( – promoted by odum)
How big a slash did the Salmon switching parties story make? A search of the Times-Argus shows that Pete the Moose and Tom the Republican are tied for the number of stories about them in the last 14 days.
The latest stories today? A back ground piece on Vermont party switching in general and news that the moose now has a lawyer representing him.
Moose, 7
Salmon, 7
Cheney still the hero of Caledonian Record?
This is Vermont Caledonian-Record’s Sept 11th editorial plea that we heed the warnings of Dick Cheney.
“Former Vice President Dick Cheney is right when he warns that those who wish to hamstring our military and our intelligence agencies would cripple the country’s ability to defend itself.”
In the Caledonian Record’s remembrance of that day Cheney’s warning stood out among the standard “he keep us safe” nonsense .It stood out more than their conveniently failing to remember the anthrax attacks on Vermont Sen.Leahy and others when claiming Bush kept us safe after Sept. 11th. Why let the facts get in the way of the “He kept us safe” meme? Torture,open ended detention , two wars, eight years and still stupid. Maybe it’s just a little Caledonian nostalgia and a wish on their part to go back to the glory days of 2003 when the National Review could gush in all seriousness “What of our vice president? Is he, too, a “daddy politician”? You bet, as Donald Rumsfeld would say. You get the feeling that things are going to be all right if Mr. Cheney is on the case.”
Some insight from someone that knows………………..
In a recent interview Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Bush Secretary of State Colin Powel when asked ,
“They started things and had no idea what their ultimate plan was. What, you really intend to hold people forever without charging them with anything?”
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, said “I’ve come to the conclusion that the man truly is – whether he was that way when I knew him before, when he was Secretary of Defense, I don’t know, that’s not at issue with me any more – the man now is just crazy,”
http://pubrecord.org/nation/49…
http://caledonianrecord.com/ma…
http://www.opinionjournal.com/…
[Update: it eventually struck me that there are implications for all those military folk being cashiered from their service simply because they are gay, many of them linguists in Arabic and Pashtun and other languages directly relevant to the safety of U.S. troops. And President Obama could halt the discharges with an Executive Order, but refuses to do so. — NanuqFC]
For all the computer geeks out there, here’s a story about Alan Turing, originator of the Turing Test for machine intelligence and the first storable software for Manchester University’s Mark 1 (first recognizable modern computer), code-breaker of the Nazi Enigma cipher of World War II, recipient of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society — and post-war convict (h/t to Pam’s House Blend, although the diarist there asserts that Apple Computer’s logo is an homage to Turing, who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple, found beside him when his body was discovered. Snopes and common sense say not so.)
His crime? He was gay.
The Guardian also has the story.
Alan Turing was convicted of “gross indecency” after reporting a break-in by a man he’d picked up and taken home weeks earlier. During the investigation, he acknowledged he’d had sex with the man.
He got to choose in 1952 between going to prison and being injected with estrogen for a year to kill his sex drive. He lost his security clearance as a result of his conviction and was denied entry to the U.S. Alan Turing committed suicide two years later at age 41.
And on September 10, 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, responding to an online petition, issued an apology for the way Britain treated Alan Turing and many other LGBT people with prejudice and criminal prosecution.
Way too little, way too late, but a piece of our cultural history that should be shared and appreciated.
And, if you’re curious, check out Turing on Wikipedia.
Obama’s highly anticipated health care speech did not disappoint, and the shameless heckling from the Republican side of the aisle amounted to icing on the Administration’s public relations cake, so clearly contrasting as it did the President with the political craziness that has aligned itself against him. Obama’s poll numbers will receive a bump – albeit a smaller one than supporters would like to see, as it will primarily come from renewed enthusiasm from the progressive wing of the party which began losing patience with the Administration on this issue (and others) weeks ago.
And praise is coming in by the bucketful. Engaged progressives – from the pundit class to regular citizenry in water-cooler conversations – are using terms such as “turning point” and “game-changer” in describing the success of the speech and the renewed momentum for reform.
Inspired pundits notwithstanding, however, the game has not changed. We are still working the same board with the same pieces and the same rules. What Obama may have done, rather than change the game, is simply hand himself a “get out of jail free” card, enabling him to regain lost ground and political momentum. But there is still a reform bill to be finalized, and the deeper political realities beyond any sense of this week’s ideological momentum remain the same. What matters, of course, is what happens next.
Political reality may be 90% perception, but that remaining 10% is made up of intractable policy realities, and Obama said nothing that mitigates the core political challenge to health care reform.
Two distinct lines from his speech collectively frame the biggest single problem that remains: “For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need,” followed a few lines later by “individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers.”
Few reformers argue the need to get everyone insured in order to capture savings and increase efficiency in the system, hence the near-universal calls from the left for an individual mandate.
