Wednesday Mashup (4/25/12)

(Testing, testing…is this thing still on ?)

OK, allow me to back up and do some ‘splainin’ here…

I pretty much walked away from this site about a year and a half ago out of total disgust, keeping Blogger as my main platform for this kind of thing. Not with WordPress as a blogging platform, I wish to emphasize, but with the impending Dem loss of the U.S. House, including the PA-08 seat of Patrick Murphy to “Mikey The Beloved” Fitzpatrick (guilty of this recent, particularly heinous moment which, in a manner utterly true to form, has been thoroughly ignored by his house organ, the Bucks County Courier Times). Also, at the time, I wasn’t sure if the Senate would fall either, but thanks to the intervention of the teabaggers, who made sure that “Yes, Wiccan” O’Donnell was nominated in Delaware along with Sharron Angle in Nevada and John Raese in West Virginia, the Senate remained under the control of the Dems. I wanted the post with the Rachel Maddow video to remain as the first thing a reader saw at this site as a “J’Accuse!” gesture of sorts (I think it’s safe to say that, after all this time, I’ve made my point).

Well, Blogger is now thoroughly hosed when it comes to fairly long, textual posts and I have neither the time nor the desire to figure out how to deal with the problem. So, on the infrequent, oft chance that I am able to generate content again, I’m planning to do so here for the immediate future.

And with that boring pretext out of the way, allow me to bring you the following from the New York Times on Monday (from here)…

Under federal labor law, employees have the right to join together to seek better pay and working conditions, with or without a union. If an employer tries to punish organizers, employees have the right to seek protection from the National Labor Relations Board. But employees still don’t have the right to be informed of their rights.

Last August, the N.L.R.B. issued a rule requiring employers to post a notice in the workplace telling employees of their rights. The rule was prompted by the board’s finding that young employees, recent immigrants and workers in nonunion workplaces were generally unaware of the law’s guarantees and protections.

The backlash was furious. The National Association of Manufacturers sued to block the rule in federal court in Washington, D.C. The United States Chamber of Commerce sued in federal court in South Carolina. In both cases, industry claimed that the law did not expressly permit the board to require employers to post a notice.

And yes, to answer the question, those opposing the notice were acting typically ridiculous, thus inspiring this video.

If you want to understand exactly how much this notice (at the very least) needs to be posted, click here to find out how Target has been fighting the efforts of its workforce to form a union (including making a video using unionized actors, believe it or not), click here to read how T-Mobile workers were trying to do the same thing (its parent company in Germany employs a unionized workforce, though that isn’t the case here – Dem U.S. House Rep Tim Bishop and Dem Sen. Richard Blumenthal supported the effort, as noted here), and this tells us how workers at Station Casinos started a seven-day hunger strike in an effort to unionize, and have faced a campaign of illegal intimidation and firings as a result.

Next, Ken Blackwell is back to attack Hillary Clinton (some things never change), including taking a shot at the new START treaty (here – in response, this tells us the following)…

The treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to each reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 – 30% lower than the previous ceiling.

Mr Obama said it was an important milestone, but “just one step on a longer journey” of nuclear disarmament.

Mr Medvedev said the deal would create safer conditions throughout the world.

If ratified by lawmakers in both countries, the treaty will replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) of 1991, which has expired.

Update: My bad – should have noted that, despite the caterwauling of Repug Sen. Jon Kyl, the treaty was ratified by the Senate, as noted here, and a particularly brainless update is here.

Blackwell also whines as follows…

This is the same Russia whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, Hillary famously gifted with a red “Re-set” button on their first meeting. That was to signal the new administration in Washington wouldn’t fuss about Russia’s 2008 aggression against the Republic of Georgia.

In response, this tells us how the Obama Administration, far from acting like wallflowers while the Russia/Georgia conflict simmers, brokered the following deal…

At the end of last year, the final roadblock to Russian entry into the (World Trade Organization) was Georgia’s insistence that Russia agree to increase transparency of trade across Russia’s borders into Georgia’s breakaway autonomies of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. (WTO rules allow every member the right to veto a country’s membership, and Georgia, as a member, could do so with Russia.) The August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia led to Russian military occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Moscow’s recognition of the autonomies as independent states. Even before the war, however, Russia controlled both sides of the crossings into Abkhazia and South Ossetia and staunchly refused access to either Georgia or international monitors.

While Russian membership in the WTO has been a priority of the Obama administration’s Russia policy, the administration has also made a point not to pressure Georgia into giving its consent. The administration thus insisted to Moscow that it had to negotiate the conditions for its accession directly with Tbilisi, while it underlined to Tbilisi the importance the United States placed on a successful agreement.

The result is, on paper, a spectacular success. The WTO agreement provides a novel mechanism for monitoring trade between Russia and Georgia across Abkhazia and South Ossetia (as well as at their third, already functioning, land crossing in undisputed territory). Both governments have agreed to report data on trade to the WTO and to affix electronic seals on outbound cargo to facilitate the tracking of goods. They have also agreed to allow a private company to confidentially monitor trade and to recommend, on the basis of that monitoring, the inspection of cargo by either party. Finally, the agreement establishes a mechanism for arbitrating disputes.

Blackwell should really avoid anything more substantive than attacking children’s television programs, as noted here, which is actually more of his speed.

Finally, someone named John Hawkins at Clownhall.com presented five “devastating” numbers that supposedly show Number 44’s “incompetence” (here).

1) The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.”

This is from an analysis from Mark Knoller of CBS News, who, as noted here, has a history of absolving Former Commander Codpiece of any financial wrongdoing and laying all blame at the feet of Number 44.

Besides, as Media Matters points out…

In 2001, President George W. Bush inherited a surplus, with projections by the Congressional Budget Office for ever-increasing surpluses, assuming continuation of the good economy and President Bill Clinton’s policies. But every year starting in 2002, the budget fell into deficit. In January 2009, just before President Obama took office, the budget office projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession. Mr. Obama’s policies in 2009 and 2010, including the stimulus package, added to the deficits in those years but are largely temporary.

