Confused old person Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is two or three more annoying media turns away from finally getting booted from health care negotiations, has found another outlet receptive to his newfound bad-faith curmudgeonly psychobabble: National Review‘s The Corner, the #1 blog on the Internet. In an interview with the site’s Robert Costa, “Grassley says ‘the jury is out’ on whether he might leave the negotiating table. ‘I’ll make a decision on walking away if it becomes clear that I can’t get a good agreement.’” Harumph! So let us ask, for the 850,000th time in six months, what in hell would be a “good agreement” for you, Chuck Grassley?
So what are the make-or-break issues for Grassley moving forward? Grassley says there are four: no public option, no rationing, no government bureaucrats getting between doctors and patients, and tort reform.
GAHHH. This is Grassley’s incredibly irritating problem: it doesn’t make for a jovial and productive negotiating atmosphere when 50% of your “make-or-break issues” are the most repeated bad-faith slogans of the “kill any sort of reform for political reasons” camp. Not even slogans, actually, just random fictional nonsense that’s nowhere in the bill, and therefore cannot be negotiated. He might as well have said, “no public option, no humans with wings and laser-gun eyeballs, no Bolivian fire-breathing dragons with mass greater than 150 tons allowed north of the 42nd parallel, and tort reform.”
As far as the two “real” things: enough has been said about the public option. But with tort reform, yeah, why won’t Obama throw Republicans a bone on tort reform to bring them onboard? Surely they’d be willing to trade back some support if he did that.
Oh? What is that, Karen Tumulty of TIME in an article from May?
When Barack Obama informed congressional Republicans last month that he would support a controversial parliamentary move to protect health-care reform from a filibuster in the Senate, they were furious. That meant the bill could pass with a simple majority of 51 votes, eliminating the need for any GOP support. Where, they demanded, was the bipartisanship the President had promised? So, right there in the Cabinet Room, the President put a proposal on the table, according to two people who were present. Obama said he was willing to curb malpractice awards, a move long sought by Republicans that is certain to bring strong opposition from the trial lawyers who fund the Democratic Party.
What, he wanted to know, did the Republicans have to offer in return?
Nothing, it turned out. Republicans were unprepared to make any concessions, if they had any to make.
So.
Lastly, Grassley describes his role in these negotiations very bizarrely, or perhaps just candidly. He’s saying that he’s an… undercover spy?
Conservatives, Grassley said, shouldn’t worry about their values being forgotten even if he is “sitting at the table” with Democrats. “I’m in the room, I know what’s going on — don’t they want to know what’s going on? Since January, from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., any Republican in the Senate that wanted to meet with me — or Senators Enzi or Snowe — to discuss health-care could do so. We’re in a task force on health care to report and to listen. Our group’s work with Senator Baucus and the Democrats enables Republicans to know exactly what’s going on with health-care discussions across the aisle.”
Then, with the knowledge, we proceed to make MISCHIEF!
Grassley on Obamacare: ‘The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back’ [The Corner]
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Little does he know, the people at that table with him will comprise a panel. A panel of deaths.
Grassley isn’t even trying to hide insurance-industry-cock that is permanently stuck in his mouth.
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2010&cid=N00001758&type=I&mem=
Hahaha. This is why old people should not have power.
Fuck you, Grassley. You bastards want to be obstructionist and tank legislation you’ve been helping craft AND shit on bipartisanship just to win political points? Rahm said it today……the Dems don’t NEED you. It’s a death panel for your useless old ass. Can you hear the whistle of the FEMA train? And we’ll tax your fucking corn crops (down with fructose!) to finance the whole goddamn thing.
“We don’t have anything on paper out of all the talking we’ve done on health care. I can tell them that there’s a Pelosi bill, and I’d vote against that. I can tell them there’s a Kennedy bill, and I’d vote against that. We’re not going to have a public option coming out of Finance.”
So let me get this straight, Chuck. No progress is being made on healthcare not because there isn’t legislation out there, but because you’re hell bent on voting against it. For realz?
Also.
The health-care debate, says Grassley, now looks “kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s back” for American voters. Citing the federal government’s takeover of General Motors and the fact that “the stimulus is not working,” Grassley suspects that Americans may be getting the sense that “maybe the administration doesn’t know what it’s doing” — and they’re fed up.
