The Cost of Offshore Drilling

The first photo is a Greenpeace ad. Both photos come from a Huffington Post slide show.

Drill, Baby, Drill

Drill, baby, drill!  Worst case scenario:  we won't have shrimp...or oysters...or Gulf Coast marshlands...or...

Ed Stein, Rocky Mountain News

Sarah Palin Is a F**king Retard

Just some subtle satire...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

A Spending Freeze?

I'm trying hard not to buy into all this voter anger directed at Obama.  I'm trying to be optimistic that he is going to learn from his first year mistakes and the economy is going to improve and the next three years are going to be better, but a spending freeze?  That's what you're going with?  A spending freeze?

To get the proper level of disdain I feel about this proposal, watch this short clip of Jim Mora.  Every time he says "playoffs" replace it with the words "a spending freeze."




Rachel Maddow lays out how Obama and the Democrats have driven all the way down the field to the one-yard line and are now ready to punt..

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And by all means, yes, if you're going to have a spending freeze, don't dare mess with the bloated Pentagon budget. Jeez!

Obama Responds to the Supreme Court

In a followup to my previous post, President Obama devoted this week's weekly radio and Internet address to discussing the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, vowing that "as long as I am your president, I'll never stop fighting to make sure that the most powerful voice in Washington belongs to you."

Transcript:

One of the reasons I ran for President was because I believed so strongly that the voices of everyday Americans, hardworking folks doing everything they can to stay afloat, just weren’t being heard over the powerful voices of the special interests in Washington. And the result was a national agenda too often skewed in favor of those with the power to tilt the tables.

In my first year in office, we pushed back on that power by implementing historic reforms to get rid of the influence of those special interests. On my first day in office, we closed the revolving door between lobbying firms and the government so that no one in my administration would make decisions based on the interests of former or future employers. We barred gifts from federal lobbyists to executive branch officials. We imposed tough restrictions to prevent funds for our recovery from lining the pockets of the well-connected, instead of creating jobs for Americans. And for the first time in history, we have publicly disclosed the names of lobbyists and non-lobbyists alike who visit the White House every day, so that you know what’s going on in the White House – the people’s house.

We’ve been making steady progress. But this week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence. This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. By a 5-4 vote, the Court overturned more than a century of law – including a bipartisan campaign finance law written by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold that had barred corporations from using their financial clout to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates in the crucial closing weeks.

This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way – or to punish those who don’t. That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time. Even foreign corporations may now get into the act.

I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.

(more of the transcript and the video of the address after the jump)

A FRESH HELL or How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America Democracy

Image via Wikipedia

My friend Carly likes to discuss politics with me and sent me an email Thursday night with the subject line, "And what about this FRESH HELL?"  She was talking about the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, and FRESH HELL (in all caps) is one of the best descriptions I've heard so far on the decision.  The conservative justices on the Roberts Court in their infinite wisdom...oops, sorry, that should be infinitesimal wisdom...decided that biggest problem with American politics was that there just wasn't enough corporate money involved.

You see, in today's Orwellian world, money is speech and corporations are people with all the rights you and I enjoy with none of the responsibilities, and the conservative majority, those damned judicial activists, went far beyond the limited legal questions of the case before them and overturned decades of legislative restrictions on the role of corporations in political campaigns, including a large part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act that the same court, albeit with a different lineup, declared constitutional just six years ago in McConnell v. FEC, and even broadened the scope of the case to include constitutional questions raised by a 1990 case (Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce), which they also managed to overturn. The decision also threatens many state laws.

In the minority dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens declared, "Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law."  Later, he declared, "Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech."  Perhaps that's next.  Stevens concluded his dissent with...

"At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

For a fascinating look at how far this court overreached and how badly they managed to subvert American democracy call up the .pdf file of the decision and skip ahead to page 88 where Justice Stevens's dissent begins, then read until you feel your head start to explode.  If you're not that ambitious or masochistic, the Progressive Review has a very small excerpt.

The Roberts court struck down a law dating back to 1947 which prohibits corporations and labor unions from using money from their general treasuries to produce and air campaign aids in congressional and presidential races, and struck down a McCain-Feingold provision that prohibits corporations and unions from airing campaign ads in the 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election. They did manage to retain a century-old ban on donations from corporations from their general treasuries directly to federal candidates and upheld disclosure requirements on campaign activities.

