An American Lion

This is an observation about health care. I don’t know if it makes sense, but, so what? I’m a professional blogger. I can do things like this. These are comments distilled from several threads at something or other called “Yglesias” and, basically, I’m throwing red meat to howling liberals. I call this “turd in a punchbowl” commenting, and I deliberately shower the threads with hilarious bits of outrageousness. You should see me giggling when I write this stuff.

I had a chance to look at the argument from Howard Dean, and then I spent some time reading what Nate Silver had to say, and I think there are some very good reasons to go one way, and some good reasons to go the other way.

While Dean supports what the House did, the House bill cannot pass the Senate. Silver has run the numbers, and sees some benefit in the current legislation that would help working families, i.e., people who don’t spend all day coming up with snark on comment threads (allegedly).

It all comes down to a very basic answer. If you voted for Obama, guess what? You have to dance with them what brung you. If you voted for this mess, and gave him his mandate, and worked for him, and helped him win states like Virginia and North Carolina, well, good for you. If you screamed and screamed about Bush for years and drove around with a “1.20.2009” bumper sticker on your car then he’s your guy and you have to live with him now. Enjoy your permanent war, permanent surveillance, permanent financial chicanery, your rather feckless and ill-considered reform of health care, and get ready for the next big thing that the President tries to foist onto the American people over the objection of his base and to the consternation of his enemies (who are really his allies):

The construction of the President Barack Obama monument in downtown Washington D.C.

Yes, I know it’s true, because I read it on Townhall and FreeRepublic.Com. President Obama is already planning to build a giant monument to his great victories, a granite hand inscribed with the entire text of his fifty greatest speeches, a rotating hand that spins around once per calendar day, of a giant hand giving everyone the finger so that they can remember who’s number one.

Oh, I can just see it now. It’s election day, 2012, and quite a few good people are just going to sit on their hands and do nothing, and no matter how many think that berating them or calling them names is the way to go, this President just gave a whole lot of good people a reason to sit out the political process. Even George W. Bush knew, you always give your base something to applaud.

Now, tell me. Who really was smarter? Bush or Obama? Think about that, and remember to cite examples.

Another aspect of this whole debate that I don’t understand is, what about the Constitution?

What about it?

People assert that:

“buying health insurance is not economic activity”

It most certainly is an “economic” activity, if it is mandated.

You have to estimate what you can afford, you have to decide what you need to cover, and you have an array of choices. If you like Aetna, you buy Aetna. But then a fellow from Blue Cross calls you up and starts yammering about how he can give you a better deal. Go on, you say, nervously, because these things usually end up in a screaming match. When you finally talk him down off the ceiling, you discover Blue Cross will end up costing you $3,498 a year MORE than Aetna, and you thank the nice young fellow for wasting thirty-seven minutes of your time and you go back to watching a hockey game.

I have to confess–the “unconstitutional” aspect of declaring the Health Care reform moving through Congress has never struck me as being particularly well thought out, nor is it really an astute way of applying the Constitution to a matter which is not going to be “challenged” in any way, shape or form by the various institutions in Washington D.C. You could see a New Hampshire resident file a challenge to a mandate to have to buy into Obamacare, and have it work its way up through the courts, arriving at the gates of the Supreme Court sometime in the distant future (two? three years?). Depending on what “establishment” Washington wants, the court could take up the case and issue a close decision, narrowly enshrining it in permanent law by upholding the right of the Congress to hand us health care.

My question then is, what were you thinking, goofball? You challenged the right of Congress to enact health care reform, you took it all the way to the Supreme Court, and a liberal-dominated court, flush with two or three new Obama nominees just upheld it, and now we’re all screwed and, the next thing you know, Congress is passing a law telling us we all have to have vegetable gardens.

Is growing vegetables “economic activity?” It is if it is mandated.

ought to take a deep breath and consider that Nelson and Lieberman … get votes in the United States Senate.

Did you come up with that all by your lonesome? Wow.

In point of fact, Lieberman and Nelson often ditch the Democrat caucus in order to appease whatever special interest has greased their wheel that morning with extra grease dipped in banknotes.

