Comedy and Politics

New Website

2011-02-25T12:55:00.001-05:00

Hi! Thanks for coming to my blog, but please go to my new site Radio Dispatch for all new information.

Perfection

2009-11-03T15:33:00.002-05:00

I have a new blog up at True/Slant today, but that's not what the title of this post refers to. I'm referring to a paragraph, via Wikipedia, in which Dock Ellis describes pitching his no-hitter while high on LSD. I DEFY anyone to read this passage and not laugh.

"I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."

Oh god that's funny.

New Gig

2009-11-02T16:36:00.002-05:00

Hello folks. As of this afternoon, I'll be doing most of my writing over at TrueSlant. My blog can be found at http://trueslant.com/johnknefel/. It's called Making a Mockery.

If you've enjoyed what I've been doing here, then you will continue to enjoy what I'll be doing at T/S. With any luck, I'll be able to get a few extra readers and a few extra dollars. (That's right--any retweeting, reposting, etc. now really really helps me a lot. I will buy you a beer or a joint or a vegan sandwich or whatever you want.)

I'll still be writing on this page from time to time, but mostly I'll be at T/S. Thanks everybody for reading, and I'll see you over at the new spot. If you're so inclined, make a profile and continue to comment over at MaM. If not, I understand.

Read Taibbi and Allison while you're over there.

Senate Also Not That Concerned With WeatherPocalypse

2009-11-02T10:58:00.003-05:00

I'm gonna really break some new ground here and just come out and say what nobody else has the balls to: Washington doesn't work. I know, I know, you never hear that from every presidential candidate ever, lefties, right-wing loonballs, and virtually everyone who works in or around The Hill.

The frustrating thing about the cliche "Washington is broken," is that we all hear it so much the phrase has lost all meaning. We hear it every two or four years from both incumbents and challengers giving simple-minded lip service to a very real criticism. A story today from the Washington Post perfectly highlights the structural flaws of the Senate specifically, but also of our larger political culture generally. The Post reports:

"The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage."

It is impossible to overstate both how important it is that the United States take Climate Change seriously, and how infuriating it is to know that that's not going to happen.

The Kerry-Boxer bill in the Senate is very similar to the Waxman-Markey bill in the House, both of which, at best, represent the absolute smallest steps that can be taken to prevent the WeatherPocalypse. According to the "liberal" (HAHAHAHA) The New Republic,

"In sum, an only marginally different starting point in the Senate from where the House ended does not bode well for the changing the trajectory in Congress on the nation’s energy and climate response."

If TNR is skeptical of your efforts at reform, that's a bad sign for anyone who doesn't want to live in a dust bowl that floods every 2.5 days.

Both bills have faced opposition from environmentalists, claiming they don't go far enough and offer too many corporate givaways. Still, Tim Flannery, speaking on Democracy Now!, urged Washington to pass a cap-and-trade bill.

"The US—I know the bill isn’t perfect. I know there’s a lot of giveaways in it, and I know a lot of people aren’t happy about provisions for subsidies for nuclear power and so forth. But we just have to get moving on this. We have to empower the president of the most powerful nation on earth to be able to negotiate and lead. And cap and trade is really about that."

That may be true, but my proclivities lie far closer to what Chris Hedges recently wrote on the issue:

"We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.[emphasis added]"

The Hedges article is an absolute must-read. He argues, persuasively, that small scale reform will get us nowhere. Private corporations will never voluntarily accept reforms that cut into their profit; the same can be said of any government who exists primarily to protect the opulence of the few. Whether or not you agree with Hedges, his arguments should be widely circulated. What he's saying should be the far-left limit of our discourse, not what Sen. John Kerry is saying.

Friday Round Up

2009-10-30T14:35:00.003-04:00

It's Friday afternoon and I'm feeling beat after last night's raucous show, so I'm just gonna do a quick round up of a few things that are worth mentioning.

1) Everyone in Congress is completely corrupt. 30 plus congress-people are currently under investigation by the House ethics committee, which is hilarious, because most of the investigators are probably criminals too. Also, considering lobbyists' sole job is to bribe lawmakers, shouldn't the entire congress be convicted of fraud?

2) Charles Krauthammer is such a tool. This Op-Ed of his isn't worth reading or analyzing, so don't bother doing either. I mention it here only because there's this new meme popping up that the media and the Obama administration are being unfairly critical of the Bush administration. Kraphammer (I know, I know, not my best) poses this rhetorical question:

"Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for?"

Well, I don't know if "blame," is the right word, but let's just say that, "looking forward, not backward," has effectively immunized dozens of war criminals from any chance of domestic prosecution. So let's not pretend Obama is holding the previous administration's feet to the fire.

3) Read this movie review and see these movies if you get the chance. Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, and American Casino both deal with the inherent contradictions of Capitalism, and, as such, should be required viewing for anyone who enjoys this blog.

As I've been saying to my friends recently but have yet to write about here, the most important thing about Michael Moore's newest movie Capitalism: A Love Story has nothing to do with the movie itself. The reason that it should be--though most likely won't be--remembered as one of the most important movies of the decade is because Moore has begun the incredibly important task of raising our collective consciousness to a level where we can criticize Capitalism as an institution. Capitalism in America is like air. It seems so natural that to question it is to reveal yourself to the general population as a raving lunatic.

Capitalism is everywhere in this country, constantly pushing you to consume goods as a way of creating an identity. What Moore is trying to do is create a context in which we can criticize Capitalism in America. That's why his new movie is so important, because although the two movies mentioned above are likely superior films, they aren't making the same kind of waves that Moore did. The three taken together, along with Moore's media appearances, movie reviews, etc are a (very) small step towards living in a society where one can claim to be anti-capitalist and not get thrown in the loony bin.

On that note, have a happy Halloween everybody.

The Feral Style of American Politics

2009-10-29T09:43:00.003-04:00

Other than giving goats the evil eye to try to kill them and making money disappear and then reappear in the pockets of Afghan drug lords, the CIA does not have many super powers. But apparently every once in a while they peek into a crystal ball and somebody from the future sends them a fax about what life is like in 2025. The CIA did this in November 2008, but seeing as that was kind of a busy news month, it passed under my radar. Luckily for me, Michael T. Klare published a quick post about the report on TomDispatch.com last week, so IT SHALL AVOID SCRUTINY NO LONGER.

Klare's post is ominously titled "The Great Superpower Meltdown." GUESS WHAT THE CIA THINKS IS GONNA HAPPEN! According to the CIA--who is wrong about literally everything, all the time, forever, but maybe now they're on to something?--the outlook is not good. Not good, that is, unless you believe that the beginning of the end of the American Empire is something to be cheered on. The report states [via Klare's article]:

"Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor [in 2025, its] relative strength—-even in the military realm—-will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained."

OH SHIT FUCK! Let's use all our bombs now before the Chinese repossess them to pay off our historic debt to them! Also--"will decline"? It turns out NOFX was right!

The CIA's prediction has long been obvious to anyone with a limited sense of history or economics, but also runs contrary to what virtually all American foreign policy post WWII has assumed the world will look like. And nothing exemplified the ahistorical assumption of unending American dominance more than the neocon ideology of the last 10 years.

We are a nation constantly at war, with a military infrastructure so vast it has become self-perpetuating. We have seen the world as our playground from which we can take as we please, but those days are coming to an end. American hegemony is in quick and inevitable decline, but don't expect the blood-thirsty, war-loving media and political classes to go down without a slap-fight.

You can almost see Thomas Friedman's wild eyes desperately searching for a sewer rat to chew on for relaxation. Two days ago, that American Savage rose to new heights of delusional crypto-fascism with this cough-syrup inspired nonsense:

"My last guiding principle: We are the world. A strong, healthy and self-confident America is what holds the world together and on a decent path."

Those two sentences honestly boggle the mind. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with all reasons why I disagree with that quote as much as is possible to disagree with any series of words in the English language, so there's no need to go into that now. More interesting, and I believe more illustrative of what we'll likely see from the 99% of the Establishment class who adhere to the doctrine of American Exceptionalism, is what Friedman follows the above quote with.

"A weak America would be a disaster for us and the world. China, Russia and Al Qaeda all love the idea of America doing a long, slow bleed in Afghanistan. I don’t."

Think about what's happening here. "China, Russia, and Al Qaeda," are all posited as aggressors of an equal level. They lie in wait for Our Destruction--maybe even together! Oh god! Maybe?! I don't know!

In 1964, Richard Hofstadter published his seminal essay, "The Paranoid Style In American Politics," in which Hofstadter explained his choice of words this way:

"I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind."

My guess is that as time goes on and America's god-given status as The Greatest Nation Ever is shown to be the hideous lie it has always been, this paranoid style will become feral.

You can already sense now in the Teabaggers' movement the faint stench of the cornered dog. Glenn Beck's show-tears are better understood as the foam of a rabid animal, they simply come from a difference facial orifice. Michele Bachmann's bizarre obsession with the global dominance of the US Dollar, as Andrew Leonard has correctly argued, has nothing to do with economic policy, and everything to do with insecurity.

Though it's unlikely any of the Teabaggers have read the CIA's report, the decline it predicts is already creeping into the zeitgeist. It's that creeping insecurity, more than Obama, that has driven the 'baggers and Beck into the feral rage that will only increase over the next two decades. They have been driven out of the domesticated dwelling of rational thought, only to return to the primal forest of superstition and tribalism.

What we're seeing in their "movement" is the failure of nationalism to provide a lasting personal identity. Over the past 80 years, every American has been told for his or her entire life that we are special, we Have God On Our Side, and we will never suffer the fate of every other empire that has ever existed. As that fate becomes more and more clearly inevitable, expect those whose livelihood or identity is tied to American Exceptionalism more and more to resemble the cornered dogs they are.

Scholastic Has Had Just About Enough Of These Offensive "Same Sex" Couples

2009-10-28T13:27:00.003-04:00

There's nothing more important in today's America than indoctrinating our nation's children with the steadfast belief that sex is wrong and shameful--especially when that shamey sex is between two monogamous, consenting adults of the same shameful gender. Luckily for Americans, Scholastic, which is the largest publisher of children's books, feels the same way.

Laura Myracle, whose chosen pen name actually makes me want to shove a pencil in my eye, recently wrote a book called "Luv Ya Bunches." It tells the story of 4 girls and probably the shit they all go through or whatever. I haven't read it, I swear. Sounds like it's just a nice lil kids book, right? No, wrong, think again.

Here's where, as they say in the biz, the plot thickens. See, this Myracle (ugh) lady gave one of these little girls in her book two moms. Yeah, you read that right. Two. Moms. I've heard of artistic license, but gimme a break, lady. Save it for your diary. Scholastic blushed and then got a funny feeling in its pants, and then decided all this business was not very proper at all! ThinkProgress reports:

"The company sent a letter to Myracle’s editor asking the author to omit certain words such as “geez,” “crap,” “sucks,” and “God” (as in, “oh my God”) and to alter its plotline to include a heterosexual couple. Myracle agreed to get rid of the offensive language “with the goal—as always—of making the book as available to as many readers as possible,” but the deal breaker was changing Milla’s two moms.

“A child having same-sex parents is not offensive, in my mind, and shouldn’t be ‘cleaned up.’” says Myracle, adding that the book fair subsequently decided not to take on Luv Ya Bunches because they wanted to avoid letters of complaint from parents."[emphasis in original.]

That's right, writer-lady. Look, if you want to be invited to the Scholastic Book Fair, why don't you try writing a book that teaches kids valuable lessons, like this. It's called Video Game Master, and the description is pretty impressive.

"The hottest trend in gaming is Gamerscores‚ a Web site for posting your best scores. But there’s a catch: points must be earned without using cheats or secret codes. This book shows you how to unlock special features in multiple platforms for today’s most popular games."

Cool dude! Kids need to learn at a young age how to sit in front of the TV and consume junk food. Where will they learn this if not at a book fair?

But for all you pervs who want to read your lezzie erotica, there is good news for you. ThinkProgress again:

"Change.org reports that after thousands of people contacted Scholastic to complain, the publisher has decided to offer the book in its spring book fairs."

Be on the lookout for a massive book burning this spring, lead by morons, because of ignorance.

Opium Kingpin USA's Most Valuable Ally

2009-10-28T09:25:00.003-04:00

Ho, hum, let's start out the morning with a look at the ol' front page of the New York Times. OK, here we go. So far so good, nothing to see here--OH WAIT A MINUTE! There's this!:

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

This can't possibly be the same brother of Karzai that we're always hearing about, right? The one with the drugs and the trading of the drugs? No, no, gotta be a different brother. Let's see what the Times has to say:

"Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials."

Heh. Heh. OK, then. Well, I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for this.

"The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home."

Hmmm. A CIA-backed militia operating out of Afghanistan. I feel like we've been through this before.. And what eventually happened with that? [via Wiki]

"The best-known mujahideen, various loosely-aligned Afghan opposition groups, initially fought against the incumbent pro-Soviet Afghan government during the late 1970s.
...
The mujahideen were significantly financed and armed (and are alleged to have been trained) by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Carter[5] and Reagan administrations.
...
Osama bin Laden, originally from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, was a prominent organizer and financier of an all-Arab islamist group of foreign volunteers.
...
This movement [born from the mujahideen] became known as the Taliban."

Sigh.

Here's the thing about all this. The revelation that the CIA is supporting "mafialike" warlord shouldn't surprise anyone in the least. Take a walk through the history of the CIA and you'll find a violently incompetent agency whose history consists of failure, after failure, after failure. In all honesty, the only other institutions that could continue to operate with such a dismal record are the central figures in the global economic meltdown.

WeatherPocalypse 2009

2009-10-27T11:19:00.005-04:00

I've returned from my Appalachian vacation, folks, and it's good to see that very little has changed. I'm of course referring to the fact that most Americans don't really think that the now-certain WeatherPocalypse is that big a deal. And, unsurprisingly and depressingly, as the US-sponsored War on Earth spirals us ever closer to the End of Days, Americans are growing less and less concerned about the issue. Democracy Now! reported on Friday:

"A poll released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that just 57 percent of respondents believe there is solid evidence that the world is getting warmer, down 20 percentage points in just three years. The poll also found only 35 percent of Americans believe global warming is a very serious problem."

Haha! Yeah, screw you Earth. Things are getting worse!? Well, I don't think they are. Sure, three years ago maybe I believed in some of your "facts," but where have they gotten us? Nowhere.

Or, wait, I mean... they've gotten us here. Where things are good. I think. So now we've used up those facts it's time to throw them away like a Styrofoam cup on a tire fire. Your typical anti-corporate, tree-hugging hippies are offering up a conspiracy theory to explain why public opinion has regressed so drastically:

"This downturn in public understanding of the climate crisis confirms that the corporate investment in climate confusion is paying a dividend. The public confusion campaigns launched by ACCCE, the Chamber, National Association of Manufacturers, American Petroleum Institute and a host of others, are all deliberately targeted at moving the dial on public opinion."

That's from Jim Hoggan of DeSmogBlog [via], who has probably never even shot a gun. Look, Jim Hoggan, does a bear shit in the woods? Not anymore, he doesn't.

As is to be expected, the loose confederacy of robber barons and white nationalists (the GOP) is leading the charge towards caveperson-dom.

"The poll highlighted, yet again, the partisan split on climate science, with just 35 percent of Republicans seeing solid evidence of rising temperatures, compared to 75 percent of Democrats."

I'm just going to go ahead and say this now. We NEED to stop using the asinine euphemism "partisan split on climate science," and just say outright what is happening in this country. The GOP, in general, is a collection of either ignorant or greedy sociopaths bent on destroying civilization by any means necessary.

For small dose of optimism, browse around 350.org to see photographs from this past weekend of demonstrations around the world aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of Global Warming.

Uno Tango Mas

2009-10-23T15:42:00.002-04:00

The most important thing a United States citizen can do while traveling abroad is make egregious exaggerations about an EXOTIC faraway land based on his or her limited, subjective experience while in said land, all the while maintaining an air of solemnity. It's in that vein that I'll spit some truth at y'all about Buenos Aires, about Argentina, about South America, and about the human condition as a whole. Here we go!

So, first of all, it turns out that Thomas Friedman was right. I know, I know, I hate to say it too, but the man has a point. Not about Globalization, god no. And not about the inherent goodness of US-backed invasions or global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, etc.). No, no. He is, was, and will remain wrong about all of those things. But he sure is right about how tempting it is to talk to a cabbie and then subscribe that dude's views to an entire country!

That totally happened to us. Leez and I were taking a cab to one of the recovered factories (more to come on those later) and we started talking politics with the driver. I say "we," but it was mostly her. My Spanish limits me to saying things like, "America is very not the best!" and "I am very a leftist!", which in truth is basically all I do here. I just dress it up with some fancy hyperlinks.

The cabbie, and therefore all of BA, told us that he liked the economic policies of Keynes--government spending on social programs, put simply--because it was good for the people. Simple enough! Somebody tell Paul Krugman to keep up the good work.

Today we went to a demonstration to dissolve the UCEP, a paramilitary group that goes out at night to "clean the city" of homeless people. It's not clear to me if the UCEP is government sponsored, or if the government just looks the other way while they go out and beat people. Either way, no me gusta. The march itself was a small one, but there were all sorts of different leftist groups represented, drums and firecrackers and all. Pictures are on the way.

On a personal note, now I'm a master Tango dancer. We've gone to classes the last two nights, and I took to the Tango like a fish to water. I don't at all look like a lost White Dude who doesn't speak the language. Nope, not this guy. Hell, tonight I might teach the lesson, en espanol. When you walk in, the lady at the door says, "bailante!" (you dance!) and I said, "Claro que si, mi amor." (Of course, my love.) Then I went out on that dance floor, and showed these Argentinians how it's done. Yep, that's me all right. I'm also an astronaut, so, you know, no big deal.

My Google Reader has about ten million unread items, and I have the same amount of podcasts I have to listen to to get up to speed with what's happening in Los Estados Unidos. If anything crazy has happened, let me know in comments. If we're still just continuing two occupations and talking about maintaining and strengthening a corrupt health care system, I don't want to know. I'll be back stateside on Tuesday, when normal blogging will resume. Por ahora, adios amigos.

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

2009-10-15T12:45:00.003-04:00

That's right folks! Like many a great man before me, I'll be spending the next week and a half hiking the Appalachian Trail, by which I of course mean I'm going to Buenos Aires, Argentina to visit a lady-friend. I have asked my staff to keep those vultures in the press at bay in my absence.

As a result, blogging will be spotty until I return on Oct. 26th. I'll try to keep posting updates semi-regularly about US politics while I'm there, and I'll try to throw in some Argentinian stuff as well. If anybody wants to do some extra reading about the region, the lady I'm visiting just started a blog (everybody has one!) that can be found here, and another great blog about workers' struggles in Argentina can be found here. More photos like the one above, taken by said lady, can be seen here, or from one of the links on her blog.

In loosely-related class-consciousness news, there's a fundraiser tomorrow night that I won't be able to go to (see above), but I highly recommend for anyone who's in the New York area. The purpose of the night is to raise money to fund the Campaign to End Capital Punishment. If you have a facebook account, the event can be viewed here. Otherwise, here's the necessary info:

Friday, October 16, 2009
145 W. 122nd St.
Apartment 3
6:30pm - 11:30pm

With hosts:
* Lawrence Hayes, former Black Panther and former New York death row prisoner
* Alan Newton, exonerated in 2006 after 21 years behind bars
* Yusef Salaam, exonerated in the Central Park 5 case

$15-$20 suggested donation at the door – food, wine & beer included in cover. Proceeds go to support the fight against the death penalty.

All welcome!

So, yeah, go party with people who are sick of living in a Punisher-like justice system, during which I'm sure there will be lots of talk about the Murderer of Texas, Rick Perry. He killed an innocent man, folks! Then covered it up! Oh, Texas, will you ever stop killing the innocent and the mentally handicapped? (Answer: no. But maybe if you go to this party?!?!?!?!)

Again, in *maaaaaybe* tangentially related news, I just received an e-mail from my friend Evan with the subject line: Rush Limbaugh = Fat Fucktard. Well, no arguments here. Evan links to a very short article about poor Rush's failed attempt to purchase the St. Louis Rams with his hate-money, which he has a lot of, because he has a lot of hate, which in America makes you very rich. The money quote:

"And [Rush] says he believes what happened to him was an illustration of "Obama's America on full display.""

HA! SO LONG, AMERICA! Good luck with all that. Oh, Rush. I'll not miss you on my travels. Let's just say that I'm going to enjoy not combing through the absolute worst in humanity for LAFFS for a few days. It makes my brain get crazy!

One last thing in the rambling post. I'd just briefly like to say thanks to everybody who has been reading this blog. I enjoy writing it, and it's nice to know that a few people enjoy reading it. Traffic is still modest, but slowly increasing day by day. So if you've ever reposted, retweeted, linked to, or done any other Intraweb thing to one of my posts--thanks!

If you haven't seen it yet, here's a video I did with my sister, Molly. Adios por uno o dos o tres dias, muchachos.

The Closed-Door, Health-Care Sauna Extravaganza Gets A New, Horrible Member

2009-10-14T12:11:00.005-04:00

Oh what fresh hell is this?!

"Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said that Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the lone Republican on the Finance Committee to vote in favor of the bill, would be invited to future sessions. And Mr. Manley said the Democratic leader was prepared to go to substantial lengths to keep Ms. Snowe’s support."[emphasis added.]

Here's what this means. So, the health care bill has been voted out of both the Senate Fiance Committee and the HELP Committee. Now it goes into a super secret phase in which wimpy Harry Reid, shitfacey Max Baucus, questionable-at-best Chris Dodd, and the PhRMA-loving White House are all gonna sit in a sauna, naked, counting their money until New Year's Eve, at which point the country will be told "we have to pass a bill quickly!" and we'll get some real weak-ass sauce called "reform."

BUT NOW it turns out that Olympia Snowe, who overthrew the elected government of the US in a bloodless coup earlier this month, will also be sitting in on these circles jerk sesh-es. For analysis of what that means for YOU, the angry, progressive, blog-reading stoner (probably!), let's turn to Ezra Klein, who blogs for literally 23.5 hours every day. Word has it he only stops to mainline that 6-hour energy stuff and then sing "You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings" to a poster of Peter Orszag. Ez-dog writes:

"This shifts the room's balance of power substantially: The negotiations were previously confined to one liberal Democrat and one centrist Democrat. Now they'll be between one liberal Democrat, one centrist Democrat, and one moderate Republican. In practice, this is likely to mean that Baucus will have something of a trump card against Dodd. If there's a particularly thorny dispute, and Snowe weighs in strongly alongside Baucus, it's hard to imagine Reid siding with Dodd, except in the most extraordinary of cases."

In words more appropriate for this blog: three fucks you can't trust just included a new fuck who's worse than all of them. Perfect!

In what should come as a surprise to nobody, FireDogLake is just goin' NUTS about this. Jon Walker from FDL has started calling Snowe, "The Empress."

"I know many on the left have taken to calling Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, President Snowe. This has been in response to the Democratic party leadership willingness to do almost anything to gain/keep Snowe’s support for health care reform. Frankly, this does not fully encompass just how much power has been handed over to Snowe.
...
After all, many presidents (Nixon, Clinton, Truman, Johnson) have tried and failed to get the health care bill they wanted passed the United States Senate. Snowe is basically being told that she can write whatever health care bill she wants. This is more say than has been offered to any president in the past 100 years.
...
Her sway on the issue of health care reform is closer to that of absolute monarch than of any American president in history. I think Empress Snowe more properly summarizes how completely some in the Democratic leadership are prepared to defer to her."

Perfect!

Also worth briefly mentioning is a bit of boring Parliamentary procedure that makes this sauna fuck-fest so important. Once the Finance bill and the HELP bill get combined in this closed-door meeting, it will take 60 votes on the floor of the Senate to either add or subtract any amendments to or from the new bill. THAT MEANS, in essence, that whatever comes out of the meeting is what the Senate bill will ultimately look like. It's in all likelihood going to be impossible to add a public option amendment to the bill if it doesn't have one. By the same token, if a public option is in the bill, it will not be removed.

What it comes down to is that supporters of the Public Option are now relying on the repulsive Harry Reid to act as their advocate for the most important domestic reform since the Voting Rights Act. Shudder. Already, colleagues are placing the responsibility squarely on Reid. Chuck Shumer was on Maddow last night, and he had this to say [via FDL]:

"Well, first leader Reid has the option of putting [the public option] in the final bill. If he puts it in the final bill, in the combined bill, then you would need 60 votes to remove it, and there are clearly not 60 votes against the public option. And so we’re urging him to do that, and he is seriously considering it. Once it passes the Senate, if that were to happen, it is in the House bill, it is in the Senate bill, and it would have to be in the final product. So, it is very important to see if the public option is in the bill leader Reid puts together. He hasn’t yet made up his mind, but many of us who believe in the public option are urging him to do so. So far, we are getting heard."

Before you get ahead of yourselves, though, Reid and Whores may very well include a "public option" with a "trigger," which, as I've written before, is not a public option. Jonathon Cohn, who writes for the retardo-zine The New Republic, sees this option as quite likely. He writes:

"The most likely scenario, I continue to think, is to arrive at some sort of trigger. But a well-designed trigger might still do some good. The key is designing one that would actually scare insurers, enough to make them provide the kind of affordable coverage we all want."

He is wrong. That outcome will scare nobody--nobody, that is, except future progressive politicians who want to enact reform. The triggers are worse than useless, as Empress Snowe, Rahm the Knife Murderer, and everybody else knows. They will insure that insurance companies profits will continue to rise, as the quality of health care goes down.

One thing we can know for sure is that this latest development--of including Snowe in the meeting--is bad, bad, bad.

GOP Website As Successful As GOP

2009-10-13T15:43:00.003-04:00

“The RNC’s big relaunch of its website has not gone so well today. In the last hour or so, the site has been crashing periodically. The Obama campaign’s former online guru, Joe Rospars, tells TPMDC: ‘You know your web program is in trouble when your site can’t even handle the traffic bump from people making fun of your web program.’”

