There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.
America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.
[…]
Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?
Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.
Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.
Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”
In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.
Yes. Nine months in, it’s obvious that the only choice Real Americans have is to stage a coup. The lessons they’ve learned from recent presidencies is that impeachment is no sure thing and that unless you can get close enough to steal elections, you might get stuck with someone you didn’t vote for. So they’re dreaming of more tried and true methods. That whole democracy thing is very inconvenient.
(And just the thought of “skilled, military trained, nation builders” bending the government to their will clearly sends one big thrill up these fellows’ legs. Oooh baby.)
Five Democrats — Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.) Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Tom Carper (Del.) — voted against the Rockefeller amendment. President Barack Obama‘s average percentage of the 2008 vote in those states was 49.4 percent.
The eight Senate Democrats who voted for the Rockefeller amendment represent states, by contrast, that gave Obama an average of 56.75 percent of the vote in the last presidential election.
While there will be more votes on the public option between now and when (and if) a final bill passes, the vote on the Rockefeller amendment shows how Democrats are approaching the politics of the issue.
Democrats representing red or swing states clearly believe the public option is a non-starter politically despite evidence in recent polling — in places like Arkansas and Montana — that voters in these states favor the idea of a government-run program.
Can the White House change their minds?
Carper and Nelson flipped on the Shumer public option amendment, leaving only Conrad, Lincoln and Baucus voting against it. This is good news believe it or not. It indicates that there are 51 votes for a public option in the senate.
The question most certainly is whether or not the president can change their minds. And frankly, if he doesn’t have enough juice to at least hold them together for one cloture vote then I have to wonder if he has any real juice at all. Every one of these corporate lackeys can vote against the final bill if they dare. Assuming they can bring Byrd in to do it, all they need to do is break a Republican filibuster and “allow an up or down vote.”
Irony Alert: “House Republicans are preparing to vote en bloc against the $106 billion war-spending bill, a position once unthinkable for the party that characterized the money as support for the troops,” The Hill points out. “For years, Republicans portrayed the bills funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as matters of national security and accused Democrats who voted against them of voting against the troops.”
“Congressional Republicans are at their weakest point politically in decades, but they still appear to be keeping Democrats on the defensive when it comes to national security,” Roll Call writes
The Democrats halfheartedly ran a few ads saying that the Republicans didn’t support the troops but didn’t really follow though because they actually didn’t believe in the war funding themselves. So, the Republicans got away with doing what they accused the Democrats of doing for years.
After years of trying to cut Medicare spending, Republican lawmakers have emerged as champions of the program, accusing Democrats of trying to steal from the elderly to cover the cost of health reform. […] The cuts are designed to be relatively painless. Except for an increase in premiums for wealthier subscribers to the Medicare drug plan, the Baucus bill would not increase premiums or co-payments, or explicitly cut benefits, for most Medicare beneficiaries. […]
Fifty-six percent of seniors said they thought reform would weaken the Medicare program. With seniors likely to make up nearly 20 percent of the electorate in 2010, Republicans see Medicare as a potent campaign issue. In the Finance Committee, GOP senators moved repeatedly to strip the spending cuts from the bill.
For decades, the Republicans have been trying to gut Medicare. And every time they screamed bloody murder that the Democrats were “trying to scare seniors” when the Democrats pointed out what they were doing. Today, they are shamelessly doing exactly what they accused the Dems of doing — and they are getting away with it.
It takes a lot of brass to be this brazenly hypocritical but they realize something that the Democrats don’t, which is that there is no accountability for conservatives. Ever. And that’s mostly because the liberals are confused by this and just keep playing by rules that only apply to themselves. In politics, the assault on reason is now a full fledged, mob beat down and reason is on life support.
8 Ayes, 15 Nos. Conrad, Lincoln, Bill Nelson, Carper and Baucus have been ferreted out. We’ll see if anyone flips on the Schumer “level playing field” amendment. Given the debate on the prior amendment, I’d say that MAYBE Bill Nelson could go that route. Probably not anyone else.
Now we know which Democrats want to protect the insurance industry at the expense of people.
…UPDATE: Bill Nelson just agreed to vote for Chuck Schumer’s “level playing field” amendment. And during Schumer’s remarks, he thanked Tom Carper for helping “move us toward consensus.” So we may pick up a couple votes here. Of course, the “level playing field” amendment, which doesn’t tie a public option to Medicare rates, saves $85 billion less over 10 years than the Rockefeller amendment.
