Smirking Chimp via Anne Atherton

11.6.09 Sesame Street goes after Fox News

11.5.09 Nicholas D. Kristof: Unhealthy America

...Moreover, there is one American health statistic that is strikingly above average: life expectancy for Americans who have already reached the age of 65. At that point, they can expect to live longer than the average in industrialized countries. That’s because Americans above age 65 actually have universal health care coverage: Medicare. Suddenly, a diverse population with pockets of poverty is no longer such a drawback.
NYT

11.4.09 Go forth and multiply a lot less

11.4.09 Know thine enemy

11.4.09 Corn on "Hardball": Cheney Forgets Plamegate

11.3.09 Loose with numbers: Medicare fraud report a fiction

I haven't watched CBS' "60 Minutes" in years. But it was one of those stories that stops you in your tracks: Medicare fraud is "a $60 billion crime." Medicare is the $456 billion government health insurance program serving 46 million elderly Americans. Its credibility as a government-run program is at the heart of the health-care reform debate. If Medicare isn't doing the job, the government certainly can't.

Except that the fraud claim is not true. "60 Minutes"' amateurish journalism wouldn't get past your average small-town copy editor's fact-checking.
Pierre Tristam:Smirking Chimp Via Anne Atherton

10.11.09 Required Reading: Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco Frank Rich:NYT

10.10.09 Turkey and Armenia signed a landmark agreement Saturday to establish diplomatic relations and open their sealed border after a centhttp://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/10/world/AP-EU-Turkey-Armenia.html?_r=2ury of enmity, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helped the two sides clear a last-minute snag. NYT

10.10.09 Stve Benen:

At this point, Republicans reflexively oppose every single policy Democrats embrace. The GOP has even decided to reject ideas they originally came up with. They're running a scorched earth campaign ... and Chip Reid thinks an unsolicited Nobel Peace Prize will make it "even more difficult" for the parties to find common ground?

Making it worse? How can it be worse?
Washington Monthly

10.1.2009 Mysterious Private Security Firm Gets Control Of Empty Jail In Small Montana Town TPMMuckraker via Anne Atherton

9.30.2009 Why I love Anonymous Liberal: Not so fast, Mickey A.L.

9.30.2009 THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Where Did ‘We’ Go?

The American political system was, as the saying goes, “designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.” But a cocktail of political and technological trends have converged in the last decade that are making it possible for the idiots of all political stripes to overwhelm and paralyze the genius of our system.
NYt OpEd

9.23.2009 The New Weapon Against Climate Change: Condoms

9.23.2009 I hate it when Pat Buchanan is right!

Buchanan says that keeping al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan is not worth American lives.If they can't go back to Afghanistan they will go to Somalia or Yemen.

We can't run around everywhere al Qaeda is , take over the country, rebuild it and turn it into Vermont.
Ron Beasley:NewsHoggers

9.23.2009 Whoops: Anti-ACORN Bill Ropes In Defense Contractors, Others Charged With Fraud

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
Ryan Grim:HuffPo

See also Anymous Liberal who says:

The GOP's obsession with optics over substance is also on full display here. In their rush to capture headlines and grandstand, they didn't bother to consider what the law they were proposing would actually do. Everything is a game, including the lawmaking process.

And the Democrats didn't exactly bathe themselves in glory here either. Rather than reject a hastily thrown together and poorly thought out bill, most of them took the path of least resistance and voted for the bill. It was a perfect demonstration of the kind of fecklessness and political cowardice that pervades the Democratic caucus.

Every headache this bill ends up causing lawmakers is deeply, deeply deserved.

9.17.2009 Senator Carl Levin (from letter to constituents):

... there are urgent steps we should take to support the Afghan security forces in their efforts to become self-sufficient in providing security to their nation. These steps include:

• increasing the size of the Afghan army and police much faster than presently planned;
• providing more trainers for the Afghan army and police than presently planned;
• providing them more equipment than presently planned;
• and working to separate local Taliban fighters from their leaders and attract them to the side of the government as we did in Iraq.

I also believe that we should take these steps before we consider whether to increase U.S. combat forces above the levels already planned for the next few months.

See also Levin's: Senate Floor Remarks on Security in Afghanistan: 09/17/09

9.18.2009 Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life

Cleon Skousen was a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised. Then Beck discovered him
Salon:Alexander Zaitchik via Anne Atherton

9.17.2009 Hooray for the girls! Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law

... During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."
...
Justice Sotomayor may have found a like mind in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights," Justice Ginsburg said, evoking the Declaration of Independence.
WSJ: JESS BRAVIN

9.16.2009 Matt Latimer: ME TALK PRESIDENTIAL ONE DAY GQ

9.12.2009 Frank Schaeffer: Glenn Beck and The 9/12 Marchers: Subversives From Within

Not only do the Religious Right distrust facts to them facts are evil. You are "satanic" if you believe in evolution. You're also satanic if you believe health-care reform is about anything but death panels and abortions. You're satanic if you don't believe that gay people are evil or if you think sex education is sensible. You're satanic if you don't believe in Satan!
Huffington Post

9.8.2009 WoW! This Stinks: A Threat to Fair Elections NYT Editorial

9.8.2009 Paul Krugman on the president's health care speech: Hoping for audacity

What I hope Obama realizes is that this speech should not be aimed at Kent Conrad or Susan Collins. A national address is not where you do your backroom deals. This speech has to be aimed at regaining the trust of the American people. It needs to be something with vision and sweep, not an item-by-item detailing of what the administration is prepared to concede.

