Kroog Versus The Blue Dogs

Paul Krugman's column today attempts to make sense of conservative House Democrats screaming about fiscal responsibility while trying to make sure health care reform is more expensive.

There has been a lot of publicity about Blue Dog opposition to the public option, and rightly so: a plan without a public option to hold down insurance premiums would cost taxpayers more than a plan with such an option.

But Blue Dogs have also been complaining about the employer mandate, which is even more at odds with their supposed concern about spending. The Congressional Budget Office has already weighed in on this issue: without an employer mandate, health care reform would be undermined as many companies dropped their existing insurance plans, forcing workers to seek federal aid — and causing the cost of subsidies to balloon. It makes no sense at all to complain about the cost of subsidies and at the same time oppose an employer mandate.

So what do the Blue Dogs want?

Maybe they’re just being complete hypocrites. It’s worth remembering the history of one of the Blue Dog Coalition’s founders: former Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana. Mr. Tauzin switched to the Republicans soon after the group’s creation; eight years later he pushed through the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, a deeply irresponsible bill that included huge giveaways to drug and insurance companies. And then he left Congress to become, yes, the lavishly paid president of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry lobby.

One interpretation, then, is that the Blue Dogs are basically following in Mr. Tauzin’s footsteps: if their position is incoherent, it’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests. And as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out in a recent report, drug and insurance companies have lately been pouring money into Blue Dog coffers.

But I guess I’m not quite that cynical. After all, today’s Blue Dogs are politicians who didn’t go the Tauzin route — they didn’t switch parties even when the G.O.P. seemed to hold all the cards and pundits were declaring the Republican majority permanent. So these are Democrats who, despite their relative conservatism, have shown some commitment to their party and its values.

Now, however, they face their moment of truth. For they can’t extract major concessions on the shape of health care reform without dooming the whole project: knock away any of the four main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse — and probably take the Obama presidency down with it.

Is that what the Blue Dogs really want to see happen? We’ll soon find out.

And I for one don't understand the logic of why the Blue Dogs are going after the President. The base of the Democratic Party overwhelmingly wants serious health care reform. If the Blue Dogs scuttle the plan, people are going to remember. If your major claim to fame over the 111th Congress is "I stopped my constitents from getting health care reform" exactly who in the congressional district is gong to reward the Blue Dogs? Republican voters? Don't you think they're going to be voting for the Republican candidate? No matter how far a Democrat in a conservative leaning purple district tries to distance themselves from Obama, they're still going to be attacked for being a Democrat in 2010. And Democratic voters aren't going to be too forgiving, I think.

I however am far more cynical than Krugman. There's a segment of the Democratic party, both House and Senate, that do want to see Obama's agenda handcuffed. Some have no intention of losing their big post-Congressional lobbying gigs by burning their bridges on Big Pharma with millions of baby boomers hitting Medicare age. Some of the Blue Dogs probably do feel betrayed on cap-and-trade votes right now, and have no intention of going to bat for the President on health care. And some object on ideological/free market reasons.

We'll see, certainly. How much hardball is the White House willing to play?

StupidiNews!

• As expected, Sarah Palin has officially resigned as Alaska's governor.
• House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers is calling for a full criminal investigation into the Bush administration.
• Controversy is growing over a Charlotte mall kiosk selling anti-Obama merchandise.
• North Korea says it is open to direct nuclear talks with the United States.
• A new gaming service allows players to put their money where their mouth is.

Last Call

Jake T. Snake over at Whiskey Fire expertly sums up the real issue with the brouhaha over Skip Gates (emphasis mine):

This couldn't be a more no win situation for Obama. Liberal folks like myself want him to name the beast of racism and call us out collectively. People of a more conservative stripe want him to pretend that we are that beautiful shining example of a colorblind society that offers equal opportunity to all. You should pardon the expression, but it just isn't that black and white. We will spend weeks parsing which parts of this interaction belong to us as a society and which pieces belong to the individuals involved and probably still not understand the realities of the other side of the racial divide.

What intrigues me in these various opinions is that many of them seem to feel that Obama (and Sonia Sotomayor in her confirmation hearings) must abandon their own history/experience and the mental filters that creates and make all their "official" decisions through the prism of the default or "normal" setting of white, male, middle class and center right. These folks never acknowledge that this point of view arises due to a set of unique experiences that are no more or less valid than Obama's and Sotomayor's. This assumption of a default setting creates a blind spot in the collective consciousness where people can not even imagine how someone could see a situation differently. It is the O.J. Simpson trial all over where the ground between the polarized views is sparsely populated indeed. It is a considerable threat to have one's core assumptions called into question and so we should expect more squawking from those who want the default setting to remain invisible and assumed.

The process of racial understanding must begin with the realization that my truth might not be the truth or that there might be multiple truths in one situation. Scary stuff.

