Month: September 2009

In Case You Were Wondering

by digby

… what Chuck Todd thinks, he just said unequivocally on Andrea Mitchell that the Finance Committee bill is Obama’s preferred bill, that it is being done with the cooperation of the White House, and that once it is released, Obama will do everything in his power to pass that bill.

Chuck Todd is a bit of a dim bulb, but he is a perfect purveyor of beltway conventional wisdom. His proclamation is what the Village believes and regardless of whether or not it’s true, the debate will be shaped by that preconceived notion.

Just a word to the wise: as of September 15th, if the committee reports out a bill as promised, the proponents of real health care reform will be fighting the notion that the debate is over and anything more than minor cosmetic changes to the bucket of corporate compost the Finance Committee serves up will be portrayed as Obama caving to the hippies. Plan your arguments accordingly.

Update: Judd Gregg, (the man who proved that Obama’s political judgment is more than a little bit suspect) has thrown down the gauntlet. They’ll do everything in their power to stop health care cold.

Update II: In reading the Gregg article more closely, it appears that the co-op plan probably won’t qualify for reconciliation. And since the Republicans are going to foreclose any cooperation on health care via filibuster if they can, it would appear that co-ops can’t make it through the Senate.

Interesting dilemma for the White House. Public option or nothing?

Update III: Ooooh. The plot thickens. “Robust” public option or nothing? Brian Buetler reports:

As Senate leaders begin work on a Democrat-only health care bill, they’re finding themselves confronted with an unexpected irony: Though the caucus has reached an uneasy consensus around a public option that’s modeled in many ways after a private insurer, it may be necessary to make the public option more liberal, and thus, more politically radioactive, if it’s to overcome a number of unique procedural hurdles. This is the needle Democrats may have to thread if they want a public option, and at the same time, want to bypass a Republican filibuster. And the key for them will be keeping conservative Democrats on board. “A very robust public option that scores significant savings would presumably be easy to justify doing through reconciliation,” says a Senate Democratic aide. “But it is still being studied whether other, more moderate versions of a public option could pass parliamentary muster.” According to Martin Paone, a legislative expert who’s helping Democrats map out legislative strategy, a more robust public option–one that sets low prices, and provides cheap, subsidized insurance to low- and middle-class consumers–would have an easier time surviving the procedural demands of the so-called reconciliation process. However, he cautions that the cost of subsidies “will have to be offset and if [the health care plan] loses money beyond 2014…it will have to be sunsetted.” And there the irony continues: Some experts, including on Capitol Hill, believe that a more robust public option will generate crucial savings needed to keep health care reform in the black, thus prevent it from expiring. It’s a very technical conundrum with huge policy ramifications. So it’s not surprising that Republicans are on to it, and preparing for war. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH)–ranking member on the Budget Committee–says the only way for the public option to survive the process is for it to be “very aggressive in setting rates, price controls and rationing,” a fact which may cost Democrats a number of conservative votes within their own party. However, if it’s too weak, and doesn’t meet the procedural demands of the reconciliation process, Gregg says the Republicans are preparing myriad objections to it and other aspects of the Democrats’ reform plan. read on…

This really is becoming an interesting battle. The Republican obstructonism, from a number of anlges, is pushing Obama to choose between a good plan or nothing.

If he picks a good plan, maybe we should send them all thank-you notes.

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You’ve Never Talked Nicely About The Twilight, Why Do You Hate Nature

by dday

Joke Line went way over the edge yesterday, using language that would make Joe McCarthy proud to savage Glenn Greenwald, with additional slurs thrown in for good measure.

Twice in the past month, my private communications have been splashed about the internet. That such a thing would happen is unfortunate, and dishonorable, but sadly inevitable, I suppose. I ignored the first case, in which a rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald’s published a hyperbolic account of a conversation I had with her at a beach picnic on Cape Cod.

Stop it right there. That “pathetic woman acolyte” is aimai, commenter here and I.F. Stone’s grand-daughter, who had a revealing conversation with Klein recently. Classy of Joke Line, who got famous in part by writing up other people’s “private conversations” (since when is me talking to someone else and the other person writing about it “private”?) under an anonymous byline, to call anyone a “pathetic acolyte”. You know that author you like to read? Why are you such an acolyte? Pathetic! Aimai takes care of that one easily.

