If you ever thought the Republicans have any respect for Democrats, even the Lion of the Senate, think again:
Kennedy, one of the major proponents of health care reform, has missed most of the recent debate because of cancer. Both Hatch and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Kennedy’s absence has taken a toll on the process.
“He had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations,” McCain said.
Somehow I don’t think Teddy thought “he made the right concessions” was going to be his legacy.
I haven’t given this a lot of thought, but this post by Howie makes me wonder if the next few years in American politics aren’t going to be incredibly volatile … and fascinating. He contemplates the odd fate of:
stop listening to hate-talk sociopath Glenn Beck earlier this month. Now it looks like Inglis– like two other South Carolina conservatives, Henry Brown and Joe Wilson, who consider themselves more in line with Reagan Republicanism than Limbaugh Republicanism– may well be in for some serious trouble holding onto his seat.
[T]he 2010 election will test whether Inglis’ strongly Republican-leaning constituency in the South Carolina’s 4th District believes he is conservative enough. That’s because the six-term congressman has drawn four Republican primary challengers who argue that he isn’t.
Republican State Sen. David Thomas, when he launched his primary campaign in June, said he was “disappointed” in Inglis for voting in early 2007 against the buildup of U.S. troops in the Iraq conflict– a policy, instituted by President George W. Bush, known as the “troop surge”– and for voting in late 2008 for the financial industry assistance, or “bailout,” measure (PL 110-343).
Candidate Christina Jeffrey, a professor at Wofford College in Spartanburg, said in a statement on her Web site that Inglis is “symbolic of the path many Republicans have taken over the past few years as he has continued to compromise our conservative values.”
Other candidates include Trey Gowdy, a prosecutor, and Jim Lee, an information technology and business consultant. Gowdy, on his Web site, said there is a “near total disconnect between Washington and the people of the 4th Congressional District,” while Lee derided Inglis as a man who has “lost his focus and is now part of the system he originally went to Washington to change.”
When Inglis returned to Congress in 2004 he was less of a radical right firebrand and more of a pragmatic conservative. He backed a few Democratic proposals, though not as many as, say, far right kook Eric Cantor. Inglis grouses that he’s drawn so much opposition this year to his own party’s lunatic fringe. “Apparently I don’t spit and flail enough,” he said.
The right-wing website, We choose to keep Glenn Beck and replace Bob! may auger rough sailing ahead in a crowded primary where Inglis needs to get 50% to avoid a run-off that could expose him to a major push from the kinds of passionate far right Know Nothings who are overwhelming Charlie Crist in Florida and giving wild-eyed extremist Marco Rubio wins in all the GOP district straw polls.
Looks like it isn’t just the Democrats with a little explaining to do to their own base.
Think about that. You have the bases of the two parties challenging their leftmost and rightmost congresspeople to move further left and right. Now, I would make the argument that the leftmost are not nearly as far left and the rightmost are far right. After all, if we were like the teabaggers, we would be showing up at town halls packing heat and demanding the nationalization of industry and worldwide revolution. But the general phenomenon is the same.
I would suggest that this is different than the 70s and 80s when the Democrats fell apart. They immediately distanced themselves from what was perceived to be their crazies and, in fact, nominated a conservative southern Christian at the first opportunity. Sure, there were still big protests against nukes and the like, and the Jesse Jackson coalition in the 80s was widely considered to be a “far left” endeavor. But for the most part, once the Dems lost it in 1980, the party very quickly moved to the center, even though the press continued to pretend that it hadn’t.
What we are seeing now is a right wing that has ben mobilized and animated by a certain set of ideas and kept alive by a separate communications infrastructure which will likely not allow the party to drift back to the middle as it might naturally do. And so the party stays in the far right quadrant. And the left, rightly believing that they voted in a Party which should be answerable to their concerns, is flexing its muscle at the same time. It makes for an unbelievable amount of personal tension.
