TW3 ... and the toe-holds

[Political Waves]

That Was The Week That Was ... laced with controversy; and the Review prompted a bit in my own mind as it juxtaposed Human/Elf sex with Anderson Cooper. Hmmmmm. In fact, elves took it on the chin in this weeks report. Me, I like elves ... and Santa ... and all things merry and bright, as detailed in my weekly piece, here.

With the latest polls showing 59% of the nation dedicated to the Public Option, it appears to have been watered down to the point of tepid, now -- and I'm reminded, once again, how difficult it is to fight immorality ... even when the results are leering in your face, biting your butt and picking your pocket.
 

At the moment, Big Pharma ... the Boss Hog of the medical conversation ... has shut down the debate. And while all that's going on, a Finance Reform bill was passed that begins to address the inequities. Movement of some kind is welcome after the Summer of our Discombobulation.

The best of what's going on in DC and the rest of the world, I think, is that we're staring all this down. Even the densest of us aren't settled quietly in their dopey stupor any more, although they may not be able to put it all together as yet, given the Powers that are trying to load, point and shoot them like a loaded gun. I'm issuing kudos to Jon Stewart for calling bullshit on FOX, yet again ... and so clearly that even the dumbbells have to notice. It was a LOL and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

Back to healthcare, we're closing in on Something. It's better than Nothing. I know that sucks, but it's what we've got.

I'm taking the long view, as usual, and if you think about how long its taken to get this far --TEDDY ROOSEVELT, for gawd's sake, gas lamps and ghetto streets slick with human and animal waste, human life cheaper than whatever China now produces for us -- you can get the historic sense of this accomplishment, weakened as it is. Take a moment to watch this exchange between Howard Dean and Rachel Maddow.

Dean's on the money. This is a start, a chink in the armor of the old paradigm's power to control our life/death -- a chink is all we need to start kicking over the dominoes toward a new human contract. Remember, this potent period of time is not business-as-usual ... it's precedent-setting; and the precedent will inform the energies gathering to sweep us into the Shifting energies. Be sure to add your name to the MoveOn piece circulating now, from Robert Reich -- flood the White House with your demands. Get them on record as the Will Of The People.

The bonus material includes a couple of reads on our petrie dish of moment ... and an excellent bash of Joe Lieberman by William Rivers Pitt -- no meanness, just a review of his record ... something no Republican wants in print, and which Joe would rather have sidestepped as well, I expect. I don't think it's possible for Joe to remain unaware of his fading glory -- late at night it must cross his convoluted old mind that his time is up, his goose is cooked, his day is done. And if it doesn't, I suggest we see to it that he learns.

Have a good weekend. Celebrate the chinks ... the toe-holds ... the progress .. and the moment. Keep the Vision and the faith.

Jude


Harper's Weekly Review
December 8, 2009

President Barack Obama, after a meal of Chesapeake striped
bass and mango sorbet, visited West Point and announced
his plan to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to
Afghanistan in order to "deny Al Qaeda a safe haven,"
"reverse the Taliban's momentum," and "strengthen the
capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government";
and then, after eighteen months (more than a year before
the 2012 election), to start withdrawing
troops. Republicans in Congress worried that the
announcement of a withdrawal date would allow the Taliban
and Al Qaeda to plan for the American military's
departure, while Democrats questioned whether a
significant drawdown in U.S. forces would actually
occur. "Can any of you tell me, after July 2011, that we
won't have tens of thousands of troops years beyond that
date?" asked Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New
Jersey. "We will have 100,000 forces, troops there,"
Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained later in the
week. "And they are not leaving in July of 2011. Some
handful, or some small number, or whatever the conditions
permit, will begin to withdraw at that time."
Representative Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona,
suggested that the combined escalation and exit strategy
was engineered to please critics. "There's an old adage
that a camel is a horse designed by committee," Flake
said. "This looks to be a policy designed by committee, a
little something for everyone." Hillary Clinton pointed
out that camels are sturdy, ancient, and, though plodding,
will get you where you need to go.

