HCR Debate, the screenplay

Some truth in comedy, from Nicole Belle:

Democrats: "We need health care reform"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Give us a majority and we'll do it better"
Democrats: "Done, you have majority of both houses"

12 years later, health care is irrefutably worse in every respect for every single person in the United States

Democrats: "We need health care reform"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Americans are tired of partisan politics!"
Democrats: "OK, let's compromise"
Republicans: "OK, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done"
Republicans: "Too liberal, get rid of half your ideas"
Democrats: "Done. Time to end debate"
Republicans: "Too liberal, we need more debate, we will filibuster to prevent you from voting"
Democrats: "OK, we'll vote--sorry guys, debate is ended. It's time to vote on the bill"
Republicans: "Too liberal, we vote no"
Democrats: "OK, it passed anyway--sorry guys."

One month later

Republicans: "Wait--wait, OK, we have less of a minority now so we can filibuster forever."
Democrats: "Sorry, the bill already passed, we need it to pass the House now"
Republicans: "But we have enough to filibuster"
Democrats: "Sorry, the bill already passed, we need it to pass the House now"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You haven't listened to our ideas! You've shut us out of this whole process!"
Democrats: "Sorry, show us your proposal"
Republicans: "Smaller government"
Democrats: "That's not very specific"
Republicans: "OK, here's our detailed proposal--It's our common-sense ideas we spent 12 years not enacting"
Democrats: "OK, we'll add a bunch more of your ideas"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You included all these back-room deals"
Democrats: "OK, we'll get rid of the back-room deals"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You're using obscure procedural tricks to eliminate the back-room deals!"
Democrats: "No, we're using reconciliation, which both parties have used dozens of times for much larger bills"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! You're pressuring Congressmen to vote for your bill! Scandal!"
Democrats: "It's called 'whipping', it's been done since 1789"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Can't you see the American people don't want this?"
Democrats: "This bill is mildly unpopular (40-50%), doing nothing (your proposal) is extraordinarily unpopular (4-6%)"
Republicans: "We need to start over! We need to start over!"
Democrats: "We should really consider voting--"
Republicans: "Liberal fascists! Start over! Clean slate! Common-sense! America!"

Is it really about Health Care?

Frank Rich's opinion piece in today's NYT is a wonderful collection of the GOP Hysteria over the Health Care bill and a frightening comparison to the similar freakouts after passage of the New Deal, Medicare and Civil Rights laws.

To be sure, this bill nothing even remotely close to the budget atrocity the Palins and Boehners want to make it out to be, costing roughly $94B per year for the first ten years, revenue generation and other savings excluded.  In the grand scheme of the $1.3T deficit Bush handed to Obama by the end of 2009, it's a drop in the bucket.  But this isn't really about "government takeover" or "power grabbing" the way the RNC/FNC puppets want you to believe it is, but rather a frantic collective clawing at the floor while being dragged out of power.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

Frum, ctd.

Bartlett with a rather telling anecdote re: the Frum firing. 

I don't know all the details, but I presume that his Waterloo post on Sunday condemning Republicans for failing to work with Democrats on healthcare reform was the final straw.

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

It saddened me to hear this. I have always hoped that my experience was unique. But now I see that I was just the first to suffer from a closing of the conservative mind. Rigid conformity is being enforced, no dissent is allowed, and the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia if it hasn't already.

Purity tests at their ugliest...  

(via Sullivan)

Frum - One sensible voice on the right, ctd.

To the shock of, well, pretty much nobody, David Frum was pushed out of his post at the AEI on Wednesday.   Remember kids, if you come to the Republican table with sensible and realistic ideas and can see your party for exactly what they are, you can expect to be berated by the talking heads, the WSJ and ultimately shown the door. 

Three days after calling health-care reform a debacle for the Republicans, David Frum was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday.

The ouster also came one day after a harsh Wall Street Journal editorial about the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, which said that he "now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans" and accused him of "peddling bad revisionist history."

Frum made clear in a letter to AEI President Arthur Brooks that his departure after seven years at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. "I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute," he wrote, "and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship." AEI did not comment immediately.

In a brief interview, Frum said "there was no suggestion by AEI" that his sharp criticism of the GOP's health-care strategy was the reason for his dismissal. He declined to say what Brooks had told him.
"They invited me to remain associated with AEI on a non-salaried basis," Frum said, and he declined.

No, It's really just rhetoric...

Urging your movement to violently mobilize against our elected leaders, that is.   Sarah Palin seems to have no problem doing so.   John McCain seems to have trouble... with condemning such behavior.   Has this whole world gone crazy?!   Yes it has, says Ezra Klein: 

I don't want to exaggerate the importance of the death threats being made against congressmen who voted for health-care reform. Nuts are nuts. But there is a danger to the sort of rhetoric the GOP has used over the past few months. When Rep. Devin Nunes begs his colleagues to say "no to socialism, no to totalitarianism and no to this bill"; when Glenn Beck says the bill "is the end of America as you know it"; when Sarah Palin says the bill has "death panels" -- that stuff matters.

