Missing the Gunslinger, Sort of. . .

By Steve Klinger

I’ve been watching with a buttoned lip as Obama has had a town hall meeting with half the country and still found time to appear on every news show plus Colbert. I’ve watched him extend an olive branch to Republicans, sweet-talk blue dog Democrats and provide a collegiate lecture on everything from fiscal policy to health care. Every day I am thankful that we dodged the McCain Express and have a president who thinks rationally, solicits advice, considers alternatives and expresses reasons for at least some of his decisions. I remain convinced that Obama cares about ordinary Americans and believes in his heart he is doing his best by them.
I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon of critics who will never be satisfied with anything short of absolute pacifism and total, instant redistribution of wealth, or the doomsayers who continue to predict societal collapse on a daily basis.
But all that said….don’t you miss Dubya the gunslinger even a little bit? There’s something about having a president swagger up to the podium, plant his hands on his hips and say, “I’m the decider!” that fills the belly with gross comfort, like eating a pound of chile cheese fries, even if you know they’ll do you in.
Of course, the kinds of things Bush decided almost destroyed civilization. Most of Obama’s problem is that he has inherited Bush’s infernal mess. But that’s not my point.
I am increasingly starting to believe that Obama underestimates himself. He needs to think back to LBJ and across the spam of generations to his role model, Lincoln. When he’s tempted to compromise on health care and back away from a public option (not to mention the single payer approach he knows in his heart is best), or when he pushes a watered down energy bill that perpetuates the coal industry, he needs to remember his own miraculous election campaign.
The man has public opinion on his side. His charisma (Republicans excepted, of course) is unparalleled in recent political history. He has science and history on his side to support arguments for stronger positions on global warming, against big banks and insurance companies, etc. He has the example of eight years of catastrophic failure by the very forces who oppose him now.
You can argue all you want that the votes aren’t there, that it’s all he can do to get weak legislation through because conservative Democrats and obstructionist Republicans – all bought and paid for by the obscene power of the corporate lobbyists – just won’t support progressive change. And it’s true from a certain perspective: mathematically, the votes aren’t there now indeed. But they weren’t there in 1965 either, when Lyndon Johnson hammered through civil rights legislation and Medicare, lacking even a shred of Obama’s personal appeal but knowing he held the high moral ground — and he could use his leverage as president to twist arms in Congress and win votes one by one. They weren’t there a century earlier when Lincoln determined he had to free the slaves to save the Union and then wage a war to restore it. And they weren’t there in 1933 when FDR envisioned the New Deal that produced the CCC, the WPA and Social Security.
I was resigned to the expediency of passing the wimpy energy/climate bill currently before Congress until I read Dennis Kucinich’s withering analysis of its shortcomings – on coal, on compromised timelines for greenhouse gas reductions, on all the pulled punches that undermine the good intentions of the original legislation. Even then, ordinary logic tells me a weak bill is better than none at all.
But are those really the alternatives when a leader as unique as Obama has the bully pulpit at his disposal and public approval ratings in the mid-70s? Just as he came from nowhere to beat a field of strong candidates, he has that rare capacity to captivate public imagination and support as chief executive, if he chooses to use it and does so with passion and conviction. Only his fear of failure can hold him back.
Ironically, and he’s way too smart not to realize this, it’s his lowered sights and his readiness to compromise that will likely produce failure in the longterm and provide the forces on the right with an avenue to regain power.
I’m not sure what tactics will best get his attention, though I can think of a few things I’d say to him at a town hall meeting. But I do know that those of us at the grassroots level must not buy into the conventional wisdom that compromise is better than gridlock. It’s a false equation, because strong leadership can change the dynamic and break the gridlock.
We must find a way to hold Obama’s feet to the fire on the crucial issues of global warming, health care, financial reform, nuclear disarmament and an end to empire building. But first we must reawaken his belief that together we can accomplish the change we know is desperately needed.
Steve Klinger posts regularly at http://www.grass-roots-press.com/

Read the &*#@!*! Bill

Frank Luntz, the architect of the right wing strategy to deprive Americans of improved health care, has made it easy for the True Believers to frighten the ignorant. The strategy enables them to pretend to have read and understood the various bills under consideration in the House and Senate.
It feeds them page numbers and snippets of text to support their utterly false assertions about what the legislation would or would not do. One by one, these lies that were created by and distributed by the right wing have been discredited.
One such lie, however, dies hard. The lie contends that Section 102 (a) of the House bill specifically denies consumer choice. A screed in my local "news"paper went on and on about the dire effects of this alleged denial of choice. Another ranter simply quoted captions from the bill and said, in effect, trust me, these things will put Big Brother in charge of your every breath.
Utter nonsense. Here is the pertinent text:

TITLE I—PROTECTIONS AND STANDARDS FOR QUALIFIED HEALTH BENEFITS PLANS
Subtitle A—General Standards
SEC. 101. REQUIREMENTS REFORMING HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE.
(a) PURPOSE.—The purpose of this title is to establish standards to ensure that new health insurance coverage and employment-based health plans that are offered
meet standards guaranteeing access to affordable coverage, essential benefits, and other consumer protections.
SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE.
(a) GRANDFATHERED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE DEFINED.—Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term ‘‘grandfathered health insurance coverage’’ means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:
10 (1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.—
11 (A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.
LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR CONDITIONS.—Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.
8 (b) GRACE PERIOD FOR CURRENT EMPLOYMENT
(1) IN GENERAL.—Individual health insurance coverage that is not grand -fathered health insurance coverage under subsection (a) may only be offered on or after the first day of Y1 as an Exchange-participating health benefits plan.

Read it carefully. Here's what it says: An existing plan can be continued as long as it remains exactly the same when the new law takes effect. Employees who choose to may remain covered by it. The insurer may not continue to enroll new people in the plan after the reform law takes effect. If it wants to continue to enroll people it has to move the plan into the exchange where it will compete with all the other approved plans, including the public plan. This in no way limits consumer choices; it in fact expands them and prevents insurers from "dodging" the more stringent consumer protections of the exchange by continuing to enroll people under the old plan. It also prohibits stealthy changes in benefits, rates and provisions in a grandfathered plan.
Indeed, the legislation explicitly protects full and free choice for consumers in Sec. 202 (B):

EMPLOYEE CHOICE.—Any employee offered Exchange-participating health benefits plans by the employer of such employee under subparagraph (A) may choose coverage under any such plan. That choice includes, with respect to family coverage, coverage of the dependents of such employee.

Someone asked . . . WHY? WHY? WHY?

By MORT PERSKY

"Why would so many people be against something as reasonable as the Dems all say it is?" (Asks another Salon letter-writer about Healthcare 2009.)

One absolutely correct but insufficient answer is that the Republicans and their big-money base have spent so much time, effort and cash-cash-cash to turn we-the-people against our very own interests.

Which, as history shows, is an old specialty of theirs -- a dirty job, but according to them, somebody's got to do it. And it's not like they don't enjoy it. Watch their eyes. Watch their lips.

The harder question is this: "Why isn't the plan as good as Obama and the Democrats promised? Why are Americans yet again NOT getting our absolutely essential Universal Health Care?"

And the answer? Because not only have the Republicans, spurred along by the fat wallets of their beloved Big Pharma and Big Insurance, sold their country down the river for many, many millions of shekels, but so have enough Democrats to clinch the deal.

And what about Mr. Hope-and-Change, who lives in the White House? Jury's out on him too, says this old Obama donor. And if that's true, I think we can write off the after-effects of Teddy Kennedy, who lived just long enough to see it all happening before his disappointed eyes.

After which they unhappily closed for the last time. As will so many other eyes, old and young, before such health care arrives. If it ever does.

