Keep Talking, Freakazoids

Unless severely provoked, my default response to repugs, freakazoids and other deluded liars spouting hateful nonsense is to encourage them to keep talking. The more they say, the more they reveal their ignorance, deceit and stupidity.

Sometimes it takes a while, and waiting can get frustrating, especially when the victory of fact, reason and truth can be subtle.

But every once in a while, we get a clear win.

Regular readers here may be familiar with WhoIsYourCreator, a creationist who blows through here and The Panda's Thumb now and then to dump a load of creationist cut-and-paste in the comments. WhoIsYourCreator is actually Julie Haberle, a deranged creationist whose chief accomplishment to date has been to erect foolish billboards all over the place. To date — but now she can take credit for another accomplishment. Her billboards and organization prompted a Christian to dig deeper into this evolution stuff, and what he discovered was that Haberle and others in the creationist movement have been lying all along, which led him to this simple conclusion, which he shared with Ms. Haberle.

I'm simply writing to say 'Thank You' and let you know by sharing with you the information I've discovered, your organization more than any other entity has been the primary factor in the shedding my faith. Keep up the good work as there is no doubt countless others have and will continue to do the same based on your efforts.

Dishonesty has consequences, and creationists are fundamentally distorting the evidence to fit their desired conclusion. That hurts them when people take a moment to actually examine what they are claiming.

One Nation, Indivisible, With Liberty And Justice for All

55 years ago today, a bunch of pissing-their-pants authoritarian submissives in Congress added the phrase "under god" to the pledge of allegiance.

Leaving aside for the moment the gross inappropriateness of pledging allegiance to the flag, as opposed to, say, the Constitution, let's remember the circumstances under which Congress added an unconstitutional religious reference to a secular pledge.

1954 was the depths of the Cold War. New Deal liberals were being hounded out of jobs for the crime of having, in the 1930s, supported a nation that that became our most valuable ally in World War II. By 1954, those liberals had learned enough about the horrors of the USSR under Stalin to have recoiled and recanted, but that was not enough for the witch hunters.

There were multiple ground on which to condemn the Soviet Union and China (which had embraced communism in 1949), stark differences with the U.S. by which to promote American values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Instead of highlighting Stalin's and Mao's dicatorial power in a totalitarian state, the purges of political opponents, the ethnic cleansing, the command economy that left millions to starve, Congress chose to focus on ... atheism.

America was better than communist nations not because of our dedication to the rule of law, not because of our Constitution that guaranteed civil rights (albeit not yet fully realized), not because of a balanced economy that encouraged small business while regulating capitalism's excesses, not because of our mixed but undeniable success in fulfilling the promise and embodying the values of the Founders.

No, Congress and President Eisenhower effectively declared that the most critical American value to hold up against communism was a value specifically kept out of the Constitution by its authors: superstitious worship.

For the full argument, see David Greenburg's 2002 piece in Slate, Why We're Not One Nation "Under God."

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

Obama Administration Chooses the Correct Side

Dammit, just when I'm getting a good hate on for the Obama administration for its caving on banking bailots and don't-ask-don't-tell and preventive detention and secrecy and single-payer and cap-and-trade, it goes and does something so profoundly liberal, so perfectly Democratic, so making a stand on the side of goodness and light, that I have to
give the fuckers actual props.

Vice President Joe Biden and other members of President Barack Obama's Cabinet have scrapped plans to attend a national mayors' conference in Rhode Island rather than cross a picket line of local firefighters.

I heard this on Rachel just now, and may have hurt myself punching the air and screaming "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

My grandparents were union factory workers, back during the Depression when joining a union meant taking your life in your hands. I've never belonged to a union myself, but I would take a knife in the belly before I'd cross a picket line.

Over the last 30 years, we've forgotten what it meant to make your stand on the side of workers. People blithely stride past strikers on a line, oblivious to the stand they have just taken on the side of management exploiting workers.

I am surprised, gratified and touched that the Obama administration gets it on unions, if not on much else.

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

The Expert Voice on Health Care Reform

If you want to know what's really going on with health care reform on the ground, among people who live it every day, you can't do better than our good friend Blue Girl.

Decades of working the trenches of emergency medicine in the military give her experience, perspective and insight almost unmatched in the blogosphere. So when Blue Girl says health care workers want single-payer, you better believe it.

