HCR: Count Me Out!
I have spent the last few days reading numerous blog posts on whether progressives should continue to support the Senate Bill on healthcare reform. These would include posts by Ezra Klein, Nate Silver and Kevin Drum on the pro-side and posts on Daily Kos and FireDogLake on the Con side.
I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer support the “reform” bill in the Senate as it is a gross give away to the insurance industry and does not come close to accomplishing all that we could and should accomplish at this critical point in time with large public support for real reform. I also think that the passage of this bill will be a political disaster for the Democrats.
I would add that having Gibbs & Axelrod call us “irrational” and “insane,” respectively, is not a way to win the support of those of us who have come to a reasoned conclusion that this bill is bad. In fact, it only works to diminish my respect for them and President Obama.
Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky?
This post is a verbatim repost of Jason Calacanis’ email distribution. I am doing this because I find Facebook’s behavior in this matter repulsive and I am seriosly debating whether to cancel my account as a result. The bottom line here is that if you clicked through the recent terms pop up like I did, you will need to return to your privacy settings on Facebook, click to the new “search” section and uncheck the Public Search Results option which is now set, by default to “Allow search engines to access your publicly available info and any information visible to Everyone.”
Just in case you are saying “so what” let me point out that my wife tested out the results of this little stealth move by Facebook by searching Google for her name. The first thing that came up in Google’s search results – less than a day after she accepted the new terms – was a link to her entire friends list on Facebook!
The sordid details can be found below the fold.
US Health Care Reform: Made in…Afghanistan?
Stephen M. Walt, commenting on Obama’s recent AfPak escalation and the incongruity of domestic spending initatives vs expensive foreign military endeavours on the part of the US:
As I’ve said before, Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed with suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned. This position makes no sense, but it is hard to think of a prominent U.S. leader who is making an explicit case for doing somewhat less abroad so that we can afford to build a better future here at home. Debates about foreign policy, grand strategy, and military engagement — including the current debate over Obama’s decision to add another30,000-plus troops in Afghanistan — tend to occur in isolation from a discussion of other priorities, as if there were no tradeoffs between what we do for others and what we are able to do for Americans here at home.
Thankfully, E-Mart has proposed a modest solution to one particularly contentious domestic issue currently mired in the US Senate:
Maybe we can set up an efficient health insurance delivery system in Iraq or Afghanistan and then import it to the States. Call it a part of our COIN strategy, get Petraeus to endorse it and then ship it home under cover of night.
Wow. That’s so crazy, it just might work.
Le sigh.
Hezbollah = Desertbruise? Mutaa!
This gives new meaning to the worlds oldest profession.
Mohammad, a 40-year old Lebanese Shiite who lives in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, was holding forth on the virtues of resistance, loyalty, and sex. “You could create the most loyal army by providing political power, social services and fulfilling the desires of your men — namely, sexual ones,” he declared.
“And Hezbollah has been very successful in this regard,” Mohammad continued. It is hard to disagree. Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community’s political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage.
Mutaa is a form of “temporary marriage” only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures. In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: “I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]” and the man says: “I accept.” The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the “Party of God”-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained.
Playing politics with lives
I don’t want to say I reluctantly voted for Obama. I was never totally enamored with him, but during the 2008 campaign I can’t say I didn’t feel the hope, either. Finally, a younger candidate who wasn’t bred out of the older, Clinton and Bush-esqe generation of national politicians who always played middle of the road and didn’t want to make decisions that would piss everybody off. In short, they played politics.
For me, a big question about Obama is, at the highest level, would he play politics? To place this question in tangible terms, during the campaign one of Obama’s strengths was that he didn’t vote to authorize the Iraq war. Of course, Obama wasn’t a federal senator then and couldn’t vote — but as a state senator in Illinois at the time, he claimed he wouldn’t have voted to authorize the Iraq war. This was an easy statement to make, though, for a person who was just a state senator, though he harbored presidential ambitions, probably even he didn’t think he would run for president in 2008. In short, Obama wasn’t pressured to say the political thing.
