Month: October 2009

Stats

by digby

After the silly political season of August, public opinion seems to have stabilized:

Amid the mercurial American public, support for healthcare reform may have slid over the summer (blame it on the doldrums perhaps, if not individual performances), but now it’s fall — and the support seems to be ticking back up. In August, 53% of Americans said they wanted healthcare change; in September, 57% were behind it. In August, 42% thought the nation couldn’t afford to tackle the issue at the moment; in September, that number had ebbed to 39%. These numbers are found in a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The percentage of Americans who think their family would be better off with reform moved upward as well, from 36% in August to 42%. Those who think they and their loved ones would fare more poorly declined, from 31% in August to 23%. For a closer look at American public opinion, including support for various proposals (individual mandates, employer mandates, state program expansions and the like), go here.

It hard to know why people are once again believing what they are seeing in their own lives, but it’s probably a combination of things. During the late summer, congress wasn’t in session and the media was transfixed by the town halls which made it appear that the whole country was completely outraged by the propsect of health care reform. So there may have been a sort of bandwagon effect there. Since then, Obama made a big speech and got into the fray which may have helped remind people of the real issue.

But I would guess it’s also something more prosaic. The jobs picture isn’t improving and people are hurting. When you (or people you know) don’t have health care or the job is precarious, health care reform seems much more important to you personally.

That’s why we can expect the fiscal scolds and their wingnut dupes to step up their game. They are in a race to blame this torpid economy on government debt rather than capitalistic excess. If people begin to look too hard in the direction of the financial elites they might just conclude that they are better off trusting at least some their financial security to the government rather than unelected, unaccountable high risk gamblers. (Of course, it would be quite helpful if one could make a serious distinction between the two, but that’s another post …)

Update: Via Atrios, this sent a chill down my spine. Dear God.

Update II: This too. (h/t to sb)

.

Monkey Wrench

by digby

For those of you who are interested in the impenetrable, arcane working of the Senate as regards health care reform, you must read this fascinating post by Kagro X.

Whenever I read posts like this I realize why the Senate has become a completely dysfunctional institution that makes it nearly impossible to pass sweeping legislation.

Unless, of course, the majority is willing to just fire the parliamentarian if they don’t like his decisions …

.

Tears Of A Clown

by digby

I thought that Tom Delay dancing video was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen, but this actually creeped me out even more:

I could be wrong, but it seems as though he’s saying that the Vick’s doesn’t work like it used to.

This is the leader of the new rightwing populist movement. Oddly enough, watching this makes me feel a little bit better about that.

.

Cry Me A River, Part 3,299

by digby

You may think it’s tough to lose your home, lose your job, lose your health care and lose your retirement nest egg, but you know nothing of the hell that the super-rich go through when they find they are down to their last hundred million:

IT turns out the other half — or at least the tiny slice who live at the top of the wealth pyramid — are not sleeping any better than the rest of America.

At a closed-door meeting of advisers to family offices — which serve families who typically are worth more than $500 million — I learned that the super-rich are just as concerned about the future as everyone else.

Even though the stock market has rebounded from its March 9 low, the family office advisers said many of their wealthiest clients were bracing for more bad news and wondering how it would affect their family unity.

“They are now looking at financial planning and things middle-class families live by,” Kathryn McCarthy, a leading adviser to wealthy families, including the Rockefellers, said at the gathering this week convened by Bessemer Trust

One of my best friends is a financial planner, so if any of you super-rich are looking for one, let me know. She would be thrilled to help you through your time of toil and trouble.

Here’s the thing. If these people are so worried about their futures — as they should be — maybe they should spend some time with their very close pals on Wall Street who apparently don’t give a damn about whether they take down the entire global economy as long as they get their piece before it happens. (Perhaps there’s an island somewhere where they plan to start a new civilization after the apocalypse.)

Of course, the story does go on to tell us why we need to be concerned about such people:

Before you start laughing up your sleeve, be advised that this is not a good thing. When the super-rich get cold feet, the rest of America gets swine flu. They are, after all, the people who might finance new companies that create jobs, make big investments to support existing companies and spread their wealth throughout the economy.