There was a meeting yesterday of a House subcommittee where some important things were said by some front-line healthcare providers and medical educators, and although the important things they said were not well reported, I can sum up the testimony in five words...

Healthcare professionals want single payer.

That is because we have had a front-row seat to the horror show that is our current healthcare system and we have come to realize, some of us more quickly than others, that spiraling costs are the biggest problem we face, and the surest, fastest and most effective way to get those costs under control is to move to a single payer system. "Unless you can stop the insurance industry price gouging, we simply cannot make health care affordable, which means you either have price controls on the insurance industry or you take them out of the equation through single-payer reform," said Geri Jenkins, the co-president of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents 86,000 registered nurses. "If we were to have a debate on containing costs, improving quality and universality, the single-payer advantage would be clear."

Walter Tsou, a University of Pennsylvania professor who is an adviser to Physicians for a National Health Program told the panel that for the last 50 years, government policy has protected insurance industry profits at the expense of taxpayers, doctors and hospitals. "Single-payer is the only reform that can control health care costs," he said bluntly. "Our most famous radical document begins with the words, 'We the People.' Not 'We the Insurers.' It is time for our own generation's revolution."

We all know that the single payer discussion is one that we ought to be having, but politicians on every side are scared to death of it, to the point that even though we have a popular Democratic president with strong majorities in both chambers, Democratic legislators took single payer off the table early in the first round of discussions. Unsurprisingly, they regret that decision now. Oops. Probably shouldn't have done that...

SNIP

The bottom line is this: Reform is coming, whether the AMA wants to accept that fact or not, and enough people have realized that every single argument that is made against a public option fails to stand up to scrutiny, because every single negative scenario they point to, patients already have to deal with every time their doctor orders a test, writes a prescription or schedules a procedure - and enough people are independently arriving at this conclusion that 'critical mass' is imminent.

Read the whole thing, or else.

Unions? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Unions!

You already know that it is only thanks to unions that we have an 8-hour work day, a five-day work week, protections from dangerous work conditions, wages sufficient to support a family, benefits like health insurance, sick time and pensions.

But did you know that if Wackenhut had not been able to stall a union's demands for safety equipment, heroic security guard Stephen Johns might still be alive?

Stephen Johns, the 39-year old man who was murdered yesterday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, wasn't just a Wackenhut-employed security officer. He was also a member of the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America--a union.

That union approached Wackenhut about the dangers Holocaust Museum officers face, and asked them to provide their employees with bulletproof vests. You can imagine how that turned out.

[D]uring contract negotiations with Wackenhut two years ago, the union pressed for company-issued protective vests. Although Wackenhut seemed open to the idea, vests have not been issued, Faye said.

"I hammered this in our negotiations two years ago because of how sensitive that museum is," he said. "Our guards needed more protection." He said that one of the guards at the museum was "verbally assaulted by one guy walking by, saying anti-Semitic remarks. For that reason, I made that the center of the negotiation."

Authorities said Johns was not wearing a protective vest.

Yes, Virginia, unions are still fighting employers over basic issues of life and death. But the days when a John L. Lewis or Samuel Gompers would have shut down every monument and museum in the capitol before letting their members go to work unprotected against violent extremists are long gone.

Wackenhut is one of the world's biggest beneficiaries of the repugs turning over government functions to the private sector. Second only to KBR, Wackenhut sucks up American tax dollars in private security and corrections contracts around the world.

Wackenhut knows that the castrated NLRB won't punish it for stonewalling its union, but that shouldn't stop the rest of us from holding the giant corporation responsible through negligence for the death of its loyal, six-year employee Stephen Johns.

The ability to treat employees - living, breathing human beings - as cannon fodder is what drives the frantic opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.

Which should be renamed the Stephen Johns Memorial Employee Rights Protection Act.

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

Elves, fairies and repugs

Back in February, I posted a rant about people who hate taxes and what they should have to live without. I didn't know then about Steve M.'s brilliant analysis of the right wing's "elves and fairies" theory of government services.

I've summarized the right's main economic theory a number of times, but for those who've missed it, here it is again: All tax money is poured down a rathole. Then all government services -- law enforcement, firefighting, national defense, education, parks, disaster relief, road building, Social Security, Medicare, the lot -- are provided by elves and fairies, who work for free. Therefore, every tax cut is too small, every tax increase is unnecessary and unjustified, and government is always bad. Whatever we like that comes from government somehow emerged from the labors of those tireless (and completely selfless) elves and fairies.

