Last Call

Hats off to our northern neighbors for the Olympic show.  We're pretty grateful you guys let us come over and smack you around for 37 medals.  In all seriousness however, it was a great event:

The U.S. won a record 37 medals, with a silver from the men's hockey final. The U.S. total included golds by the four-man bobsled team led by driver Steven Holcomb, the first gold medal ever by a skier in Nordic Combined (Bill Demong), and the expected brilliance of Shaun White in the snowboard halfpipe.

To their credit, despite a slow start and some disappointments in events that were supposed to be almost sure things, the Canadians won a record number of gold medals, with that one big event, the men's hockey championship, remaining on Sunday.

But no gold medal was as stirring, as inspiring, as the bronze won by figure skater Joannie Rochette, who competed despite the death of her beloved mother two days before the women's short program.

She skated flawlessly in that first night of the competition, then dazzled the crowd in the free skate, winning the hearts of a nation and the respect of those watching around the world.

Years from now, they will talk of her strength and her bravery, but she just saw herself as the daughter who shared a dream with a mother who wouldn't let her fail.

She wasn't perfect in her performance, but in an imperfect Games, she was a beacon of all that is right about sports.

An imperfect Games in an imperfect world.  Still, nice to see the world put it aside every couple of years and play games.

We even forgive you for Nickelback.

Eliminationist Nation

I've talked about Dave Neiwert and his term for the most egregious of the Winger insanity:  eliminationism.  It's pretty gruesome stuff, by definition, and its most visible adherent these days is Glenn Beck.

What motivates this kind of talk and behavior is called eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.

Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on certain distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—are claims that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our national security.

Eliminationism is often voiced as crude "jokes," a sense of humor inevitably predicated on venomous hatred. And such rhetoric—we know as surely as we know that night follows day—eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.

If this sounds familiar to you, it should:  it's the primary theme of Beck's recent CPAC speech where he compared progressivism to a "cancer" that was destroying America.  He also called for it to be "eradicated".

And that's a deadly theme we see in nearly all the most dangerous Tea Party rhetoric.  Progressives exist to be destroyed, to be excised from America and the world.  How do you reason with people who want to destroy you, don't even see you as human?

Sunday Funnies: Johnny Volcano, San Fran Nan, And A Lizard

This week's Bobblespeak Translations are here, fresh from the bakery to you.

Gregory: what happened at the health care summit?

McCain: it was 7 hours - almost as much fun as
a Matlock marathon

Gregory: so it was good

McCain: yes but the President is planning to seize tyrannical power by passing laws with 51 votes

Gregory: so how will you react if the Democrats
do this terrible thing

McCain: reconciliation is evil

Gregory: you voted for reconciliation 9 times

McCain: yes but I objected strenuously to my votes

Gregory: Obama reminded you that the American people hate you

McCain: yes but the idea that you pass laws with
60 votes and a massive majority in the House is
just plain crazy

Gregory: how odd

McCain: it’s totally unsavory to make a deal to build a hospital in Connecticut behind closed doors

Gregory: you’re kidding

McCain: policy cannot be made by deals made
with lawmakers

Gregory: with all due respect you cannot possibly
be serious

McCain: I am serious and don’t offer me pudding
if you don’t have any

Gregory: John I didn’t offer you pudding

McCain: [ yells at cloud ]

Seriously, President McVolcano has been on the Sunday Funnies what, 3.7e43 times since he won in 2008 and Republicans swept into power with huge margins in the House and Senate?  Am I missing something here?

In Which Zandar Calls Equine Fecal Matter On Steve Benen

And having just got done chastising Frank Rich, we now have Nancy Pelosi making the political argument that the  Tea Party should be hating the Republicans and trying to drive a wedge between them and the Tea Party.  Even worse, somebody who really should know better, Steve Benen, agrees.

There are multiple factions within this so-called "movement," and it's often challenging to keep track of what it is, exactly, that these activists are so worked up about. Much of the time, the Teabaggers themselves don't really know why they're so angry.

But Pelosi's suggestion that the activists have a fair amount in common with Democrats' progressive ideas is not as foolish as it might seem. The "movement" cares about fiscal responsibility? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who added $5 trillion to the debt, left Dems with a $1.3 trillion deficit to clean up, and deliberately decided that they could expand government without paying for it. More recently, the GOP rejected PAYGO and a deficit commission that they proposed. If fiscal responsibility is a top concern, it's entirely reasonable to argue Democrats are the more fiscally responsible party.

The "movement" cares about wealthy interests dictating public policy over the needs of regular Americans? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who not only run corporate lobbyists as candidates, but barely make a move without getting lobbyists' permission.

The "movement" cares about taxes? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who voted against one of the largest tax-cut packages for the middle class in American history when they opposed the recovery effort a year ago.

The "movement" cares about the size and scope of government? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who expanded Medicare and enthusiastically embraced government intercepting Americans' communications without a warrant.

To be sure, much of the Tea Party crowd is well beyond reason, and has embraced delusional and paranoid right-wing fantasies. For these folks, Speaker Pelosi's remarks will likely be laughable.

But for some of the well-intentioned factions, the notion of driving a wedge isn't entirely far-fetched.

Steve?  Horseshit.  Absolute, 100% Horseshit.  The "reasonable faction" of the Tea Party is using taxes, size and scope of government, lobbyists and fiscal responsibility as intellectual cover for their John Birch/Ayn Rand anti-government ravings, and you damn well know it.  Drive a wedge?  Really?  How?

These guys know what's up:  purge the Republican Party of the people they don't like (the RINOs) and replace them with John Birch/Ayn Rand types in the primaries.  That's the difference:  The Obama hating nutbars will vote for the Republican no matter what.  The "reasonable faction" of the Tea Party will make their move at the primaries instead.

You think these guys will ever vote for a Democrat?  No.  It just means they will differ at primary time.  Once that candidate is set, the target is the Democrat in the race.  No wedge issues there.

Any Tea Party member who says they're independent and would consider voting for "the right Democrat" is lying to you.

You should really know better, Steve.

Tea-tering On The Edge

I've argued that there's no difference between the GOP and the Tea Party, and that they are united in common by Obama Derangement Syndrome.  Frank Rich on the other hand makes the firebagger argument:  Tea Party faithful hate Bush Republicans just as much and want to see almost all incumbents tossed out.

The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. While Washington is fixated on the natterings of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele and the presumed 2012 Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, these and the other leaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. Indeed, McConnell, Romney and company may prove largely irrelevant to the overall political dynamic taking hold in America right now. The old G.O.P. guard has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club
Republicanism. The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism.

The leaders embraced by the new grass roots right are a different slate entirely: Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin. Simple math dictates that none of this trio can be elected president. As George F. Will recently pointed out, Palin will not even be the G.O.P. nominee “unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states” (as it did in Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Waterloo). But these leaders do have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there, not just to the peaceable (if riled up) populist conservatives also attracted to Tea Partyism. This ideology is far more troubling than the boilerplate corporate conservatism and knee-jerk obstructionism of the anti-Obama G.O.P. Congressional minority.

He's both correct and incorrect here.  He's absolutely correct about the Tea Party folks being potentially violent, dangerous, even deadly:

Such violent imagery and invective, once largely confined to blogs and talk radio, is now spreading among Republicans in public office or aspiring to it. Last year Michele Bachmann, the redoubtable Tea Party hero and Minnesota congresswoman, set the pace by announcing that she wanted “people in Minnesota armed and dangerous” to oppose Obama administration climate change initiatives. In Texas, the Tea Party favorite for governor, Debra Medina, is positioning herself to the right of the incumbent, Rick Perry — no mean feat given that Perry has suggested that Texas could secede from the union. A state sovereignty zealot, Medina reminded those at a rally that “the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

In the heyday of 1960s left-wing radicalism, no liberal Democratic politicians in Washington could be found endorsing groups preaching violent revolution. The right has a different history. In the months before McVeigh’s mass murder, Helen Chenoweth and Steve Stockman, then representing Idaho and Texas in Congress, publicly empathized with the conspiracy theories of the far right that fueled his anti-government obsessions.