…Kent Conrad is saying that the Schumer amendment reflects a “significant improvement” on the Rockefeller amendment… so will he vote for it? No. “The place where we still have a difference is whether the non-profit option is run by the government.” He’s sticking with his crappy co-ops. Conrad says that Schumer is moving much closer to package that can get 60 votes on the floor, but he won’t help move it, of course.
…Schumer amendment vote coming right up. Max Baucus once again says that “the public option can’t get 60 votes, so I won’t vote for it.” It’s the “innocent bystander” theory of government. Why, if only a Senator like Max Baucus had a vote on the bill, surely it could attract the necessary votes!
..here’s the vote: Schumer Aye; Rockefeller Aye; Bingaman Aye; Kerry Aye; Cantwell Aye; Stabenow Aye; Wyden Aye; Menendez Aye; Bill Nelson Aye; Baucus No; Conrad No; Carper Aye; Lincoln No; All R’s no.
So Carper and Nelson flipped. Amendment fails 10-13. Only Lincoln, Conrad and Baucus against it.
Everyone on the right is totally appalledby the NEA enlisting artists to pass on the good word about government and rightly so. Nothing could be worse than using the power of the government for political purposes, right?
Well, unless it has to do with flogging an illegal and unnecessary war (or using the DOJ to tip elections.) Then it’s perfectly acceptable. I’ll be waiting to see if the right can figure out what they think about this (from Raw Story):
A key senior figure in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program, which used retired military analysts to produce positive wartime news coverage, remains in his same position today as a chief Obama Defense Department spokesman and the agency’s head of all media operations. In an examination of Pentagon documents the New York Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request — which reporter David Barstow leveraged for his April 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose on the program – Raw Story has found that Bryan Whitman surfaces in over 500 emails and transcripts, revealing the deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations was both one of the program’s senior participants and an active member.[…] The program, ostensibly, was run out of the Pentagon’s public affairs office for community relations as part of its outreach and attended to by political appointees, most visibly in these records by then community relations chief Allison Barber and director Dallas Lawrence. But as Barstow noted in his report, in running the program out of that office rather than from the agency’s regular press office, “the decision recalled other Bush administration tactics that subverted traditional journalism.” In addition to concealing the true nature of the program and the retired military officers’ participation in it, Raw Story uncovered another effect of this tactic. It provided Bryan Whitman, a career civil servant and senior Defense Department official who oversees the press office and all media operations, cover if and when the program was revealed. Additionally, while political appointees tend to come and go with each new administration, Whitman would be there before the program and he would be there after it. His status as a career civil servant, the fact that he’s worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations – something he points out often in public settings and did as well at the close of his recent phone interview with Raw Story — has also served to buffer him thus far from scrutiny regarding his involvement in this program. Speaking with Mr. Whitman, he denied any involvement or senior role in the program, saying he only had “knowledge” of its existence and called the assertion “not accurate.” Asked to explain the hundreds of records showing otherwise, Mr. Whitman replied, “No, I’m familiar with those documents and I’d just beg to differ with you,” though he did acknowledge being in “some” of them. In defending his claim that he wasn’t involved in the program, Whitman reiterated numerous times that since it was not run out of his office, it was not under “my purview or my responsibility.” Yet records clearly reveal that Whitman was not only fully aware of the program’s intent but also zealously pursued its goal of arming the military analysts with Pentagon talking points in an effort to dominate each relevant news cycle. He was consulted regularly, doled out directives, actively participated and was constantly in the loop. Documented communications show that Whitman played a senior role in securing generals to brief the analysts, fashioned talking points to feed them, called analyst meetings to put out Pentagon and Bush administration PR fires, hosted meetings, determined which analysts should attend trips to wartime military sites (such as the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) and received frequent, comprehensive reports detailing the analysts’ impact on the air, in print and online.
Now, we all know that artists and poets are far, far more powerful than the military, so it’s not fair to compare the two. But still, consistency would require that the wingnuts be just a little bit appalled by the Bush adminstration and Pentagon pushing war propaganda in this blatant fashion. But we know consistency isn’t exactly their strong suit.
But as with so many things, they must be confused about what to do about this. This fellow, after all, is now working on behalf of the Obama administration, which makes his activities a dangerous march to fascism where under Bush they were necessary, patriotic defenses of the homeland.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) continues to be a scold to the liberals in his party. Before a crowd of over 200 gathered at a senior center in Nebraska, Nelson said health care reform ought to pass with 65 votes–a feat which would require at least five Republicans to break with their party.
“I think anything less than that would challenge its legitimacy,” he said.