My personal belief is that in a case like this, the political establishment should throw off its Nehru jackets and toss their Madonna bustiers once and for all and grok that times have changed. This is a period where active citizens are going to demand that their political institutions, especially congress and the presidency, use their power to the maximum effect whether to achieve or obstruct.
It would be unpleasant and somewhat brutal, I have no doubt. But it is also a perfectly legitimate way to govern. A liberal party and a conservative party can simply exercise their institutional prerogatives and take the results to the people every two, four and six years. There is nothing in the constitution requiring that the whining Kent Conrads be allowed to have veto power over legislation. (And there is nothing that says progressives can’t bring the hammer down on their leadership the same way the Republican base does theirs.)
As average folks without a lot of institutional juice, we citizens don’t have a whole lot of options. So we do what we can. But there is one thing we should all probably recognize and deal with: the president, the congress and the media of both parties are all in agreement about one thing: they do not like the rabble at both ends of the spectrum making demands. Remember, it’s their town.
And I include the president in that for a reason. It’s not a matter of him “miscalculating” or failing to understand the nature of the opposition. He, like all establishment politicians, has an interest in maintaining the status quo, and I would imagine that the fear among all establishment politicians is that this phenomenon might actually bring about real change (as opposed to the fluffy, Madison Avenue version they like to sell.) After all, the president has large majorities and a huge amount of power. It’s hard to believe that if he wanted to get real health care reform passed that he couldn’t do it. It’s not 1994 and the Republicans aren’t in ascendance and dominating the discourse. It’s not outrageous to make the obvious assumption that he’s not doing it for the simple reason that he doesn’t want to. And it’s not ridiculous to think that one of the reasons for that is that it would empower the base of the Democratic Party and inflame the base of the GOP. At this moment that particular problem appears to be the biggest threat to the permanent political establishment of both parties there is.
Let’s face it, the most potentially destabilizing political battles right now are within the parties — between the leaders and their most ardent adherents. That’s actually somewhat encouraging to me. I’m not sure how you could ever break through the ossified structures of the village without something like that. Whether anything actually happens remains to be seen. But it’s interesting to think about.
Update: As Greenwald once again thoroughly documents, the media establishment frames all politics as being the Real Americans vs the hippies — and I’m sure the Democratic establishment couldn’t be happier. The Republican establishment actually has a harder task, which may or may not be fortunate for us.
David Gergen says that Americans can’t do comprehensive health care reform because we are so darned special:
GERGEN: I think one of the other aspects of this is very fundamental to who we are as a people. There are a lot of sociologists and historians will tell you we as American people are just different. We’re an outliers measured in many ways. Our value system is different. We don’t think like Canadians. We don’t accept government the way it is. We’re not deferential to authority the way Canadians are or in Western Europe.
He’s cute, isn’t he?
But it does make me think about some creative ways to get around our dilemma. Perhaps the best way to get health care reform would be to have police and the military run the system. Everyone on this program (except Sanjay Gupta, who foolishly questions whether becoming health nazis will work) believes that people are unhealthy because they asked for it. They are convinced that the most important thing to do to cut costs is to punish people for their bad health so those who “do the right things” don’t have to pay for sick peoples’ health care anymore. (Presumably, those with better genes were deemed superior by God from the get go, so they wil be rewarded right along with those who “do the right things.”) Et voila, the costs are contained and everyone is healthy. America is the new Sparta.
Unfortunately, Americans have some bad habits that are going to be hard to break. It seems to me that a little tasing would go a long way to keeping people on the straight and narrow and cutting those costs. After all, unlike the authoritarian Canadians who subserviantly submit themselves to a socialistic medical system, we individualistic Americans are more than happy to allow certain authorities great discretion. They are even allowed to torture innocent people merely if they don’t like their attitude. Putting the health care system under the auspices of the police, makes all resistance to Big Government authoritariansim vanish completely.
