Month: October 2009

Bad Times

by digby

You know it is a really creepy time in America when people start shooting at animal protection advocates who are protesting puppy mills:

Members of an animal rights group were the victims of sniper fire during a protest here Saturday and are offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.

The Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS) staged a protest in front of the Aquarium & Pet Center to protest the retailer’s alleged sale of “puppy mill” dogs, or purebred pups that have been bred in inhumane conditions. That’s when the shots rang out.

Three protesters were hit with what was later determined to be brass pellets fired from a high-powered air rifle. The protesters suffered minor injuries, said Sgt. Jay Trisler with the Santa Monica Police Department, which is asking for the public’s help in identifying the shooter.

[…]

Davis said the attack occurred at a time when there is a “highly charged atmosphere” when it comes to animal rights. The Santa Monica City Council recently voted in favor of banning cat declawing and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have put caps on the number of animals used in puppy mills, becoming the only governor in the six states where puppy mill legislation passed this year to override it with a veto. Jeffrey Prang, a City Councilman from West Hollywood, which has also banned cat declawing, is working on an ordinance to ban the re-selling of any pets except bred or rescued animals in that city.

Well, obviously those people deserve to be shot. It’s just another example of liberals trying to usurp the constitution. I’m pretty sure the 17th Amendment guarantees the right to abuse animals.

I guess the Great Recession isn’t going to be like the Great Depression, which my parents recalled as a golden time when neighbor helped neighbor and everybody pulled together. Looks like we’re going to go the Mad Max`route this time.

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Mandate For Disaster

by digby

Nancy Pelosi threw down the gauntlet today:

Pelosi came closer than any member of the Democratic leadership has thusfar to suggesting that the individual mandate should be conditional on the inclusion of a public option. Pelosi declined to elaborate when pressed by TPMDC on whether Congress would revisit the individual mandate if the public option can’t survive the Senate. But her implication was fairly clear. The House, she said, “will not force America’s middle income families to negotiate with insurance companies.” Health care experts agree that health insurance market reforms can not work unless everybody is in the risk pool–and that means a mandate. But privately, many activists and experts believe that a strong individual mandate is also a gift to the insurance industry, and that it should be used as a bargaining chip to secure other robust measures, such as the public option.

I agree with that and have been writing about it for some time. The mandate without a public option is a political nightmare, especially if the insurance industry follows through on its threat to jack premiums up sky high if the bill doesn’t include a stringent mandate. (Anyone want to take bets that they won’t?)

It’s not just that. There’s a high probability that without a public option, this mandate is going to be tested in the judicial system and nobody knows where it will end up. I wrote about this earlier:

The NY Times gives us a hint about how the right is going to respond to the mandate and it isn’t pretty:

The requirement that everyone buy health insurance moved a step closer to reality last week — and possibly a step closer to being challenged in court.

Conservatives and libertarians, mostly, have been advancing the theory lately that the individual mandate, in which the government would compel everyone to buy insurance or pay a penalty, is unconstitutional.

“I think an individual mandate will pass, and I think it’s going to be very vulnerable because it exceeds Congress’s constitutional authority,” said David Rivkin, a lawyer who served in the Justice Department under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Mr. Rivkin spelled out his argument in a recent op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal that he co-wrote.

“If you say the government can mandate your behavior as far as this type of insurance goes,” he said, “there will be nothing the government can’t do. They can control every single way in which you dispose of your income.”

Reform advocates will undoubtedly look back on all this and wonder if the politics of single payer would have actually been easier. In this particular respect, it almost certainly would have been. There’s no doubt that the federal government has the power to tax for certain benefits or compel payments to outside parties for certain optional privileges (like driving.) But whether it has the power to compel all citizens to pay money to particular private interests is an unknown. Who knows what the Roberts Court will decide on that?

I don’t know. But the idea of the government forcing all of its citizens to pay money to private interests really is new. The public option would solve that problem.

Update: Here’s a nice little salvo from House Ways and means:

A House committee moved Thursday to preserve Democrats’ ability to use a procedural tactic to pass health legislation in the Senate.

The House Ways and Means Committee approved a measure that could be used as the vehicle for health legislation to pass in the Senate by a simple, 51-vote majority. Most legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate to pass.

