Filed under: Conservatives, Economics, Health Care, House, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Congress, Health, Health Insurance, House, Medicaid, Medicare, Republicans, Roy Blunt
Republican Congressman–and former House Minority Whip–Roy Blunt says this about health care reform:
Well, you could certainly argue that government should have never have gotten in the health care business, and that might have been the best argument of all, to figure out how people could have had more access to a competitive marketplace.
Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.
That’s brilliant Republican policy for you: not only should we not reform health care, but we should eliminate government-provided forms of health care like Medicare and Medicaid.
Because eliminating Medicare and Medicaid is really going to fix the health care crisis, isn’t it?
UPDATE: And where can you get some of the best medical care in America?
At the government-funded Veterans Health Administration:
Yet here’s a curious fact that few conservatives or liberals know. Who do you think receives higher-quality health care. Medicare patients who are free to pick their own doctors and specialists? Or aging veterans stuck in those presumably filthy VA hospitals with their antiquated equipment, uncaring administrators, and incompetent staff? An answer came in 2003, when the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared veterans health facilities on 11 measures of quality with fee-for-service Medicare. On all 11 measures, the quality of care in veterans facilities proved to be “significantly better.”
Here’s another curious fact. The Annals of Internal Medicine recently published a study that compared veterans health facilities with commercial managed-care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients. In seven out of seven measures of quality, the VA provided better care.
[...]
But when it comes to health care, it’s a government bureaucracy that’s setting the standard for maintaining best practices while reducing costs, and it’s the private sector that’s lagging in quality. That unexpected reality needs examining if we’re to have any hope of understanding what’s wrong with America’s health-care system and how to fix it. It turns out that precisely because the VHA is a big, government-run system that has nearly a lifetime relationship with its patients, it has incentives for investing in quality and keeping its patients well–incentives that are lacking in for-profit medicine.
[Emphasis added]
Filed under: 2012 Election, Conservatives, Corruption, Government, Governors, Polls, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal | Tags: 2012, Alaska, Corruption, David Frum, Ethics, Numbers, Quitter, Republicans, Sarah Palin
The verdict on Gov. Sarah Palin’s resignation is in–and things are not looking good for the soon-to-be ex Governor:
At the same time just 37% of Americans now say they believe Palin is fit to be President, while 55% say she is not. And while her move last week may not have hurt her overall favorability, it does seem to have negatively impacted voters’ inclination to some day put her in the White House. 57% of respondents said her resignation makes them less likely to support her in a future Presidential bid.
[Emphasis mine]
And, still, the reason for Gov. Palin’s resignation still isn’t clear. Was it for a presidential bid? To get her family out of the limelight? To deal with the various ethical charges that have been brought against her?
Well, subsequent interviews with Palin appear to point to the latter, with Palin basically claiming that the ethics charges against her were paralyzing. But that’s a pretty damn poor justification–resigning because there are so many ethical charges against you that you can’t possibly fight them all and still do your job. And it certainly doesn’t bode well for your political future when you basically have to admit that your state would be better off without you running it.
But, more importantly, Palin’s allegations that fighting the ethical charges against her would be too costly for the people of Alaska appears to be completely false:
During her resignation speech last week, Palin presented herself as a heroic defender of the taxpayer. She said that money being spent on government lawyers to defend against these “frivolous ethics violations” could be “going to things that are very important, like troopers and roads and teachers and fish research.” Palin repeated exactly the same point this week.
But David Murrow, a spokesperson for the Governor, said in an interview that much of this money was budgeted to the lawyers in advance and would have gone to them anyway, even if state lawyers hadn’t been defending against these ethics complaints.
In response to our questions, the Governor’s office provided us with a detailed breakdown of the millions Palin has claimed has gone to defending against ethics complaints. It does list roughly $1.9 million in expenditures.
But Murrow, the spokesperson, acknowledged to our reporter, Amanda Erickson, that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints — based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor’s office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing. The complaints are “just distracting them from other duties,” Murrow said.
In other words, while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn’t drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.
[Emphasis mine]
Plus–according to TPM–there are only three outstanding ethics complaints against Palin, anyway.
Even conservative commentator and former Bush speechwriter David Frum thinks Palin is toast:
Between her speeches and her book deal, [Palin] can reasonably hope to earn $10 million over the next two years. She’ll fly in private jets, sleep in sumptuous hotel suites, receive rhapsodic applause.
Yet there will be no escaping another story line. Faced with exasperating criticism and the accumulating cares of public office—she quit to cash in. Her admirers can excuse anything, but to the much larger audience of non-admirers, Palin will look a lot like those CEOs who wrecked their banks and the national economy while accepting huge bonuses for themselves. John McCain’s slogan in 2008 was “Country First.” Palin’s in 2012? “I seen my opportunities, and I took ‘em.”
[Emphasis added]
Sarah Palin has become a fascinating story again; her abrupt resignation is so bizarre–there is no positive way to spin it, there is no real upside in quitting unless she plans never to hold elected office again.
Like I remarked a few days ago, we might have just borne witness to the steepest rise and fastest fall of any politician in modern American history; much like a meteorite crashing to earth, it’s hard not to watch in awe.
UPDATE: And then there’s this:
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, told Newsmax that Palin has to stop complaining. “You’ve got to recognize that there are people who want you to fail,” he said. “And if you spend your time worrying about them, or whining about what they say, at the very least it’ll get you off your game.”
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Senate | Tags: ABA, American Bar Association, Congress, Democrats, John Roberts, Judge Sotomayor, Judiciary, Pat Leahy, Republicans, Samuel Alito, SCOTUS, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court
Today, the American Bar Association voted–unanimously–to grant Judge Sonia Sotomayor a “well-qualified” rating, the highest rating they give to judicial nominees:
The ABA committee that reviewed her qualifications came out with that unanimous rating of the federal appeals court judge and released it in a letter to White House lawyer Greg Craig.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to begin hearings Monday on President Barack Obama’s choice to replace retired Justice David Souter.
[...]
“The American Bar Association’s unanimous, well-qualified rating of Judge Sotomayor is further evidence of the outstanding experience she will bring to the Supreme Court,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“The ABA’s rating _ an evaluation of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament _ should eliminate the doubts of naysayers who have questioned Judge Sotomayor’s disposition on the bench.”
So all the Republican attempts to paint Judge Sotomayor as unfit to sit on the Supreme Court were nothing but hollow talking points with no grounds in reality (and in case anyone tries to argue that the ABA has some kind of liberal bias, they also found both John Roberts and Samuel Alito to be “well-qualified”).
