CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
March 22, 2010 04:02 PM UTC
89 Comments
has it right. And the Republicans deserve it.
Get a new sound bite or web snippet from somewhere else, ‘tad. You are irrelevant.
Sure there are some good componants, but in total its not reform.
..what up ‘tad? Up all night playing World of Warcraft, trying to get an Epic Axe?
We need universal, single payer
Even if we followed the Swiss model of regulated non-profit private insurance for everyone it would be a huge improvement over what we have now. Not quite as efficient as single payer, but very close.
From WIkipedia:
For all regular (short-term) medical treatment, there is a system of obligatory health insurance, with private health insurance companies. These insurance companies are obliged to provide a package with a defined set of insured treatments [1].
This system came into effect in January 2006. For those who would otherwise have insufficient income, an extra government allowance is paid to make sure everyone can pay for their health care insurance. People are free to purchase additional packages from the insurance companies to cover additional treatments such as dental procedures and physiotherapy. These additional packages are optional.
A key feature of the Dutch system is that premiums are set at a flat rate for all purchasers regardless of health status or age. Risk variances between funds due to the different risks presented by individual policy holders are compensated through risk equalization and a common risk pool, which makes it more attractive for insurers to attract risky clients. Funding for all short term health care is 50% from employers, and 45 percent from the insured person and 5% by the government. Children until age 18 are covered for free. Those on low incomes receive compensation to help them pay their insurance. Premiums paid by the insured are about 100 € per month (about US$146 in Sept. 2009) with variation of about 5% between the various competing insurers.
a Democrat said it best …”Simply moving money around within the existing system, rather than enacting real delivery system reform, might change who pays the bill, but it does not improve the quality of care or reduce costs for families, small businesses, or the federal government. It creates a system of winners and losers, rather than reforming the system in a way that lets everyone win. It is estimated that after passage of this bill, federal health care expenditures would likely increase above what they would under current law.”
because we are behind them, not ahead of them. Wake up and throw away your delusions of American exceptionalism Libertad.
We’re behind in the race, and its fine with you ?
Luckily for you they’ll only realize their premiums got jacked by 40%+ or services rationed after the election.
how many times are you going to post the same quote? And when are you ever going to make an actual point?
as I said above, lucky for you the elections occur before re-enrollment.
if there were some way to adjust the rabbit ears on this thing in order to reduce the static….
Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/opin…
Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/opin…
Bolded the good parts and all, I’m sure Steve feels duly chastened. Nevermind that the DP Ed never explains what makes the bill so deeply flawed besides not having a public option.
Here’s a delicious drink recipe:
Cucumber Cool Martini
By The Denver Post
Ingredients
1 1/2 ounce cucumber simple syrup (recipe follows)
1/2 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice
4 ounces vodka
4 basil leaves
Peeled cucumber slice for garnish
Kosher salt
Directions
In a martini shaker, add a few ice cubes, the basil, the lemon juice and the cucumber syrup. With a wooden pestle, muddle the basil with other ingredients. Fill the shaker with more ice cubes, add the vodka and shake well. Strain the liquid into a chilled martini glass; garnish with a slice of cucumber coated in salt.
Cucumber syrup: Peel 1 large cucumber. Cut off the ends, cut into chunks and blend in a blender. Pass through a cheesecloth and chill. In a small pot, whisk together 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil and chill. Add 1 part of syrup to 2 parts cucumber puree and chill until ready to use. Makes about 2 cups.
I’ll reprint this some time when I think someone else might read it, it’s delicious!
that prints regular columns by John Andrews, possibly the most clueless individual ever to publish in any major periodical?
So, Truth is defined by The Denver Post editorial staff? End of story, case closed, check mate, and so on?
Sorry, but here’s the scoop: Once a law is on the books, amending it and refining it becomes the normal course of events. The victory is getting a national healthcare law enacted, which, as it happens, addresses the majority of the issues identified by economists as necessary to control the growth of costs, and the most vexing issues necessary to ensure availability of coverage.