He Was a Kennedy

A friend roused me from my bed to deliver the news of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. We mourned together. We wondered together what kind of mindless hatred fosters the vile murders of not one, but two, Kennedy brothers. We wondered about the playboy kid brother, the last prince of the American Camelot. Should he retire from public life, build a Maginot Line around the Hyannisport complex, and shield himself from the forces of ignorance and hate? Or did he have the stuff in him to carry the torch?
Ted Kennedy's life, which ended just before midnight Tuesday, gave us our answers. As John M. Broder wrote in his excellent New York Times obituary:
"He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy."
When the large flaws cost him the opportunity to seek the presidency, as his brothers had done, his large faith in himself drove him to become the most effective senator of his century. In the last 46 years, no piece of legislation to help the the sick, the poor, the wretched masses yearning to breathe free has become law without his stamp upon it. When President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act last April 24, we inaugurated the largest expansion of civilian service since the Depression Era Civilian Conservation Corps.
I hope legislation that establishes quality health care for every American will be enacted, and will bear his name, as well, for it was probably the greatest cause of his long and distinguished career.
Journalists' memories of Teddy tend to be associated with the Large Flaws. I directed a team of superb journalists, including the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Miller, covering Apollo 11. On the day before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren were scheduled to fly down to the moon, Miller told me that the bosses had ordered him off the moon flight. What could possibly be more important in July of 1969 than the first moon landing? "They want me to go to Martha's Vineyard," Miller said. "Teddy Kennedy's got himself into another mess. A young woman's dead." We expected "another mess" for the playboy brother. He was a Kennedy.
Similarly, we were not surprised when a Kennedy nephew hit the supermarket tabloids after a night of drinking with Uncle Ted. He was accused of rape by a woman he picked up in a bar after what he said was consensual sex on the beach at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach. A New York editor remarked to me, "it wasn't the kids who suggested that they go out bar-hopping. It was the 60-year-old guy." He was a Kennedy.
Another journalist friend remembers walking into the Sherry Netherland bar in midtown Manhattan late one night. "I sat down about three barstools from Teddy, then married to Joan," he recalls. "He was in the enthusiastic company of several girls, and surrounded as well by a band of dark-suited protectors. Everybody in the place was watching the Kennedy action, in which the three or four ladies were all vying for his attention. No mystery there, as beyond being Teddy, he was the best-looking guy in the place. " He was a Kennedy.
I remember a guy so focused on the legislative process that as he strode across the Russell Senate Office Building Rotunda one day in the 70s, two of the bevy of aides jogging to keep up with him had to steer him by his elbows to prevent his walking into a pillar. He seemed to be conducting four or five conversations at once, barking orders, questions, thoughts, dictating memos. . . .until he spotted my companion, David Rosenbaum of the New York Times. Instantly he was transformed. His smile lit the hall. He thrust out his hand in welcome in that vigorous Kennedy style. "DAY-vid, " his brogue roared. "How ARE you?" He was a Kennedy.
But what I will never forget is the venom and bile he inspired in the Republican right.
A confession: In my college days I was an officer in the campus Young Republicans. My roommate then -- and lifelong dear friend thereafter -- was chairman of the organization.
Over the years we drifted in opposite directions politically. A few years ago we had dinner in Los Angeles. As usual, we agreed to disagree, in gentlemanly fashion, on the political topics of the day. Until Teddy's name came up.
John fulminated so apoplectically that I feared he'd have a stroke. "Why do you hate Ted Kennedy so much?" I asked when he'd calmed down.
John, one of the fastest thinkers and most articulate speakers I've known, sputtered briefly. Finally he blurted:
"Because he's a KENNEDY!"

Don't Dare to Call it Torture

Very little of what the Associated Press sends from Washington these days is journalism in the sense the term once conveyed.
Yet the wire service is the sole source of national news for hundreds of local papers throughout the United States -- just one more factor in the American public's vast wasteland of ignorance.
Occasionally, the AP's reportage descends to the level of unintended irony, as in the following example (emphasis, of course, is mine):

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration launched a criminal investigation Monday into HARSH QUESTIONING of detainees during President George W. Bush's war on terrorism, revealing CIA interrogators' threats to KILL ONE SUSPECT'S CHILDREN and to FORCE ANOTHER TO WATCH HIS MOTHER BEING SEXUALLY ASSAULTED.

One presumes that after this bit of "harshness" they all went out for ice cream.
For reasons known only to its reporters and editors, the AP chose to focus on what some might consider the most "lenient" of the "harsh" interrogation tactics. After all, nobody was actually shot, raped or assaulted with a power drill.
Aside from the fact that the threats themselves are barbaric acts and violations of the Geneva Convention to which the U.S. is a signatory, it would be well to consider some of the other interrogation tactics divulged in official reports:
--Applying pressure to the detainee's carotid artery to the point of losing consciousness , then shaking him awake to repeat the process.
--Twice striking a detainee with a rifle butt, then knee kicking him three times.
--Forcing smoke into a detainee's lungs until he vomited.
--Using a waterboarding technique more severe than the one for which Japanese soldiers were prosecuted after World War II , under the Geneva Convention.
--Hanging detainees by their arms until interrogators believed their shoulders had been dislocated.
--Dousing detainees with water, then shackling them to a cold concrete floor in cold temperatures to induce hypothermia.
The IG report concluded that "unauthorized, improvised and inhumane detention and interrogation techniques were used." It said many of the detainees were subjected to this treatment because of "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence."
"Harsh?"
As kids used to be taught in Reporting 101, "if you can't characterize it accurately, don't characterize it at all. Let the facts speak for themselves."

