Republicans, By Their Own Reasoning, Hate America

There are times I use the GOP's "insert political target here hates America" rhetoric against them. This is done (mostly) ironically, a jab at the ridiculous charge itself, as well as a dig at the hypocrisy of those who used it. McCarthyism and it's jingoistic cousins always come with a dose of hypocrisy -- it's one of history's great ironies that Sen. Joe McCarthy himself wouldn't have become a Senator if it weren't for the communist vote in Milwaukee. "They have the same right to vote as anyone else," he said when this was pointed out to him in 1946. Later, McCarthy would go on a witchhunt for communists in America -- both real and imagined, but all politically convenient -- which would do a lot more than suggest that he believed they didn't have the same rights as anyone else. Had McCarthy himself been anyone else, he would've been dragged before his own committee to explain what he did to earn all those commie votes. But he wasn't anyone else; he was Sen. Joe McCarthy, righteous defender against the Red Menace and, as such, above all criticism. His own connection to the Communist Party was forgotten and, with it, all evidence of his hypocrisy.

By the time George W. Bush showed up, few really gave a damn about communism anymore. The teabaggers seem to find some talismanic power left in the old accusation, but no one else seems especially freaked out by the charge. It's just an absurd anachronism, like accusing someone of being a witch.

So the right went with something a little broader. The new fear was terrorism, not creeping communism, and it was this that became the new tool of McCarthyism. At that point, Sarah Palin hadn't shown up yet, so no one had yet realized that there were people stupid enough to believe an accusation of actual terrorism. So they had to go with implied terrorism -- terrorists undoubtedly hate America, so you accuse political opponents of doing the same. And what was America? America was the president -- at that time George W. Bush. Criticize George W. Bush and you automatically hate America.





The example that pops into my head is that of a country music band in 2003.

CNN:

Music superstars the Dixie Chicks are finding out that criticizing President Bush's plans for war in Iraq can cost you air play, big time.

Country stations across the United States have pulled the Chicks from playlists following reports that lead singer Natalie Maines said in a concert in London earlier this week that she was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Station managers said their decisions were prompted by calls from irate listeners who thought criticism of the president was unpatriotic.

The band's great crime was criticizing the president overseas in a time of war. It was treason. It was the worst thing since 9/11. It was proof that the Dixie Chicks hated America -- just like Bin Laden. People burned Chicks' CDs, ran them over with steamrollers in big protests, shot them skeet-shooting style with shotguns. This struck me as kind of a pointless protest; after all, if I'm selling CDs, what do I care what you do with them? You bought it, do what you want. In fact, if you want to buy a few more and light them on fire, I'd be more than happy to sell you all you need.

Keep in mind that this is just a band. All they really did was please the crowd (the war was incredibly unpopular abroad and in London especially). But George W. Bush was president, it was a "time of war," and that meant that the Dixie Chicks hated America.

So how are we to explain this?

Talking Points Memo:

An interesting pattern has been emerging in the Republican Party's handling of foreign policy: Individual GOP officials are now making a regular point of not only formulating an alternative foreign policy, to be presented to the American people and debated in Congress -- they're acting on it too, and undermining the official White House policies at multiple turns...

In other words, Republicans are going overseas to criticize the president in a time of war; i.e., the worst thing ever. And this isn't just some country band talking smack about the president, these are Republicans going overseas and actively undermining US foreign policy.

For example, Sen. Jim DeMint's trip to Honduras. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was thrown out in an illegal military coup. But, since Zelaya is a leftist, DeMint supports the coup. The US government -- along with most governments -- don't recognize the junta in Honduras as a legitimate government, but DeMint has decided that he needs to go on a "fact-finding" mission to visit the junta and see what's up. It's a "fact-finding" mission on the taxpayer's dime.

"We understand that you received visitors from our Congress who represent the minority party, the Republican Party, who have expressed views that differ markedly from those of President Obama’s administration and the Democratic Majority in the US Congress," wrote six members of the House of Representatives to the president of the Honduran Congress. DeMint is actively undermining US diplomacy and foreign policy with his trip. For the record, the Senate doesn't set foreign policy -- and certainly not a member of the minority party -- the State Department does. And the State Department is an office within the executive branch.

