The Massa and Foley incidents are starting to show a strange symmetry.
Comment of the day: power and the rule of law
Commenter Wolla Dalbo writes:
I think that a lot of commenters here are basing their analysis on a false assumption, and that false assumption is that the Democrats care at all about the rule of law, parliamentary procedure, Democracy, our traditions of government, or the rules of the House or Senate. The far left ideologues in charge of the Congressional Democrats, and most rank and file Democrats in Congress too, from what I see, couldn’t care less about these things, and believe a la Bill Maher, that the American public is a collection of ill-educated, dumb, hicks, hillbillies, religious fanatics and bozos”“virtual sub-humans””bleating, stinking sheep who do not have the ability to comprehend where there best interests lie, and will, thus, have to be, in the immortal words of the French Revolution “forced to be Free,” as the Democrats define freedom.
Nothing must stand in the way of the Democrats “helping” us to be “Free,” and they are determined that nothing, certainly nothing so trivial as rules or law or procedures or Democracy, can be allowed to stop or delay their imperative errand of mercy, during which””not coincidentally”“they will gain tyrannical power, and loot the country to fill their pockets as well.
I would add that it is probably no accident that this has occurred as “progressives” have become more and more instrumental in our system of public education. The decline of teaching and knowledge about the Constitution, checks and balances, the rule of law, and American history among our young people that has gone on for decades have contributed mightily to the ability of our politicians to succeed—or at least come close—in this endeavor.
Here are some companion pieces to Wolla Dalbo’s observations. First, a retread of some quotes from Lenin:
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.
One man with a gun can control 100 without one.
The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
The goal of socialism is communism.
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience.
No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
And now in closing, Dostoevsky, from The Brothers Karamazov. Yes, I’ve offered this one several times before, but it always seems to bear repeating; unfortunately, it never quite goes out of fashion. In this excerpt Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is addressing Christ, who has returned to earth but been arrested and imprisoned again, this time by the Inquisition:
Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?
The Republican 41
Anyone think RINOs are good for nothing? This is exactly what they are good for. Every single Republican Senator (and that includes leading Maine RINOs extraordinaire—or are the RINOettes?— Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins has signed on in an attempt to stop reconciliation from applying to anything except strictly budgetary matters. This puts Democrats in the House on notice that passing the Senate bill as is just might mean that the provisions of the Senate bill become law and could be hung like an albatross around the necks of Democrat moderates (sorry for the possible oxymoron there) in the House who might vote for it.
And if any of this actually works to stop this bill from becoming law, Scott Brown’s election will have made it all possible. Without him it would be forty Republicans rather than forty-one, and they would be powerless to do anything.
Let me reiterate: without those RINOs it wouldn’t be possible either. And believe me, Maine would have had two Democratic Senators right now if not for Snowe and Collins.
[NOTE: Unless I’m misunderstanding something here, I think this article by Jay Cost misses the point. From what I’ve read about Congressional rules so far, it seems that the House must pass the Senate bill exactly as currently written and then reconciliation can kick in. Stupak and at least some of his group would only vote yea to such a bill if they knew that it could be amended re abortion funding through reconciliation. If the Republican-41 letter makes those Democrats fear this will not be possible, they might not vote for the Senate bill in the first place and it will be defeated. Jay Cost seems to see it differently.]
Slaughter: hey, I know! Let’s change the rules so that we don’t have to vote at all
I must confess I don’t understand how this could possibly get by:
House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.
Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.
How would this actually work? And why not just abolish Congress and pass everything by acclamation or silent auction or magic wands? It’s almost as though the Democrats want to warn the American people that they are willing to go quite far along the Chavez/Zeleya route to tyranny.
