AN IRISH FRIENDSHIP WISH

May there always be work for your hands to do;
May your purse always hold a coin or two;

May the sun always shine on your windowpane;
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;

May the hand of a friend always be near you;
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

Salvaging Health Care Reform

I laughed this morning when I heard Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) say this morning that (because the Democrats now only have a 59-41 lead in the Senate) they're in the driver's seat. I laughed at first because it demonstrated how delusional folks in Washington are that they can't do simple math. Then I realized sardonically that he may be right. With the massive all-or-nothing approach to health care it's pretty easy to get senators together to filibuster.

We need health care reform, but did we need it to be such a massively stupid bill that it took over a year to pull together? Couldn't we have had smaller, more manageable bills that are easier to negotiate? Easier to have up/down votes on?

If the Democrats want a strategy to pass health care reform, break it into those manageable chunks. Maybe 4 separate pieces - one for the controls including not denying people with existing coverage, one for the national exchange, and one for the public option. Present them individually. If the Republicans want to filibuster each and every one, they'll be globally viewed as the obstructionists they've been all year. In the mid-terms they'll be slaughtered.

Democrats and Republicans: Time for a reboot

For the last decade, Hollywood has been doing a lot of "reboots" where venerable series like Batman and James Bond have either gotten so silly or their roots are so far in the past that they need to go back to the beginning of the series and tell it from scratch. They need to get back to their roots.

The special election in Massachusetts yesterday was proof that both Republicans and Democrats need to reboot their own parties. I've been a centrist Democrat all my life - I'm just not sure I know what that means anymore. Maybe I'm just a centrist. My fellow Republicans are in the same boat. No one knows what it means to be a Republican anymore. The Democrats may be dazed and confused, but they have a platform. They're fragmented over the details, but they have a platform. The Republican party has ideals - somewhere - but they have no platform. They've been the party of "No" all year.

So now we're faced with two parties running the country that don't know what they want to be when they grow up. Maybe they even have an idea, but they definitely have no plan to get there.

We could always follow George Washington's idea - first things first, let's get rid of all the parties and vote on individual issues.