The NY-09

Image credit: NationalAtlas.gov

The results are in for the special election in New York's 9th Congressional District, the one formerly occupied by Anthony Weiner until he was told to resign by the Democratic House "leadership". It's not good if you're a Democratic Party partisan:

[T]onight we have another body blow to [the] Democratic Party and it is a VERY bad one. Losing this seat, at the heart of New York City, home to so much party history, will be terrible. Weprin’s GOP opponent Turner effectively turned the race into a referendum on Obama, his weakness on the economy and smeared POTUS on being “weak” on Israel. And it appears to have worked.

Progressive Notes: Race Called for Turner in NY-09 in Disaster for Dems

The Associated Press page for the election shows at this time (11:50 PM PDT) that Turner is ahead by almost 5,000 votes, and that the percentages look to be 54-46. The Socialist Workers' Party candidate received only 277 votes, so he was not a factor.

If there's anything that says "I am a pathetic excuse for a political party leader", it's forcing out a member of your own party for an offense that's little more than a bad joke, begging the people whom he was doing a good job of representing for money to replace him with a party drone in what should have been a safe district, and then losing by eight points.

Well, maybe this does. If you look at who among the Democrats in Congress have been investigated for “ethics” problems lately, you notice that just about all of them were people who spoke badly of the leadership‘s work on health care "reform". Eric Massa was forced out over making inappropriate overtures to a congressional staffer. Maxine Waters was supposedly being investigated for some vague sort of conflict of interest that turned out (surprise!) to be nothing at all. Pete Stark was investigated for a similarly insubstantial thing. Weiner was forced out for e-mailing a photo of his penis to consenting adults. None of them did anything that really merited more than censure, and in Waters and Stark’s case there appears to have been nothing at all. Yet Weiner and Massa were both forced out, and in Massa's case it was only the appearance of a Tea Party candidate that saved that district from going Republican, too.

When those people were under investigation, and yet Pelosi took impeachment off the table for Bush (and Obama, too, effectively), I think it just showed how little accountability means to the Democrats in DC. It's nothing more than a hammer to use on people who get out of line. It also shows how little being in control of Congress means. They've decreased their chances by forcing out two congressmen, and trying to embarrass two others for petty political considerations.

I’m hoping that someone does an after-election poll similar to the one done by Democracy For America after the loss in the Massachusetts Senate race. In that one, the two things that turned off potential Democratic voters were:

1. the economy
2. the health care bill

I warned at the time that this was a portent, as did others. It didn’t do any good, though. They just passed the crappy health care "reform" bill that the MA voters didn’t like, then they punted on the economy. Jane Hamsher commissioned those polls on a few Blue Dog congressmen that said that they were in trouble because of the economy and the lousy health care reform bill, and all the “experts” could do was tell us how flawed those polls were. Then they lost big in 2010, and all the same people are still in positions of leadership. But to hear these guys talk about it, I and all those other people who saw all that coming are the idiots.

So, I’d like to see another of those polls. I hope someone has the nerve to commission one this time. I bet that the voters’ first problem will be with the economy. Health care might not be the second-biggest issue, but it will be in one of the principal areas where the Obama Administration has been such a huge failure – the wars, the perpetual state of fear, the failure to regulate the banks. They’ve given us voters plenty to choose from.

The Audacity Of Dopes, Revisited

Caption: President Obama, and another shuttered factory. This time, the factory was the Amweld plant in Niles, Ohio, according to the photographer. There's another photo in that series asserting that 102 jobs were lost when it closed. Given the building's size, I suspect this is true.

Image credit: Official Presidential portrait (left), Bernard Pollack (aficio) (right)

If you want to understand why I think that the Democrats in DC are completely useless these days, you just have to look at these two stories.

The first, courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

The full details are not in yet. But it appears that Nancy Pelosi has come to an agreement with current Majority Whip James Clyburn that will have him taking a yet-to-be-named number three position in the Democratic House leadership in the 112th Congress.
...
In other words, the musical chairs crisis created by the fact that there are four leadership slots in the majority and three in the minority has been solved by creating a fourth slot in minority too. Ingenious. It sounds like Charlie Rangel gets his wish.

The Deal Is Cut

Rather than choose to remove at least one of their ineffectual leaders, the Democrats have instead decided to add another one. Anyone who doesn't recognize that this will end up diminishing all three of the original positions, and create more confusion among the ranks, hasn't been in an organization afflicted with too many "leaders".

My position on the whole "should Pelosi be Minority Leader, or Hoyer" question was, essentially, why choose? Get rid of both of them. The sad fact is that those two screwed the pooch every chance they had. Pelosi's taking impeachment off the table back in 2006 probably did more to diminish the constitutional role of Congress than any other single decision by a congressional leader in the last hundred years. If you're the leader of the legislature, you never take impeachment off the table. Impeachment is the only way Congress has of assuring that the President does what Congress tells him to via the laws they pass. That's the system, and Nancy Pelosi took a dump on it.

Hoyer, while on record supporting impeachment, sort of, hasn't done Democrats any favors, either. His conservative political philosophy is one of the things that have held Democrats back these last few years.

It was time for new blood in the leadership, in other words, and the Democrats didn't take the opportunity. Just take this as one more opportunity that the Democrats have squandered.

The second story is, if possible, even sadder, because it involves what's happened to the Executive Branch. Paul Krugman explains:

I’m not the first person to make this point, but those who are defending the deficit commission on the grounds that there are some potentially good ideas in there are missing what the purpose of the commission was supposed to be.
...
what on earth are people who say things like, “This proposal can be a starting point for discussion” thinking? We’ve been discussing and discussing, ad nauseam; the commission was supposed to provide a finishing point for discussion. Instead, it produced a PowerPoint that is one part stuff that has long been on the table, one part conservative wish-list, and one part just weirdly ill-considered.

The kindest thing we can do now is pretend the whole thing never happened.

The Soft Bigotry of Low Deficit Commission Expectations

For my part, how anyone could have expected anything but uselessness out of this commission, after President Obama stacked it with a bunch of "free market" morons who, together, represent about zero ability to come up with either compromises or good solutions, is beyond me. And that's what happened. Obama deliberately chose these people. It wasn't a choice forced on him by anyone. I was thinking of writing an article about how Obama was a "free market" ideologue from way back in his days at the University of Chicago, only to be reminded that I wrote such an article a year and a half ago:

President Obama has clearly embraced these notions about free markets, as his continued support of [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner demonstrates. He seems to think that there's nothing wrong that can't be fixed by a new coat of paint. As long as this continues to be his opinion, he will continue to rely on the same dopes who broke the economy in the first place to fix it. As a consequence, we will make little or no progress in fixing the economy.

And I'll be finding more closed factories to put next to Obama's picture.

The Audacity Of Dopes

Nothing has changed since then, except that Larry Summers has left for greener pastures, which I'd say was a good financial decision for someone with money tied up in the shadow banking industry these days. There certainly has been no purge of the free market dopes at the White House.

Yet, to this day it's not hard to read opinions by supposedly in-the-know people saying that President Obama should just buck up and resist the Republicans and their scary free market ideology. The sad fact is, this is who Obama is. He's not capitulating to the Republicans. He agrees with them on this, and that's not likely to change until someone makes him. That's why I wrote this a year and a half ago.

