The Dish

by Patrick Appel

Matt Steinglass makes what should be a familiar argument by now:

I remember what it felt like to move to the Netherlands and be told that I would have to buy health insurance, or I'd be kicked out of the country. For an American, it certainly felt…different. Then I encountered the other difference: I signed up for a plan, and found my premium cost me a quarter what I'd been paying in America. That was the result of decades of constituent pressure on politicians to get health-insurance costs down. Mr Olbermann and Mr Moulitsas are still thinking like free-market consumers of health insurance: they don't like it, so they want out. Of Albert Hirschman's trio of options for consumers in failing organisations, "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty", they're choosing "exit". When you move to universal health insurance, you have to get used to choosing "voice": if you don't like it, you fix it.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Hard to beat Dwight Yoakam's "Santa Can't Stay" for a depressing xmas song.  It's one of my very favorite xmas songs for its Jerry Springer lurid charm.  Story is, kids' dad dresses as Santa and goes to visit kids at ex-wife's house and ex-wife throws him out. Here is the only version I could find online for free.  I don't think it warranted a video.

Lyrics after the jump:

Cold tears fall from his eyes
As he turns into the night and walks away
Lucille runs outside
Just to see if there might be a sleigh
Little Bobby stares down
At the plate where cookies still lay
And tries to understand
Why momma said Santa can't stay

Momma said Santa can't stay
Said she told him that twice yesterday
Then a car just like Dad's
Pulled out and drove away
After mom said Santa couldn't stay

They both heard him coming
Saw Mom run down the hall and holler wait
Doug you're drunk don't come inside
I'm not joking I've had all this I can take
He threw a present really hard
That almost hit Mom's new boyfriend Ray
And yelled ho-ho lucky for you she's here
And said that Santa can't stay

Today on the Dish we moderated more debate on healthcare from John Cole, Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Matt Yglesias, James Joyner, James Poulos, Keith Hennessey, and Marc Ambinder. The Catholic Church backed off its threat to DC over marriage equality and Dale Carpenter shared his related thoughts. Congressman Aaron Schock became the latest Republican to embrace torture. Readers reacted here. More reader discussion of detainees here and here. Santa got the Schock treatment here and here.

In the guest-blogosphere, Friedersdorf diagnosed the ills and contractions of the current conservative movement, reflected on the state of reality TV, aired emails about what the press should cover, and narrated a photo essay of Kansas City through the lens of the talented and lovely Lara Shipley (whose other work you can find here). Sprung confronted Clive Crook over the feasibility of French-style healthcare in the US and pondered the American "abandonment" of Afghanistan in 1989. A reader pushed back against the latter. Patrick responded to all the haters.

A wave of depressing Christmas songs have started to roll in from readers – the first batch here, here, here, and here. We also posted a touch of Christmas hathos. 

— C.B.

by Patrick Appel

Ambinder sums up the current state of affairs:

The two arguments are these: the White House contends that the bill is a foundation — and will meaningfully improve the lives of 30 million people without insurance — and represents the greatest advance for American health care since LBJ and Medicare. The activist left, broadly, has come to the view that the Senate (and the White House) are held hostage by the forces to whom we've outsourced our health care: the insurance industry, who've just received a massive subsidy in exchange for minimal sacrifices.

The truth, of course, is that both of these arguments are valid. Which one you accept is a matter of taste, preference, mental furniture, ideological commitment, geography.

Beyond this, though, it's a matter of respect: liberals aren't feeling the love. They feel taken for granted. They feel as if the president hasn't done enough to bring them into his coalition. They projected a lot onto candidate Obama, and — for a variety of reasons, some valid — don't see the same guy. It is as if Obama's approach to governing assumes that the only influential audiences are the ones he has to court. The White House is looking for ways to palliate the anxiety.

by Chris Bodenner

A former member of the Basij speaks to the UK's Channel 4:

Then we heard noise from the yard. We thought it must be the youngsters making trouble. We went there and saw there was no-one, just the forces. The sound came from the containers. The sound of screams and pleading and crying. We didn't understand what was going on. They were pleading: 'We're sorry, please, we regret our actions'. Or screams, or crying. We were confused. I couldn't believe that they would want to do such a thing: to rape."

by Patrick Appel

The Chruch backs down from its threat to not offer social services in the district.

by Patrick Appel

Douthat reviews Tim Carney’s new book:

[Carney's] argument isn’t that G.E. (or Pfizer, or Chevron, or Goldman Sachs) has a liberal agenda, necessarily; it’s that corporations have a rent-seeking agenda, and the rents in the age of Obama are very rich indeed.

Such rent-seeking doesn’t always translate into support for the administration’s policies. The business/government nexus is more potent on some issues than on others, and the “business community” is hardly a monolith. (Different industries have different interests, and rival companies often want different things from Washington.) Corporate America has been divided on cap and trade, for instance, and the health insurance industry has played a double game on health care reform (now trying to shape the bill to their liking, now trying to stir up public anxiety about it) that’s so complicated I’m not sure even they understand it. And of course, as Carney would be the first to admit, the Republican Party is hardly offering some pristine free-market alternative at the moment — and it certainly wasn’t in the Bush era. (See this exchange between Matt Yglesias and Carney for more on some of these issues.)

by Patrick Appel

Keith Hennessey, who worked on policy in the Bush administration, updates his predictions:

I am lowering from 50% to 35% my prediction for the success of comprehensive health care reform.  I now think the most likely outcome is a much more limited bill becomes law.

1. Pass a partisan comprehensive bill through the House and through the regular Senate process with 60, leading to a law; (was 30% –> 30%)
2. Pass a partisan comprehensive bill through the House and through the reconciliation process with 51 Senate Democrats, leading to a law; (was 20% –> 5%)
3. Fall back to a much more limited bill that becomes law; (was 15% –> 45%)
4. No bill becomes law this Congress.  (was 35% –> 20%)

by Chris Bodenner A reader submits Joni Mitchell’s “River” – “a sad claustrophobic tale of wintertime loneliness in LA.” Lyrics after the jump:

Its coming on christmas
Theyre cutting down trees
Theyre putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it dont snow here
It stays pretty green
Im going to make a lot of money
Then Im going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Im so hard to handle
Im selfish and Im sad
Now Ive gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I made my baby say goodbye

Its coming on christmas
Theyre cutting down trees
Theyre putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on