...The concept of Bush Fatigue is lost on Hinderaker. In his mind, the slipping poll numbers can only point to the inconsequential minutiae that is the "GOP talking points memo" on the Terri-inspired legislation, a.k.a the Protection of Incapacitated Persons Act. We debate with facts, not the facts themselves, so I will admit that the source of the memo is unknown, but to write that "[a] reasonable conclusion would be that the 'talking points memo' might be a fake, created by Democrats to cast aspersions on the motives of the Republican leadership" is not only irrational, but indecent. Where are the facts? Where are the sources?...read on
Yes, now that the Republicans and their assorted right-wing soul mates have been reassured that the main suspect in the Times Square bombing attempt isn't a teabagger, they are (of course) back beating the drums of panic:
Yesterday, when the primary suspect in the attempted bombing of Times Square was a middle aged white guy, Republican leaders were the picture of calm, sober leadership. High ranking Republicans on committees related to national security like Pete Hoekstra and Peter King urged people not to jump to conclusions, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellpraised New Yorkers for not succumbing to fear. Likewise, hawkish Senator Joe Lieberman, who has tended to side with Republicans on national security issues, issued a statement yesterday saying, “More than anything, terrorists want to instill terror. They want to create a wide and broad sense of fear among ordinary people. The resilience shown by New Yorkers robs terrorists of that power."
That was yesterday. Today, as in the aftermath of the failed underwear bombing on Christmas Day, Republicans are eager to give that power back. With the Justice Department announcing the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born American citizen and Connecticut resident in connection with the failed plot, Republicans have returned to their usual script. Contrasting McConnell's careful statement from yesterday, Rep. Eric Cantorcomplained that Americans really don't live in the kind of perpetual panic that the threat of terrorism necessitates:
Cantor complained that the public "goes on heightened alert" after such incidents for "hours and days rather than permanently" and thatObama aides "tend to give these warnings due attention only in limited spurts."
Senator John McCain, appearing on the Imus show, warned the administration against reading Shahzad, an American citizen, his Miranda rights:
"Obviously that would be a serious mistake until all the information is gathered," McCain said during an appearance on "Imus in the Morning" when asked whether the suspect, 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan [should be read his rights.]
Not content to be merely opposed to due process for foreigners accused of terrorism, McCain wants to deny American citizens their rights to due process as well. Indeed, McCain and Lieberman recently introduced a bill that would allow the government to hold U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge. Needless to say, things like Mirandization were non-issues for McCain during the Bush administration, when more than 403 convictions were secured through the civilian justice system.
In the meantime, MSNBC reports that the suspect "told neighbors he worked on Wall Street." In which case, I can understand the panic! After all, Wall Street bankers have destroyed more of this country than any bomb.
Urologist Jack Cassell has a message for anyone who supports President Obama and health care reform: Find a new doctor. He posted a sign on his front door with the following message:
The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."
As if it weren't enough to put out that particular flavor of welcome mat, there's also this little gem:
In his waiting room, Cassell also has provided his patients with photocopies of a health-care timeline produced by Republican leaders that outlines "major provisions" in the health-care package. The doctor put a sign above the stack of copies that reads: "This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it."
Beyond the obvious temper tantrum, I'm at a loss to understand exactly what his problem might be. It's not like he accepts patients from a myriad of insurers. According to his Doctor.com listing, the only insurance he accepts is CIGNA. Since he's a specialist and surgeon, I can only assume he's a little angry that he might get some new patients down the road as more people are able to get health insurance and seek medical treatment?
Oh, and in case you wondered, the answer is yes. He's a registered Republican, and his wife is running for local office. For all of his education, it seems he can't be bothered to read the actual provisions of the law, preferring the Frank Luntz abbreviated version instead.
No warm fuzzies for Dr. Cassell from Rep. Alan Grayson, either.
The outspoken Grayson described Cassell's sign as "ridiculous."
"I'm disgusted," he said. "Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, ‘Do no good.' If this is the face of the right wing in America, it's the face of cruelty.... Why don't they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?"