-TalkingPointMemo

It seems the GOP has redesigned their website, and, well, let's just say it's not pretty. Wonkette has been having quite a time with it, which should come as no surprise, but even fact-bots at ThinkProgress have been leveling some snark.

RNC’s New Website Reflecting Steele’s ‘Urban-Suburban Hip-Hop’ Riddled With Errors, Widely Panned

HA! ThinkProgress has never made a joke in its life! Sure, that headline isn't a joke exactly, but it makes me smile! So--joke!

I'm hesitant to search this Gop dot com virus enabler too much for fear of my computer 'sploding, but, oh, hi there lil guy. What do we have here? This lil nugget shows up in their blog roll.

Feeding the Machine is the more tech-minded blog from New Media

I assume this is the blog that posts the question, "How do you run a website/political party?" Also, "Feeding the Machine"? Come on, Gop dot com, isn't that a little...1990s-ish? And does that mean that the political party behind Gop dot com considers itself "the Machine"? Ha! Losers!

OH AND HEY LOOKS AT THIS REAL QUICK! Hahahaha, this page is fucking great. It's the "jobs" page. I'm looking for the job application for the position to "Crack Olympia Snowe on the base of the skull with a black jack," but I can't find it yet. (Not that I want to do that, but the Gop dot comers don't care for her right now!) So what does it take to get a gob at Gop dot com? Here's one section!

YouTube Video:
You may create a clip on YouTube of why you want to work at the RNC and cut/paste the URL in the box provided

So, hey, all you perverts with a webcam can now sit on the Ways and Means Commission or whatever.

Oh, there's also this:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
I agree to the following:*
I certify that all the information provided below is truthful and accurate.

PLEASE DON'T GO TO Gop DOT COM AND FILL OUT FALSE JOB SUBMISSIONS! And don't let me know about it if you do.

Health Care Doomsday Is Here!

2009-10-13T11:33:00.004-04:00

Oh man, guys, at 2pm today the horrible Senate goblins will vote on the goddamn Senate Finance Bill, which is exciting for Internet people but not so much for the other 98% of folks. The Democrats are convinced they have the votes to get it out of committee, but all eyes are on President Olympia Snowe to see if she will in fact vote with the Democrats (who cares!?!?!) or if she was lying the whole time (so what?!?!?!)

OH MY GOD THE INTERNET MOVES SO FAST! I was typing that last sentence, and then this happened:

Snowe Will Vote “Yes” on Baucus Bill in Committee

But, she says that her "vote today is only her vote today," so, uh, look for a book of Zen sayings by members of the Senate next Spring. Once the bill gets voted on and such, I'll try to find what smart people are saying about it and report that stuff here.

For now, the fate of the Public Option is still up in the air. I've been arguing for a while now that what the President ultimately signs will contain something called a Public Option, so Rahm could get his "win," but whether or not that "win" was good for anybody other than partisan hacks remained to be seen. As a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, I've learned not to put any faith in a team down the home stretch, so I'll refrain from doing that here.

There are still two very potent weapons that can be leveled against the public option: the state "opt-out" plan, and the even worse Olympia Snowe (Rahm Emmanuel) "trigger" plan.

The trigger plan goes like this. States would have fail safes (triggers) built into their reform plans, so if health coverage got TOO INSANELY AWFUL then a public option would be "triggered." The problems with this plan are obvious and numerous. For one thing, nationwide health coverage has already reached a catastrophic point, so waiting another 5 or so years to create a public option is absurd. For another, no one has clearly defined what the mechanisms would be to create a public option--ie, what exactly would cause the trigger to get pulled, and what would the bullet be aimed at.

The state opt-out plan goes like this. States could, on an individual basis, decide not to participate in a federally provided health care program. In theory, either a Republican Governor, a Republican legislature, or both, would have to decide to opt-out. On the wonkish side of things, this hurts everybody, because if, say, Texas decides to opt-out, then the country loses cost-lowering leverage because it loses all the purchasing power of Texas. More importantly, on a moral level, the goal of universal health coverage is to make it universal, not just for "Blue State" residents.

The opt-out plan would weaken a Public Option immensely. The trigger plan will effectively kill it. The reason that the bill is not worse than it is can be directly linked to the work of progressives putting pressure on the House, and that pressure moving up to the Senate. There is still plenty of time for the insurance companies to kill this thing, though. Updates to come, as they show up.

Thomas Friedman Wants To Give Peace Prize To War People

2009-10-12T11:19:00.003-04:00

I'm in the middle of a NyQuil induced mind-slowdown thing right now, but I would be remiss if I didn't fling some poo at Thomas Friedman for his latest brave call for unending war.

The most important thing to remember when reading a Friedman column is that if you find yourself agreeing with him, just keep reading and he'll eventually reveal himself to be the mouth-frothing lunatic that he is. He opens with this passage:

"The Nobel committee did President Obama no favors by prematurely awarding him its peace prize. As he himself acknowledged, he has not done anything yet on the scale that would normally merit such an award — and it dismays me that the most important prize in the world has been devalued in this way."

So far, so good. But then, unprovoked, we are launched into Crazy Town. After claiming that Obama should say, "I can't accept this," Friedman then inexplicably writes that Obama should say the following:

“But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps."

Hey now! That's, um, not what I was expecting. So...you're saying that self-identified warriors...should...be awarded the peace prize. Hmmm.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who stand guard today at outposts in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan to give that country, and particularly its women and girls, a chance to live a decent life free from the Taliban’s religious totalitarianism.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American men and women who are still on patrol today in Iraq, helping to protect Baghdad’s fledgling government as it tries to organize the rarest of things in that country and that region — another free and fair election."

You have to seriously, seriously love war to take two occupations that virtually every intelligent critic cited as reasons specifically against Obama receiving the Peace prize, and then claim that those occupations actually render our entire war-making apparatus worthy of something called a "Peace prize." Orwell, at least in this case, was right it seems. War is, in fact, Peace--that is, if you're the United States.

Friedman's Op-Ed illustrates as clearly as possible how rampant and internalized the call for unending war is in our punditry class. Even when writing about Peace, there is a call for more war. His jingoistic catalogue of US Military "victories" selectively leaves out any mention of Vietnam, the war of aggression to which both of our current wars of aggression are most often compared.

Furthermore, under Friedman's twisted logic, any wars of future aggression would certainly fall under his rubric of "peace-furthering wars." If Cheney had gotten his way and Bush and Co had bombed Iran, there is no question that Friedman would be nominating those bombs themselves for the Nobel Peace prize. His column might be called, "Nobel Comes Full Circle," and would describe that dynamite-inventing Nobel would want his peace prize to be awarded to literal bombs.

For clarity, it's worth mentioning that this critique of Friedman's column isn't a simultaneous critique of the so-called "troops." I find any use of the phrase "the troops," insulting and reductive, as though there is one "troop" mindset to which all "troops" adhere. Friedman's exploitation of the "troops" in his piece is reminiscent of Bush-era tactics in which pundits would claim to speak for the "troops," only to call for further war. Here, Friedman praises the "troops" as a way to remind his readers how much he loves and appreciates the them, despite his unending desire to put them in situations in which some of them will certainly get killed.

Though individual soldiers may have done things that warrant the awarding of a Peace prize, it takes a truly deranged mindset to believe that an entire war-making infrastructure should be awarded such a prize. My guess is that if the Nobel committee were comprised of 5 Iraqis, one would have a hard time lobbying for an award on behalf of the US Military.

Friedman's logic did inspire me to do one thing though. Next year, I'm nominating him for the Nobel Prize for Intellectual Rigor and Also Bravery on the Battlefield Award (For Being Such A Big Tuff[!] Warrior). I hope he accepts it on my behalf.

Nobel Prize Committee Back From Future, Maybe?

2009-10-09T10:19:00.006-04:00

I don't want to spend too much time on this Nobel Prize nonsense, but there are a few points worth mentioning. First of all, the correct response to Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize seems pretty obvious to me. Say, "Congratulations, but this seems kind of premature, doesn't it?" and move on.

That, of course, is not what's happening. Erick Erickson--the son so uninspiring they named him twice--made a hilarious joke about institutional oppression, and how it's not a big deal except to pussy-ass liberals. He made a hilarious and very intelligent joke/point today:

"I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news."

Hahaha, oh boy that's rich and smart. You see, Erick(2)son makes the correct point that a black man could never win a Nobel Peace Prize except out of White Pity, which is also true about the accomplishments of oppressed classes in general. Erick(2)son believes what I wrote in that last sentence, and finds it hilarious, because he a hateful, empty man.

Then, on what is aggravatingly called "the other side"--which is to say the Democrats, even though what's on "the other side" of the GOP is something far, far to the Left of the Democratic Party--engaged in some equally idiotic hyperbole. From the War Room:

""The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize," DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse said in a statement referring to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's criticism of the award."

Come on, now. For one thing, that kind of empty, Bush-era rhetoric doesn't mean anything; it is childish and stupid. Not to mention that simplistically equating Hamas with evil is horribly reductive, which is an ironic thing to do on the day Obama is being honored (rightly or wrongly, which we'll get to in a minute) for working for peace. One can't help but think that referring to the elected government in Gaza as evil and scary isn't doing much to elevate the dialogue in the region.

The reactions aside, bestowing this award upon Obama is completely unwarranted, and I find the Nobel Peace Prize committee's actions both irresponsible and potentially destructive. Though it is true that America is now "the most admired country in the world"--a fact that, frankly, I find astonishing and depressing, to put it mildly--it is also true that we are a country occupying two Muslim countries, participating with eyes wide open in the occupation of a third (Palestine), and reserving our "right" to bomb into oblivion a fourth (Iran). (I stole "right" with quotes from GG--it's just too accurate not to use)

We have no serious plan or motivation to leave Iraq, and this week Obama claimed that an immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was not even being considered. Though Obama has called for the growing of Israeli settlements to cease, he has not called for the removal of all settlements from Palestine. Despite Israel's continued refusal to follow the wishes of the Obama administration, aid continues to flow there. Recently, Mahmoud Abbas, under heavy pressure from the US and Israel, abandoned the "resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action." This tells Israel, loud and clear, that the Obama administration doesn't want to hold them accountable for the massacre of Gaza that happened last year. Not to mention that the Obama administration hasn't taken the appropriate steps involved in attempting to restore the democratically elected leader of Honduras to his rightful place, as requested by the OAS and the EU. But none of that is being talked about today.

That's the danger in all this hoopla. If the behavior of the Obama administration is rewarded on the global stage, after a week that has delivered horrible news from both Afghanistan and Palestine, then what reason do we have to believe that the continuing aggression and occupations will come to an end? Unmanned drones continue to kill civilians in Pakistan, yet the commander-in-chief gets to play the pacifist. Obama correctly said in his acceptance speech that he,

do[es] not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

That's fine, but they don't give out the Nobel Prize for Literature based on a promising synopsis. It would be insane to think of an author saying, "this prize will really spur me on to finish my novel." Well, yeah, ok, but I thought that's what the goddamn prize was for in the first place. Why is it less important to have actually accomplished things when we're talking about human lives?

I haven't listened to today's Democracy Now! yet, but my guess is that many of the same sentiments expressed here will show up there. Naomi Klein and Tariq Ali--both of whom are absolutely invaluable as critics--are guests. That can be heard here.

As but one humble suggestion for who the prize could've gone to instead, browse the website for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. I heard a woman from that organization speak the other night, and it was informative and enlightening. And as far as I know, their organization isn't occupying any sovereign countries.

30 Senators Disagree With Al Franken That Rape Is A Crime

2009-10-08T10:11:00.003-04:00

The proper job of the comedian is to say controversial or unpleasant truths to those in power. This is why Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) was able to stand up to Senate Republicans who don't mind so much when women get gang-raped to tell them that no, wait guys, that is a very bad thing and we shouldn't pay people to do this. Franken's controversial assertion--that gang-rape is a vicious crime and those who engage it in shouldn't be rewarded with lucrative defense contracts--found substantial resistance in the rape-loving Senate though. ThinkProgress reports:

"In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”
...
His amendment passed by a 68-30 vote..."

That's right folks! Thirty, count 'em, THIRTY Republican senators voted against that amendment. Thirty people, with mothers, and sisters, and daughters, who think contractors should be allowed to "restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

One would expect that major media outlets would cover this story and report on the fact that 30 elected officials voted not to punish contractors who practice gang rape. Ha! Wrong! As of right now, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post have informed their readers that 30 elected officials voted not to punish contractors who practice gang rape. (Yes, I just cut and pasted a sentence fragment I used earlier in the paragraph. It's worth repeating.) That, apparently, is not "news worthy," which is too bad, because this story is certainly something I--and, you know, I'm just guessing here--many, many readers would find news worthy.

Also worth noting is that we're in Afghanistan to protect women's rights! I'm sure--in fact I'm positive--that every Republican who voted against Franken's amendment is very, very concerned about the rights of women in Afghanistan. Look, people, the occupation of Afghanistan is just and necessary, just like--according to 30 GOP senators--the rape of women contractors. It's almost like, and call me crazy if I'm wrong here, it's almost like the GOP is simply siding with defense contractors no matter what the issue. I know, I know, shocking. Maybe that's an issue that a reporter could write about for a newspaper.

If this shows up in the MSM, I'll try to catch it and analyze their coverage here. Until then, I don't recommend thinking to much about the vile hypocrisy on display here by the GOP unless you want to be crippled with rage. NO! Stop thinking about it before it's too late!

Women's Sufferage Bad For Society, Claims Man Who Is Bad For Society

2009-10-07T15:45:00.002-04:00

John Derbyshire is one of those guys that you don't think about very often, but whenever you do you're filled with a temporary white hot rage that threatens to overwhelm even the most apathetic among us. Then you realize he's simply a meaningless foot soldier in the conservative movement's march towards neo-feudalism, and the world becomes a slightly less daunting place.

To bring you up to speed on Derby, this is what he wrote following the Virgina Tech shooting:

"Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22. At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad."

OOOOOO!!!! So brave! Or, maybe: Hahahahahaha! So funny and ironic!

Either way, we should pistol whip The Derb and then blame him for not predicting it like a soldier would have done.

Now he's back in the news after saying society would be better if women didn't vote. A few days ago he told Alan Colmes that he didn't think women should have the right to vote, and then he kind of walked it back, but not really. Here's a transcript from a different radio show he did recently, in which the host, Thom Harman, revisited the issue. Derbs has just admitted that women probably should be allowed to vote.

HARTMANN: Why then is the title called “The Case Against Female Suffrage”?

DERBYSHIRE: Because it is a case against female suffrage. [...]

HARTMANN: Did you not say to, for example, my colleague Alan Colmes that women should not be allowed to vote, that it would be a better country anyway if women were not allowed to vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Well, you know, my mentor Paul Buckley used to say, he who say [sic] a must say b. And the logic of that chapter, that chapter five in my book, rests on the proposition that women voting is bad for conservatism, and as a conservative, of course, I think that’s bad for society.

HARTMANN: So therefore if women were not allowed to vote it would be a better country in your opinion?

DERBYSHIRE: I think as a hypothetical I think that’s arguable, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

What a wonderful wit this gentleman displays. OOOOHHHH!!!! He thinks it's so charming and caustic to say offensive things, to make a point, that is offensive and dumb. Great way to spend your time, Derby. The worst part about this is that he's got a book coming out soon, which is why he's on this media tour, and all this nonsense is just drumming up publicity for his idiotic caveman pamphlet.

Neanderthals like this are often better left ignored, but I did want to let everybody know just how tough and funny and provocative this piece of shit is. So...back to other things now.

"Graveyard Of Empires" Living Up To Its Name Quite Nicely

2009-10-07T14:08:00.004-04:00

On this, the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, we must all remember that to WIN in that country we must STAY THERE FOR SOME REASON. Retreat is failure, surrender is defeat, stay the course, etc. Yes, Obama has now said that there are no immediate plans to draw down troops in that country, and wink wink, hope you guys like the long haul! Fantastic.

For detailed analyses on how limited the scope of the debate is surrounding troop increases/reductions, see Glenn Greenwald and Allison Kilkenny. And for a deconstruction of the "reasons" we are in Afghanistan now, and how we can change the dialogue surrounding the occupation, I recommend rethink Afghanistan, by Robert Greenwald (no relation to Glenn). That documentary can be viewed in full here, and for anybody interested, here is Jeremy Scahill's analysis of the film, as well as the thorough ass-handing he gives to the New York Times' film critic who claimed the movie didn't "have sympathy for the other side."

Glenn Greenwald notes that Harry Reid said congress will basically go along with whatever King Obama (Reid's words, basically) wants, as long as Congress gets to learn some sweet-ass super-secret information along the way, or afterwards, or if they get to dress up like generals. This remarkable admission prompted the ever-sarcastic Wonkette to be sincere for a moment:

"On another note — and one that actually attempts to be a political point (BOOOO) — can you believe that Harry Reid just said, in public, without any shame or whatever, that the Congressional leaders of both parties agreed to fully support whatever decision Obama makes about Afghanistan, whenever he makes it? Why do we even use taxpayer funds to support a legislative branch of the federal government, especially with foreign/military policy? Eh, doubling troops numbers and committing to a 30-year fully-resourced nation-building strategy vs. withdrawing most ground troops but retaining for a small force to kill Al Qaeda people when they find them — six in one, half a dozen in the other."

Though Obama never promised he would draw down the occupational forces in Afghanistan, news that he isn't even seriously considering that as an option--and Congress will just go along with whatever he says because what difference does it make--will likely further demoralize the Left, such as it is in this country (David Sirota doesn't think it exists).

Eight years of Afghanistan, and who knows how many more. A health care bill that the insurance companies will love. No substantial financial reforms. Continued indefinite detention at the president's will. Ugh. You can almost feel the progressive change in the air, can't you?

Children Are Our Future

2009-10-06T16:03:00.002-04:00

Expect to see this story in a lot of places this week. NBC News is reporting, seriously (via Wonkette):

NASA to Bomb the Moon Friday

Ah-mare-i-ka, Ah-mare-i-ka, God shed his grace on thee...

Readers will no doubt immediately think of the famous Mr. Show sketch, "Blow up the moon," in which Bob and David satirize America's tendency to, ah, how do I say this...blow things up. Well, folks, the time is now!

The actual goal of this hilarious mission is to get water or something for terrorist astronauts we're sending to Mars because they're toooo dangerous to detain here on Earth. That's my guess, anyway.

What I find particularly engaging about the story is that if you click the link above, you'll see that the website has a side bar asking readers to register their responses to the article. As of this blog's non-existent deadline, here's how the numbers break down.

36% Furious (Don't those fucks hold anything sacred?!)
25% Intrigued (Let's see where this goes)
17% Thrilled (About goddamn time, for fuck's sake!)
13% Laughing (The world has gone MAD! MAD I tell you!)
7% Sad (I kinda liked that ol' dog-eared moon)
1% Bored (Seen it!)

Really, who is bored by a story about bombing the goddamn moon!? What in god's name do you want from a newspaper headline?

"Martians Land, Sleep With Letterman's Staff, Bomb NYC, and Legalize All Forms Of Drugs, Especially New and Awesome Drugs From Their Home Planet"

BORING!

Let me just say one final thing that someone should've told the moon a loooong time ago: So long, asshole!

Parallel Thinking Means This Blog Is Probably Stealing Most of Its Content

2009-10-06T14:15:00.005-04:00

There are two matters I wrote about last Friday that I'd like to return to briefly and share some others' thoughts on the matter.

In response to a lecture I attended last Thursday evening featuring Matt Tabbi, Nomi Prins, and David Grossman, I wrote:

"Prins also made the extremely important point that as banks fail and are bought by those few banks who have survived the meltdown--thanks to tax-payer funded bailouts--a tragicomic thing has happened. The surviving banks are actually becoming bigger. Those banks now hold more deposits, have more capital, and, therefore, more power. Though Prins didn't say so explicitly, it also seems to me that the fewer, larger institutions will be more likely to be classified as "too big to fail." So...that fucking sucks. What a wonderful lesson for the country to learn."

Andrew Ross Sorkin, in an interview with Vanity Fair, expresses a slightly different, though related concern (via Ezra Klein):

"The one thing I would say is, to the extent that some of these companies have come out the other side and exist today, many of the executives now consider themselves survivors. That's the word they often use. Like a cancer survivor. Maybe that's deserved for some, but I'm not sure they all appreciate that their survival was in large part paid for by taxpayers. My worry is that, longer-term, some of those who feel like survivors will be emboldened to take on additional risk in the future."

Oh my god, I can't believe these vultures who made all their money swindling the system now consider themselves winners for swindling the system. WHO SAW THAT COMING!? Once again, what a fantastic lesson for the robber barons to learn--if you can steal everything from the public before your competitors can, you get to call the shots and feels like a real tuff guy.

The second post of mine from Friday concerned Sen. Maria Cantwell's (D-WA) proposed "basic health plan." If you don't remember it, her amendment aims to create a health care exchange program which would ensure that all private insurance plans meet a designated level of care and cost, but the amendment does not create a government run insurance program. Yet, Cantwell kept calling it a "public option." At the time, I wrote:

"The danger here is that Senate Democrats will now start calling Cantwell's basic health plan a public option, thereby giving Senate Democrats a political "win" in the eyes of their constituents, while excluding a real mechanism to lower costs, which will keep the insurance companies placated. That is to say, they'll pass a "public option" without actually passing a public option."

FireDogLake is now asking the question that I've wanted to know since last Friday. Their headline reads: Health Care Reform: Did Obama Ask Sen. Cantwell to Mislead You?

Jon Walker (the author of the FDL post) references a Chicago Tribune post that reads:

"When Obama spoke by phone recently with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., he made a point of the breadth of support for the public option, the senator said in an interview. Cantwell authored a proposal to let states set up public plans that Democrats added to the Senate Finance Committee bill on Wednesday."

Walker's analysis:

"This is very strange. Obama does not need to tell Cantwell that Americans want a public option. Cantwell strongly supports a public option. She voted for both public option amendments in the Senate Finance Committee hearing.

I think the purpose of the call was to ask Cantwell to try to mislead American into thinking her “basic health plan” is a public option. The evidence is that Obama does not plan to fight for a real public option, but only wants some fig leaf so he can tell the base that there is a public option. It sounds like Obama wants to try to use Cantwell's proposal as the newest fig leaf.

Expect to see administration officials soon falsely claim that Cantwell's proposal is a public option."

I tend to agree with Walker. As I've argued before, I don't think it should be taken for granted that Obama really wants a public option, and this whole Cantwell confusion adds more fuel to that fire.

It'll still be weeks, if not months, before the final health care bill starts to take shape. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Walker's prediction--the Obama and Co. start referring to Cantwell's proposal as a public option--comes to pass. Though one could imagine a worse bill, it would hardly herald a sea change in this country's policy of profiting off the sick.

When asked about the Finance Bill that's currently in Congress, and the what the result of failure to pass reforms would be, Mark Warner (D-VA) said, "I think it'd be a travesty."

Too late, buddy! Welcome to America!

This Is Like Writing About Cheech and Chong But Never Mentioning Weed

2009-10-06T09:21:00.004-04:00

The New York Times is a very serious paper whose reporters love nothing more than to really tackle the REAL issues, brows furrowed. More than any other media institution, the Times dictates both what issues get talked about, and how issues get talked about. The importance of how that paper's reporters and editors frame a debate cannot be overstated, which is why I was absolutely thrilled to wake up this morning and see this idiotic headline on the Times' website:

In Debate On Health, It's Coverage vs. Cost

The equally disappointing, yet utterly fitting and unsurprising lede reads:

"As Democrats prepare to take up health care legislation on the floor of the Senate and the House, they are facing tough choices about two competing priorities. They want people to pay affordable prices for health insurance policies, but they want those policies to offer comprehensive health benefits."

There you have it, folks. That's the false dichotomy our country has been presented with. Good Care vs Low Cost. These two outcomes, it would seem to the casual reader of the Times, are mutually exclusive--which is too bad, but we must be Adults and balance these competing forces in ways that are Best For Real Americans.

There is no mention in the article about Physicians for a National Health Program, or any of the many other single-payer system advocates out there. The PNHP lists 3 pages of the government's own studies showing how a single-payer system would almost certainly save money on the state and federal level, and, by definition, offer universal coverage. Yet there is no mention of single payer in the Times' piece, and, in a preposterous sin of omission, the public option isn't mentioned either.

Much of the article focuses on the Senate Finance Committee's bill, which will most likely not include a public option, but to write about soaring costs and individual mandates without describing how both Democratic and Republican congress-people--who have been bought by the health insurance companies--have attempted to torpedo an alternative to the for-profit system is simply absurd. I understand that journalists work under time and space constraints, but what the article claims to be about--the challenges of providing universal, low cost insurance--relates directly, in every way possible, to the life and probable death of a robust public option.

Though I enjoy calling David Brooks a sewage facility as much as the next guy, it is this kind of reporting that does the most damage. Brooks, Thomas Friedman, and all the other Iraq/n war cheerleaders out there would be significantly less powerful without the Judy Millers and Michael Gordons--and now William Broads and David Sangers--of the world establishing the terms of the debate on the so-called "objective" side of the paper. The blood-thirsty elites who make their fortunes by advocating for unending war on the poor of this country or the Brown people of another need "respected journalists" to lay the proper foundations upon which they can build their calls for continued occupation/restricted for-profit care.

The issue with this specific article isn't so much that it suffers from Judy Miller-syndrome--as of right now, there's no evidence that the author is in cahoots with the insurance companies or Max Baucus. The issue is that the Times has an institutional blindspot the size of Europe. The debate, as they understand it, is between these narrow, competing interests in a Senate subcommittee. And, in a way, they are correct, but that kind of limited thinking, repeated over and over on a daily basis, is what creates a society in which the only humane response to the crisis--a single-payer system--is virtually stricken from the public record. To rephrase a saying that I'm familiar with because of The Usual Suspects (but it probably goes back farther than that), "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world a better option didn't exist."