In his Times article on the Tea Party right, Barstow profiled Pam Stout, a once apolitical Idaho retiree who cast her lot with a Tea Party group allied with Beck’s 9/12 Project, the Birch Society and the Oath Keepers, a rising militia group of veterans and former law enforcement officers who champion disregarding laws they oppose. She frets that “another civil war” may be in the offing. “I don’t see us being the ones to start it,” she told Barstow, “but I would give up my life for my country.”

Whether consciously or coincidentally, Stout was echoing Palin’s memorable final declaration during her appearance at the National Tea Party Convention earlier this month: “I will live, I will die for the people of America, whatever I can do to help.” It’s enough to make you wonder who is palling around with terrorists now.

But he's 100% incorrect when he says that's different from the GOP.  The country club Republicans may not be actively mentioning watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants, but to them Obama Derangement Syndrome and the Tea Party is still a means to an end, and that end is retaking Congress from the Democrats.  They may not actively admit overtly supporting these tinfoil-wrapped bits of lunacy that the Birthers, Tenthers, and 9/12ers bring to the Tea Party, but they are making no effort at all to renounce them, either.

Frank Rich is partially correct when he says the Tea Party is dangerous, but functionally they are no different than the GOP, and both sides know it.  They just want to the see the Democrats gone in flames, and one faction is simply more honest about the lengths they will go to in order to accomplish it.

That's the only difference.  Trying to pretend the mainstream GOP is somehow filled with rational actors who wish to work with the Democrats to save America from this recession is Village idiocy.  If Rich is really interested in warning us about the Tea Party, he needs to start by telling the GOP leadership to stop embracing these dangerous nutjobs, not looking for ways to get the Republicans off the hook ahead of time.  They created this monster and lost control of it.

Call them out on it, and ask them why they are not renouncing it daily.  A real journalist concerned with the safety of America as Rich really, honestly seems to be here would not be making the mistake of dismissing the GOP leadership as irrelevant to this fight in 2010.

On the contrary, they are entirely relevant, because you should be asking GOP leaders what they plan to do to stop the Tea Party.

Your article is a cop-out.  That's a shame too, because you're right about them being dangerous.

Georgia On My Mind

Yet another Republican is retiring from the House, this time Georgia's John Linder.

Republican Rep. John Linder of Georgia won't seek re-election in November's midterm election, a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman said.


Linder made the announcement Saturday during a speech at the Gwinnett County Republican headquarters in his home state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

"It has been an honor to serve alongside John and his presence in the House will surely be missed," NRCC Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said in a statement.

The DRCC has a point when it responded with this:

Linder and his fellow House Republicans who are not seeking re-election this year, are "not buying the hype from [House Minority Leader] John Boehner and the NRCC that House Republicans will somehow take back the House," DCCC national press secretary Ryan Rudominer said in a statement.

Indeed.  Clearly Linder doesn't think the GOP's getting back the House at all.  If things are looking so wonderful for the GOP, why retire now?  Linder's retirement takes the number up to 20 for the Republicans, with 7 coming in just the first two months of the year.  Republicans looking for Linder's seat?

Well, that may include former Braves hurler John Smoltz.  We'll see.

[UPDATE 10:50 AM] Jon Singer at MYDD points out that Linder is the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means subcommittee that handles food stamps, federal aid to families, and oh yeah, Social Security.  That means he would end up chairman of that subcommittee if the GOP took back the House.  That would make him a very powerful and key person in the GOP's efforts to "reform" entitlement programs.

But he's retiring instead from a relatively safe Georgia red district.  He's giving that up completely.   There's no reason for Linder to call it quits, if anything he's in line for a powerful chair...if he believes the GOP will take back the House anytime soon.

He's gone instead.

Some Much-Needed Perspective

Unemployment up to 10.8%.  Presidential approval rating down to 35%.

Obama in November 2010?  Maybe.  But that's what Ronald Reagan was facing in November, 1982 during his first mid-term election.  Reagan of course went on to totally lose in 1984 to that Dukakis guy, right?

And yet Obama is supposedly the worst President we've ever had. Would Reagan have survived the age of FOX News?

Hardly.

Just sayin.

CNN Goes All Anarchist On Us

The one thing that Bush's massive mismanagement of our country has done for the Republicans is convince America that government cannot ever be trusted.  The Village insistence that the Dems are just as bad as the Republicans contributes to that as well.  A new CNN poll shows just how widespread the damage is.

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.


Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.

That's staggering.  56% of America believes the size of government itself is an immediate threat to Americans.  An immediate threat.  If that is true, if the majority of the American people honestly believe this is the case, then don't we have to rise up against the government itself?  Is that not the next step?

If you were looking for justification to do that, would this poll not validate that belief?  If you were looking to press violence against the government, would this not be the catalyst you would require in order to take action?

So why is CNN asking this particular question, equating the size of government itself with being an immediate threat to the "rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens?"  Is it not how a government is run, and not the size, that is the threat?

Not to socially responsible, "liberal" CNN.  Why not ask "Do you believe we should rebel against the notion of government itself?"  Yeah, anarchy!

Take power away from the government (who is accountable through elections) and give it to the corporations (who are not accountable through elections) because government is a threat to freedoms!

Gotta love corporate nihilism.

The True North, Strong And Free

Canada's women's hockey team celebrated an Olympic gold medal like any other team would celebrate:  they grab a few beers, smoke some stogies, and swipe the Zamboni.  Amanda Marcotte points out that some folks have a problem with this.

Oh, I’m sure people will swear up and down that men would get the same treatment.  And maybe they will....from here on out.  But let’s not fool ourselves here.  Some of the complaints are serious reaches, and not just when you express the idea that hockey players guzzling champagne (which is what the male winners of the Stanley Cup do as a tradition) is somehow an embarrassment to hockey’s image.  That they had to fend off complaints that this encouraged smoking is even sillier, but the mother of all concern troll complaints is that a player on the team was “underage” at 18, which is the drinking age in many parts of Canada.  That’s the sort of thing that screams “reach”, and the reaching is obviously due to the fact that a whole lot of people still have problems with female athletes, especially when they behave like athletes.

This tension seems pronounced when it comes to the Olympics, where a lot of properly feminine sports that involve costumes and the athletes starving themselves---like ice skating and gymnastics---are promoted heavily, and where women’s ski jump is still being kept out, with outdated arguments about ovary-jiggling being employed.  A lot of the Olympics organizers take the notion that the athletes are role models way too seriously, and when you start talking “role model” expectations and women, you’re going to start seeing a lot of sexist assumptions about ladylike behavior being employed.  Tracy Clark-Flory found at least one blogger using this incident to slam the very idea of women play “men’s” sports.  I wish hockey was that much of a threat to the patriarchy. 

Amanda absolutely has a point.  I seem to remember the USA men's hockey team trashed their hotel in 1998.  Nobody seemed to care then.  Frankly, having a celebration like this out on the ice, sharing the love in front of Vancouver's faithful, on home soil after winning a gold medal in the country's national sport?

Yeah, you get to swipe the Zamboni and chug a damn brew.  Lay off.  These athletes played hard, won big, and won it for the home country in the Olympics.  They've earned it.  Light it up, ladies.

Getting Biblical Out There

The 8.8 magnitude quake off the coast of Chile is bad enough with 122 confirmed dead so far, but the temblor has created tsunami warnings as far away from the epicenter as Hawaii.

