Well, Republicans? Answer! :-)
-R
If Clinton had outsourced bin Laden retaliation
By MARTIN SCHRAM
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Gazing at the 24/7 news from Pakistan showing the democratic disaster produced by our heralded ally in the war in terror, a thought occurs:
What would George W. Bush and Dick Cheney be saying today if they were campaigning politicians running against a President Clinton (either one of them) who had outsourced our responsibility to retaliate against Osama bin Laden for his 9/11 attacks on our homeland?
What would Karl Rove have been whipping up for Bush to say and what would Cheney (who needs no Roving ambassador) be saying on his own about a president from the other party who had chosen to allow al Qaeda's leader to escape into Pakistan's northern tribal areas of Islamic militancy?
What if it were one of the Clintons who had decided not to pursue bin Laden into that safe sanctuary -- despite having made these speeches in which he/she properly told the world that he/she would not permit al Qaeda to have a safe sanctuary anywhere?
What if one of the Clintons had made a deal with President/Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in which Musharraf assured America he would mount a military campaign to drive al Qaeda from the tribal badlands of Pakistan's north? And Musharraf never made the vigorous fight to get bin Laden that he'd promised -- but then made a deal with the tribal leaders in which he said he'd pull his troops back? And America's helpless president could do nothing but pretend it was OK?
What if the reason a President Clinton hadn't teamed up to launch a joint military operation with Pakistan to capture bin Laden was that he/she had over-extended the U.S. military and gotten the troops pinned down in Iraq -- and had to divert resources from efforts to crush the forces that attacked America's mainland in 2001 so that in 2007 he/she still couldn't complete the retaliation he/she had pledged to lead? What if a President Clinton had actually allowed bin Laden to remain at large, videotaping his taunts against America, whose president had vowed to get him, dead or alive, many years ago?
We all know the answer: What Bush-Cheney-Rove and company would have done to either Clinton would have made what they did to one-time Vietnam War POW John McCain, triple-amputee Vietnam veteran Max Cleland and Vietnam Purple Heart medalist John Kerry look like a Crawford, Texas, picnic. They would have accused either Clinton of selling out and ducking out, of cutting and running from the vow to get Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda.
A President Clinton would have been accused of being shortsighted and weak-kneed and much worse. And those accusations would have been accurate. For the president who pinned America's war-on-terror hopes and homeland safety so fervently upon the medals on the generalissimo's chest has indeed let the country down. Big-time.
The other day down at the ranch in Crawford, President Bush defended Musharraf fervently. "President Musharraf, right after the attacks on September the 11th, made a decision and the decision was to stand with the United States against the extremists inside Pakistan," Bush told reporters. "In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he's acted on that advice."
Bush-Cheney-Rove would have had America believing that a President Clinton who had done all of the above had sold America and our Star-Spangled Banner to the terrorists. They would have had us distrusting and despising a president who had been so weak after talking so tough.
And they would have been right.
The strange thing about the Democrats who are running full speed for president is that they have not been able to make Americans understand the weakness that its president has demonstrated to the world while posing as a strongman. The leader of the Republican Party that once stood for hard-line military responses in the name of national security has shown the world that it was possible to attack America's homeland and survive. And even make videotapes taunting America's commander in chief, six years after the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Hacks 'R Us
Ahhh, cronyism....
-R
Thanks for stopping by the booth, Howard Krongard
Howard Krongard, the State Department’s Inspector General, has developed quite a reputation. Ostensibly, Krongard is responsible for being an internal watchdog, using his office as a check against fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.
As it turns out, Krongard has been an Inspector General in need of a general inspection. Instead of a watchdog that prevents and roots out wrongdoing, we have an IG who helps cover the scandals up. It led Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to invite Krongard to the House today for a chat with his committee.
It really hasn’t gone well.
Right off the bat, Waxman dropped a bombshell: Krongard’s brother, former CIA Executive Director A.B. ‘Buzzy’ Krongard, sits on the board for Blackwater USA. Considering that Blackwater is a controversial State Department contractor, it starts to look like a conflict of interest.
This morning, in response to questions from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Krongard not only denied that his brother serves as a Blackwater board member, but also said he recently asked his brother about his involvement with the company. “I called him and I asked him directly, he has told me he does have any involvement,” Krongard said. He dismissed the very idea as an “ugly rumor.”
Shortly thereafter, Krongard conceded that the “ugly rumor” is true.
KRONGARD: This is in response to something I think you found important. During the break I did contact my brother. I reached him at home — he is not at the hotel. But I learned that he had been at the advisory board meeting yesterday. I had not been aware of that, and I want to state on the record right now that I hereby recuse myself from any matters having to do with Blackwater.
WAXMAN: I see. You indicated you had called your brother to ask him earlier whether he was on the board. He told you he wasn’t.
KRONGARD: Well that was about six weeks ago, and I was not aware — and this board meeting happened yesterday, and I found out just during the break that he had in fact attended yesterday.
Wouldn’t you know it, some lawmakers found all of this a little hard to believe.
Indeed, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), hardly an administration critic, called Krongard’s story “pretty outrageous,” and told the IG that “no one” is going to believe his story.
TP provides the context of why this matters:
One of the charges against Krongard is that he blocked a House investigation into whether weapons illegally smuggled into Iraq by Blackwater employees were then “sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.” In a Sept. 18, Waxman revealed that Krongard had ordered his investigators to “IMMEDIATELY” stop cooperating with federal investigators.