Did it ever occur to anyone who pretends to be smart about these things that, going in, you would have won everything you wanted on Health Care Reform if you had simply counted heads and decided not to count on Nelson or Lieberman (and their ilk) to do what was right?

I realize President Obama gives great speeches and plays that 11th level dimensional chess, but a numbers guy he ain’t. If you count the votes, which is what happens when you’re an experienced legislator, you enter the process with something you can ram through with bare majorities.

Here’s a little (painful) history of how a professional rams a massive piece of legislation through the Congress and gets damned near everything he wants, without even bothering to hang on to all of the votes from his own party:

President Bush on Monday signed into law landmark Medicare reform legislation that includes prescription drug benefits and has sparked a bitter fight between opponents and supporters.

Speaking at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, Bush characterized the measure as “the greatest advance in health care coverage for America’s seniors since the founding of Medicare.”

Backers say the $400 billion Medicare Prescription Drug Modernization Act will provide much-needed help for the nation’s 40 million senior citizens to buy medications; critics say it is a giveaway to drug makers and insurance companies and a prelude to the dismantling of the program.

This is hilarious to read, in light of recent hand-wringing:

Two key Democrats did not vote. Presidential candidates John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and Joe Lieberman, D-Connecticut, participated in Monday’s debate but skipped Tuesday’s vote.

Lieberman’s press secretary, Jano Cabrera, said the senator left for a campaign stop in Arizona — where Bush is to appear at a fund-raiser Tuesday afternoon for Rep. Rick Renzi’s re-election campaign — after it became “ultimately clear the bill was heading toward passage.”

Cabrera said Lieberman would “continue to speak out against the president’s Medicare policies.”

In a written statement, Kerry said he fought “tooth and nail against this special interest giveaway” but returned to the campaign trail once he decided that his vote would not make a difference.

Prior to the vote, senators on both sides of the issue made impassioned pleas for their side. But two last-minute efforts by Democratic senators failed to block the vote, and the bill won out.

Tell me—how did George W. Bush, allegedly dumber than a box of hammers—get a $400 billion dollar plan through Congress and get it through the U.S. Senate? He lost and gained votes:

The Senate’s 54-to-44 vote was not entirely along party lines — 10 Democrats voted in favor and nine Republicans voted no.

Did President Obama miss this lesson? Apparently, since he didn’t even get to the Senate until the following year.

Here’s how I think it should have played out. Someone commented about how keeping Ben Bernanke was a reasonable thing.

I, personally, love the fact that this President chose to retain so many members of the Bush Administration. Why, didn’t he even send a Republican to serve as ambassador to China? Aren’t there any Democrats who speak Chinese?

Bernanke isn’t awful, and that’s about the best thing that I can say about him. If we want the economy to rev up again, I hate to say it, but health care should have been structured to make that the central organizing principle of any reform.

Health Care should have been designed as a step by step reform, with simple majority votes for each stage of a five or six step reform process. It should have been divided into areas that reformed bankruptcy laws for people who have medical bills that are too high. There should have been an expansion of SCHIP, a special program to take on malpractice insurance costs, another to establish a single, and a simple standard for electronic records for ALL Americans.

If this had been designed as a seven or eight month process of drafting each piece, negotiating and fighting it out, then ramming it through on up or down votes, the Republican minority would have been forced into a corner. One tactic could have used the death tax as a gambit to get Republicans to vote for something akin to a “public option.” The Democrats could have said, “we’ll end the death tax if you swallow a public option.” Might have worked. Now, we’ll never know. 11th dimension chess? Please. This President couldn’t play checkers with a retard.

Less than thirty days from the inauguration, President Obama should have been sent the first of a series of Health Care reforms. You could have steamrolled through a dazed and confused Republican minority, forcing them into a series of 52-48 votes (if the legislation had been put through the Senate by a professional, that’s what would have happened, and I know this because President Bush beat the left every time by doing just that).

The Democrat Party went big, and whiffed, and now you get to suck eggs and claw at your eyeballs in fear of a 2010 where Congress will now have to placate the voters and run from their record. If you thought the legislation was bad this year, wait til the whores and the fools who line the halls of Congress actually have to face the voters.