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Nuclear Option

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:01:24 PM
In 2004, Senator Kennedy helped change the Massachusetts rules to replace Senators by special election. They were afraid that John Kerry would beat George Bush for President, and Governor Romney would replace him with a Republican.
 
Now Kennedy is gone, and if they don't change the rules back, Harry Reid will only have 59 Senators until January.
 
This means that the Senate is one step closer to considering the "nuclear option"- closing off 60 vote cloture on legislative decisions and changing it to a simple majority, as if health care reform were a simple budget revision. The Democrats were screaming bloody murder about this when the GOP considered in five years ago to counter the stream of Bush appointed Judicial nominees that never made it the floor for an up or down vote.
 
I say, let 'em try it. The Senate is a safe bet to stay in Democrat hands in 2011 (even if Harry Reid loses his seat and they have to find another leader). If they try this, that notion is in play, too.  
 
If they vote in Kennedy Care (is that the new header now?) with a simple majority, there will be hell to pay.
 
They were between a rock and a hard place before Ted passed on. They may not see themselves as having a choice. Only Obama can call them off this one.
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Special Prosecutor For CIA

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 9:51:24 PM
Eric Holder at Justice didn't have the cuevos to go after Bush officials for this, but they see fit to go after CIA officials for interrogation abuse.
 
If it isn't bad enough that Obama campaigned on the notion that the CIA people weren't culpable because the policy was set from above.
 
Don't look to the present to see what kind of disaster it would be if they needed the intelligence, and they were depending on CIA people who were contemplating a joint legal defense arrangement. That is a ticket for answering questions with CYA answers.
 
Look to what happned to the CIA when the Watergate Congress, led by Frank Church, gutted the CIA in the mid 1970's. THAT CIA was just as surprised as we all were when Khomeni ousted the Shah in Iran and created a terrorist State in the Mid East in 1979.
 
We're still paying for that one. How long will it be before Leon Panetta realizes that he is running an agency that nobody in Washington wants any part of?
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Town Hall Ruckus

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 8:44:01 PM
Who here is surprised at the rancor in the Town hall meetings? Not me. I warned all of you months ago that there was a Republican/ conservative reaction bubbling up under the radar, as a reaction to Obama taking office and announcing to the world that his centrist campaign positions were a sham. The interesting part was, many in the media were not noticing this at all, for whatever reasons.
 
Well, they are noticing now. Only most of them are following along the White House talking points that the ground swell on this is something organized by the insurance companies, the pharmaceuticals and whatever other organized evil they can conjure.
 
That's the first argument structure offered by the moral absolutists- these people couldn't possibly disagree with us on this, it just has to be outside forces.
 
Then there is the other shoe that drops- all these people are being duped. Duped by messages of "death panels", "putting grandma to death", etc. This is the old red herring logic- choose the most outrageous words out there, and present them as your antithesis, easier to set on a plate for condemnation.
 
Which leads to the biggest White House problem out there- the hordes of Seniors out there, looking to live out their lives in a quality borne of advancing  medical technology and faced with a series of bills, along with a President, who keep talking about this from a cost benefit standpoint. These people are not stupid, what do you all think THAT will lead to?
 
A hell of a lot of questions, for starters. And when you face those questions as a party in power with a viewpoint that looks at dissent as some sort of new un-Americanism, you will find yourself trying to put out a fire by dumping gas cans into it.
 
Saul Alinsky and his "Rules For Radicals" doesn't try to deal with dissent with argument, except to circumvent. And if the circumvention/ deception fails, the next step is intimidation, which explains the union people being bussed in to attend some of these meetings.
 
Obama is not a pragmatist, or he hasn't shown himself to be one yet. That has made him easier to study. He has a choice here.
 
The country is still a center-right country. If he and this Congress continue to run into this wall, they will get their heads handed to them in 2010. If he loses the House there, and he shoots for what he can get with that, he has a chance to be re-elected two years later. It's always possible that even by then, the GOP has not settled their internal immigration divisions and will be handing him five points in advance. Otherwise, Obama is a one term President.
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Consequences Of Arrogance

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 21, 2009 2:13:51 PM
Every human is capable of growth and adjustment. I think Obama is quite capable of that, but the direction he will have to go in, in order to slow or stop the bleeding of independent voters this summer, may prove to be totally unacceptable to the base that elected him in part because of two decades of boiling frustration.
 