The second graph shows that under Mr. Bush, tax cuts and war spending were the biggest policy drivers of the swing from projected surpluses to deficits from 2002 to 2009. Budget estimates that didn’t foresee the recessions in 2001 and in 2008 and 2009 also contributed to deficits. Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much. [The New York Times, 7/23/11]

Continuing…

2) This country has already lost its AAA rating, we’re 15 trillion dollars in debt, we have 100 trillion dollars in unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities…

The reason we lost our Triple-A rating was because of the dithering of Man-Tan Boehner and that sleazy weasel Eric Cantor on raising the debt ceiling. The debt was mentioned previously, and Social Security (which, as noted here, is projected to drop off funding to about 70-80 percent in 20 years, which is still more funding than what is paid out today…more here) has nothing to do with the deficit. And yes, we need to look at Medicare, but even that isn’t the biggest driver of the debt.

3) We’re now up to 1,091 days without a budget despite the fact that it’s the most basic function of Congress and it’s required by law.

Oh brother – as noted here…

HONOLULU — President Obama agreed on Friday to delay a request to Congress to expand the government’s borrowing authority by $1.2 trillion, allowing lawmakers time to return from recess and register their views on it.

The delay, which a White House official said would be only a few days, will not jeopardize the operations of the government, as last summer’s impasse over the debt ceiling did. The budget agreement of Aug. 2, which broke that deadlock, has made it highly unlikely that Congressional Republicans could block an increase in the debt limit through the 2012 election. Since signing legislation to codify that agreement, Mr. Obama has already obtained two increases totaling $900 billion.

And as noted here, Boehner and his pals are making noise like they might renege on the debt deal later this year (figures).

4) One of the great ironies of this election is the still rabid support that black Americans have for Barack Obama. This is kind of like Columbine High School throwing a “We Sure Do Miss You” Memorial Rally for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Let’s see, tasteless, racist, and utterly inaccurate all at once? Yep, pretty much.

And as noted here…

During an exchange with Fox News analyst Juan Williams during a debate in South Carolina on Jan. 16, Gingrich defended previous statements that poor kids lack a strong work ethic, that they should be put to work as janitors (child labor laws be damned), and that black Americans should “demand jobs, not food stamps.”

“Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?” Williams asked.

“No,” Gingrich responded, to roaring applause and rolling laughter. “I don’t see that.”

“It sounds as if you’re speaking to belittle people,” Williams added later in the exchange.

“Well, first of all, Juan,” Gingrich said, “the fact is, more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.”

This statement, while technically true, is no more reliable as a factual observation than other conservatives’ claims that Obama has governed during the highest unemployment spike in decades, or that his presidency has overseen the biggest national debt in history.

All three statements may be true on their face, but they lay responsibility for the greatest recession since the Great Depression at the feet of a man who wasn’t even president when the economic floor caved.

Funny, but I don’t hear Democrats questioning the work ethic of men and women of color. And I know that’s a little tangential to job numbers, but it does have something to do with stigmatizing the employment prospects for a rather significant demographic in this country.

And in terms of economic policies that actually help African Americans, Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett said here that unemployment funds are a stimulus of sorts, earning her the right-wing umbrage noted here.

More to the point, though, this tells us the following…

Even here, the black employment outlook is mixed. Black men appear to have gained jobs since February 2011 in manufacturing, construction and the service sector. And while government employment held steady this month, deep staff cuts in state and local government have hit black women particularly hard. Indeed, government agencies, a sector that has slashed about 500,000 jobs since February 2010, employed just over one-quarter of black women before the recession began. That has caused the number of black women with jobs to fall, although that number held steady in February, (Bill Rodgers, a Rutgers University economist who studies inequality) said.

The issue is spending to create demand not just to spur hiring for a racial class, but an economic class that will lift all of the proverbial boats, as it were.

And concluding with Hawkins…

5) The average unemployment rate during George Bush’s time in office was roughly 5.3% as compared to 8.2% today, which is part of the longest streak of over 8% unemployment since the Great Depression. However, because of the way the unemployment rate is calculated, even those horrific numbers don’t give you the full sense of the Mt. Krakatoa-like havoc that Barack Obama has wreaked on the job market.

In response, please click here to read each of the three charts, including the last one, showing job losses from Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History and job gains under the current occupant of An Oval Office.

Oh, and one more thing: Hawkins begins his screed with the following…

Whether you’ve had some form of head trauma that has caused you to like Barack Obama or like all good hearted people, you can’t stand him, his performance has objectively been terrible.

I realize that violent imagery and veiled threats of physical harm are right out of the typical right-wing playbook (along with typically pejorative, “us versus them” rhetoric about how all “good hearted” people can’t stand Obama), but I would just like for this fool Harkins to consider something here.

This is a picture of the late actress Natasha Richardson, who died three years ago last March. She fell while on a skiing trip and, indeed, suffered the “head trauma” that Harkins apparently thinks is something to use to ridicule those with whom he disagrees. She left behind a grieving husband and two young boys.

Find a conscience somehow, you contemptible guttersnipe.

Tuesday Mashup Part One (8/17/10)

1) This story in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer tells us the following…

Peter DeStefano says he’s just an “average Joe,” working voters at Wawas, diners, and beaches to get elected to the House.

But to Republican nominee Jon Runyan, the former Eagles tackle in a tough race to unseat Democratic Rep. John Adler, DeStefano is an irritant who could prove toxic.

The little-known DeStefano, a picture framer from Mount Laurel, is running as an independent candidate under the NJ Tea Party moniker in the Third Congressional District, which runs through Burlington and Ocean Counties and includes Cherry Hill in Camden County. The tag alone could draw votes away from Runyan.

After reviewing the 200-plus signatures on DeStefano’s nominating petitions and finding he had more than enough, Runyan’s campaign has continued to dig, looking for something to knock DeStefano off the ballot.

The campaign is considering a lawsuit alleging that those who signed may not have known that DeStefano was unaffiliated with a formal tea-party group, according to Runyan’s campaign consultant, Chris Russell.

Gee, I would call that a rather pointless distraction for a campaign that probably can use all the resources it can muster.

The Runyan campaign did uncover something a bit interesting, however, as the story tells us…

Marshall Spevak of Cherry Hill signed one of DeStefano’s petitions. Spevak lives just doors from Adler, and was active in Adler’s freshman House campaign in 2008. His father, Eric, has contributed to Adler campaigns and is an administrative law judge for the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Sounds like Runyan is alleging that DeStefano is trying to pull a “Jay Russell” as it turns out, based on this (i.e., a third-party candidate who has the potential to screw up an election…the last noteworthy item I heard about from the NJ-03 contest was this “taxing” matter concerning Runyan).

