Adios

It is indeed refreshing to see the administration declare that it will officially stop beating it's head against the wall. Unfortunately we still have to wait for the swelling to go down.....

For a second, I thought this was a GBCW post by Klein.

'bout time. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Chuck.

I just read your latest tea baggery, http://is.gd/2K2z8 and I gotta say, it must be a terrible life having to continuously make things up to defend Lieberdems like Jim Cooper.
It does bring up something I've been pondering lately:

Even though Pete Hoekstra admits he ghostwrote your FISA revision column, you have lately started blaming it on an unnamed Congressional staffer. Now it is disgraceful and mendacious enough that you let people lie to you and then maintain their anonymity, but I' m wondering if you are so wankish that you actually took a staffer from a bum like Jim Cooper seriously. My money is on it being one of Steny Hoyer's staffers that punked you, because they lied to me (and I was educated enough to call the crook on lying to me), but it definitely could have been one of Cooper's.

Unfortunately for the White House, they were counting on the GOP to "force" them to compromise on the most objectionable terms to the drug and insurance companies.

If the GOP wont give them the cover, the White House either has to produce a more progressive bill and pass it without GOP support (and suffer the wrath of corporate donors) or pass a crappy bill for no good reason (and suffer the wrath of the voting base).

Well, wait, Gibbs only mentioned Enzi, didn't he? Grassley deserved to be ignored after the cowardice you pointed out a while back, Joe, when he refused to speak honestly to his Fox-addled, death-panel-fearing constituent. Maybe this latest bit linked in TPM, of Grassley raising money on the strength of his opposition to Pelosi/Kennedy government-run health care and rationing will get him the kick in the ass he so desperately deserves.

All the Republicans in both the House and Senate need to have a clear sign, walk out onto the steps of the Capitol in solidarity and show the voters in America that they stand together against this rediculous healthcare bill.

Hopefully they will do it on 9/12, the March on DC.

The last sentence of last paragraph of Joe Klein's round up on passing Universal Health Care into law despite the obdurate opposition of GOP isn't likely to appear on Sen Grassley's tombstone or in Sen Grasley's obits.
If you don't know what giving somebody unshirted hell means & have never read it, read Joe's last sentence. You aren't going to see a better example of unshirted hell in the short term or, maybe, every.
Joe knows where every body is buried from the Va state line to the Md line in the District of Columbia & most other places used to bury the people who had worked in DC or tried to work the District [DC].
Joe has reduced Chuck Grassley's worth in this enterprise from 2 bucks to 5 cents.
Chuck is now waiting for the change from a 5 cent piece in pennies. Joe, by a lucky stroke, has Chuck's change in WW II zinc pennies. Don't expect Chuck to go to Joe Klien for change. The rumor that Joe has the 1st penney he earned as a writer & that Abe Lincoln is clean shaven & as bald as Ike Eisenhower isn't true. No, you aren't going to see Joe giving Chuck his change. Both Joe & Chuck are used to playing for blood.
Chuck is a quart low on blood & starting to bleed badly.

BTW-in my barrio, we say adios as, Adios,m-f.

Explain something to us, Joe. If the public option is merely “something of a sideshow”, i.e., it's of little importance as a matter of health care policy (it's a “fact” ‘cause you said so, right?), then why are insurance companies and “centrist” types working so very hard to kill it? Since it's obviously quite important politically, to keep Obama's liberal base behind both health care reform and the rest of his agenda (and “conservatives” will demagogue it no matter what's in it) – and the individual mandate becomes politically untenable without a public option – if it's otherwise not that important why not just go ahead and pass the damned thing?
.
You're either being had again by “conservatives” or you're lying for the insurance industry - either a willing or unwitting shill. You decide which is worse.

We know Miss Palin's being persecuted by ACORN death panels, however, her followers have taken blood oathes to lay down their lives in defense of Miss Palin. Now comes word that Carrie Prejean whole biblically correct views have provoked the ire of ACORN death panels. My pastor, my wife and I, all of us, we fear that beautiful Carrie is alone in her fight to save her life against these enraged ACORN death panels, so we let fly this shout out:

Miss Palin: won't you please lend some of the your followers to Carrie so she can put down the ACORN death panel attacks against her person

Grassley was nothing more than a GOP decoy/straw man, fooling around with no real intention of bargaining.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

[...] job, buffoons. Maybe you can go back to talking about killing grandma. Share/Save Category: Buffoons, [...]