I'm not all that smart - at least, I'm not all that smart about politics or economics. Yet this is as plain as day to me, and I'm still waiting for these people to catch up. That people who ought to know better don't seem to is utterly astonishing. It makes you think that they don't want to see.

And until they catch up, I don't see why the DC Democrats will.

UPDATE: Speaking of leadership failures, Robert Reich pointed out another one yesterday, the G-20 Summit that concluded:

The three-page communique that also emerged from the session brims with bromides about the importance of “rebalancing” the global economy, “coordinating” policies, and refraining from “competitive devaluations.”

All nice, but not a single word of agreement from China about revaluating the yuan, or from the United States about refraining from further moves by the Fed to flood the U.S. economy with money (thereby reducing interest rates, causing global investors to look elsewhere for higher returns, and lowering the value of the dollar).

China and the U.S. are the only big players in the currency game. And with neither of them stepping up to bat, the game is in dangerous territory.

The Failure of the G-20 Summit

This one can't be blamed on Obama exclusively, nor even the federal government as a whole, but our own foolish economic policy hasn't inspired the rest of the world, either. As long as our country is run by self-centered elites who don't even care what happens to our economy in the long run, it's hard to expect the rest of the world to do otherwise.

Has Anything Interesting Happened?

Image credit: St. Bernard Rescue Foundation, Inc.

Yes, I haven't been writing much lately. You'd think I would, what with the showdown with Wall Street that's looming, if you believe what you read in the press these days. Then there's all that stuff going on in Afghanistan.

The truth is, I just don't see much point. The Democrats are pretending they're going to reform the finance industry. The Republicans are pretending that what the Democrats want to do will destroy our civilization for reasons that have nothing to do with why it will actually destroy it. The press, often as not, will breathlessly report the press releases and quotes of the major players, none of whom gives a shit about the rest of us.

It's a replay of the health care "reform" effort, and it will probably play out the same way, or worse. The end result is that nothing will really be changed, but lots of people who ought to know better will claim that they feel better already. On that front, Murray Waas wrote yesterday about how the insurance companies are continuing to do the same things they were doing. Ian Welsh explained yesterday how that will likely continue. Too bad I didn't see that coming. Oh wait, I did see it. Too bad no one wanted to believe it.

As for Afghanistan, it's costing so much that California could balance its budget if it were allowed to keep that money. Nothing of any use will happen there for all the money we're spending.

The common thread in all this, of course, is the complete unreality that pervades the process. The reason was summed up nicely by The Nation's Chris Hayes in this video interview with Lawrence O'Donnell:



Like the man said, DC is so corrupt that it can't help but do the wrong thing. The only truly extraordinary thing about Hayes' observation is that it was made on a television news show. Glenn Greenwald adds:

Beltway denizens play various assigned roles -- this one reads from the Journalist script, that one poses as a legislator, this one's a Democrat and that one's a Republican, the one over there is a regulator, this one is a lobbyist, etc. -- but they all feed from the same trough, and their sole allegiance is to their decadent, insular, endlessly nepotistic, and deservedly dying pseudo-aristocratic culture, and to one another.

Various Matters

To which I'd add the supposed progressive organizations that continue to send me ridiculous e-mails like this one from Blue America yesterday:

I can't think of a better House Speaker in my lifetime than Nancy Pelosi. It would be a real tragedy to see all her efforts to move the country in a more progressive direction, and to move the government in a more transparent and ethical direction, go down the drain in November. And it could happen. If the Republicans win enough House seats Nancy will lose her Speaker's chair and the country will be saddled with the most reactionary and corrupt Speaker in contemporary history, John Boehner.

Nancy Pelosi has been fairly effective at moving legislation through the House. The trouble is that it's been largely legislation that isn't doing us any damn good. The health care bill the House passed died in committee. The other legislation is mostly going to die, or already has, to be replaced by even more useless and corrupt versions that the Senate has concocted. She refused to consider impeaching George W. Bush, and thus gave him and Barack Obama carte blanche to do whatever they want in office, no matter how many laws or Constitutional principles they violate.

In short, she peformed the functions of her office very well, but never stood for anything that would make her country a better place. That's Washington in a nutshell these days, because that's as good as it seems to get.

How much worse would John Boehner be?

The progressive organizations, for the most part, are no use either. They've debased themselves so thoroughly now that no one with any sense will trust them, at least until they've managed to do something useful.

All I can do right now is just stand back and watch the spectacle of people getting worked up over all this nonsense. It's clear that whichever party is in power right now, there won't be any progress. The people who are there are, for all intents and purposes, interchangeable now. They have made themselves a profit center for the finance industry, the defense industry, and the megachurches.

Poke me in the ribs when something useful happens. Meanwhile, I'll be playing with this stick.

Afterword: In a poignant example of the incompetence of progressive organizations these days, the unsubscribe link to Blue America consists of a single line:

String index out of range: -1

Kinda says it all, doesn't it? These guys haven't managed to elect an effective congressman yet, at least, if "effective" means having a positive influence on government policy.

Observations On The Obvious

Via an article by Blue Texan, this little nugget came to my attention:

That sounded like a smoking gun to House Minority Leader John Boehner, who brought a resolution charging Pelosi may have failed to protect [former U.S. Rep. Eric] Massa's staffers from more abuse.

"Speaker Pelosi once promised the American people 'the most open and ethical' Congress in history, but she has broken that promise," Boehner said.

GOP Pushes Probe Of Disgraced Upstate Pol Eric Massa, Charges Nancy Pelosi Ignored Tip

What Boehner is referring to, of course, is the investigation into whether Massa mistreated his staffers. I've largely stayed out of this issue for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that when Eric Massa quit, my interest in the story largely evaporated. Still, as Blue Texan observed, Republicans seem a heck of a lot more interested in investigating the actions of one apparently socially inept congressman than they have been in a whole slew of their own transgressions.

So, let me just make the observation that Blue Texan didn't - Boehner should count his lucky stars that Nancy Pelosi isn't all that interested in rooting out misbehavior among elected officials. If she were, this guy and this one would have been ushered out of office three years ago, and possibly to jail. Several of their number in the Congress might have been, as well.

It was also quite clear that Pelosi's predecessor as Speaker, Denny Hastert, had no interest in investigating Mark Foley. Let's just say that anyone with the least bit of sense will recognize the hypocrisy and move on. It will be interesting to see how long it takes our DC press to get the idea.

Bad News

Today, Nancy Pelosi said that she's just fine with being the House Minority Leader next year, as quoted by Talking Points Memo:

"The Senate never supported the public option," Pelosi said.

There was talk that there would be 51 votes for it, but it never passed on the floor of the Senate. It did pass in the House and, of course, I think it would be the way to go. But it isn't the way that the Senate went. And so I think that what you might see coming out of some reconciliation would be those areas of agreement that all three--the White House, the Senate and the House--had already agreed to...more than two weeks ago.

That echoes more or less the sense that Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) had about the prospects for reviving the public option. But it's unlikely to provide much comfort to the vast majority of House progressives who were hoping it might have a second shot.

Pelosi: No Hope For Public Option At This Time

I don't know what's more depressing about this news - the fact that the Democrats seem to be determined to commit political suicide on the way to completely screwing up health care in this country, or the endless parade of dimwits who just can't stop themselves from saying things like this, by David Kurtz, referring to the article I just quoted:

One of the sadder spectacles to watch since Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts has been House progressives suggesting that now is their chance to ram a public option through the Senate. Nancy Pelosi tried to give a reality check on that point today.