Under the Constitution, revenue measures must originate in the House. If the Senate wanted to use this procedural tactic, the full House would first have to pass a bill providing for it.

House Republicans said the move was more evidence that Democrats are bent on passing a partisan bill. “This is another clear sign that Democrats have chosen to go it alone on health care, have refused to listen to the concerns millions of Americans have expressed about this legislation and blocked every attempt at bipartisanship,” said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the senior Republican on the Ways and Means panel.

Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel of New York brushed aside GOP efforts to offer amendments to the measure, saying it was nothing more than “housekeeping.”

Just in case …

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Kicked In The Teeth

by digby

Oh my Goodness, somebody has his tight whiteys twisted in a great big knot:

“I’m supported by people all over the health care system,” Hatch said, “including doctors, including hospitals, including insurers, including liberal people, conservative people and moderate people. Everybody knows how much money you have to raise to run for the Senate.” Then Hatch turned his fury to MoveOn and George Soros. “MoveOn.org is a scurrilous organization,” he said. “It’s funded by George Soros. He’s about as left wing as you can find in this country. And they’re up to just one thing, and that is to smear good people. And frankly, they’re not gonna smear me without getting kicked in the teeth by me.”

What did Move-On have the nerve to do? They protested outside his office in Salt Lake City with signs that said he was in the pockets of the insurance companies. He doesn’t like that.

Of course, he didn’t say too much about this:

The crowd repeatedly booed Utah’s senators, Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, for being part of the problem and chastised Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. for not sending back $1.6 billion of stimulus money the state is expected to receive.

Hatch said in a statement that he shares the protesters’ outrage. Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who is considering challenging Bennett for his Senate seat, said Utahns don’t need government “wiping our noses and putting Band-Aids on our boo-boos.”

And he didn’t complain about these guys picketing his office or the fact that the Tea Parties are an astroturf movement funded by wealthy Republicans. Neither does he have a problem with the teabaggers smearing Obama as a socialist Hitler.

It seems that what really bothers Orrin Hatch is the fact that Move-On protesters brought up the fact that he is a bought and sold corporate lackey. Boo hoo.

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It’s Not About Ethics, But Pleasure Is Politics

by tristero

In discussing my last post, commenter Dan brought up an important point:

I don’t begrudge anyone their distaste for fast food, but what I detect here is more than a dislike of fast food, it’s a fantasy that the best-tasting food is also going to be the most ethically admirable food, that if it’s produced by a corrupt systems, then it must be corrupt all the way down. But we didn’t evolve to take pleasure in only those things which are available to us through ethical channels.

I agree, but that’s hardly the whole story.

Of course, it is not the case that because it is ethically admirable – a synonym for “politically correct” – that it must taste good. The reason, say, great chocolate tastes so amazing is because of the tremendous care taken to ensure only the best ingredients are used. Furthermore, the chocolate is prepared with exceptional attention to the effects of each step on the final quality of the product. Whether the cacao workers are exploited or not has no bearing on the quality of the final product vis a vis its final taste: it just simply happens that the best chocolate by far (imo) is made by small artisanal businesses and many of the best artisanal chocolate makers today happen to be reasonably honest, decent, and occasionally exemplary human beings.

The problem with fast food qua food is not that the workers that make the stuff are shamefully exploited, although they are. It’s not that the animals involved are treated horribly, although they certainly are. It’s not that all the food grown to manufacture fast food is produced in an ecologically criminal fashion, although that’s mostly true as well. It’s that fast food tastes like shit.

Arguments that center around taste are all but impossible to defend. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that. So let me pull back; I’m not gonna defend my claim that fast food tastes awful if you disagree. If you like to eat burgers laced with ground-up cow noses and traces of fecal matter, hey, go for it!

However, I would like to point out that there are tremendous profits to be made from producing processed food as cheaply as possible, from the least desirable ingredients, and in the cheapest/fastest way, which usually means that flavor will get sacrificed. Accordingly, fast food makers, as well as most industrial food manufacturers, artificially flavor and perfume (is that the right word?) the slop they sell. They’ve done considerable research on every conceivable nuance of human appetite; not only what makes you prefer a food, but what makes you crave it. And so, it is no surprise that nearly all fast food is heavily salted, heavily sugared, deep-fried, loaded with fat, and so on. Of course there is nothing wrong with salt, sugar, frying, or fat, unless, for some bizarre reason, you eat extreme amounts of it on a regular basis. That is precisely what has happened. By focusing obsessively on tweaking one single aspect of the experience of food – addictive craving – processed food manufacturers have created a health crisis. Sure, there are other factors that impact our health, but that does not let these people off the hook. Extreme over-consumption of fast food is one of the major causes of numerous, preventable, diseases.

