Summits are for Snow

The White House, for reasons that were probably kept murky on purpose, announced on Super Bowl Sunday a mighty great healthcare summit would take place in two weeks so the Republicans could “air their differences” or compare Viagra doses. Or something. How a “summit” was supposed to provide a platform for healthcare debate when houses of Congress were built precisely for that, indeed had functioned with horrible clankiness to produce such a mortifyingly ugly process all last year, well, no one was clear at all, the triumvirate of Drum, Yglesias and Benen O-bots completely silent on the matter.

Eventually Congressional Republicans smelled a rat, rightly so, and began heaving buckets of cold water on the idea last night. They’d already inflicted enormous damage to the healthcare legislation process, a “summit” only gave the President a chance to sneakily corner them with some of their laughable and offensive political principles.

Open Thread

Where does the Federal Government spend its money? Here's a great interactive graphic for the proposed 2011 budget and how it compares to the 2010 budget. Definitely click on the "Hide Mandatory Spending" to see what parts of the budget would not be affected by Obama's spending cut.

Don't Read This

Don't read this. The corporatist media don't want you to know about it. It's only the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, yet they all but ignore it. And when they do pay attention, it's to create a false narrative that what is now accepted science isn't accepted science. It's to create a controversy where there isn't one.

Imagine if the greatest threat humanity has ever faced got even a fraction of the attention given to the small band of extremist idiots who wasted hundreds of dollars each, over the weekend, to delude themselves that they are brave heroes on engaged in a noble cause. Extremist idiots who, themselves, deny the existence of the greatest cause humanity has ever faced.

On February 1, The Guardian had this simple but devastating news:

A global deal to tackle climate change is all but impossible in 2010, leaving the scale and pace of action to slow global warming in coming decades uncertain, according to senior figures across the world involved in the negotiations.

"The forces trying to tackle climate change are in disarray, wandering in small groups around the battlefield like a beaten army," said a senior British diplomat.

In the Bush era, we could blame it on Bush. But Bush is gone, and although President Obama isn't pushing a climate deal with the desperate urgency it really requires, he is at least engaged in the process. Just today, more effort was announced. And yet, the international process is broken. It can't be blamed on the U.S., anymore. A process that doesn't have time for incrementalism, much less stalling, is completely broken. A process that doesn't have time for self-interest and nationalist obstructionism. The world's governments are failing.

Remember That Hanging Curve?

Paul Krugman obviously hasn’t, but just three days after the pitch with an announced health care summit (?) and the Super Bowl even the most satiated political junkie would be forgiven a blank look to the question. You know, Richard Shelby (R-AL), another huge jerk the Senate is so good at inflicting on us all, blocking all Obama appointments until he can pork it for his homies in Alabama some more.

Had we competent political actors representing us an instant reaction would not have occurred: watching a hanging curve go by, meaning—yet again, for the thousandth god damn time from the Obama people—this huge fat blimp of a political pitch is sailing in over the political plate of American politics, Hindenburg all the way, just sitting there with all the time and ease in the world to absolutely crush, to hit a desperately-needed way-easy tape-measure shut-the-fuck-up-Republican home run.

Open Thread

Paul Krugman writes America is not yet lost, but notes that our spectacularly dysfunctional Senate seems bound and determined to out do the Poland Sejm of the 18th Century in making sure it will be soon.

Clever, Or Silly?

Obama made some news tonight before the Super Bowl when he told CBS News that he would invite the congressional leadership of both parties to the White House on February 25th for a televised health care summit. Obama's calling the GOP’s bluff, wherein Republicans claim they’ve had good but ignored health care ideas for months. Mitch McConnell said he welcomes the move, as long as Obama shelved all the work done so far and agrees to start over, something that Obama thankfully has already rejected.

The GOP says they have an incremental approach that will reduce costs without adding trillions to the deficit. To that end, they are correct, as the plan John Boehner laid out back in November only cost $61 billion over ten years, because its aims were to accomplish so little. As evidenced by their proposal, the GOP has no interest in making insurance available to the uninsured; their only goal is to make it a little cheaper for those who already have insurance. The GOP freely admits this, as they claim that tackling the problem of the uninsured would cost too much and isn’t worth it. Besides, those folks don't vote GOP anyway.

Obama has already framed the session correctly:

The president offered a number of questions that his party would have for the Republicans.

“How do you guys want to lower costs? How do you guys intend to reform the insurance market so that people with pre-existing conditions, for example, can get health care?” he said. “How do you want to make sure that the 30 million people who don’t have health insurance can get it? What are your ideas specifically?”

The GOP doesn't have any ideas to expand coverage to the uninsured, and both sides know it. Oh sure, we'll hear Boehner, McConnell, and Cantor talk about the Holy Grail of tort reform, but beyond that the GOP has no plan to make useful health insurance more affordable for those who can't afford it now. The GOP would focus more on access to health care, not actual insurance, because the latter requires taking on the industry, and the GOP won't do anything to hurt the flow of campaign cash post-Citizens United. And that gets back to the notion of an incremental approach in an environment where the weak economy makes it way too easy for the GOP to scare people away from real reform.