Truer words were never spoken this week, Jake.

Something to definitely think about. I honestly don't think the country is ready for a person of color to be President yet. The comfortable assumptions of quite a few people are being challenged by Obama's election. As a country, we're still struggling to adapt, but adapt we must.

Kicking and screaming, we are all being dragged into uncharted territory here.

Kent Conrad Reveals The Problem

Here's the real problem with the current crop of Democrats in Congress, brilliantly displayed by North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad:

A key Democratic senator in health care reform negotiations said Sunday that his party lacks the votes to pass a bill through Congress on its own.

Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota told the ABC program "This Week" that the issue affecting every American and more than 15 percent of the U.S. economy requires broad support.

Asked if Democrats could push through a bill without Republican support, Conrad said: "It is not possible, and perhaps not desirable either."

Let's back that one on up and take a look at that.

There are 255 Democrats in the House out of 435 seats, or 58.6%. There are 60 out of 100 Senators in the Democratic caucus right now, an even 60%.

58.6% and 60% majorities are not enough to pass legislation. In fact, Conrad doesn't say that "there's an issue" or "we don't have the support" or "we can't get this bill on the floor", he specifically says it is not possible to pass this bill without the Republican party.

Why is it not possible? It is more than possible to do so mathematically. But Kent Conrad is telling us that it isn't. He's telling us it is impossible, despite having such a large majority and a President of the party in the White House.

Why is Kent Conrad saying this? Which party does he work for? Which interests does he work for? How can he explain this statement to his constituents in North Dakota who do not have affordable health care right now?

Why is Kent Conrad worried more about Congressional Republicans than he is his own constituents?

And you wonder why I'm worried about the August recess.

Phoenix And Dragon Must Fight, It Is The Way Of All Things

Nouriel Roubini and Anna Schwartz go at it in the NY Times op-ed page today over whether Helicopter Ben should keep his job or not. Bloomberg runs down the play-by-play...but the sides aren't what you'd expect.

Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the credit crisis, said Bernanke deserves another term for averting a “near depression.” Schwartz, co-author with Milton Friedman of a history of U.S. monetary policy, wrote that the Fed chairman should be replaced because of policy missteps and a failure to clearly articulate the central bank’s goals.

The 55-year-old chairman, whose term expires in January, defended the Fed’s unprecedented actions to restore financial stability in testimony last week before Congress and said the economy is showing “tentative signs of stabilization.” Bernanke has cut the benchmark lending rate almost to zero and flooded the economy with cash to counter the deepest recession since World War II.

“The Fed’s creative and aggressive actions have significantly reduced the risks of a near depression,” Roubini wrote in his opinion piece. “For this reason alone Mr. Bernanke deserves to be reappointed so that he can manage the Fed’s exit from its most radical economic intervention since its creation in 1913.”

He praised Bernanke for policies that were “not in the traditional toolbox of monetary policy,” including extending credit to investment banks, supporting the commercial paper market, participating in the rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. and committing to the purchase of $1.7 trillion of Treasury bonds, agency debt and mortgage- backed securities.

On the other hand, Schwartz says Ben needs to turn in his copter keys.

Schwartz, 93, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Friedman’s co-author on “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960,” blamed the Fed under Bernanke for failing to warn investors of the dangers of investing in securities backed by pools of mortgages.

“Partly as a result of the Fed’s silence, investors who loaded up their balance sheets with these securities were ignorant of the great risks of trying to sell assets that are difficult to price,” she wrote.

She also said the Fed didn’t live up to its own rhetoric about the importance of transparency and “failed to articulate its own goals,” adding to volatility in financial markets.

In particular, she said Bernanke failed to explain why the Fed supported the rescue of Bear Stearns and not Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., whose bankruptcy in September 2008 added to the severity of the credit crisis.

When credit markets seized up last year, Schwartz said, the Fed “persisted in believing that the market needed more liquidity” when “the real problem was that because of the mysterious new instruments that investors had acquired, no one knew which firms were solvent of what assets were worth.”

I personally think that it doesn't matter much, anyone that Obama would appoint at this juncture would almost certainly be another Ben Bernanke, the same way Bernanke was another Alan Greenspan, so in that respect, Roubini is correct. Better the devil you know...and Bernanke did at least come to the conclusion that deflation is the issue right now, not inflation.

Still, everything Schwartz says about Helicopter Ben is true. The Fed still hasn't explained why they let Lehman go under to any satisfaction, and turned a blind eye to the complex financial instruments that got us into this mess.

Should Bernanke keep his job? Not my call. He says he has a plan to get us out of this mess...but much of the reponsibility for the mess falls on his shoulders to begin with. It's a tough situation, same with Tim Geithner. Somebody has to run the Fed, somebody has to run Treasury. The list of other candidates that would do anything differently? Almost nil.