Yeah, You're Here Legally, But, You Know, We're Still Not Gonna HELP You

2009-10-05T13:33:00.004-04:00

Republicans in this country have a running joke between each other to see who can be the most cartoonishly evil while still keeping a straight face. It looks like we have a new champion, ladies and gents.

Aaron Serwer at American Prospect passes along this murderous little doozy:

"Last week, Mike Lillis caught a remarkable scene during the Senate Finance Committee debate: Republicans attempting to insert amendments that would bar legal immigrants -- you caught that, legal immigrants -- from accessing health-care exchanges, leaving those very immigrants Republicans say they are not hostile to, those who have "played by the rules" so to speak, without access to a reformed health-care system.
...
That would essentially make being in the country illegally a death sentence for someone who gets seriously ill. Kyl also memorably tried to prevent the federal government from requiring insurance companies to offer maternity care, because he himself "didn't need it.""

So, between that and treating spousal abuse as a pre-existing condition, we should all be pretty happy that the Democrats have been so excited to please Republicans and health insurance companies. It's called centrism, people, and it's the name of the game. See, there are two sides to every health care debate. On the one hand, you can treat health care as a human right that all people deserve, and on the other hand you can try to make a profit by denying care to beaten women and immigrants of all varieties. The Serious person, you see, finds the happy middle ground so as to never ever be called a leftist, which is FAR worse than being a xenophobic misogynist (fiscal conservative).

If there were any justos in el mundo, Sen. Kyl would be beaten mas o menos a la muerte with a sock full of pesos, and then denied "you-got-what-was-coming-to-you-because-you're-an-awful-Senator leave," because most Americans don't need that.

Make Them Talk

2009-10-05T09:57:00.004-04:00

Reading this latest report from The Hill, one might think that the health care bill that ends up coming out of the Senate will include a public option. I remain skeptical, to say the least. As I wrote here, we might see the Senate include something called a public option, but as far as a robust, government run insurance plan goes, that still seems like a bridge too far for the rotten Senate to cross.

The conventional wisdom states that the Senate Democrats don't have enough votes to overturn a Republican filibuster, even though they have 60 votes, which is what it takes to overturn a filibuster. But they still can't do it, for fear of being correctly identified by the media as liberals. This phenomenon is called: We Need Better Democrats.

But here's the thing. Which Senate Repub will actually filibuster? Has any one of them actually promised that? I think it's just taken as a given that they'll be dicks, which is true, but still, which ones specifically will be dicks? As Atrios tweeted on Sept. 18th, "wonder whatever happened to phrase "up or down vote" media used to love that one."

Remember when the Dems were the minority party, and the question was whether or not they had the balls to be dicks and filibuster? It was never, ever, EVER taken as a given that the Dems had a backbone. If they threatened to filibuster, the Repubs accused them of Communism for denying an up or down vote to whatever-the-fuck was going on. Liberals would've killed for an assumed Dem-lead auto-filibuster.

Make some awful Republican talk and talk and talk, and then accuse them of being obstructionist when YOU, the Democratic Party, is trying to provide, oh, I don't know, affordable, universal health care to the goddamn public. How can Senate leadership not understand that that's a winning script? But, as we've seen, the Dems just give the GOP the auto-filibuster, and it puts THEM, the party with a super majority, on the defensive again, somehow. It's really quite amazing.

The only explanations for this blistering message failure on the part of Senate leadership is either incompetence or malice. I've been saying that a lot lately, I know, but it's true. If the Democrats can't, or won't, make the GOP play by their own vicious rules, when they--the Dems--have a winning issue on their hands, there's no hope for progress in this country. And yes, the public option is a winning issue.

From Kevin Drum, (via Yglesias):

If Democrats really do lose the House next year (about which more later), this will be why. If they don’t pass a healthcare bill at all, they’ll be viewed as terminally lame. If they pass a bill, but it doesn’t contain popular features that people want — like the public option — they’ll be viewed as terminally lame.

And here's a pretty picture that will convince you the Democrats are The Impotents because literally everyone who isn't a comically rich asshole or a moran(!) who's afraid of the ghost of Stalin wants a public option.

What's In A Name?

2009-10-02T15:32:00.002-04:00

FireDogLake is an indispensable resource for anyone looking to stay informed about the health care debate, specifically the life and (sadly) likely death of a robust public option. FDL has remained resolutely optimistic throughout this whole process--a Herculean feat, if ever there was one.

They are currently calling on all interested parties to sign their latest petition (they LOVE petitions at FDL) telling members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus,

"that you will stand with these progressives all the way through conference in their commitment to block the passage of any bill that does not include a strong public option."

That petition, which I signed and encourage anyone who enjoys this blog to sign, can be found here. It takes less than a minute, and although it's easy to poo-poo the significance of a petition, it's probably better to sign this than not to. As Jane Hamsher at FDL writes,

"Maxine Waters. Keith Ellison. Jerrold Nadler. Emanuel Cleaver. Lloyd Doggett. Bob Filner. Chellie Pingree. Lynn Woolsey. John Conyers. These are the names we see over and over again, fighting for health care and the environment and worker's rights and civil liberties. For choice and marriage equality and financial regulation and free speech. They are standing up for what we believe in, resisting the influence of lobbyist money and Rahm Emanuel's thuggery, and if we don't support them when everything is on the line, there is no progressive movement in this country -- we're just going through the motions on the way to inevitable defeat."

Too true.

On a related note, FDL has been reporting on the latest, potentially positive development in the health care debate. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced an amendment to some goddamn version of the bill--I can't keep them straight, and for my point it's not important--that calls for a "basic health plan." Jon Walker writes:

"[W]hat Cantwell's amendment would do is allow states to create a much better exchange for those under 200% of FPL [Federal Poverty Line--JK]. It is an exchange with well-defined minimum benefit package with fixed co-pays, out-of-pocket limits, and deductibles. It would allow real economies of scale to affect negotiations, and mandate a minimum medical loss ratio of 85% for participating insurers. Insurers would be required to meet “specific performance measures and standards,” and their performance would be publicly reported. The basic health program must provide a choice of at least two or more similar plans.

This is closer to a Dutch-, Belgian-, Swiss-style, well-regulated, private system. You get to choose from several similar well-defined plans, knowing all of the plans provide sufficient coverage."

This is a positive development, with one exception. Cantwell keeps referring to her plan as a "public option," which it is not at all. Her idea, in fact, would benefit tremendously from the creation of a government run insurance program, which would simply act as another option which people could choose. Calling Cantwell's plan itself a public option is both misleading and possibly destructive. Why?

Because Harry Reid--who has not been an advocate for a public option at all--is now saying the final Senate bill will in fact contain a public option. As is the far better Senator (from Iowa!) Tom Harkin. Even Sex Escort Max Baucus loves Cantwell's proposal.

The danger here is that Senate Democrats will now start calling Cantwell's basic health plan a public option, thereby giving Senate Democrats a political "win" in the eyes of their constituents, while excluding a real mechanism to lower costs, which will keep the insurance companies placated. That is to say, they'll pass a "public option" without actually passing a public option.

All that aside, Cantwell's amendment does seem like a positive development, even if it is a bit like applying a tourniquet to a leg wound while the patient has an axe in his skull.

The Lessons We Learn, Which Is To Say, "None"

2009-10-02T11:40:00.003-04:00

Last night I attended a discussion at The New York Society for Ethical Culture featuring Matt Taibbi, Nomi Prins, and Daniel Gross that was fascinating and more than a little depressing, which is true about the act of learning things in general. The talk focused on corruption and manipulation of markets big banks and financial institutions engaged in, including a rare but necessary peek behind the curtain thanks to Nomi Prins. She was a Goldman executive before defecting to the Light side of the Force and becoming a whistleblower and journalist. After hearing her speak, I can't recommend her new book, It Takes A Pillage, highly enough. I want her and Wendell Potter (the invaluable heath insurance whistleblower) to get married. That would be a fun wedding.

The talk was too expansive to summarize here, but the two main takeaways for me came from Prins. First, when asked when we would see major reforms--including reinstating the Glass-Steagall act, which separated Depository banks and Investment banks--she responded, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe after the next serious meltdown. We're certainly not going to see it now." The certainty with which she spoke about another coming catastrophe was disturbing in its clarity. We're not out of the shit yet, it seems. Most of those toxic assets are still out there, and it's not clear that they will ever regain any of their "value" in the future--in part because their "value" never really existed in the first place.

Prins also made the extremely important point that as banks fail and are bought by those few banks who have survived the meltdown--thanks to tax-payer funded bailouts--a tragicomic thing has happened. The surviving banks are actually becoming bigger. Those banks now hold more deposits, have more capital, and, therefore, more power. Though Prins didn't say so explicitly, it also seems to me that the fewer, larger institutions will be more likely to be classified as "too big to fail." So...that fucking sucks. What a wonderful lesson for the country to learn.

On a related note, I think there's a parallel to be drawn between banks accruing more power and health insurance companies accruing more power. If the health care bill doesn't include a robust public option, but does include individual mandates, then Insurance companies will profit from that immensely. I have this crazy fear that after The Great Recession (or Depression if you're a minority) and "health care reform," we will actually see the two most destructive industries in this country--financial institutions and insurance companies--consolidate more wealth, access, power, and institutional inertia, thereby making future reform all the more difficult.

So not only does the government step in to save these massive corporations, we're actually taking steps to allow/encourage them to become MORE powerful. If all this proves to be unwarranted doom-saying, I'll push people over to be the first to apologize. Let's wait and see!

The Pigs Got JJ

2009-10-01T13:46:00.003-04:00

It seems that 6 Chicagoans were arrested Tuesday night after attempting to burn an Olympic banner after ripping it down from that main Picasso statue downtown. I haven't been able to find much credible reporting about this topic, but one thing that we can be sure of is that Jeremy Sorkin (pictured above) and 5 other protesters were taken into police custody, and today charged with "mob action," according to Chicagobreakingnews.com.

The group isn't believed to be part of No Games Chicago, a group who was also staging a protest that night.

According to Indymedia Chicago, public opinion has turned sharply against hosting the 2016 games. They report:

"The Chicago bid book, which outlines the financial proposal for Chicago's 2016 bid, was written before the recession hit and many of the anticipated funding streams have since dried up. Thus, funding the Olympics could skyrocket into the billions of dollars with the shortfall paid by city residents and from the city's controversial TIF program — an ostensible program to aid development but which has morphed into a mechanism to funnel public funds into unaccountable slush funds controlled by Mayor Daley and approved surrogates."

I haven't been able to find any statements from those arrested, so I don't know what their specific or general goals were. I will say that I went to college with Jeremy, and he's a hell of a good and smart kid. Funny, too. We were in an improv troupe together for a year before he dropped out to travel around Asia. I looked on his facebook page to see if anyone had posted any information, but, alas, no recent activity.

If anyone was there or knows what happened firsthand let me know. Likewise, I'll be checking for updates about their case, but if you have information send it to me at johnknefel@gmail.com.

This Is The Legacy Of Reagan

2009-10-01T09:59:00.004-04:00

The New York Times published two Op-Eds this week that both claim to comment on the current state of the country, but completely ignore the role that Ronald Reagan played in pushing it to the wretched place it's in today. Each column--one by David Brooks and the other by Thomas Friedman--examines The State Of Things Today in a very serious way. The furrowed brows leap off the page. But this country forgets its past very quickly, so such glaring displays of stuffing the past down an Orwellian memory hole need to be documented and examined.

The first Op-Ed, written by David Brooks, argues that we've lost our "economic values" as a country. We need to return to our Calvinist roots, etc. I wrote about that here, but left most of the heavy lifting to Andrew Leonard over at Salon, who I quoted as writing,

"Has Brooks somehow forgotten that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? The explosion of public debt since that point has very little to do with the moral failings of Americans, and everything to do with objective fact. George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts."

I agree with his argument, but Paul Krugman, another Times columnist, had something else to add. Yesterday, he wrote:

"David would have you believe that what happened then was a decline in Calvinist virtue. But, um, didn’t something else happen around 1980? Can’t quite remember .. someone whose name begins with the letter “R”?

Yes, Reagan did it.

The turn to budget deficits was a direct result of the new, Irving-Kristol inspired political strategy of pushing tax cuts without worrying about the “accounting deficiencies of government.”

Meanwhile, the surge in household debt can largely be attributed to financial deregulation."

Good for Krugman for saying it. Lots of this country's problems can be attributed to the Bush administration, but to find the causes of the institutional breakdowns, we must return to the Reagan era.

In that spirit, let's move on to [insert blowjob joke] Friedman's column from yesterday. I have to admit--as far as Friedman goes, this wasn't his worst offering, by far. It's still either ignorant or intellectually dishonest, but it doesn't call for the blood of Brown people. I'll take what I can get.

Friedman rightly argues that there is no "we" in America right now. He begins by describing similarities between Israel in '95 (when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated) and contemporary America. He calls out the far right in this country for engaging in hateful, xenophobic tactics that he feels are corroding the political culture. But in typical pundit style, he must create false equivalencies between the right and the left. He writes:

"Sometimes I wonder whether George H.W. Bush, president “41,” will be remembered as our last “legitimate” president. The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal.” George W. Bush was elected under a cloud because of the Florida voting mess, and his critics on the left never let him forget it." [emphasis added.]

Yes, quite. Never mind the fact that W. was installed by the Florida supreme court, and that the left was pressured by every single media institution in the country to "get over it and move on."

The most glaring omission from Friedman's analysis, however, is that the tactics he claims to despise are wholly a product of the Right. Beginning with Barry Goldwater, through Nixon, and then perfected by Ronald Reagan, the Right has constantly exploited racial tensions for political gain. You simply could not have "Obama is a socialist" without Reagan's hateful caricature of the "Cadillac-driving welfare queen."

Similarly, you couldn't have the kind of income disparity that we see in America without Reagan's policies of deregulation and union-busting. From crushing the air traffic controllers union to letting Wall Street collect more and more of the national income, it was clear that the 80s were a decade in which the money moved up the ladder, and fuck you if you couldn't fuck somebody else out of it. Reagan left the country atomized and greedy, distrustful of solidarity, with a context of xenophobic paranoia firmly in place.

That is where we stand as a country. Organized labor still exists, barely, but the Democrats are far, far more in line with the corporations that pay for their campaigns than the unions who mobilize to support them. Glenn Beck and the Right have managed to create a kind of Zombie Reaganism, in which the government is the problem and so is that Nazi Commie in the White House. It's amazing to see the white poor in this country embrace an economic philosophy that has decimated the working and middle classes. But we must remember that Reagan gave his party the playbook to exploit the fears of the white poor. But Friedman can't say that, because Globalization and Free Markets will save us all.

Yet Reagan remains the figure to which every major Republican candidate must swear allegiance. He remains untouchable by both conservative politicians and columnists. It's truly remarkable to read Brooks and Friedman lament the direct consequences of Reagan's legacy, yet never even mention him by name, much less assign anything resembling blame. Whether that's because of malice or ignorance is impossible to know, but neither answer is particularly comforting.

The Jeff Farias Show

2009-10-01T09:30:00.002-04:00

For anybody who's interested, I was a guest The Jeff Farias Show yesterday evening. We discussed the New York Times' irresponsible Iran coverage, as well as my argument that's beginning to take hold in the blogosphere that David Brooks is in fact a fully operational sewage facility. The truth hurts, people.

The audio can be streamed here, or probably downloaded from itunes by searching "The Jeff Farias Show." I'm on yesterday's episode, Sept. 30th, and my interview starts about a half hour into the show. Our thirty-minute conversation was quite fun. Hope you enjoy.

New York Times To Sociopaths: Give It Another Shot

2009-09-30T09:57:00.004-04:00

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Have you looked at the New York Times' fucking Op-Ed section today?! I know I've been writing about that dumping ground a lot lately, but the editors published an article today that--if America does escalate the conflict with Iran--will go down in history as one of the most fact-free, shameful pieces of propaganda in that paper's history. It contains, literally, nothing other than irresponsible speculation and conjecture, and follows the Iraq script so closely that it might as well have been written by Curveball. Who had the courage to rehash an argument that has already been shown to absolutely, tragicomically absurd? The same fuckers who did it the first time! I'M NOT KIDDING! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! [BANG!]

The piece was written by Gary Milhollin and Valerie Lincy, who I had never heard of until this morning. Gare and Val run Iran Watch, whose tagline is, "Tracking Iran's Mass Destruction Weapons Capabilities." So...you know...they're like, totally not biased. What is Gary's track record? Wait for it. Wait...for...it.

HE USED TO RUN IRAQ WATCH! Guess what their mission was!?!?!?! To track Iraq's weapons of mass destruction! I'm not kidding. It's the same guy, literally, doing the same thing, literally. A detail like this would be cut from even the hackiest political satire for being to obviously absurd. Why, why, would the Times hand over their paper to him given his record, his clear thirst for Arab/Persian blood, and the fact that right now the country is following a disturbingly similar script as the one that lead to the invasion and occupation of Iraq?

I almost don't want to move on to the article. It's so, fucking, bad. Oh lord. Okay, let's do this. Hold your nose, 'cause here comes the cold water. The first line really tells you everything you need to know about the piece as a whole:

"THE disclosure of Iran’s secret nuclear plant has changed the way the West must negotiate with Tehran. While worrisome enough on its own, the plant at Qum may well be the first peek at something far worse: a planned, or even partly completed, hidden nuclear archipelago stretching across the country." [emphasis added.]

OH FUCK OH FUCK! We're all totally fucked! Bomb that country now before it's too late! There "may well be" dangerous things there that we don't know about. The wild speculation continues in paragraph 3.

"Perhaps Iran was planning to install more efficient centrifuges at the plant, like a version of the P-2 machine used by Pakistan." [emphasis added.]

Yes, perhaps, perhaps, per-haps.

"Clearly, the new plant makes more sense if it is one of many. If Iran built a second plant of the same size as the Qum operation and ran them in tandem, the production times described above could be almost halved. And if Iran had a string of such plants, it would be able to fuel a small arsenal quickly enough to reduce greatly the chance of getting caught." [emphasis added.]

And IF Optimus Prime were real, then he could just fuckin' drive up all like a fuckin' truck an' shit, and then once he got inside he could just be like, "OH YEAH! It's Optimus Prime in the house!" And IF that happened it'd be so fuckin' sweet, and then we could bomb those Browns into a real live Democracy, by gawd.

"This would also limit the damage if one site were discovered or bombed, because its loss might not affect the others. Such a secret string of plants, however, would probably require a secret source of uranium."
...
The Qum plant might also be linked to Iran’s known enrichment plant at Natanz...
...
By feeding this uranium into the new Qum plant, Iran could fuel one bomb in about seven months, even at the present low production rate. If the rate were quadrupled, as Washington is projecting, the plant could fuel a five-bomb arsenal in less than a year.
...
But because the Natanz plant is being watched over by international inspectors, diversion of its material would probably be detected...
...
Having begun the Qum plant to supply a bomb’s fuel, wouldn’t Iran also create what’s needed to produce the rest of the bomb’s components? [emphasis added.]

Really look over those quotes. What, WHAT is happening in this Op-Ed. We start from an unfounded assumption, that the plant "may well be" one part of a nefarious network of plants, and we end up with the vile innuendo, "wouldn't Iran also create what's needed to produce the rest of the bomb's components?" It should make any thinking person sick to their stomach that the Times' would publish such ridiculous speculation. A first year philosophy student couldn't get away with this fallacious of an argument. By the time the reader gets to the last rhetorical question, the existence of an evil, vast network of undisclosed America-killing factories is no longer in question. OH, IT EXISTS, the authors assure us. But what evidence have they provided? Literally none.

Can we prove or disprove the authors' claims? No, not exactly. Although it is theoretically possible that they are describing reality as it is, we as readers are given no reason to believe that is what's happening. And, put in context, we should believe the authors are doing the exact opposite: describing a paranoid fantasy world populated with Evil Geniuses bent on the destruction of America and Israel at all costs.

Never once does it cross the authors minds that the constant threats of war and sanctions from the US and Israel might lead the Iranians to build a protected nuclear power plant. Never once does it cross their minds that Iran notified the IAEA well before they were required to under international law. And, most remarkably of all, never does it cross their minds that Iraq was a massive failure on every level that has resulted in untold levels of suffering in that country--and America as well--and that the US will be dealing with the blowback and crippling cost of our occupation for decades to come.

None of that crossed the minds of the editorial board of the New York Times, either. Which, all things considered, is somewhat unremarkable.

David Brooks Is A Sewage Facility

2009-09-29T14:09:00.006-04:00

I wasn't going to write about this, because, to be honest, the observation I'm about to put forth is so patently obvious that it really could probably go without saying--but here goes. I think, and I'm being sincere here, that David Brooks is not a person, but rather the name given to a process in which human waste is converted into a sort of food-paste and fed out to readers of the New York Times. It is no longer useful to refer to him as a human being, but rather as a poisonous force bent on the annihilation of thought, through shit.

His column today really must be read to be believed. That said, don't read it. There is nothing to be gained from believing such an Op-Ed exists, and, I'm sorry to report, much to lose. Reading his condescending tripe has left me feeling weak, sickly even.

There is no reason for me to pick apart what you might graciously refer to as his shitty argument, because Andrew Leonard over at Salon has saved me the trouble. Now, I will pass along to you his wise words. All you need to know about Brooks piece is that in it he says our "economic values" have changed, and we need to start living like we did in the 50s again. Here's a small taste of Leonard's massive takedown. I need a warm bath and some green tea.

"Brooks displays a bizarre historical amnesia throughout his column. For example, he never even mentions the transition from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression Maybe it's because the shift from decadence to thrift at that point was also obviously a response to economic incentives. Even worse, a moral revival didn't restore economic growth after the Crash -- government action and ultimately the fiscal stimulus provided by World War II did the trick.

But a far more pertinent point of reference comes much earlier. Has Brooks somehow forgotten that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? The explosion of public debt since that point has very little to do with the moral failings of Americans, and everything to do with objective fact. George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts. Instead, he ramped up spending dramatically, on two wars, healthcare, and finally, a huge bailout of Wall Street."

Preach it, Andy.

Taxpayers To Continue Making Decisions For Pregnant Women

2009-09-29T11:42:00.005-04:00

If there's one thing we can be sure of in this country, it's that a woman's right to choose whether or not she's going to take a pregnancy to term is contingent on the whims of white guys in suits. Senators! As a country, we find it important from time to time to remind women that their privacy rights are given to them by men, and can be amended As We See Fit.

In this spirit, the New York Times is reporting today that dickhead lawmakers are trying to introduce provisions into the health care bill to ensure that tax-payer money (in the form of government subsidies) isn't used to pay for abortions. From the Times:

"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."

I didn't know about that part at the end, that there's already a ban on "taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions." Hmmmm. Well, that's dumb and patriarchal. Let's get rid of that ban, and then the whole point is moot.

Abortion-rights activists (who should really be called something like "Privacy is privacy" activists) are worried that this anti-poor, anti-women provision could have disastrous effects on people--specifically on poor women. And also on women who already have insurance.

"Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, argued that if the bill blocked the use of subsidies for abortion coverage, private insurers would stop covering abortion because those plans would be excluded from the federally subsidized programs.

“Women who already have this coverage would lose it,” Ms. Keenan said."

Anyone with half a brain knows that what Keenan is describing here is exactly what the anti-choice crowd is going for. They will fight to curtain reproductive rights with every tool available to them, because it is their business to tell poor women what to do.

It's worth noting that we see this kind of cultural "remember who you are" smackdown on other marginalized classes as well. Gays have the Obama administration's disgraceful handling of DOMA and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Latinos had Joe Wilson--and the GOP at large--telling them that the idea of providing health care to an "illegal immigrant" was so hateful to them that they literally couldn't control their anger at the thought of it. And blacks, of course, have recently been reminded that an organization (ACORN) that helps register primarily black voters will have the fury of the Congress rained down upon it at the slightest show of misconduct.

Those are all examples taken from the last 9 months, with the "Liberal" party in power, so, you know, that's...not...good. Oh yeah, and American Muslims were reminded by the previous administration exactly how important their rights are too.

Has Iran Already Nuked Us!?

2009-09-25T14:40:00.004-04:00

This morning's newspaper headlines sure were exciting, weren't they?!?!?!?!

As of right now, the New York Times' headline screams:

Iran Is Warned Over Nuclear ‘Deception’

The Washington Post cries:

Iran Admits Second Nuclear Enrichment Site

OH NO! Drudge takes the predictably sober approach and whispers:

CAUGHT BY SURPRISE: IRAN BUILDING SECOND NUKE PLANT[ital. in original]

ACK!

Why, I think we might already be at war with fucking Iran! Or close, at least! The Times today dutifully contemplates that,

"After months of talking about the need for engagement, Mr. Obama appears to have made a leap toward viewing tough new sanctions against Iran as an inevitability."[emphasis added.]

Fellatio-enthusiast Thomas Friedman wrote this week that we [America!] should threaten Iran with immediate sanctions and the possibility that "Israel might do something crazy." I wonder what Obama and Friedman talked about when they played Golf the other day.

The Post ledes by raising the prospect of sanctions as well.

"President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain blasted Iran's construction of a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility and demanded Friday that Tehran immediately fulfill its obligations under international law or risk the imposition of harsh new sanctions."

It sure sounds like the media is congealing around this new meme like the unthinking wad of lard that they are. And thankfully, the same horrifying tactics that gave us Catastrophe Iraq! are on full display yet again, for fun.

After reporting that Iran sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency informing them of the existence of the Plant, Politico goes on to say:

"“A very cursory admission to the IAEA years after the commencement of construction of the facility whose use is undeniable does not constitute living up to its obligations,” an American official said."[emphasis added.]

