Grrrr...The Republicans are showing their ugly thoughts!

In the late ’70s, the term “politically correct,” “PC” for short, entered the collective conscious. For a short time, certain words or expressions just weren't PC. But today, anything goes. It seems that as Republicans have been moving further to the right, words have become stronger, harsher, less tolerant and more ignorant. Recently, Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner (R) argued that there should be no loopholes in the state's abortions laws for victims of rape or incest. Here's why!

Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner (R) argued Tuesday that there should be no loopholes in the state's abortions laws for victims of rape or incest, because then "someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they've been raped or there's incest."

Turner had introduced HB 1210, which, among other things, would make most abortions illegal after the twentieth week of pregnancy. It would also prevent any insurance companies from covering abortions under the federal health care bill, something that has also been debated at the federal level.

State Rep. Gail Riecken (D) introduced an amendment that would create an exemption from Turner's bill for victims of rape or incest, or in cases where the health of the mother was at risk.

Turner, in response, argued that this would create a "giant loophole," where "someone who could -- I want to be very careful, I don't want to disparage in any way someone who's gone through the experience of a rape, or an incest -- but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they've been raped or there's incest."

He added that the amendment doesn't allow for any "confirmation" of that, "so I would ask you, as I think most Americans and most Hoosiers believe that abortion coverage of any kind should not be a part of the federal health care act."

WATCH Rep. Linda Lawson (D) object to Turner's remarks:

GOP: Grand Obstructionist Party

Below are a few stories that revolve around the serious problem of the federal budget deficit, the START treaty, and Republican obstructionism. The Republicans and the Democrats have very different views.

By Sam Pizzigati: A Do-It-Yourself Kit for Probing Plutocracy

The rich, many Americans have come to believe, rule. But how? The current hubbub over the federal budget deficit opens a welcome window to understanding just how our rich keep riding so high.

How can you tell whether you live in a plutocracy? Easy. Just conduct this simple test. First, identify a “pressing problem” that pundits are splashing over your nation’s op-ed pages. Then take a glance at the “solutions” to this national woe that pop up, on these same op-ed pages, as “politically possible.”

If you live in a plutocracy, not one of these “politically possible” proposals will ever do more than, at worst, inconvenience your nation’s super rich. READ MORE

Via Crooks and Liars: Financial Times' Ed Luce: Republicans Have Greater Hatred of Obama than Love of American National Security

While discussing Admiral Mike Mullen's interview on This Week, where he called a vote on the START treaty during the lame duck session of Congress "absolutely critical", The Financial Times' Ed Luce summed up very well just what's motivating Republicans to obstruct the treaty's passage: hatred of President Obama. READ MORE

By Mike Lillis and Russell Berman: Democrats vs. Republicans: Who wins the game of tax-cut chicken?

With Democrats vowing to extend middle-class tax cuts without including higher incomes, the parties are poised to play a high-stakes game of chicken over the thorniest issue of the lame-duck session. READ MORE

By Jonathan Karl: A Hard Line on Debt: Tea Party Sen Says "No Way"

At 39 years old, Senator-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) is about to become the youngest member of the United States. He may also be the most conservative. READ MORE

Via Think Progress: GOP Judges Write Senators Asking Them To Stop Obstructing President Obama's Judges

Earlier this week, seven Republican-appointed federal judges co-signed a letter warning of the consequences of the GOP’s systematic obstruction of President Obama’s judges. The letter from the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit, which includes Republican appointees Alex Kozinski, Ralph Beistline, Vaughn Walker, Irma Gonzales, Frances Marie Tydingco-Gatewood, Richard Frank Cebull, Lonny Ray Suko, explains:

In order to do our work, and serve the public as Congress expects us to serve it, we need the resources to carry out our mission. While there are many areas of serious need, we write today to emphasize our desperate need for judges. Our need in that regard has been amply documented (See attached March 2009 Judicial Conference Recommendations for Additional Judgeships). Courts cannot do their work if authorized judicial positions remain vacant.

While we could certainly use more judges, and hope that Congress will soon approve the additional judgeships requested by the Judicial Conference, we would be greatly assisted if our judicial vacancies–some of which have been open for several years and declared “judicial emergencies”–were to be filled promptly. We respectfully request that the Senate act on judicial nominees without delay. READ MORE

There seems to be a pattern of Republican obstructionism for the sake of obstructing. The real interests of the American people are being trampled on by a few arrogant politicians. 'We The People' can change that in 2012. Vote out the obstructionists!

The Answer: Paranoid Folk

The Question: Who are the Tea Partiers?

Another View of Healthcare

Roger Bybee says, "Health Insurers won the pot. Reformers need a new game." In his article, "Fixing the Big F*%#ing Deal," Bybee says that passing this comprehensive health plan legislation is a step forward. However, there is still much to do.

In a too-loud whisper to President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden famously characterized the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as “a big f—-ing deal” at a triumphal White House news conference.

On a political level, the new law is indeed a “BFD.” But in terms of healthcare policy, many reformers believe that the law fundamentally reinforces insurers’ stranglehold on affordability and access. Consequently, the law will fail to restrain the market forces inexorably driving up healthcare costs, thereby forcing another confrontation further down the road as costs climb and coverage shrinks.

