The Times of Norman

A Christian Manifesto Call to Arms

2011-08-31T11:14:00.001-05:00

[For the life of me I do not know why I have NOT renewed my subscription to The New Yorker. Perhaps when I get an iPad…]

Ryan Lizza spends some quality paragraphs addressing Russ Douthat's reponse-screed to Ryan's initial post. The Comments section alone is fine entertainment.

Bottom line is that Michelle Bachmann is a vapid, vacuous airhead. If she is the nominee, Obama waltzes in, but to get the Bachmann reference, you need to go back to the first post in this little range-war (which can be found at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_lizza_ )

Some excerpts:

For Schaeffer the "bottom line" was the replacement of the Christian world view by the humanist world view in American culture and law, a struggle most clearly epitomized by the legalization of abortion. It's true that Schaeffer was sometimes coy about the case he was making and the obvious conclusions he was reaching, which has led to some confusion about his arguments. He was clearly concerned about the power of his words, and at one point he notes that there are "so many kooky people around" who could harm the Christian cause.

But to read "A Christian Manifesto" as only a call for non-violent civil disobedience is to willfully ignore a central argument of the book: that at a certain point—the "bottom line"—the government loses its moral authority, and its overthrow by any means is justified. Schaeffer believed these conditions existed for the early Christians under the Romans, for the Protestants of the Reformation, for the Colonists in the Revolution, and for American Christians in the nineteen-eighties.

The entire worthy blog post is here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/08/a-christian-manifestos-call-to-arms.html

Michelle Bachmann says "Somebody's got to do it"

2011-08-17T14:34:00.001-05:00

Our country faces a moment of extreme crisis. We stand at the verge of an utter breakdown of our economy, our government, and our way of life. Democracy itself is at a crossroads, and without proper guidance, the United States of America will face grave times ahead. During this period of great tumult, someone needs to step in and fix these complex and enormous problems, and when it comes to the question of who is truly up to this task, I think we can all agree that person is—hands down and without question—me, Michele Bachmann.

Look at it logically for a minute. Of the 300 million people in the United States, who stands out as the one most capable of uniting a divided country and fixing a fractured Congress? Talk about a no-brainer. With my track record of urging white people to take back America, attending a church that believes the pope is the Antichrist, and advocating "conversion therapy" as a means to cure homosexuality, I'm clearly the only legitimate choice to become the next leader of the free world.

You know it and I know it.

Read the rest here: http://www.theonion.com/articles/somebodys-got-to-save-this-country-from-certain-do,21135/

Warren Buffett gets the Courage Award for the month

2011-08-15T10:08:00.001-05:00

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

By WARREN E. BUFFETT

Omaha

OUR leaders have asked for "shared sacrifice." But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as "carried interest," thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they'd been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It's nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.

Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html

TPM: Tea Party Movement Getting Americans Steamed

2011-08-15T10:01:00.001-05:00

Does NOT come as a shock to this writer. The walking average Tea Partyer does not realize that they have been Astroturfed… But, happily, the general public is starting to see the folly of this exercise, even if too late for at least one generation.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/tea-party-movement-getting-americans-steamed.php

The debt ceiling fight turned out to be a damper on the American economy, and for the approval ratings of political leaders in Washington. But it's starting to consume the same political entity that decided to make raising it a major issue: the Tea Party. Last week saw the release of three separate polls that showed Americans are not just more skeptical of their movement, but growing tired of their role in the political process, which builds on previous evidence that the Tea Party is being pushed away by independent voters.

The Tea Party movement, as an idea, was originally about anger at the way things turned out after 2008. Congress had been taken over by Democrats, and President Obama came into office after a change election with high approval ratings and the political capital to make that change. Then, surprisingly, those Democrats didn't work to enact Republican policies, they proposed and passed a few of their own. This was not how government is supposed to work, according to some very conservative Americans.

So they got some signs and some bags of tea and a few video cameras followed. They protested what they called an oncoming wave of socialism perpetrated by the Democrats who controlled the legislative and executive branches of government. Then they went to some town halls and yelled about the possible reforms to the American health care system. When that passed, they started supporting candidates for Congress that not only advocated the policies they wanted but also held the same contempt for the government process that they did. Then some of those candidates won, and they had to govern.

That's really when more Americans started to have a more formed opinion on the Tea Party, and over the last few months that opinion has been turning increasingly sour.

"The Tea Party has become somewhat less popular over time, even before the current debt crisis," said Carroll Doherty, Assistant Director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Pew itself had released some data showing as much: in April of this year there had been a fifteen point jump in the negative rating of the Tea Party amongst all voters in a Pew survey, up from a similar survey in March of 2010.

The Tea Party movement actually registered some decent favorability ratings when their associated members of Congress first arrived. There was a plurality in some polls that showed support for it when they were campaigning, which could mean a number of things. First, despite the conservative positions, the Tea Party presented an opportunity for people's hope to break the traditional political orthodoxy. Partisan bickering is never popular. So when a group of people come along who don't call themselves either Democrats or Republicans, why not give them a chance, and some people clearly did.

Doherty pressed that many Americans, except those who are most engaged, still don't know what to make of the movement. "A lot of people still saying they have no opinion. Large percentages in these surveys are suggesting they don't know much about it," he said. "Because of its diffuse nature, there's no single [Tea Party] leader, and it's still not quite a familiar group to a lot of Americans."

That certainly shows up in the numbers: the New York Times and CBS News ran a similar question in April of this year and in the first week of August, asking Americans if they had a favorable or unfavorable view of the Tea Party. The amount with "no opinion" changed little, as 43% were undecided in April, then 39% in August. But the negatives in the favorable/unfavorable pairing went up significantly in the same time period: it was 26 -29 in April, then 20 - 40 in August, directly after the debt deal was announced.

But in general, those who know the Tea Party are taking a more negative view. A CNN poll in January of 2010 showed that 33% of Americans had a favorable view of the Tea Party, against 26% who held an unfavorable view, and 24% who had never heard of it. A Washington Post/Pew poll from January of this year showed a small plurality 27%, thought the Tea Party supported candidates would have a positive effect on Congress, against 18% who thought they would be negative, and 39% who thought they wouldn't make a difference.

As the Tea Party has actually effected policy (see: the debt ceiling showdown) those numbers have definitely changed. A new WaPo/Pew poll with the same question now finds that only 22% think the Tea Party is having a positive effect in Congress, and 29% think they're having a negative effect, with 25% saying neither. The latest CNN numbers have shown a near doubling of those who have an unfavorable view of the Tea Partiers: from the 26% in January 2010, the unfavorable number has climbed to 51% in a poll conducted from August 5-7. And Gallup has tracked the popularity of the Tea Party movement, showing it with the lowest level of support since they've been polling the issue.

With the large plurality in these polls still saying they have no opinion about the Tea Party, there aren't yet majorities of Americans saying they have a negative view of the movement. But the trend is certainly downward for the Tea Partiers, and with a little over seven months in office, it's been a sharp fall.

Gotta blame someone, but I still blame The Tea Party myself

2011-08-05T15:06:00.002-05:00

http://thedailywh.at/2011/08/05/tweet-of-the-day-18/

The Coming Social Anarchy

2011-08-05T14:56:00.002-05:00

Will quote completely an article by Maya Rockeymoore talking about the abomination otherwise known as the Debt Ceiling Deal with the Devil. I would encourage you to click on the links to real data and comb through them…

http://www.globalpolicy.tv/contributors/globalpolicytv/item/165-the-coming-social-anarchy

The steep drop in stocks since passage of the ill-fated debt deal indicates that even markets understand the disastrous consequences of what has just occurred.

While attending a White House briefing for advocacy groups a few weeks ago, a Very Smart Staffer explained to the group that the debt deal would be "good for the economy." When I asked him how, he admitted that the deal would be good for "markets" (he made no mention of ordinary people). The steep drop in stocks since passage of the ill-fated debt deal indicates that even markets understand the disastrous consequences of what has just occurred.

By turning our democracy into a game of high-stakes poker, Congressional Republicans—with the support of the President of the United States, 95 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 45 Democrats in the U.S. Senate—not only pushed through draconian austerity measures that will fall like a ton of bricks on our struggling economy, they managed to twist the terms of debate toward achieving their long-standing goal to "shrink government" by severely reducing or eliminating social programs that are vital to the health and economic well being of millions of middle class and low-income families.

Since its passage, the President and his representatives have incorrectly claimed that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would be protected as a result of the deal. The outcome is likely to be quite different. The Rube Goldberg-style debt deal included $917 billion in across-the-board spending caps and the authorization of a "super committee" that has been tasked with coming up with up to $1.5 trillion in additional spending cuts—including the possibility of "reforming" entitlement programs, which by definition include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

If the recommendations of this super committee fail to pass the House and Senate, a trigger kicks in to establish automatic cuts; half of which are supposed to come from the defense budget and the other half of which are supposed to come from the rest of the budget—including education, health, and other important social programs.

In short, the debt deal has been structured to create a chaotic game of Survivor in which self-interested advocates of all persuasions will be vying to vote each other's issues or programs off the island.

Given the hand that's been dealt, how do progressive constituencies who care about the well being of the majority of Americans play the game to win? Progressive groups often work in "issue silos" in which they focus on advancing their own, often interconnected, programs and interests. However, disunity is not a winning strategy. The only way that progressives can gain the upper hand is by bridging issue silos to create a united front committed to protecting and advancing the commonwealth.

Social Security provides a good example of how this "commonwealth strategy" could work. By and large, education and environmental advocates (for example) have had little to no interest in Social Security policy and vice versa. However, for purely ideological reasons Social Security will be a primary target of the super committee even though it, by law, contributes not one dime to the national debt. This means that previously unaligned, yet natural, allies must work to ensure that members of the super committee arrive at a progressive solution for strengthening Social Security for the next 75 years. If the super committee fails to adopt progressive Social Security solutions, income security interest groups will likely fight to kill any super committee deal, which would trigger across the board cuts to education, environmental, and other vital programs.

The complexities of this process cannot be understated. Already poised to press their strategic advantage, Congressional Republicans are promising to appoint only anti-tax champions to the super committee in an effort to guarantee that the pain of debt reduction is born entirely by average workers and poor people. If the Democratic Party still stands in support of these constituencies, it is vital that their appointees to the super committee have a strong track record of advancing the interests of working class Americans.

It is important to remember that New Deal and Great Society programs have contributed to the security and advancement of millions of Americans—from the very young to the very old and everyone in between. Because the stakes are so high, there can be no glory in appeasing the intransigence of political defenders of the wealthy elite.

We are now at ground zero in the battle for the future of America. If advocates for the masses of Americans who depend on these programs lose this battle, even the super rich will not be able escape the resulting social chaos.

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore is President and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a social change strategy firm based in Washington, DC, and Founder of GlobalPolicy.TV—a web platform for diverse thought leaders.

Firm gives $1 million to pro-Romney group, then dissolves

2011-08-04T14:25:00.001-05:00

Records offer no clues who was behind mystery company that donated to 'super PAC'

How am I, a simple voter limited by the FEC to $2500 per election per candidate, supposed to compete with someone who has enough money to setup a shell company, make a huge anonymous donation to a Super PAC for a candidate, and then dissolve the company and disappear.

I'm certain that Founding Fathers would not have approved, which just goes to show that Republicans only invoke the Founding Fathers when it suits their purposes using their own twisted interpretations.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44011308/

I've got mine --- sucks to be you.

2011-08-04T12:44:00.002-05:00

I think we've heard this song before.

"Millionaires paid an average tax rate of 22.4 percent in 2009, down by a quarter since 1995, when they paid an average of 30.4 percent."

"And it was a super-boon to mega-millionaires and billionaires. IRS data show that the tax rates of the richest 400 Americans declined from 29.9 percent in 1995 to 18.1 percent in 2008, largely because that exclusive group derives two-thirds of its income from capital gains."

"Despite the fact that their taxes were higher, the 1990s were also a pretty good time for millionaires. The after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of the country grew by 77 percent in real terms during that decade—and it's now double what it was in 1996."

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/millionaire_tax_rates.html

How the U.S. Got $14 Trillion in Debt and Who Are the Creditors

2011-08-04T10:44:00.002-05:00

Obama? Not so much. Ronnie Raygun was responsible for almost as much and he didn't do any stimulus spending on his watch. And it was NOT George the First.

Miss me yet?

http://cdn.crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2011/07/nyt_debt_by_prez_lg.jpg

Fox Flies Drones?

2011-08-04T09:58:00.001-05:00

Yes, and they may be taking pictures of you sunbathing in the backyard.

Is it legal? Likely no.

Remember that this is the parent corporation of "News of the Word" recently shutdown in the U.K. For hacking into peoples phones.

Uncle Rupert, you are ruining the Republican Brand!

"The News Corp's The Daily has a drone that it's sent out a few times, as noted by The Observer. After The Daily broadcast some incredible footage of Alabama after it was devastated by storms, UAS Vision reported that The Daily owns a MicroDrone MD4-1000. The Daily sent it out again in June to bring back video from Minot, North Dakota after intense flooding there. (Total non-sequitur: Drones can hack cell phones now, you know.)"

http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/08/02/faa-looks-into-news-corps-daily-drone-raising-questions-about-who-gets-to-fly-drones-in-the-u-s/

Wrong and Right, by Dr. Krugman

2011-08-04T09:42:00.001-05:00

On point, as usual.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/wrong-and-right/

Conservative Trash Robert Byrd While His Body is Still Warm

2010-06-28T15:36:00.000-05:00

Conservatives Trash Robert Byrd While His Body is Still Warm

As always, the right remains a paragon of class.

Andrew Sullivan:

Speak no ill of the dead? Well, let me simply say that the racist, populist, larcenous bigot of a Senator – a man who robbed the American tax-payer to pave his state with baubles and bribes – is not going to be much mourned in these parts.

Confederate Yankee:

Off to that great Klavern in the sky. Well “in the sky” might be a little too optimistic.

Reason [sic]:

As the encomia mount like rotting, fly-buzzed piles of the pork-barrel spending he so systematically shoveled back to his West Virginia home, let’s not forget the late Sen. Robert Byrd’s most undeniable legacy: Undermining belief in politicians as little more than self-serving glad-handers on the hunt for more and more taxpayer money for their constituents.

Big Journalism:

Let’s just be fair. If an association with a Democrat terror outfit is an obvious disqualifier for one, it should be for everyone.

American Power:

The man should have retired decades ago, along with the hatred with which he represented.

Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds:

…keep a list of hagiographers in the press who don’t mention Byrd’s Klan connection.

Powertools:

Before his death early this morning at the age of 92, I placed the legendary West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd in the category of “only the wrong survive” along with Fidel Castro and Pete Seeger.

Robert Stacy McCain:

He just became the best kind of Democrat, joining the sainted ranks of those who can no longer demagogue and pander their way to power, who no longer tax honest people into poverty so that their less industrious neighbors can be bribed with “free” government giveaways, and about whom even Republicans feel compelled to say nice things.

If this post seems familiar, it’s because these assholes ran the exactly the same playbook against Ted Kennedy.

Republicans are Undercutting National Economic Recovery -- and Dems Need to Say So 24/7

2010-06-27T21:50:00.000-05:00

Republicans are Undercutting National Economic Recovery -- and Dems Need to Say So 24/7

By Theda Skocpol - June 24, 2010, 12:18PM

The same old story happens again and again. Dems in the House pass reasonable legislation, and Senate Dems dicker with centrists and Republicans over "compromises," weakening the legislation step by step over many weeks, only to find zero Republican support in the end.

The public has no idea what is going on, and just blames Democrats, who appear to be in charge in DC. Now it is happening gain with vital public spending for national economy recovery -- state aid, unemployment relief, and adjustments in taxes and Medicare payments. This legislation is not just important to this or that group. It matters for keeping any semblance of national economic growth going, for creating and saving hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The President, Congressional leaders, and Democrats of all stripes should be yelling day in, day out, that REPUBLICANS ARE SABOTAGING NATIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY. AND PREVENTING JOB GROWTH, JUST FOR POLITICAL ADVANTAGE. That should be the message all the time, led by the President. Stop the murky compromises and the whining about "helping the unemployed." Stop pretending this is about the deficit -- nothing will hurt the deficit more than delayed economic growth. Say what it happening in terms of the national interest.

Republicans are not "compassionate" toward the unemployed, complain Democrats and bloggers. Sorry, folks, that is not what is happening here.

Republicans have figured out that if they undercut economic recovery and increase unemployment rates, they will gain in the 2010 elections -- and probably have a much better shot in 2012. They want to repeat the old cycle: Republicans undercut the economy and run up debt to pay for reckless wars and upper class tax cuts, then hand the mess to Democrats just long enough for them to take a few small steps and get the blame, then Republicans get back in office as the economy recovers. Repeat same recipe after that. It works! So why should they stop doing it?

Democrats, led by the White House, are not handling this strategy well at all. Trying to pretend this is a reasonable argument about the deficit, or that it is about "compassion" for the unemployed, is nuts. Republicans may or may not care about unemployed people, most of whom will not vote for them anyway, but Republican leaders know what they are doing strategically: slow-walking economic growth until they get back into office.

President Obama and the Democrats need to seize the mantle of the national interest in ROBUST ECONOMIC GROWTH. Polls show the public wants more spending for jobs and growth, that people care a lot more about jobs than about deficits. Economic growth is the best way to shrink the deficit anyway. Boldy propose steps that would actually produce jobs and growth -- and proclaim loudly and all the time that Republicans are cynically obstructing the recovery for their own political gain. Spell it out, so that even the most casually engaged American understands what the Republicans are doing with their obstruction. And stop with the wimpy language of "compassion" and the murkey efforts at backrooms "compromises" with folks (like Snowe and Collins) that have no incentive whatsoever to make a deal, anyway. They are just playing a delaying game.

The failure of Democratic leaders to own the language of national economic recovery, to visibly propose and demand bold steps to deal with a genuine economic crisis involving prolonged job loss and slow growth, will go down as the big tragedy of the early 21st century.

It is past time for President Obama to pin the tail on the Republican obstructionist elephant -- and do it loud and clear all the way to election day. So what if a few conservaDems are part of the problem, too? The real issue is 41 Senate Republicans who will not help the nation's economy recover fast, because they want political advantage. Say so.

Sam Seder

2010-06-25T08:52:00.004-05:00

That's Bullshit!

How Dick Cheney and Tom Delay Caused the Gulf Oil Spill and Made Sure BP Never Be Held Accountable

2010-06-07T16:46:00.001-05:00

From Crooks and Liars:
(or with Video and active links here: http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/how-dick-cheney-and-tom-delay-caused-gulf-o )

Does everyone remember Dick Cheney's "National Energy Task Force"? The one where meetings were held in secret, and energy policy was set by the foxes in charge of the henhouse? Yeah, I figured you might.

The Center for American Progress has connected the dots between this task force, the Bush Administration energy policies, and Tom DeLay's leadership in the House of Representatives to paint a straight line right back to Cheney & Co. I don't agree with the conclusion of "Cheney's Katrina", so how about we call it "Cheney's Oil Apocalypse" instead?

Setting the stage - May, 2001

Cheney's secret task force releases a 170-page harbinger of death under the title "National Energy Policy" (PDF). One of the pillars of their report is California's supposed energy crisis, helped along by the likes of Enron.

In Chapter Five, several recommendations for increasing domestic energy supplies are made, including:

    * The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior to consider economic incentives for environmentally sound offshore oil and gas development where warranted by specific circumstances: explore opportunities for royalty reductions, consistent with ensuring a fair return to the public where warranted for enhanced oil and gas recovery; for reduction of risk associated with production in frontier areas or deep gas formations; and for development of small fields that would otherwise be uneconomic.
    * The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior to re-examine the current federal legal and policy regime (statutes, regulations, and Executive Orders) to determine if changes are needed regarding energy-related activi- ties and the siting of energy facilities in the coastal zone and on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
    * The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior continue OCS oil and gas leasing and approval of exploration and development plans on predictable schedules.

Act One - The Administration complies

First, the SAFE Act is introduced in the House in 2001. It provides for the following (quotes from CAP post):

    * Taxpayer funds to reimburse oil companies for the costs of complying with the National Environmental Policy Act (Sec. 6234)
    * A suspension of royalties on tens of millions of barrels of oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico—especially from deepwater wells like the one now spewing into the gulf (Sec. 6202)
    * Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling—with expedited leasing, limited judicial review, and lip service to environmental concerns (Div. F, Title V)

Check off one set of recommendations, though it took Cheney and Big Oil until 2003 to get it to a conference committee. Just after the midterms, Republicans guided the bill through the House, with DeLay twisting arms as needed. With Democrats safely in the minority, the conference committee was able to exempt all oil and gas construction activities from the Clean Water Act, force BLM lease approvals within 10 days, grant unprecedented authority to the Department of Interior to fast-track permits, and allocate $2 billion for oil companies to drill in ultra deepwater areas.

A filibuster in the Senate stopped it from becoming law. Then.

Act Two - If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...

In 2004 a second legislative assault on our coastlines was mounted. This time Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) worked with DeLay to get a bill through the House with the assistance of oilman-turned-lobbyist Andrew Lundquist and Abramoff crony Stephen Griles.

CAP reports:

    One of the worst elements of what has come to be known as the "Dick Cheney energy bill" had a direct role in eliminating the kind of regulatory oversight that may have prevented the blowout of BP's Mississippi Canyon 252 well on April 20 of this year. Section 390 of the legislation dramatically expanded the circumstance under which drilling operations could forego environmental reviews and be approved almost immediately under so-called "categorical exclusions" from the National Environmental Policy Act.

There you go. Fast-track approvals by waiving environmental reviews and granting "categorical exclusions". In other words, tell the oil companies like BP that it's totally okay to ride their iron horses out to the wild coastal frontier without regard for safety or environmental damage.

Worth noting: BP liked those categorical exclusions so much they were lobbying as late as April of this year for more of them.