This sounds like snark, but how else do you explain the words and deeds of right-wingers like Sarah Palin and Tom Golisano? Palin, in a recent interview with Sean Hannity bragged about her state's lack of an income and sales tax, and about the state's (decades-old) system of distributing a portion of oil revenues to households ... then, a few minutes later, decried "socialism" in D.C. ... then declared that that ability to tap into oil revenues could be a bad thing if it meant (ick! pthui!) a bigger government.

SNIP

This is the right-wing mindset. This, right-wingers, is why your party didn't impose fiscal discipline in D.C. when it held power, something that you now seem to find baffling. Your guys simply don't really understand that there's a direct connection between income and outflow. You guys think taxes are collected are collected just for spite, and that spending just happens.

So they're not hypocrites; they're just waiting for their fairy friends.

The Purposes of Violence

Digby paints the bigger picture:

You've undoubtedly heard by now that a white supremacist tried to shoot up the Holocaust Museum today.

It's pretty clear that the right wing has lost whatever restraint it had and that the ongoing paroxysms of violent, extreme rhetoric are having their effect. The crocodile tears of the anti-abortion forces after the Tiller assassination notwithstanding, it's also pretty clear that they know this violence is effective. If you want to paralyze a society and force people to capitulate out of fear of random violence, nothing beats terrorism.

And once the right gets everybody looking over their shoulders, they'll misdirect the citizenry and run to the rescue with calls for "law and order." (Recall that the violence of the 60s didn't originate with the left --- it originated with racist cops unleashing hell on non-violent protesters.) It's working great with the deficit.

Belief vs. Facts, Round 12,649

It is to this nation's everlasting shame that a decade into the 21st century, law-abiding citizens have to defend lives lived on the basis of science and reason against attacks from superstitious followers of invisible sky wizards.

But PZ Myers indefatigably takes up the cudgels of rational thought against the latest anti-atheist fear-mongering.

There are no higher purposes discernible, but we happen to be here, so I think that looking for knowledge and value and even personal purpose in what is and what we are is far more sensible than asking a cold and mostly empty universe to whisper marching orders to us. Let's strip away imaginary cosmic dictators (who are always nothing but an Oz-like showpiece to empower little, petty, earthly dictators anyway) and search for meaning in how we live our lives and how we can better the world for our children.

SNIP

I always like how these doctrinaire promoters of "Judeo-Christianity" primly declare that they have such moral authority, when their faith has such a poor track record of promoting morality. Christians have advocated slavery, have murdered people for the awful crime of miscegenation, have decreed that people who don't have the kind of sex they prefer are second-class citizens. Christians are thieves, murderers, rapists, and jay-walkers; it seems that having a belief in a transcendent authority actually doesn't equate to being necessarily law-abiding and ethical or even, shocking as that may be, immune from the temptations of their natures.

SNIP

Why do these wackjobs always assume that reason and compassion are antagonistic? Reason tells me that it is a smart idea to be compassionate to the less privileged: maybe they have some ability that my society would find useful, to be pragmatic about it; there is no reason to assume that if someone is destitute, I must therefore do what I can to make their life more miserable; someone may be poorer or weaker than I am, but in turn, I'm poorer and weaker than someone else — does this warrant that I suffer? I also possess empathy, and when I see others harmed, I feel an echo of that pain myself. And, of course, perhaps someday I will have Alzheimer's, and I'd rather not encourage the growth of a culture that would someday discard me.

I also think there are a set of ideas that are entirely the product of reason: that we should build a whole culture that enables and sustains equal rights and equal opportunities for everyone, because that will maximize the happiness and productivity of our society. I really don't need a deity to tell me that, and it rarely seems to be a message promoted by religious hierarchies.

SNIP

We do have intrinsic natures that have been necessary to our success as a species: empathy, and the tendency to respond in kind to the actions of others. These can be accentuated by culture. We don't need any gods to be good to others, just the opportunity and the examples of our upbringing.

Read the whole thing. It's simple, straightforward, well-reasoned and persuasive. Not that it'll make any impression on the Tooth Fairy believers.

