Warning: Process Story

The budget reconciliation route for health care reform in the Senate is not so simple. And then, of course, there's always unintended consequences.
But TPM's commenters so far are full-bore in favor of something lawmakers aren't likely to do, which seems to satisfy their underlying need to blame their own party for inevitable defeat. I get tired of them, too.
Perfect, meet good.

Note To Reporters: Truth Is Relative

 Signed: Mr. Goebbels I'm A Dinner Jacket Bill Irving Kristol

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work," - Irving Kristol.

Thanks again to The Dish. Hey, beats Bot flies.

When Do You Drink The Beer?

Don't Go To Belize Dept.
I had to look up Belize on a map when I did a story about a man who went diving there, made the mistake of renting his oxygen locally, and nearly died from the contaminated product.
Anyhoo, they also have Bot flies that can embed themselves in your — yipes — scalp.
NSF the squeamish.


Thank you, Andrew Sullivan's interns.

Why We Twitbook

and other social networking revelations.

Piskorski has also found deep gender differences in the use of sites. The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don’t know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views.

It's The Words, Stupid

I like to read comments on my favored blogs. They're usually written by people much better informed and more intelligent than I am, often people with real jobs in important occupations. TPM has a phalanx of lawyers and congressional aides, for instance, who crowd-read the Friday afternoon document dumps that were a regular part of the 2007 Justice Department stories.
Anyway, they always teach me something I didn't know before, open new doors, shine a light.
This one is a favorite today. Remember Newt? I remember watching him on the Charlie Rose show during the build-up to war and seeing his eyes shift up close and listening to how he never seemed to actually answer any question. Saw Kissinger do the same thing.
So, here's Newt's 1996 memo. See if you notice anything familiar.

My Fellow Americans

Jay Leno had to retire Jaywalking after last Saturday.
What else can I say? They hate us cuz we, like, know stuff?

Maria Comes Through. Thank You, Maria.

 They can't get the Baucus bill through his committee without a public option because it needs all but one Democrat and now Rockefeller and Cantwell have said they won't vote for it without the PO. Fuck Olympa Snowe!
This could get interesting.

Two Democrats have now said "no public option, no vote." Where are the other Finance Dems? Schumer? Wyden? Kerry?

Thank Maria here.

Friviality Friday

And God bless The Onion, too.

Report: Growing Ranks Of Nouveau Poor Facing Discrimination From Old Poor

Joe Wilson. What Really Happened. And...Wait For It...Carville!

Thank God for SNL. And Jon Stewart. And Stephen Colbert. We're not really crazy no matter how bad August seemed.

Time Magazine

put somebody named Glenn Beck on the cover this week, and apparently the accompanying story lives up to my expectations.
Remember, balanced news means never having to say you're sorry.
I don't get why Karen Tumulty and Jay Carney don't just quit. Oh, wait...it's the money, stupid. And The Village. And the money.

Demonstrate

I haven't been to in a demonstration since the 70s-80s. I think this is important to counter the tea party crap and all the rest of it. We ARE the silent majority this time.
Sign up here.
Seattle rally gathers at noon at City Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

Only In America. Only In America. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

From TPM today:

The politically charged Texas Board of Education has kicked off hearings today on whether school textbooks should have a more conservative slant. Things began auspiciously when one member of the public got up to announce that she is a 56-year-old virgin.

Warning: May Disturb Your Equilibrium

Sullivan linked to this today. How can I not?

Today, now, more than 100 million women are missing. They have vanished. In normal circumstances, women live longer than men—but China has 107 males for every 100 females in its overall population, India has 108, and Pakistan has 111. Where have these women gone? They have been killed or allowed to die. Medical treatment is often reserved for boys, while violence against women is routine. More girls are killed in this "gendercide" each decade than in all the genocides of the 20th century. This year, another 2 million girls will "disappear."

Speed Dating In 'The Jing"

Much to my relief, Su Fei is still around. But apparently Sexy Beijing does not allow embeds, so you'll have to click here.

Health Care Rock Video

My friend Marietta passed this along.

The Next Woman Senator

I know, I know, who cares about Massachusetts politics. Me.

Stumbled Upon

Somebody over at another Web site said the review of J.G. Ballard's short stories was probably the most linked in the universe. I doubt it. But I think I've found another author to read. Books, must get.

His is the voice reminding you not to take the postmodern hangover too personally: it was always going to happen this way.

Marriage Matters

I just received some news that could permanently change my life. For the better.
Sorry, I can't say what it is.
But even if it doesn't change my life, the possibility and its factual source challenge me to rethink my thinking about some core beliefs. And we all know how resistant we are to that challenge.
With that in mind, I think this note from one of Andrew Sullivan's readers is appropriate.
No, my life-changing news has nothing to do with marriage. At least I don't think so.
But the reader does talk about how marriage changed his life and his mind in ways he never dreamed possible.
Nice to know I'm not alone in this challenge.

The Next New Book I Read

Will be Alexandra Horowitz’s Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

Dogs, it seems, are Aristotelians, but with their own doggy teleology. Their goals are not only radically different from ours; they are often invisible to us. To get a better view, Horowitz proposes that we humans get down intellectually on all fours and start sniffing.

While my uncracked, two-year-old copy of The Return of The Imperial Presidency  languishes on a side table.
I am particularly anticipating a chapter on Frisbees.
Oh, wait...

A dog’s vision affects its sense of time, too. Dogs have a higher “flicker fusion” rate than we do, which is the rate at which retinal cells can process incoming light, or “the number of snapshots of the world that the eye takes in every second.” This is one of the reasons dogs respond so well to subtle human facial reactions: “They pay attention to the slivers of time between our blinks.”) It also helps explain those ­eerily accurate balletic leaps after tennis balls and Frisbees, but Horowitz lets us see the implications beyond our human-centric fascination with our pets. This is more than a game of fetch; it is a profound, existential realization: “One could say that dogs see the world faster than we do, but what they really do is see just a bit more world in every second.”

