The Myth of Corporate Omniscience...

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment last night discussed at length the Supreme Court’s supremely bad decision to open the floodgates to Corporate Money into the Political Process. While I think the decision was ridiculous on its face, and harmful to the good of the country, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. Why?

Because the Corporations…of which you are so rightly a feared…are going to @#$% it up.

Not might @#$% it up…they will @#$% it up.

I work for a Corporation. I work what you would call a Mega Corporation, one of the largest in America, if not the World. I won’t tell you which one, but I will give you a hint.

People keep talking about too big to fail…well howzabout too big too function? That’s us in a nutshell.

The idea of International Corporations being all knowing, all seeing and thus omniscient…is just a damn joke. They can barely handle their own business, much less anyone else’s.

That’s not to say they’re not going to try…but they will always waste time and money in the process...always.

Let me repeat an example I made on TPM Blogs yesterday: the decision to save money, by cutting jobs in IT Support, but laying off a bunch of people in America, and outsourcing those jobs...to Poland.

It @#$% you…not.

First, the idea of me having a problem in America…calling some dude in Poland to explain my problem...having him or her barely understand the problem...then having said same dude (or dude-ette) call America again to fix that same problem is...

You can’t write comedy this golden.

And let’s not even get into the issue of the language barrier. While, I'm certain that there is a sizeable chunk of the Polish population with good English skills odds are they’ve already been hired to phone bank somewhere (or God forbid were so good, they were promoted off the phones). You’re running this Polish IT Company, you suddenly need to hire a bunch more people…now you have to cull from the B Team of English Speakers. Your new hires step in and start screwing up Service Requests, slowing things down because the people who made the requests can’t get their work done, and--

--okay, I’ll stop.

The point is that a bunch of people on the ground...who don’t work in offices…who, like me, work in cubicles, knew this was a bad idea from jump. It’s not just the fact that we knew some of the people in Corporate IT, we did…they were friends of ours. It’s not just the fact we use to pick up a phone, and someone you knew would come bounding across the street and fix the damn problem. We knew that sooner or later the BigWigs were going to decide this isn’t going to work, and they’d pull the plug anyway and try to hire everyone back. In the meantime, a lot of lives were changed, a lot of money was wasted, and a bad idea that shouldn’t have been enacted…was enacted anyway because it looked good on the bottom line.

This is what you should be afraid of. Not Corporate Omniscience ruling your life like Big Brother, but Corporate Idiocy making a mess of it like the Marx Brothers.



I bear no illusions. The Court's decision was damn dangerous. They’re going to try to get what they want, when they want, and how they want it. They are going to succeed in a lot of cases…but not all. And even in those cases where they do succeed, the odds are they’re going to screw it up for them as they will the rest of us. All manner of resistance launched against this decision is right and should be enacted.

But just don’t be afraid.

Don’t assume the world’s coming to an end. It’s not.

(I’m still trying to figure out what Keith meant when he kept semi-joking about being yanked off the air at any second. Uhhh, he does realize he works for a Corporation right now, right? I mean, if NBC/Universal wanted him off the air tonight, it could do it.)

And let me suggest another strategy for future use against our Corporate Overlords.

How about pitting them against each another?

Another part of the myth of Corporate Omniscience is that they’re all working in fascistic concert with each other. Bull. There are 13 separate companies (not divisions mind you, actual distinct companies) where I work and we don’t work well with each other, must less anyone else.

Remember, Ford Motor is tacking on $1500 dollars to the price of every vehicle it rolls out for Health Care for its employees. You don’t think Ford Motor doesn’t hate the Health Insurance Industry? Now, Ford Motor spends way too much time taking this anger on its employees, but what if they would be convinced to take it out on United Health Care?

Just something to think about.

Andrew Sullivan: Now, Fight!

Bear in mind that its a Conservative who's writing this.

From this morning's Atlantic online. (And bear in mind Andrew was never a fan of HCR in the first place, and still supported Obama):

Now, Fight:

The seismic events of the last few days ends, in some respects, the phony war of the first year of Obama's presidency. As is the case in truly fracturing democracies, the opposition simply does not and cannot accept the fact that it is out of power. The incoherence of the opposition to Obama - that he is both Jimmy Carter and Adolf Hitler, as Stephen Colbert pointed out last night - reveals the irrationality of the hate. It began immediately on the FNC/RNC right. And the ferocity of the campaign against Obama, the sheer dickishness of the GOP and its acolytes, the total oppositionism to everything he has done and indeed anything he might do... suggests that any hope for some kind of cooperation from this rump is impossible.

But the truth is that these forces have also been so passionate, so extreme, and so energized that in a country reeling from a recession, the narrative - a false, paranoid, nutty narrative - has taken root in the minds of some independents. Obama, under-estimating the extremism of his opponents, has focused on actually addressing the problems we face. And the rest of us, crucially, have sat back and watched and complained and carped when we didn't get everything we want. We can keep on carping if we want to. But it seems to me that continuing that - as HuffPo et al. appear to be doing - is objectively siding with the forces of profound reaction right now.

Don't get me wrong. Criticism is still vital. I'm not going to give up on advocating marriage equality or a carbon tax, rather than cap and trade, or for an independent investigation of Bush era war crimes. I think pushing Obama to a more populist position on banks is well and good. But given the alternative, I am going to step up my support of this president in the face of what he is confronting, even when he is not exactly doing everything I want. In my view, you should too.

