For GOP, Blocking Buffett Rule as Easy as Taking Lunch from a Baby

A few days ago, this happened:

New York Times:

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a move to open debate on the so-called Buffett Rule, ensuring that a measure pressed for months by President Obama and Senate Democrats to ensure that the superrich pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent will not come to a decisive vote.

But the fierce debate preceding the 51-45 vote — the Democrats were nine votes short of the 60 they needed — set off a week of political wrangling over taxes that both parties insist they are already winning.

It seems the GOP believes that the Buffet Rule is a gimmick. It's would account for a fraction of the federal deficit -- so why even bother? They argue President Obama and Democrats are just engaging in more class warfare for cheap political points.

So how much would the Buffet Rule bring in? According to the Ezra Klein, "The Joint Committee on Taxation says the proposal will bring in $47 billion over 10 years. Chuck Schumer, assuming the extension of the Bush tax cuts, says it will bring in $160 billion." Call it $47 bil. to be safe. That's the conservative estimate.

"The White House’s opponents... have largely attacked the Buffett Rule for being too small," Klein says. "The Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso tweets, 'I’m sorry, but if the Buffett Rule is your solution to the deficit problem, you’re not even on the same continent as serious.' His colleague, Phil Klein, produced a chart comparing the Buffett Rule to 'Obama’s deficits': As you might expect, the Buffett Rule is considerably smaller. Tiny, even."

And now we come to all the hypocrisy and evil. When you're dealing with Republican arguments, you can always count on hypocrisy and evil.

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Omens, Augurs, and Polling

Let's talk about superstition. If you wanted an unconventional -- but still accurate -- definition of superstition, you could say that it's the belief that unscientific methods can yield scientific results. Walking under a ladder predicts misfortune, while a rabbit's foot can skew results in your favor. Given this definition, a very short post at Buzzfeed may qualify as superstitious.

"Modern presidents who got re-elected were all leading in the polls at this point in their presidencies — as were some who lost anyway," wrote Zeke Miller yesterday. "Obama is in a statistical tie with Romney in the first Gallup daily tracking poll of the general election, and that might not be enough." The post goes on to spell out Obama's obvious electoral doom with a graphic.

But Nate Silver has a must-read post up about reading polling that pretty much blows this thinking out of the water. And when I say must-read, I mean go read it. In fact, bookmark it and check it later, when some partisan starts waving around some favorable finding or the media starts running wild with their close race narrative.

Silver's post consists of twelve rules to apply when reading about polling and it's the final rule that knocks out Buzzfeed's pseudo-scientific reading of history and the Gallup poll.

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News From the War on Women -- Still a Disaster for the GOP

It's as close to official as we're ever going to get; a second major poll shows the biggest losses in the Republican War on Women are being taken by Republicans themselves (here's the first). A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that in an Obama-Romney matchup, the President "has double-digit leads over the likely Republican presidential nominee on who would do a better job of protecting the middle class, addressing women’s issues, handling international affairs and dealing with health care."

Not surprisingly, Obama wins the "who would you rather have a beer with" question. Obama "has a better than 2-to-1 advantage as the more friendly and likable of the two, and nearly that margin as 'more inspiring.'" These are basically personality questions and Obama wins by being the only one who actually has one.

But the biggest blow to Romney's Oval Office dreams is dealt by women:

Romney faces a huge deficit among female voters, one that more than negates his advantage among men and represents one of the biggest challenges he and his advisers face as they turn toward the November election. Obama’s edge among women gives him a clear lead among all registered voters in a matchup with Romney.

Adding to the GOP's problem is that their gas price demagoguery isn't paying off. Of three possible culprits, President Obama is the one Americans are least likely to blame. "US Oil Companies" and "Other oil-producing countries" take the bigger hits.

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GOP Enthusiasm Continues to be Weak

I've already touched on the latest Pew poll briefly, but it really bears a closer look. In my original post, I used Pew to shoot down the "Obama's crashing poll numbers" narrative that's currently popular on the right. After all, it -- like most other recent polling -- shows the President's numbers rising, not falling. A grand total of two polls have shown Obama's approval dropping and his lead in the general election drying up. All polling since then shows the opposite -- Pew included.

