StupidiNews!

• America's military newspaper Stars and Stripes is complaining of censorship in Iraq.
• Iranian opposition candidate Mir-Hussein Mousavi is now under "24-hour guard" and cut off from his supporters.
• President Obama has strongly condemned the Iranian regime's crackdown.
• Citigroup has suspended new mortgage activity after discovering paperwork is missing.
• EA's "online service model" of PC games is leaving pirates out in the dark.

Last Call

Sick today, sorry for the low content.

Obama did defend the public option for health care reform today at his presser, as Ezra Klein reports:

At the press conference that finished up a few minutes ago, President Obama fielded a slew of questions on health care in general and the public plan in particular. For supporters of the initiative, his answers were encouraging.

There were two ways he could have responded to the press corps' queries. The first would be a procedural reply: "All ideas are on the table," or something of that nature. But that wasn't his approach. Instead, he defended the plan's substantive merits. His answer was, in other words, an effort at persuasion rather than diversion. The implication was that he, at the least, is genuinely convinced by the case for a public insurer. Check it out:

OBAMA: Now, the public plan, I think, is an important tool to discipline insurance companies. What we've said is, under our proposal, let's have a system, the same way that federal employees do, same way that members of Congress do, where we call it an exchange, but you can call it a marketplace, where, essentially, you've got a whole bunch of different plans....As one of those options, for us to be able to say, here's a public option that's not profit-driven, that can keep down administrative costs, and that provides you good, quality care for a reasonable price as one of the options for you to choose, I think that makes sense.

QUESTION: Wouldn't that drive private insurance out of business?

OBAMA: Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical.

Which is the perfect answer to that stupid "drive private health insurers out of business" talking point. Supposedly the government can't run anything...so how is the government going to put insurance companies out of business if insurance companies are truly offering the best, most efficient health care coverage as they say they are?

Do you believe your insurance provider is giving you the best option at the lowest price? How many insurance options are offered to you through where you work? If your job is anything like mine, it's one company offering various plans at various costs...but it's still one company. You don't have a choice, really.

Wouldn't you like another option at least?

[UPDATE] In other news, CNN is reporting that President Obama has named an Ambassador to the vacant Syria post.

The Ed Show

TV legend, WW II and Korean War veteran and world's best second banana Ed McMahon has died.

Ed McMahon, the longtime pitchman and Johnny Carson sidekick whose "Heeeeeeerre's Johnny!" became a part of the vernacular, has died.

McMahon passed away peacefully shortly after midnight at the Ronald Reagan/UCLA Medical Center, his publicist, Howard Bragman, said Tuesday

McMahon, 86, was hospitalized in February with pneumonia and other medical problems.

He had suffered a number of health problems in recent years, including a neck injury caused by a 2007 fall. In 2002, he sued various insurance companies and contractors over mold in his house and later collected a $7 million settlement.

Though he later hosted a variety of shows -- including "Star Search" and "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes," McMahon's biggest fame came alongside Carson on "The Tonight Show," which Carson hosted from 1962 to 1992. The two met not long after Carson began hosting the game show "Who Do You Trust?" in 1957.

Here's to you, Ed.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll from yesterday's Washington, D.C. Metro train collision has reached nine.
• Britain's House of Commons has elected a new Speaker, Conservative John Bercow.
• Congress's emergency war funding bill has plenty of funding for non-war related things.
• Iran's Guardian Council has rejected new elections as crackdowns increase.
• A new study shows that if the world used all the wind power available, it would provide 40 times current global power use.

Zandar's Thought Of the Day

I would probably stop thinking of Pat Buchanan as MSNBC's resident racist asshole if he didn't spend his weekends hosting conferences with and hanging out with other racist assholes.

On second thought, he'd still be a racist asshole. The thing is every now and again he makes a good point, and has in fact has been one of the loudest voices on the right against the war in Iraq and has made very valid arguments against it, so I know he's capable of using logic correctly.

Yet he's well aware of the fact that the Republican party is heavily skewed towards older white Christian men in America, and he knows they need to attract people outside that demographic...and his ideas for doing that basically revolve around magically convincing more white people to join him by appealing to their inner racist asshole.

He's incapable of coming up with anything else.

