Move On Moves In
by digby
Move On joined the Blue America fundraiser for progressives who are standing firm for the public plan today. And guess what?
If you haven’tthanked those who have stood up today’s the day. Let’s get to $350,000.
The DFH’s are making themselves heard.
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The Limits Of Comity
by dday
Even a “split-the-bill” strategy would require 60 votes for cloture on the more non-controversial items of health care reform. And as Digby noted, Republicans like Jon Kyl are objectively pro-discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Furthermore, expecting GOPers to go along with certain health insurance reform items after getting cut out of other elements of the bill is a fantasy. So those 60 votes will have to come from Democrats.
And all Democrats ought to stick with the wishes of their party rather than join a Republican filibuster. But there’s one very sad detail – Ted Kennedy is fighting cancer. He’s very sick. He didn’t attend his sister’s funeral. And while I believe he’d get wheeled in on a gurney if it meant the passage of his life’s work, this letter shows that he’s preparing for every eventuality. And here he runs up against Massachusetts state law.
A cancer-stricken Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has asked Massachusetts leaders to change state law to allow a speedy replacement of him in the Senate, fearing a months-long open seat will deny Democrats a crucial vote on President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
In a note to Gov. Deval Patrick and other state leaders, Kennedy wrote “it is vital for this commonwealth to have two voices speaking for the needs of its citizens and two votes in the Senate during the approximately five months between a vacancy and an election.” […]
Kennedy’s letter acknowledges the state changed its succession law in 2004 to require a special election within five months to fill any vacancy. At the time, legislative Democrats — with a wide majority in both chambers — were concerned because then-Republican Gov. Mitt Romney had the power to directly fill any vacancy created as Democratic Sen. John Kerry ran for president.
I’m a bit all over the map on this. I actually think the Senate appointment process for vacancies is anti-democratic and wrong. But a five-month open seat does not serve the interests of Massachusetts residents either. Also, Kennedy, mindful of his cancer fight, could have resigned months ago. It’s very sad that such choices have to be made given the process we have.
The real problem, of course, is that we have a system where everybody knows Ted Kennedy’s position on health care – his committee staff helped write the Senate HELP bill – and he could easily indicate his position on elements of the bill from a hospital bed or through a staffer, but his specific presence on the Senate floor is required. The Senate is supposed to be about “relationships” and “comity” but the members cannot allow a colleague of 40-plus years the ability to make his preferences known given his medical condition. Ezra Klein adds:
That is to say, where Kennedy’s great friend Orrin Hatch would have voted to uphold a filibuster, now he will vote to shut it down, as that’s how the vote would have gone if Ted Kennedy were still alive, and it is neither decent nor small-d democratic to doom health care because the bill’s greatest advocate contracted incurable brain cancer.
Such a trade would not only be a grand show of respect for Kennedy’s life work, but it would uphold the outcome that Americans chose when they voted 60 Democrats into office in 2008. Conversely, if not one Republican can be found who feels enough loyalty to Kennedy to make sure that his death doesn’t kill the work of his life, then what are all those personal relationships and all that gentility really worth?
But Hatch was specifically asked this last night, and he ignored the question, saying that “The Democrats should be able to pass it. They have overwhelming majorities in the House, and they have 60 solid votes in the Senate.” But they don’t. Ted Kennedy is sick. He’s barred from voting. And Orrin Hatch, supposedly this great friend of his, plays dumb about it. I guess blood – or the bloody shirt of partisanship – is thicker than water.
It shouldn’t come to this at all – the filibuster was not designed to automatically require 60 votes on every piece of legislation, that’s a recent development. But the next time you hear some member of the Senate club go on and on about “the great civility of this chamber” and “working with my esteemed colleagues on the other side,” keep in mind that it’s all a bunch of horseshit.
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Bipartisanship
by digby
Compassionate conservatism in action:
The distance between the parties’ leaders on health care was made clear on Tuesday when the No. 2 Republican in the Senate held a conference call with reporters. Asked by ABC News about a package of insurance market reforms that have been endorsed not only by President Obama but also by the insurance industry, Sen. Jon Kyl came out against all three proposals. In particular, the Arizona Republican signaled that he opposes requiring insurance companies nationwide to provide coverage without regard to pre-existing conditions; requiring them to charge everyone the same rate regardless of health status; and requiring all Americans to carry health insurance.