Still, America’s first comprehensive health plan represents a step toward establishing healthcare as a basic American right. The new law includes an extension of healthcare to 32 million uninsured people, some valuable protections against insurer abuses, and a badly needed expansion of Medicaid and community health clinics.

What about the pitfalls of the bill?

Whither single-payer?

Health Care for America Now!, a coalition of 1,000 organizations, views the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in distinctly positive terms. “First of all, the most important thing is that it establishes that people will get decent health coverage that they can afford, and that government has a responsibility to provide that,” HCAN Executive Director Richard Kirsch told In These Times. “That’s a fundamental transformation, from it being a privilege to a right.”

Kirsch ticks off some vital areas for improvement. “We will need to improve the affordability for many families in the exchange [a government-sponsored offering of insurance plans for the presently uninsured to choose from], especially those just above the Medicaid level and adding some more help for the upper-middle class.”

Insurance industry triumphs

Non-HCAN reformers are distressed by what they see as a fundamental defect with the new reforms: The new healthcare law enlarges and fortifies the throne from which for-profit insurers dominate the healthcare system.

Regardless of the policy differences among reformers, the law’s basic contours reflect the remarkable political power—exerted through campaign contributions, lobbying and television ads—of the for-profit insurance industry, according to Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School and Physicians for a National Health Plan, a 17,000-member organization advocating a single-payer or Medicare-for-all plan that would replace for-profit insurers with a single government entity.

“The big problem in this fight about trying to introduce the single-payer idea into the debate was actually the insurance industry and how they were allowed to write the bill and check the language of the bill throughout the process,” she told In These Times. Former WellPoint insurance company Vice President Liz Fowler, an “aide” to Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus (who ruled single-payer “off the table” early on in 2009), has been credited with writing much of the legislation.

Given the central role that the new law preserves for for-profit insurers, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich placed the new law in proper historical context when he cautioned in Salon.com: “Don’t believe anyone who says Obama’s healthcare legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama’s health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican [a private market approach much like Mitt Romney’s] rather than a New Deal foundation. The New Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the very least, featured a public insurance option.”

Consequently, the guiding logic of the current system—under which insurers maximize profits by minimizing care, and ever-expanding “provider chains” (hospitals, clinics and physician networks) seek to enlarge their revenues and market share without regard to health needs—will remain intact. “Most critically, the bill strengthens the economic and political power of a private insurance-based system based on profit rather than patient need,” says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses United union.

Is there a solution?

A single-payer future?

Developing a much stronger media operation to properly frame the healthcare players and issues will be just one of the challenges facing the reform movement. The upward trajectory of health costs and premiums may help to define the solution and to arouse a much broader swath of Americans in the next round of the healthcare reform fight. [...]

Some experts predict that the new law’s utter failure to rein in insurance premiums, trim the $400 billion dollar burden of insured-imposed administrative costs, and control the excess costs created by provider chains will ultimately make a Medicare-for-all or single-payer system unavoidable.

Writing in the New York Times , William F. Pewen, former senior health analyst for Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), put it this way: “When Congress next attempts reform, in a decade or more, health costs and the number of uninsured and underinsured will have escalated—and the likely outcome will be the single-payer system that Republicans most abhor.” 

Conflict over health care reform is morphing into the question of what system will work: a failed for-profit system or change in the form of not-for-profit health care. This article states that the "Patient Protection and Affordability Act falls woefully short of achieving the universality taken for granted in every other advanced nation." Hopefully real change will come in the form of a public option or a single-payer system.

Complete article is here.

History of Reform

See Cartoons by Cartoon by Bob Englehart - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

Ayn Rand's Admiration of a Serial Killer

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

Marc Ames in AlterNet writes about Ayn Rand and the sociopath superhero of her writings who was based on the "notorious serial murderer-dismemberer" who she worshiped. According to Ames, we should all be aware that Ayn Rand is the " guru to the Republican/Tea Party right-wing" and we should all beware!

Her works are treated as gospel by right-wing powerhouses like Alan Greenspan and Clarence Thomas, but Ayn Rand found early inspiration in 1920's murderer William Hickman.

There's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be so hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population that thought like this, but the U.S. is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?

It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who exerts a huge influence over much of the right-wing and libertarian crowd, but whose influence is only starting to spread out of the U.S.

One reason most countries don't find the time to embrace Ayn Rand's thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath. In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books. These ideas were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate "entitlement programs" increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked Atlas Shrugged as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after the Bible.

The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.

What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' favorite book -- he even requires his clerks to read it.) [...]

As much as Ayn Rand detested human "parasites," there is one thing she strongly believed in: creating conditions that increase the productivity of her supermen -- the William Hickmans who rule her idealized America: "If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite."

Republican faithful like GOP Congressman Paul Ryan read Ayn Rand and declare, with pride, "Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism." Indeed. Except that Rand also despised democracy, writing that, "Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom."