Want more? How about House minority whip Eric Cantor going to Israel to criticize the White House's stand on Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands? Or Sen. Jim Inhofe's plans to be part of a "truth squad" to the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen? There, he'll engage in global warming denial and "tell foreign officials there that the American government will not take any action" on the issue.

How about Rep. Mark Kirk, who went to China and told officials there "that the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed?"

If the Dixie Chicks hated on America by making an anti-war, anti-Bush statement to a crowd in an anti-war, anti-Bush town, what does it say when Republican elected officials go overseas and actively try to sink the president's efforts at diplomacy?

Am I saying that Republicans hate America? I guess not. To tell the truth, I don't know. I know they aren't too happy with this America and want to change it to another kind of America entirely, but that's just politics. What I am saying is that Republicans are shameless hypocrites here, in the same way that fellow Republican Joe McCarthy was all those years ago.

Why anyone takes these people seriously is beyond me. By engaging in behavior that is not only similar to that which they criticized in the past, but is also much, much worse, they show how much they really believed the things they were saying back in 2003 -- i.e., they didn't believe it at all. It, as McCarthyism always is, was just a political tool, used cynically and brutally to ruin their political opponents. The Dixie Chicks were supposed to be the heads on a pike, warning others of the danger of "hating America." Luckily, it didn't work out that way.

But the next time you hear some wingnut idiot or some talk radio moron yelling that "X hates America," you go ahead and send them to this post. They're chumps, being fooled into hypocrisy, by people who -- in the end -- don't give a damn about them. They're useful to Republicans only so long as they can be counted on to have the memory of a gnat.

-Wisco


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The Good News is That it Probably Can't Get Any Worse

Yeah, yeah, yeah... Public option, public option, public option... It's all I'm talking about lately. Sure, I take the occasional sidetrip to Iran or Crazytown, but -- let's face it -- the big domestic story is still healthcare reform. Among supporters and opponents, it's almost like a presidential campaign. Unless the moon explodes or something, this thing is going to suck up all the oxygen in the room until something passes or the whole thing dies.

To a certain extent, this may be a good thing. People who don't follow the mechanics of government are getting a pretty good education on the legislative process. We didn't watch the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq as closely as we're watching this legislation. We all remember "How a Bill Becomes Law" from Schoolhouse Rock, but that didn't really tell the whole story. You've got your horsetrading and your conference committee and your internecine political warfare; this is how the sausage is made and we didn't tell kids about it back in the day because we didn't want them to grow up cynical and convinced that the political system blows. It's a real education.

But back to the public option; what is it really? Senate majority leader Harry Reid has begun promising one. "We are going to have a public option before this bill goes to the president's desk," Reid said Thursday. "I believe the public option is so vitally important to create a level playing field and prevent the insurance companies from taking advantage of us."





The problem is that Reid has suggested that what constitutes a "public option" may be open to interpretation. It's generally assumed to be a government-run health insurance program that you can choose to buy; hence the "public" and the "option" parts. But Reid seems to believe that this definition is a straitjacket and maybe we should broaden it to include things that are more "publicish" and "option-like."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the public option a "relative term" and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said "there is not one way to Rome, there are lots of ways to Rome."

"Remember, a public option is a relative term," Reid said. "There's a public option, there's a public option, and there's a public option. And we're going to look at each of them."

None of the leaders discussed the specifics of what a watered down public option would look like. Two versions have already been rejected by the Senate Finance Committee.

And in the Finance Committee anyway, the "option" part is out the window. That is, unless you want to call something that the vast majority of Americans won't be able to choose an "option." In a fit of righteousness, an MSNBC morning host called it like it is.

MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan says the efforts of some congresspeople to kill the public health care option and limit access to the proposed health care exchange system is a sign that Congress is defending the "corporate communism" of the health care industry.

On MSNBC's Morning Meeting, Ratigan pointed to the fact that health insurers are exempt from anti-trust laws as proof of the "communist" nature of the health care industry.

Anti-trust laws were enacted to prevent companies from forming market monopolies. Health care companies are exempt from these laws, which is why, for example, BlueCross BlueShield is able to control 83 percent of Alabama's health insurance market, and why WellPoint is able to control 78 percent of the market in Maine. (See the complete chart here.)