Filed under: 2010 Election, 2012 Election, Conservatives, Governors, Media, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: 2010, 2012, Alaska, Barack Obama, Chelsea Clinton, Democrats, Fail, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Resignation, Sarah Palin
I’ve spent some time in the past few days thinking about Gov. Sarah Palin’s sudden resignation, and I still think that her decision stemmed from either an impending scandal or an impending Presidential campaign.
But there have been a few other explanations I’ve heard and dismissed. For instance, some people are claiming that Palin is facing huge legal bills fighting off all the ethics complaints against her, which explains her resignation. But I find that hard to believe—her term as Governor is done in just a year and a half, meaning that she could hit up the paid lecture circuit and make those costs back several-fold come January, 2011.
Others are saying that being Governor would prevent Palin from going out there and campaigning for Republicans in 2010, putting her at a disadvantage against folks like Mitt Romney who no longer hold an office and thus have the time to campaign.
But, remember, Palin campaigned for Vice President while remaining Governor of Alaska; I find it hard to believe that she couldn’t just hand things over to her staff or her Lt. Governor every once in a while in order to speak at a rally or a speech.
Plus, being an effective Governor would probably help your presidential ambitions far more than quitting in order to fly around stumping for Congressional candidates–that’s something you do when you leave office, not something you leave office in order to do. Double plus, if 2010 isn’t a good year for the GOP—which it doesn’t look like it will be—then Palin would be better off staying in the Governor’s mansion.
Some people are saying that it’s normal for politicians to quit their current job to run for higher office. While that may be the case, they don’t usually quit 40 months before the election.
And a number of people are claiming that Sarah Palin is resigning in order to protect her family, but I don’t entirely buy that, either. When you run for office you become a public figure; you and your family are going to be in the spotlight.
Personally, I think families should be off-limits. To me, we should be focusing on the person running for office, not their husbands or wives or children; I don’t see the political point to be made in going after someone’s family. Still, we have to deal with the political reality we have, not the political reality we want—and in the political world we live in, the families of politicians are given a fair amount of scrutiny.
Palin should have known that, by being a public figure, she was putting her own family in the spotlight for good or ill. Plus, I feel that a lot of right-wing victimhood on this front seems awfully overblown–a lot of Palin’s supporters seem to believe that Sarah Palin is the most unfairly-attacked people in modern American history.
In that regard, I agree with ABC’s Cynthia Tucker, who said on Meet the Press this past weekend:
If [Palin] thinks she’s had it tough, I have two words for you: Hillary Clinton!
Conservatives are attacking Palin’s critics for allegedly targeting her family, but if you were to page through nearly any conservative blog out there and you’ll find plenty of unhinged attacks on Michelle Obama. And some of these same conservatives who are defending Palin and her family are the very same conservatives who spent the 1990’s unfairly attacking both Chelsea and Hillary Clinton.
Sarah Palin may have been subjected to some unfair criticism (and I should note that she was also subjected to a lot of perfectly fair, valid criticism as well), but she is not the first person to have dealt with that, and resigning her Governorship is an extremely poor way to deal with it. Hillary Clinton was a fighter; Sarah Palin is a quitter.
I also don’t believe the right-wing talking point that Sarah Palin’s early resignation is some kind of brilliant Nixonian political maneuver.
I mean, just think about the timing—if this was part of a brilliant political strategy, why announce it the Friday before Independence Day? Why try to bury it in the news cycle—why not make it front and center, try to draw as much publicity as possible that you can then take advantage of?
And if this was Palin’s brilliant political move, why did she sound like she was close to tears during her speech on Friday? Go listen–Palin sounds like she’s going to break down, not like she’s launching a cunning political strategy that will catapult her into the White House:
In the end, it just looks like Sarah Palin couldn’t take the heat so she quit. She promised the people of Alaska to serve as their Governor for 4 years but she broke that promise. If Palin does run for President, it should be remembered that, when things got tough, Sarah Palin turned tail and fled–not a quality any of us want in a President.
Honestly, though, I don’t think we have to worry about Sarah Palin running for President–I don’t think she’s going to recover from this. Whatever political career she may have had is probably over now; America loves fighters and hates quitters.
To make an analogy fitting of Gov. Palin, she grabbed the basketball and took off in the middle of the third quarter, leaving both teams to stand in the middle of the court, watching in utter befuddlement as she disappears off into the locker room.
UPDATE: Not only is Gov. Palin a quitter, she’s a hypocrite:
During a Women and Leadership event back in March 2008, Governor Palin was asked about Senator Clinton’s response to media scrutiny – and criticism – she received on the campaign trail during the Democratic primaries. Palin made it clear to moderator Karen Breslau of Newsweek that she considered Clinton’s conduct unbecoming. Hillary, she insisted, needed to just “plow through”:
“Fair or unfair, I think she does herself a disservice to even mention it…When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism or, you know, maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, man, that doesn’t do us any good. Women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country. I don’t think it’s, it bodes well for her — a statement like that…It bothers me a little bit hearing her bring that attention to herself on that level.”
[Emphasis mine]
So when Hillary Clinton gets media scrutiny, Sarah Palin thinks she should just shut up and push through it. But when Sarah Palin gets media scrutiny, she thinks it’s okay to play victim and quit.
Filed under: Conservatives, Economics, Government, Health Care, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Senate | Tags: Budget, CBO, Chris Dodd, Congress, Congressional Budget Office, Edward Kennedy, Health Care, Health Care Reform, Senate Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee
Previously, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis supposedly examining the Democratic health care reform proposal. Their conclusions found the proposal would cost nearly $1 trillion and still leave millions of Americans uncovered.
But, as it turns out, the CBO’s analysis was flawed–it was based not on what the Democrats were proposing but on old, outdated information. Conservatives, of course, jumped all over the CBO’s flawed analysis as proof that health care reform with a public option was untenable.
Well, the CBO just released an updated analysis–based on the plan Democrats are actually proposing–and guess what they found:
The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.
[...]
The letter indicated the cost and coverage improvements resulted from two changes. The first calls for a government-run health insurance option to compete with private coverage plans, an option that has drawn intense opposition from Republicans.
[...]
Additionally, the revised proposal calls for a $750 annual fee on employers for each full-time worker not offered coverage through their job. The fee would be set at $375 for part-time workers. Companies with fewer than 25 employees would be exempt. The fee was forecast to generate $52 billion over 10 years, money the government would use to help provide subsidies to those who cannot afford insurance.
The same provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals.
[...]
In their letter, Kennedy and Dodd said the Congressional Budget Office “has carefully reviewed our complete bill, and we are pleased to report that CBO has scored it at $611.4 billion over 10 years, with the new coverage provisions scored at $597 billion. …The completed bill virtually eliminates the dropping of currently covered employees from employer-sponsored health plans.
