Open Thread
Monday Open Thread 9.23.13
Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post writes Obama must not yield on Obamacare, debt ceiling or shutdown:
I happen to believe that Obamacare is a great accomplishment, providing access to medical insurance to millions of Americans who lack it and bringing the nation much closer to universal health care. It’s an imperfect law, to be sure, but it could be made much better with the kind of constructive tinkering that responsible leaders performed on Social Security and Medicare.
Even if Obamacare were tremendously flawed, however, it would be wrong to let a bunch of extremist ideologues hold the country hostage in this manner. If Republicans want to repeal the reforms, they should win the Senate and the presidency. If not, they’re welcome to pout and sulk all they want — but not to use extortion to get their way.
I agree. And at this point, I am fully preparing to have both the government shut down and have America default. And the President must too. I am ready for anything that ends the Modern Republican Party once and for all. And by Modern Republican Party I am referring to every Republican who does not agree with former Republican Senator Judd Gregg in his comments inside, and of course everyone who describes themselves as a Tea Partier.
Saturday Open Thread 9.21.13
the Weekly Addresses from the President and the Governor, plus West Wing Week.
Friday Open Thread 9.20.13
Noam calls the White House thinking about helping the GOP pass a clean CR a cave. Well, no, it is a not a cave. A cave would be to delay Obamacare. That is what the GOP “compromise” position is. If he agrees to that, the President is caving. What the President has insisted on regarding the budget was a CR that eliminates the sequester. So these are the positions: 1) The GOP wants an Obamacare Repeal for a CR and 2) the President wants a Sequester Repeal for a CR. Passing a clean CR with no repeals is not a cave. It is a compromise.
Thursday Open Thread 9.19.13
So Speaker… and I use that term loosely … Boehner decided this week to have the Republican Party commit suicide. Unfortunately, the suicide plan is to have the country drive towards a cliff and jump off. And since he is the driver and we are all his passengers, and the doors are locked, we have to go with him. So it is more of a non-mutual murder-suicide pact. The government, much of it anyway, will run out of money at the end of the month when the new fiscal year (October 1) starts. Eighteen days after that, the government will run out of borrowing authority when the debt ceiling is reached. So Speaker Boehner had a choice: he could have passed continuing resolutions to fund the government at last year’s budget levels for a certain period of time and have that pass the House with Democratic and Republican votes, as he has done before. Or he could surrender to the fringe tea party caucus in the House and demand that any continuing resolution and any debt ceiling increase be paired with a repeal or defunding of Obamacare.
This demand is insane and ignorant. It shows how mind blowingly stupid Teabagger Republicans are. For the funding of the Affordable Care Act is pretty much already taken care of when the original law was passed. Indeed, you will have to repeal the entire law to defund it. And as long as President Obama is alive and serving as President, the law will not be repealed. A government shutdown will not stop it. The money has already been spent and insurance premiums are already plunging across the country, meaning that the law is already paying for itself.
The Teabaggers, including Jim DeMint and Steven King and Ted Cruz, are all operating under the assumption that the President will cave and repeal his own law. Their entire plan is predicated on that assumption. And that might be a good, thought still very risky, assumption if Obamacare polled badly and the public wanted the Republicans to do everything they can to repeal or defund it. But that is not the case.
Wednesday Open Thread 9.18.13
NATIONAL–SYRIA–WaPo/ABC Poll: Large majorities of all Americans, including Democrats, Republicans and Independents, support the diplomatic deal struck this past weekend where “Syria places all of its chemical weapons under control of the United Nations, which would then destroy them.” Democrats support it 86% to 12%. Independents support it 82% to 16%. And even Republicans support it 71% to 22%. I guess it is only our media and John McCain that don’t.
Tuesday Open Thread 9.17.13
Noam Scheiber expects a government shutdown on October 1, and he thinks it will be a good thing since it will sober up the Republicans ahead of the debt ceiling vote.
Fortunately, a shutdown is almost certainly a good thing. Yes, it can slow the economy and wreak temporary havoc on people who rely on government services. But these consequences are nothing alongside the fallout from defaulting on our debt, which will happen if we don’t raise the debt ceiling by mid-October. That’s why Boehner’s inability to persuade conservatives to postpone their Obamacare demands until the debt-ceiling fight is in fact a hugely welcome development. It gives everyone a chance to sober up before we take on the substantially higher-stakes proposition of avoiding a debt default. In fact, if Boehner and the White House had both been a bit more pro-shutdown back in 2011, when this whole B-movie horror flick started, that year’s debt ceiling fight and the sequester may never have happened, and we might not be in the mess we’re in today. A little bit of shutdown, I’d wager, goes a long way.
Wednesday Open Thread 9.11.13
Regarding the President’s prime time speech last night, I agree that the speech probably should not have been given, but it had to be given to maintain the credible threat of force that is driving the diplomatic negotiations. So the speech itself, in my mind, was less important than reactions to the overall situation. And I think Andrew Sullivan and Booman best describe my thoughts:
That was one of the clearest, simplest and most moving presidential speeches to the nation I can imagine. It explained and it argued, point after point. Everything the president said extemporaneously at the post-G20 presser was touched on, made terser, more elegant and more persuasive. […]
I’m tired of the eye-rolling and the easy nit-picking of the president’s leadership on this over the last few weeks. The truth is: his threat of war galvanized the world and America, raised the profile of the issue of chemical weapons more powerfully than ever before, ensured that this atrocity would not be easily ignored and fostered a diplomatic initiative to resolve the issue without use of arms. All the objectives he has said he wanted from the get-go are now within reach, and the threat of military force – even if implicit – remains.
