The Toot is going to look past the effete, effeminate and elitist Frenchy last name and quote Scott Lemieux anyway:
[I]f you can construct a plausible scenario under which an actual president, an actual majority of the House of Representatives, and an actual 60th most liberal member of the Senate would vote to create either a single-payer system or even a Swiss-like system of very tightly regulated non-profit private insurance [then the rejectionist argument gains power]. The argument not only fails but is deeply irresponsible because such a scenario is in fact wildly implausible, and while we would be playing Vladimir and Estragon a great deal of preventable suffering and death would occur. The simple fact is that high-veto-point American political institutions protect the status quo in general and powerful vested interests in particular. It’s not just that times when even significant incremental change is possible are rare — the American welfare state was basically constructed in two 2- or 3-year periods following historically unusual landslides in all three branches. It’s that even in those periods, reform involved compromises as bad or worse than what’s being contemplated in the current legislation.
Let’s take the New Deal. The parts of the New Deal that didn’t involve the creation of corporate cartels — the enduring parts — were not only incremental reforms but were all deeply compromised with interests much more morally odious than insurance companies: Southern segregationists…The New Deal not only further entrenched but disproportionately benefited the apartheid power. And yet not only FDR (who, in truth, was even more tepid on civil rights than was politically necessary) but most of his African-American supporters understood that the programs were a good deal on balance: it wasn’t a choice between a discriminatory welfare state and a non-discriminatory one; it was a discriminatory one or nothing. And they were right.
The fact is, compromises with venality and/or evil are almost always necessary in the American political system; it’s virtually impossible to accomplish anything without buying off powerful interests. Getting anything like universal health coverage is going to require giving protection money to insurance interests. This is nothing to be happy about, but arguments that fail to recognize this aren’t going to be very useful.
Right. I’m not sure what AlternAmerica the Jane Hamshers of the world are dwelling in, but how the fuck exactly are we going to convince Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln AND a Republican to vote yes on single payer or a robust public option (after they already, essentially, voted against each, and after a grand total of ZERO Republicans would even vote for this flawed bill)?
Or is it that after health care is defeated, and the Dems lose seats in the House and the Senate in November (which is inevitable either way), that then we’ll have the supermajorities needed to get the public option or single payer?
And while we all strike our coolest pose, standing around on principle, the 31 million that this imperfect mish-mosh would provide insurance for would be left shit out of the luck. But we’ll promise to gnash our teeth and write bloggy eulogies in honor of them – our very own martyrs, sacrificed on the altar of purity.
So Hacksaw Megan McDuggan gets an email touting the vile behavior of Tea Party protesters, and Atlas Jr. shrugs. Because the protestors were only mocking a man with parkinson’s disease, and throwing dollars at him contemptuosly, she declares the whole event…an own-goal, self inflicted wound for the people that took umbrage at the treatment of the parkinson’s victim.
…[T]heir behavior doesn’t exactly seem to be out of bounds by the standards of protest and counterprotesters
I guess. I mean, no one was whacked upside the head or anything like that. The remarkable thing is, she came out looking like the compassionate one when compared to Instahack Dan Riehl (via Putz):
A protest like that is no place to go shopping for sympathy and that appears to be precisely what he did. The dude has Parkinsons! He should shake it off and move on. [emphasis putz's]
Almost as funny as Limbaugh aping Michael J. Fox’s tremors. Almost. Meanwhile,Dan Riehl also shows us how Jesus would respond:
Tough. Screw the Alleged Parkinson’s Victim.
Which I’m pretty sure is a quote of from Matthew 14.
That a so-called progressive activist would work this hard to persuade progressive legislators to join ranks with Republicans in defeating a health care reform bill that, while flawed, would still help tens of millions of Americans (and serve as a first step toward something better, as with Medicare and Social Security when they first passed in their flawed, incremental forms) is just beyond gob smacking.
In her Ahab’s quest to defeat the most progressive health care reform since Medicare, Jane Hamsher has been coordinating with Grover Norquist and the Tea Party movement. Shouldn’t rolling over and seeing such ugly, greedy, demented bedfellows make you think twice about the whole sordid menage a trois? Apparently not.
The bill is this close to passing. But we need every progressive Dem in the House to vote yes because the vile Stupak posse (who should all be primaried out of the Party) won’t vote yes unless poor women are denied access to abortions. We know they’re too fucking blinkered to understand how vital this bill is to so many Americans. But the progressive caucus has no excuse. Nor do progressive activists.
With those stakes, this is how Jane Hamsher is using her time, energy and voice? Really? Seriously?
