No, "Anyone" Can Not Be President

Anonymous Liberal has a great takedown of Ross Douthat's ridiculous claim that Sarah Palin represents the "Democratic ideal."

This last line from Ross's column also bothers me:

Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

This is a ridiculous statement. If you want evidence that anyone can grow up to be president, how about looking at the current President. It's hard to imagine a more unlikely future president than the biracial son of a teenage mother in Hawaii who was given the name of his absentee Muslim father. But Obama did well in school, worked hard, impressed everyone he met with his intellect and managed to put himself in a position to become president.

Others have said the same, but AL's last graf makes what to me is the more important point:

Palin stands for a very different proposition, that if you have the right backers, anyone, no matter how unqualified or unsuited for the job, can potentially become president. That's scary. While I very much want to believe that a smart kid who works hard and plays her cards right can become president someday, no matter where she comes from, I don't want to believe that any random schmuck can become president. The president shouldn't be an average person. The president should be someone who is most decidedly above average in most respects. Pedigree doesn't matter to me, but capability does. And it should to all Americans.

"Anyone can grow up to be president" does not mean any semi-literate, arrested-development, narcissistic psychopath with a cute smile can be president. It means for anyone willing to work her ass off studying, questioning, learning, gaining skills and improving herself, no disadvantages of birth or poverty can stop her.

Or as I believe Jon Stewart put it, I don't want a president I want to have a beer with; I want a president who is light years smarter than me.

The Left is Not Backing Off: Not Now, Not Ever

I can't speak for Move On, Democracy for America, Service Employees International Union or even the Left Side of the Kentucky Blogosphere, but in response to President Obama's request that the Left stop pressuring Senate Blue Dogs, I'll say this:

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Because as President Obama should know better than anyone, it has never been more important that liberal Americans - online, offline and outaline - keep the pressure on all our elected officials to pass the liberal legislation: single-payer healthcare, sharp carbon reductions to stop global warming, EFCA to restore worker rights, tight regulations on the finance industry, massive infrastructure investment, and repealing DOMA and DADT.

That Obama had to whine out loud about the pressure being felt by Senate Blue Dogs who oppose the public option in health care reform proves the pressure is working and it's time to double down on it.

As I wrote in a comment yesterday:

Obama can't suggest, must less achieve, liberal policies and programs unless he gets support in the form of non-stop massive pressure from the left.

If we don't get the liberal legislation we want, it's OUR FAULT for not screaming bloody fucking murder every time Obama gives the repugs and Blue Dogs the time of day.

That means not only calling and writing the White House and signing petitions, but also calling and writing our own representatives and Senators, especially the Blue Dogs and repugs.

No, it might not change their vote, but it'll prevent them from truthfully claiming they didn't hear from their constituents.

Don't let any of them get away with saying: gee, if I'd known you felt that strongly about it ....

Between a ROCK and a license plate

The state budget crisis that has been growing steadily for the last two years has had one salutary effect: it has dropped to the bottom of legislators' priority list the unconstitutional proposal for "In God We Trust" license plates.

Now a religious group has sued Kentucky to demand not only that the state produce the god-walloping plates, but that it also pay profits from the plate to said freakazoids.

A Kentucky anti-pornography group has sued the state Transportation Cabinet and two legislators for turning down its application to sponsor a specialty license plate with the motto “In God We Trust.”

The Louisville-based Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana claims in a lawsuit filed in Franklin Circuit Court that the Transportation Cabinet erred in 2008 when it denied its application for the license plate.

In its application, ROCK said it would use money from sales of the plate to raise awareness about harm caused by pornography and the sex industry and to help people hurt or victimized by porn, sexual predators and the sex business.

If approved, the plate would cost $34, but buyers could volunteer to add $10 that would go to ROCK.

In the cabinet’s response, attorney Allan Weiss of Louisville asked the court to dismiss the complaint because ROCK promotes religion, making the organization ineligible to sponsor a specialty license plate under state law.

Read the whole thing.

