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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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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He’ll deserve the credit, he’ll deserve the blame, and Harry Mason Reid, not Nikolai Ivanovitch Lubachevski, is his name. And don’t let him try to tell you any differently, because it’s just not so. Here’s the way things can play out now. Harry Reid, under cover of merging the Senate HELP and Finance Committee bills, […]

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The President has been hiding behind bipartisanship, Max Baucus, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel, and various MSM types, whose framing of the health insurance reform issues has constantly emphasized all of the obstacles making it unlikely that a robust public option would ever make it through the Congress. During the campaign the President told us all […]

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Mike Lux thinks that the tide is turning on health insurance reform legislation and that “political common sense” is beginning to set in, and make an outcome with a robust public option much more likely. Mike says that Democrats are starting to look at the Senate Finance Committee bill and that it is making them […]

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This past Sunday, the New York Times ran an editorial supporting the plan of some Democrats to use the reconciliation procedure to by-pass a filibuster of health insurance reform in the Senate by Republicans. Reconciliation requires only 50 votes from Senators plus an additional tie-breaking vote from the Vice-President to pass in the Senate. To […]

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Today, in an editorial, WaPo continued its campaign against the public option, asserting that it must, as a practical matter, be abandoned. Here’s the heart of its argument: ”This is not a matter of ideology but of political nose-counting. The kind of comprehensive health reform that the president rightly wants — changes that would extend […]

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