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

NYT Gets Health Care Reform Wrong - Again

The New York Times still does not understand what real health care reform means, as evidenced in the Sunday Magazine's cover story. No wonder, though, considering it was written by Matt Bai, who infamously got the revival of the Democratic Party by Howard Dean completely backwards in his 2008 waste of dead trees "The Argument."

Here's Bai in the NYT trying to scare everybody with the worn-out ghosts of 1993:

“HILLARYCARE,” AS OPPONENTS referred to Clinton’s 1993 health care plan, has been ridiculed ever since as the apotheosis of liberal, out-of-control bureaucracy-building. However flawed the politics of the effort may have been, however, the plan itself, weighing in at the size of an urban telephone book, was less a testament to Orwellian ambition than it was to the sheer mind-bending complexity of the issue itself. Few policy aims in American life could involve so many moving parts as designing a new health care structure, which has to involve fundamental changes in how medical providers are paid, how consumers are insured, how businesses pay their employees and even how Americans safeguard their own health. To use a home-improvement metaphor, if welfare reform was like remodeling your kitchen, and if adding the prescription-drug benefit to Medicare was like building a sizable addition onto the back porch, then overhauling the health care system is more like ripping out all the walls of your house and completely reconfiguring the plumbing, the air ducts and the wiring all at once. Each aspect of the job is painfully complex and essential to the whole, and if one piece is poorly conceived, then none of the others may actually work as planned.

Dead wrong. Health care reform - REAL reform - is simple beyond the ken of Villagers like Bai. You don't have to design anything new, you don't have to coordinate a bunch of moving parts, you don't have to do anything except this:
Announce that everybody in the country is now eligible for Medicare. If you'd rather stay with your private insurer, fine. If you want high-quality care at low prices, sign here.

Bai, Harry Reid, the Blue Dogs and the rest of the Villagers insist on re-inventing the wheel from scratch, when there's a ready-to-go Camry sitting right there in front of them.

Meanwhile, Max Baucus, Montana DINO, is using the absence of Ted Kennedy from leadership on health care as an opportunity to prove he can fellate repugs as well as Harry Reid.

What House and Senate leaders don’t agree on, necessarily, is how to get the legislation done. Waxman and Rangel are more than happy to shove a bill down the throats of their Republican colleagues, if need be. That’s why the House forced Senate leaders to accept a provision in the budget that allows health care to pass by “reconciliation” — an arcane budgeting maneuver that would enable Senate Democrats to force through a bill with a simple majority, rather than with the 60 votes needed to forestall a filibuster. But in the Senate, Baucus remains determined to send to the floor a bill with bipartisan support; passing health care reform by reconciliation, he says, would make the new law unsustainable in the long term. This is why Baucus hasn’t yet committed to the idea of a public plan to compete with private insurers. It’s not that he particularly dislikes the policy or that he can’t find enough centrist Democrats who might vote for it. It’s more that Baucus fears the provision will drive away Republicans, making it far less likely that Democrats can pass a bill without resorting to reconciliation. During our conversation in his office, Baucus told me his main goal is to keep Senate Republicans at the negotiating table for as long as he can. “Everything is on the table,” Baucus told me more than once, which is the same theme he’s been hammering home to his Republican colleagues.

Max! Max! Over here! MAAAAAX! Listen up, idiot: even if you gut health care reform and turn it into a record-breaking porker that hands the keys to the Treasury over to the criminal HMOs, the repugs will still - are you listening, Max? - vote against it..

So fuck them, and the Blue Dogs who love them. Let's have a nice, clean, two-line bill that really reforms health care in this country:

Single-payer for everybody. Paid for by outlawing private health insurers and seizing all their assets.

Done. Now, what's this bullshit about giving away carbon credits?

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

How a President Who Genuinely Respects Veterans Speaks About Veterans

Few things in the last eight years made me crazier than the frat-boy-smart-ass tone of Smirky's speeches about and to veterans. You could see it in his face, what he was really thinking:

"You stupid chumps. While you obediently went to war, I escaped active duty in a champagne unit and blew off even that. Yet I not only escaped life imprisonment for desertion during wartime, I'm the effin' president, while you retards are begging for wheelchairs from the VA budget I stripped."

Hard as it is to believe, Smirky actually held the same job title held by the person who spoke in Normandy on the 65th anniversary of D-Day, and whose passionate sincerity carried across an ocean.