And the stuff on talk radio, of course, was worse. So take the universe of people who really respect right-wing politicians and listen to right-wing media. Most of them will hear this stuff and turn against the bill. Some will hear this stuff and really be afraid of the bill. And then a small group will hear this stuff and believe it and wonder whether they need to do something more significant to stop this bill from becoming law. And then a couple will actually follow through. And one will cut the gas lines leading to house of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother after seeing a tea partyer post the address online.

(via Sullivan)

Getting warmer...

Via Slate: 

1.  Pope Implicated in Sex Abuse Scandal

The Catholic Church is in the middle of another sex abuse scandal, and this one keeps inching closer and closer to Pope Benedict XVI. As more lawsuits are filed, more documents that have been hidden from public view for years are making their way into the courts. It was revealed on Wednesday that when the pope was still known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he "failed to defrock an American priest who molested hundreds of deaf boys, despite receiving letters from a number of American bishops pleading with him to act on the matter," the Times reported. "Internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Ratzinger, warning him and other top Vatican officials that failure to act could embarrass the church, have been unearthed as part of a lawsuit." The Rev. Lawrence Murphy worked at St. John's School for the Deaf in Wisconsin from 1950 to 1974, during which time he molested up to 200 boys. (A social worker who evaluated the priest many years later said the reverend admitted to the molestations and exhibited no remorse.) Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican's secretary of state, was Ratzinger's second-in-command in the mid-'90s when U.S. bishops wrote about the situation surrounding Murphy. Bertone told the bishops to begin a canonical trial that would result in Murphy's defrocking if he was found guilty, but Ratzinger called it off after receiving a letter directly from Murphy. " 'I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,' Father Murphy wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, according to the Times. "'I ask your kind assistance in this matter.'" Instead of disciplining Father Murphy, the church moved him from the region but allowed him to continue working in schools and a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.

Frum - One Sensible Voice on the Right

David Frum follows up on his Waterloo column from yesterday and adds some credible ideas for the GOP going forward:

• Shifting the tax on high-end earners to another source of revenue; ie. carbon tax 
• Stop defending Employer-based care and embrace individual choice 
• Reduce regulation on the exchanges to promote more flexibility for the insurers to create affordable plans
• Move to end the small-business fines for payrolls of  > $500K, to promote competition among employers

These things, he says, are better alternatives to campaigning solely on the repeal of the measure as a whole.   He then goes on - brilliantly, I might add - to reprimand the conservative establishment for the vitriol and anger that has warped and negated any rational debate and discourse for the last 14 months: 

That platform is ambitious enough -- but also workable, enactable and likely to appeal to voters. After 18 months of overheated rhetoric, it's time at last for Republicans to get real.
I've been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes, it mobilizes supporters -- but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.
Now the overheated talk is about to get worse. Over the past 48 hours, I've heard conservatives compare the House bill to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 -- a decisive step on the path to the Civil War. Conservatives have whipped themselves into spasms of outrage and despair that block all strategic thinking.

Maybe there's hope after all.  

Hitchens on the pedophile protecting pope

Hitch demands the Wall of Silence be torn down:

Almost every week, I go and debate with spokesmen of religious faith. Invariably and without exception, they inform me that without a belief in supernatural authority I would have no basis for my morality. Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked. Yet let the subject be the rape and torture of defenseless children, and at once every kind of wiggle room and excuse-making is invoked. What can one say of a church that finds so much latitude for a crime so ghastly that no morally normal person can even think of it without shuddering?

 And then onto the question of what to do with the man who's been harboring these criminals...

The supreme leader of the Roman Catholic Church is now a prima facie suspect in a criminal enterprise of the most appalling sort—and in the attempt to obstruct justice that has been part and parcel of that enterprise. He is also the political head of a state—the Vatican—that has given asylum to wanted men like the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. What, then, is the position when the pope decides to travel—as, for example, he intends to do on a visit to Britain later this year? Does he have immunity? Does he claim it? Should he have it? These questions demand serious answers. Meanwhile, we should register the fact that the church can find ample room in its confessionals and its palaces for those who commit the most evil offense of all. Whether prosecuted or not, they stand condemned. But prosecution must follow, or else we admit that there are men and institutions that are above and beyond our laws.

Finally!

A great day for anyone who honestly cares about fixing a broken system that consumes 1/6th of our nation's GDP - honestly being the key term, of course.  A quick glance of the left and right of today's blogosphere highlights that ever-deepening chasm between the two sides, what with their reactions to the Health Care reform bill.   Most interesting is what each side is taking away from the fight and what it says about their true interests. 

Democrats celebrate a victory for the 32M people who will be insured by the plan, the protections for those with pre-existing conditions, and a meaningful first step towards controlling the costs of a system that is clearly unsustainable. 

Republicans are knocking the process and celebrating - prematurely, to be sure - the perceived political fallout of their counterparts. 

Sensing a pattern here?  One side acted on what was and is right; their careers and partisan control be damned.   The other?  Pretty much the exact opposite.  To the right at large, it's not about doing what's right and fixing what's broken, but rather demagoguery and doing whatever it takes to pander to the widest voting bloc in order to regain power by any means possible.  