The problem, then, is not whether to have such a mandate, but how to make it work.
A publicly administered and funded insurance option is the simplest, most obvious means to that end. Obama spoke correctly of distinguishing between means and ends, warning against a dogmatic fixation on such a public option by progressives, but the fact is any other means gets sticky, and come down to simply giving people money in some way shape or form, something Washington is loathe to do. And lawmakers should be wary; the notion of simply paying out for individual private insurance without any meaningful regulatory cost controls is an unsustainable, budget-busting gift to an industry already practiced in gouging its clientele.
So without a public option, a fairly straightforward game of policy logic becomes an equation that doesn’t balance easily at all, and despite huzzahs from enthusiastic liberal lawmakers, Obama continued to lay the groundwork for a delicate abandonment of a true public option in his speech. For reform to work without such an option, Congress and the Administration will have to show a willingness to proactively and firmly regulate in a way inconsistent with everything we’ve seen from both up to this point.
If this dynamic that was underway before the speech continues to play out in the direction it had been heading, this meeting of the irresistible force of policy logic with the immovable object of a Congress either chronically confused or simply beholden to insurance and pharmaceutical contributions will leave only one place to balance off the numbers in any final bill; on the backs of middle and working class Americans.
Unless we see more than rhetoric from Obama and Congress – and soon – this debate will continue on the track it has been on for the last week, and could very well still lead to a uniting of the progressive activist base with the far right to defeat a final product seen as doing far more harm than good. Without clearer, firmer and bolder leadership than can be contained in a single speech, we will see a bill, perhaps not as egregious as the abomination that emerged from the mind of Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus, but close enough. A bill that will not provide an immediate, meaningful public option, will still require people to buy insurance, but will only provide assistance to purchase that insurance to the poorest Americans, and in some deferred form – such as tax credits – which will not come when needed.
The middle and working class will again witness what happens when wealthy Congresspeople (especially when looking to make a tough bill’s numbers round out pleasingly) decide what is “affordable” on their behalf. Reform activists still have their work cut out for them if there’s to be a different outcome.
We all know that Jim Douglas isn’t running for guv again, but did you know that Rob Roper is stepping down as Vermont GOP Chair and Brian Dubie is heading off to Alaska before announcing his gubernatorial intentions?
Palin/Douglas ’12 bid on the horizon or some other equally nefarious undertaking?
From Thursday's Times Argus:
This whole argument predates my residence in Montpelier by many years, but as I understand it, when U-32 was being developed the U-32 district towns approached Montpelier to see if they were interested in joining the regional district and Montpelier said no.
Since then, given the physical plant problems in the Montpelier district, there have been proposals floated in Montpelier to approach U-32, but, smarting from the memory of 1967, sternly rebuffed Montpelier's overtures.
The new approach is different. First, it comes from the U-32 board. Second, it comes at a time when the finances of the state education department and the two districts is more constrained than it has been in years. Third, it comes at a time when there is a vacancy in the office of superintendent for Montpelier, following the recent death of Steve Metcalf.
Both my sons went straight through Montpelier's public schools, and graduated from the high school, but the economies of scale and scope that this proposal offers make this an attractive idea.
I hope the two districts can find a way to make this happen.
Get ready for the Right flank to reinvigorate their long-standing effort to eliminate federal funding for the arts. I just saw this on Huf-Post and all of the alarm bells went off in my head:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Since the eighties, there has been steady pressure on the NEA not to fund controversial projects no matter how valid peer review found them to be. They already reduced public television to a shadow of its former self. I predict that in the anti-intellectual furor that has overtaken the Right, the next big target will be any remaining public funding for the arts. This is just the opening salvo.
I have taken a personal interest in this because my sculptor husband was the target of censorship efforts by right-wing groups in 1970’s Toronto. In both of those cases, the law finally came down on the side of freedom of expression, but not before it cost us all a lot of time, money and anxiety.
We may be approaching a dangerous time for arts and artists in fully-armed America, where apparently one may now carry an assault weapon into a crowded room.
There has been much fanfare of Obama’s speech in front of Congress last night from liberals. I read the first six or so blog posts on the speech Huffington Post last night, and they were a bit absurd in their romanticism of the event.
Paul Begala explained “Why I Loved Obama’s Health Care Speech.”
Jacob Heilbrun claimed he had “come out swinging” and made the “single most persuasive case for government intervention in decades.”
From Bill Cunningham: “Tonight, we saw a leader, unafraid to stand and deliver…not a political document, but a platform that all who care about real reform, can support and amend and work for.”
And it wasn’t just on Huffington Post. Katrina vanden Heuvel (who I interned for and have co-written pieces with) was more enthusiastic than I would have expected, saying Obama showed his progressive “spine.”
