Harry Reid

One of the bigger wingnut bloggers, Dan Riehl, is out using the horrible accident that Harry Reid’s family was in to push the lie of “death panels”:

Come on, Harry - do your civic duty. The nation's broke and counting on you guy. Pull the plug and get back to work. And don't bill us for a full day today, either. This is no time to be sloughing off. Air freight her home, you can bury her during recess on your own time and dime. Or are you going to bill us for that, too?

And I sit here thinking of how the wingnuts like Malkin go off on hissy fits everytime some anonymous commenter posts on a progressive blog saying they wish Cheney’s last heart attack would have done him in, or that Rush would have died in the hospital. These people aren’t just hypocrites, they are sick and twisted assholes.

Yes it is:

Unions and liberal groups have dismissed Sen. Harry Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as "puny" while calling for larger stimulus measures.

More than two dozen organizations, including the AFL-CIO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) and National Council of La Raza, warned Democratic leaders in Congress to avoid tackling the troubled economy through incremental action.

They urged the Senate to pass the $15 billion jobs measure, which features a hiring tax cut for small businesses, but called for much more legislation to bring down an unemployment rate the White House projects to average 10 percent this year, more than 9 percent next year and over 8 percent in 2012.

"If this $15 billion was the only thing [that passed], that would be like having an amputated arm and sticking a Band-Aid on the end of it," said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, on a conference call Friday.

This bill is 1/71 the size of the TARP bill. It’s another example of how the people of this country just don’t matter to the lawmakers in Washington.

I’ve been tied up for the past 3 days rebuilding one of my servers and haven’t had time to really look at any thing news wise, which totally sucks, so I was really surprised to see this bit of news today:

On a local TV interview show on Friday Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) basically said it's the plan, that they will use 'reconciliation', and that they'll finish within the next 60 days

Josh isn’t too optimistic on the public option happening, but given the growing tsunami of Democrats coming out in strong support of it in the Senate, there is a good chance something could happen. I also think the recent news of insurance companies jacking up rates by enormous amounts in a bunch of states could give this a real nudge in the right direction.

So hold on, this week could be really interesting.

At least we have a few Democrats in Senate still wanting to see true reform:

Four Democratic senators, including two facing potentially challenging election campaigns this year, are asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to use reconciliation, a procedural maneuver requiring only 51 votes, to push for a public health insurance option.

Sens. Michael Bennet (Colo.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) signed a letter to Reid saying they support this plan for four reasons: the cost savings the public option is estimated to achieve, continued public support for the public option, the need for increased competition in the insurance market and the Senate's history of using the reconciliation process for health care reform.

"Put simply, including a strong public option is one of the best, most fiscally responsible ways to reform our health insurance system," the letter says. "Although we strongly support the important reforms made by the Senate-passed health reform package, including a strong public option would improve both its substance and the public’s perception of it."

Of course Harry won’t listen to any of this. He seems to only care what conserva-dems want. Maybe it’s time for the more liberal members of the Senate to start playing those games and threaten filibusters to see what Harry does.

Now it looks like the Republicans have found a loophole that will let them block items in reconciliation:

Republicans say they have found a loophole in the budget reconciliation process that could allow them to offer an indefinite number of amendments.

Though it has never been done, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he’s prepared to test the Senate’s stamina to block the Democrats from using the process to expedite changes to the healthcare bill.

Experts on Senate procedural rules, from both parties, note that such a filibuster is possible. While reconciliation rules limit debate to 20 hours, senators lack similiar constraints on amendments and could conceivably continue offering them until 60 members agree to cut the process off.

The Republican platform – screw governing and do nothing but block, block, block. There is a way around this though:

Or  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) could use a tactic similar to the so-called nuclear option to quash the GOP tactics.

Yeah like that would happen with King Useless the majority leader.

From TPM:

"As I look back it was a waste of time dealing with [Snowe]," Reid is quoted as saying about the White House in a forthcoming New York Times Magazine piece, "because she had no intention of ever working anything out."

I really wonder if Harry Reid actually knows how politics work. Arlen Specter would have been a great indicator. He sided with the Democrats on the stimulus and the Republicans decided to make an example out of him, basically forcing him out of the party. I guarantee this was in the mind of Snowe during the health care debate. She knew that if she backed the plan then the Republicans would start forcing her out of the party and might even try to get someone to primary her.

Sadly, in Washington, they are so drowned in politics that they don’t realize every decision is based upon politics. That politics isn’t the politics for the future, but rather the politics for personal gain and viability. To those of us watching at home, it is painfully obvious.