It surely is in the interests of fast food purveyors to train us to crave their product and eat it as often as possible. Furthermore, it is also in their interest to train us not to enjoy food they can’t profit from. So…it’s no wonder that so much supermarket produce is flavorless (and comparatively expensive) or that we are told over and over again by ads and commercials that cooking is a pain in the ass, that it’s hard, and we should leave food prep to the “professionals,” and when we don’t, we should try to use their products as often as we can. Of course, not everyone will like to cook, or has the time, or will ever learn how to do it well. So? That is hardly the point. The meta-message of so much advertising and promotion from the food industry is geared towards actively discouraging the individual preparation of food.

Given the extremes to which Big Food goes to manipulate and control taste, it is more than reasonable to question whether a regular diet of fast food has much to do with an individual’s exercise of his/her “freedom of choice.” It may feel like a choice to the person who scarfs up a Big Whopper three, four times a week, but that doesn’t make it one.*

Now, one can, and many do, make the case that the immoral practices of the present food industry – the sadism towards both humans and non-humans, the near-gleeful rape of the environment – impact the taste of our food. Artificially fattened chickens don’t taste as good as an ethically raised chicken, etc. because of the release of stress hormones or whatever. While a lot of what I’ve read, and my own experience, tends to support this, I nevertheless think the ethics of food production are a separate issue. Whatever it is that organic producers are doing, especially local organic producers, the food often ends up tasting better. Whatever it is that the big processed food producers are doing, the food usually ends up tasting awful – to me, of course. Oh, today’s good food seems often to correlate with good ethics? That’s interesting, but correlation does not necessarily mean causation. There’s nothing to prevent a creep or a crazy person, like the head of an upscale market chain I don’t need to name, from selling good food, or making it.

One more aspect of the food and ethics intersection. IF food was merely about personal taste, it wouldn’t have much place being discussed on a politically oriented blog. But food is not only about taste. It’s about pleasure and that makes it an essential subject.

It’s simply is a fact that there are cultural/political actors in this country who are working hard to severely restrict and regulate our access to things that can deeply enrich our lives. They are active in many areas. Some are trying, as they have since the Dawn of Time, to restrain female sexuality. Others are trying to dictate who we can marry, or what kind of movies we can watch. The reason is obvious: to control both the kinds of pleasure people can experience and their access to it is to have significant control over all their behavior.

I would like to suggest that the people who are wrecking – have wrecked – our pleasure in real food, and who are promoting a regular diet of fast, prepared glop to substitute for it, are all of a piece with the people who are working overtime to convince us that fucking without a marriage license is a crime. In this case, the food fight is all about who controls our pursuit of happiness- large corporations and the government programs that empower them, or ourselves?

I’m still trying to grasp many of the essentials of an incredibly complex subject. Perhaps it has always been the case, but at least in this country and at this time, there is no doubt in my mind that access to delicious food is a profoundly important political issue.

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*I have to hedge here. Obviously, this is not the easiest claim to defend even if you’re an expert on addictive behavior, the concept of freedom of choice, and the psychology of food. However, from what I have learned since I started to focus on food issues, I have every reason to believe the assertion can be defended and it’s definitely one I’ll be looking into further. You readers are often extremely helpful in guiding me to useful information so if you know things I should read, please let me know.

Feel Good Today

by digby

After all this mucking about in the hideous sausage factory of DC legislative politics, let’s do something clean and decent and unambiguously good this week. Let’s help the State of Maine achieve equality for all its citizens by helping pass their gay marriage initiative:

Howie writes

As of last night, the equality forces were ahead— but only marginally. The Portland Press Herald is reporting that a new poll shows that 51.8% of people who plan to vote in November say they will vote no or are leaning in that direction and that 42.9% plan to vote yes, or are leaning that way. Just over 5% are undecided. Take a look at the newest TV spot they started running this week. We want to make sure it gets up on the air, not just in Portland, where the No on 1 vote is expected to sweep, but in places like Presque Isle, Eustis, Haynesville, Allagash and Millinocket, where there’s still work to be done.