So I’ve wondered how Obama actually would have voted for the Iraqi war resolution if he had the power to vote. Would he have played politics or done the right thing and voted “nay” despite the pressure?
The Dog and Pony Show That is Our Government
When your entire political system is based on finding “language” that disguises your actual intentions this is what you get.
While arguing why the Senate’s proposed “0.5 increase in the Medicare payroll tax on upper-income people: individuals earning more than $200,000, families earning more than $250,000″ is unlikely to pass, Frum explains a basic political truth:
As payroll taxes become more “progressive,” the programs they support become more blatantly redistributionist. And smart Democrats from FDR onward have always understood that the secret of popularity for a government program is to appear non-redistributive: everybody pays, everybody gets. Then you can say: It’s insurance, not welfare. With this measure, Medicare becomes more welfare-like and therefore more politically vulnerable.
Which is a start.
A .05% increase in the medicare tax to those earning more than $200,000 (or families earning above $250,000) is not redistribution, it is more like a needle in a haystack. Or a nickel in a pile of hundreds. By the barometer used by the supposed fiscal conservative set, any increase in taxes is tantamount to socialism and therefore leads down a slippery slope at the bottom which can be found Chairman Mao, Castro and Stalin sharpening their cutlery.
But that is not what makes me so ill about this post. What makes me sick is Sullivan’s “basic truth.” The fact is that if you are a Democrat, in order to fund any legislative program conventional wisdom dictates – read the wisdom doled out by the Republicans – that you find a way to hide that your are paying for it. If you can not, which is of course the case, then you are bound to fail unlike the “smart Democrats from FDR onward.”
What a load of bull. The secret of creating a popular government program is not scamming up a way to make the top 1% of the economic strata happy. It is making a program that works for the majority of Americans.
ACORN? Really?
Ok, I know I have been out of the loop for a while here but how did this one completely miss my radar? 52% of Republicans think ACORN stole the election for Barack Obama? That is either some serious mass delusion or highly effective propaganda.
The poll asked this question: “Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?” The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.
Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% — an outright majority — saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh in at 72%-18%-10%, and Democrats are 86%-9%-4%.
Now, the obvious comparison would be that many Democrats felt that George W. Bush didn’t legitimately win the 2000 election. But there are some clear differences.
First of all, Al Gore empirically won the national popular vote in 2000, and lost in a disputed recount process in Florida. By comparison, John McCain lost the national popular vote by a 53%-46% margin.
In order to believe that Obama wasn’t the true winner of the 2008 election, one would have to think that ACORN (and perhaps other groups) stuffed ballots to the tune of over 9.5 million votes, Obama’s national margin.
Sarah Palin, Fauxpulism, and Right-Wing Identity Politics
(Image: Tacoma Urbanist, Flickr)
Sarah Palin is back — and, seemingly, everywhere, as she launches a book tour (and, perhaps, a run at the White House in 2012).
In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grassroots, Palin’s influence is now unparalleled. Through her Facebook page, she was the one who pushed the rumor of “death panels” into the national healthcare debate, prompting the White House to issue a series of defensive responses. Unfazed by its absurdity, she repeated the charge in her recent speech in Wisconsin. In a special congressional election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, Palin’s endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican politician, Dede Scozzafava, from the race. In the end, Palin’s ideological purge in upstate New York led to an improbable Democratic victory, the first in that GOP-heavy district in more than 100 years.
Though the ideological purge may have backfired, Palin’s participation in it magnified her influence in the party. In a telling sign of this, Congressman Mark Kirk, a pro-choice Republican from the posh suburban North Shore of Chicago, running for the Senate in Illinois, issued an anxious call for Palin’s support while she campaigned for Hoffman. According to a Kirk campaign memo, the candidate was terrified that Palin would be asked about his candidacy during her scheduled appearance on the Chicago-based Oprah Winfrey Show later this month — the kick-off for her book tour — and would not react enthusiastically. With $2.3 million in campaign cash and no viable primary challengers, Kirk was still desperate to avoid Palin-backed attacks from his right flank, however hypothetical they might be.
