Month: September 2009

Therapy After Terror

by tristero

One aspect of the 9/11 attacks that has gone quite unremarked for the most part is that it was a city-wide, if not country and world-wide mental health emergency. Karen Seeley, a psychotherapist and professor, has written a terrific book about the experience of therapists on 9/11 and the aftermath called Therapy After Terror: 9/11, Psychotherapists, and Mental Health. This is from a NY Times article about her research and the experience of other therapists (full disclosure: Karen Seeley and her family are good friends of ours):

[M]ost therapists, trained in the main to help people one at a time, were not ready for this “collective catastrophe,” Dr. Seeley said. “For everybody, it was unprecedented. Firefighters weren’t prepared. Police weren’t prepared. Neither were therapists.”

Dr. Seeley spent the better part of two years conducting in-depth interviews with 35 therapists who had worked closely with 9/11 survivors and families…

What she learned was that the pros in her field not only were ill prepared for the disaster but also became overwhelmed by the horrific stories that they heard and by their own terrorism-induced anxieties. Obviously, victims’ families suffered most. But all New Yorkers were traumatized to some degree. Their city had been attacked. As the country entered a constant state of war, they were told by political leaders to be afraid. Many were.

Being human, therapists often succumbed to the same fears. Dr. Seeley called it “simultaneous trauma” — “an extremely rare clinical situation in which therapists were deeply shaken by the same catastrophic events that injured the patients they were treating.”

Illegal Logic

by dday

John Aravosis uncovers an amazing nugget in TIME Magazine. Apparently, there are Democrats who saw Rep. Joe Wilson yell “You Lie!” at the President of the United States and thought, “that guy has a point.” And they happen to be the ones writing the health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee.

The controversy over Republican Rep. Joe Wilson’s shouting out “You Lie!” at the President over his claim that illegal immigrants wouldn’t benefit from health-care reform apparently sparked some reconsideration of the relevant language. “We really thought we’d resolved this question of people who are here illegally, but as we reflected on the President’s speech last night we wanted to go back and drill down again,” said Senator Kent Conrad, one of the Democrats in the talks after a meeting Thursday morning. Baucus later that afternoon said the group would put in a proof of citizenship requirement to participate in the new health exchange — a move likely to inflame the left.

So many things wrong with this, starting with caving to an extremist. But it’s worse than that on the policy end. The exchanges are just health insurance purchasing centers, like a Wal-Mart for insurance. You don’t have to receive a subsidy to buy insurance on the exchanges; in fact, if your family makes over $88,000 a year, you can’t be eligible for a subsidy, though you can still purchase there. What Conrad is saying is that he would make it illegal for a non-citizen to BUY something.

Not only that, but proof of citizenship laws, which we don’t have in most states for voting, are onerous and disproportionately tilted away from the poor and the elderly, as well as potentially restrictive to legal immigrants with green cards, in this case. As the New York Times says today:

Should we take a harder line? Force people to prove citizenship in emergency rooms? That’s illegal, for good reason. Make verification requirements so onerous that not a single illegal immigrant slips through? Very expensive, and not smart. It would be highly likely to snag deserving citizens — like old people who don’t have their original birth certificates. And besides, we’ve tried that: A House oversight committee reviewed six state Medicaid programs in 2007 and found that verification rules had cost the federal government an additional $8.3 million. They caught exactly eight illegal immigrants.

In the case of an epidemic, like swine flu, should illegal immigrants go untreated so they can infect legal residents and American citizens?

Hard-line Republicans insist that they will fight for citizenship verification. They could, in theory, get the country to spend whatever it takes to do that and proudly report back to their voters. But there is a line beyond which antipathy to the undocumented can be damaging to those voters’ health, not to mention the federal budget. Mr. Wilson and his admirers seem to have crossed it.

Not to mention the fact that buckling to these demands will not get one Republican vote on any health care bill.

This is the Senate Finance bill, not the overall bill. But Democrats are so wishy-washy when it comes to, well, anything, that we actually could see this rotten, xenophobic, piss-poor policy in a bill supposedly designed to expand access to health care.

I know a lot of money has been flowing to Joe Wilson’s opponent in 2010, but a far better use of those dollars would be to funnel them toward primary opponents for Kent Conrad and Max Baucus.

