Thursday, December 17, 2009

Youth in Asia

I don't always agree with Howard Dean. In fact, I still dislike him on a number of fronts since 2003. But he is making some good points, as are the people still supporting what is left of the health care bill, whenever Megolmaniacs Lieberman and (Ben) Nelson are done adding new provisions to make it even worse.

It makes one wonder if these two members of the Democratic caucus are doing this for political posturing for reelection, preening self-importance, or desire to make the bill so unpalatable that party stalwarts like Kerry can't stomach the final product. Another possibility is they want to show their superior power to that of say Brown or Sanders.

Principle clearly has nothing to do with it. Nelson said nothing about abortion until Stupak. Joe was for Medicare expansion before Liberals said it was better than the public option. Niether nixed Medicaid expansion until now.

Monday, December 14, 2009

With the announcement that Rahm Emmanuel, Harry Reid, and ultimately Barack Obama allowed Joe Lieberman to kill any hope that health care reform would include meaningful ways of controlling healthcare costs and abuses of the industry via competition, it worth remebering something.

Al Gore and John McCain are both great Americans who served our country with honor but made two terrible decisions and miscalculations of character in the name of political expediency. They picked Joe Lieberman and Sarah Palin for their VP nominees.

Once both Joe and Sarah got a taste of the big time, there was no turning back. Their need for attention and relevance and self-importance became all consuming. Joe is seeking to once again (see Dept of Homeland Security and Iraq War, 2002) destroy caucus' chances of electoral sucess in the name of poor policy. Sarah is slowly destroying hers as well (see Hoffman, NY23).