Blackwater is a State Department contractor and has received hundreds of millions of dollars of work from the government. The Bush administration has repeatedly rushed to the defense of Blackwater after the deadly September shootout that killed 17 Iraqi civilians, even promising legal immunity to the company’s guards. It also awarded a new $92 million contract to Blackwater just weeks after the shooting.
Where does the Bush gang find these guys? Hacks ‘R Us?
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
This is nearly a couple weeks old, from the NY Times, but is a really good article worth sharing. He raises a very good point - who do you want to see the tax revenue; us or the OPEC countries? The Republicans are running out of arguments on this one...
-Ryan
November 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Two dates — two numbers. Read them and weep for what could have, and should have, been. On Sept. 11, 2001, the OPEC basket oil price was $25.50 a barrel. On Nov. 13, 2007, the OPEC basket price was around $90 a barrel.
In the wake of 9/11, some of us pleaded for a “patriot tax” on gasoline of $1 or more a gallon to diminish the transfers of wealth we were making to the very countries who were indirectly financing the ideologies of intolerance that were killing Americans and in order to spur innovation in energy efficiency by U.S. manufacturers.
But no, George Bush and Dick Cheney had a better idea. And the Democrats went along for the ride. They were all going to let the market work and not let our government shape that market — like OPEC does.
You’d think that one person, just one, running for Congress or the Senate would take a flier and say: “Oh, what the heck. I’m going to lose anyway. Why not tell the truth? I’ll support a gasoline tax.”
Not one. Everyone just runs away from the “T-word” and watches our wealth run away to Russia, Venezuela and Iran.
I can’t believe that someone could not win the following debate:
REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE: “My Democratic opponent, true to form, wants to raise your taxes. Yes, now he wants to raise your taxes at the gasoline pump by $1 a gallon. Another tax-and-spend liberal who wants to get into your pocket.”
DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: “Yes, my opponent is right. I do favor a gasoline tax phased in over 12 months. But let’s get one thing straight: My opponent and I are both for a tax. I just prefer that my taxes go to the U.S. Treasury, and he’s ready to see his go to the Russian, Venezuelan, Saudi and Iranian treasuries. His tax finances people who hate us. Mine would offset some of our payroll taxes, pay down our deficit, strengthen our dollar, stimulate energy efficiency and shore up Social Security. It’s called win-win-win-win-win for America. My opponent’s strategy is sit back, let the market work and watch America lose-lose-lose-lose-lose.” If you can’t win that debate, you don’t belong in politics.
“Think about it,” says Phil Verleger, an energy economist. “We could have replaced the current payroll tax with a gasoline tax. Middle-class consumers would have seen increased take-home pay of between six and nine percent, even though they would have had to pay more at the pump. A stronger foundation for future economic growth would have been laid by keeping more oil revenue home, and we might not now be facing a recession.”
As a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the Harvard University economist and former Bush adviser N. Gregory Mankiw has argued: “the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to [U.S.] consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.”
But U.S. consumers would have known that, with a higher gasoline tax locked in for good, pump prices would never be going back to the old days, adds Mr. Verleger, so they would have a much stronger incentive to switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles and Detroit would have had to make more hybrids to survive. This would have put Detroit five years ahead of where it is now. “It’s called the America wins program,” said Mr. Verleger, “instead of the petro-states win program.”
We simply cannot go on being as dumb as we wanna be. If you hate the war in Iraq, then you want a gasoline tax so you can argue that we can pull out of there without remaining dependent on an even more unstable region. If you want to see us negotiate with Iran, not bomb it, you want a gasoline tax that will give us some real leverage by helping to reduce the income of the ayatollahs.
If you’re a conservative and you believed that the Iraq war was necessary to drive reform in the Middle East, but the war has failed to do that and we need “Plan B” for the same objective, you want a gasoline tax that will reduce the flow of wealth to petrolist leaders who will never change if all they have to do is drill well holes rather than educate and empower their people.
If you want to see America thrive by becoming the most energy productive economy in the world — a title that now belongs to Japan, which doesn’t have a drop of oil in its soil — you want a gasoline tax, which will only spur U.S. innovation in energy efficiency.
President Bush squandered a historic opportunity to put America on a radically different energy course after 9/11. But considering how few Democrats or Republicans are ready to tell the people the truth on this issue, maybe we have the president we deserve. I refuse to believe that, but I’m starting to doubt myself.
-Ryan
November 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Two dates — two numbers. Read them and weep for what could have, and should have, been. On Sept. 11, 2001, the OPEC basket oil price was $25.50 a barrel. On Nov. 13, 2007, the OPEC basket price was around $90 a barrel.
In the wake of 9/11, some of us pleaded for a “patriot tax” on gasoline of $1 or more a gallon to diminish the transfers of wealth we were making to the very countries who were indirectly financing the ideologies of intolerance that were killing Americans and in order to spur innovation in energy efficiency by U.S. manufacturers.
But no, George Bush and Dick Cheney had a better idea. And the Democrats went along for the ride. They were all going to let the market work and not let our government shape that market — like OPEC does.
You’d think that one person, just one, running for Congress or the Senate would take a flier and say: “Oh, what the heck. I’m going to lose anyway. Why not tell the truth? I’ll support a gasoline tax.”
Not one. Everyone just runs away from the “T-word” and watches our wealth run away to Russia, Venezuela and Iran.
I can’t believe that someone could not win the following debate:
REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE: “My Democratic opponent, true to form, wants to raise your taxes. Yes, now he wants to raise your taxes at the gasoline pump by $1 a gallon. Another tax-and-spend liberal who wants to get into your pocket.”
DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: “Yes, my opponent is right. I do favor a gasoline tax phased in over 12 months. But let’s get one thing straight: My opponent and I are both for a tax. I just prefer that my taxes go to the U.S. Treasury, and he’s ready to see his go to the Russian, Venezuelan, Saudi and Iranian treasuries. His tax finances people who hate us. Mine would offset some of our payroll taxes, pay down our deficit, strengthen our dollar, stimulate energy efficiency and shore up Social Security. It’s called win-win-win-win-win for America. My opponent’s strategy is sit back, let the market work and watch America lose-lose-lose-lose-lose.” If you can’t win that debate, you don’t belong in politics.
“Think about it,” says Phil Verleger, an energy economist. “We could have replaced the current payroll tax with a gasoline tax. Middle-class consumers would have seen increased take-home pay of between six and nine percent, even though they would have had to pay more at the pump. A stronger foundation for future economic growth would have been laid by keeping more oil revenue home, and we might not now be facing a recession.”
As a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the Harvard University economist and former Bush adviser N. Gregory Mankiw has argued: “the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to [U.S.] consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.”
But U.S. consumers would have known that, with a higher gasoline tax locked in for good, pump prices would never be going back to the old days, adds Mr. Verleger, so they would have a much stronger incentive to switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles and Detroit would have had to make more hybrids to survive. This would have put Detroit five years ahead of where it is now. “It’s called the America wins program,” said Mr. Verleger, “instead of the petro-states win program.”
We simply cannot go on being as dumb as we wanna be. If you hate the war in Iraq, then you want a gasoline tax so you can argue that we can pull out of there without remaining dependent on an even more unstable region. If you want to see us negotiate with Iran, not bomb it, you want a gasoline tax that will give us some real leverage by helping to reduce the income of the ayatollahs.
If you’re a conservative and you believed that the Iraq war was necessary to drive reform in the Middle East, but the war has failed to do that and we need “Plan B” for the same objective, you want a gasoline tax that will reduce the flow of wealth to petrolist leaders who will never change if all they have to do is drill well holes rather than educate and empower their people.
If you want to see America thrive by becoming the most energy productive economy in the world — a title that now belongs to Japan, which doesn’t have a drop of oil in its soil — you want a gasoline tax, which will only spur U.S. innovation in energy efficiency.
President Bush squandered a historic opportunity to put America on a radically different energy course after 9/11. But considering how few Democrats or Republicans are ready to tell the people the truth on this issue, maybe we have the president we deserve. I refuse to believe that, but I’m starting to doubt myself.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Playing the Race Card
Interesting article about how the Republicans learned how to subtly play the race card to get southern votes, starting back around the time of Nixon, and still going strong today. This includes the ol' Gipper, who wasn't quite the saint many like to remember him to be.
-Ryan
Republicans and Race
Republicans and Race
Over the past few weeks there have been a number of commentaries about Ronald Reagan’s legacy, specifically about whether he exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement.
The controversy unfortunately obscures the larger point, which should be undeniable: the central role of this backlash in the rise of the modern conservative movement.
The centrality of race — and, in particular, of the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support of Democrats to overwhelming support of Republicans — is obvious from voting data.
For example, everyone knows that white men have turned away from the Democrats over God, guns, national security and so on. But what everyone knows isn’t true once you exclude the South from the picture. As the political scientist Larry Bartels points out, in the 1952 presidential election 40 percent of non-Southern white men voted Democratic; in 2004, that figure was virtually unchanged, at 39 percent.
More than 40 years have passed since the Voting Rights Act, which Reagan described in 1980 as “humiliating to the South.” Yet Southern white voting behavior remains distinctive. Democrats decisively won the popular vote in last year’s House elections, but Southern whites voted Republican by almost two to one.
The G.O.P.’s own leaders admit that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization.” So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.
And Ronald Reagan was among the “some” who tried to benefit from racial polarization.
True, he never used explicit racial rhetoric. Neither did Richard Nixon. As Thomas and Mary Edsall put it in their classic 1991 book, “Chain Reaction: The impact of race, rights and taxes on American politics,” “Reagan paralleled Nixon’s success in constructing a politics and a strategy of governing that attacked policies targeted toward blacks and other minorities without reference to race — a conservative politics that had the effect of polarizing the electorate along racial lines.”
Thus, Reagan repeatedly told the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen — a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud. He never mentioned the woman’s race, but he didn’t have to.
There are many other examples of Reagan’s tacit race-baiting in the historical record. My colleague Bob Herbert described some of these examples in a recent column. Here’s one he didn’t mention: During the 1976 campaign Reagan often talked about how upset workers must be to see an able-bodied man using food stamps at the grocery store. In the South — but not in the North — the food-stamp user became a “strapping young buck” buying T-bone steaks.
Now, about the Philadelphia story: in December 1979 the Republican national committeeman from Mississippi wrote a letter urging that the party’s nominee speak at the Neshoba Country Fair, just outside the town where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. It would, he wrote, help win over “George Wallace inclined voters.”
Sure enough, Reagan appeared, and declared his support for states’ rights — which everyone took to be a coded declaration of support for segregationist sentiments.
Reagan’s defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.
Why does this history matter now? Because it tells why the vision of a permanent conservative majority, so widely accepted a few years ago, is wrong.
The point is that we have become a more diverse and less racist country over time. The “macaca” incident, in which Senator George Allen’s use of a racial insult led to his election defeat, epitomized the way in which America has changed for the better.