On MSNBC, Steve Hilderberg, a former Obama campaign staffer who has been organizing with others former staffers to demand a public option, seemed unperturbed that Obama, for all practical purposes, caved to the Blue Dogs who oppose the idea, and not the progressives that elected him.
When asked by Kieth Olberman if Obama’s speech was strong enough, he said “For sure. I never had any doubt, this favor is on side of American people and not in bed with special interests … he hit it out of the ballpark.”
Now, I know there is a desire to defend Obama, given that he has been subject to absurd lies and distortions from a right-wing base that has become more delusional and vitriolic than in recent memory.
But progressives have got to get past the glowing rhetoric, and notice something very important: Obama is going to pass a pretty shitty bill.
Sure, the bill will be better than the status quo; there will be some subsidies for lower middle class people. But also dreaded mandate — a gift to insurance companies, who love that 46 million people must purchase poor and overpriced healthcare plans that still leave them open to financial ruin.
There will almost assuredly be no public option. Even with 59-60 seats in the Senate, Democrats will not so much as accept a minuscule public option to insure just a tiny fraction of the population.
This idea that Obama is restating the case for liberalism is an absurd overstatement. There are huge majorities, and a self-described progressive president with a mandate for change, and we going to end up with a bill dictated largely by what Blue Dogs and insurance companies want (a mandate and no public option).
As Ezra Klein noted, there are not so much changes, but merely improvements.
Anyway, in today’s Christian Science Monitor, I make the case that the disappointing nature of the healthcare package outlined by Obama is a reason that advocates of universal healthcare, need to focus, not on Washington — which is so impervious to change — but in state houses across the country. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/…
There has been tremendous work on this issue done in Vermont, as I note in the piece.
Republicans’ Unprecedented Show of Contempt During President’s Address on Heath-Care Reform is Captured by TV Cameras; GOP Congressman is Booed Loudly After Calling Obama a Liar While Another Republican Challenges President on ‘Death Panels’
(Posted 8:00 a.m. EDT Thursday September 10, 2009)
NOTE TO READERS: Due to a computer crash, today’s edition of The ‘Skeeter Bites Report is being posted three hours later than normal. We apologize for any inconvenience this delay might have caused.
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A ‘SKEETER BITES REPORT EDITORIAL
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The television images were startling: As President Obama addressed Congress and the nation on health-care reform Wednesday night, the cameras showed many Republican members of Congress displaying their contempt for the president’s reform push, with some holding up signs reading “What Bill?” and “What Plan?” and copies of GOP-sponsored bills rejected by majority Democrats, while others were scanning their BlackBerrys while Obama spoke.
Then the House chamber’s microphones picked up the voice of a previously little-known Republican from South Carolina openly heckling Obama — the first time in memory that a sitting member of Congress showed such blatant disrespect for a president while he addressed the lawmakers — calling Obama a liar after the president said his reform plan would not cover illegal immigrants.
But that’s not all. According to a report on HuffingtonPost.com, another Republican congressman challenged Obama when the president told the lawmakers that claims by his right-wing opponents that his proposal would establish so-called “death panels” on end-of-life matters was “a lie” by demanding that he “Read the bill!” — a common chant used by opponents at lat month’s explosive town hall meetings.
And a third Republican congressman loudly dismissed with a sarcastic “Ha!” the president’s assertion that he had “no interest in putting insurance companies out of business,” the Web site reported.
WILSON BOOED LOUDLY; HE QUICKLY APOLOGIZES
Apparently emboldened by the fierce condemnation of the president’s health-care reform proposals displayed by opponents at town-hall meetings across the country on the matter, House Republicans, in particular, were in no mood to back down from their own united — and apparently implacable — opposition.
But Wilson’s outburst clearly crossed the line, according to HuffPost. He was booed loudly by Democrats and Republicans alike. “Shame on you!” shouted one spectator. “Throw him out!” shouted another. First Lady Michelle Obama, who was seated above and behind Wilson in the visitors’ gallery, was overheard shouting “Damn!” as she shook her head in disgust.
Within an hour after the president’s address. Wilson issued an apology. “This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill,” he said. “While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility.”
Wilson also called the White House to apologize.
BIPARTISAN CONDEMNATION OF WILSON
Wilson’s outburst was roundly condemned by Republicans and Democrats alike. Appearing on CNN’s “Larry King Live” minutes after the president’s address, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) said he found Wilson’s remarks “totally disrespectful — [there’s] no place for it in that setting or any other and he should apologize immediately.”
On the same program, Representative Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) said, “I thought that was unfortunate. [Obama’s] the president. He deserves more respect than that.”
Democrats were furious. “Nineteen years [in the House and] never, never have I seen anything like this,” said an angry Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut).