It planned to sound civil defense sirens across the island state at 6 a.m. local time (11 a.m. EST) after the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a tsunami was generated that could cause damage along the coasts of all the Hawaiian islands,

"Get off the shore line. We are closing all the beaches and telling people to drive out of the area," said John Cummings, Oahu Civil Defense spokesman.

Buses will patrol beaches and take people to parks in a voluntary process expected to last five hours.
More than an hour before sirens were due to sound lines of cars snaked for blocks from gas stations in Honolulu.

"Urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property," the Warning Center said in a bulletin. "All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face."

The center has issued a Pacific-wide tsunami warning that included Hawaii and stretched across the ocean from South America to the Pacific Rim.

Geophysicist Victor Sardina said the Hawaii-based center was urging all countries included in the warning to take the threat very seriously.

"Everybody is under a warning because the wave, we know, is on its way. Everybody is at risk now," he said in a telephone interview.

The warning follows a huge earthquake in Chile that killed at least 82 people and triggered tsunamis up and down the coast of the earthquake-prone country.

The center estimates the first tsunami, which is a series of several waves in succession, will hit Hawaii at 11:19 a.m. Hawaii time (4:19 p.m. EST) in the town of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, with waves in Honolulu at 11:52 a.m.

Sardina said the Hawaiian islands could expect waves of six feet (two meters) in some places. Other estimates have been higher but he could not confirm those were likely.

Not cool.  Already there's reports of massive tsunami damage among some Pacific islands.  More on this as it develops.

Pass The Damn Bill, Part 6

Obama's looking to move forward on Pass The Damn Bill in the next few days.

The White House will announce next week -- "probably closer to Wednesday" -- the president's preferred path forward for getting health care legislation passed, spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday.

"The President will take into account what he heard yesterday, work through with the team some ideas and make an announcement next week about the way forward," Gibbs said.

Gibbs declined to get into specifics. But the widespread assumption on Capitol Hill is that Obama will address specific changes that he wants made to the Senate's version of the legislation (beyond the proposals he set forth in his own outline this week) and that he will encourage Congress to pass those changes using reconciliation, a procedure that precludes a filibuster.

One of the issues that could be addressed is the exemption of Floridians from cuts that the health care bill makes to Medicare Advantage. The president acknowledged during Thursday's summit that the carve-out didn't make much political or policy sense. And on Friday, Gibbs suggested Obama would want it gone.

"I think again, the president outlined a series of proposals based on good ideas from Democrats and Republicans in the past and I think you will likely see him take issues they agreed on yesterday and add them into a proposal going forward," Gibbs said.

Beyond that, Gibbs refused to budge. "I'm going to let the president make a decision and announce that decision as the best path forward," he said.

So if I read this correctly, the President favors incorporating even more Republican demands into the health care bill in exchange for...what?  What are the Democrats getting out of this, exactly?  What are the American people getting out of this, exactly?

Amazing.  This has been going on for a year now and we're still at the point where the Republicans are making the demands and the Democrats like Obama are saying "OK, will this work?  This is your idea on how to make this better."   The Republicans then say "No, we hate it, start completely over."

Just incredible.

Pass the damn bill already.  The Republicans are rendered irrelevant by their own actions.

Kyl And Bunning Do A Job On Thousands

Not only is my GOP Sen. Jim Bunning blocking federal unemployment benefit extensions because he believes they're too expensive, his buddy Sen. Jon Kyl is blocking them for a different reason:  he's holding the unemployed hostage to get a massive estate tax cut for the rich.

Well, it seems like at least one Republican is not, in fact, going to ensure that unemployed workers keep their benefits without first trying to cut taxes for the heirs of multi-millionaires:

On Wednesday, a top Republican leader said a deal on the bill would depend on working out the fate of the expired estate tax…Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said that Republicans will block consideration of the new bill unless they get “a path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.

“I will insist on an agreement on how to proceed [on the estate tax], if we’re going to have unanimous consent on how to proceed with any of these subsequent bills,” said Kyl.

This is a fairly shocking admission of priorities. 1.1 million workers are scheduled to have their unemployment benefits expire in the next month, with 2.7 million on track to lose them by April, while unemployment is still at 9.7 percent and there are six unemployed workers for every job opening. 6.3 million Americans have been unemployed for six months or longer, which is the most since the government began keeping track in 1948 and “more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.” Yet Kyl is willing to hold unemployment benefits hostage in order to fashion a tax cut for heirs of the very wealthiest estates.

Due to a Bush-era budgeting gimmick, the estate tax is currently expired, but it is set to come back in 2011 at the Clinton-era level, which Kyl has an intense interest in preventing. His proposal to slash the estate tax rate and increase its exemption would cost $250 billion over ten years, with 99 percent of the benefit going to the heirs of multi-millionaires. Under 2009 law, only 0.2 percent of estates are subject to the estate tax at all.

And it’s partially Kyl’s fault that the expiration happened at all. Back in December, Democrats tried to put in place a temporary extension that would have prevented the tax’s expiration. But Kyl, along with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), blocked it in order to advocate for repealing the tax entirely.

Let's review.  Jim Bunning is throwing the unemployed under the bus in the name of fiscal responsibility.  Jon Kyl is throwing the unemployed under the bus for a tax cut for the kids of the wealthiest Americans, one that would cost the government far more than the unemployment benefits.

Kyl and Bunning are actually blaming each other at this point.  Bunning is mad that Kyl is adding another quarter of a trillion bucks to the national debt, and Kyl is mad at Bunning that he's not pushing for tax cuts for the super-rich (not a whole lot of them in Kentucky.)

Yes, that's right:  two Republican Senators are arguing with each other about what constitutes a proper reason to hold a million plus unemployed Americans hostage for political reasons.

These are the people you're going to throw the Dems out for because they're not progressive enough.  Really?

[UPDATE 8:57 AM]  Bob Cesca reminds me that Jim Bunning's maneuver shut down the Highway Trust Fund as well (that's where the money was coming from.)   The Department of Transportation is now shut down until for 30 days minimum.  4,000 people just lost their jobs.

Bunning's willing to bet every one of those 4,000 people are Democrats, so they don't matter.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• A major 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Chile, creating a tsunami that threatens Hawaii and the pacific.
• The U.S. military has reversed its three year ban on social networking sites as the U.S. government is increasingly using these services to provide information.
• A shootout in California left several dead, including the gunman and sheriff's deputies.
• Fannie Mae is looking for another $15.3 billion from the Treasury after an even larger $16.3 billion quarterly loss.
• Critics testified yesterday to Congress that the proposed Comcast-NBC merger would cost jobs, and could turn into another AOL-Time Warner level disaster.

Last Call

The alternative to the Dems are Republicans like Arizona nutjob Trent Franks.

In this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say “How brave were they? What was the matter with them? You know, I can’t believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible.” And we’re right, we’re right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery. And I think, What does it take to get us to wake up?

He's lying about this, of course.

But there was little evidence that abortions had made black children unusually endangered. The fertility rate, or births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, among black women remains higher than the national average and has inched up in recent years, according to C.D.C. data.

The advertising campaign has drawn fire from supporters of abortion rights. Loretta Ross, the executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in Atlanta, said the billboards painted black women as either monsters intent on destroying their own race or victims of whites who control abortion clinics.

“The reason we have so many Planned Parenthoods in the black community is because leaders in the black community in the ’20s and ’30s went to Margaret Sanger and asked for them,” Ms. Ross said. “Controlling our fertility was part of our uplift out of poverty strategy, and it still works.”