My last-word rant on freakazoid license plates from last summer is here. It's ironic but predictable that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet will go to court to prevent a religious group from sponsoring such plates, but has no problem with the state itself profiting from promoting religion.

It doesn't matter who sponsors or even who profits from the plates. What matters is the unconstitutional injection of a religious message into a basic government service that non-freakazoid citizens cannot escape.

And no, "In God We Trust" is not the "national motto." IGWT was stamped on coins as a Civil War-era sop thrown to slave owners, and hypocritically promoted by McCarthyites to intimidate freethinkers.

The national motto is E pluribus unum, "out of many, one." Put that on the license plates.

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

How Abstinence-Only Leads to Crime

OK, I get that their purity pledges didn't cover orgasms, but is there in Connecticut no porn?

A group of teenagers misunderstood a woman's screams during sex and, thinking they were stopping an assault, beat a 25-year-old man in her bedroom, police said.

As PZ writes:

Multiple tragedies here: not only was an innocent man beat up, but now everyone at school is so going to know those teenagers are like total virgins.

"We Pledge Our Lives"

Signed in Philadelphia July 2, 1776, adopted by Congress July 4, 1776.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Many Americans still felt a kinship with the people of Great Britain, and had appealed in vain to the prominent among them, as well as to Parliament, to convince the King to relax his more objectionable policies toward the colonies. The next section represents disappointment that these attempts had been unsuccessful.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Something to Remember on the Fourth of July

We interrupt your ongoing Sanford sex coverage for this public service announcement:

The American officials who, in the name of our precious Constitution, justified, approved and committed torture against human beings continue to roam free, desecrating our claim to civilization and democracy with every unprosecuted breath they take.

The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody -- at least. While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that's one reason we've always considered those tactics to be "torture" when used by others -- because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions -- that we Look to the Future, not the Past -- are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.

The record could not be clearer regarding the fact that we caused numerous detainee deaths, many of which have gone completely uninvestigated and thus unpunished. Instead, the media and political class have misleadingly caused the debate to consist of the myth that these tactics were limited and confined. As Gen. Barry McCaffrey recently put it:

We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.

Journalist and Human Rights Watch researcher John Sifton similarly documented that "approximately 100 detainees, including CIA-held detainees, have died during U.S. interrogations, and some are known to have been tortured to death."

Read the whole thing.

It's Not the Hypocrisy, It's the Sex

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: repugs don't respond to accusations of hypocrisy because the freakazoids don't consider hypocrisy a sin. In fact, there's nothing they love better than a contrite sinner. The more outrageous the sin, the more forgiveness and acceptance the sinner receives.

Paul Krugman nailed it, in a blog post perfectly titled "Sex and the Married Politician."

From their point of view the cause, the need to police what people do in bed, is, by definition, right, because it’s literally God-given. So the fact that some of those trying to police what other people do in bed are themselves doing nasty things does not reflect on the cause itself — on the contrary, it shows just how necessary more bed-snooping is.

It’s also notable that conservatives are, in practice, more forgiving of their politicians’ sins than liberals. John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer ended their political careers; Ensign and Vitter are still in the Senate, and Newt Gingrich is out there on the Sunday shows, speaking for the GOP. Why? Because where liberals see gross hypocrisy, conservatives see men doing the Lord’s work — which partially excuses their own failings. Liberals think that a man who has an affair is worse if he preaches moral values; conservatives think he’s better. You might say that as they see it, if he interferes with what enough other people do in bed, it doesn’t matter what he does himself.

Read the whole thing.

Heart of a Clown

Resident Senate Idiot James Inhofe today called Senator Al Franken (D-MN) a "clown."

Here's how that "clown" displayed grace, humility and nobility beyond the ken of subhumans like Inhofe.

Sen.-elect Al Franken (D-MN) just held a victory rally at the Minnesota state Capitol in St. Paul, celebrating his hard-fought and heavily-litigated victory that finally came true yesterday. In some of the most heartfelt terms possible, he thanked his staff, all of his supporters and volunteers, and especially his family -- and paid tribute to a departed friend, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.

