1. At least bother to cite that you pulled your information directly off the WhiteHouse.gov website.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Reali...ment-of-Shame/

2. I continue to be baffled by the administration's need to formally address right-wing personalities like Limbaugh and Beck in a formal manner on the official WhiteHouse.gov website. They may think they're somehow combatting these guys and their rhetoric, but all they are really doing is giving these guys a larger audience and more credibility in the eyes of their supporters. If you stop paying attention to the idiot with his pants down on the playground, eventually he'll pull his pants up and look for a new way to attract attention that may not be nearly as effective as the current method of gaining attention.

That only works if the rest of the world will also ignore him. When newspapers run stories on the latest outrage and are adding staff to monitor right wing outlets so they won't miss the next "big story" you have to be more aggressive.

The WH largely ignored the outrage about the school speech and it got covered by every major media outlet.

What's your point? Should the administration react to all this stuff? They're going to spend a whole lot of time being defensive and not getting much accomplished if that's the tactic they're going to use. It's not smart at all.

I thought it was well known that Olympics are a huge money drain?

The only way they're beneficial, from an economic standpoint, is if they raise the international prestige of a place to a level where you get more tourism for decades.

I think a Rio would benefit far more in that regard than Chicago.

The last three Olympics held in the U.S. (Los Angeles '84, Atlanta '96 and Salt Lake City '02) all finished with financial surpluses.

The Olympics themselves may have have finished under budget, but that's not a "profit" for the city, who has to spend a crapload to upgrade facilities that are never really used in the same way again.

Though, the drain should be lighter on major U.S. cities, which already has a bunch of the facilities in place, as opposed to someplace like Athens.

According to this article, the City of Atlanta spent about $6 million. The facility upgrades (Turner Field, Olympic Village, Centennial Park, etc.) were all paid by the Olympic committee.

Financial legacy of the Olympics in Atlanta is hard to detect | StandardNET – Ogden, Layton, Brigham, Weber, Davis, Top of Utah News

And the 1984 Olympics were the first ones to turn the fund raising into a private endeavor, and not have a repeat of the Montreal public financing disaster.

A staffer typing on a blog isn't that much of a distraction. It's not like Obama is going to spend all day surfing The Corner and Red State.

So no one except that blogger took the time to address the issue? You're giving far too much credit to that staffer.

And if you don't think there's a good size staff in the administration constantly monitoring all news sources including partisan blogs, we've got little to discuss. There was a staff to do that in the Bush adminstration and there's most certainly a bigger staff to do that in the internet-aware Obama administration.

On the other hand the Bush administration certainly had a bigger staff working on ways to justify torture, so maybe we should call it a wash.

No, each instance should be judged individually. Any comparisons is a partisan waste of time. Either Bush did something wrong or right. Either Obama did something wrong or right. The two situations have no relational bearing on each other.

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

What? JPhillips acted like he had no idea that a president had a news-monitoring staff for the Internet. I pointed out that both Bush and Obama have had staffs for that reason since they both were President during the explosion of widely-used internet service. That's much different than the implication that the over-defensiveness of the current administration to partisan news reports is a wash because the previous president tried to cover up torture.

That's comparing apples to astronauts.

I found the juxtaposition of your two statements amusing, nothing more.

So they have a staff already committed to doing this, but doing this will prevent Obama from accomplishing anything.

It's not that I don't know there are people in the press shop, it's that I don't think making a daily blog refuting lies is going to keep Obama from governing. You seem to think this is an extreme waste of resources and I just don't see that.

The goal has been to tie Republicans to those guys. They have huge disapproval numbers and if people can coincide Republican with Rush Limbaugh, it's a good thing.

I don't think he's giving them new supporters and I don't think he's losing any potential votes over it. People who like Rush and Beck are not going to vote for Obama ever.

If Obama can't even deliever the Olympics how can he deliever health care! :mad: ;)

Ah got it, thanks.

You've got it all wrong........

Congressman blames Bush for Chicago's Olympics defeat - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

LOL! What else can we blame Bush for? ;)

What can't we blame bush for?