So if the GOP wants to start small and focus on access instead of affordable insurance, what could Democrats do to box them in? Well, if the GOP really wants to deal with access to care, Democrats could push them to the wall and test their claim that they also want reform:

1. Obtain a huge increase in community clinics, which is already a part of the Senate health care reform bill;
2. Deal with the doctor shortage through a large expansion of the National Health Service Corps.
3. Get the market reforms and add a repeal of the industry’s anti-trust exemption; and
4. Encourage state and regional initiatives through CMS waivers and expanded Medicaid funding.

If the GOP wants to argue that we can't afford making insurance available to everyone, then Democrats can push the access and reform argument all the way.

The Real Tea Partiers

The real Tea Partiers didn't appear in public.

The real Tea Partiers met in secret.

The real Tea Partiers were engaged in an act of defiance, for which they already had been threatened with a military response.

The real Tea Partiers risked their lives and their freedom by committing their daring act of protest literally surrounded by that threatened military.

The real Tea Partiers were in the midst of a burgeoning rebellion for which unarmed civilians of their town already had been massacred.

The real Tea Partiers were in the midst of a burgeoning rebellion, the initial victim of which, at that massacre, was a black man.

The real Tea Partiers were in the midst of a burgeoning rebellion whose first martyr was a black man.

Letter From California

02/07/2010 0540.48 PST
San Jose, California

Good luck and best wishes to the respective States of Louisiana and Indiana as your noble and mighty representatives of the National Football League beat the shit outta each other today in a contest of grace, gluttony, sanctioned violence and happy good times all around. It’s a shame someone must officially lose in all the magnificent spreads of food, drink and laughter, yes, but hopefully the lesson to ignore the football, concentrating totally on food, drink and your people on a State and Federal level has sunk in enough, enjoying the celebration just, well, because.

We in California have gleefully undertaken the modern American tradition Super Bowl parties, frolics and food, a very welcome development carried on from the late 20th century. In Mexico, it is said, almost anything and everything is cause for a celebration, something busy hectic Californians should surely welcome more often in their own lives. Frequent fun times are good for the soul, bespeaking of a mind and people where few hate us and hardly anything is spent on weapons. Basic investments in society from a wise people yield a need to laugh and have a good time often because, well, that’s the way life’s supposed to be.

Open Thread

What Digby says.

Open Thread

Paul Waldman writes that Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) has put a hold on every single Obama appointee up for a vote in the Senate until the Democrats fork over some extra defense funds for his state - a disgusting display of blackmail that absolutely should not be tolerated. Along with the filibuster, there must be costs for such blatantly obstructive actions.

As for the filibuster, the reason Senators don't have to talk on and on and on and on when they filibuster is because there was an agreement that a filibuster should not have to halt all Senate business. When the ability of the Senate to do any business for the people is stopped because of the misuse of the filibuster, then Senators must once again be made to get up and talk until they and their allies are talked out (*) if only to make it extremely visible to the Public who is responsible for the deadlock in the Senate. If they want to filibuster, then as Steve says make them talk.

(*) Doing so they can spend their energy trying to convince their colleagues to vote with them with their public oratory or they can rally the country to their side. Somehow visibility on who is responsible for the stalemate must be brought back if there is any hope to bringing balance to our form of government.

Note also, I believe the Democrats could have found some very eloquent voices on why they were blocking the terrible Bush judicial nominees if they had been required to talk. The Republicans should be required to be explicit about their objections in a very public way. Just as Martin Luther King, Jr. preached civil disobedience it was only because he was willing to pay the price for his actions by going to jail that his actions got moral authority. These guys who are playing with blackmail don't expect to have to pay anything for their acts. Like all bullies and cheats they believe they are above the laws and rules of honorable behavior. Make them talk.

The Buck Stops Where?

It's hard to fathom what President Obama thinks he's doing, on health care reform. Greg Sargent catches this bizarre quote from the transcript of Obama's appearance at a DNC fundraiser, last night:

So there's a lot of information out there that people understandably are concerned about. And that's why I think it's very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let's go ahead and make a decision. And it may be that -- you know, if Congress decides -- if Congress decides we're not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not. And that's how democracy works. There will be elections coming up and they'll be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or the other during election time.

Sargent:

Make Them Filibuster

With Scott Brown firmly in tow, and the GOP caucus in each house aggressively shaking down Wall Street for cash in the aftermath of the Citizens United travesty from the Five Traitors, Chris Dodd had to say the obvious this morning: the GOP has sided with Wall Street over Main Street.

The chairman of the Senate banking committee said Friday that efforts to reach a bipartisan consensus on sweeping legislation to overhaul the nation's financial regulatory system had "reached an impasse," but he said he intends to move forward even without Republican support.

For the second time since November, talks have stalled between Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said ranking Republican Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.). Both men have expressed interest in reaching a consensus on a wide-ranging bill that would revamp regulation of the financial services industry. But after months of negotiation, they have yet to overcome a key hurdle: the proposed creation of a consumer protection regulator to focus on mortgages, credit cards and other such financial products.