Look at what we are facing right now: a take-no-prisoners right, empowered by a massive new wave of corporate money unleashed by the Supreme Court, able to wield a 41 seat minority to oppose anything Obama wants, setting up a cycle of failure for a president whom they can then pillory at the polls, and unrepentant about near-dictatorial powers for the presidency, and the routinization of torture in the American government. These forces cannot be appeased. They simply have to be confronted.

I do not believe in some massive turn left or faux-populism that Obama cannot characterologically embody. I do not think ramming the healthcare reform bill through before Brown is seated is good politics. I still believe that Obama should embrace a major assault on long-term debt and make that a center-piece of his SOTU next week.

But I have come around to thinking that the one huge mistake right now would be to surrender the Senate health reform bill.

The dust should indeed settle. But it is absurd that one special election should upend a clear campaign promise, a year of work, and a necessary start on a critical reform without which we hurtle toward bankruptcy even more quickly.

More to the point, politics is also about morale and will as well as reason and moderation. I believe Obama has been both reasoned and moderate and civil in navigating between the Democratic Congress and the embittered, mutinous GOP. I don't think his tone should change. But I do think that any surrender on health now would be a betrayal of his entire campaign. I don't think the Senate bill is perfect; but it's far far better than nothing. And not passing it means not passing anything and surrendering to forces that are as proto-fascist as any we have seen in recent times.

This is about more than health reform and we have to see it in that context. This is about a cynical nihilist attempt to break this presidency before it has had a chance to do what we elected it to do by a landslide vote. It is an attempt to destroy a majority's morale, to break a president's foreign policy autonomy, to prevent engagement in the Middle East peace process, to stop action on climate change, to restore torture, to increase tensions with the Muslim world, to launch a war on Iran. We cannot delude ourselves that if Obama fails, this is not the alternative. It is.

And we have to re-engage as powerfully as we did in the campaign to fight back against these now emboldened forces of reaction. I think this is true not just for the sake of the country but also for the sake of the GOP. The nihilist obstructionism and rhetoric they have embraced makes constitutional democracy close to impossible. Their total lack of any workable alternatives to dire problems is a form of degeneracy we have to avoid empowering.

So fight, Mr President. And to the House Democrats who won't go along with the only way to salvage health reform: this is the only sure-fire way you will lose in November. If you pass this bill, you may also go down in this climate. But you will have done something you can be proud of. Politics cannot always be about narrow self-interest. If it always is, nothing important can get done.

Do your duty. And grow some. Fight back. Explain why you're right. Tell the liberals they can always come back later to reform the bill. Just get this passed.

Comedy Central's Busy Night (VIDEO)

Well, first Jon made fun of America's inability to handle rational discourse...

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...then he ripped on Keith Olbermann for the tone of his Special Comments:

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Funny thing, I remember Keith saying that the Network wanted him to do a Special Comment every night. His reply was: "Well, they wouldn't be very special then, would they?"

Guess what he's doing now? A "Comment" every night.

And finally, our old pal Colbert:

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Mitch McConnell...wants Health Care Reform...to pass?!?!? (He typed, dazed and confused)

Okay...um...huh...what was that again??

This is from Laurence O'Donnell, regularly of MSNBC, formerly of the West Wing, and a regular guest blogger on Huffington Post. (Fine! Fine! I'm not a fan of Huffington Post, but I like Laurence, thus...)

The article is called: Will Scott Brown Ruin Republicans' (Secret) Plan to Pass Obamacare?

Let's remember, even though Laurence has gone Hollywood and all (writing West Wing, acting in Big Love), he was Chief of Staff to the Senate Finance Committee for a bunch of years. So understanding the intricacies of the Senate is definitely in his purview.

So, Laurence's opinion on Senate matters is always valued. At least, it is by me.

Thus, these two paragraphs really got my attention:

In Washington, where everyone is desperate to know what's happening behind closed doors, all you have to do to keep something secret is do it out in the open, preferably on C-Span. Mitch McConnell did exactly that when he entered a unanimous consent agreement with Harry Reid about how to proceed on the health care bill. McConnell knew that agreement was going to make it impossible for Republicans to amend the bill and would put it on a fast track toward passage.

McConnell accepted an agreement brilliantly designed by Reid that required 60 votes to pass an amendment. McConnell did that without anyone noticing anything odd after a year of saturation coverage of the importance of 60 votes in the Senate. Everyone outside the Senate now thinks it takes 60 votes to do anything. Not amendments. Amendments pass by a simple majority, 51 votes. Amendments are usually debated for a couple of minutes or hours or days, then voted on. Once in a while, a 60-vote cloture motion is needed to end debate on an amendment. What McConnell agreed to was an implicit cloture motion in every vote on every amendment, thereby completely surrendering the minority's real power. In all my years in the Senate, I never saw a leader make such a mistake. If it was a mistake.

Reid's motivation was simple. Getting this agreement with McConnell made it so that Reid's version of Senate HCR was going to be the final Senate version of HCR. There would be no surprises from anyone...(including unfortunately a good Prescription Drugs Amendment by the retiring Byron Dorgan...but Sen. Dorgan said on the Randi Rhodes show he can get that passed anyway.)

Oh, this was a pretty important graph as well:

And now the strategy becomes clear: Repeal it! That is the Republican Party battle cry for the 2010 election. Repealing Obamacare is going to be the centerpiece of their campaign to take back the House and Senate. But how can you repeal it if they don't pass it. Hence, Mitch McConnell's enabling.