"Collectivism" is another one of those Randian epithets popular among her followers. Here is another Republican member of Congress, Michelle Bachman, parroting the Ayn Rand ideological line, to explain her reasoning for wanting to kill social programs:

"As much as the collectivist says to each according to his ability to each according to his need, that's not how mankind is wired. They want to make the best possible deal for themselves."

Whenever you hear politicians or Tea Partiers dividing up the world between "producers" and "collectivism," just know that those ideas and words more likely than not are derived from the deranged mind of a serial-killer groupie. When you hear them saying, "Go John Galt," hide your daughters and tell them not to talk to any strangers -- or Tea Party Republicans. And when you see them taking their razor blades to the last remaining programs protecting the middle class from total abject destitution -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- and bragging about how they are slashing these programs for "moral" reasons, just remember Ayn's morality and who inspired her.

Too many critics of Ayn Rand -- until recently I was one of them -- would rather dismiss her books and ideas as laughable, childish, and hackneyed. But she can't be dismissed because Rand is the name that keeps bubbling up from the Tea Party crowd and the elite conservative circuit in Washington as the Big Inspiration. The only way to protect ourselves from this thinking is the way you protect yourself from serial killers: smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere.

The complete article can be read HERE.

Rachel Maddow to Democrats: Do It Alone!!!!

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: Hope for GOP good faith?

Charging Republicans with hypocrisy...is like trying to teach your dog to drive.  It doesn't work!

Different Plans, Different Results

Jonathan Cohn in his article, The Fairness Doctrine, looks at the differences between the Democratic plan for health care and what the Republicans have proposed. Even though the Republicans have been complaining that they have been excluded from the process, Cohn show us the reality of the situation.

The idea that Republicans haven’t had a chance to present their ideas on health care reform is a bit mind-boggling. Five separate congressional committees had hearings; each chamber had floor debates. That’s hundreds of hours the GOP had to talk about health care, all of it in public view and televised on C-SPAN. And that’s not even including all of the unofficial channels at the Republicans’ disposal. Generally speaking, the party of Rush Limbaugh and Fox Television doesn’t struggle to get across its message.

For most of last year, Republicans spent their time attacking Democratic plans for reform, rather than describing their own. But now they’ve put a plan on the table. Showcasing that plan--and comparing it to what the Democrats have proposed--might help clarify a few things.

What is the Republican proposal?

The Republican health care plan is part of the "Roadmap for America's Future." Its chief architect is Paul Ryan, ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and a rising star in the party. Republicans boast that the Roadmap is serious plan to get the federal budget under control, which turns out to be a fairly large exaggeration. As Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center has observed, the Roadmap doesn't account for trillions of dollars in lost revenue from its tax cuts. Yes, that's trillions with a "t" at the front and "s" at the back.

The health care portions of the plan, though, really would reduce what the government spends on health care. And they would do so, primarily, by extracting money from Medicare. Instead of continuing to provide coverage directly, the government would issue vouchers that seniors could use to buy private insurance. The value of the vouchers would rise far more slowly than Medicare spending is expected to grow if nothing changes.

How is the Republican proposal different from the Democratic reform plans?

But wait a minute--don’t the Democratic reform plans also take money out of Medicare? They sure do. But there are several key differences. For starters, the Democrats’ reductions don't appear to be as large as what’s envisioned in the Roadmap. Also, under the Democratic plan, most seniors would still be getting their coverage directly from the government, which has lower overhead than private sector insurers. So every dollar the Democrats spend on seniors would actually go a little further.

No less important, the Democratic plans wouldn't simply slash spending and let the market sort itself out. Instead, the Medicare cuts are part of a broader package of reforms designed to change the way Medicare pays for services. These reforms are designed to reward efficiency (by, for example, paying more to doctors that join integrated group practices) while penalizing inefficiency (by, for example, paying less to hospitals with high rates of infection or, eventually, paying less money for drugs that don’t work that well). They are also designed, quite frankly, to push down the prices that providers charge.

So what's the difference?

This is a critical difference. If you simply reduce the money flowing into Medicare, relying only on the wits of beneficiaries to figure out how best to spend what’s left, seniors are bound to end up with less care. That's the Republican method. But if you also introduce system-wide changes that reward more efficient care and force down provider prices, the dollars in the program really might go farther--so that spending less doesn't always mean getting less. That's the Democratic approach.

"The slowdown in the Reid [Senate] bill is predicated on specific policies which, according to MedPAC and others, shouldn't reduce beneficiaries' access to care," says Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget. "The Ryan bill just gives every beneficiary a voucher and makes them fend for themselves in a poorly regulated private market."

How does a debate between the parties help?

The irony is that, for much of the last year, Republicans have been scaring the bejeezus out of seniors by telling them that Democrats were out to destroy Medicare. But the Roadmap makes clear that it’s not Democrats who seek massive, disruptive changes to the program. It’s the Republicans. If the coming engagement between the Republicans and President Obama help the public to understand that reality, extending the debate might actually be worth it.

Obama's meeting with GOP leaders on Feb. 25 will give the Republicans a public forum to present their health care agenda. This appears to be a good idea if this forum allows people to hear the proposals of both parties and it spurs conversation regarding the differences between the positions.