The Exceptional Matt Taibbi

There are, of course, exceptions to the post that follows this one.. Here are some recent Tweets about one of them

From Mort Persky:

Couple of Saturday night tweets re Taibbi's brand-new and still-unavailable-to-us-non-subscribers article in Rolling Stone, "How Washington Is Screwing Up Health-Care Reform." (Don't let my tweet fool you into thinking I read the piece. I only listened to his wrap-up videos online at rollingstone.com.



nzanjani "Without a public option, any effort at health care reform will be as meaningful as a manicure for a gunshot victim" - MattTaibbi
36 minutes ago from web


OnJonsMind "In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle." Matt Taibbi 12.2.08 / NYT today: http://bit.ly/qjeNS
about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck


MortPersky Uh-oh. New Taibbi piece rocks, Healthcare '09 sucks. His best outcome: this bill sinks, wiser Dems get to start over in 2010. Odds, anyone?
5 minutes ago from web

Ourselves as Others See Us

Increasingly in the last decade, the best coverage of what's going on in the United States has been provided by journalists working for media outside the United States. One of the very best is The Guardian UK, whose Ed Pilkington wrote the following dispatch:


In the furious debate gripping America over the future of its health system, one voice has been lost amid the shouting. It is that of a distinguished gynaecologist, aged 67, called Dr Joseph Manley.
For 35 years Manley had a thriving health clinic in Kansas. He lived in the most affluent neighbourhood of Kansas City and treated himself to a new Porsche every year. But this is not a story about doctors' remuneration and their lavish lifestyles.
In the late 1980s he began to have trouble with his own health. He had involuntary muscle movements and difficulty swallowing. Fellow doctors failed to diagnose him, some guessing wrongly that he had post-traumatic stress from having served in the airforce in Vietnam.
Eventually his lack of motor control interfered with his work to the degree that he was forced to give up his practice. He fell instantly into a catch 22 that he had earlier seen entrap many of his own patients: no work, no health insurance, no treatment.
He remained uninsured and largely untreated for his progressively severe condition for the following 11 years. Blood tests that could have diagnosed him correctly were not done because he couldn't afford the $200. Having lost his practice, he lost his mansion on the hill and now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. His Porsches have made way for bangers. Many times this erstwhile pillar of the medical establishment had to go without food in order to pay for basic medicines. In 2000 Manley finally found the help he needed, at a clinic in Kansas City that acts as a rare safety net for uninsured people. He was swiftly diagnosed with Huntington's disease, a degenerative genetic illness, and now receives regular medical attention through the clinic.
So how does he feel about the way the debate in the US has come to be dominated by Republican-inspired attacks on Britain's NHS and other "socialised" health services which give people the treatment they need even if they cannot afford to pay for it?
"I find that repulsive and an absolutely bone-headed way to go," he says. "When I started out practising I certainly didn't expect this would happen. I thought the system would take care of everybody."
Over the last month President Obama's attempts to live up to his election promise to extend healthcare to all Americans has stalled in the face of a sustained rightwing guerrilla attack. Opponents of Obama's reforms have succeeded in distracting attention from Manley and the 46 million other medically uninsured, swinging the focus instead on to the "evils" of publicly funded healthcare. The fear tactics were epitomised by Sarah Palin's wholly inaccurate claim that the reforms would set up "death panels" that would force euthanasia on to older people.
Such scaremongering has dismayed and infuriated Sharon Lee, the doctor who now treats Manley in Kansas City. "I'm very angry, very angry," she says. "Many of the people I treat have already been in front of a death panel and have lost - a death panel controlled by insurance companies. I see people dying at least monthly because we have been unable to get them what they needed."
Lee's clinic, Family Health Care, is a refuge of last resort. It picks up the pieces of lives left shattered by a health system that has failed them, and tries to glue them back together. It exists largely outside the parameters of formal health provision, raising funds through donations and paying all its 50 staff - Lee included - a flat rate of just $12 an hour.
Poverty Line
Lee has just opened an outpost of her clinic in the outlying neighbourhood of Quindaro, an area of boarded-up houses and deserted factories where work is hard to find and crack plentiful and a per capita income is $11,025. A third of the population is below the federally defined poverty line.
And yet the local health department has decided the only health centre in the area will be closed by the end of this year and moved 30 blocks west to a much more prosperous part of the city where income levels are five times higher. Before long, one of the poorest areas of Kansas - of America - will be left without a single doctor, with only Lee's voluntary services to fall back on.
Even that is academic. Many of the residents of Quindaro were unable to see a doctor in any case - because they were uninsured. In Kansas, anyone who is able-bodied but unemployed is not eligible for government-backed health insurance as is anyone earning more than 39% of federal poverty levels. That leaves a huge army of jobless and low-income working families who are left in limbo. "It's the working poor who are most at disadvantage," Lee says.
As a result, she sees the same pattern repeating itself over and over. People with no insurance avoid seeking medical help for fear of the bills that follow, until it is too late. "When people come in they are already very, very sick. They have avoided seeing the doctor thinking that something may clear up, hoping they may be getting better."
Beth Gabaree, who came in to see Lee for the first time this morning, has experiences that sound extreme but are in fact quite typical. She has diabetes and a heart condition. Until two years ago they were controlled through ongoing treatment paid for by her husband's work-based health insurance. But he was in a motorbike crash that pulverised his right leg and put him out of work.
