I am not opposed to much of regulatory changes that made it through the House last weekend, most of them revenue neutral for Uncle Sam and long-overdue given the current state of our health care system.  However, If the democratic leadership had followed the lead of Olympia Snowe and the Blue Dogs, as the president seemed to prefer all along, this landmark legislation would have already been signed into law.  As it is, the "public option" just might be the hammer that breaks the head off the health reform screw in Conference Committee.  Assuming it makes it out of the Senate with a huge new beauracry as the price of reform.

Which brings me to the main thesis of this blog:  Why can't we fix the government we have rather than adding billions (trillions long-term) in new spending that will end up in the same unaccountable blackhole every other federal (and state and local) dollar disappears into as soon as it is approved by Congress?

As long as Americans keep eating the way we do and living the sendentiary life-styles we do, the rising cost of health care will remain beyond our ability to pay for it.

The problem is so much bigger than creating yet another unaccountable government boondoggle rather than fixing the programs we already spend billions on with very little true return on that investment.  Much of the criticism I hear from the center and moderate right isn't that we should ensure deny anyone access to medical care or that we shouldn't fix inequities in the system.  It is that creating another government program to fix something of this magnitude makes little sense given the government's long history of failure in just about every endeavor they take on.  A psychopathic government is not my number one choice in health care provider no matter who is in charge of it.

About the only thing Uncle Sam is really good at is killing people.

Speak once in opposition to their ideology, and your become that target of destruction. Never mind your answer. Never mind your argument. Never mind that that which you believe is also the same view of the majority of America. If you speak, act, or think differently, you instantly become a target of destruction.

You, sir, are a fucking MORON. Maybe two thirds of citizens call themselves 'Christian' (I have yet to meet one who actually IS), but 100% of the people tormenting people outside of those clinics are an extremely vocal minority of those so-called Christians.

if Dear Leader really believes all this nonsense, we have just the community organizer to send over to Afghanastan to engage Al Qaeda. As near as I can tell, he's sent his entire adult life doing community organizing and is not currently occupied in any other useful pursuit. I think after a rousing speech or two and a few sanctimonious references to his middle name, the bad guys will come around and we can all kumbaya and live happily ever after.

If a [insert party] had yelled out during one of [insert hated president] speeches he would have been lynched, seriously, called Un-American, Un-Patriotic, and they would have added whatever else they could slap on him. In fact if it had been a [insert party], he would already be officially censured, and they would be looking for way to get him to either resign or not run for office again.  That shit never happens to [political rival], they can do or say whatever they want. That is why I hate them! 

So if you think we're going to get hit without hitting back you've got another think coming. Quite frankly we're sick and tired of idiotic "moderates" and other invertebrates who spend more time fretting that our side behave like perfect little ladies while turning a blind eye to the brutish behavior across the aisle.

Both votes were mostly along party lines, but each featured drastically different rationales for not supporting the nominee despite ideological differences. I cannot find a single democratic senator who voted no because of something Roberts said, either during the hearings or as a matter of public record, though some cited a number of his specific rulings. Not a single one said the fact that he was a white guy was a hindrance to their voting yes. By way of contrast, the republican opposition to Sotomayor, almost to a man, mentioned her "Wise Latina" comments as evidence of her "Judicial Activism" yet not a single one cited her actual rulings. 

I am surprised nine GOP senators voted in favor of her nomination given the GOP's performance so far in the health care and stimulus debates. Even Lindsey Graham was quoted as saying:

[Sotomayor] has not been an activist judge in the sense that would make her disqualified.... I hope her being on the Supreme Court will inspire young women, particularly Latina women, to choose a career in the law.

Seriously.  Lindsey Graham.  I was floored.  Not that he has all of sudden turned reasonable on other important matters, but I think this presents an opening of sorts, however small. 

It also presents a contrast to the 31 republican senators who voted against her confirmation on what appear to be purely racial lines that have very little to do with her actual rulings from the bench.  I am sure this came as little surprise to the democratic faithful.  They are constantly having their worst opinions of the GOP confirmed by the "performance" of those at the highest levels of the party apparatus as well as those screaming from the margins.  The positions they take and the tone they offer to the national discourse gives the impression that most "mainstream" republicans see themselves as being members of the Old White People Party, despite the inclusion of token minorities to give the GOP a patina of diversity and young republicans for energy.

What baffles me, though it probably shouldn't due to America's pathetically low turnout numbers for primary elections, is the total lack of importance racial issues appear to have with moderate conservatives.  As far as I can tell, moderates are quite happy with the idea that barriers to a fair shake should be lowered, even if many have come to the conclusion that such barriers are more classed based than race based these days.  Most moderate republicans I have spoken with are not against health care reform, yet the republican party hasn't offered a single bill that would address their very common sense concerns with the democratic party's current plans.

What saddens me about the current state of affairs in the GOP is the total lack of representation moderate conservatives have in Congress and their seeming inability to vote for someone new.  They accept piss-poor performance in Washington as the price they have to pay in order to fight democratic proposals.  Proposals they don't even understand because most Americans don't have a clue as to what is actually being considered.  Moderates have become comfortable being fed partisan and paranoid explanations for what amounts to common sense changes to the way we do business.  That's if they bother to tune in at all.