UPDATE: Conrad is now clarifying that there would be no federal subsidies, and requiring proof of citizenship would just be used to determine qualification for government assistance. Of course, you end up with the same problem, then; those without proper proof of ID would have trouble getting subsidies that could be available to them. The larger point is that there was no need to react to a teabagger yelling and screaming. This was already implicit in the bill, and allowed for the HHS Secretary to determine a best practice. This blunt instrument is not the way to do it, and makes Democrats look weak (but that’s redundant).

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The Poor, The Adrift, The Uninsured

by dday

We interrupt yesterday, today and tomorrow’s media soccer scrum (“Does Ellen DeGeneres Think Michael Vick Should Agree With Joe Wilson About Health Care?”) to bring you the consequences of a Gilded Age economy:

The U.S. Census Bureau has just announced that the poverty rate for 2008 was 13.2%. This means the number of people in poverty has increased by about 2.5 million, to 39.8 million. To give you some perspective, 2.5 million is more than the number of people who live in Detroit and San Francisco combined.

The Census data is just devastating, particularly when you take into account that the numbers come before the job loss in the first 8 months of this year. In addition to the uptick in the poverty rate, real median household income fell 3.6%, the biggest drop in 40 years. The richest tenth of one percent saw their incomes rise by 35% over the last 10 years while median incomes stayed flat. And the number of Americans lacking health insurance increased by about 700,000 to at least 46.3 million, which does not account for the under-insured. In fact, if it wasn’t for government programs, this number would be far worse.

Things would have been worse but for one thing: continued expansion of government-provided health insurance coverage. Between 2007 and 2008, the proportion of Americans reporting any private coverage fell by 0.8 percentage points, from 67.5 percent to 66.7 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage reporting some form of government coverage rose by 1.2 points, from 27.8 percent to 29.0 percent […]

First, the absolute number of uninsured has increased. Second, employer-based coverage is eroding. Third, adverse trends in private coverage are partly masked in the overall numbers by the rise in public coverage.

Fourth, improved insurance coverage among children–thanks largely to Medicaid and SCHIP–is more than offset by increases in the number and proportion of uninsured working-age adults. As shown in the final column, the number of uninsured adults increased by almost 9 million in nine years. Since working-age adults are much more likely to actually get sick, this is a significant economic and public health concern.

Yes, it’s been government – eeevil, socialist government – which has had to step into the breach and take care of its citizenry amid a failing private market. And that includes your local fire department, increasingly becoming a primary care doctor for millions of Americans.

In 2008, fire departments around the country responded to 15.8 million medicals calls, a 213 percent increase over the 5 million medical runs record in 1980. The combining of cities’ fire and emergency medical services accounts for some of the increase.

But as the logs of a Washington, D.C., fire company show, the lack of health insurance by too many people—especially low-income families—has turned some local fire departments into mobile emergency rooms.

In one 24-hour period this summer, D.C.’s Engine Company No. 10 responded to more than two dozen emergency calls—two fires and the rest were medical emergencies. It is the same throughout the District. The Times reports the D.C. fire department responded to more medical emergency calls per capita than any other in the nation—and most come from poor neighborhoods […] such calls tie up a community’s resources and cost communities more because so many calls for emergency medical care aren’t true medical emergencies. Also, the increasing reliance on first responders and on 911 also comes at a time when firefighters and paramedics all across the country are being laid off, as the nation’s economic woes place a strain on public budgets. The recession is shrinking our resources and reducing manpower while the demand for emergency medical care is skyrocketing.

Best health care system in the history of man.

This is bigger than just health care, though, and it’s driving a lot of the anxiety out there. Recessions are disruptive events, but in previous years quick turnarounds would blunt the pain. More recently, jobless recoveries that last years and years have become the norm, and as a result, people cannot keep up. Inequality has risen to an almost comical degree, while more and more people sit on the other side of a gated community. This breeds anger, unrest, and ultimately enormous amounts of needless suffering.

And as long as government is captive to interests which place their corporate well-being above the well-being of the people, it will remain this way.

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Pollan

Michael Pollan has a superb op-ed in the Times on the relationship between food policy reform and health care reform. They are, basically, one and the same, or at the very least, thoroughly co-dependent:

There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

For the most part, the food business has kept a very, very low profile – a timid protest that the White House garden doesn’t use pesticides, a farmer cum Republican operative writing an article for the American Enterprise Institute, and a failed attempt to prevent the mainstream media from using the term SWINE flu. After reading Pollan’s essay, I can’t help wondering whether Big Food’s been in serious denial or simply working stealthily out of public view. Probably a little of the first and a lot of the second.