Full remarks here.

I was privileged today to speak with a D-Day veteran. A deeply conservative and religious man, a lifelong republican whose ideal politician is Bob Dole, he said this about President Obama:

"I didn't vote for him, but I'm really rooting for him to do well, and I think he will."

I couldn't speak around the sob in my throat.

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

Finally Remembered

Sixty-five years later, the last one returns.

William G. Dabney could hardly have expected to be spending that ferocious June day in 1944 hunkered on Omaha Beach, struggling to keep aloft one of the tethered silver balloons intended to confound German pilots trying to bomb or strafe exposed Allied invaders in Normandy.

Though some black units, like the 320th Antiaircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion, were directly engaged at the front, others were restricted to manual labor, as in Normandy after the invasion. More Photos »
As a member of the only all-black unit in the D-Day landings on Omaha and Utah, the two beachheads assigned to American forces, Corporal Dabney was a rarity in a European war that in its early days was fought almost entirely by whites.

The contributions of his unit, the 320th Antiaircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion, have been largely forgotten over the years. But on Saturday, Mr. Dabney, now 84, will join President Obama near Omaha Beach to mark the 65th anniversary of the invasion. On Friday, he received the Legion of Honor from the French government. Officials of the White House Commission on Remembrance, which organizes services at American war memorials, say he is the only survivor of the 320th they have been able to track down.

Read the whole thing.

It's Health Care Deform Time: Do You Know Where Your Blue Dog Stands?

Summer's here, and the Blue Dogs are bored. What to do, what to do? Hey, let's fuck up Obama's shit - it's been weeks since we did that!

Remember how they fubared the stimulus plan? Guess what - they're getting ready to do it again to health care reform.

House Blue Dogs today (June 4) released a statement of principles for what they call "responsible" health reform, specifically addressing what they view as acceptable terms of the public option.

Buried at the bottom is this caveat. "The availability of a public option would occur only as a fallback and in the absence of adequate competition and cost containment. Fundamental insurance market reforms and increased choice...should improve access and contribute to lower costs. However, should the private plans fail to meet specific availability and cost targets, a public option would be triggered and be allowed to compete on a level playing field subject to the conditions outlined above."

Translation: "Anything that endangers the stranglehold insurance companies have over health care in this country will pass over our dead bodies."

The one and only thing that makes health care legislation reform rather than a giveaway to private insurance companies that will make the super-pork Medicare bill look like a tax increase is the public option.

Only a public option will force the private insurers to actually compete with low-overhead nonprofits.

Only a public option will force private hospitals to treat everyone with the same care and for the same price.

Only a public option will cut health care costs by covering preventive care for everyone and making doctors, not emergency rooms, the front line of health care.

Only a public option will put a stop to absurd medical bills forcing working people into bankruptcy.

Only a public option will take the burden of providing health care insurance off of American business and allow the economy to thrive.

Only a public option is a path to the single-payer plan enjoyed by every other industrialized nation on the planet.

Only a public option offers a genuine chance for the U.S. economy to avoid a Depression that will send Americans sneaking south across the border to find illegal jobs in Mexico.

Tell 'em point-blank: Congress critters who oppose the public option in health care reform are anti-health care, anti-business, anti-strong economy, and plain un-American.

Read the whole thing.

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

One-Sided Extremism

Katha Pollitt shatters the false equivalence that blames both pro-choicers and murdering terrorists for abortion extremism.

It's time, too, to stop the pretense that the "debate" over abortion consists of two equally extreme positions, and that wisdom resides in the mushy middle, where everybody disapproves of abortion except when they want one for themselves or someone they care about. There's only one set of extremists here, the one that uses language like "babykiller," " Nazi," "murderer," and "death mill," kidnaps and murders providers and clinic workers,burns and bombs clinics and drives cars into them, posts pictures of clinic workers and their families on the internet, and harrasses patients on their way to get care.

Only one side writes like this about the murder of Dr. Tiller:

"But I also know joy. Not the shallow type of joy but a deep resonating joy. I feel joy that no longer will this wicked man slay the judicially innocent. I feel joy because justice, albeit of a rough variety, was visited on someone who so thoroughly opposed a culture of life and who worked so assiduously to spread the culture of death. I know joy because the truth of Scripture that those who take up the sword shall die by the sword is seen as authoritative. I know joy because I know that no longer will Dr. Tiller be sucking out the brains of people, or torturing people with saline or dismembering people in utero. How could a sane person not feel joy at the death of a mass murderer and a terrorist?"