But the Pew poll also shows a trend continuing and, perhaps, worsening -- Republican voters still don't like their choices. And the stark differences between the candidates (as much as Romney pretends to be as far to the right as Santorum) is actually exacerbating the problem. Behold the damage:

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

As voters look toward the fall election, Democrats express more enthusiasm for Obama than Republicans do for either of their party’s leading candidates. To be sure, however, this reflects the internal divisions within the party over who would be the best nominee, with each candidate receiving tepid support from those who would prefer to see the other candidate win.

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GOP on Gas Prices: 'Quick! Look Over There!'

We've seen this movie before. Ahead of a big holiday that traditionally involves post-winter travel, gas prices begin to rise. They rise in the spring, ahead of Memorial Day and Easter. Then later, they'll raise again before the Fourth of July. We've been spared the worst of this lately, because of a poor economy. Gas prices need to respond to the economy and low demand means low prices. The price of a good or recovering economy is higher prices. It can't really be helped. And, of course, there's always the "genius of the free market" -- in the form of speculators -- artificially inflate the price of oil.

In our present circumstance, speculators are the biggest problem. Oil prices are actually falling -- and prices at the pump rise. If you ever needed any evidence that the price of gas is inflated, there you go.

Still, it's the president taking the beating here.

Washington Post:

Disapproval of President Obama’s handling of the economy is heading higher — alongside gasoline prices — as a record number of Americans now give the president “strongly” negative reviews on the 2012 presidential campaign’s most important issue, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

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Breitbart's Final Smear

Andrew Breitbart's "last laugh" seems to be more of a hiccup. Before he died, Breitbart promised to release damning video from Barack Obama's college years. "I have videos," he told the collection of birthers, racists, and other assorted nuts at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). "This election we’re going to vet him."

This is the story of an empty threat laid bare by unforeseen events. It's becoming clear that Breitbart didn't have any damaging video, but that's not stopping his fans from clamoring for it. And that's a bit of a problem.

Brett Smiley, New York Magazine:

Breitbart.com's explosive, blockbuster video that would expose Barack Obama as a radical commie who wasn't vetted by the media was almost entirely hype.

Breitbart.com's editor-in-chief Joel Pollak and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro appeared together on Fox News Wednesday night with Sean Hannity to discuss the one-minute teaser clip released earlier today in which a younger Barack Obama, president of Harvard Law Review, spoke to a group at a rally about racial equality among the Harvard Law staff. The demonstration was led by professor Derrick Bell, who took an unpaid leave of absence in protest of a lack of female black professors at the school.

"Open your hearts and open your minds to the words of professor Derrick Bell," Obama said in 1991.

And that was it.

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GOP: T-Shirts -- Not Unlimited and Secret Corporate Cash -- are Destroying Democracy

Two stories provide an excellent example of what's wrong with our system of campaign finance. The first is an example of one of the almost daily Republican freakouts over nonexistent scandals. The second demonstrates the scandalous state of our campaign finance system -- and how that's just fine.

First example first:

Wall Street Journal:

At a New York fund-raising event Tuesday called "Runway to Win," President Barack Obama's re-election campaign plans to begin selling campaign-themed tote bags, T-shirts and accessories designed by more than two dozen famous designers.

Attendees can purchase a tote bag designed by Derek Lam for $75. A collectible makeup bag created by Richard Blanch with nail polish in Red-y To Win Red, Victory White and Bo Blue is going for $40. And a silk scarf featuring Mr. Obama's likeness by Thakoon Panichgul is $95. Profits from the sales will go to Mr. Obama's campaign chest.

Republicans contend the sale might violate campaign-finance rules. The gear will sell for a fraction of the price the designers' merchandise typically fetches at department stores. Republicans say that suggests they relied on corporate resources to keep costs low, which could amount to illegal campaign contributions. On Mr. Lam's website, handbags range in price from $340 to $1,890. The three scarves offered on Mr. Thakoon's website go for $325 apiece.

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Republicans vs. Reality

A lot is being made of a Wall Street Journal editorial out today that points out the obvious: House Republicans have completely screwed up the payroll tax cut extension. While it's nice to see the WSJ momentarily dip their toes in reality, they can't seem to bring themselves to go for full immersion. The editorial is crawling with half-truths and unfounded assumptions. In other words, it was obviously written by the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Still, when a rightwing propaganda outlet attacks the right wing, it's at least interesting to watch.

But has it set the GOP back on the right course? Not exactly. And by "not exactly," I mean "exactly not."