See, they are the productive members of society and we have to protect them by ensuring that they don’t have to pay any taxes. Otherwise we are all screwed.

.

Boldly Shrill

by digby

Lambert and the crew over at Corrente are holding a fundraiser. If you are fond of hellraising left wing bloggers who operate with remarkable independence and originality, you might want to click over and throw Lambert a dime or two. They have been among the few vociferous defenders of the single payer payer plan in the blogosphere and have provided an important voice and basis for debate. We need people like them to challenge our own conventional wisdom from time to time.

They call themselves the blog that everybody hates and nobody reads, but that’s not true. I read them. And you should too. (Just skip the posts where they eviscerate me, ok?)

.

Why I Never

by digby

All day long fatuous gasbags have been saying that David Letterman is in BIG trouble. Psychologists are all over the TV saying that even if the adult employees he admitted to having sex with consented, they may have been subconsciously coerced so he would have been harassing them without them knowing it.

I am a big believer in sexual harassment laws and I know from personal experience that it’s a difficult problem. But if they are going to tell us now that any romantic or sexual relationships stemming from the workplace are harassment and therefore illegal, then I hope this country is ready to become a nation of monks and nuns. It is, after all, where most couples meet.

If it turns out that Letterman was coercing female employees into having sex with him, then I won’t have any pity for him if he’s sued. But the idea that anyone who has a romantic relationship with her boss is an unknowing victim is ridiculous. It infantilizes women and says they have no free will at all.

Limbaugh is comparing Letterman to Roman Polanski and wondering if very Republican should admit to “date rape” (which is so deeply revealing about him that I don’t want to think too much about it.) And it sounds like the so-called liberal media are ready to go there too. Blitzer teased the Polanski story immediately after the Limbaugh story, but only after he asked Brian Todd a series of questions about workplace rules against sexual harrassment, as if that was actually at issue despite the fact that Letterman has never been accused of it.

Every one of these people know bosses who have dated, had affairs, married their employees and vice versa. Many of them have done it themselves. The idea that they are shocked and dismayed by Letterman’s revelation and “wondering” what the rules are is totally disingenuous and is only done in order to pass on this stupid Villager pretense that they are all pious small town puritans who met their spouses in church and only have sex to procreate.

The story is that David Letterman was extorted by a successful TV producer for two million dollars. But these people don’t seem to find that half as interesting as the fact that David Letterman had consensual sex. And considering how much other important news there is right now, spending any more than the time it took me to write this — which was a couple of minutes — is too much. Enough with the phony village moralizing, already.

Update: Here’s the shocking dirt according to People magazine:

“I’m not surprised this came out,” the former staffer tells PEOPLE of Letterman’s admission Thursday night that he had “had sex with women who work for me on this show.”

“Even the interns knew stuff like that was going on,” says the source.

The former staffer says that Letterman, 62, carried on a sexual relationship with one of his “peers, a woman close to him, not an intern.”

At the time the relationship didn’t raise too many eyebrows, adds the source. “It wasn’t a big deal because he wasn’t married. And we heard he had a girlfriend (Regina Lasko, whom Letterman married in March 2009), but she never came around, so it just wasn’t a big deal.”

“He wasn’t considered a sex symbol or anything. In fact, off the air, he came across a lot older than he was.”

Various former colleagues say Letterman could be both aloof and charming – but was always extremely private.

“David is a perfectionist, but his cameramen and other staffers respect him and are loyal to him,” says one source. “People on his staff genuinely like him.”

Another close source, who has a long history with the Late Show, says that the program’s grueling schedule – 15-hour workdays are typical – helped breed inter-office hookups.

“In politics it’s the same thing,” says the source. “People who live it, eat it, breathe it … [It’s] not some sort of predatory, ‘Let’s hire beautiful women so we can feast on them’ kind of thing. That’s just not the way it works.”

The former staffer adds of Letterman, “He never acted inappropriate with any of the female staff. He was very kind, and I never recall anyone saying anything at all bad about him.”

.

Sounds like hell on earth. Of course, those “peers” just didn’t know they were being sexually harassed because women are like children who don’t know that they are being exploited by a ruthless predator.

.