Umm...

Okay...

Just...gathering myself here...

If the 2010 strategy is to run on a repeal of Health Care Reform, this may go down as one of the dumbest excercises in political history.

Why? Right now, whether I'd like to admit or not (and I really don't) the President is reeling a bit. I don't think he's in any danger of losing re-elect in 2012, but could we see a major, major cut into the Democratic majority in 2010? Most certainly. In fact, history tells us that's exactly what's going to happen...

But if the GOP runs on a total repeal of Health Care. I'm sorry, but that's tone deaf to the point of being insulting to people who are tone deaf.

Last I checked (and this is an area where I disagree with Laurence), the Unions were onboard with the Excise Tax now. They got it delayed enough to where they're still willing to run turnout for Democrats.

While we of the Liberal creed have certainly had our arguments over HCR (Health Care Reform) -- I only do this because I note I have a follower...who's not Dad or Heidi. Yay! -- even if the Senate Version of the bill were to pass as is, no one from the Democratic side is gonna want to repeal the sucker.

Amend the living hell out of it, yes. Hell, even I'm for that. But repeal?

Sen. Mitch McChinless (Stephanie Miller reference) actually thinks that running on a platform in defense and support of Insurance Companies is a winner in 2010.

It may actually keep the Democratic Majorties right where they are.

Unless, that's the plan, to let the Democrats run wild for two more years, and get the people even sicker of them, then they'll--

Okay, my head's hurting. I'll stop.

But still, stoopid, STOOPID idea.

"We Want Our Money Back, and We're Going to Get It" (VIDEO)

My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people -- folks who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession.

We want our money back, and we're going to get it. And that's why I'm proposing a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee to be imposed on major financial firms until the American people are fully compensated for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street. If these companies are in good enough shape to afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to afford paying back every penny to taxpayers.

The Fireside chat for January 15, 2010

As the President continues to work on immediate job creation, he discusses his proposal for a new fee on the largest financial institutions to ensure that every cent of taxpayer assistance gets paid back. Saying that, “we’re not going to let Wall Street take the money and run,” he goes on to discuss the ongoing push to make sure banks can never put our economy at risk again.

In case you somehow missed it... (VIDEO)

I have long thought of Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson as garden-variety racists, given their past histories and statements. It's always nice to be provided with fresh proof.



So, a bunch of slaves rise up and kick the hell out of Napoleon's 80,000 Man Army, and run (God forbid) their own country for themselves. It couldn't have possibly been the fact that they (the French) had imported a bunch of West Africans, enslaved them, then massacred them at the drop of a hat. Oh no, the only way we could be beaten by a bunch of slaves was that the Devil gave them help.

And when Haiti is driven into poverty, it's not the fact that the White Nations of the world who previously benefited from having Haiti as a colony were sabotaging them in any way. Oh no, that's the Devil, too.

And now onto Rush Limbaugh:

I want you to remember it took [Obama] three days -- three days -- to respond to the Christmas Day Fruit of Kaboom bomber. Three days. And when he came out after those three days, he was clearly irritated that he had to do it. He didn't want to do it. He comes out here in less than 24 hours to speak about Haiti.

...

Yes, I think in the Haiti earthquake, ladies and gentlemen -- in the words of Rahm Emanuel, we have another crisis simply too good to waste. This will play right into Obama's hands -- humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their -- shall we say -- credibility with the black community, in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community, in this country. It's made-to-order for 'em. That's why he couldn't wait to get out there. Could not wait to get out there.

...

Oh, this is what he lives for. He lives for serving those in misery. Now don't misunderstand here, folks. See, this is -- I wonder -- I don't have the whole press conference, but I wonder: Did he apologize for America before acknowledging we are the only people on Earth that can possibly help them out down there in any significant way?

I'm sorry, but...light and dark skinned communities?? Last I checked...and I'm only black and everything so it's not like I'd know or anything like that, but I'm decently sure that there isn't one.

Hell, wasn't it people like Rush that instituted the one drop rule in the first place?

Fox is apparently barely covering the disaster in Haiti.

Fortunately, one member of the Fox Team Team still has a soul.

The people of Haiti have been used and abused by their governments over the years. They have dealt with unthinkable tragedy day in and day out. And we’re in the middle of a crisis the Western Hemisphere has not seen in my lifetime, and 700 miles east of Miami, hundreds of thousands of desperate human beings need our help, our support, our money, and our love. And they don’t need...that.

We shouldn't have to live in a world where this is necessary, or to thank Shep Smith for basic human decency...still, thank you nonetheless.

UPDATE 2:30pm Pacific: The White House, needless to say, wasn't amused by Robertson's remarks.



No word on what they think of Limbaugh. Maybe it's self-evident.

Lay it on 'em, Mr. President. (VIDEO)

That being said, the latest poll has Coakley up by 8. But still...

OUCH!!!

From the Daily Kos. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY)...laying the smackdown on Harold Ford.

“If he thinks that its an appealing argument to position yourself as being somebody who will stand up to Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, well I don’t think we need another Joe Lieberman,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who has long eyed a mayoral run.

Given that Ford’s candidacy was all but hatched on the Manhattan set of “Morning Joe,” and among the borough’s elite, New York Democrats wonder how Ford could run as a man of the people.