That may change as healthcare reform becomes inevitable; a very ugly foodfight seems imminent. Pollan is a very, very smart guy and certainly knows his way around the media. However, the far right will try to turn his entire life upside down, his apparent friendly relationship with Christian fundamentalist Joel Salatin notwithstanding. In the service of protecting the Smithfields and the Monsantos, Pollan will become the next Bill Ayers. Go and make a Googley of “veggie libel laws” and imagine the possibilities they could be put to silence a critic who urges us to “Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants,” and who, half-jokingly, recommends we “Don’t buy any food that’s advertised.”

Back On Track

by digby

Here’s some good news:

Polls suggest that President Obama’s address to Congress on health care reform had a positive effect on shifting public opinion.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. snap poll of people interviewed before and after the speech indicated that the president shifted public opinion in his favor. After the speech, two-thirds said they supported Obama’s health care proposals, compared with 53 percent in a survey days before the president spoke. About one in seven speech-watchers changed their minds on Obama’s proposal, but the audience was more Democratic than the U.S. population as a whole, so the results do not reflect the views of all Americans.

Dial-testing by Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling and strategy firm, found that Obama’s speech moved Americans on both sides of the aisle to support reform.

Democracy Corps conducted dial testing of the speech with 50 independent and weak partisan voters in Denver, Colorado, followed by focus groups with voters whose support for Obama’s health care plan increased after seeing the speech. The dial group participants were evenly divided among those who initially supported and initially opposed the plan, with an almost equal division between Obama and McCain voters.

These swing voters reacted strongly to Obama’s message. Support for Obama’s plan jumped 20 points, from 46 percent before the speech to 66 percent after. Importantly, Obama also achieved one of his principal goals of boosting the intensity of support. Prior to the speech, just 2 percent of these swing voters supported the plan strongly while 26 percent opposed it strongly; by the end of the evening those numbers were virtually reversed, with 28 percent supporting the plan strongly against just 8 percent strongly opposed. The president was also extremely successful in moving the needle on areas where progressives have struggled over the last few months, making great strides in reassuring voters on issues like the deficits and taxes, seniors and Medicare, choice and control, competition and costs, and government intervention.

This should help a little bit to persuade the fatuous gasbags that the momentum has shifted back in favor of reform. The fact is that these people always seem to like big speeches even if the gasbags find them boring, but it’s helpful right now to at least remind recalcitrant Democrats that Obama still has the power to persuade. The question, as always, is which Democrats he wanted to remind of that.

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Hate To Tell You, But Covering The Undocumented Would Be Cheaper

by dday

Rep. Joe Wilson gave a bumbling, stumbling response to his comments last night.

Once again the media has taken one sensationalistic remark and let it overshadow the entire speech last night, which was a political winner for reform. Everyone should grow up. But it’s worth digging down into the substance of the claims and the actual policy behind it, because there are some important points to be made.

Right now, the way things are, undocumented immigrants (there are no illegal people) can go to an emergency room and get treatment. They can purchase their own health insurance. They can go to a free clinic. They can, in a variety of ways, access health care if they need it.

The plans on the table would provide more security for those with insurance, and provide exchanges for those without coverage. The undocumented can access those exchanges, because it would require them to pay for coverage with their own money. The bill would also provide subsidies to people who cannot afford coverage. The undocumented would not be eligible for those subsidies. It says that in every single bill draft. Rush Limbaugh, being a little more honest than usual today, says “It will cover undocumented aliens. Now it may not specifically say so in the bill… “ He’s talking about enforcement and verification statutes, which is a red herring, because some form of ID is typically required at point of service if you have an insurance card. It’s also a total lie, because there is a provision to implement enforcement in the bill.

b) Implementation- To implement the requirement set forth in subsection (a), the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall, not later than 18 months after the date of the enactment of this Act, promulgate such regulations as are necessary or appropriate to insure that all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act are provided (whether directly or through contractual, licensing, or other arrangements) without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.

It’s not even worth arguing about this with known charlatans. I just saw Jim Clyburn put it best on MSNBC. He said, “I was born and raised in an parsonage and I have seen people take the bible and try to justify something as inhumane as slavery from wordings of the bible. So you cannot stop people from applying their own limited intelligence to words, and that’s what we have here.”

