Well, you know... that's what someone over at
Newsmax
(no direct link from here; that link is to TPM LiveWire) says they want. Rachel Slajda of TPM LiveWire:
Newsmax Columnist: Military Coup May Be Needed 'To Resolve The Obama Problem' ...
In a column published yesterday, Newsmax's John L. Perry wrote that there is a "gaining" possibility that the
military will stage a coup to "resolve the 'Obama problem.'"
Newsmax has apparently removed the column from its site. Links are now redirected to the homepage, and Perry's
author page has no mention of his latest work.
...
TPM LiveWire has a graphic snapshot of the Newsmax article; here is a brief excerpt, followed by another
paragraph supplied by LiveWire in plain text:
[From snapshot]
There is a remote, although gaining possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve
the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.
[Plain text]
Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a
Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not
acceptable or reversible.
It gives me great comfort to read that our men and women in uniform are safeguarding us against the ravages of
the first duly elected president in over eight years. Oh, yeah, that's the spirit. Or maybe matters are much
simpler... maybe it has nothing to do with our military... maybe the Secret Service needs to talk to
Mr. John L. Perry.
Dog-damn, I'm tired of these people, people who didn't get their way in the last election but feel that their
candidate should have been installed anyway. When St. Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, I was terribly unhappy,
but Mr. Reagan was my president, and I treated him as such. When George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988, I was
even unhappier (not because he was worse than Reagan, but because the GOPers had won three presidential
elections in a row), but Mr. Bush was my president. When George W. Bush took office after a sham election in
2000... well, let's just say I advocated no action against him, though I believed his ascent to office was
illegal as hell. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, I cheered for a few weeks until he revealed his true
positions... but he was and is my president, because he was elected. This whole "Republican right
to rule, no matter who is elected" meme is outright un-American. Perhaps, as many have said, violence is as
American as apple pie, but we don't need to scoop ice cream on top by advocating military intervention
in our basic constitutionally specified processes. I'm sorry, but IOKIYAR doesn't cut it here.
(Minor change for clarity made after initial posting. - SB)
UPDATE 11:51am:TPM
has many updates, linked from the indicated post. Most interesting to me was the
full original text
of Perry's column. It's not as bad as I expected... it's considerably worse.
Abortion Fight Complicates Debate on Health Care
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: September 28, 2009
WASHINGTON — As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.
Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.
Abortion-rights supporters say such a restriction would all but eliminate from the marketplace private plans that cover the procedure, pushing women who have such coverage to give it up. Nearly half of those with employer-sponsored health plans now have policies that cover abortion, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
...
Is this the same Democratic Party I joined decades ago in part because it held an apparently unswerving
commitment to women's fundamental rights?
Read the whole sorry article. If this provision makes it into law with the collusion of Democrats, I shall never
have one single solitary thing to do with that party again. There is no point... none whatsoever... in
staying with a political party that abandons its members, contributors and supporters like that.
If my 30 years mean that little to the Ben Nelsons and Bart Stupaks of the party, they can simply deal with my
principled opposition as they once were sustained by my principled support. Oh, and they can fucking go to hell.
Tom Lehrer (YouTube video)
(lyrics)
asked the question several decades ago, and answered himself...
...
We'll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the Bomb.
Who's next...
Well, now we know the real answer, and
it ain't Alabama
(as far as we know).
I rarely find myself in agreement with
Robert Gates,
but this time he said something sensible:
...
So what can the U.S. do about it? Gates said there's still "a pretty rich list" of sanction possibilities but
that "the reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time."
The only way you end up not having a nuclear capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their
security is diminished by having those weapons.
Kyl also implied that the time for talking with Iran is over -- or should be soon. "At a certain point, talking
is counterproductive rather than productive because time is not on our side," he said, adding later that "the
carrot approach does not work with these people."
...
Oh, yeah; "regime change" worked soooo well in Iraq. And America soooo much needs another little aggressive war.
And Bushie accomplished soooo much for American security when he listed Iran as part of the
"Axis of Evil." Yep, them GOPers is soooo
brilliant.
On the other hand, if Kyl were to get his way, we might eventually have use for
another Tom Lehrer song (YouTube)...
It's not Friday yet. This is not a cat (apologies to Magritte). And this is certainly not blogging; if it were,
I'd be utterly miserable doing it at this moment...
(Flowers in The Village near Rice University, Houston, 2005.)