You guys had quite a run with Clinton, but it ain't gonna be nothing compared the run I'm going to have blaming everything on Bush. :D

I'm not going to pretend to know all the answers, but it's very concerning to see the military commander and the current administration having such great difficulties communicating with each other. I can't imagine how this kind of relationship can be anything other than counter-productive.

Barack Obama angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan - Telegraph

i agree. maybe McChrystal should remember who the Commander in Chief is, and not publicly lobby for more troops, but instead use the chain of command.

Yep, McChrystal has at least two levels of command between himself and the administration.

Well, unlike your take on it, I believe both sides to be at fault. McChrystal needs to keep it in-house and Obama needs to do a much better job communicating with the military leaders more directly and on a more regular basis. The military and liberals may be like oil and water, but they've got to find a way to work better with each other for the sake of the general good.

I don't know why you believe the military and "liberals" are like oil and water, or what information you have that states clearly with backup that the administration is not communicating with the military.

I like this notion that Democrats can't get along with the military. That because they choose not to get us into unnecessary wars they're anti-military.

If this was a commander doing the same shit under Bush, you guys would want him tried for treason this afternoon.

Save for that South Asian adventure.

There's been an adversarial relationship there for years. This certainly isn't a secret by any means.

I'd also love you to show me where I put the communication blame solely on the administration. I haven't excused McChrystal's behavior in any way. He was out of line for what he did. I have little doubt that he was put in timeout for his comments.

Why would the administration get any blame for this? It wasn't the direct reports to Obama and Gates speaking out of turn. If anything, it shows a problem between McChrystal and his commanding officer(s).

I bolded your statement since you can never seem to remember what you wrote 5 minutes ago. What do you have that shows Obama does not communicate with military leaders more directly and on a more regular basis?

Your comment about the military and "liberals" is nearly as ignorant as most of your statements, but we'll chalk it up to hyperbole.

There is always stress between the military and any party who doesn't want war.

And which party would that be?

Depends on time in history. Each party has been against military actions at some point in history.

I'm still angry that FDR didn't regularly meet with Patton.

Well, at least you've gotten over the Republicans causing us to miss out on hosting the 1940 Olympics.

Because MBBF said so. No facts, nothing, just he wills it to be...like The Secret.

Was just hearing more about this while I was up in Massachusetts visiting for the weekend. Went digging up the stories and had completely missed most of this. The State Legislature did change the law back, Patrick appointed Kirk, and the Republicans sued to block the appointment. Any more on this? I'm just trying to get caught up.

Republicans' case dismissed, Kirk sworn in, hypocrisy wins out.

it went through. the Mass Republican lawsuit was thrown out.

We seriously need a strong third party in this country...

i think this was pretty ridiculous.

the "right" thing to do would have been to pass a law in the first place (way back under Romney) saying that the sitting governor has to appoint someone from the same party as the person vacating the seat and that that person has to be approved of by a vote of that party's representatives in the massachusetts state house or something (to avoid the governor appointing someone who was a RINO or DINO). And specifying that that process must be completed in X number of days.

But wait, that's too logical. It'd never work.

disappointed.

Just in case someone forgets to post this new poll on just one site today here it is:

AP Poll: Health care overhaul has a pulse - Yahoo! News

No, we seriously need somebody to represent the voice of the center-right. We've got Far Right and Left. Both equally rediculous.

how bout just the center? or the center-left?

why just the center-right? :p

Anything left of center-right is actually just far-left.

ding ding ding

I welcome a strong third party because it would certainly make a mockery of the idiotic electoral college when people start carrying entire states with 35% of the vote.

I'm snickering at the irony.

snicker away...

according to the tests I took Im not far left but whatever floats your boat.

This is kind of interesting. Even though support is really not what you need to put something this taxing into place, it is up a little. Now the delima for Obama is the choice between taking the plan congress presents or vetoing possibly his biggest campaign promise. If he takes it he breaks several promises he made regarding health care reform. If he uses the veto, he fails to deliver on the big promise. I almost think he is in a lose / lose situation.

$1.4 trillion deficit for FY 2008-2009?

Did I read that right or is that not true??? If so, how can anyone tolerate that, esp. with all of the correctly-placed outrage over $400 billion deficits? But I guess we can excuse that away and make it look ok.