So why is this such a big deal?  In 2008, the Fortune 100 companies amassed $600 billion in profits.  Just 1% of that enormous total ($6 billion) would double the amount spent by Obama, McCain, and every candidate for the House and Senate in 2008 combined.  The Roberts Court expressed concern that the free speech rights of corporations were being suppressed, but even with the restrictions that were in place, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce still managed to spend $123 million in lobbying efforts in 2009, the financial sector invested $5 billion in influence peddling in the past decade, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) spent $26 million in 2009 alone to influence health care reform, with the individual drug companies ponying up tens of millions more in the effort.

What About Sarah Palin?

On 60 Minutes this weekend they ran a story that delved into Game Changer, a new book on the 2008 presidential campaign by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.  In "Revelations from the Campaign," they talk to Halperin and Heilemann and focus on the Republican side of the campaign, specifically, how did they decide on Palin for vice president.  Funny stuff...


Watch CBS News Videos Online

I also got a kick out of the bit about Senator O'Biden.

Another Health Care Hurdle

Amazingly, that 60-vote bloc of Democrats and Independents hung together through a series of cloture votes and the Senate was finally able to pass their version of a health care bill. The final bill only needed 50 votes, but, in a rare Christmas eve sunrise session, the Senate voted for the bill 60-39. Every Reactionary voted no -- they'd probably kick anyone who voted aye out of the party.  The final vote took about 15 minutes, the entire session lasted about 30, then lawmakers headed out of town.

The senator that didn't show up for the vote was Jim Bunning (R-Ky). The Louisville Courier-Journal says this "caps a year of unusual incidents involving the senator." Bunning has missed 21 votes this month, one more than the ailing 92-year-old Robert Byrd.

If you slept through your high school civics class, we now have two versions of a health care bill; one from the House and one from the Senate, and there are significant differences that will have to be reconciled.  The House bill is better, but the final bill will look more like the Senate bill to make it through the 60-vote gauntlet again.  The House is back in session on January 12; the Senate on January 19.  President Obama would like to have a bill to sign before the State of the Union address, but final passage might slip on into February.

Paul Krugman weighs in...

If progressives want more, they’ll have to make changing those Senate rules a priority. They’ll also have to work long term on electing a more progressive Congress. But, meanwhile, the bill the Senate has just passed, with a few tweaks — I’d especially like to move the start date up from 2014, if that’s at all possible — is more or less what the Democratic leadership can get.

And for all its flaws and limitations, it’s a great achievement. It will provide real, concrete help to tens of millions of Americans and greater security to everyone. And it establishes the principle — even if it falls somewhat short in practice — that all Americans are entitled to essential health care.

Many people deserve credit for this moment. What really made it possible was the remarkable emergence of universal health care as a core principle during the Democratic primaries of 2007-2008 — an emergence that, in turn, owed a lot to progressive activism. (For what it’s worth, the reform that’s being passed is closer to Hillary Clinton’s plan than to President Obama’s). This made health reform a must-win for the next president. And it’s actually happening.

So progressives shouldn’t stop complaining, but they should congratulate themselves on what is, in the end, a big win for them — and for America.

Related articles

• Democrat healthcare support holds up | Michael Tomasky (guardian.co.uk)
• White House Does Not Expect Conference Bill Before State Of The Union Speech (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Sen. Kennedy Remembered in Health Debate (time.com)
• Congress Raises Debt Ceiling to $12.4 Trillion (abcnews.go.com)

Rob Rogers

The Cost of Dying

60 Minutes had an excellent segment Sunday on "The Cost of Dying" -- how Medicare (and by extension, we the taxpayers) spent $50 billion, more than the budget for the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education, on end-of-life treatment, doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of a patient's life.

They're talking about people with terminal illnesses whose lives are prolonged in ICUs at a cost of about $10,000 a day.  That might sound crass, but, in many cases, it's treatment that doesn't do much good, that only delays an inevitable death.

"Families cannot imagine there could be anything worse than their loved one dying. But in fact, there are things worse. Most generally, it's having someone you love die badly," (Dr. Ira) Byock (of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.) said.

Asked what he means by "die badly," Byock told Kroft, "Dying suffering. Dying connected to machines. I mean, denial of death at some point becomes a delusion, and we start acting in ways that make no sense whatsoever. And I think that's collectively what we're doing."

A vast majority of Americans say they want to die at home, but 75 percent die in a hospital or a nursing home.

We've heard all the diatribes from the tea-baggers -- rationing, death panels, and pulling the plug on grandma -- and thus this topic has become off-limits, but...