And because conservative ascendancy has depended so crucially on the racial backlash — a close look at voting data shows that religion and “values” issues have been far less important — I believe that the declining power of that backlash changes everything.
Can anti-immigrant rhetoric replace old-fashioned racial politics? No, because it mobilizes the same shrinking pool of whites — and alienates the growing number of Latino voters.
Now, maybe I’m wrong about all of this. But we should be able to discuss the role of race in American politics honestly. We shouldn’t avert our gaze because we’re unwilling to tarnish Ronald Reagan’s image.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
More on W's Great Approval Ratings
I think it's pretty obvious that Bush will hands-down go down in history as the worst President ever.
-Ryan
Rage of Reason__
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, November 9, 2007; A21
It's official: Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. Bush apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to frustrated, sputtering rage than any president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon.
That should be a pretty good indicator of where Bush will rank when historians get their hands on his shameful record -- in the cellar, alongside the only president who ever had to resign in disgrace.
A Gallup Poll released this week showed that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of how the Decider is doing his job. That sounds bad enough -- nearly two-thirds of the country thinks its leader is incompetent. But when you look more closely at the numbers, you see that Bush's abysmal report card -- only 31 percent of respondents approve of the job he's doing -- actually overstates our regard for his performance.
According to Gallup, if you lump together the Americans who "strongly" approve of Bush as president with those who only "moderately" feel one way or the other about him, you end up with about half the population. That leaves a full 50 percent who "strongly disapprove" of Bush -- as high a level of intense repudiation as Gallup has ever recorded in its decades of polling.
Gallup has been asking the "strongly disapprove" question since the Lyndon Johnson administration. The only time the polling firm has measured such strong give-this-guy-the-hook sentiment was in February 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, when Nixon's "strongly disapprove" number was measured at 48 percent. Bush beats him by a nose, but the margin of error makes the contest for "Most Reviled President, Modern Era" a statistical tie.
The Gallup Poll found that among Bush's shrinking Republican base, he has unusually strong support. Independents, though, have joined Democrats in the Bush Derangement Syndrome clinic: They, too, "strongly disapprove" of the job the president is doing.
Bush didn't come by this distinction with help from family connections or the Supreme Court. No, he earned it.
Look at the situation Bush's successor will inherit. Throughout much of the world, the United States is seen as an arrogant bully whose rhetoric about freedom and the rule of law is disgracefully empty. The lawyers and students who are being tear-gassed in the streets of Pakistan's cities will long remember that, when push came to shove, Bush chose to stick with a cooperative dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, rather than live up to his words about the universal value of democracy.
The next president will be left with more than 100,000 U.S. troops bogged down in Iraq, with an unfinished war in Afghanistan -- and, between those two crises, a strengthened and emboldened Iran that hopes to dominate the world's most dangerous region. Nice work.
Bush's successor will, incredibly, assume control of a United States government that interrogates suspected terrorists with "enhanced" techniques known throughout the world by a much simpler term: torture. The new commander in chief will almost surely take custody of hundreds of people detained without formal charges and on questionable evidence, and held for years in secret CIA prisons or at Guantanamo. The next president will take over a government that claims the right to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without meaningful judicial oversight.
Whoever takes office in January 2009 will be left with a more polarized economy -- an America where the rich have been made richer during the past six years with generous tax cuts, while more than 40 million people struggle without health insurance. The new president will be left with a government that not only failed miserably in its response to the most extensive natural disaster the nation has ever faced but that also reneged on Bush's pledge to rebuild a better New Orleans -- and to make it possible for all those who lived in the city to return.
The next occupant of the White House will find the nation's coffers depleted by Bush's wars -- the price tag doubtless will have reached $1 trillion by Inauguration Day -- and by whatever it eventually costs to keep the housing market afloat.
He or she will inherit, in short, a dismal mess. It will take most of the new president's first term to begin to set things right.
It's easy to understand why Americans have come to think of George W. Bush as the worst president in memory, perhaps one of the worst ever. What's hard to fathom is how we'll make it through the next 14 1/2 months. But who's counting?
He's No. 1!
The following came courtesy of Salon.com. He beat Nixon - what a champ!
-ryan
It has taken years of effort and a lot of hard work, but George W. Bush can finally claim "Mission Accomplished": By at least one measure, the president is now more intensely disliked than Richard Nixon ever was.
In a Gallup poll released this week, 50 percent of Americans say they "strongly disapprove" of the job Bush is doing as president. That's the highest strong-disapproval number Gallup has ever seen, besting by two percentage points the 48 percent of Americans who said they "strongly disapproved" of Nixon's job performance in February 1974.
Nixon resigned six months later.
Based on a Gallup chart, it appears that something like 15 percent of Americans still "strongly approve" of Bush's job performance. Roughly twice as many Americans believe in astrology.
The president's horoscope today: "Stick with what you know today -- new people and projects are more trouble than they're worth. That doesn't mean you need to reject them forever, though. Check back in after a few days or more have passed."
Yes, Mr. President, check back in after a few days or more have passed. In the meantime, here's some solace: Gallup says your 50 percent strong-disapproval number is statistically "equivalent" to Nixon's 48 percent, and neither the current Congress nor the current Supreme Court seems inclined to bring things to a head in the way that their counterparts did 33 years ago.
-ryan
It has taken years of effort and a lot of hard work, but George W. Bush can finally claim "Mission Accomplished": By at least one measure, the president is now more intensely disliked than Richard Nixon ever was.