In a report on the whole fiasco, The Hill shares this tidbit:

House Republicans... think it is Democrats who will be blamed for not working with the GOP on a deal to extend the break for a year. In their talking points Tuesday, they emphasized that a conference committee was the normal process for resolving differences between the two chambers.

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GOP's Economic Sabotage Backfiring

I want you to try -- really try -- to see the following statement as rational or logical; "A payroll tax cut extension is too important for stimulating the economy to be allowed to expire after just two months. Therefore, we need to pass a year-long extension or nothing."

OK, if you got that to make any damned sense, let me know how you did it. Because I can't get it to work at all. If an extension of the payroll tax cut is so important that it absolutely must last for a year, in what insane universe does it make sense that no extension at all is preferable to a mere two months? Further, what's preventing you from coming back in two months and demanding an extension for the remaining ten? I take this argument and I turn it over and bend it and twist it and smack it with a hammer and I just can't get it to fit within any system of logic or rationality that I know of.

As a result, I'm forced to conclude that it's stupid. Those are the rules, I don't make them up. An argument that makes no damned sense at all is just a stupid argument.

And this stupid argument is the basis for the latest roadblock thrown up by House Republicans; It's a super-important, must-pass tax cut that they love so damned much that they're willing to kill it unless it's born perfect.

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Fox Unable to Fathom How GOP Screwed Themselves

Thursday, a Fox News poll showed that the public believes -- by an extremely wide margin -- that Pres. Barack Obama would probably be reelected. The video above is the reaction from the hosts of Fox's morning lobotomy patient show, Fox & Friends. As you can see, they're not taking it well. You expect Gretchen Carlson to look at the camera and ask, "We've been telling you Obama is pure evil! Haven't you people been listening to us?!?"

To be fair, the results aren't anything approaching reality, numbers-wise. The same poll shows the president winning, but that "Obama edges Romney by only 1 point and Gingrich by 5 points." So not by a comfortable margin by any means. In fact, you could call it a statistical dead heat in the Obama/Romney matchup. Still, in a non-numerical sense, the perception of that 44% who say that Obama will win is accurate within the poll, which does in fact show that Obama would win. Fox and Friends were freaking out that the largest percentage agreed with the findings of their poll.

What we see here again is what I've come to call the "clown show effect." While an endless series of GOP debates has amounted to free advertising for Republican candidates, that advertising hasn't been extremely positive. And, of course, Herman Cain's flameout didn't help any.

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Recognizing the Failure of Reaganomics

Nearly every presidential candidate in my memory has promised to change Washington for the better. Politicians need to do things differently, we're told. To work together, to find common ground, to put aside politics for the good of the nation. It all sounds good, but the problem with this promise is that you're promising to change someone else. If Washington doesn't want to change, Washington isn't going to change. And, as we've seen in recent years, if Washington actually wants to get worse, then there isn't a lot any one person can do about it. Barack Obama, like every candidate before him, promised to change the way Washington worked. The problem was that he meant it.

President Obama kept to this centrist, moderate path long after it became clear it didn't lead anywhere. Republicans became a jerking-kneed herd, obstructing anything Democratic, out of a fit of sore-loserism and the belief that political sabotage would pay off for them at the ballot box. Centrism should have died, but Obama seemed to believe there was still some hope. There wasn't. There can probably never be. Democracy is an adversarial system and fighting is built in. A system where one side wins and one side loses once every two years fosters competition, not cooperation. The basic argument behind centrism and moderation is deeply, deeply flawed; that cooperation is more important than the best ideas, that the process is more important than the result.

So it came as both a surprise and a relief when President Obama spoke at Osawatomie, Kansas yesterday. The centrist Obama was mostly absent. Instead, a partisan Obama stepped up to the podium.

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

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Poll: 99-Percenters' Argument Gains Traction

The current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country. America needs to reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency. The government should not provide financial aid to corporations and should not provide tax breaks to the rich.

The block of text above was not lifted from an Occupy Wall Street protester's overly verbose sign, as much as it expresses common sentiment among the occupiers. No, that text was taken from an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last night. Respondents were asked if they "strongly agree, mildly agree, feel neutral about, mildly disagree, or strongly disagree" with the statement and the majority agreed -- overwhelmingly. 76% said they agreed with the statement, with 60% agreeing strongly.