How's that for honesty?    I imagine this will backfire horribly on the right, as there's a lot of time between now and November and their only hope is that improvements in other areas of the country are overshadowed by their own ugly rhetoric and vile name-calling and propaganda.   

Bartlett on Tom Scully's Op-Ed

Whenever discussing the "tremendous cost" of the Health Care bill, if you dare mention the $1 trillion unfunded Medicare Part D program to a Republican, they respond by putting fingers in both ears and start screaming la-la-la-la-la-la-la over you.  

Bruce Bartlett explains:

This morning's paper carries an op-ed criticizing health care reform primarily on the grounds that it will cost too much. It urges that the plan be sharply scaled back so that it will get bipartisan support.

If this op-ed were written by a Republican member of Congress it would be unremarkable; not even worth publishing. But this particular op-ed was authored by someone who appears to have meaningful expertise on the subject. The writer, Tom Scully, is identified as the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a White House official during the George H.W. Bush administration.

Given this resume, one might think that Scully was a career health professional, an expert that those on both sides of an issue might look to for counsel and guidance. In fact, Scully is a rank Republican political hack who was responsible for one of the most reprehensible episodes in recent American political history. It was Scully who helped ram through Congress the totally unfunded Medicare Part D program that will cost taxpayers roughly $1 trillion over the next decade--that's $1 trillion more than Obama's plan, which is fully paid for according to the Congressional Budget Office.

 Worth the read.   Included within, he also reposts his November '09 detailing of Scully's hypocrisy with a great lead-in:

Rather than go through the whole sorry story again, I am reprinting below my Forbes column from last year in which I discussed Scully's duplicitous behavior. Included are hyperlinks documenting his culpability for saddling taxpayers with trillions of dollars of debt just so his party could buy the votes of seniors and win the 2004 election.

The GOP's Worst Nightmare Coming True

Oh this is just too good to not post.   I practically have wood over here.   Here's a great string of posts by Sullivan and others on the CBO report and other Health Care Reform related items. 

The first being a grid that shows pretty clearly how silly the right's grandstanding of Obama's inexperience has been (i/r/t pundits/blowhards citing how disjointed his own party was around the HC Debate)   New year, new tactic, new solidarity. 

 -- Nate Silver on why the left is suddenly unified behind the bill:

Personally, I think the reason for the increase in support is mostly this: the Democratic leadership, and particularly President Obama, are now fighting for this bill tooth and nail. They didn't necessarily have to do this; they could have thrown in the towel, passed off some bipartisan crap that didn't do much to help the uninsured, and called it a day. That's what Rahm Emanuel wanted to do, as Chris Bowers points out. But that isn't what Obama did: instead, he's gone all-in on the thing, potentially staking his Presidency on the outcome. Liberals like the idea of being the scrappy underdog -- being the fighter -- and Obama, after a strangely aloof performance on the health care bill throughout 2009, has been fighting the good fight.

Then some fiscal sanity figures.   Not too F'n shabby, if you ask me.  

-- Ezra Klein unpacks the CBO score:

The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years -- so, 2020 to 2029 -- it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population. To put this in context, that's more deficit reduction than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.

-- Hotline:

The bill is now headed to the House Rules Committee, where Dems will finalize their options for moving forward. Floor action is expected on Sunday, 72  hours after the bill gets posted online.

 Chait on getting close:

MSNBC's First Read reports, "We’re told that the White House and House Dem leaders are fewer than five votes away from 216." I have always thought that the key is to get within four or five votes. Once you're there, you're very likely to win. Why? Because then the White House and Democratic leaders can concentrate all their attention on a few holdouts. And they can make an irresistible argument: If you don't vote for this bill, you will be responsible for the political and moral disaster that ensues. I just don't think anybody is willing to be the person who kills health care reform. They may hold back, they may want to see if the bill is going to die anyway, and they may want somebody else to go first. But when the finish line is in sight, they won't say no.

Rollins on the Texas Schoolbook Fiasco

Henry Rollins opines on the schoolbook debate:

Perhaps the powers that be in Texas consider Thomas Jefferson an extraneous ingredient and will seek to extract our third president and other major figures in American history from their school’s textbooks. It seems that there will be a bit of revision in Texas, and I fear it will be big—as things often are in the Lone Star State.

What will be the fate of Charles Darwin and Martin Luther King after the great cleansing, I wonder? I fear for the New Deal reforms and any other bits of history that may somehow be seen as inconvenient truths to the architects of the Great Texan Rewrite. I cringe when I think that the Civil Rights movement may magically vanish from the state’s history or be seen as an uppity peasant uprising. What will become of the Emancipation Proclamation? The outcome of the Civil War?

I understand a desire for nostalgia. I still listen to records I bought as a teenager. But a return to the dim-bulb cruelty and religious fascism of the past is a little too far in the way-back machine for me. What do you bring back next, the Bubonic Plague? The Texas Witch Trials!

Poorly educated people are not an asset unless you desire citizens who cannot think critically. Now why would any state want that? If I wanted my state to secede, I would need the voters to see that it is in their best interest to detach from a nation full of infidels and unpatriotic enemies. If it were me, I would start in the schools and the books that students read.