Absolution Zero

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion organization that demonized George Tiller for decades, is just one of the many who seek absolution for Tiller's death in the NY Times.

“His is the only abortion clinic we’ve never been able to close,” Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said in an interview.

Yet what thousands could not achieve in three decades of relentless effort, a gunman accomplished on May 31 when he shot Dr. Tiller in the head at point-blank range while the doctor was ushering at church.

Scott Roeder, an abortion foe with the e-mail name “ServantofMessiah,” awaits trial in the murder. In a jailhouse interview, Mr. Roeder did not admit guilt but told a reporter that if he is convicted, his motive was to protect the unborn, a goal seemingly advanced when the Tiller family closed the clinic.

But in the weeks since the killing, supporters and opponents of Dr. Tiller have been measuring the larger ramifications. Implacably divided for so long, they now agree on a fundamental point: Dr. Tiller’s death represents an enormous loss for each side.

Abortion opponents are bracing for a drop in support, especially from those in the murky middle ground of the debate. Worse yet, after years of persuading supporters to work within the law, they say they have already lost credibility among the most ardent abortion opponents who cannot help pointing out that one gunman achieved what all their protests and prayers could not.

“The credit is going to go to him,” Mark S. Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, said of Mr. Roeder. “There are people who are agreeing with him.”

The article goes on like this for eight pages or so, a hagiography of Tiller accompanied by mea culpas from the various players over the years that did their dead level best to portray Tiller as an inhuman killer.

What bothers me the most is the sense of false nobility these people have for Tiller, that the anti-abortion forces saw Tiller as some sort of noble foe, one worthy of their respect because even though they hated him, Tiller would not buckle under to them. It's a device they use to mask their own complicity in Tiller's death.

When Tiller was alive, they did everything they could to convince people that he was a mass murderer, some sort of Hippocratic Antichrist. When their protestations and promises that God would judge Tiller kept going unanswered, one man took it upon himself to judge Tiller for Him.

Now that he is dead of course, Tiller was a "respected enemy". Only after Tiller was murdered have his enemies magically rediscovered his humanity, the humanity Operation Rescue and others attempted to flense from Tiller, one strip of flesh at a time, for a good twenty years.

Poor Operation Rescue, at the mercy now of the beast it unleashed upon America. We are supposed to pity them, to feel sorry for them, and most importantly, to keep donating money to them. Let's not forget the issue here, with no Tiller to demonize and blood on their hands, who will donate money to keep them going?

The purpose here is to ask for forgiveness in the court of public opinion, forgiveness that will lead to dollars in the organization's coffers. They come not to bury a revered enemy, but to con you in to helping them survive to demonize the next doctor who still chooses to provide abortion services. When the next doctor or nurse is killed or the next clinic bombed, they will seek forgiveness again.

They always do. Users and manipulators always need those who can enable them. Tiller's loss really does hurt these organizations...in their bottom line. So, they have to apologize and pray it never happens again.

They've been saying that for decades now.

Enablers wanted, enquire within.

Who Do You Antitrust, Baby?

Stephen Labaton's front pager on the Sunday NY Times details the Obama administration's efforts to actually investigate and move on the massive backlog of antitrust complaints from the Bush era. Naturally, after that section of the Justice Department being all but mothballed for years, the protests from both the business community and those who represent their interests in Washington are that once again, Obama's DoJ is doing too much too soon.

The more aggressive antitrust policy was described in interviews with officials at the White House, the Justice Department, other agencies and Congress. It is a major policy reversal from the Bush administration, which did not prosecute cases in which some dominant companies engaged in potentially anticompetitive behavior, often because those officials maintained such behavior was not harmful to consumers.

Democrats have spent years trying to gain the support of businesses, and the policy changes under way may have long-term political implications for their party. Some companies would like to see more aggressive antitrust enforcement against their rivals, while others could be hurt by it.

In some cases, though, the new approach is being opposed by administration officials. Some fear that the crackdown is coming at a bad time, as corporate America reels from the recession. Other officials embrace the Bush administration’s view that larger companies and industry alliances can provide consumer benefits by making their businesses more efficient.

Note the warnings and the argument here: Democrats are going to hurt themselves "long-term" and larger businesses with alliances between competitors are more efficient and better for the consumer.

Isn't that second argument completely rejected by conservatives when it comes to health care, public services, education, and other government functions as the reasons why government cannot do the job? I mean, aren't we saying here that it's alright for a bloated, huge monopoly or oligopoly to run anything as long as there's a profit motive involved? Is that the only thing that matters in the end?

One clash played out recently when the Transportation Department, rejecting many of Ms. Varney’s recommendations, approved an antitrust immunity request involving a global alliance of nine airlines; Continental Airlines wanted to join the alliance to share routes, marketing and revenue.

