Last Call

And here in Cincy, city worker pensions are on the block as the Queen City balances its bilion dollar shortfall on the backs of employees.

Current and former city workers crowded Cincinnati council chambers today to hear how the Retirement Board plans to deal with a looming $1 billion shortfall.

Recommendations include raising retirement ages, reducing pension rates and cost of living adjustments, lowering and eliminating death benefits, and restructuring healthcare plans. Actuary and board member Bill Partridge says the proposals add up to nearly a half billion dollars in savings.

But retiree Tom Koch says it’s not right to take away benefits people were promised. “What are my thoughts about that,” he asks. “It sort of sucks because I had to sign a contract and everything and the city says this is what I’m going to have and now they want to take it from me. They sent me to meetings and told me ‘This is what you’re going to have, Mr. Koch” and I said, ‘Fine, I’ll take it. I worked for it. You’re going to give it to me. Thank you.’ And now they say, ‘It’s over.’”

At least one union has threatened legal action if the city attempts to change pension benefits.

Yep.  It's over there Tom,  your pension and health benefits never meant a damn thing.  Someone's got to pay to shortfalls like this all over the country, and it's sure not going to be voters, hell no.  Just blame it all on city and county employees and make them pay for the budget problems.  Can't raise fees for the city or county, that's unconstitutional or something.  Instead we'll just rob local government employees, because they're all overpaid leeches anyway, right?

And hey, that's only half the shortfall.  Going to have to make cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts...who raises taxes anymore?  Soon to be unemployed county commissioners and city council members if they try.  Naah, better to stake out the lambs so the goats live another day.

I understand Wal-Mart needs greeters.  Who'd want to work for a local government anyway?  They'll just slit your throat the second it becomes politically expedient to do so.

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter, Part 42

The battle for MERS is underway, and if the banks win, they will walk away from hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fraud scot-free.

The companies have opened wide their wallets for lobbying and are flying top executives to Washington for one-on-one meetings with lawmakers. They are holding briefings for key staffers, including an event last week that drew more than 60 aides. And they are blanketing Congress with white papers, memos and other documents that lay out their arguments.

The focal point of their efforts is Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, the controversial, privately run electronic database that is used by practically every lending institution and investment company to track the transfer of the ownership of mortgages as they are packaged into securities and traded at lightning speed around the globe.

But MERS does more than just track the trading of loans. In the vast majority of mortgage documents at local courts and offices across the country, it is listed as the holder of the loans. That allows the financial industry to trade mortgages as much as it wishes without spending the time and money to refile the paperwork.

The industry is seeking legislation that would effectively affirm MERS's legality and block any bill that would call into question what MERS does. MERS has spent more than $1 million in lobbying since fall 2008, when lower courts around the country began to rule against it. But MERS had kept its name under the radar until the recent uproar over foreclosures revealed broad problems in mortgage paperwork.

If successful on Capitol Hill, the industry could in one quick swoop make all lawsuits related to MERS across the country moot and remove one of the key uncertainties dangling over the mortgage industry. On the flip side, lawmakers could create a new federal registry, effectively killing MERS's business and forcing the industry to submit to greater oversight. 

Why are the banks going to all this trouble to lobby Congress to adopt MERS as the new national standard?  Two reasons:  one, to make all MERS fraudulent paperwork legally official, and two, to get the banks off the hook for hundreds of billions.

In recent years, MERS has become the target of numerous legal challenges from homeowners in foreclosure who allege that mortgage transfers made through the system are invalid because they bypass local recording laws. MERS, the lawsuits contend, does not have standing to foreclose because it is only a database and not the actual holder of the mortgage.

The liabilities could be astronomical for MERS. One lawsuit in California alone is seeking recording fees that could cost the company from $60 billion to $120 billion. But the consequences for the financial industry are even greater, as challenges to the validity of transfers done by MERS call into question the entire process of how loans were securitized and could render the 66 million mortgages in its system foreclosure-proof. 

In the wake of such controversies, lobbyists for Reston-based Merscorp, which runs MERS, have been floating the idea of legislation that would establish the firm as the national registry to track the transfer of mortgages. 