How about this instead: If you really want a better bill (which is a mathematical impossibility at this point, unless you can find a GOP Senator to vote yes on a more progressive bill (maybe Inhofe?), while getting yes votes from Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, etc. – and good fucking luck with that), why not pass this first, then use all of your clout to fight like hell to improve it down the road? As the history of Social Security and Medicare have shown, improving ambitious progresssive legislation is easier than passing a perferct bill initially (there isn’t as much opposition from interest groups that have already lost the primary fight, and voters are more insistent on more and better of the same).
Guess what though Jane: You won’t have Grover Norquist or the Tea Party movement as allies in that fight. There’s a reason for that. Think about it.
I mean, is there any doubt that Jane Hamsher would have been fighting tooth and nail to convince Democrats to vote against Social Security and Medicare when they first passed because they each were inadequately progressive? Awesome.
Republicans are up in arms over the possibility of the Democrats using a “deeming resolution” to pass health care reform “without a vote” …[W]hat “deeming” would do is allow Democrats to get around the political hurdles they’re facing in terms of passing the House bill before the Senate fixes, but they wouldn’t actually be “passing health care without a vote.” Deeming resolutions have been used several times in the past.
Well, that’s not the funny part. This is:
In any case, Republicans are really nervous health care is going to actually pass, so they’ve gotten a bit desperate. Matt Lewis and Michelle Malkin approvingly tweeted this post from David Freddoso quoting Georgia Congressman Tom Price, who says “We’re pretty sure there’s no verse about ‘deeming’ in Schoolhouse Rock.” [bold mine]
This isn’t bad either:
It doesn’t say anything about filibustering either. I guess the filibuster is unconstitutional. Or maybe you can’t fit everything there is to know about congressional procedure in a three-minute cartoon video for kids.
The thing is, the reductio ad schoolhouserockum probably resonates with the base. Not to mention the fact-allergic media.
Clearly, the Earth’s tilt off axis resulting from the Chile quake is begining to produce curious results. Kevin Drum, the poster child for calm, fair-minded left-centrism, is as shrill as…K-thrug:
I’d just like to quickly sum up what we now know about conservative Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future”:
And remember, this comes from the guy who’s pretty much the best the GOP has to offer. Pretty impressive, no?
Yeah, the GOP can talk a good game, but they’re boxed into a corner. They won’t really cut any federal spending programs – or announce a plan to do so – and they won’t try to get more revenue out of the people who can most afford to contribute more (read: Bush’s “base”).
So what we are left with is this gibberish. It’s not a failing particular to Ryan. There is just no way to make Republican math work at either the federal or state level.
Unfortunately, the American populace has developed an immature view of government based on that same Republican math: we want taxes to remain relatively low (especially for the super wealthy!), and we want the full suite of government services available in higher taxed, developed nations (European socialist hellholes).
On the state and municipal level, balanced budget requirements/tax aversions eventually expose the fallacy. See, ie, California, Colorado Springs and Arizona.
At least one state seems to have learned the lesson. I’m not optimistic that it represents anything like a trend though.
Conservatives had hopes that the now-former Democratic congressman from Upstate New York, who resigned abruptly under an ethics cloud, would deliver the goods about corruption and strong-arm tactics in the Obama White House and Congress. But instead, Massa served up an icky new confession.
“Now they’re saying I groped a male staffer,” he volunteered. “Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday.”
Beck looked aghast. “Was your wife at that one?” the Fox News Channel host asked.
“No, this was in a townhouse; we all lived together, all the bachelors and me,” Massa explained. “My chief of staff had a conniption and said, ‘You can’t live there, that’s not congressional.’ “
Beck tried to move the conversation in a different direction, but his guest resisted. “Let me show you something,” Massa proposed, proffering a book with photos of bawdy Navy rituals from the days when he was a sailor.
“You’re going to show me tickle fights?” Beck inquired.
“I’m going to show you a lot more than tickle fights,” Massa promised. Beck put on his reading glasses, then judged that the images should not be shown on television. “It looks like an orgy in ‘Caligula,’ ” Massa asserted
Although Mr. Beck would not show the evidence of these Navy rituals, we will not back down. Behold the evidence of the Obama Jihadosocialist agenda!
[Thomas] Ricks[...] says the U.S. will need 30,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq for a long time if it wants to avoid a civil war that drags in the entire region.
My guess is that Ricks’ view will prevail. The military has invested epic quantities of money and blood in Iraq, and U.S. commanders don’t want it to be in vain.
That’s when you’re down big. And when you’re winning, you can’t leave in the middle of a hot streak. All these very good arguments evaporate when you leave the table.
