What is going on with HCR is stupid... jaw-droppingly WTF stupid

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

I understand people being wrong about multi-variable problems involving a lot of close judgments.

This ain't one of those.

This is a simple "If Johnny has two apples..." type of problem.

• As of last week Obama was going to gladly sign the HCR bill that congress eventually passed

• Whatever congress passed was going to be almost exactly the same as the senate bill

• The Coakley election did not change anything about the worth/unworth of the senate bill as policy

If a person did not want the senate bill to become law then she should have given up on the entire process quite some time ago, from the point at least a month ago when it was settled that the senate bill was, for all practical purposes, the bill.

Talking about improving the senate bill was always sucker-bait... chum for the net-roots, cover for House progressives, just some shit to talk about. (When Lieberman and Nelson have an absolute veto on every line changed in conference then there cannot be substantial changes from the senate bill. QED.)

The message being sent here, the logical conclusion to be drawn from the willingness to dump HCR gratuitously, is that HCR was crap a week ago and that congress and the president were knowingly pursuing crap. Either that or they are shit-canning "historical change" out of shear cowardice.

The only thing that changed was the perception of the political climate. The bill that the House could pass with a fricking voice vote is still the same bill we were supposedly planning to to be popping champange corks over.

So that's the deal? All the people they told us would die if this wasn't passed are now expendable because of an incremental shift in a political calculation? Or were those people who would die fake? It is one or the other.

The WH can hardly pretend they were surprised by Coakley losing since they were in blame-shifting cover-your-ass mode days before the election. (If the WH thought she might win then they shouldn't have been trashing her campaign in the days before the election.) Presumably one does contingency planning for, at the very least, the likely. The WH must have decided that if Coakley loses, fuck it. No point having a plan. Let congress take the fall for it.

Between Pelosi, Reid and Obama this isn't policy-making, it is a three-way blame-shifting exercise... a political game of hot potato.

Sorry... this is stupid. The WH and a lot of congress-persons are committing political suicide out of dumb fear and the most venal and short-sighted perceptions of self-interest.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. They all should get their act together or else...

[TheKentuckian]

2. Yep, that's when I jumped off the wagon. HCR has been dead for a month or so in my mind

and prior to that pure optimism since the Finance mark came out.

Sure, I held out remote hopes that we'd get rid of the Max Tax, gain national exchanges, and at least get rid of the anti-trust exemption but saving at least that much movement, I was done. Done despite needing coverage myself. All I see is a system that at it's best would spread the pain and allow even more to be inflicted over time while throttling any actual reform.

[timeforpeace]

3. This has become a competence issue, and the public is sure to notice.

[TheKentuckian]

4. That should have been a concern months ago

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. It has and they will

And will respond by electing even less competent people... if available.

C'est la vie!

[tranche]

6. Isn't this what you've been working towards? Kill the Bill?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

7. Ignorant

I love people who obviously don't actually read my posts but know what I think.

I have been advocating passage for quite some time.

Perhaps you might do best to put me on ignore so you won't experience the cognitive dissonance of trying to parse honesty.

I am not an amateur propagandist. I don't keep it simple black-and-white for the credulous masses, or whatever the hell some folks think they're doing here.

I have often said the bill is shit. I have never said to kill it... for all its faults, for all my disagreements, I have always said that if I were a senator I would vote for the damn thing.

Even when I concluded that aspects of the bill were likely to pose long term political danger I STILL have advocated passage because Obama cannot survive it failing.