9.7.2009 John Kerry Then: Hear Kerry’s Historic 1971 Testimony Against the Vietnam War Democracy Now via Anne Atherton

9.2.2009 CIA doctors face human experimentation claims

PHR (Physicians for Human Rights) is calling for an official investigation into the role of doctors in the CIA's now widely discredited programme. It wants to know exactly how many doctors participated, what they did, what records they kept and the science that they applied.
The Guardian

8.31.2009 A 'Little Judge' Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style NYT

8.30.2009 Michael Scherer:

Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace was able to get an important, and clarifying, admission from Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview that was broadcast today. Wallace mentions a list of techniques that CIA agents are accused of using in violation of the legal guidance that the Bush Administration established. These include threatening a naked detainee with a power drill and a gun, and staging mock executions. Then Wallace asks Cheney this question:

WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it.

CHENEY: I am.

There is not much nuance there. Cheney is saying he does not object to the rogue behavior of CIA agents who went beyond their legal mandate. (In the same interview, Cheney says that the Bush Justice Department found there was nothing "improper or illegal" in this behavior, a determination that is now under review by the Obama Justice Department.) Speaking of the interrogation program as a whole, Cheney says, "It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well."
Swampland Blogs

8.30.2009 8.28.2009 Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care

8.28.2009 Ezra Klein: We Ration. We Ration. We Ration. We Ration.

"Look at Canada," says Charles Krauthammer. "Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we."

So do we. This is not an arguable proposition. It is not a difference of opinion, or a conversation about semantics. We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford.
WaPo (my bolds)

8.26.2009 Maureen Dowd starts out an interesting discussion of First Amendment rights with the following:

If I read all the vile stuff about me on the Internet, I’d never come to work. I’d scamper off and live my dream of being a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming.
NYT

8.25.2009 Lies of Mass Destruction

The same skewed thinking that supports a Saddam-9/11 link explains the power of health-care myths.
Sharon Begley:Newsweek via Anne Atherton

8.25.2009 Scott Horton: Seven Points on the CIA Report

7. The “prior investigation” canard. It looks like the favorite talking point emerging for torture apologists (like David Ignatius) is that the CIA cases were already examined by career prosecutors who decided not to take any action. But this claim is false. Although these cases were enshrouded in extraordinary secrecy from the outset, I closely studied their management and conducted a number of interviews with Justice personnel who were involved; I also worked with the House Judiciary Committee in its review of the matter. The cases were referred by Helgerson to the Justice Department, which in turn passed them to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Paul J. McNulty. (This U.S. attorney’s office was the most highly politicized in the entire U.S. attorneys system, and McNulty was ultimately promoted to the office of deputy attorney general and then resigned amidst accusations of misconduct involving the politicization of the Justice Department.) McNulty’s office acted as a sort of “dead letter office” for troublesome torture allegations. The suggestion that there was an active investigation is laughable. No grand jury was impaneled or testimony taken, and contrary to Ignatius’s claims no decision was taken not to prosecute. What happened instead was inaction. Why? If the cases had been pressed, the CIA personnel involved would have immediately implicated high-level Bush Administration officials. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility has examined the handling of these cases and has confirmed that no serious investigation ever occurred. So the suggestion that Holder is now somehow undermining or second-guessing the decision of career prosecutors is preposterous.
Harper's (my bold)

8.25.2009 This Isn’t Reform, It’s Robbery

Capitalists, as my friend Father Michael Doyle says, should never be allowed near a health care system. They hold sick children hostage as they force parents to bankrupt themselves in the desperate scramble to pay for medical care. The sick do not have a choice. Medical care is not a consumable good. We can choose to buy a used car or a new car, shop at a boutique or a thrift store, but there is no choice between illness and health. And any debate about health care must acknowledge that the for-profit health care industry is the problem and must be destroyed. This is an industry that hires doctors and analysts to deny care to patients in order to increase profits. It is an industry that causes half of all bankruptcies. And the 20,000 Americans who died last year because they did not receive adequate care condemn these corporations as complicit in murder.
Chris Hedges:TruthDig (my bold) via Anne Atherton

8.25.2009 Regarding Cheney: SOMEWHAT-SUCCESSFUL-INTERROGATION-RELATED TORTURE ACTIVITIES

He's underselling it. Even in his effort to set the terms of the debate, he's not declaring that torture worked. All he's declaring is that torture was part of how we interrogated the people who gave us some of the information that was part of what we used to fight terrorism.
SteveM:No More Mister Nice

