Las Vegas Gleaner

Shocking - and yet logical - coincidence explains why America can never have health care reform ever

"Friends," begins Republican senatorial candidate Sue Lowden, cheerily, in a Facebook entry, "According to this poll, Reid's health care take-over legislation has reached a new low."

The former Miss Alaska is referring to a Rasmussen poll that says only 38 percent of voters support health care reform proposed by Obama and the Democrats. And as Lowden and everyone else knows, the American public is always right.

A case in point: Earlier in this decade, people in economically developed nations around the world, including the U.S., were asked to respond -- true, false or not sure -- to the proposition:

Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.

Only a minority of Americans, about 40 percent, said the statement was true -- definitive proof (as if more was needed) that there is no evolution and the planet is 6,000 years old which means David Broder, Harry Reid and dinosaurs all walked the earth at the same time.

What's more, you know how the patriotic American right -- Sarah Palin's "real" Americans -- are always going on about American exceptionalism and how different the U.S. is from everyplace else? Well, compared to Japan and Europe, America is indeed "special." Red-blooded willingness to reject and deny incontrovertible scientific fact was more pronounced in the United States than in every other country except Turkey.

Evolution less accepted in U.S. than in other countries

The roughly 40 percent of Americans who believe in evolution are probably the same 38 percent who support health care reform, no? Filthy socialist atheists. You can bet that they're all snooty snobs with college degrees who live in big fancy cities where Sarah Palin's Fur Collar Comedy Tour would never go, also. (Although some filthy socialist atheist snooty snobs with college degrees -- your Gleaner, for instance -- think the Democratic health care reform legislation is too wimpy, and so would tell a pollster they were opposed to it for that reason. But I digress...)

Meantime, every nation on that chart has some sort of universal health care system, except the U.S. and ... Turkey. The same two countries that don't believe in science also don't believe that everyone should have the right to health care.

Coincidence? Or THE HAND OF GOD!!!!!

Anywho, we get it, Sue. If Goddy McGod had intended Americans to have universal health care, he would have put them in Europe. But how 'bout that other thing -- are you, Sue Lowden, among the minority of America-hating Americans who believe in evolution?

And the same goes for you, Sharron Angle, Jerry Tarkanian's kid and the rest of the assorted fruits and nuts in the GOP Senate primary -- along with every other Republican running for anything in Nevada. We know you're all opposed to a "government takeover" of health care, even though you don't actually know what a government takeover of health care is. But do you buy all that evolution stuff that icky scientists are always peddling?

C'mon, fess up, GOP wannabes. Your teabagger masters want to know

Nevada man featured in TV show

Here is Part 1 and here is Part 2 of the feature story on Nevada's very own junior senator, John Ensign, that was broadcast nationally on the ABC News Nightline program Monday evening. It turns out Ensign is a hypocritical little scumbag who thinks that thanks to filthy rich parents and a god that loves wealthy and pampered white male senators best of all, Ensign can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants whenever he wants.

So nothing new there. Still, ABC put together a nice recap. And Doug Hampton could be carving out a media niche as America's most famous cuckold.

Ensign, meantime, has carved out a unique niche of his own: least significant person in the United States Senate.

Predictably, the Hairdo contends that everything Doug Hampton says is a lie. Even though pretty much everything Hampton has said has held up so far, at first blush, this is a topic on which Ensign might be qualified to judge, in that everything Ensign says is a lie and it takes one to know one. But of course none of the words that come out of Ensign's mouth can be believed because, you know, everything Ensign says is a lie.

Exorbitantly privileged brazenly hypocritical religious fanatics: Creepy, but tiresome.

USA Today indulges John Ensign's fantasy

No, not that kind of fantasy. Pervs.

"The Nation's Newspaper" is still publishing (guess that's the news in this item) and provided the least significant person in the United States Senate space on its opinion page to explain how the Democratic health care plan will kill all the old people and put sugar in your gas tank and steal all the white women or whatever this week's Republican objections to reform happen to be.