The True Cost Of Cap And Trade

Steve Benen runs the numbers on climate change legislation:

For several months, whenever the issue of cap-and-trade comes up, GOP policymakers and their allies immediately turn to their favorite talking point: a cap-and-trade proposal would impose, on average, a $3,128 energy burden on the typical American home. The figure comes from a bastardization of a study conducted by John Reilly, an M.I.T. scientist who supports the cap-and-trade plan -- and who has tried to explain to Republicans why the claim is wrong.

Told, over and over again, that their talking point has no basis in reality, Republican officials nevertheless keep saying it. When the GOP isn't denying climate change science altogether, it's pushing the $3,128 claim.

OK, so we know the Republicans are lying, but what's the actual cost Americans can expect if a cap-and-trade system becomes law? The Congressional Budget Office, which has produced several reports of late that Republicans just love, reported on the expected costs of Waxman-Markey.

...CBO estimates that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion -- or about $175 per household. That figure includes the cost of restructuring the production and use of energy and of payments made to foreign entities under the program, but it does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and the associated slowing of climate change.

Some households would pay a little more, and some of the nation's poorest households would actually get money back, but the average is about $175 per household, the equivalent, Chris Harris noted, of "a postage stamp per day."

Better yet, the costs go down in future years, as carbon permits are sold, and the proceeds are "rebated to taxpayers."

Fifteen bucks a month to save the planet, huh? That's what, a NetFlix subscription?

Seems like a winner to me. But the Republicans will continue to scare America right into demanding more "clean coal technology" right up until the coastlines go underwater, I guess.

Not Something I Wanted To Be Right About

Last week I noted the drop in continuing unemployment claims after months of record increases. I said then that the drop had to have been not from people finding work, but from people exhausting their unemployment benefits.

Barry Ritholz has the numbers that unfortunately corroborate my theory.

Those of you (who can still afford the luxury of) a trusty Bloomberg will note the ‘exhaustion rate’ for jobless benefits - EXHTRATE – reveals that people are not leaving the pool of continuing unemployment claims because they are getting new jobs; Rather, they are leaving because they have exhausted their benefits.

They are now unemployed AND broke. That is hardly a green shoot . . .

And it's going to get worse. We've reached a breaking point. People are still losing jobs at a staggering rate, still 600,000 new unemployment claims plus each week. But more people are falling off the unemployment benefits rolls to boot. They're ending up in the darkest corner of the U-6. It will be hell getting out.

I was in a very similar situation after the dot-com bust/9-11 recession in 2002. I know what it's like, and it was the grimmest time in my life so far. I'd never want to go back to that point. It is hell.

Thousands more are entering this hell every week. Many will make it out, but in a paycheck to paycheck world, many more will not. They will slip beneath the cracks, under the waves, and they will pass silently, ghosts in the realm of the living.

Pray for them. Odds are pretty good you know one of them.

At This Point Bring In The Clowns

John Cole captures the GOP response to the stimulus over the last several months.

Oldest wingnut talking point: The stimulus is just pork designed to reward ACORN and left-wing causes.

Older wingnut talking point: The stimulus bill is not creating or saving any jobs.

Old wingnut talking point: Stimulus bill creating jobs after the recovery already started and should be cancelled.

New wingnut talking point: Stimulus bill hidden sexist attack on America’s testicles by ball-busting abortion-having lesbian feminists.

No really, it's Obama's fault that the jobs lost since 2007 (you know, while Bush was President) were overwhelmingy lost by men. The fact that the financial and manufacturing sectors have fallen apart (you know, bankers and factory workers, careers dominated by men) was on purpose, and somehow it's always Obama's fault.

No Stomach For The Fight Anymore

And speaking of Supreme Court news it looks like the GOP has all but thrown in the towel on opposing Sonia Sotomayor.

The calculus could certainly change when Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings begin July 13. But the Republican senators’ initial review of Sotomayor’s record, together with the meetings they’ve had with her, have left them doubting that she’ll be controversial enough to help them or hurt the Democrats heading into the 2010 elections.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the opposition to Sotomayor doesn’t have the same intensity he felt in 2005, when the GOP threatened the minority’s right to filibuster judicial nominees.

“Right now, you don’t have the fever pitch you did over the filibuster,” said Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee. “It depends on how she does [at the hearings]. If she performs well, no. If she performs poorly, potentially, yes.”

“I don’t think she’s the kind of person that invites that kind of reaction,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) of the possibility of making major political gains over Sotomayor’s nomination. “I don’t think her judicial record warrants the ability to do that with her.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) might be counted on to take an aggressive stand against Sotomayor’s nomination. But he’s in an awkward position: As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he doesn’t want to be seen as using the nomination for purely political purposes.