Joke then moves on to Greenwald. This is how he proves that the Salon writer “cares not a whit for America’s national security.”

For the past several years, Greenwald has conducted a persistent, malicious campaign to distort who I am and where I stand. He is a mean-spirited, graceless bully. During that time, I have never seen him write a positive sentence about the US military, which has transformed itself dramatically for the better since Rumsfeld’s departure (indeed, he ridiculed me when I reported that the situation in Anbar Province was turning around in 2007). I have never seen him acknowledge that the work of the clandestine service—performed disgracefully by the CIA during the early Bush years—is an absolute necessity in a world where terrorists have the capability to attack us at any time, in almost any place. Nor have I seen [him] acknowledge that such a threat exists, nor make a single positive suggestion about how to confront that threat in ways that might conform to his views. Therefore, I have seen no evidence that he cares one whit about the national security of the United States. It is not hyperbole, it is a fact.

There’s a backstory to this. Greenwald made Joke Line into a fool during the FISA debate, when he admitted that he had no idea what he was talking about but still bothered to pontificate about FISA as if an expert, claiming that Democrats wanted to give terrorists “the same rights as Americans”. Joke was exposed as an idiot and a knave, and he’s mad. He’s carried this grudge for two years because Greenwald de-pantsed him in front of the whole Village.

So, he has decided to make the “I’ve never seen Glenn Greenwald thank his mailman – how dare he claim to support the postal service and other government programs!” argument. Putting aside the irrelevant fact that Greenwald has written favorably of the military, this is really about as low as a so-called “liberal” columnist can get, demanding the journalistic version of a national loyalty oath before being let into the club. This idea that Americans cannot criticize certain hallowed elements of our national security apparatus without first gravely intoning the deep respect and admiration we all have for them is about the silliest and also the most dangerous sentiment I’ve seen expressed in a long time. Joke Line has been called “the liberal media” for so long he longer has to think about reflxively slobbering all over the institutions of authority, like a Pavlovian dog he does it by nature. And thus it becomes natural to slam opponents in the terms of whether or not they sufficiently meet the same standard of creepy hero worship. Jim Henley takes this where it appears to be going.

You may think that we already live in a country where everything is “Veterans Memorial” This or “American Legion” that, but we have not begun to express adequate appreciation for our armed forces, clandestine services and military contractors. I think we should start by renaming Joe Klein as Armed Forces Triple Canopy Memorial Oh Dark Thirty Klein. Glenn Greenwald will be Flag Day COIN Enhanced Interrogation Greenwald. It is a little-known fact that IOZ’s real name is Ronald Forward Operating Base Reagan Military Roethlisberger, so that’s one. This blog’s name shall immediately and henceforth be “Pentagon Yay!”

To Klein this is simply an expression of rage against someone who got the better of him two years ago. He fell in the punchbowl and now he wants to beat up the guy who laughed the loudest. Moreover, Klein wants to shut the velvet rope of the private DC club he and his pals have enjoyed for so long, so he figures he’ll marginalize Glenn Greenwald by painting him as an America-hating extremist (the true colors really come out in times like these) so he can nibble on cocktail weenies in peace.

Greenwald’s response is restrained, given the circumstances.

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Partly Correct

by tristero

Edward Wasserman in The Miami Herald:

As the saying goes, what really matters isn’t what people think, it’s what they think about: Debunking falsehoods is fine, but the more that news media embrace it as if it’s a cure-all, the worse we’ll all be. The solution isn’t to refute, it’s to ignore.

Useful, but not sufficient. Sometimes ignoring falsehoods isn’t enough. Refusing to pass on the swill spewing from the mouths of liars, intellectual scoundrels, and men with conflicted national loyalties would not have stopped the Bush/Iraq war, for example.

Sometimes you need to employ merciless ridicule, satire, and unalloyed contempt in the service of keeping the discourse sane. That’s why they’re part of the language, you know. In fact, the mainstream’s refusal to employ these rhetorical devices is a good reason why professional comedians like Stewart and Colbert have become some of the most important goto news providers in 21st century America. There is no reason to restrict the ridiculing of scoundrels to comedy shows, however. If Grassley had been met with mockery rather than respect, there would be far less serious discussion of whether Obama wants to kill grandma, or maybe just deny her coverage a little.