To be clear, you utter cornpone twat, I don’t think it’s the administration that doesn’t know what it’s doing.
I’d watch your back, just in case a flaming bag of dicks comes winging your way.
[re=390964]GreatOldOnesParty[/re]: Yeah. Neither does Baucus….or Enzi. Fuck the finance committee.
[re=390971]queeraselvis v 2.0[/re]: Pity the poor flaming bag of dicks.
What a strategy: bitch and moan about the Democrats’ ideas, then try to get included in negotiations solely so you can kill the bill, and then when they leave you by the side of the road, complain about their failure to achieve bipartisanship. Enjoy your (hopefully) eight years in the bitter, bitter cold Senator Grassley.
Come on. We’ve seen how things work. He has to wait for Palin to post to her Facebook page exactly what he can or can’t negotiate. Sarah is like, you know, Margaret Hamilton, and the the lesser Republicans are just the flying monkeys.
Yes, that is corn growing out of his head/face. I hear that this adminstration isn’t dealing anymore. Ha Ha. Cornface’s last stand on this planet & he lost. (hitler lady pig squeal cry)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_E4nB9I9HSIw/ScBbzY-w-EI/AAAAAAAAAlc/-NWMwML_3G0/s400/grassley2.JPG
“Sen. Chuck Grassley … tells NRO that he’s losing patience with Democrats …”.
Can’t blame him. The Dems keep spitting instead of swallowing.
Fukkit!
I’m just going to start campaigning for the right of our corporate overlords to deny us healthcare, and claim that we should support their duely purchased representatives in our government in whatever they do.
Then again, wingnutz don’t get irony do they?
Remember back before old Chuck flipped the fuck out when Iowa was cool for like 10 minutes after it legalized gay marriage? Good times.
[re=390977]NJB[/re]: Win.
Just listen to that shitkicker talk. He makes George W. Bush sound positively golden tongued. And, he is the chief spokesman for the Republicans on an issue that (as they keep telling us) involves one-sixth of the U.S. economy. He fucking doesn’t know if he’s afoot or horseback.
Seriously, what is becoming of this country? All this deranged, unhinged and depressingly unintelligent contentiousness, that the Democrats shouldn’t even have to respond to, is driving the debate. The media – too timid to do their job – egg it on. Or maybe they are too stupid to call out these mountebanques. I think it’s the latter.
Fuck em all.
why should corporate overlords have to purchase our representatives? why not just eliminate the middleman by abolishing congress and let the corporate lobbyists draw up the laws.
a lot cheaper for everybody that way, and we wouldn’t have to listen to fakers like corngrassley!
Nail/Dining Room Table 2012!
Tort reform! Because doctors shouldn’t have to take responsibility for their fuck ups! I blame the AMA for increases in malpractice insurance. They refuse to sack their own kind, allowing the same docs to get slapped over and over with malpractice, thereby raising everyone’s premiums. Granted there are ambulance chasers, juries can usually smell them. Caps just make innocent people suffer. Just get rid of the bad doctors. Oh, and get rid of Grassley, he’s already declared himself a partisan hack. We need some dead fetuses in order to stem cell Obama some new, larger balls. I’m talking truk nutz size, like Barney Frank showed at his town hall.
Tort reform. It’s all fun and games, until someone loses an eye.
Chuck Grassley to the Death Panel!
[re=390995]germansteel[/re]: So, is this how the Third Republic of the United States of America will end? Drowned in a sea of violent, racist, selfish, superstitious sort-sighted ignorance led by senile corporate whores like Senator Grassley?
I look forward to my future countrymen re-exploring your country and observing the locals mining your graves for goods and burning your books for fuel…. good times ahead, indeed…
No rationing, Chuck? Like how I can’t get an appointment at Kaiser P. for sooner than six weeks from now because, well, I’m really not that sick. Like how I would have to shell out $450 additional bucks a month to put my baby on that same Kaiser plan so she can get 30 minutes of a resident’s time once a month? I love having immediate access to all the service I want now, and at such a great price.
