Howard Dean Slugfest with Mary Landrieu

The Dem civil war over health care is getting uglier by the minute. Chris Matthews has the villain of the White House and darling of the progressives, Howard Dean, for a full segment on "Hardball."  Matthews takes Dean to task for opposing the President's health care reform and accuses him of demagoguery when Dean argues reconciliation was the solution to get the public option the left so desires.  After pounding him on this point, Matthews brings Mary (Louisiana Purchase) Landrieu on to debate the merits of the bill as it stands.  Landrieu, whose vote has been dutifully bought sets out to shill for the bill.

Landrieu and Dean go to loggerheads when Landrieu defends the villain of the progressives, Joe Lieberman.   If you are pressed for time the fireworks ensue at 10:00

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White House Official Lays Ultimate Slam on Howard Dean: "He's Irrelevant" The Left is Mostly Baffled

Via Memeorandum
Ooh burn, such a low blow against the champion of the progressive wing of the Democratic party. Savannah Guthrie reveals the anger over health care debate is not reserved for Joe Lieberman but for Howard Dean who in recent days has called for the death of widely despised health care bill.

Mika Brzezinski I won’t name names, but I heard it from several people in the Administration: Howard Dean, very not pleased, with Dr. Dean speaking out about health care reform and this plan.

Savannah Guthrie: Yeah, very irritated. Yes, isn’t it fascinating they don’t seem to be too angry at Lieberman, they’re reserving their fervor for Howard Dean, but actually, one senior official who I talked to this morning paid the highest insult which was to call him irrelevant to the entire health care debate. You know he kind of had his moment in the sun in the last week when this Medicare expansion looked like it was going to be the thing that broke the logjam between the progressives in the party and the moderates, but, of course, because of Lieberman, the Medicare expansion is gone, and now Dean is having what one official called “a tantrum.”

And they think it’s just not helpful, but they say he’s irrelevant because, bottom line is, even though he was meeting yesterday with all the Democrats, a lot of liberals did blow off steam, there’s a lot of frustration, they’re annoyed that the public option is gone, that then they compromised to do the Medicare extension, now it’s gone. At the end of the day, the moderates are holding sway over this bill, but at the end of the day the President’s been able to hold them in line and they think progressives will be with them.

Dean hasn't been shy in his criticism of the current health care bill

"This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG," former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos today. "A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works. "This is an insurance company's dream, this bill," Dean continued. "This is the Washington scramble, and I think it's ill-advised."

Obviously his call to kill the bill has the White House enraged.  Dean's statements reflect the thinking of much of the left wing blogosphere who are baffled by the attitude towards both Dean and Lieberman:

 Joe Lieberman, who held a legislative gun to President Obama's head and threatened to kill all of health care reform, endangering the Democrats' prospects for holding on to control of Congress in the next election and endangering the President's chances at being re-elected, got personally thanked by President Obama yesterday. Thanked for trying to kill health care reform, thanked for shilling for the insurance industry. Howard Dean, who is simply advocating for the President's own campaign promise, is now being dissed by the White House.

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake explains in a piece written for Politico; it's all about those secret deals the White House made:

Health Care Hocus Pocus

John Stossel nails the lies and deceptions used by politicians to sell the health care debacle:

The key to magic is misdirection, fooling the audience into looking in the wrong direction.

I happily suspend disbelief when a magician says he'll saw a woman in half. That's entertainment. But when Harry Reid says he'll give 30 million additional people health coverage while cutting the deficit, improving health care and reducing its cost, it's not entertaining. It's incredible.

The politicians have a hat full of tricks to make their schemes look cheaper than they are. The new revenues will pour in during Year One, but health care spending won't begin until Year Three or Four. To this the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner asks, "Wouldn't it be great if you could count a whole month's income, but only two weeks' expenditures in your household budget?" (H/T: Instapundit )

Charles Krauthammer thinks "the bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool."  Pat Austin wonders if there is a Senate swimming pool.  Of course there must be nothing is too good for those we pay to shred the US health care system then lie about what a wonder it will be.  Presto Changeo, the "result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency," according to Krauthammer, who suggests we can throw a dart at the 2000 page tome and find a problem:

You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.
 
You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently, insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.

You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences. 

Of course we can throw darts all day but the only solution to this bill is to throw a knife and end the misery.  Howard Dean admits the "Republicans are right about the rhetoric of this bill," though Dean seems to be hitching himself to the liberal wing of the party.  Dean's devotion to the public option aside, it is hard to ignore his point the health care bill is a giant bailout that will have negative consequences if enacted.  Hot Air has a transcript for the video below:


Ed Morrissey wonders:

Dean — who was a successful chair of the DNC and supposedly represented the mainstream of the Democratic Party — has now hitched himself to Socialist Bernie Sanders and the progressive wing of the party. Is Dean thinking about a 2012 run predicated on a politically wounded Obama who failed to pass health-care reform?

Now that would be entertaining, imagine sawing the Democratic party in two with a primary.