So, this whole space/time thingie then is dependent on perception, and human perception is...oh, hell, where is Wittgenstein when I need him?

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits."

Blogging is my church. Shorty is my priest. Frisbee time.

 

The World Is Not Good

Leave it to Barbara Ehrenreich to spoil a beautiful Sunday morning be reminding us how racist this anti-Obama crap really is, and how the perceptions among some whites — emphasis, some — that somehow black people are benefitting from their bad fortune.
Oh well, I needed that, especially the "God wants you to be happy" stuff that surrounds me on a daily basis. Fight Rage against the machine.

The World Is Good

Forget the teabaggers today.
Here's Aki Ra:

As a child soldier in Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge army Aki Ra laid many landmines. He now clears these deadly bombs with a stick and a pocketknife, more than 10,000 to date. It is very dangerous. No one pays him to do it. Aki is the real deal.

Via Metafilter.

Another Reason Not To Shop At Wal-Mart

BoingBoing has a lot of good stuff this morning. A Bach mobius strip, some real-time broadcasts as the towers were hit on 9/11. But I chose to give you this:
The American Prospect reviewed a couple of books about Wal-Mart, and included this charming anecdote about Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton

Around the time that the young Sam Walton opened his first stores, John Kennedy redeemed a presidential campaign promise by persuading Congress to extend the minimum wage to retail workers, who had until then not been covered by the law. Congress granted an exclusion, however, to small businesses with annual sales beneath $1 million -- a figure that in 1965 it lowered to $250,000. Walton was furious. The mechanization of agriculture had finally reached the backwaters of the Ozark Plateau, where he was opening one store after another. The men and women who had formerly worked on small farms suddenly found themselves redundant, and he could scoop them up for a song, as little as 50 cents an hour. Now the goddamn federal government was telling him he had to pay his workers the $1.15 hourly minimum. Walton's response was to divide up his stores into individual companies whose revenues did not exceed the $250,000 threshold. Eventually, though, a federal court ruled that this was simply a scheme to avoid paying the minimum wage, and he was ordered to pay his workers the accumulated sums he owed them, plus a double-time penalty thrown in for good measure.
Wal-Mart cut the checks, but Walton also summoned the employees at a major cluster of his stores to a meeting. "I'll fire anyone who cashes the check," he told them.

I Love Tilda Swinton

I really do, and I am convinced that her public wardrobe is one of God's inside jokes.

And I am grateful that her appearances at the Venice Film Festival drew gofugyourself comment, because otherwise I would have forgotten that my friend Pam's favorite web site still thrives.

Erm, About Those Despicable Big Bonuses

I Never Thought of That Dept.:

“Traders must be bribed not to plunder the firm. If you don’t pay them millions, they’ll sell the banks’ assets cheaply to rival firms, for which they then go and work.”

Another witty Brit — politics and economics — from  The Times' best blogs.

Best Blogs

Andrew Sullivan linked to Norman Geras this morning, and I loved the post, about how you cannot possibly read enough books no matter how long you live. Made me feel better about not actually having read any books in months, although there are four new ones I picked up at the library this week.
Anyhoo, Geras had this link from the Times of London and I was happy to see two at the top of the list that I already check out now and then. Well, Sullivan daily, Clemons now and then. So I don't feel so out of it after all.
And I loved this quote:

This, combined with the relief involved in getting something instantly off my chest, is what keeps me blogging. I want to quit, I really do. I dream of going cold turkey, I even once posted my resignation. But someone somewhere always says something stupid or funny, Lord Jeff emits another post or I am stunned by some unexpected fragment of beauty and truth — and, once more, I am lost in the limitless land of fancy now known, to me, anyway, as the blogscape.

bryanappleyard.com

I suspect the Brits have this blogging thing down better than we do. I have skipped blogging on occasion, but can't conceive of going cold turkey, although I'm definitely dropping my obsession with Word Challenge on Facebook, which is not blogging but more like dry drinking.

Quote O' Teh Day

Bill Maher to Obama:

Stand up for the 70 percent of Americans who aren't crazy.

Rob Miller

may become as famous as Joe Wilson.
He's received $1 million in donations to oppose the man who called Obama a liar during his speech.
Wilson claims he's received $750,000.

Friviolity Friday Is Back. On Thursday!

With Yoga Dogs.

Cannoli!

I ate my first cannoli while visiting friends in Chicago. They lived down the street from an Italian bakery.
Crazy Legs Conti won this year's cannoli eating contest during NYC's celebration of the feast of San Gennaro. He ate 20 in 6 minutes, but I think this picture is from an earlier year, because the image I saw on the Dish had him in Mickey Mouse ears.

Post Speech

Obama is asking for your help.

Love Rescue Me

I probably should have paid more attention to U2.



More from Playing for Change.

The Loyal Opposition

The Dish found this:

"[Tea baggers and conservative bloggers] want Obama to be ruthless and authoritarian because they want to think of themselves as a heroic resistance. They evoke Hitler not because they fear another Hitler, their very obsession with Nazi imagery betrays their attraction; no, they're longing for a Leader, a Hitler of their own. Even a Hitler in high heels, if you can picture such a lady, and I think we all can," - James Wolcott, Vanity Fair.

Basic Health Care Reform

Wapo explains.

Bob! On The Public Option

Reich has a public option video out. Make it viral.

Here's the link. Send it around. Thank you.

Health Care Reform: Cut To The Chase

This guy has it down in an easy-to-digest article:

But if Snowe signs on, according to nearly every person I consulted, it’s quite possible the legislation she supports would become the Senate’s bill with very little change--and that, in conference, the Senate bill would prevail. She’d hold the leverage, as long as the administration and Democratic leadership prefer to pass pass legislation with 60 votes. And that certainly seems to be the inclination of Obama and his advisors. (It's harder to tell about Congress, particularly the House, but they're unlikely to challenge the White House openly on this.)
Unless, of course, it never gets that far. Snowe may not sign on; even if she does, one source close to the process notes, she "may not bring a sufficient number of conservative Democrats" to reach 60. If that happens--if consensus proves elusive, for whatever reason--then Obama and his allies would focus on trying to pass a bill through reconciliation. And they would move quickly.