That's Bret MacAtee, Michigan pastor and Constitution Party activist.

People mock the word "choice" --it's consumerist, euphemistic, wimpy, calculated. But one thing you can say for it: It honors the individual conscience.

If a desperately ill pregnant woman wants to risk her life to give birth, if she wants to carry an anencephalic fetus to term so it can die in her arms, or have her rapist's baby, or become a mother at 14, or produce octuplets, pro-choicers are not going to compel her to abort. Pro-choicers don't go around lecturing girls and women that they will blame themselves forever if they have a baby they may not be equipped to raise well. They don't paint gory pictures of the horrors and dangers of childbirth to scare pregnant girls and women into ending their pregnancies with a quick and safe termination. They don't tell women Jesus is going to send them to Hell if they sacrifice their futures to the whims of a wayward sperm -- although they might mention from time to time that the Bible nowhere mentions abortion. Pro-choicers don't blow up churches or assassinate the leaders of Operation Rescue.

Only one side wants to force women to live by its so-called morality, and only one side murders and bombs to make its point. Only one side has a terrorist wing.

In the days to come, let the public discussion acknowledge that.

Read the whole thing.

A Bold Call for Peace

All you really have to know is that the shout from the audience that made him stop and say "Thank you," was, in English: "Barack Obama, we love you!"



Full transcript here.

WTF Bumper Sticker of the Day

Seen on a pickup truck in a downtown Lexington:

"Free The South"

From what? The Union? Tried that once and failed miserably.

From "confiscatory federal taxes?" Would that be the same federal tax system that returns to The South a buck and a half of federal spending for every buck of taxes The South pays?

From impossible if-it's-not-a-hurricane-or-tornado-it's-a-drought summer weather? Talk to your genius legislators who are still denying global climate change.

No, I think we know from what you want "The South" to be freed:

From the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, and 13th Amendment for that matter. The South has been denied its invisible-sky-wizard-given right to exploit ni**ers for far too long.

From those mezkins who are the only thing keeping the southern economy from collapsing completely. They can have the fields and janitor closets, but keep their little yard apes out of the schools.

From the scientists whose inconvenient facts threaten your baseless freakazoid superstitions.

From the homos who so terrify you, the bitches taking jobs from men who really need them, the enviros who prefer mountaintops to parking lots.

I'm a Southerner, but I reject The South you want freed.

Free Us From Your South.

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

Please Let This Be For Real

Half of what President Obama does is depressing proof that he really is a centrist who thinks repugs are human, and the other half is 11-dimensional chess that's depressing because the payoff is probably years if not decades down the road.

So I've been ratcheting down my expectations for health care reform in hopes of staving off suicide over Obama compromising away the one thing that could single-handedly solve about 90 percent of what's wrong with the U.S. economy.

Then Steve Benen has to come along to get my hopes up again.

OBAMA WANTS A PUBLIC OPTION.... The White House, following up on yesterday's discussions with lawmakers on health care reform, sent a letter today to Sens. Edward Kennedy (chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee) and Max Baucus (chairman of the Senate Finance Committee). President Obama has voiced tacit support for a public option before, but notice the renewed emphasis.

"The plans you are discussing embody my core belief that Americans should have better choices for health insurance, building on the principle that if they like the coverage they have now, they can keep it, while seeing their costs lowered as our reforms take hold.

"But for those who don't have such options, I agree that we should create a health insurance exchange -- a more market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that's best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can. None of these plans should deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition, and all of these plans should include an affordable basic benefit package that includes prevention, and protection against catastrophic costs. I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest." [emphasis added]

Again, this isn't new, but the more the president steps up and shows some leadership in support of a public option, the more likely it is the measure will be included in the final bill. Which is why I'm encouraged by this letter -- Obama could have stuck to broad generalities about his core (but undefined) beliefs. Instead, the president reminded the senators, who are not entirely on the same page on the issue, what he wants to see.

Ezra Klein noted today that the White House "seemed relatively uninterested" in the public option as recently as a few months ago, but "has begun pushing hard for it."

