The Wages of Compromise

Media Czech points us to Amanda Marcotte's great post on the problem with seeking common ground on abortion.

... this assassination needs to be a wake-up call to the William Saletans of the world, and also to Barack Obama---"common ground” is a pipe dream. A great deal of people want to believe that we can somehow come together to agree that abortion is unfortunate and the rate needs to be reduced (even though we can’t talk about how anti-choicers will fight you on any attempts to use contraception and education to actually accomplish this goal), and they hope this will at least temper the abortion debate.

This belief is predicated on a bunch of false assumptions that this assassination should expose, the number one being that we can blame both sides equally for how contentious this debate is. That’s utter bullshit, of course, since only one side stands by the use of force to change individual choices.

SNIP

(The problems with the common ground strategy) The big one is that it compromises the moral high ground that the pro-choice side has, and our moral integrity.

SNIP

While the anti-choice protesters enjoy how their anger scares women seeking abortion services, Dr. Tiller braved the ongoing threat of violence to save lives. We really shouldn’t even concede the ground of calling anti-choicers “pro-life”. They aren’t pro-life. Pro-choicers are the ones who are pro-life. We believe in the value of women’s lives, and we fight for this against a sexist society that treats women’s lives as lesser.

Unfortunately, we do Dr. Tiller and every doctor who provides abortion a disservice when we talk about abortion as a tragedy. It’s obvious that the proper word for an abortion provider is “hero"---someone who risks very real dangers because they feel they have a moral duty to support women’s right to live our lives with dignity and purpose. If we have to avoid saying this to avoid hurting the fee-fees of anti-choicers to get them to talk about “common ground”, then fuck it.

Read the whole thing.

Personally, I think the pro-choice movement lost the fight when it backed away from "abortions on demand." It's been surrendering the high ground ever since. No, not any abortion a woman wants, just the really necessary ones. And just if she listens to a condescending lecture first, then takes another day to think about it. and just if a judge decides the father who raped her is really a threat to a pregnant 11-year-old.

Because, as Anthony Kennedy made clear in the most recent misogynistic Supreme Court decision, women are just wombs, not sentient human beings who can be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies.

Time to bring back abortion on demand, and start calling out the anti-choicers for the women-hating, anti-American, freakazoid, motherfucking terrorists they are.

The Rude Pundit has some excellent suggestions about treating Tiller's killer like the terrorist he is, but Hilzoy explains how fighting the anti-choicers doesn't mean stooping to their terrorist tactics:

The law is not "powerless" in this case. It is not trying and failing to prevent abortion. On the contrary: our Constitution, as presently interpreted, grants women the right to seek an abortion. In order to conclude that killing people is justified in these circumstances, you need to think not just that the lives of innocents are at stake, but that this is the kind of situation in which you should take the law into your own hands, and thereby undermine our system of law and government.

I do not think that it would be OK for people who oppose the death penalty to kill the people who carry it out. I opposed the war in Iraq, but I did not conclude that it would be OK for me to kill soldiers who were shipping out, policy makers with blood on their hands, and so forth. In that case, many more innocent lives were at stake than could possibly have been at stake in Tiller's.

Deciding to start killing people who are doing things that are legal is deciding to go into full-scale revolt against one's government. There are surely times when it is right to do that, the Nazis being one obvious example. But the question when one ought to do so is a lot more difficult than McArdle makes it out to be, since a basically workable system of laws is a very great good, and it's a lot easier to destroy than it is to create.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Not A Coincidence

The wingnut freakazoids who give aid and comfort to terrorists like the one who murdered Heroic Physician George Tilley set the stage last month by forcing this report off the Homeland Security web page.

But you can still read it in PDF here.

"Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" makes it clear: the terror in Witchita is just the beginning.

Keep This in Mind

I'm with Media Czech in thinking this is just the beginning of a sustained wave of right-wing terrorism.

So let's remember just who and what we're talking about.