But no, heaping contempt on the right…that’s just not done if you want to be considered serious. Whenever most folks with access to microphones weren’t fawning over the bold audaciousness of getting America’s children killed in a country they couldn’t locate on a map for no reason whatsoever, they were treating the insane delusions of the neocons with sobriety and deference. Doing so provided these hallucinations – remember “hope might triumph over experience?”- with a gravitas that, even then, was utterly ludicrous.

As extremely important as they are, a sober debunking of the facts and/or merely ignoring the extreme rightwing isn’t nearly enough to marginalize bad ideas and their purveyors. They also must be laughed at, sneered at, exposed for completely lacking any moral, intellectual, or political credibility whatsoever. And that takes a highly diverse palette of effective rhetorical techniques. “Nyah, nyah, I can’t hear you!” just won’t cut it.

[h/t, Digby]

A Conversation With David Neiwert

by digby

I’m told there are still a few spaces left to hear Dave talk about his book tonight at Brave New Studios. It promises to be a fascinating conversation about a very important topic: how in the world did the wingnuts get so crazy?

Time: There will be a reception at 6 pm. The program will begin promptly at 6:30 pm. Note: Please be aware that they are filming this event so the studio door will be shut at 6:30 pm sharp. Location: 10536 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232
Please enter through the gate behind the building. RSVP: Please RSVP by emailing ewagner-at -bravenewfoundation.org

Come on by!

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Four Years Ago Today

by digby

…. we were just beginning to understand how bad it was. We saw people being rescued from atop buildings. We knew many were homeless. The talk of looters was rampant and the media was eating up the rumors. The right was nearly hysterical.

Here’s a typical post from that day:

KATRINA: “YOU LOOT, I SHOOT”
By Michelle Malkin • August 31, 2005 01:42 AM

***scroll down for updates…Louisiana Gov. requesting federal troops…looting in Biloxi…hospital evacuations…someone looted a Dyson vacuum cleaner…”Finding vs. looting…”***

Darkness is descending on New Orleans, literally and figuratively. Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, the N.O. Times-Picayune blog reports that the local children’s hospital is under siege:

[…]

Things are spiraling completely out of control–and contrary to some naive observers, the crimes are not just being committed by people desperate for basic food and sustenance.

In fact, according to right wingers the place had descended into total anarchy:

Something has happened in New Orleans that is unprecedented. We’ve seen it happen on a smaller scale during other natural disasters. The looting, the anger, the despair was evident in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in Florida. However, while the area damaged by Andrew may have been just as large as the swath of total destruction left by Katrina, Andrew never quite destroyed the spirit of community and shared faith which allowed Floridians to maintain a patina of civilization that kept them from lunging at each other’s throats and descending to the level of animals whose only thought was of obeying the primal instinct present in all of us for self preservation. Make no mistake. Unless something truly dramatic happens in the next 48 hours, the situation in New Orleans will degenerate into something heretofore seen only in refugee camps and places like Somalia. People will start forming themselves into mobs for protection. And those mobs will start fighting both the authorities and each other for scarce resources as people get hungrier and thirstier by the hour.

It was revealed later, of course, that 90% of the reports of criminal activity were completely bogus and the most famous of the incidents was actually a result of the police shooting completely innocent people (a case which is still being investigated today.)

Of course civilization did break down, but not quite the way these hysterics portrayed it. It broke down in the Convention Center a couple of days later because the authorities left thousands of people to fend for themselves out of fear of the rampaging mobs that existed only in the fevered minds of the thinly disguised racists of the right. The shame of that is still haunting.

But on August 31st we still didn’t know how bad it really was or how bad it was going to get.

Here’s what I wrote that day:

Game Cancelled

BagNews Notes has the most interesting take on the compelling images of New Orleans: he looks at pictures of the refugees at the Superdome and observes:

Beginning with the weekend evacuation, one unstated subtext running through much of the reporting involved the disparate prospects between rich and poor. In many accounts, for example, the more well-to-do were securing refuge by way of upper-floor hotel rooms, or escape via rental cars and long-haul taxi rides.

On the other hand, those of modest mean mostly headed for the football stadium.

In looking through the painful photos coming out of this ravaged city, I was particularly struck by the scenes shot at the New Orleans Superdome — which seemed to have transformed, almost overnight, into the world’s largest disaster shelter.

Besides people trying to adapt to the building as living quarters, what I found ironic was the fact that this was the only way the lower income evacuees — not to mention the needy or indigent — would ever get close to these field level seats.