But if you're trying to portray African-Americans as either unfit mothers that barely qualify as human or dupes of the dirty f'ckin hippie pro-choice movement so that they turn to God-fearing Republicans and away from the Democratic Party, why, this is a lie you want to tell over and over and over again.

And you know?  Check that.  It's enough to just make us not vote Democratic.  Hell, why let us vote at all?

Either way, you're bringing Jesus to the ignorant savages who just don't know any better.

In Which Zandar Plays The Devil's Advocate

Let's be honest here:  despite all the happy talk that this is moving forward, the Dems don't have the votes.

The Dems don't have the 51 votes for Senate reconciliation, or the 218 for passing the Senate bill in the House.  As it stands now, this bill's dead.  There is no health care reform.

Unless.

Unless.  Something has to change here in the next couple of weeks.  I was hoping it was going to be the summit, to finally convince everyone that there was no chance at the Republicans coming on board.  But the Dems knew that back in August.

If the votes were there, we'd have a bill by now.  We don't.  There's empirical evidence to support this, because there's no law yet.

So what has to change?  Obama has to twist some arms here.  The Dems have to commit to this now, 100%.  If they do not, they are doomed.  The Republicans warn that passing this bill and using reconciliation on it would be "catastrophic".  If that's so, then the Republicans should be daring them to pass the bill.  They're not.

Think about that.  To clarify what I mean, we need health care reform.  This is bigger than November.

Dems had better get those votes.  And soon.

Oh Yeah, Well We've Got Plasma Rockets

Plasma rockets that can cut the time to Mars down to 39 days.

I say this again.  Plasma.  Rockets.

Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says reaching the Red Planet could be dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket, now on track for lift-off after decades of development.

The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket -- to give its full name -- is quick becoming a centerpiece of NASA's future strategy as it looks to private firms to help meet the astronomical costs of space exploration.

NASA, still reeling from a political decision to cancel its Constellation program that would have returned a human to the moon by the end of the decade, has called on firms to provide new technology to power rovers or even future manned missions.

Hopes are now pinned on firms like Chang-Diaz's Texas-based Ad Astra Rocket Company.

Magnetoplasma Rockets!  That's even better than plain old plasma rockets!

Seriously, why aren't we throwing bricks of cash at this guy?

Bunning In The Billiard Room With The Candlestick

Our own Jim Bunning just killed unemployment benefits for a million Americans.

Starting Monday, the jobless will no longer be able to apply for federal unemployment benefits or the COBRA health insurance subsidy.

Federal unemployment benefits kick in after the basic state-funded 26 weeks of coverage expire. During the downturn, Congress has approved up to an additional 73 weeks, which it funds.

These federal benefit weeks are divided into tiers, and the jobless must apply each time they move into a new tier.

Because the Senate did not act, the jobless will now stop getting checks once they run out of their state benefits or current tier of federal benefits.

That could be devastating to the unemployed who were counting on that income. In total, more than one million people could stop getting checks next month, with nearly 5 million running out of benefits by June, according to the National Unemployment Law Project.

Lawmakers repeatedly tried to approve a 30-day extension this week, but each time, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., prevented the $10 billion measure from passing, saying it needs to be paid for first.
"Right now, the 1.2 million workers who will lose benefits in March are being held hostage by partisan attempts to delay and block this critical legislation," said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.

And the Senate adjourned today.  The legislation will now expire. Mission accomplished, Jim!

Republicans complained for months, bitterly, that Obama and the Democrats weren't doing enough about jobs and the unemployment rate.  So, Republicans did something about it alright:  They cut off a million plus Americans.

Dems, if you can't make this an issue in the elections, you deserve to lose.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Remember when American presidents were doddering, clueless, horny, or stupid, instead of the largest, most unforgivable sin of all...smart?

It's a safe bet that no minds were changed in that room Thursday, and it's not entirely clear that Obama was even trying to forge a compromise. Though advertised as a consensus-building opportunity, the summit served more as a moment for the president to tell Republicans, with the cameras rolling, why they're wrong and he's right.

The forum matched his lawyerly skills -- and, less flatteringly, his tendency to act like the smartest guy in the room. Prof. Obama ventured deep into the weeds of health-care policy to contest Republican claims, and, for one day at least, he regained control of the fractious student body that is the Congress.

The 40 lawmakers and administration officials, seated in squeaky chairs around the square, were to speak only when called on. After each talked, Obama would determine whether the speaker's point was a "legitimate argument."

While each of them had to call him "Mr. President," Obama, often waving an index finger, made sure to refer to each of them by their first name: "Thank you, Lamar. . . . We're going to have Nancy and Harry. . . . John, are you going to make the presentation yourself?"

If somebody went on too long, Obama cautioned the lawmaker to be "more disciplined." When Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) spoke about Medicare cuts, Obama cut him off. "I don't mean to interrupt," he said, but "if every speaker, at least on one side, is going through every provision and saying what they don't like, it's going to be hard for us to see if we can arrive at some agreements."

After several such moments, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ((R-Ky.) spoke up. "Republicans have used 24 minutes; the Democrats, 52 minutes," he said.

Obama made McConnell look small in his chair. "You're right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements," he said, "because I'm the president." 

Obama will never escape being President Uppity McBlackMan.  If Obama's acting like he's the smartest guy in the room...it's because he is...including the Villagers.

The Village And You

Doug at Balloon Juice has an excellent point:

There are a lot of people out there who believe that our sorry state of affairs is caused by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and, if they’re really deluded, they’ll add “and on the left, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann”. I know plenty of people who say things like this.

The truth is, it’s more the fault of Charlie Rose and Tom Friedman and David Brooks. Glenn Beck didn’t get us into Iraq.

Nope.  It was the Sensible Village Centrists that sold Bush and Iraq to the people.  It was their job to do so.

Our problem is the same folks that sold us that war then are still selling us things now.  They guys that said "Hey, wait a minute..." They got Froomkined.

The Case For Reconciliation

I've said a number of times that reconciliation should and can be used in the case of health care.  After all, Republicans have used reconciliation on health care bills in the past, and have even wanted to use it to drill for oil in ANWR in Alaska.

But don't take my word for it.  Take the word of Republican Sen. Judd Gregg making the case in 2005.


Bonus fact:  Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House in 2005.  They had no problems "ramming through things" using reconciliation then.

Like Shooting Moose In A Very, Very Large Barrel

Moose Lady's headlining the NRA Convention in Charlotte this year.

Palin, who has often spoken of hunting in Alaska, will speak to the convention's May gathering in Charlotte, N.C. The speech gives her the opportunity to burnish her credentials to a key segment of the Republican Party. Gun owners — and the NRA in particular — are very active in Republican primary politics.

"Gov. Palin is one of the most requested speakers in America today," Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive director, said in a statement announcing Palin's speech. "She's an outdoorsman, hunter and a steadfast supporter of our Second Amendment freedom. We are pleased to have a fellow NRA member speak at our 139th annual meeting in Charlotte this May."

I'm sure Obama will be sending his goons to take away America's guns any minute now...wait for it...waiiiit for it...

The Kroog Versus The Health Care Summit

Paul Krugman rightfully calls out the Republicans for offering exactly zip in yesterday's summit.

It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Senator Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.”

Wow. I guess you could say that he wasn’t technically lying, since the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Democrats’ plan does say that average payments for insurance would go up. But it also makes it clear that this would happen only because people would buy more and better coverage. The “price of a given amount of insurance coverage” would fall, not rise — and the actual cost to many Americans would fall sharply thanks to federal aid.

His fib on premiums was quickly followed by a fib on process. Democrats, having already passed a health bill with 60 votes in the Senate, now plan to use a simple majority vote to modify some of the numbers, a process known as reconciliation. Mr. Alexander declared that reconciliation has “never been used for something like this.” Well, I don’t know what “like this” means, but reconciliation has, in fact, been used for previous health reforms — and was used to push through both of the Bush tax cuts at a budget cost of $1.8 trillion, twice the bill for health reform.