If we simply redefine illness as a crime (which these panelists largely agreed it already was) we can incarcerate the sick people and provide them with health care without running up against our freedom loving anti-authoritarianism. In fact, the concept of an individual mandate without adequate subsidies and a public plan will automatically turn the 47 million uninsured into criminals if they don’t immediately start paying the private insurance companies an expensive tribute (the coverage will be nearly non-existant, after all), so we’re part way there already!
Clearly, we have no problem putting people in jail; it’s government providing health care that offends our reverence for liberty. Let’s “reboot” the health care debate and make getting sick a crime. In the land of the free, it’s pretty much the only way to get to universal health care. I have no doubt it would be a huge bipartisan victory.
Kevin Drum on a recent Krauthammer call to have a serious, non-Palinized discussion about end-of-life counseling care:
The only thing that’s subtle here is Krauthammer’s faux evenhandedness. Up until two minutes ago, politicians and pundits across the political spectrum universally believed that advance care counseling was an entirely sane and uncontroversial practice, one that any compassionate society would encourage. Those same politicians and pundits knew perfectly well that it was never about guiding patients in any particular direction and has never been motivated by cost savings in any way. They knew that other countries reimburse for advance care planning — just like any other use of a doctor’s time — and it hasn’t led to any pressure, subtle or otherwise, to pull the plug on grandma.
They knew this. Until two minutes ago. But now they’re pretending — subtly, temperately — that maybe it isn’t true after all. And they’re doing this not because they’ve changed their minds, but because they want to kill healthcare reform for political reasons and they don’t care whether innocent bystanders get hurt in the process. Their “Yes, but” campaign might ensure that patients forevermore mistrust doctors who talk about advance care directives, but they also know that sober, serious, subtle op-eds endorsing this point of view are more likely to derail healthcare reform among the chattering classes than Sarah Palin’s Facebook maunderings. It is intellectual venality of the first order.
Well yes, but…they’ve been doing it the entire 6 plus years Kevin and I have been blogging, and far longer before that.
Lesson #1 about modern conservatism: You cannot have a serious conversation with movement conservatives.
Lesson #2 about modern conservatism: Lesson #1 plusAbout anything.
Lesson #3 about modern conservatism: Lesson #1 plus Lesson #2 plusEver.
In case you were wondering, Joe Lieberman said this morning on John King’s show that we need to concentrate on cost controls in the health care sector in order to bring down the deficit and forget about universal coverage. We just can’t cover everyone, but we have to figure out a way to cut costs dramatically because health care is bankrupting the country.
Considering that Lieberman doesn’t understand that universal coverage with everyone paying in will mitigate health care inflation, and that he considers cost control the most important thing, one can only assume that he’s the guy who wants to off granny — and you too, if you don’t have insurance. After all, we know that people who aren’t insured get some very expensive, inadequate care if they do get sick because we require that hospitals treat people in an emergency. If cutting the deficit is the point of health care reform, then you’ve got to go where the money is — sick people.
Lieberman and Richard Lugar both agree that Obama shouldn’t have put Health Care on the agenda at all because there is a recession. But, of course, if the recession was over you couldn’t put health care on the agenda because Lieberman and Lugar would say it would hurt the recovery. And if the economy is rolling, everyone who is willing to work should be able to get covered, so there’s no need for health care reform. It’s funny how that works.
Everyone agreed that the Democrats needed to cut back their plans immediately and throw a few crumbs at health care that will only make things worse and then move on to the Republican agenda on national security, trade and financial reform which they all agreed could be passed with no problem. Otherwise, Obama will have a failed presidency.
Although it is presented with the surface trappings of one of those self-consciously “hip” post-millennial indie comedies about quirky families that are now fairly interchangeable (Little Miss Sunshine, Juno), the new comedy Post Grad is populated by characters who would have felt more at home in a mid-1980s John Hughes vehicle; in an odd way this makes it pleasantly anachronistic. You could almost picture Molly Ringwald as Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel), a college lit major whose post-graduation dream is to jump right into the career track at a major L.A. publishing house. You have the male childhood friend (and fellow grad) Adam (Zach Gilford) who secretly pines away for her while gallantly respecting the platonic reality (yes…he is, and will forever be…her Duckman).