In the same poll, respondents were asked if they agreed with a more tea-flavored statement; "The national debt must be cut significantly by reducing spending and the size of government,including eliminating some federal agencies and programs. Regulations on business by the federal government should be reduced and instead, the private sector and individuals should have greater control. The government should not raise taxes on anyone."

53% agreed, with 33% agreeing strongly. Obviously, there's some overlap here of those who want to be able to have their cake and eat it too. After all, you can't "reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency," while saying that "regulations on business by the federal government should be reduced and instead, the private sector and individuals should have greater control." It really has to be one or the other.

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One Way in Which Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party Should be Different

Catching up after my one day vacation from blogging yesterday, I noticed two items that are somewhat related getting a lot of attention. The first was a comparison by President Obama of the Tea Party and the Occupy protesters, the other was a poll of the Occupy crowd at Zucotti Park.

First things first; there seems to be some debate over whether Obama's assessment is accurate. But that debate seems to be over the headline ABC News chose to give its post on the web -- "Obama: Occupy Wall Street 'Not That Different' From Tea Party Protests." Left and right seem to bristle at the comparison, but if you bother to look at what the President actually said, it's hard to see any way to call him wrong.

"I understand the frustrations being expressed in those protests," Obama told ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper in the interview to air this evening on ABC News "Nightline" from Jamestown, N.C.

"In some ways, they're not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party. Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren't looking out for them," he said.

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The GOP's Idea of 'Tax Fairness'

If anyone needs any more evidence that the Tea Party are a bunch of chumps, here you go; the Tea Party -- which many say stands for "Taxed Enough Already" -- supports a political party that openly argues for raising most of their taxes.

Talking Points Memo:

You can almost always count on Republican presidential candidates to be united in their opposition to more taxes for the rich. But this time around, the 2012 field is standing lockstep behind a less traditional idea: the middle class pays too little in taxes.

Thanks to a strange convergence of conservative ideological trends since President Obama’s election, Republicans now are expected to protest the entire bottom half of taxpayers’ contributions as too stingy even while they proclaim Americans are “Taxed Enough Already.” And they’ve yet to figure out a policy that will satisfy both complaints at once.

In recent months, nearly every major Republican candidate has name-checked a popular statistic that 47% of Americans who file taxes paid no income tax in 2009. Given the GOP’s anti-tax zeal you’d think they’d be celebrating. Nope!

Keep in mind, this is the same side of the aisle that argues that taxation is theft. So, by their own reasoning, they're now arguing that government needs to steal from more people than it already does.

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Obama Jobs Plan Would Be Effective, So Of Course It Must Be Killed

Looks like President Obama's jobs plan is getting the thumbs-up from economists.

Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.

Economists in the survey are less optimistic than Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has cited estimates for a 1.5 percent boost to gross domestic product. Even so, the program may bolster Obama’s re-election prospects by lowering a jobless rate that has stayed near 9 percent or more since April 2009.

If you want to understand Republican economic policies, that last sentence should tell you all you need to know. President Barack Obama must not be reelected. And if that means that America takes a hit, then so be it.

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Republican Anti-Terrorism Strategy: 'Freak the Hell Out!'

If the failed terrorist bombing in Detroit has taught us anything, it's that there's no such thing as terrorist failures -- at least, as far as the right is concerned. All it takes is for someone to try and Republicans are ready to throw out everything we've stood for for more than two centuries. With Republicans at least, it's impossible for terrorists not to win, since even a failure is all it takes for them to call for a radical and fundamental change to our way of life. If terrorists are counting on anything, it's that all Americans are as stupid, as cowardly, as reactionary, and as easily manipulated as the Republican section of our populace.

In speaking about the intelligence failures leading up to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt on an airliner, President Obama took a swing at this Republican defeatism -- although, more obliquely than I would've liked.

Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses, but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am President, we will never hand them that victory. We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children.

If there's one thing you can count on with modern conservatives, it's that you'll never have your courage called upon by them. You'll never be asked to stay strong, to be defiant in the face of danger -- real or perceived -- or stay true to American principles of fairness, justice, and freedom.

No, you'll be asked to panic, to throw away everything that makes America great, and to beg government to protect you. As I said, for Republicans, there is no such thing as a failed terrorist attack. Every attempt is a huge success that never fails to get them to crap their pants.