If you are unfamiliar with
JPRA,
as I was,
here's another earlier FDL post by Jeff Kaye
that will familiarize you with their relationship both to SERE (resistance) training and to the development at
Guantanamo of interrogation techniques.
On Emptywheel's posts, please be sure to read the comments; many of her commenters are attorneys themselves. Oh,
and be sure to have your favorite antacid handy. Your government was stonewalling you under the Bush
administration on how the "state secrets privilege" was being used... and it still is on Obama's watch.
Between the contents of these posts, the atrocities I've read about in Jane Mayer's The Dark Side and
those mentioned in Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values, I believe the United States, led in turn by each
major political party, has embarked on a course of sustained lawless behavior liable to turn the stomach of
most Americans like me who used to believe we were the good guys. It is harder and harder to maintain that
fiction.
For what it's worth, this battle is being fought in court in large measure by the ACLU. If you have a few spare
bucks, pitch them a couple.
I've noticed over the years that small kids, before anyone has explained insurance to them, tend to believe
that if you buy life insurance, you won't die, and that if you buy health insurance, you won't get sick. So
what would that same little rascal say about buying
no insurance at all?
Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
Thu Sep 17, 2009 6:11pm EDT
By Susan Heavey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in
large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers
found in an analysis released on Thursday.
...
Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher
risk of death than those who have coverage.
...
Here's a question: will matters be any different under, say, the Baucus plan? Any other plan? Will the poor who
have the misfortune to be ill bite the dust with greater frequency than their otherwise identically situated
wealthy fellows who have health insurance? It's an ironic dilemma, because if you insist they're no worse off
(not that anyone is doing that, at least not aloud), you're asserting that medical care makes no difference, but
if you say the misfortunate 45,000 simply weren't smart enough to be wealthy, you're offering a rather shocking
moral proposition (again, one that no one seems to be saying aloud) that individuals of different social
statuses have disparate rights to live. No one says it aloud, but a lot of people seem to believe it.
A year ago, I'd have said that this unmentionable dilemma is the GOP elephant in the room. Now it seems very
much to belong to Blue Dog Dems. Either way, I do not have a good feeling about the outcome of this process.
Clearly the TSA hasn't gotten enough attention lately, so like a spoiled child, it is making a
public fuss
(admittedly Congress-mandated)
about its new (heh... not really) Secure Flight program. The short version: this is
CAPPS-II
reincarnated. The airlines will build a profile on each passenger and attempt to match each person at the gate
with their profile. Will it work to stop terrorism? Who knows; that's surely not its real purpose. Remember:
once such a database is collected, a) it never really goes away, and b) it can be used by anyone with access
for any purpose, not just its ostensible purpose.
Here's what the
ACLU
had to say about it in October 2008:
...
“The Department of Homeland Security has made substantial changes to the Secure Flight program in response to
the concerns expressed by the civil liberties community,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s
Technology and Liberty Program. “DHS will neither use commercial data to conduct background checks on travelers
nor create a risk score for passengers through Secure Flight. DHS also is minimizing data collection to only
necessary data elements and greatly reducing the length of data retention by expunging information on most
travelers after seven days.”
Though DHS has made some positive changes in the final regulations, significant, unanswered questions still
persist for Secure Flight’s implementation. One problem is the lack of adequate redress for individuals who are
mistakenly matched to the secret government watch lists. Many innocent Americans, including Members of Congress,
nuns, babies and other “suspicious characters,” have already been wrongly tagged by these secret lists.
Another unresolved problem is that Secure Flight is predicated upon secret, inaccurate government watch lists.
These bloated lists have more than one million names, according to a tally maintained by the ACLU based upon the
government’s own reported numbers for the size of the list.
...
(Emphasis mine.)
As I mentioned some time ago, I shall not fly commercial airlines until these policies are revoked. That probably
means I will not fly again in my lifetime. So be it. There is simply no legitimate basis for profiling the
entire population of passengers, in identity-thieving detail, as an alleged but dubiously effective means of
preventing terrorism.
OK children, it's time for the Pledge of Subservience: "... one nation, under surveillance..."