When you develop the ability to “call” anyone “out” in any meaningful way, that’s when I invest in flying horses.
ps ACORN is shutting down…one of the last cache shots of ACORN.
http://webcache.googleusercont…
p.s. Only your mother would know if those flying horses are coming out of your ass or mouth?
I understand completely why reason and facts offend you so deeply.
Yes, Acorn is shutting down, because conservatives try to shut up those who disagree with them anyway they can, and keep the disenfranchized disenfranchized so as to reduce the democratic participation of those in the population against whose interests conservatives routinely work.
As I’ve said before, any large organization targeted in the way ACORN was targeted could have been taken down in the same way. If you go to enough offices of any non-profit, you’ll eventually find someone willing to do something inappropriate.
And I want to see them fail some more. Conservative government has failed this country and our state at all levels. The nation and the states are broke because of the FALSE PHILOSOPHY pedaled by the Government Official Party, the GOP.
These fools never admit that they made a mistake — all debts they pretend are the fault of others. All failings of govt they pretend are the fault of others.
Today is the beginning of the end of “conservative political philosophy”, by which I mean, the end of the philosophy of give it all to the rich and let everyone else wait on them to fix the country.
Your benevolent elites never materialized, Republican scum! NEVER!
The rich are an anti-American class, and an enemy of the state!
Fuck the R party!!
And I want to see them fail some more. Conservative government has failed this country and our state at all levels. The nation and the states are broke because of the FALSE PHILOSOPHY pedaled by the Government Official Party, the GOP.
These fools never admit that they made a mistake — all debts they pretend are the fault of others. All failings of govt they pretend are the fault of others.
Today is the beginning of the end of “conservative political philosophy”, by which I mean, the end of the philosophy of give it all to the rich and let everyone else wait on them to fix the country.
Your benevolent elites never materialized, Republican scum! NEVER!
The rich are an anti-American class, and an enemy of the state!
Fuck the R party!!
…so nice,
you posted it twice!
and join the Republican Party. We like them to have folks like you.
but today’s Republican Party is built on rigid uncompromising ideology with a certitude and corresponding self righteousness that won’t allow even the faintest hint of deviation from it. Any Republican who believed the road to victory on health care was through compromise, and I’m betting there were a few in the House and Senate, knew the immediate consequences. Banishment from the party and for sure primary the next election cycle.
Our whole system is built on the idea that someone proposes an idea as a piece of legislation and by processing the idea through two legislative houses the idea is vetted and refined so all interested parties and groups viewpoints can be considered but today’s Republican Party has one answer to any legislation . . . NO!
The Republicans are so deeply imbedded in the idea that all government is somehow inherently wrong or evil, they can no longer govern. They simply don’t believe government has any purpose. Unfortunately, that is not how the traditional Republican Party or true conservatives view politcal policy making.
The President will get a big boost out of this as well as the Democrats.
With Obama’s win comes failure to bridge Washington’s partisan divide
By David E. Sanger
The New York Times
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_1…
The money quotes:
“But there is no doubt that in the course of this debate, Obama lost something for good. Gone is the promise that he rode to victory on less than a year and a half ago – a promise of a “post-partisan” Washington in which rationality and calm discourse would replace bickering.
“Not in modern memory has a major piece of legislation passed without a single Republican vote. Even President Lyndon Johnson got just shy of half the Republicans in the House to vote for Medicare in 1965.
“That might be the true measure of how much has changed in Washington in the ensuing 45 years and how Obama’s own strategy is changing with the discovery that the approach to governing he had in mind simply will not work.
“‘Let’s face it: He’s failed in the effort to be the nonpolarizing president, the one who can use rationality and calm debate to bridge our traditional divides,’ said Peter Beinart, a liberal essayist. ‘It turns out he’s our third highly polarizing president in a row. But for his liberal base, it confirms that they were right to believe in the guy – and they had their doubts.'”