Other gifts to the oil industry included in the Cheney Energy Bill:

    * Permanent permit exemptions granted to all oil and gas construction activities for roads, drill pads, pipeline corridors, refineries and compressor stations required under the Clean Water Act.
    * Exempted oil companies from paying royalties on oil produced from deepwater wells.
    * Created a special exception to the Safe Drinking Water Act for the "hydraulic fracturing process". As CAP notes, this process was invented by Halliburton.
    * Mandated a federally-funded study to identify ways that legislation, regulations and local zoning laws impeded development of existing leases and unexplored oil reserves.
    * Limited states' voice with regard to projects affecting their coastlines. This also included limiting court action with respect to offshore oil development.
    * Reinstated lapsed leases due to nonpayment of royalties and rents.
    * Transferred mineral rights of national seashores to private ownership or Texas state ownership in order to allow oil companies to drill under them.

Act Three - It is finished

On August 8, 2005, George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law.

On October 22, 2007 Randall B. Luthi, Wyoming attorney, Cheney cohort and new director of MMS signed a "Finding of No New Significant Impact" (PDF) with regard to Lease Sale 206, also known as the Deepwater Horizon. This finding was the last barrier for BP to cross before plunging equipment 5000 feet under the ocean's surface, using Halliburton fracture techniques to open the well, and beginning the flow of oil which ends as an environmental and economic disaster to Gulf inhabitants. No significant impact, indeed.

Stay tuned for scenes from next year

It's unclear how the Cheney Energy Act will play out in the legal morass yet to come. What we should expect are many challenges by BP lawyers to any effort to claim damages under the Clean Water Act (given the exemptions) as well as challenges for liability beyond cleaning up the spill.

But whatever happens, dear viewers, know this: The responsible parties are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Joe Barton, and Tom DeLay.

Repeat. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Get the word out. Put the spotlight on the real villains.

The Center for American Progress has connected the dots <http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/06/prelude_cheney_katrina.html> between this task force, the Bush Administration energy policies, and Tom DeLay's leadership in the House of Representatives to paint a straight line right back to Cheney & Co. I don't agree with the conclusion of "Cheney's Katrina", so how about we call it "Cheney's Oil Apocalypse" instead?

Setting the stage - May, 2001

Cheney's secret task force releases a 170-page harbinger of death under the title "National Energy Policy <http://www.wtrg.com/EnergyReport/National-Energy-Policy.pdf> " (PDF). One of the pillars of their report is California's supposed energy crisis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis> , helped along by the likes of Enron.

In Chapter Five, several recommendations for increasing domestic energy supplies are made, including:

The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior to consider economic incentives for environmentally sound offshore oil and gas development where warranted by specific circumstances: explore opportunities for royalty reductions, consistent with ensuring a fair return to the public where warranted for enhanced oil and gas recovery; for reduction of risk associated with production in frontier areas or deep gas formations; and for development of small fields that would otherwise be uneconomic.
The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior to re-examine the current federal legal and policy regime (statutes, regulations, and Executive Orders) to determine if changes are needed regarding energy-related activi- ties and the siting of energy facilities in the coastal zone and on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior continue OCS oil and gas leasing and approval of exploration and development plans on predictable schedules.

Act One - The Administration complies

First, the SAFE Act is introduced in the House in 2001. It provides for the following (quotes from CAP post):

Taxpayer funds to reimburse oil companies for the costs of complying with the National Environmental Policy Act (Sec. 6234)
A suspension of royalties on tens of millions of barrels of oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico—especially from deepwater wells like the one now spewing into the gulf (Sec. 6202)
Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling—with expedited leasing, limited judicial review, and lip service to environmental concerns (Div. F, Title V)

Check off one set of recommendations, though it took Cheney and Big Oil until 2003 to get it to a conference committee. Just after the midterms, Republicans guided the bill through the House, with DeLay twisting arms as needed. With Democrats safely in the minority, the conference committee was able to exempt all oil and gas construction activities from the Clean Water Act, force BLM lease approvals within 10 days, grant unprecedented authority to the Department of Interior to fast-track permits, and allocate $2 billion for oil companies to drill in ultra deepwater areas.

A filibuster in the Senate stopped it from becoming law. Then.

Act Two - If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...

In 2004 a second legislative assault on our coastlines was mounted. This time Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) worked with DeLay to get a bill through the House with the assistance of oilman-turned-lobbyist Andrew Lundquist and Abramoff crony Stephen Griles <http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=4475993e-1aa3-48f2-83eb-b9b50a20f791> .

CAP reports:

One of the worst elements of what has come to be known as the "Dick Cheney energy bill" had a direct role in eliminating the kind of regulatory oversight that may have prevented the blowout of BP's Mississippi Canyon 252 well on April 20 of this year. Section 390 of the legislation dramatically expanded the circumstance under which drilling operations could forego environmental reviews and be approved almost immediately under so-called "categorical exclusions" from the National Environmental Policy Act.

There you go. Fast-track approvals by waiving environmental reviews and granting "categorical exclusions". In other words, tell the oil companies like BP that it's totally okay to ride their iron horses out to the wild coastal frontier without regard for safety or environmental damage.

Worth noting: BP liked those categorical exclusions so much they were lobbying as late as April of this year for more of them.

Other gifts to the oil industry included in the Cheney Energy Bill:

Permanent permit exemptions granted to all oil and gas construction activities for roads, drill pads, pipeline corridors, refineries and compressor stations required under the Clean Water Act.
Exempted oil companies from paying royalties on oil produced from deepwater wells.
Created a special exception to the Safe Drinking Water Act for the "hydraulic fracturing process". As CAP notes, this process was invented by Halliburton <http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/about_hal/energybill.html> .
Mandated a federally-funded study to identify ways that legislation, regulations and local zoning laws impeded development of existing leases and unexplored oil reserves.
Limited states' voice with regard to projects affecting their coastlines. This also included limiting court action with respect to offshore oil development.
Reinstated lapsed leases due to nonpayment of royalties and rents.
Transferred mineral rights of national seashores to private ownership or Texas state ownership in order to allow oil companies to drill under them.

Act Three - It is finished

On August 8, 2005, George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law.

On October 22, 2007 Randall B. Luthi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Luthi> , Wyoming attorney, Cheney cohort and new director of MMS signed a "Finding of No New Significant Impact <http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PDFs/2007/2007-059.pdf> " (PDF) with regard to Lease Sale 206, also known as the Deepwater Horizon. This finding was the last barrier for BP to cross before plunging equipment 5000 feet under the ocean's surface, using Halliburton fracture techniques to open the well, and beginning the flow of oil which ends as an environmental and economic disaster to Gulf inhabitants. No significant impact, indeed.

Stay tuned for scenes from next year

It's unclear how the Cheney Energy Act will play out in the legal morass yet to come. What we should expect are many challenges by BP lawyers to any effort to claim damages under the Clean Water Act (given the exemptions) as well as challenges for liability beyond cleaning up the spill.

But whatever happens, dear viewers, know this: The responsible parties are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Joe Barton, and Tom DeLay.

Repeat. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Get the word out. Put the spotlight on the real villains.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE REVOLUTION OF 2017

2010-06-07T13:18:00.001-05:00

THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE REVOLUTION OF 2017
L. RANDALL WRAY
WASHINGTON, 7 NOVEMBER 2017*. Yesterday Speaker of the House Dennis Kucinich was sworn in as President, replacing President Jeb Bush, who had fled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, aboard Air Force One seeking asylum in his father's well guarded compound on the grounds of the Bin Laden family's palace. Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been in a coma since August after suffering his fifteenth heart attack, was declared incompetent. President Kucinich immediately announced a wide-ranging package of policies designed to bring an end to the Great Depression, which began with the global financial crisis of 2007. He called for calm and pleaded with leaders of the Revolutionary Tea Party Army that has encircled Washington to call off the attack that had been planned for today, the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. Commandant Dick Armey said he is willing to meet for a discussion of a ceasefire so long as his militia can take their weapons home.

President Kucinich apparently ordered the Marines to invade Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan early this morning. While there were some reports of small arms fire, most of the 6000 employees were reportedly removed without struggle and are on their way to various jails and prisons in the greater New York area. CEO Timothy Geithner was captured at La Guardia, attempting to board a private jet said to be headed for Riyadh. An anonymous source claimed that Geithner complained that President Bush had left him behind after promising protection. President Kucinich announced that Geithner would be charged with fraud, racketeering, and tax evasion. The case dates back to 2012 but had been put on hold when former President Sarah Palin ordered the attorney general's office to stop its investigation of the Treasury Secretary. President Kucinich said that Goldman, the last remaining bank in America, would be nationalized. He assured depositors that the bank would reopen next Monday under management of a team of presidential appointees led by William Black. All insured deposits will be protected, but it is believed that other claims will not be honored. FBI agents have reportedly moved to seize all assets of current and former Goldman employees. Warrants for the arrest of former Treasury Secretaries Paulson, Rubin, and Summers were also issued.

President Kucinich's package of policies includes universal and comprehensive debt cancellation. Under the plan, all private debts will be declared null and void. The implications are not immediately clear since delinquency rates have already reached 95% on most categories of debt. Several economists said that the new President was only validating reality, but others argued that it gave legal protection to squatters who have refused to leave their foreclosed homes over the past decade. The global movement for the "Year of Jubilee" had been pushing for such debt relief since the crisis began.

The policy proposals, which have been dubbed "New Deal 2.0″, also include a universal job guarantee that would provide work and wages for the nation's estimated 75 million unemployed. The plan seems to follow a proposal that then-Representative Kucinich had introduced into the House in 2011. Funding for the program would be provided by Washington, but projects would be created and managed at the local level. At the time, Kucinich had argued that the program would "take workers as they are and where they are", providing a living wage to participants and useful public services and infrastructure to their communities. When asked how the government would pay for the program, Representative Kucinich had said at the time "by crediting bank accounts, of course―that's the only way a sovereign government ever spends." However, his bill had failed to get out of committee; it was revealed that large campaign contributions were subsequently made by hedge fund manager Pete Peterson to all committee members who had opposed the legislation―and although he was never accused of wrong-doing, it was long suspected that there might have been a connection.

President Kucinich also announced a new "Marshall Plan" for war-ravaged Europe, which has descended into near anarchy since the EU collapsed in late 2010. He called on the Italian Red Brigade army to end its siege of Berlin. He promised to begin an airlift of food for Europe's starving millions, to be followed by industrial products to help European nations to begin to produce for domestic consumption. He called for an end to fiscal austerity and argued that since each nation had adopted its own currency with the collapse of the euro, each now had the ability to "spend by crediting bank accounts." Hence, "whatever is technologically feasible is financially feasible."

Wall Street rallied on the news, with Nasdaq reaching a new high of nearly 250 and the Dow hitting 1150―the highest levels seen since the Great Crash of October 2011. The dollar also rose on the news, to $52 per Chinese RMB. Optimism spread to Japanese markets, with the yen remaining close to 132 per dollar.

In his statement, President Kucinich said that the long "nightmare" was coming to an end. He struck a conciliatory tone when he responded to a question about the actions of the administration of President Obama in the early years of the Great Depression, which many believe to have set the stage for the Great Crash. "Look, President Obama as well as his successors followed the advice of economists―who continually called for more fiscal austerity, much like the misguided physicians used to bleed patients to death. They were, and still are, clueless. I promise you that I will ban all economists from my administration. I will not seek, nor will I follow, advice from economists." After a decade of suffering over the course of the second Great Depression, the nation breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The President pointed to the experiences of China, India and Botswana, the only nations to escape the Great Depression. He recalled that just a decade ago, US GDP and the standard of living of the average American were many times higher than those in any of these nations. Indeed, Botswana was widely derided for its policies, which had generated hyperinflation. Yet, each of these countries had adopted a job guarantee and had developed programs that achieved full employment with wage and price stability. And while unemployment rose dramatically all around the globe, these three nations enjoyed full employment and rising living standards―indeed, all three have surpassed the US median real household income level. President Kucinich said that Botswana has offered to send advisors to help get America's fiscal and monetary policy back on track. He proclaimed that the days of misguided fiscal austerity are over, and promised to "spend whatever it takes to get our nation's workers and factories operating at full capacity."

In related news, a handful of economists have declared their support for President Kucinich's policies. Among them is former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who had recanted his belief in free market economics early in the depression. Over the years he has moved ever further to the left as he embraced reforms ranging from socialized medicine to abolition of private ownership of the means of production. While some economists have dismissed Greenspan's public statements as the rants of "a senile old man" others have noted that the statements have become remarkably cogent in contrast to the testimonies he used to provide as Chairman. An early disciple of Ayn Rand, Greenspan's recent testimonies now include obscure quotes from Marx, Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg. He has also been calling for the elimination of the Fed, arguing that monetary policy and fiscal policy should be consolidated in the Treasury Department.

*Disclaimer: Some of the events reported here have not been fact-checked**.

**Disclaimer: Actually, none of the events reported here has yet occurred, although some are quite likely.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/06/great-depression-and-revolution-of-2017/

Tea-baggers are not some new, fresh approach to citizenry

2010-03-30T09:50:00.001-05:00

Amanda at Pandagon, to the point:

Any fool could see from the outset that the teabaggers are a bunch of Fox News-addled right wing nuts that are sore losers whose anger is exacerbated by racist resentments. But the mainstream media insists on covering it like it’s an exciting, fresh shift in the political landscape. I don’t think they’re carrying Republican water on this issue, though. I think the eagerness to run with this “teabaggers are fed-up independents” narrative is stoked by a desire for novelty above all other things. But it defies common sense. You can look with your own eyes and see that the teabaggers aren’t really a collection of spring chickens. But should your eyes deceive you, then you should also note a) that the average age of Limbaugh and Fox News’ audience is past retirement age and b) that enough of them were so far out of the loop, slang-wise, that they initially called themselves “teabaggers” without realizing how that would cause a nation to titter wildly. The point here is not to bash old people, but to point out that human beings aren’t known for our willingness to change our habits and beliefs suddenly in our golden years. It happens, of course, but it’s rare enough that if you see a big group of people with an average age older than 40, you can safely assume they didn’t all just wake up to their brand-new political beliefs.

Pick your platitude: “tiger doesn’t change his stripes”, “can’t teach a old dog new tricks” (apropos), or “nut doesn’t fall far from the tree”. Amanda has it pretty nailed.

All here: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/nothing_new_about_tea_partiers/

Gary

Shorter Health Care Debate

2010-03-26T10:15:00.001-05:00

From Crooks and Liars this morning: http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/open-thread-shorter-health-care-debat

Open Thread: Shorter Health Care Debate
By Nicole Belle Thursday Mar 25, 2010 8:30pm

Courtesy of my friend Tracey, who enjoys the fine Canadian health system and wonders about all the lies told to Americans:

Democrats: "We need health care reform"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Give us a majority and we'll do it better"
Democrats: "Done, you have majority of both houses"

12 years later, health care is irrefutably worse in every respect for every single person in the United States

Democrats: "We need health care reform"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Americans are tired of partisan politics!"
Democrats: "OK, let's compromise"
Republicans: "OK, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done. Time to end debate"
Republicans: "Too liberal, we need more debate, we will filibuster to prevent you from voting"
Democrats: "OK, we'll vote--sorry guys, debate is ended. It's time to vote on the bill"
Republicans: "Too liberal, we vote no"
Democrats: "OK, it passed anyway--sorry guys."

One month later

Republicans: "Wait--wait, OK, we have less of a minority now so we can filibuster forever."
Democrats: "Sorry, the bill already passed, we need it to pass the House now"
Republicans: "But we have enough to filibuster"
Democrats: "Sorry, the bill already passed, we need it to pass the House now"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You haven't listened to our ideas! You've shut us out of this whole process!"
Democrats: "Sorry, show us your proposal"
Republicans: "Smaller government"
Democrats: "That's not very specific"
Republicans: "OK, here's our detailed proposal--It's our common-sense ideas we spent 12 years not enacting"
Democrats: "OK, we'll add a bunch more of your ideas"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You included all these back-room deals"
Democrats: "OK, we'll get rid of the back-room deals"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You're using obscure procedural tricks to eliminate the back-room deals!"
Democrats: "No, we're using reconciliation, which both parties have used dozens of times for much larger bills"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You're pressuring Congressmen to vote for your bill! Scandal!"
Democrats: "It's called 'whipping', it's been done since 1789"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Can't you see the American people don't want this?"
Democrats: "This bill is mildly unpopular (40-50%), doing nothing (your proposal) is extraordinarily unpopular (4-6%)"
Republicans: "We need to start over! We need to start over!"
Democrats: "We should really consider voting--"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Start over! Clean slate! Common-sense! America!"

This appears to be a fairly concise and accurate representation, in my mind.

Gary

Best lede in a long time

2010-02-23T12:16:00.001-06:00

One of the best ledes to an article which I've seen in a very long time:

"Look, it's almost pointless to write about how genuinely dim Tom Friedman is. It's akin to lamenting that a barn animal can't do simple arithmetic. But I have to flag [his] column , because it captures so many shibboleths inherent in his pernicious mix of stupidity and elitism: ..."

The rest of this very, very good post is at: http://www.openleft.com/diary/17508/the-stunningly-persistent-factfree-propaganda-of-tom-friedman

Gary

Is there a conservative Republican bias in The Oklahoman newspaper?

2010-02-23T11:50:00.001-06:00

Why, I'm glad you asked!

Yes. Yes there is.

Just read this: http://jamesrobertwatson.com/opubcoletter.html

The Oklahoman
Central Oklahoma is served by only one major daily newspaper. A few years ago, this was one of the worst newspapers in the country:
. . • The American Journalism Review characterized the paper as suffering from uninspired content and political bias.
. . • The Columbia Journalism Review called The Oklahoman the "Worst Newspaper in America" - citing the paper's conformance to right-wing political views.
While there has been slight improvement, there is still obvious bias inherent in The Oklahoman.

Recently, several people wrote letters to the editor (Your Views) in which they expressed support for Sarah Palin. I responded by writing my own letter to Your Views. The Editorial Writer had the ignorance and bias to challenge my opinion. I then wrote to the Editor of The Oklahoman asking for explanations to the Editorial Writer's challenge. After waiting a week and getting no response from the Editor, I wrote to the Publisher expressing my concerns about the challenges to my opinion letter and to the lack of a response from the Editor.

Jim's letter to Your Views, The Oklahoman opinion page
Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 11:08am

The responses to James Mitchell's comments (Your Views, Jan. 20) overlooked a significant fact about Sarah Palin: She took an oath of office and committed to serve as the Governor of Alaska. However, when she realized that it would be more fun to write a book, travel the country, and go on TV; she quit. She defied her commitment and responsibility in favor of becoming a celebrity. Why would any thinking American want a president or vice-president who might quit when she sees something else that would be more fun? We need someone who has the integrity, maturity, and intelligence to honor commitments.
Jim Watson

Editorial Writer's responses to Jim's submission
From: JMcReynolds@opubco.com
Date: January 20, 2010, 12:13pm

Here are some points you need to address to support your argument:
-Obama, Biden and Clinton tooks oaths and committed to serving in Senate. They left.
-Janet Napilatano took an oath to be governor of Arizona. She left. Bill Clinton took an oath to be governor of Arkansas. He left. The list is endless and bipartisan.
-Palin didn't leave Alaska to become a celebrity. She's been a celebrity since August 2008.
-Hillary ran for a higher office, didn't win and left the Senate shortly thereafter when an opportunity came her way. Palin ran for a higher office, didn't win and left the governorship when an opportunity came her way.

Your Views is an edited forum. All letters that are published are edited, and submitted letters are scrutinized before publication. My response was to point out a problem with your logic in singling out Palin because it's quite routine for elected officials to jump from one office to another. If I didn't question your logic and published it as written, I'm quite sure that another letter would have done so in response. Mitchell's letter and the responses to it concerned Palin's lack of qualifications for higher office so it's not logical that any of those letters would have focused on Palin leaving office before her term was up - something that many Democrats and Republicans have done over the years. Your concluding remarks in your letter would apply to any of the people I mentioned but especially Hillary because she, too, lost her bid for higher office and almost immediately left the Senate.
J.E. McReynolds, Your Views editor

There is OH SO MUCH MORE at the link above.

Enjoy the stupid known as "The Daily Disappointment".

Gary

Health Care - This, and those nested deep inside it, are just a small part of the problem

2010-01-26T16:25:00.002-06:00

I have been a Health Care Reform supporter from the beginning. Long time. Single-payer. Fascist-communist, whatever you want to call it - the Government pays. It just makes sense on so many levels, mostly in the negotiation for level of care and cost.

Here is the issue as it stands today. We are going down the whirlpool. Big Insurance is a profit making endeavor and will do whatever it takes to make money for their shareholders - health care for their policy holders is not even secondary.

Abe Sauer in "The Awl":

Real America, with Abe Sauer: If You Don't Support Health Care Reform, You Don't Support the Troops

This is a check for $20. You may click on it to see it larger. The check itself, that is, not its amount—it will still be worth just $20. What this $20 check represents to health care reform, however, is incalculable. Although maybe not for long.

This is a payment from the North Dakota Department of Human Services to a physician licensed and practicing in the state. It is payment for medical consultations for ten patients that, by the physician's estimate, accounted for about 25 hours of work time. (Those payment and time estimates do not account for the additional surgical procedures that several of the patients required.)

To render these services at the hourly rate of less than $1, this physician went to four years of medical school and did an additional four years of residency. For this work the physician was paid about $35,000 per year. The physician now carries a couple hundred thousand dollars in school debt and faces annual malpractice insurance costing tens of thousands of dollars. (Doctors elsewhere, and in other practices, pay a multiple of this.) Maintaining a staffed clinic is not cheap.

The insidiousness of the tactic at work here is not immediately evident. Politicians get heartburn when faced with cutting funding for Medicaid (or, especially, Medicare). It makes them look like scumbags. But they need to save money somewhere and they will try to do it on the backs of the most destitute and poor (who probably don't vote anyway) before proposing any tax increase at all. And a more politically expedient and villainous way to cut Medicare and Medicaid expenses is to allow cuts in physician reimbursement.

What this does is force medical professionals to be the bad guys. They can choose to provide services at a loss—or be assholes and choose not to. Not surprisingly, patients who could get a doctor last year but cannot this year come to see the doctor as the problem—not the underfunded program and the legislators who make it so. This scam also unnecessarily stresses doctors, especially a shrinking pool of primary care and family practice physicians, who seldom go into the profession for the money.

