Because the Insanity Won't Ever End Part VI

Guess this has to be discussed sooner rather than later, when the pre-packaged riots are hammering at the meeting doors in your own backyard.

Three different sources I suggest reading about this current - and for all intents ongoing-since-1946 - fight over health care reform. First, from Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, the big question "Why?":

...what do conservatives want out of the health care debate? "Wingnut, smash" isn't an especially compelling answer.

B.A. is right about the broad benefits for Americans. Some of Rush Limbaugh's listeners are one serious illness away from bankruptcy. Some Michele Bachmann voters can't get coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Some Glenn Beck viewers will see their insurance companies drop them when they need their coverage most. Many of Bill O'Reilly's fans already enjoy the benefits of government-run health care. Some RNC donors may want to start their own business, but can't because they can't afford to pay the monthly premiums. Some of the same people who attended "Tea Parties" in April saw the insurance for themselves and their families disappear after they lost their job.

There's nothing partisan or ideological about this -- everyone is getting screwed by the status quo. We're all paying too much for too little. A huge chunk of the country is uninsured, underinsured, or uninsurable, and the system is blind to how you voted in the last election.

Now, this is not to say that the Democratic proposals are flawless; they're not. But what's striking about the opposition to reform -- at least the loudest opposition to reform -- is that the right has chosen to completely ignore the actual flaws in the plan(s) and focus on imaginary, delusional nonsense. (ADDED NOTE: for example this meme about Death Panels being set up to euthanize the elderly and genetically infirm.)

So why are far-right activists so apoplectic? Why would people who stand to benefit from health care reform literally take to the streets and threaten violence in opposition to legislation that will help them and their families? President Obama supports an approach to health care reform that emphasizes competition and choice, doesn't increase the deficit, and wouldn't raise middle class taxes ... and conservatives are comparing the plan to the Nazi Holocaust?

B.A.'s confusion is understandable. I don't get it, either...

Benen tries to examine the protesters, identifying five different groups: The Greedy (a small group who profits from the broken system, and the ones by the by paying for all the protesters to get bussed in); The Partisans (politicos more obsessed with political victories than doing the right thing, basically they want Obama To Fail even if it means the nation suffers); The Tin-Foil Hats (the crazies terrified of anything they think of as 'foreign,' 'Socialist,' what have you, basically the Birthers who care more about Obama's birthplace than the REAL F-CKING WORLD); The Dupes (the great uninformed who believe whatever the other groups say, no matter the lies being told to them, basically anyone watching FOX Not-News); and the Wonks (the five or six conservative reformers who actually have some ideas on health care reform but of whom no one is paying any attention, basically people you haven't heard of because no one invites them onto the Sunday talk shows - the Wonks don't yell enough).

Benen's examination of the groups shows that the opposition is mostly the Partisans riling up the Dupes and the Tin-Foilers while the Greedy foot the collective bill: that it's not really rioting in support of anything, it's simply rioting for the sake of intimidation and a belief it would weaken Obama and the Dems come the 2010 Midterms.

The second link is to David Frum's article, followed by a third link to Digby's Hullabaloo response to Frum:

What would it mean to “win” the healthcare fight?

For some, the answer is obvious: beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself. (ADDED: The Partisan view)

The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.

We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.

Not a good outcome.

Even worse will be the way this fight is won: basically by convincing older Americans already covered by a government health program, Medicare, that Obama’s reform plans will reduce their coverage. In other words, we’ll have sent a powerful message to the entire political system to avoid at all hazards any tinkering with Medicare except to make it more generous for the already covered.

If we win, we’ll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism. Really though it will be a triumph for inertia. To the extent that anybody in the conservative world still aspires to any kind of future reform and improvement of America’s ossified government, that should be a very ashy victory indeed.

Digby:

Frum seems to be operating under the illusion that the Republicans will be blamed for this, which I think is unlikely. Obama will be held responsible for the failure, just as Clinton was. it will be seen as a failure of legislative tactics ---- that's how liberal politics is discussed... (snippage)

Frum is fretting over the actual repercussions of failing to reform the health care system, which is completely beside the point for his fellow Republicans. Health care has officially joined the "faith based" constellation of issues, which includes global warming and evolution. They are now simply denying there is a crisis at all. And if there is one, there is simply no solution other than prayer and dogmatic belief in American exceptionalism and free markets.

The next couple of weeks will tell us whether the Republican obstructionism will result in backlash and give the progressives some room to maneuver. It's always possible the wingnuts have succumbed to hubris again --- having Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as the spokesmen for their obstructionism might end up being a mistake similar to having Newtie push the government shut-down back in 1995. They often overreach and the hysterical, far right rhetoric people are seeing at these Town Halls may not resonate in the rest of the country quite the way the villagers think it will. We'll see.

But regardless of what actually happens, if health reform fails, I believe that when the history is written it will be seen as a Democratic failure. If you put an issue on the table and are given a mandate to enact it, you are blamed for its failure, particularly when the whole promise of your campaign was based upon the magical notion that you would change the very nature of the political system. Sadly, if that happens, the likely result will not be a newly invigorated, liberal president with lessons learned and a fresh approach. It will be a chastened and weakened president newly committed to the status quo, just as the Village ordered from the beginning. And that, in the end, may be what was being promised all along: symbolism over substance. It wouldn't be the first time...