The New York State Senate voted 38-24 to reject a bill
that would have legalized same-sex marriage. "Certainly
this is an emotional issue and an important issue for many
New Yorkers," Republican Tom Libous said. "I just don't
think the majority care too much about it." Uganda
prepared to pass a bill that would make life imprisonment
the minimum sentence for gay sex. Under the proposed law,
which gained support after prominent U.S. Christian
evangelists held an anti-gay seminar in Kampala, repeat
offenders can be sentenced to death and civilians who
witness homosexual acts and fail to report them can be
jailed for three years. "We believe there are limits to
human rights," said James Nsaba Buturo, state minister for
ethics and integrity. "We are talking about anal sex. Not
even animals do that." Conservative commentators
criticized a videogame that contains gay human/elf sex,
and "Anderson Cooper 360"'s ratings had dropped more than
60 percent from a year ago. The Israel Defense Forces
created a unit to promote Israeli military objectives
through Twitter, and New York gangs were planning attacks
on one another via tweets. "I knoe bitches from oyg [the
Original Young Gangsters] that would dead mob ya shit in
Harlem," read one tweeted threat. Global Language Monitor
pronounced "Twitter" the top word of 2009, and
psychologists determined that social networking profiles
capture people's true personalities. "Social networking
profiles convey rather accurate images of the profile
owners," a researcher said, "either because people aren't
trying to look good or because they are trying and failing
to pull it off."

President Obama invited labor leaders, corporate
executives, and high-profile economists to the White House
for a jobs summit to address the high unemployment
rate. He warned that the government wouldn't pursue
another large stimulus plan. "Frankly," he explained, "we
just don't have the money." Instead, he touted a $23
billion "cash for caulkers" program that would provide
cash rebates for weatherization projects that reduce
energy consumption. Unemployment dropped from 10.2 to 10
percent, with only 11,000 Americans losing their jobs last
month. "This is good news just in time for the season of
hope," said Obama. Austrian anti-Santa Claus activists
revived their nine-year campaign to replace Santa with a
blond-haired, blue-eyed Christ-child; Jesus Christ was
dismissed from jury duty in Alabama for being disruptive;
and Maryland police tasered, shot, and killed Jesus, a
rottweiler/pit-bull mix who attacked his owner. A Georgia
man dressed as an elf was arrested for threatening a mall
Santa with dynamite, and an Ohio man was arrested for
snatching a kettle full of cash from a Salvation Army
volunteer. "I can't stand you and your bell-ringing," he
told her. "I hate Christmas."

-- Rafe Bartholomew
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/12/WeeklyReview2009-12-08

bonus

 

On Healthcare: Hold Your Noses and Celebrate Anyway
MOTHER JONES
December 11, 2009
http://mail.google.com/mail/?tab=nm#inbox/1257d6abeafedec7

Democrats have been trying to pass a universal healthcare plan for nearly a century. But Woodrow Wilson dropped the ball on the first attempt, FDR gave up on the second, Harry Truman ran smack into the AMA on the third, Richard Nixon collided with Teddy Kennedy on the fourth, and Bill Clinton fell to Harry and Louise (and Bob and Newt) on the fifth.
 
Now we're on our sixth try, and the fight so far hasn't been a pretty one. The Republican side has been dominated by howling over death panels and socialism, transparently fake attempts at bipartisanship, and promises to filibuster and obstruct endlessly. On the Democratic side, activists have turned abortion funding and the public option into hills to die for, Olympia Snowe and Ben Nelson have become de factor kingmakers, and even at best none of the bills on offer will cover more than about two-thirds of the uninsured.
 
But you know what? This is still the farthest we've ever gotten, and with Democrats coming out of this week's series of negotiating sessions seemingly united behind a compromise plan, it looks like Harry Reid might actually get something passed through the Senate before Christmas. If that happens, a conference committee will likely report out a final bill sometime in January. And that will be the first time ever that Congress has even gotten to the point of voting on national healthcare.
 
The first time. So yes: It's not single-payer. The subsidies are inadequate. The public option, if there is one, will be so weak as to be a joke. Every interest group from insurers to doctors to seniors to pharmaceutical companies has been openly bribed to go along. Lots of people will still be left outside the safety net. It's a mess.
 
But so was Social Security when it passed. It left out domestic workers (because they were mostly black and Southerners demanded it), it left out farmworkers, and its payouts were pathetically small. But what it did do was establish the principle that the elderly should be taken care of. And eventually they were. The healthcare bill we're about to get is exactly the same: It does too little and it leaves too many people out, but it establishes the principle that everyone deserves decent healthcare. And eventually everyone will.
 
So hold your noses and celebrate anyway. It's taken us a hundred years, but if this messy, inadequate, infuriating healthcare reform passes it will be a historic occasion. FDR will finally be smiling. ++


Why on healthcare Republicans should just shut up
Marc Rubin, Los Angeles Examiner
December 11, 2009
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-6572-NY-Obama-Administration-Examiner~y2009m12d11-Why-Republicans-should-just-shut-up-on-health-care

"It would be our hope that our more moderate Democratic colleagues would respect the wishes of their constituents rather than do the bidding of Harry Reid," Republican Senator Jon Kyl told reporters.