What really struck me about the meeting, however, was the inability of Republicans to explain how they propose dealing with the issue that, rightly, is at the emotional center of much health care debate: the plight of Americans who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions. In other advanced countries, everyone gets essential care whatever their medical history. But in America, a bout of cancer, an inherited genetic disorder, or even, in some states, having been a victim of domestic violence can make you uninsurable, and thus make adequate health care unaffordable.

One of the great virtues of the Democratic plan is that it would finally put an end to this unacceptable case of American exceptionalism. But what’s the Republican answer? Mr. Alexander was strangely inarticulate on the matter, saying only that “House Republicans have some ideas about how my friend in Tullahoma can continue to afford insurance for his wife who has had breast cancer.” He offered no clue about what those ideas might be. 

And that's the way it has been since last March:  The Democrats incorporate an idea fronted by Republicans into the health care plan, and then the Republicans immediately turn against it.  As I've been saying for over a year now, the Republicans will never, ever let Obama take credit for health care reform, even if it means scuttling their own ideas.

As Lamar Alexander showed us yesterday, the only idea Republicans have is "start over."  When Republicans had control of Congress and the White House, they tacked on a $1.2 trillion prescription drug gift to Big Pharma.  To Republicans, that's health care reform.

They would rather toss their own ideas down the hole than let a Democratic president sign them into law.

Time to go it alone.  Even former GOP Senate majority leader Bill Frist admits the Republicans are obstructing too much.

Paterson Packs It In

As widely expected, embattled NY Dem Gov. David Paterson is not running for re-election this fall, leaving the door wide open for a Rick Lazio/Andrew Cuomo contest.

 New York Governor David Paterson has decided to withdraw from the race for governor and will not seek election this year, a top Democratic official told NBC News.

Paterson is expected to announce his decision later Friday. 

Paterson was elected lieutenant governor and ascended to the top posttwo years ago when former Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned amid a prostitution scandal.

Recently, the governor has been under fire for having contacted a woman who accused one of his top aides of domestic violence. 

The decision would clear the way for Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is the favorite of many Democrats, to seek the nomination unimpeded. 

Not like this wasn't coming.  Question now is how will Cuomo handle the investigation into Paterson's aide?

Bureaucratic Inertia For The Win

Obama's latest plan to forestall the foreclosure crisis?  Literally stall on the foreclosure crisis.

The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.


The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan. 

You can't foreclose until our government bureaucracy has reviewed the mortgage!  We'll get back to you on that.

Finally, a government plan that might actually work.

Epic Prorogue This, Eh Fail

Via Crooks And Liars:



Dammit.

No matter how today's USA vs CAN Men's hockey gold medal game goes (and the Canadian women kicked our asses last night 2-0) in the greater scheme of things it's still EPIC FAIL for us.

Bunning Blocks The Plate

The former baseball player is blocking the dinner plate of America's unemployed that is, as the retiring Republican Senator from Kentucky delivered a big "screw you" as he single-handedly blocked federal unemployment benefits from being extended to tens of thousands of Americans...over a college basketball game.

The Senate clash over the unemployment benefits ended just before midnight Thursday with Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, refusing to lift his objection, meaning the  jobless aid – for however short a time – will run out Sunday night unless a deal is reached Friday.

As the fight drew to a close, Mr. Bunning complained he had been ambushed by the Democrats and was forced to miss the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game. He said Democrats caused their own problems by dropping the program extensions from an earlier bipartisan jobs measure.

And while he said the Senate spent almost three hours “telling everybody in American that Senator Bunning doesn’t give a damn about people who are on unemployment,” he assured those still watching that he was indeed interested in renewing the programs as long as it can be done to his satisfaction.

Senator Richard Jr. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said he intended to try to break the impasse again Friday morning but Mr. Bunning indicated he would again be on hand.

Senator Jim Bunning, the conservative Kentucky Republican, insisted that the jobless pay due to run out Sunday night should be paid for rather than added to the deficit as an emergency. During the debate, Mr. Bunning stood rigidly at his desk in the back row of the Senate and objected to repeated Democrat attempts for agreement to extend unemployment coverage through April 5.

“I believe we should pay for it,” declared Mr. Bunning, who said he was determined to remain to thwart the Democrats. “I’ll be here as long as you are here.”

So, unless Bunning relents tonight, tens of thousands of Americans and their families will get cut off on Sunday.  I love it.  We can spend billions on Iraq and Afghanistan and in fact during the Bush years we spent trillions.  Republicans didn't bat an eyelash.

Try to spend money on Americans who need it however, that's fiscally irresponsible socialism.  At one point he told Democrats on the Senate floor: "Tough shit."  What does he care?  He's an ex-baseball player.  He's got money.  The rest of you?  Tough shit!

Can't have that!  After all, all unemployed people must be Democrats.  Even in a red state like Bunning's Kentucky, right?  Don't like it?  Tough shit!

That's the GOP motto, America.  Tough shit.

StupidiNews!

• Troubled insurer AIG is expected to announce a major 4th quarter loss today of nearly $9 billion.
• Kabul, Afghanistan was rocked by an explosion less than 24 hours after the US took the city of Marjah.
• South Korea's Kim Nu-Ya and Mao Asada of Japan may have won the women's figure skating gold and silver, but the real story was Canadian Joannie Rochette's bronze.
• New York City is facing "near-blizzard" conditions as a major winter storm continues to spin off the coast.
• A judge has sided with Microsoft to take a botnet's control offline, offering the first real victory against a botnet.

Last Call Plus

Obama wants Republicans to do some soul-searching.

Joke's on you, Barry!  Republicans in Congress don't have souls.  They made this so easy for you it's hysterical.  There's no way any Republican will ever work with you on anything.  They reject any idea of theirs that you appropriate.  The GOP Plan:  Anything Obama does, say no to it, even when you supported the idea in the past.

The individual mandate. Chuck Grassley was for it before he was now against it.
Health insurance exchanges. Tom Coburn was for them, now he's against them.
Trimming Medicare fraud.  Paul Ryan in fact wants to do away with Medicare altogether and replace it with vouchers.  Against the HCR plan.

Reconcile it.  Pass it.  Move on.  The GOP will never agree to anything.

Last Call

NY Gov. David Paterson is keeping an "open mind" about suspending his re-election campaign.

At this point, it's all over as soon as Andrew Cuomo agrees to run.

"I am not suspending my campaign, but I am talking to a number of elected officials around the state, as I would, fellow Democrats, to hear their opinions," he told reporters in New York City. Asked about the calls for him to back out of the race, Paterson said he had "an open mind" about the situation.

"I want the Democrats to win this November," he said. "I want the governor of the state of New York to be Democratic, hopefully me, and I will weigh what they have to say, but right now I am a candidate for governor."

Paterson said he is in the race "for the long haul," but added: "I am not in it without having my colleagues feel they can talk to me about this."


He expressed confidence that the state Attorney General's office - led by Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat who has been mulling a primary challenge to Paterson - will clear him of any wrongdoing. Ultimately, he said, "everyone will understand."

He said he would not resign the governor's office.

Well, it's not like Gov. Appalachian Trail resigned either.  Interesting however...there's a bit of a problem shaping up for Cuomo right now.  If he goes after Paterson too hard, he risks looking like he took Paterson down to win the Democratic nomination for Governor.  If he is too soft on Paterson, he risks looking like Paterson's corrupt buddy.