And that, in my reporting, is what seems to be underneath the change. A few months ago, most observers thought the public plan was a bargaining chip. It had a lot of public supporters but few real friends. In recent weeks, that's begun to change. The White House seems genuinely intent on including a public plan -- or at least some form of public competition -- in the final bill. And that's changed the incentives for senators down the line. The public plan was safe to oppose so long as the powerful players weren't really interested in its survival. Indeed, when the policy was going to be bargained away anyway, the incentives were to try to convince the health industry that you'd been their key ally in that victory. But now that the White House has put some muscle behind the policy, opposition has potential consequences. And that's making the policy's opponents rethink their stridency.

Note to the White House: more of this, please.

It's not a lock, by any means. The health insurers knows that the public option is the death of their industry, and they'll fight it like cornered, rabid wolverines.

But damn that Benen, I've got hope.

Whom Would Jesus Shoot?

New Bethel Church, Valley Station, Kentucky. "Reforming in Faith, Spirit-Filled in Practice"

In Celebration of July 4 and our rights as Americans, New Bethel Church will be hosting an OPEN CELEBRATION CHURCH service for all who support 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. It will be held on Saturday June 27th, the weekend before July 4th. It will begin at 5PM and picnic food will be served. We are asking responsible handgun owners to attend this service openly wearing their sidearm. This will be a Cold Range Carry meaning handguns must be unloaded and in a secure holster.

Area gun store/firing range owners will be invited to attend and tell about their services. There will be patriotic music and short presentation concerning responsible gun ownership and 2nd Amendment rights.

There will also be a raffle to win a handgun. All that is asked is that you bring a sidearm, a friend who has a sidearm and a canned good for local food bank.

Violence is the Last Resort of the Incompetent *

Athenae articulates the outrage and frustration of liberals at the repug resort to violence at the loss of an election.

For eight fucking years anybody to the left of Pinochet had to kick back and watch while sensible centrists and the Coalition of the Involuntarily Committable got together and raped the country and fucked up the whole world. For eight fucking years we were told that marching in the streets with giant puppets was the most horrific form of treason imaginable, was demoralizing our troops and hurting the debate and making the baby Pope Benedict cry. Not once did I ever in that time hear Megan McArdle or any of her other sensible friends discuss how maybe, just maybe, President Bush and his administration had PUSHED us to the edge, where we HAD to make those puppets because we felt the political process was closed to us.

No, back then it was "elections have consequences" and "you lost" and "look upon my works, ye mighty, and fuck off," and anytime anybody had the temerity to say, "erm, dude, if you don't mind I'll be over here with this sign on a stick" they might as well have been plotting to shoe-bomb Air Force One the way the whiners in the nuttersphere howled and shrieked. There was none of this, "you just don't know how hard it is to be on the losing end of everything including your soul" back then. Just them, partying with Free Republic on the White House lawn, waving their big foam fingers in our faces going "nyah nyah nyah."

Now that they're out of power, natch, what choice do they have but to go shoot up church lobbies in the hopes of bagging abortion doctors for their trophy wall of American apostates? Really, what else could they do? It's not like they could vote, or convince other people to listen to them, or organize, or do any of the damn things I feel like we've been doing since before there was dirt in order to get a not-entirely-crazy in-another-life-he'd-be-a-moderate-Republican dude finally elected so a third of the country could act like Satan just put his feet up on their mother's white-clothed dinner table. It's not like they could do anything else, right? They had to start shooting.

Right?

h/t Hilzoy

Read the whole thing.

* Yes, that's from Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation Trilogy.

The Slippery Slope

The Reagan Economy

Barack Obama's Monster Twins - Tim Geithner and Larry Summers - want us all to believe that an economy dependent on credit cards, out-of-control corporations, underwater mortgages and obscene wealth subsidized by the middle class is the American norm.

But they're lying, because they're both old enough to remember when the strongest American economy in history was based on thrift, regulation, and a unionized middle class.

Paul Krugman reminds us how recently we became a debt economy, and who is to blame.

For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

SNIP

The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

SNIP

Now, the proximate causes of today’s economic crisis lie in events that took place long after Reagan left office — in the global savings glut created by surpluses in China and elsewhere, and in the giant housing bubble that savings glut helped inflate.

But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.

These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.

There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it.

Read the whole thing.