“Maybe when his helicopter lands in Queens next I can ask him,” cracked Weiner, alluding to Ford’s off-key revelation in a New York Times story Wednesday that he has only seen New York City’s five boroughs from a helicopter.

Does Harold not understand that nobody likes this idea??

Why Halperin remains scum and a hack... (VIDEO)

Fast forward to about 6:04 in the video to see what I mean.

Chris asks a simple question. "Did Harry Reid know he was going to be quoted when you interviewed him?"



Watch their answers. To paraphrase Andrew this morning, if you thought politicians could twist, turn and spin their way out of answers, they've got nothing on these guys.

A Second Look...

Looking at the extended cut of the John Yoo interview, Jon Stewart did way better than I originally thought, particularly in parts 2 and 3.

There was no hammer moment, like with Cramer, but he did put it to him. Yoo had some intelligent things to say (though I still think they're still wrong).

That being said, it would have helped if Jon Stewart had started off with the basic question: "Do you think Torture or any of the methods you describe are a reliable means of collecting Intelligence?"

You probably would have answered: "It's not up to me. I'm not a strategtist. I was asked a legal question by the Bush White House, and I provided a legal answer."

Even though that question, to me and a lot of Legal scholars, had been answered by the drafting of the Geneva Conventions.

What the @#$% was that?!?!? (VIDEO)

Watching the interview with John Yoo, I was looking forward to a Jon Stewart skewering. But it wasn't meant to be...

There's a part of me that believes, John Yoo was doing this @#$% on purpose. Clearly, it was making Jon's head hurt. Hell, it was making my head hurt. Maybe Yoo was dropped as a kid or something. I'm really starting to figure that these arguments make sense only to him, and the Bush Administration just say "Hell, go with it!"

Part 1:

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Part 2:

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Part 3:

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Crap. (VIDEO)

He's doin' it. Harold's gonna run, but in New York this time, not Tennessee.

After weeks of bashing hard-left Liberals, let me take a moment to bash ConservaDem Harold Ford. He comes from a rich family that owns most of Nashville, at least that's what I was told by a Nashville native back in the day. He must think the Senate is his birthright.

Whoever told him that going to a Playboy SuperBowl Party, no matter how innocent, despite the fact he's a single guy, was giving him bad advice. No matter how innocent it was, it allowed Bob Corker to take this racist cheap shot at him:



I'm no fan of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) either. She was an awful pick by Gov. Patterson, but don't want to lose this seat. Just as she's being pushed to the left (NYC apparently doesn't trust her), this happens. What the hell makes him think this is going to work?

The Fireside chat for January 8, 2010

The President discusses the benefits of health reform that Americans will receive in the first year, and how reform will help build a new foundation for American families.

Mr. 9/11... (VIDEO)

From this morning on ABC. The man who started every sentence with a noun, a verb and 9/11 now forgets the whole thing ever happened.



And lest we forget, classic Vice-President Biden goodness:

The one aspect where the Senate Bill is (gulp) better than the House bill??

There are two things to remember about Health Care Reform. One, is that's it's like a old Pipe Organ. Push a button here...sound comes out there. Getting from A to B ain't no easy trick. The inner workings to make that happen are real complicated. Changing one thing you may not like may wind up killing four or five things you do. Two, it's also very, very counter-intuitive at times.

Thus, I present a new piece from Erza on the Excise Tax and its critics. The more I read about this stuff, the more I come to believe (and not in a nose-holding way) that the Financing aspect of the Senate bill is infinitely superior to the House bill, though the House bill is superior in the Health Care and Insurance Reform aspects.

And, it goes without saying that any bill with a Public Option would have been superior to that...

...and something with a Single Payer superior to a Public Opt--...okay, I'm stopping.

A couple of highlights:

Before you really get into whether the excise tax is a good thing, though, you have to be clear about what it is. It's generally compared with the House's surtax on the rich. But all taxes are not alike. The House's surtax is a tax that's meant to raise revenue, much like an income tax. The excise tax is a tax that's meant to change behavior, much like a cigarette tax.

To make that even clearer, the House's surtax will only be successful if people pay it. The excise tax will only be successful if people don't pay it. And if that happens -- and many economists, and the Joint Committee on Taxation (which is the CBO for taxes), believe it will -- it will give plans that hold costs down a competitive advantage over plans that don't, and it will send a signal to insurers that they're vulnerable if they don't crack down on spending.

And...

For all that, no one should be under the illusion that this tax will not cause some pain, or upset some voters, or assail the plans of some middle-class workers. It will. But it's worth saying this very clearly: You cannot design a cost control that won't. The health-care cost problem is not a problem of the rich and famous. It is not a problem that can be painlessly solved by limiting insurance company profits (much, much too small) or reducing payments to providers (which would mean long waits and less access). Everything has tradeoffs. Everything has losers.

But click and read it. It's eye-opening stuff.

"We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children..." (VIDEO)

Somehow, I think the White House knew that'd be the line of the day...

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Let me cut right to the good stuff:

I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer, for ultimately the buck stops with me. As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility.

Over the past two weeks, we've been reminded again of the challenge we face in protecting our country against a foe that is bent on our destruction. And while passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let's be clear about what this moment demands.

We are at war. We are at war against Al Qaida, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.