Snap Out of It!

This particular asshat finds it appalling that there are people in Congress who are actually trying to make legislation better, even though they might not succeed. And yes, Mr. Kurtz, you're an asshat if you think that this is a sad spectacle. You're an asshat, because the reality of the DFA poll that followed the Massachusetts Senate loss is that one of the things that bothered the people who either changed from voting for Obama to voting for the Republican Scott Brown or who didn't vote is that the health care bill had no public option, and it had an individual mandate. These polled overwhelmingly as unpopular. Now, your best advice is to pass a bill that has these unpopular features, because it's better than passing nothing. Anyone who seriously thinks this is a good idea in the face of such evidence is either delusional or a drooling cretin.

Naturally, the Democrats want to pass the bill that got them in trouble in the first place, because apparently what got them into trouble is not screwing the public enough. My guess is that they really want to be the minority party in the House next year. At this rate, they're well on their way. Even two months ago, I wouldn't have thought that possible, but there's clearly a lot more dead wood in the heads of many Democratic Representatives. At least a lot of that will be cleared out in November.

Which is all a long way of apologizing for not having the Carnival done yet. Seeing news like this, cheered on by an endless stream of condescending shitheads, has left me in no mood to write entertaining stories this evening.

So, my apologies. Maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you have something that you haven't submitted yet, please do.

That would make for some good news.

UPDATE: Speaking of depressing, here's some more, also courtesy of TPM:

The Obama administration and the FBI are making a big push tonight to rebut criticism of trying Abdulmutallab in American courts rather than submitting him to torture and a military tribunal by revealing that he has been cooperating with investigators for days. The claim, which is not that surprising, is that it has been precisely the use of traditional and legal investigative techniques that they've been able to gain his cooperation.

The Big Push Back

What's depressing here, of course, is that the Obama Administration should even have to make this case. It should be bloody obvious.

We should probably be grateful that they felt the need. I'm pretty sure their predecessors wouldn't have.

The Day In Health Care

It's been an interesting couple of days for health care reform, and this is where I think we are at the moment:

In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to get the best public option she thinks she can pass. At least, that's what Talking Points Memo is reporting:

It has been an epic tug of war, and at times, the pro-public option side seemed on the verge of being yanked into the mud.

But in recent weeks, as the health insurance industry further disgraced itself by rolling out the big anti-reform guns, and liberal leaders in both the House and Senate made it clear that they view the public option as an essential component of reform--one that serves voters' interests, and saves money--even if the White House isn't willing to put its full weight behind the measure.

It's in that context that Pelosi is running thiis public option endgame.

At last count, she's still eight votes shy of the crucial 218 she needs to pass a robust public option plan, though key players seem to think she has momentum on her side. If she can't whip up those last eight votes she'll likely have to revert and move ahead with a more modest public option--one that negotiates rather than dictates reimbursement rates. That would disappoint reformers and progressives in her caucus. But she (and they) will be able to say she pulled out all the stops.

Speaker Pelosi Throws Down The Gauntlet For The Public Option--Will She Succeed?

I've expressed some pessimism about Rep. Pelosi's abilities in the past. I've expressed rather a lot of it, in fact. At the moment, though, she does seem to be the most progressive of the Democratic leaders on this issue. At the moment, she's the only one who is openly championing a realistic public option.

Let's contrast with President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to see why.

Senator Reid has apparently spent the last few days holed up with Senators Baucus, Dodd, and Snowe, not to mention White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The result so far? We'll get back to you:

With Senate Democratic leaders in intense talks over how to craft a final reform bill, the lukewarm view of the public option by many in the caucus is but one of a slew of differences Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid must try to iron out if he is to win a filibuster-proof 60 votes.

Aside from the public option, lawmakers are worried about the expansion of Medicaid coverage. The proposed expansion would add billions to already strapped state budgets and it has sent governors into a panic. Reid has carved out a five-year exclusion for his home state and other Senators, including moderate Mary Landrieu, D-La., who opposes the public option, are demanding the same treatment, which in the end will increase the cost of the bill by billions of dollars.

Concern Over Details Complicates Health Effort In Senate

It appears that some Senators, like "Jello" Jay Rockefeller, are starting to say that an "opt out" option for states might be a thing they could support. Opt out sounds to me like a way for regressive states to screw their populations, but apparently giving the country even this much help is beyond the people who inhabit our Congress.

As usual, Reid is talking about 60 votes as if he doesn't have sixty Democratic Senators. You'd think there was no such thing as party loyalty on key votes.

You'd think that, at least, if you didn't know that this is, in all likelihood, exactly what the President wants, as Scarecrow points out at FireDogLake. First, he asks why Harry Reid isn't doing very well at leading the Senate on health care reform:

The question many health reform advocates have been asking about the public option debate is “what’s the problem”??? Why isn’t the President demanding it, pushing it, selling it? Well, maybe he doesn’t want it.

Why, given strong Congressional majorities in favor of a public option, continuing strong polling support across the country, and overwhelming support from Democratic voters, is Harry Reid treating the matter as though it were a close call?

To be sure, getting 60 votes for cloture is a challenge, but that is not the same as needing 60 votes for a public option, no matter how many times the media equates the two. Only 5 or 6 Senate Democrats are even opposed in concept. Yet not one of these holdouts has publically declared that he/she would join a filibuster to keep a public option from getting a simple majority-rule vote. Sen. Harkin correctly asks, why should these five be empowered to force over fifty to give in?

Why the White House Probably Doesn’t Want a Public Option

A good question. As you may have noticed, it occured to me, also. Scarecrow then goes beyond what I've achieved, and answers that question:

The Beltway conventional wisdom, steeped in cynicism, is that the White House is being disingenuous when it repeatedly says the President supports a public option. WH officials claim Obama believes it is “the best way” to provide an affordable choice and reduce costs. But then why is he not working to get it adopted in the Senate, and explicitly directing his OFA troops to help that effort? Why has he ducked every opportunity to make even the logical argument that the burden is on detractors to show there’s a better measure? No one has seriously attempted such a case.

In House and Senate leadership efforts to merge their respective bills, it’s curious that no one has noticed that House Speaker Pelosi does not seem to need the White House to tell her how to merge three House bills while improving them. But apparently, Harry Reid is not capable — or cannot be trusted — to merge two Senate bills without having Rahm Emanuel, Peter Orszag and Kathleen Sebelius present every meeting.

There’s nothing wrong with the Senate consulting with the White House about what they’re willing to push and pay for. But the White House told reporters that all the key decisions would be made by Harry Reid. So why are these senior White House people, including the man who sees himself as the center of the universe, there if not to tell Harry Reid what he can and cannot decide.

Why the White House Probably Doesn’t Want a Public Option

That is something that I've mentioned before. I find that I'm in the unaccustomed position of believing in conventional wisdom. By what he's done and what he's said, it's clear that Obama doesn't want a public option. He doesn't want anything that will drive insurers and other big medical lobbies to jump to the Republican side of the fence:

Why should we not also believe that the White House has a deal to shield insurers from competition by preventing the creation of a public option in exchange for the insurers agreeing to reforms on guaranteed issue and limited community ratings (with the flexibility Baucus provided) and to support this framework with tv ads? (Read Ignagni’s WaPo op-ed today; while defending the PwC study, she says they made a deal, but Baucus broke it; she didn’t say the deal’s off.)