Adopted by Congress in 1997, the same year Cameron gave us Titanic, the Sustainable Growth Rate formula is a method for legislators to prevent Medicare and Medicaid payments from growing too quickly. The SGR formula affixes physician reimbursements to changes in the gross domestic product. As health care costs wildly outpace GDP growth, the SGR formula actually functions as a reimbursement cut.

Congress has avoided any actual cuts by repeatedly voting for extra funding. (Of course, there have been cuts in the form of cutting coverage; the cheapest reimbursement is the one you never have to make, right?) But after years of avoiding it, the SGR formula is now in debt—more than $200 billion—and dictates a 21% cut in reimbursements. This will happen in March unless Congress votes for the health care reform bill or passes a special funding override (again).

Indeed, a great deal of the American Medical Association support for reform that the Democrats so enjoy trumpeting is because of promised permanent SGR reform. In this leaner economic climate, passing this spending is tougher and has already failed once in the Senate. With a new distribution in the Senate, spurring another round of posturing over reform all over again, time is running out.

Part of what Republicans shamefully call an increase in spending in the House's health-care reform bill is actually just a canceling of the SGR cut. So this "increased spending" is basically just a market-determined funding of Medicare and Medicaid. That is important to know because one in every four Medicare patients is now having trouble finding a primary care physician.

As reimbursements shrink, fewer physicians are willing to take on new Medicare/Medicaid patients. The Mayo Clinic, that bastion of medical service held up as a model, even by the White House, of "how it can work"? It is no longer accepting a number of Medicaid and Medicare patients.

In some cases, after factoring costs, physicians are paying to provide treatment. Is any fan of market economics willing to step forward and defend such a system? Should one blame doctors for altogether stopping care for so many when it produces a loss?

Many don't care. Politicians get to deliver on pledges of "no tax increases." And poor and old people? Who gives a shit about them anyway, right? The poor ones are probably poor because of something they did (they should go get a job with health insurance, right?). Everyone wants a entitled handout! And the old ones should be lucky they get anything at all.

For those who feel or act that way, they should ask themselves: do you "support the troops"?

Health care reimbursement for military retirees and dependents of both active and retired servicemembers through Tricare, run by the Department of Defense's Military Health System, is based on the same Medicare SGR formula. Failure to change this formula either via the reform bill or through another permanent solution is fundamentally an unwillingness to provide the troops with a reliable system of health care.

Sure, call the AARP a self-interested group of fogies… just like The Military Officers Association of America, which considers the potential cuts an emergency action item.

You don't support Medicaid/Medicare SRG reform via the House health care reform bill or through other permanent spending increases? Then you don't support the military.

Of those ten patients mentioned above, for which the physician received that check for $25, sure enough, one of them was military. And the North Dakota physician did not receive the check just by itself. It was accompanied by a letter that said that, effective Jan 1, 2010:

"ND Medicaid will no longer allow/reimburse physicians (MD/DO) and other non-physician practitioners for outpatient and inpatient consultations."

So from here on out, that $1 per hour rate of patient care, if considered a "consultation," will now be reimbursed at the rate of $0.

"Ethically I'd feel terrible to drop them," the doctor said. "I'd probably take as many as possible. But I would still need to pay my bills. There are costs. I can't treat them from a tent on my lawn."

All of this at The Awl

Republicans send out faux Census document/fund-raiser

2010-01-26T13:53:00.003-06:00

How low will they stoop? Well you underestimated today's Republican Party:

This can't be legal, can it, impersonating a federal document that all Americans are mandated to fill out?

The Republican Party is seeking input and money from GOP voters - seemingly under the guise of the U.S. Census Bureau.

"Strengthening our Party for the 2010 elections is going to take a massive grass-roots effort all across America. That is why I have authorized a Census to be conducted of every Congressional District in the country," GOP Chairman Michael Steele says in a letter mailed nationwide.

The letter was sent in plain white envelopes marked "Do Not Destroy, Official Document." Labeled "2010 Congressional District Census," the letter uses a capital "C," the same as the Census Bureau. It also includes a "Census Tracking Code."

The letter makes a plea for money and accompanies a form asking voters to identify their political leanings and issues important to them. There are no disclaimers that participation in the GOP effort is voluntary; participation in the government census is required by law. Failure to participate carries a $5,000 fine, though it is rarely enforced.

The GOP, of course, deny that their fundraiser was intended to mislead anyone. But it's laughable, at best, with their hugely partisan leading questions ("Do you think the record trillion dollar federal deficit the Democrats are creating with their out-of-control spending is going to have disastrous consequences for our nation?") and the mimicking of the Census form (copy courtesy of the Politico), who are they trying to kid? Some Republican operative emailed Ben Smith at the Politico and unabashedly admitted it was intentionally misleading:

A knowledgeable Republican operative emails: "Of course duping people is the point...that's one of the reasons why it works so well. The others: low per piece cost -- they drop hundreds of thousands of pieces at a time, and will likely mail millions this year. And incredible targeting."

All's fair in love and politics, eh, GOP? The Census Bureau has officially not decided what steps to take, but the US Postal Service declined to investigate.

Read the rest at CrooksandLiars: http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/gop-sends-out-fundraising-letter-look

The Left Chimes in on the "Spending Freeze"

2010-01-26T09:03:00.001-06:00

Pretty much across the board - "Dumber than a sack full of hammers." (rough paraphrase)

OpenLeft: “This is Bush-style idiocy.”
Americablog: “I guess Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson will think it’s a good idea.”
538: “…on par with John McCain’s “suspending my campaign” gaffe.”
Orange Satan: “…unalloyed idiocy.”
MyDD: “Barack Obama may as well hold up a big sign that says, “I want Democrats to lose Congress.”
Atrios: “We are ruled by idiots.”
DeLong: “…a perfect example of the fundamental unseriousness of Barack Obama and his administration.”
Digby: “We are all neo-Hooverists now.”
Yglesias: “I suspect this initiative was deliberately leaked to progressive bloggers in an effort to get denounced by the left and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction.”

Fire Dog Lake has the whole sordid story in summary: http://firedoglake.com/2010/01/26/early-morning-swim-special-mind-numblingy-stupid-spending-freeze-edition/

Gary

Coming to a Table Near You - Monsanto

2009-12-28T18:13:00.001-06:00

And you thought they just did fabric for, you know, on your back.

In the very near future, when it comes to food on your very own table, all branches of the bio-engineered food chain lead right to Monsanto:

With the seed industry, it isn't just about what size market share you have (even though Monsanto IS the Coca-Cola of the seed industry). Even more important are what traits you control. If another company wants to engineer Roundup Readiness (a trait controlled by Monsanto) into their seeds, they need to come to Monsanto begging in order to do so. As Monsanto's spent the past decade or so gobbling up smaller seed companies (see a diagram of it here) – and the traits they own – Monsanto controls an awful lot of traits, and thus an awful lot of the seed industry.

A recent AP article explains their control over the seed industry, saying:

  With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

    Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes.

Note that they say that Monsanto's traits are in 80 percent of corn. Monsanto doesn't actually sell all of that corn. I would assume that much of it is Pioneer corn (owned by DuPont), with Monsanto's traits engineered into it. The AP explains how that works:

    Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP…

    The company has used the agreements to spread its technology – giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto's genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto's genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.

While Monsanto does not sell 90% of all seeds, the article quotes an agricultural economist who believes Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of all seed genetics.

Sickeningly, there is MUCH more at: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/21159

Now, go eat your food.

Gary

Others views - The Great Global Warming Hoax

2009-12-28T18:05:00.001-06:00

Inhofe-related.

Letter to the Editor of the Newbury Daily News. Read it online yourself at: http://www.newburyportnews.com/puopinion/local_story_361213159.html

Or, just read it here.

The great global warming hoax

As I See It
Tom McCarty

December 28, 2009 12:15 am

—

I was watching Fox News the other day and the subject was the "great global warming hoax" perpetrated by those liberal scientists. I was all ears. After all, Fox Favorite Senator Inhofe said it was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." This was serious! And true!

It is a Fox Fact that there is no scientific consensus about climate change. I know because Fox Folks always tell me the truth. It is not like they would lie to me just to make money off gullible viewers. I'm sure they have a good reason not to report about that paper in the journal Science that surveyed peer review journals from 1993-2003 and found that of "928 abstracts published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 ... none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

It's obviously all part of the liberal conspiracy. Who reads "peer reviewed journals" anyway? A bunch of science geeks, that's who. They're not real people. After all, only 6 percent of scientists are Republican. It is as if reality has some liberal bias or something.

If they wanted to, my Fox Family could have pointed to all of those scientific organizations that have exposed the liberal hoax. It was just that they needed to stay away from the liberal ones that are part of the conspiracy. You know like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Society, National Research Council, NOAA, NASA, American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, American Chemical Society, Bush's own Federal Climate Change Science Program, Geological Society of London, American Association of State Climatologists, USGS, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Goddard Institute of Space Studies, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, World Meteorological Organization, American Astronomical Society, American Institute of Physics or that communist Union of Concerned Scientists.

Fox would have invited all those other recognized scientific organizations that believe in the hoax if they could have found them. It's been hard, though. Since 2007 when the Association of Petroleum Geologists joined the "so-called consensus" no one can find any scientific organizations of national or international standing that reject the basic findings of human influence on climate change. They are all part of the hoax now. It's really scary, like they're taking over the world or something, but there are still lots of political organizations and a bunch of home-built Web sites that real experts have built to get the real truth out.

Anyway, science isn't all about "recognized scientific organizations"; there are real scientists out there who believe in the hoax and some of them even believe that 5078 years ago the world was created in seven days (six not including the weekend). Just don't have Beck or one of those other Fox science experts invite any those geeks who signed the petition. You know that petition signed by so-called science experts like 52 Nobel Laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, 195 members of the National Academies and 11,885 other scientists. They would only try to confuse us and make us think that Fox was putting on the hoax, not them. Oh boy, that would be confusing.

These are the same hoaxers who say that 2009 is the fifth warmest year on record. They would know better if they just listened to Sean Hannity who told all us Fox Fanatics that 2009 "is the coldest year on record." Who would you trust a real journalist or some science geeks with a bunch of thermometers sticking out of their pockets? Hannity, of course. He didn't have to go to college because he's self-educated, not like those science award guys who read a bunch of books.

And another thing: Fox Fighters, who lead all the great moral battles of our day like the War on Christmas, have told me that climate change doesn't have any moral consequence. God forbid, and we know the God of Fox News forbids a lot, that the Fox "do nothing" approach might end up in the deaths of millions from drought, sea level rising, economic chaos and famine. Whew, that would be really embarrassing when us Fox Christians got to the Pearly Gates. Not that it really matters. If we weigh millions of deaths against a tax increase, the Fox path is clear. Taxes are morally wrong. Anyway, Limbaugh says they might not all die and they're foreigners.

¬¢¬¢¬¢

Tom McCarty lives in Newburyport.

Mitch McConnell's mouth moves, bullsh** falls out - Part Two

2009-12-28T17:56:00.001-06:00

More from our old friend and dissembler, Mitch McConnell:

But it was Mitch McConnell, who along with his lieutenants Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) backed President Bush's Medicare giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry, who turned to misdirection to explain it all away to ABC's Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: Senator, you voted for that Medicare prescription drug benefit, which some say will cost $1 trillion over 10 years and was not offset by revenue or spending cuts.

MCCONNELL: Well, the first thing, you should notice that it came in 30 percent underbudget because of the competitive mechanisms that are involving in extending a prescription drug benefit to seniors. The Democrats criticized it at the time because it was not generous enough. And look, they have gone far beyond any deficit spending discretions -- indiscretions that Republicans might have had. In their first year alone, they ran the deficit up more than the last four years of the Bush administration combined.

As an act of political fraud, McConnell's statement was impressive, if only because of the off-the-charts ratio of deceptions delivered per word spoken. For starters, while this year's projected $1.4 trillion deficit dwarfs the figures from Bush's tenure, McConnell conveniently omitted mentioning that the budget Barack Obama inherited was already $1.2 trillion in the red when he took office in January. But more cynical still is McConnell's whitewashing of the scandal regarding the original estimate of the cost of Medicare drug plan, a forecast the Bush White House withheld from Congress in order to secure its passage.

Mitch is a serial liar. Let's just call it as it is. There are two sad stories which go with that. The first sad story is that there are those who don't pay enough attention to know that he is lying. The second, and worse, are those who do know, yet support this lying sack anyway.

Read it all here: http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/mcconnell-whitewashes-gop-medicare-hypocrisy

Gary

Mitch McConnell's mouth moves, usual Bullsh** falls out

2009-12-27T14:40:00.001-06:00

Via FDL:

Watch Mitch McConnell on "This Week" say with a straight face that the GOP was fiscally responsible during the Bush/Cheney years, that they valiantly kept those libruls in check on Medicare Part D, and that the country really didn't have any serious debt problems until that reckless Obama came to town.

Which is of course, bullshit.

Pictures, data, and video at: http://firedoglake.com/2009/12/27/mitch-mcconnell-republicans-arent-responsible-for-record-deficit/

Gary

President Lieberman calls for pre-emptive strike on Yemen

2009-12-27T11:49:00.001-06:00

"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war," Lieberman said, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday". "That's the danger we face."

It is my faint hope that the good citizens of Connecticut will rise up and remove President Lieberman during the next election, at the latest.

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/12/27/aint-nothin-wrong-with-yemen-an-invasion-cant-solve-right/

Gary

Wingnuts right the best material

2009-12-27T11:45:00.001-06:00

"She also explains that members of Congress are sullying "God's holiday for the birth of his son" and that she opposes the bill so fiercely because its death panel provisions will unleash a "genocide"on seniors."

Leno and Dave can just go ahead an layoff their staffs.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/c-span-caller-im-so-disappointed-i-have-ta

Gary

Tea Partier Calls C-SPAN, Worried His Prayers For Byrd To Die Got Inhofe Instead

2009-12-23T12:38:00.001-06:00

We couldn't be this lucky.

This is what "right-wing, evangelical Christianity" (in quotes, because it is right-wing, but NOT Christianity) has come to:

"Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn's instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn't show up at the vote the other night," the caller said.

"How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?" he continued, his voice breaking.

All can be read here and includes video at this link: http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/tea-partier-calls-c-span-worried-his-prayers-for-byrd-to-die-got-inhofe-instead.php

And for the record, Coburn is a tool as well.

Gary

Farewell to another decade of "liberal media bias"

2009-12-22T11:45:00.001-06:00

I'm not going to tell you who posted this or give the link until the end. I don't want you to run-off and declare this bogus from the start. It's not bogus – it IS true. Long ago the stake should have been driven through the heart of this beast, but as long as the "media" plays the fool of the right wing noise machine, it will ever be thus.

Read it to the end.

Link at the end with all the hyperlinks included there for reference.

It might seem futile to try to select just two quotes from the previous decade and single them out as bookends to illustrate how the political press so often malfunctioned over the last 10 years. But if pressed, I know which duo I'd nominate in hopes of highlighting the absurdity behind the never-ending right-wing claim about supposed "liberal media bias."

Y'know, the same "liberal media" that over the previous decade unleashed its venom on Al Gore, morphed into George Bush's lapdog cheerleaders, and created unfair double standards for covering the new Democratic president, Barack Obama.

The first quote I'd nominate actually comes from very late 1999, but the implication was pure 2000 and the decade that followed. The passage appeared in a Time report about the unfolding Democratic primary battle and came just as the Beltway press was unveiling its unapologetic War on Gore, as The Daily Howler might put it.

The orgy of resentment that erupted toward Gore during the 2000 campaign season was likely unprecedented in American politics, as media elites did very little to hide their disdain for Gore. For years, they mocked him, bad-mouthed him, and made up nasty stories about him. (Hint: Inventing the Internet.) Acting as a conduit for the RNC, the press actively tried to delegitimize the Democratic Party nominee for president. And the chronically caustic and unfair press coverage cost Gore the election in the historically close 2000 campaign.

Which brings me to Quote of the Decade No. 1, courtesy Time's Eric Pooley and his New Hampshire primary dispatch: [emphasis added]:

    [T]he 300 media types watching in the press room at Dartmouth were, to use the appropriate technical term, totally grossed out by it. Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd.

If readers needed confirmation regarding the open contempt for Gore, blogger Mickey Kaus soon traveled to New Hampshire and announced the consensus among journalists: "They hate Gore. They really do think he's a liar. And a phony."

My second Quote of the Decade nominee arrived 110 months later and via NBC's Chuck Todd. It was uncorked inside the new Obama White House press room, on January 23, 2009. The topic on the table was the administration's proposed economic stimulus package and whether the White House, which was hoping for a bipartisan effort on the legislation, would be disappointed if the bill passed with little or no Republican support. And that's when Todd asked Robert Gibbs the following:

    Would [the President] veto a bill if it didn't have Republican support?

That's right. Just days into the new presidency, Todd wanted to know if Obama would go ahead and take the unprecedented action of vetoing his own legislation designed to immediately jump-start the faltering economy because not enough members of the opposition party supported the stimulus bill.

If nothing else, Todd's absurd query highlighted the unheard-of double standard the press constructed for the new Democratic president. Namely, when addressing the issue of bipartisanship (i.e. "involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties") the press decided to hold only one of the political parties accountable: the Democrats. Bipartisanship was now something Democrats had to bring to fruition.

My bookend quotes capture how the "liberal" Beltway press corps changed the rules to cover Gore at the beginning of the decade and Obama at the end of it. And how did the same press corps spend the years between Gore and Obama? Lying down for Bush, of course. Having developed rabbit ears for the right-wing taunt of "liberal media bias," reporters, editors, producers, and pundits seemed determined during the Bush years to prove how un-liberal they really were. In the process, the press abandoned its traditional watchdog role and morphed instead into lapdogs.

Specifics? Almost too many to count. But who can forget the defining prime-time press conference Bush held in the East Room of the White House just weeks before the 2003 Iraq invasion began and how that press conference came to symbolize the media's lapdog approach? (Not to mention the media's monumental failure during the run-up to the Iraq invasion.)

Laying out the reasons for war, Bush that night mentioned Al Qaeda and the September 11 terrorist attacks 13 times, yet not a single journalist challenged that implied (and false) connection. And during the Q&A session, nobody bothered to ask Bush about the elusive Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind whom Bush had vowed to capture. Follow-up questions were nonexistent, which only encouraged Bush to give answers to questions he was not asked.

And then it got really bad.

At one point while making his way through the press questioners, Bush awkwardly referred to a list of reporters whom he was instructed to call on. "This is ... scripted," he joked. The press laughed. But Bush meant it literally. Bush had been given a cheat sheet that instructed him not to call on reporters from some prominent outlets such as Time, Newsweek, USA Today, or The Washington Post. Yet even after Bush announced the event was "scripted," reporters, either embarrassed for Bush or embarrassed for themselves, continued to play the part of eager participants at a spontaneous news conference, shooting their hands up in the air in hopes of getting Bush's attention. For TV viewers it certainly looked like an actual press event.

More? Prior to the start of the news conference, White House handlers, in a highly unusual move, marched veteran reporters to their seats in the East Room, two by two, like schoolchildren being led onto the stage for the annual holiday pageant.

Bonus: Following the White House performance, MSNBC host Chris Matthews, in order to get a wide array of opinion, invited on a pro-war Republican senator (Saxby Chambliss, from Georgia), a pro-war former secretary of state (Lawrence Eagleburger), a pro-war retired Army general (Montgomery Meigs), a pro-war retired Air Force general (Buster Glosson), a pro-war Republican pollster (Frank Luntz), as well as, for the sake of balance, somebody who, 25 years earlier, once worked in Jimmy Carter's White House and who today often sides with Republicans (Pat Caddell).

Meanwhile, how did that ferociously liberal newspaper from heart of Manhattan deal with the run-up to war? "[A]ccording to half a dozen sources within the Times, [editor Howell] Raines wanted to prove once and for all that he wasn't editing the paper in a way that betrayed his liberal beliefs," wrote Seth Mnookin in his 2004 book Hard News. Mnookin quoted Doug Frantz, the former investigative editor of the Times, who recalled how "Howell Raines was eager to have articles that supported the war-mongering out of Washington. He discouraged pieces that were at odds with the administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged links of Al Qaeda."

And that other supposedly ferociously liberal daily, The Washington Post, how did it cover the crucial months prior to the Iraq war? Basically, the paper couldn't stop publishing pro-war editorials -- 26 in all between September 2002 and February 2003. As for its columnists and contributors, it was like a neoconservative open casting call as the Post flooded its readers with an avalanche of war cheerleaders.

The pro-war march at times seemed to fog the paper's news judgment. In September 2002, Sen. Ted Kennedy made a passionate, provocative, and newsworthy speech raising all sorts of doubts about the war. It was a speech in which the liberal senator warned against virtually every major shortfall that eventually plagued the post-invasion operation. Yet the prophetic speech garnered just one sentence -- 36 words total -- of coverage from the Post, which in 2002 printed more than a thousand articles and columns, totaling perhaps 1 million words about Iraq. But the daily only set aside 36 words for Kennedy's antiwar cry. The Post was not alone. NBC's Nightly News devoted just 32 words to Kennedy's speech, compared to 31 words on ABC's World News Tonight, and 40 words on the CBS Evening News. And on the Sunday talk shows on the weekend immediately following Kennedy's timely address, the senator's name never came up on NBC's Meet the Press, CBS' Face the Nation, or ABC's This Week.

Not surprising. A survey conducted by the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, which focused on the first two weeks of February 2003, found that of 393 people interviewed on-camera for network news reports about the war, just 17 percent of them expressed skepticism about the looming invasion. This at a time when polling showed that approximately 50 percent of Americans had doubts about the planned war. And according to figures from media analyst Andrew Tyndall, of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department. Just 8 percent of the television news reports were of independent origin.

Of course, GE-owned MSNBC was so spooked about employing an on-air liberal host who opposed Bush's ordered invasion that it reportedly fired the highly rated Phil Donahue in early 2003 after an internal memo pointed out the legendary talk show host presented "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war."