Myself:

I keep looking at the world, seeing nearly every other Capitalist nation out there with a universal health care system and wonder why we can't see what the Brits and French and Germans and Japanese see. I keep watching the Far Right take offense at ANYTHING that doesn't have their royal seal of approval, and watching them express themselves in ways far more ignorant and violent than the Far Left has done in the last 20 years.

Part of me is thinking "The Democrats can't be THAT stupid, can they? They have to see that all this town-hall rioting is just the Republicans trying to bully them into doing something that 76 percent of the American population wants. They can't be going back to DC thinking 'gosh, Americans don't want health care reform, we'll just drop the Public Option and go back to the status quo and let the billion-dollar health industry rake in more dough at the expense of everyone else'? We're still going to get some halfway decent health care package that will reduce costs and improve basic care access and cover everyone, right?"

...Yeah, my pessimistic side is groaning right about now...

Meanwhile, expect the town hall meetings nationwide to be as much fun as the one we just had in Tampa... Seriously, they're getting death threats in Missouri and the rioters are Twittering about packing their firearms...

Everything I Needed To Know About Politics I Learned from Ferris

John Hughes just passed away. From "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Ferris: Not that I condone fascism, or any ism for that matter. Isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the Walrus. I could be the Walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.

Also, I learned that Ben Stein is an incurable ham. But that's neither here nor there.

Iran: A Friend of a Friend...

A woman I know from mah high school days just posted an entry on Facebook. She has Iranian friends, one in particular that was IN Iran but had disappeared three weeks ago. Another friend in the US is Twittering that their circle of friends in Iran haven't heard anything. This is not good news. The Best-case scenario is that he's gone into hiding, I mean serious hiding, like a small house in Yeehaw Junction/Middle of Nowhere hiding... but that means he's on the run from his own government. The most-likely scenario, God help us, is that the friend is in prison... but that means certain torture. Worst-case scenario... you don't wanna think that.

The best things I can suggest to my friend is to contact Amnesty International, see if they hear anything, if they're keeping track. Also start using her blog to get the word out. I'd also think sending requests to our State Department to make inquiries, but if he's not an American citizen there's little I think they can do...

Yeah, This Had to Happen

Check out my Official Fake Kenyan Birth Certificate

My parents will not be thrilled.

I Wanna Apologise to Larry Sabato

Early on in this blog, during the period I was actually able to write up amendment ideas instead of obsessing over political sideshows, I spent some time reviewing the ideas that professor Larry Sabato (University of Virginia) put down in a book he wrote, A More Perfect Constitution.

One blog post focused on the idea of expanding Congress, increasing representative counts in both the House AND Senate as a means of ensuring better representation (smaller constituencies, the idea goes, means the representative will be more aware of what his/her district wants).

At the time, I was incredulous. I didn't much approve of the idea of increasing the House to an even 1,000 members: I thought it would merely increase the number of bought members to be owned by the Beltway lobbyists.

I also felt that Sabato's idea of adding more seats to the Senate via population counts - top ten large states get 2 extra Senators, next fifteen mid-sized states get 1 extra - was disrupting the Great Compromise that the Founders used to settle the debate between small- and large-populus states over how the legislature would be seated.

On that point, I want to apologize to Dr. Sabato. You might be right about this.

For one thing, we shouldn't hold EVERYTHING the Founders did as stuff carved into marble for permanent display. After all, another compromise the Founders did was the 3-out-of-5 count of slaves for population rolls, not to mention allowing slavery to exist period. And our nation had to spill a lot of blood four score years later to revise that mistake. They also didn't give women the vote, didn't establish due process across all the states, and allowed for the consumption of vile alcohol which led to the 18th Amendment banning beer... which led to the 21st Amendment unbanning it less than 20 years later. But I digress.

So we can allow for changes to the Constitution. The question was, is, and will always be, do we need to make a radical change to the make-up of the Senate?

Originally, the Senate was meant to be the great equalizer between the states making up the nation. Here, each state gets 2 Senators to represent, regardless of population size. All states therefore equal. Wyoming having as much say as Texas, North Dakota as much as North Carolina, Alaska as much as Florida. The House gets proportioned by population: there California rules all, with Wyoming sitting in a back corner wondering why nobody likes them.

But now, we're at a point where representation in the Senate is massively unbalanced, not by seating but by accountability. To quote Matthew Yglesias:

...but it does strike me as worth noting that when you read a puff piece in The New York Times about the Gang of Six bipartisan dealmakers in the Senate that vast power is being wielded by people who, in a democratic system of government, would have almost no power. We’re talking, after all, about Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Collectively those six states contain about 2.74 percent of the population, less than New Jersey, or about one fifth the population of California. The six largest states, by contrast, contain about 40 percent of Americans.

We're currently in a major health-care crisis in the country, all related to rising costs. There's a bill (or twenty) stuck in the Senate, all facing blockage because a) the Republicans are playing the role of Obstructionists AND b) Max Baucus is obsessed with the idea of 'bipartisanship' even though his party now commands a 60-seat majority in the Senate and the other party is, again, playing the role of Obstructionists.