The White House isn’t taking up most of the chairs in Harry’s Reid’s meetings just to watch him make decisions on his own. They’re there to make sure Harry Reid doesn’t undo the White House deals and wander off the reservation.

This President has filled the White House with people who have no inclination to pose any major challenge to the economic power of America’s dominant financial industries (GM being an exception). We’ve already seen this in their dealings with Wall Street investment banks and their too-big-to-fail is too-big-to-challenge approach to financial regulation. We’re seeing it now with efforts to shield the major health and insurance industries from any fundamental challenge.

Sure, there are changes being offered, new regulations being proposed, and more people will be insured than before. But there is no framework being laid for a new structure for how health care is delivered and paid for in America. That is the pattern of this White House, and there is little basis to expect otherwise.

Why the White House Probably Doesn’t Want a Public Option

It's well worth reading the rest of Scarecrow's article, and following the links. The proof of what the White House wants is in their actions, not their words. Not that I take much comfort in the President's recent words on the subject. Even they lack any real conviction. If he really wanted a public option, he'd have said he wouldn't sign a bill that didn't have one. He hasn't.

It's not the first time that President Obama has tried to pin the blame for his own pandering to special interests on the Senate. It won't be the last, I'm sure. It won't be the last, because there are still lots of folks who are willing to swallow this nonsense. When they finally figure out what's happening, I have some informative reading for them to consider.

Now, where's my grindstone?

What We're Not Getting: Redux

Updated Sept. 14

Yes, kids, you're privileged to be living in a time like this, when political giants roam the land, crafting legislation to make the country and the world a better place. Our leaders head vast departments of trained and capable uniformed and civil servants who explore the limits of knowledge and technology, defend the land, end racism, and reduce poverty.

Umm, sorry, I was dreaming about the 1960s again ...

Instead, what we're being treated to is another round of moral pygmies urinating on each other, and then doing whatever the pygmies with the most money decide. On Friday, two days after the President's speech on health care, the other shoe finally dropped on the chances of having a public option:

The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate on Thursday signaled their willingness to drop a government run public health insurance option from a final health-care bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in comments at separate news conferences, said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance –whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats.

They spoke the day after President Barack Obama called the public option a preferred but non-essential element of overhauling the nation's ailing health-care system. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the president's speech the night before to a joint session of Congress "reiterated the public option is not the be-all, end-all in health-care reform."

Pelosi, who said as recently as Tuesday that a public option was essential for passing a health-care bill in the House, on Thursday used language on the issue similar to Obama's speech.

Democratic Leaders In Congress Soften On Public Option

What changed Pelosi's mind from two days earlier, when there was no way that a bill would pass without a public option? David Sirota thinks he knows:

This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth's lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, blasted this email invitation throughout Washington, D.C. I just happened to get my hands on a copy of the invitation from a source[.]

Elmendorf is a registered lobbyist for UnitedHealth, and his firm's website brags about its work for UnitedHealth on its website (Elmendorf was also a chief of staff for Democratic Minority Leader Dick Gephardt).

The sequencing here is important: Pelosi makes her announcement and then just hours later, the fundraising invitation goes out. Coincidental? I'm guessing no - these things rarely ever are.

EXCLUSIVE: UnitedHealth Lobbyist Announces Pelosi Fundraiser As She Begins Backing Off Pub Option

Could it be that Pelosi sold us out for some big bucks from a health care provider? Maybe. Or maybe she thinks she sees writing on the wall and is just cashing in.

Nothing is as certain to happen soon as when Nancy Pelosi says it will never happen. Except maybe that she'll find a way to demonstrate her utter contempt for the public shortly thereafter.

Senator Reid added further confusion yesterday:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Thursday endorsed the concept of non-profit insurance cooperatives that are at the heart of a highly anticipated health care bill being negotiated in the Finance Committee.

The Nevada Democrat reiterated his support for a so-called public option, which would create a government-sponsored entity to compete along private insurers, but said that a public option is “in the eye of the beholder.” Reid said that a public option is intended to create competition and drive prices down and keep insurance companies from conspiring to drive up prices.

Harry Reid: Public Option In Eye Of Beholder

Now, just for those who might be confused here, let me just clarify something - co-ops are not a public option. A public option is publicly financed. Co-ops would be groups of insurance companies, probably for-profit insurance companies. That means that the overhead will be several times the overhead of a publicly-financed insurance program.

To give Reid credit, he's never been a strong proponent of the public option. Now, he seems to be relishing the role of trying to put lipstick on the co-ops pig. Let's hope reports that he's in danger of losing his office next year are true. I, for one, am not lifting a finger to stop that from happening.

It's only been three months since I predicted, in what I can only describe as a particularly drained and pessimistic state, that all this would happen. I hate it when I'm right, because I'm never right about things going well.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler has reached a similar conclusion about Nancy Pelosi's change of heart:

[N]ot two weeks ago, Pelosi insisted that a health care bill without a strong public option would not pass the House. That statement was of a piece with similar statements she'd made for weeks, which were based on the progressives' insistence that health care reform's passage depended on the public option.

In other words, since meeting with Obama--who's been notably solicitous of Senate moderates, and notably dismissive of House progressives--her public language has softened notably.

Today, Pelosi's Communication's Director Brendan Daly says "The Speaker remains firmly committed to the public option and will continue to fight for its inclusion."

There's a lot more wiggle room in there than there is in saying 'no public option, no bill.'

Does Pelosi's Softening Rhetoric Spell Doom for the Public Option?

This is how progressive causes are undermined in Congress - by the slow, almost imperceptible changes in rhetoric that encourage the opposition that they will prevail. It just happened, folks, and the only question is whether progressives will stand for it this time.

What We're Not Getting

Just a couple of observations from President Obama's speech on health care "reform", and then I think I'll go read a book or something.

Basically, it tells us what we're not getting single payer:

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's -- (applause) -- where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everybody. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end employer-based systems and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I've said -- I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both these approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch.

Transcript: Obama's Health Care Speech

The part I've emphasized is a rhetorical strategy known as a strawman. Single-payer is a way of paying for health care. It's not the whole system. That Obama would lie like this is the first indication of where this speech is going, but it gets worse.

To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage available for those without it. (Applause.) The public option -- the public option is only a means to that end -- and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. And to my Republican friends, I say that rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate concerns you may have.

Transcript: Obama's Health Care Speech

Translation: You're not getting a public option, either.

Why do I say that? Simple. Once again, Obama is distorting the facts. The public option was a compromise position from single-payer, which is a much more efficient way of providing health care. What the public option does, though is allow people still want to be covered by their own private insurance to continue to do so. Those of us who don't, either because we just don't trust insurance companies, or because we can't afford them, or because we're being excluded for one reason or another, then we have an option. That's what it means, as Obama did explain in the speech prior to this quotation.

So, this was already a compromise, and now we progressives are asked to compromise again. Insurance companies are not asked to compromise, nor are drug companies. No, they're not. Insurance companies are getting a captive market in exchange for some regulations that, in all likelihood given our government's record of enforcing law in the financial sector, aren't going to happen. Drug companies are not giving up anything.