History of Health Care Reform in America

 From Robert Reich, that cute, really short guy. Well, okay, not as cute as Rahm. But even shorter.
This, just to remind you, that politics is politics.
Tidbit:

An honest economic forecast would most likely have sunk Medicare.

Trigger With A Twist

That's what I'm betting we're going to get in the health care reform package. A public option that is activated at a certain point if premium prices and what all don't come down. I'm guessing they're going to make that trigger look "tough" by dictating just how much costs must come down, how quickly, etc., so it will be a "compromise" on the trigger that those favoring a trigger like Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine (and her cohort Susan Collins) can't wiggle out of support for it.
But what do I know?
And they'll relook at it very soon, like as soon as this thing passes the Senate.
But what do I know?

UPDATE: What did I tell ya? First Nelson, now four House progressives. Trigger with a twist. Yep.

"It depends on how strong that trigger is," Farr added. "The only way I could see it getting progressive votes is by making sure the public option is strong and goes into operation."

Fired Up. Ready To Go.

Know hope.

Happy Labor Day

From Barry Ritholtz:

Speaking with Marketwatch’s Rex Nutting, I learned yet another incredible datapoint: Over the past decade, the U.S. private-sector has lost 203,000 jobs.
That’s right: Zero job growth for 10 years.
In the 1940s, we created 10 million jobs. In the 1990s, we added 19 million new jobs. Even during the much-maligned 1970s, we added almost 16 million jobs.
The 2000s might be zero. Some economy, huh?
The government has created 2.1 million jobs over that period — primarily teachers. And, that’s the weakest government job growth in nearly two decades.
Happy Labor Day!

The Public Option Is Crap, Too

Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article is finally available online, and some Kossacks at least, are pissed about the mess.
I haven't read everything on this, so I have no opinion yet. Just an FYI.

But just to hedge its bets even further and ensure that no real reforms pass, Congress has made sure to cover itself, sabotaging the bill long before it even got to Baucus' committee. To do this, they used a five-step system of subtle feints and legislative tricks to gut the measure until there was nothing left.

UPDATE:
Okay, I've read Taibbi's piece.  It's scary.  I'm back to the pass it, then fix it  solution. Nothing else will work at this point.  Or maybe  the White House really does have something up its sleeve.  Know hope.

All that's left of health care reform is a collection of piece-of-shit, weakling proposals that are preposterously expensive and contain almost nothing meaningful — and that set of proposals, meanwhile, is being negotiated down even further by the endlessly negating Group of Six. It is a fight to the finish now between Really Bad and Even Worse. And it's virtually guaranteed to sour the public on reform efforts for years to come.

Obama May Write His Own Health Care Bill

The White House denied it last week, and the AP considered it so unimportant that it's the second to last sentence in this story.
But I'm inclined to believe that the President's own bill might hold more sway over recalcitrant Dems than anything Congress has come up with so far. For some, they just might decide they'd rather have the product of their own give-and-take out there to run on next year than something they had no part in to try and defend.
Also, I'm beginning to hope that Obama's non-position on the public option is a stance being held as long as possible to win some more concessions from the insurance industry. Maybe, for instance, they'd agree to an early trigger and promise, so help me God, they will bring costs down before then or face costly consequences.
I've seen no speculation along these lines, maybe because everyone is so focussed on what's going on publicly. But you know there's all kinds of kabuki here.
Obama can say, look, I'll put the prestige of my office behind this thing that you should be able to live with even though it's painful, or you face public option through reconciliation.
No one knows publicly at least how between 12 and 15 senators would vote to get it to 50, but they know there are 45 now. Arms can be twisted. Some of those 12 to 15 may be holding out at the President's request, but privately telling the insurers what's going to happen if they don't bend.
Oh, well, might make a good novel if the good guys win in the end.

Poetry 101

Take a short class from one of the masters.

Grammar, "Church Monuments" makes me think, is the soul of poetry.

More classes — I promise you'll enjoy them — here.

Dear Mr. President

I told him to forget the trigger option, that Olympia Snowe should not be dictating health reform for the entire country and that a trigger means the insurance companies win and he needs to fight even if it takes a reconciliation process.
You can tell him anything you want.

All Because Of The Intertubes

 teenage boys no longer have to quake as they purchase their porn, and other losses.

Here's What's Going On In Health Care Reform

The news and speculation break almost hourly about what direction the White House will take and what signals it's sending out.
Finally, somebody gets it right:

A careful deconstruction of recent statements reveals an irresolvable tension within the text itself. The administration necessarily supports and opposes the public option. Though the opposition is only implicit in the statements of support, the terms signifying his opposition are central to a multifaceted understanding of the ambiguous sense of the term "support." This aporia must ultimately dissolve in the universal recognition that the public option both is and is not itself. With or without a trigger, it will be infinitely deferred, always ascendant but never fulfilled as a thing in-and-for-itself. It is a paradox spiraling ever downward into the enigmatic abyss that is Barack Obama, the man whose purely reflective symbolic significance condemns him to serve simultaneously as our Christ and Judas.

This is why I read blogs and not newspapers.

Petition O' Teh Day

Yeah, the save health care reform message is going viral on Twitter and Facebook.
But here's something else you can do.

Vicki and Teddy, The End

Well, I'm still kinda sort interested in the annulment thing, so this from The Daily Dish clears it up. In case you're also kinda sorta interested.

Public Option: Damned If You Do...

TPM has an excellent synopsis of the Democrats' dilemma as they prepare to push the health care bill through the Senate with the reconciliation process.

The Vicki And Teddy Marriage

The Daily Dish readers answer my questions. Apparently Vicki also got an annulment.