That Catch 22 again: no work, no insurance, no treatment. Except in this case it was Beth who went without treatment, in order to put her husband's dire needs first. He receives ongoing specialist care that costs them $500 a go, leaving nothing for her. So she stopped seeing a doctor, and effectively began self-medicating. She cut down from two different insulin drugs to regulate her diabetes to one, and restricted her heart drugs. "I do what I think I need to do to keep four steps out of hospital. I know that's not the right thing, but I can't justify seeing the doctor when my family's already in money trouble."
The problem is that she hasn't kept herself four steps out of hospital. Her health deteriorated and earlier this year she became bedridden. Even then, it took her family several days to persuade her to go to the emergency room because she didn't want to incur the hospital costs. "It was hard enough without that," she says.
After an initial consultation, Lee has now booked Gabaree for a new round of tests for her diabetes and is arranging for free medication. "It's wonderful," Gabaree says. "I'm so blessed. I didn't know you could get this sort of help."
That she sees basic healthcare as a blessing, not as a right, speaks volumes about attitudes among the mass of the working poor. Also revealing is the fact that Gabaree has absolutely no idea about the debate raging across America. She hasn't even heard of Obama's push for health reform, nor the Republican efforts to prevent it. "I don't watch much television," she says.
That provides Palin et al with a massive advantage: the 46 million people who would most benefit from Obama's plans are also among the least educated and informed, and thus the least able to make political waves. All of which leaves Lee fearful about the prospects for change. She has, after all, been here before - in 1993 when Hillary Clinton's pitch to overhaul the health system foundered. That attempt ended up doing more harm than good from Lee's perspective. Many of her most important donors stopped funding the centre because they assumed that the White House was fixing the problems. After the Clinton reforms crashed, brought down by the same rightwing assault that Obama is now enduring, it took many months for the centre's funds to regain their pre-1993 levels.
Recession
Lee fears history could be repeating itself. This time round there is the recession more unemployed equals more uninsured people who come knocking on the door of Family Health Care. Last year Lee and one other doctor between them dealt with 14,000 visits, and the numbers are rising daily. All of which leaves Lee part despairing, part determined to fight even harder for the bare minimum of human dignity. The frustration is that every day she must beg and plead with other health providers for simple treatments for her patients. "It drives me crazy with frustration," she says.
She rattles off a litany of horror stories. There was the man who walked into the clinic with a brain tumour. It took Lee three months to get him an MRI scan and another two to get an appointment with a neurosurgeon. Or the patient whose nerves in his neck were pushed against his spinal cord so that he lost use of both arms; by the time Lee found a way of getting him an MRI he was so sick he had to be operated on immediately. Or the woman who had such heavy periods she would wind up in ER every three months requiring a blood transfusion. What she really needed was a hysterectomy. "It took us almost a year to beg hospitals until she finally did get a hysterectomy," Lee says.
These are the stories, the broken lives, that have been obscured by the fury generated by the Republican rump. Unless Obama finds a way to regain the political initiative, to remind Americans that only nine months ago they voted overwhelmingly for change, then the future of millions appears bleak.
"Here's what I'd like to ask Palin," Lee says. "People without health insurance are dying, here in America, right now. So I'd like to ask her: how does that fit into your vision of good and evil, Sarah Palin?"
Obama's Plan: Health of the Nation
What is Obama trying to do?
The goal is to increase access to healthcare by regulating costs. His plan would guarantee all citizens eligibility for care, but the government is not proposing a "single-payer system", like the NHS. Instead, private health insurers would continue to operate under new rules that would lower premiums and remove loopholes that allow them to avoid paying for treatment when it is most needed. Per person, healthcare costs are higher in the US than in any other country, and have been rising faster than the level of inflation. The quality of care is less of an issue - although citizens with solid insurance may be frustrated by the paperwork and costs associated with the current system, they have fewer complaints about their doctors and hospitals.
Who's opposing Obama's plan?
Those who fear the government would introduce congressional "death panels" to make end-of-life decisions for the elderly. The insurance industry is worried about their bottom lines. Members of Congress and voters on the left and right are concerned about the future tax burden. Many Americans also object to any increase in government involvement in their personal lives.
How can healthcare costs get so out of hand?
Many insurance plans do not cover "pre-existing conditions", so it can be difficult for people who have a chronic ailment to secure cover. Loopholes allow insurers to refuse reimbursement even if the policyholder did not know they had a particular condition when they took out insurance. "Lifetime caps" allow insurers to set a maximum amount of cover.
Who are the uninsured?
Up to 46 million Americans are uninsured, because they are unemployed, or their employer does not provide cover, or because they do not qualify for existing government-funded healthcare. People 65 and older can qualify for Medicare, the poor can qualify for Medicaid, veterans and members of the military can qualify for Veterans Health Administration and Tricare and children can be covered under a programme called SCHIP. Those overlooked by the system include the young just entering the workforce, the self-employed, the unemployed and people who work for small businesses.

