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Mark my words, somebody's bound to make a game out of this.
All the right elements are in.
Spoiler: The butler didn't do it. And neither did the American people. And it wasn't the GOP either---not this time around.
Your turn, Mrs. Scarlet
Hmm...
Get a clue
What do you think?
Is that you, Professor Plum?
Maybe the Bartender did it. Hes been acting a bit strange this past month...
ReplyDeleteSomeone ought to make it a game. I hope someone does. It would prove far more informative than Schoolhouse Rock!'s "I am just a bill."
ReplyDeleteJane Hamsher today:
July was the month that President Obama made a "quid pro quo deal" with the hospitals to exclude the public option from a final health care bill. Miles Mogulescu reports that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina confirmed the deal to David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times.
President Obama disingenuously confirmed his support for the public option in his September address to a joint session of Congress, but, behind the scenes, he was actively working to kill it. Obama wanted Harry Reid to be responsible for taking it out of the final health care bill so he, the president, could remain popular, according to Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo.
But Reid is facing a tough challenge of his own and didn’t want the honors, so — as predicted — Joe Lieberman was called upon to do the dirty work. Far from opposing the President, Lieberman was doing exactly what Obama wanted him to do so that the deal with the hospitals to kill the public option would be honored.
continued~~~
ReplyDeleteTom Carper famously said that it was the Senate’s responsibility to honor the deal that Obama made with PhRMA, because, after all, they paid for it with $150 million in political advertising for House Democrats. And although PhRMA was nervous about putting more money in until the President delivered on that deal, they have now agreed to another $6 million ad buy in the istricts of 38 Democrats.
The objective of the White House with the health care bill has been from the beginning to secure donations of the medical industrial complex for Democrats and assure their re-election in 2010. But recently, they switched their battle plan. While Rahm Emanuel may have been protecting Blue Dogs from “fu&1ing r#%&rd” liberals who wanted to challenge them last fall, the Democratic establishment has now turned on Democrats in conservative-leaning districts for their unwillingness to take a vote that will no doubt cost them their seats. So much for the "big tent."
There are currently 36 resolutions in states across the country to ban the mandate which forces people to buy private insurance, or face a penalty of up to 2% of their income that the IRS will collect — the very thing that Obama campaigned against. It will become a rallying cry for the right.
ReplyDeleteJohn Shaddegg gives a preview of what the GOP will be saying in the fall:
SHADEGG: You could better defend a public option than you could defend compelling me to buy a product from the people that have created the problem. America’s health insurance industry has wanted this bill and the individual mandate from the get go. That’s their idea. Their idea is “look, our product is so lousy, that lots of people don’t buy it. So we need the government to force people to buy our product. And stunningly, that’s what the Congress appears to be going along with. Why would they do that?
As Jon Walker noted, the President’s recent campaign wherein he railed against insurance companies for jacking up premiums was an exercise in incoherence. “If private insurance companies are evil, why are you forcing me to be their customer?”