You even have the Hated Rival. Her name is Jessica (played to the hilt with amusingly snobby arrogance by Catherine Reitman) and she’s been Ryden’s academic arch-nemesis since high school. Much to Ryden’s chagrin, Jessica (along with her other fellow grads) all manage to breeze into immediate employment (obviously, the film was not made with the current economic realities in mind). Her road to that dream job runs into some bumps; consequently she faces every grad’s worst nightmare: Moving back in with the family.
This brings us to the Batshit Crazy Yet Lovable Family. There’s the D.I.Y. Dad (Michael Keaton, at times recalling his character in Night Shift) who manages a luggage store, but who is always dreaming up quirky money-making schemes on the side (he’s got one word of fatherly advice for his college grad daughter, and it’s not “plastics”…it’s “buckles”). Mom (Jane Lynch) divides her time between pinching pennies and reining in Ryden’s weird, sock-puppet wielding little brother (Bobby Coleman) who gets into trouble at school for, uh, licking his classmates (he apparently finds their heads particularly appealing). And don’t forget Grandma (a scene-stealing Carol Burnett, still an absolute riot at 76) who makes her grand entrance at Ryden’s graduation ceremony replete with clanging portable oxygen bottle and a rather noisy bag of Cheetos (not the only glaring product placement-Eskimo Pies get more screen time than some of the cast).
There’s not really a lot of room for character development within the film’s breezy 90-minute running time (don’t expect anything much deeper than a slightly better than average sitcom episode), but the cast is game, there are some genuinely funny scenes and the film is so good-natured that it’s hard not to like it. The only misstep of note is a subplot about a flirtation between Ryden and her 30-something neighbor, a wannabe filmmaker who directs TV infomercials (played by Brazilian beefcake Rodrigo Santoro). It just doesn’t ring true; and the romantic chemistry isn’t there between Bledel and Santoro. That aside, Bledel has a charming screen presence, although she is handily upstaged by Keaton, Lynch and Burnett (I’ll admit that I have never seen an episode of Gilmore Girls, which I’m told is a popular show; so this was my first awareness of her).
This is the first feature-length “live action” film for director Vicky Jenson, who has a background in animation work (she previously co-directed Shark Tale and Shrek). It’s also the feature film debut for screenwriter Kelly Fremon. Ivan Reitman (who directed Ghostbusters and Stripes) produced; which might explain the film’s 80s vibe. If you’re looking for a political message, steer clear (frankly the only reason I was intrigued to screen it was the vague inference in the trailer that it might signal Hollywood’s acknowledgment of our economic woes; it looks like we’ll still have to wait for Michael Moore’s upcoming Capitalism: A Love Story for that). In the meantime, don’t lose any sleep if you miss Post Grad in theaters, although it may be worth a rental on a slow night.
I shoulda just stayed in college: The Graduate, St. Elmo’s Fire, Reality Bites, The Last Days of Disco, The Devil Wears Prada, Working Girl (1988), Slacker, Diner, Wisdom, Baby It’s You, Getting Straight (1970), The Way We Were, Love Story, Four Friends.
Before they left Washington for the August recess, the Finance group, known as the “Gang of Six,” had crafted the outlines of a package that trimmed more than $100 billion from the House price tag and jettisoned a government-run insurance option, which has become a rallying cry for many liberals but is opposed by Republicans. The senators also were looking to provide insurance subsidies to a smaller, less affluent group than the House bill would.
After meeting via teleconference for more than an hour late Thursday, the Senate group is now looking to go further. They support a requirement that all individuals carry health insurance, but they are considering creating a bare-bones insurance policy that would be easier for people to afford without government help. They are also talking about further reducing the number of people eligible for subsidies, said an aide familiar with the talks.
