This is Getting Boring...It's so easy to reveal the flaws in their arguments!

Joe Klein posted another inane collection of words.  We go through it below. My remarks are in red. For the record, this is Joe's unexpurgated column.  

The Health Care Summit

Posted by JOE KLEIN Friday, February 26, 2010 at 10:28 am

Shame on me. I was elsewhere yesterday and missed the health care summit. I'm catching up now, and the tea leaves seem to indicate that Obama came out well ahead of the Republicans. How do I know that? From Matt Drudge, of course. I mean, Drudge's takeaway from the summit is that the President talked a lot--actually, the President, the Congressional Democrats and Republicans each spoke an equal amount--the Times of London found it boring and the networks turned to other programming.

1. Times of London has no standing in this issue, and besides, who the hell cares what they find boring?

2. The networks are a business.  Businesses make money.  I know the concept of capitalsim is abhorrent to you (unless you are the beneficiary of it), but they're not there because it feels good.  They're there to make money.  It was not money making television.  You yourself, in the same damned paragraph just cited the Times of London's assertion that is was boring as gospel... so... Duh.


3.  The purpose of this meeting was to have a bipartisan summit on this democrat crafted bill.  That would entail, it seems, letting the Republicans have their say.  Of all the available minutes, Republicans got ONE out of THREE.  You can denigrate the facts all you want Joe, and regard the observation of them as stupid.  But it doesn't CHANGE them.  Why do libs insist on denigrating the observation of facts as "stupid"?  It's an observation of fact....hellloooooo?  Let me help you here, Joe.  I'll give you an example of a truly stupid observation that could be made about the health care summit so you can see the difference between stupid and not stupid, okay?  STUPID observation of fact:  With few exceptions, everybody there, except the President, appeared to be "not black." THAT'S a stupid observation of fact.  Ooops.  Sorry.  The fact that the President is black and so much of the House and Senate and.... America, in fact, is "not black" has been observed repeatedly on MSNBC, CNN, etc. and deemed to be proof that any time anyone disagrees with Obama it's racism.  Got it straight now?  Of course... they elected him, but we won't let that little detail get in the way of a good racist argument, huh??????

Reading between the lines, you can conclude that the Republicans had nothing very interesting, or clever, to say (and were never able to get the President's goat). And that the President was his usual, unflappable, well-informed self. You can also conclude that not much progress was made at the summit, as Karen reports here--but that's a huge surprise, right?

1. We're "reading between lines" now?  Hey, Joe, ever heard of a VCR/DVR/INTERNET?  You could WATCH the whole thing once you got home THEN draw conclusions.

1.a. So "we can conclude" based on NYT reportage?  Isn't this a little like "I don't know the whole story but the police acted stupidly" Joe? SIT YOUR BUTT DOWN AND WATCH THE DAMN THING.  WORK.  EARN YOUR KEEP.  There are plenty of out of work reporters out there who would be HAPPY to do the work YOU ARE NOT DOING.

Reading further, in the New York Times, I can't find any indications that the Congressional Democrats were actually present at this meeting. Certainly, they had nothing notable to say, no new compromises to propose--which leads to another obvious conclusion: the Republicans have been absolutely recalcitrant in this process, but the Dems are no bargain, either.

1. You're so even handed, Joe.  That was really fair of you there, big fella!  The NYT is so even handed in their reporting I'm sure any conclusions you draw from them are accurate.  I mean, after all, they were way out in front on Van Jones....er... ACORN... oops.  Sorry.  Shouldn't have mentioned that.  My bad! ;(

I remain convinced that if the Republicans actually wanted to deal with this issue, they might have gotten some major concessions from the President--malpractice reform, for sure; perhaps a greater use of insurance polices that emphasize catastrophic coverage (as the Republicans wanted), maybe even a system--as John McCain proposed during the campaign and health wonks everywhere favor--that truly limited the deductability of  corporate health care benefits. To get these things, however, the Republicans would have had to say yes at some point. As in, YES, I'll vote for the bill if you throw in malpractice and pay for it with the money you get from limiting deductability. That is what happens in a negotiation. That is what is supposed to happen in a democracy.

1. You "remain convinced that if the Republicans actually wanted to deal with this issue, they might have gotten some major concessions from the President" Got your people mixed up there, big fella.  The sentence should have read "... convinced that if the PRESIDENT actually wanted to deal, he might have made concessions..." IT'S A DEMOCRAT BILL.  What do the REPUBLICANS HAVE TO CONCEDE?  One can't concede something ONE DOESN'T HAVE.  That sentence ALONE reveals you to be the theoretician that you are.  You have never actually had to hammer out an agreement in your entire life, have you?  Always had an agent or a lawyer or representative of some kind.  Maybe once, early in your career, over something small, you might have had to negotiate, but not lately, that's for sure.  And like you, I can make assumptions about who got the better of your early negotiations, my friend.  Two can play at the "reading between the lines" game.  You LOST.