That is, the newspaper decided to go along and pretend that someone somewhere might care about something, anything, having to do with John Ensign that is not related to him schtupping his best friend's wife and then trying to silence all involved with mommy and daddy's money and the illegal use of the clout that he once but no longer has.

In the opinion piece, a man who got his parents to pay $96,000 so he could have sex with the wife of some guy whom Ensign had already enriched rather handsomely via cronyism warns that health care reform will be bad for "working families" struggling to make ends meet, as if he knows any other than his domestic servants and the kid that cleans his golf cleats.

So whoever wrote the article for Ensign has a sense of humor. (Psst ... nobody tell Ensign that his staff is punking him).

Oh yeah. Erstwhile Hairdo crony and (still?) Ensign cuckold Doug Hampton says Ensign threw a party for him and his wife, Cindy (the woman Ensign "used ... for my own pleasure") in a lame attempt to make everyone think that the Ensigns and the Hamptons were all pure and clean and good in Goddy McGod's eyes or some sleazy hypocritical thing. That and more on Nightline Monday (which is still on the air -- guess that's the other news in this item).

We must address health care now in 2014!

By the time all the concessions are made to the Lincoln-Lieberman-Landrieu Axis of Anal, a public option will have been rendered toothless by a "trigger" that the insurance industry can easily circumvent. Or the public option will be replaced by co-ops that would be small, weak and effortlessly choked by the insurance industry. Or, in a compromise that combines impotence and ineffectiveness to produce a result of profound meaninglessness, the public option will be replaced by triggered co-ops (or co-opted triggers).

Oh, and after additional consultation with religious elites renowned for sexual-repression-driven acts of child molestation, members of Congress will revise current Hyde Amendment provisions against federal funding for abortions so as to create a federal ban on sex education in public schools and outlaw contraception.

But other than that, health care reform. Yay!

Just kidding. Mostly.

Actually, your Gleaner is ever the pie-eyed optimist, so let's assume that some key elements of the legislation survive an entire nation's capitulation to a handful of senators from the Hannity wing of the Democratic Party.

Specifically, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that near universal coverage, mandated and subsidized, could make it to Obama's desk in a form roughly similar to that found in the bill passed by the House and in the version currently on the Senate floor.

Unless you are one of the eleven people in Nevada who do not receive several emails each day from Harry Reid's Senate office and/or reelection campaign, you already know that "518,000 Nevada residents who do not currently have insurance and 132,000 Nevadans who have nongroup insurance could get affordable coverage through the health insurance exchange" under the Senate legislation. And 311,000 Nevadans would qualify for subsidies to help them pay for their coverage.

Well alrighty then. When all those Nevadans are sporting their sparkling new -- and affordable! -- health insurance policies, they are going to want to storm the polls to vote to reelect the great and kind Harry Reid.

Um, sort of?

Reid is up for reelection in 2010. Like many of the reforms in the Senate bill, health insurance, affordable or otherwise, won't be extended to Americans through the new exchange until 2014.

Passage of a heath care reform bill will buck up reliable, long-time Nevada Democratic voters with connections to the party establishment. But they've given every indication that they're behind Reid no matter what in any case. A more tantalizing prospect of health care legislation -- politically speaking, as opposed to the more important policy significance -- is whether it might re-energize the newly registered Democrats, the young people or the folks who hadn't voted in years if ever, who were whipped up and gave Obama his 12.5 point victory in the state last year. If that lot gets stoked, Reid's a shoo-in. It'll be interesting to see if the health care bill that makes it to Obama's desk, assuming there is one, will be enough to fire them up.

If they are less than impressed, Reid's hopes will hinge (as Ralston is always contending) on the all-important much-cherished traditional independent voters who often decide low-turnout midterm elections.

They may be momentarily impressed by the passage of something called health care reform, but will it drive them to vote for Democrats in November 2010, especially when the heart of the reform, i.e., accessible and affordable coverage, is still just a promise that is years away from fulfillment?