Oh, and remember the Downing Street Memo, the secret top-level British government memorandum consisting of minutes from a July 23, 2002, meeting attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair and his closest advisers? The memo revealed their impression that the Bush administration, eight months before the start of the Iraq war in 2003, had already decided to invade and that Washington seemed more concerned with justifying a war than preventing one. The implications were obvious: that President Bush lied to the American people and Congress during the run-up to the war with Iraq when he insisted over and over again that war was his administration's last option. That Bush had decided to invade Iraq in July 2002. That Bush would justify the war with a WMD argument. That the intelligence to make that case was being "fixed around the policy." That the administration didn't much care what the United Nations thought. And that few war planners were concerned with the aftermath of the war.

But boy, the "liberal" media sure ran away from that messy story.

According to TVEyes, between early May 2005 and early June of that year, the story received approximately 20 mentions on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS combined. By contrast, during the same five-week period, the same outlets found time to mention more than 250 times the oddball controversy that erupted when a photograph showing Saddam Hussein in his underwear was leaked to the British press.

In the weeks after the Times of London published the Downing Street memo on May 1, 2005, White House spokesman Scott McClellan held 19 daily briefings and fielded approximately 940 questions from reporters. Exactly two of those queries were about the Downing Street memo and the White House's reported effort to fix prewar intelligence.

But wouldn't you know that the White House press corps' collective somnambulant streak was magically cured with the arrival of Democrat Barack Obama, as reporters and pundits magically awoke from their Rip Van Winkle-like slumber? In fact, even before Obama was sworn in, portions of the press corps were busy spreading the lie that Obama's extravagant inauguration cost $100 million more than George Bush's swearing-in.

False. The costs were nearly identical.

That same inauguration week, the White House press corps greeted the new Democratic team with catcalls. "Game On! Obama's Clash With The White House Press Corps," reported The Daily Beast. And under the headline "Obama press aide gets bashed in debut," The Washington Times' Joseph Curl reported:

    Although President Obama swept into office pledging transparency and a new air of openness, the press hammered spokesman Robert Gibbs for nearly an hour over a slate of perceived secretive slights that have piled up quickly for the new administration. It wasn't pretty.

Curl reported there was much yelling and shouting from journalists inside the briefing room that day. One even "spat" a question at Gibbs. And yes, this is the same White House press corps that treated the early Bush administration with kid gloves eight years earlier. Washington Post reporter John Harris observed in 2001, "The truth is, this new president [Bush] has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton."

Yet in the same Bush-era piece, Harris went on to cheer, "[G]ood for Washington in giving a new president a break at the start."

Behold your liberal media. And what a decade in left-wing bias it was.

P.S. If I've got to squeeze in two more decade-defining "liberal media" quotes, I'd pick a Mark Halperin beauty from June 2006. Just five months before the Democrats' historic congressional victories, Halperin issued this CW warning to Democrats: "If I were them, I'd be scared to death about November's elections."

I'd also nominate this one from CBS' Dan Rather, from September 17, 2001:

    George Bush is the president. He makes the decisions. And, you know, it's just one American, wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where. And he'll make the call.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200912220005

Gary

Fair and Balanced Science

2009-12-11T11:35:00.000-06:00

Fair and Balanced Science

Joe Conason hits one out of the park today. We as a society yearn not for truth, but what we are most comfortable with. If our 'most comfortable' position is whatever fits our Political or personal fancy, then that is what WE see as truth.

Joe sez:

Evading the challenges of climate change—and the human responsibility to save the planet—is simple enough even for the laziest citizen. Pay attention only to the theories that support the comforting skepticism of the oil industry. Focus on a set of purloined emails that prove nothing except that scientists can be as unpleasant to each other as any other group of people. Get the “facts” from Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Moonie-controlled Washington Times and all the other conservative outlets that are as fair and balanced as an Exxon press release.

And be sure to ignore the mounting evidence, most notably the actual temperature studies released by the United Nations this week, that proves beyond a doubt that the earth is warming as car-bon-based industrialization spreads across the developing nations.

Click the link above and read it all.

Gary

Billed as a "Disaster Move Parody" but I think that is just being polite

2009-11-23T12:12:00.001-06:00

SNL Palin 2012 Disaster Movie Parody

How easy the path of the Broad Brush

2009-11-21T20:32:00.002-06:00

It is very easy to paint with a broad brush. Our culture wants the quick-hit, the sound-bite. They don't want to be bothered by an analysis. "Tell me if I should or should not like this concept, person, or event in one simple sentence." In many ways we Americans are becoming a culture of simpletons because of this.

With respect to what happened at Fort Hood, those who wish to find a knife/gun/bomb-vest wielding Muslim under their beds will find one. It is the easiest, simplest thing to do, especially when you have so many on the right who are cheerleading for anything to take the focus off of their morally corrupt agenda at home and abroad.

Below is an excerpt from Jeremy Walton in response to one of these knee-jerk, simplistic broad-brush attacks which appeared in the November 9th issue of Forbes Magazine:

Walton:

Here, we touch directly upon the logic of "the black box" of religion. When confronted by actions or motivations that defy explanation, the mouthpieces of secular political culture are content to attribute these actions or motivations to religion and then rush to criticize them as such. While so-called Islamist violence is a particularly frequent object of this type of black box rationality, one also encounters it in less spectacular contexts. Contemporary homophobia in the United States, for example, is typically linked to Evangelical Protestantism and Christianity more generally in public discourse, in spite of the fact that many devout Christians eschew bias based upon sexual orientation and many prominent homophobes have only marginal religious credentials. This is not to deny that some individuals do understand their own violent actions or prejudices as religiously-motivated. However, this fact does not imply that public commentators on religion should take this self-understanding at face value. This is especially the case in politically-charged times, when the attribution of individual causes too easily becomes a blanket description of entire communities and traditions.

I won't cut-and-paste Walton's entire treatise, you need to go read it yourself. His black-box analogy is unfortunately one that is publically espoused by many here in Norman-land who can look no farther than 'black and white'.

It's just not that simple.

Go read: http://www.therevealer.org/archives/main_story_003180.php

Gary

Dr. NO holds up Health Care for Veterans

2009-11-16T10:52:00.002-06:00

I get tired of the same folks who supported and rooted for a blank check on the War On Iraq telling me that they are pleased that Dr. No (Tom Coburn – Junior Senator from Oklahoma) has put a 'hold' on the Veterans Health Care bill. It is two-faced and disingenuous, at least.

H/T to Oliver Willis, this from Alan Colmes: http://www.alan.com/2009/11/15/gop-rep-tom-coburn-dr-no-stand-in-the-way-of-health-care-for-veterans/

Isn't it the Republicans who tell us they love the troops more than us anti-American liberals? But it's GOP Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, also a physician, who is obstructing a health care plan for veterans . The legislation, which has bi-partisan approval (with the exception of Coburn), would provide long-term home health care for the wounded.

The urgently needed legislation consolidates more than a dozen improvements in veterans' health care — most notably a new assistance program for family members who wind up providing lifelong home nursing to severely disabled veterans. These vital caregivers — who sacrifice careers and put huge strains on their own mental health — assume an obligation "that ultimately belongs to the government," Senator Daniel Akaka, the bill's chief sponsor, properly notes.

The measure also expands benefits for women veterans who suffered sexual trauma on duty, extends veterans' care in rural areas, tightens quality control at V.A. hospitals, and ensures that catastrophically disabled veterans will not be charged for emergency services in community hospitals.

The omnibus legislation drew unanimous committee approval. But Senator Coburn objected to quick floor passage, demanding that the five-year, $3.7 billion cost be offset with immediate budget cuts. The senator's argument rings hollow in the face of veterans' suffering and the world of deficit budgeting brought on by his party's tax cuts and zealous war investments.

But do they worry about budgets and costs when it comes time to send our treasure off to war?

G.O.P. Now stands for Grandstand, Oppose, and Pretend

2009-11-09T10:54:00.000-06:00

Ed Markey:

Markey: You know the G.O.P. used to stand for Grand Old Party. Now it stands for grandstand, oppose and pretend. They grandstand with phony claims about non-existent death panels. They oppose any real reform and with this substitute they pretend to offer a solution while really doing nothing. G.O.P.--grandstand, oppose and pretend and make no mistake about it the Republican substitute is not real reform. It does nothing to curb skyrocketing healthcare costs. It does nothing to provide real insurance coverage to millions who are now uninsured. It does nothing to stop the unfair practices of insurance companies. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Republican do-nothing substitute.

All, with video, here: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rep-ed-markey-gop-grandstand-oppose-and-pr

-30-

Paranoia Strikes Deep

2009-11-09T07:01:00.001-06:00

Paul Krugman:

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state's fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it's very bad for America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=3

Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!

2009-11-07T16:13:00.000-06:00

Paul Krugman puts facts where others put wishes.

Aha. I see that some commenters insist that I was unfair or, some insist, intellectually dishonest in my post on the fact that advanced economies actually grew faster in the era before modern finance took hold. There have been assertions that it was all about rebuilding from the war, or that the picture looks very different if you look at per capita real GDP, with some flat assertions that if you look at the numbers right growth has been better since 1980s.

Um, no.

Take the United States, which wasn't damaged in the war. Take per capita real GDP. Give hostages by taking data from 1950 to 1980, which means including the 1980 recession, but stopping at 2007, so that the current slump isn't included. Then here's what you get:

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1950 to 1980: 2.2 percent per year
Growth in per capita real GDP from 1980 to 2007: 2.0 percent per year

Oh, and if we look at real median family income instead, we get:

Growth from 1950 to 1980: 2.3 percent per year
Growth from 1980 to 2007: 0.7 percent per year

Sorry: there's no measure I can think of by which the U.S. economy has done better since 1980 than it did over an equivalent time span before 1980. It may be something you've heard, it may be something you'd like to believe, but it just didn't happen.

Post with hyperlinks here: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/reagan-reagan-reagan/

NY-23 rebukes the not-quite-resurgent Christian Right

2009-11-04T21:52:00.000-06:00

From Baptist Planet: http://baptistplanet.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/ny-23-rebukes-the-not-quite-resurgent-christian-right/

The Christian Right <http://baptistplanet.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/religious-right-will-draw-blood-tomorrow/> turned its big guns on New York's 23rd, helping annihilate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava and making Bill Owens the first Democrat to hold that congressional seat since 1871 <http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/10/palin-going-rogue-and-helping-the-democrats.html> .
Their revolt against the establishment GOP was fueled by a million dollars from the Club for Growth (out of about $3 million Doug Hoffman spent), supported by hundreds of Christian Right volunteers [1 <http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2009/11/police-called-to-ny-23-polling.html> , 2 <http://washingtonindependent.com/66249/ny-23-young-christians-for-hoffman> , 3 <http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2009/10/sensing-its-moment-the-right-d.html> ] and had muted culture war rhetoric.
As if to underline NY-23's role as a test of the Christian Right, anointed one, Conservative Party candidate Hoffman, had an enviable litany of the Right <http://www.politico.com/static/PPM110_091029_finalny23.html> endorsements:

Sarah Palin <http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=157794838434>
James Dobson <http://www.doughoffmanforcongress.com/files/dobson_letter.pdf>
Mike Huckabee <http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=2876> : Huc PAC made getting Huffman elected a top priority <http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=2877> .
Concerned Women for America PAC
Family Research Council PAC <http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/62493-family-research-council-pac-picks-hoffman-over-scozzafava>
Gary Bauer <http://news.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20091002/02oct20090600.html> , who forecast a change Americans can believe in <http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gary-bauer-expects-change-conservatives-can-believe-in-68623272.html> .
National Organization for Marriage <http://www.nationformarriage.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=omL2KeN0LzH&b=5075187&content_id=%7b1B96063C-1967-4F37-9A17-7974C557FB31%7d&notoc=1>
New York Right to Life PAC <http://www.gouverneurtimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6776:right-to-life-endorses-hoffman&catid=57:commentary&Itemid=193>
Susan B. Anthony List <http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8247411668.html>

It was undeniably a test case for the, many had hoped <http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/16/united-states-christian-right-business-oxford-analytica-politics-religion.html> , resurgent Christian Right and it just didn't take hold with voters of NY-23, although it did drive the unacceptably moderate Republican candidate to endorse Owens.
When the results came down, out-of-state supporters busied themselves spinning defeat to their advantage <http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS170442+04-Nov-2009+PRN20091104> , Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele rebuked them <http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/11/steele-throws-elbow-to-palin-pawlenty-on-ny23.html> for naively assuming they could determine the outcome in NY-23 and loser Hoffman pitifully mumbled in his concession speech:

I believe America is turning the page to a new dawn.

Casting a historic loss as a "new dawn," or accepting it as Bauer's <http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS170442+04-Nov-2009+PRN20091104> "near win," is at least arguably delusional.

The Christian Right tried to keep pace with the larger right wing drum and bugle corps, whose leaders bought RedState blogger and editor Erick Erickson's argument that the Hoffman race was <http://atlanticwire.theatlantic.com/opinions/view/opinion/In-Upstate-New-York-Conservatives-Hill-To-Die-On-1387> "a hill to die on."

Die there they did <http://baptistplanet.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/religious-right-will-draw-blood-tomorrow/> . Because believing they could thunder in among the people who live and vote in that district and use them like a set of ideological toys was consummate arrogance.

Next?

From The Great Orange Satan

2009-11-04T13:54:00.000-06:00

Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 09:32:52 PM PST

There will be much number-crunching tomorrow, but preliminary numbers (at least in Virginia) show that GOP turnout remained the same as last year, but Democratic turnout collapsed. This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:

If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary "bipartisanship", you will lose votes.
If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.
If you forget why you were elected -- health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform -- you will lose votes.

Tonight proved conclusively that we're not going to turn out just because you have a (D) next to your name, or because Obama tells us to. We'll turn out if we feel it's worth our time and effort to vote, and we'll work hard to make sure others turn out if you inspire us with bold and decisive action.

The choice is yours. Give us a reason to vote for you, or we sit home. And you aren't going to make up the margins with conservative voters. They already know exactly who they're voting for, and it ain't you.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/4/800316/-Tonights-big-lesson

Is that Minneapolis?

2009-11-03T14:56:00.001-06:00

see more Political Pictures

Don't Get Sick

2009-11-02T16:54:00.001-06:00

Alan Grayson lays it on the line.

Republican Health Care Plan is "Don't get sick".
If you do, "Die quickly".

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Blogs, Blogger Ethics, and the Federal Trade Commission

2009-10-06T13:50:00.001-05:00

I think that it is a great idea that bloggers reveal those who are paying the bills. If you are receiving money, perks, influence, or other things of value for shilling for something or someone, you should be accountable for that.

I also think that George Will should fess up to who his sources are for his vast climate knowledge. He should state clearly and plainly who those sources are. But the FTC is NOT stepping in to do that with "real journalists" because they have some magic shroud around them which protects them from revealing sources of information or even sources which may conflict with their views or opinions.

But since Will won't reveal his source, I will.

With respect to Global Warming, George Will is nothing more the megaphone for United States Senator Jim Inhofe, Oklahoma. George does not have an original thought in his head. It all comes from Inhofe, the Heritage Institute, or any one of a number of right-wing noise machines. His global warming denier stance, supported by Inhofe and Inhofe's staff is laughable, except for the fact that a large portion of the populace of this country think Will is an expert and should be listened to. They Are Rubes.

Will should at the very least acknowledge the source of his information.

Now, with respect to me and my stance on the FTC rules: I can be bought. Pay me and I'll talk about your product. Because of these rules, I'll say that yep, you paid me. But just because you paid me doesn't mean that I'll be singing from the music which you sent me. If it is crap, I'll say so.

Bidding starts at $1 million dollars.

Don't be shocked. I can be bought, but it won't be cheap and you may not like the resulting product, but I can be bought.

What? Did you think that George Will does this for free? Who do you think pays the $50K+expenses for him to speak at events?

Now, let's talk about Sarah and how much she's getting paid...

A Traitorous Assault on Our Democracy

2009-09-05T10:33:00.002-05:00

Jim Hightower. Many loathe him, but he speaks truth to power. You should read.

A Traitorous Assault on Our Democracy
September 4, 2009 <http://www.texasobserver.org/toc/september-4-2009> | Jim Hightower
In opposing Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, Republican senators loudly denounced judicial activists who would use the bench to rewrite the founders’ intent and invent new laws to advance a political agenda.

However, it is unlikely that these same champions of strict constructionism will be on their high horses again in September, when Chief Justice John Roberts and others on the corporate wing of the court will try to pervert the founders’ intent, nullify the will of the people, and radically rewrite a century of legal precedent, all to advance the political agenda of corporate power. At issue are longstanding laws that ban corporations from spending their bottomless financial resources directly on election campaigns.

Roberts, a lifelong corporate shill, hopes to get a five-member majority of the court to rule that corporations have a First Amendment right to pour unlimited sums of cash into our elections. Never mind that the founders feared and abhorred raw corporate power and deliberately wrote the Constitution as a document guaranteeing power to “We the People,” not to legal constructs that all too often promote interests directly at odds with the public’s.

In a quiet move just before the justices’ summer vacation, Roberts got the court to schedule an extraordinary September reconsideration of two major campaign finance laws that the court previously okayed as constitutional. By reversing those rulings and declaring that corporate speech is equal to human speech, corporations would be unleashed to spend billions of dollars to control all of our elections.

What the Roberts Court is up to goes way beyond judicial activism; it’s a traitorous assault on America’s democracy by corporate autocrats intent on imposing their political will through five old men in black robes.
Starbucks Disowns Itself
At last, a powerhouse competitor has challenged the market dominance of the corporate coffee colossus, Starbucks. The name of the upstart competitor? Starbucks.

Well, actually, you won’t find the corporate name on the challenger, and that’s the point. With its own sales declining as more and more caffeine consumers reject the cookie-cutter corporate climate that the coffee chain epitomizes, Starbucks is launching a new line of stores that jettisons its own brand: no Starbucks sign outside, no logos inside, and none of that generic blandness that makes each Starbucks store just like the 16,000 others in the chain.

The new shops strive to be the anti-Starbucks, with funky stylings and localized names that disguise the corporate presence behind them. The idea, says Starbucks’ senior vice president of global design, is to give the stores “a community personality.”

This is, of course, a deliberate consumer fraud, but it’s also so clumsy and transparent that it’s doomed to be an embarrassing failure. Start with the fact that genuine coffee shops already have “a community personality” and one thing none of them have is a senior vice president of global design.

Corporate chains can’t do “community,” can’t do “funky,” can’t do “cool.” One clue into Starbucks’ inherent lack of cool came last year when it surreptitiously deployed a gaggle of market researchers into local Seattle coffee shops to gather intelligence on what constitutes “community personality.” The spies didn’t exactly fit in on each of their forays; they arrived as a group, poked around and jotted notes in folders labeled, “Observation.” Then they’d leave without even buying a single cup of coffee!

Starbucks can hide its name, but its corporate nature can’t be shed quite as easily.

Five Symptoms of Republican Schizophrenia

2009-08-31T14:35:00.002-05:00

From Crooks and Liars, this just about sums up the current state of civic awareness of the Republican Party.

ie: Morons (note that I spelled that correctly...)

The Mayo Clinic, the world famous institution cited by all sides in the contentious health care debate, defines schizophrenia as a serious brain disorder "in which reality is interpreted abnormally" resulting in "hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking and behavior." Apparently, that affliction is now running rampant among supporters of the Republican Party. As recent polling about conservative beliefs regarding Medicare, taxes, supposed "death panels," President Obama's citizenship and more shows, the crisis of Republican schizophrenia has reached epidemic proportions.
Here, then, are the five symptoms of incurable Republican schizophrenia:

(If you exhibit one or more of these warning signs, see your physician immediately. If you don't have health insurance - and if your state voted Republican, you're much more likely not to - Democrats will try to provide it for you.)

1. "Keep Government Out of Medicare." In July, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) described an angry constituent who confronted him at a South Carolina town hall meeting, "keep your government hands off my Medicare." Despite his best efforts to explain that Medicare is a government program, the voter, Inglis lamented, "wasn't having any of it."

But as new data from Public Policy Polling revealed, that same cognitive failure is now far more widespread than swine flu. While 39% of all Americans responded that the government should "stay out of Medicare," 59% of self-identified conservatives and 62% of McCain voters hold that oxymoronic view.

2. "Barack Obama is a Muslim." An April survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 11% of Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, a figure largely unchanged since its polling started in March 2008. Yet 17% of Republicans and 19% of white evangelicals (74% of whom voted for John McCain) insist the President is an adherent of Islam, despite his repeated pronouncements and decades of church attendance to the contrary.

3. "Barack Obama Was Not Born in the United States." This contagion is running rampant among the ranks of Republicans. And even with repeated treatments of birth certificates and Hawaiian newspaper announcements from 1961, there is apparently no cure.

A DailyKos/Research 2000 poll found that a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. To be sure, this is a Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and the only part of the country to increase its Republican presidential vote in 2008. This week's PPP survey only confirmed the chronic birtherism plaguing the Republican Party:

Only 62% of respondents reported believing that Obama was born in the United States. 10% thought he was born in Indonesia, 7% thought he was born in Kenya, 1% thought he was born in the Philippines, and 20% weren't sure. Among Republicans 44% think he was not born here while just 36% believe that he was.

(In a promising development, only 10% of respondents weren't sure if Hawaii is part of the United States. On this score, conservatives were only slightly more confused than liberals and moderates.)

4. "Government Death Panels Will Euthanize My Grandma." Sadly, the Republicans' Birther and Deather psychoses represent a cradle-to-grave illness.

Despite the vaccinations administered by PolitiFact, ABC News, the New York Times and countless other care-givers, Republicans persist in their virulent health care death panel delusions. This out-of-control CTD (conservative transmitted disease) has spread like wildfire, thanks to vectors like Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. (Even a Republican like Senator Chuck Grassley, previously diagnosed by President Obama as sane, came down with the deather flu.)

An NBC poll this week quantified the deather madness: a staggering 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly. (Majorities also wrongly believe that reform proposals on the table would constitute a government "takeover" of the health care system, one which would cover illegal aliens.)