Al Franken Amendment Protects Rape Victims

Sen. Al Franken's (D-MN) first piece of legislation is a "rape amendment," which withholds defense contracts from companies that "restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

Yesterday, it was signed into law. The Yea votes came from all Democrats , except Byrd (D-WV) and Specter (D-PA) who were not present for the vote. Also voting Yea were 10 Republicans and 1 Independent.

There were 30 Senators who voted against the Amendment (Franken Amdt. No. 2588 ). All who voted Nay were [male] Republicans. Which means that 75% of the entire Republican Senate caucus -- voted against this.

Digby had an interesting comment on this.

The reason I think it's good news isn't just on the substance (which it certainly is) but on the politics. Franken's amendment is driving the Republicans crazy because they basically voted to protect rapists and are now paying a political price for that. And now they are whining that Franken was somehow "uncollegial" because the amendment put them in an embarrassing position (which makes me wonder how many other things issues are swept under the rug because it would make members of the opposition uncomfortable.)

That's the kind of thing the Democrats should do more of. Expose the Republicans' hypocrisy and cruelty by forcing these issues on to the agenda.

Steve Benen notes.

WHATEVER IT IS, THEY'RE AGAINST IT.... It's tempting to think a measure like this one would pass unanimously. After all, it's not as if voters would elect monsters to the Senate, right?

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

All Franken's measure would do is allow victims of rape and discrimination to have their day in court -- not exactly controversial stuff. When Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) accused Franken of pushing a "political attack directed at Halliburton," the Minnesota senator explained that it would apply equally to all defense contractors.[...]

When the Senate considered a measure yesterday to give rape victims who work for U.S.-subsidized defense contractors a day in court, 30 out of 40 Republican senators said, "No."

The notion that the majority should be able to reach constructive, worthwhile compromises with this minority is clearly ridiculous.

The Way the Game is Played

Michele Bachmann: The New Welfare Queen

Michele Bachmann who has complained that health care reform and any government handout is nothing more than socialism. Michele Bachmann who whipped up "the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care." That very same Michele Bachmann has been accepting money from the government.

Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008. This has provided her with a second government-subsidized income to go with her job as a government-paid congresswoman who makes $174,000 per year (in addition to having top-notch government medical benefits).

Wait a second. Isn't that what she calls SOCIALISM?

According to Yasha Levine, Michele Bachmann "has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America..." Michele Bachmann has been saying that presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

Yes, Michele Bachmann "has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money."

I would call that SACRILEGE!!!

But she's not the only one. Nope, other Republicans and Democrats, who have been so vocal against what they see as government buy-outs, have been taking government subsidy checks.

According to Levine, "Bachmann isn’t the only welfare recipient on Capitol Hill. As it turns out, there is a filthy-rich class of absentee farmers—both in and out of Congress—who demand free-market rules by day and collect their government welfare checks in the mail at night, payments that subsidize businesses that otherwise would fail. Over the past couple of decades, welfare for the super-wealthy seems to be the only kind of welfare our society tolerates."

Who are the other these other Congressmen/women?

The Republicans include Chuck Grassley, the longtime Republican senator from Iowa who warns his constituents of Obama’s “trend toward socialism,” has seen his family collect $1 million in federal handouts over an 11-year period, with Grassley’s son receiving $699,248 and the senator himself pocketing $238,974. Even Grassley’s grandson is learning to ride through life on training wheels, snagging $5,964 in 2005 and $2,363 in 2006. In the Grassley family they learn early how to enjoy other people’s money.

Sen. Grassley railed against government intervention in the health care market, telling The Washington Times, “Whenever the government does more ... that’s a movement toward socialism.”

Then there’s Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., whose family has been on the government take for at least the past 11 years, pocketing some $500,000. The senator recently held a “prayercast” with Michele Bachmann to beseech God to kill health care reform as soon as possible because it would bring an evil socialist spirit into America. Like Bachmann, Brownback has a fierce belief in God, the free market and a two-year limit on all welfare benefits—unless it’s welfare to rich Republicans who don’t need it.

Not surprisingly, Blue Dog Democrats are on board with this welfare-for-the-rich thing.

Max Baucus, the fiscally conservative Democratic senator from Montana who did his best to sabotage the health care reform process before it ever began, collected $250,000 in taxpayer subsidies to his family’s farm while fighting to keep Americans at the mercy of free-market health insurance.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, another Democrat, also helped hold the line against so-called socialized medicine for Americans who need assistance, even though her family farm business follows the socialized subsidy playbook to a T. The Lincolns pocketed $715,000 in farm subsidies over a 10-year period, and the senator even admitted to using $10,000 of it as petty cash in 2007.

Democratic Rep. Stephanie Sandlin of South Dakota stayed true to her conservative free-market roots by voting against the public option. Meanwhile, her daddy, Lars Herseth, a former South Dakota legislator, collected a welfare jackpot of $844,725 paid out between 1995 and 2006.

That’s just the way the game is played these days. Republicans and conservative Democrats bitch and moan about the allegedly Marxist underpinnings of universal health care and do everything they can to deny struggling Americans access to social services. Meanwhile, many of them profit off taxpayers in a massive welfare program.