Are we finally understanding what's at stake here?   The foreclosure liability vanishes for the banks.  The paperwork MERS has becomes 100% legal.  And the banks can happily keep foreclosing on any home they want to because there would be no way to challenge MERS paperwork, even though in millions of cases it's fraudulent and in some cases completely fabricated.

In short, the banks would be rewarded for stealing millions of mortgage titles, worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars.  And they could then play all the mortgage securitization games they want to.  Unlimited credit line at the Big Casino, courtesy Uncle Sam.

Your mortgage and your home becomes subject to whatever MERS says it is.  And their word would be law.

They would win completely.  And right now they are buying every member of Congress they can find in order to get this law passed.  The banks are now bringing the full power of Wall Street's lobbying grand masters to bear upon lawmakers, and they will spend whatever it takes to make this the law of the land.

And yes, that means the President will sign the bill, or there will be a veto override.  You can bet every single Republican will be on board in the House.  You can bet they will find 60 Senators too.  That leaves the President.

And even then, the banks will buy as many members of Congress as they need to in order to override Obama's veto, or they will simply threaten to cut off anyone who doesn't vote for it and see them annihilated in 2012.  This is a potentual world-breaker for the banks and they know it.  Their survival is at stake.  They will do what it takes to survive.

And that will mean taking over every mortgage in America and holding it hostage.  This is their endgame.  And I just don't see how the American people can win.

Trumping Up 2012

Because you just can't have a good clown circus without a leader, Donald Trump has now said he would consider running for president in 2012, and plans to let us know in June.

Trump says he thinks Obama is a nice man, but is in over his head, thus implying he would be better suited for the job. I beg to differ. Obama's failing is in catering to a society that wants to be tickled and amused. Considering the mess he has inherited, not only from Bush but from presidents going back 20 years, he's doing pretty good in my book.

My greatest fear is Trump's ego and knowing he would be crooked as hell when it came to big business. The conflict of interest is too great, and so is the worry that he would utterly fail to see the effects on the working class. Trump is out for his own sake, and he has never tried to tell us otherwise. I am afraid to think of what would happen if our interests were in opposition of his.

But hey, he can't win, right? Why do I feel a tiny shudder of alarm at the notion? If we're going to run through the Screen Actors Guild for candidates, why not bring in Jesse Ventura? Or better yet, let Vince McMahon have a crack at it so we get the full entertainment factor.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Digby asks:

How long before all presidential campaigns become Reality TV shows, with primaries voted on through through texting and twitter? Isn't it inevitable?

No.

Republicans would never go for that.  Poor people might use one of those two methods to cast ballots, and we can't have that.  On the contrary, Republicans will continue to make the act of voting as difficult as possible for anyone who isn't an elderly white person.  And they will continue to fight as hard as they can to institute state voter ID laws that will have increasingly more difficult and expensive requirements.

YouCut will never become YouVote.

Cold START Makes Me Hot Under The Collar

At this point "fiscally responsible" Republicans should just be publicly laughed at.

In the absence of a U.S.-Russian arms control treaty, the U.S. intelligence community is telling Congress it will need to focus more spy satellites over Russia that could be used to peer on other sites, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, to support the military.

The demand for these satellites - one component of the "national technical means," or NTM - has increased the urgency for the Obama administration to get the Senate to ratify the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in its lame-duck session.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, U.S. spy satellites began to shift focus from Russia onto sites such as Iraq, China, Pakistan and India. Today, spy satellites are trained on Iraq and Afghanistan.

"As the proliferation threat has grown over the past decade, as the terrorism threat has grown over the past decade and as the United States has been deploying troops in harm's way over the last decade, there has been a decline in the priority assigned to Russian strategic forces by national technical means and at the same time there has been a decline in our overall NTM capabilities," said Paula DeSutter, former assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation between 2002 and 2009.

To recap, we need more expensive spy satellites to watch Russia because Republicans refuse to sign on to the New START treaty...so we can put observers on the ground to watch Russia.   We'll need to spend more money on satellites instead of reducing our nukes, which will save on defense maintenance costs.  but who cares, Obama might look Presidential if he signs a treaty.  We won't do it!

The Republican scorched earth strategy has real costs, people.