It definitely sucks but IMO I wish we didnt have to spend money to save ourselves from the great depression 2 {shrug}

Well Congress could try significantly cutting the budget in other areas and/or raising taxes to balance things out but for some reason they don't seem concerned enough with the massive imbalance and the already mammoth national debt. It doesn't make sense to me.

It is one thing if you believe that such federal govt expenditures way beyond the revenues averted a depression but what about now? With the forecast being something like $1.12 trillion for 2010, why add to it and compound the problem?

to get coverage to 94% of people (or whatever) so theyre not one illness away from bankruptcy and in all honesty the Health Insurance companies dont give a shit about you, me or anyone (really) and IMO have lost the right to self regulate (for a while anyways.)

I think I laid out my position with Arles a few pages back.

Thank you, Flasch, for reminding me that you still live in a hyperbolic paranoid world. I work for a 2000-person company and we all have excellent health coverage. We even just opened up an on-site health clinic. We can't be the only one? But, I should never have come back. Just wanted to see the outrage about the budget deficit.

you used a great word there:

"work"

the real unemployment rate is north of 15% right now. So its a shame that when you lose your job your choice is the crazy expensive Cobra, or none at all....and thats if you had a leg up to begin with. thank you for placing the light on your position because it simply lacks the empathy Id expect out of you and the tunnel vision that you miss ALL of the other facets of the debate and focus only on the deficit. Nothing wrong with that, youre allowed to choose your priorities. Luckily there are elections.....

The CBO projection on the Baucus bill shows it actually reducing the deficit by @80 billion.

But the GOP, in this case, says that the CBO estimate is analyzing untruths...

On Squawk they called one of the Congressman out on the fact that they used the CBO report to blast the earlier analysis yet discount it now.

I think something was wrong with those tests, but what I was snickering about was you and lungs' high and mighty attitude that the middle-left isn't properly acknowledged, when I don't think you or many of the liberals on this board have ANY concept of the middle-right.

could be...apologies for me misunderstanding your snicker :)

As I stated previously, none of this really matters. Yesterday comments by both sides were little more than posturing. We still don't have a final bill. The politicians are making a bunch of comments about a bill that will not ever go to a vote in its current form. Much negotiation still has to take place before we even get close to seeing a final draft that probably will only partially resemble the Baucas bill.

Sen. Grassley on CNBC just said, now, that eventhough this bill is deficit neutral via CBO reports, or 'positive', theyre against the bill and the idea of it because it'll see raising of taxes.

Move that cheese.

Congrats, I work for a large University and they just raised their prices on all plans. Even more, if I want my spouse on it and she has another job where they offer coverage (they actually do and it's mega-shitty) we have to pay an additional 50-100 a month as a penalty of some sort. I mean, the "family" plan is already pretty significantly higher than the individual, I don't know why they feel they have to do it other than their endowments are down and the insurance companies keep jacking rates.

I'm not paranoid, I just think it's silly for insurance to be tied to work and the prices are way out of control. I mean, for every $200 a month I'm paying, the University is paying $700 or something (also silly because I get grants that pay for fringes and overhead that go into a large pool). All this, and my itemized bill from a simple doctor visit looks like I built a space station because they will only recover 25% from the insurance company.

But congrats on your awesome coverage. Mine is pretty solid too. If you think that represents any kind of majority, you're silly.

While realizing the slant you're attempting to put on that comment, I don't think that statement is inconsistent at all with what the Republicans have been pushing for. They've said they want a bill that is defecit neutral at worst and that doesn't raise the taxes or premiums of existing policies or reduce the coverage of existing policy holders.

You can argue whether all of that is possible, but it's certainly not a new request from the Republicans. They've been asking for that all along.

Theyve been asking for a lot of stuff for a long time. They had a ton of time to do something yet did nothing, not even Tort reform (which Im for). I dont believe that they want HI reform at all....luckily new polls lead me to conclude that a majority of Americans also see through the smoke AND believe that HI reform is good for the country.

Define 'nothing'.

Define 'majority of Americans' and the specific poll question that led to that conclusion.