The Democratic politics of health care reform sometimes seem reminiscent of that old adage about generals always fighting the last war. Because of the Clinton-era fiasco, the Democrats are determined that they absolutely, positively must get a bill -- any bill -- not only so that they can say they got one, but to deprive Republicans the opportunity to run around the country crowing that they didn't. But what should be a haymaker that knocks Republicans on their asses is going to be, at best, a complicated program with little or no impact on the vast majority of voters coupled with a possibility that something good will happen half-way through Obama's second term.

How's that going to work out? Damned if I know.

Meantime, if and when it passes a bill, Congress will move on to some other shiny object to  under-reform but in an overly and unnecessarily complicated way. The health insurance industry, by contrast, will stay on task and focused, all laser-beam-like, on, well, health insurance.

Any time there is a regulatory rulemaking that will shape the implementation and operation of all those reforms that take effect in 2014, the insurance industry will be there, filling the room with cooked books, fuzzy math and shady studies and throwing enough money and political influence around to cloud everyone's judgment, all toward earning industry-friendly decisions.

And while there is no way to predict the number of last-minute amendments that the insurance industry might get pet members of Congress to tack on to assorted bills as they make their way through committees in the dead of night and subsequently become law without anyone really paying any attention between now and 2014, a reasonable over-under might be, oh, 72. Reforms enacted in 2009 or 2010 might be awfully folded, spindled and mutilated by 2014.

That's not to say there aren't good things in the bill that would take effect in 2010 -- the end of rescissions, for instance, and extending coverage to kids up to age 26 under family policies, and eliminating the cap on life-time benefits. Such measures are welcome and overdue regulatory fixes to slimy insurance industry abuses.

But truly transformative reform may have already given way to a more pressing priority in Washington: getting a bill that lets Democrats declare victory. Whether that will also mean a significant victory for people who are getting taken for a ride by health insurance companies, well, we'll see, perhaps as early as sometime toward the end of the next decade.

Grandma seems awfully happy with hers

"Why the angst over government-run health care?" I ask in a column over at CityLife.

Palin-Ensign 2012!

Disgraced and grotesque John Ensign could serve out his current term as the least significant person in the United States Senate free and clear of any and all legal complications, some beltway kids are reporting.

Ensign, who has always sucked very hard, briefly stepped into the glare of the national mainstream media's kleig lights (do they still use klieg lights?) earlier this year when it was learned that he got his filthy rich parents to pay his Aunt Judy to have sex with him.

Well, it turns out Uncle Doug is still miffed -- even after Ensign served as his agent, got on the horn with some cronies and juiced up a few phony but lucrative lobbying contracts for poor mistreated ol' Doug.

As might be indicated by the words "agent," "cronies," juiced," "phony," "lucrative" and "lobbying" (to say nothing of "Ensign"), that was maybe probably against the law.

But now "sources" in Eric Holder's Justice Department "privately signal that the case is a low-priority matter for them." Which means that maybe the only formal consequences Ensign will face will be those rendered by a Senate Ethics Committee investigation. Or as they say in Washington, "none."

C'mon, DOJ.  No matter how venal or atrocious Ensign's actions, it is incumbent upon the American legal system to extend Ensign the same rights as would be afforded any other person charged with crimes in a U.S. court of law. He deserves -- repeat, deserves -- a fair trial, and swift justice. And to all you naysayers, well, America has nothing to fear from the risk that John Ensign will get an opportunity to spew his vile and twisted ideology in a federal courtroom.

UPDATE: Should have mentioned, s'pose, that Uncle Doug "speaks out(!)" on Nightline (which evidently is still on the air) for your viewing pleasure.

Area publication sets standard for cutting-edge reader interactivity

Hmm, carry the two, now round, and ... there. The Congressional Budget Office has finally assigned a numerical value to the Harry Reid Government Rollover Health Care Bill of 2009. It's 42. Or $849 billion. Or whatever. Anyway, now "all eyes," as they say in the grown-up media, turn to the rest of the Senate to see what the next exciting development will be in this epic saga to fundamentally reform ... ooh, look, Sarah Palin made a present for Bill Kristol.

