Pending some major catastrophe a la Mr. Karl Rove circa 2006 (Wait, nevermind…), the Senate healthcare reform bill will pass in the Senate in the the next few days. Some liberals are for it, some liberals are skeptical but, when passed, they will have an achieved something that has eluded our government for over sixty years. From a political standpoint, this bill is very unique. It’s gigantic–$871 Billion–and will be passed along party lines. As Megan McCardle points out, this has never happened before. So which party wins more political cache?
On one hand, there are the Republicans who have said no since the summer, refusing to do anything but obstruct. On the other, are the Democrats who have chosen to go the road alone and ended up with a bill that few are happy with. In the short term, it will be easy to frame this bill in the midterm elections as a massive expansion of government with little foreseeable benefits. Democrats will surely lose some seats for this. Luckily, it seems unlikely that Republicans will get a supermajority in the Senate.
In the long run, this legislation will probably just make people angry and entrenched. The changes won’t fully go into effect for a few years and I imagine this will be a campaign platform for a few years after that. In short, it’s messy. Nobody wins outright, but I guess that’s politics.
After last night’s news that the Medicare buy-in had been dropped, it is understandable that progressive activists woke up with a pretty fat hangover. All is not lost though, super-intelllectual liberal bloggers Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein looked back on how far we have come in healthcare policy. It is nice, right now, to see that Democrats are looking to unify themselves to achieve an historic victory.
The nay-sayers are not gone though. The new (albeit short) rhetorical battle will be between policy wonks (who think the bill should be passed) and activists (who think there can still be more work). More political, less wonky bloggers want nothing to do with this bill, but my guess is that they will eventually get on board. When it comes down to it, the numbers are showing that more people will be covered. More coverage will lead to more votes, even if the changes don’t kick in for another few election cycles.
If anybody does, I can guarantee it will be the Democrats. With the Medicare buy-in gone, the liberal bloggers and probably liberal senators want no part of it. Without any sort of government option to force costs to go down, liberals see this bill as merely a give away to insurance companies. This is, of course, a problem for the Democratic party right now. When Republicans ran the show, there was none of this disunity business. If you didn’t vote with the Republican caucus, you weren’t a Republican, simple enough. The Democratic party is considerably more fractured though. In fact, rather than having their own unified ideology, Democrats have sort of been just the not-Republican party.
Enter the liberal Internet. Sites like DailyKos and MoveOn mobilize thousands of supporters for exactly what they want. Their message is pointed and far-left. They can’t afford to neglect the moderates though. So they are stuck in a tight spot. It’s difficult to be inclusive of the spectrum of the Democratic party when the viewpoints are so varied. This normally isn’t a problem, but when you are trying to rework an entire industry, the faults are exposed and Republicans simply exploit these.
Long story short: The only losers in this situation, politically speaking, are the Democrats. If they emerge from this over half-year discussion with nothing, they will absolutely be to blame. The Republicans had their attempt at killing reform over the summer, people realized it was mostly hot air. Now it’s the Democrats’ chance to kill it–at their own peril.
Like Daniel Drezner, I would not be surprised at all if Obama’s Nobel speech became required reading for introductory international relations classes. It could go along side or even replace Condoleezza Rice’s 2000 or 2008 essays about American foreign policy that were used in my introductory class.
A professional football player lives over 20 years less than an average American. At the same time, professional athletes in soccer live longer than the averages in their countries. Though this may be a shocking revelation about America’s favorite sport to spectate (though not entirely surprising considering a new focus on football injuries), I don’t see much changing.
On this weekend’s On The Media, Nicholas Kristof discussed how difficult it was to market humanitarian crises given that the effects are collective and so far removed from the public’s consciousness. Football is no humanitarian crisis, though, and this is exactly why people will not care. We are paying them millions of dollars per year, do they really need our pity? Even if you select a single player be a spokesman, there would be almost no incentive for their thoughts to be heard: all of the people with vested stakes in sports make more money without these thoughts.