GOP: Paul Rand is "Not one of us"

Rand Paul, the slightly-less-kooky son of Ron Paul, is making a serious bid at the Kentucky Senate seat in 2010 marking a potentially major first impact from the Tea Party movement (sorry kiddies - and I know this may come as a shock - but the yokel from Alaska doesn't count as a success by any standards.)   One would look at this as a truly positive move for the GOP, a party in dire need of re-branding, right? 

Wrong:

Recognizing the threat, a well-connected former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convened a conference call last week between Grayson and a group of leading national security conservatives to sound the alarm about Paul.
"On foreign policy, [global war on terror], Gitmo, Afghanistan, Rand Paul is NOT one of us," Cesar Conda wrote in an e-mail to figures such as Liz Cheney, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Dan Senor and Marc Thiessen.
With an attached memo on Paul's noninterventionist positions, Conda concluded: "It is our hope that you can help us get the word out about Rand Paul's troubling and dangerous views on foreign policy.  [...]

"This guy could become our Republican senator from Kentucky?" he exclaimed. "It's very alarming."

 Yes yes.   Someone who believes in individual rights, State's rights and non-interventionist foreign policy is very alarming indeed.   Man the harpoons!   We've got a live one, Dick!  The hysteria has even gotten to the point that Trey Greyson, his Kentucky GOP opponent, has created a scare-page listing all the horrible things that Rand represents, like being Pro Choice, Pro Marijuana Legalization, Pro Gay Marriage, Anti-Iraq/Afghanistan wars, etc.    (I'll set aside for the moment that Paul is probably big-time against Health Care Reform - hey, no one's perfect!)

And the best hypocrisy, as Reason points out, is that he is Funded By Out of State Libertarians!   Wait, isn't that how Scott Brown got elected?   How the Gay Marriage repeal was denied in Maine?   How all GOP Money Bombs work?  

I guess when there are "no" ideas, morals or leadership in the Party of No, all they have left to stand on are scare tactics and smear campaigns.  And the sorry state of affairs for American politics continues...

Pixar's Flooded Basement

Two seemingly unrelated events came crashing together for me this weekend.  The first was watching the terrific Pixar animated movie Up on Saturday and the other was walking down my basement stairs on Sunday morning to find the beginning stages of a flood.  How are these two related?   Well for one, both are debilitatingly depressing in their own special way.  More to the point, though, is how early on in the movie Carl Fredricksen and his wife, Ellie, start the spare change jar to fund their epic dream of living next to Paradise Falls, only to have a blown tire and an untimely fallen tree postpone their ultimate goal, sadly for good for poor Ellie.  

Having purchased a house of our own only 18 months ago, my special lady and I have had our own Paradise Falls jar meet the business end of a hammer a few times already.  From tax bullshit to replacement appliances to an unplanned below-grade balineum - hey shit does happen - those Paradise-like plans of a return to Jamaica or a remodeled kitchen get pushed a little farther over the horizon.  And you know what?   It's fine. 

Normally at a time like this, I would be feeling the pang of demoralization deep in my craw.   But the moral of the story of Up had kinda resonated with me and even lessened the pain, to whatever minor extent was possible.   After all the hard work and despair Carl suffered in trying to keep his posthumous promise of filling out the 'Things I Will Do' section of Ellie's scrapbook, he realizes that they've been filling out the book all along, just by being together.  Through all the times.   With or without Paradise Falls.   

And that's where the two crossed together for me:  Even while we're mopping a soggy basement floor at a mopey, downtrodden pace we're still doing it together and just putting another photo into our own happy little scrapbook of life together.  I wouldn't have it any other way.     

Well my polling numbers say you're an asshat, Scott

I wasted a solid ten minutes of my life watching Instapundit Glenn Reynolds' video Q&A with Scott Rasmussen on PJTV.  Disingenuous was the word that came to mind earliest and often, starting with the lead-in by Reynolds describing Rasmussen as the guy with "his finger on the pulse of American politics" leading to this quote by Scott himself:

The American people don't want to be governed from left, right or center; they want to govern themselves

Sure, Scott, that makes sense [/sarcasm]

For those who aren't familiar with Rasmussen polls and the pulse-fingered-people he's got minding his every publication, Rasmussen's polls tend to skew towards the right, with his approval numbers lower on average than the rest of the polling universe on both Obama's favorability and the Health Care Reform bill.   He - and his supporters - claim this is because his numbers reflect likely voters where the others simply hit the general public.   Not to get all double-negative on you, but I'm not entirely sure that explanation doesn't reek of slant.  I'd love to see some hard analysis of it, but in lieu of that, I'd venture that his recipe of likely voters consists of those older, more vocally invigorated and religious voters the right relies on for all their grassroots movements and campaigns.

That being said, the guttural tone of the interview was suggesting that Scott wasn't there to represent either political party, but rather to serve the populist goal of limited government.   Something I'm normally all for getting behind.  Until I heard this exchange:

Reynolds: "The gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and the politicians who want to rule over them may as big today as the gap between the colonies and england during the 18th century.  And recently you had a poll asking people if the federal government has the consent of governed and only 21% of AMERICANS said THAT IT did.  I find that troubling.  should I be worried about that number?"