Stomp Out Loud, Part 2

Meanwhile here in Kentucky, headstomp guy Tim Profitt has his day in court yesterday.

Profitt appeared in a Lexington, KY court and pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge stemming from the incident, which briefly defined the Kentucky Senate race before Paul, the Republican nominee, won in a landslide Nov. 2. 

The court was packed with folks trying to catch a glimpse of the Kentucky Stomper, according to reports from the ground. And though Profitt's been willing to discuss the incident before (like that time when he blamed a bad back for stepping on a woman that was being held down on the ground,) in court and afterward he kept his mouth shut.

His lawyer, however, laid out a defense of the charges that he said hinged on the video that got Profitt in trouble in the first place.

"Admittedly if you look at the video on the internet and TV and don't see anymore than what was shown it looks like he may have gone out of line," attorney Michael Dean told reporters. "But if you look at the rest of the video of what she was doing before hand and get the whole story, I think you will see my client is justified."

Dean's defense is not so different from the one broadcast by Paul supporters in the wake of the stomping. They pointed to Valle's paid role with MoveOn and a video showing her trying to get a picture with the now Sen.-elect right before the stomping to suggest that Valle was a paid agitator who helped instigate the incident.

After the incident, Valle told TPM the opposite was true -- Profitt and other Paul volunteers on the ground recognized her, she said, and set out to physically remove her from Paul's path that night.

Profitt's lawyer is so sure of his defense he intends to take the misdemeanor case to a full jury trial. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 7.

Amazing.  We're going to get a full jury trial out of this, and if Profitt's lawyer Mike Dean is any good, he'll find 12 people in Fayette County that will completely buy the "She's a liberal, she had it coming" defense.  Hell, he only really needs one, doesn't he?  Damn smart play by Dean.

Profitt walks.  I'm calling this now.  And I bet the state Republican Party machine gives him a job.

Watching Reruns Of Barmy Miller, Part 5

Joe Miller refuses to admit the race is over.  Even though Lisa Murkowski has a greater lead than the number of ballots Miller has challenged, he is still trying to keep her out of the Senate because he wants a do over.

Murkowski has a lead of about 10,400 votes. Miller had challenged 8,153 of the ballots counted for Murkowski, but he would still be behind even if he won every challenge.

However, Miller, in an affidavit Thursday, said the Division of Elections began its hand count of write-in ballots a week earlier than scheduled.

"Consequently, my campaign team and I were forced to pull together volunteer observers at the last minute, and did not have time to adequately and fully recruit and train them before counting began," he said. "As a result, an indeterminate number of ballots with candidates' names misspelled were counted without being challenged during the first several days of counting."

Miller said he intends to request a recount.

Miller attorney Thomas Van Flein also said the state's policy is a departure from past practices of rejecting such write-in votes.

Van Flein filed an affidavit from former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, who served under Murkowski's father, former Gov. Frank Murkowski. Leman said he would not have accepted misspelled names on write-in ballots.

"If an election had been held during my tenure as lieutenant governor in which write-in votes had to be counted, I would have directed the division director to follow a strict interpretation of election law, and let a court direct otherwise if a candidate and the court disagreed with the division's analysis," he said.

Miller's campaign filed the lawsuit last week as hand counting of write-in ballots began.

And Joe Miller will continue to sue for recount after recount claiming "his team wasn't ready to challenge all the votes" until he wins.  If Republicans don't like the facts of the matter, then the facts must be wrong.  You thought Al Franken-Norm Coleman was a colossal waste of time?

This one's just beginning.  Murkowski will not be seated for a long, long time.

Once again I stand by my theory that Joe Miller is really campaigning for the abolition of the 17th Amendment.  He's going to bring it up eventually in this matter.

Shutdown Countdown, Part 5

Me, two weeks ago on Tea Party Republican efforts to threaten default on the debt ceiling:

Here's the problem with this particular game of chicken:  The people that stand to lose the most here, especially from the threat of a sovereign debt default, are the investor class.  They are the ones who spent billions to get the GOP into power, and the threat of default will annihilate the bond market.  The big players, especially the hedge fund giants, stand to lose hundreds of billions from a treasury meltdown as interest rates on long bonds skyrocket and yields drop like lead elephants on gravity steroids.