"Well, it was close," he began his remarks, to the laughter of the crowd, alluding to his final certified victory margin of 312 votes out of about 2.9 million. "But we won." And the crowd applauded.

"And when you win an election by this close a margin, you know that not one bit of effort went to waste," he later added. "And so I want to thank every single person who knocked on a door, marched in a parade, made a phone call, gave money, gave time, gave energy, gave of themselves to this effort. Thank all of you, thank you, thank you, thank you."

The longer his speech went on, Franken became more emotional, clearly touched in a very deep way at the amazing victory he has won, and all the effort that other people put into it on his behalf.

"I want to thank our beautiful kids, Joe and Thomasin, who helped out so much and put up with even more during this long campaign. But most of all, most of all, I want to thank their mom," he said. "You know, this September 19th will be the 40th anniversary that Franni and I met at a freshman college mixer. We've been partners ever since, and when we decided to make this effort, I called our friends and said, 'Franni and I are running for the Senate, and if we win, I get to be the Senator.' Well honey, I get to be the Senator. (They hug, as the audience cheers.) I get to be the Senator because of you. This was a historically close race, but it wouldn't have been if it weren't for Franni. I would have lost, by kind of a lot."

Read the whole thing - Eric Kleefield, who has been covering the Minnesota Senate race like a blanket for more than eight solid months, deserves your page views.

Keep Ben Chandler on a Roll

Whether you agree with Media Czech that Ben Chandler had a change of heart on cap-and-trade, or with me that industry pork got to him, Ben voted with the good guys.

He has another chance to prove he's not a Blue Dog Bayh-partisan on the upcoming ENDA vote. Hilzoy explains.

A few days ago, Barney Frank introduced HR 2981, a new version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which bans employment discrimination against anyone on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Unlike last time, this bill includes protections for transmen and transwomen. That's the good news.

The bad news is that, according to drjillygirl at Pam's House Blend, not enough Democrats are on board to pass the bill. As of two days ago, 48 Democrats are undecided on ENDA.

Ben Chandler is one of them. Email him here.

This should not be a hard bill to pass. The idea that people should not be able to lose their jobs because they are gay or transgender should not be controversial. For some reason that I do not understand, however, it seems to be.

And it's really, really important. This might be our best shot at getting protection from employment discrimination for a lot of people who need it. It might also be our best shot at getting a bill passed that includes protection for transmen and transwomen. This really matters: my best stab at explaining why is here. Altogether too often, the burden of educating people about trans issues, and advocating for their rights, falls on trans people themselves. As I try to explain in that post, this is not fair. And now is a good time for those of us who are not trans to step up to the plate and explain to our representatives why this matters to us.

It's not 1966 anymore. There is no excuse for the fact that it is still legal to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. If your Representative is still on the fence, let him or her know how you feel.

Snowe's Trigger Fraud

How many more people have to die before Olympia Snowe stops playing trigger games?

Brian Beutler reports that the moderate Maine republican is trying to revive the idea of tying the public option in health care reform to a bad-outcome trigger.

This idea sort of came and went a few weeks ago, but some legislators just can't let it go. According to the Associated Press, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)--a potentially key moderate on the Senate Finance Committee--hasn't forsworn signing on to a health reform bill that includes a public option. But she's holding out to see it affixed to a "trigger mechanism," which would, in theory, give insurance companies a years-long window to lower costs on their own and only "trigger" the public option if they failed to do so.

"If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market ... the public option will have significant price advantages," Snowe said. But this was her argument against making the public option available as soon as the bill becomes law.

Steve Benen comments:

It's a reminder of why this policy debate has been so frustrating -- a few too many of those involved believe we must avoid positive developments.

As you've probably heard, a public option would improve the system by lowering costs, expanding access, and using competition to improve efficiency. Those who like the idea of a "trigger" argue that if we pass a reform package and private insurers can lower costs, expand access, and improve efficiency on their own, we wouldn't need a public option. It's better, they say, to wait for the system to get really awful before utilizing a public option to make things better.