If Cuomo is running, the first thing he needs to do is recuse himself from this case.  Cuomo needs to put the pin back in that little grenade ASAP.  And he's better hurry:  Rick Lazio, the Republican running for Governor, is already attacking Cuomo for being silent on this matter.

While We Were Out

Rest of the universe moved on outside of SUMMITRON '10:

Top NY Cabinet official Denise O'Donnell resigned in the wake of the growing scandal involving the State Police.

Denise E. O'Donnell, the deputy secretary for Public Safety, announced her resignation at 2 pm, saying that the actions of the governor and the State Police are "unacceptable regardless of their intent."

The New York Times broke the story last night that Paterson personally phoned a woman who David "DJ" Johnson allegedly attacked. The details of their conversation remain murky, but the woman did not show up in court to address the case the following day.

The article also alleges that state troopers visited the woman at her home and discussed the case with her despite having no official business doing so.

GOP Florida Senate hopeful Marco Rubio says he has reimbursed personal expenses purchased with his party issued credit card.

Rubio said Wednesday that he paid for all personal expenses billed to an American Express card given to him by the party to use from 2005 to 2008 when he left public office. The rest of the charges, he said, were legitimate party expenses.

Those expenses include a $1,000 charge at Braman Honda in Miami for repairs to the family car in January 2008. Rubio said the minivan was damaged by parking attendants at a political function and that the party agreed to cover half of his insurance deductible. The party also paid $2,976 for him to rent a car in Miami for five weeks, according to the records provided by a confidential source. 

And new jobless claims went up 22k to 496,000.

Continuing claims rose 6,000 to 4.62 million in the week ended Feb. 13. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of Americans receiving extended benefits under federal programs.

The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits, which tends to track the jobless rate, held at 3.5 percent in the week ended Feb. 13, today’s report showed. Nine states and territories had an increase in claims for that same week, while 44 had a decrease.

In testimony before lawmakers in Washington yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke cited “tentative” signs of stabilization in labor markets, such as lower job losses, a rise in manufacturing employment and stronger demand for temporary help. 

Heck of a day.

Health Care Summit Thread, Part 2

The best part of this is Tweety, who's done a complete 180 from his position last month that the Dems could never even try reconciliation. Now he's basically saying that's all they have left. GOP will never play ball, even on their own proposals.

2:03 Obama gets class back in order.  Damn kids.  Biden!  Go!

2:06 Biden makes jokes about not doing anything, passes to GOP Rep Mike Enzi.

2:09 Mike Enzi likes exchanges too.  Talks about qualified and unqualified plans.  Of course, all the plans Enzi wants to add would be unqualified, making exchanges moot.

2:15 Dem Tom Harkin says it's time to end "segregation by health" by passing comprehensive HCR.  Good argument.  Bad politics.  GOP will jump on that and now feign indignation at the "race card."

2:19 Obama argues that the high risk pool wont work without money in said pools, money the GOP doesn't want to spend.

2:25 Sen Jay Rockefeller of the Dems talks about insurance company "sharks".  No oversight on them past state regulation.

2:30 However, Rockefeller is bluntly shooting down the public option, period.

2:45 Rep Marcia Blackburn keeps talking about insurance companies crossing state lines.  Obama wiselysets her straight.  Not your strongest speaker, GOP.

2:52 Obama talking about being dragged kicking and screaming into mandates, again, a Republican idea.

2:55 Moving on to the deficit.  Biden!


3:00 Rep Paul Ryan still lying about the cost curve.  "We don't think the government should be in charge."  We think the insurance companies should be in charge.

3:04 Ryan hits at the Obama plan's "smoke and mirrors" spending.

3:06 John McCain would like to reiterate that he's running for President in 2008.

3:08 Paul Ryan and Xavier Becerra now arguing CBO points.  Becerra says "You can't cherry pick".  Nice stroke.

3:12 Oh good, Chuck Grassley.  I wonder which of his own policies he'll argue against, the mandate or trimming Medicare fat?

3:16 And it's the mandate.  I was for it before I was against it...

3:24  Kent Conrad of the Dems up. Mentions chronically ill as a reson why we miiiiight be having a cost containment issue.

3:27 Boehner again.  Warns of bankrupting the country.  Probably shouldn't have started those wars, then.  Doesn't the bill reduce the deficit?

3:29 And now Boehner goes for the abortion attack.  Apparently Bart Stupak couldn't make it.

3:33 Obama looks like a high school teacher in the last period of the day.

3:34 ...and Obama put Boehner in time out.

3:37 Dem Jim Cooper: We have to make change now.  Only took 5 hours for the "fierce urgency of now" argument.

3:44 McCain again.  Talking about Dems trying to "impose 51 votes".  Stop and think about that one for a sec.

3:47 Obama takes Boehner out of time out and goes after him on medical malpractice.

3:50 Dick Durbin hitting clean-up here.  The man is doing well.

3:53 Did I say "well?"  He crushed it out of the park. "If you think this is a socialist health care plan, drop out of the Federal Employee Health Plan."  Quote of the day so far.

3:57 Republicans counter with Sen. John Barrasso, a former physician.  Makes Durbin's point for him that other country's wealthy come the US to buy better health care.

4:00 And Obama sticks it to Barrasso, asking him of all members of Congress should take the kind of catastrophic coverage the Republicans say all Americans should have and a salary of $40k a year to pay for it.  Nice!

4:04 Now Henry Waxman up for the Dems, follows Obama's lead on this.  Asks if Medicare recipients should only have catastrophic coverage.

4:07 Waxman also on fire.  the GOP proposal gives "a break to the healthy".

4:15 Peter Roskam of Illinois is bragging how the Great GOP Plan will cover 3 million people..out of what, 50 million?  Idiot.

4:23 Chris Dodd looks to finish.  Nice points here on the "dream" of HCR.

4:28 Joe Barton closing for the GOP.  Could save 50% if Californians could shop in other states.  Sure, until the rates for those folks go up.

4:35 Check that, Ron Wyden closing for the Dems.  Points out the GOP incremental, piecemeal approach would...surprise!  COST MORE.  Thank you.

4:37 And now Mitchy is quoting polls.  Again.  Just like he has been for the last nine months.

4:41 Obama points out the individual pieces poll better than what Republicans have been saying was actually in the package.

4:47  Tom Coburn, Charlie Rangel, Patty Murray all talking because we have to be fair.

5:03 Pelosi again, Dingell, and finally Obama getting the last word.  Dingell makes a great point:  What's wrong with deciding by majority vote?

But Obama finishes us off with his closing remarks.

...and calls out the state line nonsense once and for all.  Yes South Dakota, he's talking to you.  We've done the interstate trade before with credit cards.  They all ended up in Bismarck.  They had the nicest rules for the credit card companies.  Insurance companies want to do the same.

I'm done here.

Summit Halftime Report

Apparently, the only thing the Village is taking away from this is A) it's 2008 again with McCain vs. Obama and B) Eric Cantor's 2400-page bill prop invalidates any Democratic argument.

What policy? Obama's mean to McCain and Cantor. And angry black men are inherently bad for America.

[UPDATE 1:41 PM] David Corn argues that the GOP just made reconciliation a whole lot easier with the GOP stating over and over again that they want to completely start over, while the Dems have gone out of their way to point out the Republican ideas incorporated into the plan.

Crescent Rolled

TBogg notes the Wingers are going all crazy because the logo for Obama's missile defense program kind of looks like a CRESCENT HE'S A MOOSLIM SLEEPER AGENT GET THE PEPPER SPRAY!

Over at one of Andrew Breitbart’s hypertensive shrieky Big sites, ridiculous man-thing Frank Gaffney alerts us to  irrefutable evidence that Muslim President Barack Muslim Obamuslim is sending secret colorful messages to his Islamopuppetmasters that he will soon destroy America with low-orbit Demon Laser-eyed SpaceSheep.
Oh shut up, it’s true:

No really, that's the entire argument. More Wingers peeing themselves over symbols of Barack Muad'Dib Obama's Jihad of a Million Worlds.