[Emphasis mine]
The crux of Republican opposition to health care reform are that it would cost huge amounts of money and it would (allegedly) drive private insurance out of business by causing a large amount of employers to dump their employees onto the public option.
But this new CBO analysis shows that both of those talking points are untrue. The GOP now has no solid ground upon which to oppose health care reform beyond simple, craven, conservative obstruction.
In fact, the cost of health care reform is so low that we can already pay for it out of the funds allotted in Obama’s budget:
President Barack Obama’s first budget will seek $634 billion over 10 years as a down payment on health care reform, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
Down payment? The Democratic health care reform proposal is so good that the down payment is going to be the only payment.
Of course, Republicans will still obstruct the plan. But with 60 Democrats in the Senate, the GOP will no longer be able to stand in the way of sensible, necessary health care reform.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Health Care, IOKIYAR, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Barack Obama, Budget, Congress, Democrats, George W. Bush, Health Care, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Hypocrisy, Iraq, Republicans, Taxes
There is a lot of misinformation and garbage talking points on health care reform being spread around by conservatives. But, despite all the sound and the noise, there doesn’t seem to be a single worthwhile argument against health care reform buried anywhere in there.
Republicans claim–falsely–that a public option would result in the “rationing” of health care. But what is rationing?
ra⋅tion
1. a fixed allowance.
2. an allotted amount.
By that definition, isn’t health care already rationed? Health care isn’t unlimited–first, whether or not you even have health insurance depends on where you work and how much money you have. And both of those influence the quality of coverage you can get.
Second, even if you have the means to get health insurance, the insurance companies can still deny you coverage for a variety of reasons–a pre-existing condition, for instance.
Third, even if you have health insurance, insurance companies can deny your claim for a particular medical treatment for a variety of reasons. So, even if you are covered you might not be able to get the treatment you need.
Health insurance companies make a profit by denying as much coverage as possible to as many people as possible; their entire business model is centered around rationing.
Conservatives also argue–falsely–that a public option would put “government bureaucrats” between citizens and their doctors in terms of making health care decisions.
Yet, bureaucrats are already between people and their doctors–instead of being government bureaucrats whose jobs are to serve the American people, it’s private health industry bureaucrats whose jobs are to try to deny you as much health care as they can. That is how they make money, after all.
Conservatives are also asking where the money for health care reform is going to come from, claiming a plan including a public option would cost somewhere between $1.5 and $2 trillion.
Of course, that crowd includes a fair number of newly-minted deficit hawks who didn’t seem to care very much when George Bush and the Republican Congress were spending huge amounts of money on utterly frivolous things.
Where were these guys when Bush was pushing his $1.6 trillion tax cut package through Congress? Why weren’t any of these conservatives complaining about the cost of the Iraq War, which will cost us nearly $3 trillion?
Of course health care reform will be expensive–it’s going to help insure tens of millions of Americans who are currently going without health care. The question isn’t simply how much it will cost, but whether or not the benefit is worth it. For instance, to an average middle-class family buying a house is incredibly expensive, but the benefit they receive from that purchase justifies the cost.
Plus, we already pay a significant portion of what health care reform would cost in other ways–our salaries are lower because our employers have to pay greater health care costs. We pay more in taxes to help support overburdened hospitals that have to treat a large number of uninsured Americans. We pay higher health insurance costs and premiums to a veritable monopoly with no competition and massively-high prices, which would be challenged and kept honest by a public health insurance option.
I wonder just how much of that $1.5-$2 trillion would come from costs that the American people already pay in some form or another?
On one hand, conservatives–falsely–claim that a public health care plan would be massively inefficient, resulting in long waits for treatment, reduced choice in doctors, limited treatment options, etc.
But on the other hand, they claim that the public option will drive the private insurance industry out of business. That’s right–they claim that public option will be terrible, but so many people will opt into it that the entire private health insurance industry will go bankrupt.
They also claim that private insurance will go out of business because it’s impossible for a private entity to compete with a government program. Except:
I immediately thought of the U.S. Postal Service. Here’s a government-run service that can deliver a paper document to any remote location you choose for 42 cents. They can also deliver packages quickly and at a very competitive rate. Impressive.
But even with this efficiency the “public option” for package delivery has a number of healthy competitors. There’s FedEx (started in 1971 as Federal Express), DHL (founded in 1969), UPS (founded in 1907) among others.
Somehow, despite the government-run program, these private delivery services have managed to survive by offering customers something they found worthy of their business.
Conservatives don’t want to admit it, but America is facing a health care crisis. Costs are rising because there’s nobody to compete with the insurance industry. Tens of millions of Americans go without health insurance for themselves and their families, relying on overburdened, understaffed hospitals to be their first–and last–resort in the event of injury or illness. The time for change has come, yet conservatives are content to simply drag their feet and say “No.”
UPDATE: And keep in mind that there is already a public option for health care–it’s just restricted to members of Congress. That’s right–every member of Congress currently receives taxpayer-funded, government-provided health insurance.
So any Senator or Representative who opposes a public health insurance option is a complete and utter hypocrite, unless they put their money where their mouth is and reject their free government health care in favor of buying private insurance out-of-pocket.
But I guess those are conservatives for you–they have no problem accepting free government handouts hand-over-fist when it benefits them and their families, but will fight tooth and nail to prevent those same benefits from being extended to regular, everyday Americans.
Filed under: Breaking, Conservatives, Government, IOKIYAR, International, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Rights | Tags: Arrogance, Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Iran, Neoconservatives, Republicans, Revolution, Violence
Conservatives are hitting President Obama over Iran, arguing that he should be doing more to support the opposition there. I bristle at the politicization of the situation in Iran because, ultimately, what the Iranian people are going through isn’t about us, it isn’t about American politics and we shouldn’t be making it about us.
First off, I find it pretty disingenuous for conservatives–who spent years calling for the United States to bomb Iran–to suddenly show so much concern for the Iranian people. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out a few days ago:
During the presidential campaign, John McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran. The Wall St. Journal published a war screed from Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz entitled “The Case for Bombing Iran,” and following that, Podhoretz said in an interview that he “hopes and prays” that the U.S. “bombs the Iranians.” John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing campaign, while Bill Kristol — with typical prescience — hopefully suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected. Rudy Giuliani actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program.
[…]
Advocating a so-called “attack on Iran” or “bombing Iran” in fact means slaughtering huge numbers of the very same people who are on the streets of Tehran inspiring so many — obliterating their homes and workplaces, destroying their communities, shattering the infrastructure of their society and their lives.