The problem should be obvious: if proponents of such an idea realize that a public option would necessarily improve the overall system -- and they must, otherwise there would be no need for the trigger to kick in when things got even worse -- then why deliberately delay implementation of the part of the policy that lawmakers already realize would help?

Or, put another way, if Snowe knows a public option is a good idea, there's no reason to push it off to some arbitrary date in the future, as the system deteriorates in the interim.

Which is worse, that Snowe and the other opponents of a public option have been bought off by the private insurers, or that they are so out of touch with real life in the HMO ghetto that they truly believe American health is not bad enough?

The Things We Leave Behind

So. U.S. troops met the supposedly impossible June 30 deadline to withdraw from Iraqi cities. Out-of-Iraq-now fanatic that I am, why aren't I celebrating? Because what we've left behind is far, far worse.

Anybody remember the death squads the U.S. trained in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala? The tens of thousands of natives they massacred? The nuns they raped and murdered? The democratic governments they destroyed? The civil societies they set back decades?

Yeah, they were such a huge success the U.S. military has transplanted them to Iraq, where they're already terrorizing the population.

The light is fading from the dusty Baghdad sky as Hassan Mahsan re-enacts what happened to his family last summer ...

He walks over to his three-foot-tall daughter and grabs her head like a melon. As she stands there, he gestures wildly behind her, pretending to tie up her hands, then pretending to point a rifle at her head. "They took the blindfold off me, pointed the gun at her head and cocked it, saying, 'Either you tell us where al-Zaydawi is, or we kill your daughter.'"

SNIP

They accused him of being a commander in the local militia, the Mahdi Army, before they dragged him off, telling his wife he was "finished." But before they left, they identified themselves. "We are the Special Forces. The dirty brigade," Hassan recalls them saying.

The Iraq Special Operations Forces (ISOF) is probably the largest special forces outfit ever built by the United States, and it is free of many of the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal forces. The project started in the deserts of Jordan just after the Americans took Baghdad in April 2003. There, the US Army's Special Forces, or Green Berets, trained mostly 18-year-old Iraqis with no prior military experience. The resulting brigade was a Green Beret's dream come true: a deadly, elite, covert unit, fully fitted with American equipment, that would operate for years under US command and be unaccountable to Iraqi ministries and the normal political process.

When the US Special Forces began the slow transfer of the ISOF to Iraqi control in April 2007, they didn't put it under the command of the Defense Ministry or the Interior Ministry, bodies that normally control similar special forces the world over. Instead, the Americans pressured the Iraqi government to create a new minister-level office called the Counter-Terrorism Bureau. Established by a directive from Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, the CTB answers directly to him and commands the ISOF independently of the police and army. According to Maliki's directive, the Iraqi Parliament has no influence over the ISOF and knows little about its mission.

SNIP

Trombitas gets to the issue of human rights before I do. He assures me that US Special Forces take allegations of human rights abuses very seriously--two Iraqi men were let go for prisoner abuse since he took over in August last year, he says--but he won't comment on specific cases. I raise the issue of accountability and bring up one well-documented mission that caused waves in the Iraqi Parliament: in August the ISOF raided Diyala's provincial government compound, reportedly with the support of US Apache helicopters. They arrested a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Iraq's main Sunni Arab party. They also arrested the president of the university, also a Sunni, and killed a secretary and wounded four armed guards during the night.

I barely get the word "Diyala" out of my mouth before the American operatives standing around us start to grumble nervously and a translator jumps in. "For the reputation of the ISOF, please, let's cut that off," he says.

Read the whole thing.

Sanford-freude

You know you want it. And you know you want me to give it to you.

First, the quote, given of his own free will, on the record, out loud, to the Associated freakin' Press:

Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he's trying to fall back in love with his wife.

Yeah, nothing charms a wronged wife like announcing you're going to make the supreme sacrifice of struggling mightily to give a shit about her again.