The spice must flow.

Health Care Summit Thread

10:17:  Obama's opening statement is pretty decent.  Let's work together, etc. Sen. Lamar Alexander up next for the GOP opening statement.

10:30:  Sen Lamar Alexander just told Obama to basically go screw himself in the GOP's opening statement and that the only way forward, period, is for the Dems to start over completely, otherwise this is six hours of wasting America's time.  You don't have a choice, is his message.  There's bipartisanship for you.

10:35:  Nancy Pelosi:  Allow me to retort.  Remember Ted Kennedy!  You guys respected Ted, you know.

10:41:  Pelosi hits back on Alexander's long-on-process speech.  "Most people sitting around the kitchen table don't care about process.  They care about results."

10:44  Harry Reid opens with an anecdote about a Nevada man named Jesus and his daughter who was born with a cleft palate, and the $90k bill the insurance company stuck him with for surgery for his daughter's "pre-existing condition."

10:46: Alexander is "entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts."  Ouch.

10:50:  "America's the only country in the world where you have insurance and get sick and go bankrupt."  Nice.

10:54:  Obama again, saying everybody agrees the issue is cost.

10:58:  Lamar interrupts the President and says the CBO says the Senate bill makes premiums go up.  Obama corrects the hell out of him. Lower premiums mean people will buy better insurance.

11:00:  Obama: You know, there are a lot of Republican ideas already in this plan on cost-containment.

11:02:  Mitch picks Tom Coburn for his side next, but not until McConnell flogs the polls that say everyone hates the Dems.

11:06:  Government can't run anything.  $150 billion a year in fraud.  We fix fraud, we incentive doctors, we save 15% on health care for everyone.

11:09 We're creating more diabetes with food stamps and school lunches than anything.   It's all about tort reform!

11:14  Steny Hoyer's up for the Dems.  We've all got health care horror stories.  I have one too!

11:17 Hoyer: You know Tom, you should be happy with our bill's anti-fraud provisions.  You have a better way?  Let's talk.

11:24  Republican Rep. John Kline talking about small businesses forming insurance pools.  Don't both sides want this?  Isn't this already in the bill?

11:26 Sen Max Baucus of the Dems responds:  Yeah, those are called "exchanges".  They were originally your idea, Republicans.  It's a good idea.  We're working on ironing out those differences.

11:29  The Dems continue to be nice.  "We agree on prevention.  We agree on fraud.  We agree on exchanges."    Somebody give him the hook already.

11:32 Rep Dave Camp of the GOP comes in with the $1 trillion cost/$500 billion Medicare cuts lie.

11:37 Obama puts up Dem Rep. Rob Andrews, who has a lot of Republican friends, apparently.

11:40  John Kline cuts off Andrews.  "Nobody with health care plans from big companies are complaining."  Really?

11:41  Mitch Objects, wants more time for Republicans.  Obama relents to Rep Paul Ryan.

11:44 Obama getting annoyed now.  Ryan keeps going on about doing to insurance what Congress did to credit cards.

11:45 Obama telling his story about his legal minimum car insurance policy he had on a beater in college, and how you can't have that for breast cancer.  "We can't do that."

11:50 Chuck Schumer still agreeing with the Republicans.  The Dem response to start over is "your ideas are in this bill."   Gotta cut the bad stuff, keep the good stuff.

11:51 GOP Sen Jon Kyl counters with "No, we have too much disagreement."  Attacks mandates, which are...a Republican idea.

11:57 Obama again, disputing Kyl's "fundamental" differences.

12:01  Jim Clyburn speaking.  Emergency room patients being seen for primary care problems because they don't have insurance.  Small businesses are at the mercy of the owners who make the decisions.

12:10  Obama shifts gears to insurance reform itself.

More on this later.

12:30:  John McCain reminds everyone that he's running for President in 2008.

12:42:  Eric Cantor puts the entire 2400 page bill on the table and says "We're afraid of Washington."  Obama's bullshit tolerance level just dropped to nil.

12:50:  Eric Cantor looks like somebody just took a dump in his Cheerios.  He is clearly not used to being spoken to in this manner.

12:54:  Biden askes for 10 seconds (heh).  Rep Louise Slaughter of the Dems talking about the history of insurance discrimination of women.  Strong stuff.

1:00 Obama talking to reporters now, called lunch break.

The Cult Of Moosenality Argument Is A Complete Loser For Dems

Via Steve M, Maha has a fascinating article about Sarah Palin as the Tea Party's goddess figure, but there's a major, major problem with the notion.

Which brings me to why Sarah Palin is a goddess. By that I don’t mean she has actual godlike powers. I’m talking about her role in the rightie mythological cosmos, and why pointing out her obvious shortcomings will put no dents in the tea partiers’ loyalty to her.

By “goddess” I mean a goddess in something like (but not exactly) the tantric sense, in which a deity becomes an archetype for one’s own deepest nature. Palin, by contrast, is a near-perfect embodiment of an ideal. She is (to a rightie) beautiful, sexual, and maternal; she is powerful enough that the Evil Ones who live in Washington and who speak seditious things on the Teevee must kowtow to her. Through her folksy speech and shooting skills she evokes other American archetypes from more wholesome, earlier times, like Daniel Boone. But she also wears modern clothes and has a Facebook page.

Like most tantric deities, Palin has has both benevolent and wrathful aspects. As a wrathful goddess she gives voice to her followers’ deepest fears and hates and resentments. But she also has a bright smile and sometimes carries a baby, showing a benevolent side. Her followers both love her and identify with her; she is an archetype representing their own deepest selves, or at least the selves they’d like to be.

She’s a goddess, I tell you. And because she is a goddess is makes no difference to her devotees that she has few real accomplishments, no coherent ideas, and probably doesn’t know Bern from Budapest. It does not matter if she writes crib notes on her hand and needs several months to think of a name of a newspaper she actually reads. In fact, it does not matter to them if she reads at all. Whatever she does is exactly right, because it is her doing it, and she is a goddess.

It’s important to understand this, because it shows us why it’s futile to treat Palin as just another politician or media star. It was pointless to make fun of the crib notes, for example. I doubt anyone could bring Palin down but Palin herself. If she somehow grossly and blatantly violated the ideal she represents, her followers could turn on her. But until she does that, she is invincible in the eyes of the devoted.

The problem is simple. Isn't this the same kind of thing people were accusing Obama of having in early 2008?  Indeed, there are a number of articles I can find on Obama's cult of personality from everyone from Jake Tapper to The Kroog (!?!?) ripping Obama for coming dangerously close to a setup like this.  From a theological and sociological view, Maha is right.  Politically?  It'll never, ever fly and Obama's cult status will only get thrown up in people's faces...and rightfully so.

Not to defend Sarah Palin in any way, but throwing this cult of personality accusation around is not anything that's going to stick after it was applied to Obama two years ago, no matter how applicable it actually is to Moose Lady.

This one's a loser, guys.  Let's not go down this path on Palin.

The Other Shoe Drops On Gov. Paterson

The bombshell that was supposed to drop earlier this month on NY Democratic Gov. David Paterson was something of a dud.  Which makes this actual bombshell that dropped on him yesterday quite surprising, and very very much the end of his political career.

Last fall, a woman went to court in the Bronx to testify that she had been violently assaulted by a top aide to Gov. David A. Paterson, and to seek a protective order against the man.

In the ensuing months, she returned to court twice to press her case, complaining that the State Police had been harassing her to drop it. The State Police, which had no jurisdiction in the matter, confirmed that the woman was visited by a member of the governor’s personal security detail.