A Question of Leadership

You want to win the center? Emanate strength. Emanate conviction. Lead like you know where you're going.

An article by Drew Westen lays out the problem with President Barack Obama's leadership style. Westen is a psychologist, a neuroscientist and a professor at Emory University.

The complete and lengthy article is here. The following are excerpts from the article, Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. [...]

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

Leadership, Obama Style

Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it. [...]

It's the job of the president to be in the fray. It's his job to lead us out of it, not to run from it. It's his job to make the tough decisions and draw lines in the sand. But Obama really doesn't seem to want to get involved in the contentious decisions. They're so, you know, contentious. He wants us all to get along. Better to leave the fights to the Democrats in Congress since they're so good at them. [...]

Do you think Americans ought to have one choice of health insurance plans the insurance companies don't control, or don't you? I don't want to hear that it would sort of, kind of, maybe be your preference, all other things being equal. Do you think we ought to use health care as a Trojan Horse for right-wing abortion policies? Say something, for God's sake. [...]

No Vision, No Message

The second problem relates to the first. The president just doesn't want to enunciate a progressive vision of where this country should be heading in the 21st century, particularly a progressive vision of government and its relation to business. He doesn't want to ruffle what he believes to be the feathers of the American people, to offer them a coherent, emotionally resonant, values-driven message -- starting with an alternative to Ronald Reagan's message that government is the problem and not the solution -- and to see if they might actually follow him.

He doesn't want to talk about social issues, even though they predictably have gotten in the way of health care reform and will do the same on one issue after another. Abortion? You don't advance a progressive position by giving a center-right speech at Notre Dame that emphasizes cutting back on the number of abortions without mentioning that sex education and birth control might be useful means to that end, mumbling something about a conscience clause that suggests that pharmacists don't have to fill birth control prescriptions if it offends their sensibilities, and allowing states to use health care reform to set back the rights of women and couples to decide when to start their families based on somebody else's faith. If you believe that freedom includes the freedom to decide when you will or won't have a child, say it, say it with moral conviction, and follow it up with action.[...]

The problem with the president's strategic team is that they don't understand the difference between compromising on policy and compromising on core values. [...]

The Politics of the Lowest Common Denominator

And capping off all of these aspects of the president's leadership style is his preference for the lowest common denominator. That means you don't really have to fight, you don't have to take anybody on, you don't take any risks. You just find what the public is so upset about that even the Republicans would stipulate to it if forced to (e.g., that excluding people from health care because they have "pre-existing conditions" is something we can't continue to tolerate) and build it into whatever plan the special interests can hammer out around it.

Unfortunately, what Democrats just can't seem to understand is that the politics of the lowest common denominator is always a losing politics. It sends a meta-message that you're weak -- nothing more, nothing less -- and that's the cross the Democrats have had to bear since they "lost China" 60 years ago. And in fact, it is weak. [...]

We shouldn't have had to settle for half a loaf. If the president had simply placed appropriate blame on the health insurance industry for its pre-existing conditions, it's cutting off care for breast cancer victims in the middle of treatment, and its doubling our premiums and co-pays during the Bush years, he would have harnessed populist anger and pushed this bill through six months ago, and it would have looked like the change we were told to believe in. But if you cut backroom deals with every special interest who is part of the problem and offer the American people no coherent message while the other side is messaging straight out of the messaging memo written by Frank Luntz ("government takeover," "a bureaucrat between you and your doctor"), you can expect half a loaf.[...]

Am I being too hard on the president? He's certainly done many good things. But it would be hard to name a single thing President Obama has done domestically that any other Democrat wouldn't have done if he or she were president following George W. Bush (e.g., signing the children's health insurance bill that Congress is about to gut to pay for worse care for kids under the health insurance exchange, if it ever happens), and there's a lot he hasn't done that every other Democrat who ran for president would have done.

Obama, like so many Democrats in Congress, has fallen prey to the conventional Democratic strategic wisdom: that the way to win the center is to tack to the center.

But it doesn't work that way.

You want to win the center? Emanate strength. Emanate conviction. Lead like you know where you're going (and hopefully know what you're talking about).

People in the center will follow if you speak to their values, address their ambivalence (because by definition, on a wide range of issues, they're torn between the right and left), and act on what you believe. FDR did it. LBJ did it. Reagan did it. Even George W. Bush did it, although I wish he hadn't.

But you have to believe something.

I don't honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn't figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he's not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he's going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they're seeing right now is "liberalism," and they don't like what they see. I don't, either.

What's they're seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That's a recipe for going nowhere fast -- but getting there by November.

I feel Westen's frustration. It seems that what Obama has traded in for the Presidency and now needs to assert, is his PASSION!!!

A Message for Congress

In his article for OpEdNews, Rob Kall wants you to Tell Congress To Go To Hell With Their Current Health Reform.

I know some of my words are not nice--crude, vulgar--but if you're not thinking something like them, you don't get it. And if you have been thinking them, but don't want to say them, send your legislator my article.

Just thinking. The current legislation that the Democrats have celebrated in the house is a pile of shit, an incredible insult. People are dying.

