Posted on 02/26/2010 4:50:32 AM PST by Kaslin
The longest week I ever spent was the six hours I spent watching Thursday's health-care summit.
The better angel of my nature says that this confab is a wonderful spectacle of democracy. Serious men and women airing serious disagreements in a (relatively) respectful and substantive manner. Huzzah for democracy. Wahoo for C-SPAN. Attaboys and attagals to all involved.
My more devilish side says that this is a debacle par excellence, the policy-wonk equivalent of a show trial where the result is foreordained and the speeches are for the benefit of no one but those who don't understand what's really going on while the posturing is for the handful of Kremlinologists who care passionately about minutiae.
More to the point: It was mind-bogglingly, soul-achingly, sand-poundingly, metaphysically and ontologically boring. It's like driving through Kansas on the interstate (something I've done many times): long, vast stretches of boredom punctuated by the occasional brief promise of excitement that would require detouring from the planned route.
It reminds me of that old Monty Python skit where British soldiers are equipped with the world's funniest joke, a joke so funny that even to hear it guarantees you'll die laughing. The British army translates the gag into German (different translators for each word so as to prevent their own deaths), and has its troops read the German version as they march through Ardennes forest. Suddenly, Nazi soldiers start falling dead from the trees.
Substitute "boring" for "funny" and you'll get a vague sense of how dull this summit was.
At one point I could swear Mitch McConnell was counting fibers in the carpet just to stay awake.
For months, Republicans have fairly tagged President Obama for breaking his promise to put health-care negotiations on C-SPAN. That talking point was rendered moot Thursday. But now there's a better talking point: The summit showed why Obama was crazy for wanting to televise this stuff in the first place. Real negotiations never happen in front of cameras because to cut a real political deal in public is the political equivalent of cutting your own throat.
Now, just because the scripts were written beforehand doesn't mean that everyone's lines worked. Obama opened by striking a pose of plausible fairness and open-mindedness but grew more and more snarky (to use a technical political-science term) and less presidential as the event wore on. Obama's condescension to John McCain -- "we're not campaigning any more, the election's over" -- pleased everyone who already loves him and nobody who doesn't.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relied on the Democrats' favorite rhetorical gambit: policy-by-anecdote. Invoking the sad plight of some person no one knows can be effective, but we've been hearing such stories for a very long time, even as support for Pelosi's solutions has plummeted.
But it was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, mugging for his doomed re-election bid at home, who put the ugliest face on the Democratic Party. Cranky, mean and short-tempered, Reid seemed like he was sitting on a carpet tack throughout the discussion. He snapped that "no one is talking about reconciliation" -- a reference to the arcane parliamentary procedure Democrats are considering as a means to ram their unpopular bill through Congress.
That's true, save for the more than 100 House Democrats and more than 20 Senate Democrats who had already signed letters calling for reconciliation. His crotchety dyspepsia combined with arrogant dishonesty made the leader of the Senate seem like the sort of oldster who would pinch little kids for fun if he could get away with it.
The Republicans were arguably more boring than the Democrats precisely because they had to seem nicer. (Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who bizarrely played the race card, had no such concerns.) But when Sens. Lamar Alexander, Jon Kyl and Tom Coburn weren't contemplating committing seppuku like that Japanese soldier in "Airplane!" just to end the ennui, they succeeded in undermining the central talking point of the Democrats: that the Republican Party has no ideas on health care.
It may have been excruciatingly dull enough to force Osama bin Laden from his cave, but the Republicans patiently telegraphed an inconvenient truth: They do care about health-care reform, they just loathe Democrats' version of it (and, yes, have much to gain by blocking it). At halftime and again afterwards, when delegates were no doubt mainlining Red Bull, the Democrats' spinners took to the airwaves to insist that the Republicans "don't want anything." But anyone watching knows that's not really true.
That is, if anyone was watching.
I watched a good bit of it while doing stuff around the house, had it on most of the day. The sob stories from every single Democrat, even the President did it with both kids and his Mother were just ridiculous. Yes, bad things happen to good people but the government can’t and shouldn’t save everyone at the detriment to entire system. AND the President and his very RUDE comment to John McCain about the campaigning is over, I won, was so very disrespectful and showed him to be the arrogant jerk we all know he is.
OBAMANOMICS--TRICKLE DOWN DESTRUCTION of the economy
SET THEIR LOCAL AND DC LINES ON FIRE! Bambi doesn't keep his promises...so buyer beware.
Sen Scott Brown's number is 202-224-4543
Capitol Hill switchboard is 202-224-3121
Lots of local demwit phone numbers on this thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2408217/posts
Rename, repackage, rewrite it a tad smaller, and sell another pig in a poke.
Tennessee has joined several other states in trying to pass a Health Care Freedom Act. NO COLAs for granny, retired Military or retired fed employees. BIG NEW fees for Tricare for Life retired over 65 Military's secondary health ins. (DOD bill already passed, delayed but goes into effect 2011 NEEDS TO BE REPEALED)
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w/
New Dem mantra: Woof, woof eat dog food granny....ala let them eat cake.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Obama says slight fix will extend Social Security
http://townhall.com/news/us/2010/02/19/obama_says_slight_fix_will_extend_social_security
Health Care Rationing for Seniors Another Problem in New Obama Plan
http://www.lifenews.com/bio3058.html
TRI CARE FOR LIFE This from a google search:
http://economicspolitics.blogspot.com/2009/05/tricare-for-life-is-obama-trying-to.html
This option would help reduce the costs of TFL, as well as costs for Medicare, by introducing minimum out-of pocket requirements for beneficiaries. Under this option, TFL would not cover any of the first $525 of an enrollee’s cost-sharing liabilities for calendar year 2011 and would limit coverage to 50 percent of the next $4,725 in Medicare cost sharing that the beneficiary incurred. (Because all further cost sharing would be covered by TFL, enrollees could not pay more than $2,888 in cost sharing in that year.)
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9925/12-18-HealthOptions.pdf
http://www.vawatchdog.org/09/hcva09/hcva110609-1.htm
Bill Would Restrict Veterans’ Health Care Options 11/06/09
Buyer and McKeon Offer Amendments to Protect Veterans and TRICARE Beneficiaries
Congress plans to block Tricare fee increases
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w
By Rick Maze - Staff writer, Oct 7, 2009
Tricare fee increases imposed last week by the Defense Department will be repealed by a provision of the compromise 2010 defense authorization bill unveiled Wednesday by House and Senate negotiators.
Snip
The fee increases were announced on Sept. 30 and took effect on Oct. 1, but the defense bill, HR 2647, includes a provision barring any fee increases until the start of fiscal 2011.
Snip
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bill Matz, president of the National Association for Uniformed Services, said the announcement of fee increases was shocking considering that the Obama administration promised earlier this year to hold off on any new fee Tricare fee increases until fiscal 2011.
“President Obama and DoD assured NAUS and the entire military family earlier this year that there would rightly be no increases in any Tricare fees” in fiscal 2010, Matz said. “We took them at their word, and I can’t believe that a co-pay increase like this was allowed to go forward,” he added.
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