8.18.2009 Sara Robinson – Mythbusting Canadian Health Care — Part I

It is true that Canada’s system is not the same as the U.S. system. It’s designed to deliver a somewhat different product, to a population that has somewhat different expectations. But the end result is that the vast majority of Canadians get the vast majority of what they need the vast majority of the time. It’ll be a good day when when Americans can hold their heads high and proudly make that same declaration.
Conspireality TV a MUST READ from Anne Atherton

8.14.2009 Colbert Takes On Glenn Beck's Advertiser Exodus (VIDEO) (Here)

8.14.2009 U.S. Builds Crime Cases on Clients of UBS

Justice Department authorities are also trying to track UBS clients through legal cases filed in Switzerland contesting the possible disclosure of their names.

While the identities of the clients and their lawyers have been concealed in court filings, the Swiss federal administrative court in Berne has given American authorities a means to get the names. In March, the court ruled that American regulators could get the name of a client if they could provide enough other detail so that the identity was unmistaken.
NYT

8.14.2009 Lawrence O'Donnell gives a demonstration of enlightened Hardball. (Here)

8.13.2009 Decoding Health Care Reforms For Complete Idiots

If I were medical tsar I'd have a rule: One rotator cuff, one knee tendon, one ankle, one elbow fix, one sports-related fix per geriatric patient. If they come back in again, with the same problem, due to the same age-denying stupidity, they get handed a cane. At least that will keep them off the court, for good. Fixing the same people, over and over again, for the the same self-inflicted wound, is not good medical care, it's enabling. And we simply can't afford it. Some would call that "rationing." I call it tough love.
Ouch! The Smirking Chimp via Anne Atherton

8.9.2009 Class Photo of the Brook Brothers Riot via Anne Atherton

8.8.2009 Frank Rich: Is Obama Punking Us?

It’s in this context that Obama can’t afford a defeat on health care. A bill will pass in a Democrat-controlled Congress. What matters is what’s in it. The final result will be a CAT scan of those powerful Washington interests he campaigned against, revealing which have been removed from the body politic (or at least reduced) and which continue to metastasize. The Wall Street regulatory reform package Obama pushes through, or doesn’t, may render even more of a verdict on his success in changing the system he sought the White House to reform.
NYT

See also: Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK:NYT

8.7.2009 "C Street" and the Military

Who didn't get any help from Wamp and his fellow subcommittee Family members? Dover Air Force Base. Dover has a legitimate need to build a new chapel. This is the base where the military's mortuary is, and where the bodies of fallen service members arrive. One of the base's two chapels had to be demolished in January 2009. Then, in March, when the military began to allow the press to cover the "dignified transfer" process, as it's officially called, they also began paying the travel expenses for the families of the fallen service members to be there for the process. Because it only has one chapel, Dover has no chapel to accommodate the influx of grieving families or the facilities for the chaplains to provide counseling for the families. So, Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware requested an earmark for a chapel to be built at Dover.

The $7,500,000 needed for a chapel to accommodate grieving families at Dover AFB did not make it into the House bill, but Carter's additional $8,500,000 to expand his $17,500,000 Fort Hood mega-church did. There's something very wrong with this, but there is still an opportunity to correct this demonstration of backwards priorities. The House bill has already passed, but the senators from Delaware also requested the funding for Dover, and the Senate has put the Dover chapel in their version of the bill. We'll just have to wait for the conference report on the bill to see which base gets the funding.
Chris Rodda:Talk to Action via Anne Atherton

8.7.2009 Bill Maher: "New Rule: Smart President =/= Smart Country"

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try. via Anne Atherton

8.7.2009 "Tea Baggers FAIL to disrupt Health Care meeting, lessons shared." via Anne Atherton

8.6.2009 No hypocricy here. Have you noticed how the anti-health plan mobbers look like they have been ignoring their doctors' orders for years?

8.4.2009 Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder The Nation

See also PZ Myers:

One of the many disgraceful acts of brigandage our country committed in Iraq was the hiring of mercenary thugs through a company called Blackwater. Unwilling to risk the political fallout from openly discussing and recruiting the number of soldiers necessary to actually carry out their grand plans for invading another country, the previous administration instead threw buckets of money at Halliburton-KBR and outsourced the military to profit-seeking, murderous killers-for-hire who did more to harm than help the war effort. As we ought to have expected, the Blackwater unsavoriness is getting even uglier.
Pharyngula

7.29.2009 Sam Harris: Science Is in the Details

PRESIDENT OBAMA has nominated Francis Collins to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health. It would seem a brilliant choice. Dr. Collins’s credentials are impeccable: he is a physical chemist, a medical geneticist and the former head of the Human Genome Project. He is also, by his own account, living proof that there is no conflict between science and religion. In 2006, he published “The Language of God,” in which he claimed to demonstrate “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between 21st-century science and evangelical Christianity.
NYT

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