I don't think they will allow him to become a pragmatist past a certain point. Hence, his rapid burial of the trial balloon last week of putting forward a health care proposal without the "public option".
 
Whatever he is going to do, he has to do now. Next year is an election year, and there will be no action on something this large with that looming over them.
 
The Senate will probably stay in their hands in 2011, due to the number of Republicans in elective rotation and the impending retirements commited to already. But if Obama and the Hill Democrats continue on this course, and continue to stuff this thing in the face of the voters, especially the seniors, there will be a Republican House in 17 months.
 
It is that bad. I understand why they feel the need to act on all this stuff, and act now. But America is a supertanker of a ship, and you can't make a left turn like that in such a short time frame, even if that's ultimately what the voters want. You can't get too far ahead of the people.
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"Bearing False Witness"

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 21, 2009 2:02:35 PM
Obama isn't happy to simply disagree. Dissent on his health care program is now a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. We are " bearing false witness" against his people now.
 
This is what happens when you approach political issues as a moral absolutist. The clash of ideas is no longer a collision of disagreeing premises, but one side owns the truth and the other is somehow evil.
 
The Democrats running this thing have all gone home for the summer and found their constituents coming at them with open torches and pitchforks. Instead of facing the possibility that there is real concern among them, some of them are coming back convinced that their voters have been pushed over the edge by Republicans, health insurers and pharmaceuticals.
 
Now they are up against it, and the intra party debate among the Dems is to not bother any more with the few Republicans on the Finance Committees (the extent of their "bipartisan" negotiations) and pushing the damned thing onto the floor anyway.
 
They don't have the votes for that. So they are also considering a "nuclear option"- a procedural change that will allow a simple majority vote in the Senate, bypassing the filibuster options. They are realizing that the 'Blue Dogs' are getting farther away from them with every town hall meeting.
 
It is an outright lie to pass out the notion that the Republicans don't want to cooperate at all on this. It is another one to say that they aren't bringing any ideas to the table. The biggest lie of them all is that opposition to the plans put forward is a satisfaction with the staus quo.
 
That is what Obama, Pelosi and Reid have all done this summer. I'm not going to bother with throwing that particular Commandment back at them- this debate is difficult enough.
 
Somebody has to keep it civil. This is important stuff, and we should be above that, whenever possible. Maybe if I was from Chicago, I'd roll the same way the White House does. You all want to talk? I'm right here. I may not be the brother of your Chief of Staff, but I can add something. You ain't listening. That's your problem, not mine.
 
 
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Cash For Clunkers Clunks Out

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 21, 2009 1:45:13 PM
It's official, folks. The great Detroit salvation program ends next Monday, 8 P.M.
 
Many car dealers have stopped filing applications, partially because of the onerous clunker disposal requirements and the back log of old cars waiting in line for processing. They are afraid of not qualifying because of the time requirements.
 
Many more are worried sick that, since little of the federal reimbursement has shown itself to them yet, there is a chance that they may be stuck for the money due them indefinitely.
 
Here is the rich part: the same government that has so much trouble gearing up and managing a $2 billion dollar program for a few weeks is asking us for effective control of the health care sector of the economy.
 
I understand the fed's troubles with the car program. The government is an unwieldly monster, the program was a temp and the response was more than they imagined. Money appropriated for the year was maxed out in a week. That's a lot of fires to put out all at once.
 
The same government is now asking us to find and finance a structure for health care, adding a good 20-40M people to the insurance rolls immediately. On what are we supposed to base our faith on this government not making things worse than they are?
 
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Robert Novak R.I.P.

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 1:47:46 PM
He had cancer, and this had been coming for a while. I grew up on the Evans-Novak Report, and their atention to detail taught me many things about how politics and government function.
 
After he went solo, that detail was there as always, but towards the end, it became clear that, while his data and human assessments were right on target, the predictions that followed them were skewed conservative. Always the hopeful one. This became more pronounced after the Democrats regaining majority in 2006, and one could read it in all his caveats sprinkled through his 2008 reports.
 