It's the line about "never crossing the ultimate line with anyone but Chapur" that really intrigues me.

I mean, different people draw the "ultimate line" in different places. Is Sanford like abstinence-pledging teens, who keep their promise by indulging in oral sex? Or is he more like the legendary Greek girls who stay virgins until marriage by leaving the back door open? Or maybe he agress with one friend I had in college who fucked every guy on campus but claimed to be still a virgin because she'd never had an orgasm.

"Ultimate line." What a maroon.

But wait - there's more! Apparently South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Brauer gave an interview in which he denies rumors that he is gay - without anyone asking about said supposed rumors.

OK, South Carolina, which do you want for governor? A pathetic whiner who has the sexual sophistication of a 12-year-old, or a "confirmed bachelor" so insecure about his sexuality he starts rumors about it so he can deny them?

One more thing:

Under South Carolina law, adultery is a crime, punishable by a $500 fine and a year in jail. SC law enforcement says they don't have time to fool with that shit, but fercryinoutloud, the perp confessed live on national TV! Why hasn't Mark Sanford been arrested?

And no, that fucker is NOT going to resign. The arrogance, the self-centeredness, the utter disregard for his children, the inability to grasp the irresponsibility of abandoning his duties as governor - no, they're going to have to drag him out of the governor's mansion screaming and kicking.

For comprehensive Sanford coverage, especially on the actual issue here, which is malfeasance in office, bookmark The State newspaper in South Carolina.

For the low-down on the dirty-dirty, of course it's Wonkette.

Quote of the Day

Wonkette commenter saralovesyou:

Sanford is destroying the sanctity of my gay marriage.

The Obvious Answer

Sometimes the solution is so blindingly obvious it blinds everyone to it. But Media Czech sees it clearly.

Tobacco is dying (along with it's smokers).

Coal is on the way out (unless we find the magic "clean" kind).

Mountaintop removal is destroying everything in its path.

"Adventure tourism" is.... well, it's fucking stupid.

And meth is destroying every young person caught in between who doesn't escape to some other part of the state/country.

Which begs the question: is there a solution to Kentucky's rural economy that can create jobs, while not ecologically destroying itself (and everyone else)?

The simple answer, is "yes". But it involves a certain stigma, and necessitates politicians who are willing to look past that and focus on what can save rural Kentucky. And it looks like Oregon's lawmakers have what it takes. But they need some additional federal help, or it's all for not.

The answer is industrial hemp.

Read the whole thing.

Personally, I think we should get a jump on California and just legalize marijuana - the highest THC concentration we can find - but I'll settle for hemp.

Health Insurance Monopolies Strangling States

Need more proof that health insurers are cowardly monopolies that wouldn't last ten minutes against real competition? Talking Points Memo has it.

This won't come as the slightest surprise to those versed in health care policies issues. But I fear it's only barely permeated the health care reform debate in the country, certainly in Washington. And that's this: the opposition to a so-called 'public option' comes almost entirely from insurance companies who have developed monopolies or near monopolies in particular geographic areas. And they don't want competition.

Note, I'm not saying more competition. I'm saying any competition at all. As Zack Roth explains in this new piece 94% of the health care insurance market is now under monopoly or near-monopoly conditions -- the official term of art is 'highly concentrated'. In other words, there's no mystery why insurance costs keep going up even as the suck quotient rises precipitously. Because in most areas there's little or no actual competition.

It's something everyone can understand that if you have only one widget maker, widgets will get really expensive, and probably decline in quality. And the widget makers will pour lots of money into Congress or whatever the law-making power is, to keep their monopoly in place because their monopoly ensures locked in profits. It's market theory 101 (or perhaps, rent-seeking 102, depending on your perspective.)

That's basically what this is all about. Read the piece, it will ... make clear why the opposition to a public option is about preventing competition.

Read the whole thing.

See the full report, with state-by-state breakdowns, here.