[ADDENDUM: And if your day wasn’t pleasant enough, Harry Reid announced that as his parting gift to the Americans he’s served so proudly in the Senate, he approves of a plan to abolish the filibuster by a simple majority vote at the beginning of the next session of Congress. Chuck Schumer of NY says they’re going to start talking about it in a couple of weeks
This would refer to the so-called “nuclear option,” a technique by which the need to have a 2/3 majority to change Senate rules (such as the filibuster) could supposedly be overcome at the beginning of a new session of Congress by a simple majority vote. The argument goes this way:
…[O]n the first day of a new Congress, Senate rules, including Rule XXII, the cloture rule, do not yet apply, and thus can be changed by majority vote. Under this argument, debate could be stopped by majority vote as well.
The strategy became well-known (but was not actually used) when Newt Gingrich threatened to employ it to overcome Democratic filibusters of President Bush’s judicial appointments (and these Democratic filibusters themselves were a break with Senate tradition; routine judicial appointments previously had usually been given the courtesy of an up-down vote). The Democrats, of course, opposed the nuclear option mightily at the time, although now they would be attempting to use it for far larger and more transformative (and more unpopular) matters than mere judicial appointments.
The opposing party can do a number of things after a nuclear option that would threaten to shut down the Senate; I believe that’s one of the reasons it’s called “nuclear.” But the most important point for our purposes today is that this sort of thing makes it even more vital that the election of 2010 not only result in Republican control of the House, but accomplishe the much more difficult task of taking control of the Senate too.
Harry Reid will probably not be a part of that next Senate session, which begins in January of 2011, but Schumer is more likely—although not certain—to be re-elected in 2010 and keep his seat. Because Senators are only up for re-election every six years, only a third of the Senate will run for office in 2010 (unless a few more resign), and only eighteen of these are Democrats (see a list here).
So the Republicans would have to retain every seat they hold and gain ten of the current Democrat seats in order to take control. A couple of months ago I would have thought this completely impossible. But after the Massachusetts election, it seems there’s a chance. But it will be very, very difficult.]
They can’t even get their lies lined up
Dick Durbin slips and tells an inconvenient truth:
He better stay away from the Congressional showers.
Affairs of state: Nicolas and Chantal and Carla and Benjamin
It’s all tré¨s Frané§ais.
The marriage of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni appears to have succumbed to simultaneous affairs, he with Junior Minister for Ecology Chantal Jouanno and she with singer Benjamin Biolay.
I say, if a marriage is going to have affairs, they might as well be simultaneous. And if you’re going to marry Carla Bruni, you’d better be ready for those liasons.
Is there anyone on earth who is surprised by any of this?
[NOTE: This article fills us in on a bit more of the background of Sarkozy’s new paramour Chantal Jouanno, who is not only the Junior Ecology Minister (whatever that is), but is also married and a karate champion. Ah, these renaissance women!]
Clinging to their guns and…
Health care reform: what’s the rush?
Health care reform has had so many missed legislative deadlines that it’s difficult to count them.
The first one I can remember was last summer. The goal was to pass this thing before the American people had time to study it and hate it. Since that failed, and the people wised up, the second goal was to pass it before members of Congress did—that is, before they took a break, went home, and got an earful from their angry constituents and realized their jobs might be on the line.
Now it’s almost spring of the next year, and still the push is on. “Pass it before Obama goes to Indonesia.” “Pass if before Congress goes home for a break—again.”
But what’s the rush now? Is it possible that any member of Congress isn’t aware of the views of voters and the fact that, if he or she comes from a state or district that is anything but extremely left-leaning, his/her job may be lost? After the Scott Brown victory in January, that ought to have been crystal clear. And I think it is.
But perhaps the rush is still on because Washington is a pressure cooker, a total environment in which members of Congress bathe, and going home might break the Obama/Pelosi/Reid spell and remind Senators and Representatives of the views of the people they actually represent. But the biggest reason for the push is probably a strategic calculation that the sooner this happens, the more time the public will have to forget about it before the next election.