And we've made progress. Al Qaida's leadership is hunkered down. We have worked closely with partners, including Yemen, to inflict major blows against Al Qaida leaders. And we have disrupted plots at home and abroad and saved American lives.

And we know that the vast majority of Muslims reject Al Qaida. But it is clear that Al Qaida increasingly seeks to recruit individuals without known terrorist affiliations, not just in the Middle East but in Africa and other places, to do their bidding.

That's why I've directed my national security team to develop a strategy that addresses the unique challenges posed by lone recruits. And that's why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that Al Qaida offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death, including the murder of fellow Muslims, while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.

To advance that progress we've sought new beginnings with Muslim communities around the world, one in which we engage on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect and work together to fulfill the aspirations that all people share -- to get an education, to work with dignity, to live in peace and security.

That's what America believes in. That's the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists.

Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses, but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don't hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want. And so long as I am president, we will never hand them that victory.

We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children.

And in this cause, every one of us -- every American, every elected official -- can do our part. Instead of giving in to cynicism and division, let's move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people, for now is not a time for partisanship, it's a time for citizenship, a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.

That's what it means to be strong in the face of violent extremism. That's how we will prevail in this fight. And that's how we will protect our country and pass it, safer and stronger, to the next generation.

Cadillac Plans...

Oh, you should only be so lucky as to have one of these.

Of course, you'd be contributing to the ever-rising cost of Health Care.

Now, while one of my least favorite Progressives, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) is saying that President Obama is violating a campaign pledge by supporting the Excise Tax in the Senate Health Bill in a (hopefully) futile attempt to kill the bill, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) posts (at Huffington Post of all places) why Rep. Grijalva is full of @#$%.

First, striking this provision from the final bill will make it much more difficult to pass final health reform legislation in the Senate and that's a huge mistake when we're closer than ever to completing a journey that began with Harry Truman. If passing health care reform was easy, it would've happened decades ago. It's not. It requires tough choices. And it's worth it.

Second, this is an idea that will help health reform succeed in the long run. It will create competition and place sunshine on the process of pricing health insurance premiums.

Third, it will help control future health care costs without -- I repeat without -- directly taxing employees. Unlike a cap on the existing tax exclusion of health insurance benefits, which I oppose, this provision will not require employees to include a portion of their employer provided benefits as part of their taxable wages.

Fourth, the excise tax included in the Senate-passed health care bill will affect only a small portion of the very highest cost health plans -- a total of 3% of premiums in 2013. The vast majority of health plans fall below the thresholds set in the Senate plan and would be completely unaffected by the provision. In addition, the Senate plan provides special protections to plans held by workers in high-risk professions -- like police and firefighters -- as well as by those over 55.

Fifth, for the small sub-set of plans that are affected, the likely impact will be to increase workers' wages. MIT economist Jon Gruber recently found that the excise tax included in the Senate bill would lead employers to raise wages by $223 billion between 2010 and 2019. In 2019, wages for those affected by the provision will be higher by about $660 per household. I repeat -- raise wages. After spending years and years hearing from workers tired of seeing their unions forced to spend all of their energy at the bargaining table just to hold on to health care instead of negotiating for better wages, we now have a way to help increase wages and improve health care simultaneously.

Look, make no mistake, I didn't cook this idea up because I think it's the best or the only way to improve health care -- but it's a good idea that also helps get health care passed. And if there's one thing Ted Kennedy taught us all, it's that in legislating on core issues, you seize those moments and marry the practical and the policy.

Does the Senate-passed bill cast too broad a net by setting the excise tax threshold too low? Yes. This could affect some of the hardest working American families. So let's fix it, not nix it. I believe the final health care reform bill will include appropriate adjustments to preserve its cost containing benefits while increasing the fairness of this provision. But let's get back to the business of doing that instead of fighting to kill a provision that improves health care -- and improves the chances of passing health care this month.

The article that convinced me of the importance of the Excise Tax is here, written by Erza Klein.

Over the course of this debate, I've repeatedly talked with union leaders and analysts who wanted to convince me of their side. One of the arguments they frequently used was that they had negotiated their contracts knowing that a dollar in health benefits was worth more than a dollar in wages, because it's exempt from taxation. That, of course, is exactly the problem. The current system sets up an incentive for workers to prefer that relatively more of their total compensation comes in the form of health benefits than wages. At a time when we need pressures to control costs, that's an incentive to increase them. As the CWA example shows, a lot of people have benefited from this system up until now, but at some point, we need to call a stop to it.

Senator Ed?

I've stopped listening to and watching Ed Schultz in recent months because of his "my way is the only way" stance on the Health Care Debate. My plan was to give it about a year, and see calm the waters were before wading back in.

But now this matter of Sen. Byron Dorgan's (D-ND) retirement has come up, an since Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) isn't going to run, Ed's name has come up as a possible candidate for the Senate Seat.

And I think he's seriously considering it.

Here's the deal. Byron Dorgan was a bit of an odd political duck. He was a Liberal Senator, from a blood red state, that routinely whupped his opposition by 30-60 points an election. Now that Dorgan is retiring (and don't be surprised if he's not the first name on the list for any cabinet vacancies in the Obama Administration) the current and popular Republican governor of North Dakota, John Hoeven, would look to be a shoo-in. So Ed has got to know that he might be the only shot the Democrats have at holding the seat...short of Dorgan changing his mind.

