BACKBONE: Howard Dean says: Vote the Senate health-care 'reform' DOWN
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, September 14, 2025 23:09
VIEWED: 6438
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No one's argument gains any credibility with this talk of Obama being a "lame duck." Hello, the guy's barely been in office a year. He still has 3, no matter what. "Lame duck" is reserved for the guy's last month after an election he loses. If all the fight goes out of Obama after his first difficult year, then he's in the wrong line o' work.
I thought you could ALSO be a lame duck President if you have a hostile Congress? But granted, neither is the case here. It's just government, ineffective as usual.
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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
This so-called hard-bitten realist has never been more messed up than on this subject of Govt healthcare. I've been on both sides of the issue, flip-flopping from week to week like Sunday pancakes. At this current moment in time I guess I feel that either the Govt Option, or Medicare Option, or doing nothing at all would be infinitely better than this terrible Senate Bill.
On term limits...based on what you posted it seems I need to do some research on the subject.
Shit, Jongsie, you're in good company there. Flip-flopping on this bucket of turds isn't "flip-flopping", as Signy pointed out - it's just waking up to the reality of this nightmare.
I'm torn on term limits. They SOUND good, but think of them in presidential terms. Since term limits were enacted after FDR's four terms, there have been precisely TWO times in American history (maybe three, which I'll get to) when a term-limited President could have won at least another term: Eisenhower and Reagan. Personally, I don't feel that another term of Ike would have been a bad thing, especially given what Kennedy did with getting us involved in Vietnam... And there are LOTS of Americans who just love the idea of a third Reagan term (I'm not one of them, but they are allowed their opinion, and sometimes they're even allowed their vote!). It could be argued that MAYBE Clinton could have won a third term, and that might have been much better for the nation than Dubya, or could have been an absolute disaster, depending on who you're listening to.
Thing is, under all of those guys, there was at least a pretty strong impression that things were going pretty damned okay under their stewardship. And if such is the case, WHY would you want to force them out?
I'm with Rue and Signy in that getting the money advantages out of incumbency would be a great equalizer, but I think you should really WANT to keep strong, good people in their positions as long as possible, as long as they're doing a good job and have the support of their constituents.
If you could remove some of the incredible advantages that an incumbent has, you'd do a great job of making sure that if they're still in office, it's based not on money-rasing efficacy, but on RESULTS of a job well-done. I'd be happy enough with that.
As for what they do AFTER they leave public office, I'd say have something akin to a "no-compete" clause. It's not uncommon for people to have to sign a 2-, 3-, or 5-year no-compete clause when leaving an employer in the private sector (especially if they just sold their company to another business); let's expand that to representatives and senators, on a no-conflict-of-interest basis. That doesn't mean someone like Tom Coburn can't go back to being and OB/GYN when he leaves the Senate - it just means he can't take millions in campaign donations from Aetna, then leave the Senate to walk straight into a job with Aetna.
Mike
Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde
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Originally posted by Niki2:
So maybe someone else has said what I feel...INDIVIDUAL MANDATE BUT NO PUBLIC OPTION, NO BILL! It's what I wrote to my representatives. The fuss about the public option, while nobody has been talking about the individual mandate, has sickened me no end. Without SOME form of control, the individual mandate is an incredible gimme to the insurance companies/pharma. I'm hearing it more now that the public option/Medicare buy-in is a dead duck, and I want to hear MORE of it.
Right Niki. How do you mandate broke people to buy something? "We need to curb Big Insurance from charging too much... by making more people give money to them."
Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com
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Originally posted by Bytemite:Quote:
No one's argument gains any credibility with this talk of Obama being a "lame duck." Hello, the guy's barely been in office a year. He still has 3, no matter what. "Lame duck" is reserved for the guy's last month after an election he loses. If all the fight goes out of Obama after his first difficult year, then he's in the wrong line o' work.
I thought you could ALSO be a lame duck President if you have a hostile Congress? But granted, neither is the case here. It's just government, ineffective as usual.
You're considered a "lame duck" when you're term-limited, in a sense, and even more so if you have a hostile Congress, and even MORE so after any mid-term elections. Bush's last two years in office, he was a lame duck President. He couldn't run again, he had Democratic majorities in both houses, and everybody knew that he wasn't going to be around for long, so there really was no point in paying any attention to him. So we largely didn't. :)
If Obama doesn't get something done, it doesn't make him a lame duck. The only thing that makes him a lame duck is if he announces he isn't running for a second term.
For instance, NOBODY referred to HW Bush as a "lame duck" in 1991, even though he had a hostile Congress. He was soaring high on the HIGHEST approval ratings ever measured in the polls, in the aftermath of the "Hundred Hour War" in Iraq. There was no way he could lose his bid for reelection in '92.
And then the economy shit the bed, Clinton focused solely on the economy, and history was made. In that case, Bush wasn't a lame duck until after Election Day, and then he was one of the lamest of ducks.
We might THINK we know how the 2012 elections will go, but we don't honestly even know how the 2010 mid-terms will go. Kinda soon to be calling Obama a lame duck. It's an effort already building to paint him as such, in hopes of subtly undermining any support for him that some might have who are currently on the fence about which way to vote come 2012. Get in their heads early, and you can influence their votes later. It's the American Way! :)
Mike
Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde
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HK, Mike, etc. "Lame Duck" as an expression, not the literal sense. Maybe "Lame President" would have been better?