The big news yesterday was this “private” remark from Harry Reid, which appears on page 37 of Game Change

encouragement of Obama was unequivocal. He was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a "light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," as he said privately.  Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.

An utterly stupid comment, which Harry Reid has apologized for, but still should cost him his career. I’ll get on to the reason it should cost him his career in a minute, but first I want to address the race issue.

While surfing the blogosphere for reactions to this, one post stuck out. It was by none other than Michelle Malkin, in which she asks the following question:

Trent Lott resigned his leadership post over his birthday party pandering in praise of Strom Thurmond’s racial segregationist presidential platform. Many conservatives (myself included) put pressure on him to resign. Where are the “progressive” Democrats who will apply the same standards to Reid?

Comparing a stupid comment to support of segregation is absolutely mind boggling. Does Malkin even know what segregation is and what it did to this country? I would hope so, but after reading that, it doesn’t seem likely.

Like I said, this should cost Reid his career. He made a stupid comment, but this type of comment is also very common from people in Reid’s generation. Face it – they grew up in a very different America. That’s not making an excuse, but rather stating a fact.

The best thing for Reid now is to follow in the footsteps of Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd and hang up his soapbox. A new Mason-Dixon poll paints a very bad picture for Reid:

52 percent had an unfavorable opinion of Reid, 33 percent had a favorable view and another 15 percent said they're neutral. In early December, a Mason-Dixon poll put his unfavorable-favorable rating at 49-38. The lowest Reid's popularity had slipped before in the surveys was 50 percent -- in October, August and May of 2009, when Mason-Dixon started tracking the senate race for the Review-Journal.

The poll also took a snapshot of how Reid would do against three potential GOP opponents. In each case -- as in past Review-Journal surveys -- it showed the senator would lose with only four in 10 voters supporting him.

This isn’t the first poll to show Reid losing to all the Republican possibilities – it has become a trend. Chances are Harry is going to be gone after November.

This is why Reid should retire. Politicians never want their careers to end on a loss, but rather end when they say it is over. Reid would do his legacy a lot better if he took the same path and threw in the towel. Get with state Democrats and find a popular Democrat who is known state-wide and get them to run.

Republicans are looking at a big pickup in Nevada, like they were in Connecticut. If Reid follows his friend Chris Dodd, then it will become another big blow to Republicans. I don’t know enough about Nevada politics to know if there is any such candidate out there, but if there is then now is the time to talk them into running.

Let’s face it, Harry Reid is a horrible poker player. He folds every time before finding out if his opponents were bluffing or not.

How do I know this? Simple. Since becoming majority leader in 2007 Harry Reid has faced countless threats of a filibuster and never once has he made the opposition go through with it. We haven’t seen that all too familiar sight of the cots being rolled out and Senators being forced to read the phone book, or any other item to keep debate going. Instead Harry Reid throws his cards down and gives us that Droopy look while going “oh well”.

Time for that side of Droopy must come to an end. It’s time to see the other side of Droopy, the part where he goes “You know what? That makes me mad”. With that Harry Reid, starring as the pacifist Droopy, must also transform into the mad Droopy.

Harry should announce that the weaker public option is going back into the bill and that bill is going to the floor. If Republicans and Democrats want to filibuster then fine – make them. No throwing down the cards and walking away this time. What have we got to lose? We already have lost everything that made this a progressive bill. To quote Vince McMahon - “Are you ready to rumble”?

It took the civil rights act almost 2 months to muster enough support to break a filibuster, and at this point in the game that’s a wait I think most of us on the progressive side are ready to take on. If in the end it doesn’t work out then fine, go with the weak bill we have now, but for God’s sake at least give us a fight for our core principals in the process.

Harry needs to face the hard cold facts. It’s not just Democrats who want the public option, but also Independents. It comes out to a big majority of this country who want this. Stop playing games and man up. Make the people who want to oppose the wish of the people fight for it. Let our nightly headlines become “day 45 of the Senate shutdown over health care” so that people can actually see who is standing in the way of real reform. As it stands right now the people think the Democrats are, but if the Democrats really fight then things can quickly turn around.

What do we have to lose? It’s fight time now. Go for it Harry. Show America the fighter you are supposed to have hiding deep within your soul.

Health care reform is being totally screwed up by the party that has pushed for it for years – the Democrats. Here’s two very interesting stories that go along with the cost containment issues I have been talking about this week.

First up we have some Democrats, along with the White House and Pharma working to keep the sky-high prices of drugs:

The White House, aided by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is working hard to crush an amendment being pushed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, Senate sources tell the Huffington Post.