Joke O' Teh Day

On Facebook I am a bona fide fan of Overheard in the Newsroom.
This morning it was, New Media editor:
"Teaching journalism...that's like teaching coal mining."

Teddy's Wife

The NYT does a soft profile of Vicki Kennedy, in case you were wondering.
But here's the thing for this recovering Catholic.
They both shared a deep religious belief, supposedly.
And were able to marry inside the Church because?
Well, he had his marriage to Joan annulled and I haven't seen any discussion about the grounds for that.
She divorced her husband before she met Teddy and, presumably, also managed an annulment.
Guess I'll see what Wiki dug up.

UPDATE: So Wiki says they married in a civil ceremony, which implies she didn't get an annulment of her first marriage. So in the Church's eyes, Teddy was living in sin with a divorced woman, and unless he made a deathbed renunciation of this sin, was technically not entitled to Church burial.
I know, I know, who cares? I don't care personally, it's just this cafeteria Catholicism that interests me because the Church I knew was all about sex. When my mother converted, my parents had a Catholic marriage ceremony, of which I remember nothing except that I was there.
I've had several younger Catholic colleagues who lived with spouses-to-be before marriage, unapologetically.
No wonder the Vatican was indifferent to Teddy's passing. Benedict's a strict constructionist on things like this, not to mention the abortion support by American Catholics like Kerry and Kennedy.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Goldfish

Crooked Timber explores the age-old dilemma: What about our pets when the Rapture happens?
Apparently there are whole web sites devoted to this question.
My favorite answer:

But aren’t most cats usually quite self-sufficient? I imagine there will be much less traffic and other man-made hazards in the areas previously populated by evangelicals, so, one could argue that the cats and dogs left behind will find themselves in their own little paradise. The goldfish will perish, though.

Libertarian Litmus Test

There's a little Libertarian in all of us, I think, but in the crazies? Not so much.
Anyway, Dark Syde's 10 tests of Libertarianism are just humorous enough to recommend, albeit a bit "strident," whatever that is.
My favorite:

If you argue that cash for clunkers or any form of government healthcare is unconstitutional, but forced prayer or teaching old testament creationism in public schools is fine, you're not even consistent, much less a Libertarian, and you may be Michele Bachmann.

Ugh, Paree!

File under things you didn't know you wanted to know dept. From Best of Wikipedia:

Paris syndrome (French: Syndrôme de Paris) is a transient psychological disorder encountered by some people visiting or vacationing in Paris, France. It is similar in nature to Jerusalem syndrome and Stendhal syndrome, which are all classified as a form of Voyager syndrome (Syndrôme du voyageur)...

t is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (delusional belief of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, hostility to others), a derealization, a depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, etc..

Ted Kennedy

For full coverage, just go to TPM.
But I thought one of their Canadian commenters' note was interesting:

When ex PM Pierre Trudeau passed away nine years ago, Honorary pallbearers included Jimmy Carter, Leonard Cohen, Aga Khan and Fidel Castro. As you might suspect, there wasn't a lot of coverage in the US media."

Guess I'm The Newest Fan of The Cure

and PS 22: 2009. Especially like the guy in the front row in the hat.

Back But Not Refreshed

Take a few days rest and what happens?
Teddy Kennedy dies and Joe Klein writes something worth quoting:

Dick Cheney has now accused the Obama Administration of politicizing the Justice Department...after his Administration criminalized the Justice Department.

There's some navel gazing over at TPM wondering if Teddy's signature cause — health care reform — might gain a little momentum from the foot-dragging Dems, suddenly faced with a reminder of their own mortality and the shortness of a life, with or without achievement. Doubt it, but I could be less cynical if someone would soon (Sept. 15?) announce that there were enough willing votes in the Senate and enough willing wills to push it through on reconciliation.

Reconciliation

It ain't easy, apparently. But it's coming up again.

Conrad, who as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, would oversee attempts to use reconciliation, has criticized the idea. Senate procedures would require the measure be stripped of anything not related to the budget, and the timeframe for the legislation to become deficit-neutral would be five years, instead of the 10 years that lawmakers are currently using.

“You’ll be left with Swiss cheese for legislation,” Conrad said in an Aug. 3 interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose. “Those who say blithely, ‘we’ll just go for reconciliation,’ I don’t think they’ve done their homework.”

Democrats would also be forced to take complete ownership of the plan and might face retaliation from Republicans. Under Senate rules, Republicans could tie the chamber in knots by demanding procedures such as the reading of 1,000-page bills before they are brought to the floor, slowing Senate business.

Money In Politics

Ever wonder who the biggest donors are?
I just ran across this list today and two thoughts immediately come to me.
1. No wonder they hate unions so much
2. If unions are so economically powerful, how come we're in such a struggle over the public option

Ans: I'm just guessing, but I'm thinking the Republican money is spread around more sources. If I wanted to see if that's true, I'd have to add it up.
But I've pledged not to use my pocket calculator for at least a week to give it time to rest.

The Upside To Deep Recession

ThisJoel Stein does Vegas:

As I turn out of my hotel's full parking lot, veering onto the Strip, I come across something rarely seen in Vegas: frozen construction projects. I pass cranes abandoned at the site of the Echelon, a huge, multibillion-dollar project of four hotels that is now just three buildings of nine floors of concrete and steel beams sitting idly on some of the most expensive real estate in the country. I pass three more abandoned sites — 63 empty steel floors of the Fontainebleau, a sad unfinished shell that was supposed to be Caesars Palace's Octavius Tower and two cranes halted on a structure that was supposed to be a St. Regis condo building. I then drive up to where the New Frontier was razed to build a resort modeled on New York City's Plaza Hotel. It's just a dirt wasteland, so ugly that Wynn planted a row of trees so his hotel guests wouldn't stare at it from their windows. I never realized an economic defeat could look so much like a military one.

This makes sense.

Boemio specializes in short selling, in a particularly Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that's about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they've been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it's willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit. (See pictures of modernist houses available for rent.)