Second, like I said, this isn’t about us. It’s about Iran and the Iranian people. The uprising in Iran is really two simultaneous conflicts–the fist is pro-democracy demonstrators facing off against an oppressive government. To that extent, Obama has done what should be expected of a President of the United States—he spoke out in favor of democracy, in favor of free speech and free assembly, and denounced the Iranian government for their violent, brutal crackdown against their own people.
But there’s another conflict here that conservatives are not seeing or not acknowledging–the political conflict over the disputed election. The major players in Iran’s unrest are the ruling party and the opposition party. That’s partially why Obama hasn’t done what conservatives want and side with the demonstrators—that would, in effect, be telling the Iranian people who their next president should be.
One of the basic tenets of democracy is that sovereign states should be able to hold elections without interference. The Iranian people have a right to decide—as much as they are allowed to—who should govern them; it’s not the job of the United States (or anyone else) to declare winner.
Iran’s election occurred, was stolen, and resulted in violence. But, in the end, this is still an Iranian political dispute, though a decidedly violent one. Iran–and only Iran–should determine the course their country takes. They have that right, and Obama has said from the start he isn’t going to take that right away from them.
Honestly, if Iran’s conflict didn’t involve a disputed election, I too would be criticizing Obama for not doing more. But the fact that the core of this fight is about who will run Iran makes it infinitely more complex.
Third, if Iran’s opposition wanted America to get involved they would ask us to. Mousavi and his movement are the center of the world’s attention at the moment; they have a large microphone at their disposal. Yet, we’re not hearing the opposition call for the United States to get involved. As the National Iranian American Council says,
People in Iran have told NIAC’s Iranian-American membership that they don’t want the US to get itself involved in the conflict, but they do want to see the government’s use of violence condemned
[...]
If America’s posture returns to that of the Bush administration, these indigenous forces for change may be quelled by the forces of fear and ultranationalism
I trust the opposition to understand more than anyone how American involvement would affect their movement. The the fact that they haven’t called on Obama to do what conservatives say he should do is telling.
Fourth, it’s funny how conservatives–who like to dismiss Barack Obama as nothing but lofty rhetoric–are now suddenly believers in the power of a speech. But even if Obama did what conservatives wanted and spoke out in favor of the opposition, nothing would change. The opposition would still demonstrate; the government would still crack down; the situation would be as bloody and violent as it currently is if not moreso. As it is, the Iranian government is trying to portray the protesters as puppets for America and the West; if Obama came out fully on the side of the opposition, it would vindicate those paranoid, conspiratorial fantasies and justify even more violence and murder. Obama taking the opposition’s side would do little to help but a lot to hurt; the opposition knows this and that’s why they aren’t asking for Obama’s support.
As an additional note, conservatives are outraged that the administration is going ahead with a planned diplomatic meeting with Iranian representatives on July 4th. But that shouldn’t be surprising or controversial—Obama has always said that America shouldn’t talk only to its friends and that diplomacy shouldn’t be a reward for good behavior. And Obama’s foreign policy was the one chosen by the American people last November.
And how idiotic is it that conservatives are calling for Obama to make a speech, which would accomplish very little, yet they attack him for wanting to engage iwth Iranian diplomats, even though that would actually give us a chance to affect Iran’s polity. And for anyone who would claim that a despotic, terrorism-supporting nation cannot be changed through diplomacy, all I have to say is: Libya.
The arrogant conservatives who would have America further meddle in Iranian affairs don’t know what they’re talking about; they’re the same arrogant conservatives who engineered the Bush administration’s failed, disastrous foreign policy. Iran isn’t about us. It isn’t about Barack Obama or the Democrats or the Republicans; it’s about Iran and the Iranian people. If you truly believe in democracy, then you must believe that the Iranians should decide their own fate instead of having America decide it for them.
UPDATE: Super special note to Sen. John McCain: you lost the election. Get over it.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Polls, Progressives, Race, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Senate | Tags: Congress, Democrats, Fail, Florida, Hispanics, Judge Sotomayor, Judiciary, Lindsey Graham, Mel Martinez, Numbers, Republicans, South Carolina
Turning back to domestic politics for a bit, the GOP is failing to reap political benefits from opposing Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
Nearly a month after President Barack Obama picked her for the Supreme Court, Republican senators say Sonia Sotomayor isn’t serving as the political lightning rod some in their party had hoped she would be.
“She doesn’t have the punch out there in terms of fundraising and recruiting, I think — at least so far,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who most likely will be elected as the No. 4 Republican in Senate leadership this week.
[...]
“Right now, you don’t have the fever pitch you did over the filibuster,” said [Sen. Lindsey]Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee. “It depends on how she does [at the hearings]. If she performs well, no. If she performs poorly, potentially, yes.”
“I don’t think she’s the kind of person that invites that kind of reaction,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) of the possibility of making major political gains over Sotomayor’s nomination. “I don’t think her judicial record warrants the ability to do that with her.”
Who could have imagined that an experienced, talented, highly-accomplished judge with a history of moderate, sensible decisions would turn out to be completely uncontroversial?
The GOP bungled this from the start. They only had two options–filibuster or let Sotomayor slide. It would have been extremely hard for them to filibuster; in fact, it’s likely Sotomayor will be confirmed by a wide margin.
Therefore, conservatives would have been smart just to let Obama have his nominee and avoid a political battle. Plus, going along with him on this one would have helped dispel the perception that the GOP is made up of kneejerk obstructionists; sometimes, a little bipartisanship can go a long way.
Instead, conservatives attacked Judge Sotomayor from the start, desperately grasping at one ineffective attack after the next, clearly lacking any semblance of a strategy. Now conservatives are being forced to eat their words as the likelihood of Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation looms.
It looks like Republicans have become completely politically tone-deaf. They obstruct for the sake of obstructing without giving a single thought to whether or not they can succeed; they waste political capital on battles they can never hope to win, and then pat themselves on the back for their self-defeating and ultimately pointless opposition. Once again, the GOP has failed to deliver; no wonder people are abandoning their party in droves.
UPDATE: Hispanics, especially, are abandoning the GOP in droves:
The latest numbers from the nonpartisan Research 2000 for Daily Kos find that only eight percent of Latinos view the [GOP] favorably, while an astonishing 86 percent view it unfavorably.
That’s a real shift from what were already pretty bad numbers from before the Sotomayor nominatino, when 11% of Latinos viewed the GOP favorably, and 79% viewed it unfavorably.
One of the big stories today is that Republicans are realizing that there’s no political percentage in fighting the Sotomayor nomination. It’s striking that Latino opinion about the GOP is dropping so fast, even at a moment when GOP opposition to Sotomayor appears to be flagging, as opposed to intensifying.