Part of this is that conservatives are naturally fearful. But another part is that they're ambitious and without conscience. If they can attack someone for political gain, they will -- without fail. It doesn't make any difference whether those attacks are true. And it certainly doesn't matter whether those attacks are helpful. The only thing that matters is that those attacks might be effective. Then they'll attack away. Republicans are in permanent campaign mode; fingers in the wind, always trying to manipulate polling. If their attack is stupid, so what? They believe you're as stupid and cowardly as they are, so stupid doesn't matter.

Which is why we have people like Rep. Peter King making insanely pointless statements like this one from Good Morning America earlier this week:

"You are saying someone should be held accountable. Name one other specific recommendation the president could implement right now to fix this," host George Stephanopoulos said to King.

"I think one main thing would be to — just himself to use the word terrorism more often," said King, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee.

If this statement doesn't immediately strike you as vapid and idiotic, then you've got Sarah Palin's book on your shelf. If the president just says "terrorism," then you're automatically safer. Why? It's freakin' magic, I guess. Never mind that Obama uses the word all the time, King -- and the rest of his party -- has no problem lying in order to make it seem like Obama is ignoring terrorism. Mostly because they think you're stupid, they think you're a coward, and they want to win in November. If that means being counterproductive, then bring on the division. Who cares if it's baseless and idiotic and fearmongering?

"Instead of debating the stimulus package, Republicans wanted to explore a five-year spending freeze," explains Steve Benen. "Instead of debating health care reform, Republicans wanted to talk about death panels. Instead of debating cap-and-trade policy, Republicans wanted to talk about 'Climategate.' Instead of debating national security policy, Republicans want to pretend the president doesn't use a word he uses all the time."

It stands to reason that if the strategy for 2010 is "Obama and Democrats are wrong about everything," it doesn't matter much what the right answers are. And, armed with this strategy, Republicans march forth without the right answers. In fact, they head out with few answers at all. But that doesn't matter; if things actually get worse, if people die from terrorism and more lose their jobs and more lose their health coverage and the climate gets worse, then that just proves what hopeless screwups the Democrats are. We're supposed to ignore the fact that Republicans are blocking everything, regardless of its merits, based on 100% pure, unadulterated fearmongering and BS.

The American people have experienced a government that worked on appeals to fearfulness, sloganeering, and propaganda not long ago. Nearly everyone agrees it was a huge failure. Even Republicans would rather pretend the Bush administration never happened. Yet here they are, grabbing onto the same failed strategy -- not because it worked so well the last time around, but because they think it's bad for Democrats.

Who cares if it's good for the nation?

-Wisco


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Hoekstra's Contradictory Reasoning

Let's play dueling quotes. First off is a statement on the 2009 anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks:

It´s no accident that our homeland has not been attacked in the years since 9/11, nor has it been a lack of desire on al-Qaeda´s part, it´s because we have prevented it. The pain and suffering we felt on that tragic day led us to act to prevent such attacks from happening again.

Now, a Christmas twitterpation on the attempted Detroit attack:

Administration says attempted terrorist attack. No. It was a terrorist attack! Just not as successful as they (AQ) planned.

These contradictory statements were both made by Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra. It took me maybe five minutes to dig up the first quote. It's been an article of faith among the GOP that there were no terrorist attacks after 9/11 under Bush, so I knew that Hoekstra had to have said it -- never mind that it isn't true. By Pete's revised reasoning, it's doubly untrue now. It's been doubly untrue since 2002, when shoe-bomber Richard Reid failed to carry off a similar plan.





It may have been easy to find Hoekstra's self-contradiction, but that doesn't mean it's going to get a lot of play in the media. If the media ever bothered to look back in time, they'd quickly conclude that he's a clown. Not only has he made an ass of himself here, but in 2006 he joined then-Senator Rick Santorum in claiming that stale chemical weapons found in Iraq qualified as weapons of mass destruction. At that time, few in the media pointed out that a WMD actually has to cause mass destruction. Chemical weapons degraded by time don't count. That is, unless you want to call a headache "mass destruction." In any case, if someone had made the case that we had to invade Iraq because Saddam had headache bombs, I really doubt the public would've backed it. In trying to justifying the invasion after the fact, Santorum and Hoekstra made fools of themselves.

The point I'm getting to here is that Pete Hoekstra isn't the brightest bulb in the box. To put it bluntly, he's kind of a dope. Shooting down his arguments isn't all that hard to do, because they're already in a tailspin as soon as they're made.