But he started as a lonely conservative voice covering the doings of D.C. under JFK and then the Great Society Congress of 1965. He had a ton of sources who found in him a sympathetic ear when they were disgruntled with the movements of government.
 
His last great involvement in goverment affairs, the sourcing behind the article outing Valerie Plame pushing her husband to a fact finding trip to Nigeria, was handled with his typical class and aplomb. Absent a subpeona, he held his tongue until his source was given away elsewhere. Then he later redressed the Scooter Libby investigation because they knew he wasn't the source of the leak before any grand jury was called, and were prosecuting him for a crime they knew was not connected to him.
 
Novak was ahead of his time in that he was a pundit in a world of Ed Murrow "just the facts" clones. He never pretended to be otherwise.
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Only When His Lips Are Moving

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 14, 2009 1:09:55 PM
If it isn't interesting enough to watch Obama work a Health Care town hall dominated by softball questions, when the folks from Capitol Hill are walking into hostile LZ's at every turn.
 
The man is used to developing a debate point without serious flak thrown in his path. This includes the campaign trail in 2008, where his biggest problem (Hillary) could not find a comfortable way to put it to a well-spoken, earnest Black man. She had all the issues to lay on him, but when he sidestepped them, she was at a loss to follow up.
 
So there he is, announcing that  the AARP in "on board" with his plan. That, folks, is lawyer speak. "On board" doesn't mean anybody endorsed anything. It could mean that they heard his plan and nobody has tried to assasinate him yet.
 
So what if the head of the AARP saw a need to come out later that day and announce that there was no such support? He can count the gray heads shouting at the meetings nationwide just as I can.
 
The point is, Obama lies at will to sell his stuff. He lied so much this week, I stopped writing down exactly where. I just watched him go and had to admire the moxy.
 
Here is where the White House screwed up: when they passed the "Stimulus Bill", he busted on a campaign promise to have Bills on the internet for at least 72 hours before they were voted on. There was no public access to "Stimulus" until it was signed.
 
The health care thing has gone on so long that all five versions, Senate and House, are available now. I've been though most of the House stuff. It smells, and it doesn't match much of what is coming out of Obama's mouth.
 
Does he think we can't read? Or does he think he is so smooth and organized that it doesn't matter?
 
The history is all there, folks. Obama got his start in Illinois, where it is almost a tradition for the Governor to do time in the Cook County slammer before his career ends. The doings in Chicage are decidedly worse than that.
 
What did you expect?
 
You want health care reform? Oh, I'm sorry, now it's "insurance reform". The three big ideas that the GOP is bringing are in the dungeon for the duration. This is an Obama/ Pelosi/ Reid/ Daschle/ Emanuel high wire act. All or nothing.
 
I vote nothing. Then we wait for 2010 and try it again. In the meantime, I will be happy to be posed as an uncaring do-nothing who loves the status quo. Sometimes you have to take a trimming to win a fight.
 
Follow up: after listening to Obama's remarks at another town hall meeting, he came out and said that the AARP had "endorsed" his plan. I retract my statements about him speaking like a lawyer. He is simply lying. I'm just trying to be accurate here.
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Three Mouths Going

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 14, 2009 12:50:23 PM
First and foremost, if the President wants to take a town hall moment to illustrate how private health plans will co-exist nicely with the "public option", why on Earth would he use the Post Office as a corollary? He's right, the USPS is "the one with all the problems", while  Fedex and UPS are sailing along nicely. Does this mean we want to create a new Post Office?
 
Secondly, what got into Hillary to assuage Nigeria about their problems by pointing out that we have our own? And (natch), she pointed out the worst of them: the Supreme Court "selecting" a President in 2000, in part because the Florida voters strayed from either intelligence or the law (Hillary wasn't clear) in using  the ballot box to elect the President's Brother as Governor. Oh, wait, when he was elected Governor, George was considering running for the White House. A clear conflict of interest. I'm surprised the Florida Supreme Court, then loaded to the gills by Lawton Chiles, didn't see enough there to allow impeachment hearings to start.
 
Third, all you whiners out there who are driven up the wall by every utterance of the former Governor of Alaska will probably want to enter into the mystery search for the ghostwriter of her Facebook account. Because skimming through even a few paragraphs will convince all of you that it could never have been written by the neo-Barbie simpleton.
 