OOOOOOO!!!!!!! That's so scary, guys! An anonymous source is claiming with certainty that a new enemy can/will/already has killed us all! That sounds like a slam dunk case, right there.

Others have joined Friedman's calls for more human sacrifice to please the God of American Stability. Meat-puppet David Ignatious--who writes about politics with as much insight as John Madden does about Proust--spends his column today telling his readers that we are in a scary new cold war, but he and his anonymous insider friends are seriously doing their best to keep us safe, guys. Ignatious writes:

So why didn’t the Obama administration lay down an even stronger marker in response to this breakout -- by threatening, say, to intercept ships at sea that it believed were carrying parts for the Iranian nuclear program?

The answer, explained the senior official in a telephone interview, is that the U.S. wants to preserve consensus among its allies for much harsher sanctions, even as it heads toward a face-to-face negotiating meeting with the Iranians on Oct. 1.The U.S. has privately communicated with the Iranians in recent days that it wants those talks to go forward, the senior official said.

Asking why Ignatious granted anonymity to that senior official is like asking why banks rip people off--no matter how despicable we may find that practice, that's what they think their job is.

But let's back up just a little. Ignatious nobly wonders why the US didn't "intercept ships at sea that it believed were carrying parts for the Iranian nuclear program." That is really a remarkable sentence because it highlights, in a nutshell, how our punditry class thinks, which is to say they are blood-thirsty war-mongers, no matter how banal their demeanor appears. What meat-puppet Ignatious is describing is an act of war. You know, bang bang. Look at how casually he posits this question, the consequences of which would undoubtedly lead to massive civilian suffering and death, both American and Iranian. Yet to Ignatious, it seems odd that America didn't strike first.

To read an evisceration of another pundit warrior, read Greenwald's vicious dismantling of David Brooks, here.

And to read a historical account of how familiar all this Iran scare-mongering is, go here.

Watch out for a ratcheting up of the scary Iran meme this weekend on the Gas-bag Happy Hour with George Stephanopolous, or on This Week with Dickheads. I won't be watching them, but if anything happens let me know if you want to.

American Savagery

2009-09-23T13:23:00.004-04:00

Thomas Friedman loves one thing and one thing alone, which is to give off very sophisticated airs that he hates war--HATES IT, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND--only to call for more war in the very next breath. For this reason, he is considered America's Leading Intellectual(!) and also a Liberal(!?). Oh, he doesn't want war, don't you see, it's just that, well, this new war is so goddamn necessary. His lamentations fill the page as he bravely calls for yet another unprovoked assault on a sovereign country. War is hell, but it makes a good lede.

Friedman the Warrior begins his column today by showing all you pussies how fucking tough he is.

"For the first time since Iran began enriching uranium that could be used in a nuclear weapon, we have a glimmer of hope for a diplomatic solution to this problem — as long as we are not too diplomatic, as long as the Iranian regime is made to understand that biting economic sanctions are an absolute certainty and military force by Israel is a live possibility."[emphasis added.]

Oh yeah, Friedman ain't scared to talk some shit. He'll preemptivly threaten a motherfucker if he gots to. Sanctions, war, you name it, he'll threaten it.

Throughout his column, Friedman repeats this theme of "biting economic sanctions," also calling them, "real biting sanctions," and "real sanctions." He lists a few different options for what those sanctions could be, but what he really wants to talk about is Israel puttin' up its dukes.

"While real sanctions are necessary to exploit this moment, they are not sufficient. We also need to keep alive the prospect that Israel could do something crazy. I don’t favor Israeli military action against Iran and hope we’re telling Israel that privately. But I do believe that U.S. officials, particularly the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, need to stop saying that publicly."[emphasis added.]

Ooooo, can't you feel what a reluctant soldier Friedman is? He really doesn't want war, but we need to "keep alive the prospect that Israel could do something crazy." Anyone looking for a perfect example of the deranged, symbiotic relationship between the US and Israel--and the hawkish mentality behind it--need look no further. Iran, a country that has never attacked the United States, and has no real capability of attacking the United States, must be constantly threatened with declarations of potential military and economic force.

Friedman goes on to correctly describe how brutal Ahmadinejad regime is, as though the well-being of Iranian citizens is of his utmost concern. Remember, he is the same guy who said we need to go to a Muslim country and tell them "Suck. On. This."

Excuse me if I find Friedman's motives less than humanitarian.

[Author's note: As I write this, a "Free Iran" protest is marching past my building towards the UN. It's worth remembering that these are the people who Friedman is so quick to cast into the hell of economic sanctions. See here for some of the devestating effects of the sanctions on Iraq.]

Primary Victim Of 1960s Violence Was Family Values, Apparently

2009-09-22T10:14:00.005-04:00

Twice every week, the warden at Bellvue Hospital for the Criminally Insane unlocks a heavy steel door with a name tag next to it that reads "David Brooks, columnist." The warden opens the door, heaves in a typewriter and a raw steak, and Brooks--bound by a straight jacket and frothing at the mouth--pounds out his twice-weekly missive by repeatedly smashing his head against the keyboard until a mix of blood, tears, and neocoservativism has dirtied the page.

Yes, it's an origin myth, but frankly it makes more sense to believe that than to believe the New York Times gives an office to a man who would write a sentence like this (from Brooks' eulogy today of Irving Kristol):

"Kristol championed middle-class virtues like faith, family and responsibility, especially during the 1960s when they were so much under attack."

Oh yeah, if there's one thing that was seriously under attack in the 1960s, it was family values. Not civil rights leaders, or, I don't know, Vietnamese peasants. Mostly it was the family values that suffered. The real victim of institutionalized racism, sexism, and war-mongering were the Brady Bunch.

What was under attack in the 60s--other than Vietnam--was the supremacy of a white, sexist, imperialist mindset in America. Kristol and his neocon offspring believed--and continue to believe--whole-heartedly in the inherent goodness of American hegemony, so it should be no surprise that Kristol would've defended what Brooks euphemistically refers to as "middle-class virtues." Kristol believed that society was falling apart due to the loss of religion, and the patriarchal society that goes along with it. The following quote is taken from J. David Hoeveler, Jr.'s Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era (via Sadly, No):

"Kristol identified a spiritual vacuum that cut across the whole public culture of the United States. He was a writer who could cry out for censorship of pornography and who could praise Victorian culture for its deference to womanhood. What Kristol sorely lamented was the loss of republican virtue in Western life, and behind that loss, he believed, was the decline of religion. The decline did not constitute for Kristol a merely curious cultural shift. It lay at the base of every issue that liberal and conservative ideologies confronted. The loss of faith, Kristol wrote, was the “most important political fact of the last hundred years.”"

That paragraph speaks for itself, but it's worth briefly returning to the Brooks quote.

Brooks' phrase, "middle-class virtues like faith, family and responsibility," is repugnant and offensive, but those types of constructions get used all the time. Those three "virtues" become property of the "middle class," as though the working class doesn't give a shit about family. As though immigrants and blacks--because make no mistake, when Brooks refers to 1960s middle-class society he means white--don't give a shit about responsibility.

There's no real need to comment on any other part of Brooks' column, which is entirely dedicated to the memory of Irving Kristol. Learning about Kristol from Brooks is like learning about the Emperor from Darth Vader--if you don't trust the source, it's hard to really throw yourself into academic pursuit.

Concern For Palestinians' Well-Being Not High On Pundit's List Of Things He Cares About

2009-09-21T15:27:00.003-04:00

When it comes to debating the continued occupation of Palestine by Israel, there is no better way to be taken seriously by the Talking Class than to competely and utterly disregard the safety and well-being of Palestinians. Jackson Diehl, writing in the Washington Post (which has an explicit policy of burning Gazans for sport), illustrates this unspoken truth quite well today.

All things considered--ie, concerning Israel--that whole massacre of Gaza thing last year wasn't really so bad. Diehl does acknowledge that many Gazans--including at least 450 civilians--died, but he is such a Serious Adult About Foreign Policy that he only examines how this affected Israel.

"But what of the grievous Palestinian suffering in the invasion -- Israel itself counted 1,166 dead Gazans, including more than 450 civilians -- and the international backlash that has caused? Just last week a U.N. commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone condemned what it called "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and suggested that responsible Israelis be hauled before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

Israel's leaders worried a lot about losing the war that way. But as they see it, they suffered only scratches. Egypt, which quietly collaborates with Israel's blockade of Gaza, came under pressure to change its policy but held firm. No Arab country toughened its stance toward Israel: According to the Obama administration, as many as five may be willing to offer diplomatic and economic concessions if Israel freezes its West Bank settlement construction.

Perhaps most significant, Hamas's rival for Palestinian leadership, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is considerably stronger than it was before the war. Probably it will renew peace talks with Israel within weeks. As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council."[emphasis added]

So, here's what Diehl is saying: "Hey, buddy, too bad about all that civilian death, but, hey, you know what? It worked out pretty well for us over here." You know what that sounds a lot like?

Main Entry: ter·ror·ism
1 : the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion

And, saddest of all, the lesson that Diehl learned from the massacre was this,

"The Gaza invasion was the second military operation Israel embarked on in less than 18 months despite disapproval from Washington. The other was its bombing of a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria in September 2007. Then, too, officials in Washington feared a dire diplomatic backlash or even a war between Israel and Syria. Nothing happened.

As they quietly debate the pros and cons of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel's political and military leaders no doubt will be thinking about that history. That doesn't mean they will discount American objections -- Iran would be a far harder and more complex target, with direct repercussions for U.S. troops and critical interests in the region. But, as with Gaza, even a partial and short-term reversal of the Iranian nuclear program may look to Israelis like a reasonable benefit -- and the potential blowback overblown."[emphasis added]

This unfettered bloodlust is nothing short of sociopathic behavior, and should be called as such. "Nothing happend," Diehl writes, forgetting that an entire city was fenced in and systematically destroyed. He shows no sympathy, none, for any of the thousands of Iranians who would no doubt be killed in a preempitive attack.

It should be noted that Israeli civilian death is horrible and abhorent. I am not in any way attempting to say that those who died in Sderot and any less tragic than any 8 or 9 Palestinians, it just so happens that there are another 1,400 Arab deaths on top of that to account for.

A Prediction For The Republican Party

2009-09-21T13:56:00.003-04:00

The '08 election argued that the GOP is essentially a regional party, with little or no productive role to play in the governing of America. I have referred to them in the past as "a confederacy of white nationalists and robber barons," and now it seems a recent poll is supporting my claim.

This is a graph created by Steve Bennen that I saw over at Ezra Klein's blog. It breaks down GOP support by region, and the numbers do not look good for the Repubs.

MonkeyCage has the line of the day with this gem,

"Quite seriously, if I saw this type of regional distribution of support for a political party in a country like Slovakia, I would assume the party represented an ethnic minority."

It's funny, because the GOP hates ethnic minorities! Oh, man, that is too good.

How Can We Possibly Have An Honest Debate If People Say Mean, True Things About War Crimes?

2009-09-21T11:20:00.003-04:00

Last year, Israel rained down massive, collective punishment of the people of Gaza--actions that constitute war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity. At least that's what Richard Goldstone and his team of UN investigators reported last week. The report also said that Hamas was guilty of committing war crimes by sending rockets into Israel aimed at civilian targets, but on a far smaller scale. The findings of the report were dismissed both by Israel and the Obama administration as being overly harsh on Israel.

David Landau, the former editor-in-chief of the Israeli newspaper H'aaretz, wrote about this report in Sunday's edition of the New York Times, and frankly, he did not care for the report's findings one little bit! In fact, he thought the report was mean and disproportionately critical of Israel, which is not fair at all.

Yes, Palestinian deaths numbered around 1,400, and Israeli deaths came in at 13. Yes, there is strong evidence to suggest that Israel used white phosphorus on an imprisoned population, and shot Palestinian civilians who were literally waving white flags to surrender. And bombed UN schools. But, yeah, you wouldn't want anything about this massacre to be disproportionate.

Landau makes the childish claim that Goldstone is at fault here, because he was so mean in his report that now Israelis won't want to talk about their feelings honestly. He writes:

"But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began."

What a evil "premise" for an investigator to begin an argument with. What's unfortunate for Landau, and the New York Times, is that he clearly doesn't know what the word "premise" means. Hahahaha, silly editor-in-chief.

What he means to say--and this is a common mistake people for people who can't argue properly--is "conclusion." Goldstone arrives at the conclusion that Israelis targeted civilians, he doesn't begin at that premise. It's a common mistake, to confuse "premise" (the beginning assumption of a debate) with "conclusion" (the end point one arrives at after examining evidence). It's especially common for the head of a major newspaper to make that mistake. Or he might have been employing a dirty rhetorical trick.

In Landau's critique of the report, he offers no counter-arguments, no examples of bad methodology, and no flaws in the logic of the report. He simply doesn't like its conclusions, so he dismisses the whole endeavor as a wasted opportunity. According to Landau, we should have maybe asked some questions and called it a day, I guess.

"When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?
...
Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?"

When a rhetorical question has a clear answer, should we stifle it in an absurd attempt to maintain civility in discourse?

"These were precisely the questions that Israeli politicians and generals wrestled with in Gaza, as others do today in Afghanistan."

Yes, we should have wrestled with those questions, but not drawn any conclusions. I get it now. Silly me, I thought there was value in making legitimate accusations of wrong-doing when the evidence warranted it, but I guess that would count as a wasted opportunity, to, um, hold people accountable for their crimes, I guess.

What Landau fails to recognize is that the findings of this report are so horrific that even in describing them, one will risk angering those who are blindly "pro-Israel." And, yes, roughly 9/10ths of the report is spent documenting Israel's crimes, and only 1/10th documenting Hamas' crimes. But, as Norman Finkelstein argued on Democracy Now!, that's what you would expect in a massacre that left 1,400 dead on one side, and about a tenth of that, 13, dead on the other.

This type of inability, or unwillingness, to call a crime a crime ensure that this type of behavior will happen again. Whether the offender will be the USA, Isreael, or another occupying power is anybody's guess.

Blantant Racism Not About Race, Explains White Oligarch

2009-09-18T11:12:00.002-04:00

Respected race theorist David Brooks writes today in the New York Times that the backlash against Obama isn't about race, like, even at all. He knows this because one time Brooks saw some white people having a rally and they weren't murdering black people who were having a separate rally SO CASE CLOSED ALREADY.

In making what may be the laziest argument ever committed to paper, Brooks engages in what must be the laziest (and, sadly, most common) rhetorical tactic in the Op-Ed writer's toolbox. He cherry-picks one singular example of evidence from his own life to support his weak-ass thesis, and then generalizes from that specific interaction. Tommy "Suck. On. This." Friedman is the absolute worst perpetrator of this crime against readers. If he weren't allowed to begin a column by writing, "I was in a Taxi in [insert foreign country] and my driver told me [insert awesome thing about Globalization]..." he might never be allowed to write again.

Brooks, in his column today, tackles the extremely complicated problem of latent racism in contemporary America. Psyche! Haha, he can't do that, because he's not very compassionate, and he adores, SIMPLY ADORES, "Centrism," which is short-hand for, "Good luck, minorities! Tell me how things turn out!" No, Brooks intelligently concludes that America is not racist any more in any way and why do the mean liberals keep bringing it up? Brooks helpfully presents this trite anecdote as proof-positive that institutional racism is a thing of the past. He writes about jogging past the Piss-Drinkers (Tea Baggers) march the other day, noting:

They were carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, “End the Fed” placards and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions. [Note he fails to mention any of the explicitly racist signs, belonging to the so-called "birthers."-JK]

Then, as I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands. They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction. These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They’d both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn’t discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

Problem solved! A race riot didn't immediately break out when some white people met some black people, so, um, what more proof do you need that America is great?

Brooks bravely rips race from its historical and cultural context, isolating it as merely one of many potential sources of strife, and then triumphantly (if inexplicably) concluding, "race is largely beside the point." [For a deep look about the intersection of race, class, and gender, see AK here.] Yes, yes, Mr. Brooks, how wonderful of you to throw in your two sense. Let's talk about the Obama backlash, whose de facto leader explicitly called Obama a racist, without giving significant weight to the issue of race. While we're at it, let's talk about the health care debate, without discussing race and class. And let's do the same thing when we talk about the ousting of Van Jones, and the vile, despicable targeting of ACORN by the Piss-Drinker movement. Why, the hatred expressed towards Van Jones and ACORN couldn't possibly be race-based, now, could it? Noooooo.

Brooks continues on, heroically descending further and further into a fever dream in which the new administration is solely responsible for the inseparable joining of the State and the Corporation.

"Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector."

I have written in this space many times about the destructive pact the Democrats have made with the health insurance companies, and I'm under no illusion that they are free in any way from massive corporate control. But to claim that the fusion of federal power with Wall Street is the result of the Obama administration verges on the deranged. The marriage of the State and Corporate Power goes back to the founding of this country, and, in the modern setting, at least as far back as the Eisenhower administration.

And then there's this lunacy.

"We now have a populist news media that exaggerates the importance of the Van Jones and Acorn stories to prove the elites are decadent and un-American, and we have a progressive news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout and the opposition to the Obama schools speech to show that small-town folks are dumb wackos."

What?! That block quote may reign supreme as the greatest example yet of the mindless (or worse, deliberate) equivocation between what is called "the Left" and "the Right." The "populist news media" is presumably Fox News and it's collection of inbred spin offs. Brooks plays a particularly deceitful rhetorical trick by subtly referring to Van Jones and ACORN as "elites" in the voice of the populist media. A casual reader, however, could very easily interpret that sentence construction to mean that Brooks himself--who is, in the mind of the casual reader, a respected centrist--considers Van Jones and ACORN the "elites," which is laughable. ACORN receives about 3 million federal dollars per year, a mere drop in the bucket compared to financial institutions.

Then he says part of the problem is the "progressive media," which is, I don't know, MSNBC and blogs, maybe. There is certainly a liberal blogosphere, but calling Joe Wilson an asshole and pointing out that Reagan gave a speech at a school too is a far cry from calling the president a racist. What he fails to mention, because he is fundamentally incapable of realizing it, is that people like him are what amplify the false claims of the Right, and make it necessary for the Left to fact-check the media.

Brooks' aim is so far off base here, one could use it as a jump off for an entire book about the broken media. He falsely asserts that race can be talked about separate from class and gender, subtly advances right-wing lies about Van Jones and ACORN, and presents an idiotic equivocation between Fox News and the liberal blogosphere, in essence saying, "they're both good and bad, but here I am in the center like an Adult." That's really a remarkable achievement, even for Brooks.

And Let's Deny Orphans, While We're At It...

2009-09-16T10:34:00.002-04:00

As all Serious Adults know, reform must happen in small increments and include everybody--EVEN PEOPLE YOU MIGHT NOT AGREE WITH. This is called being a moderate, or centrist, a label that is valued in Washington, DC even more than air itself. It shows your colleagues that you don't actually believe in anything, which is to be avoided at all costs, lest you be labeled an "ideologue." That's why health care reform must--SIMPLY MUST DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND--include health insurance companies.

But then there's also this. According to insurance companies, getting beaten by your husband counts as a pre-existing condition. Yeah. HuffingtonPost is reporting:

It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

I can't imagine a more perfectly distilled illustration of the brutal logic of capitalism. A company that exists to make money by denying care to sick people (and make no mistake, that is exactly what a health insurance company is), extends an already corrupt and revolting practice--denying care due to "pre-existing conditions"--to include people who aren't sick, but are victims of abuse.

And, according to Huffpo, this practice has been happening since at least the early 90s, when insurance companies promised to end this practice during Clinton's push for reform. Surprise, surprise, that didn't happen, because, oh, I don't know, maybe because ANYONE EVIL ENOUGH TO DENY COVERAGE TO A VICTIM OF DOMESTIC ABUSE MIGHT DO ANYTHING TO MAKE A BUCK, INCLUDING LYING ABOUT ENDING THAT PRACTICE BUT THEN CONTINUING TO DO IT. That's just one theory, though, there might be others.

To give credit where it's due, in 2006 Senate Democrats tried to outlaw the practice, but the Republicans stymied the measure.

Let's invite everyone to the Big Table for Reform! Sigh.

Old Men Debate Merits Of Health Care Reform, Piss

2009-09-15T13:19:00.002-04:00

Folks, health care will be reformed, I JUST KNOW IT! How can I be so sure? My evidence is below, in the form of a humble video offering, straight from the God of Joy. The human capacity for language is not yet expansive enough to describe the beauty contained in this quasi-pornographic town hall moviefilm, but here's a shot.

One old guy yells at another old guy, and then they start talking about how neither one wants to pee on each other, which is the centrist position. Common ground! The arbiter of Centrism, David Brooks, has publicly argued many times that Serious people don't pee on each other--though in private this blog has been told other stories. Look, David Brooks' addiction to getting peed on notwithstanding, this is a serious display of how sausage (legislation) gets made, and then pees on the elderly and then the government steals their Medicare. (via Wonkette)

(All the pee talk comes at around 1:25. If anyone watches the rest of this thing and nothing else interesting happens, hahahaha.)

Numbers That Will Make You Sad

2009-09-14T15:24:00.005-04:00

Here is a sad true fact: If your head is on the TV, talking, Americans will trust you forever, no matter what. In return for the collective sacrifice of our humanity, we are rewarded with shows such as According to Jim's Testicles, and The Beard of Wolf Blitzer.

TV is on my brain because ThinkProgress is passing along some pretty grim polling data from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

TP focuses on the drastic down tick in positive reviews from Democrats over the period of 2007 to 2009. They write:

"In a new survey of how the public views the news media, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that “partisan differences in views of Fox News have increased substantially since 2007.” Though the percentage of Republicans who view Fox News positively is virtually the same (73 percent in 2007 and 72 percent in 2009), positive views of Fox News have dropped significantly amongst Democrats from 61 percent in 2007 to 43 percent in 2009. In comparison, the view of CNN by both Republicans and Democrats is “little changed from two years ago.”"

My question, though, is how the fuck is it that in 2007, 2007, 61% of Democrats held a positive view of FoxNews. That seems remarkably high to me. I mean, O'Reilly had been in full effect for years by then, as had Hannity and the lobotomized goons over at Fox and Friends. What could have changed between 2007 and 2009? Well there's this:

Glenn Beck joins Fox News

And I suppose their coverage of the Democratic primaries might have turned a few people off, but, still, 61% in 2007? Yikes.

Me on Citizen Radio

2009-09-12T16:06:00.002-04:00

For anyone who's interested, I was just on Citizen Radio, a very fun, very leftist podcast run by Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny. The show can be heard here, or downloaded from itunes by searching "Citizen Radio." You should subscribe to the show, and I don't just say that because I was on it--although that is a big reason.

Topics covered on the show include: the public option, Obama's condescension towards the Left, my critique of Inglourious Basterds, and illegal human experimentation. But it's all funny! How do we manage to do it?! Lots of farty sound effects! Not really! Go listen and then we'll talk about it the next time we see each other.

Here Is What Matters About Obama's Speech To Congress

2009-09-11T10:16:00.003-04:00

This sentence, and this sentence alone, tells you what was the goal and end result of Obama's speech to Congress. The NY Times today is reporting:

"The day after the nationally televised address, in which Mr. Obama signaled that he could accept an alternative to a government-run insurance plan, influential Democrats who previously seemed wedded to the public insurance option hinted that they, too, might be flexible."[emphasis added.]

Success! What an awesome speech that was, about transcendence, and moral imperatives. Lose one for Teddy!

The problem with the debate that liberals are having over health care is simple, and yet that's what makes it so frustrating. Those who support a public option but also give Obama the benefit of the doubt are operating from a false premise, namely, they assume that he actually wants a bill that contains a public option.

Why is anybody (or, more correctly, everybody) assuming this to be the case? Because he says he does? Since when did taking elected officials at their word become a hallmark of the left? As the great Izzy Stone said, "all governments lie." Obama says he favors the public option, but what actions--not rhetoric--serve as evidence for this claim?

There are none. And, in fact, there is ample evidence to lead one to believe the opposite is true, that Obama is in fact getting exactly the bill he wants. Obama has kowtowed to insurance and pharmaceutical companies; Rham "the trigger" Emmanuel has told progressive that they're "fucking stupid" for criticizing Blue Dogs. There has been no pressure on sex escort Max Baucus to produce a better bill.

To assume that Obama wants the public option based only on rhetoric is the height of idiocy. Do we assume a husband loves his wife simply because he says he does, despite years of infidelity? No, we don't. We judge him or her by their actions, and any one who doesn't use that standard is rightly accused of being naive.

We have to remember that public officials have every reason to say what we are meant to think they believe, not what they actually believe. That is not new or unique to Obama, it's just the nature of public service. That's why someone like Kucinich deserves praise--because he said he's in favor of single payer, and then introduced a bill that would allow states on an individual basis to adopt that system if they so choose. That's what actual advocacy looks like.

If the last 8 years should have taught us anything, it's that placing trust in elected officials without sufficient evidence to do so is asking for catastrophe.

Party of Racists Now Also Party of Stupid Children

2009-09-10T15:23:00.003-04:00

It has been clear for some time now that the so-called "Republican Party" is little more than a confederacy of white nationalists and robber barons, united by equal levels of hatred and ignorance. Their party's symbol may as well be Glen Beck pissing on the grave of Thomas Paine. That's been obvious to anybody with a brain for quite some time. What's also now clear is that they are a party of whiny assholes who deserve to be treated like nothing other than whiny assholes.

During Obama's speech to the Congress on Wednesday night, the GOP revealed its true colors as a gang of disrespectful morons who will not participate in the act of governing in any meaningful way. Joseph Wilson outburst of, "YOU LIE" stands out as the most flagrant trespass against decency and civility of the night, but it was far from the only one. Alex Koppelman at Salon, and Dana Milbank at WaPo both catalogued the GOP's asshat-ery. There is a sickening irony to Dana Milbank of all people--he who suggested that Hillary Clinton drink "mad bitch beer"--calling for civility.