Which begs the question; why isn't anyone shooting them down?

Greg Sargent, Plum Line:

Why aren’t Democrats backing up Obama at a time when he’s under fire from the right?

Yesterday, I posted on how conservatives like Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Rep. Pete King, and Newt Gingrich were using last Friday’s attempted bombing in Detroit as a hook to attack Obama’s approach to terrorist attacks and the campaign against Islamic extremism.

And, yet, Democrats have been silent in the face of these broadsides. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the Chairman of the House Intelliegence Committee, has been effectively AWOL from the news. Rep. Bennie Thompson and Senator Jay Rockefeller have called for investigations, but have not made any real attempt to articulate a defense of Obama’s unwillingness to escalate. No one else seems willing to step up.

As I've just demonstrated, it's not like it's especially hard to do. It doesn't take a lot of effort to make a fool look like a fool. Other criticisms have been just as dumb. Some have made a lot of noise about the fact that the would-be bomber -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- had been reported by his father as a potential terrorist, but the fact is that authorities determined that the evidence was too thin to act on. If the accusation makes you guilty, then anyone can get you on the no-fly list by simply saying you might be a terrorist.

But Democrats seem to be unaware that the object of the game is to get the puck in the other team's net. Say what you like about Obama's poll ratings, he's still the most popular politician in Washington. He's also the leader of the party. Not only would backing him up be pretty much effortless, it'd be smart politics. You can make Republicans look like fools without working up a sweat.

-Wisco


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Healthcare Reform Moves Forward

As of (very) early this morning, healthcare reform has become a near certainty... Although, maybe we should be calling it healthcare near-reform. What was a good bill in the House of Representatives -- Stupak aside -- became a deeply compromised bill in the Senate. Let's not forget that the bill had an original deadline of August, but Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided against woking through the summer recess -- something Nancy Pelosi was willing to do in the House. This killed all momentum behind the it and dropped the whole debate in the lap of the town hall crazies. Had Reid stuck to the deadline -- or, at least, made the effort to -- we might've had a very different bill. Add to this Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' irrational fetish for bipartisanship and we see the Senate Democratic leadership dropping the ball at almost every opportunity. Given the self-constructed obstacles people like Reid and Baucus put up for themselves, we can be excused for saying that seeing even this much-weaker bill move forward is a Christmas miracle. Democratic leadership didn't entirely blow it, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Baucus' snipe hunt for Republican votes looks especially foolish now, with the every Republican voting to sustain the filibuster that was broken last night. There was never a hope in hell of a bipartisan bill -- good or bad.

But the Senate leadership wasn't alone in turning a fairly decent bill into a collection of compromises. Sen. Russ Feingold says he'll vote for the final bill, but he's not happy about it. And he places the blame for the loss of a public option on a lack of leadership from another branch of government.

I've been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.

But while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high. This bill significantly expands coverage and helps protect Wisconsinites from high costs and insurance company abuses, such as denying or restricting coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The bill also improves a flawed Medicare formula that denies Wisconsin fair reimbursement rates, encourages the kind of low-cost, high-value care practiced in our state, increases access to home and community-based long-term care, and reduces federal budget deficits by $132 billion over the next decade.

Throughout this entire debate, the White House has been largely AWOL. And this Senate bill shows it.





In President Obama's defense, this has been his approach to nearly everything -- and it's been working. It just hasn't worked here. But the fact is that you don't play the same strategy every game. When it becomes clear that everything's going all to hell, you tweak your strategy and try to change the game. That didn't happen.

The word you'll hear most to describe this bill -- even from supporters -- will be "flawed." But it's literally better than the nothing we have now. What we call a "healthcare system" isn't a system at all. This bill makes things somewhat more systematic, but we still won't have an actual system. What we'll have is a better market.

We'll also have something to improve on. I've said here before that you can't improve something that doesn't exist and, while I was talking about a public option at the time, I'll take this. If you can say anything about the bill the Senate passed last night, it's that it's eminently improvable. Something exists and this will be revisited.

In arguing in favor of the bill and in speaking for her late husband Ted, Victoria Kennedy wrote in the Washington Post yesterday:

-- Insurance protections like the ones Ted fought for his entire life would become law.

-- Thirty million Americans who do not have coverage would finally be able to afford it. Ninety-four percent of Americans would be insured. Americans would finally be able to live without fear that a single illness could send them into financial ruin.