While we wait to see if Reid has enough votes to even get the bill to the floor so the Senate can begin turning it into tort reform, the ability to sell insurance across state lines and tax cuts for the private sector entrepreneurial heroes who are the true creators of all the jobs and prosperity in America,  here's a sort of off-topic question: What's up with the Las Vegas Sun website allowing readers to comment on stories, unless the stories mention Harry Reid in the headline?

Sure, Sun poohbah Brian Greenspun totally wants to gay marry Harry, and vice versa, and more power to them. But sheltering and coddling a single elected official is, you know, unfair (unless being "fair" means puffing up and protecting one side while denigrating or ignoring others, i.e., the interpretation of the word at Fox News). And why stop at Reid? Why not protect Rep. Dina Titus from bitter hordes of online kooks and flakes, too? Or every other politician whose appearance in a headline is sure to garner oodles of opprobrium and ill-will from the commentariat, like, say, Jim Gibbons, or John Ensign? 

Yes, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its publisher are waging a clumsy jihad on Reid. But that doesn't, or shouldn't, automatically mean the Sun has to compensate with a ham-handed bias of its own.

Besides, Reid is a scrappy little fighter (his autobiography says so) and the most powerful Nevadan in the whole history of ever (his ads say so). Presumably he can withstand obtuse rants on the internets from assorted teabaggers, Palindrones and staffers from two-bit Republican senatorial campaigns, no?

Not that any of this is your lowly Gleaner's bidness, mind. Just find it squirrelly, s'all.

UPDATE: "The Sun has disabled comments on stories about Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign for the last few weeks," so as to have a "cooling off" period, says a statement the organization posted Thursday afternoon. Makes sense. If the outraged ignorant teabaggers have proved nothing else, it's that they're sure to "cool down" as the campaign heats up.

Anyway, the Sun statement is followed by a comment, posted by a genuine reader, presumably, saying something bad (maybe? who reads these things?) about Harry, indicating that comments have been undisabled. Or reabled. Or whatever. So there, batshit crazy paranoid Nevada wingtards. Don't say the evil commie atheist Gleaner never did anything nice for you.

Btw, the Sun statement says comments had been disabled on Ensign stories all this time, too, though I could have sworn the Nov. 8 Ensign story I linked to above, which currently shows no comments, had 45 comments on it earlier Thursday. That was pretty much why I linked to it, or so I thought. Oh well. Must be my mistake.

UPDATED UPDATE: Oh, I forgot about how Yahoo's cached pages might not be refreshed as regularly or frequently as Google's. So not to be bitchy about it or anything (well, maybe a little) but just, you know, for the record:

World's most important conservative hates Nevada

Some person or persons took the initiative to compile an index of Wingnut Barbie's Big Fat Book, and in a blistering confirmation of Nevada GOP irrelevance, not a single Nevada Republican or conservative is mentioned.

Not Ensign, Gibbons or Muth.

Not Heller.

Not even Sherm Frederick!

Nevada's snubbed and ignored right-wingers will also be interested to know the book that launched Sarah Palin's Fur Collar Comedy Tour includes a reference to that filthy secularist and radical, Thomas Paine, but not Paine's polemical combatant, conservative patriarch Edmund Burke. I know! WTF? Let's just say Newt Gingrich would never commit such an oversight.

Oh wait a minute, there he is on page 252. "Eddie Burke."

Still. No Heidi Harris!

After years of practice, Senate Democrats master art of being tedious

Conservative Senate Democrats insist that any health legislation reaching Barack Obama's desk must be small, deferred and insurance industry-friendly enough to guarantee that Democrats lose hundreds of elections in 2010 if not beyond.

