Joe Opens His Mouth On Israel

And then we go to this disturbing news that both Saudi Arabia and the United States would both basically turn a blind eye to Israel should they decide to attack Iran.

A report in the Jerusalem Post cites an article in the UK’s Sunday Times that “the head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.”

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper is reporting that the Israeli prime minister’s office denies the allegation.

Ahh, but it gets worse:

Vice-President Joe Biden told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that the US wouldn’t stand in the way of Israel if they decided Iran was an existential threat.

Speaking to host George Stephanopoulos from Camp Victory in Iraq, Biden told ABC that “we cannot dictate to another soveriegn nation … if they make the decision they are existentially threatened.”

Asked by Stephanopoulos about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that he will give international peace efforts with Iran only until the end of the year to work, Biden insisted the US would not second-guess any decisions Israel makes regarding Iran.

“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest, and what they do with Iran or anything else,” said Biden.

Asked if the US would stand in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Biden evaded the question.

If this is a threat couched in diplo-speak, it's moronic. If it's an example of Obama's "smart power" it's even more moronic. Biden's performance was on par with Dick Cheney, and if you ask me with Iran in chaos like this, it's only a matter of time before somebody says "They're weak and in disarray, the time to attack is now."

The question is will Israel actually do it, knowing what the consequences will be?

Epic Wimbledon Finish

Well, if you didn't see the awe-inspiring win of Roger Federer over Andy Roddick, 16-14 in the 5th set(!!!), you missed the best men's tennis match in decades. Hats off to Roger and his record 15th Grand Slam win, cementing his status as the best men's tennis player and arguably now the best in history.

It really was a final for the ages. And there's no way Federer is through winning Slams. He may accumulate 20 Grand Slam wins, maybe more. Hell, he may have those by 2011. I haven't enjoyed a Slam final this much since I watched Michael Chang beat Stephan Edberg at the French Open in '89.

I remember watching that one with my dad. Hopefully, a lot of other familes made memories today watching Roger and Andy's truly epic battle.

Tehran Calling: Part 4

Been several days since I've reviewed the situation in Tehran, but the NY Times has a solid report from Tehran today.

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

The announcement came on a day when Mr. Moussavi released documents detailing a campaign of fraud by the current president’s supporters, and as a close associate of the supreme leader called Mr. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami “foreign agents,” saying they should be treated as criminals.

The documents, published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, accused supporters of the president of printing more than 20 million extra ballots before the vote and handing out cash bonuses to voters.

Clearly we're heading towards some sort of major confrontation here. The crackdowns over the last two weeks have not in fact gotten the rest of the Iranian clerics behind the Supreme Leader Khamenei, and they are in fact openly questioning his authority. The declaration that Moussavi and Khatami are "foreign agents" has upped the ante considerably. The Iranian regime clearly is threatened by Moussavi, and playing the traitor card now after the clerics have declared the election to be a fraud may break the country.

It was bad before in Iran. It's about to get much worse.

[UPDATE 1:39 PM] BooMan has more analysis.

This is a true ideological crisis for the Revolution. The government can crack down on dissenters of all stripes, but they can't very well declare that a government based on the Guardianship of the Clergy can crack down on the most esteemed clergy in the country. They can't issue some edict that will change the very nature of Shi'a Islam so that the people no longer show deference to their own Grand Ayatollahs.

Yet, the government still maintains all the levers of coercion. The question is: will the rank-and-file members of the armed services, Revolutionary Guard, and Intelligence Services obey the Supreme Leader when he is opposed by a religious establishment that has much greater religious legitimacy?

And that's the question.

Going Along To Get Along On Obamacare

WaPo's Ceci Connolly drops a stern warning from the White House Village Sensible Democratic Party Centrists that "liberal advocacy groups" (a.k.a. Those Dirty F'ckin Hippies at MoveOn.org) are not helping, and should really just shut the hell up and go away.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.