Given the history of the GOP, its current state is sadly ironic.  The progressive movement in American that they so rabidly fight against actually grew out of the republican party to begin with.  The republican party used to be the home for minorities when the democratic party was the sole province of white America.  Over the years, the roles of the parties have changed as they always do, but somewhere along the way the republican party lost all connection to its place in American history.

I believe Nixon (and all the subsequent neocons who started under his administration) was the ax that cut the party's mooring lines and set it adrift on ideological seas.  It is long past time the party's moderates took back the bridge and brought the ship back to shore.  We have important work to do that shouldn't be left up to liberals if we want it done right.  They are all vision.  We are all process.  Such a teaming environment can be very successful if everyone can understand their place and act accordingly. 

We need to marry the progressive with the pragmatic in a way that helps transform America into the 21st century country it must become. 

We can no longer aspire to empire by turning the Cold War into the Long War.  We must drastically reduce our military footprint by bringing all our troops back to America.  Fire up the BRAC and open bases in our hardest hit states this time even as we close them overseas.  We need to realign our military to face the real threats and opportunities inherent in today's landscape instead wasting more money than we should focusing on yesterday's fight.  Since a domestically-based military would be drastically cheaper, we can use this as an opportunity to change the way government contracting works and what our spending priorities should be.  That doesn't mean we are killing defense contractors, but it does mean they will be more accountable to We The People for contract performance and will be working on plowshare projects instead of forging swords.

That is only one of a dozen different ways that a more rational and reasonable and common-sense oriented conservatism could help with our national project. 

The republican party MUST regain our sanity and our innovative spirits if we are going to survive as a nation.  I realize the status quo is a natural state for the average republican, but we cannot afford such stasis right now.  It is creating an America that is unstable and unable to face the numerous challenges we are sure to encounter in a more globalized world economy.  This is a pivotal moment in American history and it is incumbent upon all republicans to create a party that Ike or Teddy or Abe might recognize.

Medicare and the rest of the government health programs have been around for decades and have gotten steadily less sustainable with the exception of the military health care system. It is not a money thing with Medicare, though, or an ideology thing.  Medicare spends plenty of cash and members of both parties love it, but it remains unsustainable because it leaks like a sieve and flows out into the broken foundations of our health care system to combine with all the rest of our myriad of symptoms, flooding the federal budget with red ink.  The ten-year cost projections from HHS don't look promising, so Medicare remains a fatal flaw in our current system that must be addressed.

America can take excess profit out of health care and not kill private insurance companies in the process.

We can implement strict health insurance regulation, set expectations for a minimum allowable plan with a set price and draconian enforcement of those standards. We can fix our existing system using smart strategies that seek to reconcile private businesses with public interests. Maybe this initial legislation leads to a nonprofit health insurance system as being the only sustainable method of paying for universal health care in America. Something more like the Dutch or the Swiss system. This would also cure our Medicare problem because we fixed private insurance to the point that it could be trusted with the public needs.

We could also create an sustainable "public option" that brings together all the various and sundry public plans (Medicare/Medicaid, SCHIP, TRICARE, VA, federal workers, etc.) into a single Americare public insurance plan with significant medical delivery infrastructure in all fifty states via the military and VA.  It would combine cost centers to achieve huge immediate savings and would eventually lead to a significant bargaining position to bring down overall health provider and pharmaceutical costs with nearly 100 million Americans as members when one includes small businesses, the self employed and the uninsured. 

If private companies find a fair and equitable system is not conducive to a profit-driven board of directors, then I suspect most will go into a new line of business or they will become non profits.

This would maintain the public-private hybrid we currently have by using government regulations to eliminate or reduce our worst problems in order to create a sustainable medical system and would be supported by most moderate conservatives and independents who agree the system is desperately in need of significant reform.  A reformed medical system of this nature would be one that everyone in America supports and defends against private interests in years to come instead of just the liberal wing of the democratic party.  We get the ends we require without using a single payer solution that many Americans don't seem to support in its current form.

At any rate, President Obama has done exactly what he campaigned on with regards to this particular subject, which is more than most presidents can say over the last four decades. 

I wish Barack had advocated for a more innovative solution to the problem instead of leaving it up to the democratic caucus. I believe he could have gone straight to the American people and built support for an efficient and effective strategy that might not have included a single payer solution, but would have been a straight kick in the ass to the private insurance industry and serve as the first positive step forward in decades for health care reform.  Going to Congress on this one ensured the process would lead to something less than ideal.

Same thing he did with the stimulus debate.

Health reform more properly belonged as part of that debate because of the role it plays in our crumbling economy and ballooning debt. The military should have been in there as well. I think a lot of people on the left and right were looking for Obama to be bold and progressive and innovative, but not necessarily "liberal" as his base would define it.  Barack's learning curve is in full view as the administration continues to set unreasonable deadlines for these complex and interrelated issues. It makes conservatives feel like he is trying to pull a fast one. The same way it made liberals feel when Ronnie and Newt and George Junior did it to them over the last three decades. 

By building on his brilliant campaign strategy and using the gains he made with moderate republicans and independents, the country could have spent the last six months talking about what a New New Deal and a Greater Society might look like with President Obama signing legislation at the end of the summer that was overwhelming supported by both houses and parties as well as the American people.  Kind of like this landmark bill, more than fifty years past. Our last real moment of political unity in America.  On second thought, I believe this was the last time we saw such political unity in Congress. 

I think passing systemic, significant and sustainable health care reform can be the next unifying theme to bring a fractured nation together.