"If you're looking for choice in your own health care or competition to break up the corporate communism that burdens our country at this point and prevents any of us from finding work -- no no, your Senate is not working for you, there will be no competition, nor will there be any choice," Ratigan said.

"Ratigan was referring to an amendment proposed by Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden that would have allowed anyone with health insurance from an employer or a labor union to shop for health care on a so-called health insurance exchange," Raw Story reports. "Wyden withdrew that amendment last week after heavy pressure from business and labor leaders, meaning the health reform bill being debated in the Senate will allow only those without such insurance policies to use the exchange, rendering it useless for a majority of Americans."

Even without a public option, an exchange would be a vast improvement over what we dishonestly call a "healthcare system" today. Insurance companies would have to compete on the retail level and -- barring collusion or price-fixing -- this would go a long way toward keeping them honest.

But a public option without an exchange kind of kills that whole "option" part, doesn't it? Killing the exchange was "a great tactic," Ratigan said. "It protected health insurers from having any real competition, perpetuating their corporate communism... These are literally people who are paying off our government to make sure they don't have to compete, whether it's the too-big-to-fail banks or in this case the health insurance companies."

I'm not sure how they're planning on undermining the "public" part of the public option, but they've certainly managed to get rid of the "option" part. Still -- and expect me to keep saying this until a bill is signed or this whole thing explodes -- every serious observer expected the Senate Finance Committee's bill to be the worst. But it isn't the final bill. Look at the committee's bill as the lower limit of suck; no matter what happens after it gets out of committee, it can't possibly become worse. It can only get better. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. There's always markup and amendments on the floor.

Still, rays of hope shine out in the form of pure self-interest. Moderate dems, seeing how popular the public option is with the base, are unwilling to be seen as being among those who killed it off. Brian Beutler, writing for the blog Talking Points Memo, puts it this way; "One difficulty that both the White House and public option skeptics appear to be facing is that, though they may be perfectly happy to advance a bill without a public option, the measure remains very popular, and intensely so among politically engaged, Democratic voters. That's a dynamic to keep an eye on: At this point, nobody wants to be identified as the driving force behind its demise."

In the end, that's the best hope we have for getting an actual, honest-to-goodness public option on the president's desk -- as opposed to a publicish optionoid -- pure fear. They're afraid of us and, for once, they're afraid to be identified as the one who screwed us over.

We've got the leverage here, so we need to use it.

-Wisco


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The World's Worst-Kept Secret

What you are about to learn is a secret -- a secret that the United States and four other nations, the makers of hydrogen weapons, have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect.

The secret is in the coupling mechanism that enables an ordinary fission bomb -- the kind that destroyed Hiroshima -- to trigger the far deadlier energy of hydrogen fusion.

The physical pressure and heat generated by x- and gamma radiation, moving outward from the trigger at the speed of light, bounces against the weapon's inner wall and is reflected with enormous force into the sides of a carrot-shaped "pencil" which contains the fusion fuel.

"That, within the limits of [the previous] sentence, is the essence of a concept that initially eluded the physicists of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China," wrote Howard Morland for The Progressive in 1979, "that they discovered independently and kept tenaciously to themselves, and that may not yet have occurred to the weapon makers of a dozen other nations bent on building the hydrogen bomb."

You can get the entire issue of the magazine, in PDF form, here. What nefarious methods did Morland employ to get this top secret info? I guess you'd call it journalism. Most of what he learned about how to make a hydrogen bomb he gained from published science papers. To fill in the gaps, he asked physicists. Turns out that, as closely guarded government secrets go, the H-bomb wasn't one. You can't really take a chunk out of physics and keep it secret -- the information is all there, all it takes is putting it together and solving mechanical problems.





All of which makes a United Nations report out this weekend a little perplexing.

New York Times:

Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.

The report by experts in the International Atomic Energy Agency stresses in its introduction that its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations.

But the report’s conclusions, described by senior European officials, go well beyond the public positions taken by several governments, including the United States.

Asked on CNN's State of the Union if he agreed with the UN's report, National Security Adviser James Jones said, "No, we stand by the reports that we've put out." Those reports contradict the UN's, although indirectly, by reporting that Iran stopped working on nuclear weapon development in 2003. At that point, pretty much everyone agreed that Iran was years -- perhaps decades -- away from a weapon.

