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

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

ezra klein is otm, i think:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/jay_rockefellers_inconvenient.html

dartmouth junior says dems could lose 60 seats in the house come november

http://poughies.blogspot.com/2010/02/republican-blizzard-on-generic-ballot.html

Or as Michael Barone put it,

ah i see.

oh well as they say, as Darthmouth goes, so does the nation.

i wonder if that's truer than i want to believe

you and me both

I will laugh at the Democratic Party if it happens

then I will cry at what will happen to our country

RIP gay rights

well if republicans take back congress i hope the democratic minority will be as relentlessly obstructionist as the GOP is now

can't wait to live in a cardboard box

Republicans taking back congress is a pipe dream - we're 7 months away, the Dems have more money, and Republican party identification is at an all-time low

http://dartreview.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-young-cons-coming-at-you.html

don't get me wrong, the Dems are gonna lose some seats, but both majorities? lolz

surely post-Citizens United, the Democrats having more money is a little suspect?

the Repugs' problem is putting real live crazy bodies into those 'generic' races.

Any public option from these Dems was gonna suck anyway.

we'll see. hard to predict what corporations are gonna wanna do with their money, and then there's the possibility of restrictions on that decision making it out of congress as well

x-post

the Repugs' problem is putting real live crazy bodies into those 'generic' races.

also this - if you can't find a decent candidate, doesn't matter how much corporations may hate the incumbent

as the guy points out, generic ballots tend to have a pretty easily-calculable relationship to nat'l vote results, which in turn have a varying but still close relationship to the # of seats won or lost

well if republicans take back congress i hope the democratic minority will be as relentlessly obstructionist as the GOP is now

You want Iraq War 3?

i'm actually hoping the republicans that re-take congress are all rank-and-file members of the "tea party movement."

http://www.mediacircus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/tea-party-sign-267x300.jpg

Sanders gets all Godwin's Law on climate change

lol, you go, Bernie

Inhofe is such a goddamned idiot

less godwin's law and more pascal's wager imo

i.e. act as if climate change is real and you create a better world anyway

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.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 23 February 2010 16:16 (6 hours ago)

apparently he's just a nit who waits for aces and folds to 3bets constantly.

dude got his aces Nov '08, limped in thinking he'd quadruple up, forgot to iso, is getting beat by bottom 2 pair

i.e. act as if climate change is real and you create a better world anyway

We might save hundreds of thousands of future lives that would otherwise be cut short by pollution-causing cancer. Then again it would be bad for CEOs..

the increase in skin cancer was caused by the ozone layer depletion, which was caused by CFCs, which have been banned for years.

if we cure diseases, we're just going to have overpopulation and famine, so why bother...

neo-malthusian-ism is never the answer

Worrying about resource constraints is never the answer

Not that I agree that curing diseases would imply overpopulation and famine, but let's postpone ridiculing Malthus until we figure out how to feed 9-10 billion people on eroded, mineral-drained land.