Unfinished City Center

Tort Reform

When they're trying to bore you to death rather than scare you to death on health care reform, they bring up tort reform as a cost-savings measure.
It helps to be reminded just how effective that would be.

Health Care Reform Fact Check

Obama for America morphed into Organizing for America after the inauguration and they put up their own  health care fact check page today in case you're interested.
I haven't toured it. I hope it's sourced.

Inside Baseball Talk

I love Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo, the first thing I open each day when I hit the intertubes.
Today he has this little bit of nostalgia up about his early days in journalism.

Act IV Of Recess Games

Dems leak idea of splitting the health care baby in two. The moderates can have one and go home and say they did their job. The liberals can have the other through reconciliation and also go home and say they did their jobs.
This time, the idea is in the Wall Street Journal.
Kabuki or just another way of admitting they don't have the votes in the Senate for the public option with filibuster looming. Which we already knew.

Free Movie Preview Via Internet

David Bianculli noted today that a new Robin Williams movie is available for preview on HDtv movies at 8 p.m. EST tonight. I may sit outside in my specially protected blogging chair and watch it on my little laptop screen. I've never sat through a movie that way.

The FDR Approach: Make Me Do It

The campaign to squeeze Dems on the public option continues with this petition.

And there's much more here on Daily Kos (the orange Satan) from NYCeve.

Note to Self

Answering a question with a question is one way of not answering a question. I used to cover a sheriff who did that almost all the time.
"Now why would I do that," he'd say and hope I didn't notice he hadn't said anything.

The police chief would just say "I'm not going to answer that."

Another source would say, "I don't respond to rumors."



As in:

“I don't know why on Aug. 19, we’d decide on something that's going to happen in September or October that the possibility is only 51 votes,” Gibbs said.

 He was talking about a health care reform vote by reconciliation, and maybe he is saying "I'm not going to tell you until the time is right."

Barney ! Frank Refuses To Answer Dining Room Table

Everybody Knows

Medicare is worse off than Social Security financially, and the solutions to fix it without drastic measures are trickier.
But I'll be fine, thank you, because this 1944 baby plans on living long enough to reap a bonanza.
But one thoughtful conservative boldly discusses the rational — but not correct — alternative.

        Medicare is a popular entitlement, but it’s going to have to face changes one way or another down the road, and some people are going to lose their benefits in the process.  We should be talking about health care vouchers, free markets, and responsibility.  We should be talking about avoiding monopoly in favor of competition.  We should be talking about the moral impetus to cover the uninsured because there is a moral impetus at the heart of this debate, and there is no reason it should be the sole property of the left.

This faux-crusade to “protect” Medicare from the government is just absurd.  “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” was a funny line.  That Republicans have taken it up as a cause is simply farcical.

Trouble is, no one will listen anymore. The R's are screwed.

Who Runs Govt?: A Resource

The Washington Post publishes puts out a delicious publication compiling the names and faces behind the politics and policies. I love so many women and people of color in this adminstration.
They hired Greg Sargent away from TPM to blog the insider stuff and he's often the source of breaking bits.

Juicy Tidbit

The other Kerry brother.

Cameron advised his brother; the two would often speak in French when they didn’t want anyone else to hear what they were saying.Tumulty, Karen, "Inside The Inner Circles Meet the ever-expanding group of advisers who make up the Kerry brain trust," Time, Aug. 2, 2004⁽²⁾Tumulty, Karen, "Inside The Inner Circles Meet the ever-expanding group of advisers who make up the Kerry brain trust," Time, Aug. 2, 2004

Cameron is now general counsel for the Commerce Dept., advising Gary Locke.

Timing Is Everything Dept.: Health Care Reform

The Worm Turns: A Play In Many Acts.


ACT I
First, you have the Senate Finance Committee headed by Max Baucus dragging its feet on the health care reform bill, hung up over the dreaded public insurance option (gasp! socialism! gasp!) and Republican members Chuck Grassley of Iowa and some guy named Enzi from somewhere supposedly important to bring on board to make the final bill look like it's bipartisan.

All the while N.D. Dem. Kent Conrad mumbles incoherently about something called regional co-ops, which he refuses to elaborate on, but which he insists are a solution to the problem.

Liberals/progressives fuss and fume.

ACT II

The administration says things that  make it sound like it could drop its loyalty — never fully committed in public — to the public option.

Liberals/progressives fuss and fume.

The Republican National Committee says — stroke of genius here —  that co-ops are just another government takeover  and they'll never support such a "compromise."

Chuck Grassley says he won't vote for any kind of health care reform. No way, no how.

Who's Enzi again?

ACT III — Aug. 19, 2009

Wait for it, wait for it...Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff, fires off an accusation in today's NYT ( Drudge has had the headline with the notation "NYT: developing" up since sometime yesterday) that Republicans aren't interested in any kind of health care reform, which a huge portion of the American public supports in theory at least, including most polled Republicans. He says (gasp!) they're only interested in playing political games to defeat anything the Democrats try. (Who's that guy Grassley again?)

Too early for Republican response.

Some nameless White House official says he can't understand why liberals are so tied to the public option.

(It's too early, but  liberals/progressives will fuss and fume.)

End of Act III

Tune in tomorrow, or maybe later today for another episode of our newly renamed, multiple-act,
always entertaining presentation of Recess Games. 
(The Worm Turns was just a working title.)