You really think the GOP came into the healthcare debate with a plan to do anything besides (at best) loosening restrictions on private health care companies?

For all but a few GOP Reps and Senators this has been an exercise in political obstruction with a goal of gaining electoral advantage.


This stuff isn't hard to find.

well played sir. shitty situation for you indeed. those "oh you've arleady got coverage options somewhere else" fees are stupid shit.

They have proposed 3 alternative bills that I am aware of which I posted previously in the thread. As recently as a few days ago, Bobby Jindal put forth a pretty good ten-point plan, though it didn't have specifics which would obviously be important in properly assessing it.

As far as politics go, they're not playing politics any more than the party that holds a large majority of votes in both houses, yet indicates that they somehow need bipartisan support in order to get the bills through. Politics happen. Let's not pretend otherwise. That doesn't change the fact that the word 'nothing' means something different than what Flasch seemed to indicate.

I'd also note that you're giving the Republicans far too much credit for any electoral changes that may take place in 2010. The Democrats have done a much better job of hurting their chances in 2010 than anything the Republicans have done.


Evidently it is hard to find. I see one measurement where it manages to squeak out a 51% in favor measurement and that's only by eliminating the people that have 'no opinion'. That's hardly a 'majority'. I'm going to assume that's not the poll Flasch was referring to. He wouldn't base a post on an altered poll result such as that one.

You really think that's credible? It's a stall tactic, nothing more. "Oh...well here I have ten ideas...but I have no specifics, so let's take 4 months and go off and come up with specifics, and then we'll include a poison-pill for democrats so they have to reject it and we're back at square 1."

it's not trying to bring about healthcare reform - it's just trying to stall things and drag stuff out.

i can't believe you actually tried to call it a "plan" when it doesn't have specifics either. it's a collectin of ten ideas.

On CNN, two story headlines:

• Wilson GOP rock star after 'You lie' 23 min
• 'Die quickly' congressman becomes liberal hero

The rest of us die a little inside.

Understood. It's little more than a form of a campaign speech and I mentioned that, though I would note that a couple of his points were in the proposed Republican alternatives, so those are certainly more than just talk.

no it doesnt. IMO, despite the rhetoric, the GOP want 'no change' and therefore 'nothing'. I dont parse words like you do.

Did I see that right? The Wilson video report is 23 minutes?!?!?! Sounds like a good way to take a 23 minute nap if you ask me.

I give you a link to raw data at Gallup, and you immediately claim bias. :lol:

I'd say go look at the trendlines from that poll, go look at the responses to individual questions, etc... but honestly, what's the point?

Once again, you appear to be ill-informed. Republican have not said they don't want any change. They have some alternative ways that they want to facilitate some changes in health care that should be considered and voted on. If they're not good ideas, they'll be voted down and they can move on to other options. As of now, that vote in either house has not been allowed by the majority party.

I said 'despite' the rhetoric IMO they really want 'nothing'. Not really something you can debate....unlike empirical data you spin. Take your spin arrows and point them elsewhere.

Such as? Could you describe some of these and explain how, exactly, they represent true change and improvement to health care, and are not window dressing?

It's funny. On one hand you're quite certain that the (now quite extensive) plans Democrats have put forward are terrible ideas and should be rejected out of hand, but the nebulous "talking points" ideas the GOP have put forward deserve more thought and consideration.

Why is that?

No, I did not claim bias and any move to indicate that would not be correct. A majority would be a situation where the majority of respondants answered affirmatively in favor of the bill. That's not what happened here. Only 40% of the respondants who said 'yea' or 'nay' said they were in favor of the bill. That's much different than a majority. 40% isn't much of an improvement.

I'd still note as I have before that we're still asking poll questions in this case about a bill where literally none of the respondants have any idea what the actual final bill will look like. Without seeing the full poll, I'm guessing that they didn't lay out the exact bill that they were saying they favor if they responded in the affirmative. All of this is FAR too premature to make any sort of sense or provide any real measurement.

To wit:


MBBF is arguing that a party with a clear historical record of obstinately opposing health care reform is now attempting to act in good faith now. Looking at their record (and I believe Ryan has been in office at least since 2000), that's a pretty hard claim to believe.