They will not allow the Republicans to toss satchel charges into their cathedral of cash.

Obama can win this battle if he holds his ground.  Eric Cantor is bluffing and he knows it.  I figured it would take far longer for the Tea Party to march out onto the rope bridge and begin cutting, but they're talking about doing it within a week of winning the House.

The Republicans will get reined in on this one damn quick. Count on it.  This is not a card Cantor and the Tea Party crazies will ever, ever be allowed to use.  All Obama has to do is ask Wall Street's big boys to remind Cantor who is in charge here, and while it's not Obama, and it sure as hell isn't Eric Cantor either.

Incoming House Speaker John Boehner, yesterday:

“I’ve made it pretty clear to them that as we get into next year, it’s pretty clear that Congress is going to have to deal with this,” Mr. Boehner, who is slated to become House speaker in January, told reporters.

“We’re going to have to deal with it as adults,” he said, in what apparently are his most explicit comments to date. “Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part.”

Called it.  Blowing up the debt ceiling and risking default?  Never, ever going to happen, people.  And Orange Julius damn well knows it.

[UPDATE]  Alan Simpson, of Simpson-Bowles Austerity Plan fame, is betting that the Republicans will indeed destroy America's economy by refusing to raise the debt limit and use it for blackmail to get "significant spending cuts", the kind of draconian cuts that Simpson recommends, of course.

[UPDATE 2] And as a matter of fact, Republicans using the debt ceiling as a hostage to force the Simpson-Bowles plan is exactly what Alan Simpson is counting on happening.

New START Me Up

It seems it takes losing 60+ seats in the House to get the Dems to rediscover their spines, but they are off to the races this week.  Democrats are planning to hit Republicans hard on a number of issues during this lame duck session of Congress.  They say they have the votes in the Senate to repeal DADT and want a vote on it as part of the military appropriations bill.  They are now willing to force a vote on just middle class tax cuts and letting the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy get a separate vote, both painful issues for the Republicans to go on record. And now the Democrats are fighting back on the New START treaty with Russia, accusing Republicans of being soft on national security (finally!)

Just two weeks after an election that left him struggling to find his way forward, President Obama has decided to confront Senate Republicans in a make-or-break battle over arms control that could be an early test of his mettle heading into the final two years of his term.


He is pushing for a vote on a signature issue despite long odds, daring Republicans to block an arms-control treaty at the risk of disrupting relations with Russia and the international coalition that opposes Iran’s nuclear program. If he succeeds, Mr. Obama will demonstrate strength following the midterm election debacle. If he fails, he will reinforce the perception at home and abroad that he is a weakened president.

“It’s really high stakes,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a former national security aide to President Ronald Reagan and a scholar at the Nixon Center, a research group in Washington. “I would say it’s the biggest gamble he’s taken so far, certainly on foreign policy.”

After months of quiet negotiations blew up this week, Mr. Obama on Thursday escalated ratification of the agreement, the so-called New Start treaty, into a public showdown, enlisting former Republican officials and assigning Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to work on it “day and night.” An allied group, the American Values Network, kicked off a television and e-mail campaign.

“It is a national security imperative that the United States ratify the New Start treaty this year,” said Mr. Obama, flanked by Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III and Brent Scowcroft, all of whom served Republican presidents. “There is no higher national security priority for the lame-duck session of Congress.” 

These are the fights he needed to pick before the midterms.   Why Democrats refused to go to the mat on these issues three months ago, I'll never understand.  But there are a lot more fights ahead, including unemployment benefits and the final approval of the budget, not to mention next spring's debt ceiling battle.  These are fights Obama can win, needs to win, and should win.

It's good to see fighting Obama back.  I've missed him over the last 12 months.

Dead Air, Hot Air

As promised, House Republicans forced a vote to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides a whole 2% of NPR's money.  As expected, the vote failed miserably.

House Democrats on Thursday shot down a G.O.P. attempt to roll back federal funding  to NPR, a move that many Republicans have called for since the  public radio network  fired the analyst Juan Williams last month.


