I saw this Confluence post linked at Booman (the point appears to be that Riverdaughter dakinkat is being like Jane Hamsher (and her alliance with Grover Norquist) by praising the Cantwell/McCain proposal to reinstate Glass-Steagall, though, to be honest, I am not sure what Booman's point is). It argues in favor of a proposal to reinstate Glass-Steagall. It cites this Bloomberg report:

A one-page proposal gaining traction in Congress could turn back the clock on Wall Street 10 years, forcing the breakup of banks, including Citigroup Inc. Lawmakers in both parties, seeking to prevent future financial crises while soothing public anger over bailouts and bonuses, are turning to an approach that’s both simple and transformative: re-imposing sections of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking.

Of course this sounds good to populists (and is probably good politics), but is it good policy? I addressed this issue a bit last year. The financial meltdown was not caused by the repeal of Glass-Steagall. More . . .

Just at the finish of the year, Dick Cheney puts in for the Chutzpah of the Year award:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. [. . .] He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war.

(Emphasis supplied.) As for who released the "hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists" behind this particular terrorist attack, Dick Cheney has nothing to say. Let's remind him:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. [Emphasis supplied.]

Speaking for me only. See also Steve Benen ("Dick Cheney is a coward and a disgrace.")

Rather than just copping to the fact that the policy he favors does indeed impose a stiff cost on middle class workers, Ezra Klein argues:

[Herbert] doesn't really argue that the excise tax is bad policy. Instead, he argues that there will be losers. Workers who will see higher deductibles. Union members who will find a portion of their policies taxed.

Actually, Herbert's argument explains why he opposes the excise tax - it would enact cost control by making the middle class pay for it. In Herbert's view, and mine, that is bad policy. In Ezra Klein's view, that is good policy. Remember that the competing financing mechanism presented by the House bill is to tax persons making 500k/yr. Ezra is saying he prefers a policy that punishes middle class workers to one that places the burden on the wealthy. you can call Ezra's position many things, but certainly not progressive. But of course not every good policy has to be progressive in nature. what is Ezra's argument for this non-progressive policy?

Texas has granted a divorce to Karl Rove and his wife Darby. They've been married 24 years. A friend of his blames the split partly on the "stress and strain" of the White House years.

Maybe he just thinks he'll sell more books as a single man.

Rove’s 608-page memoir, “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight,” is due out from Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions on March 9.

Unlike many in the blogs, I have been someone who has provided a kind word or 2 for Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. To be honest, I am greatly surprised that Nelson voted for even the crappy Senate health bill. I credit the health insurance industry's tacit support for the bill, the persuasions of Senator Reid and his loyalty to the Dem Caucus. It surely was not because Nebraskans favored the bill. GOP pollster Ras, perhaps in a final attempt to get Nelson to vote No (or at least hold the line on the senate bill) released a poll showing Nebraskans strongly oppose the health bill (Ras will never tell you about how they feel about the public option or Medicare buy-in):

If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote. Nelson's health care vote is clearly dragging his numbers down. [. . .] 64% oppose the health care legislation [. . .]

I never thought there were 60 votes for meaningful health care reform, and there aren't. The Senate health bill is not reform. Unless of course you believe in the magical exchanges. This is why the road to meaningful health care reform required a reconciliation strategy.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias misses the mark in an attempt to detail some of the ways a future GOP government can make the current health bill worse in the future:

Rather than repealing the specific tax provisions that finance reform, you’ll see drives to cut taxes for the rich. [. . .] [I]nstead of complaints about how reform is going to blow up the deficit, you’ll see a combination of tax (cut! cut! cut! especially for the rich) and spending policies that do in fact blow up the deficit.

Yglesias misses the most obvious way that Republicans could actually "bend the cost curve" to pay for tax cuts - reduce the funding for Medicaid. The insurance industry will be fine with that (unlike reductions in subsidies to purchase private insurance and elimination of the mandate.) Since the progressive heart of the current bill is in fact the expansion of Medicaid, the Republicans of the future could easily gut the good in the current bill.

