So then, to speculate, Lieberman has calculated that the odds are, that the insurance companies he’s voting on behalf of will reward him more greatly than the pussy Democrats will punish him. Or he doesn’t associate any value with caucusing with the Democrats, so his risk is negligible.
Seems pretty simple.
That’s the thing, if he’s a “spite merchant”, and this is all speculation, then all that matters is screwing over the people he feels has wronged him, which he’s done. If you get pleasure out of watching your enemies nash their teeth in impotence, then Joe’s gotta be on his tenth pair of underwear by now.
The Dems haven’t punished him, because they need him. He knows this, so he can piss on them from a great height and the Dems have to bathe in it.
Plus as you may be aware, whenever he pulls this stuff, the medical stocks shoot up, enriching him and his masters.
So how is this adverse to his interests? The progressives are calling him bad names? He may lose his chairmanships? Maybe if he runs, his seat?
I don’t think he cares, he just wants to kick them and keep kicking them until his leg gets tired and he gets paid. Win-Win.
It’s not the creation of the spark that’s at issue with light switches (and elevator buttons and opening the refrigerator door and having the light come on) it’s the completion of the circuit, which is construed as an act of building.
Lieberman, when voting on shabbos, engages in the act of building enmity between himself and all working people. He’s a self-serving traitor.
Because it will benefit him – in terms of his financial supporters in the insurance industry. Whether he expects to retire from the Senate into a number of well-endowed Board of Directors seats, or expects that Connecticut voters will not take issue with his positions come his run fo reelection, I don’t know. But I see it as a calculated vote to benefit those to whom he is morally indebted for their past support.
(My hunch is that he plans to retire from the Senate – heck, even the Connecticut For Lieberman Party no longer is for him – but his ego may be such as to expect he will survive this and get reelected.
Especially since, as I’ve seen pointed out in several places, he’s not getting any money from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meaning that while he’s not getting much more from the insurance industry than Chris Dodd (the other Connecticut Senator) objectively, he’s getting far more relative to what he’s getting from the Democrats.
Eh, I’m not too concerned about the subtleties. I’m just swingin’ on the flippity-flop.
What reason does he have to think it’s self-destructive? He undermined the Democrats on the war and actively and enthusiastically endorsed the Republican candidate in the last Presidential election. He’s taken every chance he’s had to screw the Democrats over in the last few years, and he still has his seniority and his leadership positions. He could nail Harry Reid’s wife on the Senate floor and Reid still wouldn’t have the balls to do anything about it.
Voters, on the other hand, aren’t going to be so kind. He lost his last primary and had to fight to win the general as an independent, and that’s when he could still plausibly claim to have the Democrats’ interests at heart “on everything but the war”. He’ll have no such cred next time, so he might as well secure as much of the Republican vote as he can. (He can’t switch parties, though, because I don’t think he can win a two-way race as a Republican or a Democrat. His best shot is another three-way race.
So, Sarah Palin without her one positive quality?
-Joe
Bricker continues to be a prick, as usual.
He’s doing it for the money. Holy shit, no, really? Yes, Virginia, stop pretending you’re as dumb as your idols.
-Joe
From Electricity and the Sabbath, Chap. 5:
From “The book of Jewish Practice,” by Louis Jacobs, pg. 76:
“Traitor?” To who? The “working people?”
Give me a break. He’s defending the working people, many of whom seem to be against this initiative. Indeed, it’s the NONworking people that will benefit from these schemes and get their health care paid for by the working people.
Uh huh.
Well, at least we have good examples like Senator Landrieu to show us how to stand up for principles and not be swayed by money.
Deflect! Deflect!
YOU DO IT TOOOOOOOOOO!!!111 [/bricker]
Because he is such a good singer?
Working people are already paying for the health care of nonworking people, it’s just that the payment is less visible. Hospitals have to raise their fees for everyone because they know that a certain percentage of people they treat are not in a position to pay them. This increase in fees, ironically, increases the number of people who aren’t able to afford their treatment.
Like others have said, Lieberman supported the medicare extension buy-in 3 months ago.
His only goal at this point is to get revenge on progressives. Progressives have been trying to ruin his career since 2006. They/we supported Lamont over him and we wanted Reid to take away his chairmanship after he supported McCain in 2008.
He is motivated by revenge against progressives now.
In between him and the obstructionist GOP, its no wonder our country is falling apart. This is our national leadership.
From The New Republic:
Not to ruin a line that sounds like a reject from whatever script Sean Hannity reads from, but there’s quite a few “working people” that don’t have, can’t get, and can’t afford health care. I’m not saying that this bill will fix that. I’d honestly prefer that they blow this up as it sounds as if the government is in full on “anything, no matter how shitty, is better than nothing” mode. I just think that this whole nonworker/worker dichotomy is a steaming pile. There’s plenty of workers who still manage to be poor.
I’m sure this is true, but is there a specific cite?
Here Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com shows the difference between the status quo and the Senate bill (the version with the public option still in, as that’s what the CBO has scored, but it shouldn’t make much difference for this example) for a family of four making $54,000 a year, which is hardly non-working. The help that the bill provides is substantial, and in Nate’s (and my own) opinion, worth passing, even if far from ideal.
In an earlier post, he describes the opposition to the public option (aside from Lieberman) as having negotiated in good faith, the progressives as having worked their asses of for a very tough goal, and fallen just short, having moved from the support of 45 or so Senators in the middle of the summer to the support of 58 or 59 Senators now. Now, I figure the best option is to figure out what Olympia Snowe or even Susan Collins will agree to, now that the public option is dead. The two of them at least seem to be willing to vote on a bill based on the merits of the bill itself and now on how they can hurt progressive Democrats in the process.
Just for the record, the people living around here are either legitimately disabled or working (or of course still children/youth in school). TTBOMK, there are no working people with access to insurance, and certainly nobody with insurance – the only people with any coverage are the kids of poorer families, on Medicaid, and two of the disabled people, on Medicare. Nor is it a case of people wasting money instead of buying insurance – they’re spending money on such frivolities as utility bills and food.
I’m not firmly convinced that ‘having the government provide it’ is the panacea to every ill – but when I can see a healthy cross-section of a population, none of whom have reasonable access to either group or individual health insurance, I start thinking that arguments like that one are nothing but partisan sniping, not rationally-based objections. I’m sure examples from, say, higher-income suburbs would be quite different than what I’m looking at in a rural county on the outskirts of a metropolitan area. But the issue is noth whether $70K young professionals can get affordable insurance so much as it is whether actual working poor can get health care under any circumstances, other than incurring bills that will go unpaid and end up as judgments against them if they do work.