Yes, it’s been messy. A more cautious president would have ducked it. Knowing full well it could scramble his presidency, Obama nonetheless believed that stopping chemical weapons use is worth it – for the long run, and for Americans as well as Syrians. Putin understands this as well. Those chemical weapons, if uncontrolled, could easily slip into the hands of rebels whose second target, after Assad and the Alawites and the Christians, would be Russia.
This emphatically does not solve the Syria implosion. But Obama has never promised to. What it does offer is a nonviolent way toward taking the chemical weapons issue off the table. Just because we cannot solve everything does not mean we cannot solve something. And the core truth is that without Obama’s willingness to go out on a precarious limb, we would not have that opportunity.
The money quote for me, apart from the deeply moving passage about poison gas use at the end, was his description of a letter from a service-member who told him, “We should not be the world’s policeman.” President Obama said, quite simply: “I agree.” And those on the far right who are accusing him of ceding the Middle East to Russia are half-right and yet completely wrong. What this remarkable breakthrough has brought about is a possible end to the dynamic in which America is both blamed for all the evils in the world and then also blamed for not stopping all of them. We desperately need to rebuild international cooperation to relieve us of that impossible burden in a cycle that can only hurt us and the West again and again.
Tuesday Open Thread 9.10.13
Sarah Palin, September 9, 2013.
Enough of this foreign fiasco distraction. Get back to work. It is time to bomb Obamacare.
I will now refer to Sarah Palin as a potential terrorist. Potential Terrorist Sarah Palin said today that she wants to bomb hospitals and medical clinics across the country, and she wants to bomb all those with preexisting conditions who can now get affordable health insurance. Potential Terrorist Sarah Palin wants them all dead.
Now, back to that foreign fiasco distraction…
So it seems that the Obama Administration has found itself a diplomatic out at the last minute, and it is one that they should take. In fact, come inside to find out why I am now a yes vote.
Friday Open Thread 9.6.13
The Obama Administration has finally gone on record to say while the President believes he has the authority to attack Syria with or without Congressional approval, he does not intend to launch such an attack without the backing of lawmakers:
President Barack Obama isn’t likely to launch a military strike on Syria if Congress votes against doing so, a top national security official said Friday.
During an interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Tony Blinken, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said “the president of course has the authority” to take limited military action in Syria with or without the approval of lawmakers, but “it’s neither his desire nor intention to use that authority absent Congress backing him.”
I would prefer a Shermanesque “He won’t,” but this is better than nothing. So Congress, vote this thing down and let’s all get on with our lives. And if the vote were held today in the House, it would fail.
Thursday Open Thread 9.5.13
“In a world in which threats are more diffuse and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace.”
— President Obama, in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 2009.
In all this Syria discussion, we kinda forgot that the end of the world is imminent in mid-October. Yeah, remember about the budget deadline (October 1) and debt ceiling deadline (October 15). Republicans all summer were saying that they would shut down the government and default on the debt if President Obama did not repeal Obamacare. For the last two weeks, they have kinda shut up about that, maybe because of a point First Read makes:
“Would a Congress that authorizes military action in Syria shut down the U.S. government and default just a few weeks later?”
Wednesday Open Thread 9.4.13
Jonathan Chait takes a look at the Syria Congressional Authorization situation from an aspect that I had not considered:
Imagine that Congress votes not to authorize Obama’s plan. Then further imagine that Bashar al-Assad, emboldened, carries out another chemical attack. The media coverage would be far more intense. And members of Congress who voted no will have to answer for the carnage that will appear on television screens across the world. If the first vote lost by a relatively narrow margin, Obama would probably then call for a second vote and stand a good chance of winning.
The prospect of that happening may itself deter Assad. And when Republicans complain that Obama’s gambit of asking for a congressional vote is a way of shifting responsibility onto Congress, they are, in a sense, correct. Obama will own the consequences of action with or without Congress’s approval. But if it disapproves, Congress will own the consequences of inaction. And those might ultimately prove higher than it is willing to bear.
Interesting. If you think Assad cannot be stupid enough to use them again, you ignore the fact that he was stupid enough to use them the first time.
Tuesday Open Thread 9.3.13
I would like to thank President Obama for taking my advice on Friday. Obviously my admonition caused the President to go for a long walk with his Chief of Staff to rethink his strategy. Here is what I said:
80% of Americans believe President Obama should receive congressional approval before using force in Syria. 80% of Americans cannot agree on anything, Mr. President. They agree on this. This is a no-fucking-brainer, Mr. President. You want a way out of that fucking corner you painted yourself into, this is it. Seek Congressional Authorization. If you don’t get it, your hands have been tied by Congress just as David Cameron’s were.
I wonder if my free form use of expletives was the thing that convinced him. Who knows. Now, to the vote in Congress, from Roll Call:
“At some point Boehner will have to make a decision and presumably rally his troops. Whether they will follow is an open question. Already, there is tension between the House Republican and Democratic camps over who will shoulder the burden of providing the votes to avoid a historic defeat for the president. GOP aides suggested Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has strongly backed the president, will have to provide the bulk of the votes. But a Democratic leadership aide put the onus back on Boehner.”
I think the Resolution will pass the Senate easily, with more than 60 votes. I think some liberals and libertarians and whatever it is Ted Cruz is will vote against. In the House, it is a much dicier proposition. I honestly do not expect it to pass. With both parties already fighting over who has to do the Whip operation, it means that both parties already know they don’t have the votes.
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