"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

In the call, leaders of both chambers expressed optimism that they will hold floor votes on legislation to overhaul the $2.2 trillion health system before Congress breaks in early August.

For his part, the president vowed to use his strong approval rating with voters to continue making the case for sweeping reform, according to one congressional staffer with knowledge of the conversation. Obama also hinted that efforts are under way to discourage allies from future attacks on Democrats, according to the source, who did not have permission to speak on the record about the discussion.

The White House had no comment on the president's call.

In recent weeks, liberal bloggers and grass-roots groups such as MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, Service Employees International Union and Progressive Change Campaign Committee have targeted Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).

A fundraising video produced by Democracy for America suggests Landrieu is a "sellout" because she has received $1.6 million in campaign contributions from the health-care industry and has yet to endorse the concept of a government-run health insurance plan to compete against the private companies. The public-option concept, which Obama supports, has become a litmus test for many pro-reform activists who accuse the insurance industry of failing to deliver affordable, accessible care.

Needless to say, What Digby Said:

All you have to do is read the paper to know that the people standing in the way of any workable health care reform are mushy, centrist robots and insurance company whores in the Democratic Party. We have the majority, the Republicans are imploding, there is no debate at the moment among anyone but Democrats. In the middle of this hot negotiation, putting ads on the air that say "let's get some health care!" is a joke.

I suspect that the truth is that he thinks he's clumsily triangulating. But the groups that he's criticizing are actually trying to support his position on the public plan and attacking them undermines the public plan as well. (Of course, it's always possible that's the intention, but I hope not.)

The problem is that triangulation is for the purpose of positioning the president between two poles in the debate. He's just set one of the poles as the public plan, which says to certain wobbly Senators that it's negotiable. I would have thought the better way to deal with this is to assure these congressional twits (who gladly ate tremendous amounts of shit from right wingers for years, but get livid at the tiniest criticism from the left) that he isn't endorsing any of these attacks, but that there's not much he can do about it. It's a free country. These waverers might just realize that he's serious about getting a public plan without him having to explicitly tell them so.

By now it's obvious that dismissing and humiliating the base is a conscious White House strategy and I'm sure it's sometimes quite useful, even though it's a distinctly unsavory political tactic (and one that erodes support over time.) But in this case, if they really want health reform, it's counterproductive. He needs the outside groups to play this role and by publicly reprimanding them he's undermining these groups with their already skittish donors --- and the cause itself.

I'm sure Obama has several people telling him "Look, the liberals are going to support you anyway, so screw them. Go ahead, attack them. It makes you look like a centrist. People will respect you."

The real problem is the people aren't overly concerned with how centrist Obama looks. They want affordable health care coverage with a public option because they are tired of getting reamed by insurance companies. The blockade is not being manned by Republicans. It's being manned by Senate Dems who are in the pocket of the health insurance companies, period.

The Centrists are telling him "The liberals are the enemy. Listen to us. If you listen to them, well, you won't get health care reform." The liberals are telling him the opposite, that it's the Centrists who are trying to sink this.

72% of Americans are on the side of the liberals here. The Obama administration has made it quite clear however that the progressives that helped him get into the White House are no longer necessary or even welcome.

Should Obamacare fall apart, remember that.

Tea Partied Out

Looks like the GOP left the Teabaggers out to dry yesterday.

Preliminary news reports from Saturday’s Tea Parties suggest public participation fell far short of the April protests. In Morristown, NJ, attendance was down by a third compared to this spring’s event. In Fort Lauderdale, FL, the Sun-Sentinel reports a crowd of “hundreds,” compared to an estimated 5,000 in April.

And in Syracuse, NY — where protesters waved the American flag upside-down — organizers had expected 1,000 people to show, but only 200 did.

Yet warm weather and patio parties may only be a part of the explanation. Unlike with the April protests, the Republican party’s establishment didn’t throw its weight behind this latest round of rallies.