This continuing drop among Latinos, coming at a time when many party strategists recognize the party’s desperate need to broaden its appeal, only reminds us that not only are there few apparent upsides in opposing Sotomayor, there are potentially serious costs, too.
[Emphasis mine]
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Race, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Rights | Tags: Constitution, Democrats, Judge Sotomayor, Judiciary, Pappas v Giuliani, Racism, Republicans, Sonia Sotomayor
One of the prevalent anti-Sotomayor talking points on the right is that Judge Sotomayor uses race–not the letter of the law–to decide certain cases. This is the basis of the right’s ‘racism’ and ‘racialist’ attacks on Sotomayor–the assumption that she substitutes her background for the rule of law.
Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that Judge Sotomayor actually does that. Conservatives will point to the Ricci case, where Judge Sotomayor–along with two other justices–agreed with a lower court ruling that the city of New Haven could throw out an aptitude test for promoting firefighters on the grounds that the test they were used was racially biased. But their decision was hardly controversial–they upheld a lower court’s decision that the city of New Haven could correct systematic racial bias.
A more revealing case to look at here is Judge Sotomayor’s dissent in Pappas v. Giuliani. Thomas Pappas was fired from the NYPD when they discovered he was sending racist and anti-Semitic literature through the mail while off-duty. Sotomayor’s colleagues upheld the firing, claiming that Pappas’ racist speech was of public concern and, therefore, interfered with the operations of the NYPD.
But Judge Sotomayor dissented, claiming that the NYPD infringed on Pappas’ freedom of speech by firing him for what he did while off-duty. That’s right–Judge Sonia Sotomayor sided with a white racist on 1st amendment grounds, which hardly sounds like the actions of a ‘racislist’ judge to me.
Of course, we all know that the right’s talking points aren’t grounded in reality. But Pappas v. Giuliani blows a huge hole in conservatives’ attempts to portray Judge Sotomayor as some kind of racist radical or Latino supremecist. Judge Sotomayor is a fair-minded justice who puts the law ahead of everything else. In one case, she sided with a group of minorities; in another, she sided with a white racist. To me, that’s a pattern not of racialism, but of respect for the rule of law.
Filed under: Conservatives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Rights, Terrorism | Tags: Barack Obama, Choice, Daniel James Murray, Democrats, George Tiller, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City Bombing, Radicalism, Republicans, Waco
Authorities have arrested a man who allegedly told bank tellers while cleaning out his savings account in Utah that he was on a mission to kill President Barack Obama.
The Secret Service said Daniel James Murray, 36, was arrested Friday outside a casino in Laughlin, Nev., a gambling town 100 miles from Las Vegas on the Nevada-Arizona line.
[...]
On May 27, as a teller counted out bills no larger than $50, Murray delivered a rambling discourse on the probability of economic and social disorder, ending with “We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States,” a bank employee told the Secret Service.
Very dangerous times:
George Tiller Funeral Attended By Hundreds
[...]
[D]emonstrators showed up from Westboro Baptist Chursh, known for picketing soldiers’ funerals to present its message that their deaths are God’s punishment for Americans’ tolerance of homosexuality.
They held signs such as “God sent the shooter” and “Abortion is bloody murder.”
[All emphasis mine]
The last time we had a Democratic President, the right-wing culture of paranoia gave us Waco, the Oklahoma City Bombing and three dead abortion doctors. Now that we have another Democratic President, it looks like the right-wing culture of paranoia is making a comeback.
People are dying, yet conservatives seem all too content to stoke the fires of right-wing paranoia. My question is, how many people have to die before conservatives reign in their radical wing and tone down their radical rhetoric? How long until we have another tragic event carried out by a conservative activist who took their rhetoric to heart and went just one step too far?
Filed under: Breaking, Conservatives, Government, House, Progressives, Race, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Congress, Fail, Judiciary, Newt Gingrich, Racism, Republicans, Sonia Sotomayor
Newt Gingrich is walking back his smear of Judge Sotomayor as ‘racist’:
My initial reaction was strong and direct — perhaps too strong and too direct. The sentiment struck me as racist and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor’s fitness to serve on the nation’s highest court have been critical of my word choice.
With these critics who want to have an honest conversation, I agree. The word “racist” should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable (a fact which both President Obama and his Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, have since admitted).
[Emphasis mine]
Hear that, Republicans? It’s the sound of your opposition campaign against Judge Sotomayor imploding.
Filed under: 2010 Election, Conservatives, Government, Health Care, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Senate | Tags: 2010, Democrats, Fail, Frank Luntz, Health Care, OH-SEN, Ohio, Republicans, Rob Portman
Ohio’s Republican Senate candidate, Rob Portman, goes extremely off-message talking about the GOP’s health care reform plan:
“I will tell you, I don’t think there is a Republican alternative at this point,” he said. He said he reached that conclusion after talking to Senate leaders and lawmakers about the GOP’s position. “There isn’t one,” he said.
You heard it straight from the elephant’s mouth: the Democrats have a health care reform plan and the Republicans don’t. So not only is the GOP the Party of No, they’re also the Party of No Ideas.
But hey, they have talking points. Because there’s the modern GOP for you, putting hollow messaging over real reform.
No wonder these guys are in the minority.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Media, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Congress, Democrats, Epic Fail, Judiciary, Republicans, SCOTUS, Sonia Sotomayor, Surrender
It looks like that, in the wake of Judge Sotomayor’s accomplished academic and judicial records, her abundance of experience, moderate stances and bipartisan history, the GOP is giving up the fight against her nomination to the Supreme Court:
Top Senate Republican strategists tell POLITICO that, barring unknown facts about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the GOP plans no scorched-earth opposition to her confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.
More than 24 hours after the White House unveiling, no senator has come out in opposition to Sotomayor’s confirmation.
“The sentiment is overwhelming that the Senate should do due diligence but should not make a mountain out of a molehill,” said a top Senate Republican aide. “If there’s no ‘there’ there, we shouldn’t try to create one.”
[...]
However, senators on both sides said they are confident that unless the process takes some startling turn, Sotomayor will be confirmed in plenty of time for the court’s opening on the fabled first Monday in October.
[...]
Republicans’ only hope of derailing Sotomayor would be a filibuster — a move countless Republicans have opposed in the context of judicial nominees. And even if they took that route, they are virtually certain to lose badly.
Republicans have 40 votes in the Senate — and it’s hard to imagine someone like Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) or anyone from a state with big Hispanic population blocking the judge.
[Emphasis mine]
The GOP would have very little power to block Sotomayor even if they had some kind of solid ground upon which to oppose her.