Republicans in the House tried to advance the defunding measure as part of their “YouCut” initiative, which allows the public to vote on which spending cuts the G.O.P. should pursue. But their push was blocked, 239 to 171, with only three Democrats voting with a united bloc of Republicans.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican who is set to become majority leader in the next Congress, said the vote showed Democrats had failed to learn the lessons of this month’s midterm elections.

“Today’s vote was just the latest common sense YouCut to cut spending and save taxpayer dollars, and again Democrats showed that they just don’t get it,” Mr. Cantor said in a statement.

For his part, Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, who formed the Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus, called the Republican effort cynical and politically motivated.

“I urge members of both parties to focus our efforts on the urgent priorities facing this Congress and stop playing political games with public radio stations,” Mr. Blumenauer  said in a statement.

Republicans?  Playing political games with cynical efforts to make meaningless cuts in order to rile up their rabid base?  Gosh, that never happens.  Eric Cantor is promising once the new Congress is seated, this vote will pass the House.  It won't go anywhere in the Senate and won't reach the President's desk, but it's nice to know that the Republicans are so focused on jobs and not petty vengeance against anyone who might be to the left of FOX News.

Of course, it's not like Republicans actually care about the unemployed, either.

Kentucky Fried Insurance

Here in the Bluegrass State, health insurers stopped issuing child-only policies in response to the new health care law provisions that took effect in September that prevents insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions.  Kentucky's Insurance Commissioner has put an end to that noise quickly.

Kentucky Insurance Commissioner Sharon Clark has ordered all individual health insurers selling in Kentucky to offer an open enrollment period in January for Kentuckians younger than 19, effectively requiring balking insurers to resume sales of "child-only" policies.

The state Public Protection Cabinet had ordered the change as a result of an Oct. 13 hearing in which insurers were asked to explain why they stopped writing "child-only" policies Sept. 23. That was the date when the companies no longer could deny coverage because of a pre-existing health condition under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The state insurance department said the decision by insurers to stop offering such policies was a violation of state law and discriminated against those younger than 19 who need individual health insurance.

Clark said Thursday she was concerned that families needing a "child-only" policy would be forced into the Kentucky Access high-risk pool.

Thursday's order makes annual open enrollment available each January beginning in 2011 and running through 2013. Federal health care reform will prohibit insurers from denying coverage, regardless of health status, in 2014.

And forcing all kids with medical conditions into expensive high-risk insurance plans would of course be bad for the families, the kids, and the state of Kentucky having to foot the bill.  The state did the right thing here.  More states will follow Kentucky's lead (and how many times do I get to type THOSE words?)

StupidiNews!

• New Zealand officials say 27 miners are missing after an underground mine explosion near the country's west coast.
• A bill that would allow the Justice Department to blacklist entire domains from American access in order to stop piracy has passed a Senate committee vote.
• More and more Mexican drug cartels are buying weapons from US dealers to get around Mexican weapons laws.
• China wants banks to hold larger reserves as an effort to slow down the country's overheating economy.
• Congress is being warned that US computer infrastructure is vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style worm attack.

Last Call

NPR Nazis? According to Roger Ailes of Fox News, that is what they are. For your enjoyment, I have included the soon to be infamous quote below:

"They are, of course, Nazis," Ailes told the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz. "They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive."

CBS News is quick to point out that only a tenth of NPR's budget comes from taxpayer money, and gets no direct federal funding for operations.

"When NPR executives made the decision to unfairly terminate Juan Williams and to then disparage him afterwards, the bias of their organization was exposed," House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colo.) said in a statement. Firing someone for what amounted to a brain fart and poor judgment brings them out in numbers, but refusing to allow women to be paid the same as men is just silly talk, right guys?

I guess wanting one point of view is only okay if you agree with them. It's the Republican way.

The 26-ers Head For The Cliff

Because the House needed a 2/3rds majority vote to extend federal unemployment benefits under the rules, the Republicans were able to block unemployment benefits for millions of Americans today.

Federal jobless payments, which last up to 73 weeks, kick in after the state-funded 26 weeks of coverage expire. These federal benefits are divided into tiers, and the jobless must apply each time they move into a new tier.