Hilzoy on the "persuasive tactics" the anti-choicers use.

Hilzoy again on the lives Tiller saved, and what we've lost.

And PZ Myers has the practical response:

Feministe has an excellent list of pro-choice charities. Want to do something to infuriate the women-hating anti-choicers and do something positive in honor of Tiller's work? Donate!

Monsters Under the Bed

President Obama speaks to us as adults. Not just in vocabulary and tone, but in subject matter and viewpoint. After eight years of listening to a middle-aged arrested adolescent treat us like toddlers who have to be sent out of the room before the grown-ups talk about serious stuff, we can hold our heads up again.

But on terrorism, Obama is still pretending there are monsters under the bed.

Obama has tried to lead America out of the shadows of the Bush years. He has projected a calm optimism, a reasoned determination, that is a breath of fresh air after the puerile, bullying bravado of George W. Bush and the dark, croaking counsel of his evil courtier Cheney. And he has said inspiring things about the importance of defending our laws, rights and traditions, even in the face of terrorist threats.

But because Obama has failed to directly reject the irrational boogeymen his predecessors whipped up, and because he has continued many of their policies, he has not been able to spring us from their dank culture of fear.

SNIP

His real problem was his failure to forthrightly say that while terrorism remains a threat, its danger has been greatly overblown. Obama needed to tell Americans the truth, which is that no open society can ever be absolutely free from terrorist attacks, and that a society that allows its irrational fear of such attacks to cause it to jettison its laws, freedoms and most cherished traditions has already lost to the terrorists. He needed to say that while we will never forget 9/11, always honor the memory of its victims, and never let our guard down, we cannot allow one attack, no matter how horrific and spectacular, to determine the nature and future of our country. He needed to draw a line in the sand, and tell Americans that while he will do everything in his power to protect them, only fools dream of eternal, perfect safety. In short, he needed to seize the terrorism shibboleth root and branch and pull it out of the ground.

SNIP

Because terrorism in our national imagination is simultaneously villain and nemesis, human and inhuman, the "war" against terrorism slips into becoming a war not just against fanatical jihadis but against our own death, against the very idea of death. As we accept this, repression of reality and the infantile fantasy of perfect safety -- in other words, cowardice -- become the driving forces of our lives.

This craven position dishonors a country whose troops fought at Valley Forge and Shiloh and Belleau Wood and Guadalcanal and Hue and Fallujah. It is not worthy of the mighty nation whose diverse people came together 60 years ago to help defeat the most dangerous tyrant in the history of humankind.

SNIP

In 1933, when the nation was in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address. That towering president said, "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

FDR's words gave heart to Americans facing a crisis and a threat far worse than any posed by terrorists today. The country has a new president, and it wants a new direction. It is waiting for him to sound his trumpet.

Read the whole thing.

People always meet expectations. FDR expected Americans - isolationist and still struggling economically - to mobilize overnight, take on the most powerful military in the world and save civilization. And we did it.

Smirky/Darth expected Americans - inspired by 9/11 to make huge sacrifices to save the nation - to cower in fear, crying for Big Daddy to take care of them, to kill those skeery terrists by shredding the Constitution. And we did it.

Stop promising to keep us safe, Mr. President. Start demanding that we grow the fuck up.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Obama May Let Superstition Compromise Science at NIH

PZ Myers explains why the rumored appointment of Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health would be a disaster.

I didn't see much "controversy in the scientific community" over that book (Collins' bestselling The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief); I think everyone agreed that he had a perfect right to express his religious views, and there was near-unanimity that they were the views of a gullible fruitbat…an opinion confirmed by his wacky Biologos website. I know he had a good reputation as an administrator of the human genome project, but do we really need to go back to the Bush years of god-walloping goofballs at the head of every major government agency?