The antitrust division argued the immunity was unnecessary for approving the newly reconstituted alliance and that it could lead to rates rising from 6 to 15 percent for many routes, according to public filings. The Transportation Department rejected that analysis for most of the routes and instead endorsed a policy popular during the Bush administration that favored such industry agreements out of a desire for efficiency.

The disagreement became so heated that the president’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, was called in to mediate.

Administration officials said that Mr. Summers did not take sides in the dispute but urged the two agencies to reach an agreement as they sought to balance the interests of the industry against those of consumers.

In a second area, senior Democrats are proposing legislation to eliminate an exemption from antitrust law for commercial railroad companies. It would give the antitrust division the authority to scrutinize the railroads for anticompetitive practices.

The proposal, by Senator Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin, who heads the antitrust subcommittee, and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has been sought by a coalition of railroad shippers. But so far the administration has not taken a position on the measure.

In a third area, a White House effort to overhaul financial regulation, officials weighed but rejected a significant antitrust role as a way to reduce the size of large companies considered too big to be allowed to fail.

“The struggles between the expert agencies and the Justice Department get to the heart and soul of exactly what the competition policy of the Obama administration will be,” said Mark Cooper, an antitrust expert and director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, an advocacy group.

He added: “Now you have an antitrust division that cares about competition, and it is running up against the expert agencies that haven’t changed their attitudes yet.”

Six months hasn't changed the prevailing attitudes in the rank and file levels of our federal cabinet bureaucracy yet. Everyone's got their own little fiefdom to protect and billions of dollars to guard. Antitrust is only a nuisance in the age of multinationals...unless you can use it to break your competition. Actually using it to benefit the consumer instead of the corporations who donate the big bucks? What kind of silly idealists in the Obama DoJ are there, anyway? Too Big To Fail doesn't just mean banks, you know.

It means everything. We have a government full of people who believe their job is to do nothing. No oversight, no regulation, no interference, no checks, no anything. Let the businesses do what they want and the consequences be damned.

Just like the banks in 2008. What could go wrong? The free markets know best, right?

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Miles Of Ice

An interesting story in the UK's Guardian today, the Obama administration has declassified several Bush spy satellite images, initially classified not for what they revealed about troop movements or terrorists, but what they revealed about shrinking arctic ice.

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse.

Something's got to give eventually. The ice has been almost completely gone in the summer now for three years straight, and it doesn't look like it's coming back anytime soon. Enough events like this and the planet won't be able to rebalance itself without extreme instances of weather: super-storms, extreme heat and cold, ocean current changes, and more.

The effect on us will be devastating. But for years, Bush thought that nobody needed to know.

Last Call

Back on Tuesday night I noted that the Village was no longer contributing the Dow's movements to Obama's policies. Since March 9, the Dow has goen up significantly. In fact, from March 9 to June 12, the Dow gained 2,250 points. What does CNBC's Larry Kudlow atrribute this rise to? Does Obama get any credit for that whatsoever?

Of course not. A one-day snapshot of the market is all Kudlow needs to determine the cause of the market's rise on Thursday.

Hate to say it but Obama’s disastrous press conference last night is a big contributor to today’s roaring stock market.

The Dow opened strong and is now up over 200 points, continuing a very bullish rally that is breaking new high ground for shares this year.

Politics is not everything, but I believe that the shrinking probability of a new government insurance plan that would lead to nationalized health care - along with the demise of cap-and-trade that would nationalize energy - is very bullish for stocks.

Hat tip to Bill Kristol for the phrase “docs and cops,” that latter of which were attacked by Obama last night. It looked real bad. In fact his whole garbled, inconsistent, and baffling defense of health care looked real bad. The president’s polls have been falling, especially on his policies. And markets see the possibility that free-market capitalism will live to see another day.

That's right, the failure of Obamacare will save the stock markets. They went up over 2,000 points as Obama continued to push the plan over the last 4 months, but all that really matters is that the day after the Village decided that the press conference was a bust, the market only could have gone up because Obamacare is failing.

Everything's about making Obama look bad now. Everything. It doesn't matter what he does, if bad things happen it's his fault, if good things happen, it's because he's failing to make bad things happen.

Your liberal media, folks.

The Apology Patrol

I said earlier today in the comments that I don't believe Obama has to apologize for anything he said about the Skip Gates incident on Wednesday.

Wanting to have a teachable moment in order to help the country move on, sure. Apologizing for what he said? He's admitting to overreacting a bit. But it doesn't change what he said nor the truth behind it.

He doesn't need to say he's sorry here, then again, it's not like the parties wanting him to apologize will accept it anyway.

Well, here's your teachable moment, folks. You can always count on Republicans to twist the knife in to keep a manufactured controversy going.