Congress has extended the deadline to file those applications four times in the past year. The last jobless benefits extension -- which lasted six months and cost $34 billion -- faced a lot of opposition on deficit conscious Capitol Hill before it finally passed in mid-July.

The $12.5 billion bill that was on the floor Thursday needed two-thirds approval, or 275 votes, a tough hurdle. The vote was 258 to 154.

Still, the bill was the opening salvo in what's likely to be a highly charged debate on extending the safety net for the nation's millions of unemployed. While the next step is unclear, it's possible the extension will resurface in a larger bill, such as one that would extend the Bush tax cuts.

But it's also likely lawmakers won't meet the Nov. 30 deadline, meaning hundreds of thousands of people will start losing benefits. In the past, Congress has made the extension retroactive, so the jobless ultimately received all their checks.

Both House and Senate Democrats have said they would have liked to extend the deadline by a year, but the House settled on three months in hopes that it would pass more easily.

It didn't pass because Republicans blocked it.  They blocked it because they have no problem seeing millions of Americans lose their unemployment benefits right before Christmas, because they believe we will blame Obama. And hey...it's worked so far!

The article doesn't say that, of course.  It says "The house failed to pass the extension".  The vote's roll call makes perfectly clear what actually happened, however.  21 Republicans did vote yes, but 11 Blue Dogs voted no.  The vote would have failed even with the Blue Dogs, however.

They are Reps. Berry, Boyd, Bright, Cooper, Lincoln Davis, Hill, Minnick, Nye, Peterson, Shuler, and Taylor.

And eight of these 11 lost re-election.  And of the other three, one is Heath Shuler, who wants to be minority leader after voting against unemployment extensions.  He can go straight to hell.

So when 2 million people lose their checks going into December and January, you know exactly who to blame.  Again, the vote was lost regardless of what the Dems did.

Whether or not the Republicans will actually get the blame is anyone's guess.

Putting The Cart Before The Moose

Palin states that she believes she can defeat Obama, and begins to lay the groundwork for 2012.

Could she defeat him? Anything is possible. Should she? No. HELL no. I was as objective as possible when Palin hit the scene years ago. Not since Geraldine Ferraro have women had a shot at such political power in the US. I wasn't swayed when people first began with the pretty jokes. You can be pretty and smart, and appearance is an easy target when there isn't anything else of substance to pick on. Maybe that's why the pretty jokes didn't last long.

In my opinion, Sarah Palin is a power hungry nut who wouldn't know what to do with this position if she had it. She showed little regard for the Constitution and has given every indication she would attempt to force her religion into our lives and laws. Much in the fashion of King George Dubya, she seems to think that if elected that means we must want her to redesign our country, rather than lead it. And really... do you want someone so ignorant speaking to heads of state? She can't even take criticism on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. A mere question that might not agree gets removed. What is she really going to do if she has to act before her buffers instruct her? How is someone so thin skinned going to hold up to global pressure?

Exhibit A:

They're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.
Sarah Palin getting the US vice president's constitutional role wrong after being asked by a third grader what the vice president does, interview with NBC affiliate KUSA in Colorado, October 21, 2008.

Exhibit B:

I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.
Sarah Palin on not answering the questions in the vice presidential debate, St. Louis, Missouri, October 2, 2008.

Exhibit C:

"I think on a national level your Department of Law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out."
Sarah Palin, referring to a department that does not exist while attempting to explain why as president she wouldn't be subjected to the same ethics investigations that compelled her to resign as governor of Alaska, ABC News interview, July 7, 2009

And my last one, my very favorite...

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
Sarah Palin, in a message posted on Facebook about Obama's health care plan, Aug. 7, 2009

If you can't stop giggling, think about this woman running the country. That should do the trick.

In Which Zandar Admits Scott Brown Is An Okay Dude Sometimes

I've always said on this blog that if there's a good idea that the Republicans want to see implemented, I'm not going to poo-poo the idea just because Republicans proposed it.  And that brings us to GOP Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who along with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, have come up with a wonderful plan to fix health care reform.