In a Gallup poll released this week, 50 percent of Americans say they "strongly disapprove" of the job Bush is doing as president. That's the highest strong-disapproval number Gallup has ever seen, besting by two percentage points the 48 percent of Americans who said they "strongly disapproved" of Nixon's job performance in February 1974.
Nixon resigned six months later.
Based on a Gallup chart, it appears that something like 15 percent of Americans still "strongly approve" of Bush's job performance. Roughly twice as many Americans believe in astrology.
The president's horoscope today: "Stick with what you know today -- new people and projects are more trouble than they're worth. That doesn't mean you need to reject them forever, though. Check back in after a few days or more have passed."
Yes, Mr. President, check back in after a few days or more have passed. In the meantime, here's some solace: Gallup says your 50 percent strong-disapproval number is statistically "equivalent" to Nixon's 48 percent, and neither the current Congress nor the current Supreme Court seems inclined to bring things to a head in the way that their counterparts did 33 years ago.
Monday, November 12, 2007
The Lone Real Republican
If Ron Paul turns out to be the lone indestructible snowball in Hell, I'm voting Republican in 2008.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Excuses, excuses...
This is a pretty good piece by Krugman (NYT) , shooting down a lot of the excuses universal health care opponents use to argue against it.
- Ryan
Health Care Excuses The United States spends far more on health care per person than any other nation. Yet we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries. Furthermore, every other advanced country provides all its citizens with health insurance; only in America is a large fraction of the population uninsured or underinsured.
You might think that these facts would make the case for major reform of America’s health care system — reform that would involve, among other things, learning from other countries’ experience — irrefutable. Instead, however, apologists for the status quo offer a barrage of excuses for our system’s miserable performance.
So I thought it would be useful to offer a catalog of the most commonly heard apologies for American health care, and the reasons they won’t wash.
Excuse No. 1: No insurance, no problem.
“I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said President Bush a few months ago. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” He was widely mocked for his cluelessness, yet many apologists for the health care system in the United States seem almost equally clueless.
We’re told, for example, that there really aren’t that many uninsured American citizens, because some of the uninsured are illegal immigrants, while some of the rest are actually entitled to Medicaid. This misses the point that the 47 million people in this country without insurance are an ever-changing group, so that the experience of being without insurance extends to a much broader group — in fact, more than one in every three people in America under the age of 65 was uninsured at some point in 2006 or 2007.
Oh, and finding out that you’re covered by Medicaid when you show up at an emergency room isn’t at all the same thing as receiving regular medical care.
Beyond that, a large fraction of the population — about one in four nonelderly Americans, according to a Consumer Reports survey — is underinsured, with “coverage so meager they often postponed medical care because of costs.”
So, yes, lack of insurance is a very big problem, a problem that reaches deep into the middle class.
Excuse No. 2: It’s the cheeseburgers.
Americans don’t have a bad health system, say the apologists, they just have bad habits. Overeating and teenage sex, not the huge overhead of America’s private health insurance companies — the United States spends almost six times as much on health care administration as other advanced countries — are the source of our problems.
There’s a grain of truth to this claim: Bad habits may partially explain America’s low life expectancy. But the big question isn’t why we have lower life expectancy than Britain, Canada or France, it’s why we spend far more on health care without getting better results. And lifestyle isn’t the explanation: the most definitive estimates, such as those of the McKinsey Global Institute, say that diseases that are associated with obesity and other lifestyle-related problems play, at most, a minor role in high U.S. health care costs.
Excuse No. 3: 2007 is better than 1950.
This is an argument that baffles me, but you hear it all the time. When you point out that America spends far more on health care than other countries, but gets worse results, the apologists reply: “Sure, we spend a lot of money on health care, but medical care is a lot better than it was in 1950, so it’s money well spent.” Huh?
It’s as if you went to a store to buy a DVD player, and the salesman told you not to worry about the fact that his prices are twice those of his competitors — after all, the machines on offer at his store are a lot better than they were five years ago. It is, in other words, an argument that makes no sense at all, yet respectable economists make it with a straight face.
Excuse No. 4: Socialized medicine! Socialized medicine!
Rudy Giuliani’s fake numbers on prostate cancer — which, by the way, he still refuses to admit were wrong — were the latest entry in a long, dishonorable tradition of peddling scare stories about the evils of “government run” health care.
The reality is that the best foreign health care systems, especially those of France and Germany, do as well or better than the U.S. system on every dimension, while costing far less money.
But the best way to counter scare talk about socialized medicine, aside from swatting down falsehoods — would journalists please stop saying that Rudy’s claims, which are just wrong, are “in dispute”? — may be to point out that every American 65 and older is covered by a government health insurance program called Medicare. And Americans like that program very much, thank you.
So, now you know how to answer the false claims you’ll hear about health care. And believe me, you’re going to hear them again, and again, and again.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Taking the heat from the press
A couple weeks old, but I felt sill worth sharing. This is just really ,really sad.
- R
The Ministry of Information strikes again...
FEMA Workers Masquerade As Reporters
Friday, October 26, 2007
(10-26) 08:06 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
One way to get decent coverage in this rough-and-tumble city is to arrange to have your own employees interrogate you at your news conference.
That would seem to be the strategy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, much maligned for its sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina over two years ago.
FEMA scheduled an early afternoon news briefing on only 15 minutes notice to reporters here Tuesday to talk about its handling of assistance to victims of wildfires that were ravaging much of Southern California.
But because there was so little advance notice for the event held by Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy FEMA administrator, the agency made available an 800 number so reporters could call in. And many did, although it was a listen-only arrangement, The Washington Post reported Friday.