Some of it might also have to do with the fact that Baucus comes from a low-population rural state, which leans conservative more often than not and would be less likely to vote for things that even hint of 'socialism' (yeah, that word again). But Yglesias has a point: there are now Senators who are more powerful than other Senators, disproportionate to their state's actual place in our country's size.

Back in the beginning, when we had 13 states, this wasn't really that big a deal. Population disparity wasn't that pronounced, and the large population states (Virginia, New York, Massachussetts) were divided on certain regional issues to prevent any overt bullying of the smaller states. So you could live with an even number of Senators per state. But today: Today we have 50 states, and the population shift between the smallest and the largest are more pronounced. Those states that Yglesias lists (Wyoming, Montana, Maine, North Dakota, Iowa, New Mexico) barely total to New Jersey, which is at 8 million people only 11th on the list. Iowa tops out that list of Six at 3 million. Florida is over 18 million at the 4th spot. California is at 37 million. A majority of Californians may want health care reform... and a majority of Texans (sorry Ross Douthat but Texas ain't the Utopia you think it is) might want it, and I *know* living here in Florida there's a lot of people who want health care reform... but you've got six Senators from nowhere states thisclose to killing it. The proportions are now seriously WAAAAAY off.

So Sabato is right about the Senate needing a fix, that we need to include population size in adding more Senate seats so that the larger states get better representation.

Although I'm not entirely sure boosting the top ten with two additional seats is feasible. Given how the Senate rotates their 6-year terms over 2-year election cycles, you're gonna have overlap of 2 Senate seats up for grabs in one election year. A more modest proposal would perhaps give the top 15 states one additional Senate seat each. That caps out to 3 Senators per big state, and each election year with a Senate seat up for grabs with no overlap. It might also allow for the mid-size states to more often rotate who gets the extra seat every 1o-year census: while the top 8 states are so overly populated that they may never lose that extra seat (barring natural disaster or an insane state tax code killing off all social services), with this system the states between spots 9 to 17 will be more... interested in maintaining their population figures. If 15 states is too small a portion, we can go to 20 states getting an extra seat and get all the important states (except poor Minnesota, which might declare war on Wisconsin to get that coveted 20th spot).
Giving 15-20 states one extra Senator would also be more fair than giving the top 10 two extra Senators: that could give California, Texas, New York, Florida and the other six mayhaps TOO much representative power. Even if the next 15 states in Sabato's proposal get one extra.

So again, to Professor Larry Sabato, my apologies. We do need to make the Senate more responsive and accountable to the overall population of the United States: we need to reduce the choke-hold small-population states may have over large-population states. We need a government more responsive to the People, not the States.

But still... Yeah I know, I shouldn't be adding a "But..." to an apology. But I just want to point out that while this proposal will fix representation in the Senate, it won't fix the undue influence lobbyists have on government as a whole. (dammit, I had an article online that showed the health care industry's contributions to both parties over the years, and now I can't find it... grrr) THAT is gonna take a whole different amendment... and maybe a class revolt or three...

When You Care Enough To Forge The Very Worst

Today is Barack Obama's birthday.

That is, if he was really born. At all.

The Intertubes are abuzz with the latest attempt by Orly Taitz to file a lawsuit proving Obama wasn't born in Hawaii like the birth certificate and the Hawaiian newspapers claim, but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse after all I mean his father's home nation of Kenya. The argument had been Obama's short form certificate was a fake, never mind that reputable people (even the World Daily Net people also saw it) have seen it and judged it legit: the counter-argument was that the Birthers needed to find real evidence for their claim, such as a Kenyan birth certificate, before anyone could even take them half-seriously.

Taitz submitted a birth certificate for some lawsuit in Florida claiming just that.

The debunking of that certificate began about ooooh 5 seconds after it got onto the Tubes. Primarily that the document has anachronistic errors - labeled 'Republic of Kenya' when at the time of the birth's documentation the country was officially a 'Dominion', that Mobassa was in Zanzibar and not Kenya at the time, that the names of the registrar mimic the names of registrars from an Australian birth certificate easily viewable online - that showed said document couldn't be what it claimed to be.

I'm gonna quote from About.com's David Emery for a minute:

The debacle shines a light on two fatal flaws of the birther movement: one, their blatantly inconsistent and prejudicial standards of evidence — i.e., they're perfectly willing to accept (and circulate) unsourced photographs of an unvetted document as "proof" of foreign birth, while dismissing out of hand a state-issued, state-validated U.S. birth certificate; and two, what the foregoing reveals about their true motives — i.e, despite their protestations, they have no interest whatsoever in truth, accuracy, or "protecting" the U.S. Constitution, but are bent, rather, on delegitimizing Obama's presidency at any cost and by any means possible.

Amen.

From this, I have a few points and questions:
1) Anyone think of calling up a university in Kenya and see if there's a directory archived from the 1961-64 era that would list the Registrars working for the government back then? Just checking the University of Florida's library catalog found me two Kenyan government directories from 1966 and 1969 (both in Storage), and that's a Florida college. You'd think their nation's own schools would have more comprehensive holdings. See if the Registrars (especially this E.F. Lavender, whose name is apparently also a detergent) have an entry, and cross-check the names.
1a) Better yet, get in touch with the Registrar's offices and see if there's anyone still employed who would know who the Registrars were back when this document was supposedly filed.