As MSNBC noted, viewers of Fox News - a strong predictor of Republican allegiance - were overwhelmingly afflicted by this health care dementia:

In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.

5. "President Obama Raised Taxes on Working People." The Republicans' profound cognitive disorders are not limited to their hallucinations about Barack Obama's birth or the health care imbroglio. As the Tea Party movement shows, furious right-wing zealots are outraged by no taxation with representation.

As promised, Barack Obama in the stimulus package delivered on his pledge of tax relief for 95% of American households. Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) didn't only jump start gross domestic product and refill empty state coffers in the second quarter of 2009. As Nate Silver thoroughly documented, "Obama has cut taxes for 98.6% of working households."

Nevertheless, frothing at the mouth Tea Baggers spouting Republican Tax Day lies took to the streets not to thank the President, but to blame him for the tax cuts they received. While Andrew Sullivan described their unreasoning mania as "adolescent, unserious hysteria," the Daily Show's Jon Stewart diagnosed their disorder:

"I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing."

Back in April, I appropriated Daniel Patrick Moynihan's classic statement to conclude that with their rag-tag band of revolutionaries, secessionists and agitators for violence, Republicans were "defining political deviancy down." Sadly, the delusional and the deviant are now descending on town hall meetings with guns. The Republican schizophrenics are no longer just a danger to themselves.

UPDATE: Newsweek adds the "Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate" to its list of "Seven Falsehoods About Health Care." Meanwhile, the RNC added to a new pathology, suggesting in a poll that "GOP voters may be discriminated against for medical treatment" under a Democratic health care plan.

Eulogies for the Last Lion

2009-08-26T23:09:00.002-05:00

Digby chimes in rounding up some of the best eulogies for Ted Kennedy today.

The Eulogies

by digby

There are some really great eulogies for EMK all over the internet and I hope you take the time to read as many of them as you can. Liberal heroes don't come along every day and it's immensely gratifying to read all these thoughts from people who knew him and lived through his time.

For instance, via Eric Alterman, I came across this wonderful piece from a few years back by the great Charles Pierce:

If his name were Edward Moore . . .

He would not have served so long, if he'd served at all. He might not have served with more than 350 other senators. He would not have served with all three men - Everett Dirksen, Richard Russell, and Philip Hart - after whom the Senate office buildings are named. He would not have had his first real fight over the poll tax and his most recent one over going to war in Iraq. None of this would have happened if his name were Edward Moore.

If his name were Edward Moore . . .

If his name were Edward Moore, Robert Bork might be on the Supreme Court today. Robert Dole might have been elected president of the United States. There might still be a draft. There would not have been the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which overturned seven Supreme Court decisions that Kennedy saw as rolling back the gains of the civil rights movement; the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, the most
wide-ranging civil rights bill since the original ones in the 1960s; the Kennedy-Kassebaum Bill of 1996, which allows "portability" in health care coverage; or any one of the 35 other initiatives - large and small, on everything from Medicare to the minimum wage to immigration reform - that Kennedy, in opposition and in the minority, managed to cajole and finesse through the Senate between 1996 and
1998, masterfully defusing the Gingrich Revolution and maneuvering Dole into such complete political incoherence that Bill Clinton won reelection in a walk. None of this would have happened, if his name were Edward Moore.

Go through his speeches of just the last decade and you'll find that he was on the right side every time, making the argument. God knows there were few enough who did.

Update: I just got an email from Bold Progressives with this mesaage, which I think is great:

Senator Kennedy called health care reform "the cause of my life." We've seen comments from across the country saying the Senate should pass the strong reform bill that came out of Kennedy's health committee -- which includes the public health insurance option -- and name it "The Kennedy Bill" in his honor.
We agree. So we created a petition to the Senate that we'll deliver Monday -- can you sign it?

PETITION: "Ted Kennedy was a courageous champion for health care reform his entire life. In his honor, name the reform bill that passed Kennedy's health committee 'The Kennedy Bill' -- then pass it, and nothing less, through the Senate."

Please click here to add your name.

In less than an hour, over 1,000 people have already signed! All signatures will be hand-delivered to the offices of Harry Reid and other key senators in Washington DC next Monday, August 31 -- just as the Senate is returning from August recess.

Senators will soon choose between Kennedy's bill and another being written by conservative Democrats and Republicans, which likely will not include a public option. Let's honor Kennedy's memory by naming his own bill after him -- and telling his Senate colleagues it would be a disgrace to vote against it or to water it down.

Can you join us? Click here to add your name.
Then, please forward this email to others.

Wolcott on Fox's scramble to save Beck's Ass

2009-08-26T22:55:00.001-05:00

James Wolcott is Da Bomb. He lets fly with a combination that would’ve made Joe Louis proud.

Beck and Call

Glenn Beck must have sent out a distress call because his superhero friends have flown into action.

First, Sarah Palin, who appears to have vanished into a spa or perhaps is having electrodes attached for a Bride of Frankenstein unveiling, howdies all her Facebook fans to give Glenn's show a watch this week as he documents the Obama administration's secret termite cadre of communist infiltration.

Then, on today's show, Beck conducts a phone interview with Rush Limbaugh, a major get. Limbaugh doesn't need publicity, grants few interviews, and doesn't like to part with his free time--it cuts into his golf game. But here he was, giving Beck the benefit of his kingly perspective for more than one segment.

And after Rush appeared Karl Rove, who decried the centralization of power taking place in the Obama White House while managing to keep a straight face.

Palin, Rush, Rove--for the extra-crispy conservative wing of the Republican Party, that's as big a trifecta as one can hit.

What does this tell us?

I don't believe that the Milf, the Mouth, and the Mayberry Machiavelli are rallying around Glenn Beck because they're truly concerned about Mark Lloyd, the FCC's new "diversity czar" and the specter of a revived Fairness Doctrine. As menacing specters go, that's hardly an imminent crisis that requires Rush postponing his tee time.

No, I suspect that what's really going on is that the boycott of Beck by Color of Change has really rattled their chassis. No, it hasn't cut into Fox News's ad revenues yet, but if the boycott sticks, it's going to make Beck's show look like a cable-access lemonade stand.

Beck’s strong ratings — even at 5 p.m. EDT he often outdraws whatever CNN and MSNBC show in prime-time — make it unlikely Beck is going anywhere even as the list of advertisers avoiding him approaches three dozen.

But it could mean advertising time becomes cheaper on his show than such a large audience would normally command. Some of his show’s advertisers last week included a male enhancement pill, a law firm looking to sue on behalf of asbestos victims, a company selling medical supplies to diabetics and a
water filter company.

Limbaugh might want to keep the phone number for ordering that penis-inflater pill handy, in case he runs short.

I think that Beck wets his pants as well. At least that is what I heard...

Wolcott shoots ducks on the Pond. Oh, wait...

2009-08-25T14:18:00.001-05:00

Glenn Beck is an idiot. Such an easy target. But when James Wolcott does it, it is melodious and, oh so enjoyable to behold.

So I'm listening to self-pitying blubber boy Glenn Beck this morning on WOR radio (which recently pried Bob Grant out of the crypt for another go at the talkshow mike), and he's a-huff over President Obama's insistence that the press not report the movements of his family in real time while they're vacationing in Martha's Vineyard. This sounds like a reasonable security-precaution request to me, especially given the paranoid gun nuttery whipping through the air , so much of that paranoia whipped up by Beck with his Hitler slideshows and lunar meditations. But to Beck it was a personal slap in the puss, since, he, Glenn Beck, didn't have the majestic authority to order people to muzzle their Tweets.

He explained that he now has a small security detail, which has become a sad necessity since the recent controversy over his pulled-out-of-his-ass accusation about Obama hating on the white folks (a backlash which has resulted in a snowballing boycott ). Beck described how he took the kids to the Natural History Museum in NY while on vacation, a single guard hovering discreetly behind, and when he and family returned to the streets he learned that someone had texted or whatever their location in real time. Which did not make him happy, knowing that even an innocent outing could end up instantly on someone's radar.

Now, to me, this only reinforced Obama's prudence in trying to curtail reporting of real-time movements. But Beck was irked that he isn't allowed to issue the same decrees, as if his security concerns belonged on the same plane of importance as the President of the United States's. It was if he thought Obama was being uppity, putting himself above a humble, striving commoner like Beck.

If the atmosphere weren't toxic enough, WABC radio, deciding their wasn't enough hate on their airwaves, has pried veteran host Bob Grant out of the crypt ; to hawk another round of phlegm at the talkshow mike.

"WABC program director Laurie Cantillo says she invited Grant back because 'many listeners missed his colorful commentary.'"

Oh, it was colorful, all right. "Colorful" is indeed the mot juste, given Grant's extensive track record of racial slurs.

The sort of listeners who have been missing Bob Grant's "colorful commentary" belong to a demographic that might be charitably be described as aged-in-bitterness, and it's not as if their cranky needs are being underserved by the rest of WABC's lineup. The station seems determined to squeeze the last rating point out of the racial animosity roiling out there, which doesn't strike me as a very civic-minded use of one's broadcast license.

Dr. No, otherwise known as Senator Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma

2009-08-24T17:52:00.001-05:00

Linkfest centered around Oklahoma’s Junior Senator, who is, if that is possible, even nuttier than Senator Jim Inhofe, R-LooneyBin.

I would say only Oklahoma would send someone like Coburn to the Senate, but that argument won’t hold water. But most of the real nut-cases come from the in-bred South.

http://okiefunk.com/node/625

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23rich.html?_r=1

http://www.okiefunk.com/node/622

http://www.dreamies.com/A_HTM_PAGES_2009/081709CoburnMcVeigh.htm

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/08/sen-coburn-if-youre-sick-tough-luck.html

http://www.osborneink.com/2009/08/tom-coburn-pals-around-with-terrorists.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/coburn-backs-death-panel_n_258946.html

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/tom-coburn-claims-members-congress-have-ea

http://www.liberadio.com/2009/08/16/sen-tom-coburn-needs-a-come-to-jesus-on-health-care/

http://pushingrope.blogspot.com/2009/08/wingnut-of-day-tom-coburn.html

http://leftofthehill.blogspot.com/2009/08/video-sen-tom-coburn-supports-hatred.html

When Arthur Frommer speaks, travelers listen

2009-08-24T13:23:00.002-05:00

Arthur Frommer (Europe on $5 a day), the guy who literally changed how people travel writes a blog. Last week, he says that until he learns more about the legality and whether/if the Arizona Lege will continue to allow the indiscriminate ability of anyone and everyone to pack firearms in the State of Arizona, he will cancel all plans to travel there. He asks “Should we all?”

Do Guns at Political Events Disturb You? Then Consider Skipping Arizona for Now

Posted by Arthur Frommer <http://www.frommers.com/community/persona.html?UID=704684&plckUserId=704684> at 8/19/2009 10:10 AM EDT

I am not yet certain whether I would advocate a travel boycott by others of the state of Arizona <http://www.frommers.com/destinations/arizona/> ; I want to learn more about Arizona's gun laws and how they compare with those of other states. But I am shocked beyond measure by reports that earlier this week, nearly a dozen persons, including one with an assault rifle strapped about his shoulders and others with pistols in their hands or holsters, were openly congregating outside a hall at which President Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

For myself, without yet suggesting that others follow me in an open boycott, I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest. I not only believe such practices are a threat to the future of our democracy, but I am firmly convinced that they would also endanger my own personal safety there. And therefore I will cancel any plans to vacation or otherwise visit in Arizona until I learn more. And I will begin thinking about whether tourists should safeguard themselves by avoiding stays in Arizona.

According to the Phoenix, Arizona, police, people with guns including assault rifles do not need permits in Arizona, but can simply carry such weapons with them, openly and brazenly, when they gather to protest a speaker at a public event. The police also acknowledge that about a dozen people carrying guns, including one with an AR-15 assault rifle, milled about outside the event at which President Obama spoke.

I would feel as I do regardless of the political identity of the speaker whom these thugs attempted to intimidate. The continued tolerance of extremists carrying guns is a frightening development which strikes at the heart of the political process and endangers the ability to carry out a reasoned debate. Is there any responsible citizen of the United States who believes that people should carry guns to a public debate or speech? If Ronald Reagan were delivering a political talk in Phoenix, Arizona, would they have felt it was proper for protestors with guns to mill about outside the hall from which he would leave?

I'd appreciate hearing your comments. The question is, should we all organize a travel boycott of Arizona until this tolerance of armed intimidation is ended, probably by an act of the Arizona legislature?

Note that many with ‘sloped foreheads’ take him to task in the comments. My guess is that they are already there or will be moving or vacationing there so that they can open carry without permit. Even the nutcases. Note that having lived in Arizona, there is a higher concentration of nut cases than in other states. Must be something about the heat...

Flank Stake

2009-08-24T11:18:00.002-05:00

Flank Stake

by digby

I haven't given this a lot of thought, but this post <http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/08/troubles-at-base-can-bob-inglis-survive.html> by Howie makes me wonder if the next few years in American politics aren't going to be incredibly volatile ... and fascinating. He contemplates the odd fate of:

stop listening to hate-talk sociopath Glenn Beck <http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-are-most-republican-elected.html> earlier this month. Now it looks like Inglis-- like two other South Carolina conservatives, Henry Brown and Joe Wilson, who consider themselves more in line with Reagan Republicanism than Limbaugh Republicanism-- may well be in for some serious trouble <http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=news-000003193240> holding onto his seat.
[T]he 2010 election will test whether Inglis’ strongly Republican-leaning constituency in the South Carolina’s 4th District believes he is conservative enough. That’s because the six-term congressman has drawn four Republican primary challengers who argue that he isn’t.

Republican State Sen. David Thomas, when he launched his primary campaign in June, said he was “disappointed” in Inglis for voting in early 2007 against the buildup of U.S. troops in the Iraq conflict-- a policy, instituted by President George W. Bush, known as the “troop surge”-- and for voting in late 2008 for the financial industry assistance, or “bailout,” measure (PL 110-343).

Candidate Christina Jeffrey, a professor at Wofford College in Spartanburg, said in a statement on her Web site that Inglis is “symbolic of the path many Republicans have taken over the past few years as he has continued to compromise our conservative values.”

Other candidates include Trey Gowdy, a prosecutor, and Jim Lee, an information technology and business consultant. Gowdy, on his Web site, said there is a “near total disconnect between Washington and the people of the 4th Congressional District,” while Lee derided Inglis as a man who has “lost his focus and is now part of the system he originally went to Washington to change.”

When Inglis returned to Congress in 2004 he was less of a radical right firebrand and more of a pragmatic conservative. He backed a few Democratic proposals, though not as many as, say, far right kook Eric Cantor. Inglis grouses that he's drawn so much opposition this year to his own party's lunatic fringe. “Apparently I don’t spit and flail enough,” he said.

The right-wing website, We choose to keep Glenn Beck and replace Bob! <http://www.anybodybutbob.com/> may auger rough sailing ahead in a crowded primary where Inglis needs to get 50% to avoid a run-off that could expose him to a major push from the kinds of passionate far right Know Nothings who are overwhelming Charlie Crist in Florida and giving wild-eyed extremist Marco Rubio wins in all the GOP district straw polls <http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2009/07/marco-rubio-crushes-charlie-crist-in-another-straw-poll.html> .

Looks like it isn't just the Democrats with a little explaining to do to their own base.

Think about that. You have the bases of the two parties challenging their leftmost and rightmost congresspeople to move further left and right. Now, I would make the argument that the leftmost are not nearly as far left and the rightmost are far right. After all, if we were like the teabaggers, we would be showing up at town halls packing heat and demanding the nationalization of industry and worldwide revolution. But the general phenomenon is the same.

I would suggest that this is different than the 70s and 80s when the Democrats fell apart. They immediately distanced themselves from what was perceived to be their crazies and, in fact, nominated a conservative southern Christian at the first opportunity. Sure, there were still big protests against nukes and the like, and the Jesse Jackson coalition in the 80s was widely considered to be a "far left" endeavor. But for the most part, once the Dems lost it in 1980, the party very quickly moved to the center, even though the press continued to pretend that it hadn't.

What we are seeing now is a right wing that has ben mobilized and animated by a certain set of ideas and kept alive by a separate communications infrastructure which will likely not allow the party to drift back to the middle as it might naturally do. And so the party stays in the far right quadrant. And the left, rightly believing that they voted in a Party which should be answerable to their concerns, is flexing its muscle at the same time. It makes for an unbelievable amount of personal tension.

My personal belief is that in a case like this, the political establishment should throw off its Nehru jackets and toss their Madonna bustiers once and for all and grok that times have changed. This is a period where active citizens are going to demand that their political institutions, especially congress and the presidency, use their power to the maximum effect whether to achieve or obstruct.

It would be unpleasant and somewhat brutal, I have no doubt. But it is also a perfectly legitimate way to govern. A liberal party and a conservative party can simply exercise their institutional prerogatives and take the results to the people every two, four and six years. There is nothing in the constitution requiring that the whining Kent Conrads be allowed to have veto power over legislation. (And there is nothing that says progressives can't bring the hammer down on their leadership the same way the Republican base does theirs.)

As average folks without a lot of institutional juice, we citizens don't have a whole lot of options. So we do what we can. But there is one thing we should all probably recognize and deal with: the president, the congress and the media of both parties are all in agreement about one thing: they do not like the rabble at both ends of the spectrum making demands. Remember, it's their town.

And I include the president in that for a reason. It's not a matter of him "miscalculating" or failing to understand the nature of the opposition. He, like all establishment politicians, has an interest in maintaining the status quo, and I would imagine that the fear among all establishment politicians is that this phenomenon might actually bring about real change (as opposed to the fluffy, Madison Avenue version they like to sell.) After all, the president has large majorities and a huge amount of power. It's hard to believe that if he wanted to get real health care reform passed that he couldn't do it. It's not 1994 and the Republicans aren't in ascendance and dominating the discourse. It's not outrageous to make the obvious assumption that he's not doing it for the simple reason that he doesn't want to. And it's not ridiculous to think that one of the reasons for that is that it would empower the base of the Democratic Party and inflame the base of the GOP. At this moment that particular problem appears to be the biggest threat to the permanent political establishment of both parties there is.

Let's face it, the most potentially destabilizing political battles right now are within the parties --- between the leaders and their most ardent adherents. That's actually somewhat encouraging to me. I'm not sure how you could ever break through the ossified structures of the village without something like that. Whether anything actually happens remains to be seen. But it's interesting to think about.

Update: As Greenwald once again thoroughly documents <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/23/alter/index.html> , the media establishment frames all politics as being the Real Americans vs the hippies --- and I'm sure the Democratic establishment couldn't be happier. The Republican establishment actually has a harder task, which may or may not be fortunate for us.

Bypassing Senate Finance

2009-08-24T11:14:00.001-05:00

The Senate Finance gang of six jumped the shark months ago. It is time to move on to the other 4 existing bills and vote.

Bypassing Senate Finance

by dday

Leaks keep springing that the White House is ready to give up on bipartisanship <http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/is-the-white-house-ready-to-ditch-republicans-and-turn-to-reconciliation.php> and just pass a health care bill with Democrats. My message would be, hurry up!

The only committee still working on the health care bill is the Senate Finance Committee. They've been systematically dismantling it <http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/08/23/scaling-back-reform-dumb-policy-dumber-politics.aspx> on a number of fronts. Not only have they ditched the public option, as well as the employer mandate <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32219407/ns/business-businessweekcom/> which would require businesses to either provide health care for their employees or pay a percentage into the system (I may be OK with dropping that), they are striking at the very heart of what will tangibly help people in the bill - the subsidies for insurance:

The saving grace of those four bills was that the consumer protections and financial assistance in them remained reasonably strong. If reform ends up looking like those four bills, then financial assistance would be available to people earning up to four times the poverty rate--or around $88,000 a year in family income. (Subsidies would be available on a sliding scale, so that a family making $70,000 would get very little, a family making $60,000 would get more, and so on.) Such a measure would also limit out-of-pocket expenses to $10,000 a year per family, while providing other crucial protections. And, of course, it would include a real public insurance option.

If Conrad and his supporters get their way, the new health care system won't be nearly as generous--or protective. They've made clear they want a package that costs less than $1 trillion. A lot less. And, thanks to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities <http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2854> , we have some sense of what that would mean in practice.

Based on previously leaked drafts of legislation going through the Senate Finance Committee--the last of the five considering health legislation, and the only where it's still hung up--the Center was able to project what a scaled back plan would look like. Their conclusions, as noted previously in this space <http://blogs.tnr.comtnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/07/27/finally-some-talk-about-affordability.aspx> , were pretty discouraging:

...an individual with income above $32,490, and a family of three with income above $54,930, would not receive any subsidy to help pay for coverage.

Substantial numbers of people with incomes modestly above 300 percent of the poverty line could face difficulty paying the full price for coverage. The average job-based insurance policy today would cost a family of three at 300 percent of the poverty line about 23 percent of its income. This could leave the family short of funds for other expenses such as housing and child care.

So people making between three and four times the poverty line--that is, families with incomes between roughly $66,000 and $88,000 a year--would get no assistance whatsoever. Families making less than that would still get some assistance, but it'd be a lot less than they'd get otherwise.

It gets worse. In the Finance Committee bill, the basic policy would cover only 65% of total medical costs <http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/24/7475/33172?new=true> , far less than even the current standard of 80-90%. For the poor, you'd be paying a premium of indeterminate size that don't actually cover you. Sure, the insurance company brochure and the glossy ads will say that their plans offer you affordable coverage and piece of mind. But when you try to use it, you'll find it to be junk, and you'll be on the hook for major out-of-pocket costs. Even if they're capped at $10,000 annually, that's far more than a lot of people can afford.

As Jon Cohn says, this sounds like a Trojan horse to bring Republicans back to prominence more than anything else:

Put aside, for a moment, whether this makes sense substantively. It makes absolutely no sense politically. Scaling down legislation basically means gutting the benefits that would go to the working and middle class. In other words, it would help fulfill the fear many of these voters already have and that opponents of reform have tried hard to stoke: That reform doesn't have much to offer the typical middle-income American.

You can imagine why Republicans might think this is a dandy idea. But why on earth would Democrats agree?