I'm sure they will take up the issue in a future "30 Rock" episode.
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The Health Care Jig Is Up

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, August 09, 2009 10:25:20 PM
The White House talking heads are out in force this weekend on the talker shows, peddling anew the harmless and cost effective way this administration wants to pool the uninsured.
 
So, in case anybody selling all that is asking, here is why you have your hands full. I understand that I disagree with the plan and the direction, so I am now a "special interest". Worse yet, according to the updated talking points, I am "attacking America". I'd be happy to take that up with union thugs being bussed to town hall meetings nationwide.
 
But I digress. People out in the hinterlands have no less internet savvy than Obama and his Blackberry minions. They have seen the uncut, unedited and unabridged editions of Obama talking about A) how important single payer health insurance is to him and B) how we are all married to employer based plans and converting over to single payer will take time. And when you all come up with a "public option" that is taxpayer subsidized (deep pockets) and prattle on about mandating higher standards- like (for instance) forcing children to be covered to age 27, we all know that the net effect will be to make business harder for private plans. We can all do the math.
 
The jig is also up big time on Henry Conyers contributions in H.R. 676, which call for "federally subsidized migrant health centers". Given the INS recalcitrance in stepping in and actually doing something about the presence of illegal aliens here, what on earth do you think THAT is code for? I'm supposed to pay for that now, too?
 
This grand new plan has all the signs in it of a contemporary version of the genesis wave in the old "Wrath of Khan" Star Trek movie, which spread out and reorganized all existing life forms in favor it's new matrix. Obama Care is designed to undercut and or destroy ALL existing health plans- including the Great Society beasts of Medicare and Medicaid. And we will all pay extra for the privilege.
 
THAT is why people are showing up at town hall meetings and causing the ruckus. The genie is out of the bottle, and Obama has jumped the shark.
 
Get over it. And don't bother sending this to flag@whitehouse.gov . I'm sending a copy myself. If Obama gives up this dinosaur and slides over to tort reform and moving away from employer based care, I'll sign up to help him succeed. I don't hate the guy, I hate his plans.
 
I just want to help.
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"Punch Back Twice As Hard"

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, August 07, 2009 1:44:44 PM
Last September, after Sarah Palin come on the scene and before Lehman Brothers went bust, the McCain ticket had taken a lead and was holding it. Not only that, the Obama ticket was still slowly bleeding independents.
 
It was the only time during the campaign that Obama and his money advantage were challenged. His reaction was illustrative: he started telling his supporters to "get in their faces". It was the Chicago street politico going back to his roots.
 
Now the White House is facing a slew of Congressmen and Senators going back to hostile town hall meetings. What is their playbook? Axelrod to Senators leaving for home: "If they punch, we will punch back twice as hard".
 
They are convinced this is all a staged rebellion, a la Florida recount in 2000. It can't be that seniors are actually sticking it to the AARP, and workers can't possibly be this unhappy. It must be the Republicans busing people in.
 
So what is their answer? Get the unions together and bus some more in. And if it turns into the '68 Democratic convention, like the town hall meeting in Tampa last weekend, so be it.
 
This is how Obama trained the ACORN workers to act. This is the Chicago street thug in action. You don't like our plan? Go ahead and protest, but we own the street. If we can't find enough Teamsters to shut you up, we'll drag out the public service unions. Or the teachers.
 
This is how they behave in Chicago. Is this what we want?
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Fishy Disinformation Alert

Posted by Bill Crawford on Thursday, August 06, 2009 9:56:47 PM
The White House has sent out an alert to all the citizens to report back to them with anybody who is out there providing "fishy" information and "disinformation" on health care. This includes all the media, blogs, e-mails and (get this one) "casual conversation"!
 
So we are supposed to engender a new generation of German youth to turn in their friends and families to the State?
 
All you have to do is e-mail to flag@whitehouse.gov.
 
Don't bother reporting me. I've already turned myself in as an enemy of the state, along with an invitation to provide directions to my house.
 
I've read my history. Woodrow Wilson and FDR would have scared me. These guys are rank amateurs.
 