2) What was Orly Taitz doing involved in a Florida-based lawsuit? I thought her license to practice law was limited to just the state of California. Where was this 'Kenyan birth certificate' filed?

3) Why are even talking about this conspiratorial nonsense? Oh, yeah I forgot. THE DAMN MEDIA ALLOWS IT.

I admit to having interests in conspiratorial stuff: huge X-Files fan here, got a copy of the Big Book of Conspiracies on my shelf somewhere. I've even got my own thoughts on who killed JFK (and why a cover-up was necessary). But even I know the difference between slightly titillating nonsense that tweaks my reading habits and this crap about Obama's birth status that extremists are using to stir up talk of coup d'etats and actual military misconduct. Too many crazy people are taking this sh-t seriously. And that's not good for the rest of us. It'd be nice if I could stop talking about it, but it's either this or the pre-planned Republican Riots at Congressional town halls this month for discussion.

Sigh. The crazy is not gonna end anytime soon.

Update on Iran: July 30

Because of the crackdown, any organized rallying is difficult to accomplish. But the Iranian people are still refusing to stay silent.

Because the Insanity Won't Ever End

I've decided to send a request to my birth county/state to, you know, get a copy of my birth certificate. Just in case I'm invited to FOX Not-News or C(an't)N(umb)N(utzoids like Lou Dobbs) and, you know, someone challenges my citizenship status. If they're challenging Obama's birth origin, I'm positive they'll challenge everyone else's, right? RIGHT?

Thoughts on Health Care reform

Things to consider during this current tumult over Obama and the Dems' push for Health Care reform:

1) The United States is the only wealthy industrialized nation (think France, Germany, UK, Canada, Japan, anyone else in the G-8 group I missed) without universal health care. India has universal health care. Israel has it. Brazil has it. Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert probably have it. In fact the question is which country DOESN'T have universal health care... and the U.S.A. tops that list.

1a) Which makes the argument about "Universal Health Care" = "SOCIALISM ZOMG!!1!1" rather specious: you can't accuse some of the most prominent Capitalist nations on the planet (England, for God's Sake! Thatcher is living on universal health care!) of being Socialists for having universal health care. This isn't the Cold War era anymore: why use labels to oppose something that, you know, works in every other pro-business nation?

2) The two biggest problems with health care in the United States are:

2a) Not everyone is covered: the number bandied about is 47 million uninsured (roughly 15 percent of the nation), although critics point out that includes illegal immigrants... so the real number would be really around 32-37 million. WHICH IS STILL TOO MANY. And I'm not sure if this includes children and college-age teens. The problem is these uninsured people still require health care, and the costs of treating the uninsured gets shifted over to those who are insured.
2b) Rising costs: partly from the fact the insured are paying for the uninsured, but mostly from the fact that the managed-care system that came about in the 1990s (the HMOs) basically have monopolies in each of the states. Ezra Klien's op-ed in the Washington Post (highlights mine):

In the modern health-care system, there is no higher power than the insurance market. And the insurers who populate that market have grown all the stronger. The Justice Department judges an industry "highly concentrated" if a single company controls more than 42 percent of the market. By that definition, 94 percent of statewide insurance markets are highly concentrated. A recent study by the advocacy organization Health Care for America Now showed that in Indiana, WellPoint controls 60 percent of the insurance market; in Iowa, Wellmark accounts for 71 percent; and in Alabama, Blue Cross/Blue Shield holds 83 percent. In the past 13 years, there have been more than 400 corporate mergers involving health insurers.

Economics textbooks tell us that concentrated markets reduce the competitive behavior that benefits consumers and lead to outsize profits for the dominant firms. Predictably, health-care premiums shot up more than 90 percent between 2000 and 2007, while the profits of the 10 largest insurers increased 428 percent over the same period.

Without government regs encouraging competition, companies can basically charge what they want, deny coverage to those they deem at-risk to their profit margin, and pass the savings on to the Senators and Congresspersons they 'bribe' with massive campaign contributions. But that's just me being cynical I suppose...

3) A solid majority of Americans - 76 percent - want a public option as part of the health care reform. Problem is, Obama has only 33 percent or so of those polled actively supporting his reform plan.

4) Another problem is that he doesn't have the full support of his own party: nimrods like Max Baucus seem obsessed with the idea of bipartisanship by dealing with a Republican Party that's gonna want health care reform nuked now and forever. Instead of legislation covering things the people want, Baucus' committee is trying to offer this up. Also consider Baucus receives HOW MUCH?! in campaign funding from the Health Care industry and you have a hypocrite reeking of Quid Pro Quo. I will always think of campaign funding as legalized bribery and it sickens me we can't do anything to stop it ('cause the bastards who profit from it are the damn politicians who like it this way and won't vote away their deep-pocket advantages).

5) This reminds me, I gotta see about my COBRA coverage payments. I think I gotta start paying them again this August. Maybe September, I hope.