That said, I agree with this:

The Baucus plan currently going around, of course, explicitly states that “[no] illegal immigrants will benefit from the health care tax credits” and limits the insurance mandate to U.S. citizens and legal residents. But Dana is right to ask whether undocumented immigrants should be covered in some capacity. Beyond potentially skewing employer hiring incentives, the exclusion of immigrants from the plan will create a financial burden on the system anyway — which seems to be conservatives’ big concern. By law, hospitals are not allowed to refuse care to anyone in an emergency situation, whether the person is insured or not. The cost of the uninsured then falls both on the hospitals and on the government, which provides $250 million annually as reimbursement through Section 1011 of the Medicare Modernization Act, which has been extended through this year.

So, tax dollars are already being spent on care for uninsured and undocumented immigrants. And hospital resources are being strained since the losses aren’t fully accounted for, which can have an effect on the quality of medical care provided to the general population. Regardless of the system in place, coverage of undocumented immigrants is a problem that’s going to need to be dealt with. Given that, shouldn’t we be working toward a solution that’s more transparent and just?

The President talked about the $1,000 hidden tax on everyone with insurance as a result of funding ER care. That would not change if immigrants had to use continue to use the ER as their primary doctor. That status quo is grossly inefficient and we all pay for it; in fact we pay more than if we just offered subsidies and brought everyone under the umbrella of universal care. In addition, having an underclass of people prone to disease without preventive care is a major public health problem.

Not that there’s anything rational about conservative arguments – they simply want to find a scapegoat for everything to take the blame off their shitty policies, and in an economic downturn, that hammer historically falls on immigrants.

In a general sense, this kind of “blame the brown people” argument will be consistently made until we deal fully with the undocumented within our borders, through both workplace enforcement and some legitimate path to citizenship. Until you do that, these political footballs will always surface, and cowardly Democrats will thunder “we will not pay for undocumented workers!” when we already are paying for them, and could lower that payment.

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Cracked

by digby

So, is this about cracking heads or kissing ass?

ABC News has learned that President Obama will be meeting with 16 Democratic senators (and one “Independent Democrat”) this afternoon at the White House.

They are: Senators Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mark Warner of Virginia, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Tom Carper of Delaware, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet of Colorado, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, and Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

The meeting is scheduled for 4:15 pm ET, in the Cabinet Room.

Many of these senators have expressed concern about if not downright opposition to key elements of President Obama’s health care proposals, particularly his push for a government-run public health care option to compete with private insurers to drive down costs.

Obviously, nobody knows. But until we do, I will indulge my fantasy that Obama is going to be talking about this:

[T]he time has come–and in fact, it is long overdue–for them to begin forcefully making the case that being a member in good standing of the party’s Senate caucus means supporting cloture motions on key legislation even if a given senator intends to vote against it.

This case was, in fact, briefly made in July by Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin–but it gained little traction. Durbin’s argument should be revived in and outside the Senate. Right now, progressive groups around the country are in the midst of efforts to agitate for a “public option” as an essential feature of health reform, and eventually will devote enormous efforts to support final passage of health reform, if we ever get to that point. Wavering Democrats have been targeted for ads and other communications, with mixed results. A significant fraction of that pressure should be devoted to a very simple message: Democrats should not conspire with Republicans to obstruct a vote in the Senate on the president’s top domestic priority. Vote your conscience, or your understanding of your constituents’ views, Ben Nelson, but don’t prevent a vote.

There are those who would respond to this suggestion by arguing that a senator voting for cloture but against the bill could be accused of flip-flopping or deviousness. Let them provide the evidence that voters understand or care enough about Senate procedures to internalize that charge. When John Kerry got into so much trouble in 2004 by saying that he “actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” he was the one trying to explain arcane Senate procedures. “I voted against ObamaCare, but I didn’t try to keep the Senate from voting” should be a pretty easy sell for any Democrat, particularly since the contrary argument requires an explanation of cloture, not exactly a household word.

The harder question is whether public pressure to support one’s party and president on a cloture vote could be supplemented by more tangible sanctions against senators who won’t at least let health reform or other critical legislation get to the floor–such as withholding choice committee assignments or party committee funds. But until Democrats begin to question the right of certain Democratic senators to maintain their tyranny, possible sanctions are beside the point.

It’s bad enough that these so-called Democrats have to be cajoled into supporting health care reform in any way. (If they can’t get behind health care, it’s very hard to see why they consider themselves members of the party they’re in.)But if they can’t even rouse themselves from counting their corporate cash and kissing the rings of Republicans to allow a majority vote, then the country should just give up on this experiment in democracy and allow whoever has the highest net worth to rule the country directly.