Rasmussen:  I think you should probably be more worried than you are.  That stat certainly worries me and I think it creates a situation.  There is a massive federal government right now.  Lots of employees, lots of revenues, lots of things it does for the American people, but our founding document says that the government derives its sole legitimacy from the consent of the governed.  If people don't believe it has the consent of the governed, that disconnect can lead to all sorts of problems.  And again, this is not because democrats are in charge right now, it happens whether democrats are in charge or republicans are in charge" ...  [there is] a sense that there's a gap in that the government is doing what it sees fit regardless what the people want"

So we're supposed to believe that this gay-hating, right-leaning Methodist, who's firm has been paid by the RNC and George W Bush's campaign, would stand up for small government regardless who is in power?

Sorry, but I call bullshit. Thanks, Scott, for making me doubt the veracity of yet another political faction which is about all I accomplished in those fateful ten minutes.

Avlon on Reason TV

 This ten minute discussion between John Avlon and Nick Gillespie is worth the watch. John does a decent job in his delivery, though a little rushed. I was certainly confused when he described Wingnuts as "people who are always trying to unite us rather than divide us" Luckily we know he meant the opposite.

Where he did well, of course, was explaining how independents relate to libertarianism as they tend to be Fiscally Conservative and Socially Liberal. He correctly notes that both fringes get this wrong and seem unable to grasp the mix, instead claiming that independent vote boons represent some kind of referrendum for their ideology. (see: liberals taking Obama's victory as a liberal mandate; conservatives taking Brown's victory as a mandate against health care reform) The truth is, on the whole, independents are deficit hawks; they don't want either party spending recklessly, demonstrated by the struggle incumbents go through trying to hold office.

At one point Gillespie asks him where in the scheme the Tea Party movement fits, which Avlon rightly explains as a group of grassroot deficit hawk populists who are sadly experiencing Obama Derangement Syndrome. All due to the shift in genesis of political talking points coming from the media, rather than the politicians.

I agree with John in hoping we eventually get to the point where the focus of government is more than just establishing and maintaining power by pandering to extremes and vilifying ideological opponents

Video below the jump.

Quick Hits

Not Megan Fox

• New jobless claims edge lower - Certainly positive news on the economic front.  

• Foreclosures slowing - Also positive news, especially for homeowners worried about the ever-dropping value of their investment.   One may also say that this could usher in a jump in new home sales, if folks who have been hesitant to buy start regaining confidence in the market.  

• Sullivan passes on a Tax Policy Center breakdown of Paul Ryan's proposed budget.  Summary:  Great for the rich, not so much for the middle-class.   Surprise, surprise.  And Ryan was one republican who I actually liked. 

• The interweb was abuzz over an outtake pic of Megan Fox posing provocatively on all fours.    Turns out it's not even her.  We'll still pretend though.  That's the American way.   

• The Tiger whores who don't think they're whores, and don't want to be considered whores, had a battle to determine who is actually the best whore of those whores.  Jamie Jungers won.  Imagine bringing this girl home?  Your grandmother would have a stroke when she jumps pantiless on dinner table to demonstrate what she does for work.  Jungers, that is; not grandma.  You sicko. 

• Jon Stewart tears apart Marc Thiessen over the "Al-Qaeda 7" bullshit that hacks like Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol are pushing on the public.  By the end, Thiessen turns into a puddle and starts whining that Stewart talked over and didn't allow him to make his points.  Watch the video and decide for yourself.  Personally, I don't think you can blame Marc for stomping and crying like someone stole his Mailbu Barbie house. Everyone knows Stewart's chairs are painful on the vagina. 

Well, he does drive a truck...

Just saw on Boston.com that Scott Brown inked a deal with Harper Collins to publish his memoir.  And why not?   After all, he's been relevant for a whole two months and a whopping three senate votes. 

I love how right wing ballwashers fawn over flash in the pan people like Brown and Palin because they catch a few headlines but then shit all over Obama for being inexperienced in the very next breath. I'm sure Glenn Beck will be pimping this book out in early 2011.  

Here we go again...

A Catholic School in Boulder, Colorado has denied re-admission of two children because their parents are a lesbian couple, triggering protests from families of other enrolled children and the GLBT community.   The Archdiocese callously defends the decision, citing unjust pressure on the staff to reconcile the couple's orientation with the teachings of the church.  A quick perusal of the local news comment boards shows a stark contrast of positions on the issue.  Some of which are nauseatingly bigoted and comically misinformed:

nativecolorado wrote:

9news: You should be ashamed for even giving this story the time of day...what a total farce! To make it the lead story the past day or so is a disgrace! Your bias is shameful!

This is America and the last time I checked a free country. Free to worship your religion...so a news flash to all of you intolerant and hate filled homosexual and liberal people: You preach tolerance yet are completely intolerant of those that follow the teaching of the Catholic Church!  Get a life!