The ACLU reviews the first year of Obama, and give him about an F+. Maybe a D- if he whines to the professor. So, another vote of meh.
The ACLU is a civil liberties organization, so their requests are a laundry list of civil liberties concerns. Probably prudent: stick with what you know. If one were to take a slightly more expansive view, one could accurately note that about 50% of the laundry listed is a direct result of our dirty little War On Terror. From a strictly civil liberties point of view, Barack Obama has x discrete operational issues which he needs to resolve correctly, in a war context. A better President might well get more boxes with ‘Yes’ in this context than Barack does – not FDR, probably, and perhaps not Lincoln, either, but one of those really great Presidents, like Washington or Voltron. Perhaps. Or perhaps the context is the problem.
“No justice, no peace!” they cry from the streets, and that is often, sadly, true. Sometimes, you have to choose between pursuing justice and having peace. People (Your Humble Editors included) often lament that Americans have no sense of history, that they forget how they got to where they are. This is also true; a third true thing is that America has been a hugely successful nation over the course of the past 2+ centuries, a success due in no small part to domestic tranquility – not for the lack of grudges to hold, just for the lack of holding. Abandoning the WOT would offend our sense of justice, and it would certainly be unjust for the perpetrators of 9/11 to escape punishment. Our history tells us that this would not be the first time. Living well, and free, may be a better revenge.
Matthew Alexander – an experienced military interrogator (he was part of the team that tracked down Zarqawi in Iraq using non-torture based interrogations) – subjected himself to waterboarding reading Marc Thiessen’s book defending the utility of torture and other Bush administration perfidy. Now that that bit of unpleasantness is through with, Matthew Alexander has a question:
My gut reaction on reading Marc Thiessen’s new book, Courting Disaster, was: “Why is a speechwriter who’s never served in the military or intelligence community acting as an expert on interrogation and national security?”
Here’s an even better question:
Why would one of the nation’s leading newspapers (at least in theory) treat said speechwriter as an expert on interrogation and national security?
Alexander continues:
Certainly, everyone is entitled to a voice in the debate over the lawfulness and efficacy of President Bush’s abusive interrogation program, regardless of qualifications. But if you’re not an expert on a subject, shouldn’t you interview experts before expressing an opinion? Instead, Thiessen relies solely on the opinions of the CIA interrogators who used torture and abuse and are thus most vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. That makes his book less a serious discussion of interrogation policy than a literary defense of war criminals. Nowhere in this book will you find the opinions of experienced military interrogators who successfully interrogated Islamic extremists. Not once does he cite Army Doctrine—which warns of the negative consequences of torture and abuse. Courting Disaster is nothing more than the defense’s opening statement in a war crimes trial.
While many of Thiessen’s opinions are appalling from a moral perspective (he justifies torture and abuse through the religious writings of St. Thomas Aquinas), the book is comprised of errors, omissions, and a whopping dose of fear-mongering. I’ll concentrate here on his worst misstatements and why his conclusions ultimately make us less safe.
Despite the self-imposed limitations on Alexander’s review, the piece is still bursting at the seams with the stupid that Alexander dutifully goes about dismantling with some ease. Perhaps “dismantling” is the wrong word in that it connotes a preceding construction of some heft. This exercise better resembles breathing lightly on a tissue paper barrier and watching it sail away. At least, if the tissue paper were concealing heinous and barbaric war crimes.
Here’s a taste:
Thiessen promulgates a theory that Islamic extremists are uniquely deserving of torture because they are doctrinally obligated to resist cooperating, after which they may disclose information.
Got it. So, the standard is: It’s OK to torture suspects because the guilty in their midst are trained or obligated to resist. But why stop there? What if the detainee isn’t (potentially) doctrinally obligated, but just really, really good at resisting (or just doesn’t know the desired answers, which could look the same)?
Even if we stick to Thiessen’s more “humanitarian” standard, do any other groups/religions/organizations embrace such a code of resistance? Why, yes in fact:
Of course this isn’t unique to Islamic extremists. The U.S. military’s own Code of Conduct and the resistance training given American soldiers impose the exact same requirements. Article V, pertaining to interrogations states: I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability.
F*cking moran.
Oh, and Heckuva Job Fred Hiatt! You could have at least hired the smartThiessen.
Although we’re probably the last to take note of this tragic event, the blogger known as Jon Swift (actually Al Weisel) died last week in a sudden fashion.
He was a brilliant writer, to say the least. I can’t even imagine what his family and friends must be going through. More here and here.