I don’t think this is going away in the public mind, however. The more the Democrats push it, the more angry those opposed to it become; it’s not for nothing that the phrases “ram” or “cram” have become so popular in connection with the process. Rasumussen reports that in the last four months views on the health care reform legislation have solidified:
In 15 consecutive Rasmussen Reports polls conducted over the past four months, the percentage of Americans that oppose the plan has stayed between 52% and 58%. The number in favor has held steady between 38% and 44%.
The dynamics of the numbers have remained constant as well. Democratic voters strongly support the plan while Republicans and unaffiliated voters oppose it. Senior citizens””the people who use the health-care system more than anybody else and who vote more than anybody else in midterm elections””are more opposed to the plan than younger voters. For every person who strongly favors it, two are strongly opposed.
Has there ever—ever—in American history been a bill that was (a) pushed so hard by a single party with not one vote of support from the other party; (b) so unpopular with the American public; and (c) that would affect people’s daily lives so enormously? This is a rogue party and a rogue government, and I don’t think we’ve ever had such a situation before.
[ADDENDUM: Hey, it’s an objective, not a deadline. And meanwhile, everybody’s focusing like a laser on jobs and the…oh well, never mind.]
Pelosi: does she…
…or doesn’t she? Have the votes for HCR, that is?
Even Pelosi doesn’t know for sure. As for me, I would not believe a word that comes out of Pelosi’s mouth. And that includes “and” and “the.”
While it’s true that, if Pelosi did have the votes, she would move the bill to the floor, right now the Democrats are waiting for the CBO to score it and the parliamentarian to rule on it. So there is a possibility she does already have the votes and is telling the truth. But if so, it would be a surprise to Bart Stupak and his anti-abortion-funding colleagues.
Ah, what’s $868 billion…
Obama boasted Monday that Democrats’ health care proposals would cut deficits by $1 trillion “over the next decade,” a flub that inflated the actual estimate by $868 billion.
This did not appear to be an ad lib, either; it was a scripted moment (here’s the text of the speech). So either Obama doesn’t know an extremely important fact about the HCR bill, or he is purposely lying through his teeth. Unfortunately, this is just business as usual for Obama.
The White House explained that the president meant to refer to the CBO estimate for the second decade after HCR reform rather than the first. That doesn’t sound especially convincing. But even if it were, the real CBO estimate is pretty much garbage in, garbage out, since it rests on a bunch of assumptions that are extremely iffy. As the CBO itself says of the second-decade projections, “A detailed year-by-year projection for years beyond 2019 … would not be meaningful, because the uncertainties involved are simply too great.” Well, the same is pretty much true of the first ten years as well.
Here’s another whopper from Obama’s speech:
I know a lot of people view this as a partisan issue, but both parties have found areas where we agree. What we’ve ended up with is a proposal that’s somewhere in the middle — one that incorporates the best from Democrats and Republicans, best ideas.
This particular distortion has two parts. The first is that Obama talks about “a proposal” rather than “a bill.” Most likely, he is referencing his own health care reform proposals made after the big “bipartisan summit.” But these are not included in the bill he’s pushing; they have nothing to do with any legislation in the hopper. Then there’s the fact that even those irrelevant and unincluded proposals of his represent only a very minor effort at incorporating very reduced versions of a couple of Republican ideas. “Somewhere in the middle?” Hardly.
And in the same speech Obama repeats his favorite lie of all, ” If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Maybe for about five minutes you can. But not for long.
[NOTE: This post was supposed to be published yesterday. Actually, it was published yesterday—as you can see by the date of the first comment. But then for some reason it went into a mode where it looks published to me but is actually private (i.e. only I can see it). I’ll try to be more aware of this phenomenon in the future and catch it; I think I’ve figured out what caused it.]
Spambot of the day
Accusative, but in a tecky sort of way:
Dang site owner you have lots of odd error codes on your blog that says parse error unexpected T String in line 19
More Rahm: he’s no LBJ, except for the naked intimidation part
Still another piece on Rahm Emanuel, this one by Peter Baker and appearing in the NY Times Magazine.