2. "That is what is supposed to happen in a democracy."  This is not the first time you have made this glaring error.  We live in a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.  NOT a democracy.  Get it straight, will you!

But the obvious truth here is that the Republicans do not want any sort of health care bill to pass at all because they do not want to hand President Obama a victory. Shame on them.

1. Those meanies.  Those big, bad, mean Republicans.  They "obviously" want people to drop dead in the streets and die, die, die.  They're the party of "no."  Okay Joe, let's take this slowly... The framers intended that this kind of legislation be hard...That's why they built in this concept of... say it with me, now....the supermajority.  That means, and we're going to take the math part really, really slow, you need 60 senators out of the 100 to pass legislation.  Too bad you never had 60 dem... Oh, wait... Until a few weeks ago, in fact, for the entire first year of Obama's administation, you DID have a 60 vote supermajority in the Senate with 60 democrats so you could have....passed...anything....you....wanted... so help me out here, Joe, cuz I'm just a big-dum-dummy... If you had a 60 vote supermajority, therefore rendering the Republicans LITERALLY HELPLESS TO STOP ANYTHING, how exactly are they the party of "NO"?

Joe, listening to you and your lefty friends whine about how the Republicans have "stopped" healthcare would be like listening to the 2004 Yankees complain that those mean mean Red Sox should have LOST game 7 of their series because "We want to win it!  We want it and they won't give it to us.  Waaa haaa haaa...We keep throwing pitches and they keep hitting them.... Waaahaaahaaaa.... Why don't they strike out?  Why don't they drop the ball so we can win....?  Waaaahaaaahaaaaa.....We're the YANKEES....."

Gotta get YOUR OWN TEAM to win it, Joe.  It's called THE BATTLEFIELD OF IDEAS.  WIN ON THE POINTS and quit yer whinin'.

Sorry.


http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/02/26/the-health-care-summit/#ixzz0gji1sb2R

The Only Grown-Up in The Room

... Okay. Maybe not the only one. Lamar Alexander gave awesome opening remarks and Eric Cantor and John McCain comported themselves well, but this was a home run.

"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future."
(Remarks by President Obama to a Joint Session of Congress, September 9, 2009)

This afternoon Budget Committee Ranking Member Ryan walked through why the bill put forward by Democrats FAILS the Presidents deficit test.
--

PAUL RYAN: The Majority Leader said the bill scores as reducing deficit by $131 billion over the next 10 years.

First a little bit about CBO: I work with them every single day; very good people; great professionals. They do their jobs well. But their job is to score what is placed in front of them. And what has been placed in front of them is a bill that is fill of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors.

Now what do I mean when I say that?

First off, the bill has ten years of tax increases and ten years of Medicare cuts to pay for six years of spending. The true ten year cost when subsidies kick-in? $2.3 trillion.

The bill is full of gimmicks that more than erase the false claim of deficit reduction:

- $52 billion of savings is claimed by counting increased Social Security payroll revenues. These dollars are already claimed for future Social Security beneficiaries, and claiming to offset the cost of this bill either means were double-counting or were not going to pay Social Security benefits.

- $72 billion in savings is claimed from the CLASS Act long-term care insurance. These so-called savings are not offsets, but rather premiums collected to pay for future benefits. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad has called these savings, A ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Additionally, the nearly half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts cannot be counted twice. Medicare is in dire need of reform in order to make certain that we can ensure health security for future seniors.

Using Medicare as a piggy bank, it raids a half trillion dollars from retirees health coverage to fund the creation of another open-ended health care entitlement.

The Presidents chief Medicare actuary says up to 20% of Medicare providers may go bankrupt or stop taking Medicare beneficiaries as a result. Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage they now enjoy.

Objections to the policy aside, you cannot use these savings twice to both extend the life of Medicare and to pay for other spending. The half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts are either to extend the programs solvency or to reduce the cost of this deficit but not both as its authors claim.

When you strip away the double-counting of Medicare cuts, the so-called savings from Social Security payroll taxes and the CLASS Act, the deficit increases by $460 billion over first ten years and $1.4 trillion over second ten years.

Finally, one of the most expensive and most cynical of the gimmicks applies to Medicare physician payments, the so-called Doc Fix.

By your own estimate, the Doc Fix adds an additional $371 billion to the cost of health care reform. With the price tag beyond what most Americans could handle, the Majority decided to simply remove this costly provision and deal with it in a stand-alone bill.

Ignoring this additional cost does not remove it from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending doesnt reduce spending.


Thanks to 96.9fm Boston Talks 10a-2p Host & Boston Herald Columnist Michael Graham for blogging about this clip.