Watching some of the footage, I couldn't help but think that I've seen better behaved crowds at strip clubs. Members of the GOP were holding up homemade signs that read "What bill?", because a speech to Congress should, more than anything else, closely resemble a WWF SummerSlam. I half expected Larry the Cable Guy to kick in the door to the House and scream, "Health Care?! I say, 'GIT R DUN!!!!!'" and then the Republicans would all stand up, rip their shirts off, grease themselves up, and roam the streets looking for at-risk teens to beat the shit out of.

I give it even odds that that'll happen at the State of the Union.

The Senator From WellPoint Has a Bill!

2009-09-09T12:42:00.002-04:00

Marcy Wheeler over at EmptyWheel is reporting that, surprise surprise, high-class sex escort Sen. Max Baucus' (D-MT) health care bill was written by a former executive for WellPoint, a health insurance company and the largest member of the Blue Cross Association. Representative Democracy! The bill was authored by Liz Fowler, sex slave Baucus' Senior Counsel and maybe Dungeon Master. She worked for Baucus from 2001-2005, then moved over to WellPoint to make MadMadMadMoney. But then she returned to public life to do some good! Or enrich her former employers and ensure that her boss would continue to receive more corporate donations than anyone else in the Congress! Either one is possible. But, yeah, Wheeler notes that,

"To the extent that Liz Fowler is the Author of this document, we might as well consider WellPoint its author as well."

Again, this shouldn't be surprising, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. The extent to which corporations exert control over our lives--psychologically, and in both public and private life--cannot be overstated.

In that vein, I'd like to pass along this excerpt from last Sunday's Bill Moyers' show for old people/smarties/folks with boring Sunday nights. The debate was about a case coming up before the Supreme Court concerning 1st Amendment rights for corporations--specifically, whether or not they are free to spend unlimited funds during an election cycle to support or defeat a specific candidate. Trevor Potter was advocating limiting the amount corporations can spend, and therefore, in the eyes of critics, limiting the "free speech" of corporations and potentially unions.

BILL MOYERS: [T]his is about more than a movie or a book. This is go [sic] fundamentally to the role of corporations in our political elections. And this concerns you, because you say in your brief that this is dangerous.

TREVOR POTTER: Well, if you just look at the numbers here you are dealing with a world we just have never seen in elections. Exxon Mobil has a political action committee, which means voluntary contributions given by shareholders and executives, about 900 thousand dollars in the last cycle. It made last year 85 billion dollars.

Now, there's just a world of difference in the resources available if you say to a corporation, "You can spend money to defeat global-- candidates who are in favor of global warming legislation." If coal companies can go out and say, "If you don't sign our pledge to support coal we're going to defeat you. We're going to spend money against you." You take those enormous economic resources and you use them for something that we've never seen before. That I think is the radical nature.

So, the case before the Court right now is whether or not corporations will be able to control even more of our lives, by being giant dicks, and probably making a movie about Al Gore being a pornographer or something. Free Speech now apparently means the ability to buy up as much of the limited, expensive, and exclusive means of public discourse as one can! THEY ALREADY WRITE OUR GODDAMN BILLS I MEAN COME ON!

Ahem. If anyone has any question left in their head about whether or not giving corporations more, ney, ENDLESS control over the public discourse might be cause for concern, here is the latest post from Matt Taibbi, telling us how "wacky evil" Goldman Sachs has become.

"It looks like Wall Street is developing a new use for the securitization process — bundling life insurance policies and selling them as bonds to investors who would be betting, in essence, on when the policyholders will die.
...
This feels like financial innovation as practiced by Josef Mengele meets the Zucker Brothers; not just evil, but wacky evil. I don’t even want to think about what happens when Goldman Sachs suddenly has a large financial stake in the premature deaths of a bunch of old people."

This is what Adam Smith meant by the "invisible hand of the market"--that it will strangle you to death, for profit, by giant dicks.

Predictions for Obama's Speech to Congress

2009-09-09T11:17:00.000-04:00

Tonight, Barack Obama will address the nation on the topic of health care reform, one of his signature issues during the campaign. Whatever else may be true of the final bill that comes out of the House and the Senate, we can be sure that it will leave progressives disappointed and marginalized--even moreso than usual--and corporate congress people (both Democrat and GOP) thrilled, thrilled, thrilled.

It is in that spirit that I humbly present the following predictions for Obama's BIG NIGHT OF TRIANGULATION AND DEFEAT.

Before the speech even begins, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), giddy with certainty that Obama won't demand the inclusion of a public option, and intoxicated with visions of the millions more dollars he'll receive from health insurance companies, releases not a small amount of ejaculate into his non-descript gray suit.

Sen. Grassley (R-IA) passes the time by going back and forth between two sets of prepared remarks he will give after the speech. The first set, or "professional" set, describes that even though he won't approve of the final bill, he's glad Obama "reached across the aisle." The second set of remarks, or "actual" set, read as follows:
Hahahahah!!!!!!!!!!! You maroons really ate my dick on this one! WE HAD NOTHING! You had everything going for you. We had nothing! Death panels?! That was a fucking bet between me and Rush about who could get Palin to say something stupider. Oh, hey, by the way, good luck getting a single-payer system passed someday. Hahahahahaha you maroons couldn't pass a kidney stone through a drain pipe.

Following the speech, which demands neither a public option or even gives lip service to a single-payer system, Reps Kucinich (D-OH) and Weiner (D-NY) are found in back-country Virginia muttering to themselves, "the horror, the horror."

Halfway through his speech, Barack Obama pauses, looks down, shakes his head, and says, "What happened to me? I squandered the best chance this country has ever had to push through real reform, because I sold out to insurance and pharmaceutical companies. I TAKE IT ALL BACK, DAMMIT! We're starting over, and we're not including special interests in the debate this time. Instead of asking 'what role does the government have to play in health care,' we'll ask the question, 'what role do private, for-profit companies have to play.' The answer, my friends, is none. Now, let's join the rest of the goddamn Western world and provide universal coverage for our citizens!"

I'm just kidding, that last one would never happen. Also, I'm kidding about Max Baucus creaming his jeans. He can't even come unless Billy Tauzin is watching.

Human Experimentation Not Just For Nazis Anymore

2009-09-04T12:57:00.000-04:00

In what may be one of the most revolting developments yet concerning America's "War on Terror," Physicians for Human Rights is claiming that US doctors--working in conjunction with the CIA--may be guilty of engaging in unlawful human experimentation. The Guardian reports:

"The most incendiary accusation of PHR's latest report, Aiding Torture, is that doctors actively monitored the CIA's interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent. The report concludes that such data gathering was "a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation".

Human experimentation without consent has been prohibited in any setting since 1947, when the Nuremberg Code, which resulted from the prosecution of Nazi doctors, set down 10 sacrosanct principles. The code states that voluntary consent of subjects is essential and that all unnecessary physical and mental suffering should be avoided."[emphasis added.]

Reading the report is very disturbing, but it shouldn't be all that surprising. Once the government explicitly engages in felonies--torture, resulting in over 100 detainee deaths--one should expect further unlawful behavior to follow. That should be so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but, as is clear now, when it comes to our country's collective understanding of the law, no principle is too elementary to be stated.

That's why we need investigations of the highest level Bush officials--illegal behavior was systemic, not the result of a few bad apples. Once the government opens the door to procedures that have been considered torture since WWII (like waterboarding), what's to keep interrogators from committing other WWII-era crimes? If the law can be disregarded when it comes to waterboarding, then it logically follows that the law can be disregarded when it comes to human experimentation.

The one silver-lining in this story is that it's SO repulsive it might actually provoke public outrage. Discouragingly though, as of posting-time, a google search of "CIA PHR Torture" yields no results from major American news outlets. For further reading, go here for more media implications, and here for an interesting historical take.

Schadenfreude

2009-09-04T10:35:00.002-04:00

A few days ago the Chicago-based sketch comedy group Schadenfreude asked me to start writing for their blog, to which I replied, "go suck on a lemon." I held strong until they offered to buy me a beer someday, at which point I caved. I'm just a man. My first post for them can be read here.

New Huffpo Piece

2009-09-03T16:50:00.002-04:00

Huffpo posted my "NY Times Challenging Itself to Get Worse at Being a Newspaper" article. Here's the link.

Party Of Lunatics

2009-09-03T15:33:00.002-04:00

I was planning on writing about the now-certain death of the public option following Obama's statement that he wouldn't be addressing the issue in his upcoming speech to Congress, but Allison Kilkenny saved me the trouble. Her post is a must read, and I echo her sentiments fully, especially her final two paragraphs:

"Watered down bills, hybrids, triggers, and so-called “compromises” (tantamount to full surrender) are all window-dressing for a Democratic President and Democratically-controlled Congress capitulating to a fringe mob of radicals and coterie of corporate insurance and pharmaceutical companies by killing the public option.

Uygur argues that the Progressives should vote no on Obama’s healthcare bill if it doesn’t include a public option, and I agree. If Democrats buckle on the public option, not only will Republicans feel buoyed up by the surrender, but Democrats will lose all credibility with their base. They will permanently become the Party of Surrender, and the healthcare reform disaster will infect all future areas of contentious policy. The death of the public option will mean the death of the Democrats."

She's exactly right, and at this point little else has to be said.

So instead I'll pass along an example of full-blown hysteria, care of the GOP. From OnlineAthens (via Ed Murray):

"MADISON - U.S. Rep. Paul Broun is again raising the specter of Democrats turning the United States into a totalitarian state.

Broun, R-Athens, apparently has not changed his belief that President Obama may be a fascist since he made similar remarks in Augusta in November and then in an Associated Press interview.

He told a meeting of the Morgan County Republicans on Wednesday night that Obama already has or will have the three things he needs to make himself a dictator: a national police force, gun control and control over the press."

Oh, man, WHAT A MAROON!

Broun's hypocrisy--that it is in fact the Democratic Party that's leading the fight in subverting the law and overstepping boundaries--would be surprising only to someone who hasn't lived in or read about America for the last decade. The GOP has shown itself to be a mob of morally and intellectually bankrupt thugs willing to do or say anything to retain power. That said, it is still disconcerting to learn how well received Broun's message has been.

"More than 1,000 people combined turned out to hear Broun speak mostly on the topic of health care at town hall meetings Wednesday in Madison and Greene County.

About 300 attended the Madison meeting. At Lake Oconee, the audience filled three 300-seat movie theaters, where Broun spoke on the invitation of three local doctors who have been giving presentations on Democrats' proposals for health care reform, said Bob Cowles, one of the organizers. Broun spoke live in one theater, while crowds in the other two listened in over a closed circuit."

Greene County has a population of about 15,600, and Madison County has a population of about 28,000. So, roughly between 2 and 3 percent of the population came out to hear Broun. While that's not a ton of people, it's not nothing. My guess is that the size of these crowds will continue to grow, as people who are naturally drawn to this fringe hysteria will see every new government program as further proof of their paranoia. That is one of the trademarks of the apocalyptic mindset, and we'll see it come up more and more.

NY Times Challenging Itself To Get Worse At Being A Newspaper

2009-09-02T09:43:00.007-04:00

The New York Times today published another horrible piece on the health care debate. The article makes virtually no factual claims, and the few that it does make are demonstrably incorrect, or at best deliberately misleading. The headline is "Conservative Democrats Expect a Health Deal," but it's not at all clear to me why that's the headline, or even why the piece was written at all.

The first five paragraphs describe nothing but how difficult it is to be a conservative Democrat, but, even so, they really want to get something passed. What would that be? Would it lower costs and extend benefits? Would it provide insurance companies with an enormous bailout in the way of individual mandates without a public option? Who knows?! And in the eyes of the Times, apparently, who cares?!

This is how the writers describe the so-called "reform" that the boot-licking Blue Dogs and their even more repulsive Senate fuck-buddies are in favor of. The reform bill is described in the first five paragraphs in the following ways:

"..[Rep Sandlin could support] a health care package if it was reasonable and represented a consensus Democratic view."

“I want to support necessary change,” she said. “But I don’t want to support radical change.”

"...many of the lawmakers still believe approval of some form of health care plan is achievable..."

"I do believe something will get passed..."

Those are all quotes from or descriptions of conservative Democrats, hereafter referred to as "gimps." That's five paragraphs, and all we know is that--according to the gimps--they really really want to get something passed, just not anything radical. I could continue to cite more vagaries from the article, but there's no point, because the content of the reform that the gimps are in favor of is never articulated.

What compels a writer to write--or a paper to publish--a story so devoid of useful information? What does the reader walk away with, other than a vague assurance that the gimps are acting in good faith to pass reform. Does that reform resemble progressive movement forward in the slightest? Does it actually benefit the insurance companies, not the patients? You would have no idea from reading this article. (The answer to those last two question are "no" and "yes," respectively.)

One thing you would learn is that the public does not want this radical public option nonsense so just go HOME already Russ Feingold. This claim--that the public is not in favor of a public option--is, of course, a bald face lie. First the quote, then my refutation. From the Times' article:

"With Republicans essentially out of the health care picture for now, Blue Dog members from suburban and rural America said they could provide the ideological balance to the more urban members of the Democratic caucus, who are pushing for a sweeping plan of universal coverage that has drawn public criticism."[emphasis added.]

(There is a lot to be said about the first half of that quote, but for the purpose of this post I'm just going to focus on the last half.)

So here you have a story that never defines what it is that the gimps support--other than the assertion that many of them are against the public option--and then a completely unsupported claim that plans for universal coverage have "drawn public criticism." I mean, SOME people have criticized it, so, technically, the writers' statement is more misleading that completely wrong. But using their logic you could just as easily write, "the assassination of JFK has drawn public applause." Yeah, maybe by lunatics it did, but that's certainly not what "the public" in any important sense of the word was doing.

The public at large is not against universal coverage, despite what the Times' statement would lead a reader to believe. In fact, quite the opposite is true, as this poll from last week shows. The Denver Post reports:

"Nearly 8 in 10 Americans support a federal health insurance plan for those who can't afford or can't get private insurance, but only 37 percent define "public option" correctly, a new national poll found.

The majority of people polled — 86 percent — say insurance should be available to everyone regardless of health history."

Hahahahahah FUCK! WHY GOD! WHY MUST THIS BE SO GODDAMN MADDENING!?!?!?! It's just...so....goddamn....fucking.....shit....frustrating. Only 37% of people can define the public option correctly. Why is that? Maybe, just maybe it's because the paper of record spends its time writing vague, idiotic tripe instead of attempting to educate the populace on what the goddamn debate is about. So, people don't understand the public option, but they DO believe that health care should be universal, and available to the poor. So, the question is, WHY THE FUCK WON'T WE GET A PUBLIC OPTION?

The answer to this question, at least in part, is that when the media isn't actively distorting the debate, they are playing the role of lazy stenographer. Why scrutinize the claims made by elected officials when it's so much easier to simply write down what they say and call it a night?

For further reading, I'll pass along these two links. Taibbi has a post today also criticizing the media that I recommend looking at if you have a chance. Also, Ezra Klein has a thorough post about the ways in which the cost of the more liberal plan--which is deficit neutral--is being used to distract and scare people away from it.

Since I usually try to end on a joke, I'm going to switch it up here and end on a real downer. Dem. Sen. Blanche Lincoln is bailing on the public option, and it looks like more Senators might be doing the same.

Senate Dems Desperately Trying To Prove Naderites Correct

2009-09-01T15:13:00.002-04:00

If anybody is still clinging to the absurd notion that the Democratic Party, as an institution, is interested in passing progressive legislation, this report should take care of that. TPM is reporting that Senate Democrats are facing a strange predicament resulting from their so-called "go it alone" approach.

To briefly summarize--over the past few weeks, Republicans have shown themselves to be assholes of such epic proportions that using words to express thoughts to argue a point--ie, that which makes us human--has proved predictably futile. The GOP has never had any desire whatsoever to engage in health care reform in good faith (with the potential exception of Nixon, amazingly). That much has been obvious since the Truman administration, and now, a mere 60 years later, the Democrats have finally come around.

As a quick tangent, it's worth noting that in 1945, when Truman proposed a national health insurance program--at a time when most of Europe was nationalizing their health care--his plan was criticized as being "socialized medicine." (Follow link above.) That gives you a pretty good idea of how Sisyphean is the task of advocating for national health insurance in America.

Back to the subject at hand. For the Senate Dems to go it alone, they must invoke a parliamentary procedure known as Reconciliation, which is primarily a budget tool. To pass a Reconciliation measure, however, takes only 51 votes, instead of the 60 it takes to override a filibuster. What this means is that the Dems can pass a health care bill with 51 votes, as long as it substantially alters the federal budget. I know this is all kind of dry, but we're getting to the good part.

SO! One would think, "hey, if they only need 51 votes, Dems can really flex some muscle! Then, if the House bill is perfect, we might get a fucking public option!" That is certainly tempting fantasy, but, again, if you have to bet whether or not the Democrats will advance the wishes of their constituents, or the companies who fund them, it's safer to bet on the companies coming out just fine.

In this instance, that means that Senate Dems are split between those who want a robust public option, which will affect the federal budget in big ways. But more conservative Dems don't want a robust option, which means that it will have a smaller impact on the budget, which makes it less likely to pass the standards required by Reconciliation. From TPM:

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.

What this means is that there is an internal division in the Senate Dems between those who are in favor of small but actual health care reform, and those who simply are not. Without a public option, you are not talking about reform. So even when the requirements for passing a vaguely progressive bill are reduced to a simple majority, not a super majority, the Dems STILL might not have the balls to get it done.

It is pure speculation as to how the Senate Dems split will play out, but the fact that it's even up for debate proves that as an institution, the Democratic Party is fundamentally untrustworthy to lead the country towards meaningful reform. Those House and Senate members who refuse to turn away from advocating for corporate interests should be challenged at the primary level, either by better local Democrats or by third parties. Only by threatening their job security will they respond to the demands of those who put them in office.

Rendon Group Axed, Journalism Saved Forever

2009-08-31T11:32:00.004-04:00

Politico is reporting that the Pentagon has canceled its contract with the Rendon Group, citing that it was becoming a "distraction." From Politico:

"The Pentagon, which first denied that an embed profiling program was used to reject reporters covering the war in Afghanistan, until Stars and Stripes proved otherwise, has now canceled its contract with the controversial Rendon Group.

“The decision to terminate the Rendon contract was mine and mine alone. As the senior U.S. communicator in Afghanistan, it was clear that the issue of Rendon’s support to US forces in Afghanistan had become a distraction from our main mission,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, in an e-mail sent Sunday to Stars and Stripes.

Stars and Stripes first broke the news Monday that the Pentagon hired Rendon -- the firm involved with a PR campaign pushing pre-war intelligence -- to evaluate reporters' work as "positive," "negative," and "neutral.""

I wrote about this story on Thursday, claiming that although it was unfortunate to learn that the Pentagon was analyzing and potentially vetting reporters, it shouldn't strike anyone as surprising. The report from today that the contract was canceled is certainly good news, but we are still a long way from having a properly functioning media.

What this controversy highlighted more than anything else is that in America, we like our censorship subtle. Something that feels like outright censorship can cause a small but powerful outcry from those who oppose it, which is what we saw in this case. Having Rendon rate reporters coverage was too explicitly an attempt to control the message, and the public didn't like it.

What's discouraging is that the implicit relationship between the media elites and the government is virtually identical to the explicit relationship between Rendon and the media. By that, I mean that the corporate media imposes on itself the exact type of vetting process for which Rendon was so resoundingly criticized. The limits of debate are less explicit in the media at large, but they are no less strict.

Where Rendon was explicitly classifying journalists' coverage as "positive," "negative," or "neutral," corporate media similarly implicitly classifies ideas--and those who espouse them--as either "acceptable" or "unacceptable." Noam Chomsky writes about this in Manufacturing Consent:

"The right wing continually claims that the press has a liberal bias, and there's some truth to that, but they don't understand what it means. The liberal bias is extremely important in a system- in a sophisticated system of propaganda. In fact there ought to be a liberal bias. The liberal bias says, thus far and no further, I'm as far as you can go, and look how liberal I am. And of course it turns out that I accept without question all the presuppositions of the propaganda system. Notice that that's a beautiful type of system. You don't ever express the propaganda, that's vulgar and too easy to penetrate, you just presuppose it. Unless you accept the presuppositions, you're not part of the discussion. And the presuppositions are instilled, not by, you know, beating you over the head with them, but just by making them the foundation of discussion. You don't accept them, you're not in the discussion."

That is why we are seeing a backlash against Rendon. Their and the Pentagon's attempt to shape the coverage was too obvious. Those kind of tactics are more likely to fail, because the population can see what is happening. The establishment-worshiping novelty acts on TV are far more subtle.

American media operates from the basic premise that America Is Good, and has Noble Intentions and Good Leaders, and therefore it is crazy and unreasonable to question our country's intentions. What we can question, at most, are the tactics our Good Leaders employ. Chomsky continues:

"So, in the case of the, say, the Vietnam war, which was a major topic of debate, if you look over the media, there was a big debate over the Vietnam war. There were the hawks who said that if we continue to fight harder, if we're more violent, and so on and so forth, then we can achieve the noble end of defending South Vietnam and the free people of South Vietnam from communism. And then there were the doves who said it's probably not going to work, it's probably not going to be too- it's going to be too bloody, and it's going to cost us too much, and therefore we're not going to be able to achieve the noble end of defending the people of South Vietnam from communism.

Now, again, there's another view, and that is that we were attacking South Vietnam. That other view has the merit of being true, obviously true, but it was inexpressible. That's outside the spectrum of debate. You can enter the debate only if you accept the assumption. And if you check the media over the entire period as far as I can see -- I've- Hermann and I in this book review the media from about 1950 to the present on Indochina, and I don't think you can find an exception to this, even statistical error -- that's the spectrum, you've got to accept it."

You can find all sorts of contemporary examples of dialogue being limited like this.

The torture "debate" is a perfect example. Torture is discussed on TV in terms of whether or not it "works," whether or not it "keeps 'us' safe." (It should be noted that the "us" in that last phrase strongly connotes white Christians. Keeping "us" safe has very little to do with keeping Muslims safe, even if they are American citizens.) In terms of whether or not the DOJ should prosecute torturers, the debate consists entirely of whether or not it would be a good idea for Obama politically, or whether it would be a distraction. Virtually no one in the mainstream media says what is undeniably true, namely that torture is a felony--always has been--and that those who participated in it must, BY DEFINITION, be held accountable for their actions to the full extent of the law.

The same can be said of the escalation of troops in Afghanistan. The question is, "Can we achieve our noble goals?", not, "Is this occupation wrong on every fundamental level?"

Or consider Israel. The question must always be, "Are Israel's tactics bringing the country closer to Peace," not, "Is Israel committing war crimes in Gaza?" That idea has been labeled "unacceptable" for discussion. That's why you don't see Norman Finkelstein making the Sunday morning talk show rounds. Indeed, Israeli press is often far more critical of Israel's actions than American press.

Take, for example, Rachel Maddow's truly awful reporting on the massacre of Gaza. (via hawgblawg, who also has a great analysis, highly recommended)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

So, in celebrating the cancellation of Rendon's contract, let us remember that ideas and scholars are constantly being ranked and evaluated by the Washington Consensus. Those invisible rankings are, in many ways, more destructive than more obvious methods of debate control.

GOP Nobly Maintains Status As Good Faith Opposition--Wait, No, No. Assclowns. Yeah, That's the Phrase. Assclowns.

2009-08-28T13:56:00.006-04:00

America created Democracy in 1776 when they started shootin' Brits for sport, and also to use their (literally) blue blood to make writing more fun for Indian children. Prior to our Grand Invention, Man lived like an Animal, but not even like one of the good animals that has sex for pleasure. More like one of the filthy animals that has sex for money. Truly, they were dark days.

Then, this country taught the world to love. To sing. To LIVE, DAMMIT.

Sadly, this blog just received proof that our Noble Experiment has failed, and is now gasping its last, dying breath. What is our proof? This actual question from the RNC’s “2009 Future of American Health Survey.”

That is a real, actual, honest question, for morons. (via Wonkette, and The Washington Independent) If you have a sock drawer full of hash handy, I suggest taking knife hits and then following that WI link and reading the full survey. WOOOOOOO MAMA!!! Those questions hit you at the base of your skull like a black jack. Here are two (and again, these are real):

3. "Does it concern you that the liberal media has gone to unprecedented levels to only give Obama's views on health care reform and no one else's?"

6. "Do you believe that your health care decisions should be made by you and your doctor, not by government bureaucrats in Washington DC?"

Hey, they're just asking a legitimate question--namely, can the GOP continue to become more and more horrible by the hour? They confidently answer: Yes We Can.

Oh and then there's this (via ThinkProgress):

"The Oklahoma-based Express-Star reports that [Sen. Jim] Inhofe (R-OK) told a town hall crowd yesterday that he will vote against health reform legislation without even reading it or knowing what’s in it:

"At a town hall meeting Wednesday Sen. Jim Inhofe told Chickasha residents he does not need to read the 1,000 page health care reform bill, he will simply vote against it.

"I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways,” he said.

He went on to tell the crowd we are “almost reaching a revolution in this country” due to opposition to health reform. Inhofe is not alone in saying he will vote against any health reform bill. Last week Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) told Fox News that he doesn’t think a “single Republican” will vote for health care reform."

Democracy on the march!

So, this is how our country functions now. A major political party wages an aggressive war to keep their constituents misinformed about basic facts, and the leaders of that party explicitly state that they will not even take the time to read the legislation they're going to vote against. Public opinion is not shaped by facts, but by posturing. The media reports on the scandals and controversy and polls, rarely bothering to examine the base claims that cause the controversy in the first place.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who runs FactCheck.org, speaking on Bill Moyers (whose coverage of health care has been absolutely PHENOMENAL), had this to say (from the transcript):

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:...But the nature of public opinion it's [sic] expressed in "USA Today" in-- at a front-page piece that appeared on Thursday of this week which says "Protests Tilt Views on Health Care Bill." Now that's reflecting the results of a poll that asked about people's response not to the health care bill but to the protests about the health care bill.