What's more, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and President Obama all spent much of yesterday explaining that they didn't think a public option would happen. So it's not going to happen. We knew that yesterday, if not before, but today was the memorial service.

The first clue that this wasn't going to happen, though, was that months ago, instead of coming up with the obvious strategy to sell a public option, Obama and Congress came up with a hodge-podge that wouldn't work for anyone. Josh Marshall explained what they could have done:

It also points back to the question (a frustratingly good one) of why the advocates of a public option and just reform in general have not simply explained this as allowing people to buy into Medicare at any age. Because, essentially, that's what it is. And I think I could pretty much guarantee you that if the question in the public mind was "Would you like the option of buying into Medicare before you turn 65?" the opposition would be vastly diminished.

This isn't just rhetoric. This is the most accurate and graspable explanation of what's being proposed. Indeed, the big secret not many people are discussing is that in the current iterations of the 'public option' in most of the bills in committee that 'option' isn't given as an option to many people. Most people aren't allowed to access it. And it's designed that way in order to put a crimp on any competition it might provide to private sector insurers.

Adventures in the Rabbit Hole

I noted a month ago that Ian Welsh had come up with the same idea. I'd guess you could probably find dozens of people who have suggested it. I certainly wondered why this wasn't the plan all along.

Why would the Obama White House want to do this, you might ask? Jane Hamsher filled in that blank a few days ago:

On May 11, "stakeholders" including the AMA, PhRMA, the hospitals and the device manufacturers delivered proposals to the White House promising to "voluntarily" reduce cost increases over the next 10 years. In an effort to keep them "at the table," Baucus's Chief of Staff Jon Selib and Finance Committee staffer Russell Sullivan told stakeholders at a May 20 meeting that their participation in the process of crafting a health care bill was contingent on them "holding their fire":
...
The goal of keeping stakeholders at the table was threefold:

1. Keep them from advertising against the White House plan
2. Keep them from torpedoing vulnerable Democrats in 2010 so there isn't a repeat of 1994
3. Keep their money out of GOP coffers

You can see the fingerprints in the deals that they made: the $150 million PhRMA was spending on ads for health care reform, the $2.5 million they spent helping vulnerable freshmen, and the total fury that Boehner has unleashed on PhRMA and other stakeholders for making deals with the White House.

The Baucus Caucus: PhRMA, Insurance, Hospitals and Rahm

So, what's left is for the progressives to either stand up and say there will be no health care bill, which would be preferable at this point, or for them to lie down and take their screwing like they always have before. I'm betting on the latter, but you never know. Maybe they've finally had enough.

Either way, there's no public option this year.

I just checked back to see the first time I referred to Barack Obama as a con artist. It appears to be February of 2008, when I wrote this:

Ordinarily, I'd say that it's wonderful that we have widened the talent pool for viable Presidential candidates to include women and black people. That would be great news, if only we hadn't managed to pick a con artist and a crazy man as the candidates. The Age of American Unreason really has arrived.

Obama Now Ahead For Real

He can do a bait and switch with the best of them. And folks, given all the shit I took for calling him a con artist, I'm happy to say I told you so.

Health Care: A Showdown-Like Thing Approaches

It's been an interesting day in the health care reform effort. Apparently, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may cancel Congress's summer vacation if they don't deliver a bill soon:

Asked at a press conference whether she'd support keeping the House of Representatives in session into the August recess to complete work on health care reform, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was fairly adamant.

"I think 70 percent of the American people would want that," she said. "I want a bill."

Pelosi 'Wants A Bill,' Congress Should Work Through Recess

That sounds more like a hint than a stern warning, but it remains to be seen. The article went on to say that Pelosi sounded confident that she had the votes to pass a bill. What that bill might look like is another question altogether. As I mentioned yesterday, there's quite a bit not to like about the bill as it's currently understood. It will leave millions of people uninsured, and will almost certainly require everyone to buy health insurance. I think that if that requirement is levied without substantially changing the health insurance options available to Americans, it will backfire.

The Massachusetts health care system, widely regarded as an example of how to provide universal coverage and keep costs low, is in fact faltering badly and should not be held up as a national model for reform, according to a study released this week by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Public Citizen.

The study comes at a time when the health insurance industry is reportedly weighing in heavily in secret talks on Capitol Hill in favor of an individual mandate, a legal obligation requiring persons to have or to buy health insurance. The insurance industry’s position was described in today’s New York Times.

However, such mandates - which have been a cornerstone of the Massachusetts health reform - have failed to assure universal coverage, the new study says. For example, the state’s most recent figures show that it had to exempt 79,000 residents from the mandate in 2007 because they could not afford to buy insurance.

The Massachusetts plan has also failed to make health care sufficiently affordable or to control costs, the report says.

Physicians, public interest group urge Sen. Kennedy to introduce single-payer legislation

Anyone who is surprised by this needs to review how the advent of no-fault auto insurance, which mandates that all residents who drive have automobile insurance, has affected the quality and price of auto insurance.

Ensuring access to health care for Americans is a problem that's just going to become more urgent and expensive over time. Huffington Post's Sam Stein explains why:

A survey of more than 29,000 individuals in June by Gallup shows that 16 percent of Americans over the age of 18 are currently without health insurance. That number reflects what the survey's authors describe as a "small but measurable uptick in the percentage of uninsured adults."

Crisis: Nearly Five Million Adults Have Lost Insurance Since Sept. '08

For those who aren't good with fractions, 16 percent is about one sixth of the adult population of this country. Considering that a roughly equal number are insured, but are not covered adequately, this is a problem for roughly one third of the country, and that proportion is growing. Failing on this will be a blot on the Democrats' record no matter what else they do in the next year and a half. As we've noted so far, they haven't done very much yet.

So President Obama is going on TV tonight to try to frame the debate more to the liking of those who want to see this system fixed. How successful that will be is a very important one, not only for us but for Obama as well.

Peter Doao wrote this today about the idea that the success of Barack Obama's presidency hangs on how this bill turns out:

The New York Times blares: In Health Care Fight, Defining Moment Nears for President. It's the "Waterloo" talking point, promulgated by Republicans, seized upon by the White House, and echoed by the punditocracy and online commentariat.

It's false.

Some form of health care reform may pass -- the contours may or may not be in place by the August recess (a deadline that has become a distraction rather than an impetus). Stakeholders across the health spectrum may or may not like the final compromise. Pollsters and pundits and press may or may not express approval. But either way, this is not the defining moment or issue of Obama's presidency.

There will be many more watersheds, many unforeseen events, many highs and lows, many poll dips and spikes. In the end, Barack Obama's presidency will be defined by the extent to which he attempts to right America's (badly adrift) moral ship. Providing universal quality affordable health care is only a part of that process, albeit a significant one.

Obama's Presidency Will Not Be Defined by Health Reform (The "Waterloo" Myth)

This will no doubt come as news for Mr. Daou, but for those of us who don't have health insurance, and those of us who are worried that our health insurance won't actually pay to keep us healthy, the "moral ship" of this country is a distinctly minor concern. People are dying for lack of health care in this country by the tens of thousands. For those without family or lifelong friends, there is no safety net anymore.

