Opinions You Should Have: Democrats To Actually Vote For Own Bill
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!: Progressive Expectaions
The Bobblespeak Translations: Meet the Press - December 19, 2009
Sen. Fritz Hollings: They're all against jobs
Majikthise: COP15: Obama's high-handed pseudo-deal
OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Share The Damn Road, Ketchup Is A Vegetable, Santa Claus Blog
Some Guy's Blog: Happy Thanksgiving!
James Fallows has been posting on how our myopic media manufactured a failure out of Obama's China trip
Angry Bear: Another Reagan myth bubbling back to the surface
cab drollery: They Knew
The Sardonic Sideshow: Has the American Dream drifted north?
onegoodmove: The Right Side of History (h/t reader Geoff)
Here's the person that President Obama has been holding out as an example of a Republican he can work with. Chuck Grassley's latest excuse for his the government is going to "pull the plug on grandma" nonsense. Obama made me do it.
From Think Progress:
Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Grassley struggled to explain why he made that statement. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Grassley stumbled over his words and even blamed President Obama for his word choice. He said that even though he knew the House bill “doesn’t intend to” kill senior citizens, he felt that he had a responsibility to nevertheless play to those fears.
[....]
Obama did use the phrase “pull the plug on grandma.” But he used it as an example of the lies his opponents were pushing around to scare the American public. Despite Grassley’s claim, he did not respond in “exactly the same way.” Obama said the right-wing myth was completely baseless; Grassley said that it was definitely something to be feared.
Grassley can't even stop the fear mongering while acknowledging there's no basis for it. Stay classy there Chuck.
Transcript below the fold.
World Net Daily has done it! They've finally proven that President Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya:
The document lists Obama's parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham, the birth date as Aug. 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth as Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Read on...
There's just one teensy little problem here -- The Republic of Kenya didn't exist until 1964 -- three years after Obama's birth. Right wing blog Little Green Footballs is calling this a hoax, but leave it to the nutbags at Free Republic to take the debunked myth to a whole new level. See, the whole thing ties into the divorce of President Obama's parents!
Judge Samuel P. King who granted the divorce – last I heard was retired and alive (for now) in his 90s in Hawaii -- MAY or MAY NOT have asked to see the Marriage Certificate. BUT, I bet Judge King asked to see Obama JR's Birth Certificate to confirm Ann's claims that Obama SR was in fact the father. That is “standard” policy to have a Birth Certificate in case the mother asks for child support from the father (or Welfare) later after the divorce. Judge King probably told Ann to produce a birth certificate before or at trial, which would have been sometime in mid- to late-February 1964 HAD Obama SR answered his notice that was sent to Cambridge.
When Judge King wrote the order on Jan. 23, he had his clerk notify Obama SR via what's referred to as a "knock and nail". That is, the postman leaves the notification on the door for (generally) 10 days and retrieves it after that time passes -- signed or unsigned. That order was sent on Jan. 23 via airmail from Hawaii and was probably posted on Obama SR's door Jan. 27-28. Read on...
Nevermind the fact that Barack Obama's birth announcement appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers in 1961. Hell, even Karl Rove says it's likely a forgery. You can be sure the Fox News gang will be running with this story, but will CNN's Lou Dobbs continue to go down the Birther path that's killing his ratings and embarrassing the entire network?
Wait, isn't President Obama the Antichrist? My brain hurts. If I could speak directly to every Birther face to face, this is what I would say.
(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 indefensibleOpponents 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.
Prose Before Hos: The Myth versus the Reality of Adam Smith's political economy
The Reid Report: 'Complexion' conscious swim club wants campers back...sort of
Democratic Strategist: Should wavering or wayward "centrist" Democrats be disciplined through the threat or reality of primary challenges?
Kiko's House: "We have met the enemy and he is us"
Zandar Versus The Stupid: Liz Cheney, Russia expert
OFF THE BEATEN PATH: WTF Is It Now?!?, Culture choc, Mental Detritus, Where's The Outrage?
A couple of weeks ago Will Bunch, our blogging friend from Philly and the proprietor of Attytood, visited with John Amato in L.A. for a bit while on the road promoting his new book, Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future.
Will has a rundown of the book's contents at Attytood, and provided an excerpt for Salon.
Of special note, I thought, was this bit about Grover Norquist's role in shaping the Reagan Legacy project:
One of the more down-to-earth tributes was written by Norquist, who said: “Every conservative knows that we will win radical tax reform and reduction as soon as we elect a president who will sign the bill. The flow of history is with us. Our victories can be delayed, but not denied. This is the change wrought by Ronald Reagan.” Norquist all but revealed one of his missions in the coming two years — finding a presidential candidate who would assume the Reagan mantle in a way that neither Bush 41 nor Dole ever could — but not the other. His second big push was practically a guerrilla marketing campaign to make sure that the less-engaged Middle America would get the message that Reagan belonged in the pantheon of all-time greats right next to Lincoln, Washington and FDR. Norquist had learned the lessons of Normandy and of the Brandenburg Gate, which was that powerful symbols can mean a lot more than words (especially in a little-read policy journal), that a motorist under the big Sunbelt sky of Ronald Reagan Boulevard will absorb the message of the Gipper’s greatness without ever pondering if ketchup should be a vegetable in federally funded school lunches or if “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers” in Central America were drug-dealing thugs, the kind of stubborn things that popped up in those newspaper articles ranking the presidents.
I've just gotten my copy and started reading, but it's an important book -- especially if you want to have some arguments handy for dealing with your Reagan-loving brother-in-law ...