But the headline leads you to think it's about the health care bill itself. And it suggests that public opinion is now shifting dramatically away from the Obama health care reform efforts.

BILL MOYERS: So the protests seem to be making some people more sympathetic to the protesters?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: And potentially the press then picks that up, polls, finds that sympathy, creates a structure that suggests that health care reform initiatives are losing support. Now polls have driven press coverage which says "Obama on the defensive. Obama struggling to explain. Obama trying," when, in fact, the dynamic under that has been created by a news structure that decided to cover this in a certain way, to do polling in a certain way.[emphasis added]

She's absolutely correct. That is how our media works, and it is structurally broken as an institution. The Republican party, not surprisingly, is doing everything in its power to keep people misinformed. The Democrats, also not surprisingly, are selling out the public to insurance and pharmaceutical corporations in a revolting attempt to simultaneously achieve two ends: they don't want to be painted as too liberal, and, most importantly, they want that corporate money. They know that if they alienate the insurance companies, those companies will not only stop giving to the Democrats, but increase campaign funding for Republicans. If you are a Party concerned only with maintaining power, as the Democrats without question are, then this outcome must be fought against at all costs. The result is--again, unsurprisingly--that the public gets fucked.

August has been a month spent reading tea leaves. Within the next few weeks, in theory, Congress will begin to shape a bill that can be examined and critiqued. I, for one, am ready to see some actual legislation.

Until then, here's something to put a smile on your face. Outside my building, I heard some guy on the phone saying, "I want chicken wings, and fries, and make the fries fresh." That dude knew what he wanted and went the fuck for it. We must elect that dude!

Surprise, Surprise, Pentagon Tries To Shape War Coverage

2009-08-27T15:48:00.002-04:00

Stars & Stripes and The New York Times are reporting that the Pentagon has hired The Rendon Group, a DC-based PR firm, to rate journalists' war coverage as positive, negative, or neutral, before they are granted permission to embed themselves with the military. The Rendon Group helped to create the Iraqi National Conference, which in turn helped sell the invasion of Iraq to the American public--a fact that the Times' report leaves out. Apparently that is not relevant information to their readers.

The Pentagon denied these reports, but then Stars & Stripes released this yesterday:

"Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan."

It should not be surprising that the Pentagon would try to shape the coverage of an increasingly unpopular (question 26) occupation. That has happened in the past, and it will continue to happen in the future.

Here are two examples that come to mind immediately. If anyone has any others, please leave them in comments. First, we've recently seen the military parade retired generals around as "independent analysts" on the major news networks to put a pretty face on the occupation of Iraq. Much has already been written about this, and I have nothing to add right now. It's simply worth noting as an example of the military attempting to shape the public discourse.

And, to cite an older example, here's the words of David Halberstam, speaking to students at the Columbia School of Journalism. In this passage, he describes standing up to a Pentagon General in Saigon (via Greenwald):

"Picture if you will rather small room, about the size of a classroom, with about 10 or 12 reporters there in the center of the room. And in the back, and outside, some 40 military officers, all of them big time brass. It was clearly an attempt to intimidate us.

General Stilwell tried to take the intimidation a step further. He began by saying that Neil and I had bothered General Harkins and Ambassador Lodge and other VIPs, and we were not to do it again. Period.

And I stood up, my heart beating wildly -- and told him that we were not his corporals or privates, that we worked for The New York Times and UP and AP and Newsweek, not for the Department of Defense.

I said that we knew that 30 American helicopters and perhaps 150 American soldiers had gone into battle, and the American people had a right to know what happened. I went on to say that we would continue to press to go on missions and call Ambassador Lodge and General Harkins, but he could, if he chose, write to our editors telling them that we were being too aggressive, and were pushing much too hard to go into battle. That was certainly his right."

Again, it's not surprising that the Pentagon would act in these ways. I don't mean to excuse their behavior in any way, but this kind of intimidation should be expected from people who are hired to kill other people. That's why its so important for the media to push back and redouble their efforts to expose that which the military is trying to suppress.

Sadly, examples of the media stepping up to this task are often the exception, not the rule. For some far from conclusive, but interesting nonetheless, evidence, I'll quote Sy Hersh from an episode of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman interviewed him about his initial coverage of the My Lai massacre, and he had this to say:

"I was working in Washington as a freelance writer and began just—I had followed the war and knew what was going on in some visceral way and knew what was—there was something there. And I began—I finally got to the point where I began to find kids in the unit, and I was writing stories. I think I wrote five in five weeks as a freelancer. And it was just as the young boys talking over the weekend were ignored by the press, I had a hell of a time getting the major press to run the stories, for sure. This is always the way it is. You know, there’s always a disconnect between the bad stuff that goes on that everybody knows goes on and what I guess you could call the mainstream press want to write about. I don’t know why, but it’s true, there always is."[emphasis added]

New Huffpo Blog

2009-08-27T11:29:00.001-04:00

Huffpo just put something of mine up on their website. The title is: Barack Obama's Disturbing Pattern of Condescension Towards the Left. It can be read here.

Torture Program Deviates From History, Oh, Not Really That Much, Sadly

2009-08-25T11:19:00.004-04:00

Two events from this week highlight America's staggering willingness to commit violence upon civilians to achieve a military end, whether real or imagined. Coincidentally, both events also showcase America's extreme reluctance to hold high-end government officials accountable for their crimes, an historical trend that is hypocritical in the extreme--considering our country's childish mis-identification as a nation concerned with equality under the law. The release this week of the 2004 Inspector General's report detailing CIA abuses of detainees under the Bush administration, and the recent apology of the only soldier held responsible for the My Lai massacre--both of which took place this week--are but two examples of our country's brutal history towards civilians from other countries. Taken together they paint a gruesome picture of America, both in its execution of various imperialist "wars," and its willingness to grant immunity to those most responsible for the atrocities that are inevitably committed.

The IG report of CIA abuses is simply the most recent example of America's tendency to tolerate violence against civilians in the name of war. That is not to minimize the horrors it describes, or the importance of its release. Far from it. The techniques that were used to intimidate prisoners into believing they were facing imminent death are repulsive. (It should also be noted that many detainees died in US custody, some of which are referred to as murders.) If one actually takes a moment to visualize the terror one would feel if a soldier approached you carrying a power drill while you were hooded, naked, and had literally no idea where you were (city, country, or continent)--well, the desired effect of that torture technique is quite readily apparent. It should also be noted that many of the prisoners, while called "enemy combatants," had never been accused of, much less convicted of, any crime.

The CIA abuse case breaks from history because these atrocities were specifically sanctioned by the highest levels of elected government. That's what makes the prosecution of those responsible for the torture memos so important, and that's why Holder's "narrow focus" on rogue interrogators is discouraging. Simply finding more scapegoats--ie, low level CIA interrogators--won't do anything to prevent actions like this from being taken in the future. (Glenn Greenwald writes extensively about this topic. One of his many relevant pieces can be read here.)

Scapegoats, of course, brings us to My Lai. Four decades after the fact, William Calley apologized for his role in the massacre of a Vietnamese village comprised primarily of women, children, and the elderly. Calley, a former lieutenant, was the only person convicted in the massacre. He was given a life sentence, which was commuted by Richard Nixon. According to the Times' report,

"The governor of Georgia at the time, Jimmy Carter, called Mr. Calley a “scapegoat.”

...

Calley told the group “I did what they say I did,” but also maintained that he was following orders."

He "maintained that he was following orders," and yet he was the only person convicted of a crime. Ever since Nuremberg, "following orders" has not been a viable defense, and those who commit crimes under that pretense should be punished. The problem is when punishment stops with those at the bottom of the totem pole. We saw this happen already with the tragedy at Abu Ghraib, and, now, it appears that we may see the same thing happen with the CIA abuses.

We must also remember the vast catalogue of American violence against citizens of other countries in the 20th century, and the total lack of legal accountability officials have faced. We remain the only country to have used nuclear weapons, one of our highest officials identified himself as a "war criminal," we waged a war of choice in Vietnam that resulted in the deaths of between 1 and 2 million Vietnamese, and a separate war of choice in Iraq has killed between 92,000 and 101,000 civilian deaths. The CIA alone is responsible for a legacy of failure, death, and intervention in the Middle East, and Latin and South America. Not one high ranking official has spent time behind bars for any of this. In fact, on the rare occasion that a high-level official is even charged with a crime, these sentences are either pardoned, as was the case with Nixon, or commuted, as was the case with I. Lewis Libby.

In presenting this brief list, I don't mean to say necessarily that Truman, or every president who presided over 'Nam, should have faced prison time. I'm simply putting forward the argument that as a nation, we fundamentally don't believe our leaders are capable of acting wrongly. That is the heart of "American Exceptionalism," a doctrine to which every major political and media figure must swear undying, unrelenting allegiance. Our leaders simply can't be evil--we're America! after all--and so holding them accountable to either domestic or international law is the height of unfairness. The USA acts in good faith, the myth goes, so punishment is unneeded and unwarranted.

It is in this context that we must view the crimes of Bush officials. Not as some isolated incident that we can simply "get over" by "looking forward," but as the result of a continuous and implicit policy of this country--namely, that no matter what the crime, those who are most responsible for the deaths of civilians will not be held accountable. Instead, low-level grunts--if anyone at all--will bear the brunt of the law. Holding Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and anyone else who authorized torture accountable is a necessary, and, in fairness, radical step towards a better country.

Democrats Secretly Can't Wait To Be Victims Again

2009-08-24T15:47:00.003-04:00

Numbers-pr0nstar Nate Silver has some potentially ominous news for the Democrats:

"After a couple of relatively quiet months, the Senate race rankings have undergone a fairly major shakeup, with 15 distinct contests receiving an upgrade or a downgrade based on a combination of local and national circumstances. Most of these changes favor Republicans -- 7 of the 10 upgrades (meaning that a party switch is now more likely) were made to Democratic-held seats; 4 of the 5 downgrades were made to Republican-held seats. While there are still plenty of opportunities for the Democrats in the Senate, I believe that the Republicans are now slightly more likely to gain seats than to lose them, potentially threatening the Democrats' supposed filibuster-proof majority."[emphasis added]

It's clearly too early to start worrying about 2010, and I'm passing this information along only as an interesting--if potentially unimportant--snapshot of the country right now.

The Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 with overwhelming electoral mandates, yet they've stumbled on major domestic issues (health care) and straight up failed on major international issues (escalation in Afghanistan, continuing rendition, etc.). I wrote at the beginning of this month:

"...Will the country eventually swing "Right" again? History tells us that it will, but, who will actually do that?

The changing demographics in America have rendered the Southern Strategy--in which you use code words to convince scared white southerners that you're on their side--obsolete. Latinos, who traditionally have voted Republican, are moving to the Democratic party in droves. It remains to be seen if the youth vote will remain as strong as it did for Obama in the coming years, but they certainly won't be the ones to give power back to the GOP. The Republican base is shrinking fast, and there's no reason to believe that that trend will reverse itself."

Like I said, it's far too early to know what will happen in 2010, but it appears that my prediction that the GOP might have been gasping its final breath may have been overstated.

That said, here's another interesting poll that argues, "No, no, everyone still hates the Republicans more than the Democrats." From Swamp Politics:

"The poll found that favorable ratings for the Democratic Party have declined since spring. Just 49 percent said they have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, compared to a 59 percent positive rating in April and 62 percent in January.

Opinion of the Republican Party has remained constant, at 40 percent all year."

That's from August 19th, so the numbers might be slightly different now, but that's the gist. Nine percentage points is still quite substantial, but the downward trend makes me a bit nervous. For all the Democrat bashing that happens around here, the idea of the GOP in control of anything beyond a traveling freak show is truly terrifying.

Max Baucus Has Always Loved Public Option Since Yesterday

2009-08-24T13:02:00.002-04:00

Turd-whore Max Baucus (D-MT) chairs the powerful Senate Finance Committee, the committee that is widely assumed to produce what will eventually become the final Senate health care reform bill. Baucus gets more money from the health care industries than any other member of Congress, a fact that renders anything that comes out of his mouth concerning health care reform completely untrustworthy.

That's why this report (via FireDogLake) leaves me unimpressed. Apparently Max Baucus is now claiming that he honestly LOVES the idea of a public option! Seriously, guys, he really does. He's only been trying to kill any type of substantial reform for the past 8 months, but that's never been his intention! OOOOOO, he wants the public option so bad!

The press release from the Coalition of Montana Democratic Central Committees reads:

"U.S. Senator Max Baucus has finally broken his silence regarding his personal position on including a public option in health care reform legislation. Last Monday night (8/17), in an unprecedented conference call to Montana Democratic central committee chairs, the powerful leader of the Senate Finance Committee told his strongest supporters that he supported a public option.

While discussing the obstacles to getting a public option through the Senate, he assured his forty listeners, "I want a public option too!""[emphasis added.]

Hey, Baucus, way to go. He's got his finger on the pulse, doesn't he? In politics, like in comedy, timing is everything. And to extend the comedy metaphor, Baucus waited about four months between saying, "Take my wife," and "please." Kind of kills the desired effect, Maxy.

Should progressives take this as a good sign? Maybe, but it seems much more likely that Baucus is desperately trying to protect his left flank than he is trying to take on the insurance companies. In fact, imagining Baucus "taking on the insurance companies" is like imagining the military going to war with Lockheed Martin. It is fundamentally impossible to wrap one's head around that possibility.

In theory, I suppose, Baucus might be forced to fight for a public option if there is a large enough outcry from his constituents. More than anything else, the vast majority of Congress-people want simply to get re-elected. That's why they take so much money from lobbyists and special interests. It's not that they're inherently evil (though a strong case could be made that many are), it's that they want to keep their job. Maddeningly, the way that this is accomplished all too often is by pleasing companies who can finance re-election campaigns, not by pleasing the citizens who elected them in the first place.

It remains to be seen whether or not Max the whore will fight for a public option, but we can know for certain that he doesn't actually want one. He's had every, EVERY, fucking opportunity in the world to fight for it over the past several months, and he has done nothing but push policies that are favored by the interests who own him. If he does turn his back on his owners, like a beaten dog who has finally had enough, then it will be as surprising as it will be praise-worthy.

Sadly, there is no reason to expect that to happen, so don't get out your doggy treats just yet.

Murder Mystery Where The Victim Is Us

2009-08-20T12:12:00.002-04:00

I'm passing along two articles that I just read and can't recommend highly enough. The first is, big surprise, by Greenwald, and the second is by Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake. Each piece persuasively describes exactly how progressives have been played like suckers for the entire length of the health care debate. Each piece argues that the "public option" was never meant as a serious option; its purpose was to string progressives along until the last moment, when the White House, working in conjunction with conservative Dems in the Senate and the stomach-turning "Blue Dog" coalition, could pull a bait-and-switch. The hope was that by the time the progressives knew what hit them, it would be too late.

Reading these two articles back to back creates a feeling exactly like the end of a mystery novel, where the detective gathers all living parties into the parlor to explain exactly what happened. Point by point, Jane methodically plots out the deception and coercion of which the the WH and its congressional allies have been guilty. I felt like she just as easily could have been saying, "you were meant to THINK the butler was the murderer, but, in fact, it was the heiress the whole time!" And in the same way that a wonderful mystery makes perfect sense and seems wholly inevitable when explained at the end, so too does the likely jettisoning of the "public option." Of course, you think when reading Jane and Glenn. It was a red fucking herring the whole time!

It's a gripping narrative, really. Feel the thrill that comes from reading this passage from Greenwald:

"The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along."

And from Jane:

"Mike Allen said earlier this week that "this weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip."

If you look at the cat-and-mouse game played between the Democrats and the Republicans, support expressed by the President for a "public plan" meant "don't you dare." A commitment that the bill will be "bipartisan" (since the GOP would never agree to one) was a signal that there would be no public plan.

The White House never cared about getting Republican votes -- it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA. Giving in to "Republican" demands was cover for writing shitty things into the bill that would keep the stakeholders happy. They didn't need Republican votes, they never did, and they never truly cared. As long as the money stayed out of their campaign coffers, it was all good."

Ugh, god, it hurts to read.

If there is any cause for hope here, it's that FDL is raising money to reward and embolden progressive House members, and collecting signatures for a petition for House members to keep their word and only vote for a bill with a public option. You can support that effort here.

If the House can revive the public option, it will be a coup of epic proportions. If not, then let's just say, "It was Rahm Emanuel, in the Oval Office, with the knife."

New Onion Headline And A Few Rejected Ones Too

2009-08-20T10:26:00.003-04:00

I have a headline in The Onion this week. Just a one-liner, no story, but I still like it. Here it is.

Attempt To Return Paperclip To Original Shape Proves Daunting

It is quite silly, no? The Onion doesn't provide direct links to one-liners on their website, but I can link to the facebook post they put up for it. The comments, generally speaking, have been positive. I've also seen a lot of commenters sharing strategies for how to re-shape a paperclip, which strikes me as odd.

Just for fun, and since I haven't done it in a while, here are three rejected headlines from this week that I enjoy.

Blog Snob Looking Down At Co-Worker Reading Huffingtonpost

Astronaut’s Wife Sick Of Being Compared With Majesty Of Space

Child Delighted When First Told About Pairing Of Water, Giant Slides

The blog snob one was originally going to take the form of:

Blog Snob Has Been Reading Glenn Greenwald Since Before He Was Even At Salon

But that headline has a very, very limited audience. Ok, back to the newz.

Liberal NPR Wants Guns To Be Bigger, More Powerful, Closer To President

2009-08-19T15:25:00.002-04:00

NPR is the famous radio organization that helps old people fall asleep at night and also refuses to call torture torture. They are often called "liberal" because they speak in complete sentences and sometimes play good music. But wait! The most important thing in the world, if you're a media organization, is to prove to everybody that YOU ARE NOT IN FACT LIBERAL AT ALL.

We have that constructive mindset to thank for this wonderful little headline, published on their website today by Frank James.

"Obama Town-Hall Gun Toters May Have An Upside"

Hahahahaha, that's a pretty funny joke. Wait, I'm reading the article right now....oh no.... After describing the half dozen or so armed lunatics at Obama's recent appearances, and how most people find this phenomenon disturbing, James writes:

"But there's another way to look at these gun-toters outside presidential events. They are indeed protected by the Second Amendment and state laws that allow them to carry their weapons.

So there's no constitutional way to ban those who would cling to their guns outside Obama's town halls.

Since metal detectors are used to scan people who actually enter the halls where the president will be, chances are slim that someone could get a gun or knife into a presidential event undetected."

James is quoting the first line of the Constitution, which reads, "If a black man becomes president you have the right to always carry an assault rifle." So, he's got a point there. Certainly, there's never been any responsible legislation introduced to try to reel in the insane guns laws in this country. The article continues:

"By openly carrying their weapons, the gun toters are at least easily identifiable to law enforcement, including Secret Service sharp shooters who, for all we know, are watching them intently through the cross hairs of their scopes."

One thing that is crystal clear from this passage is that James likes to masturbate to Tom Clancy novels, which he's probably quite good at, unlike writing.

The logic, hahahaha, no, um, what's the word...thinking, maybe? The thinking goes: all people who are crazy enough to bring a gun to a presidential event will be sane enough not to conceal it, and then we'll know where all the crazies are.

Certainly it's not a problem that all these people can get their hands on hand guns and assault rifles at the drop of a hat. Why should that concern anybody? And you know what, they're just acting this way to exercise their rights. It's not about intimidation, about creating an atmosphere of fear and danger in which the slightest provocation could set off a deadly string of events. They and their killing machines are peaceful, after all.

James closes with a call to action and sanity!

"So there's an upside to the "open carry" types, even though they cause a lot of other people great unease. Since they can't be prevented from appearing outside the events, the rest of us will just have to learn to live with them."

Haha just kidding, he doesn't. But that sad fatalism is reminiscent of many liberals--resigned to what we must live with, though we know the world could be better--so maybe NPR isn't so bad after all.

Undefeated Never Looked So Bad

2009-08-19T11:40:00.002-04:00

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the Obama administration is considering changing its tactics to try to increase support for what is still laughably being referred to as "health care reform." From the WSJ:

"President Barack Obama, trying to regain control of the health-care debate, will likely shift his pitch in September, White House and Democratic officials said, as he faces pressure from supporters to talk more about the moral imperative to provide health insurance to all Americans.

The rethinking comes amid a struggle by the White House to clarify its view on a public insurance plan, which liberals see as a critical part of a health overhaul."[emphasis mine.]

To whatever extent one believes that this tactic--ie, appealing to the conscience of the country--will work, we must remember that it is only that, a tactic. We can't know how Obama personally feels about health care reform, but we do know that until at least 2005 he supported a single-payer system, and now he's considering signing a bill that doesn't have a public option. More than anything else, this shows that Obama simply wants to pass something. The administration wants a win, or, rather, they want something that doesn't look like a horrible loss. They need to be able to walk away from this and say "we did it better than Clinton."

One needs no more evidence of how desperate they are for a win, in precisely those terms, than this, from Greg Sarget's blog:

"The Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported this morning that Rahm Emanuel warned leaders of liberal groups in a private meeting this week that it was time to stop running ads attacking Blue Dog and “centrist” Dems on health care.

I’m told, however, that Emanuel went quite a bit further than this.

Sources at the meeting tell me that Emanuel really teed off on the Dem-versus-Dem attacks, calling them “f–king stupid.” This was a direct attack on some of the attendees in the room, who are running ads against Dems right now.

Tellingly, Rahm raised the specter of a loss on health care, sources at the meeting say — which suggests that the White House may be less certain about victory than officials allow publicly.

“He started out with, `We’re 13 and 0 going into health care,’” one source at the meeting said, meaning that Rahm was touting the White House’s string of pre-health care legislative victories."

Others have said all that needs to be said about this repulsive philosophy, so I'll just say instead that, yes, here is how our political elites function. They want a win. If Obama changes tactics and is able to reinvigorate the public option by doing so, that is obviously something to be celebrated. But it's worth remembering that in this debate, the White House wants to get something, anything, passed. As a result, what we may end up getting is a bill that nobody actually believes in, but a few people can tepidly support.

Democratics Maybe Step Closer To Self-Annihilation, Which Is Fine

2009-08-18T13:25:00.003-04:00

Though the fate of the public option remains uncertain, this blog has very little faith in the Democrats to come to the rescue at the last minute. Their track record this summer has not been great, and they really have no one to blame but themselves. We are at a time that Rachel Maddow accurately described recently as a

"[O]nce in a lifetime, stars-aligned political shot at fixing the system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy."

She goes on to say, correctly, that "passing health care reform will never be more possible than it is now." And yet, all the signs show that the public option is becoming more and more unlikely. Equally disturbing is the fact that the insurance companies are actually thrilled about this so-called "reform."

Why?

Individual mandates. There is a good possibility that the final bill will contain individual mandates, which means that all citizens will be required by law to purchase some kind of health insurance. Failure to do so will be punishable by tax penalty. Originally, these mandates were seen as a good thing by those on the left. They were a tool to ensure universal coverage. Now, however, it looks like they will provide for-profit insurance companies with a captive audience.

The question, then, is: Can the Democrats fail more spectacularly than simply failing to pass a health care reform bill that contains a public option? And the answer, of course, is yes. If the Democrats simultaneously fail to provide an alternative to for-profit insurers, and also demand that everyone purchase insurance (that they probably can't afford in the first place)--well, then, that'll be the end of the Democrats. Such a move would go down in history as a political blunder of biblical proportions.

Though I don't put much past them when it comes to disappointing their constituents, I can't possibly see this outcome coming to pass. Handcuffing every American to insurance companies when premiums are increasing at six to eight times the rate of workers wages is beyond the pale, even for the Democrats. For further reading, I recommend this piece by Timothy Noah.

And yet there's a part of me that almost hopes that this happens. It feels like the natural progression of a for-profit health care system in which the explicit goal is to provide as little care as possible. Obviously, such an outcome would be disastrous for the nation's poor, and should be fought against tooth and nail. But for a country that has always lied to itself, claiming to be a bastion of free markets--while simultaneously providing corporations with tax breaks, legal protections, lemon socialism, lucrative (and sometimes exclusive) government contracts both domestically and abroad--there is a kind of poetry to such an outcome.

Under the worst case scenario that the country is now facing, not only would it be unfortunate to be too poor to afford health care, but it would actually be illegal.

Again, I highly, HIGHLY doubt that the mandates will stand and the public option will fall, but if I'm wrong, 2010 will be very interesting.

Here is Maddow rightly giving the Dems a hard time.

Chart Shows That Yes, GOP Are Bunch Of Shitty People Who Lie About Everything

2009-08-17T17:15:00.003-04:00

I found this chart over at the Daily Dish, and it confirms what anyone with half a brain is already well aware of. The GOP will lie about literally anything, at any time, for money or power or fun. Democrats do this too, duh, but, seriously, the GOP would throw their collective mothers under the bus for an expenses-paid golfing trip overseas and some caviar made out of Africans.

From the Dish:

"Politifact evaluated the truthfulness of claims by supporters and opponents of health care reform. John Sides made a provisional graph based upon Politifact's data. Not exactly a scientific chart, but it is telling."

Evidence like this highlights the dangers of stenographer-style journalism--as though those dangers had to be highlighted at all.

On a related note, I just received an e-mail a friend informing me about a website called Young Invincibles that's attempting to mobilize 18-34 years old around the issue of health care. Take a look, and if it looks like something you can get behind, please sign the petition.

By Health Care Reform, Dems Mean Not Reforming Health Care

2009-08-17T10:04:00.005-04:00

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting today that the White House is considering jettisoning the "public option" from its health care reform package due to pressure from anti-reform lobbyists, known in these parts as contract killers.