Now, Ed's got a fairly popular MSNBC Show...even though I've deleted it from my DVR. It's taken him a long time to get where he is. To give the Ed Show up (which he'll have to do) in order to run for a seat he might not win has got to be weighing on him. But I also know for a fact that he loathes Hoeven, in much the same way Al Franken despised Norm Coleman. Ed might want to stay in TV, but I know he'd love to take a shot at Hoeven. It's almost more important to him than holding the seat.

So, the long and the short of it is, I don't know what he's going to do. Ed is couching his language veeeerrry carefully. He's not ruling it in...but he's sure as hell not ruling it out. If you asked me for a prediction, I think he might do it.

I must warn you that my predictions are worthless at this stage. I thought Ken Salazar was going to run for Governor of Colorado, and ten seconds after I had that thought...this appeared.

Also, Dad reminded me this morning, if nothing else, Ed's running might demonstrate to show progressives that their way does not always command 50%.

We'll see. More on this as it comes.

Air Health Care... (VIDEO)

What was once in text, now is in video.

The President's Speech of January 5, 2010 on TSA and Terrorism (VIDEO)

MSNBC: "Doesn‘t it seem weird to build the same failed system all over again with the same known obvious loopholes?" (VIDEO)

It's rare when I put up some Rachel, so...bear that in mind.

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That is the implicit and sometimes explicit charge here, that President Bush somehow did it right, and President Obama is somehow doing it wrong.

It‘s worth noting that whatever we as a country were doing on September 12th and in the weeks after, doesn't seem to have worked all that well. It was about three months after September 12th that we got the failed terrorist attack that was essentially exactly like the one that happened this Christmas Day. Three months after 9/11, Richard Reid tried to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner with explosives that had been hidden in his shoes. Whatever we were doing with our 9/12 mentality wasn't enough to prevent that.

Our 9/12 mentality also wasn‘t able to prevent the growth and maturation of al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, al Qaeda chapters in Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, strong enough to pull off major terrorist strikes like the raid on the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2004, which left nine dead, the attack on oil company compounds in Al-Khubar in Saudi Arabia that same year that left 22 people dead, and the brutal murder of American engineer Paul Johnson also in Saudi Arabia in 2004.

An article in Sunday‘s “Washington Post” detailed the extent to which United States‘ missteps in Yemen allowed al Qaeda to expand and grow there as well.

This super-focus 9/12 mentality that conservatives now say we need to return also wasn‘t able to capture the perpetrators of 9/11, as we learned incidentally from last week‘s suicide bombing that killed seven CIA officers in Khost, Afghanistan. We are still looking for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Jordanian double agent recruited by the CIA was brought in to help U.S. officials find Zawahiri, 8 ½ years after our super focus 9/12 mentality.

The danger in these Bush policies being romanticized and retroactively imbued with some sort of magical efficacy they didn‘t really have is that we may start putting those failed policies in place again.

Today, we heard President Obama announce a new program for screening passengers coming into the United States.

That program was formally announced by the TSA this week. It calls for extra screening procedures for passengers traveling to the United States from 14 foreign countries.

That type of program, of course, evokes roughly one of the things the Bush administration did starting in 2002 when John Ashcroft announced a new system wherein any male under the age of 25 from this list of countries would have to register with authorities if they were working or visiting or living in the United States. It was called the NSEERS System.

That system that performed extremely well, produced precisely zero terrorism prosecutions. But it did turn a whole lot of people against the United States for a lifetime. It might make us feel better to have that sort of list, but those countries we just scrolled on the screen, you may have noticed didn't include the nations of Jamaica or England. Remember the shoe bomber, Richard Reid? He was a British citizen born to a family of Jamaican immigrants. He was radicalized at a mosque in London.

So, our super focus 9/12 mentality came up with the hugely costly, arguably quite counterproductive system that would not have screened out the next attempted bomber anyway.

By the way, the new Obama administration list from the TSA also doesn't include Jamaica and England. Not that it should. Not that there‘s anything special about Jamaica or England, but if we're trying to apply even the wisdom of hindsight here, doesn't it seem weird to build the same failed system all over again with the same known obvious loopholes?

It‘s one thing to pound your chest and brag on profiling because it makes liberals mad and it makes you feel tough. But how does the fact that it doesn't work intrude on your macho, macho feelings about it?

The danger of the Bush administration‘s approach being lauded as this good, tough approach that we wish we went back to is that it will currently increase the political appeal of emulating those failed approaches, being gratuitously unconstitutional in order to look tough is not the same thing as actually keeping us safe. No matter how much Mr. Obama's critics may want it to be so.

The "Simpler Time" in American History... (VIDEO)

If left to my own devices, I could easily turn giant swaths of this blog over to Daily Show clips.

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Ralph Nader is a racist.

As I said before, we're starting to see something of a Liberal pushback against other Liberals in the media. Hendrik Hertzberg's piece in the New Yorker is merely the most literate example of this.

But there was a another quote mentioned in the piece that got my attention. One saying that Obama is, and I quote:

"...an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations that are running our country.”

Sarah Palin picture, anyone?

Yes, I had a problem with this! (In case the title of this article didn't clue you in.)

If this was the first time Ralph Nader had used racially charged rhetoric in regards to this particular President, I'd have just been angry at him. But it's not.

It's the fourth.

June 25, 2008. Rocky Mountain News.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader accused Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic Party nominee, of downplaying poverty issues, trying to "talk white" and appealing to "white guilt" during his run for the White House.