If Republicans were going for “all the marbles” as Mr. Frum says, then there was never a way to split the marbles no matter what the president did.
The truth is, this bill is the compromise bill. The progressive bill would have been single-payer or at least a bill with a public option. It should have happened that conservatives said completely free market, progressives said single payer, and they meet in the middle with a bill a lot like this, with broad access and consumer protections, but driven by private companies. This is the compromise, but it was still not enough for Republicans to join. There’s just not really a constructive way to cooperate with someone whose primary objective is to tear you down.
I have a hard time laying any responsibility for that at Obama’s feet. I mean, it’s not like he hasn’t reached out to ‘pubs and tried to get them involved. They simply declared this to be something they weren’t going to accept, and that’s that.
I’ve seen and read about how Newt Gingrich built up the party during the 80s to be highly conservative, and this is the result: a bunch of hardliners who refuse to give an inch on anything. What’s a Democratic president to do? Obama made much more of a good faith effort than our last president, who never had any trouble getting some Dems to vote for his agenda.
As for November, all I have to say is that if the ‘pubs continue to be the way they are, listening to their most radical voices who are now just short of calling for armed rebellion, then they will likely find themselves reversing the historical trend of the opposition party gaining seats in Congress at the midterms. Seriously, these nuts are going to drive away the last of the reasonable people and will attract very few moderates who may be disillusioned by any of this. At most, their gains will be very small – just a few Dems representing pretty conservative districts. UNLESS they temper their rhetoric NOW.
I suspecting possibly FDR 1936, but that’s a total gut guess.
I think it’s rare, and even more rare in the first mid-term after a Presidential election. The elected President’s party always (almost always) loses seats.
… we’re in really uncharted waters here. When has the opposition party been so united and so hostile, employed such a scorched earth policy, and still lost?
I’m not going to predict Dem gains, but elected ‘pubs are already kowtowing to their most extreme elements and calling for a complete and total repeal. Are they so out of touch as to think that that’s what the American public wants?
Their only hope is that their direst predictions come true, and come true fast, because once that fails to happen, they will have absolutely nothing to offer against the Dems. A few highly vulnerable Dems like Betsy Markey may be shown the door, but there is no way the ‘pubs are sweeping back to power, and certainly not on the back of this issue.
has been that, lately, the Republican masses have been far more motivated and excited (as their efforts to obstruct progress have seemed to succeed), while, for the same reason, the Democratic masses have been demoralized.
Off-year elections are competitions to get the vote out (and get people to vote all the way down the ballot, I might add!). Yesterday may have, or may not have, diminished the enthusiasm-gap. The majority of Democrats (those who are not falsely convinced that the healthcare bill was just a give-away to the insurance companies) will find their dampened spirits a bit dried out by yesterday’s success, but the most radical Republicans/Tea Partiers will simultaneously find their militant belief that they are embattled Freedom Fighters making the last, noble stand for God, Guns, and the right to be socially destructive morons stoked into new heights of wild-eyed frenzy.
We need to recapture some of the enthusiasm of 2008. We need, like the Tea Partiers, to hear Thomas Paine’s poetry rallying us as we huddle cold and tired at Valley Forge. We need to kindle a fire in our belly.
Which ideological camp does a better job of that is what’s going to determine the outcome of the election in 2010.
The President’s party gained seats in both houses in 1934 and 2002 and gained seats in one house in 1962, 1970, 1992, and 1998. None of these year resulted in more than a 10 House seat gain.
There were particularly large losses (more than 30 House seats) in 1938, 1942, 1946, 1958, 1966, 1974, 1994, and 2006.
Average loss is about 26 seats.
Historical analysis may be very misleading because there are far fewer competitive seats than there used to be. Or at least that is what political scientists thought until Democrats nearly ran the table in 2006.