Implementing a law passed by the Texas Legislature in 2007, some Texas public schools may
teach the Bible
in the classroom, supposedly as literature or "history," or in a cultural context. The ACLU... always the good
guyz on this site, in case you're a new reader... is publishing one of its famous Know Your Rights series for
students and teachers. Here's an excerpt from the email they sent me, which (if the link works) is the same as
the article linked above:
This law, passed by the Texas Legislature during the 2007 session, authorizes Texas pubic schools to offer a
high school elective course on the Bible’s role in history and literature.
We have received numerous inquiries from parents, students, teachers and concerned citizens regarding this law.
To help guide you, the ACLU of Texas has published a fact sheet, titled
Know Your Rights: The Bible In Texas Public Schools (PDF).
...
[Aside: all these generated links from an email may or may not work. Let me know if they don't; I'll post the
whole segments... trust me, the ACLU won't object.]
The problem is, these courses never really work. The degree to which teachers show constitutional restraint in
teaching about religions or sacred texts, especially "the" Bible (which one?), varies with the religiosity of
the teacher, and inevitably there are a certain number of teachers who feel their religious commitment allows
them to exceed the Constitution's restriction on the pursuit of religion on the public dime. While these
teachers are still the exception, there are enough of them that I'll wager that every one of you readers has
encountered, directly or indirectly (perhaps through your children), at least one of them at some point. The
phenomenon isn't rare. And the Constitution's requirement is often quite unpopular among fundamentalist
Christians, some of whom seem either not to have read the First Amendment or not to believe it is part of the
supreme law of the land. (Or maybe they just don't give a good damn; how should I know.)
Gov. Perry has stuck his finger in it by
appointing extreme religious conservatives to the state board of education.
The board will doubtless rule as Perry intends on any question that comes before it. Courts... well, no one ever
really knows how individual courts will rule, but you can bet they will end up being involved, because someone
will start introducing daily Christian prayers in her or his classroom; that goes almost without saying.
My late father, a secondary school science teacher, testified a number of times before the SBOE on this very
subject, as an earlier generation of fundamentalist evangelicals attempted to take over the selection of science
textbooks for Texas public schools (which, by their sheer size, affect far more than just Texas). Dad won those
battles, but he knew... and he was right... that the war wasn't over. Keep your eyes on what your kids are being
fed in school: it may not be a healthy intellectual diet. Those few of you among my readers who might think a
little Christian prayer might help the public school classroom, remember this: it could just as easily be a
Muslim prayer someday, forced on your Christian child. Freedom of/from religion: it's for every American, or it's
for no one at all. I find the latter a scary thought.
Dana Goldstein of Tapped
points out one of the many egregiously terrible things about Sen. Max Baucus's healthcare plan:
The Baucus Plan Punishes Single People -- Especially Single Moms.
...
The HELP Committee and House bills require most employers to provide health insurance for their workers. But the
Baucus plan does not include such an employer mandate. Instead, it requires companies to partially reimburse the
government for the insurance affordability credits of uninsured workers and their dependents.
This creates some very perverse incentives. It discourages companies from hiring single people, who don't have a
spouse whose employer-provided insurance will cover them, thus offering the employer an "out" on the subsidy
payback. It encourages employers to pressure married, uninsured workers to go into their spouse's health plans,
even if the worker feels they'd get better coverage for a lower cost on the exchange. And worst of all, it
particularly discourages firms from hiring single people with children, because they'd have to pay for the
children's subsidies, as well.
We know who'll be affected most by this bad, bad idea: low-income women, who are already pushed into "pink
collar" jobs with more unstable hours, less benefits, and less pay than similarly educated men. Now even those
jobs will be harder for single moms to get, as employers weigh whether a worker earning $15,000 or $20,000 a
year is worth paying an extra several thousand dollars for, because of this subsidy payback requirement. Why not
just hire someone without kids? Or someone married?
...
Well, OK, I've rudely reproduced at least half the very short article. But it's extremely important to those of
us who are single, and especially those who are single and female, to realize that tinkering around the edges
will not remedy the insurance crisis for ordinary folk. And it makes us realize how important it is
to defeat the bill compiled by the insurance industry's bought-and-paid-for Senator. As far as I can tell his
bill represents the interests of not one member of the general public... none. Don't let Baucus faucus!
(Still sick; blogging compulsively. Apologies for the infrequency of posts.)
Obama is
reorienting
America's "missile defense" system away from Russia. In general, that would be a good
thing: he's correct that the threats are elsewhere, and that Bush's missile defense system in Poland and the
Czech Republic was a bad idea by just about every measure. Indeed, it was such a bad idea that
John McCain,
who apparently really misses and longs for the days of the Cold War, vehemently opposes its abandonment.