OK, Shakespeare-worthy insults like "gullible fruitbat" and "god-walloping goofballs" make me ashamed of my propensity for obscene profanity, but I digress. Myers continues:

Collins is extremely well qualified for this job. If all we did was look at his CV to see if he's competent to administer the NIH, I'd say they'd be hard pressed to find a better guy.

I don't care if the director goes to church. If that's what he wants to do as a hobby on sunday mornings, no problem.

However, and I think this is a great big HOWEVER, Collins also has a tremendous amount of religious baggage. This is also a political position, and it is fair to look at all the other stuff he brings into the job, and I'm afraid Collins is more than just a guy who goes to church...he's a religious freak. I've read his book, and I've browsed his website, and he's waving a great big hairy ideological flag in addition to his perfectly commendable credentials.

Look at it this way. If we had someone who had an administrative record as good as Collins', but who was as overtly and proudly atheist as Richard Dawkins, everyone would be doubtful about Obama's judgment as I am right now -- they'd be rightly wondering if this hypothetical candidate would be a diplomatic dead duck...not to mention the right-wingers would be out for his head. Somehow, because Collins happens to be weirdly Christian, we're supposed to simply overlook the fact that he struts about with his underpants on his head?

Well, Collins is not going to have my confidence, that's for sure. His writings reveal a man with an extraordinarily poor grasp of scientific reasoning and a surprising lack of understanding of evolutionary biology (his argument that morals could not evolve, for instance, is stunning in its ignorance). I also suspect that he's going to use this position as a laurel to peddle religious nonsense. I'm assuming he'd have the decency not to do it while he's in office, but afterwards, it'll be a stock part of the credentials he will trot out to validate his bogus beliefs, never mind that a large number of the scientists he will be working for think his apologetics are utterly loony.

More dangerous even than President Obama's eagerness for republican cooperation is his apparent tolerance for believers in invisible sky wizards and other fairy tales.

While it's remotely possible that someone who suffers from superstition could be trusted to run, say, the White House motor pool, you really don't want him in charge of things that require an acceptance of facts.

And you especially don't want him in charge of things like scientific research if he has made a career of publicizing his belief in myths that contradict scientific facts.

Obama is rapidly solidifying a reputation as the Great Compromiser. Bad enough he's already compromised the economic stimulus into ineffectiveness and is likely to compromise health care reform into an HMO bailout. Appointing freakazoid Collins to run the NIH would be killing scientific integrity.

Between science and superstition there can be no common ground, no meeting halfway, no compromise.

Governor Cowardly Waste of Oxygen Does Something Right

Well, shit. For the next two years I have to temper every condemnation of Steve Beshear with the caveat: except for the time he made KSP stop discriminating against immigrants.

Gov. Steve Beshear today ordered the Kentucky State Police to reverse a decision to end the longstanding policy of offering the written driver’s license test in multiple languages.

The decision to change the policy had been made largely for budgetary concerns. However, Gov. Beshear said the "decision was wrong – plain and simple."

Kentucky already requires that an operator’s license shall not be granted to any person who is unable to understand highway warnings or directional signs in the English language.

"It did not reflect the values of this administration or the values that I think most Kentuckians share – as a state welcoming people to do business here."

Gov. Beshear cited the fact that Kentucky is an increasingly diverse state, with a growing population of people in the Commonwealth from other countries here as business executives, students and legal workers in industry and other places.

While the Governor acknowledged the significant budgetary challenges confronting all of state government, including the criminal justice system, he said there must be a balance between cutting costs and providing services.

"The job of governing will get even tougher as resources grow tighter," Gov. Beshear said. "The question, then, isn’t whether we will make mistakes. We will. The question is how we respond when we do."

To that end, Gov. Beshear said no one has a tougher job than state troopers and no one does their jobs better than police officers and workers in the criminal justice system. Its leadership team, he said, "has my full confidence. That has not changed.

But when we make a mistake, we must stand up, admit it, correct it and move on."

Of the first 100 elected officials in Kentucky I would have guessed might be courageous enough to stand up against the forces of anti-government, xenophobic bigotry, Steve Beshear would not even make the list.