Kentucky does not have the worst monopolies, but it's far from a health care capitalist paradise.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a subsidiary of WellPoint Inc., is Kentucky’s biggest health insurer, with 51 percent of the state market. Together with Humana Inc., they hold 71 percent of the market.

Local markets are even more concentrated in Kentucky. In Elizabethtown, WellPoint and
Aetna Inc. together hold 92 percent of the market.

Health insurance premiums for Kentucky working families have skyrocketed, increasing
48 percent from 2000 to 2007.

For family health coverage in Kentucky during that time, the average annual combined
premium for employers and employees rose from $7,096 to $10,466.

When a firm has more than a 42 percent share of a single market, the U.S. Justice Department considers that market to be “highly concentrated.” This means that an insurer could raise premiums and/or reduce the variety of plans or quality of
services offered to customers with impunity.

Read the full Kentucky report here.

2010 Senate Update: Lt. Col. Andrew Horne Endorses Jack Conway

As Media Czech puts it:

Let's try to see (Dan Mongiardo campaign manager) Kim Geveden call him an elite effete pussy...

Many of my friends, supporters and colleagues have asked for my opinion regarding the Democratic primary for the 2010 United States Senate seat for Jim Bunning's seat.

This is a particularly tough question because currently we have two talented, well-liked Democrats running.

I am endorsing Jack Conway for three specific reasons:

First, I believe Jack gives us the best shot of winning in 2010 especially since it is unlikely that Jim Bunning will survive his Party's nominating process. Jack will proudly fight for our progressive ideals and we all now understand Democrats cannot win by simply being safe regional candidates. More importantly, we need a new brand of political leaders if Kentucky and our country is to make its way through the challenges of this century.

Second, as someone who proudly served in combat, in Iraq, it is clear to me that we need Senators who will ask the tough question and stand up to the powerful. Jack will be that kind of Senator. He is also the kind of man who will not let us forget the sacrifice our men and women made on the battlefield when they come home injured and in need of care. Accountability has taken a back seat to expediency in Washington over the past decade. Our new President gives us hope for a new day, but it is important to remember that Presidents serve relatively short terms and we have long-term challenges before us. As Attorney General and as a lawyer, Jack has proved he is willing to fight for the people and ask the tough questions.

Third, we need a Senator who will tackle a diverse set of issues. Kentucky has many challenges and while I admire Lt. Governor Mongiardo's effort on health care it is important that our next United States Senator have a broad background and intellectual curiosity. The question is not what is known today but what are the issues we will deal with in this changing world. Jack's experience in the governor's office, as a private lawyer, and as Attorney General will be beneficial to Kentucky.

Simply said, I believe Jack Conway has the tools to become a great United States Senator and has the ability to lead our Commonwealth for years into the future.

Please join me in supporting Jack Conway by signing up to volunteer or contribute at www.jackconway.org. By showing strong support for Jack now early in the game we are laying the ground work for the tough road ahead.

Semper Fidelis,

Andrew Horne

Horne, of course, is the retired Marine Lt. Colonel and Iraq veteran who stood up to challenge Mitch McConnell for Senate last year, only to be chased out of the race by national and state DINOs in favor of four-time loser and Democratic Traitor Bruce Lunsford.

Some of those same brain-dead DINOs are trying to promote Coal Industry Shill Mongiardo for Bunning's seat, and it's just too, too sweet that Horne is endorsing Conway. Especially after Gevedon's ham-handed and ridiculous promotion of Dr. Dan as a super-macho killer of defenseless small animals.

Not that Conway has exactly gotten his campaign off to a smooth start. Page One calls out Conway's campaign for a supremely lame online ad. After noting the illegal lack of a "paid for by" line, the broken link to donate, the pathetic ad design and a shitty, slow-loading website, it admonishes:

This is a Senate campaign, not a high school council race. Let’s act like it. Hire a professional development firm that has experience handling high-traffic and high-profile sites. Come on. Mongiardo’s website is currently blowing you out of the water.

We expect all candidates to take campaign finance law seriously. We also have the expectation, as does the general public, that you know what you’re doing. While this lack of a disclaimer is nothing compared to Mongiardo’s dozens of mistakes, there’s still no excuse for it.