If out-of-context quotes are garbage made-up statistics about ‘reversal rates’ are the most conservatives can lob against a 17-year veteran of the federal bench, then Judge Sotomayor has nothing to worry about.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Race, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Rights | Tags: Courts, Democrats, Judiciary, Racism, Republicans, Sandra Day O'Connor, SCOTUS, Sexism, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court
Let’s debunk some right-wing talking points on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, shall we?
Judge Sotomayor said that the appeals courts make policy! That proves she’s an activist judge!
While it’s true that Judge Sotomayor said:
All of the legal defense funds out there, they are looking for people with court of appeals experience because the court of appeals is where policy is made
She did follow that up with:
I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it.
“She’s not wrong,” said Jeffrey Segal, a professor of law at Stony Brook University. “Of course they make policy… You can, on one hand, say Congress makes the law and the court interprets it. But on the other hand the law is not always clear. And in clarifying those laws, the courts make policy.”
[...]
Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University, was equally dismissive of this emerging conservative talking point. “She was saying something which is the absolute judicial equivalent of saying the sun rises each morning. It is not a controversial proposition at all that the overwhelming quantity of law making work in the federal system is done by the court of appeals… It is thoroughly uncontroversial to anyone other than a determined demagogue.”
[Emphasis mine]
Sotomayor said that Latina judges are better than white male judges! That’s racist!
It’s true that Judge Sotomayor said:
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Actually, the full sentence is:
Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Looks like we’re missing some context here; keep in mind that Judge Sotomayor was discussing race and sex discrimination cases when she made these remarks:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice [Benjamin] Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
[Emphasis mine]
Sounds a lot less controversial when you put everything in context, huh?
Many of Sotomayor’s rulings have been overturned upon appeal, which proves that she’s an inferior judge.
Actually, Judge Sotomayor’s record on reversals is far above average:
Over each of the last several terms, the [Supreme Court] has reversed 75% of the cases that have come before it.
[...]
Sotomayor’s decisions were upheld far more frequently than the norm. Apparently, out of the 380-odd opinions she penned while on the Second Circuit, the Supreme Court granted cert on just six. And of those six, Sotomayor was reversed on only three. That’s a .500 batting average
[Emphasis mine]
So while the Supreme Court reverses 75% of the rulings they review, they have reversed only 50% of Sotomayor’s rulings they reviewed.
Filed under: Conservatives, IOKIYAR, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Craziness, Hypocrisy, Michael Steele, RNC, RNC Chair, Stupidity, Tea Partays
I almost missed this little gem from RNC Chair Michael Steele’s speech yesterday:
While promising a more aggressive approach, Steele also insisted that Republicans will show “class” in countering Obama.
“We are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of President Bush.”
Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of last month’s tax day tea parties, here’s the GOP’s “class” and “dignity”:
I eagerly await either Michael Steele’s explanation of how this constitutes class and dignity, or his full-throated denunciation of the tea party protests in the name of class and dignity.
Of course, in the interest of living, I won’t hold my breath.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Iraq, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Democrats, Incompetence, Intelligence, Iraq, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Speaker Pelosi, Torture
So DC is consumed with trying to figure out what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about torture and when.
Strange, since I thought that the people who committed crimes were more important than the people who heard about them.
Still, what led to this media-created firestorm? First, some Congressional Democrats–Pelosi included–discussed launching a truth commission to determine who was responsible for the authorization/implementation of torture.
Second, the CIA released several documents showing that Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats were briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques” in 2002. There was no indication which techniques were described, nor was there indication of whether Congress was told those techniques were purely hypothetical or being implemented.
Nonetheless, Republicans jumped on the documents of proof that Speaker Pelosi knew about waterboarding in 2002 and was therefore somewhat culpable in the torture coverup. But that conclusion isn’t borne out by the evidence–it makes assumptions about what was in those briefings that aren’t grounded in reality.
The CIA alleged that Congress was told exactly what they were doing; Pelosi contradicted them and said the CIA was misleading the public, just like they had mislead Congress in 2002. Since there are no solid records of what the CIA told Congress–since these were classified intelligence briefings–we don’t know who is telling the truth.
Conservatives are taking the CIA’s side because it’s politically advantageous to them, but it’s not very sensible. It’s hardly as if the CIA is an objective, unbiased player in all this–doesn’t it serve the CIA’s interest to divert attention away from the implementation of torture and onto a political sideshow? I mean, if there was a comprehensive investigation into torture, wouldn’t it put the entire CIA under a microscope? They have a vested interest in clouding up the investigation with political posturing and conflict, since it saves them from having to confront–and be held responsible for–their role in torture.
Plus, the CIA is pulling together records of these briefings from whatever they have lying around from 2002. Remember, the CIA circa 2002 wasn’t a bastion of competence and credibility; that was about the same time they were gathering the faulty intelligence that led to the Iraq War. As much as John Boehner may cry about the poor maligned “intelligence professionals” I don’t think you can give them the benefit of the doubt.
This story is only a few days old and we’re already seeing evidence that the CIA’s recollection of events isn’t accurate. Take this, for instance:
Almost every briefing described in the document — including the September 2002 Pelosi briefing that’s directly at issue — refers to “EITs,” or enhanced interrogation techniques, as a subject that was discussed. But according to a former intelligence professional who has participated in such briefings, that term wasn’t used until at least 2006.
That’s not just an issue of semantics. The former intel professional said that by using the term in the recently compiled document, the CIA was being “disingenuous,” trying to make it appear that the use of such techniques was part of a “formal and mechanical program.” In fact, said the former intel pro, it wasn’t until 2006 that — amid growing concerns about the program among some in the Bush administration — the EIT program was formalized, and the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were properly defined and given a name.
And this:
Rep. David Obey has sent a letter to [CIA Director Leon] Panetta complaining that a staffer identified in the documents as being briefed was in fact denied access to the briefing.
And this:
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who chairs the oversight subcommittee of the House intelligence committee, told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (h/t Democratic Underground):
On our subcommittee we are beginning an inquiry into a situation … initiated by the ranking minority member to look at a situation where the CIA did mislead the Congress … a documented issue of the CIA misleading the Congress.
A Schakowsky spokesman told TPMmuckraker that she was referring to the findings of a CIA inspector general report, portions of which were released last fall, which concluded that the agency had withheld crucial information from Congress and DOJ investigators who were probing whether CIA personnel committed crimes relating to the shooting of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.
[Emphasis added]
And:
April 2002 (two briefings), September 2002: When Bob Graham first asked the CIA when they had briefed him on torture, they gave him a list of four dates, two in April 2002, and two in September 2002. However, when Graham reviewed his famously detailed notes, he discovered he had not attended any briefing on three of those dates (both April dates and one September date). The CIA conceded he was correct on the issue.