And this June Inquirer story tells us the following about the Runyan campaign (which, apparently, is trying to embrace some of Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich’s Contract on America)…

“It’s back to the future. I’m seeing this all over the country,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who keeps an eye on federal races. “Republicans are hoping it’s 1994 all over again for two reasons: They sense a Republican wave and just as in 1994, they have a third force in politics.”

…

“Things like term limits (supported by Runyan but not Adler) have a permanent appeal,” Sabato said. “In fact, it has more appeal today than in 1994 because we have 50 additional scandals, maybe 100.”

Of course, Sabato doesn’t take time to name those “50 additional scandals, maybe 100,” a typical tactic for someone who once said that the “Swift Boat” liars were telling the truth in 2008, along with claiming that it would be “a national disgrace” to continue “the Clinton/Bush dynasty” (in an effort to attack Hillary Clinton…I always thought that was an idiotic construct) and the Democrats are the “mommy” party while the Repugs are the “daddy” party (all here).

Getting back to DeStefano/Adler/Runyan, yesterday’s Inquirer story also tells us the following…

In addition to his unhappiness with rising fuel prices and a barely regulated mortgage market, DeStefano said, he opposed the war in Iraq, which he believes was “started on a rumor.” He also is against the war in Afghanistan, which he said was helping a corrupt regime. He supports the military, he said, but believes the United States should be taking care of domestic problems.

After the 2008 general election, DeStefano switched to the Democratic Party. But “it didn’t take me much longer to find out it was worse,” he said.

“As far as I’m concerned, they are both full of crap,” he said.

He doesn’t have kind words for local tea-party organizations, who have made it clear from the start that they did not sponsor his candidacy.

The groups endorsed Justin Murphy over Runyan in the Republican primary. But last week, the West Jersey Tea Party, which has members in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties, endorsed the former Eagle.

They’re “shills” for the Republicans, DeStefano said.

That statement about DeStefano definitely intrigues me, I should add, though he has no shot at winning the general election, unfortunately (and I wouldn’t mind if he posed enough of a threat to Adler to make him remember that Democrats are supposed to have spines).

2) Also, Joke Line concocted more puffery here today on the Kentucky Senate race…

Welcome to Campaign 2010. This is going to be a Republican year, perhaps a big one. The question of how big will be resolved in states like Kentucky, where mainstream Republican candidates were defeated in primaries by Tea Party sorts like Rand Paul, and the public will have to decide if the GOP is too loony to rule.

Conway, the other guy in the race, is almost an afterthought, but a solid test case. He’s wicked handsome, moderate and Kentucky’s attorney general, which is perhaps the best office a Democratic candidate can hold these days. He has spent the past three years doing real-world populist things like suing pharmaceutical companies and cracking down on crime and drug abuse, which is epidemic among eastern Kentucky’s impoverished hill-country youth. Such activities are far more acceptable than voting for bank bailouts and stimulus packages, the burden that most incumbent Democratic members of Congress carry. But Kentucky is a fervent Republican state these days — Barack Obama is about as popular there as Tennessee — and Conway’s staffers admit they wouldn’t have a chance if a standard-issue Republican had won the primary. Paul, by contrast, is a fat target, which became apparent in Conway’s Fancy Farm speech.

By the way, here is a link to Conway’s speech.

And at this point, I hope our media just keep repeating over and over that this will be a big Republican electoral year. I honestly do. That way, they’ll look even stupider than they already are when this country realizes that we’re talking about a political party more concerned about mosques in New York City (more on that shortly), “terror babies,” and a nonexistent rise in Arizona immigrant crime than they are about trying to solve our country’s genuine problems and acts accordingly on Election Day.

I really wish Klein had spent just a few more words describing how, as noted here, Paul is totally out to lunch on the issue of Kentucky’s drug problems, as noted here (marijuana is that state’s number one cash crop, which to me is an even stronger argument for decriminalization at the least).

And to help Jack Conway, click here.

3) Finally, I regret to return to the mosque issue once more, but based on this, I believe I must…

Dear American Taxpayer,

You are paying for the Ground Zero Mosque.

Chances are you’re in not in the 20% of people who support the blasphemous Ground Zero mega-mosque. But guess what? You are currently paying for the Imam who wants to build it to visit Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar to raise money for it.

Uh, no – as noted here…

The right-wing media is attacking Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s upcoming State Department trip to the Middle East to “discuss Muslim life in America and religious tolerance,” by falsely claiming he will use the trip as a “taxpayer-funded fundraising jaunt” to finance construction of his Islamic cultural center in New York City. In fact, the State Department has made clear that fundraising of any kind is prohibited during the trip, and Rauf has previously participated in this program, first under President Bush.

And when it comes to wingnuttiness on this issue, I think you have to go a long way to find something crazier than this.

8/18/10: You know, just go ahead and call me a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, but given the trillions spent on Dubya’s idiotic tax cuts and his war of choice in Iraq, I have a hard time getting worked up over “16 large” for this story (here).

Thursday Mashup Part One (6/10/10)

1) I haven’t said anything to this point about the retirement of Helen Thomas from the White House press corps because I think there are more important matters out there for us to learn about. Yes, it was wrong for her to say that Israel should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to Germany and Poland, or whatever, but she did apologize right away after she spoke. However, since she is not a conservative and has a history of speaking out against Israel, our corporate media demanded swift retribution.

What made me turn my attention to this matter was this recent column from Cal Thomas (hardly a relation), in particular the following…

Helen Thomas’ real sin — in addition to the obvious — is that she exposed Washington journalists as having strong personal opinions about the subjects they cover.

And with that in mind, I give you the following from C. Thomas about a certain former first lady and Democratic presidential candidate (here)…

In his July 10 nationally syndicated column, Cal Thomas discussed a July 7 New York Times article that reported that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) “said she believed in the resurrection of Jesus, though she described herself as less sure of the doctrine that being a Christian is the only way to salvation.” Thomas asserted: “This is a politician speaking, not a person who believes in the central tenets of Christianity.”

Talk about your “strong personal opinions”…

And besides, the whole dustup over Helen Thomas is the tempest in the proverbial teapot when you consider the following from here, namely that…

On May 31st Israeli commandos killed at least nine unarmed volunteers attempting to take humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

According to eyewitness reports and forensic evidence, many of these aid volunteers were shot at close range, including a 19-year-old American citizen killed by four bullets to the head and one to the chest fired from 18 inches away.

