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Consortiumblog: A neocon re-write of American History

Hysterical Raisins: Changing the Rule$

Scholars and Rogues: Israel playing with a fire it expects the U.S. to put out

AlterNet: Why is Simon & Schuster spreading the wild conspiracy theories of an unhinged Islamophobic blogger?

Rants From The Rookery: Social Security myths debunked

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: New Deal 2.0, Jim Lindgren Sucks, WilliWorld

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(All 24 minutes of his Blogger call. I've been updating the post.) President Obama and David Axlerod hosted a conference call with liberal bloggers today on the whole health care issue. The audio contains the entire call with the President. You know we're heading for the home stretch in this debate and I thought it was a good idea that the President reached out to the blogs and acknowledged the work that we've done so far. Here's a quick recap of the points he made. Other bloggers will have more details about the call.

President Obama wanted to tell us directly what's going on..

He wants the bill to be strong with an excellent public option.

The status quo is unacceptable for Americans as premiums are skyrocketing....

Doing nothing is defending the indefensible

Opponents are offering up nothing and admit that they are just trying to stop it. He mentioned Jim DeMint and Bill Kristol as examples of obstructionism.

Liberal Bloggers have done an excellent job of debunking right wing myths...

Bloggers have played and will play a critical role in passing legislation...

Record deficits is a myth. He inherited this deficit and it's not an excuse for inaction...

It's important to keep pressure on members of Congress...

Sam Stein of Huff Po: Obama Calls On Bloggers To Keep Health Care Pressure On Congress "I know the blogs are best at are debunking myths that can slip through a lot of the traditional media outlets," he said. "And that is why you are going to play such an important role in our success in the weeks to come."

Very pleased that Bloggers have been letting Congress know all about the desperation Americans are feeling and that's been critical.

And he wants us to keep up the pressure on Congress and the media.

Doesn't want to wait.

He talked for about four minutes and then opened it up for questions. And I was the first one in line. Since the goal of the opposition is to defeat the bill, a key way to do that is by delaying the process. I asked the President if he would demand that Congress work through their cushy vacations in August if they try to delay the bill. While they are on their magical holidays, millions will suffer in August over their petty tactics. I wanted to ask a question that required an answer.

John Amato: Good afternoon President Obama, thanks for having us on.

President Obama: You bet.

Amato: My question is, now we have these, we'll call them conservative democrats joining with some republicans in wanting to delay the bill and saying that they need more time to go over it and actually read it. My question to you is will you ask Congress to forgo their August recess and work this bill out because while they're taking a vacation, millions of Americans are either losing their health care or are about to go bankrupt because of health care issues.

So if they're going to whine about not having enough time then they should act like real Americans and work during August.

President Obama: Well, here's what I've said. We cannot delay any longer. If people keep on saying"what's the rush? We've been debating this for fifty years. We've been talking about health care reform throughout the campaign. The day after I was elected we started contacting key leaders in Congress about the fact that this was going to be #1 domestic priority. All these committees have been meeting, all the experts have been talking and knows the time to make tough decisions. I understand that people want to put off tough decisions, but ultimately we can move the process forward in which all the options have been considered and we go ahead and make smarter choices that provide the American people with more security, greater options as well as bending the cost curve over the long term and I'm confident that we can achieve that on the timeline that I put forward.

I think it was telling that some of you may have seen. A Republican Senator saying thi weekend saying. "we're just going to delay and delay because if we can stop Obama on this, this is going to be his Waterloo. We'll break him." That was a quote. And IU think it indicates to me in which a lot of folks may sincerely think that the more time we take the better off we're going to be, but I also think that some who deliberately want to delay this process because they know the longer the special interest have to run negative ads or lobby members of Congress, the more difficult it becomes to get this done and I think the time for talk is through. It's time for us to go and act.

John Amato: I agree, will you then make them give us a bill before the August recess?

President Obama: We are working as hard as we can and I've told Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that it is critical that we see serious forward motion before people leave. Alright?

He dodged the question, but in doing so he made it clear that he does not want any delays. Stalling cannot be an option so I want to make the case that if Joe Lieberman wants more time to read the bill then he should stay at work doing so. Health care has been in the works for 65 years and Congress knows all there is to know about the process. Ted Kennedy has been writing opinion pieces now to force the issue and that's been his mission for forty years now. The Cause of My Life’ Inside the fight for universal health care.

I'll have David Axlerod's audio a little later...Please feel free to write up a transcript for the full piece so I can add it to the post.

Here's more from Sam Stein:

In a roughly 25-minute session with a handful of prominent progressive bloggers, the president also asked for help combating disinformation about his health care plan.

Continue reading »

Lawyers, Guns and Money: This is your court on conservatives – a strange enthusiasm for punishment of the innocent.

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Cab Drollery: Your money at play – outsourcing oversight. (What could possibly go wrong?)

The Bobblespeak Translations: Meet the Press with Sam Nunn and Fred Thompson, translated.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

I'm reading Will "Attytood" Bunch's new book, "Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future" about how deeply ingrained the Reagan mythology is in our country's political culture (with the help, of course, of a complicit media).