July 28, 2008. Raw Story, in one that really bugged the @#$% out of me.

During a Sunday press conference and campaign rally attended by RAW STORY, Independent Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader claimed that liberals and Democrats who will vote for Sen. Barack Obama as the "least worst candidate" are actually trapped in "political slavery."

And finally, November 5, 2008. Salon's War Room, where he said this crap...again.

During a radio interview on Election Day, independent candidate Ralph Nader said of Barack Obama, "His choice, basically, is whether he's going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."

Okay, Nader supporters...what am I to conclude from this? Believe me when I say, there are plenty of ways to go after this President. I know this because I've watched you do it for the last six months, and as wrongheaded as I think some of the criticism has been, as much as it has pissed me off...I can't recall a single instance (and I've been trying) where Liberals and/or Progressives on this site or others resorted to racial rhetoric to get their point across.

Things have gotten plenty heated between the various clans of Liberals (though the polling doesn't back that up), but y'all have never gone there.

So why is Ralph Nader, your supposed hero, ALWAYS GOING THERE?!!?

Newsflash, white folks. Because of your history with African-Americans, because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the general crappy way you've treated us for the last three hundred years (as America's only involuntary immigrants), you have lost the collective right to use certain bits of the language.

Don't like it? Tough. You never paid up forty acres and a mule. I think you got off cheap.

Mr. Nader may think that by using incendiary language he's going to quote-unquote "wake people up", but what he's really telling me that he's got an inferiority problem. Like the Tea-Baggers, the Birthers, and frankly a majority of the GOP, he cannot believe, nor can accept the fact that a black man got elected instead of him. So he's going to go out of his way, to remind himself, that despite the fact that Barack Obama is now the President, he's still superior.

Let's be clear, this is about Ralph Nader. Not about you. Ralph Nader has every right to bash the President, to call him a Corporatist, a sell-out, what have you. He doesn't have the right to inject race into his arguments...

...and still, he keeps doing it.

This is about him. Not about you.

It only becomes about you, should you keep excusing this nonsense.

The only conclusion I can come to is that Ralph Nader has no problem sticking up for the little guy, as long as the little guy knows his place.

Ralph Nader is a racist.

Some of y'all are not going to like that.

Some of y'all need to deal.

Bondad on Krugman...

A little more Krugman pushback, for any of you who are interested.

Krugman is essentially arguing that the current economic news is in fact a "blip" -- good news that is transitory, largely because of the "inventory bounce." He then argues that the good news will all go away soon. But let's look a little further. What's his proof? Notice how there is no mention of a specific set of numbers from the current economic news which bolsters his argument. He is merely saying "it's happened before." Using Krugman's logic we might as well bet on the Florida Marlins to in the World Series this year. Why? They've won it before.

What Krugman is really saying -- and what he should have outright said -- is we're not out of the woods yet and we need to guard against thinking we are out of the woods. That would have been an entirely appropriate argument to make. This is an argument against "getting comfortable" with the current situation when in fact the economy still has a long way to go.

But in defense of Dr. Krugman (who certainly doesn't need me to defend him), I think that's exactly what Krugman was saying...albeit in a slightly more drawn out way.

I've said it before. Krugman is a typical professor (y'know, aside from the New York Times column, New York Times blog, regular appearances on MSNBC, and...you know, the whole...Nobel Laureate thing) in that he's got a universe of knowledge in his head, and sometimes doesn't react well when people don't understand what the hell he's talking about. (Bondad clearly does). This frustration tends to show up in his writing. He also has a tendency, when really, really mad, to ignore political realities and go into "just get it DONE" mode (which Dr. Krugman is kinda in now).

But the fact of the matter is, he does know what he's talking about. He may not have provided numbers in this particular column Bonddad refers to, but he certainly has in the past, and will again in the future. He's worried about 1937. So am I. So are we all.

Do I think Krugman is being overly pessimistic? Yeah, probably...given his history with the Stimulus. But is he right to point out that the same Stimulus might not have been enough? Hellz yeah.

Andrew Sullivan: Praying for an overreaction...

The following is a letter Andrew Sullivan received in regards to the Crotch Bomber, and the nature and true intent of Terrorism. It was so good, I felt a need to repost it here. Andrew advisers his readers to read the whole letter. I advise the same:

I keep hearing this even described as a failed terrorist attack on an airplane. But was it really? I keep hearing about how the system failed, but did it really? Think about it. First, what is the major goal of terrorism? It is not to bring down airplanes. It is not to destroy the West. It is, pure and simple, to create terror in people. Why? Because when people are afraid they overreact. And this includes most of us, yourself included.

If the intent of al Qaeda in this latest instance was to bring down an airplane, then it failed. But if its intent was to create fear and overreaction, then it succeeded Personally, I think it was the latter. It is quite possible (in fact I think probable) that the people who planned this event, and used the young man from Nigeria as a tool, were aware that due to security measures in place, there was no way they could actually get a bomb through that would actually work. The detonation equipment needed would have been detected. The same applies, by the way, to the shoe bomber.

Again, think about it. If you wanted to blow up a plane, would you attempt it from your seat, where somebody could quite possibly stop you? No, you would go to the washroom where you could set off the bomb without disruption.

Of course, if it failed to go off, then people wouldn't necessarily know what you were trying to do. Therefore you have to make sure it is one in the open, or the very failure is perceived as a terrorist attack. The fear result is the same whether or not the bomb goes off.