SUBTEXT BY Fightin Bill at TPM or Kabuki 101

Can it be any more obvious that this is a "don't shoot til you see the whites of their eyes" strategy?
They have compiled hours of incriminating video tape to run as needed in the 2010 elections, from all the Republican "luminaries", spewing obstructionist and traitorous rancor. They have ugly footage of angry, ignorant "ordinary citizens" spewing hate, racism and obvious falsehoods, and carrying assault rifles to boot. They have gone WAY out of the way to float every possible concession, knowing that the Republicans wouldn't budge and would take the bait. They now have a clear field to do Health Care reform with a Public Option and with all of the ingredients that will give it the best chance to succeed.
And this has been done, in part, to provide cover for Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and their ilk in the Senate so that they can help us reach 60 votes to deny the filibuster and then vote as needed on a final bill that contains a public option. If their votes are needed to reach the majority, Blue Dogs have the cover of having fought the good fight to slow this down, which will help them in their conservative states. (Read Kevin Sack's piece in the NY Times from a couple of days ago about Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas to better understand why this is such an important component of the strategy.)
Remember when Rahm Emmanuel scolded activists a few weeks ago about running ads against Ben Nelson and other Blue Dogs? It was because the strategy was long since in operation: any Obama operation excels at counting and does their homework. They had to figure out a way to solve the Democratic votes in both the House and the Senate, and create a mechanism for centrists and Blue Dogs to get on board. And boy, the Republicans have fallen for this, hook, line and sinker. Charles Grassley, for one, could be reading from scripts written by David Plouffe and David Axelrod--perfect campaignfodder for 2010.
Do you think Obama and his crew got to where they are by being emotional and reactive? No, they outsmart people by always taking the long view. I suspected this is what they've been up to, and for me it was confirmed earlier this week by the big grin on Howard Dean's face when he made the rounds of morning and evening shows to insist that everything's on track, and again last night by the serene Mona Lisa smile on the face of Linda Douglass as she calmly endured Ed Schultz's interrogating rant.
This is Obama's way of doing business. I think his record speaks for itself.

I so want to believe this.

UPDATE: Or maybe it's just getting everybody back to the message as one Dish reader notes:

What just happened in three short days?
With one statement about the "public option" from Obama, the entire health care reform discussion shifted totally away from the right wing crazies and Palin's "death panels"  In just three days with one statement about the "public option", liberal Democrats who stood on the sidelines and barely jumped in to the death panel discussions, have finely stirred off their duffs to get into the fray and argument.

The White House says officially it doesn't know what they're talking about cough cough.

Swine Flu: Who Should Worry

Pregnant women, young people, people like me with underlying chronic conditions. I plan to stay home during the season, which means continue doing what I have been.

Fountain Of Youth

Resveratrol, resverotrol!
Erm, no, maybe green tea?
A good NYT piece gives the latest on anti-aging research and concludes:

All that seems clear about life span is that it is not fixed. And if it is not fixed, there may indeed be ways to extend it.

News at 11.

The Wire, Translated

The Brits are using subtitles to decifer The Wire.
Me, I took it straight, but I like the cheat sheet The Independent offered.
As in:

*The hopper from Balmer carrying a burner

A child drug dealer from Baltimore is carrying a disposable mobile telephone used by drug dealers to stop the police monitoring their conversations.

*Crew up with corner boys for a re-up

An instruction to form a team of young men who can sell drugs on a street corner when a re-up, or a re-stock package from drugs wholesalers, arrives.

Maybe I should have named Shorty Hopper. Nah.

Are They Smart Or Just Lucky?

Health Care, Ch. 4,207
Somebody else — just another blogger, but he's really funny and really good — notices what I did yesterday. That the RNC's announcement that it opposes the co-op idea as a replacement for the public option may have been exactly what the players over at the White House need to bring Baucus, Conrad et al on board in the Senate.
Was this the White House plan all along? To smoke out the Republicans for what they really are, a bunch of asshole's who will never, never support any Democratic proposals no matter what because opposition is all they've got left.

NCSteve doesn't know and neither do I. But I'm glad he confirmed for me that I'm not crazy.

They're scary smart, but smart enought to foresee the Republican response with sufficient certainty to go ahead and provoke yet another liberal snitstorm to do it?  They have better info than we do.  They've got more political skills than any White House team in decades.  But I still don't know.

UPDATE:
Now I've read the comment thread on Steve's post, and another possibility comes from Answer Frog:

But the problem remains, and the WH knows it:
How do we get the votes in the the Senate?
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/08/how-many-votes-does-public-option-have.html
We probably only need 50, and for the other 10 to vote for cloture.
I think progressives should focus on this.
Maybe 5 people in the Senate are all that stand between us and passign a good HCR bill.

Sotomayor's First Vote — In Minority

We are so consumed with health care that this sort of thing just slips by, but not at TPM, which is where I got the link.

The newest Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, on Monday night cast her first vote in a death penalty case, joining three other members of the Supreme Court in dissent as the Court permitted the execution Tuesday of an Ohio inmate, Jason Getsy, 33.   He was scheduled to die in Lucasville, Ohio, at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
The Supreme Court’s order is here.  Sotomayor would have granted a stay of execution, along with Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens.  Sotomayor’s predecessor, retired Justice David H. Souter, frequently voted to postpone executions.

California Dreamin'

When I graduated from high school in Omaha, NE, in 1962, it was a curious fact that a disproportionate number of my classmates intended to go to California and take advantage of its remarkable higher education system that was close to free.
But according to Taplin's source, Big Daddy got tired of paying the bills, then got paranoid about crime.
And then, and then, the debacle that is California's budget.
Quite a nice historical perspective.

UPDATE:
And then there's Florida:

If every home in Boston received a foreclosure notice, the total would still be less than Florida’s.

Okay, Here's What I Want To Happen

since the administration may, indeed, be backing off the public option.

Given the fact that you can't get 60 Senate votes for the public option in the health reform plan even if Kennedy and Byrd show up, and given that dumping the thing into reconciliation this early on would cause all sorts of havoc, maybe, just maybe, this is what is known fondly in the 'sphere as an Obama head fake, alway two steps ahead of the opposition.
The openness to the co-op plan is a head fake, too. It can't be proven to meet the requirements Obama has set down for the plan.
The public option will be restored to a final bill and will pass the Senate as a reconciliation measure with everyone on our side pointing at the R's and saying, "You made us do this. You refused to consider anything at all in the end." And the American people, who still support the public option, and America itself will be better off. Not as well off as if we had Medicare for all, but better off.
In the end — you did not hear it here first — I think we may be heading toward a reconciliation solution, with maybe some Executive Orders or other legislation thrown in to somehow avoid the restrictions on reconciliation, which I can't remember but I heard some Republican senator lay it all out a few weeks ago.
'Do I need to say Kabuki again?