Congress would demand that President Obama apologize to the officer the president said had "acted stupidly" in the arrest of a prominent Harvard professor under a resolution set to be introduced by one Michigan lawmaker.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) will introduce a House resolution on Monday demanding Obama retract and apologize for remarks he has made about Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley this past week.

Obama had said at his prime time press conference Wednesday that Crowley had "acted stupidly" in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a racially-infused case which has sparked a national debate on race and policing.

The president refused to back down on his involvement in the case, but appeared in the White House briefing on Friday to say he had called Crowley to explain that never meant to insult the officer. (Obama also called Gates on Friday.)

McCotter's resolution would demand Obama "retract his initial public remarks and apologize to Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James M. Crowley for having unfairly impugned and prejudged his professional conduct in this local police response incident."

Sure. And while we're at it, let's have resolutions demanding apologies for the public remarks of Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Bill Posey, any Republican who contributed to Our Country Deserves Better PAC, Rep. Pete Sessions, Sen. John McCain, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich for good measure.

Making The Case For September

BooMan enlists Ezra Klein to help make the argument that a post-August recess health care bill will be better for all.

Contrary to common wisdom in Left Blogistan, I do not think the House should attempt to pass health care reform before they recess. I am aware of all the reasons for doing so (mainly, to pass something before opponents can rally a defense), but Ezra Klein explains perfectly my reasoning.

Some sources are speculating that the Blue Dogs are getting cold feet as they watch Max Baucus dither. Many of them felt burned by the hard and damaging vote on the cap-and-trade bill, as it looks like nothing will come of it in the Senate. Committing themselves to a health-care bill before the Senate shows its hand carries similar risks, and they're no longer in a risk-taking mood. The worst outcome for conservative Democrats in the House is that they're on record voting for a health-care reform bill that dies in the Senate and is judged a catastrophic example of liberal overreach.

The problem, of course, is that the more dissension there is among Democrats in the House, the less pressure there'll be on the Senate Democrats to make a hard vote on health-care reform. This makes health-care reform something of a prisoner's dilemma for conservative Democrats. If Blue Dogs in the House and centrists in the Senate both put it on the line to pass the bill, they're both better off. But if one puts it on the line and the other whiffs, then the other pays the price.

If the House passes a bill in this atmosphere, it will probably receive the bare minimum of votes (218-220), and that will only serve to highlight the intraparty squabbling on the Democratic side along with the monolithic opposition of the Republicans. That does not create a good dynamic for Max Baucus to work with in trying to get something through the Finance Committee.

Remember that the only vote that that the electorate will really remember is the vote on final passage of the conference report. That means that House Dems can get an almost free vote against the House bill now and make up for it later by voting for final passage. It would be far preferable to have the Senate pass their bill first so that centrist Dems don't feel like they are taking a difficult vote that might not be translated into law. But, even if the House goes first, they should have a better idea than they have now of what is going to be in the Baucus bill.

So the argument at this point is which is more dangerous, the threat of the anti-Obamacare forces having four weeks to get their free shots in while they know that no Congressional action will occur, or the threat that the President and progressives spending all their political capital to force Congress working through August to get a bill will backfire?

BooMan and Ezra Klein are arguing that the Senate will really decide this bill one way or the other, not the House. That means Max Baucus has to make his deal first before the House should vote. But the assumption is that Obama and progressives can find a way to keep this bill alive until September. Given the events of the last two weeks, I'm not sure that's possible anymore. It was two weeks ago that the Senate made the call that getting through the legislation before the August recess was unlikely, and really the problem started three weeks ago just after July 4th, when the Centrists started realizing Obamacare had a real chance and decided to pressure the White House to take progressive groups out of the equation. A couple days later, Rahmbo took their advice and released the trigger option trial balloon, which got shot down in a hail of blogstorming. A day later, the President made it clear that he wanted a public option and that Democrats like Chuck Schumer were backing him on it.

The next day, the CIA secret program/assassination squad story broke, and the combination of Obamacare and an Eric Holder investigation into the CIA was simply too much for the Village Centrists to handle. That led to this July 11th story in Newsweek about Eric Holder considering an investigation into Unfinished Bush Business, and the warning that doing so would "roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform."

July 12, one day after that story broke, the Centrists were all over the Sunday shows proclaiming that they had better things to do than try to pass health care. The entire exercise took 8 days.

Since then, the odds of Obamacare passing have steadily dropped, and the Village has gone into full attack mode, with the President being savaged on all fronts. July 13 saw the President first call for Congress to work through the August recess, but Henry Waxman then upped the stakes by calling for healthcare reform by the end of the year a day later. The Sotomayor hearings got underway that week too, taking the Senate out of the health care picture for the week, but allowing the GOP to play the race card repeatedly. By the time July 16th rolled around, Max Baucus was telling the press that the President "wasn't helping".