Israel immediately imprisoned eyewitnesses and hundreds of other aid participants, confiscated their cameras, laptops, and other possessions, and prevented them from speaking to the press for days. Among the incarcerated were decorated U.S. veterans and an 80-year-old former ambassador who had been deputy director of Reagan’s Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism.

When they finally emerged and were able to tell their stories, many described horrific scenes of Israeli commandos shooting people in the head, of those tending the injured being shot in the stomach, of people bleeding to death while flotilla participants waved white flags and pled for help.

They also described being beaten brutally by Israeli forces, again and again – including those on ships that, in the U.S. media’s judgment, experienced “no violence.” A 64-year-old piano tuner from California, Paul Larudee, described hundreds of Israeli commandos boarding his ship. When he refused to cooperate with them, soldiers then beat him numerous times both on board the ship and after he was imprisoned on land.

And given all of this, the only thing a pompous windbag like Cal Thomas can find to complain about is a moment of frustration (carried to excess, I’ll admit) by a member of the profession to which he allegedly belongs as well.

2) Also, this tells us that John C. Metzler, Jr., superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, has been fired along with his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, by Army Secretary John McHugh (as Fix Noise tells us, Higginbotham had reportedly illegally hacked into the computer files of a former Arlington employee).

The matter truly at issue here, however, has to do with at least one service member’s remains buried on top of another at Arlington, as noted here by Salon from last November…

The top official at Arlington National Cemetery claims he was unaware of the most recently reported burial error at the cemetery, possibly, he says, because he was away at the time it occurred. Cemetery employee records, however, show Superintendent John Metzler present and working at Arlington when the cemetery discovered this most recently disclosed burial foul-up…

Arlington officials also continue to struggle to locate key paperwork that must be completed when remains are moved. The paperwork would confirm that Air Force Master Sgt. Marion Grabe’s remains were moved and explain the circumstances surrounding that decision. The Army, which oversees Arlington, has been unable to locate any such documents.

The still-missing burial paperwork adds to the mounting evidence suggesting that top Arlington officials may have disregarded cemetery rules in this case. The explanation from Metzler, meanwhile, raises serious questions about the conduct of top cemetery officials with respect to repeated burial mix-ups at Arlington. Cemetery officials have already established a pattern of incomplete, inconsistent or contradictory responses when asked by Salon to account for misplaced or misidentified remains at the cemetery.

…

…over the course of many months, as Salon has investigated problems at Arlington, statements from cemetery officials have been wildly inconsistent and contradictory about this and other burial mix-ups. Some of the statements, most issued via cemetery or Army spokesmen, have appeared in previous Salon articles, but this full pattern has not been assembled until now.

Among Salon’s earliest queries on the subject was this one, sent in writing to cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst last July 10: “Is (Deputy Superintendent Thurman) Higginbotham or (Superintendent John) Metzler aware of any information that suggests that in some cases, the person identified on a headstone may not, in fact, be the person buried underneath that headstone?” Salon asked. “For example, has the cemetery ever begun digging a grave, only to find that there is already someone there, though the grave is unmarked?”

Horst responded via telephone some days later. “The answer to that is no,” she said. “To the best of our knowledge, we are not aware of any situation like that.”

Ten days after submitting that question, Salon obtained proof that in 2003, the cemetery went to bury a service member in a grave only to find unmarked remains in that spot. The response from the cemetery was to cover up the unknown remains with dirt and grass and walk away. Cemetery officials then kept that secret for six years until Salon brought the case to the cemetery’s attention.

There are no words that I can add that would truly communicate what an affront all of this is to the dignity of our men and women in the armed services. And I don’t mean to allege purposeful negligence here so much as I’m alleging managerial incompetence.

Let’s just say that the terminations of Metzler (an appointee of Poppy Bush, for the record) and Higginbotham were both long overdue.

Update 6/11/10: Hat tip to Atrios for this (shame indeed)…

3) Finally, I give you The Orange One, who said the following from here about the Congressional hearings into the devastation in the Gulf…

“This is Congress at its best,” said (House Minority Leader John) Boehner at the beginning of a rant on the scores of House and Senate hearings on the oil spill.

“Why don’t we get the oil stopped, figure out what the hell went wrong, and then have the hearings and get the damn law fixed,” Boehner said at his weekly press conference.

Yep, as noted here, Boehner and his pals know a lot about trying to mess up congressional hearings, as they did last March 25th on the occasion of the energy bill sponsored by Dem Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts; a whole parade of global warming denialists held court while Congress continued (and continues) to struggle with passing legislation aimed at reversing the effects of climate change, which hastens the warming of the planet and the consequent spreading of sickness and disease among the very young, very old, and everyone else.

Oh, and did you also know that, according to this, Boehner thinks that taxpayers should foot the bill for the BP cleanup in the Gulf?

Maybe Boehner won’t think hearings into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and wreck and the subsequent cleanup are such a joke if gooey tar balls from oil and dispersant start washing up onto the shores of the Ohio River.

A Fix Noise Re-START Of A “Russkie” Ruse

Leave it to the media wing of the Republican Party to concoct more “Ooga Booga!” scare headlines, such as in this account which tells us the following…

Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to a weapons inspection program that would allow Russians to visit nuclear sites in America to count missiles and warheads.

The plan, which Fox News has learned was agreed to in principle during negotiations, would constitute the most intrusive weapons inspection program the U.S. has ever accepted.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said publicly Tuesday that the two nations have made “considerable” progress toward reaching agreement on a new strategic arms treaty.

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires in December and negotiators have been racing to reach agreement on a successor.

Gee, trying to abide by internationally agreed upon and ratified treaties and protocols, huh? How “pre-9/11” can you get?

(OK, I’m removing my tongue from my cheek now.)

I don’t know how the Roger Ailes BS Factory arrived at the conclusion that the weapons inspection program is “the most intrusive” we’ve ever accepted, but I do know the following (from here, concerning the treaty we’re currently trying to revive after years of Bushco neglect)…

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), first proposed in the early 1980s by President Ronald Reagan and finally signed in July 1991, required the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce their deployed strategic arsenals to 1,600 delivery vehicles, carrying no more than 6,000 warheads as counted using the agreement’s rules. The agreement limited deployed warheads by imposing limits on delivery vehicles and requiring the destruction of excess delivery vehicles. The destruction was verified using an intrusive verification regime that involved on-site inspections and regular exchanges of information, as well as national technical means (i.e., satellites).