Which raises the question; what does "all the data" actually mean? According to the NYT, the UN report -- titled Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program -- "draws a picture of a complex program, run by Iran's Ministry of Defense, 'aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system,' Iran’s medium-range missile, which can strike the Middle East and parts of Europe. The program, according to the report, apparently began in early 2002."

At least one top official at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disagrees with the report, with the paper reporting that "he has raised doubts about its completeness and reliability."

Last month, the agency issued an unusual statement cautioning it “has no concrete proof” that Iran ever sought to make nuclear arms, much less to perfect a warhead. On Saturday in India, Dr. ElBaradei was quoted as saying that “a major question” about the authenticity of the evidence kept his agency from “making any judgment at all” on whether Iran had ever sought to design a nuclear warhead.

So, if "all the data" means the physics, then yeah, Iran has that. But so does a kid looking to win a ribbon at the fifth grade science fair. But if it means the actual engineering involved, then probably not -- unless the whole thing came to some Iranian engineer in a dream.

But this preliminary report, controversial even within the agency that released it, has given Republicans a new tool to try to get everyone to wet their pants over the possibility of Iran blowing up the world.

Raw Story:

Two senior Republican senators say the United States, and not Israel, should attack Iran if military action becomes "necessary."

They also say a simple strike at the country's nuclear capability wouldn't be enough -- the US would have to launch an "all-or-nothing" war against Iran with the aim of crippling the country's military capabilities.

"I think an Israeli attack on Iran is a nightmare for the world, because it will rally the Arab world around Iran and they're not aligned now. It's too much pressure to put on Israel," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told FOX News' Chris Wallace.

"If the sanctions fail, and Iran's going down the road to get a nuclear weapon, any Sunni Arab state that could, would want a nuclear weapon," Graham said. "Israel will be more imperiled. The world will change dramatically for the worst. Military action should be the last resort anyone looks at, and I would rather our allies and us take military action if it's necessary."

We all remember the last time a Republican said war was the "last resort," don't we? That didn't turn out very well. The other Republican senator "reluctantly" considering all-out war is Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.

"The problem with military action also is that you're probably not going to be able to stop the production of uranium by just a simple airstrike," he said on the same program. "Lindsey's right. It's an all or nothing deal. And is it worth that at this point in time, when we know they have the capability? We can slow them down, but a full-out military strike is what it would take."

So, is typical Republican belligerence the answer here? Let's compare results. The Bush administration also had Iran to deal with, so let's allow middle east expert Juan Cole to make the Bush v. Obama comparison.

"For 8 years, Bush-Cheney practiced what I call 'belligerent Ostrichism' toward Iran," Cole explains. "They refused to talk to Tehran. They wanted to ratchet up sanctions on it. Bush sent 2 aircraft carriers to the Gulf to menace Iran. Bush's spokesmen professed themselves afraid of Iran's unarmed little speedboats in the Gulf. Aside from issuing threats to attack and destroy Iran the way they did Iraq, Bush-Cheney had nothing else to say on the matter. During the 8 years, Iran went from being able to enrich to .2% to being able to enrich to 3.8%, and increased its stock of centrifuges significantly. Bush-Cheney gesticulated and grimaced and fainted away at the horror of it all, but they accomplished diddly-squat.

"Barack Obama pwned Bush-Cheney in one day, and got more concessions from Iran in 7 1/2 hours than the former administration got in 8 years of saber-rattling."

And those concessions aren't insignificant. Iran will send uranium overseas to be enriched for energy -- not military -- use and will accept international inspectors to its nuclear research facilities. Under the Bush administration, the headlines would've been "Crisis in Iran." Under Obama, it's "Inspectors to Visit New Iran Nuclear Site at Qom Oct 25."

When we developed the first atomic weapon in WWII, we knew we'd let the genii out of the bottle. Once it they were demonstrated and proved possible, non-American nuclear weapons became an inevitability. But I suppose we thought it was worth it. Whether or not it actually was is an open question, but it doesn't seem likely that no one would ever have developed them if we hadn't done it first. After all, we didn't make them possible, the universe did that.

What is clear is that diplomacy is working and that the Republican impulse toward violence and intimidation has not. I think we should probably go with what's working.