“I thought it was very inappropriate behavior, to hold up signs. None of us ever would have done that,” said Representative Henry Waxman (D-California). “I don’t think in the Congress of the United States there ought to be catcalls, or people standing up and yelling comments or holding up signs.”
Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan), the House’s longest-serving member — whose father, John Sr., introduced a health-care reform bill as far back as 1943 — said he was not impressed by the GOP’s antics. “Well, you’ve got to understand: They’re Republicans. They’re just doing what comes natural,” he told HuffPost.
But by far the most barbed reaction came from MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman. “Whoever shouted out that the president was lying is a dumbass who should show the president some respect!” Scarborough wrote in a posting on Twitter.
GOP’S DISRESPECT OF OBAMA UNPRECEDENTED — IS IT RACIALLY TINGED?
It’s pretty clear by now that Republicans — especially those in the House — are in no mood to back down from their fierce and increasingly implacable opposition to health-care reform.
But their boorish behavior during the president’s speech strongly suggests to The ‘Skeeter Bites Report that the Republicans also might be emboldened by something far uglier: A refusal to accept the decision last November by a 54 percent majority of the American electorate to entrust, for the first time in the nation’s history, the the most powerful job in the world to a black man.
Are we the only ones who noticed from viewing the TV images that the Republicans who displayed such open contempt for the president were all white male Southerners? Is it merely a coincidence that Wilson, the GOP congressman who made the “You Lie!” outburst, is a conservative white male Southerner from South Carolina?
Can anyone recall any of Obama’s predecessors — including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon — ever receiving this kind of treatment by members of the opposition party while addressing a joint session of Congress? We can’t.
We are, therefore, forced to ask this question; Partisan loyalties aside, would the Republicans have displayed this much contempt for the president of the United States if Obama were white?
We seriously doubt it.
As much as the Republicans despised Clinton, they never subjected him to that kind of open display of disrespect even as they impeached him in 1999 — and remember, the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress back then.
Likewise, the Democrats, for all of their dislike of Nixon, never resorted to such open displays of contempt — not even when Congress began impeachment proceedings against him over the Watergate scandal in 1974.
HOW ELSE TO EXPLAIN GOP MOVING FARTHER AND FARTHER TO THE RIGHT?
It is becoming more and more difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that there is more than partisan motivation behind the Republicans’ hardening opposition to Obama’s health-care proposals.
This is, in fact, a hardening of the GOP’s opposition to Obama’s entire presidency, based on their nearly unanimous opposition to his emergency economic stimulus package and the solid opposition to his plans for dealing with climate change and energy independence.
The reason for the hardening opposition should be as plain as day: The Republicans have for months now been sucking up to the rabid demagogues of right-wing talk radio, led by Rush Limbaugh, and of a certain right-leaning cable news channel that’s having to deal with a growing advertiser boycott against one of its rising stars, Glenn Beck.
Of course, there’s more to it than that: The Republican Party’s voting base has shrunk to where it’s now where the Democratic Party’s voting base was for much of its history prior to the end of World War II: almost lily-white, mostly Southern, overwhelmingly male and fiercely conservative — and moving ever farther rightward, away from the American political mainstream.
Indeed, the GOP is moving so far to the right that it is at the point where the party is in danger of becoming a xenophobic, neo-fascist fringe party similar to the British National Party, France’s National Front, Austria’s Radical Party, Germany’s National Democratic Party and the Netherlands’ Freedom Party.
The GOP cannot remain viable with the majority of the American people if it continues on its rightward trajectory.
Sincerely,
Skeeter Sanders
Editor & Publisher
The ‘Skeeter Bites Report
Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.
Now that we’ve had overnight to think about it, what are your reactions to Obama’s speech?
A couple of initial thoughts:
1. Good for him calling the death panel lie exactly what it is.
2. I was glad to see him hold onto the public option. We’ll see how long that lasts, but it’s safe to say he needs pressure.
3. Anyone want to call Republican thug Joe Wilson to tell him he should resign after disrespecting the President, the Congress, and the American people? His number is (202) 225-2452.
4. I’m concerned about his signal that he might be willing to cave in to the insurance companies on tort “reform”. Hint: just because it’s change doesn’t mean it’s reform, especially when the point of that change is to protect wealthy insurance companies from having to compensate horribly injured victims of medical malpractice.
5. On tort liability. Why isn’t anyone but me calling defensive medicine what it is:
the unethical prescribing of unnecessary medical procedures and the fraudulent billing of insurance carriers and the government?
6. Does anyone get what the hell these “insurance exchanges” are?
7. Does anyone see how he’s going to significantly bring down health care costs without getting rid of the parasites–I mean insurance companies?
What are your thoughts?