…

Signed December 8, 1987, the INF Treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to verifiably eliminate all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Distinguished by its unprecedented, intrusive inspection regime, the INF Treaty laid the groundwork for the verification component of the subsequent START I agreement on strategic nuclear reductions. The INF Treaty entered into force June 1, 1988, and the two sides completed their reductions by June 1, 1991, destroying a total of 2,692 missiles. The agreement was multilateralized after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and current active participants in the agreement’s implementation include the United States, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are also parties to the agreement but do not participate in treaty meetings or on-site inspections. The ban on intermediate-range missiles is of unlimited duration.

Of course, Faux News is counting on its audience being too stupid to realize that the “tentative inspection program” it describes has existed roughly for about the last 30 years.

And it complements the goal of a previous president who once said, “[M]y dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth” here.

And given that, it kind of makes we wonder what the person who spoke those words would think of individuals claiming to represent his beloved political party while also ridiculing the current Oval Office occupant acting in accordance with The Gipper’s vision.

Monday Mashup (9/28/09)

Yes, I know William Safire is dead.

Aside, from the fact that he once called Hillary Clinton a “congenital liar” (to which HRC famously replied that she didn’t feel offended for herself, “but for her mother’s sake”), and aside that he brought up the thoroughly debunked claim that Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, met with “an Iraqi intelligence agent” in Prague, he also claimed that the Iraq war would be “quick,” with “Iraqis cheering their liberators.”

Bill Moyers called him out on this here, but, like Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer and Judith Miller, Safire chose not to stand up and try to defend that which is indefensible.

Also, this tells us that Safire once claimed that “nobody was telling (President Obama, on the occasion of his acceptance of the Democratic Party nomination for president last year) or the voters that Democrats preferred abject surrender,” when in fact Dems are routinely vilified by Safire and his like-minded brethren in that manner.

Good riddance.

This tells us that former John McCain Presidential Campaign Adviser Carly Fiorina, currently debating whether or not she’ll challenge California Dem U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer next year, discussed her battle with breast cancer in this interview with Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine. I give Fiorina credit for enduring this and trying to turn her struggle into something positive.

However, as noted here, Fiorina has claimed that “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore,” an interesting remark for someone who, as former CEO of Hewlett Packard, turned a blind eye to that company’s trading with Iran (at the very least), as noted here.

And as Mike Morrill of Keystone Progress tells us here (noting, among other things, HP’s disastrous merger with Compaq):

Fiorina Laid Off Nearly 18,000 HP Workers During “Restructuring.” According to the Omaha-World Herald, “Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, Calif., had a $ 903 million loss on revenue of $56.6 billion for its fiscal year that ended last Oct 31. According to a summary by Hoover’s Inc., an Austin, Texas, provider of business information, Hewlett-Packard has undergone extensive restructuring under Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina. The company announced earlier this year that it planned to cut 17,900 people by October because of a weak economy and its merger with Compaq.” [Omaha-World Herald 9/29/03]

Fiorina Suggests Her Biggest Mistake Was Not Firing More People More Quickly. In 2005, Fortune magazine reported that “Fiorina does not agree, naturally, that there’s been a brain drain (at HP). In fact, she believes that one lesson she’s learned while running HP is that she should have moved more quickly in ejecting certain people. Smartened up now, she says, “I would have done them all faster. Every person that I’ve asked to leave, whether it’s been clear publicly or not, I would have done faster.” [Fortune, 2/7/05]

Despite Being Forced Out, Fiorina’s Severance Package Was Reportedly More Than $42 Million. CNNMoney reported, “Ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina will get a severance package worth about $21.4 million, but stands to reap another $21 million after she was forced out by the computer maker’s board last week, a newspaper reported Saturday. The additional amount reflects the estimated value of her Hewlett stock and options as well as her pension, which were not included in her severance package, the New York Times reported.” [CNNMoney.com, 2/12/05]

Fiorina Was Paid $10.7 Million In 2002, But Was Decreased To $6.6 Million In 2003 Due To Poor Performance. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, “Hewlett-Packard has slashed the pay of chief executive Carly Fiorina after she missed some performance targets last year, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission… Fiorina’s total pay — including salary, bonus and stock options — dropped about 38 percent from $10.7 million in fiscal 2002 to $6.6 million last year.

While her base salary went up from $1 million in 2002 to $1.24 million in 2003, her performance-based bonus dropped from $2.9 million to $2.1 million and the value of her stock option grants declined from $6.8 million to $3.3 million.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/24/04]

If Fiorina is serious about making a run for the Senate, she should expect some sympathy for overcoming the odds on her personal health.

However, that would be grossly overshadowed by the monstrous incompetence she has demonstrated in her corporate career, a frightening harbinger of what she would do in “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

And finally, I’m going to do something I’ve been meaning to do for some time; that would be bringing us up to date on that political piñata running for governor of New Jersey as the Republican standard bearer (from here):

Hmmm, Christie and Turd Blossom, huh?

Christie’s bad week (8/18) continued.

Somehow I don’t quite think “oops” covers this on Christie.

Is it just me, or does Christie’s whole “law and order” facade start to crumble (here)?

Is the Christie juggernaut “off the rails” (here)?

Christie is nothing but a bully and a thug (here – h/t The Daily Kos).

It’s getting harder to keep up with all of the Christie revelations (here and here…this guy shouldn’t be running for dog catcher, let alone governor of New Jersey).

And it sounds like Christie’s running mate has a case of foot-in-mouth disease herself (here).

Not an appearance of wrongdoing by Christie on this, but worth considering anyway…

It should be an interesting fall.

Update 10/14/09: No “small dive” is good enough for Christie, it seems, based on this, unless you’re talking about his polling numbers.

Update 10/19/09: At least Christie is honest in acknowledging his debt to Bushco; I’ll give him that much based on this.

A Note About The Clintons And Health Care

Reporter Jackie Calmes of the New York Times wrote the following today (on health care basically)…

In 1994, Democrats’ dysfunction over fulfilling a new president’s campaign promise contributed to the party’s loss of its 40-year dominance of Congress. Now that memory is being revived, and it is the message the White House and Congressional leaders will press when lawmakers return this week, still divided and now spooked after the turbulent town-hall-style meetings, downbeat polls and distortions of August.