July 17th brought the latest wave of personal attacks on the President, staring with the Birther nonsense on multiple fronts. That led to the next day's character assassination in the WaPo editorial secton and the Gang Of Six threatening to kill Obamacare altogether. WaPo picked up the ball again last Sunday, and that led to this week's blistering attacks, Skip Gates, the Village assault on Obama's presser, even more Birther nonsense, another racist email attack on the President, and today's attacks.

That's a hell of a lot of Obama Derangement Syndrome to pack into three weeks. Now, can you imagine what another four weeks of this will achieve for the folks who want to see health care reform die screaming on the table, not to mention his entire agenda?

I know the reality is Obama cannot control Congress. I know we need a strong bill. But at some point, the Democrats in Congress have to make a choice to support the President or not. And those that do not support the President are trying to string this along so that they don't have to make that hard decision.

My question is if we have to wait through the recess (and all indications are now that we have no choice), what is Obama prepared to do to keep the momentum going? How far is he willing to go to get this bill passed and signed into law? With the GOP savaging him and the Village doing everything they can to refuse to call fouls on the Republicans while refereeing this little fracas, what does the White House plan to do? How will they get their message out, when the Village is trying to distort it and the GOP is trying to bury it in bullshit?

What, in short, is Obama's play here? If we're going to trust him to get this passed in September, I want to know.

[UPDATE 6:41 PM] Yggy notes that it's not a Prisoner's Dilemma if the "prisoners" are members of Congress, fully able to communicate with each other.

House and Senate Democrats can all get together in a room and talk this stuff out. So while the dilemma is real, it’s a perfectly surmountable problem. Surmountable, that is, if moderate members in both houses of congress actually want health care reform to pass. If the will isn’t there, then there are plenty of ways—this dilemma is one of them—for indifference to kill reform even while everyone claims to want to see it happen.

The will is there, actually. It's the reality of the other side that frightens me.

[UPDATE 7:03 PM] My other fear is of course how many more of these "Health Care Reform plan suffers new setback/blow/problems" stories are we going to see between now an September when they aren't setbacks, and they aren't new either. The muddier the waters get, the worse off we'll be.

Battle Of The Wingnut Stars

So as I peruse Think Progress today, I ask you, the erstwhile reader, which GOP Congresswoman is the least in touch with the reality of health care, North Carolina's Virginia Foxx...

"There are no Americans who don’t have healthcare. Everybody in this country has access to healthcare,” she says. “We do have about 7.5 million Americans who want to purchase health insurance who can not afford it,” she says, urging Congress to adopt a new plan for healthcare reform that wouldn’t “destroy what is good about healthcare in this country” and “give the government control of our lives.”

...or our returning champion, Minnesota's Michele Bachmann?

"This is radicalization of America like we have never seen before in the history of our country. But don’t lose heart. Because the polling data is showing — Rasmussen for instance — polling data is showing that President Obama’s numbers are dropping like a rock. As a matter of fact, his polling data now says that President Obama is a mere mortal. (Laughter) And so we can take heart. That is absolutely true."

One denies there's a problem with Americans accessing health care at all, the other wants to see to legislation that would give Americans more health care choices fail just to see the President harmed. Both go on to rail against government control over our lives, but both want the government to deny women abortions. Both are massively misinformed people spreading that misinformation in their capacity as people elected to represent hundreds of thousands of Americans in Congress...there's a cheery thought.

If you ask me, there's no winner here...we all in fact lose.

Taking It To The Next Level

As I've mentioned yesterday the attacks on President Obama's policies have graduated to personal attacks on the President himself and his qualifications for even being in office are under assault from conservatives (and once again, Digby's take on the matter is a must-read.) They're no longer going after his policies. They are going after Obama personally, and they're not even trying to hide it anymore.

Case in point: Fred Barnes's odious broadside on Obama as an "economic illiterate."

Is President Obama an economic illiterate? Harsh as that sounds, there's growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. Yet, as we saw at last week's presidential press conference, he's undeterred from holding forth, with seeming confidence, on economic issues.

Obama professes to believe in free market economics. But no one expects his policies to reflect the unfettered capitalism of a Milton Friedman. That's too much to ask. Demonstrating a passing acquaintance with free market ideas and how they might be used to fight the recession--that's not too much to ask.

But the president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent, and in his mind they may be. Three weeks after taking office, he said only government "has the resources to jolt our economy back into life." He hasn't retreated, in words or policies, from that view.

At his press conference, Obama endorsed a surtax on families earning more than $1 million a year to pay for his health care initiative. This is no way to get the country out of a recession. Like them or not, millionaires are the folks whose investments create growth and jobs--which are, after all, exactly what the president is hoping for.

Another tax hike--especially on top of the increased taxes on individual income, capital gains, dividends, and inheritances that Obama intends to go into effect in 2011--is sure to impede investment. It's an anti-growth measure, as those with even a sketchy grasp of economics know. But Obama doesn't appear to.