-- Insurance companies would no longer be able to deny people the coverage they need because of a preexisting illness or condition. They would not be able to drop coverage when people get sick. And there would be a limit on how much they can force Americans to pay out of their own pockets when they do get sick.

-- Small-business owners would no longer have to fear being forced to lay off workers or shut their doors because of exorbitant insurance rates. Medicare would be strengthened for the millions of seniors who count on it.

-- And by eliminating waste and inefficiency in our health-care system, this bill would bring down the deficit over time.

Better, inarguably. "Health care would finally be a right, and not a privilege, for the citizens of this country," she wrote.

It's been pointed out that getting any sort of reform in his first term is a tremendous accomplishment for President Obama -- and he got this far in his first year of that term. It is a tremendous accomplishment and, despite its many flaws, is a net gain for the nation.

But you've got to wonder how much more Barack Obama and Senate leaders could've gotten if they'd actually shown up for it.

-Wisco


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Here Comes a New Civil War!

Brother against brother, a house divided against itself. Goober peas and Johnny Reb. Rhett and Scarlett. Banjo vs. fiddle. Turns out it's all going to happen again...

EU Times:

Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued orders to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to “begin immediately” increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

According to these reports, Obama has had over these past weeks “numerous” meetings with his war council about how best to manage the expected implosion of his Nations banking system while at the same time attempting to keep the United States military hegemony over the World in what Russian Military Analysts state is a “last ditch gambit” whose success is “far from certain”.

This isn't the start of a second Civil War, but the birth of a new wingnut meme. The gullibility of some people seems to be endless. If I ever want to generate a whole bunch of traffic to this blog, I'll post the shocking revelation that Barack Obama plans to sell Alaska back to Russia. The credulous teabagger masses will flock like sheep to the site.





Will sad, lonely men soon be writing long, beautiful letters to their Dearest Ophelia? What do you think? I'd never heard of EU Times before, but one glance tells me that it makes WorldNetDaily look calm and reasoned. A sidebar titled "Random Articles" offered stories like "Third World Immigration Turns London into Middle East Battleground" and "Zion is FAILING – We know EVERYTHING!" The site offers sections on "European Pride" and "Survival" -- which apparently has something to do with "White Extinction."

According to Southern Poverty Law Center's Larry Keller, EUT "carries links to American white supremacist publications like American Renaissance (whose editor says black people cannot sustain civilization)..."

Despite the fact that the source for this story is so obviously untrustworthy, it's beginning to gain some traction among the perpetually paranoid and conspiracy-minded right. For people who believe that Barack Obama isn't actually an American, that there are plans to round up conservatives and put them in concentration camps, and that the president is either a Communist or the Antichrist, this really isn't much of a stretch. They've ready set the bar for what qualifies as proof pretty damned low. So seeing people running with this on social networking sites isn't all that surprising.

Already, it's gaining some legitimacy on the right. Keller points us to the popular Libertarian site LewRockwell.com, where Michael Gaddy warns that this is absolutely going to happen. It's all true, true, true and it means that big gummint is coming to take all your guns away.

It would appear those who call themselves "public servants" believe the people they supposedly serve have become dissatisfied with their job performance and will resort to some form of civil disobedience, which will necessitate military intervention. According to the article, Obama believes the reason for this civil unrest to be an expected "implosion" of this country’s financial systems. Should these events occur, members of the military would be forced to decide whether they would support their government, which gave hundreds of billions to government cronies in the financial sector, or their country.

A prudent man would speculate if the government so fears coming civil unrest, will they move to seize firearms throughout the country and use these military forces along with law enforcement to do so? I believe the answer can be found in the events surrounding the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Government forces there not only seized firearms from private citizens but also relocated many citizens against their will.

No, Mike. A prudent man would conclude that this is all horse crap and that maybe the prudent thing to do wouldn't include taking the say-so of an obviously white supremacist site. That strikes me as what a prudent man would do. Of course, Gaddy goes on to freak out over the supposed "FEMA camps" Obama's going to put conservatives into, so "prudent man" doesn't really seem to describe him very well. Maybe a better term would be "gullible chump."

But it's not that the chumps are falling for this that bothers me so much. It's that they believe what they want to believe and they're beginning to believe this. They want to believe another civil war is coming, which says more about their own desires than it does those of President Obama.