A word of advice for the "hope and change" soldiers: sometimes when you open your mouth, what comes out announces to the world that you aren't in control anymore. I thought you were all better than that.
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Health Care Scare Tactics

Posted by Bill Crawford on Thursday, August 06, 2009 9:47:41 PM
So the folks in the hinterland are erupting, and making lives miserable for Democrats all over. Naturally, this is not a grass roots movement. The Republicans, Libertarians and evil insurance companies are busing in malcontents to confuse the voters. It just HAS to be that, right? How else could it be happening when so many voted last year for "hope and change"?
 
So let's get past the yelling and get down to it, folks. What is my problem with ObamaCare?
 
Problem One: this President was an open question in January, but he ain't any more! Back then the question was, is he trying to be a centrist, as he posed himself during the campaign, or was he going to follow his own instincts as a Chicago Legislator- along with most of his friends and advisors? He has made it crystal clear since that his face on the campaign trail was a sham. So what are his instincts from Chicago? Simple. "Everyone in and nobody out". "Single payer". A clear understanding that the popularity of employer based health insurance would demand a ten to fifteen year period of transition to single payer. All his words, folks.
 
This means that you can take his promises of "keeping your plan and your doctor" and shovel them from the horse stall. The "public option" will be designed to drive standards up to the point where private insurance and employers will throw in the towel. And we will all subsidize the process with our tax money.
 
Problem Two: every version of this stuff in Committee has some sort of efficacy commission that will set government standards for medical priorities. You know, back pain goes to the waiting list, old people wait in line behind "people still in the productive phases of their lives" (from Rahm Emmanuel's brother, a huge medical influence behind this stuff).
 
So, if you are an eighty year old who needs a knee replacement, we will go to the European model, where the odds are good that you will be told that you are on a five year wait list, so take some pain killers and stay out of the way of the ones who need it who are still working. Is this where we want to go?
 
Problem Three: even though the White House has read the riot act to the Congressional Budget Office and they are no longer speaking publicly on the cost of all this, Geithner and Summers, the Treasury Sec and the White House Econ Advisor were nice enough to go on the talk shows last Sunday and warn us that middle class tax increases were "on the table".
 
So, those of you out there making $40-$249K, expect to pony up if this passes.
 
Like the old saying goes, if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free.
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Cash For Clunkers

Posted by Bill Crawford on Thursday, August 06, 2009 9:22:20 PM
So we are going to try to stimulate car sales for what- two weeks? Well, there's the good part.
 
What about the downside? Where do I start? First, we are making a point to destroy drivable cars. We're not only crushing them, we are pouring liquid glass in the engine blocks to ensure termination of use. We are not shipping them to charities that use old cars. We are not shipping them to countries just entering the developing world. That is a paen to the environmental movement, nothing more.
 
Next, we are stimulating over half the new car sales to Japan. Is that where we want to go? Even if the money stays here, there is a two out of three chance that we're funding a car company being run into the ground as a government/ UAW partnership.
 
Finally, what we are essentially doing is getting all the taxpayers to fund $4500 toward a new car sale, to the tune of $3 Billion and climbing. Does this mean that everybody who I see with a sticker in the rear window has to buy me a beer?
 
 
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Sarah Palin Heeds My Advice

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 10:32:55 AM
....As if she was listening to me. Somebody close to her is obviously feeding her similar insights.
 
For starters, somebody had the sense at her resignation speech Sunday to put a healthy piece of foam over the mike, so Palin would not be sharing air time again with every bird and frog in the region.
 
This speech had a consistent spine to it, and got right to the point, which is the only way you stay alive in politics.
 
Then there was this oddity: it maintained a heartfelt nod toward Alaskan outlier values, even if they were spoken against the interests of a potential national candidacy.
 
In other words, speaking so plainly about Alaskan values shows her to either not be interested in a Presidential run, or that she is convinced that maintaining a heartfelt consistency will trump regional interest differences- which may be the next genius moment in politics here, who knows?
 
Sarah is a natural. She will not be over coached. If she runs for anything else, her handlers will have to recognize this.
 
I have no problem believing her statements hat she is entirely comfortable with the notion that national office may not be in her future. She is that comfortable in her own life. That is part of her appeal- she is so grounded that she doesn't have any of the Al Gore style hunger that makes so many voters uncomfortable.
 
Whatever she does, everybody will watch. Especially those who despise her. They will not be able to shut her off.
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