WhyFi, DiFi?

by digby

I confess! I highlight my hair and use finger nail polish remover. Put me on the terrorist list.

Here’s Emptywheel:

As I noted last night, DiFi appears to have used the Najibullah Zazi investigation as justification to make the language surrounding Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act worse, effectively granting the FBI the ability to collect secret lists of everyone who buys acetone or hydrogen peroxide. As a reminder, Section 215 gives investigators a way to get business records or other tangible things without telling the people who those business records pertain to that they have done so. I have speculated that the FBI is using Section 215 now to search out people–who may or may not have known ties to alleged Islamic terrorists–who have purchased the precursors of TATP, the explosive that Najibullah Zazi is alleged to have tried to make. Those precursors include things like hydrogen peroxide and acetone, but common ingredients of beauty and home improvement supplies.
[…]DiFi’s language does two things. First, it shifts the burden of proof even further than the current “presumptively relevant” to the “justify the belief of the applicant language.” If I understand the language correctly, the FISA Judge would go from presuming something is relevant if the FBI has told him so, to simply checking to make sure the FBI has shown why they believe this information is relevant–and to hell whether the FISA Judge thinks it is relevant or not. Though I guess in both cases the FISA Court is just a mandated rubber stamp. [Update: I’ve spoken with two people who have persuaded me the new language is an improvement over the “presumptively” language.] More troubling, DiFi completely eliminates any requirement that the Section 215 records have to pertain to someone with a known contact with someone suspected to be an agent of a foreign power. Whereas under the current language, the FBI can only collect lists of people who have some kind of connection to Zazi who have also bought acetone and/or hydrogen peroxide, under DiFi’s proposed language, they could collect lists of everyone–everyone!!–who has bought products with acetone or hydrogen peroxide in it.

When is she going to retire already? It’s just an embarrassment to Californians everywhere, even if they are too stupid to know it.Seriously, it’s bad enough that we can’t look in the rear view mirror on the legislative atrocities that occurred right after 9/11, but are we going to start trying to out Cheney, Cheney now, every time they catch some half baked would-be terrorist? It’s ridiculous.
And they really need to start thinking about how this stuff is affecting the American economy. From Michael Froomkin:

It looks as if the Bush administration policy on making it much harder to get a US visa (which Obama has yet to alter) has come home to sink Chicago’s Olympic bid:

In the official question-and-answer session following the Chicago presentation, Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, asked the toughest question. He wondered how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Games because doing so can sometimes, he said, be “a rather harrowing experience.”

This is the same stupid anti-visitor policy that is destroying American higher education by driving graduate students to UK and other universities. Here at UM, for example, we have had great trouble getting visas for some great students who want to take our LL.M for foreign students — including one who had a US government scholarship! Maybe some good can come from this stunning defeat for Obama’s personal diplomacy: bring back the pre-9/11 visa rules that made this country a magnet for tourists, investors, and the world’s best and the brightest.

As long as we have panic artists running the country, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

.

I Guess Politics Doesn’t End At The Water’s Edge

by dday

The US government long ago decided that what happened to Honduras President Mel Zelaya was a coup. The whole “waking him up in the middle of the night in his pajamas and putting him on a military plane” must have been the giveaway. Since then diplomatic efforts have attempted to resolve the crisis, but to no avail. Zelaya snuck back into the country, and has been holed up at the Brazilian Embassy. The leaders of the new regime in Tegucigalpa, after trying to take away civil liberties to suppress dissent, have finally warmed to the idea of restoring Zelaya to office with limited powers until the next Presidential election ends his term in January. That would be a responsible compromise for both sides and would put an end to the crisis.

It is at this moment when Sen. Jim DeMint (R-Bugfuckistan) decides to lead a Republican delegation to meet with the ruling regime, which no country on Earth has recognized as a legitimate government. To quote Steve Clemons:

In other words, Jim DeMint is acting on behalf of, in cahoots with, and against the foreign policy of the United States of America in encouraging post-coup Honduran government officials defy the United States. He is encouraging a political leadership which has no legitimacy and which not recognized by other democracies in the region — while the ousted President makes cell phone UN General Assembly statements from a couch-bed in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

A US Senator alone does not make the America’s foreign policy, and working against the policies of the United States in collaboration with foreign officials. . .well. . .there are words that come to mind to describe this behavior, but I want to be civil towards the Senator.