[...]
February 4, 2003: The CIA claims that, along with Pat Roberts and two staffers, it briefed John Rockefeller on EITs “in considerable detail” including “how the water board was used.” Rockefeller says, however, that he “was not present and was not later briefed individually by anyone in the intelligence community.”
And finally, from the CIA themselves:
As the agency has pointed out more than once, its list — compiled in response to congressional requests — reflects the records it has. These are notes, memos, and recollections, not transcripts and recordings.
[Emphasis mine]
In short, the CIA hasn’t proven themselves trustworthy in the past and they don’t appear to be very trustworthy on this particular issue.
Let me be clear: this entire issue is nothing more than a political witchhunt. The CIA is doing classic CYA, trying to keep their complicity in the torture debacle from becoming public. The GOP is piggybcking on the CIA’s CYA in order to attack Speaker Pelosi and Congressional Democrats.
They want to drive a wedge between Pelosi and the anti-torture left by trying to mixing Pelosi up into the Bush administration’s torture program, hoping she’ll be forced to justify at least some of it.
They want to throw enough dirt on Pelosi to keep her from launching a truth commission, in case she ends up implicated.
And most of all, they want a scalp. They want to destroy Pelosi’s career, make that the opening salvo in their much dreamed-of political comeback. All the GOP knows to do anymore is drum up a scandal and ride it to political success; it looks like they’re hoping like that particular chapter of their playbook still works.
Let’s not take our eye off the ball. The Bush administration authorized and implemented torture. They broke the law; they need to be held accountable. Whoever may have been told what when isn’t important; who actually justified torture and made it happen is. Don’t let the real criminals get away; don’t let them divert your attention onto trivial political distractions.
Filed under: Conservatives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal | Tags: Epic Fail, Fail, Hypocrisy, Michael Steele, Republicans, RNC, RNC Chair
RNC Chairman Michael Steele just declared that “The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over.”
Over? When did it ever begin?
The way I see it, the GOP has a lot to apologize about; we haven’t heard nearly enough contrition from Republicans to even begin to make up for it.
Heck, I think Michael Steele alone has a fair amount to apologize for; I mean, wasn’t he doing such a poor job that the RNC took away much of his power as Chairman?
UPDATE: As Steele spins out all that happy talk about the Republican Party, keep this in mind:
Today in an interview with Fox News, Steele suggested that if too much of his power is taken away, he may resign:
They can contemplate all they want to, but the reality is if they want a figurehead chairman you can have a figurehead chairman, but it won’t be Michael Steele.
Steele’s threatening to quit, yet we’re supposed to believe the GOP is doing just fine? Please.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Health Care, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Democrats, Health Care, Republicans
One of the newest right-wing talking points in the debate over health care reform is invoking the fear that health care will end up being “rationed.”
Of course, that doesn’t make sense–if the Democratic plan is implemented, people with private insurance will be allowed to keep their current coverage. On the other hand, those without coverage will be able to opt into a public health care option, so I don’t see how providing health care to people without insurance would somehow constitute rationing, but…
More to the point, isn’t health care in America already rationed? I mean, whether or not you even have health insurance depends on where you work/how much money you have; same goes for the quality of coverage you can get.
And insurance companies–being private entities–can deny people coverage for a variety of reasons, such as a preexisting condition; even if you have the means to procure health insurance, you can’t always get it.
And even if you do have health insurance, your insurer can deny your claim for a particular procedure if they so choose. Plus, most health insurance plans involve a copay–you pay for part of your medical care while your insurer pays for the rest. Same typically goes for prescription drugs–most insurance plans will only pay for a certain amount of medication per year, forcing you to pay for the rest if you go over that limit.
Health care isn’t unlimited in America; a variety of different factors determine how much care–if any at all–you can get. In fact, profit motive drives insurance companies to ration care; the less health care they give to the fewest amount of people, the more money they make. Face it, in the United States insurance companies get rich by rationing out health care as strictly as they can.
That’s why we need some kind of public option–because private insurance companies can’t afford to cover everyone and provide them the health care they need. But I wouldn’t expect intellectually-honest, worthwhile arguments against health care reform from the Party of No, who were telling us just a few years ago that there was no crisis and that America had the best health care system in the world.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: CIA, Congress, Democrats, George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Shame, Spin, Torture
Recently, CIA released memos indicating that Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker of the House, was briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques” in 2002.
What those memos don’t indicate is which particular “enhanced interrogation techniques” Pelosi was told about, or whether waterboarding was among them. Those memos also don’t indicate whether those techniques were described as something that American forces were using/planning to use, or whether they were described to Pelosi and other members of Congress as purely hypothetical.
Right now, it’s a he-said she-said conflict between the CIA and Pelosi, and who you give more credibility to depends on where you fall politically.
Regardless, Republicans are pretending that, since Pelosi was briefed in some capacity about hypothetical “enhanced interrogation techniques” that neither she nor any other Democrat has any standing left to criticize the Bush administration or Republicans for the use of torture.
Even if you assume that members of Congress had some idea of what techniques were being implemented, this is still a false equivalence. Apples and oranges. Because there is a huge difference between people who justified and implemented torture and people who were simply told about it.
This is the standard GOP technique when they’re caught in some kind of scandal: claim the Democrats are also culpable in order to diffuse the eventual fallout.
Republicans want to shut down the torture debate because they know that it’s going to end poorly for them. A lot of politicos with vested interests in seeing the investigation end before it even begins are out there making these false equivalencies are trying to poison the well.
UPDATE: And here’s the right’s new talking point: they’re claiming that the government has documents proving definitively that torture works, but the Obama administration is refusing to declassify them in order to make the GOP look bad.
I don’t know whether such documents exist or not, but something tells me they don’t–or, at least, they don’t say what Cheney & co. are claiming they do.
Remember, the Bush administration were masters of the strategic leak, declassifying memos or leaking information at opportune moments in order to provide political cover. If they had smoking gun documents that proved torture worked, why didn’t they declassify them when they still had the power to? Even if they waited until Bush’s very last day in office, if those documents didn’t contain information that needed to be kept top secret, why didn’t they release them to the public and vindicate themselves once and for all?
And here’s the thing–even if those documents don’t exist, it doesn’t matter for Cheney and the Republicans; they can continue to claim they do in order to portray the Obama administration as acting in bad faith. The administration can’t prove that nonexistent documents don’t exist, so the Republicans can simply spin any claims that those documents aren’t there as attempts to keep those documents covered up.