Good Krugman column on healthcare reform, but I really wish he'd dig a little deeper into one particular myth: that most people want to keep the insurance they have. Like anything else, it all depends on how you ask the question. Do they want to keep their insurance because they don't want to be swamped with paperwork, like Medicare's Part D? Are they afraid of higher out-of-pocket costs? It's a dumb thing to make public policy based on what might be a false notion:
Health reform will fail unless we get serious cost control — and we won’t get that kind of control unless we fundamentally change the way the insurance industry, in particular, behaves. So let me offer Congress two pieces of advice:
1) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
2) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
The Democratic strategy for health reform is based on a political judgment: the belief that the public will be more willing to accept reform, less easily Harry-and-Louised, if those who already have health coverage from private insurers are allowed to keep it.
But how can we have fundamental reform of what Mr. Obama calls a “broken system” if the current players stay in place? The answer is supposed to lie in a combination of regulation and competition.
[...] Now nobody is proposing that Americans be forced to get their insurance from the government. The “public option,” if it materializes, will be just that — an option Americans can choose. And the reason for providing this option was clearly laid out in Mr. Obama’s letter: It will give Americans “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep the insurance companies honest.”
Those last five words are crucial because history shows that the insurance companies will do nothing to reform themselves unless forced to do so.
[...] How could the industry spend 15 years failing to make even the most obvious reforms? The answer is simple: Americans seeking health coverage had nowhere else to go. And the purpose of the public option is to make sure that the industry doesn’t waste another 15 years — by giving Americans an alternative if private insurers fall down on the job.
Be warned, however. The insurance industry will do everything it can to avoid being held accountable.
At first the insurance lobby’s foot soldiers in Congress tried to shout down the public option with the old slogans: private enterprise good, government bad.
At this point, however, they’re trying to kill the public option in more subtle ways. The most recent ruse is the proposal for a “trigger” — the public option will only become available if private insurers fail to meet certain performance criteria. The idea, of course, is to choose those criteria to ensure that the trigger is never pulled.
And here’s the thing. Without an effective public option, the Obama health care reform will be simply a national version of the health care reform in Massachusetts: a system that is a lot better than nothing but has done little to address the fundamental problem of a fragmented system, and as a result has done little to control rising health care costs.
Right now the health insurers are promising to deliver major cost savings. But history shows that such promises can’t be trusted. As President Obama said in his letter, we need a serious, real public option to keep the insurance companies honest.
The last thing we want is something resembling the Massachusetts plan, which is a frickin' disaster. (For instance, if you're making $31,213, the cheapest plan is $9,872 in premiums and out-of-pocket payments - and that's the good news.
Rep. John Boehner was crying again.
Avid crier, John Boehner, was at it again: sobbing when the statue-- or, in his case, idol-- of Ronald Reagan was unveiled in Statuary Hall this morning. Or maybe his mind was just wandering towards what today's Politico termed the stealth war to keep moving the GOP along the road to oblivion as a serious national party.
It's not so much that the wing-nuts will miss John McHugh (R-NY) or even the likelihood of being embarrassed again when they lose a seat-- after a costly battle they can't afford-- with a tremendous GOP registration advantage (120,887 Democrats to 167,272 Republicans). Obama won the district 52-47% last November.
I did an interview with the great Will Bunch on his new book: "Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future," and I'll be posting the video shortly.
Stephen Colbert noticed last night that, when President Obama said he would look for someone with "empathy" to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, the meme on the lips of all the Villagers (including Orrin Hatch) was that "empathy" was "code" for something -- most often "activist judges."
Wait -- isn't "activist judges" itself just code for "judges who don't rule the way wingnuts want"? Oh well.
In any event, Colbert manages to decode -- via a detour into the Star Trek universe -- the TRUE meaning of that invidious and insidious code word, "Empathy", which produces the anagrams "Meth Pay," "Ape Myth," and "Ham Type":
Which clearly means Obama plans to appoint a drug-addled evolutionist with swine flu.
Sounds as reasonable as anything we've heard from the Village.
We all know that Glenn Beck is making a career out of saying bizarre things and getting all kinds of facts wrong.
Yesterday he was downright brazen about trotting out flat falsehoods as part of his rants. The first came when he started ripping President Obama for supposedly overusing his teleprompter. In the process, he resurrected the myth of Saint Sarah "Evita" Palin and how she read her entire speech without the use of a teleprompter after it broke down on her.
Well, yeah, except said story is complete BS, though that didn't prevent Palin from repeating it anyway.
But, as with all right-wing populists, the myth and its maintenance are more important than piddling little facts.
Such as Beck's subsequent rant about the New York City flyover fiasco, in which he painted a portrait of the scene that made it seem as though Obama himself were on board the plane:
Beck: Then yesterday we had the 'secret photo op' of Air Force One flying over Manhattan. Which gave a lot of people flashbacks to 9/11. See all those people on the street? They were evacuating buildings. These people are running in fear because the president flew his plane over for a photo shoot! He's yelling at General Motors, and now he's yelling at Chrysler -- which the unions own, and we own -- General Motors -- Now, he talks to them about coming to meet Congress on their private planes. But he's taking Air Force One, a jumbo 747, out from Virginia to fly it up to New York for a photo op!
In case there's any confusion besides Beck's (which can't be fixed, it seems): Obama not only was nowhere near the plane's flight (this was only one of several planes that serve as AF1), he was furious that it had been authorized at all.
But telling his audience that would ruin Beck's little fable.