First, Fred Barnes and the TAXEN CUTTEN UBER ALLES brigade had their time. They had a President that implemented the policies that Barnes wanted to see: tax cuts for the wealthy, blank-check spending on the Defense Department, massive deregulation (and refusal to enforce existing regulations), and the belief that only the private sector has real solutions.

The result of eight years of the economic policies that Fred Barnes and other conservatives shamelessly continue to advocate even now was the financial crisis and 18 month long Great Recession we're in today. John McCain, the candidate that wanted to continue these same disastrous policies, went before the American people and infamously declared the "fundamentals of our economy are strong" the morning before the economy nearly self-destructed. At the very minimum, the American people rejected these policies as gross incompetence bordering on dereliction of duty, and Fred Barnes is accusing Obama of economic illiteracy? Really? Where is Barnes's credibility to make that decision, exactly?

After trillions of dollars of wealth were wiped out globally and millions of jobs lost and lives ruined, thousands of businesses forced to slash production and hours and personnel, hundreds of local governments facing financial ruin and dozens of states having to cut the most basic services just to survive as a direct result of conservative economic policies of the Bush administration, how can Fred Barnes accuse anyone other than himself of not understanding basic economics?

It's ludicrous to the point of absurdity.

Second, as I've mentioned above, we're to the point of personal attacks on the intelligence and knowledge of a man handed the worst economy in several generations, who has had an entire six months to try to fix it. If this was a only a policy dispute, then that's legitimate, healthy, and in fact the purpose of the opposing political viewpoint in America. What Barnes is doing however is going after the President personally, challenging his intellectual fitness to lead this nation at a time of financial turmoil. After years of advocating Bush's avowed lack of curiosity and repeated blunders in front of the media and the world, that's just idiotic on its face.

Finally, this attack represents the latest depths to which the forces arrayed against the President have shown they will resort to. Obama in the White House has driven a good portion of the Pretty Hate Machine into full attack mode. In addition to being an illegal alien, a racist cop-hater and a closet Manchurian Candidate jihadi, he's apparently just not that bright, too.

Never mind the lovely racial connotations of the history of illiteracy in this country, not to mention those of a white man attacking an African-American's intelligence. I actually don't think Barnes meant anything overtly racial about it. Those attacks I imagine will come from others.

And soon. Ask yourself where we were just a few weeks ago, and ask yourselves just how quickly the Village punditry has turned on Obama.

It will get worse. As Steve Benen concludes:

Obama raised concerns about changing the behavior and practices of banks, because the president would like to avoid things going to back to the way they were -- conditions that led to the collapse of the economy in the first place. He objected to health insurance companies making "record profits," because American families are struggling badly with rising health care costs. If Barnes disagrees, fine, but the president's concern is hardly evidence of ignorance.

In Fred Barnes's world it is, however. And that's a pretty ugly world to be in, as we're all about to soon discover.

It's Just A Goddamn Piece Of Paper

President Bush's infamous quote on the Constitution takes on new meaning today due to this story in the NY Times.

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 pretty much strictly prohibits the use of the American military for law enforcement duties (ourside of the Coast Guard) Our old friends Dick Cheney and John Yoo had some up with the notion that it was legal to send our troops into Buffalo because we were at war. The Act only mentions the Army and Air Force specifically, but a further regulation in the United States Code prohibits all branches of the military from engaging in "a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law." Dickster there figured they had the power to authorize it because it was a national security issue, not law enforcement.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

And that's the absolutely scary thing. Dick Cheney and John Yoo wanted to use military troops on U.S. soil to capture "terrorists." Say what you will about the armament of your average big city police department, with SWAT teams and weapons and whatnot, but they don't have tanks and bombers and cruise missiles and helicopter gunships and Predator drones. You see, once you go down that road using the military to enforce laws, who is there to stop them from enforcing anything they want?

Since 2002, we've seen what the Bush administration (and the Obama administration for that matter) is willing to do in order to "target terrorists" in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They haven't exactly taken great care not to leave tens of thousands dead in collateral damage. Imagine that same standard applied here in your hometown. Hey, the guy down the street is a terrorist. Sorry about your house. Sorry about you car. Sorry about your family. You have our deepest sympathies.

And before we all go "Yay, Bush saved us from this evil" let's remember that Congress and Bush signed into law the ability to declare martial law and take control of the National Guard for use inside the United States. That part of the bill was repealed a year later, but it was clear Bush could have at any point there for a while declared martial law and taken a state's National Guard...or all the states' National Guard...and mobilized them under his command. It would have amounted to the same thing in the end.

Next time anyone accuses Barack Obama of being a fascist, turn them on to that NY Times article. Steve Benen has a great observation:

Why would Cheney oppose sending the FBI to go get the suspected bad guys? Because he feared the evidence may not be compelling enough to justify an arrest and conviction. It was better, he said, to have the military take the Lackawanna Six into custody, declare them enemy combatants, and not worry about due process or meeting legal standards.