Defections from The Base

When the opinion polls showed that George Bush's support from the American people was plummeting, it was Democrats and Independents who drove the charts down.
Now that Barack Obama's poll numbers are plunging -- it's Democrats and Independents who are driving the charts down.
Bush's far right wing base remained steadfastly loyal to the bitter end, even as a second Great Depression threatened to envelope the land.
These same people are as vacuously and steadfastly opposed to Obama as they were before the election results came in. What has changed is that the President's support among independents has eroded, and his support among thoughtful progressives has virtually vanished. The defections are so widespread that in only eight months in office Mr. Obama may already have sealed his fate as a one-term president.
Perhaps this is symptomatic of his lack of experience at the national level: his time in the Senate was not sufficient to educate him in the art of reading the opposition the way, say, LBJ could.
Or perhaps Mr. Obama really believes that bipartisanship is possible in Washington today. How such a belief could possibly have survived the campaign he faced from the McCain-Palin-Fox News ticket defies logic. Probably he thinks, or has been convinced by Rahm Emanuel, that he has been following a "pragmatic" course.
His most compelling task was the economy. Reaganomics and the Chicago school acolytes of Milton Friedman had failed miserably; millions of retirees saw their life savings go up in smoke; millions more lost their homes to foreclosure.
Mr. Obama could have chosen to put any number of world renowned and respected economists in key economic posts -- Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson to name just a few. Instead he chose Timothy F. Geithner, a Republican who as ninth President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank presided over and indeed encouraged the very Wall Street misdeeds that brought on the economic collapse; Lawrence H. Summers, who as a Clinton administration official engineered the economic policies that created what Ross Perot rightly called "the great sucking sound of American jobs vanishing" and a squadron of Goldman-Sachs alumni who have done a great job of enhancing their old firm's profits, but given little beyond a used band-aid to their new employers, the critically wounded American public. One of his closest friends and advisers is Cass Sunstein, a Friedman acolyte.
The President's Department of Justice has argued in court to continue the Bush administration's unconstitutional arrogation of executive powers. Mr. Obama himself spoke against torture but continued extraordinary renditions to countries that are known to torture. His attorney general has left in powerful posts as U.S. attorneys the right-wing mouthpieces Bush appointed after Karl Rove orchestrated the politically-motivated firings of Republican attorneys who dared to refuse to play partisan politics with the law,
Each of these follies cost Mr. Obama the support of large numbers of thoughtful progressives. A trickle became a waterfall. The waterfall created a flood. What broke the dam was his Dance of Seven Veils on health care. Democrats by the thousands realized that when the last veil --a so-called public option -- was removed, their emperor had no clothes.
Mr. Obama's strongest campaign theme was change and its keystone was a pledge to provide "quality health care for all Americans."
Like his predecessor in the lead-up to war, Mr. Obama, in the lead-up to congressional action on health care, has misled, fabricated, weasle-worded, reneged, waffled and wriggled around the truth. Those who trusted him to provide leadership out of the Dark Ages of Bush have been given a mess of pottage.
Perhaps they were naive to expect more.
Meanwhile, as Sen. Baucus and his five colleagues collude to create a milksop they will call health care legislation, it becomes increasingly clear that the President will throw his support to whatever they come up with. Thus will six senators, who represent 3% of the U.S. population but whose campaign chests swell with millions from the health insurance industries, dictate, in effect, which Americans will survive severe illness and which will not.
Talk about "death panels!"