It Can't Get Any Better Than This, Can It?

Subhed:
Twitter Message O' Teh Day
Tom "The Hammer" DeLay will appear on Dancing With The Stars, Jake Tapper (ABC?) reports.

Cut-And-Paste Health Care

A 1,000-page bill in 1,000 words. A Wapo reporter gives it to you.

Women Are Fighting These Wars

I've often briefly pondered what seems like an awful lot of women military dead as the names and pictures scroll down the screen on Jim Lehrer's evening news show on PBS.
It is an awful lot for the "other sex," the one that was supposed to stay out of combat and combat zones.
But I guess these wars have altered the way women are used in combat, likely forever. This NYT story is the first I've seen to focus on it and explain what's happening. I'm sure there have been others and I just didn't see them. Well, maybe not.

Of the two million Americans who have fought in these wars since 2001, more than 220,000 of them, or 11 percent, have been women.

Slate Gives Us Meryl Streep

But misses the three Angels in America characters, possibly her best is the Jewish rabbi.





YouTube doesn't have the rabbi, but they do have her as Ethel Rosenberg over Roy Cohn's deathbed. If you haven't seen the movie, I think it's the best American movie I've ever seen, but didn't count for Oscars because it was HBO.

Medicare For All

It's the solution progressives like Krugman had for the health care reform issue. But you knew it wasn't going to happen.
But wait, maybe it is.
Remember when the big money boys all wanted to privatize Social Security? And how they got beat back by a bunch of organizations who — rightly — alerted seniors to the scam?
Well, I had a few minutes and got to prowling the net looking for the answer to my burning question "who is the Coalition for Medicare Advantage" that tried to scare the bejeesus out of this old lady with one of its robocalls telling me my Medicare benefits are under threat.
Turns out, of course, that they're the child of Coalition for Medicare Choices which in turn is the child of American Health Care Plans or AHIP, the big-bucks player in the health insurance reform battle.
And the thinking is, if they keep getting the government to allow them to bleed the Medicare system to the tune of $15 billion a year,in overpayments Medicare will fail and they can take over.
It's all here in an impressive article for The Nation by the woman who is head of the health reporting program in NYU's journalism program.
It's the kind of in-depth stuff the MSM isn't giving you because, frankly, they're lazy and they're corrupt and ...and...

CORRECTION:
Trudy Lieberman, who writes frequently for The Nation on health policy, is director of the health and medicine reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Easiest Pie Chart Evah!

From Laughing Squid via The Dish.

Eat Teh Rich!

From NYT:

Federal prosecutors are building criminal cases against 150 wealthy American clients of the Swiss banking giant UBS as part of a continuing investigation into tax evasion, a person briefed on the matter said Thursday.

Normally I hate unnamed sources, but in some cases ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
But I digress. Whatever happened to former Sen. Phil "Nation of Whiners" Gramm, last I heard still a VP at UBS, and his lovely wife Wendy, she still reeking of the Enron mess?

Apparently alive and well and still gainfully employed. From some financial guy:

Gramm’s position at UBS is “vice chairman” — dubbed “the greatest job in business” for its combination of high status and low work rate. It is a do nothing patronage role that is reward for all the Wall Street friendly legislation Gramm has sponsored. At least, they used to be considered Wall Street friendly, prior to their leading to the Street imploding.

Lie O' Teh Day

It had to come to this. Worse than the primary, worse than the election campaign. Because now we're talking real money, folks.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) just sent out a letter that tells voters, among other things, that "When mama falls and breaks her hip, she'll just lie in her bed in pain until she dies with pneumonia because her needed surgery is not cost efficient."

Anyone Want to Do a Little Weeding Out?

So do the keepers of popular website Awful Library Books.

It IS All Bush's Fault

A conservative economist reminds his party.

But the truth was always that the economy performed very, very badly under Bush, and the best efforts of his cheerleaders cannot change that fact because the data don’t lie.

Money quote:

People would have been better off putting all their investments into cash under a mattress the day Bush took office.

And then there was that Gog and Magog stuff. Sheesh.
Oh, and torture. And rendition. And USAG meddling for vote suppression.
George Bush lied. Karl Rove lied. Dick Cheney lied. Donald Rumsfeld lied. Alberto Gonzalez lied. I don't need to go on.
And now, the lying lyers are out there lying some more.

Meanwhile, Back At The Recess

Big PhArma (or however they're doing that wordie thingie) is on our side. The cost of my two very, very expensive drugs will be cut in half during the donut hole period (I'm looking at my watch, tick-tock, tick-tock. Nah, I never wore a watch.) and progressives are agonizing over what kind of deal was made.
I agree with the view of "whatever it takes to get it done," then worry about tweaking it later. Nice that insurance companies and drug manufacturers are on opposite sides now. Some say Obama Kabuki again.
Anyway, $12 million ad campaign targeting Blue Dawgs.


From TPM

A new coalition called Americans for Stable Quality Care--which includes the American Medical Association, PhRMA, as well as more predictable groups like SEIU and FamiliesUSA--will launch their first pro-reform ad later today as part of an August recess campaign that's expected to cost $12 million.

Most Bizarre O' Teh Day. So Far.

TPM picked this up:

Betsey Wright, chief of staff to Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas governor and deputy chief of his 1992 presidential campaign, has been accused of trying to smuggle 48 tattoo needles in a Doritos bag into a death row prison.

At Last, The Facts About the Health Care Bill!

From a reliable, neutral source. At last! Did I say, at last?
If you're following this, subscribe to Politifact for updates. Later this week, my favorite, Medicare!