In addition to the torture lovers advocating a return to waterboarding, the administration sets up more stringent guidelines for air travel (most of which are unlikely to be effective at all) and other people call for the resignation of the head of DHS. In other words, the response is what al Qaeda and other terrorist groups want.

Al Qaeda has lost a lot of its prestige and influence in the Muslim world. They need something to get it back. How better than to do something that creates a reaction on the part of the US or Great Britain that shows just how bad we are and how we are so anti-Islam. After 9/11, recruiting by al Qaeda suffered until we invaded Iraq. That alone increased recruitment. Then when our torture policies became evident, it increased more. Lately, however, it has declined again. If we as a nation respond poorly to this "successful" attack, then they will achieve all their goals.

WaPo: Why Mark Halperin remains one of America's dumbest political hacks...

From Erza Klein's post "Articles that make me believe America will not be a superpower in 50 years":

Mark Halperin's list of five things President Obama did well in his first year and five things Obama did poorly in his first year is quite a document. As others have noted, the five things Obama did well, according to Halperin, amounted to "governing the country." The five things that Obama did badly (aside from Halperin's critique of the White House's internal policy process) are mainly about image management. To wit: "Managing his public image." The most egregious, though, is "wooing official Washington."

(Since I don't know how to format a quote within a quote, go to the article to read the ridiculous passage Erza's talking about.)

Apparently, the administration -- which is governing during one of the most crises-laden periods in recent history and which is still operating without a number of its key officials -- should be spending more time partying. The charitable interpretation is that Halperin thinks this prioritization is making Obama's life unnecessarily hard: The White House could be getting better press coverage, and more support from established powerbrokers, if it was fanning out to more embassy parties, and that would make governing easier.

You wonder, however, whether Halperin recognizes the rot and corruption he's suggesting in "official Washington." The same goes for his item on Obama's media failures, which argues that Obama's "image makers have not been deft enough in finding a happy medium that allows Obama to be Obama while neutralizing some of the more poisonous, potentially indelible story lines."

Official Washington consists mainly of people who are paid to understand American politics. They shouldn't need to be feted at parties. Indeed, if their conclusions are being changed by glimpsing Larry Summers at the British Embassy, they're doing a terrible job. Either Obama is governing well and is worthy of respect or he isn't, but the assessment can't be that he's governing well but not coming to enough parties. At least, not unless we're in some serious "Fall of Rome" days here in Washington.

Similarly, a journalist who is so uninformed about merits of what's actually going on that a slick call from David Axelrod changes her opinion of Obama's performance should be fired. It's one thing to play the perception game during campaigns. But governance actually has real, tangible things you can evaluate. Is Obama closer or further from passing health-care reform than his predecessors? Will the bill improve or hurt the situation? Could it have been substantially better or worse given the congressional constraints? If Halperin really believes that Obama's image should be in better shape than it is, then that's an indictment of his -- and my -- profession, not of the White House.

The Inherent racism of the Torture Debate...

From Andrew Sullivan:

(And for the record, I prefer Stephanie Miller's "Crotch Bomber" reference.)

Bloggers have had a great time exposing the inconsistency on the pro-torture right. Why should Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab be tortured as an enemy combatant while Richard Reid was prosecuted by civilian authorities under Bush? Isn't the unconscious truth obvious? One has an English name; the other has a very foreign-sounding Muslim name. One was born in Bromley and one in Kenya. One is "us"; the other is "them". And it is much easier to torture them than to torture us. It just seems to me that this distinction has no moral, legal or strategic basis.

What Liberal revolt?

From the National Journal online:

Does President Obama have a problem with his political base? That conclusion seems inescapable in recent weeks, as prominent liberal voices have expressed their unhappiness with the president, especially in regards to compromises in the health care reform legislation passed last month in the Senate. Howard Dean, for one, said he would prefer to "kill the Senate bill" and start over, as did groups like MoveOn.org and prominent progressive bloggers like Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.

Encapsulating the theme, Doonesbury's Mark Slackmeyer -- the comic strip's most "unreconstructed" liberal -- vented his frustration with Obama during a week in which the fictional NPR talk show host pronounced Obama a "complete disappointment" and declared that Obama had "totally lost me."

Now of course, Doonesbury is a work of fiction, but you still have to assume that if a pollster asked, Slackmeyer would have answered "disapprove" when asked to rate the president's performance. How many real-world liberal Democrats share that sentiment?

According to the daily tracking poll conducted all year by the Gallup organization, very few.

The chart below shows Obama's approval rating tabulated by a combination of party and ideology (published on Gallup's Web site). While Obama's rating has declined across the political spectrum, nearly nine out of 10 liberal Democrats -- an average of 87 percent in December -- approve of the job Obama is doing as president.

And we're suprised...why?

Rep. Parker Griffith (??-AL) switches to GOP.

Parker Griffith's Staff just about quit on the spot.

All of them.

What a revoltin' development...

The revolt against Huffington Post is kinda beginning. At least, I'd like to think so.

Granted, the link is just to blogpost on TPM, but it well illustrates my own dissatisfaction with Huffington Post in recent months. I can't tell you how many times I've clicked on a Headline, only to find the exact opposite is true in the body of the article:

All the Huffington Post wants traffic. They want you to spread their rumors and links all over the place, regardless of the veracity of their stories.