The pictures coming out of New Orleans are all horrible. But the income disparities among the citizens are brought into stark relief by this tragedy. Everyone is affected of course, but those who had little to begin with are truly left with less than nothing now. A whole lot of people who were hanging by a thread already just dropped into total despair. That dimension of the tragedy really makes my heart ache.

That was only one facet of the tragedy as it turned out. The worst was yet to come.

I highly recommend that you read this post from the indefatigable Scout Prime, who has been blogging non-stop about Katrina since the day it hit. Watch the videos. Remind yourself.

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The Patriots

by dday

The counter-protesters at an event in Austin, TX yesterday just took the vile rhetoric we’ve seen on display this August one extra step:

“the protesters had Larry Kilgore, a “Christian activist” and candidate for governor who has endorsed executions for homosexuals; Debra Medina, a Ron Paul Republican and a slightly-less long-shot candidate for governor; and Melissa Pehle-Hill, yet another fringe candidate and a member of a self-appointed “citizens grand jury” investigating Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro.”

Kilgore captured the sentiment of the mob. (video here)

“I hate that flag up there,” Kilgore said pointing to the American flag flying over the Capitol. “I hate the United States government. … They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need!”

“We hate the United States!”

Just a lone nut, I guess. Except the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, flirted with the secessionists a few months ago. He didn’t attend this protest, which I guess is a positive step.

But this has increasingly become the Republican base. A group of people who feel completely justified in chanting “We hate the United States!” I seem to remember being told that I hated America and I was “on the other side” and “in league with the terrorists” because I didn’t agree with an unnecessary, illegal and ultimately disastrous war. I don’t have tape of myself from every day in that time, but you can trust me that I never chanted “We hate the United States” in front of a state capitol building.

Note, too, the lady who used the phrase, “the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots,” a quote from Thomas Jefferson, often misappropriated by extremists and the Patriot movement. Timothy McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt that bore this inscription when he was arrested for murdering 168 people in Oklahoma City.

What the report reflects is a reality that law enforcement trying to deal with domestic terrorism in America must confront: Their subjects are thoroughly American; many of the people drawn into these movements are, if anything, “hyper-normal.” Their version of “patriotism,” for instance, is so extreme that they actually hate not just their government but their fellow citizens — in essence, their country: because, you see, it has been “perverted” from its original purposes.

The hyper-normality is a kind of intentional camouflage. The Patriot movement, and militias in particular, were a very specific and intentional strategy adopted in the 1990s by the white supremacists and radical tax protesters of the American far right — and the whole purpose of the strategy was to mainstream their belief systems and their agendas. The tactic was to adopt the appearance of normal, “red-blooded” Americanism as a way of pushing out the idea that their radical beliefs are “normal” too.

In the process, they often adopted time-worn “patriotic” sayings and symbols, such as the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag Beck wears, as their own — though with a much more menacing meaning. If you’ve seen that flag at an Aryan Nations compound, as I have, you never quite look at it the same.

This is why the meaning of Thomas Jefferson’s quote above is quite different for them than it is for you and me. To all outward appearances, it is just an expression of avid patriotism. But to a Patriot movement follower, it means something potentially deadly.

Patriots who use the symbols of American history while claiming overtly to hate America. This would be something good to ask Dave Neiwert about tomorrow.

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Losers And The Left

by digby

Chris Matthews had on David Corn and Eugene Robinson to discuss the fact that the liberals are going to ruin everything like they always do. Surprisingly, neither Robinson and Corn seemed to agree, at least not entirely:

Corn: There are different ways of compromise. I don’t believe in making the perfect the enemy of the good or the possible, but I do believe that Obama in certain ways miscalculated…I think he entered the debate thinking he could do this in a non-partisan fashion and I think that was a miscalculation. It’s winding up in a very polarized manner and I think he’s getting the, at this stage, he’s getting the worse for that.

Matthews: It’s funny. What has changed, Gene and David, has been the tone of the country. We did come in January, well maybe this guy will get a few breaks from the other side and now it looks like we’re down to Olympia Snow it looks like being the 60th vote after Ted Kennedy.