The NFL did change the rules for concussions and now players will not be allowed to return the same day after a concussion, but this does nothing to change the way the game is played. The new rules change the consequences but not the causes of concussions. Until this happens, players’ lives will still be considerably shorter.
From The League of Ordinary Gentlemen’s cover contest. As a side note, I have really been enjoying The League of Ordinary Gentlemen for the week that I’ve subscribed to them so consider trying it out.
John Stossel’s new show on Fox Business Channel began this week. I was browsing my mother’s new set of hundreds of television channels yesterday and happened to stumble upon a rerun of the first episode. He had Cato’s Jerry Taylor on and they were discussing what should be done about climate change. It struck me as an interesting contrast between the precautionary principle and the postcautionary principle when it comes to risk assessment. Taylor is not against mitigating the effects of climate change, he just says it costs too much to do anything before we know the full impacts.
Also, Stossel’s insistence on being the “common man” is quite annoying, especially since he is so openly opinionated. I don’t think I will watch again.
I have 25 invites for Google Wave. If you want one, PM me on Twitter or leave a comment on this thread. I’m not really into Google Wave, but it may have potential, depending on how people use it.
Also, my last final is tomorrow afternoon. I will see you then.
The Tea Party Documentary has premiered and it seems that the framing of the issue is perfect… unless you’ve actually followed the tea party movement. From my favorite conservative blog, FrumForum:
…it seems highly likely that the documentary’s producers deliberately left out footage of controversial persons and signs. After all, had you only seen the movie, you would be under the impression that this is a completely reasonable group of people, out exercising their democratic rights. The crazies may not have been in the mainstream of the movement, but they were certainly commonplace enough that it would have taken a contrived effort to leave them out of this film.
One of the featured characters is a black Detroit native named Nate, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 “from an upbringing that taught him to mistrust America because of the color of his skin,” but who has since seen the light. The camera follows him as he tells a rapper named Bonz about how the government is stealing money from his pocket. He then tries to explain black psychology. “If they can’t make it, they might as well let the government take care of them,” Nate says, as if to answer the question of why he’s virtually the only person of color marching in a sea of white faces on the Mall.
Revisionism has been a common problem with the tea party movement and its supporters. If you recall, media outlets battled over the total number of attendees of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 demonstration in Washington D.C. There has also been the problem of conservative blogs ignoring or even promoting questionable signs and actions of tea party attendees. Sure, there are probably a fare amount of reasonable people who attend, but they are letting the birthers, et al. ruin it for the rest of them.
From former norwegian black metal band Ulver and a YouTube user, comes dubbing of David Lynch’s Lost Highway with Ulver’s song Porn Piece or the Scars of Cold Kisses. Lost Highway is probably my favorite Lynch movie because its story actually makes sense. The song isn’t metal, but viewers should watch out for shocking images that Lynch might throw at them.
Erik Prince can be a difficult man to wrap your mind around—an amalgam of contradictory caricatures. He has been branded a “Christian supremacist” who sanctions the murder of Iraqi civilians, yet he has built mosques at his overseas bases and supports a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He and his family have long backed conservative causes, funded right-wing political candidates, and befriended evangelicals, but he calls himself a libertarian and is a practicing Roman Catholic. Sometimes considered arrogant and reclusive—Howard Hughes without the O.C.D.—he nonetheless enters competitions that combine mountain-biking, beach running, ocean kayaking, and rappelling.
Prince is also done with Xe (formerly Blackwater) because he feels that he has been betrayed by his former bosses.
I watched the President’s speech last night for about fifteen minutes, and it seems I was not the only person who tuned out. From the left and the right, bloggers noted how boring the speech was. The one thing that liberals and conservatives agree on, however, is that the speech was right to have been long and boring. On Digby’s Hullabaloo, tristero titled his post, “The Afghan War Gets The Speech It Deserves.” How could Obama have been eloquent with speech on a pointless war? At FrumForum (formerly NewMajority), David Frum has a different reason:
Good. What’s needed now are not oratorical flights, but clear plans that give assurance of success. The president presented the details of both plans and purpose, mission and strategy.
A professional football player lives 