-Wisco

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Senate Committee for Sale

The Senate is often referred to as the "higher body." It's a genteel place of grace and wisdom, with every member a Cicero. The House of Representatives -- the "People's House" -- is a frat house by comparison. Or maybe a daycare center. When Reps are jumping up and down and freaking out, Senators rise above the fray and deal with the problems of the day with dignity and cooler heads. In the Senate, decisions are made after cool deliberation, based on reason and...

Pffft! I can't keep this up. It's fun for a while, but eventually you're laughing too hard to keep going. Yeah, there are a lot of thoughtful Senators who take their oath to the Constitution seriously, who believe that they have to work in the best interests of the people. But there are also a lot of whores who'll vote whichever way they're paid to. The best interests of the people be damned. Being a Senator is a pretty sweet gig, after all. The pay is good and you only have to run for reelection once every six years. In between, there's fundraising, but some have that all figured out. You can nickel and dime yourself to death with small donors and community organizations or you can go for the big score and save yourself a lot of time.

We can see this in the Democrats who voted against a public option on the Senate Finance Committee this week. The most liberal amendment offered by Chuck Schumer was defeated 15-8, with five Democrats defecting to vote against it. Of those five, all have received funding from the health industry -- to the tune of $19,219,860. That's a lot of fundraising dinners these guys get to skip.





The biggest recipient of all this lobbyist largesse is the committee's chairman, Max Baucus. Of that $19 mil., Max has received $7,734,102 -- roughly one third of that money. If you need an explanation of why everyone in Washington hates Baucus' bill, there you are. Republicans don't like it because it comes from the desk of a Democrat; their jerking knees compel them to oppose it by default. Democrats hate it because it's awful. The only people happy with it are Max Baucus and the health lobby.

Wendell Potter, a former Cigna insurance exec turned whistleblower, called Baucus' bill and "absolute gift" to the insurance industry, since it "would not provide affordable coverage... gives the industry too much latitude to charge higher premiums based on age and geographic location, fails to mandate employer coverage, and pushes consumers into plans with limited benefits."

After Baucus introduced his healthcare "reform" plan, insurance stocks rose. After the bought-and-paid-for Democrats on his committee shot down a public option, the same thing happened.

"Lobbying contributions appear to have the largest marginal impact on middle-of-the-road Democrats," writes statistician/blogger Nate Silver. "Liberal Democrats are likely to hold firm to the public option unless they receive a lot of remuneration from health care PACs. Conservative Democrats may not support the public option in the first place for ideological reasons, although money can certainly push them more firmly against it. But the impact on mainline Democrats appears to be quite large."

So, the middle-of-the-roaders -- the "centrists" -- are the most likely to be bought and paid for. The less partisan you are, the more for sale your votes are... Which kind of casts Baucus' months-long snipe hunt for bipartisan love (which ultimately failed) in a whole new light. Call it legal corruption.

"[A New York Times/CBS poll shows] Americans support the notion of a government administered health insurance plan by a margin of 65% to 26%," reports the good government site Intershame.com. "According to the same poll, people who identify themselves as Democrats favor the public option by a margin of 81% to 12%. That's nearly 7 to 1 in favor of, yet the representatives of the Democrat party in the Senate Finance Committee only voted for the public option at a ratio of 8 to 5. Perhaps the most interesting number revealed by this poll is that Republican voters favor the public option 47% to 42%."

You know what that looks like to me? A bipartisan agreement -- it's just not in Washington. It also looks like a mandate. Yet, in that committee, a public option is hugely controversial and must be strangled in its cradle.

"So let’s get this straight," writes Joan Walsh for Salon, "Baucus admits the public option would ‘hold insurance companies’ feet to the fire,’ but he voted against it? Is there any clearer evidence that Baucus is in the pocket of the health insurance industry?"

You mean other than that $19 million in industry lobby money? Because, taken together, his statements, his votes, and his money make it pretty much inarguable; Max Baucus is owned.

But let's not let the other sellouts off the hook here. Joining Baucus in rejecting a public option were Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln ($4,190,592), North Dakota's Kent Conrad ($3,287,891), Bill Nelson of Florida ($$2,414,895), and Delaware's Tom Carper ($1,592,380). All were paid and all delivered -- not for their constituents, who favor a public option, but for their donors, who don't.

That may be legal, that may be the way Washington works, but it ain't democracy. For too many, the Senate is a genteel and august puppet show.

-Wisco


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