-Wisco


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Birther Issue Won't Go Away

Among the stereotypically crazy wingnut beliefs is birtherism -- the idea that Barack Obama is really an illegal alien, making him constitutionally unqualified to be president. It's been so widely debunked that there's really no point in doing it again here. Suffice it to say that, if you still buy into this thing, you're either 1) astoundingly ignorant, 2) a gullible ass, or 3) an astoundingly ignorant gullible ass. At this point, it takes a real effort to buy this urban legend. Apparently, there are still plenty willing to make the effort.

In July, a Research2000 poll found that 11% of respondents answered the question, "Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?" with "no." As always in these polls lately, it was Republicans who were throwing the curve toward "crazy." 4% of Democrats thought the president was an alien, with 3% saying they weren't sure. 8% of Independents said that Obama wasn't really American and 9% weren't sure.

For Republican voters, it was 28% non-citizen and 30% unsure. 58% of Republican respondents were either birthers or wondered whether birther charges had merit.





In the mainstream media, the birther movement has lost a lot of steam. After a series of frivolous lawsuits turned into a series of humiliating losses, it quickly became clear that this whole birther thing wasn't going to go anywhere. Where there's smoke, there may be fire. But the media realized that there wasn't even smoke. In the average American's mind, the whole thing had blown over.

But, as the poll above shows, Republican voters are most definitely not average Americans. With more than a quarter of GOP voters being genuine birthers and nearly a third still needing to be convinced one way or another, a solid majority -- 58% -- of Republicans are either birthers or birther-friendly. The average Republican voter is an unaverage American, far outside the mainstream. Given the amount of information out there, even being agnostic about the question is an irrational position. If you wonder whether President Obama's an illegal alien, then you're just as much of a crank as someone who's convinced of it. It's like wondering about the existence of Santa Claus; not knowing means you're a nut. If you're not convinced by now, nothing will ever convince you.

Which segues nicely into the nutty '08 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Whether Sarah's an actual birther, a birther agnostic, or an opportunist trying to take advantage of the widespread conspiracy theorism of the GOP base, she tried to use the issue to her advantage recently by questioning the legitimacy of the president's citizenship and, with it, his win last November.

Huffington Post:

Sarah Palin declared on Thursday that the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate is "rightfully" an issue with the American public, and that it is "fair game" for politicians to question Obama's citizenship.

The comments came during an interview with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries, who asked Palin whether she planned to "make the birth certificate an issue" if she runs for president in 2012.

"I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue," Palin said. "I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers."

But she did fault the McCain campaign for not making an issue of it.

"I think it's a fair question just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game," she said, telling Humphries "the McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area. We didn't call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don't think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we're seeing manifest in the administration."

And here's where things get fun. These comments got some play and Palin almost immediately backpedaled, turning -- as she always does -- to her fanbase on Facebook. She wasn't a birther, she'd never been a birther, and everyone who said she was was being terribly unfair.

But consider the logic here; if her Facebook posting is true, then Palin was faulting the McCain campaign for not making an issue of a "scandal" she knew didn't actually exist -- i.e., she was willing to lie to get elected. Conversely, if the interview with Humphries was true, then her later Facebook retraction-in-disguise is untrue. Palin has painted herself into a corner where simple logic dictates that she must be lying. Of course, this doesn't hurt her any with her base, since cognitive dissonance is an art form on the right. They are impervious to logic.

But what we're learning here is that the birther issue isn't going to go away. At least one Republican has begun fundraising for '10 using the issue. With a majority of Republican voters at least open to the question, it's nearly impossible for candidates to ignore.

But it's not going to fly with Independents, which presents a problem. Palin tried to have her cake and eat it too and wound up just making a fool of herself. Then again, she's not exactly a master strategist and someone else might just be able to thread that needle better.

In the end, this represents just one more problem facing Republicans in 2010 -- how to address the concerns of the wingnut majority in the GOP without scaring off everyone else. Part of the problem that the McCain/Palin campaign faced was the lynch mob aura that had settled over their later rallies and appearances; i.e., the crazies backing the campaign began to take over the campaign's messaging. McCain tried to rein it in, but it was too late. Once that particular wildfire starts, it's only going to spread. And people other than your base find it off-putting at best and terrifying at worst.

So good luck with that guys. If you're not careful, your campaign appearances are all going to turn into teabagger rallies.

I don't think that's going to work out for you.

-Wisco


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