Seriously. I'll let the medical community sort out the ethics, but if I saw that sign on my doctor's door, I'd find a new doctor. Pissed-off urologists aren't my cup of tea.
UPDATE: Via Huffington Post, a video of the good doctor, in his own words:
The hateful acts that occurred at the tea party rally in Washington this weekend were not isolated incidents -- they are part of a growing pattern of violent rhetoric, racially charged imagery, and paranoid conspiracy theories emerging from the Republican party's grassroots supporters.
Republicans officials have contributed to this atmosphere with fear-mongering and coded racism, and they have actively courted this element of their party. It's time that Republican leadership is forced to address what it's helped to create.
Please join us in confronting Republican leaders and demanding that they take responsibility for tamping down the bigotry and hate among their supporters, and that they disavow the fear-mongering that leads to it. And please ask your friends and family to do the same -- unless we take a strong stand against this kind of hate, it will continue. We need as many people as possible -- of every race -- demanding that it stop.
I saw President Obama talking to Katie Couric before the Super Bowl, and I didn't breathe for a few minutes as I took in what he was proposing. I guess they are spooked by the losses of the mythical independent voters in recent polling, but even if that's the case, it's a horrible idea from my perspective.
President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health-care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.
Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.
“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.
Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do.
I understand the strategy behind them doing this, but the country is too polarized at this point to really turn perceptions enough to make any difference.
This will accomplish nothing except to possibly empower Republican obstructionists even more. They will tell us what wonderful new ideas they have and that if only Obama opened up competition in all the states, it would solve all the problems in health care. Here's Crying Boehner's response:
"The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health care costs and expand access. The House Republican alternative, which would lower premiums by up to 10 percent while increasing access for Americans without health insurance, would be a solid starting point. I look forward to discussing these issues with the Democratic Leadership and the President."
America didn't elect President Obama so that Republicans could rule the legislative process, but through the guidance of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, that's what's happening now. There is no way Republicans will sign on to anything at this point unless the president gives in to all of their demands.
Funny thing how Obama keeps reaching out to the other side instead of his own. I'd much rather have a liberal blogger meeting with President Obama instead of having to endure this.
Digby also adds a lot to this discussion and brings a really smart observation to the discussion. Much sharper than what you'd hear from the MSM.
It's fascinating, of course, because it's gossip and because some in the White House and others close to the administration have decided to try to dethrone these four. The courtiers are rebelling...read on
The article goes on to document how people like Health Secretary and former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius were kept off television -- along with others like Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Add to this others that Luce does not name -- including important voices like Paul Volcker and Austan Goolsbee on Obama's economic team, who saw their public voices choked off by a media-dominating Lawrencean Summers with support from Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel.
Paul Krugman today gives an impassioned refresher on how deregulation of the banking industry led to the Great Depression, notes the Republicans' complete denial of the need for present-day regulation:
Given this history, you might have expected the emergence of a national consensus in favor of restoring more-effective financial regulation, so as to avoid a repeat performance. But you would have been wrong.
Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.
In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” As Democrats have pointed out, three days before the House vote on banking reform, Republican leaders met with more than 100 financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies. But it also reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy.
So it’s up to the Democrats — and more specifically, since the House has passed its bill, it’s up to “centrist” Democrats in the Senate. Are they willing to learn something from the disaster that has overtaken the U.S. economy, and get behind financial reform?
Let’s hope so. For one thing is clear: if politicians refuse to learn from the history of the recent financial crisis, they will condemn all of us to repeat it.
Throughout their all-out campaign to stop health care reform, Republican leaders have relied on questionable forecasts from the Lewin Group, a subsidiary of insurer UnitedHealth Group. Now, another study funded by UnitedHealth has some unwelcome news for the GOP braintrust: the red states they represent are the unhealthiest in the nation. Following on the heels of the Commonwealth Fund's 2009 Scorecard of state health care system performance, the United Health Foundation's report is just the latest confirmation that health care is worst where Republicans poll best.
The annual ranking looks at 22 indicators of health, including everything from how many children receive recommended vaccinations, to obesity and smoking rates, to cancer deaths.