That is what public schools are for...to indoctrinate children with your intolerance! The Catholic school has EVERY right to make this decision! Why do you think private and charter schools are so popular? It always amazes me how quick people are to attack the Catholic Church and spew hatred and lies about it.

.I'd like to see these people try this with a Muslim or Jewish organization…

I can assure you 9news would not have covered the story and would have been afraid to do so.

That there exist in this world people who believe it's the gays and liberals who are the ones being intolerant on this issue is almost mind-numbing.   But I digress.  

One has to wonder, first, why this couple would bother to send their kids to this school in the first place, knowing what we do about the church at large.  One argument made on this front says that if the church is allowed to enjoy tax exemptions from the city and state then they also need to stifle their own discriminatory practices that lie in contrast with the laws of said city and state.  I can agree with that, though I'd prefer that such exemptions were abolished completely, paving way for a true separation of church and state, but that's a separate issue. 

The bigger question is how many of the other kids enrolled at this school were born out of wedlock?  Have single parents who are living in sin?   Have divorced and remarried parents? We already know the school accepts children from different faiths.   These families would also be in defiance of the morally upstanding teachings of the Catholic Church, right?   

Says Archbishop Chaput: Nope:

It’s also true that some of our schools exist as a service outreach in largely non-Catholic communities.  Many of our schools also accept students of other faiths and no faith, and from single parent and divorced parent families.  These students are always welcome so long as their parents support the Catholic mission of the school and do not offer a serious counter-witness to that mission in their actions.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

Extremism comes in more than 2 flavors

via Sullivan, James Joyner begs:

Can we please stop with the political name-calling whenever one of these nuts goes off?
Look, we’re a big country.  There are over 300 million of us.  Almost everyone holds a position or two that’s way off the charts and a whole lot of people believe in 9/11 Trutherism, black helicopters, and all the rest.  Less than a handful of those people are out trying to kill people.    However stupid or loathesome a political view may be, the fact that some nut also holds it adds nothing to the counter-argument.

Since Andrew didn't comment, I'll take it up.  Talk about a misguided vendetta on this guy's part.  And talk about some misguided commentary coming from the MSM and blogosphere.  Few things in my mind are worse than staunch ideologues from either side who demand that "government stay out of their Medicare" or preach that George Bush lied for oil, but Truthers and/or JFK conspiracy theorists give them a run for the money. 

John Avlon does well to break it down:

Any reflexive media attempts to tie the shooter to the Tea Party movement should be regarded as totally unfounded. He appears to have been more focused on his hatred of former Vice President Dick Cheney than President Barack Obama. Bedell seems to be less connected to right-wing politics than what I call “fright wing” politics—the murky ground beyond left and right where conspiracy theories reside. 

 ...and then goes on to point our a scary trend:

Earlier this week, the invaluable Southern Poverty Law Center released a new report that detailed the dramatic increase in militia and so-called Patriot groups over the first year of the Obama administration. Among its findings was the establishment of 363 new Patriot groups last year alone. “Militias—the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement—were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009,” the center found.

As more information comes in, it appears that Bedell is the latest self-styled suicidal warrior for the extreme anti-government movement that has exploded since President Obama’s inauguration. It is a reminder of the real costs that come with the paranoid conspiracy theories that are peddled on the edges of the Internet and sometimes encouraged by hyper-partisan media outlets.

Hate is a cheap and easy recruiting tool—but hate ultimately leads to violence.

This can't possibly end well.   

Even a little means a lot

Hard to argue with Jonathan Cohn's piece on TNR.  He breaks down how the current versions of the bill may only reduce cost marginally over the short term but that in the long-term - by implementing a variety of control measures in moderation to see what works and what doesn't - it can be very beneficial.   Certainly more beneficial than the unsustainable status quo.   

Some of the people complaining about this bill seem to acknowledge the political forces at play. If it's not possible to pass a bill with stronger cost control, they suggest, there should be no bill at all--or, at least, not one that looks like this one. They'd prefer only a very small expansion of coverage, if any, until real cost control has set in.

But here, too, the political logic isn't so simple. Just think about hospitals for a second. Reducing spending on health care is going to require a massive change in the way both public and private insurers pay them.
[...]
You could make the same argument about other interest groups--or what the public, as a whole, would be willing to tolerate. The most aggressive cost control efforts from left and right would start by getting everybody out of their present insurance arrangements. Good luck trying to enact that.

To be absolutely clear about this, I would support health care reform if it did nothing more than expand and strengthen health insurance coverage. I think it's a moral imperative, as much for the sake of the middle class as the poor. But it so happens that the bill moving through Congress will do something more. It will reduce the cost of care--not by a lot and not by as much as possible in theory, but as much as is possible in this political universe. That's far better than the alternative, which is to do nothing.

Deval Patrick - you're doing it wrong (again!)

Raise your hand if you want Health Care costs to go down (or stop going up)

Wow, that's just about everyone.  No surprises there.   Now raise your hand if you think capping insurer premium hikes without capping provider contract hikes is a financially viable way to control premiums.

Confused?   Well don't feel bad because the Governor of Massachusetts doesn't understand this either.  See, if 90% of premiums cover medical expenses and those expenses can rise by 10-12%  but the premiums can't rise higher than 4.8%, then there's a bit of a discrepancy on the bottom line. 