[snip]

Dodd most likely can muster enough support from Democrats on his committee to move the bill to the Senate floor. But eventually he would need Republican support to overcome the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.

Fine. Get it to the Senate floor, and beg the GOP to filibuster the consumer protection agency in plain view of Americans. Hold up all other Senate business and call in all the cameras and make it as easy as possible for the GOP, Mr. Scott Brown included, to filibuster against protecting consumers from big banks and Wall Street.

Do it now. Please. For a change, please call their bluff and make them do Wall Street's bidding in plain view of Main Street.

Deficient Democrats

Markos Moulitsas says the Democratic Party has a base problem, it’s no surprise at all when the Obama Administration releases data resulting in graphs like this:

Mathew Yglesias commented that this “agonizing glide of unemployment” must have been implemented to produce Republican “officeholders,” since Reagan presided over the worst employment record in modern history, but Obama seems determined to out-misery him. Whether Obama could lose his job with a Republican president in 2013 Yglesias didn’t specify.

Open Thread

Scott Horton is following up on his investigative report of the unexplained deaths at Guantanamo by asking other pathologists to weigh in on the questions raised by the official report. For instance:

The government has accounted for the presence of rags in the mouths of the three prisoners by suggesting that they stuffed the rags in their own mouths to muffle noise which might alert guards, and that the rags were “inhaled as a natural reaction to death by asphyxiation.” Are you familiar with any other cases in which prisoners committed suicide by binding their feet, binding their hands, stuffing rags down their throats (and putting on a surgical mask to keep the rags in place), and while so bound, climbing up onto something to put their heads through a noose? In your opinion, would it be appropriate for a medical examiner to reach a conclusion that rags “were inhaled as a natural reaction to death by asphyxiation?”

Republican Budget Draft: Privatize Social Security and Medicare

One of the truly brilliant conservative ideas is to privatize social security. After all, what makes more sense than taking senior citizens' social safety net and investing it in the stock market? We all know that the market always goes up, right? The last couple years have proved that! And if some people lose their social safety net, and lose their investments, and therefore have nothing to fall back on, that's just tough, right? At least Wall Street will have a huge new infusion of cash. Which should be a great comfort to all those retirees who spent their entire working lives paying into what they thought would protect them in their golden years. Not to mention their children and grandchildren. If they have children and grandchildren. If they have children and grandchildren who can afford to support them if the social safety net they were counting on being there suddenly isn't.

After the last couple years, you would think that Republicans would give up on their plan to transfer the Social Security Trust Fund into the private accounts of Wall Street firms and banks. But you have to hand it to the Republicans. Reality never trumps ideology. Josh Marshall has the news:

House Republicans don't have an official budget yet. But they have what amounts to a first draft. The official budget will be released in March or April and will be authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee in consultation with the other Republicans on the Committee. But Ryan has released a budget he'd like. And it's actually fairly detailed. And if you read it, which we have, you start to wonder why Democrats aren't making a bigger deal out of it.

Want some details?

First, it calls for big cuts in Social Security benefits for everyone currently under 55 years of age. On top of the cuts it also calls for privatizing Social Security.

Basically the exact plan President Bush tried in 2005. Next, it calls for the full privatization and phasing out of Medicare. It'll be replaced by a system of vouchers in which instead of getting Medicare you get a voucher to buy un-reformed private insurance.

Good. Because Medicare is just as bad and unpopular as Social Security! And Marshall points out that it's not exactly the most fiscally responsible budget, either. It does get rid of the federal deficit. In about 50 years...

Apparently, Republicans leaders are refusing to say that Ryan's draft will be their final proposal. But Ryan is their budget guy. And Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the Republicans' number two guy on the budget committee also is on the record supporting the privatization of Social Security.

So, spread the word. Should the Republicans regain the House, this year, the privatization of Social Security and Medicare will be in play. Sounds like something voters should know about.

For the Little People

Semi-wearily looking over the archive for January I was not surprised to see how angry much of the work has been, I just thought I’d get it out of my system in 30 days, that’s all. It’s really not me, one could easily imagine a person wielding a rat-a-tat machine gun fury of text at the idiots who propose to run this country every morning as a furious, combative person, it’s just hilarious, as I putter around my days I am not that kind of human at all. Well, a lot has gone horribly wrong, it’s one of the reasons I started showing up every day, fairly soon the fury should wind out of my system and I can write more like myself.

It’s never a good idea, as Yglesias says, to get personal in your writing, but hell, something has to be said about why I toil here every day, I think that’s a fair expectation of the reader, and I should be able to accomplish the evolution without making a complete hash of it.

Open Thread

In 2006, Colorado Springs was named one of the 10 most liveable cities in the US by Money Magazine. In 2010 as they turn the lights off in the city, those days of glory seem so far away. Perhaps the prayer shield will hold off the problems of closed parks, dimmed streets and bored teens. Or perhaps volunteers will show that you don't need government to provide shared services.