Hypocritic Oafs

A sweet little Republican lady stood up at a local town hall with our congressman and said health care is a good thing, but we cannot afford to make it available to EVERYONE because of the huge federal deficit.

Typical of the deathbed re-conversion to fiscal responsibility among Republicans. Also utterly hypocritical.

These are the same people who -- when George W. Bush was turning an inherited budget surplus into a record deficit to finance his unholy wars -- assured us that Reagan "proved that deficits don't matter."

The sweet little Republican lady believed it.

I said "sweet" not "smart."

Because the essence of the Republican argument she was parroting is this:

Deficits good when used to kill more than 4,000 U.S. military personnel and more than a million innocent Iraqi civilians in war based on WMDs, yellow cake and nuke tubes that did not exist.

Deficits bad if used to improve quality of health care for Americans, provide health insurance for 50 million Americans who can't afford it now, and cut per-person costs of quality health care in U.S.

Go figure.

I'm Afraid Fear Has Gone Too Far

The link between ignorance and fear is well documented in human history.

From ancient Rome. . .


 “Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth.” Publius Cornelius Tacitus.

. . . .through The Enlightenment. . .

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” Edmund Burke.

“Fear always springs from ignorance.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. " Thomas Paine.

. . .to modernity.

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” Bertrand Russell.

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear." Bertrand Russell.

“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.” Albert Camus.

“Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.” Lester B. Pearson.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Those who would seize and abuse power have always known that fear is a valuable tool in manipulating the ignorant masses. Mounting evidence suggests that the American far right has been more successful in exploiting ignorance and fear to its own ends than any political organization in human history, including the National Socialists of Germany in the 1930s.

Katie Couric (fear and ignorance among the town hall mobs) and Tom Ridge (Rumsfeld and others pressured him to ramp up the fear level) are only the latest messengers to remind us of this political phenomenon.

The optimists among us believed that the tactic peaked in the Bush administration and that the election of Barack Obama and a Democratic-controlled congress effectively brought it to an end. The optimists were wrong.

When the President sought to reverse the policies that had engendered incredible hatred of the United States in the Arab world, the far right told us to be very afraid because he had weakened our country, made it more vulnerable to another 9/11-like attack.

When the President sought to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and put us on a path to energy efficiency from renewable sources, a new industry that would provide new jobs, the far right told us to be very afraid because energy costs would skyrocket to the point that we couldn't afford to run our air-conditioners or drive our SUVs, and jobs would vanish.

Now the exploiters of fear and ignorance are telling us that a law to provide health insurance for all Americans would somehow euthanize Grandma.

Ignorance and fear have been called the twin pillars of bigotry. The bigotry that has lurked in the white American soul since slavery undoubtedly accounts for the sheer meanness, the ugly passion, with which Obama's critics have attacked his efforts to fulfill his campaign promises and electoral mandate. Ignorance, fear and low self-esteem fuel these passions -- and there'sa black man in the White House. A black man!

One progressive soul in Arizona wrote recently: "The key to removing discrimination is the banishment of bigotry and fear. And the only way to do this is to remove ignorance wherever it’s found."

Surely some right wingnut in his neighborhood said that he was advocating frontal lobotomies for those who disagreed with him, and that if he had his way we'd all become lobotomized zombies.

Then again, maybe "we" already are.