1992 wasn’t a midterm year. Good post, though, very thought provoking.
But, I’m thinking the republicans picked up seats in 2002. At least in the Senate.
The post-9/11 panic was in full bloom.
I remember Jeffords switched from r to d before the election, and and it seems that the reds retook the majority the next midterm.
Could be wrong though, it seems like such a long time ago.
I meant Jeffords switched after the 2000 election.
I think the Republicans gained a couple of seats in 2004. Part of the reason, as I remember it, was that Bush campaigned heavily for them and they still had a money advantage.
(I just looked it up and they did gain 3 seats that fall.)
Was not a mid-term election.
Republicans gained a few seats by casting Democrats as soft on terrorism for raising questions about invading Iraq.
And they gained eight seats in that election.
The old definition of chutzpah is killing both of your parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re an orphan.
Todays example is forcing the Dems to pass the health bill without a single Repub vote, and then dissing Obama for passing a partisan bill.
“Chutzpah” was the younger sister of “Cheetah”, Tarzan’s chimp, who went with Jane in the divorce settlement.
The two chimps reunited over cigars and brandy years later, and oh, how they laughed about the times they used to have together!
(Real fact: Cheetah enjoyed cigars and brandy, though his owner limited how much he could have for health reasons).
I wish more people would recognize this type of hypocricy. It’s just so completely nonsensical.
But Obama tried, over and over again. He included many Republican ideas in the bill. He obviously made it a huge priority to have bipartisan support.
But today’s Republicans would have nothing of it. Their whole attitude was “I want my country back!” Obama’s a Kenyan. Etc., etc., etc.
David Frum got it exactly right.
shows numbers coming back up for support–almost evenly split for and against this plan.
In 1965, Republicans crossed over in the House and the Senate.
This isn’t Obama’s Waterloo; it’s the Republican Party’s.
His vote would have given the bill bipartisan cover. If people end up happy with the bill, not a single Republican can claim to have helped.
Cao voted at all…shouldn’t he be packing up his office?
He’s a more endangerd species than the dodo bird.
And he is the Duke of Wellington
Bohner, GOP = Napoleon – Loser
Obama, Dems = Duke of Wellington – Victor
Irony, I love thee.
DeMint said it would be Obama’s Waterloo, but he didn’t say which side.
heh, heh. Oops.
And the Senate Republicans can be the army that couldn’t make it to the battle in time.
What a difference. Today’s modern Republicans can’t see the forest for the trees.
Which part of the bill specifically do you not like was the question I was posing to neighbors and freinds.
For the more reasonable of the group that were opposed to any reform it ended up being process and trust, not death panels. Not federally funded abortions. Not free health insurance for illegal immigrants.
The process is f’d up. I don’t trus them to not do something I hate.
So as a result we do nothing?
Most of it isn’t implemented on day 1 – organize and energize and repeal it all if you can get the votes.
For those who are equally certain this bill doesn’t go far enough, doesn’t do enough I have similar advice: organize and energize and make changes late if you can get the votes.
It’s our form of gov’t in action. Yes- it’s more stupid than we would all prefer. Yes, it’s uncomfortable knowing that one senator can block something. Yes, the Constitution is a beautiful thing, but it does not say 60 vote majorities are required to do anything. And so on.
When does the Senate finish what they have to finish?
It strikes me that some of the worse things about this bill follow from Dems’ attempts to placate Republican concerns.
All comprehensive health plans in the developed world share one characteristic: they’re mandatory. Supposedly, this one is too. However, the penalty for not having insurance is trivial compared to the cost of actually buying insurance. Unless I missed something, it makes sense to pay the penalty and wait until you get so sick that you need insurance.