“The collaboration between the official Republican establishment and the Tea Parties has not lasted into June,” writes the Washington Independent. “The RNC has no plans to get involved with any Tea Parties. A spokesman for [House minority leader] John Boehner (R-OH) … said that [Boehner's] holiday plans were private but would probably not include Tea Parties. [Newt] Gingrich will not attend any of the Tea Parties, although he recorded video messages for events in Birmingham and Nashville “at the request of the respective organizers’.”

Part of the reason for the more subdued atmosphere this time around may have had to do with the negative coverage the Tea Parties received in the media — Fox News excepted.

“There was a novelty last time that isn’t there now,” media analyst Seton Motley told the Independent. “Also, if you’re talking about the networks that made light of the Tea Parties back in April, they might have realized that opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference.”

But it may be Fox News’ muted coverage this time around that may explain much of disparity between April’s protests and Saturday’s. The Independent notes that, in April, Fox sent five of its highest-profile anchors and correspondents on the road to cover the protests, but this time around, “sources at Fox … confirmed that no anchors would be attending and that the attendance and news value of the events looked to be lower than that of the April rallies.”

There are a number of reasons why the Teabaggers got dunked yesterday. The novelty factor, sure, but I think a lot of people at the last tea party protests in April really were surprised to see just how far over the edge some of the protesters were. That scared them off, as it should. Some of these protests were expected to turn into recruitment rallies for white supremacists.

That's what scared off both FOX News and the GOP. Nobody's going to risk their career when they would be the big draw at a tea party as a FOX News celebrity or GOP luminary and find out that neo-nazis have the place staked out. That'll look good on the resume, yes?

Oh, don't get me wrong, there are GOP luminaries and talking heads who like hanging out with racists jagoffs, but not the ones seriously considering a run at Obama's job in 2012, (well, those that are left, that number is dwindling weekly it seems.)

So yes, the Teabaggers went down in flames again. Honest dissent against the government is one thing, in a healthy democracy it will always exist. But the Tea Parties were manufactured astro-turf, not a grassroots movement. Americans figured that out too, and this time they stayed away.

The party, it seems, is over.

And With That, I'm Done With Her

Josh Marshall finishes the Sarah Palin coverage around here:

She may resurface as a latter-day Hannity or she may found some Palin-specific Anti-Defamation League dedicated to calling out obscure bloggers who've written mean things about her. But what very little shot she had as a future presidential candidate (and it was a much longer shot than I think many realized) is over. She's done. She's back to what she was -- a small person looking for someone to be angry at.

And with that, we move on to the rest of the world.

Sister Sarah Saga, The Morning After

The difference between the moderately sane conservative pundit and the batshit crazy wingnut has been thrown into sharp relief over the last 24 hours or so. The sane ones, like Ed Morrissey and the Hot Air crew, Rick Moran, Stephen Green, all have like myself come to the conclusion that Palin's career is over.

But it's the folks that seem to believe that this will somehow help Sarah Palin that are the true nutbars, with Bill Kristol and A.J. Strata leading the pack, and Pamela Geller actually blaming Obama for this (yay Obama Derangement Syndrome!)

Over at the Daily Beast, Max Blumenthal goes over the scandal-plagued Palin's career and like myself, wonders what the hell the real reason she resigned was.

If there's no other shoe to drop, if she's just giving up and laying low, she's still done, folks.

You don't come back from something like this. And whoever decided she would have made a good vice-president, from the people who selected her, the people who promoted her, and the people who assured us she had the most experience in the race...the credibility of those people should also be nil at this point.

We dodged a bullet. 46 percent of American voters thought this woman should have been one heartbeat away from the Presidency. Those are the people who right now should be truly pissed off this July 4th.

Working For A Living...For Now

Brad DeLong has a couple more really, really depressing employment charts.

The BLS says:

And David Rosenberg, via Barry Ritholtz:

We're in terrible trouble here, folks. We've dropped down to civilian-employment ratio levels of the mid 80's, and we've made that drop in roughly two or three years. That's bad. All indications are we may have another year plus of this to go.