I mean, it's great and all, but your very first act of political courage had to wait 18 months from Inauguration? You couldn't muster a little testosterone on behalf of a once-in-a-century Democratic presidential candidate? Or a state economy suffering a slow death from coal-industry strangulation, wingnut freakazoid backwardness and a regressive, ridiculous tax system only a robber baron could love?

And now that you have begun to grow a spine, may I ask that you use it to tell senate president David Williams that all the tax and spending cuts in the world won't cover the $1 billion deficit Kentucky is facing next year?

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

As the Senators Turn

Both the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader have columns on the Jim Bunning-Mitch McConnell soap opera.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell may be the ranking member in his state and national party, but he has scant power to nudge U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning out of the 2010 Senate race.

McConnell can’t make Bunning balk because the Hall of Fame pitcher knows he will be the Republican nominee if he just stays in the game, said Larry Forgy, a Lexington attorney who was narrowly defeated by Democrat Paul Patton in the 1995 race for governor.

Joe Gerth in the Courier:

Bunning's increasingly erratic behavior -- including a prediction that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would die of pancreatic cancer within nine months and his bitter criticism of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentuckian, during weekly conference calls with reporters -- also has raised concerns.

"For some reason he insists on having these Tuesday morning conversations, and every Tuesday morning it seems to get a bit worse," (state senate president David) Williams said. "I don't think it's wise for him to do that."

The soap channel is missing a huge opportunity by making a bunch of pneumatic bubble-heads from Louisville the stars of the new Southern Belles reality show instead of focusing on Kentucky's favorite bickering couple.

Jimbo and Mitchie-poo are stabbing each other in the back but are going to end up killing the republican party. Great Kentucky Repug Hope Trey Grayson is in agony over his foolish pledge last year to not challenge Bunning in a primary, but Powerful Yet Hated Professional Obstructionist Williams will be happy to leap in where Trey fears to tread. Meanwhile, Libertarian Crown Prince Rand Paul is ready to fuck up all their shit.

And we heart-broken, pessimistic, cynical Kentucky liberals are taking bets on just how the Democratic Party is going to manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this time.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

That's JUDGE Sotomayor to you, Beauregard

Used to be, dense white guys exercised their sexism against uppity females with condescending epithets like "little lady." That was how they addressed little white ladies, of course. Minority females were lucky to get called something not obscene but merely demeaning, like "Mammy." Anita Hill didn't even rate that courtesy, getting labeled a cunt.

Federal Appeals Court Judge and Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor presents a unique challenge: a Hispanic woman born to the lowest of the low - Puerto Rican from the Bronx projects - who achieved one of the highest posts in the nation.

What the fuck to call this uppity-est of the uppity bitches?

Mike Huckabee hit on a brilliant ploy by calling her "Maria." No, he didn't just blurt out the only Hispanic female name he could think of; this was deliberate.

"Sonia" is the intelligent, educated, lovely-mannered European wife of your upper-class suburban neighbor.

"Maria" is your illegal maid. The fat one. Who whores around.

Backwoods Alabama pig-fucker and "Senator" Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions calls her "Ms. Sotomayor."

Every time he does that, Judge Sotomayor should say this: "Ms. Sotomayor is my mother, Mr. Sessions. You can call me Judge."

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

So Close, and Yet So Far

Thirty seconds left on the clock, you're four points behind and backed up against your own goal line, Pro Bowl quarterback about to put the game out of reach, he steps back, throws and ... your rookie cornerback snatches it out of the end zone and runs for daylight. Past the 50-yard-line, the 40, the 30, he's all alone, the 20 ... and trips and falls at the 10.

Yesterday, President Obama came this close to reversing the anti-Constitutional policies that nearly destroyed the nation, only to kill his case with preventive detention.