Chuck knows full well that under any possible plan that will be passed he can still use his pile of post-office lobbying dough to buy the a fancy private plan that will given him a gold plated replacement hip and daily hand jobs in the recover room, while everyone else merely gets access to affordable care for their kids.
Its fair to be angry at Obama for trying too hard to work with people who clearly are not serious, but I think he is being comprehensive in putting everything they could possible want, short of a death panel for poor people, on the table, so it makes the biggest possible crashing noise when they flip it over and walk away.
I can’t get a good agreement.’”
I guess I’m confused…I thought it was the American People who were supposed to get a “good agreement” not Grassley! Single payer now!
Ceterum censeo Grassley delenda est
When the lead negotiator for the other side shows such a complete and utter lack of good faith as to join in Beck, Limbaugh and Palin’s rhetoric (not to mention Palin-style inarticulate babbling), it is time for Democrats to smile, close their briefcases, back away quietly, and do this thing entirely on their own.
Chuck doesn’t know you can’t argue with a “dining room” table, a Democrat one at that.
In summary, then, Grassley stands foursquare behind a “Sense of the Senate” resolution urging Americans not to get sick.
Someone remind me again why Baucus is giving republicans a seat at the negotiating table? Apparently no one told insurance industry cum guzzler Max that elections have consequences.
“I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that [the public option] is their Waterloo,” said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform.”
-the Washington Post
The measure of whether what we achieve is actually “health-care reform” clearly needs to be how gently and yet fully we all cradle Chuck Grassley’s balls in our mouth. When those balls are resting comfortably and sweetly on the tonsils of every American Democrat, then and only then, will we be able to confidently say those words: Free at Last.
[re=391011]Clamps[/re]: And in addition salt must be pounded up his ass!
He needs more time on teevee along with every old nitwit they can muster up. A little more aversion therapy and we’ll have a pubic option before Thanksgiving, just in time to death panel the relatives.
wait a minute, i want laser-gun eyeballs! what a dick…
[re=391031]problemwithcaring[/re]: as long as Grassley doesn’t turn his head and cough… he does that, I bite down.. and HARD
[re=390995]germansteel[/re]: The media – too timid to do their job – egg it on. Or maybe they are too stupid to call out these mountebanques.
Stupid? Timid? Because three hour town hall meetings where people thoughtfully weigh the merits of alternative policy proposals would consistently draw higher ratings than the political equivalent of cockfights? Because calmly pointing out that some arguments are utterly without merit on a purely factual basis will draw more viewers than ‘objectively’ pointing out that there are two sides to every debate and then giving time to a spokesman for the grass-roots movement opposed to gravity?
Stupid and timid, no…shrewd and amoral, absolutely.
[re=391031]problemwithcaring[/re]: Oh, and btw ‘Senior White House advisor’…it’s the fucking Rubicon you’re looking for in your pathetic little analogy.
Chuck Grassley = human douchebag
[re=391059]azw88[/re]: Yea. And Sorry about the bold. I am involved in a Facebook war: RE the inexplicable, yet waning popularity of one Ms. Mariah Carey, and so understandably, I am a little distracted.
Also, my job.
[re=391062]user-of-owls[/re]: btw, I don’t even know what analogy means. I literally want to suck on Grassley’s balls for mah freedoms. If that is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
[re=391081]problemwithcaring[/re]: Well, an analogy is analogous to… And I think you meant figuratively.
(you understand, I trust, that my wrath was directed not at the messenger, but said ‘advisor’)
i prefer tortes (chocolate) and tortas (al pastor), but thanks anyhow.
[re=391031]problemwithcaring[/re]: that was beautiful. thanks for the translation.
“the stimulus is not working,”
Listen, Assley, I drove from DC to Chicago and back last week and went through about 17 different paving and bridge repair projects funded by the stimulus (all had that “funded by the Federal Death Stimulus Panel” sign posted along the road). Getting through all those construction zones added about an hour and a half to my trip, so, yeah, no work being done out there in real America by real, formerly un- or under-employed Americans; nope, none at all.
Chuck’s got a cob up his ass. Maybe he can get McConnell to pull it out, with his teeth.
