I love this shit. Jane Hamsher responds to my piece by saying that Rahm Emanuel did too start talking about triggers in January. To do this, she creates a timeline of sorts with the first date listed as February 2009. But, if you click on the article, it’s to a Sam Stein piece written on July 9th. What does that have to do with February (or January, for that matter)? It turns out that Stein had one of those ‘sources close to the administration.’
…a source close to the administration, who has been in contact with the White House on health care matters, said that Emanuel has been “floating” the trigger compromise since January.
Apparently, that unnamed source who isn’t even a member of the administration stuck in Hamsher’s memory banks. She’s been running with that theory ever since. Her only other listing on the timeline that precedes the Wall Street Journal article I cited, is to another Sam Stein article, from June 2nd. That piece merely notes that the administration and members of the Senate were debating the merits of Olympia Snowe’s trigger idea. This is surprising? In June the Democrats didn’t even have 60 members in their caucus (Al Franken was sworn in on July 7th).
Somehow these two incidents contradict my assertion that “Rahm Emanuel [first] floated the trigger in the Wall Street Journal on July 7th.” Backdating Sam Stein’s July 9th response to the WSJ piece to February was a nice trick, but totally dishonest.
And so it goes…
I am happy you’ve turned your sights on her. Hamsher requires a fact-checker.
Thank you for following up on this. We are starting to veer into crazy territory now, and my blogroll has been shrinking by the day.
that said, it HAS been something Rahm’s been doing all summer, at least. It doesn’t really smell any better with a shrunken timeline, and that’s the craw-sticking part.
It shouldn’t stick in your craw when you realize that the votes were never there to pass a public option though the Senate on the first pass. If it was going to pass, it would only be at the very end of the process, after the conference report, when all the leverage was in the hands of those wanting to pass (not amend) the bill.
Anyone who thought that Obama was going to attempt to govern as a doctrinaire anything was not paying attention during the campaign.
Seems to me that a lot of frustrated (like myself) lefties have projected their own policy preferences onto Obama (unlike myself).
I heard Hamsher on the radio recently (I think on the Diane Rehm Show, but I can’t find the link). She seemed bitter that Obama has not accomplished everything he promised on the campaign single-handedly in ten months.
Obama was not elected dictator.
We just had a president who thought he was elected dictator (and we will never know whether he was actually elected in the first place, but that’s another story). We don’t need another one.
What we need is a new Congress.
Full disclosure:
I am extremely distressed over Obama’s failure to open the books on torture and to stop using the phony state secrets defense to protect wrong-doers
(to use a phrase favored by a wrong-doer). Those are things wholly within the purview of the executive branch.It’s silly to blame him for not being able to control Congress. Congress can’t even control Congress.
Are you the ex-Corrente, ex-Atrios guest blogger “The Farmer”? Long time, no see.
Let’s see .. the votes weren’t there to provide the kind of meaningful health care reform that would benefit all Americans young or old.
But there were enough votes to pass a law making health insurance COMPULSORY for everyone, so that’s what our elected officials decided to do.
We (& by we I mean baby-boomers) are going to put the cost of old-age health-care on the backs of our grand-children by making them pay for insurance they don’t want or need at rates higher than they need to be.
This is the kind of bullshit that sours people on the political experience in this country.
I do seriously hope that this bill can be ‘fixed’ by subsequent Congresses, as has been subtly hinted at, because this bill, as it is, stinks to high heaven.
I recall an incident during a recent election when Jane attacked Bill Clinton for what she called Clinton’s “trashing” of Ned Lamont on Larry King live during the CT Senatorial election….I went back to the transcript of that program and found there was absolutely no
trashing of Lamont…Indeed, Bill Clinton had endorsed Lamont on that very program. I so posted in her comments.
JH responded to the effect that a greater understanding (such as hers apparently) was required to understand such complex issues. I could only take the response as explaining away the fact that what she said had occurred had not actually occurred.
What was Clinton going to say given that Lamont had just won the primary? Also, you conveniently forget that Clinton said that night that were was no difference between the two(Lamont and HoJo).
Your tone sounds veeerry familiar…and you also try to cover for the only relavent issue that Clinton had not trashed Lamont as had been falsely claimed.
Sorry for typo….”relevant” issue.
BooMan is good with details, just like the assholes who twist details and spout bullshit as they go about ruining this country.
Last week, he turned his attention not to those who are undermining real health care reform, but to an email sent out by Jane Hamsher, who is working to pressure the so-called Democrats in Washington who are trying hard to stop us from fixing serious problems in our health care system.
Seriously?
BooMan is showing nothing more than his own pettiness by wasting so much time formulating such twisted, dense, and totally unnecessary arguments that accomplish nothing (well, I suppose he got a bit of attention out of it).
Petty. Shameless.
What’s he going to turn his attention to next, a handful of scientists’ emails that “prove” that climate change doesn’t exist?
I’d argue that it was Jane, in her email blast, who turned her attention away from the people who are obstructing health care reform and blamed Obama and Emanuel.