Everything sounds great until you read
this TPM article
that includes a passage about Robert Gates's statement:
The system will "enhance our ability to respond to the most immediate threats to the Continent as well as future
threats," Gates said. He said the plan would be implemented in phases. The first will involve missile defense
systems placed on ships; the second, starting around 2015, will move to land-based versions in the Czech
Republic and Poland.
So let me get this straight... in 2015, we're going to reinstitute the system that annoyed Russia so much?
(Steve shakes his head...)
If missile defense really worked... I mean, outside the late Ronald Reagan's fantasies... it might be different.
But by and large it doesn't. One failed test after another has not incrementally approached a working system;
rather, it has emphasized how nearly impossible the task is. But Obama... presumably aware that he
received more in campaign contributions from the defense industry than McCain...
doesn't want to do the right thing, which is to cancel the program altogether. That might be bad for his
campaign cash flow in 2012.
Meanwhile, in the America you and I live in, the economy is the pits, and the healthcare funding plan is going
nowhere good...
(I am still sick. Apologies for the infrequency of posts.)
She was Mary
of "Peter, Paul and Mary." To members of my generation, I need say no more. To the rest of you,
I do hope you'll find a recording or at least a couple of YouTube videos to remind yourself of who she was.
It's been
a tough week
for the world of entertainment; we've lost some of the greatest.
Most of you probably know the old Southern expression, "sick in bed with the doctor," meaning nothing more than
"sick in bed." This one is not a doctor. Like me, she has a Master's degree. But she manages medical research
projects for a living, and I'm very glad to be hanging around her when I'm feeling like this. What is this bug
I've got? I don't know. It could be a minor cold. It's probably not a flu. It may just be really bad
allergies... you don't want to think about the contents of the air here in Houston this week.
Whatever I've got, I'd probably just sleep it off except I have a... you guessed it... doctor's appointment this
afternoon, long since scheduled. Maybe he'll know what it is. I don't expect to be cured; that's unlikely. But
if he offered me some good drugs that made me feel better, I wouldn't turn them down.
Meanwhile, I'll probably surf and drop comments when I'm not sleeping... but my posts here will be short and to
the point, like those of the past couple of days. Stay well, readers.
San Diego Sheriff deployed military crowd control device at Congressional town halls
September 11, 11:58 AM
San Diego County Political Buzz Examiner
Kimberly Dvorak
The increasing frustration with politicians and overflow crowds attending August town halls led San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore to place military-type crowd control devices at two area town hall meetings.
Rep. Susan Davis-D Calif. and Rep. Darrell Issa-R Calif. held town halls that exceeded capacity (10,000+ total attendees) and prompted the Sheriff’s Department to have Long-Range Acoustic Devices(LRADs) standing ready.
Both town halls took place without incident; however the use of the military device concerned San Diegians. The LRAD crowd control is primarily used in Iraq to control insurgents and can cause serious and lasting harm to humans.
...
It's just the thing for a town hall meeting: a speech suppression / hearing attenuation / crowd control device.
What is this sheriff's department's slogan... "protecting the First Amendment, one crowd dispersal at a time"?
I don't have any good cat pics this week, so here's a skyscraper snapshot from the cell phone camera:
Houstonians will recognize this one. If not, here's a hint: it is not downtown! Here's another: I took the
snapshot a couple of long blocks away, from the parking lot of The Container Store. That should be enough for
you to identify the building.
(Posted early for the usual reason. Actually, it's 11:01 pm Thursday, but changing the wrong date I
entered would change the URL of the post. Sigh.)
Christy examines the argument before the Supreme Court mentioned here
a couple of days ago
on the issue of "corporate personhood" and campaign contributions as protected speech. The comment thread on
Christy's post is worth wading through as well.
Obama's speech:
something for everybody, but nothing for ordinary people who get sick. Obama appears not to have learned anything
from this entire experience. I'll write more when I've had time to process the bullshit that was flung.
UPDATE:
Others seem
considerablymoreoptimistic
after listening to the speech. Maybe it's my frame of mind tonight. Again, I'll write more tomorrow.