In addition, as I've already mentioned, this Democratic leadership has done nothing else of note so far. The stimulus bill they put together is completely inadequate to the task of getting this country back on track economically. They were pantsed by the bankers multiple times, and actually had the chutzpah to say that they'd been successful. They haven't done a damn thing about Guantanamo or the other black sites, and they don't seem inclined to move out of Iraq any time soon. They've gradually pissed away whatever good will they had going into this congressional session. These are the things that matter, or at least will matter, to ordinary Americans. The health of the economy and our own health are two things nearly all of us are concerned about, and right now things aren't looking too good. They have managed, to quote Scorpius, to make their vector for success vanishingly small. In short, if they don't produce a decent health care bill, there's not much else they can do that's going to impress their voters.

Taylor Marsh sums up the other problem pretty well here:

Whether its secret meetings with health care industry honchos, or the missteps on marketing health care out of the White House, the debate on universal health care has the potential to become THE symbol of the Obama presidency. And not in a good way.

Pres. Obama came in with record approval numbers here and across the world. His outreach to the world, but particularly the Muslim world, has been greeted with unanimous praise and hope. But at a time when the American people, in a large plurality, have weighed in that they want universal health care, Obama has allowed the naysayers to hijack, not only the debate, but the positive impact of national health care, even when the numbers began strongly on his side. Slowly, we’ve seen these numbers erode. Why? Because the White House naively thought their bipartisan call would be greeted warmly and that Barack Obama would become the political exception to the rule of national politics.

So, the health care debate could become a symbol of Barack Obama’s presidency and how even the mighty can fall, if the opposition, including some in his own party, come at him hard enough.
...
The “Waterloo myth,” as Peter cites, isn’t a myth at all right now. The symbol has been hoisted. It all depends what happens on health care. Unfortunately, even if Obama succeeds, the seeds have been planted that his health care reform isn’t the best prescription, which means Obama’s health care reform could become the rallying cry for 2010 and beyond.

If that’s not defining Obama’s presidency by health care reform, I don’t know what is.

Health Care a Symbol of Worse to Come if Obama Fails

Sometimes, I think that image and appearances are 90% of politics. They aren't really, and goodness knows they shouldn't be, but they're very powerful nonetheless. The health care reform issue is a perfect example of the failure of the Obama Administration and the Democratic leaders in Congress to deal with what's ailing this country. They didn't turn to progressive organizations, particularly the blogs until a couple of days ago - long after things started going south, and long after the decisions had been made. They managed to honk off many of us by not even considering single payer health insurance as an option. It's possible that, in the end, we would have had to abandon that idea for now, but at least having the discussion would have let everyone have their say, and would have served to give advocates of single payer some ownership of whatever legislation ended up coming to the floors of Congress.

What's worse, they let the message about reform get hijacked by the insurance industry and their sycophants in the news and in Congress. Instead of saying what they were trying to accomplish and how, they let their opponents define it for them. Needless to say, that hasn't gone well for our side.

The irony, of course, is that if they do manage to get this right, Obama and the Democrats could probably coast for the next year and a half. They would have done something that would be directly beneficial to tens of millions of voters. Every time those voters saw a doctor, or were treated for an ailment they used to have to ignore or live with, they would be reminded of what was accomplished. There are certainly people like me who will remember all the other things that they failed to do, but to say we'd be in the minority is an epic understatement. People vote their pocketbooks, and anything that's related.

As Daou mentions, there's much that can change in the next eighteen months, but there is probably as much that can change in the Republicans' favor as the Democrats. If I were the latter, I'd be worried right now. And I'd be asking Rep. Pelosi where you can get a good mai tai in DC.

UPDATE: The transcript of President Obama's news conference isn't an especially inspiring read. He makes some good points about what needs to be done, but even in print it looks like he was phoning it in. Taylor Marsh watched the conference, and that seems to be her impression, also. As both she and FireDogLake mentioned, he has started calling this "health insurance reform", which is a more honest label. It's mostly about how we pay for medical care, not the care itself.

Anyway, certainly not a knockout punch, and maybe not more than a slap. This is going to be a long battle, and I'm not terribly confident that it will feel like a victory at the end.

Torture Briefings: CIA's Case Won't Hold Water

Here are a couple of items of note regarding the CIA's claims that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats were briefed about waterboarding and other forms of torture it used on terrorism suspects in 2002. Both are from FireDogLake, so I recommend following the links and having a look.

The first is from Gregg Levine:

In a just-completed Capitol Hill press conference, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said without equivocation that the CIA is lying when it implies that she was briefed in on the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah. Pelosi stated that the CIA told her, in September 2002, that waterboarding was not among the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on high value detainees. Reporting by Marcy—among others—now shows that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah started at least a month earlier.

BREAKING: Pelosi Says the CIA is Lying

As I wrote the other day, there are many reasons to be suspicious of the CIA's story, not the least of which is that even if it's a completely honest effort, it's based on whatever notes and recollections CIA employees had that occurred several years ago. However, thanks to this next article, there's reason to suspect that this was less than an honest effort:

Bob Graham just appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show. In addition to repeating earlier reports that he was never briefed on waterboarding, Graham revealed that the first time he asked the CIA when he was briefed on torture, it claimed it had briefed him on two dates when no briefing took place.

Senator Bob Graham: The CIA Made Up Two Briefing Sessions

As Marcy Wheeler relates, Graham went on to say that the way in which the CIA briefed Congressmen seemed designed to ensure that they couldn't discuss what they were told with each other. This is a plausible claim. People who are given classified information are not allowed to discuss it with those who weren't present at the time, unless they are cleared to do so by the agency that classified the information. In this case, that agency would be the CIA, of course.

The government's power to classify information, and its power to punish those who publicize it, carries with it a tremendous potential for abuse. This is starting to look like another case of the Bush Administration's misuse of these powers.

As if we didn't have enough already.

UPDATE (May 15): Marcy Wheeler notes that Sen. Graham has found a third briefing the CIA incorrectly said he received on torture. This one is particularly critical, as she notes:

I've got to correct something I said yesterday about Bob Graham. I reported that Graham said that CIA had given him two erroneous dates for briefings. That was wrong (RawStory reported the number correctly, though). They gave erroneous dates for three briefings.

The difference is critical, because it means the CIA tried to claim it had briefed Graham on torture in April 2002, which would have put it in compliance with the National Security Act. But Graham, by consulting his trusty notebooks, proved that claim to be false.

Graham also notes that the CIA is obligated to tell the entire intelligence committees, not just the leadership.

Graham: They Claimed to Have Briefed Before Torture, Did Not

Once again, the Bush Administration violated the law, then used their powers to classify information to cover up that fact.

As usual, the rest of the article is well worth a read. It includes an interview of Graham on MSNBC.

Did Nancy Pelosi Know About Torture In 2002?

The Internet seems to be abuzz over the news that Nancy Pelosi, along with Porter Goss, was briefed by the CIA on its so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" (EIT, AKA "torture") back in September of 2002. That would be really big news, provided one could infer that from the evidence provided. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

The principle evidence appears to be this document (PDF), a summary chart of briefings given by the CIA to various members of Congress between 2002 and 2009. Let me first emphasize that this is a summary, as in it's almost certainly been derived from other notes and recollections about these meetings. I don't see how it can be considered a primary document. That's probably the most important thing to keep in mind as you're reviewing this.