…

That 15-year-old lesson underscores how much the Clinton debacle has defined Mr. Obama’s drive for his domestic priority from the beginning, providing a tip sheet for what not to do. Even Mr. Obama’s decision to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night to jumpstart his health initiative left some aides wary, given the inevitable parallels with Mr. Clinton’s September address 16 years ago to introduce his ill-fated plan.

As I and many others have pointed out over and over and over, the Republican congressional takeover of 1994 had more to do with “values voter” umbrage over the perceived peccadilloes of Clinton at that time as well as preoccupation with “scandals” such as the House Post Office controversy (Remember what that was all about? Neither do I, actually, which is usually the case when wingnuts make noise to generate headlines) along with the fact that Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich’s face was on my TV screen every stinking day plugging his Contract on America (and the Repug takeover had very little to do with the assault weapons ban also).

Besides, this “reporting” by Calmes is free of factual content and exists only to reinforce the narrative that that mean Hillary Clinton just decided to own the health care issue lock, stock and barrel and freeze Congress out of the negotiations, right?

Um, no.

If Calmes had bothered to read her own newspaper, she would have learned the following from fellow reporter Kate Phillips (here)…

In mid-August, former President Clinton himself challenged that supposed historical lesson. He argued that blaming his administration’s decision to hand a bill to Congress was an inaccurate depiction of what occurred and not a reason the effort failed.

As keynote speaker at the Netroots Nation conference of progressive/liberal bloggers in Pittsburgh, Mr. Clinton sarcastically denounced what he considers the false, revisionist history: “Everybody knows that Hillary presented this horribly complicated, 1,300-page bill, which would have broken the back of the federal statutes. And what she should’ve done was refused to present a bill and just have her committee issue a report to Congress with recommendations.”

In reality, Mr. Clinton said, the bill-writing was dictated by Congress: “We actually pleaded with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to let us send a report with recommendations and have them write the bill, and he said, ‘I will not take this up unless you send me a bill.’ ”

Mr. Clinton recalled that the chairman at the time — Representative Dan Rostenkowski, whom President Clinton later pardoned for a mail-fraud conviction — countered that without a presidential bill, interest groups would swarm all over his committee. The lobbyists would overwhelm the lawmakers, in other words.

And according to Mr. Clinton, the chairman argued: “There’s not enough base-level knowledge in the Congress to resist it, and we will never get anywhere. This will not happen unless you give a bill.”

I would ask that you remember the next time you read about how the Clintons were the villains of the early ‘90s health care effort (more partisan mythology intended to deflect attention from the ravenous right-wing fear mongering that defeated the ‘90s attempt at health care reform and, sadly, may do the same thing this time around also).

Today’s False Equivalency From Lanny The “Lefty”

As a follow up of sorts to this post, it turns out that Hillary Clinton apologist Lanny Davis (going back to the presidential election when HRC ran against Obama in the Dem primary, I mean), is baaack, this time criticizing individuals such as your humble narrator for, as noted here…

…threatening businesses with one or more executives who offer personal ideas for achieving national health care reform different from the Administration’s or Democratic congressional leaders’ versions (full disclosure: I support all of President Obama’s core principles for national health care legislation, though I still have many unanswered questions); hateful emails, phone calls, blogs, and personal attacks, distorting alternative ideas different from the Administration’s approach and attacking the motives of those airing them; and intolerance for anyone who disagrees, including personal invective and demonization of those with different views.

Basically, Davis was answered already from TPM’s Brian Beutler here on the whole business about how we on the left supposedly mirror those on the right (h/t Atrios); Beutler also pointed out that Davis assisted John Mackey of Whole Foods on his recent Murdoch Street Journal column (I should emphasize that the column – more precisely, the fallout from we filthy, unkempt blogger types – and the fact that it originated from Mackey and Whole Foods, is the source of Davis’ harrumphing).

And after reading Davis’ full-throated defense of Mackey and Whole Foods (and assault against those baaad liberal bloggers, even though Davis didn’t have the fortitude to back up his charges with specifics), I’m starting to wonder if Lanny came up with the following on Mackey’s behalf (noted in the prior post)…

The union is like having herpes. It doesn’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover.

But I suppose this is to be expected from the guy who helped propagate the “zombie lie” here that former PA Governor Bob Casey, Sr. wasn’t allowed to speak at the Dem National Convention in ’92 because he was pro-life (other pro-life Dems did speak, for the record); launched the petition for HRC to be Obama’s VP nominee (I can recall a whole bunch of “divided Dems” columns over that one) here; and who criticized Obama here for his relationship with a certain African American preacher on April 9th last year – after Obama gave his speech about it on March 18th – and said that, “I am a strong supporter of and a substantial fundraiser for Hillary Clinton for president (though in this column I speak only for myself)”…yep Lanny, you just happened to be “speak(ing) for yourself” ultimately on behalf of your candidate – give me a frackin’ break!

The only statement Davis makes in his entire post that I agree with is “silence is complicity.”

He’s right, but not in the way he intends or understands.

Update 8/17/09: Mr. Greenwald whomps on Davis here (h/t Atrios).

Thursday Mashup (8/6/09)

From the “We Decide, Then Report” file, John Lott tells us the following from Fix Noise (here, taking an off day from compiling statistics on how much safer we would be if we all had assault rifles, no doubt)…

Only in Washington could a program that is spending money 13 times faster than was planned be labeled a “success.” The “cash-for-clunkers” program ground to a halt last week because in less than a week, a program that was supposed to last until November 1, had spent the entire $1 billion allocated to it. Let’s just hope that the government takeover of the rest of the health care industry doesn’t result in similar “success.”

Meanwhile, in the reality based community (here)…

The Obama administration’s much-maligned “cash-for-clunkers” trade-in system has made an immediate and indisputable impact on the struggling U.S. auto industry, with consumers flocking to dealerships in numbers not seen in years and auto companies posting strong sales they directly attribute to the government program.

Ford announced on Monday that their July U.S. auto sales were up a strong 2.3% over results from one year ago, a result that company executives linked to “cash-for-clunkers.”

And as noted here, the Senate is expected to vote on authorizing $2 billion more of funding for the program today.

Yes, I’ve read that this is expected to create a mini “auto bubble” also (funny – I wish more people noting that had paid attention to the housing and dot.com “bubbles” as well), with a likely dropoff to occur when the program ends, but who knows for sure? And how can it be a bad thing when the auto industry shows signs of life?