As a result, the Senate health care debate has come to a standstill: Carper has placed a "hold" on Dorgan's amendment and in response, Dorgan tells HuffPost, he'll object to any other amendments being considered before he gets a vote on his.

And here is the kind of savings we would see:

Within a decade, reimportation would save consumers roughly $80 billion and the federal government $19 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But that would mean $100 billion more in lost revenue than the powerful Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) lobby agreed to bear-- in exchange for being supportive of the overall health reform effort.

About time the Democratic leader in the Senate showed some balls. Here he is today fired up over the news that Aetna is going to shit-can up to 650,000 clients just so they can get better profits:

Transcript via The Plum Line:

“You see, one of the largest private insurance companies in America made a lot of money last year -– more than a billion dollars, in fact. Its chairman and CEO took home at least $100 million of that money himself.

“This health care company is going to make a healthy profit again this year. But its executives decided the profit they’re making isn’t quite big enough. So this multibillion-dollar company found a clever way to make sure next year’s bottom line is even bigger: it’s raising its rates.

“As you might expect, those higher premiums are going to be too expensive for many. How many? It could be as many as 650,000 people.

“That’s more than the entire populations of North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. It’s more than the entire populations of Baltimore and Boston and Denver and Seattle. How many people is this one company willing to drop? You could count every man, woman and child in Las Vegas and still have almost 100,000 people left over.

“But here’s the worst part: That shocking estimate comes directly from the president of the company himself. The means the company devised this strategy, crunched the numbers and saw how many American families it was going to hurt. Then the bosses shrugged their shoulders and decided to go ahead with it anyway.”

You know, if Harry ends up getting voted out of office I won’t mind one bit. He has been a very ineffective leader and the Democratic caucus seems content on keeping him in the position:

A new poll indicates that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, continues to trail two potential Republican rivals, less than one year before the 2010 elections.

Former Nevada Republican Party Chair Sue Lowden holds a 10-point lead over Reid, while businessman Danny Tarkanian has a six-point advantage over the Democratic senator, according to the Mason-Dixon Polling & Research survey conducted on behalf of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Maybe the voters of Nevada will finally end our nightmare.

Talk about the duh moment to top all duh moments:

In a closed-door meeting of his caucus, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, told Democrats that Republicans were not interested in passing a bill. In effect, he prepared them for trench warfare, saying the Democrats must stick together and should be ready to work weekends to finish the bill before Christmas.

The blogs have been saying that for months. Hell even Republicans like Mitch McConnell said as much. Harry Reid is just now figuring this out? That’s some leadership there.

Then we have this lovely little tidbit:

For their part, Republicans said it was unrealistic to expect quick action on such a big bill, and they denied they were stalling.

Yeah right. That’s why the Republicans are even stalling on their own amendments. They are the obstructionist party of “No” and proving it more day by day.

Markos explains why Harry Reid is an utter failure as a majority leader:

Bill Frist never had 60 votes. Bill Frist never cared. Republicans ran the Senate as if they owned the place, even when enjoying razor-thin majorities.

Yet when Democrats took the chamber, the first thing Harry Reid did was complain that he couldn't do anything because he didn't have 60 votes.

Read on.

I guess rumors are starting to fly that the Republicans may try to filibuster the confirmation of Timothy Geithner. Harry Reid has already issued a soft warning on it:

"I would frankly think it would not be very wise politically to do that," Reid told told reporters. "We have a president who is very popular, one thing he's received rave reviews about, among other things, are his Cabinet selections," he said, adding that ""I think it would be very unwise for the Republicans to filibuster."

We really need a majority leader with some balls. Whenever Democrats threatened to filibuster a Republican nominee, the Republicans threatened to get rid of the filibuster. Why doesn’t Harry do the same? Make the Republicans wonder what it would be like if every Obama nominee could be put in with no recourse for Republicans. Then we can watch as the Republicans take to the teevee and cry about being bullied.

It looks like Harry Reid may not be going anywhere in the near future:

The lieutenant governor of Nevada says the state attorney general's office intends to have him indicted over how he handled a college savings program as state treasurer.

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki said Monday he believes he is being targeted for political reasons by state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

Krolicki is a Republican who's considering a run against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Masto is a Democrat. She says she cannot comment.

If Republicans want to regain control then perhaps they should stop breaking the law. I know I am just some Liberal blogger sitting in mommy and daddy’s basement, wearing my pajamas and sipping my latte while writing this, but something says that might be good advice for the GOP.

Oh – and isn’t it also funny how every time a Republican is under investigation, it is for “political purposes”? Yeah – I buy that load of crap also.