UPDATE: Conway camp tells us the ad has been pulled. Good news for those of you who want candidates to adhere to campaign finance law. Apparently the ad did not have the approval of campaign officials before it went live.

Conway's gonna beat Mongiardo in May's Democratic primary, but it won't be the blowout it should be if Conway's campaign keeps taking its lead for granted.

How Bipartisanship Will Kill Health Care Reform

The recent defection by eight House republicans on cap-and-trade notwithstanding, trying to get repug votes for anything this administration wants is still a mug's game.

The repugs play the dems on every bill. They did it to the stimulus, and they're doing it to energy policy and financial regulation. They demand substantial changes as the price of their support, then when the bill is watered down to utter impotence, they vote against it anyway.

This is the final, completely exposed stage of the game repugs have been playing for 30 years. They have no interest - none - in governing. Their goal while in the majority and/or holding the White House is to undo the New Deal, destroy the middle class and further enrich the corporate elite and obscenely wealthy. Their goal - their ONLY goal - while in the majority is to stop the Democratic majority/president from governing, and destroy its reputation with the public.

There is, in fact, no such thing as a republican party in terms of constitutional government. We have one political party capable of governing - the Democratic Party - and one insane adolescent bent on destroying everything if it can't get its way.

But on health care reform, playing that repug game will be catastrophic.

Democrats are willing to weaken their own bill in the hopes of winning support from a discredited minority that not only has an interest in seeing the reform effort fail, but which is almost certain to vote against the final bill, no matter what's in it.

This isn't an effective way to negotiate -- or to govern.

Indeed, most of the focus over the last couple of weeks has been about the public option, and the fact that Republicans consider it a deal-breaker. It is, we've been told, the one line the GOP minority cannot cross. But looking at the big picture, Republicans haven't said, "We can support the rest of the reform agenda, outside of a public plan." In fact, Republicans haven't actually endorsed anything in the reform agenda at all.

SNIP

But thus far, for all the whining about the public plan, I'm not seeing the evidence that they're actually willing to embrace the rest of the health reform agenda, either. In which case, you may as well go forward with a robust public plan.

Late last week, Josh Marshall posted evidence that at least one Senate Blue Dog appears to get it:

On Thursday, (Sen. Rockefeller (D-WV)) admitted he expects little bipartisan support.

"There is a very small chance any Republicans will vote for this health-care plan. They were against Medicare and Medicaid [created in the 1960s]. They voted against children's health insurance.

"We have a moral choice. This is a classic case of the good guys versus the bad guys. I know it is not political for me to say that," Rockefeller added.

"But do you want to be non-partisan and get nothing? Or do you want to be partisan and end up with a good health- care plan? That is the choice."

Jay Rockefeller, of course, is the Senate DINO who hid and protected the Smirky/Darth administration criminals who tortured innocent detainees and the traitors who wiretapped innocent American citizens. My guess is he'll cave at Mitch McConnell's slightest frown.

Meanwhile, you know the public option is gaining support in Congress and the insurance corporations are running scared when Fake News attacks the most effective, popular and inexpensive single-payer health care system in the country: VA.

Anonymous Liberal gets the last word:

So the goal here should not be bipartisanship. The goal should be come up with the policy that is most likely to be effective and then browbeat every last Democrat in the Senate until they're on board. I don't say that about every issue, but on this one, there is no other sensible option.

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

Respect My Magical Invisible Monkeys

The science-religion accomodationists are at it again, insisting that the reality-based community respect fact-free beliefs in the tooth fairy, astrology and invisible sky wizards.

And they're using the strawman tactic so beloved of wingnut repugs: make up false accusations that are easy to knock down instead of addressing real issues.

The indefatigable PZ Myers exposes the dangerous illogic of appeaser John Wilkins:

It's an asymmetrical situation that will be maintained as long as we have people insisting that we grant religious ideas a specially protected status. I reject that — I'm going to insist that it is fair game to attack the obvious failings of religion. And it's not because I am unaware of the limitations of my knowledge, or because I believe I'm flawlessly rational.