But, I think that this low limit is a direct result of Republican carping about mandates and over-the-top screeches of socialism going back to the start of debate and followed by last summer’s town hall meetings. If Republicans had actually joined the process, which would have required that they accept the notion of comprehensive health care, this kind of thing probably wouldn’t have made it out of the sausage factory.
should the republicans have actually appeared to join the process they could have been far more effective in killing it before it came to a vote.
the ardent posture of “no way, no how” is what hamstrung their efforts. even with all their idea being added to the legislation.
The truly Interesting part is their “ideas” are what will limit the effectiveness of this bill. Watching their Ideas be systematically eliminated to allow the continued functionality of Health insurance reform. IS what will be the proverbial “Twisting of the knife” of their loss. for years to come.
I think there were over 200 Republican amendments to the bill – amendments that are now part of the package.
Some parts of it are going to be immediately popular, and others will be popular in the long term. But the Republican position (as expressed by John McCain recently and in the brilliant writings of RedState) is that the entire bill MUST be repealed. RedState is even saying that anyone who does not support full repeal of the entire health bill must be thrown out of the party.
This will be fun to watch.
Follow David Frum on Twitter: @davidfrum
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Let me guess– he’s getting flamed by the right-wing dingbats that want to toss him and any other rational thinking Republicans out of the pary.
Definitely time to reorganize/realign our two party system. The old GOP can become the Dodo party, and a center-right party should be formed for the outcasts.
Not missed by C-SPAN mic last night was the constant “we will sue to overturn this “flawed” . . .” They either on their own or through far right fringe groups (see Virginia AG) are going activist judge shopping now.
The more real world/reality aware of them realize that they have to attack now and find the most far right anti-American judges to rule it “unconstitutional” as soon as possible. To get any sympathy out of SCoUS they have to get it there immediately. Any delay and there will be replacements on the court (although I do not think Obama is willing to put up any progressives).
to cling to extreme ideologies, wisdom does not reside at either pole. Some radical ideas are good ones, but radical ideologies, sets of ideas divorced from the amassed institutionalized product of millenia of cultural evolution, never are.
But the one constant of history is change. While some revere some moment in the past with romaticized longing, for the most part, the advance of history has served us well. To the extent that it has not, or has not distributed its fruits equitably, it is through innovation and progress, not regression and intransigence, that we will face those challenges and solve those problems.
We took an important step forward yesterday. An imperfect step. An incomplete step. But a step. It was a step in the direction away from the exploitation of the many by the few, and toward the extension of opportunity for all. It was a step in the direction of creating an ever-more perfect union, which is what we exist, as a nation, to do.
But we will always have a thousand miles left to go. The challenge that is more pressing, more fundamental, than any instantaneous step that we may take, is the improvement of our ability to continue that journey most effectively. All reasonable people of good will need to rededicate themselves to that task, every day.
This not the time to gloat at the failure of the Republicans. It is the time to try to attract the broad middle toward willing participation in our shared endeavor. It is the time to be gracious. It is the time to demonstrate that we are not just more of the same, but rather a movement striving for something better.
Let angry fanatics spit and sputter, while reasonable people of good will build bridges across the chasms that separate us.
It was just a step but it will be harder for the health insurance corporations to put obstacles in the path at this point. There will be no going back to embrace the abuses of the past by health insurance corporations. If they don’t get their acts together and take care of these 32 million people who will be buying their services then there will be another vote in the future to spur additional competition. It is but one step but it is a big step.
We waited for a year, being ever so kind to Republicans like Snowe and Grassley, waiting for their valued input, while they lied about what was in the bill and announced that they would never support it anyway. We showed ourselves to be the better party, and in so doing lost a lot of momentum and ended up with a worse bill that was harder to pass.
In the future we shall need to be stronger. For now, it is time to gloat.
The challenge of balancing strong realpolitik with the cultivation of a more productive political process is a separate issue, one that is prospective rather than retrospective in its focus. While there is a good argument to be made that the Dems should have played power-politics from the get-go, there is no argument to be made that we gain anything by gloating now. No policy is advanced, but many moderates with uncertain or ambiguous ideological affiliations will be alienated.
