I love your blog, but why does an "Authentication Required" message always pop up when I visit the site. It says "A username and password are being requested by http://harvest.adgardener.com. The site says: 'WRT54G2' "

This doesn't happen anywhere else I visit on the Internet. Would have written this to the Washington Monthly Web person but couldn't find a link.

The Dems only care what Faux News says. They don't want to lead, they don't want to work, they dont' want to understand. They just want to do what Faux News dictates.

"For example, the proposal polls considerably better once Americans are lied to about what's in it."

Another fixed statement. Could you save me a lot of time and stop lying so egregiously about this damn bill? Pretty please?

Of course if they passed a Medicare buy-in they could have guaranteed cheaper rates and the bill would be extremely popular. Of course we go with what we got these days given the super majority bs we are forced to deal with. Oh, that a lame congress.

I think the Health Care Summit changed the momentum. The Republicans are about to lose this issue and with it the 2010 midterms.

The dithering politicians in Congress shows how much the majority hates Americans and loves Federal health care benefits and spending American money on their own pet projects. Certainly not the projects that will help Americans.Bail out for Banks , no bail out for Americans. $$$$$$$$$ for mercenaries to kill innocent people in other countries no$$$$$$$ for Americans who are struggling; no money for education for Americans as $$$$ for mercenary contractors is more important than America.

Without the Rasmussen poll data, opposition is under 46%. See http://www.tnr.com/blog/health-care-reform-getting-more-popular

I think Obama's leadership, along with the premium rises and Republican obstructionism, is making a difference. I'm still wary of getting too confident, but I think they're going to get it done. I sure wish the White House and congressional leadership are sending these charts around to the waverers.

Tlaloc - I think you'd have a bit more success in convincing us of your position if you actually cited some proof instead of tossing us your assertions and insults all the time. I think I once saw you mention one passage of the health bill regarding why you think caps aren't included, yet you didn't provide a link and I couldn't find whatever passage you were referring to. I searched for about five minutes and then just gave up, because it seemed so pointless.

So as a piece of advice, instead of calling us all liars, you might want to consider just posting a link which explains what the hell you're talking about and writing "Here's why Benen's wrong about this". You'd not only save time and grief, but you might actually convince us you're right. If you're right, I'd like to know. But as it is, you just seem like an angry crackpot. But perhaps that's all you want to be.

Re: perception that reform will raise the cost of insurance.

We have to be careful. The cost of insurance is going to rise in the future, even after reform, the only questions are whos price will raise by how much and when. After.They.Pass.The.Damn.Bill there will be much work to do to educate the public about it, defuse the inevitable problems, and steer solutions away from private-sector waste and greed. States that choose to race to the bottom will need to have their actions and consequences illuminated, companies that continue to undermine or game the system exposed, etc.

Graph look slike an XKCD character.
http://xkcd.com/707/

i just happened on cnn at the dr's office. they were talking about the health care plan, the 'breaking news' display said, 'health care, you will probably pay more and get less.' this, when coupled with the anti-health care ad (billions more in taxes etc) makes a strong argument for the public to hate the idea. If dems will not run ads defending themselves we are sunk. remember clinton against dole, those premptive ads? Dole's folks thought they could wait to respond and he never recovered.

Kansachusetts, 'WRT54G2' is a consumer wireless-G router from Linksys. For whatever reason, you're apparently being redirected to the admin interface of somebody's router!

...many of those who reject health care reform don't really understand what it is.

This is an unfortunate, but key, result. While most people who make the effort to stay current (like those of us who haunt this board) are not surprised by this, I'd imagine that most politicians and policy shops in Washington are surprised.

The fact is, substitute most any relatively complex legislation for the words "health care reform" in the above sentence and the result would be the same. People just don't know particulars of an issue.

So in this age of a usurped media machine whose sole purpose is to confuse and obfuscate, the side with the most effective message wins. Democrats and progressives simply must recognize this reality, and find a way to get through the noise and explain what various bills mean, and what they seek to do. Along with this, key to this I'd say, is a concurrent, forceful message countering the lies and obfuscations.

This or something like it is the only way to regain an informed populace, armed with the facts with which to make decisions. While there will always be those who will not listen to reason or fact, there are probably many more who just don't know what is truth and what is fiction, constantly barraged with the malodorous he said/she said/we're not going to tell you which is true mentality permeating media today.

I don't need no stinking links, douchebag! I'm tired of telling you people how stupid you are. If you just publicly admitted your own endless shortcomings I wouldn't have to waste my valuable time pointing them out to you.

It has been repeatedly shown that somewhere around 30% of those against the health care plan think it doesn't go far enough - they're single payer or public option or Medicare expansion advocates. So, I'd stop apologizing for the misinterpretation of the data as an essential tie. Doesn't anyone on the left know how to market?

Oooh, explain to us, please, so our little pea brains can understand!

In 2016 average nongroup premiums per policy would be ~$5800 v. $5500 now - ignoring the effect of increased demand for health care.

Here's an idea: read the fucking report before you condescend to your readers. If I want half-assed bullshit I'll read the Post.