You guys think his waffling and back peddling on this will have no effect? Isn't this his first big fight on the Hill?
I'm an optimist - if he does lose, "get tagged," I also hope that it will give him greater resolve, but don't you think his losing will empower his detractors? Can you imagine the gloating they will do? If they already come from the place where it's ok to yell out "You Lie!" during one of his addresses, then a loss for him has to make that faint line of respect recede even further.
If he can't get HIS bill passed with the Dems "in control," how's a loss going to help?
Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com
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Right now, I don't care who wins or loses... except if its the American people. And if the American people lose in a major way (yet again!) then whoever was involved in the clusterf*ck deserves to lose too. Period.
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"The first is we need to remove the influence of money on politics. People may cry that this limits the expression of free speech, but, no, this is actually more of a bribe in practice."
Definitely.
"The second is we need to get rid of the parties."
ON NO ! I LIKE beer ! (baaadumshhhh) I think that the reason why we are stuck with two is our system of government. If we could dissolve the ruling government at any time - if we had a parliamentary sytem - coalitions would be vital to holding power. That would give minority positions some real clout. I see it in practice everywhere there are parliamentary systems which have a multitude of vital parties. And I think the lack of that is the driving force for why we are the way we are. I suspect that unless the basic mechanisms change, we will devolve to two parties no matter what we call them.
"One possibility is to elect one issue ponies, people who are really passionate about fixing one thing or getting one thing done."
Ralph Nader ? I don't see that getting much traction except perhaps on a local level if there is a local problem that is really grinding on a lot of people. But in the national scheme the people (say, Texans) who will elect the sacrificial goat (the single issue candidate) will lose out on representation on other issues.
Unless I am missing what you are thinking ?
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Originally posted by Kwicko:
As for what they do AFTER they leave public office, I'd say have something akin to a "no-compete" clause. It's not uncommon for people to have to sign a 2-, 3-, or 5-year no-compete clause when leaving an employer in the private sector (especially if they just sold their company to another business); let's expand that to representatives and senators, on a no-conflict-of-interest basis. That doesn't mean someone like Tom Coburn can't go back to being and OB/GYN when he leaves the Senate - it just means he can't take millions in campaign donations from Aetna, then leave the Senate to walk straight into a job with Aetna.
There is, and as usual when the "rules" become inconvenient to THEM, it's universally ignored.
That being a major root of the problem, that you cannot trust the folk making the rules if they are also in charge of enforcing them, cause they won't - this is what makes the ethics committee a sham, really.
Believe me, if Congress had to put up with every little nitpick law we do without using immunity, exceptional clearance and other legal chicanery to weasel out of it, there'd be a lot LESS nitpick bullshit - same theme I've pointed out with police - if they hadda put up and comply with every stinkin nitpick petty little gun law and reg they enforce on us, most of em would go the way of the dodo bird in a hurry.
Your essential problem with Congress is that the folk tasked with making them behave... is Congress.
The Judiciary is supposed to have some influence there, but being that they're kinda bought and paid for prior to being installed - and it seems to require Congressional approval to begin impeachment, that check and balance was broken to begin with, as the AntiFederalists pointed out before the document was even ratified.
Oh, and Re: Begging Dictatorship ?
That's part of the PLAN, to give the appearance nothing can get done unless "someone" goes and "takes matters in hand" - it's a piece of nice, juicy bait hanging out there waiting for useful idiots like baby wulfie with no sense to bite on.
-Frem
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ON NO ! I LIKE beer ! (baaadumshhhh)
Heh. :)
Well, but parties aren't required in the constitution. The parties arose pretty early in in the system with the Federalists and anti-Federalists, so you're right, the two MAIN parties have probably always existed. But the only reason they're the main parties right now is because we never hear much about other parties. That's caused by the expectations drilled into us at a young age (us versus them) and by the media.
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I don't see that getting much traction except perhaps on a local level if there is a local problem that is really grinding on a lot of people.
All I really care about is the local issues anyway. I think people could come up with local workable solutions to health care and a lot of other problems. People in the same general geographic area tend to think alike on a lot of issues, so they might actually be able to reach some agreement on things they want to get done... Then actually GET them done.
EDIT: Well... Okay, that's not true. I care about a lot of national issues. But I think they COULD be solved locally is the thing... And I think we shouldn't be involved in international issues in the first place. Most of our stakes in them, most of the wars, we're given pretty sounding humanitarian reasons to go in, but what's really driving them is some economic/political interest or another.
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"But the only reason they're the main parties right now is because we never hear much about other parties."
I have a different take on that. I think it's b/c in this 'winner take all' system being a third party candidate is almost like not being there. You will never ever have a chance to get your agenda through. So you pick one side, or the other, whatever you can stomach the best, and try to ride the wave.
I think, in other words, that's it's a structural property of our system, and not just a matter of habit.
I see that especially in other systems that are parliamentary and don't have this problem. Some are very old (England), some relatively new (France), some very new (Israel). That they avoid this despite vast differences in the ages of their governments, their cultures and their histories, is why I think that common factor, the parliamentary system, is responsible. Add to it that I think I can deduce a mechanism and it seems like a fruitfull train of throught.
"I care about a lot of national issues. But I think they COULD be solved locally is the thing..."
I'd like to find out in more detail what are some of the things you have in mind, if you don't mind posting them.
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