 

The wishes of their constituents, the constituents of all 60 senators in the Democratic caucus, in case Kyl hasn't  noticed, has been that the Republicans, after wrecking the country for eight years with ineptitude, incompetence, and dishonesty, would shut up. And the wishes of their constituents hasn't changed.

Republicans have been a disaster for this country since 1993 when every Republican voted against Bill Clinton's budget saying it would explode the deficit, drive up unemployment and send the country into a recession.

What it actually did was eliminate the deficit, create the lowest unemployment in 40 years, resulted in a balanced budget and the greatest economic expansion in American history. It also resulted in a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus. But that didn't stop the Republicans. They were hellbent on trying to destroy the Clinton presidency as evidenced by both the wasteful Whitewater investigations which wasted $60 million of tax payer money,  and their impeachment of Clinton without any impeachable offenses (at least nothing that Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Robert Livingston, DanBurton and a slew of other Republicans were also caught doing.) When Bush and the Republicans came to power, they vowed to reverse all of Clinton's policies. Karl Rove bragged to Time Magazine that the Bush Administration would be "ABC -- Anything But Clinton". And they did just that. And in the process they reversed all of Clinton's results.

They blew that $ 5 1/2 trillion surplus in three years, destroyed the balanced budget, exploded the deficit, saw Bush as the first President since Hoover to lose jobs in his first three years in office and laid the ground work for the worst economic crisis since the Depression. And that was the best of it. The worst was 9/11, allowed to happen because Bush and the Republicans didn't think Al-Qeada was a real threat and so ignored 8 months of warnings that we were going to be hit and in fact dismantled elements in the government that would have, without a doubt, prevented 9/11. The fact that Bush, Rice and Cheney were guilty of the worst case of gross negligence, incompetence, ineptitude and reckless irresponsiblity related to the national security of the United States in American history is something for which to this day they havent been held accountable.

Only the most mindless or ideological of conservatives and Republicans, similar to what we saw at the town hall meetings on health care, the ignorant, the uniformed,  the, "keep your government hands off my Medicare" conservatives,could possibly want to hear a word the Republicans have to say about anything.

They had their chance, they blew it. The Bush Administration was accountable for 3000 killed on 911 because Bush and the Republicans didn't think terrorism was a threat and ignored 8 months of warnings and did more damage to the United States in 8 years than the Soviet Union was able to do in 50.And everything went south from there.

Nothing they have to say about health care matters. Nothing they have to say with their predictions of what this or that will lead to matters. If they knew anything, if they had any foresight, if they had any ability at all to look at a situation and predict its correct outcome, nothing that happened from 9/11 onward ever would have happened. No 9/11, no Iraq, no blowing the balanced budget, no record deficits, no 5 days to get help to New Orleans after Katrina, and no economic crisis. The fact is, the Republicans have been proved wrong about every major issue confronting the United States since at least 1993.

Until and unless the Democrats screw up as badly as the Republicans ( and I'm not saying they won't), they should show some humility, admit that performance matters,  and just shut up until they actually prove they have been right about something.

Then they can say "I told you so" and people might listen. ++


Little Joe
William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t
Tuesday 03 November 2009
http://www.truthout.org/1103098

Senator Joe Lieberman managed to shoehorn himself into the center of the national debate over health care reform last week with his announcement that he would filibuster any health care legislation that contained any kind of a so-called "public option." Lieberman, the erstwhile Democrat turned Independent from Connecticut, went on "Face the Nation" on Sunday to reassert his opposition in no uncertain terms. "I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement," said the senator. "The government going into the health insurance business - I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote." He went on to say that, in his opinion, it is the people pushing for a public option who are standing in the way of progress on reform.

Not content merely to potentially derail an important Democratic piece of legislation the Democratic president has made a central priority, Lieberman went on to announce that he will happily campaign for Republican candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. "There's a hard core of partisan, passionate, hardcore Republicans," said Lieberman in a report by ABC News. "There's a hard core of partisan Democrats on the other side. And in between is the larger group, which is people who really want to see the right thing done, or want something good done for this country and them - and that means, sometimes, the better choice is somebody who's not a Democrat."