Simple-minded people like using lemonade stands for analogies and I like simple terms so let's try this one.   Little Cindy runs her lemonade stand and can only purchase lemons from Massachusetts lemon growers.   One of those growers is a massive conglomerate that has banded together most of the biggest lemon farms in the state for bargaining power.   They pretty much dictate what the costs should and will be for all farmers in the state.  Every year this massive group jacks up the cost of lemons by 10-12%.

Now, Deval Patrick doesn't like that every time he stops at Cindy's stand the cost for a glass goes up.  So he makes a law that says Cindy can't raise her lemonade cost but in the meantime the lemon growers can still demand the big increase because no law prevents that.   Eventually, where does Cindy's margin go?  How can she pay workers' salaries to squeeze the lemons and run the stand?   She can't and now little Cindy is on little kiddie unemployment.  

Look, from a free market perspective, telling the doctors they can't make money is no better than telling insurers they can't but by imposing this on the insurer side is treating the symptom but ignoring the cause.  The biggest mistake the general public makes is to constantly lay the blame solely at the feet of the insurers without ever asking why the docs' costs have to go so high every year. 

What can you do to help?  Well, unless you're a physician or a contract negotiator at one of the payers, you can't have a direct impact.   But indirectly you can be prudent about the care you utilize and push back on your doc when they order excessive tests or visits for ridiculous things.  

One of my bigger pet peeves was when my doc prescribed my a pump blocker for heartburn.  He told me when he wrote it that I would have to take this medication for the rest of my life.   But then when the script ran out, the office manager told me I had to come in for a refill?!  Huh?   We already know what I have to take and why and no magical new information can be garnered from the visit.  Why on earth would I be asked to come in for this needless formality?    Because it's in the doctor's best interest to schedule as many appointments as possible.  Straight Cash Homey.  Obviously I argued this point and established a standing order with my primary for the meds.   It's that easy.   

So be smart.  Ask questions.  Demand that your health care costs are being used in efficient ways.  You have the right and you certainly have reason to do so, if you want premiums to go down.

Let he who is without... flipper?

A friend forwarded me this little gem (I swear I wouldn't be caught dead reading the douche rag that is HuffPo) about the American Family Association's spin of how SeaWorld should handle that murderous mammal, Tillikum:  Stoning.  Because scripture says so.  But of course!

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, "When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable." (Exodus 21:28)

 And it gets even better.  Apparently, according to these ravenous loons, Tilly should be thrust against the wall alongside the training manager, Chuck Thompson, as well. 

But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn't kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, "the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death." (Exodus 21:29)

Just so we're clear, Exodus is same book that Moses was set adrift in a raft like some message in a bottle...  supposedly waved his staff and did this... talked to a flaming bush and came down with these...   so I'm not sure how reliable a source it is to determine the sentence anyway. 

Seriously, are these people ever going to realize that it's not the friggin' 3rd century anymore?  And could a calculatedly innocuous name like American Family Association be any less genuine or more sinister?  Whale stoning aside, I'm sure you could guess where these people stand on things.  Sadly, it's not on the slippery edge of a SeaWorld holding tank.

Hitchens' Ten Commandments

No doubt a riff he has played during his many book tour stops and debates on religion, Christopher Hitchens expands a bit on his preferred re-write of the Ten Commandments in April's Vanity Fair.   

His wrap is terrific:

I am trying my best not to view things through a smug later prism. Only the Almighty can scan matters sub specie aeternitatis: from the viewpoint of eternity. One must also avoid cultural and historical relativism: there’s no point in retroactively ordering the Children of Israel to develop a germ theory of disease (so as to avoid mistaking plagues for divine punishments) or to understand astronomy (so as not to make foolish predictions and boasts based on the planets and stars). Still, if we think of the evils that afflict humanity today and that are man-made and not inflicted by nature, we would be morally numb if we did not feel strongly about genocide, slavery, rape, child abuse, sexual repression, white-collar crime, the wanton destruction of the natural world, and people who yak on cell phones in restaurants. (Also, people who commit simultaneous suicide and murder while screaming “God is great”: is that taking the Lord’s name in vain or is it not?)

It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Video of his explanation after the jump

Ok Go Video... Holy crap!

This video has been flying around the interwebs for a few days now, so unless you've been living in a cave, you'll think I'm just another noob who showed up late to the party wearing women's underwear again.  So what if I did drag my balls across the deli platter?   What's it to you?  The avocado dip is fine. 

But if you have been in that cave, watch this vid.   Cool Rube Goldberg shit.   These guys have some other sick one-take vids that'll blow your freakin' mind so far out that no fruit salad will be safe. 

Catholic Charities: Gays Ruin Benefits for Everyone

On February 1st, the Washington DC Catholic Charities moved to end their foster care programs in a retaliation against the city's new law allowing gay marriage.   Sullivan has commented on the issue at length, asking the question: will Catholic Charities cut benefits for any employees who have divorced and remarried under DC law?  Well, here's your answer, Andrew:

Catholic Charities President and CEO Edward Orzechowski sent a memo out to employees yesterday informing them that spouses’ who have already been enrolled in the health plan would continue to receive care under a grandfather clause, but that new employees or newly married employees would no longer be eligible to obtain coverage for their spouses through Catholic Charities.
The change goes into effect today. The District of Columbia will begin granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning on March 4.