Robinson: Yeah well, how did we get there? Well there would be two competing narratives about that. Mine would be that the Republican party has adopted a strategy of saying no, basically, and Obama has offered and has offered and has offered, maybe too early on some occasions and maybe hasn’t gotten anything in return. … but I think there is a sentiment out there in the country that wants bipartisanship and I think the White House calculates that being seen as the party that offers that is a good thing. And if you fast forward everybody’s starting to think about 2010, by then the economy could be coming back we could be out of this cycle of unemployment, things could be getting better …

Matthews then showed Bill Clinton at Netroots Nation telling the audience that it was politically necessary to get a bill out. The discussion continued:

Matthews: … I completely buy what he’s saying. In politics if you lose, you lose. And if you think you’re going to get any credit from the center or from the right or any of the commentators from that part of the world you’re crazy. The Democratic left will be pounced on, blamed for defeat. So this idea that you’re waiting for the perfect bill or you won’t go without the public option is suicidal, but that’s my thought …

Corn: That’s not necessarily the issue. (And I can remember a day Chris when you didn’t think Bill Clinton was so Godlike). But that aside, I do think there is a way to have a clear fight. And I think this is one of the problems Barack Obama is having here … I think the health care fight has become a very muddy fight now. Iit’s not a clear battle and it’s not clear what he stands for in terms of the details of this bill.

And you can’t just pass anything. It has to be something that people recognise as good for them and they have to have a clear understanding of this bill. So, to that degree, I think Bill Clinton is right; passing something is better than nothing. But if it’s something that’s unclear and people don’t really understand, and can be demagogued even after passage, that won’t necessarily help the Democratic Party politically.

[…]

Matthews: I think it should be a page or two long, it should be that everybody’s got to enroll, everybody’s got to be part of it and it should regulate and control the insurance industry so it doesn’t make a killing out of this

Robinson: Absolutely. But Bill Clinton’s message cuts both ways. It’s also a message to Democrats who may be recalcitrant who may be unwilling to to stick with what is the majority view of the Democratic caucus to what the bill ought to loo0k like. And part of that message is , you know, if the Democrats go down in 2010, who’s going to lose? It’s those marginal Democrats in 2010 who are going to be in trouble, and it is better for them for the Democrats to pass a bill even if it goes further than what they might like …

Matthews went on to describe the left as the PLO, determined to blow everything up to which Corn replied:

Right now it’s not the left that’s controlling the ballgame here. it really is the White House and Max Baucus and others. So if anything is going awry, it’s not because poeple on the left are criticizing.

Setting aside Matthews’ usual soporific CW and general inanity, both Corn and Robinson make the same important point: if the Democrats don’t pass decent health care, it’s the Blue Dogs who are going to suffer, not the liberals. Matthews is right about one thing: Americans don’t like losers and even if they don’t like the health care plan, failure to pass anything will blow back on everyone in the party — it’s not like Republican challengers in marginal districts are going to go easy on the Blue Dogs and give them credit for voting against health care. It will be like 2002, where no matter how much the Democrat marched around with a flag, he still got nailed for being unpatriotic.

Some of these Blue Dogs are probably going to lose anyway. They were swept up in Obama’s coattails and in this sour political and economic environment his coat frayed immediately. But if health care actually works and the economy is looking better, a few more of them might hang on. If it tanks, they’ll be tarred with its failure, not the left, who are all in safe districts.

I’ve been writing about this for some time as have many others in the blogosphere. But it’s good to see the normal conventional wisdom being challenged by Robinson and Corn on Hardball. It went in one of Matthews’ ears and then got lost somewhere in his head, but it’s possible that some other people heard it and realized that automatically scapegoating the hippies doesn’t actually make sense in this circumstance.

The Blue Dogs and the Senate corporate lackeys are the ones standing in the way of health care reform, not the progressives. If anybody pays the price for failure it will be from among their numbers and from where I sit, that’s exactly as it should be. If they don’t want that to happen, maybe they should stop playing the role of the GOP before it went crazy, cooperate and pass real health care reform. It’s for their own good.

*All of this assumes that the White House and the leadership actually want to keep their large majority and want to pass health care reform. Whether that’s the case is increasingly unclear.

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Two Million Buck Chuck

by digby

PCCC and DFA are launching a new ad in Iowa calling out that tweeting nincompoop Chuck Grassley.

Sign on as a supporter of this ad.

“Senate Democrats shouldn’t water down reform to appease Republican politicians. There is Main Street bipartisanship back home for the public option.”

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