It's not about the birth certificate

And while this blog entry's title comes under the category of "NO SH-T SHERLOCK" I do feel some clarification is in order.

More and more of the 'traditional' mainstream media - AKA Fox Not-News, Lou "I'm a Populist So Let Me Rage Against Furriners" Dobbs, Glenn Beck (*this* is traditional???), Sean Hannity (idiot never finished college: he lost his college radio gig for being a homophobic bastard), of course Rush Limbaugh and that ilk - are ranting about Obama not having a real American birth certificate, that he wasn't born in Hawaii at all but secretly born in Kenya and smuggled back in an elaborate ruse, and that because he wasn't born here (in order to cover the argument about his mom's citizenship status, these Birthers are also arguing she's a fake!) he violates the Constitutional requirements for being President. Well, that's one conspiracy theory: there's a handful of variations on this. Basically these 'Birthers' are claiming Obama's not legally President.

From a comment I made on a Washington Monthly thread regarding this stupidity:

This needs to be said: even if Obama and/or the State of Hawaii releases his actual birth certificate (ADDED: The Short Form has, with the caveat this is merely an official copy of the original long form. The long form from 1961 remains with the hospital in Hawaii and they don't discuss its contents due to privacy laws), there is every likelihood the Birthers will (STILL) claim it's a forgery. After all, this is a massive conspiracy that's been planned from well back in 1960, isn't it?
This is what "they" planned back in 1960 (who "they" are is obvious: FDR's worshippers): Get a white woman impregnated by a black Kenyan visiting the country (ADDED: Better yet get her pregnant in Kenya and have the baby born there, then sneak the child into Hawaii and get a forged certificate). Raise the boy in a Muslim school in Asia for a few years, but pretend he's really Christian. Ship him off to a liberal college, and then move him to Chicago so he can hang out with discredited 60s bomb-making hippies. Trick potential GOP opponents into being sex-crazed (even with drop-dead gorgeous blonde wives who make Trekkie geeks drool) or just-plain crazed (hi, Mr. Keyes!) to ensure the plot's success. Also trick the Republican leadership into massive spending deficits and a wasteful overseas war in Iraq that distracts the country from more necessary targets (Hey, Cheney, caught Bin Laden yet???), along with massive governmental incompetence allowing our financial institutions to collapse at the right moment (two months before the 2008 Election) to ensure this questionable person gets elected into the White House. And then that covert Kenyan Candidate gets to DESTROY AMERICA (as long as America hasn't already been destroyed by massive Republican-built deficits, strained military resources, lack of health care to 1/4 of the nation, and insane gun-toting wingnuts shooting up churches, cops, and museums).
All that massive subterfuge, all those pieces needing to be placed all the way back in 1960... I'm amazed that conspiracy worked to perfection almost 50 years later. Wow. Whoever planned this has (or had) enough foresight to play the Lotto with some success, you think?
Somewhere in the universe Occam is laughing his ass off.

And so, this isn't about the birth certificate. This is about the Far Right refusing to accept the 2008 election results. This is about the Far Right refusing to wake up from their fantasy-based world (where Bush and Cheney and Rush are GODS, where terrorists possess nukes and the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys, where there's an endless supply of loans to pay for massive war expenses and unending tax cuts) and re-enter the Reality-Based community (where everything's been broken by 8 years of Bush/Cheney self-serving incompetence and the whole world hates us for warmongering and neocon arrogance). This is about the Far Right thinking it's 1993 all over again and they can attack Clinton for every half-baked rumor coming out of Arkansas, only now it's 2009 and they think they can attack Obama for every fully-baked rumor about him. Facts don't matter. Truth don't matter. Even having the courts throw their cases out for sheer stupidity don't matter. All that matters is ATTACK AND WIN.

This is as close to my Obama Shoelace Hypothesis as the Far Right has gotten... so far. And while for us sane people - the ones who recognize the simplest explanation is the most likely one, that Obama was born in Hawaii complete with certificate and local news announcement - this borders on ridiculous, we can't afford the luxury of laughing this off.

You see, these Birthers are basically claiming that Obama isn't American, therefore he isn't President. They're trying to get soldiers in the military now to disobey orders, wilfully inciting our troops to acts of insubordination (doesn't directly fall under treason as defined by law, but may be considered seditious). And the more these Birther crackpots talk about Obama as un-American and "Destroying the country", the more likely they're gonna push those at the lower ends of their mouth-foaming rage gatherings into acts of violence. We've already seen that happen too.

These wingnuts are gonna get more people killed. All because they won't accept the facts (official state documents, dated newspaper clippings), all because they won't accept the simple truth their conspiracy 'theory' is too complicated to be real, all because they won't accept the reality that a majority of Americans voted for Obama and want him to succeed.

Iran: Friday July 17

Links to Sullivan (well to his site, he's off on vacation this week) and to Pitney.

Rafsanjani's speech was today, rumors about how he would speak out against Khamenei's use of violence and vote fraud were rampant, and for the most part he did speak against the violence, he did speak for the release of those imprisoned over the past month back to their families, he did speak to the need for leaders in keeping the people's trust. He threw in a few comments on the violence Chinese gov't is inflicting on their Uyghur population, comparing/contrasting to the violence Khamenei and his thugs are inflicting on their fellow Iranians.