Though talented op-ed writer and president of the USA Barack Obama has previously stated he would veto any bill that came across his desk that didn't include a robust public plan, he seems to be walking away from that commitment now. According to the Post,

"[T]wo top administration officials signaled Sunday that the White House may be willing to jettison a controversial government-run insurance plan favored by liberals."

And, according to the Times,

"The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate."

The "public option" was never an ideal plan, but the fact that the insurance companies so opposed it was reason alone to believe it was a step in the right direction.

These two reports from today are horrible signs. Once the smoke signals have been sent out that it's on the chopping block, that's all she wrote, at least this time around. It's difficult to imagine the White House regaining control of the debate in the next few weeks enough to bring the public option back to life.

So, where does this leave progressives? Matt Taibbi is gloomy, Paul Krugman is desperately attempting to clarify the terms of the debate, Nader is as unreasonable--suggesting Medicare for all--as ever, and Allison Kilkenny is skeptical that the WH can provide the country with a coherent message of reform. Nate Silver sees some cause for hope down the road.

The main issue, I believe, is ignorance. Health industry lobbyists, with the implicit help of the mainstream media, have confused and disoriented the citizenry to such an extent that honest debate is really not possible in this country. If we want any hope of passing health care reform in this country, then every report on the issue should contain at least the following facts.

Number 1, from the WHO:
"The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance."

Number 2, from CBS/New York Times:
"A clear majority of Americans -- 72 percent -- support a government-sponsored health care plan to compete with private insurers, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds."

Number 3:
"Americans are more dissatisfied than citizens of other nations with their basic health care even while paying more of their own money for treatment, a five-nation survey released Thursday notes."

Only if we constantly remind the public how awful our system is will we be able to marshal enough progressive support to withstand the propaganda campaign that the for-profit health industry is waging and will continue to wage.

On a final note, it is--and always has been--absurd to think that any amount of concessions will bring the Republicans on board with real reform, or that including Insurance and Pharmaceutical companies in the process will result in anything other than furthering the status quo. These parties do not operate in good faith, and will fight to the death to continue to make money off of the sick. They are businesses, and to expect them to operate as anything else, especially charities for christssake, is naive and destructive.

The Times Grows Balls

2009-08-14T16:29:00.003-04:00

To give praise where praise is due, the New York Times today has a good report on what it refers to as,

"The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living...."

Earlier this week I wrote about a truly horrendous piece the Times published about health care, and about the ways in which these vicious rumors start and then spread. This new report calls these lies out for what they are, and is as honest and important as the earlier one was deceitful and lazy.

But in praising the Times, we should remember that they are days, if not weeks, behind the blogosphere on this one. Much of the damage of the "death panel" meme has already been done, and although this kind of reporting is a step in the right direction, brave journalism requires publications to get out in front of these rumors and gossip campaigns before they take root in the national dialogue. The Times is right to publish this piece, but in waiting this long to call a spade a spade, they did the country a fantastic disservice.

All Politics Are Local, About Food

2009-08-14T13:29:00.002-04:00

It's been getting a little heavy around here lately, so I figured I had to pass this story along as a Friday afternoon pick-me-up. It was originally posted on Wonkette, and I don't have all that much to add, but it is simply too perfect not to post.

The New York Daily News is reporting today that Congress-person Anthony Weiner (ha!) bravely ventured into a lair of hungry old people to explain the intricacies of health care reform, which is the final level before you can advance to becoming a Wizard Senator. When Weiner (ha!) showed up at the death squad screening center, the Daily News reports,

"What he found was about 60 senior citizens fed up with the confusion surrounding the details of the President's plan to provide affordable health care for all Americans - and eager to eat lunch.

"I came to eat and I came to eat on time," said David Figman, an 84-year-old retired postal worker. "They are having chicken marsala today and the food is good.""[emphasis mine.]

Hahahahahaha, oh man that is funny. It's too bad that the reporter didn't write any more sentences about how hungry all these weird old people are OH WAIT YES HE DID!

"As the meeting went on, many of the seniors began grumbling that Weiner was interrupting their lunch."

YES! This is in a newspaper! It's so funny! Too bad all the jokes about hungry hungry old people are over OH WAIT ONE MINUTE NO THEY'RE NOT!

""I'm just hungry," said 76-year-old Albert Fink. "This is a lot of silliness."

Linda Lefton, 61, stared at the clock.

"Usually our lunch starts at noon," she said. "I think he is going to cause us to delay our lunch. That's no good."

Finally, an announcement was made at 12:22 p.m.:
"Seniors are very hungry and some are diabetic. All media needs to clear out of the room so we can feed them on time.""

I know it's not funny, but for some reason "and some are diabetic," has been making me laugh for the last 5 minutes.

Oh, and also, a lot of the elderlies yelled at Weiner (ha!) about how he's a communist and a socialist and probably gay too or whatever.

"Before lunch was served, Weiner took about a dozen questions from the group, including a heated claim that the plan was "Communist."

"Are we going to have a say in this or are we becoming a Communist country?" demanded a 61-year-old man named Bill.
...
One elderly man yelled out, "It's a Socialist country!" Others clapped."

Hahahaha, these hungry old people just wanted their free lunch like honest American capitalists. They don't understand irony, because it was invented sometime after 9/11 right around the time humor died and Communism made a comeback.

The Hateful and the Ignorant

2009-08-14T09:31:00.002-04:00

I'd like to make a quick point that I think needs to be injected into the health care debate. Watching the footage of the town hall carnage over the past few weeks has been discouraging, to be sure, but we need to remember that although a lot of the people causing the disruptions are AstroTurf fucks, there is also a sizable part of the population that is simply dreadfully misinformed.

The clearest example of our under-education is the unfortunate appearance of the "Keep the government out of my Medicare" meme. All around the country we've seen and heard instances of the elderly or the poor, many of whom receive insurance directly from the government, demanding that Big Government not mess up their Medicare. It's funny, sure, but it's also sad.

To what extent you blame people themselves for their ignorance and to what extent you blame society is a personal choice, but I will say that with a properly functioning media this meme wouldn't have made it past day 1.

This episode reminds me of a poll taken 5 years after 9/11, where 46%, 46%, of the population still believed that Sadaam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks. It is very startling to realize that many people in the country simply have no idea at all about basic facts that relate to their lives. How is this possible?

How, and I'm asking this honestly, is it possible that somebody who receives Medicare doesn't know that it's a government program? How can somebody simultaneously love Medicare but hate the idea of government provided insurance? It boggles the mind.

Is it possible to educate the citizenry in this country? I have no idea, but without a massive campaign to discredit the lies issuing forth from insurance lobbyists, the GOP, the Blue Dogs, and in some instances the White House itself, it will continue to be very difficult to distinguish the hateful from the ignorant.

Palin Making Policy Because Stupidity Must Always Win No Matter What [Bang! Thud.]

2009-08-13T17:02:00.003-04:00

If anybody out there thinks that breathing-mannequin Sarah Palin no longer affects the political discourse in this country, then I suggest you begin looking for your ass with both hands right now, because it will take you a long time to complete that mission.

She is changing legislation in the Senate by saying idiotic things, and for some reason the Democrats are allowing this to happen. TPM is reporting that the Senate Finance Committee is now stripping from a bill a provision that would reimburse Medicare doctors who provided end-of-life counseling to dying patients. As TPM notes,

"Until a few days ago, the measure--which is included in House legislation--was completely uncontroversial."

It had been in the bill for a long time, and was not a big deal at all. In fact, Matt Taibii has a fanstasic post here about how Newt Gingrich used to LOVE end-of-life services. But then something hilarious happened. Land-monster Sarah Palin referred to this practice as creating "Death Squads," which is the rhetorical equivalent of a toddler going limp in a super market.

Everybody had a good laugh about this, and sort of haha-ed it away, because it is a very stupid and wrong thing to say. Then a few hours later, a standard right-wing practice began. Gingrich changed his mind and started talking about death squads. The media started talking about death squads. Sen. Chuck Grassly started talking about death squads. None of anything that any of them were saying was honest, or supported by facts, in any way. But, next thing you know, everyone in America is talking about death squads.

Once the seed had been planted, conventional wisdom took hold and began to run its course. Here's how the process works: a right-wing insane person says something so patently false and unsubstantiated that merely repeating the statement in its entirety elicits laughter from any non-child; next, the media says, "is what this insane person said something we should be talking about?"; then the media begins "covering the controversy;" and then the Democrats go on the defensive for some reason and begin compromising left and right like they gettin' paid for it (many of them are).

Watching the Democrats fall for this trap time and time again, I feel like I'm watching a horror film screaming, "Don't go upstairs! They're going to continue to define the fucking debate if you go upstairs!"

So, to sum up, toilet-water-drinker Sarah Palin vomited up "death squad," Gingrich ate it on TV, Grassley shat it out in a Senate committee, and now the Senate's health care bill is weaker. And nobody in Washington, in New York, anywhere, could say with a straight face that this is how our legislative process is supposed to work. And, yet, on some level, it's feels completely unsurprising and natural that our national discourse should follow these despicable tracks.

When corporate lobbyists control Congress people, whose campaigns are funded by those very same special interests, and we count on corporate-owned novelty media acts to serve as watchdog, why should we be surprised when this happens? A better question is: how could it not?

Media Jumps to Moronic Conclusions, Surprises No One

2009-08-13T09:24:00.007-04:00

Over the past few days, the corporate-sponsored novelty acts who comprise the American media have been in a tizzy over an outburst by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The establishment's interpretation of the event can be stated, roughly, as: "Wow, that wife-lady is pretty angry. She must be on the rag or something, or maybe she's just upset because her dish soap is chapping her hands." I know, I know, it's hard to believe that in AMERICA, Hillary Clinton is getting trivialized by the media.

The worst part is, the most recent development in this story is sure to make absolutely no front pages at all. The Lede, the New York Times' fart-blog, is reporting that, "hey maybe that wife of that president isn't so wrong after all guys!" The Times reports:

"Two days after video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pummeled by American commentators from The New York Post to Jon Stewart for getting angry at an apparently rude question from a Congolese student during a forum in Kinshasa on Monday, two reporters who were at the event say that the much-reported idea that the French-speaking student’s question had been mistranslated is incorrect.

In the video of the event embedded below [which I have also embedded below--JK], from Britain’s Channel 4 News, Mrs. Clinton can be seen listening and then responding to a simultaneous translation as the student asked: “We’ve all heard about the Chinese contracts in this country — the interferences from the World Bank against this contract. What does Mr. Clinton think, through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton, and what does Mr. Mutumbo think on this situation?”"

The fact that Clinton was there to bring awareness to the rape epidemic that women face in Congo only heightens the inappropriateness of the question, and further explains Clinton's reaction. The stated purpose of her trip is to seek ways to empower women, yet the media can only focus on idiotic, petty, pop-psycho-drama.

Whatever one thinks about Clinton as a politician, and to whatever extent one believes that this trip actually is about empowering women--not furthering American business opportunities--is irrelevant here. I disagree with Clinton on a host of issues, but that doesn't change the fact that when the media trivializes her, it perpetuates destructive stereotypes about powerful women that have to be challenged. This is true regardless of whether or not one agrees with the woman in question.

Here's the video from the Lede.

This video clearly illustrates that Clinton was not in the wrong, and that this entire controversy is completely fabricated and ridiculous. ComedyandPolitics does NOT recommend holding your breath to see full retractions and apologies from the media stars though. The day the Post runs with the screaming headline: Clinton Right, Post Fucked Up! will be the day that this blog will no longer be needed.

Afterthought: Can you imagine what would've been the reaction if instead of strongly responding to an offensive question, Clinton had held her hand over her mouth and giggled like a school girl? Or if she had said, "oh, here's what my husband might think..."? The television novelty acts would've lost their shit about that too. Questions about her strength, and resolve, and the image that she puts forward to the world would've been bandied about the TV like so many badminton birdies.

Again, there are plenty of policy-based reasons to not like Hillary Clinton. This episode, however, falls squarely outside that category.

NY Times Phones In Health Care Primer

2009-08-11T09:34:00.003-04:00

I know I've been writing about health care a lot lately, but August is, um, how do you say, "a month where absolutely nothing happens"? Case in point, CNN ran with a story about Hillary Clinton reacting "testily" to a mistranslated question in Congo. They report that she was "visibly angry" after a question was mistakenly translated as "what does your husband think?" The subtext of this report, if you can call it that, is "ha ha ha look at that uptight bitch!" which is, I suppose, a story that CNN would run any time of the year, not just the slow news days of August. The Post and the Daily News are all over that earth-shattering scoop too.

Remember how when Sonia Sotomayor was first selected as a nominee to the Supreme Court, the media breathlessly wondered if she had the right "temperament?" You know, because she's [stage-whispered] a Latina! Gender roles and ethnic stereotypes are just falling by the wayside every day. Anyhoo.

So, yeah, fuck CNN! I want REAL news, so I read the New York Times! Haha, just kidding. The Times really outdid itself a few days ago in its attempt to be "objective," by which I mean: misleading and factually dubious. If you want a pitch-perfect example of how the media sets the limits of appropriate dialogue by excluding relevant information that runs contradictory to establishment consensus, and valuing other information that has no factual basis, you won't find a more perfect example than the Health Care Primer they published on the 9th. It just came to my attention today because it's in the "Most Read" sidebar, which is really most unfortunate. Not only does it not provide critical information, it actually denegrates the conversation as a whole.

The piece begins innocently enough, vaguely describing how complicated this whole process is, and how this primer will explain the basic facts to you. Ok, fine.

The disinformation begins at the end of the second paragraph.

"It can be difficult to sort fact from fiction, as angry protesters denounce the legislation at raucous public forums."

Oh man, it sounds like THE PEOPLE are angry. Conveniently absent from this sentence is any mention of the AstroTurf organizations who are paying the stooges to disrupt the town halls. So, a casual reader would be lead to think that these "angry protesters" are a sign that, throughout the country, people are spontaneously organizing against the Democratic proposal. This is just simply not the case.

The third paragraph begins with this substance-free sentence.

"President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have made the health care overhaul their top priority, putting their political futures on the line."

OH MY GOD! Between all those protesters, and desperate political situation of the Democrats, it might just be better for everyone if we just kept things just like they are, amIrite?

The paragraph continues, apparently irony free:

"Democrats had hoped to spend the month whipping up support for the legislation, but instead find themselves on the defensive, responding to what Mr. Obama describes as “outlandish rumors” spread by critics."

Rumors! What rumors?! Might it be helpful for the concerned citizen to have these rumors identified and debunked? Well, let's not rush ourselves. The authors do mention one of the most idiotic rumors, concerning forced euthanasia, a mere 25 paragraphs later.

So, as it stands after three paragraphs, the citizenry is appalled, and the Democrats are on the defensive, trying to debunk what they refer to as "rumors." The authors, because they are journalists, can't call a lie a lie. That is simply not their job. They write down what the big fancy people say, and then send it along.

In the interest of time, I'm going to highlight one more passage that deserves special attention, though we could go through the entire piece line by line like this.

The following passage should really be inscribed on a PR Wall-of-Fame somewhere, or circulated to journalism students with a note attached that reads, "stay independent you fucks, or this will be your job." Deep breath, let's go:

"The insurance industry does oppose a government-run insurance plan and could eventually mobilize against the overhaul. But insurers appear to be less of an obstacle than public apprehension over such sweeping change and skittishness among lawmakers, including centrist Democrats from Republican-leaning districts."[don't click that link; it plays into my argument later]

Yeah, thanks New York Times. I had no idea that the fucking INSURERS weren't yet mobilizing, and that, even if they did, they aren't really the main obstacle. That's such fantastic news! I guess the millions of dollars they donate to campaigns and spend on lobbying don't count. I guess it's actually the PEOPLE (remember them from earlier?) who are opposed to all this rig-a-ma-role.

Ok, so that link I told you not to click on. If you had to bet, wouldn't you bet that it would link to, oh, I don't know, a poll about how anxious the people are? Or at least some sort of supporting information to the claim that public apprehension is the main obstacle? You would, but you probably don't work at the Times.

That link, in fact, goes to the general topic of "apprehension." HEY, yeah, real fucking helpful! Man, my levels of anxiety are through the roof right now! Maybe it's because the goddamn paper of record reads like a fucking insurance pamphlet! Someone get me some Xanax! Oh, I bet the company that makes that isn't standing in the way either!

What would be helpful, and, oh, I don't know, informative, is if they linked to a poll like this one, from Nate Silver, that guy who's right about shit all the time.

He describes that how the question of government provided health care is asked can drastically affect the results. He writes:

"It turn out that when you take a poll, most Americans don't want the government to provide health care coverage. But the idea of government providing health care insurance: a lot of folks think that's a pretty swell idea!"

Then he provides this fantastic chart.

If you have a chance, read his whole post.

But hey, remember how Hillary Clinton and that Latina women are bitches?

Public Option Going The Way Of The Electric Car

2009-08-10T09:30:00.003-04:00

CNN's strength has always been graphic design, not political reporting, so I'm hesitant to give this latest story too much weight. It is about the Democrats caving to the Right on health care though, so it might be accurate. My thoughts on this subject, namely, how much (read: little) faith we should have in the Democrats to provide the public with substantial reform of the health care industry, can be read here.

As I said, CNN's strength has never been reporting the news, and this body of text is no exception. It contains a proofreading error so embarrassing that one almost blushes at reading it. Come on CNN!

"Both [Democratic Senator Dick] Durbin and Republican Sen. John Cornyn signaled the precarious status of any “public option” in the final version of any health care legislation, with Cornyn calling the idea a deal-breaker [sic] Durbin repeating a reluctant willingness to sacrifice the idea to assure passage of a final bill. The idea is not considered likely to be included in the final Senate version of the bill, although a modified public option remains in the House version of the legislation." [emphasis added]

As near as I can tell, the sentence should read, "...deal-breaker, with Durbin..." Even that is kind of a gross construction. Also, the word "modified" in the above passage should be read as "weakened." Now, back to the content, not the delivery.

Despite overwhelming, OVERWHELMING support for a public option, many Democrats refuse to state, unequivocally, that it will be included in the final bill. Obama, rightly, has stated that he won't sign a bill that doesn't include a public option. That is a difficult move to make and it should be praised. Now more Democrats need to get on board with that. Sadly, that's something that Representative Henry Waxman (who, in fairness, is pretty badass about a lot of things, and has previously stated his support of a single-payer system) refused to do last week on Democracy Now:

"AMY GOODMAN: Public plan, the bottom line for you, that there is a public option?
REP. HENRY WAXMAN: I want a—I want a public option.
AMY GOODMAN: Will you not accept—like the progressive Democrats have written a letter saying they will not vote for anything but a public option.
REP. HENRY WAXMAN: I don’t like drawing lines, but I expect we’re going to have a public option." [emphasis added.]

What the Democrats refuse to acknowledge is that the public WANTS them to draw lines. That's why in both 2006 and 2008 the country handed them substantial electoral victories, and it's why 2010 is shaping up to be the same way. Democrats are secure in their seats specifically, and in their control of congress and the White House generally, yet they still refuse to make and to commit to strict demands, like a public option, that are favored by the population.

Again, we won't know for several weeks what this bill will actually look like once it comes out of the House and Senate joint committee, but the prospects for progressive reform look more and more dim with each passing day.

"More Birther Coverage," Demands Party Of Racists

2009-08-06T14:30:00.004-04:00

I haven't written about the "Birther" phenomenon because it's all so obviously ridiculous that, until now, I didn't think it really deserved any attention whatsoever.

If you're somehow unfamiliar with the "Birther" movement--and, if that's the case, in many ways I envy you--here it is in a nutshell. Some idiots have refused to accept the fact that Obama has provided a perfectly adequate birth certificate showing that he was born to a human woman in Hawaii. They claim that he is not a citizen and therefore can't be president, even though, as I just wrote, he has provided ample documentation to prove that he is, in fact, an American citizen. You might think to yourself, "well, that should settle it, right?" and you'd be right, but you'd also be so wrong. Birthers are everywhere, and they're loud and angry and racist, three qualities that manifest themselves in tandem oh so often.

As a quick side note, noted Mexican-hater Lou Dobbs has joined the proud ranks of the Birther movement. So...if you needed another reason not to watch him, there you go. You probably didn't though, because that guy seriously hates Mexicans.

So, why bother writing about this collection of morons and racists now? Because, it turns out, that is the majority of the Republican party! Alex Koppelman of Salon reports:

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press is out with a new poll that asked, among other things, about media coverage of the Birthers. A plurality of respondents -- 41 percent -- said they believe there's been too much, but 52 percent said either that there's been too little or the right amount. Republicans, unsurprisingly, felt more strongly about that.

39 percent of self-identified Republicans, a plurality, told Pew they believe there hasn't been enough coverage of the debate over President Obama's citizenship and eligibility for the presidency. Another 27 percent said there's been the right amount, while 26 percent said there's been too much coverage.[emphasis added.]

That's right, folks. 66% of Republicans polled believe that the issue of whether or not the president is a citizen, despite that fact that he undeniably is, has gotten either just enough or not enough attention. It's like they're the party of loyal opposition to reason.

Here is an honest question. What happens if the country is unsatisfied with the Democrats and Obama? Can the party of the Birthers really regain power? The Republicans are now best embodied by Palin and the Birthers, which is also the name of a band that Levi Johnson should start. Will the country eventually swing "Right" again? History tells us that it will, but, who will actually do that?

The changing demographics in America have rendered the Southern Strategy--in which you use code words to convince scared white southerners that you're on their side--obsolete. Latinos, who traditionally have voted Republican, are moving to the Democratic party in droves. It remains to be seen if the youth vote will remain as strong as it did for Obama in the coming years, but they certainly won't be the ones to give power back to the GOP. The Republican base is shrinking fast, and there's no reason to believe that that trend will reverse itself.

All that said, I have no faith at all that this country can support a viable, progressive, third-party alternative, though I hope I'm wrong. Corporate media alliances and rigid election laws make meaningful inclusion in the electoral process of anyone but the two major parties very difficult.

So what will happen? Will the Democrats simply retain control of the country for 10 or 15 years? If that is the case, is that something to be praised? Are we now at a time when the country is finally ready to break from two-party politics? And why is Lou Dobbs so fucking crazy?

Learning About Big Pharma Deal Makes Me Want To Eat Vicodin

2009-08-06T09:22:00.002-04:00

The New York Times is reporting today that the White House and Congress have promised not to attempt to extract further cost-saving measures for consumers from large drug makers. Progressives have long feared that the Obama administration would go along with this back-room deal, and now it appears that they are. From the Times:

"Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul."[emphasis mine.]

The article goes on to say that Billy Tauzin, former Republican congress-person and current CEO of PhRMA, a pharmaceutical lobbying group, was promised that the administration wanted this deal with drug makers to go forward. Back to the Times:

A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin’s account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night.

“The president encouraged this approach,” Mr. Messina wrote.

Sigh. By blocking the government from being able to collectively bargain for drug prices, this deal guarantees that prices will continue to rise. Only the government's massive collective purchasing power--since we're talking drugs, think about buying 100 million pounds of weed; you'll get a discount--will be able to bring soaring costs down. Now, it looks like lobbyists have flexed their muscle to stop that from happening.

Scarecrow, over at FireDogLake, has an excellent analysis that can be read here. Scarecrow writes, in part:

"The White House has been telling the American people that we need to have an insurance Public Option to compete against the private, for-profit insurers to encourage price reductions and to keep the insurers honest. But the same arguments apply with at least equal force to the major drug companies, whose record of deceptive advertising, misrepresentation (here and here), corruption and price collusion (more here, here, and here, and here) are every bit as offensive as the mega insurers' practices.

The Times notes the deal was negotiated by Senator Max Baucus, with WH participation and approval. The LA Times version adds the deal was cut in the White House with Rahm Emanuel. So what should we expect from the WH/Baucus' negotiations with Republicans on the rest of the reform package?"

I highly suggest reading the whole article, and following the links that are embedded in the above passage. Even skimming where those links take you will more than prove Scarecrow's point that drug manufactures are "every bit as offensive as the mega insurers' practices."

In somewhat related news, an animal rights group calling itself Militant Forces Against Huntigdon has claimed responsibility for a fire that burned the hunting lodge of Novartis' CEO, Daniel Vassella. European News reports:

"A group called Militant Forces against Huntigdon (MFAH) Austria posted a message on a US website, claiming it started the blaze because of Novartis' alleged cooperation a with British company conducting tests on animals.

'It hasn't been your week has it, Daniel?,' MFAH wrote on the site www.directaction.info, 'This will continue until you severe all ties with Huntingdon Life Sciences.'

Novartis does not make its cooperation partners public."

Huntigdon Life Science calls itself a research facility, and has been accused of carrying out cruel and unnecessary experiments against animals.

Authorities previously suspected the group Stop Huntigdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was behind the attack.

MFAH's claim that, "It hasn't been your week," refers to a separate incident that happened last week when animal rights activists stole an urn filled with the ashes of Vassella's mother, who died in 2001, and sprayed "Drop HLS [Huntigdon Life Sciences] Now," on her gravestone. Novartis claims that they don't have any current connection with HLS, despite claims to the contrary by many animal rights groups. Novartis doesn't disclose their partners to the public, though one would certainly expect them to deny any connection with HLS.

These are the people, along with Billy Tauzin and his revolting lobbying ilk, that the Democrats are cowtowing to. Every day, it looks less and less likely that the final health care bill will contain a robust public option that exists to serve the citizens, not the private interests. We won't know at least until September what the bill will look like, but news like today's is not a cause for optimism.

David Angelo Radio

2009-08-04T16:45:00.003-04:00

I'll be on David Angelo's podcast tonight with the lovely and bearded Dan St. Germain. Listen in or download the podcast later here.