Which actually makes the most sense as to why Cheney wanted to do it, plus the climate of fear they were trying to create in 2002 to get every other concession from Congress and the American people would have been well-served by it. Marcy Wheeler adds:

Which to me is just as interesting as the news that Cheney was pushing to do this: Imagine how well it would work to impose military rule just in time for the first anniversary of 9/11, and just as you're rolling out the case for the Iraq War?

Which is also very true. Remember what the goal was in 2002-2003...to terrify us into war with Iraq. We went anyway, of course...but what other concessions would Bush/Cheney have gotten if they had established they were willing to use the military to detain "suspected terrorists" inside the US?

I'll go one step further. What would have stopped them from deploying troops in major Democratic Party urban centers in November 2002, less than two months after the anniversary of 9/11 to "protect our high-value target election precincts from terrorists?" If you were a minority voter in New York or Washington D.C. or L.A. or Chicago, are you really going to go into a platoon of Army soldiers or Marines and security checkpoints and all that just to vote? (Mysteriously, these overtly armed soldiers and security checkpoints would be missing from more rural Red precincts.)

How many fewer urban votes would that have caused in 2002? And of course, the public would demand that kind of safety in 2004 again too...and 2006...and 2008...talk about the ultimate in voter supression.

No, Cheney knew exactly what he was doing. Bush said no at the time, so Cheney relied on other methods to get us into Iraq. It could have been much worse. You see now why we have to fully investigate all the leftover garbage Bush left behind? The Warren Terrah was almost a shooting war on our soil, and the shooting was going to be done against American citizens by the American military.

[UPDATE 10:00 AM] Steven D at the Frog Pond adds:

So, because of the media drumbeat about the dangers of these minor and frankly insignificant members of an upstate New York Yemeni community, Cheney and others tried to bamboozle Bush and the rest of the country into authorizing something that no President had done since the Civil War -- use US soldiers to capture "enemy combatants" on US soil. Lincoln might be forgiven that excess, considering the South was in open rebellion and fielded armies in the field capable of invading the Northern states (which they did on several occasions). Cheney on the other hand saw these inept young men as an excuse to eliminate the Fourth Amendment whenever the President deemed it necessary. Spying on US citizens using the resources of the NSA to sweep up information on our financial, medical and online transactions and communications wasn't enough for this Dick. Truly, this was an attempt at an executive branch power grab of monumental proportions.

Good thing Cheney never sent his CIA "death squads" after Bush. Imagine what a President Cheney would have done had he not been hindered by such a lazy faux cowboy like Dubya?

Indeed. How close did we come back then to a functional coup led by dysfunctional assholes?

[UPDATE 1:11 PM] The Double G weighs in on just how horrific that John Yoo memo was from a legal and Constitutional standpoint.

[I]n 2002, Dick Cheney and David Addington urged that U.S. military troops be used to arrest and detain American citizens, inside the U.S., who were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda. That was done pursuant to a previously released DOJ memo (.pdf) authored by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, addressed to Alberto Gonzales, dated October 23, 2001, and chillingly entitled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the U.S." That Memo had concluded that the President had authority to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens on U.S. soil. Far worse, it asserted that in exercising that power, the President could not be bound either by Congressional statutes prohibiting such use (such as the Posse Comitatus Act) or even by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which -- the Memo concluded -- was "inapplicable" to what it called "domestic military operations."

Though it received very little press attention, it is not hyperbole to observe that this October 23 Memo was one of the most significant events in American politics in the last several decades, because it explicitly declared the U.S. Constitution -- the Bill of Rights -- inoperative inside the U.S., as applied to U.S. citizens. Just read what it said in arguing that neither the Fourth Amendment -- nor even the First Amendment -- can constrain what the President can do when overseeing "domestic military operations" (I wrote about that Memo when it was released last March and excerpted the most revealing and tyrannical portions: here).

It was a bold and frightening step towards military rule of the country, prevented only by an apparent failure of will to stomach proceeding to the logical endpoint of the Memo's assumptions on the plenary executive. Bush wouldn't cooperate, and Cheney wasn't going to go all the way.

I guess he got cold feet. There but for the grace of God goes our Republic...what's left of it, anyway.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• President Obama is inviting both parties in the Skip Gates case to the White House for a "teachable moment."
• Dick Cheney wanted President Bush to test the legal limits of using U.S. troops on U.S. soil.
• The Justice Department is admitting it has no case now against a teen held in Gitmo.
• Congress wants the SEC to consider banning mass computer-based trading called "flash orders".
• Palm and Apple continue to play games with the Palm Pre's on-again, off-again ability to sync with Apple's iTunes.