I've linked three times in this thread to the Republican alternatives. Feel free to read through them (they're relatively short when compared to the Democrat bills) and make your own judgment.

I actually have never said that the Democrat bills are terrible and rejected them out of hand. I've said several times that we don't even have a full final bill, so debate that you're in favor or against a bill is premature. With that said, I do reject specific points that some Democrats have proposed, and I'm assuming that's where your confusion lies. With that said, I have no clue what the final bill will look like. Some or most of the places where my objections lie may not be in the bill in the end. If there's no public option, no increase in taxes or premiums on existing policies, and no change in my current coverage then I likely won't have any objections. But until we get a final bill, there's no way of knowing what to object to in the bill.

Once again, a mischaracterization of my stance. I never said they were acting in 'good faith'. I didn't realize that there was a requirement that the minority party had to act in good faith. Someone might want to tell both parties if that is the agreement so both sides can stop being a pain-in-the-ass when they're the minority.

I didnt use the word 'vast' :p :lol:

I do find it ironic that the argument of 'we havnt seen a bill to talk about' is being used when that was what I was yelling about when the Tea Parties were in full swing. I had said that they aren't really even opposing UHC at those things but a much broader swatch of stuff. Its good to see you come around.

Had you instead said 'the smallest majority measurable when excluding people who had no opinion', then I wouldn't have had any problem with your statement.

:p

as an aside after some thought , with you, I do parse words, so I take that back.

What's this, then?


It's hard to read that as anything else but Gallup summarizing their numbers in a way that gets a major indicator over 50%.


Yet you've seen fit to use low poll numbers as an argument against the Democrats' potential bills in Congress. You can't have it both ways.

Polling on the general question of whether or not there should be reform to health care consistently shows good support. If, according to you, we can't talk meaningfully about specifics, then let's limit ourselves to generalities. And in general, Americans support health care reform.

So what's this:


Are members of the GOP presenting real alternatives (i.e. "acting in good faith") or are they playing politics? You can't have it both ways.

Are these measures the GOP is putting forward actual initiatives they want passed, or counterpoints to weaken support for Democratic proposals? And if it's the former, why didn't they try to pass these reforms while they controlled Congress and the White House?

you definately hit the nail on the head here - both as far as hypocritical use/dismissal of polls, as well as on the general question of healthcare reform

you keep saying he cant have it both ways...

O RLY?

I don't have any problem with someone citing poll numbers as long as they're aware of the pitfalls that they provide. There were polls in recent weeks showing that 40-45% of people were opposed to the 'bill' with a good number of 'no opinion' responses, but you didn't see me saying that was a 'majority' when no opinion responses were taken out. It's a manipulation of the data that would be just as silly as the one proposed in the Gallup poll you cited.

In general, I support health care reform and would contribute to the majority of people who want it changed. But that doesn't mean I support the form of health care reform being proposed by Democrats if we use the Baucus plan as the measurement since we don't have a final bill yet.

Yes, I'd disagree that it can't be both as well. You can provide legitimate alternatives and still play politics at the same time. I'd love nothing more than to see all three proposed bills signed into law, but we know that won't happen as they'll never get a vote. Even if they did pass, Obama would kill them with a veto. That's fine and certainly part of the process, but that doesn't eliminate them as meaningful alternatives.

The health care debate I think has run its course. That's the feeling I get from the last few pages here.

Looking foward to the Dems making up their minds and giving us something that they believe in enough to vote for and implement (even without unanimous Republican support, which of course they don't need)

We've had almost a decade now of Dems pointing out how everything is wrong and that their version of change will make things better. I'm more than ready for them to implement their visions on things so we can know either way.

It's really such a huge opportunity for them. With healthcare and with everything. Haven't seen much yet though. I hope they succeed. Either way, I hope they try.

I'm guessing you're harkening back to the election timeframe because it has little basis in reality in the current timeframe. I've been extremely selective in using polls since that point for the reason that they are extremely unreliable, far more than I realized. I did quite a bit of reading about polls after the election and there's honestly not many polls that are worth a damn.

good post.

most likely probably *nods* fair enough