The Republicans are actually in favor of discriminating against sick people. They have come right out and said it. I don’t know why anyone is even pretending to care what they think anymore.
Seriously, if they can’t support those reforms, which are even supported by the insurance companies themselves, then regulation will never be enough to keep the system honest. A public plan will be impossible to dismantle once it’s in place and will not discriminate against sick people. If they keep premiums low enough to attract some healthy people as well, it will provide enough competition to keep these insurance company greedheads and psycho Republicans from doing their worst. It’s a necessity.
I love how it’s the reformers who everyone believes are trying to kill people when it’s these defenders of the status quo who actually are.
h/t to bb.
Oh, The Things We Now Know
by dday
So let’s take a quick break from calling Obama Hitler to have a look at his predecessor. Anything new coming out?
Doop-de-do… hey, look, turns out they hired mercenaries to carry out extra-judicial assassinations!
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.
The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.
It’s the perfect Bush-era blend of privatization and murder.
Also, I think we know how Blackwater mercenaries react in situations where they are given guns and a measure of freedom – that would be Nissour Square. I guess we should be happy the “Blackwater in Your Corner” campaign only reached the formative stages.
So, anything else? Hmm… here’s confirmation from Tom Ridge of something we knew all along!
Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.
Obviously, this is Ridge’s book, and he gets to set the history. But I don’t think you could escape the sneaking suspicion that, every even-numbered year in the age of Bush, suddenly we were told about “chatter” from terrorists and definitive plans and the raising of the alert level. I used to call it the Federal Even-yeared Anti-Terror Response, or FEAR, Unit.
Can Ridge apologize now for saying in 2004 “We don’t do politics at the Department of Homeland Security”?
My, what a trip down memory lane this morning…
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We Need To Know
by digby
Citigroup Inc.’s $301 billion of federal asset guarantees, extended by the U.S. last year to help save the bank from collapse, will be audited to calculate losses and determine whether taxpayers got a fair deal. Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the U.S. Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, agreed in an Aug. 3 letter to audit the program after a request by U.S. Representative Alan Grayson. Barofsky will examine why the guarantees were given, how they were structured and whether the bank’s risk controls are adequate to prevent government losses. The Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Federal Reserve provided the guarantees last November, when a plunge in Citigroup’s stock below $5 sparked concern that a run on the bank might rock global markets and impede an economic recovery. New York-based Citigroup paid the government $7.3 billion in preferred stock in return for the guarantees. “What kind of toxic assets did the Federal Reserve guarantee, and what off-balance-sheet liabilities have been pinned on us?” Grayson, a Florida Democrat who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, wrote yesterday in an e- mailed response to questions on the audit. “How much money have the taxpayers already lost? We need to know.”
This is a big deal. Maybe this will be the thing that wakes the Democrats up to the desperate need for systemic financial reform. It won’t be easy, but it’s absolutely necessary for both political and substantial reasons it has to be done. (Sorry, but it’s true.)
Can you believe this?
Citigroup’s guarantees are among $23.7 trillion of total potential government support stemming from programs set up since 2007 to ease the financial crisis, according to a report last month by Barofsky’s office.
23.7 trillion? And we are having a full-on political meltdown over one trillion to cover all Americans with comprehensive health care? Really?
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Paths
by digby
Mike Lux, call your office. Somebody’s been listening:
The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.
And here are three good reasons why we should hold fast to a public option and why it is still the most likely to be in the final bill — however it gets there.
Negotiations are exhausting.
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Goalposts Inching Our Way
by digby
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Villagers assume that liberals would hang tough before, but it seems to be becoming something of an article of faith. On Hardball today, Matthews asked Todd and Fineman whether or not the President is going to get a bipartisan bill. matthews mentioned Mike Enzi as being someone who they could potentially work with. Fineman said it was impossible:
The problem is that they would then pass a bill in the Senate that will be way too conservative to be reconciled with whatever the House would go for. Whatever they would get in that fashion would just not sell in the House. And even if they got to the conference committee, it would be impossible.
Todd then said that he believed the president was no longer committed to a 60 vote strategy because he believed it was crazy that he had to get more than 55 or 5 to pass legislation. I don’t know if that’s true, but all three villagers nodded their heads sagely as if that was self-evident.
I don’t know if that’s really the state of play, or if any of this has meaning, but it’s significant that these three didn’t reflexively indicate that the Blue Dogs would win the day. Baby steps, folks, baby steps.
Update: On the other hand, Amato caught Chuckie spouting some real nonsense earlier on Andrea Mitchell. Two baby steps forward, one baby step back.
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by digby
White House advisers and Democratic strategists concede that President Obama’s poll numbers are at post-inauguration lows, and that the public has grown queasy about the health care debate. But they insist that the discontent has its roots in disenchantment over Washington’s ways. They note that large majorities of voters disapprove of how Republicans are handling health care in Congress and that President Obama remains the most popular active politician in the country.
In a statement today, Sen. Max Baucus said he was committed to a bipartisan bill. “The Finance Committee is on track to reach a bipartisan agreement on comprehensive health care reform that can pass the Senate,” he said. Republicans and Democrats, and their staffs, will hold a conference call tomorrow to discuss their progress.A White House official conceded today that Obama would have to weather anger from liberals for a while.More worrisome, officials said, was the growing belief that Obama’s brand is being tarnished. A new Pew poll shows that voters don’t think Obama is working with Republican leaders, and that a plurality blame Republican leaders. They believe that Obama’s favorability rating declines, largely from independents (and within that group, women), can be reversed if he reminds these voters of the bipartisan instincts in his bones.[…]House Democrats are on a different track, and it’s hard to see how it intersects with the White House’s. Leaders plan to redouble the sales pitch for a public plan, reasoning that if they can move public opinion a few degrees — largely by exciting liberals — they can help their colleagues respond to conservative pressure. Privately, White House aides have communicated to the House leadership that the onus on changing minds about the public plan is on Congress, not on the president.In private, White House officials are selectively attending to threats that interest groups will work to defeat Democrats who oppose a “public option” in the House and Senate. RIchard Trumka, likely the next president of the AFL-CIO, threatened over the weekend to withhold union support from those politicians. The White House isn’t scared. An AFL-CIO official close to Trumka said that no one from the administration has been in touch with him to protest his words or endorse him.
He concludes:
On the other hand, the left is getting tired of being given the proverbial back of the hand by a White House that looks at the world in increments of four years, rather than two.
I think that passing real health care reform is looking at the world in increments of four years. As I wrote the other day, if the president loses some Blue Dogs and some corporate lackeys in the Senate because he passed the public option, then I can’t see why I should care. The Democrats have a big majority. If they have to sacrifice a few obstructionists to get a signature piece of legislation passed, I don’t know why they shouldn’t do it. It’s not like it isn’t important. And the venerable Charlie Cook says it wouldn’t even cost them their majority.
Rahm Emanuel believes that the key to Democratic success is a coalition in which Blue Dogs and corporate lackeys mitigate progressive change on behalf of the moneyed interests which he believes the political system must serve. Regardless of his malevolent view of how the political system should work, on a political level, I think he’s living in the past. The political system is no longer organized around two parties with a faction of either moderates or racists in the middle who determine the consensus. The two parties have neatly broken down on ideological and even geographical lines and issues have to be fought out in the open on partisan grounds. Turning over the country to Max Baucus and Charles Grassley is undemocratic and unmanageable and it’s not going to hold.
Emanuel could be a great street fighter for a good cause if he chose to be. But he doesn’t. He and Obama apparently believe that there is still a bipartisan center from which they can legitimately govern. I would suggest that the swiftboating teabaggers have proven what a farce that particular approach is — at least for the present. The administration will rise or fall based upon their bold and unwavering use of institutional political power and their willingness (or lack thereof) to engage the American people in this fight.
Look, the reformers put the public plan in place as a cost control measure and threw it at the left as a crumb. I personally couldn’t care less about “keeping the insurance companies honest” because they are little more than a protection racket designed to make money off of people’s misery without offering anything in return. But as a good little pragmatist, in the interest of doing “what works,” I went along with this Rube Goldberg plan because it seemed to be the only way to insure that I wasn’t going to be forced to give some godawful insurance company my money anymore. Without a public option, I feel like I’ve got a gun to my head telling me that I am forced by law to pay some CEO’s obscene salary with no guarantee that I’m not going to get the shaft if I get sick. Regulation alone, subject to K Street influence and corporate whores in the congress, will not get the job done. Short of single payer, the only thing that even has a chance of working is making these parasites compete. So, on a policy level, I have halfheatertedly supported the only thing that was offered, and am now being told that’s going to be bargained away too. Feh.
But on a political level, the left has been betrayed over and over again on the things that matter to us the most. The village is pleased, I’m sure. But the Democratic party only needs to look back eight short years to see just how destructive it is to constantly tell their left flank to go fuck themselves.
In 2000, I recall standing in line to see Al Gore speak here in LA and I was inundated by a bunch of young, impressionable lefties, inspired by the globalisation movement and Ralph Nader’s message. We sparred for some time, me telling them how third parties don’t work, and them having none of it. They had no political experience except what they saw as a betrayal of liberalism and they found Nader’s analysis of the two parties as being in bed with corporate interests extremely convincing. And it was very hard to argue that point, although I did try valiently, knowing as I did that while both parties were corporate whores, the Republican Party, being insane, wanted desperately to actually kill large numbers of people in foreign countries, put the church in everyone’s bedroom and give everybody’s money directly to the wealthiest people in the nation. But I didn’t convince any of them. And we know the result.
At the time, nobody believed that an incumbent Vice President in a roaring economy would have a race so close that the Republicans could steal it. But we know differently now don’t we? And you would think that the Democratic establishment would also know that because of that, it may not be a good idea to alienate the left to the point where they become apathetic or even well… you know. It can happen. It did happen. Why the Democrats persist in believing that it can’t happen again is beyond me. Perhaps they internalized all the villager CW about Al Gore being a bad candidate, but the fact remains that if a slice of the left hadn’t been so disgusted by the New Democratic, mushy centrism of the Clinton years, he would have won.
Obama mobilized a whole lot of young people who have great expectations and disappointing them could lead to all sorts of unpleasant results. Success is about more than simply buying off some congressional liberals or pleasing the village. It’s worth remembering that a third party run from the left is what created the conditions for eight long years of Republican governance that pretty much wrecked this country.
After 2000, what is it going to take for the Democrats to realize that constantly using their base as a doormat is not a good idea? It only takes a few defections or enough people staying home to make a difference. And there are people on the left who have proven they’re willing to do it. The Democrats are playing with fire if they think they don’t have to deliver anything at all to their liberal base — and abandoning the public option, particularly in light of what we already know about the bailouts and the side deals, may be what breaks the bond.
It’s really not too much to ask that they deliver at least one thing the left demands, it really isn’t. And it’s not going to take much more of this before their young base starts looking around for someone to deliver the hope and change they were promised.
And Why Are We In Afghanistan?
by dday
The DFHs have convinced the nation about another misguided war.
A majority of Americans now see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting and just a quarter say more U.S. troops should be sent to the country, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Most have confidence in the ability of the United States to meet its primary goals — defeating the Taliban, facilitating effective economic development and molding an honest and effective Afghan government — but very few say Thursday’s elections there are likely to produce such a government.
When it comes to the baseline question, 42 percent of Americans say the U.S. is winning in Afghanistan; about as many, 36 percent, say it is losing the fight.
The new poll comes amid widespread speculation that the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, will request more troops for his stepped-up effort to root the Taliban from Afghan towns and villages. That is a position that gets the backing of 24 percent of those polled, while nearly twice as many, 45 percent, want to decrease the number of military forces there. (Most of the remainder say to keep the level about the same.) […]
Should President Obama embrace his general’s call for even more U.S. military forces, he risks alienating some of his staunchest supporters While 60 percent of all Americans approve of how Obama has handled the situation in Afghanistan, his ratings among liberals have slipped and majorities of liberals and Democrats alike now, for the first time, solidly oppose the war and are calling for a reduction in troops.
Overall, seven in 10 Democrats say the war has not been worth its costs, and fewer than one in five support an increase in troop levels. Nearly two-thirds of the most committed Democrats now feel “strongly” that the war was not worth fighting. Among moderate and conservative Democrats, a slim majority say the United States is losing in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan issue has crept to the sidelines of the national debate, but thousands of families are still directly affected. People still die; 6 more Americans fell today, and August 2009 could be the deadliest month in Afghanistan of the entire war. The President calls it a “war of necessity” and “fundamental to the defense of our people” but cannot credibly articulate what that actually means. Juan Cole identifies three main points that Obama makes about the war, which seem fine in isolation, but not in practice:
1. “This strategy recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan.”
2. “This strategy acknowledges that military power alone will not win this war—that we also need diplomacy and development and good governance.”
3. “And our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals—to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies.”
These three are praiseworthy points in themselves, but the question is how they work together. I couldn’t catch the significance of al-Qaeda’s move to northwest Pakistan for US military operations in Afghanistan itself. I agree that the key to success in Afghanistan is diplomacy, development and governance, but worry that the major emphasis being is put on sending more troops there and on highly kinetic military operations? And I’m not sure that the Taliban can be effectively disrupted by military means; why isn’t diplomacy being mentioned in this third part?
I’d expand on this critique. The goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda has almost no place in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, where many Al Qaeda leaders are now stationed. Gen. Petraeus admitted back in May that Al Qaeda is no longer operating in Afghanistan – we’re fighting a home-grown Taliban insurgency more nationalist than religious extremist in nature. You could make the argument that a Taliban able to take over the country could usher in Al Qaeda safe havens, but the Taliban insurgents are small in number, and have been unable to gain acceptance in anything other than the Pashtun areas. I agree with Steven Walt on this:
First, this argument tends to lump the various groups we are contending with together, and it suggests that all of them are equally committed to attacking the United States. In fact, most of the people we are fighting in Afghanistan aren’t dedicated jihadis seeking to overthrow Arab monarchies, establish a Muslim caliphate, or mount attacks on U.S. soil. Their agenda is focused on local affairs, such as what they regard as the political disempowerment of Pashtuns and illegitimate foreign interference in their country. Moreover, the Taliban itself is more of a loose coalition of different groups than a tightly unified and hierarchical organization, which is why some experts believe we ought to be doing more to divide the movement and “flip” the moderate elements to our side. Unfortunately, the “safe haven” argument wrongly suggests that the Taliban care as much about attacking America as bin Laden does.
Second, while it is true that Mullah Omar gave Osama bin Laden a sanctuary both before and after 9/11, it is by no means clear that they would give him free rein to attack the United States again. Protecting al Qaeda back in 2001 brought no end of trouble to Mullah Omar and his associates, and if they were lucky enough to regain power, it is hard to believe they would give us a reason to come back in force.
Third, it is hardly obvious that Afghan territory provides an ideal “safe haven” for mounting attacks on the United States. The 9/11 plot was organized out of Hamburg, not Kabul or Kandahar, but nobody is proposing that we send troops to Germany to make sure there aren’t “safe havens” operating there. In fact, if al Qaeda has to hide out somewhere, I’d rather they were in a remote, impoverished, land-locked and isolated area from which it is hard to do almost anything. The “bases” or “training camps” they could organize in Pakistan or Afghanistan might be useful for organizing a Mumbai-style attack, but they would not be particularly valuable if you were trying to do a replay of 9/11 (not many flight schools there), or if you were trying to build a weapon of mass destruction. And in a post-9/11 environment, it wouldn’t be easy for a group of al Qaeda operatives bent on a Mumbia-style operation get all the way to the United States. One cannot rule this sort of thing out, of course, but does that unlikely danger justify an open-ended commitment that is going to cost us more than $60 billion next year?
There’s more at the link. As Cole says, nobody disagrees that Al Qaeda may want to attack America, but we should wonder about their capability, and seek to thwart that. And that’s not a fight that can be had in Afghanistan anymore – they have no presence there.
Actually, we have morphed our goals in Afghanistan, from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency, without anyone really challenging it. The commanders on the ground have decided that making America safe from potential safe havens in Afghanistan means ensuring the legitimacy of the government at every level, as if we can replicate this in every unstable government in the world or even in Afghanistan, a tribal society that has not really known centralized leadership. Indeed, we’re only getting a minimal competence from the current government by allowing it to create laws that harm women and court Uzbek human-rights-abusing warlords to gain votes. If we really want to involve ourselves so deeply with a government like this, we should at least gain some semblance of a national security benefit, and yet none really exists, especially relative to the costs incurred in lives and treasure.
This, over everything else, is why public support is sapping. As long as this is a back-burner issue, that may not hurt the President. But I would argue it should. We have been in Afghanistan eight years, and at this point nobody can credibly explain our presence.
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“Third Sex”
by digby
We brought them freedom. Or at least some of them:
Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq
This 67-page report documents a wide-reaching campaign of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture of gay men that began in early 2009. The killings began in the vast Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, and spread to many cities across Iraq. Mahdi Army spokesmen have promoted fears about the “third sex” and the “feminization” of Iraq men, and suggested that militia action was the remedy. Some people told Human Rights Watch that Iraqi security forces have colluded and joined in the killing.
This makes my heart hurt.
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