If the states can come up with better plans, let them.  Ezra Klein explains:

This morning, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) introduced the “Empowering States to Innovate Act.” The legislation would allow states to develop their own health-care reform proposals that would preempt the federal government’s effort. If a state can think of a plan that covers as many people, with as comprehensive insurance, at as low a cost, without adding to the deficit, the state can get the money the federal government would’ve given it for health-care reform but be freed from the individual mandate, the exchanges, the insurance requirements, the subsidy scheme and pretty much everything else in the bill.

Wyden, with the help of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was able to build a version of this exemption into the original health-care reform bill, but for various reasons, was forced to accept a starting date of 2017 -- three years after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act goes into effect. The Wyden/Brown legislation would allow states to propose their alternatives now and start implementing them in 2014, rather than wasting time and money setting up a federal structure that they don’t plan to use.

In general, giving the states a freer hand is an approach associated with conservatives. On Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) sent a letter to the Republican Governors Association advocating exactly that. “The most effective path to sustainable health care reform runs through the states, not Washington,” he wrote. If it’s really the case that the states can do health reform better, Wyden and Brown are giving them a chance to prove it.

Do this.  This is brilliant, and something that I'd expect all 41 GOP Senators (and Mark Kirk when Illinois gets off their asses) to vote for.  If your state can come up with a better plan than Obamacare, then prove it.  We'll give you the money to do it.

And it gets even better.

One state that wants to prove it is Sanders’s Vermont. “As a single-payer advocate,” he says, “I believe that at the end of the day, if a state goes forward and passes an effective single-payer program, it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man, woman and child in a more cost effective way. So I wanted to make sure that states have that option.” Vermont’s governor-elect, Peter Shumlin, is on the same page. “Vermont needs a single-payer system,” he said during the campaign.

Single-payer, of course, is even more objectionable to conservatives than the existing health-care law. But that’s the beauty of this option: It allows the liberal states to go their way, the conservative states to go their way, and then lets the country judge the results. If Vermont’s single-payer system provides universal care at a low, low cost, then maybe that nudges California -- which is facing massive budget deficits -- off the fence. After all, if the state spends less than the government sends it, it gets to keep the remainder. It’s a nice incentive for cost control. And if it works, how long will more conservative states wait before they decide to take part in the savings, too?

But conservatives don’t believe that will happen. They think a consumer-directed system will offer higher-quality health care at a lower price, and with more choice. If Tennessee takes that route and outperforms Vermont, it’ll be their system that spreads across the land.

The funny thing about the health-care reform debate is that for all the arguing, everyone says they’re in favor of it. The GOP’s "Pledge to America," for instance, promises that the Republicans will repeal Obama’s health-care law “and put in place real reform.” Shumlin, too, promises Vermonters that he’ll produce “real reform.” The problem is that no one seems able to agree on what real reform is. The beauty of Wyden and Brown’s approach is that the country doesn’t have to choose.

Even better, individual states can decide, or they can stick with the current schedule of reforms.  Let red states and blue states battle it out with their own plans and see which one works.  Then all the states can use those plans in their own backyard, and we can put this to rest.

This is exactly what Republicans have been asking for:  a chance to prove they can do health care reform better than Obama and the Democrats.

So man up and do it.  Let Tennessee try its plan now.  Let Vermont try its plan.  Let California try its plan.  Let Oregon and Massachusetts try theirs.  Let's see what works in the real world.  Give states the choice.  I am all, all for this.

Pass this.  Pass this now.  This is a brilliant idea.  I love it.  Wyden-Brown for the win.

And naturally, I bet Republicans go bugnuts and hate it...even though it's exactly what they say they want.  What they really want is Obama the villain, and this bill would actually make Republicans have to govern.  They don't want that.  They want to win.  There's a difference.

Having said this, this legislation would force the GOP to go on record as being a bunch of douchebags who don't want to give the states the right to try better programs, but that they just hate Obama and want to destroy him.

I Recall When New Jersey Was Sane

And Tea Party nutjobs weren't trying to recall Senators for the crime of being Democrats.  Luckily, New Jersey's highest court just told the teabaggers to go dunk themselves in the Hudson.

"The court finds that ... the federal Constitution does not allow states the power to recall U.S. Senators," Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in a majority 4-2 opinion.