The diagnosis isn't pretty for Republicans committed to denying the health care their constituents need most of all. The 2009 rankings (above) reveal that nine of the top 10 healthiest states voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Conversely, 9 of the 10 cellar dwellers backed John McCain in 2008; four years earlier, the 15 unhealthiest states voted for George W. Bush for President.
The other day, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told ABC News that he and his fellow Republicans were going to get tough with anyone who didn't toe the party line on "core issues" such as health-care reform:
Steele: So candidates who live in moderate to slightly liberal districts have got to walk a little bit carefully here, because you do not want to put yourself in a position where you’re crossing that line on conservative principles, fiscal principles, because we’ll come after you.
Well, there was one solitary Republican who crossed the party line on health-care reform: Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana, who hails from a traditionally Democratic district that went up for grabs when ex-Rep. William Jefferson was busted for corruption.
Cao went on CNN Sunday and explained that his was a vote of conscience for the people in his district, "many of whom are poor, and many of whom have no health insurance."
Cao chuckled when asked about the comment and said he "would like to remind" Steele that he and other Republican leaders trumpeted Cao's upset win over Democrat William Jefferson last December as a symbol of party diversity. Cao is the first Vietnamese-American member of Congress.
"He has the right to come after those members who do not conform to party lines, but I would hope that he would work with us in order to adjust to the needs of the district and to hold a seat that the Republican party would need," Cao told CNN.
As Republicans proved in NY-23 -- and as indeed they proved throughout the health-care debate -- they are becoming so ideologically blinkered that they rapidly losing the ability to have any kind of voice in Congress.
Steven Pearlstein writes an excellent column in the Washington Post that says what most of the media will never say. Republicans lie every chance they get to try and destroy health care reform. The title of his piece is: Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform
The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems...
For those of you who follow the inside baseball, National Journal has a look at the Republican strategy on healthcare reform: Delay, misinform, obfuscate... You know, the usual:
Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking member, is the influential wild card among Senate Republicans, and he covets his reputation for independence. McConnell stays in close touch with the folksy Midwesterner, eager to keep him in the GOP fold. Many congressional observers have decided that Grassley is negotiating in good faith with Democrats to see if he can help get a reasonable bill out of Finance, but these sources expect him to reject a conference report later this year if it moves too far left.
In an interview, Grassley contended that Republicans should be delighted that he's on the job. "If they wonder whether or not our being involved [in the Finance talks] is doing any good, wouldn't you rather have a conservative Republican at the table than have nobody at the table?" he asked. "And secondly, hasn't our party, plus the grassroots of America, been pleading for time to study [legislation]? And suppose I was not at the table: There would be debate on the floor of the Senate, not in the Finance Committee."
Grassley said that Republican leaders asked him to block any Democratic moves to ration health services or implement a public option, although he tentatively supports a public cooperative that is not government-run. "So, the two things that Republicans are most concerned about -- the public option and rationing -- ain't going to be in it," he concluded.
Asked about his balancing act with Grassley, McConnell said that his colleague has been "very open" with the caucus. "I think it's been just fine," McConnell said of the Finance discussions. "I do read that some of the Democrats may not be that happy with it. But I don't think I have felt, nor do I think most of my members have felt, that they were trying to hide the ball on us."
Meanwhile, his "reputation for independence" is looking a little compromised. The New York Times:
"Some Republicans have begun to warn that Mr. Grassley should tread carefully on the health care bill if he wants to become the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee."
"The three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee are under pressure from their leadership not to cut a deal too quickly .. and that message has been delivered frequently in recent weeks."
The Hill:
"Senator Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, has assured his GOP colleagues that he will not sell them out and strike a private deal with Democrats on healthcare reform."
[...] On Wednesday morning Senator Grassley said, the group was "on the edge" of agreement. But later in the day he walked those comments back, saying, "I think we’re on the edge of getting something. Now, when I say ‘on the edge,’ that could be within a week. It could be within two weeks, or it might not be until we get back after Labor Day."
Awww. I think it's sweet that they let him think he's independent -- and that Max Baucus is playing along with it.