... is on display in
this YouTube video
(language probably not safe for work, unless you're self-employed). Once again, a Republican man in a powerful
position, a man who campaigns on "family values," has a few stories of conquest to tell... too close to an open
mic in a California Assembly committee room. Right now, California State Assemblymember Michael D. Duvall is
refusing all contact with the media. How soon will he claim, along with Appalachian Trail hiker
Gov. Mark Sanford of SC,
that his constituency simply cannot get along without him?
If the preachy moralizing of today's GOPers were not enough by itself, we also have to put up with their
hypocrisy. Sometimes they make me wish I believed in a genuine Hell... I mean, a fiery afterlife for them, not
our existence in the presence of these morally self-satisfied assholes, which is undoubtedly a metaphorical Hell
in itself.
(H/T TPMMuckraker.
Please read their article; they have much, much more on Duvall than that video.)
One week old (a week is an eternity in politics) and very long,
Taibbi's Rolling Stone article
is still worth reading for an overall assessment of the monumental fuckup Obama and Congress have made of the
healthcare reform effort.
(Taibbi also has a
blog at Rolling Stone. I've just discovered it,
and uncharacteristically for me, I'm reserving blogrolling until I've read a bit more of it.)
Editorial A Threat to Fair Elections
Published: September 7, 2009
The Supreme Court may be about to radically change politics by striking down the longstanding rule that says
corporations cannot spend directly on federal elections. If the floodgates open, money from big business could
overwhelm the electoral process, as well as the making of laws on issues like tax policy and bank regulation.
...
And they seem to be in a hurry to do it, too, choosing a case which the NYT says has "no factual record on the
critical question, making careful deliberation impossible." One might get the impression that careful
deliberation was never intended.
Already, in issues as diverse as healthcare and war, Congress and our sorry mainstream media defer to large
corporate interests, ignoring altogether the will of the people as demonstrated in elections and virtually all
recent polls. It is as if we don't matter at all. Imagine what things will be like if corporations can saturate
the legislative process in vast amounts of cash. Will Congress pay any political price whatsoever for taking
that corporate cash and completely disdaining the public voice?
The notion of corporate personhood, however specious, has crept into judicial interpretation for something over
a century now. If the Court rules to allow direct corporate campaign contributions... on what, First Amendment
grounds? ... we may as well hang it up. We will inevitably have, as the old joke has it, the best politicians
money can buy, but any remote semblance of actual democracy in America will be dead. How soon will the powers
that be drop the pretense of representative government? I don't know; maybe the public is so compliant under
the system as it stands that the pretense costs the bastards nothing to maintain. I believe I hear our Founders
rotating rapidly in their graves.
UPDATE:SCOTUSblog
offers an analysis worth reading, though far too involved to summarize here. Whether or not you agree with the
positions proposed and how the author evaluates them, you will find a good summary of the case, the briefs and
the arguments made to date.
Whatever its origin, the term "baroque" was not used by those who lived in the period so named by history.
Indeed, the term had the connotation of "irregular" or "grotesque," not a complimentary thing to say about a
work (or an entire period) of music and art. For your edification, the
Philly Fringe
festival presents an aria from a cantata with text by Alberto Gonzales that is both Baroque and, well, baroque:
(and Rahm, if that's you standing in the background),
I just read
an account
of your conference call with the House Progressive Caucus, as described second-hand from a verbal report by
Congressman Grijalva. If the account is accurate... and both the reporter, Greg Sargent, and the members of the
Progressive Caucus have a history of dealing in facts, not B.S. ... you asserted that you understood how dead
serious the caucus is about retaining a public option in the healthcare reform bill. And yet, again if the
account is accurate, you pushed the members on a question a lot of us in the mere voting public thought was
already resolved: namely, how much those members were willing to compromise on that public option.
Let me explain something that I thought we all already understood: the compromise was long since made. You
forced it by taking single-payer, Medicare-for-all style healthcare funding off the table, offering us instead
a "robust public option," some sort of weakened government option that nonetheless was supposed to hold private
insurers' feet to the fire by providing a sort of competitive baseline of price and services, an alternative available to
literally all Americans... those who wanted it; those who could not find any suitable coverage in a private plan
they could afford, etc. This notion was imperfect in meeting several of our goals, but better than offering nothing public,
better than offering plans with "triggers,"
and certainly better than offering mandatory purchase of private plans highly profitable to insurers but
ineffective at providing healthcare to individuals who don't have a lot of money.
