All Life Is Problem Solving

Harry, this is real simple. You’re making the American people pay much too high a price for 60 votes. You’ve got other fish more important than getting 60 votes to fry. The first is that you’ve got to get a strong health insurance reform bill with a PO that will cut costs. The second is […]

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A few weeks back I did a diary called “Mis-directed Fury.” It focused on the reaction to the State opt-out idea on health care reform at FDL, and basically made the point that there are a lot more important things to get furious about than the State opt-out proposal. Today we have another explosion of […]

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The general reaction to Harry Reid’s announcement that he is including a public option in the Senate health care reform bill, along with a State opt-out has been to praise Harry for his courage and for “standing up for the American people.” Jane Hamsher, however, expresses her misgivings about the State level opt-out, because it […]

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Deficit Hawkism is the ideology that prioritizes bringing tax revenues and Government expenditures into balance ahead of other far more essential national needs and priorities. This “old time religion” used to be the exclusive province of Republicans, and was particularly important in hindering America’s recovery from the great depression of the 1930s and particularly for […]

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Matt Taibbi calls for a run by Elizabeth Warren for the Presidency in 2012. Why? For these reasons. 1) Obama, who ran a wonderful campaign for the presidency isn’t doing well. He hasn’t closed Guantanamo, or stopped incursions of the Government into civil liberties. He’s done a terrible job with the banking bailout, and hasn’t […]

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I think “groupthink” is a general pattern in this Administration. Not the simple groupthink that considers only one alternative and never discusses anything else, but a more complex sort of groupthink about frames. Obama looks at alternatives in deciding on policy, alright. And he appears to be rational in his consideration of them. So far, […]

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The intensity of debate on health insurance reform is building towards a climax as public and blogosphere pressure increases rapidly on the President and both Houses of Congress. In particular, Harry Reid is facing intense pressure, reportedly from the Administration, Nevada Democrats spurred on by blogosphere-generated telephone campaigns, progressive interest groups, and both progressive and […]

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A few months ago, Kip Sullivan wrote a terrific piece in which he called out the leaders of the public option community for not informing the public that the public option provisions appearing in the HR 3200 and Senate HELP bills were vastly different from Jacob Hacker’s public option proposal that PO leadership had been […]

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In my last post, I railed against the 60 vote frame and outlined the “nuclear option” procedure which allows escape from that requirement for passing reform and also makes clear that the frame that 60 votes are necessary is at best a half-truth, and at worst a lie. Of course, I didn’t expect that post […]

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A number of diaries at Firedog Lake today, frame the coming phase of the legislative process in terms of the need for 60 votes to get cloture and pass the PO. For example here’s a quote from one of today’s diaries by David Dayen: “Left out of this story is the fact that any amendment […]

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