A lot of needed attention has been paid to these scale-backs. But understand - all of them are in the Senate Finance Committee version of the bill. The competing versions all have a higher percentage of coverage for basic policies, higher subsidies, more protection for consumers and a public option. It's good to have this information because we know what to look out for, but if the Administration is truly committed to giving up on bipartisanship, they can give up on all of these coverage scale-backs borne out of the bipartisan process. Simply put, if Republicans will not be needed for a bill, the Senate Finance Committee version gets thrown in the trash bin. All of the offending items under discussion exist there. Bypass the committee, borrow the House's funding mechanism and Medicare provisions (which is really the only elements under the jurisdiction of Finance), and get a bill to the Senate floor. Even reviving Max Baucus original document as a blueprint, which by the way INCLUDED a public option, could work. This may offend Chuck Grassley, but that's a feature, not a bug.

Beating back the army of insurance lobbyists is as simple as devaluing the Baucus caucus.

Why the Gang of Six is Deciding Health Care for Three Hundred Million of Us

2009-08-21T16:42:00.004-05:00

By Robert Reich

Excerpt:

I really don't get it. We have a Democratic president in the White House. Democrats control sixty votes in the Senate, enough to overcome a filibuster. It is possible to pass health care legislation through the Senate with 51 votes (that's what George W. Bush did with his tax cut plan). Democrats control the House. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is a tough lady. She has said there will be no health care reform bill without a public option.

So why does the fate of health care rest in Grassley's hands?

It's not even as if the gang represents America. The three Dems on the gang are from Montana, New Mexico, and North Dakota -- states that together account for just over 1 percent of Americans. The three Republicans are from Maine, Wyoming, and Iowa, which together account for 1.6 percent of the American population.

"The Election Broke Their Brains"

2009-08-20T11:59:00.001-05:00

Newshoggers has a commentary up by Ron Beasley, in-which he quotes Frank Schaefer extensively. It would be hilarious, but unfortunately it is true.

Excerpt:

“There is a group of angry white people who ...to paraphrase Bart Simpson - the election broke their brains!”

The whole not-so-funny-cuz-it-is-true piece is here: http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/08/the-election-broke-their-brains.html

The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists

2009-08-20T11:29:00.001-05:00

Joe Klein, in Time today.

Wikipedia for “nihilist” should you need it: “Nihilist - a person who believes human existence has no objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.”

Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009

The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists
By Joe Klein

In one of those awful collisions between public policy and real life, I was in the midst of an awkward conversation about end-of-life issues with my father when Sarah Palin raised the remarkable idea that the Obama Administration's attempt to include such issues in its health-care-reform proposal would lead to "death panels." Let me tell you something about my family situation, a common one these days, in order to illuminate the obscenity of Palin's formulation and the cowardice of those, like Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the lead Republican negotiator on the Senate Finance Committee, who have refused to contest her claim.

Both my parents are 89 years old. They have been inseparable, with the exception of my father's service in World War II, since kindergarten. My mother has lost her sight and is quite frail. My father takes care of her and my aunt Rose, lovingly, with some — but not enough — private help at their home in central Pennsylvania. One night in early August, I had a terrible scare. I called home and Aunt Rose was freaking out; she didn't know where my father was. All the worst possibilities crossed my mind — it turned out he was just getting the mail — as well as a very difficult reality: if he'd had a stroke, I would have had no idea about what he'd want me to do. I had lunch with him the next day to discuss this. (See 10 players in health-care reform.) <http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1910651_1910649_1910638,00.html>

It wasn't easy. My dad is very proud and independent. He didn't really want to talk about what came next. He was pretty sure, but not certain, that he'd signed a living will. He was very reluctant to sign an enduring power of attorney to empower me, or my brother, to make decisions about his care and my mom's if he were incapacitated. I tried to convince him that it was important to make some plans, but I didn't have the strategic experience that a professional would have — and, in his eyes, I didn't have the standing. I may be a grandfather myself, but I'm still just a kid in my dad's mind. Clearly, an independent, professional authority figure was needed. And this is what the "death panels" are all about: making end-of-life counseling free and available through Medicare. (I'd make it mandatory, based on recent experience, but hey, I'm not entirely clearheaded on the subject right now.)

Given the heinous dust that's been raised, it seems likely that end-of-life counseling will be dropped from the health-reform legislation. But that's a small point, compared with the larger issue that has clouded this summer: How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark? (See pictures of angry health-care protesters.) <http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1915718,00.html>

I'm not going to try. I've written countless "Democrats in Disarray" stories over the years and been critical of the left on numerous issues in the past. This year, the liberal insistence on a marginally relevant public option has been a tactical mistake that has enabled the right's "government takeover" disinformation jihad. There have been times when Democrats have run demagogic scare campaigns on issues like Social Security and Medicare. There are more than a few Democrats who believe, in practice, that government should be run for the benefit of government employees' unions. There are Democrats who are so solicitous of civil liberties that they would undermine legitimate covert intelligence collection. There are others who mistrust the use of military power under almost any circumstances. But these are policy differences, matters of substance. The most liberal members of the Democratic caucus — Senator Russ Feingold in the Senate, Representative Dennis Kucinich in the House, to name two — are honorable public servants who make their arguments based on facts. They don't retail outright lies. Hyperbole and distortion certainly exist on the left, but they are a minor chord in the Democratic Party.

See TIME's health and medicine covers. <http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ntt=Health+&+Medicine&iid=covers>

See the most common hospital mishaps. <http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1847616_1847615,00.html>

It is a very different story among Republicans. To be sure, there are honorable conservatives, trying to do the right thing. There is a legitimate, if wildly improbable, fear that Obama's plan will start a process that will end with a health-care system entirely controlled by the government. There are conservatives — Senator Lamar Alexander, Representative Mike Pence, among many others — who make their arguments based on facts. But they have been overwhelmed by nihilists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal. The philosophically supple party that existed as recently as George H.W. Bush's presidency has been obliterated. The party's putative intellectuals — people like the Weekly Standard's William Kristol — are prosaic tacticians who make precious few substantive arguments but oppose health-care reform mostly because passage would help Barack Obama's political prospects. In 1993, when the Clintons tried health-care reform, the Republican John Chafee offered a creative (in fact, superior) alternative — which Kristol quashed with his famous "Don't Help Clinton" fax to the troops. There is no Republican health-care alternative in 2009. The same people who rail against a government takeover of health care tried to enforce a government takeover of Terri Schiavo's end-of-life decisions. And when Palin floated the "death panel" canard, the number of prominent Republicans who rose up to call her out could be counted on one hand.

A striking example of the prevailing cravenness was Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has authored end-of-life counseling provisions and told the Washington Post that comparing such counseling to euthanasia was nuts — but then quickly retreated when he realized that he had sided with the reality-based community against his Rush Limbaugh-led party. Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner for President according to most polls, actually created a universal-health-care plan in Massachusetts that looks very much like the proposed Obamacare, but he spends much of his time trying to fudge the similarities and was AWOL on the "death panels." Why are these men so reluctant to be rational in public? (See how to prevent illness at any age.) <http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1903873_1903802,00.html>

An argument can be made that this is nothing new. Dwight Eisenhower tiptoed around Joe McCarthy. Obama reminded an audience in Colorado that opponents of Social Security in the 1930s "said that everybody was going to have to wear dog tags and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody ... These struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear." True enough. There was McCarthyism in the 1950s, the John Birch Society in the 1960s. But there was a difference in those times: the crazies were a faction — often a powerful faction — of the Republican Party, but they didn't run it. The neofascist Father Coughlin had a huge radio audience in the 1930s, but he didn't have the power to control and silence the elected leaders of the party that Limbaugh — who, if not the party's leader, is certainly the most powerful Republican extant — does now. Until recently, the Republican Party contained a strong moderate wing. It was a Republican, the lawyer Joseph Welch, who delivered the coup de grâce to Senator McCarthy when he said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Where is the Republican who would dare say that to Rush Limbaugh, who has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler?

This is a difficult situation for the President. Cynicism about government is always easy, even if it now seems apparent that it was government action — by both Obama and, yes, George W. Bush — that prevented a reprise of the Great Depression. I watched Obama as he traveled the Rocky Mountain West, holding health-care forums, trying to lance the boil by eliciting questions from the irrational minority that had pulverized the public forums held by lesser pols. He would search the crowds for a first-class nutter who might challenge him on "death panels," but he was constantly disappointed. In Colorado, he locked in on an angry-looking fellow in a teal T shirt — but the guy's fury was directed at the right-wing disinformation campaign. Obama seemed to sag. He had to bring up the "death panels" himself.

This may tell us something about the actual state of play on health care: the nutters are a tiny minority; the Republicans are curling themselves into a tight, white, extremist bubble — but there may be enough of them raising dust to render creative public policy impossible. Some righteous anger seems called for, but that's not Obama's style. He will have to come up with something, though — and he will have to do it without the tiniest scintilla of help from the Republican Party.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1917525,00.html

Sometimes the truth just falls out of their mouths...

2009-08-18T16:54:00.004-05:00

It is becoming clearer and clearer that Republicans are completely in the pocket of Big Insurance. They will not vote for any kind of healthcare change. Period.

On a conference call today with reporters, Senate Minority Whip John Kyl (R-AZ) said almost no health care compromise is likely to win significant Republican support.
"There is no way that Republicans are going to support a trillion-dollar-plus bill," Kyl said. "I have no doubt that they can make it revenue neutral to find enough ways to tax the American people, but that doesn't mean the Republicans will support it."

As for the co-op compromise? "It's a step towards government-run health care in this country."

The remarks are particularly significant coming a day after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the lead Republican health care negotiator in the Senate, said he'd vote against his own bill--and all the compromises he's forcing into it--if it doesn't win a great number of Republican votes.

Of course, when people like Grassley and Max Baucus say they're working toward a bipartisan health care bill, they don't mean they're trying to pick up one or two Republicans. What they're really talking about is a consensus bill--a package that can win significant support from both parties, even if it means sacrificing the votes of liberals and conservatives. That means the major compromises we've seen leaked out of the Finance Committee--no public option, no employer mandate, etc.

But even if a consensus bill can succeed in the Finance Committee, Kyl's saying the same bill won't achieve consensus on the Senate floor. And so the question falls back to Baucus, and through him to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Barack Obama. Why is this process allowed to continue if it's destined to fail--why not just try to snatch up one or two moderate Republicans and call it a day?

Kyl: Even A Deficit Neutral Health Care Bill Without A Public Option Won't Get Republican Support

Public Option or Primary!

2009-08-18T14:54:00.000-05:00

DaveJ at OpenLeft following up with the logical next-step of the “PO or NO” progressive stance:

Our elected officials gave away our opening negotiating position by refusing to even consider the popular "Medicare-for-All" plan. Had they started with Medicare-for-All they would have the option of giving in and compromising with a public option. In fact they could well have won with this because Medicare-for-All just makes more sense. It is simple, costs less, is easily explained and the public loves Medicare.

So here we are. Just like the stimulus fight, the administration gave away essential policy to please Republicans and appear "bipartisan <http://www.openleft.com/diary/14332/is-bipartisan-stance-destroying-obamas-presidency> " before even entering negotiations. Just like during the fight for a solid stimulus plan, the Republicans took that compromise as an opening position, whittled it away without having to exchange their wins for votes, and after reducing the plan to bad public policy won't vote for it anyway.

The rest is an important read. Here: http://www.openleft.com/diary/14678/public-option-or-primary

Well, at least one organization is out there pitching FOR real reform

2009-08-16T17:29:00.000-05:00

Michigan Blue Cross Screws Policy Holders

2009-08-16T17:22:00.001-05:00

Yet another nice Insurance Company who just wants to meet your medical needs...

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan will be increasing rates <http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20090813/FREE/908139986#> 22% on individual policies. The good news is that these staggering increases are less than half of the rate hikes Michigan Blue proposed. The Michigan Attorney General <http://www.freep.com/article/20090813/BUSINESS06/90813048/1002/BUSINESS/Regulators-OK-Blue-Cross-rate-hike> , Mike Cox, tried to force the non-profit to reach into its $2.4bn reserve fund to pay for $133mn of losses it incurred last year, but wasn't able to get his courts to help the beleaguered citizens he represents.

Rest here: http://firedoglake.com/2009/08/16/michigan-blue-cross-screws-policy-holders/

And for the record...

2009-08-16T16:53:00.000-05:00

I think that Dick Armey is an insensitive idiot.

Thank you, Texas, for foisting him on the Public Discourse.

How the conservative media co-opted our Political discourse

2009-08-16T16:49:00.001-05:00

Steve Benen of The Political Animal in Washington Monthly and Duncan Black of Eschaton asked, and Bruce Bartlett obliged. Bartlett gives a very good rundown of how it really went down. Benen has some small disagreements. My personal take is that the liberals do not have the centered focus to take the hard-core right-wing conservatives on head-to-head. These right-wing whack jobs love whatever beat-down they can put on the left. The left just wants fair taxes, clean water, safe things to eat, wear and breathe...you know, the good life. We don’t actually want to put any backbone into it.

Political discourse is now, and forever more, been pushed to the edges. You have a centrist viewpoint? Sniping from both sides. Have a nice day...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_08/019508.php

THE PENANCE HAS NOT BEEN PAID, PART II.... Yesterday, I published an email <http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_08/019503.php> from Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, about the Republican Party, to this day, to pretend it did nothing wrong over the last eight years. The media doesn't treat the GOP as if it's been discredited, Republicans don't take steps to correct their mistakes, and "those making the most outlandish charges are treated with deference and respect, while those that actually have credibility on the subject are treated as equals at best and often with deep skepticism."

The item generated some interesting discussion, here and elsewhere <http://www.memeorandum.com/090815/p26#a090815p26> . Most notably, Atrios asked <http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009/08/but-why.html> , "I'd be curious to hear what someone like Bartlett thinks about why the situation is as he describes."

Bruce responded to the question, and gave me permission to republish his thoughts on this:

"Like I said, I don't know why the media is so unwilling to exercise editorial judgment any more, but here are some thoughts.

"The expansion of television news from the traditional 30 minutes per night on just three networks to 24 hours a day on several cable channels. The talking head format fit nicely into segments between advertising breaks and it just caught on. But as time went by I think that knowledgeable, responsible commentators got tired of the format, decided it was a very poor way of getting their points across, and mostly stopped doing it. Also, scholars will tend to agree with each other too often to make good television. So they were replaced by political hacks who know that their only job is to get the talking points of the day across and do everything possible to discredit their opponent. This has led to a deterioration in discourse that benefits those most willing to be outrageous. At present this benefits the right because they are out of power and need not take responsibility for actions by the administration. But I don't think it inherently benefits the right. It's a cyclical thing.

"The rise of Fox News is very important. I do believe that from the 1950s through the 1990s there was a liberal bias in the media. Rupert Murdoch, to his credit, recognized that this created an opportunity for a network catering to conservatives. He was very clever about introducing it with the whole 'fair and balanced' thing, but now there is no balance at all. The Fox News channel is a pure conservative/Republican network that does not pretend to be anything else. Personally, I have no problem with that. The problem is that the rest of the media is no longer liberal. It has moved to the center across the board. This has created an imbalance that requires a Fox-like network that is as liberal as Fox is conservative. MSNBC seems to be trying to fill this role, but very half-heartedly for reasons I am unclear about.

"The rise of talk radio was the foundation. Rush Limbaugh deserves his millions and millions of dollars for figuring out that the abolition of the fairness doctrine created an opportunity for opinionated radio. And he was fortunate that at the moment he figured this out AM radio was dying. Its sound quality was poor and it couldn't compete with FM in broadcasting music. But it was perfect for talking. It also filled an important gap in terms of catering to conservatives who had long been ignored by the mainstream media. The problem is that people like Rush live in a cocoon where the only people they hear from are those who think they are gods. As time has gone by, these guys have gone from just representing their own opinions to representing the conservative movement to representing the Republican Party to thinking they actually speak for the American people as a whole. Power and vanity have led them to lose touch with reality

"The Internet completed the circle and provided for complete detachment of conservatives from the mainstream media. They could now get 100% of their news filtered through a conservative lens. They no longer had to confront any facts they deemed inconvenient or without a ready-made response that either refuted them or interpreted them in a way conservatives could rationalize. The result is that many conservatives live in a cocoon as well, completely insulated from any facts or opinions that are counter to their worldview. The left doesn't really have this. The reason I think gets back to liberal bias. Liberals have long been content with the mainstream media because it did largely reflect their values. It doesn't any more but liberals still treat the mainstream media as if it does. Thus as the mainstream media has declined, liberals have lost their primary sources of news and commentary and have not replaced them with those that are explicitly liberal in the same way that the right has created a fully-formed alternative media.

"Finally, the decline of the mainstream media because of the Internet and other economic forces has been critical to its loss of influence and standing. It no longer has the resources to pay reporters to look into things deeply and write about issues authoritatively. Reporters even at the best newspapers often seem like glorified bloggers who get their basic facts from the Internet instead of their own research, substitute speed for thoroughness and accuracy, and have no time to become experts on the subjects they cover because they are covering the waterfront. And since television news has always depended upon newspapers as their basic sources of material, the decline of newspaper reporting led inevitably to a decline in television reporting. All this has created a death spiral for the mainstream media that, as I said, liberals still largely depend on to represent their viewpoint.

"I don't think the genie can be put back in the bottle. The mainstream media will continue to decline and insofar as liberals depend upon it they will more and more lose out in competition with conservatives. I think they need to abandon the mainstream media and create their own alternative media just as conservatives have done. That will help redress the imbalance that now exists in the media which benefits conservatives."

I found most of this persuasive, though I disagree with the notion that there was a de facto liberal bias among major mainstream news outlets from the 1950s through the 1990s. The media's often ridiculous savaging of the Clinton presidency, I believe, proves otherwise.

But much of this is very compelling, most notably the rise of Fox News with no progressive counterpart. We talked earlier <http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_08/019507.php> today about Rick Perlstein's "tree of crazy." Far-right conservatives of recent eras have been every bit as hysterical, irresponsible, and ridiculous as the one we see today, and as Rick noted, in recent generations, they were dismissed as "extremists" outside the American mainstream, and unworthy of serious thought.

Fox News, however, changes the game. If you're crazy, Fox News will have you on as a guest to spew nonsense. If you're really crazy, Fox News will give you a show of your own to spew nonsense all the time.

Nixon, after becoming Ike's vice president, said Republicans "found in the files a blueprint for socializing America" in the White House. Civil rights leaders were accused of being a Soviet plot. The Civil Rights Act was believed to be intended to "enslave" whites. A prominent right-wing radio host insisted that JFK was building a political prison in Alaska to detain critics of the administration. When FDR proposed Social Security, the conservatives of the era not only screamed about "socialism," but told the public Roosevelt would force Americans to wear dog tags.

These were all fringe, radical arguments at the time, and were ignored as insane by responsible journalists. No one in America would turn on the evening news or pick up the morning paper and read about pathetic right-wing conspiracy theories. If Fox News existed at the time, Sean Hannity would be doing special reports on each of these unhinged ideas, and Americans would be told that they were worthy of discussion.

Republican Death Trip

2009-08-15T17:21:00.001-05:00

Krugman:

“I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in November 2007, making the case that Democrats should nominate him, rather than one of his rivals, because he could free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past.

Some of us were skeptical. A couple of months after Mr. Obama gave that speech, I warned that his vision of a “different kind of politics” was a vain hope, that any Democrat who made it to the White House would face “an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false.”

So, how’s it going?

Rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/opinion/14krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Unfortunately The Crazy Movement which brought us the Dallas area pre-JFK assassination Crazies, the Murrah Building Bombing, and the fallout from the life of John Wilkes Booth is alive and well in 21st Century America.

God Help Us.

The Crazy are with us always

2009-08-15T15:38:00.001-05:00

Perlstein nails The Crazy Movement. Not just a recent development. What is recent is that the current crop of journalistic nimrods give them oxygen. Earlier, ‘they were just crazy’.

It used to be different. You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to "debunk" claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president's program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist" -- out of bounds.

The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest. Latest word is that the enlightened and mild provision in the draft legislation to help elderly people who want living wills -- the one hysterics turned into the "death panel" canard -- is losing favor, according <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125012322203627701.html> to the Wall Street Journal, because of "complaints over the provision."

Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill -- because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.

All here. Worth your time. Journalistic nimrods.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/14/AR2009081401495_pf.html

Death panels already exist

2009-08-15T15:27:00.002-05:00

Buried in all the sound and fury being thrown up by the FreedomWorks folks (who represent anything but...) is a small kernal of truth: Death Panels already exist.

But it is not the government which is running them - it is the insurance industry itself.

Play the video. There are MANY more, thousands more, than just these folks here...

An oldie but a goodie - Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

2009-08-13T11:07:00.001-05:00

I envy folks who can write like this. Link: http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/day_in_the_life_of_joe_middle-.html

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He
was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”.

By John Gray

Nobody could have predicted

2009-08-13T10:33:00.001-05:00

Via Krugman:

From the Times, January 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=1> :

First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).

The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/nobody-could-have-predicted/

Note that those living inside the bubble of the beltway never change. It is always good new for Republicans.

Dara O'Briain on Homeopathy vs. Science

2009-08-11T16:07:00.002-05:00

I've recently discovered Irish Dentist/Comedian (seriously!) Dara O'Briain. Here, he waxes poetic about some of my pet peeves.

Lots of good, real stuff here amongst the humor.

YOYO, or The End of Compassionate Conservatism

2009-08-11T15:58:00.001-05:00

Teddy Partridge@FDL:

The more these town-hall screamers (as well as their corporate enablers and media jesters) make clear that they've got health insurance and like it just fine, thankyewverymuch, the more evident it is: there's no such thing as compassionate conservatism. Never was.

It's all Katrina Konservatism: You're On Your Own.

More at FDL: http://firedoglake.com/2009/08/11/yoyo-or-the-end-of-compassionate-conservatism/

Liars! Liars! Liars!

2009-08-11T15:50:00.001-05:00

It’s time to call them what they are!