A Bird to Reckon With

The longer I live in New Mexico, the greater my admiration for the state's official bird, the roadrunner.

What a tough, adaptable, self-reliant, feisty little creature he is, and has to be to thrive in his harsh desert habitat.

A species of ground cuckoo, the southwestern roadrunner is famously capable of killing, and eating, rattlesnakes. He can run up to 17 miles per hour. He has adapted to his sere habitat by evolving a method of reabsorbing the water in his feces before excretion. As an avian carnivore, he feasts on the moistest available diet in the desert.
He doesn't eliminate salt through his urinary tract, but more efficiently, through a gland in his noise. He's energy efficient: cuts his activity rate 50% in the heat of the day. He's so deft and quick that he can snatch a dragonfly or hummingbird out of the air.

That's the secret to his predation of the rattlesnake. He uses his wings the way a matador uses his cape, and his lightning speed is faster than the snake's strike. Roadrunner snaps up a coiled snake by the tail, snaps it like a whip and repeatedly slams its head against the ground. He eats his prey whole, even rattlesnakes, but sometimes can't consume the entire snake at one time. That's why you often see roadrunner prancing through the desert brush with something icky dangling from his beak.

Roadrunner can fly for short distances, especially when going downhill, but prefers to run, building up speed until he can soar a short distance simply by spreading, not flapping, his wings. Energy efficiency.

He adapts quite nicely to humanity's inroads into his habitat. A friend has a roadrunner who spends every winter atop his porch light, where the bulb provides warmth and the roof provides protection from predators. A big, cocky roadrunner lives around my house and loves to taunt my dog, Saxon, by strutting along the top of the patio wall. It's comparable to the way a feral cat taunted him when we lived in another state, strutting back and forth on the other side of a sturdy chain-link fence while Saxon barked in frustration. Feral cats and roadrunners share an attitude gene, I think.

I spotted a smallish roadrunner the other day, hopping slowly across the street where I live as if he had only one leg. I've seen him several times since, and once got close enough to see that he does have two legs. One of them must be injured, because he doesn't move with the customary roadrunner speed. Deprived of his principal asset, how does he survive?

I can't answer that, but I know one thing. With a pre-existing condition like that, he'd better not try to get health insurance.

Health Care Reform? Who Needs It?

The 12-year-+old boy and his little sister were waiting for the school bus in their New York suburban community one cool, clear morning. The boy felt dizzy and queasy. "I'm going home to puke," he told his sister.
He didn't get home. He collapsed on the doorstep. There was blood. His family rushed him to a teaching hospital not five minutes away. The senior neurosurgeon and his entire support team happened to be making rounds. They cleared out two operating rooms and spent the next 16 hours saving the boy 's life.
They hadn't had time for finesse. To vacate the massive cerebral hemorrhage as quickly as possible, they simply sawed out a piece of his skull. When he was out of danger they replaced the bone with a plate of surgical steel.
The entire episode was enormously costly, but the boy's father's employer provided good health insurance and major medical coverage. It cost the family only $8,000 out of pocket.
A triumph of private health insurance in this great country.
Twice over the ensuing years, the boy's body rejected the plate in his head, which had to be replaced with new space-age materials. The boy came to know the rejection symptoms well.
The replacement procedure is a relatively simple one. Private insurance paid all the costs.
The boy became a young man and got a job and got married. His employer provided HMO health coverage.
The rejection symptoms returned., The young man went to his HMO doctor. "I'm rejecting my plate," the young man said. "I need to see a neurosurgeon." Dollar signs spun in the doctor's eyeballs. He gave the young man a bar of soap and told him to wash his head. The young man asked to see another doctor. Against the rules.
The young man went home and called the neurosurgeon who had treated him when he was a boy, covered by his father's insurance. "How much to replace my plate if I'm a private patient?" he asked. The doctor told him. The price was far beyond his reach. "Tell your HMO doctor to call me," the neurosurgeon said. "We can work something out."
The HMO doctor didn't call the neurosurgeon. Two days later the young man collapsed at work. At the emergency room of the local hospital, the doctors recognized a neurological emergency they couldn't handle. The young man was rushed by helicopter to an urban medical center 100 miles away. The young man was near death
The senior neurosurgeon and his entire support team cleared out an operating room and worked 14 hours to save his life. Save him they did, but the entire episode was enormously costly.
The HMO munificently offered to cover one-third of the bill.