health care – Page 18

Now it’s the administration who’s using the term ‘Waterloo.’

But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

“I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo,” said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform.”

Bolding mine, and via Patterico’s Pontifications, who is laughing as hard over this as I am. Please also note that being for a public option is now being seen as being a non-mainstream position by the White House culture itself: the tone-deafness exhibited there is staggering, particularly since it was guaranteed that the WaPo would run with that. Which suggests one of two alternatives: either the White House is going to drop the public option, or the White House has precisely zero message discipline.

Or both, I suppose.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

How to (legally*) personally profit from your position as a Presidential Senior Advisor.

Just follow these easy steps!

Create AKPD Message & Media, a public relations company that specializes in astroturfing.
Attach yourself to the campaign of the candidate that eventually wins the 2008 Presidential election.
Disengage yourself from AKPD Media, but under circumstances where the company ‘owes’ you 2 million dollars, which it will then pay back over time (we call this ‘income’).
Become a Senior Advisor to the President.
Have the President negotiate a tone-deaf deal between the White House and lobbyist group PhRMA to get the pharmaceutical industry to support health care rationing.
‘Discover’ one fine summer day that AKPD Media, the company that you created and which is still paying you money, has been given a fat advertising contract by PhRMA to astroturf health care rationing.
Profit!

See The Conservatives, Michelle Malkin, Protein Wisdom, Bloomberg, & Hugh Hewitt for more. Continue reading How to (legally*) personally profit from your position as a Presidential Senior Advisor.

‘Liberals tired of health care compromise.’

The AP, asking on progressives’ behalf:

Isn’t it time the other guys gave a little ground on health care?

Me, answering on conservatives’ behalf:

No.

The Democrats can pass something whenever they like: they have the votes, after all. We’re not going to pretend that they need our help. We’re certainly not going to pretend that they want our input, either. All they want is the ability to share the blame.

[UPDATE]: Via Hot Air, this Drudge headline:

Bring it.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

90% of POTUS’ town hall ‘conversation’ made by POTUS.

Says it all, really.

If you’re wondering how seriously the administration is taking its tame – some might say, ‘gelded’ – town halls, well:

A look at President Obama’s health care “town hall” Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., shows the president out-spoke his audience by a ratio of nearly 9-to-1.

Here’s the scorecard.

Obama: 8,619 words.

Audience: 1,186 words.

You tell me.

Moe Lane

PS: Anybody else getting the feeling that one of the reasons that Democrats are being so graceless about this entire ‘town hall protest’ thing is because it’s wrecking their vacation? I mean, really: sitting in Congress and spending our money is such hard work, and here is the mob spoiling the ruling faction’s precious, precious time away from that task.

The nerve of us.

Crossposted to RedState.

Eugene Robinson wants to make a health care wish.

After whining about us horrible right-wingers, and nervously assuring himself that health care rationing is popular, really, Eugene Robinson wants the President to rise to the occasion. Well, he’d call it ‘rising, ‘ at least:

What the president hasn’t done is the obvious: Tell Congress and the American public, clearly and forcefully, what has to be done and why. Take control of the debate. Consult less and insist more. Remind the Blue Dogs who’s president and who’s not.

Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn’t elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one.

And I want a pony.

Moe Lane

PS: “We?” I voted for the other guy. And I’m not surprised about the expedience at all, at all.

Crossposted to RedState.

Getting in their faces – David Price’s (D, NC-04) town hall.

The assault (from last Thursday) disturbs me. The casual mockery by pro-health care rationing supporters towards a man (who I haven’t even fully confirmed was a health care rationing protester) who’s just gotten punched in the face disturbs me a whole lot more. I don’t care what your stance is on this issue: your instinctive response to this sort of thing should not be to ask sarcastic questions about the victim’s health insurance.

Original video here News stories here and here. See also Gateway Pundit and Weasel Zippers.

Moe Lane Continue reading Getting in their faces – David Price’s (D, NC-04) town hall.

Andrew McCarthy: I can’t spare this woman. She fights.

Ace over at AoSHQ wrote a reasonably comprehensive, well-worth-reading post about why he agreed with Andrew McCarthy disagreeing with the NRO editorial board over ex-Gov. Palin’s successful use of ‘death panel‘ rhetoric in shaping the debate. I’m not going to try to reinvent the wheel; as I said, Ace’s post is well worth reading. I’m just going to note that I’ve spent the last day or so trying to figure out a way to get Palin to favorably mention tort reform in her next Facebook note… and that it never even occurred to me to try to get the NRO editorial board on-message.

Not that it wouldn’t be great if they did, of course. It’s just… well…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE]: Language is a bit rough, but you’ll probably like the sentiments.

So, the White House was just signing people up without their permission.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Michelle Malkin readers. More on this topic here.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I understand that it’s probably legally wise for the White House to assign responsibility for Axelrod’s health care spamming to all those evil, evil advocacy organizations, but really:

“We are implementing measures to make subscribing to emails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf.”

If the petitions were only presented in hardcopy form, somebody had to enter those email addresses into the system. If the organizations in question had provided a digital list of email addresses, somebody had to add them to the White House’s distribution list. If the organizations in question had signed up those email addresses one at a time, somebody on the White House Staff needs to explain why he or she didn’t even set up a please-click-to-confirm-your-registration system.

Somebody with a name.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Will there be a public option sellout?

Verum Serum wants to know, “Will Obama Really Sellout Liberals and Drop the Public Option?” Off-the-record pushback to the contrary, probably: when it’s been suddenly made clear that your job is to actually convince the American public that the current plan is better than no plan at all, no individual part of a plan is non-negotiable. The real question is what progressives will do about said sellout. I predict ‘nothing,’ past the usual whining. They never do.

And I look forward to writing another post like this when we push the administration into endorsing meaningful tort reform. Which, as I have noted earlier, is not negotiable.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Have you seen me?

Won’t you come home, Russ Carnahan? Won’t you please come home?

My name is Russ Carnahan (D, MO-03), and I’m lost:

(via Dana Loesch. Also note: Ed Martin is running against this guy.)

I was last seen a week or so ago, hiding in a garage after a get-together I threw ended with some people that I invited beating up a guy. I’ve dropped off the face of the earth since then. No Twitter*, no blogging, nothing from work… I’m just gone. Now, I’ve had a bit of a sheltered life, and I’m not used to it when things go bad: so I may in a bad place right now. If you see me, please let Ed Martin (R) know; he thinks that I need to take a break anyway, and he’d like to talk to me about it.

I may be with one or more friends, who are also missing: Continue reading Have you seen me?