Multiple studies have concluded that most patients and their families are not even familiar with end-of-life options and things like living wills, home hospice and pain management.

"The real problem is that many of the patients that are being treated aggressively, if you ask them, they would prefer less aggressive care. They would prefer to be cared for at home. They'd prefer to go to hospice. If they were given a choice. But we don't adequately give them a choice," (Dr. Elliott) Fisher (of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy) said.

"At some point, most doctors know that a patient's not likely to get better," Kroft remarked.

"Absolutely," Fisher agreed. "Sometimes there's a good conversation. Often there's not. You know, patients are left alone to sort of figure it out themselves."

Read the story or watch the video.  There are also two short web extra videos, "At Home, At Peace" and "Comfort and Costs."

Oops!

If you're hoping for meaningful health care reform, you've got to like this story.  Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina recently sent out a mailer to voters in the state urging them to send an enclosed pre-printed, postage-paid card to Senator Kay Hagen asking her to oppose any government-run health care program that would compete with private insurers.  The punch line?  They sent out this mailer at the same time that they sent out a notice to customers that their premiums would be increased by an average of 11% next year.

The Raleigh News and Observer picks up the story...

Indignant Blue Cross customers have rebelled against the insurer's message, complaining that their premium dollars have funded such a campaign.

They've hit the Internet in a flurry of e-mails to friends and neighbors throughout the state. They've called Hagan's office to voice support for a public option. They've marked through the Blue Cross message on their postcards to instead vouch support, then dropped them in the mail -- in at least one case taped to a brick -- to be paid on Blue Cross' dime. Or dimes...

Lew Borman, a Blue Cross spokesman, said he wasn't sure how many people got the flier urging them to contact Hagan, but he said the mailing relied on voter registration records, not a customer list.

Since the company controls more than half of the state's health insurance market, there was unavoidable overlap.

Borman declined to reveal how much money the insurer paid for the mailing. Blue Cross is a nonprofit, so its finances are not as open as public companies.

He acknowledged the timing was unfortunate, coming as the firm typically sends its annual notices about rate increases. But he said the two mailings were coincidental, hinged to current events in Washington.

"We said from the beginning we were going to be involved and would tell North Carolinians what kind of impact the health-care proposals would have, and that's what we've been doing," Borman said.

Jenny Warburg, a freelance photojournalist in Durham, said she wishes she could switch insurance carriers over the issue, but no other company will cover her.

So she's stuck, and that makes her even madder.

"You're over a barrel," she said. "You have no choice."

And that, she said, is exactly what Blue Cross is eager to protect.

Cross-posted at The Blue Voice

Coming Soon to a Chain E-Mail Near You!

You've got to love the lunatics that have taken over the asylum that is today's conservative movement -- for the entertainment value they provide, if nothing else.  The latest meme, that was picked up by Rush and the "talent" (their word, not mine) at Fox Nation and is coming to you soon in the form of a chain e-mail, concerns President Obama's college thesis -- the one that trashes the constitution and capitalism.  The money quote that had the lunatics up in arms...

"The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

Michael Ledeen at PajamasMedia was the first to pick up on this with a blog post.  Quoting (and linking) to Brian Lancaster at the Jumping in Pools blog, Ledeen was almost hysterical...

That’s quite an indictment, even for an Ivy League undergraduate. I wonder if the prof–and I’d like to know who the prof was–made an appropriate marginal comment, something about historical context, about the Constitution’s revolutionary status in the history of freedom, and about the separation of powers in order to make the creation of any “shackles” as difficult as possible.

Maybe instead of fuming about words that Rush Limbaugh never uttered, the paladins of the free press might ask the president about words that he did write. Maybe he’d like to parse “the so-called Founders,” for example. I’d like to know what he thinks of those words today. And what about the rest of the thesis?

According the story on the Jumping in Pools blog entitled "Obama College Thesis: 'Constitution Inherently Flawed'," Time Magazine "reporter" Joe Klein was looking into Obama's academic records for an upcoming article when he ran across the thesis entitled "Aristocracy Reborn."  He was only allowed to see the first ten pages of the 44-page thesis.  The first inkling most people had that the story might not be true was when Joe Klein (JokeLine to most of us) said, "Huh?" (That might not be an exact quote, but is close enough.)