It's because the invisible monkeys in my pants dart out every once in a while to whisper the truth in my ear, in the ancient language of omniscient primates. And that is a source of knowledge nobody can attack me on, by Wilkins' rules.

Read the whole thing.

Yet Another Herald Expose of Local Corruption

BlueGrass Airport. Kentucky League of Cities. And now KACo:

When the Kentucky Association of Counties sent six people to Washington, D.C., in March 2008 to attend a conference and lobby officials, the $31,700 trip included two dinners totaling $4,277 and a $10,000 cancellation fee for hotel rooms that weren't used.

That trip was one of the most expensive among dozens of jaunts taken by leaders of KACo, a non-profit group that lobbies for counties and provides them with insurance and financing services.

In all, the association's top five executives racked up nearly $600,000 in travel, entertainment and other expenses over the last two years. More than half was charged on the credit card of Executive Director Bob Arnold.

Read the whole thing.

It's too ironic that just when the U.S. newspaper industry is fading into an online-only shadow of its former self, Kentucky's best newspaper is regularly printing the kinds of stories that could have saved the business 20 years ago.

Coal Industry Pork Buys Chandler's Vote on Cap-and-Trade

Wonder why DINO extraordinaire and Blue Dog in good standing Ben Chandler voted for the "liberal" (EEEEEK!) Waxman-Markey climate change bill?

Maybe Media Czech's plea for voters to call Ben and demand he vote for the bill did the trick.

Maybe the Ghost of Climate Catastrophe Future visited Ben overnight.

Or maybe he voted yea because the coal-state Blue Dogs got billions in subsidies for mythical "clean coal" technology added to the bill.

Cap-and-trade was supposed to allow Congress to avoid picking winners and losers in the fight against climate change. Advocates claim that approach, which relies on the market to figure out the easiest way to reduce greenhouse emissions, is at the heart of the Waxman-Markey energy bill that the House is preparing to vote on Friday. But, among many, many other things, the 1,200-page bill would also devote $60 billion to making sure clean coal isn't a loser.

Given America's huge reliance on coal to produce electricity — and the breakneck deployment of dirty coal plants in China — proponents make a strong case that coal deserves special attention. The bill's cap-and-trade system won't produce a carbon price high enough to spur deployment of clean-coal technology for a very long time, they say. If clean-coal technology can be made more cost-effective, meanwhile, the know-how could be exported abroad. And, some admit, coal-state lawmakers wouldn't be comfortable with a cap-and-trade bill that didn't include a lot for coal.

Since cost-effective, large-scale clean-coal technology is still untested, the first thing the bill would do is allow a quasi-public corporation to tax electricity distributors $10 billion over 10 years to fund "demonstration projects." We can see the appeal of supporting basic research on how to make the black stuff greener, especially if it includes research on retrofitting plants.

But then comes the big-ticket stuff. The bill essentially guarantees that carbon capture and sequestration will play a large role in America's energy mix, at first by offering coal plants that capture and sequester most of their emissions 10 years of compensation that is many times the market value of the carbon emissions they avoid — on top of the savings they would accrue by not polluting under the cap-and-trade regime. After phase one, the Environmental Protection Agency would take more control. At that point, a complicated regulatory framework would aim to reduce the subsidy for new facilities so that it covered only capital and operating costs of carbon capture and storage for 10 years.

The editorial, published in the pathetic-rag-stupid-enough-to-fire-Dan-Froomkin, bases its criticism on an assumption that clean coal is a difficult and expensive, but nonetheless possible technology.

It's not. Clean coal is a myth. It doesn't exist, never has existed, never will exist. We'll see Mitch McConnell marry Barney Frank first.

These billions in "clean coal" subsidies are nothing but a monster give-away to the filthy, destructive, lethal industry that this blog will henceforth refer to as the magic buggy whip industry.