As Nico's liveblogging is reporting, there's violence at Tehran University where the speech was held, the basiji using knives now to stab people, tear gas everywhere. Rumors about the Basij calling for more volunteers (are they losing people?). It's still chaos in Iran. It's still violent. But the people aren't letting this go, Khamenei. And you've got to be asking yourself the question again: "Shall I let my fear push me to inflict more damage on my own nation?" For once, for the Love of God, answer "No."

Via the Atlantic: Is the Recession Over?

Sullivan is on vacation (or hopefully on a covert mission to Iran... oh damn I hope I didn't blow his cover), so he's got his regular crew of misfit toys covering for him. Patrick Appel is posting:

Is the Great Recession Over?
Yes. No. Yes.

Here's the real method to measure if the recession is over, Mr. Appel.
I'M STILL UNEMPLOYED. IT'S REALLY A DEPRESSION. AUGH.
Hope that helps, sir.

What other topics can be of interest?

There are times I have great interest in politics, in seeing issues discussed, plans enacted, realities confirmed. Then there are times I see the political arena overrun by goddamn wingnut lunatics and wonder why I ever developed an interest in political affairs in the first place... and why I was ever a registered Republican (I think I can blame dad - a Nixon Republican - for that)...

I mean, what else can be said or done regarding how the mainstream media doesn't do journalism anymore, how government is tied up by obstructionist politicians going insane over a national census process that's been in effect for decades, how we still haven't dealt with the previous administration's lawlessness, how an ever-growing number of Americans are out of work and unable to save their homes or families while corrupt financial institutions that caused our recent economic depression (until unemployment drops below 8 percent or I get a full-time job whichever comes first, I'm calling this a depression dammit) are going back to encouraging the same reckless behavior that got us into this hellhole in the first place.

Unlike hilzoy of Obsidian Wings, however, I refuse to decide on retiring from political blogging. Hell, I'm trying to see if I can get hilzoy's job there...

Return of Iran Uprising: Day 28

After more than a week of relative calm, the populus is back up in arms and the streets again filled with smoke and spattered with blood. Today was apparently an anniversary of a student uprising (EDIT: 1999 Student Protests).

Sullivan as always is as up-to-minute as possible. Including links now to Nico Pitney. Pitney's reporting indicates large crowds, larger than expected:

(via Robert Mackey): The regime assumed that with Khameni's speech last week forgiving the protesters, and arresting all the reporters and heads of reformist movement, the issue of unrest was resolved. Today's marches and protests are not supported by Mousavi, Khatami, and Karoubi. It is a grassroot uprising meant to let the Islamic regime know the people will not be silenced.

Makes one forget about... hmm, something about someone quitting somewhere (I've gotten to the point Re: That Crazy Lady's coverage is overdone, so I'm currently in the Ignore phase).

Stay Green.

CIA Lying to Congress? Color me Not So Shocked

Via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly (with MSNBC making big hay out of it last night to boot. Oh and the Bold highlights are mine):

In May, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the CIA had misled Congress years ago on the use of waterboarding. Republicans were apoplectic -- the very idea that intelligence officials would mislead lawmakers was so despicable, some GOP leaders suggested Pelosi should resign. Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) said Pelosi had launched a "massive attack on our intelligence community," and added that it's "outrageous" for the Speaker to "call our terror-fighters liars." Newt Gingrich seriously argued that the Speaker's comments increased the risk of a terrorist attack against the United States.

The whole mess caused something of a media frenzy, and the Speaker's poll numbers tanked.

Perhaps it's time to revisit the question of whether the CIA has a tendency of being less than truthful with Congress.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed "significant actions" from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.

In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had "misled members" of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. "This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods," said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.

In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.'s alleged deceptions. But he said, "We wouldn't be doing this over a trivial matter."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) added that his committee "has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to." Spencer Ackerman, who was among the first to report on this (if not the first), has a copy of the full letter from the Democrats on the committee.

Aw, gee. Congress being lied to. Like that's never happened much before. /sarcasm

This is why I've posted an amendment idea to state "Lying is NOT Protected Speech" (Because some bastards interpreting the First Amendment seem to think lying is okay), and to state that any elected official or civil servant (basically ANYONE IN GOVERNMENT) caught lying be 1) suspended without pay, 2) investigated for the lies, and 3) removed and banned for life from government if proven there was intent to lie.

Palin Is Insane

Actually I'm just saying that so I can get sued by her lawyer. Bwhahahaha. Anything to increase interest in this blog...

But seriously, you have to ask WHY? Why did she resign her governorship? Why so sudden that it caught even her staff unprepared?

Best theories I can think of:

1) Palin genuinely wanted to leave the national spotlight. After months of public bashing, especially all the salacious stories about her kids, she's had enough. In this, I wouldn't blame Letterman, which was sooooo last month, but the more recent Vanity Fair article that painted such an unflattering light and exposed how unpopular she was getting inside her own state.
Problem with this theory: This doesn't entirely jibe with what we've seen of Palin's psyche, and with her ambition. Ambitious people don't quit like this: not haphazardly, always with a plan, always with something right there waiting for them that would be a bigger better prize. If this is true, a run for the Presidency is clearly out of the question, because a hostile primary contest against the other likely contenders (Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty) would be just as spiteful as what she's been getting this past year. So if this is Palin's reason for leaving now, then she's left for good, and there is no presidential run in her future...