The Jumping in Pools blog is written by one Matthew Avitabile, whom PolitiFact describes as a "22-year-old grad student in upstate New York."  Occasionally, he practices a journalistic technique commonly known as "making shit up," which is becoming more and more popular on the right.  He puts together a fake news story and runs with it with only the tag "satire" to indicate that the story might not be on the up-and-up.  I don't think this is a malicious thing.  I think he's trying to emulate The Onion or Andy Borowitz, but doesn't quite have the humor thing down yet on a consistent basis.  Although his story "Kanye West: I Had a Gluten Overdose" was fairly humorous.  Some other recent "satire" tagged stories are "HHS to Vaccinate All Schoolchildren for Swine Flu," "Obama Considering Turning Off Flame at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for New 'Green' Initiative," and "Nine-Year-Old Forcefully Removed from Town Hall Meeting after Question."  So guess which other story on his blog also has the "satire" tag.  That's right.  The one about the Obama thesis.

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times-Free Press

The Buckets by Greg Cravens

Candorville by Darrin Bell

A look at what happens when a tea-bagger, complete with a scythe representing "death panels" and a birth certificate marking him as a "birther," throws his back out...

Protect Insurance Companies PSA

Funny or Die puts a fresh spin on health care reform with this public service announcement...

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

"Rubbing the Sore"

I didn't care too much for "Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?," Time Magazine's latest cover story by David Von Drehle.  I don't think it did a very good job of answering the question posed in the title.  But I did like this little excerpt...

We tell ourselves a tale in America, and you can read it in Latin on the back of a buck: E pluribus unum. Many people from many lands, made one in a patriotic forge. And there's truth in that story — it conjures powerful pictures in the theater of our national mind. But it can also be misleading. Lots of Americans can't stand one another, don't trust each other and are willing — even eager — to believe the worst about one another. This story is as old as the gun used by Vice President Aaron Burr to kill his political rival Alexander Hamilton. And it's as new as the $1 million–plus in fresh campaign contributions heaped on Republican Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina after he hollered "You lie!" at the President during a joint session of Congress. Anger and suspicion ebb and flow through our history, from the anti-Catholic musings of the 19th century Know-Nothing Party to the truthers and birthers of today.

We're in a flood stage, and who's to blame? The answer is like the estimates of the size of the crowd in Washington: Whom do you trust? Either the corrupt, communist-loving traitors on the left are causing this, or it's the racist, greedy warmongers on the right, or maybe the dishonest, incompetent, conniving media, which refuse to tell the truth about whomever you personally happen to despise.

But we can all agree that — no matter where it comes from — rubbing the sore has become a lucrative business.

Apparently Alternet liked the article even less than I did.
Salon has an interesting article about "the man who changed Glenn Beck's life."

Half-Baked Political Analysis

Politically, last week was pretty strange with most of the news centered around two presidential speeches. On Tuesday, President Obama gave a back-to-school speech (which struck me as odd since the kiddies around here have been back at school for weeks now). The next day, the president gave his health care address before a joint session of Congress.

The hysterical reactions of the president's detractors before, during and after both speeches only served to make the president seem more...well, presidential, in comparison. The overreaction of the political right to the back-to-school speech was especially laughable. The fringe that can't decide if Obama is a socialist or a Nazi or a closet Muslim born in Kenya were vehemently declaring that Obama was trying to indoctrinate our impressionable schoolchildren. The whole thing centered around a poorly worded lesson plan in which children were asked to write letters to themselves on how they could help the president. At least that was the only halfway coherent objection I ever heard about the whole thing.

What did they think the president wanted them to help with? That was never fully articulated, but if Obama wanted it, it had to be bad. When the president gave a speech in which he basically said, "Study hard, stay in school," the whole hullabaloo made the loons seem even more loon-like than usual.

I'm not sure the health care speech was the "game changer" the Democrats are claiming. There was a bump in the polls and people who watched with an open mind were impressed, but too much attention was focused on Joe Wilson and Republicans behaving badly and not enough on what the president actually said.

Senator Edward Kennedy Dies

I was flipping through my Google Reader feeds and the news broke around me that Senator Edward Kennedy has died. From ABC News (where I saw it first, via memeorandum)

Sen. Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77.

The man known as the "liberal lion of the Senate" had fought a more than year-long battle with brain cancer, and according to his son had lived longer with the disease than his doctors expected him to.

"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," the Kennedy family said in a statement. "He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it."

It's a strange reaction to the passing of a person I don't really know, like the passing of a favorite uncle. I've always admired Senator Kennedy. I saw him as a tireless public servant, working hard in many key legislative battles all the way back to the Civil Rights Act. He was always fighting the good fight on such issues as equal rights, education and, yes, health care legislation.