So rather than doing something popular like, oh, letting people buy into Medicare if they want, the all-powerful Senate "moderates" will make sure that public health insurance options are extended to no one, and instead force everyone to go buy an inadequate but overpriced policy from a private company whose commitment to collecting premiums is matched only by its dedication to denying claims.

Why are a handful of senators empowered to transform what should be a landmark once-in-a-generation Democratic legislative victory into a bill that, at best, will provide some modest protections to the already insured and at its disgusting worst transfer wealth from taxpayers to an unaccountable insurance industry, succeeding mostly in pissing people off and thus spoiling any chance of meaningful reform -- yet again -- for another 15 or 20 years?

The Senate's storied procedural arcania doesn't account for all of the inability, or unwillingness, of  leadership to even attempt to enforce discipline on Senate Democrats. And a precious regard for Senate prerogative isn't confined to Democrats -- all senators, regardless of party, are convinced that they are very, very special and oh so clever and wise and should be treated with deference reserved in earlier times and other places only for dukes or earls or some other variety of useless and insufferable aristocratic fop.

Having said that, Republican Senators are also not afraid to muscle their own around, as they did a few years back when they told Arlen Specter he could chair the Judiciary Committee if and only if he vowed to play hardball to seat Bush administration judicial nominations.

Democrats, by contrast ... well, Sarah Palin's vice-presidential debate helper, Joe Lieberman, still chairs the Homeland Security Committee.

There is nothing new about dainty Democratic senatorial decorum, as I was reminded while reviewing an old interview I did with Harry Reid in June of 2001 when he was then the Senate's second-highest ranking Democrat. A dozen Democratic senators had voted to give the newly installed president, George W. Bush, a $1.35 trillion tax cut catering mostly to the rich. Reid and the Democratic Leader, Tom Daschle, were against the tax cut, but Reid explained -- or more accurately, boasted -- that Democratic senators were free to do whatever they wanted:

"I think the thing that Tom Daschle and I have been able to do is keep our caucus together. Never in the history, in the last 100 years, have we had a Democratic Party that stuck together like ours has done in the Senate."

"We really get along well," he added.

All that togetherness, the senator said, is due to Daschle's non-confrontational, listen-to-everybody approach. Daschle doesn't do anything without running it past the rest of the Democratic senators, Reid said.

"If anywhere along the line, there is someone in the leadership, if one person disagrees, it's gone. And if there's some vocal opposition in the caucus it's over with. So when Daschle walks out...he's got the full support of the caucus. "

Reid at the time also ladled praise on the now mostly defunct Democratic Leadership Council for shifting the party to the right. Reid approved of that repositioning, because ...

"for too long we were a party that was represented by the far left. And now we have some moderates who have places also."

The party has "some real liberals," Reid suggested, naming Sens. Barbara Boxer, Paul Wellstone, Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy. "They're very vocal, they're very determined to get their view across.

"But once a decision's been made, they're part of the team."

So Democratic senators "really (got) along well" as long as the "moderates" got to vote however they wanted and the "real liberals" hushed.

Later would come 9-11 followed by what was for all practical purposes the disappearance of the Democratic Party as a going congressional concern. When Daschle lost his seat in 2004, Reid became the leader of a Democratic Senate caucus that was smaller than at any time since the administration of Herbert Hoover, and I've occasionally wondered if he got the job because nobody else wanted it.

One also wonders if Reid's view of Senate Democratic dynamics has changed with the times, or if "keep(ing) our caucus together" still means the freedom of senators to vote however they want whenever they want, and if he still takes progressive senators for granted.

One thing is for certain: throughout the health care debate, Reid has never asserted of conservative Democrats that "once a decision's been made, they're part of the team."

And to think politicians pander to these people

Sixty-seven percent of your fellow 'Mericans surveyed for an AP poll said they favor changes to the health care system "requiring that everyone has at least some health insurance."

Sixty-four percent of those surveyed in the same poll said they oppose "a law that would require every person to have health insurance, and pay money to the government as a penalty if they do not, unless the person is very poor."