Fascinating book, really thorough. (There are things in here I didn't even know, and I'm more informed about Reagan than the average bear.) The Reagan myth is so large, so unquestioned that he even gets credit for the things he didn't do: Star Wars! Stopped the Cold War! Made the economy hum like a top! (If you have a Reagan-loving in-law, this is the book you want to read before your next family get-together.)

From the first chapter:

[...] The Reagan myth isn’t just a political problem for the GOP. Increasingly, as the idealized Reagan took hold in the American imagination, Democrats seemed to struggle even harder with the question of just who was Ronald Reagan – and whether political success going forward depended upon undercutting Reagan’s legend, simply ignoring it, or embracing all or part of it. That’s why it was a political bombshell when Sen. Barack Obama made it clear in early 2008 that Reaganism was playing some role in his thinking as he mapped out his own more progressive route to the White House – but the specifics of what Obama was getting at were open to debate.

"Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama told the editorial board of the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal in January 2008. Seeking to elaborate, the Democratic senator said that "[w]e want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." Obama’s comments caused a scramble among his Democrats: Was the presidential frontrunner simply praising the political style of the twice-elected Republican, or was his comment also intended to voice support for some of Reagan’s policy ideas? Obama advisors stressed the former – that he was merely seeking to remind voters of Reagan’s “hope and optimism.”

Obama’s statements seemed to flummox the Democrats in 2008 almost as much as Reagan himself did circa 1984. John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who was appealing to the party’s more progressive wing in those early primaries, said Reagan “openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day…I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."

And yet just a couple of weeks later, it was Edwards who was gone from the presidential race, and Obama who was soldiering on – leaving the unanswered questions of whether even a progressive Democrat in the White House could tackle not just the immediate problems of Iraq, record-high gasoline prices, a skyrocketing federal debt but the more ominous issues of world energy supply and climate change without doing so under the deepening shadow of the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

How did we get to this point in American politics? It would be easy to give all the credit to the Ronald Reagan myth machine, to the neo-conservatives and tax-warriors-turned-lobbyists behind the move to seemingly pave over and rename one long Ronald Reagan Boulevard from sea to shining sea. But no myth would be possible without the man. And if there was ever a man who instinctively knew how to write that screenplay – who rode in from Hollywood to create a new kind of presidency that would focus on strong words and cinematic images that would last long after people forgot the policies sometimes loosely attached to them – it was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

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Mitt Romney was wanking forth on MTP Sunday about the horrendous disadvantage American automakers have because of labor costs, only briefly mentioning the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- namely, health-care costs -- as "benefits."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan set him straight:

One of the reasons there is a cost disadvantage is that other countries provide health care for their citizens. In America, we put that entire burden on business.

Mittens nonetheless tries to regurgitate the "$70-an-hour" lie:

Romney: The companies across the ocean have come here, made plants in the U.S. -- Nissan, Toyota, and Honda -- they're able to make cars at $45 an hour labor costs plus benefits and legacy costs, our cost is $73 an hour --

Granholm: It is not! That has been totally debunked -- now, you know, Mitt Romney, that this is not --

Romney: Labor costs and legacy costs and benefits is $73 an hour.

Maybe Romney should ask those companies where they stand on national subsidization of their industry. Because back in Japan, they understand that underwriting their manufacturing capacity is the key to a competitive economy ... which is why they keep the yen artificially low. This subsidization is part of why those same automakers can operate at lower cost here.

Romney and the Republicans have made it clear that Detroit can go suck eggs. They just don't want to say it on TV.

Brad DeLong: Debunking myths perpetuated by dishonest Republican "economists" and politicians.

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Sisyphus Shrugged:..now that pandering to the evangelical right is temporarily off the table

Brad DeLong: How did Morgan Stanley lose that $9.4 billion anyway? It wasn't all analyists who missed the subprime mess - only the stupid, biased or corrupt ones did.

book forum: The U.S. is like Ike Turner

James Wolcott's Blog: The Goldberg Variations

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Out Of Iraq Bloggers Caucus, Progressive Blog Digest, Argue With Everyone Political Forums, Drudge Retort

Horses Mouth: The wingnut media and bloggers are in a lather because Democrats are accurately describing the Iraq 'report' as the work of the White House. Jurassicpork has more from behind the paywall...

All Spin Zone: The man who has taken on both Fox News and Wal-mart is determined to debunk the 9/11 myths surrounding Rudy

Scott Horton: US Attorneys scandal--Milwaukee

The Newshoggers: There's a war-crimes trial going on in Croatia which illustrates why BushCo refused to recognize the International Court.

unbossed: Outsourcing oversight in Iraq?

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CorrenteWire: Our Betters built an obscene world. Obscenity is not only a proper, but a necessary response to that world.

CREW: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released a new report on the most corrupt officials in the Bush administration entitled "Criminals and Scoundrels: The 25 Most Corrupt Bush Administration Officials." For the first time, the report chronicles the criminal activities and misconduct of high level officials in the current administration.

The National Interest: Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, analyzes the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate. "If this is the best they could do to make this palatable to the administration—for the publicly released form—the classified form must be just an indictment, if you will, of failure."

Amygdala: Speaking of intelligence, this inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war

Environmental Defense: Global Warming myths and facts.  If you're like me, you have at least one friend or family member who still doubts global warming.

No Quarter: U.S. Attorneys and a CIA honcho, on the way down