Then, just before she was due to return to court to seek a final protective order, the woman got a phone call from the governor, according to her lawyer. She failed to appear for her next hearing on Feb. 8, and as a result her case was dismissed.

Many details of the governor’s role in this episode are unclear, but the accounts presented in court and police records and interviews with the woman’s lawyer and others portray a brutal encounter, a frightened woman and an effort to make a potential political embarrassment go away.

The case involved David W. Johnson, 37, who had risen from working as Mr. Paterson’s driver and scheduler to serving in the most senior ranks of the administration, but who also had a history of altercations with women.


On Wednesday night, in response to inquiries from The New York Times, Mr. Paterson said in a statement that he would request that Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo investigate his administration’s handling of the matter. The governor also said he would suspend Mr. Johnson without pay. 

So, we have the Governor's possible interference in the case of violent assault on a woman on behalf of an aide with a history of violence against women, to the point where the woman was scared away from continuing her case...and the matter is now going to state AG Andrew Cuomo, a stalwart against corruption and abuse of power and already popular because of his crusade against Wall Street.  Cuomo is already investigating a nearly ten-year long tale of NY State Police corruption, including -- you got it -- covering up for powerful Empire State politicians.

Paterson's screwed.  The fork is inserted and comes out cleanly.  He is done.  As he should be.  This is pretty repugnant and Paterson deserves to go.  Cuomo needs to throw the book at him.

Meanwhile, Wall Street sees a major opportunity to get Cuomo out of their hair as AG and into the Governor's mansion, where he really can't do too much more damage to them.  Cuomo hasn't officially announced anything about running for Governor, and Paterson had largely weathered the storm.  You can bet the last 12 hours that has completely changed that picture.

Count on it.

Congress Throws Consumers Under The Bus

Obama is dropping the consumer financial protection agency and the Volcker Rule from the bank regulation overhaul bill.

The Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system.

In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are opening the door to compromise with lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy, according to congressional and some administration sources.

President Obama's economic team is now open to housing the consumer regulator inside another agency, such as the Treasury Department, though they still prefer a stand-alone agency. In either case, they are insisting on a regulator with political autonomy and real teeth so it can effectively enforce rules designed to protect consumers of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.

The administration may also have to compromise on Obama's recent proposal for a rule to limit risky activities at banks by prohibiting them from engaging in many kinds of speculative investments.

Treasury officials are preparing to send Capitol Hill a toughly worded measure that would bar banks from making certain investments that benefit only the firms' bottom line rather than their customers. But there is little support among either Democratic or Republican lawmakers for this proposal, known as the "Volcker rule," and Senate leaders are now closing ranks around legislation that would leave it to banking regulators, rather than the law, to decide which activities to ban.

That's staggering.  There's basically no support for either of these measures from Republicans or Democrats in Congress.  Real reform of the banks was always going to be impossible, even after nearly destroying the global economy and costing taxpayers trillions of dollars.  Passing this, for the Democrats, would be a massive boost to their credibility in 2010.

But let's face it:  Congress is owned by the banks.  They freely admit this.  The banks sure as hell do.  No reform for you.  Congress serves the financial industry.

So the next time this happens, we'll take another multi-trillion dollar hit to the economy.  And it will come out of your pocket again.  I find myself starting to agree with this anti-incumbent thing.

No Plan B Survives Contact With The Enemy

Ezra Klein catches the Wall Street Journal trying to muck up today's health care summit and reminds us at this point the White House has gone all in (emphasis mine):

The Wall Street Journal has a splashy piece this evening on the White House's plan B for health-care reform: a fallback approach that would cover 15 million people, do less to reform the system and cut costs, and carry a lower price tag. Call it health-care lite.

Plan B has been around for awhile. In August, discussions raged in the White House over whether to pare back the bill. The comprehensive folks won the argument, but people also drew up plans for how you could pare back the bill, if it came to that. More thinking was done on this in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, when Rahm Emanuel and some of the political folks again argued for retreating to a more modest bill. As you'd expect, these conversations included proposals for how that smaller bill would look.

At this point, I could quote some White House sources swearing up and down that that's all this is. A vestigial document that's being blown out of proportion by a conservative paper interested in an agenda-setting story. They're furious over this story. None of the quotes are sourced to the White House -- not even anonymously -- raising questions that the whole thing is sabotage. But it hardly matters. There's no Plan B at this point in the game, and most everyone knows it. 

Ezra has a point. This plan B is basically the scaled-down Republican plan with some changes, it's been around for six months, and it's being pulled out in advance of today's health care summit in order to try to give the GOP another talking point to try to kill HCR slowly.  It's being done to weaken Obama's position and I fully expect the GOP to flog this Plan B all day.

It's a pretty good tag team from the "liberal" media and the GOP.  We'll see how Obama can counter.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama, VP Biden, HHS Secretary Sebelius, and 30 members of Congress will get together for today's health care summit.
• Massachusetts lawmakers are considering creating a state-owned bank to increase lending in the state.
• U.S. and Canada face off today in Women's Hockey for the gold medal.
• Yet another major snowstorm will hammer Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston with some totals reaching two feet or more.
• Wilmington, NC becomes the second city in the country to test a "white spaces" broadband network.

Last Call

Tom Jensen at PPP finds out some interesting things about the voters in the middle.

The voters who will determine the balance of control for the next Congress are a pretty Democratic leaning group- 62% voted for Barack Obama last year while 36% voted for John McCain. They only approve of Obama by a 52/37 margin though. The fact that his disapproval and the support McCain received from them is basically the same indicates that Obama hasn't really lost any of these voters yet. But the drop from 62% who voted for him to 52% who now approve of him does suggest a lot of them haven't really decided whether they think he's a good President or not.

They're pretty divided on their feelings about health care with 45% opposed to Obama's plan and 41% in support. That suggests the issue is pretty much a wash with these voters- some are more likely to vote Democratic if the party makes progress on it but others will be turned off. There's little such division when it comes to repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell though- 64% of the swing voters supporting letting gays serve openly in the military with only 31% opposed.

Although this has little immediate relevance the divide between how these voters see Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee vs. Sarah Palin is pretty remarkable. Romney has a positive 39/24 favorability spread and Huckabee's is 32/22. But Palin's is 27/57! Republican candidates are going to be a lot better off coming across as Romney like than Palinesque this fall.

Voters in the center are still siding with the Dems.  For the most part, they remember the last eight year and they're not happy with them.  But Obama and company have to produce some high profile legislation, and dragging their feet on health care and DADT's repeal will only continue to hurt them in the fall.   If they don't, they're going to start looking at moderate Republicans to get the job done again.

Health Core

Here's what's coming tomorrow, people.



Be there.  Aloha.

A. Weiner Is You

Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York calls out the entire Republican Party on the floor of the House.

Twice.  A classic exchange between Weiner and Republican Dan Lungren of California:

WEINER: You guys have chutzpah. The Republican Party is the wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. They say this isn’t going to do enough, but when we propose an alternative to provide competition, they’re against it. They say we want to strengthen state insurance commissioners and they’ll do the job. But when we did that in our national health care bill, they said we’re against it. They said we want to have competition but when we proposed requiring competition they’re against it. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. That’s the fact!

LUNGREN: Mr. Speaker I ask that the gentleman’s words be taken down.

WEINER: You really don’t want to go there, Mr. Lungren.

About time somebody said it.   The problem of course is that what Weiner said could be applied to a number of Democrats as well.

What?  Do you see a signed health care reform bill yet?  No?

Keep that in mind.  It's a damn fiery speech here that Wiener gives.  In the end however, it's just words without the actions to go with them.