“You know, we’re just going to do our job under the Second Amendment: Section 2 of Article 2 of the Constitution, to advise and consent,” Cornyn said. Referring to the NRSC headquarters down the street from the Capitol, Cornyn said, “I really don’t mix my jobs across the street with what we’re doing over here.”

Cornyn said he’s “comfortable” doing both jobs — and that so far, he hasn’t viewed Sotomayor’s nomination as one that would become a major issue in the campaigns.

“I think Republicans have [a] basically different approach to the confirmation process,” Cornyn said. “As I told her, we’re going to treat her with respect and treat her fairly, and that’s the kind of treatment I think every nominee would receive. But it seems to be more the exception than the rule around here.”

Cornyn's sour grapes aside, it's looking like the GOP doesn't really have a play on Sotomayor right now. Most Americans like her and think she would make a fine Justice, and most importantly neither side sees the calculus of the court changing with Sotomayor replacing David Souter in October.

For now anyway, the GOP is looking to let this battle pass. They have their sights set on much bigger contests.

A Question Of Enforcement

In a sweeping and unanimous decision, the Supreme Court has put an end to the practice of preclearance in enforcing the Voter's Rights Act of 1965. Preclearance affected 16 mostly Southern states that had a history of denying blacks the right to vote.

At issue is whether in 2006, Congress properly extended the law -- whose Section 5 mandates that the covered states get advance approval of changes in how their elections are conducted -- or whether the country has made enough progress on racial equality to make continued federal oversight essentially unnecessary.

The case involves a small homeowners association board outside Austin, Texas. In 2003, residents of the Canyon Creek planned community sought to move their polling place to an elementary school that is the neighborhood's polling place for all other elections. Such a move required federal approval under Section 5.

The court's ruling makes the Texas district eligible to "bail out," or become exempt from federal oversight. But it does so without resolving the larger constitutional questions of when race-based solutions can be used to remedy past and present discrimination. Such a narrow ruling upholds the law, for now.

But Roberts noted in his ruling that the preclearance provision raises "serious constitutional questions." And he added that it "represents an intrusion into areas of state and local responsibility that is unfamiliar to our federal system."

Backed by a group of conservative activists, Canyon Creek launched a direct challenge to the law's "preclearance" provision, arguing that it should not be enforced in areas where it can be claimed that racial discrimination no longer exists.

Civil rights groups say Section 5 has proved to be an important tool to protect minority voters from local governments that could set unfair or unconstitutional barriers to the polls. If it is ruled unconstitutional, they warned the justices, the very power and effect of the entire Voting Rights Act would crumble.

The Bush administration had led the legal fight defending the law, but the case was argued in April by a Justice Department attorney named by President Obama.

During those oral arguments, several dozen members of the NAACP rallied outside the court, and members of Congress attended the 70-minute oral arguments, including the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy, and longtime civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis.

Since 1982, only 17 jurisdictions have been able to "bail out," or become exempt from federal oversight, out of about 12,000 covered political jurisdictions.

"It is unlikely that Congress intended the provision to have such limited effect," Roberts said, in the face of statistics showing voter turnout and registration rates reaching parity between the races in most areas of the country.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's only African-American, supported Monday's decision but said he would have gone farther and declared Section 5 to be unconstitutional.

"The violence, intimidation, and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it it [in part] no longer remains."

A unanimous Supreme Court decision is one of those things that's pretty hard to argue against. Thousands of jurisdictions no longer are assumed guilty of racism before proven innocent. Don't get me wrong, racism still exists...but now at a voting level it has to be proven. I don't agree with Justice Thomas that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act should be rendered unconstitutional, however.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog has more:

With only one Justice voting to strike down Congress’s 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act’s controversial Section 5, the Supreme Court on Monday interpreted the law in a way that saves it. The Court said that all local units of government must be given the option to bail out of the requirement that they get Washington approval for any changes in their election laws or methods.

So for now, VRA remains intact.

StupidiNews!

• Iranian protests continue as the ruling regime dismisses claims of election fraud and continues to crack down.
• North Korea is accusing President Obama of trying to "ignite a nuclear war".
• Two types of parasite-resistant honeybees will be delivered to the White House garden this week.
• The President will take the health care reform debate directly to the public on Wednesday.
• The EU admits that ICANN works, but wants the internet domain-assigning body changed anyway.

