I was thinking of somebody who actually got booted from his own party. I know Pierce wasn't nominated for a second term, but I don't think they actually disavowed him while he was still in office. (Not that it's about to happen now, either).



John Quincy Bush had name recognition that she doesn't.




If that's true, the secret will be out immediately. And if it's not true, it probably will be once these state constitutions are amended. But the bill will be a huge budget buster whether people pay the fines or not.




No matter. Pelosi is already talking about adding in a public option later, and I've thought for a while that the purpose of the present bill was merely to screw up the system so badly that we'd accept one to try to undo the damage. So probably, if the bill goes through, somebody will suddenly "notice" what you just said, and use that as an excuse to add in a public option to "compete" with the insurance companies. It won't really be competition, since a government agency can work like a monopoly and operate at a loss to drive the competition out of business, but that's what they'll call it.

RE: disowned by his own party. Probably Martin van Buren when he ran as a Free Soil candidate in 1848. He wasn't president then, though.

RE: fines. Lack of enforcement will make budget problems much worse, naturally.

RE: public option. I have my doubts. No matter what, Barnes is right this is just the beginning.

If we're talking about ex-Presidents who changed parties, the last is probably Teddy Roosevelt. Tyler is the only sitting President I can think of, although Andrew Johnson comes close. (I have to reiterate again, that none of this is pertinent to the present situation, because Obama WILL do what his friends tell him to do, when push comes to shove. The idea of him bucking them is almost unimaginable.)

As far as I recall, you are right that Tyler was disowned by the Whig Caucuses. But he was a late switch from the Democrats anyway, so it wasn't much skin off his nose.

I'm not sure if Roosevelt's bolt can be called a party switch, as he didn' try to found a new party and the Bull Moose Progressives didn't survive.

http://keithhennessey.com/2009/06/23/demographics-is-bigger/

Getting back to health care, this page shows that demographic costs are more injurious to the federal budget than health care costs. This entire site is pretty interesting. The article on Paul Krugman revealing the Left's strategy is also interesting.

Sadly none of this is really new. It just shows how poor we humans are at planning for the future--especially when the "planning" starts by counting re-election votes.

Krugman is that guy from the New Zork Times who always writes those "The deficit is no big deal and should be even higher" articles. In his favor, he said the same thing when Bush was President. In his disfavor, that's just bat-**** crazy.

Every time I read something Krugman writes I'm reminded of Solzhenitsyn's comments about "ignorance through scholarship."

I've been following the whip counts over at realclearpolitics. It looks like the health care vote will turn on one or two votes. I might even watch C-SPAN to see the results.

Hehe. Listening to you guys discuss politics is akin to a new Jim Carrey movie: Right and Righter.

Paul Krugman is not just "that guy" who writes for the New York Times. He is a Nobel Prize winning economist who has been on the vanguard of economic theory for over three decades. His only demerit: He is a self-described liberal. Ooooohhhhhh. Scarrrrrry.

I have nothing against Hennessey's articles. In fact, he is relatively layman-friendly, which is nice. He is also obviously economically conservative. He approaches these problems from the right; Krugman from the left. Given the economic issues in the US recently, however, if I were you I would be a little reticent to go back to the same ol' same ol' conservative model. And frankly, Krugman's economic pedigree is beyond reproach; the same can not be said for Hennessey.

Bottom line is that Krugman can not be dismissed as either: a. just another columnist; or b. ignorant. Sometimes you guys are just plain goofy.

Yeah, I also read Paul Krugman's editorials from time to time, and, there have been a number of his editorials over the years that I have actually enjoyed, and, that I have learned some things from.

(** Even though I am an "evil" conservative! **)

There is also another liberal editorialist who writes for The New York Times whose columns, from time to time, I have actually enjoyed and learned from; but, I can NOT think of his name at the moment.


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