Today is the first day of early voting– the most effective day we have left to get some real money to the folks on the grouund in Maine fighting the bigots who are trying to take away their rights and exclude gay men and women from society. Maine isn’t an expensive media market. And it’s a place where the good guys can win. This is what they can do with the cash that comes in.

And as a further inducement, Blue America is offering a chance for those who donate to win some awesome swag:

The first 9 people who kick in at least $30 at the Blue America ’10 page each wins a special DVD of Barbra Streisand’s spectacular 1966 television special Color Me Barbra (which includes a rare poster). And if that wasn’t fabulous enough, we also have something pretty mind-blowing for the person who donates the most by 6AM (PT) tomorrow. The picture is above. It’s a gorgeous Joan Osborne RIAA custom double platinum award for both Relish and “One of Us.” It’s rare, collectible, unique and… well, what a gift it would make for anyone who you happen to know who went bonkers over the song below! And, more important, what an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Maine!

You can donate to this cause here.

There is so much ugliness out there right now. The zeitgeist is angry and hostile. The success of this initiative would be a breath of fresh air, a reminder that real people benefit from out contributions and that the causes we all fight for and believe in can be achieved.

Donate now. Feel good today.

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Listening To Grandpa

by digby

Guess what the teabaggers are up to?

GRASSLEY: SENATE HEALTH PLAN DEPLETES MEDICARE, RAISES PREMIUMS,
THWARTS CONSTITUTION

Tell Congress to REJECT ObamaCare!

FaxDC.com wants to send this urgent and personalized Blast Fax
message to all 535 members of the House and Senate for YOU.

Alert: The healthcare reform proposal that forces people to buy
health insurance could be unconstitutional and the government's
"public option" insurance plan will ultimately lead to the rationing
of medical care, Sen. Charles Grassley tells Newsmax.

The Iowa Republican the ranking GOP member of the Senate Finance
Committee also said the plan before Congress is bound to shift
"leftward" as is moves through the legislative process.

Newsmax.TV's Ashley Martella noted that the Finance Committee on
Tuesday voted 14-9 in favor of an $829 billion, 10-year healthcare
remake, with only one Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, voting
for the bill. He asked Sen. Grassley about her vote.

"I couldn't vote yes for several reasons, and I don't know her reason
for voting," Grassley responded.

"But you want to remember one thing: She's pretty meticulous and she
moves ahead, and she is not committed to following this thing all the
way through the process. That's what she's told me. And it better not
get any more leftward or they will lose her."

Grassley added that when the bill moves leftward it may even have a
"public option" in it.

Under such a plan, individuals and businesses would be allowed to
join a public healthcare insurance system which critics contend would
eventually bankrupt private insurers by offering cheaper healthcare
insurance.

"When you have a public option, the Heritage Foundation said, all
these people are going to opt out and go into the government plan
because the government's not a competitor, it's a predator," Grassley
warned.

"When you do that you're going to move into an area where pretty soon
everybody's in the government-run plan, and pretty soon you have what
they have in Canada a government-run plan with no choice, with
rationing."

Grassley explained why he opposed the Finance Committee bill.

"First of all, it takes $404 billion out of Medicare, and you want to
remember that Medicare is in bad shape anyway. So why would you take
that money and put it into a new government entitlement program?

"Secondly, this is the first time in the 225-year history of our
country that we have forced you as a constituent to buy a product.
You've been free to buy or not to buy, but now for the first time
you're going to have to buy health insurance. And if you don't buy
it, the IRS is going to tax the family $1,500."

As to whether this provision is constitutional, Grassley said: "I'm
not a lawyer but I've listened to some lawyers speak on this. I don't
think we've ever had this issue before of having to buy something,
and a lot of constitutional lawyers are saying it is
unconstitutional, or at least a violation of the Tenth Amendment."

That amendment provides that powers not granted to the federal
government nor prohibited to the states "are reserved to the states
respectively, or to the people."

Grassley continued: "Maybe states can do this, but can the federal
government do it? So I have my doubts.