As Greg Sargent noticed today, there are what I'd term inconsistencies in the details provided in this document. As he notes:

“EIT” refers to “enhanced interrogation techniques.” As you can see, the document says that on September 4th, 2002, she was briefed on the “use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah” and a “description of the particular EITs that had been employed.” It’s the only time Pelosi was briefed.

This does not say whether she was told specifically about waterboarding. By contrast, elsewhere in the documents, descriptions of other later briefings to members of Congress repeatedly specify they’d been told about waterboarding.

CIA Documents Don’t Prove Pelosi Was Told Of Waterboarding

I think it's safe to assume that's what's on this document is true, as Sargent seems to have. What I can't assume is that it's the whole truth. For that, we'd need to see the notes and materials from the meetings themselves. That doesn't seem to be the sort of evidence we're discussing here.

This particular question also occurred to the Los Angeles Times:

The CIA declined to comment on why the chart does not make it clear whether waterboarding was covered in the Pelosi briefing. But a federal official familiar with the list indicated that the agency's records may not have been that specific. "The descriptions don't go beyond what the records themselves say," said the official, who requested anonymity when discussing intelligence matters.

Records Suggest Pelosi, Others Were Told Of Harsh Interrogations

So, yes, this was a summary constructed based on other records. That's a less than perfect process at the best of times.

However, Marcy Wheeler has identified some inconsistencies in the document with other known facts:

Note, too, that the CIA claims to have discussed legal issues in the July briefing with Harman and Goss, but not in the July briefing with [Senator] Jello Jay [Rockefeller] and [Sen. Pat] Roberts. We know this to be false.

In July 2004, the CIA briefed the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Committee on the facts and conclusions of the Inspector General special review. The CIA indicated at that time that it was seeking OLC’s legal analysis on whether the program was consistent with the substantive provisions of Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture.

Given the way the SSCI narrative focuses on the constitutional amendments named under CAT (the 5th, 8th, and 14th), I suspect CIA was informed in no uncertain terms they would have to account for these in the briefing. If they did not record the fact, it suggests they were trying to claim deniability for that key issue (though that is speculative on my part).

The CIA seems to have no memory of the details of the 2005 briefings (and, as WO has pointed out, seems to have been unsure who was HPSCI Chair and who was DCIA, since it claims that Porter Goss, then head of CIA, attended a March 8, 2004 hearing as HPSCI Chair). That's rather curious as Mary McCarthy has alleged that the CIA briefers in two hearings in 2005 lied to Congress. At least one of these briefings would have also featured the Senators asking why they fuck OLC ignored the 8th Amendment (and the CAT generally) in its December 2004 opinion. It includes briefings when Jello Jay was beginning to ask for more details on the torture program, to no avail. And, finally, it includes briefings when Congress should have been briefed about the destroyed torture tapes, but wasn't. All of that? The CIA seems to have little memory of it.

Breaking News!! CIA Manipulating Briefing Process!!

[links from original]

So, a reconstructed document that is contradicted by reality is the basis for this charge against Pelosi. While it's possible that she was briefed on waterboarding at that meeting, there's no evidence to think so, and there is clearly some evidence to suggest that the CIA's version of events is not accurate.

As both Sargent and Marcy have pointed out, that didn't stop ABC News from running with the story:

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence’s office and obtained by ABC News.

The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics. Instead, she has said, she was told only that the Bush administration had legal opinions that would have supported the use of such techniques.

The report details a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting between intelligence officials and Pelosi, then-House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, and two aides. At the time, Pelosi was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

The meeting is described as a “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.”

EITs stand for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a classification of special interrogation tactics that includes waterboarding.

Intelligence Report: Pelosi Briefed on Use of Interrogation Tactics in Sept. ’02

Anyone who paid attention to what I wrote, and then clicked on the links those quotes came from would probably recognize the problem with this. ABC assumed that:

1. A reconstruction of events was entirely accurate


2. The CIA was not manipulating this document's contents for its own purposes


3. The inconsitencies in the level of detail mean nothing


4. That a briefing on "enhanced interrogation techniques" would necessarily include all the techniques used.

That's a buttload of assumptions. As Taylor Marsh observed:

Porter Goss pontificating on what should have been deduced means nothing if the specifics weren’t delineated. People are now assuming that a briefing on EITs automatically means that Pelosi knew that waterboarding was being used on prisoners.

Pelosi, EIT and the Briefing

[link from original]

In 2002 I hadn't even heard of waterboarding. If I'd known then what I know now about it, I would have assumed that the CIA wouldn't be using it, because it was torture, and thus illegal. I don't see how anyone could assume Nancy Pelosi would be more aware of what was going on, assuming she had not been told explicitly.

Right now, this is looking to me like a smear that the press is willing to go along with.

Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing

Image credit: UC San Diego [The first paragraph of the accompanying text reads:

There are more than 200 different species of Jellyfish. Jellyfish are invertebrates and they come in different shapes and sizes.

Seems appropriate somehow...]

It's more than a little ironic, I think, that I first spotted Nancy Pelosi's new memoir Know Your Power, in a bookstore last week, and now I read this:

New details in a high profile case of politics and prosecution. Democrat Don Siegelman has good news from last week's Democratic National Convention. Be sure to see the accompanying photo from Denver. You can see Governor Siegelman on the left, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the right, and Democratic activist Pam Miles in the middle.

Miles tells NewsChannel 19, about the time the picture was snapped, Pelosi promised Governor Siegelman, "We will hold rove in contempt".

Pelosi's Promise to Siegelman at Democratic Convention

I can hear them laughing in the White House right now. Go ahead, Rep. Pelosi, I can hear them saying in between bouts of hysterical giggling, we'll throw that warrant right in the same burn bag where we have all the others.

Pelosi took impeachment off the table. When she did that, she gave up the one power she had to enforce the laws of this country if the President decides not to follow them. How fucking hypocritical can someone be before they simply collapse in on themselves and blow away in a puff of smudgy smoke? Apparently, it takes quite a lot.

Ms. Pelosi isn't imploding yet.

(h/t to FireDogLake reader CTuttle for pointing out the WHNT article)

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher had a quote a while back that applies as much here as it did to FISA:

"I'm very upset with my party right now," Hamsher says. "They were given the majority, and they have a 9 percent approval rating right now for a reason."

Angry Bloggers On Left And Right Unite Over FISA

If they're after better approval ratings, they're going about it all wrong, that's for sure.

Burner And Massa On FISA

image credit: www.darcyburner.com

Image credit: Massa For Congress. Reduced by Cujo359

Here's what Darcy Burner, a Slobber And Spittle Blue candidate for Washington's 8th Congressional district, had to say about the FISA bill passed by the House, according to Daily Kos:

Hi, this is Darcy Burner, running for Congress in Washington's 8th congressional district. Like many of you, I'm incredibly disappointed with today's vote on retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies. I've made my position on this issue very clear, and I've been happy to be fighting to ensure that we uphold the Constitution through all of this. But the real question is what we do going forward. We need to make sure that we elect people to Congress who are going to defend the Constitution at the same time that the keep this country safe. I promise you, I will never let you down on that. It's time for us to elect more and better Democrats.