Hilzoy explains:

If we have to have preventive detention, it ought to be subject to the kind of oversight Obama is talking about. There should be rules. There should be checks and balances. I like that part.

But that's like saying: if we have to have censorship or prohibitions on particular religions, they ought to be subject to judicial oversight. Yay for judicial oversight. Hurrah for explicit legal frameworks. Whoopee. That said:

Preventive detention????????

No. Wrong answer.

If we don't have enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we don't have enough evidence to hold them. Period.

The power to detain people without filing criminal charges against them is a dictatorial power. It is inherently arbitrary. What is it that they are supposed to have done? If it is not a crime, why on earth not make it one? If it is a crime, and we have evidence that this person committed it, but that evidence was extracted under torture, then perhaps we need to remind ourselves of the fact that torture is unreliable. If we just don't have enough evidence, that's a problem, but it's also a problem with detaining them in the first place.

SNIP

The long game? If we have a need for preventive detention, which I do not accept, it's a short-term need produced by Messrs. Bush and Cheney. The long game is the preservation of our republic. It is not a game that we can win by forfeiting our freedom.

People seem to be operating under the assumption that there is something we can do that will bring us perfect safety. There is no such thing. We can try our best, and do all the things the previous administration failed to do -- secure Russian loose nukes, harden our critical infrastructure, not invade irrelevant countries, etc. -- but we will never be completely safe. Not even if we give up the freedom that is our most precious inheritance as Americans.

Freedom is not always easy, and it is not always safe. Neither is doing the right thing. Nonetheless, we ought to be willing to try. I wish I saw the slightest reason to believe that we are.

Read the whole thing.

Security and Values

The Real Thing, from the One in Charge, courtesy Firedoglake.

Part One



Part Two



Part Three



TPM has the essential highlights.

Full transcript here.

Boomers Didn't Invent Teh Gay

Oh, alright, fine, we didn't invent sex, either. Although we did vastly improve it.

Seriously, it's long past time we all acknowledged that as long as there have been cocks, mouths, cunts, fingers and assholes, human beings have found an infinite number of ways to combine them to create sexual pleasure.

Yet historians of early America continue to insist - in increasingly shrill tones - that our forefathers in long-term same-sex situations remained celibate. And Larry Kramer is fed up with it.

No, there was no right word for it that you wanted to use for it if you were doing it. Buggery and sodomy connoted anal penetration and thus were, in many places, punishable by death.

That does not mean that men did not know they were gay (to use today's word), know what to do with their cocks, know when they were smitten with other men, know where to go to find them, know what it meant to get violently rejected, or the reverse, find a friend, in other words, the whole gestalt, to use another of today's terms. A penis has never been something that you pick up and put down and put away idly without consideration.

When both US News and the New Yorker ran pieces on the 400th anniversary of Jamestown in 2007, they were both so annoyingly ignorant of the fact that almost all of its inhabitants were men that I submitted my thoughts to both magazines.

Read the whole thing.

It's long, but well worth your time. I have only a couple of complaints:

1) At times, Kramer veers dangerously close to arguing that everyone in history who is not categorically and undeniably heterosexual is ipso facto homosexual, a tendency that undermines his otherwise strong case, and

2) Kramer appears to be guilty of the same denial of which he accuses historians when he fails to even mention the likelihood of homosexual sex between women in pre-20th-century America. Gertrude Stein was a pioneer in many ways, but in physically loving another woman I imagine she was upholding a longstanding New World tradition.

But Kramer's larger point, that what we now call "being gay" has been an integral part of American society and culture for 400 years, and that denying the historicity of gay Americans feeds and supports fear, hatred and marginalization of gays, is solid and important.

It's just sex, people. As long as it happens between consenting adults, and avoids harm to other adults, children, animals and antique furniture, it's legal, Constitutional and historical.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

RIP American Auto Industry, 1896-2009

While everybody's bitching about AIG's bonuses and Citigroup's executive payouts, the same Obama administration that's handing the U.S. treasury over to Wall Street pirates is gutting the last bastion of good union manufacturing jobs in the country.