But let me be less blunt. Should we require Senator DeMint to register with the Foreign Agents Registration office at the Department of Justice?

I don’t know that this is a violation of the Logan Act, any more than it was a violation for Nancy Pelosi to meet with members of the Syrian government. But at least that was a recognized world body.

The President and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry tried to block the trip, but Mitch McConnell intervened, and DeMint and three House Republicans – Reps. Aaron Schock (IL), Peter Roskam (IL) and Doug Lamborn (CO) – will attend the meeting.

DeMint calls it a fact-finding mission. But he has been blocking two Obama Administration nominees for Latin American foreign policy in protest of the Honduras policy. Clearly, the Senator is intervening in an area of international diplomacy for naked political reasons. DeMint’s response to that is interesting:

“Sen. DeMint cannot prevent Sen. Reid from bringing the nominees to the floor, he can have a vote at any time. Sen. DeMint has objected to unanimous consent,” said Denton, also adding: “In fact that’s all you can do. In the Senate when, someone says you’re holding up a bill or a nominee, what one Senator can object to is passage by unanimous consent. No one Senator can stop the Senate working the majority of its will through 60 votes.

I hope the Democrats recognize that when it comes to health care.

I don’t see anything legally wrong with DeMint’s trip, though he’s walking a fine line. From the standpoint of foreign policy, it’s damaging and corrosive – and there was a time when members of political parties saw themselves as Americans first and party regulars second.

And you can extend this out to the nonsensical Olympics controversy. As Alan Grayson said today, “Someone should remind them what team they’re on.” Actually, I think they know. Team GOP.

.

The “L” Word

by digby

I just wanted to point out that the Grayson controversy has done far more than simply show the way to deflecting a Republican hissy fit.

Was anyone talking about this before this before Grayson pointed out this week that the only Republican plan was to not get sick and die quickly?

Even as Republicans pummel President Barack Obama’s health care proposals, some GOP leaders worry their party is being hurt by a Democratic counterattack: Where is your plan?

Republican leaders chose not to draft their own comprehensive bill, focusing instead on attacking Democrats’ plans as too costly and bureaucratic. Some prominent Republicans now fear they are getting tagged as the “party of no,” and they want the GOP to offer more solutions to the nation’s health care problems.

Nobody was worried about the Republicans not offering a plan until Grayson pointed out in his inimitable way that they don’t have one.

Grayson is a bomb throwing backbencher in his first term who’s showing the Democrats how to go on offense. It wouldn’t be the first time a congressman became a leader following that route.

Click the thermometer above if you haven’t thrown Grayson some green to thank him for showing the Dems how to fight.

Update: Matthews interviewed Grayson today and actually got off a pretty good bon mot. He said he was wrong to call the Republicans Neanderthals because they don’t believe in evolution.

.

The Big Story

by digby

David Shuster just committed one of those beltway gaffes that inadvertently exposes their real sense of priorities:

The President: … whenever I see statistics like the one we saw today, my mind turns to the people behind them — honest, decent Americans who want nothing more than the opportunity to congtribute to the country and help build a better future for themselves and their families… building an economy of the future will not happen overnight. But we will build it. On that I am both confident and determined. And on behalf of every American I will continue in that effort each and every day for as long as I am in this White House. Thank you very much everybody.

Shuster: That was President Obama at the White House talking in the end there about the unemployment figures. The unemployment again rate shooting up to 9.8%, short of the 10% that some had feared. But the numbers were worse than expected. But the big news, of course, is that over the last 18 or so hours president Obama has been on this journey to Copenhagen and back. He lobbied hard along with the first lady Michelle Obama, for the Olympics ….

He went on to say that conservative talk show hosts say that Obama hurt the prestige of the presidency, which is a huge problem that we should all be concerned about. He promised a long debate on the subject.

Then he went on to talk about John Ensign’s mistress and her husband. And David Letterman.

*In case you actually care about that boring job story, this will give you a good idea of just how awful it really is. This too. And this.

Now back to your regularly scheduled news.

.