It said that at the news conference itself, some FEMA employees played the role of reporter, asking questions of Johnson — queries described as soft and gratuitous.
"I'm very happy with FEMA's response," Johnson said in reply to one query from a person the Post said was an agency employee, not an independent journalist.
Asked about this, Mike Widomski, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs, said, "We had been getting mobbed with phone calls from reporters, and this was thrown together at the last minute."
The State of the GOP in Colorado
This is great. I've loved watching the Republicans slowly, but surely, lose their stronghold in Colorado. The Dems now control the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, and there's not too many federal representatives left either.
This just goes to show that when you cater to the extreme fringe of your base, as the Republicans have done nationally these last 8 years or so, you're bound for a fall. You have to cater to the base of your entire constituency, not just the lunatic fringe you courted to get elected. They (the GOP) can rest assured though that they will always have Colorado Springs - the population here is that crazy.
Source article here, or you can simply read below:
Tancredo's departure a gift to Colo. GOP
By: Dan Haley, Denver Post editorial page editor
Created 11/04/2007 - 7:11am
For reporters looking for a good quote or a spicy story, Tom Tancredo has always been the gift that keeps on giving.
Last week, though, it was the Colorado Republican Party, not the media, that received an early Christmas present from the generous gift-giver.
Wrapped up nicely in his announcement that he will leave Congress after five terms was the gift of relevancy. Or at least possible relevancy. For a party clearly lacking in it these days, Republicans should open the gift early and pronounce like a wide-eyed child on Christmas morning: "Just what we've always wanted."
In three years, Colorado Republicans have gone from top of the food chain - controlling everything in state politics from the budget to bingo licenses - to plankton, bragging about their 4-3 majority on the State Board of Education.
The only Republicans left in Colorado's U.S. House delegation are Reps. Tancredo, Marilyn Musgrave and Doug Lamborn. For various reasons, at this moment, they're as relevant as a ticket to Game 5 of the World Series. When Wayne Allard announced he will leave his U.S. Senate seat next year, exactly none of their names were mentioned as possible candidates.
Here's where Tancredo's gift comes in. Colorado's 6th Congressional District, which he represents, is less ideologically diverse than, oh, let's say, Utah. Sweeping from the western suburbs down south to Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock and further east, the district is GOP-friendly. Republicans make up about 46 percent of the half-million voters, Democrats 24 percent.
It's the type of district where someone with an R attached to their last name can be elected congressman for life. It's also the type of district where a rigid ideologue can champion a cause - gay marriage, illegal immigration, tax cuts - and ride his or her one-trick pony all the way to Washington. If that happens, it's a one-way ticket to irrelevancy for the candidate and the party.
Or Republicans could play it smart and opt for someone who appeals to business interests without turning off the independent-minded voters who have soured on partisan politics and hyper-sensitive wedge issues.
Heck, they could even elect someone who will prove that "conservative" doesn't mean "crazy." Wild thought, eh?
If Republicans use their gift wisely, they might even elect someone with statewide appeal who someday might run for governor or the Senate. That's called building up a good bench.
The GOP's bench is so thin in Colorado that one natural born candidate, Mike Coffman, is already feeling the squeeze from party brass who don't want him to run. As secretary of state, he's one of only two Republicans holding statewide office. If he leaves, the Democratic governor would appoint his replacement, and the odds of it being a Republican are on par with Britney Spears winning Mother of the Year.
Coffman, though, isn't afraid to buck the party brass. And he's been patiently waiting his turn.
He wanted to run for Congress when Colorado added the 7th Congressional District but the lines were drawn away from his home in the 6th CD. Instead of carpet-bagging into the district, he waited. He wanted to run for governor in 2006, but Bob Beauprez entered the race so Coffman, a Marine, went back to Iraq to serve his country. And to wait his turn.
I have no idea if he's the right candidate for the district. That's for voters to decide. But I do know his candidacy shouldn't be dismissed simply because he's one of the few Republicans who won statewide in 2006.
Just the opposite, in fact. Gifts like this don't come along too often.
Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
This just goes to show that when you cater to the extreme fringe of your base, as the Republicans have done nationally these last 8 years or so, you're bound for a fall. You have to cater to the base of your entire constituency, not just the lunatic fringe you courted to get elected. They (the GOP) can rest assured though that they will always have Colorado Springs - the population here is that crazy.
Source article here, or you can simply read below:
Tancredo's departure a gift to Colo. GOP
By: Dan Haley, Denver Post editorial page editor
Created 11/04/2007 - 7:11am
For reporters looking for a good quote or a spicy story, Tom Tancredo has always been the gift that keeps on giving.
Last week, though, it was the Colorado Republican Party, not the media, that received an early Christmas present from the generous gift-giver.
Wrapped up nicely in his announcement that he will leave Congress after five terms was the gift of relevancy. Or at least possible relevancy. For a party clearly lacking in it these days, Republicans should open the gift early and pronounce like a wide-eyed child on Christmas morning: "Just what we've always wanted."
In three years, Colorado Republicans have gone from top of the food chain - controlling everything in state politics from the budget to bingo licenses - to plankton, bragging about their 4-3 majority on the State Board of Education.
The only Republicans left in Colorado's U.S. House delegation are Reps. Tancredo, Marilyn Musgrave and Doug Lamborn. For various reasons, at this moment, they're as relevant as a ticket to Game 5 of the World Series. When Wayne Allard announced he will leave his U.S. Senate seat next year, exactly none of their names were mentioned as possible candidates.