Last Call

Atrios on the Village:

For some reason, the Villagers think it's very important news each and every time a Republican criticizes Obama. Don't get me wrong, I certainly think it's appropriate for the press to present or even somewhat amplify the views of the minority party, provided those views have any merit or substance, but the coverage often treats the fact that they're unhappy with Obama as news in and of itself. It's weird.

Psst, Duncan, the Village has been in on The Plan now for quite some time.

The Village power to manufacture news, the news being that "Republicans are criticizing the President" is in and of itself newsworthy according to the Village only shows A) how much power the Village has, and B) that power is firmly in control of the folks in Washington who are fully vested in seeing Barack Obama fail miserably in his quest to actually change America.

It's the way the Beltway works. Obama is changing the power structure. People don't like that, in fact some of them will not tolerate it. Obama is a threat to these folks. They know he is a threat.

The more the Village as media referee keeps convincing people that the automatic gainsaying of anything the President says is newsworthy, important, and vital, the more power that gainsaying has, and the more people will go "Well, both the media and the Republicans hate X, ergo it must be a bad thing." Not because there's a logical argument there, but simply because they say so.

Palliative Care, Part 2

The Sunday shows were filled with people who did not come to praise the public health care option, but to bury it.

It's doubtful that President Barack Obama can garner enough votes to pass sweeping health care reform through Congress, a leading Senate Democrat says -- this despite a new poll that shows nearly three-quarters of Americans would support some form of government-run health care program.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that cost was the primary problem with the plan. An initial estimate had pegged the Democrats' health-care reform packages at $1.6 trillion over 10 years; a watered-down version of the proposal, unveiled last week, would run about $1 trillion over 10 years.

Feinstein appears to be following a meme that has broken out among Washington insiders over the weekend. Sen . Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made similar remarks earlier Sunday on ABC's This Week, telling George Stephanopoulos that the cost of the health care package was "a death blow to a government-run health plan."

"The last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government-run healthcare system where you've got a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor," Graham said.

The same group of Senators that gave Bush a blank check for trillions over 7 years to fight an endless war of choice in Iraq are the same ones now worried about the cost of providing health insurance to 50 million Americans.

Which is more important, Iraq or covering the uninsured? Which one will save more American lives? We're told that the defense of freedom and democracy in the Middle East is a cost we all must bear...but not for helping the one out of six Americans who lack health insurance.

Those American lives aren't worth the cost.

Understanding The Neocon Position On Iran

There is only one acceptable outcome in Iran to the neocons and their wingnut blogger supporters: regime change. It doesn't matter how bloody it is or how many Iranians die to make it happen, anything that is not an active maneuver to bring down "the mad mullahs" is unacceptable to the neocons. A prime example of this mentality is "Cap'n Ed" Morrissey over at Hot Air.

But let’s say, for argument, that the mullahs suddenly got a hankering for Hope & Change and offered a sit-down between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barack Obama. Why would we accept that offer and bolster Ahmadinejad’s prestige? How would that make the US look, sitting down publicly with a regime that bloodily suppressed peaceful demonstrations that demanded accountability for a stolen election? We would be an accessory to Iran’s oppression by giving the mullahcracy more credibility than its own people.

Is this “smart power”?

When neocons say "You can't possibly have a diplomatic relationship with Iran at this juncture" they mean "Why haven't you overthrown the regime yet?"

You see, Obama is an "accessory to Iran's oppression" if he leaves any diplomatic channels open. That kind of binary stupidity is what got us into Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, the neocons will attack Obama until he gives the green light for a strike on Iran. In that way, the neocons are even more belligerent and predictable than the Iranian regime.

The Will Of The People

Steve Benen checks out Sunday's NYTimes/CBS poll on health care reform.

An NBC/WSJ poll released the other day found that 76% of Americans believe it's either "extremely important" or "quite important" to "give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance."

The wording of that question was a little awkward, though. The results from the latest NYT poll are even more encouraging.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Respondents were asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government's offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?" It wasn't even close -- 72% supported the public option. Among Republicans, the ones who are supposed to find the very idea of a public plan so outrageous, 50% favor the same policy idea.

Even half of Republican voters want a public option, not to mention an overwhelming 87% of Democrats and 73% of independent voters. At what point do our elected representatives actually listen to the will of the people instead of the lobbyists who legally bribe them daily?

[UPDATE] Nate Silver crunches the numbers on the various public option support polls and finds that yes, America does want a public health care insurance option.