"Tlaloc - I think you'd have a bit more success in convincing us of your position if you actually cited some proof instead of tossing us your assertions and insults all the time. "

We started with facts and supporting evidence and what did we get? People like Benen and Drum, people who are perfectly intelligent and reasonable most of the time completely ignored it and continued peddaling objectively false statements as facts. Its gotten so bad that now Benen pretends he doesn't even know the the public option has ever been suggested or that a considerable number of people have suggested passing narrow popular bills instead of a big ugly omnibus bill.

So yeah, some of us, including most definitely me have become incredibly frustrated and pissed off seeing people we used to respect descend into such painful hackery in order to shill for this god damn bill and tell us not to believe our lying eyes.

Is that counter productive? Well only if you think the PTDB crowd was ever really arguing in good faith. As I see it there's a mountain of evidence they they weren't and aren't.

"I don't need no stinking links, douchebag! I'm tired of telling you people how stupid you are. If you just publicly admitted your own endless shortcomings I wouldn't have to waste my valuable time pointing them out to you."

A perfect example- the PTDB crowd has to resort to sock puppetry because they have nothing else on their side. But of course WE'RE at fault if we don't treat their dribblings as if they deserve a point by point refutation with footnotes and an intermission.

No wonder you guys have gotten continually rickrolled by the right.

We started with facts and supporting evidence and what did we get?

Who's this "we," white man? You haven't produced a fact in your whole history here. Lame attempt to duck that.

Shorter me: I got nothin' except sound and fury.

"Who's this "we," white man? You haven't produced a fact in your whole history here. Lame attempt to duck that."

Your attention span is goldfish-eque.

Oh look Grayson just introduce a bill to create a public option through medicare buy in. It's 4 pages long and doesn't include anything compromising.

http://crooksandliars.com/node/35510

Now if the dems actually bring it to a vote the reps have to choose between letting it pass or voting against an incredibly popular option. THIS COULD HAVE BEEN DONE 12 MONTHS AGO.

Your attention span is goldfish-eque.

Really? I just did a search of your posts here and came up with dozens of psycho rants, none of which contained a single objective fact. (Congratulations on the American record for use of the word "douchebag," though.) Why not point us to some of these data and evidence-filled posts you claim you authored?

speaking of bring facts into the issue, I can see where the suddenly memory afflicted PTDB crowd might have trouble finding any in my writing, you do have to go back almost an entire day...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/022778.php#1735544

But then intellectual rigor and research are counter productive if you want to support the senate bill.

That's it? That's your idea of 'intellectual rigor'? Oh man. I'm not laughing any more. There's something really wrong with your head.

You claimed I hadn't provided any objective facts and had done a lengthy search to make sure. I point you to a post that was less than a day old where I do precisely that (unless you are going to start disbelieving house vote tallies) and you try to change the argument.

Typical. When you said i never brought facts what you really meant is I didn't bring in the facts you like to hear. I'm really sorry, tonto, but the facts you desperately try to ignore are still facts. Here's one- you just beclowned yourself by making an attack that was trivial easy to disprove.

Your single "fact" (the only one you could find? Seriously? Are you really unable to understand how embarrassing this is to you when you claimed to have been sharing plenty evidence all along but still can't document that?) is that we passed one smaller bill. Great. We sure did. From that you extrapolate that we could have passed all the elements of meaningful healthcare reform in small chunks regardless of what they were, the opposition to them and the makeup of Congress.

That part's not a supportable fact, Tlaloc. That's you projecting wishes and pretending they're "evidence." I'm pretty sure you actually don't know the difference between what's real and what you want to be real, and I'm going to stop making fun of you now, because I think everyone's pretty clear that you're a deeply disturbed individual who's very much on the edge of insanity. I hope you get some help with that, and I mean that quite sincerely.

apparently counting is also not your strong suit. in the comment in question I listed two bills, gave their house tallies and compared the number of republicans voting for each.

In your mind this is "a single fact" and embarrassing. Strangely I'm not embarrassed by it. You made a claim:

"You haven't produced a fact in your whole history here."

I proved it wrong with a whole two minutes effort. It's not my fault you make wild claims and then get defensive when proven wrong. You might think about saying things that aren't demonstrably false if it bothers you to get owned like this.

Good luck to you, Tlaloc.

I'm sure all you prodigiously informed fact-ninjas have read CBO's 10/07 Technical Description of their simulation model. No doubt everybody noticed that firm's health-care demand elasticities are assumed based on studies done in 1999, 2002 or 2004. Remember those days? Exceptional profits, minimal labor-market slack... Anybody wanna bet that firms won't now just dump their employees into the individual market to go it alone? No help from providers competing for your corporate groups. That's the big difference between now and the days of Hillarycare, you know: the industry has killed the original supergroups and isolated the consumer, while their oligopolies are more concentrated than ever. This stuff is, unavoidably, a tissue of interacting assumptions. You can be sure of only one thing: without redundant belt-and-suspenders governance and performance regulation, the consumer will be eaten alive. The regulation in this bill is shit.