That second chart however is the real problem. Five unemployed Americans for each open job position? That's unsustainable for an economy. We're getting to the point where the long-term unemployed are falling through the safety net. States are going broke and having to cut back on services or eliminate them totally just when Americans need them the most.

Too many people are still betting on a V-shaped recovery. It's not going to happen. Best case scenario is a long, steady slog over a decade or so back towards where we were, worst case scenario is a second, more severe recession that would have to be considered a depression. The evidence that the latter is coming in 2010 continues to grow.

It's bad now, real bad.

It will almost certainly get worse, and might even possibly get much, much worse.

StupidiNews, July 4th Edition!

• North Korea has now test-fired several short-range Scud type missiles into the Sea of Japan sparking fireworks.
• Los Angeles is bracing for massive crowds at Tuesday's memorial service for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center.
• American Andy Roddick tries to stun the Brits in Wimbledon's men's final, the women's final features both Williams sisters.
• India has become the latest country to question declaring independence from the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency.
• The revolution at Midway Games seems to be settled as Time Warner has stepped in to buy the company.

Have a safe and happy July 4th weekend.

Last Call

Sarah Palin's done, folks.

The more I've thought about this, the more I have to say she will not recover from this. There's no way she can run for any higher political office without this resignation killing her politically. She simply walked away from the Governor's office, her responsibilities, her constituents, and her pledge to serve for four years. She's done.

And it's the fashion in which she did it that is really forever going to haunt her. Reading the text of her roughly fifteen minute presser, my first thought was that it was the equivalent a of drunken internet forum posting. As I was watching the video I swore there were several points at she was fighting back an emotional breakdown.

And her explanation, an incoherent train wreck of tangentially-related basketball analogies, aww-shucks Northern Exposure small-town wisdom, shout-outs to her stone-faced family, "librul media" persecution complex-ranting, channeling Nixon singing Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and just plain non sequitur nonsense, raised orders of magnitude more questions than she answered.

She's either narcissitic to the point of mental instability, or she's under the strain from such a terrible scandal that's about to break that she's gone around the bend.

But either way, she's finished after today. Done. Toast. Over. She didn't just burn her bridges behind her, she napalmed them, then called in artillery strikes on anything bridge-related within a 100 mile radius.

I have a strong feeling that "pulling a Sarah Palin" will soon enter our lexicon to describe a political failure of epic proportions.

We'll see what this weekend brings. Happy 4th.

Sister Sarah Throws In The Towel, Possibly Picks Up New Bigger Towel

Sarah Palin is apparently not going to run for re-election next year as Governor of Alaska.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected to announce Friday that she will not seek a second term, a Republican source close to Palin tells CNN.

Palin has scheduled a 3 p.m. ET news conference at her home in Wasilla. The governor’s office offered no further details about the subject of the news conference, but the sources tells CNN that Palin will announce her decision to forgo another run.

As the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, Palin is considered one of the frontrunners for the GOP nomination in 2012. Her decision not to seek another term as governor is sure to stoke speculation that Palin is seriously eyeing a run for the White House.

I still stand by this morning's assessment of Gov. Palin. She's too much like Bush in a number of uncomfortable ways.

But you'd better damn well believe she's going to go for the brass ring in 2012. It annoys me that I need a 2012 election tag already, but let the games begin.

[UPDATE 3:25 PM] Oh my stars and garters, she's actually resigning her office effective the end of the month.

Oh double hell yes, she's either going for the whole enchilada in 2012...or some sort of scandal so mega-huge is coming that she is resigning now.

(If it's the latter, I'm going to be pissed that I now have a 2012 Election tag with no actual viable candidates to run in 2012.)

[UPDATE 4:17 PM] According to the First Dude and FOX News, she's quitting now because Alaska is just too mean to her.

Todd Palin told FOX News that his wife will concentrate on "doing the things for Alaska and the country" that she is passionate about and can not do as governor with the limitation and constant opposition she deals with within the state.