I don't think I'll ever understand how the church reconciles Jesus' teachings of goodwill towards your fellow man with their draconian stance on gay rights.  This latest move to is the political equivalent of the Diocese taking its ball and going home.  Just goes to show, when you think bar is set low, the Catholics somehow manage to go even lower. 

Well, if you put it that way...

wwtdd.com posted a bunch of pics of this gigantic-breasted J-Woww chick.  

So wait...  these Jersey Shore birds don't all look like oompa-loompas?  When was someone gonna tell me!?   Still have to worry if this chick is mad hairy in all the wrong places or not.  She could be the type of girl who stands naked in front of a fan and her bush swirls in the wind like a Pantene commercial.

Food Inc.

Sunday night my wife and I sat down to watch Food Inc., the fantastic Oscar-nominated documentary about the corporate nightmare that is the American agricultural industry. I would be hard-pressed to find someone - save for the CEO of Tyson - who wouldn't be affected in some small way by this film. There weren't many bullet points that one could genuinely consider as previously unknown but the way they filmmakers delivered them was sobering to say the least. There were some shocking scenes (the kill floor of the hog slaughterhouse; cows standing ankle deep in their own filth, etc) yet I thought the film did well to avoid the easy lay-up, PETA-style impact shots that would turn even the strongest stomach to mush. The point wasn't to get us to stop eating meat or pork - or food in general - but rather to pull back the veil and fully understand the stranglehold large food corporations have on the supply chain.

Some major points worth noting:

• In 1970 the Top 5 meat packing companies were responsible for 25% of the market. Today, due to corporate consolidation, the top 4 companies are responsible for 80%.

• The USDA is essentially a toothless oversight group that monitors producers to ensure that standards are being upheld, but has no jurisdiction to actually enforce anything. The film notes that the USDA, per regulation, moved to shut down one slaughterhouse which had repeatedly failed bacteria tests. The parent companies lawyers fought the shut-down in court and won on the basis that the USDA lacked proper jurisdiction to do so.
  

• Patent laws put in place a decade ago paved the way for one company, Monsanto, to copyright a genetically-modified strain of soy bean seed that resists pesticides. At face value seems fair enough, except that they dominate the market and constantly sue non-par farmers for infringement when the Monsanto crops cross-pollinate with the little guy's crops, lawsuits that have put the small farmers out of business, one by one.
  

• Stonyfield Farm, an organic grower/raiser, is leading the charge to fight back against factory farming and putting Organic products on the map by selling to big retailers like Wal-Mart. I enjoyed this free-market approach to fighting off the big guys. As Stonyfield CEO Gary Hirshberg says,
  
  
  

  “We’re on the battlefield now and we need to fight with the same weaponry. We need to not be David up against Goliath. We need to be Goliath.”

• The scene where a Latino family goes shopping for broccoli and emphatically state that it's "cheaper to buy McDonald's than groceries"... ugh... This was the one spot I wish had been framed a little differently. It's ludicrous to claim that four happy meals costs more than a 99-cent pound of pasta and a $2 jar of sauce. Sure its easier to hit the drive through, but the laziness factor was curiously removed from the equation. At some point, personal responsibility has to come into play.
  

• The heartbreaking story of Kevin Kowalcyk, who died at 2 years old from E.coli poisoning after eating a hamburger. The story outlined the power of industry lobbyists and their ability to block legislation over food-borne illness regulation and the aforementioned USDA misfires. Now, I'm certainly not a pro-regulation, big government guy but this segment was tremendously moving. Say what you want about a free-market, self-regulation approach to product safety but when the big guns are so big that dirty plants are left unchecked, it points to major, major flaws in our government system.
  

• The finishing note. Epic. I really like how they drove the point home about how you, as an individual, can affect change in this massive system. A much better tactic than "Big Business is bad! Vote Democrat!!" that most documentaries wrap with today *cough* Michael Moore *cough*. Instead the films ends with a checklist of how you can cast your "vote" 3 times a day.
  

I personally felt good about a few things by the end of this movie. That there exist people like Gary Hirshberg, who understand that pure radicalism isn't the only answer to fighting the big show. That my wife is already cognoscente about what foods come into our house and works to buy as organic as possible. That we've been planning a raised garden bed to grow our own vegetables this year.

This movie may not teach you anything new, but it will inspire you to think twice about what it is you're putting on the dinner plate. Needless to say, I highly recommend giving it a whirl.

8001050F? F$%#^$ You, PSN!

So the PlayStation Network decided to prove how vastly inferior it is to the Xbox 360 last night, when anyone with a pre-slim PS3 experienced this error. 

8001050F - Hardware failure. Cannot update Firmware or connect to Internet

Really put a damper on my Modern Warfare 2 campaign to dominate the world of parents' basements and leave my wife questioning her very existence.