The madness of the approach adopted by the Johnson and Nixon administrations to war in Vietnam was summed up by the American major who said after the destruction of the Vietnamese village of Ben Tre: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

The madness of the approach adopted by the Bush and Obama administrations to the renewal of the American auto industry has been summed up by the Treasury Department's latest statement on the "restructurings" of the Chrysler and General Motors automotive companies -- which are shaping up as plans for factory closings, mass layoffs and the shuttering of hundreds of car dealerships in communities across the country: "The Administration's commitment to this industry has given both companies a new lease on life."

It may be true that the tens of billions in federal tax dollars that are being pumped into Chrysler and General Motors will save the names of these companies. But the auto-industry "restructuring" is not saving auto plants that have been targeted for closing, tens of thousands of auto workers who face layoffs, auto dealers who are being "consolidated" out of business and perhaps 100,000 service and repair employees who are soon to be jobless.

SNIP

Ohio Congressman Steve LaTourette says he and other members of Congress were briefed by top administration officials prior to the president's national address about the future of Chrysler. "Members of Congress on the call were assured that there would be no permanent plant closings... We were also assured that no jobs would be lost," says LaTourette, a Republican.

Democrat Dennis Kucinich, another Ohio congressman who was briefed, told the Plain Dealer he "is struggling even to understand why the administration would tell him and others something that wasn't true." Says Kucinich: "To me, it really becomes a question of credibility."

The question of credibility remains unsettled.

An auto industry "bailout" that shutters productive factories and dealerships, lays off tens of thousands of auto workers and perhaps 100,000 dealer employees, is not change that we can believe in. The Obama administration is headed in the wrong direction on this one.

The president needs to change course.

Instead of spending billions to steer America toward fewer jobs, fewer factories and fewer dealerships, the Obama administration should stop spinning and start investing in the workers, the small businesses and the communities that have always been the heart and soul of America's auto industry.

Read the whole thing.

Get 'im, Jimbo! Kill Mitch!

The proof that Jim Bunning doesn't have a friend left in the world is that no one is stopping him from holding conference calls with reporters.

Bunning, 77, went on to call McConnell a “control freak” and said he’ll fare well in Kentucky without McConnell’s endorsement in the GOP primary election. “If Mitch McConnell doesn’t endorse me that may be the best thing that could happen to me in Kentucky,” he told reporters during a weekly conference call.

Bunning, R-Southgate, said it would be kind to call his relationship with McConnell strained. “I said no to him and he doesn’t like people who say no to him,” Bunning said.

Media Czech calls this Bunning's "grumpy old man schtick," but I think Bunning's missing a huge opportunity here.

Hey, Jimbo: You wanna really piss Mitch off? Vote with the dems! No, seriously, I mean it. Mitch has bet the republican farm on his ability to maintain the filibuster against everything Obama and Harry Reid want. He's one vote away from losing it all - votes on health care, EFCA, cap-and-trade, the Supreme Court, Guantanamo, maybe even prosecuting Bush and Cheney for war crimes. You can bring him down, Jimbo. You can make him pay for all those snubs and insults and back-stabbing and sabotaging, not to mention the snickering in the Senate cloakroom about your lack of smarts.

Do it, Jimbo. Make that smarmy nerd pay. Wipe that smirk off his face. You've got nothing to lose.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Think Very Loudly

PZ Myers gave the commencement address at the USC Keck School of Medicine, and somebody caught it on video.

Part One:



Part Two:



Full transcript here.

Stop Obama's Cave; Demand Single-payer Now

Everybody who loves your private health insurance coverage, stand on your head.

That's what I thought. Everybody NOT standing on your head, click here right now to send emails to your congress critters demanding single-payer health insurance.

Because President Obama and the cowardly weasels in Congress who call themselves Democrats are just about to surrender any chance of genuine health care reform to the murdering bastards of the insurance industry.