[re=390995]germansteel[/re]: Is it time for someone on our side to point out that the economist, David Francis, who writes the econ column for that left wing rag, the Christian Science Monitor, pointed out recently that, based on current growth in the percentage of GNP going for health care costs, by 2050 health care cost will equal 100% of GNP.
I don’t know. That kind of made me think, you know, 100% OF GNP!!! This IS A FUCKING EMERGENCY!!!!! I go into all caps winger mode when I’m getting the shit scared out of me.
It’s time for the death panel to kill off corn ethanol subsidies, is what I’d say to Mr. Gastly.To his face.
I was just thinking/taking a shower and came up with this conclusion:
Why haven’t we seen anything in the n00z about Grassley’s assloads of money he recieves from the insurance overlords?
And then I thought: “Oh yeah. It’s cuz those same insurance overlords buy mucho advertising on those n00z netwerx and are a major source of revenue.”
So much for the “Liberal Media” Myth.
I am very concerned that Bolivian fire-breathing dragons with mass greater than 150 tons will no longer be allowed north of the 42nd parallel.
Reinstate that immigration quota, sir. That’s my deal-breaker.
Also, more unicorns.
[re=390998]OKLAHOMAjesus?[/re]: [re=390999]Min[/re]: oh yeah tort reform. that trope of the right. that famous fabulous magical meaningless 1% of medical costs that’s going to save our health care asses.
god i am so sick of these people.
[re=390987]assistant/atlas[/re]: Iowa is cool for about 10 minutes once every 4 years. That should be enough.
re tort reform – be more like Barney Frank.
[re=390996]inedalo[/re]: Cuz direct control by the corporations requires fascism, which is messy and unpleasant. They would much rather have a democratic cover. They will only take this step as a last resort, when faced with organized popular opposition. “The capitalist wants fascism about as much as a man with an aching molar wants to go to the dentist.” Leon Trotsky, who wasn’t wrong about everything, said that.
[re=391184]Beanball[/re]: The 42nd Parallel is the approximate border of Pennsylvania and NY so, ONCE AGAIN our Nigerian Overlord has fucked it up. It’s one thing if Bolivian Fire Breathing Dragons descend on the old south. That couterie of babbling male whores we’ve come to call the Republican Senate conference would gleefully name one Gog and another Magog and then they’d finally have deities who support the cherished “four pillars of modern conservative thought”,(Rape, Kill, Pillage and Burn) instead of that wimpy Jesus guy, but you know there is a lot of “Blue America” that falls below the 42nd parallel, Maryland and Delaware come to mind. We’ve supported the Democrats since FDR, what of our fate beneath the wings of our new reptilian overlords? You know you have to give dragons “maidens” to get them to stop burning your villages and farms, don’t you Comrade Mullah Obama? Where the hell are we supposed to find an adult, female virgin around here? Heng? HENGGG!
Though more Unicorns would be almost as nice as more healthcare, I, for one, cannot support our New Nigerian Overlords abdication of authority over most of the east coast in favor of our New Winged reptilians overlords administration. That’s just not change I can believe in.
Is he still investigating the suspicion that crooked evangelists are just as crooked as they look? Include big bucks for the faith healers and health “reform” will pass (like an attack of diarrhea).
Chuck Grassley, who allegedly was the GOP moderate who was supposed to reach a bipartisan deal, comes from a blue state but seemingly is only listening to Republicans in Iowa and in Washington . Grassley admitted that the GOP was pressuring him to kill Obamacare, he resisted all legislative timetables, said he would not vote for any bill which doesn’t have widespread GOP support (which no real reform bill will have), said he won’t vote for the public option, and bragged that his tactics blocked the reform effort (knowing the recociliation deadline is 15 October); he is now boycotting “gang of six” talks, claiming he’s too busy. He tried exploiting Ted Kennedy’s illness for political purposes, claimed Obama was too ignorant to know what he was doing, and accused Obama of exploiting the death-panel flap right after doing the same thing himself, although he voted for the same provisions in 2003 (when caught, he claimed he opposes it now because it’s part of a bad bill). He helped reform opponent Glenn Beck by flacking his book for him. And this is the guy who’s supposed to be leading the compromise effort? Not hardly. The Republicans have declared war on reform and on Obama.
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