Now you're apparently trying to take all or part of even that compromise option back. I believe that's known in
most trades as "bait and switch." If you were selling mattresses instead of legislation, what you're doing would
be against the law.
I understand politics rather better than you (especially you, Rahm) give me credit for, so let me both
tell you a bit more about myself and make it plain just how I'll behave in response to any removal of a "robust"
public option from the resulting plan. First, about my circumstance: ...
I have been unemployed for over a year, and uninsured for about six months. I suffer several serious chronic
conditions that require ongoing medical treatment, conditions that render me privately uninsurable, conditions
that require me to dip into my savings... the ones I put back for retirement, which is still a couple of years
away... to pay for my medical expenses. I know you've never experienced this personally, but let me tell you,
it's rough. And I'm one of the "lucky" ones: I do have some savings. I'm not bankrupt... yet.
Now, about my response...
If you and Congress pass a law without the "robust" public option you have, as I recall, already
committed to, especially if you pass a law that requires me to purchase junk insurance, I will not only not
vote for you in 2012, I will not vote for any Democrat at the national level in 2010 or 2012... not one. I will
either leave those ballot positions blank, or (considering the likelihood of tricked-up voting equipment) fill
in those positions with symbolic votes for independent candidates. Please understand that for at least the past
30 years, I have voted Democratic, often the straight ticket, and I have never before indulged in purely
symbolic votes... Democratic voters don't get much more solid than I have been. But if you sabotage healthcare
reform, all that is over. Over. No campaign contributions... did I mention those? yeah, I made those too, back
when I could afford to do so... and no votes for national-level Democratic candidates. On the state level, I
may well cast a vote in the Democratic presidential primary... for one of your symbolic opponents, and I'm
pretty sure there will be some real Democrats running against you if you betray your progressive former
supporters in the healthcare matter. Supposedly between 10 and 15 percent of Americans call themselves liberal
or progressive; in other words, there may be enough of us to prevent your re-election in the general, if
enough of us simply decline to vote for you.
Why would I do this? Why would I abandon my own 30-plus-year tradition? Because this issue is more than strategic
politics for me: this is survival, in the most literal sense of the word. Believe me or don't believe me: I will
not vote for the "least bad" candidate this time. Be true to your word, and be a hero to a great many
Americans of limited means... or forsake us, and see your own legacy reduced to a footnote in history. The
choice is yours.
I wish you the very best in the coming difficult battle. I'm counting on you to do the right thing... to keep
your word... to insist on a robust public option.
According to
emptywheel,
whose source is Greg Sargent, the Progressive Caucus has requested a meeting on healthcare with Obama, but none
has been scheduled yet. I realize that at this point, that fact could mean anything or nothing. But will Obama
ultimately snub progressives on this critical issue? In other words, is Obama willing to abandon some of his
supporters who got him elected without even meeting with them, and will they come through with their threat not
to vote for a plan without a strong public option? Stay tuned.
Tabitha makes certain she doesn't miss seeing Stella when the latter very first arrives home...
Of course, Tabitha whines a lot when awakened by the opening door, but she does it all over again every day of
the week. Tabitha grows so lonely for her human Mom during the workday that she wants to spend every moment
with her when she's home... in fact, Tabitha just walked across Stella's keyboard as I was typing this.
(Posted several hours early. By Thursday evening I'm ready for an early weekend!)
Please read this NYT op-ed
by
Jean Edward Smith,
who is "the John Marshall professor of Political Science at Marshall University in Huntington, W.V.":
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Roosevelt: The Great Divider
By JEAN EDWARD SMITH
Published: September 2, 2009 Huntington, W.Va
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S apparent readiness to backtrack on the public insurance option in his health care package is not just a concession to his political opponents — this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.
This was not true of Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congresses that enacted the New Deal. With the exception of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (which gave the president authority to close the nation’s banks and which passed the House of Representatives unanimously), the principal legislative innovations of the 1930s were enacted over the vigorous opposition of a deeply entrenched minority. Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission.
...
FDR understood the necessity of taking
control of both the agenda and the means of implementing it. As a result, we have, to this day, many of the
benefits of the New Deal, benefits which were... and are... vehemently opposed by the wealthy. FDR had no
fixation on bipartisanship.
