DL Open Thread: Saturday, October 21, 2023

Rethugs Should Monetize Speaker Disaster By Turning It Into Reality Show.  Auditions start Sunday (I’m not making this up), Caucus tries to select one winner Monday, House floor votes on Tuesday.  As if:

Republicans have until Sunday at noon to submit their names for speaker, but more than a half-dozen are already making calls or floating their names: Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (Texas), Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern (Okla.), and Reps. Dan Meuser (Pa.) Austin Scott (Ga.), Jack Bergman (Mich.) and Byron Donalds (Fla.).

Emmer goes into the race with the deepest strongest built-in reservoir of goodwill, as a former National Republican Congressional Committee chief. But as POLITICO has reported, he also has Trump world problems that his skeptics are likely to use against him.

You see, Trump has already publicly trashed his candidacy.  Not sufficiently MAGAt.  Not that anyone is likely to get to 217:

“It’s probably impossible to announce a campaign for speaker in just a couple of days,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said. “The process took [Kevin] McCarthy and [Nancy] Pelosi and many others months and years to build a confidence [among] members to get across the finish line. And to try to do so in a week, it’s pretty futile.”

Just When Dubya Was Burnishing His Reputation, The Warmonger In Him Resurfaces:

It’s not going to take long for people [to say]: ‘It’s gone on too long. Surely, there’s a way to settle this through negotiations. Both sides are guilty,’” Bush, 77, said on Tuesday at a private event near Santa Barbara, Calif.

“My view is: One side is guilty. And it’s not Israel.”

It’s no surprise that the former president who launched us into unending immoral wars is still very much a bad person. But with these remarks, Bush has once again permanently secured his footing as a blood-thirsty warmonger who, in the clearest terms, cannot comprehend arguments against mass death. In fact, for Bush, in the same crude fashion of abusive men, it appears that more bloodshed is demonstrative of one’s power.“

We’ll find out what he’s made out of,” the former president said of Netanyahu at the same event.

Netanyahu, of course, was an an enthusiastic supporter of Bush’s disastrous decision to attack Iraq:

Perhaps one of the better examples of how this rationale played out in the lead-up to Iraq comes from Netanyahu himself, a former Bush boy too. Here he was in 2002 appearing before Congress to explain why an Iraq invasion would be worthwhile.

“I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice, it’s the right choice,” Netanyahu, as a private citizen, said.

“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” he continued. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”

How’d that work out for everybody?

Speaking Of Bibi, Could War Drag Biden Down?:

Is that it? Is that the best western leaders can do as the midnight hour approaches? Kindly Joe Biden doled out sympathy and dollars in a seven-hour visit to Israel. Tiny amounts of aid are dribbling into Gaza. Two hostages out of 200 have been released. But there is no ceasefire, no “humanitarian pause” or safe zone, no end to the bombing, no long-term plan. Fears of a widening conflagration grow.

Instead there is reluctant, nonetheless shaming western acquiescence in the imminent, full-scale Israeli military onslaught on Gaza – with its understandable but unachievable aim: the permanent eradication of Hamas. With more than 4,000 Palestinians lying dead, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “team”, to use Biden’s jarring term, should be on a red card. It has just received a green light.

A great deal of diplomacy is ongoing behind the scenes. The biggest fear is that if Israel attacks, Hezbollah in Lebanon will open a second front. Instability is spreading to Iraq and Syria. US pledges of more bombs and bullets for Israel enrage the Muslim world. Meanwhile nobody, not even Biden, knows what is Netanyahu’s post-Hamas, postwar plan. That’s because there almost certainly isn’t one.

The 7 October terrorist atrocities that claimed 1,400 Israeli lives were horrifying. Few dispute Israel has a legal and moral right to defend itself. But Arab leaders, fearing their people’s wrath, are right to say collective punishment of civilians is not the way to do it. The UN, too, demands a ceasefire. Without it, more tragedies like the Anglican al-Ahli hospital blast are inevitable. Despite what dissembling British officials say, there is no such thing as a “calm and measured” invasion.

Retired State Employees Win Reprieve From Medicare Advantage–At Least Temporarily.  Of course the Carney Administration continues its court battle against the decision that stopped them from forcing retirees into Medicare Advantage scams:

While the Carney administration has taken Medicare Advantage “off the table” for now, they are continuing to fight retirees in the Delaware Supreme Court by appealing the Superior Court’s ruling in our favor. This move not only continues to erode our trust in the administration but adds further expense to retirees in legal fees. The state, on the other hand, has limitless funds to fight us. In fact, they get to use our own tax money against us. If the state wants to rebuild the trust of retirees (and show current employees that it can be trusted to keep their promises), the state should drop its Supreme Court appeal.

Many of us in this struggle have wondered why the Carney administration tried to throw retirees under the bus by taking away our Medicare benefit. We can only conclude that they thought we were an easy target. They thought we would not fight back. But they were wrong. What retirees know, and the Carney administration disregarded, is that retirees are willing to go to war to keep their health care benefits at a time when they need them the most. There’s a reason retirees carried “Hands Off My Medicare!” signs into Legislative Hall, and nearly 300 retirees attended the recent State Employee Benefits Committee meeting in person and virtually. Retirees know and trust their physicians to make health care decisions for them — not an insurance company making its profits by delaying and denying medical care.

As a retired state employee, all I can say is that RISE speaks for me, and advocates for me.  Thanks to John Kowalko, Elisa Diller and all the advocates for retirees!

What do you want to talk about?