All of this depends upon Obama and the congressional leadership having the nerve to do it something which would be unprecedented in the modern era: disciplining the conservatives. We’ll see.

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The Corporatist Five

by dday

The Supremes heard that Citizens United case yesterday, and Dahlia Lithwick sez be very afraid.

When we first met this case, it involved a narrow question about whether a 90-minute documentary attacking Hillary Clinton could be regulated as an “electioneering communication” under McCain-Feingold. The relevant provision bars corporations and unions from using money from their general treasuries for “any broadcast, cable or satellite communications” that feature a candidate for federal election during specified times before a general election. A federal court of appeals agreed with the FEC that the movie could be regulated. Citizens United, the conservative, nonprofit advocacy group that produced the film, appealed. The issue last spring was whether a feature-length documentary movie was core political speech or a Swift Boat ad. But the court surprised everyone when it ordered the case reargued in September, this time tackling the constitutionality of McConnell and Austin.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas are already on record wanting to overturn these cases. Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts have been inclined to wait. The question today is whether we wait no more […]

Solicitor General Kagan stands to defend the FEC, not in a frock coat but a tasteful blue pantsuit, and when Scalia pounces on her, two sentences into her opening, she scolds him as if he were an impudent 2-L: “I will repeat what I said, Justice Scalia: For 100 years this court, faced with many opportunities to do so, left standing the legislation that is at issue in this case.” Kagan is so loose and relaxed, you’d think this was her 100th argument. Which allows Roberts to dispense with the kid gloves and accuse her, respectively of “giving up” an argument she made in her opening brief and “changing positions.” When she is asked, in effect, if she wants to lose this case in a big way or a little way, Kagan is eventually forced to reply, “If you are asking me, Mr. Chief Justice, as to whether the government has a preference as to the way in which it loses if it has to lose, the answer is yes.”

One of the ways the Roberts Court hopes to make all conflicting case law in the campaign finance realm disappear is to blame all prior bad case law on Kagan. When everyone is thoroughly confused about what rationale the government may advance in order to limit corporate spending, Roberts can gleefully conclude that all of Austin “is kind of up for play. …” Poof. And Austin is a problem no more.

As Kennedy bemoans the “ongoing chill” of limiting corporate speech, Scalia recites a lyric ode to the greatness of America’s “single shareholder corporations. … The local hairdresser, the local auto repair shop, the local new car dealer.” Kagan points again to the “100-year-old judgment of Congress that these expenditures would corrupt the federal system,” forcing Scalia to retort that “Congress has a self-interest” and that “I doubt that one can expect a body of incumbents to draw election restrictions that do not favor incumbents.” Kagan corrects him, noting that “in fact, corporate and union money go overwhelmingly to incumbents.” And that this law “may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.”

Kagan goes on to distinguish humans from corporations by pointing out that “we have beliefs; we have convictions; we have likes and dislikes.” When she urges that it’s in the corporation’s self-interest to maximize profits and that “individuals are more complicated than that,” Scalia does another verse on “the new auto dealer who has just lost his dealership.” It’s a vision of fluffy corporate bunnies so compelling, it makes you want to give Exxon a great big hug and an African violet for the holidays […]

Olson very effectively uses his five minutes of rebuttal time to taunt Kagan for the government’s changed positions. And while it looks as though there are five votes to fundamentally alter the way American elections will work, we’ve been through enough renditions of the Roberts Court slapping litigants around at oral argument then loving on them in decisions to make such predictions unwise. Of course, as Waxman suggests in his closing, it does take a somewhat “self-starting” institution to be deciding a case about campaign finance laws in which no litigant has directly raised the issues and no factual record even exists.

Aside from how wonderful it is to read Dahlia Lithwick, this severely depressed me. As we already have what amounts to corporate control of government, opening up the meager restrictions on campaign finance through corporate entities may not mean as much as everybody assumes. Corporations currently funnel hundreds of millions to candidates through PACs anyway. But two things stand out upon reading this. First of all, the kind of significant campaign finance reform we need right now – in particular public financing to level the playing field – will never make it through the brick wall of the corporatist Roberts Court, which clearly has a lock on these issues for 20 years at a minimum. Second, if you read through these arguments, and the general set of opinions of the Court over the last term, you can only conclude that George W. Bush was a successful President. With a legacy that far exceeds his lack of accomplishments in domestic or foreign policy. Bush handed the Court to the Federalist Society right for a decade or more, and while the legal system can still put up a fight with respect to civil liberties, on most issues the ultimate answer will fall on the side of the corporation over the people every single time without question. And that’s a frightening prospect.