We all know how gratifying it is to prevail in conflict. We also know that those who have made the most of such victories in the past have done so by being gracious to the defeated “enemy”. After WWII, the genius of the victors was to rebuild the infrastructure and forgive the past belligerence of those they had defeated. In almost every victory that has produced some lasting benefit, the victors helped bring the vanquished on board afterward. To the extent that they fail to do so, they pay a lasting price in greater-than-necessary broad-based animosity and resistence.
There is no victory more complete than the co-optation of the opposition, or of some portion of the opposition. Until that is accomplished, you have only succeeded in pulling against an elastic tether toward the desired goal. It is more fundamentallly important to weaken that tether, to make it stretch further with less resistence. And it is not a dichotomous variable, that either the opposition is intransigent or cooperative. There are hundreds of millions of people involved in this game, and there are many more who are not the voice and face of either side than who are.
The passage of progressive laws and the election to office of progressive officials are the more superficial of accomplishments in the epic political battles we face. The more profound and significant accomplishments involve swaying large numbers of people in slight increments in one direction or another, changing the zeitgeist, changing the political culture. New laws certainly can contribute to that, by becoming familiar parts of the institutional landscape, but they do not solely determine it.
If you’re not working at persuading people, while working at passing desired laws, you’re not engaging in the more essential of political challenges.
It’s not. Since 1993, Republicans have been at war with the rest of us. No holds barred, all’s fair, anything goes. We played nice, and it didn’t get us anywhere. Just loss after loss after loss.
Finally their own incompetence sank them, and none of their clever ads could save their campaigns. STILL we played nice. It’s hurt us.
The public knows that Republicans are the party of the rich. It’s not news anymore. It doesn’t surprise anyone. The problem is that they don’t think the Democrats are the party of everyone else, since the Republicans keep being successful at helping the rich, and Democrats keep failing at helping anyone else. Democratic weakness is bad for us. And we don’t become stronger by begging for bipartisanship.
The people who have already decided that they hate government-run health care (as long as it’s not Medicare or Tricare or Medicaid) are not persuadable. The people who didn’t particularly follow this debate would rather be on the side of the winners than the losers.
After all, how appealing is the message in my new signature to an independent voter?
in an on-going struggle. However, this vote on healthcare reform is over, and it is in reference to this vote on healthcare reform that I say that there is no profit in gloating.
There’s no doubt that the optimal strategy is to appear to be the most reasonable of the two parties, most willing to try to accomodate all ideas and perspectives, while in reality being extremely good at playing hardball, and pushing through the policies we favor. Goating only succeeds in costing us on that first dimension, while gaining nothing on the second.
I agree, goating is a horrible idea.
But I think gloating makes winners feel good (which is important for sustaining them in future battles) and makes losers feel ashamed of themselves, and makes people in the middle want to side with the winners. That’s maybe not the way people ideally should behave, but psychologically it’s how we seem to work.
that gloating makes winners feel good (though I think it makes losers feel more resentful than ashamed), and thus has an important role to play in private gatherings of winners, but not in public displays.
You need to get out more. 🙂
Tell people how the law will help them, remind people there is still work to be done and then go high five each other privately over beers.
I long opposed this bill because it didn’t go far enough, but the crying by the GOP has turned me in to a supporter.
The majority are not extremists, and, while they may temporarily have strong views, they are highly persuadable. Most don’t see politics as war, but rather as something they want to invisibly and unobtrusively create a context for their freedom and prosperity. The people who they see being very “political” are annoying to them, appearing to cause unecessary problems. Whichever party appears to them to be engaged more in politics than in governing is the party they resent more. Part of the strategic challenge in politics, therefore, is to create the appearance of being the party more focused on governing and less focused on politics.