Now, in our own day, a time has come in which bipartisanship is antithetical to leadership. If Obama is to
accomplish his own agenda, even as weak and unsatisfactory as it is from a liberal's or progressive's viewpoint,
he's going to have to give up any notion of ever winning even one Republican vote. He's going to have to stop
being Mr. Nice Guy. He's going to have to whip his own troops, including one de facto Republican...
Rahm Emanuel... into behaving like Democrats of old. If he doesn't, Obama can forget about any positive legacy
in history.
If he thinks not passing a healthcare "reform" bill is bad for his reputation, he doesn't even want
to contemplate what passing a bad bill will do for him. This is not very complicated: he can lead his
base in passing the genuine healthcare reform he promised during the campaign, or he can become yet another
footnote in history. To my regret, it's Obama's choice. I just hope he understands that.
When I hear or read the name "Scott Horton," my mind conjures an image of a man about my age, with thinning
gray hair and a truly enviable beard, walking onstage carrying an archlute or theorbo (yes, theorbo; look it
up), on his way to delivering an accompaniment of a sensitivity I've seldom experienced elsewhere. I worked with
that Scott Horton for more than 20 years, and count him as a good friend. But that's not the Scott Horton I'm
about to link and write about.
Scott Horton
of Harper's Magazine has delivered his initial evaluation of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s report on
the CIA's actions during the Bush administration. Horton, like most of us, is limited to the released, redacted
version of the report... actually, the second, slightly less redacted version... but even so, the news does not
look good for the CIA personnel and Bush administration officials involved. Was there a cover-up, and was it
torture that was covered up? I don't know, and neither does Horton, but it certainly looks like it. Who directed
the actions that were questionable under international law, U.S. law and the U.S. Constitution? Again, that's
redacted, but based on a lot of considerations, it may well have been Dick Cheney.
I must confess that I personally believe Cheney to be GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! Ahem... excuse me,
but I am anything but objective about our former and thoroughly illegitimate Veep Cheney. But I would accept the
verdict of a jury of his peers (poor souls) if only he could be brought to trial.
Until matters are less ambiguous, let me recommend that you read Jane Mayer's excellent book,
The Dark Side.
As much as has been concealed, nonetheless much is known about the previous administration's venture into...
let us not be slow to name it... torture. I think it is incumbent on all of us to inform ourselves on what is
known, to provide a counterbalance to the "bygones" advocates who would let our leaders get away with worse
than murder. Educate yourselves. Start with Horton's article linked above.
My energy and enthusiasm for blogging are at an ebb today... too much diverted to simple health-related
maintenance to muster the focus and strength for a real blog post... so I'll point you to
Bill Moyers's
presentation of a movie made from Maggie Mahar's book Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care
Costs So Much, narrated by Mahar herself and by an assortment of doctors, researchers and ordinary
individuals who suffer at the hands of the healthcare funding nonsystem we have in place in America. One
suggestion: keep a hanky handy; some of it is pretty sad. But both the expository segments and POV segments are
grounded solidly in what really happens to individuals in our medical system.
And now I'd better go... oh, never mind the particulars. But if you're American, my advice to you is this: don't
get sick and avoid all injury, and you'll be fine.
An aside: if you concur with
Jane Hamsher's
and
Josh Marshall's
interpretations, things look pretty grim for any presidential support for a public option. Did you really think
we were going to get anything, even a weak public option, in exchange for having single-payer off the table from
the beginning? No? Me neither.
Passing healthcare reform through the reconciliation process, though it would require only 51 votes, not 60,
faces an apparent obstacle:
51 Vote Rules May Force a Public Option Too Liberal for Some Dems
Brian Beutler | September 1, 2009, 12:15PM
As Senate leaders begin work on a Democrat-only health care bill, they're finding themselves confronted with an unexpected irony: Though the caucus has reached an uneasy consensus around a public option that's modeled in many ways after a private insurer, it may be necessary to make the public option more liberal, and thus, more politically radioactive, if it's to overcome a number of unique procedural hurdles.
...
"A very robust public option that scores significant savings would presumably be easy to justify doing through reconciliation," says a Senate Democratic aide. "But it is still being studied whether other, more moderate versions of a public option could pass parliamentary muster."
According to Martin Paone, a legislative expert who's helping Democrats map out legislative strategy, a more robust public option--one that sets low prices, and provides cheap, subsidized insurance to low- and middle-class consumers--would have an easier time surviving the procedural demands of the so-called reconciliation process. However, he cautions that the cost of subsidies "will have to be offset and if [the health care plan] loses money beyond 2014...it will have to be sunsetted."