Why this man is tolerated by the Democratic caucus in the Senate is an enduring mystery, frankly, and not just because Lieberman is a publicity-hogging fraud, although that is most definitely the case. All he lacks is a big red nose, big red floppy shoes and big red tufts of hair sticking up from his head to complete his image as a clown, but anyone familiar with his record over the last several years doesn't need the props to complete the picture. He made Dick Cheney look like Socrates in the 2000 vice presidential debate. He ran one of the most ridiculous presidential campaigns in modern political history in 2004, failing to win a single primary and eventually finishing seventh behind Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Kucinich, Clark and the Reverend Al Sharpton. He lost his own state in 2006 and bailed on the Democrats, managing to win back his seat only by sucking up huge sums of GOP campaign donations, which he paid back by campaigning for Republican Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election and by bashing the Democrats while speaking at the 2008 GOP convention.

The serial list of failures Lieberman has to his name is by no means limited to the campaign trail. During his time in the Senate, he was an active opponent of the kind of financial regulation that would have spared our economy from having to deal with the Enron and Arthur Andersen meltdowns, as well as the calamity we are currently mired in. William Grieder, writing for The Nation in March of 2002, described Lieberman's foul impact in an article titled "Enron Democrats":

His most important crusade was protecting the loopy accounting for corporate stock options. Nervous regulators recognized early on that the profusion of stock options had the potential to deceive investors while cheating the tax system - illusions that could drive company stock prices to impossible heights. Tech startup firms, as well as established names like Microsoft, were issuing a growing volume of stock options as a substitute for wage compensation, especially for top executives. These companies did not have to report the billions in new options as an operating cost, thus making their earnings seem much greater than they were. Yet, when employees eventually cashed in the options, the companies claimed them as tax deductions. This two-way mirror is symptomatic of the deceptive bookkeeping that permeated corporate affairs during the boom and the bubble.

Back in 1993, when the Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed to stop it, Lieberman went to war. "I believe that the global pre-eminence of America's vital technological industries could be damaged by the proposal," he warned. The FASB, he insinuated, was politically motivated or simply didn't grasp the bright promise of the New Economy. Lieberman organized a series of letters warning the accountants' board to stop its meddling. In the Senate, he mobilized a resolution urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to squelch the reform. It passed 88 to 9. The regulators backed off - and stock prices soared on the inflated earnings reports. Whenever FASB tried to reopen the issue, Lieberman jumped them again. He was well rewarded by Silicon Valley and auditing firms. He is the New Democrats' favorite candidate for 2004.

Lieberman's victory was extraordinarily costly for the economy, not to mention duped investors, unhinging valuations and fostering the overinvestments that now hang over the tech industry. Accounting professor Itzhak Sharav of the Columbia University Business School describes Lieberman's intervention as the first step on "the slippery slope that got us mired in the Enron swamp." Once auditors and corporate managers saw regulators defanged on stock options, Sharav explained, they were emboldened to explore further in the realm of gimmicky profit reports. "How much is two plus two? How much do you want it to be?" Sharav said. "Once you start playing games with the numbers, there's no limit to what you might do." Senators Carl Levin and John McCain have proposed a nifty solution - companies can no longer have it both ways. If they don't account for their stock options as a cost in earnings reports, then they cannot claim them later as tax deductions. Lieberman is opposed - still on the slippery slope.

The mess he helped create on the economic front is only the tip of the iceberg. He supported the Bush administration's call for offshore oil drilling despite the damage such a program would do to the environment and tourism. He opposed lifting the ruinous Bush administration tax cuts. He supports the privatization of Social Security. He voted to confirm, and later publicly praised, former Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He defended Pastor John Hagee, who called Catholicism "The Great Whore" and said Hitler was a Hunter sent by God to get the Jews to Israel, and later compared Hagee to Moses when he spoke at Hagee's Washington-Israel summit last July. He sponsored the Senate version of the Iraq War Resolution, and supported that catastrophic conflict all the way down the line.

The list goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Enough of this clown. He should be stripped of his Senate chairmanship and sent across the aisle to his boon companions on the right. He should be ignored out of hand on the matter of health care reform, and anything else he decides to address. He has raised being wrong, craven, untrustworthy and useless to the level of high art. Anyone with a full understanding of his record and reputation would know better than to trust him with a job as a crossing guard, and never mind as any kind of a leader on issues of major national and international import. The man is a living, breathing train wreck, and he has no business whatsoever being allowed in the same postal code as the decisions to come that will shape our lives.

For now, he must be endured, because his term is not up until 2012. But he should not be allowed to keep the gift of his chairmanship, he should not be empowered in any way, and when the time comes, the Democratic Party should call down the thunder on any re-election campaign he might endeavor to undertake. Marginalizing Lieberman, and eventually getting rid of him, would be addition by subtraction, and the time to do that particular bit of math is long, long past due. ++

"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."

~ Barack Obama

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