Robert Reich explains:

"Don't make the perfect the enemy of the better" is a favorite slogan in Washington because compromise is necessary to get anything done. But the way things are going with health care, a better admonition would be: "Don't give away the store."

Many experts have long agreed that a so-called "single-payer" plan is the ideal, because competition among private insurers who pay health-care bills inevitably causes them to spend big bucks trying to find and market policies to healthy and younger people at relatively low risk of health problems while avoiding sicker and older people with higher risks (and rejecting those with pre-existing conditions altogether), and also contesting and litigating many claims. A single payer saves all this money and focuses on caring for sick people and preventing the healthy from becoming sick. The other advantage of a single payer is it can use its vast bargaining power to negotiate lower prices from pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and suppliers.

Not surprisingly, insurance and drug companies have been dead-set against a single payer for years. And they've so frightened the public into thinking that "single payer" means loss of choice of doctor (that's wrong -- many single payer plans in other nations allow choices of medical deliverers) that politicians no longer even mention it.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama pushed a compromise -- a universal health plan that would include a "public insurance option" resembling Medicare, which individual members of the public and their families could choose if they wished. This Medicare-like option would at least be able to negotiate low rates and impose some discipline on private insurers.

But now the Medicare-like option is being taken off the table. Insurance and drug companies have thrown their weight around the Senate. And, sadly, the White House -- eager to get a bill enacted in 2009 rather than risk it during the mid-term election year of 2010 -- is signaling it's open to other approaches.

SNIP

It's still possible that the House could come up with a real Medicare-like public option and that Senate Dems could pass it under a reconciliation bill needing just 51 votes. But it won't happen without a great deal of pressure from the White House and the public. Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and the rest of Big Med are pushing hard in the opposite direction. And Democrats are now giving away the store. As things are now going, we'll end up with a universal health-care bill this year that politicians, including our President, will claim as a big step forward when it's really a step sideways.

If you're just tuning in, "single-payer health insurance" already covers tens of millions of Americans. They are everyone 65 years and older (Medicare) and every military veteran (VA), and if you're lucky enough to be one of them, you currently suffer the horrific "socialized medicine" President Obama wants to offer the rest of us.

Stop the lies. Stop the corruption. Stop the insurance companies from profiting off third-world coverage.

Again, click here right now to send emails to your congress critters demanding single-payer health insurance. Just type in your zip code and one click gets you the phone number and email link for both senators and your representative.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

President Obama at Notre Dame

Watch it and read it for yourself.

Part One:



Part Two:



Full transcript here.

Spread the Meme: GOP = Grand Old Poopyheads

Hilzoy pulls out the rhetorical nuclear weapons to meet the repugs on their own level.

WHEREAS the Urban Dictionary defines "Poopyhead" as "The single most offensive thing you can call someone. It's like the atom bomb of arguments. Men fear it's omnipotent and awesome power. It it literally unmatched and all humble themselves in the presence of it's divinity. Few have survived to tell of it..." [sic];

WHEREAS the Republican Party, in its present incarnation, is deserving of any number of schoolyard epithets;

SNIP

RESOLVED: that I, the member of me, do call upon the Republican Party to be honest and truthful with the American people by acknowledging that they have devolved into a party of schoolchildren and should, therefore, agree to rename themselves the Grand Old Poopyheads.

Read the whole thing to everyone you meet.

Big Kentucky U.S. Senate Race Announcement Tonight!

UPDATE Below

Maybe!

Jake caught it.

Rand Paul’s Twitter account says an important announcement is coming tonight on the Rachel Maddow show. Tune in at 9:00 P.M. Eastern on MSNBC.

Yes, Rand is the son of infamous liberatarian republican Ron, and a opthamologist in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

If he enters next year's race to replace Jim Bunning in the republican primary, he could fuck it up enough to throw the nomination to Kentucky Senate President David Williams, who would lose huge to just about any Democratic nominee.