2) Palin felt confined in the governorship job and felt resigning would free her to run a national campaign. Let's be realistic: Alaska is a sparsely populated state miles away from the country's centers of power (DC, NYC, LA, even Chicago and Atlanta). Anything she does of any merit wouldn't impact a whole lot of people, and other than basic management needs - improving schools, child care, and other social services that Republicans simply don't do - there's little reason to use Alaska as a state-level laboratory for policy innovations (too small a population to be useful). When she talked about being a "lame duck" during her resignation speech, this was partly what she's referring to: knowing that she wasn't going to run for a second term in 2010, there's nothing left at her job to hold her interest or provide opportunities to show off to the nation any leadership skills she thinks she has.
The other part of this theory is the idea that this frees her up to run a national campaign. It surely does: no more need to hang aboot Juneau, she can travel nationwide to fund-raise for herself and for others during midterms. She can get any number of gigs: big-ticket name for the guest speaker circuit; talk show on FOX (who else would take her?); lecturer/part-time college professor at a major poli-sci university; Las Vegas greeter; anything else that would appeal to her interests and keep her name on the front pages. She could argue that it would be unfair to split her time between governing and campaigning, and besides, others have quit before to focus on campaigns.
Problem with this theory: The certainty that she quit her governor job TOO SOON. Palin could well have waited until the 2010 midterms were over to see what the revamped landscape would be like, what the GOP fortunes would be like, and still have 2 full years to campaign hard for funds. As a popular figure for the Far Right, getting money should never be a problem (well, until her next gaffe...). As for being a "lame duck" even lame ducks can get things done during their last few months in office, by being proactive, by being effective, by getting members of her own party to join in efforts that would A) look good in the papers and B) show that she was still working hard for her paycheck. As for others who quit their jobs to focus on campaigning... that never really worked out well, for example Bob Dole's quitting the Senate so he could focus full-time on his 1996 Presidential campaign. And in Dole's case, he quit only after securing his nomination, after 20-plus years of effective leadership in the Senate and after proving his mad skills. Most people in politics who quit their job usually did so - like Obama quitting his Senate seat after November 2008 Election Day - because they'd won a higher office. Palin's sparse resume didn't give her the luxury of quitting what has been her highest-value job, one she's barely had for 2 years and quit on with another 1 1/2 years to go.
Palin's opponents are going to have a field day with this if she does run in the 2012 primaries. What are now the three major candidates - Romney, Huckabee and Pawlenty - don't have a problem looking like quitters: Romney declined to run a second term as Governor but still finished out his term; Huckabee's governorship started by finishing out his predecessor's term (guy was convicted of a felony and forced from office) and getting elected twice on his own, completing both terms; Pawlenty doesn't face term limits in his state, but is currently insisting to finish out his second term by 2010, leaving him two good years to fund-raise for the 2012 Presidential campaign.

3) There was a scandal coming. This was the first thought amongst Palin's critics, and the early circumstantial evidence pointed to it:

• Palin scheduled the press conference so suddenly that even local media rushing to the scene barely made it.
• Said conference was sparsely attended, her handlers apparently unable to round up a good-sized crowd to cheer her on such short notice.
• The speech Palin gave was best described as "rambling": relying too much on cliches that ran against each other; points being made that were never followed up later on in the speech; signs that the speech wasn't vetted or edited by professional speechwriters.
• The fact the speech was delivered on a Friday, traditionally known as a Dump Day when politicians simply 'dump' damaging facts/reports/notices because the mainstream media is set to take the whole weekend off (and what a weekend this was, Fourth of July when EVERYBODY including Mark Sanford sorry including the Comedy Central crew was going to be on vacation).
• The basic fact this was coming completely out of the blue: usually politicians send out feelers, drop hints, promote unusual legislation, start acting in certain ways that suggest moving on to other things, stuff like that. Local media - which is supposed to have their ears to the ground - hadn't been picking up any signs this was going to happen.

Combine all that with the fact Palin and her family (and in-laws) had faced and were facing a series of ethics probes and criminal charges. There was also a rumor (promptly denied by the FBI by the way) that Palin was facing federal indictments involving the company that built an expensive sports complex in Palin's hometown - it's this rumor that Palin's lawyer is threatening to sue people over. But considering Palin's seemingly hasty resignation, the rumor did deserve a quick review for debunking...
Problem with this theory: as Huckabee mentioned this Sunday, EVERYBODY at the state level gets hit with ethics probes, usually by disgruntled rivals looking for any means to drive you from office ("I had constant ethics complaints filed against me, even by newspaper editors, and a lot of it was because if they can’t attack you on policy...they just absolutely bombard you with personal attacks and keep you tied up in court...") Palin had for the most part survived most of the ethics challenges, although I think there's still one or two still under review. And that reported FBI probe into Palin's house supposedly built by the company that built her town's sports complex was debunked after a few phone calls. Unless there's a completely new scandal no one but Palin and a few others know about, this isn't the reason Palin's quitting...