[...] oppose anything that is put in front of them regardless of its content. So hearing that Grassley might potentially be kicked to the curb is the best news I’ve heard yet during this arduously long and embarrassingly stupid [...]

[...] Joe Klein at Swampland at Time: Looks like the charade of including Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi in the health care negotiations is over. It is not impossible that other Republicans who are not Senators from Maine can be located to support health care reform. But it’s also entirely possible that the Republicans will continue their kamikaze ways and oppose a reform that is likely to prove very popular with the American public when it’s enacted (which is why, in truth, the GOP nihilists oppose it). [...]

A public option would enhance cost control.

[...] por el pito del sereno, y ha empezado a dar señales claras que se acabo el consenso y es hora de hacer las cosas [...]

Jesus Christ, Joe, what a two faced, amoral being you are. One moment you figure out that the Republicans are nihilists. You follow by suggesting that Dick Cheney should be prosecuted. Then next moment you say how much "fun" Newt Gringrich is, and how you hope he is around for the next two election cycles. And you say he has mellowed....

I honestly don't understand you. Do you understand that tens of thousands of Americans have died over the last twenty years, and hundreds of thousands in other places in the world, because of the lies Newt promulgated and repeated and the monstrously stupid policies he forced into law? Do you understand how repugnant he is to a person capable of moral judgments? Do you understand the idea of judging people by their words and their acts? Do you think the media has no responsibility for the charlatans they promote, no matter what the consequences?

What would it take for you to realize that people's lives are at stake, that this is not a game?

What, Joe, what?

Why is the public option "a rough edge" that "must be sanded down"?

Mr. Klein, are you merely a stenographer for the stooges of conventional wisdom or do you retain the capacity for actual independent thought and analysis?

The public option is not a "rough edge" to be sanded down. The public option, as tiny and neutered as it is, is the only thing that's actually left of reform in these bills.

If Obama and the Democrats pass a "reform" bill that does not include a robust public option and which is a de facto gift to big pharma and big insurance, they will be out on the arses as quick as the results of the next election come in. The public option IS the compromise position. Full stop.

BTW, that question about you retaining the capacity for actual independent thought and analysis? Don't bother answering. It was rhetorical.

“... and that we will have health care reform this year. It is liberating, however, to finally shed the dead weight of Grassley's know-nothingism and cowardice.”

Bravo on this piece. I was particularly enthralled by this part of the quote I have pasted above.

It was stunning to me when Obama mentioned Grassley as a bi-partisan supporter of the Healthcare bill! At the time, I thought that it must have been set in stone (Grassley's support) for the President to open himself up to attacks from Grassely and others in that manner.

I would have been more interested if the Right wing Republicans were not opposed to EVERYTHING from this administration, however, after their repeated rejection of any and everything proposed by Obama, it became fairly evident from the start that there would be no bi-partisan support for anything. At least nothing significant should be expected in the near (or distant)future.

Grassley was playing politics with his so called bi-partisan position so now I am delighted that his entire posturing is transparent-- and he is now what he should have been for the entire time, irrelevant and unmentioned!

Again, I cannot help commenting on how these matters seem to surprise the Obama team.

Are they also playing some political posturing or something? It could be reasonably anticipated that Republicans would do everything to frustrate passage of the bill and yet everything they did appeared to be a source of awe and amazement to the current Administration.

I hope this surprise by the Obama Administration is not due to lack of anticipation but instead a part of some political “dance” when playing high stakes issues ?? I certainly hope so.

http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

I've wondered all along if Obama was waiting for the Republicans to definitively make it clear they had no interest in participating in the reform process, so that he could say he'd tried bipartisanship and it had failed.

That said, Obama has not covered himself in glory during this process. He's lost control of the debate, as the saying goes. From the beginning this should have been sold as health insurance reform, rather than as health care reform.

[...] on healthcare reform is just about dead. Two of the three Republicans in the Senate “Gang of Six” that has been meeting to work out a [...]

[...] Bye, Chuck. Bye, Mike. Good riddance to you. [...]