Speaking for me only

Bob Herbert:

If even the plan’s proponents do not expect policyholders to pay the tax, how will it raise $150 billion in a decade? Great question. [. . .] According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, less than 18 percent of the revenue will come from the tax itself. The rest of the $150 billion, more than 82 percent of it, will come from the income taxes paid by workers who have been given pay raises by employers who will have voluntarily handed over the money they saved by offering their employees less valuable health insurance plans.

Can you believe it? [. . .] A survey of business executives by Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, found that only 16 percent of respondents said they would convert the savings from a reduction in health benefits into higher wages for employees. Yet proponents of the tax are holding steadfast to the belief that nearly all would do so.

The tax on health benefits is being sold to the public dishonestly as something that will affect only the rich, and it makes a mockery of President Obama’s repeated pledge that if you like the health coverage you have now, you can keep it. Those who believe this is a good idea should at least have the courage to be straight about it with the American people.

(Emphasis supplied.) Herbert is right. See also Glenn Greenwald and Atrios ("None of the benefit reductions are going to be converted to wages.") FTR, I think Atrios overstates the case. Some portion will be converted to wages imo.

Speaking for me only

Via Jonathan Singer, Politico reports:

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize. Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure that the 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill [. . .]

Objectively pro-terrorist. (This is snark from me. When Republicans, Joe Lieberman and the Washington Post Editorial Page Editor said it about Democrats, they were not joking. They were doing their best Joe McCarthy imitations.)

Speaking for me only

NYTimes:

When a prominent Nigerian banker and former government official phoned the American Embassy in Abuja in October with a warning that his son had developed radical views, had disappeared and might have traveled to Yemen, embassy officials did not revoke the young man’s visa to enter the United States, which was good until June 2010.

When a father calls to warn about his son, that seems to me to be cause for an investigation of the son. To incompetent bureaucrats, it leads to a chance to punch hippies:

I think its fair to say that at least the Democrats have been campaigning with a dream of having 60 for a very long time. And the American people gave them a gift, and basically they're squandering it. Any organization needs to decide how it wants to hold itself accountable. But to me there's a question of what are the expectations amongst Democrats in terms of governing? What's the social contract? -- Andy Stern, SEIU

To their credit, the Village Blogs have been writing a lot about the problems with the filibuster (see, e.g., Ezra Klein.) Two questions arise - (1) is eliminating the filibuster a good idea?; (2) is there a chance in hell of eliminating it? My answers are (1) I am for eliminating the filibuster for legislative measures and for Executive Branch appointments but decidedly against elimination of the filibuster for Judicial Branch appointments. Indeed, the filibuster is not used at all for Supreme Court nominees and it should be. And (2) there is not a chance in hell of eliminating the filibuster. There will be a single payer health care system first. Why? Because the filibuster empowers individual Senators in ways that no other procedural device provides. Do Presidents hand back power? Neither do Senators. More . . .

Kevin Drum, circa February 2008:

I still don't know whether Obama is likely to be the Democratic Ronald Reagan (my hope) or the next Democratic Jimmy Carter (my fear), but [. . .] I think he's more likely to be RR than JC. I guess I'm willing to roll the dice.

Drum on December 26, 2009:

[E]ven some very high-information voters seem to be disappointed [in Obama], and it's baffling. Obama's entire career has been one of low-key, pragmatic leadership. [. . .] This was all pretty obvious during the campaign [. . .]

Not so obvious in February 2008 I guess. To be fair, I thought it was obvious that this was Obama's inclination, but by September 2008, I thought events and crises would lead to a realization of a transformational Presidency. Instead, the Obama Presidency is run of the mill and mediocre. This is all pretty obvious now of course. Anyone surprised about it going forward has no excuse.

Speaking for me only

This NYTimes editorial is almost surreal. In almost every respect it finds the Senate bill wanting and prefers the House bill but we all know that the final bill, the bill Obama wants, is the Senate bill. So a read of the editorial is basically a litany of everything that is is wrong with the health bill: