Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The “Debate”

by digby

This morning John King had Kathlen Sebelius on his show and she made a good case for the public plan option:

KING: The president tomorrow will speak to the American Medical Association. Doctors are skeptical about this public option. And let’s look at — we will show our viewers what our means. It’s a government-owned health insurance plan, similar to Medicare and Medicaid. And it essentially would increase competition. And the goal is to lower prices by having competition with private insurers.

Those who argue against it say the subsidies from the government would be unfair competition, hurt private insurers, and perhaps drain the federal treasury, because, once you have a government option in place, you need to pay for it.

How will the president make the case to the skeptics, even in his own party, that this is too much government?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think that competition is a good thing, that most Americans understand that choice and competition is what we want. So, if you look at a health exchange, a marketplace, where people can have some options — in many parts of the country, private insurers have no competitor, in — in a state like my own home state of Kansas. There is a dominant insurance company in a lot of the states.

So, we created a public option for state employees, so they could choose side by side benefits and prices. Competition is good. You can write the rules for a level playing field.

The president does not want to dismantle privately-owned plans. He doesn’t want the 180 million people who have employer coverage to lose that coverage. He wants to strengthen the marketplace.

But, you know, I — I don’t think it’s a big surprise that a lot of insurers say, you know, what we would really like is, everybody who doesn’t have insurance to be told they must buy it, and buy it only from us.

The president feels that having a public option side by side, same playing field, same rules, will give Americans choice and will help lower costs for everybody. And that’s a good thing.

She went on to talk a bit about how the public plan is the best mechanism for cutting costs, (which is the reason for doing it!) And I like the fact that she pointed out that the insurers are all for a mandate that forces people to buy their insurance. Why wouldn’t they be? There are 47 million+ new customers out there waiting to be screwed with lousy coverage, high deductibles, profit driven bureaucracy and eventual medical bankruptcy if they have the bad judgment to get sick. It’s a bonanza for them.

So, that was good. Not so good was the fact that that was the last time we heard anything but nonsense on the subject from a parade of mushy MOR Senators, right wing flamethrowers and the Carville Matalin sideshow (which never fails to perfectly illustrate the fact that the Village sees all of this as some sort of a game.)They all pretty much predicted doom for anything but a “reform” that amounts to a mandate for the uninsured to buy insurance and maybe some phony, toothless non-profit hybrid that will do nothing to bring costs down, thus insuring long term failure. There were wingnuts a-plenty taking the far right position, which Matalin perfectly articulated, saying that “polls show” that people are far more worried about the deficit than anything else in the whole world. This means that not only shouldn’t we be reforming health care, we should be cutting medicaid and medicare too. (Carville clowned and mugged and basically made little sense at all.) Sadly, there wasn’t time to present any liberals who would argue from the other side for a rational single payer plan because well — that’s crazy talk.

And all this confusing chatter around the issue — which started out with a pretty strong national consensus that the system was broken and that fundamental reform was needed — plays perfectly into the hands of those who seek to preserve the worst aspects of the status quo and turn the crisis into yet another opportunity to profit at the taxpayers expense. Almost overnight the debate has become all about reassuring people that nothing’s going to change.

And that leads to the public being completely incoherent on the issue — all they have left is successful Republican bumper sticker propaganda to frame the issue:

So, we went to Junior’s Diner. It’s in Orlando, Florida. We sat down. Everyone at the table agreed on the urgency — the urgency — of doing something about health care. But getting them to agree on just what, that is a whole other matter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING: … with the way we do health care in this country now, if anything?

BLANCHE DORMADY, ORLANDO, FLORIDA: I think that depends on the person. I — I have — I don’t like the insurance. The insurances decide what you’re going to have and what you’re not going to have. And I certainly don’t want the — the government to have that ability. And I like it to be private.

KING: Well, are you — are you — are you worried, though, that they will make it worse, the politicians will make it worse?

B. DORMADY: It will make it worse. But I’m not a worrier.

(LAUGHTER)

MARGARET DORMADY, ORLANDO, FLORIDA: I’m against health — national health care. I personally don’t have health insurance, because it is too expensive.

But I want to get for myself what I need. I — I don’t want to be told what I can have and when I can have it. And I sure as hell — excuse me — don’t want…

(LAUGHTER)

M. DORMADY: … the government having my medical records running throughout the U.S.

KING: One of the things in the proposal put forward by Senator Kennedy, and most likely in the House by the Democrats as well, would be a mandate that would require you to get health insurance. That’s the way they do it in the state of Massachusetts now. And you would have to get health insurance. If you had a job, and you were able to afford it, you would be — you would have to get it, and you would be penalized if you didn’t?

Is that right?

M. DORMADY: Just like the car insurance. I understand that. And I don’t like that either.

STAFFORD EZZARD, WINTER PARK, FLORIDA: I trust the government more than many people do. I’m a Democrat. And I think the Democratic Party, at heart, has the people’s interests in mind. I’m somewhat skeptical of our ability, politically speaking, to reach a — maybe a conclusion at all.

KING: You don’t want the government involved, but do you think they will pass something? The Democrats have big majorities.

M. DORMADY: I’m a Democrat. I vote open ticket. And I’m afraid they will. And I just feel more power, control by the government, so that I no longer have ambition to be able to go out and strive and do what I want to do in life and have the life that I want. I have to be under someone’s thumb.

KING: You think they will do something?

B. DORMADY: Oh, I hope not.

(LAUGHTER)

B. DORMADY: I’m sorry, but if they put it back in the hands of the doctors to do what the doctors want, maybe it will be done. But to have government getting involved….

M. DORMADY: And I think that’s a good point. Doctors need to be more involved in this, and not be pushed around.

KING: Well, do you think they’re pushed around by — by the insurance companies?

M. DORMADY: I think they’re pushed around by insurance companies. I really do.

EZZARD: Yes, I think we are agreed on that.

I just had an experience with — with my primary provider, who joined a — a private — I don’t know what you would call it, but it’s a — but it’s a group of doctors who have banded together.

And, in order to stay with him, I was going to have to pay him $1,500 cash, and my wife would have had to pay $1,500. My son would have had to pay $1,500. That’s in addition to our health insurance.

KING: Paying for it is the big question mark, where many think this could collapse. One of the things on the table is to tax the health benefits you get from your employer.

Is that a fair way to do it?

B. DORMADY: I don’t think the government ought to get into it.

M. DORMADY: Well, I see what you’re saying.

And even McCain was trying to say we should back…

KING: Right.

M. DORMADY: … we should tax…

KING: Right.

M. DORMADY: … everything. So, you would have to pay more taxes on what your benefits are.

But you know what? Why not. I don’t have a problem with that. (END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: A fun discussion and great oatmeal with raisins at Junior’s Diner. You can see we brought the CNN Express along, and took up most of the parking lot there.

John King fed them the conservative straight lines and they delivered the propaganda punch lines, one right after the other. If anyone stepped in with something provocative, like the guy who said that his doctor was making him pay $1500.00 per family member, on top of his insurance premiums, just to stay with him. King just blathered on about taxes as if that’s this fellows biggest financial problem rather than the fact that he’s getting it coming and going from the health care industry.

I don’t blame them really. Nobody is helping them make sense of this. If you watch Democrats on television explaining their plans, they sound as if they are just as scared of a socialized, government takeover of health care as the Republicans are. And seeing as most of them take massive sums of money from insurance companies, it isn’t exactly surprising, is it?

This is just beginning and a lot can happen, but I can’t say that it’s going very well so far. They took single payer off the table before they even began, so they are starting this negotiation with this public plan option as the leftward position to be bargained away in the inevitable “compromise.” The way they’re going we’ll be lucky if we don’t end up with “reforming” Medicare into a private, for profit insurance company.

Update: Good stuff on this subject from Scarecrow at FDL

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Sleeping With The Enemyby digby
In case you are wondering why conservative rhetoric remains dominant and Democrats operate from exactly the same assumptions as Republicans, perhaps this is a clue:

Durbin highlighted arguments made by Republican leadership: “They tell horror stories about health care stories in other countries. That would be Dr. Frank Luntz’s talking point number five.” And on he went, referring over and over to the talking points outlined in the Luntz memo.[…]
But the Senate Democrats already knew all they needed about such mendacious methods: Luntz himself had briefed them at a Democratic retreat earlier this year. His co-panelist: Paul Begala. Since that January retreat, he has also briefed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) personally, a Reid aide confirmed. The message to the leader and to the Senate Democratic caucus was the same: Words matter. “He didn’t talk about health care in particular,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a member of Democratic leadership. “He talked about words, and words matter, and how important it is how you portray what it is you’re doing. And obviously now he’s advising Republicans what kind of language they can use to fight for the status quo.” The Luntz-Reid meeting was also about messaging. The majority leader and the Republican pollster had met several times over the previous several years, although only met once this year, other than the retreat, said a senior aide to Reid. Luntz didn’t return several calls and e-mails.

There you have it. The GOP messaging expert is advising both parties. No wonder everyone is selling conservative tropes and propaganda and nobody even knows what liberalism really is.
Ask yourself why in the world the Democrats would be interested in Frank Luntz’s advice now of all times. Do they really think he is better at this than say … the Obama campaign? That the Republican success of the past four years is so impressive that they need to emulate it? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that Frank Luntz is a conservative true believer who helped Newt Gingrich engineer the Republican revolution in the 90s and he has not changed. He has been reprimanded by his professional peers and has been caught rigging his focus groups. If you want to help Republicans by any means necessary, this is the guy you’d call.
The question is why Democrats are inviting him to advise them on how to use his patented fraudulent conservative propaganda and methods? You wouldn’t be crazy to wonder if they may just share his goals.

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Iran Today

by digby

Those of you who are twitter enthusiasts have probably been able to follow the story of the Iran election very closely if so inclined. It has been the only constant source of information over the week-end. Others will undoubtedly find this awesome compendium of articles, videos and various blog posts over at Huffington Post to be the most useful way to get up to speed on the story.

I will only say one thing at this point. If Joe Lieberman is advocating something, I would suggest that everyone thinks very hard before following along, especially when other, cooler heads, are saying the opposite. If we’ve learned anything these past ten years, it’s that neoconservative hysteria almost always leads to bad outcomes.

Update: There’s neocon hysteria and then there’s shrieking nihilism. Wow. Let the bloodbath begin.

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Scolds And Boogeymen

by digby

Robert Reich has a great article on the return of the fiscal scolds in which he correctly notes that forces from throughout the spectrum are suddenly panicking about a debt which was created by George W. Bush (and which nobody said a peep about at the time.)

The Great Debt Scare is back. Odd that it would return right now, when the economy is still mired in the worst depression since the Great one. After all, consumers are still deep in debt and incapable of buying. Unemployment continues to soar. Businesses still are not purchasing or investing, for lack of customers. Exports are still dead, because much of the global economy continues to shrink. So the purchaser of last resort — the government — has to create larger deficits if the economy is to get anywhere near full capacity, and start to grow again.Odder still that the Debt Scare returns at the precise moment that bills are emerging from Congress on universal health care, which, by almost everyone’s reckoning, will not increase the long-term debt one bit because universal health care has to be paid for in the budget. In fact, universal health care will reduce the deficit and cumulative debt — especially if it includes a public option capable of negotiating lower costs from drug makers, doctors, and insurers, and thereby reducing the future costs of Medicare and Medicaid. Even odder that the Debt Scare rears its frightening head just as the president’s stimulus is moving into high gear with more spending on infrastructure. Every expert who has looked closely at the nation’s crumbling infrastructure knows how badly it suffers from decades of deferred maintenance — bridges collapsing, water pipes bursting, sewers backed up, highways impassable, public transit in disrepair. The stimulus, along with the president’s long-term budget, also focuses on the nation’s schools, as well as America’s capacity to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. These public investments are as important to the nation’s future as are private investments.

He goes on to explain that the US has had much higher debt to GDP ratios in the past and that we have always grown our way out of these deficits, which are usually caused by war and economic stress. Therefore, when the nation has to go further into debt to stimulate the economy, one of the smart strategies is to spend the money on investments that will prepare the ground for recovery and future growth. “Pulling in your belt” or obsessing about deficits in the middle of recession is actually counterproductive to both the short term goal of getting the economy moving and the long term goal of reducing the debt.
He then asks a critical question:

Why are the ostensibly liberal Center for American Progress and New York Times participating in the Debt Scare right now? Is it possible that among the President’s top economic advisers and top ranking members the Fed are people who agree more with conservative Republicans and Wall Streeters on this issue than with the president? Is it conceivable that they are quietly encouraging the Debt Scare even in traditionally liberal precincts, in order to reduce support in the Democratic base for what Obama wants to accomplish? Hmmm.

I’m afraid that’s treating our president like a bit of an idiot. He’s been talking up “Grand Bargains” and “Fiscal Responsibility” for a long, long time. He has not made the argument that Reich makes and neither has any other elected Democrat. They simply refuse to refute the Republican propaganda that says the deficit and higher taxes are second only to terrorism as the greatest threat America faces. They will not speak to the American people like adults, instead trying to finesse conservative cant around the edges until they can get to a point where they can fully embrace it — as when Bill Clinton proudly stood before the people and proclaimed “the era of big government is over!” (And then they impeached him …)

Through years of relentless hammering (and a natural distaste for paying the bills) American people have been conditioned to believe that deficits are a serious problem for them personally and must be avoided at all costs or the country will … implode? And yet it’s a completely abstract concept that doesn’t actually mean anything to an individual citizen. Meanwhile, the tangible, real life benefits they receive for their tax dollars in the form of social security and food safety and roads and schools and health care are called “entitlements” or “government waste” and they believe that their tax dollars go into a black hole of special interests in “the fleecing of America.” And nobody in the Democratic Party ever tries very hard to challenge those assumptions. It makes you wonder if they really want to.

Update: Tim Fernholz takes issue with Reich’s assertion that progressive institutions and the administration are failing to properly challenge the fiscal scolds. He says that on balance, the president has been far more progressive than not on these issues. He concludes with this:

This post reminds me of the panic that surrounded Obama’s White House meeting on entitlements, which was initially met with dark warnings that the president was planning on attacking social security but everyone quickly realized that the effort was focused on health care reform. There are people out there who are saying nonsense about the federal debt, but they’re not at the Center for American Progress or, so far as we know, in the current administration.

That’s not exactly correct. The Peterson Foundation was scheduled to be involved with the summit and they are not about health care. What happened was that the White House realized that attacking social security was going to muddle their agenda on health care. But there’s little doubt that it was, and is, on the agenda for deficit reduction.
Perhaps more to the point, is this twitter from Ana Marie Cox from an event last week:

Yep. Taking on social security will prove to all the villagers just how tough Democrats are. Nothing makes ’em happier than punching a hippie — especially an old hippie.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

SIFFting through cinema: Wrap party!

By Dennis Hartley

The 2009 Seattle International Film Festival is winding down this weekend, after showcasing 392 features over 25 days (ow, my ass). Again, thanks to the Hullabaloo readers for your invaluable support in helping me get my foot in the door this year. If I may paraphrase Sandra Bernhard: Without you, I’m nothing. Nada. Nichte. Niente. Rien.

Some of the films I have been spotlighting will hopefully be “coming to a theatre near you” soon; some may only be accessible via DVD. So let’s go SIFFting one more time…

Still clueless…OSS 117: Lost in Rio

SIFF’s Closing Night Gala selection this year is OSS 117: Lost in Rio, which is the sequel to OSS 117: Cairo, Nest Of Spies, which was a huge hit at the festival back in 2006. Who is this “OSS 117” of which I speak, you may ask? He is the cheerfully sexist, jingoistic, folkway-challenged, and generally clueless French secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, who is played once again to comic perfection by Jean Dujardin. In my review of the first film, I described why I thought Dujardin was a real discovery:

He has a marvelous way of underplaying his comedic chops that borders on genius. He portrays his well-tailored agent with the same blend of arrogance and elegance that defined Sean Connery’s 007, but tempers it with an undercurrent of obliviously graceless social bumbling that matches Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau.

After viewing the second entry in this series, I have to stand by my assertion that Dujardin is a bloody genius. In this outing (which moves the time line ahead about 10 years or so to the Summer of Love) Hubert is assigned to assist a trio of Israeli Mossad agents as they hunt down the son of a Nazi war criminal in South America. As in the first film, the plot is really moot here; it’s all about the killer combo of Dujardin’s riotous characterization and director Michel Hazanavicius’ knack for distilling the very quintessence of those classic 60s spy capers. As I noted in my review of the first film:

Unlike the Austin Powers films, which utilizes the spy spoof motif primarily as an excuse for Mike Meyers to string together an assortment of glorified SNL sketches and (over) indulge in certain scatological obsessions, this film stays manages to stay true and even respectful to the genre and era that it aspires to parody. The acting tics, production design, costuming, music, use of rear-screen projection, even the choreography of the action scenes are so pitch-perfect that if you were to screen the film side by side with one of the early Bond entries…you would swear the films were produced the very same year.

I will say that some of the novelty of the character has worn off (that’s the sophomore curse that any sequel has to weather) but this is still a thoroughly entertaining film, and I hope that Hazanavicius and Dujardin have some more projects on the horizon. I’m there.

Pigtails, G.I. Joes and go-karts: Mommy Is at the Hairdresser’s

Mommy Is at the Hairdresser’s is such a perfect film, that I’m almost afraid to review it. It’s a perfect film about an imperfect family; but like the selective recollections of your most carefree childhood memories, no matter what the harsh realities of the big world around you may have been, only the most pleasant parts will forever linger in your mind.

Set on the cusp of an idyllic Quebec summer, circa 1966 (my guess), the story centers around the suburban Gauvin family. Teenaged Elise (Marianne Fortier) and her two young brothers are thrilled that school’s out for the summer. Their loving parents appear to be the ideal couple; the beautiful Simone (Celine Bonnier) works as a TV journalist and her handsome husband Le Pere (Laurent Lucas) is a medical microbiologist. But alas, there is trouble in River City (what family doesn’t have its ups and downs, eh?). When a marital infidelity precipitates a separation, leaving the kids in the care of their well-meaning but now titular father, young Elise finds herself the de facto head of the family.

Thanks to the sensitive direction from Lea Pool, an intelligent and believable screenplay by Isabelle Hebert, and (perhaps most of all) some of the most extraordinary performances by child actors that I’ve seen in quite some time, I found myself completely transported back to that all-too-fleeting “secret world” of childhood. It’s that singular time of life when worries are few and everything feels possible (before that mental baggage carousel backs up with too many overstuffed suitcases, if you catch my drift).

This is also one of the most beautifully photographed films I have seen recently. Daniel Jobin’s DP work should receive some kind of special award from the Quebec tourist industry, because watching this film gave me an urge to take a crash course in Quebecois, pack some fishing gear and move there immediately. This is easily my personal favorite entry from this year’s SIFF, and I’m hoping that it finds wider distribution- tres bientot.

Barking mad: Harris (l) and Martin (r) in Poppy Shakespeare

Sometimes I get a little bit of a twitch when a movie breaks down the “fourth wall” and a protagonist starts talking to the audience in the opening scene. When it works, it can be quite engaging (Alfie); when it doesn’t (SLC Punk), it seems to double the running time of the film (and not in a good way). In the case of Poppy Shakespeare, the device pays off in spades, thanks to the extraordinary charisma and acting chops of an up-and-coming young British thespian by the name of Anna Maxwell Martin (remember that name!).

Martin plays “N”, a mentally troubled young woman who has grown up ostensibly as a ward of the state, shuffled about from foster care to government subsidized mental health providers for most of her life. She collects a “mad money” pension from the government, and spends most of her waking hours at a London “day hospital” (where many of the ‘patients’ participate on a voluntary basis and are free to go home at night). In an introductory scene (reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), we learn that most of the patients in Poppy’s particular day ward appear to gather not so much for the therapy group sessions, but to swap tips on the latest loopholes in England’s socialized health care system. Poppy is a bit of a rock star in the group, due to the savvy she has developed in working the system to her maximum advantage (she’s crazy…like a fox).

She is a polar opposite to Cuckoo’s Nest hero R.P. McMurphy. Rather than looking for ways to break out of the laughing house, she is always scamming ways to avoid being discharged from state-sponsored care (bye-bye gravy train). She seems perfectly happy to bide time at the hospital by day, and make a beeline home to her lonely flat at nights and on weekends to gobble her meds and shut herself in with the telly. N’s comfortable routine hits a snag, however when her doctor “assigns” her to mentor a new day patient named Poppy (Naomie Harris). Unlike the majority of patients in the ward, Poppy’s admittance for observation has been mandated by the state, based on answers she gave on a written personality profile she filled out as part of a job application (some Orwellian overtones there). She desperately implores N to use her knowledge of the system to help her prove to the doctors that she isn’t crazy. In a Catch-22style twist, the financially tapped Poppy realizes that the only way she can afford the services of the attorney N has recommended to her is to become eligible for “mad money”. In other words, in order to ultimately prove that she isn’t crazy, she has to first get everyone to think that she is nuts.

This may sound like a comedy; while there are some amusing moments, I need to warn you that this is pretty bleak fare (on my way out of the screening, I asked an usher if he had a bit of rope handy). That being said, it is well written (Sarah Williams adapted from Clare Allan’s novel) and directed (by Benjamin Ross, who also helmed an excellent sleeper a few years back called The Young Poisoner’s Handbook). The jabs at England’s health care system reminded me a bit of Lindsay Anderson’s “institutional” satires (Britannia Hospital in particular). Harris is very affecting as Poppy, but it is Martin who commands your attention throughout. She has a Glenda Jackson quality about her that tells me she will likely be around for a while. She’s better than good. She’s crazy good.

Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush…

Another quick mention here about one more film to watch for. I can’t give you the full review yet, because the press is requested to “hold reviews” on some specific SIFF entries that have already found distributors and are all set for release in the near future.

World’s Greatest Dad is certainly one of the more, ah, interesting films I screened at SIFF this year. Filmed here in Seattle, it’s a (very) black comedy, directed by that world-renowned auteur, “Bobcat” Goldthwait (Shakes the Clown). It stars Robin Williams as a poetry teacher (yes, again) and frustrated writer who leads a life of quiet desperation, thwarted at every turn by publisher’s rejection letters and the odd, disquieting antics of his misanthropic teenage son (Daryl Sabara). I can’t say much more, but you can chew on this: Think The Accidental Touristmeets The Front by way of Pump up the Volume.

Well, next week, I guess it’s back to the cinematic salt mines of the Summer Release Gulag for yours truly. (You can’t make me! Hey…leggo my arm! Owww! Please, nooo!).

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Brass

by digby

I would normally feel sorry for someone who got caught up in something like this because I think it speaks to something fairly sad and lonely in her life that she would carry a hoax like this to such lengths. But she was feeding into something that is cruel and indecent among the anti-choice crowd — their arrogant assumption that they have the right to decide what other people should do in these horrifying situation and conform the laws to their beliefs. They cause a huge amount of suffering an pain among people who are already in terrible distress trying to deal with a heartbreaking decision.

The unmarried mother’s story about giving birth to a child diagnosed as terminally ill in the womb hit a major nerve on the Internet.

Every night for the last two months, thousands of abortion opponents across the nation logged on to a blog run by the suburban Chicago woman who identified herself only as “B” or “April’s Mom.”

People said they prayed that God would save her pregnancy. They e-mailed her photos of their children dressed in pink, bought campaign T-shirts, shared tales of personal heartache and redemption, and sent letters and gifts to an Oak Lawn P.O. box in support.

As more and more people were drawn to her compelling tale, eager advertisers were lining up. And established parenting Web sites that oppose abortion were promoting her blog — which included biblical quotes, anti-abortion messages and a soundtrack of inspirational Christian pop songs.

By Sunday night, when “April’s Mom” claimed to have given birth to her “miracle baby” — blogging that April Rose had survived a home birth only to die hours later — her Web site had nearly a million hits.

There was only one problem with the unfolding tragedy: None of it was true.

Not the pregnancy, and not the photos posted on the blog of the supposed mother and Baby April Rose, swaddled in white blankets. The baby was actually a lifelike doll, which immediately raised the suspicion of loyal blog-followers.

“I have that exact doll in my house,” said Elizabeth Russell, a dollmaker from Buffalo who had been following the blog. “As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam.”

By Monday, outraged followers on dozens of Christian parenting Web sites unmasked “April’s Mom” as a hoaxer, and hundreds more vented their anger.

“She needs to be exposed and held accountable,” Russell said.

Sensing people were close to establishing her identity, “April’s Mom” on Monday raced in vain to delete her Web site and Twitter and Facebook accounts.

But it was too late. The online community found out her true identity: Beccah Beushausen, 26, a social worker from Mokena.

When reached by the Tribune on Wednesday, Beushausen admitted the hoax.

“I know what I did was wrong,” she said. “I’ve been getting hate mail. I’m sorry because people were so emotionally involved.”

There’s no evidence that Beushausen benefited financially in any significant way or committed any crime.

Still, Russell said she doesn’t understand how anyone could create such a convincing tale that preyed on other women’s emotions.

Beushausen said she really did lose a son shortly after birth in 2005. She started her blog in March to help deal with that loss and to express her strong anti-abortion views, she said.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap people. This whole late term abortion hysteria is designed to prey on people’s emotions. It’s their stock in trade. They think nothing of heaping horrible guilt and pain on those who are mourning the impending death of a much wanted child or the desperation of those who have to choose between dying themselves and saving their child. It’s very hard for me to feel anything but contempt for these anti-choice zealots who are now complaining about being emotionally manipulated. They’ve got some brass.

If she had really been in that situation and had really decided to carry her pregnancy to term, no sincere pro-choice person would ever have thought of condemning her for it. Unfortunately, they don’t offer the same compassion to others who make a different decision. They are moral midgets.

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Yet Again

by digby

I assume that most of those who read this blog are following the reaction to the administration’s inexplicably bigoted defense of the DOMA yesterday. If not, you can catch up all over the blogosphere as people weigh in with justifiable dismay and anger.

Americablog has, unsurprisingly, been leading the charge. And if you read nothing else on this issue, read this piece by Joe Sudbay. Here’s a short excerpt:

Yesterday, a Democratic President of the United States of America, in the year 2009, and an African-American child of inter-racial parents no less, gave his lawyers the go ahead to compare our marriages to incest on the same day that 42 years ago the Supreme Court ruled in his parents’ favor in Loving v. Virginia. And these people, along with our President, are suggesting that the appropriate response is to shrug our shoulders and go home, since, after all, the law is the law?

So, yes, I am advocating that we push the envelope and demand new and creative thinking on legal issues, on our civil and human rights. That’s how change happens (there’s that pesky word again). That’s what we expect from our President who promised change, who promised to be a “fierce advocate” for our rights.Yesterday’s homophobic brief would have met the expectations we had from George Bush (or Jerry Falwell). From President Barack Obama, it was an appalling betrayal of our humanity, and his own.

It’s important that people keep in mind that there is often a difference between justice and the law. Lately, we are seeing this sort of creeping, legalistic literalism in a number of different ways, such as when people rebuke Bush and Cheney for torture with a simple “because it’s illegal, that’s why.”

What if it weren’t? Would that make it ok?

I think we are about to find that out as we see the administration asking the congress to retroactively legalize secrecy on the photos, (on the heels of the Bush administration having the congress “legalize” the Guantanamo policies under the ultimately reversed MCA.) We all rightly excoriated the “unitary executive” theory as being an unconstitutional usurpation of power, but that was only half the story. What the unitary executive used his theory for was equally important. If congress had signed off on every one of Bush’s War On Terror policies in detail it still wouldn’t have made them just or proper under the constitution.

And likewise, merely because an unjust law is on the books doesn’t mean that it’s right for the DOJ to defend it, particularly with the kind of inflammatory and (one hopes) disingenuous arguments used in the brief. This isn’t God’s Law we’re talking about (assuming there were such a thing.) This is just a system set up by human beings to create an orderly and (hopefully) just society. Separating justice from the law makes the law nothing more than an arbitrary exercise in power. (I recognize that it is that mostly anyway, but there’s no reason to legitimize that by saying that anything goes as long as it’s “legal.”)

If he really felt constrained by the law in this case, Eric Holder could have simply argued that the couple in question didn’t have standing and let it go at that. The other arguments were gratuitous and seem to me to be designed to form a strong legal bulwark in favor of the law rather than setting the stage for reversing it. Which brings us to the politics.

Needless to say, after so many slights, snubs and various betrayals it’s pretty hard to deny that the LGBT community is being used as a pawn in the president’s “outreach” to social conservatives. It’s a cruel dismissal of a strong and loyal constituency on an issue of fundamental civil rights. I can’t defend it and I don’t know how the administration is going to keep defending it. And it won’t buy them a single vote, I guarantee it.

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Talking The Talk

by digby

On the CNN Money show this morning, chief fiscal scold David Walker said the budget deficit is the biggest problem facing the country and will cause every citizen to have to pay the government $155,000 in higher taxes. There will be ever tighter credit, higher interest rates and higher oil prices.

Then the editor at large of Fortune magazine came on and said the only solution to this pressing and immediate crisis is going to be an enormous tax increase on the middle class that the president is simply not telling us about.

Finally, they turned to Mark Weisbrot of the CEPR who began to talk about how this fear mongering was completely absurd, that more than a century of statistics show … and he was cut off for breaking news. Maybe they’ll go back to the subject tomorrow. But if you were watching today, you were left with the impression that the deficit is the cause of all of our economic problems and that unless the government stops spending money right NOW, you can expect a bill from the IRS for $155,000.

This is why people are brainwashed into believing that the problem with our economy isn’t a bunch of rich gamblers playing with other people’s money while skimming off millions in bonuses for themselves — or wealthy corporations rigging the system to make the taxpayers bear the burden for their failures. It’s that the government is spending too much money on old and sick people.

Yesterday I even saw Gretchen Morgenson, one of the smartest economics writers out there, say on MSNBC that a public option was a problem because we’ve all seen that when government gets involved in industries it always ends up costing more. It was like it was a tick, a bit of reflexive social lubricant that’s required in order to be taken seriously as a member of the club.

We know that the US already spends more on health care per capita than any other industrialized country and doesn’t cover everyone. Is it really reasonable to believe that the insurance companies are going to voluntarily cut their own profits? Doesn’t the government have to get involved to fix health care? And if they get “involved” they might as well do it right and create a plan that will actually force the insurance companies to do what’s necessary to bring down costs so that we don’t spend more money while we treat everyone, correct? How else will this happen, fairy dust?

I don’t think people quite realize how pervasive and unthinking free market fundamentalist assumptions and anti-government ideology is among the ruling class and the media elite. Even those who know better simply don’t know how to think or speak from any other framework. This hard push on the debt and fear of higher taxes runs on well worn grooves in American politics — they sound reasonable and familiar and work hand in glove with the moneyed interests which are determined to stop any kind of fundamental reform that erodes their privilege.

Update: Fredericka Whitfield is hosting a health care hour and did say something to the effect that at the very least, the sad little losers who don’t have health insurance at all probably need to be “given” a little something so they don’t keep forcing the hospitals to raise costs. (Maybe we could get something like Doctor’s Without Borders to pitch in. Oh wait.) I guess we probably should be grateful that well compensated television celebrities are so compassionate that they don’t think it’s a good idea that their fellow citizens die on the streets. (Those millions who are going bankrupt from being undercovered or who are living as slaves to their employers so they don’t lose their coverage are just out of luck. They should become TV celebrities too so they don’t have such problems.)

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Iran

by digby

Not good:

It’s Saturday afternoon in Tehran, and the streets are generally quiet. But the aftermath of Iran’s rigged election, in which radical-right President Ahmadinejad and his paramilitary backers were kept in office, has left Iran’s capital steeped in anger, despair, and bitterness…

To get some perspective on the crisis, today I went to see Ibrahim Yazdi, a leading Iranian dissident and Iran’s foreign minister in the early days of Islamic republic.

Read the whole interview. It’s quite disturbing. But here’s the kicker:

What is your reaction to the results of the election?

Many of us believe that the election was rigged. Not only Mousavi. We don’t have any doubt. And as far as we are concerned, it is not legitimate.

There were many, many irregularities. They did not permit the candidates to supervise the election or the counting of the ballots at the polling places. The minister of the interior announced that he would oversee the final count in his office, at the ministry, with only two aides present.

In previous elections, they announced the results in each district, so people could follow up and make a judgment about the validity of the figures. In 2005, there were problems: in one district there were about 100,000 eligible voters, and they announced a total vote of 150,000. This time they didn’t even release information about each particular district.

In all, there were about 45,000 polling places. There were 14,000 mobile ones, that can move from place to place. Many of us protested that. Originally, these mobile polling places were supposed to be used in hospitals and so on. This time, they were used in police stations, army bases, and various military compounds. When it comes to the military compounds and so on, if even 500 extra votes were put into each of the 14,000 boxes, that is seven million votes.

Mousavi and Karroubi had earlier established a joint committee to protect the peoples’ votes. Many young people volunteered to work on that committee. But the authorities didn’t let it happen. Last night [that is, election night] the security forces closed down that committee. There is no way, independent of the government and the Guardian Council, to verify the results.

Juan Cole has more on specific anomalies. This looks pretty clearly to be a rigged election. And now Ahmadinejad is talking about getting rid of the term limits on the presidency.

This makes everything even more complicated. You have in power an Israeli hard liner with an itchy trigger finger and an Iranian nutball without any legitimacy. It’s a recipe for serious misjudgment.

Update: I was going to talk a bit about why this vote rigging was so obvious and then I came across this post by Kevin:

I was at a book party for Bob Wright’s The Evolution of God last night, and even then it was obvious that the Interior Ministry was probably rigging the vote. One of the topics of conversation was: when autocracies decide to do something like this, why do they do it so clumsily? Why not give Ahmadinejad 52.7% of the vote, which would be at least within the realm of reason? Or force a runoff and let Ahmadinejad win a week from now? Why perpetrate such an obvious fraud?

Hard to say. Maybe it’s just too hard to orchestrate something more believable. Maybe, against all evidence, they believe that smashing victories are always more convincing than close ones. Maybe it’s just rank panic and stupidity. It’s a mystery — and a counterproductive one, too: there isn’t a person on the planet who thinks that Ahmadinejad could have won two-thirds of the vote with a turnout of 85%, and the possibility of inciting an internal revolt is a lot higher with a barefaced fraud like this than it would be with something a little more subtle.

On the other hand, maybe we’re looking at this through the wrong lens. Obviously something about Mousavi started to badly spook the powers-that-be during the past week, and maybe they decided something needed to be done about it. Maybe they wanted to provoke a round of violence from Mousavi’s supporters as an excuse to lead a crackdown on dissidents. And what better way to do that than to make the election rigging so obvious even a child could see it?

I think it’s clearly the latter. Authoritarians need to demonstrate their power and one of the ways they do it by making openly ridiculous claims and daring anyone to prove otherwise. If dissidents try, they will be put down hard. This is how they make the population feel impotent and powerless: “Yeah, I stole the election, what are you going to do about it?”

If they can get the media to tell the citizens to “get over it” they will complete the process.

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Choice

by digby

John Amato caught Chuck Grassley letting the cat out of the bag:

Sen. Grassley, the Mad Twitterer, was on with Andrea Mitchell and she asked him about the public option. She didn’t bring up his tweets, unfortunately. He said that he was against the public option because a think tank study told him around a hundred and nineteen million people would opt out of private health insurance and join it.

There you have it. He’s obviously not including the uninsured, who are only opting out of horrible anxiety and bad health. He’s admitting that over a third of the American people would leave their current crappy insurance company (or job they loathe but are stuck in because it’s the only way they can get decent coverage) and choose a public health option, which is a big problem for the insurance companies. Therefore, Americans must not be given that choice.

Meanwhile, Grassley and his fellow corporate servants will tell you that the key to bringing down costs is competition.

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