Tell your legislators in Congress what you think of their health reform.

Flipping Congress the bird collage by Rob Kall

People are enslaved in jobs they hate, abused by employers, because they can't afford to leave because they'd lose healthcare coverage.

What have they offered us?

-a four year wait for a plan that affects hardly any Americans.

-no controls on drug costs, and every likelihood that co-pays will go through the roof, since raising co-pay is one way to cut monthly insurance rates.

-We should expect rates to go up and benefits to keep shrinking.

-The current version is a horrific affront to women-- the 60+% of whom voted for Democrats-- that they would have rights to control their bodies and abortion rights. Disgusting. It's amazing Pelosi not only allowed the amendment to reach the house floor, but that she celebrates any legislation that cuts women's rights.

There are a handful of legislators who are calling for single payer. That is the only legislation worth talking about. The majority of the population wants it. America desperately needs it. I can't see myself voting for anyone who doesn't support it.

So, when the senate starts working with the house's bit of garbage health reform, let your senator know that anything less than single payer is an insult and a shameful failure to do what needs to be done.

Let him or her know that waiting four years is obscene.

Make it clear to all your legislators that what they've done so far is not enough.

There are teabaggers (see the wikipedia explanation of Teabagging) who oppose single payer. I can see legislators opposing it because they are whores who have sold out their constituents to health care companies. But the grassroots idiocracy is another story. These are the dumbest, most deluded, mislead lemmings in American history. They will be remembered as a movement of fools and idiots, dupes who bought the lies of Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Fox News and the right wing echo chamber that was used by corporatists to take America from First to Third world status.

History does funny things. If the teabaggers win, which is possible, then they will be lauded as rescuing America. That will be history written in the US of Teabaggery. But outside the US, where truth may still see daylight, they will be seen as the moronic idiots that they are.

It's time to remember that health care is a human right, a civil right, and those who block it are no different than those who have engaged in blocking other human rights. It's time to remember that even after 40 years of equal rights for blacks, there are still tens of millions of racists. The toxic dregs of humanity don't go away. They linger, putting brakes on human progress. Now we face a new challenge to fight these dark forces. It will take the same kinds of strategies that freedom riders and protesters who supported Martin Luther King in the sixties south and those who supported the fighters against Apartheid in South Africa used.

Congress must be told that their best so far is not even close to good enough. The current incarnation of the public option is a sham. It will set back progress. Tell your legislators. Raise your voice. Let them know that they are not even close yet. Tell them to find their spines.

I agree! If you aren't completely appalled then you haven't been paying attention!!

The GOP Plan

Here's an ad from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee about the differences between Republicans and Democrats. If the Republicans have any solutions to America's problems, they sure aren't sharing. So what is the GOP's plan?

A Republican for Everything

Regarding Republicans in Congress:

The Republican party today has little interest in developing constructive policy. Its reps would rather spend their energy offering up ridiculous claims to see if they can ride a wave of deceit back into power. Hopefully, they’ll just catch a riptide and get pulled further out to sea. GOP'n...

WATCH:

OLBERMANN: Not 'Blue Dogs'...Just 'DOGS'

Olbermann On Health Care Reform: Legislators for Sale!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Speaking to the Blue Dogs collectively:

I warn you all. You were not elected to create a Democratic majority.

You were elected to restore this country.You were not elected to serve the corporations and the trusts who the government has enabled for the last eight years.

You were elected to serve the people.

And if you fail to pass or support this legislation, the full wrath of the progressive and the moderate movements in this country will come down on your heads. Explain yourselves not to me, but to them.

They elected you, and in the blink of an eye, they will replace you.

If you will behave as if you are Republicans - as if you are the prostitutes of our system - you will be judged as such.

And you will lose not merely our respect. You will lose your jobs!

Every poll, every analysis, every vote, every region of this country supports health care reform, and the essential great leveling agent of a government-funded alternative to the unchecked duopoly of profiteering private insurance corporations.

Cross us all at your peril...

Crooks & Liars has the story: Calling Blue Dogs Out!

From Countdown Aug. 3, 2009, Keith's Special Comment on health care reform. Michael Moore wrote this today about the Special Comment:

It is nothing short of brilliant -- and if all of America were to hear what he is going to reveal tonight, we are certain the vast majority of Americans would be on the phone to their elected representative immediately, calling for an end to the private, for-profit, rip-off health insurance companies who have wrecked our country.

Olbermann writes:

Tonight I will present what I believe is the longest Special Comment I have ever aired, naming names and citing dollar amounts to call out the politicians -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- who are paid by the Health Care Monopolies to bring to life one of my favorite quotes, the observation of the Belgian essayist Maurice Maeterlinck...

Some of the highlights.

PBS pointed out that the health and insurance industries are spending more than a million, 400 thousand dollars a day, just to destroy the "public option" - the truly non-profit, wieldy, round-up and not round-down, government, from helping you pay your medical bills with about a billionth of the recklessness with which it is still paying Halliburton and its spinoffs to kill your kids.

And much of this money is going to, and through, Republicans. But that's the real point tonight. Not all of it is going through Republicans...

[.....]