The Committee to Recall Robert Menendez, a group linked to the conservative Tea Party movement, wanted to recall the Democratic Senator because of his support for policies including healthcare and immigration reform and cap-and-trade legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The committee sought permission from New Jersey's secretary of state to hold a popular vote on the recall effort. Their recall bid was earlier upheld by an appeals court but has now been reversed by the state's highest court.

The court's decision has been awaited by conservative activists seeking recall initiatives against elected members of the U.S. Congress in other states including Louisiana, North Dakota, and Colorado.

And the insanity of this is that Republicans want the option to immediately force a recall vote of any Senator they don't like, which is to say anyone to the left of Jim DeMint.  First it was take the vote of Senators away from the people by repealing the 17th Amendment, now they want to hold do-overs any time a Democrat wins, because that has to be suspect, and voting for legislation is a high enough crime to warrant removal from office based on the Tea-ranny of the Majority principle.

Luckily it seems this lunacy is being stopped cold.  Disagreeing with the Tea Party is not a friggin federal offense.

Yet.

Trying To Assange Your Guilt

The Swedish rape allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are back.

A Swedish prosecutor on Thursday requested that Julian Assange, the founder of whistle blowing website WikiLeaks, be detained over rape allegations, a charge he strongly denies.


The prosecutor's office began an investigation into allegations of rape against Assange, an Australian citizen, in September.

The prosecutor's office said in a statement it had now decided to seek to detain Assange on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. A court hearing on the request was due at 1300 GMT.

"The reason for my request is that we need to interrogate him. So far, we have not been able to meet him to carry out the interrogations," said Marianne Ny, leading the case for the Prosecution Authority.

If the request is granted, authorities could issue an international arrest warrant for Assange, said Prosecution Authority spokeswoman Karin Rosander.

Remember, these allegations were made and then withdrawn due to lack of merit back in August.  Now they are being made again.  As I said then, any allegations of rape must be checked out.  But given the public calls for Assange's incarceration for WikiLeaks itself and even calls for his outright assassination from the wingnut right, and given the history of our own intelligence agencies in this country, the fact that these allegations may be false must be at least a possibility.

However if the Swedes have enough evidence to prosecute, Assange must turn himself in.  Period.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

And that reminds me:  to those of you who decided to vote for the Republicans to punish the Dems for not be progressive enough, particularly women who thought the Democrats weren't good enough on women's issues, LGBT voters who thought the Dems were failures on gay rights issues, and national security voters who think the Dems aren't serious on foreign relations: please keep the consequences of your votes in mind with Republicans killing the Paycheck Fairness Act with 41 no votes, planning to kill DADT's repeal in the Senate, and planning to delay the New START nuke treaty with Russia until next year, when they can kill it more easily.

And that's just this week. Keep that in mind heading into 2012.

Republicans don't give a pile of rat crap about any of that.  They just want to destroy Obama and stop him from signing anything into law over the next two years.

Anything.  And if the country burns, so be it.

Elections have consequences, they keep telling me.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Do Force A Showdown

Looks like the fight to repeal DADT is on in the Senate.

As recently as last week, there was quite a bit of talk about Senate Democrats caving on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Leaders knew they have to pass the military spending bill (the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA), and if Republicans were prepared to kill the measure over DADT, Dems looked like they'd blink first.

This week, there's been a shift in the other direction. President Obama has reportedly been working the phones, urging "dozens of Senators from both sides of the aisle" to approve the spending bill just as it is, leaving the repeal language intact.

By late yesterday, the Senate leadership announced it's not caving, setting the stage for a December showdown.

The problem is who on the Republican side will do the right thing when the base will see working with the Democrats as treason that must be ripped out?  Reid will offer amendments to both sides in order to get his two votes, but that will eat up two weeks of Senate business, leaving not a whole lot of time to get votes on anything else.

I just don't see how this works out.  I fully expect another last minute 180 by the GOP and this measure fails to advance by that same 58-42 vote, and then the real problems begin.  I hope I'm wrong.  How will the GOP be punished if they scuttle the bill?

More than enough LGBT voters went to the Republican side to reward them for the Log Cabin Republicans' efforts to attack DADT in the courts.  If things play out like I forsee it, these same folks will blame the 58 yes votes and not the 42 no ones...and vote increasingly Republican in 2012.