As noted here…

If the Senate approves the additional money, it’s likely to lead automakers to increase production and bring back laid-off workers. Many automakers reported low inventories due to increased sales from the program at the end of July. Already Hyundai Motor Co. has added a day of production to its Montgomery, Ala., plant, and Ford is considering increases.

Ford’s chief financial officer, Lewis Booth, said Wednesday night the company would decide this month and make an announcement in early September.

Among states, Michigan has taken most advantage of the program, requesting more than $44 million in vehicle vouchers. California dealers had requested nearly $40 million in vouchers, and Ohio had sought nearly $38 million.

Senate passage would send the legislation to the White House for Obama’s signature and assure consumers there will be no interruption in the program that has led to packed car dealerships nationwide.

The deals are aimed at boosting auto sales, which have been at their lowest levels in two decades.

Which of course means that the program is opposed by the Repugs, including Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a state which, to the best of my knowledge, manufactures no automobiles whatsoever (maybe armored, but that’s it).

As noted here, President Obama is going to visit Bozeman, MT next week to pitch health care reform. As this story tells us, this is the first visit of a sitting president to this area of “big sky country.”

(And gosh, J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times actually didn’t trash health care reform today, but wrote about a “missing ape sculpture” instead…insert your snark here).

Maybe while Obama and his entourage are staying over, someone could remind Repug State Rep Michael More that introducing language in a bill that could be potentially interpreted to justify an armed insurrection against this country isn’t a good idea (here).

And the both the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are coming under attack for the following based on this (as if Obama doesn’t have enough to do – he’s been in An Oval Office for how long now? Six months and two weeks?)…

President Obama got lots of attention last month for his drop-in visit to Ghana after the G20 meeting in Italy, where he blasted African leaders for misruling the continent and condemning its people to poverty and backwardness. “Repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty,” said Obama. “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.”

They were fine words. But not much else. Obama didn’t single out any particular leader for criticism, and he gave the speech in Ghana, one of Africa’s handful of functional democracies. In her own trip to Africa this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit bright spots like South Africa, Cape Verde, and Liberia. But she also has a perfect opportunity to name and shame the continent’s worst leaders. There’s only one problem: she’s going to blow it.

See how our corporate media cousins have moved from magnifying perceived misdeeds of the Obama Administration to now forecasting what they will do wrong instead; Newsweek must be in possession of tarot cards, tea leaves, an Ouija board, and maybe even Harry Potter’s wand…amazing!

The article specifically singles out Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria, Mwai Kibaki, of Kenya and Joseph Kabila of the Congo as people who are particularly bad actors. And yes, Hillary Clinton has said here that not having a USAID agency head named by the White House is “frustrating beyond words.”

But I think the following should be considered (from here)…

The Obama administration inherited a foreign aid system starved of civilian experts and burdened by a bewildering array of mandates. USAID’s full-time staff shrank by 40 percent over the past two decades, but the assistance it oversees doubled, to $13.2 billion in 2008. The agency has a skeleton crew of technical experts, with four engineers for the entire world, Clinton noted recently. Increasingly, USAID has become a conduit for money flowing to contractors, who have limited supervision from the agency.

As USAID has weakened, foreign assistance programs have proliferated across government agencies, especially the military, causing duplication and confusion. Meanwhile, aid budgets have been saddled with presidential directives, “buy America” provisions and congressional earmarks that raise the cost of aid and reduce its effectiveness, development specialists say.

“In the USAID budget, every dollar has three purposes: help build an Air Force base, support the University of Mississippi, get some country to vote our way,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of the aid group Bread for the World, describing the plethora of political claims attached to aid. The development program, he said, “is a mess.”

The waste of billions of U.S. reconstruction dollars in Iraq and the growing role of development in the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan have given new urgency to long-running debates about reforming the aid system.

And as noted here (last year)…

…the United States currently provides economic aid and security assistance to such repressive African regimes as Swaziland, Congo, Cameroon, Togo, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Gabon, Egypt, and Tunisia. None of these countries holds free elections, and all have severely suppressed their political opposition.

Among the worst of these African tyrannies has been the regime of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang has been in power even longer than the 28-year reign of (Robert) Mugabe and, according to a recent article in the British newspaper The Independent, makes the Zimbabwean dictator “seem stable and benign” by comparison. Obiang originally seized power in a 1979 coup by murdering his uncle, who had ruled the country since its independence from Spain in 1968. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea nominally allowed the existence of opposition parties as a condition of receiving foreign aid in the early 1990s. But the four leading candidates withdrew from the last presidential election in December 2002 in protest of irregularities in the voting process and violence against their supporters. In that election, Obiang officially received more than 97 percent of the vote (down from 99.5 percent in the previous election.)

Though the U.S. State Department acknowledged that the election was “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation,” the Congress and the administration devoted none of the vehement condemnation that was so evident after the recent, similarly marred election process in Zimbabwe.

One major reason for the difference in response is oil. The development of vast oil reserves over the past decade has made Equatorial Guinea one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita gross domestic product. Virtually all of the oil revenues, however, goes to Obiang and his cronies. The dictator himself is worth an estimated $1 billion, making him the wealthiest leader in Africa; his real estate holdings include two mansions in Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country’s population lives on only a few dollars a day, and nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. The country’s major towns and cities lack basic sanitation and potable water, while conditions in the countryside are even worse.

During his most recent visit to Washington in 2006, Obiang was warmly received by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who praised the dictator as “a good friend” of the United States. Not once during their joint appearance did she mention the words “human rights” or “democracy.” At the same press conference, Obiang praised his regime’s “extremely good relations with the United States” and his expectation that “this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation.” None of the assembled reporters raised any questions about the regime’s notorious human rights record or its lack of democracy, instead using the opportunity to ask Secretary Rice questions about the alleged threat from Iran.

Does Obama have work to do in Africa? Yes. Does our Democratic Congress? Uh huh. And our media? Bueller?

Did Dubya have work to do? Next question.

Now, Newsweek, since we’ve settled all this for now, can you just report stories like grownups again for a change?

And finally, this tells us the following…

After a period of relatively low bankruptcy filings during 2006-07, U.S. consumer bankruptcies rose sharply in 2008 and continue to climb in 2009. Consumer filings reached 126,434 in July, the highest monthly total since the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was implemented in October 2005, and pushed the consumer total for the first seven months of 2009 past 800,000 filings.