“She’s gangbusters!” a leading conservative radio host exclaimed to me. “There is nobody in the Republican Party who can raise money like her or top her name recognition.”
In contemporary politics, money + brand recognition = power –period. For a Republican party scrambling to maintain its ever-shrinking base, that makes Sarah Palin its most influential personality. And with the Democratic Party and the White House being seen, rightly or wrongly, as the party of Goldman Sachs, an avowed fauxpulist like Palin (she’s ‘one of us!’) driving the tone and tenor of conservative politics in an age of economic instability is not something to airily discount.
Miniature Manhattan
If you are into photography you know that Tilt-Shift – the process of making a normal scene look miniature – is all the rage these days. Once you have seen these photo’s you will know why.
Traffic approaching the Queensboro Bridge.
Isn’t that one hell of a cool effect? For more examples check out this Google Images tilt shift search.
“Legal, yes; ethical, NO.”
Have you ever got hit with a $1.99 data charge on your Verizon bill for accidentally hitting a button that connects you to “Get It Now” or “Mobile Web?” This design “flaw” might be netting Verizon $300 million per year.
Apparently Palin Lied…
Thirty two times according to Andrew Sullivan.
Remember: we are not including contested stories that we cannot prove definitively one way or another or the usual spin that politicians use, or even hypocrisy or shading of facts. We are merely including things she has said or written that can be definitively proven as untrue, by incontestable evidence in the public record.
Go see the list for yourself. All I can say is I wish all public officials were forced under the same microscope Sully has Palin under.
Who Is Leading The Charge Against Health Care Reform
According to this AP piece there is at least one shadowy group that wishes to remain unknown.
One clue to the mystery group may lie in its goals: to oppose any government-run insurance option, the approach favored by President Barack Obama and most Democrats, and to support requiring all Americans to buy insurance.Those aims match two of the health insurance industry’s top priorities. Several industry officials disavowed any knowledge of the group and said they’re not behind it, including the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of North Carolina, and other large national and North Carolina insurers.
‘They want to stay in the background’
Presented evidence that the activities in Maine, Nevada and Louisiana involved employees of Moore & Van Allen, one of North Carolina’s larger law firms, the firm’s spokesman Matthew French acknowledged the connection and said the firm runs the health care group for clients. He declined to name them, but he referred to “member companies of AQAH,” the group’s acronym.“They want to stay in the background and off the front page,” said French. “They want the message to be the important thing.”
Moore & Van Allen has more than 300 attorneys and numbers financial, manufacturing, technology and health companies among its clients, although it won’t name them. It says they include “some of America’s foremost hospitals, multi-institutional health care systems, physician groups, specialty providers, lenders and insurers.”
French would not discuss the health group’s financing or provide much detail about its activities, saying it gives materials to like-minded organizations to distribute to their members.
The three states where the group’s activities have been noticed are focal points of the health care fight. Nevada is home to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat who is putting together the Senate’s health overhaul bill. Louisiana and Maine are represented by two senators viewed as swing votes: Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
French acknowledged the group is hoping its activities will build pressure on lawmakers.
“Obviously we want to educate to an end purpose. Otherwise we’re just kind of preaching to trees,” he said.
So the question remains, should a group with this much money and influence remain anonymous? I am not suggesting this is the case here, but if any group is allowed to hide their principles and their funding from public view what is to prevent nefarious foreign interests from participating in the U.S. political process?
File This Under Sexy
This baby makes me shutter.
Show me the money...$14,000 to be specific.
The Japanese Reinvent the Mobile Home
Talk about a trailer park upgrade!
Designed by Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
Google Search Box Fun
Michael Agger at Slate got the ball rolling by putting Google Suggest through it’s paces and trying to identify the most awkward Google suggestions. What he has uncovered is that there are some seriously messed up people out there. Seriously.
Yikes
blog advertising is good for you