From TPM via Kurtz:

It really is amazing to watch a fringe right-wing movement completely dominate the narrative surrounding the health care debate. The Democratic Party has the strongest governing coalition we have seen in years, and yet, they are being run over by misinformation campaign that includes lies so bold and outrageous that one actually grows to gain begrudging respect for the Machiavellian mindset that allows otherwise seemingly rational people to perpetuate this stuff on a public whose gullibility should never again be underestimated.
So, what should the Dems do? For one thing, isn't it time to just once call a lie a lie? Although I support a rational-deliberative approach to politics as a principle, there are some contexts where it just doesn't work. There are some conversations, we have all had them, that start with premises that are so outrageous that in the process of stumbling about about looking for a way to respond that we actually, and quite unintentionally, end up giving credibility to the craziness of the initial premise. It seems to me that our Democratic representatives are becoming caught up in these types of conversations time-after-time at the so-called town meetings. Wouldn't a much more effective approach at this point in the game be simply be to look at one of these tea baggers in the eye and say "sir, you are misinformed, you are listening to lies." Simple, quick clean and strong. We need to change the optics of this debate and it is getting painful to watch our representatives stumble around responding to the lunacy of the fringe right-wing. We should start treating their lies with the clarity it deserves..."you are being mislead sir. You are being lied to."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/frustrated.php

For an example of "irony", look here

2009-08-10T09:48:00.001-05:00

David Kurtz identifies the new Poster Child for irony.

The conservative activist who claims he was beaten up by union thugs in St. Louis while protesting against health care reform is accepting donations towards his medical care <http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_08/019423.php> because he was laid off recently and ... has no health insurance.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/the_new_joe_the_plumber.php

As Duncan says, "This is about right"

2009-08-10T09:29:00.003-05:00

Mark Streeter, editorial cartoonist for Savannah Morning News:

http://savannahnow.com//node/764390

John Sullivan comes out of rehab and joins the Birthers

2009-08-09T22:20:00.001-05:00

I don’t know this guy from Adam. Says he works in the Publishing Industry. But he certainly knows Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation.

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/08/oklahoma-congressloon-john-sullivan.html

Excerpt:

Lifelong binge drinker and wingnut John Sullivan is back from his taxpayer-funded stay at the Betty Ford Clinic. He claims he's no longer tempted by alcohol. But he's doubling down on the crazy wingnuttery. According to the very conservative Tulsa World, Sullivan, addressing a mob of Republican activists at a health care forum at the Summit Club, questioned the authenticity <http://tinyurl.com/msgjtb> of Barack Obama's birth certificate. Without having his alcoholism as an excuse for his psychotic pronouncements, does Sullivan really have a reasonable shot at being re-elected next year?

Despite Oklahoma suddenly leaning Democratic <http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-republican-jihad-making-party-more.html> in party identification, lets' not kid ourselves. Oklahoma gave McCain a bigger percentage of it's vote (66%) than any other state in the Union, even more than the three crazy Mormon states! And Obama did even worse in Sullivan's Tulsa-based district (OK-01) than Kerry had in 2000. At the same time, Sullivan also netted 66% of the votes in the district.

Out of a possible score of 100 on the ProgressivePunch scale of progressiveness, Sullivan rated a 0.86! (He must have had a couple drinks too many one day and accidentally cast a vote that favored working families for a change.) He isn't even the most far right member of the sociopathic Oklahoma congressional delegation. Mary Fallin, who represents Oklahoma City, the only part of the state where Obama actually did reasonably well, has a rating of 0.37! (She's been burnishing her image for a run for the governorship.) Tom Cole and Frank Lucas are relative socialists <http://www.tulsabeacon.com/?p=2575> though with scores of 1.53 and 1.57 on the scale, beating out in the race to the bottom of the fringe barrel such celebrated extremists and national cranks as Lynn Westmoreland <http://crooksandliars.com/2006/06/15/only-on-the-colbert-report-westmoreland-co-sponsors-bill-on-the-ten-commandments-and-cant-even-name-them?highlight=%22lynn+westmoreland%22> (R-GA), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Dan Burton <http://www.salon.com/news/1998/12/cov_22newsa.html> (R-IN, but owned <http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7347> by the government of Turkey) and Dan Lungren (R-CA).

Most folks have lost sight of the little known fact that Oklahoma was the nuttiest of the Wing-Nut States on election day this last year. I’d say that I’m ashamed of them, but hey, I didn’t vote for any of these Bozos.

Rachel 'outs' the Astroturffers

2009-08-09T19:15:00.001-05:00

The local reporter who actually followed-up with this Republican shill should be brought up to the majors. Oh, wait. Big Corporate Network Owner would likely fire him for actually finding out the facts...

Steve Perlstein "Steps over the line"

2009-08-09T18:52:00.000-05:00

Steve Perlstein in the WaPo on Friday. He finally gets beyond “he said, she said” and speaks the truth that is out there. I’ve been aggravated lately that ABC, NBC, CBS, the whole run of them have had the Freedomworks shill on almost every night without identifying him as a spokesman for the folks who are ginning up the astroturfers at the Democratic townhalls. Perlstein doesn’t address this – that is just my pet peeve this week when it comes to the antics of those who practice what passes for journalism these days. Perlstein may be entering his own 12 step program with this on his way back to what real investigative journalism is.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080603854_pf.html

Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform

By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, August 7, 2009

As a columnist who regularly dishes out sharp criticism, I try not to question the motives of people with whom I don't agree. Today, I'm going to step over that line.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress -- I've made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation.

Under any plan likely to emerge from Congress, the vast majority of Americans who are not old or poor will continue to buy health insurance from private companies, continue to get their health care from doctors in private practice and continue to be treated at privately owned hospitals.

The centerpiece of all the plans is a new health insurance exchange set up by the government where individuals, small businesses and eventually larger businesses will be able to purchase insurance from private insurers at lower rates than are now generally available under rules that require insurers to offer coverage to anyone regardless of health condition. Low-income workers buying insurance through the exchange -- along with their employers -- would be eligible for government subsidies. While the government will take a more active role in regulating the insurance market and increase its spending for health care, that hardly amounts to the kind of government-run system that critics conjure up when they trot out that oh-so-clever line about the Department of Motor Vehicles being in charge of your colonoscopy.

There is still a vigorous debate as to whether one of the insurance options offered through those exchanges would be a government-run insurance company of some sort. There are now less-than-even odds that such a public option will survive in the Senate, while even House leaders have agreed that the public plan won't be able to piggy-back on Medicare. So the probability that a public-run insurance plan is about to drive every private insurer out of business -- the Republican nightmare scenario -- is approximately zero.

By now, you've probably also heard that health reform will cost taxpayers at least a trillion dollars. Another lie.

First of all, that's not a trillion every year, as most people assume -- it's a trillion over 10 years, which is the silly way that people in Washington talk about federal budgets. On an annual basis, that translates to about $140 billion, when things are up and running.

Even that, however, grossly overstates the net cost to the government of providing universal coverage. Other parts of the reform plan would result in offsetting savings for Medicare: reductions in unnecessary subsidies to private insurers, in annual increases in payments rates for doctors and in payments to hospitals for providing free care to the uninsured. The net increase in government spending for health care would likely be about $100 billion a year, a one-time increase equal to less than 1 percent of a national income that grows at an average rate of 2.5 percent every year.

The Republican lies about the economics of health reform are also heavily laced with hypocrisy.

While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers -- the only two ways I can think of to credibly bring health spending under control.

When Democrats, for example, propose to fund research to give doctors, patients and health plans better information on what works and what doesn't, Republicans sense a sinister plot to have the government decide what treatments you will get. By the same wacko-logic, a proposal that Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care is transformed into a secret plan for mass euthanasia of the elderly.

Government negotiation on drug prices? The end of medical innovation as we know it, according to the GOP's Dr. No. Reduce Medicare payments to overpriced specialists and inefficient hospitals? The first step on the slippery slope toward rationing.

Can there be anyone more two-faced than the Republican leaders who in one breath rail against the evils of government-run health care and in another propose a government-subsidized high-risk pool for people with chronic illness, government-subsidized community health centers for the uninsured, and opening up Medicare to people at age 55?

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs.

Steven Pearlstein can be reached at pearlsteins@washpost.com.

Grassley's Fairey Tale

2009-08-07T13:31:00.001-05:00

Grassley totally hoses the story. Think "Uncle Remus does in The Terminator"...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Chuck Grassley's Debt and Deficit Dragon

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Spinal Tap Performance

limbaughticus bombastus inflamaticus

2009-08-07T12:00:00.003-05:00

from American Progress

Wolcott opines The Mittster

2009-08-07T11:26:00.001-05:00

Wolcott waxes poetic about our very good friend Mitt Romney today. His thoughts joined with those of Alex Massie from as Wolcott puts it “the good Spectator” pretty much uncovers the stinking mess which is Romney’s new book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness:

Excerpt:

How stale. It sounds so 90's, like something William Bennett would have crapped out between Vegas jaunts <http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0306.green.html> . The sort of book--no, I think the word I want is "tome"--that inevitably quotes with approval Jeane J. Kirkpatrick's disdain for the blame-America-first crowd <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jeane_Kirkpatrick> ("But then, they always blame America first"); reminds the reader that America liberated Europe--twice--and our only reward has been sneering contempt from bistro-haunting welfare-staters, especially those ungrateful bastards, the French; and makes every American military action and occupation in the 20th Century sound saintedly selfless. The sort of book that would have a rippling American flag on the cover, to avoid any accusations of subtlety.

He then quotes Massie:

Then again, the GOP is increasingly a nationalist, not a national party. The title of Romney's book acknowledges this. Who are these people apologising for being American? Well, Barack Obama obviously (if absurdly) and by extension all those who voted for him. Race has something to do with this, but it's importance is not the whole drama. The rise of the people who tell the census that they're American-American pre-dates the Obama era, even if we may expect Obama's presidency to exacerbate the alienation felt by white southern and Appalachian men.

That alienation responds to emotion, not policy. It's nationalism - or, if you prefer, its definition of patriotism - is instinctive, suspicious and belligerent, keenly aware that there are sell-outs and traitors everywhere. This, then, is the crew Romney is pandering to. Maybe he is right to do so, perhaps he needs to do this. Either way, it's a sad commentary on the state of the modern conservative movement.

The entire post is worth your time: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2009/08/you-can-judge-a-book-by-its-title.html?printable=true&currentPage=all

Wolcott channels Batchelor

2009-04-13T10:49:00.001-05:00

And fun reading it is!

    ...From Herbert Hoover to Robert Taft, from the Bush clan to the ridiculous Tom DeLay, not one note of grace, not a convincing moment of understanding that the Republican Party is about honest liberty for honest, laboring people—not about Wall Street, the tax code, chasing Reds, or bullying the lonely.

    Vigilant Democrats worry today that the Republican Party is only playing possum, or that it can be revived by extraordinary means such as a Martian invasion. In fact, the GOP is a mummy-wrapped skeleton sitting in its own chilly mausoleum of bilious resentments and creepy sentimentality...

    [snip]

    What about the Republican Party right now? Isn’t it on radio and TV claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility and American power? Bypassing the stupidity of these claims, I am on radio, on what is called right-wing radio, and it is easy for me to see that my loudest colleagues, who compulsively repeat the cant of Conservatism for Dummies, are not sincere students of the Republican Party but rather barkers, hookers, establishmentarian jesters, cultists, and, in the worst instance, just thatch-headed whiners. Fox News is a parade of wet-eared Republican office holders, yet there is usually just one each allowed of the categories the Democrats own in multitudes: a Jewish-American, an Asian-American, an African-American, a Hispanic-American. Then there is the beauty pageant of fast-talking, rude Fox blondes—if they are not all the same woman in mood swings—who stridently mock the Democrats, yet have almost nothing to say about the Republicans, as if the party was a disappointing ex or mother’s latest beau.

    The party’s death 76 years ago was never more obvious than over the last six months of the financial crisis. The Democrats sensibly blamed the feckless, bootless Bush administration for the collapse of the markets. Tongue-tied Bush and dyspeptic Cheney defended themselves with grunts and sarcasm before they surrendered to Congress by sending out the plutocrat Hank Paulson with a plan called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). A breathing Republican Party would have brought out the flintlocks, boarded the windows, and settled down for a defense of the republic. Instead, the Republican leadership in the House and Senate rushed to grab the pork bribery and vote with the Democrats. John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and Judd Gregg distinguished themselves as dhimmis and were later rewarded by the victorious Democrats by being granted parakeet cages for offices in the new Congress. The House Republicans now boast that they voted a goose egg against the stimulus package, but this was just the twitching of the corpse. The truth about the House Republicans—cowards, sycophants, and snobs just like 1930’s lot—is illustrated by the fact that 85 of them voted for the ludicrous AIG bonus-confiscation bill written on the back of a parking ticket.

All of it in its tasty goodness here: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2009/04/this-isnt-going-to-make.html

Another Teenager 'tased' to death

2009-04-13T10:29:00.001-05:00

The mantra all along is “guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. Taken at face value, that statement is not even true. If it weren’t for the ‘instrument’ (gun), the assailant would be required to use a club or fists.

Anyone who tells you that tasing someone is a safe way to subdue them has not looked at the statistics. Officers have been taught that tasers are a safe way to subdue suspects. In their eyes, it is. Tase them until they are shaking uncontrollably on the ground or catatonic and they are very easy to put into cuffs.

All too often, they die.

What is said more often than not is “sorry, it wasn’t supposed to kill them”.

Nothing more than a ‘License to Kill’ without the 3-digit numbers behind their name.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/unfortunate-situation-by-digby-teenager.html

A Detroit teenager who police say fled a traffic stop Friday died after being subdued with a Taser. He is the second Michigan teen to die following a Taser stun in less than a month.

Warren Police say they don't know why the 15-year-old bailed out of a Dodge Stratus he was riding in during the stop on Eight Mile near Schoenherr, leading officers on a half-block chase that ended in an abandoned house on Pelkey in Detroit.

The car was stopped for having an expired license plate.

In the scuffle, officers shocked the teen one time with a Taser, police said. Shortly after, he became unresponsive and died.

Warren Police defended their call to shock the teen, who they later learned suffered from asthma and took antidepressant drugs. "It's an unfortunate situation," Warren Deputy Police Commissioner Jere Green said. "Our officers are shaken by it; they are upset. They are humans just like anybody else."

Dave gives us a primer on Facism

2009-04-13T10:20:00.001-05:00

And, no, it is not what Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg are espousing. Skreed and Sponge Bob Doughpants are extreme ‘up is down’ folks.

Go read Dave: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2009/04/glenn-becks-liberal-fascism-hour.html

Excerpt:

Most Americans believe they know what communism is, largely because it is an ideology based on a body of texts and revolving around specific ideas. In contrast, hardly anyone can explain what comprises fascism, mainly because all we really know about it is the regimes that arose under its banner. There are no extant texts, only a litany of dictatorships and atrocities. When we think of fascism, we think of Hitler and perhaps Mussolini, without understanding anything about the conditions that carried them to power.

At the same time, it’s important that both liberal and conservative Americans have a clear view of what fascism is, not just as an abstract definition, but as a real-life phenomenon. Fascism is not an extinct political force. Most Americans view Nazism as some kind of strange European virus that afflicted only the Germans and Italians, and only for a brief period—this by way of reassuring ourselves that “it couldn’t happen here.” But a look at the history of fascism shows this not to be the case; that the Germans and the Italians were ordinary, ostensibly civilized people like the rest of us. And that what went wrong there could someday go wrong here, too. How, then, are we to know if that is what’s happening, as it seems to happen so gradually that the populace scarcely recognizes it?

In its early years, fascism was best understood as an extreme reaction against socialism and communism, as “extremist anti-communism.” This view, predictably, was offered up by communists, who saw everything through their own ideological prisms. In reality, fascism was more complex than that, though the fear of communism was no doubt an essential element that fueled its recruitment and ideological appeal. At the time, there were very few attempts to systematize the ideology of fascism, though some existed (see, for example, Giovanni Gentile’s 1932 text, The Doctrine of Fascism ). Its true spirit was best expressed in an inchoate rant like Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Fascism was explicitly anti-democratic, anti-liberal, and corporatist, and it endorsed violence as a chief means to its ends. It was “revolutionary” in its fervor, yet sought to defend status-quo institutions, particularly business interests. It was also, obviously, authoritarian; the claim that it was oriented toward "socialism" is crudely ahistorical, if not outrageously revisionist. Lest we forget, socialists were among the first people targeted by Mussolini’s black-shirted thugs, and they were among the first people imprisoned and "liquidated" by the Nazi regime.

Glen Coffee - The Daily Oklahoman (hearts) him

2009-04-08T04:29:00.001-05:00

The Lost Ogle talks about the latest Glen Coffee “issue”. I’d just like to say that if I did what he did, it wouldn’t be the Ethics commission looking into it, it would be the Oklahoma Tax Commission. I’d be standing on a box with electrical leads attached to parts of my body, topped off with a hood over my head. But I digress…

The Oklahoman did a whitewash. Read the article. Same author did the story for “the World” and “the Oklahoman”. The article in the Gaylord Gazette got the old “never speak ill of another Republican” routine (except that the Daily Disappointment is supposed to be a newspaper, but, naaaah…). Whitewash. Total. The LO calls it “an infomercial for Coffee”.

Oh, heck. You go read it.

http://www.thelostogle.com/2009/04/08/the-oklahoman-%E2%99%A5-glenn-coffee/

excerpt:

So how did he manage to rack up an average of $238/day while not attending to the duties of President Pro Tempore at the Capitol? (Note: this figure also assumes that Coffee didn’t spend a single day earning the salary he collects working for a fancy law firm.)

Sounds like a reasonable question, right? Unfortunately,the single article The Oklahoman felt compelled to run on the topic disagrees. While vaguely mentioning the issue the state Democrats have attempted to raise, The Oklahomanpiece, written by Randy Krehbiel, prominently features Coffee’s spokes person referring to the topic as “an effort to prolong a non-story.” Finishing out the article is basically an infomercial on behalf of Senator Coffee.

Luckily, the Tulsa World also tackled the subject. In their article, written by Randy Krehbiel, they do what journalists call “journalism” and discussed all sides of the issue. There are quotes from the Democrats state chairman and rebuttals to the excuses offered by the Coffee staff. In all it is a well written and fair piece that allows the reader to understand the whole issue. It makes me wish that Randy Krehbiel wrote for The Oklahoman.

Wait, hold on, Randy Krehbiel did write the article for both papers. Now that I think about it, the two papers started a “sharing agreement” that allowed The Oklahoman to use content created by the Tulsa Worldand vice versa. When that came about, I expected it meant that the papers would publish content from their partner. What I didn’t realize was that the editors at The Oklahoman would take the journalism at their counterpart and re-publish it scrubbed of journalistic integrity.

Oklahoma "justice"

2009-03-14T15:28:00.001-05:00

Sadly, the overcrowded and overworked Oklahoma Penitentiary System fails again.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509231,00.html

McALESTER, Okla. — A 23-year-old inmate beaten to death at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary had been put in a cell with convicted killer he had testified against.

Prison spokesman Jerry Massie says Paul Duran Jr. fought with one cellmate and then was put in a cell with Jessie James Dalton.

Duran was found beaten to death about 15 minutes later.

Massie says the two were not supposed to be put in the same cell and prison officials are trying to determine how it happened.

Duran and Dalton were co-defendants in the January 2002 shooting death of Billy Wayne Ray in Oklahoma City.

Duran pleaded guilty to a robbery charge and testified against Dalton who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole.

Massie says investigators will present their findings to a district attorney who will decide if criminal charges will be filed.

I won’t recite the litany of problems with mandatory sentences for possession, number of inmates required to server 85% of their sentence, etc.

Overworked, overcrowded, oversentenced.

Sad.

You shouldn't fool with the old people

2009-02-18T09:24:00.001-06:00

The reason why they are old is that they know somehow or other how to overcome fools and Congress People who don’t take care of the Old People.

http://www.texaskaos.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5779

Analysis of House version of Stimulus Plan

2009-02-11T09:02:00.001-06:00

Go pork hunting for yourself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/02/01/GR2009020100154.html

Welfare lines

2009-02-08T21:47:00.001-06:00

We are so very insulated from this here in the heartland. It happens is little bits and pieces and for the most part, we just don’t see it. But there are pockets where this is just tragic.

How much worse will it get? Call Inhofe, call Coburn, Call Cole. Ask them what will it take to do what ‘the people need’ and not the party?

http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-12/123407089630660.xml&coll=1

New Jersey Star-Ledger

THE LONG, GRIM LINE FOR AID

The dejected meet the overwhelmed as recession widens need for welfare

Sunday, February 08, 2009

BY SUSAN K. LIVIO

Star-Ledger Staff

In down coats and scarves, grim-faced and shivering, hands jammed in pockets, they arrive at the Essex County Department of Citizen Services in East Orange before the doors open at 8 in the morning.

Everybody dreads the line: the people standing in it who feel demeaned and angry, the workers inside who brace for bad tempers or tears, and the people who drive past, fearing they could be standing there any day now.

By 9 a.m., the line snakes down South Clinton Street and extends along Freeway East. Once the people clear the metal detector, they're in line again -- some for hours, baby carriages in tow -- divided into their different needs. Every week hundreds will leave empty-handed because county workers are too inundated to help them all. They are given an appointment and told to come back later -- sometimes 10 days later.

All over the New Jersey, the welfare lines are get ting longer and longer. Victims of the recession are lining up to apply for food stamps and seek help paying for utilities, rent and subsidized health care in numbers that veteran social service workers have never seen before.

While the lines may run the longest in urban Essex County, rural Salem County and suburban Middlesex see the same thing: lines getting longer, lines made up more and more of people that have never stood there before.

Nikki Hernez, a 45-year-old Newark bus driver looking for work since October, said she has stood in lines all over the county. She walked 2 1/2 miles to a Newark office Monday to pick up a bus pass, only to be told to come back Thursday because the office was so jammed.

Hernez finds the line in East Orange office the most chaotic.

"The line at 50 South Clinton Avenue is crazy -- people get there early in the morning, a lot of the people are cursing, yelling and screaming," Hernez said.