That’s so true. It’s so much more legitimate to give 35 political enemies of the majority party veto power over all legislation, which is the very definition of democracy.
Update II:Dday, writing over at Brave New Films has a post up about the public option, replete with a BNF video to illustrate everything that’s wrong with the Baucus Plan.
Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone has a huge scoop – 15 years too late, but still a huge scoop – that again shows the capture of our government by corporate interests. It turns out that Betsy McCaughey, the wingnut noise machine creation, was actually a creation of – get this – Philip Morris:
During the debate over Clinton’s health care overhaul in the early 1990s, McCaughey — then an academic at the right-wing Manhattan Institute — wrote an article for The New Republic called “No Exit,” in which she claimed that Hillarycare would prevent even wealthy Americans from “going outside the system to purchase basic health coverage you think is better.” Even though the bill plainly stated that “nothing in this Act” would prohibit consumers from purchasing additional care, McCaughey’s claim was echoed endlessly in the press, with each repetition pounding a stake further into the heart of the reform effort.
McCaughey’s lies were later debunked in a 1995 post-mortem in The Atlantic, and The New Republic recanted the piece in 2006. But what has not been reported until now is that McCaughey’s writing was influenced by Philip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton’s health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company’s strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to “work on the development of favorable pieces” with “friendly contacts in the media.” The memo, prepared by a Philip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:
“Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan.”
The story goes on to say that Big Tobacco funded a front group called Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1993-94 to stage “grassroots revolts” in Congressional town hall meetings, which morphed this year into Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.
We all knew McCaughey was a paid liar, but not a tobacco-funded paid liar. James Fallows has a bit more. This will be a great angle for the media to ignore the next time they invite McCaughey on one of their shows to tell us what’s “really” in the health care bill.
Alan Greenspan had an interesting change of heart today. He endorsed the Consumer Financial Protection Agency as an overseer of banks and lenders.
For Alan Greenspan, lapdog to Ayn Rand, perhaps the only person in America not to recognize the possibility of human greed in the financial markets, to come out for a federal body overseeing the Masters of the Universe, the same kind of consumer protections he opposed while chairing the Fed, is quite a turnaround indeed. But then Greenspan told us that he was rethinking his theories after the biggest financial collapse since the Depression.
Greenspan: I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms…
Waxman: In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working.
Greenspan: Absolutely, precisely. You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.
In particular, Greenspan said that the Fed’s current responsibilities are quite enough for the body to manage without the added layer of consumer protection. He might have gone a bit further and mentioned that, when faced with a choice between monetary policy and consumer protection, the Fed will always choose the former. They don’t exist for the mere consumer. You can see this in the performance of Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve during the housing bubble.
The visits had a ritual quality. Three times a year, a coalition of Chicago community groups met with the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators to warn about the growing prevalence of abusive mortgage lending […]
The evidence eventually led Illinois to file suit against Wells Fargo in July for discrimination and other abuses.
But during the years of the housing boom, the pleas failed to move the Fed, the sole federal regulator with authority over the businesses. Under a policy quietly formalized in 1998, the Fed refused to police lenders’ compliance with federal laws protecting borrowers, despite repeated urging by consumer advocates across the country and even by other government agencies.
The hands-off policy, which the Fed reversed earlier this month, created a double standard. Banks and their subprime affiliates made loans under the same laws, but only the banks faced regular federal scrutiny. Under the policy, the Fed did not even investigate consumer complaints against the affiliates.
“In the prime market, where we need supervision less, we have lots of it. In the subprime market, where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision,” former Fed Governor Edward M. Gramlich, a critic of the hands-off policy, wrote in 2007. “It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat.”
Binyamin Appelbaum’s story is well worth reading. If the Federal Reserve were a rank-and-file employee, they would have been fired long ago.
I don’t know if Greenspan is trying to atone for past sins or actually learn from past experience. But when you have Greenspan and the World Bank in agreement with the likes of Elizabeth Warren, that Fed powers have grown too strong and a separate entity needs to be charged with protecting people who enter into financial arrangements, there clearly is a growing consensus here.
Here’s the latest “pro-life” tactic, which I’m sure will be a lot of fun for all of us:
It is one of the enduring questions of religion and science, and lately of American politics: When does a fertilized egg become a person?
Abortion foes, tired of a profusion of laws that limit but do not abolish abortion, are trying to answer the question in a way that they hope could put an end to legalized abortion.
Across the country, they have revived efforts to amend state constitutions to declare that personhood — and all rights accorded human beings — begins at conception.