Awesome, awesome plan. If we could just get rid of all subsidies and consumer protections, it would be perfect. All that would be left is the mandate.
Buy insurance stock.
Update: Robert Reich asks the perennial question — and answers it correctly.
In response to the newly revealed details of our torture regime, a reader compiled a handy primer for those who will capture American and allied military personnel in the future:
An Open Letter To Our Enemies:
In the international struggle for autonomy, freedom and dominance, there will be warfare. The United States of America is of course a prominent force for change around the globe and from time to time you may have the unlikely fortune of holding an American Soldier in your captivity. Should this unwelcomed day arrive, the Executive Branch of the US government, in conjunction with the CIA and Attorney General, has compiled a list of persuasive activities that you will be allowed to employ that will not be, at some future date, considered torture and subject to prosecution. We refer to this as your Persuasion Permission Slip or PPS. Please reference this list as needed for appropriate treatment of our soldiers should they be under your care.
PERSUASION PERMISSION SLIP (PPS)
· Physical Discomfort that doesn’t leave a scar. This includes the use of forced positions, extreme temperatures, and constant exposure to noxious stimuli. For example, tying a soldier ‘s head to his ankles and leaving him in the desert in the middle of a camel stampede is acceptable provided no organs are damaged. Note that punctures, bruising and blows may be used but must not permanently damage any organ.
· Humiliation that doesn’t leave a scar.This includes the use of nudity, or sexual contact of any kind that is for the purpose of sadism. Please note, if it is for the purpose of sexual gratification without the essential sadistic component, you run the risk of prosecution for War Crimes. Inserting a light stick into a child’s anus, for example, is not considered torture if it was done solely to frighten or humiliate the child or his parent. Allowances will be made for incidental gratification but if its sole purpose was the pleasuring of the guard on duty, that is another story.
· Infliction of Fear that doesn’t leave a scar. Simulated drowning, electrocution, or mock execution are of course acceptable to America, as long as there isn’t a permanent injury or accidental death. Use of power tools such as hand drills to create an impression of immediate threat is permissible and encouraged provided no actual holes are made. (See Bybee v Black & Decker 2004 for details). This would include chainsaws and other time-saving woodshop devices. Remember that irrespective of how much terror or discomfort the soldier or his family members might feel, torture has not occurred until there is permanent damage to an organ. We recommend having a medical team on standby to provide ameliatorive care so that PPS may occur on an ongoing basis.
I hope this letter makes it clear that the United States is prepared to be tolerant in its treatment of our soldiers — up to a point. Any action that leaves a scar is going to be treated as an act of war. (Of course mental scars don’t count, especially if you are able to obtain a memo from a respected legal scholar saying this was not the intent). Sadly there are some bitter leftists in this country that would seek to deprive our soldiers of their right to PPS by persisting in advocating outdated definitions of torture. Those in power understand war changes trivial things like moral values and national character. I am sure this letter and the strict adherence to PPS will guide your treatment of our soldiers for years to come.
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.
Lafayette CA
What with all the memos floating around and various interpretations of same, I think it’s quite helpful to lay out what is and is not considered torture so that our enemies don’t make the mistake of violating the Bybee Yoo rules which are now deemed to have been perfectly legal by the United States government.
Unless, of course, the US government wants to apply a double standard. It wouldn’t do that, would it?
This is the kind of addle-pated pseudo-reasoning that gives blogging a bad name:
American soldiers are fighting the Taliban, partly to provide time and space while Afghan forces are better trained and partly to persuade some Taliban that resistance does not pay. Call it armed state-building.
But is Afghanistan a war of necessity? And if not — if in fact it is a war of choice — so what?
Wars of necessity must meet two tests. They involve, first, vital national interests and, second, a lack of viable alternatives to the use of military force to protect those interests. World War II was a war of necessity, as were the Korean War and the Persian Gulf war.