Here's where Tancredo's gift comes in. Colorado's 6th Congressional District, which he represents, is less ideologically diverse than, oh, let's say, Utah. Sweeping from the western suburbs down south to Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock and further east, the district is GOP-friendly. Republicans make up about 46 percent of the half-million voters, Democrats 24 percent.
It's the type of district where someone with an R attached to their last name can be elected congressman for life. It's also the type of district where a rigid ideologue can champion a cause - gay marriage, illegal immigration, tax cuts - and ride his or her one-trick pony all the way to Washington. If that happens, it's a one-way ticket to irrelevancy for the candidate and the party.
Or Republicans could play it smart and opt for someone who appeals to business interests without turning off the independent-minded voters who have soured on partisan politics and hyper-sensitive wedge issues.
Heck, they could even elect someone who will prove that "conservative" doesn't mean "crazy." Wild thought, eh?
If Republicans use their gift wisely, they might even elect someone with statewide appeal who someday might run for governor or the Senate. That's called building up a good bench.
The GOP's bench is so thin in Colorado that one natural born candidate, Mike Coffman, is already feeling the squeeze from party brass who don't want him to run. As secretary of state, he's one of only two Republicans holding statewide office. If he leaves, the Democratic governor would appoint his replacement, and the odds of it being a Republican are on par with Britney Spears winning Mother of the Year.
Coffman, though, isn't afraid to buck the party brass. And he's been patiently waiting his turn.
He wanted to run for Congress when Colorado added the 7th Congressional District but the lines were drawn away from his home in the 6th CD. Instead of carpet-bagging into the district, he waited. He wanted to run for governor in 2006, but Bob Beauprez entered the race so Coffman, a Marine, went back to Iraq to serve his country. And to wait his turn.
I have no idea if he's the right candidate for the district. That's for voters to decide. But I do know his candidacy shouldn't be dismissed simply because he's one of the few Republicans who won statewide in 2006.
Just the opposite, in fact. Gifts like this don't come along too often.
Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Connecting 2007 Iran to 1933 Germany
Zakaria makes good points here. I loved Josh Marshall's observation regarding the absurdity of the comparison between Nazi Germany and Iran, which I highlighted below in red. The Iran hawks are insane, just as they were with Iraq...
-Ryan
Connecting 2007 Iran to 1933 Germany
Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria recently had a terrific piece on the right’s foolish desire to attack Iran: “Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century…. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?”
Commentary Magazine editor Norman Podhoretz, meanwhile, is desperately trying to convince the president and the rest of the country to invade Iran as soon as humanly possible.
They discussed the issue together last night on PBS’s Newshour. It didn’t go well.
Zakaria tried reason…
“We have a policy that we understand, which is containment plus deterrence. We’re using sanctions. We’re using a kind of anti-Iranian alliance mechanism in the Middle East, which has become quite successful, by the way. We have isolated Iran.
“Time is not on their side; time is on our side. I think that the onus surely must be on the other side to explain to us why, because Iran might gain the knowledge to make nuclear weapons in the next three to five to eight years, we should launch a unilateral American invasion.”
…and Podhoretz didn’t.
“I want to say that I think the attitude expressed by Fareed Zakaria represents an irresponsible complacency that I think is comparable to the denial in the early ’30s of the intentions of Hitler that led to what Churchill called an unnecessary war involving millions and millions of deaths that might have been averted if the West had acted early enough.”
It’s even worse watching the video.
Zakaria did his level best, noting that Iran has “followed a pretty rational, national interest-oriented foreign policy” for 30 years, is opposed to al Qaeda, opposed to the Taliban, and is easily deterred by Israel’s 200 nuclear weapons, “including a second strike capacity on submarines.”
But it wasn’t to be. Zakaria is Chamberlain, Ahmadinejad is Hitler, Podhoretz is Churchill, and the interview was painful.
Keep in mind, Zakaria would fairly be characterized as a center-right pundit. Indeed, as Josh Marshall noted, “It’s perhaps an apt commentary on the rightward, lunatic turn of this country’s foreign policy that Fareed is taking what I guess must be called the left (?) in this debate.” The cliche about reality having a liberal bias continues to be surprisingly apt.
Podhoretz referenced Hitler and 1930s Germany repeatedly last night, prompting Marshall to add what should be obvious.
It’s almost an insult to what the world faced in the late 1930s. Germany, industrial powerhouse, with arguably the most powerful army in the world, at the forefront of technology, overawing and invading neighboring countries. Iran, minor economic power, second or third-rate military power, which may get a couple of small nuclear-weapons compared to the couple hundred high-end nuclear warheads in Israel’s arsenal (plus, a robust second strike capacity, as Fareed notes) and the many thousands we have — and our blue water navy, satellites, air force. Please. Time’s running out for us? We’re going to look back on this fifty years from now and see the non-podhoretz-loons as the Chamberlains of the day? I don’t know what to say.
I know the feeling.
Of course, it’s important to remember, Podhoretz is not just some random nut, popping off on a right-wing blog. He’s Rudy Giuliani’s chief foreign policy advisor. Indeed, Podhoretz recently boasted, “As far as I can tell there is very little difference in how he sees the war and how I see it.”
Be afraid.
Their own people thought it was torture!
Bush's own appointee thought waterboarding was torture.... (so, of course, he was fired)
-R
-R
Meet Daniel Levin
Daniel Levin, a former top official in Bush’s Justice Department, isn’t exactly a household name, but his story is worth considering. As the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2004, Levin recognized interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration were pushing the legal envelope, and became so concerned about waterboarding that he experienced it personally so he could report on its application.