"But here's the untold story 85 percent of people in this country
have health insurance already. So what does the Congressional Budget
Office as well as the industry say? That premiums are going to go up
for that 85 percent of the people because of our not doing anything
to keep them from going up.

"What is this healthcare debate mostly about for those 85 percent of
the people? They're tired of their premiums going up so much over the
past four or five years. Then you're going to have what's called the
individual mandate you have to buy insurance and you still have 25
million people who don't have health insurance."

Martella asked if Grassley agrees with Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell's assertion that the bill approved by the Finance Committee
will never come before the Senate.

"I 100 percent agree with it," Grassley declared. "That doesn't mean
that none of it will come before the Senate. What he's saying is,
it's not going to have an identity all by itself because it's going
to be merged with the Senate Health Committee bill that came out of
committee back in July when Senator Kennedy was chairing that
committee.

"Understand that this thing has moved leftward even in the Finance
Committee. I was part of a group of six negotiating what was supposed
to be a bipartisan bill. The White House pulled the rug out from
those negotiations because they wanted to move ahead.

"So they moved ahead in a partisan way and the bill moved leftward in
the Finance Committee. And when it's merged with the Senate Health
Committee bill it's going to move more leftward.

"Then when you look at all the left-wing ideas that [Speaker Nancy]
Pelosi has in the House of Representatives, with her vast majority
over there, it's going to move further to the left." (NewsMax)


DO NOT BE SILENCED BY ANYONE STAND UP! MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

TAKE ACTION: Send YOUR blast FAX to ALL 535 Congressman NOW!

To visit FaxDC.com, click here: http://faxdc.com/

To view Your Fax Message, click here: http://faxdc.com/healthcare.htm

To Fax Blast Capitol Hill, click here: http://faxdc.com/healthorder.htm

Fax Specials, click here: http://faxdc.com/flagbearer.htm

To view the Ultimate Protest Package, click here:
http://faxdc.com/ultimateprotestpackage.htm

Be sure to click through the links. Awesome.

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Full Court Press

by digby

So the insurance companies are doubling down:

By releasing a transparently hyperbolic and self-serving study on the effects of health reform, the insurance industry appears to have blundered in a big way. They discredited themselves in the eyes of the media elite, alienated potentially sympathetic members of Congress, and rallied Democrats around a common foe. So what are they doing now? They seem to be trying the same stunt again, with a brand new study. It’s not as deceptive as the last one. But it’s not going to win any points for intellectual honesty, either. This time the study’s sponsor is the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), rather than America’s Health Insurance Programs. The hired gun accounting firm is Oliver Wyman, instead of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. But the message is the same as before: Pass reform, as currently envisioned, and insurance premiums will go way up.

Can someone please explain to me why this isn’t a blatant threat? Nice little health care system you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

In a normal country, this kind of corporate threat, in which they openly say that unless they get their way, they will raise premiums sky high and make everyone suffer, would be considered criminal. After all, premium pricing is entirely in their hands — and that’s why we are in the terrible situation we are in today.

This new report, much like the last one, leaves out the information about subsidies, so the amounts are very scary to the average person. But that’s not the only point. They are also signaling to the deficit scolds that they have something valuable to trade with, namely that the insurance companies are going to gouge the government hard if they don’t get their way. The deficit scolds will naturally use that as another reason to defeat health care reform.

And I’m still not sure that this insurance company salvo doesn’t have a kabuki element. We’ll have to see if this second report, from a different “trusted” source doesn’t give this gambit some restored respectability. (Hopefully, this will help.)

Update: Blitzer was pretty brutal with Karen Ignani today, basically implying that she hired Price Waterhouse to come up with a specific result. If that attitude holds up, it’s good news.

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Huckleberry Fin

by digby

It seems that lil’ Huckleberry’s lugubrious, “who me?” act isn’t playing all that well among his own followers these days:

Angry attendees in the crowd interrupted Graham with cries of, “You’re a country club Republican,” “Sotomayor!,” and “You lie.” Outside the event, right-wing activist Julliet Kozak picketed the town hall with a sign decrying all “Unconstitutional Anti-Christ Socialist Federal Deficit Spending Programs.” She explained that she opposes what Graham is “doing in our Congress, what he’s doing to our country.”