If Paul enters the race as an independent, he would draw enough repug votes away from any repug nominee to hand the general election to just about any Democratic nominee.

Jack Conway, you can start packing for D.C.

UPDATE, 8:59 p.m.: Meh. "I'm forming an exploratory committee." Yeah, so's everybody and their mother. Call me when you sign filing papers.

Losing Re-election is the Least of Norm Coleman's Problems

Steve Benen calls our attention to the widely ignored real scandal of the blatantly corrupt Norm Coleman.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman and his team of lawyers are still fighting hard to reverse the outcome of last year's Senate race in Minnesota, but it appears that the Republican may end up in another courtroom for an entirely different set of reasons.

The FBI is investigating allegations that former Senator Norm Coleman had clothing and other items purchased on his behalf by a longtime friend and businessman Nasser Kazeminy, according to a source in Minnesota who was interviewed recently by federal agents. [...]

The FBI has also been conducting interviews in Texas, according to media reports, in regards to different allegations that Kazeminy tried to steer $75,000 to Coleman through his wife's employer. Up to this point, there have not been reports of any FBI work taking place in Coleman's home state.

SNIP

I can't help but wonder how the dragged-out process in Minnesota would be perceived if more people -- voters, politicians, political reporters -- realized that the candidate who keeps fighting is the same one who's under an ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI. Perhaps, if this generated even a little attention, the Republican establishment might be a little less enthusiastic about their support for Coleman, and he might be more inclined to quit one legal fight to focus his energies on the other.

Read the whole thing.

Steve's so sweet; he just can't let go of that last shred of doubt about the utter corruption of the Grand Old Poopyheads.

But I'll make a prediction: If the not-remotely-close-to-liberal-enough media actually picks up this story and runs with it, the gooper babies will scream and stomp their tiny feet demanding Norm be given the Senate seat in apology.

When Your Electricity Bills Skyrocket This Winter, Thank Ben Chandler

Kentucky's Own DINO Extraordinaire Ben Chandler (D, KY-6) is an out-and-proud member of the Congressional Blue Dog Caucus, which just forced the House to gut the cap-and-trade bill to slow global climate change.

Matt Yglesias watches the sausage grinder at work on the Waxman-Markey climate bill and is especially outraged at so-called moderates who insist that a large fraction of carbon emission permits should be given away, rather than auctioned off:

The moderate bloc [...] has portrayed itself as concerned with the climate crisis but worried about the tradeoffs with short-term economic growth. But the concession they’ve forced here doesn’t do anything to boost short-term growth. Instead, whereas auctioning the permits would have made rich people bear most of the cost of reducing emissions, by giving the permits away you make poor people bear most of the cost.

The environmental impact of the two methods is similar, and the overall costs are similar. But the moderates acted swiftly and decisively to reallocate a portion of the costs onto the backs of the poor. And they’ve done so specifically under guise of looking out for the interests of the working class. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

In a way, this is even worse than Matt makes it out to be.

SNIP

If moderates were demanding free permits because they wanted to keep electric prices in their states low for a few years while they work on converting to new power sources, that would be one thing. We could argue about whether it's a good idea, but at least it's normal, understandable stuff. But that's not what they're doing.

Prices are going to go up regardless, and the free permits do nothing except provide windfall profits to operators of coal plants. The moderates pushing this "compromise" either don't understand basic economics, in which they case they need to learn some, or else they understand it perfectly well and like the idea of screwing their constituents in order to provide a bonanza for coal plant operators. In either case, yes, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Read the whole thing.

But earning millions in campaign cash from the coal industry while fucking over his constituents is standard operating procedure for Benny Boy. And until he's held accountable for how he has damaged Kentucky he'll keep on doing it.

Where is the Sixth District Real Democrat willing to stand up to this pathetic excuse for a representative? Only a strong primary opponent will make that weasel sit up and take notice.