P.S. Grassley says "kill Granny" language out of bill because it could be misinterpreted, as he did yesterday at one of his town halls. Of course, nothing's final until the House and Senate get together the the Republican author of the end-of-life, advanced directive proposal was disavowing it yesterday, too.
Goddam, who's more scared of the beast they've awakened, the Secret Service or the Republican establishment?
Guy with "Death to Obama" sign was detained and news story said the sign included "Death to Michelle, too, and her two stupid girls." I love freedom of speech, cuz here I am speechifyin'.

I Didn't Know That

out-Kabukied.

Why, for example, have even Democratic senators been resistant on health-care reform? It might be because so many of the key players represent so few of the voters who carried Obama to victory — and so few of the nation’s uninsured. The Senate Finance Committee’s “Gang of Six” that is drafting health-care legislation that may shape the final deal — without a public insurance option — represents six states that are among the least populous in the country: Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Maine, New Mexico and Iowa.
Between them, those six states hold 8.4 million people — less than New Jersey — and represent 3 percent of the U.S. population. North Dakota and Wyoming each have fewer than 80,000 uninsured people, in a country where about 47 million lack insurance. In the House, those six states have 13 seats out of 435, 3 percent of the whole. In the Senate, those six members are crafting what may well be the blueprint for reform.

I need to retake that American government class.

Senior Scare Tactics: Coalition For Medicare Advantage

I got my first robocall today from the front organization that's out there trying to scare seniors — who often don't know whether they have a Supplement or Advantage plan, mine's Advantage — that the cuts they say are threatened are to senior benefits, when in fact they're cuts to the exhorbitant $15 billion a year in subsidies to the insurance companies.
The USA Today article I read on this topic was filled with misinformation, but quoted the Congressional Budget Office as saying the cuts in Advantage subsidies would save $150 billion over 10 years.
It's one of the ways the Democrats hope to pay for health care reform.
The robocall doesn't leave you any opportunity to respond other than "join now."
Don't press that button if you get one of these calls until you've checked the facts.
Here's one source.

Karl Rove Directly Involved In US Atty Firing

;This is what Talking Points Memo and other purely journalistic blogs — but with a liberal/progressive agenda — are all about.
At a time when Jay Carney and his boss over at Time Magazine — not to mention the rest of the mainstream press — were telling us "nothing to see here folks, move along," Josh Marshall and his crew kept on it like pit bulls.
Why? Because for the White House or anyone on the political side to directly interfere with Department of Justice actions or procedures is flagrantly illegal.
But read it for yourself.
Sample:

Perhaps the key takeaway from the just released documents on the U.S. attorney firings is this:

Karl Rove claimed recently that he and his staff acted merely as a conduit for passing on concerns about David Iglesias. But it's now clear that Rove's office pushed from 2005 for Iglesias to be canned, and was intimately involved in the decision.

Now, Mr. Fitzpatrick (Fitzgerald?), how about those missing Liddy emails?

R.I.P. WFB

and you, too, Gore. I saw the aged Vidal recently on some public TV show. He is frail and not long for this world. Alas, where have polite threats of violence between liberal and conservatives gone?
Oh, yeah, to pistol-packing "activists" at Obama town halls.

Cass Sunstein

I like Obama's old colleague from the University of Chicago Law School mostly because Samantha Powers like him well enough to marry him.
But the R's apparently think he wants to kill your granny ban all guns and allow pets to sue their owners. Or something.
I think I feel my soul leaving my body now. Gotta run.

Obama and Health Insurance Reform

not health care reform, that's so last week.
Anyway, Froomkin, fired from the Washington Post despite producing one of their most successful blogs, is now working for Arianna.
Sample:

One possibility is that Obama, to everyone's surprise, will come out with a strong bill much like the one he promised his supporters during the campaign. It is conceivable, after all, that the reason Obama hasn't publicly issued ultimatums and twisted arms and busted heads is that he believes it's best to do those things in private -- and only when the time is truly ripe. In this scenario, which I call the Obama-as-community-organizer scenario, the community's needs are finally met, but in a way such that even those who had thwarted the people's will are allowed to save face.
The other possibility -- well, I call that one the Obama-as-pushover scenario. In this one, Obama will come out of it having given away the store -- having neither significantly improved the health-care system nor lowered its costs, but rather having created a new entitlement that primarily benefits the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries.
So far, the glimpses we've seen from behind all those closed doors suggest the latter scenario.

Bad Farmer, Bad Farmer

Not every well-intentioned person agrees with Michael Pollan (who I personally love for Botany of Desire)
but this guy is worth attending to because he knows whereof he speaks.
Sample:

Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety. Are people who refuse to use them my moral superiors? Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river. 

Yeah, I know it's from the American Enterprise Institute's magazine American. But Obama is a model for listening to the opposition, and I only caught the guy in one slightly misleading thing, the hypothetical deployment of 7,500 trucks filled with manure to Missouri is not anything anyone but he has envisioned. He does it for rhetorical purposes.

UPDATE: Scratch that. Sigh. Okay, somebody who actually read Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma weighs in at The Dish, which is where I stole the above from.

This has got to be your worst post that I've read, Patrick, and not worthy of the Dish. The very book that's being attacked here refutes almost every argument presented. Did anyone actually read the damn book? This author is a vicious and willfully ignorant denialist, and his supposed indictments of Pollan are so tone-deaf that I find it almost impossible to believe he even read this pragmatic, sensible, and well-supported book.

Wake Up?

1,001 reasons why I should suspect what's coming out of this White House.
Frank Rich notes a few, and you're probably familiar with most of them.

I'd like to disagree, but I can't. I'm in the wait-and-see modality. And keep pressing your congress critter.
There's some reason besides that he's a former theater critic that I'm not supposed to like Frank Rich, but I can't remember what it is. Maybe Somerby will remember for me.
Oh, yeah, it was the anti-Gore bandwagon he jumped on years ago. Somerby has a long memory and tends to hold grudges.