And there the irony continues: Some experts, including on Capitol Hill, believe that a more robust public option will generate crucial savings needed to keep health care reform in the black--and thus prevent it from expiring. But though that may solve the procedural problems, conservative Democrats have balked at the idea creating such a momentous government program, and if they defected in great numbers, they could imperil the entire reform package
...
But that doesn't change the underlying dilemma. The path of least political resistance is beset by procedural obstacles; and the path of least procedural resistance is beset by political ones.
Heh. Ha. Haha. Hahaha... BWAHAHAHAHA!
Forgive me, but the Democratic Party was once unashamedly the party of liberals. Now, a legislative rule placed
in effect with the intention of squelching legislation that has a long-term deleterious effect on the deficit
is threatening the consequence of... again, I have to suppress laughter... requiring the liberal option
instead of the "moderate" one.
Well, fancy that! Good policy results not only in a better society but also in
sound economics... what a concept! <snark> Who knew! </snark>
I am operating as a nonmember of the Democratic Party these days, one more determined to see liberal legislation
passed than some Obama/Democratic political agenda. The healthcare reform package that eventually passes will
largely determine my future relationship to the Democratic Party. (It may also determine my physical and
financial survival... ho-hum.) The dance we're about to witness should be very entertaining indeed.
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page.
Click a comment link below to add a comment to the original article.
Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least:
HaloScan has a page allowing me to view recent comments, no matter which post they refer to.
Some very recent posts may be included in their entirety.
Global Climate Change And National Security
With global climate change, the question is not when it happens... it's already happening... but how fast. And
its impact on national security is not a matter of whether, but a question of when and how bad.
Sen. John Kerry
provides the broad outlines. Here's a sample:
...
The truth is that the threat we face is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us and its
effects are being felt worldwide, right now. Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer
of 2013. Not in 2050, but four years from now.
Make no mistake: catastrophic climate change represents a threat to human security, global stability, and -- yes
-- even to American national security.
Climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile
world. It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource
scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale. We risk fanning the flames of failed-statism, and
offering glaring opportunities to the worst actors in our international system. In an interconnected world, that
endangers all of us.
...
Republicans seem willing to allow all of President Obama's agenda to fail... the stimulus, healthcare reform, climate change
legislation, whatever... even if America fails along with it. But how much more catastrophic even than that
descent into chaos would be a global failure of the very climate that sustains human existence?
However much these latest results stir you from your habitual lethargy, you're probably going to have to
respond a bit more than you think. It's not optional, and it's not going away, no matter how much the stupids
insist that everything is hunky-dory. This is not a question of mere political advantage: it's a question of
human survival, and possibly the survival of all life on Earth. Would you prefer an economic solution now, or
a military solution... one in which ultimately nobody wins... a few years from now?
Bill Maher interviews Bill Moyers.
Glenn Greenwald
provides us the links (three of them... yes, it's a PITA to click through to three video segments; do it
anyway) and a few quotations from the segment.
Why must we receive our best journalism through an entertainer interviewing one of the few remaining real
journalists? (Not to mention receiving it through a comedian on another show, but that's for another time.) I
don't know, but Moyers is outstanding in this extended segment. We're a little short on insight and hope this
week; this segment is most certainly one source. If you give a damn about America, please watch it.
If you think GeeDubya Bush invented presidential signing statements, or that he was the only president who
attached these statements of intended interpretation of newly created laws at the time he signed them, think
again. Bush, of course, went insane with such statements, arrogating to himself the power simply to ignore
provisions of law he didn't like. In many cases, the constitutional consequences of Bush's signing statements
have yet to be tested.
But what about Obama?
Daphne Eviatar of the Washington Independent
examines Obama's use of signing statements to date and finds them, perhaps not surprisingly, to be pushing the
limits and deleterious to that transparency of government to which Obama seemed so committed in his campaign.
Is Obama as evil as Bush? Apparently not. But what he offered in the campaign seems in retrospect to have been
"change he can deceive in." Does he really think no one will notice?
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives
in a spirit of charity than the constant omissions of a
government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
- FDR
I belong to the Democratic Party wing of the Democratic Party.
- Paul Wellstone
I am a Democrat without prefix, without suffix, and without apology.
- Sam Rayburn