4) Palin is batsh-t insane. Something in her ego simply told her to jump ship and swim for shore.
Problem with this theory: You'd think somebody in her family and circle of friends would check on her medications...

And thus did the GOP 2012 Doomwatch march on...

Iran: Clerical Group Challenges the Election

Via Sullivan via the NY Times, news is out that the the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom are calling the tainted presidential election illegitimate:

The editorial was written by Hossein Shariatmadari, who was picked by the supreme leader to run the newspaper.

The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests.

It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections.

“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said.

Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”

What does this mean? It means Rafsanjani's finally gotten at least one group of clerics to openly criticize Khamenei and his ilk. Past that, this is still a long slog ahead. Khamenei is not about to back down (he's gotten to the point where any admission of "Oops, shouldn't have done that" is gonna collapse his own little empire). But this also gives the protesters in Iran hope...

Well, You Won't Have Sarah Palin To Kick Around Anymore...

...at least not until she thinks the coast is clear for 2012... Somewhere in Hell Nixon is smiling...

Palin's resignation from the governor's job in Alaska came completely out of the blue. Sure, the past month for her has been a bit tabloid-ish, what with all the battles with David Letterman and all, leading up to the Vanity Fair article that painted her in the most unflattering way possible, and with renewed chatter about how she contributed to an imploding McCain presidency run. But of the Republican Governors having a bad week or two, Palin wasn't really in the running: Sanford (Remember, Mark, Michael Jackson Died For You) and Schwarzenegger were better bets to use this Friday dump day to run screaming for their lives.

Instead, Palin quickly announces that she'd be making a statement this afternoon. Immediate thoughts were that she was A) openly responding to the Vanity Fair article, or B) openly beginning a primary run for the Republican Presidential ticket for 2012. Then word leaked that she was leaving the governor's job.

And then she had the presser. The best word to describe it is "rambling." The only ones viewing this as a shrewd career move are Bill Kristol and Kathryn Lopez... and those two aren't exactly the wisest or learned of the Villagers. When the Ace of Spades guy is saying you're toast, you're toast.

'Cause Palin's big job has been this governorship. She's only had this one term, and she's not even finishing it. Being Mayor of Wasilla may lead you to Juneau, but that alone doesn't lead to the White House. If she was willing to just finish this one term, it wouldn't look bad. But this... she's QUITTING before her job's even supposed to be done, breaking her 4-year lease with the people of her state of Alaska. How is this gonna compare to others in the running for 2012, especially Romney or Huckabee? Even if she was quitting just to immediately focus on a campaign for 2012, it wouldn't look good. 2012 is THREE YEARS down the road, more than enough time to pace herself as Governor AND Candidate, get the ball rolling while focusing on duties at home until 2010, yadda yadda.

The chatter now is that for Palin to resign so suddenly, and in such a haphazard manner, suggests that a massive scandal (bigger than Sanford???) was coming down the pipeline. Schadenfreude doesn't entirely cover this just yet, because there's still too many questions (especially WHY?) to be satisfied in any way about this.

And Sanford still hasn't really dodged a bullet, even though for a second I considered that possibility. Sanford now combines with Palin as part of a newly growing meme: the GOP Candidate Doomwatch. Which potential 2012 Candidate is gonna ruin his/her chances next?

Iran. The Twitters Have Dwindled. The Streets May Be Calm...

...but there's still outrage among the Iranian population. It's just we are seeing the signs of the theocratic junta's willingness to outlast and overwhelm the peoples' anger. Sorta like "We'll see who rusts first," where in the short-term the Khamenei hard-liner faction survives. But in the long term, it all depends on how well Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and their cronies can pay off the Revolutionary Guard. People's support for the regime will be as slight as possible. It also depends on the back-room politics still in effort: rumors abound that Rafsanjani is working overtime to get enough clerics to turn against Khamenei.

Meanwhile, Iran's hatred of the British spilled over into a game of diplomatic brinkmanship, each country expelling or recalling ambassadors, and Iranians arresting UK staff. While it doesn't change much - Europe's general outrage isn't going to frighten a mullah class that hates the West already - it does escalate the isolation Iran is going to be getting from the rest of the world over this election sham.

And so, we turn our attention to Honduras. Aw dammit, not Central America AGAIN! You'd think they'd have fixed their "free dictatorship" systems decades ago...!

Battleground Iran, Day 13

From what I'm seeing from the Sullivan livetweets, and also from Nico Pitney's updates (he's a must-read on this as well), the violence in the streets is getting worse, and it's not just one-way as it looks as though the protesters are pushing back.

The pro-Khamenei/Amhadinejad people are moving forward on an 'official' inauguration by next month, clearly confident that they will prevail in this, but Nico's reporting that more than half of the Parliament members invited to a celebration snubbed the event (180 MPs did not show out of 290), clearly showing a deep split at the higher echelons of the Iranian government. I really doubt a lot of people outside of the Revolutionary Guard will show up for such an inauguration... heck, they might be a little busy elsewhere at the time...