I don’t think the GOP is hoping to prove that torture worked; I think they’re simply trying to taint whatever investigation may be launched. Their claims about secret smoking gun documents dovetail nicely with their allegations that Pelosi knew something and their calls for a “full investigation”; conservatives are trying to taint any investigation into torture as inherently politically-biased.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Health Care, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Congress, Democrats, Eric Cantor, Fail, Frank Luntz, GOP Playbook, Health Care Reform, Lies, Republicans
Mike Allen gives us a page out of the GOP’s playbook on their effort to block health care reform:
Here are some suggested arguments for Republicans that [GOP pollster Frank] Luntz calls “clear winners”:
—“It could lead to the government setting standards of care, instead of doctors who really know what’s best.”
—“It could lead to the government rationing care, making people stand in line and denying treatment like they do in other countries with national healthcare.”
-“President Obama wants to put the Washington bureaucrats in charge of healthcare. I want to put the medical professionals in charge, and I want patients as an equal partner.”
Luntz’s 10 pointers in “The Language of Healthcare 2009”:
(1) Humanize your approach. Abandon and exile ALL references to the “healthcare system.” From now on, healthcare is about people. Before you speak, think of the three components of tone that matter most: Individualize. Personalize. Humanize.
(2) Acknowledge the “crisis” or suffer the consequences. If you say there is no healthcare crisis, you give your listener permission to ignore everything else you say. It is a credibility killer for most Americans. A better approach is to define the crisis in your terms. “If you’re one of the millions who can’t afford healthcare, it is a crisis.” Better yet, “If some bureaucrat puts himself between you and your doctor, denying you exactly what you need, that’s a crisis.” And the best: “If you have to wait weeks for tests and months for treatment, that’s a healthcare crisis.”
(3) “Time” is the government healthcare killer. As Mick Jagger once sang, “Time is on Your Side.” Nothing else turns people against the government takeover of healthcare than the realistic expectation that it will result in delayed and potentially even denied treatment, procedures and/or medications. “Waiting to buy a car or even a house won’t kill you. But waiting for the healthcare you need – could. Delayed care is denied care.”
(4) The arguments against the Democrats’ healthcare plan must center around “politicians,” “bureaucrats,” and “Washington” … not the free market, tax incentives, or competition. Stop talking economic theory and start personalizing the impact of a government takeover of healthcare. They don’t want to hear that you’re opposed to government healthcare because it’s too expensive (any help from the government to lower costs will be embraced) or because it’s anti-competitive (they don’t know about or care about current limits to competition). But they are deathly afraid that a government takeover will lower their quality of care – so they are extremely receptive to the anti-Washington approach. It’s not an economic issue. It’s a bureaucratic issue.
(5) The healthcare denial horror stories from Canada & Co. do resonate, but you have to humanize them. You’ll notice we recommend the phrase “government takeover” rather than “government run” or “government controlled” It’s because too many politician say “we don’t want a government run healthcare system like Canada or Great Britain” without explaining those consequences. There is a better approach. “In countries with government run healthcare, politicians make YOUR healthcare decisions. THEY decide if you’ll get the procedure you need, or if you are disqualified because the treatment is too expensive or because you are too old. We can’t have that in America.”
(6) Healthcare quality = “getting the treatment you need, when you need it.” That is how Americans define quality, and so should you. Once again, focus on the importance of timeliness, but then add to it the specter of “denial.” Nothing will anger Americans more than the chance that they will be denied the healthcare they need for whatever reason. This is also important because it is an attribute of a government healthcare system that the Democrats CANNOT offer. So say it. “The plan put forward by the Democrats will deny people treatments they need and make them wait to get the treatments they are allowed to receive.”
(7) “One-size-does-NOT-fit-all.” The idea that a “committee of Washington bureaucrats” will establish the standard of care for all Americans and decide who gets what treatment based on how much it costs is anathema to Americans. Your approach? Call for the “protection of the personalized doctor-patient relationship.” It allows you to fight to protect and improve something good rather than only fighting to prevent something bad.
(8) WASTE, FRAUD, and ABUSE are your best targets for how to bring down costs. Make no mistake: the high cost of healthcare is still public enemy number one on this issue – and why so many Americans (including Republicans and conservatives) think the Democrats can handle healthcare better than the GOP. You can’t blame it on the lack of a private market; in case you missed it, capitalism isn’t exactly in vogue these days. But you can and should blame it on the waste, fraud, and abuse that is rampant in anything and everything the government controls.
(9) Americans will expect the government to look out for those who truly can’t afford healthcare. Here is the perfect sentence for addressing cost and the limited role for government that wins you allies rather than enemies: “A balanced, common sense approach that provides assistance to those who truly need it and keeps healthcare patient-centered rather than government-centered for everyone.”
(10) It’s not enough to just say what you’re against. You have to tell them what you’re for. It’s okay (and even necessary) for your campaign to center around why this healthcare plan is bad for America. But if you offer no vision for what’s better for America, you’ll be relegated to insignificance at best and labeled obstructionist at worst. What Americans are looking for in healthcare that your “solution” will provide is, in a word, more: “more access to more treatments and more doctors…with less interference from insurance companies and Washington politicians and special interests.”
[Emphasis mine]
The GOP used to thrive on messaging memos like these, so expect to hear these talking points repeated ad nauseum by nearly every Republican politican and conservative commentator under the sun.
Problem is, this memo does nothing but craft and take down an elaborate strawman instead of commenting on the Democrats’ actual health care reform plan.
In reality, Democrats are proposing a program that would help Americans without health insurance buy it from the same private corporations that everyone else gets their health insurance from. There is also a public option that would let people choose to either retain their private health insurance or opt to enroll in a government plan. Note the use of the words “option”, “choose” and “opt” in that last sentence–nobody would ever be forced into the public option, contrary to what the Luntz memo suggests.
And keep in mind that the GOP has no alternative plan. They can attack the Democratic health care reform proposal all they’d like, but America is facing a health care crisis; without a viable alternative plan, all the talking points in the world won’t do the GOP any good.
Hell, even the GOP’s new rebranding committee doesn’t have a plan:
Responding to [small business owner Ed] McKee’s question concerning the dramatic health care cost hike, [House Minority Whip Eric] Cantor said “that should be a sure sign we ought to be promoting anything that can try to bring health care costs down.” But rather than offering any ideas or policy plans for addressing health care costs, Cantor launched into a set of attacks on the health systems in the UK and Canada, saying any reform should not reflect a “government takeover.” The National Council’s policy paper on health care is similarly vague and lacks a single policy plan.
Cantor is not offering any of the promised “new policy ideas.” Instead, he is rehashing tired straw man arguments against the single-payer systems of Canada and the UK. The Obama administration has consistently opposed a single-payer program.