"You gotta understand, people are under so much pressure there is only so much they can take," said Hernez, who ran out of unemployment benefits and applied for welfare in the fall. "But even I tell them, real nice, you're not going to get anything quick by cursing the worker out."

The experience isn't easy for the people on the other side of the counter.

"We have to face the clients every day. They are frustrated people who are not in good shape or they wouldn't be there," said David Weiner, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1081, representing Essex County welfare workers. "They get angry and don't get seen in a fashion that would be reasonable. They take it out on the first person they see, and all they see is who is in front of them."

JOAN'S THREE VISITS

Advocates for the poor say the people living on the economic mar gins have been nearly invisible in this recession, as the banking and foreclosure crisis has dominated the headlines.

That's likely to change as the demand continues to grow for government and nonprofit assistance for working poor and middle-class people who have lost their jobs and maxed out their unemployment benefits.

They include people like Joan, a 52-year-old Warren County resident who applied for public assistance in December, after years of holding white-collar and part-time tutoring jobs. County workers told her to come back in January because they were "so overloaded," she said.

Joan, who declined to reveal her full name to protect her son's privacy, said she doesn't blame the county workers -- "good people doing the best they can. But I have always been a taxpaying citizen. I am playing by the rules and I can't get help."

She said she pawned jewelry to make a car payment, and put food on the table by going to food pantries and taking handouts from friends and family until, upon her third visit, the county came through with a one-time food stamp grant for $227 last month.

"I never thought I would be in this situation," Joan added. "Something has to be done about people like me."

The state Department of Human Services, which oversees the distribution of welfare, Medicaid and food stamps benefits, saw a dramatic spike in the demand for these programs in the fall. Food- stamp applications doubled from 2,234 people in October 2007 to 4,547 people in October 2008, according to the most recent state data available.

During roughly the same period, there was a 61 percent spike in the number of people seeking cash assistance through public welfare, known as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or General Assistance. State unemployment rose to 7.1 percent in November, the highest in 15 years.

INUNDATED

Essex County welfare director Bruce Nigro said county agencies have yet to feel the full impact of the lost jobs. "They've just extended unemployment for another 13 weeks, but when unemployment runs out, I expect to get hit, probably late spring or early summer," he said.

That's saying a lot, considering how inundated his staff has been.

The system is handling an average of 31,500 people a month seeking help from various assistance programs, compared with 28,000 in the middle of 2008 and 24,000 in 2007, Nigro said.

"In 40 years, I have never seen volume like this," he said.

People in the most dire circumstances are getting help right away, welfare directors say.

Angela Mackaronis, director of the Middlesex County Board of Social Services, said a homeless person will get placed in a shelter that day, and a person without food can be approved for food stamps within seven days.

County agencies are allowed up to 30 days to approve applica tions for public assistance programs, and in Middlesex it often takes that long to complete them. "We're working overtime almost every night and Saturdays to meet the demand," Mackaro nis said.

"I've been at the board 40 years, and director since 1986. The current situation is unprecedented," she said.

In addition to welfare, there are other alternatives for help.

Dialing 2-1-1 or going to corresponding website (nj211.org) will link people to the universe of 12,000 government, religious and community programs across the state, said Laura Marx, executive director of the New Jersey 211 Partnership.

Last year the hotline took 22,296 calls between July 1 and Sept. 30, with one in every five callers seeking financial help, Marx said. The upward trend continued in the next quarter, between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, when 24,317 people dialed in and nearly one in three callers reporting they were in financial trouble.

"We definitely are hearing more people say they have never been behind on their mortgage or rent before, or they've never had trouble putting food on the table," Marx said. "We're trying to keep them clothed and fed and housed until they can get into the programs they are eligible for at the state and county."

DISPIRITED

Hours after she returned from a county office without her bus pass, Nikki Hernez arrived at the Iron bound East Family Success Center, feeling dejected and exhausted and looking for some support.

Jonah Gensler, the center's di rector, promised to call Hernez's welfare caseworker to sort out whether she was entitled to another welfare check. She hadn't gotten one since December, and needs the money to renew her driver's license so she can look for work.

"I have 96 cents in my bank ac count," Hernez said in a quiet voice, shaking her head. "This is two months without benefits. I'm washing my clothes by hand."

Since last March, the Iron bound Family Success Center, run by the Ironbound Community Corp., has helped people in need apply for government programs, as well as offering its own economic- empowerment services, Gensler said. "We are also their advocate. It's a big system and they can get lost," he said.

Last year, 11,540 families sought help or participated in programs offered by the 37 Family Success Centers across New Jersey, funded by the Department of Children and Families. "The purpose is to provide a one-stop shop before families find themselves in a crisis," commissioner Kimberly Ricketts said.

But with the economy in a spiral, the demand for help from the traditional government safety net will only grow.

"All 21 counties in the state have been screaming they need help, but help is just not available," said Kathleen Lockbaum, director of the Salem County Board of Social Services, where the number of people seeking help rose from 2,700 last February to 4,000 in December. This is a huge jump for such a small county, she said.

"Unfortunately right now that is the struggle -- there are people coming in who need help, and you can't help them right away," Lockbaum said.

The executive director of Legal Services of New Jersey, a nonprofit agency that had more than 60,000 indigent clients last year, thinks the state has a role to play in lightening the load. State officials could make applications for assistance programs easier to complete and expe dite the approval process. Lawmakers should consider providing aid to counties to help them hire workers.

"The state is ultimately responsible for overseeing a statewide system that works best for the pub lic," said Melville "Dee" Miller, Legal Services executive director. "They have to absolutely get smarter, the ways they do things to admit large numbers of people who are unquestionably in need."

Downtown Norman Landmark - unsafe for occupancy

2009-02-07T05:35:00.001-06:00

The “Financial Building” (I never knew it had a name other than the Vista Building, was closed to visitors and occupants on Friday. Questions regarding structural integrity. Tenants being relocated.

Norman Transcript Story Here: http://www.normantranscript.com/localnews/local_story_038014805

The Housing Crisis - Dubai style

2009-02-06T08:50:00.001-06:00

OK, OK, I know this is a Norman and Oklahoma blog, but this is not our very own private mini-depression (or full-blown if the Congressional Republicans and Limbaugh get their way).

However, “walking away” is not the correct descriptor when it comes to defaulting on a mortgage in Dubai.

For many expatriate workers in Dubai it was the ultimate symbol of their tax-free wealth: a luxurious car that few could have afforded on the money they earned at home.

Now, faced with crippling debts as a result of their high living and Dubai’s fading fortunes, many expatriates are abandoning their cars at the airport and fleeing home rather than risk jail for defaulting on loans.

Police have found more than 3,000 cars outside Dubai’s international airport in recent months. Most of the cars – four-wheel drives, saloons and “a few” Mercedes – had keys left in the ignition.

Read the rest at The London Times online (h/t to Calculated Risk):

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/the_gulf/article5663618.ece

Krugman - Congress Fiddles while it all burns

2009-02-06T05:56:00.001-06:00

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

The entire post is very much worth your time: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1

From a Family Friendly, Neighborhood Republican Company

2009-02-02T15:54:00.001-06:00

Shorter version: OPUBCO says “If you are a woman working for us, help us with our bottom line right now. Quit so we don’t have to fire you. Stay home with the little terrors. Get pregnant again. And cook a meal for Chrissakes!”

January 26, 2009

OPUBCO Child Development Center Families

Despite the rate increases that went into effect July 1, 2008, OPUBCO budgeted approximately $150,000 to subsidize the operations of the OPUBCO Child Development Center (”Center”) during 2009. Given the state of the economy, we have made the difficult decision to close the Center effective July 3, 2009. This decision was not made lightly or without a great deal of consideration to the impact it will have on each family, but we simply cannot continue to subsidize the Center’s operations. It is our hope that by providing this advance notice, you will have sufficient time to locate a quality alternative for your child(ren) beginning July 6, 2009.

If you have any questions about the information contained in this letter, please feel free to give me a call at 475-4016 or send an email to sbriggs@opubco.com. On behalf of OPUBCO, please accept our apologies for the concern and inconvenience this decision may cause. We wish the best for your child(ren)’s pre-school care and education.

Sincerely,

Scott Briggs
Vice President of Human Resources

Racism is NOT dead. It lives as a 'wedge'

2009-02-02T08:55:00.000-06:00

Immigration is not an ‘easily solved’ issue. Passing laws and mass expulsions won’t cut it. It will take hard work, sensitivity, and clear, un-agitated minds.

NY Times Editorial from February 1 in total:

February 1, 2009

Editorial

The Nativists Are Restless

The relentlessly harsh Republican campaign against immigrants has always hidden a streak of racialist extremism. Now after several high-water years, the Republican tide has gone out, leaving exposed the nativism of fringe right-wingers clinging to what they hope will be a wedge issue.

Last week at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft.

The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. Rather than “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” as President Bush and Karl Rove once tried to do, the report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to double down on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out.

This is nonsense, of course. For years Americans have rejected the cruelty of enforcement-only regimes and Latino-bashing, in opinion surveys and at the polls. In House and Senate races in 2008 and 2006, “anti- amnesty” hard-liners consistently lost to candidates who proposed comprehensive reform solutions. The wedge did not work for single-issue xenophobes like Lou Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton, Pa., or the former Arizona Congressman J. D. Hayworth. Nor did it help any of the Republican presidential candidates trying to defeat the party’s best-known voice of immigration moderation, John McCain, for the nomination.

Americans want immigration solved, and they realize that mass deportations will not do that. When you add the unprecedented engagement of growing numbers of Latino voters in 2008, it becomes clear that the nativist path is the path to permanent political irrelevance. Unless you can find a way to get rid of all the Latinos.

What was perhaps more notable than the report itself was the team that delivered it. It included Bay Buchanan, former adviser to Representative Tom Tancredo and sister of Pat, who founded the American Cause and wrote “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.” She was joined by James Pinkerton, an essayist and Fox News contributor who, as an aide to the first President Bush, took credit for the racist Willie Horton ads run against Michael Dukakis.

So far, so foul. But even more telling was the presence of Peter Brimelow, a former Forbes editor and founder of Vdare.com, an extremist anti-immigration Web site. It is named for Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, which tells you most of what you need to know. The site is worth a visit. There you can read Mr. Brimelow’s and Mr. Buchanan’s musings about racial dilution and the perils facing white people, and gems like this from Mr. Epstein:

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

It is all around us. Much was made of the Republican mailing of the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro,” but the same notorious CD included “The Star Spanglish Banner,” a puerile bit of Latino-baiting. It is easily found on YouTube. Google the words “Bill O’Reilly” and “white, Christian male power structure” for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration views of “the far left” (including The Times) as racially traitorous.

And it takes only a cursory look at a worsening economic climate and grim national mood to realize that history is always threatening to repeat itself. Last week on Long Island, the authorities in Suffolk County unsealed new indictments against a group of teenage boys accused in a murderous attack against an Ecuadorean immigrant, Marcelo Lucero. Since that crime last year, many more victims have come forward with stories of assaults in or near the same town, Patchogue. The police in that suburb seem to have made a habit of ignoring a long and escalating trail of attacks against immigrant men, until the hatred rose up and spilled over one night, fatally.

Frank Rich - NY Times

2009-02-02T08:48:00.001-06:00

His take on the Obstructionist Party (Rs).

Excerpt:

The problem is not that House Republicans gave the stimulus bill zero votes last week. That’s transitory political symbolism, and it had no effect on the outcome. Some of the naysayers will vote for the revised final bill anyway (and claim, Kerry-style, that they were against it before they were for it). The more disturbing problem is that the party has zero leaders and zero ideas. It is as AWOL in this disaster as the Bush administration was during Katrina.

If the country wasn’t suffering, the Republicans’ behavior would be a laugh riot. The House minority leader, John Boehner, from the economic wasteland of Ohio, declared on “Meet the Press” last Sunday that the G.O.P. didn’t want to be “the party of ‘No’ ” but “the party of better ideas, better solutions.” And what are those ideas, exactly? He said he’ll get back to us “over the coming months.”

His deputy, the Virginia congressman Eric Cantor, has followed the same script, claiming that the G.O.P. will not be “the party of ‘No’ ” but will someday offer unspecified “solutions and alternatives.” Not to be left out, the party’s great white hope, Sarah Palin, unveiled a new political action committee last week with a Web site also promising “fresh ideas.” But as the liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga observed, the site invites visitors to make donations and read Palin hagiography while offering no links to any ideas, fresh or otherwise.

Later in the article, he discusses the Shadow Chairman of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh:

The Republicans’ other preoccupation remains Rush Limbaugh, who is by default becoming their de facto leader. While most Americans are fearing fear itself, G.O.P. politicians are tripping over themselves in morbid terror of Rush.

These pratfalls commenced after Obama casually told some Republican congressmen (correctly) that they won’t “get things done” if they take their orders from Limbaugh. That’s all the stimulus the big man needed to go on a new bender of self-aggrandizement. He boasted that Obama is “more frightened” of him than he is of the Republican leaders in the House or Senate. He said of the new president, “I hope he fails.”

Obama no doubt finds Limbaugh’s grandiosity more amusing than frightening, but G.O.P. politicians are shaking like Jell-O. When asked by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News on Wednesday if he shared Limbaugh’s hope that Obama fails, Eric Cantor spun like a top before running off, as it happened, to appear on Limbaugh’s radio show. Mike Pence of Indiana, No. 3 in the Republican House leadership, similarly squirmed when asked if he agreed with Limbaugh. Though the Republicans’ official, poll-driven line is that they want Obama to succeed, they’d rather abandon that disingenuous nicety than cross Rush.

Most pathetic of all was Phil Gingrey, a right-wing Republican congressman from Georgia, who mildly criticized both Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Politico because they “stand back and throw bricks” while lawmakers labor in the trenches. So many called Gingrey’s office to complain that the poor congressman begged Limbaugh to bring him on air to publicly recant on Wednesday. As Gingrey abjectly apologized to talk radio’s commandant for his “stupid comments” and “foot-in-mouth disease,” he sounded like the inmate in a B-prison-movie cowering before the warden after a failed jailbreak.

“It’s up to me to hijack the Obama honeymoon,” Limbaugh soon gloated, “and I’ve done it.” In his dreams. He has hijacked what’s left of the Republican Party; the Obama honeymoon remains intact. The nightmare is that we have so irrelevant, clownish and childish an opposition party at a moment when America is in an all-hands-on-deck emergency that’s as trying as war. To paraphrase a dictum that has been variously attributed to two of our most storied leaders in times of great challenge, Thomas Paine and George Patton, the Republicans should either lead, follow or get out of the grown-ups’ way.

Seems that The Oxycontin Sponge rules the roost these days. However, please don’t confuse him with Foghorn Leghorn. From time to time ole Foggy had some moral scruples. Rush is bereft of those. He and the Republican Party are in the toilet. They both want the rest of the country there as well.

Whole at on the Times Opinion page at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01rich.html

Stock Stuff. Technical and wonky but worth remembering

2009-01-26T09:29:00.001-06:00

James Bianco, CEO of Bianco Research (from Ritholtz): http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/01/bianco-the-dow-is-distorted/

Now that I read this, I mostly understand it. And it scares the crap out of me!

Bianco: The Dow is Distorted
January 21, 2009 James A. Bianco, CEO of Bianco Research, LLC

Comment - The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is a price weighted index. The divisor for the DJIA is 7.964782. That means that every $1 a DJIA stock loses, the index loses 7.96 points, regardless of the company’s market capitalization.

Dow Jones, the keeper of the DJIA, has an unwritten rule that any DJIA stock that gets below $10 gets tossed out. As of last night’s close (January 20), The DJIA had the following stocks less than $10…

Citi (C) = $2.80
GM (GM) = $3.50
B of A (BAC) = $5.10
Alcoa (AA) = $8.35

If all four of these stocks went to zero on today’s open, the DJIA would lose only 157.3 points.

The financials in the DJIA are…

Citi (C) = $2.80
B of A (BAC) = $5.10
Amex (AXP) = 15.60
JP Morgan (JPM) = $18.09

If every financial stock in the DJIA went to zero on today’s open, it would only lose 331.25 points, less than it lost yesterday (332.13 points).

If you want to add GE into the financial sector, a debatable proposition, then:

GE (GE) = $12.93

If the four financial stocks above and GE opened at zero today, the DJIA would only lose 434.24 points.

The reason the DJIA is outperforming on the downside is the index committee is not doing it job and replacing sub-$10 stocks and the financials are so beaten up that they cannot push the index much lower.

So what is driving the index? The highest priced stocks:

IBM (IBM) = $81.98
Exxon (XOM) = $76.29
Chevron (CHV) = $68.31
P&G (PG) = $57.34
McDonalds (MCD) = $57.07
J&J (JNJ) = $56.75
3M (MMM) = $53.92
Wal-Mart (WMT) = $50.56

For instance if all the sub-$10 stocks listed above, all the financials listed above and GE opened at zero, the DJIA loses 528.63 points. To repeat if C, BAC, GM, AA, JPM, AXP and GE all open at zero, the DJIA loses 528.63 points.

If IBM opens at zero, it loses 652.95 points. So, the DJIA says that IBM has more influence on the index than all the financials, autos, GE and Alcoa combined.

The DJIA is not normal as the Index committee is not doing their job during this crisis, possibly because of the political fallout of kicking out a Citi or GM. As a result, this index is now severely distorted as it has a tiny weighting in financials and autos.

The Economy Since Eisenhower

2009-01-24T12:15:00.002-06:00

NYT prepares the numbers for you. They make it easy...they give you pictures.

Worst President Ever.

[click photo for larger]

Well, they didn't really make the numbers up

2009-01-24T11:46:00.001-06:00

so much as they just failed to note the context.

Whenever you hear John Boehner mewling about bi-partisanship, watch out for the knife in his hand.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_01/016586.php

by Steve Benen

ABOUT THAT CBO REPORT.... This week, congressional Republicans seized on a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) showing the limited short-term stimulative effects of the Democrats' proposed rescue package. It's also led to widespread media coverage undermining the White House's arguments about the benefits of a stimulus plan.

There is, however, a problem. The CBO report, as it's been described, doesn't exist.

Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package won't be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending.

Funny thing is, there is no such report.

"We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study," a CBO aide told the Huffington Post.

Rather, the nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a score -- how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.

Because it dealt with just a part of the stimulus, it estimated the spending rate for only about $300 billion of the $825 billion plan. Significant changes have been made to the part of the bill the CBO looked at.

Oops.

It appears that the preliminary, incomplete numbers put together by the CBO were distributed to a small handful of lawmakers in both parties earlier in the week. Someone (Republican congressional offices) then passed the misleading data onto the AP, which predictably ran with the incomplete numbers, telling the public that it "will take years before an infrastructure spending program proposed by President-elect Barack Obama will boost the economy."

Other major media outlets quickly followed, and voila, Republicans had a talking point: "Boehner and other Republican aides roamed the Capitol press galleries, flogging the CBO numbers."

Obviously, congressional Republicans were less concerned about reality than undermining an economic rescue package. But as DDay noted, let's not brush past media culpability: "It's pretty clear that the media has no ability to or interest in understanding this stuff, because then they wouldn't have their precious 'conflict.' So they regurgitate whatever some GOP staffer feeds them, just to spice things up."

OMB Director Peter Orszag, who used to head the CBO, has already responded to the bogus reports and talking points. Republicans and reporters might want to check it out.

Ray Charles - America The Beautiful

2009-01-21T08:47:00.003-06:00

"

"

A question for my one loyal reader from Texas...

2009-01-20T19:26:00.001-06:00

Why on God’s green earth did you people send such an ass back to Washington?

Cornyn blocks Clinton nomination

The Solid Middles

2009-01-16T14:23:00.001-06:00

The big middle of the Middle Class – The Solid Middles:

Nobody pays any attention to that rock solid group, let's call them the Solid Middles. There isn't a uniform set of characteristics, not Republican or Democrats, religious or atheists, workers or professionals, or any other demographic. The thing they have in common is that they live financially conservative lives. That, and that no one cares about the incredible diminishment in their lives.

No one is going to do anything about the losses in their 401k plans and their IRAs. In fact, the talk is that something has to be done about Social Security and Medicare, meaning we have to cut them back. No one is going to help them educate their kids. In fact, cities and states are seeing reductions in tax revenues, which means cuts to education at all levels. The transition team whispers that the promises that might make a difference to the Solid Middle, like health care reform, are going to take a back seat to the problems of the economy. The tax cuts in the incoming administration’s proposals are insignificant. The most that can be said is that if the administration can do a decent job, a few more Solid Middles will hang on to their jobs.

To top it off, they get to watch the profligate people get bailed out. It’s bad enough that the really rich, the Financial Elites, got billions, and then rubbed our noses in their billion dollar bonuses and all-expenses paid “conventions”. But it’s not just the Financial Elites who got the gold ring. Many of us can look next door and see people who overbought, and can’t pay. Then they hear that Congress is considering allowing bankruptcy courts to cut their mortgage debt and their payments. This is really rubbing it in. A Solid Middle family that bought a house with a 20% down payment and monthly payments they could manage, never bought anything on credit cards they couldn’t pay off that month, drove cars until they rusted away, and saved money for their kids’ education and their retirement, now see their profligate neighbors living almost the same life without paying for it, thanks to bankruptcy or the Hope Now program.

It's true that if mortgage principal and interest get cut, the only losers are the investors in the big mortgage securitized trusts, the greedy yield hogs. Unfortunately, many of these trusts are insured through credit default swaps, many issued by AIG, and the Fed is buying those CDSs at a cost in excess of $82bn.

It's also true that Solid Middles won't suffer the emotional pain of personal failure. And it's good that they have the money they saved, and a lot of the money they invested in mutual funds. Some of them might be comforted by reading Matthew 20:1-15. But still, it is galling to see the profligate rewarded out of their taxes and the future taxes on their kids.

There isn’t a solution to this problem. It is grossly unfair, and there isn’t an answer. People who work hard and pay by the rules pay for the failures of the profligate, rich or not.

Read it all here: http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3054

Our money. Going to the top and the bottom. I don’t mind the bottom. The tops, not so much.