as the political landscape has changd

haha im not reading his mind, im assuming that hes telling the truth

What the hell's changed since last fall except they needed sixty votes then and will rely on fifty votes now? Let's not kid ourselves: it was going to come to this, 50-50, with Biden breaking the tie.

what do you mean? we elected scott brown president and democrats shit their pants. we were all there. we started a thread about it.

i just really dont think jay rockefeller is the guy to take on here

I think every Senate Democrat should be taken on and told that we really do want a public option.

they don't care what you or anyone want. "public option" has always been a carrot on a stick to corral in a segment of the voting public. they know that their bosses are the insurance companies, and they will legislate as the insurance companies see fit.

the bosses of the senate are insurance companies?

weird, i never heard about that in civics

I'm not prepared to cut Rockefeller any slack after his disgraceful behavior in the warrantless wiretapping scandal.

You didn't go to the right schools, Que.

fuck rockefeller on coal and everything else. but i trust the guy on health care.

anyway i dont know if were talking about all democratic senators or just jay rockefeller or what? afaict, rockefeller is the only one whos gone public w/ his objections to the public option thru reconciliation

the bosses of the senate are insurance companies?

on Mondays - there are other corporations to do the bossing Tu-Fr IIRC

Monday - insurance companies
Tuesday - pharmaceutical companies
Wednesday - bankers
Thursday - military industrialists
Friday - cigarette/alcohol barons

do u have a chart i can consult--could come in handy

http://www.morethings.com/philosophy/robert_anton_wilson/wilson-conspiracy-chart.gif

pretty sure its

Monday - ACORN
Tuesday - ACORN
Wednesday - ACORN
Thursday - ACORN
Friday - Kenya

I have always thought that sufism led to the Knights Templar, I'm glad someone else agrees.

( P.S. i know this health care shit this week is serious, don't mean to detract from the discussion at hand.)

serious health care is serious

they don't care what you or anyone want. "public option" has always been a carrot on a stick to corral in a segment of the voting public. they know that their bosses are the insurance companies, and they will legislate as the insurance companies see fit.

wait, you mean for this to address alfred's question? i don't think this is the reason a public option isn't in obama's plan. i think it's because reconciliation isn't designed to introduce broad new policy provisions, but rather to address funding mechanisms. since we can't have the senate pass the house bill (because of scott brown), the idea is to have the house pass the senate bill, and then reconcile funding for the senate's proposal through reconciliation.

that's at least what i read. if it's totally off-base, i'm happy to be disabused of the notion

my feeling (just a feeling, mind you, i'm not mind-reading) about the white house approach to the public option has always been that they intended it as the big bargaining chip to use to get everything else they wanted. and i think a lot of other pro-public-option democrats thought of it the same way, maybe including rockefeller. but they muffed the strategy by trying to get too fancy and nuanced about everything and not ever having a clear direction on things. if that was the idea -- and again, that's just my guess -- then they would have had to push hard for it from the start, put the fear of god into opponents that it might actually pass. as it was, the signals were all over the place. one week it was crucial, the next it was just some hang-up that "the left" was "obsessing" on. so nobody ever took it seriously as a legislative possibility. obama has done this kind of thing a few times, it happened with the stimulus package too -- it's like he wants to start the negotiations at step 2, after both sides have made crucial concessions. but what he really ends up doing is making his concessions unilaterally and not forcing the other side to concede anything. it's a major tactical flaw that possibly signals his impatience with the whole haggling process, i don't know. but in any case, a strong public option should have at the least been a big bargaining chip, but it was never fully exploited. like hendrik hertzberg says, they did a whole lot of horse-trading but they didn't even get a horse.

it also makes me wonder how good a poker player the guy really is, because he hasn't been able to bluff for shit all year.

in "getting to yes" the authors say there are basically two ways of negotiating - either you start far away from where you actually want to end up and negotiate towards some central ground, or you simply start where you want to end up and don't budge - they imply that the latter can be more effective if backed up with facts and evidence and if the other side is negotiating in good faith, because it's clear, simple and direct

if the other side is negotiating in good faith

lol