Are you kidding me? I smell a disaster incoming, and she's right back to playing the "Liberal media is picking on me/Victim card" like she did during the election. Why is she doing it now?

[UPDATE 4:31 PM] Here's the heart of the speech, in all its incoherent glory, courtesy TPM and CNN.

Something is definitely not right here.

I don't know. Maybe she really is just quitting. Maybe there's an illness in the family, or she's sick, or she just wants the world to leave her alone...but why not reveal something like that? I would think the people of Alaska at least would want a straight answer, not to mention her base is not going to be satisfied with this statement.

Now, I wish no harm to Sarah Palin or her family. But a little honesty, please.

[UPDATE 5:47 PM] Bill Kristol: This is only good news for Sarah Palin!

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble - but it could be a shrewd one.

After all, she's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues - and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she'll take a hit for leaving the governorship early - but how much of one? She's probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.

"Without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska?" If Palin really is gunning for 2012, it means she quit 18 months before her term was up to run for an election 40 months from now. She completely neglected her duties in Alaska, she f'ckin quit.

[UPDATE 6:41 PM] Boy, did I pick the wrong morning to psychoanalyze Sarah Palin. Raw Story is reporting that Palin resigned as damage control ahead of a major scandal "not involving her family", and that even her family did not know of her resignation until the press conference. Short of being caught on tape transforming into an evil space alien, what the hell did she do that was worse than Mark Sanford's year-long affair with an Argentinian newscaster?

Cup Of Stupidi-Tea

Tomorrow being the 4th of July and all, the Teabaggers are expected to be back out there, hating the President protesting the government ahh screw it, spreading racist/anti-Semitic bullshit.

White supremacists and neo-Nazi hate groups plan to take advantage of the anti-tax “Tea Parties” set to occur in more than 1,000 cities and localities over the July 4 holiday weekend to disseminate racist fliers and other materials and attempt to recruit others to their cause, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

ADL’s Center on Extremism, which monitors extremist groups and provides information to law enforcement and the public, has released information on its Web site describing the attempt by white supremacists to co-opt the anti-tax message of the events as a means to spread racism and anti-Semitism.

On Stormfront, the most popular white supremacist Internet forum, members have discussed becoming local organizers of the “Tea Parties” and finding ways to involve themselves in the events. Many racists have voiced their intent to attend these rallies for the purpose of cultivating an “organized grassroots White mass movement,” with some suggesting that they would do so without openly identifying themselves as racists.

But then again, why are we acting surprised? After all, the last Teabagger get-together didn't degenerate into a racist hatefest or anything, did it?



Oh you mean white supremacists would be looking at this group of chowderheads for recruits? I'm shocked!

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

The Kroog asks:

This morning’s Wall Street Journal opinion section contains a lot of what one expects to see. There’s an opinion piece making a big fuss over the fake scandal at the EPA. There’s an editorial claiming that the latest job figures prove the failure of Obama’s economic plan — something I dealt with in the Times. All of this follows on yesterday’s editorial asserting that the Minnesota senatorial election was stolen.

All of this is par for the course; the WSJ editorial page has been like this for 35 years. Nonetheless, it got me wondering: what do these people really believe?

I mean, they’re not stupid — life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they’re not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth — one that is, in effect, told only to Inner Party members, while the Outer Party makes do with prolefeed.

The question is, what is that higher truth? What do these people really believe in?

See GOP Plan, The there Paul.

It really is all about looting the country and setting up somebody else, in this case Barack Obama, to take the fall. It always has been.

What they believe is that they are entitled to all the money and power and decision-making ability, and that we are entitled to give it to them and to be grateful for the Divine Right Of Conservatives.

Deflation Is Bad, Man

Don Surber decides deflation is good.

Falling prices reflect demand. If supply costs remain below the price, no problem.

Computer users learned this in the last 20 years. New computers (which were slower and had less memory) cost $2,000 in the 1990s. The one I just bought cost $300. Computer companies are fine with it because as the prices have dropped, productivity for computers and their component parts has increased and costs have gone down. As long as cost is below price, no problem.