Reading it made me think once again that it’s a good thing Obama has been too full of himself and his own legendary powers to listen to the advice of Emanuel the gradualist. Obama wanted to make the bigger gestures rather than the incremental ones that probably would have had more chance of achieving his goals, albeit more gradually. In other words, Obama turned up the heat on the boiling frog too quickly, and the frog (the American public) is trying to jump out—although unfortunately it may be too late.
Here’s a nice summary of Rahm’s point of view:
Emanuel counseled the new president as he set out his original agenda more than a year ago to think about moving more strategically and incrementally, according to White House insiders and key Democrats. Bite off what can be done now and keep making forward progress. Obama disagreed and insisted on pushing for a comprehensive plan…
Rahm thinks bipartisanship is a way to get what you want ”” to fake bipartisanship to get what you want,” a senior administration official told me. “He understands that’s a better way to get things done than to be nakedly partisan.
Many Democrats are angry that Emanuel, the veteran of Congress and noted hard-ball player, hasn’t been the equivalent of an LBJ. An unnamed Democrat is quoted in the Baker article as saying of Rahm:
We need a little less ballerina and a little more L.B.J.. For all the reputation of being able to bust knee caps, we haven’t seen nos turned to yeses.
I’m no Rahm fan, but this comparison and expectation of LBJ-like success seems both unfair and naive. LBJ had an unusually strong Congressional resume. He held lengthy tenures in both House (twelve years) and Senate (twelve years) before becoming VP and then President, and his Senate career featured leadership positions nearly the entire time. He became Senate Majority Whip only two years after he arrived there, and then advanced to Minority Leader for two years and then Majority Leader for six.
Poor Rahm (and most other members or former members of Congress) can’t begin to compare. Emanuel may be a grizzled old legislative veteran compared to Obama (who isn’t?), but not compared to Johnson or even many current members of Congress. Rahm’s entire tenure was in the House, and it lasted a total of six years. His leadership there included only the roles of head of the DCCC and then Democratic Caucus Chairman. It was well-known that he aspired to ultimately replace Pelosi as Speaker, and he was instrumental in the campaign to get more blue dog Democrats into Congress and obtain a majority for the Party, but in terms of knowledge of how House and Senate work, the interrlationships between them, and having the goods on every single member he couldn’t possibly compare to someone like LBJ.
But in one respect they do seem similar, if the wild and wooly Eric Massa’s (D-NY) description can be believed. Here’s Massa on his encounter with a naked Emanuel in the Congressional shower:
I’m sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t gonna vote for the president’s budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man? … It’s ridiculous.
If this is true, perhaps Emanuel took to heart all those exhortations that he be more like LBJ—although Johnson outdid him even in the somewhat narrower realm of the naked political discussion. LBJ was well-known (although the stories only came out publicly some time after his presidency was over) for insisting that aides accompany him to the toilet, where he continued to talk to them. It was a sort of test:
Johnson also upset aides with his habit of adjourning a conversation to the bathroom when the need arose. Those who were reluctant to follow him to the toilet were a source of great amusement to him. He frequently recounted a story about “one of the delicate Kennedyites who came into the bathroom with me and then found it utterly impossible to look at me while I sat there on the toilet. You’d think he had never seen those parts of the body before. For there he was, standing as far away from me as he possibly could, keeping his back toward me the whole time, trying to carry on a conversation. I could barely hear a word he said. I kept straining my ears and then finally I asked him to come a little closer to me. Then began the most ludicrous scene I had ever witnessed. Instead of simply turning around and walking over to me, he kept his face away from me and walked backward, one rickety step at a time. For a moment there I thought he was going to run right into me. It certainly made me wonder how that man had made it so far in the world.”
So, which is more intimidating: Rahm in the shower, or LBJ on the toilet? I know who would get my vote.