“Not gloating” is a long way from “begging for bipartisanship.” Gloating has one value, and one value only: The emotional gratification of the victors. Except on very rare occasions, it has no strategic or tactical value whatsoever. The question then reduces to: What’s more important, the emotional gratification of the victors, or continuing to get the job done?
Listening to the rants of the R reps and the rants of the outdoors mob made me think they gave up bothering to be of this world. The constant “. . . flawed bill. . .” mantra was telling. Rather than let any one of the R reps talk on their own it was scripted and only the women dared to vary from it.
The activist judge shopping is one more step off terra firma. Believing the majority of Americans do not want health payment reform (this has very little to do with health care as it does with how payments are made) shows there is very little understanding of our country.
The manufactured outrage, much of it based on the R’s own false talking points, leaves the R’s with little to fall back on. The Wall St. first, you little people never is not working anymore. Eventually people figure out that the R’s really do not represent them.
” this isn’t what the American people want ! ” over the past year. Talk about out of touch. What group of Americans is he talking about ? It’s not what HIS American people want, you know, the ones he hits the golf course with.
There are a lot of Americans that were left for dead by health insurers. They’re gone, and can’t speak, but is getting shut out by their health insurers what they wanted ?
I don’t think so.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-…
Can you really take revenge by doing the same thing you’ve always been doing? The party of “Hell no you can’t” doesn’t seem to have many tactics left, since no Republican has cooperated on anything since Arlen Specter was forced out of the party.
what you are going to do because they can then come up with new ways to twist in the knife.
If obstruction is the order of the day then introduce bills that make them take sides with the most offensive of corporation practices. Let them vote for Wall Street mega-bonuses and against regulation of the banks. Democrats control the agenda so use automatic Republican opposition votes to cut their throats. We saw last night that Democrats are better legislative tacticians so this is just more ammo for Dems. to use against such a shallow strategy.
The GOP also lost Rush Limbaugh since he said he’d move to Costa Rica if health care reform passed.
Buh Bye, Rush!
Note: the following YouTube has lots of middle fingers, so probably NSFW, but funny nonetheless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
I like how Limbaugh says he’ll leave in 5 years after all the stuff is implemented, hoping apparently that his loser listeners won’t remember what he said. Which is most likely true; the only way they’ll remember is if he repeats it every day on the show for the next five years.
In his campaign schedule, Austerlitz comes way before Waterloo;-).
Enjoyed looking up Battle of Austerlitz. Glad that we aren’t really waging war with each other but the battle analogies do have some applicability. If Austerlitz was a masterpiece of strategy by Napoleon then this was a great gambit by Pelosi. To dangle the “deem” solution as a legislative trick which got them all fired up with outrage then take it off the table and give them what they want but be a real hard ass from the speakers chair about their delaying tactics was deftly done. “Everything by the book but you don’t get anything extra”. They had no counter except to look constipated but looks don’t kill bills. They were toast and they knew it. I thought they were going to cry because they didn’t get their way. What babies.
…completely routing the enemy from the field of battle, but unable to follow up and pursue total victory.
at the center of the gare du Austerlitz in Paris that was made entirely by melting down the iron of the enemy’s cannons IIRC. Now thats pretty badass.
sent me an email, because I guess I’m still on John McCain’s email list.
Nationalize health care by gutting Medicare? GUTTING MEDICARE?
Could someone else with more patience than I have remind us why Republicans are such fucking morons?
Which offers little to patients, but was a real cash cow to insurance companies because it was heavily subsidized by the government.
It’s not exactly the same as gutting Medicare, but it’s close enough for Republican Talking Points.
Of course, he’s a pretty die-hard Republican anyway, but he was very happy with his Medicare Advantage plan, into which he paid a bit extra to get some extra coverage. I’m sadly sure that he’ll be misguidedly pissed when the extra subsidies paid by Medicare to his plan to cover the Medicare basics go away and the insurance company blames the HCR bill.
Much less the truth. With the possible exception of David Frum, judging by the clarity of his memo above.