If Gov't Officials Can Swear Then So Can This Blog

2009-08-04T10:12:00.003-04:00

It seems that knife-maniac Rahm Emanuel isn't the only potty mouth in the Obama administration after all. According to the Wall Street Journal, King of Money Tim Geitner also likes to use a bit of the ol' sailor-speak if the occasion calls for it. The occasion in this case was a meeting of the nation's top financial regulators, a collection of the fuck-iest shitstains this side of Horsecockville, if this blog may speak frankly. The WSJ reports:

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blasted top U.S. financial regulators in an expletive-laced critique last Friday as frustration grows over the Obama administration's faltering plan to overhaul U.S. financial regulation, according to people familiar with the meeting."[emphasis mine.]

Reason #4,893 for the death of print. WSJ, you HAVE to print that "expletive-laced critique." Seriously guys, I would pay the online subscription fee for that sensitive information alone. Also, I assume that once you pay the online fee, you can tell all the members of the editorial board to get their shit-stained short-pants back to Horsecockville, which is worth the $8 a month or whatever it costs to read the Horsecockville Herald (WSJ).

GE, MSNBC, And a General Summary Of The Ways In Which Our Media Is Broken

2009-08-03T14:54:00.006-04:00

The recent revelation that GE and News Corp. privately agreed to stifle reporting is just the latest example of how the national press is failing the country. This episode highlights how increasingly difficult it is to find any news outlet that even deserves one's time, let alone one's trust.

For whatever reason, the country operates under the general assumption that although giant parent corporations own every major TV news outlet, they somehow don't interfere in their reporting or shape their editorial content. After the publication of this story from the New York Times on Friday, that fallacy has been laid as bare as possible.

The Times' report describes how the bitter feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann was ratings gold for both shows, but also that both parent companies, News Corp. and GE, respectively, were getting worried about the fighting. "But wait," you might be thinking, "the feud increases the viewership of both shows, so what's the problem?" Well, in the process of attempting to beat each other bloody, Olbermann, and probably despite himself, O'Reilly, were doing some real reporting. In an attempt to discredit the other, both were going after their competitor's parent company, which was making the corporate overlords very uneasy.

So, as the Times reports,

"At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in mid-May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.
...
The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations."[emphasis added.]

This story came to my attention via Glenn Greenwald, who has written two fantastic posts about the subject. The first can be read here, and his latest from today can be read here. I highly recommend reading both in their entirety. The first piece also has the added benefit of highlighting MSNBC's disgraceful use of Richard Wolffe, a PR man they bill as an independent "political analyst." Greenwald discusses Wolffe's many appearances on "Countdown," and the fact that he guest-hosted while Olbermann was away, while never disclosing his eggregious conflict of interest. To quote Greenwald:

"When Olbermann is there, Wolffe is a very frequent guest on Countdown, where he is called an "MSNBC political analyst" and comments on political news. All of this, despite the fact that Wolffe left Newsweek last March in order to join "Public Strategies, Inc.," the corporate communications firm run by former Bush White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, its President and CEO.
...
Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" -- is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover."

For further reading on the issue, I recommend this post by David Sirota. He provides an excellent history of instances in which parent companies dictate to their media outlets what stories are or are not appropriate on which to report.

If you take this example of GE and News Corp. silencing figures that, for better or worse, are labeled "journalists," mix it in with MSNBC's lack of disclosure of Richard Wolffe's conflict of interests, throw in the Washington Post's recent attempt to whore out its reporters and editors at $25,000 a pop, add to that that Politico (who broke the WaPo story) is in bed with lobbyists as much as anyone, sprinkle on a little program where NBC News (and others) presented retired military generals who were getting paid by companies that stood to earn a shit-ton of money from the war as "independent military analysts" (which the networks still have not disclosed to their viewers), and top it all off with the idiotic stance from NPR that they won't call torture torture, you get a pretty grim image of our media landscape.

Or you draw that same conclusion just by watching Manufacturing Consent.

Really, just think about this list above. It makes you want to just punch a wall or something. That list shows us that a reasonable citizen who spends a few minutes a day trying to keep him or herself informed, is probably being either mislead or lied to from any number of different organizations, regardless of where they are getting their news.

Whether or not these outlets report some accurate stories is beside the point. Once an institution shows that it will sell out for money, or mislead its reading/viewing/listening public out of either cowardice, malice, or incompetence, the whole institution becomes suspect. I'm not arguing that journalists can't be allowed to make errors. That's an insane and unreasonable position. My criticisms, and much of the blogosphere's criticisms, are not about honest mistakes. Rather, the problem arises when these outlets deliberately deceive their audiences for months on end by refusing to disclose conflicts of interest, or by committing any of the other infractions listed above.

I'll leave you with two funny videos concerning this topic. The first is from SNL, and the second is the great David Letterman (thanks to Mike Drucker for the heads up for both).

conspiracy theory rock

Abstinence-Only Events Creep Me Out

2009-08-03T10:27:00.002-04:00

Tracy Clark-Flory writes today in Salon about an abstinence-only high school pep rally full of cheerleaders in short shorts leading the crowd in what may be the most disturbing cheer I've ever heard. The costumed lolitas chanted:

""Stop, don't touch me there, this is my no, no square," while drawing boxes in the air in front of their va (clap) jay (clap) jays."

As a side note, in the future this blog will only refer to women's genitalia as "va (clap) jay (clap) jays." Ahem.

Call me a prude, but getting a bunch of sprightly young women in cheerleader outfits to point at and teasingly refer to hoo-has while a gymnasium full of family members and priests look on strikes me as a bit, oh, I don't know, SEXUAL. And also, oh, I don't know, CREEPY. Look, abstain if you want to [note: "abstain" substitutes hilariously for "don't dance" in Safety Dance. "'Cause your friends abstain and if they abstain, well, they're no friends of mine". --ed.], but the idea of gathering an entire community together to gaze at a gaggle of females drawing BOXES around their...you know what word I was going to use, so let's be adults and move on... it's just so obviously meant to titillate.

"This is my no, no square." I mean, come on. This event is only slightly less creepy than the Daddy-Daughter balls that you hear about every once in a while. As I understand these perv-vents, fathers and daughters go to the prom together to gross everyone out or something and then no one can have a healthy sex life because that would be shameful! That description might not be ethnographically responsible, but I think it does the trick. I will not be providing any links, because doing a google search of "daddy daughter balls" might return some hits that are not appropriate for the internet connection I'm using. Ironic, no?

Here's a video of the event, which I haven't watched yet, because I think it might send the wrong message to people I'm sitting next to if they see me watching cheerleaders pointing to their va (clap) jay (clap) jays. So...tell me how it is.

God and Abstinence from Stuart Productions on Vimeo.

As an afterthought, Russell Brand has a good bit about the hypocrisy involved in the abstinence-only business, specifically "purity rings." Can't embed because it's flash, but he makes several good points.

Oh, and also, this sex rally took place in Mississippi, which Clark-Flory reports, "not only has the highest teen birth rate in the country, but also the eighth-highest HIV rate among those in their early 20s." So there's that.

Sunday Afternoon Movie Review

2009-08-02T15:06:00.002-04:00

I haven't done this in a while, but it's raining out and I feel like procrastinating on other things I should be doing, so here's another edition of the Sunday Afternoon Movie Review at ComedyandPolitics!

Put simply, In The Loop, a new political comedy from Armando Iannucci, is one of the finest films I've seen in a long time. Excuse the profanity, but, honestly, it's so fucking good. And while we're on the subject of swearing, let me say that In The Loop transforms foul language from the comedic crutch that it often is into a kind of poetry. The movie is so filthy, and so, so funny.

The plot centers around Simon (Tom Hollander)--a mid-level aid to the (unnamed) British PM--who speaks off message, the communications director, Malcolm (perfectly played by Peter Capaldi), who tries to fix the problem, and a handful of other British and American politicos, all of whom are looking out for number 1. The film is set vaguely in the run-up to the Iraq war, but it doesn't feel dated, because the criticisms it levels are more structural than topical.

And it's funny. I can't repeat that enough. As proof, here's a clip featuring Malcolm telling Simon just how much he fucked up when he said that "war is unforeseeable."

"We've got enough Pentegon goons here to stage a fuckin' coup d'etat."

If you have fancy TV, you can watch In The Loop on demand by clicking here.

As long as we're here, I'll pass along another movie recommendation, because why not. Yesterday, Molly and I saw Flame and Citron, a film about the Danish resistance in 1943 and 1944. Holy hell it was awesome! So badass. It's about these two guys, Flame and Citron, who go around killing Nazis one by one. There just two guys, with guns, and a few friends, and the sack it takes to kill Nazis at their door. Do you have that sack?! Do you?!?!?!?!

Here's the trailer.

I highly recommend seeing both of these movies if you get a chance. Movie review time over.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Beers

2009-07-31T12:37:00.004-04:00

I have nothing at all to say about the "beer summit" that this picture doesn't capture perfectly. If you had to choose one image to display how foul, trivial, and embarrassing our national media is, I'm not sure you could find a better one than this.

Juxtaposition, you're a doll. Give me a call when they make Cheney drink a shot of monkey stool for every death in Iraq. Until then, ugh. (via Wonkette)

With Democrats Like These...

2009-07-30T10:15:00.005-04:00

This morning, I received an e-mail from FireDogLake, asking people to call progressive members of congress and ask them to support a plan with a strong single payer option. That website, with instruction on who to call, can be found here.

The e-mail from FDL reads in part as follows:

"Dear Friend,
It's working. Your phone calls are making the difference.

The progressive caucus is finally realizing it can stand up for a real public option. Yesterday progressive members actually blocked the Blue Dogs from watering down health care reform - for the time being."

Their article about the "liberal insurrection" in the House can be found here. FDL is "cautiously optimistic" about these new events, though ComedyandPolitics is not optimistic in the slightest, for several reasons. Here is one of them, from the New York Times this morning:

"Efforts to pass sweeping health care legislation took a big step forward on Wednesday as House Democratic leaders reached an agreement with fiscally conservative party members that would cut the bill’s cost and exempt many small businesses from having to provide health benefits to workers.

...

Representative Mike Ross of Arkansas, the chief negotiator for the fiscally conservative Democrats known as Blue Dogs, said the changes were “a huge win for us.”"[emphasis mine.]

That juxtaposition should more than speak for itself.

Here's the thing. Anybody who has any faith at all in the Democratic Party to lead the way to a more progressive and just society is delusional. I could link to hundreds of articles that make this point, but Matt Taibbi's blog post from two days ago hits all the right notes. He writes:

Make no mistake, this [watering down of the health care bill] has nothing to do with Max Baucus, Bill Nelson, or anyone else. If the Obama administration wanted to pass a real health care bill, they would do what George Bush and Tom DeLay did in the first six-odd years of this decade whenever they wanted to pass some nightmare piece of legislation (ie the Prescription Drug Bill or CAFTA): they would take the recalcitrant legislators blocking their path into a back room at the Capitol, and beat them with rubber hoses until they changed their minds.

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes.

It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters.

That last sentence describes our country and government as accurately as anything I've ever read. And if any Obama apologists are getting upset with me right now, read the following passage from The Hill:

"Within hours of the liberal complaints, Obama was on the phone with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a fellow Illinois Democrat and Energy and Commerce member who is in charge of the healthcare issue for the Progressive Caucus.

He told her the bill should go forward, Schakowsky said."

We now have a country coming out of the most disgraceful period since the administration of Andrew Jackson, a Democratic president with overwhelming political capital, a Democratic majority in the House, a Democratic and filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and a issue (health care) that will cripple this country if it is not dealt with in a progressive way. And what is happening? The exact same thing that always happens. Democrats make noise about universal health care, and a robust public option, and then when a bill gets put on the floor the lobbyists and special interests are the only groups that really win.

If anybody, ANYBODY, thinks that supporting the Democratic party as an idea after this disgraceful episode will help the poor, the uninsured, and the most at-risk patients, then nothing at all will dissuade them from that delusional position. What possibly could?

On Returning To The City

2009-07-28T14:02:00.002-04:00

Vacation time is now over and normal life resumes. My alarm clock this morning was particularly loud, giving further evidence to my belief that that foul machine has it out for me personally. Like Boroughs' typewriter in Naked Lunch, I imagine my alarm clock transforms into a ruthless bug at night, waiting in the wings to torture me from 7:50am to 8:14am, depending on my snooze cycle.

The trip was amazing though. Seattle lived up to, and in some ways exceeded, an already high standard it had set for itself several years earlier. Chop Suey on Wednesday night in Seattle is my new favorite night in comedy. San Francisco was great as well. The Punchline is a fantastic club (thanks again to Ali Wong for the spot) that I'll hopefully get another chance to work sooner rather than later.

And in a perfect example of form fitting content, my trip of comedy shows ended with a marriage, which was both funny and touching, and gave me a chance to see some fantastic people I hadn't been in touch with in far too long.

Big thanks to everybody who put me up for a night, or several, and here's hoping that we all see each other again real soon and dance.

Latest Onion Headline

2009-07-15T14:09:00.002-04:00

I'm in Seattle right now, so blogging will be light to non-existent in all likelihood for the next 2 weeks. But! The Onion just used another of my headlines! Woo! Here's the link.

Here's the headline:

Man At Bar Clinging To Muted 'King Of Queens' Episode Like Life Preserver

The next time you find yourself in that situation, know that I (and all of the rest of us) have been there too.

Brawl On Wall Street

2009-07-14T13:06:00.002-04:00

This amazing video of two guys fighting goes on for a long time, but it's pretty funny. The doorman is completely non-plussed by the low-level action happening in front of him, as are the two people who WALK AROUND A BRAWL to get through the lobby. (via The Awl)

Prez Likes What He Sees

2009-07-10T12:33:00.002-04:00

This is the greatest picture ever taken.

Here's a video that makes Obama look pretty innocent, but Sarkozy's stare could melt lead.

Opaque

2009-07-06T14:18:00.002-04:00

This video is a few days old, but it's well worth watching for Anderson Cooper's reactions alone. At minute 4, he starts to wonder if a joke is being played on him.

Through Clenched Teeth

2009-07-02T14:06:00.002-04:00

Fox News anchor Shep Smith holds the distinguished title of "least insane man at Fox" because he has not yet personally killed a Palestinian, and, as a result, liberals tend to like him. He seems like the kind of guy who would fire off a few rounds into the air in the middle of a street fight and yell out, "All right fuckers, everybody calm the FUCK down!"

Here's a link to see Shep just about lose it, then bring himself back from the brink.

Fancy Word For Pushing Some Dude Out The Window

2009-07-02T09:50:00.003-04:00

Roger Cohen's semi-weekly dispatches from Iran have been one of the recent highlights of the NY Times' editorial page. In his column today, he argues that it may be best for Obama to refrain from any new diplomatic outreaches to Ahmadinejad as a means of putting pressure on that country after it's tumultuous election. Truth be told, I mildly disagreed with his arguments, but not enough to write about it, until I saw this! [emphasis mine]:

The price of Obama’s engagement may just have become Ahmadinejad’s departure. I think it has. His defenestration is not impossible; it would be forced from within where disaffected clerics and moderates abound;

Holy moly! For those unfamiliar with the definition of defenestration, here it is:

–noun
-the act of throwing a thing or esp. a person out of a window: the defenestration of the commissioners at Prague.

Good lord! Roger Cohen, respected op-ed columnist for the New York Times wants to throw I'm-a-dinner-jacket out of a window! What is this? Prague?! Again, from the ol' dictionary:

defenestration
1620, "the action of throwing out of a window," from L. fenestra "window." A word invented for one incident: the "Defenestration of Prague," May 21, 1618, when two Catholic deputies to the Bohemian national assembly and a secretary were tossed out the window (into a moat) of the castle of Hradshin by Protestant radicals. It marked the start of the Thirty Years War.

That picture is from the wiki-dinner-jacket article on defenestration. Cohen may have left himself a legal out, though, as the wiki definition claims [emphasis mine]:

Although defenestrations can be fatal depending on the height of the window through which a person is thrown (see Falling), or lacerations from broken glass, the act of defenestration need not carry the intent or result of death.

You're a smart cookie, Cohen! But you'll slip up someday, and when you do, ComedyandPolitics will be there.

God Said No

2009-07-01T13:10:00.002-04:00

The few people in the world who believe they have found the one, true God are notoriously rational and scientific. It is in this clear, grounded spirit that Plumber Joey! [! mine] offered up his evidence as to why he shouldn't run for elected office. WorldNetDaily reports (via Thinkprogress):

Asked if he [Joe the Plumber] has plans to run for public office, he replied, "I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, 'No.'"

That's right folks. God said, "no."

To celebrate this unlikely parallel thinking between this blog and God, here is a song by the wonderful Dan Bern, aptly titled "God Said No." (Apologies for the truly awful video that accompanies it. It was all they had.)

As an tangentially related afterthought, check out Hitchens' latest article on Slate. I rarely agree with him as much as I do on this issue. The piece is a funny, vicious attack on Nixon, and few writers are funnier and more vicious than Hitchens. He writes:

In debates with religious people, I keep being told that even if not all of religion's supernatural claims can be defended as literally true, at least it can be said that religion encourages morality and makes people behave better. In every Nixon tape that has so far been released, he is at his lowest and ugliest and most inhuman when being incited and encouraged and sometimes outbid by the most famous Christian ever to be born on American soil [Billy Graham]. I merely pass on the observation.

I can't recommend reading the rest of the column highly enough.

The Wink and The Gun

2009-06-30T14:01:00.002-04:00

Bill O'Reilly is generally and correctly thought of as one of the worst people currently living. If you follow the link below, however, you will see a man grasping with the complex moral issue of whether or not murder is something that people should be doing on their own, in the streets, after TV pundits tell them to. It's like Dostoevsky!

O'Reilly recently got a lot of heat for calling health-care-provider George Tiller "Tiller the baby killer" on his nightly opinion/hate show. When a fringe lunatic murdered Tiller, Billy was all, "oh, wow, I can't believe that happened! Oh me oh my I NEVER wanted that!"

Since that controversy, O'Reilly must take the unfamiliar position of not advocating murder on his show. He recently had Geraldo--who, by the way, not-so-subtly called for the execution of a private citizen by other private citizens--on the show, and the two of them discussed the finer points of mob justice. Geraldo is all excited about this new era wherein the populace takes the law into it's own collective, righteous, Fox News-watching hands, but O'Reilly must force himself to play devil's advocate and disagree. He is obviously uncomfortable with this new "pro-life" stance, as indicated by his stumbling over phrases like, "Now, we shouldn't actually KILL these people, right?"

I can't find the video of this on youtube or google, so here's a link to Gawker, with video embedded.

For more information on how right-wing pundits can spurn on vigilante justice, see this article by Chip Berlet on Huffpo, or listen to Terry Gross interview him on Fresh Air.

I disagree with parts of Berlet's argument in the Fresh Air interview, particularly when he equates left- and right-wing extremism. Although I don't subscribe to the Truther movement, I have found that--by and large--that community is driven by skepticism of the official government explanation of 9/11, not bigotry, xenophobia, or any of the other wonderhate ideologies that are so often a part of right-wing extremism. That said, the interview is still well worth listening to. Here's a small excerpt from his Huffpo piece:

Demagogues and conspiracy theorists use the same four "tools of fear." These are 1) dualism; 2) scapegoating; 3) demonization; and 4) apocalyptic aggression. The tools of fear are a connected constellation of frames, narratives, and processes used by demagogues to mobilize resentment and undermine the democratic process.

The basic dynamics remain the same no matter the ideological leanings of the demonizers or the identity of their targets. Meanwhile, our ability to resolve disputes through civic debate and compromise is hobbled. It is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread scapegoating that is so dangerous. In such circumstances, angry allegations can quickly turn into apocalyptic aggression and violence targeting scapegoated groups like Jews or immigrants.

Let's just say it's lucky for this blog that the Irish are now just considered White, because if they were hated like they used to be, I'd be blogging from my mom's basement.

The Coup Has Not Yet Been Tweeted

2009-06-30T09:56:00.003-04:00

Iran recently became the cause celebre for keyboard warriors--such as this blog--and well-meaning internet people the world over. We had important work to do! There was retweeting, avatar-color turning (which I did and I'm not apologizing for--yes, it was purely symbolic, but probably better than nothing, if only in a small way), video sharing, location jamming...

The list goes on. For reasons that are not yet clear, the weekend coup in Honduras has not captured the imagination of the world in the same way. While the situations aren't identical, one would think that if Americans can get worked up over a fraudulent election in Iran, they can also get worked up over the military ousting of a democratically elected president of a country that the United States has had a military presence in since the 1980s.

Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at NYU and author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, spoke on Democracy Now yesterday and had this to say:

The Honduran military is effectively a subsidiary of the United States government.

Yikes! Yowza! Etc. Grandin continued:

Honduras, as a whole, if any Latin American country is fully owned by the United States, it’s Honduras. Its economy is wholly based on trade, foreign aid and remittances. So if the US is opposed to this coup going forward, it won’t go forward. Zelaya will return, if the United States—if Obama and Hillary Clinton are sincere in their statements about returning Zelaya to power.

In a show that Honduras really may be taking its cues from Washington, the NY Times reports today:

In the face of criticism from across the hemisphere, the new government hunkered down in Mr. Zelaya’s old office, ringed by soldiers and defending its actions as a bid to save the country’s democracy, not undermine it.

Acting outside the law to preserve it! I'm pretty sure that the Bush/Obama administrations have used that same rationale to justify suspension of habeus corpus rights. The world is finally looking back to the USA for moral guidance. Shining city on the hill!

With What Will We Cool Our Cocktails?!

2009-06-29T14:19:00.004-04:00

Here's a scary picture for all you drunken liberal elitists out there. It's photographic evidence that god doesn't want you to drink so many mixed drinks so he (or rather, He) is taking away your precious ice glaciers for whiskey.

(via Krugman, Original source)

The House just passed a small step forward towards slowing down climate change. Ezra Klein is pessimistic, however.

The flip side to that bit of optimism is that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill -- am I the only one who wants to see climate change explained to kids by way of the friendly pirate Cap'n Trade? -- probably won't do that much to avert global warming, either.

That said, it's my sense that supporters of Waxman-Markey have spent a lot of time in the last week or two defending the bill in terms of how insignificant its long-term effect on prices will be. I've been one of those people. But I'm not sure it's a good idea. Climate change is a big problem. It will eventually require a big solution. My understanding is that the polling suggests that people don't like it when you tell them this is a big problem and they don't want to be convinced that they need to spend their time worrying about something new. In fact, like kids who want to believe that they're going to the doctor for a lollipop, they want to hear that this is an awesome new jobs program. But it isn't an awesome new jobs program. It's an effort to avert a catastrophe on the only planet we know how to inhabit. And I can't see a successful respond to climate change that doesn't presuppose a majority sharing that belief.

Tools Get Much Needed iPhone Tool

2009-06-26T15:57:00.002-04:00

When you run (or read) a blog as popular as this one, you're gonna have ladies throwin' theyselves at you left and right. Luckily, some enterprising misogynist has created an iPhone app that will help readers of ComedyandPolitics keep their ladies straight.

Here's the product description, from the website. [ed: Providing link for verification purposes. Don't buy this app.]

Welcome to the famous "The Amazing Girlfriend Manager"!

With this application you can improve your relationships by applying concepts of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) on your girlfriends. Think about your girlfriend as a client! What information and tools you need to improve your relationship? This application is the answer.

Features of this application:
- Allows you to manage multiple girlfriends at the same time (not recommended for moral reasons)
- You can assign a rating for each girl
- Stores personal information, preferences, sizes of clothing, notes and other data for each girl

For each girl you can register:
- Gifts given and received, cost and rating
- Dates, location, cost and rating
- Special dates (first date, first kiss, first trip together, bla bla bla…)

Benefits that this application can bring to you:
- Don’t make mistakes. Check the measurements of the girl before you buy a new pair of shoes or clothing
- Be creative. Do not repeat gifts
- Be more creative. Avoid always going to the same places with the same girl
- Be attentive. Do not forget your special dates
- Be healthy. Do not mix information from two girls
- Be the master. Show to your friends your long list of girls
- Be selective. Through the analysis of ratings and cost of dates and gifts, you can keep only the girls with the best cost-benefit

WARNING: For your own safety, under any circumstances, do not let your girlfriend access this application

Hahahaha WOMEN ARE COMMODITIES!

Froomkin Throws A Middle Finger Up, Says See Y'all In A Few Weeks

2009-06-26T14:12:00.003-04:00

Dan Froomkin's recent firing from the Washington Post resulted in a huge (and much deserved) backlash from the blogosphere.

The Post published his last column today, which includes this fantastic line:

Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars.

Wherever Froomkin eventually lands, take note. He's been one of the best, and we need him to continue to hold Obama accountable. You know, like a journalist.

Wallabies Enter Heroin Phase

2009-06-26T13:40:00.002-04:00

I'll pass this story along, because why not. It's a summer Friday afternoon, and these lazy days are fit only for stories of drugged up marsupials. From the BBC:

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.

She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.

Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

I can tell you from personal experience that you don't want to be around when wallabies are coming down from a morphine high. Lots of crying. Lots and lots of crying.

This is the animal kingdom equivalent of doing donuts in the high school parking lot and then sleeping in an opium field.

King Of Pop Meets Iran

2009-06-26T13:26:00.002-04:00

Here's your video for today. It covers everything that is happening in the world right now.

Citizen Radio

2009-06-24T15:36:00.002-04:00

I recorded a very fun podcast last Saturday afternoon with Jamie Kilstein, Allison Kilkenny, and co-guest Mike Drucker, esquire (probably).

You can listen to it online here, or download it from itunes by searching for Citizen Radio and downloading today's episode. While you're there, subscribe to the show. It's a good one.

The four of us talked for a loooong time, so there will be at least one more part to our conversation, which will air next week.

Drink At Work Video

2009-06-24T09:41:00.002-04:00

I was involved in a Drink at Work video that just got posted online, but the computer I'm currently on doesn't have quicktime, so I can't embed it. Here's a link. I haven't seen it yet, so if you watch it tell me if I'm any good in it.