I think the only path to checking this power lies at the state level and with corporate charters. But state interests can be arguably more corruptible than federal ones.

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DFHs Need Not Apply

by digby

Guess what?

Yosi Sergant, who recently popped up on Beck’s radar for his involvement in a conference call on national service, has been asked to resign as communications director by the National Endowment for the Arts, sources familiar with the move tell the Huffington Post.

At issue was an August conference call in which the NEA encouraged select artists to participate in an administration project dubbed “United We Serve” and led by the first lady.

Beck attacked Sergant and the NEA on his Fox News talk show, accusing the agency of propaganda efforts similar to those used by Nazi Germany. And now Sergant has been tossed overboard, making him Beck’s second victim in his campaign to rid the administration of perceived radicals, socialists, communists, fascists, anarchists and all other manner of nefarious influences.

Perhaps not coincidentally, both Sergant and Van Jones – Beck’s first takedown – have roots in on-the-ground organizing and were tightly connected with the grassroots progressive community.

The NEA wouldn’t comment on Sergant’s situation specifically, saying that it was a confidential personnel matter.

The White House did not come to Sergant’s defense but says it was not involved in asking him to leave. “The White House did not ask for Mr. Sergant’s resignation,” administration spokesman Shin Inouye told HuffPost.

Sargent probably joined the boy scouts as a kid, which every knows is a quasi Nazi organization modeled on the Hitler youth.

The others at the top of Beck’s hit list will probably fare much better. Sunstein, a favorite of many conservatives, was confirmed yesterday. The others are establishment figures with social standing in the Village. If Beck wants to continue to take “commie” scalps he should probably concentrate on DFHs. They are sitting ducks.

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Send Liberal Jews To The Country For Political Re-education! And Now Let’s Change The Subject, Shall We?

by tristero

I recently wrote two separate posts regarding the nature of -and one commenter’s reaction to- Robert Stacy McCain’s repulsive suggestion that Norman Podhoretz encourage liberal, ie, most, urban Jews to relocate voluntarily to the countryside in order to correct their political alignment. The long history of Jewish persecution, forced conversion, and removal (“voluntary” or otherwise) is, except to the David Irving crowd, quite well known. Anyone familiar with even its roughest outlines would never make such a suggestion. That McCain did so is inexcusable.

During the course of a long response to my second post, McCain brought up, among other things, the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan, compassionate conservatism, No Child Left Behind, Karl Rove’s “permanent public majority,” 9/11, two presidential elections, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, James Mason, Patrick Henry, a girl in Charlottesville, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (and his intimate familiarity with the text), the establishment of religion, federal lawsuits over prayers, the Naked Public Square, militant secularism, “Question Authority” bumper stickers, his own political history, Newt Gingrich, Van Jones, Norman Podhoretz, Trilling, Allen Ginsberg, Mailer, Reagan, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Not once did he allude to the reason which first brought me to McCain’s attention: my objection to his suggestion that to cure Jews of their degenerate liberalism, a fellow Jew should encourage them to evacuate the cities and relocate to rural communities hostile to their politics.

McCain’s tactics illustrate a well-worn rhetorical maneuver: When cornered and exposed as a far-right extremist, change the subject. Say anything, anything at all to distract, shift focus and derail. Churn out as many buzzwordy putdowns of liberalism as you can – “militant secularism,” anyone? – so the original, unacceptable ideas are forgotten. And, oh, whether posing as an intellectual or a straight-shooting-in-the-face Voice of the People, be sure to pile on the ad hominems – ‘get’s ’em liberals all the time.

The fact remains, despite his extended attempt at obfuscation, that Robert Stacy McCain seriously suggested Jews endure exile from America’s cities until they learn the error of their ways. Liberal Jews only, of course. And voluntarily. Of course.

And that puts McCain far beyond the pale of acceptable discourse.

If past experience is any judge, McCain may choose to respond again, dazzling us further with his intimate knowledge of America’s Founders, and coming up with far more baroque variations of “ignorant twerp.” Perhaps he’ll run away and change the subject permanently; whatever, it’s a free country. As for myself, McCain doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Until, that is, the next time his pseudo-intellectual mask slips and he exposes again to the world the true countenance of rightwing extremism and bigotry.

What he will never do is what any decent human being would: unequivocally apologize to American Jews for so much as hinting that they be exiled because of their political beliefs.

I certainly hope he proves me wrong.