I guess just being an unctuous little twit isn’t good enough any more. These teabaggers won’t accept his brand of winking and nodding phony “bipartisanship” anymore, even though his whole purpose is to water down and muddy up anything progressive initiative that might pass . They want all out war.

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Winners’N Losers

by digby

Unemployment may the highest its been in a generation, but at least we don’t have to lose any more sleep about the plight of the really important people:

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year — a record high that shows compensation is rebounding despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street’s pay culture.

What is this regulatory scrutiny they speak of?

Congressional lawmakers today expressed concern that another AIG bonus fiasco could soon unfold, on the heels of a new watchdog report criticizing the Treasury Department for failing to oversee pay plans at AIG before the bailed-out company dished out $168 million in retention payments in March.

“It was a failure of oversight by Treasury” that led to the spring’s bonus fiasco, watchdog Neil Barofsky told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this morning, a failure for which he said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was ultimately responsible.

Treasury essentially abdicated its oversight duties of AIG’s compensation structures to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was “a recipe for disastrous consequences,” said Barofsky, the special inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

I realize that 2009 has been a banner year on Wall Street and all, and everyone’s very excited that the market closed above 10,000 today. But let’s not forget that the rest of America is still mired in a horrible sluggish economy, with housing still as moribund as ever and unemployment still rising. Considering the fact that it was the greed of the financial industry that was the proximate cause of this recession, common decency would have them putting their triumphal return to master of the unhiverse status on hold for just a while longer.

By the way, the more this happens without a response from the Democratic majority in Washington, the more they will be blamed for perpetuating this crisis. Saying that everything would have been a lot worse without the stimulus and then letting these greedy jackasses crow and gloat and resume the pillaging isn’t going to go over well among the electorate unless this economy turns around very sharply.

Wall Street knows very well that nothing will happen to them if they start handing out bonuses like Halloween candy. And the good news is that everyone will blame big government and its onerous taxes and regulations for letting it happen. Talk about a win-win.

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Family Blackmail

by digby

I have heard that nobody on Capitol Hill seriously believes that Joe Lieberman will help Republicans filibuster a health care bill. Apparently, he’s seen as some kind of errant child who needs a lot of attention but will fall in line when the time comes.

I just wonder why anyone believes that. Recall that he was the first Democrat to come to the Senate floor and condemn Bill Clinton for being immoral, thus breathing new life into the scandal at a critical moment and turning up the heat for impeachment. Consider his behavior during the confirmation processes for Supreme Court nominees during the Bush administration when he and Lindsay Graham convened the Gang of 14 to essentially hamstring the Democrats from filibustering Supreme Court nominees, thus ensuring that we will have a corporate friendly court for a generation. Remember, for Gawd’s sake, that the man spent all of last year campaigning by the side of the Republican candidate for president, saying that the Democratic nominee, the current president, was unfit to lead. What exactly would he have to do to prove that he isn’t a loyal Democrat?

I think it’s pretty clear that Lieberman isn’t planning to help the Democrats pass health care reform. After all, he hasn’t just been saying that there shouldn’t be a public option. He’s been saying that there shouldn’t be health care reform at all. I think he’s very likely to be a “no” vote even without a public option (and he’s not alone) but considering his history I can’t see any reason why anyone would believe that he’s going to vote for cloture either unless they bribe him with something he dearly wants (nuclear war?) or threaten him seriously with something he doesn’t want to lose. He certainly is placing himself, as usual, at the center of the negotiations whether we like it or not.

This is all about Reid and Obama now. They don’t seem to think they can successfully threaten recalcitrant Dems with the loss of their committee chairs if they refuse to allow an up or down vote. I’m not sure why that is, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s so. But if they refuse to use the sticks, there sure are plenty of carrots out there for these pampered little royals, so I don’t see that as an excuse. If Obama and Reid can’t get Lieberman and the rest of the selfish jackass caucus to allow an up or down vote on something that a vast majority of the American people want, then we have to ask ourselves if they really want to.

Update: Mary Landrieu said on MSNBC that the reason people say they support the public option is because they think that means it’s free. And then she said that she’s sorry there’s been this whole “unfortunate debate” about the public option because we should be talking about public private partnerships and cost containment not a free lunch.

Let the blackmailing begin.

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