From Florida to California, abortion foes are gathering signatures, pressing state legislators and raising money to put personhood measures on ballots next year. In Louisiana, a class at a Catholic high school is lobbying state legislators as part of a civics exercise.
[…]
“I realize it’s been defeated in every state where it’s been attempted, but I am not discouraged,” said Hoye, who has founded the California Civil Rights Foundation to push the initiative. “Everywhere I go from now on, we are going to be talking about personhood. Imagine the discussion statewide on whether the child inside the womb is human or not.
“
Yes. Imagine. Ugh.
This is just another harrassment strategy to wear down the population until they finally just give in out of sheer fatigue. I certainly know more than a few liberals who would love to add this to the death penalty, gun control column.
Dave Weigel reports from deep in the heart of the conservative movement:
Kitty Werthmann has made quite a career out of warning Americans that fascism is on its way. The 84-year-old native Austrian survived the excesses of the Third Reich and, in her dotage as a leader of the South Dakota branch of the Eagle Forum, recorded tapes and videos explaining just how Hitler took power. She made her case during George W. Bush’s presidency, but the audience was small–fringe conservative activists, radio hosts like Alex Jones. Then came President Barack Obama. On Saturday, at the “How to Take Back America” conference, Werthmann found herself speaking to an overflowing room of conservative activists about the parallels between Obama and the rise of Hitler. “We had prayer in school before we started class, and after class,” said Werthmann. “One day I came into the classroom and the crucifix was gone, and there was Hitler’s picture, and the Nazi flag on either side. And our teacher said, ‘Today we don’t pray anymore. We sing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles.’” [I hope nobody tells her about the Pledge of Allegiance. hooboy… ed] The audience of mostly female conservative activists murmured; some of them scrawled out detailed notes, shaking their heads at what they were hearing. It had been a few days since Fox News reported that a New Jersey school had children sing a song of praise to President Obama. They kept on writing and listening as Werthmann explained how Hitler had euthanized mentally handicapped children, and how he’d kept lists of political enemies. “What would you suggest we do,” asked one activist, “if we are asked to give up our guns?” “Don’t you dare give up your guns!” thundered Werthmann. “Never, never, never!” “Give them back one bullet at a time!” called out another activist. The tense atmosphere melted a little bit; the room broke up with laughter.
Ah, good times at Phyllis Schlaffley’s yearly confab. Apparently, it’s more successful than ever this year.
But this was classic:
“If you look at the classic model for moving to Marxism,” said retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who would give the conference’s opening speech, “you look at what every Marxist organization has done, they nationalize. They redistribute wealth. They restrict gun ownership. They then go out and suppress the opposition. And then, finally, they censor the media.”
In his speech, Boykin–who has gotten into hot water for speaking out against Islam while in uniform–begged the audience to pray for their country. “It’s only because of intercessory prayer that we haven’t been hit again since September 11,” said Boykin. “Pray for America for 10 minutes a day. If we can mobilize millions of prayer warriors that can pray for 10 minutes a day, we can open the gates of heaven.”
Boykin, of course, is the Delta Force zealot Zelig who became famous for saying that he was fighting the terrorists for Jesus:
The Pentagon has assigned the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an Army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.
Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, is a much-decorated and twice-wounded veteran of covert military operations. From the bloody 1993 clash with Muslim warlords in Somalia chronicled in “Black Hawk Down” and the hunt for Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar to the ill-fated attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, Boykin was in the thick of things.
Lt. Gen. William G. ‘Jerry’ Boykin, speaking about battle with a Muslim warlord Yet the former commander and 13-year veteran of the Army’s top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hated the United States “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian … and the enemy is a guy named Satan.”
Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”
“We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this,” Boykin said last year.
On at least one occasion, in Sandy, Ore., in June, Boykin said of President Bush: “He’s in the White House because God put him there.”
Anyway, it’s interesting to watch the Christian right shifting into anti-communism/fascism (which seems to have morphed into the same thing, which would come as a helluva surprise to Hitler and Stalin….) A guy like Boykin is perfect. He’s a real Christian soldier, who fought for both God and the flag as if they were the same things — kind of like the Nazis actually. He’s an excellent standard bearer. The real Jack D. Ripper.
Wiegel’s reports from the front are fascinating. The right may be confused but they are thrilled to be wallowing in their domestic paranoia once again. The Islamofascists are terrible and all, but they’re nothing to the threat of the Amerifascists, the clear and present threat to everything the wingnuts hold dear.