Congressman Mike Ross of Arkansas.Leader of the Blue Dogs in the House. You're the guy demanding a guarantee that Reform won't add to the deficit. I'm guessing you forgot to demand that about, say, Iraq.
You're a Democrat, you say, Congressman?

You saw what Sandy Barham said? Sandy Barham is 62 years old, she's got a bad heart, and she's hoping her valves will hold together for three more years until Medicaid kicks in, because she can't afford insurance. Not just for herself, mind you. For her employees. She needs the public option. So do those six people who work at that restaurant of hers, Congressman Ross. And why should you give a crap?

Because Sandy Barham's restaurant is the Broadway Railroad Café, and it is at 123 West First Street North in Prescott, Arkansas.
Prescott, Arkansas, Congressman Ross.

Your home town. You are Sandy Barham's congressman. Hers, Sir. Not Blue Cross's and Blue Shield's, even if they do insure 75 percent of the state and they own you.

The Nitty Gritty of Health Care Legislation

It is difficult for most of us to understand the important issues surrounding the debate on health care insurance. Joshua Holland tells us, "How Dennis Kucinich May Save the Health Reform Battle."

No time today for a lengthy analysis of the Tri-Committee health bill. My quick-and-dirty take is this.Those who think the bill is a wonderful progressive victory with a robust public option are wrong, and, on the flip side, the charge that it's a "bailout for the insurance industry" is totally divorced from what the bill would actually do if passed.

It is the most progressive, comprehensive and significant health care legislation to come down the pike since Medicare was passed in 1965. If it were enacted as written, it'd go a long way to solving a lot of our problems (but by no means all) and wouldn't break the bank in the process.

But it also fails some of the basic criteria that most progressives have long said is a red-line that can't be crossed. First and foremost, it doesn't have a public option that can compete with private insurers and result in significant cost savings.

It has a public plan in which -- as far as the statute goes (it can be expanded in 2015 but there's no mandate to do so) -- only 9-10 million people will be eligible to enroll by 2019. Similarly, the publicly-administered exchanges are projected to cover about 30 million by that year. (These relatively small insurance pools will be able to bargain in concert with Medicare to some degree, so their power will be magnified, but still...)

That greatly limits the potential for cost containment. What it does is bend the curve of projected cost growth downwards, and cover about 2/3 of the uninsured. But we'll still have 3-6 % of the population uninsured and being treated at the ER. And while bending the upward curve down a few notches is a very good thing, it doesn't get us where we want to go -- not when you consider that we pay $2000 more for every American than the OECD average each and every year.

But it's more than just the costs or the people left out. Crucially important is that the public plan won't be big or effective enough to serve as a living example of the kind of large-pool public exchange models federal employees now enjoy. And that means it won't be a back-door to a European-style health care system. This is really key. As I wrote last week about the divide between single-payer advocates and those pushing a public insurance option:

The divide that does exist in progressive circles is tactical, not ideological. Most of those pushing the public option would, if they had their druthers, enact a single-payer system. But they recognize that the two commercial enterprises that have spent the most on political lobbying in recent years are the "disease care" and insurance industries.

Like single-payer advocates, they believe that a large insurance pool with extensive government regulation and some subsidies afford the greatest potential for (near) universality and cost containment.

And they think that given the choice -- given a demonstration that this approach works better than having a fragmented system of private insurers -- most people will eventually opt into the public plan, and we'll end up achieving something approaching a single-payer system -- although an American-style variation -- through the back door.

Obviously, a public insurance plan for which 10 million are eligible to enroll isn't going to serve as an example of the efficiency that comes with a single-payer type system. And the fact that they designed a pretty good public option for which most of the public will be ineligible to enroll (and that wouldn't have as much potential for cost savings as one would hope) was enough to make me consider opposing it. Howard Dean told me recently that he thought a bill without a robust public option wasn't worth passing, and I agree.

And that's where Kucinich, a supporter of single-payer, comes in. He's trying to save the whole promise of this project.

On Friday, an amendment he authored was added to the House bill that allows states to create their own single-payer systems instead of adopting the federally-run exchange system. The original bill allowed states only to enact their own exchange system -- it was a nod to federalism -- with the proviso that if a state (think a deep red one in the South) refused to adopt the plan, the feds could step in and set it up.

The Kucinich amendment is really key. If it were to survive the legislative sausage-making and be enacted into law, then we could expect a progressive state to take advantage of the opportunity and enact a single-payer system in short order. And, if those of us who have been pushing such an arrangement are correct, the result will be greater access and better outcomes at a lower price tag for that state's residents.

And then we can move from an often ill-informed argument over the Canadian or British systems to a debate in which we can hold up a model in which millions of real Americans see very tangible benefits from an actual single-payer system in action.

Thanks, Dennis! Now let's see what comes out of the Senate.

The Republicans are continually insisting on state's rights for issues such as abortion to welfare reform. They should love the Kucinich amendment!

Republicans are in a Tizzy over Reconciliation

New York Times:

Republicans are in a tizzy that Democrats are threatening to use the budgetary procedure known as reconciliation — it reconciles policy with fiscal guidelines — to overhaul the health-care system, possibly enact legislation on climate change and rewrite education policy.