Deflation today is caused by two things: The burst of the housing bubble and the precipitous drop in the price of oil.

The housing price drop slowed production of new homes because productivity is not improving fast enough to keep pace. The upside is construction is less expensive and this helps public works projects.

The downside is that property values are dropping and with them the property tax revenues, which largely go to support schools.

Housing prices likely will drop further as the supply of mortgages has fallen due to a variety of factors, mainly interventionist government. Stopping foreclosures is breaking the Rule of Law, which hurts any economy by introducing instability. This scares off investors.

The drop in the price of oil — and with it energy — helps all other producers by cutting their costs. They may or may not pass those savings on to consumers.

If I can figure this out, a Nobel-winning economist should.

Somebody should tell Don there that allowing massive housing deflation to continue unchecked would be a hell of a lot worse than "government intervention" because unchecked foreclosures would be putting people out of ther homes and into the streets, making them more dependent on the government services that are paid for by the same property tax revenues he notes are falling. It squeezes everybody. People have to live somewhere, and if entire neighborhoods are being wrecked by plummeting housing values, those neighborhoods turn into urban blight and empty subdivisions. And these property taxes pay for a lot more than schools: witness the plethora of local and state governments having to slash expenditures due to lost revenue.

If I can figure that out, certainly a newspaper columnist should be able to...

Quid Pro Quo-Mart

Brian Beutler has an article up at TPM that shows concern that the cost for Wal-Mart's support for Obama on employer mandates for health care reform is the complete and permanent death of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Labor sources, well-acquainted with Wal-Mart's anti-EFCA tactics, have suggested or acknowledged this concern to me in the days since the administration announced the deal--and as hard as it is to imagine Wal-Mart fighting that legislation harder than they already do, the sources say both sides may turn up the temperature in the fight over employee rights in the weeks and months ahead.

It's unclear where the basis of this concern lies--whether it comes from internal knowledge of Wal-Mart's negotiations with key health care players in Washington; or from an understanding of the company's incentives; or whether some in the labor movement are using this moment to launch a pre-emptive strike against their main EFCA opponent.

But either way, it's clear that the uneasy alliance between labor and Wal-Mart on the question of health reform does not translate into rapprochement on the issue of unionization. If anything, it makes the fight over that issue bloodier.

This makes sense. If there's any company on Earth that would be completely opposed to employee mandates, it would be the country's largest private employer, Wal-Mart. And let's face it, Wal-Mart is not exactly known for its generous health care benefits. Wal-Mart would be on the hook for a whole bunch of employees for health care, most of them earning around $10 an hour, even the part-timers.

The death of EFCA may in fact be the price Wal-Mart wants for flexing its muscle and getting behind Obamacare.

[UPDATE 1:06 PM] Amanda Marcotte has another explanation for Wal-Mart's sudden generosity: it expects the cost of employer-mandated health insurance to finish off the rest of the country's supermarket chains and discount stores.

The likely employer mandate that Wal-Mart wants to see would cost every business that doesn’t provide benefits to part-timers, particularly those that finagle hours so that full-time employees are nominally part-time. The clearest example of this? Retailers, particularly grocery stores. If there’s one operational tactic that Wal-Mart has perfected, it’s short-term loss for long-term gain. Five years of an employer mandate on most small margin retailers around the country will put many of them out of business, leaving Wal-Mart with an effective monopoly across most of the country.

The real question is why SEIU is letting themselves get played like this. An employer mandate is one of the worst possible ways to achieve universal health insurance, forcing everyone into the current terrible private health insurance system through employers, which is like curing your polio by going around smacking other kids in the knees with hammers.

I'd have to argue that an employer mandate is better than the no health insurance 50 million people have now, but that's another thing. I absolutely agree with Amanda that this is a totally valid reason why Wal-Mart is going with this, and certainly a reason why mandates should be reconsidered.