WA-08: Darcy Burner on FISA

That's the entirety of the message, as I understand it. There's no equivocation, no nonsense about "compromise".

Here's SnS Blue candidate Eric Massa on the subject, also from Daily Kos:

Another fundamental injustice is the current and new ability of the government to wiretap, eavesdrop and record private conversations on cell phones, traditional phones, email and posted traditional mail. They can do this without a warrant because again they claim that that government ability is needed to be able to catch potential terrorists in the act before they strike. But, again this is just not true. The government already has that ability but under previous pre-Bush Administration law the enforcement agencies must seek a warrant within days of the action.

NY-29: Why I would have voted against new FISA rules

Once again, we have a clear statement of what's wrong with this bill. Massa is a former career naval officer - he understands what can happen if there is no way to catch terrorists before they act. Yet he is unequivocally against trashing the Constitution to do it.

Actually Massa had a good deal more to say on the subject. It's an article worth checking out.

Contrast these statements with the pathetic efforts of Barack Obama and the craven pandering that Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer engaged in to pass that bill in the House. This is why I'm not going to contribute to Obama's campaign, nor to group funds like the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). I'm putting my money where it will do the most good - supporting candidates like these.

You can do that, too, at Slobber And Spittle Blue. Part of the reason these people are on that list is because they've stood up and taken positions that are unpopular with the people who are running this country, and their sponsors. If that's not enough choices for you, check out Blue America '08. There are many good candidates there, as well.

If we're ever going to get our country back from the fools, cowards, and opportunists who are running it, we need to put our efforts into electing people who will make that happen.

UPDATE: Added a bit of explanation about what it takes to be listed on Slobber And Spittle Blue.

UPDATE 2: Forgot to mention that newly-elected SnS Blue candidate Donna Edwards voted against the FISA bill. She's making me proud already.

Sixty Senators Won't Be Enough

Despite what I wrote this morning, Glenn Greenwald really hasn't calmed down. In fact, it was his day to hit the nail squarely on the head:

I'd like to underscore the fact that in 2006, when the Congress was controlled by Bill Frist and Denny Hastert, the administration tried to get a bill passed legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, but was unable. They had to wait until the Congress was controlled by Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to accomplish that.

George Bush's latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress

This is why I want better Democrats in Congress, not more of them. When they were the opposition, they occasionally acted the part. Now, in the majority, they're more dangerous than the Republicans. Why would I want more of that?

A friend who is much more politically astute than I am told me that the last time the Democratic Party called him up asking for money, they used the line about needing sixty Democratic Senators. "No, you don't", my friend replied, "you have all the Senators you need right now." To understand why that's true, all you have to realize is that they are the majority party. That means they, or more properly, Harry Reid, get to decide what the legislative schedule is. If the Democrats don't want a bill to see the light of day, it won't. Simple as that. That's one reason that sixty Senators isn't going to make a difference.

The other reason is based on mathematics, so it was the one I caught onto on my own. Look at this list, which I've reprinted from an earlier article:

Max Baucus (D-MT)
Evan Bayh (D-IN)
Thomas Carper (D-DE)
Robert Casey (D-PA)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Herb Kohl (D-WI)
Joe (Short Ride) Lieberman (ID-CT)
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Ken Salazar (D-CO)
James Webb (D-VA)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Roll Over And Beg Award: Just About The Entire U.S. Senate

That's the list of Democratic Senators, plus Joe Lieberman, who voted for the telecom immunity and blanket warrant bill the last time it came around. That's nineteen Democrats, plus Joe Lieberman. Do you think they voted against cloture on this bill? Of course they didn't. So, assuming that no new Democrats of this sort show up in the Senate, in order to have a "filibuster proof" Democratic majority, we'd need to have:

60  +  19  =  79 Democratic Senators

In case you're a little rusty at arithmetic, that's 2930 more Democrats than are in the Senate now. It's also reasomably certain that some of those new Democrats would be receiving their own Roll Over And Beg Award some day. In short, no majority, if it's filled with these sorts of people, will be enough.

That's why we need better Democrats. I'd rather have fifty-one Chris Dodds in the Senate than one hundred Dianne Feinsteins. If you're interested in government that works for you rather than the powerful, so will you.

UPDATE: Fixed the count of additional Democrats needed. I'm good at arithmetic, but not so good at rememering things. Bernie Sanders is also an independent, although he's a pretty reliable progressive.

I Like This Guy

Steven Porter is running as an independent in the PA-03 Congressional district. He ran as a Democrat last time, but decided that the Democratic Party wasn't substantially better than the other one. There are days when I agree with him.

Today, he sent an e-mail out containing a press release. Since it's labeled a press release, I see no reason not to present it in full here, minus his campaign's phone number. You can look that up if you need to.

From: Porter for Congress

To: Media, PA-03

Date: May 29, 2008

Contact: Dr. Steven Porter (XXX-XXX-XXXX)



ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION


“Today’s outrage over Scott McClellan’s new book is misplaced,” said Dr. Steven Porter, independent candidate for Congress in the third district of Pennsylvania. “The Republicans are furious over McClellan’s revelations that Bush and his administration manipulated intelligence to lead us into war. Predictable but rather irrelevant. The press is all agog about asking McClellan to explain his revelations further. Again, predictable and irrelevant.

“The real question ought to go to Nancy Pelosi, and it ought to be this: ‘In the light of McClellan’s book—and several others like it—why did you take impeachment investigations off the table two years ago when you became the Speaker of the House?’

“That the Bush Administration has mangled our Constitution and led us into military and economic disaster is no longer the point. The tragedy equally appalling is that the Democrats, who came to power promising to hold Bush accountable, have done nothing in the last two years except to contribute to the deaths in Iraq and sit idly by while gas prices have risen and our jobs have continued to be exported.

“Before the 2006 elections, the Democrats in Congress fairly salivated at the chance to hold impeachment hearings. In fact, senior Democratic Congressman John Conyers did hold them—at least mock inquiries in the basement of the Capitol Building. On March 2, 2006, Conyers said this: “People think of Watergate or Iran-Contra as constituting crises…Today the crisis is substantively and systematically far worse. The alleged acts of wrong-doing—lying about the decision to go to war; manipulation of intelligence; facilitating and countenancing torture; using confidential information to out a CIA agent; open and flagrant violation of wiretap laws—are more egregious than any I have witnessed in my 41 years in Congress…We could simply ignore the myriad transgressions…or we could do everything in our power to call attention to and document these grave abuses…I opted for the latter.’

“But the day after the Democrats got control of both houses, Pelosi took impeachment ‘off the table,’ as she said. In other words, all the pre-election hullabaloo was just a ploy to gain political power. Pelosi and the Democrats had no intention of stopping the war and devoting their attention to the American economy. And they are counting on the voters in 2008 to turn to them for the “change” they have failed to deliver. Laughable.

“I hope that the American people understand how corrupt both parties have been, and how poorly we have been led. Neither party deserves our support. They are both cut from the same cloth. Both are willing to play with our lives for power. Disgusting.”

[emphasis mine]

Disgusting is a word I've used a lot lately, along with its various synonyms, to describe our political process.

If you live in the Erie, PA area, you might want to consider sending someone to Congress who is willing to ask questions like this.

When this press release is up on his website, I'll provide a link.

UPDATE (Jun 1): Here's the link to the press release. It's a PDF file.