Just to refresh our memories, here are the brave souls who opposed this horrible law (all Dems)…

Daniel Akaka
Barbara Boxer
Maria Cantwell
Jon Corzine
Mark Dayton
Christopher Dodd
Byron Dorgan
Dick Durbin
Russ Feingold
Dianne Feinstein
Tom Harkin
Ted Kennedy
John Kerry
Frank Lautenberg
Patrick Leahy
Carl Levin
Joe Lieberman
Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray
Barack Obama
Jack Reed
Jay Rockefeller
Paul Sarbannes
Chuck Schumer
Ron Wyden

And here are the cowards who supported it (Dems are noted)…

Wayne Allard
Lamar Alexander
George Allen
Kay Bailey Hutchison
Max Baucus (d)
Evan Bayh (d)
Bob Bennett
Joe Biden (d)
Jeff Bingaman (d)
Christopher “Kit” Bond
Sam Brownback
Jim Bunning
Conrad Burns
Richard Burr
Robert Byrd (d)
Tom Carper (d)
Lincoln Chaffee
Saxby Chambliss
Tom Coburn
Thad Cochran
Norm Coleman
Susan Collins
John Cornyn
Kent Conrad (d)
Larry Craig
Mike Crapo
Jim DeMint
Mike DeWine
Elizabeth Dole
Pete Domenici
John Ensign
Mike Enzi
Bill Frist
Lindsay Graham
Charles Grassley (he sponsored it)
Judd Gregg
Chuck Hagel
Orrin Hatch
John Isakson
Jim Inhofe
Daniel Inouye (d)
Jim Jeffords (i)
Tim Johnson (d)
Herb Kohl (d)
Jon Kyl
Mary Landrieu (d)
Blanche Lincoln (d)
Trent Lott
Richard Lugar
Mel Martinez
John McCain
Mitch McConnell
Lisa Murkowski
Ben Nelson (d)
Bill Nelson (d)
Mark Pryor (d)
Harry Reid (d)
Pat Roberts
Ken Salazar (d)
Rick Santorum
Jeff Sessions
Richard Shelby
Gordon Smith
Olympia Snowe
Arlen Specter (d?)
Debbie Stabenow (d)
Ted Stevens
John Sununu
Jim Talent
Craig Thomas
John Thune
David Vitter
George Voinovich
John Warner

(And Hillary Clinton voted Present, which I think is questionable also.)

A pox on those “Yes” voters for all time…

Friday Health Care Roundup

Every time I’ve ever read some piece of punditry claiming that the Clinton health care plan of the ‘90s died because it was too “top heavy” in regulations, included an option for a public plan that was sooo unpopular because – horrors! – it reeked of the dreaded “socialized medzin,” or (worst of all), because it was done so secretively by that mean, non-cookie-baking first lady Hillary (and by the way, sorry to hear about this; hope she gets better soon), I was always tempted to dismiss it all because it was probably pulled from one of the writer’s bodily orifices.

And then I came across this great post by Nate Silver yesterday that confirms my suspicions (and, more importantly, shows no sign of erosion for a public health option, something I wish our senators would note based on this).

What Silver does is to show the approval numbers for the Clinton plan at various points during ’93-’94, and he sums them up as follows (noting that this is a bit of an oversimplification)…

The approval polling suggests that Clinton was benefiting when he was doing the most direct salesmanship of the bill. A joint address to Congress on September 22, 1993 was met with a sudden jump in Clinton’s approval rating. Although that bounce was short-lived, his approval rating then continued to improve throughout the balance of 1993 as a health care bill was presented to Congress in November. It was only when the bill was left to linger before Congress in the spring of 1994 that both its fortunes and those of Clinton began to suffer. Clinton’s approval rating hit a nadir at 39 percent on August 16, 1994, the lowest it would be for the rest of his Presidency, which is right about when George Mitchell was making it clear that no bill had the votes to pass the Senate.

What I take away from this is that, when the case for the public plan is made, the support is there. However, when that gets drowned out by the typical right-wing lies on this subject (which usually reach their loudest volume when the plan details are getting hammered out by Congress), that’s when health care reform for real goes up in smoke.

And right on cue, we have this from Repug U.S. House Rep John Shadegg, who tells us that “your health care benefit will be taxed,” which is disingenuous because 1) the tax would be on the employer, who would surely pass off some portion at least to the employee, I’ll admit, even though 2) “Straight Talk” McCain proposed the same thing during the election last year (here…and by the way, the other five RNC-approved talking points rehashed by Shadegg are nothing but propaganda).

With this in mind, please note that Shadegg received over $244,000 from the healthcare sector, over $168,000 of which was from healthcare political action committees (in the 2008 campaign finance cycle), and he also sponsored legislation to increase the number of work visas for registered nurses coming to this country from abroad (great move with so many in this country out of work; by the way, I don’t know if the post I linked to here on this is tongue-in-cheek or not).

Finally, if anyone has any doubt as to whether or not funding a public health care option is a good idea, I would ask that you consider the following from here which tells us that the cost would be at least comparable to what we’re already paying to bail out the “banksters” (and to contact your senators to tell them to support the public option on health care, click here – the pic above of President Lyndon Johnson signing the bill into law creating Medicare, with President Truman looking on, serves as a reminder that we can do this, people).

Some Brief Wednesday Wingnuttia

The New York Times got a bunch of “experts” together here to figure out what questions they would ask Secretary of State Designate Hillary Clinton in her confirmation hearing yesterday (seemed to go well based on this, though, since we are talking about the Clintons, after all, our political-media-industrial complex must be allowed some brief hysterics).

And one of the writers appearing in the Times was the neocon simpatico Fouad Ajami, who wondered as follows…

1. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed William Jennings Bryan secretary of state for solely domestic political reasons. He needed but distrusted him, and thus relied on other advisers to conduct diplomacy. Have you read up on Wilson’s relationship with Bryan, and will it be relevant to your own situation?

Uh…sorry – too much work to try and answer that question, and somehow I don’t think anybody cares.

3. You speak about the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s era, as a time of peace and prosperity. Yet the ‘90s witnessed a steady trail of anti-American terrorism that emboldened Al Qaeda’s leaders. In the Clinton era, terrorism was generally viewed as a law enforcement problem. Did we really do so well in handling terrorism in the 1990s?

Uh…yep, considering this.