They have good reason to fret. If Democrats successfully invoke reconciliation, such major bills could pass by a simple majority vote, denying Republicans the filibuster, their sole remaining weapon to influence federal policy given the Democratic grip on government.

Media Matters:

The Los Angeles Times reported Sen. Mitch McConnell's criticism of Democrats' potential use of the reconciliation process to pass health-care reform without noting that he repeatedly voted in favor of using reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts.

Think Progress:

Santorum: What the Democrats have done is to try to short-circuit the process on a major piece of legislation. This has never been done before. We have never seen a major, long-term, policy prescription, whether it's Medicare, or go back throughout history and look at all the major pieces of legislation, none of them have ever been passed using this procedure. ... This is truly an abomination.

Of course, reconciliation has been used nearly 20 times since 1980, when it was first created.

Indeed, Santorum himself was the Senate Republicans' point man in trying to push welfare reform through budget reconciliation in 1995, including it in a budget then-President Clinton opposed.

Senator Judd Gregg (NH-R)

1. “We are using the rules of the Senate here,” Mr. Gregg said in 2005 as he fought off Democratic complaints that reconciliation was wrongly being employed to block filibusters against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. “Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so.”

2. “It is not appropriate to use reconciliation, which cuts off the role of the Senate, on something as broad and extensive as rewriting the health care laws of this country,” said Mr. Gregg in one of his many attempts to explain why he is against reconciliation after he was for it.

Fear and Loathing from The New GOP

"Manufacturing a Controversy out of Nothing"

The GOP, the far right and the right wing media do not like Barack Obama or his Administration. During the eight years that George W. Bush was in office their outrage was evident only when they perceived criticism toward the Bush Administration, the War in Iraq or W's policies of wire tapping, torture and expanding executive privilege. They then spewed out their venom against being anti-American and unpatriotic.

Now their anger has become explosive. They have voiced opposition to The Serve America Act. They feel threatened by gay marriage or civil unions. They are claiming that Obama is raising their taxes and that the administration is a threat to their personal freedoms.

The latest threat that they are complaining about is a new report by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS report warns about the rise in "right wing extremist activity."

[The report says that] the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "right wing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.

• Click here to download a PDF of the report.

According to Steve Benen, Republicans do excel in one thing, "manufacturing a controversy out of nothing." One of the best examples is "this week's flap over a DHS report on potentially dangerous right-wing extremists." Benen notes that the DHS had also "prepared a similar report about left-wing radicals (curious that no one seems worked about that one)."

Think Progress also has information about two earlier reports. A DOE report from April 2001 titled “Left-Wing Extremism: The Current Threat.” The DHS prepared a report on January 26, 2009 titled “Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade.”

Back then, no one seemed to care.

The Washington Monthly finds that this outrage of the Republicans is not only ill-founded but it hasn't been well thought out.

For one thing, DHS produced a similar report on radical, potentially violent, left-wing extremists. For another, the FBI published a similar report about the far-right fringe and potential security threats in 2008, and no one seemed to raise an eyebrow.

But perhaps most importantly, if the DHS report is evidence of some kind of nefarious White House agenda, it seems Obama's Republican detractors are complaining about the wrong White House.

The report on right wing groups, it turns out, was prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of DHS' Homeland Environment and Threat Analysis Division. That Division falls under the purview of the Under Secretary For Intelligence & Analysis -- or, in this case, the Acting Under Secretary For Intelligence & Analysis Roger Mackin, who was appointed on September 10, 2008 by noted left wing partisan George W. Bush.

Yep, the report about right-wing extremists that have Republicans worked up was, in fact, requested and prepared by Bush administration officials, an inconvenient fact that might undermine this week's talking points a bit.

But that hasn't stop the far right from asserting the 'F' word...Fascism.

The far right has seen the fresh face of fascism, and it looks like the civic-minded legislative love child of Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

Most Americans applauded last month when the Senate voted across party lines to expand national-service opportunities. How could you not? The Serve America Act, which passed easily 78-20, invests $5 billion in volunteer corps focused on education, clean energy, health care and veteran issues. In a symbolic but meaningful gesture, the bill also designates Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, thus expanding a post-9/11 concept of patriotism previously limited to dying in Iraq and shopping at JC Penny.

The Service Act will help millions of people learn to read, go to college, stay warm and connect with their fellow citizens. Upon passage, it was immediately hailed by 9/11 survivor organizations, literacy advocates, veterans groups and the AARP.

But not everyone feels warm and fuzzy about the bill whose House version was dubbed the GIVE Act. Among readers of WorldNetDaily and other sites that bridge mainstream conservatism and the lunatic fringe, the biggest question was whether President Barack Obama had shape-shifted from Stalin into Hitler, or had morphed into some grotesque dictatorial hybrid unique to history.

Whatever the genus of the beast, it was agreed in these corners that the Service Act heralded the end of the Republic, the end of Liberty, and the end of Boy Scouts helping little old ladies across the street.

There was a time when there was a distinction between the far right and the right wing. Lately, morphing seems to be going further toward the right.