In the wake of 9/11, invading Afghanistan was a war of necessity. The United States needed to act in self-defense to oust the Taliban. There was no viable alternative.
Now, however, with a friendly government in Kabul, is our military presence still a necessity?
Such blatantly unsophisticated reasoning really is laughable; anyone remotely familiar with the real world in which wars occur recognizes that “choice/necessity” is not only an obviously false dichotomy but also a crudely misleading framework to discuss the numerous events, both within and out of control, that swirl around the beginnings and the wagings of a war. It is a hopelessly inadequate starting point for a meaningful discussion of what the real issues were on Sept 12, 2001 – for one thing, the Taliban didn’t attack us, bin Laden did, and it is the height of foolishness to conflate the two, no matter how deep the ties – to assert that the bombing of Afghanistan and the subsequent war was in any sense necessary or that there were no viable options to war, or that if the kind of military action engaged in was besides the point.*
Yet this drivel was written by no obscure blogger, typing in his underwear in some filthy hovel. The author is none other than the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and it was published in the New York Times. In other words, lots of folks take this intellectually childish argument as a deeply thoughtful rumination on the policies of war in modern America.
No wonder the neocons got as far as they did. If this is the level of discourse amongst establishment liberals and moderates, the neocons’ psychotic delusions must have seemed not merely bold and audacious, but plausible.
Bob Somerby, the Daily Howler, often gets a lot of heat from fellow liberals who have been the victims of his ire as often as conservatives.** But his basic point is absolutely spot on and we should never forget it: The problem with our discourse is not merely the madness of the right and the corruption of an elite corporate press. It goes much farther and deeper and that. It is a problem that afflicts even (and especially) the so-called “responsible” voices.
Unlike Bob, I don’t think it is mere careerism that permits ludicrously inane notions like the “war of choice/war of necessity” dichotomy or “The End of History” (remember that one?) to become topics of serious conversation, although blind ambition surely plays a role. I think the influence of sheer stupidity on the part of the political establishment should never be misunderestimated. The truth is that the heads of our pointiest intellectuals are often really quite dull.
Back in October, 2003, regarding the absence of serious ideas in discussions of foreign policy, someone wrote that:
It is an intellectual crisis that gives credence to obviously terrible and self-destructive ideas. It makes them seem fit not only for academic debate, and not only for public discussion, but – incredibly -also fit for adoption as policy by the most militarily powerful country the world has ever known. It is an intellectual crisis that permits such long-discredited siren calls as America’s ‘manifest destiny’ to sing out once again and seduce nearly every class in this country into believing the clearly delusional notion that by prosecuting a clearly unnecessary war we could ensure peace.
That wasn’t the president of the Council on Foreign Relations speaking, or even someone from the Center on American Progress. Nor was it published in the New York Times.
*Note: Obviously, I am not addressing whether military action against bin Laden was or was not necessary (nor am I in any way defending the Taliban, of course). I am simply posing the question of whether the framework of a dichotomy which pits “necessity” against “choice” is any sense a useful one in analyzing the situation that faced the US on 9/12. I think it is a ludicrously inadequate way to begin a helpful discussion of that era.
Obviously, something had to be done, there had to be some response because even doing nothing was a response. The question then, as it is now – and as it is for all foreign policy, war-related or otherwise – was what kind of action would be most effective in achieving US goals (duh; that’s what happens when foolish ideas gain traction: to rebut them, you end up all but forced to re-state the perfectly obvious, wasting time no one intelligent has to waste). Perhaps some kind of military action would be the most effective on 9/12, but clearly, the specific actions undertaken by Bush were not only ineffective, but downright incompetent – bin Laden is still on the lam – and, in the long run, completely counterproductive. Necessity has little or nothing to do with it.
**I, too, have been howled at by Bob on several occasions, but for some reason or another, it doesn’t bother me, and sometimes I even agree that I earned the howl.
