I just finished reading the transcript of Ezra’s interview with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). I thought Senator Alexander’s responses were thoughtful and intelligent … until this:
Ezra: But you liked at least part of it. The Senate health-care bill seems like Wyden-Bennett on the margins. If you were willing to build on Wyden-Bennett, which is a comprehensive solution, why not the Senate plan? Are they so different in theory?
Alexander: I think they are. One thing is you can’t be sure what’s in the Senate bill because it’s 2,100 pages long. You just know there are surprises in it.
In my short career as an engineer, I’ve had to read through the entire datasheet of a microprocessor I never programmed before because my company was switching to that processor the following day. I’ve had to peruse the revision logs and bug notes of multiple versions of memcachedb to figure out that our app was failing because the version of the software we were using could not allocate a memory pool larger than 2GB.
At no point did I say that the problem couldn’t be solved because the documentation was too difficult to understand.
Stop acting like you’re just an average American who finds this stuff to be “too darn complicated”. You’re not an average American. You’re a Senator, a legislator. It’s your job to understand the details and nuances of legislation. Quit complaining and read the damn bill.
No Diversity
Scenes from the Tea Party Convention:
Forget that you see an all-white crowd. Although that presents a problem for the GOP as minority populations continue to grow, the big problem is that it’s an all-old crowd. Where are all the young people? Where are all the angry college students?
I know that there are some young tea partiers (like my sister, sigh). But their message predominantly resonates with old people. This may create short-term gains for the GOP, especially in the 2010 midterms. But long-term, you can’t rely on a grey-haired revolution.
As Andrew Sullivan likes to say – Know hope.