The Chicago Tribune has finally reverted away from home-town boosterism of the President and is now telling him to, essentially, admit that his signature ‘achievement’ is toast:
[President Barack Obama] crusaded for [obamacare] and has embraced its nickname. But he did not write the law. Congress did. Major changes are necessary — he has stipulated by his actions that this law as constituted cannot work — and Congress should legislate them for his review.
Bottom line: Let’s delay and rewrite this ill-conceived law. Congress need not start from scratch. Lawmakers can build on what all of us have learned from three years of painful trial and error. Three years of attempting, but failing, to make this clumsy monstrosity work for the American people.
By all means, let us have a, ah, temporary delay in implementation – which is Beltway-speak (sorry about that) for ‘let us kill this monstrosity, throw it into an unmarked grave in federally-protected wetlands, pour lye into the hole, cover it up, go home, and never speak of this ever again.’ Not as satisfying (either as a policy, or personally) as simply defunding the monstrosity – but you have to expect that the President is contemplating using a ‘temporary’ delay as a last-ditch firewall. Or at least his staffers are. Well, the smarter ones, at least.
Via Jammie Wearing Fools. I suspect that JWF’s assumption of IRS attack dogs against the Chicago Tribune is a bit unwarranted, actually: Barack Obama presumably plans to go back to Chicago, eventually. He doesn’t want the biggest paper in Illinois holding a grudge.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: The chance that Barack Obama will actually take this advice is, of course, nil. Bless his heart.
Really feel like unless this thing goes down in flames, a full repeal before people feel the pain will just mean we’ll see it again in 10 years.
And a number of people .. many of them writing over at DailyKOS and other wretched hives of scum and villainy* .. really *really* don’t want a repeal because “those knuckle-dragging conservative luddites want to kill people!”
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I am not optimistic that there’s enough will available to burn it with fire, let alone Moe’s above solution that amounts to the same .. only the bastards would use less fire and more quicklime**.
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Mew
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* Classical reference
** More obscure classical reference
A) Chicago does not want him back.
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B) The Trib does, from time to time, remember it’s supposed to be the “rational” Chicago paper.. meaning semi-fiscally-responsible.
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C) I seem to recall half of Congress .. the half with all the elephants .. offering lots of fixes for what now are very apparent problems, and being … rebuffed.
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D) Bless his heart… yep.
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Mew
I doubt he’ll move back to Chicago – he needs to be somewhere he can golf year round, so Florida maybe? Michelle could run for Nelson’s seat in a few years when he’s done with it.
I’m betting Hawaii.
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Mew