Not surprisingly, Levin concluded that waterboarding is torture, and sought to advise his superiors. He was rewarded for his efforts with a pink slip.
Levin … concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.
The administration at the time was reeling from an August 2002 memo by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, which laid out possible justifications for torture. In June 2004, Levin’s predecessor at the office, Jack Goldsmith, officially withdrew the Bybee memo, finding it deeply flawed.
When Levin took over from Goldsmith, he went to work on a memo that would effectively replace the Bybee memo as the administration’s legal position on torture. It was during this time that he underwent waterboarding.
In December 2004, Levin released the first of two memos, explaining, among other things that torture, including waterboarding, is illegal. This did not sit well with Alberto Gonzales, who forced Levin to add a footnote — the revised memo did not make the administration’s previous opinions illegal. (”Just because we embraced illegal techniques before doesn’t mean we were wrong.”)
Levin was preparing a second Justice Department legal memo, outlining tighter controls on specific interrogation techniques, but never got a chance to finish it. Alberto Gonzales became the Attorney General and Levin was forced out of the Justice Department. He was branded “too independent” and “someone who could (not) be counted on” — Levin was not, in other words, a loyal Bushie, so he had to go.
Marty Lederman finds it all hard to accept.
I have been reluctant to say such things before now, but those stubborn facts keep adding up, and, if the Greenburg story is accurate, it’s hard to resist the simple conclusion that Gonzales and others were engaged, not only in an effort to completely distort the proper function of OLC (see generally Jack Goldsmith’s book), but also in a conspiracy to violate the Torture Act and the War Crimes Act (which at the time prohibited such conduct). When responsible, thoughtful lawyers — loyal conservative, Republican lawyers, mind you — told them that what they had approved was unlawful, they got rid of the lawyers, and concocted alternative, and patently ridiculous, legal advice (and rewarded the lawyer who was willing to sign his name to that advice).
I’m trying to avoid hyperbole, honest. But how is this not a huge scandal, in form (but certainly not in degree) directly analogous to what we, at Nuremburg, prosecuted German Justice Department lawyers for having done? (And no, I am not saying that the crimes committed here are analogous to those approved by German lawyers, so please don’t go there in the comments thread.)
During a “special comment” on MSNBC’s Countdown last night, Keith Olbermann was thinking along the same lines.
Waterboarding, [Daniel Levin] said, is torture. Legally, it is torture! Practically, it is torture! Ethically, it is torture! And he wrote it down.
Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country’s 43rd president: “The United States of America … does not torture.”
Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush. Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.
Waterboarding had already been used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed and a couple of other men none of us really care about except for the one detail you’d forgotten — that there are rules. And even if we just make up these rules, this country observes them anyway, because we’re Americans and we’re better than that. We’re better than you.
And the man your Justice Department selected to decide whether or not waterboarding was torture had decided, and not in some phony academic fashion, nor while wearing the Walter Mitty poseur attire of flight suit and helmet.
He had put his money, Mr. Bush, where your mouth was.
So, your sleazy sycophantic henchman Mr. Gonzales had him append an asterisk suggesting his black-and-white answer wasn’t black-and-white, that there might have been a quasi-legal way of torturing people, maybe with an absolute time limit and a physician entitled to stop it, maybe, if your administration had ever bothered to set any rules or any guidelines.
And then when your people realized that even that was too dangerous, Daniel Levin was branded “too independent” and “someone who could (not) be counted on.”
In other words, Mr. Bush, somebody you couldn’t count on to lie for you.
So, Levin was fired. Because if it ever got out what he’d concluded, and the lengths to which he went to validate that conclusion, anybody who had sanctioned waterboarding and who-knows-what-else on anybody, you yourself, you would have been screwed.
And screwed you are.
Olbermann added that this presidency “has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.” If there’s a more charitable interpretation of events, it doesn’t come to mind.
Even Supermodels are Running from the Dollar
As further evidence that the dollar is growing ever weaker and weaker, Gisele Bundchen, the world's richest supermodel, is now insisting she get paid in currencies other than the dollar. Warren Buffet is also moving his money to more and more foreign currency based investments, citing concerns that the U.S. dollar is going to continue getting weaker. Read more about it all here.
Quite the economic stewards we have running the country, huh? And just think - George W. Bush is the only President in U.S. history to hold an MBA. Impressive....
Quite the economic stewards we have running the country, huh? And just think - George W. Bush is the only President in U.S. history to hold an MBA. Impressive....
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Assumptions
Here's a great post by Jim Kuntsler over at Clusterfuck Nation (hey, I didn't name his blog... ;) ).
He points out a lot of things happening in both the U.S. and around the world right now that no one really seems to be paying any attention to, and that could have huge consequences in the near future. Pretty soon we'll need to change the way we live not just due to ideological choice, but out of resource scarcity and geopolitical necessity.
He points out a lot of things happening in both the U.S. and around the world right now that no one really seems to be paying any attention to, and that could have huge consequences in the near future. Pretty soon we'll need to change the way we live not just due to ideological choice, but out of resource scarcity and geopolitical necessity.
Where does that tax money go?
Oh yeah, things like fire protection. See this article about how anti-tax sentiment run amuck cost a more timely & forceful response by the local fire departments during the San Diego fires:
How Anti-Union, Anti-Tax OC Conservatives Defeated Adequate Fire Protection in 2005
How Anti-Union, Anti-Tax OC Conservatives Defeated Adequate Fire Protection in 2005
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